#she's really near divine because of her

[capslocked]

PROXIMITY

male reader x chou tzuyu

25k words

You’re not a bad person. And you know how that sounds apropos of nothing - defensive, unscrupulous - but it’s true. You’re like anybody else: full of mistakes, but good, mostly. 

You are also aware of the way she looks at you. None of that has changed.

The slight quirk at the corner of her lips. A flicker, a smirk. A game, all doe-eyed and deep dimpled - she's playing the seduction one. It isn’t subtle, and you're losing by proxy. So you're backtracking, drawing your conclusions; you're reading into the line of her jaw, the fall of her hair. Measuring the weight behind each blink.

"You were wrong by the way," Tzuyu starts, indifferent. Through some act of divine retribution, she laughs. "Because to tell you the truth, I used to have, like, the biggest crush on you."

She’s young, and - well, she’s a lot of things. A terrible idea. Incredibly off-limits. She is anathema, red tape, an original sin. You shake your head at her, smile fading - which for anyone keeping score, is an admonishment, however faint.

Because Chou Tzuyu, you recognize, is categorically, unequivocally: never supposed to happen.

-

If you want a read on your current dilemma, then this is how it pans out:

You’re walking headfirst into one of the multiple terrible, terrible scenarios you've probably had an anxiety dream about. It’s an ambush, really.

There’s the text from Mina, explaining all the ins and outs of her winter hideaway, the logistical whereabouts, and the pinched photo from the outside, the endless winding driveway, the clearing in the woods. The remote location, the unfussed snow, the towering trees. There are no neighbors to speak of, just seclusion and isolation and that makes you, among the seven billion or whatever, the only one who will know precisely how fucked you are.

The door to the cabin swings open on its hinges. You kick the snow off your boots, and the air smells indistinctly of peppermint tea.

It’s a cozy place, you think. A slightly rustic aesthetic. There’s a pair of skis decommissioned over the mantle. Mina, as usual, has good taste. You peek around: the foyer, the open living space, the wood finishes, the sunken fireplace. You almost make out a bathroom, through a half-opened doorway - and the kitchen, maybe, is nestled around the far corner.

You settle in, find your bearings, and start taking these leisurely steps down the hall.

That’s when you see her. Wearing a sweater that's a size too big, draped over her frame - sleeves tucked, exposing the barest hint of skin on her wrists, her delicate fingertips. You blink once, twice. That’s a dangerous flare. The rest of her, this canvas of pale skin and soft, endless legs, the hollowed stretch of inner thigh-

Actually, you know what, you are going to delete that out of your mind; as far as you're concerned, Tzuyu absolutely does not have her long, satin-like mahogany hair spilling over her shoulder, her bare legs poking out from under that bulky cotton blend, and she definitely, very absolutely has not given you a complete lack of boundaries, so it's more than plausible for her to slide onto a stool near the countertop with her painted-toes peeking out from beneath the folded press of her thigh (the pedicure, really, now?) and look over at you like you aren’t perfectly familiar with that goddamn face. Those eyes, that jaw.

And her collarbone is out too. Ouch.

Tzuyu rests her chin in one of her perfectly manicured hands, and tilts her head: she’s very blatantly checking you out.

The problem is, you’ve recognized her immediately.

Which - god, the bottom-lines, the blurred borders. It’s been years. She's twenty-three, twenty-four now, and as it turns out, she's taller than you remember. She's thinner, taller, actually a bit filled out too-

Right, okay, no. Just. Delete that image from the internal memory.

"Oh," you breathe, because there's not a single thing you're sure you’re supposed to do. It takes a split second too long to put the brakes on everything in your brain and say, "Tzuyu." It takes even more control not to tack an unthinkingly fond 'miss' to the front of her name - you're a god-honest lost hope - but at the last minute, you settle for, "hi."

It’s unnatural. She's actually somehow prettier than you remember, and the tousled brown curls flowing down her shoulder make it worse. She smiles, gently; this soft-spoken, "hey."

She’s at the kitchen island, holding a bowl of cereal and looking at you like she’s taking inventory. The strap of her bra is black, loose around the curve of her left shoulder; she's barefoot. Any other context, and it's your favorite kind of combination, basically: casual and messy and haphazard. Perfect. She's so tall, christ.

"We've met a few times," and she's not even phrasing it as a question - because she knows for a fact that you know her - and now, well, you can see how that's a problem.

"Yeah." You drop your bags. "Nobody said anything about anyone being here, so, I'm just a little-"

“Relieved?” Tzuyu tries, and if it sounds conceited, you’ve imagined it.

“Surprised,” you amend, quickly. There is a massive amount of distance currently between the both of you - several feet and an island counter to top it off. That's good, you think.

Tzuyu runs her hands over the top of her hair, a half-effort at putting it up into some sort of a ponytail, or maybe a bun. You see now that her nails are bare. "I'd heard from Mina," she starts, "that Sana was coming here-"

And you watch, absentmindedly, as Tzuyu slides down off her chair. You watch her too carefully almost, for a beat. You want to follow the length of her legs with the same ease and shamelessness - like it's instinct or just expected; it's ridiculous and wrong to think, but-

"-with, uh, someone. She left it purposefully vague." Tzuyu finishes, then pauses. Her gaze slides across you. If the awkward stretch of silence is weird, she doesn't comment on it. “Then I heard the flight got delayed because of all the snow."

"Just Sana’s," you correct, and that's not information you should be simply giving away. She just stands there, blinking up at you.

"Huh," she says, eyebrow lifted - slower than is explicitly necessary, “so you’re like. All alone until she gets here.” She simply eats a spoonful of cereal, chews for a moment, and adds, “bummer.”

It’s true, in some sense. You sigh, rake a hand back through your hair, and your jacket falls further down on one of your shoulders; she drops her gaze down, almost imperceptibly, following the motion.

There is definitely a point where you could take notice of a lot of things, and they include, but are certainly not limited to: the fucking languor with which she is licking the yogurt off the back of her spoon, her stupidly long eyelashes fanning on the tops of her cheeks when she glances down, the frankly risque neckline of her sweater. Those kinds of things. Those kinds of details. Really, you wouldn’t dare.

"It sounds like she’ll be getting in tomorrow evening," you decide to inform her, though she didn't ask, and now she nods, focusing still on the yogurt and granola at the bottom of her bowl.

You walk into the kitchen. Rap your knuckles on the countertop. Tzuyu’s right there, and your mind is filling up with images you could really do without. That's the unfortunate, traitorous nature of all this: in any universe, Chou Tzuyu fawns over you. And she will, on accident or purpose, test you. And as for your hesitation - that's an instinct that gets activated every time you so much as meet Tzuyu in person, this invasive little impulse. 

"Well," Tzuyu says, way too casually. “It’s just us then.”

"Yeah." you agree, stilted. “Just us.”

"There's wine," she decides, tilts her head. Then, matter of factly, "and coffee, hot cocoa. Mina’s more or less stocked on everything."

Her voice hits the room all nice, sweet, syrupy - god, fuck, maybe there's a window or a door here somewhere that you're supposed to open to clear the air, but when you look, there’s frost on the glass; it’s the subalpine frigidity. Tzuyu flashes you this other sort of glance - her teeth scrape the rounded spoon's tip before her lips fully fix around it. The drowsy, delirious feeling is almost involuntary at this point.

"I should unpack my things, is what I should do, probably," and now you are saying things for the sake of saying them, as an escape. "Hey, seriously. Sorry for the inconvenience."

“Don’t be,” she tells you. "The weather isn't anybody's fault."

(Here, a premonition. You look at Tzuyu, who raises an eyebrow back.)

The next logical move is: leave. Tzuyu folds her long limbs back up onto the stool, and you're - trying not to look. You're also trying not to do it consciously, actively - you're not, and not. You fail, like you did a few years ago, too - the eyes have a bad habit of wandering. She's made of porcelain, all thin wrists, thin neck, soft curves and delicate lines. She's made out of glass - she’s at her most dangerous when you’ve gone and broken her.

It’s possible, you think, she could break you too.

-

Look, contextually - it’s Murphy’s law, or maybe your own very specific curse. A lot of stuff happens, so here’s a rough draft, your best effort at an approximation, a smudged-pencil sketch:

Tzuyu has been on vacation in the Alps from the start of the week, or maybe the week prior - she's alone in this stupidly big cabin you're supposed to be meeting Sana in for two weeks and change of pure unadulterated, hedonistic fun. Skiing, lounging, stargazing, drinking, screwing, consummating a situationship. You know the drill.

However there ends up being an actual, literal avalanche - with snow and rocks and ice and whatever the fuck - the power goes out, and you can only assume the whole mountain's gone dark. It's like a classic, a cautionary tale: hey, dude, you're on vacation with this drop-dead gorgeous girl who will let you do whatever you want to her - in the name of love and lust and a loosely legal liability. She says she'll be yours forever, except you also heard her say that the universe is entitled to laugh at you, a bit - so you do something you'll regret (which, okay, you've done countless things you'll regret) and now you're getting punished for it, and so is the stunning temptress currently shivering in the bed next to you. Seriously, whatever you do, do not fuck her, don't let her get too attached, because oh, man - Tzuyu really likes to make herself comfortable, huh? To nestle herself into your arms, let her hand stroke circles in the dark fabric of your t-shirt, warm her cold nose into your chest, and cuddle the night away. She's so easy to give in to, isn't she? This walking, talking paradox of everything she's not supposed to be and everything she'll willingly do anyway - there's her expression, placid and rapturous in equal measures, the sleepy mumbles against your skin that sound like prayers, her damp breaths.

You should know better. You should know that this is the universe, laughing its ass off at you.

And just for the record, there is sound reason for everyone to feel, in some sense, extremely concerned by the narrative that your life has slowly, unceremoniously devolved itself into.

The first time you meet Chou Tzuyu is years ago. She’s dramatically, devastatingly, problematically, young.

It was all happening before you could really clock it, and it was morally reprehensible, and it was, in fact, probably all your own doing.

And it’s even more obvious in retrospect: how she would react to the way you reach back and ruffle your hair when you laugh, the casual appeal of your smile, the depths of your tone, how you cut it as close as you can get it. A girl will trip all over herself to let you look after her; that’s the basic blueprint, that's the default. See, you're in your twenties, an adult - not having figured out much, but having certainly figured out this - and it's very much not lost on you that the girl should not be flirting with you - but she does, and the very worst of it is: you let her.

“Are you out of your mind?” Jihyo had said at the time, and, in fairness, yeah. That more or less sums it up.

So you end up making a point of never getting to know her, to always keep the conversation nonexistent. Or in the worst case scenario, brief - on surface level topics. The weather. Your job. Food. If you like her sunglasses. (They look protective, you’d told her, very practical. Very safe.) It's the essentials, a light, professional rapport - never once crossing the border from casual conversation to candid disclosure. 

She's infatuated, of course. You're not mincing words here. It's actually rather unfortunate, how gone she is for you. You could’ve probably stood to dial it back; you, and your charm. Your smiles.

Because Chou Tzuyu was however many years young, very much off-limits - and like a lot of people it seems, totally hooked on your whole deal.

-

(Theoretically, that's how it all starts. Which is why, pragmatically, you will never, ever lay a finger on her.)

-

So, the plan to get through this was simple and to the point and as follows:

* Avoid unnecessary physical contact

* Maintain social distance, in fact - something covid-esque sounds great, about six feet

* Do not offer opinions/advice unless specifically asked

* Minimize speaking, just to be safe

* Do not exchange gifts, especially personal ones

* Be wary of the temptation to take a voluntarily-tipsy Tzuyu to bed, because you'll want to - and god knows Tzuyu will make it extremely clear that you could; this is exactly how shit turns south-

* Adjust and reframe

* Reinforce

* Remind yourself

* To just fucking think about literally anything else

It was working fine, so far - really fine, especially if you consider how early into the stay you're sitting there, telling yourself off in the bathroom mirror, get it together, you dumbass. What is wrong with you, don’t you know better by now - before an unapologetic knock on the door snaps you out of it, and the click of the door opening a moment later forces a heavy inhale from your chest: you just need a fucking second, thanks - not a half-decent excuse or a rearrangement, not a careful restructure, just a split second in your own head; that's not even the sort of thing you're prone to needing, because it's you, but with Chou fucking Tzuyu-

A soft breathy laugh, "are you okay in here?"

Tzuyu pokes her head into the room, her hair a wavy curtain that tumbles down past the middle of her back. You have this vague, fleeting impulse to run your fingers through it.

"Well," and there goes all the shit you'd managed not to think about, or contemplate, or dwell upon for that one glorious, naive, misinformed second. "Sort of," you say, offering her a quick glance.

"Really?" Tzuyu says, not catching onto the whole existential crisis thing. "Is there anything else you need? I mean," and then your eyes fall upon her; she's put a sweater on, pants, which all things considered, is a huge victory, a total rout - her baggy sweater drapes on her, practically brushing her thigh where the material stops, the hem. "I guess not, just. Um," her teeth catch her bottom lip for a quick moment, and this time she glances back towards the hall, the granite-finish tiles. "Wanna make s'mores?"

"What," you ask, because honestly, what the actual fuck-

"I went into town to get fresh groceries earlier this week. Everything just kinda landed in my cart," she says, the beginning of an explanation - the backstory, if you will. "And there's a fireplace. Momo always says the calories don't count if it's social eating, so." She makes a small shrug.

"Oh,” you say, like you understand. Your throat feels tight. “She’s totally right.”

She offers you a small nod. Tucks her hair behind her ear. You wonder if she knows how suggestive even the smallest of gestures she makes are; and more so, if she does it knowingly, or simply without thought - if it's a facet of her own effortlessness.

"Um," you say, for no particular reason other than that Tzuyu is fucking distracting. "Okay."

The edges of her mouth tick upwards at that. "We could put something on the tv,” she suggests. “For the vibe."

"Oh yeah, for the ambience."

"For the ambience," she nods.

(And fuck her, seriously. You might be a goner already.)

-

"A winter weather advisory," Tzuyu reads, squinting slightly at the tv. A minute later: "Just stay home," followed by another pause, and a frown: "hail and ice too. Yeah, no kidding."

She's reading the weather report. You're pretending you have any idea how to work the fireplace while she sets her eyes on the news, hands running over the blankets she has huddled around herself - legs folded, tucked into the edge of her chest. She'd gotten as far as logging into her Netflix account before the suggestion of cuddling was so obviously implied, her hands patting the cushioned space beside her that you were required by moral law to flip through the cable options until you found the least sexy, least rom-com-y option you could find: a newscaster reporting on the ongoing inclement weather, a forecaster saying 'near zero chance of improving, so travel is heavily discouraged, we strongly advise against-'

"Wonder if Sana's even going to make it," Tzuyu breaks the relative silence, and you are acutely aware of how casual she has been referring to Sana, the complete and utter lack of jealousy or any emotion related - or you guess, inspired. She's not even the slightest bit irked. “If the airport opens, maybe," she adds, and, after a beat, "let's hope."

-

It gets colder. You can barely see three feet past the front door. The forecast only gets worse, the storm intensifies and swells, it snows and snows - and this isn't a cottage somewhere on the lake, you're a couple miles down a single-track, woodsy road, far, far away from society.

-

If only these walls could talk, honestly. You're like, caught in a moment. With Tzuyu and marshmallows and these tiny, sticky wooden skewers. This is a story you will tell nobody, ever.

"I don’t mean to say I told you so," she says, but it comes out with a mouthful of chocolate and graham cracker, and marshmallow, which sort of takes the bite out of it. "But the movie is a little more entertaining."

You pretend like you weren't staring at her mouth a beat prior. "Right, a cinematic masterpiece." 

Tzuyu tugs a marshmallow off the stick, and looks over at you again. Smiles around the impromptu pastry. She's just such a bright, wholesome thing - soft-hearted, selfless, so innocuous and so pleasant. It's absolutely sick. You have a fucking pavlovian response to Tzuyu simply existing.

And you’re pretending like the white, tacky remains on her mouth haven't permanently solidified that look into memory: the melted chocolate, the whipped sugar, the dimple. You could really do without this specific feeling - for however much longer it'll last, should the storm linger.

"You don’t ever have stuff like this, just for a quiet, carefree time?" Tzuyu licks it off her skin, and the question kind of drags your attention elsewhere.

You breathe in, slow.

Maybe she can feel it too, you think. Because Tzuyu drags the pad of her thumb against her bottom lip, and a question she doesn't ask flickers to life in her gaze: if you'll break or not, if there is an absolute limit.

But it’s impossible to read her. Tzuyu takes up this real easy-going disposition, all quiet and stoic, sort of, and maybe that's the dangerous part of her - the stillness. Other moments, she has this uncanny knack for conversation. She's charming in that way, you have always thought, a bright face. She has a keen understanding of things too - maybe sometimes too much; maybe a little bit beyond her years, really, a little too knowledgeable.

"When the gang does," you answer, diplomatically. “Sure, I suppose.”

There's another smile at that, which is how you know that the back and forth, this coolly cool, somewhat-stiff exchange is sort of becoming a game. A bet on who cracks, who turns. She won't tell you it's you, and you'll never in your right mind acknowledge her. It's some version of honesty. A bit like Russian roulette.

"I used to think we were friends, you know," she muses, like it's some great mystery - all very deliberately cryptic. Like it's funny.

"Hey, you were like, a teenager," you're grasping at straws. You’re spinning the bullet round the conversational chamber. “And I have this thing-”

"You have a thing?" Her eyebrow is raised again - sweetly challenging.

"-like, a principle, a standard - if there's nothing there, and let's face it: there's really not something here-"

"Aw," Tzuyu fakes pouting, which is simultaneously very mean and also like, painfully hot, and she makes this pitiful coo, "you really have nothing to say at all, do you."

Which. Fuck, she’s right. The 'thing' here is the no touching, the no messing, the no making anything resembling a move. She's sitting over there with her mouth covered in sugar, batting her goddamn eyelashes. Which you ignore, thank god for impulse control, or the instinct of it, and Tzuyu pushes a graham cracker past her lips to placate her own expression.

And so it goes. She keeps looking at you and looking and looking and you stare, transfixed, back at her. The edges of her jaw, the rise of her nose, the jutting curve of her collarbone; you say something dumb or clever and you're making her laugh, and every time she does, her teeth catch on her bottom lip and you could really do with a distraction right now, but it's impossible not to flirt. 

It's just the way the universe has constructed you - this starvation, a twisted desire. There’s cruelty in the design.

-

(Things take a turn for the worse, of course. You don’t know how, but she gets to you agree that you two should've gotten closer in all that time-

"Well, I’m sure you were just so busy," you'd shrugged, indifferent, and she'd pressed the sleeve of her sweater to her mouth, just to hide how bright the smile was.

-which, honestly, fuck you - given all the context. Because now she's right here in the cabin; she's an arm's length away, and all this time, you've meant to stay the fuck out of reach.) 

-

Tzuyu does the worst thing. She returns from the kitchen, hands full, with two squat tumblers and a bottle of dark brandy. She sets one down next to you and asks if you want some.

You look. You mean, what are you even supposed to do? It's a catch twenty-two, it's a joke - what can a girl be thinking, standing there. Bending the right way, hair framing a face like hers.

Yeah, sure - it’s the voice of someone who's slipping, who’s gonna say the same thing three more times. "Hm, why not."

The ice clinks against the glass. Then, the pour. Toast to good health, a clean conscience, safe passage; you’ll take whatever you can get. 

You watch Tzuyu knock back an impressive amount and make an impressive face. There’s maturity there, you cope. Because you want to touch her jaw, thumb over her cheekbone, breathe baby, it's too strong, slow down on her lips, watch her mouth open slightly-

The fire pops.

She leans toward you. “Are you going to keep stealing stories from me, or are you going to supply anything good to the discussion?"

"About me, personally?" you say, purposefully pedantic.

Tzuyu’s smirk is half-present, half-playful. She sets down her tumbler on a coaster - Mina would be appreciative - and hums at you. “What do you think I mean?”

"I was really hoping the inflection would help clarify."

She levels a gaze with you. You fight back for a hot second - this slow-burning heat under the skin, your resolve threatening to buckle, shatter, spill itself everywhere - and in the end, she is the one that looks away, softly laughing, a pfft under her breath. You’re left the opportunity to just - look. See where the glow from the wood-burning fire has cast this gorgeous gold over her face, all her defined curves, her delicate features.

"I don't care, it could be anything," she poses, settling back into the pillows. Smiling. "Please. Entertain me."

Her cheeks are rosy. You realize, quite suddenly, you are not totally sober either. This is exactly how Sana talked you into something however many moons ago, then however many moons later, surgically unattached all the strings. Sana’s good at talking. At convincing. And you don't do shots like her, or apparently like Tzuyu does - but hell, it's that maddening, pretty little dimple of hers - the one that's always there when she does her mischievous smirk - a deeply devastating look, a devil-may-care demeanor, and you're dead-drunk on it, honestly.

"Want me to talk about Sana?" you offer, "seems like an obvious choice."

"I think you’re projecting," Tzuyu teases. “You just miss her, I'm sure.”

"Mhm. Sure."

Tzuyu makes a noise halfway between a chuckle and a snort, and draws the blankets more tightly around her. "What," she says, nonplussed, "who doesn't want to hear some gossip about their friends?"

You're fucking up, right? Fucking up the same way you did years ago when you caught the wrong kind of feeling for an entirely, altogether inappropriate woman. But you'll blame the drinks. And the mood. And the ambience, the fucking fire that's almost suffocating, the closeness of her body next to you-

"Hey," you say, and it's such a mistake. You're pointing to a spot on your chin. You're making it worse. "You got a little, uh-"

You watch as she lifts her hand, glides it through the air - brushes her own cheek with her fingertips, smoothing out an imagined blemish.

"Did I get it?"

"Uh, well, sorta-" and she knows you’re lying.

Tzuyu tries again. Comes up short, and when her hair falls in front of her face, she’s looking at you like maybe you’ll help take care of that too. She’s a total fucking coquette - though maybe she hasn’t even done it on purpose, maybe she's just that unaware, innocent. Not the second one, you figure. You're leaning, tilting closer and closer to her - in any other scenario, there'd be the shortest possible time between her touching herself and you, cupping her jaw with one of your hands.

But your mouth feels like it's moving of its own accord. "No, wait, let me help you," you continue, before you know it. 

Isn’t it disastrous; all ice and hazard, this is the advisory in effect; a napoleon-goes-to-russia caliber calamity, a colossal write off, a write in. You could have, should have stopped, except you didn't and now you're reaching, gently, until your palm cups the side of her face - until you press, until you hold her steady. Her head tilts. She lets you, blinking up. Her eyes are this hazy, intoxicated coffee-brown, honeyed and burnt and fucking beautiful.

You swipe your thumb along her bottom lip. The gesture is slow, languid, intentional; you think, through some cosmic error, that might just be the end of it.

"There," you say, smiling, naive.

"Yeah," Tzuyu breathes out, and she winds her fist into the fabric of your shirt. "Thanks."

You lean, or she does; you go down, or she pulls you; there's no difference, really.

She is kissing you, this soft little press. A tug in every direction. You hadn’t kissed her, at the very start, but when her fingers thread through your hair, gripping hard, bringing you closer until you groan, parting your lips slightly, and - and her tongue flits past yours - your brain does this wild mental leap that you ought to be questioning later.

But everything starts to sink. 

One of your hands lands on her waist, thumb slipping under the hem of her sweater and pressing against bare skin, and her knee nudges between both of your legs - until Tzuyu hums this low, pretty sound in her throat. There is something fervent here, all-consuming, devouring; her mouth moves like it's frantic for air, for oxygen and fuel, and her whole body melts under yours like she's completely falling apart.

Fuck, you think. There is a deep, smouldering heat in the pit of your stomach.

Because she’s perfect. You always knew that, didn’t you. She is firelight and perfume and muted gold; everything else falls into shadow, fades into the background. Her lips are velvet-soft, and they open again and again with these heavy exhales of hot air - so much so that you have to shift the hand you'd set on her waist lower, a little, her hip bone under your palm, a touch ghosting towards the dip and the swell.

Somehow you have this knowledge: at the end of everything, it'll be her name falling helplessly off your tongue.

"You were wrong by the way,” she stops to say. 

"About-" You press another kiss into her jaw, and her mouth parts around the same slow sigh. "Wait." You lean back enough to look at her again.

“Whatever you said earlier." Tzuyu’s eyes go half-lidded as she starts petting your hair back into place, thumb stroking your jawline. "I'd have made time."

Oh, christ-

"Because to tell you the truth," her tongue wets her lip, shiny, wet, "I've never really forgotten. Like I just thought, that whole thing was so… fleeting, you know, like the last time, when you let me text you - god, I was crushing so hard."

You breathe, shaking your head. 

"Don’t," is what comes out of your mouth after, quick, sharpened. 

“Don’t what?” Tzuyu taunts, pushing another inch further. That small grin on her face, her long, nimble fingers combing through your hair. 

You are trying to think, and there was an apology, right? You'd had this one in you. The one that began as a guilty soliloquy, a rueful acknowledgement; something that should have been directed toward Tzuyu, told her, at one point, or another: look. Sorry it's like this.

But there is a hand tracing the collar of your shirt - a sensation that follows all the way to the base of your throat; you lean further into her touch, almost involuntarily - a simple motion, and yet. "You shouldn't. You shouldn't say things like that to me," and you mean: these things you already know. "It's not good."

"Doesn't feel that bad," she tells you, a breezy sort of whisper, warm. "I think I'm getting the opposite impression."

"Maybe for the wrong reasons," you remind her. And to remind yourself, actually. "Probably for the wrong reasons - trust me, it is.”

"Trust you," and it’s the slightest bit ridiculing, a tease - Tzuyu drops her smile, pulls you in by the hair, whispers low. "Sure," the syllable soft, pressed against your throat, "I trust you not to hurt me," and the 'not' gets hung on for an impossibly long moment, stretched out thin. 

She's sinister; she has to be, or some amalgamation of the most potent version of every word she’s ever said. A dream girl, the definition and essence of a temptress, this shameless attraction - an insistent siren begging for your attention; the incepting mind-game; the entity that stalks the halls in the deepest trenches of the night, whispering your worst fears right into your ear. You fall further into Tzuyu, the prettiest of nightmares.

(Oh, it's the dimple that does you in, really: if there's any possible way that Chou Tzuyu has unintentionally ruined your life, she's done it with that innocent little smile.)

"You can kiss me again," Tzuyu says, permissive.

And you do. You kiss her, and kiss her like you’ve no choice - like you've decided, at least in this very moment, if Tzuyu can own a piece of your soul, you can take something too.

-

(The thing about a cautionary tale: sometimes it is really just a story. Sometimes it happens and the world is left unscathed. There were a lot of warning signs, yes. But this could be a coda, a moralistic adage, a story to turn the page on and laugh and be embarrassed by and say, oh, no, I'd definitely do better; a blip. We’d never do anything like that. It's all history, honestly.)

-

It's not romantic, and it's less gentle than you’d have expected: Tzuyu bites your lip at one point, and you grab her hip so hard she yelps. The pause in the after is filled with a provocation, a stare, a tilt of your head, and her saying, “hey, easy now.” You cup her face in your hands, and run your thumb over lips. The calm is pretty short-lived. She gets her hands working frantically to tear your shirt off over your head. Then it's a haphazard stumble into the doorframe of the bedroom, with her pulling you in too-hard by the waist, bumping your nose against hers in this rough meeting - until your lips fit together. 

“Mm,” Tzuyu’s mouth pushes insistently into yours and your tongue immediately laves at its underside, coaxes it to slide against yours and soon she’s sliding forward on purpose - on her own initiative, pressing the steady line of your cock against the seam of your pants, the pressure sudden.

"Watch it," you murmur, breaking away a little to glare at her, which just makes her smile, like she likes pissing you off or something, likes watching you get mad at her, or whatever - if she says it's true, then it is, probably - she's honest.

Her small hand darts up, gripping the sides of your jaw tightly and moving in, kissing like it's easy; like she knows what the fuck she's doing. Her head tilts and she does it again, except it's a few times in a row, making out in the doorway. 

"And if I say no?" She grins, hand at your dick again, just palming through the fabric and getting off on your soundless reactions to it all. "Like, is that really enough? I feel like you'd have to like - tie me up. Something - you know?"

"That sounds like a you problem."

A mischievous smile steals across her lips and you feel yourself doing the same. "Yeah, you're right," she responds, dragging her thumb and forefinger from the zipper of your jeans to the hard line of your cock, pinching gently along the shape. "It is my problem."

She feels pliant, more than willing, but it's a calculated type of softness. Still, you get a hint, a vague message and you figure, the way this girl's smirking in her lips: she likes being held down, held fast and steady, so you pin her wrists above her head - her eyes stay on you, don't drop; you pin her, and her expression becomes that shade more dark, more teasing. Oh, you'll go slowly, you think, until Tzuyu gives. You'll climb a hand further under her sweater, let it skim over her ribs. You'll kiss her again, open-mouthed, and slow, until she can't breathe.

Her head knocks into the wall, she bites and smiles like a promise, and all her muscle flexes under your grip. "Oh, seriously," Tzuyu whispers into your mouth. "Y'know, this is like a fantasy of mine.”

And that's kind of it: she has that look. In the morning, you can see yourself chasing her down into sheets - just pinning her with the weight of your whole body, feeling each tensed curve of her against you. She pulls you closer, into her; she seems the type.

"I’d really rather not hear that, Tzu.”

"And I want to hear you say please, more than anything," Tzuyu laughs at herself, something hard in it, "but I think you want to fuck me so bad, it'll come naturally. Like, the second you have your fingers inside me. And that's what you want, right? Tell me."

"I'm thinking about your legs,” you tell her, running your palm around the curve of her thigh. Fuck, she’s perfect. “Think they'd fit around my waist."

"And hook my ankles? I’d love that." Her eyes crinkle. "Is that it, though?"

"Maybe I'd keep my hand on your throat and fuck you like that, too. That's on the table."

Tzuyu laughs: a real, actual sound, but not at you. "It is. You're smart."

"To be completely transparent," you mutter. "I don't plan on asking you very nicely at all."

The lines in Tzuyu's face go a little blissful, contented, like she's so, so pleased with this, like she approves, and she kisses you again, the length of your bodies pressed together, except where her hips cant up and meet the space between your thighs. You drag a hand roughly along her waist, kneading muscle there, down to the rise of her jeans - which, fuck, you need to help her shimmy out of and find the pull of the sweater, whatever - and she grinds out some noise, something caught between her throat and her teeth, but mostly in the place where your hand's dragged under the material, tugging gently at the wire of a bra, and you'd actually kind of forgotten it was a thing.

It's when you hear her own rasp, when she slips the side of your zipper open with a few quick strokes, shoving her fingers inside to hold the base of your cock, that you finally decide:

She's yours and you'll prove it. You'll make sure she knows: the evidence, the fingerprints,  the bruises blooming the size of your thumbs and she'll be the one showing them off with pride. She'll let you do whatever you like, which'll be a lot. She'll appeal to all the worst parts of you; she'll say thank you; she'll whimper while you're pulling her bra off and simply letting it flutter to the ground; she'll be crying within the first half an hour of you touching her. You can read it right off her gorgeous face. She'll be so damn breathtakingly-pretty, bouncing on your cock, folded under your weight - it'll be incredible. She'll be yours.

"Come on," Tzuyu breathes. "Yes. Please," she adds, as though it's an afterthought, her free hand tangling in your hair, pulling. "Hurry, or something - I fucking love this but we need to- I’m literally going to, like, die if you don’t touch me right now."

"Yeah," is what you get out. Her jeans finally fall to her ankles and she kicks, to get them to puddle onto the floor. "Yeah. Alright, maybe."

You won't even need to hear her begging, you already know how she sounds: a little annoyed and very turned on, rolling her eyes at herself. This part - she's playing at resistance, but she's giving in. A kiss back, hotter than you were expecting, as you slip a hand up the back of her bare thigh and the edge of her underwear, a thin strip, like it's done on purpose.

When you tuck a finger inside the waistband, feeling a little guilty about the way her whole body reacts - the flex, the pull, the weight of all her muscle straining against how her legs fall open - Tzuyu manages, her face in the hollow of your cheek: "you've waited long enough, right?"

God, she knows where the wounds are still fresh. Which bruises will hurt most when she puts a finger right into one - a reminder you couldn't possibly ignore. She's playing this whole thing a little bit sadistically; she wants this to be your fault, you can tell.

And your mind isn't unbending. You push a finger into her cunt and the girl absolutely shakes apart, body jerking like you've severed a lifeline. She's so wet, and so pretty, so sensitive. Maybe you really have.

"Tzu," you tell her. The hand in your hair tightens, a warning, as you let two, then three, fingers shove inside her. She's breathless; the slow, rough motions, her entire body riding the heel of your palm. "Do you want me to tell you how good you are for me, right now? Is that it?"

"Yeah - do. Please, fuck - please say it."

"I was right," is what you manage, biting your tongue.

"Right?" She asks, her fingers locked, urging your thrusting to turn punishing. "Please."

"Do you want me to make this a nice, pretty little memory? Suck the bitterness out and - have something sweet to go back to, the next time someone hurts you."

"I can take it." She snaps, not even responding to your comment. "Tell me you need me and you're leaving me no choice."

You smile into her hair, because she's a dream. Your thumb pushes into her clit and you can feel her seize up with a pathetic whine.

"Pretty," you mutter, as she slumps her chest to yours. You kiss it right into her hair. “I need you, Tzu.”

And the idea's seductive: keep her pinned and fuck her right into the wall. See her wrecked by the end; the swell of her thumb bloody from how she was biting into it, how she's wrenching at your wrist. Your lips land over her collarbone - no, hers do, to the side of your head - she'd be bent in half if it wasn't for the wood at her back. Her leg crossed in the small of your back. A proper, all-consuming kind of wrecking, with your name on it.

"Yes." Tzuyu nods into your temple, “just- that.” 

You're kissing the crook of her neck; your fingertips sliding right against the end of her, your fingers pressing into her and stretching the girl to her limits, making her tremble in her own skin, making her insides melt for the next round, and the next round, and the next; the best, and worst, and longest-lasting kind of high. Your fingertips push together, flutter apart, and Tzuyu's eyes open all of a sudden, locking onto yours.

"Please," she gasps, this one thing. She has tears in her eyes: her face falls into your hands like water, a long drip, and she's all but unraveling.

"I'm going to make you cum, okay?" you tell her, and it sounds so sincere that she simply nods. She trusts you. Implicitly. You see how something in her relaxes, muscles unwinding as though for one last moment. Then you lean down, to her ear, to murmur: "say you're mine."

Her teeth are gritting. You can feel every last point.

"Just yours," she mutters, and it's barely even audible, but she'll say it: over and over, as her orgasm builds, before her mouth goes slack. "Always been. From the very beginning, please-"

“Fuck,” you bite down, and she looks like she’s won.

“So long, y’know?” she manages, in her halting voice, as if you haven't got two fingers up her sweet, perfect cunt, which is, currently, gripping the shit out of your hand, the hungry slutty muscle spasms, a slippery fist; it's not too hard getting Tzuyu to talk dirty and vulgar like a total degenerate - all it takes is the circle of your thumb and she’s perfect and pliant and absolutely out of her mind. “Since like, forever-”

You need her to stop. Need her to be quiet. Your palm lands over the shape of her mouth. She's murmuring something else, but it's muffled - and that's perfect, really. You’re not going to hell; all the devils are already here, getting off on the impropriety-

On the fucking drag of your fingertips. If it isn’t mean, it’s definitely cynical. Each curl of a knuckle unwinding her, a little more, a little further. The gush of her slick that’s collected on the webbing between your fingers is getting unruly, and you’re pressing her mouth flat against your hand, muffling the sheer appreciation.

“Shh,” you tell her, and she seems to calm - insofar you find a spot inside her that makes her eyes roll back and her chest shudder. “Don’t. Hold still for me, I want to watch you cum, Tzu.”

The only thing you can hear beyond the stilted breathing against your hand is her wet cunt getting stretched and fucked on your fingers. It’s so simple. So straightforward. The front of her orgasm makes her jolt against your hips and you pin her again, just to see those gorgeous eyes opening and shutting in sync.

It's this beautiful thing, watching her cum; her flushed cheeks, her pupils blown.

"Good girl," is the only thing you manage in response. "Such a good - such a good little-"

She moans into your hand and finally the muscles of her core tighten, tipping over the precipice as she tips back from the edge. "Ah, you - oh, it feels so-”

You tell her not to talk, and thumb her sensitive clit until the girl's screaming.

Her cries cut through the hallway: the friction, your movements - she's grinding desperate to ride her own orgasm. The absolute highs wracking her silent. She doesn't seem capable of getting off her tiptoes, or opening her eyes properly. Her mouth's still gaping beneath your palm with a whimper, her lungs heaving, and her cunt practically burning-hot - or, she just is, she's overheating, and everything else is burning around her.

"I'm going to fuck your pretty little cunt, Tzu," you tell her as her hips jump and her eyes open. You drop her leg, which buckles instantly. "You're going to be good for me, won’t you?"

"Yes, sir," Tzuyu promises you - it makes you wince - like she'd say anything else, with her hips pushing into your hand like she can't remember how not to. 

Even with her brain turning to mush, Tzuyu finds it within her to tease, to pull, to coax - as her slick slides down the seam between your fingers, like she's gushing, a wet ribbon coating the backs of your knuckles. There's a fantasy in it, you think - and it's always the unapologetic type, like, they never admit it: they want the dirt, the debasing. There's always a blueprint to it; they want to hear how terrible it is and then have some fun playing into it, playing a part.

Only Tzuyu’s lip is wobbling; she’s looking at you like you’re going to fuck her apart and she’ll thank you for it. There's no play. Tzuyu wants your cum and she's so open-legged about it you can't pretend it's not exactly that simple.

She’s going to fall apart if you don’t shove your cock in her tight cunt. You need to pin her there - fuck her until she’s shaking. You can already see the face she’ll make when you shock yourself inside her-

"What is it, baby?" you ask her, and a beat later, you draw your zipper down with a steady hand, the other working in her mouth, pressing down the tip of her tongue - not exactly holding, not exactly pulling out of her.

Tzuyu sighs, heavy on her eyelids and slow. Very pretty.

"I want-" Her head is lolling. She's in a daze, now, you can tell: her mouth wet and trembling, her legs kicking weakly, a full-bodied tremor overcoming her. Everything wraps around you as your cock slides inside her: the pale-soft underside of her legs, her slender arms. All those lovely, endless tensed lines, her strong abs. She can hold you like this, with only her abdomen tightening, the rest of her almost liquid. Her head knocks into yours. "Fu-fuck my cunt, fill it, please.”

You use the angle, the approach. Her pussy's practically spasming on the thick tip, milking the hardness there - but the deeper, more confident strokes, you feel it in every one of her shaky breaths. The only thing you can see is Tzuyu's dumb little doe eyes, the one-to-two second interval, fluttering in between slow, heavy blinks. The walls of her pussy are all at once so gentle and smooth, her cunt a plush, warm vice on your cock; she's clinging, and hot, and you're so buried inside you could probably pick her apart with a few words alone:

"Please," she's muttering to herself, and every single cry gets stuck in her mouth and vibrates between the both of you.

Your fingertips hook into the curve of her waist, until your nails are sinking into the flesh, pinching gently, and watching her expression twist, you grip her hips with all the bruising-strength in your hands, yank her back onto your cock. Her spine goes rigid as a line of curses fall like rain from her mouth. A shuddering gasp - you have to steady her against you, where her knees lock tight around your waist as though she's worried you're leaving, like she's scared you won't stay-

"Baby," you grit out, like you'd beg too, "Oh- fuck, my baby, you're - you're all mine, okay."

You bury yourself balls-deep - and there's no pretense, it's just you and her, the pace making Tzuyu's little repeating "ah" go choppy with your thrusting, her eyes clamping shut, her limbs locking around you.

"Too deep," she groans. "Jesus, it's-"

"Uh uh," you mutter against the bend of her chin, and press in, still, maybe just to spite her. "Fight me. If it's too deep."

There’s tears in her lashes, she’s sobbing; you’re fucking her so properly you think she wants to kill you. It might even be written into that glossy expression: death, your demise. But her pretty eyes glint with mischief and her lips split into a grin.

"Try me," and this laugh, coming up from your chest - low, amused. "Go ahead. Put my neck in your hand, if you want-"

There's only ever a couple of moves. Like in chess, the combinations repeat, patterns emerge. Tzuyu pulls into your kiss; her wrist pinned to the wall behind her with one of your hands, the other knocking her thighs apart. Her ankles hook into your hips, just as you knew they would. There are so few options for a person; the only solution's the natural one - the urge to match each other's needs; to lose yourself in the easy push and the easy pull.

It doesn't take long before she opens up beneath you: until there's nothing between the hard pound of your hips and her tender, creaming cunt. Then there's that final gasp, this violent pulse as she takes her hands back from you to cup around your ears and press her lips to the line of your cheekbones and nose and mouth, with her tear-slick skin and saliva and, god - she's a whimperer, you now know, but Tzuyu holds her body still enough to not sway. The picture-perfect example of a good little girl -

That's how you push your mouth to hers: the steady-languid thrust of your cock between the hot clamp of her legs. "Oh, god, you’re gonna make me cum again, christ," her cries go, all muffled, right into your lips. She’s a little lost. Fucked-out. Blissful.

It's not right, though; just pinning the girl against a wall - no, she deserves better. You don't let her fall as you drag her into the bedroom. Not until a tumble into the sheets. She doesn’t try to control the fall, you land on top of her, and Tzuyu laughs a little, but it dies into the hard breaths you can feel bouncing back against your mouth. Her soft thighs pressed beneath your weight, quivering still.

"Fuck your cum into me," She huffs out, softly, more air than noise. You’re practically crushing her. And then the tilt of her head, almost inviting, like a question. "Please. I want it."

In hindsight, the real memory of this moment will be a soft and lovely thing - fabricated mostly: her tiny frame shaking, trembling in its effort to take you in, her voice giving out around a cry as she cums again - there's something sacred there, surely, a holiness that isn't altogether safe, considering what this girl is.

You’ll try not to remember how you fucked her and buried your face between her tits, though she did look up at you through her tears and made it sound sweet, said your name just so, or even the fact that she watched her whole body get filled and only smiled with contentment. That part won’t survive - nor the fact you’ll hold the girl down later and cum inside her three times. Until she’s leaking. Details to be confined to Mina’s cabin-secrecy - or at least, to whatever depth of oblivion, past your will to suppress it, her mind reaches when you bury your hand in her hair and pull her head back to really make sure you've hit every corner of her and left your cum there, marking her insides, turning her warm.

And look, Tzuyu doesn't balk. Instead she lets you pull her in close, her nails raking into the nape of your neck, the muscles under your skin. She drags scratches down your back as you sink into her cunt, hot, willing - she’s so fucking wet you’re bottoming out in each sloppy thrust.

"Tzu," you can't stop yourself from muttering, almost reverent. You were right, on all accounts. The girl is a problem.

One that is currently collapsing under you. You push her knees up to her elbows, and all her weight melts under your hands, limp and helpless.

"Fuck, your pussy is unbelievable.” You shouldn’t be fucking her this hard, but, well, you are - “Tzuyu, baby,” and when your hand comes up to her jaw, she palms it. Takes your thumb into her mouth and sucks. Fuck, it’s all slipping, consuming, you need to cum in her, need to bury your cock deep in her cunt and cum right into that wet sopping mess. Fill her up where she’s molten hot and her walls are gripping you so hard they’re practically begging-

"Yeah," she repeats around the digit, flitting her tongue against your fingertip. “Yeah. Cum for me.”

That's how she likes it. She'll scream, if you let her. If you give her the deepest fill. She’ll apologize and she won’t know for what. You already know how her expression will shift as soon as it hits. Head falling back. Her hands fisting in your hair, the bedding - her knees nearly get drawn up, and you push them apart by your fingertips. She whimpers, and whimpers, and you can't stop from fucking the pretty noises right out of her lungs until she's dripping - soaking you, all over the sheets. You want her to feel it when you leave. Your presence. It’s only fair - she should remember some part of you, in exchange for what she’s traded and stolen away - ideally forever.

You thumb at the tear tracks and lift her by a fistful of that pretty dark hair. And for her, you can be kind, you let your lips graze hers. As tenderly as you can manage, which isn't much, but then the angle settles lower, your cock hits deeper, all the right spots - and god, Tzuyu is so easy to fuck. She slips a little, and you’re catching her, pushing deeper, harder - she’s easy to pound too, to hold down and smother and grind deep, to have under you, all boneless, insensible-

"So pretty for me, Tzu," you growl into the shell of her ear, because you can, and another stroke, another velvety drag has you cumming in her hot, little cunt.

Each throb brings more, pumping her full of your cum, and she likes it. Keeps muttering baby, baby please in your ear, and fuck, you almost slip a hand down and make her fall apart too - but - her fingers wrap around your wrist before they get there, so tight.

"Can feel it. So deep," she whispers, when your eyelids screw shut and the mess floods out of her - gets fucked right back in: your hot cum and her thick slick, the creamy mess leaking from her cunt. You pull your cock out halfway, and she does sob - that sounds just like you'd imagine, too. "Please. Oh, my god- sir. That's it. That's it, let it out, sir. Sir, all your cum feels so good in me - please. Please- just give it to me, sir, yes-"

She’s not even taunting or mocking on that ‘sir,’ you think, not the way she sounds now, the halfway-slur. It's all torn up and tired. It makes you press closer, making the head of your cock swell between the thin walls of her pussy. It hurts - the squeeze. And then the soft, pleading sound she makes.

"Anything for you, sweetheart," you groan, a last attempt at a condescending tone. But she's so raw, so broken down by now that nothing is quite right.

"Fuck," she mutters against your mouth, "fuck, thank you," and your palm drags down the length of her sternum, following the angle of her jaw, slipping your palm onto her tits, thumbing at the indent. It's soft, pliant skin, and you pinch: not anywhere sharp or cruel, not especially sensitive, just in a line below the ridge of her rib cage, and it's too pretty a picture not to smile at her, when her entire chest jolts at the contact, the intake of breath. "Sir. Fuck."

"I'm still fucking you later," you assure her, as if her breathing could've convinced you otherwise. "But I wanna hear your voice some more. Hum a little. Give me a yes, sweetheart. Can you do that?"

The noise is barely audible, almost nonexistent, except it is: she hums her assent as you dip two fingertips back into her swollen, well-fucked cunt, scooping out some of the mess. Your fingers hook into her cheek and her mouth opens, because she's so obedient, because that's why it has to be like this.

You rub her bottom lip. Her eyes open into yours; a wet mouth. It's impossible not to see what's right there. It's easy, really, to press through and in, and give her that taste, that warm, velvety brush, like she's been sucking your cock, and maybe - oh, yeah, you'll remind her about it tomorrow, how she's a needy little slut for it, can't get enough - how you could've fucked her face until she was drooling and out-of-her mind - but the way her eyelashes flutter against your touch; the look-

You’ll take your time. You know what she wants: more than anything. It's the thing you can read. Maybe the hot, sticky mess, the flush in her cheeks. A touch to her face. Your thumb in her mouth, too, stretching, prying, holding. More cum falling beneath her tongue, dripping in those gaping, half-open red lips.

She’s licking your load from your knuckles, your Tzuyu. You can’t believe it.

"Swallow," you tell her.

"Mmm," and it’s there: this gorgeous expression on her features, her eyelids dropping, the shimmer, the shine. You'd do anything to keep it there.

You let your thumb leave the corner of her mouth and it stays open, just the tip of her tongue darting out to taste what little she can. The rest of her lulls back with a satisfied murmur, eyes half-closed, clearly the type of content-afterglow of wanting the man who'd just ruined her. A gratitude, or a simple, silly thing, if he would just pick her up in his arms: "thank you, sir."

Her panties end up back around her hips, and a new shirt's thrown haphazardly on, a soft, gray cotton which rides down, slipping past one pale shoulder. And then she turns over, to the side, her back curling into the heat of your chest. There's no attempt at leaving or any plans either. The arm you've loosely wrapped around her waist simply tugs. It's not subtle or even nice: your hand rucks up the fabric and snaps the waistband, and the soft cotton doesn't stop it from being painful.

"Fuck me again." Tzuyu shakes off with a shrug. She's wiggling her ass, practically. She's not wrong, you suppose - your cock hardens easily, more of a reaction. "Are you just going to - keep teasing?"

“Such a brat,” you say, and that makes her whole body tense; she makes the most beautiful sounds for you, but words, praise, humiliation - those always hit harder. You know your girl.

"Your brat," says Tzuyu, easily. "You can do whatever you want." 

Your grip on her hip is brutal. Of course you know. That doesn't mean you can't look for loopholes, anyway, right? You don't move, but the threat's there.

The look she shoots over her shoulder is smug. "I like it rough, or something. Doesn't it make you mad that someone could've had me before?"

"Should I be?" You're swiping your cockhead through her folds before you have a chance to say, "Should I care that some guy's had my little cocksleeve before? Should I be angry that someone used my pretty toy before I got to?" You thumb at the tightness, and Tzuyu gives up the front immediately and jerks her hips backward. "If I wasn't the first?"

"Not exactly," comes Tzuyu's mild answer, "not if I was always thinking of you. Plus, they didn't make me feel like that." She tips her head up, to nip at your jaw. She's smiling so fucking coy when she adds: "please, don't hurt me too bad."

You wrap your hands around her. Press a kiss into her shoulder.

“Or do, maybe. Whatever feels natural, you know," she bites down.

"The hickeys are going to be difficult," you agree. "People are gonna see them and they'll picture themselves, probably, with you spread out, huffing, gasping - fucking you out of a brain."

"As they should," she says, and then hums this low, heartfelt note into the mattress. "So how hard can you do this, hm?" She's moaning into the pillow as you slip back into her cunt, but it's a challenge, the tilt in her voice. "Like, if I ask, real nicely."

Who’d have ever guessed she was so filthy. All hidden behind the pristine, the perfection. The prim girls are always the worst: all that beauty means more to them wrecked than revered - it means they've won, again.

Well, that works just fine. She's won you over.

You lean into her shoulder, murmuring, “you’re pushing your luck here, Tzu.”

“Am I?” Her head tilts back until it finds the curve of your jaw. Those deep brown eyes flashing. She knows what’s coming, her pussy tightening prettily. "I'm sorry, sir. I’ll clean up my act."

And the little smile. The fucking dimple, proudly stitched into her cheek - right as you pull her back onto you again, your length working its way slowly into her cunt. The way her ass fits in your hips lets you know you're no match for this girl: how unbelievably good it feels to be inside her. Hot, tight, wanting. Pressed tight between her gorgeous thighs.

“Guess I never noticed,” she says, before falling quiet with the soft punch of breath as you drag her backwards, against your body and the rocking press of your hips. Her eyelashes tremble while your cock nudges its way fully inside her pussy. The rest, as it seems, is silent: only the crash of skin, the sound of your breathing.

You’re already gathering her hair into your fist when you tug her back to your waist, mouth hovering right at the shell of her ear: "fuck, you take my dick like you're made for it. Do you even know how good your pussy feels? I'll ruin you if you let me. We can find out together," you tell her, pulling her back onto your cock. A wordless, pained, perfect whimper.

Tzuyu lets herself go slack against your chest.

She's taking you like a dream and that's it, that's enough, all you've got to say, and Tzuyu, jesus-fucking-christ, she does it with a laugh: this awful, melodic, bright, sweet, airy fucking thing: "don't fucking test me, Tzuyu -" you repeat, a warning.

Tzuyu bats those long lashes, like it'll mean anything, like this isn't all the proof you need. 

"Okay. Don't tease, then.” Her hand reaches up to the nape of your neck, finds your body close and hot. She sighs. “I want to feel it, sir. So much that I can't walk after. That I'll still have you in me. I want it all to hurt. Is that too much?"

All she does is try to hide her smiles, and she's terrible at it. There's a gasp buried underneath her giggling, one that Tzuyu loses every time she moves her body with yours. There are only two conclusions now: either she's that perfect of a fuck or she's as full of shit as you are. Either way, the dimple's giving her away - her smile, her lips, the full, syrupy brown of her gaze.

Tzuyu wraps that leg up and back around you and the angle is devastating.

"Baby, I want you- I want your cock deeper - yes, baby. Deeper - as deep as it'll go. I want you to fuck me until I can’t think, until there's nothing I can do. Seriously. Fuck me." 

Her hand dives over the shirt; there's no question when your gaze follows the trail she takes over her tensing body, over the curve of her breasts and down to where she's dragging at her pussy, where she's exposed herself. She finds the space and lets the fingertips flutter down, onto her needy, swollen clit; the place where your bodies join and separate; the throbbing pulse of her pussy.

"And then fuck me some more,” she adds, like that'll help. Her pussy fits you like a glove - it’s not fair. It’s not right.

But she's so beautiful up close, eyes fluttering in pure, concentrated rapture as she loses the tension in her face - one more thing that the facets, angles, and shades of Tzuyu become, something you tuck away in a vault somewhere safe; a secret just between the two of you.

Her hand runs up your thigh, fastens back on your hip. “You owe it to me, to use my body a little bit, don’t you think?”

There's no sense fighting it, not anymore - maybe there never was - and when you grip Tzuyu's upper thigh, tilt her leg upwards, she gives you an anticipatory hum. This light sound. An ankle lands over your hip, and what follows is a tight, enveloping slide, your cock buried in her wet pussy. So close together that she can't move much at all except to take it - the hard thrust, the one that forces its way up to the hilt. She's impossibly, overwhelmingly soft, a pleasure unlike any other. The absolute worst kind.

She knows exactly the danger of getting involved with you, and when she cums, once, again, and once more - her eyes water, her voice flooded - you think, so do you.

-

It’s in the hours of the morning that’re not quite today, nor quite tomorrow when Tzuyu leans on the end of the bed as she stretches. A loose t-shirt is draped over her petite body - you glance over at her as the bottom of the fabric lifts, exposing more skin across her legs. No matter the circumstances, the space she inhabits will always feel charged. She could wear a potato sack and have the same effect, you suppose, because that's just how she is: Tzuyu is magnetizing.

"That is definitely not yours," you say, finally.

The girl has a lovely arch to her back, a golden glow of perfection that you can't find elsewhere. That's when Tzuyu laughs and spins around. "Is that a question?"

You only have yourself to blame. Of course it's not hers. The shirt's oversized and could fit all five feet, eight inches of her like a tent. It doesn't belong to her, but her heart-shaped lips make you feel stupid, so you're giving her a second chance. You really need that shirt back. You packed light, it's your favorite tee, it’s a family heirloom, or something - whatever makes her get it off, you guess. You sit up against the bed, and watch her fingers hook into the hem as it slowly peels off from her frame.

And that is - a vision.

You already knew - but it's worth repeating, or forgetting your name and every last bit of your existence for; the sharp collarbone, the striking red lines beneath them, the palest, sweetest chest. Her breasts, a bit smaller, a bit rounder than normal (not that you would know), sit heavy in her hands, soft and full - oh, the hickeys, the perfect peaks and the bruised nipples - she's an aphrodisiac.

"I want one later," she tells you, and runs a hand over her breast, pressing against the angry red marks that color the pale skin.

"A shirt?"

She turns back toward the mirror, an image reflected tenfold - a beautiful flush on her high cheekbones. It's only a small win to think that those rosy cheeks are there because of you. Only a little one, if at all. "One of yours, sure."

You laugh, but she looks taken aback. "What, you mean like a keepsake?"

"Hey, if it smells good." Tzuyu brings up the neckline to her nose, eyes fluttering shut for a brief second before they snap closed. "Yes. Like a keepsake, is that so unnatural?"

"Has anyone ever told you that you are, like, really forward." You thought you knew, but there's this part of you that wonders. Why the sudden revelation. "Not that it isn't obvious. I meant...with the rest. Just to clarify."

"With sex, you mean?" Her smile turns a little sheepish. "I can tone it down a little. I don't even notice sometimes, I just talk."

You walk forward and wrap your arms around her waist. You fit easily around her. "Don't," you say, quietly, against the back of her neck. "It's nice, in a way."

She cranes her head to trade the reflection of your eyes for the real thing. Her body is soft, warm. "You like to talk too."

"Right."

"Your favorite past-time."

"Point taken." Your thumb runs down the middle of her breast and traces her nipple. It's tender, you note. You can’t really keep your hands off her waist, or stop touching her tits - because who would ever let something so delightful pass them by? Not you. No way. "Want to hear a story?"

"If it's coming from you," she whispers, a little smile, a lot of entendre, "I’ll listen to anything."

"Do you see the wall over there?" You nod to the window. She follows it with her gaze, her chin jutting towards your shoulder, her long neck arching. It's hard not to kiss it. There's a clear stretch of drywall beside her desk. She nods. "When I came here with Sana and Mina last," and your nose presses into her hair, inhaling her, the way she smells like something tropical: vanilla and citrus. Something far from here. "I put up a few paintings. I'm handy sometimes, a hammer seeking a nail sorta thing."

Tzuyu almost snorts, and sways a bit in your grasp. You tighten your hold, not wanting to drop her. "Oh?” she teases out, suggestive. “Show me."

-

(You shouldn’t. You can’t stop, frankly. Fucking Tzuyu is in its own category: the luxury, the treasure, the extravagance; feeling between your fingers the finest silk, the richest cashmere.

Her palms slide higher up the wall, fingers splayed. The curve of her back, the pull of her hair. Tzuyu kissing you like the world will end and the moon will be the first to know, her fists curling into your back, a furious, frantic urgency - Tzuyu fucking you. Well. Tzuyu always, always kissing you; it's the universe resetting, it's a timeline rewritten, it's trading everything sweet for salt, giving you teeth and tongue, the insides of her lip rubbed raw - she tastes like 80 Proof, a sticky, melting liquor, and it goes down too easy. "Why are you making this hard for me." It's not a question, her face in your neck - then she says, like there's a hundred other things, a hundred thousand ways you can ask:

"What makes you think I want to make this easy?")

-

The power goes out early in the morning.

Which means you're in the dark. But, it's alright. You consider for a moment the omen-like timing, if such an idea is ludicrous in the first place. This could be a metaphor. After all, what is Tzuyu if not a classic trope? It isn't fair to judge anyone based off their flaws. For starters, you have more than you can count. You consider a moment longer, that the timing isn't metaphor-worthy. After all, if this was a punitive force, you're certain that it would've been more apparent, more explicit, if the electric panel had burst into flames or the cable box was shot-out; something bigger, flashier, less like something that you'd play up for theatrics. And it probably would've been when you had the girl on all on fours, your handprints seared into the round of her ass-

Or, when she got on her knees. The snap of darkness setting in as you slipped your cock out of her lips and spilled a rope of hot cum on her face, in her hair. The way she just relaxed into it, a reverence to her being baptized, kneeling. “Oh, Tzu,” you said, with a fist around a cock, and jerked the rest right out on her tongue. You probably would have heard her sniffle after, still recovering from her choking a bit.

Or, when you had half a mind to kneel down between her legs in the shower, suck her clit until she was dripping, fucking her open with your tongue; you could taste her sweat, her slick, and imagine how hard it must be to put up that front: biting into a washcloth, trying not to fall apart.

(Karma arrives late, or it doesn't arrive at all. Or, something. Who knows. It doesn't matter. The outcome would have remained the same.)

Tzuyu opens the sliding glass door to the balcony.

You watch her from behind - there's a small pile of snow at the edge. The whole mountain has gone into complete darkness. No moon, no lights, no light poles, or blinking bulbs or strobe signs or house lights - just night. How eerily romantic, that. And if there was an excess amount of snow before, it only got heavier, thicker, now weighing on the steel bars of the railing.

Tzuyu rests her hands there, leaning her hips a bit forward, so far that her knees lock. Her back bends. "It's so weird," she breathes out, and you can see your exhales, both of yours. "I feel like you and I are the only ones here right now. Everyone else is probably taking shelter. Maybe the power went out for everybody."

"Maybe."

"It's all a bit spooky. Or creepy. But, exciting too, yeah?" She turns, just enough. Her fingertips run along the side of her face. "In the mountains, yes." She doesn't even need to say the rest, doesn't need to ask: does that appeal to you? All this isolation? I could scream and scream and nobody would ever hear it. I'm yours to fuck, to have, to own, to do anything to-

"It'll probably be fixed in the morning," you tell her. "Who would turn it back on tonight. To this place. They'll start at the closest areas to town and go out from there."

"Mina has a generator," Tzuyu supplies helpfully. "No living clue where."

"Want to look for it?"

She lets her head tilt, as if to follow the expanse of trees leading up into the rocky ground. "Would it kill us to wait for tomorrow?" Her bare toes curl into the floorboards. The blanket stays wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and a single line of her wrist can be seen when she tilts her arm a certain way. "We won't die or anything."

You wouldn't die, not before being smitten with a different death, falling headfirst and in love; and that's what you've felt since the start, since the beginning: you've always wanted more. It was always inevitable, her letting her weight fall backwards, in the living room - all your filthy secrets falling out. It felt like the sky had dropped. All over the bedroom floor.

"Then let's get some sleep," you say, but still step closer, as you do with anyone, to brush aside the strand of hair over her ear.

-

It feels like the temperature must have dropped dramatically. Not that it bothers either of you very much, you note, when you move under the blankets together. Some might feel embarrassed by the necessity, but then, most aren't half the people that you both are.

Tzuyu presses her fingers under her thigh to keep her legs shut. To avoid the cold, she claims, but you can hear the slippery noises that her cunt makes as her body shakes with each thrust of her fingers. You almost suggest that you heat her up in an entirely different fashion, but the smile, her smile, gets the best of you. Instead, you let yourself touch and trace, and feel her wherever it may land. There's no sense in pretending either, so you tangle yourself into her: a finger between her legs. Another in her palm, resting against her hip. When you press your thumb against her cunt, she begins to smile, too, as if to show you exactly what kind of person she is. That is to say, completely insatiable.

You let your free hand slip under her chin. Tilting her head up, exposing the faint pulse-points. You wonder if she's imagining the things you'd do if the snow never cleared: toying with her hair, petting the top of her head, speaking pretty and dirty and pressing kisses against her bare back, in a rhythm, as you fuck her without care - something close and tight like the little noises she makes and how they die off, finally, when you push your cock deeper, still.

There are no words between you anymore, maybe - but she's not laughing, and you're not angry, and it's only one second before your mouth is on her neck, kissing the column of her throat. It's easy to sleep with her - so, so simple, if not anything else.

"I don't have anything in the morning," you murmur to the top of her shoulder, barely moving as not to break the moment. To tell her it's fine to leave her body or keep it forever. Either way. Both, if it's an option.

She smiles. Her eyes are still closed. "It'd be weird if you did."

She can be a tease - a complete brat - sometimes. Like now. But then again, who would you be if not the person who falls for exactly that.

And that is a weakness: you have a very specific kind of hunger, that won't fade, that can only be sated. She knows it, and yet her coy grin remains. It's a habit, not a mistake. "Yeah, well," you lean up onto your forearm, pressing the knuckles of your right hand against her soft cheek. "This is the most inconvenient of all places, but- don't worry about it."

"Meaning?"

"I don't think they sell birth control or morning after pills or anything up here," you explain, lightly. Your gaze passes from her eyes to the pink of her bottom lip and back, again.

"Do I look like I'd care?" Tzuyu sighs and takes your wrist, pulling your arm over her body. "I know what I'm doing," she adds, which might actually be a lie. "Obviously. You don’t need to pretend you’re like, responsible, or whatever."

Yes, obviously. As if it was all as easy as pulling strings, deciding exactly which points to tease, to stress. You should know. You just kissed and held down and fucked and fucked your cum into this one: you know how to move her strings better than any.

-

You flip the switch in the kitchen. Up, down, up, down: except, nothing. The electricity is still decidedly off by mid-morning, and you and Tzuyu end up having actual, quality, conversation. 

You sit her on the kitchen counter - though it’s not fated to last long, because her legs loop around your waist, and she tugs your sweats down as you try to fix the two of you lunch - Tzuyu gets what Tzuyu wants, of course - so you're standing there fucking her while her head leans back on the cool marble, her silky dark hair tumbling off the end of the counter.

She ends up propped up on one elbow. Eyes hazy and half-lidded, fixed on the glide of you into her creamy folds, spreading her wider, wider.

Tzuyu asks questions - all innocuous, at least to the ear. About your past. Who you were before all this. Whether you want kids, when, whether you were religious, once. She gets personal before you have her cumming and incoherent: how you sleep, in what positions. How often you jerk yourself off. What you're thinking of when you do. How you'd use her - not the lewd version, the spitting, filthy iteration, just the you and her and her being yours part. And she gets specific about that. She'll slide up to you and bury her nose in your throat, wrap her arms around your shoulders, mumble about wanting you closer - you feel her, maybe more than you should - but every few seconds you're sliding home into that pussy and her chest heaves out a deep breath-

"I want what's in here," she finally says, her delicate palm cupping your balls. She's pulling you into her on each stroke like the fucking sun's gone out and this is her last chance - she's magnetism, gravity, a blackhole you'd give up the rest of the universe to. She's got one fist on your shirt, and the other hand on your sack, and her pussy's fluttering around you, and she's watching you watching her, and it's infinity:

"The idea of you." Tzuyu smiles at the way your eyes narrow, the way the word turns itself over and over on your mind, her. She tilts her face to look at your expression. "Like, in here. All your cum. There's so much. Can I please have it-"

You swear.

"Pretty please, baby," Tzuyu's asking if you'll fill her up, if you'll make her your cumdump, keep fucking her even with all your cum inside her, asking what the worst of your fantasies are - you fuck harder, deeper, and she nods eagerly, tightens that fist in your shirt. "Can you give it to me? Please, it's the only thing I need, and we both know I always need something, please."

"Jesus fucking christ," you tell her, helpless, and it's never felt better: her cockwarming on your lap, her teasing and teasing until your self-control's paper thin - won't you? won't you? fucking breed this slutty little cunt? won't you cum until I'm so full it's spilling out-

The snap. Like falling, it’s something you notice right away, but only ever understand a long ways down. 

"Yours," moans Tzuyu, half in an accusatory fashion - fuck - she's almost gasping: "fuck - just use me, use your cumdump, 'cause you'll never have a tighter cunt than this."

God. Damn. Her. You cum so hard it aches, and there's no hesitation:

"My cocksleeve, my good girl, shit-"

"You could leave a baby in me, even, just like that. Couldn't you. Isn't that hot. And nobody could do a fucking thing." Tzuyu’s tits are spilling out the sides of her camisole and she looks like pure porn, in person. Your cum is dripping out of her and you watch as it spills on the marble.

"Is that what my girl wants? 

She smiles, again, so prettily.

“You wanna be full of cum, is that it?" You grab Tzuyu's hair; pull just enough to get the point across. "Is that it? You're a perfect cumslut who needs all that fucking cum, huh? Wants it pumped deep? You like being full of it, right Tzu? This needy little cunt loves the thought of getting bred? Knocked up? Goddamn, Tzu."

"That's me," agrees Tzuyu, in the afterglow. Dimple dug deep. "Yeah. Your personal cumslut, sir."

She just grins when you reach between her thighs, pressing your fingers into the cum you've fucked into her, before you decide that the wet warmth is yours and you’re going to fuck her even further into delirium.

Her hips come up off the granite, desperately.

"Uh-huh," she mumbles, already drifting - you put her off her balance, for real. "God, yes, please," she's whispers, as if all the ways you'd ruin her were prayers, like she wants to start a new religion all her own: you're a god, and it's all about Tzuyu - just you, and her, asking, again, the questions piling on top of other ones, the sweet drawl, the sinful want, the curiosity-

Fuck. She wants everything about you, your dirty secrets and your nice manners - the stories behind your scars, your funny little quirk of raising just one eyebrow at a time-

You turn her around. She's made for this, intelligently designed: her tiptoes just touching the floor, the delicious curve of her lower back, your cock sliding effortlessly into her and hitting a spot she arches into like it's divine intervention and that pussy making its first church of your name. The cum you'd already left in her cunt is making everything wetter, making those obscene sounds echo in the space around the two of you. It's rapturous; you let her feel it slow, and deep, and it’s bliss.

“Tighter,” you growl into her ear, and her cunt clenches like you own it.

The girl's figure is pristine, an ass that belongs under spotlights, on camera; those thick lips, the curtain of her hair when she tips her chin down. It's all been in magazines, billboards, it's been idolized - she is the icon and you're the follower, but, this weekend, here and now-

"So. Fucking. Good-" she gasping, falling apart. She’s collapsing and it’s not even noon.

"Oh, the world knows." You pull her up, hold her body in yours and snap into her cunt. Her skin's hot, feverish, the light that filters through the blinds and the snow slows outside.

It all happens without a moment’s notice - Tzuyu reaches behind and clutches your thigh, as if she could ever pull you deeper, like it wouldn't tear her in half. But you find yourself in a position to grab the edge of the counter; your phone buzzes. It's Sana, probably asking what's up. You want to ignore it and keep fucking Tzuyu from behind. You want to hold her hips, be mindful of the marks, the bruises, sink your fingers into her hair, her tits - you end up murmuring things like please and fucking perfect and if we were a little more religious then you'd be a sin to remember-

Fuck, you're cumming again. The writing’s on the wall as soon as your cock makes her breath draw short and her eyelids snap shut. She’s exquisite, a masterwork - you’re painting in broad strokes, all over the beautiful curves of her ass - not only because you’ve needed to see it cast in hot streaks of white, all debased with your cum, but simply to prove a point; to say that you can. You cum on her cheeks, her cunt, you pump your fist around your shaft and cum in the crotch of her panties too.

"That's it, Tzu," you croon, "look at that," your spent cock twitching against her plush thighs, her dripping pussy lips, and she's sagged forward, onto the counter, your thumb running through a particularly thick rivulet. Her face dips down, pressed to the cold surface, and the words coming out aren't coherent, are just filthy and true; but they're there: she's taken you and kept you, all for herself.

(Thank you, she says, for making me into your little cockwarmer, your toy, for breaking my fucking cunt, baby - thank you, please, thank you-

You could end your career tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. Just saying, man. This girl, fuck.)

There’s a beat, the strained breathing, the panting, the disbelief. She ends up kissing your chin after sliding back to her feet, a saccharine imitation of chaste. Pulls up her shorts without a second's consideration. Her panties, still sticky with your spend - well. She puts those back, too, grinning dreamily. 

Oh, how is a woman like Tzuyu even real, huh? You really do need to find out, somehow.

"Your imagination is…" you say, your tone flat. “I swear.” But you don't deny that the sex isn't. You don't think of her that way. She doesn't ask you for your hopes or your dreams or the full gambit of life, as some people might. She asks about what you think about at three am when she's got one hand on her tits and one on her clit and one finger in her mouth:

"Anything we can think of," she corrects, her long limbs squeezing her tighter to your front. Her grin bright, so perfect she's beyond believable, and how can such a dissonance exist in something, someone, you're holding on to? "I mean, we can if you want."

-

"Maybe we'll talk about that - how you can handle me," is what Tzuyu rasps, softly, tying her hair up afterwards: and you realize this is her post-coital. For her, sex makes her nice. Sweet.

You've already fixed her lunch; Tzuyu comes to sit down at the table with you. "Like, for future reference." You're raising an eyebrow. She grins at that, kicks her feet. Her hips don't do the same, though - no doubt still a little sore, like her lips. She's worn out, finally. She won't try to slice off and claim any more of your aching soul.

“You have no business thinking about babies.”

“Tell that to my ovaries.”

"You have a breeding kink, is what it is, really. I’m being completely serious."

"Well, am I pregnant yet?" Tzuyu flutters those lashes, puts those big pretty eyes on full display. "No? Then I'm getting off on something else, clearly, isn't it obvious, like maybe there's something about being on the other end of someone so big. Have you considered how wet you make me when you-"

"Tzuyu, cut it out," you chide her. The little brat's giggling. You aren’t going to let her know how pretty the noise is.

"Fine." She reaches across the table, puts her small hand on your larger one. "Like I said - how to handle me." Her tone is placating, the sharp edge to her personality blunted. It's different with Tzuyu - after sex, she gets like this: playful, easy, fond. The mess you've just made, the cunt you've stuffed full, that's another Tzuyu altogether. "For your... benefit."

"My benefit, really?"

"Aside from getting my brains fucked out," she explains, "is what I meant."

"Not making this easier, babe."

Her mouth curves a slow smile. She likes when you call her names, cute shit like that.

"I need to call Sana back," you explain, finally.

Tzuyu nods.

"In a bit," you add. "Also," you're saying, leaning forward. Her head tilts toward yours.

She's receptive, her whole body pliant and lazy, after that, well, marathon - she'll roll with whatever you're suggesting. This has always been a dream to her, she's mentioned. (Who has dreams like that? Someone so young, that innocent - well, yeah.)

But you kiss her temple, lightly. "Gimme a minute."

Tzuyu blinks, in that catlike way she has of staring, intent. Her mouth slightly pouty.

"Then you get your turn," you offer.

"Deal," she nods.

And that makes her beam - your beautiful, very good, very perfect, little toy.

-

"You're going to have to slow down," you tell Sana over the phone. "I have zero reception up here, sorry."

"The highway is shut down, I literally can't get to the other side of town," she yells over the sound of tires rolling on snow. Sana does not sound in the best spirits. If anything, she sounds slightly desperate. "Part of the mountain collapsed on a cliff somewhere. Fuck's sake. The weather is still terrible and they're shutting everything down. Literally shuttering every road off the base of the mountain."

"You sound good," you deadpan, and when Sana grumbles, say, "try the next exit, head around and take a back road-"

"Yeah, except it's snowing like nobody's fucking business right now - I'm not going to risk exposure to try to get there on my own."

"What should I do?" you try, a bit helpless. "Stay here?"

"Why are you even asking," Sana scoffs, "yes, stay there, stupid. Tell Tzuyu you can't drive in snow, that she can't possibly expect me to deal with any of you leaving a safe situation." There's another brief pause. "Ah, seriously, there is not a single living human being near here that can be helpful - and they're supposed to bring us new tires? Here? No, fuck's sake."

"Oh," is all you say.

"Don't worry about me." Sana's voice goes up a notch. "Just be there, alright? Stay warm, okay?" A crackle, more radio waves or distance.

"Text me," you urge. "Tell me you're getting in safe."

"Of course, of course," and that's when you get the click, the abrupt disconnection. You stare at the device in your hand and consider the possibilities, and the outcomes, and how to stay sane while alone with temptation incarnate for a couple nights.

Maybe this really is hell. Or it's a trial. There’s the storm, and there’s your angel, contextually out of place. You're incapable of controlling yourself, clearly.

You sigh, let your gaze slide. The lights are still out, and in their absence, Tzuyu has dragged every available blanket or bed sheet within her reach into the living space, spread a dozen pillows across the sofa and is now occupying one of the corners: there's a book, opened onto her lap, as her nails run circles down the blanket draped over her lower back.

"Tzu, what exactly did Mina mention to you about the generator," is the first thing you blurt, upon entry, and Tzuyu smiles, holding up the page against the fading daylight - which is currently hardly much. "Better question: how are you able to read in the dark?"

"Takes a lot to shake me off, honestly,” she says, which you already know to be true. “Also my eyes aren't old like yours, so."

"Wow."

"What?" Tzuyu grins, tilts her chin. "Do you want me to say that you're ageless? Thirty, flirty and thriving. So impressive, your youthful vigor, that sort of deal? How attracted I am to your experience," the insinuation, this sudden intimacy. She laughs. "Seriously. Let me read."

"Apparently we're going to be stranded for a few days."

"That's cute." She pauses. "Sucks for Sana."

"You don't know what sucks for Sana."

She peeks over the corner of the page, then, grinning, the teeth of a joke. "What's on the menu, then? Hm? So far, the best part was waking up beside you," and you almost grin, at how honest she manages to be without seeming conceited. How shameless Tzuyu has become in the ways of liking you, and maybe a bit of who she thinks you are. And why that's dangerous, really, and it makes the guilt burrow down beneath your ribs a bit: "my ass hurts," she's complaining now, which is only going to encourage the teasing-

"As it should," you comment, then watch her eyes sharpen, glint with mischief. "Oh," you realize, with a shrug, "do we get to cuddle again."

(Let's hope, for a moment, this isn't really karma. Because really, it'd just be an uncalled-for injustice: Chou Tzuyu delivered down on all fours, head tucked into your thighs as a fist grabs a handful of her hair, a slow push and pull - your cock sinking into the velvet warmth between her lips, again, again, and again until she's ruined and crying and still swallowing you whole - as she, not the universe, forces a massive dose of her own medicine down your throat. You see how that might not be quite fair.)

"But I'll have to leave again," you're protesting - no heat, no vitriol. "There's, like. Stuff I gotta grab."

"Then grab me," she sighs, pats her lap, "read over my shoulder. Make out with me. Just keep me warm. That'd be very helpful, and I would be so grateful."

Well, fuck. You're not one for inflating egos - at least not anybody else's - especially when, unchecked, that tends to do the exact opposite of keeping them grounded.

"Fine," you're muttering, and you clearly have a habit for capitulation wherever Tzuyu is concerned, the quirk in her lips, the quiet pride in her dimple, the cadence in her speech - which she's already smug about.

"Wonderful." She taps the back of her fingernail against a book page, waits, just a few more seconds, her grin spreading as you begin to fumble around. "Please," she says, flicks her gaze back down, a tease, "take all the time you need."

-

The thing about mountain air is it has a way of clearing your head, cooling down the frenetic thoughts of indecision and uncertainty and moral conflict.

Well, maybe that's a slight overreach, the mountains also have a way of getting you killed, but the intention was to look upon the white caps and ponder. It didn't work.

-

You eventually find the generator. You hear the clicks of metal and electrical wiring, the roar of the motor kicking on, a steady hum. Then, Tzuyu pokes her head out from behind the shed, her cheeks tinted a warm pink; her eyebrows rise up a beat.

"Yes?" you prompt.

"Is it working?"

"Does it look like it's working, miss?"

"Looks a-okay to me," and she presses the heel of her mitten into her teeth, tries to bite it back down her wrist; she stumbles, a moment, slightly clumsy in the snow. You instinctively reach out. Your hands brush the outer seam of her pajamas, the heavy fabric of her coat - "oh," you can feel the instant the shivers start, "fuck, I'm cold.”

“We’re both probably pretty due for a hot shower,” you say.

"Yeah, you came in my hair. Er, sorry, I meant, we both need a hot shower."

"It was really adorable when you were rutting back on my dick like some horny animal," you snort. "Admit it."

"No comment."

"So shy."

Her smile cracks open, and her breath is a white plume. "Fuck you."

"Sure, babe," you're agreeing, the tone almost saccharine. "If you insist."

She blinks back in mild surprise, the blatant answer - and god, her fucking eyes: soft, dark, her eyelids barely lift up. Even when they should've narrowed. That was another thing to learn. (Maybe, god - who knows, maybe she's still learning how not to care.)

She runs a hand through her hair. The scarf around her neck is fluffing up. There's white clumps settling on the fibers, slowly dissolving into a damp mess.

"Listen," Tzuyu murmurs, wraps an arm around yours to help herself up. 

Your palm settles on the round of her thigh. She shifts, her hand dropping lower - tugs at your arm until she has an elbow in hers. The backs of her knuckles settle against your hip bone, her fingertips sliding across the waistband: you walk backwards through your snowprints, gently - the side door to the cabin is unlocked - Tzuyu's stumbling toward it.

"Going to the shower, we're turning the water on," she explains. You grin, feel your own arm, a slow drag around her lower waist; she tilts into it, steps closer. Presses a finger to your chest: "dinner's gonna be in half an hour," she announces, "and before you ask, I've been craving those boxes of instant mac & cheese in Mina's pantry."

"I haven't had one of those in ages."

"Me neither," and with her heel, she kicks the side door shut; Tzuyu yanks on a cord, pulls the blinds closed. It's pitch black. You're chuckling low, turning around - one of Tzuyu's hands smacks over a nearby light switch, illuminating the room just a shade lighter than it was prior. She presses a hand to your chest, a single-minded goal to your front.

You put your hands on her hips.

"It's the kinda thing that makes me feel like a kid again," you hear her say, just slightly; that, and how the white fabric of her sweater twists, pulled to a single point.

"Happens," is the best explanation you can give. She slaps the lightswitch again. Kisses you. You shove a leg forward. She whines. "Be good," you're chiding, though you both stumble until her back is pressed against the wall. "You were just complaining that you're still sore."

"Maybe I can't help it, maybe that's all on you," the end of the sentence fades. Her nails slide up the sleeve of your arm. There's the soft hitch of a moan. "It's just you. So unfair." She rubs up. Swallows like it's instinct, at the slightest hint of friction. You curl your hand, your thumb grazes the waistband of her underwear; her fingertips tighten, her blunt nails sink deeper - press like she means something else, wants something more.

It'll be a few days, at least, more likely a week; and by then, this girl will have you right where she needs you. She's proven, time after time - you can never just say no.

-

The days bleed together after the snow.

You fuck her, but slower; sometimes softer, a little less raw, the hurt. Not that you'd ever try to take too much: the thought is unthinkable, un-imagined. Infinitely impossible. You'll pull out and empty everything you have, paint her skin, make her ache, fuck until you know exactly where the bruises are and how to touch them, how to breathe the hurt down from her ribs.

But some mornings: she rolls over onto her side, opens her eyes and smiles. Brilliant like the sun, something that would warm your heart even without trying. Some afternoons, you put the fire on; read something aloud from Mina's bookshelves, and watch the red-orange flames turn Tzuyu's cheeks and neck pink and honey. Evenings, especially the colder ones, you're wrapping her up, blankets, sweatshirts, pulling her close: into bed with the lights turned off. She wants the touch, she craves it, she'll almost whimper when you get near her - and it's you, whispering words against her ear; tracing fingertips lightly against her temple, down the nape of her neck, her lower lip-

"How come you don't kiss me, hm?" She sounds sleepy. "Baby. Don't pretend you're a stone. Like, an unfeeling brute."

"I have my limits, princess."

"Like not kissing someone you're fucking." Her face drops from your sight, and Tzuyu turns over: she curls into her comforter, and her legs nudge the back of yours. "That's so fucking cruel," her voice a little whiny. "But okay, okay - tell me the reasons. Just so we can keep going."

"Keep going, huh. Even though I'm mean."

"Well, yeah, I've done much, much worse," the worst, if you think about it; and it's almost true. Maybe her morality was on the rocks long before yours. "Obviously."

You drop a kiss into her hair. "We both know what that mouth of yours is capable of."

She grins into your skin. Presses her lips, like a sign, and stays.

-

A girl like her inspires the worst in a man, and that's just about it: you think a man would burn the world down for her, with her, and maybe that would be how all things end, someway, somehow - not because of him or her, the full spectrum of his intentions, all the intricacies and subtleties, and hers too. You're both complicated creatures, sure; both very capable and wanting. Of big feelings, deep attachments: the overflow of your good hearts, perhaps; or, rather: the deficits.

She appeals to your worst impulses, in the plainest terms.

"Jesus Christ," you hiss, hands firm on her lower back; your voice breaking; Tzuyu has shed the bedsheets and climbed into your lap, one leg bent at the knee, digging the other into your ribs - her shirt hitches up and over the curve of her spine and then pools at her neck.

"Tell me that's good," she murmurs, hips gyrating, rocking her pussy along your cock. "Like that - right?"

"Fuck- yes," your cock slides into her, your entire length, the rest of the world fogged out: even the fire is quiet. "God, tzu. Feels amazing."

Tzuyu rolls her body forward, rides you with ease, and puts one small hand against your mouth. Her shirt hitches up and over the curve of her spine and then pools at her neck.

"I want to make you cum," she says, all quiet determination and wily confidence, "only you." She rolls her hips in your lap and then finds it: the steady, rhythmic grind down, down. Her ass crashes into your balls; the first telltale sign of that wonderful orgasm to come. "Is it wrong to want this? Like, you and I? Fuck. It feels like your cock was made for me."

"Yeah,” you grit, “fucking you feels - like it's meant to be, huh?"

"Sir," she says with an unhealthy smirk. She’s loving this more than you are, and you can’t really blame her for it: there’s no other sound quite like the slick, wet noise that her pussy makes as her body drops to yours, your cock filling her completely. It's music to your ears.

You grab at her ass, her hip, and pull her closer. She smiles, tilts her face down to you.

"Me too, you know, me too," she murmurs, kissing you softly; when you cup her breasts her breath hitches. "God- fuck- just-"

When she does cum, it's with the faintest little groan; a small, intense quiver in her thighs. You kiss her to swallow down the sound; and feel yourself tip over, and when she fucks you through your orgasm - her smile is dark, wicked, totally satisfied.

-

And everything else follows, because you're weak: because she makes you want to say no, even while simultaneously being your very favorite yes. You warm your cock inside her with some slow, gentle rhythm, her nipples hard against your shirt, her cries as sweet and earnest as all the best promises; a slow grind down, her fingers scrabbling for the headboard, you lean and lick her breasts, roll her nipples on your tongue - she gasps, tenses, digs her nails hard into your nape.

You'll have her again in the morning, she's adamant.

Her hands find your back, her legs circle your hips. The taste of her sweat. The taste of her nipples; her chest flushed, hair disheveled, pupils blown.

"Not letting me go." She whispers. Her cheeks are a lovely pink. "Even after this?"

You kiss the corner of her mouth, inhaling, wondering what to say.

"Good," Tzuyu tells you, tilting her jaw: "that's really-" She catches her lips with her teeth. "That's so fucking good."

-

(Her pussy grips your cock like it's the home she's always missed, her lifeline, her safe harbor. And it's dizzying, it's heaven, hell; and, in the morning - when everything is sepia-warm and sleepy - you fuck her again.

A promise, a hope, a plea. It's what makes a girl fall for a guy, in theory.

It's what makes her heart beat. )

-

"My phone's charging," Tzuyu sniffs the next morning: you're brushing out her hair. The sheets are warm.

You continue combing.

"Sana told me she would be texting, or trying to call."

"Well, that's nice," is all you can manage.

"Babe-" she leans back a bit: turns her gaze to the ceiling, exhaling sharply, "what if she got caught in a whole different avalanche, or fell from the top of a mountain, or something-"

You let go, letting her rest her weight against your thigh. "Honestly? Would serve her right. A little cold, a little damp-"

"If you don't take that back-"

"Alright. Alright. I'll send an apology prayer when I get around to it."

"No you won't." She curls in further, and you stroke her neck, shoulder blade; down the ridges of her spine, across the width of her back.

Tzuyu shudders slightly under your touch.

"Haven't I earned enough good faith, or a clean conscience?"

"Sir, don't pretend."

"Let's pray for Sana, then," you mutter. "Wherever the fuck she is."

"With respect," Tzuyu pipes up, eager: "bitch ain't found."

"Jesus.” You laugh out loud. “At least your brain isn't fully turned to mush, yeah?"

"Give yourself some credit. I can hardly fucking walk. You really pounded the feeling in my legs away."

"Too bad."

"Sorry." And she noses at your collarbone, tugging the waistband of your boxers; "feel free," the drawl of an old, forgotten song, "to make me repent. Baby. Do your thing."

"Right, I forgot that I could convince you to do anything by sliding my dick in your throat. Yikes."

"Baby, just, uh- do whatever." Tzuyu grabs hold of your cock through the thin fabric: one light tap of a finger, "my lips are numb," the suggestion. You really could be her everything: and maybe if you said, stop, please, you won't. She'd pause; look at you like you're insane and maybe spit out what the actual fuck is wrong with you. Like the reality:

This doesn't have to end, no?

"Sorry about your phone battery," you tell her, brushing out the knot at the base of her skull. She exhales, goes soft; lets you tug lightly. "We’ll figure things out when Sana can actually text you, okay?"

"Dumbass. When it's warmer and you drive down to meet her."

"You're not jealous," you tell her. You’ve decided for her.

Tzuyu rolls, leans down on her back, smiling prettily-

"Nope," she agrees, pulling your cock out: already hard, ready to cum down her throat. Her fingers pump soft, slow, the anticipation- "just not done."

"Crazy."

She shrugs and lets the silence calm the world around the two of you; at least for a little while. "Takes a certain kind," she agrees.

"Permissiveness. Like what I'm seeing. Your brand or whatever."

"It’s straight from the heart." She shoots up, making a face you want to kiss. "Honestly."

"Absolutely sincere," you deadpan, and she ignores the jab.

"Tie a bow with my hair," she chuckles, the laughter light, and your fingers graze her temple. "Come on. I'll make you so proud. So pleased. Sir. Let me, let me-"

"Only if I can finish down your throat," you retort - half-joking, but, her eyes grow warm, molten, the lust is immediate - you tip her head, lower it gently - she bites down onto her lip, nods a bit.

-

You don't take her right away. Not at first. You’re trying to show some restraint, trying not to think about how Tzuyu wears clothes like a vice. She's that kind of girl. Like an accident waiting to happen. She's moving around the kitchen later, poking about the cabinets. She's slid into some jeans that fit her a little too well, and one of those obscenely thin t-shirts.

You watch her back muscles work, how the cotton bunches as she leans, arms extending. Her chest's flat against the counter to grab whatever item's out of her reach. You catch the ribbon in her hair bob slightly back into place when she stands back up. The hairline on the nape of her neck catches a long highlight of a morning, the thin strands a brilliant brown, a spark of warmth in the midst of a muted winter morning - and it's honestly amazing to look at.

(Her ass hangs out in the open like an invitation. Your eyes are running down every curve of denim like they can't help but search.)

"Tzu," is the warning, and she flashes a grin; turns, the expression shifting, wide. "I can literally see everything you have."

"Hm." The front of her shirt lowers, too - her black bralette, barely a scrap of lace and string, visible through the thin fabric. "If I'd known you'd like that so much, you could've told me earlier."

"It's not your job to figure me out."

"Well, I'm not sorry." The words are sugar sweet, with an almost fake concern: her feet pivot, her ass filling your vision- Tzuyu spreads her hands down her outer thighs.

"Be nice," you reiterate. "C'mere."

Her legs snap to you quick.

-

You are careful, tentative and slow. You leave the ribbon in place and everything; just your mouth, like you have a right to lick down her breasts, her stomach, her clit - like you deserve the faint marks where your hands pressed down onto her waist.

The slow licks, the soft kisses; you could eat her out until the sun sets and Tzuyu was left sobbing through the overstimulation. Her fingers rake your hair like it’s exactly what she’s hoping you’ll do.

When Tzuyu does let go: she doesn't drop. There is no shame, nor shameful whimpers. Instead, she fucking screams, so high and clear it doesn't seem possible: a singer's wail.

"Sir!" she's crying, you can feel it through every tremble. "Oh my god, please-"

You get her to climax twice before the tears fall, your fingers tracing her spine, pressing deeper, a knuckle, then two-

She looks at you in abject reverence, "God, you don't know," is the gasp, "how perfect you are," and you're sure. You'll never get it right again: at least, not without her.

She cums a third time, shivering, collapsing: her eyes wide, glossy, breath shallow, limbs giving in. The sweat clings to her like a lover, a life she doesn't know how to leave.

So, you ask:

"What now, doll?"

Her tongue sweeps the corner of her mouth, a tiny wrinkle.

"Whatever," Tzuyu exhales. "Fuck, whatever, seriously, that was like- amazing- but my throat is actually going to murder me."

"Was the screaming really that necessary."

"Not sure- about anything," is the groggy admission, "like, honestly. Too horny to care, but." She pauses for a second. "You," she finally decides.

"I," is the immediate reply.

"I’ll let you do - anything, but I- can I, like, get a breather? For a minute. Can you wait, like, just."

Her arms open: you settle against her side, and a shaky hand starts combing through your hair. Her other palm lifts to rest against your cheek, cupping it. The nails tap gently along your hairline. 

"Been waiting so long, Tzu, honey," and it doesn't sound as cruel or glib as the slip up should be construed - doesn't even bother to count on forgiveness, either. Maybe you're beyond all of that, honestly, and more or less in love, as a result. It’s kind of fucked. What’s a minute more?

She laughs softly, a cough catching up and sounding pained. She's lost her voice, the poor thing, she’s cummed herself hoarse and ragged and you’re proud of your handiwork.

"Honey," you hear her say, and she shakes, pulls herself closer, kisses you back: like the old, gentle motion can ever fully cure the fever of desire that grips the two of you. It's a pipedream, and you're kissing her. It's a pipedream, and you know it.

-

The calls start coming in after the sun sets and the cabin grows cool with the dark: you feel, faintly, that it's inevitable. That the snow would clear and time would start marching on, a predetermined cycle. (That, maybe, something in the universe - at this stage, almost a hundred years of weather, tectonic plates, astronomical phenomena, interconnected - knew the two of you needed that bit of seclusion.)

"I dunno, just some bog-standard hotel, holiday suites or something. The point is: the roads don’t open until tomorrow and I've been holed up for a while." Sana sighs into the phone. The static pops. "Oh my god, I'm bored out of my mind. I've had like, three full bags of crisps in one sitting, which is just plain wrong."

"You're basically living off carbs." You say this from in front of the fireplace. Tzuyu is sitting on the opposite side of the couch paging through a stack of magazines, wearing a big jumper and sweats and socks pulled up to her knees. Her hair is falling around her shoulders in soft waves, and it makes her look small and domestic and a bit docile - she’d re-tied the ribbon in her hair after you’d fucked it off her, and that more or less completes the look.

"Yes, I have gone off the deep end. A tragic, awful spiral. Because you're not here. Fuck, you have no idea."

"Ah- Sana." You stop. Take a deep breath.

"Do you have any idea? The state of me right now? seriously. I packed so many fucking condoms and the idea of bringing them back home is more defeating than anything else." She lowers her tone a little, then adds, "because, not to be weird, I was kinda sorta hoping we might use them when I got up there."

You blink. Tzuyu isn't even pretending to look anywhere else. Her whole face is shifting into a satisfied expression, and when she catches you looking, she winks.

"Right. Now this might sound like a surprise," Sana is continuing, her voice full of amusement, "but when I get stuck somewhere, alone and thinking about the weather- I'm often in need of a fuck. Please be prepared to service, because god damn, I've got nothing and it's gonna have to be the battery."

"Is that Sana?" Tzuyu interrupts, the tone hushed, but lofty.

You make a face, like: who the fuck else - but that makes her smirk; Sana sighs, then laughs.

"So if you like, you know. If you feel like the vibe is there. I'd appreciate the hand out."

Tzuyu walks over: sets herself down between your feet and kisses your knee. Just to fuck with you. Because she wants to. She holds the kiss, the bow in her hair, done up tight and shiny, visible. You want to tug the stupid thing until it unravels; all your fingertips, her lips, and she sighs-

"Oi," Sana's saying on the line. You can hear her crash onto her bed. "You still there?" 

"I'm sorry," you say, "are you uh, asking for phone sex - or did I totally read that all wrong."

"Nope. Pretty direct." Sana laughs, and the sound should make it easy to close your eyes, picturing it: a silver smile, the low slung skirt and a stretch of stockinged leg, the twinkle of a drink as the ice hits her mouth. It’d be easy, y'know, if your gaze wasn't pinned on the girl who's settled at your feet.

"Oh, jesus, okay," you manage to breathe. Tzuyu hums a little: reaches for your fly. "Is there anything, anything that you want me to do?"

Sana's laughter drops to a murmur: the air goes heady as Tzuyu parts the zipper and rolls down the waist of your pants- "ask me what I'm wearing, duh."

"Boring," Tzuyu breathes into the air. Because apparently Sana's defining trait is being loud. The kiss to your clothed cock is hot, teasing - her eyes never lift away, "always, always start with, 'darling, sweetheart,' or something stupid, sweet." Her tone is pure syrup: you can feel the warm, the wet; a fucking tease, all the way to her core.

"What are you wearing, darling?" you ask, dryly. Tzuyu rolls her eyes.

Sana's grin widens and you swear it's audible, "oh, just these boring pajamas." She draws it out slow and sexy and completely aware. "It's all loose cotton, and it doesn't hang off me, just folds."

"Is it the type that comes down to the mid-thigh? The white kind, where you can see through to the skin?"

"That's a little presumptive, don't you think? A bit on the nose? Yeah, fine, I'm wearing the kind, if you absolutely insist. These legs, bare. Maybe you'd want to bite. Y'know. Mark 'em'. Whatever."

Tzuyu is kissing the outline of your shaft. Pulling your hard-on out from its confines - all gentle and tentative. Her pretty brown eyes dart upward, gauging: okay, just do your thing - you shrug - but it'd be so helpful if you could scoot to the end of the cushion for me, can you-

"Yeah," you're agreeing into the phone, somewhat vague - to no one in particular. You don't give Tzuyu just an inch; instead, you lift your thighs toward her. Sliding, Tzuyu pulls your pants down: enough. There's a delicate pressure applied at the bottom of your cock, right at the base, right where Tzuyu drags her nails. "Let's have that show off a little," your breath comes shallow, "then. Strip, real slow. We can try for something sexy I guess."

"You," Tzuyu kisses the base and shuffles up the rest of your shaft, "just love bossing people around," then her lips part: the slightest graze, then warmth, the faint suction. “Don’t you?”

"Uh-huh," says Sana, and then the rustle of cloth: and you could imagine her, really, lifting the shirt up, off, sliding it along the inside of her ribs, over the tips of her breasts - she'd cup them, lean into the contact. Sana's hands are always on her tits, or the spread of her hips - she likes the shape of her body more than anyone else. "Sometimes, that's the best way," she tells you. Her breath is hot, full of sex. "Being told what to do. Isn't that true, hm?"

Tzuyu tilts forward, lets your cock drop over her bottom lip. It leaves a smear of spit in its wake, the sensation electric. Her head falls, swallows the whole of the tip: her tongue immediately swirls. A hot little pulse. Her cheeks hollow.

"Yeah. Some could probably argue," your breath catches, the weight of the sensation, the fullness, your hips arch, your spine straightens. The electricity goes through your stomach and down your spine; you can feel the wave rolling along. Tzuyu giggling into the stiff line of your cock-

"Telling us both?" Tzuyu smiles again, running her lips slowly up and down the sides, teasing with her breath and her fingers running down the ridges. "What you want." She hums low, into the hot air.

You press your phone to your neck. "Can you, like-

Tzuyu pulls her mouth off your cock. Just sits there blinking. “Hm?” she asks, tugging a strand of her hair from the corner of her mouth.

“Just please stay quiet, or something- this is already harder than I thought it would be," the joke is as unsubtle as they come, "jesus, okay-" and put the phone back to your ear, "shit, Sana- can you, like-"

Her fucking mouth. The seal, the press - the tongue swirling around your head. Fuck.

“Yeah, babe? What do you want to know?”

The words aren't coming and a very obvious swallow is, Tzuyu leaning closer, and her fingers tangle with yours - guiding you closer, guiding your hand to the ends of her hair.

"Explain," is somehow where you land, shaky. You stick the landing just enough that Sana might buy it. "What are you doing now?"

"Slow circles. On my nipples, pinching," her voice strains, then settles,"yeah, the tip's so sensitive. Jihyo was laughing that guys always obsess over her tits. Always wanna suck, or nibble and I'm like, girl, what the hell are you complaining for?" - Tzuyu inhales a huge breath, and then another: her lips, those eyes - open and glossy, every movement steady like she knows just how to make the wait worth it - "or, or maybe I'm just weird, because the first time I felt someone's teeth and their tongue. Fuck, like, I almost screamed. Or, cried. Literally."

"Hah," and Tzuyu brings her lips lower. Moves her hair gently out of the way to take the rest of you into her mouth: bobbing up, her lips puckering in some rhythm, and her tongue darts, swirls the edge of the cock. Tongue at the slit. The pressure. Fuck, your head falls back. Every breath sounds heavy, loud. "Fingers,” you huff, “are good too I'm sure. I’d be paying close attention. Making you feel good."

"Mhm." Sana agrees. "The little pinches, ugh, I could die happy if you did just that, it's that fucking amazing."

"Baby," you half-moan. You’re struggling. The mouth stops, then sinks: down, all the way. Fucking amazing. Fucking hell.

"Oh?" Sana laughs airly, "are you touching yourself, hm? No fair, are you going to leave me all lonely here-"

You can see that smirk. The fuckery that would come: Sana's version.

"Sir," Tzuyu mumbles, sounding muffled. Her mouth is a tight vise of warmth, and your hand threads through her hair again. You hold, tighten the ribbon a bit, and Tzuyu stares at you through half-lidded eyes: you don't think she'll blink until you make her cry, and by then-

“Fuck,” Sana says, totally flat, "I'm actually pretty wet," the emphasis, "so I'd like some real advice, y'know-"

You see her legs. The tops. The bottom, all the way down- and you inhale sharply, too much and too hard.

Tzuyu has her fist at the base of your cock and her palm is sliding down the slick flesh and, a moment later, up, meeting her mouth at the top of its stroke - and, without a goddamn care, she hollows her cheeks - puckers her lips along the surface.

You were right. "This is hell."

Sana hums a laugh. "Need me that bad, huh? We're missing each other by just a couple days."

You stroke the top of Tzuyu's hair, her bow bobbing in a nice little bounce. Sana would know better than to wear her hair up. To even go near this, her throat - you hold her jaw steady, maybe a second, the moment of recovery to make Tzuyu slow and careful: her tongue does a pass at the sensitive, rigid underside of the crown, the sudden movement - before she speeds up.

"Picturing your hand." She tells you in a languid tone.

"God," you half-say, half-moan, and Tzuyu is good. So fucking good, and the mouth is too damn eager and it's difficult to think.

You barely get your hand free to switch to speaker, then let it clatter to the side. Tzuyu grinning, her lips flushed red and wet and dragging over your cock, sliding down, her tongue doing another pass, swirling at the center, the flare-

"Thinking about you, actually, fuck," Sana has a hitch to her breath that wasn't quite there before. "Doing those things, that mouth all over, Jesus Christ - ah- my legs, my breasts, fuck- are you jerking off right now? You sound, well, pretty uh, yeah."

"Just saying," you breathe, as the shock and the sensations rise and fall; Tzuyu's edging you in her mouth, her own head starting to shake, her chin bobbing up and down the full, long line of your dick - she's never done anything by halves. "It's getting- I'm thinking about you, Sana, of course, and your- pretty cunt, god, of course, so- ah, close- you said you were wet?"

"Huh? Of course, dripping. Imagining you - your thick, your cock," Sana sorta giggles, out of it then-

Tzuyu moans. Her body is pliant and her shoulders roll; she sucks, her cheeks dip, her back arches, and all of the noises hit the air thick, all while Sana's voice sharpens - both girls, two. You're slipping off the cushion, and probably out of your mind. The ache builds and burns and yearns for some sort of release- 

"-how wet and tight I would feel, after so fucking long. Please, fuck, fuck-" you hear Sana, "would you, fuck, c'mon, how I would look, on top of you? Could feel- the stretch, your cock deep inside. The, fuck- friction."

There’s this beat, where it’s just Sana’s stiff breathing; you can picture her wrist between her thighs, the pump, the twist as her fingers run over and over again through the sound of her slick. You’re left wondering if she can hear too, the mouth trailing kisses along your balls, tongue gliding back up and swallowing your length whole.

“Mnph.” Tzu chokes down a little.

And you look down, you have to eventually - to see the steady stare. Tzuyu's brows pinched and her eyelashes fanning out over the hollowed curve of her cheekbones. Pretty, fuck. Beautiful. So sexy: she looks up, swallows you back, like a fucking slut. Her mouth, wet, messy, hot, and her body-

"Third finger, by the way," Sana strains, "'cause- fuck, my pussy - my tight little hole would be swallowing your cock so damn good."

"Mmm, fuck." You're reduced to your base instincts, pulling Tzuyu's hair, dragging her wet, velvety mouth onto your shaft - she follows willingly, no question of her pace slowing, but - more, and more, and you could probably cum in her mouth if her hands weren't clasped firmly over your thighs and you weren't brushing away the tears pricking the ends of Tzuyu's lashes- you won't tell. Not with your fingers. Fuck. Her nails bite at the skin of your bare legs. She looks angry, insistent. Choking.

Sana sounds just as out of sorts, out of breath, "you would feel so fucking good. Look so good. Let me have it- whatever I need, yeah?" And you think she's close: it's that keen edge, a faint, broken whine. She's never going to finish any way except- "would you, inside me? Y'know- make me cum, real full. God- are you close? Would you make a mess out of me? Of my pretty pussy?"

“Okay, holy fuck-" and the question barely even hits you. 

Tzuyu is glaring now, shaking: she wants you to lose it, and she looks furious, holding her fingertips, her thumb on the base of your cock: a new pressure, a new feeling, a new pulse, a new high- she wants you to forget about Sana, maybe. What she sounds like, how she looks. Her legs wide, her bare, slicked skin on display. For you, yes. Fucking her until she- "uh, baby," and this time, your voice makes her smile, and her teeth drag. You wince. Her pupils are blown out, and there's a flush building in her chest. "Where are you?"

"Laying down. Flat- god. Where I'm always-" and you imagine a plane of soft, tanned, toned legs, her wide hips, "I'd, yeah, in a second. Pressure at my back- it would feel so fucking good, y’know, if you were here."

You have no doubt in your mind: Sana would be gorgeous. Even from the back, she'll be hotter, fuck, she always is, especially like that - and the movement of Tzuyu's fingers tightens against the straining, needy ache, and- 

"Please, fuck, fuck- need to-"

"Would cum- a lot, that's it- over my back. Oh, yes, all over my back. My ass. Messy. fuck that's actually so good, jesus christ-" and then Sana lets out another soft keen and a shout - and it's so sweet and high-pitched and familiar, almost musical; she's cumming, hard. You're only a second, a third behind and-

Your balls draw tight and a coil in your stomach unfurls-

Tzuyu sees you, grins, your eyes trained on the pink of her mouth and her perfect, wet lips and the deep brown eyes - her dimpled cheek is the softest fucking thing - but the rest, her mouth, her wet heat: it's pure sensation. The tight vise of a throat swallowing, the taste on the flat of her tongue. You've got your cock shoved deep in her mouth, and you're not easy to take. Fucking Tzuyu's face, thrusting and the throbs of your cock pumping out a hot, heavy spill. More and more: sticky, filling, spreading out from the corners of her lips. Tzuyu gurgles, struggling - fuck, finally letting go with a weak pop, falling back, and the white mess runs hot over her mouth. Your release smeared across her lips, dripping off her jaw - fucking christ - her tongue, her eyelashes - a wild mess of fluid. It splatters against her pale skin - runs down the hollow of her throat to the edges of her chest. She has her fingers working fast still, a squelching tight fist: you cum all over the stupid, cutesy bow too. It's all you see, the only thing-

“Fuck,” Sana says, oblivious. “That’s good.”

-before your eyelids shutter close, a ringing in your ears and your heart racing; and, not far, another sigh, followed by the slide of your phone down the couch.

"Aw, you done already?" Sana says. Lazily. You can see the look on her face, probably rubbing her pussy and thinking about more - if there’s any two ways the girls compare, it’s this allergic reaction to anything like temperance or moderation. You need new friends, new lovers; this can’t last.

"Uh-huh." The back of your head digs into the couch cushions. Fuck. Sana. Phone. On speaker. Oh. Right. Shit. "But I was- mnph. Uhh." Your brain has lost a lot of blood. It's doing nothing. Nothing but losing blood. You wish it’d stop. “I’m here, Sana, talk to me.”

Sana giggles at that, delighted, "don't tell me you're in such bad shape I need to save you-"

"The uh," your voice slurs. Then you're pulling the phone to you, closer. Fuck. Yeah. You're an idiot. Your breath is heavy: "I could go for more, yeah, how’re you feeling?"

"So fucking tired." Her breathing sounds less ragged. A full breath. A pout: a poor me.

"Hmm." Tzuyu crawls onto you. Slides the fabric of your shirt between her palms, up and down your ribs. She pushes the sweater and tee away. Bares your stomach- then kisses there. Lower, and then rises, looking through her lashes. It's clear: a demand. She'll be insisting, pressing down on you, kissing, running her teeth along the edges of your shoulders, your neck. She’ll kiss you right now if you let her - until she sinks into a promise at the center of your body. Your back is arching off the leather from the sensitivity, and Tzuyu has her lips all over you - smiling when your hands tangle with the long strands of her hair.

She pauses. You drop a hand to Tzuyu's waist. Pinch.

"Ow-" she says, coming across slightly betrayed. 

And, satisfied with the expression her face, the phone cradled between your chin, her lips warm over your ribs, her head tickling the edges of your jaw, you keep laughing, or you want to, but Tzuyu takes you between her thighs, lifts a little on your cock - her eyes widen: she's testing your flexibility. Trying to drag this out, trying for teasing. She’s good at that (a verifiable truth), but you’re you - you see right through it: she likes how it feels, the thickness and size of you. Tzuyu keeps sliding slowly down the full length, letting you fill her inch by inch - her slick heat feels unbearable.

“God,” she mutters, and she’s making the dreamiest expression - the blush in her cheeks, the eyelids hung low, the mouth slightly agape - she lifts up, then slams all the way to the base, flush. You grab anything you can to hold onto. Her legs. Her ass. Her thighs. Her jaw. That perfect little fucking waist.

She’s sublime. Your cock is bathing in her slick, the wet heat, the throbbing pulses - she's gasping in your lap, like she can’t believe how good you feel filling her cunt.

"Sana," you grit, "there's- nothing else in the world I'd rather do right now than shove my cock-” 

“Ugh,” Sana sighs in agreement, in imaginary bliss. “In my little fucking pussy- you’re making me miss you, or something, jesus-”

You squeeze her thigh and her lips quirk, just barely, a challenge.

"Want put a nice thick load" - the hand on Tzuyu's hip brings her down in your lap, fucking up hard as her chest racks with breath - "in your slutty little cunt" - you fuck her faster, the sounds of flesh against flesh obscene - "fill up your pussy, princess. Would cum in it until" - and the last inch of your cock, filling Tzuyu’s cunt, you've no control - "you're a mess, you're dripping in it-"

Tzuyu's movements still. A pause. Her hips. Your own, and all the rest, every nerve in your body is on fire. 

She moves with the most graceful slide, her wet lips gliding - gripping - up your cock. Then, down. The quiet. The lull. The pause before she does it again. She has cum all over her face, and she’ll kill you. You’ll let her.

"God. We'll have to get around to it," Sana finally tells you, dryly, "when this fucking snow clears. Say hi to Tzuyu for me won’t you?"

-

You're not a bad person. 

(The reassurance that you aren’t - or don’t want to be? - is probably still not super convincing. There's some line drawn there, blurred, crossed, and thoroughly annihilated by your actions, you think, vaguely, but maybe it's better if no one sees, hears, finds out. The finer details matter a lot less at that point.)

You're like anybody else: you get desperate to hold onto something, somebody, even for just a moment. Sometimes you don’t even need a reason at all.

Tzuyu is stepping out of the shower, her head bobbing: it takes everything in you not to drag her back in there. She’d let you. She wouldn’t even complain.

You can hear the catch and the slide of a bath towel, the wisp of water hitting the bottoms of her feet and trailing, an exaggerated moan - a gesture, meant to entice, a suggestion: fuck her right back in the shower until her hair is plastered to her cheeks, and she's panting. Or the steam lifts her breasts in a gentle, humid press. That mouth on the tiles - sobbing.

“Tzu,” you call out, and she just continues humming some indifferent tune. 

You pull a thick sweater over your head: it's gray wool, and it's all clean and good and new. When she wraps her arms around you, a deep inhale: a grin, then a shiver. She's naked and dripping everywhere, wet hair leaving a trail in its wake. She burrows her face in the folds of fabric at your spine - and if you turned, the slightest movement, the smooth line of her torso would be exposed, and your fingers could trace down her belly button, the tips dipping between her legs-

The window is fogging at the bottom, the steam slipping out in tendrils - but the heat can't compete against the girl all wet and dripping, and it does nothing but give way to the cold, seeping in.

"I still think it's funny," she says, all matter of fact. "It's weird that this isn't awkward."

“What’s that?”

She's at the doorway.

“Us. Being here.”

You turn, and Tzuyu pulls at your sweater: looking for attention, always seeking out the easy praise. Her hand automatically slides beneath the cloth of your collar, drawing your jaw up for a short, hard kiss.

"Okay," and there's a small nod, the line of her throat pulsing as she breathes, "yeah," her chest rising and falling.

"Look at you,” you tell her. “All dry and tidy. Cute. "

A dumb comment earns you the tiniest smile, then she's leaning back, taking her hands to her hair and wringing out the water, pulling and tugging at the tangles - the towel wraps around her waist again and again, and she looks good, clean: it makes you think of what comes later. Not having to give a fuck - at least not for a little while.

"Jeez," she's shivering, still, and rubbing the tops of her arms, "and Sana is gonna be, like, all over you once she gets the chance. Wants a nice lay too, from the sound of it. Was being honest about that. Seems pretty pent up."

“Maybe you can help,” you offer, a bit flippant. She smiles - but in all seriousness, it’s a resounding: no.

There's something else, too, as she runs her fingertips, absently, through her hair - it falls flat on her neck and around her bare shoulders, dark against the lightness of her skin, but somehow you get the impression that she's not entirely preoccupied. "Y'know, I had a really good time and all, but I'm not the homewrecker type, yeah - it's not worth the stress," a slight shrug, like she isn't certain, her mind a little more tangled than usual, and for good reason, too, "probably won't hook up ever again."

"Gloomy," you tease.

"Don’t act like you're not going to miss it," she says, conspiratorial - and Tzuyu plants herself where you can feel her in your space - but she doesn't press. "Even when you're keeping busy, you'll have the smallest reminder, like - aha, Tzuyu would've really liked this, or that - when, y'know - you're stuck somewhere, thinking about the weather," and her cheeks are heating with color as her tongue forms the syllables - and the meaning is clear now as it always was.

“Even if you’re like, totally smitten, or whatever with her,” she adds, smirking.

"Sana will be back to her usual antics in no time. Being annoying and forward and whatever," you reply. "Won't miss much."

The girl's expression flickers a little - a slight twitch - but otherwise, a flat look.

She fixes the lay of her towel across her wide hips. You reach for her arm: pull at it, pulling her toward.

"I mean- Sana and I have a few things in common, anyway. Something in common. Can both be a spoilsport. Dull. Can be a bit, uh, territorial, if you you know-"

The rest is cut off, the words running into a kiss, deep and desperate; there's no place like her mouth: soft, eager, hot.

"And our usual antics?" she asks.

She leans into you, the chill starting to set, a fire burning nearby: something clandestine that maybe shouldn't last as long as it does. A log settling against the others, another plume of heat, and you say, a touch solemn,

"Dunno if we've ever been in common about anything, babe."

"Jeez. You don't have to spell it out like that, do you?" Tzuyu laughs lightly, holding the bath towel at her hips - her breasts are bare. They fall without support, her nipples, the slope of her ribs, everything. "I mean, how cruel."

(It isn't really. Because, here's the thing. In the grand scheme of things, Chou Tzuyu was never really supposed to happen at all.)

-

The snow clears, like all things you suppose, slowly and with a sigh: with the change in winds and a promise for a gradual spring. Tzuyu steals a shirt. Doesn't seem inclined to return it, says she's good at letting her imagination do half the work in lieu of the actual sex. (The nip is like a sting: it'll last longer, apparently. The bruising at the edges of her waist is more abstract.)

You’re in the driveway. Tzuyu’s leaning back on her luggage.

She kisses you like she wants to make you lose something: her lipstick, her mind, her heart or soul. And when her arms slide, her mouth parting - her tongue darting and sweeping, taking - Tzuyu knows a good many things about herself. She knows you, too. What makes her wet, what gets her off. What part of you will always come back to her. But her hair falls heavy: so much silk. She's laughing - a grin and she's licking the pink right off her teeth and she's beautiful and you think you'll want this always:

A girl like her, kissing so eager for you-

"You can totally say it first," she tells you, that mouth at the edge of your ear.

"Um," you say, and she settles down a little further, her wrists locked behind your neck. "You are so: clingy."

The look she gives you is adorable. All dimple, no worry. “Yeah, so?”

“How is that fair?”

"I don't really care if it is or isn’t. We’d be good together - and that’s a fact. So say something good, or I'm getting in that cab right now."

So you do. You do. The first word, the syllable, the way you ask her, the sound that is something like: mine, and the way it dries the edge of your throat; you kiss it away and she giggles because maybe this means, after a while, you really are as terrible as she always hoped.

She'll give you everything. She says, yours, and it would always be you; she halts a bit, and says it like she’s thawing a revelation, one that’s been there since the start - says she loves you and she always has. You laugh and she says it again: always.

-

Sana ends up standing in the cabin a day later. The same place you stood, watching Tzuyu lick yogurt off her spoon. Her coat looks expensive. There's her purse. The boots. That red-painted mouth. Her eyes are fixed, and she sees nothing out of the ordinary. Which is probably, you think, ideal.

"That's funny," her face betrays nothing.

The cabin smells a little like burning wood, vaguely: peppermint tea. An electric kind of heat and the warmth of the sun. It had smelled like evidence prior, the way a girl gets with her underwear missing, hair a tangled mess, body sore and aching, a wet bed. You'd looked like a pair of kids caught in a terrible storm, a lovers' quarrel in a small space - or, just: well-fucked.

"What's funny?" is how you finally manage.

"I just mean," she starts again, "she used to have like. The craziest crush on you. It would’ve been cute if it wasn't sorta sad. Did you know? You couldn't, I guess." She shrugs: a heavy lift of her shoulders, a release. The tension is leaking everywhere. "Must've been torture for her to get stuck here with you."

"Huh," you say, like you were missing something, which is exactly the wrong tone and definitely the wrong sentiment. “Oh, the crush. That. Sure.” You’re suppressing a smile. “Torture, yeah. Hey. Don't worry about it. I’m sure we’ll be fine."

-

(You can’t stop running it back through your head, her long dark hair disappearing into the cab. She loves you and you love her, and it’s got this beautiful caveat of being something simple-complex. Like, who would ever believe any of this? Like, who else even matters? 

You say, you belong to me, and she agrees without even thinking. 

“You always knew, though. From the start, you always did. I was never going to be anyone else's," and then she pouts. "Wouldn’t hurt telling me, from time to time."

And the mountains have a way of feeling like the end, sounding like the closing score, the credits - you look out at the white caps and reflect: maybe you shouldn’t have let her go. Maybe you should chase after her. Maybe you could still make it work. Maybe you should consider that a promise.

You look up at the sky, the pale blue - and maybe you can afford to let her go. 

You know you’ll only find your way back.)

#tzuyu smut #twice smut #tzuyu #twice tzuyu smut #kpop smut #male reader smut

[sinning-23]

SIT, LIKE A CHAIR

Opla face sitting/p*ssy eating headcanons

Warnings: dude the title is warming enough lol. ITS 18+ BRO

Zoro

-Fuck around and hover if you want to. He’s already got his arms around your thighs, forcing you to sit.

-He’s got some kind of sorcery or some shit with his tongue cause what the fuck.

-oh you thought he was stopping after you came once? Hahahaha that’s so funny.

-makes sure you are shaking and fucking shivering when he’s done with you

-Will make sure you know how much he loves the way you taste.

-“That’s it honey, cum on my face.”

Usopp

-unfortunately doesn’t know what the FUCK he’s doing when he eats but is very very fucking skilled with his fingers.

-we all know this man’s nose is 5 mf stars and would be nice to sit on and he knows this fact.

-on the occasion that he asks you to sit on his face he’s putting everything to work, using one hand to simultaneously spread your cheeks and keep your things flush against him.

-the other is already coaxing another orgasm out of you while his tongue circle slow around your clit.

-doesn’t talk when his mouth is full, he’s got manners lol

On the rare occasion he does speak it’s often after all is said and done

-“now you can brag about being eaten out by a legendary captain”

Sanji

-oh he eats religiously. Like is that even a question?

-he gets really fucking sloppy too. He’s got your juices and his saliva down his chin and all over your thighs.

-sometimes it feels like the eating is more for him than you (sometimes it is lol)

-expect lots of worship when he’s positioned under you. He prefers to eat when you’re sitting on the edge of the counter or table and he’s kneeling down in front with your legs over his shoulders.

-“I’ve never tasted anything as divine as you. Tout va bien pour moi”

-Has definitely cum from eating you out alone

Nami

-Oh she’s fucking ruthless. I mean just so mean when she eats.

-She likes to draw loving circles on your thighs and then offset that sweetness with a pinch.

-She’ll make it seem like she’ll be nice and let you cum, only to stop completely, eyes laser focused on that adorable little frustrated knot between your brows.

-Is a bit of a shit talker honestly and between how well she works her fingers inside you, how good her tongue feels on your clit, and each teasing comment she throws your way, you’re left spiraling.

-“Ohhh how cute. You gonna cum on my face just like that? You can hold on a little longer can’t you honey?”

Shanks

-If you look closely you can see that his facial hair is slightly bleached.

-We know the fuck why.

-He makes sure you know just how much he loves your pussy when he eats. I mean yes he’s slow and damn near torturous with how he asked you be patient and wait but it’s so worth it.

-He kisses up your thigh, then over the top of your panties. Then will suck and lick over the fabric until it’s soaked.

-Once that’s done, he takes em off with his teeth and licks one long, slow stripe up before deciding to suck on your clit for just a second. Soon after he’s pulling your closer by your thighs and eating you for all your worth.

-He will not talk, well…only if it’s to get you to sit still, his eyes peering dangerously into yours.

- “Don’t. Move.” (its pretty mf hot)

-holds your hand when you finally cum on his tongue.

Buggy

-He the best eater I know- he gets down. He don’t play

-if eating was a sport he’d be the champion.

-Teats your pussy like a meal(because it is in his eyes) and makes sure nothing is left behind besides your own slick, his saliva, and your trembling thighs.

He really gets into it too. I mean he’s moaning against your folds, slurping and drooling.

-This mf is a multitasker. His hands are definitely detached and holding the back of your knees to keep you from closing your legs. and he is working yet another orgasm out of you.

-He's a talker btw so expect lots of witty and raunchy comments while you're practically convulsing from overstimulation.

-"No one makes you feel like how I do huh princess?"

-"That's it honey scream my name."

-“I could eat you forever.” He whines with his mouth full of you

Mihawk

-He's not likely to eat as much. He doesn't dislike it but would rather give to you in other ways. However, despite this little thing about himself, he makes sure it's for a reason when he eats.

-For example, had a bad day? There's a remedy for that, come sit.

-Feeling a bit insecure and self-conscious? Let him show just how amazing you really are.

-Expect to feel a lot of vibrations with how much he growls and moans into your cunt.

-Not too much of a talker but when he does it makes not only your pussy throb but your heart melt.

-"Look at yourself. So beautiful my love." (there's a mirror on the ceiling)

-He isn't afraid to kiss you when he's done either. Wants you to know just how good you taste and that every time he has the privilege of having you sit on his face its like heaven (his words more or less).

#x reader #i don't care he's hot #one piece #one piece live action #headcannons #smut #one piece x reader #opla mihawk #opla shanks #opla buggy #sanji opla #opla nami #opla usopp #opla zoro #opla sanji x reader #opla zoro x reader #usopp x reader #opla shanks x reader #mihawk x reader #opla buggy x reader #nami x reader

[smusherina]

yard work - chapter 14 (regina george x reader)

fandom: Mean Girls (all media)

pairing: Regina George x OFC/Reader

summary: You'd been in the same class as Regina George since kindergarten. You'd lived on the same street even longer. Once upon a time, when life was sandbox disputes and who got the swing first arguments, you'd even been friends. Now, in junior year of high school, you doubted she even remembered you. The same couldn't be said about you. You definitely remembered her.

chapter 1 / chapter 2 / chapter 3 / chapter 4 / chapter 5 / chapter 6 / chapter 7 / chapter 8 / chapter 9 / chapter 10 / chapter 11 / chapter 12 / chapter 13 / chapter 15

You told Mrs George (or was it Ms George now? Too soon?) that you'd drive yourself to the school. Under no circumstance did you want to sit in close quarters to Regina. Besides, you knew she'd have to be there significantly earlier because she was performing. If the thought of being near Regina made you uncomfortable, that of being in that building made your skin crawl.

Why you were even bothering to go was beyond you. You'd been made into a laughing stock, a subject for people to talk about and twist around for the rest of the break. There was no PR response you could concoct to fix this, because for one, there was no time, and secondly nobody would want to hear it.

Maybe this wouldn't ruin your entire fucking life. Maybe you'd get over it eventually. Maybe it would all turn out fine. But it didn't feel like that. You could understand Regina more now, could see more clearly what she'd been talking about when she went on that rant.

Thinking all your problems would dissolve once you were old enough was stupid. That could only be applied to something vain, like pimples and pit stains and body odour. But issues like Regina's, utter self-hatred weaponized against society and everybody around her, and yours, chronic doormat syndrome with a side of people pleaser, could not just resolve. One could not pray the gay away, could not sweep it all under the rug.

You looked at the chicken sandwich in your hand. Mrs George had made some for lunch earlier and you'd swung by after the grocery trip to get you one. Then, she'd driven back to yours, helped you pack it all away, and made a weekly meal plan with you while you ate. It'd been nice. And the chicken sandwich was divine.

Your tummy was already full, but you didn't want to stop eating. You almost never got to really stuff yourself. The feeling of it was luxurious, though painful.

You put off going for as long as you could. You left at just the last minute, cutting it dangerously close. Didn't bother changing your clothes or anything. A hoodie and jeans, your usual jacket and scarf. By the time you arrived on the scene, the parking lot was pretty much deserted. You hustled to the gym where the thing was set up and easily found Mrs George and Kylie.

"C'mon, it's- it's- it's almost starting!" Kylie hissed at you, patting the seat next to her.

"Okay okay!" You whisper shouted back, mustering a little excitement for the little girl's sake.

Most of the performances were utterly dull. To be fair, the talent show was also an opportunity to get extra credit for some classes. Several people from your Spanish class took the stage. There was poetry and a couple songs, all mediocre at best. A pair performed a salsa number, which was surprising on two accounts. One, they were both dudes and two, they were good.

After Damien's dramatic rendition of Christina Aguilera's Beautiful, it was time for The Plastics to take the stage. Karen, Gretchen, and Cady were slowly revealed by the curtain. Cady stood front and centre, Gretchen to her left and Karen to the right.

Unlike many of the other dance performances of the night, the highlight was certainly not the choreography. The wow factor was hinged on the simple fact that it was them, specifically these girls, in latex, borderline slutty Santa costumes doing a provocative dance. The audience was not thrilled, the adults' reactions ranging from mildly uncomfortable to downright scandalized, while the other high schoolers looked on in either lust or disappointment that the act was missing the thing that had made it interesting in the first place.

Regina George had been the main attraction. Without her, without her effortless stage presence making the dance seem interesting, it was actually pretty embarrassing.

You had to look away when they started doing stunts. Karen went to the floor on all fours crab walk style, while Gretchen positioned herself behind her, and Cady geared up to- you couldn't watch. Suddenly, the music cut out and a heavy thump accompanied by someone's breath wooshing out of their lungs echoed through the gymnasium.

Kylie covered her mouth in a valiant effort not to laugh. You bumped your shoulder into hers. She bumped back. Mrs George had gasped and almost surged out of her seat. A beat of silence. Then, like water rippling, laughter began to bubble out of people.

You still couldn't watch. You could hear heels clicking on stage, groaning, and some frantic whispering. Kylie had tears in her eyes and her whole body was shaking.

"What's happening?" You whispered to her.

"Cady... She... Belly flopped the stage." She managed to get out before bursting into giggles.

"What? Is she, like, okay?"

"She's getting up. The principle's getting on stage." Kylie reported while you kept your eyes firmly on your lap. "He's gonna say something, oh, Gretchen's taking the mic-"

You had to look up when you heard your full name being spoken into the microphone, but regretted it as soon as Gretchen finished the sentence:

"-is a lesbian!" Quiet. Again.

You looked down so fast your neck cracked. Through the tinnitus in your ears, you could vaguely hear the principal admonishing Gretchen, the murmurs in the hall, their heels clicking off stage.

Why was Gretchen of all people announcing your sexuality at the talent show? What did she have to do with any of this? Maybe Regina had put her up to it. It didn't seem planned, though. You thought that Regina and Gretchen weren't talking.

"What's a lesbian?" Kylie asked you, all innocence and wide eyes.

"Kylie, don't ask that, it's not appropriate." Mrs George said.

"Why? Is it a bad word?" She turned to her mother. You took deep breaths and clenched your fists. Unclench. Clench. Everything was going to be fine.

"No, but it's not good to accuse somebody like that." Mrs George tried to explain gently, but you could tell she was out of her depth.

"But what does it mean?"

"Kylie, I said don't-"

"It means a girl that likes girls." You cut in.

"Huh... So like how boys like girls, but a girl likes a girl?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Okay."

You would've paid so much money for it to be that simple. Why you couldn't be afforded the benefit of the doubt that you weren't a pervert, riddled with disease, and out to get people? Why was it so unbelievable that you didn't want to change the world, you just wanted to get married someday? Why did kissing girls on the mouth make you a predator?

You suspected there were no real answers to those questions. Fear. Repression. The patriarchy. Religion. The wage gap. Whatever.

The show went on. You felt numb. Realistically, what could you even do? Stand up and shout that it wasn't true? That would only serve to put a name to a face. The next talents came and performed their mediocrity to the mildly interested crowd. There was a pretty good sleight-of-hand magician. Somebody had trained their cat to do tricks.

Eventually, it was Regina's turn to take the stage. You couldn't help but perk up when they announced her. Mrs George was out of her seat immediately, kneeling on the pathway to the stage with a video camera poised to film her daughter.

The curtains parted. She stood in the centre of the stage, mic stand in front of her. She smiled a little, eyes on her mom presumably.

Her hair was done in soft waves, framing her face so beautifully. Natural makeup kept light, a compromise between the bare face that you liked and the full beat she was into. She was wearing an old white tee shirt, the logo so faded you could barely make it out. That had been your shirt, you realized as you narrowed your eyes. You'd gotten it from summer camp, one that Regina hadn't been able to come with you to. After you came back she'd confiscated all the stuff you'd gotten there. Tee shirts, crafts projects, a whittled duck, braided cord. You'd always assumed she had thrown it all in the trash. On her wrist was a braided leather cord and a wood bead friendship bracelet. She had on Lee jeans that hugged her hips and thighs exquisitely. Those had been her mom's.

In her hands was the photo album. Everybody could read the front, Reggie & Jorts.

"Notice me... Take my hand..." She crooned into the mic as the soft melody of Briney Spears' Everytime began to play.

"Why are we strangers when our love is strong? Why carry on without me?"

You felt like you couldn't breathe.

"And every time I try to fly I fall without my wings," Her eyes scanned the crowd. You wondered if she was looking for you. "I feel so small, I guess I need you, baby,"

She found you. Your eyes met, hers clear and blue and somehow so sad, even as she glittered up on stage. Even with everybody's eyes on her, she was looking at you.

"And every time I see you in my dreams, I see your face," She sang so prettily, every note like a gentle caress, a soothing balm to your ears. You did so love to hear her sing.

"It's haunting me. I guess I need you, baby," Her eyes closed, like she couldn't focus on two things at once; looking at you and singing. She swayed gently with the rhythm, feeling the soft instrumental in her feet. Sneakers. Simple, white sneakers.

Her eyes opened again with the next lyrics. You tried not to overthink it, tried not to imagine things that weren't there, but maybe there was a glassiness to her eyes that hadn't been there before.

"I make-believe, that you are here. It's the only way that I see clear. What have I done? You seem to move on easy."

You swallowed, eyes closing. You weren't sure what to think. Was this her way of apologizing? Was she trying to make up for what'd been said? Hadn't she just earlier today made your life living hell?

You leaned your elbows onto your knees and cradled your face in your hands. What were you supposed to do now? She was singing to you. This was the ultimate show of sincerity, of vulnerability, but what were you meant to do with it all in your hands? Your chest tightened and your breaths shortened.

The song continued, you knew the lyrics by heart, but only once she sang the next part did you open your eyes again.

"I may have made it rain, please forgive me. My weakness caused you pain, and this song's my sorry,"

You understood. Cowardly as it may have been, Regina was apologizing to you. Though the references were obscure enough that most, if not all, people would not know who she was singing to, it was quite clear this was a song for somebody.

You rubbed at your throat. It felt constricted, like something was tightening around it.

You couldn't shake the feeling that it was too late. As much as you would've liked to weep in gratitude, be swept in the relief that she was taking you back, irreversible things had happened. None of this made sense. If she hadn't pulled the stunt today then who had? Had she told somebody? Had Janis told?

Regardless, you were an outcast. If not, then ridiculed. You were scared. You had become a target. You didn't think anybody at Northshore was capable of the atrocities you saw reported on the news, but nobody who'd become a victim did until it was too late.

As it was, it didn't matter whether or not you forgave Regina. It didn't matter if she forgave you.

"I guess I need you, baby," As the last line of the song carried throughout the gymnasium, and after the split second of stunned silence before people began cheering and clapping, you got up and left.

You'd smoke a cigarette and get out of here once and for all. Then, you'd drive home and call dad. You'd tell him everything, tell him you needed to switch schools and that you were gay and that you'd made a real mess of things.

You'd take what was given, reap what'd been sown, and forget all about this goddamned town.

Forget all about Regina George.

Notes: Took a bit longer with this one. Sorry for the suspense! Here, have some more unresolved stuff! Also, I fucking love that song by Britney Spears. I've known Regina was gonna sing it for J since pretty much the beginning and finally, she did.

Taglist will be posted separately. If you want to be added to the list, please comment on that post! Thank you!

#mean girls #mean girls 2004 #mean girls 2024 #regina george #regina george x reader #regina george x you #regina george x oc #regina george x ofc #lesbian regina george #wlw #fic: yard work

[yusume-the-writer]

If you wouldn’t mind, can we get a bf!Orter Mádl x F reader.

Where Orter is being jealous and over protective bf, that whenever men come near or talk with reader that he just scares them off in a way. And when confronted about his jealousy he denies (as expected).

Sweet and happy ending! (take your time!)

It's not jealousy if it's just to protect your loved one

Orter Máld x Fem Reader

Request made by Anon, thank you very much for this idea

I'm sorry for the delay. I was kind of having a problem creating a scenario, but I hope you like it

We have to agree that Orter seems to be really overprotective, as he is a Divine Visionary who follows the rules to an extreme and has probably made a lot of enemies.

Gender: Fluff

Summary: During a meeting between Orter and his girlfriend, someone appears to interrupt the couple's moment

Today was a great morning

 Orter had missed a day off to spend with his lovely boyfriend (Name) as he was away because of work

So they spent half the morning in bed because of (Name)'s neediness (and also because Orter was hungry for her affection), and then they had breakfast and got ready to go out in the afternoon.

Now it was nighttime, and (Name) had mentioned a restaurant she wanted to try because of a friend's opinion.

And here they are both, in the restaurant while waiting for their orders to arrive

"A friend of mine said the sweets here are amazing! I can't wait to try them~" (Name) says in a childish tone similar to a child entering a candy store

"Okay, but be careful not to eat too much and get sick later" Orter says

"Okay dad, I'll be careful" She says while looking at him with a pout

"(Name) and you?!?" Suddenly an unknown male voice says

Then a guy appears that Orter has never seen in his entire life.

But it seems like (Name) does...

"Oh and you Kevin..." (Name) says while facing the stranger

 However... she didn't seem happy about this sudden encounter

"Yes! It seems like yesterday that we met" The man known as Kevin says, seeming ignorant about the presence of the Divine Visionary

 "Yes... because we work in the same office" (Name) says while looking at him as if he had asked a question that didn't even need to be asked because the answer was too obvious

Which was true, but Kevin thought he was a comedian

'There's the annoying colleague' Orter thinks as he remembers (Name) venting about how annoying and insufferable a colleague was and that he thought he was the guy for making uncle jokes

He wouldn't say it out loud, but he wants Kevin out of their sight now.

He just wouldn't say it out loud because (Name) would tease him about being jealous.

 "Yeah... anyway -" (Name) tries to tell Kevin to go away

"Me and the guys from work are gathered here, don't you want to come? It'll be fun." Kevin cuts (Name), and it seems like he doesn't want her to deny the invitation

"She's on a date at the moment," Suddenly Orter says, catching the attention of Kevin and (Name)

"... And who would you be, man?" Kevin says it in a confused and disgusted tone of voice.

And, of course, he would be disgusted. There is a man who seems to be a thousand times better than him in front of him

"Her boyfriend, now that you're on leave, could you get out of our sight" Orter says while facing Kevin

 Orter didn't look like it, but he was very angry

Kevin looked like he wanted to say something, but he couldn't say anything

He wouldn't admit how threatening Orter looked or how he stared at Kevin like he was nothing more than prey, not an insect.

No, it didn't even seem like that Orter considered him, but rather just unbearable dirt on a clean floor

And like any dirt, it could disappear and no one would care

... An awkward silence filled the room around Kevin

Then he left without saying anything and went towards a table with people who saw the situation.

As soon as they saw that Orter was also looking at them, they quickly turned around.

 "Heh~" A laugh echoes in front of Orter

As he faced the source of the sound, he found (Name) staring at him with a knowing smile.

"It looks like someone is jealous~"(Name) says while still staring at Orter

"...The food has arrived" Orter says as he changes the subject and faces the waiter who brought the orders

"Hey!!! Don't change the subject!"

"If you don't mention that, I'll buy all the desserts you want"

 ".....Closed"

𝑩𝒐𝒏𝒖𝒔

 Orter was in bed reading a book while waiting for (Name) to finish her skin treatment.

"Don't you think it's better not to read so much?" (Name) says while lying down next to Orter

Confused, Orter stares and raises an eyebrow for her to continue

"If you keep reading so much, your vision will get worse" (Name) begins. "And if you continue, every time you take off your glasses, instead of your eyes looking like 3 they will turn into 4" (Name) ends

Suddenly a pillow is thrown in her face

#mashle #mashle magic and muscles #mashle x reader #mashle x you #oneshot #mashle orter #mashle orter x reader #orter mádl x reader #orter x reader #orter madl #fem reader

[komaniyaexpress]

— is this .. me?! .. ♪

sagau — they find a piece of artwork made by the creator; of .. them.

— featuring furina, wanderer, freminet, and neuvillette .. ♪

cw. none wc. 200-400 ea.

furina

it goes without saying .. furina is ecstatic. i mean.. why wouldn’t she be? she wouldn’t make this known, however, because “of course you’re going to wish to capture my enthralling beauty on paper — it’s only fair when faced with such divine radiance!” inside.. she’s a mess. her widened eyes flit over every tiny detail, every little stroke of the pen or paintbrush. “enthralling beauty”, she says, “divine radiance”, she says — but is she truly talking about herself or the way you interpreted her? never in all the centuries she’d been alive would she admit this, but she couldn’t help but feel as if you had made her look much more ethereal than she truly was. she does make it known that she likes it, though. when you turn away from her and murmur something about how you’re not the most proud of this particular piece, she scoffs indignantly. “what? how— ugh, how could you ever say such a thing? do you dare question my judgement?!” she leans back against the couch, hardly able to focus on the taste of the small pastry half-eaten in her hand. she’s incredibly grateful it’s only you two alone, because she has an entirely embarrassing blush upon her face as she chews.

wanderer

“.. seriously?” he kind of just.. glares at it. i’m sorry, but i don’t really know what you were expecting. depending on the kind of mood he’s in, he’ll either simply cast it aside without a second glance or attempt to mockingly chew you out over it. it doesn’t matter whether he actually likes it or not; he is not going to let you live it down. he’s not amused, but i can’t really imagine him actually getting upset about it either. he’ll scoff, maybe roll his eyes if he’s feeling generous enough, then go about his day without another thought to it. even with his nonchalant, near-annoyed demeanor over the whole thing, when you’ve left and he’s alone — he looks for it again and stares at it like he didn’t get to before. as his eyes travel the lines that form a quite accurate depiction of his visage — implying you spent a lot of time looking at him — he can’t help but wonder why, of all people, you chose him as your muse. he does.. appreciate the sentiment, though, even if he’ll never voice it. he catches himself before he spirals. it doesn’t matter, he reminds himself. with a huff, he sets it down again and crosses his arms, trying to ignore the fact it does indeed make him feel.

freminet

if you were expecting anything other than freminet being an absolute mess.. you’d be sorely mistaken. of course, he’s not upset at all. he’s just.. very, very embarrassed. he loves your art, he does. he doesn’t want you to misconstrue this, and makes sure you know it’s not your problem, but his own. make sure to reassure him. the moment he lays his eyes upon it, it’s evident; his eyes widen almost comically, and, suddenly, he has the surely inexplicable urge to run for his life. that wouldn’t be fair to you, though, so he bites it back and forces himself to stay put. the gears whir in his mind like he’s a piece of the machinery he holds so dear. he doesn’t know how to thank you — should he thank you? he doesn’t know what to say at all, more like. he clears his throat, unable to get any words out; his mouth goes dry and his heart practically beats out of his chest, all the while he’s looking just as frozen in time as your rendition of him. he lets out an audible sigh of relief when you reassure him that he doesn’t need to speak. he can’t handle you when you stare at him like this, and asks if you’d be okay with him putting on his diving helmet. once you’ve given him your permission — which you reiterate he doesn’t need — he quickly places it over his head, letting out a soft sigh of relief when you can no longer see his face. his gaze doesn’t leave the art, not for a moment. he stands still and stares at it, unable to tear his eyes away from the lines that, somehow, paints a clear picture of.. him. that you made. he still does not make any move to talk, and he’s very glad that you’re so understanding. eventually, he murmurs an apology, and through the lump in his throat, reassures you that (if there was ever any doubt), he likes it.

neuvillette

it was raining. it had been raining all day. naturally, this worried you, and your first thought was to check up on neuvillette. exhausted yet unchanging, neuvillette sifted through his paperwork without taking a single break to rest. however, all things must, and eventually, his tire overcame him — letting out a sigh, he placed his palm upon his forehead and leaned into it, his eyes fluttering closed. it took him a moment to open them again, but when he finally did.. after such a long day, eyes sore with the strain of reading fine print jammed together so thickly the pages looked more inky than ivory, the last thing he expected was to see was a piece of blank paper on his desk. curious, he picks it up and flips it over, assuming it to be more writing on the other side — only to be met with.. himself, staring right back at him. the neuvillette now is slightly slouched over, eyes drooping with the weight of an unrelenting week. he’s unable to see his true reflection — in a mirror or water, not a near-perfect version of him on paper — so he couldn’t really tell, but even so, he can’t help but feel as if this version of him must appear much more composed. he pushes the thought away, stares at the piece a bit closer, and he eases a bit. not only was it a splendid break to the monotony of monochromatic paperwork, it was made by you. it’s now that you walk into the room. in a split second, you realize what he’s holding. you blink. he smiles, gentle and soft. the rain stops pouring.

#✦ . ⁺ 🕊️ i. divinity at its finest. #✦ . ⁺ 🌧️ ii. furina. #✦ . ⁺ 🌱 ii. wanderer. #✦ . ⁺ 🌧️ ii. freminet. #✦ . ⁺ 🌧️ ii. neuvillette. #furina x reader #furina #focalors #focalors x reader #wanderer x reader #scaramouche x reader #kunikuzushi x reader #wanderer x you #scaramouche x you #furina x you #neuvillette #neuvillette x reader #neuvillette x you #neuvillette sagau #sagau neuvillette #sagau furina #furina sagau #wanderer sagau #sagau wanderer #sagau scaramouche #scaramouche sagau #sagau #sagau x reader #sagau freminet #freminet sagau

[worldofkuro]

Painted Smile

Painted Smile XII

Pairing: Alastor x Female! Reader

<- Previous Chapter I Next Chapter ->

Summary: You couldn't wait to meet new friends. What you didn't expect was this smiling little boy, only one year older than you, that would take such a big place in your life.

Notes: Alright folks. This is Alastor point of view since his last chapter, it's 15K long. Beware: blood, killing animal, gore, drowing experience, torture, obession. I hope you'll enjoy what is going on inside our favorite deer's head.

“ You look tense, are you alright?” 

He repressed a sigh while turning his face toward his mother. He was reading a book about radio and how it worked. It didn’t seem complicated, it wasn’t complicated really but he knew he would have to put much more effort than others to be able to get a job that would satisfy him. People wouldn’t like a dark skinned man on the radio. 

“ I’m just reading.”

“ You’ve been reading the same book for weeks now. I should buy you another one.” his mother said as she took the book from his hands. He shook his head, taking his mother’s hand between his.

“ No need, mom. I was just thinking about what to buy you for Christmas.” 

“ Don’t you dare buy me something young man.” she tapped his nose with her finger, her face wearing a teasing smile. “ Let your mother spoil you before you become a grown man.”

He smiled at his mother with a soft expression. A grown man huh. What was the difference with how he was now ? Was she talking about his changing body? Or his morals? He watched her leave the room before signing. What was a grown man?

 He changed his clothes with his hunting outfit, put on his glasses and went to the woods. He walked quietly into the snow, stalking animals, or finding news areas. He watched as animals weren’t aware of his presence, he was the perfect hunter, almost like a divine punishment that couldn’t be stopped. He quite enjoyed the feeling, the thrill.. But hunting animals was getting boring.. He craved something more…more what? 

He thought about his father with a dark smile. He had so many scenarios inside his head,  how he would chase him, how he would trap him, he would make him feel the terror he had put on him and his mother for years. He had all the scenarios inside of his head but when it came to killing him, he didn’t know.  Maybe being a grown man was knowing how to kill someone? 

His thoughts drifted toward you. His special person, his safe space. You were stressing out because war was still going on and he was nearing the age where he would be taken to fight for his country. On one hand he didn’t want to go and leave you here, he didn’t think he could be sane knowing you were so far away from him but on the other hand, war meant killing, killing other humans, and that, that was interesting. 

He looked down on his pocket watch. It was something old, and that seemed to stop working each time he went into the woods. He rolled his eyes, this was so annoying. He walked back toward his home, as quietly as he arrived. He knew he was the most dangerous predator in these woods. Now, he needed to be the most dangerous predator in his own house.

He changed his outfit and went to your house with his mother. Your home has always been much warmer than his, and his mother would be smiling with your mom. He liked that image. Even with his father gone, his house was calm, not warm, because his mother and Alastor knew it was only a matter of time before the devil came back to his own house. He smiled at your mother when she opened the door and said you didn’t arrive yet. That’s okay, he’ll wait. He’ll always wait for you. 

After thirty minutes, there you were, opening the door with hot chocolate on your lips. How could you still drink that, he couldn’t understand you. You seemed in a hurry so what’s better than taking your attention from your quest?

“ Look who’s here~.” he smiled as you hugged him before kissing him on both cheeks. Your touch was something that grounded him, sometimes he would be so lost in thoughts he wouldn’t realize he zooned out for more than thirty minutes, sometimes even longer, but if you happened to touch him, he'd just come back, as easily as that.

“ Seems like someone drank hot chocolate but didn't bother wiping her mouth.” he wiped your bottom lips with his gloved hand. You flushed as he stared at your mouth, keeping his finger on your lips. He lightly pressed his finger against your lips, he almost wanted to nip it. Your lips looked… delicious. He looked at your eyes, the windows of your soul and couldn’t help but feel content. You had a glint in your eyes, a glint that would appear only in his presence. You looked at him like you were asking, begging for more… More of what? Please, do talk dear, tell him what you need, he’ll make it so you are fulfilled.

“ Oh my dear, you look starving.”

You gasped as you took a step back while Alastor was smirking at you, his arms folded behind his back. You stuck your tongue to him, like you used to, and he couldn’t help but grin. You were the same, the same little girl who would follow him everywhere. He smirked when he heard your mother’s remonstrance.

“ Yes, listen to your Mother. Keep your tongue inside your pretty mouth.” teased Alastor as he sat on the sofa with his usual mocking smile. “ Now my dear, do you have news to share with me?”

You began to talk about your school, what was happening there and of course you had to motion John. Truthfully, Alastor didn’t care about John’s interest in you, he really didn’t care, unless he was being dangerous. What he cared about was that you mentioned him. Which meant, he was important enough for you to notice him and bring him into your daily conversation.

“ Should I be alarmed ? It’s not the first time I heard this name ?” teased Alastor as he took off his glasses to clean them with a tissue from his chest pocket.

“ Which one? Alice? She wants to meet you…” you mumbled and tensed when you saw Alastor’s smile. Ohoh.. Now, that was interesting. Having another point of view about your associations would be a plus. He trusted you, but you were so naive, you couldn’t even see what you had to offer. How could he trust your word about people being nice to you without asking something in exchange.

“ Well, why didn't you say so! I would be delighted to meet the darling that blesses my sweet little friend with her presence when I’m not here!” he exclaimed as he stood up. You jumped off the sofa as you forced him to sit back down. 

“ No Alastor !”

“ Oh come on my dear, do you want to keep me all to yourself ? How bold.” he smiled as he watched you struggle to keep him sitting. If he just used some of his strength, it would be so easy to just stand up but he liked to see you try. How would you shut him up today? With a kiss on his cheek? A witty come back?

You sat on his lap.

He clenched his hand on the sofa, and inhaled deeply. What an odd reaction from his own body. He was used to your touch, some days his body couldn’t bear it but today it didn’t seem like it. He didn’t feel like your touch was burning him so it wasn’t a bad day. But your touch right now wasn’t as relaxing as usual. He stared at you, you were blushing. How cute. Were you feeling as conflicted as he felt ? He wanted to know. He needed to know what you were thinking.

“ What do you want for your birthday ?”

His body tensed for a second, staring straight at you, did you avoid what was happening? Oh well, he’ll let this one pass. He relaxed himself and laughed, tilting his head backward. He shook his head as he rolled his eyes. Every year you would ask him what he wanted for his birthday and each year he would give you the same answer.

“ Well, just like always. Celebrating with you and Mother. What could I ask for more?” he smiled at you but as you tried to stand up from his thighs, he grabbed your waist and pulled you near his face. He didn’t know what happened, his mouth talked before his own brain could think. “ Should we invite John?”

“ Who–? Wait, John? Why?” you frowned as you looked at his smile which was tense. He was grabbing your waist tighter now but you didn’t seem to dislike it.  You didn’t even flinch or wince in pain. Everything he gave you, you always took it nicely…

“ Wait… Are you jealous?” you smiled as his smile twitched,“ Yes, yes, you are. Haha !” you laughed, not mockingly, but happily, like you enjoyed the fact that he could be jealous. Him? Jealous? Don’t make him laugh, dear.

 He pinned you down on the sofa and began to tickle you. Your laughter was smooth music to his ears but then you began to gasp for air as your cheeks were flushed because of him. He felt a shiver run down his spine as you looked up at him with teary eyes and cheeks flushed. He kind of wanted you to talk in that state, what would you sound like? So he ordered you to say his three rules. He stared at your face as you opened your mouth.

“ You are the strongest here.” you gasped as you tried to wipe your tears that threatened to stream down your face but Alastor holded both of your wrists in one hand so you couldn’t hide from his observant eyes. Don’t hide from him. Don’t ever think about hiding yourself from him…

“ Rule number three.” 

“ I give up…” you breathed as you closed your eyes. You felt his head next to yours, his lips almost touching your ears.  You were so… enchanting. Did you put a spell on him, making him behave like a starved man that couldn’t help but seek your presence to be fulfilled ? What’s even worse, you were giving yourself to him. Were you aware of it? Each time you let him see your emotions, each time you let yourself be vulnerable with him, you were giving him such silenced praises. No one should feel safe with him. No one but you. But how he wished for you to tell him that. He wanted to hear those words from your mouth.

“ Give up yourself to me.” he whispered.

Your eyes opened suddenly, feeling your body being hot. You looked at Alastor who was above you. What did he say? Did he really say those words? He was so confused. That was new… He tilted his head as he watched your expression. You looked at him with..hope? Was that hope? Like you wished him to say those words again. But he wouldn’t, not now, he needed to understand what was going on inside of his own mind.

“ Are you okay, you look almost as red as Eamon ?” he laughed at you as he stood up, putting his glasses back on. You asked him to repeat himself which he did, still confused by his own behavior.  “ By the way dear, it seems like you have a letter.” he said as he held a letter to you, which made you beamed. Surefly it must have been from your father.

“ You still have no news from your father?” you asked after reading the letter.

“ No, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been killed for insubordination.” he said with detachment as he looked at his nails. He wished his father was still alive, dying like an honorable soldier didn’t fit him at all. You nodded before turning your head toward the entrance where you heard a knock. You stood up and went to open the door and froze.

“ Alice ?”

Alice huh? Wasn’t she the one who oh so desperately wanted to meet him? He stood up from the sofa and listened to the conversation, trying to find clues about Alice’s personality without having to interact with the lady.

“ Alice… A man came to your door with my bag and you are not worried ? How did he know where you lived ? Does that mean he followed us?” he heard you say. Huh… He walked into the home’s entrance and saw you tugging a woman into your house before going outside, trying to see if someone was following her. Sweet heavens, did you not care about your own safety? He jerked you back inside the house giving you a pissed smile.

“ Are you dumb? If there is a man who is following you, why would you show your face, confirming that you are living here.” he asked you coldly. You closed the door quickly. 

“ The man isn’t here for me, if he is here. He didn’t follow me, he followed her.” you pointed to Alice. “ You can understand that, I mean, look at her.” 

He turned his back at you to look at the newcomer.  He observed her, she was a blue eyed girl, with long blonde hair and she looked like the cherry kind of girl. There he looked at her, could he give you back his attention now? Oh, he almost forgot his manners. He took her hand in his gloved one and flashed her his usual smile.

“ Quite a pleasure to be meeting you, I’ve heard a lot of you. You seemed like a clever woman, I would have never guessed that you would walk down the street with a soon to be stalker at your feet, bringing this man to my dear friend’s door!” 

“ N-nice to be meeting you, sir. I’m.. I’m sorry..?” Alice stared at you, begging you with her eyes to do something. She was lucky you were behind him or he would have slaughtered her with words about how dumb she was to bring danger to your front door. 

But he was a gentleman.

“ No, no, No need to be sorry. It is not your fault, but the gentleman’s one. You both shouldn’t stay outside alone.”

“ Alastor, maybe we are overthinking. Maybe he was a nice gentleman–”

“ Oh my friend, hush.” he turned back to Alice, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. What did he tell you about your endearing naivety? “ What did he look like?”

He listened as the girl began to describe the man’s appearance. Tall, white man, black eyed, no pilosity.. Huh.. Everyone in New Orleans looked like that. But from what she told you before, it didn’t seem like a stalker. A stalker wouldn’t risk being seen…

“ Well, dear friends of mine, go into the living room, I'll go with some drinks.” you said, sounding upset to his ears. But right now he didn't have time for your emotion, your safety always came first.

“ No, no, I won’t bother you any longer. I’m going home.” 

“ I’ll accompany you.Stay here.”

He went to the kitchen, said to his mother that he was going to bring a lady back to her own home. He didn’t kiss you goodbye, why would he? He was going to come back as soon as the luggage was dropped. 

He walked while observing around him. If the stalker was for Alice, he would feel someone following him. He has an instinct that has been sharpened by his father’s constant presence. He knew where danger came from.

“ So.. You both are childhood friends?”

“ Well of course we are! Can’t you see the special bond that ties us together. Only a fool would deny such–”

“ Oh yes, yes, of course, I wouldn’t dare deny such a strong bond, but other boys, like a guy named John, would deny it. After all, some say, she has never been with another man than you so…” he looked at Alice, still smiling. Was she trying to work him up? 

“ Well, tell this… John fella, why would she need another man? Or even a woman? Our bond is too special for this stupid boy to understand.” he spat with a charming smile. Alice beamed as his answers. He didn’t like her. It was like she was observing him, hoping to find answers. 

Try again.

He let her at her front door steps and left quickly. It was beginning to be late and he didn’t want to kiss you goodbye if you were already asleep. He walked into your home and found your mother with a confused expression. Seemed like something happened and you were upset.

He frowned and went into your bedroom. He opened the door quietly and walked toward your lying form in your bed. He kneeled down and stroked your cheeks which were still wet from your tears.

Who made you cry?

Who dared make you cry?

“ Dear friend, why are you crying?”

You sat up immediately asking him why he was here, hiding yourself from him with your blanket. What a dumb question…

“ Well, I came to give you your kiss, dummy.” he approached his face toward you, staring at your eyes. “ But why are you crying? Is it because of the man?” his eyes went cold, his smile widened but there was no warmth. Did that man come here while he was taking your friend back home?  “ Did he come here? Did he touch you? Where?”

 You just stared at him as tears were falling down your cheeks. He wanted to slay something, someone. Each tear your eyes dropped would be a drop of blood out of the man’s body. 

“ This bastard was here? I fucking walked your little friend home so I could see if someone was lingering around here and that bastard had the nerve to come and–”

Then he couldn’t see you anymore, the blanket was covering his face. But then, he felt a pressure against his lips. He froze. Did you just… Did you..?

“ No.. I was just… afraid that you would leave me for Alice.” you whispered. He couldn’t see you and he knew that if you covered his face right now, it was because you didn’t want to talk about it at the moment. Well, he couldn't be mad at you. Since you introduced your game of covering someone's eyes and then telling a secret and the other had to keep his mouth shut about it, he did it to you plenty of times when you were being a little too curious.  “ She is a beautiful lady, and she is interesting, sweet… a perfect lady you would say.”

“ Don’t put words in my mouth dear.” You chuckled as he moved his hand blindly toward your cheek, wiping your tears away. Seemed like you stopped crying, great.  “ So, you thought she was going to take me away from you? How absurd. Nothing could tear me away from you, not even yourself.”

You really thought something could keep him away from you? How absurd. He waited for an answer for you but was confronted by a dead silence. Well…

“ Can I take off your blanket now?”

You laughed and uncovered his face, his warm smile was back,your laughter could calm him down so quickly… You really put a spell on him, didn’t you? He watched you as you fidgeted with your nightgown. Well, it seems like it was time for him to take his leave!

“ You look like an absolute mess my dear friend! I’ll let you rest and please, do get your beauty sleep unless you want to crack every mirror you shall see.” he laughed as you tried to hit him with a pillow. He kissed you on the forehead, giggling before leaving your bedroom. “ See you soon, doll~!”

He didn’t know why but he walked back home with his mother with a big smile on his lips.

—-

He wiped the blood from his face. Killing animals was getting easier and easier. He chuckled as he stared at his bloodied knife and the dead animal around him. Rabbit, doves, wild board. He laughed out loud, his head tilted back.

Yes, this thrill… This thrill ! 

“ Oh father, please stay alive. I’m preparing something worth living once, I’m preparing your Death.” he laughed maniacally in the forest with cadavers surrounding him. He turned his head toward the noise of a branch cracking, already raising his knife but stopped moving. 

A deer.

Was it the same deer he saved that made his father beat him?

“ Well, hello there. Am I disturbing you?” he smiled, tilting his head. He watched as the deer came closer and began to eat the rabbit's remains. Alastor’s eyes widened before chuckling. What kind of deer would eat meat? “ Aren’t you odd? Well, I guess we are the same..” He stared at his bloody hands and couldn’t help but think about you. What would you think right now? Nobody was forcing him to hunt. He was doing it himself, he was enjoying himself.. Would you still smile at him with the same smile? The same warmth in your eyes. He closed his eyes as he inhaled the blood scent. 

Would you understand him? Or would you run away from him ? 

Would you wait for him at home, preparing dinner while he comes back, dirty, bloody from his hunts. Would you embrace him, worrying about his health and not the animal's? Would you kiss his bloodied lips or put a blanket in front of it? Would you live in a lie with him or accept him fully… Would you open your eyes and stare at his soul and tell him you’ll stay by his side…

Oh odd for him to think like this. But he was thinking about you, so he wasn’t really surprised. He stood up and looked around, the deer wasn’t here anymore. He took some animals and brought them back home so his mother could cook them. His mother had a sad smile when she saw him enter their house, he wondered why. He quickly prepared a bath but just before getting into it he stared at himself in the mirror.

His scars were beginning to fade, for some of them. He chuckled before going into the bath.

He was so monstrous, inside and out.

He tilted his head back on the edge of the bathtub. He hummed a melody you used to sing when you were younger. It’s been a long time since he hadn't heard you sing, he should find a song to play so you could sing. He nodded before sinking into the water, smiling as the water began to redden from the blood he had on him.

Yes, he should go see you.

—-

“ I’ll be delighted!”

He smiled as you looked at him from the swing, confused. You just asked him about coming with you into Alice’s soirée for Chritmas’s Eve.  He was lying down, reading a book which he didn’t even remember the title of. 

“ Really? You would like to come?” you smiled as you let the swing go, walking toward him. He put his book down and looked up at you with his usual grin, he really was excited about it! 

“ Of course dear, going to a soirée with you holding on to my arm? How could I refuse? And I’m sure my Mother would be delighted to celebrate Christmas’s Eve with your mother, as long as we celebrate Christmas with them.” he sketched before sitting up. You laughed softly before tugging off leaves from his hair. He smiled and layed down on your thighs, taking his book back and began to read the same sentence he was trying to comprehend. I Love You. What does it mean ? What was the protagonist feeling right now? The description of his feelings seemed so light compared to what Alastor felt for you. He was obsessed with you and yet he didn’t feel like what was described in this book. 

He wanted you to see the monster inside of him. That side of him you haven’t met again. He wanted you to be able to make yourself bleed in front of him, like a fish in front of a shark, but never being afraid of him hurting you. You would look so beautiful drenched in blood…

“ Alastor, what are you going to wear?”

He snapped back in reality, answering you without missing a beat.

“ Why?”

“ Come on, I was just wondering… I don’t know what kind of dress would suit me, I have never been to a fancy soirée. I’m scared of being… underdressed. “ he almost scoffed at your words. You? Being afraid of being underdressed? Hah ! How stupidly adorable. You could be shining like the sun and he would still watch you until his eyes dry out. He tilted his head backward on your laps so he could stare into your gaze. You were beautiful, how unfair…

“ Red suits you.” he stared at you before you looked away. Were you cheek flushed? Cute… See, red suited you.

“ Well, thank you, does that mean that the only color that suits me is red and I look awful with any other color?” 

“ Oh I didn’t say that. I just want to see you in red.” he smiled in satisfaction as your smile grew bigger. You took his book off his hands, which he let you do, still looking at you. You put the book next to you, on the grass. 

“ Do you think you'll be able to keep up with me if we have to dance ?” you teased him, raising an eyebrow. His eyes widened before he roared with laughter, holding his belly. You were utterly humorous ! He had more endurance than you and he loved dancing. Being in control of the other person’s body was thrilling. They trusted him not to make them fall, they tried to match his footsteps… He stared at you with mirth in his eyes. Oh dear… 

“ Oh my dearest friend, if we happen to dance, trust me, I’ll make it so you wouldn’t be able to walk for some days.” he winked at you with a confident smile. You laughed out loud, throwing your head back. Maybe he should give you a reminder of his skills…

He took your hand and helped you standing up before walking you home. The road was frozen which made him suppress a few laughs as he saw some people slipping on the ice while you were busy looking at the shop’s vitrines. Were you still trying to find a birthday present for him? You should rather look where you were putting your feet… 

“ Hey, Alasto-”

Thought so.

You screamed as your foot slid on ice. You felt yourself falling before Alastor wrapped his arms around you and tugged your body against him before gracefully dancing around the freezed road. You stared at him, your eyes wide opened as he made you spin on the freezing floor, but you never fell, he was moving your body, like it was another part of him. You began to laugh happily. 

He couldn’t help but smile wider. Your laughter was something that could heal any illness in the world, he was sure of it. And yet, you were the one, making him feel things he couldn’t name. You must be a witch, making him fall for you without him trying to struggle. And even though you were the one putting a spell on him, you let him do what he wanted with your body. You closed your eyes as he controlled the pace of your dancing. What were you trying to do to him?

 He made you drop, your head almost touching the ground. You stared at him as he held you firmly, your breath coming in short puff. He was staring intensely at you with a satisfied smile, yes, this looked good on you.

“ No matter what, I’ll always catch you if you fall.”

As he walked you back home he hoped you understood his message. No matter how hard you fell, how low you fell, he would be there before you,lower than you waiting to catch you.

—-

He was at your place with his mother fussing around him. She wanted him to look perfect but wasn’t he always perfect? He knew how to keep appearance, so being dressed up was the easiest thing someone could ask him. He held the bouquet behind his back, he wondered if you would understand the meaning of the flowers. He asked the florist for hyacinth, white carnation and white chestnuts. He was excited though, he really couldn’t wait to see your dress. Did you choose a red dress? His suit was a darker shade of red but he hoped you both would match. 

“ Alastor, come closer, there she is !”

He walked toward the stairs and froze.

Oh.

You were breathtaking.

Your makeup was accentuating your traits. You looked devilishly divine. You were wearing red. Your legs made him want to sink his teeth into it. You wore heels making you the same height as him.  You kissed him softly on both cheeks making him gulp. He felt like he had no control over himself. You were like something he wasn’t worth touching and yet, you were offering yourself to him. How cruel of you.

“ Alastor, please say something…” you begged, looking down.

Oh no, his dearest shouldn’t look so down while looking so perfect. He grabbed your chin softly and raised your face toward his. 

“ I told you, red is our color.” he smirked before giving you the bouquet. You smiled brightly as you saw the flowers, you didn’t seem to understand the message but who cared when you were smiling like this? He couldn't tear his eyes from you, you were enchanting, ethereal…

“ You both are so beautiful, but leave right now before being late !” Marie said just after taking a picture of you. You took a long coat that hid your figure before leaving with your arm around Alastor’s one. 

“ I can’t wait to be there ! “ you said excitedly. Alastor was being careful of every man who could touch you in any way. He didn’t think he would be able to have a polite gentleman's conversation if that were to happen. He looked at your feet, you were walking nicely with those heels, you weren’t even slipping on the frozen road.

After a thirty minute walk, you both find yourself in front of a huge house.Well, he already knew Alice was a daddy’s girl so he really wasn’t surprised, unlike you, from your expression, you didn't expect Alice to be this loaded.

You knocked on the huge door and a butler opened the door, eyeing suspiciously but before you could even your mouth you saw Alice running toward you. She was wearing an outfit similar to yours but hers was white and blue. She looked boringly angelic. He almost scoffed, please, was she supposed to be some kind of boring angel?

“ You made it ! Come, come, come inside!” 

After introducing yourself to some of Alice’s guests, you walked toward a buffet. He already remembered every name, every contact he could make right now.

“ Well, what do you think of it so far?” you asked him with a tired smile. He took a drink and sniffed it before putting it back. “ What?”

“ Be careful, some of the brevage have alcohol,” he said before leaning against the wall.” but I’m not surprised. Your friend seems to be the type to always go big.  Being able to pull off this kind of soirée with a war going on? I’m almost impressed.” he said before straightening his tie.  Now, could the band he saw before entering, begin to play? He wanted to dance with you and show off your talents.

“ Alastor, is it you?”

Dang it.

He flashed the lady his most charming smile. She was the mayor’s daughter, Alyzée. So Alice was close with high society.. He began a conversation with her. He met her during a school event, he was playing the piano and she began to chat with him. She must be around her twenties and yet, she came to him. Perfect for him, she could be useful.

He looked at the band as they began to play songs. He almost flinched when the woman dragged him toward the dance floor. Well, he could afford to waste some dance with this woman before going back to you. The songs weren’t hard to keep up, so dancing with Alyzée was pleasant at most but he couldn't help but look to where you were.

He almost snapped Alyzée’s hand.

You were dancing with that John. Why was he here? He looked so underdressed, you weren’t going to dance with him once more would you? He spinned Alyzée, never letting you off his gaze. If that bastard were to throw you in the air…

He turned his face toward Alyzée as she began to talk about her father’s plan for New Orleans. Great, that would smooth his nerves. What did the man planned for the black community? He listened to her, still dancing. It wasn’t thrilling in the slightest but at least, he had some information on what was going on in the high sphere.

After some dances, another girl came to ask him for a dance. He gave her his usual smile and took her hand, thanking Alyzée for her information. Well, this new girl wasn’t useful in any way but she could be a distraction if she knew how to dance.

He snapped his head toward the scene as soon as your voice reached his ears. What were you doing on stage? You were astonishing. You held the crowd in the palm of your hand. You were controlling them with your voice, were you aware of that? You were a devil in disguise. Ooh, you were exquisite. 

He suppressed a sigh as the woman tried to take his attention back. He couldn’t be impolite here, there were too many risks at stake. He danced with her, hoping for some kind of divine power to put an end to this clown show. He almost smirked when he heard you singing with much more vigor, the beat getting faster. Oh, how he loved those kinds of songs. Unfortunately for him, it seemed like his dance partner couldn’t keep up with him.

He flinched when he felt someone touch him and turned around. 

There you were.

You grinned at him, singing before smoothly taking him away from the girl. You both were encircled by the crowd but he didn’t care. Alastor and you danced, never breaking eye contact. You kept the rhythm as fast as you could, every step was nailed, every spin. He would bring your back against his chest and then he would spin you so your face was inches away from each other. Your pupils were dilated, just like his, were you aware of that? And then Alastor lifted you in his arms before throwing you in the air.  Did you remember his promise to always catch? It seemed you did, because you already had your eyes closed before he lifted you in the air. 

You fell down in his arms, your head near the floor but never touching it. You felt his breath on your lips and you opened your eyes, staring right back into his gaze. He was sweating and so were you. You were holding his shoulder, breathing hard. You were both alone in your own world. 

Wasn’t living much more worth it when you were both together, dearest?

And just like that, the spell broke as the crowd cheered for you. You blinked and Alastor straightened you up with a genuine smile. You both went back to the buffet after you gave back the microphone to the singer.

“ Oh my Lord, you both were.. I don’t even have the words!” squealed Alice as she shook you by the shoulders. 

“It really was amazing.” John said as he clapped while you were drinking a glass of water. Of course, you punk.

“ That’s what happens when you let us do our things together, let that be a lesson folks.”  Alastor said as he put his arms around your shoulders.  You nudged him but couldn’t contain your laughter. You were having a great time and so was he now. He tugged you once more toward the dance floor, he promised you many dances after all.

After a while, he sat down with you at a table with some friend of Alice’s. He already knew where it was going to go. 

“ You’ve never kissed before? Hoho, you don’t know what you are missing.” said a lady to John who just blushed. The lady started at Alastor. “ And you, pretty boy? Have you ever kissed someone ?” 

“ Yes, I have.”

He smirked. You were his first kiss, and everyone should be envious of him for that. But what he didn’t understand was when the question was asked to you, you said you’ve never kissed anyone. At first, he thought you were ashamed of having kissed him but it wasn’t what was shown on your face. You looked… hurt. 

“ Well, why not remedy it tonight, just before Christmas ! John, was it, why don’t you kiss our adorable singer right here?” you flushed even more and Alastor felt anger swirling up inside of him? Could someone shut this harlot?

“ As if my dearest friend’s first kiss would be with such a boring fella, no offense my friend.” said Alastor sarcastly. Could they stop talking about you like you were some kind of prize? You must have been upset because you stood up and went into the garden behind the mansion. He stood up after a minute or so and joined you outside.

“ You are going to catch a cold.”

You turned your head toward Alastor as he took off his blazer, ready to hand it to you. You shook your head. Hha.. you were being a brat right now?

“ No, I needed… I need the cold air.” he hummed, well, he could have guessed.

“ Why did you lie ?”

“ Pardon?” you turned your body toward him as he took a step toward you.

“ About your first kiss.” he really needed that answer.

“ I didn’t lie, I’ve never kissed anyone. And unlike you, if I did, I would have told you but Mister Alastor doesn’t care to share such a secret with me, am I right?” you crossed your arms over your chest. He smiled at you mockingly. How could you be so stupid but so adorable at the same time? How?

“ Don’t you dare look at me like that, Alastor.”

“ You’ve always been endearingly stupid. My first kiss was with you, in your room, remember ?” he tilted his head as he took another step toward you. He saw your body relaxed and you began to explain how it wasn’t a real kiss because in books bla bla.. He rolled his eyes as you looked away, why did you care about books? Were they the one writing what was going on between the both of you. His hand found the back of your waist as he softly tugged you against him. Come on, don’t hide from him…

“ So, a first kiss must be with a special someone, right?” he waited for you to nod before raising your chin with his finger. “ Then, can I give you my real first kiss?” You stared at him with your eyes wide open, your cheeks flushed red. “ You are my most special person since childhood… For me, it’s only natural for you to have my first kiss.” he smiled at you, did you understand what he was trying to tell you?“ You don’t have to if you don’t want of course, but–”

“ I want to. You.. You are also my .. most special person…” he nodded with a soft genuine smile. That made his body relax. He smirked as he saw you closing your eyes. Oh no little lady, you hid yourself one or two many times tonight. You’ll let him watch your emotions.

“ Nu-uh, keep your eyes on me.” you opened your eyes, blushing furiously.

“ You are supposed to close your eyes when you are kissing someone !”

“ I don’t really care, this is our first kiss, we’ll do it how we want.” he smirked as he approached his face toward you. Your eyes were looking everywhere on his face while his gaze was focused on your eyes. You were nervous and excited. Did you feel this emptiness being fulfilled because of his presence like it was with yours? You did finish by closing your eyes as you kissed each other. How cute…

You kept your eyes closed as Alastor stepped back slightly , he could still feel your breath against his mouth. You opened your eyes and gave him a shy smile as he whispered.

“ So dear, have you ever kissed someone ?” you nodded. “ With whom?” Say it, say it, say it…

“ Alastor.”

“ How was it?”

“ Perfect.” you smiled at him as he grinned at you before covering your shoulder with his blaze. He could see your lipstick being less vivid than before. He must have some of your lipstick on his lips. He licked his lips.

“ Come on now, the soirée needs its stars !”

He went back inside, keeping his jacket on your shoulder. It would be a shame for you to get sick. He sat back down and easily went back to the conversation that was being carried on. They were talking about how they wished the enemy would just drop dead. He smirked, they didn’t know how to kill but they wished for other people's death either way. How hypocritical.

He felt your hands on his tights. He took your hand in his, caressing your skin before looking at you. You were pointing to his own lips and he couldn’t help but grin harder. Alice must have told you about your lipstick. He leaned toward you.

“ You already want another one?”

You threw yourself back against your chair as Alastor was laughing, throwing his head back. Everyone stopped talking and looked at the both of you, confused and curious. You took your glass, hiding your face behind it as they tried to coat you to tell them what had happened. Alastor couldn’t help but talk first, clearly wanting to tease you.

“ I just reminded my dearest friend that being gluttonous was bad,” he said with a cunning smile. Oh, you looked so pissed ! “ You might get addicted!”

“ Unlike you, I don't have food all over my mouth.” You closed one eye, staring at him with the other as you drank from your glass.“ and as you know my dear Alastor, since our younger age, you always were the glutton one.” you smirked. Oho, were you trying to shut him up? Cute attempt.

“ You know that when I like something, I can’t help but crave more until there is nothing left for others to share.”

He grinned as you almost spat your water. 1-0. He won this fair and square.

“ Ooh Alastor, you have such a way with words. What else can that mouth do?” said a woman. He turned his gaze toward her, his smile still present.

“ It bites.” 

Thank God, you wanted to go home. He shook some hands and waved at Alyzée before leaving with you. You were shaking, from the cold weather and, he supposed, from your heels. Well.. He kneeled and carried you in his arms and began walking toward your home.

“ You know you have lipstick on your lips?”

“ Well, yes.  Dear, when you kissed me I could see that your lipstick wasn’t as clean as before. And with Alice’s reaction, it just confirmed my thoughts.” he smiled teasingly at you. 

“ But… Why did you not wipe it?”

He shut his mouth. How could he explain that he wished to feel you longer on his lips. He wanted your taste on his tongue. He wanted to consume you like you were consuming his thoughts. He lost himself in his thoughts until you were in front of your doorstep.

“ I wanted to feel you a little longer.”

Seems like you understood he still wasn’t really sure about his feelings. You just held his hands between yours before opening the door, entering the silent house. He closed the door, watching around him, making sure there wasn't anything strange. 

After checking on his mother he went into your bedroom where you were already ready to fall asleep still dressed up. He dragged you toward the bathroom and sat you on the bathtub’s edge. You were whining that you were oh so tired but he didn’t care. You needed to go to bed completely clean. He began to wipe your lips as you accepted your fate.

“ Good girl.” he smirked at you with a mocking glint in his eyes.

And there it was. You bit his finger and he felt his body react. He felt a shiver going from the top of his hand until the end of his legs. He knew you didn’t like being called a good girl, most of the time he used those terms when he was easily manipulating someone. But you weren’t like other people.

You were his oh so precious special person…

He leaned toward you, making you lean back, keeping his finger between your teeth, until your back was at the bottom of the bathtub. He climbed above you, his eyes never leaving yours.

“ I recall being the one who said that I bite…” he looked at you calmly as you stared at him with angry eyes. Did you know how it made him feel that you accepted that situation so easily? His hands had killed animals, his hands were drenched in their blood and soon enough his father’s blood. Yet, here you were, staying comfortably underneath him, like he wasn’t the most dangerous man you have ever met.

Would you accept him ? This question was beginning to bring him closer to madness than he would admit. Would you dirty yourself with him? Would you drenched your hands in blood and then cup gently his head with a sweet smile.

Would you be a sinner for him? with him?

Then he felt cold water on him. You just turned on the shower.. He smirked, was that a sign? You would be the one washing up his sins? Or did it mean you would always want a cleaner version of himself, that you couldn’t accept his bloodied self? You both cleaned up before you asked for his help in your bedroom. Seemed like you couldn’t take off your dress by yourself.

He approached you and dragged the zip down. You thanked him but didn’t move when you felt his gaze on your back.He wondered how he was looking at you? Like a hunter? Like a friend? Like a man? You turned your head toward him with a curious expression. He was still looking at your back with a straining smile. “ I hope nobody will ever backstab you… Can I..?” he whispered as he held his hand toward your back. You nodded and closed your eyes when you felt his other hand covered your eyes. 

You were so compliant, never asking anything about his weird tendencies. He stared at your back, unharmed, unlike his. He traced the scars his father did on his back, but on yours. But unlike his fathers, his fingers were gentle against your skin. You weren’t flinching, afraid of him. You were even pressing yourself against his hands.  Would you still have done it if you knew his thoughts? His delirious thoughts about killing his father? Would you still let his dirty hands touch you?

“ Alastor..” you whispered and he hummed in response. “ Can I… Can I do the same..?”

…

Could you do the same..? He wished for it. He wanted you to see him, as he was. But tonight, he would be a coward.

“ If you keep your eyes closed.”

He took off his shirt and sat down on your bed, his back facing you. His body was tense, he knew you would keep your eyes closed but he felt like you could see right through him. That in any moment you would scream at him to leave you alone. That he was the same kind of monster as his father.

But this moment never came. Your hands were so gentle against his bruised skin, against his broken self. You asked him if he was okay multiple times, making sure he was still with you. How perfect could you be? He tried to keep himself from hugging you, letting you map his back with your hands.

“ You are beautiful, Alastor.”

“ You say that because you keep your eyes closed when you are with me.”

“ Then, let me open them.”

“...No, not yet.”

Please, let him believe you were accepting as he was right now. 

“ Alright.” you said softly. You didn’t ask, as always, letting him be ready to come to you. He didn’t deserve you and yet, he would destroy anyone that would try to keep you away from him. He flinched when he felt your lips against one of his scars. You began to apologize but he stopped you, you didn’t have to apologize. Never.

He moved, making you step back. He was now sitting in front of you, with his legs opened and you in between, on your knees. Your eyes were still closed, as instructed. He smiled, you didn’t break his trust, you never will, right?

“ Alastor.. Where..?”

“ I’m here, you are caged between my legs right now.” he said with a teasing smirk.

You scoffed at the choice of his words.

“ I’m caged ?” you teased him, tilting your head against his legs. 

“ With me.” he kissed you on your forehead.” Would you like that? Being caged with me?” he whispered almost desperately. 

“ Yes.”

Oh Lord.

He tugged you against his torso, embracing you as hard as he could. You didn’t hesitate, you would be ready to throw yourself to the flames with him. How could he not crave you? Maybe you would accept him, you’ll just need more time than he thought. He kissed your forehead before putting back his shirt. He went downstairs to prepare your hot chocolate. He grimaced as he smelt the scent. How could you drink this…

He walked quietly upstairs and gave you your drink which you happily drank.  You fell asleep almost immediately. He would almost be envious as he looked at your sleeping form before letting himself rest for an hour or two.

The next morning, everyone was giving their presents. He smiled when you gave him a watch. He didn’t know why, but he knew deep inside that this watch would keep working even in the woods or even through Hell itself.

—

Alastor was helping his mother clean the house. She hurted her hips so he was taking care of lifting the heavy boxes he found in the cave. His mother never wanted him to go there, sometimes he respected until this day. She was the one asking him to clean there and he was excited. What kind of secret would he find?

Nothing much but books and some animal’s skeletons. He sat on an old chair and leaned against a shelf a little too hard which made a book fall. He sighed as he took the book and stared at him. What was that… It looked like a journal, almost the same as the one he had in his bedroom since he could write. He opened it and began to read.

It was a Voodoo’s book. Explaining its origins and even more interesting, what could be done with it. Alastor couldn’t help but smile as he began to read spells about soul binding, trapping souls inside objects… What was needed, for each spell, were animal sacrifices to feed and beckon the spirits.  Was that why his mother would ask him to hunt, but sometimes, never cooking the animals? 

He smirked. If he could control or work with those spirits… He would be unstoppable. From what he read, it was in his blood but he’ll be the judge of that, if spirits were useful or not, if they existed or not. He shut the book. He needed more information, he needed to practice. He needed a place where he could learn without being bothered. He bit his lips, the cave must be his mother’s sacred place, it wouldn’t feel right to taint it with his dark goals. He held the book against his chest as he went to his bedroom quietly. 

He’ll find a place.

He sat on his bed and began to read the soul binding spells. He needed your blood and his, and an object that would bind us together, an object that had a powerful meaning for the both of you. He frowned as he looked at all the things he needed to own before making the spells. He laid on his bed. An object that binds you together. Why not his microphone from when he was younger? You both had fun with it, it wasn’t working anymore but still…

 His eyes settled on Eamon.

Perfect.

Eamon was the best material bond between the both of you. He smiled as he stroked the plushie’s fur. When you first gave it to him, the fawn had pure white fur, now it was mostly red because of him…

He put the fawn down. He needed to see you and maybe find a clue if you would accept his new interests. He knew voodoo was seen as a barbaric religion, but from what he read, it was just like any other one. He took his coat and asked his mother if she needed any more help which she declined. 

He walked toward your home but your mother told him you were having your period and this one was particularly painful. He blinked. Didn’t you have your period earlier this month? He remembered the first time you had your period he didn’t understand. You were bleeding but weren’t injured. He almost had a panic attack when you were shouting at him, telling him to leave you alone. You didn’t deserve this pain. When he asked his mother about it, she explained what menstruation was about. He really was impressed by women.

But if you were having your period, again, he wouldn’t bother you. He slid a chocolate bar under your bedroom’s door after you told him you were going to rest today. He could hear the lie in your voice but when you were on your period you would always lie by telling him you were feeling better, or that you weren’t hungry.

He decided to take a relaxing walk but after a while, he could feel someone was trying to follow him. Well, he couldn’t do what he wanted to do today… He went into a coffee shop, some boys from school came to him but he didn’t care about them, he was trying to find his mysterious stalker. He couldn’t feel any murderous aura in their stare but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.  

When he left the coffee shop, he waited in an alley and smirked when he found the person who had been following him all afternoon.

“ May I know why you are following me, my goodfella?”

He had a knife in his pocket, he really didn’t want to use it but maybe, in front of him, was your stalker. He needed more information but the person ran away. Alastor scoffed, the only person who could outrun him was you. He ran after the stalker but then realized.

He couldn't catch them.

Was he running after you? He biforked into another alley, running toward your home. If you weren’t in bed, that would mean that you were the one who had been following all afternoon. But why?

He entered your home by slamming the door, startling your mother but he kept running until he heard your voice in pain. He opened your door and there you were, in your bed sweating although the windows were wide open. He went to close it and stared at the tree near the opening. Did you use a tree to leave your room? He could see some dirt on the edge of your windows. So you were following him all afternoon…

“ Well my dear, I was chasing what I think could be your stalker.” you stared at him with wide eyes. “But what was worrisome was that when I chased them, they ran into your house’s direction. You haven’t seen anything suspicious my friend ?” he stared at you with his usual smile. You shook your head but he could see you were lying. He didn’t say anything, you were surely trying to find a present for his birthday. But why did you feel the need to lie to him? He kissed your forehead before leaving you alone, he didn’t like it when you were lying to him, no matter the subject.

He went back home and began to read the Voodoo’s book while taking notes in his journal. He didn’t know why but all the information about some rituals were sticking in his mind effortlessly. 

It was so interesting, he really hoped you would understand him.

—

He was talking with your mother, with some sweets he had made with his mom. He knew you always wanted chocolate when you were on your period, if you really were on your period right now, so he would just make some. Sometimes he would prank you by putting some spice in the chocolate and it was always a hilarious sight when you realized what he had done. 

Your mother had told him you went out with Alice and you should be back soon enough. He didn’t mind talking with your mother, she would tell him cute stories about you before you came settling in New Orleans. But as the stories were being told, he was getting more and more agitated. 

You were still outside with Alice as the weather was beginning to get more and more dangerous. He asked your mother if he could use the telephone which she agreed to. He called Alice’s house. Maybe you decided to sleep there because of the weather.

“ Yes, Alice speaking.”

“ Where is she?” he asked, he didn’t really cared for Alice, he needed to know you were okay.

“ Oh.. She.. She is with me of course, we were getting ready to sleep because of the weather!”

She was lying.

That meant that you weren’t with Alice. Where were you then?

“ Alice, if you cared about you pathetic life, you are going to tell me where my dearest friend is.” he spoke calmly, hiding his inner turmoils.

“ I… I can’t, she would hate me if I were to tell you…”

He was sure he was going to destroy the telephone from anger. He was sure it was about his birthday.

“ If it’s for my birthday, I know” he lied “ So where is she? The radio said there will be a snowstorm soon enough.”

Alice mumbled something before telling him the truth. You were in an unknown house, far from here, alone. He laughed nervously, asking for the address. Alice gave it to him and he hung up. He went to your mother, asking for your father’s car. She seemed surprised but when he said that you were alone in a house far from here, she gave him the key. If he was lucky, he would be able to arrive before the snowstorm hit.

He knew how to drive, he learned by himself in secret. He took the car and drove for about an hour , following Alice's instruction, until he saw a house. The snowstorm was already raging but he needed to see if you were okay. Didn’t you know there were crazy people who would break into a lady's house who was living alone?

He walked toward the house, trying to see something. Fortunately for him he arrived near the door, but slid because of the ice and slammed against the door. Dang it. He tried to open the door but it was locked. Good, you weren’t that naive yet. He stepped back and looked at the roof. He needed to be careful because with the snow and the wind, he could fall but he could manage to enter by the window.

He climbed easily and then broke the window with his foot before entering the room. He heard your scream and ran toward you, were you hurt, did someone was with you? He only had the time to see you running through a backdoor.

Damn it.

He couldn’t let you run away, you were faster than him, he would lose you easily. He shouted your name as he ran after you. He could only see your shadow getting farer and farer from him. He felt his chest hurt at the thought of losing you here. He screamed your name, desperately. Please, just hear him…

He stopped himself as he felt ice under his foot. It seemed like a frozen lake. 

“ Stay away !” you shouted, the wind carrying your voice to him. “ I’m not afraid of killing you !” 

You were there, he could hear you so if he screamed, you would hear him too. He tried to take a step on the frozen lake but he could hear the cracks getting louder. He couldn’t risk taking another step.

“Look at me!”

He felt his body relaxed as he saw your frame getting closer to him before you disappeared.

You just fell down the lake.

You fell down the lake.

You fell down the lake.

You fell down the lake.

You fell down the lake.

He didn’t wait any longer and punched the ice with his bare hands, trying to widen the hole. He jumped into the water, not even caring about the cold. He opened his eyes and there you were, sinking peacefully away from him. He swam toward you, tugged you against him before swimming toward the surface but he couldn’t find the hole he came from. He punched the ice, trying to break it once more. He punched it again, one time, two times, and then his hand traversed the ice, breaking his skin. He was feeling his body trying to force him to open his mouth to catch some air.

Not yet.

He smashed the ice with his fists and lifted you out of the water, he didn’t care if he didn’t have air yet, he needed you to be safe first. He pushed you out of the water before getting his head out of it. He gasped as he grasped the edge of the ice, cutting himself once more. He lifted himself off the water and immediately went toward you.

“ No, no, open your eyes. Look at me!” He shook your shoulder but you stayed silent. He put his head against your chest. Your heart was still beating. He forced you to breathe by performing mouth to mouth. He looked at you as you coughed the water that was in your lungs. Now you need to get somewhere warm. He carried you and ran toward the cottage and thanks to some kind of miracle, he managed to find his way back through the snowstorm. He lit up the fire in the chimney and ran in the house, taking every blanket he could find. He undressed you until you were left in your undergarments. He put the blankets around you, he didn’t care about himself, your safety was his priority. 

He talked to you, begging you to open your eyes for thirty minutes. He kissed your lips, praying that you would just wake up. He looked at you as you pushed him, coughing. He closed his eyes, he was relieved but then anger began taking place in his body. You almost died tonight. You almost ran away from him, somewhere he couldn’t follow.

 “ What are you doing here..?”

“ Is that the first question you want to ask me ?” His voice was cold, his face was stoic, his usual smile non-existent. He was shaking with anger and fear. “ What were you thinking going out in a bloody snowstorm? Have you lost your mind ?” he stood up, raising his voice at you.

He didn’t understand why, but you were angry too. 

“ I was doing great before you came along! Why are you here?”

“ There is a bloody stalker after you and you decide to stay alone in a deserted area ? Tell me dear, are you trying to impress me with your stupidity because you succeeded.Congratulations.” he said mockingly as he sat on the sofa, trying to dry his hair with a towel, now that you were okay he needed to warm his body and the first step was drying his hair.

“ I was preparing your birthday, it was supposed to be a surprise !”

“ My birthday’s not worthwhile if you are not by my side!” he shouted, throwing the towel on the floor, his eyes shining with fury. He came to you and tugged you closer by grabbing the necklace he had given you on Christmas. “ What a charming surprise it would have been, finding your dead body in the snow ! Celebrating my birthday would mean celebrating your death? Oh, you really are spoiling me, my friend. You really are taking the cake!” he spat as he stared at you.  What were you thinking for heaven’s sake!

“ Don’t shout at me !”

“ Don’t play with your life then!” He took the knife you brought with you before running away from his wet pants.” What did you think you could have done with that? Would you stab a man my dear, tell me, would you do it?” he taunted you, mocked you, moving the knife in front of your eyes. “ Do you know how to kill, my dearest?” his voice was low, menacing, he wanted you to speak to him. Stop with the lies; speak what’s on your mind.

And then you cried while telling you would have stabbed someone, you would have killed someone so you could live longer with him. He hugged you as he felt his heart beat faster. Were you like him?  Maybe it was the perfect time for him to come clean…

After explaining what had happened he took off his shirt, and your eyes immediately fell upon his scars. You came toward him without hesitating, you always came to him no matter his state.. You were his… his everything. He wanted you to know that.

He softly took your hand in his and with a soft sigh, kissed the back of it. He kissed the back of your hand, once, twice.. before tugging you against him and kissing your lips avidly. He needed to feel you against him, you were alive, safely caged in his arms.

He laid you down on the floor as he kissed your neck, your cheeks, your lips. He couldn’t get enough of you. He felt like he was starving. You were panting, gripping his hair. Were you feeling like him? Like a starved monster? Did you feel the need to crawl inside him like he felt it with you? He wanted to molded into you. To become one with you.

After a few minutes, he stopped, panting against your chest. You were still gripping his hair. 

“ Don’t ever… Don’t ever do that again my dear…Don’t ever go somewhere I can’t find you...”

You hugged him, pressing his head against your warm chest. 

“ I promise.”

He sighed as you answered without messing a beat. Yes, he knew you would understand him. He could talk to you about him.. About his desires. But for now, you needed to rest. You laid him on the sofa and almost fell asleep immediately, but he couldn’t bear this image right now so he asked you to keep your eyes open for a little while. 

You tried so much to stay awake for his sake he couldn’t help but let you sleep. He didn’t sleep that night, he counted your breathing and your heartbeat. He counted them until you woke up the next morning as he was playing with your hair. 

You caressed his scars and then asked the questions he knew you would ask.

“ Who did this to you..?” 

Now, it was the time to show the monster he was inside. A monster that seemed to be tamed only for you but was craving to exist.

“ What is there to tell, dear? The man who owned the title of being my father had my mother pregnant, he wanted to be a perfect man so he married her.  It was a gamble that failed. I was born and he would beat me or my mother if we were acting a little too “ black” for him, with his belt, his fists, cold water and so many other things. He teached me how to hunt, how to kill, how to hurt… I know so many things that would make you run away from me, my dear friend…” he hugged you tighter, waiting for you to ask about the things that would make you run away but once more you surprised him.

“ I hope he dies during the war.”

He almost moaned at your sentence. He stared at your face, trying to see if there was something darker lurking inside you. It was a gamble he didn’t want to risk but… 

“ And if I told you I didn’t wish for him to be killed during war?”

He couldn’t help but grinned as you began to explain how he shouldn’t be sorry for his parents, that his father should get killed the worst way possible. You were perfect. He kissed you hungrily, your word of death against his father brought him such joy.

“ Aah.. Darling, you are…” he sighed in bliss as he dug his nails into your waist.” What if.. What if I told you I didn't want him to be killed because..” he stared at you a moment before speaking again.”  I want to be the one to kill him.”

You didn’t seem disgusted by the idea. Shocked, yes, but not screaming at him how it wasn’t a good idea. You seemed a little lost but weren’t against his idea.

“ Don’t see him as living being my dear, he isn’t worth the title. Think of it.. Like I’m going to hunt a dangerous animal that needs to be put down. I’m just like your ideal Prince charming , aren’t I? Killing dangerous people for his loved one?” He tilted his head with a soft smile, he remembered when you were younger you were bragging about the prince charming killing his enemies to save the princess, it was the same right now. 

“ How would you kill him?” you asked, curiously. 

Oh how he adored you. He kissed your face multiple times before going on about how he was going to kill his father. He's been thinking about it forever.

And then you told him you would be by his side if needed. He felt like he could cry and laugh at the same time. You were accepting him. Fully. You were accepting him, Alastor and the demon that was within himself. You were accepting them both.

“ Dearest, once I have killed my father,” you hummed while he took your hand in his. “ Would you marry me? ” he stared at you, waiting for your answer, caressing your trembling hand. 

His eyes were shaking but he kept his gaze on you, observing your reactions. 

“ Would you accept my mad affection?”

And you said yes. You were happy giving up on a normal life by chaining yourself to him. But he needed more, he was always greedy with you. He needed a bond that transcended human’s mind. So he talked about his discovery about voodoo and talked about soul bounding. 

You didn’t even wait to consider his offer, you accepted it once more.

You decided to damned yourself with him. 

You ran to the kitchen to take a knife to cut you, so you and him would be bonded together forever. Even death wouldn’t be able to tear you apart. He felt like he was flying, he was feeling so light. You would hurt yourself for him if it means staying with him. 

If he could, he would tear out his heart to give it to you. 

You were his.

His future wife.

His partner in crime.

You would be his happy ending.

—

“ Happy birthday Alastor!” 

He smiled as everyone cheered for him. There was you, sitting next to him, Alyzée, Mimzy, Alice, Victor and some extras at the table. He was now 23. How time flies. 

He was beaming as the attention was on him. He told everyone about his new job as a radio host which made you cheer the loudest. Of course his future wife would be the most delighted. He couldn’t wait to tell you his father was back home. 

Would you be excited? Nervous? Happy? Oh, he couldn’t wait to share the news with you.

At 3am you decided to go home, so he walked you back to your house. Before saying goodbye he kissed the back of your hand and shared that oh so delicious news.

You smiled widely at him before cupping his face and kissed him. He couldn’t help himself; he pinned you against the front door as he demanded you to open your mouth so he could devour you.

You were just as eager as him. His prey was coming back home.

You would soon be bound to him. 

He step back as he heard you panted his name. You were asking for his plan. You were asking about his plan to kill someone. He must be the luckiest man in all New Orleans, no doubt about it. He asked to come meet him in a week, he needed to see if his bastard had been changed by the war or not. Depending on that information, he would kill him differently.

He kissed your forehead before going back home with a smile so wide he almost didn’t recognize himself in a shop’s vitrine. How odd… He almost thought he saw his eyes reddened. 

He observed his father for a whole week. The bastard hasn't changed at all, he was just more full of himself than before the war. Perfect, he knew how he would kill him, he just needed to share it with you.

When you came to his house, he took you in his bedroom and gave you a hunting outfit, before tugging you toward the woods with two guns. You seemed confused about his hunting game but it was mostly because he wanted to catch you. A revenge for his younger self who hasn’t ever been able to catch you once you were running from him.

He explained the rules to you and you seemed excited by the game. Perfect. He waited 10 minutes after you entered the woods before going inside himself. He knew those woods like the back of his hand, he could see where you ran, where you began to walk… 

He walked toward the bushes where he could see the rifle he had given you. Were you hiding in the bushes? He waited a few seconds then smirked. He knew you couldn’t stay still for more than 3 minutes, that meant you had tried to bait him. He felt a shiver in his spine, you were playing the game like a champ! But he could hear your breathing behind the tree, right here.

“ Very intelligent darling, I almost fell for it.” He pointed his weapon toward your direction. “ But now, you are harmless.”

You step out from the tree, walking toward Alastor with a cute faked pout. He smirked, were you giving up?  But then you threw the paint’s bullet and smashed one on his weapon. 

“ Now, you are harmless too, right?” you taunted him as he stared at you with his eyes wide open. His smile was getting bigger and bigger, you were so…entrancing. He moved his hand to cup your cheek but you ran from him. Again..

But this time,unlike when he was younger, he could run as fast as you, he could run faster than you. His smile widened as he tackled you on the ground.  You were his favorite prey, a prey he would never kill but that he would always run after. Seeing your surprised expression was so worth it.

“ Caught you.” 

He had waited to say those words to you. He had caught you, he had trapped you with him. Through a wedding, through a voodoo curse. Your soul and his were tangled in a way that nobody could separate you.

“ Now, what about the plan?” you asked eagerly. He smirked. You were always the one asking first about the plan about killing his father, were you aware of that? After planning a plan, you asked the question he was dying to answer.

“ When will it happen ?”

“ Tonight, dearest.”

He was waiting for you to ask for more time, but you just nodded, ready to start your first sin together. 

He went back home with you, you were so nervous you decided to take a nap in his bedroom while holding Eamon. He went to check on you and approached your sleeping form. He looked at the fawn.

“ Protect her tonight.”

He went out to cut wood, thinking about all the possibilities that could happen tonight. He was so excited, were you feeling like him? He snapped back in reality when he heard Husker hissing at him. He stared at the cat who hissed at him before looking toward his home. Huh.. He went back inside and almost bit his lips until blood would drip. His father was standing too close to you, and from your expression, he must have said something that you didn’t like.

“ Father, are you ready for our hunting session?”  Alastor asked with his usual smile, observing your body relaxing at his voice. He took the rifle from the wall and put them on the table. He looked at you before going into the kitchen with his father. What was it called..? Tragic irony was it? His father was talking about the people he had killed during the war although he was going to get killed tonight. How funny.

He looked at you as you entered the kitchen. You weren’t wearing your necklace. Why? As he walked next to you to follow his father into the living room so he could take the weapon, you held his hand while showing him your neck.

Hah, You must have used your necklace to show him which one was the gun he should choose. How clever.

“ Are you coming boy, I don't have all night long!”

“ I know, Father.” You won’t be seeing the sun tomorrow.

He took his weapon with your necklace around it. It felt like you would be with him during his vengeance. How sweet.

He left his house to walk toward the woods with his father. One last hunting session. Two men. But only one hunter and one prey.

“ You really grew up, Alastor.” he turned his head toward his father as they kept walking deep into the forest. “ You’ve even found a little accomplice.” He kept his smile but furrowed his eyebrows. What was he talking about?

His father pointed his rifle toward nowhere and shot. Alastor froze. Why was his father’s weapon armed? He knew you would never betray him. So that meant, his father knew about his plan? How?

Before he could speak, his father hit him in the face with the back of his weapon. He didn’t know why but he felt like he was back at 8 years old, where he couldn’t do anything against his father. He was still alone. He let his father drag him into the woods. He was staring at the sky. 

“ Did you really think I wouldn’t check my gun, boy? You really should have gone to war, maybe you would learn some things or two.” he said as threw him on the floor. He looked at his father as he pointed the rifle against his forehead. Mhn, was he going to die here? No chance. He knew that he wasn’t alone anymore, you were waiting for him at home. So it was better for him to play the weak boy his father was seeing in him before turning the tables around. 

His father kept talking about how he was a disgrace. He was waiting for the perfect timing but then he saw movement. Damn it, if people were to see this scene, it would be annoyingly difficult to explain. He quickly looked on the side and froze.

It was you.

You were walking quietly toward his father with a knife in your hand, never letting your eyes drift away from the man's back. Now, what would you do? If you were to stab his father, he would pull the trigger and kill him on the spot. He wouldn’t be mad at you of course, but he didn’t wish to be killed by his father.

But once again, you surprised him by helding the blade against his father’s throat, taking away his father’s attention from him.

Then, everything went down quickly.

The bastard elbowed you on the nose, making you fall on the snow with a blessing nose. He almost snapped when he saw his father pointed his weapon toward you. He tackled him on the floor, wrestling him, trying to take the rifle back. He didn’t expect the war to help his father in being better at fighting, he thought the coward would hide himself under his camarades’s corpses.

His father kicked him off him, and was ready to shoot him but you jumped on the weapon, putting the rifle’s head toward the ground. Were you aware you were screaming?

“ Just die already !”

He felt your scream in his soul. You were screaming out loud what his younger self was thinking. He stood up once he saw his father punching you, but before he could shoot him, you raised your knife and sank it into his father’s tights. 

“ Don’t hurt him anymore!” you cried as you raised your knife once more and plugged it into his thighs once more.  

Don’t hurt us anymore. Said his younger self.

His father hit you with the rifle, making you fall into the snow once more. You stood up quickly and jumped on him, raising your knife once more. Alastor paled as he saw his father trying to headshot you, but you were so deep into bloodlust that you weren’t even aware of it. You both needed to calm down. Alastor ran toward you and tackled you on the ground, sighing in relief when he heard the gunshot hitting nobody.

Alastor stood up just before taking the knife of your hand. He would fight his father with your knife, from what he heard, his father was out of bullets, he already used two of them.

“ You little cunt. Stabbing me like you had the right.” spat his father. You stood up quickly next to Alastor who was breathing as hard as you. “ Killing you will be the easiest thing I've ever done. After fucking your mother, of course, right Alastor?”

He felt something snapped inside his mind.

He ran toward him, with a smile so wide he wondered if that was blood of saliva dripping down his chin. He avoided his father’s punches like a dance he had learned by heart. He still got touched by his fists but it was nothing he wasn’t used to. He managed to cut his father on his cheeks or his forearms. He needed to cut a tendon so he wouldn’t be able to move his muscles. He was breathing hard while his father seemed more in his element and the bastard easily disarmed him of his knife. Stupid war training.

He saw you behind his father with your necklace. That meant you have found his gun, you must have put it somewhere behind him so he could easily take it. He punched his father with much more force which sended him stumbling toward you. What were you trying to do?

He felt his heart skip a bit.

With the necklace he had given you for Christmas, you were strangling his father, forcing him to walk backward, trying to grab the thing that was bruising his neck. He needed to act fast. He began to punch his father in the face as you forced the bastard to bend his neck for him to be able to breathe. You were perfect.

With a roar, his father punched him so hard he fell backward. Fuck, he needed to stand up quickly before the bastard touched you. He looked behind him and smiled cunningly, his gun was there. You really did put the gun not too far away from him. You were just as clever as him.

He turned his head toward you when he heard you scream. He thought you were being hit but you were clawing at his father, biting him, trying to hurt him as much as he hard hurt his younger self. He took the rifle and pointed toward his father as the bastard threw you on the snow.

“ Don’t move, Father.”

But of course, the devil had his tricks too. He held you against his chest, his arms against your throat. Alastor grimaced as he saw his father kiss your cheeks. He will kill him. How dared he touch you? 

He will kill him, kill him, killhimkillhimkillhim

He was shaking from anger, he couldn’t let you die. He needed to find a plan quickly. The devil was beginning to strangle you from behind. He was ready to throw his weapon in the snow  but then you did something amazing.

You tore off one of the bastard’s eyes.

Those eyes who would look at him with disdain, disgusted, you tore one off. And you didn’t stop there, like a punishment coming from heaven you jumped on his father and began to hit him repeatedly with a rock you found. Alastor walked toward you as you kept screaming, he felt like you were doing what he couldn't do anymore. Letting it all out. 

You were beautiful. A vengeful spirit.

His father pushed you off but you were already getting ready to finish him so he stopped you with a hand against your shoulder. Would you recognize him in your blinding fury?

“ Alastor…” you said in relief. He stared at your bloodied face, you were absolutely beautiful. He couldn’t help himself, he kissed you tenderly, trying to send you his thanks through the kiss. The kiss tasted like blood.

The kiss tasted like a victorious future for the both of you.

“ You crazy bitch!” the man spat as he tried to stand up. Alastor walked calmly toward the man with his knife and his gun.  He stood in front of his father with a scary smile before dropping to his knees, and began to stab his father multiple times while laughing as the man was screaming in pain. He couldn’t stop laughing, he was careful not to sink the knife too deep, it would be a shame to kill him too quickly. Should he give his father the same scars he had given him? Should he cut his tongue so he couldn’t say such disgusting words against him or his mother?

He felt your hand on his shoulder and looked as you sat next to him. You were like a fallen angel, all bloodied, surrendered by bloodied snow. Were you aware of the effect you had on him right now?

Alastor held you the knife.

“ Would you like to try my darling?”

“ I tore his eye off, I think I’m good.” you laughed, rolling your eyes, not even caring about the man’s moans of pain.

“ Oh right, it was an amazing sight, why don’t you give it to me?” he held his palm to you and you gladly gave him his father’s eyes. “ What do we say, an eye for an eye?” he laughed as he stared at the eyeball. Maybe he will keep it as a souvenir.

“ You.. both are bat shit crazy..” spat his father underneath him. Alastor hummed before leaning toward his father’s face with a grin almost too big for his face. 

“ You should smile more, Father, you only die once after all!” he said as he began to carve a smile into his father’s skin.  The man was screaming from the pain and he couldn’t help but giggled. How pathetic, he didn’t remember screaming when his father was beating him. He felt strong like this, but as he was ready to finish his father off, he almost felt vulnerable. Would you stay with him as he kills his father?You were watching him as his worst, but that's what he was. You kissed his cheek, making him chuckle. Seems like yes, you knew what you were choosing. “ Now, you look ready for your final moments!” He stood up and took his rifle, pointing it to his father’s forehead.

“ What would your parents think, lady?” his father spat as he stared at you with his only eyes.

“ I don’t know what my parents are thinking, but Marie thanked me for taking care of the trash.” you smiled sweetly at him before standing up, next to Alastor. Alastor was staring at you, did his Mother know about his plan? 

 “ Go to hell.. Both of you…”

“ We’ll see you there then. And you better hide yourself, I can’t wait to kill you once more.” you smiled as you put your hand around Alastor's, the one ready to shoot. You stared softly at Alastor. You were his everything, you accepted to fall in hell with him. But just like he promised you, he will catch you.

“ Darling, will you marry me?”

“ With pleasure.”

And then you both pulled the trigger.

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[madarasfloofyhair]

okay. my favourite details from the death note musical london performance:

the booklet being paged right to left. with a page at the end saying "you're reading in the wrong direction!"

okay but MISA MISA HAVING LIKE 5 BACK-UP DANCERS LITERALLY ALSO DRESSED UP AS MISA MISA (it was so funny to see them dance around her)

light being dragged along by sayu to misa's concerts. like the Older Brother he is.

misa's concert on stage literally had a rap segment it was WILD

sayu later fangirling over misa's 'latest song' in light's bedroom only for him to be having a life crisis right next to her because of the message in the lyrics. he was sat there like...."ill gladly give you half my years"????

L keeping the "yagami-san", "light-kun" when he talked to them!!!!!! (naturally only happened one time each BUT STILL IT WAS COOL)

ryuk taking any and every opportunity to be sassy. the audience laughed tons at his lines in particular.

like light saying "they're calling it divine justice!" and him responding "or oooh, you know, mass murder. that totally has a ring to it too :D"

L's iconic "well, light...you're the first friend I've ever had." and "what? why are you staring at me? is it...because im the only one who has sweets?" (they changed it slightly cause I think he had marshmallows on a stick? and was walking around with it, gesturing)

after the tennis match, light threw down his racket at L's feet and L held both rackets up awkwardly like a peace offering as he walked towards him

but I swear L nearly DROPPED THEM when misa arrived, I just loved watching him slip into the crowd of fans all eagerly and then the phone call scene afterwards. so iconic.

rem's. vocals. were insane. Borrowed Time. was also amazing.

PUNS ??? during misa's interrogation scene, she's naturally defending light, saying he's not kira, but also defending kira all "kira has saved us all! he's taken away the darkness in society!" ONLY TO HAVE L SNAP BACK "so....light?"

then after this one song finishes, L exclaims "Light!" out of like realisation but then the stage lights actually turn on and he's like.... "oh. convenient :)"

the way the music played in between songs during dialogue was SO GOOD it was really satisfying.

AND THEN THEY REALLY HAD LIGHT SAY "well. they do say the pen is mightier than the sword." near the end. that's just CHEESY

light. laughing. as he was winning against L at the end. "I just wanted to see your face as you realised I won :)" unhinged arrogant boy

only to have him panicking and snivelling on the ground all pathetic as he realises what ryuk's about to do.

and so, at the end. ryuk was sat at the big red chair at the centre after killing light. watching over everything. both dead bodies. the last haunting requiem. it was such a menacing and powerful sight.

#death note musical #death note #light yagami #misa amane #l lawliet #txt #london palladium #dn #:D i really just enjoyed it #been obsessed with the demo for years #death note the musical #my thoughts

[dulc3vida]

bunny!reader

only daughter of a ranch owner who is always away on business and may or may not be a narco. moved to the obx when she was really young. she misses home a lot, mostly because she had a pet tiger. dad taught her how to use a gun and she even has a couple of her own porque una nunca sabe. was called "conejita" or "little bunny" growing up bc she was always hanging out with the bunnies.

best paired with rafe because she's such a niña fresa. her dad's a narco (ALLEGEDLY) so it's safe to say that she has been spoiled her whole life. has never heard the word no and immediately fell in love with the luxury and class of figure 8. bunny is preppy, high maintenance and expensive. her dad has always showered her in money and expensive things to makeup for his absence so when rafe is giving her that AND his undivided attention, she's in love. is it freudian as fuck? maybe. is it real as fuck? yes.

rafe does step into the dad role a lot for bunny, especially once he moves her into tannyhill. its definitely freudian for him as well bc it makes him feel important and needed especially in season 3. season 1&2 she's like a trophy to him and she doesn't know where she stands because he's beating up all the guys she likes but he doesn't want to be her boyfriend (subconsciously knows he isn't good enough for her). season 3 is when he looks at her and decides that that's his girl, forever. whatever means necessary.

bunny lets rafe take the lead most of the time, but she's very calculating. friendship is transactional, which is why she's not really friends with the kooky girls. she has a few friends but she's very cautious and curious about everyone she encounters. they want something from her (some of the attention she recieves) while they offer nothing in return. bunny is shy and timid but people misunderstand her and think she's a bitch. she's not mean, but she can be. she's possessive and especially hates when rafe, or anyone for that matter, touches/moves her things around.

she and rafe both first fall in love with the idea of each other (rafe sees her as the divine feminine and bunny sees him as the american dream) which is why when they both display "unsavory" characteristics (i.e. rafes actual insanity vs. bunny's temper) it catches them off guard. they keep each other on their toes. like when rafe finds one of her guns in between his couch cushions.

she's upstairs doing her makeup and he's looking for his vape, damn near tearing the couch apart. then his hand hits familiar, cold metal. he calls for her once and she bounces down the stairs, a pout on her face.

"you made me mess my eyeliner up."

"what the fuck is this, hm?" rafe sets the gun on the coffee table between them.

"it's called a gun rafe."

"hey, hey. don't get smart with me, where did this come from?"

"it's mine." bunny takes it from him and shoves it back between the couch. "don't worry, the safety's on."

rafe studies her for a second. "where are the other ones?" she rocks on her heels and glances to the side before shaking her head.

"just that one." she plays with her fingers and he knows she's lying.

"okay." rafe chuckles, wiping his mouth with one hand before swiftly grabbing the back of her hair, tugging her through the house to collect all the guns bc he doesn't want his bunny to get hurt.

another moodboard inspired by @princessbrunette and @starfxkr (aka two of the sexiest blogs on tumblr.com)

#bunny!reader #rafe cameron x bunny!reader #rafe cameron #latina!reader

[thoughtspresso]

Oshi No Ko was about Arima Kana all along.

And I think there’s a real possibility she may die at the end.

Or be placed in the way of grave danger.

I was reading some AquKane shippers say something about how they don’t understand AquaKana, and why the writers and directors keep clearly pushing Kana towards Aqua when they barely share any chemistry. Whereas, in their belief, his relationship with Akane is more honest, deeper, whatever. I’m not here to argue about that. But I get where they’re coming from. And the simple explanation is this:

It’s because this whole story was written for Arima Kana.

I’ve seen some Youtubers talk about how this whole story was meant to be fulfillment for Ruby/Sarina’s dream to become the next great Idol, something about Amaterasu favoring her.

And that’s near what I thought of it. But I really think if the God of Entertainment wanted to bless a child with cancer a second life as the world’s great idol, they’d also give her a great singing voice, y’know?

Spoilers for the manga, of course as we go along on this explanation. So anime onlies, get caught up before you start reading me ramble.

Here we go:

1. Arima Kana is the embodiment of Amaterasu, not Ruby.

Or at least, Amaterasu’s appointed representative, or her favorite daughter.

To give you a run-down of some of the core Shinto/Japanese Mythology that is important for the story, the Creator God Izanaki had three children:

Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun.

Tsukuyomi, the Moon.

Susanoo, the Storm.

The story goes that Amaterasu and Susanoo had a competition about who could create better gods. So Amaterasu took Susanoo’s Totsuka-no-Tsurugi* (longsword) and split it into three, from which she birthed the three Munakata goddesses.

And woncha knowit, there are three great actresses born in that year?

*A reminder that Kana plays the character Tsurugi, which literally just means Sword. And Akane’s character Saya-hime just literally means Sheath or Scabbard Princess.

In this bet, Amaterasu got clever with the rules and won on a technicality. Susanoo went on a rampage, destroyed Amaterasu’s ricefield, and flayed Amaterasu’s favorite divine horse*, and then threw its body at her loom.

*The name Arima is spelled with the Kanji of Horse & Exist/Live. 

Amaterasu, in her grief, flees into a cave, believed to be Amano Iwato cave, right in the town of Takachiho, Amamiya Gorou’s hometown, and the death place of  Tendouji Sarina.

The being that draws Amaterasu out of there was the Goddess of the Dawn, known also as the Goddess of the Revelry & Arts, a being that Aqua says he knows well, and believes there’s a grain of truth to:

And how does Ame-no-Uzume draw Amaterasu out of her grief?

By throwing an absolute rager, and dancing really wildly that it catches her attention and makes all the gods around them laugh so hard. Just like:

Ame-no-Uzume will later on marry a diety who tried to block her passage before, Sarutohiko, who in Ise is worshipped as the god who illuminates the world.

That’s some divinity-level AquaKana shipping right there.

Just like how Aka Akasaka wrote the story of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War about two lovers who couldn’t be together just like in the myth of Kaguya, but having his characters overcome all odds to defy divine fate, I do believe that apart from the parallels to the mythology like he did in Kaguya-sama, there is very literal divine intervention this time in Oshi No Ko.

I think what’s happening is that the gods, particularly Amaterasu and Susanoo are quarelling again about who could create better gods, just like before, but now more of whose favored child will shine the brightest and be worshipped by the most humans. But just like last time, Susanoo may have been enraged, especially at the sexual assault of his chosen Hikaru Kamiki, that he possessed him with a corrupting force that urges him to destroy shining stars before they reach their peak, hence the murders of Himekawa Airi, Hoshino Ai**, and Katayose Yura.

Which by the way, the name Hikaru means Radiant Light!

And Hoshino means Field of Stars!

Whether it’s because Amaterasu is angry that every daughter she sends to earth is slaughtered by Susanoo’s chosen, or just because she wants to win their competition, she appoints Ame-no-Uzume to assist in safeguarding her new favored one from Kamiki’s clutches. Her new favored one being Arima Kana.

And therefore, Ame-no-Uzume takes the souls of two motherless humans who had passed before they could shine and sent them to become Hoshino Ai’s twin children. It was all anyway happening in her territory of Takachiho at the most opportune time.

Ame-no-Uzume is also known as The Goddess of Dance, as well as The Great Pursuader. And wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly the gifts that the Hoshino Twins received.

An energetic performer who takes the stage with dance:

And a deceptive, persuasive, extremely believable actor, who:

fooled his own sister into believing she had been rejected from an audition

pretended to scout an idol from a competing agency to research them

get Director Gotanda to raise him and train him

make Akane not just date him, but follow him down a destructive path

convince Kana and Mem to join IchigoPro

impersonate Pieyon for several days straight

Anyway, I truly, truly believe that unbeknownst to Aqua, his true mission is just to keep drawing Kana out of her darkness until she shines the brightest. Which is what he keeps doing anyway:

2. The Timing of the whole Oshi No Ko plot is aligned with Arima Kana’s rise to unprecedented stardom.

The story of Ai Hoshino’s pregnancy and meeting of Gorou Amamiya in a quaint hospital occurs at the beginning of Arima Kana’s life, just after she is born.

She meets Aqua Hoshino around age 4, already talented, and already extremely arrogant which could have easily been the demise of her career. But meeting Aqua and seeing his acting was a necessary wake-up call for her, that it brings her to tears. She never forgets this experience that she brought that lesson with her to her adulthood: that she can’t be satisfied and keep working harder, and to be a better communicator with her colleagues. At their first point of contact, Aqua already becomes the reason why Arima Kana’s acting career survives the slump.

They meet again in high school, when Arima Kana has one acting job in a lackluster production of Sweet Today. The ratings had plummeted, if not for the fact that Aqua came onto the set to draw out the best acting Arima Kana could deliver. After this, Arima receives much more respect and recognition from her colleagues in the industry beyond just being cast to bring some legitimacy to their production.

It’s because of Aqua and Ruby that Kana joins IchigoPro’s Idol Division, and her career is reborn anew. Such that, even after quitting B-Komachi, Arima states she never regretted the decision to join, because otherwise the career of Arima Kana would have been already over. 

It’s because of Aqua’s presence that Arima trains to become better and better as an idol. Aqua kept drawing out the light from Kana’s eyes, to the point that it catches the attention of the crowd who previously had no interest in her.

It’s because of her experience as an idol that she regains the confidence and sense of greed necessary to grab the attention of the audience when on stage, such that even Akane recognizes this change in her when Arima takes the stage as Tsurugi for the 2.5 Adadptation of Tokyo Blade.

And it’s because of all of these that she captures the attention of award-winning Director Masanori Shima, who lines up some roles for her when her acting schedule had dried up. It’s once again because of Kana’s dedication towards Aqua that Shima D finds her so interesting that he was most willing to promise her the best role possible.

It was as if Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto appointed Aqua and Ruby to come draw Arima Kana out of her Cave, and bring the Sun out again, just like how the deity drew out Amaterasu.

If you think about the title of the show, Oshi No Ko, it literally means The Favorite Child. God’s favored child. Arima Kana had been born chosen by Amaterasu from the very beginning. And Ame-no-Uzume is sending Aqua and Ruby to aid on this quest.

Which explains why it seems like there had been a mission communicated to Aqua from the very beginning. And why Ai was never going to be reincarnated at all.

You would think that if The Crow Girl, which we assume is the divine guide Yatagarasu, was communicating with Aqua about his revenge plan or helping him find Kamiki, that Aqua would hold a more favorable relationship with The Crow whenever it appears to give advice, no?

But it’s exactly the opposite. Because The Crow is guiding him into something that is different from his personal goal that Aqua doesn’t understand.

And this is where I think Arima Kana could be put in danger.

3. Arima Kana is Hikaru Kamiki’s next target.

There were earlier theories that thought Kurokawa Akane was the one to die next, because of what people have now learned of Kamiki’s serial murderer profile targeting big celebrities before their peak, and because Akane had received a bouquet of white roses from him when she won an award.

The chapter when it was expected to happen was a fake-out from Aka Akasaka, and some people think it’s still possible that she’s the target. In fact, I keep seeing recent theory videos who discount Kana and say she’s “the safest”. Hah! If only!

The scenes with Shima D weren’t just a mere plot point to bring scandal to Arima’s name, and threaten her career and life enough that it pushes Aqua to reveal his mother’s secret in exchange. But it’s there because this is the upward path for Arima Kana. So far, the only people who have witnessed her dazzling star power have been fans of the Sweet Today manga, idol otakus, and people who attended Tokyo Blade. That’s not really masterpiece-of-the-century, performing-at-the-dome level. None of these gigs have placed her center stage in what could be Film of the Year, and a Best Actress spot. Now, the chance is here, and it’s real:

I think, The 15-Year-Lie will attempt to draw out Hikaru Kamiki, or that Aqua intends to reveal himself in the movie looking like him, and reveal the identity of his father.

But I also think what would happen is that they would be unsuccessful at taking him down completely. Instead, from the movie, he would be interested in Arima Kana, and target her through the course of her Shima D movie, and plan to kill her before an important awards night.

Alternatively, now that Kana is changing her focus to film, she may consider moving agencies, and ask Frill Shiranui about her agent. And if we’re right, she is likely represented by Kamiki Productions.

Either way, Kamiki will pay attention to her and try to kill her just before she reaches her highest.

But I don’t think Arima Kana will die. I think instead of being saved by Aqua, it’ll be Kana who takes Kamiki down. Echoing back to her getting mad at Aqua for thinking that avoiding her was protecting her, and Aqua believing that Kana doesn’t need help since she’s strong enough to take care of herself.

And then maybe, it’s Arima Kana who draws Aqua out of the darkness too.

And, just like with Kaguya and Shirogane Miyuki, Aka Akasaka is once again writing a story about two people who will defy a fate of divine tragedy, and come out of it being more truthful with each other than they’ve been with themselves all along.

#oshi no ko #oshi no ko spoilers #arima kana #aqua hoshino #japanese mythology #shinto #shintoism #aqua x kana #hoshino aquamarine #onk spoilers #aquakana

[pregnant-piggy]

hey I want wondering if you could do a harry j potter x reader oneshot when the are dating for a few months (takes place in ootp or hbp I don’t really mind which) and reader is still not completely comfortable with cuddling and that kind of stuff with harry cause she just isn’t used to physical contact and one day when harry wants to cuddle with her in the evening she stiffens or flinches and harry is extremely worried (yk him and his adorable overreacting) cause he doesn’t know if she has any trauma or something and you can make the rest up just make it extremely fluffy (only if you want to do it tho I just think it’d be very cute <3)

hi love, so while my requests are technically not open, you were lucky there weren't many requests from my celebration so i did write this :) and it wouldn't be a blurb from me if it wasn't 1.3k words (i swear i'm not doing it on purpose)

Flinch

The fire spit out sparks near your feet as you poured over your Divination homework. You were halfway but it was becoming harder and harder to come up with solutions and explanations of your dreams and with every minute that passed your concentration grew smaller. Not that there had been much to begin with when you'd started, but whether you liked it or not, the deadline was approaching fast.

Just as you'd finished describing your dream of last Thursday—something to do with unruly black hair and glasses—you got interrupted. Someone dropped to the couch behind where you were sitting on the floor and let out a loud sigh. Then in the corner of your eye you saw a flash of red hair darting to the last empty chair on your side, followed by a "How gentleman-like of you, Ron".

Hermione sat down next to you on the floor and glanced at your parchment. "I feel sad for you."

"You should," you said, dropping your quill and massaging your forehead with your fingers. "It's a wreck."

"Wait a minute." Ron perked up from his slouch in the armchair. "Why did you not feel sorry for me when I complained about it today?"

Hermione shook her head. "Because you don't even try, Ron! You predicted you'd be caught by a mob of horses and be forced to turn into a centaur."

"So?" Ron shrugged. "That's just what my dream meant."

"Be careful," you said to Ron. "Or soon you'll dream it's a mob of Hermiones chasing you."

Ron shivered as if that was the worst nightmare anyone could have and behind you Harry barked a laugh. You looked back at your boyfriend and smiled. The dating thing was still new and you were trying to find your way with it, but you were glad to have made him laugh.

"Hush now," you said, waving a hand towards Ron. "I want to finish this."

You did get silence but only for five minutes or so before Ron started to talk about the upcoming quidditch game against Ravenclaw. You, who had been busy coming up with a dream for Friday—maybe Ron's technique wasn't all that bad after all—got pulled from your focus. You tried for ten more minutes, but eventually had to admit that you were doing more bad than good and would have to correct everything you wrote tomorrow so you gave up  You threw your quill down and rested back against the bottom of the sofa, right next to Harry's legs.

Without turning away from his conversation, he laid his hand atop your head and started massaging it.

You froze, heart skipping a beat and pumping twice as fast after. Every muscle in your body grew rigid, frozen, and you carefully moved away, pretending to grab something of the table, but in fact trying to get away as unnoticeable as possible.

No one noticed. Harry's hand fell back but he said nothing nor did he move closer again. With a pounding heart you stared at your Divination paper, pretending you were fixing a mistake.

It wasn't Harry's fault. Really not. You'd never been good with physical contact but you also never thought it a real problem till you got together with Harry. Now each time he wrapped an arm around you or reached for your hand, you froze, panicked, feared. You weren't even sure why.

You also didn't know if Harry had noticed. He had never said anything about it and whenever it happened and you pulled away he seemed not to notice it. But you knew it wasn't fair to him and you did try to do better. Just yesterday he had taken your hand and without too much panic you'd held onto it for the entire walk.

It was a slow process and many times you were on the verge of telling him about it, but you were scared.

After a few minutes of calming down, you got up and sat next to Harry on the sofa, leaving enough space so you weren't touching but no one would think anything of it.

Ron was animatedly telling a story about Flitwick who had fallen off his chair and Harry turned to you.

"You alright?" he asked softly.

"Hm? Yeah, I'm fine." You bit your lip and Harry's gaze flicked down but back up quickly.

"Are you sure?" he went on. "You seem a bit off."

"No, all's good. Don't worry." You shrugged. "Just tired."

"Okay." Harry's mouth split into a smile. "'Cause you'd tell me if something was wrong right?"

"Of course." You tried a smile and apparently it was convincing enough for him to drop the subject.

"It's not that funny, Ron," Hermione said, tearing your focus from Harry. She shook her head while Ron wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

Next to you, Harry smiled lazily. "It kinda was. He made the funniest noise ever." He proceeded to make some high-pitched noise that had Ron roaring with laughter in his chair until he fell off.

"Serves you right," Hermione mumbled, but there was a smile on her face.

You laughed and sunk a little more into the sofa. So much that you almost didn't see what happened next to you. Almost.

Harry stretched out his arm to lay it over your shoulders and before you could stop it, you flinched.

And this time there was no mistaking it. He noticed.

"What-?" he stuttered.

Your eyes were wide, your body frozen in shock. You hadn't meant for it to happen, didn't even know it would happen. You'd been on edge all day, tired, overworked, but you never figured it would end up like this.

And unfortunately not only Harry noticed.

"Ron," Hermione said. "Ron, come on. I want to talk to you."

Ron looked up from where he hadn't even bothered get up from the floor. "Why?"

"Just something." Hermione's eyes flicked to your frozen body and Harry's face that you were too afraid to look at. "Quickly. Come on, Ron."

"Alright, fine. But I don't see what could possibly be so important."

"Just come!"

Hermione quickly left, Ron following after her reluctantly. You were glad she'd given you some privacy, but you didn't want to see the undoubtedly hurt look on Harry's face.

"y/n?" Harry didn't reach out for you and somehow that hurt. "Can you look at me?"

You took a deep breath and looked up. You had expected pain, anger, disappointment, but instead there was only worry and confusion. Harry's eyes were full of concern and that gave you the slightest of hope. He didn't hate you.

"What happened?" he asked softly.

"I'm trying really hard, Harry. It's just... physical contact and touch and everything---it doesn't come easy to me. I don't know why; it's just always been so for me." You looked down at your hands in your lap. "And I want to change that. I do. But it takes time."

Harry was silent for a long time and you didn't look at him. You'd understand if he didn't want to see you any longer, if he wanted to break things off. You'd hate that, of course, but you'd understand.

"We have time."

"What?"

You lifted your gaze to his face. He was watching you with a smile.

"You said it takes time. We have time. All the time in the world if we need."

"You mean that," you realised.

"I do. I don't want to lose you over something like this. We'll find our way with it. I promise."

A watery laugh fell from your lips. You nodded, more relieved than words could describe. He didn't hate you, not at all. Your fears had been ungrounded.

"Thank you," you said. And very carefully, you placed your hand atop Harry's one. Nerves spiked in your chest, but you pushed them down. "It's not that I hate you touching me. It's just a bit more difficult."

Harry turned his hand over and held yours. He was careful, soft.

"That's alright," he said. "I'm still yours."

- - - - - - -

hp taglist: @kingalrdy @missswriter @awritingtree @ananad1 @secretsthathauntus @izzyyy-1 @nyotamalfoy @xxinvisiblexx @idli-dosa @lacunaanonymoused @kitkatkl @d22malfoys

#harry potter x reader #harry potter imagine #harry potter #harry james potter x reader #harry james potter imagine #harry james potter #harry imagine #harry x reader

[legitalicat]

Too Sweet - Modern!Aegon Targaryen ii x reader

AN: Hello my beautiful people! I hope you enjoy this story. It started as a little love note to the song "Too Sweet" by Hozier because I feel it's very Aegon coded. It then became kind of an amalgamation of a few different stories. My own story and journey with alcoholism and recovery played a big part in this, and as I wrote it parts of my feelings about my older brother, who is in active addiction, came into play. Please know that this is not everyone's story. Recovery from addiction looks different for most everyone. I truly overcame my addiction through building community and connections. I know many people who have to work a program to succeed. I know a person who actually did get a degree after a near lifetime of addiction and now he does a lot of things to help our local community in treating addiction. So really, this is a love letter to people like me and my brother. There is hope and I believe in every one of you.

Link to the TED Talk mentioned.

TW: blatant talks of alcoholism and substance abuse, talks of rehab, family issues, abusive family subtext yet never explicitly stated, gonna say it's kinda angsty, FLUFF

Pairings: Aegon Targaryen ii x reader

Word count: almost 3k

The soft pads of her feet made barely any noise as she walked into his bedroom, carrying a mug in each hand and wearing nothing but his MCR tee-shirt. Technically, they should both be in a deep sleep by now. It was fast approaching four in the morning and neither of them had bothered to close their eyes once. It was all he could to not hold her close in bed and stare at her captivating beauty.

When Aegon first saw her, weeks ago, he was stunned. It was the first time he had gone to the new bar right down the road from his apartment and it just so happened it was karaoke night. He had been tempted to turn around when he heard a horrendous rendition of his favorite Hozier song. But then she took the mic from her drunken friend, and it was as if the heavens parted and the gods showed him the future Mrs. Aegon Targaryen.

“Your coffee, sir,” she said to him as she handed him a mug. “No worries, it’s as black as your soul,” she added with a teasing grin.

“Thank you, beautiful,” he said as he took the mug from her.

She was truly a lesson in divinity for him. Aegon didn’t truly believe she was the most gorgeous woman on the planet. There would be people who would think she was average looks, maybe even less than that, but he didn’t need her to be more beautiful than anyone else. He wanted her exactly as she was. Beautiful like a spring day, teeming with beauty in the most natural of ways. Like one would think of a cherry blossom tree, or their favorite flower. Simple and breathtaking, a reminder of life and truth on a fundamental level.

He knew it the moment they locked eyes in that bar. Her voice shook from nerves as she sang in front of the crowd of strangers. When she looked at him, and he at her, he felt joyful for the first time in years. All of the stupid shit with his family, the years of drowning his sorrows in whiskey and wine and any other drug, none of it mattered.

If he were honest, he couldn’t remember how he got so lucky. He knew he approached her once she was done singing and complimented her. By the end of the night she was nestled beside him in bed, and he’d be damned if he ever let her leave.

“Gods, you’re amazing,” he muttered as he watched her. He knew she was drinking hot chocolate, finding the taste of coffee much too bitter.

“What was that?” she asked him when she pulled the mug away from her face. She had a bit of whipped cream on her upper lip, making his heart feel like it was on the brim of exploding.

He leaned forward, just barely, and lifted his hand to wipe the cream away with his thumb. She gave him a cute little smile when it brushed against her lips, puckering them to press a kiss to his skin. When he pulled his hand away and sucked the cream off, he heard her giggle.

“This is why you’re so sweet. Where most people drink whiskey and coffee, you put sugar in your sugar and drink it until the sun comes up,” he told her. Of course, he was teasing her.

“Because unlike you, Mr. Listen to Sad Music Even When I’m Happy, I like to enjoy things. The good things. The sweet things, like whipped cream and hot chocolate and fruit loops in bed on Saturday mornings. I just think I live a better life than you,” she told him. She was grinning from ear to ear.

If Aegon wasn’t so afraid of rejection, he would tell her how he loved her. He loved that she wanted to eat sweets at all times. He loved that she teased him for listening to My Chemical Romance or Asking Alexandria, calling it all sad music, even when she would listen right alongside him. He loved that she would start crying at the Wonka movie near the end, unashamed about feeling overwhelmed by the backstory.

If he weren’t so afraid she didn’t love him, he would tell her. He knew it had only been a few weeks, that all logic points to love at first sight being nothing more than him just getting turned on by her appearance. But how could he not love her when she sat in bed with him like this after making him a cup of coffee before the sun had even risen? How could one resist the gentleness of her touch when they watched TV together and she insisted on holding his hand? How could he be expected to watch her hyper fixate on a book or a video game, talking about it for hours on end with so much passion she always ended up wound up and breathless?

“You’re too sweet for me,” he told her as he laid back against the head board. He gently pulled her into his side, wanting to have her as close as humanly possible.

His words were met with an amused chuckle. She didn’t fight his hold on her, instead melting into him as though it was where she had always been.

“Tell me about your family,” she said quietly. “I mean, I’ve not been further than ten feet from you for weeks and you haven’t said the first word about them.”

He could feel his jaw clench as she asked him. His family was a complicated and sensitive subject. Even though he wished he never had to speak to her about them, he knew he had to if he had any hopes of them becoming more than just a passion fueled fling.

“Not much to really say. Dad ran Draconic Industries. My older sister, Rhaenyra, is my dad’s daughter with his first wife. He made her next in line to take over the business. Me, my younger siblings, even my mom, we never really mattered much to dear old dad. He died when I was nineteen. I don’t really matter much to any of the rest of them,” he told her, tracing shapes on her bare thigh as he spoke.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said quickly.

“It is,” he told her without any uncertainty. “Helaena, my younger sister, hasn’t spoken to me in a few years either. I haven’t spoke to my youngest brother Daeron since we were kids. And my brother Aemond…he was the last to hold out hope for me and I burned that to the ground a long time ago. I think it’s been at least a year. My mom completely disowned me about four years ago, when I was around twenty-two, cause I refused to go to rehab again.”

She frowned softly but said nothing. He could only imagine what was going through her head at this point. If roles were reversed, he would probably be planning his exit strategy. All it felt like he told her was a sob story about a poor rich kid who can’t live off mommy and daddy anymore. He felt pathetic.

“What did you go to rehab for?” she asked him.

“Started partying when I was like twelve. Alcoholic by age fourteen. Lead to worse shit, as it does, and I overdosed when I was eighteen on some coke. My mom and grandfather checked me into rehab the following week. Have done two more stints since. Never really stuck, and I haven’t been sober for more than a few days since I was like fifteen.”

He was laying in all our there for her. He wanted her to know so she could decide if she thought he was worth the trouble. He couldn’t blame her if she ran away from him. Why would she stick around? All of his family had washed their hands of him and they were family. She was just someone he met in a bar a few weeks before.

She stayed quiet for a long time. Longer than he would’ve liked. The silence weighed on his heart like an elephant pressing against his chest. He wanted to beg her to say something, anything, just so he knew where her head was at.

Though, he noticed, she didn’t move away from him. She stayed right there, comfortable tucked into his side, occasionally sipping her hot chocolate. His own mug, still filled with coffee, had gone near forgotten in his hand. He was too focused on her.

“You know, the opposite of addiction is connection. Watched a TED Talk one time about it. They found when addicts are treated like people instead of criminals, integrating them into society instead of isolating them, they show less of a struggle with addictions. Allow their basic needs to be met, give them a community, and they thrive,” she said softly after several moments.

She sat up, her warmth leaving him. He felt lonely without her touching him even though she was still well within arm’s reach. She was all he wanted, all he needed.

“I’m not saying I can fix you. I’m not saying the cure to all your problems is me giving my heart to you. I am, however, telling you that I haven’t once seen you drunk or high or anything and we basically haven’t been apart in weeks. If you want to develop healthy connections, create a community, be a person, I am more than willing to be part of it,” she said.

His heart started beating rapidly against his chest. He knew she was right. Since being with her, he hadn’t really felt the need for anything. He had physical cravings, sure, but no mental desire. Aegon didn’t want a moment with her to be a hazy memory that he may be able to recall when he's older.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Because I love you,” she said.

The weeks and months following that night, Aegon really put in the work. Y/N had made it clear to him that she was not going to just give him everything. If he wanted this, it was on him. She was only helping him.

Together, they had found a group therapy program for him. It was ran by a man who had gotten his psychology degree a few years before, but had struggled with addiction for most of his life. That was the first step, a step Aegon felt proud he had taken once he realized he didn’t feel so alone anymore.

The next step, he decided on by himself. The group program was all well and good, but he felt a need to find a deeper explanation into himself. Once a week he found himself sitting in a therapist’s office, talking about everything and nothing all at once. They spoke about his family, his self imposed isolation from them and how that lead to them cutting off, his hopes and dreams for the future.

Through this, he found out about opportunities for volunteer work in the community. He realized he quite liked working at the local secondhand store that helped people in need. He even brought her with him on the Saturdays he worked a shift, turning it into something they enjoyed together.

Even at work, he began reaching out more. If the opposite of addiction was connection, then by the gods he was going to make connections. His coworkers were enough to give him a good laugh. All of them were extremely proud of the progress he made, always encouraging him. He found that little bit alone made it easier for him to be more himself. In the conversations he was able to have with his coworkers, he talked about shows, movies, and music he liked and became friends with a few of them.

It was with this progress, along with the support Y/N provided, that Aegon found himself at the door of his family’s estate. He hadn’t been here in years. He knew all of his younger siblings still lived here. Helaena’s bright yellow VW Beetle sat parked in the driveway, Aemond’s motorcycle probably laid in parts in the garage, and Daeron had always been more content taking a town car than actually driving himself anywhere.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Y/N told him as she held his hand tightly. He had asked her to come with him so she could at least meet them. They needed to see how he had changed.

“I do have to. If for no other reason than to show them I’m not who they remember me to be,” he told her.

“Did you talk to Dr. Wilson about this? I mean, I just, I don’t want you to,” she said, trying desperately to find the right words. He silenced her with a kiss to her forehead.

“And I love you for it,” he said to her, holding her hand as tightly as she held his. “I’m okay with whatever happens in there.”

He knocked hard on the door. It wasn’t long before his mother answered. The ever looming presence of Alicent Hightower, never Targaryen, filled the entire space of the door frame. Her auburn curls were tied neatly back into a bun, her brown eyes widened in surprise.

The woman before him, despite being in her forties, showed no true signs of aging. There were no gray hairs scattered around her head, no fine lines or wrinkles. The only indication of a less than flawless appearance were the almost invisible lines that came from the outer corners of her eyes, put there by the fact that just like Aegon, her eyes would always squint up whenever she smiled.

“Aegon,” she said quietly. She looked at him like she saw a ghost.

“Hi, mom. Can we come in?” he asked her, biting his lip. Y/N gave his hand a small squeeze as if to remind him she was with him. He had her support every step of the way.

Alicent nodded silently and stepped to the side, allowing them entrance. The house was the same as the last time he was here. All of the old family photos hung on the walls of the hallway to the living room. The air smelled of cedar wood and spiced apples, giving it the perpetual scent of fall. It was warm and inviting, the plush couch so comfortable beneath him it was almost indicative of how much money his mother spent on it.

In a lot of ways, the house felt like his family. It was the epitome of warmth and love on first glance. When you looked closer, you could see how some of the picture frames were void of glass, having been broken in one family argument or another. There was a coat the hung on the same rack, day in and day out, hiding the hole where his head went through the wall in a drunken stupor. The paint on the walls were beginning to chip away, revealing the yellowing walls that proved how much his dad had liked to smoke. It was haunted, irreversibly scarred by the past.

A maid came around and asked the three of them if they wanted a drink. Alicent requested a glass of wine. Aegon noticed how surprised she looked when he just asked for a soda, like Y/N was having. He also noticed how she kept looking at his hand that held Y/N’s.

“And who is this?” She asked, nodding her head to Y/N.

“This is the woman I’m going to marry, Y/N,” he said confidently.

They hadn’t spoken about it, there wasn’t a ring on her finger. But he had no doubt in his mind that he would marry her. He was certain that she was who he was made for. The gods had her in mind when they designed him, knowing how much he would love her. She truly was his soulmate.

“And so you came to show her how terrible we all are?” she asked him, eyebrow raised. “Or did you come for money? Because you’re not getting a dime.”

“Neither,” he said firmly. “I just wanted you to see me, mom. I wanted to see you.”

She was surprised at his words. The last time he had spoken to her, he had been begging for money. Crying, begging. When she refused, trying to help him in the best way she knew how, he screamed at her about all of her faults. The last words he spoke to her was how he could only hope that he had the courage to kill himself before he turned into her.

“I’m sorry for…for everything,” he told her. “It wasn’t fair of me to blame everything on you.” Y/N squeezed his hand again. He looked down at their hands and he knew he was okay. He would be okay. “I’m like, eight months sober from everything. Not a drop of booze, no drugs. I have a full time job, I volunteer on the weekends at a secondhand store. I’m doing good, mom.”

Tears flooded to her eyes as she looked at him. Her oldest son, the first person she ever truly loved in a selfless manner. She had thought he was completely lost to her. The vicious creature he had been when they last saw each other had melted away entirely.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asked him. He could only wordlessly nod, allowing her the time to stand from her chair and walk over to him. She hugged him tighter than she ever had.

He looked over Alicent’s shoulder at Y/N. The woman he loved was watching him with tears of her own, a smile on his face. She was good, too good, for him. She had opened his eyes to a reality he had been scared to face. But she had never once made him face it alone.

And that made all the difference.

#dividers by benkeibear #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen x reader #mental health #recovery

[cantheykillmacbeth]

Could Kiwi(The Bard) from Wandersong kill MacBeth? They are enby(any/all genders/pronouns) and due to being so insignificant destiny doesn’t care enough to write a future for them they are immune to fate.

Yes, The Bard aka Kiwi from Wandersong could kill Macbeth!

They are canonically nonbinary with any pronouns, meaning it applies for the Gender Clause (presumably; there is still the possibility that he is comfortable with being referred to with the term 'man' despite her identity as nonbinary, but I wasn't able to find any evidence that this is the case, so we will presume otherwise).

As for whether or not Kiwi counts as a Unique Exception, I wasn't able to find any information about Kiwi's relationship to fate and destiny online anywhere...

...So I bought the game and played through the entire thing in a single day so I could find out what you were talking about. ((Very good game btw, loved it, nearly made me cry, super funny, could do with about a dozen bug fixes though because I almost got softlocked 3/4 of the way through the game because apparently there's a cutscene trigger you can accidentally skip by RP walking resulting in multiple cutscenes attempting to play at once therefore not allowing you to progress. But yeah I still did really enjoy it. I love the gay monster boyfriends with my life))

Within Wandersong, there is a moment where a fortune teller attempts to look into Kiwi's future, and she finds that the universe/the goddess Eya made no plan for what Kiwi would do at all, as they were deemed insignificant to the story of the universe. The fortune teller explains that this is very unusual, as she is always able to divinate something out of any given person, and Kiwi is an anomaly in this regard. The entire plot of the game revolves around the fact that the universe is coming to an end, and Kiwi is attempting to stop it, though is told time and time again that it is impossible; the method to stop the end of the universe has rarely ever been attempted, and when it has, it has always failed. This universe is stated near the end to take place after "an infinity of infinities" of other universes, so managing to stop the universe's end is statistically completely impossible for any living creature to accomplish. Kiwi, however, is able to pull it off.

While one could probably argue that Kiwi being immune to fate and pulling off impossible feats wouldn't be able to counteract Macbeth's prophecy, I'm fully willing to say that it counts, and that Kiwi applies as a Unique Exception. This might be influenced by the fact that this is single-handedly the most research I have done into a character before, but I stand by it: they apply for the Gender Clause and as a Unique Exception.

Thank you very much for your submission!

#asks #gender clause #unique exception #wandersong #kiwi wandersong #wandersong kiwi #the bard #bard wandersong #wandersong bard

[lovelybrooke]

My Forgotten Love (Yandere BOTW x reader)

Link often wonders if he's better off without his memories.

As he explores across the distant land of Hyrule, he's constantly bombarded with echoes of the past, of the person he once was.

He was a hero, a knight who wields the master sword, the sword that seals the darkness. He protected the princess of Hyrule, the one who carries the power of the Triforce of wisdom. He was strong, courageous, brave. Thats what everyone told him anyway.

He never felt strong, courageous, or brave. In fact, he was afraid most of the time. Afraid of dying, afraid of his past, afraid of what lies ahead of him once his journey is over. He was always somewhat afraid, but as the last protector of Hyrule, there was no place for fear. So, he buried it all down, never acknowledging it, in the hope it would disappear.

The fear bubbled up and almost spilled out of him when he found an abandoned house near castle town that caused his head to spin. It was lonely, Link would've missed it if it wasn't for the pain it caused. it was small, only a single person could've lived there, but it felt homey, and strangely warm as he walked inside. It was a single room decorated with a desk, bed, and fireplace, a pot hanging above it. The walls were covered n maps, notes, and other little writings that were worn to time.

The desk was in the far corner of the room, a single, unlabeled book, on top of it. It called to him, like a distant friend you haven't seen in a while, filling his body up with warmth that drowned out the pain he previously felt. His body moved on its own, quickly opening it up, reading note that was attached inside the back of the cover.

"(Y/N) (L/N)'s personal diary. Please do not read if your name if Purah or Robbie."

(Y/N). (Y/N)? Why does his chest hurt when he reads the name? Ignoring it, he flipped the page, absorbing the words on the page.

Entry 1:

"I don't know how to start this. Purah had suggested starting a diary log to record my day to day. Why you ask? I never got a straight answer from her. Purah's like that, bringing things up quickly and dropping them just as fast. Either way, I guess recording my thoughts isn't that bad. As long as it gets, Purah off my back for a while, I'll do whatever she asks. Speaking of Purah, Impa (her younger sister), recommended her to the Princess to study the recently excavated Shaikah tech. Is it bad to say I'm jealous?

Entry 2:

Purah can definitely tell I'm jealous. Maybe she's been reading my diary? I don't know. It might be because I'm kinda avoiding her, but it's only because I've been busy with my studies, nothing else. Either way, she's been talking nonstop to me and Robbie about her studies of the shrines. Speaking of Robbie, Purah put him in charge of the guardians, which he seems very eager about. It was then when I asked her if I could help out. She didn't give a straight answer, like always, but I could tell she was holding something bad, like she was thinking heavily about something.

Entry 3:

I'm very excited! Purah came to me and said she talked to the Princess, and she agreed to let me study the Divine Beasts! I could barely contain my happiness; I ran write home to start writing this (sorry about my handwriting). I plan on thanking Purah properly after I meet the Princess. Apparently, she'll bring me up to speed on somethings I need to know about the Beasts before boarding them. I'm just so excited, I need to take a nap before I write off this page.

Entry 4:

Princess Zelda was very kind, but that was to be expected. She was more than happy to listen to my hypothesis about the Divine Beasts. She was accompanied by her sworn protector, Link. He was, quiet, to say the least. He didn't really, do that much, just listened to our conversations quietly. It was sort of awkward, but I got over it quickly. It was weird though, it felt like his gaze was on me more than it was on the Princess. Even when I left, his stare was almost imprinted on me. Maybe it was my fault, probably. Anyway, on the Princess's request, I'll be traveling to the Devine Beasts with him. I won't be able to write then, so see you soon!

Entry 5:

I'm happy to be home. The journey around Hyrule took a little over a month, and it was very tiresome. There's lots to talk about. Firstly, I met the Champions, at least most of them. I was unable to meet Daruk, Champion of Vah Rudania. Death Mountain is too dangerous for Hylians, and it would be dangerous to bring it down the mountain. Hopefully I'll get to meet him soon, I've heard a lot of great things about him. The other Champions were great, well most of them. Revali, Champion of Vah Medoh was...very boastful. He talked a lot, mostly about himself. But I guess I would be boastful if I could pilot a Devine Beast.

I think I got closer with Link. I say think because it was really hard to tell. It took a while to get him to talk, he was silent most of the time I tried. It got to the point where I just talked about everything, just so I wouldn't have to sit in silence. Eventually, when he reached Zora's domain, he started to talk. It was sparce, but he would talk about what life was like as a child. I learned he liked to cook (his cooking is very good). He also let me talk about my findings and while it was obvious he didn't understand most of it, it was nice for him to listen to me.

I had a really great time. I hope Link did too.

Entry 6:

I think I'm being watched. Zelda has been requesting my appearance at Hyrule Castle more and more, I practically live there. Every time I step foot there, I can't help but feel like someone is watching me. I never bring it up, since I'm with the princess most of the time and I don't want to bother her. I have some ideas on who it could be, but no concrete answers. I sometimes catch Revali staring at me whenever he has business at the castle, but even when he's not there, I can feel someone's eyes on me. Honestly, I think Revali might just be hung up on me visiting Vah Medoh with one of his least favorite people (sorry Link). There's also one of the men within Hyrule's royal guard, I believe his name was Thomas. He’s pretty shy, but he had a bunch of questions about my research. We talked for a while before I was pulled away by the princess and Link. Speaking of Link, he’s been a little on edge lately, especially with the other members of the guard. He says it because they’re “distracted”. He’s even become a little, clingy? I don’t know, it’s probably just my imagination, I’m going to bed.

Entry 7:

I haven’t seen Thomas in a while. He hasn’t shown up to the castle in weeks. Link said he was slacking off and he got what he deserved, honestly it was kinda scary. I even brought it up to the princess, but she really didn’t seem to care. I hope he’s okay.

Honestly, I haven’t seen really anyone in a while. Since Zelda is nearing her 17th birthday, she’s been up at the shrine of wisdom trying to awaken her powers. Link has been with her, same with the champions, and Purah and Robbie have been busy with preparing for Ganon. It’s been really stressful, all I can really do is try to help them, and pray to Hylia that everything turns out okay.

The rest of the pages, which are slightly burn and blank, fill Link with dread. You were someone he knew, someone he cared for, someone he loved, how could he forget you? This journal is the only thing he has to remember yoh by, and it makes him want to lay down and die. Out of all the people in all of Hyrule, why wasn’t he able to protect you. This was his fault.

Link doesn’t acknowledge the tears that runs down his face as he pockets the journal with immense care so to not damage it. He doesn’t wipe them from his face as he leaves the house that brought him a fleeting sense of comfort and warmth. And Link doesn’t flinch as the tears continue to steam and hit the grown as he walk away, heading towards Hateno.

#yandere x reader #soft yandere #platonic yandere #yandere link x reader #yandere legend of zelda #yandere breath of the wild #breath of the wild x reader #tears of the kingdom x reader

[scriptorsapiens]

Classicstober Day 13: Arachne (𐀀𐀨𐀏𐀕)

Arachne was a mortal woman and a weaver beyond compare. She claimed that her skill surpassed even the gods'. An old woman warned her in a cracked voice:

"Be careful what you say, child; the gods loathe hybris."

"I'm not afraid of the gods. Even if Athena, goddess of weaving herself, appeared before me I know I can make a better tapestry than her!"

Arachne clearly had no idea she was living in Bronze Age Greece, because when an elder warns you about the ways of the divine it is ALWAYS a god in disguise.

Long story short, she is the reason spiders can weave so well.

Those of you who know me, and those of you who take the time to read these 'behind the scenes' things know that I do lots of research, but sometimes there just are no resources for me to draw on. Case in point, we know that the Mycenaeans had looms like the one I depict here, but as far as I know no Mycenaean tapestry has been preserved. This is not unexpected, since perishables like cloth can't really survive 3000 years without lots of luck and/or intentional preservation, but it also left me with a question of how Arachne's tapestries might have looked.

While we have some preserved Mycenaean and Minoan frescoes, I decided to not really draw from those for Arachne's tapestry. Her art was supposed to be breathtakingly realistic, so I opted from a more naturalistic, if a mite stylized, rendering of a woman. Perhaps a little anachronistic, but Arachne was a prodigy.

Speaking of which, Arachne is wearing a typical Mycenaean skirt and tunic but this piece finally gave me a good chance to show off Mycenaean makeup. Women, when depicted in Minoan and Mycenaean art, are often very pale and sometimes their faces are decorated with red florets on the forehead and cheeks. Arachne is not royal, but she is incredibly proud. Therefore I decided she would powder her face and rouge her lips, almost making herself look royal. The florets are just dots on her face, but the extras added to her forehead let me evoke the spider eyes she will bear in the near future.

Gods often take the appearance of the elderly (Zeus, Hera, and Athena all come to mind taking this disguise), and for whatever reason I have always had a vivid image of what Athena's mortal guise would look like. I know black was usually a very difficult color to dye, making it reserved for the wealthy, but maybe because of the old women in Portugal I grew up seeing the archetypal Old Woman is wearing black and using a shawl.

I would also like to formally apologize for not including the Linear B name for Athena, which is preserved: 𐀀𐀲𐀙

#classicstober #classicstober23 #classicstober2023 #arachne #tagamemnon #greek mythology #ancient greek mythology #mycenaean

[thekingofwinterblog]

Inquisition Companions, good, bad, ugly

So over the years, I've seen a lot of dislike aimed at Inquisition's companions(Two in particular more than the rest), and doing a deep delve into all of them, a lot of the bigger issues with pretty much all of them are related to the direction the game chose to take.

Namely the thing that is pretty much ubiquitous with all of them is that unlike DAO characters where characters could, and did change, DAI's characters are far more in the style of DA2's characters, in that they are very static individuals.

That's not to say that there is no change at all to each of the companions over the game, but it's the exception, rather than the default.

The big, big thing that differentiates DAI to DA2 however, is the difference between Hawke and the Herald.

DA2's characters were for the most part just as unchanging as DAI's lot... But it was nowhere near as big and issue, because Hawke was a much, much more forceful personality, whereas the Inquisitor is a far more laid back individual, who even if they have the knowledge necessary to make arguments, isn't really all that inclined to actually make the kinds of arguments that Hawke would, and could.

However, it goes deeper than that, because DA2 also has one massive edge that DAI does not in regards to the companions. An actual series of Climaxes.

DA2 has two just as divise characters as any DAI ever had, in the form of Anders and Fenris... But you don't tend to hear that much about it anymore, because they have been overshadowed by DAI's far more divise cast... But also because if you really, really hate both of their guts... You actually get to see that through to the finish line at the end of DA2 and stick a dagger in Anders back for mass murder, and/or your preferred weapon of choice in Fenris guts when he comes to help the Templars attack the gallows.

Now this is actuqlly the case with most of the companions in DA2 and DAO. If you really, really hate one, chances are you have an option to kill them at some point. I'm just highlighting these two base breakers to illustrate a point.

NONE of your companions in DAI follows this mold... Except for one, and it's not one of the game's more hated characters.

There are few thematic, or cathartic end points for most of the companions, few moments where you can hit a point where you just tell them to fuck off and destroy them the way you could in previous games.

And without that possible sense of Catharsis, you never get any sense of closure, even if you hate the characters with every fiber of your being.

Cassandra Penthagast

Cassandra is an interesting case in that she actually does develop a lot over the game.

Cassandra is not at heart a bad person, she has plenty of flaws, and convictions she can be forced to challenge, with various degrees of success, but the ultimate thesis of her character is that she is not a leader, and she has to accept that.

Through the game you have the option of determining whether or not Cassandra reforms the Seekers of Truth, despite it all, or whether you aid her in letting go, and moving on, the latter of which seems the better option, for the reasons i'll cover next.

The worst ending for Cassandra is if you make her the next divine, where she frankly has no idea how to fix things, and so where Vivienne coldly but calculatly reinstates the circles and lays the groundwork for things going right back to the ways they were, leliana forges ahead with the reformation wheter with a cyncial heart or a cheerful one, Cassandra does not see where she needs to change the Chantry and where to keep it the way it was.

In other words, it's clear that despite good intentions, Cassandra is not up for reforming the seekers of truth... But going down that road does not utterly destroy the Inquisitor's relationship with her, and that is probably one of the better character development bits of the game.

Now the truly bad parts of cassandra, and the ones you cannot change or challenge at all, is her prejudices regarding the Elvhen pantheon or culture.

Now this is obviously far more pronounced if youre an elf, and especially if you romance her.

Now as we'll see, pretty much every, single companion has one of these(or in the case of two, a bucketload) of points where you are completely incapable of challenging or changing their views on things. Sometimes handled well, other times not.

Varric Tethras

Now Varric is as usual, perfect. He is the overall best companion to have in almost every, single situation, and his wits never fail him.

No, pretty much the only part of his interactions where i would say the game fails him, is his obligatory spot where you don't get to challenge him, and the game seemingly doesn't realize that a player might object to what's on screen, and that's the relationship he has with Bianca, his sorta Ex-Girlfriend who strings him along, even now two decades later.

Now Bianca is not a well liked character for a lot of reasons(The infuriation of any Hawke x Varric shipper for being the in universe reason not letting it happen, her being extremely unlikable, talking about things she doesnt understand, etc.), but i dont wanna focus on those here.

No the problem here is that there is no choice to point out just how toxic Bianca is, and/or try to help varric move on from her, as a friend, a love interest, or a shipper of Hawke x Varric.

You are instead forced to watch your bestie Varric Tethras keep going in a very clearly unhealthy and borderline abusive relationship without being able to do anything about it.

Solas

Like Varric and Cassandra, Solas is also one of the Game's best written characters, but unlike everyone else, it's because you actually do get to challenge him on pretty much everything he believes, culminating with a decisive point in your relationship where you get to punch him in the face... Or you can be his friend, his bestie, and he will still choose the worst possible route forwards.

Solas is a character with very, very strong beliefs, and regardless of what road you take with him you cannot change those... But unlike everyone else, this is a strength of the narrative, because the Game very clearly understands this fact, and uses it to tell a story.

If you befriend Solas, and respect his opinion on you, what you get is a tragedy, of a man with flaws and good points who despite it all was not able to overcome his issues and flaws... and if you oppose his views on every point, tells him to get bent, and ends up punching him in the face, you get the same option of catharsis that you get with Anders and Fenris(Even if it doesnt have the same kind of permanent joy of those).

Moving on from well written elf, we have the opposite. DAI's least well written, and easily the least well liked companion Sera.

Sera is an incredibly immature, rebel teenager, who thinks she has all the answers when she really doesn't know jack shit.

That's not the bad part by the way, that could have made for a great character actually... no the problem is that the game does not confront any of these flaws the way you could with previous companions.

Sera is just as intolerant, bigoted, and self-righteous as Solas, Fenris and Anders ever was... But unlike with Solas, the game does not recognize this as a flaw in her as a person.

Both of these two have genuine virtues and flaws... But the problem that ultimately doomed Sera into becoming the most hated companion is that the game does not recognize, or give you the option of confronting her on her shitty, shitty behavior in any mature fashion.

Rather it's just treated as a part of her quirky personality that you have to accept to deal with her.

I would also argue that Sera has the single least impressive endings out of everyone of your companions.

If you hate her beyond words, you have the option of kicking her out of the Inquisition at any time... But it doesn't have any sort of Catharsis behind it, and rather just comes across like the Inquisitor has just had enough of her bullshit, and tells her to leave after one too many pranks.

There was a way to do this right, and this ain't it.

On the opposite ending, in trespasser, Sera does finally give up on her hatred against the Elves, but not because of any character growth. Instead, she, like many other young firebrands burned herself out on hating the targets of her ire... But she has not had any character growth as a result, not any moments where she recognizes, "maybe I've been a douce..." instead her attitude is basically "My hatred was justified, but eh, it wasn't worth it." Which in it's own way just makes her look even worse.

Dorian Pavus

Dorian is also one of the better written DAI companions, and like Cassandra and Varric, his biggest issue, is that there are parts of him that the Inquisitor is not allowed to challenge, which can really leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

Pavus, like Sera is a young, anti-establishment rebel, the main difference being that Dorian's target of ire generally tends to deserve their hatred, and unlike Sera he has put a lot of deep, deep thoughts into it... And probably most important of all, despite everything, Dorian truly, genuinely loves his homeland.

The scene after getting to skyholdz where Dorian lays out his feelings after learning that Cory is a Tevinter magister is probably the best bit of writing he has in the entire game, as he is forced to confront that the single worst crime in human history, which everyone else takes for granted was committed by one of his countrymen, happened mostly as the chantry said it did.

"Because the imperium... Is my home."

Dorian's entire arc is summed up by that line. For all his justified anger and hatred of everything the Tevinter Imperium stands for, Dorian loves his homeland. He is just as much a patriot as any of the Venatori you fight in the game. It's just that his vision of where the Imperium has to go is fundamentally different than theirs.

He is essentially what Varric would have been, if he was in Bhelen's position.

The man who sees the flaws, the cracks and most importantly, that there is a way forward that isn't just capitulation to tradition, when tradition got them into this mess to begin with.

...which is why the thing you're not allowed to truly call him out on is so baffling.

Because the thing you are not allowed to critique in any noteworthy way is his opinion on slavery.

And the funny thing is... His initial stance on slavery is written, really, really well. He thinks on slavery exactly the way a man raised in a slave society would, even if in most other regards he is a good man. There is a lot of people in modern day that wants to demonize every, single person who lived in a slave society unless they were 100% abolitionists, but the reality is generally far, far less simple. Because there were plenty of people like Dorian. Good people in most regards, who nonetheless didn't see a problem with slavery because their society ran on it.

It is a very obvious flaw of his, and the writing for it is good... You know what is not good? The way the Inquisitor tries to challenge his views.

When challenged, Dorian points out that the south has alienages instead of slavery, that is just as oppressive and full of abuse, which is actually a good point... The problem is that you are not then allowed to point out the obvious, namely that any mage society with slaves, would have every single incentive to use blood magic in the worst ways possible, and so the root of everything wrong with his homeland comes back to slavery in the end.

Neither are you allowed to point out the constant and frequent slave raids and underground enslavement across all of Non Tevinter mainland Thedas... Which is only a thing because of Tevinter's slave market.

As such, what could have been another aspect of Dorian that added to his character, instead is far and away the most infuriating of all of these character aspects you are not allowed to challenge or critique... Because the game was so, so close to making him a perfect character... And then fumbled it by not allowing you to force him to grow at all on the subject.

Thom Rainier

Blackwall is an interesting character... In how you can have a decent concept, competent execution, good pacing, and still produce a very, very boring result.

There is nothing inherintly wrong with Blackwall, but there is nothing that interesting about him either. The man has no charisma, and though he lacks any of the big points where you're not allowed to challenge him on like most of the cast has, he lacks any of rhe more interesting aspects like varric, cassandra, solas, and so on has.

Sera and Vivienne might be far less likeable, but at least they have interesting things to consider how their writing went wrong. By contrast Blackwall is competently written and executed... but that does not make him interesting.

The Iron Bull

Iron Bull is basically the opposite of Blackwall, in that he is an incredibly uninspired concept, but because of his execution, he works.

He is the upfront double/triple agent, the washed up loser who realized how shitty his side was, and so ends up defecting.

On paper that's something that's been done a thousand times and does not sound interesting at all, but as Blackwall proves, the execution is the key to success.

Bull's story of how he genuinely believes in the Qun despite having effectively left it, and how despite his integration with the Inquisitor and the rest of the cast, at the end of the day, even if you romance him, the thing that genuinely, truly matters to Bull, his soul, is his mercenary company, not you, not the Inquisition, not the Qun, is far, far more engaging than it has any right to be for being such a simple premise.

He's also an excepection to the rule about not having a satisfactionary bad ending, because if you truly, genuinely did hate him, and sacrificed his men, he WILL turn on you, just like Fenris, and will have the same ending as the Tevinter Elf.

Vivienne

Vivienne is the second most disliked Character in DAI, and just like Sera it comes down to bad writing, and how the game does not allow you to push all the way to really make a character work.

Vivenne is an interesting concept in that she, just like the original game's ice witch is a flat out evil character in a party of generally more good-hearted if flawed individuals.

The game is very, very upfront with the fact that she is a competent, charismatic, ambitious, ruthless individual, who wants to recreate a system where she and those like her would succeed... But anyone of mediocre or average talents would be crushed, and freedom will be ground beneath templar boots again.

That's an interesting concept, and frankly I would applaud them for NOT letting you soften her, the way the original game did with a Morrigan who was befriended/romanced.

The problem here, is the fact you are not allowed to take this to the finish line.

Unlike so many of Origins and DA2's companions, who would have some sort of climax where if you went against them completely, you would be forced to have to end up fighting them as the final point to their character, Vivenne has NO climax in any way.

And no character in the entire game, is hurt more by a lack of a climax than Vivienne.

To compare her to Morrigan, the original witch was not someone who could be killed, but she had a thematic climax, where if you wanted to, you could repay her for the fact she was just using you, by denying her the ultimate price, the only thing she wanted, and all her plans had been building towards by not doing the ritual.

And if that didn't suffice there was also the way you ended whatever relationship you had by stabbing her in witch hunt.

The problem with Vivienne, is that she has nothing like this. Regardless of what you do, even if you don't recruit her, she still wins in some way or another.

And if you hate her guts, that is a big, big problem.

The reason why Morrigan worked, was because you could make her go through substantial Character development to overcome her flaws. You cannot with vivienne. She starts the game off as a bitch who loves the Orlesian pastime "The Game" that is responsible for 99% of it's population being little better than livestock that can be beaten and raped at will, and she ends the game as a successful player of that game, who even if you do nothing with her at all, still emerges as a challenger to the College of enchanters, spitefully trying to tear down any alternative to the Circle.

If you disagree with Vivienne's point of view, there is absolutely nothing to be gained from recruiting her.

Her personal quest is probably the single biggest example of this. Wheter you give her the right heart or not, her lover dies, and she moves on, takes advantage of the situation, and comes out on top.

The way to fix this is pretty simple too. Have it actually matter.

There should have been an option for you to have leliana look into why the heart mattered for Vivienne(which an inquisitor really, really sjould have the power to) and make the choice to either comply, or deny her the advantage of a powerful noble ally.

Then, if you give her a false heart and the guy dies, when confronted about it, you should have been able to tell Vivienne to get bent, that you have watched her and judged her, and ultimately decided that her and her desire for a world that is run by "the game" has no place in the one you wish to build, and so you removed her biggest patreon and supporter, and you follow that up by kicking her out of the Inquisition.

That would have been a satisfactory climax for anyone who hated Vivienne's guts, and would have given even people who don't like her as a person a reason to recruit her... All while not changing her personality in the slightest.

Wheter you then have a life and death duel with her or not doesn't matter, because the Thematic climax has been reached, and you have had a satisfactary conclusion to her and the Inquisitor's relationship.

As it is, if you really don't like Vivienne, the only winning move, is not to play with her. Once you've recruited her, she will get to reap the benefits that she was part of the Inquisition for the rest of her life, and even if you don't show up to her meeting at all, she still makes the world a worse place by trying to tear down the College.

Cole

Like The Iron Bull, Cole is also a very simplistic character idea, but unlike Blackwall, he is very well executed.

The way his telepathy is used to give an insight into how the world works, and how characters are actually built up is one of the best parts of the entire game. Cole has the single most interesting party banter in the entire game, and as such is great to have around even if not that important to the plot.

The main problem with Cole is that after you make the choice of whether or not to make him human or backtrack towards being a spirit, you don't really get to see the aftermath other than trespasser, and even then, it's just in whether or not he has a relationship.

Other than that, he's pretty great though, and of the characters who might leave Skyhold, he's pretty much the only one who's exit is engaging as he calls you out on how despite your words, you don't want to help people, which is ehy he's leaving.

The fact that he's compassion in human form makes this ending way more fitting than, say, if Blackwall does the same thing.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dragon age 2 #dragon age origins #dragon age awakening #meta #companions #varric tethras #cassandra pentaghast #solas #fen'harel #dorian pavus #cole #vivienne #blackwall #thom rainier #sera #iron bull #the iron bull

[saint-siren]

A World For Her Alone | Sisyphus

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16

cw (chapter specific): child neglect, very vaguely implied forced prostitution, death, abuse, poisoning, suicide, mentions of pregnancy and childbirth, arranged marriage, infidelity

pairing: claude x fem!reader

summary: we take a brief intermission from claude's suffering to examine what the fuck is wrong with reader's family

author's note: me and my husband we're sticking together🎵

Claude lingered around your parents’ manor like a ghost after you died. In the middle of the night, every night, he found his way to your bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed you’d died in, remembering the shape your body formed in the sheets. The room still smelled of your blood and sweat, though the room had been cleaned up by the maids as soon as your body was taken out of the room. Your absence was starker than your presence. After the funeral, Diana expressed that she wanted to go home, heavily implying she would leave if he came with her but Claude was no longer beholden to her wants. He had no reason to care whether she came or went.

He was wielding grief as the knife he held up to cut deeper into himself in hope that if he only suffered enough, his hands would wash clean of your blood. But in the end, he had already decided to live, if only because he could do nothing else. Morbid thoughts plagued him, swirling around his head like unquiet spirits begging him to give in. He thought perhaps he should cause his own ruination and this time, live with it. He thought he should make for certain that both of your houses are set aflame and collapsing on top of the lot of you, to bury and burn your sycophant parents, his helplessly selfish wife and even his own child. He thought that nothing should be spared from complicity. He knew not anymore if he truly believed that it would save you, or if this was what some divine terror was willing him to do even still, but he began to long for punishment. It became catharsis, the thought of being punished.

He roamed through the house you grew up in, searching for any trace of you that survived, as if some inkling of you would help him to save what had already been lost too many times. Even so, it was automatic for him at this point, no longer even really a choice. He had no direction, only frantic need pulling him toward the doomed task. He was trying to get to the dregs of a goblet of wine which never ran dry, he kept drinking until he was sick but never satisfied, never finished.

Your parents’ manor was an eerie place, he’d always thought. Wind blew in from an opened window in the hall and the house seemed to breathe, and its hollow bones creaked softly. Despite her gentle ultimatum, Diana could not actually follow up on it, she must have known that but she believed better of him at the time and thought that everywhere she went, he would follow her like a lovestruck teenager again. There were things to be done at manor that she could not neglect as its lady even if he chose to neglect his own duties. She had come into her own as a marchioness, no longer the shy and unassuming lady that lay in bed sick day in and day out. She would not leave the territory without management though he knew she desperately wanted him to come back home. She seemed dazed to return home without her husband for that purpose, for the lament of a sister she had infinitely more right to grieve so egregiously. Even after all those years, the silly girl was only just beginning to grow aware of the disparity of marriage.

Somehow he felt it was hard for her to reconcile that she wasn’t a precious young lady anymore. Even as he was mired in a pool of half catatonic grief, she dared ask him to leave with her because she truly expected he would do so if she did. Had she not grown out of the habit of expecting to be near worshiped no matter what that her parents instilled her? He remembered how she was after your funeral, when he was sitting in the dark of a guest room. She had come to him, tried to hold him, to kiss him; believing all this would be a comfort and not a further indignity. She’d had arrogance enough to look hurt as he pulled her from him and recoiled from her touch. She must have still believed she was the cure to all ills because she was once more in a house where she was always treated as though she truly were.

He found his way to the library where you’d spent much of your life, if Felix’s word was truth. He brushed his fingers along the spines of the books, looking for the one that he left his missive in, the one Diana read and did not want understand. He searched through the categories of books that contained subjects you three would have studied together as he could not remember which particular book it was, but even after pulling all the books and flipping through the pages, he couldn't find the letter. He wondered if you had ever even set eyes on it once before Diana got to. Had it been your catalyst to run away? Had you read the note and understood that the effort of trying to be happy at his side was a fool’s errand? Was he again the cause of your downfall?

As he gave himself to thought of you, he continued looking through your family’s collection of books. It was all fairly standard and even a bit utilitarian, lacking any of the fanciful novels so beloved by many young nobles. He assumed if there were any, they’d be in Diana’s room because they’d be bought for and read by her alone. But there was something that struck him as he roamed around the shelves, his eyes scanning aimlessly for a book that looked as if it had been perhaps been misshelved. It was subtly tucked into the highest shelf but it still stood out to him eventually among droll guides, needlework books and encyclopedias emblazon with gold lettering. It was hastily bound looking more like a journal and it was worn, unlike the rich and well maintained leather of the other books and it was small, leaving a wide gap between the top of the shelf and the top of the book. Its spine did not read a title.

When he pulled the book, he understood what it was. Its title read “The Princess and The Knight,” signifying it was some common, tawdry romance novella. Still, he began to read it, the absurdity of its place in a house so heavy and serious intriguing him. Could this book have belonged to you? Could it have been an escape for you who was locked firmly out of girlhood when you were only just betrothed? When he’d read the title, his mind flashed with the memory of your face as Felix’s body fell into the dirt in front of you. He remembered how fiercely Felix had protected you even in this life. The rage and grief in his voice when he came for retribution. Though he knew you were ever dutiful and if there was love between you and Felix, it was never more than courtly, maybe you had seen this book and it had reminded you of some place where it could be more.

The story revolved around the love affair of a princess from a bloodline with an affinity for magic fleeing her country at wartime and being assigned a knight from the neighboring kingdom she sought refuge in. The two began a passionate and sanguine love affair in secret, all while living under of the tension of war and the threat of both of them losing everything to their love. But when the war was won, thanks in part to the wits of the two characters, and peace spread over the kingdom, she and her knight were able to be wed and live happily ever after. He had been searching for you in the pages, interpreting the knight and the princess, looking for traces of a love you might have had once. He had been looking for you so closely in every word that he hadn’t realized the grander scale of things until the end; when he flipped over the last page to read the epilogue, on the blank side of the page he saw a sketch. 

The drawing was finely, intricately done in ink and resembled…Diana. The owner of this book had drawn Diana so vividly, yet there were a few differences in the likenesses of the two. This woman had long spools of curly hair spilling over her shoulders and a mole near her gently smiling lips. She was older than Diana must have been when the book was written. She looked like the heroine that had been described in the novel. For some reason, he found himself fixated not in awe or admiration but in mind numbing shock. He could feel the love that went into each stroke of the pen and a knot formed in his stomach the longer he stared. It was uncanny in a house like this, to find anything that should mark vulnerability or simple folly. He recalled an occasion where your father had gifted her a portrait he’d made of her and their daughter. Though two different mediums, the style looked so similar. From what Claude saw, it seemed that your father seldom made art of anyone but Diana. Your father surely had not been so passionate about a throwaway romance that he had ignored his bias and poured so much love into an image of the heroine.

The only one who could be so brazen as to have a romance novel among his books wherein which they lovingly drew an almost intimate image of a woman, worn with the spine slightly bent from being handled so many times— not even properly hidden away, would be your father. Your father who paraded his illegitimate child, born from a mistress. The revelation gave him pause. What did Claude truly know about Diana? He couldn’t remember having ever asked her if she’d known her mother because she so resolutely accepted the countess as her only mother. But this woman sketched onto the page of a well loved romance, was this her mother? She looked as if she could be. Portraits of Diana hung in exposed parts of the house, he did not seem to care that the custom of having an illegitimate child was to have them separate from one’s “official” family, to not love a child born of one’s own lust so openly. Even if one had a particular love of their mistress and child, he would simply put them up in a nice mansion close enough for him to come and go but your father had your mother raising his illegitimate child. He celebrated her birthdays lavishly and even allowed her to go to the academy. He absolutely refused to hide her, to show shame in her. So why was this woman Claude presumed to be Diana’s mother who was clearly beloved by him even now, shut up in the back of a romance novella?

A thought occurred to him then, that perhaps the otherworldly force pulling him into Diana, entangling him in her was not otherworldly at all. Perhaps it had not originated in him alone as some primordial curse formed around him before there even was a him. He thought of just how besotted he was with Diana the first time he met her in each life, how the greater part of him felt foreign. He thought of your mother’s unusually devoted love for a child that wasn’t her’s, a product of her husband’s disloyalty. Something inside him thought that the answer lay at Diana’s feet. In her very blood, he was convinced, was the answer. 

Such a tenderly written romance, signed with a carefully drawn illustration of the woman who could be Diana’s mother. The part of “The Princess and The Knight” which struck him so was the bit about the princess possessing capacity for magic. It was not mentioned much nor utilized greatly in the plot but it made an impression. Magic users had decreased over the years, their powers waning until they were unheard of entirely. To anyone else who read the novella, it must have given the story to a bit of fantasy but to Claude, it was almost uncanny. He could not take it for an unassuming romance. To him, the story hid some truth under its veneer, for it was no coincidence that the princess resembled Diana so and that it ended up under the same roof as her, worn with years of eager hands flipping back over the pages. The princess’ power was never described in detail but if she were based on a real woman, then perhaps she had something to do with his situation.

He might’ve gone to Diana right then for answers but he feared his body might be taken over again at any time. He did not want to see her, did not want to feel the familiar paralysis of affection reaching up through his body. He did not want to see himself bed her again while the memory stood frozen in his eyes. Each time he saw her after he’d been set free, he’d worried that it would happen again. That his body would betray his mind and he’d never find anything of substance to end the cycle of misery the two of you shared. And he was committed to the task of trying, even if he could never succeed. He was ready to succumb to the greater sense of careworn madness he found in you.

He decided to explore the unattended corners of your home further, thinking there would be— must be more. If ever Diana’s mother had lived here, someone left a trace that he intended to find. He might’ve asked your father directly but as much as he was a lickspittle, something told him that your father would be afflicted by the same paralysis of mind that he had when he belonged to Diana. Unable to share the love he held for her but unable to hide it either, culminating in a pathetic sort of half-baked defensiveness. He wasn’t likely to get anything out of that, even you hadn’t been able to get anything out of him when he was like that. Worse still, he might try to cover up all that he kept that ever indicated Diana’s mother had lived there once, that she had a name and a face. And then what?

No, it was better this way. Better to find it all before he got the chance to hide any of it.

Your parents were still in the house, seemingly without intention of asking him when he was going to leave but there was still a bit of anxiety in the air when they entered the room. He could tell that they very much wished for him to return to their daughter and make her happy again as she was destined to be. It was awkward that their son-in-law had a longer bereavement than your sister did. But still being the cowardly sycophants they were, they could not ask him to leave for her sake—only “encourage” him by tossing out little updates on Diana. “Diana and our grandchild miss you very much,” “Diana takes ill so easily when she works so hard, we should hope you’ll be well enough to go back to her soon,” “Diana sends her love and wants you to know she’s there for your sake.”

Claude wouldn’t care if Diana’s life hung by a thread and he was all that could spare her, frankly and he brushed off all responsibility in favor of giving himself to his task. It was shameless, he knew, but he’d given up everything inside of the barren, hollow shell of his self to save you. It was a task that had already and would yet again supersede death, birth and the enveloping void he fell backward into each time his life was ended. He waited until they inevitably visited Diana, likely to calm her worries with lukewarm supplications about his grief, to go searching in the other parts of the house uninhibited. For, even if the servants were to tell their lord and lady, he’d already have looked through every corner he intended before they’d have a chance to move things around to better hide them.

He started with Diana’s old room. When he walked in, he was surprised to find it was left exactly as childish as it had been when she was only a young miss. Just the scent of the air turned his stomach, heavy and cloying with a pungent smell of medicine that was still sitting on her night stand in a small white bottle. He frowned as something fell clumsily into place. It hit him like the stray sour note of a violin. He recognized the bottle. Where did he last see this bottle?

For how preoccupied he was with the revelation taking slow form, he did not realize that Felix had entered the room until he heard the distinctive sound of a sword unsheathed. He did not turn.

“Felix.”

“Lord Claude,” Felix acknowledged, his voice struggling to keep its softness. “I might’ve known you’d be here. You truly cannot help yourself, it’s like a sickness.”

“Yes, it is very much like that,” Claude agreed easily. “But I’m not here for what you imagine I am.”

“I’m not so sure it matters, my lord.” Felix’s voice was flat.

“Nor am I. But I need you to let me live just as long as it takes for me to make sense of this.”

Felix went quiet for a moment but nothing about the situation made Claude think it was because the knight was going to hesitate. On the contrary, he was sure that his sword would swing just as neatly. “Do you know where I found my lady chained up, my lord? There are places, you know, that they bring women who had no other place to turn. You must know. You were at her side every night when we brought her back, you saw what toll it took. You saw what had been done.” Felix took a shallow breath. “You’re asking me to spare you so that you can make sense of whatever it is your farce of a marriage is built on? When my lady was given no such pardon? I know you’re the head of your house now, honored knight of the crown and you must think yourself above your treatment of others but I assure you, this will be the last time you ever assume so.”

Claude held still, his voice firm even as fear raged through his body. It was not fear for his life or of Felix’s wrath, it was the fear of failing, yet again, to make any movement in saving you. “I know how you think of me, Felix. I know that I have failed my wife. I know that I deserve to die here and now but even so, I can’t.”

“That is no problem, I’ll do it for you.”

Claude smiled joylessly to himself at the devout knight’s words. How could you have been judged so harshly in that life for wanting to run away with him when he so clearly had a loyalty akin to love for you? “You don’t understand. You cannot possibly. But answer me this, do you know who Diana’s mother is?”

The question puzzled Felix but he stood resolutely, ready at any moment to fell Claude’s head. “Everyone else in this household has care for Lady Diana. My duty was to serve my lady, I was the only one and I did not ever lapse. You’re asking the wrong person.”

“Felix, I do not ask for my wife’s sake. I know how this will sound but I’m trying to find out just what exactly it is that Diana holds over me and everyone else. I’m trying to figure out what exactly she is. You have seen it, haven’t you? The disparity between how people treat my wife and how they treat your lady. Do you think it natural to love a daughter born from an affair more than one’s own?”

He heard Felix laugh bitterly. “You believe her to be a succubus? Is that your excuse?”

“No. I believe her to be something worse.” Claude laughed as well, though his was more hysterical than anything. “She rules everything, Felix. Even in death. No, especially so in death. I have lived this life many times. I have died and returned back to the day that I first met her at the tea party. And when I do, I am taken over by her. It feels like love at first, it really does. But then intrusion. And then a curse. It is a cycle of death and resurrection, for myself and for the lady.”

Felix was silent and Claude continued on. “In one such life, she ran away with you, you know. It was raining the night we found you two. You were holed up in some abandoned cottage out there in the countryside, the one with the patches of white clover in the yard and a missing shingle on the roof.”

“What are you saying?” Felix’s voice wavered with near disbelief at the picture he painted but he held firm.

“My knights killed you where you stood and took the lady back to my manor. Your betrothed visited her. She had asked to speak to the woman who had been responsible for your death. She told me you two had planned to get married once the lady and I were finally married and settled in. She could not even mourn you properly because you were compelled to run away with the lady and killed.”

It is clear that Felix still thought Claude had lost his mind but what shocked him was the truth seeded into his madness. How could he have known the intimate arrangements of their betrothal and marriage when even their families had not known the cause for delay? This was not knowledge he could send an errand boy to fetch him nor an illusion he couldn’t hope to keep up, this was lived. It was memory.

“What does that have to do with Diana?” Diana was more likely a seductress than a sorceress in Felix’s opinion. Such a thing as a time loop, how could a girl so weak and childish create something like it?

Claude turned slightly, slowly toward him. “I don’t know yet myself. That is what I seek to find out. So that I can perhaps end it, for the lady at least. I don’t need anything Felix, not Diana, not my child, not my house. All I need and want is for the lady to stop suffering. I only beg you not to hinder me. When the time comes, I swear I will die on my own.”

Felix had no idea what to make of it all. Much of what Claude said seemed stilted, frantic and half thought. Yet he could not help but feel there was a certain sincerity to be had even in the worthlessness of Claude’s promise. And in any case, he was not entirely unfamiliar with the concept that Claude explained but all that it implied, he was not ready to believe. He sheathed his sword again finally and Claude turned to face him with the medicine bottle in hand. “Have you any idea why this would be in Diana’s room? It’s medicine that the lady took before.”

Felix’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. “It’s used to treat severe infection. It’s not supposed to be used by just anyone who gets ill. Lady Diana should not have needed that medicine, it would take effect like poison if not administered to someone battling a harsh infection. The doctor sent one of the servants to fetch it in town.”

“Yes, but this bottle is dusty, it’s mostly emptied out and the liquid inside it has congealed. It’s been sitting here for years. The medicine inside is aromatic. It has a distinct smell, doesn’t it? The lady’s room still reeks of it even with the windows opened up. Every time I went into Diana’s room when we were young, I smelled it, I tasted it. That means she was not only taking medicine she did not need but taking it regularly.” Claude said aloud, more to himself than to Felix who had bristled at the way he implied he and Diana were. “Was she…ever even sick?”

“Of course she was. Perhaps madame gave her the wrong medicine. She would not have poisoned herself, far be it from me to defend her but she did not desire to be sick. She seemed to envy the lady for her health, as she saw it.”

“…it was the lady’s mother who administered this medicine?” Claude questioned as new pieces fell together in his mind.

“I only know that the madame came to Lady Diana before bed to give her medicine. I do not know that it was that medicine, I did not see it.” Felix paused. “What is the significance, my lord?” He asked, annoyance creeping into his tone at the extensive talk of Diana.

“I intend to find out.”

He had wished to creep into the madame’s bedroom quickly and easily but the door was locked so they’d needed to fetch the key. Claude was shocked at the amount of sway he had over the servants of a house he was not a part of for the head maid simply handed over the key when he asked for it, albeit hesitantly as though she thought she might be scolded for doing so. When he took in the room, it was tidy and rather plain by aristocracy standards. The room seemed to have a chill about it, there was a draft somewhere that made it feel colder than the other rooms.

He began to pick carefully through her things, looking in every corner of the room for anything hidden. It was all mundane, droll and typical until he reached the last drawer of a dresser that was locked. Sure enough, nine bottles of unopened medicine neatly lined into rows of three. When he tried to pull the drawer out all the way and see what more he could find, it was caught on something that had been pressed against the top. Claude reached in to feel for it and pulled down what looked to be a simple leather bound, worn and yellowing journal.

Immediately he began to read. He was a bit startled at himself when he realized that he was eager to read the contents of his mother-in-law’s mind. He wanted to know how she saw you. How she justified treating you the way she did to uplift a child that was not her’s. A pitiful part of him just wanted there to be reason. He wanted cause for the rift in the relationship. He needed to believe there was a because to your suffering.

But what he read was not as he suspected. In neat, small lettering on the first page, it chronicled her life back to when she had been perhaps 19 years old but it was dated some ten years later. A reflection on her younger self written seemingly less as a journal and more a memoir.

“The princess had always been so gracious a mistress that even her tasks sounded like gifts.

When it was her time to return to her duties in her own kingdom, she resigned to it with great grace. However, she understood that the opposite would be true of her beloved knight. This fragile man only smiled in her company, protected her with wild fervor and once told her that he felt divinely guided to her. That to him, she was the symbol of god’s forgiveness and in serving her, loving her, he saw his life’s purpose. Oh, the princess lamented to me how dark a life her knight had lived, how the blood he shed as a knight haunted him with guilt. How his father had been of a violent sort in his efforts to transform his only living child into a knight of some worth to bring more prestige to their house and in his efforts to vent his own turmoil over his wife taking up with men of far more money, status and legacy than he. Her knight resembled his mother and so became the target of the ire he could not give his wife for the great protection being a mistress to such men afforded her. His mother knew what his father did, she did not care so long as it were not her. My heart came to soften for him too, the more she told me.

He had been a quiet man, shy and quite unknowingly sweet for his reputation as a ruthlessly skilled knight. He opened up to my princess like a flower toward the sun. He loved her so madly that she knew even though it was inevitable, he never intended to be where he could not protect her and stand at her side. The princess feared that their duties as princess and heir to a county respectively would give way to the knight’s devotion. She feared he’d kill himself trying to reunite with her or simply deteriorate under the burden of his own isolation but her own life was dedicated to more than just one person. It was her nation, her home of people waiting to see her return that she could not abandon. So in her stead, she asked me to stay in the kingdom and marry him. To give him a countess and to keep watch of him for anything he might do to interfere in both their duties.

It was a great honor she had given me entrusting someone so precious to me and given me a title higher than that I had been born with, I still feel that way now but I was foolish then and I did not understand the nature of what I was being asked to do. Nor would I until after it was already done.

You see (and it does, still pain me to even write such a silly thing), I did, at the time believe that I would become close to my husband. I viewed it as a matter of course, for I was far from a home I could never return to and he had no one. We were, for each other, the last traces of the princess. Though I could never think to hope for the kind of love that he gave to the princess, I believed that commonality could be nurtured into love or kinship. I wished for someone to turn to as my heart was sinking faster than a stone the longer I spent from my home. I believed it would happen. I believed he would become someone to lean on.

Though the first months of our marriage were cold, I managed to coax him into trying to have children as was our duty. I saw this as progress both in the way of our relationship as well as keeping him from the princess. I viewed even our coldness then as a sign of something beginning. It was only once, afterward, I think he worked very hard so that I would not ask him to do it again. But even so, I found that I was with child soon. I was a stupid girl then, I believed a child was what we needed to grow closer. I brought this news to him with a smile, I must have looked like an idiot.

My husband’s expression, I can never forget it. He was horrified at this revelation. He looked at me as though I’d announced a death. He looked at me as though I had wounded him. Then his beautiful eyes sparkled with unshed tears and his expression reverted to a weak, helpless smile as he said all the right things in his wavering voice.

It was then that I realized he would never love me. He was horrified at having a child with me, it was sheer terror and dread on his face when I told him. Perhaps he thought that I would not become pregnant at all, he would have preferred it that way. I hadn’t the relationship with him to truly comfort him, to know intimately what he feared about my child. I was useless in that way.

Through the following months, my apprehension was near unbearable. I kept feeling my stomach sink in dread, I kept waking up thinking that I would be home. I kept thinking that I had done something irreparable but I could think of nothing which was actually within my control. Therefore, when I finally gave birth, my relief that it was done with was greater than my joy. But that was alright with me because I had intended to deal with things in my own way."

From there, she went on to describe her rigid attention to being a diligent countess for a few droll pages. But at last, Claude came to another thing of significance. Your father had been summoned to court for political matters regarding the civil unrest which had not been quelled with the end of the war. Your mother could not follow him and leave a newborn alone so she had no choice but to simply trust in your father. She would come to regret that.

"My princess appeared like a bolt out of the blue months later. She was dressed as a peasant and had a somewhat bashful smile on her lips. Although I had missed her, all that I could think in seeing her was, "She should not be here."

But we brought her to the study so that presumably, she would tell us why she had returned when she had surely sworn that she could not. She took off her cloak and then I understood without her needing to tell me. I saw a little bump on her otherwise thin body and I was overcome. When my husband had returned to court, he had not been officially permitted to see my princess but they had met anyway and she was now with child. She had waited until she was just about to start beginning to show in order to take leave from court on the pretense of recovering from illness at her villa in the countryside.

I had been given the task of minding him but I had clearly failed. I should have gone with him no matter what. I should have taken the chance and left my child so that I could have prevented this. But my princess looked at me as faultless and took my hands in hers to assure me that she regretted nothing. She comforted my husband who apparently also knew nothing about this pregnancy until then. She knew his fears like the back of her hand, she knew exactly how to soothe them as I hadn't. He did not even have to speak. She simply knew.

Until then, I had not known that my husband dreaded having children for fear they would be cursed and afflicted with the same moral decay that his own parents had; and because he feared that having a child would bring the same thing out of him. Even if I had known, the princess was the perfect one to comfort him. She asked him if he believed a child born of her could be wicked and of course, he said no. She spun such sugary images of their child together for him with her eyes shining with joy. She told him that their child was special, that she did not fear him becoming a parent like his own because their child would change everything about being a father for him. It surely helped that my princess was glowing as she said such things, that the excitement radiating off of her grew stronger with each passing moment. He could not deny her, could not bring himself to contradict her words because he would always believe in her even if he did not believe in himself.

It went unsaid that the princess would be entrusting the child to the both of us. I had much apprehension about taking care of two babies rather than one and the secrets to be kept piling up above me but I could not complain, it had been my job for years to make everything work. I could not stop then when my princess needed me most. In any case, her presence in the manor brought life to a place that had become so eerie to me. She was the only flame in the dark and we were huddled around her, trying to preserve an ounce of warmth within ourselves. She was joyful through her pregnancy, she could not stop talking about the baby she was to have. The more she chattered, the more excited I became too as though I had any right to be. This was true of my husband too, who tentatively felt the kicks of his child and smiled, genuinely smiled as the princess did. I could see that he loved that child.

She slept in the master bedroom with him, after he left each day, I went in to help her get ready for the day. It was though I was still her maid and I suppose I wanted to be, would rather be that than a wife. But I could not bring myself to complain. I was not unlike my husband, I viewed my duties to the princess as somewhat sacred. I was as honored as I was anxious to raise the child.

On the day Diana was born, my husband was at my princess' side the entire time, as though he could protect her as her knight again. I could only marvel at him. When I had given birth, he stood at the foot of the bed stiffly and asked me what I intended to name our daughter, if I was alright and then told me that if I needed anything to have the butler prepare it at once. After Diana was born, my princess was still beautiful, perhaps even more so in her vulnerability. She held the most beautiful baby I had ever seen, close to her chest as my husband looked down at the both of them with sheer joy. It was as though all the happiness in the world existed between those three. My Diana had been born out of love and so it was easy to love her.

I left my own daughter to the maids in favor of caring for Diana when the princess rested. Her little ruby eyes and her head of soft blonde hair captivated me. Each coo or cry had my focus in a fraction of a second.

I had not yet considered the greater implications of her birth until my princess brought it to me. Diana had been born with an inordinate affinity for magic. The princess, as a member of the royal family had the capacity of a mage, it was kept secret through the death of magic that through her bloodline were those capable of miracles. I only knew after years of my proximity to the princess. This child, born in the time of civil unrest, when the queen had not yet been blessed with a child and the civil war had still bitterly divided the houses, was capable of being seen as a potential figurehead that could be used as a pawn in a new round of rebellion.

It was for me and my husband to put her above all things. Above even our own child. That, to me, went without saying for I did love Diana as my own daughter. But the princess knew that anything could happen and she used all of the strength of her magic to cast a spell over her that would be held with Diana's own great magic. My princess nearly expended all her energy to do so. Magic, she had once told me, was seen as a weak form of power because it relied so greatly upon emotion. It was the transformation of want into will. I knew not the details of the spell which bound my mistress' daughter. All my princess said was that her precious Diana would live happily, that for all the odds against her, she still had odds in her favor."

Claude felt numb as he turned the pages. He was in shock, suddenly the environment of the room felt too harsh and stimulating but he was glued to the journal. He could not dare stop reading it no matter what truths arose. So he flipped the page and read every single entry even as his hands trembled.

From then on, it was Diana, Diana, Diana. With each entry, she recorded a measurement which he assumed was the amount of medicine administered and her symptoms. She fretted over whether it was right to give her more or to give her less. She wrote about denying Diana's requests to go outside, to go to the theatre, to do much of anything besides stay in bed. It chilled him to the bone but more than that, perplexed him. He was staring at a page where your mother had seemed to write sloppily, hurried and anxious when he heard a voice.

"Lord Claude?" It was your mother, standing in the doorway.

He looked slowly up at her, at a loss for words and unable to reconcile the cold mother she was to you with her joy at being Diana's proxy mother. Unable, still, to understand why she was poisoning the daughter she loved so much.

"My lord, you should not be in here," she said softly but in her blank expression, it was apparent that she knew what he was there for. "It will look strange to others, for you to do something like this."

"You poisoned Diana," He was keenly aware of how delicately she was trying to dance around this subject but he was unwilling to indulge her.

Your mother did not even blink. "You must understand me, Lord Claude. Please understand."

"What is there to understand? You neglect your own daughter and fawn over your husband's illegitimate daughter only to poison her."

Your mother shook her head slowly as if she could not believe what he was implying. "I love that girl," she said, moving deeper into the room and shutting the door behind her. "Diana is my little princess. She is my only daughter."

A rush of rage ran up his body, carrying an unbearable desire to hurt her. "She's not your daughter at all. She's the daughter of a woman far more beloved than you."

But your mother could only smile helplessly. "Yes, but even so, she is my daughter in heart. You must trust me when I say that Diana was hopeless before."

"Hopeless?" His brow furrowed and a cold feeling creeped up his back, extinguishing his fury and replacing it with a kind of fear for the woman in front of him. "She wasn't hopeless, she was able to wed me, to live happily." He said it not as a defense of her but as an accusation.

"That poor girl. In the first place, she already had a weak constitution, because her magic was stronger than her body but it was the perfect excuse to keep inside and away from the eyes of those who would want to hurt her. But it was my eldest daughter who kept planting false hope in her. She even sent Diana before my husband to beg him to let her go to the academy because she knew very well he could not say no to her." There was venom in her voice, a sneer on her face. Claude rose to stand slowly, not knowing what he was going to do.

"He cannot say no to Diana because he loves her so, no, he loves her mother so," she sighed. "All the other one did was cause troubles. Diana had already given up but she roused such hope in the girl, false hope, cruel hope. If she had not been able to marry you...I do not know how we would have protected her. If my daughter was still alive, everything would be ruined. It was you who saved her, my lord. That is why I beg of you, don't judge me. You know that Diana is special. You must know."

"I did not want to save her, she did not need to be saved."

She remained with that pitiful smile on her face. "My husband is weak to her. He will...he will never forgive what I've done to our- his little princess. He won't understand. He will think that I have killed my princess. You know, he almost sees them as one in the same." She reached onto her desk, picking up a letter opener. "Diana will be hurt if she knows. I ask that you let the girl live her life believing as I told her. She deserves that much. I let her believe what I did because it was in her best interest. Please take care of her."

Before he could react, your mother plunged the sharp end of the letter opener into her throat.

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