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dreamerwasntfound · 10 months

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Kpop Writers and Fic Recs

List of Kpop Fanfic writers I follow and the fic I found them with (if there is one)!!

Warning: Very Long List :)

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With Specific Post

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✎ @remedyx > Boyfriend for Hire (Series) ♡ BTS OT7 x Reader # N/A ➤ n/a 🗨 Unsatisfied with your life was an understatement. Being under the thumb of your father can have that effect. He wanted someone capable of running the company, but you wanted to pursue your passion. Countless unwanted blind dates and the threat of losing your freedom drives you to seek help from a group of individuals you’d least expected.

✎ @bebejungkook > Gym Bunny (Series) ♡ Jungkook x Reader # N/A ➤ Toxic friends, reader learns to love herself, cuss words, accidental boners, some mean comments about reader from her friends and Kooks bestie who hates YN. 🗨 After being tired of feeling insecure you decided to take your friends advice and hit the gym. The only problem is you don’t know what to do, but luckily the very muscular and scary guy next to you offered to teach you a couple things. He just also happens to be the sweetest man you’ve ever met and not scary at all. You catch yourself falling in love with him on your journey of self love, but old insecurities stop you from doing anything about it.

✎@your-daily-biaswrecking > You sit on his lap in the car and he cums in his pants + but, check out their m.list ♡ Kim Namjoon x Reader # Drabble ➤ n/a 🗨 Like the title says ;)

✎ @m-yg93 > Solace ♡ Kim Namjoon x Reader # 13.5k ➤ Brief blood mention from a cut, mention of minor character death (sickness), fingering, hand job, big dick joon, belly bulge, unprotected sex, mentions of choking, creampie, dirty talk, inconsistent POV 🗨 Namjoon thought getting used to a new roommate would take time and adaptation but you fit yourself into his apartment with ease. He swears he only landed in your bed to keep you safe in his arms when you get spooked by the storm. Surely he can blame the eventual lack of clothing on the summer’s heat stroke.

✎ @joonsytip > Anonymously Yours ♡ Hong Joshua x Fem!Reader # 18.6k ➤ Fluff, Angst, Humour (broken coz mine), high school au, enemies to lovers au, strangers to lovers au, anonymously yours au. 🗨 After an accidental text message turns into a digital friendship, you and Joshua start crushing on each other without realizing you both see each other frequently in real life.

✎ @peekaboongi > Snake Kisses (& Defense Against the Dark Farts) ♡ Yoongi x Reader # 8.5k (& 2.2k+) ➤ Licking kink? masturbation, voyeurism, exhibitionism (kinda?), slight? biting kink, dom!yoongi, sort of aphrodisiac? idk his spit makes you kinda sorta sensitive does that count as a spit kink? fingering, oral (female receiving), orgasm denial, degradation, name calling, spanking, pet names (he calls her princess), cumplay, unprotected sex, humiliation, handjobs, choking, creampie, like mild cum inflation? overstimulation. oh dear god this is more than I thought it was. (& dom yoongi but also soft yoongi, one tiny possible spoiler for the very last harry potter movie, sad danger noodle yoongle, oral (male), handjobs, yoongi has two dicks, one (1) spank, yoongi spits on her hand, unprotected sex, degradation, name calling, pet names (he calls he princess), tiny bit of begging not really, i think that’s it) 🗨 You are grossly unprepared for the snake hybrid that enters your life. Yoongi is quiet and sneaks around you but eventually, even the cold reptile warms up to you. (& While trying to get Yoongi to take the full Pottermore sorting quiz, you discover something that he’s self-conscious about. Lucky for him, you love every part of him, snake bits and everything. ↳ defensive snake farts are a thing, apparently)

✎ @whatifyoulivelikethat > (seven) days a week ♡ jungkook x reader # N/A ➤ rated M (18+) for language (reader swears a lot); strangers-to-lovers; vague allusions to a loveless childhood and bad parenting (no specifics); JK might be insane and you do tell him that he is; slight crack; fluff; smut (fem reader, fucking with clothes on and off, m and f-receiving oral, light hair pulling, fingering, nipple play, choking, penetrative sex, handjob); non-idol!BTS – persistent!Jungkook x noona, def tsundere!reader lol ft instigator-cupid!Park Jimin setting them up 🗨 It only takes seven days (a week) for Jeon Jungkook to get you in his bed to fuck you right. And showing up in weird places. And kissing in the rain. He’s crazy. Okay, it’s kinda complicated.

✎ @httpjeon > lovebug ♡ jimin/reader # 12k ➤ spider hybrid!jimin, hybrid mistreatment/bullying, love self esteem/self-worth, arguments, crying, physical altercation between jimin & reader, name-calling, attachment anxiety, possessiveness, kissing, scenting, dom!jimin, manhandling, size kink/difference, fingering, dirty talk, cunnilingus, sensitivity kink, wet & messy, lots of cum, cumflation, jimins duality 🗨 hybrids are lovable companions for humans. unfortunately, most people simply want a cat or dog with which they can cuddle and love on. while looking for one to adopt, a lonesome hybrid of an unusual breed catches your eye.

✎ @solemnreads > Way Back Home (Series) ♡ jungkook x reader # N/A ➤ parents au, single parent, coparenting, chaebol, ceo jungkook, assistant reader, jeon twins, one of the babies has a weak heart, smut 🗨 "please tell me this isn't what i think it is" he asks you with tears in his eyes. you look down at the sight of your son with an oxygen mask on his face while your daughter is sleeping on the couch near the wall. you look into his eyes, broken and sad. you've dreamt of this day for years, wondering how he would react. but here you are, hoping he could've meet the twins under different circumstances. "yes...they're your children."

✎ @dovechim > the singularity theory (m) (Series) ♡ yoongi x reader # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 in your last year of undergrad, you find out what a gloryhole is at the expense of your final year thesis. it’s a classic example of a psychology experiment that went way, way wrong. but how were you to know that a certain min yoongi would be sticking his dick into your life?

✎ @jeonstudios > drown for you (Series) ♡ siren!jk x f reader # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 there was something in that enormous tank, hidden in the murky water. all you knew was that you weren’t allowed inside the room and that it used to hold something dangerous.

✎ @barbika1508 > Lacuna (Series) + M.List ♡ Hybrid!Jeongguk x reader # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 posted on each chapter

✎ @btssmutgalore > Nude (Series) ♡ Taehyung x reader # N/A ➤ smut 🗨 You accidentally send a nude to Taehyung, a fuckboy you definitely shouldn't have been thinking about, despite already kissing him. The fact that he's your roommate's best friend doesn't help your situation at all.

✎ @joonberriess > Jock!JK (Series) + M.List ♡ jock!jungkook x reader # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter

✎ @dreamescapeswriting > BTS Reactions + M.List

✎ @taesbetch > To Own A Hybrid (Series) + M.List ♡ Jungkook x Reader # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 the hybrid world was one y/n never really involved herself in; however, after certain events, she is tossed into a world of uncertainty in the company of a particularly rude hybrid.

✎ @gothvkth > sensitive ♡ Jeon Jeongguk x GN!Reader # 2k+ ➤ self conscious jk, sensitive jk, nipple play, pussy pocket, vibrator, dirty talk, whiny jk, orgasm denial, sub jk, dom reader, pre-discussed kinks and wtv, safe sane and consensual, jk hugs a pillow to his chest like a cutie, a hint of dacryphilia, jk cries but he loves it. 🗨 you two have been friends since the beginning of time. after finally getting together, you guys had a miscommunication problem regarding your sex life in concern that jeongguk didn't want you but truth is, he's just a sensitive boy, too sensitive.

✎ @taleasnewastime > Purr-haps I like you ♡ Yoongi x Reader # 11.6k ➤ An abandoned cat; the cat gets ill at one point. 🗨 You have a no pets policy where you live, but when you find a tiny kitten in a box on the side of the road, what can you do but bring it home with you? The only problem? The landlord who made the no pets rule, also happens to be your flatmate.

✎ @kookslastbutton > Too Late to Dream (Series) ♡ professor!jungkook x fem!artist!Reader # 16.5k (TBA) ➤ 8-year age gap, professor-student relationship (oc was a Masters student), lots of family drama, fighting, pent-up issues/desires, jk has daddy issues, therapy, sexual content + more specific warnings per chapter 🗨 You did it. You married your college professor. You even bought a house together. Against all odds, everything had fallen into place. But after two years of marriage, you begin feeling something was missing. You want a baby but your husband can’t say the same.

✎ @stylesluxx > Eight Years (Series) ♡ poly!ceo!bts x reader # N/A ➤ angst (and more, posted on each part) 🗨 in which they fall out of love

✎ @jcwriting > There's A First Time For Everything ♡ idol!namjoon x reader # 2.8k ➤ swearing, oral (m receiving), face fucking, choking, reader has a painful thigh kink (don’t we all), overuse of the word thigh 🗨 namjoon has never had a blowjob before. you’re about to change that.

✎ @minnochu > Lustrous (Series) ♡ Hybrid!Kook x Reader

✎ @appreciatethefoolishness > Bunny Trouble (Series) ♡ jeongguk x reader

✎ @numinousher > Combined Beings (Series) + M.List ♡ mafia/ceo!bts x chubby!reader # N/A ➤ cursing, a bit of mature content ( English isn’t my first language so just to warn you all 😭), deep conversations based on beauty standards, body dysmorphia, mental health issues, harassment/bullying, gore/violence 🗨 You are bullied on a constant because korea’s beauty standards do not fit girls on the heavier side. The bullying gets worse once a ceo is attracted to you and he mentions you to the other 6.

✎ @secretbangtnn > Until I bleed out (Series) ♡ poly!BTS x hybrid!reader # N/A ➤ mentions of sexual assault and sex trafficing, violence, mentions of homelessness, mental problems, panic attacks, reader is scared of everything, bts just wants to help, smut later, mentions of abo, to be added… 🗨 Hybrids always were discriminated against, the laws passing over years changed nothing, collars still needed to be seen on those innocent necks like some kind of label. Cruelty was something the hybrids faced on daily basis, sex trafficing or illegal fighting it still felt as if those humans treated everything like pets. Situation you however found yourself in, was kind of different - not worse not better but still so bad you did not know if the next day would be yours, and when the winter started coming with big steps it was only a matter of time when the freezing cold would eat you alive. Unless one silent night a little too loud striped tiger decides to break your calm nap with a clumsy package of long limbs after him who just could not leave your tired and scared self alone…

✎ @20moonchild21 > Sehncucht - Discontinued? ♡ Hybrid!BTS x human!female!oc # N/A ➤ fluff, angst, humor, smut (later), mentioning of sexual assaultment, abuse, violence, friendship, love, dark themes 🗨 Hope is your average New York college girl, who is only one step away from reaching her big dream and becoming a lawyer for Hybrid rights. Never would she have thought, that one night, where she heard a whimpering coming from a dark alley, could turn her whole word upside down.

✎ @strlstlvr > skz finding your old fan tweet for them (hyung line linked, also maknae line version available) ♡ skz x reader # N/A ➤ smau, crack, a wee bit suggestive in changbins🫣 🗨 of course you were always their biggest fan, too bad they took a deep dive and found out how obsessed you actually were

✎ @alternateafterthought > Golden Time (Series) + M.List ♡ hybrid!jungkook x reader # 30k+ ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 Y/N has been rescuing and recovering hybrids her entire life. Now she has inherited her grandparent’s hybrid sanctuary. It was a normal rescue, get the hybrid, recover him and give him a choice, stay on the sanctuary or find a life for himself. Why was this one so different?

✎ @idkcantthinkofaname > It takes time (Series) ♡ bts x reader # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 after finally getting the house y/n always wanted, she find a hybrid hiding in an old shed. Unlike most people who find strays, y/n doesn’t turn him into h.c mainly because there was a lot of shady things that happened with the hybrid control in the area.

✎ @jiminrings > 4-7-8 (Series) ♡ jungkook x reader # N/A ➤ semi-heavy angst (pls take a break when necessary!!), emotional constipation, no cheating happens here btw (neither physical nor emotional), self-loathing, miscommunication, based on the moral dilemma of whether or not it's okay to be friends with ur ex, intense yearning + specified tags in each installment! 🗨 you're secure when it comes to loving jungkook, knowing that your husband loves you beyond words. what you aren't so secure about is his first love - someone who isn't you. alternatively, jungkook's married to you, but he still celebrates his anniversary with his ex out of sentimentality.

✎ @ya9amicide > Redamancy (Series) ♡ ot7 x ot7, ot7 x oc # N/A ➤ posted on each chapter 🗨 Hybrids were accepted in society to a certain degree. To some, they are for entertainment. Used as sex and money tools. To lock up and abuse whenever and however they please. Something to have control over. To others, they are companions. Just like regular animals are used for therapy or simply companionship, hybrids are too. To the rest, they are just like everyone else. Someone with their own life who deserves the same freedoms as your everyday John or Jane Doe. Wren is one of these people. She hates the idea of owning a hybrid. She has nothing against those who own them for medical or companionship reasons. Just the rest. But, when a ragtag pack of seven mismatched hybrids somehow ends up in the woods behind her home, she takes them in and does the one thing she never thought she would do. Own them. But, she also does something she didn't even think was possible. She fell in love with each and every one of them.

✎ @sue-bts > Teething ♡ Bunny!Jungkook x Reader # N/A ➤ much smut very sin wow, biting, pet/owner (he is of age, hybrid stuff makes the developmental process- i.e. teething- a bit slowed but he’s 19) 🗨 (Requested) Can you do one where hybrid Jungkook is going through his heat and he just needs dom!y/n so bad, but she just loves to see him beg and practically dry hump her leg. Can you add dirty talk in there too. I don’t care what he’s mixed with.

✎ @eternal-mikrokosmos > Stubborn Hugs (Series) ♡ Hybrid Namjoon x Reader, occasional ot7 x reader, ot7 x ot7 # N/A ➤ posted in each chapter 🗨 After helping out a koala and bunny hybrid, your bring them home with your other hybrids to adjust. But a certain koala doesn’t seem tho get the concept of being cared for without a catch. Having your own set of secrets, it already proves difficult to gain their trust and getting them to stay with you at the same time. Your hybrids already know everything about you and are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to keep you safe.

✎ @arrianna21 > Hybrid!Taegi Masterlist + M.List ♡ cathybrid!yoongi/doghybrid!taehyung/reader # N/A ➤ posted in each chapter

✎ @gimmesumsuga > Pink Panther ♡ Jin x reader # 13k ➤ Graphic descriptions of sex, oral sex (female receiving), impregnation kink, unprotected sex, dirty talk 🗨 ‘The one where your boss, Kim Seokjin, tries to show you how beautiful you are’ - Hybrid!AU

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Without Specific Post

✎ @borathae > Masterlist

✎ @tasteleeknow > Masterlist

✎ @ffsarchive > Masterlist

✎ @guess-whos-now-a-mood > Pretty Moodboards

✎ @taetae-tea > Masterlist

✎ @yeontanismypresident > Masterlist

✎ @jinniesboy > Masterlist

✎ @baepsaets > Posts in General

✎ @secret-kpoplibrary > Masterlist

✎ @thereaderstea > Masterlist

✎ @jamaisjoons > Masterlist

✎ @ahundredtimesover > Masterlist(s)

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#kpop x reader #bts x reader #bts recs #svt x reader #seventeen x reader #svt recs #seventeen recs #honestly it is only one seventeen fic right now #i had/have a bts phase

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devieuls · 10 months

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The way of love pt.X

Neteyam Sully x Tayrangi Fem Reader (Na'vi)

Warning of the Serie: MDNI. Dom Neteyam x Fem Reader; SMUT; ANGST; FLUFF; Dirty Talk; Fangs; Bites; Blood; Spit; Power Play; Jealousy and Possessiveness; Foreplay; violence; Swearing; Teasing; Unprotected Sex; Enemies (because of you, Neteyam treats you well). Aged characters: Neteyam 19 y.o / You 18 y.o. SERIE

Synopsis: After a great loss happened in your family, you are forced to take a role that before did not belong to you, following a path that you will feel like your only in time. Just when you thought you were finally overcoming the loss, your clan shows up with those you blame for the great offense received. You are the daughter of the first Olo'eykte of all clans and are about to take your mother’s place to lead the Tayrangi clan, but first you must follow Neteyam (the eldest son of the man you detest with all your heart) To train him, despite your contempt for the Sullys and everything about them, you inevitably bond with the boy, unknowingly falling in love with him.

CHAPTER WARNING: ///////

Lenght : 6k

Notes: This chapter is perhaps one of my favorites, after this, will miss only the last chapter (chapter 11) and then the series will be finished. Enjoy the plot twist and leave a comment to let me understand what the chapter was like

NA'VI WORDS: 'ITE: Daughter; SA'NU: Mother; YAWNETU: Darling; NGATSYIP: Little you; PARULSYIP: Children; TANHI: Star/Bioluminescent freckles; YAWNTUTSYìP: Darling

Character Cast: NEY'NARI: Your dead sister; IKEYNI: Your Mother; TSENTEY: Your Father; YÌMKXA: Your Ikran; ULEYTE: Your bestie; TUL'PEY: Your future Mate; REYIN'AL: Neteyam's future mate and daughter of Ninat

CLOTHES AND APPEARANCE: You ; Neteyam; Reyin'al

PART: 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4 ; 5 ; 6 ; 7 ; 8 ; 9 ; 10 ; 11 the end

· · ─────── · 𖥸 · ─────── · ·

Then why did your heart beat so fast at the thought of his eyes in love and enchanted as he looked at yours?

The morning came too early for your taste, the sea breeze and the sun’s rays forced you to wake up in a bad mood. A long sigh came out of your mouth when you remembered that today you were going to go to the Omatikaya clan, already feeling the pains in your stomach that made you regret even waking up.

You got up off the carpet, hearing your mother’s voice calling you already impatiently, almost certainly as she loaded her personal belongings on her Ikran, yelling at your father to do the same. You took advantage of the fact that Ikeyni seemed focused on yelling at your father to take a few minutes to eat some fruit and sneak out, to go say goodbye to Uleyte.

"Where do you think you’re going? Come back here and start loading your ikran." Your mother’s voice prevented you from implementing your escape plan, you sighed heavily before nodding and doing as she had asked.

For the next twenty minutes you loaded your items on your Ikran, doing everything slowly and unwillingly, hoping your mother would change her mind and tell you to stay home, but she didn’t. She turned her back on you by continuing to do what she was doing, not wanting to know of any protest or request to stay. Once the Ikran were ready, Uleyte had come to greet you and wish you a safe journey, much like the whole village.

Your friend took you aside before you left, taking you away from where the elders and clan were wishing a safe journey under Eywa’s protection.

"Are you all right? Are you ready?" she asked, caressing your face with kindness, noticing your little hidden expression of sadness.

"No and no, I don’t want to see him but I can’t avoid him either. I have a plan, I’m going to be the mature person who doesn’t suffer for him anymore." Your voice was pretty convincing, even though your heart knew perfectly well that it would screw up all your plans.

"Are you sure? I already have some things packed, I’m ready to get on Yìmkxa and follow you. You still have time to ask me" The girl’s words made you laugh and hugged her.

"Don’t worry, I’ll be fine." You answered and then you saw Uleyte take your face and put her forehead on yours. " Really, I’ll be fine," you whispered and smiled.

"May Eywa protect you, I will pray for you. If that Sully makes you suffer, I swear to you, I’ll learn to ride an Ikran and I’ll smack his ass." she said dramatically, only to smile and look you in the eye, leaving on your hand a band woven with the colors of the clan and small green leaves.

"Thank you…" you said with a thread of voice, then hugged her again, holding her with affection and holding the jewel. Feeling a gust of wind wrapped around your back, smiling gently, thinking that that was Ney'nari joining the embrace, just like when you were younger.

You broke away from the hug, when your mother called you from her Ikran, making you sigh before saying goodbye to your friend and return to your ikran. You put on the sash before you climbed on Yìmkxa and followed your parents in flight, noticing at the end Tul'pey watching you from afar, then turning around and going. Yet another sigh came out of your mouth as you walked with your family to the clan that had now become your worst nightmare, even though you would have liked to see Tuk, Kiri and even Lo'ak again, even though he looked like a total idiot.

The hours in flight passed faster than you thought and you watched your clan get further and further away, welcoming the land of the Omatikaya with wonder, noticing how the forest was enchanting, totally different from how you could admire it from the coastal area. Your family landed on the Omatikaya ground when the eclipse was already disappearing into the sky leaving room for the night, immediately noticing how the main village was welcoming you with much warmth.

You felt uncomfortable to see all those Na'vi who greeted you holding their hands to their foreheads and then pointing at you, returning the gesture immediately after your parents, looking at the people in front of you who opened the way for you to pass. You noticed how your mother’s pace accelerated when she saw Neytiri coming at her, hugging her with affection, while Jake formally greeted your family. Next to them you saw Kiri, Lo'ak and Tuk, but not Neteyam, you didn’t know whether to be happy or not, but a small gap in your heart made itself felt.

Tuktirey was the first to greet you, hugging you affectionately, emulating your mothers, this made you smile as you returned the little girl’s embrace.

"Have you grown taller these past few months? Soon you will reach me" you said playfully, making her laugh as you ruffled the pigtails in her head, while Kiri simply greeted you formally as Lo'ak. In the glances of the two older brothers you could notice some note of displeasure, making you realize that they probably both knew how you were emotionally.

"And you’ve become even more beautiful! Even your clothes are so beautiful!" Tuk’s voice made you smile again, she was really a sweet and kind girl, who did not miss the opportunity to give voice to her innocent and sincere thoughts.

The three young Sullys helped your family settle in one of the empty tree houses, very different from your clan’s wooden huts. You thanked the three brothers and for a few hours you spoke, while they took you out of the house to be eaten throughout the clan as was tradition. You would lie in saying that you had not sought Neteyam’s eyes among people or his perfume, but in this case you did not find them, his person around you seemed so absent.

"He can’t get out of the hut, it’s a tradition that the future Olo'eyktan stays alone in the Tsahik's hut" Lo'ak whispered to you, noticing that you were looking for something with your eyes. You were already fighting back. "I know you were looking for him, don’t pretend" he continued, making you sigh heavily before eating a steamed teylu.

"I didn’t ask" you snorted while you were eating.

"But you were looking for an answer, I just gave it to you." You turned to him, like you wanted to ask for something else, but you shut up before talking, knowing there was no point in raising your hopes.

"Thank you, but I didn’t need it." You whispered and then noticed the look of understanding that Lo'ak turned to you.

Lo'ak and Kiri could see from your eyes the same feeling of despondency that Neteyam had in these months without you. They knew that you both wanted each other and also understood your duties as future leaders of your respective clans, what they did not understand was why your parents did not come against you or why they seemed so blind to your unhappiness. When Jake announced the impending mating between Neteyam and Reyin'al, the Sullys' older brother had been desperate to have more time, he wanted to keep his promise to you, returning to you after some time, apologizing. The only one to understand it immediately was Neytiri who tried to convince her husband to give him more time. Neteyam had spent the days before her forced mating praying and meditating, looking for Eywa to beg her to take you back to him, if only to make you feel his apology.

After a few minutes of talking to Kiri and Lo'ak, an elderly Na'vi approached you, making herself known as "grandmother" thanks to Tuk who had greeted her. She asked you to follow her and you nodded, moving from the ground to follow her to an open house, where on the ground there was a young Na'vi that you recognized for the smell.

You rolled your eyes and noticed that Na'vi was Reyin'al. The old woman sat you next to her and looked at you. "Y/n te Skxumew Ikeyni'ite, as the last earthly guide of the future Olo'eyktan you are called to speak with the Tsakarem Reyin'al te Sxeke Ninat'ite, to guide her spiritually and mentally towards the great rite"The old Tsahìk, Mo'at, dismissed without too much ceremony, closing the curtain behind her. Your heart stopped beating as your lungs threatened to let you choke.

"There is nothing I can say about Neteyam more than one of his brothers can." You said after collecting as much air and security to look strong.

"You’ve been with my mate for over a month, you can tell me something more about him." Her sour voice made you doubt that she was the daughter of the singer of the Omatikaya clan.

"Is an exceptional Na'vi. He excels at everything he does, but I think you know that better than I do, because you grew up with him" Your tone became just as acidic, while a sharp tension was created in the air. She looked at you thinning her eyes, just like Pandora’s predators did before attacking their prey.

"These are things I already know, my mate is great at everything. He also told me about his lessons… with you." Reyin'al spit out the last part with poison, as if the thought of Neteyam with you burned in her mouth.

She had noticed how Neteyam spoke of you, describing you as exceptional, an excellent guide, a kind friend and admirable Leader, she had never heard him say a bad word about you. She smelled the situation, but she knew that Na'vi men were having fun with many women before mating through Tsaheylu with one woman.

He still remembered that 'Ma Tanhì' said when you asked Neteyam who she was, the way Neteyam seemed to fall apart after seeing you leave, and then run after you despite her trying to hold him back. She hated the moment they left and he wouldn’t stop looking back, or how he had waited for you to return to his hut until the last. She knew that you were something more than a teacher to him, but she could not afford to raise charges against the future Olo'eykte of a clan as powerful as the Tayrangi, best known for their skills in riding the Banshees and hunting.

"Like I said, he’s a Na'vi who excels at everything he does. He was a very good student." Your voice was cold, while you supported his predatory gaze with your indifferent, you did not intimidate Reyin'al in the slightest and she noticed.

"Then it is a good thing that he chose wisely to anticipate the rite of Tsaheylu with me. It was months away, but after he came home two months ago, he decided to cut it short. I guess I should thank you." Her words stabbed you in the chest without even expecting it. It was difficult for you to keep your face as indifferent as possible, because inside you a new piece of your soul was torn.

"There’s nothing to thank. I didn’t do anything." Reyin'al smiled at you with disdain before answering you.

"But you have done a lot. Don’t think I don’t know." At these words you looked at her, feeling the bitterness in your throat, as if it were poison.

"What would you know?" You asked, as your eyes tapered like hers, the only difference being that your eyes were more endearing, and she reassembled.

"That surely in your clan he will have fun with some woman, it is normal for Omatikaya men to have moments of leisure away from home." Her tone was mean, just like her eyes. "Of course I gave him permission for all this, you know how the guys are, but then he came back to me. He was so happy to come home, come back in my arms. He could no longer stay away from me" you looked at her with indifference, as you derealized what she was saying. "After all, I am his mate, I’ll be the one to bind myself to him and his soul tomorrow. For this, I thank you. You guided my soulmate wisely."

You took a deep breath before nodding, accepting her thanks, knowing there was something unsaid. "I only did my duty." You hissed

"You are too modest. You guided my soulmate on the right path, he returned home healthy and stronger. It’s no small feat, though I’m sure he’s had his affairs with some skank. You know, Neteyam had always been in love with me and he suffered so much from my lack that the first day when he came home we…you know. He was so passionate and engaging" his tone getting increasingly mean to you, you knew she was doing it on purpose. But the thought of Neteyam doing the same thing to you hurt so much. " He also started calling me 'Tanhi', He says I shine like a star, that’s why he calls me so. It’s something he said when we were kids, I’m so glad he remembered."

The heart fell into your stomach, being dissolved in the acids that were contained in that place. Neteyam called that woman what he called you, it hurt you, your bleeding wounds now seemed to result in hemorrhage. "I’m glad." you hissed before you got up from the tappet to get away from her.

"Don’t you wish me a safe path with my soulmate Neteyam? it is tradition." She smiled mean while watching you get up from the ground. Reyin'al waited for the blessing, noticing how your eyes revealed a veil of pain you were trying to hide. "May Eywa protect your path." You said clenched teeth, noticed her proud smile and winning posture before heading out of the hut.

You took a long, deep breath to hold back what looked like tears of pain, starting to walk to the opposite point from which you had arrived. You hated how you were feeling, you knew that maybe it was a lie, but there was that worm in your head that told you it wasn’t a lie. Why did she have to lie? Surely Neteyam did not tell her that they had had intimate moments, so why not believe her? But at the same time your heart screamed that you had to believe in him

Your heart hurt again, as if small needles were slowly puncturing it, causing you to feel pain, but you could not scream from the pain due to large throat knots. Unknowingly you found yourself in front of a closed hut but that had an unquestionable perfume, he was there.

You would have liked to see him, but at the same time you preferred not to. After two months you felt so close to him and the only thing you could do was lay your hand on the tent for a few seconds, along with your forehead, poisoning yourself with his sweet scent that was better than you remembered. You would have wanted to come in and look at his eyes as you convinced yourself that he was nobody, but your heart was beating so hard feeling his heart close again. You sighed once again before turning around and leaving, not knowing that Neteyam had felt youe presence too, but when he got up to open the tent it was too late to see you, so he thought it was just another joke of his mind.

It hurt, everything in you hurt, but in those few seconds that his perfume collided against your nose, it made you feel at home and calm. You were wondering if he really lied to you, all those promises, kisses, intimate moments, was it really all just fun?

You tried to buy yourself back, you couldn’t afford to collapse again, not in a place where everyone knew you like the next Tayrangi Olo'eykte, you would have been weak. And that’s how you swallowed your feelings, pulling the moments with Neteyam out of your mind and torturing yourself with Reyin'al’s words, it was good to know now, it would have been enough to convince you of the woman’s words and your heart would not have made a beat thinking of that boy who was not yours.

It took you some time before you found the right road to the house where you were staying with your parents, and when you found it you rushed in with the intention of going to sleep. Your mother told you a few things, but you ignored her words to keep your mind empty, nodding as if you were consenting to everything she said, then taking your things and going to sleep in those strange capsules that were the clan’s bed.

You prayed to Eywa to take away the pain, to strengthen you for the next day, and to protect your heart if you saw Neteyam, so as not to fall for him again. You closed your eyes, unknowingly seeking comfort in the necklace around your neck, forgetting that some threads are twisted belonged to Neteyam, feeling strangely better before falling asleep.

The day greeted you in a way too tortuous for you, the air was so intrinsic of happiness around you, hearing some Na'vi preparing the village for the big event. You could understand their joy, after all the eldest son of Olo'eyktan was going to take his place, and lead the clan in a new era of prosperity and peace under the gentle hand of the Great Mother.

You opened your eyes, cursing yourself for waking up one more time, hoping that for some strange reason the capsule would fall, but unfortunately for you it wasn’t.

You climbed to the platform where there were already many Na'vi coming and going with some decorative objects or delicacies for the banquet that would take place immediately after the main event. Formal and ceremonial clothes adorned the slender bodies of the tribe, and guests from other clans, reminding you that you too should have prepared to honor the new couple who would be your clan’s ally, but there was no joy in your heart, only bitterness and sadness. These feelings increased when you noticed Reyin'al coming out of Ninat’s tent, dressed in a charming manner that almost looked like Eywa's daughter. The long black braids were adorned with jewels typical of the Omatikaya, with some feathers that you recognized as those of Neteyam and his family, her face was radiant and bold as she walked through the village to return to her tent, drawing everyone’s attention and eyes on her. You envied her then.

Lucky for you your mother Ikeyni found you with a speed and ease that reminded you why she was recognized as a great hunter and observer, she took you from her arm and then dragged you to the house where you were staying, to get ready. She wasted no time and arranged your braids, picking them up slightly and putting some items representing the Tayrangi clan before sending you to change with your dissent.

"Mother, the ceremony will begin later. Don’t rush me, nobody’s waiting for me" You snorted while wearing ceremonial clothes that strangely were so complicated and full of draperies. They remembered the nets your clan used to fish, while the loincloth cloth was draped in such a way as to simulate the waves, but thanks to the light breeze it seemed to emulate something vaguely like the wind.

"Ma 'ite, of course they are waiting for you. I told you about it yesterday, Mo'at asked that the teacher of Neteyam prepare him with tribal painting as a last step lesson, from student to Olo'eyktan. You said 'yes', so they are waiting for you now" Hearing your mother’s words you opened your eyes wide and walked out of the corner where you were changing.

"Me what? No. Why me? II have not accepted anything. And then, even dad taught and trained Neteyam, why does he not do it?" Your voice revealed a slight panic and exasperation. You couldn’t believe the one time you didn’t listen to your mother, she asked you to do this. It felt like Eywa was starting to play with you again, or your sister was trying to help you again, and at that moment you remembered the speech he gave to her two months earlier.

"Because I asked you, if you had told me 'no', I would have asked Tsentey. But you said yes, and I told Mo'at and the Sully family" She said, and then she smiled at you in those clothes. "You already look like the Olo'eykte Tayrangi. Today will be your time to be the face of the clan" Her sweet voice made you breathe heavily.

You didn’t feel like making a fuss and going against your own word, if you had retreated back, your word would never have been taken seriously by anyone. You looked at your mother’s eyes, full of pride as she saw you wearing those clothes that fully represented your clan and your status.

"Your sister sewed this dress a long time ago, she said she would give it to you on the day of your social debut as the future Tsahik, as she said that you would be the spiritual voice of the clan…now you wear it to represent the Tayrangi as the future Olo'eykte and Tsakarem" as if the memory of Ney'nari were hurting her, in fact she never spoke of her.

"Me? Tsahik? I was so rebellious and unmanageable, how could she think I would be a good spiritual guide?" You said laughing bitterly at the memory. Ironic how even your clothes reminded you of your sister, it seemed like she was doing everything to remind you of that Tsaheylu argument.

"You were, but she said that your soul was deeply connected to Eywa, even if you didn’t participate in the rites, you ran into the forest or the sea and connected to the native animals. She convinced me that you would become a great Tsahik, but look at you here… My little girl will be Olo'eykte" She caressed your face gently, and glimpsed in your eyes a bit of the spiritual essence of Ney'nari, making her smile. "Now go, you’re already late and I still have to get ready." she said before she left you. You knew she was about to cry over Ney'nari’s memories and you left her alone, knowing she didn’t like to be seen in moments of fragility like that.

The dress felt like it was giving you warmth and strength, so you thought your request last night had been answered this way, 'a protection for the heart if I had seen Neteyam'. Now you were going to see it and you were squeezing into those fabrics that let you wear your sister’s warm embrace.

When you arrived at the Sullys' house, Neytiri greeted you with a kind hug, and then formally greeted you. She was charming, her clothes worthy of a Tsakarem, colorful and refined, while her body presented some paint marks that recalled the colors of the Omatikaya clan.

"Ma yawntutsyìp, you are wonderful. It seems that you have already taken your mother’s place" Neytiri’s gentle hands caressed your face, touch and sweet and warm.

"You are wonderful too, ma Tsakarem," you laughed slightly, noticing how her gaze fell on yours, reminding you that she wanted to be called by her name. "Ma Neytiri" this time she smiled, then called Tuktirey.

The little girl showed up with a deep bowl that contained white paint, mother and daughter accompanied you to Neteyam who was a bundle of nerves inside his tent. He stood with his back as his hands leaned on what appeared to be a table or shelf with some clothes on it that he should wear. Your hands trembled, just to see him from behind was taking your breath away

"Ma'itan, it’s time to get ready…" Neytiri politely said, as she had Tuk put the bowl on one of the furniture that were there, and then sent her to Jake to get ready. Neteyam turned around, ready to respond negatively to his mother, but remained silent when he saw you, enchanted.

Time seemed to slow, and your looks met, remaining enchanted by each other, it seemed like a lifetime ago since you saw those eyes for the last time. His eyes held a veil of sadness but there was something that made you realize that he was happy to see you but also sorry for something. Neytiri smiled as you reacted in that way, then quietly disappeared, leaving you two alone.

A thrill of excitement passed through your body. Your heart was beating faster and faster, as the butterflies in your stomach took flight creating a strange dance. You had the feeling that everything around you was fading, focusing only on him. As if the rest of Pandora is dissolving, leaving you two alone in an aura of magic and old promises.

The words got lost in your throat as you tried to breathe, to remember how to move and walk. Your senses are sharp, every detail of his face, his way of looking at you and moving seemed to have been eternally etched in your memory. His presence resonates within you, a sweet melody that makes every fiber of your being vibrate.

Your legs trembled as you approached him slowly, then carried a hand on your forehead and pointed out to greet him formally; the words intertwined in your mind as you tried to follow the plan you had studied so as not to fall back into his sweet trap.

"Sit down…" you whispered as you took the bowl that Tuk had left. Neteyam sat down and looked at you with so much adoration and nostalgia that for a second you almost thought that everything was back to the way it was. You felt a sense of déjà-vu as you sat in front of him, reminding you of the first time they had forced you to draw on his body for that distant holiday.

"You’re gorgeous…" Neteyam whispered in love, voicing his thoughts, watching you shuffle the paint inside the bowl with your fingers. At that moment all your defenses were dissolved, leaving room for a sense of vulnerability that overwhelmed you brutally. You felt like he opened a door in your heart, allowing all emotions to flow without restriction.

"Your partner is gorgeous." Your tone was slightly sad as you took the paint to begin the tribal blessing designs. The chemistry between you was palpable, and the mere encounter of looks seems to encompass a universe of meanings, which led you to look away from his cursed eyes.

"It doesn’t matter… It’s not her I’m looking at" he said without looking away from your face, while you drew the first line on his chest, feeling your fingers burning on him. At his words, you raised your eyes to meet his, for a moment you thought that nothing had changed and that you were still the same people who until a few months ago were kissing secretly in a shed, exchanging promises and talking about the future.

"You’ll see her soon, she’s very beautiful today, I saw her…" Your voice was nostalgic, you missed him so much. But talking about her was like eating a great dish, knowing it’d been poisoned.

"How are you?" he asked gently, changing the subject. His tone of voice was also evident in his nostalgia. He thought he was dreaming and that this was just a beautiful dream, shuddering at every touch accompanied by paint.

"Well, I'm fine… I’m preparing to become Olo'eykte and Tsahik… I’ll mate with Tul pey in four moons…" Your fingers did not stop working lines on his chest and shoulders, noticing with the corner of your eye his sad expression.

"Four moons…" he whispered, with disbelief and sadness "I-I’m glad you’re fine, ma Tanhi," you raised your face to hear that nickname you missed so much. Your eyes moved from his lips to his eyes, feeling that urge to kiss him and feel him again as yours.

"what about you? How are you?" Your voice was dying in your throat, you were kind of hoping he was sick today, just because he was gonna mate with Reyin'al.

"Nervous, I never thought I’d be here, on a day like this, to mate a woman I don’t feel like my own" he laughed nervously. "…It’s just… weird, that’s all."

You smiled softly at him, albeit with a slight tone of sadness, understanding where he was going. Your eyes passed through his entire body, following your fingers that traced lines and points on his torso and neck.

"Everything will be all right, the Great Mother looks up at you and protects you, ma 'Teyam" his face came up to yours and you felt his heart pounding wildly. Neteyam’s heart was beating faster and faster, He missed you so much, and he missed hearing you call him that.

"I would like the Great Mother to watch over me to follow this path with another woman." He sighed as his eyes pointed to your lips, "You… you don’t know how much I wanted to tell you before… That I’m sorry, for everything, Ma Tanhi. I-I swear. I should have told you about her, I was an skxawng"

A wave of heat enveloped you at those words, as your stomach filled with frantic butterflies dancing in a disorganized manner. Every breath became deeper and more difficult, as if just looking at him left you breathless. Your cheeks faded with a slight blush, while your thoughts falter between enthusiasm and uncertainty. A sweet and sudden feeling of lightness pervaded you, as if the chains of worry were melting.

The look you exchanged was full of contrasting emotions: passion and desire are intertwined with nostalgia and sadness of lost time. The air charged with an electrical voltage, a palpable energy that enveloped both of us after all that time. You could feel the presence of each other, the heat emanating from your bodies, as if there was an irresistible call that united you two. Your eyes attract like magnets, you peer each other, looking for clues and signs that confirm that everything you have shared in the past can still exist.

Each line of your faces bears the marks of the experiences you had experienced, but the sparks in your eyes reveal that the feelings you felt were still alive and present. The romantic tension and the weight of time spent were felt. Doubts and fears crept into your heart, like a cold wind caressing the flames. Old pains and past disappointments are scars that cannot be ignored. And so, in the midst of this dance of desire, you stood there, staring at his lips intensely, breathing suspended, while he did the same.

"I have to finish…" You said to then lay clean fingers on his chest, making him sit normally, while you continued to create drawings.

He looked at you enchanted, hoping that you understood how much he still craved you, not only carnally, he wanted all of you.

Your fingers began to draw lines and curves on his face, trying to resist the temptation to still taste his lips, and it was difficult because of his strong and sweet scent, but also because of the way his eyes burned with love on you.

The fear of suffering again, of putting at risk what was rebuilt after the separation, holds back your deepest instincts, you couldn’t give in right now.

"I missed you, ma Tanhi. Every night, every day, I missed you so much." He whispered, noticing the little distance between you, the tension became heavier and harder for both of you.

"Neteyam… you are going to make Tsaheylu with Reyin'al…" your fingers passed over his lips, making the last lines of the tribal blessing design.

"I don’t want Reyin'al" he said, brushing your fingers with his hand, smearing himself with paint while he couldn’t look away from you.

Before you could answer, Mo'at entered the room, and you instinctively walked away not to raise any suspicions.

"ma parultysip, are you finished?" asked old Tsakik, looking at you, and then smiling when you nodded.

"Yes, ma Tsahik." You stood up from the ground without looking at Neteyam, as you approached Tsahik to greet her formally. The woman puts a hand on your shoulder and dismisses you. For a second, before you left, you turned and your eyes met those of Neteyam who did not miss a single movement of yours.

A whirlwind of emotions erupted within you as memories of past love re-emerge in your mind. A mixture of happiness, excitement, and fear spreads through your body, making it difficult to control the visceral reactions that overwhelmed you. You sighed thinking how stupid you were, it was so clear you wanted him and you didn’t know if Neteyam really wanted you or was just playing.

Acquitted in your thoughts you clashed with Kiri, who held you from your arms to keep you from falling. "Hey. Y/n, but where’s your mind?" she asked, looking at you, checking if you were okay.

"Oh, I’m sorry, I’m just distracted." You said you’d pull yourself together and look at the girls in front of you.

"The ceremony starts soon, I know you don’t want to… but we have to go, it’s the other way. Follow me" Kiri took your hand and led you to the opposite side of the village, meeting again Neteyam who was to go with Mo'at from the opposite side to yours, he was dressed in traditional clothes that the Olo'eyktan wore before being recognized as such. You passed by, but your hands searched silently, stretching some fingers, as if they were attracted by a magnetic force, barely touched each other. You two felt the contact, light but full of meaning, that triggers electric shocks along the skin. It is as if an inner fire is burning within you, fueled by the memories of the past and the awareness that this moment could be the beginning of something new. And then let you go, you drag by Kiri and him to his grandmother.

When you arrived at the sacred place where all the clan and guests had already gathered, you sat in the second row, along with Kiri and Lo'ak, already seeing Reyin'al standing in front of the Tree of Souls. She looked at you defiantly, with the same eyes of those who were winning both the war and the battle, seeing you so close to the tree made her happy, because you would see that Neteyam had chosen her.

When Neteyam reached her you felt a squeeze in your heart and Lo'ak offered you his hand to shake if you needed it, remaining silent and respecting your pain. Every word of the Tsaheylu rite stabbed you in the heart, and with it you shook Lo'ak’s hand ever stronger.

"Oel ngati kameye, ma Neteyam," Reyin'al said as she took her braid very theatrically, glancing at you to make sure you saw it.

Neteyam remained silent for a few seconds, feeling the pressure on him and the look of Jake burning on his skin, hoping that he would do nothing foolish, while Neytiri hoped that her baby would become a man and follow his heart.

Neytiri understood that you and Neteyam had something similar to what she and Jake had had, she understood that since she first saw you together. In fact, she sent Lo'ak instead of Tsutey to check where you and Neteyam ended up that night in the shed.

A mother feels and understands her children even before they understand each other, so in the months when he had returned home, she did everything to help him and encourage him to follow his heart. After all, she was the one who raised her kids by telling them about her love story with Jake Sully.

Neytiri was shaking Jake’s hand while mentally encouraging his first son to make the right choice, and was slightly disappointed when she saw Neteyam take his braid. She was waiting for him to put it back, and then she saw you on the other side. You shook Lo'ak’s hand, grieving, while Kiri gently scratched your back.

Seen from the outside, no one would ever suspect that you were suffering, after all you were rigid and composed, but those little details didn’t escape her.

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Notes II:

This is officially the penultimate chapter, it tears my heart. Anyway, I’m trying not to hate Reyin'al, but I can’t </3

-Mel

(I’m in love with this picture, okay? Okay.)

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royaljestersfirst · 6 months

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Fizz & emotional integrity

this is the first of a series of character analysis posts i want to make about Fizz because i think that he’s a very rare representation of a character in great contact with his emotions and quite far in his trauma healing journey. this post turned out to be mostly about s2e6 bc i think it shows up well in conflict. i don't claim that Fizz is communicating in a perfectly healthy way (who does tbh!), but he is very genuine in his feelings and communication and i looove to see that. imo you can absolutely be an emotionally authentic bitch 💅✨

some ppl judged Fizz for being very rude to Blitz and i don't see why that's necessarily a bad thing. he thought that his childhood best friend actually resented him, wanted to hurt/kill him, was not interested in seeing him for 15 years, then crushed his gig and fucked off again. he has no reason to trust or be kind to Blitz, and it’s understandable that he’d want to vent his anger and protect his pride.

what touched me was how he reacted to Blitz saying that's not how things really went. even though he was just furious, he immediately unclenched his fists and paid attention. it shows that Fizz cares a lot about this relationship even after all this time, so he's ready to lower his defenses and try to listen.

he is still angry at the hurt he was caused, at this point he still thinks that Blitz left him after the accident. even then, after hearing that Blitz is remorseful, he deeply empathises. Fizz tries to get where blitz is coming from while not downplaying his own hurt.

without hiding his true feelings, he expresses how important Blitz was to him by saying that he wouldn't be so angry if he stayed by his side. that requires lots of emotional honesty and vulnerability, especially for a traumatized person, especially in conversation with the same person who hurt him.

he honestly says that he can't just forgive and forget everything. however, by talking about being okay now he shows that he may move past it. his words may also ease Blitz's guilt and self-loathing which Fizz empathized with earlier.

after this rollercoaster of emotions, he openly shows how much he appreciates his "former bestie, then lifelong enemy, then recent hero, now newly rekindled sort of friend" (btw the fact that Ozz knows all that shows how much Fizz is communicating about his trauma&emotions with his partner which is sweet).

Fizz is a character who feels a lot and deeply. he is unapologetic about his anger but he also is not embarrassed to show how much he cares. he is ready to confront and process difficult emotions, listen and be vulnerable even when the conversation is hard.

he demonstrates great emotional integrity considering his childhood of conditional "love", physical&mental trauma, abandonment, abuse and exploitation. his ability to stay true to himself after all that speaks volumes about his resilience, his connection with his own emotions, the supportiveness of Ozz, the strength of his childhood bond with Blitz, and perhaps the professionalism of his therapist 😄

anyways what do you all think about his character? do you agree with my interpretation? i love this bitch and love to talk about him 💕

#i recognize that this post might be extremely biased lol. i've never written character analyses but i tried ehhhh #fizzarolli #helluva boss #my post #text #character analysis

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soulrph · 8 months

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some vibes that i absolutely think need to be explored in a dnd thread (bc baldur's gate 3 has the lot of us CAUGHT!)

first, characters sitting by the campfire. cooking a nice meal with the supplies they've gathered along the way. maybe they use a very highly sought-after ration as a treat after a long day, like cream or fresh meat or a spice of some sort. they sit around the blaze together, and tell stories of their earlier travels, adding ingredients to the meal and fuel to the fire, and bonding as they discuss what's next in their shared adventure.

i also love the potential of them walking together along a long, winding country road! maybe they pick some flowers idly, or for each other, or maybe they find herbs or vegetables or fruits to add to their supplies. maybe they overhear footsteps up ahead and have to decide between keeping to the path or rushing into the nearby stream to avoid being seen or smelled. perhaps they have a horse, or two horses, or even a carriage, or maybe they're just walking along together. they could discuss what's next in a journey, or their choices from earlier encounters. if we think of roads as liminal spaces, this is an opportunity for many things to be happening, from a fallen tree blocking the road, to the road forking at a junction in the woods, or enemies/allies travelling along the same path, or even a side quest of sorts awaiting them in the woods!

character A meets character B when they're wounded and unconscious, and brings them back to their camp, either out of fear of what might happen if they don't, or for concern for B, or maybe they recognize them from somewhere! they nurse them back to health, and have to fend off attacks along the way because B is too weak to retaliate, and ultimately it leads to a curious bond where neither are willing to separate from the other, but they also don't know nearly enough about each other to understand what makes them trust each other so much.

the last one for this post: the two characters have travelled a long way. they're tired and weary, battered and bruised from past battles, and they find themselves in a merry kingdom that welcomes them heartily to a party, where they get to eat and rest and bathe and dress in finery and attend a ball together. and this may sound romantically leaning, but i also think it works in a platonic sense or a parental sense, because i think the concept of watching someone you've grown to care about finally laugh and smile and enjoy themselves after a long, brutal journey, is smth that would make many people very happy. and they get pulled to their feet for a dance, and this night of levity and merriment, as beautiful as it is, still inspires a transformation in the journey. perhaps the more experienced or worn-out of the two decides to slip away in the middle of the night, leaving a letter that begs the other to stay where they're happy and safe and allow them to finish the journey alone. or maybe they're about to leave but the other character intercepts. like there's so many outcomes for this one besties!!

#OKAY TO REBLOG!#plot ideas.#plots #wishlist.#wishlist plots #( this could be the first of many )#( but i also just wanted to write these out )#( bg3 has me cornered in an obsession )#( anyway bon appetit i hope you guys find these interesting! )

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xalygatorx · 3 months

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Unbound | Chapter 17, "Get Up"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: Already weakened from their fight with the duergar and subsequently Glut as well to protect Spaw’s circle, the party encounters their most monstrous enemy yet in the Underdark while they seek a place to rest. On their last legs and fighting for their lives, Áine reawakens an old power within herself to save them all at a cost. Astarion, mortally wounded and terrified for Áine, scraps with his allies as they try to help him. The group finds a safe spot to make camp and focus on recovering. An old acquaintance returns to Áine.

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Graphic fantasy violence (appropriate for canon, but described in detail); blood; descriptions of pain and injury (seeing it on others and feeling it); grief; trauma and descriptions of trauma, panic, and anxiety responses; angst; comfort/hurt; close calls for canon characters; no one dies but I do love to toe that line, besties; suggestive dialogue and content; lightly proofread

Word Count: 9.3k

Listening to: Destroyer - Of Monsters and Men

“I knew that fucking mushroom was going to be trouble!”

“Seemed like a fun guy at first.”

“Karlach,” Wyll warned through a snicker at Gale’s joke, “he didn’t mean it.” More likely it was Wyll who didn’t mean what he was saying because Gale had gone all-in on that one.

Karlach was halfway between laughing and barbecuing their wizard. “Gods, I hate you both,” she seethed, her flames calming in time with her chuckling. “Affectionately.”

“Chk,” Lae’zel grumbled. “There is no overlap in love and rage.”

“There is when it comes to dealing with their puns, Lae,” Karlach noted, adjusting the straps of her pack. “Gods, I need a nap and away from these two… Áine!” Up ahead, the bard paused and glanced over her shoulder at the tiefling barbarian. “How long until we camp?!”

“Soon,” Áine called back, taking stock of their party while she was half-turned. They were all tired and battered—the duergar had proven a tough fight, especially when their plan to take them by surprise had failed and one of the slavers had raised a small army of zombified corpses to fight on their behalf. Gale had helped to minimize the damage by destroying the rope ladders connecting the wooden platforms and funneling them into a singular nearby path, but they’d still taken a beating.

And then there was Glut. They’d no sooner finished one fight before another was started and they’d had to kill the clanless myconid, who’d attacked them as soon as Áine refused to betray Spaw’s confidence.

They’d meant to take a more straightforward path back to Spaw’s circle, but the path had led them in a more roundabout route than intended and they were now more fatigued than ever. At least the path forward was clear—the Selûnite outpost was just up ahead and with a couple of short climbs, they’d be back near its crumbling walls and able to retrace their familiar path from its gates, back to their old camp.

“What do we think?” Áine asked no one in particular. “Keep going until we’re back to the circle?”

“The outpost is just there,” Shadowheart pointed out, unable to keep the wrinkle from her nose when she gazed upon the outpost again. Áine resisted rolling her eyes. “I don’t recall the circle being too far from where we ran into those minotaurs, do you?”

Áine shook her head. “Not too far, no. And we are likely the safest there while we recover.”

“It sounds as though our best option is to make our way back in full,” Halsin supplied, supportive of their conjectures in his reaffirming way. He cast a glance across the others, his features a little grave as he took in the smattering of split lips, bruises, and limps. “Anyone opposed?”

Silence stretched and Áine drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself. She looked to her side, meeting Astarion’s eyes as she said, “We keep moving then.” He nodded once, equally roughed up but ready to settle down somewhere he felt safe enough to meditate and heal. He walked along just behind Áine as she approached a rocky incline and said, “If anyone starts to feel otherwise, please say something, alright?”

There was a collective murmur of agreement as the group fell into step behind her. Áine set her jaw and prepared for her body to protest as she scaled the craggy outcrop. It echoed its ongoing soreness with renewed fervor, but she made it to the top just fine. Her shoulder was even cooperating for once and it made her a little more optimistic about their journey back.

She was so focused on assessing her condition that she didn’t notice the statue she’d risen beside until it nearly scared her out of her skin. Áine hopped back, prepared for a fight until she realized it was merely stone. On closer inspection, she saw that it was a life-sized statue of a drow in mercenary garb.

On even closer inspection, she realized it had once been a drow. It wasn’t stone-carved, it was a petrified elf. “What in the Hells…,” she murmured, her fingertips tracing along its arm.

“A statue?” Gale asked, stepping to the other side of the petrified drow and lightly knocking against its shoulder.

“Not always, I don’t think,” Áine murmured, her eyes shifting further down the path and seeing more of the same. She raised her voice slightly as she ordered the party, “On your guard.”

“Always,” Lae’zel murmured in confirmation, her hand resting against the hilt of her sword as her reptilian eyes traced the eerie plateau.

Áine neared another of the petrified drow mercenaries, noting that this one was unmasked. The look of unbridled terror on his face, frozen into eternity, sent a chill down her spine. There was no telling when this had happened exactly, but every survival instinct she had urged her not to linger. “Let’s hurry up t—”

She was cut off by an unnatural rumble through the ground beneath her feet. Áine steadied herself, glancing toward her friends also struggling to keep their footing. “Another bulette?” Wyll wondered aloud. It did seem the most likely based on their experiences so far, but Áine’s urge to hasten away intensified nonetheless.

“I don’t want to find out, let’s go,” Áine said, turning around to step back down to the plateau and get to the break in the outpost wall. She didn’t manage more than the turn before she looked up and saw precisely what had created this purgatorial statue garden they stood amongst.

Spines rippling with every undulation of its ghastly tentacles, the monster that had upset the earth in its uprising lifted into the air and opened its singular, enormous yellow eye. Its pupil spasmed and adjusted, skittering between them for just seconds until its mouth opened on a scream, the expression splitting its nightmarish face in twain.

“RUN!” Karlach shouted, jarring them all from their varied states of panicked freezing.

Bolts of light shot from the ends of the spectator’s appendages, barely missing Áine and Gale, but hitting Shadowheart and Halsin. The bolts paralyzed them, rooting them in place with only their eyes able to move. Any plan to retreat was shelved then and those still able to move turned to fight.

Gale was the quickest to react, unleashing a fireball at the creature and hitting it squarely in the eye. It screeched and flung an appendage at him, sending him sprawling against a nearby outcrop. He clutched his side, rivulets of blood weaving from beneath his hair and across his temple as he shot more fire at the creature. “Ardē!”

Arrows sliced the air from Astarion’s bow, finding purchase in the creature’s leathery skin and the jelly of its eye. Lae’zel surged forward, sword in hand, only pausing along the way to free Shadowheart from her paralysis. The cleric looked jarred but nodded to the githyanki in thanks as she quickly dredged up what healing magic she had left, spreading it across the group.

After Halsin was also cured of his paralysis, Wyll concentrated his final dregs of power to unleash bolts of red eldrich energy upon the beast, unsheathing his rapier when he felt his strength draining from the effort to little avail. Nearby, Karlach screamed wrath into her veins, aflame as she took her battleaxe into the fray and hacked at one of the spectator’s tentacles.

Their confidence was momentary. Fleeting, even, as their preexisting injuries screamed back to life, worsened or accompanied by new ones with every bite, every hit, and every bolt the monster threw their way. They were reminded that they’d meant to retreat, only fighting out of necessity, when the spectator took a chunk from Halsin’s broad, blackened shoulder with its needly teeth and flung him into the dirt near Gale.

The appendages ignited anew with bolts of what they first thought would be another paralysis spell but instead found purchase on the petrified drow. Reinvigorated from stasis, the mercenaries were propelled into the spectator’s defense and caught the party’s blades with their own.

Astarion’s attention diverted to sinking arrows into the resurrected drow, finding his shots counting for more against the smaller enemies descending upon their companions. He was unloading an ice-imbued arrow into a mercenary nearing Áine’s flank when the spectator unleashed a new wave of paralysis that caught him in its turning tide. The arrow had found its target, loosed just before the light struck him.

His crimson eyes froze wide as the spectator descended upon him, shredding his torso and right arm with its teeth. He was left unable to scream his agony as his blood poured from the gaping wounds, his undead body barred from beginning any sort of healing process until he could move again.

Cold blood waterfalled from his slashes as the spectator ravaged their frozen, bloodied friends, only Karlach, Lae’zel, and Áine left mobile. He felt his body growing colder, his mind growing fuzzier and number, sending him back in time to when this was his normal state of mind, bloodless and barely alive. If he could have shuddered, his body would’ve made him. Instead, he remained frozen in time, his struggle against the enchantment rooting him in place weakening with every second he continued to bleed.

It occurred to him that only seconds had gone by, seconds that felt like eons, when he heard Áine scream his name. With effort, he focused on her. Unfortunately, so did their foe. As the creature turned on her, suddenly bleeding out in his paralysis wasn’t his worst fate.

Watching this thing kill the woman he adored and being unable to save her was.

Áine had been working off adrenaline and horror ever since the monstrosity hovering over them had hurled Gale to the ground. Each time one of them was paralyzed, it was a race with just her battered legs and her swords to fend it off one of her defenseless friends before it killed them in their stasis. Suddenly it was just herself, Lae’zel, and Karlach left moving. The drow were all dispatched save two. Áine had rushed to help when she saw Karlach roll with one of the resurrected elves over the edge of their plateau and disappear, only stumbling to a stop when the one Lae’zel had been fighting threw the injured gith against a rock and came at her instead.

An arrow had sliced the air and punctured his side, a sweep of ice blossoming beneath the drow’s feet that immediately sent him down on his face. Áine’s mistake had been to assume that was enough in her desperation to get her blades back into the monster assaulting her friends, her vision tunneled into protecting her loved ones as she’d slid on the ice herself and fallen on the drow’s upturned blade.

The possessed mercenary thrust up into her when she slipped and Áine gasped, muffling a low whine of pain as she stabbed her scimitar into his neck, effectively finishing him off. She looked down at the long, spindly dagger he’d plunged into her stomach and her fingers twitched, aching to pull it out despite knowing she shouldn’t. She felt a familiar tickle of drow poison spreading through her, but her resistance was such that pulling the dagger out and letting her wound bleed more freely was the larger danger.

The keening of stripping metal and tearing of flesh broke her bemusement and she whirled, tracing the spectator and seeing amongst its multitudes of teeth—

“Astarion!”

Gods above, there was so much blood. All around her, but leaking without pause from his pale body, his armor shredded where he spurted red. This can’t be the end…

Her vision shifted as her wounds and her panic at seeing her lover and her friends so horrifically mangled sank into her mind. She didn’t see the spectator change course. She wasn’t even sure she would have cared if she had. Perhaps she would have felt relief that it turned its attention away from Astarion onto her. Maybe he could get away.

Áine’s eyes rose to meet the spectator’s gaze, her features taut with defiance as she stabbed both her scimitars into its dripping, lacerated sclera. It responded with an unearthly shriek and a hurl of its tentacles that slammed her like a ragdoll into a nearby stalagmite with a hard crack.

The scream in Astarion’s throat was half-loosed when the paralysis finally wore off, but the condition’s fade sent him immediately tumbling to the ground, into puddles of his own blood. Shaking, he raised himself on his elbows, his nails digging and scraping against the plateau gravel as he tried to drag himself forward. The sensation brutalized his mind with intrusive flashbacks—the scratching and clawing against a stone crypt lid, painstakingly picking dirt out of the ridges after seizing against the dungeon floor for hours after being whipped, beaten, and carved into. He ignored them, unwilling to let his last thoughts be those long wretched years. If anything would be his and his alone, it would be his death.

“No, you can’t die,” he gritted out, his voice barely managing above a murmur as he clawed the dirt in a daze, desperately trying to get to Áine. What would he even do when he got there?

She was slumped in a heap on the ground next to the rock she’d hit, her shiny pearl locks bathed red and pooled around her face. A dagger he hadn’t even seen pierce her stomach was buried to the hilt and poked past her arm folded beside her. The spectator made a breathy noise that almost sounded like a laugh and the odious air flowing from its jaws stirred Áine’s hair. It was the only movement Astarion saw from her.

He snarled, one of his palms slipping in blood and sending him to the ground again. “Get up, damn you!” he growled, but his voice cracked in desperation.

Áine, barely lucid, slowly tilted her head, looking through hair stained red at Astarion. Around them, the paralysis was slowly wearing off the few it affected, Shadowheart included, but the damage was so great and the situation so hopeless that the freed immediately collapsed beneath both. Áine’s vision blurred and she heard Astarion plead with her as if through a long, narrow hallway, his words clear but far away.

Subconsciously, she extended her arm, reaching for him despite knowing neither of them could make the crawl. She winced at the simple movement, her body rending around every injury. She could feel her pulse, an irregular burning around the dagger buried in her belly. Get up, she growled inwardly, her mind’s voice sounding a mix of hers, Astarion’s, and voices from her past, not all of them fond.

Shaking, she withdrew her outstretched hand and planted it against the ground, her bicep straining as she tried to do as he asked. The hilt of the dagger clacked against the dirt, sending a new shock of pain through her body and she shuddered, a hiss escaping between clenched teeth. Áine managed to push herself up just enough to turn towards the lingering spectator, her body vibrating with the effort while her legs remained buckled beneath her. A cough wracked her body and a spatter of blood projected from her parted lips.

The spectator blinked slowly, its lids hitting the hilts of her blades still sheathed in its eye. It seemed undeterred, its gigantic, slobbering tongue slipping over the surface of its teeth as it stared at her and then began to advance again.

She heard her name croaked again from the vampire lying nearby, too weak to even sit up despite trying desperately to. She could hear his hands splashing against the gore he crawled through, too drained to find purchase on the slickened cave floor.

Áine’s mind remained addled with her own urgent demands to her body, her memories surfacing in a mingling of voices. Astarion’s, Shadowheart’s, the illithids’, even her father’s. Was this what people meant when they spoke of one’s life flashing before their eyes? Was she dying?

No. No, she wouldn’t die. None of them would. An old voice resonated in her, reminding her, and her mind traced the contours of that voice with recognition, finding within it a buried ancient power she’d long refused, ignored until it faded into ether and the bearer of that voice left her too. Áine, for the sake of her new family, would embrace them both now.

She shoved herself up once more on one shaking, bleeding arm and with the last of her might extended her other hand toward the looming creature, its bared teeth littered with scraps of their flesh and smears of their blood. Its maw split open, still hungry, still eager to strip every scrap of her skin, every ounce of her defiance off her bones.

A deadly silence fell over them all until all that could be heard was the crackle of building power around Áine’s hand, a building flush of emerald light blaring from her fingertips and the slits of her half-hooded eyes as, in the quiet that also extinguished the vocal clamor in her mind, one final word caressed her conscience with a tone of recognition.

“Oathbreaker.”

The crack that split the air was deafening and, for a second, scattered conscious members of the party feared that Gale’s orb had detonated. A blinding, sickly green light erupted from Áine’s hand. When the light cleared, the spectator lay in steaming slices of viscera across the cavern floor.

When the ringing in Astarion’s ears faded, he heard Áine collapse, unmoving against the rocks. No, was the only word he could think with any clarity and it grew repetitious and feral as his terror and fading condition mingled. No no no no no no no no no no no—

Something touched him and he snarled, swiping backward with one blood-covered hand. He heard Shadowheart mutter at him to stop moving as she dodged around him and turned him over to assess his damage while looking half-dead herself.

“Don’t touch me!” Astarion hissed, attempting to shove her hands away from his destroyed armor but finding himself too weak to win the battle of wills. The realization just made him further lose his composure.

“Hold still!” she snapped, prying apart what she could of his scrapped armor to get at the deep wounds beneath. Shadowheart caught Astarion’s wrists, drawing another angry snarl from the vampire spawn fighting against her aid. “Wyll, help me!”

Wyll’s face appeared in Astarion’s vision and the Blade took hold of his wrists from Shadowheart, pinning his arms above his head and away from her work. Astarion’s anger bordered on panic. There were too many hands on him and he was too weak to rid himself of any of them. He hissed and growled, still struggling despite knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that they were trying to help him. All he could think of was getting them off him and Ái—

“Go help her,” Astarion gritted, snapping at Wyll’s arm when it came within reach. The Blade held fast, avoiding his fangs and maintaining his bruising hold on the vampire’s arms. Seething, Astarion shouted at Shadowheart, “Go to Áine and get off me!”

“You are dying, Astarion,” Shadowheart finally snapped, near-black bruises under her eyes as she forced her remaining magic through her fingertips as they pressed into his torso.

“So is she,” he tried to snarl back, but the words came out with a panicked whine. He twisted desperately to try and see past Wyll to where Áine had collapsed. He got a vantage point just as Halsin and Lae’zel stooped to peel her limp body off the floor. “Bleeding Hells, Áine!”

“Halsin will help her until I can, but you’re in more dire shape than she is and she will never forgive either of us if you die,” Shadowheart gritted, finding Astarion even harder to hold in place now that he’d seen Áine.

“I don’t care!” Astarion spat, his eyes rolling back in his head as his vision blurred sideways again. “I don’t care, just help her—please—”

Shadowheart felt panic lance through her as Astarion started to lose his focus. At least when he was fighting her, she knew he was lucid, but he was drifting again and she could only assume the worst. “Shit,” she snapped, holding his face as his head started to roll sideways. “Stay with me. Astarion!”

Wyll looked at her, panic in his eyes that only flared further when she pulled one of Astarion’s daggers from his belt. “What are you doing?”

“He needs blood,” Shadowheart said under her breath, her features contorted in pain from her own injuries.

“Let me,” Wyll quickly said, holding out his hand. Astarion was half-conscious and had stilled his struggle in his delirium. “I’m in more of a condition to do so.”

Shadowheart hesitated, but he was right and they both knew it. She hesitated, handing him the dagger and switching her hands down to Astarion’s wrists. Wyll sliced his palm with a quick wince and held his dripping hand over Astarion’s mouth, squeezing the wound. There was a moment of uneasy stillness before Astarion’s entire body seized, almost succeeding in bucking Shadowheart off him as he lunged up toward the source of the blood. Wyll jolted but held his ground as Shadowheart wrestled the drained vampire back down onto his back.

“That’s enough,” Shadowheart said as she saw Astarion’s pupils begin to react more normally when shadows passed over them. “That will help and we’ll still be able to cart him to wherever we set up if he fusses again.”

Wyll retracted his hand, starting to scout a makeshift bandage when he felt Shadowheart’s fingertips against his, a gentle light cascading from the touch to knit his cut closed. Wyll looked up, meeting Shadowheart’s tired but grateful gaze. “Thank you.”

Realizing they were lingering, the two quickly retracted their hands and set back to work on getting Astarion into a stable enough state to move him. Astarion had grown slightly more aware with some fresh blood returned to his system, but he felt dissociated from himself. When his eyes did wander, they tried to follow Halsin’s hulking form as he struggled to find Áine again.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way her head had lolled on her neck when they’d picked her up, not an ounce of fight left in her. Furthest from his mind at that moment was what she’d done to save them all. He didn’t care as long as it meant she’d saved herself, too.

It made very little sense to Áine, when she awoke, that she was still alive. It simply didn’t add up. Not the way she felt her eyes open in such a familiar corporeal sense, not the warm hands she felt resting against her stomach, and not the way her persistent, stubborn heart still thudded in her chest.

But her eyes did open. So who was she to argue?

Past the fringe of her lashes, she saw a blur of dancing blue light, a shimmer of iridescent motes. When her amber eyes focused, she saw the bioluminescent spores for what they were, aglow as they wove in through the flap of her tent from outside. Their song thrummed gently against her aching head and seemed to settle among her bruises and cuts, their faint warmth second to the touch against her waist.

Gingerly, Áine turned her head to regard the cleric hunched over her. Shadowheart’s focus was solely on the wound she was pulling together in Áine’s gut, the dagger that had made it set aside near her medical pouch. The pouch was dotted with blood as if the dagger, coated in the substance, had been thrown down in a hurry. The shadows under the cleric’s eyes were nearly black against her ashen skin and while her hands appeared still against Áine’s flesh, she could feel the faint tremble in them through the wound they covered.

Áine tried to speak but found her throat dry as a bone. Shadowheart heard the little sound she made at least and her eyes flickered to the bard under her care. “Welcome back,” Shadowheart murmured, an attempt at humor.

“Did you have to revive me?” Áine asked, managing to find her voice this time but just barely.

“No,” Shadowheart said, the glow fading from her palms as she removed her hands to reveal a fresh scar where the drow’s dagger had run Áine through. “But it was close. Not just for you.”

“Is everyone—?”

“Don’t stress yourself and undo my work,” Shadowheart scolded Áine as she tried to sit up too quickly. “Everyone is alive. We’re back in the circle. We’re safe…” She gave Áine a peculiar look. “Thanks to you.”

Áine let out a shaky sigh of relief to hear the others were all alright. She parsed back through what she could remember before blacking out, but it was scattered. More vividly than what she’d done specifically, she remembered that whisper in her mind, the familiar gravelly voice as vivid in memory as in life. “Oathbreaker.”

At least it had worked.

Áine glanced at Shadowheart’s imploring eyes, feeling bare under the other woman’s scrutiny. She focused on the shadows beneath her eyes again and the bruises and cuts she could see scattered across her uncovered skin. “You should rest, too,” she informed the cleric. When Shadowheart grimaced, Áine insisted, “Seriously. You’ve done more than enough. Take care of yourself for a while. Please?”

“Fine, fine,” Shadowheart mumbled, waving Áine off as she gathered her things back into her pouch. She plucked up the bloodied dagger with a sneer of resentment. “I’m going to rid us of this unless you want it for some reason.”

“I’ve had enough of it, thanks,” Áine murmured.

Shadowheart nodded but didn’t yet budge from Áine’s side. She broke her troubled silence just as Áine was about to insist again that she go get some rest. “You know… Whatever you were before we met, before you were a bard, it’s okay,” she said, catching Áine off-guard. “It won’t change anything, even if you feel it might.”

Áine frowned. “I’m not so sure.”

Shadowheart nodded, meeting Áine’s eyes. “I understand. And I can’t speak for everyone, of course. But I can relate in a way. I felt the same fear when I hadn’t yet told you I was a Sharran. And, for whatever that’s worth in relation to what you’re dealing with, that ended up okay.”

“It’s different. You’re not riddled with shame for it,” Áine said, trying to gentle her curt tone. “But I understand your meaning. And I’ll take it to heart.”

“That’s all I ask,” Shadowheart said, patting Áine’s hand. “That and for you to check on Astarion when you feel ready to get up and around again. Not that you wouldn’t regardless, but—”

“Is he alright?” Áine asked with renewed urgency. Memories of his torso slashed apart, his panicked frozen eyes, and how he’d tried to drag himself to her flashed through her mind.

“He is,” Shadowheart hastened to reassure her. “He wouldn’t be if you hadn’t done what you did. None of us would be, I don’t think. But he made it very difficult to save him and I’m worried I didn’t find all his injuries before he ran me off.”

“Ran you off?” Áine repeated.

“It took me and Wyll to stabilize him on that cliff so we could move him,” Shadowheart told her. “He was fighting us nearly the entire time and telling us not to touch him.” Áine’s heart stung. “And yelling at us to go help you instead. Then when we finally got back and I took you over from Halsin, we had to all but cram him into his tent for him to leave your side and actually rest. Succeeding that, he wouldn’t let anyone in to finish cleaning up his wounds and—”

Shadowheart was becoming more and more impassioned and blustering as she recounted it, only pausing when Áine rested her hand against the cleric’s arm. “I’ll go.” Shadowheart was frustrated and Áine could see it, but she only got this flustered when she was also worried.

“Right. Thank you,” Shadowheart said breathily through a sigh as she ran a hand across her forehead. Her palms and fingertips were speckled with blood she’d missed between patients and her nails were crusted with dirt and grime. She looked like she could pass out at any moment and it was finally that fatigue hitting that encouraged her to follow Áine’s advice. “I think I’ve said it before,” she said as she turned to leave, “but I can’t remember in my current headspace if I’ve said it aloud to you… I was wrong about him.”

Áine adjusted to her side so she could push herself into a seated position. “How so?”

“I told you a while back that I doubted his intentions with you,” Shadowheart explained. “And I still sort of did, even after he asked me about your shoulder. But I was wrong. He loves you. Dearly.”

Áine blushed and the color got mixed in with the bruises splotching her skin. “I wouldn’t go that far, but—”

“Oh, I would,” Shadowheart insisted. “You should see the way he looks at you, especially when he thinks no one’s paying him any mind. Then you wouldn’t be able to argue with me.”

“I’m sure I’d still find a way,” Áine mused, gathering her hair into a low side-ponytail and noting with some alarm how streaked with blood her hair was. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she supposed she’d just forgotten both how much she’d bled and how much blood she’d fallen into in general during the fight.

“Hm. Probably,” Shadowheart hummed. “Take it easy tonight.”

“I will,” Áine assured her, watching her leave before slowly staggering to her feet. She ducked through her tent door as well, her eyes finding the cleric and watching her progress back to her tent.

Shadowheart started to deviate toward Halsin, who was working on closing a wound on Gale’s scalp. She hesitated and glanced furtively back as she felt Áine’s eyes on her. Áine gave her a scolding look that put Shadowheart back on a path to her tent, not satisfied until the cleric was in her tent with the bit of canvas falling back into place behind her.

Satisfied, Áine scoped out the camp, noting Halsin and Gale again but not resting until she also scoped out Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’zel. The last she’d seen of Karlach, the tiefling had been scrapping with one of the drow mercenaries and it had taken both of them over a ledge, but at a glance, she seemed the most intact of all of them.

Wyll looked more or less just a bit bruised with a few treated cuts to his name and he was assisting Karlach in checking a wound on Lae’zel’s head. Lae’zel had only agreed to Karlach evaluating her wounds, as she saw a sister-in-arms in the tiefling and felt less scrutinized by a fellow warrior. However, Karlach couldn’t touch Lae’zel without setting the young githyanki ablaze, so Wyll was permitted to be Karlach’s hands, carefully moving Lae’zel’s bloodied hair so they could check the damage.

From Áine’s vantage point, they looked like they were doing well to take care of each other, which meant she could feel zero qualms about going to see Astarion and likely staying there for the rest of the night thereafter if he let her. They’d been cohabitating since he’d confided in her just a couple of nights back, but she’d never seen him in such a state of injury and figured there was a chance he preferred to weather those conditions alone.

Meeting her comrades’ gazes as she passed them to get to his tent door, she exchanged smiles and reassuring looks with each, her heart full and her head light with relief that everyone, somehow against their odds, had survived another night. As put-together as she seemed on the surface though, her mind hadn’t stopped racing along with her heart since she remembered how badly wounded Astarion was before she fainted. Neither slowed until she was able to peek through the door of his tent and confirm he was inside, alive and in a deep reverie.

Áine held a hand against her aching heart, a sigh easing from her chest and relaxing her frame. He was okay.

Astarion lay on his bedroll, his fingers curled into small circles for his meditation and his skin littered with cuts and bruises. Shadows bloomed as dark as Shadowheart’s under his closed eyes, standing out against his porcelain pallor, dark petals against snow. He was without a shirt, either of his choosing or something Shadowheart and Wyll had managed to do when they’d fought to stabilize him. His pants remained but they were tattered from the battle, slashed through in several places.

To Áine’s relief, the wounds she remembered pouring blood to stone looked well on their way to healing. His chest rose and fell with even breaths despite not needing to breathe. She was glad he did anyway—it reassured her in times like this.

Her gaze shifted down to a small bowl of water and a cloth near the bedroll, the bowl half spilled across the dirt beside it. A relic of Shadowheart’s scrap with him, she supposed. Áine shook her head as she carefully sank to her knees beside him and submerged the cloth in the lukewarm water, wringing it over the basin. Didn’t he understand that whatever vigil he may have kept in or outside her tent would have done her no good at all if it hindered his healing?

She smirked softly as she supposed he probably hadn’t thought that far at all. He rarely could think more than two steps ahead into a plan at any given time.

Áine started with his arms, carefully wiping away the remnants of blood Shadowheart had been unable to get to and Astarion had likely left in favor of tending to his pain and exhaustion. She took her time to be thorough, humming the melody to “Lilac & Gooseberries” under her breath while she worked, musing over how she could change more of the lyrics to suit his fine qualities. When she felt a sliver of her bardic abilities touch upon the tune, she allowed them to flow in, giving the strokes she made with the cloth a touch of magic to help along his recovery.

She sighed again, soft and more sad this time. My poor boy, she thought, locating his essential oils near one of the pillows she’d brought from her tent and adding a couple of drops to the basin before she began cleaning the blood from his chest and neck. He was okay and she knew that. He’d go hunt and be better in a day’s time and he was already most assuredly more healed up than she was. She just kept thinking back to the look on his face after she’d gone down, and kept hearing that crack in his voice as he’d begged her to get back up.

It was possible, she thought while she featherlight cleansed his neck, face, and ears, that she may not have found it within herself to reawaken that old, unexplored power had she not felt compelled to push through for him. She was giving up before hearing his voice. She’d felt herself buckle, delirious with pain and fatigue, and flood with despair at seeing her friends so broken. At seeing him so broken, too. She’d started to lose hope.

A star in the Underdark, indeed, she thought, thinking she was perhaps still a little delirious with pain when she noted the sappiness of her own musings. She felt herself smile even though it aggravated the split in her lip. Áine drew her lower lip between her teeth, fidgeting with the healing cut while she moved on to Astarion’s hair, meticulously smoothing the red tints from his silver strands.

She didn’t notice he was conscious until a few minutes after he first opened his eyes, too focused on tending to his curls. When her eyes met his, she found them already on her bearing a mix of emotions, some of which she couldn’t quite translate. One almost looked like anger.

Áine’s lips curled in the beginnings of a smile that fell away when he suddenly bolted upright. They stared at each other—Astarion agitated and Áine bewildered—until Áine’s gaze once more traced the dark shadows beneath his scarlet eyes and held out her wrist. Astarion looked between her confused expression and the vein she offered him before scowling as if insulted and swatting her arm away.

More flummoxed than before, Áine’s eyes narrowed and she parted her lips to speak, but he lunged forward and swallowed her words, his hand catching around the back of her neck as he angled her head and kissed her hard. She made a small noise of complaint against his lips, bracing her hands against his chest when he crowded her with his body.

Regardless of his reasoning, Áine was uncomfortable and her wounds were aching as he pulled her closer and she slapped his cheek with as much force as he’d swatted her wrist away. It was enough to jar him and he withdrew, looking at her with shock that had mirrored hers just moments ago.

“Cut it out,” Áine mumbled once her mouth was free, the split on her lower lip feeling like it might bleed again. “Astarion, stop,” she said emphatically when he yanked her closer by her belt, slapping his hands away from the buckle.

His eyes, somehow far away and yet present enough to react, flashed with hurt. “I…,” he faltered, his empty hands hovering with nothing to touch as he tried to reroute his reactions. “Darling, I’m sorry, I just need to be close to you.”

“Then come here and be close to me, my love,” Áine suggested simply and with a patience beyond her years. She guided him to her and folded him in her arms, one of her hands moving to cradle his face as he buried his head against her chest. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” he murmured almost too softly for her to hear. She felt his tears trickle over her hand before she heard them in his voice. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Áine felt her faint frustration with him melt away along with the presentation of his poor coping mechanisms that had caused it in the first place. “You didn’t.”

Astarion craned his head back to look at her, his ear still pressed to her heart. His eyes were rimmed in red. “But I almost did,” he argued in a whisper, a quiet crack in his voice.

“And I almost lost you,” Áine murmured, sniffing against her own tears that threatened to come. “But I didn’t. We didn’t. We’re both alive and on the mend.”

“I don’t think you understand, dearheart,” he said, clearly very shaken. “I can never feel like that again.”

Áine frowned, smoothing her thumb against his tear-dappled cheekbone. “We will,” she told him honestly, not liking it any more than he did. “Probably several times before this is over.”

“Well, that’s…,” he paused, drawing a shaking breath. “That’s shit.”

The bard offered him a smile dipped in nothing but understanding and sympathy. “That’s life.”

Astarion scoffed. “There has to be something I can do,” he seemed to muse exclusively to himself. “If at the source of the tadpoles’ creation, we can sort what controls the cult, the parasites, even the Absolute, too, then—”

“Astarion,” Áine admonished him, her tone flat and unyielding. He stopped and looked at her, his expression pleading. “Power doesn’t make you safe. In fact, it often does the opposite.”

“Darling, I need the means to protect you,” he murmured through clenched teeth as he sat up from her arms, his hands moving to cradle her face. “To protect myself, to protect both of us.”

“I don’t need protecting,” she told him, her hands resting over his and holding them to her cheeks. Áine turned her head just enough to kiss the inside of his wrist. “This is the risk we take in—,” she sighed, kicking her anxiety aside, “in loving each other. Especially in our present circumstances.”

“Well, I hate it,” he snapped, his tone severe even as he stroked her face as carefully as if she were made of glass.

Áine raised a brow at him. A mostly teasing challenge. “You want out?”

“No!” Astarion muttered, tensing with embarrassment at how quickly he’d shot down the notion.

Áine tried to contain her smile but failed utterly. “Good. I don’t either.”

Astarion finally smiled a little and the sight eased the tightness in Áine’s chest. “Good,” he echoed. “May I kiss you now?”

“Depends why you want to,” Áine said. “Is it still old motions?”

“No,” he assured her, still occasionally blown away by how much of him she truly saw. It was becoming less jarring every time. “I just want to kiss you.”

“Then please do,” Áine said with a smile, giggling when her face was immediately peppered with kisses. He relished the sound of her delight before pressing his lips to hers again, his fearful urgency gone and replaced with a gentle savoring that did perfectly well to coax them both back into their bed for the remainder of their rest.

Áine fell asleep in Astarion’s arms, a thing that was now common practice for them but felt much more significant and rare when they’d even for a moment questioned the possibility that they’d ever have this again.

She woke to a faint tugging on her ponytail and when her eyes fluttered open, she saw the cloth she’d been using to clean the blood off Astarion being used to gently wipe down her hair. Áine watched him work for a moment, admiring his hands, before she traced the line of his arm up to his face. He briefly met her eyes to smile at her before he focused back on his task of painstakingly smoothing every reddened layer from her white locks.

“Good ‘morning’,” he said, using the term loosely as it was just as dark outside as when they’d finally settled in.

“Hello, love,” Áine mumbled, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. She noticed the water in the basin had darkened, which told her he’d managed to sort through more of her hair than she first realized. “How did you manage to do all this without waking me sooner?”

Astarion smirked. “Roguish stealth and dexterity, my dear,” he answered simply. “I’m afraid though that because of the oils you added to the basin last night, you’ll smell like me now.”

Áine laughed. “I probably already did.”

“Because you’re mine,” he grumbled as he leaned in to kiss her temple, reaching over her to wet the cloth again and wring it out.

The bard smirked. “Am I now? And what am I to you exactly?”

She’d never seen Astarion get so immediately flustered. His hand froze against the basin and nearly caught the edge and knocked it sideways until he steadied himself. He cleared his throat so hard he had to turn into his sleeve to cough. Were he not low on blood, she was sure he’d be a cherry red. “Well, I…,” he mumbled, realizing she was waiting for an answer. Astarion made an impatient noise in his throat, “Oh I don’t know! But isn’t it nice? Not to know?”

Áine snorted. “Is it?” She hadn’t expected this response, but it was an interesting one.

Astarion groaned and gestured vaguely when words didn’t immediately come to him. “Well, you’re not a victim. Not a target. Not just one-night-it’s-better-to-forget,” he listed off, seeming to find it difficult to look her in the eyes lest she see the vulnerability there. As if she hadn’t seen it before. “But then… Whatever in the world could you be?”

“Is this a test?” Áine asked, raising an eyebrow.

He sighed loudly as he brought the cloth back to her hair, working on the last few streaks so he could have a secondary reason to not look at her expression. “Well, what would you call this?”

“You mean what would I call us?” Áine bartered.

Astarion bit down a small, schoolboyish smile. “I do still like the sound of that,” he mumbled. Áine melted a little. What a silly man this was. She leaned up and kissed him, a smile curling her lips as she felt him melt into her. When they parted, he tenderly added, “And I do rather like that, you know.”

Áine smiled. “I know,” she murmured, nuzzling his cheek. “I do, too.”

He hummed, ducking his head to brush noses with her. “Thank you, by the way,” he murmured. Before she could ask what for, he bridged the gap and told her, “For snapping me out of my habits. For not taking advantage. For being patient with me.”

Áine’s gaze softened. “No need to thank me,” she told him, her voice a gentle lull. “Thank you for telling me what you needed and letting me help.”

Astarion’s stare became unfathomable and it was mesmerizing for Áine to simply watch the way his features shifted. He swallowed, but the motion looked difficult. “No need to thank me, dearest,” he murmured finally, nodding a little to himself after as he reaffirmed that this was something he could do, something reasonably expected. Something healthy. Something real.

“I would call us partners, for what it’s worth,” Áine answered him at last as he set the cloth back in its bowl. “And I’d also call us late to breakfast based on that aroma coming in.”

Astarion smirked. “You’re late to breakfast, dear,” he corrected her as he rolled the word “partners” around in his mind, testing it against his tongue without moving his mouth. Equal standing, level field, two halves of a whole. He snorted softly as Áine got up to get ready to leave their tent. Cute. He wasn’t entirely sure whether the word crossed his mind in response to her answer or to just watching her get up and around, but he supposed either could’ve been the case.

The couple ducked out of their tent and Áine’s eyes went straight for the campfire, smiling when she saw their friends gathering around to eat yet another hearty meal Gale had somehow scraped together from their supply bags. She was about to apologize for their tardiness when she heard Astarion ask over her shoulder, “Who is that?”

Áine faltered and looked up at him, following his gaze toward where Withers was set up. Her stomach dropped, but she also wasn’t sure why she was surprised. She’d reawakened the dormant powers of her broken oath, why wouldn’t he show up again?

Standing adjacent to Withers was an ornate phantasm of a knight, fully ensconced in spotless bronze armor cloaked in blackened patina. Fierce, fiery eyes of vibrant orange glowed through the slits in the helmet, plumes of necrotic energy flaking from the orange aura to lick at his plating as he leaned against his enormous greatsword. His angry eyes were already resting on Áine by the time she registered his presence.

Astarion expected her to gawk at least, as he was. Or be perturbed by the intruder in their camp space, even if Withers for whatever reason didn’t seem to be. What he didn’t expect was what she actually said.

“An old friend, I suppose,” Áine said, sounding more exasperated than appropriately horrified. It reminded him of how she’d reacted to Withers showing up in their camp as well, excluding when he’d intentionally or unintentionally jumpscared her of course. “I’ll be back in a moment or two.”

Her tone told him well enough that she wanted to speak to him alone, but he felt the urge to insist he accompany her as that innate protectiveness swelled in his chest. Ah how the tables have turned from the original “plan,” he mused, glancing down at her as she walked toward the knight. She was half the strange apparition’s size and yet strode with all the confidence of someone who towered three feet above him. Not for the first time, Astarion found his nerves easing a little at the sight and thinking, That’s my girl.

Áine drew in a deep breath as she crossed the thatch in the myconids’ circle, offering the knight a half-smile as she stopped in front of him. “Hello again,” she greeted him almost sheepishly.

“I have been waiting for you,” the knight informed her, the familiar voice stirring memories that brought her both pain and comfort. Gravelly and thickly accented, but shockingly kind. In more than a few ways, the strange soul who’d saved her in that first year of freedom. Until he’d realized she wanted nothing to do with the power her broken oath granted her and needed to make his way elsewhere to souls who needed his guidance more. At least, that’s what she’d assumed when one day she’d found him gone. “I felt your call rise again. Your broken chains echoed as they shuddered.”

She nodded slowly, still hesitant to accept this part of herself. It felt like a trap, retaining any remnant of her past and the creed that bound it. Even the shattered pieces. “I have people to protect now. I did it for them,” she said softly.

“A noble cause,” he acknowledged. “Just like the first time. I trust you still remember why you abandoned your oath?”

“Every moment of every hour,” Áine said, her throat tightening as her mind shoved the memories back down where she always held them fast. “I… I’ll never forget.”

“Good,” the knight decreed. “To know the reason for your fall, to remember it, is to know the shape of things to come. Your undoing should remain a source of comfort. For all oathbroken who have realized they are far better to choose their own path…but especially for you, Áine Ts’sambra.”

“Forgo my bloodname,” she ordered on a shaken breath. “My kin lie with my oath.”

“Your kin are alive and continue to spread their ill at Moonrise Towers under order of their master,” the knight said. “But you already suspected that.”

Áine’s blood ran cold. She had, but it was something different to hear it. She felt bile burn her throat as she asked with a forced even tone, “And my father?”

“Aye,” the knight confirmed, inclining his incorporeal armored head. “No less would be expected.”

She gave a flippant shrug of one shoulder. “I dunno. Rather hoped he might’ve died, I suppose.”

“Are you sure?” he challenged her.

“Are you suggesting I miss him?” she hissed in an effort to keep her voice low. “That I would ever forgive him?”

“No such thing,” the knight said. “But even now, the shadows gather around you. They have been with you since you ran. They sense the cracks in your armor and they yearn to be used. To be inflicted. Your power reawakens reborn. It is your path to pave, lass.”

Áine pursed her lips and glanced toward her feet. She knew what he implied. And he wasn’t wrong. While her fractured heart and broken mind reeled in terror at returning to those sickly lands knowing that the ones she’d fled still lived, some part of her looked upon this and saw opportunity. Closure. She’d always sworn to kill him, any of them, if they came after her, and some dark part of her welcomed that possibility as it drew ever closer.

“Will you be with us again now?” she asked, turning her gaze back up to his flame-made eyes. “Or is this just my ‘welcome back’ party?”

“You were not ready when first we met,” the knight said, his tone almost gentle. “You accepted this power out of fear of your family, out of fear of your weakness. You now know your way, but we reunite so I may show you how you might reach it if you have need of my teachings.”

Áine nodded. “Well, you are welcome in our camp, if you care for my permission,” she said, drawing a breath. “And I feel as if I owe you an apology. Not for resisting my power, but for how I treated you for most of our time together. I wasn’t myself.”

The knight actually chuckled. “You were young. Tortured. And too kind for your own good. Still seem to be.”

Áine smirked, a guilty press to her lips. “I suppose that’s something I’ll never shake.”

“See that you don’t,” the knight advised. “It is a rare thing and you possess the strength to protect that kindness rather than be taken advantage of for it.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Áine said, adjusting her ponytail and tracing her fingertips over the wet strands Astarion had cleansed the blood from just earlier. She glanced at Withers. “Hope you don’t mind a roommate.”

“Thou art as ever far too keen to seem amusing,” Withers informed her.

“Did you just say I’m not funny?” Áine balked. “You know what, nevermind. I’m done with both of you for a while.” When she turned to walk to the fire, the two strange figures exchanged a glance behind her back.

Áine joined Astarion’s side and served herself a bowl of porridge from the pot hanging over the fire, plunking a dab of honey into it from a jar nearby. She was surprised there was any left given how fond Halsin was of the stuff. As she stirred the honey into her breakfast, she cast another glance back at the stalwart knight. It was so strange to see him again, but also strangely reassuring. As frightening as it was for aspects of her past to be coming full circle, it felt overdue. She only hoped she proved herself in the end.

“Áine, did you hear me?”

“Hm? What?” she piped up, following the source of the voice back to Gale. “Sorry.”

“No need!” he hastened to say. “I was just curious about our, uh, new guest.”

“Do you know them? Or it?” Wyll pressed warily.

Áine deliberated for a moment before she shrugged and went back to eating her food, relaxing when she felt Astarion’s hand trace up her back. He was starting to get a little too attuned to when she was stressed. Or perhaps that was okay. Perhaps that was something she needed like he needed certain things from her.

“Just another member of the ‘Undead Peepaw Corner’,” she said, speaking a little more loudly so she could be sure Withers would hear her. “He’s fine.”

The group shared glances, save for Karlach who was fully focused on shoveling her breakfast into her mouth. Lae’zel also seemed generally unbothered, her trust in Áine enough for her to not push further.

“There has to be more to it than that,” Wyll asserted, earning surprised glances from Shadowheart and Gale for the suspicion in his tone.

Áine glanced at Wyll and set her spoon in her bowl to scratch the owlbear cub’s head when it ambled over to her side. “I mean, you’re welcome to go ask him yourself.”

Wyll glanced toward Withers and the knight before pulling a face and thinking better of striking up that particular conversation.

Next chapter: Chapter 18, "Bard Dance"

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kjmcotton · 8 months

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omg i need another exo enemies to lovers from you! i enjoyed that one

Metanoia | Bbh

Byun Baekhyun x fem!reader

Flatmates!AU

Enemies to lovers!AU

Plot:moving to Seoul was stressful,but it got worse when you found out that your flatmate was Byun Baekhyun,your best friend’s ex

Warnings:mentions of a troubled past and troubled relationship,fights,swearing

Masterlist

Author’s notes:thank you for requesting a story!! Can’t wait to write more! This story is pretty long and full of drama,so get your popcorns!♡

Tumblr works with reposts:if you enjoyed my story please repost and leave a feedback! Help me growing!♡

Metanoia (μετάνοια):the journey of changing someone's mind,heart,self or way of living

“Open this damn door,come on Y/n! Open the door!” Baekhyun had been knocking and complaining for the past ten minutes but you had no intention of leaving the bathroom to open the front door:it was his fault if he had forgotten the key again.

“I’m coming” you repeated for the fourth time,while massaging your hair with a revitalising mask.

One month,it had been already one month since you moved from your hometown to Seoul after receiving the first well paid job offer of your recent graduate student life;and it had been one month since you had made the most terrible discovery you could have ever done:Byun Baekhyun would’ve become your flatmate.

You had visited the flat twice before moving in and,even tho both times it was empty,you were well aware of the fact that you would’ve shared the house;however you would’ve never considered the possibility that your flatmate could’ve been that idiot of your best friend’s ex.

When you had brought in the first box and saw him sitting on the couch,you shivered.

With all the people out there in Seoul how much unlucky could you be to end up with the one you wanted to forget forever?

Baekhyun had never hurt you personally,but made your best friend’s life hard.

When he was younger,and still leaving in Bucheon,he used to be known as the troublemaker of the town. He was constantly involved in fights,little crimes and dramas.

Many girls had dated him and all of them used to say that he was quite a fuckboy;however you were sure he had never cheated on your best friend Lin,but it wasn’t enough to make things works.

You used to see her often picking him up after a fight or,worse,talking to her father,one of the policemen of the town,asking to be patient and give him a soft penalty.

She used to spend nights crying or arguing with him;until one day,out of nowhere,he broke up with her and disappeared,saying that he would’ve moved to Seoul…and he surely did.

“Open the door,Y/n I’m about to call the cops!” Baekhyun complained again,so,once you were ready,you wrapped yourself in a towel and let him come in

“Oh,I’m so sorry…sometimes I forget they’re your besties” you teased him

“That joke doesn’t work anymore. I’m no more a stupid teenager. I’ve got a good job and I’ve put my shit together. Remember that the rent of this pretty flat is half payed by me”

“The fact that you’re a jerk still remains” you spat out

“You’re talking like you’re better than me” he rolled his eyes.

That was one of the many brief conversations you used to have with Baekhyun. The two of you never really talked,only exchanged put-downs and argued even on the smallest things. It was no one’s fault,but your complicated past.

Lin had always forbidden you from saying anything to him,even tho you were dying at the idea to do so,but since her relationship wasn’t really your business you kept your mouth shut for a while,until you had found out that he was leaving.

After receiving a call by your friend in the middle of the night,with her screaming and crying,cursing Baekhyun,you snapped:you called Jongin,the only one you were sure knew everything as he was close to that idiot,and forced him to tell you what he had in his mind.

Once you had found out the train he was about to catch,you drove to the train station and told Baekhyun everything you had always wanted.

The two of you ended up yelling insults at each in the middle of the night,you even risked to get involved in a fight with him after slapping his face;however the boy had to run off because the train arrived. You were sure it was the day in which Baekhyun begun to reciprocate your hate.

And now you were there,trying to tolerate each other as the flat you were living in was so beautiful,and hard to find at a good price in a city like Seoul,that no one wanted to leave.

Once your hair had dried,you went to the kitchen to cook yourself an omelette for dinner. You weren’t good at cooking,you could make just a few dishes,but you’d rather eat the same things instead of asking for help to Baekhyun,who,on the other hand,was a quite good chef.

You looked outside the window while waiting for your dinner to be ready:grey clouds were approaching,meaning that a huge thunderstorm was about to arrive.

Once the omelette was ready you sat at the table,noticing Baekhyun leaving from the door

“Where the fuck are you going with this weather?”you said,realising how handsome he looked in that white shirt that was matching his platinum hair

“Clubbing with friends,it’s Friday. I’m not antisocial like you” he scoffed,disappearing without bringing his umbrella.

You laughed:someone would’ve looked like a drenched mouse in a few hours.

The next morning you woke up ad 8 am. You took a shower and then went to the kitchen,where you found a sick Baekhyun warming some milk up. He looked at you and coughed,without even saying good morning.

“That’s on not bringing an umbrella with you” you mumbled,opening a cupboard to get some biscuits

“You saw me leaving,you could’ve said something”

You laughed “What am I? Your babysitter? You’re an adult,it’s none of my fault if you always forget the important things”

Baekhyun sneezed,making you step back

“Take some meds” you said

“Keen you are! I would’ve never thought about it!” he scoffed. You looked at him easily,noticing that his eyes were watery.

“Have you checked your temperature?” you asked,resting your hand on his forehead:it was pretty hot.

Baekhyun stared at you for a while. His cheeks were flushed,his face was pale and his shoulders were curved;he didn’t even look like the usual cocky Baekhyun,he seemed a lost kid.

Seeing him in those conditions made you feel sorry,so your attitude automatically softened.

“Answer me,have you checked your temperature?” you asked again,with a sweet voice this time.

Baekhyun shook his head

“Then you should go” you said,looking at him dragging his body to his bedroom.

As you had imagined, the boy had a fever;however you didn’t expect it to get worse by the same evening,so,without even realising it,you found yourself sitting on the bed next to a sleepy Baekhyun whose cheeks had turned as red as an apple.

You sighed,putting some ice on the top of his head:damn it,how could it happen that in less than 24h you went from scolding that idiot to look after him? Life was funny sometimes,or maybe more than sometimes considering how things had changed in the span of a month.

You were lost in your thoughts when you heard Baekhyun grunt. You looked at him,noticing that his sleep had suddenly become fitful. The poor boy was shaking and moving,mumbling words that you could barely hear. You understood only one phrase,something that left you speechless:

“I’m sorry Lin…”

At those words you got paralysed,your hands tightly holding the sheets of the bed

How could it be possible? How could it be possible that after all this time he still had her in his mind? And why? He was the one leaving her,so why after so many years her name was still being pronounced by his lips?

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m…Lin…I’m sorry…” he kept repeating those words,louder and louder,panting,with more and more pain in every word until,you swore,a tear fell along his cheek.

“Baekhyun…” you tried to call him,but the boy didn’t wake up;otherwise he was getting more and more agitated. Then,with a startle,he sat.

“Baekhyun!” you exclaimed,collecting some strength to move.

The boy didn’t even look at you,he simply hid his head in between his hands and started sobbing. He wasn’t lucid,you knew it,but you were still confused.

“It was just a dream…-you reassured him,massaging his back. His pyjama was soaking because how much he was sweating,but you didn’t care,all you wanted was helping him calming down-it’s gone Baekhyun. The past is in the past”

At those words your flatmate rose his head,looking at you with teary eyes;you slid closer,wrapping your arms around his body as he rested his head on your shoulder.

You moved aside the wet strands of hair falling on his forehead to check his temperature:even tho you had given him a bunch of meds he was still burning. You were really concerned now.

“You need to lay down-you whispered,caressing his cheek-I’ll get you a towel and a new shirt”

You wanted to stand up but the boy didn’t seem willing to move aside

“Baekhyun,have you heard me? I-“ you stopped talking as you realised he was still sobbing. Your heart shattered. Was it because of Lin? You couldn’t understand,but you had no strength to push him away,so you just adjusted yourself against the headboard and gently stroke his back.

“It’s okay. It’s just a fever” you kissed his head,resting your chin on it.

The boy’s hug tightened as he buried his face in the cloth of your shirt. His breath was heavy and his body kept shaking. It took him a while before calming down,but after half an hour he was peacefully sleeping in between your arms.

You looked at him,so many questions were going on your mind,but,most of all,you were asking yourself how to behave after that. Even tho Baekhyun had seemed completely over his past,he clearly wasn’t,he was still hurt,which made you feel bad…how much had he been suffering because of all the hate you had been showering him with? All those rude words,the put downs and stuff like that…how much did it hurt him? A lot,you were sure.

You sighed

“I’m so so sorry-you whispered-I’ll be better,just like you. I promise”

That night you called the doctor who changed some meds,allowing Baekhyun to get back on track in a few days.

In that span of time you would cook for him and bring anything he needed to his bed

“Why are you so nice all of a sudden? What’s the scam?”

“No scam,I’m acting like a decent flatmate. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll go back to insult you once you’re fine”

That was a lie,obviously,even after the fever was completely gone you never stopped being kind.

Now that you knew the wounds of his soul hadn’t healed yet, you didn’t want to pile on. However,Baekhyun wasn’t dumb,that was why he immediately noticed you had changed your behaviour and asked for explanations as soon as he had the chance.

It was a Sunday night,none of you had any errand that day,that was why the two of you ended up drinking a beer on the couch.

“I think we need to talk” Baekhyun said,looking at you

“About what?” you pretended to not know what the point was,so you carelessly put the beer on the table in front of you,avoiding eye contact to not show your real feelings

“Look at me” the boy called you out

“Why are you acting this odd?-you faked a laugh-anyway,I gotta go to the bathroom…” you tried to stand up,but your flatmate grabbed you by the wrist and dragged you back on the couch.

Baekhyun put his beer on the ground and slid his body closer to yours:your faces were a few inches away and you swore your heart suddenly lost a beat. He looked so pretty under the dim light of the living room,you had never realised how handsome he was and how polite could he be when he wanted;in fact,since you softened your attitude,he did the same.

“We haven’t argued since I got sick,and you’re always so sweet. What is it?”

“Nothing…”

“You’re lying”

“I’m not” you tried to get up,but Baekhyun stopped you again

“Tell me. I need answers. Everything got so strange all of a sudden. I-I…I can’t even say that I hate it” his hand left your wrist to end up on you tight. It gave you shivers.

“It’s just that…-you bit your lips,you didn’t know what to say-….I’ve realised that maybe we both should leave our past behind. We’re adults now”

“Why? Why all of a sudden?” he asked,his breath warming your skin

“There’s no a precise reason…”

“Don’t lie!”

“Fine…-you huffed-I know that you haven’t gotten over Lin and what happened”

At those words you saw his face frown and his body stiffen

“I’m sorry,pretend I didn’t say anything” you tried to get up, but Baekhyun held you by the thighs

“No,it’s okay. How do you know it?”

“You had a nightmare while being sick and said something about it in your sleep”

“The fact is…-the boy paused-no…I’m not over it. There’s no reason to lie. I’m not over anything I did in the past. It doesn’t matter how much I grew up and worked hard,my past still haunts me;but maybe I deserve to suffer for all the pain I caused to the people around me…Lin in particular”

You gulped:those words had pierced you like knives. How could he say something like that? No one deserves to suffer for their mistakes.

You shook your head,hugging Baekhyun

“Without those mistakes you wouldn’t be here today. You learned from them and became a better person,there’s no reason for you to still be suffering”

The boy looked at you,his hand moved up to your cheek as he caressed it with his thumb. You got lost in his beautiful deep eyes,but never wanted to find your way out. What was happening? Why were you feeling strange things in your stomach? What was it? Butterflies? You didn’t know,all you knew was that you wanted that instant to never end.

Baekhyun licked his lips,then he leaned in,kissing you softly. You closed your eyes,intertwining your fingers in between his soft hair and,without even realising it,you found your back pushed against the couch,with a shirtless Baekhyun towering you.

He looked so beautiful,and his skin against yours felt so right. He left wet kisses all over your neck,then he went back to kiss your lips until he was out of breath. His hand slipped under your shirt,there was nothing sexual in that gesture,he was simply seeking for more contact. Your fingers were tracing lines along his back as you pressed your waist against his.

Baekhyun’s eyes chained with yours:he seemed enchanted while his index caressed your face,then he smiled.

“No one has ever said anything this beautiful to me” he whispered,looking at you with smiling eyes. You could tell those words had comforted his soul.

“Why are you talking like this. What did they say?” You asked,moving a few strands of hair away from his face.

Baekhyun lowered his eyes,holding his head up with a hand. You moved aside,giving him a little more space so both of you could lay down together comfortably.

“They said many things-a sorrow smile appeared on the boy’s lips-especially in Bucheon”

“I’m listening” you said

Baekhyun took a deep breath and started opening up

“Well,re-start a fucked up life it’s not that easy. It doesn’t matter how much you try,or how much you work hard,there will always be someone that will always label you as the crazy asshole .That’s what happened to me. I tried to change multiple times while staying in Bucheon:I stopped hanging out with wrong people,I learned how to control myself and I looked for decent jobs;however,no one ever wanted to put up with me. They would either reject me or hire me to later fire me because of the smallest error. People would look at me with mistrust in their eyes. That’s why one day I decided to move to Seoul. No one knows the old me here,I’ve started a second life”

“Jongin didn’t tell me that…”

“I knew someone would’ve come for me,so I asked him to shut his mouth. I just didn’t expect to see you,I expected to see Lin. You left me speechless”

“She was kinda busy crying that night-you pointed out-that’s why I was completely mad. Furthermore I had never tolerated your behaviour,but I couldn’t say anything since it wasn’t my business. You gave me a chance to finally talk to you so I just took it”

Baekhyun smiled

“I’ve never stopped thinking about you since that day”

“What??” you felt your cheek heating up

“I swear. As I said it was unexpected,I didn’t know that you would come,nor that you would snap like that. Since then,anytime I’m about to do something I ask myself if it would make you that angry”

“Oh come on…-you laughed-this is embarrassing”

“It’s not. You would never be embarrassing, you’re just…-Baekhyun bit his bottom lip-you’re just amazing. That’s what I’ve always thought about you. Since then,all through these past months,and now even more. Besides Lin,no one has ever cared so much about me like you did when I was sick. Thank you- the boy pressed a kiss on your forehead-I think I fell in love again”

Your heart fluttered as you buried your face in the crook of his neck

“If you believed that I was amazing all this time,then why you pretended you couldn’t stand me? Was it because of the way I acted?”

“Let’s say that I didn’t really know how to approach you in a different way”

“I’m sorry. I was wrong” you murmured

“It’s okay-he caressed your shoulder-we can start everything again”

You nodded

“Yes,we can. And-you stood up,grabbing your phone-I think you have an unfinished business”

Baekhyun looked at you,his eyes were unsure

“Call Lin,apologise,and put your soul at peace once forever” you smiled,sitting next to the boy.

He grabbed your smartphone,looking for Lin’s number while bouncing his leg up and down. He was extremely anxious,so you sat next to him and held his hand,resting your chin on his shoulder.

“You can do it” you kissed his cheeks

Baekhyun sighed,then he called Lin.

He didn’t know that in a few minutes all his demons would’ve disappeared.

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