Category: Romantic Fluff, Angst
Characters: Yona, Soo-Won
Requested By: Anonymous (Tumblr)
After wresting the dusty tome from the towering bookshelf, Yona fell back on the flats of her feet and tucked the volume underneath the crook of her arm. She paused to sweep an errant strand of her dawn-red hair from her forehead and tuck it neatly behind her ear. She pulled the book out from underneath her armpit to inspect its front cover; it was an accounting of a specific war from antiquity, written by an esteemed general. Soo-Won had requested she retrieve it from within the stacks and she obliged because, well, she was his assistant now.
Following her manic fit, Soo-Won had given her leave to enter and leave his personal study as she pleased. It was a far cry from the freedom she desired, but it was much better than being basically imprisoned in her bedroom to talk to the walls all day. As promised, Soo-Won had sent some contractors to repair the destroyed curtains with the concocted explanation that Yona had tripped and accidentally wrecked them. Their concerned side-eyes at the princess as she sat at her calligraphy desk silently drawing characters on parchment indicated that they didn't quite believe that story, but they knew better than to openly dispute the fact. Yona had not since been gripped by that manic anger since that night, most likely because Soo-Won had taken her fragile mental health in mind and afforded her the tiniest bit of liberty.
The castle was quiet as she walked back towards Soo-Won's study. Yona's prior residence in the castle seemed like a lifetime away, but she still didn't recall the castle ever being so… lifeless. Her memories, hazy as they were, were of a castle filled with laughter and smiles, of jovial parties and consular meetings, of bright days and the sense of home. To Yona it now felt like a foreign fortress of which she was a tolerated guest- fed well, clothed well, but looked upon like a stray dog or relative overstaying their welcome. The servants embraced her presence, at least, and always greeted her with genuine smiles and friendly words; however, Soo-Won's cabinet always eyed her like a scheming wretch, a bug to be squashed before it could nip the tender flesh of their king and mar it forevermore.
They weren't exactly wrong. Yona was indeed scheming, even if her scheming yielded no useable strategies. Scheming, as well as performing mundane chores for the king, at least kept Yona sane. Although… There was still one maddening gear that just didn't fit properly into the clockwork of her mind.
The king himself. Soo-Won. Current sworn adversary whom she was also madly in love with and may or may not have kissed him in a very un-princess-like way after tearing curtains from a wall like a deranged maniac. Yes. A very oddly-shaped and uncooperative gear in her little whirling mind.
Yona's steps faltered until she was standing in the middle of the hallway, just hugging the large book to her chest and staring pitifully at the stone floor. She had tried to forget about that kiss, to cordon it off in the recesses of her mind to be blissfully forgotten. She couldn't, though. She couldn't forget about how good it felt to have his lips moving against hers, to have his tongue swirling with hers, to have his hands roaming her body and lighting up a fire in her nerves. She couldn't forget about what might have happened if they hadn't stopped. She couldn't forget about the headspace that one kiss had created, that temporary world where she could forget about all the maddening aspects of her reality and just be Yona. Not Princess Yona, not Yona the reincarnated Dragon King, not leader Yona of the Happy Hungry Bunch. Just… Yona.
Groaning, she knocked on the side of her head with a fist to shove down the tempestuous feelings that were once again rising up. It was already so complicated; she didn't want to complicate things further by dredging up her old love for Soo-Won. Come on, Yona. Just deliver the book. It's late in the evening, so you can retire to bed after. In her head, it sounded like a perfectly simple plan. With renewed vigor she set off to the study. Her pace was less than leisurely so she arrived in no time at all.
"Here's the book you asked for," she announced as she strolled in, holding up the book by the spine. "If you'll excuse me, I'll…" she trailed off as Soo-Won leaned back in his desk chair to gaze at her with a small smile. Her words, and her plan to retire to bed, were completely forgotten in a mere instant. She stared owlishly at the taller man as he languidly rose and walked over to pluck the book from her hand.
"Thank you." Her mouth made some gratuitous remark, but her brain did not register it. Her arm flopped limply to her side as he turned to begin thumbing through the pages. She was fixated on the way he moved, unbothered yet purposeful, languid yet graceful. Soo-Won had always been beautiful in his own sort of way. She was yet again reminded of that fact, and all it had taken was for him to get up from a desk and walk over to her. He suddenly looked up to eye her through his peripheral vision and she quickly shut her mouth after realizing that it was, in fact, hanging open. "You were going to say something?"
"Uh." Yes, she was, but now she had no recollection of what. That little gear had tried to once more wedge itself into the cogs of her mind and sent her thought processes careening. Soo-Won raised an eyebrow and snapped the book shut to set it on the desk, turning back to face her. She found herself dimly wondering if his profile or his full face was more handsome. It was a very tough decision.
"Yona? Are you all right?" he asked. The genuine concern in his voice made her heart twist up, finally returning her wits to her. It was always that concerned, guilty look that did her in. It was so confusing. How could Soo-Won be so troubled about her well-being, and yet set this entire maddening situation into motion? How could he care for her, and yet murder her father in cold blood? She felt her throat begin to close up with mounting anxiety.
"I-I need to sit down," she wheezed and stumbled for the nearest seat, his desk chair. He caught her underneath her elbow as she tripped over the hem of her dress, gently guiding her fumbling form to the chair. She sank down into the cushioned furniture with a shaky whine. She looked down at her hands to find them sweaty and frightfully trembling. Her face was beginning to feel clammy and sweaty, too. It was happening again. It was all surging up, the anxiety and the hypotheticals and the reality, a tsunami threatening to take her under and spirit her down into the dark abyss.
"Yona." His voice was so soft, so reassuring. It shone out to Yona like the convivial beam of a lighthouse, and without thinking of its implications, she swam headlong towards it. Soo-Won was kneeling down in front of her. He reached out with his hands, then hesitated, leaving them hovering over her lap. When she made no move to resist, he slowly grasped her trembling hands in his own and squeezed them. "… It appears I have made you displeased again," he remarked wryly. Despite it all, Yona sniffed self-deprecatingly.
"No. It is my own mind that is the problem," she answered wretchedly. "I simply do not know what to do with you, Soo-Won, and it maddens me." He glanced up at her with slightly wide eyes, then smirked dryly.
"If I told you that you don't have to do anything with me, would you listen?" His own tone of voice indicated that he already thought he knew the answer. Before the establishment of the alliance, it would surely be right; Yona would scoff and agree that no, she would not listen. That's what would have made sense to her. However, nothing made sense to Yona anymore. After months of spiraling down into a maelstrom of secrets and plots and myths made reality, nothing made sense at all. All Yona wanted was to reach out grasp the one thing that could make sense to her, even if it went against everything she had learned and experienced up until then. None of that made sense either; she knew not how all the puzzle pieces fit together. All she wanted was to shove the puzzle aside and for one brief, short, single moment, breathe.
"Yes," she answered before her addled mind could convince her otherwise. Her eyelashes fluttered as she committed herself to the decision, and then repeated again more softly, "Yes… Just for one moment… I want to pretend that's true." His expression was calculating as he tilted his head to the side and searched her face for any sign of hesitation or insecurity. No such sign appeared. Yona closed her eyes as a sense of calm swept back over her just by the way he squeezed her hands again. Just for one moment… I want things to be uncomplicated.
On some level, she knew the kiss was coming. She knew the instant his hands met her cheeks. She knew the instant his thumbs swept away her falling tears. She knew the instant he ever-so-slightly tilted her head and the instant his warm breath ghosted her face. She knew it was coming, and she shamelessly welcomed it. Maybe she had gone mad, during those days isolated in her room poring over possibilities and hypotheticals. Maybe she had descended into insanity, but just for one moment, Yona wanted to delve into that madness where somehow things made sense.
She sighed in relief the moment his lips met hers. She leaned into the kiss, moving her mouth in tandem with his, and reached out to grab onto the front of his robes. His hands fell from her face to her shoulders, slowly making their way south until he had a firm hold on her waist. A small moan reverberated in her throat when she parted her lips and his tongue immediately moved in to claim hers. The chair creaked as she shifted forward, legs bumping into his as she searched for any semblance of closeness. It wasn't enough, not nearly enough. She wanted to feel him, to know him. She keened with a needy whine, hoping Soo-Won would understand her wordless plea.
In an impressive display of athleticism that contradicted his fair physique, he deftly and swiftly wrestled her from the chair and spun her around, such that he was now seated, and she was sitting in his lap. At first, she was sitting with her legs hanging off the side; however, pressing herself into him was incredibly awkward and still didn't provide that proximity she craved. With a grunt of frustration, she loosened her obi and opened her kimono just enough that she could swing her leg around and straddle him. Soo-Won made a choking noise of shock as she surged forward to kiss him with a ferocity, every square millimeter of her torso pressed against his.
The hairpin securing a segment of her red hair clattered noisily to the floor as his hands fisted the wavy tufts; they soon fell away to run down her back, pulling her loose kimono away from her shoulders. She whimpered as his mouth left her bruised lips, only to sigh contentedly as his lips reconnected with her neck. His name left her mouth like a divine prayer as he planted kisses down her neck, along the column of her throat, and then across her right shoulder. He finally stopped there, mouth resting against her flushed skin as he side-eyed her thoughtfully. She had her head tilted back, eyes lidded and hazed as she gazed up at the ceiling. Lost in the fog, where reality couldn't touch her. So lost that it took her a moment to realize that Soo-Won had stopped showering her in his affections. Slowly, it dawned on her how very improper the whole thing was, and every inch of her face turned the color of her hair.
"Feeling better?" She felt him smirk against her skin. Blushing fiercely, she looked in the opposite direction of him but made no move to get up. She was feeling better. The tempest had receded back into the depths, biding its time for another moment of weakness. He took her silence as affirmation. He snorted in laughter and rested his cheek on her shoulder, staring at her in mild amusement. Yona, realizing how close she was to unveiling her modesty, pulled the front of her kimono together with her hands. "Yona?"
"What?" She couldn't force any venom in her voice if she wanted to. She'd just let the man kiss her like a common harlot; she couldn't pretend that she hated him now. Her mouth twitched with the urge to frown, and she rolled her eyes in their sockets to meet his heady gaze. The look in his eyes electrified her. There was no pity or triumph burning in those pools- only affection and longing. His hand shifted at her back, holding her tenderly to his body.
"If I told you that you could trust me, would you listen?" Her mouth ran dry and her throat bobbed like she was trying to choke down a rock-hard biscuit. Trust. That was a very complicated notion. Yona had not trusted Soo-Won from the moment she had watched him yank a blood-soaked sword from her father's limp corpse. She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. Yona wanted to trust Soo-Won more than anything in her life. It would make things so simple. It would take her maddening reality and just paint it all in black and white; blissfully, she could just submit to that trust and everything complicated would all go away.
But yet… But yet…
"No." He offered no resistance as she climbed off him and turned her back. With numb fingers still tingling with exhilaration, she fixed her disheveled kimono and refastened her obi snug around her waist. "No, Soo-Won. I wouldn't." Tears glistened on her lashes and she discretely flicked them away with her index finger.
"That's fair." He had said that the other night, too. That's fair. Was it? Yona didn't truly know. But that was the reality of things, in this mad world of hers. She could trust herself; she could trust Hak; she could trust Yoon and her dragons. No matter how much she wanted to, no matter if she loved him so much it was painful and allowed him to romance her as he wished… She couldn't trust him.
And that was the only thing that truly made sense.
The chair squeaked as he reclined back against it. She glanced over her shoulder at him as he sighed deeply and rested his arm on the desk, the other stringing his fingers through his slightly sweaty blonde locks. He made no move to fix his ruffled robes, but instead picked up the tome he had discarded earlier and flipped it back open. Yona finally remembered the words she was going to utter earlier.
"If you'll excuse me, I'll be retiring to my room now."
"Goodnight," came his only response, but he did not miss the way his eyes flickered to her form to watch her leaving. Just as she reached the door, he called out to her. "Yona." She froze in the doorway. Was he going to ask her to stay with him tonight? Honestly, she didn't know if she had the will to refuse him, as much as that would complicate things. She did not look back, afraid of what his expression would be. "… If you can't trust me, trust in my love for the people." The utterance caught her off guard. She stood in the threshold for a few seconds, processing it. Yes. Yes, she could trust in that. If anything, she knew deep down that he wanted what was best for the country.
"All right. Goodnight." And with that, she left. He may have had her trust, but that did not mean that Yona was giving up. After all, if she did not continue fighting to uncover the truth, what was her purpose in this web of lies, deceit, and secrets? Yes, Yona would still fight, even if she believed in Soo-Won's will to protect the people.
After all, in this mad, confusing, scary world, the fact that they were somehow working together made a comfortable amount of sense… but not enough. Not nearly enough.