The hay tickles her torso and she takes a deep, deep breath, relishing in the fresh air. She can feel his eyes on her, lingering as always. She turns to him and he looks away, the remnants of a small smile tugging at the corner of his full lips. This time, she is the one to stare. His smile grows, though he does not turn back, preoccupied instead by the clouds overhead. She commits the sight of him to memory, vowing to immortalize him on canvas, as she believes all beautiful creatures must be immortalized. It is the least she can do, is it not?

"This is it, isn't it?" His voice is soft, low, and she blinks at the way his smile drops, the way reality comes crashing down on them, the way sweat trickles down her back and the humidity becomes suffocating. Everything worsens instantaneously. The air is stale, the hay is itchy where it makes contact with her hands.

He turns to her, his dark-almost-black eyes flickering over her expression. He glances down, almost involuntarily.

She presses a hand to her abdomen, blinking away her tears. She thinks of the Crown Prince's cold eyes, thinks of her father's words, and she manages to murmur, "Yes, I...I think so."

He is silent for a long, long moment, lingering as he always does. His jaw ticks.

But then, he murmurs, "Okay."

He does not fight it, as he should. She does not question it, as she should.

title: In Silence

genre: royalty au, historical au - set in the joseon period i guess, but yet again not historically accurate at all lol, assassins, angst AND fluff AND romance, drama

pairings: jongin/oc

word count: chaptered fic, idk how many words yet tbh

ratings: pg-13, there will probably be smidges of -but-not-really moments, warnings for anxiety and descriptions of mild panic attacks

notes: BIG BIG BIG shoutout to kyungsoo's drama 100 Days Husband because I took the scene where the assassin brother tries to kill the crown princess when they're kids and the father kinda just shrugs it off and worked off of that? i ship the crown princess and the brother so hard and this is me projecting and adapting them into a jongin fic lmao - so that one scene will be in here but everything else plotwise will deviate from the show, baekhyun is the crown prince, minseok is everyone's unofficial adopted big brother, there is mentions of violence because assassins, the ending will be different from what i usually throw at yall lol i'm so ready to write about jongin ahhhh also i swear i'm gonna write my other fics too kdfjsnkj, and like if any of you read salt skin this may or may not be me writing a salt skin au feat hyemi/jongin but ANYWAY that is beside the point!

title tracks/inspiration songs: 

> breath of life - florence and the machine

> where's my love - syml

> badbye - rm

> oasis - exo

> when the party's over - billie eilish

> under my skin - taemin

> insomnia - zayn

> fire - taeyeon