ᴱᴸ FILTHY ROYAL.

so yes, she wants it, a coy grin slipping into place. "wow, you REALLY miss me, don't you?" there's a laugh for her, reaching out to loop an arm around his, tugging his arm back and out to her, to meet them side by side. "i don't even care where-" she did. "but i need something as a welcome to make myself feel alive again. i have jetlag, and it's time for going out as it is, so mimosas? a start."

a moment, really, already feeling the city warm and explode around them. this was her present win, the flight now long forgotten and behind her. a return was always a brilliant time, but a WRETCHED adjustment, tongue lapping at her bottom lip. "is everyone around in the city or have half the group abandoned us for their summer vacation houses?"

give that to me! where did you find this?!

do you drink coffee or tea?

sorry– am i crazy, or have we met before?

do you trust me enough to close your eyes?

when were you planning on telling me?

at the risk of being a cliché, do you want to get out of here?

can i convince you to stay the night?

do i look like someone who knows what that means?

would you consider giving me a second chance?

do you really think that's helpful right now?

would you mind showing me around?

do you ever plan on forgiving yourself?

are you thinking what i'm thinking?

can we ... go out and do something crazy?

why are we whispering?

who exactly are you, anyways?

can't we just be civil for a minute?

does the past ever keep you up at night?

if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?

how long has it been since i saw you last, [ name ]?

did the power just go out?

are we still doing the thing where we pretend not to care?

how should we celebrate?

can we just ... start over?

why is this so important to you?

how was i supposed to know that?!

do you want me to stay? it doesn't have to mean anything.

where are you? nobody's heard from you.

can you help me zip this up?

why do these things always happen to me?

you don't secretly hate me, right?

can i get you something to eat? –or drink?

ready to see what i've been working on?

where have you been disappearing off to?

what's that perfume you're wearing?

you're laughing?! do you really think this is funny?

are you planning to stay for dinner?

did you think it was going to be easy?

you see where you went wrong, don't you?

when did we become so cold and distant?

who are you working for?

did you really do all of this for me?

can i open my eyes yet?

haven't you heard the stories?

[ name ], what are you doing here?

what's it gonna take for you to trust me?

do you believe people can change?

how about we catch the ten o'clock showing?

don't you remember what happened last time?

why is it so unbelievable that i'd want to help you?

you're [ name ], aren't you?

who did this to you?!

how did you know i'd be here?

what's that supposed to mean?

do you think i'm irredeemable?

what kind of mess have you gotten us into?!

do you see anything you like?

what do i owe you for the food?

why won't this stupid thing work?!

does tonight really have to end?

holy shit. can you believe we really pulled that off?!

i can tell you're upset, [ name ]. what happened?

how long have you been standing there?

do you ever wish you could just ... run away?

haven't we been here before?

wait, shush ... did you hear that?

did i miss today's newsletter or something?

can we put our differences aside for a second?

what are you getting out of this, exactly?

you'd tell me if something was wrong, right?

are you willing to bet on it?

would you kill for me?

what made you think that was okay?!

do you believe people can change?

what's the worst thing you've ever done?

you were going to leave without saying goodbye?

[ name ], can you sit up for me?

can i kiss you?

where are your keys? you're not driving like this.

how's life been treating you?

where have you been?!

aren't we supposed to be alone tonight?

aw, has someone had a little too much to drink?

where are you going with this?

are we really doing this right now?

have you eaten today?

can i crash here for the night?

how did you learn to lie so well?

can i at least buy you a drink?

where should i meet you?

is that  ...  blood?!

are you trying to make me jealous right now?

what’s your problem? you're acting weird.

[ name ], you're ... real, right?

where’s your sense of adventure?

do you like horror movies?

what are you trying to prove?

can you give me a ride?

do you have any idea what you've done?

shouldn't you answer that?

why should i be the one to calm down?

have you been up all night?

why are you lying to me?

is that my [ jacket / hoodie / shirt ]?

what are you so afraid of?

do you want to grow old with me?

you’re gonna walk away from this?

are you nervous? your hands are shaking.

where am i supposed to go?

how many fingers am i holding up?

you want me to just walk away from this?

[ name ], slow down– what's wrong?!

are you embarrassed of me?

what's that smell? something's burning.

how can i make it up to you?

why can't you stay out of it?

is this some kind of trick?

come on, what do you have to lose?

do you ever still think of me?

idiot. why didn't you tell me?!

can we stop and think about this rationally?

how long has it been since you’ve slept?

what's your ideal first date?

are you ready to tell me the truth?

i almost died, and you're laughing?

what do you mean, "sort of"?

can we just stay like this forever?

when can i see you again?

can we put this behind us?

oh ... you thought of me first?

where did you learn to do that?

oh my god,  are you bleeding?!

where are you?  nobody’s heard from you.

[ name ], are you drunk?

how can i make this go away?

someone's jumpy today. are you feeling okay?

are we safe here?

what can i do to convince you?

what could possibly go wrong?

you have no idea who i am, do you?

how do you really feel about me?

why can't you look me in the eyes?

did you know you talk in your sleep?

were you following me?

can we just pretend this never happened?

are you just barely getting home?

are you even listening to me right now?!

where does it hurt?  can you show me?

are you trying to get yourself killed?!

how about we just forget the world exists?

how long have you been keeping this from me?

were you ever going to tell me?

what do you make of this?

[ name ],  what the hell?!

can we just be honest with each other, here?

are you trying to keep me a secret?

why does your story keep changing?

how long have you known?

it can't be that bad, right?

are you happy? i mean, really happy?

isn't this place amazing?

did i interrupt something?

how am i supposed to trust you?

are they still following us?

are you fucking serious?

do you remember our first kiss?

can we take a break for a minute?

how about we disappear for awhile?

you're going to walk away from this?

can you please just cut the crap?!

why didn't you tell me you were hurt?

how can i make this go away?

can you just look at me, please?

is there anything i can do to change your mind?

do you ever stop talking?

that depends. are you done lying to me?

are you sure this is legal?

how do you take your coffee?

can you keep your voice down?

here, it was a WAY OF LIFE!

"of course! i wasn't born brilliant to let that part of me be squandered like pearls before swine. my mind is a knife! it needs to be kept sharp!" so dramatic - but he gives her the room to be, giggling as she's set down and feeling, for the first time in a while, that she could take a BREATH out here. it seemed as if he already had a plot, a plan, a scheme already brewing, a grin forming as she took to a pace alongside of him.

"tell me. who's happy, who's sad, who's pregnant, who's broken up?" there's so much that she misses out on amongst their childhood cohort, though perhaps he's adopted them better than her now, given her own absence. it's a wound to the heart, but a REAL ONE, proof that there was something tangible, even within a pit of vipers. "america is so buttoned down and everyone's afraid to do anything. i'm bored to tears, to absolute tears." well, the rich at least. the average, however, felt almost embarrassing to acknowledge.

yeong  had  a  system.  it  wasn’t  complicated.  avoid  crowds  where  possible,  manage  the  unavoidable  ones  with  efficiency  and  exits,  never  linger  anywhere  long  enough  for  the  ambient  weight  of  other  people’s  sins  to  accumulate  past  what  the  vial  could  handle.  it  had  kept  him  functional  for  the  better  part  of  a  decade.  he  had  built  his  entire  life  inside  it,  the  gloves,  the  odd  jobs,  the  careful  calibration  of  distance,  and  told  himself  that  functional  was  enough.  it  had  taken  him  longer  than  he  wanted  to  admit  to  acknowledge  that  functional  and  living  were  not  the  same  thing. 

he  had  started  in  the  mountains.  gangwon  province  first,  where  the  air  was  thin  and  cold  and  the  silence  had  a  quality  that  almost,  almost,  resembled  the  inside  of  his  own  chest  on  a  good  day.  he  had  spoken  to  healers  and  herbalists  and  one  very  old  woman  in  a  village  outside  sokcho  who  had  looked  at  his  hands  for  a  long  time  without  touching  them  and  then  said  something  he  hadn’t  fully  understood  but  that  had  felt,  in  the  way  things  felt  before  language  got  involved,  like  a  door  closing.  south  gyeongsang  next,  where  someone  had  told  him  about  a  ritual  that  had  been  performed  on  a  curse  similar  to  his  three  generations  back.  the  ritual  required  ingredients  he  couldn’t  source  and  a  bloodline  connection  he  couldn’t  verify  and  had  probably  never  worked  anyway.  jeju  island  last,  because  someone  else  had  told  him  about  jeju,  and  by  then  he  was  following  rumors  the  way  a  drowning  person  follows  light,  not  because  the  light  is  necessarily  the  surface  but  because  it  is  the  only  direction  that  feels  like  movement.

he  found  nothing.  no  ritual.  no  herb.  no  magic  old  enough  or  specific  enough  to  reach  what  lived  in  his  blood.  nothing  in  all  of  korea  that  could  lift  it,  redirect  it,  silence  it  for  longer  than  the  vial  managed.  he  had  stood  on  the  edge  of  jeju’s  coastline  in  the  early  morning  with  the  wind  pulling  at  his  jacket  and  understood,  in  the  particular  way  you  understand  things  you  have  been  avoiding,  that  the  answer  was  not  here.  so  he  left.  his  first  time  on  a  plane.  his  first  time  leaving  the  country.  his  first  time  doing  something  that  exceeded  every  personal  boundary  he  had  constructed  over  twenty-five  years  to  stay  somewhat  sane  —  and  he  had  constructed  many,  had  built  them  carefully,  had  lived  inside  them  so  long  they  had  started  to  feel  like  walls  he  had  chosen  rather  than  walls  that  had  chosen  him.  the  flight  was  eight  hours  and  he  spent  most  of  it  with  his  gloves  on  and  his  eyes  closed  and  his  ability  doing  its  quiet  inventory  of  everyone  in  the  adjacent  seats,  which  was  exactly  as  unpleasant  as  it  sounded.

spain  received  him  with  heat  and  noise  and  the  particular  smell  of  a  city  that  had  been  inhabited  for  longer  than  most  cities  had  words  for  what  they  were.  he  had  chosen  spain  for  a  reason  he  hadn’t  fully  articulated  to  himself.  something  about  the  folklore  …  the  reading  he  had  done  in  the  weeks  before  leaving,  sitting  in  the  library  after  closing  with  books  he  had  technically  checked  out  for  himself,  which  was  a  thing  he  had  never  done  before.  spanish  folklore  made  little  distinction  between  the  living  and  the  dead,  between  sin  and  punishment,  between  curse  and  destiny.  those  who  led  the  santa  compaña  did  not  know  this.  those  who  desired  the  lamia  may  have  sensed  it.  here,  sin  was  not  a  moral  judgment  but  a  state  of  being.  and  that  was  precisely  the  language  yeong  understood.  something  you  could  taste.  something  you  felt  with  your  whole  body.  not  shame  and  not  condemnation  but  simply  the  texture  of  existence,  present  and  specific  and  real.  he  had  thought,  reading  that,  that  maybe  this  was  a  place  his  curse  would  feel  less  like  a  verdict.  he  was  still  deciding  whether  he  had  been  right.

it  was  his  fourth  night  in  madrid  when  he  first  encountered  the  flavor.  he  had  been  doing  what  he  had  been  doing  every  night :  walking,  mostly,  because  madrid  at  night  was  a  different  city  than  madrid  in  daylight  and  he  found  the  darkness  easier  to  navigate,  the  crowds  thinning  to  something  manageable,  the  sins  of  strangers  arriving  at  a  lower  volume  when  the  city  stopped  performing  itself.  he  had  found  a  bar  that  was  quiet  by  local  standards,  which  meant  it  was  merely  loud  rather  than  genuinely  unbearable,  and  had  ordered  something  cold  and  sat  in  the  corner  the  way  he  always  sat  in  corners  and  told  himself  this  was  fine,  this  was  progress,  this  was  a  person  trying.  and  then  something  reached  him  that  his  ability  turned  over  and  couldn’t  place.  sweet.  warm.  open  in  a  way  that  had  no  layer  underneath  it.  no  guilt,  no  buried  shame,  no  rot  living  below  the  surface.  gluttony,  he  thought,  because  the  shape  of  it  was  familiar,  the  excess  and  the  wanting.  but  the  sourness  that  always  followed  wasn’t  there.  he  waited.  his  ability  kept  reaching,  kept  looking  for  the  part  that  made  indulgence  ugly,  the  part  that  made  wanting  things  you  had  too  much  of  feel  like  a  wound  slowly  filling  with  something  wrong.  it  didn’t  come.  across  the  room,  someone  was  laughing  at  something  that  apparently  deserved  it.  yeong  looked  up.

the  laugh  was  too  comfortable  for  someone  in  a  bar  they  didn’t  own.  that  was  yeong’s  first  coherent  thought  —  not  about  the  flavor,  not  about  the  sweetness  that  was  still  sitting  at  the  back  of  his  throat  without  the  sourness  he  kept  waiting  for,  but  about  the  specific  quality  of  ease  that  some  people  carried  like  a  second  skin.  the  kind  that  didn’t  perform  itself.  the  kind  that  simply  was,  the  way  weather  simply  was,  occupying  whatever  space  it  found  itself  in  without  negotiating  for  permission  first.

the  man  was  spanish  in  the  way  that  madrid  at  night  was  spanish:  loose  and  warm  and  entirely  unbothered  by  the  hour.  dark  hair.  the  particular  kind  of  handsome  that  knew  about  itself  without  being  defined  by  it.  a  drink  in  one  hand  and  a  story  in  the  other,  delivered  to  whoever  was  listening  with  the  unhurried  certainty  of  someone  who  had  never  once  worried  about  whether  the  room  was  paying  attention.  it  was.  yeong  looked  back  at  his  drink.

the  sweetness  was  still  there.  closer  now.  proximity  making  it  more  specific,  giving  it  texture.  he  turned  it  over  the  way  he  turned  everything  over,  looking  for  the  seam,  the  place  where  the  honest  wanting  became  something  else.  excess  without  apology.  gluttony  worn  openly,  the  way  you  wore  a  color  you  liked  without  checking  whether  it  suited  you.

no  sourness.

he  waited  another  thirty  seconds  to  be  certain.

nothing.

it  was  the  most  confusing  thing  his  ability  had  done  in  recent  memory,  and  his  ability  had  recently  led  him  across  an  entire  country  looking  for  a  cure  that  didn’t  exist.  he  picked  up  his  drink  and  told  himself  to  stop  cataloguing  strangers  in  foreign  bars  and  go  back  to  the  apartment  he  had  rented  for  the  week  and  get  some  sleep.

he  was  still  there  an  hour  later.  not  because  of  the  man.  he  told  himself  that  specifically  and  with  some  conviction.  because  the  bar  was  tolerable  and  his  drink  was  cold  and  madrid  at  this  hour  had  the  loose  and  warm  and  entirely  unbothered  quality  of  a  city  that  wasn’t  asking  anything  of  him,  and  that  was  rare  enough  to  be  worth  staying  for.  the  sweetness  had  become  almost  …  comfortable.  background  noise  in  the  best  sense.  his  ability  resting  against  it  the  way  you  rest  against  something  solid,  not  because  you’re  tired  but  because  the  solidity  is  there  and  it  costs  nothing  to  use  it.

he  became  aware  that  someone  had  sat  down  across  from  him  approximately  three  seconds  after  it  happened.  up  close  the  sweetness  sharpened.  still  no  sourness.  his  ability  turned  it  over  one  more  time,  stubborn,  and  found  the  same  thing  it  had  found  across  the  room:  excess  worn  honestly,  wanting  without  shame,  the  special  texture  of  someone  who  had  looked  at  everything  they  desired  and  simply  taken  it  and  felt,  apparently,  fine  about  that.  he  found  it  deeply  strange.  and  he  didn’t  leave.  “you  don’t  seem  to  be  at  war  with  yourself.”  he  said  quietly.

it  arrived  slowly,  the  way  his  own  sins  always  did  when  his  presence  cleared  enough  of  the  ambient  noise  to  let  them  through.  not  sharp.  not  the  acrid  edge  he  knew  from  other  people’s  envy,  the  wanting  that  had  gone  sour  from  being  held  too  long.  this  was  softer.  almost  sweet,  which  confused  him  for  a  moment  before  he  understood,  this  was  fresh  envy.  new.  the  kind  that  hadn’t  had  time  to  curdle  yet  because  he  had  only  just  understood  what  he  was  missing.  it  tasted  like  the  first  bite  of  something  warm  after  going  without.  like  the  specific  ache  of  a  word  you  don’t  have  in  your  own  language  but  recognize  the  shape  of  immediately.  like  watching  someone  move  through  a  room  as  if  they  had  every  right  to  be  there  and  feeling,  quietly  and  without  drama,  the  full  weight  of  never  having  felt  that  way  yourself.

not  bitter.  just  …  present.  and  honest.  and  his.

which  made  it  worse,  somehow,  than  anything  he  had  ever  tasted  in  someone  else.

a canonically accurate portrayal of lucrecia montesinos—hendrich from the netflix original series: elite. the queen bee of las encinas; crowned by fear, undone by remorse.

disclaimer: this account is strictly in character and has no affiliation with netflix or danna paola. governed by a dead dove do not eat warning, with mature and taboo themes present, not suitable for minor audiences.

que tal, bebe. 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐎    𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐒    ,   a   nightlife   maestro,   medicinal   lord    —   socialite.   one   son   of   the   mexican   ambassador   of   spain.   one   of  three   siblings.   a   study   on   addiction,   euphoric   irresponsibility,   a   velvet  tongue,   rising   and   falling.   dark   secrets   kept.   neon   lights,   a   ticking  firecracker   in   lavish   life   of   high   class   wealth,   dysfunctional   family,   and  endless  gluttony.

the summer hits, and blair feels that familiar pull ; how even when she's peeled off from manhatten's familiar concrete court steps, off at college, and yale, and everything that she's been GRINDING HERSELF TO DUST for... there's no denying the warmth, the refresh that coming back to spain did for her once class gave her a break. and honestly? while she doubted she'd have the same level of relaxation she'd glimpse during her high school years, she was ready to embrace what she could, while she could.

blair just waits to be delivered into the family home, her parents already having flown in separately, and she, directly from uni. there was no need to stress over what to pack and bring, having unfolded her life into an apartment back in new haven in the fall. and whatever - she could just BUY whatever was missing. what feels too familiar are the faces she sees, head shaking with mock disgust when her gaze landed on none other than valerio montesinos.

oh, oh, would could have counted on seeing HIM so soon?

her hand works to shut the door of the vintage car her father loves to drive when he's here. "i thought they didn't let the animals out SO SOON." her drawling tone ending with a grin, already skipping past the distance between him to pull him into a hug, groaning conspiratorially. "i only just got off the plane, and i already feel so weak, take me somewhere i can actually feel alive again."