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#I am thoroughly delighted by all the SMALL GUYS!!
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Why! Are! You! All! So! Small!!!
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We Are a Family
Glorfindel x reader
Warnings : They talk about pregnancy, reader is afraid of pregnancy, the reader wants a family but not right now, that decision isn't for everyone it's just what I decided for this fic, fem reader, a bit of nudity in the bath, but overall just reaching an understanding and fluff, no beta, not enough peace of mind or time to edit so sorry about any mistakes, also I don't have as much experience with the Silmarillion as other people on tumblr so I'm basically shooting in the dark with elvish words. It's hit or miss and I'm hoping hit.
A/n : it's 2:36 am and I should be sleeping but no...I needed some Glorfindel and I hope you guys can enjoy too! If it's alright to ask please no constructive criticism with this particular fic, it's not perfect, by far not perfect but it's my first attempt that I tried doing. I've been struggling with the confidence to write for a while so please go easy on me!
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It was no surprise to Y/N that Glorfindel had always dreamed of being an Adar, he fought bravely in the name of peace even having been reborn from that noble deed, and now that a time of peace has finally begun, Glorfindel wanted to experience the joys of creating and having children.
Small beings made from the love of him and his beloved. The pure joy, creativity, and laughter of children was the very image of peace and love to Glorfindel.
The peace he fought to earn.
He often asked his treasured Y/n what personality he thinks they might have or what mannerisms or even what interests they might inherit from the both of them.
Y/n always smiled and said "I'm not sure, only time will tell" with thoes words Glorfindel put his arm around her waist and pulled her close.
"Meleth nîn, you mean everything to me, I love you dearly" he whispered.
He often thought about how stunning Y/n would be carrying his child inside her.
Y/n smiled and pressed her head against his chest feeling the strength and intensity of his heartbeat, the heart that contained the bravery and courage this Balrog slayer.
However Y/n, as courageous as she usually is, could never find the courage within herself to tell Glorfindel something rather important about this wish of his and so time had come and chosen a time and place for her.
And that time and place was a late afternoon just after sparring practice. Glorfindel and Y/n were home in the bath as he leaned back slightly as Y/n washed his hair asking him about how he felt and all the interesting things he had to share.
He hummed in delight chatting all about his day as Y/n's nimble fingers were scratching and rubbing, thoroughly making sure his cascading golden locks were perfectly clean and scented to his preference.
Once Y/n rinsed it off, he walked out taking in the sight of her beautiful form in a thin dress, damp with water from the bath.
"Y/n, shall we try tonight? Starting a family I mean" he asked.
Y/n froze unsure of what to say, instead she averted her gaze.
"Melda, are you alright? Are you feeling unwell? Please look at me" he asked.
"Glorfindel, could we please go to the bedroom" she whispered. "Yes of course" he said, gently lifting her into his arms and carrying her to the bedroom.
He gently placed her on the bed and sat down himself, quickly glacing over her form, she seemed tense and trembling, he tried to discern what she might be feeling in this moment.
"Y/n, you do not need to answer my questions today, however, I'd like to ask if you feel ready to start a family, I'd like to hear your opinion when you feel ready to share it" he said.
"No no, you deserve an answer veru" she said taking a deep breath.
He patiently waited sitting by her and holding her hand. She looked at him and took a couple more breaths before starting.
"The long answer is yes but the short answer is no, truthfully I'm scared of pregnancy, but that does not mean I don't wish to start a family, just perhaps not right now, it doesn't mean that I don't trust you to be there for me and sit with me through every sickness and cravings, it just means I fear the changes that will happen to my body, I was once told I will never feel the same again after pregnancy, and thoes words stuck with me ever since" she explained.
Glorfindel held her close saying "Meleth nîn, you mean everything to me, I love you dearly, I'm sorry you felt scared to tell this to me, I promise I am not angry and I'm glad to hear what you have to say, and I don't mind waiting, we have all eternity until you feel ready melda"
He rubbed small circles on her back in a soothing gesture.
"I'm so sorry Glorfindel, I know you wanted a family" she said.
"Meleth, we are a family" he said as he nuzzled her neck playfully.
She wrapped her arms around him and said "Glorfindel, you're the sweetest husband anyone could ever ask for" as they enjoyed eachother's company well into the depths of the night.
......
Elvish words I googled
• Meleth nîn  (my love)
• Melda (beloved/ lovely, beautiful, desirable)
• Veru (husband)
• Adar (dad/father)
Honestly I don't know if this is correct I just googled these. I decided to take a risk and try to use what I could find.
Also this Glorfindel was basically molded by what little I read and understood in the Silmarillion, but mostly what I read on tumblr, especially by @icarus-fell-in-spring who has an incredible masterlist of fics and especially some beautiful Glorfindel ones (Hi! I'm the person/anon who asked for tips on writing Glorfindel a long while back! I finally attempted it! Still don't think it's good enough but I'm feeling brave enough to try posting it! And thank you for your reply too)
I also love how @lovefairymina writes Glorfindel and I was inspired to at least try!
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blackhakumen · 4 months
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Mini Fanfic #1170: Odin the Dark (Super Smash Bros Ultimate X Fire Emblem)
12:00 p.m. at Big Bang Burgers.........
????: (Holds his Food Up While Having Thoroughly Examine) By the Elder Pope's beard......Of all of the fonest meals I've encounter and consumed over the years, I have never seen one that looks unfamiliar yet so delectable and pleasing to the eyes and scent. (Looks Over to the Trio Couple He's Sharing a Table With) Say, my three newest companions, what is this creative looking meal I am holding in my hands?
Dark Pit: It's a burger.
Misako: Double Cheeseburger to be exact.
Kyoko: (Place her Hand on her Chest and Stick her Other Habd Out in an Elegant Like Fashion) A Double Cheese rich with two beef patties, melted gooey cheese, fresh tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and toasted buns all mixed together to create a heavenly meal before thee~
Both Pitto and Misako raised both their eyebrows at Kyoko in silence.
Kyoko: What? I'm only trying to give it a great impression to our new friend here. (Turns to The Blonde Haired New Guy Beside Her woth a Bright Smile) But seriously though, you should really try their burger, they're super yummy!~ (Went Back to Eating Her Own Burger)
????: If you're certain.....
The young man slowly takes one bite of his burger for the very first time. It wasn't long before his own eyes starts to widened and sparkle up in pure delight.
????: Remarkable......(Continues Eating his Burger) This is a phenomenon handcrafted from the heavens above the rich, clear skies! (Takes Something Out of the Red Basket in Front of Him and Eats It) ('Mm') And these......Appetizers you speak of, are divine worthy!....What are they exactly?
Kyoko: (Giggles Softly) Chili Cheese Fries~
Dark Pit: They're fries all covered in chili and cheese combined. The name's self explanatory really.
????: (Eyes Starts Sparkling Some More) Genius. (Starts Eating More of the Chili Cheese Fries From the Basket)
Misako: Hey, save some those fries for the rest of us, magic boy. We're sharing remember?
????: (Abruptly Stops his Eating) Oh. Uhh...(Chuckles a Bit Lightly and Awkwardly) Apologies for the rude manner. I've been traveling on my own for so long that I forgot to control my hunger there. (Picks up a Niptack From the Table and Dab it on the Both Sides of his Lips)
Kyoko: Oooh~ So you've been a wandering traveler this whole time?
Dark Pit: That would explain why you were taking a sidewalk nap.
Misako: And why you dress like some kind of glamerous jester.
????: (Let's Out an Offended Gasps Before Glaring Misako) Excuse you!? This is no mere jester costume! This is an attire worn by one of the powerful dark mages of the century. Like yours truly before you: ODIN THE DARK! (Sticks Out hus Hand Creating a Small Purple Fire on his Palm)
Kyoko: (Rapidly Clapping at the Display of Magic She and her Boyfriend and Girlfriend are Witnessing) Oooooooh!~
Dark Pit: Odin the Dark, huh?
Misako: (Snickers a Bit) What? Are you like a God or something?
Odin: (Put his Magical Fire Out Before Lowering his Hand Down Letting Out a Heavy, Tiny Bit Dramatic Sigh) I wish! But no, I'm not a God sadly. (Quickly Points Up) B-But I was appointed to be one of the two retainers to serve under the Great, Intelligent Prince Leo of Nohrian Kingdom.
Misako: So like his errand boy?
Odin: No!.....Well.....I mean....('Sigh') Okay, so maybe I did do a few errands here and there, but I have also helped him venture through toughest quests and trials imaginable! We traveled through many lands, villages, and summits, fought and slayed tons upon tons of deadly, mystical monsters and evil forces we've encountered thus far, defeated and dethroned the kingdom's former king who turns out to be a diabolical scumbag from the very beginning, I even saved his and our troops' lives from a man eating serpent once by obliterating it to ashes with my dark sorcery!
Kyoko: (Rapidly Clapping While Her Eyes Starts To Sparkle) Ahhhh!~
Dark Pit: (Starts Nodding to Odin's Journey) Hm, is that right? You did pretty well for a prince's retainer.
Odin: (Politely Bows at Pitto a Bit) Why, thank you, my good man. It was a long, challenging journey for each of us to endure in those days, but it's a blessing to know that we had enough willpower to persevere until our victory was finally seized that day.
Misako: Cool story. (Takes a Sip of her Drink) So how did you even get here to begin with?
Kyoko: Yeah. (Takes a Chili Cheese Fry From the Basket and Eats It) That travel of yours must've been REALLY long if it got you sleeping on the sidewalks.
Odin: ('Sighs Heavily') Ohh you have no idea......After the war came to an end and the truce between Nohr and Hosido was made, I decided to part ways with my prince and comrades as I started my anew journey of my own. It was a long, superly long and exhausting road ahead, so much so that I ended up crawling at one point, which was terrible by the way, would not recommend for traveling sake.
Kyoko: (Raises an Eyebrow in Curiosity) Where did you started crawling at exactly?
Odin: In the desert. An extremely hot one.
Dark Pit/Misako: Yeesh.
Misako: That.....Couldn't be pleasant.
Odin: Not. In the slightest. But luckily, before I was close to preparing for my potential demise, lady luckily was gracious enough to bestow Pitt on me as a giant gold ring suddenly appears before my eyes.
Misako/Kyko/DP: (Eyes Widened at What Odin Said) Giant Gold Ring?
Dark Pit: The hell was that doing there?
Odin: I'm not sure......I just saw it twirling around out of thin air for a few seconds before gaining me it's access. I was too hot and dehydrated at the time, that I didn't try and question what was going on. I just crawled my way inside and before I know it, my entire body was traveling across time and space in a speed of light, as if I was being taken into another world. And load and behold, I was sent to this....."Local Smash Beach" I awoken from. I started roaming around the town shortly after until I eventually passed out on that spot on sidewalk, where I was found by you three: (Extends his Habd Out at the Trio) My new faithful, companions!.......Er.....Question. Do you mind telling me your names are please? It seems I've forgotten to ask.
Kyoko: (Giggles Softly) Not at all!~ My name is Kyoko. A fashion connoisseur, social media geek, and very pretty all around~
Misako: (Points at Herself) The name's Misako. Tough as nails and the last bitch you wanna pick a fight with. (Points at Pitto) And that cute, moody dork of an angel over there is our boyfriend, Pitto.
Dark Pit: I go by Dark Pit, but.....(Rolls his Eyes) Pitto's fine too I guess. (Takes a Sip of his Drink)
Odin: (Smiles Brightly) Ah, so you all formed a trio of romance? (Starts Nodding in Approval) Truly remarkable indeed. By the looks of it, I can tell you three have been happy with one another for quite some time
Dark Pit: (Forms a Proud Smirk on his Face) ('Hmph') Damn right. They can be pain sometimes, but I still love those two dumb-dumbs to ends of the earth. They're practically my everything at this point.
Kyoko: (Heart Begins to Melt in Pure Happiness) We love you to the ends of the earth too, Pitto-Kins!~
Misako: (Smirks Back at her Dark Angel) Expect some loving and cuddles later on tonight, will ya, babe?~ (Winks at DP)
Dark Pit: You got it. (Hears Odin Snickering Before Turning Back to Him) What got you laughing?
Odin: Your nickname is Pitto-Kins?
Dark Pit: Yep. (Glares at his New Friend While Pointing his Bow at him) Call me that and I will end you in a millisecond.
Odin: (Immediately Cease his Snickering While Looking Away) D-Dully noted. (Starts Clearing his Throat Before Notices and Pointing at the Two Portraits From Afar) Say, are those two are the king and queen of this establishment?
Misako: ('Sigh') Sort of. They're only named that because they've completed the Big Bang Burger Challenge in record time.
Odin: (Raises an Eyebrow in Curiosity) Big Bang Burger Challenge?
Dark Pit: It's a challenge where you have to eat this giant burger the quickest. We've done it multiple times already and we ended up losing in every single one. It's impossible at this point-
Odin: (Immediately Got Up From his Seat) Challenge Accepted!
Dark Pit: (Turns Back to Odin) What?
Odin: (Turns to Dark Pit Beside Him) Is your hearing having difficulty there, my angel friend? I said I-
Dark Pit: Oh no, I heard you perfectly. I'm just wondering how stupid you are and how quickly you'll fail.
Odin: (Gasps Before Glaring at Pitto) I beg your pardon!? I'll have you know that I participated in multiple trivial challenges over the years and have accomplished a few of them without breaking a single sweat!
Dark Pit:(Already Unconvinced) A few of them. Really.
Misako: (Raises an Eyebrow) You sure you wanna go through with this, new guy?
Odin: Absolutely! It could try and intimate me all it want. I will persevere this so called challenge without fail and let it be known by all that Great and Powerful ODIN THE DARK has seized the throne of this establishment with his head held high!
Kyoko: (Immediately Gets Up From her Seat as Well All Fired Up) I ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE TOO!~
Dark Pit/Misako: (Gives Their Girlfriend Deadpinned Looks) Seriously?
Kyoko: (Pouts at her Boyfriend and Girlfriend) Yes, seriously! This is a brand new year and I'll be damn if I'm gonna let that dumb challenge get the better of me now! (Turns to Odin) You have room for one more in that throne of yours, Odin?
Odin: (Smiles Brightly) Why, of course! My throne will be shared by all who participate with me!
Kyoko: HELL YEAH!
Dark Pit: (Watches the Duo Firing Themselves Up Along with Misako) We're gonna have chime in on this too, aren't we?
Misako: (Turns to Dark Pit) Well, we can't let 'em do that challenge alone. They'll get destroyed out there.
Dark Pit: ('Sigh') True. I really don't wanna go through this shit again......
Misako: Neither do I, babe, but who knows? With the four of us combined, we could have more chances of winning than we ever had before, right?-
Thirty Minutes Later.........
Everyone: (Groaning in Failure and Fullness)
Misako: I take it back. This challenge is fucking impossible!
Odin: ('Groans') B-But....We've tried so hard.....And got so far......
Dark Pit: In the end, it doesn't even matter. Nothing matters anymore.
Kyoko: My poor tummy.......
Employee: (Walks By the Group's Table) Failed the challenge yet again I see.
Misako: (Glares at the Employee) Yeah. No shit.
Employee: (Gives the Gang a Reassuring Smile) Hey now, keep your head held high. It's like I always say-
Dark Pit: (Rolls his Eyes in Annoyance) "There's always next time". We know. Just.....leave us wailing in our failures in peace already.
Employee: (Casual Shrugs) Okay, buut if you really want my advice, i suggest you-
Pitto/Misako/Kyoko: LEAVE!
Employee: (Finally Walks Away)
Misako: ('Groans in Pure Annoyance') I swear, if I wasn't this full, I'd punch that jerk to kingdom come right about now.
Kyoko: Same. (Stares Smiling a Little) But you wanna know what will make us all better after we leave outta here?~
Misako: (Smirks at her Girlfriend a Little) You know it.
Kyoko/Misako: Shopping Timeeeee!~
Dark Pit: ('Sigh') Can't believe I'm saying this, but sure, why not. (Points at Odin Beside Him) The new guy's in desperate need of a new wardrobe anyways.
Odin: (Eyes Widened by Pitto's Comment) H-Hey! What's wrong with the clothes I'm wearing right now!?
Dark Pit: (Turns to Odin) No offense, man, but it's like Miski said: you look like some jester that's trying way too hard to look glamorous when it's anything but.
Odin: Y-Yeah, well.....(Turns Away While Crossing his Arms and Pouting) Lord Leo says he likes it......
Dark Pit: Well, your lord isn't here now, is he? You're in the modern time now, Odin. It's high time blend in with the crowd like the rest of us.
Odin: (Slowly Turns Back to Dark Pit Before Sighing in Defeat) Very well. But can we stay here for a bit longer? My stomach is killing me way too much for me to stand back up right now......
Dark Pit: Sure thing.
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empress-of-hugs · 2 years
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Prime Profiler - DoMAYstic day 12
Criminal Minds, Gen Rating
Jason Gideon & David Rossi
Also available on AO3
Walking into the bunker, Jason found himself greeted by the seductive smell of fresh coffee and bagels. A smile tugged on his lips and his eyes immediately searched out his colleague and friend. Dave stood bent over his desk, pouring coffee into a large mug while chewing on a cream cheese poppyseed bagel. “Good morning,” he said, picking up the mug and handing it to Jason as soon as the latter had shed his jacket, “I picked us up some breakfast on the way.”
Jason smiled, taking a small, appreciative sip of coffee. Dave watched him with amusement in his eyes, waiting for Jason to take his first sip of the day before reminding him of the existence of the bagels. He then easily stepped aside to allow his friend to take whatever he wanted while he flipped through a file, “Got word late last night that Gordon was convicted.” 
Slathering a bagel in cream cheese, Jason didn’t look up, “The guy with the buried trailer in the backyard, right?” 
“Right,” his eyes watched as Jason sat down at his desk, taking another sip of his coffee before devouring the bagel. 
“What was the verdict?” 
He shrugged, knowing full well his friend wasn’t going to like it, “Death penalty.” 
Jason sucked in a breath and nodded, “I guess it was unavoidable.” He took another sip of his coffee, thoroughly enjoying the dark liquid. “Why are you watching me like that?” 
Dave immediately looked away, thumbing through the file, “I’m not watching you. We’re having a conversation, people tend to look at one another when they have a conversation.” 
A light chuckle tinted the air. Jason took another sip of his coffee before speaking again, changing the subject, “This coffee is really good. Where’d you get it?” 
“Imported.” Dave cleared his throat, “From Italy.”
Jason raised his eyebrows, “Expensive…” 
“An aunt brought it over when she came to visit my mother. She saved it for me. I now share it with you. Didn’t cost me anything but the time to go pick it up.” There was tension in his voice, but Jason made the conscious decision not to point it out. Instead, he simply took another sip of his coffee, letting the stuff roll around his mouth before swallowing. After a few moments, Dave returned to his file and Jason picked up the file on top of his stack. There was an amicable silence between them, only interrupted by the sounds of coffee and bagels being consumed and the occasional crackle of paper. 
“I got something here,” Jason said quietly, “Three abductions in the last three months. All taken on the first Monday of the month, all young women, all redheads.” 
Dave nodded, “Sounds like a pattern, alright.” His eyes lingered on Jason’s coffee mug, but he didn’t say anything more.
“Yeah,” Jason tossed the last bite of his bagel in his mouth before picking up the phone and dialing the number on the case file. 
Pulling a small face, Dave returned to his own reading. He didn’t pay attention to Jason’s conversation, focussing on finding his own case instead. When Jason put down the phone, Dave finally looked up from his own file, a finger betwixt the pages, “And?” 
“Wanna go to Maryland with me?” 
Dave sighed, eying the stack of files on his desk, then the one on Jason’s desk, “Is that wise?”
He shrugged, a lopsided smile on his face, “I dunno. Am I wise?” 
Dave pulled a face, studying his friend for a few long seconds, “Do I need to answer that?” 
Chuckling, Jason picked up his mug to refill it. He ignored the studious look that Dave gave him, though it made him feel just barely off. The coffee his friend brought was good, the mug deep and wide. He filled it all the way up, a delighted smile on his face as he noticed how much heavier the mug got as he did so. He took a sip before turning back to Dave, who was by now, definitely studying him. “Alright, confess. What did you do?” 
“I didn’t do anything,” Dave spread his hands, “I swear.”
“So I am to believe that this delicious coffee isn’t a bribe?” 
“A bribe…?” Dave chuckled, “No, it’s not a bribe.” 
Jason took another long drink. This was dangerous, he was already addicted to the stuff. “So I am to believe that this offer of expensive coffee means nothing?” 
“Sure it means something.” Dave shrugged, “It means you’re my friend. I just wanted to share.” 
For a moment, he didn’t have an answer. Sure he knew, but Dave had never put it quite so bluntly before. Jason took another sip of coffee, mulling Dave’s words over in his head. 
“What?” Dave’s laugh sounded a little nervous, “What’s wrong with calling you my friend?” 
“Nothing,” he shook his head, “It’s just not something you’ve said before.” 
Dave hid his face behind his own mug as he muttered, “Well, isn’t there supposed to be a first time for everything?” 
Jason smiled, “Of course.” He studied his friend through his eyelashes, thoughtfully considering even the tiniest hints of what Dave might be thinking. If only he didn’t hide so much of his face behind that oversized mug. He almost frowned, but then his gaze examined the mug in question. It was new. Of course it was. The FBI-issued cups were tiny and the ones they had brought in themselves weren’t nearly this large either. Dave had brought these in together with the coffee, he realized. It made sense he’d bought himself an obnoxiously bright yellow mug that said ‘Miracle worker’ in fancy blue font. It was just like him. Jason smiled, then, slowly, realized something else. He carefully turned his cup, taking great care not to spill even a drop of coffee. As his eyes rested on the front of the mug Dave had so casually handed him first thing in the morning, Jason felt his own throat get a little dry. He didn’t notice Dave’s eyes on him, he didn’t notice his friend was holding his breath. All he saw were the two words that were spelled – yellow on dark blue – on his mug; ‘Prime Profiler’
Fin. 
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euthymiya · 3 days
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oh my goodness i’m crying! i’m crying because you make me cry with that alhaitham fic😭🫶🏻🥺
reading all of that in that format and prose was so healing for me as someone who wasted a year and some months on a situation with a guy (nothing happened but i am healed from that)
i honestly would not have believed that i would be able to get another sense of closure and a healing session from a random artist on the internet about a topic so heavily guarded to me that damaged me a lot but thank you so so much from the bottom of my heart
(i’m so sorry for the trauma dump but i feel the burning need to thank you and to sing you praises)
i adore how you explored alhaithams character while staying true to to his essence as well as the MC being a delight, i was screaming and being frustrated in the scenes where the MC was in her head, but let me tell you the love confession was delightful
i am so sorry my mind cannot string together more praises but please do enjoy these ones, i love you and this piece of art will forever live in my mind (and blog🤭)
omg!!! hello your ask will make me cry this is so precious i will combust 🥹 first of all i’m very glad you’re healed! i think i also wasted a good amount of time on a man that inevitably got me nothing and a small part of this fic is a reflection of that so i’m glad someone could’ve read it and felt seen or heard 🥹💖 but i’m genuinely so mind blown that a silly little fic i wrote would have someone telling me they got a second sense of closure. that’s crazy!!! and im grateful!! thank you so much for giving it a read i am so very thrilled. thank you so so so much from the bottom of my heart for enjoying my fic!
i thoroughly enjoy a fic where reader is the cause of the miscommunication or the “conflict” in the plot and especially when they’re scared or unable to fully be optimistic about a situation bc sometimes i feel like it’s nice to see them be portrayed as overthinking in their heads. idk it makes for a fun ride and it makes the character more dreamy when they’re good at communication and reassurance 😚
but truly this ask was the most lovely string of praise you could have sent and it definitely made my day. thank you once again and i hope my future writing will bring you as much joy too! giving you a big tight hug 😚💖
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daddyhausen · 2 years
Note
can i request a kenny omega smut where the reader asks kenny to slap her around during sex but when they do get to that the bucks walk in on it and they are really confused and asking why he slapped her and stuff?
• not for innocent eyes — kenny omega •
.*•…………………..•⊹•…………………..•*.
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{ warnings } — smut, 18+ { minors do not interact }, fem!reader consensual slapping, masochist/sadist dynamic, pain kink, masochism kink degradation, blowjob, facefucking, throatfucking, male orgasm, facial, cumshot, pearl necklace, choking, erotic asphyxiation, vaginal sex, rough sex, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, exhibitionism { caught }, orgasm denial
{ word count } — 1.3k
{ genre } — smut
.*•…………………..•⊹•…………………..•*.
it was a strange question to ask, virtually asking your partner to slap you around while you fuck surely wasn’t on the list of normal relationship questions. but you, as ever persistent as you are, still remained hesitant in asking him, more or less for fear of his response. kenny was a well-rounded guy, sweet, caring, definitely the best fuck you’ve ever had, it still troubled you in the back of your mind that he might reject the idea.
he had come home early this evening, he had contacted you earlier saying that the t.v tapings for dynamite were cut short on the account of a technical error. still it did not seem to worry as much, at least he got to come home to you.
“what’s on your mind, love? i called out to you three times and you didn’t answer” you hummed softly as his voice took you off guard, you hadn’t even realised his presence until now. better now than never to vent to him your desires.
he joined you on the couch, rubbing circles into the small of your back ever so gently, his touch made your skin tingle, from the tips of your fingers and toes, all the way to your core. you took no time straddling his lap, seductively crawling on top of him, wrapping your arms around his neck and planting a soft kiss to his lips.
“what has gotten into you? i’ve been home for five minutes and you’re all over me?” he chuckled awkwardly, yet enjoyed the prospect of his girlfriend straddling him so suddenly. you hummed in delight, already feeling his bulge press up against your cunt through his gym shorts.
“why don’t we try something different tonight?” you purred, pure eroticism dripping from your pinkish lips. he cocked an eyebrow, confusion riddled his features, groaning softly as you began to swirl your hips slowly.
“okay…what do you want to do?’ he questioned cautiously, not sure wether to be intimidated or turned on by the such newfound sexual confidence of yours. he must admit he did enjoy the sight.
“i want you to slap me while we fuck, and not softly either” you fists balled up into the collar of his shirt, hips pressing down and forward, grinding against his growing cock. “i want you to ruin me, degrade me like the pathetic little slut i am”
his eyes darkened, those bright cerulean blues, now a deep sapphire with lustful intent. his cock now fully hard beneath you, so much so with each movement of your hips against it made your cunt wet with anticipation.
“on your knees…” he snarled, waiting for you to obey his orders, you waited for a second, not hesitant in the slightest, but patient, awaiting what his next move would be.
“now!’ he growled lowly in your ear, a harsh slap met your cheek, an exhilarated moan left your lips, your cunt soaked at the contact as you were able to make your way to your knees. you loved the sting, the sensation of his handprint etched into your burning skin, you thought you were about to cum them and there. he gave you another slap to the opposing cheek as your body shuddered with delight.
although kenny did not utter any words, his eyes softened at the sight, he did not want to hurt you. that was evident but the way your moans flooded the room, accompanied by the sickening sound of the slap, the way you thoroughly enjoyed it. it turned him on even more.
“you want my cock, little whore?” he asked, freeing his cock from his shorts, his shaft thick, littered with veins, pulsating under his touch. he gripped your chin roughly, making you look up at him.
“answer me!”
“yes sir! i want your cock so bad, ruin my throat, please sir!” you begged undertoned with an almost masochistic laugh. he did not say a word, simply, willingly forcing his cock down your throat, the sensation was pure wonder. his size filling your throat almost to the point where you choke on it. you spit glazing his thick shaft, mixing with his precum and beginning to drip down your chin.
“stupid girl, your such a fucking slut for my cock” he hummed lowly, gripping your head between his hands, thrusting roughly as his cock hit the back of your throat, so much so he felt his first orgasm nearing, as much as he wanted to grace your tastebuds with his seed, he hesitated, knowing he had much more in left in store for you.
he pulled out of your throat, leaving you sputtering and choking around air. he stood stoic before you, pumping his cock roughly, with heated growls and laboured breaths, your pussy quivering with want at the noises he made.
“fuck-“ he groaned, with a shaky breath, hot ropes of his cum coating your pristine skin, your rosebud lips glossed with his milky essence as you licked them clean with such an erotic moan, some excess dripping onto your neck. he chuckled at the sight of you trying to gather his seed onto your tastebuds, slapping his cock against your cheeks and tongue tot he desired affect as he came down from his high.
“get up.” he demanded, you did as told, quickly stripping before his eyes, and made your way to the couch, beginning to toy with your soaked pussy, knowing he’d already be asking that of you. your face slightly red, still covered in his cum, boy what a sight it was, and he enjoyed every second of it.
he wasted no time ridding himself of his clothing, his cock, engorged and red, still leaking with his hot seed. he gave you no time to prepare before his hand wrapped around your throat and his cock buried deep inside your warmth.
“your cunt is so fucking wet for me” he lulled, feeling his cock slip in and out of your pussy with ease. he kept a firm grip on your throat, squeezing tighter as the act progressed. your masochistic side still needed to be pleasured and he knew that, he brought his hand up once more, ruining your pristine skin, with continuous loving slaps to your cheeks.
“fuck sir, it feels so good!” you spilled your words through a guttural moan, your skin burning, stinging with such unbridled pleasure. his breath was heavy, limbs going weak, so enthralled with the sensation of running you that he did not even realise that the bucks had made their entry, and were currently witnessing such an erotic act.
“uhh what’s going on here?” your minds were taken aback by the sound of matt’s voice flooding your living room, kenny quickly pulled out of you, much to your dismay as the both of you, scrambled to gather your clothes, or at least try and cover up your modesty.
“what does it look like, we’re fucking” kenny responded spitefully, bitter that he did not get to fill you and relish in his second orgasm. you simply hid yourself into the couch, far too embarrassed to look either of the bucks or kenny for that matter in the eye.
“yeah, we got that, but why were you hitting her?” nick spoke up, becoming overprotective of his best friend's girlfriend, who was more like a little sister to him and his brother.
“because i wanted him to” you interjected before kenny could speak up again, your comment taking aback the two brothers, both of whom raised their eyebrows in surprise. “we were trying out new things like new kinks and-“
“yeah yeah we get it” matt interjected, nick covering his ears in an attempt to block out your words as he left your apartment in embarrassment, leaving his older brother to fend for himself. “forget we ever showed up”
both brothers left, possibly having to bleach their ears and eyes for what they had just witnessed, leaving you and kenny stunned. next time he should definitely lock the door after coming home.
“i swear i did not know they were coming over” you chuckled out of desperation to ease the awkward tension in the room between yourself and your boyfriend.
“well one thing i do know for sure…” he paused for a moment, still breathless as he slumped on the couch beside you. “its that you’re a fucking masochist!”
.*•…………………..•⊹•…………………..•*.
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espressokiri · 3 years
Note
Heyy, I’m Muslim and I’m also a huge simp for Todoroki, Bakugo, Iida, and Kaminari. Soooo can I have them with a Muslim (possibly hijabi) s/o?
Todoroki Shoto, Bakugou Katsuki, Iida Tenya, and Kaminari Denki x Hijabi!reader
In which reader is a hijabi Muslim.
Warnings: None
Genre: Fluff (literally half these ideas came from late night talks with my bestie @that-weirdo-in-the-corner)
Note: My first headcanon <3 I hope you like it!
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Todoroki Shoto
We’re all aware of this mans lack of physical affection and aloof nature, along with his social awkwardness. That’s a recipe for odd encounters and hilarious misunderstandings.
This man gained interest in you when he noticed you were elegant even while in training/battles, along with your sweet nature and fashionable modest wear.
He researched about your religion and had found out that only women who are married are allowed to go out alone with their partners.
Poor boy didn’t read/research enough.
He decides to get to know you from a distance, respecting your boundaries and it wasn’t that hard to avoid physical contact as he himself was not one to initiate it.
When you did get closer and formed an emotional bond, you’ll be met with the weirdest encounter;
“Shoto, what are you doing?” You blinked, not understanding what the half-and-half male was doing bent on one knee with a ring box outside your family home.
“I read that we can only go out on dates together if you’re married.”
You want to smack your head on the wall but you were flattered at the same time.
Had to tell him that you were allowed on dates if you were chaperoned by a family member or friends.
Had Fuyumi chaperone you two, she was very delighted but had kept watch from a distance.
Shoto has the best time learning about your religion, curiously asking questions and gains a deeper understanding of how things were in your perspective.
He keeps a respectful distance even during dates, making sure he wasn’t crossing boundaries.
Would scour the whole of Japan to find halal food.
Tells you that he called Endeavour shaytaan and you choke on the water you were sipping on, laughing out loud.
Fasts with you one day and is betrayed at how full he felt after one bite.
Hands you Endeavour’s exclusive credit card for Eid.
Todoroki is just very genuine and he tries his best to keep you comfortable around him, also carries hijab pins in his backpack just in case you need some.
Bakugou Katsuki
Oh God.
Listen, he’s very respectful in his own way but it took him time to work through it with his competitive nature.
Man has done his research thoroughly and he is ready to commit.
“I can cook us a vegetarian meal that won’t be boring to the tastebuds like the crap they sell out there.”
That’s his way of asking you out, making sure his parents would be home too because he knows two people of different genders should not be left alone.
Makes the best damn vegetarian dish. Vegetarian because he has yet to figure out what halal is.
Tries to learn some words, does excellent but his way of speaking is even more aggressive than an Emirati accent. He has your Arab friends shaking in their shoes.
It’s Ramadan? Prepare for three am calls that consist of him yelling at you to get up. Yes, he breaks his sleep pattern to wake you up to eat. Yes, he makes you video call him so he makes sure you eat well and hydrate. Yes, he ends up fasting with you so you don’t feel alone. Will he tell you that? No.
Sometimes he makes Iftar for you and brings it in a bento, giving it to you after school so you can have a good meal.
Watches you with wide eyes and mouth open in shock when he sees you eating when you’re supposed to be fasting;
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO EAT YET!”
“I- I’m on my period?”
“SO?”
“We’re not allowed to fast while we’re on our period.”
He stays quiet the rest of the day.
Admires different styles of hijab you do.
Eid? He’s the best dressed alongside you. 
Bakugou would be a good partner, respectable, and tries his best to understand and make you feel comfortable in his own way.
Iida Tenya
This boy knows everything already.
Has done research the second he realized there was a Muslim classmate, and as a good fellow class president it was his duty to make sure everyone was comfortable.
Has extra scarves with a small tin full of pins for you kept under his desk in case of emergencies or if they get damaged in training (which wouldn’t happen as Hatsume had created one that would resist damage.) It was a nice thought.
He does slowly wants to get to know you more as your sweet nature made him feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Keeps a respectful distance at all time.
“Asalam Alaikum, Y/n! It has come to my attention that Ramadan is nearing soon so I have made a list of dietary necessities you may need to intake in order to help your quirk during the holy month.”
“Iida, that’s so sweet of you! You didn’t have to! Also, how did you pronounce that so well?”
“As you class president and friend, I am honoured to do such! To answer your question, I had listened to someone say it on repeat before I practiced.”
This man has every word on repeat just to soak it in his brain.
Averts his eyes even if he sees your ankle, angry at himself for accidentally glancing.
Sir, I promise it’s not a sin to look at an ankle accidentally.
Sees your Hijab bunching up and start showing bits of your neck and shoulder? Grabs the end of the scarf and pulls it down to cover again, avoiding touching your skin.
Checks the ingredients list of the snacks you’re buying for gelatine or alcohol, making sure it’s halal/vegetarian/vegan friendly.
Upset you can’t find halal gummies? This man goes online and orders a bag of certified halal sweets for you to enjoy because you deserve simple joys like this.
Makes sure you pray on time, has the MuslimPro app on his phone to keep track.
He also scrolls through the app to learn more.
Iida is a perfect gentleman and he’s also making sure that you stay spiritually on track and don’t get distracted <3
Kaminari Denki
This man is a physically affectionate person. 
He will make the mistake of bounding over to you and slinging an arm around your shoulder or pull you into a hug.
But he will learn and try to control the affectionate urges, limiting himself to hand holding if you allow it.
He thinks you look wonderful with the different coloured hijabs.
Tries making you wear a yellow and black one to match his hair.
Forgets that you can’t eat everything and anything, especially casual things like gummies.
Will apologize profusely when he realizes after you tell him it has gelatine.
Tries to stave off of gelatine infused products.
“Not even water???”
“Denki, I swear to God I’m going to smack you.”
Yes he’s that guy.
Tries fasting with you, just sleeps through the whole day till it was time to eat.
When he see’s you dozing off in class because of staying up all night either because of suhoor or special night prayers during the last ten days, he’ll zap you to keep you paying attention.
He is honestly your hype man when it comes to modest fashion, especially during Eid. This boy will dramatically kneel on the floor and look at you like you’re the light of his life.
Get’s excited when you hand him Eid money because you love him and he has cute child-like tendencies.
Tries greeting your family members, comes out as gibberish.
“Asalamasjdaskjdhashjs”
“Not quite there yet, Denki. A-plus for effort.”
He’s a fun guy who tries to better himself around you, making sure he’s aware of his actions and makes an effort to not mess up around you because he’s never felt so in love with a person as he has with you.
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helloalycia · 3 years
Text
my patient’s neighbour [two] // wanda maximoff
summary: as you spend more time with your patient's neighbour, you come to realise that your crush may be getting too much
warning/s: none, just fluff tbh
author's note: i’m so glad you guys enjoyed the first part! here’s the next bit :)
part one | part three | part four | part five | part six | part seven | masterlist | wattpad
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When Sunday rolled around, I did everything in my power to make it the perfect day for Anna. We went out for breakfast at a café around the corner, a stroll around the park, then I made her lunch before she conked out afterwards, napping in her bedroom. I took that as my chance to decorate the living-area with birthday decorations. Nothing too much as I knew she'd kill me if I went overboard, but little things like a banner, some balloons and streamers.
I told Wanda to come at this time, too, and she showed up with a bag of groceries and a pretty smile on her face.
"Here, let me help," I said, already moving to take the bag off her. "How are you?"
"I'm good," she said, closing the door behind her and following me into the kitchen. Her smile widened when she saw the decorations. "Y/N, this is lovely! Anna is going to love it!"
"You think?" I asked, spinning around and doing a once over of the living-area. "It's not too much? I know she'll hate if I do too much."
"It's just the right amount," Wanda reassured, glancing at me. "How has she been today?"
We both began to unpack the groceries as we talked.
"Really good actually," I said with a nod. "I treated her to breakfast at that café she likes. We went to the park, fed the ducks, had a nice stroll. Then I made her some lunch and she's napping which leaves us the perfect time to crack on with dinner."
Wanda chuckled. "Great." She paused, making me look to her to see her smile fading. Nervously, she asked, "Did her granddaughter call?"
I sighed quietly and Wanda seemed to know what that meant without me saying anything further. 
"It's okay, we'll just have to make this the best meal ever," she said, not letting it get to her.
"We will," I agreed, before looking to the food on the table. "So, chef. Where do we start?"
Wanda and I spent the next hour prepping dinner, a beef stew called Solyanka, as it would require two hours to cook on the stove so we were starting early to make sure it would be ready in time.
I was chopping some onions as she prepared the beef, but I couldn't help myself from glancing at her every two seconds, still filled with concern because of her cast and minor injuries.
"You should take a picture, it'll last longer," she said teasingly, making me look up to see her watching me with a stifled smile.
"Sorry," I mumbled, shaking my head and looking back to my chopping board.
"What's wrong?" she asked gently.
I chewed on my lip as I glanced at her wrist again, before meeting her gaze. "How did it happen?"
"I already told you," she reminded me playfully, trying to lighten the mood, but I was still fretful. "It happened on a mission."
"Yeah, but how?" I asked again, hoping she understood what I meant.
She seemed reluctant to share, face scrunching up with thought, before looking down to her own chopping board. I thought she wouldn't tell me, but then she spoke.
"I can't tell you too much," she started, shrugging, "since it was a confidential mission. But basically, I was undercover when my target recognised me and we got into a fight."
Watching her with the utmost attention, I nodded, imagining it in my head.
"It wasn't difficult or anything, but it surprised me, y'know?" She looked to me with a smile, as if trying to make it sound less scarier than it was. "The guy, the target, he managed to get in few good hits. And he sprained my wrist. But it's alright."
I wasn't as amused as she was, wincing at the thought of her being in a fight. "Are you sure you're alright?"
She tilted her head knowingly. "I'm sure, Y/N. It's my job."
Shaking my head, I looked back down to my chopping board and continued chopping the onion. "I don't know how you can do that as a job..."
"Well, it's rewarding," she said like it was obvious. "Why do you spend most of your week caring for the elderly?"
"It's rewarding," I said without hesitation, before realising what she'd done and looking her way.
She was smiling cockily, making me roll my eyes and laugh.
"Okay, I see your point," I gave in. "But still. It's a dangerous job what you do. Just be careful, yeah?"
"Always am," she promised. And I wanted to believe her, but the cast on her wrist said otherwise.
"It smells like home, devochki, spasibo (girls, thank you)," Anna said from her place at the table. "Are you sure you don't want me to help?"
"We're sure, Anna," Wanda called back to her. "I'm just putting the food into a serving bowl and Y/N is grabbing some glasses. You sit and wait like the patient woman I know you are."
Anna mumbled something in Russian which I didn't understand, but it seemed to make Wanda chuckle as she rolled her eyes.
It was finally time for dinner and the stew had turned out beautifully, not that I had doubts since Wanda didn't seem like one to kid around with cooking.
As she was readying it for the table, I was setting everything up and all that was left were the glasses. But, of course (and oddly enough, since Anna was shorter than I), they were stored on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard and just out of my reach.
In hindsight, I probably could have grabbed a stool and stood on it, but I was too lazy, so I went on my tip-toes and stretched with all my might. The tips of my fingers brushed against a glass and I attempted to move it towards me, unable to see if I was actually doing anything since it was too high. After a couple of tries, I managed to bring it forward, but my stupid self flicked it too hard and it came tumbling off the shelf and towards the counter.
I braced myself for the sound of glass smashing, but instead, a wondrous red energy wrapped itself around the glass and kept it suspended mid-fall.
"Very clever," Wanda said sarcastically, appearing directly beside me. Her accent was daringly teasing.
I looked up and saw her smirking at me with amusement, right hand raised and aimed at the glass. Red tendrils of energy glowed around her hand and the glass; I widened my eyes a little, amazed at how easy she made it look. Though I knew she had powers, I'd never actually seen her use them up close and personal. It was stunning.
"I totally knew you were going to do that," I played it cool, cheeks flushing as she set the glass on the counter.
"Mhm, sure you did," she played along with a melodious laugh, before pressing her front to my back without warning and reaching to grab two more glasses. "Here, I got it."
My body tensed at the feeling of her unexpectedly so close to me. My mouth went dry, her warmth emanating from her and washing over me with the scent of her perfume. Did she always smell so good?
When she grabbed all three glasses, she didn't seem to notice the effect she had on me (unless she did and kept quiet for her own amusement).
"Think you can grab the food without dropping it?" she asked, quirking an entertained brow.
Still distracted by her perfume, I nodded and cleared my throat. "Food. Right. Yeah."
As I stirred the stew to mix everything thoroughly, I felt my heart rate return to its normal pace and told myself to chill out. Wanda just happened to be an extremely pretty individual who was kind and thoughtful and funny. It wasn't a big deal.
When I was sure I wouldn't make a fool of myself, I returned to the dining table with a pot of stew and set it down on the placemat.
"Priyatnogo appetita (enjoy your meal)," I said, trying not to stumble over my pronunciation. 
Both Anna and Wanda raised their brows with matching surprised smiles on their faces.
"You said that perfectly, Y/N!" Wanda said encouragingly, as I took a seat to the right of Anna at the head of the table.
"I see you've been practicing," Anna added, looking to me with an endearing gaze. "A present in itself. Thank you, milaya (sweetie)."
I smiled bashfully. "I have to keep up with you both somehow, right?"
Anna chuckled as Wanda gave me a brilliant smile. Something in my chest stirred as she did, and I was forced to look away, though my own smile didn't fade.
"So, Y/N and I put this together for you and I'm sure you'll know what it is," Wanda said, before serving up a bowl for Anna.
"Solyanka," Anna exclaimed with delight. "Devushki (girls), this looks and smells amazing." She paused, glancing between us both with a grateful smile. "Since you've both been here, this place... it's beginning to feel alive again."
To my surprise, she teared up and began to laugh, using her napkin to pat the corner of her eyes. I rested my hand on hers, squeezing it gently and giving her a small smile.
"I appreciate this very much," she continued, before squeezing my hand and letting go to grab her spoon. "I can't wait to try it."
The three of us dug into our stew and Anna loved it, talking about the first time she ever had it as a kid and how it was one of her favourite dishes. The rest of the meal went by wonderfully, with Anna looking as happy as ever and Wanda listening to her intently. I was listening, too, but my gaze did end up wandering to Wanda as she sat there animatedly, nodding along and smiling to Anna.
For some reason, she was ethereal tonight, though she looked like she always did. Her long brown hair was tied up in a ponytail and she wore a loose tee shirt over some jeans. Nothing fancy, but she pulled it off so well. Rings adorned her fingers as she played with them thoughtlessly, and it caught my eye before I got distracted by her cast on her left wrist.
She'd said she was okay, but it still worried me. It wasn't my right to worry, but she was my friend. I was concerned. She could take care of herself, but that wouldn't put the ache in my heart at ease.
As if she could hear my concerns, her eyes flickered to mine, a kaleidoscope of blue, green and gold. She sent me a reassuring glance before looking back to Anna with focus. I chewed on my lower lip, trying not to let my worry get the best of me, before looking back to Anna.
Towards the end of the meal, after we'd eaten and were merely conversing, Anna's landline rang in the apartment.
"I'll get it," Wanda said, already standing up to grab the phone from its cradle.
Anna and I watched as she answered the phone with a friendly 'hello', before a surprised expression appeared on her face.
"Sure, I'll pass it on now," Wanda was saying before approaching the table and stopping by Anna. Her expression softened as she said to Anna, "It's Sasha."
Anna's expression fell at the mention of her granddaughter. She nodded slightly, before standing up and grabbing her cane to balance. Accepting the phone, she began to walk away into her bedroom. Wanda and I heard her say a faint 'hello' before she closed the door behind her.
"Her granddaughter rang?" I asked with mild disbelief.
"It is her birthday," Wanda pointed out, returning to her seat.
"Bit late into the day though, isn't it?" I retorted, pulling a face. "Almost like the day is over, in fact."
"Sounding a little judgemental there, Y/N," Wanda teased, leaning forward into the palm of her hands and watching me.
"I'm not," I said with an eye roll. "I just think she should show her grandmother some respect. Who does she think she is?"
I paused as Wanda gave me a knowing look, then winced.
"Okay, I heard it that time," I admitted, making her laugh.
"I get it," she said, nodding slightly. "Maybe she's finally starting to realise though."
I sighed, leaning back in my seat. "I guess... For Anna's sake, I hope so."
Wanda and I talked amongst ourselves until Anna returned silently, hushing our conversation. She returned the phone to its cradle before taking a seat at the head of the table. Wanda and I exchanged looks before I decided to speak, noticing Anna wouldn't.
"Is Sasha doing okay?" I asked gently.
Anna was staring ahead, barely listening, before she glanced at me then looked down to her empty bowl. Sentences left her lips in Russian, mumbled and incoherent, at least to me. Wanda leaned forward, holding her hand and frowning with sympathy as she listened to her words. I felt horrible, sensing something was wrong, but unable to do anything to help.
"I'm sorry, Anna, I didn't mean to upset you," I said, shaking my head.
Wanda met my gaze. "It's not your fault... Anna just misses Sasha."
I frowned. "Oh."
"But I'm glad I have you both," Anna finally spoke, accent thick with emotion, as she looked between us before settling her eyes to me. "Even if you're paid to be here."
She cracked a smile, making my shoulders relax. I returned her expression, glad she still had a sense of humour.
Anna didn't mention Sasha's name for the rest of the evening. We cleaned up, had some tea, played a quick board game before I made sure she was okay for the night.
"She alright?" Wanda asked when I closed Anna's bedroom door and stepped into the hall.
"Yeah, she's tired from all of today's excitement," I said with a smile.
"So are you by the sounds of it," she joked, but stepped forward to rest a hand on my arm. "I think we should call it a night."
"I think we should," I said in agreement.
After grabbing my stuff, Wanda and I left the flat before walking to her apartment and stopping outside.
"Thanks for helping me out today," I told her with a tired smile. "I really appreciated it."
"Well, you asked so nicely... how could I resist?" she said, staring up at me through her eyelashes. I rolled my eyes playfully, making her smile. "I had fun. Thanks for inviting me."
I was going to respond, but a yawn escaped my lips, prompting me to cover my mouth as I did.
"Sorry," I said, trying to blink the fatigue away momentarily.
She chuckled, tilting her head and watching me carefully. "You're cute."
I breathed out through my nose, unsure what to say to her words, but I definitely felt my heart rate speed up a little.
"I'll let you go," she said, clearly entertained by my silence. "Get home safe, yeah?"
"And you look after yourself when saving the world, yeah?" I replied with a quirked brow, eyes glancing at her wrist.
"I promise." She grinned before moving forward to hug me.
I returned the hug, the smell of her perfume permanent in my nose by now, before pulling away with a final smile. Of course, I probably shouldn't have stared at her lips so intensely, wanting nothing more than to kiss them.
"See you tomorrow," I said, snapping back into reality and taking a step back. "Goodnight, Wanda."
"Goodnight," she said sweetly.
I turned to leave and was suddenly wide awake. Did I just think about kissing Wanda?
It was a few visits later when I was caring for Anna and she decided to have a dance around the living room. One minute we were flicking through different radio stations, and the next she was putting on some old records on her record player. She settled on an upbeat, 50s dance song, the music filling the apartment with joy.
"Egor and I danced to this very song when we first met," she told me, talking about her late husband with a twinkling passion in her eyes. "It was a party and he had been staring at me all night, and I him. Then finally, when this song came on, he approached me and said, 'dorogaya, okazyvayesh' mne chest' tantsevat' so mnoy?'"
I suppressed a smile as I watched her reminisce. "And that means...?"
"'Darling, would you do me the honour of dancing with me'?" she repeated in English for my benefit.
My heart melted. "Anna, that's adorable. He sounds like such a gentlemen."
"He was," she said with a sigh of agreement, smiling to herself.
Whenever she talked about her husband, I'd never seen her look more content. The mere mention of his name was enough to put a smile on her face. I could only hope to have a love like theirs some day.
I stepped forward, putting out my hand. "I'm no Egor, but I'd love to dance with you if you'd let me."
"Oh, I can't do that," she said, waving my hand away. "I can barely walk, milaya (sweetie)."
"Hey, as your carer, I am insisting that you dance with me," I said, feigning sternness.
She hesitated, before resting her hand in mine and smiling with gratitude. The two of us danced together, myself being careful to keep her upright and make sure she didn't overexert herself. She was smiling and laughing as I spun her around, dancing her all around the living room, and it warmed my heart to see her so cheery.
A knock on the door caused me to excuse myself from Anna, only to find Wanda on the other end.
"Someone's in a good mood," she said instantly, taking note of my smile.
I stepped to the side to let her in. "Yeah, well, Anna is doing good today. It's contagious, what can I say?"
Before Wanda could respond, Anna called from the living-area with excitement.
"Wanda, idi syuda i potantsuy so mnoy!" she exclaimed, already grabbing Wanda's hand and pulling her in.
It didn't take a genius to know that Anna had basically asked Wanda to dance with her. I chuckled as I followed after them, enjoying the sight of Anna and Wanda dancing together.
"What's the occasion?" Wanda asked, glancing over the short woman and to me with a helpless smile.
"No occasion," I quipped, crossing my arms and trying to hold in my laughter at Anna's speed and perseverance with a reluctant Wanda. "Just having a good time."
Wanda looked like she wanted to retort with a comment, but Anna spun her around before she could, making me laugh aloud.
"Prikhodi odin, milaya (come on, sweetie)!" Anna said, holding out a hand. "Dance!"
Unable to resist, I joined in with the two Sokovian women, appreciating how happy Anna looked and how awkward Wanda felt in the situation. She wasn't much of a dancer, but she was trying and God was that adorable.
We danced for a little while longer until Anna's back began to hurt and she took a seat. Though, she insisted that Wanda and I resume with our dancing.
Just on time, like a sign from the universe or a higher being or whatever you wanted to believe in, a slow song came on next, filling the apartment soothingly.
To my surprise, the awkward dancer that was Wanda was oddly confident as she held out her hand to me.
"Would you do me the honour of dancing with me?" she asked softly, a small smile playing on her lips.
At the familiarity of her words, I glanced to Anna, who seemed to pick up on it, too. She said nothing as she watched us with a smile of her own.
"I'd love to," I said, looking back to Wanda's eyes.
They looked blue in the light, a beautiful sky blue that put me at ease as soon as I stared into them. I slipped my hand into hers, letting her pull us closer together as she rested her other hand on my waist, the touch sending shivers up my spine. I put mine on her shoulder, allowing her to take the lead.
It was the most intimate we'd been, and as she maintained eye contact, I wondered if she could feel my hands trembling slightly, or my heart hammering loudly, or my palms turning a little sweaty. She made me nervous in the best way possible, her smile dazzling without realising and her eyes piercing without meaning to be.
She must have felt it, too, that tug in the pit of her stomach that I was feeling now. Otherwise there was something seriously wrong and I was already too deep into a crush on my patient's neighbour.
When the song ended, it feeling like mere seconds in total, she let go of me and I missed the contact and the smell of her perfume and the way she was looking at me.
"Couldn't have done it better myself," Anna spoke, forcing me to tear my gaze from Wanda's lips. She smiled at me knowingly. "You ladies definitely know how to dance."
I felt a heat creeping up my neck as I smiled to myself, distracting myself with the laces on my shoes. When I finally brought myself to look up, I saw Wanda already looking my way, a calm expression on her face.
As she did most times she visited, Wanda stayed with me and Anna until I tucked Anna into bed and bid her a goodnight. We left the apartment and Wanda decided to walk me to the lift that evening, a distracted look on her face.
It was silent between us, a comfortable one, until the doors slid open and I looked to her with kind eyes.
"I guess I'll see you tomorrow," I told her, making her look to me. "Have a nice evening, Wanda."
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. I watched with amusement, wondering what was going on in that pretty head of hers. The lift doors began to shut, so I put my foot between them to keep them open.
"I should go," I said with an awkward laugh, before grabbing her hand and squeezing it gently since she wouldn't speak. "Goodnight."
When I turned to leave, I got, maybe, a step into the lift before I felt her fingers wrap around my wrist and tug me backwards, spinning me around. I didn't get chance to ask what was up as she stepped forward, pressing her lips to mine in an instant.
Startled, I froze at the contact, but then her hand rested on the back of my neck as her thumb caressed my jaw, and I found myself melting into her, closing my eyes at the blissful feeling.
Her other hand fell to my waist as she deepened the kiss, sending me into the lift and the wall hitting my back. I moved my lips in time with hers, revelling at how soft and delicate and gentle she was being. Kissing Wanda Maximoff wasn't something I had realised would be this good, but now that I was, I never wanted to stop.
Unfortunately, the sound of the lift doors shutting pulled us apart. I was breathless, my heart racing and my lips swollen from her spectacular kiss.
"I've wanted to do that for such a long time," she revealed, stepping back a little. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed as she watched me with mild concern. "I completely should have asked though. I'm sorry that I overstepped."
She pursed her lips, forefinger and thumb pinching her bottom lip regretfully and gaze falling to the floor.
"You didn't overstep," I said, already missing the sensation of her lips against mine. "You stepped just the right amount."
She looked back up, eyes softening as her lips curved into a radiant smile.
"You wanna, maybe, do that again?" I asked without thinking, my mind a haze as Wanda still remained so close to me.
She laughed melodiously before raising her hand and cupping my cheek. Her eyes looked between mine before falling to my lips affectionately.
"I'd love to, dorogoy (darling)."
I smiled toothlessly before closing the gap between us, secretly wishing this lift ride would go on forever if it meant I could kiss Wanda like this.
After making out with Wanda in the lift, she asked me out on a date and it was the best date I'd ever been on. Nothing over the top but very thoughtful as she took me for a picnic in the park before getting ice cream for dessert.
We went on a few more dates after that, taking turns to take the lead with them, and she ended up asking me to be her girlfriend which of course I said yes to.
All whilst this was going on, I still cared for Anna and Wanda paid her visits when she could, though we tried to remain as normal as possible. We didn't think it was best to tell Anna that we were together since we didn't want to startle her or make her feel uncomfortable in our presence. Of course, keeping a secret from Anna is as good as nothing when she had eyes like a hawk.
Wanda and I were putting a plate of tea and biscuits together for Anna one day, myself lining up the biscuits neatly as Wanda lingered beside me. She was about to grab a biscuit from the plate when I smacked her hand away.
"Just one," she pleaded, but I shook my head before nodding to the packet on the side.
"Help yourself to those," I told her condescendingly. "These are for Anna."
"Just get her another," she said simply, before reaching over again.
I smacked her hand away again, giving her a knowing look.
"Y/N!"
"Wanda!" I mirrored her childish smile.
She narrowed her eyes petulantly. "Are you seriously doing this right now?"
"Are you?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.
She pouted and I so badly wanted to lean forward and kiss it away, but Anna was sat on her recliner behind us. Wanda seemed to know this as a mischievous smile fell on her lips, eyes watching me carefully.
"You're not cute," I mumbled, before grabbing the tray and turning to leave. As I was walking to Anna, a biscuit began to float off the plate, red wisps of energy wrapped around it and bringing it to– "Wanda!"
She laughed, eyes glowing red with magic, before grabbing the biscuit from mid-air and taking a bite.
"Such a child," I said under my breath before setting the tray on the coffee table before Anna. Smiling at her, I said, "Here you go, Anna. Do you want anything else?"
As I straightened up, flipping Wanda off behind my back and encouraging her laughter further, I noticed the way Anna looked between us both curiously.
"Everything okay?" I asked, eyebrows knitting together as she continued to study us both.
"Something happened," she decided. "Between you both."
"What do you mean?" I asked, taking a seat on the couch. "Nothing happened."
"Something definitely did," she said knowingly. "I may be old, milaya (sweetie), but I have very good eyes."
"Anna, what are you talking about?" Wanda played dumb, taking a seat beside me, biscuit in hand.
"Don't think I haven't seen the way you two steal glances when you think I'm not looking," she said, pointing between us. "Or the way you," her finger settled on Wanda, "have been helping Y/N out more often than usual."
Wanda and I flushed, embarrassed that we'd been caught out. I was so certain that we'd successfully hid it from her, but clearly we were mistaken.
"We wanted to tell you," Wanda began, cheeks still pink as she leaned forward.
Anna silenced her with a wave of her hand. "Save it. I knew I was right. You two are together."
Pursing my lips, I waited for her to say something because I wasn't really sure what to say myself. Suddenly, a smile appeared on her lips.
"I'm very happy for you both," she said to us. "Wanda here always needed somebody in her life who wasn't me. And you, Y/N, are the perfect match for her."
I chuckled, looking to the girl in question, whose face was as red as her powers that she used to torment me with. I grabbed her hand, squeezing it gently, and nudged her in the shoulder.
"You hear that? Perfect match," I teased, making her roll her eyes to distract from her flustered self.
Anna said something to her in Russian, way too fast and incomprehensible for me to understand, even with the extra effort I was making to learn it. Whatever it was, it made Wanda get even more embarrassed, her green eyes darting around the room in an effort to overcome it.
"What did you say?" I asked Anna with amusement.
"Oh, nothing Wanda hasn't heard before," she said dismissively. "It's all okay. Isn't it, Wanda?"
"Yeah," Wanda mumbled.
"I don't know what's happening here, but I'm all for someone putting Wanda in her place," I said, looking between them both with an entertained smile.
Anna chuckled as Wanda shoved me in the arm gently before pulling me close again. I smiled at how cute she looked, pink blush creeping up her neck and teeth chewing on her lower lip to contain her smile.
I'd never get sick of the sight.
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forsworned · 3 years
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[♥] collegeau! to date or not to date {rengoku kyoujurou x reader}
Genre: Comedy, Slight Fluff, Slight Sensual Themes
Categories: F/M
Relationships: Renguko Kyoujorou/Reader
Word count: 2,791
a/n: continuation of unintentionally roomates which you can find here ,,requests are open
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➽────────────── ────────────── ──────────── ❥ 
It had been some weeks since she had gotten used to Kyoujurou being her roommate. So far neither of them had walked in on each other naked--yet. He was pretty tidy and would call her out in a teasingly kind of way that she'd sleep with her mouth wide open which made her pretty insecure, but he insisted it was "very cute." Which didn't make it any better. He could concur that it probably wasn't a good idea to show her the picture he had taken of her (he actually would look at it when he was having a bad day or he just wanted a good laugh; he also nearly made it his homescreen but decided that was maybe a little too far).
Mid-terms would be coming up soon and Kyoujurou wanted to do something fun before all the stress would settle in from piles of homework assignments and study guides. He suggested that the both of them should go to the amusement park and [name] was more than delighted to go, but there was a small issue with this. She didn't know if it was a date or just them simply hanging out. He just brought it up so casually when they had just finished a round of Super Smash Bros. and [name] was trying her hardest not to be a flustered mess about it.
"Just ask him." Shinobu's usual singsong voice was now monotonous. She had had enough of [name]'s shit to say the least. Always inquiring about Kyoujurou since Shinobu and him had been in the same graduating high school class and friend group. Not to mention mid terms were coming up and pre-med was no joke.
[Name] visibly sulked at her friend's tone. She didn't like being a nuisance to Shinobu, even though it wasn't hard to irate her nerves, but this time she seriously needed help and Shinobu was being nothing less than unpleasant.
"Shinobuuuu," [Name] whined. "This is a big deal for me. Please give me advice and I won't bring it up ever again."
The ravenette's eyes darted to the [h/c] pleading gaze, and it was enough to make to [name] squeak. Shinobu let out a sigh before speaking.
"Fine," [name]'s expression brightened, but Shinobu's finger pressing into her forehead made it falter a little. "but you don't need to stop talking about him. Just do it a lot less. I need to focus on exams."
[Name] cheered in triumph and fist pumped into the air, which in turn made Shinobu laugh. She wanted to be there for [name] in anyway she could, just within some restrictions and limitations. Shinobu's face suddenly went gravely serious.
"So here's the game plan."
.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°
[Name] took a deep breath before looking at her reflection. Her outfit was subtle yet cute. A simple blue top and beige skort to prevent panty reveals yet still have the illusion of wearing a skirt. Hair was pinned and pulled back abover her neckline since the sun would be beating down and she wanted to take every precaution to avoid any excessive sweating. Make up was light to circumvent it from melting off her face. Yes, [name] was over meticulous because she was resolute in this hang out/date to be absolutely perfect. And if Kyoujurou had decided to reject her than at least she'd look hot getting her heartbroken.
He had already left over an hour ago since he had to tutor a student in history at the tutoring center. A work study job that he picked up to help cover his tuition and endlessly spoke about when he got back to his dorm when you two were winding down from your day.
[Name] spritzed her best perfume to all her pulse points to extend the life of her scent as it hit her body. She threw it in her bag along with her make up just in case she needed to freshen up. One last look in the mirror and she was finally off to her date, er, hang-out thingy.
The autumn air was irregularly warm and humid. Well, not irregular for Okinawa at least. It was a sub tropical climate which meant mild winters and the moist summers were what [name] favored most about it here.
As she walked out of the dormitory and into the student parking lot, she was nearly blinded by the blond tresses sitting on the bench. Like quite, literally blinded. The sun was bouncing off his fiery hair more than usual and it was causing [name] to squint at him when she approached him. For some reason (she had an exact reason being that she looked super hot), [name] felt bold, and advanced toward Kyoujurou with hands concealing his vision. He visibly tensed and she couldn't help but feel a smile tug at her lips.
"Guess who."
His body now relaxing at the sound of her voice and she felt the apples of cheeks rise into a grin against the palm of her hands. "[name], you're finally here!"
She released her hands as he got up to face her and his jaw went a little aslack as he oggled at her profile. [Name] was stunning, indeed. His adam's apple bobbed up and down as he dryily swallowed. His hair that was now pulled back in a high ponytail let his bangs frame his face beautifully, swayed in the small gust momentarily. She could've sworn that he was blushing at her, but then again it was quite hot...
"You look--um, quite sharp!" He stammered. Kyoujurou mentally socked himself in the face. Sharp? That was the best he could come up with?
[Name]'s expression was now in a state of bemusement before she laughed melodically. To him it was a beautiful melody that he always tried to sway out of her with corny jokes and memes. "Well, thank you Kyoujurou. You look quite sharp, too!"
[Name] wanted to die. She looked sharp? Sharp?! No, she looked Hot! With a capital freaking "H".
Nonetheless, [name] shook it off. She was determined to make this flawless even if it was off to a rocky start. Thankfully the ride to the amusement car was starting to make up for it. The both of them jammed to the playlist they had put together earlier and discussed which rides they were excited about most.
"$50?!"
"You really don't read things thoroughly do you, [name]."
[Name] ignored his attempt at poking fun at her. It was always like this whenever she freakishly exclaimed about information that was news to her, but had been there for well however long the inital post had been there for and Kyoujurou had always made it a point to call her out for it.
"Well, I can't make you pay for it." She deadpanned. And she absolutely meant it. Kind of. Not really. It would mean that it would technically be a date, right? Right? A guy paying always meant that it was a date. [Name] mentally nodded at herself reassuring herself.
"Well, that's too bad." He inserted his card into the chip reader and thanked the attendant while grabbing his receipt.
[Name] bit back a smile as they walked side by side into the park. "Well, I'm going to pay you back."
He looked at her with an uncharacterstically sultry gaze. "No, you are not."
His voice demanding, dropped an octave and it sent a shiver up her spine. [Name] would be lying to herself if she said that it didn't make the her stomach knot up. Kyoujurou pulled out his phone pointed it towards her, trying to get a good angle and lighting.
"Now, give me a smile!" He beamed in his usual cheery tone. [Name] smiled posing her usual peace sign as he clicked away at his phone. Had she just imagined that?
The day seemed to slip past them as they took pictures with their phones and disposal camera they bought at the one of the stands for a whooping $25. Which was a total rip off, but then again bottled water was $5. The pair were laughing as they looked through the pictures they had taken throughout their trip.
"Oh, no. You are not keeping this one." She reached over to tap the trash can on his phone screen to get rid of the terrible photo that was her inhaling funnel cake. But before she could, Kyoujurou moved his screen away from her as he chuckled at [name] getting flustered. There was no way he'd let her get away with such a cute picture.
"I am definitely going to be framing this as soon as we get back." And that made [name]'s face inflame in embarrassment and shock. She was definitely, not going to let him do that.
"You delete that, right. Now!" She tried her best to extend her arms in every which way Kyoujurou was flexing his arms out but to avail. [Name] knew she wasn't going to get her hands on his phone, but she kept leaning over in an attempt to get an advantage on his long arms. That was until she clambered into his lap, face first into his crotch.
Kyoujurou froze and his breath hitched as he lowered his arm down and let unholy thoughts pass through his head but he quickly shook them off. "A-are you alright, [name]?"
Nope, now [name] was definitely going to die. She slowly rose out of his lap and plopped back into her seat, trying her best not to make the situation even more awkward. She shot him a smile in a strive to shake off the graceless action of diving face first into the crotch of her crush.
"I'm all good." She took a deep breath before looking up at the darkening sky. Kyoujurou couldn't tell what she was thinking, but it looked almost as if she was unfazed which he was very thankful for.
"Let's go on the ferris wheel before we leave!" That snapped him out of his thoughts. A grin now making its way back onto his face and a sound of approval emitted from his lips. "Let's do it!"
.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°
[Name] snickered to herself as they entered the ferris wheel seating after letting several people ahead of them. It was all going according to plan, well, not the face planting into Kyoujurou’s lap. That was definitely not in the plan she and Shinobu had concocted.
“So, here the game plan.” Shinobu stated matter-o-factly. Her name were in a crouched position as if in a very important football team meeting. “You’re gonna look hot. Like I’m talking Jennifer’s Body hot. And then—“
”But i don’t have clothes like that.”
“Shut up. We’ll go shopping. And your make up has got to be perfect like I’m talking no melting off your face looking like the Corpse Bride. Oh, and you’re drowning yourself in sexy perfume every thirty minutes.”
”But I—“
”Speak out of line one more time and I’ll kick your ass.”
“Fine.”
“Back to what I was saying. You’re gonna take loads of pics start it off friendly and lighthearted and then bam! You get him on that ferris wheel and get your flirt on. End the night off with a kiss at the top of the ferris wheel.”
Shinobu was extremely gifted in giving pep talks and revving them up. Which was probably why she was captain of the cheer team at their university.
[Name] felt like she was a crazy high. She could practically run four miles nonstop with the attitude she had in that moment.
Shinobu and her high fived, one leg kicked up in to the air with the most triumphant looks on their faces. “We got this!”
She shook her head as if to shake away the thought.
”You, ok?”
She smiled at the slightly dampened Kyoujorou who’s cheek were tinted pink from the heat. Beads of sweat has slid down his temples, but that only seemed to add to his sex appeal.
”More than ok. I love ferris wheels. They’re so romantic.”
Those words left her lips and turned in a smile that was as sweet as candy. Kyoujurou’s heart leapt in his chest as he eyed her intently.
”You could say that.”
He done fucked up again. Kyoujurou wanted to kick his own ass at this point. Why was he so terrible at flirting? It made him look like he didn’t pick up any social cues at all. Which wasn’t entirely untrue. There were many times where Tengen would point out that a girl was being extremely flirtatious with him but it would simply go over his head. He would usually reject the notion claiming they were just being nice which in turn would lead to Tengen face palming. And he thought he was doing such a good job at the start.
The silence was deafening as they reached the top of the ride and it suddenly came to a jerking stop. The view was wondrous. The sun kissed at their faces and grazed the tops of trees and the peaks of roller coaster rides. Brightly colored lights flashed simultaneously down below, but [Name]’s  stomach felt like it was caving in the longer she stared. Very romantic, indeed.
Her face must’ve looked a little green because Kyoujurou’s expression turned into a worried one. “You sure you’re okay, [name]? Have some water.”
She grabbed the bottle he handed to her and instead of water falling like she usually did, she pressed her lips against the same place his had been. Kyoujurou’s eyes widened in surprise as she absentmindedly guzzled his drink down and gave it back to him. His hands turning into fists as he flexed as hard he could to keep the warmth that was rising away from that region.
“Thanks.” She gasped. [Name] wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she leaned back against the seat. So much for her game plan. She sighed to herself as she collected her thoughts. What difference would it make if she just told him right now.
”Kyoujurou.” The name left her lips so effortlessly. He loved the way she said his name. He would think about it mostly in the shower, but more innocently before he went to sleep.
He raised his eyebrows fully attentive now. She turned to face him as she leaned forward. A different look on her face. Soft and flustered. “I like you, a lot.”
His body stiffened for a moment and a cool breeze swooped past their longing gazes. The sudden realization had dawned upon him that those words weren’t just make believe. She had really uttered them into existence. He hadn’t noticed how close her lips were to his until he felt her minty breath fan against his nose. He didn’t pull away.
[Name] closed the distance between their lips and Kyoujurou instinctively leaned in more as soon as they made contact. His hand cupped her cheek to deepen the kiss and she sighed in delight. A smile now etched on her face had now infected him and he pulled away to look at her. He caressed her cheek as she giggled and he gazed her puzzled.
”Did I do something wrong?” If he kissed her wrong he definitely wanted to know. One thing about Kyoujurou was that he was always open to constructive criticism. She shook her head. The content look on her face still evident.
”Not at all.” She leaned in once more. “I just didn’t expect you to be so frigid.”
She giggled again at his surprised, yet embarrassed mien. However, [name] stopped giggling when she saw the determined look on his face.
”Well, I can do better.” He suddenly captured her lips and she instantly melted at his hot touch. His hand loosely on her waist and she moaned a bit as their kisses turn into feverish open mouthed ones. His lips detached from hers as he felt the the ride coming back down. [Name] felt like her whole body was in flames and there Kyoujurou was sitting there as cool as a cucumber.
The ride shifted the shuttle as the two got up and his hands slipped in hers as he lead them out. She couldn’t believe  the stunt he just pulled. Her fingers on her lips still feeling the ghost of his. He laughed heartily at her reddened face and that captured her attention.
”Don’t worry. We can continue that when we get back.”
[Name] was speechless, but somehow was even more flushed than before. Kyoujurou chuckled at her again as he pulled her in for a side hug as they headed back to his car. The smug look never left his face.
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The Cult Girl (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 3
So I picked option 2 cause I just had more ideas around it. I could probably still do 1 and 3 sometime but this is the direction we're going now. Y/n gets a call from her horrible grandmother who is expecting a visit.
Trigger warning: discussions of emotional and mental abuse, gaslighting
That night at his dining table was the start of something wonderful. You made a point to apply a bit of perfume to your neck before you left your apartment. Your three slightly judgmental but overall supportive roommates even donated a few drops of their own fragrances from time to time. 
You didn’t like the sound of the sentence “Hannibal is my boyfriend”. It just didn’t hit your ear right. ‘Boyfriend’ was too childish of a title for him. By extension, he found something very diminutive about referring to you as his girlfriend. You were, of course, a grown woman. He remedied this right away, resigning to call you his ‘darling’. You, however, had to use ‘partner’ as a placeholder until a more suitable pet name presented itself. Although the titles were never stated outright, after a while, you knew it was more than just a passionate affair. Hannibal (and you were calling him Hannibal, now) saw potential in you. He nurtured you and had been since day one. 
Finally, things were starting to go your way. You were in classes you loved, had wonderful, supportive friends and a fulfilling relationship. It took over twenty years, but better late than never. 
But, if there was one thing you learned from your short stint as a student of physics, it was that what goes up must come down. Your long-awaited bliss was about to be tested by an equal and opposite force bearing the name “Beatrice [L/N]” on the caller ID. 
Not only did she call, but she called three times in the middle of your meal. And that was followed by multiple texts, several of which containing words like “emergency” in all caps. You were just trying to enjoy another one of Hannibal’s culinary works of art, but the old bitch was persistent. 
You apologetically excused yourself from the table and retreated to the office with your phone. 
Grandma, you had better be on your fucking deathbed. You thought to yourself before sliding the green answer icon across the screen.
“[F/N]!” Came her shrill voice. “You finally answered. I was beginning to worry.” 
“What do you want, grandma?” You groan. 
“I wanted to ask you what you were wearing to Anna’s wedding next weekend.” She explained, calmly as ever. “The color scheme is seafoam and coral and she wants to make sure everyone adheres to it for pictures.” 
You covered the speaker with your hand and pulled your phone away from your ear so she couldn’t hear you bite back a scream. It physically pained you to return the phone to your ear. “Yeah, I RSVPed no to Anna’s wedding.”
“[F/N],” Your grandmother said in that scolding tone you knew all too well. “Your cousin expects you to be there. I expect you to be there. I invested so much money into this wedding, I will take it as a personal affront if you don’t attend.” 
You take everything as a personal affront. You thought.  
“It doesn’t matter, I already said no. She’s not going to have a chair or food for me.” You explained, hoping that you found some way out of this conversation. 
“No, she will.” Your grandma corrected. “I won’t have any child of mine absent from another’s wedding. I put in all the work to pull this event together.” 
For a moment, you almost felt bad for Anna. Having to endure your grandmother’s micromanaging was a circle of hell even Dante refused to tread.
"Of course, heaven forbid someone in your life show an ounce of autonomy." You finally snapped.
"I don't know why you're acting so rude, but it stops now." Grandma ordered. "I raised you as my own daughter. You should be more grateful for the luxuries I can extend to you. I didn't have to take you in, you know..."
It pained you to stay quiet when all you wanted to say was "I wish you hadn't".
"Your emotional manipulation isn't going to work on me anymore." You informed her.
“So, naturally, I’ve seen to it that you are expected." She continued her own conversation without even acknowledging yours. "You and a plus one, of course.”
You hadn’t even considered the possibility of attending the wedding with Hannibal. The two points never once intersected. And they never would. You vowed that Hannibal would never meet your grandmother or cousins. At that moment, that was the hill you were willing to die on. 
“If I come at all, I’m coming alone.” You snap. “You can punish me all you want but I am not letting you get him involved.” 
“Him?” Your grandma repeated. “So there is someone?” 
“Someone you are keeping me from.” You said, thoroughly frustrated and now panicked at the idea that your grandmother knew Hannibal existed. “Goodbye.” 
You didn't want to rejoin Hannibal in such a sour mood, but you didn't want to keep him waiting either. You returned even more apologetically than you left and took your seat.
"Everything alright, love?" He asked. You could tell he was raring to psychoanalyze you.
You shook your head. "It was my grandma."
"I could tell that much." He admitted, beginning to cut into his steak. "What with all the frustration you're trying so desperately to hide. What did she want?"
"She called to tell me she expects me at my cousin's wedding next Saturday." You rolled your eyes. "I'd already declined the invitation, but she didn't like that, apparently."
"Which cousin is this?" He probed. "The one that works as an engineer for Halliburton?
"No, that's Theresa." You shook your head. "And she works for Halliburton, but she's not an engineer. She's a PR executive."
"Right." Hannibal nodded, taking a bite of steak between his teeth. "She took after your grandmother and turned gaslighting into a career."
You smiled a bit. "Right."
"So, it's Anna, then?" He concluded. "You haven't told me much about her. Perhaps she is the benign tumor of the family?"
"More or less." You shrugged. "She works at a publishing agency. Only got the job because her boyfriend's uncle's the CFO. She didn't even make it to the interview. It was pure nepotism."
"And now she's marrying the boyfriend, I presume?"
"Yeah." You felt a grin cross your face thinking about what you were going to say next. "She wasn't even dating him at the time. She was dating someone else and cheating on him with the guy she's marrying now."
Hannibal grinned. "You like knowing this? Having information that could potentially ruin her life?"
You knew there was no use in lying. The look on your face said it all. "Absolutely I do. When you're the black sheep of the family, you've gotta take power where you can get it. Mine just so happens to be potential blackmail."
"I'm quite delighted to be privy to this side of you, love." He smiled. "We're a bit vindictive, now are we?"
"Are you kidding?" You snicker. "These are the girls that psychologically tormented me growing up. Of course I'm vindictive."
"So about this wedding." He didn't look up from his plate. "Do they expect you to bring a date?"
"They do." You nod, your eyes wandering off. "But I can't let them meet you. They're just so unspeakably rude all the time."
For some reason, you felt that this didn't deter him. Perhaps it even compelled him a little. "Oh?"
"They take this really strange pride in making scenes everywhere they go." You explained. "They've already ruined so much of my life. I can't even give them the opportunity to ruin this too."
"Darling," Hannibal leaned in. "Is there a part of you that wants to attend this event?"
You held your tongue before you said anything you both know to be untrue. "...maybe a small part."
"That small part of you that wants power. That wants justice." He nodded. "Indulge it for a moment. What does this wedding look like to you?"
Trying to keep up the illusion that you hadn't thought of this before, you paused for a moment. "...we would show up--you and I--and I'd be wearing a stunning gown that doesn't fit the stupid color scheme at all. And there's just an unspoken knowledge that I could absolutely ruin Anna's entire day. Anna and Theresa and Grandma are all being nice to me because if I so much as mention the name of that boyfriend she cheated on, I'd ruin her life and possibly her career. So finally I hold all the cards."
Hannibal looked proud. He took a sip of his wine. "You want to be powerful, but with just enough restraint so they know you're the bigger person."
"Exactly." You agreed.
"Perhaps my fondness for you is clouding my professional judgment, darling." He put his wine glass down. "The thought of you in an evening gown, commanding attention and reverence... that's just something I have to see."
"...something you have to see?" You met eyes with him, realizing you were on the same page.
Your phone buzzed in your pocket again. This time, you didn't feel the need to step out.
"Hey [F/N], care to explain why my sister is crying?" Theresa snapped through the receiver.
"Is someone cutting onions nearby?" You offered. "That usually makes me tear up."
"Fucking hell, for once in your meaningless life can you care about someone other than yourself?!" Theresa yelled. "Grandma told us you're not coming to the wedding."
You looked back at Hannibal, who gave you a nod. "Actually, I am. We are."
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bloody-bee-tea · 3 years
Text
Glance
Jiang Cheng is this close to punching Wen Chao in the face. The only thing that keeps him from doing so is the fact that his mother will have his hide if he does it, and so he grinds his teeth together and steps yet again out of Wen Chao’s immediate reach.
Wen Chao has put his hands on Jiang Cheng more times than he really cares to count and not even Jiang Cheng’s hissed “I have a goddamn boyfriend” seems to deter him in his advances at all.
He leers at Jiang Cheng and devours him with his gaze when he can’t get his hands on him and Jiang Cheng’s skin crawls with it.
“I bet you’re lying about your boyfriend,” Wen Chao even says at one point and Jiang Cheng has to do his hardest not to snap the fingers that are yet again itching towards his waist.
He is lying about the boyfriend—not that he would ever tell Wen Chao that—but he has kept that rouse up for long enough that it’s mostly believable.
His mother tried to arrange dates for him for a long, horrible while before Jiang Cheng snapped at her that he was already seeing someone and didn’t need her help.
She insisted on meeting the mystery boyfriend, but so far Jiang Cheng was able to dodge any too personal questions about it, citing he still needed more time before he introduced him into the whirlwind of their family.
That, sadly enough, seemed to garner a lot of understanding from all sides.
“I am not,” Jiang Cheng presses out now, and slaps Wen Chao’s hand away before he pushes him away for good measure, too.
Wen Chao has never heard of personal space it seems and with every step that he takes closer to Jiang Cheng he feels more cornered, feels more panic well up in him.
Jiang Cheng let’s his gaze roam the room, desperately trying to find someone who would be willing to help him, but his siblings are nowhere to be found and even Nie Huaisang and Mo Xuanyu are gone from his sight.
He doesn’t even have think about trying to get help from his parents, because they would just tell him to suck it up and not be this dramatic but if he’s being honest, Jiang Cheng is this close to either breaking down or exploding in Wen Chao’s face and he doesn’t know which would be worse.
When his gaze catches the eyes of another person Jiang Cheng doesn’t even take the time to properly recognize him; instead he immediately starts to convey his dilemma through his eyes, hoping that the guy will have enough compassion to come and save him.
Jiang Cheng’s stomach drops when the guy looks away without moving and he’s hurt enough by that blatant dismissal that he allows Wen Chao’s hand to creep up on his waist again.
“See, it’s not so bad,” Wen Chao croons in his ear and Jiang Cheng wonders if throwing up on him would get the point across.
But instead of doing that he simply slaps his hand away yet again, much to Wen Chao’s apparent delight.
“Don’t touch me,” Jiang Cheng snarls at him but Wen Chao only laughs in his face.
“I love the feisty ones,” he tells Jiang Cheng as if he’s imparting some great secret and it makes Jiang Cheng sick to his stomach.
He can see how Wen Chao’s hand is itching to come forward again and Jiang Cheng braces himself for it, when suddenly another hand comes to rest on his waist.
“I’m sorry I’m late, my heart,” a voice says and then a kiss is being pressed onto the top of his head. “Who is this?” the guy asks and Jiang Cheng sags in relieve.
“Nie Mingjue!” Wen Chao says in surprise and Jiang Cheng blinks before he glances at the guy from the corner of his eyes.
It really is Nie Mingjue and now Jiang Cheng finally connects the dots. He was the guy he made eye contact with earlier and it seems like Nie Mingjue did decide to come to his rescue.
“It’s alright,” Jiang Cheng says with a small shake of his head, and then he steps closer to Nie Mingjue.
His hand on Jiang Cheng’s waist is warm and heavy, and he should hate it, with how often Wen Chao just had his hand there, but all Jiang Cheng can think is that Nie Mingjue’s hand feels grounding and like safety and unlike Wen Chao Nie Mingjue doesn’t use it to jerk him around.
It’s just there; a steady, heavy presence, allowing Jiang Cheng to move like he wants.
And he definitely wants to move closer to Nie Mingjue. It only barely has to do with the fact that he wants to move away from Wen Chao, too. Jiang Cheng takes the step that brings him squarely into Nie Mingjue’s personal space, hoping he’s not overstepping, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t stop him at all. Instead he makes space for him readily.
“Nie Mingjue is your boyfriend?” Wen Chao asks in disbelieve and Jiang Cheng’s stomach drops when he realizes just what he pulled Nie Mingjue into.
Jiang Cheng knows Nie Mingjue—of course he does, Nie Huaisang is his best friend—and pretending that they are boyfriends will get really messy really quickly.
“I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but that wouldn’t be true,” Nie Mingjue says, with his no-nonsense manner and Jiang Cheng snorts out a laugh.
“You—” Wen Chao starts but Nie Mingjue doesn’t let him speak.
“Maybe you should go hide at your daddy’s side, before I remember the way you practically groped by boyfriend against his will,” Nie Mingjue calmly advises him, but there’s a sharp edge to his voice and Wen Chao has enough survival instinct to blanche.
“How dare you! You will regret this,” Wen Chao tries to tell them, but now it’s Jiang Cheng’s turn to laugh.
“We will see about that,” he says because he doesn’t think Wen Ruohan cares enough about his son’s hurt pride to pick a fight with the Nie’s and the Jiang’s.
Going by how quickly Wen Chao shuts up, he seems to know it as well.
“Get lost now,” Nie Mingjue advises him and Jiang Cheng presses his lips together to not burst out laughing.
He doubts anyone has ever spoken to Wen Chao like this and he thoroughly enjoys how he goes red in the face.
In the end he slinks away without another word though, and Jiang Cheng lets out a sigh of relieve.
“Thank you,” he says to Nie Mingjue when Wen Chao is out of earshot and he feels more than he sees how Nie Mingjue shrugs.
“You seemed desperate,” he gives back and then takes his hand away from Jiang Cheng’s waist.
Jiang Cheng wants it back immediately.
“I hope I didn’t overstep,” Nie Mingjue says with a wince, hiding his hand behind his back but Jiang Cheng is quick to shake his head.
“No, not at all,” he reassures Nie Mingjue and then bites his tongue when his traitorous mouth wants to add “I wish you’d do it again”.
Nie Mingjue doesn’t need to know about that.
“You told him you have a boyfriend?” Nie Mingjue asks then. “Isn’t he here? I hope he won’t be mad.”
Jiang Cheng looks around before he steps closer to Nie Mingjue again and he can’t help the grimace on his face.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” he tells him quietly when he’s close enough that they can’t be overheard. “I said that to stop my mother from setting up dates for me and then it somehow just stuck around. But Wen Chao will tell everyone that you’re my boyfriend now, and I’m sorry about that.”
Jiang Cheng will have to come up with a reason for a break-up and then he’ll have to endure his mother’s dates and it will be hell for a while, but it’s better than dragging Nie Mingjue into this whole mess with him.
“I’m not,” Nie Mingjue says and it takes Jiang Cheng a moment to understand what he’s saying.
“What?” he croaks out because Nie Mingjue cannot possibly mean that.
He knows Jiang Cheng; he knows what kind of mess he is and there is no way in hell that Nie Mingjue wouldn’t mind being associated with him like that.
“I’m just saying that I’m not against giving this a try,” Nie Mingjue says with a shrug and a light blush on his cheeks and Jiang Cheng quickly pinches his own arm to test if this is a dream.
“You do know who I am, right?” Jiang Cheng asks him, because he very vividly remembers the numerous breakdowns he had in the Nie house over the course of the years; the yelling, raging ones but also the ones that left him as a sobbing mess on their couch.
Nie Mingjue cannot possibly want to have that in his life any more than he already has, thanks to Jiang Cheng’s friendship with Nie Huaisang.
“Of course I know who you are,” Nie Mingjue gives back and he sounds honestly affronted. “And I’ve been paying more attention than you seem to think,” he then adds on and Jiang Cheng jerks with his words, before his memory decides to kick in again.
There’s always that very soft blanket on the couch that Jiang Cheng adores so much, and his favourite drink is always in the fridge just as his favourite snacks are always in the cupboard and Jiang Cheng thought it was all Nie Huaisang’s doing but maybe he was wrong about that.
“I—” Jiang Cheng starts but then he simply doesn’t know how to end that sentence so instead he settles on “You’d have to meet my parents.”
“Okay,” Nie Mingjue easily agrees and Jiang Cheng balks at that.
“No one wants to meet my parents.”
“I can’t say that I want to meet them,” Nie Mingjue says with a shrug. “But I want to date you, so of course I’m going to meet them.”
“You want to date me,” Jiang Cheng repeats weakly, even as his heart beats faster in his chest.
He never allowed himself to give too much thought about these stupid feelings inside of him whenever he thinks of Nie Mingjue, but maybe he’s allowed to now.
“Yes,” Nie Mingjue says with a decisive nod. “If that is something you want to as well. Otherwise we’ll fake a break-up of course,” he says as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
“Of course I want to date you,” Jiang Cheng hisses out and is not at all prepared for the way Nie Mingjue smiles at him.
Jiang Cheng momentarily forgot about the dimples he has, and it hits him like a brick to the chest.
Fuck, Nie Mingjue is gorgeous.
“That’s decided then,” Nie Mingjue says very smugly and Jiang Cheng doesn’t know how to deal with that at all.
“Stop that,” he hisses at Nie Mingjue who only smiles at him more.
“Why should I?” he wants to know and Jiang Cheng goes red in the face.
“Because it’s embarrassing,” he tells him, but Nie Mingjue only shrugs.
“I don’t think so, and I don’t care. You’ll just have to deal with that.”
Jiang Cheng opens and closes his mouth a few times—much to Nie Mingjue’s apparent amusement—before he settles his face into a scowl again.
“That thing you called me, when you came to save me,” he finally whispers, going red with just the memory of it.
“My heart?” Nie Mingjue wants to know and Jiang Cheng nods, not finding his voice. “You want me to stop that?” Nie Mingjue asks him and Jiang Cheng can’t believe he’s going to have to say it but Nie Mingjue’s expectant look doesn’t give him another choice.
“I want you to do it again,” Jiang Cheng presses out and at least Nie Mingjue doesn’t laugh at him or mock him otherwise.
“Of course, my heart,” Nie Mingjue readily says and leans in to press another kiss to Jiang Cheng’s head as well, for good measure it seems.
Jiang Cheng feels a little bit like dying and a lot like this could be the best thing in his entire life.
“Now how do you feel about ditching this boring thing with me and going on a real date?” Nie Mingjue asks him, his hand hovering over Jiang Cheng’s waist in clear invitation and for this Jiang Cheng doesn’t hesitate at all.
He has been missing the warmth of that hand, the security of it, ever since Nie Mingjue first took it away and so Jiang Cheng steps close enough for the hand to make contact again.
“I feel good about that,” Jiang Cheng admits and is rewarded for that with another kiss to his head. “Is that going to be a thing?” he wants to know, unwilling to show just how pleased he is by that little action.
“Yes,” Nie Mingjue decides. “You have the perfect height for it and I love doing it.”
He seems entirely shameless about it too, and Jiang Cheng’s entire being goes hot at his words.
“Fine,” he presses out as if it’s the worst thing he ever had to endure but Nie Mingjue seems to understand him just fine because he smiles at him.
“Let’s go on that date then, my heart,” Nie Mingjue says and gently steers Jiang Cheng forward, only using the hand on his waist to do it.
It feels possessive, in a protective kind of way, and Jiang Cheng walks slower than he normally does, just to feel the slight pressure of it.
He’s going to get addicted to this feeling—and the kisses, and the endearment and Nie Mingjue in general—Jiang Cheng just knows it, but he can’t find it in him to mind that.
Jiang Cheng is looking forward to it, really.
Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!
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Text
humans are space orcs (with magic!) *skillz to pay the billz pt 1*
5wow i have been gone for a hot minute but i think i’m gonna tryn write more on here, but school’s starting up again soon so we’ll see how that actually goes. anyway, without further ado, here is another short story or sum, based on how some people can cook, and how some absolutely cannot
also i had to resist so hard from writing that’s what she said at the end so i will have to console myself with writing it up here.
***
The VIV Narrtor was docked at a WayCenter Station for repairs after a gamma burst from a neutron star had fried nearly all the sensors. As it was the humans had decided to designated this as their “vacation” and had put their money together and were renting a small abode for the duration of the repairs. Not wanting to miss out on any possible research, Drerzii had insisted that he and Tygeria rent the room across the street from the humans. 
And so Tygeria found herself the windowsill with a pair of “binoculars” as the humans called it, in her hand. Currently the humans weren’t doing much, in fact it appeared that only one of them was up and active. Uhris, clad only in his undergarments, was in the sustenance preparation room, making ready the pot of dark, steaming liquid that the humans drank every morning. She and Drerzii had suspected it to be either some sort of religious ceremony or a necessity of their species, much like how the dular always had to eat from a plant native to their planet before they ate anything else or they would die. However, neither of them had mustered the courage to ask the humans. If it was indeed a private matter, it might not be appreciated if they suspected they were being studied so thoroughly. And an angry human was not something Tygeria wanted to see. 
As she observed, the rest of the humans slowly arose from their slumber, except for Taurus. Being the largest of them all, Tygeria suspected that he likely needed more rest than the rest of them in order to move his mass around. She noted her thoughts on a holotablet. 
When she resumed her observations, she noted that Uhris was preparing sustenance, and quite a large amount. He must be feeding the entire group. It was strange she thought, since his records didn’t indicate that he had been trained in sustenance preparation, but he seemed quite adept in his actions. Perhaps he had trained in secret, hoping one day to be employed as a sustenance prepare. These “chefs” apparently were quite coveted in any group. 
The group spent most of the morning hours indoors, but what they were doing exactly Tygeria couldn’t say exactly. They were certainly enjoying themselves at the very least. Around midday Uhris and Enara walked out of the building. Tygeria leaned forward, her interested piqued. “Drerzii, Drerzii! They’re headed this way.” Her carapace tingled with mixed fear and excitement. They’d been found out. Surely the humans would be angry at being spied on. Drerzii rose from his resting state. 
“My dear Tygeria, you surely must be mistaken. The humans-” He stopped as he peered out the window, “Oh. You’re quite right Tygeria. But do calm yourself, I doubt they mean us any harm. Likely their simply curious. Their species’ natural inclement is towards curiosity rather than violence; however, I suppose we should be prepared. There, I have a clear line of communication to command should anything happen.” 
Tygeria appreciated his actions, but her carapace still tingled. A minute later there was a knock on the door. She walked quickly across the room and opened the door. Uhris and Enara stood in the entryway. 
Uhris switched his hand from scratching the back of his head to giving them a little wave. “Uh hey. Anne pointed out that you guys were staying across the street from us, and we all agreed that we couldn’t just let you guys stay here.” It was exactly as Tygeria feared, the humans were angry about being spied on. Drerzii’s flashing colors echoed her fear. “So we- Drerzii you okay? You’re putting on a whole light show my dude.”
“Oh, yes, I’m quite fine. For the time being at least.”
“Erm, yeah, whatever that means. Anyway, we’re about to have lunch, so we wanted to know if you guys wanted to join us. We might do something later, but we haven’t decided what yet.”
Tygeria lowered her head so it was on eye-level with the human. It didn’t make much of a difference to her, what with her infrared vision, but apparently it was a human gesture. “You don’t intend us any harm?”
The two humans looked on in confusion. “N-no? I mean why would we want to hurt you? We just wanted to know if you wanted to eat with us, but if you don’t that’s fine too.”
Tygeria was taken aback. Did they not know? “Because we were obs-”
“Of course we would be delighted to enjoy you for a meal. I unfortunately am unable to consume at the current moment, but I would be delighted to participate in your fellowship.”
“Oh. Great, well you guys can head on over then. Enara and I are just going to get some groceries, but we’ll be back in just a few minutes. The door’s unlocked so just head right in”
And so the humans headed off toward the provisions center of the station while Tygeria and Drerzii made their way to the humans rooms. Upon entering the room they were met with ferocious laughter. The terrifying sound of mirth coming from all three of the humans. Taurus, who apparently was in the middle of a story glanced over towards the door, his predatory eyes moving by pure instinct. He motioned with his hand. “Come on over guys, I was just telling them about when I managed to get a screw jammed up my nose.” It took a few minutes of recap for Tygeria and Drerzii to understand the situation, but it was incomprehnsible why the humans found it so funny.
Uhris and Enara arrived shortly after the story was finished. Both had bags filled with consumables in both hands. Taurus hooted from across the room “Uwu, y’all look like a couple, walking in with your groceries.”
Uhris breathed heavily through his nose, what Tygeria believed was called a “snort.” “If I was Jason maybe we’d be a couple.” At that comment Jason started coughing and Enara’s face grew red. Perhaps, Tygeria thought, this has something to do with them ‘liking’ each other.
“Anyway, we’re going to get started on lunch. Y’all just sit tight. Also Tygeria you should be able to eat this, we got food that’s edible for you too.” She clicked her thanks.
It was very considerate that the humans would use sustenance that she would be able to ingest as well. She was, however, concerned. Among her kind she was known to have rather specific preferences. However she couldn’t risk offending the humans by not eating any sustenance they prepared. But as they worked in the kitchen, her olfactory senses began to tingle. The smells of whatever it was they were making piqued her curiosity. How could one prepare food so that it would have such a smell? Was this some form of communication between human. Perhaps it was just a byproduct of whatever processes they were using to prepare the sustenance. 
She peered over to see both Uhris and Enara moving efficiently through the kitchen, handing each others utensils and ingredients as they worked. Occasionally one of them would take a small utensil and taste some of the sustenance, then make a small adjustment to the ratios of ingredients. Sometimes they would ask each others opinions or hand something off to the other. Tygeria was astonished at the ease with which they hurried through their movements. Uhris placed his creation in the heating unit and turned to the rest of them. “Alright, so this should take just a few minutes to bake, and then we’ll be good to go.”
Taurus set out dishes for everyone to eat on, except for Drerzii, who had declined on account of his metabolic processes not being in service for the time being. Once Uhris had deemed the time to be right, he carefully pulled the sustenance from the heating chamber and placed it upon the table. Enara came from the kitchen and placed what she had prepared next to Uhris’. “Just wait for it to cool down and then go ahead and dig in.”
With a laugh Jason raised his hand, “So what exactly is it that we’re eating.”
Uhris bared his teeth, then quickly changed his expression to be less frightening for Tygeria and Drerzii. “What we have here is a magherita flatbread, made completely by hand, with non-native ingredients. I subbed uthara for tomatoes for both the garnish and the sauce, and used tehari cream instead of cheese. And the crust is, actually I don’t know what it is, it just said it could be substituted on my holotablet. But Enara, tell them what you made.”
“What we have here is a fruit salad, also made with ‘non-native’ ingredients, as Uhri put it. And I put in some of the spices they had at the compound for some added flavor.”
Jason laughed, “So basically we’re having alien pizza and alien fruit salad? This is really gonna be the test guys.” With that he took out the first section of the ‘flatbread’ and took a bite. His eyes opened wide and he made a sound deep in his throat. With a mouth full of food he said, “Oh yeah, thish ish the sh*t you guys.” 
What exactly that meant, Tygeria wasn’t sure, but the rest of the humans began consuming the sustenance, and so Tygeria took one of the squares and took a bite of it herself. Her carapace tingled with delight. The flavors burst in her mouth, sweet and salty combining perfectly. She hummed with delight, this was beyond what she would have imagined the humans to be capable of. She then took a portion of the ‘fruit salad’ and ate some of that as well. It complimented the flatbread in a way that she didn’t know was even possible. She quickly secured another few servings, making sure she would have enough for later on. She would have to savor the taste whenever she had the chance. But she couldn’t help but to hum even more as she continued to feed on it. 
“Well it looks like we have one very happy customer.” Uhri said.
* * *
The rest of the day the group simply stayed indoors and talked about a myriad of subjects. Enara’s skill in the kitchen had come about simply because she liked to cook as a past time. It was, as she said, “A pleasure to see my work put smiles on faces. And even better if I can make the food healthy.” Uhri had apparently worked in his family’s business of making food for special events, something called catering, and had picked up his skills from his years helping around the kitchen. He volunteered to make another meal for dinner, but before he could start Anne stopped him. 
She stepped into the kitchen and turned to him “It’s been a while since I’ve made anything for anyone else, but I’d like to try to make something for you guys.”
Uhri shrugged, “Knock yourself out.” Tygeria was startled by this. Why would Anne hit herself so hard as to knock her unconscious? She was about to raise her concern when Uhri spoke, “I didn’t mean it literally. It’s a human saying, kind of like good luck, or go right ahead.” 
She hummed her acknowledgement, but was still confused as to why anyone would say this. 
Taurus paused, “Wait Anne, I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Well I did live by myself for two years in college. And I got sick of instant ramen after the first semester, so I had to learn.” 
This made sense to Tygeria, humans apparently had to fend for themselves once they reached a certain age. Their parents would assist but for the most part they were on their own. Next to her Drerzii trumpeted with delight. “Why, Tygeria I have been fastidiously taking notes of this whole occasion, and I would like to mull over them with you later. We can see what our thoughts are, but this entire time has been so enlightening.”
A few short minutes later Anne huffed out of the kitchen a steaming platter in her hands. The smell coming from it was just as strong as the one coming from the earlier dishes, but not quite so delectable in nature. Anne plopped it down in the middle of the table and introduced the dish. “It’s a bean casserole, or at least as close as I could get to one with what we have.”
Jason was again the first one to take a bite. He slowly pulled his utensil out of his mouth. Anne beamed, “So, what do you think?”
Jason shook slightly, “It’s definitely something else. You’ve got a real flavor there I’ll tell you that.” He timidly placed another portion in his mouth, shutting his eyes as he did so. 
The others began to eat, and had similar reactions. Slow, and usually taking a drink of water after every bite they had. It was a completely different reaction to what they had before. Before she could take a bite, Drerzii whispered in her ear, “Tell me what it tastes like.” 
So she  put a large portion on her plate, and another large portion in her mouth. If it was anything like the bliss she had tasted earlier she would have to start eating the humans food more often. Unfortunately, it was nothing like what she had eaten earlier. It was as if whatever the flavor was meant to be had become evil and was attacking her mouth. And the way it felt, it was incredibly dry, parching her mouth. She quickly grabbed a cup of water and downed it, trying to suppress the taste and texture. She turned to Drerzii and spoke quietly, not wanting to offend Anne, “It’s awful. I would not recommend trying it.” She looked back to see Anne staring directly at her. Her predatory hearing must have heard Tygeria’s report. 
“Is it actually that bad? I know I might have fudged some of the spices, but was it actually that bad?” 
Tygeria started to panic. How could she tell the human that it was possibly the worst thing she had ever tasted? Humans were easily offended when it came to things they made themselves. It wouldn’t do for her to insult the food. But she could thing of no other honest alternative. Right as she was about to confirm, Taurus spoke. “To be honest Anne, it’s not great. It’s pretty dry and you overdid it with the flavoring. But trust me it’s not as bad as my grandmothers cooking. That was a culinary nightmare. I can at least eat this.” 
Anne nodded, liquid gathering at the bottoms of her eyes. Tygeria tilted her head, she had heard that liquid spilled from humans eyes when they got emotional, and the action even had a name. So she asked, “Are you going to cry?”
Instantly Anne stood straight, and shook her head. “Throw the food away. I’ll just go out and grab something pre-made.” With that she dashed out the door. 
“Did I say something wrong?”
“I mean, yeah, you aren’t really supposed to ask people if they’re going to cry.” Taurus said, “But at least we don’t have to finish the food. God it was disgusting, I thought I was going to throw up.” 
Enara struck him on the shoulder. “Don’t say that, she tried her best.”
“I mean am I wrong?”
Enara raised her hand as if to cuff him again, but slowly let her arm down. “No, not really, it was pretty terrible. I’m going to go find her, but let’s do try to cheer her up when she comes back.” And with that Enara rose and left the room. As soon as she had Uhris spat out a slimy, semi-chewed portion of the food. “That shit was nasty, I couldn’t bring myself to swallow.”
Tygeria wondered how any human could take the risk of attempting to prepare sustenance of the potential for disaster was this, this massacre of the tastebuds.
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jjungkooksthighs · 4 years
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Claws of Carnality | jjk (7)
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Pairing: alpha jungkook x omega reader
Genre: smut, fluff and angst, abo/werewolf!au, soulmate!au, fantasy!au 
Rating: 18+ / nsfw
Word Count: 7.4k
Summary:  When you and your alpha rivetingly reunite for the Offering Ceremony, you are thoroughly twitterpated in his display of intent to you that colors your entire being with affection for him, but you will soon find that he isn’t the only one that has his sights set on you...
Warnings: alpha!jungkook, possessive!jungkook, jealous!jungkook, dom!jungkook, sub! reader, omega!reader, mentions of breeding/ruts/heats, mentions of blood, mentions of a mark, slick and pre-ejaculatory production, scenting, mating rituals and hunting 
A/N: What a ride this chapter has been. From the many drafts I had of the original version that went through various reworks before I initially posted and then onto the deletion of that from Tumblr only for an alternate version to be made in my efforts to better guide understanding of the story, this chapter has started from one destination and landed somewhere across the other side of the world. 
I hope that this version is easier to digest after the heaviness of the original and much work has been done to ensure that. All feedback that was given to me on the previous rendition of this chapter was greatly appreciated even if some of it hurt, so those who reached out, I thank you. I hope that you all will continue to let me know what your thoughts are as I thrive on comments and feedback that show to me what you guys really think about my work. Please make me a happy author and share your feedback with me on this revised version that I made just for you guys! 
Also, you will notice the gif I used this time is different. That is because that look is what Jungkook has somewhere in this chapter (because lbr here I am a slut for Black Swan Jungkook). There might additionally be an insert that looks somewhat familiar to something we have all screamed over, so that will be interesting to see if anyone catches what it is. 
For my readers that enjoy auditory stimulus while they read, I wrote this chapter entirely to Jungkook’s “My Time” and I implore you to listen to that while you read because it really sets the mood and perspective I had in the sentiments that I wanted to convey for this part (not to mention I fucking love that song like a child adores their favorite toy). You may find while listening that a certain part resonates especially deep with it. Bonus points to anyone that catches the special allusion! 
Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 8 Part 9
Suffering in silence amid the agonizing absence of your alpha, every second spent without him is dragged on by cruel hands of time that languidly pass with lethargy in the wake of the sun’s slumber.
 Despite the powerful paroxysms that wrack every fiber of your being, your heart paddles agog with anticipation while you wait anxiously for your alpha as your irises sweep like a whirlwind through the woodland in the distance in their frantic frenzy to find under their storm the bringer of the tempest of emotions that rain over you.
 The knoll erected just before the greenwood is certainly an insolent impediment that blocks and bars your sights from penetrating pervasively into the forest’s opening as you whimper in the damned denial of your mate.
 You hardly notice the profoundly proliferating mound of quarry in front of you that the same beta tugs and tows from the forest in an accumulating aggregation that far surpasses the small, sad excuses for the other piles of game that other betas pull from the forest in their lugging of the conquered prey of each alpha that they serve.
 The name of this particular one drifts away from your comprehension in the turbulent gusts that your alpha spews over you even in your separation that cloud your mind of all but him.
 By now, the sun has lain itself to sleep below the horizon and, in its place, the moon has awoken augustly from her own chamber to seat herself atop her throne at the sky’s crest. This night, she is tainted red with the crimson of the lifeblood within all creatures under her care in a rare occurrence that is otherwise known as the Blood Moon. 
Occurring only twice a year among the winter and summer solstices, the striking shade is symbolic of the wild impulses that drive all living beings and even the stars pulse like veins through the sky’s soma in their own frenzied palpitations.
 The moon’s subjects of omegas, alphas and betas all throng tightly together in clusters behind the garden of newly presented omegas that have blossomed with maturity, the cheerful chattering of all the wolves of your pack blooming around you in the warmth of excitement that spouts from them like water. You are rooted like a flower to the ground amidst the field of other omegas that have recently presented, your limbs planted there by the elder who had brought you from the woods.
 It had been an onerous omission on your part to abstain from hissing at her when her bony, knuckled hands had grasped your arms in the utter dissatisfaction that had erupted like a volcano within you in the urge to tear her off of you in the lack of heat that her touch- which had been so definitively and determinately not your alpha’s- had been incapable of warming you with.
 It had been so unlike what your alpha easily instilled upon you in his calefaction that rolled off of him in waves and, in wanting only your alpha’s hands on you, you’d had to bite down on your tongue to keep from releasing the noise of dismayed dissatisfaction and risk being begrudgingly berated for an unruly display.
 Once she’d ambled away, it was your secret that you’d pulled the furs your alpha had given you closer around you to bask in his scintillating scent, the pelt closing comfortingly around you to offer you some much needed incalescence while some, but not all, of the tension pressing down on your shoulders had lifts away.
 Niva, who stood behind you, had giggled as she asked, “Are you that gone for him, darling?”
 Your cheeks had reddened in embarrassment before you’d looked back at her to quietly mumble, “I am. Irrevocably and unequivocally.”
 You watch with bated breath as alphas begin to ascend from over the hilltop that stands to attention just before the woodland as you all but tremble in anticipation to find your own among them.
 They are all cleaned of the blood, sweat and tears from the prey they slayed and most are dressed in exorbitantly expensive threads that have likely never before been worn before today. 
They are donned under furs from which the alphas acquired in hunts years past in the aged, tanned colors of them all that are draped over each wolf’s shoulders as they come to stand in front of their designated deposit of game they have proudly procured in effort to offer it to their desired partner amidst the line of omegas that have been arranged opposite of them.
 It is tradition that the sins of death be wiped away from them before an omega's virtues of life can fully cleanse the alpha that would receive them.
 Incurring impatience is what has you whine out for your alpha that still evasively eludes your visage as you searchingly seek him while your wolf cries for the only one that could possibly quiet it as a familiar figure separates from the amalgamation of agglomerated elders that have accumulated along the west and east sides of the stage before she takes her place on the beamed boards that circularly coalesce into the timbered stage.
 Amidst the jovial jabber that percolates through the air, the lead elder, who is also your grandmother, raises her hands over her head so that the moonlight drips down onto her upturned palms as she shouts, “Children! Tonight, we commemorate the adulthood that our blessed mother of the moon has acknowledged in these youth before you,” the lead elder lowers both arms to gesture to you as fondness showers over her before she softens, “And among them is my beloved grandchild, Y/N, who hails from the purest of bloodlines and who has been the sole caretaker of our pups and livestock in her dutiful and devout service to her pack since her very juvenility. Let us commend both her and those she was raised alongside in this momentous moment!”
 There is a thunderous applause that bursts roaringly around you as exhilaration energizes you anew whilst every wolf in attendance animatedly hoots and claps with a delighted dynamism that has you smiling happily as the sounds bound through you with the liveliness of a sprite.  
 It leaps through you ceaselessly and when you breathe in to give it more room to prance around within you, that’s when your lips lift in gratified gaiety in the unmistakable undeniability of the scent of myrrh that skirrs insatiably forth until it has found and enveloped you in its mighty musk as you sigh with satisfaction at the realization as it wantonly wafts around you.
Jungkook, your precious mate, must be close by.
 The knowledge has your heart skipping a beat as your wolf bays amidst the kindles of joy that light themselves within you in the rapid recognition of the presence of your other half somewhere in the distance.
In the cesspool of odors of all the other wolves that odiously stink and reek through winds around you, it is a taxing task to attempt to locate the origin of the aroma you have come to adore ardently.
All you can do is readily revel in the piquantly pungent incense that incites your baser being with inclination to rejoin with its mate and to find solace in the euphoric utopia of his waiting arms once more.
 Some of the lead elder’s words are lost to you amongst your alpha’s essence that wraps willfully around you in a brume that brushes eagerly against you while the ovation that, somewhere along the way, has gradually quieted while the last of the alphas have found their allocated allotment next to their corresponding heaps of seized, slain prey.
They are organized according to rank with the first place that heads the row of alphas belonging to the wolf boasting the highest station amongst his dynamic as their chief in charge of them all through the title afforded to him through his strength, power and bloodline.
 Such were no match for any other alpha that had been unwise and unfortunate enough to face and bear the brunt of his sharp claws in battle that ended in loss to any that opposed him as the rightful pack alpha.
 It is Jungkook’s locus at the vertex of the line that is empty and while the sight should distill doubt’s inklings within you, your alpha’s reassuring redolence is there to caress you in the swathing surety that he’s near. In your endeavored expenditure to catch a glimpse of Jungkook, you fail to detect that there is not one desolate domain that is devoid of an alpha in front of you, but four.   
 Still, you’re hardly at the liberty to discern that within the olfactive haze of your alpha’s pheromones that effervescently enfold you in their pleasing particles.
 When your irises chase the lingering trace of him that is everywhere and nowhere at once to no avail yet again, you pout and, in the distance, a pair of golden eyes glint with mirth at the spectacle of you that is so incredibly and charmingly cherubic to their beholder.
 A knowing expression momentarily crossing the lead elder’s face, your grandmother steps back before smiling fondly at you before her eyes carry their focus across the line of omegas that have been bestrewn along the grasses to your right before returning to you as she proclaims, “My dear grandchild, I welcome you and your fellow omegeans to the maturity that the wolves within you have flourished so beautifully with. May the most worthy of alphas earn you this night under the approving nod of our maternal moon that shall watch us from above,” she gives a revering salute to the celestial body above as she crosses her fingers over her heart in a spherical motion before bowing and when she stands once more, she trumpets, “With that, let us begin the Offering Ceremony!”
Upon her final words, she hobbles haltingly back down the wooden stairs connected to one side of the stage with some aid from the other elders in the age that has stolen away the strength of her feeble, frail ligaments as another round of applause fiercely flies through the land on the wings of the air that carry it as good-natured gossip joins it.
 The stage is emptied but for a moment before an alpha emerges from the arched lumbered and logged mouth opening onto the platform, the tongue of timbered planks spanning outward in a circlet as the wolf takes his starting position for his celebratory dance before a flurry of flutes cast their music from the forelimbs of the wooden body under the deft fingers of the pack’s musicians.
You do not recognize this wolf and it takes only a second for your attention to sway elsewhere as your alpha’s scent draws you back to him when its mists cling in their sedulous sumptuousness to you.
 It is tradition that all ceremonies and events initiate with performances meant to embody the heart of the occasion. Through their artistically aesthetic displays, tangible forms are given to the impalpable sentiments that the pack amasses in its harnessing  of sensibilities toward such a jovial jamboree in the dances that are done to reflect those avid attitudes of each wolf imbued innately with such enthusiasm.
 Following this, alphas are the first to proffer a present to their desired partners in declaring and dedicating the winnings of their hunt to their chosen omega. In exchange for the bounty, the omega then gives something of their own to their alpha as a symbol of intent to be paired exclusively with each other.
 If there are offerings that exceed those of a single alpha for one omega, challenges or duels can be instigated and thusly proctored in official matches in their efforts to win an omega.
Such battles end either through submission or when one wolf is left incapacitated in the incapability to rise from the ground through the wounds that always leave their bodies in tatters through the violent nature of the fight for a mate.
The losing combatant forfeits their rights to claim an omega if they are bested by their opponent and the omega is not given a choice to accept the victor even if the alpha that wins them is not the one they had hoped to have, for it is a rule that the superior wolf who dominates another and exhibits that they are the more capable provider to the entire compound is the worthier being in their ability to protect their omega.
Following this, an intended pair of wolves each bestow matching marks that they paint onto each other in the blood of the strongest, most fearsome prey that an alpha robbed of its life in the honor of their omega.
 After that, they are free to depart to a den the alpha is to have carefully crafted in preparation of his mate where the two are then meant to consummate their bond that will seal them together forevermore, for the brand of tooth marks that the two leave on each other through the throes of rapturous ecstasy would bind them to one other until the end of their days in the ultimate deed of giving themselves to each other through such an intimate act.
 Daedal devotion linked the delicate affairs of courtship that you had always thought was so romantic and you can’t help the thrilling sensation that cascades over you at the prospect of what is to come alongside a particular alpha that has captured your mind and soul in his very palm.
 His scent swirls enticingly around you as your irises, once again, flick along the endless expanse of the forest beyond while you squint as if that would help you to better see into the greenhood that grasps him away from you. Try as you might, you still cannot glimpse the apple of your eye from the fanning ferns careening from the underbrush as you whine once more in his hedging of you.
As his tang drapes itself over you, it stirs in its insistence his voice that echoes through your mind to remind you, “I will return for you and when I do, I will make you mine forever.”
 Your anxiety is quieted in his quintessence that settles like a blanket over you to warm you in his stead as you continue to scour scrupulously around you for any smidgen of him that might deliver you to the truth of his whereabouts, your focus narrowed now in the thin beam of light that luminates your mind only with the purpose of finding him.
 Lost in your fossicking forage for him as you are, the first wolf that had arrived on the stage is replaced by another and after that, two more.
 By the time that six have gone, you’re no closer to illuminating your vision with his candescent luster as you peer longingly at the vacant spot that parallels your own where your alpha should be standing as yearning pulls at your heartstrings in his devastating absenteeism as you tug his pelt tighter over you.
 When the yakking and chatting of the wolves behind you is blown out like a candle in the current that sweeps them through in awed astonishment at the same instant that the pheromones lacing over you thicken in headiness in their willful wiles, that’s when your irises are whisked away, lured as they are to the baited source of it all.
 Your breath hitches when golden eyes pierce your own, fiery fervor flashing in them amidst the ferocious flames that lick hungrily at him from all directions in their passionate parchedness to welcome him into their warmth.
 His irises rove ravenously over you, heat coiling low within you as your wolf preens at the attention while you do the same.  
 Covered in the color of soot, Jungkook’s lower half is ashen with cindered linen that clutches with cohere to him in every slew of thew cording his legs. Adorning his middle is a blackened buckskin belt that bears a perfect hourglass shaped waist and already your salivary glands are fructuously fertile in their gushing of spittle within your jaw that drops when you drink in the overtly obscene shirt that is provocatively provoking in its transparency that elicits the subsequent swoons of omegas around you. 
It leaves nothing to the imagination and, like a second skin, vaunts every delicious dip and ridge of his mouth-watering musculature.
 It is decorated with patterned patches in the shapes of burned brambles that are woven across the material meant to inspire illicit impurities in all that are fortuitously fortunate enough to behold your alpha in how it sinfully sticks to him. Encircling his neck like a thick collar, the shirt bands around him and over it, a blazoned blazer engulfs him. Like it has been seared through by fire, it is open to reveal his clothed chest in its entirety.
Tendrils of dark hair fall over his face in dangerous, wild wisps that curl amidst the humidity that overtly obsess over them.
 You can hardly contain your own ire of want that simmers through you at the sight all of that and, when you trail your visage back up to his eyes, they are brightened with amusement while he dares to flick a sculpted brow as if to tease, “Like what you see?”
 You lick your lips as a whimper traitorously escapes you while a wolfish grin lifts at his own before the symphony of flutes and lutes harmonize in the opening notes of their song and they sing soulfully for a few meters.
 When your alpha begins his damning dance to the thrumming tempo of the waiata whispering through his ears, you already know you’re going to fall even more for him in an impossibly irredeemable descent that you have no wish to ascend away from.
 Your alpha sidles forward with purpose pervading his slow movement, his irises burning torridly into your own with the finer feeling that fully fulgurates them before he spins on one foot while the chords of both instruments twirl together with him as he whirls around to face you once more.
 The melodic music is, like your alpha, insistent in its eagerness to call commandingly to you in the way that its trill lowers and soon deepens with the same tantalizing temptation into his darkness that captivates you to him in your pure light.
 In his meticulous motion, his fingers close around the end of his jacket that he’d caught in an open palm upon completion of his turn only to strum his fingers through the air with the other hand as if he were stroking the strings of an invisible lute between his arms.
 He draws his free hand backward before smoothly and flowingly sweeping it forward only to then arc it behind him in a circular kinesis, his chin following his hand like it is tied around his wrist by twine. He repeats this once more, his eyes never straying from yours in the heated intensity that warms your very being as he stares only at you the entire time.
 Like a match being struck in various vertices over him, every movement sparks the flinted flicker of white that births from it the embers of an inferno amidst the small moonstones that have been adroitly added over his blazer.
 When he steps forward to be bathed by the scarlet rays of the moon that color him in the passion that he dances with, that’s when he vocalizes the sentiments for you that move him in a lyrical lilt that is in sound synchronicity with the instrumental tune he’d written himself.
 As he takes in the way that you melt under the smoldering charcoal of affection for him, he can’t help the words that fall freer than rain on a spring day as he allows his emotions for you to pour out of him while you thaw him with your own rays of radiance that glisten in your eyes and in the way that you fondly look on at him like he’s the only one that exists in your world.
 His baser being demands that he show to you what you mean to him and so he does.
 He sings how rapidly his life had gone by and how lonely with lorn he’d been in his wait for his mate in the incertitude of whether he’d been correct in his way of living without you while his arm lifts so his fingers point toward the sky that, through its unstopping hands, had turned the cogs of time.
 “Oh, I think I was in yesterday ‘cause everybody walk too fast, don’t know what to do with, am I livin' this right?”
 He chants to you about the time that had been stolen sufferingly away from you both in your childhood and adolescence that had barred you both from each other in the forbidding rules of the compound that outlawed with onus your unavoidable union.
 “Why am I alone in a different time and space? Oh I can't call ya, I can't hol' ya, Oh I can't…”
 He proclaims the struggling strife that had wracked him in being forced to remain apart from you for so unbearably long in his cover behind the trees while he’d watched over you as his soul had cried for the only one that could complete it in the days he’d spent following the orders of his father.
 “Sometimes when I’m gasping for air, I wear my hat low and keep running, yeah, I don't know where I go, even if it's opposite of sun…”
 He chronicles with vivid verve the verdict that he has brimmed blisteringly with in your brilliance that shines as bright as the stars above while he pumps his closed fist gently against the heart that thumps only for you as he continues, his hand dragging through the hair you’d pulled on in effort to induce his mercy in the wood before he runs his other palm along the thigh he’d watched you so beautifully pleasure yourself on while he’d been blessed with the view of your damned delight atop of him.
 “One time for the present and two time for the past, I’m happy that we met each other now til' the very end…”
 He declares to you that you are, after so long, the Eve that he will always escape into the verboten oasis to find as he jumps high in the sky, his spirits soaring for you as he watches you reach dotingly for him before he lands to extend a hand of his own to you before spinning in a circle like a clock to once more face you.
 “Oh, I will call ya, I will hol' ya, oh I will and yes you know, oh yes you know that I will...”
 Enraptured in ardency’s hold over you, Jungkook’s gleaming gold irises are streaked so profoundly with earnest elan that, as they sink into the riveting depths of your own, they scintillate with silver like the genial moon that you are to him as it washes over his eyes the farther that he descends into your deep devoutness that floods you for him.
 In the irrefutable irrepressibility of your own sentiments for him, your own eyes dye themselves gold like the sun that is your alpha to you.
 His dulcet words phosphoresce the burgeoning seedlings of affectionate attachment to him as he nears you along the lip of the stage that is speckled with candles that cast their light over him like sunbeams themselves that, through their heated kisses, leave him shimmering in an ethereal golden glow that radiates out into the night that has befallen you. 
You do not know if a more mellifluous voice exists in the world than his own with the way the chords of your own heart are struck with each soulful solfege that is uniquely and undeniably him as his eyes seek nothing but you, who has brought so much lustrous light to his sky.
 Neither of you pay any mind to the collective series of shocked gasps or astonished huffs that are emitted from the converged crowd behind you.
 In the stuttered stupefaction that fastens itself to them like moss to a tree, all eyes are on you and your alpha that take notice only of only each other amidst the mutated metamorphosis that had transfigured the irises of both of you to match those of the other through the gift of sight that marks two soulmates in their belonging to one another.
 Such an ocular occurrence had not been recorded for over seven thousand years in the rare paucity that the moon granted with the declining diminishment of purebreds descended from the lupi antiquis.
 Thus, in the episodical exceptions where the celestial body did bestow such an innately intimate connection between two wolves, it was said that their zealous zest for each other would guide them in their reigned rule over the other wolves that would bring prosperity and peace for generations to come under the moon’s favor.
 Yet, under the music’s metrical melody, its sonorous spell casts a coddling cocoon over you and your mate until the silken thrum hums around only the two of you as its fibered filaments shield everything but the both of you from each other’s vision.
 Your mate’s vociferous voice fades after the chanted crescendos ravel into decrescendos until the collection of euphonious sounds wrap wholly and completely around you as his body moves with the beat of the organ that pumps only for you within him.  
He plants both feet to the floor before a hand trails down his body in a vinelike display while one leg is uprooted off the wood beneath him to swing in front and behind him as if he’s embedded into it and can’t bear to relinquish himself from the earth that grounds and supports him like you do.  
 Like the celestial bodies whose hands that turn time, he easily epitomizes this when he steps forward, his arms turning in a spherical motion akin to that of sun’s path through the realm above during the days it brings before the moon journey in her brother’s stead as the siblings of the sky steal away the lost moments that had been wracked away from you both amid their ceaseless passing.
 His wrist then flicks outward as if he’s trying to halt the spindles of a chronometer from ticking precious time away from him as his irises flare frenetically into your own with the fervor that flecks them.
 You whine for him as he moves, his fervent feeling made so precisely palpable with the way his shoulders roll in circles along with the crux of the heart sitting in his chest that hastens its already quickened pace as he glimpses the tender smile lifting along your lips.
It sets his very soul afire with contentedness before one and then the other hand pounds against each pectoral only to then sweep upward to tangle through his hair as his legs splay outward so that each thigh bulges boastfully against the fabric while his wolf howls when he hears you suck in a breath.
 It is one that sputters with a stammer from your lips in the emotion he’s nurtured inside you and drawn forth from the deepest recesses of your body that wails needily for him, your wolf baying with want to be closer, nearer and together.
 The sound you make lathers itself like honey over his ears and he’s sure he’ll never tire of that with how breathlessly bewildered you had seemed all because of him.
 He’s swiftly besieged by his baser being to show to you how much you affect him and to display to you what you do to him in his deep-seated desire for you and, never one to bypass his urges, he does not cage it.
 Once his hands have streamed through his luscious locks, he trickles them over his face, irises still settled along the substrate of your own as his fingers drag downward to collect the lapels of his blazer before, in one fluid motion, he sheds it from his shoulders as a loud whimper dribbles from you while you absorb attentively the salacious sight before you.
 His hair has fallen crazedly over one eye in curved, thick tufts as an iridescent iris dappled in the chroma of the orbs that oscillate through the sky during the night and day. Through his continued movements, the mingled union of a silver and gold buries itself as deeply as it can within your depths as the offending piece of clothing trails lower until it pools at his wrists.
With a devastating grin, he puffs out his chest with proud pride, a sheen of sweat shining under the thin material amongst dark, dusky nipples that nip against it in protest of its tautness that chafes against them.
 Instantly, your legs are rubbing against each other without your mind’s notice as he smirks when your essence that is spawned by your sex spumes over you before its titillating tinge rises in the air to collect under his nostrils.
 Your rousing spice seasons every recess of his body in the relish that causes his pupils to dilate in craving, his member growing hard within his trousers for you as he pulls his lip between his teeth with a growl before gyrating around and when your irises meet once again, he pivots to the side at the same time his fist opens and closes while he outstretches a hand for you.
 Your limbs are slowly sapped of their strength with each measured movement that he makes and when he runs toward you until he’s dangerously close to the edge of the stage, you think he might reduce you to a puddle on the ground beneath him when his hand returns to the corpulent collection of muscles cording the crus of his leg as he whisks one palm along his thigh while he rotates his ankle inward to have every tendon jump in a torturously teasing sight while his free fingers curl inward before him as he repeats it all with the other.
 Saliva pools in your mouth as he sleekly and confidently moves with the impressively intricate series of footwork that he glides impossibly closer to you with and with one final twirl and fatal arch of a brow, he shirks the blazer off him entirely while his ligaments lower him down to one knee in sharp, quick movements that have his chest caving in and out while he descends, his head tipping back to bare a neck sluiced with sweat in a sight that has you drooling in want to touch and feel him against you once again.
 Jungkook leers longingly at you when he slides forth onto his other leg with one bent underneath him while the other is jutted out like the perfect throne that you’d gladly fall to your knees for.
 He looks like a god that you would readily worship and yet, he dances like a demon.
 It is with a lethal dark flash of his eyes that he snaps the fingers of one hand to the final strum of the lute while the other trails damningly along his chiseled body until it settles over the swelling cock throbbing for you that you whine with the unyielding yearningness that has captured every inhibited iota within you under his command.
 You are utterly enthralled as his lips move to mouth, “All of this was for you, my omega. Now that everyone knows what we are to each other, no one will dare to keep you from me,” he watches with interest the way that your lips part in his effect on you and curses in how far away you are from him as he utters, “Come to me once I’ve gone away from here, pretty. Your alpha requires your presence after being denied of you in the forest. I will be waiting anxiously for you.”
 When he stands to sink into the shadows behind him that the light cannot permeate, your high-pitched warble still has not dissipated.
 You only realize this when a spindly, bony hand is laid over your shoulder to pull you back and away from the pack of wolves around you while the familiar and oldened voice of your grandmother tries to break through to you in the stupor set by your alpha.
 When you don’t respond to the many redundant repetitions of your name, she squeezes your shoulder to throatily call out, “My, my, my… you are besotted with that alpha that names himself Jeon Jungkook, my dearest granddaughter. I hadn’t the foggiest idea before on why he asked me to allow him to dance, but now I see that it was for you.  I suppose that is to be expected, considering everything."
 It is the mention of your alpha that grapples your attention away from where you’d last seen him as you tilt your head in question before you quietly squeak, “I am very taken with him, but what do you mean by that?”
 She laughs, “Grandchild, these eyes may be old, but I saw within you and he the gift of sight that the moon mother above bestowed to you both that, by her blessed design, declares each of you as the other’s soulmate. Even the gift of olfaction was there, for this nose can still smell the taint of sex that he, along with you, produced during his performance.”
 Your eyes widen and your cheeks burn in embarrassment while you stutter, “Grandma, h-he made me do it. I c-couldn’t help it.”
 She only pats your head to say, “It is nothing to be ashamed of, grandchild. The moon chose him for you. It is only natural that you respond to him in such a way. Incidentally, what did he say to you at the end of his dance?”
 Mortification has you worrying at your lip before as you fidget as you shyly whisper, “He asked that I go to him. I believe he wishes for us to have some time alone together before the offering.”
 Your grandmother nods in understanding and instead of finding any trace of dissenting disapproval in her countenance, she encourages, “Then go and join him, my granddaughter. You must be swift, though,” she steps back to gesture to the row of alphas that stand before the stage, “There are only a few performances left before you and he must return for any challengers that may wish to win you from him, though I don’t see how that will be possible as smitten as you appear for that alpha that you call Jungkook.”
 Gratification steeply swills over you as you embrace her, “Thank you, grandmother. We will be quick as the wind, you’ll see.”
 She waves you off as you scurry with hurry beyond her toward the wooden dwelling that houses the elders, for it secondarily serves as the temporary domain of the dancers that begin the performances where they are allowed to change clothes and prepare in the spare rooms that are located along the first floor.
 You do not notice the shift of silhouettes in the distance as you scamper along, your mind swimming in the waters of your alpha that have soused you so.
 It is only when you are scuttling along the steps that lead up into the den that you hear the whistle behind you before it is followed in a voice saturated far too saccharinely with sweetness that has your tongue souring in its wake as it muses, “Damn, Taehyung. You weren’t lying. She really is such a divine little thing.”
 In the hormones heaving through you, they insistently incur your instincts that are stirred with stimulation only for your alpha and in simultaneous sequence, the repellant revulsion of any wolf that is not him in your baser being’s acknowledged acceptance of Jungkook as your mate.
 Your wolf kecks under the miasmatic fumes of malodors that are bitter and acetic as they burn your nostrils, the stench of alphas heavy in the air as you remain in your place with your back to them while you try to stifle the gag that sits low in your throat as you manage, “What do you want with me? Why are you here and who are you?”
 You recognize one as Taehyung’s, but the other is unknown to you.
 There’s a mawkish chortle that bellows, “You do not know of me? You will, omega. Soon enough, you will. All of you omegas eventually do.”
 The words lift the hairs at the base of your neck in the cloying sugariness of them that clump heavily together in their mission to rot your insides as the swish of grass grows louder in the closing distance between you and the stranger that is an obstructing obstacle between you and your alpha.
 The unabating advance does not terminate and when you furtively glance over your shoulder to see a hand inching toward you, you cringe with the trace of a hiss tinting your voice, “Do not touch me. My alpha is very protective of me and will not be merciful if you toy with what is his. Your friend over there,” you flick your chin back toward the source of the foul odor that you know to be Taehyung’s, “he was not so lucky when he felt it just to try to take me from my alpha.”
 The stranger makes a sound of consideration, “Hm, a creature with some bark to her bite. I like that.”
 It’s as though you’re being backed into a corner, your wolf yelping in protest as you try to rein in your emotions that beg you to beseech your alpha that is so close, yet so far away from you right now. If he does not come for you, it is only a matter of time before your claws will come out in defense.
 Fingers stretch toward you and before they can make contact with your skin, you bare your teeth to sibilate, “It seems you do not understand. It was only I that could calm Jungkook- who is bound to me and I to him by the moon above- through the rage that overcame him when he was ready to maim Taehyung for foolish disobedience,” you turn to pierce your perpetrator with a cautionary glare as you forewarn, “The wounds that were left in Taehyung’s shoulder are but minor lesions of what my alpha will scar you with should you dare to incur the wrath of my mate.”
 In a momentary lapse of an instant, you think that you derive in your detection the distinct aromatic attar of your alpha nearby, but it is fleeting as are the contours that are casted of a darkened outline that, so quickly you think it may have been a trick of your eye, briefly block the light filtering past the opaque aperture of aged glass next to the entrance of the den.
They disappearingly depart almost as soon as they arrive with only a sliver of a scent that remains and without a doubt, there is only one wolf it could belong to in its special singularity.
It had been Jungkook, your alpha.
You wish you could be with him and wonder if an elder had gotten to him before you could, but you’re not given long to ruminate on either of those despite the sudden stoutness that is spritzed over you in Jungkook’s oceanic presence that ebbs and flows faithfully alongside you.
 In spite of it all, it is Jimin who stands before you when you look down on him. He is clad in bloodred silks that contrast clashingly with dark smudging around the sides of his eyes while pewter colored hair hangs loosely over his forehead with the oils that must have been used to carefully style it while he cheekily checks you out much to your discontented dismay.
“What you say is of little concern to me, Y/N. I always get what I want and you will be no different,” he says.
You have seen him only a few times before during his performances and had once thought him to be beautiful as a doll, but now you can see where his stitches have become loose in vainness that bursts at his seams.
You take a step back and away from him, your alpha’s presence pouring itself onto you through the remnants of his smell that douse his confidence over you as you cross your arms to chide, “It is a pity your looks have made you so conceited, Jimin. You have become spoiled and ruined by them, it seems,” you harden your gaze at him, “I am not like everyone else and I do not wish to have anything to do with you because I am already promised to Jungkook, who is your pack alpha that you must obey.”
 One side of his lips lift up his irises hoggishly digest you from head to toe as he decides, “It’s precious that you believe any of that is enough to stop me,” he climbs one step slowly before ascending up the other until he is eye level with you, “Spend the limited time together that you can, little omega. It will be over soon enough when I reap you from him and harvest the most fruitful crop this fucking pack has ever had and plow you until you’re bursting with my seed instead of his.”
 Your alpha has never spoken to you with such disregarding disrespect. It irks you with anger that reddens enflamed within you.
 You grimace at that, disgust damningly withering your insides in its blight as you sneer, “Try it, Park Jimin. You will never win against him. When you lose to him like I already am assured that you will,” you lift your chin in defiance, “you’ll regret allowing that minuscule cock of yours to rule over your tiny, pygmy brain.”
 That earns a titter from him as he replies, “What a little spitfire you are. No matter,” he gibs, “I will tame you soon enough.”
 Obstinance consumes you in its angry wildfire as you scoff, “As if you ever could. Good luck with your attempts that shall only end in bitter failure, for I will never be yours. I belong to Jungkook and there is nothing you could do to change that.”
 “That’s where you’re wrong,” Jimin smiles so wide it’s almost nauseating with how much his lips can twist as he backs away with a quip coming from between them, “When he loses to me-“
 “He will not be defeated by the likes of you. This, I know to be true,” you narrow your eyes in certitude’s credence that your blood sings with.
 “If I do not win you, then Taehyung will. Nonetheless, we shall see, little omega. We shall see,” his vexing voice dims in deliquesce as the moonlight regressively recedes while the two prowling wolves remit themselves into the shadows of utter umbra that swallow them from sight.
 You stand for some moments counting contrived breaths hindered by your ire that had smoked and combusted within you to block your airway from effectively expelling the blazing emotion and it is only when your chest no longer aches with the stressed strain to contract that you set in motility once again to make your way into the elder’s den.
It doesn’t take you long to locate your alpha in the perceptible path of pheromones that lead you to him and there is no havering hesitation that stymies its stall of you from opening the oaken door before closing it as it groans in its senile senescence from the effort of such work.
Any negative sentiments that Jimin had left brewing immediately disintegrate within you as you ogle openly how, with his back to you, your alpha damningly divests from his body the shirt made of pure sin in its tempting taunt to you.
He pulls it from his middle slowly and torturously drags it up to reveal skin soaked by the sun and burned by the claws of combat, the serried slew of muscles lining his shoulders swelling savagely in his mannered motion and only when he lets it fall limply on the floor do his eyes find your own through the mirror he ostentatiously oxidizes you through.
Golden irises specked with silver sear into your own as one brow arches up only for him to rumble out, “Enjoy the show, pretty? I know I did.”
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burnedbyshoto · 3 years
Text
just with everything that’s happening in the manga right now, I just wanted to write this as a sorta indulgent thing because my heart hurts for izuku. platonic relationship + recent manga spoilers below, beware:
i’m thinking of ua, recently turned class 2-a, student!reader being assigned to go out and gather lingering citizens in the city. you have your licensing, and even if your hero costume is still partly torn, you have a duty to save those in need.
you just never expected that while on lookout you’d run across an even more beaten, trodden, and torn midoriya izuku. it’s your first time seeing him since he was in the hospital, he had, after all, recovered and left within the same week. and all you knew is that he looked worse.
there were purple eye bags under his eyes, deeper and darker than even aizawa’s, shinsou’s, all might’s, and recently bakugou’s. his typical green delighted and excited gaze looking slightly hollowed, scared, as if you being near him spelled danger and he was a tired, wounded prey. you understood why, however, his written letter that had been placed outside your dorm room spelling out everything about his quirk... his given quirk...
midoriya izuku was quirkless apparently, strange.
“deku?” you whisper, confused as smoke seems to suddenly lift off the ground, covering the area to your ankles with it. “oh my — are you okay?!”
“I-I’m fine!” deku says loudly, almost shrilly as he stumbles backward, hands motioned in a sign that screams: don’t come near! “I was just in the area for my own patrol! I was just taking a small break because i’ve been up since one a.m. and I am a bit tired, but if you’re here then it’s okay! i’ll go away, please continue on this way! had i known that yuuei was sending all you guys out here i definitely wouldn’t’ve come out here! not that i’m avoiding you all! i just think you all are so capable and i wouldn’t want to ever impose on your area and accidentally bring you all danger. in fact, that’s the last thing i want to do! so I think there’s a group of people—”
“you’re not sleeping much, are you?” you whisper, heart aching as you easily read the painful, forced, and oh so tired smile on his face. it’s not his typical smile full of hope, excitement, determination, and a fierce drive. it’s quiet, muted, as if he’s barely holding it all together. “...midoriya-kun, are you okay?”
it wasn’t the most intrusive question, but it was the only thing you could manage out because the grief and guilt that seemed to entrap you both like a too tight blanket was making you tear up.
he wasn’t okay.
his green eyes look at you, blinking hollow and blank.
“we miss you,” you plead pathetically, your eyebrows furrowing. “I miss you. come back already? w-we can deal with it together! there’s nothing that us in class 2-a can’t survive together! and I know that even if that’s true you won’t come back, and I know that you want to leave me right now immediately but I... I need to know! are you okay?!”
and like that, he breaks.
green eyes become glassy with tears and izuku snaps his gaze away from you as unshed tears refuse to fall from his eyes even if they gather at the corner. his nostrils flare as he sniffles quietly and you wonder just where that crybaby boy you used to know went? he never cries anymore, not even now, it seems.
“i’m exhausted,” he laughs bitterly, looking at you in a way that makes him seem to have aged twenty years while also making him look like a child in tattered clothes hoping to play heroes. “i’m the worst successor to all might... he wouldn’t have failed to capture all for one and shigaraki... but I can’t go back... not when they want me, I won’t let people get hurt because of me again.”
“no one got hurt because of you!” you exclaim, tears welling in your eyes because this isn’t your classmate! this isn’t midoriya izuku who laughs and smiles at every joke and every word because he likes making sure everyone is acknowledged. the midoriya izuku who has sat down with practically every member of class 1 now 2-a to discuss a proper workout routine. the midoriya izuku who still gets star eyes whenever all might enters the room. the midoriya izuku who verbally jabs at bakugou katsuki and never fails to get them both into some altercation only for them to be friendly moments later. “that war was us going up against them! we did it, not them!”
“but their end goal is me,” izuku says with a frown, not looking at you.
“it would be anyone holding one for all right now!” you snap. “it couldve been all might still! but it happened to be you and it’s not your fault that people got hurt!”
“then why did kacchan get hurt!?!” izuku wheezes and you startle to see the tears flowing from his eyes despite the angry, desperate, near wild look to his face. “I-If this all isnt my fault, then why did kacchan get hurt?!”
you swallow, unsure what to say to that as his green eyes show desperation, self hatred, and sorrow for his childhood friend who was nowhere near right now.
“because you needed saving,” you swallow, eyes downcasting. “even heroes need saving... and i wasnt there when that happened but,,, knowing you, you were probably doing exactly what you’re doing right now.”
“and that is?” izuku snaps, but there’s no fire to it, just a man who is thoroughly exhausted but with no place to call home.
“trying to win on your own,” you whisper, head shaking as you look down.
it’s silent for a moment, maybe two.
there’s a small sniffle and a quiet sorry and by the time you decide to look up, deku’s gone with nothing but clouds of smoke left behind.
“you better come back!” you find yourself screeching to the setting sky. “i’ll never forgive you if you don’t come back!”
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chockfullofsecrets · 3 years
Text
Critical Role: Embarrassing and Undignified
(Read on AO3)
Rating: Gen
Summary: Caleb doesn’t smile much. It’s something he rather likes about the man, that he prefers to save his pleasure for that which is truly worth it - but there’s nothing else he can call the expression that briefly narrows those blue eyes. “Reacting like that in front of a friendly tiefling?” he says - teasing, almost, and Essek feels his stomach flip. “I am not so sure.”
Essek's time in the hot tub goes a little awry.
Wordcount: 3.3k
A/N: Fill for this anon prompt! (i’m so sorry for taking 2+ months to write this... i love Essek so much and he needs more tk content)
---
Essek is no stranger to being - unusual. He often welcomes it, really. Achieving a status such as his for the better part of a century comes with its fair share of eccentricities, his floating among them, and at this point hovering just above the rest of the Dynasty has become something of a favored routine.
And yet, it seems, the Nein have him beaten at every turn.
He had meant to take his leave directly after dinner, unsure of his place among Yasha’s solemn questions of loneliness and Beauregard’s transparent attempts to pry information from him and Jester’s threat to invoke a Zone of Truth for idle gossip -
(and the slight jealousy, he admits, if only to himself, of seeing Caleb, ambitious and focused and loved, among them - )
But. Lonely and friendless he is, as has been quite thoroughly pointed out to him through the evening, and he’s intrigued enough by the rarity of this hot tub to clamber up awkwardly onto the enclosing stone wall and dangle his feet into the water while his hosts bustle around and shuck off various pieces of clothing.
Caleb sits next to him, rolling his own pant legs crisply to the knee and lowering his feet in. “What do you think?”
He looks over - thank the Light, Caleb’s still wearing his shirt. “It’s - nice,” he says. He drags his toe through a slow stream of bubbles rising from what he assumes must be the hottest parts of the depths. “Unfamiliar, but quite impressive that you’ve constructed it on your own.”
Caleb raises an eyebrow. “The hot tub, or -” He traces a small circle with his index finger, encompassing himself and his companions. “- all of this?”
Decades of court experience well up unbidden on his tongue. “The compliment extends to you either way,” he offers smoothly.
Caleb squints at him, but before he can say anything more the rest of the Nein are joining them with pleased exclamations and a thoroughly distracting amount of splashing. Essek watches, bemused, as Jester flops in belly-first before even unbuckling the last clasp of her outergarments - she wrestles them off, finally, crumpling the dripping green cloak into a ball and flinging it away, and he winces on behalf of the fine Kryn fabric.
She looks around, eyes lighting on him, and her hands fly to her round cheeks with an excited gasp. “Essek! Your legs!”
Startled, he looks down - they seem quite normal, with his boots off and his neatly pressed trousers folded at the knee, if a little more purple than anyone else’s present. “I would prefer to keep my clothes dry, yes.”
She leans in, eyes wide. “Are they re-al?”
Light be with him - she’s hardly said anything, but he struggles not to flush under the scrutiny. “Ah, yes? Why should they not be?”
Just then, something brushes lightly over the sole of his foot - he startles, and -
His seat is well made, certainly, but not enough to stand up to the Nein’s shenanigans; as he recoils, his center of gravity shifts right off the narrow ledge and he’s tumbling backwards before he can do more than blink.
Light, if this is how he dies -
He flails for a solution - it’s been years, at least, since he’s done something so pedestrian as fall, and there are spells for this, certainly, but what he’s prepared for today is more showy fare, in case the Nein asked for a demonstration, why can’t he think -
A hand closes roughly around his bicep, then another around the opposite shoulder, and then he’s dangling from Caleb’s grip with his back nearly parallel to the floor - he reaches out too, panicked, and crumples the front of Caleb’s shirt in a death grip.
“Good reflexes,” he says, breathless. Blood pounds in his ears. Caleb stares down at him, blue eyes wide and jaw tight -
“Ooh, now kiss!” Jester hoots.
The rest of the Nein burst into laughter behind them. Caleb goes bright red and hurriedly turns away, looking over his shoulder. “One of you jokers come here and help me, please,” he chides, strained, “I am not the muscle of this group.”
The tension in Caleb’s face becomes infinitely more explicable - finally capable of rational thought, Essek flicks his fingers and casts a weight-lightening cantrip just as another strong hand latches onto his knee and bodily tows him upright. Yasha nods at him, chest completely bare, and wades back to her corner as Veth pops up from nowhere with her long ears twitching maniacally. “I’m SO sorry,” she screeches, insistent far beyond the point of sincerity. “I brushed against your feet COMPLETELY ON ACCIDENT.”
“VERY ACCIDENTAL,” Jester agrees loudly. Next to her, Fjord winces.
Veth’s voice softens, then, as she pats him gingerly on the leg. “I didn’t think you would do that - are you okay?”
“It’s all right,” he says weakly. Her ears droop in what seems to be genuine relief - it is pointless to care, perhaps, but he feels better for having reassured her.
He sucks in a solid breath for what feels like the first time in minutes and turns to Caleb to thank him. There’s still a guarding hand resting warmly against his back - and worse still, he realizes belatedly that his own hand is still fisted in the buttons of Caleb’s shirt.
He snatches it hastily away, ears burning. “Ah, my apologies. I shall pay closer attention to gravity, for the rest of the night.”
Caleb doesn’t smile much. It’s something he rather likes about the man, that he prefers to save his pleasure for that which is truly worth it - but there’s nothing else he can call the expression that briefly narrows those blue eyes. “Reacting like that in front of a friendly tiefling?” he says - teasing, almost, and Essek feels his stomach flip. “I am not so sure.”
A friendly -
Surprised, he glances over at Jester and finds her wearing a smug expression that might not be out of place on Da’leth himself, if significantly sweeter. “E-ssek,” she wheedles, wide-eyed with delight, drawing every syllable to its maximum extent. “Are your feet like, super ticklish?”
Essek blinks - ticklish? But he hasn’t - really, he can’t remember the last time he might have known. As a child, perhaps, when Verin used to tempt him into playing by tackling him straight off his feet and -
Oh. Oh, dear.
At least that particular piece of evidence is decades out of date - a poor excuse to discard it, but he’s willing to compromise in the face of Jester’s ever-sharpening grin and the traitorously pleased squirm in the pit of his own stomach. “What? No, of course not, I was merely surprised-”
“You can be surprised and ticklish,” Jester corrects, skipping forward with a splash. Essek shirks back into Caleb’s hand, millimeters from tumbling off the ledge again, and she giggles. “And I’m pret-ty sure that you’re both.”
The hot tub, for all of its excellent qualities, is unfortunately not large enough to keep her at bay for longer than that. She reaches out as he’s still deciding which direction would be the best to flee in and scoops his ankle up in a grip like steel. “Ah-” he sputters. “I - Jester, wait-”
She drags a fingernail up the arch of his foot.
It feels like one of the few times while developing a lightning-based spell that he’d electrocuted himself - but the feeling doesn’t stop, shooting up his leg and tickling at his lungs too to make them shiver, and it’s silly, and he just -
He panics, jerks back against Caleb’s hand again, and in a moment of brash stupidity the animal instinct of his brain decides that the only safe place to hide is Caleb himself. He buries his face in Caleb’s side and grabs him around the waist just in time to shriek as Jester repeats the same lazy route up and down the sole of his foot, pausing only to scratch tingling patterns into his heel. “Tickle, tickle! Aw, guys, he’s so ticklish, look at how much he’s laughing!”
The fabric of Caleb’s shirt isn’t much of a barrier to Jester’s teasing - or to his own ticklish laughter, embarrassingly high-pitched and loud in a way that makes his whole face heat with shame - but at least they can’t see him blush.
Caleb jumps a little as Essek latches onto him, but his hand stays put, stabilizing, and starts to rub gentle circles on his back as Essek dissolves into cackling at another spidering assault on his arch. “Jester, please be gentle,” he says, amused. “I am not sure that is a good idea.”
Essek’s not sure how he feels either. It’s terribly embarrassing, and undignified, and if this was happening in front of any other being in the Dynasty he would have to learn some sort of memory erasure spell, but - the Nein have never cared for his layers upon layers of decorum anyway, have they, always prying for indignation and confusion and warmth that he’s not certain he even possesses.
Caught between Jester and Caleb and a vat of hot water, with the rest of the Nein making relatively amused noises behind him, he doesn’t think he’s ever felt warmer.
Jester just laughs. “I’m barely doing anything!” she teases, shaking Essek’s leg lightly. “He’s just so sensitive - oh, Essek, is it ‘cause you never walk anywhere? Is that why your feet are so soft and tickly?”
He’s giddy, even with the sudden reprieve, giggling too hard to speak. “I - ha - I dohon’t - ehe-”
“Of course it is,” Beauregard says smugly from a distance that seems far too close, “waving all those secrets and magic over our heads and he’s hoisted on his own fuckin’ petard-”
“What’s that?” Caduceus asks. Essek vaguely remembers the term to describe some sort of bomb, but Jester chooses that moment to send her mischievous fingers exploring under his fucking toes and it tickles like absolute hell. He shrieks even louder than before, if such a thing were possible, and makes a solid attempt to burrow his way straight into Caleb’s ribcage as his entire leg jolts in involuntary protest. No amount of desperate attempts to flex or curl his foot make the sensation any more bearable - it’s like the sucking feeling of a Teleport spell, like everything inside him is unmoored and floating in a sea of mirth and the only way he can get any of it out is to scream.
His cheeks hurt and he realizes, suddenly, that he’s beaming.
Jester cackles. “Come get his other foot, Beau,” she urges, easing off to just pinch his big toe between two fingers and wiggle it. “He totally loves it, he’s not even kicking-”
“Uh-huh,” Beauregard says, and there’s another splash. “Maybe I will.”
Caleb’s still rubbing his back - he stops, briefly, and from his huddled position Essek feels that Beauregard has jostled his other side on her way past. “His feet might be worse than yours,” she murmurs. He can hear the grin in her voice. “Better hope Jes doesn’t remember and go after you next.”
“Don’t remind her,” Caleb says, strangled. It’s remarkably friendly for Beauregard, though, and Essek is once again caught up in the paradox of this little group - merciless but fiercely protective, reluctant but trusting. It’s hard to be regretful - or wistful, maybe, one of those feelings that twinges in his chest every time he thinks of the Nein nowadays - with Jester tickling her way up the back of his bare calf and cooing over the way it makes him wriggle. But his heart, a traitor to the last, manages. There are so many secrets between them still.
Beauregard seizes his other ankle, hauling it up from the water, and he realizes for one terrible moment that if they were to, say, force him out of hiding and keep tickling, he might be inclined to spill some of them. “Scoot over, Jes,” Beauregard says, and there’s a squeak that, for once in the evening, doesn’t come from him. She chuckles. “Good thing he’s not trying to tickle you back, huh?”
He expects Jester to sputter and redirect her, as he would, but she sounds entirely unconcerned at the prospect. “Oh, Beau, do you want to have a tickle fight? We totally could, after this-”
“No,” she says, not entirely drowning out the little panicked noise that Caleb makes. “Not the kind of wrestling I want to do when half of us aren’t wearing shirts, if you know what I mean-”
“Beau!” Jester shrieks, giggling. Fjord groans loudly from the other side of the hot tub, and Essek, still squirming, is very sure that he’s blushing enough for it to show on the back of his neck, under his high collar. “Who do you want to wrestle with? Is it Yasha-”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, moving on.” Beauregard interrupts hastily. There’s a popping noise that takes a second for Essek to place as her cracking her knuckles. “Hey, Essek - you think you’d trade another favor to get us to stop?”
Essek flails for something resembling a complete sentence as Jester’s fingers curl teasingly behind one of his knees. “Nngh - heh-”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She squeezes the back of his other knee, barks out a laugh as he jumps. “Jes, stop messing around, let’s get his feet.”
That makes him kick, but at this point his entire lower half is restrained - all he can do is take one last breath before fingertips are scribbling over both his soles and he’s cackling so forcefully that his laughter peaks into agonized wheezing with each fresh gulp of air. “Hhh - ha - ahahaaaa, hA -”
Caleb shifts a little, bending until one of the strands that always hang stubbornly loose from where he ties his hair back brushes the tip of Essek’s burning ear. Essek shivers. “You can tell them to stop, you know,” he murmurs.
Essek’s almost entirely sure that he’s crying into Caleb’s shirt, tears leaking from squeezed-shut eyes as Beauregard and Jester torment his feet, but Caleb seems - fond, oddly - as he starts to rub his back again. “They’re not trying to be cruel - I believe they’re just excited that you’ve. Ah. Lowered yourself to our level, perhaps.”
And what level is that, Essek wants to ask, suddenly conjuring a mental image of Caleb in the same throes of helpless laughter. But he’s barely capable of that, as he’s currently dying, so he just tightens his grip on Caleb and shakes his head. He can barely even register Jester and Beauregard’s teasing anymore - he doesn’t think he can speak right now without embarrassing himself even more if he tried.
“Fuck, alright,” Fjord says abruptly from somewhere miles away, “I think he’s actually crying now, the Dynasty is going to have our heads if we break him.”
“He wouldn’t let them, he’s our friend,” Jester trills, but she does stop tickling, ghosting a hand up over his heaving shoulders to pat him gently on the head. “His ears are really purple though, like magenta purple, I think he’s blushing.”
For some reason - perhaps because he can finally think - it strikes him, fighting through the warm and pleasantly tingling haze of being touched and gentled back into himself, that as much as the casual label of friend pleases him he cannot afford this kind of vulnerability.
“Or suffocating,” Beauregard says a moment later, dropping his foot unceremoniously back into the water. “Thelyss? You alive in there?”
And, a beat later, when he doesn’t reply - “Are you just, like, smelling Caleb now?”
“Gross,” Veth squawks. “Get him off, get him off!”
Caleb smells quite pleasant, actually, but that’s not the point - his self-awareness is slowly trickling back in as he remembers who and where he is, and what he’s done to the Nein, and now they’ve broken him and he would rather die than look any of them in the eye for the next year.
Caleb pats his back. “Come on, friend, chin up.”
And he’s right, Essek can’t afford to cling to this veneer of comfort any longer - but to his immediate and eternal shame, he whines and nuzzles further into Caleb’s ribs. Just a moment to gather his wits, maybe, and he’ll be able to Misty Step to the front door and don his mantle-
“No? Alright, then - I’ll go to work too, if I have to.”
The hand on his back lifts away and walks itself on two prodding fingers neatly up under Essek’s arm, gently wriggling into the hollow until he can’t bear to keep his arms up any longer. “Nnn, hnn! - eheh, thahat’s - enough, please-”
It’s. It’s not, is the problem - he tries to stir up anger, distaste, but there’s only fear. He would deal with this indignity again, suffer it gladly, even, just to have them speak to him kindly. It’s new, and terrifying, and he needs to think it over alone with a generous glass of wine in his tower.
He shrinks back in on himself, still snickering at the tickling under his arms, and Caleb takes the opportunity to grab him neatly by the shoulders and sit him back up - Essek catches a glimpse of his blue eyes shining with rare merriment and promptly swivels to look away from all of them. No one stops him as he rolls his pant legs down and shoves his feet into his boots, heedless of the damp. He can feel their curious gazes prickle on the back of his neck - shifting into an unconscious competence that’s carried him through many anxieties before, he’s already floating off the ground before he can remind himself otherwise. “I’m going to go now,” he says, rushed, still too terrified to turn his head. “Thank you, I -”
“Essek, wait!” Jester says, confused, and Beau scoffs, and he’s not going to think about how he can recognize their voices without even seeing them, he’s not -
Yasha’s voice, at last, breaks through the hubbub, and it’s only in deference to their conversation before dinner that he pauses to listen.
“Hey,” she says, quiet and certain enough to shake him. “You said that you’re lonely, right?”
The noise fades away. He inches down to the ground with it. “Recently, yes,” he replies, just above a whisper, fighting to keep his voice steady with the enormity of this, this feeling -
“I didn’t say so before,” she continues, perfectly calm, “but it’s a little scary, right? To not be so lonely, anymore.”
Essek says nothing - he knows, without the mantle, that they can all see the slight tremble of his shoulders.
“Go away, then,” she says confidently, and then, hastily, “oh, no, that’s not right -”
“Yasha,” Jester squeaks, horrified, and Essek, to his own surprise, laughs. More of a chuckle, really, but. That’s a relief, after all this.
He can place her roughly in the rightmost corner of the hot tub, turns just enough to catch her heterochromatic gaze in his periphery. Her mouth drops slightly open before she gathers herself. “I just, I meant -” She inhales nervously. “I used to leave all the time, to go do - things - and come back when I was ready. You can do that too, if you want, we won’t mind, as long as you come back. And the tickling - we’re all ticklish, you don’t have to feel bad about it - ah, maybe someone else should say something.”
Caduceus pats her shoulder. “Nah, that was pretty good.”
Essek agrees, despite his better judgment. He rolls his shoulders, forcing them loose. “No, no, that’s - helpful,” he assures, and then, taking a deep breath and praying that his cheeks have cooled, he turns to look at them all. “I am to show you my abode tomorrow, yes?”
Caleb looks extraordinarily stressed. “Ah, you don’t have to, if you would rather-”
Beau punches him in the shoulder harshly enough to make him wince. “Yes.”
“Yes, and breakfast pastries!” Jester cheers, clapping her hands together - he’ll have to talk to his staff tonight.
“Until tomorrow, then,” he says, and spares only a brief smile before casting Misty Step to take him to the door and then again to the street.
He’s not quite ready to lose all his dignity, yet.
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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years
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Indruck 22 for the meet uglies?
Here you go! I went SFW on this one
you’re on a date with this awful, awful person who keeps getting under my skin because my friend and I have been eavesdropping all night and your date says something that makes me snap … I thought it was a first date, not a three year relationship
“...such a waste of money. I mean, why spend all that to get something tacky on your skin?”
Indrid rolls his eyes at Barclay from across the counter of the Amnesty Lodge coffee shop, the cooks arms and hands sporting a plethora of tattoos rivaled only by Indrid’s collection.
“I dunno, l like the one I got.” The other man--who seems to be on the worst first date of his life--shrugs.
“You honestly think you and Juno couldn’t have spent that money on something else in college?”
“I mean maybe but, uh, we were earnin our own cash, figured we got to decide what to spend it on.”
“Hmmmm” the first guy sips his coffee, “sounds like a typical excuse for someone who doesn’t want to admit a mistake.”
“C’mon, that ain’t fair-”
“Ugh, stop saying ain’t! I can’t take someone who talks like that to meet my family.” Before the target of his disdain can respond, he snaps his fingers, “hey, buddy, can I get a refill or what?”
“The station for black coffee refills is right there, sir.” Barclay indicates the very obvious corner of dispensers, his voice the kind of calm that Indrid knows means he’s memorizing this guys face to warn other staff about.
They earn a brief reprieve while The Asshole leaves the table. When he returns, he’s shaking his head.
“God, have you looked at the photos they’ve got up? Who the fuck wants to look at bones?”
Indrid quickly glances at his friend to be sure he’s permitted to start a fight. Barclay nods.
“Quite a lot of people.” Indrid spins on his stool. “I’ve sold a number of them just from the display here. So perhaps you could keep your rude, unclultured, close-minded, obnoxious mouth shut.”
The man balks, looks to his companion for help. He offers none, mouth trying to form words and only coming out with halves of ones (except for the “fucks” which are plentiful).
“Oh my fucking god, you agree with him! That’s it, I’m out.” The Asshole pushes back from the table and storms out. The remaining man leaps up, panicked.
“Fuck.”
“It’s okay man, shitty first dates happen to all of us.” Barclay offers from beside the bakery case.
“I mean yeah, they do, but that wasn’t one of ‘em. That was my boyfriend of three fuckin years.” He dashes out of the shop, sparing a final glare at Indrid as he does.
Indrid trades a sheepish look with his friend, “Oops.”
-------------------------------------------------
“I’m glad you finally get to meet Duck!” Aubrey grins over her shoulder as she and Indrid wind down the hall at the office Kepler magazine.
Founded by childhood friends, Kepler worked a combination of print and video content that saw its subscribers and revenue climb while other publications struggled to stay afloat. Aubrey was head of the video team, though she contributed content to the magazine in the form of interviews about environmental activists of color and sustainable gift guides.
Kepler has three sections: travel, science, and environmental writing. Indrid now has the honor of being one of their primary photographers. He started two weeks ago and is thoroughly enjoying his work and the company of the other staff. The only person he’s yet to meet is Duck Newton, one of the founders and main reporters, as he was off on an assignment.
Aubrey knocks, gets a friendly “come in” and ushers Indrid into the office.
Looking at him from behind the desk is The Asshole’s Boyfriend, whose face goes from open and friendly to confused, then to perturbed.
“You okay?”
“I, uh, fuck, n-ye.” Duck sighs, “remember how I told you Alex and I split after a shitty date in a coffee shop?” He points at Indrid, “this was the fella who, uh, expedited the process.”
“Ohhhh.” Aubrey frowns, then shrugs with a smile, “whelp, he’s our new photographer. We’ll see you around.” She hurries them outside once more, shutting the doors. As they head back the way they came, she whispers, “his ex was a huge fucking dick, so if word gets out everyone is gonna think you’re a fucking hero.”
“He didn’t seem to see it that way.”
“It was only a few weeks ago, so it’s still pretty fresh. He’ll heal from it okay, Duck’s a tough cookie. And I’m sure you guys’ll get along eventually.”
---------------------------------------
“Juno, please, you gotta come with me.”
“I would bud, except it’s April and I’s fifth wedding anniversary that weekend. And no, we already have plans, so we can’t just take over this assignment as part of the celebration.”
“Fuck” Duck leans back in his chair.
“...You really asked everyone?”
“Ye-no, fuck-”
“Duck.”
“I ain’t asked Indrid yet.”
“There it is.” Juno smirks, “you gotta ask; besides, we were gonna have him do illustrations for the feature, but photos would be even better. And we both know it ain’t his fault y’all broke up.”
Duck nods, promises to ask Indrid after lunch. He finds the photographer flipping through his files from his shoot for next issues cover. His silver hair is pulled back, red glasses sitting on the desk beside him so he can gauge color correctly.
Duck kind of wants to pull the silver locks just to see what happens. It’s not his fault Indrid looks like his Sophomore roommate who he had a raging crush on, only with more tattoos and a much more captivating face. Pity he helped fuck up Duck’s last chance at a stable relationship.
“Hey, Indrid, you got a minute?”
The photographer cocks his head.
“I, uh, so we got a feature on this whole chunk of places touting themselves as ‘sustainable romantic getaways. I booked a bunch of places, but a lot of ‘em will turn me away if I turn up solo. And the person I was supposed to go with ain’t an option any more. Neither is anyone else. You get my drift?”
Indrid pinches the bridge of his nose, “you realize this is a terrible idea, yes?”
“Hey, we been workin together just fine. Ain’t we? Wait, fuck, I ain’t been treatin you bad even when I’m tryin to be professional, am I?”
“No, you’ve been perfectly polite. But there’s a world of difference between being cordial in an office and going on what’s functionally a vacation together.”
Duck crosses his arms, “I ain’t about to lose eight hundred bucks in deposits.”
Indrid blinks, then chuckles, “Fair. What day do we leave?”
-------------------------------------------------
The temperature rises and the air dries as they speed south on Five. Indrid fiddles with games on his phone as cover for the list of “will this be a disaster or not” he’s mentally constructing. So far the signs are positive; Duck isn’t very chatty, but neither is Indrid. They have similar tastes in music, which makes much more sense when Duck explains he was a burn-out in high school. He also isn’t agitated by Indrid stimming, which makes it easier for the photographer to relax and enjoy the drive.
But they haven’t spoken about the elephant in the car, and Indrid resolves not to be the first to do so. No point in poking the sore spot if he doesn’t have to.
They stop at a Sinclair for gas. Duck reaches into his glovebox for something as Indrid climbs out, comes away with a photo instead. It’s one of those ones from a photobooth, faded but unmistakably him and his ex. His face falls for a second and Indrid scurries into the Dairy Queen attached to the convenience store.
As he waits in line, he turns one fact over in his mind like a picture he’s trying to make sense of; it would be easier to let their awkward first meeting go if he did not genuinely like the other man. He’s charming, in a quiet way, and very friendly. He’s built like the guys Indrid always got useless crushes on in college, usually third tier frat boys or--if he was lucky--a bear a few years older than him who liked his men on the odd side.
He doesn’t like seeing Duck sad. The sadness isn’t something he can fix. The stalemate between these two facts annoy the living hell out of him.
He’s next in line, glances up to confirm what he wants, and gets an idea. Last week, he overheard Duck talking with Aubrey about roadtrip snacks of their youth.
“One chocolate dipped cone, on me.” He holds the treat out to the other man.
“Oh. Uh, thanks. These are my favorite from when I was a kid.” Duck’s smile returns.
“I remembered. Or, ah, that is, I remembered you saying that.”
The smile changes, “you didn’t need to.”
“I wanted to. Shall we?”
“Yep. Uh, you gonna be able to drive and eat that at the same time?”
“Do not doubt my ability to consume ice cream under difficult circumstances, Duck Newton.”
They make it to their first stop unscathed. It’s what Duck refers to as, “eco-bespoke,” a fancy spa and hotel built in a former school, the kind that was made in an era of beautiful instead of grim educational architecture.
“Goats!” Indrid claps his hands, delighted, at the two animals stabled near the main building. One of it’s supposed sustainable elements is the small farm that helps feed the on-site restaurant. Duck smirks and Indrid suddenly feels the gulf in their upbringings, “Ah, I suppose they’re not exciting to someone who grew up in a rural town.”
“Nah, but they’re damn cute.” Duck checks the tag on their room keys, “okay, we’re in the green building, room 2B.”
Indrid snaps some photos as they cross the grounds, more to remind himself of things he wants to come back to later than anything else. He’s busy studying a strange mark on the wall by their door when Duck says, “I can sleep on the floor.”
“Why--oh” he stares at the single bed, “in retrospect, we should have seen this coming.”
“Yeah.” Duck drops his bag near the closet, slides the door to look for spare linens. Indrid summons his courage, finds it lacking, and so bolsters it with nonchalance.
“It’s a king, we could easily share.”
“You’d, uh, you’d be okay with that?”
“It is only narrow definitions of masculinity that mean something like sharing a bed is inherently sexual.”
He’s not entirely sure that made sense, but Duck nods, “You want the right side or left?”
“Right, please.”
“Great. And, uh, Indrid? Thanks for rollin with all this. I, uh, I know it’s fuckin weird but this is a huge feature for the magazine and we woulda been fucked if we had to pull it.”
Indrid gingerly sits on his side of the bed, “You’re welcome. And I don;t know about you, but” he smiles, catches Duck watching him intently in the mirror, “I’m enjoying myself so far.”
------------------------------------------------------
“Why has an activity that renders one incapable of using their thighs been deemed ‘romantic?” Indrid mumbles, face-down on the bed to offer his burning legs relief.
“Fuck if I know.” Duck groans as he sits next to him, “Kinda fun, but if I was doin this to get you in bed, I’d be fucked.”
“I am in bed” Indrid teases.
“And if I tried to put the moves of you you’d toss me outta it. Assumin I could even move myself that close.” Duck nudges him, then clears his throat, “uh, I mean, not like we’d be doin that-”
“Nono, point taken.” Indrid rolls over. The horseback ride was one of the “couples exclusives;” a trot out to a beautiful oasis for a gourmet picnic. Indrid got some excellent shots, including one of Duck with honeycomb dripping down his chin, which he will not be offering up to editors but may keep for himself. For it’s beautiful composition, of course.
Mercifully, their next stop is the pool. Indrid settles himself in the hot tub while Duck types some notes on his phone. Then his friend doffs his bathrobe and Indrid may as well be in a dream. In the steaming, echoing paradise of multi-colored tile and ecstatic shouts, Duck stands like one of the angelic fountains at its heart has come to life.
“You okay there, ‘Drid?”
“Yes.” He hopes his lack of glasses means Duck will mistake his blatant staring for trying to get his vision in focus.
“Then scoot your cu--uh, your butt over so I can sit down.”
Indrid gladly moves aside, finds he’s so comfortable with Duck pressed against him that he begins nodding off in the warm lull of the water. When the other man nudges him, saying it’s time to go, he finds a strong arm draped over his shoulder and Duck’s smile the most relaxed it’s been all trip.
Their last task at this location is to locate the speakeasy somewhere on the premises and order the “lovers delight” (only available to couples). To do so, they follow clues purple light bulbs, doors that lead to tiny, art-filled rooms, secret staircases, and a false supply closet to a dark wooded, dimly lit, incredibly pleasant bar looking out over the property. The drink turns out to be a massive goblet (more a bowl that someone stuck on a stem) of ginger syrup, prickly pear juice, and silver tequila.
It also turns out to be incredibly strong. So much so that when they get back to the room, Indrid loses his balance getting his shoes off, which makes Duck laugh, which results in both of them flopping onto the bed.
“S’fun. You’re, you’re real good at the clues. Should, should go to an escape room when we get home.”
“Wasn’t, hic, that hard. They, they want, hic, want you to find it.”
“Take the compliment, goofus” Duck pushes his shoulder.
“You’re, hic, the goofus.”
“Nuh uh.” Duck sticks his tongue out. Indrid does the same, then licks his cheek just to hear him laugh.
Duck rolls onto his back, giggles dying down to a contemplative sigh, “He woulda hated this.”
“Your ex?” Indrid crawls to stay close to him.
“Yeah. Everythin I like, or, or thought was fun, he thought it was a waste of time or just plain worthless. He, he wasn’t like that at the start. Dunno what changed. Probably me. Probably got borin. Got worse.”
Indrid is not so drunk that he believes he can fix this. But he’s just drunk enough to stroke Duck’s cheek and murmur, “No. Nono, hic, you’re th’best.”
He doesn’t remember falling asleep after that, but he must have, because his phone is beeping at them to get up and face the day. They do so with to-go coffees in one hand and their bags in the other, neither speaking of the night before until Indrid has turned the car into deeper desert.
“Sorry for gettin on a thing about Alex last night.”
“It was a three year relationship; goodness knows you’re allowed to have feelings about it.”
“Even relief?”
Indrid glances at him, “Of course.”
His friend leans back in his seat, sipping from his travel mug, “That’s half the reason I been in such a funk. I feel like I oughta be sad, then I feel guilty for the fact I’m relieved instead. But if I really was that unhappy in it, why did I hang around so long? Maybe that was the best I deserved, y’know?”
“I know the feeling, yes, but I can’t say I agree with your statement. You deserve someone who sees you for who you are and adores it, not someone who loved what you once were and became bitter when you grew.”
Duck looks at the console between them, at Indrid’s chipped black nails and the hand he hopes isn’t shaking. He squeezes it a moment longer than necessary, “Thanks, ‘Drid. It’s nice to hear that from someone who’s still gettin to know me. Juno and them, they’re my friends, I know they’re in my corner but, uh, sometimes I worry that anyone new is gonna find me dull or somethin like that.”
“I’m sure some people would, just as some take one look at me and decide I’m a weirdo who they don’t want to deal with. But I can say with certainty that I don’t find you that way.”
Duck grins all the way to their destination. It’s a quirky trailer park full of amenities and built mostly from salvaged materials, doing it’s best to run off the grid. It also gives each trailer a theme, and Indrid flaps his hands when he sees they’ve been booked in the “The Cramps” themed one.
“Hell yeah.” Duck mirrors his excitement as they open the door. Their haven from the desert sun is full of kitschy horror artifacts and a much smaller bed than the previous spot. There’s no debate this time; Indrid settles on the right, Duck on the left, and they settle in for a nap before venturing out to work.
They take in the bar, the arcade, the mini-golf course, and the “couples supply room” (“damn, didn’t know they made eggnog scented massage oil” “ooh, I like how that smells”), but Duck turns out to be most excited to rent a stargazing kit and guide Indrid out into the dark desert. They’re on their backs, shoulder to shoulder and munching chocolate covered fruit, when he discovers the source of his glee.
“There!” Duck points to a crackling streak of silver.
“A meteor” Indrid wiggles happily as a second one speeds through his view.
“It’s the Perseids, and this is a damn good place to watch ‘em. Look, there’s another one.” He’s breathless each time and Indrid’s heart threatens to beat hard enough to crack the earth at the sound.
“Did you ever wish on stars when you were little?”
“Yep. Never asked for much worth notin, though I’m pretty sure I wished once to just wake up and be a boy. Or, uh, guess for everyone to see me as one. What about you?”
“I wished...I wished for someone to do things like this with, some who’d kiss me and tell me that they didn’t need to wish because what they wanted was right here.. I love the world, I want to see so much of it, that’s half the reason I chose my profession.. But when I was young I thought I’d be with someone when I did. I thought it was easy to find that kind of love. To be worthy of it.”
“Hey now” Duck rolls onto his side. He’s backlit by the moon, meteors zipping behind him as if they, just like Indrid, are pulled to him, “what happened to all the stuff you said in the car about deservin someone who adores you?”
“It’s easy to apply such things to you, harder to believe them about myself.”
“How come?”
“Because you are everything a sensible person could want in a man and I am not.”
“That’s where you’re wrong” He sets a hand next to Indrid’s shoulder, “Can think of at least one sensible fella who wants to get to know you a whole hell of a lot.”
“He’ll get to know me plenty, we’re co-workers.”
“There are different kinds of gettin to know someone.” Duck dips down, brushes their noses together, “for instance, the last few days I’ve gotten to know you’re a damn good travel companion and that Ned was smart to hire you. But I’ve also gotten to know there’s some things about you I really wanna know.”
“Such as?” Indrid’s fingers find Duck’s sides.
“Such as whether you wanna go on a date with me when we get back. No assignment, just the two of us gettin some time together.”
“I want nothing more.” He leans up to kiss him, feels him shudder happily when their lips meet. Indrid wonders how long it’s been since someone kissed Duck like they meant it, and resolves to make up any deficits with an enthusiasm that would put horny eighteen year olds to shame.
Indrid nips Ducks ear, “you know, were it not for the threat of mosquitos and scorpions, I’d suggest we make good use of the non-food items in that basket.”
Ducks grin lights Indrid up like a comet, “Then howsabout we go test just how conducive our trailer is to romance?”
Indrid kisses him adoringly, “Lead on, sweetheart; I’ll follow you anywhere.”
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