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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

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I Prefer My Heart To Be Broken, Chapter Eight: Nine Days

A week of torture. An expert in human psyche. A deeply dangerous development.

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Content warning: There's torture in this one. It's not too graphic, and it's not too long, but it is intense.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: NINE DAYS

The actual traveling is dizzying as hell, and Jon can’t block it out.

Can’t avoid the vacuum-pinch in his ears or the clench of his sinuses or the spin of his gut.

But then it’s over, and they’ve arrived.

This is a temple. Dimly lit by distant daylight, all white marble, pillars carved with what look like tentacles or really thick vines, and the King’s three-hook symbol sits prominent in ebony and takes up most of the floor.

And apart from the King and Jon, it is absolutely empty.

Jon is on his knees.

It’s inevitable that this monster-god will lose patience over his continued refusal, and when that happens, it’s going to be bad. Jon knows he’ll be tortured. Burned. Skinned.

Waiting to be tortured, burned, and skinned is almost worse than the thing itself, and he’s torn between pushing until the King snaps and starts hurting him, or playing nice and putting off the pain as long as possible.

Jon doesn’t like pain.

So: long game. He intends to give this being no reason to hurt him apart from that one, crucial thing that he will not do. He remains on his knees.

“You’re so certain I’m going to harm you,” says the King, who sounds (and hopefully still is) amused.

Jon swallows.

“Have I hurt you so far, Jon?”

Regret, regret, should have stuck with Archivist— “Apart from ripping me away from my soulmate and forcing me to relive my worst memories, not at all,” says Jon before he can stop himself, and winces.

So much for the long game.

Not like I’ve ever been able to avoid irritating anyone, even when they were about to melt my hand, he thinks, and almost laughs, but that would peel right off into hysterics, so he keeps it down.

The King’s voice is low, pleased. “Look at me, Jon.”

Jon is too afraid.

One of those hideous tentacles touches under his chin, lifting his face. The King’s gaze pins him like nails through his eyes, power and penetration, and Jon is well aware the King could do that in a way that makes it hurt.

But he’s not.

“Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?” says the King. “I’ll ask you this: what do you think I want from you?”

Jon is shuddering. “Something I can’t give.”

“Can’t you? I only ask for something you already want to give.”

The King isn’t wrong. Of course there’s a broken, bruised part of him that wants to answer their call.

“I don’t,” Jon lies.

Oh. He feels the King in his mind.

“You do. A strange state of affairs, isn’t it? For one whose very blood flows with truths to deny one of his own.”

The King is prodding through his head, that’s what’s happening. Finding thoughts, lifting sensations like rocks to see what’s underneath. Finds, somehow, his tether to the Dread Powers, that connection, always on, circuit open, always calling, always beckoning.

For all the world, it feels like the King plucks that tether.

—and Jon finds himself curled on the floor with no memory of going down. He’s gasping.

The King waits. Silent. Watching.

Jon doesn't know what just happened. He completely blacked out; feels the horrifying vibration of the Dread Powers in him, still calling—but he didn't answer. He didn’t. Relief brings tears to his eyes.

Jon forces his voice to work. “You don’t understand. I already did this. I damned everybody. I… I can’t do it again. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

The chuckle is dark. “You’re really very bad at lying. It’s almost… endearing.”

He’d lied?

Jon has no idea what this being considers lying. “Endearing. Sure it is,” he mutters. “Look, let’s just cut through the filler, shall we? I intimately felt the suffering of seven and a half billion people.” His voice is rough as he pushes shakily back to his knees. “I know their fear, sorrow, horror. I felt it all, every scream, every terror. I know what can be done to the human body and mind, and I know what’s coming, and I’d rather just get on with it, if it’s all the same to you!”

The King studies him. “Walk with me, Jon.”

Jon grits his teeth, shudders. Somehow, he stands, and walks.

He’s dizzy.

The King keeps his pace to Jon’s, leading through this enormous white space, empty and echoing. Ahead, what looks like bright sunlight spills onto the floor. “Let’s begin again. You know what I want.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, then, what you think I want.”

Hadn’t they just… “You want me to bring the Fears into this world, and you think you can control them, but you can’t.”

The King chuckles. “I have to admit I’m surprised, Jon. I thought you had better reading comprehension.” And the King leads him onto a balcony that is somehow, impossibly, on the edge of the world.

Before them is all the universe.

Jon gasps.

It’s a clarity he could never have had on his own. Stars and suns and swirling constellations, comets and nebulas and wide, wild things that human astronomy hasn’t discovered and has no name for, and—

He feels them, feels the violence of star-births and the grasping pressure of their deaths, feels the tiny few sparks of life that start for reasons unknown and sputter out so fast that their own stars never knew they were there. Feels whispers of fear and anger and love and joy and all the things that are life, echoing still, even from worlds long gone.

He makes a small, wondering sound.

It’s beautiful. Engulfing. Calming.

Vastness without the fear of the Vast.

A feast so rich even the barest whiff from emptied plates is enough to sate him.

Jon feels like he could just drift into it, be ashed away, and find solace in dissolution.

His soil is watered. He hasn’t felt this good in… a long time.

A moment later (an hour, a year), Jon realizes he’s entranced.

It doesn’t seem terribly urgent.

“All of this is mine,” says the King, voice buzzing pleasantly against his ears. “So tell me again how you think I can’t contain the Entities.”

“Yours?” Jon sounds dream-like to himself, and wonders what he’s going to say next. “There were other beings in those books. They don’t share the universe with you?” Is it a spell he’s cast on me? he wonders dreamily. Some kind of harmonic resonance? Will it be permanent?

“There were… but I’ve banished them, or gained their fealty. As I will do with your Entities, once you call them here.”

How is it done? Does everyone in the world feel this? Is it just his will, being pushed on everybody? How were we immune? Does it weaken me? Does the Beholding care?

It does, and it isn’t happy with this.

What an odd thing to know.

“Jon,” prompts the King.

Oh, yes, he’d been asked something, hadn’t he? “The Dread Powers aren’t like you, or like any of the others in this place,” Jon finally answers. “It won’t work.”

“Oh?”

Muscle spasm, Jon thinks. “They don’t reason. Most of them. They can’t be satisfied, paid off, bought, threatened. You can’t gain their fealty because they have none.”

“You’re so sure.”

Could this free me from the Eye? Would Martin like that? Will I die if the Eye is broken away from me?

But these questions are… less, somehow.

Dimming.

The part of him that always asks, that always questions, is getting harder to see in some failing light. It doesn’t feel very good.

“Jon.” Prompting, warm.

“I….” What had he said? Ah—”Yes, I’m sure. You’d hold them for a while, then be overwhelmed.”

The King laughs. “They only held your Earth. I hold much more.”

“They….” Jon’s heart gives a strange, painful thud.

He can’t find his questions.

He can’t find his fear.

He’s starting to feel like he can’t get enough air.

“Jon.”

“They rewrote reality to suit themselves,” Jon says, breathy.

“So have I.” The King says. “I’ve created perfection. No wars. No murder. No theft. No rape. No children are harmed. No animals abused. The land is pristine. Your Fears are no threat to me.”

And Jon answers, because he can’t not, and because he can’t even feel the warning ping of self-preservation that might have kept him quiet. “There’s also no hope. No stories. No healing from unnamed sorrow. No caves to be explored, no yearning for endless sky. Questions unanswered, stars unseen, and true happiness always out of reach.”

Jon feels like he’s speaking a lullaby, a rhythm to his words, musical. He can’t help it. The Beholding has followed the thread of itself back into his mind, and it’s wonderful.

Feels like it’s spilling into him, unstructured, ink in a vat of water.

And whatever the King is doing seems to be pushing back. Rigid. Hard, like thrusting a pipe of metal right down his gullet and around his heart.

It hurts.

Jon should be afraid.

Part of him is.

The rest….

“They don’t need those things, Jon. They have me,” says the King. He drapes one hand over Jon’s shoulder, huge, familiar, heavy. “I am in no danger from your Entities.”

Jon knows he isn’t thinking very clearly; it’s slow, thick, like honey running downhill, and still doesn’t feel urgent. “They change,” he tries to explain, watching the birth of a star, watching it spin through its fiery, moon-building cycle, bloom blue, and then slowly fade into its eventual death. “That’s why they would win.”

That rumble again, that sound of displeasure. “So? Do you think I don’t change? Adapt? Learn?” The King’s other hand joins the first, on both shoulders now, just brushing his throat, caging him in.

Safe. Secure. Who needs questions? (I do. I need questions.) “They mutate. They….” (The Beholding is reaching, displeased, maybe just as pained without questions, without more.)

“They what, Jon?” prompts the King

(The Beholding, deep in Jon’s core, the wire at the heart of him, from toe to crown and thrumming—) “They change,” Jon says again, low. “They are now as they were in my world, but that wouldn’t last. Once through, they’d alter themselves, becoming as fear here dictates.”

“There is no fear here.” The King’s thumbs just brush Jon’s jaw.

He obediently tilts his head back, eyes lidded, still watching the stars. “Yes, there is, Hastur,” he says, and does not quite register the King’s hands twitch on his shoulders. “So much fear.” And he can taste it.

Hastur, the King in Yellow, has gone very still.

The Beholding is flooding the walls that Hastur built, rusting through with questions, with knowledge, lifting fake happinesses like rocks to see what’s underneath. “So much fear,” Jon whispers. “Suppressed, but so much. A wealth of it, banked and building. Hastur, they’ll eat this world, and then they’ll eat you, because you’re afraid of—”

Hastur suddenly grips him hard and hurls him onto the floor.

Jon is wrenched out of his peace and skids across the marble, dazed and aching.

“He got your name?” comes Kayne’s voice, and then a terrible cackle that rips through the air (and makes Jon’s vision shatter, and makes Jon cry out). “That’s great! Do it again, go on, go on, do it again, push your luck.”

“You aren’t invited here,” says the King with that horrible growl, that rumble of warning.

“And he knows you’re afraid! Oh, oh, oh, that’s just rich! You want a snack? I’m having a snack. I can’t wait to see what happens next.” A crunching sound.

Kayne terrifies Jon on an instinctive level that he cannot name.

This is the antithesis of all he is, somehow. This isn’t an enemy. This is…

Undoing, he thinks, and isn’t even sure what he means. He can’t sit up yet. He’s still dazed from the universe.

The King descends on Jon.

Grabs him with too many limbs and does not try to be gentle, compresses him so hard that his bones crack, and Jon manages one wheezy cry.

“You’ve rejected the easy way, Jon,” Hastur says, one wide, terrible hand tilting Jon’s face toward his. “But judging by your past, you always do.”

And the King takes a fistful of Jon’s mind and squeezes.

Squashing thought, displacing memory. Burying him, drowning him under wet and heavy concrete, forcing him into the mud.

It’s the King’s will, completely subsuming his own—and it’s worse than anything Jon has ever felt.

The panic that hits now makes forgetfulness in the Unknowing seem cheap, makes the Web’s control seem just a warm-up, and as who he is suffocates, his panic rockets past every other fear to take the number one slot.

The Beholding drinks that fear like nitro, and it responds.

There is pain (but incidental, like Jon is a channel, a mere transmitter between), a shocking burning biting splashing slicing —

The King throws him with a deep and terrible cry.

Jon lands badly. This panic precludes silence, precludes sense, precludes anything but primal desperation, and he wraps both arms around his head and makes noises he doesn’t recognize as human.

Kayne gasps dramatically. “You cheated!” he cries, and then he cackles. That laughter is madness and lightning, that laughter is hysteria enfleshed, that laughter is so extreme and so chaotic that hurts to hear.

“Be quiet!” the King rumbles.

“I told you you couldn’t suppress him. That fucking eyeball doesn’t care if you hurt him, but theft? Come on! Did you really think that thing wouldn’t respond to its pet being poached? Ahaha!”

“He had no memories of anything like this happening!”

“No, but all those memories were before deification, my darling boy. My lovely idiot. My charming pup. All fluff, no brain.”

“Silence!” the King snarls, growls, roars.

“You even lost an arm! Oh, oh, oh, this is delicious. I gotta ask, though, you gonna eat that? Because it’s better fresh, and it’s already lost a lot of… mm, that’s not blood, what would you call that, ichor?”

The only answer is that horrible, low growl.

The growl means the King is angry. If he’s angry, he might do that again, and Jon whimpers.

Then the Beholding wraps over his mind like a heavy, warm blanket.

Jon can’t think, can’t identify what’s happening, can’t reason through this, or what it might mean. He is cradled in the familiar grip of the Eye, the one who claims him, loves his fear, recognizes him as key to its ascent.

The Eye is fixing what was squashed.

Jon feels his memories filling back in, feels his thoughts flow as channels rebuild, feels himself being lifted out of the mud where the King pushed him down. Because of course the Eye can do that, the Eye knows him, the Eye can heal a severed finger, and the Eye can put everything back where it was.

And it feels so right.

Jon moans.

“And would you look at what’s happening now,” says Kayne.

“He made it more aware,” murmurs the King.

“Of course he did, you fucking sock.” The tone changes, and now it is violence, now it is low and sultry and venomous. “And I told you you couldn’t couldn’t force your way with this one, but no, you wouldn’t listen. You cheated, and that means I get an advantage, and that fallout, dear Hastur, will be all your fault.”

Jon barely hears any of it.

He is complete.

Complete in a way he’s only briefly known, complete in a way he’s only given himself fully to once.

It was three minutes of bliss, wholeness, peace.

Then the distress of his (Martin lover soulmate heart) Own had turned that moment so sour.

Martin isn’t here right now, and Jon can’t even think to pull away from what is happening.

Home.

“That’s a lot of blood, old buddy, old pal,” says Kayne so happily. “Can he lose that much? I dunno, I was never great with math.”

“I know.” Hastur still hasn’t moved.

Home. Home. Jon is home.

Communing with the Ceaseless Watcher. Being communed. Fitting in place, into the space made for him, filling with fear and joy in equal measure.

“Mmm, true worship. Amazing to see, isn’t it? Been a long damn time since you got any of that, isn’t it?”

“Go away,” Hastur says.

“All that puppeteering, and when was the last time you actually saw worship?”

“I’m warning you,” says Hastur.

“What? Leave? And miss all this? Not on your life, buddy.”

And Jon—

He’s hit the block, the wall, the place where the Eye can push no further unless he lets them all in.

The place where they must all be invited.

As always, it fingers the door, as always, it tries the lock, as always, it knocks, beckoning with soft and intimate whispers.

Jon remembers the death of the world and does not open the door. I can’t.

And he regrets it.

I can’t let you in.

And he grieves.

Kayne sighs. “Are you giving up? I’d guess he has a few minutes left, bleeding like that. Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your toys, but once he’s dead, you automatically lose. You know that, right? That you lose? And then you’re mine? Is that really what you want?” There’s a sound, like gnashing of teeth.

Hastur growls and picks Jon off the floor so gingerly that it’s like he thinks he’s going to be blasted.

Jon is suddenly aware just how badly his side hurts. He gasps.

Then he’s aware of the King.

Of what the King did.

The panic comes back full force, and Jon twists himself out of the King’s loose grip and onto the floor with a crunch.

Kayne howls like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen.

Jon is beyond reason, beyond caring that he feels freshly stabbed, feels his torn flesh rubbing against itself in the space Martin’s knife made.

He tries to drag himself away.

Kayne appears in front of him, crouching, just some guy in homespun clothes and incongruous snake-leather boots. “Inquiring minds want to know: just where in fuck do you think you’re going?”

Jon looks up.

And sees Disorder.

Chaos in the flesh, Madness and Gripping Insanity, Wideness and Wildness and Strife, Peacelessness and Impossible Things that could never be and should never are and never did become.

Sees the universe not as it is, but completely unhinged, gravity twisted, stars colliding and darkness in their wake.

Jon scrambles backwards, gasping, slipping on his own blood.

And Disorder looks… surprised.

“You cheated!” Hastur roars, and finally picks Jon up with enough force to keep him from squirming away.

“He sees me,” says the other with wonder, the Undoing, the Strife, and then falls into absolute laughing hysterics.

“Cheater!” proclaims the King.

“Don’t you wish I had?” cackles Kayne (that’s Martin’s chaos god, here in the non-flesh, and oh gods Martin be careful). “Because I’m wearing my guise, big boy, and it doesn’t matter. He got my name, then he got your name, and now, he’s got my face. What else can he do?”

“He got your name?” says the King, startled.

“Nyarlathotep,” Jon gasps, pushing fruitlessly against Hastur’s hands.

“Ahahaha!”

Jon also gets that he’s bleeding badly, very badly, and his vision is beginning to tunnel. Maybe this is the way out, he thinks. Maybe I can just die here, end it. Just fucking BLEED out.

Hastur lays him out on the floor and begins prodding at his side.

Jon tries to roll away.

Hastur catches him and puts him back down like a toddler getting changed.

“Mmmm, good luck fixing this mess, darling.”

“Get out!”

“Fine, I guess I’ll go bother my guy for a while. Ta!”

The Madness’ absence is like the removal of a flame, the burning finally gone away.

Leaving Jon with him, the King, who did that to his mind, and yes, he’s healed, and yes, it’s fixed, and yes, this now scares him more than anything else. He tries to scramble away again.

“Stop it,” snaps the King, catching him.

“Leave me alone!” snaps Jon.

“I am trying to keep you from dying,” the King says.

And Jon doesn’t know what his face does, but it must be the same look that makes Martin frown, because the King draws back as though absolutely shocked, then snarls like a freight train and yanks Jon up to mask-level. “Enough!” the King bellows, and then—

Jon wakes.

He can’t see. But he can feel.

This isn’t where he was. This is not Somewhere Else.

“Welcome back,” says the King, who was waiting. “I don’t want to do this, Jon—and I guarantee I will not actually damage you. But it’s going to hurt. You will not enjoy it. Call the Entities—or else.” He sounds regretful.

Jon knew this was coming. “No,” he whispers, and then, oh, there is pain.

Breaking pain, burning page. Sharp pain and banging pain. Pain so bad it shoves him into darkness.

He wakes again, shaking.

But pain is not all he feels.

This placeis a bad place, it is an in-between place, a stuck place, so close to the Fears that he feels them, feels them like claws on his throat and spine, feels them like familiar touches just shy of piercing his skin, feels them lingering over sensitive parts with knowledge where to taste him, how to tempt.

They are right behind some thin, useless sheet, pressing so hard that they deform its shape with their faces. Ghosts, on the other side of the veil, nearly through. “Where am I?” he says, hoarse.

“The only place you can stay alive right now. Call the Entities,” rumbles the King. “Don’t make me do this, Jon.”

“No,” whispers Jon, and again: “Where am I?”

“That’s all you have to say?” the King says, and it is a warm tone, almost a caress, affectionate. “That’s too bad.”

Pain.

Jon knows he’s screaming. His darkened vision flashes white and red, and when it finally lets up, he feels like he’s dripping all over—sweat, blood, he has no idea.

He can’t stop making little breathy sounds, and he hates them.

“I can do this for centuries,” the King croons in his ear. “You don’t age, Jon.”

“I… I wh… what?” Horror makes his voice crack.

“You don’t want this pain, do you? I don’t. Call. The Entities.”

Jon laughs. It’s a bad sound. “No.”

There is pain.

Then there is nothing at all.

When he wakes, it’s pleasure.

This is worse.

He’s still blind, and his hands are tied above his head. Something like electricity is buzzing through his nerves from his toes to his scalp, under his skin, a manual and emotionless manipulation.

He does not want this, does not like this, and he screams.

The King adds humiliation, standing near, letting Jon feel his presence, just watching, watching, watching. “Call the Entities, Jon, and all of this will end.”

“No!” Jon sobs it.

It doesn’t stop, and it doesn’t stop. It rises, crests, teases into burning, aching tension, and it does not stop.

“We don’t have to do this, Jon. Call the Entities.”

“No!” Jon whimpers, struggles, tries fruitlessly to get away.

It surges past pleasure and into something like pain but worse because it isn’t, and no matter how he twists, what he does, he cannot make it lessen. It’s in him, in his bones, tracing every branch of his nerve and neural network. He cries out, half a sob.

“Call. The Entities,” says the King.

Shame peaks along with agony, tormented ecstasy, and Jon weeps. “Go to hell!” he shouts.

Darkness hits him hard.

He wakes without sensation, without anything of any kind. No touch, no sound, no smell.

Compete deprivation.

He still feels the Eye—far more keenly than before—as well as the other Fears, their proximity horrifying, tempting, terrifying, tantalizing.

Call the Entities. It’s directly in his head, piped in, and other than the Fears, the only thing that’s real.

And Jon knows that this will break him.

Is against his nature, starving his need to know, learn, touch, taste, feel, experience.

This. This is his personal hell. The King found it.

Jon doesn’t mean to reach for the Eye. Desperate, a drowning man, he still does.

And sees through the King’s eyes, and it is disorientating: Jon sees himself floating in the air, horizontal and nude, hair curtaining down. The look on his face is terrible, pained—he looks like he was frozen mid-scream, but he doesn’t make a sound.

And yes, there is a blindfold. Jon knows (knows) that his eyes are open beneath it.

But that’s not all he sees.

Green, liquid light loops all around and through Jon, like dripping solar flares. They surge and ebb, expand and contract, coiling wildly, and something about them makes him think of breathing.

What is this? The Eye? Something else?

I’m beautiful, he thinks in shock, and wonders if all humans look like this, or if this is somehow connected to his many marks and scars.

The King speaks. Do you see, now? Why would I want to hurt this? To hurt you? I don’t, Jon. This isn’t my choice. This is yours.

Each flare pulses, and Jon doesn’t know if they match his racing heartbeat, but they seem to.

Call the Entities, or I go, and leave you alone until you can’t remember your own name.

Jon can see himself crying—unmoving, but tears somehow escape the blindfold, floating around him in whatever field the King has generated.

So. This, forever.

Starvation.

And Jon is terrified that the Eye will eventually grow bored with unchanging experience and leave him here. Right now, in this naked and true place, that feels worse than—

Almost anything.

One moment more painful still remains, one moment more terrible: when realization bloomed that he was killing Martin.

When he saw Martin’s cheek bleed as the Panopticon fell down around them.

And it didn’t matter that Jon would have become the pupil anyway when Jonah died, no matter who had done the deed.

Didn’t matter that all he’d done was speed things along by killing Jonah himself.

Didn’t matter that he was the tether through no choice of his own, through the machinations of the Web and Jonah Magnus.

That didn’t change what happened.

By doing it the way he did, he’d broken his promise, and he’d stabbed Martin more surely than Martin had stabbed him.

That is still worse. He won’t do it again. And if never betraying Martin again means… this, floating forever in nothing, cut off from everything, even the Eye…

It’s what I owe, he thinks, and it still won’t be enough, he thinks, and then finally answers the King.

No.

Jon sees his body hitching, trying to cry, but he can’t hear himself, can’t feel it. Can’t even feel the sobs in his throat.

The King sounds sad. As you wish, Jon. And he does—

Something.

Jon is booted from his view, his head, back into total darkness.

Into nothing.

The Eye isn’t gone yet, no. But it will be, eventually.

Anticipating abandonment, silent, unheard, Jon weeps.

He wakes flooded.

Overwhelmed.

Sensation, too much of it, inside and out, loud and bright and painful on every inch of his body.

Blood sears his veins, air peels his lungs, his hair sizzles like lightning along his skin.

He cries out, but that’s too loud, and he tries to curl in on himself, but that’s too painful, and the Eye is here and the Fears are here and they don’t care about his distress, and they demand, demand, demand… something.

Something he can’t recall, doesn’t know how to do.

He can’t remember who he is. Who they are. What this is. Where he is. Anything.

Could not answer that call if he tried.

It’s too much. He’s slipping, falling back, unbalancing his way right off a cliff into comforting madness, into no thought and no reason and nothing matters.

And then the Eye reaches into him, through him, and steadies his balance, and keeps him from breaking.

Jon remembers who he is.

The Eye wants to see, to watch, to know, and it wants these things through him. It likes his responses when he’s sane. If it didn’t, it would let him fall.

Jon is so afraid.

“I think I’ve finally figured out where our little disconnect is, Jon,” says the King congenially, and he isn’t shouting, and he doesn’t have to, because it’s still so loud, too much sound, and the Eye has to translate. “Of course, I could just keep doing this. It wouldn’t take much; I could douse you in fire, drown you in bliss, or deny you every sensation over and over again. I could do that.”

Jon knows he could. “Wh… why….” Whatever he’s lying on hurts, and he whimpers. Jon’s own voice hurts him—too loud, too much. Feels like a rock in his throat.

“Exactly, Jon, very good! I thought, why? I don’t actually want to hurt you. I like you. I take no pleasure in this—and obviously, neither do you, no matter how much you demand it.” The King’s chuckle beats against Jon’s skin like wings made of iron.

Jon makes a small, helpless sound. He can almost understand these words on his own without the Eye’s help, now. Whatever he’s lying on merely feels abrasive, rather than made of woven fire. “Y….” His voice hurts him, and he winces. “You d… don’t?”

“YourEntities love your suffering, don’t they?”

It’s such a warm voice, so pleased, so penetrative. Jon whimpers. “Yes.”

“They love it when you’re injured, or anticipating injury. Don’t they? Anything to make you afraid.”

“Yes,” Jon whispers.

“They feed off you.”

Jon sobs. “Yes.”

“I don’t.”

The silence is strange.

“What?” says Jon after a moment.

“I don’t feed off fear. I don’t feed off torment or pain. None of that does anything for me, apart from… occasional personal proclivities.”

Jon is confused. “What?”

“You expect me to hurt you because your former gods will always hurt you. That is their nature. They will terrify you, deprive you, burn you, cut you. That is what they are.”

Jon shakes. Sheets. He’s on sheets. They’re soft. His skin is lying.

“You don’t belong to them anymore—you just haven’t realized it yet. You’re mine. Do you understand why this matters, Jon?”

“No,” Jon manages.

“That’s all right. You will. You’re not stupid.” That tone is mocking, because Jon can be very stupid, or… or is Jon just hearing mockery because he expects to hear it?

“It’s all changed for you, Jon.” The King is coming closer now, and Jon can feel him, feel his approach like a wave of heat before an open fire.

Jon curls tighter. He can’t seem to avoid making the noises he’s making with every breath.

Heat from the king’s face, from the King’s breath, right against his ear. “I like you, Jon. I know you better than you know yourself—and I am not going to hurt you anymore. I want you to thrive, so instead, I’m going to make you understand.”

He’s not sure what that means. If he heard it right. “Un… understand what?”

“Like breathing,” says the King, softly. Something of the King’s touches him, starting at his scalp, running down his spine, and it hurts. It’s too much.

Jon cries out.

“When you’re ready, you and I will have a talk. I’d guess it’ll take a day or so for you to adapt to… everything. Once you understand, I think you’ll do as I ask. You might even apologize to me for making me wait so long.” And the King laughs.

Every pulse judders through Jon, shakes his nerves like trying to break their necks, thrusts him past pleasure or pain into white flashes and a brain that gongs like a bell.

Then the King is gone.

Just that, just that absence, helps so much.

Jon pants, slowly adapting. Slowly adjusting.

It’s a nice bed, really. It’s not sandpaper.

And it’s quiet in here. Really.

Dark, too—though even this dim light hurts right now.

The part of Jon that needs to know is ravenous. Wants to see where he is, explore, sate his curiosity. To learn how he can be so close to the Fears, yet so separate from any reality he’s known.

His body decides otherwise. He falls into a deep sleep.

Untold ages later, Jon wakes and knows the King is watching him.

He wakes, and knows a lot more than that.

The King tortured him for seven days, unceasing.

Only seven days. It felt so much longer.

Jon has slept for a day and a half, and now, he’s in a different world.

“Dreamlands?” he mumbles, unsure what that means. It’s just one of many useless facts the Eye hurls at him, information without understanding, data without discernment.

Right now, that’s particularly frustrating.

“It had to be the stupidest of the lot, didn’t it?” Jon mutters, struggling to sit up. “Oh, no, I couldn’t have a god capable of reason, no, that’d just be silly.”

Except the King in Yellow claims to be his god now, and the King is regrettably capable.

Jon tries to take stock.

He’s aware he’s been worked over by an expert in human psyche.

This was intended to leave him vulnerable. (It did.)

Intended to leave him raw. (It did.)

Intended to render him unable to trust his emotions or judgment. (It did.)

The bleeding, cracked part of himself that’s trying to be objective sounds like a child in his head—tiny and powerless.

Just don’t call them, he reminds himself, the one signpost he can trust. Nothing else matters.

He’s also still naked. “Ugh,” he says, a general commentary, and finally slides off the bed.

The bottoms of his feet hurt. That just seems unfair.

It’s a room. Just a room. Walls and floor of big, stone blocks. A bed, dressed all in white. A single bureau with two drawers, a mirror, and a hair brush. A small yellow ribbon sits on top.

There are two doors, and there is one window.

Jon heads right for the window, then stops because he remembers he’s naked.

He can truly be stupid with curiosity. The Beholding hadn’t chosen him by accident.

He sighs at himself.

The bureau, happily, does have some clothing in the top drawer. Unhappily, it’s some satiny material in the King’s specific yellow.

The outfit has no name because the King never named it. It’s short, revealing; it’ll show his legs, and his chest, and sort of drape over his shoulders, and probably flutter up in a light breeze like some damned fan-service thing.

Maybe naked would be less embarrassing. Or he could do something with a pillow case.

At least it wasn’t identical to the outfit he’d been wearing in that vision the King shoved into him that first meeting.

But that thought brings with it a caravan, wagon after wagon of horrors from the past week, violation and pain and sensory deprivation—

Jon finds himself hyperventilating, crumpled, having somehow wedged himself into the space between the dresser and the wall.

The floor and wall are cold. This is not comfortable.

This is fine, he thinks.

(Jon is not ready to deal with what happened.)

“Lovely,” he mutters, shaking too hard to stand. “Panic attacks over nothing. Very impressive, Sims.”

(He may never be ready to deal with it.)

“Ugh,” he says again, crawling free, and focuses, so he can get through this.

Through this to what? He doesn’t know.

(The King says he likes you! Haha! Good joke, he thinks in Breekon’s terrible Russian accent.)

Then he’s laughing, or maybe crying. He doesn’t know, and for a long moment, cannot stop.

Jon is deeply, achingly grateful that Martin is not here.

He doesn’t want Martin to see this.

To see him… like this.

He already knows how this is going to go. The King will let him get better, just begin to hope it won’t happen again, and then it will happen again, all of it, maybe even longer, and this time, when he gets out, the King will swear it’s the last time for real, and then….

(He said he doesn’t want to hurt you.)

Jon rubs his face. He’s sweating and freezing at once.

(Said he likes you.)

“Balderdash,” he says with full sincerity.

He throws the yellow outfit on the bed and goes to peek at the doors.

The first door exits to some kind of hall, so Jon keeps that shut for now. No lock, of course—not that it would do any good.

The second door is a bathroom. There’s a huge tub, a small sink, and a sort of Turkish-style toilet.

That’s when it hits him that everything in here is his size.

Made for humans. Even the mirror in the bedroom only reaches a foot or so above his head.

The Eye informs him this is the King’s palace, and he can make whatever he wants happen here, but Jon doesn’t think that explains this place.

It all feels… old. Unused for a long time, but established, somehow.

Jon runs the water in the tub. What comes out first is dark brown and gritty—pipes that have not functioned in a while.

He leaves the water running and goes back to the bedroom. That window is calling his name, and curiosity takes precedence over pride.

It looks out on a landscape that changes with every blink.

Lit by one moon, then two, then none, it is a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of galaxies and planets and stars, absolutely dizzying and amazing and incredible.

The Eye wants to know what every single landscape is.

Jon wants to know what every single landscape is.

“Probably why he gave me this view,” Jon mutters, certain he’s being bribed.

Then he looks down, which is a mistake.

The tower plummets into nothing.

Nothing. There’s no need for anything down there, because the King doesn’t live down there, so it’s void, empty, non-existence, truly nothing, and the knowledge of complete absence of the real smacks Jon like a hammer to the head.

He spins away from the window, gasping. No escape, he thinks. Not if he wants to keep existing, anyway.

That gets logged away for later.

Trembling, he heads back to the bathroom, where the water is finally running clear.

Use of the toilet and then a hot bath aren’t a compromise, he tells himself. He reeks. And he’s freezing. And it delays the inevitable moment of stepping into that hall.

The Eye wants to see what’s out there.

Jon wants to see what’s out there.

Stubborn, he stays in the tub—which is enormous—hunched over and boiling, and he does not leave until the water has gone just a little bit cold.

There are no underthings with this stupid outfit, and Jon seriously reconsiders trying to use a pillowcase.

The thing fastens at the waist with a single brooch in the King’s three-hook shape—which, he notes, possesses a very thick needle. He logs that away, too. Not that he’s sure what he’d ever do with it, but it’s good to know he possesses something sharp.

The outfit isn’t very… much. It wraps around, loops over, and drapes prettily on his shoulders. Jon can see all the scars on his thighs, his arms, his torso. The one on his neck is on full display.

It’s a lovely enough style, he supposes, or would be on some Adonis.

He is no Adonis, and this is absurd.

“Ugh,” he says again, then eyes the yellow ribbon.

It’s an ownership marker, he knows. It’s somehow more meaningful that he dons this unnecessary bit of color than the only clothing he’s been given.

Well, it’s this or leaving his hair loose.

Martin likes his hair. That’s why Jon kept it long after the coma. The long hair is Martin’s, and he decides he won’t leave it loose for anyone else. Braided, it is. The ribbon doesn’t matter.

“Well,” he says to the Eye. “I suppose this is it.”

The only answer is the desire to see what’s in the hall.

Fair enough. Jon wants to see, too.

Hands shaking (which he ignores), at last, he opens the door.

The hall is long and curves gently, as though crescent-shaped. Doors identical to his line the inside wall. On the outside wall are tall windows, bright as if in sun.

But that’s not glass. It’s some kind of mist. And every single one of them is too high up for Jon to see through.

Those windows are for the King, not the humans who used the rooms. It’s as if he and his pet humans would walk these halls together. Actively together.

It unnerves Jon, somehow. It doesn’t fit his image of the cruel god high above the rest, only deigning to touch his peons with the lash of a whip.

Trying to shake it, Jon turns right and walks.

He checks a few doors. They’re all the same—rooms like his, beds made, windows opened to a changing nighttime landscape. After a while, he stops checking.

They’re all unoccupied, anyway. “Where is everybody?” he mutters at empty rooms.

Eventually, he comes back to his own door, which he’d left open.

That shouldn’t be possible. That means this place is a circle, so the inner bedroom windows can’t open onto unending landscapes with variable moons.

Except they do.

He also found no exit, and fear flutters through his heart.

There must be an exit. He just missed it, he tells himself.

So this time, he opens every door. Every. Single. One.

And returns to his own.

“Right,” he says, breathing a little too hard. “Right. This isn’t anything to panic over. He’s just… got you in the cookie jar, for later. That’s all.”

(More human psyche manipulation. Lovely place, all needs cared for, but a cage.)

He makes a small, panicked noise, no matter how hard he tries not to.

The Eye beckons, offers, tempts. It can show him the way.

He laughs unsteadily. “Now? Really?” he asks it. “Like I’m going to lean on you in this place, so close to where you all might break through?”

He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t reach.

The Eye shows him, anyway.

A path opens, and Jon gasps. It’s light and misty, and goes straight through the hallway wall.

He hadn’t asked.

The Eye is being proactive? Why? How? What is happening?

Jon stares at the path, shaking. Can he even walk on it? Will he fall through to the nothing below if he tries? Where does it lead?

He has to know. He has to see.

That need to see what is unseen crests over his fear and his worry and insecurity and doubt. It is familiar and warm and his, and he clings to it like a drowning man to a rope.

Jon swallows hard, braces himself, and steps onto the white and misty pathway.

Kayne sits cross legged on the arm of Hastur’s throne and juggles human skulls. “I told you.”

“I know,” the King rumbles, growling, warning.

“You’re gonna have a time keeping this one locked up.” He adds a fourth skull, juggling with ease.

“Of course,” says the King, as though planning this all along. “The illusion of power will only ease his transition.”

Kayne laughs. “Illusion of power? Hastur. Lying, now? We should add that to the list of cheats. If we can lie, Hastur, then you know I’ve already won.”

Hastur growls. “I am content with my choice,” he says. “And when I have won, you will bow to me.”

“Mm, and when you have lost, I will eat you. One. Bite. At a time.” Kayne smacks his lips, smiles with too many teeth, then hurls a skull at the approaching Jonathan Sims.

Jon can’t see what’s on the other end of this path. It’s more mist, bright, like in the windows.

But he does hear the voice.

He knows that voice. That’s Undoing, the ender of worlds, the heart’s blood of chaos. He stops walking.

And clear as a bell, knows that if he stops walking for too long, stops seeing the path he’s on, he’s going to fall.

Into nothing.

Forward or back, Sims, he tells himself.

He has to know what’s on the other side. Has to. Feels like he’ll chew his own arms off if he doesn’t.

It’s not like he can run away from any of these beings, anyway. Haha.

(He is not okay.)

He chooses forward.

Hears the rumble of a displeased King (and immediately breaks out in a cold sweat), hears the mad cackle of Chaos incarnate.

Through the mist, out—

Into a throne room.

And a human skull comes flying at his face.

Sports were never Jon’s… thing, and he barely catches it, fumbles it several times, then drops it.

It shatters.

“Wow, what an entrance!” howls Kayne, clapping. “Encore!”

(Humiliation.)

Which means nothing to them, they’re alien, they’re not relishing it, it’s just a button to push—

Jon takes a deep breath and tries to stay out of his own head.

The room resembles the temple. It’s white marble, the king’s symbol on the floor, an enormous throne at the head of it. The left side of the room has no wall. The view is only broken by four thin and narrow curtains, white, diaphanous, and fluttering.

Beyond them hangs the biggest moon Jon has ever seen, shocking above a choppy, gray sea.

It helps to look at this, to study the crater-pattern—completely different from both his moon and the moon of Somewhere Else. Off-rhythm splashes hint at huge beasts below the water, beasts that fear nothing and hunt in the night, and he yearns to know what they are.

There’s even a second, smaller moon, peeking out from behind the big one. Amazing.

This is much better than looking at gods.

At the Undoing, who has some interest in Martin (and that thought makes Jon willing to do something very badly rash, though he doesn’t know what).

At the King, whose presence inspires fear and shame in equal measure.

“Jon,” says the King, sounding warm and welcoming. “Come. Break your fast with me.”

Jon makes himself look.

In the moment between Jon’s emergence and looking at the moon, the King has laid a table. Bowls of sliced fruits, cheeses, and breads sit between pitchers of some yellow liquid.

There are flowers Jon does not know in a vase, vaguely lily-shaped, black and speckled with the King’s yellow.

Cantus Flos, the Eye informs him. Song Flower, bred by early worshippers of Hastur the Shepherd god, designed to record and repeat his praises in an endless loop.

Well, that’s a thing.

Jon glances behind him. The path is still there. He could go back to his bedroom.

Or he could face this like an adult.

Can’t run, anyway. (And thinking about that nearly sends him into panic again, which will not do.)

It’s the waiting that’s worse, he decides—waiting for this play-acted niceness to be over with so hope has no chance to bloom, and he can lose himself in the torment.

Well, he can do something about that.

It’s time to don his spiniest, thickest-gauge armor. “You could’ve at least given me socks,” he snaps, heading toward the table.

Kayne cackles.

The King looks surprised. It’s a full-body movement, pulling back. “Perhaps I shall, soon enough. For now, though, I prefer you like this—on display, your power and presence witnessed.”

“You mean my scars? The physical manifestation of my every failure? Oh, of course, worm-holes must be all the rage this season.”

Kayne loses it again.

The King is silent.

Jon sits across from him, pauses, then adjusts the stupid skirt-thing, which isn’t long enough to feel comfortable against the smooth wooden bench. It’s horrifyingly revealing.

“I prefer you on display,” says Hastur, as if Jon’s not getting it. “Seen.”

The word is triggering, appealing, tugs at something deep in him, and it is terrifying that Hastur knows to use it in such a powerful way.

Jon is afraid.

He retreats further into his armor and raises one eyebrow. “A kink?” he drawls in his driest academic dismissal. “Is this really the time? Well, if you feel like sharing, I suppose that’s your prerogative.”

That sets Kayne off again.

It makes the King growl.

Jon’s breath is uneven. If he’s good at anything, it’s eroding social situations. This mockery of pleasantries won’t last much longer.

Kayne abruptly flops onto a chair he seems to have manifested at the head of the table. “You’re actually interesting today.”

Jon glances over. “If all it took to get your attention is a little rudeness, then I wonder how bored you must actually be.”

“Ooh,” says Kayne, low. “Ooh, I would hurt you so much if I could.”

That is completely terrifying.

Jon wants to lean in, press every button he can find, chew on every wire—but he fears Kayne taking it out on Martin.

He can’t risk Martin.

So. “I apologize. To you.” He looks away.

“This is unexpected,” says the King. “You’re acting like you’re not afraid, but you are.”

“Of course I’m afraid.” Jon's voice breaks just a little. “I’m damned terrified. Do you have a point, or are we already reduced to banal observation?”

The low rumble is a warning.

The play-acting will be over quicker than I thought. Jon steels himself for horror, torture, isolation.

“When you were afraid before, you were respectful,” says the King.

Jon is surprised at his own vitriol. “And it accomplished nothing. I gave you no reason to hurt me, and you still hurt me worse than… you hurt me. And then you had the… the gall to insinuate you didn’t want to, and you’d rather play nice, and it would all be tea parties from now on. I’m not that stupid. We both know you’re going to torture me, anyway. I see no point in pretending.”

“Ooh, solid logic there,” says Kayne, and holds up a chalk slate. He proceeds to draw “1” under the column labeled “J.”

Hastur snatches the slate and crushes it.

Kayne produces another.

Jon swallows.

Hastur sighs. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jon. I won’t torture you any more.”

“You’ll say that,” Jon challenges, “until I start to believe it, and then you’ll do it anyway.”

Kayne draws 2 under the J, chalk screeching.

Jon’s unsure what that means. Does it mean Jon’s right? Or that he’s sincere? Or that it was just an entertaining delivery?

The King seems to have decided to pretend Kayne is not there. “You’re correct that such a method would be effective… if I wanted to break you. However, I do not. I need you whole, Jonathan Sims. You know that.”

He can’t call the Fears if he’s broken. “I do. I also know you could still hurt me very badly without breaking me. You think I don’t know how this works? All you’ve done is strip away whatever polite varnish I had. You say you like me? That you know me better than I know myself? Then all of this—” he gestures at himself, at his unpleasantness, his venom, his spikes—”should hardly be a surprise.”

Kayne draws a 3 under the J column.

Hastur leans in, and for one moment, Jon thinks this is it. Hastur’s going to skin him right here, or start crushing his fingers one by one, or—

The King wraps one tendril around his back so he can’t pull away. The touch is gentle, terrifying because it could crush, but does not. “I do like you,” says Hastur, and this close, Jon realizes that is not a mask. “You’re amusing. Perhaps… unrefined. Yes, we would work on this attitude of yours—but I don’t find it offensive because I see what’s behind it. You aren’t being rebellious, Jon, no matter what you think you’re doing. You’re afraid. You forget that I gain nothing from your terror, Jonathan Sims—and I gain everything from your praise.”

“Praise!” Jon says, taken aback.

Kayne draws a 1 in the H column.

That frightens Jon very much.

Does it mean Hastur is sincere? Hastur wants Jon to praise him? What the actual hell?

Jon hasn’t even dealt with the fact yet that Hastur—whatever the hell he is—is not one of the Fears. What does this praise thing even mean?

This isn’t the time for philosophical dilemma, so instead of replying, he scoffs.

Jon is very good at scoffing.

No one he’s scoffed at has ever taken it in stride, and the King is not the first. He rears back again.

Kayne erases the 3 in the J column and replaces it with 5. “Bonus point for casting so much shade without a word.”

“Leave!” snarls the King, turning on him, and the room trembles so hard that Jon’s bench rattles.

Kayne sighs and drapes backward in his chair. “Oh, all right. Ooh! Ooh,you know what would make this better? A recap for my soon-to-be-partner-in-crime who just loves this series, got a lifelong subscription, you know, and I’m gonna go watch his face when we hit the plot twists. Ciao.” And he vanishes.

The slate drops to the table with a thunk, and his chair—which is some sort of clown-faced monstrosity—blows a raspberry at them both before disappearing with a pop.

Jon is shaking. That was a terrible sentence to leave on. “If he’s… if by throwing him out, you’ve aimed him at Martin like some sort of gun….”

“I haven’t, but now, I’m curious. You would do what, if I had?” The King sounds amused.

What does Jon have, after all? What leverage?

Jon scowls at the table. He’s got nothing. “I’ll be really unpleasant.”

That earns a deep, dark chuckle. “If you want to protect your lover, there’s only one way,” says Hastur.

“Calling the Entities won’t protect him. He’d be sucked back into the Lonely. That’s betraying him, not saving him.”

“An interesting perspective. Let’s unpack that, shall we?” says Hastur, and begins building a plate of fruit and cheese. “You fear suffering—but I have ended suffering.”

“That isn’t true.”

“I’ve come very close. You know I have.”

“I know you’ve created a world in which I would have been murdered and thanked you for it, and now you want me to make it worse.”

“On the contrary. I want you to make it better—to make it unnecessary to cull in the name of peace.”

The slate screeches, and a 2 appears under the H column.

Jon swallows. He doesn’t understand.

His stomach chooses that moment to rumble, and he is irrationally angry at it.

Hastur hands him the plate. “Eat, Jon,” he says. “Surely, your hunger is not the hill to die on.”

It’s a good point.

Jon sighs and takes the plate.

The slate changes to 3 in the H column.

“Oh, shut up,” Jon mutters at it. “You think the Dread Powers would let you do anything good? They preclude comfort! There would be no joy, no peace. Even the shallow pond you’ve forced everybody into would dry up.”

“I don’t intend to give your Fears free rein,” says Hastur. “They will power good things, not steer bad ones.”

“You can’t control them.”

“The reality I’ve built says I can,” says the King.

“They’ll adapt until you can’t. That’s what they do. Even if, for some horrible reason, I did want you to burn away the crumbs of free will left in this place, it still wouldn’t work. You’re not listening.”

“What makes you think I want to remove free will? I intend to restore it.”

The slate screeches and writes a 4 in the H column.

Jon stares at it.

To avoid answering, Jon focuses on eating (because of course it’s going to be taken away once Hastur decides to stop playing this game, and it’s better than gruel, or sinews, or whatever is coming).

Hastur waits.

Jon wishes he wouldn’t.

The fruit is amazing. Unfair. Distracting.

He’s finished half the plate before he can think to reply.

It takes effort to summon his most dubious researcher voice. “I find your assertion… unlikely.”

With unnerving grace, Hastur lifts a pitcher and pours him some of the golden liquid. “I understand why. You and I haven’t had the smoothest interaction, so far. You haven’t seen me at my best.”

“Is any of this poisoned?” Jon says with power, and didn’t mean to do it at all.

“No,” says Hastur obediently, then goes very, very still.

The J column changes to 6, and it is a terrible, squeaky sound in the thick and heavy silence.

Jon clutches the edge of the table, expecting to be blasted, burnt, beaten. Trying to push away the utter shock that it worked.

The low, warning rumble is looming doom, an avalanche beginning, a volcano threatening to spew. “Was that an accident?”

“Yes.” Not that it ever mattered, Jon thinks, horrified that he can suddenly compel again, horrified at what it could mean, horrified at the memories of avatars who responded to his questions with violence, rage, pain.

Something in the rumble changes. It feels… pleased. “Yet you kept asking, didn’t you? Even when they hurt you, you kept asking.”

“I had to,” says Jon in a tiny voice, knowing it won’t matter.

“But it does matter. You’re making my case for me. You just don’t know it yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is food and drink,” says Hastur instead of answering, “the finest I only gave to my high priests. None of this is poisoned, altered, or laced with any substance that might affect your body or mind. I’ve already tried to sway you that way, Jon. I don’t enjoy repeating myself.”

The universe. Of course. What else had that been but a perfect drug for Jon?

Unnervingly perfect, now that Jon takes a moment to think about it. He’d have happily stood there, seeing it all, until his body gave out.

“I told you—I know you,” says the King, placing the glass of golden liquid in front of him.

The H column changes to 5.

Jon’s not at all sure what that means, and is disturbed. “You realize that places every single one of our interactions squarely in suspicious,” he snaps.

“For now,” says the King. “I don’t want to destroy free will. Do you think I don’t know I’ve halted progress? That wasn’t my plan. It’s a temporary state of things, only necessary because I lack the power to do what I truly want.”

“Which, I’m sure, doesn’t at all include murdering people who ask too many questions,” Jon quips.

And he’s too curious, absolutely reckless about it, because he tries the golden drink.

Hastur gives him a moment to process.

Jon needs it.

This is divine. Light, cold, refreshing. Very slightly alcoholic, but neither dry nor fruity. Should be next to “rejuvenate” in the dictionary, Jon thinks, staring at it.

Hastur sounds pleased. “I created it for them—my chosen faithful.”

“You didn’t… squeeze this out of any part of yourself, did you?” says Jon with such grave suspicion that Hastur finds it funny.

Apparently, so does Kayne. The J column changes to 7.

“No, child. It’s only wine. Anything that squeezed out of me would kill you. Mortal flesh—even changed as yours is—can only take so much.”

Changed. Yeah, that’s another fun little horror going on the back burner for now.

Jon grimaces and changes topics. “You say you don’t want the very thing you’re proud of creating. They’re all bound, somehow. Half of themselves is gone.”

“Not gone. Suppressed. Do you want to know why?”

Yes, Jon thinks, and clenches his jaw out of pure stubbornness. “No.”

He can’t see expression on the mask that is Hastur’s face, but Jon feels like he just made the thing smile and doesn’t not know why. “You don’t lie well, Jon.”

Jon sighs. “I know.”

And then Hastur answers. “I don’t want to suppress them because humans without free will can’t provide true worship.”

Jon doesn’t understand.

The H column changes to 6.

Hastur isn’t lying.

“What are you playing at?” Jon asks the slate.

It draws a smiley face.

Jon sighs, shakes his head. “That makes no sense,” he says, and gestures at the empty temple, the empty rooms, this place designed for many people, devoid of human life other than himself. “Why would this place be deserted, in that case? You could pack it full of acolytes. The whole world already worships you, even the ones you’re actively murdering. Or did you forget that evening at the Dandridge Grove?”

“There was a time the cleverest students came to me instead of that fate, Jon. They came here, to serve and learn, to worship. It was a reward.”

Learn what? Is there a library? More classes? Learn how? “I don’t believe you. But. Assuming I did, how did that work, and why did it stop?”

“Do you know what true worship is, Jon?”

Jon’s only experience of corporate religion was being dragged to the Church of England by his grandmother, and he’d apparently asked all the wrong questions in catechism classes until they’d told him to stop, just stop. So he did, and never returned.

“No,” he says, simplifying.

“Let me show you.” Hastur waved his tentacles to Jon’s left, toward the throne.

Suddenly, Jon sees himself. Himself, on the floor, moments after the King had tried to take over his mind.

The King had failed.

(And something bad had happened, but Jon can’t recall what.)

He sees those wild, green flares all over himself again, and they are so beautiful, and so random, and it is hard to watch himself curled up and whimpering beneath them, in obvious distress.

And then the Beholding began.

Now, Jon is seeing something else. Something he can’t fully comprehend. He’s an ant, watching quantum mechanics.

It’s sight, his instinct tells him, but that makes no sense. It’s not a beam of light or questing hands or strings attached to all his soul, but it is those, and more.

Sight the way the Ceaseless Watcher’s gaze destroyed the Not-Sasha, he thinks, but this sight hadn’t destroyed him. Instead, he’d bloomed.

Uncurled, stretched out flat on his back and spread-eagled, every single cell willing and vulnerable. The flares were no longer random. They focused, pulsing with his heart, washing in and through that sight like some weird and wonderful lovemaking.

It’s so deeply intimate that Jon’s face burns.

The Jon on the floor turned his face toward the sight, wearing ecstasy—a look he has never seen on himself, and it’s private, a revelation that belongs to Martin alone, and he misses Martin very much.

The Jon on the floor is also bleeding very badly.

“That is worship,” says Hastur, and Jon jumps because he forgot the King was there.

“Why was I bleeding?”

“Your Ceaseless Watcher is imperfectly bound with you, thanks to the poor manner in which you were deified. In the human world, it can either focus fully on your mind, or your body. When it needs to concentrate on your mental state, your wound reopens. That’s the reason I brought you here, Jon. This is much closer to it. In the Dreamlands, it can manage both.”

So if Jon found a way to cut tether for good, he really would die.

So they hadn’t actually healed that wound, which was apparently more esoteric than either of them had guessed.

The image fades. His face still burns. “I wasn’t doing any of that on purpose.”

“I know you weren’t. Worship is a response. It’s supposed to be like breathing, Jon.”

Chalk screeches, and Jon doesn’t have to look at the slate to know the H column is up to 7.

“That’s what you want,” Jon says.

“Yes.”

“You were getting it. I was at the Grove. I saw—”

Hastur waves his tentacles almost angrily, and now Jon sees that night at the Grove—matriculation.

At everyone screaming and singing and writhing around, a thing that looked like ecstasy.

But it wasn’t.

Jon’s eyes widen. Those people didn’t have the same flares he does, no; but what small spurts of light did fizz around them were chaotic, flicking randomly in all directions.

None of them point toward Hastur.

Not one, even though whatever will or wicked power Hastur is forcing onto them (which hurts to look at, not entirely unlike the Dark) is quite deeply embedded in them all.

“No one’s interacting with it,” murmurs Jon. “But they mean it. They’re all… how can that not be worship?”

“It’s not a response. I’m making them do it, Jon. It isn’t the same.”

So the puppeting was even worse than he’d thought.

“Come,” says Hastur. “I will show you something else.”

“What now?” Is it done? The peaceful break is over?

The King chuckles. One of his tentacles appears from under the damn table to touch Jon’s arm.

Jon is off the bench and away from the whole setup so fast he almost doesn’t remember moving, and he can’t decide if he’s angrier he didn’t get to finish his plate, or that the King would be so… so… “Are you a child?” Jon demands. “That wasn’t funny!”

“It was,” says the King, absolutely magnanimous. “And I find your prickliness amusing. Fortunately for you.”

The slate screeches an 8 in the H column.

Jon doesn’t want to play anymore. “Show me what, then? Let’s get this over with,” he snaps.

“This way.”

Again, the King adjusts his speed to Jon’s, not rushing him, not going so fast that he has to hurry. It’s beginning to bother Jon.

The craftiness of it.

(Or thoughtfulness?)

Right, says Jon, reminding himself of the hell he went through before waking up in that damned bedroom prison. None of that.

“I am not so easily categorized for you,” says the King, still responding to his thoughts. “Nor should I be. In time, you’ll come to see that applying human morality to me is a foolish effort.”

“Wouldn’t that make you the worst possible deity to place in charge of humanity, then?” Jon quips, and wonders if the slate recorded that.

“Not quite.” The King stops outside a door. Behind them is another open wall, facing the opposite direction of the throne room—but it, too, shows the moons, the choppy sea, the hints of hidden beasts. “I am qualified to judge humanity because I am not part of it. I can see the waste, the greed, the cruelty far better than they, who tend to excuse all their bad decisions. Don’t you agree?”

Jon knows his emotions and judgment are suspect right now.

He still can’t help feeling… moved by these words.

“I’m not going to like you,” Jon suddenly says, because it’s bothering him, because this apparent reasonableness is like slow-acting poison, because he knows he’s fragile, knows he’s been left vulnerable to kindness. “I’m not going to agree with you, and I’m not going to suddenly see you as good. You’ve guaranteed that with your own damn hands.”

“Those are strong words from one who betrayed his most important person so deeply.”

Jon stops breathing.

“Who, in fact, depends on the very forgiveness you deny me… on your lover’s choice to see you as worthy, even though what you did was truly unforgivable.”

There is a small, final crack from back in the throne room, and Jon knows the slate just broke.

Of course it did.

It turns out the King understands love very well, and also, how to weaponize it.

There’s no comeback for that. That’s what Jon did, after all.

The physical pain in his chest is so bad, so bad; he’s almost amazed it doesn’t kill him outright.

He’s silent, looking at the floor.

The King doesn’t let it go on too long. “I don’t relish your pain, Jon,” he says, one of those tendrils sliding over Jon’s head. He ignores Jon’s flinch. “This way.” And he opens the door.

Jon never saw the animated Beauty and the Beast, but if he had, he’d think of this.

It’s like the Grove in London, but on steroids. Huge. Circular balconies and books rising up and up and out of sight, shelves going on forever.

Jon stares. His mouth hangs open.

Hastur’s not done. “I don’t want to set false expectations for you. These aren’t scholarly works. This isn’t some repository of dry knowledge. Each of these books is—”

“The life of someone who served you,” Jon interrupts, and his voice is hoarse, as if he’s being strangled. “Thoughts and fears and dreams and everything, preserved.”

The King in Yellow sounds like he’s smiling. “That’s right—because to serve me is, in some ways, to live forever. And I’m giving them to you.”

Statements, is what Jon hears, and this is the thing he wanted to avoid, this is the thing he’s been terrified of since they landed here and thought he was free.

He’s breathing fast and shallow, and it’s too late, because the scent of this place has caught him through the skull with absolute gut-breaking throat-parching eye-bleeding need.

He can’t speak.

He can’t quite remember what they were just talking about.

He feels these stories.

So much fear in this room.

“I’d suggest beginning at the top,” says Hastur. “Those are the oldest ones.”

“Wh….” Jon struggles to find himself, to remember himself, as the Eye rising-pushing-drowning-demanding surges, because this is new, new, entirely new things it doesn’t even know through other people’s minds. “Why… would you… show me this?”

“You know why.”

“A… a bribe.”

“A good-will offering. I have some distance to go to make up for what I’ve done to you, Jon. I intend to see it through. You might say I’m playing… the long game.”

Jon looks at him sharply, because even like this, he knows he’s being mocked.

The King looks as serene as a being with a mask-face and inhuman body can look. “Look for yourself. See what life truly was for those who worship me. See if it’s as bad as you feared.”

This place is calling him.

“No. No, don’t make me do this.” Feeling sick, trapped, helpless, Jon backs toward the door. “Please. I got free of this. Please—”

The King presses a book into his hands, and reflexively, Jon takes it.

The room vanishes.

He sees a woman named Adra who lived centuries before, feels her as if she were giving a statement right in front of him, and he could no more resist reaching for her than he could fly like a bird.

His power and the Eye’s curl around and under and over and through and beneath and above and inside her story, and they pull.

Then he knows nothing else at all.

Jon comes to very slowly.

Feels like he’s drifting through space—directionless, without gravity to alter him. There is silence; his very thoughts are so distant that he may never find them again.

Inside, he is still. He knows peace.

Gradually, far away, there are sounds.

A ragged breathing, the King in Yellow, gasping for air.

Jon feels…

Good.

Very good.

Very very good.

Painless. Warm. Thrumming, as though his whole being just finished an orgasm.

His thoughts are louder than they were a moment ago.

“Hastur,” says Kayne, the Chaos, the Undoing, and his strident voice is oddly strained. “I am going to say this once: kill him.”

“No,” says Hastur, sounding utterly wretched.

Noise in the back of his head, now, softly building—the susurrus of life, the universe, his never-ending questions.

“No,” says Hastur again. “This is what I planned. It’s working.”

“So you want to end the universe on the off-chance you can get your stupid guy back.”

“I’m not ending anything. And he’s not stupid.”

“No, no, you’re right, you’re the stupid one. Have you lost your mind? End this.”

“If you’re so afraid, why don’t you end it?” says Hastur with such sweetness that Jon’s teeth hurt.

He’s almost back in his body. It’s all still dark, and floaty, and wondrous, but he can feel the cold, hard marble beneath him now, and hear the echoes of words.

“You can’t,” says Hastur, viciously. “Our bet was worded carefully, fool. Did you truly think you could go up against me and win?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s why I did it.”

“You can’t. I’m halfway to my goal now. It’s almost over.”

Jon is being lifted. The king’s limbs are warm and supple—much better than the floor.

“Soon, I will have my heart back—and I will have you, as well. You won’t enjoy it, Kayne. You will not like what I do to you.”

“All because I didn’t play Pet Rescue Saga when asked? You’ll end the universe over that?”

“You could have saved him. You didn’t. I promised you’d pay, Kayne. That time is coming soon.”

“Whatever,” says Kayne, quiet and brief, which is eerily out of character for him, and then he’s gone.

Jon breathes more easily. Kayne gone makes the air better.

“There, there,” says the King, cradling him, stroking his hair. “Come back to me. Come on.”

Jon’s fingers tingle. It’s unpleasant, pins and needles, shocking in the wake of euphoria. “Wh… why does it hurt?”

“Because you stretched your powers, Jon. I’ll be honest—you did quite a bit more than I expected at this stage. You truly are a marvel.”

Jon doesn’t feel like a marvel. The painful tingling has traveled up his arms now, begun in his toes and crept up his legs, and he recognizes it—the paresthesia resulting from a foot falling asleep, only everywhere. He makes an unhappy sound.

“Ride it out. That’s it. It will pass.”

“What happened?” Jon doesn’t want to open his eyes. He doesn’t want to think. Doesn’t want to remember. Doesn’t want to move.

It’s the closest to sated he’s felt in… a long while. The tingling doesn’t matter. Even with it, he feels so good. Luxurious. Full. Languorous.

Thinks of lying in bed with Martin, the first time they had sex. It’s like that. Just like that. So good—

Like the Panopticon, and becoming the Pupil of the Eye.

That thought feels less good, and he whimpers.

“There, there, Jon. You’re all right.”

Jon finds himself being placed gently in a bath of hot, scented water.

He’s naked, with no memory of that happening.

The realization shocks him. He thrashes, splashing.

The King holds him still.

Vision comes back now, and the King is right over him, all he can see, which doesn’t help the panic.

“Shh. Nothing bad is happening. You need to be cleaned.”

It’s implacable, this strength—not tight enough to hurt him, not hard enough to cause him pain, but he cannot get away. “Let go! Wh… wh… let go!” He’ll be drowned, or boiled, or frozen—

“I am not going to hurt you—especially after that,” says Hastur. “Shhh.”

Jon does not know why he obeys, but with a small sound, he goes still.

The King immediately relaxes his grip. “Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? You’re all right.”

“What happened?” Jon says. “You gave me the book, and I….”

“You gave a statement. We’ll leave it at that,” says Hastur. “I am going to pour water over your head now, Jon. You’ve sweated quite a lot.”

And Jon becomes aware of his own skin, of the tackiness of his scalp, of the fact that his beard feels unpleasantly moist. “Statements don’t make me do that,” he says.

“They do here. Your power is greatly increased.” Hastur makes a happy sound—it’s a rumble, not a purr, not a growl, a low and almost mechanical burr that continues as he speaks. “You gave me a gift, Jon, and I am very grateful.”

“Gift?”

As promised, water pours over his head. It’s scented. Jon keeps his head down.

It’s warm. It’s pleasant.

It’s very difficult to find this unpleasant.

“Yes. For a time, you gave one of my long-dead faithful back to me.”

Jon can’t remember this at all. He goes completely still.

“Drink.”

It’s a glass of that golden liquid, cold and condensating. The moment it touches his lips, he realizes he’s desperately thirsty, and drinks it all.

“Good. Very good, Jon,” rumbles the King.

Jon breathes. A little too fast, but he feels like maybe he didn’t for a while, and has to catch up.

Hastur washes his hair, massaging his scalp.

Kayne wasn’t off. It is vaguely like being a pet.

Jon tries to take umbrage with this. To find insult, to cling to anger.

He can’t find his anger. His spiniest, thickest-gauge armor is misplaced.

“I don’t remember what happened,” he says without meaning to. “It’s blank. Just an empty spot, like someone cut it out with scissors.”

“You will in time. Hold your breath.”

More water, pouring overhead in a stream.

It all smells amazing, lightly scented, just hot enough to chase away the pins and needles, to return some of that bliss.

“Can you stand yet?” says Hastur.

“I don’t know,” says Jon, honest.

Hastur lifts him and wraps in him a towel. It’s huge, thick—very comforting.

Jon is aware he’s being manipulated. That this is the other side of the torture-coin, designed to make him trust, to encourage him to drop his guard, to till his soil for the seeds of torment.

He can’t bring himself to wrath. It’s all too much. The sensations, the fullness, the wholeness. “Why can’t I remember?”

“Perhaps you channeled too much of your Ceaseless Watcher,” says Hastur. “You have the memory; I see it inside you. I suspect it may simply take your human mind a little while to process it.” His voice turns pitying. “You poor thing. You’re divine and finite, a light-bearing vessel, deeply cracked. At odds with yourself. No wonder you couldn’t be happy. You need me, Jon.”

That’s a bit too far, Jon thinks. “I was happy. With Martin.”

“You will be with him again.”

Jon’s throat tightens. “That’s a cruel thing to say.”

“Is it? Once I win my bet, I will reunite you with your lover. He’s your heart, Jon. You think I don’t see that?”

Jon wants to cry.

He hates it. Hates it. Doesn’t want to be vulnerable here, doesn’t want to be moved by these simple and intimate words.

Doesn’t want to believe a thing he desperately wishes were true.

“Next you’re going to say you’re a big romantic,” Jon mutters.

“I have known love,” says Hastur.

Jon stares over the top of his towel. He wants to ask.

He wants to compel.

He wants to know how Hastur knows love.

His feet are cold, and he focuses on that instead.

“Can you walk?”

Jon could, probably. It wouldn’t be comfortable. His feet would hurt by the time they arrived wherever.

Or he could let the horrible monster carry him.

He’s so tired.

Would it really be giving in? Is it really a concession? Or would he be taking advantage of Hastur’s false kindness?

Hastur decides for him and picks him up.

It is the strangest good feeling. “I don’t want to feel good.”

“I know, Jon. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you anymore.”

Jon closes his eyes. Fuck it, he thinks, because it doesn’t matter, this doesn’t matter, it’s all going to the same place, anyway, no matter what he does, because he won’t call the Entities, so he might as well take some comfort while he can.

“A wise choice, if misguided,” rumbles the King.

They’re back in Jon’s room. He’s being put to bed like a child, and there is a towel on the pillow to deal with his wet hair.

“Hey,” he says, which isn’t much of a protest.

“Shhh.”

Jon is being tucked in.

This is beyond surreal.

It feels so good.

It’s absolutely outside anything that makes a lick of sense, or falls into reasonable description.

He’d laugh if he had more energy, but… he doesn’t.

“Sleep, Jon,” says the King, sounding warm and pleased and patient.

Maybe Hastur is right. Maybe he needs to sleep. Maybe—

He must be asleep, because the Eye has him, guiding him through a new dream, and he watches a woman named Adra live, serve, and finally die, and the intensity of her experience is such that while he dreams her, he is her.

The Eye eats it all, and is sated.

(part nine)

NOTES

Torture's done from here on out, FYI. We're on to gaslighting now, which - in my honest opinion - is worse.

#cw: torture

1 note · View note

gaysimpsstuff · 3 years

Text

Accidental Turn-Ons; Hawks x Dom! Reader

Genre: angst to fluff to smut

Type: Oneshot

Summary: Hawks returns home from a mission, clearly exhausted, and you take the time to give him a little massage! However, it doesn’t quite have the effects you expected.

Word Count: 3.5K

Warnings: minor dub-con (Y/n doesn't know that what they're doing is sexual for Hawks), stress, minor injuries, Keigo's adorable bird tendencies, sexual innuendo, dom y/n, wing play, feather play, nicknames, edging, dacryphilia, handjobs, aftercare

Other: Yo this might actually be my best smut yet

Inspiration: This was actually inspired by my own piece of work, MHA Characters + Their Biggest Kinks where I spoke about Hawks’ wing and back kink and how it relates to his avian traits.

Taglist: @smolchildfangirl @mandalorian-baby-bird @waffleareniceandfluffy @catcherisvibin @thesubtlewhore @popcatx0

You paced the living room, glancing between the TV and the door. The news station had cut away from the fight five minutes ago, which meant your boyfriend was either in the hospital getting treated for any injuries he might have sustained, dealing with fans, dealing with paperwork, or on his way home.

Your phone buzzed and you raced to grab it off the couch, fearing an incoming call from the hospital, or a news alert about the well-being of the man you loved.

You bit the inside of your cheek as you realized it was just an email from work, not even marked important. You tossed your phone back onto the couch with a groan.

Wasted build-up. Your mind grumbled

Your eyes flicked back to the TV, watching as the reporter rambled on about yet another stupid thing America had going on as you waited for something, anything to happen. Right when you were getting ready to pick your phone back up from the couch cushions when you heard a light tap tap tappity tap against the thick glass of the sliding glass door that led to your balcony.

You dashed across the living room, accidentally knocking a chair over as you raced to reach the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. You'd recognize his special knock any day, even if he changed it all the time whenever he forgot it. You always had patience with him, you knew he had too many things on his mind with Hero Work to always remember a random knock.

You grabbed the handle, yanking the door open with a wide grin, finally laying eyes on your bird boy. He had a hand stuffed in his pocket, the other rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Hey, Y/n. So sorry I'm late, been flying all day so naturally I'm a little sore. No excuse for missing movie night but-"

"I'm just so glad you're here!" You exclaimed, taking his cheeks in your hands and rubbing at his cheekbones. "I'm so sorry you're hurting, come inside I'll get a heating pack, or a cooling pack, maybe some lotion and I could give you a massage." You babbled, tugging him inside.

"A massage and some cuddles sound great," he sighed, eyes tired. You never liked the fact that Keigo was a hero. He worked too hard, too much, and for so long. He was still young, he should be appreciating life and spending time on himself and with his lover and not with the commission. "Oh I uh, I found this for you."

He took one of your hands off his face, taking his other hand out of his pocket and pressing something cold and smooth into your palm. You opened your fingers, a soft smile growing on your face at the sight of a smooth pretty white rock with grey and black speckles.

"Oh, Kei, this is beautiful. I love it~" you pressed a kiss to Keigo's cheek, loving the way he trilled. He was always so excited to pick up random items he found pretty or interesting, and he'd always give them right to you. It was truly adorable, you loved his gifts. His wings fluttered in happiness for a moment before he winced slightly in pain, happiness vanished in a reminder of his stress from the day.

"Ouch, okay, sitting down time," he muttered, stumbling past you to flop down on the couch. You grabbed the lotion from the kitchen counter (you kept it there for whenever he came home with sore muscles). You set the stone down on the coffee table, tapping it twice in a small show of affection before sitting next to Keigo.

"Shirt off Birdie," you said, squirting some lotion into your palm before rubbing them together.

"Hey, at least buy me a drink first," he chuckled, tugging his jacket off and peeling off his tight hero shirt. You sighed, deciding not to comment on his tacky flirting, knowing you'd been dating for almost a year now.

He turned his back to you, crossing his legs. He folded his wings, lowering them to give you access to his shoulders and shoulder blades. You pressed your fingers against one of his shoulders, finding a large knot almost immediately. You heard him hiss, and your frown increased.

"I know it hurts but it will hurt a lot less when I'm finished," you told him, pressing a gentle kiss to the nape of his neck. The hair there rose against your skin, a shiver shooting down his spine. You blinked, confused at his reaction. Maybe it was uncomfortable for him. You resolved not to kiss there again.

You continued to rub against his tightened muscles, listening to his soft hisses and groans. You pulled away after about six minutes, picking up the lotion bottle and squirted some more into your palms.

"Hey, when you finish with mm~ when you finish with that shoulder could you do around my wing joints? Down my spine, y'know?"

"Are there muscles there?" you asked, most people didn't have muscles down their spines, usually it was just the ridges of said bones.

"Yeah, I do," he explained quickly. You nodded pressing into his knot, slowly working down when it eased up. You moved your fingers downwards, feeling his shoulder blades and spine before reaching his wings joints. He shuddered, similar to when you kissed his neck, but a little larger. You hummed, pressing your fingers down and finding another knot, right where his skin turned to bright red feathers.

"Oh, yeah, yeah right there that's perfect." You glanced back up at him, confused, he didn't usually speak when you massaged him, he'd also never asked for a massage so close to his wings, he was usually very cautious about having his wings touched. Maybe he'd just gotten tired of dealing with wing pains by himself, it was probably a lot different from other knots.

"I'm so sorry you have to deal with this," you cooed. "You really deserve a break, it's not healthy to work this hard all the time."

"I know, Little Feather, but it's nng- n-not my fault. The citizens need me." he panted. You sighed, moving your other hand to work out both wings' knots at the same time.

Keigo's head flopped forward, and his hand flew up to slap over his mouth, holding back a soft whine. You lifted an eyebrow in suspicion, there were only a few times when you heard him make noises like that.

Slowly, you pressed your fingers down closer to the underside, right over a few of his downy feathers.

"Oh fuck~" he hissed.

"Okay, that's it." you lifted your hands away from them, holding them in the air. "What the hell's going on with you?" His head whipped around so fast you were surprised it was still attached to his neck. His golden eyes widened, pupils blowing out, nearly completely covering the honey iris.

"W-what?" he exclaimed, feathers puffing up.

"I'm sorry if I seem mad, I'm not, I'm just- very confused. You're literally moaning. I am giving you a massage and you're moaning. Explain."

His cheeks dusted over in pink, and his eyes fell down to his lap.

"Okay uh- fuck I- this was not how I planned on telling you, erm- I promise I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable-"

"Keigo, it's alright, I'm not uncomfortable, just confused. Take a breath darling,"

"Okay, okay, okay." he took a deep breath. "My wings and back are... sensitive, like- in a sexual way. It's why I never let you touch them, I didn't want you to get uncomfortable with that."

"Oh Keigo, you should have just told me, it's perfectly alright, you know I love you, and I love your bird traits. I'm not uncomfortable with this." you smiled sweetly, pressing a hand to his cheek.

"You're- you're not?" he glanced back up at you, golden eyes filled with hope.

"Not in the slightest. To be honest, I don't see why anyone would be uncomfortable with it. It's just another erogenous zone, like someone's neck, ears, or nipples would be. And lots of people keep those bits on display."

"Thanks," he murmured, rubbing his nose against yours. "That does make me feel better, but uh- there's something else.." he trailed off, nervous.

"Your obvious boner? I was gonna leave you to take care of that yourself, but I'll gladly do it for you if you'd like."

"Oh uh-" his cheeks brightened as if attempting to match the tone of his wings. "I would very much like that," he admitted, offering you a slightly nervous smile.

"Anytime, Birdie~" you stood up, hands landing on either side of his waist as you pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. "But I would very much like to experiment with those wings of yours, see what we can do with them. Just how far can we go?" You smirked at him, tongue darting out to moisturize your lips. Keigo let out a soft breath, shifting against the couch to make room for the tent in his pants.

"I- I have thought about using them before- my feathers can move fast, so they can act as a vibrator if I focus, but I could never use it on myself. I know I'd get distracted, then the feather would stop moving, then I'd have to start all over again. I'd basically just be edging myself all night. I know I'd just give up and jerk off."

"I can work with that~" you pressed your lips against his, surprising him. He whined into the kiss, hands flying up to fist your shirt.

Unfair. He thought, he already had his shirt off, and he knew he'd be naked in just a few minutes, but you hadn't taken anything off yet. Knowing you, you would stay clothed just to tease him. The most you would do was lift your shirt a little to show him your stomach before quickly covering it again. That was what you usually did when you dommed. At least for the foreplay.

You pressed the tip of your tongue against his lips, pushing past his defensive barrier of shiny white teeth, perfect for the press, and you licked along the top of his mouth. His whole body shuddered against yours, his hips jerking upwards.

You grabbed his thigh with one hand, squeezing. A warning, he knew, against bucking up again, against disobeying. He tasted your saliva, feeling it pool onto his tongue. His eyes finally drooped closed, enjoying the taste of leftover's from last night's dinner on your tongue.

He whined against the back of your mouth, feeling you move your other hand up towards his back. He already knew what you were going to do. Without pulling away from the kiss, you plucked a feather about the size of his hand from his wings, running a finger down the stem, brushing it against the little red bristles. Soft against your finger, yet forcing Keigo's restrained cock to grow even harder than he ever thought possible.

You slowly pulled back from the kiss, taking his lower lip hostage between your teeth, tugging it as far as it could go before finally releasing it. You felt Keigo's hot breaths fanning out across your face, and your grin only grew. You loved breaking him apart, the strong, well-put-together Hawks was an act only for the cameras, only you could ever know the real him, the horny, whiny, needy baby he truly was.

"Look at you, falling apart already? I've barely done shit to you."

"Fuck- that's just 'cause it's you~" he purred

"Flattery won't get you anywhere, doll." Your shit-eating smirk only grew, and Keigo could feel himself melting into the couch cushions. "C'mon, take 'em off, you're a big boy, I'm sure you can do it yourself."

He nodded, hands flying away from your shirt and grappling with his belt buckle faster than you could say 'Hawks.' He tossed his belt behind the couch, not caring if it hit anything, and quickly shimmied out of his pants and underwear, letting them pool around his ankles. His cock slapped against his stomach, six inches and throbbing.

Looks like his prediction was correct. He was naked. You were not. You didn't look like you were planning on undressing anytime soon, which left Keigo feeling slightly disappointed. However, any negative emotions vanished the second you ran his bright red feather down his nose, over his lips, then under his chin. He knew immediately you were trying to lift his face with the feather, despite the single feather not being strong enough by itself, not unless it was under his control. But he was not in control, you were, and fuck it if that wasn't the best part.

"Good boy~" you praised him, sliding a hand up his bare thigh, brushing it carelessly close to his dick. He bit his lip, eyes flicking between your hand and your eyes.

"Please, please touch me," he whispered, slightly embarrassed by the situation. It had been a long while since you'd last had sex, and an even longer while since you had been the dom. He'd all but forgotten how to properly beg. You could tell.

"Come on, doll, I know you can ask me nicely, or at least better than that." He groaned, hands gripping your hips and attempting to tug you into his lap, a plan formulating in his head that ended in an amazing thighjob. But his plans never worked, not at least with you involved. No, you were too stubborn, one of the many things he loved about you. But not really in this precise situation.

"Nah ah ah~ hands off the merchandise." Your hand squeezed his thigh again, twice this time. That was all he needed to let go. He found purchase in a nearby pillow, moving it behind him and tugging on the little dangly bits on the corners. He forgot what they were called but he was ninety-five percent sure it started with a 'D' or something.

"Fuck, please, I need it, you know I need it, I-I've been nothing but good all day, please touch me, please~" He whined, eyebrows furrowing. That plus his reddened cheeks made just the cutest face. You couldn't wait to make his eyes go crooked and for him to drool.

"That's it, good boy~" You ran the tip of the feather up his cock, circling the tip. He shivered in response, biting back a loud moan. "Come on, don't make me mad, vibrate yourself with your feather~" you cooed, teasing tone making his stomach churn in the best way possible.

He bit his lip, looking down at the feather slowly circling the tip of his dick. It had already nudged his foreskin downwards, leaving the red skin fully exposed. He took a deep breath, trying to block out your presence, and how hard he was, just focusing on the single red feather, twirling around in loops.

He felt it twitch against his skin, before finally starting to shake, then at last it was vibrating. He twitched it away from his dick, slightly nervous about how it might feel. You sighed, pressing it directly onto the little hole at the tip.

"Ghhh- oh fuckkkkk~" he moaned, pressing his head against the couch cushions. It felt better than he ever possibly could have imagined. Feeling the feather on his dick, his dick against his feather, it was double the pleasure. He whined loudly when the vibrations suddenly stopped. "Nooooo I want it, bring it back, please," he begged, looking up at you with wide eyes.

"Doll I didn't even do anything. You lost focus. You gotta try a little harder." you said, tapping the feather against him again. Pre-cum stuck to it, making red glisten with a little bit of white. He cursed at the sight (and feeling) of his own pre on his feather.

Soon enough, it started to buzz again. And you put it back on him. This time, you traced it up and down his base, running it over the tip again. One of his hands flew up to his mouth, knuckles pressing against his lips. His hips bucked up against the vibrating feather.

"Ooooohhhhhh fuckfuckfuckfuck so goooood~" he moaned loudly. Again, the buzzing stopped without warning. "Nooo fuck no! I need it please fuck!" He looked like he was on the verge of tears- no way it was really that good. You'd have to ask him to use his feathers on you sometime.

"I know baby, I know," you ran your fingers through his hair, tugging lightly. His breath hitched, golden eyes filling with tears of pleasure. "But you gotta focus to get it done, okay?" he nodded, wiping his tears, but he only managed to spread the warm, salty liquid over his face, making him appear even more debauched.

How cute

You wrapped your hand around his dick when it started to vibrate again, the feather curled up between your palm and his dick. Slowly, you began to jerk him off, feeling the feather vibrate faster than you'd felt any toy vibrate, and his dick throbbing and pulsing against you left you feeling like you just might cum in your pants.

"FUCK!" he shouted, back arching off the couch. One of his legs flew upwards, toes curling around the air. He was shaking at this point, looking like he was just on the verge of cumming. "Oh, Godddd fuckkkmeeeee~" he wailed, tears overflowing and falling down his flushed cheeks.

"No god's gonna fuck you, darling, only I will because you belong to me. Isn't that right?" You pulled on his hair and his moans grew louder, the vibrations intensifying, which you thought was impossible at the rate it had been buzzing against your skin and his.

"Youuuuu fuck- I- I belong to youuuu~" he moaned, hiccuping a little.

"Fuck, you're so fucking cute like this, so adorable when you fall apart beneath me, gonna break soon?" He sniffed loudly, nodding. His moan broke out into a disappointed wail when the vibrations stopped again. He tried to get it to move but it just wasn't going to. You opened your palm, revealing the feather, the stem bent awkwardly. Hawks sighed, sadness filling his eyes.

"I was just 'bout to cum too..." he whimpered.

"Oh, you'll still cum. We don't need anything else between us anymore~" you tossed the feather aside before spitting into your palm, beginning to jerk him off again. It certainly didn't feel nearly as good as it did with the feather, but at this point, he was so close he just couldn't give two fucks about how good it felt, just that it would get him where he needs.

"Oh yes yes yes fuck yes more more- gonna cum gonna cum ooooh fuck baby you're gonna make me cum!" He cried out, bucking up into your hand, sobbing as pre ran down the sides of his dick and onto your fingers.

You pulled him to you by his hair, loving the loud moan he let out from the pain. You pressed your lips right up against his ear.

"Then fucking cum, my baby boy~" you purred seductively. Moments later, his whole body spasmed, legs shaking violently and wings flaring outwards. He wailed, screaming as he finally came into your hand, white ribbons landing on his legs, stomach, and even a little on the couch. Subconsciously, he knew he'd have to clean that up later, but he was not about to worry about that right now.

"Godamn! If that wasn't the hottest thing I've ever seen!" you exclaimed, truly in awe at just how good his orgasm looked. He had gone limp, flopped back against the couch, and panting. You pulled your hand away from his dick, licking away the bits of cum from your skin before sitting down next to him, tugging his body closer to you.

"Unf, that was the best damn orgasm of my life," he murmured, voice a little hoarse.

"Looked like it, you alright darling? Can I get you anything? Water, blankets, bath?" You worried a little, hoping you didn't completely brain-fuck him.

"Jus' some cuddles." his head flopped down on your shoulder, eyes fluttering shut as he yawned.

"Hey birdie, don't fall asleep on me," you chuckled. "We still gotta get you all cleaned up and put in bed."

"Not... a problem..." he whispered, breath tickling your skin as he nodded off.

"Heh, that's a problem," you smiled affectionately. He deserved his rest. You resolved to stay still for a little while, then clean him up as gently as you could before carrying him to bed. He wasn't that heavy, after all. "I love you, my darling Keigo~" you whispered, resting your head on top of his and closing your eyes.

Maybe the mess could be cleaned tomorrow, you were also very tired.

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sukirichi · 3 years

Text

“your hair is really soft” – jjk ver!

ft. itadori yuuji, gojo satoru, fushiguro megumi, nanami kento, ryoumen sukuna, & inumaki toge

ITADORI YUUJI – you’re in the room with Yuuji, who is busy watching the movies gojo-sensei had given him. He holds the cursed corpse in his other side, careful not to let him hit you, while your head lies on his shoulder, eyes drooping close from your long day. Yuuji turns the volume down and brings you closer to him until you’re practically sitting on his lap, his lips making brief contact at the crown of your head while he mumbles sweet nothings, too engrossed in the movie.

You smile at his sweet gesture, gently fisting the front of his jacket while you return the affection, kissing the edges of his jaw softly to not distract him too much. Yuuji’s lips tilt at the soft press of your lips on his warm skin. Soon, your hands rake up to his hair where your nails rake his scalp. Immediately, Yuuji deflates like a balloon as he purrs at the movement, making you chuckle in your sleepy daze.

“Your hair is really soft,” you note, and his eyes practically sparkle. Yuuji was a huge fan of hair gels and hair products, that his desk was filled with different brands all so he could keep his hair perfectly styled – in that somewhat natural, messy appeal. You love it on him and he melts at the fact you’ve noticed his efforts into taking care of himself. Most of all, the feeling of the smooth tendrils running past your fingertips like caressing a field of flowers lulls both you and him to a serene state.

GOJO SATORU – Like Yuuji, Gojo takes his time in styling his hair. You brush your teeth beside Gojo, who scowls as he struggles to keep his hair up the way he likes before he puts on his blindfold. The lanky man groans and adds more product, flattening the strands of his hair between his palms before swooping it up. When it falls down, Gojo whines, leaning forward on the sink counter.

You chuckle to yourself; he could be so dramatic sometimes. Bumping your hip with his, you gesture at him to move, and the big baby pouts before placing his chin on your shoulder as he watches you gargle. “Babe,” he sniffles, arms wrapping around your middle before his nose nuzzles into your skin. You giggle and push him away; the little bastard knew you were ticklish there. “My hair won’t stick up the way I want it to. Now I don’t look so cool anymore. What would my students say? That Gojo-Sensei stopped being attractive?”

That earns him an eye roll and a playful smack to his shoulder. “Ow!” Gojo rubs his shoulder with another pout, although both of you know nothing ever really hurts the strongest jujutsu sorcerer. “You’re mean.”

“And you’re just fishing for compliments.”

When Gojo hides his smirk behind his palm, you know you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Gojo was probably the most self-assured and overconfident man you’ve ever met – the day he thought lowly of himself and worried about anything concerning him that would ruin his “image” would be the day pigs could fly. Nevertheless, you give in with a sigh, extending your palm towards him.

“Give me the gel. I’ll fix your hair for you.”

“You’re a lifesaver, babe!” Obediently, Gojo crouches down so you could reach his hair, but not before muttering “shorty” under his breath. You tug at his hair harshly than you intended as payback, and Gojo only lets out a loud, fake moan before doubling over.

Your laughter and his bubble and echo through the cramped room, but both of you don’t mind. It’s moments like these you cherish with your whole heart even though it’s not extremely sweet or anything over the top. Dating a jujutsu sorcerer, the strongest one at that, wasn’t always rainbows and unicorns. You worry for him all the time and stay up awake all night, only ever finding peace in your sleep when he comes home safely – which he always does.

Still, you don’t stop worrying for him. It’s only natural, after all, and the way Gojo’s eyes soften as you slightly massage his scalp and style his hair for him lets you know he loves small moments like this too when both of you are completely alone in your own worlds, just enjoying each other’s presence and not having to think about anything else.

“Your hair is really soft,” you muse, unaware of the way Gojo’s closed his eyes as he lets your hand do the magic. When the familiar scent of vanilla and flowers wafts into your senses, you lean down closer to him to sniff his hair, stopping in your movements. “That’s odd. You smell like shampoo, but I haven’t bought that scent in a week.”

“Well, I may or not be the one who emptied it the last time,” he sheepishly chuckles.

“Gojo! That shampoo was really expensive!”

“Yeah, but I wanted to smell like you,” he coos, gently peeling your arms off him so he could hug you. Because of the height difference, you face plant into his bare chest where his skin is still warm from the shower. You keep feigning your irritation, but really, you squish your cheek above his heart, and Gojo’s chest rumbles as he laughs – he knows you can’t resist him. “Sorry about it babe, let’s go grocery shopping tonight when I come home, yeah?”

“You better buy your own shampoo,” you grumble, but Gojo only laughs.

FUSHIGURO MEGUMI – Megumi is hunched over his desk, eyebrows pinched together while his hands move at an extreme speed. He’s studying while you scroll through memes on your phone, not wanting to disturb your boyfriend. Megumi is studious as ever, and it’s not that you aren’t, but you’re definitely a lot more relaxed than he is.

You often tease him that you’ve got amazing memory by tapping your forehead whenever he tells you to study with him, which only makes him huff, but in reality, you refuse to study with him because he’s so distracting.

The way he bites his lip when he’s concentrated on something has your stomach erupting with butterflies, and it doesn’t help when his dark blue eyes pierce through the pages like the poor textbook committed a crime he couldn’t forgive.

All in all, Megumi’s beauty tripled tenfold when he was dedicated to something, and it was this fact that had you keeping your distance from him while he studies, because the last thing he needs is to have you jump him when he’s got an exam to prepare for. Unbeknownst to him, you’re angling your phone upwards until his beautiful side profile comes to view – and it’s so unfair his lashes are longer and thicker than yours – and you take a silent snap.

You take a few more pictures with a silent giggle, making sure to set it as your lock screen later. Nothing better than waking up to Megumi’s face every time your alarm went off, but your daydreaming is halted when Megumi drops his pen with a loud sigh.

“I know you’re taking pictures of me,” he side-eyes you with a glare. You squeak before hiding your phone behind you, knowing that it’s not out of the picture for Megumi to steal them and delete his precious photos. It didn’t help he knows your password either (duh, it’s his birthdate) so you take the extra mile by offering him a sickeningly sweet smile, an apology ready to leave your lips when – “If you wanted my attention that badly, you could’ve just said so. I don’t mind taking a break or something.”

Although he sounds annoyed, the way he avoids your gaze to hide his reddened cheeks and ears say otherwise. Megumi’s back faces you as you wait patiently on his bed. You don’t want to bother him – you really don’t – so you stay put, and Megumi sighs for the hundredth time that night before spinning on his chair, arms stretched out wide open. “Come. Want hugs.”

He keeps his gaze on his lap to swallow the embarrassment of using baby-like words, which was a huge contrast from his quiet and cold persona. You don’t mind though. Deep down, Megumi is like everyone else who wants constant affection, so you leap out of his bed and jump into his arms. Megumi relaxes with your weight on top of him before he squishes his cheeks against your boobs – one of his quirks that you found endearing – a sign that he just wanted to relax for a little while.

Megumi isn’t really that huge on touch, so moments like this where he allows himself to be physically intimate with you has you floating on cloud nine. You hear him sigh between you, and you hide your grin by pushing his hair back to reveal those pretty eyes of his, beckoning him to look you in the eye.

As expected, his cheeks flush a beet red at the intensity of your gaze, but what really catches your attention is how his eyes just brighten even though they’re lined with dark circles.

This precious boy means everything to you, and you cup his face until your noses are rubbing. “Love you, Gumi,” you whisper, the boy’s breath hitching when your eyelashes flutter against his skin. Megumi tsks, a faux scowl on his face because both of you are painfully aware that he just melts around you.

“Stop teasing me. You know I don’t like that.”

“I’m not teasing you,” you lie, brushing his hair back in a soothing manner to help him relieve the headache he gets when he studies too much. “You know, your hair is really soft. Can I keep doing this?”

Megumi hates it when people touch his hair, so you expect him to say no – and you’ll gladly respect it – but instead, he pushes you closer and murmurs, “Don’t stop doing that.”

You smile so wide you fear your face would break.

NANAMI KENTO – You’ve always been fascinated with your co-worker. You don’t know what it is about the sharp-faced and stoic Nanami Kento that somehow makes him stand out from the rest. It’s not like he was smarter or better than anyone, although you do admit Nanami overworks most of the time.

It’s kind of pathetic you’ve been crushing on him ever since your first day of work. Maybe it’s because he worked with virtue and wishes to actually be honest instead of just sucking the money out of others. Maybe it’s because seeing him visit a bakery every after work makes him seem softer and a lot more human than his seemingly unapproachable nature. Whatever it was, you can’t explain why you’re so enamoured with the blond, or why you have the audacity to suddenly card your fingers through his hair at his desk that time.

You were told by your boss to give him this folder – quick, easy, and simple. But Nanami has this effect on you that he makes your brain go brr every time you go closer to him. You blame it on the fact both of you are alone at the office right now for OT, but when Nanami freezes under your touch, you realize the grave consequences of your actions.

As if you’ve touched something boiling hot – and he kind of is – you retract your arm and bow so deep you feel a vertebrae popping air. “I’m so sorry!” you begin to blabber, bowing repeatedly to the point your hair has become a mess. You can’t even look him in the eye – what were you thinking?! “I didn’t mean to, it’s just your hair looked really nice and soft and I couldn’t help myself! If you want to tell the higher-ups about this harassment and get me fired, I promise I won’t mind. In fact, I’ll take this to my grave and even offer my firstborn child as an apology—”

“Y/N.”

“because I’ve done something so horrendous and oh my gosh, I was just eating donuts and I probably got crumbs in your pretty hair—”

“Y/N,”

“And that’s really so low of me. Uh, actually, I may or may not have spent last month’s salary to buy my niece a huge ass dollhouse, but I’d gladly schedule a hair appointment for you—” you stop your words when you feel huge, calloused hands squishing your cheeks together until your lips are puckered out like a fish. Nanami stands before you, looking as handsome as ever, and that thought only has you panicking more and withdrawing. “I’m so sorry.”

Nanami sighs, pulling away to give you some space. You try to fight back the whine because not only did you look ridiculous under him, but also because you actually missed his touch.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” he takes the folder from you, pauses, then tilts his head to the side. “You think my hair is soft?”

“Uhm,” you blink rapidly, “Y-yes. Your hair is really pretty too. In fact, everything about you is pretty, like your hands when you type in paperwork but – I’m talking too much aren’t I?” you laugh nervously, scratching the back of your head. “I’m sorry. I tend to ramble when I’m nervous.”

“I make you nervous?” Nanami doesn’t sound like he believes it.

“Yeah,” you confess, switching your weight from one foot to another. At this point, you’ve given up on asking him out for coffee this weekend because you’re sure he’s labelled you as an idiot now. Not that it’s surprising though; not only does Nanami keep to himself out of social aversion, but you’re also pretty loud and awkward, a huge contrast to someone as well-put as him. “Anyways, uh,” you clear your throat, gesturing to your cubicle. “Now that you’ve got the file, I’m gonna go do my part. See you later, I guess. Or not. You can go home first you want. I’ve got quite a lot on my plate.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“Sorry?”

Nanami organizes his desk one last time before following you to your desk. “I’m done with my part and it’s late. It’s not safe for you to walk home alone,” he glances at his watch, “I’ll wait for you until you’re done and walk you back home. That way, I don’t have to worry about your safety tonight,” he plops down on the empty seat next to yours, crossing his arms on his broad chest. “Take all the time you need. Just wake me up when you’re done.”

Just like that, Nanami dozes off, exhausted from a long day of hard work. You, on the other hand, are more energized than ever as you suddenly find a strong wave of motivation you’ve never had before.

Maybe you don’t mess up everything, after all.

RYOUMEN SUKUNA – He groans when you giggle at him, using your small, dainty hands to brush it through his hair. Sukuna liked to sleep in and it was only seven in the morning, meaning he’s supposed to be still lost in dreamland with thoughts about you and your cute little face. But because you’re an annoying brat who’s an early bird and way too cheerful as a morning person, you’re wide awake when the sun shone through the windows, and you’re gently coaxing him awake by rotating your fingers through his hair.

“Your hair is really soft.”

“Stop that,” he complains, but doesn’t really do anything to push you away. “It’s too early. Go back to bed.”

“But I’m already awake,” you tease, proving your point by taking off his covers and patting his chest. “Come on, let me make you breakfast. Maybe we can go out today and go see a movie, what do you think? It’s my day off so we better make use of it!”

“Exactly, it’s a day off,” he growls the last part, surprising you when his strong hands grip your thigh and drag you beside him. Soon enough, Sukuna has you trapped in his muscular arms until you can’t move anymore. “Let’s just stay the whole day in bed. Plus, I’m the one making breakfast. There’s no way you’re still cooking for me on your day off.”

“But I love cooking for you.”

“I know, but it’s my turn now,” he huffs through your hair. Sukuna’s grip loosens around you a bit to give you room to breathe, but he’s taken aback when you only snuggle closer to him to the point your legs and tangled and your body is warm from his heat. You don’t have to say it out loud to tell him you’ve conceded to his wishes.

As always, Sukuna is right. It feels much better to just let go of time and enjoy this moment. And he smells so good, feels so warm, that you’re unable to stop yourself from burrowing closer onto his body until you’re sure you’re about to start smelling like him later.

Of course, Sukuna likes the thought of that, so he sweeps one arm behind to tug the covers back over your bodies. He kisses your temple, and with a low, husky voice, grumbles, “Let’s go back to sleep, then we’ll do everything you want later, okay? I just want to stay in bed with you a little longer.”

For a guy who was considered heartless and barbaric, he sure turned into putty in your hands.

INUMAKI TOGE – The platinum haired boy lays on your lap, the wire of headphones dangling beside you both. You’re thankful Inumaki has his eyes closed, because the last thing you want him to see is how embarrassed and giddy you are at that moment.

You and Inumaki have been friends for years, meaning you’ve been hiding your crush on him for a painfully long time. He’s recently made a Spotify playlist with an innocent text of, “I made you a playlist of all the songs that reminds me of you,” which leads you both to your current predicament. It’s a rather lazy weekend and Gojo-sensei isn’t around to bother any of you, so you’re in Inumaki’s room, careful not to bounce your legs out of habit to not give the poor boy a headache.

You snap back to life when Inumaki squeezes your thigh, and you’re met with azure eyes looking back up at you. “Mustard leaf?” he points to your face, which has been previously constricted and heated from his close proximity. It isn’t the first time you and Toge have cuddled, but it’s been too long and you’re standing at the edge of a dangerous cliff with the desire to tell him you like him.

Inumaki must’ve thought you’re uncomfortable with his weight on you because he begins to sit up. “Oh, no, no!” you coax him back down despite his questioning eyes, a wide grin replacing your flustered state to conceal it. “Its’s fine, really. I was just vibing with the songs.”

He hums, not completely believing it, but he doesn’t want to push either. Soon, he settles into your lap again and makes you lose your mind when his breath starts to tickle your kneepads now that he’s facing behind you.

Your heart just about combusts, and before you know it, Inumaki has fallen asleep while the theme of Howl’s Moving Castle plays. Once his breathing regulated into a steady rhythm, you reach out to brush his hair back and lightly add some pressure for better sleep. You know Inumaki lies that, and you smile to yourself when he leans into your touch even in his slumber.

“Your hair is so soft,” you say mostly to yourself, leaning down to kiss his the crown of his head, making Inumaki sigh contentedly. Gosh, you love him so much.

Now isn’t the time but...hopefully, one day you could tell him how you feel. Even if he rejects you, you hope you could still be friends even after that awkward encounter –

You freeze as the next song comes on. I.F.L.Y by Bazzi comes on, and just as you cover your mouth to silence your gasps, you hear the faintest snickers coming from Inumaki before he goes back to “snoring.”

“Toge! Were you awake the whole time?!”

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muffindaddystyles · 3 years

Text

Someone hurts Y/N at work; and Harry’s owner of the company.

Angry young man CEO!H very protective of his lovie :)))))))))))))

It was Tuesday. Tiring Tuesday is what Y/N calls them to be because they lurk in the middle of week and drags you after a Monday. Today, it’s the worst fucking Tuesday since the day she started working at this company.

Harry offered her. More to say tried to convince her with his sweet puppy tactics, tried to lure her in with his seductive begging and would mumble the same thing in her sweaty neck while balls deep in her, “Please sweet toots ... promise I wouldn’t be there to take ye' interview, please work in my company.” He squished her sides in desperation. Y/N whined, mind too occupied in the way he’s leaking into her, the head of his cock angled to rub at her spongy wall making her hug herself into him.

“I could be a very hard boss in my office, ‘s all ‘m saying.” He wiggled his brows at her playfully, hissing when his double joke earned him a tight fit around his prick and he was soon forgetting all of it when she canted her hips to let him slick deeper inside her.

It’s not that; Y/N doesn’t wants to work at his company. When her boyfriend asked her so sweetly and stout-heartedly. Call him a sap but he actually wants to be closer to her in every possible chance he gets – she gives him an unyielding amount of comfort and happiness when she’s with him.

There’s this silver of pride he wants to take (since he’s the biggest narcissists) in being a power couple, because in the end everything will be theirs.

But she doesn’t want to seem like she took advantage of him. She didn’t study and worked hard many years to be called dependent on her boyfriend. She wanted to find her first proper job herself – feel all the odds and jitters of her firsts after UNI.

Harry called the battles off knowing his little stubborn baby’s too much a wiggler and he believes in her and he’s very proud of her previous achievements, he just wants to see her happy working with him or not.

She indeed got it. She was finally a design editor at a grand magazine company, excited to meet her boss who’s one of her absolute favourite graphic designers in the industry.

Harry and her celebrated her baby step towards her success by going out at this cafe which had cats you can pet and love on.

He was blissed to see her this happy, considering it a win win situation. But she doesn’t need to know? Does she? And Harry didn’t do anything suspicious? Did he? Nobody even know who she's! And if Y/N wants that, he’ll have it that way.

Soon her enthusiasm deflated like a sorrowful balloon whirling in the air for seconds before falling on the ground and getting it’s existence neglected, because, her boss was the meanest bitch alive.

At the moment, Y/N forced the pertinacious lump of pathetic tears down her throat, not blinking to dry out the moisture threatening to fall from her waterline feeling humiliation creep up her skin and making her want to shrink into herself and never show her face.

She listens patiently and optimistically as her boss practically screams at her for not liking the designs Y/N worked to modify for damn 62 hours and the Karen still had an audacity to degrade, Y/N.

Y/N gasped, stumbling back in fright shock when the file that had her precious designs composed in it flew and hit Y/N, the ragged corner of it scratching Y/N’s delicate skin and her boss was spinning away from her to stare coldly at the bustling city outside through the window drowning into fumes and anger.

Y/N opened her mouth, guppy like. Wanting to say something back and call her out on her act but she felt like her voice got strangled into her chest.

ShitShitShitShit.

Hammering in her brain when she felt something warm oozing from her skin and she’s panicking, wiping a vicious streak of blood from her jaw with her trembly fingers and scuttled straight to the washroom before anyone was able to see her in such vulnerable condition.

She had enough of it and left out of there without a word to anyone, not even to her cubby mate. She bottled all the emotions that were rattling against her bones to flood out of her each pore, until she could reach her home and once she did she was having a humongous and ominously scary breakdown, glad that Harry was stuck in meetings and the house was all of hers to cry ugly.

Once she was all blue lips, puffy and swelled up cheeks and eyes, nest of a hairstyle and all burned up lungs she was calming herself down with deep breaths just Harry taught her.

Scrubbing and cleaning herself off then going to bed without waiting for Harry, something very rare and the right hit in the nail for him to know she isn’t feeling well.

He was welcomed by silence. No dinner, just leftovers in fridge and his insides became all crummy and not very pleasant when he tailed to the living room and wasn’t met by his lovebug; either cramming her head to sketch down designs with an ipad in her lap while a buzz of random Netflix show accompanies her, dossing off cutely with hundreds of her study journals and magazines messed around her on the floor, or her in sleeping pyjamas with food already set up on the coffee table and brightening the whole room with her squeals when Harry announces his presence.

None of that instead he finds her in their bedroom, drowned under layers of blankies and her stuffies with room lit dark.

He coos softly, mattress dipping down from his weight and his heart expands and melts all around his other organs at how adorable she looks sleeping in his hoodie. He chuckles shaking his head at the way she has the strings of the hoodie squeezed around her head, not sure how she’s able to breath at how tight it seems around her neck.

Doing his own routine he was slipping into the bed, sighing from the warmth and how toasty she has made the bed already.

He bunched her against his chest and kissed her head then spooned her up in his arms, lips fluttering into a smile when she hummed and sniffed basking into his scent.

“Oi sleepy.” He whispers down at her cupping her neck and giggles softly when she whines mushing her cheek against his chest only to grunt sleepily and muffle her yelps into his sweatshirt.

Harry’s brows shoots up into slight bafflement then dips down into a frown when he slipped his calloused palm under her hoodie to cradle her jaw and felt something graze against his thumb that was about to press into her soft skin to bring her for a night kiss.

“Hey...” He perches himself on elbows, switching on the lamps and ignores her groans grasping the blanket she was about to pull over herself, huffing at him to let her sleep but Harry’s more stubborn than her if it involves assuring himself she’s okay and right now she’s not and Harry was already feeling it in his bones.

“Lemme see.” He persists gently, peeling the blankets and the hoodie off her head while she’s still stirring into sleep not able to open her eyes how much she tries because of the exhaustion dumped on her from whole day.

He stares at the wound she did a shit effort to cover with a gauze messily over her jaw and tiny bit area of her neck, a long bandage reaching to her ear and Harry tries to think rationally and not freak out as he touches it with cautious fingertips.

“What ... the –- fuck, Y/N what is...is this?” His mouth falls slack. His ears buzzing for a moment and he wraps his arm around her shoulder to bring her up as he leans them against the bedhead.

He feels bad when she knuckles at her eyes warily and mumbles something that’s barely audible.

“What happened, baby? Talk t’me? How did y'hurt yourself so bad?” Worried and fearful. He bombs her with questions not waiting for her to be fully awake and his heart breaks miserly upon focusing his gaze on her face, her angelic face that’s now soaked with sadness –- she’s been crying.

His loves been crying and he wasn’t there for her.

“Who did this to you?” Y/N's eyes widens abruptly. The alertness in them vivid for Harry to see under the lamp glow and she gasps, nose twitching and lip wobbling as Harry grabbed her chin and ducked to her eyelevel to ask her tenderly with a layer of strictness under his tone, “’M asking, Who did this to you, Y/N?” Her fragile heart could already take so much and she strangled out a sob lowering her head down in embarrassment.

“’M.. I’m —-.. no –..not telli –-..telling you,” She hiccups breathlessly, shaky fingers fisting onto the blanket thrown over Harry’s lap and he holds her hands kissing them gently, “I’ll know it one way or another baby. Don’t force me to get outta my way to find —–“ His soul stabbing glare was enough for Y/N to ramble and at first he thought he didn’t heard her right, that she was mumbling too much but when the reality seeped in gradually Harry almost froze in his spot.

“I know it’s very shameful —..” Y/N stammers barely able to get in a breather and Harry’s head snapped at her words, removing his nails away from making little graves in his palms and his jaw which almost felt like breaking from the hinges from how painfully furious he had it set relaxes as he tries to calm himself down and not to grab his keys and drive to that bitch's house to trash her place.

Because how fucking dare she treat anyone like that in his own fucking company.

“Hey, hey. Now none of that toots. Look at me darling, oh my sweet moppet ... shh.” It slices his heart in pain to see Y/N like this -- so small and disheartened. How dare she hurt his such delicate, sweet, loving girl like that? How!?

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of yourself moppet. She should be, fo’ being such a heartless prick.” He spat, his guts full of bitter and hatred. His skin hot, his grip on her tightening protectively and his chin quivers trying to lock all his anger inside and not to burst out like a pressure cooker.

“I’ll deal with her tomorrow.” He nods curtly to himself, poking his tongue to wet his grimacing lips and Y/N was too woolly to get what’s he’s saying.

His gaze flitters back on her. His demeanour turned incredibly soft and gentle for her smooching a big generous kiss to her salty lips and then to both of her cheeks cared in both of his palms, “Are y'okay? D'you want me to take you to hospital?” She shakes her head mewling and melting and caressing herself into his wrist.

“Why didn’t you call me baby?” He asks her doing anything in his power to mask the hurt in his tone and sighs touching his forehead to her's when Y/N sniffled, “Didn’t wan’ you to worry.” He slid his forearm under her bum and scooched her atop of him, patching tiny careful pecks to her jaw.

“But, that’s love moppet. Worryin’ bout you, takin’ care of ye' and beating anyone raw who even dares to have evil intentions towards you,”

“Remember the time y'snubbed that one guy’s oh so expensive shoes who was very rude to me at one of your graduations party?” His simper turning into a proper ironic grin when she giggled hoarsely nodding along and the tension in his muscles released watching her getting better.

“Proper broke his big toe with your heel darling.” He giggles with her and then Y/N realised how sad and awful Harry’s feeling, how it’s hurting him the same way it hurt her an year ago.

“How about we have a glass of milk .... it’ll help us sleep less grumpy y'know.” He murmurs in the crook of her neck, elbow cocooned safely around her shoulder blade as he kisses the side of her head again and again nose buried in her hair to smell her treacly smell.

In the morning he was tragic to hear Y/N sound so heartbroken and dejected as she told him, “I’m going to resign and accept your offer.” Her smile small and sad, hugging him looping her limbs around his torso lazily.

“’kay baby, but first eat your brekkie.” He kissed her hair and squished her pout when he moved away to make some calls to his assistant.

Y/N had no-idea what he was upto. Glad that he was driving her to the company and that he was immensely supportive of her decision, her insides pooled with warmth and giddiness when he tried to cheer her up with his silly jokes and singing along the radio murmuring rubbish whenever he forgot the lyrics.

She was utterly confused when upon reaching he was giving the keys to valet boy to park his car and interviewing their fingers in a strong grip before leading her inside, even though she should be the one to do so.

She sputters a, “Huh?” when instead of telling her he’d wait for her in the lobby he’s rounding the corner towards the elevators and turns his wrist to push her infront of him to keep her closer to himself all the time.

When the doors are sliding apart the people scurrying outside halts for a moment, not looking Harry in eyes and keeping their heads low.

Phones were already rung in the building that Mr. Styles will be coming un-announced and everyone should be prepared to face the consequences if they stumble upon him – because well he isn’t in such a nice mood to start with.

“Harry.” She pokes him in ribs feebly, stepping away from him feeling timid due to few pair of eyes in elevator watching her awkwardly and maybe judgingly.

The tension in space could be cut through knife, as if everyone’s holding their breaths and she pouts taking a good look at Harry who’s smirking smugly confident in his element.

Do they all think her boyfriend’s way too intimidating and out of reach for them? They should know he’s such a sweetie!

Y/N huffs. Folding her arms over chest when Harry paws at her hips and pulls her back against his chest resting his chin atop of her head with a shit eating grin.

In all seriousness. Showing them that’s she’s his's and belongs under his wings, which will keep her safe and protected till his death.

“How did you know my boss's office’s on tenth floor?” She squints up at him suspiciously.

“Hmm. Dunno, moppet. Magical powers or summat?” He teases her, putting a hand at the small of her back to nudge her forward making her blush pink and ducks down to whisper in her ear, “You got this toots.” Biting her earlobe playfully to stroke down her anxiety upon sensing her hesitancy to step in the hallway that has cubicles lined up.

He already got this. He ordered his assistant to get the resign letter ready and showing her who’s the boss here’s not much of hurdle for him.

It’s weird. Bloody weird. Y/N wants to turn back and run away because the moment they step inside the whole damn hallway falls eerily pin drop silent and everyone’s peeking up from the short walls of their cubicles and then diverting their eyes immediately in embarrassment and apology seeing Harry behind her.

The ones who’re standing bows their heads lightly in respect for him and scurrying away to give him a way and that’s insanely surprising and weird.

Harry on the other hand was no stranger to those bogey looks. Of curiosity, uneasiness and dread when he passes through the crowd of his employs. Y/N is.

Slowly perhaps. It starts to sink in— jumbled and disoriented when she looks back at Harry. He’s keeping his head held high and shoulders tilted back with poise and conceitedness, hands stuffed into the pockets of his pants and because though it makes him look like a proper snob— he is their boss and the owner of this company, he should act like one.

“Mr. Styles.” Y/N’s boss assistant Marina who’s usually very chirpy (and undeserving of all the yelling she gets from her boss) turns pale at Harry’s presence. She’s the only person Y/N's very keen of, now she’s fretting towards them with her head lowered and tries to stammer something but Harry’s walking past her with his lips pursued as he goes inside without knocking.

“Harry...” Y/N tattles behind him, lunging to clutch onto the hem of his suits coat, to scold him to stop babying her and let her handle it herself, too late since she’s already meeting with the sight of her overly stressed and upset boss.

Her knees almost gives in when Harry snaps his fingers for the employees that were inside to give them privacy and takes in the most relaxing breath of oxygen, feeling a gag of bitterness in his mouth from even looking at her.

Y/N gasped. Her boss (which she’s not sure is her boss anymore) gasped. The sweet assistant Marina gasped. When Harry told her in the most composing way– though his blood’s boiling absolutely sheathing through his veins.

“You’re fired.” His demeanour cold and voice monotone not giving a fuck how much she shakes and cries for his forgiveness.

“Mr. Styles. I..I can explain–-" She stammers rushing from the back of her desk and stops obediently when Harry gestures her to not to take another step forward.

“There’s no excuse for abuse. I don’t want your lame explanations, I can’t have an abusive asshole running my company for me ... we might be strict on our employees but we aren’t monsters.” He grits, his eyes flaring piercingly with rage and showing no empathy towards her as she pleads him to forgive her mistake– those bricks of money makes you work baby.

“You hurt someone so dearly to me ‘n think I’ll forgive ye'?” The assistance eye’s blows away at newfound information, Harry Styles love of life’s none other than Y/N. The girl she used to have smoked sandwiches and milkshakes with in their lunch breaks.

“I didn’t know ...” He chuckles ironically at her hypocrisy and that’s the last straw for him before he’s threatening her to call the security and she’s getting out of there cursing him under her breath but Harry grabs her from elbow roughly, conceding his brow at her dauntingly.

"Apologise to her right fuckin' now."

"Sorry, Mrs Styles. I'm very ashamed of what I did." She says nervously and Y/N nods not able to speak from the butterflies that are flapping around her stomach, which sure didn't go unnoticed at Harry's side and he smirks at Y/N.

When they’re left alone. Jovial cackles are bouncing against the walls and he’s pressing his hip to the desk, securing his hands around his triceps as he folds his arms infront of his chest entertaining himself to the cute and fuzzy reactions of his girl at what just happened.

“See. Told ya, nobody could defy my bossiness at work.” He grins at her, jerking his hand towards his chest to usher her closer to him and boops her nose smacking an obnoxiously loud kiss to her mouth when she toddles in his arms.

“The offers still there,” He looks down at her cheekily and she shakes her head, a small smile kicking up her lips at his determination and devotion.

“Couldn’t say no to you, could I? What will you be owning secretly next time?” She nips at him, planting her palms firmly against his midriff feeling the crispiness of his shirt underneath his jacket.

“A bakery shop ....?” He muses in the most pondering voice and she scoffs at him through pattering of giggles, “Suck it up Mr. Styles.”

“Hey! I know my prick’s huge but not tha’ much for me to suck it myself.”

Y/N chokes onto her own spit. Shaking her head at him.

“Your innocent employees knows how vulgar you’re?”

“Uhmm. Infact, She gets very hot hearin’ me like tha'.” He bobs his head grinning at her wickedly and she smacks his shoulder, “Harry!”

“Yeahhh! Tell everyone how good I make you feel babbbyy—....” Y/N clamps her hand around his mouth to muffle his lewd fake moaning.

“You’re so embarrassing.” She grumbles wiping his spit sticking to her palm down her skirt and spins around to head for the door expecting him to follow her.

“You don’t talk to boss like that!” He trails behind her, “Boss my ass!” She quips out a squeal looking around to make sure that nobody saw it when Harry slapped her bum.

“Boss someone’s ‘bout to get a pink ass.”

#ceo!harry #ceo!h x y/n #ceo!h x reader #ceo!h x fem!reader #harry stylss angsty drabble #harry styles one shot #harry styles blurb #harry styles smut #harry styles #cute harry #harry smut #harry styles fanfiction #fluff #harry angst #hsh #dom harry

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roscgcld · 3 years

Text

ZEN’IN NAOYA || husband’s duty

request: omg if it is okay can i ask for a part 2 of sweet little things 🥲

note: you definitely can, love! honestly this definitely cracked my head a little since we didn’t get to explore naoya too much as a character, underneath all that complexity that makes him up as the man we saw in the manga. But I am not gonna sit here and say I do not simp for him AHAHAHA - that would be a huge lie. But we shall see, no? I feel like I made him too soft though, but I live for soft!Naoya - so do not touch me T^T

part one

warning: suggestive scene throughout, but nothing happens really. just naoya being an ass lol

pronouns: she/her

A content sigh left Naoya’s lips as he leans back into the warm water of the bath, his eyes slowly sliding shut at the warmth that surrounds him. Today has been a long day on the office - with back to back meetings and piles of paperwork on his desk, he was just ready to land into his bed face first and sleep the evening away.

“What do you want for your onigiri filling tomorrow? The farmers that produce that special rice you like sent a bag of rice to us earlier today.”

Your soft and sweet voice was what broke him out of his tranquil trance, yet he doesn’t find himself getting angry. Instead he hummed as he leans towards the direction of your voice, seeming to melt further in the steaming water when your soft hands immediately rest themselves against his broad shoulders. Fingers immediately getting to work on the knots that had started to build up since the afternoon. “Hmm...unagi filling sounds good.”

“I’ll make some for your bento tomorrow then,” You reassured him with a warm smile as you started to work through the knots on his shoulders, making sure to not accidentally dig your short but well kept nails into his skin. Whilst Naoya enjoys leaving marks of ownership all over your person, he does not appreciate having any scars left on his skin. And although he does not voice his disapproval, you know your husband well enough to know that unless he is in the mood, you should be careful about things like your nails scratching his skin.

The idea of you making one of his favourite dishes for him, knowing that he has to deal with more paperwork and calls tomorrow has him smiling softly in response. He would not voice out how your little actions causes his usually cold heart to skip a beat; instead he just leans back a little when he heard you collecting some water from the tub with the wooden shower pale. Relishing in the feeling of the water being poured over his two-toned hair, along with your soft fingers gently running through the strands.

Many people feel bad for you, since everyone knows what kind of man Naoya is. Everyone knows that he is nothing more but a skirt chaser, a man who views women as nothing an accessory to hang off his arm. Whose purpose is to provide strong heirs, and nothing more. You knew of the man even before you met him the first time on your family estate - listening to your older sister rant about how much of a myogenetic, rude, and disgusting excuse of a man Zen’In Naoya is. You’ve heard of the whispers from the other women whenever you would join a jujutsu event where the Zen’Ins would be in attendance. You knew that the moment both your fathers shook hands after Naoya shows great interest in you, your future was sealed to be with a man who seems to be every woman’s living nightmare.

And yet, for the last 4 months of marriage life, things have been...pleasant.

Naoya knew from the moment that he spoke to you that he needed to act ‘softer’ in order to gain your trust. That he cannot be his full self around you for at least the first month of your marriage in order to make him trust you; or until his patience runs thin from acting.

However, even though he has promised himself that he will drop the act after the first month; here he is, 4 months into your new marriage. Still finding it almost natural for him to act softer and more...kinder around you. Maybe it is because he finds your personality just so soft and welcoming that it just...felt right to treat you differently. Maybe he is just trying to reason to himself that as his wife, you should be treated differently from the common folk outside of your private home; after all, as long as he keeps you happy, he can get away with pretty much anything.

And yet...he has yet to find it in him to actually act like his usual self around you. Almost as if he was afraid of scaring you, or fearing that you’re scared of him. It’s laughable - how a man who was so self centered and only cared about himself and no one else, seemed to be so worried about what his wife thinks about him. He had reasoned to him that this is normal; that any husband would want their wife to fear them.

But just...it was odd to him. How he chooses to act differently around you, and not feel like he is forced in any way.

His opened his eyes to take a peak at you when his thoughts start to wonder, scanning over your concentrated features as you carefully worked the shampoo through his hair. Somehow just seeing you so focused on making sure that he was enjoying his bath had his heart skipping a beat; something that would have scared him if it were to happen with anyone else.

Yet, instead he found himself letting a small but genuine smile tug against the corners of his lips, one that immediately catches your attention as you carefully wash the studs from his hair. “What got you so happy, my love?,” You asked him curiously as you carefully ran your fingers through his hair, making sure that all the studs were gone. Instead of answering he just reached his hand up to grab your wrist in his gently, pressing a soft kiss against the inside of your wrist.

Naoya isn’t a man to convey his emotions often. He doesn’t necessarily view emotions as weak; he just sees no reason to show others around him how he feels unless it brings him some form of advantage. Other then that, he just puts up an arrogant and unbothered front for the most part. But with you...well, you were different. You are his wife, and in order to be a good husband, he needs to show you that he is willing to show you what is underneath his mask. Or so, he thinks that is what he needs to do.

The feeling of Naoya’s lips against your skin send a set of shivers down your spine, your eyes shyly glancing away from his handsome face as you felt the tips of your ears warm up. Just seeing how bashful you were about something as small as showing you emotion had him smirking against your wrist, immediately wanting to see just how far he can push his luck.

And he knows exactly what to do. “Get in the bath with me.”

You immediately snapped your shocked eyes back at your husband in shock, immediately feeling your cheeks warm at how he was staring at you expectantly. Although you’ve seen each other naked before, with him being so obsessed of having an heir of his own - it would be a surprise if you haven’t see him naked in all his glory. It wasn’t like he was bad to look at either - from all the training puts himself through to perfect his Technique, you would be lying to say that you’ve never stared at his strong back or broad shoulders whenever you two are alone.

It was just...so sudden. And you immediately knew what his intensions were, yet you just pouted softly as you quietly pulled yourself up from the steps you were seated on. Just seeing the soft pout tugging against the corner of your lips had Naoya biting back a smile as he watches you strip from your kimono, carefully folding the expensive fabrics to the side.

Soon you carefully made your way up the wooden steps of the traditional bathtub, thanking your husband quietly as he held a hand out to help you into the tub. You awkwardly knelt down between Naoya’s knees, still a little nervous to touch him even though he was the one who invited you into the bath with him. Naoya found your fear quite amusing, and without missing a beat he grabbed your hand in his before he pulls you close; chuckling at the squeak you let out when you landed against his bare chest.

“Don’t need to be so scared, my wife,” Naoya mumbles with a smirk, hands trailing down your soft back to relish the goosebumps that appear on your skin; his eyes glancing away from your shocked face to your fists resting against his chest. “After all...if there is one person worthy enough to be by my side, it will be you,” He mumbles, hands that seem even warmer than the water surrounding you two resting on the small of your back.

A combination from his soft touches, to his overly sweet but frank words had your face burning up once more as you whine and bury your face into his neck, your actions causing Naoya to let out a soft but genuine peel of laughter come from his chest. “Did I startle you?,” Naoya asks in amusement, already knowing the answer to that question. Yet he wanted for you to answer the question yourself, since he lives for seeing you getting embarrassed over the smallest of interactions with him.

You fluttered your eyes close to try and calm you rapid heartbeat, yet you nodded your head gently to answer his question. “A-A little..,” You mumble back quietly against his skin, heart skipping a beat a little at Naoya’s soft chuckle that he breathed against the shell of your ear. Naoya did not want to admit it, but he finds this subconsciously clingy side of you quite endearing. Whilst he hates it when others touch him, even if they grazed him by accident; he does not mind it when it’s you.

Maybe he has gone a little insane after marriage.

After you’ve managed to gather your wits, you quietly pulled away from him before you reached back to grab the wash towel you had grabbed from earlier, Naoya curiously opened one of hi eyes when you shifted against his chest. Just having you pressed up against his chest, along with the warm water surrounding him had lulled him into a tranquil and sleepy state. But he didn’t stop you as you wet the wash towel before you carefully lathered his body wash into the fabric.

Quietly you started to wash his body like you would usually every night, yet this time it was a little different since now you were in the bath with him. Something that he has never really allowed before, since he views his bath time as his personal time. You would usually help him bathe before you leave the bathroom to prepare for bed and whatever wifely duties you need to fulfil for the night.

But if you were being honest, as you carefully washed your husband clean, you did not mind a change to your routine. Yet you did not voice your inner thoughts as you continue gliding your hands over Naoya’s arms, making sure to keep quiet to give him the silence he enjoys whenever he’s in the bath. However, Naoya was in the mood to talk today.

Whilst you were carefully washing his chest, Naoya’s hands started to wander along your body once more once more. “So, what did you get up today whilst your husband was out at work?”

You blinked up at your husband curiously, to which he just raised an eyebrow in response at the look you threw his way. “Can a husband not know what his wife gets up to when he slaves away at his desk?,” Naoya asks with a soft raise of his brow, his words causing you to widen your eyes as you shake your head immediately. Not wanting him to think that you’re questioning his authority. “O-Of course not! I-I just...thought...you’d like some quiet in your alone time..”

A soft sigh was your only response, to which you awkwardly looked away from your husband’s eyes to stare at his hard chest; worried that you’ve angered the man. “You know...I want to hear about your day too,” Naoya mumbles after a few tensed seconds of silence, a finger gently crocking under your chin to coax your eyes to look up at him. He did not have a smile on his serious face, yet there was a soft look shining in his usually hard eyes. “I get curious sometimes when I have time to breath...what does my beautiful wife do at home when I am away? Does she miss me? Does she take the free time she gets to pretend that she is not my wife? What could you be possibly be doing when I am away from home..?”

When you heard his words, you tilted your head softly as you scanned his face, trying to understand the meaning behind his message. He wasn’t dumb - he was more than aware of the whispers of the maids that thought he was not around, how people feel bad for you that you are married to a man like him. He honestly doesn’t care what others have to say about him - he never cared about what others have to say about him. Because he knows that when they need power or need something to get done, they will always turn to him with fake smiles and praise dripping from their tongues.

However, he was genuinely worried about you - he was worried that the whispers of his past will start to scare you away. Make you think that you are an idiot for marrying a man like him, and slowly but surely take you away from him. For once he was worried that you are going to leave him, because for once in his life, he finally understand what it truly means to be home. The very thought of you leaving him shakes him down to his very core, and he will do everything in his power to prevent that from becoming his reality.

“I don’t...think like that, you know.”

Your soft voice snapped his train of thought as he glances back into your eyes, blinking when your soft hands rest against his cheeks gently with a soft smile gracing your features. “I knew the type of man you were before you came to my family estate that day, and I have heard of all the rumours of your attitude even whilst you were courting me. But that didn’t change my decision because I genuinely enjoyed having you around.”

Your words had Naoya widening his eyes as his mind went blank at your confession. And seeing your usually stoic and arrogant husband looking stunned had you giggling as your thumbs started to stroke at his high cheekbones. “Yes, you may be a little colder and stricter then I am used to, but you are still a good man. You’ve been nothing but a good husband to me, and far from the rumours paint you to be. So don’t worry too much about my thoughts on our marriage, because I am nothing but happy to be your wife.”

Quietly you gently tugged his face close, resting his forehead against yours with a smile. “I know that you grew up in a different world from I did, and that you were brought up with different morals from mine. But I also know you’re trying for me, and that is more than enough for me at the end of the day.” You mumble softly, revealing to him that you were more observant than you let on. Yet you faked ignorance for his sake because you genuinely cared for him as a person. “Because at the end of the day, a wife is knows all of her husband’s sides the best.”

For once Naoya was completely stunned into silence, having never expected for you to be so candid about your feelings. Your response to his stunned silence was a quiet giggle as you lean forward to press a soft kiss against the tip of his nose. The feeling of your warm and soft lips snapped him back into reality, and upon realising how close you were, his pale cheeks flushed up from embarrassment. Immediately one of his hands pulled itself away from where they were resting against your bare hips to cover his cheeks with the back of his hand, eyes darting away as he leans away from you immediately.

“I-I want to get out of the bath now...”

You let out a giggle at the sight of your husband so out of character, yet you made no other comment as you nodded with a smile. “Lets get ready for bed then, my love,” You hummed out as you carefully got out to grab the towels for the both of you, biting back your smile at how cute you find him to be as you dried yourself before you did the same for him.

It was only later into the night, long after you’ve fallen asleep when Naoya really calmed down. You had long fallen asleep, face tucked away underneath his chin whilst your arms wrapped around him loosely. He knows he needed to sleep in order to function properly tomorrow, but his mind has been racing the moment you two got out of the bath to prepare for bed together.

He still cannot wrap his head around the idea that you willingly stay, even knowing that there is a chance you might see a less ideal version of himself. You choose to stay knowing all of the rumours about him and his, admittedly, horrendous behaviour and morals. And whilst he does not know what was it that he did that had you landing in his life, he is 100% sure he will never let you go.

Quietly he presses a soft kiss against the top of your head, a soft but content sigh leaving his lips as he closes his eyes to try and get some sleep before his alarm would go off later. Signaling to a start of another long and boring day away from you once more.

“You’re the best thing that has happened to me,” He mumbles softly into the quiet bedroom, a soft admission to you whilst you’re far away in dreamland, dreaming of things unknown to him. But the least he can pray for is that he wouldn’t become the enemy in your nightmares.

Because at the end of the day, it’s a husband’s duty to protect the happiness of their wife from the evils of the world. Even if the biggest evil in their lives is themselves. As long as he is your husband, you will have nothing to fear.

He will make sure of it.

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watchmegetobsessed · 3 years

Text

An Ocean Away - Harry Styles

Sequel to Tastes Like Strawberries 🍓 !

a/n: ahhh! thank you so much for the love you showed TLS! i already had more planned for the story, but all your comments motivated me to do this part 2! it’s an emotional one so brace yourselves! further in the chapter i placed the song that inspired the title and i listened to it while writing so i suggest you do the same!

pairing: professor!Harry x Reader

warning: sexual content

word count: 12.7k

masterlist

You walk down the familiar hallway texting back Eden that you are not spending the night at home again.

Eden: You really need to tell me about the dick that keeps you so busy these days.

Y/N: I never said a thing about any dick.

Eden: Oh please, you surely got yourself a rebound after Harry, you can’t tell me otherwise.

Y/N: Don’t you get a rebound when you broke up with someone? I was never together with Harry, so it doesn’t make sense.

Eden: You had a thing!! Okay, whatever. Keep your little secrets, I guess it’s fine…

Y/N: Love you!

Chuckling to yourself you put the phone away and stop at the door you know all too well, knocking two times before you open it and poke your head inside.

Harry is sitting at his desk, his reading glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose as he is vigorously scribbling something down into his notebook. He lifts his head at your arrival and you shut the door closed behind you.

“Hello, professor,” you smile at him teasingly, walking around his desk as he pushes himself back a little so you can sit on his lap, pecking his lips gently.

“Hey, done for the day?” he asks, his fingers tenderly stroking your thighs over the fabric of your jeans.

“Yeah. We can leave if you’re done,” you nod.

“Just a few more minutes, alright?”

“Sure,” you nod, standing up from his lap so he can finish his work while you sit on the little loveseat he has in the corner, right under the window.

It’s been six weeks since New Year’s Eve, the new semester has officially started, you’re working your way towards your degree as this is officially your last semester, but what’s more important that you and Harry have been a couple for six weeks following the heated actions of New Year’s Eve.

Harry is still quite anxious about the whole thing, always on high alert and he even asked you to lie to Eden and Nat too. You tried to fight him on that, but you could tell how much he wanted to protect what you had so you decided to feed them this elaborate story about how you and Harry had a fight on New Year’s Eve and realized that it would have never worked out so you agreed to stay just friends. It seems like they believed, because they’ve been keen on trying to set you up with someone while you just keep dodging their attempts, sneaking around with Harry behind their back.

Other than the continuous lying and sneaking around, things have been going well with him. You’ve been spending a lot of time at his place, the only hiding spot where you can be carefree around each other without always watching out for others around you.

Today is Valentine’s day and though your opportunities to celebrate are very slim, having anything that’s slightly public crossed out of the list, that still doesn’t stop the two of you from having a good night in.

You watch him curiously as he is reading the lines of someone’s essay probably, or some test, whatever. Holding the pen ready to use whenever he finds something incorrect, he furrows his eyebrows at something before crossing out a line, mouthing the words he writes to the side of the page. He doesn’t wear his glasses that often, but he’s been complaining about having dry eyes these past days so it’s no surprised he switched to them from his contact lenses.

“You look sexy in your glasses, have I told you that?”

He glances at you, a small smirk tugging on his lips before he returns to the paper in front of him.

“Think they make me look older,” he mumbles under his breath.

“Nah, not more at least than your grandpa sweaters,” you tease him, earning a ‘Really? This again?’ look from him that makes you chuckle.

You busy yourself while Harry finishes his work and then you head out together, strictly keeping the distance between each other. Walking out of the building Harry heads to the left where the car park is while you take a turn to the right. It’s been your usual, since you can’t have anyone see you get into Harry’s car so casually, so you usually walk down to the small café near Building D, because there’s a very narrow little street running behind it where you can get into the car without anyone noticing you. You do the same now too before finally heading back to Harry’s place. Sinking into the comfortable seat, you stare out the window, thinking about how it’s just been six weeks since New Year’s Eve, but it feels like you’ve been together with Harry for months. Despite his many doubts and hesitant act, it was easy to fall into a kind of routine with him, and even more easier to get used to the thought that he is yours and you are his.

During these six weeks you’ve learned quite a few things about him, things women on campus would die to know and they were handed over to you on a silver plate by Harry himself.

One, he is a very touchy person, of course, when he has the chance for it. In the safety of his home or when you have a few minutes for yourselves in his office, he always likes to have his hand on your back or waist, he loves touching your hips or cheeks, caressing the skin wherever it shows from under your clothes. He is also very cuddly, likes to wrap you in his arms when you’re watching TV and when it’s time to sleep the first thing he does is to pull you into his embrace. You usually wake up in the morning with him completely wrapped around you, limbs thrown over you, face buried into your chest or stomach. He is a messy sleeper, but also a fucking adorable one.

Two, he is a good cook but not that good at baking. He says it’s the universe’s sign that he shouldn’t eat as much sweet stuff as he does, but in reality he just sucks at measuring the ingredients. He never follows the recipe, easily goes with things his own way and then he is surprised when it doesn’t turn out as it should.

Three, he notices the smallest things you’d never. Like how you hate it when the Sun is shining right into your face so he always makes sure to draw the blinds in the evening, or that you prefer sleeping with more pillows so he just simply gives you an extra without even asking every time you’re spending the night. He cares so much about you to the smallest details, it always makes your heart flutter.

And four, though he keeps a tough act in school, he is a lovesick puppy when no one is around, likes to be the small spoon when cuddling, absolutely adores it when you cup his face in your palms and kiss it all over. Loves it when you play with his hair or when you hug him from behind, kissing between his shoulder blades. He always tells you how pretty you are and never misses a chance to sneak a kiss from you. You couldn’t imagine him do any of these before you really knew him, but now you see that all these little things are just as much parts of him like the version of him he shows at school. You feel lucky to be able to see him like this and you’ll probably never get bored of it.

Arriving to his place you drop your bag off at the bedroom before you join him in the kitchen, already eyeing the flyer to the nearby Italian place that delivers.

“How about pizza?” he hums, eyebrows knitted together as he scans the menu.

“Sounds good. Can we order dessert too?” Walking past him you kiss his shoulder before grabbing a glass for yourself, filling it with tap water.

“Oh, no need,” he shyly answers, glancing at you. “We… have dessert.”

You watch him with curious eyes as he disappears in his little study before emerging with a plate filled with pink cupcakes. They look wobbly, the cream on top is not the same on either of them, but because you know he made them, they are the most perfect you’ve ever seen.

He places the plate to the counter with a shy smile before turning to you.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he murmurs, hands finding your hips as he pulls you in for a kiss.

“Oh baby, did you stay up last night to make these?” you ask, touched that he took the time and energy to surprise you with something. Harry nods and you kiss his dimples softly.

“Mm, they are strawberry flavored,” he smirks boyishly.

“We are never escaping strawberries,” you chuckle softly as you dip your fingertip into the cream on top of one of the cakes, tasting it. “Hmm, this is actually good,” you tell him.

“Yeah, the cream is kind of okay, dunno about the rest though,” he admits chuckling.

“As long as it’s not poisonous, I’ll love it,” you giggle kissing his lips again softly. “Alright, but I can’t go over the fact that we agreed on no gifts for Valentine’s Day,” you say giving him a look.

“S’not a gift, just… a little gesture,” he shrugs innocently.

“Okay, then you can’t get mad over my little gesture,” you smirk at him, peeling his arms off you before you run into his bedroom to get his gift.

You really weren’t planning to give him anything, but you had a good idea last minute and couldn’t just not do it. Digging into your bag you pull out the little box and join him in the kitchen again, handing it to him.

“It’s not fair if you spent money on it,” he pouts, but you just roll your eyes.

“You spent money on the cupcakes too. But besides, I didn’t spent a penny on it. Open it!” You urge him.

Harry huffs but takes the lid off, revealing a stack of Polaroid photos. In this not too ideal situation the two of you are living in, there’s no chance you can ever post anything about him, even though there are quite a few cute photos of you with Harry. Eden recently bought a Polaroid printer and you borrowed it to print your favorite pictures of the two of you. There’s one from the morning after New Year’s Eve, just a silly selfie you took in bed, then one with the band from Harry’s birthday recently, a photo of the two of you backstage of one of his gigs you took in the mirror, he has his guitar in his hands as you stand next to him smiling widely. There are a few more with Sarah, Mitch, Charlotte and Adam and at the very end of the stack… some special ones.

You watch him go through them smiling warmly until he reaches the last few and freezes. You took the courage to take a few spicy ones of yourself in your favorite lingerie and thought it would be sexy to print them out as well and give them to him.

“I hope you’re not thinking about selling them already,” you chuckle. Harry glances up at you before shaking his head with a playful smirk.

“Was just a little surprised by them,” he admits.

“Do you… like them?”

“Oh baby, I love them, you look… wow,” he breathes out going over the pictures one more time. “But I’m gonna have to lock these away so no one finds them. Adam likes to go over my stuff when he is over, I definitely don’t want him to find them.”

“You better keep them safe because if anyone sees them I’m burying myself,” you snort.

Harry puts the stack of photos back into the box before leaning down he cups your face and kisses you gently.

“Thank you, love the pictures. All of them,” he adds cheekily and you feel yourself blushing.

He leans in to kiss you again, putting the box aside to the counter and this time it’s not just one short kiss, he carries it on, taking his time with your lips, savoring and tasting you without a worry in the world. It grows more and more passionate, tongues clashing and you tug at his hair, lacing your fingers through his locks, a moan escaping his pink lips.

You start inching backwards until your backside meets the edge of the counter. Harry doesn’t hesitate to pull your sweater off of you, throwing it behind before his lips are pressed against yours again. It doesn’t take long for his shirt and pants and your jeans to end up on the floor somewhere behind him, leaving you both in just your underwear. You kiss down his neck and collarbones, your lips gliding across his tattooed chest as you slowly slide down to your knees, hands moving over his growing bulge.

Hooking your fingers into the elastic of his boxers, you tug them down and pull his erection out, already so hard for you and you barely even touched him.

“What does my Valentine deserve for making me cupcakes?” you hum, teasingly pumping him a few times with your hands. Harry whimpers under your touch, but doesn’t answer so you stop your hands and look up at him. “Talk to me, what do you want?”

“Your mouth,” he breathes out, his eyes meeting yours, filled with lust and hunger only for you. Smirking to yourself you lick his length up before gently kissing the head, swirling your tongue around the tip before you slowly take him into your mouth.

“Oh fuck, baby!” he pants when you start bobbing your head, pumping the base in sync with your head’s movements.

His hand comes to the back of your head, fingers lacing through your hair. He doesn’t force you, he never does, just likes to hold onto you. You try to take him deeper and deeper with each movement until you fit his whole cock into your mouth, keeping it there for a few seconds before pulling away and letting him go.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he mumbles, helping you up from the floor, kissing your lips hard as he is already pulling your panties down your legs. “How do you want it?”

“From behind,” you tell without hesitation, turning around so you can lean onto the counter and push your ass up for him.

You feel one of his hands stroke down your spine while the other one reaches between your legs, his fingers finding your clit, drawing gentle circles on it at first before he goes a little harder, making you moan his name.

“Harry, please!” you beg, the need to feel him growing with each passing second.

He pulls his hand back, grabbing his hard cock as he lines himself up with you, one hand on his shaft, the other one holding your hip firmly to keep you in place. First he pushes just the tip inside and when he is sure you’re ready to take more, he slides all of him inside, filling you up perfectly.

“Shit, you feel so fucking good. Always so good,” he breathes out, both his hands coming to grip your waist as his hips meet your ass from behind.

He starts moving, going a little soft at the beginning before he gets rougher, his hips smacking against your ass with each thrust. You arch your back and push your ass up so you’re angled just perfectly for him, he runs a hand up your back, sliding it under the clasp of your bra and he leaves it there while fucking you from behind oh so well.

“Harry, oh my God!” you groan when he starts hitting that one spot that makes you go crazy.

“Feeling good, baby?”

“Fuck! So good!” you gasp, feeling the pleasure building up with each thrust. “Go harder!” you beg and once he has both hands on your hips again he does as you asked, railing into you hard, making you keep gasping for air.

“Getting close? Tell me when you’re about to cum, baby.”

“I’m close, please don’t stop!” you pant, hands holding onto the counter’s edge for dear life.

He reaches around you, a hand coming between your legs as his fingers find your clit again, adding to the sensation as he starts playing with it just the way you like it.

“Fuck, fuck! I’m gonna cum! Harry!” you moan uncontrollably and he growls deeply from his chest.

“Cum with me, baby. Give it to me,” he breathes out sharply and he just keeps railing you hard, fingers working on your clit until he feels your walls clench around his dick. “Oh fuck, yes, baby! Cum on my cock!” he gasps and at the same time as you go through your orgasm, you feel him twitch inside you, coming hard with you at the same time. “Jesus fuck! I love you, Y/N!”

You gasp at his words, eyes snapping open in the middle of your orgasm and all air pushes out of your lungs for a moment.

He whimpers and moans, thrusting into you a few more times before he comes to a halt, both of you panting like crazy, coming off your high. When he slowly slides his softening cock out of you, you turn around and look into his eyes. For a moment you thought he just said it in the heat of the moment and he didn’t even realize it, but when your eyes meet his, you can tell he is a little afraid of what your reaction is going to be.

“Did you mean that?” you quietly ask as he tucks his dick back into his boxers, pulling them up, but you don’t bother to put your underwear back on, standing there in only your bra.

“I-I did. I didn’t mean to say it now, but I did mean it,” he nods. “Is it… too soon?”

“No,” you smile at him, stepping closer so you can cup his face in your palms, kissing his lips softly. “I love you too.”

“You do?” he asks, surprised at your reaction.

“Of course, silly. I wouldn’t give my nudes to someone I don’t,” you joke making him chuckle, his arms coming to curl around your waist.

“Sorry, this wasn’t too… romantic,” he breathes out and you press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“You said you love me while fucking me on Valentine’s Day after exchanging cute gifts. I think it’s romantic,” you chuckle, finally making him smile. “Besides, I don’t care about the setting, just feels nice to hear you say it.”

“Yeah?” “Mhm, care to say it again so I can see your eyes as well?”

“I love you,” he softly murmurs, his forehead resting against yours.

“Yeah, feels better when I can actually look at you,” you chuckle kissing him softly. “I love you too.”

It’s definitely not just fun and games, being in a secret relationship that no one can know about. It surely adds a lot of tension into the situation, having to be so careful all the time and be reserved to the point where you can’t even be seen too often together.

As the semester carries on you always keep your ears open if there’s anything going on about you and Harry. Though you only limit your time together on campus to the bare minimum, only talking on rare occasions, you still want to make sure no one is getting the wrong (or right) idea about what is going on between the two of you.

The worst part is probably having to lie to Eden and Nat all the time. You spend about three nights at Harry’s every week and you have to lie every time you leave. After a while you tell them that you’re dating this new guy but he wants to keep it low-key because he recently broke up with his previous girlfriend. That gives them enough peace not to nag you all the time but you can tell they really want to meet this new man in your life.

You’ve tried to discuss it with Harry, tell him that they won’t tell anyone but it ended in a fight and you kind of gave up. Harry is way too keen on keeping it a secret and it’s clear he is not gonna make any exceptions. At least it’s the same with his friends, the two of you act like just friends when you’re out with the band though you have a suspicion that Sarah can see through the act. However she chooses not to talk about it so it’s kept hidden.

You don’t fight much with Harry, but when you do, it’s major. You both can get really into the argument and it easily gets way too heated, turning into a screaming match until you both realize you should just talk it out and have a little more understanding for each other. The makeup sex after a fight however… that’s something that makes up for every nasty thing that’s said in the heat of the moment.

Nearing the end of the semester you both start to grow more stressed, you about finishing your last classes, your thesis and studying for your finals, Harry about the growing pile of essays and tests waiting to be graded. A lot of the time when you’re at his place you both are busy with your own stuff and only have the chance to actually be with each other when you go to bed. It takes a toll on the both of you, but you’re determined to make it work. Despite the unfortunate nature of how you are forced to maintain your relationship, it’s the healthiest one you’ve ever head and you definitely won’t give up on it too easily.

Though you, Nat and Eden turn in your thesis works mid-April, the semester is still not done for the three of you, the final exams are threateningly close at this point. Spring has officially kicked in, the weather is mostly clear and sunny, allows you to stay outside again and you take advantage of it.

One particular afternoon the three of you are lounging under the pergola, all three of you buried in a book or your notes when you spot Harry walking towards the building. You keep your eyes on him as he slowly approaches you, his gaze meets yours and he smiles at you shortly. It’s all you can get out in the public, but it’s more than nothing.

“Isn’t it hard to see him?” Eden asks and glancing her way you see that she is looking at Harry who is now busy with his phone.

“Why would it be?”

“I don’t know, you clearly had a thing for him and it wasn’t even just a one-sided flirting like every other women had with him. I couldn’t be around him if it happened to me.”

“It’s not like anything major happened. It was all bad timing and the situation wasn’t good. It’s better this way,” you tell her, trying to sound convincing while the guilt is eating you on the inside. All these lies are clouding over your head and you have a feeling they will come down on you pouring one day.

“Still crazy that you are friends with his friends though,” Nat chimes in, squinting her eyes in the sunshine.

“Yeah, you are literally the only person on campus who gets to see him in his private life,” Eden nods. If only they knew how much you see him privately!

“It’s not that crazy,” you shrug, turning back to your book.

You all get back to work, forgetting about Harry, or at least Nat and Eden does, because you get a text from him shortly after he disappeared in the building.

Harry: You look very pretty today :)

Y/N: Flirting with me on campus, professor?

Harry: Can’t help it.

Y/N: You look handsome too, it’s a shame I can’t kiss you stupid!

Harry: Patience!

“Y/N? Did you hear what I said?” Nat grabs your attention from the phone and you realize she was talking to you.

“What? Uh, sorry.”

“I said that we should go out this weekend. It’s been ages since we last did anything other than studying.”

“I’m not sure…”

“Don’t come with your usual, rambling about how we shouldn’t have any fun before we finish,” Eden rolls her eyes.

“That’s not what I say. I just think that we have priorities.”

“I don’t know about you, but it’s a priority for me to have fun, so I’m down for a night out.

“I think I’m passing,” you mumble. You already made plans for the weekend with Harry, take a hike up the hills since the weather has been nice and it would be great to spend time together outside the house. The hiking routes are far away enough from town that uni students don’t like to take the hustle to drive all the way out so you’ll be fine being together outside.

“If you want to say that you have something planned with your mystery man, don’t even bother. If it’s not his birthday, we are overruling him,” Eden scoffs and you roll your eyes at her.

“Just go without me.”

“That’s not the same!” Nat whines. “Come on, Y/N. For once choose us!”

“That’s rude I choose you guys a lot of times!”

“Not since you’ve been spending half your life with some man and the other half in the library.”

“Yeah, we feel abandoned!” Nat pouts at you, trying to make you feel bad and in all honesty, she is succeeding.

“We can doll ourselves up, have fancy cocktails and all that, it’s gonna be fun! Come on, just one night! I can’t take another Saturday sitting in my room, reading my notes,” Eden growls and you sigh in defeat.

“Alright, I guess I’m in,” you mumble and your friends start cheering as if you just declared that men and women are going to get paid equally from now on.

You can tell Harry is bummed that you have to cancel your weekend plans, but he is also trying to be understanding.

“I couldn’t bring up a relevant argument so they made me say yes,” you growl when later that day you’re cuddling on his couch after dinner.

“S’fine,” he sighs, leaning down he pecks your lips shortly.

“Wish I could just tell them that I had plans with you,” you breathe out.

“Y/N…” “I know!” you roll your eyes. “It’s just that it would be nice if I could at least tell them the truth.”

“We already talked about this,” he sighs.

“I know, but that doesn’t change the fact that it bothers me,” you point out. “Am I not allowed to feel that way?”

“You are, I just don’t get why you keep bringing it up when there’s literally nothing I can do about it,” he retorts.

“Well there is, you just choose not to.” And with that, you officially pick another fight with him.

It’s not that you enjoy fighting with him, not at all, but the situation is so not ideal and you find his overprotectiveness a little too much at times. You don’t understand why you can’t share it with your two closest friends. You could at least tell Sarah or the other guys, have anyone know about the two of you, but literally no one on Earth knows that you are a couple and it’s bugging you way more than it probably should.

“Why are you so damn keen on making others know about us? What does that have to do with anything?” he growls throwing his hands into the air, standing in the opposite end of the room as you keep pacing the floor, the urge to keep on moving taking over you.

“Because—“ you snap, but stop yourself. You know if you say it out loud, he’ll think you’re stupid.

“Because what?!”

“Because i-it makes me feel like we are not even real! I can’t talk about us, I can’t touch you outside of this house, no one knows we are a thing and it’s so fucking nerve-wrecking, Harry!” you break down, feeling your throat closing up. You didn’t mean to get emotional over this, but you’ve been bottling it up for a while now.

Harry’s shoulder fall forward as he sees the change in you, the heat of the fight long forgotten. He crosses the room, hands reaching up to cup your face in his palms, his thumbs running across the soft skin under your eyes as he wipes the tears away.

“Baby, I know. You think I don’t want to show you off? I want to hold your hand and just take a walk with you, kiss you whenever I want to, show all the horny fratboys on campus that you’re taken. I know it’s hard, but we really don’t have a choice until the end of the semester.”

He gently kisses the tip of your nose before pulling you to his chest, your arms circle around his waist as you bury your face into the crook of his neck, trying to stop your sobs.

“I’m sorry. I really wish it was all different,” he murmurs, kissing into your hair softly.

“No, I’m sorry for bitching about this all the time. I knew what we were getting into,” you exhale sharply. “It just… really sucks.”

“It does. But we just have to be patient.”

You manage to put the fight behind and move on in peace, but a tiny thought remains buzzing in the very back of your mind. What happens when you finish school? Will it all be different? Harry will still be a professor and if people see you around together, they will know you were one of his students. What’s gonna be the difference? If he is so on edge now, something is telling you he won’t be changing dramatically and it concerns you. A lot.

Not willingly, but you go out with Nat and Eden on Saturday. You go to a place that’s quite popular between students, you can most likely always find familiar faces from lecture halls and classes. It’s close to campus and more on the cheap side, the perfect spot for uni students for a night of fun.

As expected, you run into some people from school and they invite the three of you to sit with them at their table which comes in handy, because there’s no empty place by the time you arrive.

One drink follows the other and you easily get tipsy especially because you skipped on dinner before heading out. Though you weren’t in the mood for tonight, you find yourself enjoying the conversation and the company. It really has been long since the last time you went out with the girls and it’s nice to spend some time with them without the books and notes.

A debate starts about whose course one of the boys, Jace should take next semester.

“Professor Peltz is fucking boring, dude,” Nat growls, taking a sip from her drink. “Had him last semester, I could barely stay awake during his lectures.”

“Yeah, but they say he gives good grades easily,” Jace argues.

“Okay, but who else can you choose from again?” Lydia, a girl who lived a few doors down from you when you lived in a dormitory your first year.

“Um, Professor Makley and Professor Styles.”

You freeze at the mention of Harry, especially upon hearing Lydia’s reaction.

“Jace, choose Professor Styles! He is so fucking hot!”

“Not that it matters to me, Lyd,” Jace chuckles.

“Oh come on, I know even guys think he is hot.”

You feel like an intruder in the conversation, keeping quiet as you listen to her rave about how hot she finds Harry. It’s like you are eavesdropping on something that wasn’t meant for your ears, but it’s just the guilt bubbling inside you once again, because you know you won’t be able to say a word without having to lie.

“She has a point,” another guy, Garrett chimes into the conversation. “The man is handsome and I’m not even ashamed to admit it.”

“See?” Lydia chuckles. “He is sexy and smart, the whole package. I’ve been daydreaming about him since first year.”

You catch Eden’s look, but you just busy yourself with gulping from your vodka cranberry, feeling uncomfortable in the situation but not even for the reason she thinks. Eden must think it’s weird because you had an actual thing with Harry, but the truth is… that thing is still very much ongoing.

“I would let that man do whatever he wants with me,” Lydia adds sighing longingly, and you are having a hard time to hold your tongue. Unfortunately, you don’t succeed.

“Not sure he wants anything to do with you,” you mumble into your drink and though you hoped your comment would stay unnoticed, but you are out of luck.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Lydia slyly replies, a bit too full of herself for your liking. Yes, she is pretty and definitely doesn’t have problem with guys, but she is a little too confident about Harry if you’re being honest.

“I’m sorry?” you ask with a soft, bit annoyed chuckle.

“I’m just saying that we’ll never know who he finds attractive, because we all know he keeps himself so far from his students.”

“Yeah, maybe because he is not interested in any of his students,” you point out.

“As if he would ever make a move on any of us,” she snorts and you are losing your temper. You shouldn’t have had so much to drink, because now you really can’t hold your tongue.

“You can never know, Lydia. You can’t know if he acts the way he does because he is just trying to be professional or because he is, and consider this, not interested in you. Maybe he would actually act up on his feelings but you’re just not his type.”

Your comment is more like just a harsh comeback to Lydia’s words, but Nat and Eden kind of catch on that something is up with you. Ignoring their questioning looks you chug down your drink and soon excuse yourself to get some fresh air. No surprise that they follow you like puppies.

“Girl, what was that inside?” Nat asks as the three of you stand near the entrance of the bar, a few smoking guests littering the area.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” you mumble, clearly avoiding to look at any of them, wrapping your arms around your upper body as if you were trying to keep your shit together physically.

“You snapped at Lydia for saying Professor Styles might have a thing for her,” Eden points out, but you just bite the inside of your cheeks.

“Because it was bullshit.”

“Why does that matter to you? Not that you’re together with him or something,” Nat argues and you roll your lips into your mouth, trying to keep a straight face but they know you way better than that. They gasp at the same time, Eden grabbing your forearm forcefully that makes you scowl.

“Hey! That hurts!” you whine, but she couldn’t care less.

“Are you fucking around with Professor Styles?” Nat whisper yells at you, eyes wider than ever.

“I mean… we’re not fucking around,” you mumble, looking down at your shoes as you kick the dirt around. “We’re kinda serious.”

“Holy fucking shit!” Eden snaps, drawing some attention at her and you let out an awkward chuckle at the glances the three of you get. “Are you fucking joking right now?”

“No, I am… not,” you admit, feeling a little relieved that you finally said it, but you also feel like you let Harry down with it.

“How long?” Nat questions in shock.

“Since New Year’s Eve. So… almost four months.”

“So he is the one you’ve been seeing all this time? The guy you didn’t want to talk about?”

“Um, yeah. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk about him, we just agreed that it’s safer if no one knows.”

“I’m speechless, Y/N,” Eden shakes her head in disbelief. “I can’t fucking believe you kept it from us for this long!”

“I know, I felt so shitty, but it’s such a complicated situation, it’s so risky, we don’t want it to ruin us.”

“Obviously,” Nat nods understandingly. “And now I see why you snapped so harshly at Lydia.”

“I just couldn’t stand her talking like that. You guys have no idea how hard it is to keep every fucking thought to myself.”

“Why do I have a feeling it has a little more to it than to just Lydia drooling over Harry?” Nat arches an eyebrow at you, folding her arms over her chest.

“Yeah, you’ve been oddly tensed lately,” Eden agrees.

“It’s just pretty stressful to have a secret relationship, it causes a lot of tension. And I’ve been… I’m not sure anything is going to change after I graduate, if I’m being honest.”

“What do you mean?” Nat asks.

“I just…” you sigh, all your thoughts you kept to yourself flooding back to you at once, overwhelming you in a situation that’s already a bit too much to handle. “We keep saying that it’s gonna change when I graduate, but I don’t see it. He is so overprotective and even if I graduate, people will find out that I was once his student. And it might not be against the rules anymore, but we’ll be judged. I didn’t think it through before, but it’s now starting to be more and more clear for me and I just… don’t know if we can make it work.”

You feel the tears forming in your eyes, you’ve been keeping this to yourself for way too long now and saying it out loud just broke the dam. When Nat and Eden sees your lips trembling and the watery eyes you’re trying to blink away, they don’t hesitate to pull you into a tight hug.

“Aw, don’t cry! It makes me want to cry too!” Nat chuckles softly as they sandwich you between them.

“It just sucks so much, because I love him, but I feel like we met at the wrong time and place,” you sob, letting them crush you.

“It happens, baby. It happens. You’ll figure it out!” Eden kisses your forehead before they let go of you. “Want to go home?”

“It’s still early, don’t want to kill the party. I think I’ll just… head over to Harry’s for now. Is that okay?”

“Of course, do whatever makes you feel better,” Nat assures you, giving your hand a gentle squeeze.

“I’m sorry I was such a party pooper.”

You call yourself an Uber and text Harry that you are going over. Twenty minutes later you are walking up the stairs to his house and he opens the front door before you could even reach for the doorknob.

“Hey, baby,” he breathes out softly and you don’t say a word, just wrap your arms around his waist, burying your face into the crook of his neck. “Hey, what happened? Didn’t have a good time with your friends?” He delicately caresses your hair, walking the two of you inside so he can close the door before wrapping both his arms around you, holding you close to his chest.

“Don’t really want to talk about it,” you mumble and it’s the truth. You’re tired of these thoughts though you know you should talk to him about how you’ve been feeling about the two of you lately. Part of you is hoping something will just magically solve the whole situation and you won’t have to deal with it yourself.

Harry makes you a tea while you take a shower and once you are both in bed, you cuddle to his side while he reads some. You are just genuinely enjoying his closeness, because despite everything that’s been haunting you in connection with Harry, you really love this man. Like no one else before and the possibility of the two of you not making it long term scares you more than it probably should.

The next few weeks come and go in a sense of numbness. Following your emotional breakdown in front of the bar, you kind of push the whole thing to the back of your mind once again, putting all your focus on finishing school. Neither you nor Harry has the energy to put up more fights though you both can feel there’s a lot to talk about, but the end of the semester is just keeping you both way too busy to acknowledge the problems waiting on the corner.

At least there’s one less weight on your shoulders now that Nat and Eden know about you and Harry. You made them swear to their life they won’t tell anyone and you trust them to keep this heavy secret. They’ve been very supportive of the two of you, interrogated you one evening about everything that happened so far, they wanted to make sure Harry treats you the right way. No surprise, he does.

A few weeks before your state exam Harry extends his contract with the school to have him as a professor for another academic year so he is able to keep his visa as well.

You spend your last two weeks buried in your notes before your state exam and Harry gives you all the time and space you need, knowing well how much it means to you to earn the best grade possible.

When you are finally over your exam, you are celebrating at his place. He has bought a little cake and some champagne and you can’t wait to finally spend some time with him without having to worry about your studies.

“I’m proud of you, baby,” he smiles at you, clinking his glass against yours.

“Thank you, feels nice to be finally free,” you chuckle before taking a sip from the champagne.

“My smart girl, knew you’d kill all your exams.” He kisses your lips shortly before squeezing your hand. “How about I run a bath for us, we eat the cake in the tub and then we can watch a movie?”

“Sounds fantastic,” you smile at him before he disappears in the bathroom to get everything ready.

Finishing your champagne you wash the glass quickly and you’re about to cut the cake when your phone buzzes signaling that you’ve just gotten an email. As pull down the notification bar your lips part reading the first few lines. You open the whole thing and read through it eagerly.

It’s a job offer, but not just some lame one that also sounds sketchy at the same time. This one is from one of the biggest investigation offices in London and they are offering you a trainee position as a forensic document examiner with a possible secured spot on their team after one year. The money sounds amazing, the position is perfect, just what you’ve been dreaming of once you are done with school and they are looking forward to hear back from you about a possible interview in the near future.

“Alright, bath is coming together nicely, want to cut the ca—Wha’s up?” Harry questions upon returning from the bathroom, finding you staring at your phone’s screen with widened eyes.

“I, uhh—I just got a… a job offer,” you stutter, still rereading the lines, trying to find a sign that tells you it’s just a joke, but it seems completely genuine.

“What? Baby, that’s amazing!”

“Yeah,” you nod swallowing hard before you look up at him. “It’s in London.”

You watch his face fall from excited and happy to shocked and kind of panicky. You both know what that means, it doesn’t have to be said out loud. Harry just signed another year with the university that’s gonna tie him here for the next 12 months and if you accept the job you’ll be all the way across the world in the UK. Kind of ironic, him, the British guy stuck in the States while you, the American in the relationship, eager to go to the UK.

“That’s… wow. London.”

“Yeah, London,” you nod biting the inside of your cheeks.

“Are you… Are you gonna take it?”

“Well, they want an interview with me, but this is clearly a huge opportunity for me,” you say, not wanting to say the actual words. You feel like saying them would hit you harder than what you can take.

“It clearly is, it’s just that… You want to leave?” he breathes out, eyebrows knitting together.

“This is my only job offer and probably the best I’ll ever get.”

“So you do want to leave,” he forces and it’s pushing your limits.

“Career-wise, of course!” you finally say out loud, unwillingly.

“And what about everything else?”

“I clearly don’t want to leave everything else here, but I will never get a chance like this, Harry. This is the greatest push for someone like me, fresh out of school. I can have a secured spot in a year at a well-respected place. I’m not really in the position to reject offers like this.”

He exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair, clearly unsure about what to do or say in the situation on his hand. You can tell he has a lot to say, but you’re not sure you want to hear all of them.

“Say something?” you softly plead and his eyes meet yours again, filled with concern.

“I just… It took me by surprise, I guess.”

“I wasn’t expecting it either.”

“No, not the job offer,” he shakes his head.

“Then what?”

“That you are ready to leave so easily. It’s like you never even wanted to discuss a version where you stay here, you just decided that you are leaving and that’s it.”

“Did you hear me? I cannot pass on this opportunity, Harry.”

“I did hear you,” he nods, pressing his lips together. “I heard that you didn’t even think about saying no.”

“Why would I say no?”

“Because I’m here, Y/N!” he snaps. “Good to know that I’m not a factor when it comes to decisions as big as leaving the country!”

“You are, Harry, but I need to think about my future career now. I’m not planning to work at an office for the rest of my life and if I pass on this job I might never get anything as good as this one,” you explain, but it seems like the two of you are having two different conversations.

“But why do I feel like it was never an option for you to stay?”

You give him a confused look. He really doesn’t see your point.

“Okay, why was only I supposed to change plans for us? You coming to London doesn’t feel like an option either, why are you trying to turn this against me?”

“I just extended my contract, you know that.”

“I do, and also, while we are at it, you didn’t ask me about that either. You didn’t even wait for me to figure out what I want to do after school, you just assumed that I would be here, but I never said that.” You can tell it hit him hard in the chest but somehow still, he thinks he is right when he isn’t.

“How could have I known you’d want to move across the globe?” he throws his hands up into the air.

“You’re saying this as if I didn’t just get the email and I’ve been plotting this the whole fucking time!”

“I’m just saying that it’s a huge fucking step and you decided so easily, it says a lot about the nature of our relationship.”

“Why are you saying that?!” you snap at him. “Why are you trying to make me the bad guy?”

“I’m not! I’m just saying that it would have been nice if you at least pretended like it was up for debate. You know what it’ll do to us if you move to London.”

“Then come with me!”

“I can’t!” He raises his voice, clearly losing his temper. “I can’t break my contract and you know that too.”

“Well, I can’t afford to say no to the job either and if I’m being honest, I don’t think we could have made it work even if I stayed.” The words leave your mouth before you could think about them, and the cat is finally out of the bag. It seemingly shocked Harry and he is now staring at you with a blank expression, shoulders falling forward.

“What?” he breathes out and you can actually hear his heart breaking. You take a deep breath and rub your face with your palms, trying to collect your thoughts and not just blurt everything out.

“I’ve been thinking and… Even after I’m officially out of the school, people will know that I was your student if they see us together. And I know how important your reputation is for you so I would never put you through any of the shit we might get for us being together. People would judge, no matter what the situation is. I don’t… I just don’t think we can ever make it work here.”

He stays silent, just stares at you, taking in your words and once again, you wish you could read his mind. You almost start begging him to say something when he finally speaks up.

“So you think we don’t have a chance?”

“Not here… maybe not now. I feel like this has been the perfect example of wrong place, wrong time,” you quietly say, a pang of guilt in your tone, this is not how you planned on making this conversation. To be honest, you wished this never had to come, but you were out of luck.

Harry is awfully silent, it’s all over his face how broken he is and you feel the same. You have so much love for this man, yet fate decided you don’t get to share it with him the way you want.

Walking closer you cup his face in your palms, searching for his eyes until his green irises meet your gaze. You run your thumb across his cheekbones, the pads of your fingers gliding softly over the soft skin. His hands slowly find their way to your waist and he pulls you close to him as you kiss him tenderly, a silent confession about just how much you love him.

“I wanted this to work. I wanted this so badly,” he whispers against your lips, his fingers digging into your back as he keeps you tight in his hold.

“I know. Me too,” you smile at him bitterly.

The rest of the evening passes by silently. You take a bath together, finish the cake anyway though even the sweetness can’t help the pain you both feel. Then you lie in bed for hours, just touching and feeling each other, making the best out of the time you have left. It’s unsaid, but you both know your days together are coming to a close end. Kisses and touches turn into some passionate love making, both of you desperate to feel as close to each other as possible and then you fall asleep in each other’s arms.

If you’re being honest, it’s all a blur following that night. You fix up an interview with London a few days later and they are not shying out of telling you straightforward that they want you there, the job is yours. You have one last short conversation with Harry about you leaving, but it’s more like just a confirmation that yes, it is going to happen and that leaves you with only a few weeks left together before you are packing up to leave the country.

You spend every possible free minute together until graduation where you finally get your degree. Your whole family comes and they cheer on you proudly, Harry standing in the crowd a little farther in the back, but still with a proud smile, a hint of gloominess in his beautiful green eyes. A week later you officially move out of your shared apartment with the girls, it’s a sobbing goodbye since all three of you are leaving in different directions following your graduation. You spend your last two weeks before your departure at home, spending as much time with your family as possible since you won’t be able to see them too often once you leave. Though your mom is dying to take you to the airport to say her final goodbye, you decided to give that time to Harry. He said he would drive to your hometown, pick you up and take you to the airport and you already know it’s gonna turn you into an emotional mess.

Leaving everything behind is hard, but having to say goodbye to Harry is the worst. It’s been a whole emotional rollercoaster for the both of you to get to this point and neither of you are ready to say goodbye, but this is what needs to happen.

That morning, you hug your parents, sister and brother tightly after you load Harry’s car with your two huge suitcases that have your whole life packed in them. You asked your family not to ask any questions about Harry and luckily, they kept quiet the whole time he was there, just treating him as a friend. You couldn’t take having to explain to them who he really is and how you met him, that’s gonna be another conversation for the future when you don’t feel like you’re about to start crying the moment you open your mouth.

The ride to the airport is silent, Harry holds your hand, your glued together palms lying on your lap the whole time. You haven’t even left but you already miss him so much.

Arriving he helps you bring all your stuff inside and patiently waits until you check your baggage in, leaving you with just your carry-on. Standing near the security check, the final moment finally comes and as soon as you look into his eyes you start bawling your eyes out.

“Oh baby, come ‘ere,” he breathes out, pulling you into his arms.

“I’m so sorry, Harry. I told you we would make everything right, but I couldn’t,” you sob into his chest as he holds you tight. You feel like if he let go of you, you’d just turn into a puddle at his feet.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he soothes you, his fingers threading through your hair.

“But it feels like it was,” you choke out. Harry leans back and takes your puffy cheeks between his warm palms, looking deep into your eyes.

“It wasn’t. As you said, it was just a matter of wrong time and place. But I think we brought the best out of it.”

“So… you don’t regret it?” you softly ask, eyebrows knitted together in concern.

“Absolutely not,” he smiles at you kindly. “I loved every moment of it. And I love you.” You notice how he didn’t use past tense when he said he loves you and you can’t decide if it aches your heart more or fills you with joy. A little bit both of them.

“I love you too,” you whisper before pressing your lips against his, savoring them one last time before you leave everything behind.

“Maybe we’ll meet again,” he smiles sweetly when he pulls back, tugging your hair behind your ear with a gentle move.

“I really hope,” you chuckle through your tears. “Take care, Harry,” you tell him, pecking his lips just once more.

“You too, baby,” he smiles, his hands falling to his sides as he lets go of you.

Turning around you walk into security and as you go with the line towards the gates, you glance back one last time. Harry is standing in the exact same spot, eyes glued to you as he watches you disappear from his sight.

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It feels like the meeting is never coming to its end. You exchange a look with Jasmine, who seems just as tired and done with this two hours long discussion as you are. She grabs her phone from the table and you watch her something type out before she eyes at your device, signaling that she just texted you.

Jas: I need alcohol after this day. Want to have a drink with me after work?

Y/N: YES PLEASE!!!!!!!

You see her smile at her screen before both of you return to your boss at the front, talking about a possible upcoming case.

“And last but not least, I want to take a moment to bring light to the excellent work Y/N, our new full-time colleague did on the Santiago case. The police were highly satisfied with the fast and precise work you did. This was your first official case since you’ve decided to accept our offer to become a full member of our team and transferred from your position as a trainee. Congrats!” William, your boss nods in your way with a proud smile as a round of applause cheers for you from your colleagues.

“You go girl!” Jasmine mouths you from across the table and you just chuckle shaking your head.

The meeting finally wraps up and everyone goes on with their day. You are walking back to your office with Jasmine by your side. Your offices are next to each other and you started working here just three weeks apart. She is the same age as you and was approached the same way as well, it’s just that she moved all the way from Australia. The two of you have grown quite close, starting a new life at the same time in a foreign country, it easily brought you together.

“So are we leaving early for those drinks or what?” she asks poking your side.

“How early?”

“I don’t know, like fifteen minutes? Come on, it’s Friday, everyone leaves early!” You shake your head chuckling at her. She can be so restless sometimes, but it’s just the right amount that she can push you out of the comfort zone just enough.

“Alright.”

“Cool, I’ll come banging on your door,” she winks at you before disappearing for her usual coffee break.

It’s two in the afternoon, you still have a few hours ahead of you and some caffeine sounds perfect actually. Though the coffee at the office is excellent, you’ve grown to like this small place nearby, a family owned business that offers the best you’ve ever had.

You grab your bag from your office and head out for a quick coffee run. The walk to the café is freshening, the weather has been treating you well lately, the Sun is beaming and you can only hope you won’t wake up to pouring rain the next morning.

You think back to how lost you were feeling just a year ago, when all of this around you were so new and a little too much at once. One month into your time in London you even thought about quitting and moving back home. You felt alone and broken, yearning after everything you left behind. Your friends, family, loved ones, everything that was so far away from you.

It took you long weeks, even months to get used to your new life and now you can’t even imagine yourself anywhere else. It doesn’t miss you don’t miss terribly the life you had still, but now you have a lot to be happy about here as well.

Waiting at a crossroad, you find yourself twirling around the strawberry ring on your finger, your thumb fidgeting with it like every time you think about your home. You glance down at it and take a deep breath before the lamp turns green and you continue your walk to the café.

It’s not rush hours so there are only a few people lingering around the small place. You don’t have to think about what you are getting, James, the barista already knows your usual and starts making it right away as you swipe your card paying your drink.

You stand at the side, waiting for your coffee, staring out the window, watching people pass by on this lovely afternoon. Your gaze stops on an old lady sitting on a nearby bench, feeding a group of pigeons and you smile as a little girl runs through the birds, making them fly away instantly. The old lady just smiles at the girl, not holding a grudge that she just scared the birds away.

Your eyes move away, watching businessmen come and go, kids going home from school, wearing their school uniforms, everything just feels so… peaceful.

You are almost about to turn away from the window when your gaze falls on a tall figure near the Sainsbury’s across the road and your lips part as you catch a glimpse of a tattooed arm you know all too well. You blink once, twice, three times, waiting for your eyes to make sure it’s the person you think it is.

Harry is standing right there, holding a little bag of groceries, eyes glued to the screen of his phone, oblivious to your shocked gaze on him. Your feet move before your brain could think it through, they take you out of the café and you stand in the middle of the sidewalk as you call out for him.

“Harry!”

His head snaps up at his name, eyes looking around, searching for the source before they finally find you, a shocked, but seemingly joyful expression plastering over his handsome face. He is quick to shove his phone into his pocket before he watches both ways and runs across the road to meet you on the other side. You can’t push your smile down as you watch him approach you, his tall, fit figure getting closer and closer until he is standing right in front of you, watching you in awe.

“Hey,” he breathes out, both of you a little unsure of what to do, how to greet each other.

It’s been months since you last talked. After your departure you kept in contact, you couldn’t just distance yourself from him so abruptly, but the thousands of miles between the two of you made it almost impossible to maintain a working connection, the time zones, all the work you both were buried under and just life itself made you drift away from each other.

But he is now standing in front of you and though he looks slightly different, he is still the Harry you know and love. He is your Harry.

“What… what are you doing here?” you ask, finally finding your voice.

“Did you forget I’m British?” you teases you and you roll your eyes.

“I mean, are you visiting family or something?”

“I uhh…” he glances down at his feet before his eyes meet yours again. “I’m actually back.”

“What do you mean?”

“My contract ended in July and I didn’t… I didn’t extend it. I came back a few weeks ago.”

Your lips part at the information. Harry is in London, he is now in the same city as you, for the first time in a whole year.

“Really? That’s… wow.” There’s too much you want to tell and ask him, yet you stand there, blinking at him, still lost in the feeling of seeing him for the first time again.

“I actually wanted to contact you when I got back, but I wasn’t… I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about that,” he admits with a nervous chuckle and your eyes soften over him.

“What do you mean? I would have loved it if you called.”

“It’s just that we haven’t talked in a while and I didn’t know… I didn’t know where you’re standing about me.”

“Well, seems like fate did it for you,” you smile at him warmly. “I would love to catch up. I have to head back to work now, but maybe later?”

“What about after work? When are you getting off?”

“I finish at 5.”

“I can meet you at your work if you text me the address.”

“That would be great,” you nod smiling. “My number is still the same, so you’ll know it’s me.”

“Great,” he nods, the corners of his mouth curling up in a boyish smirk. You are just now realizing how much you’ve missed him.

“I, um…” You’re trying to find the right words, still feeling overwhelmed about the sudden run-in, but at last you decide to go for a hug.

Your arms wrap around his waist, he hesitates for a moment before wrapping you in his tight embrace, pressing his cheek against the top of your head. A shiver runs down your spine as the sense of home washes over you all at once, the warmth of Harry’s body making your heart flutter. Unfortunately, the moment must come to an end. His arms fall from around you, just like they did at the airport when you said goodbye to each other over a year ago.

“I’ll… see you later then,” he smiles as you are backing towards the entrance of the café.

“Yeah, later,” you nod and turning around you walk inside.

Arriving back to the office you drop by Jasmine’s office to tell her that you have to postpone your plans after work.

“What is more important than getting drunk with me?” she gasps dramatically.

“I ran into… I met Harry,” you tell her. You told her all about Harry one evening when you were out, just a few months into your stay. It was one of those days when you were feeling extremely homesick, or maybe you just missed him terribly.

“What? Your professor ex?” she asks with widened eyes.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, you are forgiven. Go and get the man back!”

“What?” you chuckle. “We just met after a year, how do you know I want him back? Maybe I just want to catch up with him,” you say, but it’s an obvious and blatant lie and you both know that. Jasmine gives you a look.

“Please, you are still so obviously in love with the man, don’t even try to convince me otherwise.”

You don’t protest, just bite into your bottom lip. You really are in love with him, or the version you knew a year ago. He could be an entirely different person now so you can’t be sure if your feelings are the same about the man you met today.

“Have fun with him and then tell me all about it after, okay?” she beams and you just nod, leaving her to finish her work.

As time is slowly passing by you find yourself growing nervous about seeing Harry. That short little conversation on the street was not enough to calm your nerves. What is he like now? Is he the same? Does he have new hobbies? Is he as happy to see you as you are to see him? What will he think of you? What if he doesn’t like you after all this time?

You try to push the questions to the back of your mind, not wanting to overwhelm yourself too much to the point where you chicken out of seeing him. When you’re on your way down following his text that he is waiting for you in front of the building, you are trying to keep yourself together and remind yourself that it’s just Harry, he might be a little different, but he is still kind of the same.

Luckily, the moment you spot him waiting a few feet away from the entrance, you forget about everything else, he is the only one to exist. He envelopes you in a hug when you arrive, smiling at you warmly.

“Hi, ready to go?” he kindly asks and you nod.

You settle for a nearby bar you’ve actually been to with Jasmine before. Harry insists on paying for the first round of drinks as the two of you settle in a secluded booth at the back. When he is standing at the bar you catch yourself watching him in awe. The situation is quite odd, could have never happened probably back home, the two of you casually out for a drink.

“What’s gotten you so smiley?” he asks upon returning, sitting across you.

“I was just thinking how this is the first time we are out, just the two of us.”

Harry smiles softly, probably appreciating it just the same.

The next couple of hours you both try to share anything and everything that has happened in the past year. He tells you about his last year as a professor and him not extending his contact. Coming back to London he has joined a research group for a marketing company, using his excellent knowledge to analyze human behavior in connection with different type of ads.

“It’s a lot different from being a college professor ain’t it?” you tease him and he nods chuckling.

“Guess I wanted some change. But it’s been nice, I enjoy doing a lot of research and experiments.”

Then you tell him about your time as a forensic document examiner, all the different cases you worked on and how it has been, living in London on your own. He listens to your tales about everything you’ve done with Jasmine, the concerts and karaoke bars you’ve been to and just generally your life overseas.

“Sounds like you’ve found your place, then,” he says smiling softly.

“I guess. Wasn’t an easy transition, but I’m feeling good now,” you nod. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss my past,” you add.

His eyes wander down to your hands that are fidgeting with your almost empty glass. You see how they stop over the ring and he seems surprised as he reaches out, takes your hand in his and runs his thumb over the little strawberries.

“You’re still wearing the ring,” he states.

“Of course,” you smile and when he is about to let go of your hand, you grab it and hold it, needing to feel his touch.

You wanted to run back home so many times because you were missing him too badly, missed his voice, his eyes, his touch, everything and now, out of nowhere, he is here with you again, far away from the place where it all started and had to end for a while, still making you feel like home, no matter where you are.

At one point, you move to sit beside him in the booth. You just keep sharing and sharing even things you’ve talked about on the phone before. You’re just soaking each other in. His arm soon moves around your shoulders and you gladly lean into his side, placing a hand to his thigh, sparkles running through your body.

“I love this,” you hum to yourself upon finishing your last drink.

“Love what?”

“Being out with you without a worry. I always dreamt of this and it’s just… so natural. I wish we got to experience it before.”

“As you said, that was a wrong time and place. Wasn’t our fault.”

You lift your head, eyes meeting his curious green irises as he smiles down at you kindly. You’ve missed that smile, it still makes your heart skip a beat, just like at the beginning.

“And do you think it’s the right time and place now?” you prompt the question.

“It’s definitely… better,” he chuckles softly. “Unless you are seeing someone, because now would be the best time to tell me.”

“I’m not,” you shake your head smirking. “Tried to go on dates, but truth is… none of them were you. I gave up after a few terrible attempts.”

“I didn’t even try,” he shyly smiles. “I just… knew no one would make me as happy as you did. As you always do.”

Pushing yourself up a bit, you rest your forehead against his as he closes his eyes, his arm around your shoulder tightens and his other hand rests on your thigh, pulling you closer. Your palm slides up his chest and neck until you’re cupping his cheek. You place a soft lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth, testing the waters out, seeing how he reacts though nothing that happened tonight tells you he wants to keep his distance.

He moves his face, nose nudging against you before his lips find yours in a kiss you’ve been longing for since you left him behind at the airport over a year ago. Your fingers lace through his hair, pulling him towards you as if he could escape from your hold any moment, but he is definitely here to stay. Your lips clash again and again, savoring each other, eagerly trying to make up for the time you lost since your departure. You melt into his arms, moving your legs across his lap as he pulls you to his lap in the booth, partially hidden from the rest of the bar, wrapped up in your little bubble. He tastes like home, his kisses feel like the first warm rays of sunshine after a long and cold winter, the only thing you couldn’t really get yourself over this whole year. Because you’ve become good at pushing your feelings down to the point where you could easily carry on, but he was always in the corner of your mind, making you wonder if you’ll ever meet again and if you do, will it be the same as before?

It’s not, because it’s better. The burdens and banters that tied you both down a year ago are now long gone, you have all the time and space in the world, nothing is restricting you. You can touch him and kiss him whenever and wherever you want. There’s no more sneaking around, no one here knows who you are and who Harry used to me to you. Here, you’re just another lovesick couple, so into each other it’s almost insane.

When he pulls back his forehead stays rested against yours as you both are trying to catch your breath. His hand runs up and down your thigh, the warmth of his palm melting your body under his soft touch.

“I love you,” he breathes out, eyes meeting yours.

“You still do?” you ask with a small smile, heart beating in your throat.

“I never stopped loving you,” he admits and you let out a shaky breath, pulling him down for a short kiss.

“Not even when I was an ocean away from you?”

“No,” he chuckles shaking his head. “If that’s possible, I loved you even more when you were away. I realized how much you mean to me and I could only hope you weren’t moving on without me.”

“I could never,” you smile at him softly. “I love you too much to do that.”

“You have no idea how much I missed you say that,” he breathes out with a soft chuckle and you kiss his lips shortly, assuring him that you feel the same way. “So… are we going to try again?”

“Do you want to?”

“There’s nothing I want more, baby,” he truthfully admits, his gaze softening at you as he brushes a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “Do you want to?”

“Of course,” you smile at him widely. “I think it’s settled.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed it!

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