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pers1st · 2 months

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afterglow - alexia putellas x reader

part 3 of dancing with the devil, painkillers

pairing: alexia putellas x singer!reader

warnings: mentions of OD

Keira was taken away first. Alexia noticed it as she marched across the damp pitch, a winter coat shielding her body from the cool wind, her body glistening with sweat. Barcelona had won, the way they always did, and Alexia, as the captain, had been the first to call the team into a circle afterwards, in order to listen to Jona's speech, which she knew wouldn't be long today, and thank the fans afterwards.

The chants and cheers had been relentless today. Alexia knew it was the right thing to walk towards them and spend time with them, thank them, but as she watched Lucy, who had spent the last twenty minutes on the sub bench, put her arms around Keira and softly guided her shaking ex-girlfriend away from the pitch, tears shining in her own eyes, Alexia's feet stopped moving. Her gaze followed the women until it couldn't, and they disappeared into the tunnel.

If Lucy cried, something bad had likely happened. If she told Keira, it likely involved you. Alexia's heart was racing at the realization, and she managed to take a total of three rushed steps before a body pulled her shoulders back. Fighting the force slightly as she wriggled in what she knew was her best friend's grip, Alexia's worry soon turned into anger.

"¡Suélta me!" (Let me go), Alexia whispered through clenched teeth, struggling to free her arms of Mapi's grip and follow Lucy and Keira to wherever they had disappeared to.

"No", Mapi sighed, and suddenly appeared on Alexia's side, only letting go of the shoulder closest to her. Ingrid suddenly stepped towards Alexia's other side. It seemed the woman had appeared out of thin air, but your ex-girlfriend didn't have the capacity to wonder where she'd come from, or why the two were escorting her into the tunnel and towards the nearest office. Ingrid peaked through the door and sighed a snip of relief at the realization that the room was empty.

"¿Que pasa?", (What happened?) Alexia asked, her voice softer this time as she realized that something had most definitely happened. And it most definitely involved you.

"It's about Y/N", Ingrid started, leading Alexia to sit in the chair across from the desk before turning the chair around softly, crouching down in front of Alexia. The captain couldn't see the darkness in Ingrid's eyes, or the way her shoulders slumped, or the fact that this whole setup meant very, very bad news.

"Did she call you? Did you hear from her? What did she- what did she say?", Alexia asked, hope suddenly glooming in her. Maybe you had reached out to Ingrid, maybe Keira had reached out to Ingrid, maybe you wanted her back, maybe you'd allow her back into your life, maybe the two of you-

"No, Ale", Mapi sighed, a soft touching finding her shoulder gently. Alexia looked up at the woman who stood in front of her, and only then did she see the tears in her best friend's eyes. Mapi didn't cry often. She was like Lucy in that sense.

"Ale, she-"

Ingrid struggled to find the words to describe. Alexia struggled to find the air to breathe.

"She overdosed. She's in the hospital- it's-", before Ingrid could finish her sentence, Alexia swatted her hand away from her knee.

"No. No, no, no-", she breathed, suddenly the room closing in on her. The walls came flying closer and she could do nothing but allow Ingrid and Mapi to stare at her. Tears spilled from her eyes quicker than she could stop them, but in all honesty, even trying would've been useless. The woman sitting in front of Mapi and Ingrid wasn't the stern faced, dedicated and composed captain of Barcelona and Spain anymore, the woman in front of them was a crying, broken woman. She hid her face in her hands to shield herself at least a little bit, but it was no use.

You had overdosed. You took drugs?! Had this started before the breakup, had she done this to you? Had you done this on purpose? Had you been broken enough to want to-

Had she done this to you?

She thought back to the livestream just a few hours ago. It seemed like an eternity now. It was clear as day now - the way you had wobbled on stage, the way you had been so devoid of emotion, the way everything had just seemed off with you - you had been high. Since when were you doing drugs?! How had she missed this?

It took Ingrid's hand to reach her knee again for the woman to realize she couldn't breathe anymore.

"Ale, please- you have to-"

Alexia couldn't hear the rest of her words, because the sob that left her mouth was one loud enough to, it seemed to her, shake the whole stadium.

Overdosed. Overdosed. Overdosed.

The sobs kept wrecking her frame, even as Ingrid gripped her knee harder in an attempt to steady her captain.

"Alexia", Mapi pleaded, her words barely above a whisper. Had Alexia not been so encapsulated in her own thoughts, in her own pain, she might've realized how odd it was for Mapi to get, she might've realized how close she was to having a panic attack.

But she didn't. She couldn't hear Ingrid begging for her to take a breath, couldn't hear the soothing words the both of them kept repeating over and over again.

All she could hear was your stupid voice and all the stupid songs you used to sing for her. Would she ever hear that voice again?

It was a known phenomenon that the first thing you forgot about a deceased person was their voice. Alexia hadn't heard your voice in over two weeks, at least not in real life - would she ever hear it again? Would she forget it, if you died?

The thought gripped every cell of her body, squeezing and squeezing until the air dispersed from her lungs, until the bile rose on her throat, until she became so lightheaded she had to remove her hand from her face to hold onto Ingrid's woman and steady herself because of how close she felt to passing out.

It was memories of you that spun her head. It was your laugh that she couldn't seem to drown out anymore, it was the way you'd said "I'm leaving, I'm so sorry", it was that night you'd showed up at her flat, ready for the tour of the city she had promised you over Instagram messages, it was that first time you'd ended up in her bed and every time afterwards, it was every hug you had given her when the pressure had been too much, it was every phone call, every facetime, it was you. Everything was you. Every last bit of her thought about you.

If it hadn't been for Ingrid and Mapi, she might've stayed in that ugly and bare office forever. After all, why should she move? With everything she'd been told, she'd never move on anyway. Why would she go back to the city you had fallen in love with, why should she go back to the apartment you'd shared with her, why should she go back to the bed you'd spent so many nights in?

Because Mapi and Ingrid said so, and because Alexia was too exhausted to complain. It was Ingrid who walked her back to the changing room once Mapi had checked it was empty, it was Ingrid who'd guided her into the shower gently, setting out fresh clothes and everything else Alexia needed.

In the end, it was Ingrid who took her clothes off at the realization that her teammate wouldn't move, even if Alexia tried. She'd asked for permission, and Alexia had nodded absentmindedly, something that would've been unimaginable just hours ago. Alexia never let anyone see her in a vulnerable state of any kind, but she was too tired. Too exhausted. That wasn't what made her cry in the shower though.

It was the memories of you.

The way Ingrid took off her clothes was entirely different to the way you had. There was nothing loving (not in that way, at least), about it. Ingrid didn't kiss every inch of her exposed skin, Ingrid didn't giggle the way you did as she removed Alexia's shirt, Ingrid didn't peck Alexia's lips at every chance she got, but the fact that the woman removing Alexia's clothes wasn't you was enough to send silent tears down her cheeks.

The captain didn't even have enough energy to sob for you. The realization only multiplied the tears.

In the end, Alexia didn't know how she had made it back to Barcelona, back to Ingrid and Mapi's spare room, and, in the end, back into the bed you'd once laid in.

Perhaps it was the statement your team had issued mere days after the overdose, stating that you were okay physically, stating that you would begin rehab soon, stating that you would take some private time to deal with all of the past events.

Perhaps it was the fact that you disappeared off the face of the earth for a year. Not a single post, or story to your socials. Not a single song. Not a single show. Not a single message. It was foolish to say that she managed to forget about you, because - let's be honest, it was you she was thinking about every morning she woke up, every match that she would glance into the family section and not find you next to her mother, every medal she didn't get to wear as you made love to her. She could never forget about you. And she hoped that you wouldn't forget about her either.

Still, shock couldn't describe the emotion she felt as a hand tapped her shoulder gently as she stood at the FIFA's best awards, conversing gently with Lucy.

"Hey, strangers."

She heard the words before she could turn around to see you, but she hadn't forgotten your voice. She could never forget your voice.

"Hey, you", Lucy smiled with her teeth as she pulled your body into a hug, so tight that your eyes almost came out of their sockets. Alexia smiled softly as you frowned in Lucy's arms, chuckling at your expressions.

This was the last place she had expected you to be. It was the last place anyone had expected you to be minus Keira, Lucy and their families. All of them were here tonight, and it made Alexia a little anxious to know you'd been here throughout the whole ceremony and she hadn't even noticed.

When Lucy let you go, you looked at Alexia with a slightly unsure expression. You had known she'd be here, but as Keira was finally nominated for the award for the first time, and not just the best XI, you had promised her you'd be there, even if it meant seeing Alexia again.

In all honesty, seeing Alexia again was part of the reason you'd come here, though you'd never admit it. Reaching out to her would've been foolish after everything you'd put her through, clenching complete radio silence for over a year. This was a nice occasion - one where she wouldn't think you'd come just to see her, but could still converse with you (hopefully), without the attention being on the two of you.

Before you could think about mumbling an excuse to leave the two women at Alexia's lack of a reaction to your presence, the woman pulled you into a hug. A hug that was even tighter as Lucy's, which you hadn't thought to be possible. But you didn't fight Alexia's arms around you. You could never fight her touch, could never resist the familiar smell of her perfume and the way her hair covered your nose as you buried your face in the crane of her neck.

"Lo siento", you whispered into her, just enough for her to hear and everyone else to miss, though Lucy did smirk at seeing how tightly the two of you were embraced.

"Not here", Alexia mumbled back and pulled herself out of your arms, smiling softly. Though you were disappointed, you couldn't help the smile of your own. Not here meant somewhere else. You'd get to talk to Alexia again. You'd get to explain, get to apologize. It was what you needed, whether she forgave you or not.

The time came a few hours later at the after party. You had, at this point, escaped all of the photographers, but apparently someone had caught you on the livestream and your phone was blowing up as your manager texted you, asking if you were okay. You were sat at a table with Keira and her family, the woman's head laying on your shoulder softly.

"Cat's out the bag", you smiled slightly as you placed the device back onto the table, not missing how Keira lifted her head to look at you. Your best friend was slightly tipsy, and very tired at this point. The fact that the Barcelona federation had allowed them to stay at the after party had been celebrated before the actual party had even begun, while you had caught up with Lucy's brother, in one of the backrooms where Keira and the rest had gotten ready. By the point she had joined you again, with Aitana on her heels and the rest of the Barcelona women following shortly after, she had caught you in another bone crushing hug, whining about how happy she was you were there.

"Are you okay with it?", she asked softly, analyzing your facial expression as best as she could in her state. You took a sip of your water. It was actual water.

"Yeah. Tomorrow's gonna get even better."

Your album was scheduled to drop tomorrow. No promo, no announcements, no nothing. Just music. Just the most raw and honest music you'd ever written.

"Nervous?", Keira asked, just when Aitana came towards her again. You shook your head.

"¡Ven a bailar conmigo!", the woman shrieked, just as tipsy as Keira was, gripping her hands and pulling her up.

"Go", you smiled. "I'll be fine."

And fine, you were. You loved Keira's parents almost as much as you loved your own, and talking to them was easy, especially when all they could do was gloat about their daughter. However, there was another conversation on your mind. One that wouldn't be as easy. As if she had read your mind, a body appeared behind you, her hands laying softly on your shoulders. Alexia had always been touchy. She had argued that every Spaniard was this way, but when you'd asked whether it was just a Spanish thing and she was touchy with everyone, she had shut up about it quickly, accepting every teasing comment you made about her clinginess.

"Can I steal her for a second?", Alexia asked with her silly Spanish accent, the one that you loved so much. When you looked up at her, her green eyes shone a little.

"Of course, dear. Go on, we'll wait right here!", Keira's mother beamed at the two of you, but her quick words and accent were too much for Alexia to understand, so you nodded up at her instead, quickly lifting yourself from your seat.

Alexia's hand found yours quickly, not caring about all of the footballers, reporters and people in general who were eyeing the movement curiously, as she gently led you through the crowd and towards the hall you'd met Keira in earlier.

She pulled you into a corridor, the warmth of her hand transcending into your stomach as she nudged the second door open. There wasn't much in the room - a vanity, a clothing rack which held various suits and dresses, and an armchair.

Alexia glanced through the room quietly, and you knew she was scanning for a place for the two of you to sit on comfortably as you talked. You knew this because you wondered the same thing. The armchair was spacious, but it was made for one person only. The vanity had one seat, but one seat only.

This time, it was you who held onto her hand, gently pulling her to the floor with you. You lay on your back next to your ex-girlfriend in a similar position, glancing at the ceiling.

"Quiero mirarte." (I want to look at you)

Her voice was barely above a whisper but you heard it anyways, turning to your side to face Alexia, who once again mirrored your actions. With your head cradled on your arm, you glanced at her. Taking every feature of her in, recognizing every dimple, every freckle, the birthmark above her lips. She didn't look older, despite the year the two of you had spent apart.

"Lo siento, Alexia", you whispered.

She nodded. "You should be."

"I'm sorry for just- disappearing. I really am."

"Why didn't you just to tell me?", her voice sounded so fragile, so small, that you suck in a breath.

"Why did you not trust me? I could've-"

"Stop, Ale. Please, let me explain", you pleaded, taking another deep breath as she nodded softly.

"I should've told you, yes. But it wouldn't have done anything for either of us. I was under so much pressure with the tour and everything, and I just-", you paused for a second.

"It wouldn't have changed anything. I wouldn't have let you be there for me, I couldn't. I wasn't ready to be sober, Ale. I'm sad that it took an overdose to realize it, but the good thing is I realized it. And I'm sorry, for everything I put you through. I'm really sorry, please, forgive me."

You didn't think you would beg, but one look at Alexia was enough to completely spin her mind. You would've done everything for her to forgive you. Begging was one of the things on an endless list for her to say it was okay.

The next thing she said, however, had been completely unimaginable for you.

"Yo también lo siento." (I'm sorry too.)

What could she possibly be sorry for?

You had left her without an explanation, after years of loving her, after she had given you reason after reason to spend the rest of your life with her. Then you had almost killed yourself. Then you had completely vanished for a year. And she was apologizing?!

"No, Ale-"

"Sí. I'm sorry. I should've been there, should've realized, I should've reached out and-"

"No." This time, your words held more firmity and less shock. This time, she remained silent, her eyebrows furrowing.

"You couldn't have known, Alexia. I didn't let you be there. I didn't let you reach out. There was nothing you could've done. You did enough- every day for the past year I thought of you and how to make up for this- how to get you to forgive me."

"I have already forgiven you, amor."

You sucked in a breath at the nickname. Then-

"Come home with me."

You couldn't help the shocked laugh that escaped your lips, and you couldn't miss how it made her smile again- those dimples would be the death of you one day.

"You should ask me on a date first."

"Disparates, we didn't do that last time either", (Nonsense) she chuckled, reminding you of the first time you'd ended up in her bed, the first day you'd met her.

"I don't want to do it the way we did last time."

Alexia nodded.

"Okay. But you come home with me. Because I know that you wrote songs about this, and I want you to sing them for me", she smiled, reaching her hand out for you as she turned onto her back, softly pulling you towards her. Your head found her chest immediately as your breaths synchronized the way they always had. In all honesty, sometimes, during the past year, you'd wondered if your lungs worked at a similar pace the way they always had when you'd lay like this.

"I don't have a guitar at your place", you mumbled as Alexia began playing with your hair.

"Sí, you do. You forgot one. The one you bought me to learn", she whispered into her hand that was running through strands of your blonde.

"Did you?"

Your head shook as Alexia laughed, holding you even tighter.

"I tried, but I was- fallido", (unsuccessful) she breathed.

"La reina? Fallido? Increíble", (unbelievable) you answered, chuckling softly. You remembered the first day you'd tried Alexia to play the guitar like it was yesterday, and the awful combination of what you couldn't describe as chords that had echoed through the room and had left both of your expressions frowning.

You had bought her her own, mostly because you were scared she'd somehow break yours.

You would go back to Barcelona with Alexia tomorrow. You would go with her anywhere. You would do anything she asked you to.

"We should probably go back, Keira will be looking for me", you sighed, feeling more content than you had in a long time here, in this shabby room, laying in Alexia's arms with her hands in your hair.

"Sí."

You waited for her to get up, to push you away softly and take your hand in hers again.

"Five more minutes", she hummed. You couldn't resist Alexia. You could never resist Alexia.

notes: final paaaaart! what do you think? this was a pain to write tbh but i'm happy with the way it turned out! there'll be probably be some more blurbs about the two of them just because i rly like this "series"

also, thank you so so much for all of the support! genuinely incredible

#woso #woso community #woso fanfics #woso imagine #woso one shot #womens football #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas #barca x reader #barca femeni #barca femeni x reader #Spotify

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goffjames · 2 years

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Spotlight Art - Ode to a Broken Heart - Painting / Drawing of the Day by Alicia Larsson

Spotlight Art – Ode to a Broken Heart – Painting / Drawing of the Day by Alicia Larsson

Painting / Drawing Attribution © Alicia Larsson, Ode to a Broken Heart, 2015 Source Attribution https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-Ode-to-a-broken-heart/787582/2514675/view View more works from the Spotlight Art Gallery Thank you for your visit goffjamesart.wordpress.com Art Music Photography Poetry Quotations

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#Alicia Larsson #Art #Drawing #Ode to a Broken Heart #Painting

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smoochkooks · 9 months

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—chapter nineteen: illicit affairs

this is a part of my an ode to a broken heart drabble series.

pairing: jeon jungkook/reader genre: unrequited love, best friends to (?), heavy angst, smut word count: 1.6k words summary: it dies a million little times...

previous || next

Five months later

There is a park nearby your apartment, sandwiched between the residential buildings. It has been here way before some chaebol had decided to buy this land and transform it to yet another wealthy neighborhood in downtown Gangnam. It looks almost surreal – tracts of green among concrete. There’s not many people here today. It feels like a scene from a movie: remote, run-down bench by the pond standing directly underneath the only magnolia tree in the park, and the girl sitting on it with an unreadable expression. What's going through her mind? What, or who, is she thinking about? She's clutching the phone in her hand in a death grip – the only sign she's feeling any emotion right now. Nightingale sings somewhere in the far distance, the sound breaking the deafening silence. Then, a phone rings. Once, twice, three times.

You pick up.

“I told her.” Jungkook waits a beat and then adds, “She wants to speak with you, in private.”

You wonder if he can make out your ragged breath through the speaker. It's the only thing you can hear now, as if the whole world has gone quiet just to listen to your conversation.

“I gave her your number. Is that okay?”

It was all your design to come clean, to free your conscience from the burden that's weighing you both down day by day. You agreed to do this, but he still makes sure if you're ready. A single magnolia petal lands on your thigh. You stare at it, transfixed. He calls your name. So softly, so gently and you break a little.

“Okay.”

The line cuts off. No one says goodbye.

Soojin contacted you soon after that. She sent you a message, asking whether you would have time to meet with her on Friday. She had chosen a coffee shop in SNU’s neighborhood where she had met Jungkook all those years ago. When you googled later the address you found out it's one of those places designed to serve both as a coffee shop and bookshop. How ironic. There's no doubt your book will be sitting on the bestseller shelf, mocking you as your best friend's wife is confronting you.

You arrive almost fifteen minutes earlier. Your heart is beating so fast it's borderline painful, your entire body trembling from anxiety. You don't know exactly how much did Jungkook tell Soojin, so have no idea what to expect from her, which makes you even more uneasy. She has the upper hand here. You notice a stack of ‘An Ode To A Broken Heart’ copies laying on one of the tables and avert your eyes somewhere else.

You try to pass the time by swiping through social media but it's too hard to focus. You keep re-reading sentences because you can't make out what they mean. You've never been good with handling stressful situations, ever since you were a child. You envied kids who didn't worry about tests and exams. Growing older, you managed to control your nerves a little, once you realized you couldn't possibly continue living like this forever. In high school your parents took you to a therapist and that, along with anxiety medication, helped you survive finals and college. However, today you can't help but feel like the girl who couldn't sleep before a math test all over again.

Soojin enters the coffee shop on time. She looks flawlessly, just like during her wedding day. Her silky, black hair is styled in pretty curls and she's wearing light make-up accentuating her features. She’s dressed in a formal attire, a white button-down blouse and beige pants, so she’s probably here on her lunch break. Not much time for a private conversation it is, then.

She orders her coffee to go and looks around. She smiles when she spots you but you can easily tell it’s not sincere, more of a courteous manner. “Hi,” she says and takes a seat in front of you. “Have you ordered something yet? They have amazing lemon tarts here.”

“I’m fine with just coffee.”

“I’d love to eat something sweet but I’m currently trying to cut down on sugar, so just coffee for me, too.”

You nod, not knowing how to respond to what she said. It has always been hard for you to talk to her, ever since Jungkook had introduced you two together. She doesn’t really speak down to you but she carries herself with such superiority it’s making you feel self-conscious.

Soojin was born into an upper-middle-class family from Seoul. Her father owns a prospering business, so they’ve never really had to worry about money, as far as you recall what Jungkook had once told you. She used to attend ballet classes but dropped out of dancing school before entering university. That’s probably where her poise comes from. Thinking about it makes you straighten your slouching pose.

“Are you working around here?” you ask, trying to ease yourself into the conversation. She hasn’t moved straight to the point yet, so you’re panicking a little.

“Yeah, the company I work for has office nearby.” Soojin answers courtly. She takes a sip of her coffee and in a flash, the polite tilt of her mouth vanishes. “You know I’m not here to chit-chat with you, though.”

There it is.

“I’m aware.”

“What did Jungkook exactly tell you?”

“That you want to talk.”

Soojin raises a brow. “That’s all?”

“I’m assuming he didn’t want to intervene,” you say. “He only told me you know about the book.”

Or was it the only thing he meant? Did he perhaps tell her about the New Year’s Eve kiss as well?

“Weird situation, isn’t it?” she asks. “I just found out that the book I liked so much is actually about my husband and his childhood best friend. I sympathized with someone who’s been in love with him for twenty years. Can you believe it?”

Irritation laces her voice already but you remain calm. “He didn’t know. If he didn’t read the book, he would have never realize it. Don’t blame him.”

“I’m not blaming him. I actually believe he had no idea about the book. Maybe he did suspect something about your feelings but he decided not to do anything about it. He married me after all, right?” Soojin says. “What bothers me though, is you writing a whole goddamn book about your silly crush.”

You frown. Silly crush? You wouldn’t go to such great lengths if this was just a crush. And Soojin knows it too, she read the book after all. But she’s not here as a reader who enjoyed your work. She’s here as a wife whose husband you’re in love with.

“I published it under a pen name,” you counter. You’re hoping your voice doesn’t tremble too much. Soojin would gladly use your weakness to her advantage. “I changed names, locations. No one beside me and Jungkook would have known it’s about us.”

“What gave you an impression that you could just use someone’s life like that?”

“It was my life too,” you respond firmly. Jungkook was mad at you because you didn’t tell him about your feelings and now Soojin is going to be angry in his stead for writing a book about your relationship with him? “I talked to Jungkook about it after he had found out. I already apologized and he said he doesn’t mind that–“

“Of course he won’t hold a grudge against you. You’re his best friend.” Soojin snorts.

You sigh heavily. This is going nowhere. It’s crystal clear why she wanted to talk to you but for some reason, she won’t say it directly. Maybe it’s a matter of pride for her, or she’s afraid to admit it out loud.

“I’d like to apologize to you too. I’m sorry for using your relationship with Jungkook for my book, however I am not going to apologize for the way I described it. I didn’t write anything malicious or improper about you. I put on paper what I had seen as a mere bystander,” you say. “I know you’re probably worried now that since everything is out in the open that I am going to act out on my feelings but I can assure you it’s not going to happen.”

Soojin chuckles. “Oh, I’m not worried about that.”

Maybe she shouldn’t feel so sure of herself, you think. It’s not your place to tell her about the kiss. If Jungkook chose to lie by omission, that’s on him. You can’t carry the guilt on your own.

“Because you will, from now on, refrain from hanging out with him,” she continues. “You won’t meet up as often as before, you won’t text him about your mundane life, you will contact him only if necessary.”

Your heart skips a beat. “What?” you croak.

“I don’t want you near Jungkook anymore, it’s as simple as that. I don’t trust you.”

She has all the rights to feel displeased. You’re in love with her husband, after all but forbidding you from seeing him? She cannot control your lives like that.

“Does Jungkook know?” you ask.

Soojin’s rose-tinted lips stretch in a smile. “No, he doesn’t know yet because you will be the one to tell him so,” she replies. “You will tell him that you don’t want to be as close to him as before, that you need distance. If he asks to meet and talk, you will ignore him. If he asks about our conversation, you will say that you apologized to me and I decided to move on.”

“And if I don’t?”

Soojin’s expression is almost triumphant. She got what she wanted at last: you, finally out of Jungkook’s reach.

“Then the world will find out who Magnolia May really is and how she seduced her best friend and made him abandon his wife.”

#jungkook smut #btswritingcafe #networkbangtan #ksmutclub #bangtanarmynet #bts smut #jungkook angst #jungkook fanfic #jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #an ode to a broken heart

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libraryofloveletters · 8 months

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The Same Shade Of Red

Sebastian Vettel x Fem!Reader

Warnings: monza 2020 (double dnf for the boys in red), so much angst sorry, redbull comparisons for seb, the magic that is monza, the disaster that is ferrari and their team, talks of seb's races in monza, a few harsh/sad thoughts from seb, mentions of retirement, charles's crash in monza 2020, mentions of the pandemic, reader is the most loving wife to which seb is her perfect match, britta is sooo over you guys after years of this.

Word Count: 2.2k

Author's Note: would I be me if I didn't take monza race weekend and turn it into an ode to seb? no. ferrari seb you will always be my most beloved and fuck you ferrari for hurting my husband fr. (also this gif is so sexy I can't explain it. well I can but I will be banned from tumblr dot com)

---

Monza held a special place in the heart of your husband, in yours and in anyone that was a part of the Vettel family.

Sebastian had proven his worth, winning his and Toro Rosso's first ever Grand Prix in Monza during the 2008 season.

It was no different when he moved to Red Bull from Toro Rosso, his era of dominance brought him win after win and two of which were in Monza; the home of Ferrari.

Ever since that first win, Sebastian held a special love for Monza, as did you. There's something magical about the place; it might be the atmosphere or the fans but it has always been good to you and Seb. Whatever it was, it was nothing if not remarkable every single time.

The Tifosi held their drivers to the highest of standards, some would say next to God. Something happens to Italy when motorsport comes to town; everything changes and every single person you meet is so passionate. They live and breathe for Ferrari, they'd die for their drivers if it meant they could see them on that top step.

When Sebastian moved from Red Bull to Ferrari, he counted down the days to Monza.

It had always been his dream to drive with the red team, just as his childhood hero and friend, Michael, had done. Sebastian's first year with Ferrari was the epitome of picture perfect.

Despite coming in P2 behind Lewis and Mercedes, being on the podium at home for Ferrari meant everything to the German driver. This wasn't the first time he had gotten on podium for Ferrari, in fact he had already won twice with them that season; in Malaysia and then again in Hungary.

Monza was different; magical, special. There was something in the air, the energy was indescribable. Sebastian grinned, waving to the team from the second step.

You smiled, watching as your fiancé at the time hummed along to the Italian anthem, a country he quickly counted as his second home.

Sebastian was the king of the world that day, even though he hadn't won.

He had returned to the garage with the biggest grin on his face, trophy in one hand and the bottle of champagne in the other. He passed them over to his engineer, making a beeline for you. The man's covered in champagne and sweat and confetti, and he smells like gasoline and engine oil but he picks you up, squeezing you tightly.

You remember telling him how much you loved him and how proud of him you were. Sebastian responded with a kiss, you can taste the champagne; a familiar taste that slowly became more scarce as his days with Ferrari went on.

Unfortunately, things took a bit of a downwards dip for Sebastian after that. He was hungry to win, he was constantly in a fight for the championship every year and it was killing him that he wasn't there yet. Yes, he had won races with them and broken every record he could possibly break but if he couldn't achieve the one thing he really set out to do, the one thing he had always dreamt about, then what was the point?

Monza seemed to always have Sebastian in its grasp, tricking him as the years went on. He almost always was there, he could reach out and touch the win and yet, it slipped through his fingers. Winning in Monza meant more to a Ferrari driver than winning in Monaco would - unless you were born and raised there like Sebastian's teammate, Charles.

You were the king of the world if you won there; your name written in the history books from now until the end of time.

Sebastian longed for his name to be in the book of the greats; Sebastian Vettel, Monza race winner.

A dream that slipped through his fingers as did his hope of winning the championship with Ferrari.

After coming in P2 in 2015, things just kept getting further and further from the finish line for him. P3 in 2016 and 2017, P4 in 2018 and last year was the final shove before the cherry on top this year; P13 while his new teammate, Charles, stood on the top step as race winner, basking in the magic that is Monza.

He was happy for him, beyond happy actually and any win for the team was great but oh how he wished that was him.

Now you're back in Monza, the season had been delayed due to the pandemic and this was the first race you had been able to join him for all season. It was weird being there with the track empty; just the teams and the occasional celebrity guest that was rich enough to pay their way in.

The car has been giving Sebastian a hard time all weekend, practice was shit and he placed P17 in qualifying. It wasn't a good weekend for your husband.

"Be good," you told him while he was getting ready for the race. Sebastian nods, a witty remark about him always being a good boy slipped past his lips and you waved him off, your cheeks red as you walked back to the garage.

Watching him start from the back of the grid was breaking your heart, you knew he could manage much more than that but it's the stupid car that was giving him trouble.

He barely got a grip on the car before he drove off and into the blocks that were in the run off area. Your brows furrowed as you watched him speed through the blocks, his voice coming through the headphone - "brakes failed."

Your heart drops, eyes fixed on the screen as Seb pulls the car into the corner as best as he can without disrupting the race. He finds his way back to the garage after the marshals come for his car, Sebastian gives your hand a squeeze as he passes through and into the back hallway to his driver's room. You figured you'd give him space to cool off and you stayed in the garage to watch a bit more of the race.

It was barely 20 laps later that you saw the other Ferrari slide into the wall. To no fault of Charles, the car had understeer which caused him to lose the back half and send him into the wall. You stood there, waiting to hear if Charles spoke before you took your headphones off.

Once you hear that he's okay, you step out of the garage and make your way to your husband's driver room. You knock on the door, peeking in before he answers.

Sebastian gives you a sad smile, you can feel your heart breaking as you step in and shut the door behind you. He's sitting on the bench and you walk over, joining him.

"Charles is coming in."

"What? The race isn't over, is it?" Sebastian looks over at you before glancing out the window. You shook your head, "it's a red flag now, Charles' car has understeer, went into the wall."

"Is he okay?" He asks and you nod, "he's a little shaken up but he'll be okay."

Your hand finds your husband's, interlocking fingers. "I always admire that even when you're going through it, you still look out for others."

"I know what it's like to be in his position, it's tough."

You hum, glancing down at the racing boots that were tossed to the side, Seb's sock clad feet slide back and forth over the floor. "You know what happened today wasn't your fault, Sebastian. It was mechanical."

He's quiet for a bit, nodding at your words. "I don't know how much more of this I can take, baby."

You look over at the man, "of Ferrari or of racing?"

"Both," he answers truthfully.

Sebastian and Ferrari had come to a mutual agreement - a publicity term - that they would not be renewing his contract. You weren't opposed to it, you knew it was killing your husband to go but if Sebastian was good at one thing, it was that he knew when it was time to go, he had to go. He wanted to win with them, you think a part of him still held a tiny sliver of hope that he would find his way back to the top step as champion of the world but he also knew being there was killing him.

Mentally, physically, emotionally; he couldn't bear the pressure of staying there any longer.

"It's just a few more races, love. You can do it."

He nods, "I know but.." "Don't even go there," you tell him, shifting to face him. One of your legs hanging off the bench as the other folded in front of you.

"Monza's special, you know that." He says, "I just.. I feel like I failed." He sighs, his head hung and if your heart wasn't already broken, it was broken now.

It was days like today that made you hate the team that your husband so dearly loved.

"You didn't fail, you never failed them, Sebastian." You squeezed his hand, the man looked up at you. Your free hand comes up to cup his jaw, your thumb rubbing over the few days old stubble on his cheek. "If anything, they failed you."

"You have the talent and the skill, and the drive to win and to be a champion; it's them, babe. They couldn't give you a car that was worthy of you, you can't blame yourself for that." You look at your husband and the man sighs again.

"I should have been able to, though. Been able to get the best out of the car."

You scoffed, rolling your eyes. "Seb, c'mon. Be for real right now, it's their shitty ass car, it's not your fault. You know Lewis's car is basically a rocket ship, plus it's not like your strategies are A1 over here."

Seb tosses you a glance, a look of disapproval on his face. "You're so not helping right now, darling."

You raise your hands in surrender and your husband smiles - his first genuine smile all weekend. You smile back, holding his face again. "I love you, Sebastian."

"I know," he grins and you shake your head, laughing. "This is usually the point where you say I love you back."

"Oh, sorry." he chuckled, "I love you, y/n."

You smile, leaning in to give him a kiss. "Good, now come on. You need to get dressed, go check on your teammate," you patted his thigh, getting up to find a shirt for the man. In the meantime, Seb pulled off his race suit and fire proofs, slipping on a pair of shorts.

"Do I really have to go?" He sits on the bench again, shifting to lay down, his arms tucked behind his head. You roll your eyes, looking through the small cabinet off to the side. "Yes, you know they'll make you out to be a villain if you don't."

"And if I wanna be a villain ?" He asks, looking over at you.

You sigh, tossing the shirt at him, "Sebastian, don't start with me right now."

The man laughs, dropping the shirt on the bench before standing up. Sebastian grabs your hand, pulling you flush against his chest. "Ew," you fake a gag, "you're sweaty."

He smiles, ignoring your comment. "I don't know what I'd do without you, I can't thank you enough for being here for me all these years."

Your hand rests on his jaw, giving him a kiss before smiling at him. "You don't need to thank me, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat but.. if you do wanna thank me, you can buy that purse I liked."

"Show me when we get back, you can take my card and order it."

"I was joking," you look at him, and Seb shrugs. "It's the least I can do to thank you for being the perfect wife."

"It's easy to do when I have the perfect husband," you smile, kissing him again. There's a knock on the door, causing you both to look in the direction of it.

"When the two of you are done being perfect, you're needed for press, Sebastian." Britt's voice from the other side of the door, making you both laugh.

Seb gives you one last kiss before grabbing his shirt, "I'm coming!" He calls to her, pulling it on. He was on his way out but you stopped him, grabbing his hand.

He turns back, looking at you as he waits to see what you wanted. "I'm proud of you, no matter what," you tell him.

Seb nods, smiling at you. "I love you."

---

taglist: @dragon-of-winterfell @benedictscanvas @elisaa-shelby @hnmaga-blog @czechoslovakiandisco @dr3lover @troybolton14 @Lovingroscoee @compulsiveshit @somanyfandomsbruh @damnyoulifee @barzysreputation @vickyofalltrades @yeolsbubbles @barzysreputation @thybulleric @valkyrie418 @ricsaigaslec @idkiwantchocolatee @sessgjarg @molliemoo3 @bisexual-desi @sunf1owerrq @alwaysclassyeagle @coldmuffinbanditshoe @sillybananamaker and @oconso cause she was fucking with the preview I sent her

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syrena-del-mar · 2 months

Text

An Ode to Older Siblings: New in Dead Friends Forever, Episode 9

Spoilers ahead for Dead Friend Forever Episode 9. Allusions to suicide and all other triggers that have accompanied this show will be here. Tagging @slayerkitty for the DFF Meta compilation.

Can you imagine New, who sacrificed his relationship with his little brother to make it into a university abroad with a scholarship, one that would open opportunities that Thailand did not have to offer him, having to come back on a plane ride? A minimum of 12 hours in a plane, in an airport, packed with people going on business trips and vacations, yet where nobody knows that you're going to back home to a hell that you never could have imagined? It was supposed to be a holiday for him, a chance to see his family again after months of being apart.

But instead, his baby brother was now missing. The same baby brother that had given up on having any semblance of a relationship with him because he felt abandoned, forgotten. His little brother who would find no difference if he was abroad or not, because it's not like Tan had ever paid him any attention when he was so focused on just getting out of their home. But New was trying, extending an olive branch, hoping that Non would accept even the smallest bit of it. He'll bring him the best snacks that England has to offer, he'll listen to any problems that Non may have, even while he's thousands of miles away. But no calls ever came from his little brother's number. No, he hadn't even known that Non had gotten into trouble until his mother called him. Non's missing.

And, now he's returning home. The snacks that he had promised Non probably weighed like a ton of bricks as he carried them, they were his burden to carry. Maybe if he had been there a little more for Non, had been a little bit more present, maybe Non would have reached out. Maybe he wouldn't have had to turn to his tutor. His home is broken, but it's still a home. He's the oldest, he's the one that has to repair it when his parents can't.

He knows his mom had mentioned Non's boyfriend in passing before, even though Non had never told him directly. So he had searched through Non's belongings, looking for his number, hoping that Phee might have more information. He's doesn't, they're both at a loss. Maybe Phee didn't know Non as well as he thought he did, but New knows his brother. Non was never good with his words, never good at speaking directly of the problems he faced, but he would have left a sign, something, that might show them what demons he was facing alone.

So, he pretends that he can go back to his life in England, pretends for his parents' sake, so they don't have to worry about their only other son. But he can't, not when his little brother is out there...alone, again. He takes a leave of absence from school. Maybe it's crazy, reckless, but he puts himself back in high school. If the cops won't give him answers, then he'll get them himself. He forges his records, pretends that he was Non's same age, changes his identity. He's now Tan. A new kid that just happened to meet Phee at the office on their first day of school. Tan can charm his way into the same friend group that likely destroyed his brother. Tan can dig for the answers that nobody was willing to get.

And Phee helps, maybe he helps a little too much and little too close. For a moment, a part of New's heart breaks for his baby brother, as he sees his boyfriend get close to one of the bastards that had a hand in Non's disappearance. Maybe this is why Non always felt abandoned. So New smokes, one pack turns into hundreds more. A bad habit that he picked up with his English friends as they hit the pubs. It's the only sense of normalcy he has anymore.

He builds a makeshift lab with the money his parents wired him, nothing like the state-of-the-art equipment that he had grown accustomed to at his university, but it was enough. He researches, he experiments with the one concoction that might finally get Non's friends to tell him the truth. He's so close to perfecting it. Then his dad calls, and it feels strange. He rarely talked to his dad, it's his mom that usually calls him. Mom's dead. For a moment, he forgets that he was supposed to be in England, that he was never supposed to be in Thailand. He's not Tan anymore, he's just New. His house isn't just broken anymore, it's crumbling.

His father resents him. He's drunk and he's spitting fire, New can't blame him. Afterall, he is a liar. He lied that he was back at university, back in England. He never visited his mom when they were only miles away from each other and now she's dead as well. Was Non right all those years ago? Does he abandon everyone? He was never his dad's favorite, he knew that, but how he could he go and leave him behind too?

Now there was no broken house, no dilapidated house, no place that he called home. He couldn't fix this anymore. And he's tired, he's so tired. There's nothing for him to salvage anymore. Maybe if he takes a hit of his own concoction, he can end his pain as well. But Non... Non deserves justice and New is so scared, scared of failing him again. He wants this to end, he can't save anyone. But Phee arrives and holds him steady, lets him cling tightly to his shirt like he used to cling to his mother as a child.

Maybe he won't live for himself anymore. This all started with the bastards who were supposed to be his brother's friends. They cost him his whole family. No. he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of destroying his home, of destroying his baby brother. He once told Non that he would steal his novel, get it sold for other people to read. Maybe it can't be sold anymore, but maybe Non's story can finally be told as Non had wished.

How could New have ever known that getting onto that plane would just be the prelude to the hell that he was about to raise? He's the oldest brother of the family, he was supposed to protect them, take his responsibility for his parents and his baby brother, but he failed. His dad was right, he wasn't a good enough son or brother, but maybe this could be the start of his atonement.

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yeyinde · 1 year

Text

ode to a conversation stuck in your throat

Captain John Price x Reader

》 WORD COUNT: 12,7k

》 WARNINGS: 18+ | MATURE: allusions to smut but nothing graphic/explicit

》 TAGS: Gender-Neutral Reader. Angst. Mutual Pining. Idiots in Love (but in Romania). Fluff. Love and Romance described as death and decay and broken religious imagery. Y'know. The usual Yey tags.

》 NOTES: I recently got into Augury (just a fancy word for bird watching, innit??) so this feels more whimsical and nonsensical than usual. Good luck with this one, lads.

It's like clockwork.

A text comes—some variation of are you awake, or are you home? in that strange Price-esque way he manages, even through the stark face of a message (biting derision, Gaz calls it, adds: man can't pretend to be a little less angry even over text)—and then a phone call.

Always after midnight.

Devil's hour.

When your phone rings at half past three in the morning, hearing Price's gruff perfunctory greeting of "alrigh'?" bleeding through the phone, and right into your ear doesn't surprise you anymore.

(Not much does, really.)

These phone calls are a strange, almost paradoxical thing that both happens often enough not to be considered rare, and yet: it still seems outlandish enough each time it happens for you to ever really let yourself expect it. Odd. Price doesn't strike you as the type of man to need to rely on his friends—the seldom few he does have, you often joke (always a shade too close to the truth like most jokes are; the one that makes him dip his head in a nod of quiet acquiesce, and make you wonder if you went too far)—but he's never given you a reason for them.

Never answered why.

They just—

Happened.

(Over and over and over again—)

The brief conversation in the oddest hour of the morning started a new tradition. A routine. Expecting a phone call from Price at least once a week was now so commonplace, you almost felt empty when days had passed, and your phone never rang.

He can't sleep. Neither can you.

And so, he calls you.

It's not always about a mission. Most of the conversations that take place are about absolutely nothing. Everything, sometimes, when you pry apart the bones locked around your chest, and bare your insides to the warm cellphone clutched in your hand. To the voice on the other line.

A man you know—have known since you first stepped into his training ring, and into the orbit of Captain John Price—and barely understand at all.

You know everything about him—his name, his title, where he grew up, went to school, his favourite food, his least favourite drink, what he does after a mission; his greatest fear, his biggest worry, the insecurity that gnarls in his chest, and the weight of the world that sometimes feels like it might splinter his bones, grinding them into gun cotton—and nothing at all.

The reason why he called you all those months ago, invited you on a mission you had no real part to play in, and why he still does is a mystery.

(Loneliness, maybe.

Insomnia, you find, is more bearable when it's shared between two.)

But that was before.

The last phone call you got from Price had been nearly three months ago after you touched down in Heathrow following a botched mission in Tenerife.

You heard the murmurs about Shepherd, about Zyani that trickled through the mess hall (when there was no battle to be fought, they gossiped), and so his radio silence makes sense considering he was halfway across the globe for the bulk of it.

In the midst of it, though, you would find yourself staring blankly at your phone, screen black and void of any calls, and wonder if it had anything to do with your offer. With his swift rejection.

When it rings after an aching expanse of time, you can't place the gnarled tension in your chest. The uncomfortable feeling that blooms in your heart at the sight of his name flashing in neon blue.

Price seems almost surprised to hear your voice on the other line instead of the monotonous droll of your voicemail.

"Up for a trip?" He asked when you cleared the sleep from your throat, and rubbed blearily at your eyes. "Jus' me and you."

It feels like nothing at all had changed since he last called you with an offer to accompany him to Tenerife.

"Just like old times," you murmur, a touch distant. Hedging.

"Right," he says, words glueing to his throat. You hear the click when he clears it, and pretend you're only pulling the phone away from your ear to check the time.

Half past three. Of course. Of course.

"Got a proposition for you."

Typical Price: he gets right to the point.

There is no staying up talking about everything, nothing, and all the in between until well past five in the morning when your alarm sounds for your run. Or his for a shower before heading into headquarters at Hereford to reach a new class of hopefuls when he isn't saving the world with his infamous team.

The very same one he refuses to let you be a part of.

(Better on your own, he says.

You think you'd be better with him—

His team. Team. Not—)

The blooming heat under your cheeks is never acknowledged in the sanctity of your lonesome bedroom with his rough voice pitched low enough to squeeze through the little holes of your speaker. Tucked away to pine while still somehow making a fool of yourself.

You're only half listening when he murmurs about his proposition.

It's a simple mission, he tells you. The usual grab and go.

Usual, because only in this work could kidnapping bad people in foreign countries be considered normal. Routine.

(Legal, kind of.)

"It's in Romania," he murmurs, and the tinny sound of his voice through the old dial phone of the inn he's staying at between missions makes him sound lighter than he usually does. Airy. "I know you liked visiting the last time—"

It drags a snort from you. "Yeah, on holiday. Something about this whole ordeal tells me I won't be enjoying mici in Târgovişte much."

"Well. Consider this a pre-paid holiday. I'll do all the work, you just 'ave to sit there, and—"

"Look pretty?"

"—listen."

You hum. "I think I'm much better at looking pretty than I am at listening, John."

"Yeah," it's dry, derisive. "Don't I know it."

Silence lapses between you—intentional, of course. He's letting you think it over. Weigh the pros and cons of a free trip to Romania. With four hands and two heads you could clear it up before the allotted time frame, giving you those extra, precious few days to linger in the country.

Tying up loose ends is what will end up on the official report. Discouraging witnesses from coming forward with stacks of Euros stuffed deep in their pockets.

Making sure no stone has been left unturned—the Americans, in particular, like that one. They never ask questions when you wax about patriotism, and ensure there's no chance of calamity. They like their ends tied, and their witnesses happy.

It's all a cash business. More than enough money wired to an infant account under an preconstructed name. Passwords and identification handed to you in a sealed envelope. It's unlikely that anyone would ever track said witnesses down to discover the person given hush money was actually a nightclub in Mamaia or a fancy pub in Cluj.

Illegal, of course. Should you ever get caught, you'd be reprimanded. Punished. Made an example of.

(But who doesn't skim a bit from the top? Especially when the pile is given to you by the military.)

"Fine," you huff, and aim for some semblance of acquiescence in your tone despite knowing full well that you've yet to turn down these impromptu partnerships with him since they started two years ago.

Moldova. Egypt. Chad. Canada. The Philippines. Taiwan. Tenerife. Your odd partnership has taken you further across the world than the sedentary office job of pretending to make a difference ever did.

The place he said you were better suited for. You refuse to wonder what that means.

"Okay. I'll go. But I'm not doing anything at all except enjoying the Romanian countryside."

"Wouldn't expect any less from you."

You want to say, then why bring me at all? Why not take Gaz or Soap or Laswell? Why sideline me so blatantly only to keep asking for my help when it's never really needed? but the words are stuck in your throat. Trapped in their esophageal prison.

Instead, you say: "count me in then, I suppose," and wonder when you became such a coward.

"Mm. I should let you get some sleep, then."

You make a noncommittal noise in the back of your throat. It's been three months of nothing but unanswered texts that gradually faded into nothing by the third week. An island of uncertainty. Worry. Dread. Fear. Wondering what you did wrong, and coming, quite conclusively (and indignantly) to the conclusion that you didn't.

Hearing his voice again, tinny and always shades softer than you've ever heard him speak before, unearths the sarcophagus you laid your feelings inside; a sudden and abrupt disinterment of everything you tried hard to ignore. The desecration cracks the tomb wide open. The flood of everything you tried to bury blooms; the foetid sickness of your festering wants taste a little bit like regret, and even more like hope.

Helpless, your finger gnarl around the blossom of what laid bare, bones and rotted flesh, and the weight of it in your palm feels more comforting than ever before. Made more potent, you think, by the absence of him.

It's an unignorable truth that you missed him.

And so, you cling to the offering like it's a sacred trinket.

"How—," the words are rough, gritty, when they slip through the moulted dirt clogging your throat. Dredged up in the wake of the sudden excavation. You swallow hard when he makes a noise. Force yourself to claw through the humus. "How are you, John?"

You want to add something you know will make him huff, call you cheeky, something a little coquetry in the wake of your exhumation. Such would be your exequy, but the words are buried once more when the dirt shifts as he draws in a deep, staticky breath.

He's not usually a loquacious man in person, but something seems to crack open, shift, when it's well after midnight. A secret, a new side of him, shared only with you.

You don't expect him to respond. You hope, but you don't assume.

When he sucks in a breath, a staticky little noise that reverberates through the receiver, victory snakes across your vertebrae. Unwarranted and unearned, but the stinging reminder of it does little to stop it from nursing on the marrow of hope pullulating inside of you.

"Been better," he offers, and the muted shift of him relaxing into the starchy pillows cuts through the line. Settling, you think, for the beginning of your routine. "Didn't have much of a chance to call you. How've you been?"

"Been better," you echo, a wry twist of humour snaking across your lips when he offers a huff in response. "Lots to get caught up on, I suppose."

And you do.

You talk about nothing. Everything.

Your darkest secrets were spilled out in those phone calls at Devils Hour—fears, uncertainty, failures. This is no different. He tells you about Shepherd blinding them all with his dedication to the cause. About how he would have let Laswell rot to save his own arse, but knew, of course, that not letting Price and Gaz rescue her would have raised even more alarms.

They cornered an animal, he spits. One who led them around by the nose for years.

Bloody American Politicians, he grumbles.

No better than the bloody English, you snark back. At least they're honest about their motives when it all comes tumbling down around them, and don't hide it under layers of the blooded elite. Of status.

He mumbles to himself for a moment before begrudgingly conceding your point.

It buzzes in the static. A lapse in the midst of espionage tainted catch-up that makes your hindbrain tense for what he might say next.

He shifts, then, offers even softer than the hello he greeted you with:

"What about you? Get up to any trouble while I was gone?"

He listens to you bisect yourself in a midnight confessional, letting your rotted guts tumble out in deep lags of silence you wish weren't as comfortable as they are.

He talks, too.

Tells you about woes of nepotism, and the muppets they send him for basic training. The fleet of soldiers he doesn't want to carry on his back, but does anyway. The losses he couldn't prevent. The monsters he made.

"I wouldn't change anything," he always says, as if you don't know him by now. As if you need reminding of just how tar-coated his heart really is. "I'd do it all over again."

You say, "I know, John." And when you hear the hitch in his breath, you add: "you wouldn't be you if you did. I trust your judgement—no matter what."

Explicit trust. He runs from it.

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. It always sounds a little bit like a mourning toll.

"I… should let you get some sleep."

It's something he always says during your late night phone calls.

Par the routine, the same question claws through the mess of words unsaid in your oesophagus until it reaches the seam between your teeth and lips.

Why me, Price?

But every tradition has its rules.

You let him run, and wonder if he feels as cleansed as you do after baring your soul to someone who knows you better than most of your closest relatives, your friends.

(Or if the silence that lingers when you hang up feels just as oppressive and empty to him as it does to you.)

Wishful yearning.

Instead, you say: "try to get some sleep, John. I'll talk to you later."

And then, like the hypocrite you are, you lay awake and wonder why.

He meets you at Heathrow, and really—

It sometimes surprises you just how intimidating a man like Price is.

He glowers down at the phone in his too large hand, eyes downcast, and brows pinched by whatever is irritating him now—emojis, you later discover.

(Bloody things make no sense to me, he grumbles, shoulder knocking against yours when you make yourself comfortable on the plane.

You gently remind him he's barely even forty.)

Price is an indomitable man.

Tall. Broad shouldered. The heft of his bicep is actuated when he curls his hand around the strap of his duffle bag, muscles bulging. Flexing.

It's hard not to stare at him.

His shoulders roll back when you approach, eyes flickering up from unravelling the nuance of modern text messaging from a man who came out of the womb a fully fleshed adult with a mortgage.

The corners of his eyes relax from their narrow slits when recognition bleeds into ashlar blue. His mouth parts a little; the flash of nicotine stained teeth.

The furrow of his brow flexes like it wants to smooth itself out, but something passes across his face—unknowable, brief; the incipient markings of something that makes him look a little more at ease in the bustling confines of Heathrow (hell on earth you have both very quickly, and unanimously, acknowledged)—and it's pulled back together. Irritation, but not at you. Never at you.

(But if not at you, then who?

Why, you wonder, does he always look so cross in your presence?)

He clears his throat. The grumble of his voice, full and robust, and so different from the tinniness of a phone, nearly makes you jump when it glides across your ears, abrasive and raw. A rough growl.

(You wonder sometimes if the brassiness of his timbre is from choking back apoplectic snarls all day.)

"Took you long enough."

You huff. "London is a nightmare at this time of day, John. As if you could've gotten here any faster."

"You chose to live in it."

Another sigh falls from the split seam of your lips. "It's not that bad."

"London smells like shite."

"As if Liverpool smells any better," you volley back, watching the subtle shift in his expression fade from the pinched world wariness almost permanently etched into the lines of his face into something more relaxed. Agreeable. Or rather, as agreeable as Price could be in the middle of Heathrow, and surrounded by people.

He opens his mouth, then, as if to remind you of the sea-salted scent of Liverpool, briny and bitter. Smog and hardwork. Oil, gun cotton. The city smells like the working class. Blue collar. Hands gnarled from the factories, and stained permanently with grease.

A distinct thrum of pride, of home, rumbles through him with each new add-on to why Liverpool, in his opinion, is the best choice to call home.

(And London, he always adds, if only for another barb, another insult in your choice, always reeks of selfish ambition. The kind that rots your insides into something askance, and is deprived of decency.)

His biggest gripe with London, however—

"They never fuckin' smile."

You passively nod in agreement—you mostly get looks of outright suspicion when you smile at passers-by in central London, so: point to Price—and then undercut the small victory he gains with a mocking grin in his direction.

Price's nostrils flare when he catches the derisive bite of your lips curling over your teeth.

"You think you're smart, mm?"

"I'd rather hope so, considering."

"Bloody annoyin' is what you are, considerin'—"

His words are swallowed by some boarding announcement ringing shrill overhead. You pull away from him, and the mocking smile fades into some facsimile of genuinity when you watch him shake his head, put-out and already annoyed by whatever thought skimmed through his thoughts.

London always seems like a sore topic, but you've known him long enough that the edge in his voice is less severe and more mocking. There is a distaste for the city, but the reason has evaded you much like—

Well. Everything else.

You've thought about asking why nearly hundreds of times in the past, but that line of questioning has always been a terrifying endeavour. There is a locked door: a proverbial floodgate keeping all of the other why's at bay. Opening it now, in the middle of a crowded terminal, feels reckless. Stupid.

It's nearly four hours from here to Transilvania.

You think of all the insubstantial reasons he could offer, and find the idea of them all rather bitter. Anguishing. It sends a ripple of hurt through your chest, and the sting alone is enough to seal your lips.

Words stuck, once more, in the back of your throat.

Price says nothing when you quiet, eyes flickering between the throng of people rushing through the terminal, listless and impassive.

There is always a degree of separation between you and him whenever you meet in person, as if the personal, raw conversations whispered into the early hours of the morning are just some strange dream. A fugue wanting, unslaked and bothersome, that ripens inside your virgin sulci. A sickness that manifests in the fibrils of your desire, covetous and greedy; gnarled gyri breathes life into the dreams you reach for until the delineation between reality and fantasy wanes, fades to cinders.

So, you bite your tongue, letting the noxious words pollute, rot, inside their esophageal prison, and pretend the claw marks on the walls aren't from your own bloody hands.

You follow his lead, and he's always seemed so content not to speak of the vulnerability you whisper into his ear. The fear he rasps about at quarter to four.

Gone, then. It doesn't exist when you can see the lapis of his eyes listing toward you periodically, expression oscillating between a rendition of something that feels a little worrisome, and—

Tenerife.

That unnameable thing that broke through the gleaming sapphire when you whispered his name, and broke your own rules for the very first time.

(You'll call me anyways.

Does it bother you?

Never. Wished you called more—)

You turn away from him, from the weight in his gaze when it finds you. Worried, somehow, that a single look will be enough to ferret the secrets out of you.

A man in fatigues lingers in your periphery, standing awkwardly by the Starbucks entrance. He nods sharply when you catch his eye.

"Guess we're up," you murmur, smile fading into placid neutrality. Getting caught riling up Captain John Price won't win any favours back in the concrete vacuum of Hereford. "Ready, cap?"

If he notices your sudden distance, he says nothing about it. His eyes drop to the phone clutched in his hand, before he rolls his massive shoulders.

"Suppose so," he grumbles, slipping his phone into his pocket.

Out of sight.

Selfishly, you wonder who else he calls late at night, and find the burn of bitterness, jealousy to be some torturous form of retribution.

It burns like a knife to your gut. You wallow in it.

Price isn't a man known for his garrulity, and so, when he takes his seat on the plane, and immediately reaches for the files stuffed haphazardly into the zippered fold of his duffle bag, you take no real offence the undeniable abolishment of conversation.

You're used to it, really.

Silences that stretch on, culled by the hum of the engines cutting through the thin air some several hundred kilometres above sea level, are nothing novice.

In turn, you take to flipping through the worn, jaundiced pages of a book you packed away in your carry-on specifically for this. Whatever secrets lay nestled in the crease of his rumbled folders doesn't matter to you—not yet, anyway—and you're content to enjoy something that you can pretend to be immersed with for the four hours you'll be sharing the scant space that separates the two of you.

Pretending, of course, being the operative word.

Price is a breathing furnace. The seams of his tight jacket crackle with unbridled heat that wafts against your arm when you settle into the chair. There is no armrest allotted to you with his sinewy bulk taking up most of the aisle and middle seat, and you feel each exhale when his frame almost melts into your own.

Broad shouldered. Thick biceps. A tapered waist. Thighs quite nearly the width of a gnarled, hardened fir. It's hard to find space, privacy, with him bleeding out around you. It's hard to concentrate on anything that isn't the muted press of his covered flesh on yours, and, rather illicitly, the way it makes you feel.

It's a rush of singular emotions nearly indistinguishable from each other, but all leaving you feeling like a raw nerve scrapped from muscle, and dissected from bone. Flayed with just a touch.

The tremulous wake of them makes your body fight against the onslaught of the roaring deluge that rips through you. An amalgam of wishful anticipation, trepidation, and fear of being caught. Discovered. Having your dirty secrets, the one's you're not willing to share over a tea after midnight with a man who, despite knowing his greatest fear (the lives of his team over the stakes of everything, everyone, else), and his proudest accomplishment (getting the fuck outta Hereford while he still had the chance), galvanised out of you. Spilled into the open air.

It comes too close to the lowered inhibitions you felt in Tenerife to ever sit well in the churning pits of your stomach.

And so, you try to force some semblance of distance between your bodies despite there being none. The curved ledge of the plane window digs harshly into your forearm, but you still press into it more.

Welcoming the ache, almost.

It doesn't feel good, but it's a harsh reminder that the feelings pooling inside of your chest are wrong.

A part of you, then, almosts hopes that the pain will soon become an almost Pavlovian reminder whenever you think of Price, and of—

Everything.

Negative reinforcement.

(Price and you; the thought brings pain.)

He mistakes your tension for nerves, and drops his chin down when you keep wriggling about, struggling to find a modicum of distance between the weight of him pressing against you.

His expression is always oscillating between lour surliness and a pinch of frustration, and something in the middle of the two—glum, you think: stoic impassivity weighed down by heavy shadows—but the usual ire dims as the jet lurches down the runway. It's washed away in the tenebrous that leaks in from the empty interior of a military craft where it's just you and him and the pilots.

A world where the stench of London dissipates into the familiar filtered scent of recycled oxygen that wafts through the open vents. Sterile, almost. Void of the grime, the pungent smell of stale petrol on the wet pavement, the distinct scent of the tube—sweat, fungus; putrid and ripe with something mouldy; tobacco and marijuana—and old cigarettes.

(Smells like shite, he'd gripe if he knew you thought of it with fondness.)

When he looks at you, you have to force yourself to remember hierarchy, propriety. Decorum.

Distance. Reality.

It aches, but you push it down. Swallow the words until they leak back into their cage, glued against the soft tissue of your oesophagus, and force something neutral, unbothered in your countenance while pretending as if you weren't choking yourself to death.

"Alright?" He murmurs, words uttered low. Susurrus, almost. It's different from the phone calls where his voice is relaxed, muted; saturated in an ease, a warmth that lacks the usual snarl choked in the back of his throat. He talks with a degree of distance. Boxed into the role of unflinching, infallible leader even in this microcosm that bubbles between you.

Still. It makes the air in your lungs stutter all the same.

"Fine."

He hums, and the guttural vocalisation is adorned with the flat press of his disbelief. Price isn't the type to pry, though, and he takes your virginal lie with a mere shift of his eyebrows; a soft buoy of skepticism that is just scrutinising enough to let you flee if you so wish.

You do, and so, you take it. Offering him a tight smile that you know will never reach your eyes, or any semblance of believability, but it's the most you can manage over the drumroll of your heart (now making serious threats of breaking through your ribcage, and leaping out of the jet), and the shallow gasps of your breath, a desperate struggle to quench the flames billowing in your lungs.

He's so warm, you think, that he burns you. Fire spread from the heat of him, catching on the cindered embers lying in the soft fibrils of your being, and igniting you in a flameless smoulder.

Price nods once, and you're unsure if it's in a gentle acquiescence of your bold-faced lie, or your quick prevarication, but you find yourself mimicking it all the same.

Good, then. Settled.

But he leans down instead of returning to the urgent press of files and papers all neatly stacked in a manila folder, and you come undone at seams when the scent of him envelops you.

Crushed tobacco leaves, stale smoke, ambergris and vetiver.

The headiness of his smell smothers you, and makes your hindbrain tense at the familiar, enticing miasma that seeps into your lungs, and fills your sinuses until it washes everything out but the gun cotton, and leather he reeks of.

"Hmm, a bit early to start lying," he rasps, the words just as brittle as your crumbling resolve. "Ain't it?"

Your breath shudders out of your lungs. Caught, then. Called out. The idea of confessing everything to him, all at once, passes through, but it's immediately dismissed. Shoved back into whichever crevasse it slunk out of.

The fact that it even drifted through, sneaking past the tightly guarded prison it was kept in is enough to make you fluster.

As if to hold them in, you sink your teeth into your tongue to keep from speaking the words that still echo in your head, and offer nothing more than a simple shake of your head, and some facsimile of a wry smile tossed in his general direction.

He hums again, and the coo rumbles through his flesh and ripples across your skin. Electric shocks. Static buzz. The vibration of it shakes the doors of the mausoleum where everything is left to moulder, rot.

A plume of nicotine dusts across your nose when Price shifts in his seat, much too small for a man with such broad shoulders, and thick thighs, and when you breathe in the heady scent of it, your head spins.

"We're all entitled to our secrets," he murmurs. His hair scratches against the fabric when he turns his head, chin notching down to bore into the side of your face. It's all you'll offer him when the rattling at the doors of your tomb dislodges a piece of rotten wood; lignin crumbles to the floor around you in stripped, fleshy white. A hole big enough to sink your fist through.

"And that's fine, but—," his tone dips, timbre scorching through you when he speaks. The words are gritty, and coarse. They sink into your ears until the flesh is rubbed raw. The change in pitch makes you look up, wordlessly following the command that tangles around each vowel. Sharp, authoritative. This isn't John right now. It's Captain Price.

His pelagic eyes are hardened into firm, dense sapphire lined with unbreakable obsidian.

"But," he stresses the word again, brows arching high on his forehead until three, four, lines are carved into the pale skin. "Those secrets can't interfere with the mission, yeah?"

His stare is intense. Firm. Unyielding. He doesn't look away. Doesn't cower under the strange, too hot sensation that fills your head whenever you're forced to make eye contact for more than a few moments.

It occurs to you, then, when he holds your stare for three, flinching inhales, that the only reason he's saying this is because he knows. Maybe not everything, maybe not all of it. But he knows enough that you're acting strange. Odd. Not yourself.

Price sits back, and the loss of his intense stare boring into you, stripping you down to basal parts—raw and vulnerable—allows air to inflate your burning lungs. Oxygen bubbles and seeps into your bloodstream so quickly that you feel a little sick with it. Dizzy.

"We clear on that?"

His expression is guarded, pinched.

You swallow thickly against the deluge of emotions that run down your spine, and wonder what he knows. What he pieced together already. It makes your heart slam against the flesh and bone cage it's prisoned in.

His flat, phlegmatic expression seems to wobble. A frisson ripples, and splinters his reticent resolve, and he looks, in that moment, like the man who speaks to you late at night about his biggest worries, and fear. Touchable, reachable. It's a sharp contrast to the impenetrable man who stands at the top of the command post, and makes decisions of life and death. A stalwart leader made human.

You drink it in, trying to make sense of the softening of his gaze, the tremble of his moustache as his lips relax into an even line, but it's indecipherable. Unknowable. You struggle to piece the pensive, almost contemplative look together, but the gingerness in his expression snaps shut.

All at once, it's forced back, and pulled taut. The drawing of a bridge.

His lips flatten into a grim line. A divot forms between his brows. The tick in his jaw speaks of frustration, but—

Not at you. Never at you.

You can't make sense of the enigmatic distance in his eyes—a floating island in the middle of the open ocean. Separated by the turbulent sea.

Something changed between you. You feel the incipient shift trembling through your bones; a novice crack. The plates deep below the surface surge, and split; shattering into the other. The waters froth white as something begins to emerge from the depths.

A new landmass, maybe.

"Alright, then," he rasps, turning back back toward the files spread out on his lap. "Try to get some rest. We'll be jumpin' into the thick of it when we land."

You can see the hesitation in his eyes. The uncertainty in his mein. It's a sharp juxtaposition to how these strange missions usually unfold, where you both pour over documents, and leads, and have easy conversations between sharp, playful barbs, and impish quips to always devolve into some debate over something trivial.

The silence is stifling. Oppressive.

Tenerife, you think, when you drunkenly stumbled down the stairs, and into his arms, and—

Coldness. Frigid distance. He cut you off after that, and it was radio silence until last night when he called you.

You don't know what it all means, but Price is startlingly observant when it comes to you, and you wonder, with your heart thudding in your throat, just how much you gave away.

A snag in the middle of lush green. You tremble.

Into the thick of it, huh?

His words haunt you.

(But when don't they?)

The novel—a neo noir mystery disguised as a romance—does little to capture your attention. Threads of interest snag on the ends of the protagonist's steadfast determination to not to let crime run rampant in the city he's taken a reluctant appreciation for, and to rescue his penultimate damsel from the crumbling affair she's trapped in with a married man of the mafia, but it dwindles after the discovery of the red herring.

It sits, untouched, in your lap as you gaze out of the circular window. Plumes of thick, white clouds blanket the world below the plane, and look dense enough for you to almost believe you could stand on the curled peaks of the cumulonimbus. A mirage, maybe.

(Or wishful thinking: you've always enjoyed chasing the unattainable.)

The sky above is a midnight blue that fades into lighter shades of lazuli as curves around the earth.

A shade lighter, flecked with greens and golds and greys, and it might have looked just like his eyes.

(Chasing, always chasing.)

The shock of it makes your leg twitch as your muscle tense back into that familiar state of constant fight or flight that Price always seems to put you in. Stage fright. Fear of discovery.

Sometimes you wonder if it would be easier to just spit the words that have been coagulating in the back of your throat for years out now into the world, and let him run from them.

Flee, like Tenerife.

Does it bother you?

No, I wish you called my more—

—can't, love. Can't do that, you know I—

Dreams pop like rubber balloons around you. The snap of the recoil blisters your skin.

A lesson, then, that there are certain words that should never be uttered, or mentioned.

He drew a sharp delineation between you and him. A line in the sand. Uncrossable. Unspeakable.

Unignorable.

Your heart aches, but you know it'll soon pass. Soon. Soon—

"Ready?" He asks when the wheels of the plane kiss the solid ground with a jolt, and the single word feels more augury than you'd like.

It feels almost instinctual, then, to glance through the small window, eyes listing to the pale blue sky. Two chaffinches chase each other in the blooms of white, their plumage harsh against the idling clouds overhead.

"Sure," you say, and wonder if he'd asked the same thing when you touched down in Tenerife. It doesn't matter. You shake the thought from your head, and try not to linger on the birds.

Leave it for Agamemnon.

Despite his insistence to the contrary, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what was promised.

Your idyllic vacation to the Romanian countryside is forfeited for the cold interior of Brașov where the man you're after, Iulian Mitrea, is hidden somewhere in the near hour long commute from here to Sinaia.

Somewhere, of course, because no one is willing to tell you anything at all. From the moment you landed at Târgu Mureș Transylvania Airport, help from anyone within the country evaporated, dissolved. Mistrust was rampant between the soldiers here to help you on your hunt.

You couldn't blame them, really. Not when their orders to stall, delay, and interfere came directly from above.

It makes sense when you're trying to capture a well-known friend of several high ranking politicians worlds over.

The pinch in their brow as they say, we don't know where he is, despite confirming only an hour earlier that they did, in fact, know where he was speaks volumes to their reluctance to participate in this farce. It needles inside of you because despite the irritation of the delay, you get it.

If they help you catch him, their name will be in the report. People will talk to you. You get to go home with a wanted man nicely wrapped in a bow for Lady Justice, and they stay behind and face the ramifications of letting a man go who greases paws with men in power—politicians, businessmen, foreign diplomats.

So.

You get it. It doesn't make it any easier to swallow when you see them on the radio each time you get closer.

It'll be a wait and see mission until someone either relents enough to let you get a headstart, or the bigger people in power finish the behind the scenes negotiations to protect as many people as possible from the fallout.

Either way—

You're landlocked in a city that's never felt more hostile to you; stuck in stasis in the middle of a brutal winter.

The inn is nice, you suppose. Old architecture. Its age sings with each movement you make against the wood that is nearly three generations older than you. It's plumed a dusting of disuse that sneaks into the corners where it rots, and stinks of mildew.

But it feels unwelcoming each time you catch the eye of a soldier, a local police officer. The lady behind the counter of the front desk is oblivious to the tension bleeding between everyone, and offers toothy smiles whenever she catches you. Eager, you think, to talk to someone who doesn't respond in clipped tones.

You soak up the rapid Romanian, and try to remember the phrases you picked up—much to her amusement.

Her hand fixes itself permanently against her chest with each new pronunciation of the Romanian alphabet you pick up—breve, circumflex, S-comma, T-comma—and she seems eager to listen to prattle on in stilted Romanian with more appreciation than the men who are meant to be your partners.

They linger, listening in on each conversation you have with the woman. Combat every effort of your futile attempt to salvage some holiday from this mess.

They undermine Price at every junction. Cut his opinion down until it's shredded paper snowflakes on the icy cobblestone. A forgotten arts and craft project now mushy from the snow blanketing the world around you in an endless white prison.

It's easy, you think, to just give up.

But you know Price.

Despite their delays, and mutterings to each other every time a lead pops up only to quickly slip through your fingers, he doesn't falter. He won't. Not until this is seen through.

He'll fight to the bitter end.

(You think he just might prefer to do his fighting on the battlefield instead of dabbling in subterfuge.

So.

You do it for him.)

Your efforts amount to a burst vessle: a rumbling eruption spewing anger and tension at your feet like an angry volcano.

And with it, you feel the words you try to swallow down buoy to the surface.

This mission makes you feel like little more than some ornate polyptych, folded away for convenience sake, and unravelled in the privacy of his borrowed office.

It's there where Price poses questions, and piques at you for more information.

His tongue is too thick when he tries to speak the language echoed around you, unable to catch the proper slur on the t-commas and drag the breve out the way it should be spoken. It sounds somehow more French than it does Romanian, and you resolve to take the mantle of lacklustre translator for him, wondering whether he took your words as coming only for the holiday as sincerely as possible.

It makes a needle of fondness grow in the gyral folds of your beating heart. A sudden deluge of empathy, and affection that makes you idealistically moony-eyed at his penchant for keeping promises.

Still.

It's unneeded.

You take a proactive role in trying to find the man who keeps evading the grasping fingers of the law (however twisted it might be), and make it quickly known to him that you're here as a partner, at his behest, and not as some fancy tchotchke to be placed, indiscreetly, on the sidelines.

It's unlike him, though. And you wonder more about the potential ramifications of this mission each passing day that you're stuck in the stifling confines of some luxury inn where the men around you whisper furiously to prevent your success.

You ask him about it, and receive a piercing stare in response. A gruff, don't worry about it. This is my muck up, not yours.

It hardens your resolve.

All it takes is a few words whispered while rolling sarmale, and you manage to find a man in Brașov who might be hiding the person you're looking for.

Information that turns out to be more fruitful than anything else thus far.

You tuck it close to your chest. The man is landlocked and stuck, hidden in plain sight by the soldiers there to help you. He isn't going anywhere.

But you might be.

The lack of progress is noted by the people who requested your aid on this—the ones that must have conveniently forgotten that the person who kidnapped foreign dignitaries was also the man they had over for summer parties at their luxury estates in Dorobanți.

They dangle Price's visa over his head during a massive row after—yet another—delayed piece of information is forwarded to you by the local police. By the time it lands in your hands, on his desk, it's too late.

More blocks. More opportunities to catch the man squandered, lost to politics.

The schism between Price and them widens. A wide chasm, uncrossable.

You catch his eye, and wonder if you should share the secrets you keep, but you don't. Not yet, anyway. There's a mountain on his shoulders. A mess of politics that you know makes his blood boil.

You want to ease the burden. The tension.

But it doubles to a new height when one of the men jabs his finger in your direction, eyes blazing, and calls you his assistant.

"My what?" Price's words are eerily calm despite the gyre welling in blue. "What did you say?"

The man doesn't back down. Neither does Price.

It's his warmth by your side, unflinching, as he stands tall and guarded, leaking anger and ruin at the slight against you. A white night in red-hot anger.

You've fought your own battles, cutting your knuckles on cracked teeth until bone embedded itself into your cartilage like a macabre set of brass knuckles in jagged ivory. You throw punches like you're fighting for your life behind the screen of a computer that ticks away for eight hours, and pretend the emblem on your lapel doesn't weigh you down to the pavement below. Your own weight to carry.

And you don't need this, don't want it, and a little part of you wants to rebel, to throw your fists around like they're the white-hot slugs spat out of the barrel of a firearm, but it's tapered down when he seethes beside you.

His hands curl into fists before swinging up, latching onto the straps of his tactical vest. A defensive manoeuvre, you once thought, but now you know better.

Price isn't clinging to the woven fabric to keep himself steady, to ground himself. It's to keep those burly fists from sinking into the gullet of the first man who wanders too close to the rapacious maw of a starving beast.

Your eyes are fixed on the hairs dusted over his knuckles as he flexes and tightens his grip until they bleach white like dead coral, sharp bones threatening to break skin.

Those hands once pressed you tight to his front, holding you steady as you stumbled through the haze of want, and longing, and kept you steady as the boat rocked with the calm waters of the neverending sea.

(—wish you called more—

—don't know what you're sayin', love. What you're startin'. Gonna let you turn around, and pretend this never happened, mm?—

—but—)

They tightened then. Hard enough that the skin around your hip bones bulged between his thick fingers. Your flesh filling in his gaps. His eyes dropped there, fixed on the way you fit between him despite the pain that bloomed where his fingers dug deep.

(—jus'... Walk away, love—)

Tenerife feels like a dream. A wisping cloud of want dredged from the depths of your subconscious yearning.

But the ache in your side where his hands rested the night before kept you from casting away the words as drunken ramblings and masticated dreams.

Those hands whiten under the strain of holding himself back, and you recognise the colour as the same shade when he held you. Paperweight. Featherlight. You wonder, then, your eyes only for him as the world you've been invited into erupts into chaos and blame tinged with the palpable weight of unwelcomeness and claustrophobia when he hasn't been holding himself back—

"Talk about 'em that way on more time, and I'll stick your goddamn heads on a post for that slimy bastard you want to protect so fuckin' bad to see—"

—from you.

You find him near the window, gazing out at the snow-covered roof-tops of the sprawling village below.

He stands, his back angled toward you, with one hand curled around the crystalline glass, filled with three fingers of scotch—the perfect amount, he stresses, and gives credence to his sincerity with each winkle in his brow—and a lit cigar in the other.

Price brings the cigar up to his lips, eyes roaming across the smear of lights in the distance. You catch the spark when he inhales, the orange intensifying into an angry red.

It casts a halo of orange on his face, and the fire makes him look somehow older and younger than he really is. An timeless visage of a man who, hours earlier, was recklessly throwing himself into the very same fire he syphons from as it burns the tobacco in his stem.

The brief flash of red is complemented by the harsh dandelion-yellow from the illuminated city when it spills through the glass, frosted with condensation from the heat in the room, and the brutal chill kept at bay by a two inch glass panel.

He's a composition in contrast.

The only light inside the room is from the kindling fireplace, and the jaundiced lamp on the desk table, spilling over the documents you'd come to talk to him about. The dimly lit interior bathes his back in a clouded tenebrous, darkening the crevasses, divots, and the contoured folds of his body until they're shadowed in the gloam. It's perfectly juxtaposed to the highlights that catch in the warm golden glow of the sleepless city just below.

A perfect chiaroscuro, you think.

The sight of him, then, at peace—or as close to it as he can manage—steals the air in your lungs. The words on your lips.

The look on his face is pensive, yet coloured in a hue of consternation that seems to quiver through the dark pools of blue gazing back at him. A ripple of disquietude. A splash of rumination. It all coalesces into an unfathomable knot of emotions that bloom in the deep divot of his brow. Ones you can't even begin to unravel.

(But your fingers itch to try.)

There is something about him in absolute stasis—completely unguarded, and unburdened by the devastating world around him—that spools under your skin like a fever. A webbing nebula that weaves with the threads of venial sin until it tangles around you.

When it tightens, it feels like a noose.

This moment of privacy between him and the thoughts locked tight inside his head makes you feel a little bit like you're intruding on a moment not meant for your eyes. A sacred thing. A voyeuristic spectator.

You should leave. Let him have the sanctity of this moment to himself, where the pensive, introspective look etched into his brow is shared only with his reflection, and no one else.

An unwitting birefringence. A glance inside Pandora's box.

You try to tiptoe back in the direction you came from, a manila folder tucked under your arm, but the wood is worn. Aged. The floorboards creak when you press your heel into them, letting out a loud, jarring noise that seems to reverberate through the arched ceiling, and against the frosted glass that encompasses the vast majority of the eastern wall.

Loud enough, you think, to crack the class. His reverie.

Price makes a noise in the back of his throat when he turns to you, brows drawn tight in wordless displeasure at the intrusion. Recognition bleeds into ashlar blue. His shoulders ease when he sets his steeled gaze on your cringing form, one foot out the door, and the other fixed firmly in your mouth.

The way he relaxes when he finds it's just you melts some of the embarrassment away. The tension dissipates, sheds itself from his coiled muscles pulled taut from carrying the weight of everything on his broad back.

(The world, then, is tucked into the corner when he dropped it earlier.)

"Sorry," you murmur, hiding another wince. "I didn't realise you were—" Brooding. Another grimace. Your foot slides deeper into your mouth. "Uh—"

"It's fine," he says, his voice hoarse from the growling threats he made against the Romanian diplomats who insisted on your help only to shrug off everything he suggested.

He clears his throat before he speaks, taking the brief lull to drag his gaze down your form. Tendrils of something soft liquify the hardened edges of sapphire—a look you haven't seen on him since Tenerife—but it pauses at the folder you try, and fail, to discreetly tuck further into the crevasse of your body. Hiding it, futilely, from view.

Something sours across his face. The half melted azure firms into unbreakable obsidian.

"Business as usual, then?"

You huff. "Not if you don't want that."

Price inhales deeply at your words, and you know that he can't. He won't.

You mourn the loss of that soft, unfathomable look on his face when the only concern he had was the condescension from his breath hiding the view of Sinaia from his appreciative gaze.

A look full of something aching. A want, maybe; a need. Things you can't begin to connect to your stalwart captain.

But then you think, again, of Tenerife. When he caught you mid-stumble, hands heavy and hot on your flesh. The look on his face ages younger than the grey around his temple would lead you to believe.

"Careful," he murmured, eyes lighter somehow as he pulled you in closer to his side. "Can't go falling all over the place."

It was your quip of, "but you'll catch me, won't you?" that made him feel almost reachable when he turned away from you, the tips of his ears dusting a pretty pink.

"Jus' watch where you're goin'."

You think about it now—about the unfathomable distance between the stars.

Between you, and him.

(And then of broken walls you mend with your own hands.)

"Jus' bring it here," he mutters, moving toward the desk cluttered with everything he was trying to avoid. The desk you brought him back to. It pinches something sour inside of you. "I'll 'ave a look at it."

Price sets the glass down, and reaches for the crystal ashtray left near the edge of the table. When he drags it closer to the fish-shaped map of Romania, decorated with little red stickers of possible hideouts for the man you're supposed to be catching, you count four ends of a cigar in the mess of ashes, all smoked down to the stem.

Concern gnarls in your gut.

"Busy day for you, Captain?"

All he gives in a noncommittal grunt in response before eying the chair with a touch of wariness as if sitting down now will prevent him standing up again. It might, you think, tentatively taking stock of the neverending pages on the desk just waiting for him to tackle. A ceaseless maelstrom that tries to drag him down that endless abyss that leaves stress marks on his forehead, grey hairs around his temple, and grinds his bones down until marrow below is exposed to the rotten air.

He doesn't sit. A pointed gesture.

The heels of his palms rest on the edge of the table, and he leans forward over the papers strewn in his familiar organised chaos, and drops his head down between the bracket of his arms, locked at the elbows.

He's the very picture of exhaustion.

"I don't have anything good to share with you," you murmur, tone low and susurrus as if raising above an octave will shatter the fragile glass that houses the two of you from the brutal storm outside these four walls. "Mostly a complete repeat of what already happened—"

"Bullshit," he grinds the cuss out like the potency of his tenor will somehow strengthen it into a hex. "Fuckin' politics."

"Nothing we haven't dealt with before," you note, turning to lean against the desk. You mirror his pose in the reverse, fingers curling around the ledge. "It'll smooth out eventually."

He considers your words, lids sliding to half-mass. Lost in thought. In—

Something.

You're not privy to the war in his head. The battle he struggles through.

But you want to be.

You'd give anything to fight alongside him in this moment of quiet contemplation. To aid him in the pursuit of victory, and help ease the burden he carries on his broad shoulders. A weight that makes his heels dig deeper into the ground than any other man you've met. Gravity falls on him harder than the others, but he never folds. Never falters.

Something shifts when you tilt your head toward him, waiting. Watching.

Irritation drips down, polluting the cenote until it's a gyre grey. Clouded with the poison of choices that lay in front of him.

"Maybe," he settles on, rolling one shoulder to alleviate the burn in his tense muscles. "Would be easier if they'd just bloody listen—"

"They will."

His eyes flicker up to you, curling with something playful, you think. Or as close to mirth as the shadows in his brow will allow.

"You gonna make them?"

The tone of his voice—smoke cured, molasse thick—is blunt, but—

Baiting.

Loose tendrils of smoke weep from the end of his forgotten cigar, and curls in the air between you. You taste ash, and feel the burn of nicotine when you breathe in.

It does little to quell the spike of nerves gnarling in your chest; the itch under your skin.

Something brims in your pulse. A rapaciousness that seems to burn through your arteries until they're blistered from the heat. You lean back on the desk, knees locking until your legs are straight to alleviate the anxious knot growing in your stomach.

His gaze drops to your legs when your ankles cross, sliding up to the softness of your thighs now spread plush over the wood.

Another shift. Poisoned grey darkens into thick tar. Bog water. You wonder how long it would take for anyone to find you if you sunk below the thin film of pleats, swallowed whole by the fen.

Imprisoned in his clutch.

"For you? Anything—"

The words slip out before you can stop them.

His head jerks up. The roundness of his almond shaped eyes can only be derived from your slip-up, to your unintentional confessional between secondhand smoke, and borrowed nicotine.

A mistake, you think. An accident. A follie.

But the words are lodged under the syrup-y thick water that leaks down your throat.

You swallow again, but it feels like you're drowning.

An impasse. Brutal, and uncrossable. You wonder what he might say, what he might do, and try to ignore the ache in your chest, the bitter throb of anticipation as the lines in his brow deepen, darkening with the stains of his indecision.

That same wellpool of emotions buoys in ashlar blue when he stares at you, plain faced and—

A touch uncertain.

It's strange to see him so unsure, so hesitant.

Price isn't a man who falters in the face of anything. Who concedes, and surrenders.

His tenacity is what drew you to him. That staunch perseverance that you sometimes wish you could fill each hairline fracture in your soul with. To somehow syphon the staggering presence of him, indomitable and ferocious when he needs to be, into your marrow where it'll congeal and paint the walls of your bones with the same stalwart dedication to a singular gospel that he carries with ease.

He huffs, then, and the exhale reeks of stale cigarette butts in a damp ashtray.

"Don't know what you're getting yourself into, love—"

Something flickers across his face, and you wonder if he even meant to say it. Or if the endearment slipped out, oiled by the same elixir that covered your throat and coaxed something closer to the truth, to your hidden wants, out of the depths of your yearning.

It's unfathomable, though. The mere idea of it being drug from the same hidden well as yours itches between your ribs; a blossom of something featherlight. Hopeful.

When you look at him, eyes scouring the dividing lines between the face he shows the world—the one with a deeply furrowed brow and obsidian clotting in the crevasses of liquid sapphire; a stalwart sense of detachment, and pointed distance—and the one he shows you.

With you, though—

With you, he's always asymmetrical.

A singular brow notching up at something audacious you said; one side of his mouth lifted in a crooked grin. The flash of teeth when you murmur under your breath about the stuffy politicians you're meant to be saving.

Rusted picket fences. Faulty hinges. Open, lax. Void the usual symmetry that makes him Captain John Price; a stalwart presence on the battlefield, shoulders strong enough to lift the morale (and morality) of every soldier under his commands. Has to, you think, or he might implode, crumbling under the stifling weight of his utilitarian choices, and the actions guised under the moral grey dust of patriotism.

It clings to him. Scars shaped like canines: the teeth of an old, rotten dog. Nightmares in absenteeism.

He never tells you about them, ever; but you've gotten more than a handful of phone calls during devil's hour to know they haunt him just as much as they do you.

(And if you've taken to turning your ringer on as high as it will go—just in case—then that's a secret between you and midnight blue sheets.)

The look on his face now makes you think of that mission in Tenerife, when his fingers curled around your wrist after landing in Heathrow. Warm, flushed skin. Rough like a cat's tongue when it slid over your flesh.

He stopped you from leaving, eyes shaded in stagnant blue as the taxi idled in front of you.

"Could go for a coffee. Want to come?" He asked, and it was unlike him to stall, but the prospect of more time, and coffee, numbed you to it all.

You didn't give it much thought, but the words feel almost sibylline now. Hindsight, you think: that pesky little thing that makes you feel like Lleu, caught in the crosshairs of a feud between Arianrhod and Gwydion.

Over burnt, bitter beans and coffee flavoured water, he said: "don't get much sleep anymore."

"Our late night phone calls don't bore you to sleep?"

It was a pawkish barb not meant to be taken seriously, but Price, you find, is percipient when it comes to you.

"No, they don't." He shifted in his chair, eyes cutting toward the mid-morning haze dusting the streets of London in a fine periwinkle blue. He looked older, somehow, in the virginal rays of the dawning sun. The words that slipped out felt softer, subdued in a way that made you wonder if they were meant to be uttered at all. "I sleep much better after them, actually."

Price has a strange ability to leave you both speechless and full of words. Of things, mundane and inconsequential, that you long to spill out over the linoleum countertop.

More often than not, they're just naked, bare. Raw words not yet shaped or formed into any semblance of meaning, but ones you want to say, anyway. If only to keep the conversation going. To keep him around a moment longer.

(After all: if the conversation does end, he can't leave.)

But your lips are glued. Words stuck in the wet ashes that congeal in your throat.

Your eyes followed the breadcrumbs of his gaze, and found the quieted road of Liverpool Street staring back at you. Drenched in cobblestone grey, and smeared in industrial neon. An uninspiring visage of some secluded corner tucked away from the tourist trap of central London.

The near hour long drive from Heathrow to London for a cup of coffee is another mystery. Why he invited you where, of all places, isn't known to you.

He paid for the coffee, the taxi. Said nothing at all but walked you back to your flat in London, the place you stay after each mission brings you back to Heathrow. It's a near twenty-nine minute commute in the opposite direction.

Said no when you offered him a place to sleep for the night, and you tried not to let the bitter sting of rejection show while his fingers curled around the wooden frame of your front door, knuckles turning white from the strain of—

Hindsight, you think.

The shift in his gaze when his hand snared around your wrist. When he hailed a taxi for burnt coffee in the middle of a city that he couldn't stand—a place you'd heard many tirades about in the middle of the night, all leading back to the same reason for his staunch hatred of London: it's too bloody far from Liverpool. Too bloody far from him.

When he turned to look out the window to watch your reflections contrasted against drab, grey London.

Earlier, when he was gazing at the city below.

It clicks, then.

He wasn't staring out the window. He never was.

"Why didn't you come into my flat?" You ask, words thick. Heavy.

His nostrils flare. "What—?"

"That night in London, after Tenerife—I asked you to spend the night. Why didn't you—"

White knuckles. The look on his face was—

Pensive. Dusted with consternation. Just like—

Now. Then. All the moments in between.

Like many things in conjunction to this, it's probably your fault. An unignorable truism that sits under your skin like an itch you can't scratch no matter how viciously you claw at your dermis.

You could have asked, but it wouldn't have mattered.

The answer was staring at you this whole time.

Why he called you in the middle of the night. Why he never even bothered to entertain your application to join the 141. Why he looked so troubled when you invited him in. Why he kept you at arms length this whole time, but let you see the gnarled ruins of his soul in the middle of night.

The delineation of your relationship was drawn in the distance of a phone call at midnight, ones made not because he was lonely or bereft of comfort—

But because he could hang up before he said too much. Widen the gap with a press of his finger.

You can see him try to pull back again. To put a distance between you greater than this lonely hotel in the middle of Brașov to Orion's Belt.

Words—stay, don't, why—caught in your throat. They refuse to come out. A conversation trapped. One you can't start.

(You've always been better with actions than words.)

And so, you kiss him instead.

A cacoëthes.

It's less of a kiss and more of a messy punch to his mouth with your blistered lips.

Your trembling fingers curl into the straps of his tac-vest. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes.

His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. Words, you think, like: what're you doin'? or this is sexual harassment and I swear to god I'll sue—

You don't let him finish. Don't let him start, either.

You fall back on the desk, yanking on his straps. He jerks forward.

You meet, clumsily, in the middle. An awkward assemblage of limbs; bodies cut across each other like an unfinished T.

It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss.

There are moments leading up to this that, in hindsight, make everything seem almost inevitable. The look on his face. The ache in your chest. It blooms from the same vine; a want in spades. You almost weep when he groans against your mouth, teeth knocking together. You taste heme in the back of your throat, and nearly choke on it when his fingers curl under your jaw, holding you steady as he tries to devour you whole.

It sheds threads of kismet, and tastes a little of finality when you brush your lips against his again, meeting in the middle: a perfect equilibrium. Absolute congruence.

(Or, maybe, it's the thrill of his taste that shades everything else in a roseate veil; that swallows down the other moments, trials and tribulations that felt more gruelling than your training, and lets the others surge to the surface. Moments of heartache, and pain, and—

And it doesn't matter, you think, a touch delirious; not when you know what his hands feel like when they curl around your waist, when his fingers dig into your skin, and he pulls you closer.)

"Listen—" the word is mangled in his throat; charred from the fire that burns in his lungs. "You need to know what you're getting yourself into."

"You say that like I haven't been thinking about it for years, John."

It sobers him a bit. He pulls back until a thin strand of space sits between your wet lips and his moussed beard.

The implication in your words makes his eyes darken. Lids fluttering.

Want, palpable and thick, pulses in the charged atmosphere between you. A microcosm of your own design: a place carved from stone, ashlar, and shaded in the midnight blue of his eyes. A roseate gossamer falls, veiling you in that corusating haze that makes the world look prettier than it really is.

Shades of rose.

The breath he pulls in is tremulous.

When he speaks, it sounds like an orison. A plea. "That so?"

It's a weighted question. Benediction paints his throat, stains the words when they slip out.

"Kept me waiting for quite a while."

"Didn't think you were waiting." His hands sear your skin when they slide up your back. His forehead falls, resting against yours. "Not much to sit around and pine over, love."

It makes you scoff, a wet noise in the back of your throat. "You think I answer my phone in the middle of the night for just anyone?"

"No," he murmurs. His hand lifts, cups your cheek in the seat of his palm. "But I'm not jus' anyone, am I?"

"Nope. Your a walking contradiction on how—sometimes—nepotism isn't all bad—"

"Watch it."

"Or what, John?"

You're distinctly aware of the age-old idiom about playing with fire, but when he dips his chin, and narrows his eyes at you like that, you find you don't really care much about getting burned.

His nostrils flare, eyes dark, and hungry. A warring pelagic storm looms over ashlar. Gyre grey. Arsenic white. You want to stain the tips of your fingers in the liquid blooming in his gaze.

"Might need to teach you a lesson in respect."

"Might need to teach you not to keep someone waiting."

His mouth is searing it when it presses to yours.

"Touchè."

Price tastes of saltpetre.

Thick, ichorous. An heady elixir that sits heavy on your tongue, leaking down the back of your throat when you swallow.

A fine sheen of nicotine paints his teeth from the forgotten cigar burning in the ashtray on the table, and when you swipe your tongue across them, chasing the secondhand buzz, it feels anxiolytic. Your head is a slurried mess from it all, and the way he feels beneath you.

Hard edges, broad—massive.

His chest expands with each deep inhale. Shoulders tense with the effort of holding himself back. A fact, you find, is more intoxicating than the nicotine on your tongue, or the saltpetre blooming in your veins.

The width of his thighs make your muscles burn when you perch your knees on the cushion beside them, the stretch a deep burn that feels more arduous than a workout.

You're not supposed to be kissing your captain.

To be sat on his lap while his big hands roam your skin, sliding down the knobs of your spine, thumb pressing the grove of each one. Massaging your sides when you gasp into his mouth, a wet noise full of the burn in your joints, the want in your belly—an ache, a need for more. More. More—

It was meant to be professional.

At work, on the field, in the stuffy headquarters of the SAS building in Hereford, it's meant to be distant. Cold. And—

And not this.

Not spread open in his lap, one palm cupping the soft cheek of your ass and squeezing until the flesh bulges from between his splayed fingers. Not heaving his name out in a palpable supplication drenched in want. Need.

Needy.

"Look'it you," he'd rasped into your neck hours earlier, slick with sweat from your impromptu training lesson in the comfort of his office. "So fuckin' needy—"

And you were. Are.

"C'mon, cap," you gasped, nose pressed taut against his temple, tongue chasing the briny tang that saturated his hairline. "Give it to me—"

He did.

Over and over and over again. Bending you over hard wood of his desk until your face was full of reports and papers, missions and confidential files on things, and people you'd rather not think about while your captain was spreading you apart with his tongue, and three fingers, and—

It was too much. Not enough. A paradoxical realm where pleasure and pain melded into a single entity. It's veins coursed with a potent cocktail of everything you could easily become addicted to—oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins rich enough to make you dizzy for aeons when it saturated all those gullible receptors in your head—and when he touched your skin with his bare hands, you felt the prickle of it leaking into your bloodstream.

The rough husk of his voice rasping out his pleasure in your ear is an audible opiate; euphoria condensed into decibels. It rattles your synapses. Your bones. You quiver under his bulk, eager for more.

Aching for it, really. Want him so badly that it hurts.

Even after he'd taken his time to prepare you, made you cum from his mouth, his fingers, more times than the chemical slurry of your melting mind could ever try to keep up with, it isn't enough.

Wasn't.

His cock feeding into you, stretching you open around the thick of him, until the world around you was awash in pure bliss in the most beautiful shade of blue, wasn't enough.

"More," you gasped, nerves throbbing like a bruise. Bones battered, rusted from the force of him taking you over and over again. "More, John—please—"

He obliged each time. Sliding home until all you could feel was him pulsing inside of you. The heavy weight of his hips notched against your ass. The branding heat of his hands gripping your hip, fingers curling around your shoulder, as he held you steady for him.

(Over and over again—)

Price smells of tobacco when he leans in close. Damp ash. The wet end of a cigarette butt. Stale smoke. Mossy, loam. You breathe in the bitter scent of him until it floods your lungs, clotting in each fibril until it's heavy with the tarish resin that leaks from the end of burning cigar.

"Greedy fuckin' thing," he hissed in your ear, fingers delving into you, feeling his release squelch around him. "Ain't you?"

"Always," you huffed, struggling through the onslaught of your mind buzzing for one more, just one more hit, and your body screaming for respite. "Always for you, John—"

"Stubborn, mm?"

He didn't give you one more. John is attune to you in ways you'd never anticipated. He just—knows you. Can easily see through the desperation for victory clawing at your throat, sinking it's nails into the delicate skin of your jugular, and hissing rapacious demands that rattle through your vocal chords.

When he meets the apogee of your mettle, he pulls back. Edging away from the battered fold of your limits once he brings it to a new precipice, a new level.

Price pulled you against him when your fawn-legs quiver, knees threatening to buckle, and tucked you against his chest, a protective embrace while he murmured words of gratitude, admiration, into your crown.

That was hours ago, and now—

The hunger rears. Your want is a perfect personification of greed, lust, pride, gluttony all coalescing into a molten desire that spools together, knotting tight against your chest where it tightens in a vice. A pretty bow of your searing need for the man whispering heavenly words of ardour into your damp skin.

"Price—"

He stops the whine with a nip of teeth against your jugular. "Come on, now," he bares the flat of them on your skin, pinching soft tissue between his incisors. "Rest a bit, love. Jus' wanna hold you, yeah? Jus' like this."

He leaks benzene, arsenic, and formaldehyde when he murmurs your name into the sticky column of your throat.

(And when he whispers it so softly, reedy benediction dipped the brush of his blunt affection, how could you ever deny him anything?)

Your arms thread around his nape, wrists locking together behind him.

The ticking of the clock on the wall is just another reminder of how little time you have, and yet—

"Stay," he murmurs against your jaw, whiskers scratching your chin.

Jet-lag. Exhaustion. Wishful thinking.

Whatever the reason might be, you pry your lips apart and choke out the words that have rattling inside your head from the moment you felt his chest bloom beneath your palms, and knew—without any doubt or uncertainty—that you would follow this man to hell and back if it meant you stand inches away from him for the rest of your meagre existence.

A tortuous whim. An exquisitely agonising proposition.

But you've always been rather smitten with poems that break your heart into pieces. Ones where you leave a little part of yourself between the lines that eviscerate your pericardium until you taste heme in the back of your throat.

Price reminds you of those poems. Ones that blugeons into you with a force so heavy and full, it feels as if it was written just for you. A pain so robust and brutal, that you're sure the lines in Times New Roman were first etched into your bones before they were spilled across the stark white page in black ink. Rotten blood between the pages of your barren soul.

Your fingers run through the mess on his crown, slick with sweat from earlier, and you nod, mind wandering down that path that leads to closed doors, a locked mausoleum, and with your bruised knuckles, broken nails, and bent fingers, you pry it open.

Finally, finally—

The words claw up your throat, grasping at the stretch of freedom within reach, and you—

Let them go.

"Wouldn't go anywhere without you."

(Not ever again.)

#this feels somewhat complete but it's been bumming about in my drafts for ages now and it's about time it left the nest #sorry for all the bird imagery i found a pair of binoculars in my shed and suddenly i think i'm Attus Navius #captain john price x reader #john price x reader #captain price x reader #john price #captain john price #captain price #goddd i hate tagging stuff #can i just not???#like if u wanna read it come check out my blog but i am sick to death of these goddamn tags

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tinietaehyun · 5 months

Text

Forsaken : ̗̀・❥・ ੈ✩‧₊˚

[Sorcerer!Taehyun x Royal!Reader] [Series] [Masterlist]

Pairing(s): Sorcerer!Taehyun x Royal!Reader [Ft. other txt members]

Genres: Romance, fantasy, supernatural, royal!au, enemies to lovers, angst, fluff, action, strangers to lovers.

Contains: Will be stated each chapter.

Summary: With your throne ripped away from your hands and on the run from your brother, you have no choice but to enter the Woods of Mors to escape the royal guards.

On the brink of exhaustion and hopelessness of having lost everything, you meet an arrogant sorcerer who seems to not respect your status whatsoever. Learning about his past, you realise, he’s exactly what you need to perhaps have a chance at winning back your throne and protecting your people from your tyrannical brother.

It’s all smooth sailing until you realise, you’ve caught feelings for the prideful sorcerer who despises royalty. Oh, it’ll be fine, right?

Note: Chapters will be varying length 4-5K words depending on chapter content. This will attempt to be an immersive experience! Rated PG-13.

————••————

Story Masterlist:

1. Chapter I: An Ode to Betrayal

2. Chapter II: A Plea to the Sorcerer

3. Chapter III: One’s Own Misgivings

4. Chapter IV: Bounties & Temptation

5. Chapter V: A Cry of Two Broken Hearts

6. Chapter VI: Keep Your Enemies Close

7. Chapter VII: Fluttering Feelings

8. Chapter VIII: A Door to the Past

9. Chapter IX: Trust Me, Sweetheart

10. Chapter X: Forlorn Reunion

11. Chapter XI: Home, Sweet Home

12. Chapter XII: An Ode to Romance

13. Chapter XIII: A Ballad of Two Lovers

14. Chapter XIV: Confessions & Treachery

15. Chapter XV: To Die is to Lose

16. Chapter XVI: [Finale] The End is a New Beginning

> I will be opening a taglist for this series! If you wish to be added to the taglist, please comment below. First come first serve basis!

Taglist: [closed]

@royallyjjk @wolfytae-exe @rencarnationofangel @sirenla @matcha-binz @beomies-world @michinri @parkweylyn @kvshzj @hanniehaeeeeeee1004 @elara828 @wonioml @onima-chan @moonekth @glossykai @jjunielvrs @beargyuuzz @cathyun @hanstarrs @m3chigo @vanicogh @baekberrie @nap-of-a-starr @ur-mother-realnotclickbait @sunpov

Coloured/pattern dividers are from @cafekitsune (amazing work!)

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jinwoosungs · 1 year

Text

{ 96 }

kill bill.

rei suwa x fem.reader

10 stages of love

warnings: mentions of a neglectful father; v-olence and bl-od mention; soft depictions of intimacy; minors don’t interact.

by choosing to interact with this 18+ content, you have consented to viewing something n-fw despite the warnings.

{ i did it all for love... }

1. first sight

you had to be the unluckiest woman in the world, that you were certain of. at the ripe age of 23, you were forced to take on the debts left over by your horrid father left in the wake of his death as you found yourself surrounded by copious amounts of unpaid bills.

despite how much you loved him, and how much his death had left quite a lingering ache within your heart, you knew that he was everything but an ideal father to you. after all, it was his vices and need to experience the more exhilarating type of life that lead him down numerous dark paths.

for starters, he had the most abhorrent gambling addictions, more often than not blowing off any amount of money he earns from the jobs he could manage to keep through pachinko machines. and when he wasn’t spending his free time gambling his earnings away, he would be caught up with indulging in various illicit substances, simply to feel alive and whole again.

such tragedy befell of your father the moment your mother had passed away when you were young. all you had ever known was the deep void your father felt as he struggled day in and day out to take care of you. during your teenaged years was when you forced yourself to grow up as you tended to him while taking care of yourself to the best of your abilities.

you knew of most of his vices, and loved him unconditionally as a daughter should. his death had truly broken your heart-

but more so than that was the deep sense of freedom you felt.

however, such feelings of freedom was bound to be ephemeral-

it all came into a shattering crash when you came home one day and saw that your apartment had been ransacked. you had just returned from your late hours spent working at your job. all around you were strange men dressed in suits, all of them concealing a weapon of their own the fear was felt coursing through your veins when you saw a scarred man in a suit with a gun safely within the confines of his pockets.

he takes one look at you and grins, slamming down a few sheets of papers that you recognized as being written in your father’s own handwriting. “looks like your worthless old man was such pussy he went ahead and died before paying me the debts that he owes.”

his eyes gleams at you, eyeing at you with such a lustful hunger that you felt your heart drop down to the confines of your abdomen.

“and he has given you to me, to do as i please as part of his payment.”

you were trembling, already feeling the cold sweat travel down the nape of your neck as the nausea begins to settle. it takes you a herculean effort to prevent yourself from dry heaving, watching with a terrified gaze as the man steps forward, a glint seen within his dark brown eyes as he places a calloused hand behind your neck. “it’s a good thing you’re easy on the eyes, unlike that piss-ant excuse for a father.”

as you were surrounded by those men, you were given little choice but to pack what belongings you wished to take with you as you were escorted out of your apartment by the men. it was only then that you found out that your father had somehow involved himself with the japanese mafia, the yakuza, managing to take several loans from them as he dug himself even deeper into the depths of their claws-

leaving you behind to deal with the mess.

for the following weeks, your days were spent beneath deep scrutiny of the yakuza, living within their grand mansion as the boss ends up growing a fondness for you. he forces you to quit your job all while donning you in heavy amounts of makeup along with low cut and revealing dresses. you were nothing more than a piece of eye-candy for the bastard to admire and behold.

“you’re damn lucky you’re so fucking beautiful. i don’t even wish to have you writhing beneath me, at least, not yet.”

it was one of those nights where you were forced to take a seat against the boss’ lap, surrounded by his luxurious furniture as he kept tracing his disgustingly chapped lips over your features. each time you felt his caress, you look away from him, making him grow even more frustrated with you when he tosses your form against the ground.

the wind was knocked out of your very lungs as you struggled against him, using every bit of your strength to get him off of you-

but to no avail.

his brown eyes were wild, filled with fury and lust as he worked on tearing away at your dress. “the more you keep defying me, the more i will wish to dominate you. i changed my mind, perhaps i will take you after all.”

just as his hands reach down to the skirt of your dress as a scream was felt lodged in your throat-

the sounds of gunshots and a door slamming open was what stops him from going any further as you tilt your gaze to your right to see the sight of a young man, the mere visage of his sharply handsome features taking your very breath away.

his dark hair was tied up in a neat ponytail, revealing a smooth undercut from beneath its soft strands as his dark eyes were slanted in a scowl. he was dressed in a suit, with black gloves covering his hands as he aimed the gun directly at the man hovering above you. the yakuza boss was given no chance to react when he aims his gun towards the man, shooting him directly against his head as your screams finally echoed throughout the room.

2. introduction

the adrenaline was felt coursing through your very veins, and you swore you were close to gagging upon feeling the warm sensation of blood beginning to stain the fabric of your dress. despite how the rich scent of iron fills your senses, you couldn’t find the strength to move as you were left frozen on the ground with a dead man slumped over you.

your heart was pounding, sending rushes of ice cold blood to rush through your veins as your breaths came out as uneven and labored.

“oi, can you hear me? OI!”

with a gasp, you felt the man with the gun, your savior, pick the dead body off of you before tossing him aside. your eyes briefly meet with his, and you found yourself admiring the deep shade of sable settled within his stern gaze, comparing the color of his eyes to a deep, moonless night. you watch as his thin lips move, and you were aware of him speaking to you, but the blood rushing through your ears was making it difficult for you to understand him.

he lets out a string of curses, muttering some word pertaining to you being traumatized before leaning down to pick up your trembling form. he doesn’t seem to mind the blood that stains at your dress, nearly drying as your breathing slowly began to calm down its rapid beats.

while you were held in his arms, you were aware of his brisk pace when he takes you out of the room, allowing you to see just the sheer amount of damage he had caused as many of the yakuza members had a bullet wound gracing their chests. the sheer sight of it all was enough to make you tremble once more-

“....name?”

you were aware of the way he continues his trek out of the mansion, calling out to you when you divert your attention back to him, “p-pardon?”

he doesn’t return your questioning gaze, eyes remaining honed in on the exit settled several feet away. but...perhaps it was your imagination, but did your savior press your form even closer to his chest in hopes of shielding you from the gruesome image of the fallen yakuza members?

the man lets out a gentle huff, “i asked you what your name was.”

finding yourself clinging to him, you could feel your face heat up in response to his close proximity. wetting your lips, you take in a deep breath before exhaling, softly murmuring your name to him.

he tilts his gaze downwards, meeting your gaze while softly repeating the syllables that made up your name. his brushes against your skin was soft, achingly so, before his tone becomes softer, “are you alright? did that bastard hurt you?”

you shiver at the memory, letting out a whimper before folding yourself even closer to him. “h-he was going to hurt me, nearly beyond repair; b-but, you saved me.”

a sound reminiscent of a pleased hum was heard coming from the confines of his throat, his strides taking him out of the mansion as the cold night air was felt hitting against your skin. his gaze lands on a vehicle settled near the mansion’s gates, ready to walk towards it when he was suddenly stopped, feeling a soft sensation gracing his jaw.

looking down, he meets with your shimmering gaze, filled with gratitude for saving you as you whisper, “what’s your name?”

a sudden shyness was felt coursing through him, causing him to avert his gaze all while letting out a cough.

“it’s suwa, suwa rei.”

a smile was seen gracing your features, and you found yourself repeating the syllables that make up his name, thinking to yourself how much the name suits him before allowing your body to succumb to its exhaustion. the moment rei feels your form slump within his arms, he frantically calls out your name, patting at your face in hopes of getting you to awaken-

but with you completely unconscious, in a deep sleep even, the young assassin knew that he could not leave you alone.

3. interaction

the moment kazuki saw rei return back to their shared home with you in his arms, he knew something major had happened during his solo mission. nearly forgetting that he still had miri in his arms, he hears her let out a gasp all while asking, “papa rei brought home a princess!”

rei gives his partner an exasperated expression, feeling his own exhaustion coursing through his veins, “can you put miri to bed? i promise, i’ll explain everything later.”

understanding the look settled deep within rei’s eyes, kazuki gives him a nod before carrying miri away, doing his best to calm the young girl’s tantrums and curiosity pertaining to the woman settled within rei’s arms.

he sighs, making his way toward his bedroom, allowing the light from the hallway to light up the dark corners of his room. with his bed in sight, he gently settles your sleeping form on top of the covers. running a hand through his dark hair, he releases them from the confines of his ponytail, allowing them to fall freely across the back of his neck.

rei’s gaze continues to linger on your form, unsure of what he planned to do with you. your dress was a complete mess, the front of it being dyed a deep burgundy due to how he had immediately taken out the boss, spilling his blood all over your form.

a surge of guilt courses through him, hating the fact that he had to make an innocent person like yourself bear witness to such bloodshed. his hands itch with the need to reach out to you, to brush back the strands of your hair while cleaning your form of any spilled blood-

he coughs, banishing such strange thoughts from the confines of his mind. his face felt oddly heated when he finally convinces himself to deal with this all in the morning, already having plans to sleep in his bathtub and allow you to rest within the safety of his room.

he turns around, only to nearly jump back in response upon coming face to face with kazuki. his brown eyes were filled with concern when he tilts his gaze over to your sleeping form. “was this another one of watanabe’s women?”

“yeah, the bastard was close to tearing her apart had i not arrived sooner.”

“heh, and is that why your fair maiden is covered in blood?”

rei winces upon hearing kazuki’s teasing words, rolling his eyes as he was ready to prepare his bed from within the safety of the bathtub when kazuki stops him. his hand was gripping at his wrist, stopping him from leaving when he asks, “what do you plan to do with her?”

ah, of course, the age old question. what was he going to do with you? kazuki’s concerns were valid, and besides, it’s not like you didn’t have your own life to return to. surely, he was able to help you return back to the life you had before watanabe ruined it?

avoiding kazuki’s gaze, he allows his eyes to travel back to your sleeping form, watching the way your chest rose and fell in tune with your breathing. just seeing how vulnerable you were, still in your ruined dress with your face finally painted in the perfect visage of tranquility.

tearing his gaze away, rei shrugs off his partner’s hold on his wrist. “we’ll deal with such things later.”

4. attraction

as if the circumstances couldn’t get any stranger... you found yourself living in the same house as rei, along with his partner, kazuki kurusu and adoptive daughter, miri.

the morning after rei had saved you and taken you back to his home, there seemed to be tense and terse silence that filled the air. you recall waking up that morning, feeling sick to your stomach at the sight of the dried blood that soaks the front of your dress.

you felt the bile creeping up the confines of your throat, about to heave up everything that remains in your stomach had it not been for the sight that came from your periphery. settled at the end of the bed was a folded shirt and a pair of shorts with a new packet that contained a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.

a surge of warmth was felt coursing through your very veins, somehow knowing that rei had given you such items as you force yourself out of bed. wanting nothing more than to discard the disgusting dress that covers your form as you shrug yourself out of it. picking up the new clothes and packet of essentials close to your chest.

making sure that the hallways were clear, you kept following it until you reached the bathroom, sliding your form within the room as you worked on thoroughly cleansing your body from the events that happened last night.

with you feeling refreshed and dressed in what you assumed to be rei’s clothes, you make your way towards the kitchen to see rei already settled on the table with an adorable young girl with rich brown hair settled on his lap all while feeding him bits of what looked like pancakes. for a moment, you felt your heart become trapped within your throat upon seeing rei in his disheveled state.

he was achingly handsome, with the soft curls seen falling across his face. there was a soft expression seen within his eyes when he holds the little girl on his lap, allowing her to pat and prod at his cheeks while letting out a string of giggles-

and truly, it was such an endearing sight to you.

“papa, papa! say ahhh!” she beckons at rei to lean down and take a bite out of the pancake dipped in syrup, making his mouth twitch a little bit before leaning down to meet with her gaze.

“ahh.” rei’s voice was completely deadpan, dripped in nonchalance as he allows the young girl to feed him the delectable pancake. the sight was enough to make you smile as a giggle was felt escaping from your lips, and you immediately regretted letting your presence known. rei’s gaze was unreadable, looking at you as the little girl does the same.

thank the heavens for miri, for the moment she sees you, she hops off of rei’s lap and comes to meet with your surprised gaze. “hello! you are the pretty princess in papa’s arms!”

you could feel your cheeks turn warm in response to the girl’s sweet words, causing rei to let out a cough as he tries to correct her, “she’s just...a friend of papa’s.”

the girl doesn’t seem to pay rei any mind, standing on the tip of her toes as she beckons you to pick her up. upon seeing this, rei tries to stop her, “wait, miri, she’s not-”

he trails off upon hearing your sweet giggles, picking her up with no hesitation as you bask in her laughter. the sudden tension felt within the household melts with the joyous sounds that escapes your lips. such a happy sight was enough to make kazuki stop his cooking, watching with unbidden amusement while watching their daughter laughing so freely whilst in your arms.

after calming down miri, you were able to settle yourself on the dining table as kazuki brings you your own plate of breakfast. between bites of your pancakes and sausages, rei keeps his gaze honed in on you. kazuki distracts miri with feeding her some pancakes as well, allowing rei to talk to you.

“do you know what you want to do?”

you hum, cutting off a piece of sausage while chewing on it thoughtfully. “to be honest... not really. since watanabe forced me to come with him as part of my dad’s...payment,” you give yourself a chance to shudder, “i had to quit the lease on my apartment and my job as well.”

“papa rei, you can keep her!”

rei was in the midst of taking a sip of his coffee when miri’s sudden outburst makes him choke on his coffee, the poor man nearly spewing the dark liquid across the table earning an amused chuckle from kazuki.

“i mean, our daughter has a point. it doesn’t seem right to simply kick her out, right? especially after going through something so traumatic as being the center of watanabe’s affections.” kazuki shivers dramatically in response, the sight of his goofy expression was enough to melt all thoughts pertaining to the uncertainty of your future away.

5. date

currently, you had been living with rei and his unorthodox family for a few months now, acting as miri’s primary caretaker when rei and kazuki were sent on missions. despite how awkward it all seemed in the beginning, you all managed to work it all out-

well, for the most part.

what you didn’t account for was the absolute attraction you felt whenever you were close to rei. everything about him seemed to draw you in, and you found yourself daydreaming about him on more than one occasion. everything about him intrigued you, and you wanted nothing more than to tear down the walls rei had built for himself surrounding his heart.

being kazuki kurusu’s complete opposite in every way, you realize that rei was a man that spoke and expressed himself with few words. he enjoyed keeping to himself, spending his free time basking in his various videogames, working out on his treadmill, or tending to his personal garden.

and oh boy...there was a moment where you had caught rei in the midst of his workout, running on the treadmill as you collected everyone’s dirty clothes to do some laundry when you happen to pass by rei whilst he was on the treadmill. your periphery had caught sight of him, but your curiosity got the best of you as you felt yourself facing forward-

only to have your heart cease with its beats at the mere sight in front of you.

rei didn’t notice you, eyes clenched shut as headphones covered his ears. he ran across the treadmill dressed only in a pair of sweats. his muscular body was littered with scars, and even with a few bullet wounds here and there-

yet he was still so attractive to you. you could feel your cheeks warm up as you thought about what it would feel like to kiss away at those scars all while darting your tongue-

as if sensing your presence, rei looks directly at you, taking off his headphones while asking you if you were alright. to which you merely let out a squeak in reply before dashing away from him.

because of how you had witnessed him working out so freely like that, your mind was a complete and total mess whenever rei was around. each time he was within your proximity, you would feel your blood rushing through your veins as your whole body began to heat up in response. the emotions rei had elicited from you was truly and utterly maddening.

so you decided to finally act on your emotions, knowing exactly what to do when rei had his next day off.

it happens on a sunday, with the sounds of rei playing one of his games in the early morning prompting you to wake up. you continue with your morning routine and put on your newly purchased clothes. dressed in a shirt and a cozy pair of sweatpants, you calm down your racing heart and make your way toward rei.

his form was settled on the couch, dark eyes glued to the glowing screen as he mashes several buttons on his controller, completely focused on the game when you make your appearance known. he acknowledges you with a nod before returning back to his game.

you watch the screen, coming closer to where he was settled on the couch to see that he was playing one of those competitive fighting games. hoping that he didn’t catch your bluff, you settle yourself next to him while giggling, “oh, i love this game. i used to play it all the time with my friends.”

rei pauses the game, looking at you with his eyebrows arched upwards in question. “oh yeah?”

“yes.” you confirm with a nervous smile, truly hoping that rei couldn’t catch your bluff. your eyes travel over to the second controller and gesture over at it. “how about we compete one-on-one?”

just then, the most attractive smirk graces rei’s features, “what? are you hinting that there’s a prize at the end of it?”

“but of course,” you say with a cheshire cat grin spreading across your features. “if you win, you get to ask anything of me...and if i win...” you trail off, suddenly feeling shy when his gaze is kept honed in on your form.

“and if you win...?” he trails off, ending in a question as he is genuinely curious as to what you were going to say.

ignoring the way your cheeks began to heat up so considerably in response, you look away from him and say, “if i win, th-then you must take me out on a date.”

the silence that permeates the air was unbearable to you, and you found yourself regretting betting such a thing. perhaps he wouldn’t take the bait after all, and you were so close to saying how you were just kidding-

that is, until rei says with a smile on his face, “you’re on, let’s do this.”

he stands from his seat, allowing you to take the other controller before he settles back on the couch right next to you. he exits out of the menu and switches over from single player to two-player. upon reaching the character selection scene, you chose your favorite character to play while rei does the same.

you could feel your palms become sweaty in response, ready to button mash your way into his heart when the fight starts. feeling so wound up, you end up releasing a flurry of attacks first with rei’s character being barely able to block it.

it was strange, but wasn’t rei a great player at this game? surely the hours he spent putting into the game would reflect his far superior style of gameplay compared to yours-

so why was it that you were able to chip away at the opponent with ease? truly, you had lied about this game being a favorite of yours, with you simply taking a guess with each button mash you performed. within just seconds alone, your character comes out victorious, standing over rei’s own player character as rei drops his controller in response.

“alright, you won fair and square.” his deadpan expression meets with yours, making your heart race even faster in response. “i’ll take you out somewhere nice come next weekend.”

6. holding hands

you were still in a daze when rei had agreed to take you out on a date so freely like that.

between kazuki’s knowing smiles and miri’s joyous laughter all urging you onwards with your date with rei. when the weekend finally came, you found that your heart wouldn’t stop racing with anticipation, making sure that you were dressed extremely well while wearing some makeup in hopes of further attracting rei to you.

with you ready to go, you meet with rei, feeling your heart perform somersaults from within the confines of your chest from the mere sight of him. he wore a deep blue jacket, coupling it along with some jeans and a regular pair of sneakers. his curled black hair falls perfectly across his pale face, his full lips perfectly straightened, not showing a single emotion as you struggled to decipher what remains within his mind when he looks at you.

your own gaze was shy, meeting his eyes for a brief moment as you fought back the urge to ask him, what do you think?

but lucky for you, perhaps rei suwa wasn’t as stoic as he made himself out to be. for the moment you step closer to him, eyes wide with your lips parted, as if ready to utter your question when a sudden flash of pink was seen settled across his cheek.

not wanting to be scrutinized or teased by kazuki or their daughter, rei takes a hold of your hand and exits his home together with you. “we’ll be back later, by tonight.” he calls out to his partner and daughter before pulling you along, leading you away from your shared home.

you were close to asking where he planned to take you, but felt your words get caught within the confines of your throat when he takes a hold of your hand, interlocking them together with his as he looks back at you. he lets out a gentle whisper of your name before telling you, “we can go anywhere you’d like.”

7. first kiss

your laughter was all that echoed throughout the night was you kept your arm wrapped around rei’s. staying true to his word, rei takes you to wherever you pleased, allowing you to truly tailor the date to your liking alone.

knowing of rei’s introverted nature, you took him to your favorite cafe, treating yourselves to your favorite drinks before exploring a bookstore close by. the sight of his tiny smile gracing his features as he buys the volumes to his favorite manga was an image that you embedded within the depths of your mind. you had every intention of paying for your own books, but was left pleasantly surprised when he ends up purchasing your novels for you as well.

you end up giggling, having the time of your life while gently running your hips against rei’s as he carried your bag of books with him, “you know, i didn’t think you’d be so bad at city fighters.”

he lifts up his eyebrows at you, “pardon?”

“you know,” you run your hips against his once more, “when we made that bet? and i told you that you owed me a date if you lost?”

it was then that a rich smirk appears on rei’s handsome features, stopping his movements when he meets your gaze and tells you, “oh that? don’t get too cocky, since i lost on purpose.”

the sudden realization makes your cheeks burn with embarrassment, especially when rei begins laughing at you. “w-wait, what?! you lost on purpose, b-but why?!”

your question succeeds in making rei cease with his laughter, not looking at you as he hid his mouth behind the back of his hand. “f-figure it out yourself.”

it takes you a few minutes, until it finally dawns on you.

he wanted to go on a date with you.

yet before you could voice the answer out loud, rei distracts you, asking you where you wanted to eat for dinner. with your heart racing and tied in knots at the thought of rei being so damn cute and charming, you allow rei to choose the restaurant.

you end the night with a dinner at a small and quaint diner that rei favored hidden within the corner of the city. you both end up enjoying the meal while striking a conversation with him. during your conversation, it seemed as though rei was purposely being closed off, not saying much as he allows you to delve into your own rich history about your past.

throughout dinner, you tell him about your rocky relationship with your father, seeing the way rei had tightened his grip on his fork when he listens to all of the troubles you went to, even going into some detail of the weeks you spent with watanabe.

“b-but truly, i’m fine now! i mean, i feel like i should feel sad, or like, just any emotion that pertains to him but...with him gone now, i just feel an overwhelming sense of relief? and i just...i feel so bad about it.”

rei remains silent, hiding his face from beneath the length of his hair before dropping his fork. you were going to ask him if he was okay, only to see him suddenly lean forward as he takes a hold of your chin. his eyes gaze deeply into yours, saying your name in a bit of a husky tone before capturing your lips in a sweet kiss.

you were given no chance to react the moment rei pulls away from you, eyes now shimmering with a deep emotion you just couldn’t quite put a finger on yet. he keeps his gaze honed in on yours before settling back against his seat. with your free hand in sight, he takes a hold of it, holding it against him as he presses a kiss against the back of it.

“i know your feelings pertaining to your father all too well. and really, there’s no need for you to feel sorry. you aren’t obligated to forgive him, not when he’s inflicted so much pain on you.”

hearing rei’s words causes a fresh wave of tears to wash over you, feeling comforted by his reassuring words as you felt your heart begin to blossom with newfound feelings for the man settled in front of you.

8. relationship

something was growing between you and rei, you could feel it.

every waking moment was spent together with him. you couldn’t quite put a label on what was going on between the two of you, due to rei’s own quiet and introverted nature.

but truly, you didn’t think that your relationship needed a label; not in the slightest.

all you knew was that he was immensely important to you, and possibly, just as broken as you were due to his own troubled past. you wanted to soothe his own heartaches and help with healing his own traumas to the best of your abilities.

it was late into the night and you found that you couldn’t sleep, not without rei by your side. with your form cuddling close to one of your pillows, you continue watching random videos on your phone, hoping that one of them would miraculously lull you into a peaceful slumber, like miri would each time you finished reading a bedtime story for her.

but truly, you need rei by your side to feel any amount of comfort within the night.

as if answering your heeds, your ears perk upon hearing the sound of a front door opening. you gently lower your phone, straining your ears to listen for the familiar sounds of rei’s footsteps. the closer he got to your shared bedroom, the more prominent his sighs became as he pushes the door open.

his eyes strain against the darkness, seeing the way your phone still lights up the space before grunting, “it’s late, why are you still up?”

you cough, turning off your phone before deciding to be honest with him. “i-i couldn’t sleep without you next to me.”

rei was unnaturally silent, not making a sound when he loosens his tie and takes off the jacket of his suit. you listen to him let out a sigh of your name before joining you in bed, feeling the expensive fabric of his collared shirt brushing against your back.

“are you not going to change?”

cue rei letting out a grunt in response. “no, too tired.” he leans in closer to you, breathing in your scent before placing a kiss behind your neck. “besides, i can’t sleep unless i have you in my arms.”

the mutual warmth you felt was undeniable, and you could feel your heart brimming with fondness for him when the drowsiness slowly takes over your form. you could feel your eyelids become heavy, basking in the way rei’s chest was pressed against your back, making you feel every sensation of his breathing whilst he slept.

9. love

there was a sudden distance felt forming between you and rei, and you weren’t sure what had become the catalyst to such a thing. it was felt each time you tended to miri, watching with an almost forlorn expression each time rei leaves without sparing you a second glance.

during those times where he would leave on his own, you would ask kazuki if you had done anything to upset rei, to which he would simply let out a chuckle in response. “it’s fine, rei’s probably just busy, that’s all. it probably has nothing to do with you.”

you thanked him for his words, tending to miri once more as she shows you all of the pictures she had drawn as you force yourself to smile. she calls out your name before shifting through her many drawings, pulling out one in hopes of cheering you up.

“mama, look, your holding hands with papa rei a-an he’s holding your hand ‘cause he loves you! this will be my present for you!”

you felt an almost painful smile cross your features, holding miri tightly against you as you buried your nose within her soft strands of hair all while breathing in the soft scent of her strawberry shampoo. “thank you, sweetheart.”

later that night, kazuki offers to put miri to bed so that you could be alone with your thoughts. within the comfort of your shared room, you kept miri’s picture close to you, staring at the sweet colors and wondering if rei would come home tonight. your fingers trace at his features within the drawing, feeling your heart ache as you called out his name.

you were so caught up in your thoughts, wondering if you could truly explain the reasoning behind rei’s distance that you were unaware of the sudden presence coming from behind you. the man seemed out of breath, entering the room before locking the door, making his way toward you.

you gasp, finally realizing that you were no longer alone when you saw rei take great strides toward you. his eyes were filled with a yearning, brimming with the same shine within his gaze you had seen during your first date. you call out to him, voice a stuttering mess when he strips himself of his clothes.

with his added weight making the bed dip in response, you feel him reach out towards you, hands brushing against your chin as he forces you to face him. he lets out a hoarse cry of your name before delving his lips against yours in a sweet kiss. with a moan, you feel your hands let go of miri’s drawing, allowing it to flutter to the ground as you felt yourself drowning within his kiss.

using his strength alone, he picks up your form to settle it in the middle of the mattress, his knee coming between your legs as he pushes against your core with a purpose. you moan into his kiss, feeling the heat spread from between your legs the more rei places the pressure against it.

when the need for air became too much to bear, he pulls away from the kiss first, settling his form away from you as he works on tearing off the rest of his clothes. you whimper upon feeling rei pull away from, about to voice your protest when he finally strips his collared shirt away from his body, revealing his broad and scarred chest for your eyes to drink in.

he crawls closer to you, pressing a finger against your parted lips when he tells you, “sssh, we wouldn’t want to wake up miri...” he trails off, hands working on lifting up your own pajamas away from your form as he pushes up the soft fabric, revealing your bare, heaving breasts to him.

he moans at the sight, hands coming to latch on to your heated skin while letting out a quiet string of curses, “d-damn, i forgot how you seldom sleep with a bra on.” he squeezes at your chest, prodding at your nipples before settling himself above your form. licking his lips, he takes in one of your hardened buds into his hot mouth with his tongue curled against it. him lavishing such sinful kisses across your chest makes you elicit a whimper, with you literally having to bite down against the back of your hand as rei continues his ministrations on your form.

the ache you felt between your legs was painful, becoming so uncomfortable that you felt your very breath become taken away from you. you became so needy for him that you felt your legs wrap themselves around his waist, grinding yourself against him in hope of relieving such an annoying ache that took residence between them.

he groans at the sensation, nipping at your skin before traveling down your form, “so damn impatient.”

rei continues to lift your clothes away from your body, tearing them away from your form as you were left in your panties. with a grunt of your name, rei keeps sliding down your frame until he was settled between your legs, pressing a kiss against your inner thighs before grabbing at your panties, pulling them down with his teeth alone.

your mind was spinning, feeling your panties loosely hang against your ankles as rei presses soft kisses against your aching core. you could feel the evidence of your arousal coming out of you as rei’s gentle licks against your slickness makes you toss your head back in response.

the squelching sounds that were felt and heard eliciting from your core as rei worked on devouring you was enough to send your heart and mind reeling. thoughts were no longer felt nor acknowledged the moment rei decides to explore your gummy walls with his fingers. he stretches you, allowing his fingers to gently prod and open them all while drinking in the evidence of your arousal.

nearly letting out a cry of his name, you bite down against the back of your hand, feeling yourself spill into his mouth as rei lets out a guttural groan of your name.

as if driven by sheer desperation for you, rei steps out of bed for a few moments, shoving his dress pants and boxers down as you watch with anticipation, admiring the prominent erection seen between his legs. he comes closer to your form, pressing a kiss against your forehead before leaning over you to reach the nightstand. from the drawer, he pulls out a square foil and rips it open with his teeth.

returning back to you, his eyes never leave your form as he places the ring of rubber around his cock, ready to take you in every sense of the word as he allows your legs to wrap around his waist.

his eyes were brimming with absolute adoration for you, allowing the tip of him to collect at the arousal that stains your walls. your breath hitches when you feel him slide his tip within your aching core, making you arch your back when rei breathlessly tells you, “i’d rather be in hell than alone, and you make me feel less alone.”

“r-rei...ah!” within seconds, he fully sheathes himself inside of your walls, pounding himself passionately in and out of you all while admiring the way your breasts seemed to bounce with his every movement. the sheer amount of pleasure you felt was at an all time high, with rei feeling the same way as he struggled to keep his breathing even.

due to your respective desperations that was felt, rei continues to quicken his thrust all while holding on to your hips tightly, the bed seeming to creak and bounce with his passionate movements as you arched your back in response. just feeling how deeply rei penetrates your walls makes you gasp, crying out to him when rei suddenly leans forward to capture your lips in a bruising kiss, thus swallowing your moans.

with one final thrust, rei comes and spills himself within the condom as your walls convulses against him at the same time, feeling yourself spill the sweet evidence of your release over him. he lets out a grunt, making sure he was completely emptied before pulling out of you, tying up the used condom as he tosses it within the trash-bin settled in the corner of his room.

both of your expressions were painted with a tinge of exhaustion when rei comes closer to you, taking you in his arms as he places the blankets over your naked forms. all was quiet, with neither of you uttering a single word. rei allows you to bask in the quiet ambience, taking advantage of your sleepy state as you let out a yawn and fell asleep against him.

feeling your gentle breaths against his skin, rei closes his eyes all while softly murmuring into the night.

“i love you.”

10. commitment

the sun was felt shining a bit too brightly for your liking, making you wince as you buried your head even further from within your beloved’s chest. did you and rei end up sleeping in? the intensity of the sun was insane, and you weren’t sure if kazuki needed your or rei’s help with taking care of miri.

with a soft moan, you were ready to call out to him to wake him up, sitting up from your position on his chest when something sparkling from the corner of your eyes catches your attention. following the sight, you felt the air escape from your lungs upon seeing an engagement ring settled safely within a plush, black velvet box.

as if spellbound by such a sight, you step out of bed and come closer to where the ring was settled, hand trembling as they reached down to grab a hold of it. the box kept shaking, even when it was placed upon the palm of your hand, and you couldn’t find any reasons why such a ring would be here, in yours and rei’s shared bedroom.

you weren’t sure how much time had passed when rei finally woke up, dark eyes completely unreadable when he puts on his boxers and joins you. he takes note of the way your hand keeps trembling and decides to take a hold of the ring, letting out a soft chuckle when he teases you, “shall i help you with putting it on?”

you gasp, meeting his gaze while letting out a stuttered cry of his name. taking the box from your hand, he extracts the diamond ring from its confines before sliding it on to your left ring finger. “ah, a perfect fit.”

gently, he turns you around so that you were facing him. his expression was shy, as a light blush dusts at his cheeks, “i’m sorry, i’m not so good at these types of things, and i didn’t mean to come off as being so distant when all i wanted was to surprise you with this.”

he admires the ring settled on your finger and sighs, getting down on one knee for you, “i had every intention of waiting; of proposing to you when i took you out to dinner or something...but, the moment i saw you sleeping so peacefully while next to me, i couldn’t stand not being to claim you as mine for forever. that’s why...i carefully snuck out of bed and took out the ring in hopes that you would see it once you woke up.”

“r-rei.”

holding on to your left hand, he places a kiss against your ring finger, purposely brushing his lips against the engagement ring when he tells you, “i’ve never felt such a deep love or fondness for anyone- well, aside from with miri, but you’re different.” he presses his forehead against the back of your hand, “with you, i learned just how soft having an unconditional type of love could be. i see it every day when you care for miri and laugh at all of kazuki's stupid jokes. i want to spend the rest of my life with you, tying your life together with mine.”

“i’ll always protect you, so please, marry me.”

with a happy cry of his name, you eagerly accept his proposal, causing the widest smile to appear across rei’s handsome features as he stands back to his full height, taking you in his arms as he kisses you deeply, filled with joy at the thought of you becoming his wife ♡

a.n. - currently an unedited mess of a story, but it was so worth it ♡ as always i will fix any glaring errors once it's posted 🥹

all stories are written by rei; reposts, translations, and plagiarism are not allowed.

#rei suwa x reader #suwa rei x reader #buddy daddies x reader #buddy daddies fic #.stories

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