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fatesundress · 11 months

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⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader

summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.

tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people

note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡

word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)

You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine.

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones.

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary.

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly.

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile?

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up.

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about?

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers.

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession.

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary.

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure?

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning.

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with.

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge.

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books.

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls.

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin.

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated.

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again.

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any.

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now.

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice.

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all. You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else.

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them.

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten.

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.)

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true.

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer.

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t.

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid.

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless.

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that.

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately.

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end.

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight.

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes.

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand.

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain, a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him.

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love.

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock.

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly.

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it.

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.)

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish.

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same.

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much.

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition.

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal.

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it.

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is.

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —”

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor.

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together.

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident.

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be.

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop.

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece.

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that."

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval.

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will."

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis.

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain.

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.”

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back.

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake."

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster.

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating.

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself.

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh.

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you.

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle smut #tom riddle angst #(the trifecta)#tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world #ftltutbh

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grandline-fics · 19 days

Text

Shifting Focus

DESCRIPTION: The moment they began to see you differently

WARNINGS: None

CHARACTERS: Shanks, Kid, Smoker | Sanji, Law

WORDS: 2,850

A/N: Another part of this in honour of reaching 500 followers. This was my first time writing for Smoker so here's hoping you all enjoy!

*REQUESTS ARE OPEN*

MASTERLIST

---------------

SHANKS

Everyone knew Shanks was a flirt, a laidback charmer who always had a smile and a wink at the ready for the next pretty face he came across. No-one was meant to really take it seriously, to see anything that happened to be more than what it was, a fleeting moment of enjoyment for both sides. Serious feelings never truly came into play, it was easier that way given that he was always on the move. To let anyone believe he was the settling down type would have been cruel and he didn’t find any enjoyment in hurting people needlessly, unless they were his enemy of course. Everyone in the crew were more than used to his mannerisms, yourself included. You could understand his worldview on the matter however you never entertained him when he chose to flirt with you. Something that he finally started to notice and when he did, he couldn’t let it go.

“Do I repulse you?” He asked suddenly one evening causing you to choke on your coffee. Your body tensed and you forced the liquid down your throat, wincing at the painful burn it caused and sharp tightness in your throat. You’d needed it to stay awake for your night shift but after that, you set the mostly untouched mug aside. Looking to your side you saw your captain staring at you intently, a small pout playing at his lips making you believe he was picking his words carefully to seem like he was keeping the conversation light. However underneath the joking you could tell there was a real question there.

“If you repulsed me Cap, I wouldn’t have joined your crew, now would I?” You answered, looking back down to the sea chart in your hands, needing to keep track of any notable features coming into view. “What is it you really want to ask me?”

“I’ve noticed something about you.” Shanks began, scowling when you looked away from him to continue your work. You were always so task-oriented and levelheaded that even when you were joking with another member of the crew, you were still focused on what was needed to be done. Finally you looked up at Shanks again, eyebrows raised slightly to invite him to keep talking. “You don’t flirt back.”

For a moment you had to think about what Shanks was getting at but finally you let out a laugh and lightly rolled your eyes. So he was in that kind of mood today. For a moment he almost had you by making you believe he was asking you a semi-serious question. Still smiling in amusement you shook your head and turned to go inside when a wind started to pick up. If you lost the charts in your hand it wouldn’t have been good. What you weren’t expecting was Shanks to follow you, with a sigh you settled down at your desk and sat back to stare at your captain who clearly wasn’t finished with this joke and you weren’t going to get any peace until you indulged him. “Am I being reprimanded for my lack of flirtation towards you, Cap? I’m surprised it’s affected you so much given how you’re never without company.”

“You flirt with the others on board.” Shanks pointed out, not really knowing why it was getting to him so much. Ever since he’d realised you’d joke around and tease the others on board but not him, it just kept gnawing at him. Shanks knew he shouldn’t get so irritated by it all but he just couldn’t help himself. He stepped closer until he was leaning of the edge of your desk, staring down at your calm expression. “So why not me?”

“I flirt with the others because it’s not serious and they know that.” You shrugged lightly, leaning back to regard your captain, a smile slowly pulling at your lips. “You, however are a different story, Cap.” With a breathy sigh you rose from your seat and Shanks’ earlier position meant you were now standing mere inches away from him, not quite touching but close enough for the warmth of your body to radiate into his. “If I gave in and flirted with you…I don’t think I’d be able to stop it as just a joke. I don’t have the same self-control that you do.” You murmured, tilting your head up slightly so your breath could softly dance against his skin. Satisfied that that should be enough for your Captain’s need for the joke to end you took a step back and grinned before sitting down at your desk.

With your presence no longer engulfing his, Shanks blinked and immediately wanted more. More of that rush, that spark, more of you. However fate had other plans when Lucky Roux called for him and he had to do his duties as the Captain. Sharply letting out a huff of annoyance, Shanks reluctantly left your side to head onto the deck. When he reached the doorway, he couldn’t help but look over his shoulder and see your attention already drawn back to your work. Yeah, this was far from over.

KID

There was never a dull moment on the Victoria Punk. Even on the calm days at sea, the heavy steps of the Captain and the usual tone of conversation was carried at a volume louder than some other ships were used to. But that was what you liked about it. It was only when the ship was deathly quiet outside of sleeping hours that any of you felt the need to worry. The seas were calm and laughter surrounded you all as you sat in the living quarters with plenty of drink to see you all through to morning if you wanted.

Currently you were all playing a game with the bounty posters you’d all seemed to collect. It was a simple enough form of ‘Kiss, Marry, Kill’ by selecting three posters from the pile however each person that had to answer ended up getting drawn into a fierce debate about their answers. If you didn’t want to answer on your turn however, you had to drink. It was an empty punishment since all of you were drinking happily regardless.

“Look I stand by my answer okay?!” Wire shouted, unable to keep the grin from his face knowing the argument was in good spirits. “I had the worst draw out of them all so far, you guys have been getting it easy.”

“Just hurry up and pick my three okay?” You grinned, sitting up from your lounged position to get a better look for your turn. Wire reached over to the pile of posters lying face down on the table and picked three at random, slowly flipping them over to reveal Blackbeard, Franky, and Bartolomelo. Grinning you sat back down into your previous position. “Kiss Bartolomelo, Marry Franky, Kill Blackbeard. Easy.”

“Not that I’d argue with the decisions, you just made up your mind so quickly…” Killer noted, a grin in his voice as his face remained hidden by his mask. You rolled your eyes and grinned.

“Nothing to think about, Blackbeard is…ugh” you suppressed a shudder at the mere thought of the Emperor. “Franky is dependable and skilled, and fun from what we saw when we allied with them so marrying him wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

“You didn’t think about Bartolomelo as marriage material?” Kid asked with a grin and you laughed up at your Captain who you’d been leaning against for a majority of the night.

“No way, he’s a major Strawhat fanboy. I’d be competing against that entire crew for his attention, sadly we just weren’t meant to be.”

“Yeah, you’re real heartbroken about it I see.” Kid laughed along with you and the others. The game continued for another while, some of the crew stopping from being too drunk to stay awake while others began to head for their quarters. Those remaining all agreed this would be the last round and it meant you were to deal out three posters for Kid.

You were still far too comfortable lounging against your Captain so you quickly reached over, fumbling you flipped over the first three you could get your hands on and flopped back before even seeing who he had to choose from. From the sound of the stifled laughter you could tell his options were going to be good. With an anticipated grin you turned on your side and pushed yourself up with your elbow only to become surprised to see your bounty on the table along with Buggy the Clown and Nico Robin. You couldn’t help but become curious about what your Captain would pick about you although you supposed as long as he didn’t pick you to kill it was all fine, it was just a game after all.

Kid suddenly felt tense and couldn’t help but look away from your printed face to the physical version of you. The you he suddenly became all too aware of. You’d been part of the crew forever and he’d never needed to see you as anything other than a valued member like the others. What if he said something that made you uncomfortable. But if he didn’t play then you could misread that too and make things worse. Fuck, why was he overthinking this? He had to finish the game and hope nothing more was said about it. “Kill the clown and kiss Robin.” He muttered quickly before looking away and draining the last of the alcohol in his mug.

“Aww you wanna marry me?” You cooed, the smile growing wider on your face. With everyone satisfied with a good ending to the game, the crew began to clear up their drinks and the bounty posters and move to turn in for the night. You got up with a groan and stretched out your arms, finally feeling the need to rest too. With a yawn you turned to Kid who was still sitting and smiled softly. “Not heading to bed, Kid?”

“Yeah, heading soon.” He grumbled lost in his own thoughts that were now occurring to him and you tilted your head, a frown falling on your lips. Quickly Kid realised you were going to worry and he recovered enough to smirk at you. “We need our rest, right? We’ve got a wedding to plan huh?” He forced the joke out, relieved to see you laugh and leave while wishing the rest in the room goodnight. When you were gone, Kid glared at Killer who was sitting far too relaxed for his liking. “When did you add their bounty to the pile, Kil?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about and you have no way of proving it.”

SMOKER

“Vice Admiral?” You paused in the middle of the G-5 Base corridor when you spotted the base commander leaning against the wall with his office just a few feet away. At the sound of your call he made no sign that he’d heard you. It wasn’t exactly uncommon for someone of his rank to get lost in thought especially if there were certain higher ups breathing down their neck or certain pirates occupying their minds. Adjusting the documents in your hands you approached the base commander. “Vice Admiral Smoker?” You asked again and moved to lightly touch his arm to get his attention.

At the same time, Smoker turned sharply and knocked into your hand causing you to drop your files in surprise. As the papers fluttered to the floor you kept your gaze on Smoker, concern growing in your eyes. His usual steely gaze seemed to have dimmed and you noticed the small tremor in his otherwise imposing frame. As one of the base’s medical staff your critical, scrutinising stare was pinpointing all that stood out to you. Since you were dealing with the commander himself, you felt you had to be somewhat nicer and couldn’t just order him to rest. “Are you sick?” You asked and immediately his stare sharpened at the implication.

“I’m fine.” Smoker’s answer was gruff as to be expected but you could hear the slight shake that could have been missed had you not been listening out for it. When he saw you weren’t fooled he finally took a proper look at you and through his mind that was getting foggier by the second he managed to recognise who you were and what department you worked for on the base. Inwardly he cursed his bad luck. He’d been trying to get to the safety of his office but a dizzy spell hit him hard and he had to stop to catch his breath just mere seconds before you’d approached him. Smoker didn’t want to be babied, getting sick was a rarity for him. He just wanted to get to his room and sit there in peace until he felt a little better. No one else had noticed his state all day, why did he get cursed with bad luck like this at the final moment? He just needed to get rid of you before you tried to take a closer look at him. “Aren’t you going to pick up your documents?”

“Well since you're not sick and are partly responsible for me dropping them. You can surely help me lift them, right Vice Admiral?” Your question was so sweet and innocent but still Smoker glared at the challenge in your eyes. In any of his previous interactions with you, you’d seemed so reserved and quiet but now he could see another side to you. With a grunt, Smoker lowered himself to the floor, trying to fight the wave of dizziness and aches rolling down his body. Mentally he cursed you as you smoothly crouched down and started collecting sheets at a pace far faster than he was able to. When Smoker was focused on the task you’d given him, you struck. Your hand touched his forehead before he could react and you scowled at the man in disapproval. “You’re burning up with a fever. You’re going to your room and resting.”

Your order left no room for disagreement and before Smoker’s mind could truly catch up, he found himself walking into his room with you. When he was lying on his bed you set about gathering what was needed to help his fever and aches before making yourself comfortable at his desk to fix the scattered documents into their right files again. From the small layer of dust gathering on the surface you could tell Smoker didn’t use it much, being a man of action over paperwork. “You don’t need to stay, I’m fine.” Smoker grumbled.

“The second I leave, you’ll rest for an hour at most and call yourself cured. I’m not leaving until I’m happy you’re actually fine.”

“An hour is all I need.”

“Didn’t know you had a medical degree.” You noted dryly. “Do I call you Doctor Vice Admiral Smoker or Vice Admiral Doctor Smoker?” It surprised you when Smoker’s deep laugh rumbled through the air and a small smile graced your lips at the sound. Perhaps he should laugh more, it was a nice sound and it would help make him more approachable to some people.

“You can call me whatever you want.” Smoker mumbled, it wasn’t often people stood up to him like this and he had to admit it was refreshing to see. Unable to fight it, Smoker yawned as his body was beginning to give in to its need for rest. When you heard the telltale signs of him falling asleep you let out a sigh of relief that the medicine you’d given him was started to take effect.

In the early hours of the morning, Smoker stirred at the soft feeling of fingers lightly running through his hair. It was a comforting feeling and still under the haze of sleep that hadn’t fully left him, his mind hadn’t properly caught up so he let himself relax into the feeling. Reaching up he curled his fingers around your wrist holding your hand in place as his eyes slowly opened and met your face.

“Your fever’s finally regulated.” You informed him gently, keeping mindful of the time and not wanting to speak too loudly. “If you promise to drink more fluids and stay in bed until at least late morning I can leave.”

“I promise, thanks Doc.” Smoker mumbled with a half-smile, stifling a small yawn and letting his eyes fall closed again but when he didn’t hear you leave he opened his eyes again to see you still standing there. “Problem?”

“Um, kinda need my hand back…or did you want me to stay?” you laughed softly, trying to hold back the grin when Smoker tensed and quickly let go of your wrist, allowing you to leave. “Remember your promise.” You reminded him as you left, smiling to yourself as you left to your room with the memory of Smoker’s blushing, embarrassed expression fresh in your mind. You had to admit it was pretty cute to see.

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bestedoesmeow · 9 months

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𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐞, 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

pairing: carlos sainz jr & fiance!reader

request: Carlos x reader trying to have a baby, but after some failure, during the summer break with all of his family in Mallorca they got the big news (baby Carlos is comingg). After a year they come back to the summer house, as a parents, dealing with baby Carlos, with his sister and his mother🥹 (can you make this angst at the begging)

The summer sun hung low over the horizon, casting a warm, golden hue across the picturesque landscape of Mallorca. Carlos and you stood by the balcony, gazing out at the tranquil waves below. The sea breeze ruffled your hair, a gentle reminder of the passage of time.

It had been a journey of hope and heartache, a story that had begun with dreams of parenthood. But those dreams had been met with silence, punctuated by the bitter sting of failure. The two of you had weathered the storm, your love growing stronger with each setback. Yet, the emptiness lingered, a void that seemed insurmountable.

Amidst the laughter of Carlos' family echoing through the summer house, your heart ached in secret. His sister's children played by the shore, their innocent giggles a painful reminder of what you longed for.

One evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon in a blaze of oranges and pinks, you found yourselves alone on the balcony. Carlos turned to you, his eyes filled with a mixture of sorrow and determination.

"We can't keep letting this consume us," he whispered, his voice laced with vulnerability. "I want this more than anything, but I also want us to be okay, no matter what."

You nodded, tears glistening in your eyes. "I know. It's just... hard, Carlos."

"I know, mi amor," he said, wrapping his arms around you. "But let's make a promise, right here, right now. We won't let this define us. We'll find happiness in each other, in the love we share."

"I thought this summer would be different," you whispered, your voice breaking with emotion.

Carlos nodded, unable to find the words to comfort you. His own frustration and sadness mirrored yours. You've had dreamed of starting a family together, and yet, fate seemed to conspire against you almost like it hated you, it hated you were together and happy.

That summer indeed was different. When you woke up one day to check the situation, the test result was different from the other times, and you wondered if you were still dreaming or if it was a cruel joke played on you and Carlos. The test was positive - two lines on it. You didn't know what to do or how to react.

"Carlos, can you come here for a second?" you called out, beckoning your fiancé to join you.

Your fiancé made his way into the bathroom of your room, his eyes still sleepy with morning hair. You didn't want to wake him up, but you had to, you really had to. You didn't say anything, leaving him even more curious, standing there in his boxers with sleepy eyes.

"Is everything okay, querida? Are you okay? Did you get your period? You know it's okay, we've talked about this," he said, not expecting the situation to be different from the other times.

"No, Carlos—"

"Did you hurt yourself? ¿Estás bien?"

"No, Carlos, look—" You said, showing him the test you had been holding in your hand for the past five minutes he was there. His eyes wandered on the test for more than 10 seconds, maybe as if he was trying to comprehend the situation or trying to understand if he was seeing it correctly.

"You're pregnant, querida? When did you take this? Oh, I can't believe it," he said. His sleepy eyes widened with the news. His hands were placed at the sides of your waist while you were sitting on the bathroom sink, looking at the test with a beautiful smile.

"I took it this morning. I hadn't thought that I'd be actually pregnant this time," you said with obvious disbelief. His hands covered your torso while you were sitting on the sink, wiggling your feet happily.

"You've been wanting it from the bottom of your heart, mi corazón. We've been wanting it actually," he said, cupping your cheeks to leave a happy and relieved kiss on your lips after a long time. Your hands cupped his freshly shaved cheeks, breathing slowly.

"I am so happy, Carlos," you said, your thumbs drawing circles on his cheeks slowly.

"Me too, querida, me too."

Sainzs took the news more excited than ever, actually Reyes did even cry while hugging at you. Then she admitted it in the dinner, she was so happy for the baby but she was happier for you, she hated to see you sad, she loved your energy the most.

The next summer, the visit to Mallorca was quite different from the other times. Your baby boy, Antonio, was cradled in your husband's arms - you and Carlos had decided to get married just after you received the news. As you entered the house, big smiles and even happy tears greeted you. Reyes kissed your cheeks once again to show how proud she was of you, and how strong you had been. Carlos's father took his grandchildren, who was named after his recently passed away father, in his arms and placed a good luck kiss on Antonio's forehead before whispering the words.

''Bienvenido a nuestra familia, Antonio.''

Carlos tightened his hold on your waist before leaving a kiss on the crown of your head.

''I am so proud of you, querida. Te amo.''

''It wouldn't be possible if it weren't for you, Carlos. Te amo, forever.''

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nexusnyx · 1 year

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keep close | joel miller

Summary: It takes you six months to break. You thought you'd last longer. Tried convincing yourself that everything in your head was because he saved you, not because of real attraction. One night, Joel proves that to be wrong. a/n: I'm nothing if a byproduct of my environment. And my environment right now is a mind palace made only of Pedro's role... so here we go. Reblogs and comments are much appreciated. [WC: 3.7k] Warnings: Mostly fluff. A hint of indecent thoughts, so maybe reader discretion is advised? Protective!Joel, strangers to friends, unresolved sexual tension.

masterlist

What lived under your skin the most was Joel's duality.

Registering the range of what he was proved to be a difficult task from the very beginning.

Here he was, the man who saved you. The man who somehow, despite the gritty and cruel ways of existence, managed to keep a kind bone in his body. Kind enough to step in when you were in danger, even if he didn't need to. Life-threatening danger—most people would look away these days. But not him. Not Joel.

Here he was, the man who was kind enough to look you in the eye when he saw you crunched down in a corner, sweating profusely due to the wounds and most likely looking like a rabid or wild animal, and still tried putting some calmness to his voice before asking: "Can you walk? I heard you. 'm gonna help, ok?"

That man. The same one who beat the bastards who were keeping you to a pulp. That man, currently, slept only a couple of feet away from you, with his face half-tucked inside his scarf and jacket, and for the first time in your life, you saw Joel... smiling.

It was the first time you witnessed it.

The book on his lap told you he fell asleep mid-chapter. While the sprain and cuts were minor compared to what they could be, Joel fussed as if they were broken bones. The most worrisome part was your ribs, but those, he cut out fabric from an old t-shirt of his ("they're all old now though, aren't they?") and wrapped your body as firmly as he could.

It made you smile, even if only at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

How could this be the same man?

Sometimes, you closed your eyes and saw him like that.

Mid-fight, rage and sadness oozing out of him as if they were radiation, his fists flying so fast it seems impossible to catch up to the act.

When violence is needed, Joel breaks the calm surface and introduces outsiders to the storm within.

It goes calm, storm, drizzle.

He'd never change that.

Now that it was too late, Joel would always be this sea of turbulent waters, often hidden by its vastness.

Joel "I will punch you in the throat" Miller asked you very few questions at first.

Dinner on the day he rescued had been awkward, to say the least.

Not that it mattered in the long run.

What was awkwardness in the face of not looking over your shoulder, and what was feeling left out and intrusive in comparison to the jittery stress of always checking if the gun is loaded?

Nothing.

Having two people close by who seemed alright in the head — a rarity, if there ever was one —trumped it all.

Joel and Ellie were headed West. So were you.

It was logical, only. Or it was, at first.

"I could definitely use an extra pair of hands with this one," Joel admitted. It was the first night walking together after one week stationed at the same place to wait for yours and Ellie's healing—a night of dubious whiskey and traded information.

"She doesn't seem that difficult," you answered, eyeing Ellie's sleeping frame on the other side of camp.

He scoffs. "She isn't." His lips pursed in a thin line. "I just—" his shoulders shrugged. "Think she might get bored with just me."

For someone who had barely said a word for a whole week, it was more than you first perceived him to be. "The world's quite a boring place now," you whispered. Then, shrugged your shoulders just the same. I don't care. "I like it."

"Do you?"

"I do." You remembered how noisy things were. So many nowadays lacked the age for that, but not you. "'s nice hearing nature. And that one," you tilted your chin towards Ellie, "should be happy to be alive."

The truth of that hung in the air.

That first conversation sealed it for you—Joel making an effort to ask things and answer your inquiries surprised you.

"Think we can keep her alive 'till we get to the Fireflies base?" Joel asked you.

You thought it over for a second, and came to a conclusion. "We can definitely try." A purpose other than escaping — all you've ever known — and surviving sounded good to you. "And if that's your mission, probabilities of success rise with another member on the team."

That night, all you got out of him was one eyebrow raised. "Is that so?" It sounded teasing, but he looked so serious saying it. "Well. 'm gonna hope you're as good with that rifle as you are with your probabilities."

To his delight, he quickly discovered you were.

Faster, even.

Joel might have risen an eyebrow at first, but your sentence proved to be true in the next couple of months. There's a team there. The two of you do your best at trying, even through hardships.

When there are no Fireflies, you make Ellie look away from the bloodshed. With no clear plan or direction in sight, you're a helpful extra set of eyes when Joel decides it's best to look for Tommy.

In all of the three months where you, Joel, and Ellie head towards Wyoming, a routine is established, and the days looking after each other make it hard to pretend there's any distance between your little group.

Ellie is fond of your Encyclopedia of Unbelievable Facts.

She's a quick learner, an agile fighter with a wicked sense of humor, and enough cursing to rival you in the games of "unladylike shit and sounding like pirates, honestly," as stated by Joel.

He hid a lot of his amusement in scoffs and sighs, you thought.

Joel is fond of doing perimeter checks, sleeping on his side, and 'peace and quiet'.

It takes you a bit to understand that it's easier to pull conversation from him when Ellie is safe and sound. Tucked in her sleeping bag, showering in the river streams (and swearing incessantly under her breath), eating her food.

Without Ellie around, Joel opens up, bit by bit.

He talks about Tess.

About how close he and Tommy always were.

"I bailed him out of jail, y'know? That night of..." he doesn't say it.

Most of us never do. "Did you?"

He chuckles drily. "I did." He shakes his head, sips his water. "Stupid fucker."

"More like lucky fucker." When Joel turns his head to you with furrowed eyebrows, you elaborate. "If you hadn't gone, no more Tommy."

Joel takes a second before nodding. "Yeah."

"Were you always bailing him out of trouble?"

His face softened for a second. Before him, you embraced the darkness as you did the silence, but now, you wished for better lighting. "Often. Once, he and I were at our dad's house on a winter hunting trip. He hated those at first, but before..."

You started living for the stories.

Joel's presence became warm when he shared.

Vivid, and so fucking tempting.

It was all soft whispers back and forth, until the day he dropped her name.

"Sarah."

You knew the second you heard it—an open wound starts smelling the longer it stays open, and this one carried literal weight to it.

A whiff in the wind, and mourning was all over the air.

Joel left, and in the morning, nothing more is said.

Colorado changes everything.

It gives you the smile.

It comes at a cost, like everything else.

Since there's been no Tommy, you advise and convince Joel to check the Fireflies base here, only to find out they're relocated to Salt Lake City. When you three are coming out of the building with the fresh news hot on your laps, a group tries to ambush and kidnap you three.

As it does in this world without order, hell breaks lose.

Other than hell, a lot more breaks—protocol, jaws, ideas, trust.

Theirs thankfully.

You, Joel, and Ellie make it out alive, but not good.

You find a safehouse in a mountain cabin.

"Friend of Tommy's used to live here. Thank fuck it's still here," said Joel.

"Thank fuck indeed 'cause I don't know how much longer I can—oh fuck, fuck, fuck, Joel."

"Hey, hey, take it easy, slow down." Joel is just if not more fucked up than you from the fight, but he's still the one holding you up. He whistles—a call for Ellie. "Help with her other side, we can finish lighting up the place afterward. She needs to lie down."

Ellie hooks her frame underneath your left side, and you thank her with your weak and sweaty smile. "And your sure just lying down and resting will heal her rib?"

"It just cracked. Bones heal, El."

"I'm just checking." Ellie always checks. "You might need some penicillin, too. That knife looked ugly."

"I'll get it once we're all cleaned up. I'll go on a run," says Joel.

You're hurt too, you bastard.

"I'm the only one not limping here, can't I go?" asks Ellie.

"No," you and Joel say in unison. "I'll go tomorrow. I'm bruised, but nothing's infected. I think I saw a warehouse down there."

Ellie sighs next to your ear. Then, she mumbles to you right before you're lied down on the bed. "Bet this will be Pittsburg two."

Pittsburg.

The fight. Joel deciding to save you despite your brother almost ruining Ellie's life.

Joel's frame sleeping next to your cot.

"You shouldn't have run off like that."

Not a single request for your apologies, or a comment on the shitshow that happened before you just 'ran off'.

Joel, the same man who saved you from a group of lunatics by bashing one of their member's head against the nearest tree, huffed and puffed before saying, "you saved Ellie's life by shooting your brother. and... i'm sorry about what came after that."

An apology from him.

How was that fair?

"You don't need—to thank me."

"I do."

"...You just saved my life, Joel."

"Well, you saved Ellie's, so consider us even."

That was then.

That was before deciding you were a team. Before heading West, before finding out about Salt Lake, before the attack.

Joel probably needed to rest himself.

Except—

There he is.

The first thing you think upon waking up in the candle-lit room.

Joel slept next to you, almost as if keeping guard.

It stirs the strings in your chest.

It's one thing to be observed by him after he saved you from those three men because you're bruised and traumatized by the whole thing.

It's whole other to know Joel is just as bruised.

Six months have passed since then.

A lot has happened. More than you could compute, sometimes, but less than your heart desired.

All the struggles, the Infected, the long days of walking, and the hard nights of worrying have molded this new thing into its own ecosystem.

This Joel sleeping on an old mattress right next to you lets Ellie take watch because he trusts her abilities and her notion of danger. He knows if you two prefer your 'apocalypse grub' — an Ellie trademark term — all mixed together or separated, if you can be trusted with the bourbon bottle (no), and that your taste in music is "atrocious but expected" (his words, clearly).

This Joel knew you kept your distance for a reason.

He'd seen it in you, months ago.

And yet, there he was.

With the book — your book — in his lap, sitting with his back to the wall and his legs already tucked inside the raggedy blankets you found in one of the cabinets.

Joel's extensive list of injuries had you waking up in a cold sweat, but the same as you, he seemed to recover fast.

In two days, he's wincing less to get up, and comments on his wishes to go look for pharmaceuticals.

That's the night you wake up to him sleeping—both of you could do it, but he insisted on taking turns.

When your eyes open, first, you see the book.

Then, you notice he moved the mattress closer to yours.

They're touching.

The raggedy blankets make them look like a single bed, and the thought feels foreign.

Next, you notice...

Joel is right there.

Sure, he's a few inches away, but... you could touch his legs if you extended your arm. All it would take is a little bit of wiggling to make a pillow out of his thighs, and you know how much more comfortable than what you have underneath you.

His smile is the last thing you see.

Not because you skipped his face—on the contrary, Joel's face is the first thing you see in the morning and the last you see at night.

Maybe that's why.

He never had this.

A gentle, real smile.

You hardly blame him. There are no reasons to smile nowadays, not for long. Not without sadness poisoning the eyes, or without the grin turning into a grimace.

Joel is smiling.

His dream must be good, because his features all softened somehow.

Good gods, he's handsome.

That's why you look so little at his face. The real reason.

Staring at Joel too much can cause you to think of nothing else, and in month one you learned the lesson of eyes wide open or head blown open wide.

Mistakes meant death.

Joel's eyes crinkled as he lifted one of his mouth's corners in the closest thing that could come off as a 'smile', and that meant distraction, which meant an eventual mistake, and so on.

When your gaze searches for the lines left by his crinkles, Joel's eyes are on you.

As serene as the quietude outside, Joel stares down, and in a contrast to the weather howling cold winds outsides, your body says it is morning, and it rises.

The longer he stares, the more it rises.

Your blood pumps harder under his gaze.

Joel knows that. He has to.

Silence with fixed gazes turns the air into a thick, palpable fog.

Why is he staring? It's probably the busted eyebrow. Busted lip. Joel never stares at you, never looks too long, too hard, never looks enough—

"I can almost hear you thinkin'," Joel's voice is a whisper, but it startles you nonetheless. Not in fear.

Once, somewhere, you read something you never forgot. The body, it always betrays itself. It blushes. It trembles.

It was true.

The shiver is involuntary.

Your mother used to say the sound of sirens meant trouble and ever since, you always heard sirens in your head as you panicked. "Was observin' your hair," laugh, look away, know your place. "It's gettin' whiter."

It gets a chuckle. A tight-lipped smile. "I'm gettin' older."

"So you say." Constantly.

The first reminder of why he kept his distance, probably. Of why he had no interest in you. Too young.

"Doesn't it look like it?"

You shrug, hugging the makeshift pillow tighter under your head. "'m not so sure how old people are supposed to look." Definitely not this good, right? This broad. Soft. Strong "Haven't been around many."

Joel points at himself. "Right here."

"You're not old."

His lip twitches. "No?"

"No."

"I'm over my forties."

"That's not old." You don't know why you're arguing. You never argue.

Joel closes the book, then hums. "I remember the world before it turned to ruins and vines."

Maybe it's because he's so damn close. Your fingers itched to touch him countless times before, but usually, there are more counterarguments in your head as to why you shouldn't. "So do I."

The smile returns to his face, but it's the awake and lucid kind—a little sadistic. Sad. "Let me rectify it—I lived in it."

"So did I." Albeit, not much. "Less than you, though." A decade or so more. Almost two.

"Right." Joel takes a deep breath, and the movement quiets you down.

Sometimes, you wished you had just a few years more. Five, or six would suffice. Would he look at you, then?

As the silence goes on, your mind starts with at least three different scenarios where Joel met you under different circumstances.

"Can't sleep anymore?"

There's no shiver this time, but you look up at him again, desperate to see some more of his sleepy eyes and that damned smile.

"Don't know," you whisper.

If he smiles again, you'll count the night as a win. Tuck his happiness somewhere out in the front of your mind to see if it occupies space. If it makes you think less of what he used to be like as a lover.

The tainted thoughts always make you avert your eyes, but this time, you have the benefit of only candle lights, so you let the embarrassment burn you as you keep staring.

Joel is looking at your face the same way. Heavy eyelids, gaze searching.

"Does it hurt anywhere?"

The question makes your brain swim in the lingering pain, but for other reasons.

Every scenario still opened in your mind leads to the same corridor—he placed his big hands on your neck right now to feel your temperature and caressed somewhere in your body to put you to sleep.

Somewhere he could touch the skin.

Through foggy vision you see Joel starting to frown, so you're quick to answer before he worries.

"'m just uncomfortable." True enough. "Anxious."

He nods. "Makes sense." He exhales slowly, placing the book on the floor next to the mattresses. "It'll take a while to calm down from it. It... they came out of nowhere." You nod. He clasps his hands together on his lap. "It could've been a lot worse."

Your group had a rule. "No what ifs about the past."

Joel made your heart jumpstart all over again by almost doing it—he almost smiled. "Right. Sorry."

"We're both in one piece."

"We are." He looked down at you and then, in a gesture that your entire body freezing on the spot, one of Joel's hands leaves his lap, and makes its way to you. It places on top of your head. In administrated, slow moves, it starts petting your hair. Then, Joel speaks. As if you can listen. "None of us needs penicillin..."

His words seem to trail off.

You need a second longer to relax under his touch. When you do, the tension melts so visibly you might as well be snow under the sun.

This time, the silence is thick.

Liquid.

When his hand moves lower, it ends up on your back, rubbing between the shoulder blades, and clearing the line of sight for his eyes again.

That's when he must see it.

The second he started to touch you, your blood become fuel. You could feel it burning hot inside your veins, moving faster than it ever did with you two alone in a room. The only times it's beaten like this before you were either in life-threatening danger, or muffling your sounds behind your hand as your other did quick work between your legs.

Joel sees it.

Even if the illumination comes only from the candles, he has to see it.

The way your lips parted for him.

There's no way your eyes aren't saying as much as the temperature your body is exuding.

Joel keeps on rubbing circles for a few more seconds, but eventually, he whispers. "What?"

It makes you want to cry.

If you answer, he'll probably do the thing. He'll turn you down gently, politely.

You shake your head, swallowing a lump in your throat. "Nothing." Your eyes sting. I want you so badly it makes me a bit crazy sometimes. Instead of that, you settle for whispering. "How d'you feel?"

It takes him a minute to answer. His eyes keep shifting between where his hand is rubbing and your face. "Good. Hurts less. Unfortunately, that means thinking more."

"Dangerous."

"You have no idea," he chuckles.

This time, the silence lasts. You keep on staring, while Joel is happy to continue making your back and hair feel a tingling warmth they never saw before.

"Is this ok?" he asks eventually.

Without noticing, your eyes had closed.

Always a man of few words. "Of course."

He nods to you. "'kay."

Stay here. Don't go anywhere.

Watch out for her.

Keep close.

Those and okay. The words you most heard over these past months.

When your eyes open again, Joel's hand is traveling back to your hair and this time, the silence between you two becomes a cord.

Tension.

His fingers do careful work once they find your strands—goosebumps rise all over your skin and for the first time, you're thankful for wearing long sleeves even to bed.

You know there are words hanging in the air, begging to be said, but...

Insecurity pulls you back.

Even if your eyes keep locked on his for a small amount of forever, you swallow down your wants and needs in fear of being blinded by your own attraction and ending up projecting yours on him.

All Joel does is stare back.

Maybe if you weren't inexperienced. Maybe if you had any previous knowledge of what intimacy and relationships had been like, but this world was not the same as before and things were... harder.

So you burned in silence.

Eventually, you burned for him in the dark of your sub-conscience.

With the ghost of Joel's hand still on your nape, caressing on top of your hair, you dive into a deep slumber, and it's in dreams that everything cracks.

You're not even present in mind to witness his world shift.

Joel, in silence, watched you going under. Watched those eyes staring up at him with so much said, so much written in between your lines. He watched with his heart pounding in his chest loud enough for him to hear.

When you sleep, he observes with reverence.

Trying to push down the feelings curling up inside him.

That's when he hears it.

Spoken through your glued lips at first, then louder, more confidently. Joel's heard your sleeping mumbles before, but this one is the one that breaks him.

"Joel..." soft. Breathless. Dangerously low. And then, "Joel."

That's when Joel realizes it—late at night, alone in the silence.

It changes something in him.

📝 PART TWO →

#usernexusnyx #joel miller #joel miller imagine #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #joel miller drabble #joel miller one shot #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fluff #joel miller x you #joel miller x oc #joel miller x y/n #joel miller x reader #joel miller self insert #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female character #joel miller angst #joel miller smut

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halcyone-of-the-sea · 10 months

Text

Songs That Sound Like Sea-Foam (I)

AU MASTERLIST || PART II

PAIRING: Fisherman!John Price x F!Mermaid!Reader

WORD COUNT: 6.2k

WARNINGS: Fluff, mentions of death, being hunted, vulgar language, price in a tunic (yes this is a warning by itself), awkwardness, nakedness, suggestive (?), implied age gap, etc.

A/N: I'm feral over this AU, ong. A million kisses to the Anon that brought this to my attention-btw this is definitely becoming a mini-series.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

Your family told you to never go beyond the deep waterways of the cove, never to brave the open sea. Times were changing. The Harpies, when they weren't as shrewd about their feathers getting wet, would fly down from their tall mountain spires and tell stories—ones about the hunting ships.

They’d seen them, they said as your family listened on in horror from the rocks, dragging all manner of Merfolk up from the waters in large nets made of iron and hard steel. Spears that tore scales to take for profit. In other instances, the unlucky individuals were even sold to royalty to become showpieces in displays of high wealth and standing.

But it wasn’t just Merfolk. It was all manner of mystical beast and being. Hunted. Sold. Humans, your parents had told you, were not friends. They were greedy and selfish; more than often cruel.

And so they started to do the same unto them. Your family would lure them with their voices to the ends of the great ships that were brought close to your cove—watch as they hurled themselves from the sides into the grasp of the ruthless waves. They did it for you, they explained. To try and keep you safe.

For years they did this until they were gone too.

Suddenly the cove seemed more like a prison than a safe spot, and the Harpies no longer came to converse or tell news. Killed or taken you had no idea, but it was becoming fairly obvious that even interactions with your own people were impossible. Were you the only mermaid left? It was a good question to ask and one that you could never answer. All that you knew was that you had been alone for a very long time.

That was, before you first laid eyes on the fisherman.

You watch him now, yet again, from behind the sharp jutting body of the rocks; the water delicately bobs you up and down as your vibrant tail hangs limp in its otherworldly throes. Eyes softly wide and mouth parted in wonder.

He’s walking along the deck of a small ship—not the large and intimidating ones of the other men that sail the seas—with a strong form. A hat on top of his head of brown hair and a well-trimmed beard of the same color made him look gruff in appearance.

Your hands shift over the sharp black stone, and the nakedness of your top is covered by the long strands of your wet, uncut, hair. This man wore a plain white tunic and brown pants stuffed into large boots. Even as far as you were, you heard the soft whistled tune dancing in the shell of your ears. Delicate eyes watch, head slowly peeking out more and more.

He was tending to the nets he had on the bow and as you studied him you were mystified.

“Fascinating,” you whisper, unknown emotions swirling in you.

His muscles strain, large and expansive shoulders lead down to a tapered waist; legs that you blink at before glancing at your tail under the rippling water. There’s a large grunt before the fisherman’s net is thrown in a beautiful arc, hitting the water with a slap and a spray of liquid as it begins to sink. Startled, you flinch back, gasping loudly.

With a racing heart, you quietly scold yourself for the childish reaction, flicking your tail in annoyance. Slowly but surely, your head peaks back out with water dripping down the flesh of your shoulders.

But when you shift back into the open, you find a deep set of stormy blue eyes digging into your field of view. You freeze, seeing his lids go back in surprise and shock as your jaw slackens. A cold fear enters your veins at the new attention brought to you but you find yourself unable to look away.

The Fisherman is the picture of utter stillness, just as you are, like twin mountains of ancient stone. Your nervousness only seems to grow as he doesn’t do anything—teachings and lessons about those who walk on two legs and sail in ships poking holes into your mind.

Gawking and spying were one thing…but being seen meant death. You swallow stiffly and go tense, shifting to half-hide behind your rock.

“Oh, no,” your mouth murmurs, self-hatred and fear lining the tone. “Oh, no, no, no.”

And yet the Fisherman had not moved, nor made any attempt to pull his sinking net back into his boat. Fish panic in the rope grave they’ve been ensnared in. His eyes….why are they so curiously locked on you?

You spare one last glance before shoving away from the rock and disappearing under the water with a violent splash; making off for the deep underwater caves that offer salvation.

When you’re down there—in the darkness with only silent ripples of light to guide your eyes—you find it hard to stop thinking about the Fisherman and his strong jaw. His genuine awe at the sight of you.

Had he not heard the stories of the Merfolk of this region? Or…or were you truly the last of your kind?

The thought troubles you, and, riddled with anxiety, you go over to your store of shiny trinkets that you’d collected over the years; grabbing them in your hands and fiddling with them to try to put your mind at ease. The walls of the caves bare down on you and you hope you’d not just signed over your own death warrant.

Maybe he’ll go away, you offer yourself, face tight and tail curled close, maybe he’ll be afraid and won’t come back.

It was a pointless belief. They always come back—driven by greed or a righteous authority. Humans were cruel.

But your brain goes back to stormy blue eyes like pebbles and softly parted lips. Orbs glinting with wonder and shock. No attempt to shout or grab for the large knife you’d seen strapped to his belt.

A fisherman, you told yourself, who hesitated to go after the biggest fish of them all.

You didn’t quite know if that made you more afraid or more intrigued.

—

It was only after you’d spent three weeks in the underwater caves of the cove that you’d finally decided the coast was clear. You’d cautiously gone back through the winding seaweed and schools of marine life to hide in your little rock fort; afraid but brave. From under the waves in the calm of the water you’d scanned the surface for the shadows of a boat, anything to indicate that the man had returned.

Nothing.

Tension leaves your shoulders and you travel upwards, vibrant scales shimmering like jewels. You were quite close to the mainland, you would say, back to the shore to look out over the open entrance to your home. At the first sign of danger, the rocks would be your first point of shelter if you wished to remain hidden but continue to watch.

Ears popping as your head surfaces, you only look out with the water swaying below your eyes; nose and chin hidden. Sand from behind you shifts.

“Knew I’d seen something, then, eh?” Your heart lurches—brain flashing to hooks and nets; you shove yourself back under the water with a garbled gasp.

Fish around your form dash away as you frantically look back at the surface, your scales shining as the light hits them. Fingers tense in the water, you shift your body so that your form has its back to the floor of the cove and breathe quickly in your own mermadian way with shaking fins.

On the very edge of the shore, you see the shadow of a sitting body in the sand. He hadn’t moved, this Fisherman. Was waiting as inanimate as an empty shell.

What had he said? You ask yourself, hair disturbed by the flow of the waves above your head. A gentle back and forth. After a moment of contemplation, the large muscle in your breast slows itself and a nervous curiosity grows.

Yet still, the shadow stays completely motionless beside the occasional itch and brush as facial hair. Waiting.

Waiting to attack, your hand twitches in the water and you flutter your tail to take you closer to the open air, or waiting to see me?

Taking what you can describe as a deep breath, the top of your head once more breaks the top of the water; lashes dripping salty tear-drops as you blink away the sting. Every part of you is ready to disappear once more if things go south.

And then you lock eyes once more.

The Fisherman sits in the sand with his boots pushing up the granules—his right hand rests over his bent knee while the other keeps him up in a relaxed position from behind his back. You stare, the sun reflected in your eyes with a small glinting and hair in your vision. A foreign heat builds in your face when the man’s head tilts; tiny eyes narrowing as if he’d just proven a point to himself.

Why doesn’t he seem surprised?

There’s a moment of a smirk that slashes his hidden lips but it’s gone in a fraction of a second. His mustache moves as he speaks and your face slightly bobs lower instinctually. The Fisherman doesn't seem hostile—he has a kind of stern comfort to him.

Stubborn gruffness. And his accent only amplifies that fact.

“Well, wasn’t expecting to find you here,” his chest rumbles with his words. You find you quite like the sound of it. Shells grinding against each other and pearls that clatter in palms. Your eyes widen with innocence. The Fisherman clears his throat, still watching carefully as the water sloshes over his boots. “Else I would have stayed clear when I still could.”

Your hands tread water around you, tail flickering in small movements.

The man's gaze darts down to stare as well as he could through the ripples.

“Bloody Christ,” he murmurs to himself, returning your eyes once more, “thought you were all mostly extinct. Fuckin’ hell.”

“Extinct?” Your lips flinch, chin caressing the waves as brows pull up. The Fisherman blinks as if surprised to hear you speak. To be honest, you were half afraid you couldn’t either—how long had it been since you’d had a conversation above water? You spent most of your time passing comments to rare traveling Hippocampus and Sea Serpents.

Not that they could respond, of course.

By now your face had entirely left the water, that word startling you. Your chest tightens.

“What do you mean,” you ask the older man, this strange Fisherman who was shifting his weight in the sand, “extinct?”

Dark brows furrow and his back slightly straightens itself.

“You aren't exactly what I’d be calling common, Love. No one’s seen one of your kind in years.” Your face stills.

“Years?” Head angling itself down, you stare at your reflection in growing fear.

The Fisherman makes a move to stand, and you dart back swiftly. A pale hand is held in the air as if to sedate you.

“Easy, now.” It’s said softly, a grunt stuck at the beginning. A small moment passes before the man fully stands up, dressed similarly to when you’d seen him before.

Top, pants, hat. There’s also a flash of metal around his neck, some piece of jewelry hidden on the chain under the layer of his thin, flowy, tunic. Hands go to cross over his chest in a display of muscle gained from a long time of hard work.

You nervously plead for an explanation, “B-but that…that doesn’t make any sense! I’m not the only one left!”

“No,” the Fisherman slowly states, taking off the hat from his head and delicately placing it on the ground. “No, you’re not the last.”

His eyes dart along your visible body, trying to catch a glimpse of that tail that was in all stories about your kind.

“Your name, Ma’am,” he asks, blue returning to your own sights, “what is it.”

“Well, what’s yours?” You counter, getting snappy in your anxiousness. “You come into my home and expect me to answer to you? And where’s your fishing boat anyways—unless a male Selkie has suddenly managed to brave the deep sea?”

Perhaps it had been a trick of the light, but you had sworn the Fisherman had smiled at you; it was a swift slash of something that pulled his mustache back and wrinkled his face. An amused thing it was. A sort of tiny tease, in its own right.

Your heart beats steadily at the sight, eyes watching.

“Well, I suppose you’re right, then.” He scratches at his beard with one hand, still studying you with a tilt of his head. As if weighing what he should tell you. There was an air of intrigue but that did nothing to hide the hesitance. “I docked my boat in the sea cave, thought it would do more harm than good to leave it in the open. If you’d seen it, you wouldn’t have shown, eh?” The Fisherman points and you look to the deep indent in the mountainside, the tiny ship visible as it stays stationary. You blink at it slowly.

“And you can call me whatever it is you like, I don’t bloody care, but I’m not inclined to tell one of the Merfolk my name—I may have come ‘ere, but I’m not fuckin’ daft, now.”

It was true, what he spoke of. Names to your people have a stark and violent purpose. To know one's name is to own a piece of that person’s soul. Songs gain more power, words grow into orders followed without thought. Not that it was your intention.

You glower, brows pulling in.

“A simple fisherman does well to know that it’s rude to speak ill like such in another’s home.” The man smirks, cheeks rising.

“Simple, am I?” The already expansive build of his shoulders widens as he leans back on his heels, water sloshing at his boots. His eyes glimmer like lighting with humor. The look makes your cheeks burn with warmth, throat swallowing saliva.

“Why are you here?” You avoid the question, treading water and letting your tail drift. Willing the water to cool your senses. It was obvious that this man wasn’t a hunter—foolish, perhaps, but no hunter.

Or maybe just confidently brave.

The Fisherman hums under his breath, grunting in the way you’d already come to associate with him. Rugged fellow, really. Weathered like a pile of old rope but still handsome, the sinews under the stain of dirt pure of color. You found yourself, however apprehensive, enjoying the squareness of his face; how the brunette’s hair would sweep in the warm breeze.

He was attractive.

“Fishing, Ma’am.” A broad sweep of one of his hands, “You have a proper cove. Plenty of places to cast.”

Your tight arms somewhat loosen.

“Just fishing?” Your voice darkens. “Then why is it you’re here on shore and not doing just that.” Tail flickering, it lightly brings you back from him, eyes always darting away to stare into the background of his form—at the dark shadows of trees behind the dark rocks. At the open mouth of the cove in case of extra ships.

If what he told you earlier was true, you were in danger just by living.

Extinct? Not seen in years? No, that can’t be right. A deep knot forms in your stomach.

“I may be human, Ma’am, but I believe myself to be above intrusion.” The Fisherman splays his hands by his waist and shifts his thighs. He seems serious again, like a wave going forward and back he seemed to always revert to a crafted visage of firm resolve. “This is your home, and I’m asking to ferry my boat here when able. Nothing else.”

You blink in surprise, brows pulling back.

He was…asking you?

“I…own the cove no more than the Manticore owns the desert,” your voice stutters, oddly touched by his sincerity. You pause and push yourself farther above a wave. This large man didn’t seem cruel to you. “I have no claim on the waters—they have been here longer than I. Do as you wish.”

While that should have been the end of it, you found his blue eyes continuing to watch you, head tilted like a shaggy dog. Thinking deeply with a slight parting of his lips and rising to his lids.

At the intensity of his silent wonder, your head goes light. Had you said something strange? No, it was just the truth. Then…why was this man’s face going to a modest pink shade? Why were his eyes darting away from yours and his feet shifting?

You narrow at him before he speaks, clearing his throat and crossing his arms.

“Alright,” the Fisherman mutters, chest rumbling.

A silence falls where your ears twitch to the lapping of the sea-foam and the feeling of blood in your veins which mirrors such movements. As you saw him do to you, your vision falls to the man’s body; looking across the tapering of his waist and the rolled sleeves of his tunic—showing off years of muscle

“I don’t suppose…” Your tail flinches from the sudden noise from the brunette, expecting him to swim over to his boat and get to his business. You stare and listen, and for the first time, you believe a mermaid has been entranced by another's voice. “That I’ll have the pleasure of seeing you again?”

The Fisherman speaks slowly, hands shifting on his biceps; thighs tense and settle. You allow the waves to connect and slide around your body and a feeling reminiscent of warm rocks in the sun grows in your heart.

Strange, this man. This serious-faced Fisherman who asks one of the Merfolk for permission over the waters we don’t control. You tilt your head to teasingly mirror the brunettes. He humphs in his throat at your action. I enjoy him.

At the first sign of danger you’d leave—but for now…talking felt good.

“Perhaps,” you say, lips twitching into a smile. “Would this nameless Fisherman enjoy the company of a mermaid? Not many would say yes.”

“I think you’ll find I’m not like those many, then, yeah?” He smiles, a small twitch of his lips. You begin backing up, getting to deeper water while maintaining eye contact. “I don’t care what you are, just that we have an agreement.”

“Very well,” your neck dips under the waves, tail momentarily peaking above the surface. Blue flickers to it, shoulders lowering in hidden awe. The Fisherman’s lungs still.

He hears your giggle before you dive under, disappearing swiftly down to your caves with a splash.

It’s a long while before the brunette picks up his hat and begins walking the length of the shore—strong steps taking him back to his ship with a tiny smile brightening his ruggedly handsome face.

He runs a hand over his chin and chuckles.

“Fuckin’ hell.”

—

You perch on the side of the Fisherman’s boat, golden comb in your grip as you run it over and over through your locks. Tangles and knots are rendered useless to the fine and beautiful make of the object, the handle covered in small barnacles and seaweed. A nice breeze wafts in the air, and behind you, the padding of feet goes across the deck. With the sliding of nets and a small whistling from the Fisherman, you feel your tail gently sway from side to side; the bottom under the water whose waves rise and lower the vessel.

It had been a week since your first meeting and you had become more relaxed about this man’s presence. He had been truthful—every day he would come and fish.

At first, you’d watch from the black rocks, sitting atop them and studying. More than once you’d see the brunette raise a hand in greeting when his boat had entered the cove; an acknowledgment that you were there and nothing more. No expectation for you to come over or speak to him.

Day after day you’d see the net being thrown from the side only to be reeled back by large arms, legs apart and firm to the deck.

On day four, you swam over and grappled onto the side of the ship, curious. Before you could even realize he instantly knew you were there—despite his back being to you—the Fisherman spoke in a cheeky tone.

“Come up, then, if you’re that interested. No use watching from the water.” So you had, with a bit more fire to your cheeks than you thought mermaids could handle.

Now it was routine. The human man would pull into the cove and you would sit on the side of his fishing boat, doing whatever you wished as he worked.

You pull your comb through the ends of your hair, placing it down after and closing your eyes before your hands grab the shiny strands, twisting them. Under your breath, you hum in tune with the Fisherman’s whistled song; the notes like a growing symphony in your head.

Song to Merfolk is sacred and revered—everything sings, in its own right, and deserves careful crafting to fully understand.

“You seem to enjoy that,” you startle to a stop, eyes popping open. Sharply looking over your shoulder, you pause your hands. Staring, the man has completely stopped his work; nets at his feet with slapping fish of all colors stuck in the rope’s limp weavings.

He squints at your confused face.

“Rhythm.”

“Oh,” you offer a smile and watch him look away only to kneel down and begin separating his quarry. “If you’re worried I’ll sing around you, think nothing of it—I know what that could cause.”

The Fisherman hums, amused at you, “I’m not. I was complimenting you,” the knife at his belt glints in the light. “You have a pretty voice, Love.”

You shyly watch him, hair partly covering your visage, and catch a glimpse once more at the necklace he seems to always wear. Silver and shiny but still hidden.

“If you knew about my species, you wouldn’t be saying that.” Explaining lowly, the man grunts, sending a look your way as he tosses a Cod farther up the deck—you watch it flop around for a moment.

“Well,” the Fisherman explains, hands pausing and body leaning closer as one of his knees connects to the wood. It’s a teasing whisper that slides into your drum, and you find yourself nearly shivering from it. Blue eyes twinkle with mischief. “I did. No worries, I’ll never tell.”

A deep chuckle joins a lighter one, and your tail shimmers in the open light; scales vibrant and rich-looking. From what the brunette can see on the deck—the smaller plates that extend all the way up your navel to stop at your belly button—you know he stares at them.

Not a greedy, evil, stare…just one of hidden admiration. It was of no surprise to you that he found it beautifully uncanny.

You have no idea how to read this Fisherman; have no idea what he wants. You think he doesn’t want anything. On your face, a strange calm settles.

“Tell me, Fisherman,” his gaze snaps from your scales to your face, momentarily stopping at the dip of your neck as you turn as fully to him as you’re able from your perch. Your hand rests at your side; spine twisted halfway. “Who are you? No, I don’t mean your name. I want your person. You don’t act afraid of me—of what I am.” He stays kneeling and lets the net rest for now, his heart beating steadily in his breast. “There is more to you than a human at sea, surely.”

Your words are not accusatory, they lacked any sort of confrontation. Curiosity, though, like enclosed treasure, was stuck behind your tongue. He surprises you by standing and beginning to walk over, boots thumping.

As he nears, he sits down with a huff on the edge, right next to you.

There’s a moment when you both stare into each other's eyes as you feel the world shift. Blinking up at him, at the closer range you take into account the ancientness of his eyes and how it seemed, for such an alone man, it was making him look far older than he was. Still older than you, yes, but the sentiment still stands.

With his hat having been retired not five minutes earlier onto one of the many ship’s barren tops, you saw the streaks of sun-bleached strands in his brown hair. You unconsciously reach for your comb but stay your fingers as they flinch over the gold.

Storm-blue carefully glances away before coming back to you.

“Not much to know, Love,” the Fisherman’s brow raises, “you understand?”

“No,” you say, honestly, head tilting at him. He looks surprised, breath hitching.

“It’s just…there’s not much to tell, Sweetheart.”

Humans are strange creatures.

Not knowing this word game, you take your hand away from the comb and bring it to his chest, slipping under the neck of his tunic to grasp at the necklace he always wears. A hand snaps to your wrist almost immediately—a startling speed that makes you flinch.

Above your heads, seagulls squawk at you, but all you can gaze into are those pure blue orbs. They trap you, drag you down far faster than a whirlpool into the briny depths of hypnotic appeasement.

Perhaps you were naive to the magical whims of males that walk on two feet.

The Fisherman’s jaw clenches, eyes tightly narrowed at you in hesitance and veiled threat. You blink at him softly, not doing anything besides twitching your fingers and widening your sight. Before long, his hold loosens but doesn’t leave, allowing you on whatever it was you were doing yet still touching your damp flesh.

Lips parting, you don’t make a fuss. Instead, you hum under your breath and allow his calluses to scrape you. The toughness becomes a stark contrast to your own make-up.

Feels nice.

Your digits peel out the article of jewelry and you shift closer to look; bare chest brushing against his. You can feel his pulse through the brunette’s tunic, the way his throat shifts in a tense swallow of nothing.

The necklace held two pieces of small, round, silver and said the following.

“Jonathan Price, Captain, 141st company under the King.”

As you read, your tail gradually begins brushing his leg in its swaying. Through it all, the large Fisherman only slants his chin down and watches, breathing half through his mouth and half through his nose. You hear his throat clear; feel his grip squeeze your wrist.

It is a small and taken-aback kind of noise. He doesn’t move his hand.

You are happy he doesn’t.

“You’re a…Captain?” Asking, you look up shocked and aren’t taken aback by how close your face was to his. Even if your cheeks begin to burn at the beard bristles itching your nose.

“...Yes,” breathe puffs over the lower half of your face. Your fingers detangle from the Fisherman’s necklace and let it thump to his chest. “I was. Left.”

Blinking, you whisper, steadily, “What’s a…Captain…?”

A small sound is made in the back of his throat and he releases your wrist and pulls back before a loud bark of a laugh jerks his chest. You stare in innocent confusion, hair falling over your shoulders.

“What?” Gripping his mouth, Jonathan Price grounds himself by gripping his thigh as he chuckles.

“No, no,” he takes a deep breath and releases his face, smoothing down his beard quickly with amusement stuck in his smile. “Bloody hell, it’s nothing. Nothing at all, Love.”

He sends you a warm side glance and you huff, moving back and picking up your comb, getting back to brushing your locks again. You are acutely aware that you now know the Fisherman’s name, but refrain from saying anything until he does. Now you know why he reacted in such a way.

Your tail twitches in the water as fish brush past it and the brunette begins with a soft look.

“I was in charge of a small group of men—we had a ship. Far larger than this old girl,” he pats the deck, and you slow your motion to show that you are listening, intrigued. “We did what was needed of us, but there was a thin line that needed to be drawn to keep every bastard sane.”

Blue meets your eyes and the man’s expression darkens. Your fingers twitch as the breeze ravages his hair, chest tightening.

“And yours?” You ask softly, entranced and open, “What was your line, Captain Price?”

He hums after a small silence, sighing deeply. Along the hull of the boat, the waves rock the vessel gently side to side, and your mythical attention seems to entrap him far better than your voice could. His face loses that dark edge, well-trimmed beard relaxes as his jaw does.

The past it seems, looms over him like a tsunami.

Reaching up a slow hand, his fingers brush the tendrils of hair that had slipped out of your hold and were dangling in front of your face; the Fisherman blinks and pushes them back behind your ear. By now your brush had long stopped and your breath was held in your chest. For the first time in your life, you think you feel yourself shiver at the delicate scrape of his skin on yours.

“John,” he mutters, and you suck down a shallow breath as he watches you like you were an idol of the Gods, “Just John.”

Your smile leaves his fingers pressing deeper into your scalp and, perhaps a bit naively, you welcome him to you like a bird to the sky. You liked his gruffness—his beard and his face. The lines on his forehead that you could imagine tracing as if they belonged on a map instead of the squareness of this Fisherman’s profile. Tiny sockets that hold sapphire stones.

“Maybe I left because I couldn’t stand seeing such beautiful creatures being put to the hook, eh?” Your eyes widen, tiny gasp leaving your lips.

Merfolk swooned with flattery, truth be told. They enjoy being doted on and praised; given gifts of both words and objects. You were no different.

Oh…did he call me beautiful?

John smirks at your reaction, taking his hand off of you and standing with a low chuckle. Your tail flutters at the sudden absence, head following after him as he walks back to his net with a sway in his step. You blink in astonishment.

“You’re a strange human, John,” calling to him, you grimace at the blatant disappointment in your bones at the lack of his skin on yours. At his humored hum, you sense your growing attraction to the grind of his vocal cords. His voice. “I don’t know what to think of you.”

“Then think nothing of me,” he explains easily, casually, re-gathering his nets in his toned arms. You try not to let your jaw slacken at the bulge under his tunic when he carries them. “I’m not offended by it, Love.” A sly look, “Do as you wish.”

Your tail twitches so violently you’re afraid you might break the side of the ship.

And so this strange dance between the two of you continued well into the longer months—John would come in his ship nearly every day and you would join him on the side of the deck. Sometimes you would hum for him and he would whistle a tune back, others there were long bouts of conversation about the ways of humans and beasts. John told you that the King had ordered the total extinction of all manner of ‘strange and unordinary’ creatures to secure his line safely to the throne.

When he had explained it, the mad had gone red with anger.

“Fuckin’ muppet,” he’d spit, fiddling with his knife as you watched a small distance away, playing with his silver necklace in your hands. You twiddled it around and liked how it shimmered like your scales did in the light. “Bloody thought I would just go along with the deaths of innocent beings. He had no facts—no proof to back up his claim. I’ve done things. Horrible things,” John explained to you, sending you a stiff look, “but I’ve not forsaken my damn mind to reality. Takin’ the piss.”

Muttering the last sentence to himself, you had felt your lips curve into a smile. “You have a proper conscience, John, done bad or not.”

“Yeah, well, Sweetheart, I’ll be done in soon enough.” You only stared with care-drowned eyes and caressed his necklace. When he had seen this, his body had deflated with an exasperated grunt.

You shared a chuckle and he got back to work; feeling his melting gaze drawn back to you every so often.

Later, yet again, you found your form on his boat, this time with his hands across the small of your back as you studied the blade of his knife.

“Careful, now. Don’t run your finger along the edge.” His free grip points to the sharp side—breath fanning your ear. You feel your throat tighten and nod, caressing a thumb on the leather handle.

John’s hand is hard on your bare skin and you sense his heat drilling past your veins into the very marrow of your bones. You unconsciously sigh when his fingers slide slightly higher, traveling the length of your spine; his scars catching on every knob of bone. Your exploration stills and your pupils widen.

His breath is on your neck, nose tilting as his jaw does just above the meat of your shoulder.

“Why’d you stop?” You stare off into the metal, lashes fluttering when his fingers finally curve at the swell of your neck. Lips drag on your flesh before a deep grumble of affection stems from John’s chest as he kisses your rapid pulse. “Distracted? Hm.”

“It’s,” you breathe out, scales reflecting light as your lower body shifts on the wood. His opposite hand circles your waist, drawing your back to his chest. Skin burns and thoughts go to liquid as you feel his roving muscle. “It’s g-good. Pretty—”

Words fail you as his lips continue to slowly travel.

“Could say the same,” John grunts; beard scraping down your flesh.

Your eyes flutter, head tilting to give more room at the same time you whisper out, violently shivering at the compliment, “John…”

“What is it?” The grip moves to run over your scales, right where your upper hips would be; the sensation of him caressing you with gentle, deep, rubs of his thumb was all it took for you to give in completely to him. “Go on, Love, speak.”

You take a breath and feel his heart beating steady along your back—the texture of his tunic. “What…are you doing?”

John moves your hair and places open-mouthed kisses on the back of your neck. He breathes in your scent and you turn your light head to stare unabashedly at his flushed face. Your tail sways, limp, over the side of the boat.

Blown pupils hide that sea-storm blue like a lock and key to dangerous thoughts and attraction.

In answer, his eyes flicker down to your lips hungrily and your gaze widens; a small sound in the base of your throat.

“You’re somethin’ beautiful, y’know that?” He says and you let him lean in closer to your face, eyes threatening to close when you take in the musk of human flesh and sweat. Rope and wood oil. John’s words make you shiver again, hairs standing on end—responding to that deep growl with a roaring in your ears.

You shouldn’t be enjoying this. Shouldn’t be enjoying his lips or his tight grip; his…his rough, large, hands that encapsulate your body and drown you. It terrifies you, this heart-stopping magnetism. You can’t get enough of him.

John presses his firm lips to yours, groaning into the connection as you sigh and part your mouth. Fingers shaking, you twist and place your hands on his chest, gasping mutely as his teeth nip into your lower lip and pull back before pushing back forward. Sparks of subdued pain mix with pleasurable agony at the scrape of his beard hair.

“Every inch of you…” John’s grip captures you closer, hands ensnaring you against his chest like deeply intertwined strands of fabric, squeezing as he licks his upper lip. He catches his breath shallowly. Blue eyes burn through you. “...is fucking perfection.”

You grab at his necklace and drag him back in, feeling him not waste a single moment to grip the back of your head and keep you trapped to him, tongues slipping out of mouths to tangle together like seaweed. Perhaps it was foolish, but a part of you knew that this Captain, this strange Fisherman—this Johnathan Price—was the only man or being on this planet, land or sea, who could make you feel like you could walk and fly all at once.

When he lifts you in his arms and drops you in his lap as if your body weighed as much as a pebble, you knew you’d brave the open ocean for this man in an instant. His arm drips with water as it slips under the joint of your tail; where your knees would be if you had them, and you whine into his mouth at the slip of his fingers.

Intoxicated, drunk off of his scent and his pressure.

A dangerous mix of two different lives.

It couldn’t last.

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blingblong55 · 4 months

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My kind of love -Keegan P. Russ

Based on a request:

Just a thought : Keegan strikes me as the guy who would hold wife! reader close to him when they sleep in their bed. Or he'd carry her when he finds her asleep on the couch. ---- F!Reader, fluff/romance, established!relationship, boyfriend!keegan, cuddling ----

A/N: thanking Bon Iver and Niall Horan for this fluff🙏

It's four in the morning, Keegan comes home after nearly ten months of deployment, his duffle bag placed on the floor. Steps soft to not wake you up, after all, he is meant to surprise you with his early arrival. As he was about to go and check on the dog, who slept by the sofa, he noticed a blanket, your blanket. He approaches you, his gaze softens the second he watches his beautiful sleeping. You look so peaceful, so calm and in this moment when things for months went so wrong, this view is all he can adore.

"My love, I'm home," Keegan whispers, in his arms, he carries you to bed. They say people have a certain amount of luck and you are proof of that. Maybe out there in the cruel world, he doesn't have much luck but in this place, a warm, cosy and safe place he calls home, he knows luck is there. No one can say they are lucky because they don't have you and he does. A million men can say your name, a million more can watch you but just one gets to come home to you. One man in a sea of billions gets to kiss you, to listen to your ramble about crazy theories, to listen to you hum a tune and to love you and be loved back.

That man is him and in this precise moment, he knows why he proudly waited day and night to hide that ring in his pocket. If he wasn't a romantic, he would propose to you right here right now but he wants that moment to be magical because his precious girl deserves it. "Keegan, it's you," your voice so soft. Fuck, why must you make his heart melt like this? Why must you- damn you! Why do you love him? Why do you see what others don't and why must you make him blush just from the sound of your voice? Couldn't you be any less cruel to his weakened heart? Oh but he loves it, he loves that voice, that touch and stare, he loves the kisses and the 'Did your job go well? Are you hurt? Did you miss me?' he loves it all.

"Of course, it's me, darling," he sets you down on the bed and covers you with the sheets. "I'll be back," his lips touched your soft skin before leaving to take a short shower. You lay in bed, not being able to sleep without him anymore, you wait for him. Once he snuggles to you, you can feel his fresh skin, how his embrace wraps you with love and with care. "Did everything go to plan?" you ask as you nuzzle your face on his chest, a low chuckle escapes his lips as he brushes your hair. "It did, which is surprising," he kisses the top of your head and drapes his leg over yours.

In a warm bed, you and he lie, legs intertwined like they are the perfect match. Your back to his chest, soft breathing filling the room. As you close your eyes, he finds himself admiring your beauty from his angle. His arm wrapped around your waist, keeping you close for the rest of the night as the other arm caresses your head. His fingers brush through the hair, and slowly, they make their way to your forehead, where he slowly catches himself falling asleep.

Until morning and maybe even after being awake, he keeps you in his hold and under those warm bed sheets. "I love you to the moon and back- no, let's keep going beyond the moon," he whispers as he keeps holding you close. If only he dared to propose already and make you his missus. But only the brave wait for the exact right moment.

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tojisun · 1 year

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into my flesh

toji x fem reader

!! smut fic - minors dni; hinted age gap; mentioned jealousy; praise and degradation kink; petnames; squirting; brief cervix sex; breeding kink; passing out post-sex; mentioned aftercare; toji’s big dick galore // 2.4k words

: have my horny thoughts strung to form a somewhat coherent fic; i hope u guys would like it <33; title of the fic is from flesh - simon curtis

there is something in the way you make toji jealous that unleashes the ever-pooling desire he has for you.

wearing that red silk dress that he bought for you on your birthday, pulling him in with the curl of your lips, but never allowing him to venture close. you sidestep away from his touch whenever he tries to hook his arm around your waist, your lips pursed like toji isn’t worth your minute.

toji's glower grows and his frown deepens but he gets it.

he knows this game. he knows that you're just trying to set his veins ablaze because oh how you love it when his lips are pulled back in a snarl and his hips are punching in their thrust and his hands find their purchase around your neck. oh how you love his growled words pressed on the rise of your breasts, promises of filth rippling along your damp skin, before full lips circle around your hardened nipple. oh how you love it when toji is ruthless with his love — animalistic and jagged and overarching.

toji knows how this game goes so he slinks back into the shadows and watches you. he watches the way you hover around this boy — because what else could he be if not a boy whose lips twitch in their attempt to keep your attention, his fingers fiddling with the loose dress shirt hanging off of him, all because he could not handle your magnificence — and titter at his jokes, your eyelashes batting purposefully delicate, enticing him in a way that no other could. your hair frames your face devilishly: the cut of your jaw is sharp, your cheekbones are defined, and your eyes are half-lidded.

toji is feet away from you but even his throat goes parched. he can’t blame the kid for swooning even if toji wants nothing more but to pull you away from those coveting eyes.

——————————————————

toji’s smile is cruel as he taps the head of his cock on your twitching cunt. you whimper a choked moan, your eyes fluttering shut as the tears continue to spill. your lashes are sticking together and you are sure your “waterproof” eyeliner is all but retained, but fuck.

fuck.

your chest heaves as you gaze back into toji’s eyes, sharp hues of green looking at you with such reverence like you’re so precious even when utterly debauched. like toji loves you like this: heady and desperate and mewling. and he does. you know he does. but there is something so good at the reminder of how your presence pushes toji past his built walls, ushering his scarred palms to feel you.

he is so beautiful like this: impatient and hungry for you.

(toji has always been beautiful but in way that was not apparent in your exes — satoru with his twinkling eyes that crinkle every time he laughs; kento with his quiet drawl as he whispers your name; mei with her sloping curves and her pianist fingers ghosting their touch along your spine. no. toji is not delicate like them; even in his softness, toji has always been different and stark against your history of picnic dates and lavender kisses.

because toji, with his maps of scars and speckles of grey hair peppering the sea of black and crooked grin and aged hands and deep baritone, was not fortunate enough to afford to grow in his gentleness. he had to learn it himself — crafting fragility from his weaponry of agony and anger, all for you. all because of you. because he saw you and realized he loved you and promised, then, that he would bear kindness from his ruined hands.)

“hey,” toji’s voice is gruff as he calls out to you, pulling you from your swimming thoughts. “y’still there, baby?”

you blink back at him, glossed eyes focusing on his face.

oh how cruel of you to think about other people when toji, the man whom you love with all that you are, has you pinned down on his bed, mounting you with his bigger body. fuck, the reminder of how easy it was for toji to press your legs parallel to your chest has you breathing heavily, your pussy clenching at nothing. a quiet huff escapes your kiss-swollen lips, your eyes almost going crossed when toji slides his cock along your soaked folds again.

“yes,” you finally hum. “please, fuck me.” your empty hands slide down his chest, running your fingertips past his nipples and down to where he has a fist around his heavy and thick and full cock. your tongue juts out to swipe at your lips, feeling utterly hungry all of a sudden.

“impatient,” toji tuts. “after almost dozing on me an’ everything.”

your cheeks burn, your lips pouting. you murmur unintelligibly, not really refuting his words but not admitting to them either.

“shh,” toji whispers at seeing you flustered. he cups your cheeks, sliding his thumb just below your eyes. “was just joking, sweetheart.”

your lips part open for a response, one that dashes from the tip of your tongue at the feeling of toji’s cock slowly pushing in your pussy. you keen, your back arching off the bed.

god, you feel so full. and even then, with your quiet whimpers and curling toes, toji’s still not all the way in. your eyes flutter at every steady slide, panting at the feeling of being so stretched out. you don’t even hear yourself keening, so focused in the way toji’s cock breaches your walls like this is the first time all over again.

toji’s so gentle even when you can hear his heaving breaths, his fingers — the free hand that he has that’s holding onto your hip — dimpling your skin where the thin line of sweat builds up because of the heat simmering from toji’s palm. you peer up at him through clumped lashes, gasping quietly at the look you see on his face.

toji’s brows curl the way you know he’s barely suppressing himself from punching in his thrusts. his lips — scarred and plump and beautiful — are pulled in a snarl, and you shiver at the intensity of his eyes when he pulls them up from where you two are connected to meet your own.

he growls, the sound so animalistic it reverberates within the space between you two, sending goosebumps rising across the expanse of your skin.

“shit, baby,” toji groans, full-stopping and bracing himself with his hands on either side of your head. a sort of giddy and disbelief fills the bubble in your stomach — toji isn’t even fully in yet. “you’re so good, might just cum like this.”

he shallowly pulls out, you moan, your tears building up again, before he’s thrusting back in and breaching further in you. “just gon’ feel your cunt warm my cock like this, have you looking like the doll you are, an’ i’ll be gone.”

he sweeps your damp hair away from your face.

“you heard what i said, baby?” toji asks like you weren’t hanging onto his every word like they are gospel, pulling his cock back out, the slide is torturously slow, and only stopping when all that’s left in you is the head of his weeping cock. “you could milk me dry with just a bat of your eyes.”

you giggle, punching his chest playfully. “shut up and fuck me already!” you whine. toji winks at you in response and you roll your eyes with a fond smile, your bottom lip trapped between your teeth.

“mm, whatever my princess wants.” then toji thrusts all the way in.

you wail, feeling his cock hit something nestled deep in you, but you couldn’t even think for a second and figure out what it was because toji’s pulling out, not letting you get used to the full stretch of his cock, and fucking into you just as fast, his pelvis grinding against yours.

toji doesn’t stop, his hips unrelenting as they piston fast and hard and deep. you squeal, your fingers digging into the duvet, fisting them tightly as dizzying pleasure overwhelms you. toji’s head bows, the muscles of his back rippling as he does so, and bites on the juncture between your neck and shoulder.

“toji!” you cry, voice almost breaking into a sob, at the sharp pain on your neck mingling with the overdrive of pleasure erupting across your veins.

toji hums, his voice muffled in your skin. when he pulls back, he folds himself before you, pressing his weight on the back of your thighs.

“god, baby,” toji groans. “so wet around me.” he humps his hips forward as he says this, as though urging you to feel the sloppy mess running down the sides of your thighs. you choke, your eyes rolling back. toji does it again, his face finding its spot on the crook of your neck as he fucks you, his hips rolling every time he’s pressed close, and you hiccup at every new angle he hits.

there’s a weight inside you every time toji fucks in. it feels foreign but not unwanted; overwhelming and sensitive. when toji bucks in, you realize what it is that he’s hitting.

you squeal, crying as you scream, almost like the knowledge alone of toji pressing his cock in your deepest part brought about a new feeling of pleasure.

toji laughs, his voice ripping through your echoes of shaky sobs. “you feel it, baby?” he lifts his face to meet your eyes. “oh, yeah you do.” his voice crinkles like he is amused.

“deep!” you cry, trembling, your mind unable to string any more coherent sentences.

toji hums. “feel me kissing your cervix? if i press in like this,” he pauses to press his pelvis flushed close to yours, his eyes furrowing and his grin growing sharp when he feels you squeeze around him, your tight walls spasming around the thick curve of his cock. you let out a long hiss, your eyes fluttering at the feeling of being utterly stuffed.

“see, sweetheart?” toji continues, his voice low and guttural. “your womb is practically opening up for my cock.” you hiccup at his words, your cheeks warming up at the slur of his voice. the imagery makes your moans wobble, and toji laughs when he feels your pussy twitch around him again.

“oh darling,” he croons. “you love it when i talk to you about your hungry cunt? wanna hear the way it’s clinging so greedily around my cock? oh, yeah you do. you love being reminded how desperate of a slut you turn to.”

you sob, your voice breaking into breathy ah-ah-ahs. toji shakes his head, fully endeared even when you are splayed out before him — your skin glistening with sweat; your hair sticking to your forehead; your pussy stretched and wet and dripping as it clings around toji’s thick cock.

toji hums, delighted, before straightening back again. his cock slides out, its head leaving the depths of your walls — your cervix, you are reminded when toji rocks back in again as if testing how deep he’s claimed you — and you watch, even with muddled mind and blurry eyes, as toji holds onto the meat of your thighs.

it all happens so quickly. you saw toji’s mirage, a god-incarnate before you, and the next thing you know, he’s fucking you hard and fast, his mind focused on nothing but making you cum. you can hear yourself screaming, your throat burning alongside the pleasure erupting from your pussy. your blunt fingernails are digging into toji’s shoulders, and it is all you can do to reel yourself in from the numbing pleasure as toji pistons his hips, his pace picking up, going faster, faster, faster–!

“shit, baby!” he crows as the first spray of your squirt hits his pelvis. “yes!” toji hisses. “c’mon, sweetheart, keep squirtin’ on me.”

your eyes roll back and your ears are ringing, but you do just as he said: you squirt with every push of his cock, the rivulets between your thighs dripping to stain the sheets.

it takes toji four unrelenting thrusts before his hard pistoning peters into pathetic humps, his own orgasm building rapidly. “‘m gon’ breed this pussy,” toji murmurs, so pussy-drunk that his words turn into accented slurs. “‘m gon’ fill you up. you want that, baby? wanna be filled up?”

“yes, please!” you scream, nodding, your hand reaching down to rub at your hardened clit. “fill me, toji! fill me, please!”

“of course, sweet thing,” toji growls, pushing his cock all the way in, before you feel the sprays of hot cum shooting into your sensitive walls.

a choked moan escapes your throat before you are cumming agin, your soaked cunt squeezing toji’s one last time — “fuck, darling,” he moans, his voice curling into a hiss — then your eyes finally shut close.

——————————————————

you wake up to your head tucked into the crook of toji’s neck, your silk pajamas crinkling as you move about the bed. throbbing pain echoes mutely from your spine, and your exhausted mind reels back at the onslaught of memories.

oh. oh fuck.

you can’t believe you passed out. while toji’s balls deep in you, too.

you choke, embarrassment rushing across your veins.

a muffled squawk is ripped from your throat, tentatively distracting you from your thoughts, when toji’s arms tug you further into his embrace like you’re not already pressed flush to him. you study his face, watching as his brows begin to crinkle like he’s about to wake up.

before you can effectively escape from the rousing toji, his voice rumbles from where his lips are pressed on the crown of your head.

“g’mornin’,” he whispers.

you cringe, realizing that you have to face the embarrassment of passing out on toji while he’s literally breeding you. you cough, awkwardly, and greet, “good morning,” your voice quiet and broken. oh wow.

toji whistles, pulling back just enough to eye you. “you sound ruined,” he states.

you smack his exposed — hickey and bite mark-littered — chest. “whose fault is it?” you hiss at him.

toji grins. “mine.” he says it so cheekily and with so much pride, his scarred lips stretching to show off sharp canines.

you smack him again, futilely ignoring the explosion of warmth in your cheeks and the growing embarrassment curling at your stomach.

“ow! baby, ow!” toji cries, rolling away to avoid your soft punches. you follow him with difficulty, your body still aching, but you are determined to smack toji until your shame abates.

you fail, anyways, when toji drapes himself across you like an overgrown and clingy cat, trapping you between him and the soft bed.

ugh, why’s he literally so cute.

#suns.f #toji fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro smut #toji fushiguro x you #toji fushiguro x fem reader #toji smut #jjk x reader smut #jjk x reader #jjk smut #toji fushiguro #jjk #suns

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mydearlybeloathed · 4 months

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𝐒𝐀𝐈𝐋 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍 ¹

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: once upon a time, you weaseled your way into the demon pirate hunter's confidance, and maybe even his heart too. but one bounty gone wrong leads to you being left behind, and you just can't understand why. now, zoro's departure draws near, and your tolerance of his bullshit has run thin. it's time to face this, or risk losing him forever.

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: opla!zoro x fem!reader

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 6k

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭: swearing, use of Y/N, angst with a happy ending (sort of), mention of alcohol, an oc i really like :), reader has a backstory, takes place three years before Zoro meets Luffy

𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤: lost at sea

The breeze washed in from the sea, brushing your hair away from your face so you couldn't hide behind it any longer.

The stitched up slash across your back throbbed with every breath you took, and honestly, you were shocked you were even standing this long. But you’d spent three days lying in a stupid bed, arguing with your green-haired companion to no avail. You couldn't stand to lay down any longer.

He was leaving you on this stupid fucking island, and there was nothing you could say to dissuade him.

So now, standing on the docks of Syrup Village, you tried to ignore how your heart ached watching Zoro make arrangements with the captain of a nearby supply ship. Despite every hardship you’d known in your life, never had you felt so helpless. And that was saying something.

It felt like just yesterday you’d been an apprentice under a skilled apothecary, studying chemistry and botany day in and day out, displaying prowess in the field. You were on your way to opening your own apothecary one day. Until the pirates attacked.

For years after they sieged your village, you were the decorated captive of cruel pirates, forced to use your knowledge and skill to craft poisons that would end hundreds of lives over the course of your imprisonment. The fates of your faceless victims haunted you by night, even now.

But then, after so long of that neglect and servitude, you were freed. It was just over a year ago the pirate crew was torn apart by a single boy with green hair and three swords. His intention hadn't been to rescue you, of course, that was clear by the bounty he took on the captain of the ship. But he didn’t leave you there, and to you, that meant everything.

Zoro found you annoying to no end, what with your insistence that you repay your debt to him despite his insistence that he wanted nothing to do with you. Still, he never truly forced you away, not finding it in himself to do so.

So leads the tale of how you forced your company upon the notorious Demon Pirate Hunter, becoming his life’s greatest annoyance, and consequently, his only friend.

Zoro had never been too socially inclined, always managing to say the wrong thing. He felt glaring was the extent of communication he needed—and you never minded. You let him have his silence and made a little game out of trying to make him be the first to break it.

When he glared, you glared right back, keeping his stare with twitchy eyes and silly expressions until he had to break the contact, lest you discover the smile hidden on his face.

Eventually, he stopped trying to ditch you at every port, opting to feign sleep and curl into your side atop a musty inn mattress, shared to “save beri” as he put it. You knew it was more than that, of course, but you let him keep the pretense that he wasn’t fond of you for at least a little while more.

The pair of you fought side by side, tracking down pirates by day and whispering in low-lit corners by night. The happiest you’d ever been was by Zoro’s side, but all happy things end.

Zoro’s most recent bounty had gone very, very south.

One moment you were in the middle of following Zoro’s lead, taking out the sparse crew with your dagger. It was supposed to be a simple job, with you covering Zoro as he went for the captain of the crew. Key word being supposed.

The motions leading up to the fatal moment were still a blur, but you would never forget the cold terror that rushed through you as sharp steel slashed the skin of your back. You collapsed immediately, the pain so great that your body chose to go numb to protect you from the intensity.

And though now you swore you were fine, Zoro saw every paranoid glance you cast over your shoulder, as though afraid it would happen again. Suddenly you felt thrown back in time, meek and terrified in the face of cruel pirates, crafting whatever poison they required.

You weren’t very surprised when Zoro told you he wanted you to remain in Syrup Village, but that didn’t make it sting any less.

The village doctor, a woman called Vee, didn’t hesitate to agree to letting you room with her. She had been looking for someone to split rent with anyway. Vee said she could always pay you to deliver medicine, and after hearing of your background in apothecary, she was very excited to expand on your teaching through an apprenticeship. (You hated to admit you were excited to learn how to cure people, not kill them).

It was all so sudden and unreal. Zoro seemed so eager to leave you behind. He hadn't met your eyes since you’d regained consciousness and your entire being ached from the absence of his ever faint smile.

You didn’t know how much more of this you could take.

Zoro's eyes remained on the ground as he approached you, and only when he stood right in front of you did he raise his gaze scan over your body. Still, he never looked you in your eyes. “Are you sure—”

“I’m fine, Zoro,” you cut him off, saying his name sharply, coldly even. In all honesty, you were exhausted. You just wanted to sleep away the pain in your body as well as in your heart. “When do you leave?”

“Sunrise.” So soon. The words left his lips like they had no significance at all. Like this wouldn't be the last time he ever saw you. You’d always known Zoro would put his dream above you… but it was very different to experience it in real time.

It seemed he finally realized what a burden you were. It was only a matter of time, really. You cleared your throat, feeling a burn rise from your neck to your tongue as words begged to be let loose.

Not seeing much point in holding back anymore, you let them.

Your gaze flicked back to his face as got right in his line of sight, catching his eyes and locking him in place. The air felt heavy. “I’ll be better in a week at best. I—”

“No.”

It was like getting smacked in the face all over again. To save you the shame of having him see you cry, you turned your face away, a new wash of anger coming over you. “Fine. Fuck, see if I care… You snore anyway.”

Your voice broke off into a weak crack, and you were turning on your heel to leave him on the pier before he could say anything. With tears rolling down your cheeks, you walked into Vee’s little home, sat on the cot she’d given you, and took off your boots. It didn’t feel like home when you slept your sorrows away. There was no warm body at your back, no arm slipped around your waist that would be gone in the morning, off getting a lead on the next bounty.

Sleep found you, somehow, and your dreams were filled with memories of days much better than this.

જ⁀➴

Zoro hated this. Every emotion he was feeling was another dagger to his lungs. Every break of your heart was a scorch on his chest.

He downed another drink, tossing it back in one motion. You’ll be safe here. Syrup Village was… quaint. Free of any action, free of any danger. Though, the more he looked around, the more he thought that this was not your type of scene. He couldn’t explain why, he just knew: you were going to hate this place.

But you were safe. That was all that mattered.

Zoro called the bartender over for yet another drink, not keeping a tally of how many he’d downed that night. Swirling the alcohol around the glass, he forced away every feeling and every doubt. In Syrup Village, you would recover, away from the danger his line of work required.

Never again would he hold your dying body in his arms.

A figure sidled up to him at the bar. He glanced over. There was Vee, the village doctor, and your new housemate. She looked less than pleased as she snapped for the bartender. Receiving a glass of vodka, she turned to Zoro with steely eyes. “She’s beside herself, you know.”

He didn’t need this. He really didn’t need this. “What do you know?”

Vee’s brows drew with the challenge. “I know that poor girl is lying in my house crying over you, asshole.” She tipped her drink back and slammed it back down. “Let me tell you somethin’, Pirate Hunter.”

Zoro waited, eyes locked on the counter. “The moment she woke up, you know what she said?” Vee let out a weary sigh. “She said where’s Zoro? Is Zoro okay? I need to see Zoro.”

“Your point?”

“My point,” Vee nearly snarled. “Is that I’ve known her what, two days? And it’s already plain to me. If your plan is to make her care for you turn into loathing, you’re on the right track, pal.”

Gripping his empty glass, Zoro was at a loss. He knew you cared for him. Hell, he cared for you just as much, if not more. Which is why he had to do this. You could barely even stand—he saw through your act in seconds—and it’d be much longer than a week for you to entirely recover from your injuries. He felt like clawing out his hair, like screaming even. Why did the right thing feel so very wrong?

Vee leaned on the counter, kissing her teeth. “My advice? Don’t leave with her thinking this is on her.”

“Why would she—”

“Trust me.” Vee settled him with a glare. “She thinks this is her fault.”

Vee knew nothing, Zoro told himself. Vee had no right to step in on his relationship with you, or lack thereof. There was no way in hell Zoro would let Vee’s words get to him.

Which is why he was sitting on the curb across from Vee’s house, trying to figure out what to say to you that would salvage the only friendship he’d had since Kuina.

His head in his arms, Zoro tapped his toe on the cobblestones, and closed his eyes. What would Kuina think of him, so frazzled over a girl like he was a kid again. Not just any girl, though. This was you, so it mattered more than he was ready to admit.

A little grin worked its way up his face. Kuina would call him a coward. She’d punch his arm and tell him to just lay it all out.

“She hates me,” he whispered to no one. “I’m making her hate me.”

Like a ghost, he swore he heard the smug voice of his sparring partner at his side, a ghost's words burning into his brain: What are you gonna do about it, Roronoa?

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, pathetically regretting every choice that led him to this moment, but it had been long enough for the street lamps to shut off, casting the road in a dull darkness enough to make him start creating figures in the shadows.

Rubbing at his eyes, Zoro decided he needed some sleep. He left early in the morning, after all. But you, his heart screamed, in direct contrast with his head.

You had completely infiltrated Zoro’s life. You were brash and defiant, insisting on following him around the East Blue until you could repay him for freeing you from your bastard captors. You stayed even after your life debt was paid, your hurricane person sticking to his side. You were like a bruise he discovered one day, unsure where it’d come from and at a loss as to when it would go.

Even now, you were a sore on his heart, working your way into his very soul.

His every blink was haunted by your smile. His every move was watched by your admiring gaze. These days he couldn’t even breathe without knowing you’re safe.

Zoro knew that even if he left and never turned back, he’d never get rid of you. There was too much of you wrapped up in him, and it was terrifying.

He raised his eyes to the house across from him, and glanced over the hand painted sign reading Healing Remedies and Modern Medicines swinging in the midnight breeze. The light in the top window taunted him, the draping curtains daring him to walk in and reconcile.

But what if you didn’t want to? Your temper had always been reliable, never failing to rain upon those who wronged you. Zoro had never had the privilege of being on the receiving end of your wrath, and he was in no mood to start.

A sigh forced its way out of him, heart thundering for reasons beyond him, and Zoro had to wonder why exactly he cared so much.

He was the Demon of the East Blue. The most feared pirate hunter this side of the Grand Line. He wielded Wado Ichimonji. And yet, Roronoa Zoro was crippled by the thought of how crestfallen you had looked that evening. When he’d told you no, something he rarely ever did. If only he could just tell you…

The light in the window went off, and he was really, truly, completely in the dark.

His head hit his knees, one hand going to rest on his sword. Zoro had no clue what to do. Perhaps… Perhaps it would be best to leave it all at this. You would grow to hate him, eventually, but you would never be hurt because of him ever again.

“You’re gonna catch a cold.”

Zoro just about unsheathed his sword, halfway standing by the time his eyes readjusted to the dark, and the outline of you settled in his head. You stood there in a nightgown with your arms crossed, expression unreadable.

He relaxed, sitting back on the curb and averting his eyes. He heard you scoff, the fabric of your dress rustling as you moved to sit beside him. “Idiot,” you murmured, and he had to agree.

Instead of saying what he wanted to, Zoro demanded, “What’re you doing?”

Your eyes burned into the side of his skull, unrelenting in your blatant scorn. Sucking in a breath and letting it out, you felt your tolerance for bullshit meet its end. “I'm sitting. Zoro?”

When he barely even hummed in reply, face turned away from you, you rolled your eyes and grabbed his chin, jerking him around to look you in the eyes. The surprise on his face would’ve been funny had you not been pissed. “Zoro, grow up.”

Zoro would’ve given you the world. He would’ve killed anyone, stolen anything; all you had to do was ask. Yet, he couldn’t seem to find the words, no matter how he tried to force them. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to…” As the sentence faltered on your tongue, Zoro saw that same starvation for the right thing to say in your eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know!”

Releasing his chin, you shifted to face Vee’s house, hugging your knees to your chest and allowing the silence to swallow the conversation whole. Your frustration was palpable, radiating off your skin and latching onto Zoro, till the both of you were simply sitting on the curb amidst the complexity of emotions in the air.

It was infuriating.

You raked your hands through your hair and whirled on him suddenly. “I want to know why you’re abandoning me.”

“You’re injured,” he deadpanned, prompting a hefty sigh from you.

“Wounds heal. I’ll heal.” You searched his face, finding he betrayed absolutely nothing, per usual. “Do you think I’m weak?”

His rebuttal was immediate, and quick to be cut off. “I—”

“Because in case you don’t remember, I was on a pirate ship for years before I met you.”

“Y/N—”

“And I know I’m not easy.” Suddenly out of breath, you expelled all your thoughts. “I know I’m annoying and I probably do more harm than good and trust me, I know I’m a burden but I thought maybe… I thought maybe we were friends. I thought that maybe…”

Faltering, you forced yourself to face him, if only to see how much damage you’d done. Imagine your surprise when you found his gaze already zeroed in on you.

His eyes had always been beautiful, always so deep that it felt like you could drown in them if you let yourself. And now they bore into you with an intensity you were unaccustomed to.

“You’ve never been a burden,” he told you.

Raising a brow, “Never?”

You swore you could practically see the memories replayed in his eyes as a little smirk pulled at his lips. “Maybe at first.”

As quickly as it’d formed, your grin slid away, replaced by that same hopeless frown.

You felt it like cupping water in your hands; Zoro was slipping through your fingers with every second that passed. “I just don’t understand. I mean, I get that you liked the lone bounty hunter life but—”

Zoro shook his head. “That’s not it.”

At a loss, you looked at him with a pleading sort of gaze, glassy eyes nearly driving him over the edge. “Then tell me what is. Because I’m just gonna keep spitting out words and we both know that won’t end well.”

For a long time, he didn’t say a word. Maybe he couldn’t, you thought. Was it unfair to demand explanations from him? You were on the brink of telling him to forget everything and wishing him a safe journey, when he spoke, a quake in the usual even tone of his voice.

“Do you even remember what happened?”

It took you a moment to realize what he was talking about, and then the bandages wrapping from your back to your chest became all the more tangible, and your throat went dry. “I… Of course I do,” you said, not entirely sure it was true.

Zoro passed a hand over his face, fidgeting. “Do you remember how much blood you lost? How deep that wound is?” He could barely meet your eyes now, every ounce of the confidence you knew and loved gone missing. “Do you remember that your heart stopped beating?”

You hadn’t known. You hadn’t known any of that… but Zoro did, you realized, aching as he seemed to glare at the space ahead of him. “If I hadn’t gotten you here in time, you would have died.” His jaw set, tight fists rested on his knees. “You nearly died because of me.”

You reacted instantly—you couldn’t stand that look on his face—swiftly reaching for his hand and taking it in yours. “I didn’t die,” you insisted, “because of you. It is not your fault.”

He squeezed your hand. He didn’t really believe you, and you weren’t sure you could say anything to convince him. And when he met your gaze, you swore your heart swelled as realization set in.

You’d always had a hunch that your feelings were reciprocated—you’d always felt that he loved you too. Yet now, as you stared into his pretty eyes, it became a truth settled into the depths of your longing heart. So that’s what this is all about, you thought.

This all felt so wrong. How could he be leaving in the morning, with so many things left unsaid? And if you finally put these emotions to words now, what good would it do?

The prospect of never seeing him again was worse than death itself. There was no way you’d let this be goodbye forever.

“Zoro,” you whispered, tugging on his hand to draw his attention. “Sleep with me?”

His eyes slowly raised to your own, soft despite their cold, and he stood, taking you along with him. You led him into Vee’s house and up to the room she’d supplied you with. Zoro’s hand never once left yours, his thumb running circles on your skin.

When you grimaced as you tried to lay back on the bed, Zoro was there in an instant, letting you squeeze the life out of his hand as he settled down beside you.

He couldn’t help it: ”What was that about being fine?”

It dragged a laugh out of you, and you gazed over at him with your adoration wrapped up in your face. Zoro had never done anything wrong in your eyes—well, except leaving you behind, that is.

You brushed his hair off his forehead, your fingers drifting down to graze his cheek. At long last, the little smile was back on his face, though a bit sadder than usual. You’re sure your own grin looked the same. “You’re pretty when you smile.”

Zoro half rolled his eyes, shifting so he was lying on his side as you laid on your back. “Yeah, you’ve told me.”

“I wanna tell you again,” you shrugged. There was so much you needed to say, but the air was already so full of words, and you were tired. Tonight, you could lay by his side once more, and pretend watching a random barge take him away wouldn't tear your heart in two.

જ⁀➴

Zoro’s spot on the bed was cold when Vee came storming into the room the next morning.

Bleary eyed, you blinked sleep away as her frantic words left you confused to no end. You sat up only to have a dress thrown in your face. Looking it over, you questioned, “What?”

“Get up!” Vee ordered, her tan face a furious shade of red. “Up! Up!”

Your mind wasn’t catching up to your body. Your gaze fell to the bed, and the place where Zoro should have been. The sheets were tossed aside and his boots were gone. A cold pit formed in your gut. “Where’s Zoro?”

Vee exasperated, “The pier!”

In an instant your feet hit the floor, eyes blown wide, all air seized from your lungs. “No! He can’t—”

“Well, he is.” Without warning she spun you around and started to unbutton your night dress. “Put this on. His ship is almost set to leave.”

You’d never dressed so fast in your life, though you lacked shoes and the dress was only halfway tied in the back. You were decent, and that was enough. Bounding out of Vee’s house and through the streets, not one apology left your lips as you dodged in and out of people and carts, set on a desperate sprint to reach the docks.

“I’ll kill him,” you heaved. “I’ll chase him and find him and kill him, dammit.”

Your back ached and your limbs felt weak and you really needed a glass of water, but none of it mattered. If you didn’t make it, none of this mattered.

The flag of the merchant’s ship came into view. The sailors only had a few more crates to load, and then they’d be off. You couldn’t see Zoro anywhere, so there was only one thing left to do: you invaded the ship.

Running up the gangway and ignoring the shouts of the crew on the dock, you stood at the center of the ship’s deck and rounded in a circle, eyes scouring for that green-haired little bitch.

Chest heaving, you nearly whimpered when you still couldn’t see him. Would you have to search the whole ship, turning everything upside down?

You jumped when a hand clamped down on your arm, and you whirled around to find not Zoro, but a very tall, very surly man with a single scar running from his left eye to his jaw. His grip on you was enough to send a shock of fear through you.

“I don’t take kindly to stowaways,” he barked. “And really, you’re not even trying to hide. At least commit to it if you’re thinkin’ of hitchin’ a ride on my ship.”

As you gulped and stared up into his darkly narrowed eyes, there was really only one thing on your mind. “Where is Roronoa Zoro?”

The captain of the ship gaped, and before he could get out another word, a very familiar man rushed down from the helm, a frustrated set in his brow.

You were in no mood for his temper. In a swift motion you broke away from the captain and stormed over to meet Zoro halfway. “There you are, son of a bitch.”

Zoro’s heart was in his head, worried about the deathly glare you now gave him. He steeled himself and started, “I told you—”

“How dare you!” You shoved at his chest, barely knocking him back as crimson tendrils creeped in your vision. “Is this really how you want to leave things?”

He stood solemn, eyes almost sad as they met with yours. “I thought it would be best.”

“For who?” You couldn’t deny the break of your heart, the pieces of it under the sole of his boot. You hoped he saw it on your face. You hoped he acknowledged the damage he’s doing.

The captain awkwardly came up behind you. “Your lass is gonna have to pay for passage, Roronoa.”

“I’m not coming.” “She’s not staying.”

The pair of you kept in a dangerous staring match, your words overlapping.

Still, the captain shuffled on his feet, saying, “Listen, we have a schedule—”

You whirled on him, locking him in place with a single glare. “Give us a minute.” Then, with more sympathy, “Please.”

The captain sighed, rolling his eyes and waving it off as he continued to prepare to depart.

There was little ignoring the curious stares from the ship’s crew as you slowly turned back to Zoro. “You’re a coward.”

“I know.”

“I’m not done,” you said, holding up a hand to stop him. Zoro’s lips snapped shut, his gaze lowering for a moment before he brought it back up, waiting for the blows of your anger.

You took a breath, and finally, “I get why I can’t go with you. I’m a liability. You can’t become the world’s greatest swordsman if you’re busy keeping me alive.” You took a step closer, partially because of the eavesdroppers all around and partially because you wanted to be near him as long as you could.

“So I’ll stay. I'll live and train with Vee and become the greatest healer Syrup Village has ever seen. And maybe I’ll even forgive you for trying to leave without a goodbye, if you can tell me why.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Why what?”

You could have screamed at this man you had the displeasing pleasure of falling in love with. “Why do you care so much?”

“You know why,” he said, stubborn as always. Only, maybe he wasn’t being stubborn, you considered as something like hesitation hovered in his gaze.

Still, you persisted. “No, I wanna hear you say it.” You reached out for him, gently setting a hand on his arm to ease some of his tension. “I wanna hear the words come out of your mouth before you sail away from me.”

“You make it sound so definite,” he said, huffing a laugh as he forced a pained smile.

“Zoro.”

His deep eyes burned into you as his hands rose to softly caress your jaw, his hold featherlight. The spinning of the world began to still, the earth on its axis slowing to allow you just enough time. He got impossibly closer, breaking your anger down to a soft annoyance. You really couldn’t help but lean into his touch.

“Not like this,” Zoro murmured. “When I tell you how I feel, it’s gonna be when I have the time to show you.”

You rested your palms on the hands that cradled your face. “I’m impatient.”

He only grinned, though it barely reached his eyes. “I know.”

You couldn’t bear to waste this precious time crying, choking down the fire in your throat. You teased, “So what I’m hearing is that you like me too much to leave me stranded forever?”

“Something like that,” he said, hands drifting to your waist.

From somewhere behind him, the captain bellowed, “Roronoa!”

“I know!” Zoro called back, never removing himself from you. He pursed his lips before enveloping you in a hug that nearly knocked the breath out of you. “I’m… I’m sorry. For everything.”

Your fingers carded through his hair. You hid your face in his neck. Anything to relish the feeling of his arms around you. “I suppose I forgive you.” Squeezing him closer, “Just promise to write.”

Pulling away, he pressed his forehead to yours. “I promise.”

You cupped his jaw in your hands and locked with his eyes. “I'll get stronger. I'll come find you someday, or you'll come back, or—something. But we’ll sail together again. Swear it to me.”

He couldn’t help the smirk twitching at the corners of his lips. Then, Zoro did as you asked. “I, Roronoa Zoro, swear that we will sail again.”

“Good,” you said, voice finally cracking under the pressure building in your chest.

Somewhere in the village, the morning bell rang true. The sun was fully up over the horizon line. Not a cloud disturbed the bluer-by-the-second sky. A perfect day for sailing, you mused.

You stepped away, swiping at your eyes, and smiled as best you could. It was watery, most likely, and conveyed every bit of your melancholy. Casting a look over his shoulder you saw the captain standing there, ticked and holding up his wristwatch. The breath you let out was shaky as you turned back to Zoro.

“Goodbye,” you said, as if that word did this feeling any justice. Before he could say a word in return, you’d lunged forward to press your lips to his cheek, your hands steadying yourself on his biceps. It was quick, nothing but a peck, and enough to make you lose your nerve instantly.

Skin warm and grinning like a fool, you pivoted in a whirl and made for a quick escape, only getting two steps away when an arm hooked around your middle and pulled you back into a broad chest. Zoro’s breath was loud in your ear, so loud you could hear his goofy smile before you saw it.

Your back still hurt like hell, yet nothing could sway the stretch of your lips as you swiveled in his embrace, finding yourself once again in between his arms. In an instant, memories of months gone by haunted your eyes; memories of nights spent sleepless, only filled with the soft graze of his fingers against your arm; of nights in hasty argument over trivial things such as money or fleeting jealousy; and of moments so dear they nearly felt domestic.

And when he drew you into a feverish kiss, his hands clawing at your shirt to just get a grip of you, the sensation of lips on lips made it feel as though he truly was breathing in your soul and giving you his own in turn, the two energies intermingling in a promise sealed with love and lust and labor.

Your ears were ringing when you registered the morning bells had stopped, and you retreated from the moment. Zoro squeezed your hips, eyes shut as he sightlessly pecked your lips again, then pressed a kiss to your forehead. You leaned up and peppered a few kisses to his jaw.

Finally, time had had its fill of freezing, and commands to depart from port were barked out.

Meeting your eyes, Zoro sighed out another apology before tugging you in one last time, his arms wrapping you up in a warm embrace that had your stitches crying out again. You grimaced despite yourself. “Injured. Still injured.”

He laughed, and you swore you’d get drunk on the sound if you weren’t too careful.

"I'll come back," he whispered in your ear. "I'll be the greatest swordsman and you'll be the greatest apothecary in the world."

"That's quite the duo."

“Lass!” called the captain, standing next to the gangway, preparing to pull it in. “You goin’?”

“Yes,” you said, breathless as you took Zoro’s hand, kissed his palm, and turned away before it was too late. You ran off the ship, down the gangway, and far off into the docks. Your head wanted to run back to Vee’s little house and woe around the rest of the day. Your heart wanted something else entirely.

Like you’d been caught in the gut, you froze, instantaneously backtracking in a sprint to the edge of the docks. The ship taking Zoro away was a good way out, but not far enough to block your voice.

Cupping your hands around your mouth: “Zoro! Roronoa Zoro!”

That mop of moss green hair appeared at the ship’s railing. You grinned from ear to ear and bellowed, “I’m impatient! I love you, Zoro! I love you!”

At such a distance, you couldn’t see his exact reaction, and he couldn’t hear the whispers of the passersby that broke out at such a confession. But he’d heard your every word, his hands gripping the railing like he thought he might slip through the wood of the deck and fall right into the belly of the ocean.

A few sailors whooped and hollered and one dared to clap him on the shoulder, and he would have severed that hand from the man had it not been for the red hot affection coursing through his veins. You were waving, and so he raised his hand and limply waved back.

He would be writing to you the moment he got a hold of some paper, Zoro decided. Until then, he stood at the edge of the ship, watching Syrup Village and Gecko Island and you grow smaller and smaller, and then gone.

There was a tightening around his lungs, and as he retreated into the depths of the ship, he knew his heart had remained on land with you. One day, when you were healed and he was strong enough to make sure you never got injured again, he’d have his heart back, and you along with it.

Until then, your paths diverged, to be met once again some years later.

જ⁀➴

Nami’s little ship taking on water was the least ideal occurrence possible. Yet, deep inside, Zoro found it incredibly funny to watch the orange haired girl scramble around all frustrated like this.

“Gecko Islands,” said Nami, drawing Zoro out of his thoughts. She was hunched over her map with Luffy over her shoulder, per usual. “I think we’ll be able to make it before the ship sinks.”

Those words took longer to process than they should’ve, but Zoro couldn’t help it. Gecko Islands? How long had it been, three years maybe? No longer than that, he was sure. His eyes went unfocused at the memory of a laugh that could easily end him and bring him back to life all at once.

“Swear it to me.”

“I, Roronoa Zoro, swear that we will sail again.”

Nami nodded to herself, saying, “Syrup Village is known for its ships. I say we dock there and ditch this junk.”

He couldn’t believe that luck. Zoro’s lips threatened to quirk into a grin before he got a hold of himself. He rested his hand on his swords and snuffed. “I’ve got a friend in Syrup Village who could help us.”

Nami took off her readers and rolled up her map. “You have friends?”

He shot her a tight smirk. “Just one.”

“And he can help us?” asked Luffy as he took to the ship’s helm.

“She might.” Zoro checked on a knot here and a rope there. With his back to his temporary crew, he let out a small smile. “If she’s happy to see me.”

A surprised grin took Nami's face. “And if she isn’t?”

“She will be,” he assured, only half certain, if he was being honest.

It'd been three years since his promise, after all. Whatever happened next, Zoro could only be certain of one thing: oh, how he missed you.

#zoro #zoro x reader #opla!zoro x reader #opla #roronoa zoro x reader #one piece #one piece live action sanji #one piece x reader #x reader #reader insert #female reader

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soobnny · 1 year

Text

jealousy, jealousy — nrk.

trope. established relationship. overprotective / jealousy au.

synopsis. nishimura riki is stubborn and hard-headed, yet not even a fight can stop him from making sure no one bothers his girlfriend. who knew jealousy could look so good on riki? (2.1k words)

note. here’s to anon who requested for me to write jealous aus! realized i’ve never actually tried writing it before :0 the song btw has nothing to do w the fic. just stole the title

There’s nothing more unsettling than seeing you trying to talk to Nishimura Riki who is actively making it a point to avoid looking or speaking to you, despite being in the same vehicle.

Especially when you’re saying, gently, “Riki, I’m really sorry.”

Riki couldn’t bring himself to look at you. He was understandably upset, and there was an insistent voice in his head that told him to give you the silent treatment. Your boyfriend had the right to be annoyed – especially when he had spent hours prior in the day waiting for you at your favorite ice cream parlor.

It wasn’t like you had meant to stand him up on your date. You had been called back late by your teacher, and you had forgotten to inform Riki especially when your mind was a sea of responsibilities you had to tend to. And on most days, Riki would understand and forgive you in a heartbeat – even offer to help you with your workload.

He always said it was a stupid reason to be upset with, and it was in hindsight. However, it’s been a really long time since you’d last been on a date together.

With his dance competitions and your constant strive to keep your scholarship, the both of you were understandably busy. Spotting free time on both of your schedules was rare and you took every chance at spending time together when it happened.

Today was one of those days, and the plan was that you’d go on an ice cream date (just the two of you) before going to one of Jay’s famous parties. It didn’t help that Riki was particularly clingy today after having lost a spot in the Top 3 of his recent competition. He just wanted to be with you, to bask in your comfort, and to hold you in his arms as a reminder that there was always next time.

And you had accidentally robbed him of that. So, Nishimura Riki was upset with you.

“Riki–” You begin.

“Don’t.” He cut you off before you could even continue. “I don’t really want to talk to you right now.”

He surprised himself with how cold he spoke to you, guilt instantly settling in, but it was too late to take back his words. Besides, you knew never to take it to heart when Riki was upset. You’d just have to try again tomorrow, when he’d have enough time to calm himself down. So, you simply grow quiet as he pulls up the driveway of your shared friend’s house.

The night air is cold when you step out of the car, and you visibly shrug at the sudden coolness in contrast to the heat you had felt in the silence between you and your boyfriend. It’s only now that Riki allows himself to look at you. His gaze follows the gentle shaking of your shoulders and the clattering of your teeth as you wrap your arms around yourself in an attempt to warm yourself.

While he was angry, Riki was not a cruel boyfriend. Shrugging his jacket off, he places it on your shoulders gently, helping you adjust your arms in its sleeves to make sure that in the chill of the night and the air-conditioned party, you would not feel cold.

Before you can thank him, he starts walking for the door.

Poor Sunoo is unaware of the fight when you pull both of you in for a hug, bouncing in conversation and being greeted by an awkward string of responses from the both of you. He only understands the situation when you and Riki walk separate ways upon entering the party.

The music is unbearably loud, and Riki is the first one to go meet up with his friends. You walk the opposite direction in hopes of seeing a friend.

Truthfully, you did not want to be in this party right now. It was only ever fun when you were Riki, popping out an ankle biter or two as you’d make fun of the drunk teenagers around you. Time always stretched in meaningful ways when you were with him, blurred by silly dancing and excusing yourselves to pull pranks on your friends.

“(Name)!” You spot Felix, a good friend of Jake, approaching you with a smile on his face. He gives you a side hug, immediately noticing the lack of your boyfriend by your side. “Where’s Riki?” You return the warm smile at the boy, politely acknowledging him. You don’t really want to tell him you weren’t with Riki because you had a fight, so you settle with a little white lie.

“He’s downstairs. I’m looking for a friend.” Felix nods his head, patting your head before he’s called by Hyunjin. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll see you around!” With one last tap on the shoulder, Felix heads towards the direction of his friend, leaving you to walk around by yourself again.

You grow more anxious upon not spotting a single close friend in the party after roaming around the house for a good fifteen minutes. Then again, Jay’s space was huge and it’d be impossible to look through every space and crevice in search of a friend.

You had hoped maybe Yuna or Yunjin were around so you could pass time through conversation and gossip. However, fate doesn’t hand you luck tonight.

On the other side of the party, Riki is seated with his friends – Sunghoon and Jake joking around with a beer in hand as they chat about their recent flings, Sunoo off to dance with friends, Heeseung and Jay busying themselves to make sure the partygoers were accommodated with enough food and drinks, and Jungwon who is concerned why his friend is awfully quiet tonight with the absence of your usual figure next to him.

“Where’s (name)?” Jungwon starts.

“We had a fight.” Riki’s response is pointed as he glances at Jungwon before going back to people-watching. It’s like he doesn’t want to say it. Riki hates fighting with you – and while it was normal to occasionally fight in healthy relationships, it didn’t mean Riki hated it any less. However, he was stubborn and hardheaded, and that insistent voice has not left his head.

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Jungwon blinks, unsure of how to respond. He wasn’t sure if Riki wanted him to keep pushing at the topic or not. Going for the safe option, Jungwon keeps his mouth shut as he excuses himself to go help Jay and Heeseung.

While heading for the kitchen, Jungwon spots you seated on another couch in the living room, scrolling through your phone. Next to you is Chaewon who looks like she’s in a peaceful slumber despite the loud music and the crowd of people.

When you catch sight of the boy, he waves at you politely before he disappears into the crowd.

You hum to yourself. You suppose you should just leave in a bit after Chaewon wakes up. Besides, it wasn’t really a bother having her lean her head on your shoulder, and you didn’t really want to wake her to leave the party you had just joined.

You’re less fortunate with the man seated on your left.

He had been trying to talk to you the whole time you were looking for a friend (after Felix had left your side), and he had sat down next to you the moment you grew tired.

When Jungwon disappears, the boy next to you perks up and starts quizzing you on your name, which school you went to, what year you were in. He honestly seemed friendly, noticing your lack of mood for the party and attempting to lighten it up a little. But, you did not feel like answering him.

Perhaps he was trying to make a friend, but you were too preoccupied on how you were going to apologize to Riki tomorrow. And, he was being a little too creepy about not leaving you alone.

He tries asking you open-ended questions, tries to be quirky by asking conversation-inducing questions, but you really had nothing to say that might be of interest to him.

“You look like you aren’t enjoying yourself.” You’re ripped out of your thoughts at his constant efforts at a conversation, and when you start to feel properly awkward, you feel his arm slide behind you, dangling on the couch and inching impossibly closer to you. Maybe he wasn’t trying to make a friend after all.

You silently pray in your head for Chaewon to wake up so you could peel yourself away from the situation.

You stutter over your own words, trying to think of a way to tell him you really weren’t in the mood to have a conversation with a stranger, and you’re sure Riki wasn’t too big of a fan of someone else trying to be touchy with you.

While you appreciated his efforts at trying to make you enjoy yourself, you can’t help but think that he had ulterior motives, and you were sure your boyfriend wouldn’t appreciate that.

Was the oversized jacket you’re wearing not clue enough that you had a boyfriend?

“Yo, who’s that next to (name)?” Riki’s ears perk up at the mention of your name, back straightening as he tries to listen in on Jake and Sunghoon’s conversation.

“Riki, I think someone’s trying to chat your girlfriend up.” Sunghoon looks behind him to look at Riki who has grown intimidatingly silent at his comment. Motioning over to where you’re seated, Riki pushes himself off from the couch, peering over in search of his girlfriend in the crowd.

Jake and Sunghoon were right. In his view, he spots a stupid looking boy trying to impress you – and you were clearly not having it. Riki feels his head start to ache and his fists clench by his side. He grips his phone tighter, knuckles turning white at the sight that greets him.

The icy grip of jealousy that seeps through his veins is overwhelming. You’re smiling politely at the boy, and Riki knows you’re trying to think of a million ways to get away from the situation. He doesn’t understand why he feels jealous. It’s not like you even wanted to talk to that boy.

Then it clicks. Maybe that’s why. Because here you were, seated with some boy who has his hand on your shoulder when it should’ve been him. And all of this is happening just because he was upset at you for your lack of communication from a while ago.

Nishimura Riki couldn’t take it anymore.

Locked and loaded behind gritted teeth and popping veins on his neck, he makes his way through the crowd, stopping right in front of you and the cause of his annoyance. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?” Riki glares down at the boy beside you. “That’s my girlfriend, so get your hands off her.”

The sight of Riki is enough to send bullets of sweat down the boy’s forehead. With a newfound fear, the boy straightens up from his seat, pulling his arm off of you before raising it in defeat. “Dude, my bad. She was here alone, how should I have known she had a boyfriend?”

“Go fuck yourself.” Riki’s face flashes in your direction and his features soften at a ridiculously fast pace. He reaches out to take your hand in his before gently tugging you off of the couch, apologizing to Chaewon in the process while he takes you outside.

Riki pulls you in for a hug. He doesn’t care how upset he was with you, he needed to make sure you were okay. With his hand running through your back and his lips pressed on top of your head, he feels his mood instantly lighten.

He pulls away, brushing your hair off your face before asking quietly, “Are you okay?”

You thought about it for a second before nodding your head, smiling gratefully at him. You know he was upset with you (he might still be), and Riki tended to be stubborn and hardheaded when it came to arguments. It was just nice to know that even then, he always had your back. Even if he was angry or upset or annoyed, you knew you could always count on him to be there for you.

“You wanna go home?”

You nod your head, scooting closer to him. He knows that you just need him so he takes your hand in his, leading you over to where he had parked the car. “Maybe some ice cream to make it up to you?”

“Okay. I’m still upset, by the way.”

“I know. I love you.”

“...Love you too.”

#enhypen x reader #nishimura riki x you #ni-ki x reader #ni-ki x you #ni-ki x y/n #enhypen ni-ki x reader #enhypen ni-ki #nishimura riki x reader #enhypen riki x reader #nishimura riki x y/n #riki x y/n #riki x reader #riki x you #nishimura riki fanfic #enhypen nishimura riki #sam nishimura #jealous #overprotective

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jaevie · 5 months

Text

Midday Reverie

Pairing: omega!Jaehyun x alpha!reader

Genre: Enemies to lovers (kind of), omegaverse, slow burn, smut.

Word count: 22.5k

Summary: After moving to the countryside to protect himself from hunters, Jaehyun is finally content: not only he lives away from omega stereotypes, but manages to get himself a job at the local sex shop. Everything is perfect until a huntress comes to town — one that, much to his surprise, is an alpha. And his mate.

Warnings: If you’re big/educated on omegaverse, know that I made the pairing a little non-traditional, with female alpha being able to get impregnated by a male omega. For smut, expect oral and unprotected sex, biting, scenting, toys, shibari, and extreme emotional involvement. This fic also contains mentions of death and descriptions of violence.

N/A: Wow, this was finished way faster than I intended. I hope you enjoy it! ♡

After years of running and hiding, Jung Jaehyun could say that, for once in his life, he was happy, safe and free.

The countryside observed his absolute content — a young man with a serene complexion, glasses on his nose and thick black hair caressed by the sea-scented wind — as he walked downtown. Attracted to beautiful things, the sun petted the top of his head. Even the soothing landscapes kept an eye on him: the historical houses carved into the hills, the imponent cliffs, the flower fields extending their arms into the horizon, and the never-ending ocean who occupied itself leaving giggly pecks on the shore, a kiss marked by the whitest foam.

The small town Jaehyun had chosen to live in was graced with more than natural beauties, as a colorful village thrived in the middle, very similar to an artist’s canvas. Medieval but also vibrant, with several shades of bricks decorating the buildings, streets and squares. The air was often dense with the smell of bread coming from the bakery, fresh pasta from the restaurants, and flowers from the shops.

It was such a lovely place. Perfect for an omega.

Although many hurtful lies had been spread about his kind, Jaehyun accepted the truth. He was a gentle soul, patient, understanding and sensitive to other’s feelings. However, he was not what others claimed omegas to be: so weak and submissive he would beg for love and affection; so unable to control himself his hormones would turn him into an animal. And finally, Jaehyun believed, with his entire heart, that he did not need to rely on an alpha to be happy or to find purpose in life.

So when he noticed how cruel life could be, how omegas were treated unfairly and how the government was paying hunters to keep them under control, Jaehyun ran away. Thankfully, it worked out.

The small bell on the door rang softly when he stepped in, finding his boss already inside the shop. “Good morning, Jae!” Haechan cooed, expressive brown eyes matching his big grin.

“Good morning!” Jaehyun put his bag aside, noticing a bunch of new boxes on the floor. “I see the packages arrived.”

“These are going to sell like water!” Haechan nearly jumped from excitement. Had he not been human, he was probably going to be an omega too. Sometimes, Jaehyun wished he could actually like Haechan: that the shop owner’s scent edged him on, and that Haechan’s gaze could make him blush. Things would be a lot easier if Jaehyun could fall for a human. “Here are the new plugs, the clit suckers are there, and these…” Haechan opened one of the boxes, removing a toy Jaehyun had never seen. It had two different ends connected by a string: a white vibrator and a clitorial sucker. Yellow, blue and pink flowers were imprinted all over it. Quite honestly, it seemed to match a little girl’s birthday party. “This is the revolution, my friend. It sucks the clit while the vibrator thrusts itself in.”

Jaehyun’s eyes widened. Technology was really wild those days. “Wow!”

“I know! People can use it on their own and with their partners. Amazing, isn’t it?” Then, Haechan handed the toy over. “Here, this one is yours. Use it and give me your opinion. We need honest, accurate reviews.”

Jaehyun swallowed, shifting uncomfortably on his feet as he felt the toy in his hands, rubbing his thumb against the smooth silicone. Perceptive as a fox, Haechan noticed his hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have anyone to try this with.” Jaehyun smiled without showing his teeth, dimples coming out shyly.

“Well, my boy, you can always try. Go out tonight and find yourself a lady. You don’t have to marry her, just a night will do,” Haechan encouraged with gentle taps on Jaehyun’s shoulder.

Deep inside, Jaehyun wished he could explain that his nature was way more complex. He was an omega, and omegas sought to have mates for life. Someone they could trust and thrive with, someone to complement their skills, to be nice to them. To build them a nest and keep them nice and warm. But no one should know about his nature. It was only going to put him in danger.

Laughing it off, Jaehyun kept his secret buried in his chest.

Heachan left after checking the storage to meet the marketing agency he had hired, leaving Jaehyun by himself. It was nothing unusual. Most of Jaehyun’s days were spent at the shop, anyway. He put all his efforts into keeping everything neat and being as attentive as he could muster, recommending the best toys for what the customers looked for. There wasn’t a single question he would not reply. At the end of the day, people felt comfortable to open up and listen, because there wasn’t anyone more patient and gentle-mannered than the sex shop’s salesman. And, obviously, comfortable customers made bigger purchases.

That was one of the reasons Haechan loved having Jaehyun as his employee. The other reason was Jaehyun’s looks. He was like an angel, with peachy skin, lively brown eyes, manly eyebrows and broad shoulders; Jaehyun was tall, soft and polite, cultured and humble. Haechan could not even guess how many people in town had a crush on Jaehyun, but he guessed the sales increase after his hiring was not a coincidence.

That day went by as ordinary: Jaehyun’s playlist was on in the shop — slow, melodic R&B tones that got the customers asking the name of the songs —, and a few customers arrived to check on new products. The sun was warm and life was good. Average, ordinary. Jaehyun liked it like an anchor liked to sit at the bottom of the ocean.

But when the bell on the door rang its premonitive chant, Jaehyun lifted his face to meet with the end of his peace.

You smelled like fading into sleep beneath the hot sun. Like an alluring adventure, a midday reverie. Orange-like, passionate, summerly. A scent so confident and strong he instantly knew that you were an alpha and that he liked you more than he ever wished to like Haechan. His heart, so candied, desired nothing but to be delicately held by your hands.

You did not look like most alphas, though. You were shorter than Jaehyun, with the average silhouette of a woman. Driven by details, Jaehyun registered the thin silver choker on your neck, from which small diamond stars hung; he took in how your hair crowned your face like moonlight made the night a thousand times more alluring. He looked into your eyes, sharp and dazzling, eyelids so long snowflakes could be captured in them. And the black, long jeans you wore? The oversized suit that combined your powerful aura? You had his knees trembling. Jaehyun stared in awe as you walked inside the shop, exhaling confidence and authority, running those unforgiving eyes on the shelves filled with vibrators, dildos and plugs, until they landed on him.

You tilted your head with a playful grin on your lips. “What’s wrong with your jaw?”

Jaehyun immediately closed his mouth without realizing he had opened it in the first place, his cheeks burning like flames on a stove. “I’m sorry, miss.” Sorry that you were so beautiful and it felt so right to just look at you — and that his mouth salivated at how gorgeously you messed with his brain. “H-how can I help you?”

Your gaze was analytical, cold even through the layers of playfulness. Only then he told himself that you were an alpha, and alphas were not to be trusted. How would he know you weren’t one of those hunters that tracked omegas and forced them into submission? Jaehyun had been lucky in hiding, but he knew most omegas had an unhappy ending. If you were an omega and an alpha caught you, you were sent back to the capital, and once you were there, you were forced to mate with someone your heart did not choose. It was a hideous crime against everything Jaehyun believed in, and he mentally thanked himself for taking his suppressants. That way, you wouldn’t be able to feel his scent. You would not even know he was an omega. Hopefully.

You stepped closer and closer, until Jaehyun could count the pores on your face. “I’m looking for a toy.” Your voice was velvety and calm, like a carpet that took him straight to the loveliest daydream.

Jaehyun nervously fixed his glasses. “Any preferences?”

“I like the flexible and potent ones. Extra points if they’re cute,” you replied, leaning on the counter — your scent, stronger with your proximity, could intoxicate his every blood cell. Why did it sound like he could be the toy you were looking for?

“W-we have this one, it arrived today,” Jaehyun was close to sweating as he handed you the new toy. “This end gives you clitorial stimulation. And this other end is-“

“Perfect for penetration,” you interrupted, using your fingers to explore the end that resembled the shape of a cock. “Does it thrust alone?”

“Yes,” Jaehyun's rosy cheeks embarrassed him further. “Excuse me, miss,” he politely pressed the button to turn the toy on, swallowing when you wrapped your lovely hand around the girth that started moving back and forth in a short, strong speed. He should not be thinking the things he did. God, he should not. “It has five different types of potency too.”

You nodded with a smile that only made you twice as beautiful, so much it was a scandal. “I’ll take it.”

Jaehyun proceeded to wrap the toy box for you, putting it inside the shop customized — but still discreet — bag. When you handed him your credit card, he quickly registered your name, and knew he had to say something else or he was going to regret his silence forever. “Are you new in town?”

“Yes,” you nodded. “I was transferred from the capital.”

“Really? What do you work with?”

“I’m a huntress.” Your honest reply almost made Jaehyun choke on his own saliva, but for the sake of his being, he did not. “You might’ve heard it. Rebellious omegas are moving to small towns, and the government is sending alphas to track them.”

Fuck. How Jaehyun was able to control the absolute agony in his face was even unknown to him. “So you’re an alpha, then…” he hummed as though he had not known.

“Yes,” you grinned like an angel holding a knife on its back, like a snake hidden in the bushes. “You’re not an omega by any chance, are you?” Your tone was mocking: you both knew the chances of an honest answer were low, in case he really was an omega.

“Human,” Jaehyun lied.

“I envy you. Human population is rising, and we are going down,” you sighed. “We wouldn’t, if omegas had the decency to face their destinies.”

Your words were like a sting in his chest. In true honesty, Jaehyun wanted to argue. To tell you what people called destinies was nothing but a way to both control and hurt omegas and alphas. He wanted to tell you what he thought: that omegas had suffered enough, seen as only useful for sex, to stay back home and take care of the kids and the housework while alphas, especially males, ran wild and free. Jaehyun wanted to tell you that your opinion was not only wrong, but violent. It made his heart ache, how you were part of the system he despised.

“I can imagine,” was all he said.

Your eyes held his gaze for a few seconds, as though you were trying to see through him, your nose trained to smell his lies. But you said nothing, accepting when he handed you the bag. “Thank you, mister…?”

“Jung. Jung Jaehyun.”

“I’m Y/N, but you already know that.” With a smile, you turned around to leave. When your hand was on the handle, Jaehyun spoke again.

“Miss, can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure.”

“We still don’t have reviews on the toy you’re taking. With due respect, if you could write yours, so we can anonymously post it, I’d appreciate it.”

Jaehyun did not know how he mustered the courage to ask you that. Just like he didn’t understand how he resisted falling to his knees when you chuckled, frank and gorgeous and just made for him.

“You’ll hear from me soon, Jaehyun.”

Hidden into the dark embrace of the night, you were supposed to delight yourself in its secrets and maneuvers, but it was quite the opposite.

A cold drop of sweat ran down your temple as you squirmed on the bed. Another nightmare. It was as though you smelled the metallic notes of blood on your nose, dense and undeniable, while your mother, lying on the living room floor, tried to push the pup. Your fifth brother.

“He’s not coming out,” your mother insisted, her face salty with excruciating tears and laboring sweat.

Coldly watching from the balcony, your father sighed as if every word coming out of her mouth was made of pure, overreacting drama.

That night, after ten hours of pleading and sobbing, your mother and brother died on the cold floor. A pool of thick blood spread on the rug, and you were once again haunted by how your father told you to get it fucking off his face and clean it.

You woke up with a scream in your throat, that you swallowed harshly as sweat dripped down your nape. That nightmare was more frequent than you would ever like, and it repeated from time to time.

There was no escaping from the things you had seen. There was no exit from the way of the world, how females were meant to breed and bring live to pups. It didn’t even matter if they were alphas, betas or omegas. No woman was safe.

Every day, you did what you did not to end up like your mother. As long as there were omegas to hunt, you were not going to be forcefully paired with a random man that seeked to impregnate you. You would rather hunt a thousand omegas than allow anyone to put a pup inside you.

Even the cute, polite omega you had met that afternoon.

Jung Jaehyun. A name like sugary on your tongue.

Who was he trying to fool with those sweet eyes? Those plush lips, charming dimples, shiny black hair and his soft voice? Who was he trying to fool with that bewitching attitude that flourished right from the courteous and respectful garden of his heart?

You had come across attractive omegas before, with eyelashes so gracious that even the brattiness in their mouths came out alluring and dear, but it was different this time. Your heartbeat had been singing a different melody since you entered that shop, hoping to find another prey that would offer you a pleasing, feisty hunt. However, even the thought of Jung Jaehyun soothed your nightmare’s side effects, helping you focus on the devouring need to bring him to your arms and give him the world. A need so brutal it felt visceral.

You wanted to show him how you looked naked. To see his jaw dropping again, and to show him the true meaning of warmth.

But you had a file on him, a long list of information: where he was born, where his parents lived, what money the government was going to pay you for his capture. You knew his background, a lovely child that wished to be a theme park designer, mom’s only child, the best in class. You also had the address of Jaehyun’s suppressant provider.

All that information was like having a rope around his neck, a rope you were close to tightening in a firm, definitive knot.

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” you chuckled bitterly, using your own blouse to wipe the sweat away from your face, and staring over at the sex toy on the bedside table, the same you had used as your head guided you back to him. His eyes, his hands, his lips.

You knew better than to give your heart any indulgence. Jung Jaehyun was your prey, and you were going to hunt him down.

“So, how was your night? Found a lady to try the new toy with?” Haechan cooed excitedly as he welcomed Jaehyun into the shop the next day.

If Jaehyun could give an honest answer, he would say that he put his vinyl records on, from Frank Ocean to Cigarettes After Sex, lit a musk candle, and counted how many suppressant pills he still had — everything so his mind would not chase you in its eternal longing for romance and belonging. You were a huntress, which severely compromised your morals and sense of judgment. It was so mean of you to do what you did, and still, Jaehyun wished you'd be gentle to him. A type of gentleness that put him to sleep and blew sweet air on his lungs — a type of care that was absolute, inviting and nesting. He wished you could build him a nest, with things that smelled like you, and bury him in your arms after a rough day. There was nothing else in the world that he desired as much.

“Not actually,” Jaehyun scratched his nape softly. “I preferred to stay home.”

“Ah,” Haechan’s excitement shrinked with himself, and he seemed smaller behind the counter. “I didn’t succeed either.”

Jaehyun’s eyebrows furrowed. “What happened?”

“I have not been in the mood lately, you know? Which is very weird, considering the way I am.” Haechan pouted, looking down at his hands. His sorrowful tone made Jaehyun come closer to rub his back in soothing circles.

“Don’t worry, Haechannie. We all have our phases.”

“What if it is not a phase? What if I have lost my libido forever?”

“So dramatic,” Jaehyun chuckled. “It won’t come to that. Give yourself time and be patient. You’ll feel ready again one day.”

Haechan nodded with slightly hopeful eyes, although his face still looked pouty. Slowly, his features allowed a bit of rage in. “What a shame! I need reviews for my shop and can’t even push myself to experiment with the toy I was the most excited about!”

Jaehyun mentally told himself to be quiet, but his empathy spoke louder. He couldn’t help it. Seeing people struggling was something he really hated. “We still can get reviews somehow, you know? I asked one of the customers that bought the toy to write us one.”

“You did what?!” Haechan stood up in shock. “Who did you ask?”

Jaehyun raised his hands in peace. “You don’t know her. She’s new in town. But don’t worry, Haechannie. I wouldn’t have asked her if she didn’t seem open.”

The owner seemed to calm down, but retorted suspiciously: “She’s probably into you. I bet she’s leaving a whole ass review with several details to make you think of her…”

“I don’t think so,” Jaehyun readily replied.

“Why are you always so humble, Jae? Don’t you notice the effect you have on others?” Haechan sighed, then analyzed Jaehyun a little closer. “Unless… Unless you’re interested in her, that’s why you asked!”

As much as Jaehyun admired his boss, sometimes Haechan’s cleverness really got on his nerves. “Stop saying nonsense!”

“Your ears are red. You’re definitely lying! Come on, tell me everything about her! New in town, you said…?”

Disconcertedly, Jaeyun removed his glasses and rubbed his eyelids. “I’m not talking about her. Please, respect it.”

Haechan was about to stick his tongue out at his employee when the bell on the door rang and they both turned around.

And just like that, the sensation of summer was once again in Jaehyun’s lungs, the smooth moves of your hair bringing the soft notes of oranges to his sensitive nose — and this time, as he awkwardly put the glasses back on his face, Jaehyun thought he was actually going to die, because you walked in wearing a leather jacket that matched your biker gloves.

You rode a motorcycle. It was just parked outside.

Holy shit, you were a fucking badass!

“Hi, Y/N!” Jaehyun was close to gagging, his ears turning twice as scarlet, like cherries. “How are you?”

“Hey,” you grinned gingerly, taking a moment to look at the young man right next to Jaehyun. “Perfect. You?”

“Fine. This is Haechan, he’s the shop owner. Haechan, this is Y/N, our new customer” he was quick to introduce you.

“Nice to meet you,” Haechan hummed in a tone that sounded almost like a seductive coo, which embarrassed Jaehyun a little.

“You have a lovely shop,” you smiled. “I just came back to tell Jaehyun I wrote the review.”

“Ah, thank you!” Jaehyun uttered. “You can send it to me and I’ll post it on our website asap!”

“With one condition,” you spoke, staring at him deeply. His eyes were sweet, but yours were menacing. “I’ll send it if you have dinner with me.”

Both Jaehyun and Haechan held their breaths. Your target blushed while his boss tried not to jump around in a supportive display of happiness, content that his reserved and discreet employee finally had the chance to go out with someone he was interested in.

Jaehyun, on the other hand, was nearly shock-circuiting, wondering if you really wanted to take him out or if it was all a strategy for you to find out if he was an omega.

But what could he do against the soul crashing desire to be with you? What will did he have against his own instinct?

Denying you was not an option.

“Sure,” Jaehyun managed to reply. “I’ll be happy to.”

Taking Jaehyun’s suppressant provider down was easily risked off your list. Piece of cake. The man, a neat guy named Jaemin, offered little resistance when you knocked on his door, which led to you finding his hidden lab and the several suppressants he stored in the garage. Jaemin was quickly sent to jail right after.

Without suppressants, Jaehyun would be unable to hide his scent. He was probably going into heat too, when the time came; heats were usually so ferocious and ruthless he was going to give you all the evidence required to send him back to the capital as an omega. That was how you planned on catching him.

Of course, as you faced him at the lovely street restaurant, with candles burning on the table and the moonlight rays blessing your encounter, he did not know you already had planned his downfall from start to end. You pitied him. You pitied everyone. But it had never stopped you from doing your job.

“This is one of my favorites in town,” Jaehyun looked at the restaurant facade, with an angelic arch of light blue flowers surrounding the wood doors.

“Glad I picked the right place,” you replied, sipping on white wine. “How long have you been living here, if I may ask?”

“A little more than three years.”

“And are you happy?”

Jaehyun nodded without hesitation. “More than when I lived in the capital. Here, life goes by slower. There’s no traffic and the violence ranges are lower than average. I’m closer to nature too. I really like listening to the birds sing when I wake up.”

There they were again, his sweet eyes. His plush lips, charming dimples, shiny black hair.

Your inflamed desire to give him everything he could possibly have,

“Adorable,” you smiled. At that very moment, one of your colleagues, Taeyong, was breaking into Jaehyun’s house to get rid of his suppressants. Dinner had just been an excuse to bring Jaehyun out. Or so you liked to think. “I suppose you enjoy the people too, besides the lifestyle. Your boss seems to be a lovely boy.”

“Haechan?” Jaehyun’s eyes widened as he winded up some spaghetti on the fork. It caught your attention, how smooth and lovely his manners were in his structure, with long slender fingers and defined muscles on his arms. “He’s my friend, that’s all. But yes, he’s really cool.”

“It must be fun, working at a sex shop…”

He chuckled, looking exceedingly cute in those reading glasses, with a smile so pure and genuine you wanted to kiss him. It ached, being in his presence and knowing you could not make him yours, like a true alpha did to an omega.

“I thought so too, when I was hired, but now I just focus on helping people find what they want,” Jaehyun explained, seeming a lot more comfortable around you. He had barely touched his wine, so you could not blame it on alcohol. Maybe he was just a sweet and outgoing communicator. “It’s impressive how sex toys can assist us. They make couples grow closer and help people who are discovering what they like, and even those who are facing sexual traumas. I really like what I do, it makes me feel important.”

Shit. He was really adorable.

“What about you?” Jaehyun continued. “Are you enjoying the town?”

“Kind of. I love the capital, but it is nice here too.”

“Is the hunt going well? I mean, did you find any omegas?”

“None,” you replied, trying to suppress how his boldness surprised you. “They’re getting harder to catch.”

Jaehyun looked down at his fork. “Maybe… Maybe they don’t want to have a miserable life, you know?”

Softly, you clenched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I mean, think about yourself. You’re an alpha. Aren’t there any responsibilities that come with the title that you wish you could avoid?”

“There are, that’s why I’m hunting,” you honestly replied, feeding from the curiosity in his gaze. “As long as I’m working, I won’t be needed in reproductive matters.”

Jaehyun’s eyes squeezed. “So you hunt omegas and send them back to serve the same matters you personally run from?”

“Hypocritical, right?” you hummed nonchalantly. “But it is them or me, and I’ve made my decision a long time ago.”

Jaehyun bit the inside of his cheek. How complex it was, to comprehend one’s motivation. “Do you really think that’s the only solution?”

“Well, if you have a better one, I’m all ears,” you tightened your eyes at him, chewing on a buttered rigatoni. “You have a very determined opinion, for a human.”

“I’m interested in social subjects. I think societies can be more equal and gentle.”

Of course he did.

“I bet that’s motivation for selling toys too,” you guessed. Alphas, betas and omegas tended to only have sex with their mates when they had the chance; if they had not found their mates, sex toys were the best substitutes, and offered some kind of relief. “Tell me, how many omegas have you attended lately?”

“Is that why you wanted to have dinner with me? Because you think I’m turning my customers in to you?” Jaehyun firmly replied.

“Not really. I can always use some help, but you don’t have to tell me. And relax, I’m not here to investigate you. The review was only an excuse for me to get to know you a little better.”

Jaehyun blinked behind his glasses. "Did you like it? The toy?"

“Yes, I was really impressed” your eyes analyzed him like a fox eyeing a distracted white rabbit. You leaned over, and he immediately pulled his face closer to yours, as if you were going to tell him a secret. “What I liked the most about it was that the thrusting end firmly stays in, like a true knot.”

If Jaehyun had any wine in his mouth, he would have spat it out. But he did not, and even then, the poor guy choked on his own saliva, coughing inside his closed fist as you pretended not to be entertained. You rubbed his arm gently, like you were not trying your best to have him crumble in awe for you. “Did I say anything wrong, Jae?”

“N-no,” he shook his head, tears filling his eyes. “I just swallowed saliva and it went wrong. I’m sorry, Y/N. I really imagine that’s a huge thing for an alpha.”

“It is,” you agreed while handing him a glass of water. Your eyes then averted from his face, landing only for a second on his jeans, where an imposing volume outlined the zipper. Much to your surprise, the sight of his hardness made you damp on your panties. Fuck. You were turned on too, and Jaehyun was going to smell it. Well, let him. “Feeling any better?”

He nodded, trying to keep his eyes sober as he detected your arousal, looking almost lightheaded as he grabbed his fork back and went back to eating.

When Jaehyun got home that night, he felt like he was going to explode. His heartbeat frantically jangled in his ears, his eyes blurred with overwhelming tears, his pants tightened with the fantasies of his lifetime. Unsure, his mind was like a matryoshka doll, with layers of thought unraveling as he tried to figure out whether you intended on seducing him to yourself or on capturing him as an ordinary, worthless prey.

You. You were going to be the end of him. And he was going to very much let you.

Minutes after he arrived, his cell phone screen lit up with a new email notification. You had sent your review.

In the speed of light, Jaehyun clicked on it.

“It's different from any toy I've used. Heavier, too. I was unsure the clitorial stimulation was going to work out, because the nozzle was larger than my clit, but it fit just fine. I just had to keep my lips spread. The clit sucking end feels like someone is really sucking on your clit, moving their tongue up and down. That alone would make an amazing toy. But the moment I slid the other end inside, it was mind-blowing. My walls immediately clenched, and the combination of the pressure with how my muscles squeezed the toy was stupidly good. It reminded me of the feeling of being penetrated for the first time. Worth every penny.”

Jaehyun tried breathing as usual, fighting against the sinful images of you all naked, with your glistening pussy tightening the toy as it thrusted inside you. He tried shaking away the thoughts of your body squirming on the bed as your clit was sucked and your legs shook, your irresistible face contorted in the sweet bliss and pleasure the toy offered you.

Bravely, he fought the painful desire to touch himself. Until he remembered you said the toy resembled a knot, and fuck, Jaehyun wanted to give it to you: to be inside you, locked in, tied to you until you were both satisfied.

His permissive hand traveled down his navel. Just a little relief wouldn’t hurt, would it? He could have some fun, alone, without anyone knowing…

The remaining pieces of morality injected some reasoning into his brain.

He grabbed one suppressant pill from his wallet and swallowed it down with a sip of water — the glass had shaken helplessly in his hand on the way to his mouth. With a quick look, Jaehyun noticed he only had another six pills. His heat, too, was close, dangerously now that you were close to him. Heats, he remembered with a shiver, could be triggered by the presence of a soul bonding alpha, and even if Jaehyun resisted the thought that you could be his mate, it was definitely time to refill his wallet.

Taking a deep breath, he reached for the bedside table drawer. His heartbeat nearly stopped when he didn’t find the blister packs. Denying what he had already concluded, Jaehyun searched under his bed, in the bathroom cabinet, and even in the kitchen, but his pills were nowhere to be found. He knew what it meant.

As his heart cracked in more pieces than it was made of, Jaehyun knew you were hunting him.

“What do you mean Jaehyun isn’t here?” you clenched an eyebrow at Haechan, who pouted. He looked pretty much like a purry cat,

“He called in sick. Said he's got a fever. Was he well when you last saw him? You went on a date earlier this week, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, he sent me the review, by the way! Thank you so much, the details will definitely help.”

You couldn't tell if Haechan's words were mocking, or maybe he was just playful. “Not at all,” you hummed, leaving the shop without further conversation.

It was weird that Jaehyun had not sent you a single text after your encounter. Maybe he was too idiot to make a move after you told him about the knot thing, or perhaps he had found out that you were after him.

[Haechan just told me you're sick. Need anything?] you texted shortly after jumping on your bike to ride home. Your text was not delivered, much less seen.

Impatiently, you started worrying something had happened. You knew his address, but Jaehyun had never told you where he lived. Knocking on his door meant exposure. Shaking the idea away, you attempted to find distraction in a long bath that left your skin flushed, your fingers wrinkly like plums. Still, your mind restlessly played you like a chess, awakening your impulsiveness. What if Jaehyun needed help? What if he was sick indeed? What if he was…

Oh, so you did care about him.

“Screw it!” you resolved, readily standing up from the tub and leaving a trail of determined drops where you stepped, heavy and firm.

You rode as though you were late to a crucial event, your cheeks burning in touch with the cold breeze as your bike cut the night like a deadly knife in a birthday cake. In your ears, the beat of your heart musically revealed the bitter sensation of despair. Your plan was perfect. Jaehyun was perfect. You could not let him slip between your fingers.

However, when you got to his house and the lights were off, you knew he had.

He had run away from you.

For three days, you did not hear anything from Jaehyun. He did not leave a trace, not a merciful clue, as if he had never been there. The only connection between you and him was named Haechan, and his purry presence did not make those gut-wrenching days any less sore.

Every waiting hour left a bitter taste on your tongue. You walked on a tightrope, and emptiness was a blade that cut it thinner. Somewhere in the middle, you were unable to know if you wished to find Jaehyun to kiss or to torture him. All you knew was that you had failed both as a hunter and an alpha. You even had the hypocrisy to feel offended that he left, because, by leaving, he was denying you and everything you could be.

They said that when an alpha crossed ways with their omega, they felt like giving them the world. Like protecting them with the strength of their arms and the sharpness of their minds. It was what being a mate meant: a strong and undeniable bond, crafted by the angels of love and desire, to create roots so firmly into the ground that no one and nothing could stand between them.

You lied to yourself by thinking Jaehyun was all about the hunt. Deep inside, you knew he was far more than that. You knew your anguish and anger meant you hated that he was far away from you.

[No sign of him?]

[Not a shred.] Taeyong texted you back.

You wanted to scream, but decided to have a pistachio ice cream by the beach instead, angrily kicking the rocks with your feet as the sun shone — as though it had any reason to.

Where the fuck was him? Where the fuck was your omega?

How quickly you grabbed your phone after it vibrated on your pants pocket was insane. “Got any news?”

“Yes, Jaehyun’s back!” Haechan replied.

At daylight's speed, you ran to the shop. The purple shadows of dusk covered your hurried pace, legs burning all the way down the dark paths of your desire, your voice demanding under your breath when you walked in. “Where is him?”

Haechan readily got up, motioning for you to come with him. “In the back.”

Obediently, you followed him like a dog after a treat. It was only when you were inside the room where Haechan stored the toys that you noticed something was awfully wrong. However, you had no time to act on it.

Haechan had already handcuffed and locked you inside.

What happened next was something you would never imagine. The purry but also mischievous Haechan really commanded you around.

“You have to stay silent if you want to see Jaehyun,” he explained while blindfolding you. Needless to say he had already grabbed your phone and you were helpless, unable to call for help. Not that you would make a scandal, because now you were curious what that was all about. “I’ll drive you to him, but you have to behave.”

“When this is over, I’ll come to get you,” you growled, even though you did not mean what you said.

“Whatever.”

Humans.

It was night when Haechan led you to a car, putting you on the back and cuffing your ankles too. “Why are you doing all this?” You asked calmly. If Jaehyun had planned all that, you knew you did not need to fear. “Can’t you be civilized?”

Even if you couldn’t see him, you swore Haechan rolled his eyes. “I don’t trust you, Y/N. You’re mean and manipulative, and I’m just doing this because Jaehyun wants to talk to you. But I’ll do it my way.”

Exactly like you had suspected.

Much to Haechan’s delight, you managed to stay quiet for the whole trip. Not knowing where you were going to really bothered you, your instincts found such helplessness absurd, but you knew it was going to pay off if you saw Jaehyun again.

It took hours. And hours. But you finally arrived.

Haechan led you to what seemed like a house, and soon enough you were alone in a room, sitting on a chair. After a few minutes, your senses captured another presence, and the way your heart soothed told you everything you needed to know.

You felt some strange type of relief shivering down your spine, and said nothing. Let him speak.

“I hope the cuffs are not too tight. Are they burning?” Jaehyun asked, and you could have moaned at the mere sound of his voice.

“Oh, you made such a fool out of me… And now you’re trying to be gentle,” you chuckled sourly.

“I’ve always been gentle,” Jaehyun retorted. “But you were hunting me, and I’d rather make a fool out of you than fool myself.”

“I can’t make fun of that. Can I see, please?”

Jaehyun readily complied, removing the blindfold. You tried opening your eyes, but sunlight caught them unprepared. Slowly, as your eyes adjusted, you noticed Jaehyun was in an armchair right in front of you. He looked at you worriedly. His presence had you so focused you only noticed you were in a living room seconds later.

“What’s your plan now? Turn me in to the rebels?” you asked. There were illegal communities of beta and omegas who had rebelled against the capital.

“No,” Jaehyun said. “I want to talk to you. Omega to alpha.”

“All this for talking?” You nearly spat, a strand of your hair landing on your face.

Gently, Jaehyun leaned over to tuck it behind your ear. “I didn’t know how you were going to react, Y/N. You had all the power back then, and I needed to make sure I was not at risk. I told Haechan to be nice to you. I really meant no harm. I’m sorry about that..”

You breathed. “Go on. I don’t think there’s anything else I can do but listen.”

“I want you to listen openly. I know I’ve deceived you, but I really want us to get to an agreement. That’s why I brought you here.”

You let his words sink in, sure you looked quite ridiculous, all cuffed, unable to defend yourself. “Why, Jaehyun?”

His eyes almost faltered, but did not leave yours. “Because I like you.”

As if you were in middle school, your heart beat so fast it could have climbed up your throat. How silly it was, to be liked. To be adored, admired, to be wanted around. How stupid it was, to be responsive to one’s liking. To think you had finally found your mate after years of loneliness and pain, divided between who you truly were and who you could have been.

It was almost cruel, how Jaehyun messed up with the roughness it took you years to build.

His hands shook. Your scent in such a closed, small space was making it harder for him to think. “I’ve liked you since the day you first walked in the shop. I know you’re hurt by your own status, just like I have been, and I think I can help. Please, Y/N, let me offer you a different point of view. Let me convince you you don’t have to hurt others to be happy.”

“You lied to me. You and bloody Haechan.”

“You lied to me too. You’ve even stolen my suppressants, which is far worse in my humble opinion,” Jaehyun reminded you with the calmest of tones. “But I am here, ready to give you a second chance. All I ask is for you to give me one too.”

You simply stared at him. Your eyes resembled a sky that had both light and heavy clouds, with glimpses of sun and rain. An intrinsic inner battle. Finally, you acquiesced with your chin. “Go on.”

Jaehyun fixed his glasses before speaking. “I know I’m more than a pup maker. I have dreams. I want a good life, with friends I can count on, a life where I can be safe and have the same rights as anyone else. And if I ever have pups with someone, then it will be because we both agreed on it,” he breathed, sincerity dripping from his lips like wine. “That’s why I ran away and why I will not let you hunt me that easily. I don’t know what happened to you, but I’m sure life as a female alpha takes a heavy toll. Whatever you went through, you deserve healing. You deserve to be heard and validated, Y/N. It is not others that dictate how you should live. What you want matters.”

His entire speech was like seeds of roses planted in the confinements of your chest. “How we should live is beyond us,” you spoke skeptically.

“Only because you choose to believe so,” Jaehyun disagreed. “If I had, I would certainly not be here. If you do, you’ll see hurting others is not your only option.”

How could Jaehyun be so understanding, so forgivable, so lovely? How could he offer you a chance of redemption? It amazed you. Badly. You breathed every particle of the room inside your lungs, so deep it was the first time you smelled the musky, leathery scent coming from the man in front of you.

The suppressants’ effects… They were low. Almost non-existing.

Jung Jaehyun smelled like the rawest of desires.

“If I decide to trust you, what’s it going to be?” you asked, pretending you were not lightheaded.

“We leave here together,” Jaehyun proposed. “And I promise you’ll have all the safety you need by my side.”

Most alphas would have laughed at the perspective of finding safety on an omega, but you did not. You tasted it. How good it would be, to have someone you could rely on. Someone patient, strong, who added to your dreams and aspirations. Someone you could be yourself with.

Your eyes softened, your wrists relaxing inside the cuffs. “Let me go, then.”

“Do you really accept it?” Jaehyun carefully confirmed.

The air stood dense between you two, hanging like a sword on a wall, an icicle on the top of a cave, and also like a gentle caress coming from a waiting hand.

You nodded. “I do.”

He stood up and approached the chair slowly. As his hands uncuffed you, you paid attention to the slenderness of his fingers. His musky scent was messing up with your head, your veins pumping blood to your lower body, even though you resisted the natural urge to touch Jaehyun whole as he uncuffed you like a real gentleman would.

Once you were free, he gazed at the reddened skin of your wrists. In an act that apparently was beyond any reasoning, Jaehyun gently brought them to his lips, pressing a chaste kiss to where the metal had left a slight burn.

Your lips shook with the force of your breath. The man was crazy, a soft freak and a lord all together. With every passing second, you wanted him more and more. Holding his silky gaze, you mustered a grin before abruptly grabbing the hair on his nape and pulling Jaehyun down to his knees.

His eyes widened in fear.

“You’re so fucking naive,” you scolded. “Next time, think twice before trusting an alpha. Not everyone is like me,” you let your grip loosen, helping him stand up once again. “Promise me.”

His pupils adjusted back into a soft gaze. “You scared me,” he admitted.

“That’s the idea. Promise me.”

“I promise. I’ll be more careful.”

It was what you wanted to hear. Slowly, Jaehyun’s fingers returned to the gentle, languid caresses on your wrists.

“I suggest you back off if you don’t wish to be claimed,” you sighed.

His eyes had darkened at your words, his Adam’s apple tensing as he pulled his hands away in a respectful manner. “As I said, I like you, Y/N. Genuinely.”

Affection was a new, alien thing to you. However, your instincts encouraged you to embrace it, even if at your own pace and time.

“We both have instincts that can rush things. I’d be careful,” you explained, smoothly brushing his hair back. How the silky strands slid between your fingers felt like touching the clouds.

“You’re scared of love,” Jaehyun concluded, making you smile frankly.

“Aren’t you?”

“No. I’d happily give myself to a good alpha if we loved each other. I believe in long-lasting, healthy relationships.”

Your smile faltered. “I don’t think the world is ready for that, Jaehyun.”

“I don’t need it to be.”

You averted your gaze to the window. There was a sunny road outside, with few cars passing.

Minutes ago, you decided to leave the house. Jaehyun took you to a car, an old yet functional Chevy Impala.

“Where’s Haechan?” you asked.

“In his parents’ house. He was born here.”

You hummed, getting into the passenger seat. “He won’t be coming back with us, I hope?”

“No,” Jaehyun shook his head, already in the driver seat. “Also, don’t be mad at him, Y/N. He didn’t know I was an omega until I found out you had stolen my suppressants. And as weird as it was, Haechan was very willing to help. We thought it’d be better to take you somewhere far away, because you’d have less advantages.”

“I might forgive him for a few things,” you cooed, then looked over as Jaehyun started the engine, his fingers grabbing the wheel firmly. “What about your suppressants?”

“I’ve got a few more left,” Jaehyun replied. “But since you stole all of my supply and Jaemin is probably in prison now, I have to be careful.”

“Didn’t have any luck finding another provider?”

“As if I’m telling you,” Jaehyun chuckled.

You laughed along. “It’s my job, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” his tone was slightly more serious now, as he drove through the peaceful streets. “What did you do before hunting?”

“My dad had a law office. I studied law too, but never quite liked it.”

“What do you like, then?”

You caught your breath, your voice two tones lower, almost inaudible. “Baking.”

Jaehyun’s eyebrows lifted in sweet surprise. “Like, baking bread?”

“Baking cakes. I’m really good at it,” you admitted, looking down at your hands. You had always been ridiculed because of your hobby. Your father, brothers and sisters constantly accused you of wasting your time with such stupidities. Alphas were born for high power positions: politicians, lawyers, doctors, CEOs… But baking cakes? That was a job for omegas. The weakest of the weak. You were taught that, even if you did not fully agree. The only person who supported you was your mother, because she expressed her love through the awesome, homemade dishes she cooked. However, as your mom had passed and you grew older, you preferred putting your efforts into something more socially accepted than to perceive the distant dream of having a bakery — even if you felt truly accomplished whenever you looked at a cake you had baked.

“That’s so nice!” Jaehyun encouraged. “What’s your best cake?”

Your heart fluttered at his genuine curiosity, making you bite the inside of your cheek. “Pistachio.”

“I love pistachio!” the man cooed excitedly. “I’d like to try it if you're okay with it.”

“I haven’t baked in forever,” you mentioned.

“Well, you have time now that you don’t have to hunt me,” he chuckled.

As the morning turned into afternoon and the sky was outlined with purple clouds, you noticed Jaehyun had driven considerably. By the corner of your eye, you caught him yawning sleepily. Shifting in the passenger's seat, you hummed. “Let me drive for a little.”

“I’m fine.”

“You want me to trust you but can’t trust me?” you pricked.

Jaehyun fixed his glasses. Such a cute habit he had. “Well, you’re the deadly one.”

“What you did to me can easily be considered kidnapping, Jaehyun.”

“But you know it was not like that, right? I mean, do you feel kidnapped?” he asked to be sure, making you chuckle.

“People have done worse things to me. Come on, let me drive.”

“Don’t worry,” he insisted. “What worse things?”

“I might tell you one day.”

You waited for the purple sky to turn dark with sparkling stars. You waited for the breeze to turn colder. You waited until Jaehyun just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Get some sleep,” you encouraged as you changed seats, holding his cautious gaze. “It’s fine, Jae. Trust me.”

Stubbornly, Jaehyun fought his own tiredness even after you were driving. His eyes got swollen from tiredness, his yawns became more frequent, and he pinched his own cheeks in an attempt to stay awake for a little longer, as if he feared you were going to disappear if he slept.

But it was quite the opposite, because when he finally closed his eyes and peacefully slept on the passenger seat, you knew you never wished to stay away from him.

The flowers swayed with the wind, and so did his hair. Jaehyun had not remembered arriving to the fields, but we couldn’t care less about the reason: you were right by his side, and it was all that mattered. “These are beautiful.” With a grin, you leaned closer to smell an orange tree flower. The hot shades of sunset matched you like an artist’s masterpiece, Jaehyun thought while relishing in the image of you acting so free. He wished nothing but to let you be.

“Just like you,” he whispered, another lovely flower blossoming between his fourth and fifth ribs.

You straightened yourself, coming closer to him and swiftly removing the glasses from his face. Jaehyun almost forgot how to breathe with you so close, your orange perfume making his head spin, his fingers shaking in nervousness. Your face got closer, and closer, and then…

And then he felt a hand on his shoulders, shaking softly. “Jaehyun,” your voice called, but did not come out of the image in front of him. “Jaehyun, we’ve arrived. Wake up.”

Untangling himself from his dream, Jaehyun swore the oranges still smelled fresh on his nose, and that he could feel the temperature of your breath against his cheek. It was just wishful thinking, though, because you were sitting on the driver seat. It was dark night and the car was parked right in front of your house.

“For how long did I sleep?” he cleared his throat, relieved that you were both back in town.

“Not enough,” you replied shortly. “Take some rest tonight.”

“I'll try to,” he breathed. Oranges. Oranges everywhere making him crave you like the trees craved the rain to flourish. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

“You can.” You opened the car door to leave, shivering when the piercing cold breeze hit your skin and thundered on your bones.

Extremely sensitive, Jaehyun jumped from the car and hushed to your side. Without a word, he removed his hoodie and handed it over to you. You stared in awe, eyes big with admiration and delight, as if he had achieved global peace or discovered the cure to every disease. “What’s that for?” you asked.

“I don’t want you feeling cold.”

“Jaehyun, I’m like, eight meters away from my door.”

“Eight cold meters.”

Slowly, you grabbed the piece of clothing. It was impossible that someone was that amazing and kind-hearted. You had never met anyone like Jaehyun before, and it made you feel something in your chest that was strange, foreign, almost agonizing. You could not name it.

You put the hoodie on in front of him, pretending not to notice his pupils widening at the sight of you wearing something his. The musk, leathery scent was all around you again, making you almost bounce on your feet out of excitement. “Thank you,” you murmured.

“Not at all.” His features suddenly changed, as though he remembered something. “Ah, here’s your cell phone,” Jaehyun grabbed it from his back pocket, and your fingers brushed when you took it in your hands. “Sleep well, Y/N,” was the last thing Jaehyun said before entering the car to drive to his house — only after you had come inside, of course.

You locked the door and pressed your back to it, closing your eyes as though you needed the dark and the silence to absorb everything that happened in the past hours. Jaehyun had maneuvered you in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine, and it was both revolting and pleasing. How willing he was to just be with you, with raw sincerity in his eyes, shook you to the core. It made your bones soft and your resolve like water, flowing, delicate, transpassing obstacles.

Such a weak alpha you were, afraid to act on what you truly desired.

Because it was clear, once you pulled the fabric of his hoodie to your nose, that you wanted him. That you were meant to be.

That he was your mate.

What you felt on your chest, you then knew, was hope.

The next day, shortly after you woke up, your phone vibrated on the bedside table.

[Do you like picnics?]

[I do.]

[Great. I’ll pick you up at 1PM].

Punctually, Jaehyun knocked on your door. Punctually, you opened it, surprising him with two things. The first one was that he had never seen you dressed so casually, with high-waisted jeans, a plain black shirt and white sneakers, hair in a simple bun allowing the sight of delicate earrings hanging from your ears. The second thing was that you held a small tray in your hand, covered by a gingham cloth, that smelled precisely like pistachio.

“You baked? Seriously?” Jaehyun’s eyes widened, and he hid his gracious smile behind his hand, causing your heartbeat to quicken.

“If you’re going to act this fucking cute I’ll just leave the cake here,” you replied impulsively, unsure of how to deal with what sounded like praise.

“Please, don’t!” In a heartbeat, Jaehyun lowered his hand and straightened himself. Deep inside his chest bones, his heart fluttered. You had baked for him. “I just didn’t expect it. Thank you.”

You nodded somehow sternly. A little voice inside your consciousness blamed you for being so rigid.

“Come,” Jaehyun offered you a smile, stepping aside so you could follow him to the Chevy Impala.

“Where are we going?” you inquired.

“You’ll see.”

Surprises made you uneasy. As did not being in control. However, for Jaehyun, you made a little effort — you knew it was important for him to make decisions. Thankfully, it paid off, because the car rode all the way up the hills until it reached the top of a cliff. It was easily one of the most beautiful sights you had ever put your eyes on, something only the countryside could offer, with sunlight rays dancing with the velvety waves, the foam kissing the beach like a devoted lover’s embrace.

“What’s wrong with your jaw?” Jaehyun chuckled, making you notice your mouth was agape. You also remembered it had been the first thing you asked him.

“This is beautiful,” you commented, the corners of your lips lifting in a discreet smile.

“It is, right?” Jaehyun sighed. The breeze lifted his hair slightly as he grabbed a basket from the backseat, and a towel that matched the cloth on your tray. He then proceeded to spread the towel on the ground and remove the things he had brought: homemade sandwiches with cheese, pesto and tomatoes, strawberries and peaches, orange juice and a local brand of chocolate you had never seen. You joined him, placing your tray on the towel and removing the cloth to reveal a small pistachio cake covered in buttercream. It might have taken you hours to get it done. “Let’s eat!”

You crossed your legs on the towel, reaching for the sandwich while Jaehyun poured you juice. As you took a bite, your mouth was filled with delectable flavorsome layers that reminded you of your mother. The care in each slice of cheese, the carefulness in dosing the olive oil for the pesto, and the perfectly smoked tomatoes sharpened your taste, causing your eyes to water. Uncontrollably, you chuckled out of joy.

Jaehyun joined you, a face so pure and glad it seemed to shine like the ocean waves. He was just… Just so soft-looking you wanted to squish his cheeks and kiss his forehead. “What? Is it good?”

“It kind of… It kind of reminds me of my mother,” you replied, comfortable enough to share something so private it weighed like a pirate’s treasure in your chest.

“Really? Does she cook for you?”

You took another bite. “She did, when she was alive. I guess it was her love language. In fact, she was the only one who supported me baking.”

Jaehyun looked carefully at you. “I’m sorry. Losing her might have been hard.”

“The hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” you admitted, contemplating the ethereal sight in the harmonic horizon. It was only now that Jaehyun listened that you realized how badly you’d been wanting to talk about your mother, as if the filter between your mind and brain stopped functioning. How could you keep secrets from the only person destined to you? Mates shared. Mates understood. “She died while trying to give birth to my ninth brother.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen. That’s why I decided to work with anything that didn’t have to do with getting pregnant.” Your eyes, frank, held his gaze.

Jaehyun nodded, and said nothing for a while. “How many omegas have you hunted, Y/N?”

“About a hundred.”

“And how do you feel about it?”

“It’s a heavy guilt to carry on my shoulder, but it does seem small in comparison to a lifetime being used for my body. I know it sounds hypocritical, and it probably is, but it was my choice,” you replied.

“I don’t blame you,” Jaehyun took a bite on the sandwich, using his thumb to wipe off the pesto at the corner of his lower lip. “It’s hard to see beyond the rules.”

“What about you? What’s your background?”

He took a deep breath. “I was born and raised in the capital. Went to a boy’s school. You know how alphas, betas and omegas had classes together, right? Since then I couldn’t understand why alphas always bullied others and got away with it. If I opened my mouth, I was arrogant and full of myself, but if an alpha spoke, he was powerful, opinionated, and influential. I was bullied a lot for just being me, you know? Of course I spoke back, so I was in trouble quite often, being threatened and stuff. My mom and dad were very supportive of me, we had to move a few times…”

Empathetically, you wondered what it meant for an omega to constantly move. They were highly adaptable, but sought for stability and safety.

“So when I heard that omegas were rebelling and moving to the countryside to build their own lives, I didn’t think twice,” Jaehyun concluded. “I’ve been happier ever since.”

“Your parents might be nice people,” you commented, reaching for a peach. “Do you miss them?”

“Everyday,” Jaehyun smiled. “I call them on a weekly basis, so we’re fine.”

“That’s lovely.”

“What about you? Do you keep in touch with your family?”

You shook your head. “I don’t speak to my dad. We’ve always been the perfect alpha family, but it came with a high cost. My mom was always pregnant, even when she was tired and getting too old to bear. Dad thought it was her job, and we did too. But now… Now I understand she suffered alone.”

The salty breeze gently touched your faces and clothes as you shared confidences. Jaehyun’s understanding soothed you. He made you feel at ease, like sharing your experience was natural and necessary. You liked it.

“You were just a kid, Y/N.”

“I know.” A small smile bloomed on your lips. “I try not to blame myself. All I want is to live differently.”

And that he understood. “I’d say the more we live differently, the more we show others that it’s possible,” Jaehyun said while slicing the cake.

“You’re not wrong.”

It made butterflies fly in your stomach when he chewed on the cake with a content moan, his eyes closing and his eyebrows furrowing at the delicacy in his mouth. When his eyes opened again, Jaehyun’s brown irises reflected light as if the sun had set within his soul.

There were no words to describe that day but lovely, dear and sincere. You had never been on a date with someone before, at least not one where you saw yourself free from the norms of your status. There had been no need for you to be aggressive or demanding, like alphas were portrayed, and instead of playing the role of the needy submissive omega, Jaehyun was just… Normal. Respectful, wise, and so cool you admired him as a person.

You spent the entire afternoon sharing stories, talking about hobbies — he told you about his vinyls and you told him about baking — and contemplating nature. Time by his side seemed to pass two times faster.

“Thanks for today, Y/N,” Jaehyun smiled once you were in front of your door. “Thanks for trusting me and giving me a chance.”

“Thank you,” you emphasized. “I really had fun. Next time is on me.”

At your words, Jaehyun’s face lit up. You reacted too, your heart beating so fast you shivered, nearly forgetting how to breathe when his scent felt suddenly stronger to your heightened olfactory senses. He got so excited with the idea of you meeting again that his scent exhaled twice as freely.

Even if you liked to think you mustered enough self control to resist him, your body surrendered to arousal in no time. You closed your eyes, clenching your hands into fists.

“Y/N, is everything okay?” You only registered Jaehyun’s worried tone before replying.

“You’re practically rubbing your scent on my face right now,” you admitted, aware that as an instant response, your pheromones started exhaling too, mainly from your neck and inner thighs. Your bodies functionated beyond your reasoning, blood running warm and fast, desiring to mate, to be tangled to one another. A biological necessity to be all over him, and to protect Jaehyun with tooth and nail. It was how scent glands worked, releasing pleasurable smells that expressed raw bodily and emotional needs.

Your eyes opened, trying to gather some control even though they were sedated by desire.

Jaehyun’s ears were once again red. “M-my heat is approaching,” he muttered. “And you’re close to me, s-“ Jaehyun stopped himself. Now, he smelled your scent twice as strong too, a scent that was alluring and dominant. Perfect for him. “Fuck, you smell so good,” he praised without noticing, mouth numb with craving.

Only God knew how badly you were trying to control yourself. “Go home, Jaehyun,” you said authoritatively.

“Y-yes“ he stuttered, cheeks as red as his ears. “I should, right?”

“Absolutely,” you nodded firmly. “If you don’t want me to mark scent you, you fucking should.”

Jaehyun nearly grunted, both because of your intentions, and because of how seductive your voice sounded when you cursed. “What if I want to?” He asked.

Motherfucker.

And you loved it.

“You’re aware that mark scenting you can easily trigger your heat, right? And that your heat can cause me to go into a rut.” You reached for his wrist, simply holding it in place. Ruts had a similar purpose to heats, to find a mate and breed, even if contraceptive methods could keep you from getting pregnant. “That isn’t a nice idea, is it?”

“It’s a perfect idea,” Jaehyun challenged.

“You’re playing with me,” you warned. “Even if I’m being nice and collected, I’m still an alpha. I can be dangerous, Jaehyun.”

His gaze pierced yours with the firmness of a grip, and you knew he was about to say something to break your resolve before he even opened his mouth. “What kind of danger my mate can possibly put me in?”

Snapping, your grip on Jaehyun’s wrist pulled him flush to you. Your chests collided and your breaths violently mixed before you grabbed the hair on his nape and tugged hard, tilting his head to the side. His exposed neck made you groan lowly, the musky scent directly wetting your undies. You had to mark him so bad it ached in your guts, and the moment you stuck your tongue out and gave a broad lick on his skin, your body shivered, your nipples hardened and your hip rubbed the volume in Jaehyun’s pants.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he trembled.

“Shh, quiet” you instructed, in charge, breath blowing against the wet trail left on his skin. “Just feel it.”

You lifted your weight on the tip of your toes and rubbed your neck against Jaehyun’s, warm skin against warm skin. Parents scented their children, friends scented friends, packmates scented packmates — but scenting between mates was a whole different thing, an encounter of souls wrapped in animalistic bodies. It felt like your soul was touched for the first time, as you left your scent on Jaehyun’s neck, marking him as yours, telling others that he belonged to you. And he felt it too, a sensation so deep in his guts resembling the coziness of an established home. As though he never had to move in his entire life. Ever.

It was so intimate you felt naked in front of each other.

Slowly, Jaehyun’s hands found support on your waist. The grip on his nape softened, and soon he was rubbing his face against yours affectionately, cheeks brushing in a loving manner that made you flush. His heat was closer than ever, but this time it was different: heats usually led Jaehyun to lock himself in a room, surrounded by sex toys, a slave to the basic needs of his body to mate and find relief. However, with you he felt… Shit, he felt loved and taken care of, and it only amplified his craving. It was better, it was whole. It was mating.

“I love this,” he admitted.

You grinned, letting your nails scratch his neck gently. His cute shivers widened your smile. “Me too.”

Jaehyun wet his lips with his tongue. “Can I see you again tomorrow?”

You could not precise how exactly you loved that he did not intend on having sex with you that night. It was so much better that way, especially compared to the expectations of sexually aggressive alphas taking their pleasure as soon as possible. His question meant that you could take your time, because there was no running and hiding. You’d be together time and time again, until it felt like the moment was right.

“You can,” you chuckled, and yet another alien feeling assaulted your heart.

You suspected it was called happiness.

Hours later, you got out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around your body and the silliest of smiles on your face. The euphoria of finding your mate was real, so carved it could be felt in the flesh, like an iron bullet. Your heart, toughened by time, prejudice and rage, now opened its arms to enjoy a feeling so holy you could crown it as your favorite.

You had a mate. And your scent was on him.

You could still feel Jaehyun’s perfume on you too, and all over the hoodie you had kept by your pillow, to smell him again and again.

For the first time in years, you were soft.

“Whipped,” you accused playfully as you looked at your image in the mirror, wondering how Jaehyun was feeling at that exact moment. You wanted to know. So, without further thought, you grabbed your phone to text him — and you would have, if other messages did not steal your attention. Messages sent by Taeyong.

[We found an omega pack hiding in a nearby city from where you are.

We’re gonna need you to come with us, so backups were sent to help you with Jaehyun.

We’ll be there tomorrow.]

You swallowed thickly, your heart faltering, your hands shaking. It could not be. You could not let Jaehyun get caught. You could not lose him now.

Or maybe… Maybe you were being stupid risking your own life and position for… For love.

Taking a deep breath, you started typing.

[Appreciate that. See you tomorrow.]

Jaehyun was God’s favorite. He was God’s most loved child, because only he was allowed to step in Her fluffiest clouds. The luckiest man alive, one of the few creatures that experienced love’s fingers opening him inside out.

And oh, it was almost killing him.

He would do anything for you: walk for miles, cry for centuries, write your name in a paper for eternity... All the letters, time after time, carved in his wrists, his thighs, his bones. You were his and he was yours, as the lovely scent on his neck reminded him with each breath. Summer lived in him like it had never done before.

Now, he felt less judgmental of the omegas that craved for an alpha. Needless to say he was excited for what you’d do the next day after your date at the cliff, restless even, taking pleasure in the simple act of breathing, knowing you had left your scent on his skin.

Scent marking an omega really could trigger their heats, and Jaehyun knew that his was lurking dangerously, ready to flourish. The signs left no doubt.

Firstly, he desired a safe space: somewhere with dim lighting, where he could surround himself with objects that smelled like you — shirts, pillows, your leather jacket and biker gloves, and even plushies, if you ever agreed to give those to him. His senses, too, were twice as sharpened: a primal state of animalistic instincts blooming along his consciousness, to protect him from undesired alphas. His mind was slightly hazy as well, and even if he was excited for your third date, the cold, feverish shivers running down his spine worried him.

He couldn’t surrender to his heat. Not now. Not when he was so determined to make you understand he liked you not because you were an alpha, not because he desired you sexually and biologically. Jaehyun needed you to understand he liked you, wholly, for who you were.

So, when you knocked on his door the following day, he opened it with blushy cheeks, bouncing on his feet out of nervousness.

“Jaehyun?” your eyes tightened. You looked fresh, hair swaying with the breeze, orange trees offering him shadow, calm, and absolute hell all together. “Are you going into heat?”

He groaned in frustration. “Then it is obvious.”

You looked around before stepping inside, closing the door behind your back. “I got new suppressants for you.” You opened your palm, handing him one of the blister packs he was so used to.

Jaehyun stared down at your hand. Even if he wished his heat could wait a little longer, your suggestion felt like a crime, especially now that you were there, in his home, gorgeous and strong. Why should he hold back? Why did he have to behave now that he could finally let himself go with you?

“I don’t want it.”

You blinked, surprised. “Sorry?”

“I don’t want it, Y/N,” he repeated, lifting his gaze to yours. “We don’t have to suppress our instincts anymore. We’ve found each other.”

Your breath was long and strong, strangely raspy. “Take these, just this time.”

“What is it, Y/N? Are you scared you’re going to hurt me? That I will induce you into a rut?” Jaehyun stepped closer, cupping your cheeks with his hands and looking deep into your eyes, trying to understand. “Are you scared you’re going to get pregnant? I’d never do that to you, Y/N. We can use protection.”

You closed your eyes shut as though his touch hurt. When they opened, it felt like you were both begging and suffering. Jaehyun could feel his body combusting, his blood running faster, a thin layer of sweat glistening in his forehead. “Jaehyun, please, you have to believe me. Promise me.”

Your words made no sense.

“What are you talking about?” he asked with the softest of tones.

In one second, you had taken him down in a swift move. Jaehyun’s chest met the floor as you forced your knee painfully on his back, making him yell in surprise. His glasses slid down his nose to the floor. You took the chance to slide a pill inside his mouth, forcefully pressing the palm of your hand against his lips as he squirmed on the floor.

You… You were hurting him.

“Swallow,” you demanded coldly.

Out of fear, Jaehyun obeyed.

Why were you hurting him?

The metallic sound of handcuffs made his throat tight. It was hard to breath. Jaehyun looked over his shoulder, still slightly confused, his dear eyes vulnerable. He only fully understood what was happening when the front door of his house opened, and a male alpha looked down at him.

“It wasn’t that hard, was it?” the man chuckled, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“Piece of cake,” you stood up, placing a heavy boot on Jaehyun’s back to keep him in place. Even your voice sounded different, distant. “He was practically begging to be fucked.”

Jaehyun’s heart… It broke in tiny little pieces, like glass poured all over the floor. The evidence of a slaughter.

“What won’t they do for pussy, hm? You really thought Y/N was into you? So many others did too…” The alpha male approached him, grabbing Jaehyun by the arm and helping him stand up. You stood right by his side, with the most devilish smile on your face.

When in heat, omegas were not helpless creatures, defenseless, sex slaves that submitted to anyone. They were primal, violent, and almost as deadly as alphas. So, once he was back on his feet, Jaehyun snapped. He took the male omega to his knees with only one kick of his legs, hitting his temple with the force of his knee. The man fell on his side, using his hand to support his weight precisely on Jaehyun’s glasses. Then, Jaehyun turned to you, and oh, he wished he could hurt you. He wished he could bite you raw, to bury his teeth into your neck and have you killed, but he could not.

You were the worst person he had ever met, and yet Jung Jaehyun could not act as though he didn’t love you.

He fell to his knees, tears running down his eyes. “You…” he sobbed, eyes wet with crystal salt. “You’re awful.” And evil, and mean, loathsome, disgusting, vile… All those things you were. But Jaehyun couldn’t speak. His throat hurt.

The male alpha stood up with a grunt, and was about to retaliate when you raised your hand.

“What use is he if you damage his body? We’ve already got what we need, Doyun.”

The blurriness in Jaehyun’s eyes did not allow him to fully visualize how his capture went. He felt strange hands on his back. He felt someone kicking him inside a car, and knew that someone started driving, leaving the town behind.

You were not there anymore.

Jaehyun had heard stories about omegas that were sent back to the capital. The hunters drove them to specific centers to get them tested and check their fertility levels. Said omegas were constantly watched, sleeping in cold cells until they were designated an alpha who matched their characteristics. However, even with the best attempts to match compatible alphas to omegas, it did not work out. It was not unusual for alphas to get hurt after trying to touch omegas: some were bitten like dogs, others scratched so deeply their skin bled, and others even carried scars, forever imprinted in their bodies. So, naturally, omegas were tied up while mating.

It was no different from rape.

Jaehyun wondered how you could have done that to him, just like you did to a hundred other omegas.

It was raining like it usually did in the capital, droplets falling through the skyscrapers, painted red, yellow and green from semaphores, shining neon on outdoors, as people went by as if nothing was wrong. Rats ate at the garbage in the sidewalks, the poor begged for food, and young girls and boys sold their sensuality at the corner of the streets, hovering seductively at the drivers who stopped at a red sign. Without the assistance of his glasses, the capital just looked darker than a nightmare, blurred and agonizing.

Jaehyun held back his tears. They were hard to swallow.

At least, the suppressant heat pill you had made him swallow was like a blessing.

But fuck you. Fuck you a thousand times!

He was never going to love again. Jaehyun was never going to be such an idiot. Such a naive fool.

He breathed hard under his nose, calling the attention of an alpha male that kept an eye on him. This one was smaller than the guy Jaeyun had kicked, with big doe eyes and blue hair.

“Hard time?” the man asked.

Jaehyun did not reply.

“I’m Taeyong,” the man insisted.

“Why would it matter what your name is?”

“Ouch,” Taeyong hissed. “It matters a lot. You’ll see.”

Jaehyun remained silent. He merely shifted on the seat, muscles tense and uncomfortable as his arms stood cuffed behind his back.

A few minutes later, the car came to a stop, then proceeded to enter an underground garage. The driver, another alpha Jaehyun had not seen until that moment, jumped out before opening the back door.

“Get out, loser,” he commanded, and Jaehyun had no choice but to obey.

He was given white clothing — plain shirts, pants, socks and sneakers —, that he wore without a word. Then, Jaehyun was taken to a room where a female alpha asked him a few questions. Did he have any diseases? When was his last heat? Was he sexually active? Was he on suppressants? Generic or branded? Did he ever take a fertility test?

Jaehyun answered honestly, speaking calmly even if he had the worst headache, caused by the lack of his glasses. Whatever he said, he knew tests were to be taken to either prove or deny his words.

The female alpha took notes and handed Jaehyun a paper. “You’ll be taking medical exams tomorrow. Please be aware of the requirements.”

Next, the guards took him to a cell, neater than his imagination could muster, with a single bed and a small bathroom he could use. Fucking government money. While the poor suffered and starved, the government raised buildings like that one, keeping them clean and equipped.

One of the guards brought Jaehyun dinner, some stew with vegetables, and a plastic glass filled with grape juice. Jaehyun did not touch it, even if his stomach growled.

“You better eat on your own before I have to force you,” the guard warned. They both knew a meal was necessary for his medical exams to come out with correct results.

The last thing Jaehyun wanted was any type of violence. So he ate, even when his throat was so tight he felt barely like breathing. He ate obediently, like every omega stereotype he fought against.

When the sun rose and he had barely closed his eyes, Jaehyun was taken to the medical wing. Every detail screamed such hygienic excellence he wished to vomit on its torturing, endless whiteness.

The nurse took his blood. His urine.

“We’ll need your sperm now,” the nurse explained as he guided Jaehyun to a separate room. He was an omega too, a young boy. “What scents do you feel the most attracted to?”

A scent like fading into sleep beneath the hot sun. An alluring adventure, a midday reverie. Orange-like, passionate, summerly.

“None in particular.”

“It will be better if you collaborate, honey. You smell like oranges, but I sense it is a scent that doesn’t belong to you. Would it work for you if you smelled it?”

Jaehyun’s heartbeat quickened and his knees seemed to pull him down. It was sad, how he had lost hope in himself.

Looking at his feet, he nodded.

The nurse opened a wardrobe that contained several rows of perfume bottles, all labeled with their respective scents. “I’ll apply some on you, and then you'll have some privacy. Just make sure to cum on this flask. Later, you can immediately take your suppressants, to stop any heat trigger.”

The flask weighed like nothing on Jaehyun’s palm. “Why do you do this? he asked the nurse.

“This what?”

“Why do you help the ones that violate you?”

The omega’s eyes clenched in confusion. “It’s our role. God made us this way, didn’t He?”

Jaehyun wanted to say God was nothing like that. God was something else.

Something that reminded him of orange trees.

The exams told no lies: Jaehyun was highly fertile, with a concentrated sperm that promised many and many pups to aid the population. That meant he had to be paired with a mate as soon as possible.

After two days in that cell, the guard came to take him out. “Time to meet your mate.”

So that would be it. Jaehyun was going to be matched with an alpha he had never seen before. Someone who was not you. He swallowed harshly as he stepped out of the cell, joining the guard on the way to the elevator. Every step he took towards his destiny ached.

And then, he heard a familiar voice. “What are you doing, huh?”

“Ah, Taeyong!” the guard exclaimed. “Is anything wrong?”

“Yes. The test results for this guy are wrong. Some confusion was made, you see. I have to take him back to testing,” Taeyong explained. “Mister Park’s orders.”

The guard politely stepped aside. “As you wish.”

“Come,” Taeyong hummed, placing a hand on Jaehyun’s nape to guide him over the elevator. But, at the last minute, Taeyong looked over his shoulder to make sure no one else was watching, and quickly pulled Jaehyun towards the stairs down to the parking lot. “Come on, we gotta be fast.”

“Fast for what?” Jaehyun asked.

“For escaping, dumbass.”

Wide-eyed, Jaehyun tried to listen to his intuition. He didn’t want to be naive again, and Taeyong was an alpha… But anything seemed better than to walk back and be paired with someone he did not love. So he did as Taeyong said, rushing to a black car and sliding into the backseat.

“Lie down. You can’t be seen,” Taeyong instructed as he sat on the driver’s seat.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere that’s better for you.”

Jaehyun lied down quietly as Taeyong drove. The car took a few turns left and right, getting to what seemed like a highway before Taeyong spoke again.

“You can sit down now.”

“Can you tell me what the fuck is going on?” Jaehyun demanded.

“I’m taking you to the rebels.”

“The rebels? You mean omega rebels?”

“And alphas, as I am clearly. It's my job. I rescue omegas.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“I think you’ve had enough jokes,” Taeyong chuckled. “You can chill, Jaehyun. Everything is going to be fine.”

“Is Y/N a rebel too?” Jaehyun breathed hesitatingly. Your name burned in his tongue. His brain clenched in a mantra: Tell me she is. Tell me she is. Tell me she is.

“The best of our kind,” Taeyong grinned. “You didn’t think she was actually letting the bad guys take you, did you? It might have seemed so, because it took me more days to rescue you than I planned. I’m sorry, but it was really risky to take you out earlier. I need to take care of my reputation, you know? And Y/N is surely going to murder me the minute she knows I could not keep you from getting tested. Shit.”

Hopelessly, Jaehyun started crying. His sobs were like heavy clouds making it rain in his heart. He didn’t know he was crying because he wished to believe Taeyong, or because he already did — because, if it was true, if you really were a rebel, then you were perfect. Then you did everything in your will to give him a way out. Then there was a chance your love for Jaehyun was real.

“W-what, are you-” Taeyong frowned. “Don’t cry, man, I’m sensitive to others’ feelings.”

“I thought Y/N hated me,” Jaehyun sobbed.

“She’s crazy for you. She’s saved omegas before, and some even fell in love with her, but it was never reciprocated. When she knew the hunters were coming for you, she asked for my help, and here we are.”

And just like that, Jaehyun’s was God’s favorite again. “When can I see her?” he quickly wanted to know.

“It might take a few days. She was selected for a mission in a nearby city, so she’s gotta be careful now. I’ll let her know you’re safe when we get to the headquarters, okay?”

It was hardly okay. Jaehyun had been impotent and despairing for the past days, because he believed tooth and nail that you were the worst person ever. But now, your love for him made him feel empowered and ready to fight against whoever got in his way. He could not simply sit down and wait for you. He had to be with you. Ferociously.

“I have to see her. Please, Taeyong. Take me to where she is.”

Taeyong chuckled apologetically. “I’m sorry, buddy, but I only take orders from your mate.”

You stared at Jaehyun's glasses, bent to your feet, the lens shattered in the shape of a cobweb where his happiness once shone. It was the grammar of your despair.

He had said that you were awful, and even if you hoped he was going to soon understand why you allowed his capture, that word stung like an unbearable twinge of pain right in your heart. Seeing your mate hurt and pretending it did not bother you was easily the hardest thing you had ever done, and although your fingers itched to light the world on fire to save him, you knew only patience and discretion were going to offer Jaehyun a way out.

You trusted Taeyong. He was your best friend. He was going to keep an eye on Jaehyun while you played your role in another hunt.

Sitting speechlessly on the passenger’s seat, you pretended to listen to Doyun’s precise instructions on how the hunting would go. Other two alpha hunters you met quite well were in the backseat: Jeno, sharpening his knife with repetitive moves, and Johnny, who still had his knuckles red from a previous hunt. From all three, Doyun was the colleague you trusted the least — and much to your dislike, he was in charge of the operation.

“We’ll act fast and be done with it. These omegas offer almost no resistance,” he cooed before his eyes landed on the glasses on your thigh. “What’s that for?”

Like a good alpha, you took care of your omega’s belongings.

“A victory statement,” you lied.

It took about an hour until you arrived at the nearby town, the paddy wagon smoothly driving through the suburbs. The minutes before a hunt started were always rough on you. Those people had lives of their own. Parents, friends, mates and children. Hobbies. The laws that separated you from them were as blinding as a fog. They did not deserve the suffering. The humiliation.

The sun shone in deadly sparkles of orange.

Doyun parked in front of an ordinary house. At his command, you all left the car, quickly following behind as he broke inside, coming across five different faces startled in fear: a middle-age couple, with an alpha male and an omega female, and three kids.

Fuck.

“Oh, look at what we have here,” Doyun chuckled under his breath, smoothly removing the knife from his hip. The blade shone like crystal water under the sun. “Such a beautiful family… What a shame it will be to hurt any of you.”

The kids hid behind the mother, tugging on her dress. You first noticed the bite on her neck, where the alpha’s teeth had sunk to make her forever his — then, your eyes slid down to her tummy, shaped a little rounder underneath the fabric. “Please, leave my kids and wife out of this,” the male begged. “I’ll go with you if you promise they will be safe.”

Your stomach turned over nauseously. “Doyun, they already have kids. Let them be,” you argued.

“Why?” He looked at you like a snake would look at a mouse. “They’re probably hiding the omega pack, Y/N. We need to make them speak.”

“They are mates and she is pregnant. Anything different from leaving them alone is pure masochism.”

“You’re softer. Is it because of that omega? Does he really mean something to you?” Doyun swiftly aimed the blade of his knife at you. “You haven’t been hired to care, Y/N. You’ve been hired to act. You better remember that.”

You held his gaze strongly, even when he stepped so closer it reverberated in your bones like a threat. Your blood boiled red.

“Jeno, you grab the kids. Johnny, take care of the man,” Doyun commanded, looking over each one of you until his eyes bore into yours one more time. “The woman is mine.”

Perhaps it was your love for Jaehyun that spoke louder, but this time you could not tolerate any more bullshit. Deep in your guts, it just didn’t feel right to allow alphas to wander as a crown made their heads weigh. As others owed them unconditional respect, a respect they did not own. Every person who was thought of as being of a lower class, as though they only existed for others’ pleasure and use… It was Jaehyun’s face you saw when you looked at omegas.

Any move from your side could easily destroy years of disguise and fakery, of hiding behind the mask you intended on using to protect Jaehyun, but you knew your priorities now. You knew that, in order to support your mate, you too had to be yourself.

The alpha that liked baking. The woman that fell in love with a rebel soul.

Clenching your fist, you tilted your head and grinned softly. “You fucking wish.”

How quickly your hand came for his cheek was even beyond you, the impact so powerful your fingers snapped. Mixed with the sudden pain, Doyun’s surprise was the perfect opportunity for you to kick the knife off his hand before he could retaliate.

And retaliate he did, throwing you against the wall. The shock of your back against it made you hiss, but the sound was cut short when Doyun wrapped a hand around your throat. A clean kick of your boots between his legs was enough for him to let you go, coming to his knees right in front of you.

For a moment, you crossed eyes with Johnny, who was already taking the family outside to the car, to take them somewhere safer.

Jeno, on the other hand, simply stared at the door frame as confusion munched longly at his features.

When you blinked again, the knife you had kicked away had caused a sharp, deep cut in your thigh. You hissed and stepped back in pain, your breath fast now that blood soaked your jeans, warm and red.

“I’m taking you back to the capital, Y/N,” Doyun’s smirk was perversely mocking. “They will make a fantastic breeding bitch out of you.”

Your entire body burned like a merciless fire. With one certain move, your fist collided with Doyun’s jawline, causing an awful sound echo through the walls.

You knew how jaws sounded when they broke.

Looking over at Jeno, you hummed in deep breaths. “Are you a good boy, Jeno?” He nodded, in awe. “Then, help me with this motherfucker.”

Doyun offered little resistance when Jeno lifted him up. Even his kicks and punches were a mere attempt as he had one of his hands trying to hold his dislocated jawline in place, teary eyes big with the pain. Never before you had seen him so defenseless. It made you proud.

You met with Johnny outside. “Fuck, Y/N. You’re hurt.”

Only now you noticed your blood was drawing an exposing trail on the floor. “I think my disguise ends here,” you chuckled dryly.

“Probably, but we do have more important things to tend to now,” Johnny retorted.

“Care to stitch me up before I drive?” you asked, making him frown.

“You’re driving? Y/N, I don’t think that’s a good id-”

“My mate needs me,” you interrupted. “I can’t make him wait longer. Can you keep the family safe?”

“Absolutely,” Johnny nodded. “What about Jeno?”

Looking over as Jeno locked Doyun inside the back of the paddy wagon, you breathed. “I’ll take him with me.”

“So you’re a spy?” Jeno asked in the back, as he made sure to watch Doyun, who was cuffed to the seat and sleeping peacefully after you had punched him in the head. You were not going to drive with him trying to speak all the way to the capital.

“You can say that,” you said while driving, hissing low whenever you had to use your leg. Even with Johnny’s skilled stitching and the painkillers, it hurt like hell. “At least I was until earlier today.” Now, you were just a rebel. Out in the open.

“And Johnny too?”

“And Johnny too.”

“Holy shit, you’re really good!” His surprised tone nearly made you chuckle.

“There is always space for new people, you know,” you encouraged, looking at Jeno over the rearview mirror. “You have a good heart, Jeno. You can work for a better cause.”

He looked down, a lonely strand of his black hair falling onto his forehead. “I don’t know… I think I’d easily get caught.”

“We all think that at some point. Then, we just get used to it.”

Jeno spoke no more. You too preferred to stay silent.

Every mile you drove meant a mile closer to Jaehyun. You could not wait to get to him. To finally let your arms embrace his sweet body.

A small red sign that twinkled by the steering wheel called your attention. Shit. You were running out of gas. “Jeno, I’m stopping to fill up. You keep an eye on Doyun for me, okay?”

Thankfully, you stopped at a gas station minutes later, quickly jumping out of the wagon. You were about to pay when Jeno called you. “Y/N, can you get me some snacks, please?”

“Sure. Anything in particular?

“I like shrimp crackers.”

And so you grabbed some at the convenience store, as well as bottles of water to keep you and Jeno hydrated. It was going to take another two hours until you reached the capital, and you had a feeling it was going to seem like twice the amount of time.

As you approached the cashier, you noticed small, lovely cakes placed around the line, and a specific flavor made your heart flutter. Those pistachio cakes were not to be compared to yours, but they could be a perfect small treat for Jaehyun. For when you would meet again.

Influenced by sweetness, your eyes lifted from the cakes to the glass door that faced the station. It was only then that you noticed Jeno was outside the wagon, with Doyun by his side.

Doyun had a gun in his hand.

Everything you held in your hands fell to the floor at the same time the bullet pierced the glass — and by then, you were already on your fours, searching for a way out. Another gunshot was heard as you rolled to your right, noticing a back door at the other side of the store. You ran to it in no time, as fast as you could even when the wound in your leg pulsated, and frantically looked around, searching for a way to escape.

There was an old man talking on the phone by his bike, and you did not think twice before pushing him aside. “I’m really sorry,” you apologized while grabbing his keys and phone, jumping on and starting his bike as if your life depended on it.

Well, it did.

One final time, you looked over your shoulder to witness both Jeno and Doyun behind you. A last shot was heard.

As you rode, the bullet in your shoulder bled through and through.

The headquarters were nothing like Jaehyun expected: less like separated buildings where the rebels hid, and more like a normal city, where people lived commonly. The only difference was that the only way inside was through a tunnel that was watched nonstop, certain as the sun came back every day. “The police are on our side,” Taeyong explained. “It’s safe.”

Jaehyun saw omegas, betas and alphas living so freely it even surprised his own expectations. Omegas worked as police officers, betas were teachers, and he got a glimpse of an alpha taking his kids to the local playground.

That place was everything he had ever dreamt of. And you were part of it.

“This is Y/N’s house. Like, her real house. She has an apartment in the capital too, for disguise purposes,” Taeyong hummed after he parked in front of a simple one floor house, even if Jaehyun knew to whom the house belonged to even before the alpha had said one word. The entire place smelled like you. “She told me to bring you here.”

Jaehyun grinned widely. God’s clouds all over his head again.

“Thank you, Taeyong.”

“It’s fine. Again, I’m sorry for taking longer to come and get you.” Suddenly, the alpha’s face lit up. “Ah, here, Y/N told me to buy you these.”

New glasses. Almost identical to the ones he previously had.

Taeyong left Jaehyun on his own after that. With the keys in his hands, the omega breathed deeply, looking around carefully, and recognizing you in the small details: the pictures of your mother on the wall, the resistant plants, the bakery books on the shelves, and the kitchen utensils that were worn out by how many cakes you had baked.

Jaehyun did not know it was possible, but he felt so much more in love with you his eyes teared. It was like digging deep into his being and sleeping in the calmest nest of his thankful wishing. Slowly and without noticing what he was doing, he started gathering small items that brought him comfort. One of the pillows on your bed, your hairbrush, a silky black gown you probably wore for sleeping in the summer, and a pair of your biker gloves. Jaehyun lied down on the bed with all those items nested inside his arms. His eyes closed to dream of you.

It was already night when his eyes opened again. Your scent, rawer than ever, came from the window as rain suited the neighborhood like a hat. And it was violently metallic.

After throwing your phone in the road and grabbing the one you stole, you called Taeyong and sent him your localization. The bullet in your shoulder hurt more excruciatingly at each passing second, but it was not enough to keep you from your final destination. You rode through the setting sun and the first clouds that gathered in the darkest shades of gray. You rode through thunder and lighting. Through the heavy summer rain.

When you got to the tunnel, you broke down in Taeyong’s arms.

Even though your ears understood every word your friend told you, because you automatically nodded in acknowledgement, your mind was too busy to make a full idea of what he said. The only thing you fully got, between delirium and the wetness that soaked your muscles, was that Jaehyun was safe.

Then, Taeyong took you to the hospital. You allowed it only because you did not want Jaehyun to see you injured. It would be a sin to scare him.

Similar to blank pages on a diary, the next hours were numb and almost imperceptible to you. Most of the time, your eyes remained closed out of tiredness, your body claiming its need to rest after the adrenaline flood in your veins. But a few things you remembered.

Taeyong was right next to you as the doctor, a young female omega, gave him instructions. “It will only cause more damage if we remove the bullet, actually. Her body will just surround it with a scar tissue and wall it off, but we should give her painkillers for a few days.”

You groaned on the bed, feeling a little more sober now, as you even registered the raindrops hitting the ceiling. “All of them, please,” your voice came out hoarse and exhausted. Much to your relief, you had already been medicated.

“Y/N, are you alright?” Taeyong leaned over.

“I’ve been worse,” you replied.

“We’ve sterilized your wounds, miss,” the doctor explained. “The bullet in your shoulder isn’t fatal, so the best thing to do is to leave it there. It’d be more dangerous if we tried to pull it out.”

You nodded in agreement. “If you say, I don’t mind it.” Your eyes slowly opened to meet Taeyong’s. “Where’s Jaehyun?”

Your friend smiled in amusement. “At your house. I didn’t want to call him.”

“Good,” you nodded.

In perfect timing, your face turned as soon as the doors were open, only to land on a very familiar face, one that you would recognize amongst a million. Your person was right there, soaked in rain, dripping on the hospital room floor, and he was smiling. Jaehyun was smiling through the droplets that fell from the black strands of his hair. So beautiful he could lend a bit of his beauty to every man on earth and still be the most handsome.

“Y/N,” oh, his voice… His beautiful, deep voice opened every curtain of your body, letting the sun shine through. Like a vice, his musky scent calmed down your heart.

You opened your arms to him, and the moment Jaehyun hugged you was like the weight of the world was removed from your shoulders. He was wet and cold, but also so warm that the greatest bonfire could not compare. The firmness of his chest against your breasts, his breath against the curve of his neck, his gentle fingers removing the hair from your face, strands that stuck to your skin due to your salty tears.

“Are you alright?” you sobbed. “I’m so sorry, Jae. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, don’t. Please, Y/N, I know it,” he looked into your eyes reassuringly. “Taeyong told me everything. I know. You don’t have to feel sorry.”

Your tears fell down your cheeks like waterfalls as you rested your hands on his elbows.

“Are you alright? Do you need anything?” he asked.

“Yes. Stay with me.”

You did not have to ask twice. Jaehyun was never leaving your side.

His hand held yours long after the nurse and Taeyong had left. “You should sleep, Y/N. You went through a lot,” he advised, letting the tip of his fingers tug your hair behind your ear.

“Why sleep when I finally have what I want? Two days waiting for you felt like an eternity,” you admitted, your voice low and serious. “They might have been rough on you.”

Jaehyun both nodded and brushed the tip of his thumb against the surface of your hand. “They were, but I suffered the most because I was heartbroken. I get it, though. Why things went the way they did.”

“I thought I was going to protect you for longer if I kept my identity, but it’s all over now,” you sighed. “I should have ran away with you when I had the chance.”

“You didn’t know, Y/N. It’s okay.”

You looked into Jaehyun’s eyes the most sincerely, squeezing his hand into yours. “Do you forgive me, Jae?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” The kiss he planted on your forehead felt like a mating bite. Like true, eternal love.

For two more days, the doctor insisted that you stayed under observation. Gratefully, your wounds seemed to act quick in the solemn act of healing, as bandages were constantly changed by Jaehyun’s delicate hands, so smoothly you only felt slight tickles when his fingers applied the prescribed ointments.

In moments like that, you felt blessed that your mate took care of you like you intended to take care of him, regardless of your status. Alpha, omega… It didn’t matter. You were both responsible for each other.

Also, you thrived like a cherry blossom in spring whenever he tended to your needs.

“You mate might have magical hands. Your wounds are almost fully dry, miss,” the doctor grinned when she came to last check on you.

Instead of bringing any biological or scientific explanation, you simply nodded. “Does it mean I’m free to leave?” you asked excitedly.

“You are, with the condition that you keep the exact treatment you’ve been doing here for seven more days.”

“You have my word,” Jaehyun spoke, looking bright like a winter night behind his glasses, and with a frank, happy smile on his lips.

An hour later, you left the hospital with your hand in his. The day was warm, the sky a lighter shade of blue as a few clouds played in the open. At the extreme and joyous brightness, your eyes tightened, and Jaehyun immediately used his free hand to hover over them.

You were going home.

Your house exhaled the lustful aroma of orange fields even more now that you were back to it, your pheromones and scent prominent like you were intentionally marking your territory. To Jaehyun, it was overwhelming, his sensitive nostrils addicted to every breath, his hands shaking from how badly he was trying to control his needs, taking suppressants to muffle any chance he went into heat. It was only going to distract you from healing, anyway, and no matter how he liked to think you were both safe, Jaehyun still feared alpha hunters would suddenly appear.

So he did what he thought best and played it safe. He cooked for you — your favorite dishes constantly on the table —, cleaned your wounds and slept with you, placing a chaste kiss to your forehead with every goodnight. Everything in those days felt comfortingly domestic, so much that Jaehyun knew, like the tree branches knew how to grow, that he could live days like that for the rest of his life.

“I haven’t been able to decorate the house with flowers in ages,” you sighed, eyeing the empty vases around your living room. “We should go on picking some today.”

“Isn’t your leg hurting?”

“Oh, this?” You chuckled, rubbing the stitches on your thigh. Summer had gotten so scorching you finally decided to put on shorts instead of pants, allowing Jaehyun to see more of you. “Looks uglier than it hurts.”

“You wouldn’t be ugly even if you tried your best, Y/N. Not a single part of you.”

There they were again. The reddest ears you had even seen.

“Sweet,” you praised with a peck to his dimpled cheek. “Let’s go!”

It was only when you arrived at the fields that Jaehyun realized your idea could not have been better. It was a perfect day to pick flowers, and even if he missed the town where you two met, the fields at the secret city were just as beautiful. Peonies, orchids, sunflowers, roses, lilies, and several sorts of plants grew over the horizon — the colorful sight was soul pleasing. With glowing eyes, Jaehyun admired how skilfully you cut the stems.

“I think we’ve got enough,” you stood up, putting some white lilies on the bucket he carried. Your eyes traveled up and, for a moment, you salivated at the image. His defined muscles clenched under his tangled sleeves, his shining black hair reflecting the sun, his brown eyes innocently holding your gaze. “Wow.”

Jaehyun frowned. “What?”

“You. I don’t think I ever said how beautiful you are.”

He fixed his glasses in that adorable way that showed both nervousness and care, looking down at the colorful bucket. “Oh, thank you.”

Swiftly, you pulled him by the hand until his chest met yours. “Why are you still on suppressants?” you asked calmly.

His eyes met yours again. “I don’t think it’s the right time to let it happen,” Jaehyun admitted. You could tell he was putting some effort into holding your confronting gaze. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“To get to you. Now that I have, I don’t feel like holding back. Is that okay?”

His cheeks resembled the peonies you had grabbed. “Yes, miss.”

“Don’t call me miss,” you reached for his hands with a smile that, to Jaehyun, uncrowned the sun. Your lips against his wrists left a feverish sensation on his skin. “I want you to call me yours.”

He swallowed, wetting his plump lips with his tongue before speaking. “My… My love.”

There were no words to describe how accomplished your heart beat at those words, like all the questions deep in your soul were answered by three simple syllables. Confidently, you stood on the tip of your toes, leaning closer as your eyes alternated between Jaehyun’s eyes and lips. He leaned closer too.

Your lips touched with the sun’s blessing.

With a hand on his nape, you kissed him so slowly it was possible to feel inch by inch of his mouth widening. A low, raspy moan escaped your throat when Jaehyun’s tongue found yours. He kissed you like songs were created, melody, rhythm and lyrics combining, making sense, becoming one. You could kiss him for hours, and you were probably going to if raindrops had not started falling heavily from the sky.

Parting ways with your laughter as background music, you ran straight to the closest shelter: a small and abandoned wooden barn, that at least was going to be of use until the rain passed.

It took one look for you to notice you were both soaked, fresh with rain, and so ready for each other it could be cut in the air with a knife.

After placing the bucket on the floor to let the flowers dry, Jaehyun kissed you again. This time, your tongues moved heatedly, drawing sensual circles around each other. Because there was no need to rush, you seized every bit of the kiss, from how your heads leaned forward to how Jaehyun’s lower lip brushed yours. You wanted to breathe him in. To lick him whole. To drink his every drop. Nobody had ever kissed you like that before, so warm and wanting it felt as though the sky was breaking open. Like a theft, your hand slid, gentle and demanding, under the soaked fabric of his white shirt.

“Is this okay?” You had to make sure.

“Yes,” Jaehyun breathed affectedly, feeling your nails against the defined muscles of his abdomen. His damped hair was dripping raindrops. “Is it for you too?”

“Yes.”

“I can wait a little longer, until we get home, if you want.”

“You’re my home,” Jaehyun retorted, and you were kissing him all over again.

For once in your life, it felt right to let go and devour the world with your own mouth. You took Jaehyun’s shirt off, kissing his muscles like a devotee worshiped a saint, memorizing every mole from his hip to his neck.

For once in your life, you let someone undress you, and kissed his knuckles in gratitude because it felt safe. Even if he could see the scars on your stomach. The marks of every plan going wrong. Every hunt, every lie.

“It’s fine,” you whispered.

But of course Jaehyun had to kiss you right there. Of course he had to press his plump, swollen lips from kissing against where you had been the weakest. “You’re beautiful, my love,” he murmured as his hands roamed your body, thumbs situated on the curve of your waist as his fingers sank against the fat of your skin. Your nipples peaked harder against the cool, fresh air. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Want you to make me yours.”

The shiver that ran down your spine was like thunder touching the ocean’s deepest ground. “You want me to bite you?” A bite given by your mate formed a permanent, unbreakable bond. It was a definitive and territorial claim, like the scar your teeth would leave in his skin.

Jaehyun’s instant and certain nod could easily have killed you with how fucking sweet he was.

With your lips back on his, your hands pulled your shorts down your legs; your panties rested where they landed, the bottom glistening with thick arousal. Proudly naked in front of your mate, you jumped on a table that was gladly by the barn’s door. It looked firm enough for what you were going to do.

Spreading your legs enough to offer him a peak of your core, you guided his wrist under your navel. “You look big, my love,” you murmured, giving in that you had absolutely noticed the girth in his pants. “Can you prep me a little?”

There was nothing Jaehyun would deny you. Readily, his hands spread your legs a little wider, and the tip of his fingers ran against your soaked, sliging lips. His gaze took as long as it needed staring at your folds, as though Jaehyun wished to commit the image to his memory in all its colors and shapes.

“It’s my first time,” lifting his eyes to yours, he confessed.

“So is mine,” you smiled. “I’ve only used toys.”

Jaehyun’s irises glimmered. So you were about to discover sex together, every stage of it, every thing that would and would not work out.

Fuck, what a lucky bastard he was.

Ever so gently, Jaehyun slid two of his slender fingers inside you, making you immediately clench around them with a breathy moan. “Go slow,” you instructed, only to find out Jaehyun did not need any of your orientations. Soon, he was with his mouth on your nipples as his fingers drew wet echoes in the barn, going at a pace that pressured a sensitive spot within your folds.

“You’re perfect,” Jaehyun grunted, needing you to know how amazing he was feeling just with his fingers buried in you, his eyes amazed to see such a breathtaking view. “So soft and wet, my love. Better than any toy I’ve used.”

“Baby,” you moaned, melting with how sweet Jaehyun sounded and how handsome he was when he concentrated on your body, those deep brown eyes focused on your cunt. His scent, too, was slowly driving you to insanity, feeding a brutal, biological need inside your guts. Growling, you tugged at his pants. “Take these off.”

It would be a shame to leave you waiting. Without removing his fingers from your clenching walls, Jaehyun pulled his pants and boxers to his feet with his free hand.

Your mouth drooled at the sight. How handsome he was, from head to toe, every color and vein, just for you... “Fuck, I want you,” you breathed impatiently.

The deep grunt that left Jaehyun when he pulled his fingers out came from the depths of his ribcage. From the tip to the base, his long fingers glistened with your pulpy juices. Almost too much to take. “Can I have a taste first?” he asked with eyes so allured you wanted to fuck him right then and there, but you complied, relishing as your omega got on his knees.

You removed his glasses to keep them from getting foggy.

At the first touch of his tongue on you, your toes curled at the edge of the table, your body unable to control its own responsiveness. You did not know if you liked the pleasurable sensations on your clit the most, or if it was how Jaehyun’s face was crafted while he had the time of his life between your legs. Even if impatience ate at your limbs, you let him suck and lick your pussy all he wanted, drowning in the slurping noises echoing in the barn. “Feels so good, baby. You’re so talented, doing this for the first time,” you praised, resting on your elbows as you watched, drawing slow circles with your hips for his mouth to follow. “That face is mine to cum, huh?”

Jaehyun moaned with his mouth still on you, looking up from where he so devotedly stood. “Yes. Just yours.”

“Good,” you tugged at his hair just slightly to lift his face back to yours. Your taste in his mouth was like oranges, like falling in love and lust. “I’m going to use it later.”

Thunder fell outside, lighting up the afternoon sky, as you adjusted on the table and kissed Jaehyun passionately. He grabbed the base of his member and aligned it with your entrance, rubbing the head, leaking with precum, up and down a few times. “Do you want me to pull out?”

“Hell no,” you shook your head with a grin. “I’m on birth control. I want your knot, angel.”

With his wet hair dripping on your stomach, Jaehyun grabbed the side of the table with such strength that it made his veins clench. You calling him sweet names nearly had his eyes rolling to the back of his skull. You were a temptress, so delicious and with a beauty that ended every standard, so knowing and lustful, and he was eager to please you, to feel your every inch, to make sweat and cum glisten on your skin like pearls. “You’re so good,” he muttered overwhelmingly, and even before he understood his own body, the head of his cock was welcomed by a wanton grip, one that soaked him warm and made his balls tense with how much cum he had for you. “You‘re the best alpha I could ask for, so beautiful and lovely, I’m so happy my heart is yours,” he mumbled, making your heart flutter.

You threw your head back when he was fully inside you, occupying the space sex toys, as effective as they were, never did. Your gaze held his all the time, even when they darkened with desire. You wanted to remember that scene forever. You wanted to keep it to your heart, the first time your omega felt your pussy around him. “I’m happy too, love. Madly,” you smiled. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes. You?”

“Wonderful. You can move.”

Gripping the table’s edge, Jaehyun slowly retracted his hips only to slam them back again. The way his face clenched could be put in a painting and hung in a museum, because it was pure art, from his eyebrows to the curse that died on his lips. “I can feel you tightening around me.”

“Does it feel good?”

“Fuck, yes,” he breathed, this time thrusting a bit faster, which was a synonym for erratically. “S-shit, did I hurt you?”

“I’m not made of glass, Jaehyun. You can go harder,” you encouraged by planting a kiss on his lips and guiding his hand to grab your hip.

With that, Jaehyun was lost forever. He let years of suppressed heats explode in every blood cell, in every breath and thrust of his hips. He let himself be the savage, lewd creature his desire crafted, and only for you he moaned, your name like wine on his lips, the jiggle of your breasts and thighs feeding his arousal, his knot forming quicker than he liked.

You saw his eyes turn into needy orbs, his agape mouth letting out the most guttural moans you ever heard, and the exposure of his thick, masculine neck had your teeth sharpening in seconds.

You pulled him closer, your breasts rubbing against his chest.

Your teeth touched his skin, and that lovely musky, leathery scent edged you on. They sank through skin, blood and muscle, the sharp edges piercing the core of Jaehyun’s soul, until it was tangled to yours. You moaned with his blood in your mouth, feeling how your heartbeats aligned, how your pupils left almost no space for the color of your irises, how Jaehyun’s knot formed firm and long inside you. You took it ravishingly, shivering on the shaking table, lost somewhere between Jaehyun’s moans and the feeling of his body flush to yours, until you managed to gather enough consciousness to remove your teeth and offer him your neck.

The mere thing Jaehyun saw was your mouth, bloodied, smiling in permission, before he dived in to make you his as much as he was yours.

Equally.

“So you’re telling me that after leaving my shop to a complete stranger and traveling for hours I can’t see my friend?” Haechan crossed his arms stubbornly.

“Johnny is not that much of a stranger. He’ll have the time of his life selling things for you” Taeyong chuckled. “But yes, you definitely can’t see Jaehyun now. He’s in heat.”

“And when is it going to be over?”

Taeyong shrugged. “In one week, I guess?”

“All that?”

“I told you, there was no use in coming with me, but you insisted.”

Haechan sighed, not wanting to admit Taeyong was right. “Is Y/N with him?”

“Where else would she be? She is his mate now.”

“So all they will be doing for an entire week is to be locked up, fucking each other’s brains out?”

“Correct.”

Haechan rubbed his face in frustration. “And to think that I was worried about him…”

Jaehyun admired the two small teeth marks on your neck as he breathed in and out.

“Color?” you demanded.

“Green,” he replied, looking so deliciously pliable your mouth watered.

You were finally in a scenario Jaehyun had pictured uncountable times inside his head: in your bedroom, which now was quite honestly a nest for the both of you, somewhere your omega felt comfortable and had his most primitive needs tended to, while slow rhythm and blues played, and the aroma of freshly baked pistachio cakes filled the house. Not only was Jaehyun surrounded by things that had your natural scent shirts — pillows, a leather jacket, biker gloves and plushies — but you were there all the time, no exception, to keep him well fed, hydrated and completely satisfied.

You even had rubbed your pussy on a pillow for him, one that he kept his nose buried in.

Right now, you had Jaehyun’s naked body restrained by ropes, your hands working on the delicate yet firm knots that kept his hands behind his back, his wrists tied together, and his chest tied to one of his thighs. It was the sound of your breathing and the notes of the rope coming against the ground that turned him on, the helplessness and vulnerability to be put in your beautiful hands… Oh, Jaehyun loved it.

You had been hidden in the nest for three days. However, it felt like an eternity of knowing your mate and savoring his every reaction. Since you weren’t much experienced, both you and Jaehyun found out what you liked together, and the absolute attention you paid to one another was holy, like a prayer whispered at night.

“This will leave lovely marks on your skin,” you grinned wholeheartedly, brushing his hair back. A thin layer of sweat covered his skin.

“I love you,” Jaehyun let out as quick as a bubble exploding. Your beauty shook him to the core. “I love you so much.”

“And I love you,” you let your hand drift to where he needed you the most. “Are you sure you’re not sensitive? Is it like, your sixth boner today?”

“I can take it. Please,” he reassured.

“How do you want to cum this time, baby? My hand?” Jaehyun shook his head. “My mouth?” Another shake. “All the way in?”

Jaehyun nodded, wetting his lips with his tongue. “Want you to ride me.”

You replied by straddling his lap.

It always amused him, how fucking beautiful you were on top. Your tits were perfect in his hands and mouth, the curve of your waist giving space to the adorable fat in your belly, and how your thighs spread over his was just cinema. “Thank you, my love,” Jaehyun smiled.

“The pleasure is all mine,” you assured, rubbing the slick of your core against his swollen member before taking it all in, starting a quickened pace so your lovely boy could find his relief one more time.

Because his hands were restrained, Jaehyun couldn’t touch you, but he still stared in awe at the earthquaking vision of you rocking his world. You swallowed him full, making his cock disappear inside your entrance only to poke at your navel from inside out. Your pussy was his favorite place to be, where he felt the happiest, blessed in mind, body and soul, and you let him feast on it whenever he wanted. Your darling, loving man.

“Let go for me,” sweetly, you pecked his forehead.

Jaehyun felt his cock harden an almost impossible amount, his balls aching with cum, before he was moaning helplessly, his knot firmly attaching to your uterus.

It was the look on his face that made you cum along, riding his cock faster, eating from every move of his good looking face.

A thin drop of sweat ran down Jaehyun’s temple as you both calmed down, ecstasy giving space to a loving, bonding gaze. “I think we’re getting better at this,” he cooed, making you laugh.

“No doubt. We will be unstoppable once your heat ends.”

“I don’t want it to end.”

“Cute.” Softly, you lifted your hips. His member, glimmering in juices and white cum, rested against Jaehyun’s stomach.

It was going to take minutes for it to get hard again.

“Y/N,” he called.

“Yes, angel?”

“Can you make yourself cum for me?”

How you held your breath had Jaehyun close to wishing his hands were free to make you cum himself. But oh, he wanted to watch. He still was not over how beautiful you looked when you had an orgasm.

You smiled widely. “I think I love you even more with every word you say.”

Grabbing a light pink vibrator from the bedside table drawer, you rested back on the mattress with those attentive brown eyes following your every move. The device’s buzz filled up the room with a naughty promise. You brushed it gently against your nipples, then down your belly, all over your thighs and finally where Jaehyun loved the most.

He watched without a word, licking his lips when you moaned wantonly, first focusing the vibrations on your clit before easily sliding the vibrator inside your cum soaked hole. “Fuck,” you cried.

You dripped pearly white on the sheets. A beautiful sight.

Jaehyun’s skin shivered with goosebumps. Every damn time. “I’m so lucky,” he uttered, eyes glued to your pussy. “I’m so fucking lucky.”

As sweet and gentle-mannered as he was, Jaehyun could kill for the smile that bloomed on your face, so pure and adorable even if your cunt clenched around the toy. Your hand slid low, starting to rub long circles on your clit. “You are. Even more knowing that you’re going to fuck me dumb when I’m done.”

Most of his life, Jaehyun was told alphas strictly played the dominant role in the bedroom. Now, however, nothing thrilled him more than the perspective of switching roles with you.

You offered him the world. You allowed him to be.

He grunted quietly and yet deeply, already counting the signs of your orgasm approaching. First, your tightening drunk eyes; second, your hips rolling erratically; third, your chest trembling in long breaths that prolonged your ecstasy. “That’s it, my love. That’s it, looking so pretty for me…”

The moment your orgasm kicked in had your hole visibly pulsating, your mouth agape and your eyes rolling back. You let out a high-pitched moan as your back arched, and pulled the toy away fast, your swollen clit way too sensitive to receive further stimulation.

With his cock so hard it ached, Jaehyun admired in awe, unconsciously trying to get rid of the ropes that restrained him, which only caused them to burn hotter against his porcelain skin. He was so immersed that the only moment he noticed he was drooling was when spit ran down his chin. “Fuck.”

You sat on your thighs, readily licking his saliva and running your fingers through the knots on his back. The loveliest smirk decorated your face. “Time we untie you, angel.”

The experience of being untied was, perhaps, just as good as being tied up. Jaehyun watched with pupils dilated, taking small breaths of relief when the rope loosened around his skin, leaving red and pink marks on his body where it pressed. You watched in full delight, kissing the marks that blossomed in a deeper shade. “You’re so good for doing this, Jaehyunnie. I’m so lucky too, my love.”

He sighed when the rope fell entirely to the mattress, his muscles relaxing in freedom. Without waiting any longer, Jaehyun kissed you long, hands roaming up and down your curves. Smoothly, he turned you around, with your chest to the sheets and your ass up in the air. “Jaehyunnie is going to fuck you raw now, like dogs do,” he whispered, both his hands caressing your butt cheeks, his fingers slaves to both adoration and perversion. “Color?”

You smiled over your shoulder.

“Green. A thousand times green.”

You stared at the ceiling as your body rested in awe, a smile plastered on your face like it was permanent ink.

For the past few days, you had tended to Jaehyun rawly. Ravishing and frankly, to a point your bodies collided in exhaustion. All you had the strength to do was wrapping into each other’s embrace and sleeping for hours before you started it all over again.

After a specific round that left you breathless, your thighs shaking from overstimulation, his voice came out soft. “What now, Y/N?”

You hummed, leaning against his bare chest. “Hm?”

“What is it gonna be when we leave this room?”

“To give you an answer, I have to know what you want,” you replied, even though you were already considering the possibilities. Doyun was not going to stop hunting you, that much you were certain. You would never be safe as long as the government continued to sponsor people like him.

Jaehyun stared into the ceiling for a few seconds. “It is nice here. I feel safe and loved. I think I’ve always wanted that, too.”

“But?” you risked.

“But I don’t think it’s right for us to hide forever. What was built here has to be normalized out there, in the open,” he breathed. “I want to go back to the shop. I want to see the sea and listen to the birds sing in the morning. I want every omega in the world to have the opportunities they have here.”

Your chin rested on his chest, eyelashes batting softly as sunlight crystallized your irises. “Is that what you want? To rebuild the world?”

Jaehyun nodded.

“Good. I’ll give it to you,” you sealed your promise with a peck on his lips. Jaehyun’s eyes widened slightly as he puckered his mouth against yours.

“W-what do you mean?”

“I mean I will be the rebel to fucking stab the system in its throat.”

At that, Jaehyun got hard all over again. His eyes, so pure, blinked in a sparkling admiration. “I’ll fight with you.”

“Don’t say nonsense. You’re not fighting.”

“I think we agreed alphas don’t make choices for omegas,” he ran his hand through the sweaty strands of your hair. “If you fight, Y/N, I will fight with you.”

You let him be right. In every word and intention. In every truth of his desiring heart. And when Jaehyun smiled, his soul promised you way more than guns, hideouts and blood.

It was something worth fighting for.

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