Tumgik
#certainly nothing intelligent
sebaren · 1 year
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pantestudines · 6 months
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having a "former gifted kid" type mental spiral
#i say this because the spiral is actually about how much i hate the word and the general culture around giftedness#mostly because its incredibly inconsistent between schools so people often mean different things when they say it#but also because in my specific case its certainly not a gift but like. what am i supposed to call it.#its literally a neurodivergence in my case that has had many effect postive and negative on my life. but its also a school club.#and its also nothing! before the advent of like modern standardized public education i wouldve just been a curious kid#Without modern public education im not sure i wouldve even been different from other kids. maybe a little socially awkward still but idk#and like. Am i really different from other kids? am I now as an adult different from my peers? Occasionally i will get told as such#how the fuck am i suppose to talk about how much being seperated from my peers and held to higher standards sucked#when the name of the reason why this happened might as well be 'gods specialist little boy'#none of the things that make people think im smarter are really all that useful day to day. and most non-gifted people are like. still smar#i happen to be good at memorizing the kind of facts schools test you on as children#but is that just because i was told as a kid to be good at school and so i tried hard to do that?#even if I am uniquely good at that#does that really make me more intelligent than the high school dropouts who can fix cars like its nothing?#in fact i would say they are at least wiser than me for picking something practical to be smart at#at my school being gifted usually implied you were a little neurodivergent and bad at socializing#often our gifted kids were actually failing classes because they were smart enough to realize they didnt matter#(not me but still)#but at some schools being gifted just means you were an avid reader or were pressured by your parents to maintain perfect As at all times#so if i say. wanted to talk about how being 'gifted' has often made some aspects of academia like hating emails and having time blindness#and not having a good friend network and having many unadressed issues around not really knowing how to make friends#if i wanted to talk about that. and i say 'I was gifted growing up and this sucked'#the person on the other end might hear 'oh woe is me im so smart and this makes my life so hard'#AND FURTHER STILL#on tumblr especially 'former gifted kid' has kindve become parlance for 'guy whining about nothing'#or even 'person who they were told was smart but is actually kinda dumb'#which... yeah! theres a reason many former gifted kids are like that! thats kindve my issue with the program in the first place!#it takes otherwise relatively normal if well achieving kids and tells them they are gods specialist little children.#THIS CANNOT BE HELPFUL TO ANYONE? like whatever chance the kids had at seeming normal has been stripped away#and they now also think they are the smartest person in the room in every situation
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cornertheculprit · 1 year
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Phoenix: ...Like how Ms Kira here threw a major hissy fit in court and was barbecued for being a witch.
Layton: Eloquently put, Mr Wright.
i mean. i wouldn't say. ELOQUENT. is perhaps. the best word. to use. here. but alright professor whatever you say
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absentlyabbie · 6 months
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seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.
very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.
they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.
mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.
sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.
these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.
i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.
what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.
they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???
THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!
it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just
ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.
kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.
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breitzbachbea · 3 months
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I wonder now if people who know a lot more about that certain part of history my AU takes place in have been slagging me off in private, which is their good right, but I would also appreciate constructive slagging to my face, because the more I learn, the more interesting it gets.
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kentopedia · 25 days
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౨ৎ ˖ ࣪⊹ SAFEGUARD — dazai, chuuya, akutagawa
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summary . . . they save you after you've been injured and captured by an enemy.
contents . . . sfw, f!reader (chuuya & dazai) and gn!reader (akutagawa), violence / blood, threats, injuries, hurt/comfort, angst, established relationship, and it's pmboss!dazai bc i can't help myself — 3.5k total
notes . . . i got this request so long ago lol. not my best work, but i have been in the worst writing slump ever and just wanted to finish something. i've also never written for akutagawa before so pls be nice <3
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𝐂𝐇𝐔𝐔𝐘𝐀 . . .
there are very few times that chuuya feels he’s been outsmarted. he knows he’s not the mastermind of the port mafia, but he certainly isn’t a fool. when it comes to you and your well-being, though, his mind short-circuits, half of his intelligence draining away while his emotions take hold. 
your relationship isn’t a secret to anyone in the port mafia, which means that it isn’t a secret to your enemies either. and while most people know it’s hard to land a finger on chuuya directly, his pretty little girlfriend doesn’t have the power of a god nestled inside of her.
the rage sparks through him, growing fiercely into the blaze of a forest fire, until all he can think of is getting you home safely. he thinks of your sweet smile as he rips the door of the enemies’ base off the hinges, crushing it into a million pieces with the force of gravity. 
the men are quick to react, but chuuya hurtles the crushed door towards them, knocking three of them to their feet. another group charges at him, but their guns do little against his skill. after years of fighting some of the strongest ability users, simple criminal organizations are as easy to step over like ants. 
chuuya kills them all — except for one.
the man’s knees are wobbling, hand shaking around the gun as he realizes that these will be his final moments. there is fear in his eyes, brown ones that rest wide open, and chuuya almost hesitates. his remorse doesn’t last long, though, before he’s wrapping a hand around the man’s throat, thrusting him backwards. 
“where is she?” chuuya asks, voice sharp and commanding. 
he can feel the man swallowing. 
chuuya knows that backup is probably on the way, but it won’t matter whether they show up or not. he’ll crush the rest of his enemies just as he’s crushed the last twenty men. the poor soul in his leather hold seems to know that as well. 
“i-i’ll take you to her,” he rasps, dropping his gun to claw at chuuya’s hand. 
he drops him, lets him take a few heaving breaths and coughs, before he’s kicking at him, forcing him back to his feet.
the young man takes him up the elevator, weaves him through a hallway as chuuya leaves a scattering of bodies in his wake, not hesitating to kill a single man that gets in his way. there is nothing that can keep him from you. 
how fiercely and loyally he loves you — it drives him to near insanity. 
finally, with blood coating his face and his clothes, the young man enters a room, locked with a code, revealing you. 
chuuya’s rage is almost as blinding as his corruption, as he gazes at the sight of you. bloodied and bruised, tied up in a chair, so visibly harmed. his hands clench into fists. “get the fuck away from her,” he says to the man who seems to be monitoring you.
“what are you doing in here?” the men left in the room panic, but they don’t have time to react before chuuya throws them back at the wall, so quickly, with so much force, that their spines snap. they hit it with a sharp crack, skulls shattering against the plaster, the wall crushing beneath the weight of them. 
limply, they fall to the floor. 
chuuya rushes over to you. 
the young man that led him here disappears, but chuuya isn’t worried about him. he’s a coward; he’ll likely flee from the country and never look back. the men that truly hurt you are already dead, and he’ll burn this building to the ground once he’s gotten you away from it. 
“hey,” chuuya says, cradling your cheeks gently, trying to coax you back awake. he’s not sure if it’s exhaustion, blood loss, or the obvious head trauma that caused you to pass out in the first place. but you’re still breathing, so he counts that as a blessing. 
“hey,” he whispers again, kissing your forehead, like it will heal all your ailments. “wake up, baby. we gotta get you out of here, okay?” 
it takes you a few seconds to come to, eyes glazed over and shell-shocked as you blink at him. “chuuya?” you say; your voice is so hoarse it makes chuuya want to keel over and vomit. “is it really you?” 
guilt gnaws at him, almost crushing, at the fact that thirty-six hours passed, and you’re delirious enough not to recognize him. you probably haven’t eaten, either. 
he should’ve been there. no one should’ve ever had the chance to hurt you, yet…
“it’s me, i’m here,” he says, kissing your lips, your temple, brushing your hair away from your face. the strands are sticky with blood. “shit,” chuuya nearly shouts, pulling a knife from his pocket, sawing through the thick ropes around you as quickly as he can. “i’m so sorry, i’m so sorry.” 
he can’t get you free fast enough, and you smile at him, drowsy, your eyes fluttering shut once more. “it’s okay, chuuya,” you say, leaning your head on his shoulder. “you’re here now.” 
“you have to stay awake,” he says desperately, realizing your head is still bleeding. he doesn’t know how hurt you are. chuuya’s no expert when it comes to medicine, but he’s smart enough to know that internal injuries could be even worse than the external ones. 
“stay awake for me, okay, honey? i’ll get you back to the boss and we’ll find you a doctor. you’ll be just fine.” 
“okay, chuuya,” you hum, weakly gripping his back. seconds of silence pass before you mutter, “i just want to go home.” 
"i know." his heart pulls, and he almost lets out a cracked sob. but he refrains, knowing that there is plenty of time to drown in his sorrows later. 
finally, he gets the ropes under, lifting you from the chair. you’re so much lighter, weaker, and it makes him sick as he carries you. “let’s get you home.” 
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𝐀𝐊𝐔𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐖𝐀. . .
the call comes just as akutagawa is getting ready to head home for the evening, his tasks completed, eyes heavy with exhaustion. 
normally, he doesn’t stick around to say any goodbyes, sneaking off into the darkness of the night like a shadow, blending right in. but, something about the evening, so gloomy and drizzly with spring rain, feels off. 
with a heavy knot in his chest, so much different than an incoming fit of coughs, akutagawa heads back up to mori’s office, if perhaps to only ensure that everyone else’s jobs had been completed. he’s a lot of things, but he’s never been a slacker; and he’ll do what it takes to ensure that his position in the mafia is eternally secure.
though, he doesn’t have the opportunity to get all the way upstairs before he run into the boss, who is calm, but with an air of irritation clouding him. 
he explains the current situation to akutagawa in a clipped tone, bored — an enemy group has kidnapped you, holding you hostage. 
“how rude is it to bother a man, just as he is getting ready to go to sleep?” mori says, sighing histrionically.
but what is a minor inconvenience to mori sends an entire wave of dread through akutagawa, his entire body feeling as if it’s been dipped in ice. he can’t explain the horror that washes over him, not really, because he shouldn’t feel so panicked. it is rare for him to get worked up about the danger his subordinates find themselves in, save for his sister, of course. 
but you… you’re different. 
“can i trust you to diffuse the situation?” mori asks, impatiently glancing at his watch as if that will change anything. “i can call someone else, but they will not be so quick.” 
akutagawa doesn’t even think before he accepts the job, hating the way he sounds pathetically desperate for more details. his hands flatten the edge of his cloak, as if his ability is going to take on a mind of its own. 
he calls for a driver, calm but breathing so heavily that an aching cough rises up in him. his throat feels as if it may begin to bleed, but he swallows, glances away from the driver and gets himself under control.
there’s a ransom — bring them the money and they’ll return you, mori had told him. you’re only a lower ranking member of the mafia, and someone that makes for a pretty poor bargaining chip, so the motive is questionable. 
mori probably would’ve let you die, akutagawa knows, his teeth gritting together, so much so that a splintering sound comes from it. but the boss, in his infinite, concerning wisdom, seems to also know that his loyal dog has an soft spot for you. 
as regrettable as that may be.
akutagawa has no doubt that whoever the enemy is, they are no match for him. still, a twinge of anxiety settles in his stomach, fingers jittery as the driver, despite the decreased traffic of the hour, seems to drive impossibly slow. 
“are we not in a rush?” akutagawa snaps, leaning forward.
“apologies,” the driver, says, not daring to even look at akutagawa from the mirror. but the car speeds up, enough for akutagawa to be able to notice, at least. it cools the simmer that has already begun deep in his chest.  
even so, the car seems to go at a snails pace, minute upon minute flying by, with you in the clutches of an enemy. 
akutagawa doesn’t care who they are. he doesn’t care why, or how they captured you. he wants them dead. he’ll rip them apart, easily, and he’ll make them suffer — they’ll be alive for all of it, for every second that he peels the skin from their bones, ripping the smaller ones out of their sockets. 
what he feels for you… well, it’s too hard for him to admit to himself. he has no experience with what it means to care for another person, doesn’t even know if that’s his goal. he just knows he wants to protect you.
and he can’t do that if you’re dead.
finally, the car pulls up to an old warehouse, one at the very outskirts of the port, beyond the docks and the shipping carts. it’s tucked far back, an obvious lair for some villainous organization that doesn’t want to be found. 
akutagawa gets there, but there is nothing. he hears nothing, feels no signs of life as he trudges through the puddles left behind from the earlier rain. 
a small string of panic begins again, as he wondered if maybe the call that mori had told him was only a ruse. maybe this entire time had been a distraction, a way to lure him away. there are other skill-users in the mafia, but none quite as dangerous as him. 
though, he hears it, then. a small little sound, muffled and hoarse, full of pain. 
he ducks into another corner of a warehouse, and you’re there — bound with chains and a gag across your mouth, one of your eyes blackened with bruises, your nose bleeding. 
his heart aches. never in his life has he so quickly made his way over, used the sharp edges of his ability to shear through the chains, falling to his knees as he unbinds the cloth from your lips. 
“where are they?” he rasps, mouth opening and closing, hating the sound of his own voice. he recognizes his desperation, his anger, but the affectionate sound that clips at the end is unfamiliar, as he shakily pulls himself closer to you. 
you glance up at him, eyes glossy and wide, and though you are scared, hurt, he’s so thankful you are alive. his heart flips once, as you grasp at his cloak, the material that has the blood of so many staining the threads. 
“gone,” you say, throat chalky, words nothing more than a note against the wind. “they fled when they heard it was you coming.” 
“and left you?” he asks, jaw clenching, as he hopes that the emotions aren’t as visible on his features as he thinks they are. “were you not a ransom?” 
“no,” you swallow, hard, as if in pain. he notices bruises around your neck, the shape of fingerprints indented there. “i was bait.”
anger rises up in him like a wave, engulfing him, wholly and relentlessly. he is no stranger to that, like he is the kindness you show him, the way you look at him as if he is your protector, rather than a bringer of destruction. “i’ll go after them. where are they headed? they’ll pay, i’ll slaughter—”
“ryunosuke,” you say, reaching for him as he stands, expression pleading as he backs away. “stay.” 
he has half a mind to ignore you — the enemy escaped, after all. but your voice. your eyes… you look so small sitting there, bloodied and bruised and broken. 
“please,” you try again, near tears, and though he has never been good with obvious displays of emotion, something within him snaps at the desperation in the word. 
he nods, slowing his pace as he returns to you, lets you wrap yourself in him, cling to him. his hands fall, naturally, to your waist, somehow knowing where they belong, even if akutagawa never has a clue what he’s doing with you. 
“i’ll call hirotsu,” he says simply, before pulling out his phone, not bothering to untangle himself from you. 
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𝐃𝐀𝐙𝐀𝐈 . . .
dazai is not a forgiving man, and will never learn to be. forgiveness is not a luxury he is often able to indulge in in his line of work, and his heart has hardened enough that until the end of time, those that are branded his enemies will remain his enemies. 
though, in his blackened heart, one soured over the course of time, you have carved out your own little space, lit it up with golden rays of light that are fiery enough to melt the stone casing of his chest. 
his only love — his only weakness. but it is a weakness that his enemies know about as well. 
dazai tries his best to keep you safe. he always has, and he knows that, sometimes, his grasp on you can be a little too tight. that the way he tries to keep you under his watchful eye can sometimes be stifling, frustrating. 
but he can’t always be there to protect you. and it is in times like these, that he regrets letting you go without a bodyguard. he regrets that he listened to your insistence that you could keep yourself safe. 
he should’ve at least told you to take a friend. 
“boss,” his subordinate says, bowing his head, his voice pleading, desperate. “i’m so sorry. your wife—”
“if anything… anything happens to her, you will be the one responsible, do you understand?” dazai says, his eyes cold as he glowers down at the man, only a few inches shorter than him, but feeling so much smaller. “i will personally see that this act does not go unpunished.” 
“of course, sir,” the man says, and he, at the very least, has the decency to sound resigned. to accept his fate and suffer the consequences, for allowing the boss’s wife to get herself into such a situation. 
and dazai means it, every last word; if he finds you in a state closer to death, anyone who put you in harm’s way will be torn apart from the inside out. he isn’t able to think of anything but bringing you home safely, his hands shaking with rage as he sends more than enough people out on a search to find you. 
with all the strings he’s able to pull as the mafia boss, it doesn’t take long to find you, for those that have bravely — or stupidly — used his wife as bait to come forward, and offer an attempt at some sort of negotiation. 
there’s little of the conversation that dazai remembers on the phone, even less that he remembers after that. the anger bubbles up in him and grabs hold of his conscience, the emotion directing his movements with a mind of its own. 
he’s already sent out every last one of his people into the field, ensuring that the organization that had the gall to threaten you is wiped off the face of the earth. deleted from every corner of the world, buildings flattened to the ground. by tomorrow, they won’t have ever existed. 
today, he doesn’t care what happens as long as he finds you alive. 
you’re held hostage by two men — so completely beaten that they’ve given up on any restraints. whatever they wanted from you, you seemed to refused to have given up, lip bleeding, eyes swelling so badly that you can’t even open them. 
dazai doesn’t hesitate before pulling the trigger on the first man, then turning to the other, shooting the hand that holds the pistol. the man recoils, shouts, and drops the weapon completely, as dazai lands another bullet to his knee, causing him to fall. 
slowly, dazai walks up, firing again to his other arm, a loud snap echoing throughout the room. the man winces, trying to crawl to the gun, one last desperate attempt to stay alive. 
he kicks the gun away, watching, as, pathetically, the expression in the enemy’s face changes — any of his remaining hope vanishes. 
“you told me she was unharmed,” dazai says, bending down, his coat flaring out behind him as he squats. 
the man coughs, gasping for air as the blood seeps out of him. “we lied.” he smiles cruelly, and though he shares the same sort of darkness as those in the port mafia, there is something even more twisted in his smile. 
dazai hums. “you the leader?” 
the man doesn’t give an answer, but the slight twitch of surprise on his face is all dazai needs. he’s no one — just a grunt whose life was put on the line to guard you. 
“didn’t think so.” dazai shoots him once, straight through the forehead, instantly killing him. but he is vindictive, angry, and the man he truly wants to destroy, the one who took you, is nowhere to be found. another bullet lands, tearing apart the flesh of his temple, then another, and one more, his skull beginning to cave in from the force of it all. 
dazai heaves, letting the gun clatter to the ground as it runs out of bullets, and then he realizes, all this time, you’ve just been watching him. the ugliest side of him — the worst side of him. 
you’re no stranger to it, of course. how can you be, when you’ve shared a life with him for years? but that doesn’t mean he wants you to see it, see how bloodthirsty he can become. 
he stumbles over to you, where you’re still sitting on the ground, your wrist in your lap, bent at an angle that he knows isn’t right. bruises are littered across your skin, and your hair is matted from the blood that pools at your temple. 
it takes every ounce of restraint he has to stay calm, a million feelings swirling under his skin. ones that he was never familiar with until he met you. 
“i’m sorry,” he says, taking your face in his hands so, so softly, worried that he’ll hurt you even more. “i’m sorry, darling. i should’ve — i should’ve been there.” dazai notices his hands are shaking and he balls them up into fists, leaning back. “fuck. fuck — i’ll kill them all, just tell me who it was. anyone who laid a finger on you. i’ll cut them down one by one.” 
“osamu,” you say, and your voice is raspy, cracking, as your unbroken arm reaches for him, squeezing his shaking hand. “i—”
you open your mouth to continue, but only tears come streaming down your cheeks, over your bloodied lips, saltiness soaking your jawline. no words don’t leave you, but a soft sob chokes itself up your throat.
“hey, hey, hey.” dazai’s voice softens, every muscle in his body relaxing as he draws you nearer to him, into his chest with a touch that’s barely there. “you’re safe. i’m here, okay? they’re not going to hurt you again, sweetheart.” 
you sniffle, barely making a sound, but he can feel the tears drop onto his clothes, soaking the material.
“can you walk? are you hurt anywhere else?” 
you hesitate for a moment before answering; he’s not sure if there’s a reason you only answer the first question. “i can walk.” 
dazai nods, and though the rage is still bubbling there, underneath the surface, there is a coolant streaming through him at the vision of you alive. the men who did this will pay the price, but he still has you — and that’s all that matters.
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thank you for reading !!! ❤︎
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sanakiras · 1 month
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HEAVEN
PAIRING — jeon wonwoo x fem!reader
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WORD COUNT — 3.4k
SYNOPSIS — wonwoo has a reputation for being distant, quiet and a bit mysterious. once you get to know him better, though, you come to find the sweet, shy boy underneath the surface.
TAGS — established relationship, explicit sexual content, sub-ish virgin!wonwoo, lowkey corruption kink, i have a sickening crush on this man can you tell, not proofread :)
♪ — the nbhd - heaven,, hank lotion - k-sEx
NOTE — gam3 bo1 wonwoo and ep 1 nana tour wonwoo footage has been making me act UP and i think he’s just so cute <3 screw the hard dom wonu agenda i like to see my men a lil WEAK ‼️😁
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like most people, you felt rather intimidated when you met jeon wonwoo for the first time.
stoic, quiet, intelligent. the strong and silent type. that was the clear image you had of him. and to top it all off, he had the criminally good looks too. a relatively rare kind of man to come across, in your opinion.
though you began to see him in a different light after bonding with him over your shared love for video games. since then, you’ve discovered he can actually be quite talkative, cracking silly puns or laughing at the corniest dad jokes. he’s well-spoken and is actually very open about his feelings, which you found refreshing.
and while developing a friendship with him, you realized how much of a big softie he actually is, which paints quite the contrast compared to his cold and quiet persona he unintentionally seems to put up towards those outside his circle of close friends and family.
it reminds you of the day he asked you out — that sweet, shy smile on his face with rosy cheeks, all flustered and stuttering that you really don’t have to say yes if you don’t feel like it and he’ll push it all to the side like nothing happened if that’s what you’d prefer—
you very easily interrupted him by agreeing to go on a date with him. you’d never seen him smile wider.
wonwoo is cute when he smiles.
and despite his nervousness in the beginning, he still made efforts to be as talkative as he could and show you his interest in you, which you found very sweet. you had a great time with him, and you noticed rather quickly how comfortable you felt around him.
a couple dates later, he asked you if you wanted to be his girlfriend, and you certainly didn’t refuse him.
he’s also turned out to be a gentleman in his own way — subtly saying he could do certain things for you to make your life easier in that monotone voice of his, eyes following you around whenever he’s with you.
the first time he slept over at your place was rather recently after you two made it official. it wasn’t planned, since he was supposed to go back to his place after your date, but due to issues with public transport, you offered him to stay with you instead.
with his face and chest bare, he got into bed next to you. of course you’d imagined what he looked like underneath his big hoodies, but actually having him by your side like this was different.
and wonwoo was putting every bit of effort into playing it cool, even though he was freaking out to be sleeping next to his first girlfriend, forcing himself to look away from your tank top that left very little to the imagination.
yet ironically, it was all he could fantasize about before drifting to sleep.
normally, you’d only let a guy into your bed to do things other than sleeping once you’ve been dating for quite a while. it’s never been something you like to initiate quickly — but wonwoo’s been making you question it. severely.
because he looks so hot when he’s out on the field with his football team, when he’s working out, when he’s gaming on his pc, even when he just fucking smiles at you. the worst thing of it all might be that he doesn’t even seem the slightest bit aware of how attractive he is, nor what effect it has on you.
maybe you should really just tell him you want to jump him like a tree.
but you don’t want to rush him. for all you know, he doesn’t feel like doing that at all with you yet, and for some reason you just didn’t know when or how to ask him about it. later, you thought to yourself.
though you will say you’ve been pushing his buttons a little over the course of time. ever since that night, you’ve subtly been putting yourself on display for him. low-cut shirts and dresses so he can take a peek at your cleavage, accidentally exposing a bit of the fabric of your lingerie, sitting in his lap and rubbing up on him — unintentionally, of course.
it took every ounce of self-control in your body not to smirk when you felt him stiffen up underneath you.
the progress of your relationship has been nothing but positive, really. but you’re aching for him to just touch you at this point.
the day you hit your breaking point isn’t much later. you were trying on some newly bought dresses in front of him, one more revealing than the other — sundresses always work magic on men for whatever reason — and you turned around to find him pathetically trying to hide his hard-on while seated on your bed.
and you just couldn’t find it in you to wait any longer.
so that’s how you ended up sitting in his lap, hands on the back of his neck as you’re grinding against him. his glasses are sitting lop-sided on his nose, black locks messy from your fingers threading through them, lips swollen from your kisses.
the moment he feels your fingers tugging at his hoodie, he feels the need to clear up what he’s been meaning to tell you for a while now.
“i need to tell you something. i’ve—” he cuts himself off when he accidentally lets out a whimper, “i’ve never had sex with anyone.”
he’s still heavily breathing, looking at you in anticipation, and you just can’t escape the buzzing feeling you get from the idea of taking his virginity.
“do you want to?” you ask him, and how could he say no when you’re holding his face like this, looking at him like you’re willing to give him the ride of his life?
“yeah, yeah, i just—i usually don’t last very long,” he sheepishly admits, then internally asking himself why the fuck he would say that, “sorry, i’m nervous.”
but you think it’s endearing. “i don’t mind. we can always go for a second round, right?”
all he can do is nod his head in agreement. “i, i um—i’m not sure what to do next. i’m sorry, this is embarrassing.”
“it’s not, really. it’s not some big performance you need to put up, it’s something fun and exciting and intimate. you can go ahead and relax, and tell me if you like or don’t like what i’m doing.” you reassure him so patiently, which puts him at ease.
jesus — if anything, he’s already a whimpering, stuttering mess and you’re hardly even touching him.
so you move your hand down into his boxers, fingers wrapping around him to test the waters. he gasps in surprise once he feels you touching him, heat rushing to his cheeks.
“just let me take care of you, ‘kay? we can stop anytime.” you tell him, and he trusts you enough to let you go on.
you press another kiss to his lips before moving backwards, fingers taking a hold of the waistband of both his sweatpants and boxers.
the cold on his skin makes him shiver, but he’s hardly given the time to feel exposed in front of you when you’ve already got your hands on him, pleasantly surprised by his size.
“you’re so big, wonu.” you tell him in a sweet voice, feeling like you’re about to drool at the sight of him.
“didn’t think i was big.” he mumbles more to himself than to you, staring at the ceiling as he tries to steady his breathing.
you chuckle a little as you watch him. “you are. gonna have to work for it to make you fit into me.” the words make his eyes widen, images of you getting fucked by him flashing through his mind.
“fuck, really?”
“mhm. but you’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
wonwoo is absolutely crumbling underneath you here. the effect that your mere words have on him should be studied, because shit, he’s never felt this hot before. why is it so hot in here? is he sweating already? “yeah, i’ll—i’ll do anything you want me to.”
he’s such a sweetheart that it makes you want to ruin him.
for the sake of both his and your own pleasure, you decide not to tease any longer and touch his cock with your lips. he lets out a moan of surprise, the feeling being unfamiliar to him, but holy shit — this has got to be what heaven feels like.
his chest heaves as he tries to control his breathing once more, focusing on keeping his breathing by his stomach. your tongue darts out to lick his cock, and he whimpers, which makes you triumphantly smile a little.
you’re genuinely curious to see how long he can last, so you catch him by surprise by taking him into your mouth as far as possible, and his hand subconscously flies to the back of your head, and he doesn’t know whether he wants to push your head down or pull it back. he releases a choked moan, spurring you on to keep him lodged in your throat despite his efforts to pull you off him.
“fuck—please don’t make me cum already, baby, please—” he begs, loving the feeling of your mouth on him like that — he just doesn’t want to hit his peak that fast.
unfortunately for him, you do.
with your mouth currently no longer on him, you gently jerk him off instead, his hips automatically bucking into your grip. "what if i want you to?"
“you’ve barely—barely touched me. ‘s embarrassing.” he chokes out. the heat is still rushing to his cheeks. his hands are shaking.
of course he’s nervous. you’re his first time, his first girlfriend, it’s all new to him. he’s clearly afraid you might be turned off by him being all flustered like this.
so you make it your mission to show him it’s very much the opposite.
discarding your dress, you’re left in your tank top and underwear, nipples poking through the thin, white fabric. you move to tilt his face up with your glossy, acrylic nail, gently holding his chin, your face mere inches away from his.
“do you have any idea how wet i am? just from seeing you like this?” you ask, pulling his one hand down so he can feel the dampness of your panties. “bet you could slip right in.”
a broken whimper slips out of his mouth when he feels it. he didn’t know you were this turned on.
you push his head and upper body back against the pillows, making him lie down fully, and you’re just so eager to suck the life out of him.
the feeling of your warm mouth and tongue around him makes him experience a sensation he didn’t think was possible. christ, this must be what heaven feels like.
“oh my god—you’re so fucking good.” he’s arching his back with his eyes tightly shut from the pleasure you’re giving him. it’s only when you take him as far in your throat as possible that the first guttural groan is ripped from the depths of his chest. it’s a low, sexy sound that makes you clench around nothing.
he’s burning hot under you, causing his glasses to fog up a little. he carelessly throws the pair onto his nightstand, the grip on the back of your head becoming harsher and less gentle than before, because he’s that fucking close now.
it’s cute seeing wonwoo not knowing what to do with himself. keeping your mouth on his cock, gripping the sheets, throwing his head back before he casts his eyes back down to watch you suck him off — it’s like he’s being overstimulated in the best way possible.
it’s enough for you to sense he’s close, which makes you take your mouth off him to jerk him off instead, all so you can watch him chase his release. “that’s it, wonu, give it to me.”
there’s a sudden shiver that runs from his back and core all the way down to his toes. he tenses up, unintentionally grabbing your wrist to stop your movements as he trembles and his body gives in to his orgasm.
once he’s coming down from his high, he looks at you like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“that was… holy shit.” he laughs a little to himself, eliciting a chuckle from you.
“i’m that good, huh?”
“yeah.”
“wanna keep going?”
“mhm.”
“okay. take off your shirt.”
wonwoo blinks for a moment. he practically forgot he was still wearing one, so he sits up and gets rid of the black shirt, throwing it beside your bed, now completely bare before you.
if he’s being honest, you did ease his nerves by letting him have his first orgasm already. the strange sense of shame he previously felt has disappeared into the air, with only nervous excitement left.
he feels good.
especially when he watches you move to sit on your knees on the bed, removing the tank top and slipping out of your underwear.
his eyes are glued to your naked body, hardly able to look away — that is, until you sit down in his lap, your dripping heat touching his hardening dick, making him twitch under you.
“where do you keep your condoms?”
the question forces him out of his constant staring at your body. “uh—nightstand.” he mutters, taking the initiative to reach and get it himself.
thankfully, he manages to get it on himself quickly. you urge him to lie back down again while you position yourself above him, shamelessly staring at his strong chest and broad shoulders.
his mouth is agape when you sink down on him, and fuck, he’s in so deep.
the stretch burns, especially because you didn’t get yourself ready, but you’re so dripping wet to the point you don’t care — you need him in you.
wonwoo notices you struggle despite your arousal. “you don’t have to take me all the way if it hurts.”
you hum, a half-smirk creeping onto your face. “but it hurts so good. so i will.”
once he’s sheathed fully inside you, he’s subconsciously holding his breath. the anticipation for you to move is killing him. the sensitivity of his dick makes him whimper, his lashes fluttering as his teeth sink into his lower lip in a failed attempt to hold it together.
you decide to tease him a little by clenching down on him. his hands fly to your hips, gripping the skin harder than intended from the sudden feeling, his breathing becoming erratic again. “hah—don’t do that, please, i don’t wanna cum yet baby—please.”
“why? you close?” you ask him with an innocent face, knowing damn well what you’re doing to him.
“yeah. need you so bad.” he answers truthfully, his ego and pride nowhere to be found anymore. whether he sounds pathetic or not, he doesn’t give a shit. all he knows is that you’re sitting on top of him and he needs you to make him feel what he’s been desperate to feel for so damn long.
so you tilt your head. “‘s okay, wonu. i’ll give it to you.”
he can hardly even make out a response before you lift your hips and proceed to sink back down on him, your hands on his chest. a filthy moan rolls past his lips — you think it’s the best sound you’ve ever heard in your damn life.
then you begin to roll your hips, and he sucks through his teeth from the feeling, a mix of overstimulation and pleasure rushing through him. once you let out your first dragged-out moan, his fingers twitch for a moment, digging deeper into your skin.
“have you thought about this? fucking me?”
despite the position he’s in right now, he still feels his face heat up when you ask him dirty things like that, even more so when he answers them.
“yeah, i did.”
“when? tell me. i wanna hear it.” you tell him, and when you’re so gorgeously riding him like this, how could he not oblige?
wonwoo swallows, stuttering as he focuses on recalling the memories while admiring you and the feeling you’re letting him experience. “when i saw you wearing that short skirt on our second date, and—and that time you came to watch me at the football game. couple of my teammates were drooling over you. so was i.”
his words turn you on, because you doubted whether you were sensing actual jealousy from him that night, and this confirms it.
“were you?” you ask, running your nails down his stomach. “what’d you do about it?”
he bites his lip. “i’ll sound like a pervert if i answer that.”
teasing him again, you push yourself down on him almost harshly, relishing in the way he gasps under you. wonwoo is wonderfully responsive in bed, and you’re having a fucking field trip with it.
“yeah? try me.”
“i touched myself after getting home, and i... thought about you. in that skirt.”
“i’ll wear it for you next time.” you smile, watching him close his eyes in pleasure when you leave your marks on his chest, putting a few hickeys on his neck and collarbone on purpose. “i touched myself thinking of you, too.”
that makes him twitch inside you, which is exactly what you wanted.
his hands dip to the curve of your ass, following your movement. “really?”
“mhm. i thought you looked so sexy in your football attire. you were wearing that tight compression shirt that you always wear when you go to the gym too — drove me nuts, wonu.” you confess, which seems to work as a brief shot of adrenaline for him.
he moves to sit up, bringing your bodies closer together by looping his arms around your waist, the slight change in position making you moan.
the drag of his cock inside you is slowly making you go insane. your face is hot and you’re dripping wet for him, sucking him in to the point you feel like you need to claw at the walls.
“god, feels so good.” he mutters, his mouth finding your breasts before he begins to suck on the skin like a man starved.
once he notices you’re both getting closer, but you’re getting tired from your position on top, he takes a breath and flips you over, now hovering above you.
burying his face in the crook of your neck, he holds onto your body and fucks you. his thrusts are harder than he intends them to, the control over his body lost in his relentless drive to make you both feel good.
he’s panting hard, doing everything in his power to make you cum first this time while indulging in his own pleasure as well. “am i doing good for my first time? does it feel good?”
god, you can only half-catch the words with the way he’s fucking you. it’s almost funny — such a sweetheart he is, asking you if he’s doing well while simultaneously fucking you into oblivion.
“you’re so good, wonu. so good—‘m so close.” you cry out, manicured nails digging into his back, making him groan.
“wanna feel you cum around me so bad.” the words almost sound like a plea, like he’s begging you for it.
then he kisses your neck, and he hits the perfect spot inside you over and over, and it’s enough to make you clench so hard around him that he can’t hold it any longer. your orgasm makes your legs shake, and he fucks you right through it, making you wonder why the hell it took the universe so long to let him into your life.
he moans and whines and shakes when he hits his climax, twitching inside you, filling up the condom. with heavy breaths, he lets his body rest on top of you, his head by your collarbone, a comfortable silence emerging as your heartbeats slow and breathing steadies.
surprisingly, it’s him who speaks up first.
“i’m gonna need a while for my legs to start working again.” he chuckles breathily, covering his face a little when he notices you poking fun at him.
“aw, baby, did i drain you that much?”
“i genuinely can’t even feel my limbs.”
you laugh at him, pressing a kiss to his cheek, and he smiles so sweetly — as if he didn’t just fuck the living daylights out of you. “wanna go again?”
he blushes a bit, tilting his head as if he has to think about it, before sheepishly giving you his answer.
“... yeah.”
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thanks for reading! let me know if u liked it x
® SANAKIRAS — do not repost, remake or copy my work in any way whatsoever. translations are not allowed.
862 notes · View notes
minswriting · 19 days
Text
SPENCER REID NSFW ALPHABET
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A = Aftercare
spencer is so good at aftercare!! after any session, he’s holding you, giving you kisses, or you’re doing that to him. he’ll see if you need anything while giving you the softest of smiles. he just loves you! and wants you to be taken care of!
B = Body Part
spencer’s favorite body part on himself are his hands and fingers. he loves to finger you, making you cum with nothing more than just his hands. however, on you, he loves your waist. he likes to grip it during sex or to just pull you to him by your waist while you’re walking down the street together.
C = Cum
when spencer cums, he cums a lot. and it has everything to do with the fact that he doesn’t have a lot of time to jerk off. so he really only ever has release when he’s with you. he will literally paint your whole entire body with his cum and then use it as lube to fuck you.
D = Dirty Secret
spencer is a switch (it’s not the secret) and would love for you to tie him up and blindfold him while you’re riding his cock. it’s the idea of being at your mercy every once in a while that really gets him going. but being who he is, he’s just too shy to mention it.
E = Experience
i don’t think spencer has a lot of experience at all. but due to his intelligence level, he’s a fast learner and loses his virginity with the knowledge of already knowing how to make you cum. once the two of you are comfortable with one another, it’s literally the best sex ever.
F = Favorite Position
spencer’s favorite positions definitely are missionary, riding, and one where you’re on your stomach lying down and his front is pressed against your back while he’s fucking you. it’s just so sensual and deep and just feels oh so good.
G = Goofy
depending on the mood, i think spencer can be a bit goofy. but it’s not like being funny. it’s just things to lighten the mood like a little giggle here and there or a comment about how beautiful you look while he has the softest smile on his face.
H = Hair
spencer most certainly had a happy trail and is actually very well groomed down there. he likes to maintain it simply because he likes to look clean. on you, however, he doesn’t care. so even if you have a bush, he’s eating you out like a starved man.
I = Intimacy
he’s very intimate when you guys have time to take your time. he’s maintaining eye contact with you, holding you close to him while he’s fucking you or you’re riding him, and regardless, he’s telling you how much he loves you and how beautiful you are. intimacy is like the norm for him when it comes to sex.
J = Jack Off
it’s very rare for spencer to jerk off but when he does it’s when he’s in the shower and he’s pumping his cock hard and fast in order to get some sort of release. this usually happens when he’s on long cases and he’s unable to stop thinking about you and your cunt.
K = Kink
okay so he’s got quite a few. when he’s feeling more subby, he’s lowkey got a mommy kink. but when he’s in his dominant mood, he wants you to call him sir. i feel like spencer is also very huge in body worship. he’s got a huge praise kink (giving and receiving) and a huge degradation kink (giving and receiving). also lowkey he’s into somnophilia.
L = Location
he prefers to have sex in the comfort of your bedrooms. however, you guys have definitely fucked in the restroom at the bureau. and at a few bars. and in the car. and in the kitchen. and in the living room. honestly you guys have fucked in every room in your apartments.
M = Motivation
you. just simply you. he’ll take one glance at you while you’re working on something and he would start imagining you on your knees in front of him. or him on his knees eating you out while you’re doing your work. he just wants you wholeheartedly.
N = No
this definitely stems from the trauma of his profession but anything that hurts you or is a risk to your life in any way, shape, or form is a big no for him. he can do choking but not enough for you to actually lose your breath.
O = Oral
HE LOVES IT!! spencer is such a munch. he will eat you out for ours and make you cum at least twice on his tongue before he does anything else. he is also big on receiving it too. 69 all the way baby 😏😏
P = Pace
definitely depends on the mood. when he’s stressed and just needs release, you guys are fucking hard and fast. but if you both just want to feel close to one another, you guys are fucking slowly and sensually, clinging to one another for dear life.
Q = Quickie
loves them. especially early in the morning right before he has to get ready for work. you wake him up by riding his cock and he’s whining beneath you. god it’s his favorite thing. he also loves bending you over the counter and taking you from behind.
R = Risk
spencer likes to think he’s modest and would not take any risks. but he’s lowkey an exhibitionist and gets off on the idea of being caught at some point. so he’ll fuck you in places like the bathroom or fitting rooms.
S = Stamina
depends on the day but usually he has enough stamina to do two rounds. when he’s exhausted though, he can only do one.
T = Toys
loves them! especially when he’s away, he wants to call you while you’re fucking yourself with a dildo, imagining his cock inside of you. he absolutely adores using vibrators on you to tease the hell out of you too.
U = Unfair
dom spence can be so unfair. he loves to overstimulate you and do orgasm denial. but he also loves it when you do the same to him. deny his orgasm until he can’t help but cum without your permission. or overstimulate him until he’s got nothing left.
V = Volume
he’s very vocal. he’s a whiner, a whimperer, a moaner, a groaner. he’ll praise you, talk dirty to you, talk you through it. and he loves it when you reciprocate it. he’s not afraid to make noise with you.
W = Wild Card
spencer loves getting pegged.
X = X-Ray
i think spencer is just above average. he’s about seven or eight inches but his cock is skinny, not girthy. especially due to his thin and lean build. but he knows what to do with it. and regardless, you’ll be cumming on his cock.
Y = Yearning
i think he’s someone with a high sex drive but with immense self control. he wants you 24/7. but he knows to control himself because sex isn’t as big of a priority as is making sure you’re both happy and thriving.
Z = ZZZ
depends on the day but spencer will always do aftercare before falling asleep. so i would say he would fall asleep at least a half an hour after sex.
629 notes · View notes
it-happened-one-fic · 1 month
Note
Hi, sorry to bother you but I would like to ask for a post from Leona, where Cheka is trying to get her two favorite people married (ie Leona and the reader)
Hi! Sorry it took me so long to respond to your ask! I had a bit of trouble writing this one, but over all I had fun too. I hope you enjoy!
Duly-Noted - Leona
Type: Gender-neutral reader/ fluff/ sfw/ featuring Cheka/ request
Word Count: 1790
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Leona huffed out a sigh as he watched Cheka play with you on the floor of the Ramshackle dorm from his relaxed lounging on the couch.
It hadn’t taken him long to figure out his nephew’s scheme when, as soon as the little fuzzball had appeared, he’d cheerfully stated that he wanted to come and play with you. Of course, Cheka had given himself as soon as he’d included his demands that Leona come along with him, even though he’d been to visit you at Ramshackle dorm plenty of times on his own.
Cheka was definitely fond of you, and Leona couldn’t really blame the kid considering how you patiently played along with the child. But that wasn’t what was really going on here.
What was going on here had more to do with Cheka’s pressing questions about why Leona so often told family members that he wasn’t particularly attached to anyone at school.
He could still see Cheka’s bright eyes looking up at him with an insistent frown on his face, “You know that is true, Unca! You like Y/n!”
Leona had snorted at his nephew, shaking his head at the child and, for once, was genuinely amused, “And what makes you think that?”
“You look at them the same way Papa looks at Mama. And Y/n likes you too! Why don’t you just take them home with you? Then you don’t have to worry about leaving them here while you visit us!” Cheka was as determined as Leona had ever seen him, but it was a drastic misreading of the situation.
Leona had plenty of reasons to not want to visit home, and none of them had a thing to do with you. But the moment he’d told the child that, Cheka had smiled. 
He’d been all but beaming up at Leona from where he sat on his lap, hands fisted in Leona’s shirt like he thought his uncle would run away, “But you do like them.”
There were moments, like right then, when Leona almost wondered if Cheka was more intelligent than his father. Perhaps he’d taken after his mother in that sense. But then Cheka’s hare-brained plot for tricking you and Leona into a relationship certainly hadn’t been well schemed.
After all, Leona wasn’t the only one who'd caught on. You had, too. Though, to be fair, Cheka wasn’t exactly being stealthy with his questions about how, “Wouldn’t it be great if we all lived together?”
Leona had fully planned on handling it, but you'd only smiled, shaking your head and saying you’d talk to Cheka about it, “He’s just a kid after all, and he doesn’t mean any harm. There’s no need to come down on him so hard.”
Leona had only eyed you with rising eyebrows before shrugging, “Have it your way. But he won’t drop this easily. He’s a stubborn little thing.”
You’d snorted, elbowing him lightly as you went by to rejoin his nephew, “Must run in the Kingscholar family.”
And that had been that.
Truthfully, Leona hadn’t known what you’d told his nephew, but Cheka had fallen largely silent on the matter of a possible romance with you after that. 
In hindsight, though, Leona really should have known better to think that was all there was going to be to it. Nothing was ever that simple. Especially when you or his nephew were involved.
He had to hand it to Cheka, though; he’d been completely caught off-guard when the child had suddenly questioned him about his wedding plans. Especially since it happened during a trip to Sam’s with Ruggie.
Cheka held up the little ring-shaped lollipop, and before Leona could even start to refuse to buy the treat for him, the child spoke with innocent curiosity, “What kind of ring are you going to get for Y/n when you two get married?”
Leona blinked, his eyes widening as he stared at the child who just stared up at him while Ruggie did a spit-take and Sam’s eyebrows lifted. The only sound that broke the silence was the occasional beep as Sam continued to scan items.
Leona finally frowned, crossing his arms as he eyed the child, “What makes you think I’m going to marry the Herbivore?”
Cheka frowned almost immediately, as if he were trying to mirror his uncle’s expression, “Y/n and you like each other. But Y/n said they couldn’t move in with us until you two had gotten married. They said people would talk since we’re royals and they aren’t if you didn’t.” 
Cheka’s expression slowly shifted to one of concern, his tiny hand reaching out and grasping Leona’s pants leg, “You are going to marry them, aren’t you, Unca? Y/n’ll be sad if you don’t.”
Ruggie only barely managed to contain his laughter in an ugly-sounding snort that had Leona shooting him a look while a smile began to creep across Sam’s face.
“Did they?” Leona’s gaze shifted back to his nephew as he spoke, his tone careful as he eyed the child. But he was already putting two and two together without Cheka having to say anything.
You certainly had talked to Cheka about it, but now Leona was going to have to talk to you about this.
Ruggie wiped his eyes lightly before kneeling, humor still flooding his voice even as he eyed Cheka, “Well, marriage is a pretty big deal, Cheka. Leona can’t just go proposing without putting some real thought into it.”
Cheka frowned, but Ruggie only titled his head, reasoning with the child easily, “Y/n deserves the best, don’t you think?”
Leona watched, eyebrows raised, as Cheka frowned thoughtfully before his tiny face cleared like a sun coming out from behind clouds, and he nodded, smiling widely, “Oh! I see! Leona wants to sweep Y/n off their feet like those princes in the stories Mama likes so much.”
Leona didn’t even bother hiding his groan as Ruggie snickered mischievously, nodding and egging on the child, “Exactly, so you’re going to have to give him some time to do just that.”
Ruggie paused, glancing up at Leona with a grin that had Leona glaring at him warningly. But the hyena beastman was hardly even phased as he looked back at the child seriously, his eyes sparkling with poorly disguised mischievousness, “We’ll both have to support him, Cheka.”
Cheka’s expression turned determined as he nodded before looking up at Leona, “Good luck, Unca!”
Leona sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out an annoyed, “Uh-huh,” as he watched Ruggie lead his nephew out of the store.
 He would get Ruggie for what a mess this was inevitably going to end up being, as well as deal with whatever the little mercenary wanted in exchange for his assistance later. First, he had a certain herbivore to find.
And he couldn’t complain that you were hard to find. But then you never were.
You were, as ever, at Ramshackle. Working on upkeep for the run-down building on your day-off, just like you usually did on the weekends when you weren’t working at the Mostro Lounge.
Leona didn’t even have to call out since Grim handled letting you know he was here for him.
You turned, blinking up at him in surprise, before a smile split its way across your face. Leona wasn’t really looking at you, though. Instead, he was staring at the busted chair you were apparently working on with a frown. 
How the crossbar had wiggled its way out, was beyond him, but that was evidently enough, what had happened.
“Leona! No little prince with you today?” Your voice was bright, and Leona found himself looking back your way as he propped himself in the doorway.
He crossed his arms as he looked down at where you were seated on the floor, tilting his head at you, “Nope, but a certain little prince did tell me what you told him the other day.”
You blinked in confusion before your eyes slowly cleared, and you let out a small chuckle, shaking your head slightly, “Oh, that. He bought the marriage excuse pretty easily, and at least that way I didn’t have to lie or something like that to him.”
Leona felt his eyebrows rise at your words as you twisted to go back to work on the chair, seemingly unconcerned by what side effects your words might have had.
“Yeah, but now that he’s found out we’re dating when no one else has, he’s going to report directly back to either Falena or his wife,” Leona pushed himself off the wall as he spoke, walking over to where you were.
You simply shook your head at his disgruntled words, a smile on your face, “I still don’t see why it would be so horrible for them to know. But even if he does tell them, they probably won’t believe him. Not if Falena is as concerned about your love life as you say he is.”
Leona frowned as he watched you before kneeling and reaching around you to help you support the chair while you fought the crossbar into place, “No, he’ll call and ask all sorts of questions or, worse, have his wife ask me all sorts of questions.”
You hummed, tilting your head slightly, “You’ll be able to handle it if it comes to that. But, like I said, I really don’t see why it’s a big deal if they know or not. I’d like to meet your family.”
Your words caused his eyebrows to lift once more as he glanced over at you, watching as a frown crossed your face.
You glanced over your shoulder at him, confusion accenting your voice as soon as you spoke, “How did you find out what I’d told Cheka anyway? Did he just tell you?”
Leona let out a huff, his ears twitching as he glanced off to the side, “He saw one of those lollipop ring thingies at Sam’s and asked me what sort of ring I was going to get you for the wedding.”
You laughed aloud, earning yourself a look even as you shook your head in light-hearted amusement before glancing at him, “Hopefully nothing like a Ring-pop. That would be hideous.”
Leona grinned, leaning forward to rest his chin on your shoulder, “You don’t want something big like that?”
You snorted, shaking your head, “No. I think a rock that size, even a fake one, would be a little heavy.”
He let out an amused huff, turning his eyes back to the chair as he idly considered what sort of ring might actually be best, “Duly noted.”
After all, your thoughts on it all mattered too, even if you didn’t know that held actually had been looking at some rings already.
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kelluinox · 2 months
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Oh are people mad at JKR again and calling out her antisemitism? That's funny. No, it is! It's funny when people suddenly care about antisemitism after these 5 months we've had. It's funny when people who threw a grand ol party on October 7th suddenly care about being antisemitic. It's funny when the people who called the kidnapping and rape and largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust justified resistance... suddenly care about the Holocaust. It's funny to hear their "very angry very loud very righteous outrage against antisemitism" when they have:
1) said and done nothing about the hostages being held by Hamas, among which there is a baby and a 4 yo and women being subjected to sexual torture
2) done nothing to pressure the embarrassment called the Red Cross to pass vital medicine to the hostages and actually do its job
3) have gone full Holocaust denial with their denial of the 7th... despite eagerly sharing videos of Shani Louk and Naama Levy and Noa Argamani and the Nova Festival massacre as it was happening, asking Hamas to film their slaughter horizontally and calling victims "hipsters" as the massacre was actually happening
4) called for the murder and expulsion of half the world's jews from the Levant, labeling them all colonizers despite us being indigenous... which is ironic because they certainly don't seem eager to move their own ass and go back to wherever they came from (looking at you Americans, Canadians, Australians - shut the fuck up you hypocritical bitches)
5) attacked, and harassed, and bullied, and even murdered jews all over the world since the 7th. Jewish students were told to hide in the attic from an angry mob, have been unable to walk to class without verbal or physical attacks, have been unable to mourn the biggest massacre of jews since the Holocaust, have had posters of the kidnapped jews that they put up torn down, have had all their attempts at talks about antisemitism and peace derailed and have even been unable to wear their magen david without harassment. Jewish business have been targeted and defaced. And Paul Kessler and Samantha Woll were murdered. Murdered!
6) refused to listen to jews about antisemitism and have eagerly repeated antisemitic conspiracy theories as old as the middle ages like the gullible bigoted little idiots that they are: Jews control the media by distracting Americans from Gaza by using Spotify Wrapped, the Superbowl, and making a Stop Jewish Hate ad (wow do I 'love' it when Americans make fun of their own intelligence by admitting that they're so easily distracted). Jews poison wells - they poison Palestinian land. Jews steal Christian kids and drink their blood - Jews kidnap blond Palestinian children and steal organs from Palestinian corpses. Jews love killing and are bloodthirsty monsters - Jews intentionally target civilians, have killed 0 terrorists whatsoever, and are rubbing their hands in glee watching mass starvation unfold. Oh, and they also do all this on Ramadan because they're evil like that. Beyond that we also have had: Jewish doctors are not to be trusted - straight out Stalin's doctor's plot. And Zionists are racists - straight out of Imperial Russia's Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Wow, congrats on quoting Imperial Russia and the leader of the Soviet Union, fuckers. Though frankly you don't seem embarrassed about that considering your genocidal intifada posters display the hammer and sickle, do you?
7) have ignored literally everything Hamas has done. From the rape and brutal murders and kidnapping (videos of which they published themselves!). To the tunnels. To the theft of aid. To the execution of civilians following humanitarian corridors to safe zones. To using hospitals to hide weaponry, terrorists and hostages. To forcefully keeping civilians in said hospitals even as they try to evacuate, using them as human shields. To shooting at civilians who try to get some aid before it's stolen. To sending 4 yo children to Israeli soldier camps to assess their preparedness. To keeping weapons beneath a child's bed. To enlisting child soldiers. To programming children with Mein Kampf. To launching rockets from next to kindergartens and across the street from a building belonging to the joke we call the UN. To breaking the November ceasefire 15 minutes in because even an hour without killing jews was too difficult for them to accomplish. To separating families despite the hostage deal being that families will not be separated. To branding the Jewish boys they took hostage (sound familiar to you yet?). To forcing child hostages to watch their October 7 videos and threatening to shoot them if they cry. To raping female hostages. To depriving elderly and chronically ill hostages of life saving medicine. To forcibly converting female hostages. To not releasing the Bibas family despite the deal being that all children be returned. To executing hostages and then lying they died in air strikes despite the cause of death being a bullet. To creating sick games where they publish photos of hostages and dare psychopaths on the internet to guess which are dead and which alive. The list goes on and on and on and you lot stick your fingers in your ears every single time and go "lalala not listening".
8) Have supported the Houthis who literally have "a curse upon the jews" in their slogan
9) Have supported Bin Laden
10) Have supported Iran by supporting its proxy - Hamas.
11) Have shamed Ukrainians for trying to remind them that Russia is still attacking them, and told them that they should support Palestine when... Hamas and the Houthis have literally visited Moscow and Iran are Russia's allies. Good job, guys. Good job.
12) Have done everything to exaggerate what's happening, twist the facts and demonize Israel, all the while portraying it as "criticism". A war is suddenly not bad enough on its own - it has to be a genocide to get people to care. Displacement caused by a war is not bad enough - it has to be ethnic cleansing. Israel is suddenly a fascist Nazi state... despite being democratic and Jewish (where have all the people who laughed at Putin for calling Zelensky a nazi despite Zelensky being a jew gone? I wonder). The war in Gaza has to be the worst conflict on Earth, despite there being ongoing genocides in Sudan and China and the goddamn invasion of Ukraine.
And before any of you antisemitic goyim start furiously typing that it is a genocide and I'm a genocide apologist, please do keep in mind that jews know more about genocide than you ever will. And being a Russian jew I will know more about fascism than you ever will. So do us all a favor, shut up and listen to people more educated on the matter than you.
13) Have tried to define Zionism and Judaism and Jewish history to jews. Thanks for the goysplaining, I guess
14) Have mocked released hostages and their testimonies. Falsely claimed that they were not mistreated and actually written fanfics of them falling in love with the terrorists who murdered their families and kidnapped them
15) Have defaced the statue of Amy Winehouse
16) Have made lists of jews. Oh, sorry, "zionists"
17) Have devolved into race science
And to conclude my post, here are just a few photos of the shit goyim have done since october:
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netherfeildren · 4 months
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Honey, Stomach, Mine ; 2. More Intelligent Than a Face
Series Masterlist ; Part 1. ; Part 3.
Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics; Dystopian Society; Outbreak not Cordyceps AU; Angst & Yearning™️; Slow Burn; Sexual Inexperience; Cock Riding; Size Difference; Size Kink; Sex Ed for Omega’s 101; Power Dynamics; Creampie; Discussions of Heats and Knots and Slick, Oh My!; Virginity; Emotional Hurt/Comfort; Young and Needy Omega; Possessive Behavior; Age Gap
A/N: FYI I do mention that she has small breasts in this one only because I usually write big boobs and thought it was time for some itty bitty titty committee representation. 
Word Count: 13.9K
Read on AO3
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2. More Intelligent Than a Face
Existence is a strange thing, a needful thing. Something to be sated, filled, satisfied, this ordeal of being a living, breathing person. And to be an unusual sort of person, someone with needs extra to what the regular sort would require, doubly strange. 
You had always thought, in different ways, that the mating program, although a choice thief, a freedom thief, was also benevolent in its control in some ways. After all, it gave those of you who were of the not usual sort, alphas and omegas, that such thing that you needed so badly. 
Each other. 
A bad, terrible, devastating thing that in turn gives you something necessary, life changing, life fulfilling, even, perhaps. 
When your aunt had died and you’d been taken away and then put away and then shut away for what seemed would be forever, it had not, at first, in your child’s mind, seemed so terrible. But with the years, that existence you bore that needed, it began to hurt. It eventually became a very terrible thing that in turn, had taken away your ability to recognize yourself, as well. The reality that you’d been caged because of what you were, perhaps not particularly who, but certainly, what, was, at first, difficult to see. And then, when you did see it, even more difficult to look at. 
A thing caged because of what it is. And again, existence is a strange and needful thing. Caged because of what you exist as; caged because of what you need because of what you are. Caged because they can give you what will sate you. 
You open your eyes slowly, the bright, waning golden light of dusk shooting over the edge of the end of the world; bleeding pinks and violets feeding the fire. And he’s there, in a deeply set arm chair pulled up by the hearth, staring into the flames, and you realize, like you’d never truly considered before, that the cage was in part also his fault. That in ways, you’d been put away also because of what he is. You wonder if this should make you angry, resentful. If it should mean you should not want to be here, langoring so comfortably in his home that he’d brought you to. This man who you do not know, who does not so much even look like he wants to know you. In ways, your caging is his fault. And certainly, concretely, the prolonging of that caging was entirely of his doing. So why is there no resentment?
Once, one of the other omegas had said that they were brainwashing all of you. Preparing you, ripening you for slaughter. He’d come in later than the rest of you, when he was more grown, more mature, when he’d seen more things in his before life. He had lots of opinions, lots of thoughts, said that your before life, those ten years of living with your aunt, of only being a child like all the rest of them and not an omega, did not count. He said you’d been too young to understand all you’d lost. A boy named Leo. He was kind, but he was angry. And his anger frightened you. It was something you did know, in the sense that you could recognize it, for you’d seen anger before, but you could not understand it. For some reason, maybe you were built wrongly, and Leo was right, and you should have been angry like him, but you could never find it within yourself to muster it. Maybe there was nothing wrong about it. Maybe everyone was simply built and made and felt differently and that was fine too. But you knew that he was wrong on some accounts, particularly, that your before life had counted, that your aunt, who you remembered with so much love, had counted. And most of all, what he was most painfully wrong about, was that you did, and deeply, understand all you had lost. 
After all, you could only see the sky for one hour a day, every other day, now, and that one hour made your understanding of everything around you, everything happening to you, keen and painful and humiliating in a very clear way. 
The last rays of the sun wash Joel in vibrant orange reds now. A slash of glowing vermillion across his face, something almost violent about the streak of light, something possessive, and you focus your eyes intently on the sight of his face. This man, this alpha, who for all intents and purposes would or could own you as declared by the government or nature or even Leo and all he’d said would happen once you’d been claimed. 
But there was one last thing he’d been wrong about, that young, angry boy, and what you felt was the greatest chasm between the way the two of you had existed within your new designations, which was that, at one very recent point in Leo’s memory, he had belonged to someone, to somewhere. He’d had a place and a home and a family, and he had belonged, and you had never had that. Your aunt, despite her love for you, had been too old and tired to want you, truly want you. You had never been wanted in any soft, true way by anyone before. And looking at him now, you don’t think Joel could ever be capable of wanting anything in a soft way, but you do think he could want something in a true way, and you’re certain that could be more than enough for you. 
“Why didn’t you come for me?” Your voice, scratchy and small from sleep, floating away from you towards him. He jerks, the twitching returned, head snapping towards you, eyes wide, moving forward in his seat as if he’d spring out of it and towards you without thought. His scent seems to be heightened somehow now. As if your sleep had awakened your senses in new, keener ways. You can feel him tickling the back of your throat, threading his way through your hair, beneath your clothes, between your legs. 
“Are you hungry?” He asks, ignoring your question. “When was the last time you ate? You need to eat.” And again that frown, too many fast words. 
“Why didn't you come for me?” You press. “They told me you didn’t know if you wanted to come, that you wouldn't answer. I want to know why.”
He sighs a heavy, heaving thing, falling back in the chair, and turns back to the fire, and you want to whine and cry until he puts his attention back on you. You feel so… so– you don’t know. Little, unmade, with a need to be big, to grow and grow and grow so that all the things you feel and want might fit inside of you, so that he might fit inside of you. You feel hungry as if your gums ache and sting with a desire you’ve never tasted before. But also, and despite all of these conflicting, churning things, you also feel so inexplicably at ease. He’s just there, and you are just here, and you’ll make him answer, you know you have it in you to make him do the things you want, and you can’t say how, you don’t know how, but you understand that you do. 
There’s power in that – even as you are, all you are not, you can see it – the ability something small possesses to make something big move, do, be. There’s power in that. 
You whine low in your throat, and he turns back to you, something dark and tumultuous in his eyes, brow crooked sternly, but he opens his mouth. “I was going to leave you there,” he says, and you immediately wish he’d shut it. Never mind, you want to tell him, you say all the wrong things.  
“But why? I was waiting for you.” Whine, whine, whine.
“I didn’t want this. I never have.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want me?” You ask again, just to be absolutely certain you’re understanding that you’ve once again found yourself in a place where you are not wanted for, or despite of, the thing that you are. The logistics, the intricacies of it don’t seem to matter as much anymore, after everything, the before life, the not life, all that matters now is the yes or no. 
But he goes silent again, attention back toward the fire, the sun set, no more glowing vermillion slash, very little hope now too. 
He ignores your question again. “Tell me about the place they kept you,” he says instead. 
“There’s nothing to tell.” You want to cry now, for the first time, besides the tears of initial happiness when he’d finally walked into your white box, you want to cry. You dig stubby nails into the round of your knee, hard as you can, trying to make it hurt and distract. “It was very calm and very quiet.”
“Did you have friends?” He won’t turn back to look at you, and it makes you feel very lacking. Very much like the nothing they tried to make you feel you were before. 
“No. They wouldn’t let us.”
“They wouldn’t let you have friends?”
“No. They said it would agitate us – too much socialization. Really, they just didn’t want us realizing, becoming angry and aware”
This makes him turn, makes you feel, within yourself, the anger you’re telling him of, like oh, now, when I’ve been shocking and honest, you look at me – after I waited all that time for you. There is no resentment about the cage, only for the waiting. You should stick your tongue out at him, make him an ugly face, turn over and go back to sleep and ignore him the way he’d ignore you. But no, you think, let him see that you do understand, and you do know some things, that you are angry, and Leo was right.
“What did you do then?” He asks. 
“I read. I learned about myself, about you. About what we are.”
His gaze is so intense now, a ricochet, a scream, something very persistently sad. “And what are we?”
“People just like all the rest of them. But with more necessity.”
“How do you mean?”
You tip your head side to side, bright fire eyed gaze to bright fire eyed gaze. Your cheeks feel molten, sweltering, sweat at your nape, the fire in the hearth so bright, but not as bright as you; your belly glows. This is what you are, this is what you’d been made into. “There is so much necessity in existing, don’t you think?”
He tips his chin, he doesn’t understand. 
“We need so many things. We require so much to be alive, to be what we are, to be satisfied and content.”
“Do we?”
“The things we are, yes. I think so.”
“You don’t seem like you spent years in that place,” he says, voice slow, molasses in the notes. There’s something hypnotized slumbering in him that forces something satisfied to swell within you. Your belly glows. 
“I had a before life. People forget that.”
“I read in your file — you lived with an aunt.”
You wait for the: only for ten years, but the diminishing does not come. “Yes. She was kind, and I remember all of it, even if the rest of the world forgets it happened.”
“Did they ever mistreat you? At the facility–”
“No. Never. There was nothing.” You’re the one to turn away now. The sun has entirely gone away, a single glowing sliver just at the drop off of the end of the world. You stick your hand out straight ahead of you, fingertip following that line of fading light through air and space and sea. 
He watches you unblinkingly, and asks, “What do you mean?” The far off light glows through your skin, through your fingernail; he follows the path of your hand.
You can pretend in your mind that you feel the warmth of it against your fingertip, that it scorches the way it glows, heats the length of your limb, feeds the same glow in your belly, but there’s no more possessive streak of light to wrap around you; now, the heat only lives within you. This is what you are, this is what they said would happen, and now it’s finally happening. You let your arm fall back to your lap, limp, and turn to look at him again. He looks so angry, and you feel so incredibly sad for him. This cold perch, this cage that is not white like your box, but dark and struck right on the edge of peril, this place he chose to exile himself to. They were honest, in the things they'd told you all, the truth of the way alphas exist out in the world. Lonely and ostracized and feared, brainwashed to your reality maybe, sure, the way Leo claimed. But in certain things, they’d been honest, and you’re glad for it, that you have the ability to understand him now from this vantage point. The reality of how he exists, the reason for that look in his eyes, it all makes sense to you. 
“I suppose that can be a kind of bad thing… a mistreatment. Making nothing of us, of our lives, taking the whole world away until someone chooses to come and give it back to us.”
He flinches, the look shutters, clicks and flashes, a camera capturing the truth of what the two of you have already done to each other without even really knowing one another at all. “I’m sorry I waited. I’m sorry I took so long.” The words cost him something the way all truths cost something. “That I wasn’t there for you as soon as I should have been.”
“Why weren’t you?” You ask, although you know. 
“I couldn’t. I can’t. I’m not– I’m not right. I’m not well.” And this costs him more than the rest, you can see. The thump, thump, beat of his heart in his throat. You should tell him to stop, mercy is power, but you think, feel, that this pound of flesh you’re demanding via his truths is what you’re owed for your life and a year of waiting. And anyways, you’ll pay your own pound of flesh in kind eventually, and it’ll cost, even if it’s freely given, it’ll still cost. Everything is equal here, it’s only that it takes a certain kind of eye to realize the truth of that. 
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Everything, what I am, the whole thing of it and this. It’s all wrong.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know.” And he looks suddenly angry, aged, wearing all his years and all his very obvious loneliness, teeth bared but on the verge of falling out.
“No…” you say slowly, thinking, rationalizing, a rolodex of truths in your mind. What you are, what I am, what we all are and all the honesties that compromise us. “I don’t, but I understand anyway. They make you all nothing, as well, don’t they? They take it all away, all nothing until you have one of us. It’s a terrible way to live.” And you don’t ask him, it’s not a question, only a very obvious thing. 
Your words upset him, put him right at the mouth of madness, all those shakes and jitters returned, but you only lay your head back down on the soft pillow he’d tucked beneath you, hands folded undercheek to wait for the explosion that does not come. There’s something in you that wants to see him angry, angry like Leo, like the boy who’d said you didn't have to be what they told you to be, that reminded you that you could choose for yourself. One of the few things you’d agreed on, despite and inspite of the friendship that they would not let you have but that would have blossomed anyways if they’d given you the time. They wanted to make you nothing, but you didn’t want to be nothing. You wanted very much to be alive and to belong. 
You realize, watching Joel muzzle his nature before your very eyes, wondering if the truth of him would have him springing up out of the chair to smother you with his weight and temper you with his knot, subdued with his teeth sunken into the gland at the back of your neck, that you want to see him angry. You realize that you want to see him break, that you want to hear that truth no matter what it costs the either of you. You want to see him honest. 
He struggles, a dog fight right before your eyes, but when he wins, it changes the game, turns the truth chimeral. Makes you see him in a different way, and all at the same time, makes you aware and even more comfortable than you’d already been. You’re safe here. He is safe. Most importantly, you want to be here. 
“Let me show you your room,” he says after a deep breath. 
“My room?” A little seedling of dread and sadness and disappointment. 
He shows you to a bedroom hued in soft blues. The sea when it is gentle, the sky when it’s joyous. Everything comfortable, nothing white, like he’d known already. 
He stands awkwardly at the mouth of the entry, as if scared to step foot into this serene pool of azure and marr it’s peace. You watch him out of the corner of your eye as you move around, no shoes, no socks, slowly running your fingers over all the soft surfaces, sweaty little toes sunken into the deep pile of the rug underfoot. 
“I wanted you to have somewhere to adjust– where you’d have privacy. I’m sure this– that I– that it’s all a shock…” he stutters.
One of his boots inches forward, snaps back, like he wants to follow, like he needs to follow, like nature is right here in the room with the two of you, but he wins that dog fight again, holds back. Frustrating. 
“I’m not shocked. But I– I won’t stay with you?”
“No,” he says with a finality that makes that seedling bloom in full. “I also got you clothes. And– and soft things. I know your sort–”
You give a soft huff of air through your nose, my sort… our sort.
“Like things like that. And I also… I also put some of my own things in the drawers,” he nods towards a dark mahogany dresser shoved up against the wall; shy and boyish and hesitant all wrapped into a package that would seem to be none of those things. “They say that helps.”
“Okay… thank you.” 
“Went into town to get it,” he says of the robin's eggshell blue duvet, a more dove gray blue wash for the silk soft sheets beneath. It’s all beautiful and delicate and lace trimmed and looking at him, huge and rough and something like a lonely mountain, you can’t believe he’d chosen this for you. “Lady at the store said you’d like it when I picked it out.” And that makes satisfaction smother the seedling, yes, he’d chosen it for you. A good sign. 
“You went into town to get me things?”
“I told you I want you to be comfortable while you’re here.” Something about the sentence tickles your mind, but then you’re lowering yourself onto the cloud soft bed, cool silk and cotton beneath your skin, sliding against his clothes, your belly glows bright. You’re full of distractions and truth. “There’re a couple of young women that live down aways.” Young women? You perk up at the thought. Friends? “Ellie and Dina. Two young alphas, and they’re good people. I’ll take you down to meet them soon, when you’re ready.”
“Two alphas?”
“They’re a couple.”
“Like– like in love?”
He hovers at the edge of the rug with that strange look in his eyes again, the one from before – I’m only an omega, you don’t have to be afraid of me – and a palpable desperation to cross the border you don’t think he’s even aware he’s letting you in on, but that you can see nonetheless. Two fingers tucked into the line of his belt, twisted there as if grasping for restraint. 
“Yeah, they’re together.”
“I didn’t know alphas could do that… that they’d let you.”
“Reckon it’s why they came all the way out here, to be honest, for freedom. But ‘course they can – be together, that is. We can do what we please, despite what they’d have us believe.” And Leo’s words ring in your mind again. Perhaps everyone sees the truth of what you are except for you. The seedling grows vines, suffocates. All the hope you’d thought would live here seems to have never even existed at all. You feel, for the first time, heavy with all the things you do not know, all the things you lack, all the inexperience and naivety like ignorance thick and cloying in your blood. “From what I understand, Dina presented late, after they’d already gotten together. And by that time it was a done deal, they were in love, no going back. And anyway, they make it work, make it look easy as nothin’, to be frank.” He runs a big hand over the back of his skull, and the way he lifts his arm has the thick of his bicep bunching, fat ball of muscle just there for your teeth to sink into. You shift restlessly on the bed. 
“Easy as nothin’,” you say slowly, trying to imitate the dip and pitch of his drawl. Your fingertip follows the line of stitching in the duvet, petting at the seams holding it together. “Is that how we’ll be too?” And although you mean the words, intend the question, you’re suddenly awash with shy regret for asking, even though you can’t say exactly why. Probably for the look on his face, which goes immediately dark and serious, and even yet, you persist. “Will it be easy for us too?” And you’re sure your voice must sound like you’re begging. 
“No. It won’t. It won’t be like that between us. You’ll stay here as long as it takes for you to acclimatize to being out of that place,” that place, he says like a curse, and it makes you angry, “To bein’ out in the world, and then we’ll find somewhere for you. Somewhere that’s safe and comfortable where you’ll be able to make your own life.”
“I don’t– I don’t understand,” you tell him, but it’s a lie. You do understand, you see, and very clearly, that all you’d waited for during your life, the before, the not life, the extra year, it had all been in vain, for nothing. It would not be given to you here. 
“What don’t you understand?” And his tone is cruel and spitting, making you flinch. “I’m sending you away soon. This is what I’m saying.”
“But I don’t– No–” You’d waited so long. He’s being so mean, and you tell him so. 
“Yes. You need to be with people your own age. You need to see the world and grow up,” and what a horrible thing to say, you think – to grow up. As if it were not a thing you’d been forced to do already all on your own, without anyone to help you.
“Well then what do you care about what I need? You make no sense!” And you bare your teeth at him. “If you don’t want me–” 
But he cuts you off, broad palm held up in a staying gesture, and it’s so incongruous with all the rest of it, that you want to laugh in his face. “Didn’t say I don’t want’cha.” And that frown again, he makes no sense, the tip of his boot makes landfall in the high piled rug, halfway in, hypnotized and compelled in full. You settle on the bed and feel very calm despite the too fast beat of the thing that moves and lives within you, despite your anger and confusion. 
And through the beat and the heat and the sweat on your neck, despite the shyness you’ve forgotten is shyness right at this moment, but that you’re sure will return later because this is what you are and this is what you were made for: him. You ask, “Then are you going to knot me now?” Because if he’s going to send you away, then surely he’ll give you that before you go, surely he’ll still want that from you. 
He splutters, going all red in the face as if the notion of a young omega asking the experienced alpha she’s been presented with to do that most basic thing his nature demands, is something out of the ordinary. “What? No– no.” But despite his supposed refusal, he takes two steps forward towards you. Venturing further onto the soft piled rug, leaving large crushing footprints in his wake. 
“Later then?” You ask very pragmatically.
“No. Absolutely not. There will be no knotting.”
You shake your head at him, small frown between your brows, but still feeling calm despite the tragedy. Forcing that horrible seedling down into submission, the vines smothering all your hope. “But what do you mean?” And you feel like a child. 
“I’m not going to fuck you. We aren’t doin’ any of that. You’re too– you’re too young, practically a girl.” A child. He has an accent that thickens with agitation, the ends of his words sluicing off between his tongue and teeth and anger while he hurts you.
“You don’t want me,” you say, and it isn’t a question anymore, only an obvious thing.
His eyes go very dark, and you want to turn away, look back at the edge of the world and the bright glow of the sun being swallowed by it. “I don’t want that.” And the way he spits the words hurts, making you a thing impossible to desire.  
“You don’t want me,” again, repeated, so the both of you can bask in the truth of it. 
But it snaps something in the room, or in him, or amidst the honesty being brought out here and now. He takes two ground-eating steps forward to loom over you aggressively, forcing you to fall back on your elbows, looking up at him wide eyed but still inexplicably not afraid, only a greater thing than what can be called merely disappointed. And yet, not disappointed enough to not notice the way one of his knees presses against the inside of one of yours. “I should get to have a fucking choice too, shouldn’t I? Like you, locked away in that horrible place–”
“It wasn’t horrible,” you try and say, but you don’t think he hears.
“The way you had all your choices and freedoms stripped. Shouldn’t I also be allowed to have one single goddamn thing?” Where else would I have gone if not there? “A choice – to say, no, stop, I don’t want this.” He’s so angry, and it is all suddenly so clear, and he finally grabs you, pulling you up by the bend of your elbow, the small joint almost crushed in his massive fist to pull you halfway up off the bed and towards him, getting in your face with all his anger. 
Leo’s voice again, you don’t have to be what they tell you to be, you can choose for yourself. This is what Joel wants too. 
“You can’t end up stuck out here at the end of the world with some washed up old alpha who can’t give you a quarter of what you need and deserve. I won’t let you. I won’t,” he snarls.
But despite your greenness, your naivety or your ignorance or your youth, you think: how dare he? “And what about what I want? What about my choices? Or are you going to be just like all the rest of them? Like the whole world telling me I’m too insignificant and too stupid to decide for myself? Just locked away in another cage–” You spit at him, trying to claw and shove at him, stubby nails digging at the sun pebbled skin of his throat, yanking at his too long hair and patchy beard, inadvertently pulling yourself closer to him. He grunts, struggling to take you in hand, slippery thing you can make yourself into when you really want, and you, trying your mightiest to hurt him any way you can as he’s already decided he’s going to hurt you with his rejection. “Is that what you are? Just like all the rest of them?” You cry amidst your struggle, choked with tears and being too little to be effective but too big for your own skin. 
You shove at his jaw, trying to scratch at his cheek, but he grips you full around either arm, locking you in place and gives you a swift but measured jerk, jostling you into submission, trapping your hands bent as they are up by his neck so that one small palm is sliding to the back of his nape, over the gland behind his ear, at that soft vulnerable hollow, and coming to rest at the one in back, at the base of his neck beneath his collar. Both of you go still as stone, frozen by the truth of what you both are and how inescapable it all is, reality held in the palm of your hand.
Obvious: a designation is not a thing you can ever hide. Alphas and omegas wear it on their bodies like markers. Glands scattered at different places: behind the ears, at the base of the neck, inside the wrists and ankles; vulnerabilities that when acknowledged, bitten, seal a mating bond. Places that if handled properly, turn you into nothing but what you are at your basest nature. And you can’t help yourself – at the feel the spongy patch of skin, slightly raised and slightly rougher than the rest of him, a place that when in rut or in heat, would become, will become, extra sensitive, extra swollen, extra ripe – when you slowly slide your fingers against it, feeling the texture of it, the way it’s even hotter than the already sweltering rest of him. 
He growls low and rumbling in his chest, that sound again, and he’s so angry, it’s painted all over his face in shades of defiance; coming off of him like radiation, angry at you, angry at the truth of what you both are, angry at himself and the world and all of it, but he pulls you closer anyways, tugging your forward by his grip on your arms which is starting to mimic the ache you’re suffering at that place between your legs you long to show him, pulling you in so that the tips of your breasts, covered beneath his thick sweater and the too thin, soft bra they gave all the omegas who needed them, brush against the thick of his chest, pulling a soft breath of a moan from your tongue.
“You’re being so mean to me,” you whisper. “And I don’t deserve it. And I waited so long for you and you never came for me, and now this is how you’re treating me,” you say with a hiccup and a tear, and you feel little and big and that place that calls for him pulses and hurts and leaks. He’s so mean and you’re so sad and you want him and you can’t understand why he’s being this way when you were made for him and he for you, and if nothing else was right in this world, then this was the thing that was supposed to be. 
His eyes shift quickly back and forth between both of yours, that frown, mouth turned down, his mustache that connects to the patchiness of his beard showing how contrary he finds you. You frown back at him, trying to pull away, whining when he tightens, pulls you closer, right up to his face as if he needs to inspect you even more closely. Your toes aren’t touching the rug anymore, scraping against the thick round of his boots, and you won’t have it. You’ll give him a piece of your mind, you’ll show him. “You think that because I’m little and young and easily bruised that I’m not in control.” It’s not a question. If you could grow fangs, you would. If you could rip him to shreds, you would. “That I can’t control you. But I made you come for me, didn’t I?” Now you laugh at him, now you show him. “I knew if I wrote to you, you’d come, and you did. I made you come. I made you.” And saying it feels like victory, so you don’t care that it makes his face crack, you don’t care that he pushes away from you, letting you fall back onto the bed with a limp bounce, storming out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him. You don’t give a thistle for choices. You want to be selfish, you want to be alive, you want to see the sky. You have the sea now, and you want to be this thing you are because this is already you, this is what you were made into, and you have no choice but to bask in it, and you won’t bend to him or give it up for him only because he can’t accept the same of himself, only because he’s still trapped in his own white box. 
-
He knows, as soon as you make whatever stupid decision it is that you’re making, that something’s off. A shift in the air in the house, his heart beating funny, his scent changing because his body knows you’re not in its immediate vicinity anymore, something that tells him off, off, off, be vigilant, she needs you so much, you can’t fail again. He reminds himself of all the decisions he’s already made, of what he knows he wants and does not want, of what he is and what he is not. 
After he’d stormed out of your room – I made you – he’d retreated to hide in his own bedroom, to the other big chair by the fireplace in here, cowering like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs, forcing himself to listen to you cry for hours, the whine and whimper of an omega in need of something he was made to give, and yet will not. As if a little thing like you could make him do anything. Him. He grits his teeth, chews on his own tongue, digs his fingers into the arms of the chair to force himself to remain seated in place, to not return to you, to not give you all the things he knows you need and want to be soothed by. 
He can smell your scent changing already, reacting to him, reducing him to nothing, entirely effective in your conquering. And he’d stupidly thought that perhaps the heat, and the rut that it would yield, would wait, give him a moment of reprieve or compassion before it came for him. A moment to think. He thought he’d have more time, a chance to escape the thing he so desperately wants but cannot and will not let himself have, refuses to give in to. His body stirs and smolders, and like he’d done for eleven years and then one, he ignores it. He ignores the truth of who and what he really is. 
He sits in his chair, head propped up against the back, and listens to your cries and mewls ebb and quiet until finally, he thinks you might have sobbed yourself to sleep. He doesn’t want to hurt you, he doesn’t mean to hurt you. It’s the absolute last thing he could ever, ever want. Everything, not only in his nature, but in his character, in the things that make him up as a man who’d want a woman like you, is clamoring within him to go to you, to give you what you want, to sooth you with his voice and his scent and his cock. To fuck you into your heat until you’re soft and slick and fevered enough to take his knot, to let him breed you, to let him mate you. His cock stirs and thickens beneath the rough confines of his jeans, that thicket of skin at the base where his knot waits in ready for you, simmering with heat and tightness. He digs his knuckles into his temple until it hurts. 
You don’t want me… Of course he fucking wants you. He’d have taken your cunt for himself right there in that white box room, on your rickety little iron cot for all the surrounding omegas and witless betas to hear without giving a single shit what anyone said or thought if he had any sort of right or will or choice. If he had anything more to give you. And then watching you go right to sleep when he’d brought you into his home, the sight of you feeling so immediately safe and content, ready to nest amongst his things and his scent – that feeling of having within himself the things that he needs to be what he is – indescribable. 
Pretty little omega – and truly, you’re so pretty. All he’d never let himself imagine or desire or hope for. He’s too old, past his prime and forgotten by the world, but he’s still a man with a working cock, still an alpha, even if only in the simplest of ways. Of course he wants you. 
He lets himself languish miserably before the fire, eyes going hazy with exhaustion, the comedown of adrenaline, the presence of warm omega all around him, the taste of your pre-heat scent coating his tongue and throat. He pulls his socks off and lets the heat of the fire warm his feet and thinks he should’ve given you his room instead, let you sleep in his bed, near the fireplace, between his sheets and amongst his scent. He can sleep out in the dirt for all he matters as long as you’re comfortable. And the rational part of his brain wants to laugh at the thought, sitting here alone, realizing that despite his battling, his nature will always win out in the end, that all this fight really means shit. His cock gives a faint throb, his deflated knot rhythmically pulsing in time with his heart, ready to swell and claim what everyone including nature, but excluding Joel, has said belongs to him. Of course he wants you. And if he’s honest, or a fucking liar, he can’t really say which, all his truths and deceptions have become so muddled within his own mind, his past and his present and this future he’s never thought he wanted or had a right to, the year of waiting was more a form of self punishment, restraint as proof of fear, than anything to do with you. 
Anger, yes, that everything had been decided for him for so long. That he isn’t even allowed to decide what he is, what he wants. But fear, more than anything, that interminable curse of failure he’s so haunted by and so afraid of. How could nature ever look at him and think him strong enough to take on the role of caretaker, protector, alpha – whatever it is that you need him to be, the whole world in the eye of a young and untried omega – when he can hardly stand the sight of his own face in the mirror? There’s nothing but tragedy setting the stage the two of you stand posed on. 
Finally, your cries fade to soft hiccups, and then a peculiar silence he doesn't trust. He waits, ears peeled, his head turned slightly towards the cracked open door of his bedroom, sensing the shift in scent and after a few beats of too loud silence, a thud and a huff, the music of a little mind thinking too loudly and mischievously for its own good. Even the wind seems to blow differently as if it knows you’re scampering about amidst it now, vulnerable to its lashings, and he’s shooting up out of his chair and charging through the house. By the door, he realizes his boots are gone, stolen from where he’d dropped them discarded after he’d left you in your room to cry your salt tears. He forgoes a coat and his flannel, braving the icy wind in nothing but his white undershirt, stepping silent but no less frantic out onto the deck. The truck is dark and quiet, still in its usual spot, and this quells his fear minutely. It occurs to him that you likely don’t even know how to drive. 
But when he comes around the western facing corner of the house, it’s worse than he could’ve imagined, and the scar slashed across his right temple suddenly zings like copper, burns like fire at the sight of you. You are, for some inexplicable reason, crawling on all fours, towards the edge of the cliffside. And he’s frozen solid for a second, shocked and terrified, and then moving forward like lightning, tripping over his own two feet and breath before he realizes you’re right at the very edge now, and he needs to move very fucking carefully to ensure he doesnt send you spilling in fright over the edge. 
He alters his movements, continues forward slowly, his bare feet over the freezing ground and sharp bric-a-brac of the forest floor, the slabs of stone turning to ice as he nears the edge, and he watches the uncoordinated wallop of your movements, banging your knee with a small yelp, as you crawl like a slow and drunken spider in his too big clothes, dragging his too big boots around your ankles, to the very edge of the cliff side, slowly lowering yourself to plop down with your head and arms hanging over the edge. 
He pauses about ten feet away from you and waits for your next move, but you lie still, quarter part of you draped over the edge of the cliff, and he realizes that you’re watching the water far below crash against the rocks. 
“Sweetheart,” he calls slow and gentle, crouching down low so that his voice travels along the ground where you lay. “Sweetheart, what’re you doin’?” You start, turning back towards him, one palm coming to the edge of the rock to shove yourself up to peer back at him, rock pebble spraying out over the void with your movement, and his heart and stomach lurch to his throat, almost gagging at the terror. Your eyes are hazy and bright, and he recognizes the beginnings of the fever, it’s tendrils wrapping themselves around you, making you a little confused, a lot needy, and he’s so fucking stupid, he should’ve never left you alone. But he hadn’t thought it’d come on this fast, that you’d affect each other so. 
“I wanna go down there,” you call over the small hill of your shoulder, turning back to peer down at the beach. You point down at the shoreline with your other hand, wagging your finger as to emphasize what it is you want.
Jesus fucking Christ, he’s going to have a goddamn heart attack. “Alright, baby. Come back here, I’ll take you down. Let’s go together.” You mumble something, arm flopping out, waving him away. “Please, sweetheart, come back here with me,” he begs, and there must be something in his tone, he’s sure, because you turn full back at that, looking at him suspiciously like you remember his earlier words of rejection and no longer trust him now. 
“I’m glowing, sir. I need to feel the sea and the cold.” Your voice sounds not your own, like it comes surfing off the wind to his ears. 
“Not, sir. Joel. Only Joel, remember?”
You push yourself up, moving to sit back on your knees, but still right at the edge, still too close. Sweat slides slick and frigid down his spine, the complete opposite of what you must be feeling right now. Only Joel. Only Joel, he hears you mutter at the sea. “There isn’t anything only about you. Leave me alone. Go away–”
“Please, baby. Come back here. Let’s go inside, I’ll give you the sea, I promise. Just come over here – with me.” You turn back at that, shifting on your knees to face him. If you lose your balance, stumble, you’ll topple back over the edge. He just needs to be good enough for you to want to come to him, convincing enough. He puts his palm out towards you, all supplication now. “Come here, sweet thing. I’ll show you the sea, I promise I will.” You start your slow spider crawl back towards him and his scar burns, a sharp pain through his brain, piercing behind his eye, heart beat to death between his ribs. As soon as he gets his hands on you, he’s going to fucking throttle you, he promises. But he’s almost got you, and he dares not move, barely even breathes, his hand is shaking so badly it interrupts his view of you on every other painful heartbeat, and he realizes his eyes are blurry with terrified tears, and suddenly, that anger doesn’t matter even half an ounce as much anymore because then you’re here and crawling into his arms, up into his lap so that he’s falling back onto his ass on the cold, hard ground. He pulls you into himself, clumsy little spider legs wrapping around his waist, your arms going around his neck so that you’re clinging to him. 
One of his boots lies lost and discarded back by the edge of the cliff.
“Please, don’t ever fucking do that to me again.”
“I’m glowing,” you sigh into his neck.
“I know you are, baby. It’s okay, we’ll fix it.” He feels you nuzzle at his collarbone, his neck, the gland, already sensitive and swollen behind his ear, already, already, already, God help me, and his heart feels like it’s beating so hard he can feel it move through your chest cavity and reverberate against his hand on your back. Christ, it wasn't supposed to happen this quickly, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to have more time, more choices, more control. The wet of your lips mouthing at his skin, and then the peek of your tongue tasting his gland, and he rumbles deep in his chest, his mind going loose and slacken like an old rubber band, and then snapping back to clarity at your surroundings. Cold wind and now the beginning sprinkling of needle freezing rain, your shivers jittering into his chest.
“We gotta go inside – let’s get up,” he murmurs into your ear, unable to resist nosing at your hair, the small, freezing cold seashell hidden within. 
Wait, wait– and then the scrape of small, blunt edged teeth just there at the vulnerable patch of skin. He swallows a scream, and the caged thing rattles and howls inside his chest, his arms going iron and binding around your back, pressing you to him, chest melded to chest. “Wait, please,” again, and now a tiny kiss. “If you don’t want me,” and he never should’ve even insinuated it, it’s the worst thing he’s ever done in his entire miserable fucking life. “Then will you please–” another soft press of lips to his jaw, the corner of his mouth. His hand slides down your spine, he can’t help himself, presses down on the base of your vertebrae, the heat of your cunt along the pulse of his cock, through cotton and denim and cold, just there, just there, he’s so fucking close. “Will you at least kiss me–” but you’re not waiting for another rejection, you’re just licking clean across the slash of his mouth, taking his bottom lip between both of yours for a shy little suck, unsure and inexperienced with desperation. And then there’s nothing caged about any of it, no more white box, no more perch at the end of the world, he squeezes you to himself so that it hurts, and he kisses you.  
Hand twisted too tightly in your dampening hair, he pulls your head back, and with a rumbling grunt sends you deep and languid into easy submission, the steady deep timber of the sound wringing the desired effect on you. You twitch once, as if he’d tugged on your strings, his pretty puppet, and then go soft and open and easily penetrated, jaw hinging open so that he can lick inside of you, tasting all you have to offer which he refuses to accept he’s actually taking and which you’re all too desperately eager to give. 
He takes it all regardless. 
Slick mouth against slick mouth, out there in the cold rain and wind, rolling around in the dirt, he tastes you the way the two of you were made for. Pulling your hips closer, rolling his up to meet all the heat you have to offer which will only get hotter and hotter the more he continues down this path. You claw at his hair, the gland at your wrist rubbing against the one at his ear, marking him with your scent and pheromones, marking him as yours. And he swears he can almost feel that glow in your belly too, a little wriggling comet in his hands, set to burst. The crescendo of your whining climbs higher, your mouth hungrier, and Joel feels insane for a second, entirely outside of himself, lost to his senses. All he is, is what you need him to be, something hard and strong and solid for you to mold yourself around, and it’s so right it’s wrong. Not what he’d planned, not what he’d decided. 
He rips his mouth away from yours, panting, forgetting his name and his sense and everything else he is besides a hard cock and a now equally smoldering belly. “Wait– wait,” he begs, burning comet, too willful to tame without teeth, surging in his arms. You rub yourself against his face, your hair sluicing through his, your soft tits against his chest, his neck, bumping his chin while you try to climb him perched in his lap like you are. “Wait, please–” he tries to sooth over your huffing whines, and then a sharp stinging little bite to his jaw line. 
No, no. 
“Stop. We have to stop, please. This isn't what’s supposed to happen. This isn’t what I want.” And you hear that. 
The comet burns out, you go still in his arms, and it feels worse than anything. He wishes he could swallow the words back immediately because then you’re pushing back and away from him. Scrambling out of his lap, escaping his arms as fast as you can. 
“You’re horrible! Get away–” He dodges a small, kicking foot – the bootless one.  And you’re stumbling to your feet, tripping over the too big shoe wrapped around your too small foot. He pushes to stand, as well, gripping you about the elbow, avoiding a weakly punching little fist now. This is truly getting too ridiculous. The two of you need to come to terms with each other, meet in the middle, forgo the theatrics you seem all too desperate for. He ducks away from another ineffectual punch, grips you by the scruff of the neck, unruly kitten that you are, and pushing you forward, hooks you under his arm, lifting you clear off the ground and rendering you entirely captured, bent in half, a wilted flower over the strong of his forearm. 
You squawk indignantly, kicking your feet against the back of his leg as he stomps over to his abandoned boot, slowly filling with rain now, fuck this shit, and trudges through the mud back to the house, ice cold droplets dripping off the tip of his nose. The two of you are well on your way to soaked, but he thinks it might not be such a bad thing, considering the ball of heat radiating from your belly, the one in his own mimicking you. It seems to pool in the palm of his hand, where he’s got you hooked and caught over his arm, honey collection of magma.
Let me go! You’re screeching. “Leave me alone! You don’t even care about me and I hate you and I want to see the water!” More kicking and clawing.
When he finally dumps you back onto your rumpled bed, undignified yelps and pathetic little growls, he’s at his wits end. Taking you firmly in hand, heavy hand back at the nape of your neck, thickly calloused palm scraping against the quickly swelling gland there, other pushing at your hip to drape you over the edge of the bed like a rag doll, he folds himself over you, smothering you with his weight and heat, forcing you into calm. You go shocked frozen, wracked with shivers and then finally, blessedly still and quiet. This was all you needed, for Joel to follow his instincts. 
He presses you into the bed with his too heavy weight, thick arms caged around your head, pert little ass tucked up against his pelvis, and he breathes you in, lets you settle. 
“You need to behave,” he rumbles, and all you do is sigh bleary eyed and exhausted by your own willfulness. “You’re not to go outside all alone at night like that again, do you understand me? And you are especially, never, ever, to go that close to the cliff edge again.”
“But the sea–” you whine and shift, rubbing your little cunt against his now fully hard cock, perfect position that he’s got you in, presented to him like this. He presses tighter against you, growling deep in his chest to shut you up. 
“Promise me.” But you whine, shifting, starting to cry a little, too far gone to the start of the fever he’s done nothing to really sate. There’s still time yet, for your full heat, but these beginning symptoms, they need to be soothed just as well, tempered just as diligently as the full blown heat would be. If for nothing else, than for the sake of the omegas' comfort and happiness. He bends his knees, shoving the thick of his erection up against the apex of your thighs, pressing you further up onto the bed and tighter beneath him, and nosing through the mantle of your hair, he finds the gland at the back of your neck beneath the collar of his sweater and bites down gently. Not breaking skin, only giving you teeth to feel, to be soothed by, that blunt clasp that’ll dull your own sharp edges for now. 
He laves his tongue along the scorching patch of skin, the texture different to the rest of you, different, even, to his own glands, like silk, like water, something liquid about the feel of you here beneath his tongue and teeth. You let out a terrible little sound that has the threads of his control snapping, providing cause for concern, and he growls softly, pleased, in response. It’s a sound of submission and acceptance and praise, from the both of you equally, all at the same time. He lets you settle like this, petting at you with his tongue, giving you the scraping edge of his teeth like a threat, every so often. Grinding, because honestly he can’t even fucking help it, against that scorching little cunt he knows would already, even now, be so soft for him. Perhaps, not soft enough yet, not ripe enough yet, to take his knot and everything else he wants to force on it, but soft enough for him to teach you how to take a good fucking. 
A virgin, never even had a heat before, and trapped here between his teeth and beneath his cock. It would all be so easy, it would all feel so right. 
But that is, Joel thinks, just the thing of it. It would feel right – but would it be right? He can’t yet tell. 
You cloud his judgment, seduce his nature into wanting to give you everything and anything you could ever even think to ask for, and he can’t yet tell if it’s just you, that sparkle and that light and that heat like a comet that lives inside of you that he’s coming to suspect is wholly yours, nothing to do with biology or designations or markers that tell of what you should and should not be, that’s got him so desperate to please you. Or if it’s only nature, trying to force him into another choice he’s not made for himself. 
-
You wake slowly, disturbed out of your sleep the way one feels when they’re being spied on by something too large and too scary to look at right in the eye. 
You shift in the blue bed, cool and calm now, all that glowing heat from before that’d forced you out into the cold and the wind, hungry to throw yourself through space and time out into the sea, reckless and free, gone away now. All you feel as your eyes blink open slowly, is a shivery, damp cold rattling down the line of your spine. The room around you is dark, the glow of the slumbering fire out in the living room peeking in through the slightly left ajar door of your bedroom. 
He’d stayed until you’d gone boneless and calm, trapped beneath his weight and between his thick strong arms, letting you suck on the gland inside his wrist as you’d pleased. And when finally, you’d been just on this side of awake, he’d changed your clothes and slid you beneath the soft sheets and weighted duvet, and sat in the cozy sofa chair by the window until you’d been too exhausted by the embers in your tummy and the tight want between your legs to fight sleep any longer. 
The chair sits cold and empty now, and above it, the wide window, the pitch black of the world beyond is bright with unknown terrors, and you huddle into your nest of pillows and blankets, hiding beneath the edge of the duvet. 
You’d never had a window in your bunk, had not experienced the night in years and years, and looking at it now, put on display as it is through the clear pane of glass separating you from all of that unknown, you feel suddenly terrified, nothing but little. It feels as if you were to look away from it, it’d reach through the glass and pluck you out of your bed, whisk you far enough away that he’d never be able to find you, come for you again, and also, like if you don’t stop looking, it’ll eventually begin to look back. You wiggle backwards, bum finding the edge of the bed, and then sliding out, feet first, gaze still peeled on the window and the night, walking backwards out of your room and pulling the door shut on your way. At the very last moment, you peek through the sliver of the door edge and frame, nothing but your nose remaining in the blue room, and you swear the night stares back now. 
You shut the door with a snick, and turn to rush on tipped toes in search of his room. 
He’s sleeping on his back, one thick arm thrown over his head, the other laying across his belly, and you peer over the edge of the bed, hands clasped beneath your chin, watching the up and down of his breathing, the flicker of his eyes beneath his lids. He has long eyelashes and funny whiskers and hair everywhere. Under his arms, and across his chest and his belly, leading down below the sheet covering him, to the thick lump there, that place you don’t know yet, but do understand. He’s hairy, and he’s big, and the aching place you want to show him comes awake in response to all this man you have before you. And although the house is warm, the fires stoked diligently to keep you as toasty as you need, another shiver runs its way down your back. So taking hold of one of his thighs, you hoist yourself up onto his too tall bed, knobby knee stabbing him in the side as you climb on top of him, planting yourself right in the middle of his broad expanse. He gives a rough grunt, shocked awake by the little creature climbing its way all over him, hands shooting out to steady you by the hips as he jerks startled. 
“What in the Sam Hell–” You ignore his spluttering, rubbing your bottom against his stomach, finding a comfortable position to drape yourself over him, wilting like a felled weed snuggled up against his chest, tucked just below his chin, giving an entirely contented sigh when you settle. “What the fuck’re you doin’?” He has such a nasty mouth. Someone should wash it with soap for him. 
He tries to roll over, but you cling, bearing your sharp little teeth to latch at his collarbone, holding tight, refusing to be shoved away again. “M’cold–” you fuss, chewing and slobbering all over him as you pull yourself closer, hitching a knee over his hip, burrowing your foot between the bed and his back. 
“You have t’go back to your bed. You can’t sleep here.”
You whine, chewing harder, and he grumbles, but his hands slide from your hips to your back in a soothing pass and you slick your tongue against the flavors of his skin. He tastes so good, and he smells so good, and in a tiny voice you know will get you what you want, you say, “The window is too big and it’s so dark. I’m scared, alpha.”
He groans, grip going tight and strangling around you, fists bunching in the oversized clothes he’d swaddled you in after he’d dried the rain and outdoor chill off of you before putting you to bed. “Can’t I just stay here? I promise I’ll be good like you told me to,” and you nuzzle against him, making sure to thoroughly cover him in the headiness of your scent. Everything is so warm and right, and he’s so thick and comfortable and strong everywhere, perfect for laying on top of like this. The hair on his chest is prickly, tickling your face where you rub yourself against it, and he rumbles low, a deep sort of purring sound that you feel vibrate in your tummy, big wolfish man that he is, but his grip goes loose and soft after a while, stroking and soothing and petting along your slopes and planes. Convinced. Ha. 
You hold very still, breathe very slow, make sure not to spook the beast while he accepts the fact of you here atop him until he finally says, already sleepy and relaxed again, “Alright… but you’ll behave like I said.” And eventually he rolls the two of you over, little omega barnacle that you’ve turned yourself into, and tucks you into his warm side. 
The third time you wake to him, there’s fire everywhere. And an ache in your womb so sharp it sends shivers through your whole body. You cling and grind and tremble; forget your name, where you are, nothing more than that sticky throb in that place that you want to give to him so, so badly. 
He’s draped atop you, heavy arm caging you in, thick chest covering your back, smothering you between incredible strength and, soft, Joel smelling sheets. You cup the ball of his bicep, it’s big and hard and hot, and drag your palm along the thick slope. He’s so strong, he could crush you, hurt you, make you into anything he wanted, and you want all those things, you think. You want him to do whatever he wants if only he’ll make the ache go away. Fire and glowing bright heat everywhere, most of all your belly, your heart, somewhere so deep inside you’d never known it existed until he’d come and made you aware of it. 
Your fingers slide along his wide forearm, hairy here too, thick wrist, hard, strong bone beneath, and then the soft spot on the inside that belongs to you now. You stick your tongue out, tasting the spongy patch, scraping your teeth along it. If you bite him, you’ll be able to keep him forever, he won’t be able to send you away, but there still remains – even if just for a little bit longer, before the heat you’ve been waiting your whole life and a year for to finally take you – a part of you that’s still rational, head only halfway gone to the clouds. That part which reminds you that more than anything, you want him to choose you. Without the bite as a deal breaker, bond sealer, only because he wants you, only because he likes you. 
But you can taste him, it doesn’t mean you have to bite him, and you the tip of run your tongue along the inside of his wrist, gently suckling at his gland, the flavor of him so much stronger here, as if his essence is more concentrated at this small place. And the ache between your legs, in your tummy, deepens, spreads and blooms and ravages. The inside of you feels sensitive and swollen and big and little all at once, and you shift your bottom, trying to rub yourself back up against him, your sucking mouth pulling sharper, a whine bubbling in your throat because you need something, something more, and you think you know, and you know you understand, but you’re not sure, and if he could just wake up and show you it would all be so much better.
You press back harder, arching so that the aching place feels the heat of him behind you, that hard ridge there that makes your heart pound all through your body. You’d shucked off your leggings and the sweater he’d put you in through the night, too hot and sweaty with the big beast smothering you as he’d been, so now you’re left in nothing but one of his too big t-shirts and the soft, cotton white panties all the omegas always wore. You whine again, gnawing on his wrist for real now, and a big paw of a hand comes up to wrap around your hip, stilling your wriggling. You feel him lean closer, burying his face in the back of your hair, groaning, hot bullish breath fanning across your nape. He rumbles deep and it only makes you feel worse, more desperate, more hungry for that thing you don’t know how to ask for. You want to cry his name, beg him, but your tongue feels fat and swollen inside your mouth, too full of blazing heat to form actual words. He just has to know, he just has to be able to tell. 
“I know,” he mumbles against your nape, nosing around to your ear where he presses his mouth. “I know, it’s alright.” You gurgle again, pulling his wide palm to cover your face completely, nuzzling against his rough palm, muffling your pathetic animal sounds of supplication. It’s okay, it’s okay, you can hear him murmuring and you’re not sure who the words are for, but you feel certain they’re not for you. He’s scared, you know this. Between all the things you’re so uncertain of, this you’re sure of. He’s afraid, and it’s your job to reassure him, to show him how well it will all be once the two of you come together. 
You push your face harder into his palm, and you feel him hook his fingers into the elastic of your panties, tugging the soft fabric wide, tugging them down your legs, and there’s that same need, yes, that comet bright glowing heat, but also, and something you can recognize as more your usual self, a desperate sort of shyness. Something coming unraveled and unspooled for the whole world, him, to see. You can feel the slick uncoveredness at the apex of your thighs, running down your legs, a blossom of heat and vulnerability there at that place, the core of you, and it doesn’t feel shameful, necessarily, but painfully exposed. Your softest place bared for him to see. And yet, alongside that, the knowledge that this soft place is only for him, that you only ever want it to be for him, and so this can, again, be nothing but right. 
“Look at all this slick you’ve made for me, what a sweet girl you are.” There’s such reassurance in the timber of his voice, it makes the heat change, something swirling but steady, constant. You spread your own palm against the back of his hand covering your face, line your fingers along the backs of his, little and big, matched alongside each other, and you press his fingers against your forehead, squishing your nose against his palm, Hiding there in the cup of his hand from the whole world and him, waiting for this truth of yourself to finally be revealed to you. 
His palm strokes along your bare thigh, I know, I know, he keeps saying, and they’d told you all that your alphas would know, that they’d show you, and there’s reassurance in this, that some part of what’s happening is unfolding as they said it would. It makes you feel not so small, not so untried and naive. You try and lay as still as possible, willing the flames into patience, breathing in your own hot breath from the cup of his palm. I know it hurts, we’ll make it better, I promise. He shifts behind you, the rustling of fabric, and then his hand on your bottom again, moving in a slow circular motion, steady and reassuring. He moves to your leg again, lifts it and then something hot and hard and big, coming to rest on your inner thigh, and he lets your leg down, starts the soothing rub of your bottom again. 
“We’re gonna go so slow, alright. Only a little at a time and not the whole thing today. We gotta wait for your heat to settle in all the way, time it all right so that my rut doesn’t start before you’re ready to take me. How does that sound, sweetheart?” But your tongue is still fat, your words still jumbled and missing, and all you really want to ask is if he’s changed his mind now, if he’s finally decided he wants you, and you think you’re crying, sipping salt water from the palm of his hand. “I know I wasn’t how you needed me yesterday, and I’m sorry for that.” He presses his forehead against the back of your shoulder, hand sliding up your hip to your waist, dragging his shirt along as he goes, uncovering you for himself. And you feel so intensely, that you belong to him, and you can’t understand how he could have ever not felt the same way. 
You hitch an agonized little sob, muffled by his hand, and he rolls slightly so you’re half draped atop his chest, his palm rubbing soothing circles low on your belly now. And forcing you out of your hiding place, he pulls your face back to look at him, gripped around your jaw. His face is very serene, and this settles you, makes the words he’s saying clearer, more meaningful. “Can you hear me silly thing, or can all you think about is taking a cock right now?” You scrunch your nose at him, you know that word, it’s his hard thing between your legs. 
“It’s so heavy, alpha,” you sniffle, feeling the weight of it pressing against you there. 
He nods, warm look in his eyes that crease at the edges. “That’s how it’s going to feel inside you, baby.”
“The knot?” A seedling blooms again, this one very different now, full of hope once more. You realize you’ve found your missing words. 
He shakes his head, not yet, and drags his palm up the inside of your thigh, squeezing and kneading as he goes, and you want to complain that he moves so slow, that he needs to do something else, you don’t know what, but something. You want to click your teeth at him, bite him again, anything to make him go. 
And then: “Drippy little girl,” and he’s finally there and a moan that’s almost a scream because he’s cupping a place that is so unbearably sensitive and raw and full of heat and wet like you’d never known was possible. 
Oh, oh, ah, ah, ah. “It’s alright,” he says, rubbing gently back and forth, a slick sound that is loud and embarrassing coming from between your legs. “It’s alright. This’ll help for now. We won’t go inside.” And he grips the heavy thing, his cock, in his own palm that’s all slick from your leaking and presses it against you. He rolls over completely now, shifting higher in the bed so that you’re sitting full on top of him, back to chest, bum to belly, and he spreads your thighs wide with his other hand, pulling your shirt up to bare all your nakedness for him to see. You wonder if he can also see all that burning shyness you’re suddenly so chock full of. 
“Look at these pretty little tits,” he murmurs, cupping one small morsel in his palm, squeezing so that you’re arching against him, mouth agape like a fish, trying to find sounds that seem to have suddenly gone missing once again. “That’s right, I know.” He moves to the other one, squeezes and pinches and shakes it so that it jiggles in the cup of his hand. All the while he strokes his cock between your legs, pulling his hips back every so often so that it slides against you, coating it in all that wet slick you’re spilling for him. 
You look down at the place where it juts out between your thighs, and it’s so big. Dark and angry looking at the end, thick and covered in veins that make it look even angrier and about to burst. You ask him if it hurts him, and he laughs a little and says it isn’t anything you can’t fix which makes you seven different shades of pleased. 
The hand at your breasts moves up to your face again, and he turns your head, searching for your eyes. “We started off badly yesterday, yes? But we’re gonna do better today. I promise.” He slides his hips back again and this time he presses harder against you, his hand flat against the underside of his cock so that the top is slicking all along you. Sensitive little cunt, he says when you tremble and shiver and keen, and that’s when you know that’s what it's called. Your cunt. That place that belongs to him, that you want to give him so badly, that you want him to want so badly but that you barely even know yourself. No more experience than the greedy, frantic digging at the soft, hot flesh beneath your hand in moments when everything had felt too tight and needy to do anything else. 
“Gonna break you in so well, baby. Gonna teach you how to come, how to fuck, how to take a knot.” And now the wide head presses against you, against a place that is so, so incredibly sensitive it almost hurts. You suck in a sharp gasp, trying to jerk away from the hurt, but he holds you in place against him, presses again, yeah, I know, yeah I know, like he’s trying to put it inside you, and yes, you think that’s what it is, that’s what you need, even if it might hurt. “You’re gonna get everything you need jus’ from me,” and his words are slurred and dripping slacken from his tongue. 
He starts to move faster, you think he’s swallowed the same stone of desperation you did, rough grunts and huffing pants, and “So fucking small, it’ll never fit.” Jesus fucking Christ. And on every slick slide forward that wide angry head of it, his cock, bumps the crest of your sex, catches at your hole. You watch it in shock as it presses in just a little, and it hurts and feels like you’re full of bubbles and everything is sticky and your tummy glows with heat. 
“Your little cunt needs this,” he grunts, the head catches, he presses, presses, pulls away, you want to bite and scratch and demand he go all the way, and you’re nothing but a pounding heart and a clenching cunt and you want more, and when he slides again it notches full on at the tiny opening, he pauses, lets it rest there before he presses not even half a centimeter further, only giving you the wide stretch of it, letting your cunt flutter and grip around the very head. 
“Look at that–” And he peers over your shoulder to look at what he’s doing to you. “Look at your tiny cunt stretching for me.”
You cry, trying to pull away, trying to shove yourself deeper, to take the whole of it like the greedy thing you are, but he holds you in place and lets you flutter and flutter and cry until something in your womb pulls tight, and with his fingers swirling at the apex of your sex, the little nub that is so sensitive it pulls a warbled, baying moan from your tongue, an ah, ah, ah, he gives you your first orgasm with him. A desperate thing, too much and not enough, and with his other hand he’s squeezing, shoving his fist along the rest of the length of his cock, pressing it hard where you meet, and then he’s feeding you a blazing heat, filling you with it, stirring your insides to flutter and shiver harder. Forcing you to cry and beg for more, “Please, please, please,” more.
“You’re not ready yet.”
And although you’re not entirely certain for what, you promise, “I am, I am, I can take it.” You know he’s supposed to put it all the way inside, that then, the knot will come. And although you’re unsure what it will specifically be like, what will become of you during or after, you know you’re ready to discover it all. 
“Not yet.” And he’s grunting it through clenched teeth, his hips churning, spitting tip grinding at your hole, something hot and thick sliding wetly all over and between the two of you. “You’ll do as I say. Your little cunt needs this, needs me to be patient with her.”
He lets the slick weight of himself fall away from you, leaving you feeling stretched and bruised and all shivery on the inside, yet still hungry for more. And he pulls his hands along the slopes of you, leaving trails of sticky wet along your skin. The proof of all you are, invisible but tangible, with a taste and a smell and a feel. 
You lay your head back on his shoulder, the heat swirls and simmers for now, and your cunt, your cunt, your cunt, you want to give it to him in full, it throbs and trembles against his slick cock. “I’ve never had a heat before,” you tell him although you know he knows. He probably knows everything there is to know about you, which, admittedly, is not much. 
“That's alright.”
“It will come soon, yes?” You peer over your shoulder to look up at him, and he nods down at you, that warm, eye creased look on his face again. You like the sight of it so much. 
“Will I go away from myself?”
“No,” he says gentle, “I won’t let you. I’ll keep you here with me. You have nothing to be anxious about.”
He rolls the two of you over, keeping you in the comfort of his embrace, and he’s huge and steaming and naked behind you. His hairy chest, his hairy legs all along the smooth and sensitive curves of you. And his thing, it’s still trapped between your thighs, heavy and sticky with your wet, and still kind of hard but not as much as before. You reach between your legs to touch it, and he jerks and hisses but lets you do as you please. Curious fingertips gently along the thick round end of it, down the long length to find two heavy and hot weights hanging lower. 
“Where is the knot?” You ask uncertainly, shy with all the things you don’t know. 
“Here,” and he grabs your hand, moving your fingers to the base of it where there’s an area of skin, of a different sort of texture, rougher, thicker, around the circumference of it. You prod gently at it, not understanding. “See, it’ll swell when it’s inside of you, and then we’ll stay connected for a time, and I’ll fill you, and that’ll help your heat. And after a while it’ll go down, until you need it again. Did they explain to you how it’ll happen?” His cock is thick between your thighs again, beneath your exploring fingers. A little harder and bigger than it was before. His body, something like a wonderful miracle you need to know everything there is to know about it.
“Yes, but not– not all the way, I don’t think. They said you’d show me.” You turn back to look at him, searching for confirmation, reassurance, but instead ask: “Why did you change your mind?” And finally, of his own choosing, he grips you by the throat, and presses a small kiss to your mouth. The greatest victory of the day, and it’s only just begun. 
“It’s exhausting, not letting yourself have what you need.” Need, not want. He shifts over you, coming up on his elbow and rolling you so that you’re on your back and looking up at him. You bring your fingers up to explore along his face: the hooked nose, soft mouth, heart brandished beard. He sighs that bull sigh, and you giggle as it tickles your throat and cheeks. Need, not want. That stings. “Fighting against what you are constantly– and you reminded me that we still have control in what we are. That there’s still choice in this, decidin’ to be what we are without resenting it. And we need each other, after all.” Need, not want. 
“I don’t think you need me.”
“No?”
“No.” The truth that you very much feel like you need him, you keep to yourself. And anyways, he knows. You know he knows. 
“M’thinkin’ I didn’t know I did. Or couldn’t say it out loud.” And he mimics your exploring fingers: thumb against the fan of your lashes, up the slope of your cheekbone, prying your mouth open to catch the edge of your bottom teeth and look inside. There’s a warm look in his eyes, like he’s pleased with you, like you’ve done a good job. “Think I’m realizin’ how wrong I was. How I want this all too.” 
Want, not need. 
He bends his head and kisses your mouth, kisses your breast, shows you how much he wants it.  
3. I Was a Child Once, I’m Not Any Longer
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bby-deerling · 5 months
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floral & fading (law x reader nsfw)
18+, mdni, nsfw, wc: 1.7k masterlist
a secret santa present for my lovely anie <3 @strawheart-pirate
cw: afab!reader, piv, rough sex, scratching, choking, hate sex kinda, law is bad with feelings, reader is also kinda bad with feelings, angst, bittersweet, hurt no comfort, you let this guy hit once and he's totally obsessed w/ you, strawhat!reader, messy relationship dynamics
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Law needs you desperately despite the fact he knows he cannot have you.
He hadn’t intended to get attached to you, not in the slightest.  Mind scattered, full of adrenaline, and buzzing with alcohol, he had meant for you to be nothing more than a late-night drunken distraction from the flood of emotions he felt after the events of Dressrosa.  Somewhere in the murky deep of the back of his mind, you had snuck in and sank your ragged claws into the sulci of his brain, to the point where he can barely close his eyes without picturing your mischievous smirk, or the contortions on your face as he fucked you, squeezing his tattooed hand around your throat.
For all intents and purposes, Law couldn’t stand you.  Brimming with intelligence and wit, you squandered your potential by wasting precious time goofing around with Luffy.  The strategic and combative skills you possess in battle make you an essential asset to your crew, but you were resistant to discussing any sort of long-term plan with him, insisting that wasn’t how Luffy rolled—it drove him crazy, and gave him the deep urge to break you until you finally relented and decided to use your mind properly like he wanted you to.
“Come on, Traffy!  Tell us who won!” you exclaim one day after a water gun fight, out of breath and nearly falling over as you slide along the wet deck in your flip flops, Luffy close behind you.
Law rolls his eyes and sighs, not bothering to look up from the book he was reading.  “How should I know?  I wasn’t paying attention to your nonsense.” he says in his usual dry monotone.
“Traffy, you were supposed to be watching us!” Luffy whines, putting his hands on his hips as he pouts.  Law ignores both of you, hoping you would eventually find another judge to determine the victor of your silly game; he thinks you’re finally discussing finding someone else to bother when you whisper something in Luffy’s ear that makes your Captain giggle maniacally.
“We decided to team up.” Luffy says proudly.  Law catches your grin in his peripherals, but continues to sit, eyes fixed on the pages in his lap, and ignores you, a mistake that would soon lead to his downfall. 
“So…You lose!” you shout with a grin.
With your words comes a stream of water straight to his face, followed by a second, less accurately aimed jet from Luffy that drenches his book and leaves Law fuming.  You keep that infuriating, mischievous grin plastered across your face, but he slightly smirks as he notices the way you swallow hard as he glares at you, a silent acknowledgment that you knew you were certainly in for it now.
“Shishishi—you’re in trouble with Traffy!  Not me though, I’m gettin’ away!” Luffy cackles, using his rubber arms to swing to the other side of the ship, leaving you to Law’s devices, and oh, did he have plans for you.  
Your idiocy had earned you a harsh quickie in the library, full of bites and dirty talk and nails dragging into his back.
“F-Fuck, Traffy—” you whimper as he bucks his hips harshly, filling you up so deeply his cock brushes against your cervix.
He yanks on your hair harshly and sinks his teeth into your neck, not caring in the slightest if he leaves marks on your precious, unblemished skin.  “Brat.  Say my name properly.” he hisses in your ear, wanting nothing more than to hear the word fall off your lips.
“Mmmf, ‘m sorry, Law…” you whine, tilting your head towards him to give him more access to your neck.  Law—hearing you drop the nickname and letting his real name drip off your tongue drives him wild and makes him drive his cock into you even harder as he bites and sucks along the column of your neck.  The familiarity and intimacy of it—even though it’s entirely manufactured, and he would never dream of displaying a similar vulnerability and dropping the -ya­ from your name—allows him to pretend you care more than you do.  It lets him pretend you care as much as he does.
“You better be.” he whispers, roughly clawing at your back with his jagged nails.  He wanted a string of apologies out of you before he was done—he’d already coaxed one out of you for spraying him in the face with the water gun, but burrowing your way under his skin and refusing to evacuate was the much more severe crime at hand, one with a sentence that ended up benefiting you both physically, but left him in a mental state even more frazzled and unfocused than before.
Irrationality began to cloud his judgement even more so as time went on, and he insists on you being in the group he brings to Wano with him.  Having you on the Polar Tang, even for a short time, is intoxicating to him—with the temptation of having you so close overpowering him, he finds himself uncharacteristically taking breaks from his work to use you for stress-relief.  He tells himself that’s all it is despite the fact he knows it’s a weak lie.  You’ve deciphered his feelings by this point; he can see it written on your face, though you cautiously say nothing.  Instead, you hang around after your unsavory activities, following him around the submarine and staying up late at his side, curiously and gently prying at aspects of himself that he thought he had locked away for good.  He’s furious at you for the way you’re able to unravel him, ripping him open emotionally just as he tears at your insides physically, and he takes his frustrations out on you accordingly.  However, you never seem to mind, and take all he gives you in strides; he’s mean, nasty, and rough with you in bed, but no matter how hard he tries to keep control, there’s a glint in your eyes that says you’re the one with the real power—you’re the one who can get the Surgeon of Death to snap and succumb to his base urges, and it enthralls you, much to his continued frustration.
He finds himself obsessing over you so deeply that he makes every excuse to keep you apart from your crewmates until the rest arrived with Sanji in tow.  He gives you a cover story to keep you close to him and continues his façade of this simply being sex to him, though you both know it’s more at this point.
“I like you, Law. I've gotten attached.” you said one night, words nearly drowned out by the chorus of cicadas hissing in the distance.
You were curled into his side, fingers tracing along his chest tattoos; it’s a rare moment where he lets you to show him affection like this, and your confession makes him deeply regret allowing you this luxury.  Despite the way your presence makes his heart contort and twist, despite all the hoops he’s jumped through to keep you close to him, and despite the fact that if he keeps his feelings bottled up for too much longer, he may never get the chance to vocalize them, he remains stubborn, letting a painful silence emanate into the night.
“It’s silly of me, I know, but I can’t help it.” you whisper, flinching at the way your voice cracks in the process. 
At times, Law saw you as obnoxious and silly, but you were also clever, compassionate, understanding, and strong, especially as you withstand all of his erratic mood swings as he sorts out his feelings for you—that’s why it cuts him to the bone when he causes you pain like this.
“Neither can I.” he whispers, unable to hold his sentiments back any longer.  He feels a touch lighter, but is not surprised when the melancholy resting between the two of you remains hanging in the air, coating you like a blanket.  After all, this could not and would not last forever, and once this alliance ends, the only glimpse he may ever get of you again might be on your wanted poster.
When all of the business in Wano ends, he has half the mind to take you for himself—to make you his and refuse to let go no matter how much Luffy begged him to release you, but he knows you would never leave your friends and go with him willingly.  Maybe that’s what infuriates him most—no matter how intimate and soft your half-lidded stare is while he fucks the daylights out of you, you would always love the sea, freedom, and your stupid antics with your crew more than him.  No amount of late-night conversations, full of hesitant divulgences and barriers broken, and no amount of physical contact would ever permanently tie you together, despite how much he wished that wasn’t the case.
Law knows this is the last time he’ll have you beneath him, close to him, and vulnerable for him, but he can’t bring himself to be gentle, overwhelmed by the violent storm in his chest.  Laid out and panting, your fingers curl into the sheets beneath you as his skilled fingers work magic on your clit.  Just as your thighs begin to twitch, he pulls his hand away, delighting in the way you whine and plead with him in frustration.  Inked fingers roughly squeeze the sides of your windpipe, making you squeak for him.
“You didn’t think I’d let you have it this easy, did you?” he taunts, using his other hand to grip your chin, smirking as he hovers over you before planting his lips onto yours.  Heated, deep, and full of longing on both sides, the kiss is enough to nearly pull his heart apart in two.  He takes great care to memorize the drag of your lips against his, the way the plush skin of your hips feels in his grasp, and the grip of your walls against him as his cock slides deep inside of you.
If this is the last time Law is going to have you, he is intent on drawing it out as long as he possibly can before he lets you go.  He just wishes things didn’t have to end this way.
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loaksky · 1 year
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— 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘮
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the deets — lo'ak is the black sheep in the family, clinging to honor by a precarious thread. you are the well-loved songstress in the tribe. he should resent you for being everything he's not, but his fickle heart can't bring him to do so.
the who — lo'ak x fem omatikaya!reader
the word count — 10.2k (rip yall)
the tags — (one-sided) rivals-to-lovers, angsty angsty, hurt / comfort, reader gives lo'ak a big ol smooch (perhaps more than one), lo’ak is the biggest dumbass and because of this he’s mean asf, reader has a big ol heart and just really wants lo’ak to like her, aged!up characters for maturity’s sake. 
the warnings — language, lo'ak is in luv but doesn't realize it, he's in denial that the feelings could be reciprocated, this is super dramatic so put your seat belts on!
the notes — was feeling extra sad and wanted to write something self-indulgent. this lovely anon requested something, and i used their ask as inspiration to finish this beast. fine line, bags, and love in dark are the three main songs i listened to finish this, so if you wanna be in your feels, have a listen LMAO. despite all the support, i’m still so mf nervous posting this ejsjsjdjs
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SOMETHING UGLY KINDLES IN THE PIT of Lo'ak's stomach at the mere mention of your name. It's sour on his tongue, bitter in his brain. He doesn't know when he's started to feel like this, started to feel absolutely dreadful anytime he'd hear the timbre of your voice. 
It's warm, thick like nectar and it makes him sick. 
Ever since you all were little, the elders crooned over what a great girl you were growing into; strong, intelligent, beautiful. It made him boil how much they'd sing your praises, the high esteem everyone held you in as one of the clan's most talented. 
Something dull would pick at him being compared to his older brother, but nothing burned more than being compared to you. 
Maybe it's because it's always implied whenever your names share the same sentences, that lingering implication that he could be more like you. The clan fans the flames of your mere existence while Lo'ak is snuffed out like a dying fire. 
He hates it. He hates you. 
He thinks. 
It'd be easier to, if you were awful behind the scenes. Arrogant, stuck up, but you're none of those things. You're kind, gentle, mighty when you need to be. It doesn't help that you shine like the brightest star, engulfing everyone in your light, in your warmth. 
But Lo'ak resists. He sees right through you, sees right through every saccharine smile you send him. He can see it in your eyes, how you really see him. Despite standing a full head taller than you, he sees the way you look down your nose at him. 
It grates his nerves, how disgustingly sweet you are towards him despite all attempts to rebuff you. 
Certainly doesn’t soothe his ego when you always seem to be around the bend every time he gets bitched at by the clan, eyes soft and filled with pity. To add insult to injury, you frequently tail him like a shadow after these moments when all he wants is to be alone. 
Like now, you linger. 
It's after dinner and Kiri and Spider stand before him. They come together like the three points of a triangle and you stand an awkward distance away from them. 
Kiri notices you first, her face splitting into a big smile as she waves you over. 
Lo'ak breathes a deep sigh before locking eyes with Spider who tries his best to suppress an amused grin. 
“Hi,” you chirp and Lo'ak can't help but roll his eyes. 
Spider and Kiri greet you eagerly. Lo'ak simply nods his head in acknowledgement before tightening his fist around his dagger. 
“We going or what?” he finally says. 
You perk up. 
“Where are you guys heading off to?” you ask curiously, hands clasped behind your back.
Spider opens his mouth to answer, but Lo'ak cuts him off quickly. 
“No where important,” he says, unsure if you'll blab about their whereabouts to the elders, or worse, his parents. 
You roll your lips and shift on your feet. 
“Can I come?” you ask hesitantly, eyes hopeful. 
Kiri's smile grows as she links her arm with yours. 
“No,” he says sharply. “Absolutely not.” 
Your face falls and something pulls inside his chest when you fail meet his gaze, your frown barely perceptible. 
You make a move to pull from Kiri's grasp, but her arm tightens through yours. She levels Lo'ak with a weighty glare and you fidget uncomfortably under his narrowed eyes. 
“Don't worry about it,” you say, like someone's hit a reset button. You smile that pretty smile and Lo'ak wants to scream. "It's okay, I think Rutan needs help with clean up." 
You slip from Kiri's grasp and the three watch you walk off. 
“Do you always have to be such a bitch?” Spider scoffs a disbelieving laugh. 
“She's just gonna tag along so she can snitch,” Lo'ak grumbles. 
“Oh c'mon,” Kiri argues. “________ just wants friends.”
Lo'ak sneers. 
“I don't want to be friends with her,” he says firmly, knuckles white around the handle of his knife.
“Weirdo,” Spider mumbles. “She’s cute. Think she likes you.”
Lo'ak's spine stiffens.
“It's an act” Lo'ak grumbles. “She just wants to look good in front of the elders to keep up whatever nice girl show she's putting on.” 
Kiri rolls her eyes hard. 
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There are moments when Lo'ak thinks he's being harsh, but he can't help himself. It's like he loses all semblance of a filter when it comes to you. 
“Hi, Lo'ak,” you greet him sweetly, lowering yourself onto the fallen log he's perched on, fashioning arrows to practice with later on in the evening with Neteyam. 
He shifts away from you, putting the distance of two bodies between the two of you as he pauses his task at hand. 
“Hi,” he says flatly. 
“Can I help?” you ask tentatively, fingers twitching towards one of the untouched sticks in a pile next to his feet. 
His kicks them closer to himself, out of your reach before leveling you with a sharp glare. 
“No thanks,” he says quickly and you recoil slowly, letting out a shaky laugh before fixing that stupid smile on your pretty face. 
“Oh, sorry,” you apologize, straightening in your seat. 
A silence so uncomfortably palpable settles over the two of you as you shift so that your knees are turned towards him. 
His throat bobs when his gaze travels from your little toes all the way up to your inquisitive gaze, golden and searching. It makes something unruly settle in his gut and he turns his attention back to carving his arrows. 
“Do you need something?” he breaks the silence finally. “I'm kinda busy.”
You bite your lip before scooting a little closer to Lo'ak's hunched figure. 
“My birthday's coming up,” you start. 
“I'm aware,” Lo'ak almost scoffs. 
It's all the clan has been able to talk about for the past few days. How they'd be able to prepare for the golden girl's next birth cycle and what they'd be able to do to make you smile the brightest. 
“Your birthday is a week before,” you state and his head whips towards you. 
“How do you know that?” he asks sharply, accusation heavy in his gruff tone. 
You flinch and he falters for a moment before your smile simply widens. 
“We grew up together, Lo'ak,” you say and the way his name sounds from your mouth sounds absolutely heavenly. “You're my friend.”
Friend. 
He scowls at the term.
“We're not friends,” he bites back. 
If the statement bothers you, you don't show it, simply tucking a strand of hair behind your ear before putting on a brave face. 
“I want to celebrate with you,” you say shyly. 
“Hard pass,” he says too quickly, gathering his sticks and fashioned arrows under his grasp. 
He leaves you in the clearing on your own.
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You must be fucking with him. You have to be. It'd be the only explanation for why Jake pulls him aside a few nights later and tells him that you've requested to work with him and Neteyam during archery practice. 
“No,” he says stiffly, shaking his head. 
His dad levels him with a hard glare and Lo'ak sighs deeply. 
“She's a nuisance, Dad,” he argues. “Me and Neteyam are making good progress with our training and we'll have to start at square one if she joins.”
“Lo'ak, this isn't an ask,” Jake says sternly. 
“But, Dad!”
“Lo'ak.”
Lo'ak huffs, snatching his bow and quiver angrily before storming off. 
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“You're doing great,” Neteyam says to you once the three of you have convened in the training circle. 
The three arrows you've shot have all landed within centimeters of the mark and to say that Neteyam is impressed is an understatement. Lo'ak, on the other hand, fumes not-so-silently as he tears his arrows from his target. 
Yet again, you have another person wrapped around your finger and it makes his blood simmer as he assumes his position at the marker and loads his arrow. It splinters through the air and hits the target right on the bullseye. The arrow punctures through the hide and lodges its way into the wood from the sheer force of Lo’ak’s shot. 
You start at him moon-eyed, lush lips breaking into a full smile. 
“Perfect shot,” you observe. “That was awesome.” 
Lo’ak scans your features hesitantly before his gaze flits to his older brother, waiting for any acknowledgment that he’d done a great job, but Neteyam is taking notes on the arrows still stuck in the fabric of your own target. 
His heart sinks. 
“Fuck this,” Lo’ak grumbles, bundling all of his belongings.
He stalks through the clearing, past his brother, to leave you two. 
He doesn’t know what fuels the fire more, the fact that Neteyam didn’t even bat an eye at the feat they’d been practicing for for the past three weeks because he was too immersed in you, or the fact that you bore witness to his first clean shot and gave him that sickeningly sweet smile that made his stomach turn. 
“Where are you going?” Neteyam sighs. 
“Somewhere you two aren’t,” he grumbles under his breath, ducking through the brush of the lofty forest. 
You lick your lips, locking eyes with Neteyam as you give him a bashful grin and slowly break away to follow Lo’ak’s path. 
He isn’t far ahead as you push through the vines and low-hanging leaves, the path lined with large plants and the spindly roots of the looming trees. The grass is plush between your toes as you scamper to follow Lo’ak from a distance, watching as his lithe body climbs through the dense flora. 
“Why are you following me?” he calls after a few dozen paces, stopping in the middle of the path to whirl on his heel. 
His golden eyes are syrupy, warm despite the edge, and you can’t help but flash him your pearly whites in a genuine smile that takes up your dimpled cheeks. 
“Why’d you run off?” you ask him. “You were doing so well!” 
His chest rises and falls with a scoff. 
“You can give it a rest, you know?” Lo’ak says flatly, fist so tight around his bow he feels like he’ll crush the wood. 
Your expression morphs, eyebrows furrowing in a way that makes Lo’ak throat bob, something pinching behind his ribcage. 
“What?” you ask, frown marring your pretty face. 
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you can stop acting like you wanna be friends with me,” Lo’ak says matter-of-factly. 
“You are my friend,” you protest quietly. 
Lo’ak rolls his eyes. 
“Dude, whatever,” he mutters, turning his back on you. 
“Is it so wrong?” you murmur and he stops in his tracks, refusing to meet your gaze. “To be friends?” 
Friends. 
That stupid fucking word again.
Lo’ak bites his tongue and stalks off, leaving you on the path. 
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Neteyam rips him a new one when he sees him at dinner later that night. Lo’ak hangs his head as Neteyam digs in.
“Is it so hard to be nice?” Neteyam asks, hand squeezing his shoulder as they stand a handful of meters away from the main circle. 
As his eyes wander, he notices you sitting with his sister, head thrown back in laughter that glitters and wafts with the rising smoke of the fire. He swallows turning his attention back to his older brother. 
“Just don’t like her,” he admits. “I want her to leave me alone.” 
“You don’t like her or you like her too much?” Neteyam asks, brow bone raised. 
Lo’ak’s face scrunches.
“Ew, no,” he blurts. “Why would I—”
“________ just wants to fit in,” he sighs. “She has trouble making friends.” 
“Yeah, I wonder why,” Lo’ak mocks. “I don’t know why Kiri and Spider are always up her ass, she’s—”
“Lo’ak,” Neteyam warns. 
“Dude, everyone is always ________ this, _________ that! I don’t understand what’s so great about her—”
A throat clears and the brothers both turn their attention to the newcomer. Lo’ak could groan in frustration seeing that you’ve abandoned your seat and now stand nearby with two wooden plates. 
“They’re going to start cleaning up soon,” you say hesitantly. “Wanted to bring you some.” 
Neteyam takes it graciously from you, nodding his head in thanks while Lo’ak stares down at the plate you’d arranged for him, abundant in vegetables and thick cuts of meat. 
“No thanks,” he says flatly.
You try to coax him. 
“C’mon Lo’ak, you say gently. “I know you haven’t eaten yet.” 
“No thanks,” he repeats stonily, holding his hand up. 
You offer up the plate again. 
“Lo’ak–“ 
“I said no thank you,” he grunts, annoyed. 
He’d only meant to push it back towards you, but one second it’s in your hands, the next you’re wearing dinner, the plate clattering onto the ground. 
“Lo’ak!” Neteyam scolds. 
“Shit, I didn’t–”
“It’s fine,” you breathe an airy laugh and Lo’ak freezes when he hears your breath hitch. “It was an accident.” 
“Oh, ________…” Neteyam sighs, but you’re picking up the plate and scurrying off, ignoring the nearby snickering. 
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“Whatever you got going on, you need to cool it,” Jake scolds him in the family tent after dinner that night. “________ is a good girl, she’s trying to find her place. Can’t really do that if you’re gonna be a jerk to her all the time.” 
Lo’ak resists the urge to roll his eyes because, yet again, someone is sticking up for you, admonishing him about how he could be nicer, how he could take you under his wing, how he–
“What about me?” Lo’ak argues. “I tell her to leave me alone all the time, but she doesn’t listen. Why do I have to be nice to someone who doesn’t respect–”
“Cut the bullshit,” Jake thunders. “You haven’t even tried being her friend.” 
“Why should I?” Lo’ak counters. 
“Because maybe you two are more alike than you’d care to learn,” Jake says knowingly. “Now go apologize.” 
“Dad!” 
“Go, Lo’ak.” 
Lo’ak sucks in a deep breath before squeezing his eyes shut and blowing out through his nose. 
“Fine, fine, whatever,” he grumbles, ducking from the tent into the humid night air. 
He starts into the jungle, fingers brushing over the leaves and petals of the plants and flowers. He takes the moment to regulate his pounding heart in his chest before trying to wrack his brain for any words that he could scrounge into a believable apology. 
When he crosses the glowing waters of a skinny brook, something rustles nearby and his hand is on the hilt of his dagger in the blink of an eye. 
He turns to face the noise, knife drawn, but then you emerge and his body relaxes a fraction. 
“Fuck, ________, you scared me,” he sighs in relief. 
You fidget and swallow down the lump in your throat. 
“Sorry,” you say sheepishly. 
A brief silence dawns the two of you and Lo’ak notes that you’ve cleaned up from the evening meal’s debacle, now wearing a longer loincloth threaded with round pearlescent beads that refract the luminescence of the surrounding forest. 
Your grasp tightens around a leather bound journal and for a moment, he wonders what you could be writing about. 
When you follow his gaze, you shyly tuck the journal behind your back and give him an uneasy smile. 
“I wanted to–”
“I came to–”
Your words clash and you breathe a little laugh through your nose as you gaze at him with brilliant eyes. You start closing the distance and Lo’ak’s hands grow clammy. 
“You first,” you offer. 
Whatever threads of an apology he’d crafted in the moments prior have evaporated now that you stand before him, absolutely glowing. 
“Lo’ak?” Your head tilts and his cheeks warm. 
“Sorry,” he says hoarsely. “For what happened at dinner.” 
You shake your head quickly. 
“You don’t have to apologize,” you assure him, reaching out to touch him. 
He recoils, clearing his throat as he retreats to put an ample amount of distance between the two of you. 
You eye the berth and something shutters across your face as you rock back on your heels and flash him another uneasy smile. 
You haven’t even tried being her friend, his dad’s words echo like a call in the night. Maybe you two are more alike that you care to learn. 
Were you? You and Lo’ak were as different as they come, you molded by the love and adoration of the clan, him built up by the lessons and lectures he received from his parents and Neteyam. 
“Where are you going?” you ask, blowing by the previous conversation. 
He shrugs. 
“Dunno,” he admits. “I was looking for you.” 
The way you freeze is almost covert, your lips rolling as you try to hide the smile threatening to split your face. 
“Oh,” you hum. “Wanna go for a walk?” 
No, he wants to say. He absolutely does not want to spend anymore time with you than he has to. Likes to believe that he wouldn’t even bat an eye if he were to never see you again, but you’re looking at him expectantly and his dad’s words are like a mantra in his head, so he agrees begrudgingly. 
It’s awkward at first, silent except for the natural soundtrack of the vicarious jungle. But like you do so well, you break the silence and Lo’ak has to resist rolling his eyes for the third time that night. 
“What are your favorite colors?” you ask suddenly. 
“I dunno, green?” he offers. 
“Are you sure?” you laugh quietly. 
Lo’ak thinks a moment before nodding his head. 
“Yeah, green,” he finalizes. “And blue.” 
He barely notices that you’d fallen behind, and when he turns to look over his shoulder, he sees that you’re scratching something into your little journal. 
“And your favorite fruit?” you press, nose still between the pages. 
Lo’ak breathes out a laugh and your head shoots up. 
“What? You gonna send this list to the lab?” Lo’ak asks.
You give him a shy smile, shifting on your feet. 
“No,” you say softly, then whisper to yourself, “just compiling a list to win your heart.” 
Lo’ak barely hears you, ears twitching as his eyes narrow in confusion. 
“What?” he asks. 
You snap your notebook shut, shaking your head quickly as you pad through the grass to catch up to him. 
“Nothing.” 
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Something ripples in the fabric after that night, you and Neteyam both notice when Lo’ak enters the training clearing the next afternoon and greets you with a nod instead of flat out ignoring your presence like he had the last training session. 
And you think that the moment is fleeting, a one off, but as the days progress, you realize that maybe Lo’ak is finally softening around you. 
He stays for entire lessons, the most minute of smiles twitching at his lips whenever you compliment his shots. He waits near the edge for you as you pack up your things, and while the walk back to the village is a quiet one, you bask in his company, triumphant when he doesn’t run off. 
And while your evening walks are few and far between, you savor the moments he affords you, wedging yourself between him the crumbling walls of his facade. 
Tonight is one of those moments, sitting on adjacent branches overlooking the lively forest, when Lo’ak lets you peek farther into his life than he’d originally intended. 
“He never understands,” he sighs, popping a few berries from his satchel past his lips. 
Tonight’s topic is his father and you listen intently, eyes fixed on the way he reclines on the branch and looks up at the stars. 
“I try hard, you know? To make everyone proud, but all they see is my failure,” he says, obviously annoyed. “No matter what I do, it’s not good enough.” 
“You do great things, Lo’ak,” you say quietly, the first words you’ve said all night. 
And like your voice is a reminder, Lo’ak’s spine goes rigid, throat bobbing as he realizes that he may have said too much to you. He’s getting too comfortable and you’re all the willing to absorb every insecurity and every worry he has. 
But something about quiet moments like these makes him loose-lipped, eyes fluttering to where you’ve got your notebook balanced in the seam of your thighs, scrawling something on the pages as you eat your own berries. 
The words are leaving him before he can stop them. 
“Easy for you to say,” he murmurs. “You’re perfect.” 
The laugh that escapes you startles him and a few of the berries he was about to devour slips from his fingers and plunk down the leaves.
“I’m not perfect,” you assure him. 
“Only someone who’s perfect would say that,” Lo’ak grumbles, peering over the edge of the branches to spot his fallen fruit. “The whole village loves you, everyone’s always so ready to bat for you.” 
You look down at the pages of your journal with a sad smile. 
“It’s a lot of pressure,” you admit quietly. “Everyone’s watching your every move, waiting for you to mess up.” 
Lo’ak shifts uncomfortably.
You continue. 
“And most of the villagers our age don’t like me,” you say, thumbing one of the pages. “They say I kiss ass, that I’m always trying to keep a leg up.” 
Lo’ak winces, knowing that he’s the source of at least one of those sentiments. 
“The elders think you’re honorable,” Lo’ak argues gently. “You’re talented, you have something to offer the people.” 
“Honor means nothing if you’re bound by it,” you say finally, closing the cover to your journal. “If anything, I want to be more like you.” 
“Like me?” Lo’ak asks incredulously, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 
You nod, smiling at him. 
“Yeah,” you whisper. “I think you’re brave, fearless. And even if you care what people think, you do what you want.”
Lo’ak is quiet, taken aback by your confession.
Before he can respond, you’re gathering your things, bidding him a warm farewell as you begin climbing down the tree to disappear into the night. 
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After that night, you think that maybe you’re just imagining things, that you’re reading too much into the fact that Lo’ak has begun to finally act like you exist, but then Kiri says something and the hope sends your heart soaring. 
“Seems like he finally got his head out of his ass,” she says a few mornings later as you two stand near a shallow stream, eyes peeled for any fish you two could bring back to the village. 
“Think so?” you ask nervously, arrow trapping the flailing fish to the pebbles of the stream’s bed. 
Kiri shrugs. 
“He actually pays you mind now,” Kiri observes. “That’s a step up for sure. I think you just need to spend more time with him.” 
You smile, splashing through shallow waters to capture the fish and add it to the growing pile in the basket between you and the middle Sully. 
“Yeah?” you wonder
So you test the theory, basket filled with various peeled fruits and a little container of nectar you squeezed from the petals of a flower. 
It doesn’t take long to hunt him down. When you enter the training circle, he’s packing up his things, quiver strapped to his back and bow in his fist. 
Before you make yourself known, he’s turning on his heel to face you, eyes wild as he swallows down the lump in his throat. 
He’d be the last to admit that the last night you two spent together was branded in his brain, that his mouth had dried up so much so he felt his tongue could crack.
There were so many implications in your words and it horrified him, scared him so much that he knew he couldn’t let you that close again. 
But now you stand before him, pretty as can be, hopeful even, and he’s at a war with himself, absolutely caught between resenting you for being everything he’s not and giving into the draw. 
“Hi,” you greet, basket heavy in your hands. 
You look more radiant than usual, skirt brushing the forest floor, the woven vine of your top banded to expose your midriff. 
“Hey,” he replies hesitantly. 
“Where you going?” you ask curiously.
His throat bobs as he gestures behind him. 
“Hunting,” is all he says.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” you ask eagerly.
He doesn’t. He shouldn’t. Because things are shifting and he’s not sure if he’ll be able to stomach the change. If he’ll be able to admit to himself that you’re wearing him thin, that you make him feel things he’s never felt before and that it makes him feel like he has no control. 
Because when it boils down to it, you make him lose control, make him lose his filter, and make him feel every emotion twice as hard. 
“No,” he says.
And in that moment, you feel like you’re back at square one, watching as his eyes turn stony and his jaw sets firmly. 
“You shouldn’t go hunting on your own,” you say softly. “Will someone be with you?” 
“It’s fine,” he argues. “I’m fine.” 
“I can go with you!” you offer. “I thought maybe we could sit by the stream and talk, but we can go hunting instead. We can–” 
“No,” he says again, pinning you with eyes so lethal, it makes you wonder if you really had imagined the moments you shared with him, if you had imagined Kiri telling you that she saw it too. 
You try again anyways. 
“It’ll be good practice and–”
“I said no, ________,” he barks. “You’re dead weight and I want to be alone.” 
Your lips seal and you bite the inside of your cheek. 
Lo’ak could nearly scream in frustration when he notices the way your shoulders sag and it makes something in his heart cinch. 
“Okay,” you agree, nodding quickly. “Be safe and–”
The words die on your tongue when you notice the look of annoyance on Lo’ak’s face. 
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Lo’ak is in deep shit, you come to find out hours later. 
You sit outside of the training circle, knowing that Lo’ak will return down the path after his hunting trip. What you don’t expect, however, is Jake and Neytiri emerging with the entire line of Sully kids and Spider.
Jake grips the back of Lo’ak’s neck tightly as they march past wandering eyes, straight to the family tent. You don’t miss his wounds though, varying in depth, some bleeding, some sore. 
You’re hot on their heels, standing right outside of the entrance as Jake tears into the middle Sully. 
“Time and time again, I have to get on your ass for doing the complete opposite of what I ask you to do!” Jake’s voice is thunderous inside the tent. “Do you not realize that you not only risked your life but your sisters’ too?”
There’s a beat of silence before Jake continues, obviously pacing from the way his volume fluctuates. 
“And what were you thinking bringing Tuk? She’s nine, Lo’ak!” he shouts, the anger and the hurt evident in his tone. 
“I’m sorry,” Lo’ak mumbles. 
“Yeah, I bet you are!” Jake scolds. “I don’t ask for much. All I want is for you stay in line. Just stay out of trouble and work hard on your training. I paired you with ________ and Neteyam in hopes that maybe you’ll tighten up and be more like them, but you’re always disappointing me.” 
You frown. 
Whatever Lo’ak had done probably didn’t warrant such deep admonishment and something tugs especially hard at your heartstrings knowing that all he wants to do is make his dad proud. 
“You’re surrounded by good influences, but you always have to go against the grain, Lo’ak,” Jake says, the edge in his tone softening. “I’m getting tired of the bullshit, son. You need to clean up your act. Hear me?” 
“Yes sir,” Lo’ak says quietly, voice almost a whisper behind the hide of the tent. 
“Now go get yourself cleaned up,” Jake huffs. 
Your spine is straightening when you hear foot steps closing in, holding your breath as the flap to the tent billows open and Lo’ak is emerging.
His eyes flit to yours and his expression sours further. 
“Lo’ak,” you murmur, reaching out to him. 
He’s shrugging you away, wincing when a wound on his shoulder stretches especially taut. 
“You’re hurt,” you say quietly. “I’ll–”
“Leave me alone,” he says, eerily level. 
“But you’re–”
“I said leave me alone, ________,” he warns, pushing past you in what should be the pursuit of his grandmother’s quarters.
Instead he’s making a beeline for the jungle. 
You’d seen the look in his eye before he stonewalled you, seen the hurt and heaviness that most people didn’t seem to notice because he was always so adventurous and carefree. 
You follow after him. 
“Lo’ak, you know he’s only worried for you,” you try to reason gently, fingers reaching for his own as you duck under massive leaves and fluttering insects. 
He whirls to face you, swatting your hand away. 
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he bites. “You don’t know anything.” 
You swallow, holding your hand to your chest as you watch him lay down every brick to wall himself off. 
He hates it. He hates how you look at him, how you seem to pity the life he has to live. It makes him sick, thinking that you two have it the same. He’d rather be hated for being great than hated for being a let down. It’s insulting, how you think you know how it feels. 
“Let’s go back. I’ll wrap your wounds and–”
“Of course, clan’s golden girl is gonna patch me up and make it all better, huh?” he seethes facetiously. “Just fuck off!” 
You flinch, blinking at the boy you holds so much rage in front of you. 
“I know you’re hurting, but you don’t have to be mean,” you whisper, taking in a shuddering breath to will yourself not to cry. 
“Mean? Mean?” Lo’ak bristles. “I’ve tried telling you to lay off nicely, tried telling you to just leave me alone, but you don’t listen. You just pry and overstep and you make every little thing about you! Oh, it’s so much pressure, villagers our age hate me, of course they would! You already have everything and just have to go rub salt in the wound!” 
You shrink, eyes welling as your lip trembles. 
“Lo’ak, stop,” you whimper. 
“We’re not friends, ________.We never were and we never will because I don’t like you,” he spits. “Now please, for the love of god, will you just leave me alone!” 
The forest is silent save for Lo’ak’s ragged breathing, fists clenched as he glares down at you. 
“I-” Your breath hitches and you choke out an apology. “I’m sorry.” 
Lo’ak’s heart softens a fraction as you take a step back, turning quickly on your heel. 
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” you rasp, tripping over your own feet as you stumble into a run, putting as much space as you can between you and the middle child who stands in the middle of the forest, unable to wrangle every harsh word he’d said to force back down his throat. 
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You dropped your journal. 
Lo’ak is sure you’re looking for it, know that you’ve always got your nose stuck in it. You had dropped it running off and now he has its leather bound in his hands. 
It’s been a couple of nights since the faithful evening he’d blown his top and he’d only seen whispers of you. It was so unlike you to disappear, to not be entertaining the masses as they fell to your feet. 
He’d cooled off significantly, and when he replayed the conversation in his head, he winced, body folding in on itself as he realizes how harsh he’d been. 
“Are you actually thinking thoughts?” Spider claps him on the shoulder, startling him so badly he drops the journal. 
It lands spine down, the pages fluttering open. 
He chances a peek before Spider is rounding his lithe figure to pick up the notebook. All he makes out is a rough sketch. 
“You write?” Spider asks, intrigued. 
“No, it’s ________’s,” Lo’ak answers. 
“Oh, your little girlfriend’s?” 
Lo’ak gives the human a cross look, snatching the book from his grasp as he stands up.
“Trouble in paradise?” Spider pries, scurrying to keep up with Lo’ak’s long strides. 
A beat of silence before Lo’ak finally answers. 
“Made her cry,” he mumbles, embarrassed. 
Spider winces behind him. 
“You serious?” 
Lo’ak sighs. 
“Yes, dude, fuck,” he breathes, hand coming to the back of his neck. “I don’t know what came over me. Dad was ripping me a new one and Neteyam already chewed me out before they got there and she was being annoying, so I just…” 
“Bro,” Spider scoffs in disbelief, scratching the back of his head. “You’re a real dickhead sometimes.” 
Lo’ak’s eyes wander as he shifts uncomfortably, feeling incredibly small as his friend glares up at him. 
“I mean, I told her I wanted to be left alone!” Lo’ak tries to defend weakly. “I- I didn’t mean to.” 
“She likes you a lot, dude,” Spider reiterates. “She just wants you to like her back.” 
Despite the glaring signs, Lo’ak has trouble believing that your feelings for him far surpass charity work. They couldn’t, it was impossible. Because at the end of the day, you’re you and he’s…him. 
He opens his mouth to say something, but Spider beats him to it.
“Did you at least apologize?” 
Lo’ak squirms.
“Dude!” 
“Look, I know, I know,” he tries to assuage the situation. 
“________ is literally the sweetest girl in the entire clan you just–“ 
“I get it, bro, I get it!” Lo’ak huffs. 
“Get your head out of your ass,” Spider says. “She might not stick around long enough for you to realize.” 
“Realize what?” Lo’ak snaps. 
“Are you really gonna play stupid right now?” 
He blinks at the human. 
“You like ________,” Spider says matter-of-factly. “You always have, ever since we were kids.” 
“Oh, piss off,” Lo’ak grumbles.
“Dude, you’re literally my best friend, but I sometimes I wanna shove my foot so far up your–”
“I do not like ________,” Lo’ak says sharply. 
“Everyone sees it but you, dipshit,” Spider scoffs. “You like her, but you’re scared. She’s perfect and she intimidates you. Think she’s gonna see you for what you really are and turn her back on you like everyone else does when you fuck up, but she’s not like that, Lo’ak. She’s been there whether you like it or not. But she might not always.” 
Lo’ak swallows down the knot in his throat, fingers tightening around the notebook. 
“Everything clicking?” Spider asks knowingly. 
Lo’ak throws him a final narrowed glare before stalking off. 
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It’s Lo’ak’s birthday and just like every orbit, he spends it alone in the forest.
At first, he’d been burdened with the weight of hurting your feelings, but now his conversation with Spider weighs heavy on him as he climbs dirt walkways and flowered paths. 
It doesn’t help that your notebook weighs heavy in his satchel, a silent reminder that he still has a piece of you while you cling to his peace of mind. 
I think you’re brave, fearless. They’re the words you uttered to him that fateful night you turned the reality of you two on its axis. 
As he splices all the moments you two shared like a reel, he realizes that it’s endless. That you’re always there, you’d always been there, like a layer of impenetrable atmosphere surrounding him. 
He really should apologize, he knows this much, but you’ve disappeared like a wisp of smoke. Training sessions have returned to a sibling affair and he’s too prideful to ask about you. 
It’s almost eclipse when he begins making his way back for the evening meal, knowing that a scolding will await if he arrives even a minute late. 
After what had happened with you, he was lying low, trying to diminish his blip from the radar.
As he closes in on the village’s main circle, he notes that it’s quiet. A little too quiet. It puts him on edge, makes him draw his bow and feel around for an arrow in his quiver. 
A few more paces and he’s broken into the clearing, a few stragglers milling about. Another half a dozen steps and it’s like the forest melts into a celebration, whorls of blue pouring into the circle as villagers begin trilling. 
Lo’ak is hoisted into the air as the dying fire in the center of the camp begins to slowly roar. 
“Happy birthday, baby bro!” Neteyam caws loudly as they begin jostling him into the air, chanting and dancing as the dense crowd of clanspeople celebrate him.
It’s like time slows as he peers from side to side eagerly, seeing the way Spider, Kiri and Tuk dance happily among his people. Jake and Neytiri stand near the fire, smiles wide when they see the look of awe on their middle son’s face. 
When he’s finally set on his feet, he wobbles, childlike as he turns, taking in the glowing streamers that crisscross between the tents. Flowers of green and blue thread through the vines, gleaming like lamplight as the forest buzzes around them. 
“Wha– What is all this?” Lo’ak croaks in disbelief, eyes flitting wildly as he notices Norm and Max standing next to a table they’d hauled from the pod to the circle, piled high with meats and vegetables wrapped in leaves. 
A platter of yovo fruits, his favorite, are at the center, surrounded by a painted sign with his name and the handprints of dozens of villagers on it. 
“You survived another orbit!” Neteyam laughs heartily, head-locking the younger boy before roughly digging his knuckles into the top of his head. 
A laugh bubbles from Lo’ak’s lips, swatting his brother away as villagers and clan members he’d grown up with approach him one by one to greet him. 
As the night progresses, he doesn’t even realize he’s searching until your mother approaches and his spine goes rigid, cheeks warming under her piercing gaze. 
“From my ________,” she says, setting a pouch into his palms. “She toiled over these for many eclipses. Please take care.” 
Lo’ak’s nod is delayed as his satchel shifts on his shoulders, a dull reminder that your journal still remains with him, begging to be read. 
“Where– Where is she?” he asks suddenly, feeling your absence all the more now that your gift sits in the palm of his hand. 
“My daughter does not feel well,” your mother says simply. “She wished to be excused from the festivities.” 
His chest feels hollow, stomach tight as his cheeks burn. You’d mentioned this to him, all those days ago in the training circle, about wanting to celebrate with him. 
His eyes flit to the flowers looped through the vines, the mountain of yovo fruits, the gift in his hands. He doesn’t want to be presumptuous. Doesn’t want to fuel the tiniest ember of hope in chest, but he can’t help it. 
He can’t help but read into it, into the implications of this celebration you’d planned all for him, into every word you uttered to him in the quiet of the forest’s chirping. 
It’s all it takes for him to lock himself in his own head. The feast melts into the background, dull, as his eyes cut the crowd for you. 
You have to be here, gotta be hanging around the outskirts silently. The idea taunts him, makes his gut twist hard as images of you dancing in the circle, singing to him, celebrating him, loving him—
Lo’ak freezes, blinking incredulously at the thought that’d just crossed his brain. It makes him queasy, makes the regret and the guilt gnaw at every nerve ending as your crying face flashes like an unwanted slideshow in his brain. 
It’s all he can think about as the festivities die, as villagers begin turning in the for the night and he helps his family clean up the aftermath of another orbit finally finished. 
Spider helps Tuk and Neteyam near the fire, and as Lo’ak moves through the motions like he’s caught in a tide, Kiri watches, knowing all too well what consumes her brother’s mind. 
It isn’t until Lo’ak is shrouded by the stillness of the early morning, his family tucked in their tent, bodies and limbs splayed as they sleep together, that he sits in a swinging hammock, your journal and the pouch in his lap. 
It feels wrong, the way he thumbs the cover, working up the courage to turn it open. But Ewya, fate, would have never left it in his wake if it wasn’t meant to be read.
As his finger ghosts the etchings of the front cover, worn and loved by you, something tickles his leg as he admires the leather. He blinks in disbelief when he sees a singular woodsprite resting against his thigh. 
Before he loses his nerve, he’s opening the pages with bated breath. 
Recipes, nature notes, short thoughts fill the sheets and Lo’ak feels like he’s reading into your brain, seeing all the little things no one bothers to know. 
he is like the sun,
shines so bright,
but burns the closer you get. 
Lo’ak’s pointer finger glosses over the ink, over your curly handwriting. 
he is so incredible, but he doesn’t even know it. i want to shout it to every creature in the forest, every tree and every flower. oh, how i wish to be as fearless as him. 
His chest heaves as the words blur. 
Fearless. 
Fearless. 
Fearless. 
In this moment, he feels everything but. He feels like a coward. 
He continues to flip, throat lodged as he sees drawings, both rough sketches and full renderings. He hadn’t even known that you liked to draw, yet here he was, observing his home through your artistic eye. 
Flowers, leaves, trees, creatures, insects, fruits mar the stained papers, etched like it’d been caught in real time. 
likes green and blue. 
likes yovo fruits. 
The entry from the day you’d first walked with him through the forest. 
When he turns the page, his breath hitches. 
In full color, you’d captured his bullseye from your first training session. His back taut from the release, expression shaded stoic. He looked mighty, like the strongest warrior, and it was all through your eyes. 
Lo’ak doesn’t even realize he’s crying until the bullseye in the illustration bleeds from a fallen tear. Another one drips from his chin, then another. 
The next page is the night you two had poured your hearts out to each other. Again, in full color, he’s watching the stars. You don’t leave out the glow of the freckles that smatter his face and body, don’t miss the smile that plays at his lips as he quietly points out that his dad had come from a star. 
He flips again and different iterations and designs for what seems like jewelry litters the pages, shaded with different colors of blue and green, marked with varying notes, x’s marking through ideas you didn’t like. 
Lo’ak remembers the pouch, sitting untouched in his lap, and his shaky fingers undo the ties. He shakes the contents on the flat of the notebook and the most intricate beadwork fits into the crease. 
His eyes widen as he picks up the necklace in a trembling hand, the eclipsing sun catching the etching in the flat stones. 
Four five-fingered hands and four four-fingered ones, each separated by jewels scavenged and cleaned from the bed of the glowing river. 
A small scroll flutters from the pouch and Lo’ak chokes back as sob as he unrolls the hide. 
Happy Birthday, Lo’ak. I am always grateful to know someone like you. May your next orbit be filled with endless blessings from Ewya and may you see yourself how I see you. 
You see him, he realizes. You’re his supporter, a silent force that consumes every insecurity and swallows every doubt. You believe in him more than he believes in himself. 
He stands from the hammock and runs. 
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You’re sitting in the same tree the two of you had rested in the night you’d confided in Lo’ak, watching as the sun eclipses and begins to light up the sparkling forest.
Something rustles and you sit up, hand on the hilt of your dagger as you search the area for movement.
As your eyes lock on the source, you almost wish it had been a beast coming to devour you whole. But as Lo’ak climbs the branches of the tree quickly, you feel the dread begin to solidify in your veins. 
You take your satchel, hanging from a nearby branch and sling it over your shoulder, pulling your shawl over your head to prepare for your escape. 
“________, wait,” he chokes breathlessly. “Please.” 
You feel like crying all over again, feel so unbelievably stupid thinking that Lo’ak would ever see you the way that you see him. 
You pause a beat as he settles on the branch across from yours, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. 
Something glints in the sun and your eyes widen when you see that Lo’ak has fastened the necklace you made him around his neck, right above the the leather chain that holds his beloved claw charm. 
“You’re wearing it,” you whisper, lips twitching into a frown as you try your best to keep your tears at bay. 
“I’m sorry, ________,” Lo’ak apologizes hoarsely. “Fuck, you don’t understand how sorry I am.” 
The tears well on their own. 
We’re not friends. We never were and we never will. 
The words haunt you like a broken record and you shake your head, moving from your perch to move down the branches. 
“Wait, wait,” Lo’ak pleads. “Please don’t go, I–”
“I hate you,” you whisper. “I hate you, Lo’ak.” 
He freezes, watching as you balance on a branch below. 
“I tried so hard to be your friend,” you whimper, angrily wiping away your tears. “You’re amazing. You’re strong, and you’re fearless, and you are everything I want to be, but you’re heartless.” 
Lo’ak lets out a shuddering breath, a chill running down his spine as you look up at him like he’d smashed every star in the sky. 
“I wanted to be with you, you know?” you let out a watery laugh. “I hoped that maybe if I stuck it out, you’d see how much I cared, how badly I wanted to be with you, even if it was from a distance.” 
“I do, _________, I do!” he argues. 
He hadn’t always, but he sees it now. He sees you. 
You shake your head again.
“You don’t,” you sigh, voice trembling. “It’s my fault anyways. You were right. You told me to leave you alone and I was being too much.” 
“Stop–”
“Let this be the last time,” you assure him. “Let’s just– Let’s pretend we never met.”
“No, _________. Wait!” 
You’re climbing down the tree and disappearing into the brush and, like a fleck of ash, you’re disintegrating into nothingness. 
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Most people think he’s being moody, that he’s just been scolded by his father or older brother, but Neytiri knows better. 
She sees the way her son has changed over the course of the past few weeks. She knows there is a great burden that he carries, but much like her beloved and her eldest, he suffers in silence. 
“Maitan,” she says quietly, brushing a braid from his face as he folds the leaves around a chunk of steaming meat. 
Lo’ak pauses almost imperceptibly, but continues his task. 
It isn’t like him to stay home and work with Neytiri. If anything, he’d be the first one out of the tent, Tuk, Spider, and Kiri tailing after him as they galavant through the endless forest. 
“Something weighs heavy in your heart,” she tries again, hand coming over his. 
Lo’ak stops and leans back, unable to meet his mother’s searching gaze. 
“I hurt someone,” he says quietly. 
Neytiri stiffens.
“What?” 
“I hurt someone I care about,” Lo’ak admits. You’d called him fearless, strong. He needed to live by your word. “I hurt her and I don’t know how to fix it.” 
“Oh, Lo’ak,” she murmurs, squeezing his hand gently. 
Her face has softened as she takes in his stony expression. 
“My son, some things cannot be fixed,” she says honestly. “But all things require great effort. Sometimes those efforts will fall through, but that is the natural order of life.” 
Lo’ak swallows. 
“Whoever this special person is, if you have hurt her, she deserves the full effort of your heart, no?” 
You do, he knows you do. You deserve every last effort. But a niggling streak of insecurity tells him that you don’t deserve someone like him. You don’t deserve someone who takes your affections for granted. You deserve someone who will love you with every breath, who will love you fearlessly. 
“I really messed things up, Mom,” Lo’ak says quietly. “I don’t…” 
Neytiri’s hand comes to Lo’ak chest. 
“The night I first met your father, Ewya gave me sign,” she says. “He has a pure, strong heart. You do too.” 
Lo’ak swallows. 
“Be brave, Maitan,” she says. “Sometimes that is enough.” 
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Lo’ak’s fingers hurt from picking berries.
His cuticles bleed, pricked by the thorns of the fruit’s bush. Kiri hums beside him, weaving a little bag out of ropes of thin vines. 
“You’re not gonna help me?” he whines. 
“Why should I help you with your mess?” 
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You look beautiful under the glow of the evening meal’s crackling fire. It’s the first time you’ve emerged since before Lo’ak’s birthday feast and you’re being flocked by elders and villagers, wishing you well and asking about your supposed ailment. 
He sits across the fire, fists tight as he searches for a lull in the crowd. 
Spider snickers next to him, devouring the contents of his plate like he’s starved, watching Lo’ak’s useless pining like a show. 
Be brave. 
He’s standing to his feet before he can back out, crossing the circle to approach you. The villagers watch like they know something he doesn’t and the nerves are eating away at him as he steps into your space. 
You look up from your conversation with a girl your age, the smile slipping from your lips. 
“Can we talk?” Lo’ak asks, eyes wandering to watch the way everyone watches him. 
You remain jaded.
“Now’s not a good time,” you say quietly and a few onlookers snicker in the background. “________,” Lo’ak tries again. 
You stare up at him, the shadow of the fire dancing over your features as you seemingly look right through him. It’s humiliating, the way you remain seated and watch him fidget, but he figures he deserves the cold shoulder after months, years of casting you to the side. 
“Let’s go?” you ask the girl, nodding your head over your shoulder. 
The girl chances a glance between you and Lo’ak, noticing the telltale sign of your work etched into the stones of the choker he hadn’t taken off since his birthday. 
She gives him a sympathetic smile as she follows after you. 
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He’s going to have to try a lot harder than he has, he realizes as your birthday looms right around the corner. The next eclipse, in fact. 
He’s losing hope, losing courage, but he can’t give up on you two just yet. 
He makes sure the berries he picked the days prior are packed tightly in his bag, the lid to the nectar fastened, and his present wrapped nicely. 
It’s his last hope, his last shot to make things right. 
Spider, Tuk, and Neytiri surround him, Neteyam and Jake off on a hunt. 
They’d all been privy to the fact, aiding him in his endeavors as he organized his final grapple with your heart. 
“Kiri said she’ll bring her right before eclipse,” Spider says, peeking from the flap of the tent. “That’s in, like, minutes.” 
Lo’ak is nervous. Doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses you for good, but he knows he has to give it his best effort. It’s the least you deserve. 
Be brave. Sometimes that is enough. 
Lo’ak glances at his mom and she gives him a warm smile, ruffling his braids. 
“You are the son of Toruk Makto,” she assures him, pinching his cheek. “There is nothing you cannot do.” 
The words are carved into his brain as he rushes through the forest, the the stream that the curls and bends through the forest. It glows beautifully at night and that is his final push. 
“Wait, give me like three seconds, I left something.” Kiri’s voice is muffled behind the trees. 
“Huh?” Lo’ak sees the way your head tilts through an opening in the foliage. 
“I’ll only be a second!” 
“Wait, Kiri!” 
Kiri is running straight for him, comes barreling through the bushes, and continues down the path. 
“Good luck, egghead!”
Lo’ak takes in a final breath to quell the tremor in his hands before ducking through the bushes to reveal himself. 
You’re sitting on the embankment, on a woven mat that Kiri had laid out for you two, decorative vines edging the seams. 
“Oh, you were–”
You peer over your shoulder and your expression falls. 
“Lo’ak…” 
“Happy birthday, ________,” he breathes. 
You don’t look amused, slinging your bag over you shoulder as you rise to your feet. 
“Kiri and I are hanging out,” you tell him. 
He scratches the back of his head. 
“I…I had Kiri bring you here because I knew that you wouldn’t come with me if I asked,” he admits. “And of course, I don’t blame you, but I– I just really need to talk to you.” 
You bite the inside of your cheek, unable to look him in his eyes as he draws nearer. 
“Just give me some time, please,” he pleads. 
You finally meet his gaze, searching his eyes as he looks down at you earnestly. 
You give him the tiniest nod, reluctantly shedding your satchel to reassume your seat on the mat. 
The waters rush gently, like a song as Lo’ak lowers himself next to you.
His palms are clammy as he fidgets in his seat, the scent of herbs and flowers wafting from your dewy skin. He can’t bring himself to look at you, afraid that every sentiment he’d crafted in the hours of the night will escape him, so he watches the bubbling of the stream. 
“Well?” you whisper, like you don’t want to shatter the fragile sheath of peace that layers you. 
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I know I’ve said it already, but I really am, ________.” 
“I know,” you murmur and his gaze flits to yours. “Even if you don’t act like it, you have a good heart, Lo’ak. You feel everything, even the things you don’t want to.” 
He swallows.
“I didn’t mean it,” he says carefully. “I was mad and I took it out on you. That wasn’t fair.” 
You sit silently, knees hugged to your chest. Your cheek rests against your knee, watching Lo’ak with seeing eyes. It makes him trip over his words. 
“My whole life, I’ve always been compared to Neteyam,” he says. “The entire village would whisper about me and how I was nothing like the mighty warrior.” 
When he glances at you, he notices your fingers twitch, like you want to reach out to him. 
He squashes his fears and turns to face you, five-fingered hand coming up to thread with your four. You watch the union, uncertainty obvious in the way you tense, but Lo’ak squeezes. 
“And then when we started growing up, you were just another person I had to live up to,” Lo’ak whispers. “You’re perfect, ________. You’re kind, and you’re smart, talented. You’re everything I’m not and it made me hate you.” 
You shrink, but Lo’ak pulls you towards him, hand coming up to brush your cheek. 
“But you’re all of that and more,” he continues, the words gushing like a river. “You’re always there, you support me and you defend me and see things I don’t.” 
You become shy under his gaze because for the first time, he’s seeing you. He’s seeing you for every single thing you’ve been to him and it makes your stomach knot. 
“I have something to tell you,” he says. “Please don’t be mad at me.” 
Your gaze is soft, palm still in his as he turns and reaches into the bag he discarded next to him. Your eyes widen when he produces your notebook, edges curled the slightest as he hands it to you. 
“My journal,” you say, taking it from him quickly. “I’ve been looking for this. Why- Why do you have it?” 
He looks guilty, lips rolling as he avoids your gaze. 
“Did you…” 
“I wasn’t going to,” he admits. “But there were woodsprites and I knew it was a s–”
“Lo’ak this is private,” you murmur incredulously. “Why would you read this?” 
“How long, ________?” he asks quietly, grip on your hand tightening. 
“Lo’ak, don’t–”
“How long?” he presses desperately. 
Your eyes are watering, like that wicked night all over again and Lo’ak begs Eywa for the final push. 
“Since we were ten,” you whisper brokenly. “It was my first performance and it was so stupid, but I was throwing up because I was nervous and you talked me through it.” 
Lo’ak is stunned, the memory like the faintest of outlines. 
“We didn’t even know each other that well,” you hiccup. “But you patted me on the back and you gave me this–”
You pull your fingers from his grasp and flip the journal to the last page, revealing a hidden pocket. Your nimble fingers pull a tattered string, the remnants of a vine, threaded with wilted flower petals, preserved from being pressed inside your notebook.
“You said that they made you make it during lessons,” you say, breath hitching. “That it’d be my good luck.” 
He’d forgotten all about the memory completely, too caught up in driving whatever wedge he could between you two, building up walls to seal you out. 
“And you kept it this whole time?” he asks, face scrunched in disbelief. 
“I’d hold on to anything you give me,” you admit in defeat. “Heartbreak included.” 
He lets out a shaky breath. 
“________, I’m so sorry,” he repeats, hand coming up to your neck. “You have to know that. I’m really fucking stupid, but if you give us a shot, I won’t mess it up.” 
Your hand comes up to his wrist, crumpling as you bow your head. 
“Don’t do this to me,” you beg, moving to break away from him. 
“Please.” 
His hold tightens, other hand twining with yours. 
“If I…if I give myself to you, I’m giving you everything,” you say hesitantly. “If you break this, you break me. I don’t think I can come back from this.” 
Lo’ak presses his forehead to yours, breath warm against your lips as he searches your gaze for any semblance of hope. 
“This is me being fearless, ________,” he whispers. 
You melt, pressing your lips to his tentatively. He’s frozen for the shortest of moments before relenting, pushing up onto his knees to deepen the kiss. 
He’s cradling your face and your hands are wandering and Lo’ak can’t help but think he could get used to loving you. 
To being loved by you. 
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BONUS
“I was gonna give it to you on your birthday,” Lo’ak says sheepishly a few nights later under the stars. “But, you know…” 
Your usual place among the branches of the looming trees have a lot of memories both bitter and sweet, but you suppose you could make new ones. 
“You don’t have to give me anything,” you say sweetly, tail swishing to wrap around his ankle. “You’re all I need.” 
Lo’ak doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to your saccharine words if the pounding in his chest is anything to go by. 
His hands are shaky as he pushes the hide towards you, a bow made of vine tied neatly around the gift. 
“Wanted to,” he says simply, moving the hair from you face to see your reaction better. “Open it.” 
You’re gentle with the present, like you are with most things, but eager to see what he’d gotten you. 
A tiny gasp falls from your lips when you finally see it, wide eyes meeting his as you free the jars of paints he’d mashed up, the brushes he fashioned, and the brand new journal he bound himself. 
“Lo’ak, wow…” 
“So you can paint me more,” he says, then adds timidly. “Or maybe us. Maybe you could paint us.” 
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an — holy shit guys, this was such a big project for me because i really wanted to dive into so many different things in this fic. to everyone who was waiting patiently, thank you sososo much. as usual, i took a lot of creative liberties with this one, but i hope you guys enjoyed nonetheless! although requests are paused for me to catch up, like always, if you wanna chat with me about literally anything, my askbox is open. lots of love hehehe :) xx
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neng © 2023
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taglist: @nao-cchi , @jkiminpark , @philiasoul @amart-e , @s-u-t , @netesbby , @tayswiftlovebot , @dumb-fawkin-bitch , @ewackmn
3K notes · View notes
kentopedia · 4 months
Text
౨ৎ ˖ ࣪⊹ REASSURANCE — nanami kento
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kento comforts you when you're feeling down
contents: gn!reader, insecurities, pet names, this was written in like 30 mins so idk, 700 words, sfw
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“kento?” you asked, resting your hands on your lap. from the other side of the couch, he turned, smiling softly, placing his thumbs between the pages of the book to save his spot. your head was buried in the cushion, and you stared at him, blinking slowly. “you still love me, right?”
at first, he laughed, a small little sound that left his throat. then, when your face fell further, he cut himself off immediately, eyebrows drawing together tightly. “of course, i love you, sweetheart. i love you so much. why are you asking me?”
you shrugged, embarrassed, and looked away from him, at your hands locked together. “sometimes i just don’t know why. it makes more sense that you wouldn’t love me than that you do.”
a heavy frown drew on kento’s face, and inched closer, reaching out. “what do you mean? did i do something that made you feel unloved? if i did, honey, i’m sorry—”
which only served to make you feel worse, because, most things weren’t ever kento’s fault. he was so patient and caring, the sweetest man you’d ever known. and you weren’t sure that you deserved that kind of love at all.
“of course not, kento, you’re perfect.”
he smiled a bit, then, but that didn’t erase the concern in his eyes. “i’m certainly anything but perfect.” his fingertips ran along the back of your own, softly. “tell me what’s wrong, my love. i don’t like seeing you upset.”
you sniffed, willing the tears away as you looked past him once more, unable to meet his gentle eyes. “it’s stupid.”
“don’t say that. nothing you feel is ever stupid.”
and when a tear fell down your cheek at the kind words, you wiped it away before kento could see it, scrubbing violently at your skin.
“i’m fine, kento.”
“you’re not.” he paused, softened his voice. “it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. i won’t make you. but don’t keep it all bottled up just because you think you’re being silly. okay?”
you glanced over, blinked, stared at the way his smile was slightly tilted. the plumpness of his lips, the gentleness of his eyes. his soft, blond hair falling over his forehead, because it was sunday night, and he hadn’t bothered to style it.
how dearly you loved him. you’d rather die than live a life without him.
a sob broke loose from you, and you covered your face with your hands, sniffling. “i’m sorry. i’m sorry.”
kento said nothing, but drew you closer, pulling you onto his lap. tears fell down your cheeks, and though you didn’t want to look at him, he drew your lips to his own, the touch barely there, before he kissed across your cheeks, your forehead.
“why are you sorry?”
“i didn’t mean to cry. i’m being so dumb. and sensitive.”
“honey,” he sighed, stroking your cheeks, eyes almost pained from the sight of you so upset. “it’s okay. don’t apologize for crying. i love you. i love you, i love you.”
you breathed deeply, trying not to cry harder, hating how difficult it was for you to accept him irrevocable affections, sometimes. “but why? why would you choose me, kento? i don’t think i’m an easy person to love. i’m so… boring, and average, and you are amazing in every way.” you squeezed his hand, still resting on your cheeks, and leaned into it.
kento stared, forehead wrinkling, before he pushed you down to his chest, holding you close. a long inhale breathed deep into his body. “you aren’t any of those things, you know? you’re so lovable. you’re beautiful, caring, intelligent. anything but boring. anything but average.” he ran his fingers up the knots of your spine. “perhaps, i was put on this earth to prove you otherwise.”
you gave him a sad little smile. “you might be working on that for a while, ken.”
"that's okay." he laughed, soft, gently, enough to shake you against his chest before he kissed the top of your head. “that’s what love is, isn’t it? i'm not going to leave when things get tough.”
1K notes · View notes
defectivevillain · 2 months
Text
through gritted teeth
pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Reader
reader's race & gender are ambiguous; no pronouns or physical descriptors are used.
summary:
The man says he’s your husband.  He’s polite, charming, intelligent. He seems a little pretentious, but he appears to know you rather well and the thinly-veiled devotion in his eyes dispels most of your remaining doubts.  It certainly helps that the man is rather well-dressed—and attractive, a traitorous voice in the back of your mind whispers.  Unfortunately, you have no idea who he is. 
word count: 3.8k | ao3 version
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You wake up to fluorescent lighting burning into your eyes, pulling tears down your cheeks as you blink stars from your vision. Your entire body aches with exhaustion and you can feel a headache brewing already. Groaning, you try to push yourself up to a sitting position. There’s an IV attached to your arm and, upon closer inspection, you seem to be in some sort of hospital room. White walls line the space, and there’s nothing much of note in your immediate vicinity. You blink a few more times past your absurdly dry eyes and continue inspecting the room, until your eyes catch on the chair to the right side of your bed. 
There’s a man sitting at your bedside with his eyes closed. He stirs within a few moments, as if he can sense you staring at him. Relief is written all over his face as he leans forward and clasps your hand with a small smile on his face. You can’t stop yourself from instinctively flinching at the contact and he notices, removing his hand at once. 
“Do you remember who I am?” He asks. His words are carefully constructed, strung together with eloquence and remnants of what sounds like an accent from a European country. You blink at him once, twice. It takes a moment for you to process the question, and another to contemplate the answer. The man doesn’t look familiar. Indeed, he looks like a stranger. 
When you tell him as much, a sad smile works its way onto his face. It seems he expected your answer. He begins to explain the circumstances surrounding your visit here, which you are immensely grateful for. You know next to nothing as you sit in this hospital bed, and, try as you might, you can’t remember anything save for your name. 
Apparently, you’ve suffered a serious head injury that left you with a spontaneous case of amnesia. Fortunately, your memories will likely return to you in due time. Somehow, these two revelations aren’t the most shocking of statements from the stranger. What the man reveals next shakes you to your core: he’s your husband. 
Upon closer examination, you find that the man is charming, polite… He’s rather attractive, too, with fine-combed hair and sparkling brown eyes with flecks of amber. His face looks as if it was sculpted by Michelangelo himself—sweeping lines, sharp edges, soft curves. The man is intelligent and [perhaps as a result] a little pretentious. From his attire, you can only assume that he makes a lot of money and has rather particular tastes. You could see someone like this going to the opera regularly. 
But there’s something else about this man—something lurking beneath the surface. You can’t puzzle out what it is. There’s something sinister concealed in those reddish-brown eyes, an unspoken violence in the man’s careful poise. And you think you catch him intently scrutinizing you—as if you’re under a microscope.  
You soon learn that the man’s name is Hannibal Lecter. He’s a psychiatrist who used to be a surgeon. He’s in his 40s. He has refined tastes—and even goes to the opera on occasion, yes. He is fascinating, intriguing beyond measure. He discusses heavily philosophical topics with ease. He is slippery, only giving you the information he wants to give you. He has a very controlled image. The dishes he cooks you are extravagant and lavish, with ingredients you’ve never even heard of. (The meat in them is always some sort of organ, and it turns your stomach every time.)
In the wake of your injury, you’re unsure of almost everything. But you know one thing for certain: Hannibal is not your husband. And you’re convinced that he’s dangerous. You don’t trust him—can’t trust his carefully crafted words, his home-cooked meals, his polite smiles. It’s all a farce. 
It would be all too easy to ask your next visitor about this well-dressed, enigmatic man. Unfortunately, you don’t get any other visitors. In fact, your next visitor is Hannibal again… And again. And again. It gets to the point where your nurse gives up on having him sign in when he visits. At first, she had been rather strict in enforcing the rules; she seems to have caught onto something that you still haven’t grasped, because she now collects herself with an entirely different—almost heightened—awareness. 
You’re having increasingly conflicting feelings, especially when you consider the fact that Hannibal hasn’t actually exhibited any behavior that justifies your wariness and suspicion. If anything, he’s been the perfect supporter—the perfect husband—throughout your recovery. You want to believe your gut sense, want to believe the whispers in the back of your mind that tell you to exercise caution. But, at the same time, who’s to say they can be believed? You still have almost no recollection of who you are. Why are you questioning the only person who has bothered to show up for you throughout your recovery? 
Days pass in the blink of an eye; before you know it, Hannibal is walking in one morning with the declaration that you’ve been officially discharged from the hospital. Despite your misgivings, you head to the bathroom to change into some normal clothes before putting on the pair of shoes near the door. Your heart is racing as Hannibal’s gaze refuses to leave your form. Why can’t your mind rest? Why can’t your thoughts be silent, for once? Why are you so damn suspicious of every minute kindness? 
The walk out of the hospital and through the parking lot is painfully silent. You can’t resist sneaking glances at Hannibal, waiting for his mask to crack and fall. It never does. He catches you looking and sends you a smile, which discourages you from looking again. You let your eyes roam about the shiny cars in the parking lot as the warm afternoon sunlight greets your skin. You missed the fresh air. 
“Where are you taking me?” You finally ask, as you continue to follow behind the man.
“Home,” Hannibal remarks. He pointedly does not say your home or even our home. Your heart is racing in your chest. His back is turned, leaving you to imagine the expression on his face.  
It isn’t until you’re secured in the front seat and Hannibal’s driving out of the parking lot that you summon the courage to utter the question that has been plaguing your mind. “Are you really my husband?”
“Hm?” It’s clear he heard you; he’s giving you a chance to retract the remark. You know you should take it, but… you want to know what’s going on. You need to find an answer for the seemingly irrational fear drumming in your chest and rushing in your ears. 
“You say you’re my husband,” You repeat yourself, gaining a bit more confidence. “But I don’t think you are.” For an awful moment, there’s nothing but silence. The car zips along the road. You feel your hand trembling at your side—hopefully the only visible sign of your distress. You clench your shaking hand into a fist and try to remain calm. Panicking won’t do you any good. 
“Do you remember how we first met?” Hannibal asks instead. You stare at him in disbelief, surprised by how he completely ignores your accusation. There is an utter lack of emotion on his face. Seconds later, you remember his question and shake your head. “You’re an FBI agent,” Hannibal reveals. “I was called in to perform your psychiatric evaluation.”
Great. Just great. Out of all things, you had to be an FBI agent. The thought of forgetting your work—forgetting all the victims left to die in muddied puddles of crimson, forgetting all the killers with mocking smiles and cruelty written in the lines of their faces—is sincerely troubling.  
And Hannibal is a psychiatrist. That seems to fit—you can see him in a needlessly extravagant office, surrounded by books and expensive elegancies. You have to shake your head to get rid of the weirdly vivid imagery that your thoughts produce. “Are you… my psychiatrist, then?” You ask. 
“If you wish,” he replies with a mirthful smile. That answer doesn’t satisfy your curiosity—not in the slightest. 
“Were you my psychiatrist?” You press. You get the feeling that you need to be asking the right questions in order to get the answers you want. The man across from you is adept at picking apart people’s words, flipping them around and twisting their intended meaning. Your wording will be immensely important. 
“I was your psychiatrist, for a time,” Hannibal acquiesces. From that statement, you get the sense that he really was your psychiatrist, until something evidently happened. You ask him as much, but you seem to go too far, because he regards you with an amused glance. “You’re asking a lot of questions.”
“And you’re not giving me any answers,” you feel the need to respond. You have simultaneous suspicions that honesty is dangerous in front of Hannibal, and that he values honesty above sugar-coated words. Your eyebrows furrow. “You haven’t exactly been forthcoming with information.”
“Is that so?” Hannibal is providing more questions in lieu of answers. He’s definitely hiding something. Sensing that you won’t get anything more from him, you fall silent and settle for staring at him out of the corner of your eye. His gaze is locked on the road ahead.  Despite the time you’ve spent together, talking about your past, you still aren’t totally convinced that you’re married to Hannibal. Is there a way you could test him—test his knowledge of you? Surely there’s something you can ask him to determine if he truly knows you or not. 
It comes to you a moment later. “What’s my favorite color?” You ask, before you can think better of it. The man doesn’t react at first, instead staring straight ahead. Just before you can repeat the question, he answers. 
“I can’t imagine you have a favorite color,” Hannibal responds. “You once told me the very notion was foolish.”
Okay, he’s sort of correct there. But that was an easy question. You sort through the few memories you have, looking for something you can ask him. “What’s my middle name?” That’s an answer that you just barely know yourself—a memory came back to you a mere few minutes ago, of you and your childhood friend talking about middle names and nicknames and other unimportant things. 
Hannibal answers the question correctly again. The two of you must’ve been friends, at the very least. You continue to search your mind for something you can ask him. 
Five minutes and several questions later, you’re starting to doubt your own conviction. Hannibal answers every single question correctly, providing you with information you don’t remember but know deep-down to be true. It’s unnerving and disturbing to think that you could’ve forgotten this man so easily. He seems… utterly unforgettable, in every sense of the word. Furthermore, he’s your husband—perhaps you shouldn’t be doubting him so easily. 
“I’m sorry,” you blurt out, before you can quite contemplate your next words. Hannibal’s eyes are locked on the road, but you know he’s listening. “I don’t mean to doubt you, I just- I don’t know what to do. I don’t remember anything, obviously, and… I feel so lost.” You choke out, your throat burning. You bury your head in your hands for a selfish moment, hoping for some solace and clarity. 
“Don’t apologize, dear,” Hannibal says. You hate how the remark sends a shiver down your spine. Damn it, why can’t you just be comfortable? This man is practically a dream, so why are you trying to ruin it? Can’t you just accept that, sometimes, you deserve to have nice things?! Hannibal continues, unknowing of your internal dilemma. “You’re going through a lot right now. I’m just happy to be here with you.” 
You feel ashamed, knowing that you’ve been holding yourself back despite the fact that Hannibal has shown you nothing but compassion and affection. “I’m… happy you’re here, too,” you say. Guilt prickling in your chest, you impulsively reach out and clasp his free hand resting on the console. Somehow, this surprises your husband, because he stiffens for a second before reciprocating, gripping your hand reassuringly. 
“We will get through this,” he promises. You push aside your doubts and decide to believe him.
Maybe things really will be alright. Maybe, you’ll get your memories back sooner rather than later, and you’ll be able to look back on these moments—riddled with doubt, insecurity, wariness—and laugh. You take a deep breath and look out the window, watching the passing trees blur together. 
Your hand slips from Hannibal’s and you look at your nails, picking at your cuticles. Your hands are somewhat indicative of the life you led—the one you don’t remember living—with a few scars stretching down your wrist and climbing up your forearm. You look down at the healed wound and frown, trying to remember how you got the scar. 
Suddenly, you get a flicker of a memory. It’s faint and fast, but it’s a reminder of the past nonetheless. You squint ahead, trying to focus on keeping the flashback in your mind for long enough to dissect it. You remember… blood. A corpse, perhaps? Yes, a corpse. A woman’s corpse, hoisted and impaled on antlers. You remember… staring at that corpse for so long that you had to be physically led away from the scene, albeit with a gnawing feeling in your gut that something just wasn’t right. You remember… walking into an office, only to be met with Hannibal’s curious gaze. That must’ve been the first time you met the psychiatrist. You put a hand to your temple and try desperately to concentrate. 
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Hannibal says, effectively throwing your focus. You blink and chance a glance at him. He’s still looking at the road, yet you can’t shake the perplexing conviction that he’s been watching you. What’s more, you can’t shake the feeling that his interjection was purposeful—that he meant to throw you off and break your concentration. 
“I- just remembered something,” you choke out, feeling a bolt of pain slide down your scalp to the back of your neck. You bring a hand to the nape of your neck and press, hissing as your fingers glide over sore muscles. “Something important.”
“Congratulations,” Hannibal hums, immune to your internal panic. You don’t know exactly what this man did, but he must’ve done something. Your subconscious is convinced that he is incredibly dangerous, and you feel inclined to trust your gut. 
Another flashback arrives, apropos of nothing. You remember sitting across from Hannibal in a finely-decorated room, lined with bookshelves and artifacts. You remember averting your eyes as you speak, desperate to avoid the roaring flames racing up your skin with every additional moment of prolonged eye contact. You remember… a twisted grin on Hannibal’s face. You remember… the intensity to his gaze as he studied you when he thought you weren’t looking. 
Unsettled, you shake your head and try to refocus on the passing scenery again. To your surprise, you think you recognize where you are. Hannibal must be taking you home. You take a deep breath. You just have to survive this car ride—then you can figure things out from there. You have all the time in the world to muse on the nature of your injury and the nature of your “husband,” once you’re safely contained within four walls. Right now, though, you need to be wary. You need to have your wits about you, you need to watch for any sudden movements, you need to be ready-
“We’re here,” Hannibal announces, promptly throwing your thought process to a halt. You blink and look ahead, only to find a nondescript home with beige siding and a somewhat weathered front door. Vaguely, you remember pulling your car into this driveway, remember unpacking boxes from your trunk. Yes, this is your house. Hannibal is much quicker on the uptake, as he gets out of the car and walks around the vehicle. You don’t realize that he’s opening the passenger door for you until you feel him staring at you expectantly. You thank him and get to your feet, a sudden bout of dizziness sending you wobbling. Hannibal is there in a moment, steadying you with a hand on your forearm. You pretend not to notice his hand on the small of your back as you walk up the path to the front porch. When you’re finally situated in front of the entrance, you realize that you have no idea where your keys could be. 
“Left pocket of your jacket,” Hannibal murmurs, as if reading your mind. You nearly choke on a breath. 
“Thanks,” you respond a bit breathlessly. When you finally manage to unlock the front door and swing it open, you turn back to face him. “Well, thank you for the ride.”
“Of course,” Hannibal responds easily. There’s a regretful smile rising on his face. Everything around you fades to obscurity. “I’m afraid this is goodbye.” That remark sounds strangely ominous. Your heart is in your throat. 
“Thank you for keeping me company,” you feel the need to say, regardless of your suspicions about the man. He was the only one to visit you. You don’t want to think about how you would feel if you spent your entire hospital visit without a single familiar face. “...Bye.” Suddenly, there’s a hand on your cheek. Hannibal’s hand cradles your jaw, his thumb gently roving along your skin. He regards you for a moment, his eyes sparkling, before kissing you on the cheek and leaving. You watch him return to his car and drive away, apprehension and adrenaline coursing through you. Somehow, you get the feeling that you’ll never see Hannibal again. 
Your doorbell rings about an hour later. You look through your peephole, only to find a somewhat intimidating man with his hands shoved in his pockets. You have to focus on quelling the foolish spike of hope that had risen in your chest when the doorbell rang, and the subsequent disappointment at the unfamiliar figure you found. You take a second glance at the stranger, only to find that he looks somewhat familiar. This vague familiarity convinces you to crack your front door open slightly and ask him, “Who are you?”
The man pulls something out of his pocket. “Jack Crawford, FBI,” he answers, showing you his identification card. You stare at him for another moment. “Your boss.” Crawford supplies, when you can’t seem to get the words out. After a few seconds of awkward silence, you decide to invite him inside. 
Before long, the two of you are settled in your living room. The tension that first appeared when you opened your front door has yet to fade. You’re not sure why this man has yet to crop up in your memories—he has a rather powerful aura of authority, not to mention the fact that he’s apparently your superior. You decide not to beat yourself up about it. Your memories will come back in due time; until then, you’ll make do with what little you have.
Crawford—Jack, he tells you to call him—clasps his hands over his knees and levels you with an unreadable gaze. “I need to ask you something,” Jack says, rifling through his other pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. He unfolds it slowly, before revealing it to you. “Do you remember this man? Hannibal Lecter?” Jack explains, immune to your growing dread. You feel sick to your stomach as your eyes flit across the black-and-white photograph of the same man who watched over you vigilantly as you recovered, who claimed to be your husband and kissed you on the cheek mere moments ago. “He’s the Chesapeake Ripper—the serial killer who has been evading capture.” 
“I-” You stammer, bringing a hand to your temple. Your headache from earlier is returning and your head is spinning from this sudden disclosure. You almost don’t want to believe Jack, but you get the feeling that he’d have no reason to lie to you. If anything, lying would just make his job harder. You take a shuddering breath in, trying to come to terms with the fact that you just narrowly escaped a serial killer’s grasp. 
“It’s alright,” Jack tries to reassure you, evidently sensing that you’re growing a bit panicked. 
“No, I-” You’re choking on the words. Recent memories are mixing with old, creating a convoluted and murky timeline of events. It’s hard to sort through everything, to find the truths hidden amongst the lies. You’re not sure how long it takes for you to collect your composure and organize your thoughts into a relatively coherent statement. “I saw him. He… visited me in the hospital. He drove me home.” 
“What?” Jack asks, utter disbelief written all over his face. You don’t remember your boss very well, but you get the feeling he isn’t usually so expressive. The look on his face would be comical, in a different situation. “What did he say to you?” He implores.
“He said a lot of things… Nothing very important.” You try to recall what you can, but your memories are quickly slipping through your fingertips in granules of sparkling sand. You press a hand to your temple, your headache growing worse as you try to recall what happened. “I tried asking him questions about me, to throw him off, but he knew all the answers.” 
Somehow, Jack doesn’t seem surprised by the notion. “You two were… close, before,” your boss evidently settles for saying. There’s a certain suspicion in his voice, as if he suspects you may have been more than “close” with Hannibal. You’re feeling too discombobulated to rise to the bait or bother calling him out on the obvious verbal trap. 
“He said ‘goodbye,’” you continue, eyebrows furrowing. Somehow, you get the sense that Hannibal isn’t the type to utter goodbyes. Moreover, a goodbye ushers in a sense of finality, as if you will truly never see him again. You pinch the bridge of your nose, pretending that your exchange with him on your doorstep isn’t replaying in your mind. He kissed me on the cheek, you don’t say to Jack. He said he was my husband. He watched over me in the hospital when no one else did. And it may have been fake, all of it… But that gleam of affection in his eyes didn’t look manufactured—it looked genuine.  
Jack looks troubled and somewhat restless. “You’re lucky you made it out alive.” He states. You don’t think you can quite believe his words. For whatever reason, Hannibal Lecter—the Chesapeake Ripper—is interested in you. Whether sick fascination or cloying obsession, you have to face the facts:  luck had nothing to do with it. The Ripper kept you alive because, inexplicably, he wants you alive. 
And that unnerves you. 
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hannibal taglist, cause i think y'all would be down with reading this since it's also hannibal: @its-ares @tobbotobbs @xrisdoesntexist @gr1mmac3 @tiredstarcerberuslamb @yourlocalratwriter @kingkoku @kahuunknown @atlas-king1 @pendragon-writes @slipknotcentury @cryinersaved @the-ultimate-librarian @starre-eyes @pendragon-writes @peterparkeeperer @gayschlatt69 @flow33didontsmoke @mrgatotortuga @house-of-1000-corpses-fan
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doremimosasol · 4 months
Text
𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐝 - 𝐓𝐨𝐦 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭 ⟡
warnings: suggestive, sharp blade, blood, a bit toxic but kinda sweet too at certain times
word count: 2,8 k
summary: Tom Riddle, the hardworking student, fascinated by you
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Tom Riddle, known for his driven mindset but passionate behind closed doors.
It was hard to really get to know the real him, to break through those walls he built around himself. He had always told himself lovers and even friends would distract him from his goal to always over-succeed. He needed to be the best, he needed to know everything they taught at school. He needed to know more.
As a person, like yourself, who studied a lot, it wasn't hard to see him regularly. Tom practically lived in the library, often pulling an all-nighter at any given opportunity. He had his way of tricking Filch into thinking the library was empty and not being able to find him. He often spent time in the restricted section but that didn't give him a chance to analyze the behavior of people around him. So he only visited that part of the library if he really needed to. He didn’t like being around people but the library was the perfect place to really get to know a person.
It may looked like he didn't care about people at Hogwarts, but he was a watcher. In his opinion, watching people study was the best way for him to draw out their personalities. He was intelligent but plain enough to only link people's self-worth to their dedication to their studies.
People sleeping in the library. Those were the ones that didn't have their 8 hours of sleep during the night. Not because of the endless hours studying but because of their weak-minded behavior to party at any given time. They were often Gryffindors, but his own house succeeded in making him disappointed too. It's the reason for him to stay in the library so often, the parties in the common room giving him a headache. Mornings after parties weren’t better for him either. Hungover people all around the place, hoping someday Professor Snape might find them in this state. He’d love to see them get detention.
Ravenclaws. Always putting on the act of the perfect student, while he knew well enough that half of them didn't even study for desire for knowledge. Some of them lived under a lot of pressure, making him almost sympathize with them — no — that was not possible. They were always trying to confirm the expectations of the others. It wasn't a gift. They pained themselves to prove their worth through their grades. But he was always the one they couldn't pass.
Students not using the library for proper end-goals. The kissing in the library drove him mad. There were enough places for one to eat one another's face but they always seemed to decide to do it in the library. What about a room? Anyway, he had his proper way of handling these kinds of students. A way that may or may not make them end up in the hospital wing. Nothing serious, just gluing their lips together with a simple spell. It wasn't pleasant but certainly made them leave. And he didn't have to listen to the awful noises.
Loud students. Same consequences as the kissing students but this time their own lips shut together. It wasn’t a hard spell to reverse. Poor them for not knowing the counter spell, should’ve paid some more attention in class.
You. You were different, always driven to reach the top of the class. Your determination almost — ALMOST — made him feel bad for you not succeeding. Because no one would ever reach the top place as long as he was in school.
You were often the person sitting there too at night. He analyzed your behavior every night. You were different, you took your studies seriously too, and seemed to enjoy it just as much he did.
It seems as if DADA was your favorite subject, noticing the small smile on your face when you had your nose in those textbooks. It was intriguing to him, to see how passionate you were while studying. And especially passionate about his favorite subject too.
This was the first time he'd ever been interested in another student. He wasn't experienced in relationships at all, whether they were romantically or just a friendship. He soon fell into an obsessive spiral, wishing you'd be in the library too when he was there. Figuring out your schedule just by sight of your direction in the hallways. It was unhealthy but you never left his mind, it almost made his grades drop by some percent.
You also noticed him in the library, intrigued by him yourself. He was elegant and charming and the way he spoke made your heart flutter. The guy just radiated intelligence. You caught yourself staring at him quite some times in the library, hoping he’d never notice. Silly you, of course, he did.
It took him weeks to build up the courage to even make the slightest move. He left a small note between the pages of your book while you were gone to get another one. From his seat, he waited for your reaction, even dropping his work just to not miss the smile that formed on your face when you opened the pages it lay in between.
"If a certain someone is on your mind while reading this, take the risk.
-TR"
The moment you lifted your eyes from the small note, yours met his. Tom Riddle. Drawn to the darkness and mystery that surrounded him.
The strange desire that flowed through both your veins reflected in each other's eyes. Neither of you saying anything. When he stood up to leave the library, you immediately picked up his intentions. He wanted you to follow him. A few seconds after he left, you stood up too, following closely behind him.
He stood still in the hallway, his back facing you as you stopped a few meters behind him. The tension was palpable, the only sound in the corridor being both of your breaths. A pace of breathing that quickened every passing second.
"Follow me." His voice echoed through the hallway, it was alluring…
You were contemplating whether to do as he told, but something in you was so damn drawn to him. You were pulled to him like a magnet, your feet following without listening to the signals your brain was giving to you.
He then stopped in front of a wall...?
Suddenly a large door appeared in it and he looked back at you with that typical smirk of his, he was proud of showing this discovery to you. He extended his hand out to the door, it opened magically. "Ladies first, of course."
He looked down at you and behind the darkness that filled his eyes, you could sense a small light flickering behind them. Like a small fire in a deep obscure cave, pulling you closer into the cave. Like a moth to a flame, drawn to the light in the cave.
As you entered the door, your eyes almost fell out of your sockets. Has this always been hidden in the castle? You looked back at him, the surprise on your face was obvious.
"You like it?" He walked closer to you, your heart beating faster at every step he took.
When he was right in front of you, he leaned his head closer to your ear. His breath was warm against the side of your face, a shiver going down your spine at the sensation. "You can keep a secret, right?"
He leaned his head back again, his eyes tracing all your features, pupils dilating. His fingers came into contact with your cheeks, dragging them down slowly until he reached the top of your shirt. Gently he loosened your tie, still looking at you like you were his own personal art piece. "You fascinate me."
"What is it that interests you in Dark Magic?" He slowly traced your collarbone, waiting for a response from you. "Mhmm?"
"I don't know... The secrets and mystery draw me towards it." You didn’t know how to explain it, just keeping it to some simple words. He raised his brows slightly at your confession.
"Is that so? I can give you just as many secrets Dark Magic holds..." He pushed a lock of hair in your face behind your ear. "Even more."
"Are you interested in finding out?"
You probably shouldn't have been…
It was since that day, that Tom and you had these secret meetings. He often took you back to the Room of Requirement during several nights. He taught you new things, in more ways than you could imagine. It seemed as if he was experienced in everything. Everything except love.
As the year progressed, you woke up more times in that room than in your own dorm room. Waking up in his warm arms as he traced his fingers over your bare back. It was a habit of his. He traced every single mole he could find on you, worshipping your body as if it were his reason to live.
His reason to love...
Love.
Love wasn't always that convenient in a relationship with Tom Riddle. The kisses barely weighed out the tears you had spilled during only those few months. They were heavy but he was worth it.
It was the toxic kind of love.
But he was sweet, in a way Tom could ever be sweet.
Nights with Tom were rough, wild, and passionate. The aftermath coloring your body the day after and some even weeks after. He was rough but he knew how to fix you after he almost ruined you. He'd lie if he didn't like to see you in that state. Satisfied by the way he was able to feel unimaginable things again and again. Nothing pleased him more than him pleasing you. Your face was at its most beautiful when you reached the edge. The look of it haunts his mind every single day. Gosh, he believed you were the most beautiful person in the whole school, in the whole world. Your hair spread out on the mattress, your face left with an afterglow, your chest sweaty, and your neck covered in his love.
But there was always something missing, something that made you his. Something that screamed his name. Something that could remind everyone whom you belonged to. Something that would stay with you forever. Something that would bind you to him in a way that was unbreakable…
It was when you two were studying alone in his room that it came to his mind. His eyes averted to the blade that lay on his desk. It was richly decorated with small emerald stones, a snake hugging the handle. It was one of the objects that clearly displayed his heirloom. One of the only things from his heritage that he kept close to him.
He looked back at you, sitting on his bed. You looked so precious in that moment, your eyes tracing the words on the paper of the book you were reading. It was a book he gave to you. It gave an in-depth study of the unforgivable curses: their past, present, and future. His future...
"Darling?" You looked up at him with sparkling eyes, his stomach twisting at the sight of you.
"What is it, Tom?" You straightened yourself on the bed and put down your book, noticing he seemed serious about something. It was a look you knew oh so well. Either you’d be lectured and crying yourself to sleep or tears would stream down your face due to something completely different.
"Do you trust me?"
It was something he asked often but only during closer intimacy, it was weird for him to ask you just out of nowhere. Your heart felt heavy, anticipating something bad.
"Of course, Tom. Always.”
At those words, he got up from behind his desk and took the blade in his hand. The metal made a soft clicking noise against the rings around his long fingers. You had always loved his rings, they were his trademark. He wouldn’t look the same without them. Your eyes followed his actions, not diverting from the blade in his hand.
He pulled your legs so that you got pulled down into a laying position. You gasp softly at the sudden movement. He traced the blade with its blunt side over your legs, passing your knees and slowly reaching your thighs. The cold metal sent shivers down your spine, it was pleasant in a way even though you wouldn't admit it.
He trapped your body, clenching his legs around each side of your body. He looked down at you, seeing your flustered face. It ignited a fire within him and only encouraged him even more to continue. He unbuttoned your shirt slowly, not losing eye contact. He wanted to see your every reaction, the anticipation in your eyes growing.
You didn't say anything, you let him... Surprisingly, you trusted him. You always trusted him. How harsh he could be, he had never hurt you ever. Emotionally maybe but never physically. He’d hurt himself if it meant that you would be untouched by pain.
He pushed the shirt to the side, your chest now exposed to him. You collarbone to his reach, his goal was uncovered. He licked his lips and moved them close to your right collarbone, the one on the side of your heart. He traced them with his lips, soon covering them with his saliva. His tongue left a small wet trail, it glistened in the moonlight coming through the curtains.
He moved his mouth to your neck, up to your jaw until he reached the side of your lips. The teasing made you whimper softly and you put your fingers into his locks. They were soft in between your fingers, a feeling you craved every day.
"You're beautiful." The words hit your lips and you look up into his eyes as he stares back into yours. It's like he's looking into your soul, you feel completely naked in front of him though clothed half.
He dragged the blade across your collarbone, slightly pressing it into your skin to make you get used to the sensation. He looked back at your face to see your reaction. You were calm, and it surprised him. The amount of trust you put into him made his heart skip a beat, it was like falling in love with you all over.
"Can I try something, love?"
Words left your mind and all you could do was nod, You had a feeling about what he was about to do but just waited for him to confirm your thoughts. He traced his thumb across your cheek in the shape of a 'T', the same shape that was now forming right below your collarbone.
It felt cold, it felt warm, you didn't know what it felt like. It almost felt like the same feeling his thumb was making on your cheek like he somehow transferred that soft feeling to your collarbone. It was weird, the pain was almost nonexistent. Little did you know that he put a spell on it, the blade replicating the feeling of his thumb. Like you said, he would never hurt you...
'R'. The next letter now shaped in your skin too, forming his initials in the end. He brushed his fingers over it, immediately closing the wound and causing it to scar. He was making sure it'd stay there forever, like a tattoo.
"T... R..." You looked up at him as he moved his face above yours again.
"That's right, yours. Always and forever yours. Say it.”
“You’re mine and I’m yours, Tom…”
He connected both of your lips as he switched positions into the kiss and put you on top of him now. He pulled away and pulled his shirt over his head, putting the blade in the palm of your hand.
"Your turn now."
Your breath hitched in your throat as he said those words, your turn to do what...?
"Come on, mark me. Own me. Make me yours like you just said" He caressed your cheek and pulled you closer. His eyes were almost demanding, a look you were all too familiar with. He really wanted you to carve your own initials in him too. It was kind of thrilling honestly.
You couldn't deny his wish so you pressed the blade softly against his collarbone with a small sigh. You were focused on the shape, your first letter now leaving a red trace just below his collarbone.
"Good girl..."
Little did you know that this was as close as a blood pact he could get. It'd connect the both of you forever. The letters would turn into a wound again at only the thought of betrayal or disloyalty. You should've known better, for Tom had put another spell on you. Marked by his obsession, marked by his love.
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