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#like where's the fun in making him less Complicated. you know?
fruitsyrups · 2 months
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i think your hat post is really cool and interesting but susan’s hat is a cat and i will die on this hill
this is true!!! when i was talking about the modern human hats not resembling animals i meant all of these ones
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(excluding the minerva-bots and finn of course)
#wait. wait. i just thought something#finn wearing his bear hat -> bc it makes him feel connected to the humans#and martin & the hiders (that old woman with the tiger at least) not wearing hats bc they don't feel that personal connection w/ the island#ok this is so obvious but i just think comparing and contrasting finn and martin is so interesting#but i don't think martin really was a hider. i don't think he felt particularly connected to any ideology or viewpoint in particular#he's a floater#yk#martin is so interesting#i dont like the amnesia theory or whatever (that martin also lost his memory in some capacity)#like to me its just that. he was able to commit enough to start a family but not committed enough to go back to them#after being seperated & having freedom#& he just super duper avoids thinking about it bc it makes him feel guilty. but not guilty enough to do anything about it#like when he said he doesn't like thinking about minerva cause it stresses him out that doesn't come across as 'can't remember'#it very much comes across as 'nah im not gonna expend energy into thinking about something emotionally difficult'#like if he actually tried to be a dad to finn he'd have to face all the time he spent not looking for him. instd of just avoiding it all#like where's the fun in making him less Complicated. you know?#whenever finn is in the vicinity martin's always tryna get out of there as fast as possible 😭#i guess that could also just be seen as him trying to avoid the consequences of his actions (like when he's worried finns gonna try to rip#his arm off lmao) but i personally interpret it all as a guilt thing too#none of this is related to the ask but yea 🫣
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amysubmits · 6 months
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Owning Me Is Complicated
Occasionally I come across content that makes it seem like being a Dom is easy.
Order her around, make her do the things you don't want to do, do whatever you want, "win" all the disagreements because you're the dom - or even silence her from disagreeing with you to begin with. Get sex exactly how you want it, exactly when you want it. She's just a living, breathing object that can and will do whatever you want. She has no needs other than to make your life easier. She's your own personal robot, but with a body you want to fuck. Being a dom is like a regular relationship but without the emotional labor. I'm sure there are other gender versions out there too, but I see the M/f version most often. It's so funny to me how absurd that all is compared to real life.
Owning me is complicated. Owning me means doing way more emotional labor than a vanilla relationship would require, not less.
Yes, I do what he says - but he's responsible for making the best decisions he can. He's in charge, so keeping me physically and emotionally safe is his responsibility. It's a huge part of how he earns my submission. It's no small thing to make decisions when making them well is part of how he keeps me safe and keeps me open and trusting towards him. Yes, I'll try to push my sexual limits for him - but I have complex emotional needs that accompany physical intimacy. Use my body without having respect for my physical and mental health and it'll fall apart real quick. And once again, making a reckless decision here that would leave me damaged and could forever damage our dynamic. Sure, he can take his cock out anytime and instruct me to suck and I will, but that doesn't mean it's all fun and games. He has the burden of double and triple checking that he isn't pushing me too far, or taking too much as to leave me empty. Yes, he gets the final say in disagreements, but he earns that by hearing me out. He couldn't keep me submissive if he didn't respect my feelings. I can't feel respected if I'm not heard. So he has to hear me out and really listen. And then his job is to attempt to get the best outcome for both of us. He has to try to balance our needs, because if either of us gets neglected, we individually suffer and then the relationship suffers. So he sometimes deals with the weight of threading the needle between his needs and mine, his wants and mine. His shoulders carry the weight of those choices. Yes, he can deny my wishes - and even my needs for a time, if he chose. But I am human. How long can he deny me things that bring me pleasure before I start to feel unwanted, unloved, disrespected, thrown out? Resentment would set in eventually. Self-protection would kick in eventually...and it might be too late by then, the damage may be done by the time I would wake up to look around and decide I didn't want to live like this anymore. Why would he want to even find out, given that he loves me? He wouldn't. He has a sadistic streak, so he likes to deny me things I like so that I long for them even more for a while. He likes to see me eager, desperate to get it when he decides to give it. He likes to watch me tolerate discomfort for him. Playing with these ideas require a deep understanding of my needs and limits. He has to know where "desperate for you 🥺 " starts to fade and "That goblin in the back of my head is starting to worry I'm not valued" starts to enter my thoughts. Yes, I look to him to guide and lead, and he has a lot of power and control - but that comes with the ability to destroy and damage. There's nothing easy about ownership if you feel the weight of the responsibility you're carrying.
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quin-ns · 1 year
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Matchmaker (Joel Miller x Reader)
Word count: 1.8K
Summary: ellie knows joel has feelings for you and proceeds to annoy him relentlessly about it
Tags: basically just all fluff, humor, age gap, ellie being ellie and messing with joel, mutual pining, love confessions (more of a realization but whatever), friends to lovers implied, ellie is a great wingman
Request: anon: “It would be so cute to have Ellie basically shipping Joel and the reader, like her being a little matchmaker. If you chose to write this do with it what you want that’s all I got. Would love to see what you do!”
A/N: this was actually my first time writing for joel while having ellie play a part and I gotta say it was super fun! I really loved this idea <3
cross-posted to ao3 • tlou masterlist • writing masterlist
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“You are so,” Ellie argued, a cocky grin on her face as she taunted Joel from his side.
“I’m not,” he grumbled back, not wanting to be on this topic with Ellie. 
The kid had gotten the idea in her head that Joel had feelings for you. Thing was—she wasn’t wrong. But Joel had yet to tell you and he didn’t need Ellie blabbing or pestering him about it.
But Ellie was Ellie, so the latter was exactly what she was doing. It had been a while now and he couldn’t get her to quit it. Denying it wasn't going to work it seemed.
“You’re definitely into her. I won’t say the L word again, but you’re not fooling anyone. You’ve got, like, heart eyes for her, dude,” Ellie pointed out. “God—how did I not notice before?”
“Drop it,” Joel told her. You were walking ahead of them, curiosity driving you to increase your pace. You weren’t that far because Joel could still see you—he would’ve been too worried if he couldn’t—but you were far enough ahead that thankfully you couldn’t hear Ellie clearly. Still, he didn’t want to risk it.
After everything that had happened, he couldn’t risk a strain being put on your relationship. Not when you and Ellie were all he had in the world right now. You all had bigger things to worry about, like the fact that the winter was growing harsher as you were heading north.
“She probably likes you too,” Ellie commented, sounding awfully sure of herself. “I mean, there’s gotta be a reason she’s put up with you this long.”
Joel let out a scoff. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” 
Ellie shrugged. “I will if you tell her.”
Joel shot her a confused look, a slight frown on his lips and his eyebrows furrowed. “Why do you care so much?” he asked accusingly. 
“Because I like you, and I like Y/N, and I think it’s nice you make each other happy,” Ellie explained easily. “Plus, you’re less grumpy with her and that’s pretty refreshing,” she threw in the slight jab at the last minute. It’s not like it was false.
Joel just made a sound, like a “hmph,” and looked back ahead. His eyes landed on you. As if you could sense it, you looked over your shoulder and threw him a reassuring smile. 
A smile of his own tugged at Joel’s lips. 
“See?” Ellie spoke up. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
The smile faded into an annoyed expression as he looked back at Ellie. She was just smirking to herself, like she’d busted him or something. 
She stared up at him for a moment, then looked back ahead. “You’re just grouchy because I’m right,” Ellie sassed. She didn’t need to look at Joel to see his eye roll. 
They walked in silence for about a minute. During that minute, Joel was relieved. He didn’t feel the need to discuss his inner thoughts and feelings about you with someone that wasn’t you. As far as he was concerned, his love for you was none of Ellie’s business and wouldn’t even be yours until the time was right.
He was going to tell you. Eventually. Maybe it was taking him longer than he thought because of how complicated things had gotten on the journey, but he’d find the time. Soon… if he could work up the nerve to.
There were moments where Joel saw a spark there, between the two of you. And apparently he wasn’t as good at hiding his feelings as he thought, so maybe on some level you knew and even reciprocated. If Ellie thought there was something there, than maybe—
“All I ask is that can you not do it near me if you guys want to have se—”
“Ellie!” Joel snapped, cutting her off. 
Because of the sudden loudness, you halted and turned around. “Everything okay?” you called back to Joel and Ellie, concern present in your voice.
“We’re fine!” Ellie shouted back and gave you a thumbs up. 
Joel didn’t say anything, still thrown off. He had not been expecting her to go there and really, really was in desperate need of a change of topic with the fourteen year old. He gave her a look, silently telling her to knock it off.
“What?” Ellie asked defensively, but also clearly very amused with herself. “It’s a valid request.”
“Knock it off,” Joel said out loud this time instead of just thinking it like before. 
“Fine,” Ellie feigned defeat. She fiddled with the straps on her backpack, gripping them in her gloved palms. Then, she took off in a light jog. 
“Where are you going?” Joel yelled after her.
“I’m gonna bother Y/N now!” she called, not looking back. Ellie caught up to you and slowed her pace. Joel didn’t know if he should be worried or not, but he hung back anyway. 
“Hi,” Ellie greeted you when you noticed her presence. She was kinda hard to miss.
“What’s up, Ellie?” you asked kindly, giving her a once over. “Everything okay?” you glanced back at Joel and found he was fine too. 
“Yeah, yeah, everything is fine,” Ellie assured. “Just thought I’d check on you.”
“You’re checking on me? I’m touched,” you told her with a hint of sarcasm overlaying your appreciation. Ellie didn’t do much without a reason and between her and Joel’s muffled argument behind you and the devious little smirk on her face, you suspected she was up to something. “Seriously, what’s up?”
“What do you think of Joel?” Ellie questioned vaguely.
You laughed a little. “That sounds like a loaded question,” you commented.
“Huh?” She furrowed her brows, not getting the term. “I mean like, do you like him?” she clarified. 
Another laugh from you. So you were right. “Of course I like Joel. What kind of question is that?” you wondered. “He’s my friend, has been for a long time.”
“Okay but, like, do you think he’s handsome?” Ellie pried bluntly, looking up at you for your reaction. You were a little taken aback, then amused.
“Where is this coming from?”
“Just… curious,” she lied. Ellie looked over her shoulder at Joel briefly. “So, do you?” 
Ellie looked up at you and found you glancing back at Joel yet again. A small smirk appeared on your face. You leaned down a little and whispered to her, “Of course I do. I’m not blind.”
Ellie laughed at that, enjoying the feeling of gossiping a little more than she realized. You were going along with it—you were always a good sport. 
“Do you think you’d date him?” Ellie pushed, seeing how much she could get away with in this ‘girl talk’ scenario.
Ellie considered you a close friend at this point, something she never had that many of. Sure Joel was a friend too, but he was also like a dad. And there was just something special about having a girl friend that she could talk to. While with Joel she usually had to annoy him into talking about life stuff (a few minutes ago being an example), you would be open to the conversations just because. You didn’t treat her like a kid despite being older—probably because you were closer to her age than Joel’s anyway.
That’s why if you liked Joel, Ellie wanted you to know that he did too. Even if she gave Joel a hard time and sometimes (but very rarely) did the same to you, you both deserved to be happy. 
“What do you think?” you turned the question. 
Ellie shrugged. “I know he’s kinda old and kinda grumpy, but he’s a good guy,” Ellie campaigned on Joel’s behalf. “He cares about you a lot.”
You smiled to yourself. “Yeah, I know,” you admitted. “I care about him too. A lot.”
“As more than just a friend?” Ellie needed to know, the anticipation was killing her. 
She didn’t know when she suddenly got so invested in your and Joel’s relationship status. Of course because she cared about you both, but she could also blame it on the months of boredom. Finally something interesting was happening. 
And what you said next was definitely interesting.
“Yeah,” you revealed with a little nod. “For a while now.”
There was a light smile on your face that made Ellie smile too.
Ellie looked over her shoulder at Joel once again and her gaze met his. She wondered what he’d say if he heard what you had just said. She didn’t think he did because he looked suspicious, silently asking her what she was doing. She looked back forward. Oh boy, if only he knew.
“That’s interesting,” Ellie mused. “Because I happen to have some information.”
You raised your brows at her, hearing the knowing tone laced heavy in her voice. “Oh?”
Joel couldn’t take not knowing anymore. You and Ellie had both kept looking back at him—definitely talking about him. He picked up the pace a little, not really jogging but more like speed walking. You and Ellie had slowed your pace a little before, caught up in conversation, so it didn’t take him long to place himself on your opposite side.
“How’s it goin’ up here?” Joel asked as casually as he could manage, drawing attention to himself. 
Ellie moved to walk backwards in front of you and Joel. She didn’t miss a step as she eyed you both. 
“Good news, Joel,” Ellie addressed him cheekily. “She likes you too.”
His eyes went wide. Ellie just bit back a laugh and left it at that, turning on her heel and picking up the pace to get ahead of you two. She stayed in line of sight, but out of the strangling zone (she wasn’t actually worried, but she knew she was being a menace so she kept a distance). Not a far enough distance to be out of earshot, though. 
She had to hear this after all her work.
“So,” Joel started flatly. He looked down at you just as you looked at him. Then you both turned your heads straight forward and kept walking in tandem. “I guess I should ask what she said?”
“Well, she was asking me a lot of questions about how I felt about you,” you recalled, sounding very entertained by the whole situation. “Kinda had a feeling for where it was going.” 
Joel heaved out a dramatic sigh. “Kid’s not subtle, is she?” he asked rhetorically. You both knew the answer to that.
You laughed. “Not at all.” 
The sound of you laughing and your words made Joel relax. He let a chuckle fall past his lips. 
Ellie looked back at you and Joel, the sound of you two laughing together making her smile. 
“Oh look, she’s staring at us,” you pointed out, nodding your head at her. Ellie whipped her head back around as if trying to pretend she hadn’t been watching you two. “Did we really just get set up by a fourteen year old?”
Joel scoffed out an amused sound. “Yeah, I think we did.” 
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joel taglist: @the-ice-frozen-ground-red-rose @dontphunkwithmylove @cilliansangel @amethystwonders11 @frogsmuahh037 @andy-rocks @melllinaa @alitaar @melanie451 @b00kw0rmsworld @reverieisaway
if you would like to be added to the joel taglist just send me an ask or a message!
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wineauntie · 4 months
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FIVE MINUTES — Luke Hughes x Hischier!reader
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summary: in which you and Luke are under a serious time crunch.
note: this was just purely fun to write. This wasn't going to be a Hischier!sister fic but I couldn’t resist!
warnings: make out session, use of y/n and the nickname ‘baby’, fem!reader, reader is Nico’s sister, swearing, forbidden relationship (kind of), reader is a photography and journalism major (do i know how the American collegiate system works? No! But go with it, it’s fineeee)
word count: 1.5k
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You gasped as your back slammed against the door behind you, your heart racing as the blood pumped through your body. You felt feverish as if each of your veins had been ignited with a pure, searing fire. Your back pressed against the wood, the frame of the door digging into your spine. Adrenaline fuelled your brain as you lunged forward again, your hands reached out to grasp and clutch whatever you could to draw closer.
"God, we’ve got to stop this or I won't be able to control myself."
Luke's deep groan against your lips caused you to slightly withdraw from the kiss. Your lips curled in amusement as your hands threaded through his hair.
"Then start listing presidents or something," you grinned, crashing your lips to his once more. The grasp he had on your waist tightened even further, his hands spanning against the skin where your top had ridden up. "We only have five minutes…maybe less at this rate."
"You are trouble," he moaned in defeat, pressing you further against the wall as his warm hands gripped you as if in fear you may be taken from him.
Let's get one thing straight, you and Luke were complicated. He liked you, you liked him but if your brother ever caught wind of that? Oh, there would be hell to pay.
Nico Hischier had a stick up his ass— at least you thought so. He had warned you countlessly throughout your childhood that you were to stay away from his hockey friends and that they had received the warning to stay away from you. He said they were "never going to treat you like you deserve to be treated", you agreed, of course.
Hockey men were the semblance of all evil, they only cared about three things; hockey, their roster and blonde hair (you never understood their obsession with that one honestly?). You convinced yourself that they were the evil that walked the Earth, the only exception being your immediate family members.
...that is until you met Luke Hughes.
You'd moved to New Jersey over the course of lockdown and moved in with your brother. You wanted a change of pace from life back home, and you'd enrolled in various colleges in New York for photography and journalism.
When life had returned to normality, you’d been recruited to work as a social media girl on a part time basis for the Devils. It was a good gig, not too demanding but they paid you well enough. You attended away games and did little fun interviews for TikTok and their Instagram.
You'd met Luke in early 2023, briefly interviewing him with stupid questions like "if you got swept up in a tornado, what wouldn’t want to hit you as you spin?" or "if you could only skate on one leg, which leg would you choose?". You were aware of how cheesy and awful the questions were but the Devil's TikTok loved it– they devoured content like such.
It was only after a winning home game did you truly get to know Luke Hughes.
The two of you had sat next to each other in the bar the majority of the team had chosen to celebrate at. You remembered your brother sitting with Jack at the other table, celebrating their victory, your eyes warily glancing to Nico every few minutes.
You and Luke had talked awkwardly at first until the awkwardness was swept away and the storm of laughter and easy chatter arrived. You'd known from that moment on, that Luke Hughes was different. He wasn't like anyone else you'd ever met. He'd caused your stomach to flip and your gaze to soften.
You'd ended that night with Nico offering Luke and Jack to stay over at your shared apartment.
Nico and Jack had walked ahead to try catch a taxi, both, paying no attention to you and Luke who were completely and utterly enraptured by each other.
And the rest was history.
Luke's body pressed against yours as his hand moved to cup your jaw, his thumb smoothing over the skin there. There was no other feeling quite like this one, he figured. You desperately reaching up to hold him as he devoured you like a man starved. It was the little moments like these where the two of you broke away from reality and allowed yourselves to indulge in the greatness of this feeling.
Luke had known he liked you from the very moment he spotted you laughing with the other photographers on his very first day with the Devils. He saw the way you tipped your head and scrunched your nose as you let out a melodic sound, so sweet he wanted to pocket it and take it wherever he went. He wasn't even sure you'd seen him that day, but he'd seen you and it was hard to ever forget it.
The night at the bar was the moment that he knew he was a goner. He'd seen the lingering stares from men and women alike in the bar the moment you had walked in. He'd seen the way you parted the crowd like an angel in the darkness, eyes only set on him, your slight and shy smile suddenly overshadowing the night's victory. And you'd chosen to sit beside him...HIM!
Over the weeks following that night the two of you had texted back and forth, hanging out whenever you can and when you'd kissed him in the rain after an unofficial, but kind of official, date, he knew you felt the same way about him.
That had officially been the beginning your sneaking around. The two of you hid in the shadows of bars, clubs and each other's apartments when your respective brothers weren't around.
Which is what led you to this very moment. Nico had invited Jack and Luke over to watch a match of some kind. He hadn't even told you until the two brothers had knocked on your apartment door just after lunch. You'd had to hide your wide smile at the sight of the tall, bashful boy who stood scratching his head behind Jack.
They'd both been here since then, with you and Luke exchanging secret glances every few minutes. It was later in the evening when Nico had suggested that the four of you order dinner in and when Jack had offered to accompany him downstairs to the lobby to help collect it, it guaranteed you and Luke approximately five minutes of just you and him.
You head found itself flush against the wood of your bedroom door, just down the hall from the living room, as Luke pressed desperate kisses down your neck, his hand still cradling your cheek, moving your head to give him more access to the supple, exposed skin. Your breath caught in your throat as he gently sucked the flesh over your pulse point, your hands playing with the curls at the nape of his neck.
"Luke," you whimpered whilst he softly bit over the spot and ran his tongue over the bruising skin.
"I know, baby," he murmured, his breath fanning across your skin as he moved back up to look you face to face. Your blown pupils met his, the heat in your cheeks spreading around your body like wildfire. "Been missing you."
Your nose brushed against his with a whine. You hadn't seen each other in almost a week and a half, between your exams and Luke's games, you two just hadn't been able to find the time. You craved his touch, his comfort and his warmth.
"Been missing you too, Lu," you muttered, pulling him in for another kiss. Your neck craning as he enveloped you in a tight grip once more, his lips meeting yours frantically.
The two of you were so wrapped up in yourself that you hadn't heard the front door opening. You'd only heard one box of food hit the floor causing you and Luke to jump apart and snap your heads towards the noise.
Nico stood with a dropped jaw in front of Jack who smirked knowingly. Your wide eyes looked between Luke and Nico, your mouth agape in horror. Luke's hand was still around your waist as your brain ran in circles trying to decipher where to begin.
"What the fuck!” Nico eventually groaned breaking the silence.
"It's not what it looks like!" You rushed out, not making any attempt to move away from Luke.
You watched nervously as Nico furiously dug around his pocket until he yanked out twenty dollars and shoved it into Jack's awaiting open hand.
"Thank you," Jack grinned, winking at the two of you as he pocketed the money. You and Luke scrunched your eyebrows and shared a look of pure confusion.
"You couldn't wait until next month, no?" Nico huffed, picking up the fallen box of food before moving towards the kitchen with Jack, leaving both you and Luke standing in your stupor, before Luke let out a small laugh, burying his head in your neck as you stifled a groan.
"What the...YOU GUYS BET ON US?!"
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eyesxxyou · 9 months
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Fun & Games
☆🕷️。・hobie brown x blackcat!reader
rating. m
word count. 3.3k
synopsis. you and Hobie have long been playing the game of cat and spider. you chase, you fight, you fuck, you fight again, and you two love your games. but it's truly all fun and games until you manage to get your hands on an interdimensional device.
✩°。 ⋆⸜ 🐾warning: p in v sex, unprotected sex don't do that children, possessive!hobie, public sex, y/n is a real hoe and I love her for that, odd love hate relationship, clit slapping, Gwen's here very briefly, wall sex, bondage, mentions of injury, just me being horny so it's kinda horribly written, lemme know if I missed anything
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"She's gotta be somewhere." Gwen sat perched on a ledge, the eyes of her mask wide and alert for any sign of the anomaly. In other words, you. You had somehow managed to get your hands on a interdimensional device of Miguel's making and have been hopping all around the multiverse causing mayhem. "You sure you have no idea where she's at? She's from your dimension after all, not to mention-"
The thing is, the devices don't show exact locations. They just tell you what dimension others are in. Leaving Gwen and Hobie hopping about right after you to put you back where you belong.
It was Hobie's fault after all. Being the Black Cat of his dimension meant you were good at sleight of hand. A single run in with you and next thing he knows his device is gone, his cock is hard, and he misses you so fucking much.
"Yeah, yeah, i's my fault or whateva." He spoke over the communicator, his eyes scanning across the streets for just a peek of that brilliant white hair of yours. "I'll keep an eye out, jus' stay where you are and don't underestimate 'er. She'll put you on ya arse before ya know it." He's gone toe to toe with you plenty of times to know that you're rather skilled in combat. And for reasons he'd also know that you're flexible.
He cut off his device, the one Miguel reluctantly gave him after laying into him over his incompetence. "You're gonna deal with this mess you've made!" He almost crushed the device in his hand from gripping it so hard as he pushed it into Hobie's chest. "You get her back to where she belongs then you're out. You're done."
Hobie honestly couldn't give less of a damn about being booted from the society. Taking orders and being a part of a team was really cramping his style. Preferred it when it was just him and his own dimension's problems.
He hopped between buildings in this dimension looking for any marker of you. Your cloud-like hair done always in wild, untamed curls that somehow manage to sit perfect around your face. You wore black leather, nice sharp spikes, claws you made yourself that left their scar against his chest as well as down his back.
Hobie liked how complicated your relationship is. How you constantly kept him on his toes, remained so inconsistent that he never got bored. One second you were on your knees, his cock weighing heavy on your pretty tongue, just narrowly missing the angel bite piercings you had with fangs in, and the next, you were trying to claw his eyes out of his face. You were batshit fucking insane and he was absolutely in love with you though, he'd never admit that.
He hoped he found you before Gwen did— it's been just a little under a month and he's been feening for you, spending his lonely nights when he doesn't have a million wounds and a few broken bones to tend to with his hand wrapped firmly around his cock and your name wetting his lips with prayer. He's fucking pussy-whipped, desperate, absolutely nuts for you.
And when he finds you (which he always does somehow), you're hopping across a rooftop and sliding down a gutter into a nearby alleyway. He follows you stealthily, lingering in the shadows as he rounds the corner and drops into the shady alley. But he finds you aren't there. He pauses, talks a moment to let his instincts take the lead.
It just took a second, a small tingle, the hairs on the back of his neck standing but he hardly had any time to react before you were on his back with your claws pressed against his throat. "Ya missed me?" You whispered in his ear with the touch of a smile in your voice.
Hobie moved quickly, pushing the both of you back until your back slammed against the jagged brick wall and your grip loosened just enough for him to pry himself out of your clawed hold. He webbed you up with your hands trapped above your head. Your goggles were already pushed up into your wild hair and your cat-like eyes gleamed at him. "I'd say you do."
Hobie reached up and pulled off his mask. “Nice to see ya too, Y/N. We can have our reunion once ya back where ya belong.”
“Never took you as the type to join a committee of interdimensional spider fascist.” You scoff, wriggling your wrist against the binding of his webs but you know all too well how strong they actually are. Many times have you been caught in his web, bent in all sorts of positions. He’s always been your favorite toy.
“No’ by choice. You did me a fava’ actually, they gave me the boot ‘cause of you.” He came close, his tall, lean stature looming over you as he removed the watch from your wrist and deactivated it. Hobie looked down at you, looking into your sultry eyes that told him you just wanted to sit on his dick then make your grand escape. You’re always dressed in leather, your shorts so tight and small it leaves hardly anything to the imagination. You were wearing those torn up, distressed tights he loved so much and that he’s definitely torn his own fair share of holes in.
“Don’t you want to know why I went to the places I did?”
“There’s a reason?” He thought it was just you fucking around, trying to cause as much mayhem as possible, begin a nice little collection of diamonds stolen from different dimensions. Your motivations were always a bit hard to decipher.
You leaned in as close as you could in the position you were stuck in and whispered to him, “All the dimensions I went to had a version of you in them. I wanted to see which one was my favorite.” It was a confession of sin just between the two of you in this dark little alleyway he had you stuck in. “Would you like me to tell you about the other yous I’ve met?” You took his stoic silence as answer enough.
“There was one with the prettiest eyes. One blue and one brown. I got to look in them while I rode his pretty face. He made me cum so hard.” Your voice was so heavy with the memory of it but you didn’t linger. “And the other one, nice, long locs. He fucked me so good my legs were shaking. Oh- and the other one made me squirt for the first time-”
Your descriptions sparked something primal in Hobie, something carnal and possessive. A part of him was aroused at the thought of your pretty little cunt he was absolutely addicted to getting ran through by different versions of himself. Maybe you were just as obsessed with him as he was with you, why else would you do something like this?
“You a lil’ whore, ya know tha’, kitty?” His hands were already at the waist of your shorts, undoing the makeshift button you had made after he broke the original one a while ago. His lips were on yours, licking and biting feverishly in attempt to get a taste of you. “Guess I gotta remind you who you belong to.” He needed to tame your pretty little pussy, domesticate it, make it purr for him.
“I don’t belong to anyone, you know that.” You murmur against his lips, shifting your hips to make it easier for him to get your shorts out of the way. He pulled them down to your knees just above your boots and shifted away from you to duck under and slot his way between your nylon-clad thighs. He trailed kisses up the length of your body as he made his way back up, shoving your torn shirt up so his lips could feel your heated skin. “I’d beg to diffa, luv. I think you know ya slutty pussy belongs to me because why else would you hop aroun’ the multiverse just to hook up wit’ me ova and ova again?” He forced your shirt up over your tits, leaving you nice and exposed, unable to do anything about it even if you wanted.
“I’ve just gotta show you tha’ the original is always the bes’.” He had no time to take his time, to worship every inch, every curve, every dimple. He wanted his cock in you, he wanted to fuck you hard, fast, and deep. He wanted to destroy that pride of yours and force you to admit that he will always be your favorite.
He knows that's just how you like it. Rough, quick, and almost animalistic with a hint of risk. You can't get off without it. 
He tears a new hole in your tights right that the crotch and finds that your panties are already soaked, the vague outline of your plump pussy pressing against the fabric that clings to you like a second skin. He gets so hard at just the sight of it, so hard it becomes painful. "I's been a long fuckin' time." Hobie breathed out under his breath. "Ma favorite girl missed me I can see." He pressed the bulge of his cock against your wet, desperate cunt.
Your muscles tense and shudder uncontrollably as your lips attempt to contain a horrid little whimper. You weren't usually so sensitive, Hobie could feel your thighs clamping at his hips in an attempt to close your legs. His fingers slid past your panties and pulled them to the side just to find that your pussy was already pink and swollen, abused and misused by all the cocks you've already taken. You were so damn sensitive, your bud throbbing and engorged.
Hobie couldn't help but let out a chuckle, a smirk framing the scoff he let out. "A fuckin' slut, I tell you. You've already been so damn ran through." He slapped your pussy nice and firm and your whole body jolted with the pain and pleasure it caused and you cried out a little too loud.
"Migh' wanna be quiet. Ya don't wan' someone coming down and seeing your poor cut gettin' abused." His fingers slid between your slick folds, every part of you tender to the touch, every movement leaving your body trembling. It's pathetic how quickly he can have you and squeaking, whining, crying mess. A street cat tame by those long, slender fingers of his as he plays in your mess, a reminder of all the other hims you've had. You had been out on a conquest and somehow it's ending with you getting conquered.
It was easy for him to glide his fingers into your heat, the pad of his thumb drawing circles on your poor clit while he used his other hand to grab your chin and force you to look him in the eyes. "Can you feel tha'?' Your cunt was swallowing his digits down to the knuckle and squeezing. "Nice lil' kitty is purrin' fo' me. Think I migh' make 'er a house cat."
"Go fuck yourself." You manage to choke out between the strangled moans of your throat. Hobie chuckled and kissed you, nice and hard with his tongue against yours and his fingers playing your pussy like a fiddle. God, he was so good at what he did, knew just where your sweet spot was to have you crumbling in his hold. 
He pulled back a little, both of your lips wet with saliva, and nipped at your bottom lip. His fingers pumped in and out of your trembling pussy that wept for him, your slick dripping from his knuckles. You writhed against your restraints, claws sawing at his webbing to little avail. And you knew his fingers were nothing compared to that gorgeous cock of his that fit in you so snuggly and touched places that, before him, you hadn’t even known existed.
But his fingers were so good, able to caress your walls in ways his length couldn’t. His thumb rubbed your clit ferociously, sending spiked balls of pleasure to every muscle in your body. You spasmed, back arching off the walls, eyes rolling, vision blurry. “S-stop fuckin’ with me.” You manage to spit out at him in a shaking gasp.
“But fuckin’ wit’ ya is my favorite part.” Hobie slipped his fingers from your messy hole and took it upon himself to get a taste. “Plus, i’s no’ like you show me any mercy when ya in one of ya moods. I’ve gotta point to prove here.” His hands began to undo his belt with rushed persistence.
“And what point is that?” You watch him pull himself out, the length of his cock pressed against your pelvis. Prettiest you’ve ever seen, nice and long with subtle veins and dark brown tip beading with pearls of precum that weep from his tip and roll down the underside of his shaft.
Hobie maneuvered (more like manhandled) your fame so that your legs were up over his shoulders. He spat on his fingers, used it as lube to spread down his length. “Tha’ you ‘n I both know you can’t replace me with some off brand version.”
“Oh, I’d argue they were very on brand. All had that pretty face of yours. That prettier cock.” Your words faltered a bit as he pushed into you without so much as a warning, jealousy getting the better of him. His fingers grip your thighs, body pressing you into the wall while his hips rutted against you. He fucked you like an animal, his teeth gritting, his cock brutalizing your used up cunt. And the position allowed him to sink so deep you felt him in your gut, in your throat, in your very head. He fucked the air out of your lungs but that didn’t stop your cries of pleasure.
And as pretty as they were, Hobie didn’t need the two of you being stumbled upon. He placed his palm over your mouth, kept you placid and quiet white he fucked you with intention. He was gonna claim your pussy, paint it white, make it his, let you know that no matter how hard you try the two of you will always find yourself dancing to this same song. You’d fight, you’d fuck, you’d fight again, you’d fuck again. Sometimes you were allies, sometimes you were enemies, but at all times you were lovers.
He spanked your swollen clit while he fucked you in such a brutal nature. There was no sympathy for you, no mercy, no kindness offered. Just carnality unmatched by any of your other affairs. It might be the spider venom bound to his DNA making him this way. Hobie– normal Hobie, rational Hobie– was not a jealous person, especially not towards someone who, in all cases, did not belong to him.
The emotions of it were conflicting. The mixture of jealousy and arousal at the thought of you with another version of himself because in all the ways that made him who he was on paper was, he was with you every single time. Genetically, generally, the vague outline of himself. But the experiences were different, slightly tweaked in a way, and in the way that matters you had fucked entirely different people. And that was the fun of it. What would be the point of sleeping with the same person over and over again if not for the slight differences every time.
Hobie wondered if they made you feel this way, your back arching so dramatically off the wall, your eyes going cross with pleasure as your moans are contained behind his palm. The two of you had so much shared history that even if they were better, it still wouldn't compare. He knew you like he knew many things, on a level balanced by emotion and technicality.
The two of you were never meant to be anything more than this, a quick, filthy fuck in the back alley of some random place and yet you both were sure you were soulmates in some sick twisted way. You'd both go around in these pointless circles having the most fun with never making the effort to define yourselves or restrict yourselves to something that wasn't completely and entirely you.
Your toes curled in your boots as you felt the brutality of an orgasm coming your way. It built within you, clawing to get out like you clawed through the webs. It seized you like being strangled, curled around your body, left you warm and fuzzy and delirious.
"Look a' me, luv. Look a' me with those pretty eyes of yours." The way he fixed your face forward, made you look him in the eyes. "Nice lil' pussy gonna make me cum." Your walls spasmed, hugged him, squeezed around his length, molding to every curve, every vein. If only his hand weren't over your mouth, you'd kiss his pretty lips and tell him to shut the fuck up and just fuck you, just lose himself in you.
And oh, was he losing himself. An orgasm quickly approaching on the horizon. Hobie pressed his forehead against yours, his eyes low and sultry as he removed his hand from your mouth and gripped your thighs once more. "Fuck-" Hobie gasps and shudders, his abdomen tightening with the beginnings to a climax.
"Go ahead, pretty boy. You said you have a point to prove, right? Go ahead and prove it." You watched in breathless pants as he takes his pleasure in you, comes undone for you, his fingertips pressing bruises into your supple skin. "You're my favorite, my pretty boy." You confess to him. In all versions, you were simply looking for him, something you didn't find, no matter how eerily similar they all were.
Hobie murmurs something incoherent under his breath as he cums. He's swift with pulling out, just in time to spill his hot semen all over your heat. He claimed you like he always wanted to, with the way his hands left bruises in your skin, with the way his trembling cock spread his cum all over you, how his lips claimed yours in a moment of passion.
"You can stop pretendin' to be trapped now." Hobie murmured against your lips, pulling away and running his thumb across your kiss-swollen bottom lip before making himself decent. You had long sawed your way through his webs, they never last that long. You let your arms drop. "Finally, they were startin' to hurt." 
Hobie removes himself from your body, letting you take the time to get yourself together. "How much time do I have this time?" It was back to business as usual, not that either of you minded. You both enjoyed your games.
"A minute before I call my partna. Two before I start chasin' you myself." He always gave you a bit of a head start, maybe out of some soft spot he had for you. Sometimes he caught you, sometimes he didn't, it was all up to chance.
You pull your goggles out of you disheveled hair and fix them over your eyes. You lean into him, close enough that he thought you might kiss him. "I'll try not to break your nose this time, lovely." You peck his lips as a distraction as you slip your hand into the pocket of his vest and attempt to steal your stolen watch back.
Hobie's already thinking one step ahead of you. His hand grasps your wrist. "No' tha' generous. An' you've got 'bout 40 seconds lef'. Better get goin'." He's dealt with your bullshit more times than he can count. He knows what goes on in that pretty head of yourself, how you're always scheming, even against him— especially against him."
You scoff then chuckle. "Fine— c'ya 'round, Bee." You turn and rush off, grasping a gutter to leap up on the rooftop and run off.
You both love your fun and games.
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notjustjavierpena · 3 months
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His
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A/N: This has been on hiatus since July. I have finally decided to finish up another chapter. I have no idea where this is going but I am just going with it at this point. They’re fun! Enjoy part 4 of mean!joel ❤️💖
Summary: After Joel kisses you, something shifts. You find out a hard truth and take matters into your own hands.
Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader/You (No y/n)
Tags: +18 smut, a mishmash of feelings, dubcon-ish themes, a hint of sub!joel (?!!!!?!!??) but he is not happy about it, a hint of edging, handjobs, degradation, humiliation, riding, unprotected piv, slapping, dirty talk, empty threats
Word count: 3.6k
Link to this work on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48179338/chapters/135617983
His
Something shifts after Joel kisses you and leaves. Especially because he did it in a way that made it seem like he was bolting out of a burning building, leaving you inside for the walls to come tumbling down around you. You hardly blame him for reacting like he did that night; he is the most emotionally unavailable man you have ever had the (dis)pleasure of meeting, and you doubt that he even has the vocabulary to put words to why he fled your bed like it was the scene of a crime. It isn’t like you’re going to ask him though, not even despite being curious about his reasoning and intentions. 
For you, it is not a mystery what the shift is. The arrangement between the two of you used to be anticipation, fury, and lust. Now it’s a gentle tug at your heartstrings when you catch a glimpse of him in the streets and he doesn’t look your way, knowing you should not want him in the way you do. 
How you want him is harder to pinpoint. It’s not wedding bells, it’s not children padding around on the wooden floor of your home, it’s not doing laundry for him and watching him do the dishes after sharing a meal. It’s something less complicated than love. You don’t want him to love you, but you wouldn’t mind being his only and his favorite. 
Though irony would have it that it turns out you are indeed not his only source of whatever fucked up thing the two of you exchange once in a while. 
During a short break from a late-night meeting of your patrol group (Joel had decided last week to switch to another), one of the newcomers to Jackson snickers girlishly as she tells the rest of you about how Joel Miller had made her come four times last weekend. It makes something uncomfortable swirl in your stomach, makes it drop as you feel foolish about thinking you were special. Additionally, it takes all the willpower in you to not blurt out that he had made you come seven times during one of the nights you’d spent together.
To your surprise, It isn’t that he has slept with someone else that hits you. It’s the little piece of information that your new patrol member lets slip with a giggle. 
“Such a gentleman,” she says, basking in the attention of the circle of women standing around her. Their collective sigh makes you wonder what they’d say if you let them know that Joel forced you to suck him off the first time you were together. A part of you suspect that she is lying as she continues, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore, girls. He was just so attentive and sweet.” 
After the meeting, you feel like you’re about to suffocate if you don’t leave the building quickly. The tightening in your chest makes your heart feel caged, desperate to come out into the open and bleed all over the place from making its way past your ribs. Desperately, you push past anyone who does not jump out of your way immediately. 
Once outside, you find a quiet spot behind the community center where people only come to be alone. You rest your forehead against the side of the building, breathing deeply in through your nose and exhaling shakily as you suppress the tears that threaten to roll down your face. 
“Fuck,” you say bitterly as a droplet still manages to escape from the corner of your eye. You wipe it away with a quick swipe of your hand as if to hide the evidence from the world and yourself, “Fuckfuckfuck. What the fuck are you crying over him about?”
However, the single tear seems to have opened the floodgates because you find yourself properly crying a few seconds later. It is ridiculous, you know this, but you cannot help the shaky breaths that leave your mouth as your cheeks stain with tears. 
Joel is not anything special. Joel is rude and arrogant, bordering on narcissistic and psychotic. You’re not even sure if he can smile, if he’s funny, or if he’s capable of not ruining things when touching them. He sure has ruined you, ruined both your nights and days because they’re spent wondering about him. 
Then again, surely he must know this because he looks at you from across the room the way he does. He must know what he is doing to you, and it makes you fucking furious because how did he ever think that he had the right to pursue you? Make you want him? And, to top all of it off, how does he think he has the right to not appreciate you? 
Rage slowly builds in your chest. Your heartbeat is threatening to make you pass out with how fast it is going, but you ground yourself by taking a few deep breaths that eventually stop your tears as well. 
I’ll fucking show him, you think, and it’s the white-hot fury in you that is talking.
You stalk across the streets of Jackson, earning a few concerned glances but no warning words. It’s a relief that you look angry enough for people not to bother you, because you wouldn’t be able to articulate your reasons for wanting to implode with how furious you are. 
Your legs take you all the way to Joel’s house. You stomp angrily up the porch’s stairs, but it’s only when you burst Joel’s front door open that you realize that you actually haven’t been in his home before. It’s also only then that you realize that you have no idea what you’re going to do now that you are here, too angry and out of your damn mind to explore the many pictures on the walls, the wooden carved figures on the shelves and… is that a guitar? 
You mentally shake yourself.
“Focus on the task at hand,” you say quietly with exasperation, and then the search for your betrayer begins.
You walk through the house with determination, but you soon realize that he is nowhere to be found downstairs. It doesn’t surprise you that he hasn’t locked his door (nobody in Jackson does), but you still feel disappointed that you can’t make a big dramatic scene of throwing a plate in the kitchen or a cushion in the living room. You feel slightly like a rage-filled balloon that’s slowly losing air. 
So you decide to go upstairs whilst still clinging to your rage, planning on waiting in his bedroom for his return but realizing that Joel is already in and sleeping in his bed. It’s late enough, you suppose, and you know he has a series of hard labor tasks on certain days.
You try your hardest not to feel too intoxicated by the smell of him on the sheets, need your head clear as you slowly start to undress right in front of his sleeping form. He looks so peaceful and so unlike his usual stoic self, and so vulnerable that the opportunity is too great to miss. 
You freeze the times he stirs slightly but he never wakes up, and soon, you are down to your underpants and nothing more and you are so wet with the anticipation of both sex and power in the room, even more with Joel being so unaware of it.
The bed creaks as you crawl onto it. You manage to straddle Joel before he wakes up fully, immediately lifting his arms to grab you and defend himself but when he realizes it’s your body on top of his, he falters.
“What’re ya doin’ here?” His voice is filled with sleep but he is nowhere near panic as you had hoped. 
You lean down over him and grab at his chin with the hand that’s not holding you up. You smile down at him but Joel is already staring down at your chest as you hover above him. You shake his head slightly, “Eyes up here, you bastard.”
“Shouldn’t look so pretty then,” he retorts. 
“Heard you were screwing around with that new bimbo. I thought you liked a challenge,” you tighten the grip on Joel’s jaw, push him back into the mattress, and catch the way he is connecting the dots in his head but the time it takes him makes you realize that there has been more than her. You growl, still hovering over him, and leaning down to ghost your lips over his whilst your eyes roam over his face, “It’s a damn fucking privilege to be breathing the same air as me.” 
“Cute,” he says quietly and brattishly. 
You push down briefly before letting go. Your eyes look down at his lips but you don’t kiss him like you want to, don’t want to give in when it would seem so vulnerable to give in to that temptation. 
Instead, you reach up to hold your palm in front of his mouth. You smile innocently, “Lick it.”
“What?” He chuckles in disbelief.
“Go on. Do as I say.”
Joel lets out his tongue and wets his lips. He gives in faster than you have anticipated, licks a long stripe from the start of your wrist to the middle of your palm, and coats your hand in disgusting, hot, and dirty saliva. 
“Did she do that?” You ask. You feel behind yourself to slide a hand down into Joel’s jeans and then past the waistband of his underwear, “Put you in your place because she knows how disgusting you are?” 
Joel is already half-hard as you take him in your slicked palm, and his cock comes alive fully not a moment later. He gasps into the bedroom but still looks cocky as ever, “Which of ‘em?”
“Fuck you,” you stroke him slowly and his breaths come out in small puffs that hardly make him seem calm and composed. You realize how much you’ve needed, craved, to put your hands on him. 
“That can be arranged,” he says, trying to catch a glimpse of what you are doing to him. He starts to move, makes an effort to flip you around but you catch him before he can follow through. You tighten your grip around his cock, squeezing him around the base until he gasps softly. 
“No one but me,” you say, “Okay?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart, what is this?” He rolls his eyes and moans when you stroke him once and then twice. 
“Are you going to behave?” You ask with a harsh grip again. You let your lips touch briefly now. 
“What?” Joel looks slightly disgusted. 
“I asked,” you begin and now you start to stroke him properly, mimicking what you have seen him do to himself when he has wanted to come on your face, “Are you going to behave, Joel?”
“No,” he teases. 
“Don’t make me ask once more, baby,” you move your hand up and down quickly, almost forcing him to near orgasm before you squeeze around the base to edge him. He hisses, neck blushing with how his heartbeat must be on overdrive. 
“Fuck,” he groans, throbbing in your hand, and with his snark, you almost just want to spend hours tracing the vein along his length with your fingertip, “Whaddaya want? You want me to be your little boyfriend or somethin’? Don’t be dumb, it don’t suit ya.”
“Listen,” you say, scooting back slightly and leaving a stain of your slick on the bottom of his t-shirt, “I’ll stick your big cock in me right now and let you come in me if you say I’m your only girl. You’ll never need another pussy than this.” 
He says your name as you straighten on top of him again but you let him know it doesn’t mean anything to you. Your free hand reaches to pull your panties to the side, and then you hold his cock in place as you slide down onto it and let it stretch you by bottoming out inside of you. You try your best to look motionless but he has a girth that stings.
“Say it,” you demand, slightly out of breath at the feeling of sitting on his thighs now. 
Joel is silent. He stares up at you, looking as if he has won because he is already inside of you but when you don’t hear an answer, you start lifting yourself off of him again. Joel grabs your hips in protest, holds you down, “No.”
“Then say it,” you reply, “Now.”
“You’re my girl,” he moans helplessly as you reward him with a roll of your hips. You make a noise as well, something closer to a tiny cry for him but you aren’t going to give in just like that.
“The only?” You inquire when you regain your composure. 
“My only girl, even if she’s a fuckin’ pain in the ass,” he groans. You flex your thighs to grip him around the middle and then you squeeze his length, letting your walls clamp down and it sends his eyes rolling backward. He bucks up his hips and you moan. 
However, you still have more to say and do. You don’t move yet, “I don’t believe you.”
Joel rolls his eyes, his grip on your hips tightening but he still doesn’t force you to ride him, “Jesus Christ, what the fuck now?”
“I think you’re a liar,” you inform him, trying to ignore how much every instinct in your body is telling you to use his dick for yourself. You squeeze around him again, “I think you’ll say anything to get pussy.”
“No one’s got a pussy like yours, sweetheart. You think I don’t know that?” He bares his teeth like an aggressive, cornered dog and he groans at the feeling of your soft, wet walls, “You’re like fuckin’ cocaine. Need more each time or I’ll never recover.”
“Don’t go finishing in me, Joel,” you scold. 
“I ain’t gonna,” he bites back, “I do have some self-control.”
“With the way you’ve been whoring around?” You tut, experimentally rocking your hips forward to feel him slip almost all the way out of your cunt. You move back to let him bury himself deep once more and whine, “Riiight.”
“Watch it, we’re only doin’ this because I allow it. I could break ya spine like a fuckin’ toothpick,” he breathes, hands going up along your thighs until he lets them glide up your back as if he is going to make truth of his threat, “Don’t forget who has the upper hand here.”
You relish in his rough hands on your lower back and finally start up a pace to ride him properly, not caring about how your thighs start to burn as you seek out pleasure. It’s a fun contrast to what Joel has just told you because his eyes glaze over in a way that shows you that he wouldn’t even know how to snap you in half if he wanted to. 
His breath has quickened, each intake and exhale becoming airy, whilst he holds your soft sides in his calloused grip. You rest your palms on top of his forearms, undulating your hips until his eyes roll back. He seems like he might lose his mind this time around, so submissive in his own way now that what you are doing to him has hit him by surprise. 
He shamelessly groans your name. Its roughness spurs you on, making you lean forward a little further to give him more. You ride him as if your life depends on it until something burns delicious in your belly and his pelvic bone grinds into your clit. 
Your first proper moan leaves you, high and squeaky. The angle has you baring your teeth, your breathing shaking, from how his cockhead stabs at your front wall repeatedly. You start spitting filth to not sound pathetic even further, “Fuck, Joel, your big cock is enough to make a girl lose her sanity. Makes my eyes wanna roll back.”
But Joel says nothing as he seems pissed off by what you have made of him. Instead, he breathes hard through his nose and occasionally lets a moan fall from his mouth. It pisses you off too. He had such a smart mouth just moments ago, and now he has resorted to being spiteful. 
You make a rash decision then. You move steadily on his cock, rhythm not faltering once, whilst reaching down to his face with your dominant hand. You smack his cheek hard enough to make a point and a noise, eyes narrowed, “Snap out of your ego tripping.”
Joel responds not with words but by curling his hand around your wrist and yanking it away, and then he takes hold of your smaller body once again and starts snapping his hips upwards, crashing them into yours until you nearly topple off of him after crying out. He tightens his hands on your body whilst you hold his forearm with one hand and have the other firmly planted on his chest, and suddenly you are working together towards a crescendo. 
“Give it to me!” You yell with your eyes screwed shut from the pressure against your clit and g-spot. Joel is swearing and his chest is glistening with sweat but he gives in to your command, making you bounce in his lap until he throws his head back and yells with you. 
“Fuck, honey,” he grits out, “Gonna make me come inside ya tight pussy.”
“Oh, it talks?” You quip, trying to hold back a pathetic string of cries but to no avail. Joel smooths his hands up to cup your body just below your breasts, digging his thumbs into your rib cage. 
“Shut the fuck up,” he retorts. 
“I’m gonna come,” you say instead and furrow your brow. 
“Yeah?” He mocks but then his face goes slack and you feel him twitch inside of you, impossibly close to the edge too, “Fuuuck, I can feel ya. Choke my cock real good, Doll.”
You come hard, unable to catch your breath as you keep moving back and forth on his length. Your whole pussy pulses, tight walls gripping him even further. The fingers holding onto his forearm make little indents and your nails on the other hand scratch into his chest until red lines form. And you cry. Oh, you cry and cry for him whilst singing his name.
The clenching of your cunt around his dick makes him reach his own point of no return a moment after. He does a sharp intake of breath and when he exhales even sharper, a groan follows, and his cock releases come inside of you. 
You use your last bit of energy to ride him through it. Your delirious mind, hazy with pleasure, makes your mouth run as you slowly drag your hips to match each twitch of his length, “See? She can’t love you like I do. Is that really what you want, Joel?” 
Joel pants underneath you. He tenses up when he hears those words but instead of pulling away, he grabs the back of your neck and pulls you down, “What the fuck did you just say?”
Your eyes widen slightly at the realization. In your chest, your pulse beats rapidly, “Just ‘cause I said it, doesn’t mean that I meant it.”
Joel tightens his grip briefly but then lets go. He sighs, then reaches up to rub his forehead in frustration, “I don’t have the strength.” 
“What’s so bad about it?” You ask, figuring that you might as well jump into the conversation now that you’ve been stupid enough to start it. 
“Don’t,” he warns, letting out a noise as he moves to pull out of you. Your panties move back into place, causing you to shiver.
“Please,” you know it is weak of you.
Joel says your name, mimicking the tone of a parent who is tired of hearing their child pestering them about something. He finds your eyes but doesn’t say anything else. 
“Just let me try something,” you continue and earn a raised brow. He stops trying to move. You swallow thickly but decide to be brave. 
Carefully, you curl your fingers into Joel’s chest hair and reach for his cheek with your other hand. You close the distance between the two of you, finding his mouth with your own and kissing him with a lot less vigor compared to what you have just done.
Underneath your palm on Joel’s chest, you can feel him exhale in something resembling relief. He doesn’t fight the kiss, no, instead he moves his arms and holds your waist. He kisses you back with closed eyes and soft hands, and you try not to ruin it by becoming eager. 
A few moments pass. When you finally pull away, he looks like a deer in the headlights of a car but you talk before he can, “Go to sleep. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything; I can see you’re exhausted.”
You move off of him to lie down at his side instead. Besides you, Joel closes his eyes without hesitation as if he needs to escape any conversation but when his breathing slows down further and you realize that he is drifting off, he looks mostly like a tamed beast. 
Ever so gently, you run a hand over his hair. He shifts only a little bit, so you do it again and suddenly you’re stroking the salt and pepper curls repeatedly.
To think that he had been ready to fight if someone touched him just half an hour ago. You continue for a few minutes before leaving the bed, heading for his bathroom to get cleaned up, and when you return again, he doesn’t react this time either.
The next day, you’re back in the same patrol group. 
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.
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467 notes · View notes
floralpascal · 1 year
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The Best Lies
Summary: After you join the 141, Ghost does everything he can to fight his growing feelings for you. But during a night out with you, he finds it harder and harder to ignore.
Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x f!reader (no use of y/n)
Word Count: 5.9k
Rating: Explicit (18+ only, mdni!)
Warnings: a little angst, Ghost agonizes over having feelings, canon-level violence, blood, alcohol/drinking, kissing, semi-public dry humping, fingering, unprotected p-in-v sex (you know the drill, wrap it y'all), secret relationship
A/N: This truly is 50% Ghost trying to ignore the fact that he's down bad and 50% depraved smut. Writing Ghost losing his mind over having feelings is truly so fun. I hope you all enjoy!
Illicit Indulgences Series Masterlist
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Ghost had convinced himself that he had done more than just nip his issue at the bud. He thought he had pulled it out by the roots and set it aflame, never to bother him again. 
And why would he think otherwise? He had done that same thing time and time again, and it had always worked. This time, he thought, would be no different. He had washed his hands of the issue and could continue on like before. 
The problem was that he was dead wrong. This time was different. 
You were different. 
You were the newest member of the 141, a sniper and one of the best hand-to-hand combat specialists he had ever seen. You were a strong woman who fought hard and fast, with an eye for precision. Price had been trying to get you onto the team for months, telling Ghost that he was convinced you were the perfect addition. Price had been right; you were perfect. You fit right in with the guys, kept up with their banter, and were as tough as nails. When you worked, you had a focus that was so zeroed-in that Soap and Gaz had started to liken you to Ghost. 
By all means, you were the best addition to the team that they could have asked for. You weren’t the problem. Ghost was the problem. 
What had started as a small acknowledgment of your attractiveness had slowly grown into something more. It was your quick sarcastic quips that battled with his own, your soothing demeanor and featherlight touch as you patched him up, your ability to make a terrible situation seem better than it was - the list went on. There was something there between the two of you, a connection that he had never experienced before. No, his attraction wasn’t just surface-level, it was something deeper. 
It was something that he wasn’t supposed to feel - on many levels. 
Ghost never got involved, period. He could acknowledge when a woman was attractive, have a night where he gave in to the physical aspect of it, but it never grew to anything. He didn’t let it. He would dispose of those feelings as soon as he registered them. In his line of work and in his experience, feelings were a liability - a luxury that he would always pay the price for. They complicated everything and unusually ended in pain. In short, they were a weakness that needed to be disposed of. 
What was more, you were his subordinate, his teammate. He was a professional, he never let himself feel anything like that for his subordinates. Hell, he barely even had what could be classified as friendships with his subordinates. Soap and Gaz had been the first he had ever shown his face to, and that was after fighting by their side for years. 
The bottom line was that Ghost didn’t let himself get distracted, much less get distracted by a subordinate who was just doing her bloody job. Yet, in a few short months, you had flipped everything Ghost thought about himself on its head. It was disorienting. 
Once he realized what was happening to him, he tried to put a stop to it. He worked with you when he had to, interacted with you when he had to, but besides that, he largely steered clear of you. Whether it was downtime at the base or a night out with the other 141 guys, if you were there, Ghost wasn’t. It was the only solution he had. 
If only it had worked. 
Even staying clear of you couldn’t stop the spread of whatever had taken hold of him. He slipped one day, imagining what your lips would feel like against his while you talked to Price, barely even realizing that he had been staring at your lips the entire time. Not too long after that, you had tried to get his attention while on an assignment, opting to whisper a low, breathless “Ghost!” into the comm. Going straight to the comm in his right ear, the low drawl of his name from your lips was almost like a siren’s call, sending a shiver racing down his spine as he responded back to you. Another day, he caught a glimpse of you training with Soap, watching as you passed his guard and kneeled between his legs as you continued to fight. The sight shouldn’t have sent his blood boiling or sent his thoughts straight into the gutter - you were just training. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw you look up at him as he swiftly left the training room, your piercing gaze following him as you helped Soap up from the floor. 
He didn’t feel anything for you. He didn’t feel anything for you. He repeated it like a mantra, like he could make it come true if only he said it enough, with enough conviction.
So why did he still have a knot in his chest every time he saw you? Every time you spoke through the comms directly into his ear, your voice strong and smooth as honey? Every time your eyes locked with his, an unreadable expression on your face?
He didn’t feel anything for you. He almost made himself believe it.
“Styx, get the fuck out of here!” He bellowed at you. “Leave me! That’s an order!”
It was a stealth job gone south nearly a year and a half after you joined the team, their intel leading them into a pretty nasty situation. Almost everyone had long retreated to safety. 
Ghost was hit, blood streaming from his right thigh. The bullet was still in the wound, making it bad enough to where he could barely put weight on it, considerably slowing down the two of you. He was a liability now, putting you both at risk of being killed or captured. You stayed with him nonetheless, shoulders set with determination. 
“Like hell,” you scoffed as you crouched down to where Ghost sat. Your face was dirty from the fight, your clothes scuffed and torn with a slice cutting through your sleeve from a bullet graze. He tried to push you away, continuing to order you to fall back with the others, but you refused, your burning gaze snapping up to meet his. “Either I get you out of here or we keep bickering right here until they find us and kill us! Your choice.”
Of course you wouldn’t leave him behind. It’s who you were. It’s what made you you, even if it was infuriating to Ghost. Even if he would have done the exact same thing you were if it was you with a bullet wound instead of him. 
His head starting to go fuzzy from the blood loss, his focus wavered.
“Hey,” you called, snapping your fingers in front of him before you started to check his wound. “Eyes on me, Ghost. Stay with me.”
After examining his thigh, you clicked your tongue before finally deciding that the makeshift bandage he had fashioned would be enough to suffice for now. 
Ghost let out a groan, finally letting you pull him up and wrap one of his arms around your shoulders. You took some of his weight, helping him limp a little faster now. He was putting you in more danger, that he knew. If you would’ve just listened to him, your chances of going undetected and making it out of there would’ve been drastically higher. But your grip on the strap of his belt to help ease the weight off of his leg was firm, refusing to let him go.
That same feeling nagged in the back of his mind as you dragged him with you, the blood loss making it harder to ignore the thoughts that he usually shoved down. 
You murmured words of encouragement to him as you walked for what felt like a lifetime.  “Come on, big guy, just a little more. Just a little faster.”
Ghost huffed a small laugh. He was in a haze now, letting words slip past his lips that he would normally have guarded against. “Can’t be sayin’ stuff like that, love. Might give a man the wrong idea.”
Your head snapped to look at him, surprise written in the pinch of your brows. Ghost found enough clarity then to shut up, the reality of what he had just said slowly setting in. Not only had he voiced a sentiment he had barely been willing to admit to himself, he had voiced it to you. 
You examined him for a moment with a confused, analyzing eye. Finally, you huffed out a laugh, your grip tightening on his belt as you readjusted his arm on your shoulder. Your eyes slid over his masked face, a flicker of amusement creeping into your gaze before you turned to look at your surroundings again.
After that, Ghost tried to hold on to every bit of self-control he had left to keep his mouth shut.
You both made it out that day, the two of you banged up and worse for wear, but alive. Ghost had been pretty out of it by the time you got him back to the exfil point. How you had managed to drag the both of you out of there while holding up a man as large as Ghost, he could barely remember, the whole event becoming fuzzier in his mind past the point when he had let those words slip to you.
The shot to his thigh had been a nasty one, leaving him bedridden in the medical area for the next few weeks, per the doctors’ orders. Price made sure Ghost didn’t try to disregard them. 
Ghost told Price what you had done, wanting you to get the credit you deserved for your bravery. Still, it didn’t stop him from thinking that you very well could’ve gotten yourself killed for him. The thought pulled at the familiar knot in his chest.
“What’re you in for?”
Ghost followed the voice to the doorway of his room only to find you leaned against the frame, a small, teasing smile on your lips. You were cleaned up now. Having donned a fresh set of clothes, you now wore a plain black T-shirt tucked into camouflage tac pants. Despite your teasing attitude, your eyelids were heavy, like you had barely slept in the two days you had been back on base. A thick bandage poked out from under your shirtsleeve, covering the area where you had been grazed. Other than that, you seemed like you were in one piece from the entire ordeal. 
Why did that revelation alone release some of the tension in his chest?
“Jus’ a scratch,” he rumbled. He couldn’t help but humor you a little. He gestured to the hospital bed and monitors surrounding him as he huffed, “Bit of an overkill if you ask me.”
You chuckled, pushing yourself off the door frame before coming closer. Voice laced with sarcasm, you said, “Yeah, okay, tough guy.”
It was quiet for a moment, the silence thick and heavy over the two of you. Your eyes slid over him, taking in his condition, your gaze almost too much to handle.
He didn’t feel anything for you. Under the weight of your scrutiny, the thought was more like a pleading prayer.
“You should’ve left me out there,” he asserted, trying to ignore his own thoughts. “You disobeyed a direct order.”
You rolled your eyes, your hands moving defensively to your hips. “I made a call and saved your life. You’d think that would count for something.”
“That wasn’t your call to make.”
“Listen, just because you can’t stand me doesn’t mean that I can’t make a call. You-”
“Is that what you bloody think?” Ghost spat, surprise creeping into his voice.
For the first time, he saw you hesitate. You blinked for a moment. 
“How could I not?” You finally retorted, stepping closer to him, your tired eyes alight with anger. “You avoid me like the damn plague, it seems like you can barely stand me, and you second-guess every call I make. Yet you treat all the guys like your brothers. You trust them when they make a gutsy call. And what? I’m supposed to think you respect me at all?”
Of course that’s what it looked like to you. You had taken his distance to mean that he didn’t want you here, that he didn’t think as highly of you as he did the others.
“I’ll only say this once.” Ghost leaned forward, his eyes locking with yours through the holes in his mask. “You’re wrong. You’ve got my damn respect - have had it for a while, even before this mission. I think you’re one of the toughest people here. But I still gave you an order. You could’ve gotten yourself killed. And that would’ve been on me.”
Whatever you were expecting to hear from him, it wasn’t that. You appraised him, squinting a little as you did. When you finally spoke, your voice was quieter, but still even. Still strong. “I’d do it again.”
Now, it was Ghost who was at a loss for words. He tried to ignore the intensity in your voice, the certainty. As if that wasn’t exactly his issue - that you would be willing to put yourself on the line for him again.
“Y’know,” you mused as you turned and walked back to the door, “usually people just say ‘thank you’ when you save their life.”
With one last glance at him over your shoulder, you were gone. 
~~~
In the months following your confrontation, Ghost stopped avoiding you at all costs, letting himself be closer with you again. The fact that you had taken his distance to mean that he thought less of you gnawed at him in a way that was damn near painful. Ghost’s issues were his own - he wasn’t going to take them out on you anymore by avoiding you. He shoved those thoughts for you down into the recesses of his brain, thinking that this time, the tactic might actually work. 
You seemed happy about his change in demeanor. While you said nothing to point it out, he saw how you gradually relaxed around him over time. You were quick to joke with him now, your sarcastic quips as precise as your aim, as if you knew that your banter made it easier for him. You were lighter with him now, ignoring the weight of that mission. Most of the time, he could, too.
Most of the time.
I’d do it again. The words rang in his ears each time he saw you now. They dug at him, called to him. It was maddening. The weight of those words remained heavy on his chest, their meaning something he was wary to look too closely into.
Tonight, he found you at a small pub a few streets over from the hotel the 141 had been staying at in some small Irish town, your elbows resting on the sleek wooden bar as you swirled a whiskey in its glass. You seemed deep in thought, your eyes only half-watching the amber liquid spin under the pub’s dim, warm yellow lights.
“The guys all leave?” Ghost asked, pulling you from your thoughts. A small smile played at the edge of your lips as you turned towards him, gently placing the glass back on the table.
“Yeah, they all left me,” you sighed dramatically. “Price went to see an old friend here in town. Soap and Gaz wanted to go check out a pub a couple blocks over from here.”
Ghost paused for a minute to order a bourbon from the bartender. “And you didn’t wanna go?”
You shook your head. “The place sounded a little too loud for my liking.”
Ghost made a noise in solidarity, picking up the glass the bartender had placed down for him. Your taste in pubs, he had learned, was close to both his and Price’s: laidback and quiet. Sure enough, this pub was just that. It was an old vintage-style pub, one that didn’t attract a loud, rowdy crowd. The small number of patrons were mostly older people - locals, by the looks of them - laughing softly as most of them paid attention to the football game on the television. It was the kind of pub people went to when they were looking for a warm, peaceful night. It made it easier to relax a little in this strange pub in this strange city. In your line of work, that was a difficult feat to accomplish. 
A comfortable silence settled between the two of you for a while, both of you nursing your drinks.
But something was on Ghost’s mind, something that had been sitting with him for months. He broke the silence to say only, “Thank you.”
You turned to look at Ghost, an eyebrow raised. You hesitated for a moment, seemingly unsure that you had heard him correctly. “Huh? What for?”
“I never said it,” he explained simply, voice even and calm. “For savin’ my life ‘n all.”
You appraised him for a moment, taken aback by his admission. The two of you had barely talked about what happened that day. Finally, you nodded. “Still think I was wrong for disobeying your order?”
“No,” he admitted, quickly adding, “just don’t make a habit of it, yeah?”
You nodded, chuckling a little before you took the final sip of your drink. “Of course.”
It was quiet for another moment before you set your empty glass down with a clink. When the bartender came back around, you handed him enough money to pay for both your drinks and Ghost’s. Then, you turned back to Ghost and said, “You sure are… talkative when you get shot.”
Ghost averted his eyes from you at that, opting instead to watch the other patrons as they celebrated their team’s goal. His only response was, “It was blood loss.”
When he looked back to you, your piercing eyes were trained on his. You seemed like you were trying to piece him together, to figure out the puzzle of him. 
“Blood loss or not, I never took you as the kind of guy to have his head in the gutter like that,” you teased, your tone light. Underneath the teasing tone though, laid something more serious. Something Ghost hoped he was wrong about. 
“I’m not.” It was a lie. He knew it. The worst part was that you knew it, too. 
A smirk played at the edge of your lips at that.
“Sure you’re not, Ghost,” you teased. You stood from your seat then before you leaned in close to Ghost’s ear, your hand gliding along his shoulder. Voice near a whisper, sweet and honeyed, you added, “Can’t be saying things like that, then. Might give a girl the wrong idea.”
With that, you were gone. By the time Ghost turned around, you were halfway to the door, shooting him a sultry, burning look over your shoulder. It was a look he had never seen from you before, a look he was sure was aided by the whiskey you had been drinking. It was an invitation extended to him under the dim yellow lights of the pub.
It was the first blatant sign he had seen that you were interested in him like that - that it hadn’t just been him afflicted by whatever this was. 
In the split second your eyes locked with his, a million thoughts ran through his mind, all saying that he definitely shouldn’t take the invitation, shouldn’t follow you. For one, it would undo all the work he had done to ignore his own thoughts about you. Not to mention the fact that he was your superior and all the hardline rules that very clearly stated that he shouldn’t unless he wanted to risk his entire career. 
But what if he did? What if he gave in to you this one time? What if all he needed was a night with you to finally get you out of his damn head? He could have you once and finally be able to get over the hold you had on him. To let go, maybe all he had to do was give in.
Fuck.
Ghost abandoned his seat in a moment. Weaving his large frame through the tables and patrons, his eyes were trained on you as you slipped through the front door. He caught it right as it swung closed from you, hot on your tail. Pushing out into the cold, crisp night air, he found you barely two steps away from him. You turned when you saw him, a small smile blooming across your face.
Ghost was on you, his hands grabbing your hips as he pulled the both of you into the alley. Shrouded in darkness, he pressed your back to the brick wall of the pub before shoving the lower part of his mask just above his mouth. Before he could even move again, your hand came to wrap around the back of his head, pulling his lips to yours in a rough, messy kiss. 
It was better than he imagined. You were better than he imagined, the feeling of your plush lips on his almost making him forget why he had held himself back from you for so long. 
He caged you in against the wall, one hand grasping against the rough, scratchy surface as he leaned in while the other held your head in place. You pulled at him, fervent and insistent as you drew him ever closer to you. Shifting in your hold, he slotted his knee between your legs, maneuvering so that his large, muscular thigh rested against your clothed center. When you gasped against him, he took the opportunity to slide his tongue along yours, the thick, heady taste of your whiskey mixing with his bourbon. It was the taste of you, though, that was intoxicating. More so than any drink he could have ordered. 
As you ground down against his thigh, your tongue met his with equal fervor. And while you grasped the back of Ghost’s mask in your desperation, he knew you would make no effort to pull it from him. How he knew that was a mystery even to him. All he knew was that the way you tugged at his hair through the mask sent him careening over the edge of a chasm that he couldn’t see the bottom of.
His hand left the wall beside you to firmly grasp your waist, urging you to increase the speed of your hips against him. Flexing his thigh, another gasp fell from your mouth. It was maddening, a sound he knew he had to draw out of you again, only louder and unobstructed. The sound shot through him like adrenaline, fast and exhilarating. 
For the first time in a long time, Ghost felt truly awake. It was like a fire had been lit in his veins and you were the gasoline fueling the raging flames. 
Suddenly, a loud group of people passed by the alley on the adjoining street, voices ringing out in conversation. All at once, Ghost was reminded that you were both out in the open, albeit tucked into a dark alley. You broke from the kiss, your mind seemingly on the same track.
“My room,” you offered breathlessly. “At the hotel.”
“Lead the way, Styx.”
You made the quick walk back to the small hotel with Ghost in tow, winding through the dimly illuminated streets and alleys with an illicit sort of stealth and swiftness, the both of you keeping an eye out for any of the other guys along the way. While you both knew that you wouldn’t see any of them again tonight, neither of you could seem to help it. You both knew you weren’t supposed to be doing this. 
Yet, neither of you put a stop to whatever this was either.
Ghost had you pressed up against the door to your room the moment you locked it, your back to his chest and arms extended to brace yourself against the sleek black wood. His mask once again pushed to just under his nose, he lavished hungrily at your neck just below the ear, earning another sharp gasp from you. His hands dipped to the front of your jeans, racing to blindly undo them. Movements deft, efficient, and precise, his fingers were quickly past the undone line of your jeans and slipping under the band of your underwear.
“You want this?” he rasped, both because he needed the confirmation that you were completely in and because he wanted to hear the way you would sound.
“Yes,” you rushed almost immediately, a newfound desperation lining your voice. You moved your ass back against him, pressing yourself against his covered erection and he had to hold himself back from rutting into you. “Fuck, Ghost…”
Ghost nipped at your ear as he stilled your hips, his right hand drawing lower under your underwear. 
“Easy,” he warned. ”Gotta open you up first.”
With that, his fingers finally met your core, gliding through your soaked folds. He groaned at the feeling of you already dripping for him, your underwear even damp with your arousal. He dragged some of your slick up from your entrance until he found the small bundle of nerves that had you rolling your hips forward in his grasp. Completely encircling you from behind with his body, he held you flush to him while he rubbed hard and fast circles between your thighs. 
Melting into his touch, you started to move your left hand from the door to grasp for him. His free hand stopped you in only a moment, grabbing your wrist and replacing it back in its previous position.
“Hands stay there,” he ordered. For once, you actually listened, opting instead to claw your fingers against the wood as he slipped two fingers past your entrance and into your heat. He moved achingly slow at first, letting you feel the way his fingers dragged along your walls, filling and stretching your tight cunt already. You moaned, your head falling back to rest against his broad chest. 
“Ghost… Ghost, faster,” you pleaded, voice airy. The satisfaction he got from your desperate request was all too strong, more than he had ever experienced before. It shot through him like a drug, fast and disorienting. 
He picked up the pace, steadily building up to a pace that had your knees ready to give out. Wrapping his free arm around your middle, he held you steady while he wrecked you with his fingers. He tried not to think about the fact that it had only been a few months ago that it had been you holding him up, that now he got to return the favor to you in a much more pleasurable way. 
When you cried out for him, Ghost whispered into your ear, parroting your own words from that fateful mission, “Just a little more.” 
With that, he added a third finger, holding his blistering pace. The sounds you made were utterly debauched, utterly sinful. He should have been worried about how loud you were - surely others in the hotel could hear your moans. You would be lucky if there weren’t complaints to the management by morning. It was reckless… but Ghost couldn’t bring himself to care. He was too enraptured by the ringing of your voice as you fell apart beneath his touch. 
It only took another minute for you to come undone around him, your muscles tensing around his fingers, squeezing him as your mouth fell open in a silent scream while he worked you through it. 
After you had begun to relax, a sweet whine leaving your lips, he finally slowed his pace to a stop. He pulled out of you then, drawing his hand up to his mouth to suck them clean. Eyes blown wide with lust, you turned to watch him as he slowly pulled his fingers out of his mouth, the tang of your cum one that he was sure he wouldn’t be able to forget. You watched his display until the tip of his middle finger left his lips. Then, you turned so swiftly he could barely register it and pushed up to kiss him again, your tongue dipping into his mouth to taste yourself as you threw your arms over his shoulders. 
A groan left Ghost, one that surprised even him. It was so much. The taste of you on his tongue, the feel of your body under his hands, and the way you grasped at his back to pull him closer all had his head swimming, his usual cool-headed clarity quickly becoming muddled. His heart was hammering in his chest, his cock so hard it was aching in his jeans.
Alarm bells rang in his head, telling him that he was in too deep. Never had he ever been this… wrecked from sex before he had even gotten his cock out of his underwear. Something was different this time. That feeling was back in his chest - the one he wouldn’t put a name to. 
But he couldn’t turn back now. His sense was far too gone for that. 
Ghost effortlessly lifted you up from the floor before carrying you to the bed. When your back lightly hit the mattress, your mouth open in a surprised oh, he was already on top of you. He helped you peel the clothes from your body, his own clothes soon joining yours on the floor, save for the mask. 
You looked so beautiful like this, spread out under Ghost like a dream. It was like every one of his long-ignored thoughts about you had come to life. Your hungry eyes, the way he could see every dip and plane and curve of your body like this, the way you practically glowed in the moonlight that poured into the darkened room… the sight made him finally let go of all his inhibitions about having you. He would deal with the consequences later. 
Suddenly, he realized that he had just been staring at you. 
You quirked an eyebrow at him, an easy smile on your lips. “Enjoying the view?”
In lieu of a reply, he leaned down, grabbed your chin, and smashed his lips into yours as he ground his hips against you, his cock sliding along your slickened folds.
“Ghost,” you breathed against him. He wished you wouldn’t say his name like that - like he was something good for you. Yet, it still only made his cock ache more. “Just - fuck - just fuck me already.”
“This isn’t gonna be soft, Styx,” he warned, lining his cock up with your entrance. 
You gave him a small smirk, eyes full of mischief as you replied, “Good.”
Fucking hell, you were trying to kill him. 
Ghost pushed inside of you slowly at first, reveling in the way you felt around him as you squeezed him, all molten heat and velvet. He draped himself over you, one hand planted on either side of your head, and watched as your eyes rolled back, your breathing becoming ragged once again. Your nails bit into his shoulder blades as you tried to adjust to him, the sting ever so satisfying against his skin. 
“You’re s-so - ah - so big,” you mumbled, almost to yourself. 
Buried to the hilt in you, he waited until he felt you begin to relax.
Then, Ghost threw himself into the flames. 
He almost drew out of you completely before slamming back into you. And if he thought your sounds before were something to behold, the moans you let out now were nothing short of divine. Again. And again. And again.
He fucked you into the mattress so hard the bed shook and groaned with the force of each thrust, devolving into one never-ending cacophony as his speed increased. Your tits bounced with each impact and he dropped his head to take one nipple into his mouth, lavishing it with his tongue before moving to the other. Using one hand to hold onto his shoulders for dear life, you roughly fisted the sheets with the other, searching for any point of stability you could find as your world rocked. 
When he lifted from your chest, he found your head tilted back on the mattress, neck outstretched and straining. Your eyes were squeezed shut, your face contorted in pure pleasure. 
Yet, something gnawed at Ghost, an urge so deep and so powerful he was useless to hold out against.
“Eyes on me, Styx.”
Your eyes blinked open, fluttering for a moment as you tried to refocus your gaze. Finally, your eyes locked with his, as piercing as ever. That feeling flared in his chest again, his next few thrusts even harder than before. It was like he was drowning, only in the best possible way.
He watched the force of each thrust as it rocked through you, every twitch of your face and desperate grasp of your hand in the sheets. He watched the way you drank him in, eyes hooded and hungry as they held his gaze. 
“Ghost.” 
It was a plea. A demand. One he was all too eager to give in to.
Connected your lips again as one of his hands wound up to the hand you had fisted in the sheets. His fingers wrapping around your wrist, he guided your hand above your head and pinned it to the mattress. He felt you groan into the kiss before you slipped your tongue into his mouth, heated and messy. 
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It was all too much. He was enjoying this all too much. You were too good, too addicting. 
You were taking him deeper than he had ever been. Your cunt threatened to pull him under, the pleasure of your tight walls too intense. He was only a step away from the edge, having to hold himself back from going over before you. 
Ghost used his free hand to grab one of your legs and hook it over his hip.
Like this, his movement told you. 
Taking the hint through your haze, you brought your other leg up around his hip and locked them together behind him. 
Instantly, you broke from the kiss, a broken moan ringing in his ears and vibrating against his lips. They flowed freely from you now, the beautiful sound filling the room. He couldn’t hold in his own grunts anymore, one for every snap of his hips against yours. 
Ghost felt you tense a moment before it happened, your body going rigid and your moan abruptly cut. Then, you were squeezing him so tight, it ripped a deep, guttural moan from his chest. The force of your orgasm rocked through you, seeming like you were trying to pull him over that same edge with you. Surely enough, with a few more rocks of his hips, he felt that heat as he released, coating your walls with his cum, your release taking every bit of him with you. 
Before he could pull out of you, spent and panting, your hand found his covered cheek, the cloth warm under your touch, and guided his lips back to yours again. Your kiss was slow. Deliberate. Heavy. A hint of something deeper on your lips. 
And as he ducked out of your room that night, the moonlight seeming dimmer in his room than it had been when it was illuminating your face, Ghost tried to push all his thoughts of you away for good. 
He had his fill and now he was done. 
He could move on. 
He didn’t feel anything for you. 
They were all good lies. For the best lies were the lies he told himself. 
4K notes · View notes
bricknees · 2 months
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it seemed a lot of people liked the brother-in-law merle headcanons and a couple of people like the idea of uncle merle, so... let's talk about how you and daryl make merle an uncle :)
─•~❉᯽❉~•──•~❉᯽❉~•──•~❉᯽❉~•─
• you get pregnant not long after the group settles in alexandria
• merle keeps his distance from you while you're pregnant
• your hormones are all over the place, you go from laughing to crying at the drop of a dime, and any time he opens his mouth around you, he's always saying the wrong thing
• daryl has to play mediator so that you don't kill him, even though sometimes daryl considers doing it himself
• like when merle mentioned how big you were getting during your second trimester... *sigh*
• you cried
• daryl snapped
• it was... not a good day
• so he stays away for the most part, asking daryl when he wants to know how you're doing. he occasionally brings you some snacks that he must have stolen from the pantry, but you're always too hungry to care about how he got them
• first time merle actually calls you his sister out loud is after you've given birth and he holds his niece for the first time
• "atta girl, baby sister. you did real good."
• he is BEAMIIIINNGGG
• his eyes are just a little wet because the air is dry, that's all...
• he had wanted a nephew so bad, but the second he sees her, his heart grows three times it's size
• he was convinced that dixons could only make boys, but here he is holding a little dixon girl, daryl's babygirl, and she's the most precious thing he's ever seen
• constant jokes about needing a paternity test
• "i'm just saying, that nose is lookin' more like mine than yours, maybe your girl slipped into the wrong bed one night-" "shut the hell up, merle"
• merle always gives you a little wink to show he's just being an ass and not actually accusing you of such a thing
• which daryl knows. it doesn't annoy him any less, though
• never allowed to babysit EVERRRR. if your daughter isn't with aunt carol or aunt maggie, then she's at the grimes house. merle always has choice words about it
• okay, well... he babysits a couple times. and your daughter was returned back each time covered in dirt. one time merle carries her up to the door with wet pant legs pulled up to her knees and bits of leaves still strewn in her hair
• "oh... you had a fun time with uncle merle, huh?" "damn right she did, mamas. taught 'er how to catch frogs. babydoll, tell yer mama what a frog says!" "bib-bit!" "she's learnin'."
• saying the name merle is too complicated for your daughter's limited articulation, so she just calls him 'unca' while she's learning to talk.
• when your daughter DOES start to articulate...
• "son of a bitch!" "bitch!" "ha! that was good! wait- nah, nah, don't say that- aw, shit..." "shit!" "no!"
• he refuses to own up to it
• "merle! why's my daughter cursin' like a fuckin' sailor?" "well, darleena, sounds to me like she's gettin' it from you!"
• he's the favorite uncle (after aaron - your daughter adores aaron)
• rick's lowkey offended by it and tries to subtly bribe your daughter into saying she likes him more
• "uncle dick!"
• ...
• "... are you kiddin' me?" "don't know where she learned that from. must be a good judge'a character."
little bonus that doesn't have to do with uncle merle: it's really up to you, but i like to think that you and daryl would have agreed to name your daughter beth 🥺 you would have suggested the name, knowing that part of daryl never really healed after her death, and he would freeze. forgets how to breathe for a second as the memories wash over him. and then he would blink really fast as he feels his eyes start to water and he'd give you that soft little nod he does when he's trying not to cry. PLEASE- 😭
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hqbaby · 10 months
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chapter one — oh cool
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fuck ur instincts — suna x reader & atsumu x reader
you and suna are just fooling around—so why does he care so much when you start falling in love with someone else?
masterlist — next
word count. 1.9k content. sexual imagery, implied fwb, swearing
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Suna knows he’s being greedy.
When he has you in his bed every night, gets you to say his name in that breathy whimper of yours, gets to touch you like nobody else can—he knows he isn’t being fair. To him, you’re perfection, and he’s never been the kind to settle for any less. He wants you all to himself and he’s not afraid of getting what he wants.
And when he refuses to let anyone else know that he has you? When he’s decided to keep you a secret? Well, he knows that he’s the greediest fucker there is.
In public, you barely acknowledge each other. You run in different circles, you go to different classes. There’s the occasional overlap in your friends and his, but no one would ever call you two close. You’re friendly at most.
No one suspects a thing. 
Everyone sees you as the golden girl, the one who everybody wants. You’re the captain of the cheer team who somehow manages to work through her degree in chemistry while still going to all the parties that matter. People have decided that you’re interested in relationships but you haven’t been in any serious ones. You already have too much of a life going on anyway.
Suna, on the other hand, is seen as the star athlete fuckboy. Apparently, he’s gone through half of the female population on campus and he’s still going on a roll. He lives in a completely different world from yours, one of debauchery and mess, where he floats above it all.
The two of you aren’t exactly as everyone says you are, what with you being the occasional nervous wreck and Suna being too lazy to hook up with people most of the time, but you like how people perceive you. It’s fun to live the life of a persona, it makes you feel like you’re actually living.
No one knows that the two of you are always at each other’s sides when everyone else isn’t looking. And it’s not just sex, no, when Suna has all of you, it means he has all of you. He gets to curl up with you on the couch and watch Ghibli movies on Friday nights. He gets to have coffee with you in the morning and eat the pancakes that you made together. He gets to drive you to your parents’ house when you go visit them and he gets to pick you up and take you out after.
He gets all the best parts of you that you have to offer and he has no intentions of letting any of that go. He just doesn’t want anyone else to know, that’s all. He has a reputation to uphold, and you just so happen to be a complication in all of that.
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“Morning,” you say, rolling over to your side and finding Suna looking at you. “You sleep okay?”
He hums and wraps an arm around your waist. “‘Course. You’re here.”
You let out a light chuckle before pressing your lips to his. The kiss is sweet and tender, like it means everything in the world to the two of you. When you pull back, a smile graces your lips, your hand coming up to push a strand of hair from Suna’s face.
“I gotta get going,” you tell him, sitting up. “Iwa’s helping me study today.”
His grip on you tightens. “You can make him wait.”
You stick your tongue out. “Such a bad influence.” You lean down and press a quick kiss to his forehead before getting up and gathering your clothes from the floor. “Am I seeing you tonight?”
“Not tonight,” he tells you, eyes on your body as you pull your underwear on. “I have a date.”
You nod. “Alright,” you say. “Just text me whenever.”
He watches as you put your clothes back on and check yourself in the mirror to see if you look okay, completely used to this routine you’ve built for yourself. As much as he likes that you’re not bothered by him seeing other women, he can’t help the nagging feeling that you’re equally unbothered by the reverse. That you think it’s fine for you to go and see other men.
You never have, not in a way that matters at least. You’ve hooked up with a few people, but you always told Suna about it afterwards and it always happened just because he wasn’t around to keep you company. He likes the idea that he’s the only one that really matters to you. He likes that idea more than he probably should.
He refuses to consider what would happen if you actually met someone you liked. He tries his best not to think about it. Besides, it’s not like you’re going to find anyone anytime soon.
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“You got plans tonight?” Iwaizumi asks, passing you your coffee and following you to a table. “Oikawa’s asking.”
You shake your head. “After my midterm later, I’m pretty much free.”
“And the guy? No plans with him?”
“What guy?” you ask coyly as the two of you take your seats. “There’s no guy.”
He totally knows that there’s a guy. There’s no way he doesn’t. He thinks that it started almost a year ago, when you were being secretive about your plans all of a sudden. You never turned down the chance to go out with him and the boys though, so they couldn’t exactly complain that the mystery guy was getting in the way of your friendship with anyone. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder why you were keeping it a secret for so long.
“Yeah?” Iwaizumi says with a knowing smirk. “So you wouldn’t mind if we whisk you away on a surprise week-long camping trip?
Your face falls a little at that. “Uh, I don’t know, man. I’d have to think about it.”
He laughs. “Whatever you say, Y/N.”
The two of you start talking about your friends, places you want to visit before the next semester starts, plans for the future, the occasional existential crisis. When you realize that you’ve been at it for two hours, you begrudgingly decide to pull out your notes and review for your exam.
After quizzing each other on the last two topics, you decide to get some snacks before going through everything again.
“Nope,” you say as you stand up and Iwaizumi tries to give you some cash. You hold your wallet up for him to see. “I’m paying this time.”
“Y/N,” he whines. “But I’m the man.”
You tut at him. “Don’t bring the patriarchy into this.”
Ignoring his protests, you make your way over to the counter to order your food. You’re pretty sure he’ll sneak the money into your bag while you’re gone anyway, but it’s the thought that counts.
“Here you go,” the cashier says, handing you your change and sliding over the tray of cookies and brownies. “Enjoy your food.”
You thank her with a smile, picking the tray up, and turning to walk back to your table.
“Hey, Y/N, right?”
You look over your shoulder and find a boy you recognize from campus. Atsumu. You met him at a party where he somehow ended up singing “Gotta Go My Own Way” with Hanamaki. You’re pretty sure the guy throwing the party regretted serving so much booze after that.
“That’s me,” you say. “Atsumu, right? I remember you from Haru’s thing.”
He rubs the back of his neck and smiles sheepishly. “Yeah,” he says, “I went sober for a whole month after that.”
You laugh. “It wasn’t that bad.”
He shrugs, then looks down at the tray you’re holding. “Lemme help ya with that.”
Before you can even say no, he’s already taking it from you and asking you to lead the way back to your table. When you get there, Iwaizumi nods at Atsumu in greeting.
“Hey, man,” he says. “Nice seeing you here.”
“Yeah, small world,” Atsumu replies, placing your tray down on the table. He looks at you. “Iwaizumi and I are in the same health science class.”
He smiles and you can’t help but notice how sweet it looks. You never really got to look at him before—what with him being on the verge of blacking out and you not exactly doing too well yourself back then—but now that you see him properly, you can’t help but think that he’s actually cute. 
And hot. Definitely hot.
“Thanks for the help,” you say, “You really didn’t have to.”
He waves it off. “I don’t mind,” he tells you, adjusting his backpack strap. “Well, I gotta get goin’. It was nice seein’ ya again.”
You watch as he turns around to leave and, before you can even stop yourself, the word comes tumbling out of your mouth. “Wait.”
He looks back with a raised brow. “Yeah?”
“I wanna pay you back. For… being so nice.”
He shakes his head, the sweet smile still on his lips. “Ya really don’t have to—”
“No seriously,” you say. “Maybe I can give you my number. Let me know when you’re free, I’ll get you a coffee or something. To pay you back. For being nice.”
His eyes widen in realization. Then he smirks. “Sure,” he says, pulling out his phone and handing it to you.
You type your number in and pass his phone back to him. You smile. “See you around, Atsumu.”
“See ya around, Y/N.”
When he’s gone, you turn back to Iwaizumi who has an amused look on his face. 
“So?” he asks. “Care explain what that was just now?”
You groan, already knowing that he’s going to tease you about this for years to come. “Shut up and eat,” you say, pushing a cookie into his mouth. He tries to speak as he chews and you throw a balled up tissue at him. “You got food on your face.”
Your phone pings on the table and you pick it up to check.
number unknown: this is tsumu. u up for dinner tonight?
Trying to ignore the snickers coming from Iwaizumi, you text back.
you: sure thing
tsumu: 8 sound good to you? i’ll pick u up
you: sounds great, i’ll send my address
You put your phone away and try to bite back the growing grin on your face as Iwaizumi watches you with a smug smile.
“That him?” he asks.
You shrug and take a sip of your coffee. “Maybe.”
“You’re so bad at hiding shit.”
You give him the finger. Then, you hear your phone ping again.
rin: date tonight bailed, wanna hang?
you: sorry i got plans :( 
rin: it’s fine. u going out with ur friends?
you: nah i have a date
rin: oh cool
rin: have fun
“Is he still texting you?” Iwaizumi groans. “You have like one conversation with the guy and he’s already in love with you.”
You roll your eyes at him and aim another wad of tissue at his head. “I told you to shut and eat,” you say. “But if you must know… We’re going out tonight.”
At that, Iwaizumi guffaws. “I want details,” he demands, stuffing his face with more food. “I pretty much got you two together.”
“By sitting there and doing nothing?”
“Exactly.”
You grin at his antics and lean over the table to take a bite of his brownie, much to his dismay. You barely hear his whining though. You’re too busy wondering how you’re going to get through your midterm later, head already swimming with questions about what you’re going to wear to your date tonight.
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notes. AAAAA SO IT’S BEEN A WHILE but i’m backkk baby! my stories tend to reflect how i approach love and relationships, so while my past works might have been more romantic and sweet, this one’s gonna be a bit more messy and angsty and sexy ;) so strap in loves, we’re in for a ride <3
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anonymouspuzzler · 3 months
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you know what? fuck you (heartbreak gulch's my own guys)
(@heartbreakgulch courtesy of the inimitable @strangegutz & collaborators, also miscellaneous Thoughts under the cut bc it's my blog no one can stop me the doors have closed behind you)
HEARTBREAKER BULKHEAD:
Probably does not have superpowers anymore but still came from a family of considerable influence and was under pressure to inherit, pressure which he very much Broke Under.
Turned to a life of crime, definitely got in over his head with it, and essentially got rescued by Eddie, who he is Utterly Obsessed With And Heartsick For.
Has spent literal years as one of Eddie's attack dogs and generally jumping through hoops for him for Whatever Scraps Of Affection He Can Get, though he's still kind of squeamish around Literal Murder and thus tends to be assigned to supply runs and such most of the time.
Amateur mechanic and car enthusiast. Probably did a lot of McGyver-ass fixes around the Gulch-slash-generally assisted Ami til Davey was recruited.
Speaking of, was still the guy who recruited-slash-rescued Davey. They fell for each other hard and are in a committed relationship now, which has helped Buck take a little bit of a healthier step back with whatever the hell he and Eddie have going on (and helped him be a little less jealous and curmudgeonly about the Hot Young Things In Town, ie Zeki and Felix).
Absolutely not prepared to be a guardian to Minnie which has led his and Eddie's whole Relationship to enter a fun new stage of "hey man can I ask you for parenting advice nothing weird"
HEARTBREAKER DYNAMO:
Pretty similar backstory to the Villain-Coded version. Civilian turned criminal, lost his arm when he got in over his head on a job and Buck rescued him.
Has a bunch of different prosthetics he swaps out for different purposes, ie. one for combat, one to use for mechanic work, a kinda general use/everyday one, etc. That said, he goes without a lot to make sure he's prepared for a situation where he doesn't have access/one breaks or fails on a job/etc.
An alarmingly good recruit; I feel like originally Eddie kind of let him stick around as a kind of "gift" to Buck, but now that he's actually got him on jobs he's become a real rising star. Real good in a scrap and is a little more flexible with his moral lines in the sand compared to Buck. Outside of that he works with Ami a lot doing mechanics and repairs - probably interested in learning CompanDroid maintenance/repair but figures it'd be skeevy for him to push that point too much.
He and Eddie have a complicated relationship I think. They'd be kinda suspicious/distrusting of each other but also have a LOT of similarities and work really well together. To say nothing of their respective relationships with Buck.
I don't think he's Trying to Uncle the younger recruits in the Gulch but he definitely Does. He likes White a lot. He and Ami would also definitely get along really well. He is being The Bigger Man and Mature Adult and not giving Felix a wedgie no matter how badly he wants to
HEARTBREAKER(?) MINNIE:
From the same family of prominence as Buck and is currently very much on the run after a failed attempt to kill her own dad.
Extremely a city kid and is Not necessarily adapting well to Middle Of Nowhere Self Sustained Living.
Knew Of Buck but never met him before this so his whole Life and Little Criminal Commune featuring Multiple Guys He's Got SOMETHING Going On With is. it's a lot
Would like to do some crime actually but is A) still a little traumatized and adjusting to the whole Situation and B) 13 Whole Real Human Years Old.
Fascinated by Zeki's whole deal and his work but I think they would absolutely bring out the worst in each other they would fight so much. Autism to autism hostility
Having a very complicated response to White and Ami wherein she thinks they're SO cool but interacting with them at any length would make her realize Things About Herself that she's not consciously ready to confront so just like. Imagine being White and looking over your shoulder and that 13 year old is just Intensely Staring At You Unblinking from around a corner and as soon as she realizes you've seen her she turns around and runs off as fast as she can directly into a wall
Zarita absolutely hitting that Cool Just Slightly Older Kid niche for her.
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hlficlibrary · 3 months
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HL Fic Library 🩷 Meet Cute Fics
Remember to leave kudos and a comment on the fics you enjoyed to show your appreciation! You can find the library's other recs here.
🩷 You Make Lovin' Fun by @homosociallyyours {E, 109k}
Harry is a 28 year old travel writer at a gay magazine who gets the assignment to go a lesbian cruise. She figures it's a nice chance to have some fun in the sun, but she's not expecting much else-- even if her partner and best friend are both encouraging her to hook up with someone while she's there.
When she locks eyes with a gorgeous silver fox from across the room, she starts to think she could've been wrong. There are lots of things standing in the way of anything real happening with her and Louis, but that doesn't stop them from falling for one another. True love isn't always easy, but they do make lovin' fun.
🩷 Quiet People Have the Loudest Minds by @2tiedships2 {M, 38k}
Broadway shows were one of the few things that could keep Louis’ attention for a full two hours without needing to move about. But not tonight.
The alpha next to him was both infuriating him and practically turning him on at the same time. He needed to leave. The alpha, that is. Louis was staying.
Or the one where Louis is a nonverbal omega who has accepted the fact that he will never find an alpha that will treat him as an equal. On the other hand, he’s never met anyone like Harry.
🩷  hymns for restless stars by @turnyourankle {E, 37k}
Every Holiday season Louis has his pupils write down their Christmas wishes for class. He's read almost every wish under the sun, but one girl's wish takes him by surprise. It's for her uncle not to be alone anymore. It's not a wild wish by any means, but Louis had no idea that former teen idol Harry Styles was lonely in the first place.
🩷 From the Start by @allwaswell16 {E, 32k}
Louis has no idea that one act of kindness will cause his life to spiral out of control. But that's what happens when his new friend fake proposes to him and a video of it goes viral.
🩷 On This Winter's Night by @reminiscingintherain {T, 27k}
When a random bloke offers his lap for a seat on a busy bus in December, Louis' Christmas ends up being much different, and far less lonely than he was expecting.
🩷 What Side Of Love Are You On? by @fallinglikethis {T, 25k}
Ever since Harry finally made the decision to come out to his mother as bisexual, she’s been foisting women on him left and right, determined it’s just a phase. But when she puts out a personal ad to find the perfect partner for her son, things really get complicated. Suddenly, Harry’s heart is being pulled in two very different directions. On one side is the sweet, caring woman he has fun with, but doesn’t know his mother chose for him. On the other is a man who seems to be his mother’s worst nightmare, but makes Harry’s heart flutter in ways he’s never felt before. When all is said and done, maybe they’ll all learn that when there is no clear path to go down, the best option is to follow your heart.
A Because I Said So Au with a bisexual twist.
🩷 A Road To Something Better by @taggiecb {E, 25k}
Louis Tomlinson, famous romance novelist, has just had the rug pulled out from under his feet when his boyfriend leaves him without notice. What's the most appropriate response to this? Move a thousand miles away and seclude himself in a tiny lake town, of course. But nothing is as he expects it to be in the very best way, especially not the handsome mayor of McAll, Idaho.
🩷 Naked & Proud by kiwikero / @icanhazzalou {E, 18k}
The town itself is tiny, as evidenced by the ten minutes it’s taken Louis to drive the entire thing. There’s not a single recognisable brand in sight—no Tesco or McDonald’s or even a bloody Starbucks. Lining the streets instead are mom and pop stores with names like ‘Jerry’s Burgers’ and ‘The Market Basket’ and…
“'Naked & Proud?'” Louis almost slams on the brakes at the outlandish sign, the name written in a seemingly innocent font, words curved around a large cartoon peach. He can’t help turning into the carpark, easing the car into a spot next to a beat up truck.
He isn’t sure what to make of it. Surely it isn’t a strip joint or sex shop, not with the families and little old ladies going in and out of the establishment. Some kind of nudist hangout, perhaps?
And, oh, God. Did Louis’ mother accidentally send him to live in a nudist colony?
In which Harry runs an organic store, not a nudist colony, and Louis doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
🩷 Single Bells Ring by nonsensedarling / @absoloutenonsense {M, 16k}
A holiday singles event is not where Louis wants to be tonight, but there he is, helping his best friend find love. Just as Louis is settling in, ready to have a terrible time, he meets the fittest alpha he’s ever come across.
🩷 love so soft, you ain’t had nothing softer (series) by @neondiamond {E, 15k}
Louis is an Alpha with an odd obsession for gummy bears. Harry is an Omega who makes friends a little too easily. They meet on the bus.
🩷 Breathe me in, breathe me out by @lunarheslwt {G, 14k}
Louis was just passing the autumn collection, when an unfamiliar but addicting scent tickled his nose. Cinnamon. He turned as he realised something. He felt calm. Relaxed. The permanent agitation that he carried was melting away the more he breathed in the scent, as faint as it was. Consumed by the crazed desire to seek out the specific candle, Louis began picking up candles and sniffing them madly, when a deep voice piped up, startling him. “Uh, sir, we don’t allow candle fetishists in here.” Louis froze mid sniff in mortification. Willing himself to not blush, he turned, a retort at the tip of his tongue. Except, it died in his throat as he took in the man before him. “I uh,” Louis blurted out accidentally, temporarily rendered speechless by the frankly unfairly beautiful man before him. Only at the man’s grin widening did he regain his wits. “You’re gonna kink shame me?”
Or, Louis is drawn into a quaint candle shop in his desire to find ways to soothe himself while struggling with touch depri. It takes him two more run-ins and with the lovely alpha sales assistant, and a drop, to figure out the source of the scent that imprints upon him and calms his omega. Idiots to lovers
🩷 Far Afield by QuickedWeen / @becomeawendybird {T, 11k}
Harry Styles is a witch who owns the best flower shop in Manchester. Lottie Tomlinson is planning her wedding, and brings her brother along to her first appointment. Both men have been having a bad day and sparks fly.
🩷 The Art of the Giants by asphodelknox / @iamasphodelknox {G, 10k}
Louis is dancing away from an old relationship when he meets Harry at a bookstore in the busy streets of Seattle. Harry is just a bookstore owner hoping his handsome weekly visitor could become something more.
🩷 All Shook Up by @littleroverlouis {T, 9k}
Memphis, Tennessee is looking to crown the Ultimate Elvis Tribute artist. A majority of the contestants are content to shake their hips on stage, but singer-songwriter Harry is taking it more seriously. He is confident his voice and charisma will send him straight through to the finals.
He is already polishing his crown before even setting foot on stage, until he meets a fellow competitor. Louis is talented, charming, and a natural born performer. He commands the stage— and Harry's attention.
Harry has his eye on the prize and the Ultimate title, but what happens when someone becomes the ultimate prize?
🩷 The Way to My Heart by LadyAJ_13 / @ladyaj-13 {T, 6k}
Louis' having a bit of a dry spell, until he bumps into an attractive alpha in the supermarket and leaves with his number. It was a hard bump. Very... muscular.
The only problem is, said alpha asks Louis to cook for him - which is not exactly his skill set.
🩷 Only Reason by @letsjustsee {NR, 5k}
“We are so lucky to have with us one of the leading experts on beekeeping in the modern age, Dr. Louis Draper.” No. No, no, no… “I know I speak for many of us when I say that this man’s books have guided our practice, or helped us get started,” Harry continued, and Louis watched as the crowd nodded their heads in agreement. Oh shit. No. What? No. But then Harry was gesturing towards him, saying “Dr. Draper?” into the microphone, the crowd was applauding, and Louis found himself walking up the stairs to the stage.
Or, Louis is most definitely smitten with Harry from the second he sees him, but he is also most definitely not the world's foremost expert on beekeeping. He decides to roll with it anyway.
🩷 Unplant by @hellolovers13 {M, 4k}
Please do not disturb my plant She needs 2 hours of sunlight a day and I live in a sunless flat I’ll be back to collect her soon Thank you and stay well.
or Louis should've looked where he was going, then he wouldn't have to desperately try to save a little flower now.
🩷 Validation by @lululawrence {NR, 3k}
“Hey, how are you?” Harry asked. He’d found that sometimes just a smile and a kind face was all that was needed to brighten someone’s day.
“Oh, uhm. I’m alright. Can you validate me?”
Harry chuckled inwardly, but decided to go ahead and take him literally.
Or the one where Harry worked in a parking garage and he totally didn’t mean for this, the whole validation of people as well as their parking tickets, to become a thing. It just kinda...did.
🩷 more than that by @nouies {NR, 3k}
Harry looks for the best bread in France. He finds Louis.
🩷 an honest mistake by @disgruntledkittenface {NR, 2k}
“You look different when you’re not covered in come,” he blurts out, immediately regretting each and every life choice that has led to this exact moment. Elevator Guy is going to hate him.
Louis has ridden the elevator with his neighbor all week. The first time they speak, there’s a misunderstanding.
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superficialdomina · 4 months
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Fray (Into Submission, Part 4)
Part 3: Lost
Series masterlist
AN: An Avengers training session gives you a chance to show Loki how fun it would be to let you win.
As always, an enormous thank you to @acidcasualties for making this whole series happen. Special thanks to @lokisgoodgirl for checking the accuracy of my swordplay!
Word count: 2.1k
Warnings: 18+; minors DNI. Thirsty with some reminiscing, but nothing explicit in this one. Inaccurate descriptions of combat training. Mostly just lurid descriptions of Loki's smoking hot bod in workout wear, with a touch of plot development.
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Days. You hadn’t seen him in days.
There were hints of him; you knew he was still in the Tower. You’d heard his voice a couple of times, and yesterday when you’d stepped into the elevator you could smell that he’d been there minutes before. But he’d upped his avoidance game. It made you sad, and a little afraid.
The look of anguish he’d worn as he’d cast you out of his apartment remained etched in your memory, leaving the subtle ache of guilt in your chest. Had you gone too far?
You mulled it over as you pulled on your gym gear. Loki might still refuse to talk to you this morning, but you were confident that you would at least see him. After several of your coworkers had missed Saturday afternoon’s impromptu training session, Rogers had rescheduled for first thing Monday morning, with strongly worded insistence that everyone be in attendance. His WhatsApp message didn’t quite single Loki out by name, but none of you was in any doubt about its intended target.
The spacious training hall gleamed with the sunlight that streamed through the large 26th story windows, casting a warm glow on the polished mats. The luxury of the Tower was as prominent here as on every other floor. The gym was loaded with state-of-the-art equipment and comprehensive accessories, all meticulously maintained - as though getting your arse kicked by a handful of superheroes would hurt less because there wasn’t a speck of dust on the yoga mats, you thought wryly. You peered hopefully around the room as you entered. I just need to know that he’s OK, you told yourself.
Loki and Thor were sparring hand-to-hand in the open rink, the soft thudding of their bare feet resonating as they moved around one another. Occasional grunts carried as one of the pair landed a strike. Despite Thor’s size advantage, they were evenly matched; Loki was always a fraction faster, seeming to know exactly where Thor would move next, as though each step were choreographed and practiced to perfection. Observing them was like watching an ancient dance. Which is exactly what it is, you thought, momentarily awed. A fierce, millennium-old dance.
Thor’s bare chest, though impressive, was still somehow less appealing than Loki’s lithe form, clad in workout wear that clung tightly to his broad back. You let your eyes blatantly traverse him. His elegant ankles smoothed into perfectly sculpted calf muscles; his Godly hamstrings flexed under the hem of his training shorts, which in turn restrained his flawlessly rounded glutes. His body was utterly splendid. A delight of form and function, forged by centuries of practice and power. A work of art.
If he would just put that phenomenal dedication and discipline to good use in service to you…
“Time!” Rogers called loudly, and the brothers stepped back, arms lowered, chests heaving. Thor clapped Loki on the back amicably, and for the briefest moment, you saw Loki wince. The small movement made your blood run hot.
Pain.
“Three minutes, everyone!” Rogers continued, before consulting the pairs listed in the complicated run sheet on his ridiculous clipboard. “Two and eight,” he began. “Three and twelve. Four and… Sixteen.”
You groaned inwardly, pushing thoughts of your recalcitrant conquest from your mind. The Black Widow. Not exactly a leisurely start to the morning, then.
“Come on, sixteen,” Natasha laughed. “Show me what you’ve got.”
The room filled with the sounds of Avengers in practice: thudding boots, wordless shouts, the familiar hum of mutual respect and collective, focused power. As you sparred, you began to relax into the collaborative energy, muscle memory activating as your training partner led with her familiar fighting style. Nat feinted here, and you responded there; the two of you were strong, and graceful, and -
Thump. You landed flat on your back on the hard mat. Again. At least this time you’d seen it coming. Your body just… didn’t move that way. Or that fast.
“You’re getting better,” Nat insisted as she hauled you to your feet. “You almost avoided that one.”
“I saw what you were doing,” you agreed, somewhat reluctantly. “I just couldn’t do anything to stop you.”
“They rarely can,” she winked, as Steve’s obnoxious whistle sounded again.
“Drinks!” he shouted, “then re-pair for weapons.” He returned to his spreadsheet, muttering numbers to himself, as you reached for your water bottle and your thoughts – and eyes – returned to Loki.
He was sauntering towards the group with Bucky, shoulders thrown back in haughty masculinity, animatedly wiping sweat from his brow with his sinewy forearm. Whore, you thought lustily. They looked almost amicable. You gazed at him, curious; confused. He seemed… fine? Loki caught you watching him and gave you a wink. A wink. Almost like…
Like old times, you thought. What is going on?
You turned away, chugging water, then wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. He seems fine. Was it real? If he was truly so nonchalant, why the vanishing act over the past few days?
You were still standing there, bemused, when the team began to pair off again. In your distracted state, you’d missed the next call. Who…?
Only one person remained by your side, and his imperious gaze left you in no doubt as to your next partner.
Loki.
You moved together to one end of the training mats. This close, you could see the fine trails of fresh sweat across his bare shoulders; smell the sweet scent of it heavy around you when he raised his arms to pull his curls back into a messy plait. You imagined the saltiness of it gathered in the valleys of his muscular, sinewy body, with which you had so recently become better acquainted; the way it would pool and concentrate in the deep hollow of his jugular notch.
I could make you sweat like that.
He continued to smirk at you mischievously as he moved into position, as grandiose and egomaniacal as ever. “Short swords, Agent?” he drawled, a short, thick blade appearing in each hand with a flicker of green.
“Just one, Laufeyson!” Rogers shouted, before you could respond. Loki raised an eyebrow at you, flirting with the idea of arguing; but he wordlessly vanished the weapon on his left.
“You didn’t want to lend that to me?”
“Darling, they are hundreds of years old,” he drawled coolly. “I don’t lend them to anyone.” Turning to fetch a training sword, you hid a smile at his words. Had he forgiven you?
Or he’s just feeling cocky.
The gym’s practice swords were hung neatly at the far wall. You tried to pick one that was long enough to be effective, but not so long as to be cumbersome. It was highly irrelevant; he was faster, stronger, and infinitely more skilful than you. You selected a narrow doge sword that at least felt comfortable in your grip.
The gym echoed with the ring of steel on steel as your peers sparred. How many rounds had it been? Each time you lasted barely a minute before he outdid you, the sharp edges of his blade finding their mark at your shoulder, your thigh, and once, your collar bone. Despite your budding fatigue, you found yourself mesmerised by him. He wielded the ancient sword with harmony and fluidity, so fluent was he in its unwritten language, so familiar with its little quirks. Like an old lover, you thought madly, as you struggled to steady the vibrations of the blade with each parry and clash.
His weapon whistled again; this time the flat of his blade struck your hand, and you dropped your own sword. He stepped back to patiently wait for you to ready yourself again.
His fitness was phenomenal - you were breathing hard, your arms burning, and he barely seemed to have slowed. The smirk he’d given you earlier was once again pasted across his beautiful, pretentious face. Patient, but smug.
“Where have you been, Loki?” you asked as you retrieved your weapon, buying time to catch your breath. Dammit, your knuckles stung; you hoped it wasn’t obvious.
“Here and there,” he replied easily. No denial this time. “Are you ready?”
“I was worried about you.”
“If you mean that you feared for my safety, I am most able to defend myself.”
“That’s not what I meant.” For a second you thought you saw a flicker of vulnerability return to his features. If you did, it was quickly swallowed by his traditional haughty confidence. “I just… Well, as long as you’re OK.” Ready, you lifted your blade - and a thought occurred to you.
The timing had to be perfect; if he hadn’t been looking directly at your mouth, he might have missed it. Provocatively raking your eyes down over his long body, you bit your lower lip, and gave a tiny, breathy moan.
It was horribly overdone, but it worked. Loki hesitated for a fraction of a second, his eyes widening, and you took advantage of his momentary distraction to slip below his guard; the steel of your sword captured his, and you pushed - hard. There was the harsh sing of metal-on-metal as you slid down the blade, checking his weapon against his chest. His move was forfeit. He stepped backwards off the edge of the mat, losing his balance - and you pinned him against the wall.
You pressed your body into his, your mediocre blade below his chin, and carefully assessed his face. Was he irritated by your trick? If anything, he seemed… amused.
“That,” he said lightly, looking down at you over his long, regal nose, “was an interesting tactic.”
“You know what they say,” you muttered, still breathing hard. “If you can’t beat them…”
“I dare say it would not be widely effective,” he added.
“More than you think, perhaps.”
And then you noticed it: the slight flush to his cheeks, which could be excused by the workout. The twitch of a muscle at the corner of his jaw. The feel of his perfect cock swelling slowly under his training shorts.
Not amused… Aroused.
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Loki knew the moment you’d realised his state of mind. Or rather, state of body.
You’d opened your mouth in mock astonishment, your eyes bright with barely contained glee.
“Are you enjoying this?” you had asked, quietly delighted. The crossed swords had still been pressed unrelentingly against his chest, his blade locked tight under yours. It made his pulse quicken pleasantly.
Loki had given a small, wordless huff, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. In truth, he’d found it highly enjoyable; your control, your audacity, your erotically mischievous little decoy. His own powerlessness. But how could he admit that to you?
The sounds of water splashing off bathroom tile brought him back to the present. Gingerly, he stepped under the heavy jets; steam enveloped him. Lathered soap formed clouds of bubbles that washed away the training-hall grime, the sticky salt that clung to his skin like a fragrance. The precious soreness that assured him that he had worked for this. That he had earned it.
How could he admit that to you? The question turned over in his mind like the soap in his hands, slippery and fraught. It should be simple, really; the evidence was laid bare before him, stripped of illusion and ego in the privacy of his mind. The chamber. The Genuflexa. The young man, beautifully bound. The way your body had risen in his mind's eye to bring him undone, not just then but so many times since…
He let the water run through his long hair, raking his fingernails to help it penetrate all the way to his scalp. He liked the way their sharpness felt on the sensitive skin.
… And in counterpoint, the betrayals of his youth. The early memories of hurt and rejection that had sown the seeds of distrust. The expectations of masculinity and dominance, and the familiarity of the long-worn mask.
Loki lifted his chin to shake the heavy, saturated mass of slick curls out behind him, squeezing the last of the water from it. He thought of you; of how much he would like to tend to your sore muscles, to soothe the bruises you would surely have sustained in combat today. To gently run his fingertips over your scalp, and hear you sigh with contentment.
There was only one sensible question, he decided as he stepped from the lustrous shower recess. Steam was clearing to reveal his glistening face in the bathroom mirror. Did he trust you?
He dried his hands, and picked up his cell phone.
Alright, Agent. Prove me wrong.
Almost immediately, he received your reply. The tone of it sent a little shiver down Loki’s spine.
9pm, my apartment. Be punctual.
Before he could interrogate his feelings about it, his phone gave another gentle ping.
Wear your cape.
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gallusrostromegalus · 4 months
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Funky Muguruma Kensei AEIWAM headcanons? Spare serotonins with the blorbos? /j Also what's AEIWAM Mashiro like? She's one of the only characters I genuinely get annoyed by in the canon oof
:)
So the friendship between Kaname and Mashiro is one of my favorite things in the fic so far. Have a spoilerific Scene (Part 1 of ?)
Crickets and Grasshoppers
Scene One of ??? Approximately 7K words Fluff that goes South and won't get (sort of ) better until part 2, warnings for body horror, referenced torture and Emotionally Devastating Betrayal
:)
It was Tuesday November 5th, 1901, Scheduling Day in the Ninth Division and Mashiro was standing in front of the vending machine just down the street from the Ninth, choosing her armaments for the coming battle. 
In other divisions, the actual drawing up of rosters was the job of lower-seated officers and the specific parts of the Division they were responsible for.  Tousen’s friend Komamura has told her once that the 7th Division’s schedule was so predictable, they only looked at the roster once a year when people retired or were hired. A fascinating concept to Mashiro, who listened to Komamura’s tales of the 7th with the rapt fascination of an anthropologist privileged to hear the folklore of distant and largely unknown people. 
The Ninth was… complicated for the sake of simplicity.  Information did not move the same way people did, and while the seventh could pass an inbound soul from the Intake Team to Queue Management to the Registry Office, passing an information project from one subdivision to another was a great way to lose said project. So instead of projects moving from subdivision to subdivision as they reached different stages, subdivisions went from stage to stage, following projects. 
This meant scheduling had to be done every month, but it beat the hell out of a major archive loss or communications failure. 
And it meant that Snackage was in order. 
Mashiro surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder to make sure Captain Muguruma was still overseeing drills in the courtyard, then selected 37 cookies, chips, snack cakes, bottles of pop and juice and other goodies from the machine and paid out of the Division Purse.  
Kensei, bless him, was a deeply honorable man who was so reliable you could set a watch by him and would probably cross actual Hell to help a friend, but he did not understand scheduling, much less the kind of caloric requirements it held. 
-- “You’re just sitting there!  What do you need all that for?” He’d asked her once.
“The brain’s the most expensive organ to run in terms of calories.” She’d explained, rolling her eyes and opening a bag of Barbecue-flavored corn chips. “-I know your brain is a plodding cart horse, but you can’t do scheduling.  You need my thoroughbred racehorse brain, and it needs snacks!”
He’d given up with a disgusted groan of defeat, which was good, because the other reason she needed the snacks would have actually made him snap.  -- Mashiro shoved the snacks into her backpack, checked that Kensei was still distracted by drills, darted back across the street where he might spot her, ran around the back of the division, and jumped up to the third-floor window that had been left open for her. 
“The level of subterfuge this perfectly normal administrative process requires…” Fifth-seat Kaname Tousen groaned from where he was lying on the floor, partially under his traditional low desk. 
“-Is half the fun, you dork!” Mashiro giggled, closing the window after her as she climbed in. “All the autumn stuff is in the shops and vending machines now, and I made sure to get every persimmon-flavored thing they had just for you!” She grinned down at her chosen assistant for scheduling. 
The other purpose for the snacks was Bribery. 
Kaname Tousen was, by Mashiro’s estimation, definitely the smartest person in the Ninth Division, and possibly in the entire Soul Society.  If the world was a fair place, he’d be lieutenant and she’d be fifth seat, but the world wasn’t a fair place and in the week between Graduation with every honor Shin’o academy had and starting as the 9th Division’s 20th seat, Kaname had been struck down with some sort of horrible spinal infection that damn near killed him, made him miss his entire first month and a half of work, and left him with occasional bouts of crippling pain, like today, when he’d decided to risk worsening Kensei’s already low opinion of him by doing his work lying flat on his back on a hot pad. 
Kaname’s services as a Brainiac were much in demand and his availability highly limited, so Mashiro guaranteed her place on his schedule with confection-based compensation.
“I mean, Kensei’s a mean old sack and that’s not great for the division too, but the spy shenanigans and scheduling snacktime really is like, The Highlight Of The Month sometimes.” Mashiro shrugged, flopping down on the floor beside him and  dumping the snacks out between them. 
“Captain Muguruma’s sense of discipline is intense but very necess- ow. Yeah, that’s not happening.” Kaname sighed, laying back down from trying to sit up. “-He’s a good man.  Difficult, sometimes, but a good man.”
“You’re way too nice for your own good. Here’s the Persimmon castella cakes.” Mashiro grunted, handing Kaname the small package and the payroll notes to read. 
Kaname groped across his desk for a clipboard, attached the payroll notes to it, propped them up on his stomach so they were balanced on the edge of his desk, and laid all the way back down, face pointed at the ceiling rather than the notes.  Mashiro opened up a packet of Amakara rice crackers, watching him with interest as Kaname took off his goggles. 
The goggles were what convinced Mashiro he was the smartest man in the Soul Society.  Kaname had been born totally blind, but he had figured out how to mount a pair of tiny cameras in the frame of a pair of safety goggles, which were connected to… he’d explained that the little bricks behind the opaque white lenses of his goggles contained something like an obscenely long and complicated Kido spell that spotted readable characters, ‘read’ them, and turned the resulting text into words that played out of the tiny “Microphonogram Speech Players or ‘speakers’ “ hidden in the legs of the goggles.  So he could read pretty much anything printed with enough contrast (and decent enough handwriting, Captain Urahara) because his goggles would read it aloud for him.  They were much slower than most people read, and sometimes he had to stop work to “charge” the spell that made them work, but they worked a damn treat, and had the added advantage that Kaname himself did not need to be looking at the thing he was trying to read, only the goggles.
So now he unwound the coil of wire that connected the Kido brick to the microphonogram, placed the ‘speaker’ back in his ear, and set the glasses on his chest so he could read the notes while keeping his back and neck pressed to the hotpad. 
True Genius, that.
“I love how the cameras wiggle.” Mashiro grinned, watching the two lenses shift and dilate as they focused on the notes. “They move the same way cicadas and grasshoppers shift their eyes independently to focus. It’s so clever to have them operate like that.”
“Hm.  That was Kakiyo’s design, not mine.” Kaname smiled.  Kakiyo was his adopted and now-deceased sister.  “She was always more of an entomologist than me.”
“Weird that you ended up with Suzumushi the cricket for a Zanpaktou then.” Mashiro pondered.  She liked Suzumushi- that sword, and her own Musabori Kuu Batta (Devouring Locust) were two of less than One Hundred insect-type Zanpaktou in the court guard, and fewer still that weren’t butterflies. She couldn’t really see Suzumushi- no shinigami could perceive another’s Zanpaktou Spirit- but she could hear Batta’s half of the conversation the two would chirp to each other sometimes.
Kaname paused from opening the persimmon cake packaging with his teeth. “...Yes. Bizarre.” he said, with a rueful finality that Mashiro took as her cue to change the subject.
“Right. Where are we on the Agricultural Practices census?” She sighed, pulling the active projects list and next month’s calendar out in front of her. 
“Maegawa-san has requested travel permissions to-” Kaname replied, flipping through the pages, the goggles faintly reading off names as he tracked them with his fingertip. “Ah, ‘pull the damn report out through the East 36th Daimyo’s nose if I have to’, which I think we can call a requisitions expense rather than reconnaissance. Unless you think Lieutenant Fon would enjoy the catharsis as well.”
“She WOULD, actually, that girl is wound tighter than my grandpa’s pocketwatch.”  Mashiro nodded, placing the card for “3rd Seat Maegawa” in the “Out Of Office” Pile. 
And so it went for a pleasant hour, eating snacks and solving the five-dimensional time, space and payroll puzzle of scheduling, with Kaname helping her keep track of the process and who was not supposed to be doing overtime or couldn’t be trusted to work with someone else or on maternity leave or whatever. 
“Alright, I think that’s nearly everyone sorted…” Mashiro muttered, going down the list of all 200 division members to make sure they’d made it onto the roster. “Oh wait, we didn’t put you down!” She giggled. 
“I believe my schedule should be identical to last months while we are still doing data entry into the archives, but I do have a request- May I have this coming Friday off?” he asked. “I have an engagement.”
“Who’s getting engaged?” Mashiro teased, erasing him from the roster that day.
Kaname tilted his head a bit, pointing his ear at her with a conspiratorial smirk. “...Can you keep a secret?”
Mashiro blinked at him in surprise, then gasped with delight and leaned in  “Cross my heart and hope to die!” She whispered back, giggling. 
Kaname regarded her for a moment, teasing. “Love- Captain Aikawa has finally worked up the nerve to propose to Lieutenant Yadomaru.”
Mashiro made a noise like an asthmatic teakettle as she tried to not shriek with delight and deafen Kaname as well, rolling onto her back and kicking her legs in the air with excitement.
“-He wants it to be a surprise though, and Lisa is always going through his bag for his water bottle or whatever at kendo practice and she will notice if his schedule changes, so I need to duck out during lunch today and pick up the ring for him to propose with on Friday.” Kaname elaborated.
“A conspiracy!” Mashiro balled her fists with excitement. “When? Where? Can I come?”
“You got an invitation to Captain Kyoraku’s next moon-viewing party, right?”  Kaname asked and she nodded.  “It’s then.”
“EEEK!” Mashiro giggled with delight. 
“What’re you two giggling about?” Kensei grunted from the doorway, still sweaty from training. 
“It’s a SECRET!” Mashiro glared imperiously, sweeping the snack wrappers out of sight off the desk as Kaname sat up with a small grunt of pain and bowed his head in salute.
“Whatever.” Kensei rolled his eyes. “Tousen. Read your report on the dodgy census statistics and possible disappearances in West 66 and I think you’re right.  Something stinks on ice out there.”
Kaname gasped sharply with relief and bowed his head in gratitude. “Thank you, Sir.”
“I gotta attend a captain’s meeting this afternoon because Urahara has some harebrained new project to show and tell-” Kensei continued, glaring at his battered fingertips where he’d caught a bokto the wrong way during training. “-Saw that Maegawa is gonna be in East 36 and Fukuda’s on maternity leave, so I’m sending every seated officer from you to 15th seat Shizawa out there to investigate and deal with it.  You all need to be at the Kido Corps for teleportation at three. Mashiro, don’t burn the place down.”
“OH COME ON!” Mashiro shouted with disappointment. 
“HEY! No backtalk!  I know you wanna go but someone’s gotta hold the fort-” Kensei glared down at her. 
“It’s not me!  Kaname has to- I mean-” She sputtered, abruptly remembering his request for secrecy.
“It’s alright!” Kaname tried to smile but ended up grimacing at her as he got up. “I’ll just go get it now and it’ll be in my pocket when I get back!” 
Mashiro glared at him for a moment, but sat back down. “Okay. I guess.” She pouted. 
“Get what?” Asked Kensei. 
“A surprise for Captain Kyoraku’s moon-veiwing party!” Kaname grinned at him as he collected his belongings into his satchel by touch.
Kensei pondered that for a long moment, glaring at Kaname. “...How’d you score an invite?”
“Captain Aikawa invited me along.” Kaname explained over Mashiro’s offended scoff. “We were roommates when we were at the academy and he has very kindly kept inviting me along to things despite my not really being able to keep up with him anymore.” 
Kensei regarded him a moment longer. “Huh.” he eventually decided. “Well, see you when you get back from the investigation.” He waved, dismissing Tousen.
“Thank you Sir.  Lieutenant Kuna.” Kaname bowed before jogging off. 
“See you later Kaname-kun!” Mashiro called after him.
“-Even if he won’t technically see yo- OW!” Kensei yelped as Mashiro clipped him sharply under the ear. 
“Why are you so MEAN to him!?” Mashiro glared up at her captain as he rubbed his jaw. 
“I’m not mean! I’m just- it’s just office banter!” Kensei growled back. “I can just not like a guy and still be colleagues with him, okay?”
“No, apparently you can’t!” Mashiro “You’ve been really hard on him and getting on his case and teasing him since day one!”
“-More like day thirty-two, he missed the first six weeks of his appointment.” Kensei grumbled.
“That was literally FIFTY years ago and he was in the HOSPITAL. BECAUSE HE NEARLY DIED!”  She bellowed, probably loud enough for Kaname to hear in the street but it didn’t matter. “Yeah, it sucked, but it wasn’t his fault! I don’t get why you were mad at him back then, and I really don’t get why you’re still mad about it NOW!”
“I’M NOT MAD ABOUT THAT, I JUST-” Kensei bellowed back but then stopped, hand over his mouth. “...He keeps secrets.”
Mashiro stared at him blankly for a moment, face slowly collapsing from bewilderment into disgust. “OH. MY GOD. You’re the one always going on about operational security!  He’s just careful- all the details are in his summarial reports, if you ever read them…”
“I do!” Kensei barked. “And they’re-  I mean, All the information he’s required to fill out is there, and then some.” He sputtered, deflating. 
Mashiro leaned in close, eyebrow cocked at him. 
“...But I keep getting this feeling it’s not the whole picture.” Kensei muttered. 
“Ugh!” Mashiro shouted, throwing her hands up and turning away. “So you don’t like him because you have bad reading comprehension?”
“Shut up! I don’t- there’s just something off about that guy! He’s always taking weird days off-” Kensei started, ticking off a list on his fingers. 
“You mean the sick days from his spinal infection?” Mashiro glared, arms folded across her chest.
Kensei continued to count his grievances “-and taking secret calls in weird corners-!”
“You mean privately scheduling his medical treatment? For his spinal infection?” Mashiro continued to glare.
“-And getting him to go to the fifth or third division is like pulling teeth! What the hell is up with that?” Kensei demanded.
“You mean the divisions that have A) Lieutenant Iba, the woman who has a weird horoscope-based personal grudge against him-” Mashiro asked, mimicking Kensei’s earlier counting, “-and B) Lieutenant Aizen, who also keeps forgetting he has a spinal injury and slaps Kaname across the shoulders every time they meet?  Yeah, I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid two of the most annoying people in the whole court guard!”
“Whatever.” Kensei waved her off. “I’m still right. There’s something off with him. Now get that roster updated and posted!”
“Yes, sir.” Mashiro groaned, rolling her eyes at him and stomping back to Kaname’s office for the Roster.
***
Kaname hadn’t felt this light in years. 
Oh god.
Oh, GOD!
Please, please, please please let this be happening?
He sprinted down the road, back towards the apartment that he and Sajin shared, the small box with Love’s ring in his chest pocket.  He allowed himself an ounce of elation- After all, I am just a young man who has picked up the engagement ring of one of his best friends!  It is exactly what anyone would expect to see-
That was the tricky part of The Curse. 
He couldn’t talk about it, like many curses, but it had the added complication that anyone who looked at him- or listened to him, or put their hands on him, or- 
Well, they’d only find what they expected to find. 
Certainly not a curse. 
But curses cut both ways- The broader and less specific a command for someone bearing a curse was, the harder it was to enforce, and it was harder to come up with a command broader and more open to interpretation than “Help Me Kill God”. So as long as Kaname could argue to the curse that an action did “help” some aspect of Aizen’s plans, he could be inefficient, neglect to mention something important, do an assigned task sloppily, fail to cover his tracks and so on-  Sometimes Other times, the curse would take effect and cripple him until he relented and obeyed Aizen’s command again. Or at least, managed to convince Aizen he was doing what Aizen wanted. 
Aizen hadn’t quite realized it, but he was also subject to his own illusions, and there was a gap- a mirror image, if Kaname understood mirrors correctly- so long as he appeared as Aizen expected, Aizen wouldn’t notice him sabotaging Aizen’s machinations. So for the last three years, Kaname had done his best to appear tired and overworked and failing from exhaustion rather than malice, or like he was starting to agree with Aizen, which is exactly what the narcissist expected after fifty years of mental, physical and spiritual torture. 
It was finally  paying off. 
He’d managed to make the kidnappings Aizen and Gin had been conducting on the villagers of West 56 appear by conducting a census that showed the discrepancy of expected versus actual population.  -And made sure the increased hollow activity in the area from Aizen’s experiments showed up in the 10th Division’s monitoring statistics. - And the weird waves of reiatsu visible on the 12th’s monitoring equipment- not what people expected to see, but by keeping all the evidence noticed by unrelated parties, he kept it out of the scope of Aizen’s Illusions. 
Kyoga Suigetsu took a lot of energy to operate, and Tousen was pretty sure Aizen could only passively fool about 150 at a time- he chose mostly his own division and people he saw daily, like his neighbors and cross-division colleagues, and could only actively alter the reality of maybe 20 people at once- the other captains and a few key would-be witnesses.   So a rural census-taker, and two members at the bottom ranks of other divisions weren’t actively subject to the illusion. 
He had to do it on faith, that someone would notice-
Kaname felt like he’d been holding his breath for weeks now, doing his best to tell Aizen and the constantly-itching nails in his spine that this was a Perfectly Normal Database Cross-referencing project- very boring, but it will be missed if it’s not done, Lord Aizen- and nothing to draw attention to the horrible Laboratory…
…By some miracle, Mugurama had read the report, understood and believed it- Kensei had a naturally suspicious mind, so Kaname made sure the report was full of “It's entirely possible this is all a weird coincidence!” to make him suspicious.  The curse only showed people what they expected to see, and for once, Kensei’s natural pessimistic expectations allowed him to see the truth. 
24 hours.  That’s all I have left.
The only people in the Ninth Aizen had under his Active Influence were Kensei and Mashiro, so he wouldn’t be able to hide the nature of the laboratory from the investigation team without dropping the Active Illusion on someone else and risk discovery- and so long as Aizen didn’t find out about the expedition, he wouldn’t know to make that shift in time.
24 hours. I only need to keep Aizen distracted for 24 hours. 
In Aizen’s personal quarters, The Distraction Apparatus waited.
Aizen was mistaken to force Kaname to do his lab work for him- Kaname understood it better than him now, and had pulled aside a little trick to confuse him. The Hogyoku bonded with its user, almost like a zanpaktou, and communicated with them- it purred when Aizen fed it, and whined when it was hungry.  Aizen knew about Suzumushi’s Bankai- he’d insisted Kaname develop it under his supervision, so he would know of all Kaname’s abilities.  But he only knew it from the inside, and hadn’t realized that not only was anyone inside blind, deaf and without any form of sensory input, neither could anyone on the outside sense anyone within. It was worth it to break Suzumushi like that. It was actually her idea, to break the guard of his Zanpaktou and separate the ring from it.  That’s where the Bankai was stored, and with a hell of a lot of practice, he’d learned to cast it remotely.
It had been months before he had an opportunity-  Kaname would never forgive what had been done to that poor angel, but during one of the The Sessions where Aizen was using the Hogyoku to change the angel, Kaname was able to get ahold of the little Illusion box Aizen kept the infernal device in, Secure Suzumushi’s ring to the floor, disguise the tampering with a false floor, and return the box to it’s place without Aizen’s notice. The Ring had been waiting there for months.
24 hours, and the secret will be out. 
He’d memorized Aizen’s schedule- in 22 minutes Aizen would be entering the reiatsu-locked laboratory of the 12th with his own Captain Shinji for Kisuke’s Demonstration, and would not be able to feel Kaname activate his Bankai. When he came back out, it would seem like the Hogyoku had vanished. And for all Aizen would be able to tell, it had- he wouldn’t be able to perceive the Hogyoku or it’s illusion box until Kaname released his Bankai. 
So for now, Kaname acted exactly like Aizen would expect him to act- a little tired, a lot in pain, but elated that two of his best friends were getting engaged, and that he’d be able to help. That was a natural source of excitement, and definitely not any kind of counter conspiracy-
Kaname jogged down the stairs to the apartment, ring box in his pocket, heart hammering, hands shaking a bit as he took out the keys to unlock his door, grabbed the knob that was not there and was suddenly off balance and falling- Into something soft and steady that carefully picked him up like a child’s doll and set him back on his feet, gently taking his hands.
“Are you alright?” Sajin asked, soft, deep voice tinged with concern. “My apologies, I was just trying to do some house cleaning while the weather is mild and had the door open for ventilation.”
“Y- yeah! I’m. I’m alright. Just- distracted. I’ve had some good news!”  He grinned up at his friend. 
“Oh?” Sajin asked, tugging lightly at Kaname’s fingertips to indicate he should step inside.  “Mind your way, I have all the chairs out in the living room so I can sweep.”
They had been living in this garden-level apartment for the forty years since Sajin had followed Kaname into the court guard, and under the same roof at the Akaido City Library for many years before that, and their domestic arrangements settled into a comfortable and comforting routine- Kaname was incapable of seeing grime, so Sajin did the housekeeping, and Sajin would eat raw, expired meat if left unattended, so Kaname did the cooking and shopping. 
Kaname followed his lead, hand reflexively on Sajin’s instinctively proffered arm to keep balance while he unbuckled and took off his boots- the gestures of proximal intimacy had calcified into a secret language between them.
“Thanks-” Kaname stood up and stepped in with a guiding hand on the wall. He could normally navigate the apartment by memory alone. “-I’m only here for a few minutes, I’ve also got a deployment I need to pack for.”
“Deployment?” Sajin asked, following after him, voice slightly muffled from the cloth mask he wore over his face- at least when the door was open.  Being mostly underground had it’s advantages- Kaname didn’t need much light and Sajin possessed almost superhuman darkvision, and the small, high windows that were obscured by bushes gave them enough Privacy that Sajin could relax and keep his face bare at home. 
24 hours.  
Maybe. Maybe when it all came out, and the dust settled--Assuming they don’t hang me alongside Aizen, which was a big If--But once it was all said and done and I still draw breath- Maybe I will have the courage to ask Sajin what it is he feels he needs to hide.Surely, he is far too gentle to be half so monstrous as he claims.
“Kaname?”  Sajin prompted, and Kaname realized he’d been silent for nearly a minute. “S-sorry. I just. Captain Muguruma finally read my report on West 66 and ordered and immediate investigation, so I have to be at the Kido corps by three-” “Kaname.” “Ah, No don’t worry,  I’ll get dinner prepared so you only have to put it under the broiler, and There’s um-” “Kaname.” 
“-I’ll be back by Friday for Love and Lisa’s- Right- Here, I need you to-”  He sputtered, dozens of ideas baying for his attention at once, patting his chest for the ring box- “Kaname!” Sajin snapped, and his giant hands were on Kaname’s shoulders again, turning him around in place to face his friend, gloved hand suddenly under his chin, holding his face up for Sajin to glare at. “...When was the last time you slept?”
“I’m fine!” Kaname tried to jerk back, laughing defensively. 
“You’ve gone to bed after me and gotten up before me, if you went to bed at all for at least a week, and I’m doing maximum overtime. You don't have bags so much as matched luggage under your eyes and can’t finish a sentence coherently.  You’re not touching anything in the kitchen.” Sajin rattled off, giving Kaname’s chin a light shake. “...it’s not yet eleven, and the Kido Corps is less than ten minutes from here. I’ll see to your packing. Lie down. Please.”  
Kaname sighed, shoulders slumping. “Sajin, I- I need to-”
“You need. To sleep.” Sajin rumbled, no room in his voice for argument.
Kaname panted for a moment, realizing that if Sajin wasn’t holding him in place he’d be swaying with exhaustion. 
24 hours.
…I can spend one or two of them resting. 
If I don’t manage to prove my innocence, I’ll want to have at least this to think about on the gallows.
“...Stay with me until I fall asleep?” Kaname asked, voice soft. “It’s just. It’s been a lot.” “Of course.” Sajin hummed, rubbing his cheek. “I also need to, ah- use facilities, first.” he grimaced, and Sajin let him go. 
“I’m coming in after you if I think you’ve passed out on the floor.” Sajin threatened. 
“That happened ONE TIME-!” Kaname protested, following the wall to the bathroom.
Once inside, he checked the time again. 
If the meeting had stuck to schedule, they should be inside the 12th’s labs now.  
Kaname sent Aizen a test message to his Soul Pager. 
> Mandatory Status Report: Muguruma handed me a sudden assignment. Won’t be back until Friday.
If he was outside the Reiatsu-locked lab, that missive would have Aizen furiously calling him in under five minutes. He timed it, relieving himself and washing his hands as he waited-
Nothing.
“Here goes…” he muttered, hoping the sound of the bathroom fan and the running water would cover his voice. He focused, feeling the silver ring start to rotate in his mind, the way it multiplied and stretched, the rings dancing a circle on that which needed to be concealed-
“-Bankai.” He whispered, skin tingling- 
-And suddenly he was keenly aware of the hogyoku and it’s illusion box, as though he were holding it, both wholly contained and hidden by his Bankai.  
It is done The distraction is set. In a few hours, all will be revealed to the rest of the court guard. There. All I need  to do now was follow the assignment like I was told and investigate the- the-
-He suddenly he felt the Bankai’s draw on his power and he collapsed over the sink, retching and knees shaking with how weak he felt. The skin on the back of his neck prickled and almost tasted like vinegar in the back of his mind,  high-pitched ringing between his ears. 
The nails sizzled ominously but there was no power behind it- It’s alright- I can- I can deal with this. Just breathe, come on dumbass, you just need to keep breathing for another 24 hours.
“Kaname? Sajin called.
“Nothing broke!” Kaname called back, forcing himself to his feet and stumbling back against the wall.  He tested the Bankai again- It holds. Very convenient of you Suzumushi, that I only need to cast and feed it, rather than concentrate…
Suzumushi chriped distractedly, her focus on maintaining the Bankai. With her concentration, the illusion would hold even as he slept. Cold water on his face and neck, trying to make himself vaguely presentable and the room stop spinning as he stumbled out- oh, Sajin is right here, how thoughtful of him…
“It’s alright, just follow me…” Sajin soothed, guiding him along to the Thick Futon and large collection of pillows they used as a couch- nothing with legs would bear Sajin’s weight for long. He allowed Sajin to pull him down, settling beside Kaname until he was wedged between Sajin’s giant body and the collection of cushions, head on his friend’s chest, listening to his heartbeat- A little slower than mine, and steady- always so steady- so- 
Kaname was asleep before he completed the thought. 
---
Scene two: 23 hours later
“It’s just up this way Mister Shinigami!”  The boy said, his hot little hand pulling Kaname along. 
They’d gotten to West 66 and Kaname had realized he’d been wrong to worry about looking like he already knew the way to the Laboratory- Iruka Village had taken some fairly extreme defensive measures against the kidnappings since the last time he’d been forced out here- Barricades errected, bridges taken out, and even the road torn up and replanted to hide the route to the village. Kaname was entirely turned around before they even set foot in the Village and started asking the peasants if there was anything unusual nearby.
Fortunately for the expediency of the investigation, one Young Shuuhei Hisagi was extremely eager to help, giving them a detailed accounting of the strange activities at the old foundry, where someone had turned one of the kiln’s back on and there was “An ‘lectric” generator and it smelled a lot like someone was cooking rancid pork but he’d never seen anybody there, even when he went into the basement because he wasn’t ascared of it, weird that there’s a basement, nobody makes basements here as it’s a swamp-
Kaname felt his skin go cold when he realized the boy had somehow gotten inside and made notes and even poked some of the machinery, but given he hadn’t tried to actually chew Kaname’s arm off as he lead the Ninth Division Investigation team to the Lab, he was probably uncontaminated…
“There’s a hill an’ it’s on the other side- mind the branch.” Young Shuuhei was one of the great tragedies of the poor parts of the Rukongai- whip-smart and observant and thoughtful, but illiterate from the lack of teachers, and likely destined for an early grave if the statistical average lifespan out here held true.  His Reiryoku shimmered at the edges- with a little training and a better diet he might even make for a good Shinigami. 
Maybe if I live through this I can get him a scholarship.  Kaname mused, trying to think about literally anything but the nauseating familiarity of the smell creeping over the hill. 
“Mr. Hisagi?” he asked in the polite voice he’d cultivated as the Head Librarian to indicate to children he was taking them very seriously.
The Boy snapped to attention. “Sir?”
“Thank you for leading us here, but I absolutely cannot allow you any closer. It’s extremely dangerous here-”  he started to explain.
“I been in before! An’ the door’s trickylike you gotta pull the handle up and in and rattle it to get in and then prop somethin’ in the gap or it locks back behind you-”  Shuuhei explained, gesturing  like Kaname could see him demonstrating. 
“-And you were lucky to get out in one piece! I also need you to do a very important job.”  Kaname sighed, familiar with this kind of kid- slightly too bright and kind-hearted for his own good, but reliable at a task- “-I can hear that some of your friends have followed us from the village.  They’re about a quarter mile behind us-”
“Dangit Suichi-!” Shuuhei muttered under his breath. “-Yeah that’s probably my little brother and his friends. You want me to go chase him back home?”
“Precisely. Also, tell everyone to get indoors and stay put until they get an all-clear.  Just in case something goes wrong, I need everyone to stay safe until re-enforcements arrive.  So go get everyone back home and inside, alright?” “Yessir!” Shuuhei snapped a salute and Kaname heard some of the other Shinigami giggle behind him.
“I’m glad I can rely on you.” He nodded, and shooed Shuuhei down the road. The boy took off, hollering for his brother.
“I didn’t know you were so good with kids.” Laughed Sixth Seat Todo Izaemon. “Cute little thing too-”
“Being in charge of the West 51 Children’s Intensive Literacy School teaches you how to get along with them.”  He shrugged. “Alright, I can’t sense anything, but that doesn’t mean danger is not present.  Even numbered seats- go west and approach from the north. Odd numbers, we go east and approach from the south.”
“Sir!” Izaemon nodded, the next ranked officer. 
Kaname approached the building at a crouch, straining to hear- the brief nap Sajin had insisted on and six-pack of illicitly acquired 4th Division “Stamina Supplements” were doing what they could for him, but everything  hurt and Suzumushi’s Bankai was even more draining than he’d anticipated and he could barely sense more than a few feet around him. But he found the door- Shuuhei was right, the Handle was starting to go out of alignment- Up and in, right? Yeah- and when nothing behind it exploded, he cautiously stepped in. 
“Nobody ran out our side Sir!” Izaemon called and Kaname acknowledged him with a nod. 
“What the hell IS this place?” Seventh-seat Akishita asked, looking around the room.  This was the main floor of the laboratory, where the bulk of Aizen’s butchery was done- the whole place reeked of rotting flesh and sulfur- byproducts of the ‘Hollowfication Process’, and Kaname very nearly tripped on a groove gashed into the floor that hadn’t been there last time. 
“That looks like an office or control room up there-” Kaname said, pointing to the partial second story that took up the west third of the building that he REALLY hoped was still there. “-Akishita, with me. Lets see if there’s a schematic or something.”
“Sir!” She agreed. 
Oh good, it is still there. He thought, trying to not pant with pain- oh god, his eyes were burning and spine felt like it was actively dissolving he was so TIRED- He touched his watch, checking the time again. 
24 minutes.  Come on, just a little more-
He got to the door at the top of the stairs, Akishita behind him. 
“Are you alright Sir?”  She asked.
“What?” He jerked towards her. 
“You seem… really off today.”  She frowned. He could sense the shape of her this close, and the way her hand on the hilt of her Zanpaktou. Maybe just resting, maybe not. 
“I- I haven’t been sleeping well. Nightmares.” He gulped. That was actually entirely true.  Still the nails sizzled louder and he winced. “-I -I might need to put in for sick leave when we get back.”
“You really should.  You look awful.”  She nodded, hand off the hilt. 
Kaname nodded, and carefully opened the door into the control room. He felt Akishita turn, making sure nothing unexpected followed them as he stepped in- no traps, but a strange sort of coldness- not a draft, like a there was a block of ice in here-
The door slammed shut behind him. 
“Heya Goggles!” a boy’s voice drawled behind him. 
-Or a snake. 
Kaname froze, skin going cold as Akishita called for him from the other side of the door.
“Gin?” He asked, trying to keep his voice even.
“She’s right, you look like shit!” the boy laughed, activating a Kido seal that barricaded them in the room.  “-Boss sent me to talk to you because the CRAZIEST thing happened at the Captain’s meeting this morning!”
“-Please tell me Urahara’s latest crime against nature maimed him?  I could use some good news.”  Kaname groaned, complaining like usual, like nothing was wrong. There was more shouting from the main floor. He braced himself, feet under his shoulders, feeling Gin’s aura twist as he decided on an angle to strike from.
“Oh nah, Aizen-sama is wrapping things up and planting evidence over at the 12th right now, that’s why I’m here!” Gin laughed. “No, Your Boss Muguruma stopped everyone before Urahara’s demonstration to tell everyone about this report you submitted sayin’ several hundred people had vanished in West 66!  The other haoris were all horrified, I tell ya- Captain Hirako just about shit bricks!  Hollerin’ Aizen-sama’s ear off about it the whole way back to the fifth!”
Kaname gripped Suzumushi’s hilt.
“Oh now don’t be unfriendly!  I even got somethin’ for ya!” Gin laughed, and tossed something his way. Knowing better than to catch anything he threw, Kaname waited for it to hit the floor-
PING!
-Stomach turning over as he recognized the metallic chime of Suzumishi’s ring. 
“Neat trick by the way- Aizen must have spent ten hours turning over the fifth looking for the Hogyoku!!” Gin laughed. “-He didn’t actually find it neither, if it’s any consolation. But he has me, and I got…Abilities.” The boy leered as Kaname Swiped the ring from the ground- Suzumushi had been strangely quiet, and only now did he realize that at some point the sensory illusion of his Bankai had been reversed. Louder yelling from the main floor and the sound of Akishita preparing a Hakudo Kido to blow the door in on the other side. 
“-Shit.”  Kaname growled, reconnecting the ring to the hilt, Suzumushi whimpering in pain. 
“Madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory he is!” Gin chuckled, then surged forward. Even on a good day, Gin was nearly impossible to block and tonight-
“-Sorry goggles, but I got orders. Rikujokoru!” he hissed fingertips on kaname's sternum, and Kanane was slammed to the ground, six beams of Kido energy hitting his middle, paralyzing him completely. “Aizen-sama says if you can get outta this and get home you can live, but if I’m honest, I don’t really like your odds-” Gin explained, walking over to the control panel and flicking it on, the machines whirring to life and something rumbling beneath them. 
…Basement. Kaname realized. The boy said there was a basement- there wasn’t one last time?
There was a loud hissing as vents opened and gas streamed out of the floor into the main room, the sickening scent of rotting fruit comingled with melting plastic- The Hollowfication Compound? It’s a gas now!?
The shouting turned to screaming.
Oh God.
The screaming turned to roaring. 
Oh god, no. Please-
“- 'Specially not now.” Gin leered, patting him on the shoulder as he turned to leave. “Bye-Bye!  See you tomorrow-! …Maybe.”
Kaname could hear Gin leaving out the small fire window up at the roofline and he struggled, concentrating his reiatsu in his mouth to speak the counterspell- “-Horses of wind and gale, river of thread- 
-Akishita screamed in the hall, and there was the terrible wet sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones-
“- By Shadow and storm, unbind me!” He hissed, and the spell dissipated with the loud sound of shattering glass. Kaname scrambled to his feet, standing up in time to feel the gaze of ten newly-turned hollows fall upon him. His watch pulsed against his wrist, the timer for 24 hours Going off. 
“Well. I did say it would be over one way or another, didn’t I?” He grimaced, drawing Suzumushi as his former colleagues charged the plate glass that separated them. 
---
Part two approximately whenever I finish it :)
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sunlightmurdock · 9 months
Text
The Odyssey | 0.5 | Bradley Bradshaw x Reader (18+)
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You leave Como, your arrival in Verona is going to make the rest of the trip much more complicated.
Warnings: enemies to lovers, power imbalance, professor / student relationship, age gap ( 22 / 33), will be smut, virgin reader, swearing, infidelity, bickering and teasing, extremely suggestive, somewhat graphic towards end, minors dni. WC: 5.8k
You’re driving him fucking crazy. You’re spending far too much time together. The worst part? — You’re actually listening to him now. No, the worst part about that is that you’ll listen to what he tells you, but you’re still giving him all of that fucking attitude about it.
The two of you have spent so much time together, in fact, that Bradley didn’t get another chance to get Natasha alone. It’s for the best, because she actually smiles and waves him off when he leaves this time. Normally, they’ve argued by now. He never moved on and she’s not coming back — the usual kind of stuff.
Today, she had stretched up onto her tiptoes and draped her arms around his thick shoulders, exhaling calmly against the warm skin of his neck. “We’re looking forward to seeing you again next year, Bradley.”
And then, she had taken a step back and entwined her fingers with her husbands. And Bradley hadn’t said anything. He’d looked the woman that he spent so long loving in the eye, and said absolutely nothing. And now, he’s sitting on a packed minibus to a different location, with nothing but you on his mind.
In a professional sense of course.
It’s professional, because he’s sitting here and watching you read the play that he gave you. It’s from the Gracchan period, a time where social mobility was a big focus, but the play itself is by a very wealthy man — making fun of that. It’s about a girl from a poor family of farmers who falls in love with a very powerful man in their town.
Bradley’s eyes scan the page, then flicker up to your face. Your brows are furrowed in concentration, the small playbook open against one thigh and your dictionary wedged open between yours and Bradley’s. You’re just past the first act.
“I don’t… she…?” You shake your head in confusion, lifting it to look at Bradley. “She wants to belong to him? — Like work for him?”
Bradley’s lips twitch. He gives a small shake of his head, leaning closer and taking the dictionary. He flips around a little, his shoulder pressing into yours. Warm skin, the smell of his cologne, the rumble of the wheels against the uneven road.
Pasquale’s love for the 1970s American rock pours through the car in the form of an Eagles album. Bradley knows which one. You couldn’t have less of a clue.
“She’s saying she wants to give herself to him. Not belong to him.” Bradley explains patiently, turning the book towards you so that you can see the rough translation. It’s an easy mistake to make. That’s why he has you reading the play, so you’ll be able to use the context of the scene to eliminate the mistakes you’re making.
You look up at Bradley briefly. Belong to, give herself to — you’re stuck on how that could possibly not mean the same thing, until it hits you. Give herself to. Her body, she means.
“Oh. Thanks.” You set your headphones back on your ears and turn your attention back to the play. Bradley gives you a curt nod and adjusts his sunglasses. He spreads his thighs just a little. His knee presses gently against yours, not pushing, just sitting there.
You don’t mind it much. But, you’re beginning to notice a pattern. He touches you too much. When you’re studying together, his feet rest on your side of the table, constantly nudging your ankles. He’ll get too close when you’re walking by each other. He’ll sit with his legs spread so far that you’ve got no choice but to let his thigh smush into yours. But, you don’t mind that too much.
What you do mind, is that the man in this book was described briefly in the beginning as having brown curls. And now, now that the protagonist is throwing herself at him, there’s only one person that you’re picturing playing him.
It’s not your fault. He’s arrogant, he mocks her constantly and he’s got brown curls. Sounds like Bradley. Unfortunately, at this moment in time, Bradley’s character is all too willing to make the wrong choice. You swallow softly, brows knitted together as you try to convince yourself that you’ve got the translation wrong.
That his hands aren’t trailing up, under the fabric of his skirt. Your eyes dart from the page to Bradley’s hands resting against his thighs. You study the tanned flesh, the sun-bleached, blonde hair at his wrist. The protruding veins on the back of his hands. The gold class ring on his finger.
Bradley feels you shift in your seat, your thigh knocking into his. He glances down again and quickly back to the road. Those denim cutoffs fit your thighs perfectly. But, he can’t stop himself from taking a peek at your face. Plastered in discomfort.
Maybe he shouldn’t have given you a book with a sex scene in it, but this is mild compared to some of the content in his class. This book is the introduction to virtus versus pudictia. He figures the concept will be something you get your head around pretty quickly. Men doing whatever the fuck they want and women waiting patiently for a husband. Sounds exactly like what you’ve got going on already.
It’s only a three hour drive from Como to Verona, and Bradley’s got prep work for his research here to get done. He sits there and cards through the papers like he’s working, but really he spends most of the journey just observing.
Your reaction to his syllabus irritates him, but intrigues him in a way that he just can’t explain. He wants you to stop being so old-fashioned and wake up to the concept that sex is just a natural part of life — but also, he isn’t used to being around girls like you. He has made a point of surrounding himself with people who are nothing like you.
“Hey, Bradley,” You broach the topic tentatively, and he feels you shift slightly closer to Pasquale. He sighs. You dog-ear the page and close the book of the play. His eyes linger on that, before he finally looks up at you. You shift once more, taking a deep breath before speaking. “So, I spoke to my parents…”
You’re not going home. That wouldn’t make sense. You wouldn’t have just spent three hours giving yourself a headache by trying to read a raunchy Roman play if you were going home. Bradley’s brows draw together. He sets his papers down on his legs.
Pasquale winces as he looks between the two of you — it has been such a smooth drive so far.
“My dad has spoken to the Dean, he wants me to have my own room for the rest of the trip. He’s paying.” You explain calmly, pulling your knees up to your chest and resting your feet against the bench. Dog-earing pages and sitting like a kid, it just doesn’t fit into this image that Bradley has of you in his head.
He scoffs, lips twitching under that stupid moustache. “Of course he is.”
Between the two of you, neither one is really sure what his problem is. Maybe he wants you to be more independent, maybe he just likes the way your face looks when you scowl at him. Either way, he’s an expert at getting under your skin.
“Would you rather pay?” You bite back. Pasquale cringes, leaning away from the two of you. Bradley’s stare is something to behold. He really has perfected it. It’s mean, hardened and it’s superior all at once. And yet, it still doesn’t make him look any less handsome.
“I’d rather that you at least try to get along with the other kids. It would make your life easier.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“You know what I meant.” He knows that. It doesn’t make him feel any better about the way he feels about you. But, he knows that you’re more mature than he gives you credit for. Even if you punched him in the nuts last week.
“It’s really none of your business either way, I was just letting you know.”
It’s quiet between the two of you for a while. Almost long enough for the entirety of Hotel California to play through those dusty speakers.
“Does your dad know that you’re the one who started that fight?” Bradley really can’t help it. He’s a decade your senior, he should really be more mature about things. But, there’s just something about you that makes him want to put an end to your know-it-all attitude.
“I didn’t.” You cross one knee over the other, lifting your chin and straightening your spine.
“Pulled a good handful of her hair out, kid.” He scoffs, turning his attention back to his paperwork. His tone is so dismissive that even Pasquale wouldn’t judge you for hitting him in the balls again.
“I’m not a kid!” You turn sharply towards him, scowling furiously.
“Right. That’s why you’re here, huh? — Because you’re grown up enough to stand up to your dad?” He doesn’t even look up at you. That’s the worst part. Pasquale winces so hard that he has to fight with himself to keep his eyes open and on the road. He waits for the sound of an impact, a hit, a scream — anything.
Instead, you lean in so close that the soft curve of your breast nudges Bradley’s arm. “I’m grown up enough to know that pining over a married woman is pathetic.”
“Pining? — Kid, your own fucking fiancé couldn’t care if you lived or died. Don’t fucking lecture me about love.”
It falls quiet quickly. The voices in the back of the bus fade out, everyone turns their attention towards the two of you, arguing again. You look down slowly. Bradley follows your gaze to his fingers curled around your forearm, tight. He looks back up and this is all to familiar. Sitting with you facing him, blinking at him like you’re about to cry.
“Get out.” He breathes finally, releasing your arm and sitting back against the door. Your face twists, confused. Pasquale shoots a look at Bradley — they can’t just leave a kid on the side of the road, surely. “Sit in the back. Finish that fucking play, we’ve got more to cover.”
Pasquale pulls over to the side of the winding, countryside road and steps out of the van, pulling his door open. You’re silent as you get out and step into the back, finding all of the seats taken. Abigail pushes Luke’s backpack off of a seat and gestures for you to sit with a pitiful smile. You take the spot and secure your headphones over your ears again, reaching to the Walkman at your side and skipping the song.
You don’t say another word for the rest of the drive. Bradley doesn’t even look at you. He gives you your key first just so you’ll go. This place does have an elevator, it’s just dusty and creaky and awful. You’re on a different floor to everyone else too. That doesn’t help.
You sit down, settling against the foot of the bed with your suitcase abandoned in the corner. He doesn’t know anything about your relationship. He just has so many cruel things that he could say to you — she’s all that you’ve got on him, and clearly she is a sore subject. The thought bubbles in your chest to the point that it makes your face warm. It makes you entire body hot.
That stupid look on his face. Like he knows anything about you, or Malcolm, or the way that you love each other.
You wish you had longer to sit and stew. Instead, you’re interrupted by his stupid, big fist slamming against the other side of the door to your hotel room. You know it’s him because he’s the only one rude enough to do it. Unsurprisingly, when you tear the door open, he’s the one in the hall. Without saying anything, he brushes past you and walks inside, then lifts up the textbook in his hand.
“Let’s get this shit over with so that we don’t have to see each other later.”
You wouldn’t be foolish enough to think he was here to apologise, but still, his attitude makes you want to hit him with that textbook. But, he’s got a point, and you would rather not see him this evening either. So, you sit down on the bed and fold your arms over your chest.
He takes a look at you and frowns, then does a survey of the room. Wardrobe, your own bathroom, two nightstands, suitcase rack, floor lamp. No desk. Begrudgingly, he takes a seat beside you on the bed.
“Alright, the play that I gave you,” He exhales like that will make him let go of all of the anger he’s holding on to. It doesn’t. “It focuses heavily on the sexual roles of men and women in developing Rome. Did you pick up on that?”
You watch him open the textbook and flip through, searching for something in particular. It really would be quite easy to tear the book from his hands and get him with it. It’s a hefty book. Instead, you shrug your shoulders and leave him with a simple, “I guess.”
He looks up at you, bored. “You guess? — The male main character had a wife, a girlfriend and a mistress. The female main character devoted herself solely to this one man, that she knew was never going to be hers. What do you think that suggests about gender roles back then?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know, stop acting like you’re stupid.” He bites back. There’s a second where you stare at him and both of you take a moment to decide whether this is going to become another argument. You sigh softly.
“It’s patriarchal.”
“Right,” Bradley nods, “So there were these concepts back then called—“
The lesson goes on, and the more you engage, the less hostile he becomes. As much as you struggle when it comes to reading text excerpts and answering the questions he gives you on those, it gets to the point where you’ll crack a joke and he’ll laugh. That’s got to be diplomacy of some kind.
Both of you grow unintentionally closer, shifting periodically, leaning closer to see the text, or look at a picture. So, when you’re stumped by a question and you turn sharply away from him and throw yourself down, smushing your face into the pillow and growling in frustration, he finally realizes just how close the two of you have gotten.
You, laying on your front on this double bed, groaning into the pillow. Him, close enough that if he moved his leg, it would graze your hip. Bradley stares at you for a moment, then — while you’re not looking — lets his eyes trail. Along the feminine length of your legs, up over the curve of your waist in those cut-offs.
He lifts a hand and strokes it tenderly over the top of your hair, careful not to catch of tug at your lengths. He repeats the motion a few times. You feel him shift closer.
“It’s alright,” Bradley says quietly, stroking your hair back with a surprisingly gentle hand. “It’s a hard class. That was good. You’re doing well, I’m impressed.”
“Please,” You scoff without lifting your face from the pillow. You shift just a little and hook your arms under it, hugging it closer to your body. His eyes dart down to the way your back curves into your eyes, then slam shut. He should make an excuse to leave. “The only thing that could impress you would have happened a hundred years ago.”
“You know that this course focuses mainly on things that happened from —“ Bradley stops correcting you as you turn your head and glare at him. His eyes are trained on your face. He’s not looking at the way those denim cut-offs hug your figure, but fuck, he’s thinking about it. “Nevermind.”
He stares forwards. His hand is still resting in your hair. He should move it. He should leave. He hasn’t ever felt like this — countless students throwing themselves at him and he’s ignored every single one. He’s being ridiculous. It’s just the forbidden fruit effect. The proximity.
He should move his hand. He just can’t take his eyes off of your face. The swell of your lips. The slight scrunch of your nose. The narrowed look in your eyes. Bradley lifts his hand.
Then, he takes the length of your hair resting against your cheek and brushes it softly back, revealing the rest of your face to him. He shifts his hips, sitting just a fraction closer, making you easier to reach as you lay at his side.
“I mean it,” He says quietly. Your lips quirk softly, almost a smile. You’re about to tell him that he’s probably never spoken to you so kindly ever. Then, he speaks again. “You’re trying. I see that you’re trying. You’re doing a really good job.”
His thumb swipes softly over your temple, guiding your hair back further out of your face. The smile fades from your face. Then, you’re just blinking up at him. Your face is calm. His doesn’t reveal anything.
Slowly, his thumb swipes along the same trial. Over the skin covering your temple, just slightly into your hairline. It doesn’t even cross your mind to move. Maybe because you’re too thrown off by this sudden tenderness, maybe because you don’t actually hate this feeling.
The third time, he doesn’t follow the same route. His thumb swipes tenderly along the skin of your cheek, gently trailing in a small circle along the apple of your cheek. Further down. You stare up at him. Your heartbeat betrays you, thudding away in your chest as his thumb leaves your cheek and meets the corner of your mouth.
His eyes dart from his thumb to your eyes, studying your expression briefly, before he looks down again. You’re silent as he swipes his thumb delicately over the plump skin of your bottom lip.
“What did you mean earlier? — About Malcolm?” Your sudden question surprises the both of you, putting an abrupt end to the out of body feeling that was fogging Bradley’s mind. He blinks, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he pulls his hand away from your face.
“What?”
“You said he wouldn’t care if I lived or died. Why?” You push yourself up from your front, settling onto your knees instead. Bradley’s brows knit together. The only thing he can think to say is your name. He stumbles it out, baffled. “You don’t even know him. Why would you say something like that?”
He could turn this into another screaming match. Avoid answering until you’re yelling so hard that you’re blue in the face. But, he won’t. He deserves answers too — he’s tired of that night clouding his head, having no idea if you remember or not.
“Because he left you on the side of the road to freeze to death last December,” Bradley’s suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he’s sitting on your bed, alone in your room. Your face twists in confusion. He’s not done yet. “And the only reason you didn’t freeze to death was because I hauled your ass into my truck and drove you to your parents’ house.”
He’s expecting to have to elaborate further, but you know exactly which night he was talking about. You remember the three days after blacking out that Malcolm wouldn’t so much as answer the phone to you.
“No you didn’t.”
Bradley raises his eyebrows at you. He wishes there was something he could show you, some way he could prove to you how fucked up you had been when he had found you on that curb.
“You were wearing a blue dress with sparkly shit on it,” Bradley says, his voice too calm. You were. You woke up still in it the next morning. “Open-toed heels.”
What the fuck were you thinking? — In the middle of December?
“Your parents live at the end of a long street with a bunch of Oak trees on it,” They do. Last house on the left. You stare at him, unblinking. “Your room is on the second floor, at the back of the house. Your window overlooks the swimming pool. I called your fiancé from that stupid fucking pink phone on your nightstand eight times before he picked up.”
Your chest shudders with the next slow breath that you draw in. He sits there, watching you try to rationalize what he’s telling you. There’s too much information for it to be a lie. The look on his face tells you that he isn’t lying.
“You… spoke to Malcolm that night? — What did he say?”
Bradley makes a face, then turns his chin towards the ceiling and sighs. He looks down and rubs his rough palm over his jaw, shaking his head at you. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he left you in the fucking snow, unconscious.”
The air conditioning unit rattles behind you, making you all the more aware of the sweat starting to bead on the nape of your neck. You swallow softly and look down at the textbook between the two of you.
“We were fighting that night, but he — I think I — I think I ran off…” Your memories of that night are fuzzy. Truthfully, you can’t even remember what the two of you had been arguing about, much less what happened for him to be so angry even days later. “Whatever happened wasn’t his fault—“
“No?” Bradley interrupts, a level louder than he had been previously. You pull back from him subconsciously, bracing yourself on the bed behind you, trying to find purchase in the sheets. “It wasn’t his fault? — Anything could have happened to you, you know that? — What kind of man lets someone that they love put themselves at risk like that?”
“He probably didn’t realize. I’m sure he thought that I got a cab. Wait, Bradley, what did you say to him?”
Wait, Bradley, what did you say to him? — He’s looking at you, but he’s had this conversation before with Natasha. All those years ago. Seconds before he had answered her and watched any love she had had for him ebb away.
“We had a conversation.” Bradley answers you dryly. Your brows knit together, leaning just slightly closer. “I asked him where he was. If he knew where you were. He asked me if you were still sulking on the curb outside of the quad. He knew exactly where you were.”
Finally, he renders you speechless. For the first time, maybe ever, you’re left without something to say to him. There’s a brief silence between the two of you before he speaks again.
“What were the two of you arguing about that night?” Bradley presses.
“I — I can’t remember. Something stu—“
“Why did you kiss me?”
Your eyes go round, widening incredulously at the man sitting on the other side of your bed. The man that you’ve spent the last week and a half screaming at. The smug, over-confident man ten years older than you who refuses to dress his age or pay grade. The man who threatened your fiancé back in December.
“What?” You shriek, pushing up onto your knees and scrunching your face up at him.
“You sat in my car and begged me not to take you into your parents’ house. You kissed me. I dragged you out of the truck and put you to bed.” Bradley says it so calmly — you wonder how often he has thought about this moment to be able to recount it so easily.
You look him over. There’s no more distance between the two of you than there would be between a driver’s seat and a passenger seat. Obviously you were out of your mind that night, running away from Malcolm and not kicking and screaming when this oaf had put you in his car. But there’s not a chance in hell that you would have kissed him. You can’t stand him.
Still, here with just the two of you, you’re not sure how it would benefit him to be lying about this.
So, you take a deep breath and try to ignore the heartbeat thudding in your ears. You stare at him. His hair is neat enough. Short at the back and sides, curly on top. It would have been shorter when he was in the Navy, but you remember it being longer at the beginning of the year. You hadn’t shown up to many of his classes, so you can only guess at what he wore during the winter. Vaguely, you’ve got a memory of him in grey slacks and a navy sweater. Still not wearing a tie.
If he had come straight from his office, he would be in his work clothes. You would be sitting in the passenger side of his truck. It was snowing out, so you know he would have been cold. The sun-kissed pink hue on his cheeks was probably still there, just frost-chilled in variety this time. His facial hair is always neat. Everything tidily shaved, his moustache always trimmed. He’s certainly not ugly.
Long lashes. A slight bump in his nose, like he might have broken it once, but it suits him. Slightly raised scar tissue on his cheek, his throat. Lashes that touch the bone of his eye socket when he closes his eyes. Freckles dotting his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. Eyes that can’t quite decide whether they’re brown, black, amber or hazel. Pink, plush lips.
Ah. That’s where your attention catches. You practically take a mental snapshot of the place where your eyes land. The hollows of his cheeks, the scars on his left side. His strong jaw, usually clenched when he’s looking at you. The thick length of his neck, his protruding adam’s apple, the gold chain usually visible just inside of his collar. Those thick, reddish pink lips.
Pushing up on your knees, you lift your gaze and find him already staring. He knows exactly what you’re about to do. His hand finds your hip and grabs at it roughly as you put one knee in front of the other and crawl to him. He guides you where he wants you and lifts his other hand, cupping your jaw.
His rough palm sits against your jaw bone. Tenderly touching your cheek, just slightly grazing your throat. Eclipsing the side of your face with the magnitude of his hand size. Even up close, you’ve still got no clue of why you would kiss him. Well, nothing that you can rationalize. No explanation that would make any kind of sense to you on any regular day.
But, if you’re being honest with yourself, it’s because you know that there is no rationalizing this. The want that you feel for him just doesn’t make sense. His fingers curled around your hipbone, pressing roughly into the denim there — it doesn’t make sense.
And yet, when the strong hand on the side of your jaw pulls you forwards, you’re all too willing to lean all the way into him and kiss him. Softly, slowly. Your bottom lip between his, controlled even though all he wants to do is throw you down on his bed and kiss you like he means it.
Bradley figures that’s a bad thing, that he’s in control of the situation enough to be gentle with you, but not to stop himself from making this mistake. His tongue swipes softly against your lip at the same time his hand tugs at your hip. You wobble forwards, he parts his thighs and tugs again making you land unceremoniously against his legs.
You can feel the abandoned textbook digging into your ankle. Its glossed pages, open and forgotten.
His hand trails from your jaw, around to the back of your neck. He feels you tense against him as he pulls you close by your neck and your waist, lifting, and then planting you on your back. The second that your spine touches the sheets, you tear your mouth away from his with a gasp.
He stills, kneeling between your parted thighs, staring down at you. You glance down. He watches your brows knit together and follows your gaze down to the necklace that has slipped from his shirt. You lift your stiff hand from your side and reach out for it. He swallows as the delicate tips of your fingers graze the gold cross. You wonder where his dog tags are. Why he’s wearing this today. If he just wore the tags for Natasha’s benefit, maybe.
“I didn’t know you’re religious.” You breathe out. He’s just close enough to be able to hear you. His hands flex around the pits of your knees, skimming down your calves.
“I’m not,” He answers you quietly. “It belonged to my dad.”
You breathe out hard, but it doesn’t make that weird feeling in your chest go away. You just keep on staring at that dangling necklace. Something keeps you from looking him in the eye. Fear, shame — lust — you’re not sure exactly what it is.
Turning your head, you’re met with the sight of his flexing forearm, planted beside your head. Bradley watches through darkened eyes as you reach out once again, starting at the back of his hand. You trail the vein in his skin from his fist, up along the inside of his forearm, onto his bicep. Stopping at the hem of his white t-shirt sleeve.
Bradley leans down, moving to the side to catch your mouth. This second kiss is different from the first. It’s all him. His tongue swipes your bottom lip and you’ve got the sense to press into him, to open your mouth. Both of you are surely aware of how dead still you’re laying, the way your hands are balled in the sheets at your sides.
But, you lift your chin and chase his kiss like he’s got your next breath. He pushes harder against you, his tongue pressing forwards and grazing yours. Suddenly, your hands aren’t so still any more. They’re up and shoving at his chest.
“What are you doing?” You gasp, horrified.
He sits back on his knees and stares at you. You’re right. What the fuck is he doing? — You’re one of his students, and fuck, your father would never let this go. Your fiancé too. Fuck, your fiancé.
“Keep your tongue in your mouth, what is the matter with you?” You snap at him, sitting up swiftly and hitting his chest with another hard shove. Bradley stares at you. Never in a million years was he expecting your issue here to be with the fact that he’d barely grazed your tongue with his.
“Excuse me?”
“Your tongue, you animal! — What do you think you’re doing?” You pull your legs out from between his thighs and shift away from him, leaping off of the bed. His jaw falls slack, staring at the way you’re glaring at him from the bottom of the bed.
“Kissing! — What? — Are you telling me that you’ve never—“ He shakes his head, trying to make sense of what he’s hearing. He knew you were inexperienced but french kissing has been popular in the US for a lot longer than you’ve even been alive.
“No, I haven’t! — What kind of girl—“
“Alright, stop yelling, stop yelling!” Bradley stands up swiftly and catches hold of both of your biceps. Quieting, you crane your neck back to look at him. He looks down at you and exhales. “That was a mistake. Right?”
His thumbs brush gently along the backs of your arms. You’re silent, just staring up at him, but he gives a quick nod anyway. That’s good enough. Squeezing your arm, he lets you go and then moves.
“Fuck. Okay,” He runs a hand over his jaw and turns, dizzily trying to collect his things. “We’re good. We just need to not get in each other’s way, get you a C — and then we’re out of each other’s hair.”
There are so many things you want to say. Even more that you want to ask him. But, you don’t. You just nod silently at him and tuck your hands behind your back. Then, you make the mistake of glancing downwards. The khaki colouring of his shorts has never looked as indecent as it does now.
Bradley doesn’t need to follow your gaze to know what you’re staring at. He knows all too well that he has been rock hard since he first grabbed at your hip. The little squeak you had made had sent every red blood cell in his body rushing south, and the way you’re staring at his straining dick now doesn’t help.
You make it worse too. There’s no shock on your face, you’re not saying anything. You’re just staring at the way his thick length is pressing against the fabric of the shorts, hard, and because of you. Natasha, that you had understood. She had been touching him and she was undeniably gorgeous. And they had history.
“Stop —“ Bradley pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand and dips a hand into his shorts to adjust himself with the other. That still doesn’t stop you from staring. He frowns at you. First you don’t know how to kiss, and now he’s realizing that you’ve probably never seen a dick either. “For fucks’ sake.
Your eyes finally go wide as he grabs the textbook, turns on his heel and leaves the room with a slam of the door. You flinch at the sound, suddenly completely alone in your room, reeling. Ashamedly, your first instinct is to call Matthew.
Bradley walks down the hall, takes the stairs, and into his own room. It’s empty, meaning that Luke’s probably in Robin’s room. Bradley should be an adult and go and lecture them both. Instead, he slams the door to their bathroom and twists the lock. Cold water probably would have been the best thing to do. Instead, letting the warm stream soak his body, his clothes ditched on the floor, he feels like he can finally breathe.
Truthfully, your fiancé is the furthest thing from his mind. The fact that you’re his student has never felt as minuscule as it did when he was kneeling between your thighs and watching your delicate fingers toy with his necklace. You’re graduating. This is just extra credit. If you had passed the first time, you’d be out of his class already.
All the excuses in the world doesn’t make it okay that he has kissed you twice now. But, that doesn’t stop him from trailing his palm along his toned stomach, wrapping a hand loosely around the base of his cock and planting his free palm on the tile in front of him.
Upstairs and three doors to the right, you’re sitting criss-crossed on the same bed that you had just kissed your professor in with an old plastic phone pressed to your ear. The line rings, and rings until it feels like you’re about to burst into tears until finally his voice comes through on the other end.
“Hello?”
“I need to ask you something and I need you to please answer me honestly. Okay?”
Tags: @thedroneranger @batdanceq @wkndwlff @cassiemitchell @himbos-on-ice @bradshawsbaby @damrlova @fudge13 @xoxabs88xox @mak-32 @sihtricswife @callsignvenus @callsign-joyride @harper1666 @krismdavis @sheisanangell @thecitysgraveyard @cherrycola27 @sugarcoated-lame
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gretahayes · 1 year
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Favourite tim drake recs? :0
Assuming you mean fanfic recs, I've got probably the most for him and this is long, so it's going under the cut;
This is genuinely one of my favorites, it's set post-Red Robin, and deals with Tim's vigilante stalking habits, his family finding out, Cass realizing there's no photos of Tim, them setting out to take/find some of him (a much harder feat than you'd think) and finally, Tim seeing the photos. It's amazing and sweet, and I can't recommend it enough. (I especially like the Bruce & Tim and Tim & Damian in this)
This is by the same author, also set post-Red Robin. This is Damian and Tim focused, Damian POV, in which Damian sees Bruce's contingency plans for him and the rest of the family, and with nobody else to turn to, runs for Tim. Canon divergent in the way Bruce doesn't have a contingency for his children, neither does Tim for his team, or them for him, but it kinda makes sense in this setting. Their interactions are amazing here, and seems so real.
In this, Tim gets a tonsillectomy. An elaboration in the form of a long fic. A must-read, I feel. It's funny and has so many feels and such good characterization.
!!! Can't believe I almost forgot about this one! Tim is Bruce's assistant, not son, and never became a vigilante. He's incredibly overworked, but no less dedicated to the Waynes. It's heartwrenching and sweet and funny and—words can't do it justice. It's a must read. The Al Ghuls make a cameo but Tim knows how to deal with them. Tim's deeply sad but next to nobody knows and those that do just accept it (including him). Kon is the MVP. Cass. Damian and Tim have an odd bond built of mutual respect and disdain for everyone around them. Luthor tries to recruit Tim every year and fails.
This is funny and amazing—Tim lands in a universe where he's technically considered a drug addict, since coffee is a drug and in the regular universe everyone drinks it.
The YJ fic Ever. I've recced this at least three times, and I will continue to. It's amazing characterization all around—both YJ and batfam—and genuinely is so fun. I love everyone in this. When an unknown enemy threatens Robin, Gotham's vigilantes come together to keep him safe. Unfortunately, they're protecting the wrong Robin. Or: Tim Drake plans his own rescue. Things get complicated.
This is Tim & Damian—Tim gets his overprotective big brother moment :) love love LOVE the way everyone is written here.
This is short and hilarious—Tim has amnesia after a head wound (can only remember back to his YJ days) and tries to bullshit his way out of anyone noticing. He might have succeeded if not for Cass.
This is a time loop fic, switching POVs. Tim's stuck in a time loop in which Jason always dies. The loop before the one this was set in, he accidentally kills Damian out of stress and too-fast reflexes. He breaks down when he sees Damian again, the whole thing unravels, and they resolve to help him out of it.
THIS SERIES MAKES ME FERAL. Jack, Tim and sometimes Dana, set when Jack made Tim quit from Robin. Horror-type elements and beautifully poetic, but centered around Jack's POV of the son he realizes he doesn't know, and him realizing he may be a shit dad. Dana's the best stepmom ever, and Tim's far nicer to her than he is Jack. This is the first work, in which Jack tries and fails to understand this Tim, and realizes that this Tim is Robin, not Tim. This is the second (and last) work in the series, in which Tim hasn't fully quit the lifestyle even though he's not going out as Robin, but Jack has no proof he hasn't. Just a hunch and a few odd occurrences that us, the readers, who are familiar with Tim's hero life will find obvious, but Jack does not. Dana makes Tim happier, more Tim than Tim-Robin, than Jack does, and Jack hates it. Near the end, he starts calling Tim Robin, not Tim. I LOVE it. Even if you hate Jack (like I do) you need to read this, for the Tim characterization if nothing else. Outsider POV, except he shouldn't be an outsider. But he is.
This is so fucking funny. Tim gets a matching tattoo with Kon, and hides it from Bruce. When Bruce—and the rest of his family—find out, all goes to hell.
Remember when I said the Jack and Tim series was only slightly horror? This is horror. Bruce's got a habit of picking up monsters, and this one is about Tim. If you're sensitive to horror, please read the tags and maybe avoid it, because this is delightful but not for everyone.
In this, Tim becomes an unintentional sugar daddy to the caped community. It's a bit iffy in some places, but hilarious.
This is Dick and Tim (surprised it took me this long to rec one with them as the main focus tbh) and it's Dick checking up on his little brother. Pure fluff, and genuinely amazing.
This is Tim & Bruce but also Tim & Tam in some places. Bruce forgets Tim is the majority shareholder for WE and is thus invited to shareholder meetings, Tim finds this very amusing and is generally a menace. You can FEEL the teenager in this Tim. Amazing.
Tim's de-aged to a kid in this, and re-meets his family. Fluff and feels ensue.
This is Bruce and Tim. Bruce isn't prepared for his newest Robin's neuroses.
This has Tim & Cassie meeting at an archaeologist event as kids and having to fight a monster thing :) it's cute
GODDD this fic? This fic ruined me. Beautiful Tim characterization, a gorgeous look at Bruce and how much he fucks up despite caring, and Dick being a stressed but amazing big brother with gorgeous writing. I love their brotherly affections here, and Tim's weird neuroses being shown here. Tim & Bruce is how it starts, and it's very much centered around their relationship, but it tapers off into Dick & Tim, which I'm not complaining about. Kon (and Bart!) makes a cameo and is an amazing friend. Can't rec this enough. If you read none of the other fics, please read this one.
This is Dick and Tim again. Dick forces Tim to go undercover with him to an Elvis convention in a thinly veiled attempt to spend time with the brother who he doesn't think knows how much he loves him. It's set in Tim's POV, though, so until Dick says this, Tim doesn't know. Hilarious and short.
This is Dick and Tim (who's surprised? Nobody) where Dick goes to Robin!Tim's science fair because Tim mentioned it and well, nobody else was going. Short and sweet.
This deals with the batfam finding out about the shitshow that was Tim's BruceQuest. If you're a stickler for canon I'd recommend you skip this one, but if not, it's a great read.
This is Dick and Tim again, and it's amazing. Tim's alone on Christmas Eve. Dick finds out, and does something about it. It's Robin!Tim, so this is Dick, Babs and Tim. This author is amazing at writing their interactions, plus inside Dick's head is a tricky place to write and they nail it perfectly. Mostly Dick & Tim, but since he invites Tim to Babs' holiday party, Babs makes a good number of cameos.
This is Tim talking a jumper off the ledge while Damian watches. Then they talk about it. Tim from Damian's POV is always interesting, but this especially is amazing.
This is a core four fic, Tim's POV! Pure humor. Tim finds a dildo in the dishwasher and he drags them for a team meeting so he can sus out whose it is.
I've recced this before, I think, but I'll do it again. Red Robin canon divergence fic in which Bruce is actually dead, and Tim calls Dick to tell him he thinks he may have been wrong. Dick's POV, short, but the emotion in this is outstanding.
In this fic, Damian has trouble with the transition from Dick's Batman to Bruce's Batman. Tim, who's also had both, is surprisingly helpful. This has so many Tim and Damian feels that I'm literally bursting at the seams. Melancholy, camaraderie, and all the good stuff. Damian's POV, and since he sucks at so much as guessing at what's going on in Tim's head, it's all the more great.
This is Dick and Tim, a soft Christmastime fic.
This is Bruce and Tim. Bruce and Tim have a sort-of game that started when Tim was thirteen. Initially, it was Tim stealing sips (or occasionally whole mugs) of Bruce’s coffee, back when he was too young for Alfred to allow him to drink it. Now, though, Bruce is getting his own back, and steals Tim’s coffee when he can. Sweet and fluffy.
Here, Tim gets a headwound and only remembers back to his Robin days, and forgets to be awkward around Dick and Damian. Tugs at the heartstrings. Dick's reminded of how much he misses this Tim.
This is really funny. Remember that time during the YJ days where the adult heroes were de-aged and the kid ones grew to be adults? Tim didn't reach six foot. In this, he's mocked ruthlessly for it.
Here, Tim goes to high school again after dropping out :) it's core four and hilarious
In this, Tim accidentally kills his dad in self defense—or rather, thinks he does, Jack's still alive but he doesn't know that until Dick shows up—and scrambles to call Dick. He calls Jason instead. Dick eventually gets called and shows up, and the brotherly feels in this are amazing. Tim's in shock for a good portion of it, and it's his POV, so you've got to piece some stuff together. Bad dad Jack, as in worse than canon bad dad Jack. Tugs on the heartstrings, and have I said I love Dick in this? Because I do. Bruce shows up near the end, and to everyone's surprise, doesn't absolutely fuck things up and/or fail as a parent.
Here, Tim is sick and alone. Dick, after not hearing from Tim at all for three days, goes to his apartment, finds him sick, and takes care of him. Eventually he gets dragged to the Manor for some actual r&r. It's sweet, and this writer has an amazing way with words and an intriguing flow.
In this, Bruce knows Tim. They have a routine, have habits, they know each other. This is so so touching, and I love it so much.
Here, Tim and Steph give Bruce a headache. It's amazing.
I..can't even begin to describe this. Bruce is fresh from the timeline, and this is a sort of introspection/character study type thing about him and Tim and how Tim's changed. Mostly, though? Mostly, Bruce just gives his son a hug.
Here, Kon is Tim's work husband. Bruce suffers. Pure fluff and humor, with a touch of feels.
Here, Bruce takes Tim to get his wisdom teeth out. They're both worried, but together, they're alright. Tim cries while doped up on the drugs. He cries a lot.
Here, 90's!Tim Drake wakes up in his Red Robin body. Exhausted from a YJ mission, he chooses to focus on getting through a normal day so as not to disrupt things for his future self. But, y'know, his way. Hilarious and so in-character, if exaggerated for comedy.
This is Tim and Damian—Damian gets hit with truth serum on patrol, and a pissed off Tim has to come and get him. Damian resolves to not tell Tim he's been hit with truth serum. They get closer as a result. Love their dynamic in this.
This is core four again, but just general teenager superhero chaos. Can't rec it enough
Here, Tim tries to build a LEGO Gotham, but his family just can't leave it—or him—alone. He calls a family meeting to tell them to knock it off, and they do not. Fluff and humor.
Here, Tim has appendicitis and gets his appendix removed. The best mix of fluff, feels, and good old complicated family dynamics ever
In this, Bruce tries to navigate giving affection to his odd son, Tim. Touching and funny.
This is Tim and Damian—Damian crashes on Tim's bed in the Watchtower when injured, Tim finds him. They talk, and maybe bond a bit, even though they'd never admit it.
Here, Bruce hugs Tim. Really nothing else to it.
Another fic where Tim wakes up with amnesia and pretends to know his family so he's not rude. He's found out when he correctly deduces Bruce is his dad, but makes the mistake of calling Bruce dad.
This is Dick and Tim again. Tim gets de-aged into a six-month-old, and Dick takes care of him. Soft and so so sweet.
In this, Tim's trying to work in his apartment when his siblings keep showing up to distract him and get him to take a break. It's sweet of them, if very annoying.
This is Bruce and Tim. Tim's injured and lying in bed, Bruce gets him takeout. Feels fuzzy and just...good. You've got to read it to know what I'm talking about, no summary does it justice.
Here, Damian tries to make amends with Tim. He does it very oddly though, so Tim thinks he has a crush on him, and avoids him all the more for it because ew-gross-ew-ew.
In this, Tim gets his teeth knocked out and grabs Dick as a mediator so he tells Bruce. Short and funny-sweet. You can tell this is in Tim's Robin run, due to all the little hints dropped.
This is Tim and Kon, funny and nonsensical. Tim calls Kon in the early hours of the morning, drunk. Kon thinks he deserves sainthood for this.
In this, Tim has road rage and most of his family find that out in the most hilarious way possible.
Bruce and Tim—a test sort of fic? Interesting, definitely.
This is timkon, Tim has memory loss and is amazed by Kon all over again.
Core four go to a gala :)
This is Dick and Tim, Tim breaks into Dick's house, accidentally interrupts his nap, tries to leave out of guilt, and gets wrangled into hugs. So so soft and so so sweet.
Another de-aged Tim fic, but this time with six year old Tim and Bruce taking care of him. This is so melancholy and...ugh. I love them.
Here, Tim and Dick are thrown into an alternate universe and have to try and get back with no other support system and no way out. They meet this world's version of Bruce and Alfred, though.
CEO Tim, and hates it. He makes that Luthor's problem.
Timkon, in which Tim plans all his dates VIA corkboard and Kon is so attracted to that.
CEO Tim (again), except he's still a teenager and people end up thinking he's a communist. This is short and hilarious all the way through. Also, Bruce is there.
This is The kid!Tim fic ever. Tim, having found a weird hole after a storm, decides to go exploring ignoring the fact that This Is Gotham and They Probably Have Cursed Stuff Down There.Luckily, it was just a cave system that spans the entire Gotham underground. Unluckily, Tim is a very curious child. Tim's a sorta eldritch being at the end?? Amazing, 100 would recommend.
In this, Tim finds out he isn't his parents' biological son. This changes everything. This changes nothing. Can't say anything else without spoiling, but I can't rec it enough.
In this fic, Bruce is back in time in Drake Manor, and meets baby Tim. It's like you're frozen in time, and all that matters is Bruce and his infant not-yet-son.
Here, Kon and Tim date. Tim's a cryptid stalker that refuses to be photographed, Dick is a big brother that loves his little brother, and it's cute.
Sorry it took me so long to compile this list anon, happy reading!
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carionto · 5 months
Text
The recoil makes it fun
Most everyone in the known Universe agree that a stable and noise-free space ship is preferable to anything not that. You know, due to space being so bad for your health. Stability means safety, noise-free means things are not breaking, which is always great!
Pure silence, however, can be deceptive, so you do want controlled noises in there, such as small beeps at regular intervals indicating that everything is fine. Soft green and blue lights are good.
By that logic, Johann Utsushima then must hate green and blue. His ship, Kitaiyohdzha, is always blaring orange and red lights and barking annoying warnings at him.
Things like: "Low pressure" "High pressure" "Not enough power" "Overload detected" "Insufficient oxygen" "Dangerous oxygen levels"
Like, make up your mind! One or the other, stop it with the extreme ends. Johann has resorted to do the time-honored tradition of ignoring the check engine light and instead stays in his suit all the time. It's his rickety mess and he knows exactly where everything is and how it should be, don't go telling him how to run HIS ship. Especially you, ship, don't tell me you know better.
An astute observer may notice the fact that Kitaiyohdzha is a giant rail gun with a cockpit, engine, thrusters, and basic life support systems attached. Or what's left of them anyway.
Mr Utsushima loves guns. And I mean LOVES them. This one in particular. He can't get enough of it. Literally. He couldn't, so he kept ordering bigger and bigger ones. Kitaiyohdzha is the biggest one (21 meters long) he can legally get without being part of or associated with the military in some way, or registering as a "redistributer". He would not pass the background check to do either.
This, however, does not stop him from modifying his guns. It's a lot of effort, very expensive, and quite complicated. Well, for him. Because he does not document anything and not even God knows how many iterations and past modifications he has made to Kitaiyohdzha to make it what it is today.
None of the matters though. The only time the world makes sense, when everything is exactly as it should be, is when he pulls the trigger.
Space. Quivers.
You can't hear the discharge, but you can feel it from a great distance.
Johann is not at a great distance. Everyone would say he is dangerously close, and be factually correct. Not even a meter from the power generator that enables the rail gun to fire a piece of tungsten at relativistic speeds in order to completely obliterate a poor and unsuspecting little asteroid just gently floating through space. Or is it a meteor? Comet? Doesn't matter, they all explode more or less the same.
Johann likes to watch the recordings of him firing the gun. It lets him know what happened, because the moment he fires Kitaiyohdzha, every time without fail, he loses consciousness from the sudden g-forces hurtling him and the "ship" backwards for thousands of kilometers before the barely functional automatic stabilizers return him to rest.
But that moment right before his mind goes blank. THAT is something you cannot explain to others. You FEEL it. The power. The force. The raw... just, THAT.
It's the only thing that keeps him going. Where to? He doesn't care. Simply forward through life.
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