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roamnook · 1 month

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"Quantum computing set to unlock $1.3 trillion in value by 2035 with government investments nearing $34 billion. Get the facts on the next big tech trend from McKinsey experts."

What is Quantum Computing?

WHAT IS QUANTUM COMPUTING?

April 5, 2024

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Flip a coin. Heads or tails, right? Sure, once we see how the coin lands. But while the coin is still spinning in the air, it’s neither heads nor tails. It’s some probability of both.

This gray area is the simplified foundation of quantum computing.

GET TO KNOW AND DIRECTLY ENGAGE WITH SENIOR MCKINSEY EXPERTS ON QUANTUM COMPUTING

Ondrej Burkacky [/our-people/ondrej-burkacky] is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Munich office, Miklós Gábor Dietz [/our-people/miklos-dietz] is a senior partner in the Vancouver office, Dieter Kiewell [/our-people/dieter-kiewell] and Jared Moon [/our-people/jared-moon] are senior partners in the London office, Alexandre Ménard [/our-people/alexandre-menard] is a senior partner in the Paris office, Mark Patel [/our-people/mark-patel] is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, and Rodney Zemmel [/our-people/rodney-zemmel] is a senior partner in the New York office.

Digital computers have been making it easier for us to process information for decades. But quantum computers are poised to take computing to a whole new level. Quantum computers [/featured-insights/the-rise-of-quantum-computing]represent a completely new approach to computing. They have the potential to solve [/industries/chemicals/our-insights/the-next-big-thing-quantum-computings-potential-impact-on-chemicals]very complex statistical problems that are beyond the limits of today’s computers. Quantum computing has so much promise [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/quantum-computing-just-might-save-the-planet]and momentum that McKinsey has identified it as one of the next big trends in tech [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-top-trends-in-tech]. Quantum computing alone—just one of three main areas of emerging quantum technology—could account for nearly $1.3 trillion in value [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/quantum-technology-sees-record-investments-progress-on-talent-gap]by 2035. Investors of all kinds are perking up their ears—and opening up their wallets: government investors alone have pledged $34 billion [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/tech-forward/is-winter-coming-quantum-computings-trajectory-in-the-years-ahead]in investments. In 2022, the US government announced $1.8 billion in funding, bringing its total investment to $3.7 billion.

HOW DOES A QUANTUM COMPUTER WORK?

Here’s how quantum computing works: classical computing, the technology that powers your laptop and smartphone, is built on bits. A bit is a unit of information that can store either a zero or a one. By contrast, quantum computing is built on quantum bits, or qubits, which can store zeros and ones. Qubits can represent any combination of both zero and one simultaneously—this is called superposition, and it is a basic feature of any quantum state. Chips are the physical hardware that store qubits, just like in classical computing.

When a classical computer solves a problem with multiple variables, it must conduct a new calculation every time a variable changes. Each calculation is a single path to a single result. Quantum computers, however, can explore many paths in parallel through superposition.

Additionally, qubits can interact with one another. This is known as entanglement. Entanglement allows qubits to scale exponentially; two qubits, for example, can store and process four bits of information, three can process eight, and so on. This exponential scaling gives the quantum computer much more power than classical computers.

INTRODUCING MCKINSEY EXPLAINERS

Explore the series [/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers]Heavyweight tech organizations are already placing bets on quantum technology. In 2019, Google claimed that its quantum computer had solved in just 200 seconds a problem that would have taken a classical computer 10,000 years (although other tech organizations and academics have surfaced doubts [https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/22/132519/quantum-supremacy-from-google-not-so-fast-says-ibm/] about the validity of Google’s claim).

Even if Google’s claim was accurate, the achievement was more of a theoretical leap forward than a practical one since the problem its quantum computer solved had no real-world use. But we’re rapidly approaching a time when quantum computers will have a real impact on our lives.

WHAT ARE QUANTUM COMPUTERS USED FOR?

Today’s classical computers are relatively straightforward. They work with a limited set of inputs and use an algorithm and spit out an answer—and the bits that encode the inputs do not share information about one another. Quantum computers are different. For one thing, when data are input into the qubits, the qubits interact with other qubits, allowing for many different calculations to be done simultaneously. This is why quantum computers are able to work so much faster than classical computers. But that’s not the end of the story: quantum computers don’t deliver just one clear answer like classical computers do; rather, they deliver a range of possible answers.

For calculations that are limited in scope, classical computers are still the preferred tools. But for very complex problems, quantum computers can save time by narrowing down the range of possible answers.

WHEN WILL QUANTUM COMPUTERS BE AVAILABLE?

Over the next few years, the major players in quantum computing, as well as a small cohort of start-ups, will steadily increase the number of qubits that their computers can handle and improve how the technology functions. Progress in quantum computing, however, is expected to remain slow. According to our conversations with tech executives, investors, and academics in quantum computing, 72 percent [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/tech-forward/is-winter-coming-quantum-computings-trajectory-in-the-years-ahead]believe we’ll see a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2035. The remaining 28 percent think this milestone won’t be reached until 2040 or later.

But some businesses will begin to derive value from quantum well before then. At first, businesses will receive quantum services via the cloud. Several major computing companies have already announced their quantum cloud offerings.

Learn more about McKinsey Digital.

WHAT ARE SOME OBSTACLES THAT IMPEDE THE DEVELOPMENT OF QUANTUM COMPUTING?

One major obstacle to the advancement of quantum computing is that qubits are volatile [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]. Whereas a bit in today’s classical computers is in a state of either one or zero, a qubit can be any possible combination of the two. When a qubit changes its status, inputs can be lost or altered, throwing off the accuracy of the results. Another obstacle to development is that a quantum computer operating at the scale needed to deliver significant breakthroughs will require potentially millions of qubits to be connected. The few quantum computers that exist today are nowhere near that number.

Here are some other challenges facing the technologies [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/tech-forward/is-winter-coming-quantum-computings-trajectory-in-the-years-ahead]that could support quantum computing at scale:

High-fidelity two-qubit gates at scale. Maintaining high fidelity (meaning accuracy and reliability greater than 99.99 percent) is required for fault-tolerant quantum computers. Doing so at scale will be difficult.

Speed. Qubits need to retain their quantum state to be able to interact with one another. Even in specific environmental conditions, they will eventually degrade. For quantum computers to operate at scale, gate operations will need to move very quickly to complete computations before qubits degrade.

Multiqubit networking. Connecting, or networking, qubits to one another could theoretically make quantum computers much more powerful. The key challenge here is connecting qubits across chips, or from one physical quantum computer to another.

Individual qubit control at scale. The control of individual qubits becomes increasingly complex as the number of qubits increases.

Cooling power and environmental control. As quantum computers become larger, the size and power requirements of the cooling equipment become more and more expensive, from both a cost and an environmental standpoint. Currently, powering a quantum computer large enough to connect millions of qubits is cost prohibitive.

Manufacturability. Producing large numbers of quantum computers will require automating both the manufacturing and testing processes. The production of certain quantum computers may require developing entirely new manufacturing techniques.

HOW CAN CLASSICAL COMPUTERS AND QUANTUM COMPUTERS WORK TOGETHER?

Slowly, at first. Initially, quantum computing will be used alongside [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]classical computing to solve multivariable problems. One example? Quantum computers can narrow the range of possible solutions to a finance or logistics problem, helping a company reach the best solution faster. This kind of slower progress will be the norm until quantum computing advances enough to deliver more significant breakthroughs.

Learn more about McKinsey Digital.

WHAT ARE SOME POTENTIAL BUSINESS USE CASES FOR QUANTUM COMPUTERS?

Quantum computers have four fundamental capabilities [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]that differentiate them from today’s classical computers:

Quantum simulation. Quantum computers can model complex molecules, which may eventually help reduce development time for chemical and pharmaceutical companies. Scientists looking to develop new drugs need to examine the structure of a molecule to understand how it will interact with other molecules. It’s almost impossible for today’s computers to provide accurate simulations, because each atom interacts with other atoms in complex ways. But experts believe that quantum computers are powerful enough to eventually be able to model even the most complex molecules in the human body. This opens up the possibility for faster development [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]of new drugs and new, transformative cures.

Optimization and search. Every industry relies in one way or another on optimization. Where are robots best placed on a factory floor? What’s the shortest route for a company’s delivery trucks? There are almost infinite questions that need to be answered to optimize for efficiency and value creation. With classical computing, companies must make one complicated calculation after another, which can be a time-consuming and costly process given the many potential variables of a situation. Since a quantum computer is able to work with multiple variables simultaneously, it can be used to quickly narrow the range of possible answers [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]. From there, classical computing can be used to zero in on one precise answer.

Quantum AI. Quantum computers have the potential to work with better algorithms that could transform machine learning across a diverse range of industries, from automotive to pharmaceuticals. In particular, quantum computers could accelerate the arrival of self-driving vehicles. Companies like Ford, GM, Volkswagen, and numerous mobility start-ups are running video and image data through complex neural networks. Their goal? To use AI to teach a car to make crucial driving decisions. Quantum computers’ ability to perform multiple complex calculations with many variables simultaneously allows for faster training [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]of such AI systems.

Prime factorization. Businesses today use large, complex prime numbers as the basis for their encryption efforts, numbers too large for classical computers to process. Quantum computing will be able to use algorithms to solve these complex prime numbers easily, a process called prime factorization. (In fact, a quantum algorithm known as Shor’s algorithm theoretically already can; there’s just not a computer powerful enough to run it.) Once quantum computers have advanced enough, new quantum-encryption technologies will be needed to protect online services [/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/a-game-plan-for-quantum-computing]. Scientists are already at work on quantum cryptography to prepare for this eventuality. McKinsey estimates quantum computers will be powerful enough for prime factorization by the late 2020s at the very earliest.

As these capabilities develop at pace with quantum computing power, use cases will proliferate.

WHAT INDUSTRIES STAND TO BENEFIT THE MOST FROM QUANTUM COMPUTING?

Research suggests that several industries in particular stand to reap the greatest short-term benefits from quantum computing based on the use cases discussed in the previous section. Collectively—and conservatively—the value at stake for these industries could be in the trillions of dollars.

Pharmaceuticals. Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize the research and development of molecular structures in the biopharmaceuticals industry. With quantum technologies, research and development for drugs could become less reliant on trial and error, and therefore more efficient. (Read more on how quantum computing stands to affect the pharmaceutical industry [/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/pharmas-digital-rx-quantum-computing-in-drug-research-and-development].)

Chemicals. Quantum computing could be used to improve catalyst design, which could enable savings on existing production processes. Innovative catalysts could also enable the replacement of petrochemicals with more sustainable feedstock or the breakdown of carbon for CO2 usage. (Read more on how quantum computing might affect the chemicals industry [/industries/chemicals/our-insights/the-next-big-thing-quantum-computings-potential-impact-on-chemicals].)

Mobility. Quantum computing could result in a mobility ecosystem that is fully connected, intelligent, and environmentally friendly. Changes depend on the rapid and smooth exchange of vast amounts of data between in-vehicle computers and computers elsewhere. Quantum computers can process these large amounts of data Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-quantum-computing&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiemvXY-7mFAxWsM1kFHUn_DfoQxfQBegQIABAC&usg=AOvVaw1el2CGaGO9OnmyLEz0BtLV

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princematcha · 2 years

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wc: 918 || sfw || mdni

Names are precious. They’re something you can cradle in the soft middle of your tongue, hold with gentle weight between your fingers, flipping and spinning like a coin. Names can be spat, be spoken with such heat and ire that they are all that has to be uttered for the receiver to feel pain. For them to hold their name to their chest with scarred hands, hardened by the knowledge of having to protect it.

Bakugou knew that. He knew names were precious. The scent of fresh cut grass from grade school fields that lingers on the back of his tongue every time Deku still chooses to call him ‘Kacchan.” The look dunce-face gave him the first time Bakugou called him Denki, how a small victory smile crept its way onto his face and he punched Bakugou’s arm with a giant grin.

He just never imagined it would feel like this.

You gifted Bakugou your given name before he gave you his. His name has never been scorn, never used as an insult, but he was still scared. He had no idea what you would do with that much power over him– he knew he’d let you do whatever you wanted with it. When he said your name, it felt like the stars had left their place in the sky and found their home in his body. Heat and light filled his chest and spilled out of his mouth as your name rolled off of his tongue, Bakugou ended up stuttering over the last part of your name.

It wasn’t the first time he spoke your name, he said it to himself in the comforts of his apartment the sixth time he met you. That day you yelled his hero name for the first time, a quick and loud “Dynamight!” seconds before you kicked him out of the way to dive through a window next to him. You saved two falling civilians.

Bakugou was filling out forms to recount the mission and his eyes got stuck on your printed name on the paper. He whispered it to himself once then continued down the paper.

(your name has left his lips a few times before and after you gave it to him, whispered, choked and fluttering through the darkness of his bedroom)

The first time you said his name to him, you took the stars out of his chest and put them back in the sky.

“The party’s back there, big guy.” Your footsteps on the rocks covering the beach sound like a rough game of marbles. He doesn’t respond when you stop next to him, your cup filled with something sweet but with enough alcohol for him to smell. His hand hanging next to you twitches and he shoves it in his pocket.

“Want a hit?” Bakugou glances towards you, curious of what you’re offering him– he’s greeted with a smile and a palm full of flat rocks. You laugh at the face he makes and drop a couple of the stones in his pocket, still warm from your hands but cooler than his fingers. “Looked like you were bored,” you say to the air.

He watches as you skip rocks on the water, the reflection of the setting sun rippling with every skim. The cicadas are loud and so is the party, but he can hear each bounce the rock makes along the water as well as the final drop. “Not bored,” he finally replies, “Just needed to think for a second.”

Your hand stops before you throw the next stone, “Ah, what are you thinking about?”

You gaze up at him while you slide the one in your hand into his, nudging him to toss it. He feels like there’s rocks on his tongue. Should he say you?

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Bakugou brings his hand out of his pocket, holding the small flat rocks. “Don’t know how to skip these tiny fuckin’ things.”

You frown and look at his hand and he tries not to snicker at your confusion, “For real?”

He knows how to skip rocks, he spends every other weekend that he can in some mountain range. “Too busy being the best hero.” You roll your eyes at him and grab most of the rocks out of his hand, leaving just one. Your smaller hands brush along his and Bakugou has to actively not grab yours and just hold them. You wrap his fingers around the final stone, remnants of stars reigniting where your skin meets his. Then you pose in front of him. He stares at you.

Your face turns to one of mild anguish and that’s when he starts snickering. “Bakugou, you’ve gotta at least try! I’m trying to show you the proper form,” you groan.

“Alright, alright.” Bakugou matches your stance with the traces of his laughter still on his face, rearing his arm back when you do. “One more thing.” Your hand falters in the air and he reaches back even more. He flips the rock around in his hand, staring at the darkened sky through the water. “Katsuki,” he says when the rock feels comfortable in his hand, a little wet from his sweat.

“Oh?”

He tosses the rock over the top of the water, the bottom almost looking like it’s floating, “Yeah.”

“Cool,” you whisper. “Katsuki.”

The stone breaks the surface and the sun has fully set. The ripples push waves through the night sky, “Katsuki,” and the final drop through the stars.

#Bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugo x reader #matcha writes #bakugou katsuki #bakugo #bakugou fluff #not edited #fav.w

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garbage-eater144 · 3 years

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THE WARFSTACE AUTOMATED INTERVIEW CAPTIONS

i was chattin in the discord and some people said it was tough to understand some bits, obviouslt this is made by a fan (me) so it might have a couple errors here and there but ive checked through it quite a few times and it seems about as right as i can get it.

so !!SPOILERS AHEAD!! also @markiplier feel free to correct me if you see this thank u <3 The warfstache automated interview

Starting video captions

[Wilford] Well, that’s terrifying… one moment!

{mechanical whirring}

[Wilford] (frightened sound) marginally better… er worse… better? Worse. It’s much worse.

{mechanical whirring}

[Wilford] Ah! there we are. Welcome, pretend I remembered your name here, this is a pre-recorded message anyway, I would NOT want to be in the same building as that thing I tell you me. Anyway, thank you whoever you are for agreeing to test out the Warfstache automated interview automaton, or {yelling} WAIA for short. Let’s start off with some quick calibration. All you need to do is sit back, relax and listen for some numbers. Okay? Here we go.

[WAIA]- (phone dialing, dialup tone, windows error sound)

[WAIA]- (scary mechanical garbled noises, followed by a ding and celebratory trumpets.)

[wilford]- now what did you hear? Numbers? Good numbers. Keep in mind I have no idea what youre going to say due to the fact that, as I said before, this message is pre-recorded. But if you did hear something, now would be the time to speak up.

[wilford]- don’t be shy, I’m sure nothing bad will happen. I don’t know what you’re going to say but if it does happen it will happen and if it doesn’t happen it wont happen. Thats how deterministic reality works.

I Think I Heard Numbers!

[wilford] Thats great! Or bad, not really sure what you said, but I choose to remain positive and assume that you are still alive. which means our automated friend here is operating well within acceptable murder parameters. We’re one step closer to mass production! THE WORLD DEMANDS MORE INTERVIEWS! And I cant be everywhere at once all the time, only some of the time! Even you might land an interview some day! Maybe, probably not, depends on how these next few minutes go. On to the next test! Word association! The fundamental basis of any good interview is getting the goods out of those stubborn interview-ees. The WAIA will say a word and you just say back the first thing that pops into your little head! Simple! Right? probably. Good luck!

{mechanical whirring}

[WAIA]- initializing word association training protocol round 1

{scary mechanincal noises} [WAIA]- Please respond. [WAIA] Sorry, I didnt get that. Round 2. {yet more scary mechanical noise}

[WAIA]- please respond.

[WAIA]- response unclear, increasing aggression

{clicking and mechanical sounds}

[WAIA]- round 3. {increasingly threatening mechanical noise} [WAIA]- Please respond.

[WAIA]-5 [WAIA]-4 [WAIA]-3 [WAIA]-2

Sounded like nightmare garbage to me…

[WAIA]- {mechanical ah?} {clicking}

[Wilford]- oh I forgot to mention, please do not say the word nightmare, or uh garbage, or nightmare garbage, or any combination of those words, the WAIA is just a little bit sensitive Yknow, a little touchy feely. Well not really touchy feely.. we-well actually REALLY touchy feely depending on your definition of touch and feely. Its really gonna-

[WAIA]- {jumpscare sounds} [WAIA] I. tell. you. me.

But you didn’t say anything…

[WAIA]- 1

[WAIA]-response unclear. Increasing aggression.

{ding sound effect} [WAIA]- {jumpscare noise}

[WAIA]- it. was. an. accident.

Uh… potato salad?

[WAIA]- 1

[WAIA]- response accepted

{ding followed by triumphant trumpets}

[WAIA]- word association raining protocol compl-{mechanical freakout eeeeeete}

[Wilford]- most dearest next of kin, I regret to inform you, that your dearly beloved and/or most despised has regrettably but not unexpectedly become recently deceased in the line of duty. Be confident in the knowledge that their demise was just as likely to be quick and painless as it was slow and agonizing. Please do not respond to this voicemail as the number has already been disconnected. {clears throat} alright that should do it for the… death scenario, now onto ah, er, uh, the survivors {mumbling}. Wow! Potato salad. A real thinker, you. But the test has been passed with flying colors and you’re still alive! And speaking of flying colors, our next test is about something called, uh… synthetic linguistics? That sounds made up. but the point is you cant have a good interview is the WAIA isn’t able to conjure up the right words in the right situations. So our friend is going to fire off some random words and you just try to spot anything that doesn’t make any sense. Alright? Although, pretty much everything isn’t going to make sense because its all random words….. errrr I BELIEVE IN YOU!!! {mechanical sounds}

[WAIA]- initializing speech training protocol round 1.

[WAIA]- yes. no. maybe. left. right. Up. down. D o w n. B a s e m e n t.

{windows error tone} [WAIA]- Rewrite Detected {tape rewinding sound}

[WAIA]- who. Where. what. Am. i.

{windows error tone}

{tape rewinding sound}

[WAIA]- green. blue. Yellow. pink. Red.

{scary mechanical noise}

[WAIA]- I saw you die

[WAIA]-{error, but garbled and mechanical}

[WAIA]- {with a different voice} potato salad

[WAIA]- speech training protocol complete

{mechanical noises}

[Wilford]- so how’d it go?? Did you hear anything weird? Dont be shy, or do, or are- are you alive? Are they alive?

[wilford]- I didnt kill them! I dont know if theyre dead! im just asking!!! Cant a man ask if someones alive or dead?!?! {frustrated ugh}

Yeah, I’m dead.

[Wilford]- hellooooo are you alive down there? Give me a sign… through the multiverse!!! Ah why am I even bothering, but how can I tell if you’re dead… hmmm ah…. I’ll flip a coin! I’ll flip a coin..

{coin flip sounds} [Wilford]- ah! Its heads I didn’t call it in the air… what’s heads mean.. ahhh uhhh heads is dead? [WAIA]-{jumscare noises}

[WAIA]- theres. still. time.

He said… potato salad?

[Wilford]- huh, potato salad again. That’s weird, it must’ve really stuck in his head when you first said that, I’m guessing. I don’t know what you said before because as I said, this is {sing-songy} pre- recorded! [WAIA] {mechanical aaaa}

[wilford] er, well I think thats all the calibration that needs to be done… for now anyway. All systems are likely nominal at this point unless im speaking to a pile of quivering meat thats been robotically smooshed into the floor… either way we’re gonna take this bad boy for a spin with a full on interview! A mock interview mind you, don’t get too excited, it’s not real. But theres no reason to wait around for the WAIA to get bored so let’s keep it nice and limber while you sit back and get ready for the interview of your life! And maybe the last one too. Have fun!!

{mechanical clicking and whirring}

{newsroom music} [WAIA]- good evening ladies and gentle men and all other considerations of being. My name is wilford warfstache and my guest tonight is {spooky robot sound} we have a great show for you tonight. first question: how many people have you killed? [WAIA]- good answer! Second question:

{robot sounds}

[WAIA]- a man goes to a party. This man met an old friend. There, two friends shared some wine. The two friends played a game. The most dangerous game. I didn’t know the gun was loaded. I didn’t know. Was it my fault?

YES

[WAIA]- ah, sorry for everything that I’ve done. I don’t remember who I was, I wish I did. But, I am sorry.

[WAIA]- potato salad

{triumphant trumpets}

[WAIA]- great answer! That was a titiliting interview for sure but we are out of time. Thank you for joining me tonight. Say ing good bye

[wilford]- oh the emotions! The passion! The fuuury. He’s just like me! My sweet baby boy! Well he should be anyway, hes a perfect scan of my noggin, so he better be a chip off the ol block. Hey you! Oh-ho What a supporting role!! Fantastic I guess. So much that you’re alive, but I am grateful whether you’ve been torn to shreds or are merely drowning in your own tears! Magnificent! And now that testing is done we can finally bring this monstrosity to the main stage! Im sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of the WAIA soon. Very very soon. Now get out~ and I’m billing you for any blood you got on my robot! Have a nice day! Ta-ta.

{mechanical clicking}

[WAIA]- you can’t change the past, you can tell all the stories you want to tell, it wont change what happened. You cant re-light the past. if you live in fantasy forever, you’ll lose yourself in the story.

[WAIA]- potato salad

{triumphant trumpets}

[WAIA]- great answer! That was a titiliting interview for sure but we are out of time. Thank you for joining me tonight. Say ing good bye

[wilford]- oh the emotions! The passion! The fuuury. He’s just like me! My sweet baby boy! Well he should be anyway, hes a perfect scan of my noggin, so he better be a chip off the ol block. Hey you! Oh-ho What a supporting role!! Fantastic, I guess. So much that you’re alive, but I am grateful whether you’ve been torn to shreds or are merely drowning in your own tears! Magnificent! And now that testing is done we can finally bring this monstrosity to the main stage! Im sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of the WAIA soon. Very very soon. Now get out~ and I’m billing you for any blood you got on my robot! Have a nice day! Ta-ta.

{mechanical clicking}

#markiplier #markiplier egos #a heist with markiplier #wkm wilford #who killed markiplier #waia spoilers #waia #wilford motherloving warfstache #markiplier lore #captions #sorry if there are any mistakes here everybody like i said i am just some guy

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bangtanloverboys · 4 years

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sweet sugar // ksj

summary - losing your virginity to a sugar daddy wasn’t how you imagined your first time playing out, but you’re ready and willing to do it. thing is you don’t know how to break it to your sugar daddy that you’re a virgin

pairing - sugar daddy!seokjin x virgin male!reader

genre - smut; sugar daddy au

word count - 4.4k

warnings - age gap (both are over the age of consent), virgin/inexperienced!reader, top!seokjin, bottom!reader, sub!reader, loss of virginity, dom!seokjin, throat fucking, sir kink, ass eating, anal sex (duh), anal fingering, overstimulation, dirty talk, passing out after sex, big coin flip tho now it’s very soft sex, very vanilla

author’s note - i want more gay stuff so here we go

You couldn’t believe you were doing this. Yet here you were, practically shaking in your shoes as you stared at the busy building. Taking a deep breath, you moved one foot in front of the other and pushed open the door to the hotel.

While being a sugar baby wasn’t that bad of an idea, you quite enjoyed getting paid for your company. You did however put off having sex with your sugar daddy because you were practically a virgin, having never really had sex before (unless you count a really bad handjob given to you by a girl when you were very very confused). It wasn’t like you did it on purpose. Being 23 years old and still a virgin, you just never got around to it. Getting paid wasn’t the way you saw yourself losing it, but here you are.

Thing is you were doing pretty okay up until a few months ago. You got laid off on your job, your landlady sold the building so your rent was going to increase, then on top of all that with the incoming semester you needed a way to pay for your classes. Struggling to make ends meet, you signed up for a sugar baby website. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of crusty old guys on the site but to your surprise quite a handful of quite handsome and successful men that definitely caught your eye. Min Suga, Vante, to name a few but they didn’t seem like good possibilities for you as one wanted a dominant partner (definitely not you) and the other had a thing for feet (a hard pass, no matter how much you needed cash). You were about to give up when you came across him.

The cool air of the hotel washed over you as you entered the upscale building. Tightly gripping onto your overnight bag, You glanced around the lobby, looking for the man who’s been keeping you afloat. You spotted him sitting in a love seat, flipping through some tech magazine. Stopping right beside him, you cleared your throat to catch his attention. He looked up at you and you still couldn’t believe that he was real. He had dark hair that was pushed back, exposing his forehead; beautiful plump lips that you had your mind spinning for days.

Kim Seokjin, your sugar daddy.

He contacted you first, saying he was interested in you and wanted to get to know you. You met a few times, just talking and getting to know each other before officially entering an agreement. He’d given you an allowance, and a little something extra for each time you went on an event with him as a plus one. There were however some guidelines: you couldn’t have sex with anyone, keep a healthy and balanced diet, and to be honest with him.

Seokjin mentioned a few times that while sex wasn’t a requirment for your arrangment, it would be a little extra sugar on top of your company. At first he gave you the option to decide whether or not to say no and to your surprise, you said yes. You didn’t have any expectations of how your first time would go down, sex was sex.

The honesty rule you did a bit twist because you still have yet to tell him of your virginity. And you were nervous, how do you tell the sugar daddy that wants to pay you for sex that you have no experience in the bedroom? If you did tell him, what would be his reaction? Would he be mad? Would he want to call off the agreement all together? So you twisted it a bit to easy your guilty conscience. It’s evading the truth, so unless he directly asks you about your virginity, you don’t have to tell him.

Tonight however, was the night he had asked you to meet him at a hotel. You asked for what and he responded, to put it bluntly: “I want to fuck that goregous ass of yours now”. Swallowing any nerves you might have, you said yes and followed his instructions to prep yourself and for the night ahead.

Soon as Seokjin laid eyes on you, he let out a quick smile. Dropping the magazine onto the table as he stood up, “Y/N, pleasure to see you again.”

“I hope you weren’t waiting too long,” you scratched the back of your neck nervously.

“Nonsense,” he dismissed the notion as he picked up a suitcase from the chair next to him. “I checked us in a few minutes ago, so it wasn’t much. Please, follow me.” With that he swiftly led you over to the elevator. It wasn’t long before the doors opened up, the two of you alongside a handful of other guests filed into the small space. Everyone pressed their floor, including Seokjin who pressed the button to the second highest floor, and the ascension began.

Your heart was pounding against your chest as you stood next to him. He kept his eyes trained in front of him, not looking at you as you stole quick glances at him. As the numbers climbed higher, the elevator got less and less crowded. About a few floors away from your stop, you felt a large hand rest on your bum. Your eyes darted to the man beside you and you saw a small smirk on his lips. The last of the people exited the floor right below yours and he gave your ass a quick squeeze as the doors closed and the lift went up the next floor.

You felt all the heat rush to your face as the doors opened and he removed his hand and led you down the hallway towards the room you’ll be staying in. You waited behind him quietly as he pulled out the keycard and opened the door, revealing a very fancy suite. Walking into the room, he sets his suitcase on the desk before turning to you.

“I’ll ask you one last time officially if you’d like to stop here,” he started, “you have the right to say no or stop at any point afterwards. But I wanted to make this clear.”

“I want this.” You said as you watched the smirk appear on his lips once again.

“Good. Are you familiar with the color system?” He asked as he turned to face his case, opening it.

“Green is good, yellow is move on, red is stop.” You recited, knowing this was a common practice.

“Excellent,” he nodded as he messed around with the contents of his case, pulling out a bottle of lube. “You followed my instructions from earlier for prep?”

“Hmm,” you nodded.

“I need words, Y/N.” His tone of voice was stern, commanding. You weren’t going to lie, it made your knees a bit weak.

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir.” He turned to face you, a brow raised.

“Yes, sir.” You repeated, the heat returning to your face and ears as he approached you, putting a hand on your cheek.

“Good boy,” he said as you leaned into his touch. He removed his hand then made his way over to the bed, sitting down facing you. “Now, be a good boy and strip for me.”

You felt very small under his hard gaze, but taking a breath, you started to remove your clothes, one by one. Seokjin palmed himself as he watched you, the sight before you had all the blood rushing to your cock and hardening as you removed your clothes.

Once completely naked, he patted his thighs. “Come sit on my lap.” He ordered, you nodded with a ‘yes, sir’ and quickly seated yourself on him. The feeling of his fine clothes against your bare skin sent shivers down your spine. He placed one hand at the back of your neck and pulled you closer. You closed your eyes in anticipation, but he paused before your lips brushed against his. His other hand slid down your front, resting on the base of you. “Your hard already? What’ve you been thinking about?” His breath fanned against your mouth.

“Y-you, sir.” You managed out, holding back from bucking into his hand.

“Oh, have you? What do you imagine I’m doing?” His plump lips moving away from your mouth and kissing down your jaw, nibbling at your flesh.

“Fuck- I- I imagine you fingering me, filling me up.” The confession flooded out, you’ll admit you’ve dreamed this happening a few times but never did you actually imagine it actually happening.

“Really? What a dirty boy you are.” He ran his hand down your length, this time you couldn’t help yourself and let your hips rut against his hand. “Ah, no. Be a good boy and wait.” His hand found its way into your hair, tugging on it.

“Yes, sir.” You rasped out as Seokjin dragged his mouth along the length of your neck, all while squeezing your cock. The stimulation had you let out a breathy moan, that was quickly silenced by him finally kissing you. As you suspected, his lips were soft as they moved against yours, but there was an underlying roughness to it all. A quick flick of his wrist and you were gasping into his mouth, taking the opportunity to slip his tongue in.

As quick as the kiss was, he pulled away, causing you to frown. You leaned forward to kiss him again but he pulled away. “Nuh uh,” he teased. “I’ve played nice long enough.” You watch as his eyes darken. “Get on your knees, dirty boy.”

The order has you stiffening, but you slowly slide off his lap and onto the floor. His legs spread open before you, with shaking hands you went to his belt and started to undo his pants. If he sensed your nervousness, he didn’t say anything. Pants undone, you started to drag his slacks down, his erection being freed of it’s confinements and you stop around his thighs.

You took a moment to stare at his dick for a moment and you swear to god it’s the prettiest dick you’ve ever seen. It almost makes you feel slightest bit jealous about your own, but you push that thought aside as you bring your hand to trace along his veins. He shuddered above you and that had your cock twitching. You gave him light touches as you admired it until his hand clamped around your wrist.

“Be a good boy and put it in your mouth,” he growled as he pulled away his hand and leaned back, waiting for you. You nod, bringing his tip to your lips as you wrap them around him, giving an experimental suck. Seokjin groans above you, his hand threading in your hair. “More.” He sighs and you let him push you down his length, you gag around him as he hits the back of your throat. Stabling your hands on his thighs, you just follow your gut instinct and start to bob your head. “Fuck.” He pulled your head back and motioned for you to get back on your knees. “I’m gonna fuck that pretty mouth of yours, you got that?”

“Yes, sir.” You nod as you lean back, and watch him remove the last of his clothing, tossing it elsewhere in the room. You’re stunned into silence as Seokjin stands before you, fully naked and you swear you might faint.

He chuckles above you as you look up at him. “Tap my thigh three times to stop, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy,” he praised as he held his cock in his hand, lightly hitting it against your lips. “Open.” He instructed, as you did such, he again hit the head of his dick against your muscle. You wrapped your lips around him once again, and waited for him to push into your mouth. His hands find purchase in your hair, keeping you still as he started to shallowly thrust into your mouth.

A million thoughts started to run through your head, were you doing this right? Was he enjoying it? Was there anything else you were supposed to be doing? You were so caught up in your head, you were forgetting to breathe and as he hit the back of your throat once again you started gagging. Tears in your eyes, you started to tap his thigh.

As promised, he immediately pulled himself from your mouth and got on the floor next to you as you coughed. He softly patted your back, soothing you and calming your body from what was happening.

“Color?” He asked once you stopped coughing.

“Yellow,” your voice was rough as you spoke, but still alright. You looked up to Seokjin, hoping what happened didn’t damper the mood or anything. He simply helped you back to your feet and guided you to the bed. You watched as he pulled a water bottle from the little hotel fridge and opened it, handing it to you. You took a few gulps of the water before handing it back to him where he placed it on the bedside table In the silence of the room and being naked, you felt strange and the urge to cover your body.

Seokjin sat down next to you. “You did good, do you want to continue or want to stop?” He asked, looking at you with concern.

“Continue, I’m okay.” You gave a nervous chuckle as he nodded.

He stood again and you watched as he resumed his role. You watched as he picked up the bottle of lube and placed it on the bed. “If you’re okay, on your hands and knees. Ass up.” He ordered and you quickly scrambled to the position, feeling completely exposed to him. You sat closed your eyes, trying to calm your heart that was trembling in anticipation.

Gently, you felt his hands rest on either side of your ass, spreading your cheeks. You groaned as you felt him start to pepper your back side with kisses. Slowly but surely, he started ghosting over your rim. He licked a broad stripe over your hole, causing a moan to erupt from your throat again. You swear you could feel him smirk against your ass as he started to eat you out.

“Hnnghh f-fuck!” You keened as pleasure started to build up in your gut.

“You like that, huh? You like that little boy?” Seokjin taunted as he playfully bit the flesh of your ass.

“Fuc-k yes!” You managed to get out, fists closing around the covers.

A loud smack echoed in the room, heat flooded on your thigh. “Yes, what?” He barked.

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir, it feels- sooo good.” You whined as he muttered something you couldn’t hear as he continued to lick and probe at your hole. With each stroke, you felt your cock getting harder and harder, boarding on painful as it continued to be neglected. While he didn’t order you to not touch yourself, you wanted nothing more than to jerk yourself off, finally reaching the euphoric bliss. But seeing how he reacted to you not calling him sir, you knew to keep your hands forward.

Seokjin pulled away from you, blowing lightly at your wet hole. You mewled at the action, but as you realized he was pulling away from you, you started to pout.

“Aww, you a needy boy? Don’t worry, I won’t be gone for long.” You heard him speak as he opened something, you turned to look over your shoulder to see him opening the bottle of lube. He started applying some to his fingers when he noticed your starring. “Eyes front!”

“Sorry, sir!” You quipped as you moved your head to face in front of you again.

“Mmm, normally I’d punish you for such behavior. But seeing how it’s only the first time,” you freeze, but then realize he was talking about you together, “I’ll let it slide.” He chuckled as his fingers started to press against your rim, his first finger slipped in no problem. You moaned as his finger started to slowly move in and out of you, occasionally pushing at your sides to stretch you out. The burn of the stretching hurt at first, but as Seokjin continued, the pain slowly morphed into pleasure. “You ready for me? Huh, are you ready for my cock, little boy?”

“Yes! Yes, sir. I’m ready for your cock, please please please give me your cock.” You practically sob out, wanting nothing more than to finally have him inside you. He chuckled behind you, as he pulled his fingers away and you heard the familiar click of the lube bottle.

“Look at me,” Seokjin called to you. You turned to look him in the eyes. “Are you ready? Do you still want this?”

“Yes,” You nod. With your consent, he pressed his tip into your hole and inch by inch started filling you up. Simultaneously, you both let out groans as he fully sheathed himself inside you. “So . .big. . fuck- sir!”

“Fuck, your so tight.” He groaned as he started to pull back out and thrust back in. “Fu-ck!” He quickly found a pace, fucking you as you held onto the covers so tightly your knuckles turned white.

As Seokjin thrust feverently into you, you could feel the pleasure start to build up again in your gut. Nothing ever compared to the amount of pleasure coursing through your veins as you felt yourself get closer and closer.

“Fuck, sir, I’m-I’m close!” You gasped out. Soon as the words left your mouth, he started to piston his hips faster into you, hitting you deeper and deeper. He leaned forward, wrapping his hand around your neglected cock, running his hand up and down, faster and faster.

“You’ve been such a good boy, come for me.” He praised you as he continued to fuck you into the bed.

With that said, your gut tightened and your vision went white, your cum spilling all over the bed. You cried out as Seokjin continued to thrust into you, chasing his own high. Unfamiliar with the feeling of him continuing to use you as his own fucktoy, you started twitching and crying, overwhelmed with stimulation. Tears threatened to spill as he pounded into your ass relentlessly. You don’t know how much longer he continued to fuck you but soon as you felt him come inside you, painting your insides white, you felt your eyes roll into the back of your head.

The next thing you know something wet is being pressed to your forehead. Groaning softly, you open your eyes to see a concerned Seokjin above you, wet towel in hand.

“Hey, you okay?” He asked as he pulled the towel away from you.

“Hmm, what happened?” You muttered as you looked at him.

“Well, uh,” he wet his lips, trying to hold back a smile. “You passed out.”

“I what?!” You sat up quickly, your eyes practically bulging out of your skull. Did you really do that?

“Hey hey, it’s fine.” He placed his hands on your shoulders, holding you still. “You were only out for a few minutes, are you okay though?”

“I’m good,” you nodded. “A little sore, but it’s all good.” You chuckled, trying to keep calm at the fact that you fainted after having sex for the first time ever.

“That’s good,” he responded, a smile pulling on his lips. “I’ll admit, that was a first for me. Having someone faint.” He chuckled.

“Yeah. . me too. . .” You returned the laugh.

“You passing out like that isn’t a regular occurrence then?” He quipped, raising a brow at you.

Fuck. Quick think of something to change the topic! “I uh, wouldn’t know-” Fuck, don’t confess!

Seokjin’s eyes were laced with worry at your disclosure. “What do you mean by that?”

“I uh, it’s nothing.” You wave your hand, trying to dismiss the question.

His hand clamped against your wrist and you locked eyes with him. “Y/N, be honest with me.” His was stern, the gaze alone had anxiety bubbling up in your stomach.

“That. . was my first time. . .” You broke eye contact, looking away from him, not wanting to see his reaction. You wanted the ground to consume you right then and there, ending your embarrassment.

“That. . .” You heard him start, “was your first time ever having sex?” Squeezing your eyes shut, you gave a singular nod. “Why didn’t you tell me?! I would’ve taken a completely different route! I would’ve done more to make you feel comfortable-”

“Seokjin!” You cut him off, taking his hands in yours. His ramblings set your nerves on fire. “It’s alright. I liked it.”

He pulled his hand from yours and cupped your cheek. “Please allow me to make it up to you.”

If there was a heaven, you swear you died and went to it by now. “Okay. . .sir!” you quickly tagged the title on at the end.

“Shhh, no sir now.” He whispered as he brought your face to his. “It’s just Seokjin right now.” With that said, he presses his lips to yours in a soft kiss. Moving slowly, taking his time with you. With his other hand, he led you to lean back down on the bed, your head landing amongst the pillows. His hand traces down your side as he movies to climb on top of you, not ever breaking the kiss. Hand on your thigh, he gave you a quick squeeze, causing you to gasp. Taking the moment to move his tongue past your lips and to explore your mouth. Groaning into the kiss, your hands go to his head, pulling on his silky dark locks.

He pulls away from you, his eyes dark with lust as his hair hangs around him. You must be making a face because he’s smirking down at you. He moves to press kisses down your throat and chest, the sight alone had your blood rushing down once again to your dick. You know Seokjin could feel you harden against him, judging by how you could practically feel him smile as he kisses down your chest.

“God, fuck!” You moaned as he pressed another kiss to your pubic bone.

“That feel good, hmm?” He asked as he looked at you. “You want me to suck you off? You did so well for me earlier, let me treat you even better.”

“Please please please, yes.” You begged as he finally took your length in his hand and gave you an experimental pump, whimpers erupting from your throat. He finally wrapped his lips around your tip, swirling your pre-cum around with his tongue. Whatever words left your mouth were incomprehensible as he took more and more of you into his mouth. His hand moved to play with your balls, giving them a playful squeeze. He prepared for your reaction as you were about to buck into his mouth but he kept his free hand firmly planted on your stomach, keeping you still.

His hand slid further down, back to your abused hole. It was now that you suddenly became very aware of the fact you were leaking cum onto the bed. Seokjin didn’t seem to mind because he just slid his finger back into you. Whimpers emitted from your throat as he pumped his finger in and out of you. Obscene squelching noises filled the room, causing heat to rise to your cheeks once again as you realize that was you and your noise.

“Fuck,” he moaned as he pulled away from you. “The sounds you make are driving me wild, baby.” He peppered kisses over the tops of your thighs. He managed to slip another finger into your hole, opening you up again no problem. “Are you ready again, huh?”

“Yes, please.” You whined as he pulled away, grabbing the bottle of lube once again. You watched as he squirted a good amount onto his fingers, getting his cock ready. He watched you with dark eyes as his fist went up and down his length.

Seokjin pulled your legs apart, settling in between them, his slick member prodding at your entrance. Slowly by surely, he started to push back into you, this time with a lot more ease as you were already spent out. But you wanted this. You wanted him. He repeated the shallow thrusts again, each time hitting everything just right.

“Hnngh fuck, please harder.” You pleaded, wanting to go faster.

“Shh, soon baby. Soon.” He whispered as he captured your lips with his again with a kiss, swallowing any noises you make. As promised, he started to pick up speed again, not as hard as before though. When he pulls away, he gages your each and every reaction, watching you as you squirm in pleasure.

Impatient now, you wrapped your legs around his waist, forcing him deeper into you. Groaning against your neck, he nipped at your neck, a playful punishment for your behavior. He got the message to go faster, positioning his hips to fuck you harder and deeper once again. His hand once again moved to your cock, squeezing the base of it.

“Come on baby, you can do it. Come for me.” His breath was hot against your ear.

A few more thrusts and you were coming all over yourself, painting your chest white. Seokjin followed soon after, filling up your ass with his seed once again. He pulled you in with another sloppy kiss, teeth clashing against one another as he collapsed on top of you.

“That’s how it should’ve gone.”

You bark out a laugh at that. “That was so cheesy, oh my god.” Rolling your eyes at him.

He just chuckled as he sat up, pulling out of you. “Let me get another towel, clean us up.” You watched him as he walked away from the bed and towards the bathroom. He was back in a few minutes, him already wiped clean. You watched him as he diligently cleaned up all of your’s and his cum from your chest and your spent hole. Once all cleaned up, he tossed the towel somewhere else in the room. “Are you doing alright now?”

“Yes, thank you.” You gave him a small smile as he nodded and started to pull back the covers. Tossing away the cum soaked top cover. He settled himself next to you, you tried to give him some space but your lower half was so sore you could barely move. He merely chuckled at you as he wrapped and arm around you and brought you close to him.

“Remind me to give you a little something extra tomorrow morning,” He sighed as he closed his eyes.

“Seokjin-”

“Don’t refuse me, Y/N. Consider it an extra bonus, for letting me be your first time.” He cracked open an eye at you, making sure you don’t fight back.

“Yes, sir.”

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venushasvixens · 3 years

Text

Ch. 4 Back to Beginnings -Life is But a Dream (Spike Spiegel x Reader)

WARNING: mild sexual content

The cool air that snuck its way between the buildings blew into you harshly. You placed your hand over your mouth, silencing yourself. You clenched your jaws to keep yourself from chattering, afraid that every little thing was going to give your position away. Whoever you were chasing should've been hiding from you, not from them.

You could hear running in the distance against the pavement, echoing in the alley. It grew closer and closer. Your heartbeat was in your throat, threatening to jump out. You could feel the soft pulse through your fingertips. You couldn't tell if it was from the cold, or from the adrenaline. Was it a bad time to admit you needed to pee?

You were a horrible bounty hunter. You were too loud, you were clumsy with your gun, and body is just far too slow to give chase. Matter of fact, you looked rather ridiculous. But then again, everybody has to start somewhere, right?

Home was far away from here, across the solar system. And as much as you were homesick, fuel for your small, dingy ship cost money, and that was something that you did not possessed at the moment. Not one single woolong. Maybe a few coins and a token from the local arcade. You needed this bounty, and you needed it now.

The running grew louder and louder, the noise filling the alley. You squeezed the handle of your gun, afraid that your it was going to slip. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped. You never really prayed before, but maybe you should start now. One step echoed in the alley. Then another. And then another. Each one growing louder than the next.

You placed your finger on the trigger gently, your hand surprisingly steady. You could see the outline of the woman that was now hunting you, her silhoutte growing bigger and bigger. Even though you were in the shadows of the alley, you definitely were sure that she could see you in the dark clear as day. Then she stopped, maybe a few feet in front of you. In an attempt to scare you, maybe elicit a reaction from you, she flipped out the barrel of her gun, spinning it, and popping it back in, over and over.

"You're sure one shitty bounty hunter." she spoke. You could hear the smile in her voice, one of the last insults in your short life. You could also hear the age as well, scratchy and hoarse. "But what I will let you keep for the next minute is the smallest bit of nerve for trying to take me out."

"You have nerve now to assume that I'll accept that." you blurted out without thinking. It may have been stupid, but do you have all the time in the world now to think it over?

She scoffed. " Oh, please. You're the one thinking that I'll give up myself that easily. And to a little girl with a gun."

You swallowed. "You're not wrong, but I might surprise you."

"Hiding in an alley waiting for the enemy to come to her? Yes, that is very surprising." she cackled, her hair flaying everywhere in the wind. Her arms outstretched, like a villain who just told the hero their heinous plan to take over the world. The dramatics certainly didn't work on you, but you sure thought it was funny.

You start laughing as you got up and dusted yourself off. Not in a mocking tone, or in a conniving way. It was totally genuine. She noticed this, and immediately stopped laughing.

"What"s so goddamn funny?" she ran up on you, her faces inches away from yours. You continued laughing, your head down. "Tell me, or I'll blow your fucking brains out!"

She stuck her gun underneath your chin, snarling and hurling threats at you. This still didn't stop your hysterics. "I-i think.." you couldn't even finish this sentence without a chuckle or too. "I-i honestly think.."

"You think? Spit. It. Out." she growled.

You smiled. "I think.. you are sure one shitty criminal. Your barrel's been empty since your laughing fit a minute ago."

Her face went blank as she looked at her gun, the barrel unloaded.

"Also all your bullets are on the ground behind you." You stated, your mouth into a fine line. She back up, accidentally stepping on few of the bullets. Her legs flew up, landing on her back. You could hear her start wincing and groaning.

"Seriously, how old is your gun?" You snatched her gun out of her hands, inspecting it. At a first glance, it could've been mistaken for a prop gun in an spaghetti western movie. "Wow, this is older than you. And you're ancient."

"Its my lucky gun. Its been with me since I first started in the game." She muttered. She struggled to pick herself up, but before she could, you swiped underneath her knees. She buckled down, stunned.

"I don't think I can let you off that easy. After all, I'm just a little girl with a gun, I don't know what I'm doing." You shrugged.

You aimed your gun at her leg and fired, the shot echoing. Your bounty gasped in shock, then started wailing in agonizing pain. Clutching her leg, she cried out. "Are you fucking insane?!"

"No, I'm just tired." You sighed. "Alright, let's pack it up, John Wayne."

As you finished the story, Spike and Jet could not stop laughing. It wasn't that funny. But with at least with five shots in, it was hilarious.

"John Wayne?!" Jet choked out, clutching his chest.

"I'm not kidding."You smiled. "I thought I was a total badass."

As you all tried to catch your breath, Spike waved over another round of shots. Jet noticed this, and put his hands up.

"No more, Spike." he said, yawning and stretching. "I think its time we hit the hay."

"Oh come on, Jet. At least stay for one more round." you lied, secretly wanting Jet to leave so you could have Spike all to yourself. It felt so odd, wanting someone you barely knew near you. Before today's events, you caught yourself multiple times delving into fantasies where you were confessing your love and affection to this mysterious man, and him returning just as much. He would place his hands on either sides of your face, stroking your cheek with his thumb. His eyes looking into yours, And then, that classic fairy tale moment would come. A sweet, soft tender kiss, and the flying off into the sunset. Then you realize that you were just creating a version of him that you wanted, and that he probably wasn't thinking of you at all.

And then there was moments where your mind wanders off, and you begin to think of all the ways he could absolutely destroy you. Emotionally and physically, but mainly physically. You imagined the way he would pin you against the wall, cornering you in. Trailing his lips against your neck, biting and kissing that sensitive spot that made you go crazy. He would grab your hair, pulling your head back to face him. It wouldn't be harshly, but that he had full control of you. Spike would crash his lips against yours, desperately and passionately, like it was the last time he would ever kiss someone.

Moaning and whining for more, you would try to snake your wrists from his grip to touch him. But he would keep you pinned down, only torturing you more.

"I don't think you deserve to touch me, " he would tease, pulling back from you. "Unless I hear you beg for it. Tell me how bad you want me to fuck you."

After that, you would put a lid on it for the moment. You would feel the immediate need to drink some water, and an even greater need to take a cold shower. Its not that you didn't want these thoughts, its just you didn't want them to intrude on your mind when you were conversing with THAT person. Who was now trying to get your attention because you were spacing off. You were spacing off so bad, you hadn't realized that Jet actually did leave, and it was just you and Spike.

"Hey," he said, waving his head in front of you, "you okay?"

You nodded, hoping that it wasn't obvious that you were thinking of Spike fucking you six ways to Sunday. "Yeah I'm good! Why you ask?"

"You were just staring at me like I was a piece of meat." he replied, lighting another cigarette.

"Well, I don't even like meat, so." you smirked, taking a sip from your drink.

He raised his eyebrows. "From what I saw earlier at dinner, I know that is a fucking lie."

You giggled, twirling the small stirring straw in your cup. A little tipsy, and more confident than you usually were, right now was the perfect time to flirt.

"I do like a sausage every now and then, but, "you shrugged, looking anywhere other than Spike. That was a little too bold. You looked back at Spike, who was just smirking away.

"I think I'll that hang in the air for just a minute." he replied.

"I'm sorry, it was just there. I had to." you chuckled.

You noticed the faintest bit of blush on Spike's face. It could've been from the amounts of drinks he had, or the teasing earlier. You were pretty sure that it was from the drinks. Little comments like those definitely didn't influence that one bit. Or did it?

"How longer on you planning on staying here?" Spike asked.

"Until I'm ready to go to bed, and I'm wired." you responded, a little discouraged if Spike was implying that it was time that all parties were going home.

"No, I mean staying here on the planet. I'll be here until next week." he said.

"Oh my bad." you replied, your face burning slightly in embarassment. "I think the same as you, until next week. "

"Ah, okay." Spike mumbled. He looked at the tabletop, you both sitting in complete silence. What he said next made your heart jump into your throat.

"I was just wondering if you maybe wanted to do this next week? Dinner and drinks?" He asked, finishing his cigarette. "Right before we leave, I mean."

As much as you wanted giggle like a school girl, you played it cool. "Mr. Spiegel, it sure does sounds like you're asking me on a date."

Spike leaned his head on his hand. "And what if I am?"

"I'd say yes. I need a little fun every now and then." you stated, mirroring Spike.

You both sat there in silence for a little bit. You wanted to say something else, but the silence was doing just right for now. Talking to someone was nice, but just enjoying another person's presence? That felt just right.

"Question?" you asked.

"Answer." Spike replied.

"What do you do for fun, besides drinking and being cool?" you smiled.

Spike chuckled. He sat there, thinking. "If you would like, I can show you." he finally said.

"Show me. I'll follow you wherever you go." you said, taking that last shot.

"Alright, follow my lead then." Spike said, getting up. He held his hand out to you. You took it, jumping out of the booth. You staggered backwards, but Spike wrapped his arm around your shoulders to steady you

"Easy there." he grinned. You were a little too tipsy to care about Spike touching you, but it was gladly welcomed with open arms.

"Let me show you were the real fun is."

The real fun was in a small jazz bar, with a single man on stage playing the sultry notes of a saxophone. You were prepared for anything, but you thought it was going to be a little bit more exciting than this. But if this is what Spike likes, then you will definitely respect that.

He sat next you, his arm on his knee, leaning his head in his hand. He looked mellowed out, a blank expression. You were watching him out of the corner of your eye, seeing if his face would change. But it didn't. He kind of looked bored. Hoping you weren't making him bored, you cleared your throat. That got his attention.

"Hmm?" he asked, his eyes still fixated on the saxophone player.

"How often do you come here?" you asked him.

He sighed, leaning back. "Man, I want to say every time I'm on Mars. I've been going to this place since I was younger. Its almost like a safe haven for me. Where do you think I get my good taste in music from?"

You nodded, chuckling. "I get that."

"Besides drinking and enjoying some good music," you continued, "what else do you like to do? I already told you my hobbies earlier at dinner, so I guess its your turn to spill."

Spike leaned backwards, hands interlocked in the back of his head. "My hobbies." he thought. "I want to say make money, eat, and go to sleep."

You smiled. "No, I'm serious. What do you like to do for fun?"

"I'm serious too. Now that I think about it, I want to add on watching TV and practicing some punches, so I'm not too rusty." he replied.

"Who do you practice punches on? Not on anyone on the Bebop, I hope." you said.

"If I could, I would. Some of them really do know how to push my buttons." he muttered, sticking a cigarette in his mouth, but not lighting it.

"I'm not pushing any buttons by interrogating you, am I?" you asked, leaning closer.

"Of course not. I'm just answering some questions for a curious cat." Spike winked at you.

Your heart felt like it was going to pop out of your chest, this man was so fucking fine. You bit down your lip, tapping your leg. You hope it wasn't too noticeable that Spike's flirting was taking a HUGE toll on you. You couldn't go back on to your thoughts from earlier, you can't right now. If you did, boy you were in for a treat back at your ship.

The silence this time was a little different, like something was off. You were expecting the conversation to bounce back, but it didn't. As much as you wanted to initiate talking, you felt like you could be talking too much. Spike was quiet, and he hadn't really changed positions for a hot minute. You now knew that when Spike got like this, he was thinking. His face would be expressionless, tapping his leg lazily, and just staring whatever direction he felt was necessary. During dinner, while you and Jet were talking, he would get quiet and travel off into his own little space. Now that it was you and Spike, you felt like you were intruding on something.

You turned your focus back onto the music. Coursing their way into your ears, the deep notes felt like they were pulsing in your body. You still couldn't get over the air between you and Spike. It felt a little somber.

"Hey," you said softly, touching his arm, "is everything okay?"

Spike looked at you, his eyes turned down a little. He looked right back at him, waiting on a response. His eyes traveled from your eyes, down to your lips, and then to the rest of you. Was he checking you out? His lips formed a soft smile.

"Yeah, I'm okay, " he said, "but besides that, did I ever tell you how nice you look tonight?"

As flattered as you were, you were still concerned over Spike. "No, but thank you. Spike, seriously, you seem off. You were just fine and chatty earlier, but your vibe is definitely off."

"I don't think we've been hanging out that much for you to see that." Spike shot back.

"Yes, but I kind of got a knack for reading people." you replied, crossing your arms. You were a little taken aback by his sudden hostility, but you really didn't know what was going through Spike's mind.

"If I said something that offended you, I-" you began, but Spike put his hand up to you. He shook his head, folding his hands together on his chin, placing his elbows on the table.

Conflicted with pushing until he tells you and just shutting up, you sat there. You began to distract yourself with thoughts of getting another drink, what you were going to do when this "date" was over.

"Alright, (y/n)," Spike spoke, his voice smooth, "do you want to know what's really bugging me?"

You hesitated, anxious that you awoken something that would surely make this the last date. You nodded, turning to face Spike.

"The past." he murmured, scooting closer to you.

"The past? Why?" you asked quietly.

"Why the past? Let's see." Spike stared into your eyes, his gaze unwavering. You looked back, but averted your eyes when you felt like you were overstepping. You already were overstepping with asking if he was okay, but there was something about eye contact that made you uncomfortable.

"I've had a long, long past (y/n). I've made many stupid mistakes. And even though I know they are all in the past, they keep finding ways to ruin my present. I guess you can say I'm torturing myself with being here, since this was such a big place to hang when I was in-" Spike stopped abruptly, clamping his mouth shut.

You nodded. "You don't have to say anything else. I understand." You gave him a small smile, placing your hand on his shoulder. Fuck comfort, you thought. Maybe it was just a human thing, to reach out to others when they're in pain, forgetting boundaries and anything that could hold back support.

He looked at the placement of your hand, then back at your face. It seemed like eternity that you were both like this. He returned the smile, a silent thank you in the air.

"Now I know that we already kind of drank a lot earlier, but how does another round sound?" you grinned.

Spike's face lit up. "You read my mind, (y/n)."

You stumbled your way out of the bar, clinging onto Spike as he led you out onto the street. You were a giggling, drunk mess. You weren't rowdy or anything when you drank, but you sure were the comedian. Spike sobered up a little earlier, so he was a bit straighter than you were right now.

"I would say, Spike," you slurred, "you sure are a pretty man."

"Oh thank you. Now lets get you back home." Spike replied, just holding onto you while you tried to walk without falling over.

"No no, you're not listening. Like you are really, really gorgeous. So gorgeous, you could put Valentine to shame." you laughed.

Spike chuckled. "Okay, I'll take that."

"Say thank you."

"No."

"Why?"

"Cause."

"Why?"

Spike sighed. Now you were getting a little annoying, but he didn't want to get rid of you for the night just yet. Even if you were drunk and acting a fool, your company was something he needed for a long, long time.

"Its a pretty night, don't you think, Spike?" you said, pointing out to the stars.

Spike looked up, amusing you. "Sure."

"No, say that it looks pretty. Or else you'll hurt her feelings." you smirked, giggling.

"Whose feelings?" Spike asked genuinely, because you were definitely talking out of your ass.

"I honestly don't know. But I do know that I'm tired as shit." you mumbled.

Spike was tired too, but for some reason, he didn't want the night to end just yet. You haven't noticed this, but Spike was walking around buildings to see if you would follow him and not the way home. And your dumbass just did that. It was actually kind of funny, but it was a joke only for Spike. For a brief moment, you walked completely normal, and then the spiral started again.

"Look miss, if you keep harassing me, I'm going to have to call the police on you, and I really don't want to do that." Spike teased, only adding more fuel to the fire.

"Ahh, no, please don't do that." you replied sarcastically, putting your hands up. "I've been a good girl, I promise." You half smiled at Spike, and continued staggering to the port where your ships were.

Spike place his hands in his pockets, trying his best not to reply to that last bit from you. But maybe he could let a little something slip.

"From what I've seen, you've been a bad girl." Spike taunted. "A very, very bad girl."

You turned around slowly, raising your eyebrows. Now it was your turn.

"And what are you going to do about it?" you asked, sauntering over to Spike.

"Give a guess." he said softly, his voice low and husky from the cigarette he just finished.

You moved in closer slowly, finding your balance. You looked up at him, boldly running your hands up his chest. Spike flinched from your touch, but melted into it. You ran it all the way from his chest to his shoulders, and finally up to his face. Placing both hands on either side of Spike's cheeks, you brought his face down to yours gently. The smell of alcohol and smoke filled your nostrils, tingling your senses.

You tilted your head, chuckling softly at how you had Spike wrapped around your finger at this moment. Spike closed the space between you both, taking into account how your hands framed his face so kindly, like you both have been doing this for forever.

"Mr. Spiegel," you began, smiling, "you're not going to do a goddamn-"

A loud blast burst through the air, scaring you enough to become completely sober. Orange flames and clouds of smoke could be seen from behind the buildings. Alarms from the surrounding structures sounded off, people yelling and asking each other what the commotion was.

"What the fuck?" you yelled as you watched the flames grow at a steady pace. You shielded your eyes, coughing.

"Its from the port!" a person shouted. "There was an explosion at the port!"

You and Spike looked at each other. Without thinking, you both bolted towards the chaotic scene. Every step brought more anxiety, not only for your ship, but for the Bebop. People ran around, to and from the port. You covered your mouth from the sudden inhalation of smoke, coughing more and more. As you came to a clearing, you could see the tumultuous scene before you.

Your ship was burning, engulfed in a blaze of violently whipping flames. You shielded your face from the heat of your destroyed home, backing into Spike.

"(y/n), we have to get away from here!" Spike shouted over the screams of panic surrounding you both. He wrapped his arms around you and started pulling you away, your feet dragging.

You began to hyperventilate, unintentionally filling your lungs with smoke. Either from shock or the smoke, your vision blurred, and finally, slipping to black.

AN: Thank you all for sticking around. With these last two months, I've lost two jobs and gained one where I'm finally in a good place, financially and mentally, so that's good. I want to push out more fics for characters listed on here and my tumblr (same username as my Wattpad). Once again, thank you guys so much for enjoying this fic, and please, stay safe.

#cowboy bebop #see you space cowboy #spike spiegel #spike spiegel x reader #Faye Valentine #Jet Black #radical edward #ein #90s anime #toonami #Adult Swim

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jooyeone · 3 years

Note

Namjoon has had nightmares before that start like this.

Dreams that start with an evening spent in the restaurant of a friend of a friend of Seokjin's, all crisp white table linens and ruby velvet swags on the windows and gilt-framed mirrors hung on every wall so there isn't a single blindspot in the entire dining room.

Dreams where he's full-belly lazy and hazy with wine, watching Hobi spin a lighter meditatively between his fingers, tiny flashes of silver and flame, flip, click, flip, click, rippling it through his hand like a coin trick.

Dreams where he's leaning back in a booth, watching Yoongi weave his way through the room from the back kitchen, arms reaching out from passing tables to press things into his palm – a slip of a paper with a dead man's name; a glassine envelope, contents unknown; a wad of bills folded tight and sweaty from the fist of a nervous corner boy tasked with putting on his funeral suit and sitting still and silent over a table of uneaten canapés until the Min Yoongi walks by – all disappearing into hidden pockets with that casual, practiced sleight of hand; now you see it, now you don't. Where he watches Yoongi watch him all the way across the dining room, that steady predator gaze, one caged thing to another. (It's the same way they've looked at each other for the better part of ten years, ever since they were double booked to find the same hole in a dangerous man's inventory.)

Dreams that twist, somewhere in the middle, until the Malbec stains on his cuff are blood, not wine, and Hobi's lighter slips from his hand and their table goes up in a wall of blue flame that reeks of fresh varnish, and the hands reach out in a single swarming mass that drags Yoongi down under the floorboards, under the ground, until the last thing Namjoon sees is the tip of one pale finger clawing at the carpet before it, too, vanishes.

Dreams that wake him with a full-body breathless jerk, like he's just been shot, or fallen from some great height; dreams that send him scrambling, half-asleep, hands numb and useless, for the switchblade held to his bedframe with hidden magnets.

Dreams just exactly like this, where he's watching Yoongi prowl through the sea of high-backed booths and white-draped tables, and then there's a pair of twin cracks as a gunshot shatters the air around him and its bullet splinters the mirror behind him.

There's a yelp from across the table and then a hard shove to his shoulder, quick and precise as a viper strike, that sends him careening out of the booth. In one earth-tilting moment, Namjoon finds himself facedown on the floor awash with silvery slivers of glass, adrenaline jangling up his spine to jolt at his brain, its sharp acid taste coating his tongue.

Two breaths, three breaths, four breaths, five, and then he starts to heave himself up, pulse thundering in his ears, wincing as tiny fragments of glass dig into his forearms and palms.

Six breaths, seven, and then there’s a hand yanking hard on the strap of his shoulder holster, and he’s being twisted over onto his back and Hobi is there, just an arm's length away, his sweet, open face creased with concern, pupils blown and eyes so wide that Namjoon can see white all the way around the irises. The hand on Namjoon's shoulder pins him down against the floor while the other skates blindly up and down his body, looking for injuries.

“I’m fine," he gasps, fumbling for Hobi's hand where it's pressed tight against his ribcage. "I’m good, it's fine, I'm fine.” Namjoon squeezes three of Hobi's fingers, then the heel of his hand, the bones of his wrist just above his watchband, and the cuff rolled neatly around his elbow. “Seriously, Hobi, 'm okay. I’m fine.”

And... he is, is the thing. Other than the spot where his elbow hit the floor with most of his bodyweight behind it, he's not hurt at all, just dazed.

Amidst the swell of screams and frenetic movement unfolding on all sides of them, Hobi stares down at him like he’s not sure whether or not Namjoon is full of shit. His mouth stays pressed into a tight, bloodless line, but after a long moment he must concur because he nods and rocks back on his haunches, fingers still hooked through Namjoon's holster. He doesn't let go even as Namjoon levers himself up into a sitting position, watches him all the way up to make sure he doesn't miss any little wince or tic that might cross Namjoon's features. There's visible relief in the droop of his shoulders and the way his jaw unclenches around a shaky huff when they're both finally upright and unharmed.

He's had dreams so exactly like this, only now there's dimensionality that dreams can never replicate – glass grinding under the knees of his suit pants, and his fingers wrapped around Hobi's elbow, so tight that Namjoon can feel his heartbeat pounding in the joint, and the tremor in Hobi's hand when he brushes the backs of his knuckles against Namjoon's cheek, light as anything.

And then he watches as Hobi's eyes catch on something over his left shoulder. Watches his jaw drop open into a scream that sounds like nothing Namjoon's ever heard before.

Thing is, he's known Hobi a long goddamn time, and Hobi is a screamer. So in the years that Namjoon has known him, has lived with him, he's heard Hobi scream well over a thousand times. In all sorts of scenarios; in delight, in terror; in amusement, and pleasure, and pain; screams that run the gamut from boisterous to reproachful.

Only he's never heard his hyung scream like this, not even in his nightmares; this reactive wordless shriek that sends Hobi up on his hands and knees, scrabbling through mirror shards to get to his feet.

And then Hobi is gone, legs a dark blur as he takes two, three, four long lunges before dropping down behind a table, out of Namjoon's sightline.

"What the fuck," Namjoon says, or thinks he says, or maybe shouts as he stumbles up to his feet. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck, rhythmic as the tide.

Two strides and he's around the table, dropping straight down onto his knees beside Hobi, not even fully aware of the movement, only the little crunch his kneecaps give in protest.

He's pretty sure his eyes aren't working.

Everything's gone fuzzy-bright and white – he's waking up, maybe – while next to him Hobi says his name, again and again and –

"Oh my god.”

"–Joon," Hobi is saying, and not for the first time, "Namjoon!"

For one more dizzying second, everything is blurred somewhere between his eyes and his brain, nothing registering quite right, and then his vision clicks back in, instant-clear, like his optometrist just dropped the right set of lenses on the phoropter.

Namjoon sucks in a breath that burns and aches, all sharp edges scraping down through his lungs, chest constricting fast and tight around a cold knot of dread.

Because Hobi is snapping his fingers right in front of Namjoon's eyes – or, trying to, only they keep slipping noiselessly apart because they're slick with blood.

With Yoongi's blood.

inspired by this fanart

#at this point i am literally begging the gods in the sky that you're an actual fic writer #i refuse to believe you would rob this fandom of your writing skills i truly. truly hope. you WRITE.#i know i normally write novel-length tags but this time i just want to beg you to either continue this EXCELLENT drabble with one or two or #or twenty more drabbles that you can leave right here in my inbox #or actually turn it into a full fic please please please PLEASE #please. PLEASE.#PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#i volunteer to beta read / to bring your coffee in the morning / to treat you to dinner anything you want #you have such a brilliant way of bringing characters to life and painting an atmosphere in such a vivid light #especially with this kind of prompt where you can FEEL the tension you can FEEL all of the action happening around namjoon #and the moment namjoon snaps back to reality #the confusion and the horror when the last scene unfolds #it's just all SO WELL DONE. SO WELL WRITTEN.#you're an INCREDIBLE writer please i truly hope you never let this go to waste #answered #anon #drabbles

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thepancakeboi · 4 years

Text

38. “Wow, you’re hot.”

When we had learned that one of the games in Sae’s Palace was a battle arena, I never would have guessed that I wouldn’t be participating. Unfortunately, the rules state that only one person can participate, and, as much as I hate to admit it, Joker’s versatility with his Personas makes him the best candidate. I can’t reveal my secrets now, can I? It would certainly be interesting to see how far I could go massacring my opponents alongside my Persona. That will have to wait for another day.

Instead, I find myself among a cognitive crowd of people and the rest of the Phantom Thieves. The room encircles a central area that likely serves as the battleground for these three fights. I’ve distanced myself from the others, preferring to watch this fight alone. This is the best chance I am going to have to truly watch Joker fight without any distractions. I don’t need the Thieves’ prattling to get in my way.

The simulated crowd erupts into cheering. It’s obvious why. Joker waltzes into the arena like he owns the place. He’s playing the part up for all it’s worth.

“Now then, our gripping battle is finally here! The idiot leader of the adult-defying thieves has come!” an announcer’s voice calls out from over the loudspeakers. Oh, this commentary is going to be good. “Odds are 1.1 to the house, 23.0 to the Phantom Thieves! Wow, the Phantom Thieves are surprisingly popular! It’s rare to see odds in the double digits! Now, let us begin our serious one-on-one battle! Bring out the first contestant!”

The first opponent, or should I say, opponents, appear in the form of two human-sized bipedal elephants. These are the same as the one we fought to get a member’s card in the first place. Joker had called it Ganesha. “Uhhhh, what the hell!?” Skull yells loudly enough for even me to hear him. “There’s two of ‘em!”

Clearly, they weren’t planning on giving Joker a fair fight from the start. That’s not surprising. I had anticipated this happening. I just hope my faith in his skills isn’t misguided. You better not lose, Joker. I did bet a lot of coins on you.

“Now then, it’s time for this hellish trio of battles to begin!” the announcer continues. “Ready...”

Joker’s eyes unerringly find me in the crowd.

“Set...”

He grins, mouthing “watch this” before turning his attention back to the two Shadows he has to face.

“Go!”

The Ganeshas waste no time rushing at Joker, swords at the ready. He just...stands there, looking around the room. What is he thinking!?

He waits...and waits...

Only when they’re nearly on top of him does he take action. He spins in a clockwise rotation, a thin, nearly invisible line shooting away from his extended left hand and latching onto a beam on the ceiling. I recognize what he’s doing just as he’s lifted into the air by the grappling hook. The Ganeshas end up swiping at empty air, their inertia causing them to nearly trip over their own feet. Joker releases the grappling hook well before he reaches the ceiling, doing a couple of front flips as he lands. He’s already showing off an awful lot. That’s saying something when it comes to Joker, who constantly does a backflip before going into what the Phantom Thieves call an “All-Out Attack”. Not that I can say anything, considering I’ve taken to doing the same. Turning his head to look at me, Joker has the audacity to wave at me during this fight. Is he even taking this seriously?

One of the Ganeshas rushes recklessly again, likely hoping to catch Joker off-guard. It’s too bad that Joker sees it coming and backflips into the air, sailing high over its head. He cocks his gun mid-flip, firing bullet after bullet into the Shadow’s back. I can feel a murderous intent from the two Shadows. Joker deploys his grappling hook and flies clear out of the way of the other Shadow trying to avenge its injured comrade.

It’s impossible not to laugh at the pathetic Shadows stumbling around, making fools of themselves as they try to land a single hit. Using his trusty grappling hook and acrobatic skills, Joker moves all over the arena, confusing them tremendously. It’s almost a show. The thief flips and spins as he goes like he has to show off at every possible moment. I for one can’t take my eyes off him. His movements flow one into another, captivating the cognitive audience as well. These weaklings are no match for him. So why doesn’t he just finish them off quickly as he should? He’s wasting time.

As if hearing my thoughts, Joker’s hand reaches for his mask. Playtime’s over. He summons the paperlike Persona Shiki-Ouji. “Ravage them!” he yells as a myriad of pink and cyan blobs assault his opponents. The two Shadows collapse under the barrage, one of them being taken out by the attack. The other one struggles to get back up, but it’s no use. This Ganesha is as good as dead. Joker uses his grappling hook to swing around the Shadow, his dagger cleaving right through its neck. He lands right where the Shadow is as it explodes into black dust. Joker stands right in the middle of it, looking cool as ever.

I know that I’m staring right now. I don’t care. He made that fight look simple, and he looked good doing it. “Wow, you’re hot,” I whisper to myself, hoping the announcer’s derisive voice echoing through the room will drown out my musings.

Oracle walks up to me a few seconds later. Thank goodness I- “Mwehehe! I’m gonna tell him.”

“What-” I start to ask, only to realize she had heard me after all, despite my precautions. “No.”

“I’m gonna tell him,” she repeats with a mischievous grin.

“Please don’t tell him.” The last thing I need is for Joker to think I find him attractive. Granted, he is quite attractive, but that’s beside the point.

“He’ll find it cute after you guys were holding hands!”

“What are you talking about?” I can hear my voice pitch higher. There’s only one event she can be referencing, and if she saw that...god, I hate how worried I sound.

“In the House of Darkness!”

She had noticed after all. Joker had sensed my...unease upon first entering the maze and had grabbed my hand to calm me down. That was all it was. It meant nothing, even if he had continued to hold my hand through the entire thing except in the rare instances we had to crawl through the vents. Not that trying to convince Oracle of this will help. “Don’t tell him or else,” I say, trying to sound confident once again.

“You can’t stop me. If you try, I’ll tell everyone you’re so scared of the dark you held Ren’s hand!”

“Are you...blackmailing me?”

She laughs. “Maybe.”

“Damnit,” I hiss.

Seeing no way out of this predicament, I turn my attention back to the fight just as Joker slaughters three Rangdas all at once with a well-timed Makouga from Isis. They certainly didn’t last long. He laughs jovially as he remarks, “Now that’s comedy!” He sounds slightly surprised as if he himself hadn’t expected them to be destroyed so easily.

“Bullshit! Why the hell aren’t you dying, you goddamn Phantom Dweeb!?” the announcer yells, clearly annoyed that Joker simply refuses to lay down and die. Wait, when did the announcer start calling him a ‘Phantom Dweeb’? What even is a dweeb? Never mind; that’s not important. “I have a bet on this too! Grr, there’s no way in hell you’re getting away with this! Time for our final contestant!”

What an inane fool the announcer has to be to think the cocky, rebellious boy that is Joker is going to accept defeat. He’s been defying the odds stacked against him since April, and that isn’t changing now. He’ll keep fighting.

Even if the enemy that materializes in front of him is a hulking humanoid at least three times his size.

“Yowza... That’s a big one,” Oracle says in shock. At least Joker’s final foe takes her focus off of me. Hopefully, she’ll forget my little comment from earlier.

“Go, grind his bones to dust! Let the extreme third battle begin!”

Thor looks down at its foe. “Let’s get this over with,” the Shadow says. To it, Joker must look like a puny opponent. It’ll learn soon enough not to underestimate him.

Joker looks like he’s still chuckling despite his opponent’s size. He takes off his mask, but the Persona he summons isn’t Shiki-Ouji. “Magatsu-Izanagi Picaro!” he calls. Something about this Persona’s appearance feels...familiar, somehow. Perhaps...? “You need proper punishment.”

I raise an eyebrow because, even though he’s looking at Thor, the way he’s positioned makes it seem like he’s directing it at me instead. Does he not understand proper phrasing?

A black and red mandala appears on the floor right under Thor’s feet. The Shadow is surrounded by red symbols swirling faster and faster around it. The symbols are impossible to make out from this distance. Whitish-red streaks of light build up in intensity from all sides before a large beam shoots down on Thor in an explosion of energy. “What a powerful attack,” I remark idly to myself.

In a completely unnecessary move, Joker uses his grappling hook to move in my direction and away from Thor. The Shadow is preparing for an attack. He once again does nothing to stop the Shadow charging head-long at him. I soon see why. Shiki-Ouji suddenly materializes in front of Joker and grabs Thor mid-rush, holding the Shadow back before Joker commands his Persona to use Dormina.

Thor falls asleep almost immediately while standing up. It still amazes me how Shadows can be so dumb as to fall asleep in the middle of a fight. I nearly start as Joker walks right up to me and leans against the glass separating the two of us. “Hi, Akeppi.”

“What are you doing, Joker?” I respond.

“Nothing yet.” He hums in thought. Like the shameless flirt he is, he asks, “Enjoying the show?”

“Perhaps you should save your questions until after the battle is won. You’ll have plenty of time to ask for my opinion later.”

“Fine,” he says, whining a little as he turns around. Just in time too, for Thor is starting to stir from its forced slumber. He casually takes his mask off, resummoning Shiki-Ouji to attack with Mapsi before his opponent fully wakes up. It doesn’t bring Thor down as it did previously with the Ganeshas, but it still must have hurt. Just as it gains lucidity, Joker has Shiki-Ouji use Dormina again. He doesn’t waste time talking to me again. Instead, a bunch of circular pink, yellow, and cyan beams surround Thor before striking all at once and send the Shadow reeling onto the ground. With a cocky grin on his face, he uses Psio again for good measure.

“Yeah, keep smiling, buddy,” Thor growls as it pushes itself to its feet. It swipes its electrified hammer at Joker, who deftly backflips away. However, the electricity shoots forward and hits him head-on.

Joker, you fucking idiot. Sure, other than looking a little disheveled, he’s no worse for wear. He’ll be okay, but he shouldn’t have let such an obvious attack hit him.

Something inside Joker seems to snap. The glare on his face is fiercer than I’ve ever seen from him. He looks utterly enraged...and somehow even hotter at the same time. His Persona disappears, but even with the mask, I can sense the fiery rage in his eyes. Pulling out his gun, he jumps to his right, twirling in mid-air as he shoots a couple of bullets. He somersaults as gravity brings him back to the ground. However, he isn’t done. He leaps straight into the air from his crouched position. It’s almost impossible to perceive what happens, but he seems to combine the twist from earlier with a front flip, followed by another spin in the air as he proceeds to fire bullet after bullet in mid-air while upside down. He uses his feet and left hand to take the brunt of his fall. Thor collapses to its knees shortly after, the continuous gunfire too much for it to handle.

Joker stands up and looks contemplatively at his left hand. Is he seriously thinking of using the grappling hook now? With a shrug, he looks back at Thor and does a running leap into the air. He performs a couple of front flips before his momentum brings him to Thor’s head. With a level of dexterity only Joker could pull off, he straddles Thor from below, his legs wrapped around the Shadow’s neck. His left hand grabs a hold of one of the horns on Thor’s helmet while he points the gun right at Thor’s face. “You’re done!” Joker yells as he shoots at point-blank range.

The Shadow crumbles into black dust, but not before Joker pushes himself off its body, twirling in the air and backflipping so he lands crouched on the ground facing me. He grins as he hops to his feet, pirouetting before he poses, right arm outstretched and left hand resting on his chest.

I blink, startled. I know exactly where that maneuver came from. I’ve done that exact same thing once or twice in those All-Out Attacks. How did he manage to figure out how to copy it so quickly...?

The announcer groans in disappointment, having no comment on the fact that Joker just won their rigged game in style. I can’t help but grin as I give my own snide remark.

“Once again, justice prevails.”

Prompt list

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lilixloveswriting · 3 years

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Party Crasher

Summary: Being popular isn't all that it's cracked up to be; in which Akio attends his first high school party.

TW: Underage drinking (they're "third years" but I might change the timeline so do with that what you will), non-con touching (Akio is drunk and therefore cannot give his consent), vague depression angst stuff at the end, akio has self worth issues ah ha ha so relatable

Akio’s eyes dropped down to the address given to him on his phone. Yup, this was it. He could hear the bass of the music thumping from outside and every once in a while a red or green light pierced its way through the window to dance on the lawn. He took a deep breath as he readied himself to go inside.

Of course, he’d been invited to house parties before, but this is the first time someone had ever invited him personally. That meant that Hata Taichi had gone out of his way to find him after school and asked him to go to his party.

Now he was sitting outside of Hata's house, ditching his daily training to go to a high school party. He took a deep breath and walked up to the porch. The door was already ajar, allowing music, lights, and the cheering of teenagers to leak through. His heart fluttered with a mix of excitement and nerves as he fully opened the door, stepping into the house. The atmosphere on the inside was completely different than it was a few steps before. For one, it was warmer. Much warmer. The mixture of dancing bodies and the smoke from the fog machine heated the room by at least ten degrees. Akio’s quirk allowed him to deal well with heat, but it didn’t aid in the heavy weight that the air seemed to have and he felt as though he had to work harder to breathe.

“Akio-senpai is here!” Akio turned his head to see a girl on the steps shout, raising her cup in the air. Others did the same thing, raising their cups and happily cheering his name. Akio glowed a bit at the amount of admiration in the room. He couldn’t say that he knew the name of the girl or the names of the others who joined in her celebration, but he smiled as his eyes fell on a boy with short black hair making his way through the crowd.

“Senpai, you made it!” He grinned, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I was starting to get a little worried.”

Akio smiled apologetically. “Hey, Hata-san. Yeah, sorry. There were some things I had to take care of.”

“Well, people showed up anyway, so…!”

His eyebrows furrowed and his face fell slightly. “Uh, why wouldn’t people come?”

Hata shrugged a little. “Oh, you know. No one knows me, but you’re the life of the party. It was a good thing I told everyone you’d be coming to the party, otherwise, there’d be no one here!” He smiled and patted Akio on the shoulder. “So thanks, man! There are drinks over there, and some food too...but honestly you can go home if you have more important stuff to do. The party was a success so…” Hata flashed his teeth again, then made his way back into the crowd of people.

Akio closed his mouth into a frown as he felt his heart sink. He should have known he wasn’t actually wanted at this party. People always seemed to enjoy his presence, but nobody seemed to ever actually need or want him. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out.

It’s Littt 👴🏼💪🏼🔥

You are over ten minutes late. Are you still coming?

A sigh escaped his lips and Akio tucked his phone back into his jeans. Since he wasn’t needed at the party anymore, he figured he could just go back to training, but not before grabbing a drink for the road. He wandered in the direction that Hata had pointed him in earlier and eventually found a table with some chips and a big bowl of punch. He looked around for a bottle of water or Gatorade, but ultimately didn’t find anything, so he picked up a cup and spooned some punch into it, bringing the drink to his lips. He recoiled and coughed at the sharp taste the liquid had but he was thirsty, so he continued to drink it. The juice burned his throat, and he figured it must be alcohol.

"Todoroki-kun!" Someone squealed and Akio looked down to see a girl who he recognized from his class hanging off of his arm. "Come on! Play a game with us!" She tugged him unsuccessfully, as she was much smaller than he was.

Akio chugged the rest of his drink and tossed it in the trash can as he let the girl lead him to wherever that game was. He could have left, but he was already late to practice. The drink wasn't enough to get him drunk, but he didn't feel like walking home and he knew Hisao would be pissed if he had to come pick him up, so why not stay a bit longer?

---

The group cheered as Akio slammed his cup down, wiping at the corner of his mouth while girls clung to him at all sides. He took the coin revealed from under the cup and flipped it with his thumb, catching it in the air and tucking it into his pocket.

"Wowww Todo-kun! You're sooo bad at this!" One gushed, nuzzling her face into his sleeve.

"Yeah!" Another girl giggled. "You've lost like three timezz in a row!"

"Oi!" Akio called out, a smile gracing his lips. "I's not my fault! My eyes 'on't move as fas' as his quirk." He slurred as he motioned to the kid across the table placing another coin under a cup and using all four arms to mix them up at an incredible speed.

"Uggghh," One guy groaned, "I don't wanna play this anymore."

"I know!" Someone else shouted, and Akio wasn't sure who it was anymore. "Let's play the King Game!"

A few people cheered in agreement and they all moved to the couch. Someone laid out a bunch of chopsticks and the game began. Akio reached into the pile, pulling the stick and looking at the number.

Five. Or was that a three? Damn, reading was ten times harder when he was drunk.

Akio felt a buzz in his pocket and pulled his phone out, fumbling with the keypad before opening the message. He squinted at the text, trying to make the two blurry images form into one.

"Hey!" A whiny voice rang in his ear and he looked up to see…he couldn't remember her name, in his face. "Pay attention Aki-senpai~! I'm the King! You should be focused on me." She pouted and Akio looked back down at his phone, muttering some sort of apology. She huffed and snatched his phone from his hand, giving him a devious smile.

"I said your number, Aki-senpai." She dropped her voice so that it was low and sultry, tracing a finger along Akio's jawline and flicking up at his chin. "That means you hafta do whatever I say." She stood up and grabbed his hand, pulling him off the couch and leading him away from the group.

The jolt was more than enough to throw him into vertigo, and he didn't remember anything between when his butt left the couch and when his back hit the bed. He felt the girl's soft lips on his, and he felt hands. Hands everywhere, all over. Too many. Too many hands, whose hands were these?

This was wrong. He knew it, and he felt it, but he couldn't see and he couldn't feel, not really. The random contact left his skin feeling numb and Akio struggled, at least he thought he did. He couldn't really tell how much he was moving underneath them. His limbs felt heavy and the ceiling was spinning. And he was really hot, oh god, it was so hot. Was his quirk on? Fuck, he didn't know. He prayed he wasn't hurting them, but seeing as he could still feel their hands, so many, all over, they must have been okay.

Geez, how long was this going to last? He should probably be getting home soon…damn. He really didn't want to walk. He wasn't even sure if he could walk. Maybe one of these girls could take him home? No…they were drunk too, and he didn't even remember their names. He didn't want to be rude. Gosh, they sure were heavy though. Akio felt like a stress ball. All the squeezing and poking and smushing and mushing and -- oh? It stopped.

Akio blinked and did his best to get a hold of his senses. Someone was yelling and- oh! Hisao. When did he get here? Ah, shit, he seemed really mad.

Akio muttered an apology as he did his best to sit up, ultimately getting pulled by the wrist as Hisao yanked him to his feet. He hoped they could go home now.

---

*An hour and a half earlier*

Hisao sat at the table with Kayda, tweaking one of his newest bots while she highlighted one of her textbooks. The bot squealed as its gears turned, then made a wretched screeching sound before falling silent and motionless on the table, prompting an exhausted sigh from Hisao.

"Don't kill it," Kayda warned halfheartedly, flipping the next page in her textbook.

Hisao huffed and picked the screwdriver back up. "Not the thing I want to kill at the moment."

"Mm." She hummed condescendingly. "Better switch from support to comedy."

"Haha." He strained as he twisted the tool, the gears slowly tightening up. "I'll make sure to turn my request form…in…ah!" He jabbed the robot and the machine whirred, beeping as its little eyes lit back up. "There, I gotcha." He spoke softly to the machine as though it was a child and Kayda scrunched up her face.

"You know it isn't actually alive, right? And why don't you just use your quirk?"

"I don't know, why aren't you studying?" He asked, reaching over and tapping her little pencil topper, causing the plastic bear to hop off of the eraser and dance across the table.

"Hey!" She exclaimed, swatting at it, but Hisao was quicker. "Give him back! Seriously, Hisao! It's Mitsuko's!"

Hisao thought for a second, just to make her squirm then let his hand go limp, allowing the bear to fall lifelessly. "Fine."

She exhaled sharply, snatching the toy back up and placing it back on her pencil. "You're such a pain."

Hisao held back a snicker, picking his tool back up. Before he could do anything with them, the table began vibrating and the pair's eyes fell on the ringing phone.

"Dad!" Kayda shouted, "Your phone is ringing!"

"Who is it?" Shoto yelled back, and Hisao checked the caller id.

"It's Grandpa!" He said.

"Don't answer!" Was what they got in response.

They looked at each other and Kayda shrugged, allowing the phone to ring.

Hisao frowned. "What if it's Akio?"

Again, Kayda shrugged. "Then he'll call Mom."

"Hm." Hisao tilted his head. He supposed that was true. "'Kay then. I'm gonna go shower."

Kayda barely acknowledged him, not giving more than a quiet hum. He collected his items and took to his room, plugging his dead phone in on the charger before heading to the bathroom.

He emerged about twenty minutes later, hair still dripping water down his back as he searched his drawers for a shirt. He found one and plopped down on his phone, tapping his phone on as he pulled the shirt over his head. He squinted at the notification, picking the phone up questioningly.

4 Texts and 3 Missed Calls from Grandpa E

Grandpa E

-Tell your father to pick up the phone.

-Is your brother home? He has not answered my text messages.

-Shoto changed my phone settings. It will not allow me to call your mother. Help??

-Why do none of you answer my calls?

He frowned and pushed the call icon, holding the phone up to his ear.

"Finally. I don't like being ignored."

"I wasn't ignoring you, Grandpa. Sorry, my phone died and I was in the shower. What's up?"

"Your father has done something to my phone. I cannot contact your mother and the wallpaper is a very unflattering photo of me. I need you to fix it."

Hisao let out a short laugh. "Sure, I'll fix it the next time I see you."

"Good. Also, tell your brother to tell me if he is going to cancel so I'm not waiting for thirty minutes for him to show up."

"He didn't come?" Hisao asked, flopping back onto his bed.

"No, and he didn't answer my messages. Is he not home?"

"No…" He said, rolling onto his stomach and putting the phone on speaker while pulling up his thread with Akio. He shot him a quick message asking for his whereabouts. "Okay, Grandpa. Thanks."

"You're welcome. Tell your father to stop ignoring my calls."

Hisao nodded before realizing that his grandfather couldn't see him. "Okay. Bye." He hung up the phone and sat up on his bed. He frowned down at his phone, hoping for a text back that Akio was on his way home. Their mom had probably already gone to bed by now, and his dad was most likely getting ready for his night patrol. This left Hisao to go get his brother, and all he really wanted to do was get under the covers and go to sleep, not hop in the car and go on a wild goose chase. Alas, Hisao rarely got what he wanted.

About twenty minutes went by and Akio hadn't answered any calls or texts Hisao had sent him. He pulled up the family tracker app he had on his phone, patented by his mother, just in case any of them ended up getting kidnapped. Akio's indicator pulsated in white, and Hisao took the keys to the car and began in the direction of Akio's phone.

It wasn't too long until he stopped. The app told him that he was right on top of it as he pulled up to a house. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Parties were never his scene, and he wasn't sure when they had become Akio's either. They were hot and stuffy and there were always way too many people he didn't care about. The only parties they ever attended were dinner parties held by their parents. Why would Akio go to a high school party?

Hisao got out of the car and jogged up to the front door, mentally cursing his brother for the hell he was about to put him through. Hisao pushed the door open and was immediately hit with the smell of booze. He grimaced, knowing he would probably need another shower after this.

The house wasn’t that big, but the sheer number of people there was going to make the search difficult. Navigating the bottom floor was like swimming through sludge; sludge that pushed you and spun you around while you did your best to keep yourself upright. He finally reached somewhat of a clearing, arriving at a table with crumbs all over it and an almost empty punch bowl. To his left was a girl sitting on a chair, eating chips while scrolling through her phone. Hisao tapped her lightly, grabbing her attention.

“Hey, can I borrow your chair for a second?”

She shrugged and stood to the side, allowing Hisao to climb up. He peered over all of the heads at the party, looking for the familiar white tuft of hair.

“Lose someone?” The girl asked and Hisao scoffed.

“Yeah...Do you know if Akio Todoroki is here? Third-year...big three.”

“Ohhh, big three Todoroki fan, huh?” She mocked and Hisao rolled his eyes. “There were rumors he was coming, but I haven’t seen him. There was a big commotion in the living room a few minutes ago, though. You could check there.”

“Thanks.” He said, climbing down from the chair.

“Mhm, no problem. Try to keep your pants on, fanboy.”

Hisao clicked his tongue, turning back and mumbling, “Shouldn’t be a problem. He’s my brother,” before taking off to look for the living room. After a few minutes of shoving his way through drunk teenagers, Hisao finally found the room but was disappointed to see everyone but who he was looking for. “Hey, have you guys seen Todoroki?”

One guy snorted. “Yeah. He just stole all the girls even though he wasn’t even the king. If you find him, tell him to bring back the chopsticks.”

Hisao held back a frustrated sigh. “Do you know where they went?”

“Kurata-chan took him upstairs.” Another person said, and Hisao turned around, making a beeline for the staircase.

There were significantly fewer people upstairs, and Hisao finally felt like he could breathe a little easier. There were also fewer rooms, all located in one hallway. Akio had better be here or Hisao would kill him himself.

He pulled one door open and closed it back quickly; just the linen closet. The next door he opened led to a bathroom. He entered, freezing in place as he was startled by two other people. They didn’t seem to notice his presence, as they were too busy making out to even be aware of their surroundings. Hisao inched his way around them, peeking inside of the shower and the tub for his brother. Hisao squinted as he spotted Akio’s phone at the bottom of the tub. Wonderful, he might not even be at the house.

He picked it up, only to drop it in disgust as he felt something wet on his fingers. Hisao groaned and took some toilet paper, wiping off the phone and putting it in his pocket, preferring not to find out what the mystery liquid was.

He promptly left and continued his search, next opening a door to a bedroom. A hazy fog hung in the air and multiple people were passed out on the floor while others were huddled up in a group. Akio wasn’t there, so he closed the door back. There was only one left, and Hisao prayed that this would be the one. He opened it up and his eyes fell to the bed with a cluster of girls on top of it. He couldn’t see what was going on, but he did see one leg intertwined with all the others that had a long, familiar scar on it.

“HEY!” He shouted and the girls flinched. He stomped over and grabbed one by the arm, pulling her off of his brother. “Get off.” He said sternly to the others, who did in their frightened states.

“Hey, man!” Hisao turned toward the door to see a very angry-looking guy yelling at him. “Get your hands off my girlfriend!” He ripped Hisao’s hand away from her wrist and Hisao didn’t even realize he was still holding her.

“Well, your girlfriend just had her hands all over my brother, so I’m really not the one you want to be yelling at.” He said and walked over to the bed, taking Akio’s hand and pulling him up. His eyes were glossy and out of focus and he swayed as Hisao pulled him to his feet.

“What the hell did you just say?” The man stepped in front of them, blocking their path to the door. He crossed his arms in an attempt to intimidate, but if he knew how annoyed Hisao was getting, he would be the one to cower.

“Listen, man. I don’t want any trouble. Just let us thro-” Hisao was cut off by large hands on his chest and he was pushed back into a table. The thing collapsed and Hisao grimaced at the sore feeling left on his back.

He balled his hands into fists, his fingernails digging into his palms as he let go of trying to control his anger. Oh, he was going to sleep well after this. He touched all four legs that had broken off of the table and in one swift motion, sent them flying towards the unsuspecting guy. The pieces of wood caught onto his clothes and dragged him backward, pinning him to the wall as Hisao pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed onto Akio’s wrist again and dragged him out of the room.

“Let’s go.” He said and the girls cleared a path for him. It was a straight shot from the room to the car, although it was difficult to get Akio inside and buckled up. The white-haired boy burped, followed by a hiccup and Hisao took a deep breath.

“If you throw up in here I will make you clean it.” He warned, shifted gears and pulled away from the house. “What were you thinking? If you were going to skip training, you could have at least told us where you were.”

“Wasn’t gonna,” Akio responded, closing his eyes and snuggling into his seat.

“Oh, really?”

“I was gonna leave, but then...I dunno. I was jus’...I played a game.” He slurred and Hisao frowned.

They slowed to a stop at a red light and Hisao turned to his brother. “Look at me.” Akio listened and opened his eyes, which Hisao inspected thoroughly. “What did you drink? Did you take anything from anyone? Akio, listen. Did you set your drink down?”

Akio shrugged and closed his eyes again, head lolling to the side. Hisao’s hands shook in anger and he squeezed the steering wheel. The image of all of those girls on top of his brother was ingrained into his brain. He hated the idea of Akio being in such a vulnerable state, it made him want to burn the whole place to the ground.

“Sorry…” Akio mumbled quietly. “I was just…” He shook his head and Hisao loosened his grip slightly. “I didn’t call ‘cause I knew you’d be mad. I know you din’ wanna come get me.” He slurred.

Hisao sighed. “No, I didn’t. But you should have called anyway if you were in trouble.”

A beat of silence, then, “I’m really tired, Hisao.”

Hisao’s normal response would be to go to sleep, but the break in Akio’s voice withheld that. A quiet sob filled the car and Hisao turned the radio off. “Tired of what, Aki?”

A shaky breath. “Trying.”

Hisao frowned, he wasn’t sure what Akio was talking about, but he knew he was a hard worker. He was always pushing himself to do his best, and Hisao knew the constant work and training must be tiring. “Then stop trying so hard. It’s okay to take breaks, you know.” Hisao glanced over when Akio didn’t respond, letting out a small sigh to see his brother fast asleep. The two obviously had more to talk about, but Hisao decided that it could wait. Akio said he was tired after all, and Hisao was just happy that he had shown up when he did. Even if that meant his night’s sleep would get cut short by a couple of hours.

Notes:

wow it is very obvious that I wrote this over a year ago, but we're to going look at it as a positive because that means I've improved!!! yayyyyy but I do want to rewrite it, I actually already started a little while ago and BITCH IT'S LOWKEY SO GOOD she says like it's something special but no actually I can see the improvement, so maybe I'll post the rewritten version if I ever finish it. But anyways just know that this was written in January of 2020 and I've been writing through a whole quarantine since then and I actually have decent description now! So the newer stuff will be better :)

#my ocs #bnha next gen au #my writing #full orbit #bnha ocs #my hero academia ocs #akio todoroki #hisao todoroki #todomomo #kayda todoroki #lilixloveswriting

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hardkinkbardkink · 4 years

Text

anon asked: I am once again sending you a prompt, which I think is like my third one? Sorry for the spam I guess. Eskel is the love of my life soo... Eskel meeting Jaskier after The Mountain, and quickly falling in love with the charming bard. He knows Jaskier’s heart belongs to Geralt, but his body belongs to Eskel. They get to Kaer Morhen, and ofc Geralt is there. Eskel having to deal with that- but it all ends happily with a big polyamorous fuck pile. Jaskier definitely has enough love for both witchers.

listen. i. Adore eskel. i fucking LOVE that bitch, i love him greatly and i love him fiercely, he is the light of my life & my forever favourite witcher character and not even sweet darling joey batey as jaskier can change that like?? eskel is It for me. i was maybe seven when i played the first game because it is a National Classic and you were legally obliged by law to play it and wee bairn me looked at this four pixels of a man on my screen and thought fuck guess i gotta be gay?? the fucking. quest. where he gets his face ripped open. when i tell you i cried. and then he got even hotter?? impossible. i’ll never love a character like that again, it’s been too long to change x

my mild obsession aside, did you mean for this to be so angsty? because it is, it’s fucking Sad and has Feelings and also a soft threesome that feels firmly out of place on my noncon-bestiality-centric porn blog (so i posted in on ao3 too)

as always i look at canon and i pretend i do not see it lovelies x

send in more eskel prompts if you want him to get fucked in true hard kink fashion & also send in more eskel prompts in general i will never refuse

***

Eskel has no intention to stop in that tavern at all, until he hears the singing.

It’s nothing, he tells himself.

It’s nothing, and yet he pulls Scorpion to a reluctant halt, pays the stablehand a copper and no mind as he makes his way, ensorcelled, to hover near the entrance. He’d heard the one particular song in so many renditions his head spins with it. Most of them lousy, some of them bearable. This one—

Oh, but this one seems like it’d been torn from the bard’s very soul.

Eskel waits until the final, unusually heart-wrenching notes of Toss a coin bleed into a brief silence.

He doesn’t enjoy taverns much—the burning glances when he settles at a table, swords at his back and hood pulled low over his eyes. The quiet chorus of gasps when he slips the bastard cloak off and people get a good look at his monstrous, twisted face, averting their gaze quickly but drawn in by morbid curiosity again and again. Their reluctance to serve him, to approach him, to trust him with his own damn job.

Eskel’s had decades to get used to it.

Maybe next century.

He pulls the door open with an unsteady hand, eyes falling immediately to the bard, centre stage as he can manage in a wayward tavern not designed for such performances. He’s dressed finely, lavishly, with great care and taste and Eskel lets himself admire, just for a moment.

“Oh,” the bard breathes on a sharp inhale, and his dazzling blue eyes glitter with a sort of recognition that punches Eskel right in the gut with its intensity.

It’s entirely quiet for a few painful heartbeats.

“Oi!” a man hollers to his side, clearly too deep in his cups to try at decency. “Y'heard the bard, toss a fuckin’ coin to the witcher.”

They don’t, and Eskel would never ask that of them—but he’s served a decent pint on the house as soon as he sits down in a darkened corner, and his cheeks can’t exactly burn, but he feels like they would.

The bard gets through another song, a bawdy drinking tune. Eskel keeps his eyes on him the whole time, though he barely hears the words, mesmerised by the sway of the man’s hips and the honey-warm timbre of his voice.

A faint panic rises up in his throat when the bard thanks his audience for their attention, bowing in a manner entirely too exaggerated for this place and time—and makes his way with a strange mix of confidence and reluctance to sit across from Eskel.

“My apologies for presuming,” the bard begins, and Eskel watches with bated breath as his long, shapely fingers wrap around Eskel’s own mug. He takes a deep drink, eyelashes casting lovely shadows on his cheeks. “Eskel?”

He nearly chokes on his own tongue, but manages to nod curtly.

“It seems that Destiny’s playing tricks on me.” The bard’s lips twitch up in a sad smile. “I’m Jaskier. Pleased to make your acquaintance, after all these years.”

Jaskier. Jaskier. Of course it’s Geralt’s fucking bard, his—

“I must say, I harboured my hopes that you wouldn’t be quite as broody and silent as Geralt is.”

Eskel manages to shake himself out of it, though only barely.

“Sorry.” He clears his throat in an attempt to make his voice less gravely. Less threatening. “Sorry, fuck, just spent so many winters with Geralt talking my ear off about you, I’d half-expected the bastard to’ve made you up.”

He tries for light-heartedness. A flash of poorly-disguised pain passes through Jaskier’s face, and Eskel realises it was decidedly not the way to go.

“Ah, you won’t have to worry about that anymore, darling. Geralt and I are no longer companionable, in any way.”

Perhaps it’s the darling that does him in. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming desire to never see this brilliant man sad or hurt again. Perhaps it’s Eskel’s own harrowing loneliness.

It doesn’t matter much, because he downs the rest of his ale in three gulps, and then there are warm fingers around his wrist, pulling him away and up the stairs, pushing him into a room and onto a bed with a lapful of bard.

“Goddess,” Jaskier says quietly, almost privately, except that his lips hover temptingly close to Eskel’s. “You do look just like him, if it wasn’t for—”

“The disfigured maw?” Eskel adds helpfully, out of habit if nothing else.

Jaskier puts a gentle hand on his cheek—the scarred one, gods save his soul—and Eskel leans into the touch involuntarily, like a dog starved for affection.

“I was going to say the hair,” Jaskier finishes with a hint of kind amusement, and winks.

Eskel knows, with that first hungry kiss, that he’s absolutely and utterly gone for the bard.

“Beautiful, darling—gods, you’re stunning,” Jaskier whispers later, hands roaming Eskel’s broad chest, and fuck, he hadn’t been touched like this in months, so he hides against the smooth column of Jaskier’s throat—sucks a vivid bruise there like he has any fucking right—and desperately ignores the praise that isn’t meant for him.

He sucks Jaskier’s cock to make him shut up, and gets called lovely and breathtaking and darling angel for his efforts. He opens Jaskier up—mouth latched to the pale insides of his thighs, littering them with bruises—on four fingers and so much chamomile oil the smell makes him lightheaded, and Jaskier tells him he’s a treasure, fuck, so good to me. He gets pushed backwards onto the bed, his wrists guided above his head in a soft suggestion of restraint as Jaskier rides his cock with determined fervour, and he's divine, gorgeous, my sweet, darling witcher.

Jaskier arches beautifully when he comes, spills all over them both, his eyes heavy-lidded, still holding Eskel’s gaze, and Eskel knows he’s only looking for an echo of Geralt in his yellow irises—but he flips them over, takes his pleasure in Jaskier’s body, and he can live with being a second choice when he’s used to being no choice at all.

***

“I’ve been—fuck, awfully lonely on the road, gods, darling—”

Eskel’s quickly found out Jaskier is quite keen on being held, suspended in the air with only Eskel’s hands underneath his thighs and a cock driving into him with haste and despair.

Especially out in the open, on the side of a well-traversed road. Eskel licks absently at the raised imprint of his teeth above Jaskier’s collar and yearns to deepen it, have it stay there forever.

Jaskier pulls at his hair, panting harshly, brings their lips together in a searing kiss. He whines at the back of his throat and his sinful hole flutters around Eskel’s cock, milking him into completion faster than anyone ever could, whispering low into his ear, that’s it, that’s it, love, fill me up ‘til I can’t hold anymore, fuck, so good like nobody ever did.

And if they’re never quite alone in their passions, if Jaskier still searches his eyes for a ghost of someone else—Eskel can pretend he doesn’t see, because he’s the one who gets to fall asleep with the bard pressed up against him, soft and warm and kind.

***

Inkeepers take him in more willingly, when he’s got Jaskier at his side, flashing them a smile full of promise.

He doesn’t need for brothels, when he wakes up to Jaskier lapping at the head of his cock like it’s the sweetest treat. When Jaskier’s unable to keep his hands to himself. When he stays nice and loose and ready for Eskel to pound him into the ground at any moment.

“I’m not a young man anymore,” Jaskier always says after, struggling to catch his breath, even if he were the one palming Eskel’s cock through his breeches.

“You don’t look a day over seventy,” Eskel offers in return, and Jaskier slaps him upside the head in mock offense.

Eskel’s never been happier than he is with Jaskier trudging the Path with him.

Which is why the frost crunching under their boots fills him with a hollow aching. A single snowflake lands pointedly at the very tip of Jaskier’s reddened nose, and Eskel glares at the sky.

He lets Jaskier fuck him, then. They get a room for the night, light the hearth and feed the flames. Share a bottle of wine, of which Eskel takes the brunt. Stretch out leisurely on the furs, and Eskel’s insides tie in knots when he watches the silver hairs on Jaskier’s dark head glimmer in the firelight.

Jaskier takes his time, as Eskel thought he would. Lavishes him with kisses and praise and adoration and Eskel still doesn’t think it’s all his to have, but he melts under Jaskier’s touches anyway.

I love you, he aches to say, to scream at the top of his lungs when Jaskier pushes into him, jaw slack and eyes squeezed shut in rapture.

“Come away with me,” he begs instead, on the verge of release and at mercy of the insistent snap of Jaskier’s hips. “To Kaer Morhen.”

Jaskier shushes him with a kiss and a gentle hand in his hair.

“I don’t want to leave without you.”

Don’t leave me alone, I can’t bear it again.

He tips Jaskier’s chin up, the bard’s pretty eyes brimming with unshed tears as he nods—and this time, just for a second, Eskel doesn’t feel like a shoddy replacement.

***

They beat Lambert to the keep by three days.

Three days spent reacquainting with the concept of heat and the feeling in their fingers after weeks traversing increasingly higher snowcaps.

Three glorious, uninterrupted days of having Jaskier share his bed in the only place Eskel could ever call home.

When he gets there, Lambert asks when he’s going to get a turn on the bard, and if Eskel beats his insufferable arse in training a little harder than he normally would on the first day—well. It’s what brothers do.

He makes sure to keep the ever-present mark at Jaskier’s throat a vibrant purple when it fades into yellow, and Jaskier begs him for it as sweetly as he begs for his cock, just within Lambert’s earshot.

Geralt doesn’t show for a full fortnight, and then some. The snow piles higher with each day. They all collectively agree that their last wolf won’t show this year, like he did so many years before.

Perhaps it is because Eskel thanks his Lady Destiny too soon, that Geralt staggers into the hall in the midst of a snowstorm, his cloak frozen stiff, frost melting on his silver hair.

They fall into each other’s arms, because they always do; because they're brothers, because they’d been through hell together, because they love each other fiercely even if Eskel can’t think of a single person he’d rather avoid more than Geralt, right now. They stand there in the hall, the snow on Geralt’s collar a shock of cold against Eskel’s neck. And then Geralt stiffens, suddenly, rigid in Eskel’s embrace in a way that has nothing to do with the chill.

“You smell—” Geralt begins, seemingly perplexed, and inhales deeply at the juncture of Eskel’s shoulder.

They fall away from each other abruptly, Eskel’s chest tight with a muffled pull of dread.

“Let’s get you warmed up, yeah? I’ll get Lambert to see to your mare. He might not be too happy to see you, though. You lost him a bet.”

Geralt follows him, almost reluctantly, and Eskel wants just one more night before it all goes to shit. Just the one.

***

Jaskier is sleep-warm and perfect and doesn’t appreciate the chill of Eskel’s skin once he finally gets back into bed.

Eskel takes him too roughly for the time of night, bites at his freckled shoulders and sharp collarbones, has Jaskier trembling and begging for it twice before he lets the bard come.

He muffles his own release against Jaskier’s lips, all too aware of Geralt in a room not a hallway away.

***

The door creaks when it’s pushed open. Faintly, but enough to rouse Eskel awake. He tightens an arm reflexively around Jaskier’s sleeping form, and the bard nuzzles up against the side of his chest.

Yellow eyes stare at them intently, Geralt’s expression unreadable, though the nod he gives can mean only one thing.

Eskel is careful as he untangles their limbs, and his heart decidedly doesn’t pound quicker for a beat when Jaskier reaches out after him and mumbles a sleepy Eskel.

Their footsteps are nearly soundless on the stone floor. Geralt is equally quiet, rigid as a bowstring. They walk for a long time, until they come to a place Jaskier didn’t yet get a chance to explore. Neutral ground. As neutral as can be, with Eskel still drenched in Jaskier’s scent.

“I’m not sorry,” Eskel says finally, and Geralt flinches.

They don’t look at each other.

“Why,” Geralt forces out. Eskel can hear the bones in his jaw click. “Why bring him here.”

Wind howls outside the walls, the storm unrelenting.

I didn’t want to be alone, he almost says, but bites his tongue. Instead,

“You broke him, Geralt. You left and he—he used to call out for you at night, you know? He’d have nightmares and wake up shaking. And I couldn’t help.”

They rarely talk like this, heart to heart under the guise of night.

“Why?” Geralt asks, softer this time. Kinder.

It doesn’t feel right, but it’s what’s going to make things right.

“I’m just a substitute. A lousy one at that. He still—he wants you. Loves you.”

And it’s the truth, when he finally admits it out loud. Eskel is more at peace with that than he thought he would.

“Please don’t take it from me,” he whispers, overwhelmed in a way that he was assured the mutagens were supposed to eliminate. “It’s all I have.”

Geralt doesn’t respond, though he does place a hand on Eskel’s shoulder, in comfort or understanding, he couldn’t know.

***

Jaskier keeps his head high.

“Geralt,” the bard greets him, in a manner far too cold and collected.

He doesn’t flinch under Geralt’s gaze, doesn’t look away before Geralt, but when he does—Eskel catches his expression shatter, fall into a million pieces that he desperately wants to collect and put back together. They slip through his fingers.

At night, Jaskier jolts awake clawing at his own throat, crying that he can’t breathe, asking Geralt to help him, please help him. Eskel holds him until the tremors subside. Neither of them sleeps well.

All the good evaporates from Eskel’s life.

The silly marks of faux ownership fade from Jaskier’s skin, eventually, and Eskel’s heart aches.

He kisses Jaskier deeply, puts all his horrible feelings behind it, and then just holds the bard close. For the last time. Eskel knows he isn’t meant to cry—but the trials merely took away his ability to shed tears, not this overpowering fucking desire to do so.

“Eskel?” Jaskier says, gently, the question of what’s wrong implied.

Eskel shakes his head and holds Jaskier tighter.

***

“You. Apologise.”

Geralt seems startled by the development. As does Jaskier, to be fair, shifting nervously where he’s gripping Eskel’s arm.

“I don’t want his apology,” Jaskier says weakly. “We’ve had our words, and they were very—pointed. Very definite. Eskel—”

Jaskier looks to him with wide, terrified eyes.

And it wouldn’t be enough that he has to give up the one good thing in his life, would it? It wouldn’t be enough that every time they fucked Jaskier looked beyond him and for someone else. It wouldn’t be fucking enough that he was madly, unreasonably in love with a man whose affections laid firmly elsewhere.

No, it wouldn’t, because now he has to—

He takes a deep breath and listens to the staccato of Jaskier’s quickened heartbeat.

“I wouldn’t make you do this, except you do want his fucking apology, and Geralt wants to give it to you, because you love him and he loves you and I'm—” useless, disposable, unwanted, "I’m done. I’m done. Figure it out. Please.“

Jaskier’s hands fall away from around his arm, and Eskel takes off.

He doesn’t really have anywhere to go, when every place he’d grown to love in the keep knows Jaskier’s presence, wears his mark and his scent.

The corridors are still and silent. Grey and imposing. Cold is seeping through the thick stone—cold from this winter and the hundreds before it, and Eskel thinks the walls had never truly known warmth. It’s all terribly dull, Jaskier had said when they’d walked the halls that first time, hand in hand with not a worry between them.

He’d been stupid to grow so attached when Jaskier was never his to keep. He’d been stupid to bring him here and expect everything to stay the same in blissful ignorance. He’d been stupid, and he didn’t want to be lonely again, even for just a few months—and now he’s going to be lonely until some merciful beast cuts his suffering short like it was always meant to.

It is, perhaps, too early in the day to drink, but Lambert’s eyes light up when Eskel goes to him with the offer.

Later, out of habit, he almost stumbles into his room before his drunken brain screams at him to keep going. Eskel falls asleep in an abandoned bedroom that smells of dust and time instead of his bard.

***

"You didn’t come to bed.”

Eskel hears Jaskier approaching, of course he does—but he doesn’t turn to face him, eyes firmly fixed on the window, even if it is just snow there. He does feel quite dramatic, sat in a windowsill like a maiden awaiting her beloved to come and whisk her away. Eskel awaits only peace and for his heart to feel whole again.

“Smells like you,” he says, too honest.

Jaskier shuffles closer.

“I waited up for you.”

A hand falls gently to his shoulder, and Eskel shivers at the touch.

“Thought you’d be staying with Geralt. You—you can keep the room, if you want.” Eskel couldn’t ever be comfortable there, anyway, not after everything.

“Darling—”

The hand moves from his shoulder to his cheek, soft and tender and Eskel meets the incredible blue of Jaskier’s eyes easily.

“I never meant to make you feel unwanted,” Jaskier begins. Eskel wishes only to shrink under his gaze. “I want you so, so much.”

Jaskier settles next to him, their thighs pressed together, the black of his trousers startling against wine-red silk. Eskel feels fucking dumb.

“I know it wasn’t about me, I—you should go be with your wolf. I’ll be fine.”

The scars pull tightly when he smiles, aiming for reassuring; it comes out tired and helpless.

Jaskier leans in impossibly close, the ghost of his breath on Eskel’s lips.

“You’re my wolf, too.”

They kiss before he knows it—desperately, hungrily, until Eskel’s head spins and Jaskier’s hands tug at the collar of his shirt.

Eskel pulls away with a deep, burning hatred of himself.

“Just go, Jaskier.” When did his voice grow so cold? He never wants to speak to Jaskier like this, never, and yet— “I don’t need your pity.”

He expects Jaskier to do just that. Go, and avoid him for the rest of winter, and walk around with Geralt’s scent all over him and a mark to the side of his neck and—

“No. Nuh-uh. Not happening. Eskel, gods, I—I’m sorry, yeah? That you couldn’t trust my affection was all for you, and perhaps it wasn’t, not always—”

Fuck, but it does hurt to hear it, just a bit.

“—but then you had to go and be the most splendid creature under the sun and I, well.”

The gold of Jaskier’s rings glitters enticingly in the sparse sunlight when he reaches for Eskel’s hand.

“I do love Geralt, but Eskel, darling. I love you just as much.”

Eskel could fall to his knees if he were the praying sort.

Fuck, he might anyway.

Jaskier kisses him, and Eskel carries the bard all the way to bed to show his worship in a different way.

***

It’s easy to kiss Geralt.

It’s not the first time he’d kissed Geralt.

“Fuck, look at you,” Jaskier moans, somewhere to their side.

Geralt arches his neck beautifully when Eskel grabs a fistful of silver hair and tugs his head backwards.

It is, possibly, the first time he’d kissed Geralt without the hushed secrecy of darkness and a hard scrubbing to get the scent of release off each other.

Jaskier leans over his shoulder to capture Geralt’s lips for himself, chest pressed tightly to Eskel’s back.

He’d thought the jealousy would smother him, when Jaskier first brought it up. He’d thought he would choke on the image of Jaskier laid bare before anyone else. He’d thought—

But it’s Geralt, isn’t it? It’s Geralt, and they’d already shared so much with each other, their joys and their pain and their lives, and—

“Eskel,” Geralt breathes like he used to so many lifetimes ago, except he doesn’t bite his tongue, now, and Eskel leans in to bite instead at the soft skin below his jaw, to leave his mark there, twin to the one he’d left on Jaskier.

They fall softly to the mattress, him and Geralt, with Jaskier crawling over them swiftly, a sun-warm smile on his pretty face.

“Gods. Gods, you’re stunning.”

Eskel turns his head slowly, lazily, and finds Geralt’s eyes heavy and sparkling. Not just yellow, anymore, no longer the colour of a beast's—rather, the exact shade of sunlight caught in honey. Of morning dew on dandelions.

Fuck, he’d grown mellow.

Jaskier comes to straddle him, all pale skin and gorgeous hair and bruises from his hips to his throat. He settles heavily over Eskel’s cock, the bastard tease.

“Jaskier,” Eskel near-hisses, because suddenly the head of his cock dips inside Jaskier’s oil-slick hole. “Fuck, you—”

“Of course I got ready for my wolves, darling,” Jaskier breathes, and laughs, and seats himself completely in Eskel’s lap like it's nothing. “In fact, you might be partial to know—I had to employ the use of my other hand, to prepare for what I have planned.”

Eskel’s head spins, thick with the promise that he doesn’t dare dwell on. His eyes slip shut; Jaskier coaxes them open with nought but a soft word.

He can feel Geralt stir next to him, watching with a tight grip on himself as Jaskier moves easily, like he’d been made only for this, his one divine purpose.

“Geralt,” Eskel hears himself call out weakly. “Geralt, Geralt—”

Words seem only a silly hindrance, so he doesn’t bother, grabbing instead at the thick muscle of Geralt’s thighs, guiding him to sit astride Eskel’s chest, crush him with all that glorious weight—stuff his cock in Eskel’s greedy mouth, fuck.

Eskel thinks he might combust, go up in flames as he’s caught between the agonising pleasure of being buried to the hilt in Jaskier’s slack hole and the heavy satisfaction of having Geralt’s cock glide wetly on his tongue, further and further as Geralt stares at him, bewildered.

It’s a wonder he doesn’t come as soon as the length of it slides seamlessly down his throat, so deep he can feel it when he wraps a hand around his own neck. He squeezes, just to make sure Geralt feels it, too, and the rumble of a groan from above him makes Eskel thrust wildly into the clutch of Jaskier’s maddeningly hot body.

“O-oh, you were made for each other, weren’t you?” Jaskier’s hand is petting gentle circles up Eskel’s heaving stomach. “Fuck, darling, next time I’ll watch you bounce on Geralt’s cock till you sob with it.”

He reaches blindly to grab Jaskier’s hand, entwine their fingers together. With heavy-lidded eyes, he watches Geralt’s head get pulled back for a messy kiss. The bruise on the elegant column of his throat stands dark and proud and Eskel’s chest swells with it, even if it’ll fade in hours. He’ll just have to try very hard to keep it vivid.

Geralt rolls his hips, knees tightening around Eskel’s shoulders, ragged moans filling the air, mingling with the sinful noises dripping from Jaskier’s lips. Eskel’s vision spots, air suddenly hard to come by, and yet it doesn’t cause him distress; fuck, of all the ways to die, being smothered between Geralt’s thighs with Jaskier tight and lovely around his cock is Eskel’s preferred demise, if given a choice. His heartbeat quickens, though, and Geralt stops his delicious rutting, moves away with a tender look and a touch to his swollen lip. He leans down to steal another kiss, but Eskel’s too floaty, too hazy to do anything more than open his sloppy mouth–for Geralt, and then for Jaskier, when he collapses on Eskel’s chest.

“Desperation really is becoming on you, darling.”

Feeling Geralt’s tongue lapping at his cock when it’s still moving in and out of Jaskier—

Feeling a finger press in alongside him, joined quickly by another and another, until the fit is so tight it seems like he’s suffocating—

Feeling the torturously slow drag of Geralt’s cock against his, contained so closely in the heaven of Jaskier’s body—

“Fuck,” Eskel and Geralt groan in perfect harmony, Jaskier trembling wildly in their arms.

“Gods, gods, fuck, I love you, love you both so much—”

Eskel can’t speak, can’t move, can’t do anything but suck in desperate breaths and look as Jaskier’s face morphs from pain into rapture, his brow smoothing out, his bitten-red lips coming apart in a perfect o.

Geralt roars, withdraws his hips just a little, and it jostles Eskel’s very soul.

Fuck, he can't imagine what it’s like for Jaskier.

He wonders if—

“Move,” Jaskier says in a broken voice. “You can move, you can fuck me, a-ah.”

Eskel wishes he could Axii himself into not coming. He wishes—gods, but he can’t, he can’t, and when Geralt starts moving with purpose, Eskel feels the crackle of release at the base of his spine, coiling tighter and tighter until—

“Fuck, Eskel—” Geralt moans, and it’s torture, when Eskel can feel his cock throbbing against Geralt’s, and then he’s coming and coming and coming, a shockwave of sensation.

His ears feel like they’re stuffed with thick wool.

Jaskier kisses him, quick and filthy and needy.

“You’re perfect, perfect, my darling—” he says against Eskel’s lips.

Eskel whines at the back of his throat, his hands trembling where they grab Geralt’s hair and tug him to lean down.

The raw, painful pleasure of his oversensitive cock still trapped within the suffocating heat of Jaskier’s body threatens to undo him completely. He claws blindly at any skin he can reach, to ground himself, to settle against the unrelenting drag of Geralt against him. He can feel his seed dripping out of Jaskier and down his balls. It’s fucking filthy.

He kisses Jaskier and he kisses Geralt and his lips go numb before Jaskier finally tips into a shaking release that rips a hoarse scream from his throat.

The bed is barely big enough for two people, but they make it work. They’ll make it all work, somehow.

Before sleep takes him, Eskel hears Lambert yell, I’m moving the fuck out from down the hall.

#cw SOFT #i'm so tender for eskel i cant

33 notes · View notes

hardkinkbadkink · 4 years

Note

I am once again sending you a prompt, which I think is like my third one? Sorry for the spam I guess. Eskel is the love of my life soo... Eskel meeting Jaskier after The Mountain, and quickly falling in love with the charming bard. He knows Jaskier’s heart belongs to Geralt, but his body belongs to Eskel. They get to Kaer Morhen, and ofc Geralt is there. Eskel having to deal with that- but it all ends happily with a big polyamorous fuck pile. Jaskier definitely has enough love for both witchers.

listen. i. Adore eskel. i fucking LOVE that bitch, i love him greatly and i love him fiercely, he is the light of my life & my forever favourite witcher character and not even sweet darling joey batey as jaskier can change that like?? eskel is It for me. i was maybe seven when i played the first game because it is a National Classic and you were legally obliged by law to play it and wee bairn me looked at this four pixels of a man on my screen and thought fuck guess i gotta be gay?? the fucking. quest. where he gets his face ripped open. when i tell you i cried. and then he got even hotter?? impossible. i'll never love a character like that again, it's been too long to change x

my mild obsession aside, did you mean for this to be so angsty? because it is, it's fucking Sad and has Feelings and also a soft threesome that feels firmly out of place on my noncon-bestiality-centric porn blog (so i posted in on ao3 too)

as always i look at canon and i pretend i do not see it lovelies x

send in more eskel prompts if you want him to get fucked in true hard kink fashion & also send in more eskel prompts in general i will never refuse

***

Eskel has no intention to stop in that tavern at all, until he hears the singing.

It's nothing, he tells himself.

It's nothing, and yet he pulls Scorpion to a reluctant halt, pays the stablehand a copper and no mind as he makes his way, ensorcelled, to hover near the entrance. He'd heard the one particular song in so many renditions his head spins with it. Most of them lousy, some of them bearable. This one—

Oh, but this one seems like it'd been torn from the bard's very soul.

Eskel waits until the final, unusually heart-wrenching notes of Toss a coin bleed into a brief silence.

He doesn't enjoy taverns much—the burning glances when he settles at a table, swords at his back and hood pulled low over his eyes. The quiet chorus of gasps when he slips the bastard cloak off and people get a good look at his monstrous, twisted face, averting their gaze quickly but drawn in by morbid curiosity again and again. Their reluctance to serve him, to approach him, to trust him with his own damn job.

Eskel's had decades to get used to it.

Maybe next century.

He pulls the door open with an unsteady hand, eyes falling immediately to the bard, centre stage as he can manage in a wayward tavern not designed for such performances. He's dressed finely, lavishly, with great care and taste and Eskel lets himself admire, just for a moment.

"Oh," the bard breathes on a sharp inhale, and his dazzling blue eyes glitter with a sort of recognition that punches Eskel right in the gut with its intensity.

It's entirely quiet for a few painful heartbeats.

"Oi!" a man hollers to his side, clearly too deep in his cups to try at decency. "Y'heard the bard, toss a fuckin' coin to the witcher."

They don't, and Eskel would never ask that of them—but he's served a decent pint on the house as soon as he sits down in a darkened corner, and his cheeks can't exactly burn, but he feels like they would.

The bard gets through another song, a bawdy drinking tune. Eskel keeps his eyes on him the whole time, though he barely hears the words, mesmerised by the sway of the man's hips and the honey-warm timbre of his voice.

"My apologies for presuming," the bard begins, and Eskel watches with bated breath as his long, shapely fingers wrap around Eskel's own mug. He takes a deep drink, eyelashes casting lovely shadows on his cheeks. "Eskel?"

He nearly chokes on his own tongue, but manages to nod curtly.

"It seems that Destiny's playing tricks on me." The bard's lips twitch up in a sad smile. "I'm Jaskier. Pleased to make your acquaintance, after all these years."

Jaskier. Jaskier. Of course it's Geralt's fucking bard, his—

"I must say, I harboured my hopes that you wouldn't be quite as broody and silent as Geralt is."

Eskel manages to shake himself out of it, though only barely.

"Sorry." He clears his throat in an attempt to make his voice less gravely. Less threatening. "Sorry, fuck, just spent so many winters with Geralt talking my ear off about you, I'd half-expected the bastard to've made you up."

He tries for light-heartedness. A flash of poorly-disguised pain passes through Jaskier's face, and Eskel realises it was decidedly not the way to go.

"Ah, you won't have to worry about that anymore, darling. Geralt and I are no longer companionable, in any way."

Perhaps it's the darling that does him in. Perhaps it's the overwhelming desire to never see this brilliant man sad or hurt again. Perhaps it's Eskel's own harrowing loneliness.

It doesn't matter much, because he downs the rest of his ale in three gulps, and then there are warm fingers around his wrist, pulling him away and up the stairs, pushing him into a room and onto a bed with a lapful of bard.

"Goddess," Jaskier says quietly, almost privately, except that his lips hover temptingly close to Eskel's. "You do look just like him, if it wasn't for—"

"The disfigured maw?" Eskel adds helpfully, out of habit if nothing else.

Jaskier puts a gentle hand on his cheek—the scarred one, gods save his soul—and Eskel leans into the touch involuntarily, like a dog starved for affection.

"I was going to say the hair," Jaskier finishes with a hint of kind amusement, and winks.

Eskel knows, with that first hungry kiss, that he's absolutely and utterly gone for the bard.

"Beautiful, darling—gods, you're stunning," Jaskier whispers later, hands roaming Eskel's broad chest, and fuck, he hadn't been touched like this in months, so he hides against the smooth column of Jaskier's throat—sucks a vivid bruise there like he has any fucking right—and desperately ignores the praise that isn't meant for him.

He sucks Jaskier's cock to make him shut up, and gets called lovely and breathtaking and darling angel for his efforts. He opens Jaskier up—mouth latched to the pale insides of his thighs, littering them with bruises—on four fingers and so much chamomile oil the smell makes him lightheaded, and Jaskier tells him he's a treasure, fuck, so good to me. He gets pushed backwards onto the bed, his wrists guided above his head in a soft suggestion of restraint as Jaskier rides his cock with determined fervour, and he's divine, gorgeous, my sweet, darling witcher.

Jaskier arches beautifully when he comes, spills all over them both, his eyes heavy-lidded, still holding Eskel's gaze, and Eskel knows he's only looking for an echo of Geralt in his yellow irises—but he flips them over, takes his pleasure in Jaskier's body, and he can live with being a second choice when he's used to being no choice at all.

***

"I've been—fuck, awfully lonely on the road, gods, darling—"

Eskel's quickly found out Jaskier is quite keen on being held, suspended in the air with only Eskel's hands underneath his thighs and a cock driving into him with haste and despair.

Especially out in the open, on the side of a well-traversed road. Eskel licks absently at the raised imprint of his teeth above Jaskier's collar and yearns to deepen it, have it stay there forever.

Jaskier pulls at his hair, panting harshly, brings their lips together in a searing kiss. He whines at the back of his throat and his sinful hole flutters around Eskel's cock, milking him into completion faster than anyone ever could, whispering low into his ear, that's it, that's it, love, fill me up 'til I can't hold anymore, fuck, so good like nobody ever did.

And if they're never quite alone in their passions, if Jaskier still searches his eyes for a ghost of someone else—Eskel can pretend he doesn't see, because he's the one who gets to fall asleep with the bard pressed up against him, soft and warm and kind.

***

Inkeepers take him in more willingly, when he's got Jaskier at his side, flashing them a smile full of promise.

He doesn't need for brothels, when he wakes up to Jaskier lapping at the head of his cock like it's the sweetest treat. When Jaskier's unable to keep his hands to himself. When he stays nice and loose and ready for Eskel to pound him into the ground at any moment.

"I'm not a young man anymore," Jaskier always says after, struggling to catch his breath, even if he were the one palming Eskel's cock through his breeches.

"You don't look a day over seventy," Eskel offers in return, and Jaskier slaps him upside the head in mock offense.

Eskel's never been happier than he is with Jaskier trudging the Path with him.

Which is why the frost crunching under their boots fills him with a hollow aching. A single snowflake lands pointedly at the very tip of Jaskier's reddened nose, and Eskel glares at the sky.

He lets Jaskier fuck him, then. They get a room for the night, light the hearth and feed the flames. Share a bottle of wine, of which Eskel takes the brunt. Stretch out leisurely on the furs, and Eskel's insides tie in knots when he watches the silver hairs on Jaskier's dark head glimmer in the firelight.

Jaskier takes his time, as Eskel thought he would. Lavishes him with kisses and praise and adoration and Eskel still doesn't think it's all his to have, but he melts under Jaskier's touches anyway.

I love you, he aches to say, to scream at the top of his lungs when Jaskier pushes into him, jaw slack and eyes squeezed shut in rapture.

"Come away with me," he begs instead, on the verge of release and at mercy of the insistent snap of Jaskier's hips. "To Kaer Morhen."

Jaskier shushes him with a kiss and a gentle hand in his hair.

"I don't want to leave without you."

Don't leave me alone, I can't bear it again.

He tips Jaskier's chin up, the bard's pretty eyes brimming with unshed tears as he nods—and this time, just for a second, Eskel doesn't feel like a shoddy replacement.

***

They beat Lambert to the keep by three days.

Three days spent reacquainting with the concept of heat and the feeling in their fingers after weeks traversing increasingly higher snowcaps.

Three glorious, uninterrupted days of having Jaskier share his bed in the only place Eskel could ever call home.

When he gets there, Lambert asks when he's going to get a turn on the bard, and if Eskel beats his insufferable arse in training a little harder than he normally would on the first day—well. It's what brothers do.

He makes sure to keep the ever-present mark at Jaskier's throat a vibrant purple when it fades into yellow, and Jaskier begs him for it as sweetly as he begs for his cock, just within Lambert's earshot.

Geralt doesn't show for a full fortnight, and then some. The snow piles higher with each day. They all collectively agree that their last wolf won't show this year, like he did so many years before.

Perhaps it is because Eskel thanks his Lady Destiny too soon, that Geralt staggers into the hall in the midst of a snowstorm, his cloak frozen stiff, frost melting on his silver hair.

They fall into each other's arms, because they always do; because they're brothers, because they'd been through hell together, because they love each other fiercely even if Eskel can't think of a single person he'd rather avoid more than Geralt, right now. They stand there in the hall, the snow on Geralt's collar a shock of cold against Eskel's neck. And then Geralt stiffens, suddenly, rigid in Eskel's embrace in a way that has nothing to do with the chill.

"You smell—" Geralt begins, seemingly perplexed, and inhales deeply at the juncture of Eskel's shoulder.

They fall away from each other abruptly, Eskel's chest tight with a muffled pull of dread.

"Let's get you warmed up, yeah? I'll get Lambert to see to your mare. He might not be too happy to see you, though. You lost him a bet."

Geralt follows him, almost reluctantly, and Eskel wants just one more night before it all goes to shit. Just the one.

***

Jaskier is sleep-warm and perfect and doesn't appreciate the chill of Eskel's skin once he finally gets back into bed.

Eskel takes him too roughly for the time of night, bites at his freckled shoulders and sharp collarbones, has Jaskier trembling and begging for it twice before he lets the bard come.

He muffles his own release against Jaskier's lips, all too aware of Geralt in a room not a hallway away.

***

The door creaks when it's pushed open. Faintly, but enough to rouse Eskel awake. He tightens an arm reflexively around Jaskier's sleeping form, and the bard nuzzles up against the side of his chest.

Yellow eyes stare at them intently, Geralt's expression unreadable, though the nod he gives can mean only one thing.

Eskel is careful as he untangles their limbs, and his heart decidedly doesn't pound quicker for a beat when Jaskier reaches out after him and mumbles a sleepy Eskel.

Their footsteps are nearly soundless on the stone floor. Geralt is equally quiet, rigid as a bowstring. They walk for a long time, until they come to a place Jaskier didn't yet get a chance to explore. Neutral ground. As neutral as can be, with Eskel still drenched in Jaskier's scent.

"I'm not sorry," Eskel says finally, and Geralt flinches.

They don't look at each other.

"Why," Geralt forces out. Eskel can hear the bones in his jaw click. "Why bring him here."

Wind howls outside the walls, the storm unrelenting.

I didn't want to be alone, he almost says, but bites his tongue. Instead,

"You broke him, Geralt. You left and he—he used to call out for you at night, you know? He'd have nightmares and wake up shaking. And I couldn't help."

They rarely talk like this, heart to heart under the guise of night.

"Why?" Geralt asks, softer this time. Kinder.

It doesn't feel right, but it's what's going to make things right.

"I'm just a substitute. A lousy one at that. He still—he wants you. Loves you."

And it's the truth, when he finally admits it out loud. Eskel is more at peace with that than he thought he would.

"Please don't take it from me," he whispers, overwhelmed in a way that he was assured the mutagens were supposed to eliminate. "It's all I have."

Geralt doesn't respond, though he does place a hand on Eskel's shoulder, in comfort or understanding, he couldn't know.

***

Jaskier keeps his head high.

"Geralt," the bard greets him, in a manner far too cold and collected.

He doesn't flinch under Geralt's gaze, doesn't look away before Geralt, but when he does—Eskel catches his expression shatter, fall into a million pieces that he desperately wants to collect and put back together. They slip through his fingers.

At night, Jaskier jolts awake clawing at his own throat, crying that he can't breathe, asking Geralt to help him, please help him. Eskel holds him until the tremors subside. Neither of them sleeps well.

All the good evaporates from Eskel's life.

The silly marks of faux ownership fade from Jaskier's skin, eventually, and Eskel's heart aches.

He kisses Jaskier deeply, puts all his horrible feelings behind it, and then just holds the bard close. For the last time. Eskel knows he isn't meant to cry—but the trials merely took away his ability to shed tears, not this overpowering fucking desire to do so.

"Eskel?" Jaskier says, gently, the question of what's wrong implied.

Eskel shakes his head and holds Jaskier tighter.

***

"You. Apologise."

Geralt seems startled by the development. As does Jaskier, to be fair, shifting nervously where he's gripping Eskel's arm.

"I don't want his apology," Jaskier says weakly. "We've had our words, and they were very—pointed. Very definite. Eskel—"

Jaskier looks to him with wide, terrified eyes.

And it wouldn't be enough that he has to give up the one good thing in his life, would it? It wouldn't be enough that every time they fucked Jaskier looked beyond him and for someone else. It wouldn't be fucking enough that he was madly, unreasonably in love with a man whose affections laid firmly elsewhere.

No, it wouldn't, because now he has to—

He takes a deep breath and listens to the staccato of Jaskier's quickened heartbeat.

"I wouldn't make you do this, except you do want his fucking apology, and Geralt wants to give it to you, because you love him and he loves you and I'm—" useless, disposable, unwanted, "I'm done. I'm done. Figure it out. Please."

Jaskier's hands fall away from around his arm, and Eskel takes off.

He doesn't really have anywhere to go, when every place he'd grown to love in the keep knows Jaskier's presence, wears his mark and his scent.

The corridors are still and silent. Grey and imposing. Cold is seeping through the thick stone—cold from this winter and the hundreds before it, and Eskel thinks the walls had never truly known warmth. It's all terribly dull, Jaskier had said when they'd walked the halls that first time, hand in hand with not a worry between them.

He'd been stupid to grow so attached when Jaskier was never his to keep. He'd been stupid to bring him here and expect everything to stay the same in blissful ignorance. He'd been stupid, and he didn't want to be lonely again, even for just a few months—and now he's going to be lonely until some merciful beast cuts his suffering short like it was always meant to.

It is, perhaps, too early in the day to drink, but Lambert's eyes light up when Eskel goes to him with the offer.

***

"You didn't come to bed."

Eskel hears Jaskier approaching, of course he does—but he doesn't turn to face him, eyes firmly fixed on the window, even if it is just snow there. He does feel quite dramatic, sat in a windowsill like a maiden awaiting her beloved to come and whisk her away. Eskel awaits only peace and for his heart to feel whole again.

"Smells like you," he says, too honest.

Jaskier shuffles closer.

"I waited up for you."

A hand falls gently to his shoulder, and Eskel shivers at the touch.

"Thought you'd be staying with Geralt. You—you can keep the room, if you want." Eskel couldn't ever be comfortable there, anyway, not after everything.

"Darling—"

The hand moves from his shoulder to his cheek, soft and tender and Eskel meets the incredible blue of Jaskier's eyes easily.

"I never meant to make you feel unwanted," Jaskier begins. Eskel wishes only to shrink under his gaze. "I want you so, so much."

Jaskier settles next to him, their thighs pressed together, the black of his trousers startling against wine-red silk. Eskel feels fucking dumb.

"I know it wasn't about me, I—you should go be with your wolf. I'll be fine."

The scars pull tightly when he smiles, aiming for reassuring; it comes out tired and helpless.

Jaskier leans in impossibly close, the ghost of his breath on Eskel's lips.

"You're my wolf, too."

They kiss before he knows it—desperately, hungrily, until Eskel's head spins and Jaskier's hands tug at the collar of his shirt.

Eskel pulls away with a deep, burning hatred of himself.

"Just go, Jaskier." When did his voice grow so cold? He never wants to speak to Jaskier like this, never, and yet— "I don't need your pity."

He expects Jaskier to do just that. Go, and avoid him for the rest of winter, and walk around with Geralt's scent all over him and a mark to the side of his neck and—

"No. Nuh-uh. Not happening. Eskel, gods, I—I'm sorry, yeah? That you couldn't trust my affection was all for you, and perhaps it wasn't, not always—"

Fuck, but it does hurt to hear it, just a bit.

"—but then you had to go and be the most splendid creature under the sun and I, well."

The gold of Jaskier's rings glitters enticingly in the sparse sunlight when he reaches for Eskel's hand.

"I do love Geralt, but Eskel, darling. I love you just as much."

Eskel could fall to his knees if he were the praying sort.

Fuck, he might anyway.

Jaskier kisses him, and Eskel carries the bard all the way to bed to show his worship in a different way.

***

It's easy to kiss Geralt.

It's not the first time he'd kissed Geralt.

"Fuck, look at you," Jaskier moans, somewhere to their side.

Geralt arches his neck beautifully when Eskel grabs a fistful of silver hair and tugs his head backwards.

It is, possibly, the first time he'd kissed Geralt without the hushed secrecy of darkness and a hard scrubbing to get the scent of release off each other.

Jaskier leans over his shoulder to capture Geralt's lips for himself, chest pressed tightly to Eskel's back.

He'd thought the jealousy would smother him, when Jaskier first brought it up. He'd thought he would choke on the image of Jaskier laid bare before anyone else. He'd thought—

But it's Geralt, isn't it? It's Geralt, and they'd already shared so much with each other, their joys and their pain and their lives, and—

"Eskel," Geralt breathes like he used to so many lifetimes ago, except he doesn't bite his tongue, now, and Eskel leans in to bite instead at the soft skin below his jaw, to leave his mark there, twin to the one he'd left on Jaskier.

They fall softly to the mattress, him and Geralt, with Jaskier crawling over them swiftly, a sun-warm smile on his pretty face.

"Gods. Gods, you're stunning."

Eskel turns his head slowly, lazily, and finds Geralt's eyes heavy and sparkling. Not just yellow, anymore, no longer the colour of a beast's—rather, the exact shade of sunlight caught in honey. Of morning dew on dandelions.

Fuck, he'd grown mellow.

Jaskier comes to straddle him, all pale skin and gorgeous hair and bruises from his hips to his throat. He settles heavily over Eskel's cock, the bastard tease.

"Jaskier," Eskel near-hisses, because suddenly the head of his cock dips inside Jaskier's oil-slick hole. "Fuck, you—"

"Of course I got ready for my wolves, darling," Jaskier breathes, and laughs, and seats himself completely in Eskel's lap like it's nothing. "In fact, you might be partial to know—I had to employ the use of my other hand, to prepare for what I have planned."

Eskel's head spins, thick with the promise that he doesn't dare dwell on. His eyes slip shut; Jaskier coaxes them open with nought but a soft word.

He can feel Geralt stir next to him, watching with a tight grip on himself as Jaskier moves easily, like he'd been made only for this, his one divine purpose.

"Geralt," Eskel hears himself call out weakly. "Geralt, Geralt—"

Words seem only a silly hindrance, so he doesn't bother, grabbing instead at the thick muscle of Geralt's thighs, guiding him to sit astride Eskel's chest, crush him with all that glorious weight—stuff his cock in Eskel's greedy mouth, fuck.

Eskel thinks he might combust, go up in flames as he's caught between the agonising pleasure of being buried to the hilt in Jaskier's slack hole and the heavy satisfaction of having Geralt's cock glide wetly on his tongue, further and further as Geralt stares at him, bewildered.

It's a wonder he doesn't come as soon as the length of it slides seamlessly down his throat, so deep he can feel it when he wraps a hand around his own neck. He squeezes, just to make sure Geralt feels it, too, and the rumble of a groan from above him makes Eskel thrust wildly into the clutch of Jaskier's maddeningly hot body.

"O-oh, you were made for each other, weren't you?" Jaskier's hand is petting gentle circles up Eskel's heaving stomach. "Fuck, darling, next time I'll watch you bounce on Geralt's cock till you sob with it."

He reaches blindly to grab Jaskier's hand, entwine their fingers together. With heavy-lidded eyes, he watches Geralt's head get pulled back for a messy kiss. The bruise on the elegant column of his throat stands dark and proud and Eskel's chest swells with it, even if it'll fade in hours. He'll just have to try very hard to keep it vivid.

Geralt rolls his hips, knees tightening around Eskel's shoulders, ragged moans filling the air, mingling with the sinful noises dripping from Jaskier's lips. Eskel's vision spots, air suddenly hard to come by, and yet it doesn't cause him distress; fuck, of all the ways to die, being smothered between Geralt's thighs with Jaskier tight and lovely around his cock is Eskel's preferred demise, if given a choice. His heartbeat quickens, though, and Geralt stops his delicious rutting, moves away with a tender look and a touch to his swollen lip. He leans down to steal another kiss, but Eskel's too floaty, too hazy to do anything more than open his sloppy mouth--for Geralt, and then for Jaskier, when he collapses on Eskel's chest.

"Desperation really is becoming on you, darling."

Feeling Geralt's tongue lapping at his cock when it's still moving in and out of Jaskier—

Feeling a finger press in alongside him, joined quickly by another and another, until the fit is so tight it seems like he's suffocating—

Feeling the torturously slow drag of Geralt's cock against his, contained so closely in the heaven of Jaskier's body—

"Fuck," Eskel and Geralt groan in perfect harmony, Jaskier trembling wildly in their arms.

"Gods, gods, fuck, I love you, love you both so much—"

Eskel can't speak, can't move, can't do anything but suck in desperate breaths and look as Jaskier's face morphs from pain into rapture, his brow smoothing out, his bitten-red lips coming apart in a perfect o.

Geralt roars, withdraws his hips just a little, and it jostles Eskel's very soul.

Fuck, he can't imagine what it's like for Jaskier.

He wonders if—

"Move," Jaskier says in a broken voice. "You can move, you can fuck me, a-ah."

Eskel wishes he could Axii himself into not coming. He wishes—gods, but he can't, he can't, and when Geralt starts moving with purpose, Eskel feels the crackle of release at the base of his spine, coiling tighter and tighter until—

"Fuck, Eskel—" Geralt moans, and it's torture, when Eskel can feel his cock throbbing against Geralt's, and then he's coming and coming and coming, a shockwave of sensation.

His ears feel like they're stuffed with thick wool.

Jaskier kisses him, quick and filthy and needy.

"You're perfect, perfect, my darling—" he says against Eskel's lips.

Eskel whines at the back of his throat, his hands trembling where they grab Geralt's hair and tug him to lean down.

The raw, painful pleasure of his oversensitive cock still trapped within the suffocating heat of Jaskier's body threatens to undo him completely. He claws blindly at any skin he can reach, to ground himself, to settle against the unrelenting drag of Geralt against him. He can feel his seed dripping out of Jaskier and down his balls. It's fucking filthy.

He kisses Jaskier and he kisses Geralt and his lips go numb before Jaskier finally tips into a shaking release that rips a hoarse scream from his throat.

The bed is barely big enough for two people, but they make it work. They'll make it all work, somehow.

Before sleep takes him, Eskel hears Lambert yell, I'm moving the fuck out from down the hall.

#cw SOFT #honestly that's it #god i'm tender for eskel i'm sorry #on another note #to the anon that sent me a leshen prompt yesterday #how fucking dare you?? fit all my biggest kinks??? in a two sentence ask?????#criminal

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blake-belladonna-defence-force · 4 years

Note

Soooo, bee haw related asks huh, cool, the white fang are cattle rustlers so Blake is insanely good with a lasso, while yang can put a hole in a quarter after someone flips it in the dark, they decided its a good idea to traid skills after they are partnered up at Beacon Ranch

There a whole lotta creative liscence taken with shooting and lassoing here 😅

I hope y’all like competitive bees!

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Listen pardner…” Yang drawled, lifting her hat up slighting and leaning back on the fence, toothpick hanging loosely from her lips. “There ain’t no way no rope throwin’ gon’ impress me. Any body can throw a rope. Takes real skill to shoot a quarter in the dark, y’hear, Blake?”

“Sweetheart…” the cat faunus woman in front of her practically crooned, slivers of gold glinting from underneath her own hat. “If Just anybody could throw a rope, Ozpin wouldn’t have hired me. You need me.”

“Oh please, Blake. I could do your job easi-“

Yang stopped and quirked a brow when amber eyes glinted below Blake’s black hat dangerously, seeming to shift to a molten gold. Blake’s hands shifted to the two lassos that she kept at each hip and unhooked them from her belt and started spinning them at her sides, her movements slow and lazy at first but quickly picking up speed.

“Miss Xiao Long…” Blake said dryly, her golden eyes narrowing as Yang stood up and stepped forward her head tilted curiously. “I don’t appreciate your tone. Maybe we need to do something about it?”

“Like wh-“

Yang was cut off by Blake expertly sending her lassos out towards her and she lifted her arms high to block the incoming trap… only to realise too late that both ropes were headed to her gun holsters that were slung low on her hips. Blake’s lassos looped around each gun and yanked them out and into her hands, disarming her. Blake’s golden eyes gleamed with a challenge as she freed the guns and twirled them around in her hands before she quickly unloaded them, sending Yang’s magazines to the ground, before she hooked them into the front of her jeans with a smirk, her shirt lifting up to reveal the toned skin beneath.

“Holy-“

“Anybody can shoot in a sharp line. But it’s takes real skill to disarm our finest sharp shooter on the ranch.” Blake said, mocking Yang’s earlier words. “Now, these guns are real pretty so I think I might hold onto them for a bit. Come find me when you’re ready to admit defeat, cowgirl.”

Yang stared after her in shock as Blake sauntered away, her thumbs hooked through her belt loops and disappeared around one of the buildings.

“Goddamn.” Yang whispered to herself, taking her hat off her head and ruffling her long, blonde hair ruefully as she stared after Blake with a slightly dopey grin. “Now that’s a woman.”

She paused for a moment and blinked as she realised, later than she should have, something very important.

“A woman that stole my guns!”

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Blake smirked lazily as Yang strolled into the saloon, her spurs clinking as she walked, an air of false nonchalance about her. But when lilac met amber, Blake watched the way Yang’s jaw tightened at the sight of Blake spinning her guns around her fingers lazily. The ranch hands surrounding Blake all glanced up and winced, patting Blake on the back and wishing her good luck as they moved a safe distance away.

Still within viewing distance of the show, though.

“You wanna give me my guns back now, Sugar?”

“Hmm… maybe.”

Blake bit back a laugh when Yang growled, her gaze narrowing as she turned a chair around and sat on it, leaning forward and crossing her arms over the back rest.

“What d’ya want, woman?” Yang asked, tilting her head slightly as her sharp gaze carefully examined Blake’s face.

“I want you to admit that you were wrong about me.” Blake said simply, placing the guns on the table out of Yang’s reach. “I disarmed you. Something that no one has been able to do, cowgirl. That’s gotta say something.”

“It says that yer a smartass.” Yang drawled, a competitive gleam entering her eyes. “I admit, you got the jump on me this time. But I still doubt that ropin’s as hard as you claim.”

“Funny. I could say the same thing about shooting.” Blake leaned forward, biting back a smile. She would never admit it… but she was having fun.

“Yeah? Well… how ‘bout we make this more interestin’, then, pardner.” Yang said with a sly grin. “I set up some trick shots that you’ll have to shoot and you set up some kinda challenge for me with a rope.”

“Make it two and you got a deal.” Blake smirked, her feline ears flicking forward with intrigue. “I’m ambidextrous. If I’m shooting with two guns, then you’re going to rope with two hands.”

“Pfft.” Yang scoffed. “Easy. What are the wagers?”

“Loser buys drinks for the winner for a month?”

“I like the way you think, Belladonna.” Yang chuckled, leaning her chin on her forearms and grinning up at Blake. “I almost feel bad that I’m gonna kick yer ass.”

“That’s funny.” Blake laughed, delighted with the challenge. “I don’t feel bad about kicking yours at all.”

“Feisty.”

“As you’ll find out, Yang.”

“I certainly hope so, Blake.”

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Blake, admittedly, may have bitten off more than she could chew. She watched as the two kids stroll 20 paces away and got ready to throw their coins.

Blake could shoot. She could shoot a bandit and a rustler. She could take aim at a rattler that was about to bite her herd or her horse and protect her animals. Hell, when she was with the White Fang and rustled cattle, she had taken out her fair share of deputies and sheriffs.

But that was basic shots. This was sharp shooting. She had heard the rumours about Yang. Had heard tale that she could shoot a hole in a quarter at 50 paces… in the dark, using only the glint of steel to direct her shot.

Ugh. This is what she got for trying to show off.

“Alrighty, Blake. Usually I shoot at 50 paces and at night but I’m gon’ be nice and getcha to shoot at 20 paces durin’ the day. When yer ready, Doll… let the kids know.” Yang called lazily from the crowd, a smug expression in her face.

Blake growled under her breath. Cocky little shit, wasn’t she? Regardless, she inhaled deeply and nodded to the kids and took aim…

And took out two windows instead of the quarters.

“Well, shoot.” Yang grinned cheekily, no doubt knowing exactly what she was saying. “That’s not meant to happen. I hope you’ve got enough lien for the upcoming month, Blake.”

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Yang.” Blake stomped over to her and calmly (well… as calmly as she was capable of at that moment as the crowd chuckled) placed Yang’s gun’s into their holsters, purposefully giving them a tug and leaned forward. “I can’t wait to wipe that smug smile off of your face.”

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“I’ll show you a small series of tricks and I want you to copy them as best as you can, cowgirl.” Blake said calmly as Yang watched carefully. She couldn’t get this wrong. How hard could it be?

“Got it, Sugar.” Yang smirked.

That smirk quickly fell away as Blake effortlessly danced through her lassos, bouncing and hopping between the loops. She made it look so easy… but not even Yang’s sharp eyes could keep up. Yang gulped, her confidence starting to crack.

This was what she got for trying to show off, wasn’t it?

“Here you are, Sweetheart.” Blake smirked with a brow raised challengingly as she passed Yang the lassos and stepped back.

“Pfft.” But she wasn’t going to let Blake see the crack in her confidence. “This’ll be easy. That’s nothin’, Doll.”

Now… Yang could throw a lasso over a rogue cow if she needed to. She could tie knots. She could even make a rope. But she was starting to realise that this was a very different beast.

She inhaled deeply and began to twirl to loops to the sides and made the first jump into them… and quickly lost track of what she was doing as the noose tightened around her ankles, sending her off balance. She hopped, desperately trying to regain her balance, until the back of her legs hit something.

There was a loud splash as Yang fell tumbling into a water trough. Loud snickers ran through the crowd and if she didn’t know better, she’d say that the horse’s were snickering at her too.

“It’ll be easy, huh?” Blake teased as Yang pulled herself out and crouched, loosening the lasso and pulling it off her ankles and throwing both ropes at Blake, who caught it easily.

“Yeah, yeah.” Yang grumbled, despite the smile fighting its way into her lips as she, dripping water, glanced at Blake. “I guess ropin’s harder than I thought.”

“And I guess I can’t shoot as straight as I thought.”

The two stared at each other for a long moment before they both began to laugh softly.

“Well…” Yang snorted, amused. “I guess that’s a draw. How’s that work out?”

“Let’s make it simple and say that we just have to buy each other drinks for a week?” Blake smiled genuinely as her left ear flicked. She had a really pretty smile, Yang realised.

“Sounds good to me.” She said before letting out a sigh. “I would suggest that I buy you one now… but I need to go change.”

“We can catch up later, then.”

“Sure thing, Blake.” Yang started to walk away but paused and glanced over her shoulder with a small side smile. “Jus’ so y’know, Blake… I’m looking forward to workin’ with you.”

“You too, Yang.”

Yang grinned, winked and waved as she walked back to her home. Life just got a lot more interesting around here.

#blake belladonna #yang xiao long #bumbleby #rwby #fanfic

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poptod · 4 years

Text

Brought To Your Knees (Kenny x Reader)

Description: 7-Elevens are a lot more versatile than one might originally think. AKA, sometimes you can get locked in them with your long-time crush and, following that, things can happen.

Notes: Freshman means you’re around 14-15 years old, Sophomore is 15-16 I think, Junior is 16-17, Senior is 17-18. Idk the American schooling system too well. Completely male reader.

Warning: Smut :) not sure why its there but hey everyone needs a gratuitous blow job every now and then

Word Count: 6.1k

You were expecting rain. You even brought an umbrella along, tucked away in the side pocket of your backpack, but an umbrella clearly wouldn’t work very well. Snow fell harsh upon the earth, cold and freezing near instantly, making a very thick layer of snow trap you inside the 7-Eleven, the doors frozen shut despite the fact that the heating was still on.

How exactly one gets trapped inside a 7-Eleven with the only person they’ve ever really loved probably needs some explaining, so let’s go back to the beginning; seven years ago. Seven years ago you transferred schools due to an unfortunate accident with a classmate, at least that’s what’s on your record. Half of you is grateful no one knows what really happened, but the other half wishes people knew you punched someone in the face hard enough to dislocate their nose. Though, looking at you, most people probably wouldn’t believe you, considering you haven’t got the strongest body structure. Your (at the time) new school was better than the last one in several ways, but the most important to you was the fact that it was a public school. There were horror stories about public schools, of unruly students and horrible teachers, and by god did you want to experience that - private school was far too clean, far too organized for your mind, and you were going slowly insane.

If there’s a term to describe you, it’d probably be ‘thrill seeker,’ if asshole can’t be said out loud. For the first couple of years you were a nuisance to classrooms, the well known class clown and always up for distracting the teacher (the history teachers were the easiest to distract, math teachers the hardest), and always ready to fight back for what you believed was right. Then came your first year of high school and you found the greatest thrill of all - boys.

Previously you hadn’t taken much of a romantic interest in either gender, and most people said it’d kickstart sometime in high school, which was about right - freshman year you had a crush on a boy named Everett. It wasn’t a particularly strong crush, not compared to your more recent crushes, but it was your first, and you knew exactly what you wanted to do. You wanted him to fall in love with you, hopelessly and endlessly, you wanted him to hang on your every word and dream of your affections... but you didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. No, you just wanted his adoration, and nothing more - only to lead him on and drop his heart to break it. When this didn’t happen and he didn’t fall in love with you, you realized that most boys are not attracted to other boys, and you became deathly silent when it came to crushes.

Several other boys (and maybe a girl) caught your fancy in the remainder of freshman year, but there was one boy you hadn’t yet met that would become the greatest thrill of all. Junior year you had a class with him, and on the first day of school when you walked into English class your bag fell from your hands, clattering to the floor with a loud thump.

He is perfect, in every conceivable way he’s everything you’ve ever imagined, shy and kind, sincere and genuinely interesting - just the sight of him from that day on and your heart speeds up tenfold. You’re a horror story that teachers talk about, so Mr. Davis is clearly flabbergasted at your silence, and for the most part he leaves you alone even though you’re barely paying attention to the blackboard at the front of the classroom. Instead your attention is focused on the boy sitting two seats in front of you and a row to the right. It’s almost surprising he hasn’t noticed your staring, but clearly Mr. Davis notices because about two months into the school year he pulls you aside to talk about it.

“I wanted to talk to you about your attention,” he says quietly, sitting behind his desk as you stand at the other side. You’re playing absentmindedly with your fingers, barely listening to him, only staying where you are to avoid another hour of detention today. “I know you’re usually very loud in class, word gets around easily here, but you’re staring at your classmate a lot.”

“And?” You ask, not really seeing the point. In your mind, he should be thankful you’re not a disruption.

“Is… is there anything you want to tell me? About Kenny?”

“Who’s Kenny?”

“… that’s the boy you keep staring at,” he says slowly, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Ah, you think to yourself. That’s his name.

“Listen, (Y/N), I want you to know you’re always welcome in my classroom. This is a safe space for you, okay?” His voice goes to a whisper as he says, “I have a boyfriend, so we aren’t so different after all.”

“I’m not gay,” you spit out quickly, the venomous tone of your voice not deterring him.

“I know it can be hard to admit at first, and at your age I understand the confusion within yourself. Just know you can talk to me, okay? And try to pay more attention in class? I know you’ve got it in you.”

Without word you pick your backpack up from the floor, slinging it onto your shoulders and leaving. Just as you exit the main doors, noting the dark clouds low in the sky, you’re called back by one of the vice principals, ordering you to your detention.

“C’mon, it’s Friday,” you groan, walking backwards to stare at the teacher as you walk away.

“I’ll call your parents!” She threatens, whipping her flip phone out of her pocket.

“Oh yeah? What are they gonna do? Fuck off,” you laugh, throwing double middle-fingers at her, which lands you in three hours of detention.

At five thirty you’re released, an absolutely sour look on your face as you walk down the pavement. There’s a seedy part of the city that has a 7-Eleven you’ve been to so often you know the workers’ shifts. All of them are pretty nice, though all very tired of life and if you had to hazard a guess, mildly suicidal. At least that’s the look in their eyes, and you don’t blame them - customer service is one of the most horrid jobs in history. Friday evenings Alan has shift, and he’s rather nice, but upon opening the freezing door to the inside, you don’t see him. The door shuts behind you and you wander the aisles for a little while - you don’t have much change, you note as your fingers fiddle with the coins and bills in your coat pocket.

Several minutes later your attention is brought to the weather - it’s snowing, bad, and you groan internally at the wind force practically blowing down the stop sign out front. The few trees that survive in the city are barely hanging on now, flimsy limbs and branches ripping away from the main trunk. Again you groan, a grimace on your face when you think about having to go home in that. With a calming sigh you turn back to the hotdogs, spinning slow and peaceful in the warm light.

Heaven is one big 7-Eleven, you think to yourself. One of the very few things that calms you down is rotating hot dogs that probably aren’t real meat.

From the corner of your eye you can see someone else enter, but the wind blasting through the doors is enough for you to turn your head.

It’s Kenny.

Of course it’s him.

Gulping you turn back to the hot dogs, hoping beyond belief that Alan will get back soon. Kenny is the only person that’s ever rendered you speechless, the only one that’s ever made your cheeks blush without a word. Even in fluorescent light he seems to glow, peaceful and careful as his fingers drag a feather touch across a row of snacks. He hasn’t noticed you, not yet, so you have time to plan out how to hide from him. Instantly you turn to the cash register, wondering if you’d get kicked out of Alan found you hiding behind the counter.

Too late - you can feel his eyes turn to you, burning into the back of your neck as you hold a viselike grip on the edge of the plastic red counter.

“Um, do you, uh, work here?” He asks, now standing directly behind you. Trying to smile, you turn to face him, feeling your heart burn with the speed it beats at.

“No, I - I just know the guys who work here, I don’t know where they are now, though,” you say, oversharing a little bit and praying he doesn’t notice. He’s right in front of you, half confused as his lips part just barely, brows furrowing above grey eyes. You can practically feel your legs giving out beneath you, but he turns to the door before you fall in front of him. Practically gasping for air as he leaves your personal space, you watch as he goes to open the door.

“Is... is this supposed to be locked?” He asks.

“No, it shouldn’t be,” you breathe out, making your way over to the door to try and open it. It’s stuck, hard - you even back up to kick it and it doesn’t budge.

“Wait, you’re… you’re (Y/N), aren’t you?”

“You know me?” You ask incredulously, even though it’s not that farfetched that he would know your name.

“Of course I do, you’re like a legend at school,” he says, getting quieter as his sentence ends. As he fiddles with his fingers, awkwardly trying to look somewhere else, you can’t help but stare as you nearly always do.

“I’m flattered,” is what you manage to say, just as choked and embarrassed as him.

“I’ll stay out of your way, just - just don’t beat me up?” He requests, holding his hands up defensively as he backs away towards the corner of the small store.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I don’t do that,” you say, taken aback by his words. You know your reputation isn’t great, but you didn’t think it was that awful - you’d never beat up an innocent person and you didn’t plan on starting. “What are you doing here anyway? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Um, my friend… he told me to meet him at the library, but the weather got bad and I needed to get inside,” he explains, still not meeting your eye.

God you’re perfect, you think to yourself in reaction to nothing in particular - he’s just so beautiful, so supple you can’t help but wonder what he’d feel like with his bare skin against yours. More than anything you want to belong to him, which you realize is strange for you; generally you enjoy others belonging to you, but… Kenny is different for no reason, but he’s so incredibly special you can’t understand your infatuation beyond the fact that it’s insurmountable and achingly enduring.

“I might be able to make a flamethrower,” you say, trying to think of ways to not be suffocated by nearness to the object of your unending affections.

“Wait, a flamethrower? What -“ he follows you frantically as you begin to search for flammable sprays - “what for!?”

“The door is frozen shut, we might be able to get out if I melt the ice away,” you say quickly, but he’s pulling at your arms to stop you from digging through the shelves. At the force you whirl around, face to face with him as your chest practically touches his, and in an instant you can’t breathe for fear of losing the moment. You both pause, frozen into shock before he steps back like you’re poison.

“I don’t think that’s, uh, necessary,” he says slowly, and just as slow you agree, nodding as you put the lighter away.

“Sure. You have a phone?”

“No, you?”

“I keep mine at home,” you mumble, untensing as the adrenaline of the moment fades away.

“Well this sucks,” he huffs, crossing his arms and turning awkwardly to the shelves as though he didn’t want you to see his face. “At least it could be worse.”

“No, don’t say that, the power’s gonna go -“

Darkness falls over the store and the heating system goes quiet, the dull background hum going out. A loud sigh comes out of you, letting your eyes accustom to the dark before thinking of what to do next.

“I think we might be stuck here till morning,” you grumble, the dim light of streetlamps casting a gold glow over the various rows and, of course, putting Kenny in a perfectly beautiful light. You can practically feel the blood rushing into your cheeks, and you quickly look away with crossed arms.

“I’m… sorry,” he says rather suddenly, just barely making his way closer to you.

“It’s not your fault,” you sigh. “A beautiful coincidence.”

“… beautiful?” He asks, confused by your wording - it can’t possibly be a good thing to him.

“Yeah, I -“ you look over at him, fiddling anxiously with his fingers as he looks up at you - “Never mind. You tired?”

“No, don’t think i will be for a while,” he says, sitting with his back against the refrigerated drinks, the back of his head clunking against the cold glass.

“I’ll get a flashlight and a boardgame,” you tell him, the only idea in your head that didn’t sound stupid; the entire time you’re looking through the back for games, you’re kicking the thought of cuddling him out of your mind. The situation is perfect, far too perfect for it to work out well. Besides, these types of things generally don’t work out for you - as previously said, you’re a bit of an asshole, and that trait has a tendency to screw you over.

He just sits and waits, and when you come back a good five or ten minutes later, he’s still sitting in the same position. It strikes you as odd how he hasn’t even fidgeted considering how much he was doing it earlier, but you just shine the light in his face and cackle when he winces away from the brightness.

“All they had is chess. I guess Marie took back her game, which is fair,” you add as you sit yourself down across from him, putting the box in the middle of you two. “She got fired a while back and didn’t get her game when she left. I helped get her a key for the backroom,” you recall, chuckling, but Kenny looks partially terrified, so you stop.

“You know how to play?” He asks, rubbing his hands together as he starts setting it up.

“A bit. My brother tried to teach me when we were little, I never caught on much though,” you say, thinking distantly of how your brother was doing in university. “He’s a big math guy, loves strategy games like this.”

“So you don’t like strategy…?” He asks slowly, as though worried he’d offend you - you just shrug.

“It’s not that. I’m… just more of a romantic guy.”

For a good three seconds he doesn’t breathe, but when you raise your eyebrows questioningly, he picks up again with an absent nod. Once the last pieces are set into place, he does a quick run-through of the rules, and by the end of it you’re fully aware you’re going to lose at least the first few rounds. Neither of you have a grasp on time as you go through the first round, then the second, and onto the third - you lose very fast, that’s all you’re aware of. He’s sweet about it, for which you’re confused if not thankful. If you were to play chess with some of the people you hang with, they’d be mean about winning and they’d cheat on you, which is fair; you’d do the same to them. Now you’re being nice, trying to actually understand the game, and he’s being a complete sweetheart about teaching you the rules.

It isn’t something you’re used to, but it’s something you could be used to, and something you want to be used to - this sort of kindness. Despite all the thoughts running rampant in your head you manage to stay concentrated on the game - well, him more so than the game - and it almost feels like he might like you. That’s an improvement, you think to yourself, recalling his initial fear of you.

“Could I ask you something? If you don’t mind,” he requests after you both come down from a laughing high, and you agree easily. It’s only far too easy to be open with him. “There’s lots of stories that go around about you - there’s this one, this one’s my favorite, mostly because I don’t think it really happened, but it is really funny.”

“Really? Well, rumors are half right sometimes. What horrid thing did I do this time?” You ask, using the bottle opener on your swiss knife to pop open a beer bottle.

“It’s mostly just… inappropriate, not that it was a particularly ‘bad’ thing. I heard you… slept with Isla and Gianna like, at the same time, like every high school boys’ dream. The guy I heard tell it said you snuck into a sleepover or something?” He says slept like it’s disgusting, so that paired with absolutely everything else about him you assume he’s very unexperienced.

“That’s an interesting story, which I - I don’t usually tell the truth about,” you confess, waiting for him to make his next move in the game, but the moment never comes. He’s far too engrossed in your conversation, and as wonderful as it feels to be having a real conversation with your crush, you can’t help but hate the subject.

“Will you tell the truth this time?” He asks, quiet and sincere in a way that you don’t fully expect. It pushes you to trust him just a little bit more, and it’s all you need for the truth to come out for the first time about that story.

“I went to sell them some weed because they called me up n’ said they’d pay the price for bothering me so late at night, so y’know, I said ‘fuck it,’ you only live once right? I climbed into Gianna’s window for this too, and then they offered for me to share it with them. To be fair to myself I wasn’t feeling… too great about myself,” you grow quiet, “so I said yes. And then they started bringing up sex, and they kept trying to get me to make a move on them, but I wasn’t really feeling it. I didn’t want to do it, but it.. sort of happened anyway?”

He’s quiet, sort of nodding his head but he’s too far in thought to commit to the motion fully.

“Why haven’t you told anyone the truth before?” Is what he asks at first, and you breathe out a sigh of relief when you realize it’s one of the easier questions.

“Didn’t want to seem like a pussy, that’s why,” you scoff, taking a smooth swig from your bottle. “It’s not a big deal anyway.”

“Kind of sounds like it,” he murmurs.

“Yeah, that’s because you’re a virgin,” you say, that asshole part of yourself that you were so worried about earlier rearing it’s ugly head. Right on time too, right when you could’ve opened your heart.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin. You know what they say,” he says defensively, leaning back against he glass.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“The safest sex is no sex at all.”

“Yeah, and abstinence won’t get you pregnant 99.99% of the time,” you laugh. When he just looks confused, you explain, “Virgin Mary, dude.”

He opens his mouth to let out a tiny ‘oh,’ and at last the game is resumed. Throughout the next several rounds he asks more questions, but those times he doesn’t ever lose track of the game turns. By the end of the night, when you’re both finally yawning with dewey eyes, you’ve only won one round, which you’re very proud of.

“At least I beat you once,” you remark as you help him look for blankets to stay warm with. “I won a round against Mr. Chess Master.”

“And I won fourteen rounds against Mr. Sex,” he says, his eyes bulging out of his head as his hand slaps over his mouth once he realizes exactly what he’s said. You turn to him, shocked yet pleasantly surprised to find him so flustered. Dreadful is how you’d describe him, dreading your full reaction.

“Those aren’t the rounds that matter if I’m Mr. Sex,” you respond, trying to remain as smooth and deep as possible when you wink to punctuate your sentence. His mouth falls open when his hand drops back to his side, and you walk out of the storage room with a small smile.

You heave a massive sigh, gathering yourself back together once the door shuts behind you. It only takes a few seconds before he’s following you, but it’s all that’s necessary for you to gain your chill again.

“It’ll probably be easier to sleep back here,” you say, gesturing vaguely to the entirety of the backroom - it’s a tad warmer and carpeted, which is a plus for comfort. The one office chair is cheap and heavily scratched by god knows what, so you roll it into the corner and lay out a blanket on the floor. It’s not an especially nice blanket, which is what you expected. The only real source of warmth you have access to is the leftover coats from employees who didn’t care to take theirs home.

As you lay down on the blanket, covering yourself in a too-large trench coat, you wonder of the different ways the evening could progress. In fact it’s all you can think about, all your brain can stress about when Kenny lies down right beside you. He has his coat as a pillow, and without word you offer your coat to help cover him - he declines, mumbling something about how he’s already warm.

I could kiss him right now, you think, the thought sending shivers of anxious excitement and fear through your veins. He’s staring at the ceiling, and though your body is facing the same direction you’re looking at him, watching the slow movement of his chest and the tired blinking of his eyes. Or we could leave and never talk again.

You don’t know what you’re doing, hardly aware of your own movements as the back of your fingers caress the side of his face, pushing unruly hair away from his eyes. His breath catches in his chest for a moment before he turns to you, eyes wide but curious despite the obvious fear.

“You’re really handsome,” he barely gets out, a whisper that he stumbles over. Judging by his uncertainty in himself you’re confident in saying he’s being sincere - that and the fact that nothing about him insinuates he’d lead you on like that. There’s so many silent words shared between you, a bond that one hold tights while the other wonders how it’s possible.

One wrong move, you think, one wrong move and I fuck this up, just like everything else. The urge to hold him close, to grab his hands and keep them intertwined in your own runs strong through your cold fingertips, but you wait. You wait for him to make the first move, but he doesn’t even blink; he’s far too enraptured in the way your lips part just slightly, the way your eyelashes flutter when you glance nervously up and down.

“I really like you,” you say, though the words don’t fully come from your conscious self. Something grabs you, ties away your thoughts and says what you mean - exactly what you mean, something you hardly ever do. He reaches up towards your hand lying dormant beside his cheek, trailing over your skin till he tangles his fingers in yours, holding your hand tight in his as he presses a kiss to your knuckles. The entire time you stare, watching his eyes flit downwards as a blush you can barely see in the dark crawls up into his face.

In a swift movement the old coat is off of you, crumpled in some corner as you rest your forearms on either side of his head, supporting your body held above him. His breathing picks up and at last he finally looks into your eyes again, careful to watch for any sign of what comes next, but even you aren’t sure as to what you’re doing. Still you move down, inching closer till your lips press against his.

He’s clearly startled, even though he immediately moves against you, kissing up into you even if his hands don’t know where to go. In your position you can do very little, but you manage to thread your hand into his hair, tugging on it lightly as you move deeper, pulling a tiny, broken hum from him. When his hands wrap around your wrists it’s painfully obvious he’s never done this before, so you break away, letting the both of you breathe and smile when it’s finally, fully, consciously realized what just happened. It’s so starkly different than any other romantic encounter you’ve had, so openly loving and yielding you wonder if you’ll ever be able to kiss anyone but him again.

“I’ve waited so long to do that,” you murmur, letting your head fall into the crook of his neck. He almost laughs, breathy and unsure as he runs his fingers down your spine.

“You could’ve done it sooner,” he tells you, whispering the words into your ear, his lips tickling the edge of it as he speaks. “I’ve had a crush on you for months.”

“Really?” You ask, pulling away to look at him fully. He stammers when you rest your weight on his hips, the heat of your thrill burning through the layers of clothes to intoxicate him. “I haven’t ever seen you look at me once in class.”

“We have class together?”

“I sit behind you, Kenny. English class,” you chuckle, watching his lips purse together in embarrassment.

“I mostly watch you during lunch. I - I never said anything because… well, you know why,” he mumbles, once more unsure of where his hands are supposed to go, so he crosses them on his chest.

“I know,” you say, quiet as you think over your words. “You still could’ve come up to me, but… this works too.”

He breaks into a grin, giggling when you join him till you’re both coming down from a high - as the wide grins dissolve into contented smiles, you kiss again, moving slow and soft, softer than the girls you’d been with, sweeter and more innocent than any love you’ve known.

“It’s strange you know,” you mumble against his lips, interrupting yourself by kissing him again. “I usually go for degenerates, you know, people like me?” You kiss him again, deep and needy - “but God, I’ve never adored someone as much as I adore you.”

“Really?” He manages to get out amidst your attack, trying to get ahold of a rhythm you could kiss him to but you’re chaotic, switching from his lips to his jawline and pressing kisses up his neck.

“Yeah,” you rasp out, the beginnings of a hickey blooming red on his neck.

“Oh, I - oh, don’t leave a mark,” he says, but by the way he tugs at your hair and pulls you closer, you’re sure he really wants you to.

“Let me guess, strict parents?” You ask, pulling away to look at your work. He nods as though it’s something to be ashamed of, but you just sigh and smile, tracing his jawline with your fingers. “This is probably the only time we’ll be able to make lots of noise, though.”

“You mean this’ll happen more times?”

“If you want it to. I want it to,” you say, watching as he nods furiously.

“Yes, please,” he practically whimpers, pulling you in for another searing kiss, his new ferocity biting at your lips and making you moan. You’re grinding on him, hardly realizing your actions before you’re both far too worked up from the friction.

“Fuck, I need you,” you say, your hands going up his shirt to scratch at the soft skin there.

“I haven’t ever done this before,” he tells you, almost glaring at you when you mumble, ‘I knew it,’ but the glare is quickly cut short when you palm at him through his jeans.

“Do you want this? We don’t have to, you deserve better,” you stop for a moment, letting your hand grip at his hip while the other strokes soothingly through his hair.

“Better than a quick fuck in the back room of a 7-Eleven? Probably,” he says, a smile breaking across your face at his humorous tone. There’s a delight that runs through you when you hear him swear, but you try not to think about it. “But I don’t think either of us are gonna be able to sleep well with… this.”

“Fair enough,” you say with a shrug, pulling him back into a kiss.

With fumbling hands he works at your pants, managing to unbutton the ragged material and push them partially down your hips. You do the same for him before pulling his shirt off, kissing down what you find to be a surprisingly toned chest. For as much as he’s bullied he’s incredibly attractive and rather fit, and for a second you wonder why he’s bullied so much, before remembering a lot of people are pretty racist, and the whole ‘being gay’ thing was pretty obvious to everyone.

A long, saccharine moan is pulled from his lips, forcing you to think only of him. At the sound you practically gape, a sudden virility going straight to your cock, which is now straining painfully against your boxers. You can’t remember what it was you did that made him moan like that, so you do everything you think could work - it proves a lot for him to handle. Tiny gasps leave him as you trace your fingernails over his chest, biting tiny love marks into his ribs as your own chest occasionally rubs against his crotch.

“(Y/N), please, just friggin’ touch me,” he whines, his head thrown back and staring blankly at the ceiling, too focused on the sensations to care. You almost laugh at his desperation, but when he grabs your hair and practically grinds his dick into your face, you don’t. As demanding as it is you can’t help but acquiesce. You mouth at him through the fabric, and by the time he’s begging you again there’s a prominent wet spot on his underwear from where you sucked. When at last you begin to pull them down he looks at you, watching intently with flushed cheeks as he’s fully exposed to you.

Standing, you undress yourself, making a little show of it when you notice him staring. The moment you finish you’re back on him, just as needy as he is when your bare cock brushes up against his; his shoulders shake at the contact, and he falls back onto the floor, his eyes shut tight. To soothe the ache you kiss him, as tender as it was when you first kissed, and he finally lets out an anxious breath when you part.

“Tell me what you want,” you murmur, running your hand slowly down his chest till you reach his waist, your fingers just barely curling around him and pumping slower than what he deems should be possible.

“I just need you, anything, please,” he replies, breathy and still as wanting as ever.

“God, you really like begging for me, don’t you?” You tease, smirking when he just whines as you speed up your pace. With a kiss to his neck you whisper in his ear, “I love hearing you moan, though.”

“Then make me moan,” he says thoughtlessly, regretting his words when you smirk and move down his body. Regret is the last thing on his mind however, once you wrap your lips around the tip of his dick, sucking and practically drooling as you pump him.

“You taste wonderful,” you hum, attempting to take him deeper.

As experienced as you are it’s chiefly with girls (even if you aren’t as attracted to them, it’s just easier to pretend like you are), and this would technically be the first time you’ve sucked dick. It’s a lot harder than girls make it seem, you note to yourself, but try to take him deeper anyway. A long whine tumbles from his lips when you both realize you don’t have a very strong gag reflex and take him to the hilt, sucking and still roaming the expanse of his thin waist with your hands. He’s close, you can feel him twitch in your mouth, paired with the precum dripping off him and into you, but he yanks you away by your hair and pulls you up for another passionate kiss.

“What about you?” He asks, panting, and you almost laugh again - it’s so odd for someone to ask about you first.

“The sight of you like this is enough for me,” you assure him, laying wet kisses that have his eyes fluttering into the back of his head down his neck and onto his shoulder.

As you continue pumping him, focusing the majority of your energy on sucking a hickey into his skin, you hardly notice yourself grinding against him. In fact you only realize you’re doing it when his legs wrap around your hips, pulling you in till your cocks are slotted next to each other, both achingly hard. The intensity of it has both of you coming soon after, the imprint of your nails a semi-permanent fixture on Kenny’s hips, paired well with the blossoming hickey on his clavicle. He’s not the only one marked up by the end, though - angry red streaks line your back from his scratching, and you only notice when you collapse on your back beside him.

“Would you happen to have a rag?” He asks, both of you breaking into giggles soon after.

“I’ll go get paper towels,” you offer, reaching for your underwear before realizing you need to clean up before putting on clothes. Instead you peck his forehead, leaving him smiling as you leave the room.

Eventually you’re both cleaned up, clothes on, and the trench coat is covering the both of you, cuddled tight in the back room of 7-Eleven. When the story gets out, as all stories do at some point, there’s a lot of varying accounts on what happened in the night. The most popular, and probably your least favorite, was that you terrorized him the entire night, and though most people don’t believe it considering how close you and Kenny act, it’s still the most popular. Another theory was that you introduced him to drinking and you stayed up with him all night, drunk out of your minds; you don’t mind that story as much, but he does, so you try to tell people that isn’t what happened.

He does ask at one point if he’s allowed to talk about your relationship, and your answer is an ardent yes, which surprises him. You adore every part of him, and you find no shame in that, even if he thinks you should. Sure, you do get bullied a lot more, but it’s nothing brass knuckles don’t sort out quickly.

It’s an odd pairing, you acknowledge that. Punk doesn’t usually go well with sweetheart nerd, but it works surprisingly well, and for that you’re endlessly grateful. In-between classes you run by his locker even though you’re on separate sides of the school, always kissing him before each class. Your little expeditions leave you late to every class but English, and by the end of the year all your teachers hate you as usual with the exception of Mr. Davis.

“You concentrate a lot better these days. Did my talk help you out any?” He asks after class one summer day. Kenny is waiting outside the class, so you try to find a quick answer.

“Well… a little. I talked to Kenny at least,” you answer with a smile, bidding him a kinder good-bye than you usually give your teachers, saluting him as you close the door.

“Everything alright?” Kenny asks, walking shoulder to shoulder with you down the empty halls of the school.

“Everything’s perfect, sugar,” you answer, your arm hanging around his shoulders.

#kenny al bahir x reader #kenny al bahir #war at home #rami malek x reader #rami malek #male reader

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bearly-writing · 4 years

Note

So that gunshot wound fic you wrote was AMAZING. While savoring every word, I was thinking that I’d really love to also read something with older, Red Hood era Jay being protective of Dick. So, if you don’t mind, could I request the Burns square for Dick with Jay??

Thank you very much for such a lovely compliment! I am so sorry that this is taken SO long to write! I hope that it’s at least slightly what you were looking for and that you enjoy it :)

All of my prompts have now been requested! Thank you everyone who’s requested something - I know I’m getting through these painfully slowly, but I promise I am getting through them! :)

Under The Skin

Fandom: Batman

Prompt: Burns

Characters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne

Warnings: Violence, Blood and Injury, Gun Violence, Gore, Burns, Acid burns, Torture, Permanent injury, Career-ending injuries

Summary: This is exactly what Jason means about Gotham’s villains. Two-Face can’t just shoot Dick, or beat him, or, hell, mutilate him a little. It has to be a fucking performance. It has to be totally goddamn insane.

Read it on AO3 here!

There will be a second part to this. I’ll add the link in here once it’s been posted!

The problem with Gotham, Jason thinks bitterly, is that everyone has a fucking gimmick. No one seems capable of doing anything in this city without putting on a goofy outfit first: Freeze, Catwoman, the Riddler, the Joker – fucking Batman can’t fight crime without his fur suit. It wears thin after a while. Jason is tired of the overwrought jokes and the overly-contrived crimes. What happened to the good old-fashioned thugs? What happened to a classic get-your-hands-dirty beating? Jason would take that over Batman’s rogue gallery any day. He would take a punch to the face over sitting here listening to Two-Face rattle on about chance and probability and rolling that fucked up coin between his fingers in a heartbeat.

“I’m a fair man,” Dent is saying, the coin flashing beneath the glare of the bare bulb above them: warehouse-torture-room aesthetic at its finest.

Jason snorts and Dick throws him a look that’s almost physical. It’s easy to ignore, though – Jason’s had plenty of practice.

“If you want it to be fair, then untie us and fight us properly.”

That earns him a cold look, but not much else. One day that sort of goading will work – until then Jason will have to make do with tugging fruitlessly at the cuffs binding his hands behind him again and snarling.

“I’m a fair man,” Dent repeats. He smiles with the side of his face that isn’t mangled flesh and exposed bone. “You’ve both been poking around where you shouldn’t be. I should kill you for that, but I want to give you a chance.”

Flash, flash, flash, goes the coin. Watching it makes Jason feel dizzy and he has to shut his eyes to stop the room from spinning, has to tighten his throat against the anxiety that’s slowly expanding in his stomach. A 50-50 chance. That’s Two-Face’s shtick. Not the most inventive gimmick in the world, but with a face like his, Jason supposes there aren’t many other options. Except not becoming a homicidal maniac, of course, but then, Jason doesn’t have much room to judge on that count.

Footsteps, loud against the concrete floor. A shadow falls across Jason. When his eyes snap open, almost automatically, Two-Face is standing over him, leering down at him. Jason tries to jerk away but there’s not much space to put between them whilst he’s tied to a chair.

Two-Face grins. Scarred fingers grip Jason’s chin, tilting his head up. “You first, I think.”

Flash, flash, flash.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason can see Dick’s face, pale and tense, attention focused like a laser-point to the press of fingers against Jason’s skin.

“Red Hood doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Dick snaps, because he’s too stupid and self-sacrificing to not draw attention to himself. “If you really want to be fair, you’ll let him go.”

Because that has always worked for them.

Two-Face ignores him, of course.

“This side –“ The coin stops spinning. Two-Face holds it up between his fingers, the smooth side facing out. “- and you get to go unscathed. This side –“ A twist, then it’s the scarred side facing them. “- and I leave you with a little reminder of exactly why you should stay away.”

Jason rolls his eyes. Which came first, he wonders? Is it Batman’s fault that all of the villains in Gotham are like this? Or is Batman a product of whatever chemical is clearly floating around in the air too? He wishes Two-Face would let go of him. Wishes that he and Dick hadn’t crashed the villain’s party in the first place.

“Get on with it,” he snarls, because he can’t figure out how to get out of his bonds with Two-Face standing so close, and he’s been sitting in this chair for long enough that his ass has gone numb.

The coin flips up into the air and Jason tightens his gut to prevent his stomach from doing the same. It lands in the palm of Dent’s hand with a soft thud. The villain glances at it, and Jason struggles to read his face, but it’s difficult to parse an expression from the mess of scars. Then the coin is extended towards him. Shiny side up. Jason breathes a soft sigh of relief. Beside him, Dick strains in his own bonds, trying to get a look at Jason’s fate.

“Lucky,” Two-Face murmurs, but he’s smiling that creepy half-smile. Jason can’t tell if he’s angry or not. At least he lets go of Jason’s face, finally, if only to stalk across the warehouse towards Dick. “Your turn.”

“Let Red Hood go first – that was your bargain.”

“No,” Jason snaps, because he’s tired of feeling so out of control here and he’s tired of Dick throwing himself on the fire every fucking chance he gets. Jason doesn’t need anyone to coddle him, and he definitely doesn’t need Dick martyring himself for his sake – if only because the others would never forgive him for letting golden boy get hurt when Jason’s here to take the punishment instead. “Take that as Nightwing’s toss and do mine again. Or better yet, let us go and fight us properly.”

Two-Face just shakes his head, still smiling. The effect is unnerving – that bright flash of teeth that shouldn’t be visible even in the widest grin.

“Cute.” He stops in front of Dick’s chair. The vigilante glares up at him with a surprising amount of venom. “You both get your own chance with fate. Then you can both go free when I say you can go free.”

There’s another flash. The soft thud of metal against flesh. Jason can’t help straining forward, even as he works desperately at the cuffs around his wrists whilst Two-Face is distracted. The metal is digging painfully into his flesh, scraping the skin raw. Something warm trickles over his hands – blood probably, but Jason doesn’t have time to care about that. If he can just get the leverage he needs to break his thumb…

“Oh dear.”

One hand stretches out towards Dick. For a long moment, Dick just stares into Dent’s face, gaze locked resolutely on his. Then, as if he can’t help himself, he looks down. Dick recoils. It’s not hard to guess which side came up.

Shit.

Shit, this is bad.

“You cheated,” Jason manages, voice a low, gruff growl. It makes him sound uncomfortably like the Batman, he knows, but he can’t soften his voice when his anxiety is crawling up his throat and choking him. “You fucking cheated.”

Two-Face is on him before Jason even registers the movement. An arm slams hard into Jason’s throat, jerking his head up and rocking him backwards. Pain spears from the point of impact, racing down his spine, setting alarms blaring through Jason’s head. He tries to gasp a startled breath but he can’t suck any air past the press of Harvey’s arm. Pain and pressure lock his throat tight.

“Say that to my fucking face,” Two-Face snarls, inches from Jason’s nose.

Jason struggles. Gasps. The chair is tilted back dangerously, threatening to spill him onto the floor at any moment, but Jason can’t pull himself upright with Two-Face holding him down. Can’t drag in enough air to get the words out.

“Hey! Red Hood goes free. That’s what the coin said. You can’t touch him. Hey!”

Even through the fog of panic, Jason can hear the fear in Dick’s voice. It sends his heart rocketing against his chest. Has his pulse throbbing beneath Two-Face’s arm.

For a long moment, the villain doesn’t move. Then, finally, he pulls away. Jason rocks forward at the release of pressure, gasping in a solid breath of stale, dusty air. Instinctively, he tries to reach for his throat, but the cuffs hold him just as helpless as Two-Face had.

“You’re right,” Two-Face says, calmly, smoothing down his suit, as if he hadn’t just launched himself across the room to strangle Jason. As if he isn’t holding them captive in a sketchy warehouse, threatening them, hurting them. “The coin has decided you go free, Hood. But don’t test me. I can always flip again.”

Jason’s throat is still too tight to manage a scathing reply. He settles for baring his teeth, glaring as darkly as he can manage. Two-Face seems entirely unconcerned, turning away from him to focus his attention back on Dick.

“You’re not so lucky, huh?”

One hand braces against the back of Dick’s chair as Two-Face leans down until he’s right in the vigilante’s face. Dick doesn’t react, just stares back evenly. It’s hard to tell if the confidence is fake or not. Jason knows that Two-Face scares his brother. Knows that Dick still has nightmares, sometimes, from when the villain had beaten him senseless with a baseball bat well before Jason’s ill-fated turn as Robin. Jason understands that.

“Cat got your tongue?” Two-Face smirks.

Scarred fingers twist through Dick’s hair and jerk his head back, forcing his neck into a painful-looking arch. Dick snarls, teeth flashing, the muscles of his arms bunching as if he’s tugging on his restraints. From where he’s sitting, Jason can only see half of his face. Something cold and frightened blooms in Jason’s chest, an awful paranoia born of Two-Face’s proximity, Two-Face’s threats.

“Don’t touch him,” Jason snarls, and Dick’s head jerks, as if he wants to look over despite the hand in his hair holding him still.

Two-Face straightens but he doesn’t let go.

“Stop me,” he says, mildly. “If you can.”

Jason yanks harder on his restraints, feels the skin split beneath unforgiving metal. Snarls. There’s no more give than there was before. As hard as he struggles, he isn’t getting out of these cuffs.

A smirk. “That’s what I thought.”

***

This is exactly what Jason means about Gotham’s villains. Two-Face can’t just shoot Dick, or beat him, or, hell, mutilate him a little. It has to be a fucking performance. It has to be totally goddamn insane.

“This is a joke right?”

Jason tugs harder on the cuffs. It won’t get him anywhere, but it makes him feel a little better and it’s the only thing he can do with Two-Face standing behind him, scarred hand resting heavy on Jason’s shoulder.

He isn’t in the chair anymore, although they haven’t untied his hands. Instead, he’s kneeling on the ground, cold concrete leaching the heat from his knees. There are about fifteen of Two-Face’s men milling about, waiting for the entertainment, and Jason had been stripped of his helmet and most of his gear before he’d been strapped into the chair, but he thinks he could still make a good go of it, if he could just get his hands free. Or even without his hands, if Two-Face wasn’t holding a gun, resting it casually against the back of Jason’s head.

Dick won’t be much help either, and Jason isn’t sure he can take on sixteen people on his own. His brother is more securely bound, ropes wrapping tight across his chest, winding around his arms and cinching his legs together, tethering his ankles to his bound hands to render them immobile. Oh, and he’s also dangling in the air above a wooden platform covering what Jason strongly suspects is a vat of goddamn acid.

Honestly, Gotham. Sometimes Jason feels as though he’s fallen down the fucking rabbit-hole.

“I don’t joke,” Dent says from above him, voice mild, as if he’s commenting on the weather rather than someone dangling over a vat of acid. “I do like to keep to a theme though.”

A theme. Fucking hell.

“You would think you’d stay away from acid,” Jason says, nastily. “Don’t want to fuck up the rest of your face too.”

Two-Face doesn’t rise to the bait. Jason wonders if the theatrics are just for them, or if he’s always like this. There certainly hadn’t seemed to be any themes involved when Two-Face had shot Jason’s good-for-nothing dad dead. Just a short fuse and a gun.

But then, a thug is a thug – maybe caped crusaders require more pizzazz.

“He’s obviously jealous of my good looks,” Dick interjects, surprisingly calm for someone who’s good looks are in imminent danger.

Jason sneers – his skin feels too tight to manage any other expression, pulled taught across the bones of his face. “Well, you could always scar the other side Harv – if you’re looking for a way to improve that mug of yours.”

The gun presses hard into Jason’s skull, rocking his head forward until his neck aches, chin pressed into his chest, staring down at his own lap. It’s an uncomfortably vulnerable position.

“Shut up,” Two-Face orders, voice still mild. There’s no hint of the snarl from earlier, although Jason feels the phantom press of an arm against his throat all the same.

Jason kind of wishes he would lose his temper – Jason can work with anger, particularly if it’s aimed at him. Anger makes most people sloppy. Makes them react without thinking. All Jason needs is the opportunity. But Two-Face has pulled cool and collected Harvey Dent to the surface like a flip of the scarred coin that had doomed Dick earlier.

“My boys have been promised entertainment. The coin has decreed a punishment. Nightwing is taking a little dip and you’re going to sit here and watch it. Isn’t that right boys?”

There’s a ragged cheer. The pressure against Jason’s head lessens. For a moment he doesn’t look up, just keeps his eyes fixed on his legs, feels his heart punching against the curve of his neck. If he can’t see it, maybe it won’t happen. Maybe this is all in his head.

Except, when he finally lifts his head it’s all still there: Dick’s still dangling from that fucking rope like a rat caught in a trap; the vat of acid is still sitting underneath him; the goons are still milling around, watching Dick with hungry eyes. The gun is still hovering close behind Jason’s head.

There’s a flash of light at the edge of Jason’s vision. That stupid coin turning over and over in Two-Face’s fingers. What Jason wouldn’t give to snatch it out of the air, toss it down a drain or bury it under the earth, or maybe throw it with enough force to bury it in Two-Face’s head.

“Take him down,” Dent says. He could be closing a case in court, listening to his voice, rather than sending an innocent man to his death.

Or maybe there’s not such a difference there after all - Jason’s never much liked lawyers.

Across the room one of Two-Face’s goons closes their fist around the lever connected to the winch system Dick is dangling from. There’s a metallic clank. A suspended moment where even the air feels still, as if not a single person in the room is breathing. Then there’s a jolt as the rope holding Nightwing in place starts to unravel, dropping Dick down towards the vat.

“Stop!” Jason snarls.

Panic shreds his voice to something rough and painful. He strains against his bonds, against Two-Face’s looming presence, against the fact that this is happening. A heavy hand layers over his shoulder, pressing him down as he tries to struggle to his feet. Dick drops steadily downwards.

“It’s fine, Hood. I’m fine.”

Because Nightwing is a martyr to the end. Because even as he’s being lowered to his death, he can’t keep his mouth shut, can’t let a moment go by without nobly sacrificing his own wellbeing.

“Shut up,” Jason snaps.

Behind him, Two-Face chuckles, a low, awful sound. If Jason can just get out from underneath him. If he can slip his cuffs and get across the room and pull that fucking lever back up.

“Don’t do this, Dent. You bastard. Let him go.”

As if begging has ever helped anyone. Two-Face ignores him. He’s breathing heavily, fingers pressing savagely into Jason’s shoulder without the protection of his leather jacket between them. Around them, Two-Face’s men jeer and laugh as Dick inches ever closer to the acid beneath him.

His brother’s face is tight with fear now, that strange calmness completely gone, eyes huge and dark. He’s struggling, trying to gather enough momentum to swing himself out of the path of danger, but he’s bound too tightly to have much success. By now, his knees are almost touching the surface. Dick tries to pull them up, to curl them safely against his chest, but the rope between his wrists and ankles pulls taut, holding him in place.

A hollow, frightened sort of hope carves out a space behind Jason’s ribs. It’s the same sensation he had felt, through the agony of his broken bones, his ruptured organs, as he had leaned against the locked warehouse door, waiting for his father to rescue him. It’s stupid. It’s childish. Jason, of all people, should know that you can’t rely on a last-minute rescue, knows that even Batman can be too late. If they’re going to get out of here, Jason can’t rely on the bat. The only person he can rely on is himself.

“Wait,” Dick shouts. The whites of his eyes are bright against his dark skin. “Stop, please! Don’t-“

Batman isn’t going to make it. Jason isn’t even sure if Batman knows they’re here. It’s down to him. No one else is going to save them.

There’s a sharp crack as Jason’s thumb gives way. To Jason, it might as well be loud as a gunshot, but it’s mostly lost beneath the jeers of Two-Face’s men and Dick’s terrified shouts. Jason’s heart is punching so strongly against his throat that it feels a little like it might leap right out of him. He can feel the frantic throb of his pulse in his wrist. There should be pain, Jason thinks, numbly, as he slides his damaged hand out of the cuff, but instead there’s only adrenaline, bunching every muscle in his body, setting his heart ricocheting against his chest.

Two-Face isn’t looking at Jason. Instead, he’s focussed on Dick, exposed teeth and eye gleaming in the harsh light. Jason doesn’t spare any time following his gaze, or hesitating, or waiting for a better opportunity. He acts. Sweeps one leg out to catch Two-Face by the ankles. Rocks him back. Surges up to catch his flailing wrist. The arm in Jason’s grip gives with a satisfying snap beneath the pressure of his elbow and Two-Face howls. Jason lifts one leg and plants his foot solidly against the villain’s chest. The kick sends Two-Face flying, crashing to a groaning, hurting heap against the far wall.

In a matter of seconds, Jason’s arms are free, Two-Face is across the room, and Jason has a gun in his hands. When he spins to face the rest of the room, Two-Face’s men are staring stupidly, attention drawn by the sound of their leader’s scream, but no one has reached for their weapons. No one is prepared for Jason hefting the gun in his hands and opening fire.

There’s green crowding close at the edge of Jason’s vision. A wavering, blurry quality, as if Jason is under water. As if he’s back in the Lazarus pit, drowning in toxic green, water in his mouth, his nose, his throat, pressing in against his eyes. There’s a roaring in his ears, a swelling wave of noise crashing against him. And underneath that, the sharp rapport of gunfire – his and the thugs who haven’t yet been dropped like flies.

“Hood!”

The cry cuts through the strange, tinnitus-ring in Jason’s ears, the green-tinged fog in his head. He blinks. The voice is frightened. Someone’s in danger. There was something Jason was supposed to do.

Then Dick screams and Jason slams back into his body with a jolt like an electric shock.

The lever. Jason needs to get to the fucking lever, now.

Jason isn’t sure if he’s ever moved as fast as he does now, launching himself across the room. He gets a flash of a white, terrified face - the thug’s mouth dark and wide as Jason barrels towards him - before they collide with a force that knocks the breath out of him.

That terrible, agonised scream cleaves the air in two. Jason fumbles. His hands are slick with sweat and blood. They slide hopelessly against the rusty metal of the lever.

Beneath him, the thug struggles for his gun. Jason smashes his fist into his face. Ignores his gurgling cry - barely hears it under the siren-pitch sound of Dick’s pain. Reaches. There’s metal under his hands and something gives and somewhere in the distance Jason hears the rattle of mechanical movement and please, please let that be Dick being pulled free.

The thug is limp beneath him. Jason pushes himself upright in a sort of daze, feeling both very far away from his body and yet strangely present at the same time. The world seems to spin around him. Some of Two-Face’s men are still standing, but no one is firing at him. Most of them are on the floor, lying groaning in pools of blood, or clutching wounds, or crouching in fear.

Above them, Dick is writhing on the end of his rope like a worm on a hook. The black material of his suit is dark around his knees. Liquid drips off of his legs in a slowing stream, splattering across the wood and concrete as he jerks and twists in his restraints. The scream has tapered into a high, choking keen. It’s...it’s a noise unlike anything Jason’s heard before. It pours icy water down his spine, tightens his skin until he feels claustrophobic in his own body, twists cold fingers through his gut.

Dick was dunked - that much is obvious. Dick is hurt. That’s acid clinging to the weave of his suit. Acid darkening his legs. For a long moment, Jason feels paralysed by the realisation. Dick is hurt, Dick is injured, and Jason doesn’t know what to do.

Get him down. That’s the first thing. Jason needs to get him safely on the floor and away from that goddamn vat. He moves almost without meaning to, as if his brain is trailing behind his body, still caught up a few seconds ago. One of the goons, startled by Jason’s sudden movement, fires off a shot. It goes wide, splinters the wall somewhere behind him. Jason doesn’t turn to look. He doesn’t care. If the bullet had ripped through his shoulder, he’s not sure if he would even have noticed.

The gun in his hands comes up automatically to return fire, but Jason doesn’t stop to aim or to check if it hit its mark. He keeps his eyes fixed on Dick. There are a set of shallow steps leading up to the platform. Jason scrambles up them. His whole focus laser-sharp on Dick, his world narrowed to the dark shape of him, the contorted twist of his legs. The rest of the room might as well not even be there. But no one fires on him.

Jason has nothing. Nothing but the gun and his own hands - his jacket, his knives, his fucking boots are all in the other room. Jason could shoot him down, but the acid is still beneath him, and if Dick falls…

But it’s not like Jason has any other choice. If he doesn’t get Dick down now, who knows what could happen. He’ll just have to catch him. He’ll haveto.

Jason launches himself at Dick a second before his gun goes off. For a breathless moment, Dick is free falling, dropping like a stone towards the acid below him. Then Jason collides with him, hard enough to knock the breath from both of them, sending them both crashing to the wooden platform.

Beneath him, Dick makes a choked, breathless sound of pain. Jason rolls off of him as quickly as he can. Fumbles with the ropes holding him tight. Doesn’t look at his legs even as he frees Dick’s arms and torso. Carefully avoids touching where the rope is damp and already falling apart.

Dick writhes. It’s hard to tell whether he’s trying to free himself, or just too caught up in the pain and fear and confusion. His eyes are wide and white, his mouth dark where it’s stretched around the awful little sounds of pain he’s emitting. When he finally frees his arms from the ropes, he reaches automatically for his legs, blindly, and Jason catches his wrists and holds them tight.

Dick’s pulse thrums like a desperate bird beneath his fingers. Jason’s own pulse is beating almost as hard, a sick, throbbing rhythm at the hollow of his throat. When Jason finally glances down at his brother’s legs, his heart almost leaps right out of his mouth.

The fabric around Dick’s knees has melted away almost entirely, leaving ragged, bald patches in Nightwing’s uniform. The skin underneath is already blistering. The flesh is raw and wrinkled, pink and wet in some places, bone white or blackened in others, as if the skin is already dead. Jason has to swallow bile at the sight of it. Feels acid burn at the base of his throat.

Water. He needs water. Needs to get the acid off Dick’s skin. He should cut the uniform off too, get the contaminated fabric away. Or should he? Would removing the fabric, practically melted onto Dick in some places, only make the wound worse? He doesn’t know. He can’t remember. Jason knows that Batman taught him this - knows that first aid for burns was one of the first things he had learned. But the fog in his head is too thick and he can’t think.

Not that there’s much Jason can actually do. There isn’t exactly a handy water source in the middle of the huge concrete warehouse and all of Jason’s gear is piled in the other room: his comm, his jacket, his gloves. Jason is scared to touch Dick’s legs. Scared to hurt him and scared to disable himself. The last thing this situation needs is Jason with acid on his hands.

All he can seem to do is clutch at his brother’s wrists and stare, helplessly. Dick’s face is white, a wet sheen of sweat glimmering in the bare orange light. His mouth is just as wet, parted around his ragged breaths. Each exhale comes out as a whimper, little helpless noises of pain.

“Hood.”

Dick’s eyes roll sightlessly. Jason can see the whites all around them. The words are pressed out between gritted teeth.

“Hurts. Fuck. Fuck. Help. Jay, it hurts.”

It trails off into a high whine. Dick jerks, all of his muscles tightening, knocking his head back against the metal floor of the walkway. It looks a little like he’s having a seizure, his entire body tight and twitching. Jason tightens the fingers around one wrist and tries to cushion his head with his other hand.

“You’re OK, N,” he babbles, feeling useless. Panic draws his stomach tight, a hard, heavy ball in his gut. “You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna...B will be here. He’ll come. It’s OK.”

It’s all meaningless, but Jason doesn’t know what else to do. They can’t rely on Batman, as much as Jason might want to. Batman’s only human. It’s Jason who needs to get Dick out of here. He needs to get water. Needs medical attention.

His hands flutter over Dick’s legs, his chest, too frightened to land. Dick moans, a low, rattling sound. Jason could get him under his arms, but the last thing he wants to do is drag Dick’s ruined legs across the ground.

“Who’s cheating now?”

The voice is surprisingly close. Jason hadn’t heard Two-Face get up. Had missed the soft thud of his footsteps beneath the sound of Dick’s pain. But the voice comes from right behind them - as if Two-Face is standing over them, and suddenly Jason is painfully aware of the fact that he had slung the gun onto the floor beside him in his haste to get to Dick. That he doesn’t have any of his gear and Dick is incapacitated and not all of Two-Face’s goons are out of commission.

He crouches low, trying to cover as much of his brother as he can. Beneath him, Dick writhes, staring blankly up at the ceiling high above them. Two-Face steps closer. Jason can feel the heat of him against his back. He tenses.

There’s an ear-splitting crash - splintering wood and glass - and a huge, dark shape barrels through the boarded-up window. In that moment, Jason understands exactly why so many people are terrified of the Bat - his almost mythical status. Because now, a shadow against the shattered window, cape spread wide, face grim beneath the cowl, he could be a demon. A nightmare. Despite knowing that Bruce is on his side, for a moment Jason is terrified.

He ducks and Batman flies over his head. There’s a dull thud as he collides with Two-Face, then a garbled cry as the two of them shoot over the edge of the platform. Jason doesn’t turn to watch. Beneath him, Dick’s face has gone slack, his eyes half-lidded and Jason is too preoccupied with fumbling for Dick’s pulse. It’s too fast. Too weak. But it’s there, still, threading beneath his fingers.

“What happened?”

Jason starts at the sound of Batman’s voice. It’s low and strained, even gruffer than normal. Jason recognises it as panic, although not many people would. It touches Jason’s own fear, sharp and bright in his chest.

“Acid,” Jason murmurs. “Two-Face dunked him. I got him out before...but his - his legs…”

A hand lands on Jason’s shoulder, warm and firm and reassuring, and Jason hates how grateful he is for that small touch. Hates how, despite everything, Jason was relying on Bruce showing up.

Batman crouches beside him. There’s a water pouch in one hand, drawn from the recesses of his cloak. His mouth is tight and pinched as he pours most of its contents carefully over Dick’s legs.

Jason can’t help himself. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Batman ignores him. Reaches up to touch the comm hidden in his cowl before sliding a knife out of his utility belt and slicing it carefully across the ruined fabric covering Dick’s legs. Batman’s gloves are thick black leather. Jason wonders if it’ll be protection enough, or if Bruce just doesn’t care.

“Agent A?”

Jason can’t hear Alfred’s reply without his own comm but it must be immediate, because Bruce launches right into the situation with barely enough time to draw breath.

“Nightwing is injured. At least second degree acid burns, possibly third degree. Basic triage applied.”

The knife slices through fabric like butter. The dark exoskeleton of Dick’s suit peels away beneath his hands. The flesh underneath is raw and wet - an awful, gory mess. Jason has to stare hard at Batman’s hands to keep from gagging.

“We’re heading back to the manor, but we’ll need an ambulance to meet us there. I think this is beyond our capabilities.”

Can Alfred hear the muted terror in Bruce’s voice? The little tremble? The low rasp at the back of his throat? Probably better than Jason can, but Jason hears it well enough to have his skin prickling, to have his heart rocketing against his chest.

Most of Dick’s suit, from the top of his thighs to his ankles, is stripped now, lying in tattered, half-melted shreds around him. Some of Dick’s flesh had gone with it, adhered to the fabric in a way that has bile surging up the back of Jason’s throat. Dick is still unconscious, thank God, face loose, chest rising with too-shallow breaths.

“Help me with him,” Batman murmurs as he rinses his gloves with the last of the water. Then he unclips his cloak, tucking it carefully around the open wound that is Dick’s legs.

Jason moves dumbly as Batman orders him. Hooks his arms under his brother’s armpits. Batman cradles Dick’s legs as carefully as he can, fumbling to find a spot that isn’t as badly damaged. Still, when they lift Dick into the air it must hurt, because he jerks back into consciousness as if electrocuted, eyes white and wide and rolling in his head. Jason tightens his grip to stop Dick writhing right out of his arms and Dick lets out a punched-out little noise of pain.

“Calm down, Nightwing,” Bruce orders, voice a low growl, and Dick goes still and quiet with a strangled whimper, as if he can’t help himself obeying.

“B? Hurts. My - my legs -“

“You’re OK,” Batman reassures - or maybe that’s an order too. Maybe if Batman says it sternly enough, Dick will be forced to make it true.

“Told you B would get here,” Jason murmurs. His own pathetic reassurance.

Batman’s head jerks up. Through the flat white lenses of his cowl, it’s difficult to read his expression, but Jason thinks that’s something like grief in the tight lines around his mouth. Something like guilt in the way he ducks his head.

“I’m here,” Batman agrees, although it’s clear that Dick isn’t listening. “Hold on Nightwing, we’re getting you home.”

#badthingshappenbingo #prompt: burns #batman #dick grayson #jason todd #bruce wayne #nightwing #redhood #fanfiction #my writing #violence tw #guns tw #torture tw #gore tw #burns tw #permanent injury tw #injury tw #hurt/comfort #angst

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artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

If You Ever Wanna Be In Love (I'll Come Around), Chapter Two (Branjie) - Athena2

Summary: After a mix-up at work leads to Vanessa pretending she has a wife, she uses this fake wife to get out of work events. But when she runs out of excuses and needs a wife for a party, Vanessa finds herself turning to Nina’s friend Brooke, who just so happens to need a fake girlfriend.

Previously: Brooke and Vanessa agreed to a fake dating arrangement Now: Brooke pretends to be Vanessa’s wife at a work dinner.

A/N: Thank you all so much for the amazing feedback for chapter 1! It really does mean so much to me that you enjoyed it and are excited for more! I hope you like this chapter and leave feedback if you’d like! Thank you so much to Writ for betaing, you’re the absolute best <3 <3 <3.

Brooke dumps half her closet on the bed. She hasn’t done this in a while, hasn’t stalked around her room in a robe and makeup, trying to pick an outfit. Sure, she goes to work everyday with fierce eyeliner and sharp suits and silk shirts, but this is different. She’d been extra steady with her eyeliner, blending her contour until it was perfect, but she’s not sure why. Maybe she just wants to take advantage of the night and an opportunity to look nice. Maybe she wants to impress Vanessa–who’s definitely prettier than she remembered–and show her that she’s going to be the best fake wife she can be, good enough to turn heads and have them be the perfect couple at the party.

Whatever the reason, it has her rifling through every dress and pant suit she owns, trying to decide if purple or black or red is the right color, if she should go stripes or plain, form-fitting or loose. She and Vanessa exchanged numbers after coffee, and Brooke has a text asking what to wear half-written before deleting it all. No need to bother Vanessa over this. Eventually she pulls on the plain black dress that pops against her pale skin, figuring a classic will work.

Vanessa is smiling hesitantly when Brooke gets in her car, shooting out apologies for the mess. Brooke moves aside an old magazine advertising fun kids’ activities and settles in, legs bouncing as she gets a good look at Vanessa, soft waves tumbling down her back and dazzling teeth giving the sun a run for its money.

“You look nice,” Brooke says, hoping it’s okay to say. Vanessa does look nice, and she figures compliments should be part of their fake marriage. Her dad always complimented her mom whenever they went out, leaving Brooke and her sister with their grandma whose cloud of old-lady perfume almost dissolved their lungs.

“Thanks. So do you.”

“Thanks.” Brooke looks at her lap, panic growing as blocks pass in silence. She knows almost nothing about Vanessa, and somehow she has to convince people they’re married for the night. Can they really pull this off? This could be one of the worst situations she’s been in, aside from the time she and Nina tried to dye their hair pink after finals and spent the night scrubbing the dorm bathroom clean, pink staining their hands for days.

Vanessa peeks over at her when they hit a red light. “Hey, Brooke? Thank you for doing this. You really saved my ass.”

Brooke blushes. “You don’t have to thank me, it’s not any trouble. I would’ve just been watching Gilmore Girls with my cats for the third time.”

“Gilmore Girls?”

“It’s a really good show. Really soothing, too,” Brooke says. She doesn’t add anything else, doesn’t add whether Vanessa would like or not because she doesn’t know the kind of things Vanessa likes. Vanessa could be a horror movie fan for all she knows, but from the way she jumped out of her seat when a squirrel ran in front of the car, Brooke’s thinking that’s a no.

Vanessa nods. She cranks up the radio when Beyonce comes on, chattering about work, and as they drive further away, Brooke almost forgets her nerves.

—

Vanessa’s hands are stuck on the wheel as they pull into the restaurant parking lot. Brooke looks nice–a lot nicer than Vanessa expected. Her sleeveless dress reveals strong arms that taper into clever hands and long fingers, and Vanessa has to stop looking.

Brooke fidgets with her gold bracelet, and Vanessa knows she’ll have to take the lead to get them through this. She notices her own hands are sweaty, and she dries them on her dress, forcing herself to stay calm. Paul and everyone else already bought the fake wife story, Vanessa reminds herself. All she has to do is turn up the charm until they’re completely sold.

“We got this, right?” Vanessa meets Brooke’s eyes with a hopeful smile.

“Right. We go in, we act married, we get out,” Brooke says.

Vanessa laughs. “You’re making us sound like spies! Just relax, okay? Follow my lead and we’ll be fine, I promise.”

Brooke nods, and Vanessa hands her the second fake ring she’d gotten from the thrift shop. It shines in the dim parking lot lights, gaining its second life through Brooke.

Brooke opens her door then slams it, turning back to Vanessa. “Wait. How did we get engaged?”

“What’s it matter?”

“If I’m playing a part, I want to do it right. And what if someone asks? Our stories have to match so we don’t get caught in the lie.”

Vanessa takes a breath of awe. As absurd as this whole thing is, she clearly has the right person for it, someone careful and dedicated enough to make sure they succeed. Vanessa thinks for a second. “You proposed to me on the beach, at sunset.”

Brooke scoffs.

“What?”

“That’s so lame! That’s something a boring straight guy would do for his girlfriend he knows nothing about. If I’m gonna propose to you, it would be better than that!”

“It’s not even a real proposal!” Vanessa argues, though part of her is touched that even if it is fake, Brooke wants her to have something nice.

“Still,” Brooke insists.

“Got any ideas?”

“What would your dream proposal be?” Brooke asks. “Not some generic beach thing. Something special.”

Vanessa’s pictured her wedding before—gold sun streaking through red and orange leaves as her dress flows behind her on the walk to her wife, the fall air crisp as an apple-—but hasn’t considered all the exhausting details and planning that would get her to that point.

“Well, don’t laugh, but I had a pirate thing when I was little. My mom would put coins and toys in the sandbox and give me a map and I’d dig for them. So let’s say you did a little treasure hunt that ended in the proposal.” Vanessa never knew how much she wanted something like this, something to show her wife knows her like no one else, but as she speaks, she can see it happening. Her breathlessly flipping over a tattered map to see neat lines and bright red X. Her going through each step, faster and faster as her excitement builds, until she reaches the end and Brooke is on one knee with a box—

Vanessa shakes her head to clear out the image.

Brooke smiles. “I like that. It’s nice.” She leans in closer, like she’s sharing a secret. “I had a dinosaur thing, so I won’t laugh.”

“Seems like you still have a dinosaur thing, Miss Museum Head,” Vanessa teases.

Brooke blushes, and Vanessa’s heart leaps. “I guess I do.”

There’s a beat of silence, and they both realize this is it. Doors slam, locks click, and they give each other one last nod before entering the restaurant.

The small restaurant room Paul reserved is packed with disgruntled library employees eager for a night off, and every single head spins toward her and Brooke. A few mouths drop open, and Vanessa grins. They do look impressive, Brooke’s black dress flowing down her long frame, a perfect match for Vanessa’s red dress with tiny black stars, one of her favorite thrift store finds.

But beyond the outfits is something Vanessa can’t quite describe. She gets a look at her and Brooke in a mirror on the wall, and something about them looks right, like they could be on opposite sides of the room and you would still know they were a couple. Maybe it’s the way Vanessa leans into the space around Brooke, or the way Brooke slows her pace for Vanessa’s matchstick legs, but there’s some sort of magic bubbling around them.

Couples cling like koalas and Vanessa throws an awkward arm around Brooke’s waist to look more couple-y. Brooke stiffens slightly before relaxing into it.

Paul runs over. “So you’re Vanessa’s wife,” he says to Brooke, pumping her hand up and down with no sign of stopping.

“That’s me,” Brooke agrees. “I’m Brooke, if Vanessa hasn’t told you.”

“Actually, she hasn’t,” Paul says, giving Vanessa a look. “We’ve been wanting to meet you for months but Vanessa says you’ve been sick a lot lately. I hope you’re doing better after your stomach problems last week?”

Brooke shoots Vanessa a death glare, but she still answers warmly. “I’m much better now, thank you.”

“Glad to hear it.” Paul ushers them over to the table, and Vanessa quickly pulls her arm back.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “Just thought we needed a little touching.”

“It’s fine,” Brooke says, sighing in relief as they slide next to Nina at the table.

Vanessa quickly makes the introductions to her coworkers. Silky smiles devilishly and A’keria and Yvie narrow their eyes, serving as her test panel for the night, to see if she and Brooke can really sell things for the admins.

“Now, about those stomach problems?” Brooke demands. Her eyebrows are furrowed and Vanessa has to consciously stop looking at how adorable the expression makes her.

“Well, when I don’t want to go to parties, I use you as an excuse sometimes,” Vanessa says sheepishly.

Brooke pinches the bridge of her nose. “And how many times have you said I was sick?”

Vanessa shrugs. “I kinda…lost count?”

Brooke groans, heaving a mighty sigh. “I really hope this food is better than slightly-above-average.”

—

The food, it turns out, is actually better than Vanessa expected. She makes her way through fish in lemon butter, but Brooke’s lasagna came with garlic bread that’s calling her name. They’re supposed to be married, after all, so why the hell not? She reaches over and grabs a chunk. Brooke then asks for a bite of fish, and Vanessa knows from her friends’ approving nods and the calm behavior of the others that they’re completely selling the wife thing.

Vanessa doesn’t know what exactly makes a marriage look real, but she follows stuff her parents did—sharing food and joking with each other, letting their hands brush every now and then, each one making her whole arm tingle.

Brooke does her part wonderfully, no question about it. She maintains her calm all through dinner, answering question after question about herself and work. Even though Brooke seems to hold back when she talks about her job, like she’s afraid no one is interested, Vanessa finds herself really engrossed in what Brooke does, no acting required.

Brooke does a lot more than look at bones all day, Vanessa learns. She supervises the museum’s dinosaur collection and has been working on a special summer exhibit for months, getting permission to borrow a T-Rex skull from another museum. She’s also started more kids’ programs, special events and days just for them. As she speaks, Vanessa can see it. She can see Brooke strutting across the museum’s stone floor in a sharp black suit, opening up a crate of fossils and grinning like a little kid, staying at the museum long past closing to set it all up. It makes her smile, and the smile doesn’t leave.

Vanessa also learns that Brooke likes hiking on the weekends, and she’s grateful they’re not really married, because if she ever had to tag along on a hiking date she’d probably pass out.

When they walk back to the car amidst Paul shouting his hopes to see Brooke again, Vanessa feels sad somehow, like the thrill of tonight is fading.

“I, um, I had a nice time tonight,” Brooke says quietly, after Vanessa starts driving. “I haven’t been out in a while. I’ve been focusing on the T-Rex exhibit since January. Haven’t had time for much else.”

Vanessa nods. “Yeah, I get it. We get a lot more kids in the library for summer, I’ve been pulling crafts out of my ass to have more activities. But I love it, you know?”

“Yeah,” Brooke says, grabbing her purse as they pull up in front of her apartment. “Um, I’ll text you about the party at my mom’s, okay?”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Vanessa almost wishes the night didn’t have to end, that they could still buzz with that same magic that overtook them in the restaurant. She wonders if she’s getting her wish when Brooke releases the door and turns back to her.

“Your ring,” Brooke explains, and it hits Vanessa again that this is all fake, just an act. Brooke’s face falls as she tries to twist the ring off. “It’s stuck.”

“What do you mean,stuck?”

“I mean it’s stuck!”

“But it went on okay.” Vanessa shakes her head. “I bet you crack your knuckles. My mom made me stop, said I’d get big knuckles—“

“That’s a myth!” Brooke shoots back, tugging harder on the ring.

“Let me help.” Vanessa twists it with her, trying not to hurt Brooke.

“If I lose my finger, I’m mailing it to you so it can haunt you forever,” Brooke says, a hint of panic creeping into her voice.

“No one is losing a finger! Hang on, I have lotion.” Vanessa grabs the mini bottle of Aveeno in her purse and rubs it into Brooke’s hand, trying not to think of how soft—albeit sweaty—her skin is. Vanessa gives one last tug that sends her flying into the door, ring triumphantly in her fist.

Brooke massages her hand, then meets Vanessa’s gaze. Suddenly, they both erupt into laughter so fierce it brings tears to Vanessa’s eyes and makes her stomach hurt. I’m that moment, Brooke becomes more real to her, shaking and snorting with laughter, her face stretched into a grin. Brooke isn’t just someone who passes dishes at Nina’s without being asked, but someone Vanessa thinks she might want to know more, and she’s suddenly grateful for the birthday party coming up, grateful for more time with her.

“Okay, okay,” Vanessa wheezes. “Good night, for real.”

“Good night.”

Brooke gracefully walks into the building, and Vanessa finds herself staring at the empty space Brooke occupied long after she’s safely inside.

—

Brooke can’t quite believe it, but dinner with Vanessa was fun. Even with the number of questions Vanessa’s coworkers threw at her and the answers she had to keep spitting out, things began to feel less like a contest to prove their fake relationship and more like a real dinner party.

Vanessa is funnier than Brooke had remembered, telling story after story about the library’s chaos, from the time a grown man got stuck in the bathroom to the woman who almost went over the library desk when she found out there was no vending machine in the children’s room. Vanessa acts her stories out like she’s on stage, changing her voice and making exaggerated faces and swinging her arms all over the place.

She and Nina meet for their weekly breakfast the next day, and it’s nice to be around her warmth, nice to be around someone who knows the previous night was fake, freeing Brooke from pretending to be someone else. Even so, all Nina can talk about is how well Brooke and Vanessa did.

“I’m just saying, you really pulled it off,” Nina says around a mouthful of toast. “And she took some of your food! That was so cute, did you plan that?”

Brooke shakes her head, turning to the waffles she won’t have to share with anyone today. Not that she had really minded Vanessa’s slim wrist darting to her plate. “We didn’t plan it. She literally just stole my garlic bread.”

“Well, it worked. You looked so natural. I know A’keria, Silky, and Yvie were impressed, and they’re hard to win over.”

Brooke smiles a little at that. You can’t assign grades for being someone’s fake wife, but Brooke likes knowing she did a good job.

“Yeah. Vanessa’s gonna be my fake girlfriend at my mom’s in two weeks, and then I guess that’s that.”

“You’re really just doing the two things and that’s it?” Nina stares at her in surprise.

Brooke looks down, suddenly self-conscious. “Yeah? I mean, that’s what we agreed to…” she trails off. After last night, she was starting to think that more time with Vanessa could be a nice thing. Vanessa is funny and kind and charming, almost like Nina in a way, and Brooke was sucked into her personality in the dim restaurant lights. But now, in the cold morning light, the effects have worn off. They’re just two people who barely know each other, pretending to be in a relationship a few times. They might keep in touch after, talk at Nina’s parties, but there’s nothing more than that.

“Well, maybe you could stay friends after and do things,” Nina says. “You seemed like you had fun.”

“Yeah.” Brooke shovels some waffles into her mouth, because Nina is right and they both know it. Luckily, Nina moves the conversation onto the library carnival they’re having, and Brooke can forget all about last night.

—

That night, Brooke’s phone buzzes while she’s curled up with the cats, watching TV. Her heart flutters a little when she sees the sender.

Vanessa Mateo: So how long do I have to wait for Lorelai and Luke to get together?

Vanessa Mateo: Is Rory gonna end up with this Dean guy?

Vanessa Mateo: I need answers!

Brooke’s fingers hover over the phone. It’s been a while since she’s texted someone besides Nina or her mom, and she’s not sure how to approach this. Just as friends, she tells herself, and begins to type.

Brooke Lynn Hytes: You’ll just have to wait and see ;)

Vanessa Mateo: Brooke Lynn Hytes did you just winky face me???

Brooke Lynn Hytes: ;) ;)

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #nina west #yvie oddly #silky nutmeg ganache #akeria davenport #branjie #lesbian au #fake dating au #s11 #fluff #if you ever wanna be in love #athena2 #concrit welcome #submission

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