Tumgik
#violence towards the pop up
cozy-the-overlord · 8 months
Text
Me when I saw that snoozing tumblr live now works for 30 days instead of 7: 😀
Me when I saw that snoozing tumblr live no longer removes its icon from the bottom bar AND that there’s no way to make the little “NEW” pop up go away either: 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
7K notes · View notes
intoxicated-chan · 11 months
Note
Okay, so this is more on the soft angst side, but would you be willing to write a Miguel x F!Reader (or gender neutral if you’d prefer that) where Miguel visits Reader’s universe to check in on them since they haven’t visited the Spider Society headquarters for some time now, and he shows up at her apartment right as she’s in the middle of fixing up her wounds after a massive fight. And so he helps patch up her wounds, and after some intense eye contact between the two of them, they kiss (it should be noted that they’ve been pining over each other awhile now, but neither of them have said anything to the other).
And if it isn’t too much, I have these dialogue prompts you can add as well if you need anymore inspiration (you totally don’t have to use them, I just thought they’d fit perfectly with this scenario).
“Are you alright? Where are you hurt?”
“You don’t have to come over here and take care of me you know. I can clean up my own messes.”
“Can I stay? I'll take the couch.”
If this feels like too much, don’t hesitate to decline this ask! I’m just really excited 😅
I Need You to Stay
Tumblr media Tumblr media
✿ฺ Paring ➳❥ Miguel O’Hara x F!Reader
✿ฺ Summary ➳❥ Miguel hasn’t heard from you in weeks, he wonders what’s keeping you so busy.
✿ฺ (A/n) ➳❥ Inspired by “Stay” by Ari Abdul. Thank you for the request Anon! I hope you enjoy it and are taking care of yourself. Have a wonderful day/night!
✿ฺ Word Count ➳❥ 887
✿ฺ Content Warnings ➳❥ Female reader, mention of violence, mentions of death, light angst, fluffy, blood, open wounds, light swearing…
Tumblr media
Four weeks. It has been four weeks since Miguel last saw you. Normally, he wouldn’t be so worried, but it’s been four days. Usually, if you couldn’t make it, you’d talk to him through a screen but that hasn’t happened in the four weeks. Not a call, not a text, not even a simple message. Heck, even Lyla hasn’t heard anything from you.
Miguel sighs, “I can believe I’m saying this right now…” He looks at Peter B. “I’m putting you in charge until I get back.”
“Where are you going?” Peter B. asks.
“I haven’t heard anything from (Y/n) and Lyla can’t reach her. I’ll be back soon.”
Gwen pops up from behind Peter B.,“Can I join you?” She asks, pulling her hood up as she walks closer to Miguel, “I want to see the person who has Miguel O’Hara crushing on.”
“Excuse me?” Miguel cocks an eyebrow.
“You heard me!”
“No.” Walking away from Gwen.
“Why not?” And Gwen quickly follows.
“Because she could be in danger.” Miguel begins adjusting his gizmo to the correct universe.
“You saw me in action, I could help.” Gwen retorts.
“And I said…” A portal opens up, “No.” Then he disappeared and Gwen scoffed.
“I told you he wouldn’t listen.” Peter B. laughs with Mayday in his arms and Miles right beside him, laughing along.
Miguel lands on the rooftop of your apartment with a grunt. He takes a moment to look around and see if anything has changed, and something did. It was midnight in your universe and the lights to your apartment were still on.
He jumps down and easily clings onto the wall next to your window. With his other hand, he slowly slides your window open and slips in, closing it behind him.
“I know you’re here Miguel!” You call out from the other room, “Heard you since you landed on the roof.”
He chuckles as he walks towards the sound of your voice, “I shouldn’t be so surprised, your abilities have always impressed-” His eyes widen as he looks at you.
You sat at the table, bloody bandages on the table, cotton balls and fresh bandages. But the blood still dripping from the open wounds on your arm made his stomach churn, not in a good way.
He swallows thickly as he comes closer, taking your injured arm in his hand, “Who did this to you?” He growls.
“I took care of it.” You tell him, but it doesn’t stop him from worrying, “Nothing left but cuts and bruises… That will heal.” You try to sooth his worry.
“Are you alright? Where are you hurt?”
“You’re holding the only thing that’s hurting right now.”
Miguel uses his webbing to pull up another chair to sit. He grabs the disinfectant and pours some of his on a cotton ball, you hiss at the contact as he cleans up the blood.
“You don’t have to come over here and take care of me, you know. I can clean up my own messes.” You speak through gritted teeth as it still burns.
“...How strong were they?” He speaks through the awkwardness.
“It wasn’t because they were strong.” You admit, “I got carried away, distracted.”
“By what?”
“The bastard was wearing colors similar to yours. I thought it was you for a split second, and in the second, I was open for an attack and they took it… I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Grabbing the bandages and wrapping up your arm.
“Don’t you remember the first time you brought me on a mission with you. I got distracted.”
“Of course I remember, what kind of idiot throws themself in front of someone.” He looks over the bandages, making sure they’re on correctly and not too tight.
“I thought you were going to die that day, I thought if I could at least save Spider-Man, then for once I did something good in my life.” Your head hangs in shame.
“We cannot save everyone, no matter how hard we try.” Miguel huffs, “At least…” He cups your face, slowly lifting your head to look at him, “I got to save you.”
“Migu-”
“Can I stay?” He asks, “I’ll take the couch.”
“I’m fine, I don’t need someone looking after me.” You pick up the bloody cotton balls and bandages.
“You’re shaking.”
“My arm still hurts and the adrenaline is still pumping.” You lie.
“Please don’t lie to me, (Y/n). You know how much I hate liars.” He comes closer, “Tell me what’s got you so distracted.”
“Everything about you. From your stupid, lovely hair to you entirely.Which is why I stayed away, I didn’t want to be so distracted that I’d cause the team to fall apart.” He cups your face once more and closes the space between you two. His lips falling onto yours.
It made Miguel’s heart beat faster and faster, and for some reason, the pit in his stomach grew even more. But it disappeared when he felt your arms come around his neck, standing on your toes.
He pulls away, “Distracted now?”
“Very.” You mumble.
“Are you letting me stay the night or will we have to go to my place?”
“Are you sure you want to leave Peter in charge for any longer?”
Oh, shit. He forgot about him.
Tumblr media
© 2023 Intoxicated-Chan, I do not allow my work to be copied, translated, modified, adapted, or put on any other platform without permission.
Tumblr media
7K notes · View notes
obsessivevoidkitten · 9 months
Text
Between A Rock And A Hard Place
Male Yandere Human-like Golem x Gender Neutral Human Reader (CW: Noncon, huge dick, golem man, magic, fatal violence towards bandits, spit used as lube, general yandere behavior) Word Count: 1.8k (Sorry this took forever, was originally going to be a drabble and then kinda got away from me, hope you all enjoy huge dick golem man.)
The small town that you lived in, Somnheim, had been victim to a swathe of horrible luck. Raided by bandits, packs of beasts killing livestock, and enemy soldiers scavenging what they could. Finally the town had enough and sent for a practitioner of the magic arts to aid them in the defense of their village.
This was you.
They didn’t have much but they offered a home and food for your services. You figured you could help them and have a quiet place to conduct your research away from the prying eyes of the council, who liked to hold newer mages under their thumb. It would also just be something nice you could do for your fellow humans, and these folks clearly needed the help.
You didn’t want to stay in this place forever though, so your solution would have to be one that would last long after you were gone.
Given your expertise in summoning and animating the logical choice was a good, old fashioned, golem. A pentagram, some select incense, clay flesh molded to a slate skeleton and imbued with an amethyst heart carrying an artificial soul, some runes carved in, and a scroll inserted that would have him follow his purpose and give him personality.
Then just add in a spell that turned the humanoid clay man into something more human so as not to frighten the villagers too badly and make him able to experience a near human existence.
The ritual was a complete success. Of course it was. You were you after all, young but talented and more importantly utterly dedicated to your craft.
Somnheim now had a mighty protector. An artificial man over 9 feet tall, with huge bulging muscles, shaggy brown hair, stoic brown eyes that gave nothing away, and glowing green runes on his arms and legs. The spell that made him human-like was more than just visual, it gave him nearly all the functions of a human male, he’d be as durable and strong as the hardest metal, never age, and of course he was certainly infertile.
Not one for creative names, you named him Slate.
Eventually bandits came by and decided they would stock up in Somnheim before going on to bigger and better loot.
They did not live to regret that decision.
Slate simply rolled a massive boulder down the hill they approached from and flattened all but a couple. Those he took care of quickly with magically precise throws of average sized stones.
Over the months any threat he couldn’t flatten with a boulder or smack with a stone he would pop open with his mighty fists.
By the end of his first year as the village’s guardian he was beloved by every single townsperson. Even the tiny children, who would climb on him and put flowers in his shaggy hair as he smiled and watched, had no fear of him.
You had enjoyed your time there, but eventually it was time for a change of scenery. You wanted to do more field research and you had saved enough money up with side projects to be able to fund a trip to the other side of the country near The Great Forest.
The villagers were grateful and sad to see you go, but they were much more interested in Slate than you.
But when you packed your bags to leave behind your wattle and daub dwelling once and for all you found yourself blocked by Slate.
He uttered one word in that deep, almost monotone, voice of his.
“No.”
“What do you mean no? I have to leave.” You tried to squeeze past him but he was not having it.
“I must protect the village… Your presence here makes the village safer… I might need repairs… or reinforcements… And you also tasked me with keeping you safe…”
You fudged the wording. You, breather of life into stone, weaver of clay, and creator of souls, messed up the wording.
He picked you up like a box of luggage and sat you on a chair in your makeshift study before going over to the heaviest bookshelf, picking it up, and placing it in front of the only door so you couldn’t escape.
“I’ll move it when I need to leave… then I will put a rock outside to keep you here…”
And that became your life. A literal prisoner in your own home.
Your magical abilities were useless in this situation, you were not a battlemage that could explode a wall, you couldn’t teleport, you bent earth.
Of course you tried to tunnel your way out by making a hole under your bed, but Slate had walked in and caught you red handed. He had confiscated and locked away all your magical supplies and texts unless you needed them to repair him you were not getting them back.
Slate was tentative enough of your physical needs, bringing you food and water and taking you outside like some sort of pet for sunlight, fresh air, and exercise. You had tried to run away but of course he had inhuman speed. And the villagers refused to help. What if Slate refused to save them if they did that?
It was a fair concern, he was made to protect the village and not villagers, he may even see them as a threat if they assisted you. You were on your own.
Though you were healthy enough physically your mental condition was deteriorating rapidly. How could you not be? Being trapped in the same building, even with trips outside, was awful. The villagers only looked at you with pity if they looked at you at all, and no one would even talk to you anymore.
It got to the point where you barely eat, refused to go outside, and spent all your time laying in bed.
Slate was failing the magical directives that governed his personality and behavior. You were clearly not safe, he was convinced that you would die if this continued, and honestly you likely would… eventually…
But the golem was not incapable of learning. He observed the other humans to find out what he could add to your life to bring you back to your usual self.
One night, when he was sitting in front of the house watching the humans passing by and holding hands, he came to the conclusion that humans had families, they lived together in their dwellings and they loved each other. They coupled together and mated.
Up until this point Slate had only been directed by simple emotion and the unyielding parchment that had imbued him with his goals. But now his task demanded something more of him, it demanded a much more complex emotion. The magic in him allowed this evolution, and now he was much more dangerous because he loved you. But it wasn’t just love he felt for the first time, it was lust.
Slate’s expression became one of someone thinking about the one who they adored infinitely, an expression of a man thinking about the person he wanted to have writhing in pleasure beneath him, even his normally green runes and brown eyes took on an amorous pink glow.
When you heard the boulder blocking the door shift and then heard the bookshelf take its place as what was blocking your way out as Slate came lumbering in with his heavy steps you didn’t even glance up.
Not until he stood in front of you and you noticed his strange pink glow replacing his green one did you stir.
You sat up in bed and when you saw the strange way his normally near emotionless eyes were staring at you, and glowing, you scooted away.
“I know what you need now! I am so sorry for not realizing sooner…” He said in a surprisingly soothing tone, a stark departure from his normally deep monotone.
“What do yo-”
Your words were forgotten as he took off his shirt and pants revealing a sweaty body and a frighteningly large cock.
“You need a partner to be happy, like the other humans, and you need to mate!”
He sounded very eager.
“No! Uh… I don’t need to… mate. I need to lea-” he put a large finger over your lips and shushed you before gripping your pants and peeling them and your underwear away from you carefully.
There was no dissuading him from his chosen course of action, he would make you happy and keep you safe no matter what!
It’s what you needed.
Slate leaned forward and spit all over your hole, thoroughly lubing it with his spit, before pressing his big cock into your hole.
It was so large that you let out a whimper of pain at first, but he was somehow knowledgeable enough about sex to know he needed to let you adjust to the size rather than just ramming himself in.
You gasped and writhed but he held you still with his massive hands running up and down your sides as he slowly pulled you down on his prick.
Slate was in complete heaven, he had never really known much pleasure of any kind, let alone the type that came with burying his cock in someone he was now completely obsessed with.
He had no idea his dick could be used for this at all, but now that he did he would certainly be doing this everyday, maybe even a couple times a day! The perfect blend of heat and softness was amazing.
As he began to thrust slowly, with a blissed out expression as he stared up at nothing with drool coming out of his mouth, you couldn’t help but moan in pleasure as his cock caressed your depths perfectly.
Hearing your breathy moans snapped him back to reality. You were finally happy again~
The treatment was working! That settled it, he would do this every single day no matter what!
Carefully gripping your sides a bit more firmly he moved your entire body back and forth on his cock. You couldn’t help it, your whole body twitched with the force of a massive orgasm. The sensation of your body spasming around his previously virgin dick caused him to slam in deep and cum hard.
He pulled you close, holding your head into his muscular chest as he panted, his dick still firmly impaling your limp body. You hadn’t been eating much and this serious fucking had taken a lot out of you.
Slate cleaned the two of you up, bathing you gently before taking advantage of your compliant state by spoon feeding you some dinner he had brought from a town person.
Mating with you made you so pleasured and too tired to resist him when he took care of you, he almost couldn’t wait until you had enough energy to do it again, his cock strained in his pants with anticipation.
3K notes · View notes
tenelkadjowrites · 2 months
Text
The Heart's Filthy Lesson - Seonghwa x Reader (NSFW)
🪓Summary: Your best friend has always been dedicated to you. But isn't everyone's best friend like that?
🪓Word count: 15k
🪓Playlist for this fic can be found here.
🪓Genre & warnings: one shot smut. (twisted) best friends to lovers. unreliable narrator. elements of horror. descriptions of stalking against the reader, violence against others (not the reader), unhealthy relationship dynamics. dom hwa. dirty talk. underwear is torn off reader. oral sex, reader receiving. choking, reader receiving. unprotected sex. creampie.
this fic is not meant to represent seonghwa in any way, shape or form.
               You’re fumbling with your keys, trying to get it into the lock without dropping your overstuffed bag. Why do I overpack so much? You curse inwardly. Every time, you swear that only essentials will be packed. Somehow, that ends up meaning enough underwear for a month and clothes for three different outfits a day even when you’re just visiting family.
               You manage to get the key in the lock, practically tumbling inside your small apartment on the third story. Unceremoniously dumping your bag on the floor, you let out a long sigh. Like all family visits, you’re glad for them but also socially drained.
               Padding into your living room, you wince a little. Way too much light in here, you think, I thought for sure I closed the blinds when I left. You turn around, fighting off the urge to take a nap. The trip is catching up to you, leaving you tired.
               But you stand in the middle of the room, feeling a strange sense of unease. The living room looks entirely the same yet you cannot shake the sensation that something is different. It’s just cuz I thought I had closed the blinds. But the words ring hollow in your head.
               In the quiet atmosphere of the apartment, you can distantly hear the traffic outside and the neighbor upstairs moving something heavy around. Your eyes slowly look across your kitchen counters before landing on a small pile of mail.
               Curiously, you walk towards it, picking up the stack. There is a small sticky note stuck to the top with just a quickly drawn smiley face on it, the ink smeared into the paper on one side. Frowning, you peel it off and go through the mail. All of it is from when you were gone –
               A knock on the door makes you jump, pressing your hand against your chest for a second. The pile of mail drops back to the counter, scattering across it as you go to the door. You don’t check who it is. You already know.
               Opening the door, you find yourself face to face with your overly enthusiastic best friend.
               “Hey, I remembered you were supposed to be back around this time so I figured I’d come over to say hi.”
               “Hi, Seonghwa,” You say, already moving to the side to let him in.
               He glances over his shoulder at you while heading into the living room. “How was the trip? How was your family? Did you tell them that I said hi?” Every word is said quickly, as if they are all fighting for importance and can’t decide what order to pop out in.
               You push the door closed, trailing after him. You’ve known Seonghwa longer than anyone else in your life – he used to live next door where you befriended one another at just six years old. You went to the same high school, even the same college and when you decided to move to the city, so did he. You lived on different sides of the city at first until a year ago, when the apartment building finally had an opening and now he lived just one floor under yours. The two of you were a team – you knew everything about him and he never forgot a detail about you. Things were comfortable…although maybe a little too comfortable.
               You cross your arms, leaning against the wall. “You brought my mail in.”
               He turns to look at you, smiling brightly. Seonghwa always had the same countenance – pleasant and happy. “Yeah, of course.”
               “I don’t remember giving you a key.”
               “Oh, your plant needs watering.” He leans over and touches the wilting leaves gently, already moving past the fact he let himself into your place without asking. “Want me to do it?” He looks up at you.
               You sigh, walking towards him. “Seonghwa,” You touch his hand gently, trying to get his attention.
               His expression falters just for a moment before guilt pops in behind his eyes. Seonghwa looks tired, although that isn’t new, because he’s always on his computer at all times of the day and night. He glances downward at where your fingers had grazed his skin for a split second. His profile is so familiar to you – the sharp curve of his jaw, the long nose, his perfectly plump lips hiding perfect teeth. This is the same man you’ve grown up with your entire life. You know objectively he is beautiful but you’ve known him for so long that it no longer catches your notice. From the time he got in trouble for pushing a kid bullying you at the playground when you were both eight years old to sneaking out while in high school to go drink to this very moment, he’s always been there. That’s why you dislike whenever you come off as though you’re lecturing him.
               “It was from two weeks ago. Remember? I had to let the plumbers in for you,” Seonghwa protests.
               “You’re supposed to give the key back,” You hold out your hand, wiggling your fingers.
               He ducks his head, some of his hair falling in front of his eyes as he looks down at the sagging plant. “It’s in my place. I don’t keep it on me.”
               “Fine,” You sigh, “Next time, okay?”
               Seonghwa bites down on his bottom lip for a second before his eyes lock on yours. “It happened six months ago. I mean, don’t you think – I think I’ve done a good job at not crossing a boundary since then.”
               You hadn’t been expecting to have this conversation today. But maybe that is your own fault for constantly putting it off. It isn’t even that you’re mad at him anymore. But coming home late one night to find him passed out drunk in your bed after using your key to get in just felt like shattering a boundary. You took your key back after that, giving your best friend a dressing down even though he was apologizing profusely. 
               “I mean, you technically weren’t supposed to use the key to drop off my mail,” You point out.
               His cheeks flush. “I was trying to be helpful,” He mumbles, eyes darting away from your face.
               You sigh, knowing you’re going to give in. That is how it usually worked with Seonghwa. He was always the overzealous best friend, eager to help you even to the extent that it resulted in too much on his own plate.
               “I know,” You reply, “And I appreciate it.”
               His face lights up, all earlier guilt and tension erased immediately. Seonghwa immediately begins to pepper you with questions about the trip back home, leaving the earlier conversation about boundaries long passed. You aren’t sure if anything you said even sunk into his head. Likely not, you think.
               After all, you know Seonghwa so well. You know what sticks to him.
*
               “Hey!” The familiar chipper voice snaps you out of your mindless phone scrolling.
               It’s two days later, after work, and you’re meeting Seonghwa for a coffee. The key issue is long forgotten, overtaken by the daily events of life that naturally take more importance than your best friend helpfully bringing in your mail.
               He’s pushing through the crowd of people that have formed looking for a late afternoon caffeine boost. It had begun snowing earlier and there are a few snowflakes melting in his hair. His brown jacket hangs off his thin frame, the same jacket he’s had for easily a decade because he doesn’t care enough to buy a new one. It’s well worn, fraying at the seams near the elbows, and you’ve seen it against the backdrop of a multitude of different coffee shops.
               “Am I late?” He stands by the table, looking down at you, not paying attention to the man trying to get past him while carefully balancing two cups of coffee in his hands.
               “No. Even if you were, it’s okay. I was waiting for you before I got anything.”
               You move to get up but Seonghwa shakes his head quickly. “No, no,” He nudges you back in the seat gently, “I’ll go order for us. It’s too crowded.” He is looking in your eyes. “I know what you like.”
               He’s gone then, back in the crowd, moving towards the counter. You watch him go, turning your attention back to your phone. Ten minutes later, Seonghwa returns, handing you the coffee and sliding into the seat across from yours. The table is crammed in the corner, a clear attempt to try to fit more seats inside since the snow is coming down.
               “I’m getting sensory overload in here,” You remark when someone smacks your arm with their laptop bag on accident.
               “Do you want to go?” Seonghwa leans forward, “We can go if it’s too much.”
               “No, it’s fine,” You shake your head, “I should have given more consideration to the time, I guess. How are you?”
               He drums his fingers against the table while answering. “Fine. The usual. How was work?”
               “The usual too. That project I’ve been stuck working on finishes next week – ow,” You wince as someone else hits your arm while squeezing through the tight space between your table and the next.
               Seonghwa reacts like lightning, too quick for you to even say anything. His hand reaches for the strap of the man’s bag and he gives a sharp tug on it. “Hey!” He snaps and the man looks over his shoulder with wide eyes, “Pay attention to where you’re going!”
               “Seonghwa, it’s fine –”
                “I’d rather walk in the snow than be in here,” He says curtly, grabbing his coffee cup and gesturing for you to follow.
               You do, and out in the cold, let out a small sigh of relief. Alright, maybe the idea of leaving the crowded coffee shop was the right choice. The soft layer of snow that is forming across everything is ruined by the many feet trampling over it hurrying to get home after work.
               But you walk slowly along the sidewalk with Seonghwa, neither of you speaking for a few minutes. You glance out of the corner of your eye to find him looking at you.
               He clears his throat quickly and asks, “What were you trying to say in there?”
               “Oh, the project. It’s winding down next week. I’m relieved.”
               Someone cuts in between the two of you and when Seonghwa moves back closer, he is no longer looking in your direction. “Is the project leader still texting you outside of work?”
               You blink, a little surprised he remembers such a small detail from a few months ago. “Yeah, sometimes. But it isn’t anything unprofessional.”
               Seonghwa’s cheeks are slightly red from the cold. He is holding the coffee cup tightly for warmth. “He might ask you out when the project is done.”
               “Maybe,” You reply with a shrug, “We’ll see.”
               Your best friend falls silent. The look in his eyes is from a thousand miles away for a couple of seconds before it snaps back into focus. “Would you say yes?”
               “I don’t know. I guess I’ll see how I feel when it happens.” You hadn’t given it a lot of thought.
               There is another silence which is unusual for Seonghwa who usually fills the conversation easily. But he seems to be mulling something over and is lost in thought – a rarity.
               “What about you?”
               His head snaps up, looking at you. “What do you mean?”
               A lone snowflake lands on the bridge of his nose. You lean forward and brush it off. The gesture comes automatically, instilled from years of friendship. You’ve brushed a thousand snowflakes off his face and shoulders over the many winters spent hanging out.
               “That woman at the coffee shop was flirting with you a few weeks back,” You then frown, “But we haven’t been back since. We could’ve gotten you a date.”
               Seonghwa turns his face away from yours, slowing his pace down a little while watching the rush hour traffic grow larger on the road.
               “No, I’m good.”
               Coming to a stop at the crosswalk, you nudge his shoe with yours. “You haven’t been on a single date in ages.”
               “So?” He turns to look at you, his eyes wide and questioning.
               “Nothing, you just work a lot from home, that’s all. I wouldn’t want you to miss out something fun because of that.”
               “Trust me, I’m not. I just am not interested in awkward dates.” He bounces on the heels of his shoes for a couple of seconds until the crosswalk turns green and he takes off like a shot.
               This is typical of Seonghwa’s walking speed and you try to keep up. “Was I overstepping?”
               “No,” He replies swiftly, his energy bubbling underneath the surface, “But I had a string of very awkward dates all last year and I need a break from them.” He runs his fingers through his hair, still walking at a brisk pace.
               “Right, I get that. I didn’t mean to come off like I was lecturing –”
               Seonghwa stops suddenly, so abruptly that you almost trip over your own feet. “You never come off like you’re lecturing,” He says, reaching out to help steady you, “I understand you just want what is best for me.”
               “Right,” The word sends up a tiny puff of air from the cold, “You’re in your apartment a lot except when you’re with me. That’s all.”
               Seonghwa’s hand is still on your arm but the grip is so loose that you can’t even feel it through the thick jacket. His nails are bitten to the quick. He lowers his hand once he knows you’re not going to fall over.
               He flashes a quick grin, the same expression you’ve seen a thousand times. Your shoulders relax, knowing he isn’t upset with you.
               “Is that so bad? Maybe I just wanna hang out with my best friend right now.”
               “No, there isn’t anything wrong with it. I just need to make sure you’re doing alright though. You’d do the same for me.”
               Seonghwa’s grin softens and he gently punches you on the shoulder. “Yeah, of course I would. I’d do anything for you. You know that.” He straightens up. “Now, come on. Enough discussing how I prefer to be indoors all day. Mental check-in complete. Ask me again in six weeks.”
               “Right,” You are smiling, your concerns about Seonghwa spending too much time alone now allayed.
               “Let’s get home, alright? I’m freezing.”
               The conversation resumes, the ebb and flow always the same, some topics circled back so often over the course of time that they feel more like well read books with their spines bent than anything exciting. But you like that with Seonghwa.
               With him, what you see is what you get.
*
               “Nope, not Mario Party,” Seonghwa shakes his head, stretched out on the couch in his apartment, “You turn into someone I don’t even know when you play that. Half the time, I think you’re gonna tear my face off.”
               You scoff. “Come on. That isn’t true.”
               “Yes, it is. Think about last time.”     
               Shifting awkwardly on the couch, you avoid his eyes. “Whatever,” You mumble, remembering cursing him out for stealing your star.
               It’s a week later and you’re trying to unwind from the stresses of work. The project finished yesterday which meant some relief. It is almost a routine now to pop over to Seonghwa’s, play a video game and unwind – to the point where neither of you ask to confirm, it just happens.
               His place is organized and tidy, in a way that you could never hope to replicate. A shelf lined with books is next to the TV, with another one filled with his Legos he builds to unwind. His computer with dual monitors is in the corner, the chair pushed out from where he hastily got up once work finished for the day. The apartment is comforting.
               Seonghwa gives you a knowing look and you drop the subject, aware he is right. He runs his fingers through his hair before turning his attention to the TV, leaning forward to grab the remote off the coffee table.
               “You hear from that client? The one who is clearly interested in you?” He asks suddenly, staring at the TV while booting up Netflix.
               Surprised, you glance at him and shift a bit in your spot on the couch. “He’s been texting me a bit.”
               Seonghwa makes a noncommittal noise although for one second, you swear his grip on the remote tightens. When he doesn’t say anything further, you’re unsure of where to take the conversation. He’s never shown much interest in who you’ve dated before – in fact, he’s always seemed bored hearing about them, to the point that you barely mention it. You wonder what makes this guy different but something in you holds back asking.
               “I gotta pee,” You say instead, and he just nods, swept up in whatever he’s thinking about.
               You head down the hall and into the bathroom. You’re about to sit down when you notice there is no toilet paper on the roll. Rolling your eyes, you open the cabinet under the sink and rummage around. Why does he never pay attention to this stuff? Better yet why are you surprised?
               The cabinet is as organized as the rest of his place but there is no sign of toilet paper. You try to remember if he stashes it elsewhere but nothing comes to mind. You think of your own cabinet under the bathroom sink and wince. Seonghwa has always been the more organized of you two. You’re lost in thought, pushing aside some cleaning supplies when your eyes land on a strange small black box pushed all the way to the back.
               It’s slim and almost glossy, completely out of place to be shoved underneath the bathroom stick. You chew on your bottom lip, curiosity nipping at your brain. Seonghwa isn’t the one for secrets. There’s probably Pokémon cards or something inside that he misplaced.
               But you still reach for the box, sitting down on the bathroom floor and opening it quietly. Guilt is poking at you for snooping through your best friend’s stuff. You can’t explain what is even driving you to open something personal that belongs to Seonghwa.
               But you do.
               There isn’t a lot inside.
               One pair of underwear. A house key. A small bracelet.
               Your pair of underwear. Your house key. Your small bracelet.
               You stare at the items, not comprehending what is in your lap. The pair of underwear is green lace, one of your cuter pairs, and it went missing months ago. Around the time I found him passed out drunk in my bed, a small voice in your head points out.
               The memory of the night replays. Coming home late, finding Seonghwa fast asleep in your bed, flopped on his stomach, wrapped up in the bedsheets as if it was his own room. You were frustrated at the lack of respect for your personal space. Seonghwa always had a tendency to do such things; back in college, more than once you’d wake up to him in your dorm with a cup of coffee in hand, somehow getting past security.
               But you snapped that night, under a lot of work pressure and startled at finding a shape in your bed in the middle of the night. Waking Seonghwa up, you angrily asked him what he had been doing. Seonghwa slurred his words, said he was drunk and apologized. He sounded panicked and ashamed but that didn’t stop you from demanding your key back. You hadn’t talked to him for three days while he left you a ton of texts and messages apologizing and explaining himself. It was the longest you had gone without speaking to him.
               Back in the present, you gingerly reach for the pair of underwear. Why would he take this? Your cheeks feel hot looking at it. Was he…doing something with this? Surely, that would be impossible. For a split second, your brain flashes a mental image of Seonghwa with his hand wrapped around the underwear as he – nope, no.
                You drop it back into the box, opting for the bracelet instead. It’s a thin fake gold band with a tiny cubic zirconia diamond in it. You wore it over ten years ago, one night at the summer festival. Your boyfriend at the time just broke up with you and all you wanted to do was stay inside until Seonghwa prodded you to go with him. You wore the bracelet then, with a sun dress, trying to make an effort to look presentable. Seonghwa won a stuffed animal at one of the booths and gave it to you. You don’t remember misplacing the bracelet.
               The house key winks knowingly at you.
               You shut the box, shoving it hurriedly back in its spot as your heart threatened to explode in your chest. Your head is spinning, wondering what the hell to do. Do you confront him about it? That is what you’re supposed to do. But what do you even say?
               You turn on the faucet, splashing cold water on your face while trying to gather your thoughts. Could it be that Seonghwa had some sort of crush on you? That is absurd. Keeping the bracelet would mean it has been a minimum of ten years he’s been pining for me. It could be longer. That’s enough to drive anyone mad.
                In any case, you needed to get out of his apartment and try to calm yourself down. You had a tendency not to think very rationally when emotional and it would be better to put some space away from Seonghwa until you figured out how to broach the subject.
               You open the bathroom slowly, trying to collect yourself and steady your breathing. When you enter the living room, Seonghwa is idly watching TV. He glances over at you and then frowns.
               “What’s wrong?”
               So much for looking casual.
               “My boss texted me and there’s some crisis with another client. I need to pop back home and get on a Zoom meeting.” You don’t even know where the lie came from but it leaves your mouth smoothly.
               Seonghwa sounds exasperated when he replies with, “You’re kidding.”
               “No, sorry. You know how it is. Big girl job.”
               “Yeah, fine, I get it.”
               You are trying to get to the door without asking him what the fuck but he meets you there, his hand on the door knob. You force yourself to look at him directly – this face you know so well, this face you’ve stared at a thousand times. The same face that won you a stuffed animal at the festival ten years ago. Nothing has changed.
               “I’ll message you later,” You say.
               “Alright,” He opens the door, “Later.”
               It closes behind your back, leaving you alone in the hallway. You stand there for a few moments.
               You have no proof but there’s the sensation of Seonghwa looking through the peephole at you.
*
               Not seeing your best friend for two days does nothing to help you figure out how to broach the subject of the tiny black box underneath his bathroom sink. By the time you see Seonghwa Sunday afternoon, the only idea you have is to avoid the discussion completely and opt to veer the conversation into you going on a date with someone.
               The sun is lazily cutting across the floor of your living room while you pretend to be making coffee in the kitchen. Seonghwa is talking animatedly from the couch about something that happened the day before. You’re not really paying attention. Your mind keeps flashing to the night he fell asleep in your bed, picturing him rummaging through your underwear drawer to take a pair and slipping it into his pocket. You’re remembering the way he comforted you after getting dumped, convincing you to go to the festival. You can see him against the backdrop of the small white bulbs that were hanging off the booths, running his fingers through his hair while explaining with easy confidence how he could win a stuffed animal.
               “Hey,” Seonghwa’s voice cuts through the memories and you blink, looking up from your place at the kitchen counter to see him standing in front of you, “Are you even listening to me?”
               “I’m going on a date Tuesday night,” You blurt out without preamble, “With the client. The project that just finished.”
               Seonghwa looks thrown before clearing his throat and replying, “Alright.”
               But you keep going. “I think we have a real connection. It could turn into something.”
               For the briefest moment, Seonghwa’s face goes startingly blank. There is nothing behind his eyes, and no expression on his face. Then he snaps back into focus, his hands pressing flat against the counter. “That’s good.”
               You’re lying, of course, you doubt anything will come from this date. But if Seonghwa is harbouring some sort of intense crush on you, maybe showing him you’re into someone else will fix things. Knock the thoughts out of his head, redirect his focus to something else. Anything to get out of having a horrible discussion with him that could ruin the most solid friendship you’ve ever had in your entire life.
               “Yeah, I can let you know how it goes,” You say a little too quickly, “Might be good for me. Like, I haven’t had a relationship in a couple of years. I feel ready for one now.”
               Seonghwa pushes himself away from the counter, turning his back to you. “That’s great.” He plops back down on the couch. “Remind me again what I know about this guy.”
               You decide to take this opportunity to really sell this man, to truly drive it home that this could be someone that you will be smitten with. You spend the next five minutes prattling on about him. At one point, you sit on the couch, on the opposite side of where Seonghwa is, still enthusiastically talking about a man you’ve barely thought of the entire time you worked with him. 
               Seonghwa’s face is slightly tilted with his arm propped up on the side of the couch, hand resting against his cheek. He’s looking at the wall, eyes distant. You’re trying to stay the course and see your speech through while at the same time studying his face for any sign that this onslaught of information is settling in. But there isn’t anything, not even a clenching of his jaw.
               Running out of breath, you stop speaking and the room lapses into silence. Seonghwa stirs, turning his face in your direction. There it is once more – the same blank stare from earlier. Nothing behind his eyes, gone in a flash, replaced with the same Seonghwa you knew. You swallow hard, suddenly feeling a little off kilter. There is something unfamiliar in that blankness, something that is brand new ground in the relationship with your best friend.
               “Well, you sound excited,” He says casually, “You’ll have to let me know how it goes.”
               Your shoulders relax slightly. Are you overthinking everything? If Seonghwa was upset, you’d notice, right? You’ve seen him angry or annoyed a thousand times before. But the box still tugs at your sleeve. There’s a reason he has that. There is a reason he kept the underwear, the bracelet, the key. But the idea of asking your best friend why he has a box with such contents makes you want to jump off a cliff.
               And Seonghwa is…comforting. Maybe it is selfish to think of him that way and to want nothing to change, especially if things are different at his end. But he’s been in your life for so long that the idea of him potentially not wanting to be around you anymore due to a crush forming makes your anxiety spike. He’s been there through everything…You can get stuff back on track. You can fix things without mentioning the box.
               You’re sure of it.
*
               Typically, the process of getting ready for a date is somewhat fun and enjoyable. You tend to overthink your outfit but other than that, you like listening to music, doing your makeup and wondering how the night will go.
               This date doesn’t feel like that, mostly because the entire time you’re getting ready, your mind keeps going to Seonghwa.
               You’ve been overanalyzing his behavior since your Oscar winning performance convincing him this date is important. It’s been a few days since your speech and he seems exactly the same. Maybe a little more reserved if you truly look at the small details. But that could be work related, you argue, maybe I need to stop being so self-absorbed and think that everything has to do with me.
               But then you think back to the box with your underwear, bracelet and key. Any rational person would just talk to their best friend about it. Instead, you’re forcing yourself to go on this date in hopes of avoiding it because you’re being selfish, putting your feelings before his and wanting everything to remain normal.
               Your phone suddenly rings, startling you out of your brooding. It’s your client – no, your date.
               “Hello?”
               “Hey, listen,” His voice comes out fast and urgent, “I am so sorry but I’m going to have to cancel.”
               “What? Why?” It comes out way more demanding than intended but you had been banking on this…
               “Some fucking psycho ruined my car! It’s all smashed up! Like, it’s completely fucking ruined!” The client’s voice pitches higher in anxiety and an undercurrent of fear.
               You grip the phone tightly while exclaiming, “What?!”
               “My tires are slashed, my windows are blown out! The doors have these deep gash marks in the side like some lunatic took a fucking axe to it! Even the insides are cut up…Christ, I gotta go, okay? I’m really sorry. We’ll reschedule, I promise.”
               “No, of course, I understand. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that happened,” You say in shock, “That’s horrible.”
               “Thanks. Again, really sorry. I’ll call you, okay?”
               The call ends as suddenly as it began. You stare at your phone for a few seconds, feeling a wave of sympathy for your client. It would be horrible to deal with your car getting messed up like that. But this meant the date was pushed back…
               Looking at yourself in the mirror, you wondered what to do now. Normally when plans fell through, you’d hang out with Seonghwa. If he found out the date got cancelled and you didn’t come over, he could think you’re avoiding him. But showing up all dolled up for a date that had nothing to do with him could be rubbing his face in things too, couldn’t it?
               “I’m so sick of overthinking,” You mumble, leaving your bathroom and trying to find a hoodie to tug over your outfit, yanking it on over your head, adjusting it a bit and then grabbing your bag, “I don’t care.”
               You’re lying – you care more than you’d like to admit, both about Seonghwa and whatever is going on with his feelings towards you and the fact deep down you’re aware that you are handling this poorly.
               A few minutes later, you’re knocking on the front door of Seonghwa’s apartment. While you do have a key to his place, you weren’t going to violate that boundary even though you knew he wouldn’t see it that way.
               No one answers.
               You knock again but this time you go, “Hey, Seonghwa?”
               Now, you can hear shuffling inside the apartment followed by a muffled, “Just a second!”
               The door opens a second later. Seonghwa has clearly just gotten out of the shower. His hair is still soaking wet, dripping onto his black t-shirt. He runs his hands through his hair, trying to smooth it out but all that does is send some water droplets flying to the floor.
               “What, were you taking a swim?” You joke.
               His eyes land on you. “Wasn’t expecting you to come by. I thought you had that date.”
               “I did but he had to cancel,” You reply as Seonghwa moves to let you inside, “He called me and told me like…his car got fucked up.”
               “His car got fucked up,” He deadpans, raising one eyebrow, “Are you sure he isn’t lying?”
               You scoff. “Seriously? Who would lie about that? He told me someone slashed his tires, broke his windows, banged up the doors and shit. So, he needed to go deal with it. We’re gonna reschedule.”
               Seonghwa runs one hand through his hair again, seemingly unbothered by how wet it is. Even his t-shirt is damp, clinging to his frame. He flexes his fingers on his right hand, an action that is unfamiliar to you. The muscles in his arms move. You’re staring and don’t know why. It’s like he was mid shower when he got out or something, you think.
               “So, I’m the backup plan?” He asks and there’s a strange edge to the sentence, stripping it of any humor.
               You blink, thrown by the tone. “No, I didn’t…”
               But Seonghwa smiles then, and his voice is back to normal. “It’s cool. I wasn’t doing anything tonight. We can hang out. You wanna watch TV?”
               You nod, trailing after him into the comfort of his living room. He goes into the kitchen, opening the fridge and leaning forward to try to find something to drink. His t-shirt lays flat across his back, his black hair curling against the nape of his neck, still dripping onto the tile. You stare at him for a few seconds before settling in on the couch. You’re suddenly acutely aware of the dress you’re wearing although most of it is covered up by the hoodie. He didn’t seem to notice your outfit or makeup anyway. Be serious. He’s seen you on dates a lot of times.
               There is the sound of a beer opening as Seonghwa returns to the couch, tossing you a bottle of water as he plops down next to you. You glance at him out of the corner of your eyes as he takes a swig from the beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing while swallowing.
               “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to ruin the couch with your hair dripping everywhere?”
               He tilts his face in your direction and then rests his head directly on the back of the couch. You roll your eyes.
               “Get a towel.”
               “Nah, I’m good.”
               “You’re just trying to annoy me now.”
               “Yup.”
               The exchange is so normal and familiar that you don’t even realize you’ve sunken onto the couch next to him as he flips through the channels. The two of you lapse into a comfortable silence, so comfortable that you forget the box stuffed away in Seonghwa’s bathroom for the first time since discovering it.
               Apparently, he is comfortable too because at some point, you realize you’re hearing soft snoring. Surprised, you look over at him. He’s dozed off, eyes closed, chest rising and falling peacefully. His mouth is open slightly, head to the side, blissfully unaware of his wet hair. Seonghwa often kept odd hours and it wasn’t so strange for him to fall asleep as soon as he got even mildly relaxed.
               Mixed emotions are mingling inside your chest – a concoction of anxiety, peacefulness, and a sense of impending doom. In this quiet moment, it is as though you’re standing on a beach watching a tsunami approach. You’ve been trying so hard to run from the change that swept in with discovering that tiny box underneath the bathroom sink.
               You want to lean over and wake Seonghwa up, just ask him what is going on. But you still balk at the conversation and at tarnishing this moment where everything feels so normal.
               You wonder if the box is still under the sink.
               Maybe you imagined it.
               With one last glance at Seonghwa, you get up. Even though you’re walking to the bathroom, you cannot shake the guilt feeling swooping over your chest. You glance over your shoulder. He’s still perfectly asleep.
  Seonghwa’s bedroom door is next to the bathroom, slightly ajar. You glance inside out of habit. His bed is perfectly made with a couple of framed posters on the walls. There isn’t anything out of place but…
Maybe it’s the way the light from the hallway lays across the carpet or maybe you’re spending too long looking inside but before you completely pass by something shines for a split second. You slow down and then stop, hovering in the doorway to his room. Your heart is beating quickly now.
One final look in Seonghwa’s direction to ensure he’s sleeping sends you into his bedroom. Now who is breaking boundaries? A little voice in your head remarks cruelly. You cross the carpet towards what caught your eye – the glint of something similar to a knife. The bathroom towel has been quickly thrown over whatever it is.
Bending down, your fingers hover over the towel. Your entire body is screaming for you just to leave and get out of there. You’re snooping, you’re keeping secrets, you’re posturing as if Seonghwa has done something unforgiveable but meanwhile you’re not doing anything better –
You snatch the towel off the object and your heart falls into a pool of ice water.
An axe is laying on the floor. You stare at it while the hair on the back of your neck stands up. “The doors have these deep gash marks in the side like some lunatic took a fucking axe to it!” The words of your date ring in your head with deafening volume. You think about Seonghwa asking for information about the client and how you babbled endlessly in order to convince him this date was real. You knocked on the door and he hadn’t been ready for you, soaking wet, barely toweled off as if he had been busy…what, hiding the axe under the towel?
This is insane. Do you realize what your brain is jumping to? What are you trying to suggest? That Seonghwa went out to this guy’s place and ruined his car? Do you know what that implies? It implies he’s not just crushing on you. It implies there’s something…wrong. There’s something wrong with him. That’s what you’re thinking about your best friend right now.
The anxiety hits you full force in the chest then. You can hardly breathe, quickly covering up the axe and stumbling to your feet. You didn’t know what to do. You don’t even know what to say to him. The most important thing is getting out of here –
“What are you doing?”
You almost jump out of your skin, whirling around to see Seonghwa’s figure in the doorway. His face is half in shadow and one hand is on the door frame. You take a step back, almost tripping over the axe while straightening up.
“I thought you were sleeping,” You mumble and all efforts to make your voice sound normal fail.
“I woke up.” His voice is different, altered.
Seonghwa takes a step into the room and his face is clearer now. Yet there is that same look you have seen flashes of before. The complete emptiness of expression, the utter blankness behind his eyes. There is nothing familiar about him now.
“Now,” He says in a cold voice, “Who is the one breaking boundaries?”
You swallow hard while your brain fumbles for an excuse. But instead of speaking one, what leaves your mouth is, “Why do you have an axe?”
“Is it illegal to own one?”
“No but it’s a little strange to have it on your bedroom floor underneath a towel.” You try to make it come out like a lighthearted joke but your voice quivers, giving you away.
Seonghwa takes another step. In exchange, you back up, over the axe and closer to his night table. It seems ridiculous to be afraid of your best friend. But it also is ridiculous to have a secret box in the bathroom and an axe on the floor.
His right hand flexes and his jaw is clenched. You get the feeling he is trying to wrangle himself under control – but from what? He has all the qualities of the Seonghwa you know but it’s like someone smeared him with a layer of paint and distorted him.
You try again. “Why do you have the axe, Seonghwa?”
He doesn’t answer. Just moves closer. You’re cornered now. He’s near enough to touch, to grab his shirt and demand he answer you – this man you don’t know, this man you’re realizing you might not know at all.
“Why are you in my room?” Seonghwa makes a small noise, a tsk tsk, before adding, “Gonna have to ask for my key back, I think. Didn’t we just discuss boundaries?”
Up this close, you can better see the blankness in his eyes. You can smell the familiar scent of his shampoo and body wash. Your mind is telling you to run but your heart is whispering that this is your best friend, just hug him and talk it out. You don’t know what to do.
You say Seonghwa’s name so softly, just a wisp of a thing against the boiling emotions that are brimming to the surface inside him. “Why do you have some of my things under your bathroom sink?”
Seonghwa recoils, eyes widening in surprise. Your brain tells you to push past him, take this chance and run. But your feet don’t listen. Even now, you want to hear him out. You’re desperate to prove this all some fucked up misunderstanding.
You keep going. “That bracelet. From the night of the festival. And my….my underwear. Why do you have those things? My date calls me, says his car got trashed and that it looks like an axe was taken to the sides and then you’re scurrying around when I knock, hide an axe under a towel. Where were you earlier? Seonghwa, where were you earlier? Why do you have those things? Tell me. If you don’t want me to walk out of here, tell me. If you don’t want to fuck up the friendship, tell me.”
He tilts his face away from you, eyes glassy, looking at nothing. He’s grinding his teeth, something else you’ve never seen him do. Seonghwa’s profile is striking but no longer comforting. When he looks back at you, your lower back nudges into the night table and your hands grip the edge, staring at him.
“I want to fuck up the friendship. I’ve always wanted to fuck up the friendship,” He declares.
You shake your head. “You don’t mean that. That’s not how things are with us –”
“That’s always been how things are with us!” He shouts suddenly, loud enough to make you flinch.
“No! No, Seonghwa, that isn’t true –”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” His eyes are alive now, twisted, no longer blank but not belonging to him either. He’s so close to you now, dangerously so. The warmth of his body is seeping into yours. The rage is swimming off him, strong enough to knock you over. You have never seen Seonghwa so angry before…and certainly never at you.
“I’m not, I’m not lying,” You plead, wanting to touch him but too afraid of making things worse, “I’m not lying. I was just – I was just trying to understand. The box under the sink and the axe…”
“You’re a smart girl, stop pretending like you don’t know,” Seonghwa growls out, “You know why I have those things under the sink.”
“The bracelet –”
Seonghwa is bristling with an intense energy as he replies, “From the festival night! See, you remember. You knew immediately where it was from. It slipped off your wrist when you were at one of the games, landed in the dirt. I took it. I took it because that was the night I thought ‘maybe’. I thought maybe you’d realize how badly I wanted you. And I think you did realize it. But you looked the other way. I love you but fucking hell, you look the other way when anything might change. But I’m patient. I can wait. I can take care of things and I can wait.”
I love you he had said, so effortlessly, so easily. The air is knocked out of your lungs by his casual admission. Seonghwa doesn’t seem to notice nor care he said it. He just stated it as though it was a fact, like the sun rising every morning. He runs his fingers through his hair, his brow furrowed in memories.
“The underwear, do I gotta explain that? Like I said, you’re smart. You know. I didn’t think you were coming home that night. I thought you were out, picked up by a guy or something. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I had shoved the underwear in my pocket before you got there and it just felt so damn good to be in your bed. Everything smelled like you and just…it was just a lot, you know?” His eyes land on you. “It was wrong to lie, tell you I was drunk. It was the fastest thing I could think of.”
“You lied to me?”
“I’m sorry,” Seonghwa says seriously and you realize he believes lying about being drunk was the worst thing he did that night, not using your key or stealing your underwear.
“You’re – you’re sorry? You violated my boundaries, you slept in my bed, you stole my…and then you lied to me,” You reply aghast, “It’s like I don’t even know you, Seonghwa.”
Seonghwa is starting to look anguished now. He goes to reach for you, thinks twice and drops his hands to his sides before taking a step back, carefully skirting around the axe. Then he stops, considering it before picking it up and tossing it onto the bed, making you flinch again.
“Don’t act like that,” Seonghwa says sternly, pointing to you, “Don’t do that. It’s me, alright? It’s me. You’ve known me since we were kids. I’m still the same person.”
You swallow hard, unable to reply.
He continues to talk, pacing the room. “Listen, for how long I’ve been in love with you, I think – I think I’m doing alright. I’ve never done anything bad to you. I have always had your back. That one asshole back in college – that professor. The science one. Remember? I made sure to stop that shit before it got out of hand. He was out of bounds asking you out. That’s wrong. You’re a – you’re a student.”
The floor is unsteady underneath your feet. You’re staring at Seonghwa as he paces, wondering if you’re going to faint. “That was you? He couldn’t even come back to work after that. He needed physical therapy. His legs…”
“Okay, in my defense,” He holds out one hand to ward off your criticism, “In my defense, I didn’t realize until later I maybe shouldn’t have brought the bat down so hard.”
Your eyes fall to the axe. You’re almost afraid to ask.
But Seonghwa follows your gaze and he immediately makes a noise of protest. “I didn’t lay a hand on that guy.”
“But…but his car…”
“So what? It’s a car. Which he thought was more important than you seeing that he cancelled the date, by the way,” He is talking so quickly that it is hard to follow his words, “You gave me so much information about him and this idiot – I mean, he’s a real idiot, alright? He had so much public information about himself. I found his address in like, two minutes. I mean, this is not the sort of guy you want to be with. He’s too stupid for you.”
You’re feeling dazed now like you got hit with the axe instead of the client’s car. “How did you not get caught?”
“He doesn’t live in the city. Lives in the suburbs, some big fancy ugly house with a private garage. Slipped in, slipped out.” A thought strikes him and Seonghwa moves towards you, holding his hands out to calm you down as if you’re a scared deer. “But I didn’t hurt him. I wasn’t going to hurt him. You seemed to really like the moron. I just wanted to see how badly he wanted to go on a date with you. If his material items were more important than seeing you.”
Thunderstruck, you reply, “Seonghwa, you trashed his fucking car.”
He scurries over, extremely close to you once again. He looks so warm and inviting again, earnest as ever as he goes, “And he picked it over you. He isn’t a good fit for you. Not like me. You get it? Not like me.”
You can only stare at him, unable to reply. Too much is happening. There is too much new information occurring at once. And the way Seonghwa is standing there, looking so open and honest – the polar opposite of earlier when he came into the bedroom, is making things confusing.
Seonghwa tilts his head to the side, his voice a soft murmur while studying your face. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve protected you from is because I love you. I’ve always loved you. The entire reason I exist is to love you. I’d follow you to the end of the earth. I’d follow you into hell. Some part of you had to know that. You felt it, didn’t you?”
Your breathing is quick and shallow. You’re grateful for the barrier of the hoodie because you’re acutely aware of how close you are to your best friend. You’re thinking about him moving to the city, and then into your building. You’re thinking of all the various strange occurrences you tried to steadfastly ignore – people getting injured after upsetting you, job interviews that felt horrible only for them to offer you a position, Seonghwa up all hours of the night on his computer looking exhausted and claiming it was just work, the beleaguered quick expression on his face whenever you mentioned him going on a date…
Seonghwa makes a small noise in the back of his throat. “You’re scared. It’s okay. You never liked change and you were never good with your feelings.”
You squeeze your eyes closed while saying, “I thought you’d think I was smitten with him. That you’d…you’d drop this. And we could go back to normal. I didn’t think you’d…”
“Go back to normal?” He scoffs, “What is normal for you? Ignoring what is right in front of you?” Very slowly and carefully, he brings the back of his hand to your cheek, gently brushing it along your skin. The touch makes your heart thud violently in your chest. Seonghwa looks at you tenderly. “I would be so good to you. I’m a perfect fit for you.”
“Seonghwa…” You aren’t sure if his name is a curse, a prayer or just a whimpered plea to let things stay the same.
He is close enough to your body now that you know what is going to happen next. You should push him away, get out of here and call the police on him.
But you don’t.
Instead, you allow Seonghwa to kiss you.
Your mouth opens underneath his, tasting your best friend in a way that is entirely new. The sensation of his lips on yours is dizzying in the most twisted way possible. Seonghwa’s hand goes to the back of your neck as the kiss grows more intense. His tongue is in your mouth and he makes a tiny noise – like some small bit of him is finally finding relief. You aren’t even sure if you’re breathing, too swept up by the mind-bending things that have occurred in the last ten minutes. As the kiss deepens, you tilt your head to the side, your tongue against his now.
There is a small voice in the back of your head quietly asking you what the fuck are you doing? Not only is this Seonghwa of all people but he’s obviously mentally unstable. But there is a heat swooping through your body and there is a need cracking through something inside you that is made worse by the fact you’re thinking about how he’s always had your back since first meeting.
Your hand is gripping the bottom of his t-shirt. You aren’t sure whose ragged breathing you’re hearing but certainly it cannot be yours because you must’ve died ten minutes ago. That’s the only logical explanation for why you’re now desperately kissing Seonghwa; it just simply couldn’t be happening like this.
The heat is unspooling in your chest now, dropping to your thighs. Seonghwa makes another quiet noise while kissing you, so fragile yet tense, and it is in that noise that the desire and fear smash together and overwhelm you.
You push him away with a small gasp, wiggling free from the confined space and placing your hand against the wall to steady yourself.
“I can’t,” You gasp out – although is directed to you or your best friend?
Looking over your shoulder at Seonghwa, he’s staring at you with blown out pupils while his chest rises and falls rapidly.
“You can’t what?” He drawls coldly, “You can’t what?”
You shake your head while saying, “I should be calling the police on you. You’ve hurt people. You’ve damaged people’s property.”
“Oh, please!” His mood shifts quickly again, his tone hostile. He approaches you, so close again, enough to see that his lips are slightly wet from the kissing. “Stop pretending. Stop pretending you don’t feel it.”
But it’s too much – all of it. You shake your head, afraid of…of what? Seonghwa? No, something else. Something worse.
You’re afraid of yourself.
“I can’t – I have to go,” You say, pushing past him, “I can’t do this.”
In all your years of friendship with him, you’ve never run out of his apartment. There has never been any reason to. But you leave Seonghwa in his bedroom with the axe on the bed, quickly scampering down the hallway. You cast a glance over your shoulder to see if he is following.
But he isn’t.
And you’re not sure how you feel.
*
               There is no sleep that night, only replaying the entirety of your friendship with Seonghwa like a horrible movie in your mind. You try picturing him taking the bat to that teacher’s legs but it is an impossible thing to imagine. You wonder what else he’s done. He’s been off, slinking around in the night, breaking into your apartment, sleeping in your sheets.
               You roll onto your side, staring at the edge of your bed. What is Seonghwa doing right now? Is he thinking of you? Most likely, since it has become clear that all he thinks about is you. He isn’t a good fit for you. Not like me. You get it? Not like me. His confession bangs around in your brain, refusing to give you any peace.
               You’re back at the festival, watching him win you the stuffed animal. Seonghwa’s head is cocked to the side as he thrusts the stuffed animal towards you, grinning. You try to refuse it at first but he shakes his head, saying he has no use for it. His hair is softly glowing against the lights. His fingers brush against your wrist while accepting the gift. You feel a sense of contentment knowing you’re here with him and not crying in your room alone.
               What happened the next day? Your ex’s dorm room goes up in flames due to an unattended candle left burning. You remember laughing about karma with Seonghwa.
               But it wasn’t karma.
Unless Seonghwa is your karma.
Your brain circles to the one thing you’ve been trying the most not to think about: the kiss. It is something you’ve never ever considered. Kissing Seonghwa had always been something firmly planted in the realm of impossibility. Anyone of sound mind would have called the police on him, and what did you do? You kissed him.
And even worse, something that you can only admit in the dead of night when the world is still and quiet: you liked it. You enjoyed the small noises of relief Seonghwa made, how hot his body temperature ran, how his t-shirt was gripped in your hand. You enjoyed his desperation. You enjoyed his dedication.
What the fuck did that say about you?
*
               You’ve never gone this long without hearing from Seonghwa. It’s been four days and you keep expecting him to show up. You think he might even be waiting in your apartment every time you come home from work. You almost wish he was. But he isn’t. His silence is throwing you off.
               Maybe Seonghwa is going to skip town, you think in the silence of your bedroom one night. He might think I’m going to turn him in and he’s trying to get ahead of it. The idea of Seonghwa vanishing is eating you up inside. You just want to talk to him.
               But now you feel like the stalker, taking the elevator one floor down to his place with his apartment key in your hand. Even if Seonghwa ignores me, I’m gonna go inside, you think, if he can do it to me, I can do it to him. I just want to talk to him. Your mind is flickering to the kiss. You’re thinking about staying up late with him watching movies over the years. You’re remembering how he stopped going to the coffee shop where that woman was interested in him. You can taste him in your mouth.
               At the front door of his apartment, you knock. Softly at first. No reply. You knock again. You stand there, debating what to do. The key is heavy in your hand.
               What Seonghwa has done is wrong. It’s not just illegal, it’s fucked up.
               But no one in your life has ever looked out for you in the way he did and continues to do.
               His hair, wet, dripping onto the tile in the kitchen. His right hand flexing. The blank look in his eyes. The axe on the bed.
               Still no answer.
               The key is heavy in the lock, and the tumblers sound like gunshots as you turn it. Quietly, you push open the door and creep inside Seonghwa’s apartment. There aren’t any lights on. Silence settles across the place like a blanket. You shut the door softly, wondering why you’re doing this.
               But still, you continue, creeping down the hallway towards his bedroom. The door is open and moonlight filters in through his bedroom window, leaving a small band of white along the hallway floor. You hover outside Seonghwa’s room before pushing the door open wider to allow yourself in.
He’s sprawled out on the bed, asleep. You stand next to it, looking at the way the moonlight lays across his face. His black hair is messy, lips parted slightly as his breathing goes slow and deep. Some logical part of you knows it is bizarre to be watching your best friend sleep like this after using his key. You’re not any better than he is when you act like this, it scolds you.
But you study Seonghwa’s face. The moonlight washes his skin out. His bone structure is so familiar to you but tonight, you’re thinking that once again he looks like someone scrambled his face up with a large brush and showed you it.
You raise your hand to reach for his shoulder. You’re going to wake him up. To ask him…what? You’re not sure. You just want to talk to him.
But before you can touch him, Seonghwa’s hand reaches out in a flash and grabs your wrist, his eyes startingly empty. You gasp in surprise and almost fall back but he is holding onto you too tightly.
“You’re creeping around my place again. I might start getting the wrong idea,” Seonghwa’s voice sounds taunting, almost venomous, “I might start thinking you want to fuck me.”
You’ve never heard him speak like that.
“I wanted to talk,” You reply but the words sound so absurd given you used his key and were watching him sleep.
“No, you didn’t,” He retorts.
No, you didn’t.
Seonghwa pulls you down and you kiss him again, open mouthed and desperate. You gasp from the force of his lips on yours as though he wants to devour you. He’s half sitting up, his hand on the back of your neck, and you’re getting in his lap now, straddling him as his tongue slips into your mouth. He bites down on your bottom lip, tugging it with his teeth until you make a noise and the kiss breaks.
His hands are cupping your cheeks. Seonghwa is looking at you almost deliriously. You hadn’t changed before coming over, just wearing a thin pair of sweatpants which means you can feel him stiff in his own pair, rock hard already, pressing against your thigh.
It’s you who speaks first.
“Why didn’t you talk to me the last few days?” It sounds almost plaintive.
He’s studying your face as his thumbs graze your cheeks. “I was waiting for you to either turn me in or come see me. Whatever ended up happening, I knew what it would mean.”
Breathlessly, you reply, “I wasn’t going to call the cops.”
His thumb is running over your lips. Seonghwa is looking at you mesmerized as if he has never seen something so wonderful as you in his lap. No one has ever looked at you in this way.
“Everything I did, I did because I love you,” His voice sounds like a raw wound, “Do you get that now?”
“I get it now,” You reply, knowing it’s wrong, knowing it’s fucked up, knowing you must have lost it.
His grip on your chin tightens ever so slightly as his eyes grow intense. “I was looking out for you from the moment we first met. I have always protected you. I’ve always made sure no one would harm you and if they did, I ensured they got what was coming to them. You deserve the best. You always have,” His voice is hurried, emotional, “I always have tried to give you the best because I love you.” His fingers dig into your skin. “Do you get that? Do you understand how much I love you? God, sometimes, you would look right through me and it felt like the entire world was ending. Like the ground was just shattering underneath my feet. But I never dreamt of leaving your side. I love you too much even if you didn’t feel the same. I told myself I would just protect you until I died.”
His voice is pure agony, a crackling and fizzling of the years that have gone by spilling out from in between his lips. “You looked at me with such fear the other day when you were in my room, staring at the axe. As if…as if I would ever hurt you. It’s so absurd. I would never do anything to you. Everything I do is because I love you.”
“Seonghwa,” You breathe out shakily, “Your hand…. it’s too tight…”
His eyes drop to the way he’s gripping your face and he releases his hand immediately, apologizing. Your head is swimming, torn between the logical mind telling you to leave and your irrational heart pulled by his words, his love, his promises and protection.
But he feels so good underneath you.
Your lips find his once more and whatever remains of Seonghwa’s speech dies in his mouth, lost in the groan he emits when you touch him again. He shifts slightly so that his leg is pressing against your pussy and you react by grinding down slightly on his knee, just enough to feel pressure against your clit. Your breath hitches as Seonghwa’s hands roam across your body – fondling your tits through your shirt, down across your hips before resting on your waist, pushing you down on his knee.
He’s kissing and biting your neck, hard enough to leave marks. Your hands are in his hair while you grind on his knee. At one point, he bites so hard that you gasp and you swear that he chuckles quietly. Seonghwa pulls away, looking at you with an expression of mingled lust and something more possessive.
“You’ll have to cover that up for your date.” His words are like stone but there is a flicker of toying amusement behind his eyes.
“What date?” You mumble, slightly dazed, too turned on by the way he’s touching you.
Seonghwa laughs, his teeth like daggers in the flash of moonlight before pulling you towards him. His kiss is greedy, one hand sliding under your t-shirt to cup your breast. You’re not wearing a bra, having come over here quickly without putting much thought into it. You can feel him smirk against your lips, as if the lack of one is telling him something you’re not privy to.
He pinches one of your nipples, making you jump. His other hand is on your lower back, steadying you on his knee as you continue to chase your orgasm. It’s evident Seonghwa isn’t going to try to stop you. He leans his head down, tugging your shirt up so that he can wrap his lips around your nipple, sucking on it hard. He switches to the other one, biting on it. You’re making soft noises, a cross between a plea and pleasure, dimly aware that to be doing this with Seonghwa means forever ruining the very friendship you were once so keen on saving. But maybe it never stood a chance. Maybe time just caught up with the dynamic.
When Seonghwa pulls away from your tits, he grabs the back of your head, forcing you to look at him while demanding, “I want to watch you cum. I want to see what you look like when you’re cumming. I’ve pictured it so many times in my head – no, don’t stop. Don’t slow down. There, good girl. Oh, do you like that? When I call you that? Is that gonna make you cum?”
You manage to nod even though his hold on you is tight. He looks different in the moonlight, different in the manner he’s openly staring at you without hiding his feelings. There’s an energy rolling off him that you’ve never felt before, something bubbling to the surface and spilling out – who he really is. Who he hid for so long. You feel like a small bug crawling into a Venus fly trap but you don’t want to turn away.
Your orgasm starts then, after Seonghwa calls you good girl in that voice of his that is dripping honey while hiding a dagger. You can’t believe that you just got off from grinding on your best friend’s knee but you barely have time to come down from the climax before he is slipping your shirt off over your head and tossing it to the side.
He’s groping your tits, rolling his thumbs across your nipples, in seemingly no hurry to fuck you. You thought the orgasm would bring clarity, give your mind release from the problematic thoughts you’ve been having about your messed up best friend and allow yourself to exit the situation.
But you feel no such thing. Instead, you find yourself removing his shirt as well before kissing him hungrily while your hands press against his chest. His arms wrap around your waist and in one swift motion, he has you against the pillows underneath him.
Seonghwa is hot to the touch, his skin almost feverish as your fingers trail down his shoulders and along his arms. He’s moving downwards, his tongue across your nipples, down your stomach, obscenely leaving a trail of his salvia until he reaches your sweatpants.
Hooking his thumbs into the band, he yanks them down, leaving you in just your underwear. He nudges your thighs apart, pressing one finger along your pussy.
“You’re soaking wet,” Seonghwa drawls, sounding both pleased and tormented, “Underwear is fucking glued to your pussy.”
There is something fucked up and thrilling hearing your best friend talk like this. Seonghwa has always been so nice, so thoughtful over the years. Even when he would discuss his dates, he never dove into any details that would come off disrespectful. But now, mask off, it’s evident he’s perverted and unhinged on top of being psychotic. So why do I like it so much?
Seonghwa abruptly grabs the sides of your underwear and rips it with his hands. There is a loud tearing of fabric, his eyes alight while doing so, and then you’re exposed to him. Instinctively, you squirm, trying to close your legs. But Seonghwa is faster and his hands are on your thighs, keeping you open in front of him. His eyes look upwards to meet yours.
“No, I want to see how wet your pussy is from me. No hiding now. I’ve daydreamed about tasting your sweet cunt for far too long.” He turns his gaze back downward, one finger against your wet slit. “God, look at how fucking good you look,” The desperation in his voice is obvious, “What a perfect pussy.”
Seonghwa leans forward and his tongue is in your hole with a pornographic slurping noise as he tastes you for the first time. His nose bumps against your clit as he buries his face in between your thighs, trying to get his tongue as far as possible inside you.
“Fuck,” His words are muffled, “You taste so fucking good. You taste exactly how I knew you would. Can’t believe it took this long to taste your sweet cunt,” His hold on your thighs tightens, “Drives me fucking crazy knowing others had it before me. They didn’t deserve it.”
His tongue drags along your folds until he places a kiss on your clit, just enough to make you shiver. You know that you shouldn’t look down. It will make the entire situation feel entirely too real. But you don’t listen and instead prop yourself on your elbows slightly, just enough to look down at Seonghwa in between your legs.
His eyes catch yours and he lewdly flicks his tongue across your clit just to drive the point home that this is happening and you’re enjoying it. You sharply inhale, your hand grabbing onto the bedsheet. He closes his eyes, focusing on rolling his tongue over your clit slowly, just enough to drive you crazy. You cannot tear your gaze away from Seonghwa of all people doing this to you, making you feel this good. In the moonlight, his shoulders almost glow, and some of his hair has fallen in front of his eyes.
While Seonghwa is working your clit, he slips one finger inside your hole, meeting no resistance from how wet it is. You squirm, head rolling back a little from the new sensation. Still, he doesn’t miss a beat, continuing his soft licks on your clit while pumping his finger. Your eyes flutter closed. It had been a long time since someone ate your pussy this good. It is just fucked up that it’s your best friend.
Seonghwa pulls his finger out of you, eliciting a whine that would be embarrassing in any other case but he quietly shushes you. “Needy girl, you want my tongue back on your clit? Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
You look down at him, your cheeks warm. His eyes are devious, a smirk on his face, making his cheeks stand out more than usual as he shakes his head to get his hair out of his face.
You nod and he looks gravely serious. “No, tell me. I want to hear you tell me.” His voice is ice cold, allowing no argument. You’ve seen him this way a few times, always when he is angry and never at you. No, always at someone who did something mean to you though, the little voice whispers.
“I want your tongue back on my clit,” You say meekly because begging Seonghwa for such a thing is a foreign concept.
He stares at you for a second or two longer before suddenly spitting on your clit and smearing it in with his thumb. Your hips buck automatically from the sudden pleasure.
“You’re so sensitive,” He murmurs, “Gonna be so easy to make you cum again.” Seonghwa sounds lost in his daydreams and you cannot fathom how many times he’s thought about this.
His finger is back in your cunt and his tongue is flicking across your clit faster now. He adds a second digit, pumping them hard and fast, stopping occasionally to wiggle them deep inside you. His face is pressed against your pussy, sucking on your clit and sometimes stopping just to spit on it again. Seonghwa is groaning when he’s eating you out, as if he is driven to intoxication from the taste of you.
You can no longer prop yourself up on your elbows, instead sinking back down among the pillows. One of your hands reaches down for Seonghwa, his hair wrapping around your fingers as you desperately hold onto him so he doesn’t stop. He makes a noise of approval, fucking you harder with his fingers.
And it feels just too good and it feels even worse because it’s Seonghwa, the person you know the most and the person you don’t know at all. When your climax starts, his name leaves your lips broken and shattered, forever changed by what happened tonight.
When Seonghwa pulls away, his eyes are ablaze. You’re disoriented from cumming so hard two times already but he pulls you towards him. His lips crush yours in a sloppy kiss. You can taste yourself on his tongue. When the kiss breaks, there’s a long strand of spit connecting the two of you. He’s holding the back of your neck again, looking at you as though you’re trapped in his web.
“Oh, my name sounds so good like that.” He rubs his thumb across your lips, and the spit makes a mess, “You’re such a pretty thing.”
You like the way Seonghwa talks to you as if you’re the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. But you suppose to him, you are. You’re feeling an aching desire to have him inside you, to know what it would be like to be fucked by him. Tentatively, you reach for his groin, pressing your hand against the tent. He inhales sharply but gives a firm shake of his head.
“Not yet,” He brushes your hand away, “You’re going to cum again.”
Surprised, you open your mouth to say something but before you can, he places two fingers on your tongue. Without questioning it, you wrap your lips around them and then immediately wonder why you didn’t even hesitate. You swirl your tongue around his fingers while he watches, entranced at the sight.
“Fuck, you’re so pretty. I can’t get enough of you. Now, sit on my face.”
Seonghwa pulls his fingers out of your mouth, snapping his fingers at you after he issued his command. You’re not even thinking anymore, lost completely to whatever pull you feel towards him and the promises of more pleasure. He’s on his back, motioning for you to hurry up. You try to carefully straddle his face but he makes a noise of impatience, reaching upwards to grab your hips and yanking you down so that your pussy is against his face.
His tongue dives into your hole and you make a noise of surprise, gripping the headboard of his bed. He’s eating your pussy like a man starved, not stopping to let you adjust at all. His hands are holding onto your hips, keeping you in place as he brings his tongue swooping up to your clit, swirling around it. This time is a lot more urgent as though it is more for him than you.
The sounds of Seonghwa eating your pussy sounds graphic but it is the way he is moaning while doing it that is turning you on. You like how he sounds, so desperate and his voice muffled, and when you move your hips gently against his face, he makes a noise to let you know to keep going.
So you do, grinding against his face. He moves his tongue back to your hole and you can feel his nose against your clit while rocking your hips. Your clit is growing sensitive from all the overstimulation and sometimes your hips bounce a little when it becomes too much. Seonghwa notices this and instead of giving you a break swoops his tongue back over your clit, flicking it hard and fast.
Your grip tightens on the headboard but you’re close to cumming again. Your thighs are shaking, panting with your tongue poking from in between your lips as you ride his face. With one last flick of his tongue, you moan out his name loudly, unable to stop from how much you’re working your pussy against his face. This orgasm is somehow even better than the earlier ones although it leaves your body shaking. You slide off him, falling onto the bed, trying to catch your breath.
Seonghwa sits up, kicking off his sweatpants. With relief, you realize he’s going to fuck you. You’re unsure that you could handle another orgasm again so soon after the others. Your head is dazed and thighs sore and you’re pretty sure that your pussy is a mess of your juices and Seonghwa’s spit.
He’s stroking his length, drinking in the sight of your naked body on his bed with the same fascination of someone viewing a beautiful painting. He shakes his hair out of his face again while getting to his knees, his hand still wrapped around his cock.
“You’re gonna cum around my cock next.”
You give a small shake of your head, out of breath. “I don’t think I can cum anymore.”
“Of course you can,” Seonghwa replies simply while positioning himself over your body.
His skin against yours is heavenly and hellish, weighted by the knowledge you’re tumbling into bed with your best friend who isn’t as stable as previously believed. But what does it say about you that it won’t leave your mind? He’s propped up over you, studying your face with such intensity that you break eye contact, feeling exposed. His cock is pressing at your entrance as your hands go to his sides, gingerly touching his hot skin.
Seonghwa lowers his face down to kiss you while sliding inside your wet entrance. You arch your back, fingers digging into his waist as he enters you easily. His lips are back on your neck, emitting a sigh that is a mingle of relief and tension all at once.
His words are muffled as he goes, “You feel so good. Your pussy is made for me. I was meant to be in this pussy every night.”
Seonghwa is curled around you, taking his time. He’s moving slowly, lost in the sensation of your walls tightening around his cock. Your hands glide upwards to his hair once again, bunching it in between your fingers as you wrap your legs around his waist.
When Seonghwa speaks again, he sounds lost, as if he isn’t even present in the moment. “I love you so much,” He grunts, going still for a second to collect himself before thrusting a little harder, “I love you so fucking much. I’d do anything for you, I’d do anything to be in your cunt like this. You just had to ask. But you never did.”
Your body is warm all over, each nerve in your body responding to his passion in a way that you didn’t think was possible. The voice in your head that has been pointing out how wrong it’s been all night is eerily silent. Instead, you tilt your head so that Seonghwa looks at you. Your foreheads are touching and when you speak, your lips graze his.
“Tell me what you’d do for me,” You plead softly.
His breath catches, his cock buried inside you to the hilt while he replies, “Anything. You know that. You already know some of what I’ve done. And I don’t regret any of it. I’d do it again,” He starts moving his hips faster now, plunging his length in and out of your soaking wet hole while his breathing grows laboured, “I’d do anything for you.”
The words make your head light. You’re moving your hips in time to his thrusts, tugging on his hair to let him know to keep going. Hearing your best friend make noises of pleasure, noises you’re not supposed to hear from him, is making you only desire more.
Seonghwa shifts positions, just enough so that your legs are bent back so he can hit your sweet spot with every jerk of his hips. Your hands fall to the bedsheets once more, digging into them as he fucks you.
“You look so fucking beautiful taking my cock,” He grunts and runs his hand through his hair quickly with one hand to get it out of his eyes.
The gesture, so familiar, one you’ve seen him do often, strikes you in the chest. His desperation is evident in his eyes, in his voice, in every action he’s taken since he grabbed your wrist earlier. This is still your best friend, the realization dawning, this is still Seonghwa.
You’re just seeing all aspects of him now.
You aren’t sure what compels you to reach for his hand but you do, sliding it up to your neck. His eyes light up at what you’re requesting, that shark’s grin returning so quickly that it sends a shiver down your spine. His hand tightens around your neck while he fucks you. The muscles on his arm tightens; he pushes you back against the pillows while fucking you hard and fast.
“I’d do anything for you,” He repeats, voice breaking, “I’d have done anything you ever wanted if you just asked.” The pleasure is overtaking him and his mind is wandering, jumping from topic to topic, telling you all the things he’s ever thought about. “Fuck, my hand around your neck…” He grips you harder and you make a small noise which only drives his cock harder in your hole. “You look like a ragdoll taking my dick with your lips parted like that. I watched you through your window last week. You looked so tired. I thought – fuck, I thought about my hands around your neck, choking you while I fucked you into oblivion so you could sleep.”
I watched you through your window last week.
The angle and his hand on your neck is bringing you to another climax which you didn’t think could be possible. You can barely breathe, can barely move your hips to meet his thrusts. You’re so close to finishing, watching how Seonghwa’s eyes never leave your face, how intensely he is staring at you, no expression on his face as he fucks you.
With the little air you have left, you ask the question again. “Tell me what you’d do for me.” The words are so soft that you aren’t sure anyone else but Seonghwa could have heard them – he’s just too in tune with you.
“I’d fucking kill for you.”
And you’re cumming on his cock then. Seonghwa releases his grip on your neck so he can hear your hoarse moans. He hasn’t stopped fucking you, moving his hips the entire time you’re orgasming. You keep saying his name, your hips moving to meet his thrusts, making more noise than you ever have before.
Seonghwa pulls out, wiping the sweat from his brow before leaning forward, grabbing your face and going, “Open your mouth.” You do immediately and he spits in your mouth lewdly before kissing you hungrily. When it ends, he says roughly, “I’m gonna cum in your cunt now. Get on your knees.”
Your body protests a little while doing so, tired and sore from cumming so much and being fucked so hard. But once your ass is in the air, Seonghwa’s hands are on your hips, pulling you back onto his cock. He doesn’t waste any time and you know he must be dying to finish. You’re not used to someone putting their pleasure last like this.
The change in angle feels so good and you moan, prompting Seonghwa to go, “You’re cock starved, I love it. I love hearing you want more of me.” His hands slide to your lower back. “I love hearing you want me and none of those idiots you’ve wasted time on. All those fucking idiots. Made me sick.” He’s slamming his hips against your ass, his balls smacking against your pussy with each hurried thrust. “Makes me fucking sick to think of them touching you instead of me. They never deserved you. They never understood you, not like I did.”
You’re sinking into the bed, the weight of his hands on your lower back giving you no choice, your ass high in the air now as Seonghwa fucks you mercilessly. His voice is slurring at the edges, his words hazy like small things being tugged towards the light for the first time.
“I knew they couldn’t fuck you like I could or take care of you like I could. Just idiots, circling around you and I tried so hard to be nice. I wanted to be nice to those idiots because of you. Everything I do is because of you because I love you so much. F-fuck,” He does a particularly hard thrust and groans, “I wasn’t perfect. I knew I was doing bad things. Getting them fired from jobs. Snooping through their emails. Slashing their tires. I knew –” His breath caught, and his hands move to your ass, gripping it hard enough to leave marks. “I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t help myself. I was in love with you for so long and sometimes it’s enough to drive a man crazy.”
Seonghwa is fucking you so hard that you can’t even move. You lay against the bed, taking his cock, your eyes almost rolling into the back of your head from how it good it is. You couldn’t speak even if you wanted to. The way he’s fucking you combined with his speech is making your head utterly blank – it just feels so good. All of it feels so good. You think your tongue might be poking out from between your lips. All you know is he’s going to make you finish again.
“I’m gonna fuck you like this every night, I’m gonna – fuck. I’m gonna take care of you and I’m going to fuck you and no one is ever going to bother you again because you’re mine now. Tell me you’re mine, I want to hear you tell me.”
Using the last of your energy, you moan out, “I’m yours, I belong to you, I’m yours.”
Seonghwa grunts, giving one last thrust while going, “Now take my load in that sweet cunt of yours.”
His cum is warm in your cunt as he empties his balls, filling you up until it’s leaking out of your hole. You’re finishing again as well, perfectly in sync with your best friend. You’ve fallen on the bed, making an unholy amount of noise from the intense orgasm, completely overstimulated. Seonghwa has pulled out of your cunt, leaving a long strand of cum along your lower back as he finishes.
Your eyes are closed, feeling completely fucked out. Your tongue is heavy in your mouth; you couldn’t speak even if you wanted to. Seonghwa shifts behind you, sliding off the bed, leaving the room. A few moments later, he returns and you can feel a towel along your back, cleaning you up before he shifts, sliding closer to your body.
Seonghwa’s arms carefully wrap around you, pulling your body towards him. You curl up against his chest, eyes closing. He’s kissing the top of your head, his fingers trailing along your back in gentle touches. All his earlier energy is gone, depleted, and now he is soft and inviting.
You tilt your face to look at Seonghwa, reaching upwards to graze his jawline with your fingertips. He kisses them too. Would it be so wrong to have everything with him? To be so adored and loved with someone who has known you forever? His eyes are cutting through your defenses, nuzzling into the soft spot of your brain that should know better.
Your lips find his.
A cloud covers the moon.
*
               You’re wearing just one of Seonghwa’s shirts, sitting on the edge of his bed in the morning light. He left twenty minutes ago to get coffee from your favourite spot, leaving you alone in his apartment.
               You’re thinking about him.
               You’re thinking about the soft kisses he gave you upon waking, his smile that you know so well, the way he looked shirtless in the morning light.
               He had cupped your cheek, said he was going to get coffee and you felt a pang at him leaving, even for just a little while. Even just for twenty minutes.
               Relief swoops through you when the front door opens, and Seonghwa calls your name. He comes down the hallway and stops in the doorway. His jacket is already removed, just wearing a hastily thrown on Star Wars t-shirt and a pair of jeans. He places one coffee cup on his dresser, running his fingers through his hair with his hand. He’s smiling, sitting down next to you.
               “I missed you,” He admits bashfully, holding onto your coffee, his eyes dropping to your lap, “Should I keep it?”
               Your hands are curled around the handle of the axe. You look at the blade; your reflection is distorted. He rests his chin on your shoulder, peering at you, waiting for your choice. Everything with Seonghwa is your choice because he loves you so much. He doesn’t question that you’ve been sitting in his bed, holding his axe, lost in thought.
               You’ve been thinking about what is right, what’s wrong and what you want.
               You kiss his forehead, and he makes a noise of contentment.
               “You should keep it,” You declare, shifting the axe into his lap carefully. “Just in case.”
               Seonghwa grins cheerfully.
               “Yeah, just in case.”
the end.
1K notes · View notes
dreamescapeswriting · 4 months
Text
Stray Kids Reaction - You Disappear While Pregnant [Mafia Edition]
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
⤜Copyright: © DreamEscapesWriting - January 2024
⤜MASTERLIST
TW: mentions of violence, blood and swearing
CHAN:
Things had been feeling weird all day to Chan, you hadn't replied to any of his messages when usually you were the text-back immediately type of person - with him at least. But he tried to put off the uneasy feeling he got when he thought about it all, the two of you were strong as a couple and him worrying you about not replying wasn't the type of man that he was.
"Changbin, make sure Yn has had something to eat today," Chan said as he came through the door of your shared home, expecting to see you curled up on the sofa doing something but you were nowhere to be seen. It was unlike you to not come and greet him so he figured maybe you were tired and had gone to sleep. Maybe even just popped into the garden and hadn't heard him arrive home.
"She's not here," Changbin called from upstairs, panic began to wash over Chan as he thought through his day. You hadn't said anything the night before about going out and you hadn't been responding to him. Within seconds Chan was making his way up the stairs and into your shared bedroom where he found some of your clothes missing and a suitcase was gone too.
"Fuck! Fuck!" Chan screamed making his way to the bathroom and finding a bunch of your overnight supplies were missing too. This wasn't like you, you weren't the type to run away and it wasn't as though the two of you had just had a fight. Everything was going great for you both, god, you were getting married in less than a year now and Chan thought everything was okay.
"I've started a search and Felix is watching the cameras to see where she went. We'll find her." Changbin said as he watched Chan in the bathroom, he was just sitting on the edge of the tub looking down at the floor trying to rack his brain for any reason you might have done this.
"Just find her, tell me when you do but don't make a move." He mumbles, standing up from the side of the tub and knocking over a bin failing to notice the positive pregnancy test that had fallen onto the floor. 
Tumblr media
It had been eight months since you walked out on Chan and they had been the worst eight months of your life, every day was a struggle and it didn't help that you were pregnant.
"Not now, please not now." You groaned as you held onto your bump, letting out a sharp breath as you tried your best to ignore the pain in your back. God, it felt as though someone was stabbing you repeatedly as you prayed for the train to hurry and arrive where you needed to be.
"Mummy, that woman peed herself." A little girl giggled before the train stopped and you hurried off of it and in the direction of some metal seats on the train station platform. It wasn't time, it was too early for the baby to be coming right this second and you were nowhere near a doctor and you weren't about to give birth to your baby on a train platform. 
"Do you need me to call you an ambulance?" The mother of the little girl asked as she made her way over to you, you studied her face for a second before nodding your head. You'd grown a little paranoid since running away from Chan, you knew he was probably doing everything within his power to find you and it wasn't something you wanted to happen. You needed him to stay away from you,
"That won't be necessary." A voice said from the side, you stared over in the direction to see a very panicked-looking Chan making his way toward you. There was sweat dripping down his forehead and he was red in the face, clearly, he'd been running but you had no idea how he'd found you. You weren't in Seoul anymore, you left the second you had the chance to.
"She needs medical attention, she's in labour." The woman argued but you couldn't get words out to tell her to stop you were in far too much pain.
"I'll get her to the hospital," Chan said before Felix and Jeongin escorted the lady and her daughter away and you whimpered a little.
"Channie-" You whimpered out, tears streaming down your cheeks,
"It's nice to know you still like that nickname," His voice came out cold as a group of men began to make their way over to you and you stared at the one in the centre before trying to get up.
"Sit." He ordered gently placing his hand on your shoulder.
"I-I need to go, I can't be near you." You hissed trying to move but Chan was holding your hand, refusing to let you go.
"C-Channie please." You begged your eyes scanning the man at the other end of the platform.
"He said we can't...W-We can't be together." Just like that everything began to click into place for Chan. The only reason you'd left the way you did months ago was because of Hongjoong, he'd told you that it wasn't the right thing for Chan and threatened you to leave without saying anything.
"Who did?" He growled out, your eyes flicking behind him.
"Hongjoong...He said a baby will ruin things." Time suddenly moved slowly as you watched Chan stare over at his advisor and back down at you.
"That's why you ran?" You hated that you couldn't answer him with words and nodded at him.
“Fuck what they think, fuck what anyone thinks. It won't ruin anything, our little baby will only make things better." He promised you as you heard sirens coming.
Tumblr media
He was right, of course, he was he always was, but your little girl had only made things better between you and Chan and even made some of his men more loyal to him. They protected you more than ever whenever you were out alone with just you and your little girl and Hongjoong had been demoted so he was no longer able to speak to you - something you'd begged Chan to do instead of killing the man
MINHO:
Everything was too much when you were with Minho and everything pushed you over the edge until there was no coming back from it.  For a while, it seemed that all the two of you ever did was fight and scream at one another and you'd finally had enough and just left. No note, you'd choose a week where you knew he was going to be so busy with his own world that he wasn't going to notice you gone. A week gave you enough time to disappear into the world with a new identity and to create a whole new life for yourself.
Or so you'd thought.
It had been even harder to do this for yourself since you happened to be pregnant. Something you had no idea at the time of running away until it was too late. It wasn't until your third month when you found out and there was no way you were going back, even if you didn't think you could raise a baby alone you were still going to do everything within your power to try.
"Are you sure you're okay walking home alone? I can get Angel to walk with you." Your boss stated as he watched you heading for the door of the bar. Angel was one of the bouncers who worked there, someone who looked like he could scare the stripes off a tiger.
"Nah, I'm good. I'll catch the train so there's no point." You shrugged before heading out into the dark of the night and making your way through the alleyway.
For eight months your life had been good, you'd gotten away from Seoul and everyone who ever knew you, you had a new identity you went by and no one could connect you to Minho anymore. You worked your own job, had your own place - sure it wasn't the best but it was still home - and your boss was even letting you bring your kid to work since he knew how badly you needed the money.
"So this is where you've been hiding?" A voice sounded from behind you and you didn't need to see him to know it was Minho and it felt like your whole world was coming down around you.
"How did you find me?" Your voice shook but you didn't turn around to face him just yet, you didn't know if he knew about your pregnancy.
"It wasn't easy. I taught you well."
"I was a fast learner." You mumbled a little, you knew this was going to end with him seeing your bump but you couldn't bring yourself to face him.
"Why did you run off, little bird?" The nickname he had for you made your heart flutter and you hated that he still had that kind of effect on you after all this time. But then again, it didn't matter how much time passed you still found yourself hopelessly in love with him.
"I had my reasons." You pulled your coat tighter around yourself but it did little to hide the bump that you were sporting,
"Another man?" You scoffed a little at him you both knew that there was no way you'd ever do that to him.
"You know I'd never do that."
"True. So what was it?" You heard his steps getting closer to you until he was right behind you and you slowly turned to face him, letting your coat fall down to the sides.
"Pregnant," His voice came out in a whisper and he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"You need to come back." He stated plainly, his eyes not leaving the bump you had but you were shaking your head at him,
“I don't think I can come back. Too much has happened, too much…water has passed under the bridge. I can't do with the fights anymore Minho, I can't." You choked out before you felt a pain in your back and you bent over a little clutching onto your stomach.
"You're pregnant with my child, you're coming home."
"N-No...I need the hospital," You whimpered looking at Minho who was already on the phone to emergency services.
Tumblr media
"I've had Felix and Changbin fix the office into a nursery," Minho told you as he walked into the room to see you feeding your little boy.
"Did you tell them about needing to get more diapers?"
"I've got Chan and Seungmin on that job," He smiled proudly walking over and kissing the top of your head. It was going to take a long time to repair your relationship but a family together was something you were going to build from.
CHANGBIN:
You'd walked out on him, you'd just packed up your shit and walked away from him. You'd seen no point in staying in a relationship with someone who was never even there for most of it, missing birthdays and anniversaries that the two of you were supposed to share. You'd just walked out and tried to never look back, but it was damn near impossible when you were pregnant with his kid. Something he was also never there for, he'd never shown any interest in your baby, never came to appointments or shopping with you.
"Do you think he knows we're here?" You asked your bump as you looked out of the window. You were six months pregnant and constantly on the run which wasn't good, your doctors told you it wasn't good but what were you meant to do when one of the most powerful men in the world was looking for you?
There were sirens outside and you slid back into bed, sighing a little as you tried your best not to focus on what was going on outside. You were in one of the sketchiest neighbourhoods you'd ever seen and you were praying the lock you had on the door would be enough to keep you safe tonight.
Tumblr media
“I've already lost her once I'm not going to lose her again,” Your eyes flew open and you saw Changbin standing at the end of your bed but it wasn't the room you'd fallen asleep in. Instead, all of the walls around you were white and there was a loud beeping coming from the side of you
"What the fuck?!" You screamed as you stared at him and then at the other men trying to see if you knew any of them but none of them felt familiar to you.
"Leave," Changbin ordered making a bunch of men you'd never seen before leave the room and you stared at him confused as to how he'd gotten you to a hospital without you waking up once.
"Glad you finally woke up princess," He sat down beside your bed and you stared at him, studying his face before folding your arms over your chest.
"You've resorted to kidnapping now?"
"If it means you'll come home, yes." You roll your eyes at him, of course, he would expect you to just come home after he'd done nothing to fix what he did in the past.
"Why? So you can ignore me and the baby for the rest of our lives?" You hissed bitterly before Changbin's hand took yours and he shook his head at you.
"I would never-"
"You never came to any appointments, you always forgot our anniversaries and my birthday. I was going to put our son through that!" You cut him off angrily and his eyes softened,
"He's a boy?" Tears began to build up in his eyes as he stared at you and you swallowed the lump in your throat.
"Yes...Yes, he's a boy." You mumbled before looking at the screen beside your bed, your heart rate and your son's were both displayed on the screen.
"I'll have them fix the nursery then. I'd been painting it to be pink." He chuckled a little taking his phone out of your pocket and leaving you even more confused than before.
"What?"
"I hadn't been ignoring you...w-well I had but I'd been working on a surprise. I was convinced we were having a girl so I had the nursery made up pink." He admitted before you whimpered a little.
"You did all of that?" You quizzed wondering where this side of him had been the whole time you’d known him
"I did, I would never just ignore you." You sniffled a little as tears began to roll down your face.
"You still kidnapped me." You reminded him as if he could ever forget. He’d spent months tracking you down and it was the best plan he’d ever done.
"With good reason." He added with a sly smirk making you giggle a little at him
"Still a crime," 
"When has that ever bothered me?" He smirked before kissing you gently.
HYUNJIN: EXTRA TRIGGER WARNING! Reader is slapped by a third party!
You slowly lifted your head and looked around your surroundings, nothing had changed in god knows how long you'd been here and you don't know why you held out hope for it to chance in the first place. The men that had taken you told you that the only reason you weren't dead was because of the baby, something that they were going to use as leverage over your husband.
"Morning sunshine, want some food?" One of the men - Lucas as you found out - taunted as he waved around food in front of you before eating it and making lewd sounds about how good it tasted. All of them made you feel physically sick to your stomach, they would taunt you with food or drinks whenever they had it only to give you just enough table scraps to keep you healthy.
"Hyunjin is going to kill you when he finds me." You spat out, looking up at the ceiling and whimpering a little. You were about eight months pregnant which meant at any point any stress could send you into an early labour and you were doing everything within your power to make sure it didn't happen. You weren't going to let a group of men take your daughter away.
"If he finds you, any day now you're going to pop, give us what we want and we'll kill you." You swallowed the lump in your throat because you knew he was right. If Hyunjin hadn't found you by now then there was a slim chance that he wasn't going to find you before you gave birth and it worried you.
You'd always had faith and trust in your husband but you didn't know how many days or even weeks you'd been here, you'd lost count since the men would sedate you to move you from a bed and back to a chair where they left you tied up for hours.
"The doc is coming later to check on the baby," Croft said as he looked at Lucas who simply nodded at him and went back to eating his food in front of you. 
Tumblr media
The doctor who had come to see you was really nice, great even and you could have sworn you'd seen him before.
"The baby is healthy, both of them have a healthy heartbeat but there is one slight problem." Your heart broke at the idea of a problem with your child.
"Is she okay?!" You panicked earning a slap across the face from Lucas for speaking out when you weren't supposed to and you whimpered looking down at the floor.
"The child is fine, the problem is Lucas." Before Lucas could question what was happening shots rang out throughout the warehouse and multiple men were shot dead on the floor leaving just you, the doctor and Lucas alive with a gun pointed at his head.
"Cut her free," The doctor ordered as a metal shutter began to open, you squinted in the direction and saw Hyunjin making his way through with a giant smile on his face.
"I knew you'd come but what took so fucking long!?" You screamed as you were finally free from the chair and slowly stood up.
"The little rat is too good at covering his tracks," Hyunjin grumbled as he held your face in his hands turning it from side to side as if he were checking you over. Once he saw that you were fine he let you go and turned his focus on the man that had taken you.
"You know," You started as you stared around the warehouse where about 60 of Hyunjin's men were waiting with their guns trained on him,
“There’s an unspoken rule where if this many people are trying to kill you, then you should be dead already.” You grumbled before Hyunjin wrapped his arm around you and nodded at his men, giving them the all clear for what they needed to do.
JISUNG:
What on earth made you think that you could do this? You couldn't do this and you were nowhere near ready like you thought you were. You swallowed the lump in your throat as you laid your head back on the edge of the bathtub, the water filled with blood and whatever else was coming out of you at this point and you cried to yourself.
"Fucking arsehole!" You screamed gripping the edges of the grungy tub that you were laid in, screaming out in agony as you tried to do the breathing techniques you'd been reading about. 
Everyone had told you how beautiful birth was going to be but none of them told you about the pain you were going to feel, like how you felt as though someone was ripping you apart from your vagina. No drugs to help you, no one to tell you if you were dilated.
You were alone and in some sketchy neighbourhood and a dirty apartment with no one around you. No friends, no husband, completely alone because everyone had forgotten about you and left you behind.
"Why did you have to come now?! You couldn't have waited a few more weeks?!" You yelled through the tears, ignoring the sirens that were outside of the apartment building that you were currently residing inside. It was every day that sirens went flying through and you'd tried to drown them out but now it was impossible, you prayed that they were somehow for you. That Jisung had finally remembered you and came to get you but no hope.
Hongjoong had told you that Jisung would come and get you within a month of you hiding out in the "safe home" but it didn't feel much of a safe home when you were in the worst neighbour imaginable and felt at threat every second of the day. You did some deep breathing as you heard someone pounding on the door, probably telling you to be quiet but you were about to give birth in a tub there was no being quiet.
"Fuck...y-you," You whispered suddenly feeling as though your eyes were too heavy to keep open and you looked down at the water, it had to be time to push surely. There was no way you could keep going through all of this pain.
"Yn?!" The door to the bathroom burst open and Jisung was staring at you, wide-eyed as he took in the scene around him
"What are you-" Before he could finish asking you let out a loud scream as another contraction hit you and he was on his knees on the floor beside the tub.
"I've got you." He whispered as men rushed into the scene, looking away from your naked body.
“I feel like everyone just forgot I existed," You whispered out to Jisung, looking at him a little unsure if any of this was even real at his point.
"I killed Hongjoong," He mumbled wiping sweat off your forehead,
"Baby he made it look like you ran away, left me a note...I-I had no idea where you were." The pain from the birth and heartache all crashed into one as sobs began to leave your throat.
Tumblr media
Weeks of hospital treatment later you were home once again but on bed rest, Jisung's orders not the doctor's. He was refusing to let you move for as long as humanly possible and did everything he could for you.
"I'm okay, I can run my own bath." You told Jisung as you watched him running a bubble bath for you while your baby slept soundly in the bedroom.
"I want to do this for you." He whispered as you held him from being. He was doing everything he could to make up for you being alone all this time, the guilt was overwhelming for him but you hadn't blamed him for a second.
FELIX:
Your head was killing you when you woke up and you tried to lift your hand to your head but it was met with resistance and the sound of metal clanging on the floor. You weren't home that was for sure and if you were you were going to kick your husband's butt for some silly prank he was pulling.
"What the fuck?" You looked at your wrists and saw a metal cuff around them and down at your ankles it was the same. Your eyes shot around the room and you saw a camera in the corner facing you and it had a blinking red light, meaning it was recording or live.
"Who the fuck are you?! What do you want?!" You did your best to sound as confident as possible but it was impossible since you had no idea who had taken you in the first place.
"Someone who wants revenge." A voice sounded before a door opened and an elderly man walked in with the help of a cane,
"Your husband took something...someone from me and I plan to do the same." He stepped closer to you and you were able to see a huge scar down the left side of his face and you instantly knew who he was. Jan was one of the men Felix had to take down in order for him to become who he is today, one of the biggest mafia leaders in the country. 
"He didn't kill your daughter, your own men did." You spat out knowing the story of his daughter already. Felix had tried to save her, getting her out of the house before he burnt it down but Jan's own men took her back into the building, shooting her to make it look like Felix had done it.
"You're a silly brainwashed little girl, your husband took what was mine and now I will do the same." He reached out to touch your bump and you slapped his hand away, you were almost ready to pop which made you more scared for your daughter's life.
"He'll kill you." You grumbled rubbing your bump as you stared at the man who simply smirked at you.
"Actually, he'll do everything he can to find you and slip up. I'll be waiting for him with his daughter in my hands and his wife dead beside me." You felt sick as he walked out of the room, slamming and bolting it shut before you leaned your head back on the wall.
"You stay in there as long as possible, you don't come early." You mumbled to your stomach, whimpering at the thought of this all happening.
Tumblr media
As soon as Felix found out that you were missing he knew who was responsible, it really didn't take a genius to figure it out either and Jan hadn't been the sneakiest of people when it came to plans.
"I want men at every entrance, dead on sight," Felix ordered into the earpiece as he sneakily made his way toward the basement window. Men had been watching the building for a week now trying to find weak points in the security system and there was one. There were no guards, no cameras. It was just Jan on his own in a house that seemed to be abandoned,
"Lix?" You whispered when you saw him at the window, a smirk on his lips as he began to break it open, sliding through it with ease.
"How-" Before you could ask the door was opened and men came through, your men who were all smiling at you happy to see you were okay.
"Where's Jan?" You asked as you made your way through the home and up the stairs, a car was failing to start out in the drive and you all began to make your way in the direction. The frail-looking man looked panicked as he tried to start the engine of a very run-down-looking car.
“Running doesn't matter i’ll hunt you down if you do," Felix said loud enough for him to hear but Jan continued to try the engine again and again until clouds of dark smoke left the hood before he was pulled from the car and dragged toward a van.
"Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" You shook your head, for the most part, he'd left you alone and just fed you and let you use the bathroom but Felix was still going to make him pay for taking you.
SEUNGMIN:
The old lady you'd made friends with over the last month was holding your hand as she walked you around the small spare room in her home. This wasn't supposed to be happening right now, you were supposed to be long gone from Seoul before you gave birth but it seemed as though your son was going to come earlier than you wanted him to.
"We should get you to a hospital," She told you as you gripped onto her hand and shook your head, hosptials meant that Seungmin could track you down and you'd been doing everything you could to stay off his radar and you were going to keep it that way.
"He'll find me, he can't find me." You pleaded, she knew your story and why you'd run away but for the whole month she'd known you she had been trying to convince you to go back to Seungmin and have him be there with you.
"He should be here for the birth of his son." She scolded and you rolled your eyes at her. No one seemed to understand why you'd walked away from him, the two of you were fighting more than usual. You'd heard him say he wasn't even sure he wanted a child and so you didn't give him a choice, you ran.
"He said he wasn't sure he wanted him, I took the choice away." You groaned before bending over with your palms flat on the bed, screaming out in agony as a contraction hit you.
"I'm sure he was just nervous and he never meant it," She pleaded with you before the door opened and someone walked inside. Your head slowly looked behind you and you groaned seeing your husband standing there with a doctor by his side.
"You called him?!" You screamed trying to push her hands off you as Seungmin walked over to you but the lady continued to hold onto you, rubbing your lower back.
"Of course she did, you really think I'd let you get that easy?!"
"You said you weren't sure you wanted him. I took the choice away from you, leave." You hissed out but he shook his head at you,
“Aren't you tired? Can we stop this and give our hearts a rest?” You hated that he sounded so poetic when all you wanted to do was hate him,
"She's almost ready," The old lady mumbled as you shook your head there was no way you wanted to do this here, you wanted drugs to numb the pain anything, 
"You need to push," Seungmin told you as he held onto your hand, your eyes meeting his as you let out a whimper,
"I'm not ready, we're not ready!" You yelled and he chuckled a little kissing your cheek.
"No one is ever ready baby." He held onto your hand and you whined out knowing that it was time to push.
Tumblr media
As soon as Seungmin was holding your son in his hands he was smiling at you,
"I-I'm sorry I ever doubted this," He told you as he held onto his son's tiny hand, watching him sleep peacefully in his arms as you laid your head on Seungmin's shoulder tiredly.
"If you ever say it again, we will be gone and you will never find us," You warned him as he nodded at you, kissing the top of your head as he promised that it would never happen again.
JEONGIN:
You had no idea what you were thinking when you'd disappeared months ago, there was no way that you were ever going to do this alone. Maybe if it had just been you on your own everything would have been fine but after running away you found out that you were pregnant. The only reason you'd run was because you were scared of the life he led, you weren't sure it was something you could see yourself in but ever since you discovered you were pregnant you knew you needed to come back.
Your child deserved a father in their life, even if it meant co-parenting instead of getting back together with him but you still loved Jeongin. You didn't think you could ever stop loving him for that matter.
"Yn?" Jisung whispered as you waited inside one of the buildings that Jeongin owned, you knew sooner or later one of his men would see you and tell Jisung or even bring you to him.
"Hey, is Jeongin around?" You weren't showing yet, no one would know that you were pregnant by looking at you and you were thankful for that.
"In his office, I'll take you up." Jisung took your arm gently and began to take you up. It had been a weird few months with their boss who lashed out at everyone who was close to him and refused to speak to anyone unless he needed to.
"What?!" Jeongin snapped as Jisung knocked on the door and walked inside. As soon as Jeongin turned around you felt guilt prickling your skin, he looked rough and that was putting it lightly.
He hadn't shaven in months, he was sporting a full beard which you assumed was to hide all of the bags under his eyes.
"Yn?" His voice broke but he quickly cleared his throat as he stared at you, not moving from his chair. He was too scared that if he did you'd suddenly disappear again.
"Hi." You mumbled a little as Jisung silently left the room, shutting the door behind him and leaving you alone with the man you loved.
"What can I do for you?" He asked, putting on his business voice as you slowly stepped toward the desk and dropped the ultrasound photos down onto the desk.
"I don't want money...I want you in the kid's life, even if you don't want me." You told him as you watched him slowly pick up the photos, you waited for him to question if it was even his but those questions never came. 
"Move in, we'll create a nursery...we'll have everything ready."
"You'll forgive me? Just like that?" You were stunned at how he was just ready to throw everything into the past and come back to you. You expected some kind of resistance from him, or that he'd want a paternity test.
"You're the mother of my child...the love of my life, you could stab me and I would forgive you." You scoffed a little at him, of course, he would say something like that.
"That's toxic." You smirked at him before he shook his head at you.
"Shut up." He grumbled before shaking his head at you and looking back at the photos with tears in his eyes.
"You need to shave, I won't come back until the beard is gone." You told him as he moved to hold you in his arms.
Tumblr media
Tumblr media
@chiisaiblog @sw33tnight @kaitieskidmore97 @laylasbunbunny @stayconnecteed @saymyspringrain @toplinehyunjin @katnisspeetaprim @acciocriativity @wolfgurl2600 @just-aelia @choisoorin@straykids5star @minholythighs @midnightfrog625 @beccaskz @compersian @scarletemeterio @alicejustwakeup @halesandy @junhannies @gothic4under4lord @lixie-phoria @soulphoenix1618 @aerastus @jin-from-the-block @peachyproductions @lenfilms @elizaschuyler18 @piratequeen-impact @kpopmenace143 @minhosify @loveforred @kpopstuffs @chaeyoungs @delulu18 @stzatzch @b1nn1e-1s-cut3 @xyahrinx @katsukis1wife @anthropologymajorkpopmultistan @blairscott @4-chan-inpadella
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
kyber-crystal · 4 months
Text
i will follow you into the dark || bradley "rooster" bradshaw
summary: your first instinct has always been to push people away when they get too close, but for some reason, you have trouble letting one pilot go. but little did you know that he had settled into your heart from the start and has no intention of leaving. (in which you have Bradley Bradshaw wrapped around your finger, and you don’t even notice—5 occasions that solidify your love for him, and 1 time you realize it)
words: ~3.3k
warnings: angst (BUT A HAPPY ENDING, I PROMISE), near-death experiences, brief mentions of violence, also my writing LMAO
a/n: hi guys i haven't posted a full-length fic in a LONG time but here we go :) this fic won the vote so it's going up first! hope you enjoy :)
Tumblr media
I. meet me in the middle
“Mav!”
You and Maverick turned around at the same time. “Which one?”
“The pretty one,” Rooster stated. 
“Be more specific.”
“I am being specific, Captain.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Fine, I need your daughter.”
“You always need her for something.”
“Sorry, pops,” you grinned and clasped Maverick’s shoulder, and walked over to Bradley. “Come to kidnap me again, Bradshaw?”
“Actually, I’m hungry.”
“Then…go eat? I don’t see what any of that has to do with me.”
“I’m going to dinner, and I want you to come along,” he explained. “So, let’s go.”
“Is that why Cyclone was grumbling about someone spilling coffee all over him earlier? I knew it had to be you that put him in that mood.”
“Doesn’t matter. Come on.”
You looked back at your father, who simply laughed and motioned for you to go. The test flight would have to wait. 
It was 5:30 when you got there, but the usually-crowded cantina had only one other person inside. Rooster didn’t hesitate as he set down his car keys and slid into the booth right next to you.
“There’s a seat right there,” you pointed out. 
“And?”
“You can sit over there.”
“I don’t want to, though.”
“Alright, then.” 
You weren’t even done for the day and already, felt tired and worn out beyond belief. The one thing that had been keeping you going was Maverick’s promise to take you on a Mach 7 test flight. (With the Admiral’s permission, of course. But you wouldn’t be surprised if he had never asked.)
Rooster tells the waitress your order without blinking, and you give him a tired smile as a thank you. 
There’s no animated conversation, no loud comments or jokes or anything of the sort as the food comes out, but neither of you mind. Sometimes, all you needed to cool down from a long week was each other’s company and a steaming plate of fajitas. 
The little routine you’ve established falls into place so easily you don’t even have to think. Impromptu dinners, blasting 80’s music as the sun goes down, taking the offbeat path down to the coast with salt in your windswept hair.  Little to no words spoken, and somehow the silence speaks volumes.
But you don’t understand why he’d choose you to do this with, out of everyone. You’d expect him to drift towards someone less damaged. Someone who could keep up to his free and daring spirit and push him to his limits. Someone who had less baggage and didn’t flinch at every little touch. 
But despite all that he doesn’t leave. Even when everyone else around you seemed to, he was always there, assuring you he’d wait no matter what.
“Don’t worry about it.” He places a gentle hand over yours as he hands his card over to pay later that evening. “Let me treat you tonight.”
“Thanks…” 
He holds the door open for you as you walk out and keeps a ghost of a hand against your back the whole way to the car. You’re trying to burrow into yourself, but he doesn’t stop looking at you. The feeling of his eyes on you sends shivers running down your spine and you nervously shift in your seat. 
“You okay?” Rooster places his hand on the headrest as he reverses out of the parking lot. “You seem quiet tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t press any further, assuming that you’re tired and that’s why you’re unwilling to say much. He knows. He understands. “If you ever need to talk, though, I’m one call and a 15 minute walk away. Or 7, if I sprint.”
This makes you laugh a bit. “If you say so.”
Tumblr media
II. waiting on you
As soon as you hop out of your plane, he’s the first one there to greet you and pulls you in for a hug. You have no time to react to it because he’s so quick to sweep you up into his arms. You can smell a mix of sweat and coffee and a little bit of raspberries on him, and it helps bring you back down to reality. 
“You saw me a few hours ago, Roos…please let me go…” you mumbled into his shoulder. His grip on you only tightens further. “What’s with the excitement?”
“Nothing. I’m just happy to see you.”
Not knowing what else to do, your hands awkwardly reach up to pat him on the back. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Though you don’t say it out loud, you’re also just as happy to see him—it’s comforting to know he’ll be waiting whenever you return from something. And that, you think, is more than enough. 
Rooster carries your things for you without asking, and you’re grateful because your shoulders feel like they’re going to fall out of their sockets. Once again, he’s standing close by as you go to your quarters, ever the watchman. If he doesn’t have a hand on you, then his eyes will stay glued to you for as long as they can be. 
“Is that my shirt?” he asks as you step out of the bathroom wearing an oversized vintage T-shirt and a pair of jeans. 
“No.”
“It looks better on you, anyway.” He smirks; you fail to notice the way his gaze lingers on you a bit longer than normal. “You ready to go? They’re waiting for us at the Hard Deck. Hangman’s complaining about a rematch or somethin’.”
You lean into his side and smile, and he puts an arm across your shoulders. It feels so natural that you almost don’t notice. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
His eyes never leave you, even when he’s in the thick of the game. It’s impossible to ignore the heat pooling in your stomach every time his gaze flickers over to yours. 
Coyote notices your dazed look and nudges Payback in the side. “How is it that everyone knows that Bradshaw and Y/N love each other except Bradshaw and Y/N?”
“Because they’re stupid,” Payback whispered back.
“Ah. Makes sense.”
“So, we need to do something about it.”
“Hm…I’d say we wait it out. They’re going in the right direction.” A small smile graced Coyote’s face as Rooster pumped a fist up in victory before rushing over to embrace you. “A room full of people, yet all he sees is her.”
“You’re so right, man.”
Tumblr media
III. rose-tinted glasses
“What are you looking for out there?” Rooster called out.
“Something pretty,” you replied as you stood by the ocean’s edge, the wind fanning your hair around your shoulders. He’s sure that he’s never seen a more mesmerizing sight. 
“I beat you to it, because I already found one,” he stated with confidence, eyes never leaving you.
“Where?”
“I’m looking right at her.”
“That’s not what I meant, silly. Do I look like a seashell to you?”
“No, you’re even better.”
You laugh once again and resume your search. Right then, a glowing scallop catches your eye, and sand dusts your clothes as you bend down to pick it up. It’s smooth and seems to glow in rose gold amidst the early evening light. 
“Would you look at that,” you breathed out, palm extended to show him what you’ve found. “It’s perfect.”
Rooster encloses his hand around yours, and you can feel the heat radiating from his skin. It’s cold out but you’re not freezing at all because he’s so close. He’s so close. Your heart skips a beat. 
“Wow…it sure is.”
He kneels down with you, and you spend the next few hours making it a competition to see who can find the most unique set of stones. A strange feeling washed over you as you watched his brows furrow in concentration. Never had you imagined to be spending Thursday night with Bradley Bradshaw by the seashore, and yet, it feels like you’ve done this thousands of times before. 
Everything seems to fall into place. 
Tumblr media
IV. for you, i’d cross the line 
“Y/N, hey.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Doesn’t matter. Move over.”
You shifted on the bench to make room for him and he sat down next to you. This was probably his tenth time playing his rendition of ‘Great Balls of Fire’ but that didn’t matter; the man knew how to sing. You found yourself leaning into him and listening to his heartbeat, and the sensation lulled you into a peaceful trance. 
You took one good look at your best friend. Sweat lined his forehead and his face was bright red from both the alcohol and heat, but still, you were 100% sure that you’d never seen a more beautiful sight in your life. 
The way he seemed to gaze at you made your heartbeat pick up speed. It didn’t matter that he had too one too many drinks in the moments leading up to this, nor did it matter that he was always one to be rather affectionate with you. It didn’t make you love him any less—if anything, it made him all the more endearing. 
“You’re looking at me very…intensely,” you mumbled. “It’s making me nervous.”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “A man can’t help it when he’s in love.”
“Was that tipsy you or sober you?”
“Sober me is saying I love you.” He continues playing, unfazed, and the sound of the piano in your ears fades away into nothingness. 
It’s drunk Rooster telling you he means what he says, the confidence boost making him do things he normally wouldn’t. It’s drunk Rooster attempting to serenade you as his warm, alcohol-riddled breath falls against your neck. It’s drunk Rooster talking…but there’s a sober truth hidden behind his words that sends a shiver down your spine. 
You’re nose-to-nose as he starts to sing, and you lose yourself in a sea of gold and blue as his warm thumb grazes over your cheek. As if there’s an invisible string drawing you together, you move closer and closer towards each other. Drunk or not, he was utterly enchanting and you couldn’t turn away.
Once again…you ignore the stirring feeling in your chest at the feeling of his body being so close to yours. 
Tumblr media
V. saving grace
You find yourself opening the door to Rooster, who has a bouquet of your favorite flowers and some large Tupperware in hand. Butterflies flutter in your stomach as you accept them and step aside to let him in. “What is this for…?”
“Thought you’d want something nice to add to the kitchen. You and Mav need to work on decorations,” he said. “Why? Do you not like them?”
“No…I’m…how’d you know these were my favorite, anyway?”
“I heard you talking on the phone to Phoenix about them six months ago,” Rooster explained, taking his jacket off and hanging it over the couch. “I pride myself on being observant like that. Also…I woke up early to cook you that pasta you always go nuts over when we drive to LA.”
“Oh.” Your heart twinged as you glanced over—that damn pasta was your favorite thing on the entire planet. You claimed that nobody could make it as well as the diner in Newport did, except Bradley himself. (He didn’t tell you how many times it took to get it just right, though. He didn’t want you freaking out over that. And besides, Maverick’s pots and pans that he borrowed had already paid the price.)
He paused for a moment after setting the container down on the counter. “I noticed you went home early today. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine,” you lied as you put the flowers in a vase. But that was no use; he could see right through your monotone response. “Didn’t sleep enough last night.”
Bradley sees your hands tremble slightly. “Sweetheart.”
That’s all he needs to say before you step forward and lean your head against his chest. One arm finds its way around your waist to pull you close, while his free hand smoothes your hair out. A cracked sob escapes your lips and you squeeze your eyes shut in the hopes that if you kept them closed long enough and prayed hard enough, a guardian angel would swoop in and save you. 
“I’m here, it’s okay, you’ll be okay,” he murmurs. “You’ll be okay.”
“Please don’t go, Bradshaw,” you begged, voice hoarse. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m right here, don’t worry,” he reminds you, his hand moving down to rub your back. “I’ll be here whenever you need me, I promise.” 
You reach your pinky out a bit, and the two of you link your fingers together. 
You’re never letting go, and neither is he. 
Tumblr media
epilogue—soul ties 
“I’m trying to shake them off. They won’t let up—shit, I’m hit—”
His panicked voice cuts through the buzz of static and you can feel your whole body go numb. What if he doesn’t make it back… The thought alone is too much to bear. 
He curses under his breath and you hear something like that of a whispered prayer and several mentions of Please let me come home to her. Your heart clenches in your chest and you feel like you’re going to puke. Noticing your sudden uneasiness, Maverick grips your hand to keep you steady. 
“Bradshaw, what the hell is going on there?” Coyote nervously rubs at his forehead as he looks up at the screen. “If you die, we’re all going to kill you.”
“Left engine’s completely blown out. I have two bogeys on my tail.”
You bite the inside of your cheek until the tangy, metallic taste of blood fills your mouth. This couldn’t be happening. There already was a ghost amongst the skies, and Rooster could not afford to become the second…
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, I’m going down, guys—” Rooster curses again, and the earsplitting sound of a large blast interrupts him before he can say much else. 
“Bradley!” you shrieked as you watched his radar signal slowly fade off the screen. “No—”
Silence punctures the air and you finally lose balance, succumbing to the black void of nothingness. 
10 hours later, you sit outside the hospital room in the cold hallway, a thin, tear-stained blanket wrapped around your shoulders. Hangman and Phoenix had long since given up on getting you to move, so they took turns sitting with you. 
“You should try eating. There’s In-N-Out nearby, I’ll get something for you if you want,” Jake offered. 
You shake your head. 
“Come on. It’s been all day.”
“No.”
“You’re really that worried about him, aren’t you.”
“No,” you muttered bitterly. 
“You claim to not care, yet you’ve been sitting here for the past ten hours.” 
“I don’t care. This is me looking out for him in the same way any colleague or teammate of his would. This is what I’m supposed to do. What we’re all supposed to do.” 
“Y/N.” Jake sounds a bit more serious this time, and this makes you stop trying to bury yourself within your thoughts. “Listen to me.”
“What,” you exhaled.
"The fact of the matter here is,” he cleared this throat, “Bradshaw cares about you…a lot. Not in a simple and innocent ‘friendly’ way. And if you keep pushing him away like you always do, all 'cause you're scared, you're gonna lose him for good. Losing a good man out of fear is never worth the cost."
Your heart stops.
Every hug, every word and cheesy pickup line, every lingering glance and touch and intertwined set of fingers—he'd fallen first long ago, and pulled you down with him. But you let him, and you'll walk to the ends of the earth if it means he'll hold your hand along the way. And that's when everything hits all at once—the realization comes crashing down like a waterfall. 
You were hopelessly in love with him, the man who brings you flowers every Friday night. In love with the man who holds the door open for you, gives you his favorite jackets, and stays up late or wakes up early to learn your favorite comfort meal (even if it means failing 17 times in the process and ruining Maverick's kitchen), the man who serenades you to classic rock ballads with the taste of rum on his lips. 
This was Rooster Bradshaw, and he was your soulmate.
“But I already lost him,” your voice falters as you struggle to find the right words to say, “I can’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That man is going to stay waiting for you until the day his body is buried six feet underground. Deny it all you want, but he’ll keep waiting long after he takes his last breath.”
You let out a long sigh and stood up. “Okay.”
You’re hesitant as you step inside the small hospital room. He’s asleep, but he must’ve sensed your presence and his eyes flutter open. 
“Sweetheart…”
“Bradley.” He moves over a bit for you, and you sit down next to him. “You’re alive.”
“Sorry for not dying. That must’ve disappointed you,” he jokes. If he’s in any sort of pain, he manages to mask it behind a soft smile. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“I waited ten hours.”
“You should’ve gone home and slept.”
Closing your eyes, you rest your head against his chest. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing that you weren’t okay.”
He hums some tune against the crook of your neck; lips brushing over your skin. “But I came back, like I promised. I’m okay, because you are.”
Helovesmehelovesmehelovesme.
As if he could read your mind, he leans in just that bit closer. You look up at him and your heart somersaults in your chest. 
When your lips meet, everything clicks into place and it’s like you finally found the missing puzzle piece you’d been searching for. He was here all along; it made so much sense. Everything else fades away into the background as you get lost in the feeling of him and him alone. You knew from the moment he stuck out his hand and told you with a million-dollar smile “I’m Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, and I can make a mean lasagna or anything else you want,” that choosing him would be the single best thing you ever could’ve done. 
And you were most certainly right about that now. 
“I kept it, you know.” he murmurs as you eventually break away, “I didn’t think it would last as long as it did, but here it is.”
“What…what are you talking about?”
He fingers dip below the scoop of his T-shirt and he brings out the glittering charm, laying it in his hand. “You gave it to me ages ago. It was a while ago but I still remember the exact time and place. August 5th, 2010, 2:26 a.m. We were both on the verge of falling asleep.”
Your heart grows warmer. “Roos…”
Rooster opens the locket, and inside is a picture of you beaming as you wrapped your arms around him from behind. So young and so in love, but not yet knowing how you felt about each other. 
“I think this is what kept me alive up there. I was in the air long enough to think about and reflect on the fact that I was dying, but I knew I had to come home to you. I was dying, Y/N, but you saved me. If you didn’t come into my life right when you did then I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be telling you that I love you.”
He has you at a loss for words yet again. It didn’t matter that you’d known each other for years because he would always find a way to steal your breath. The once-tiny caterpillars crawling in your stomach had morphed into giant butterflies that never stopped fluttering when he came too close.
He leans in and he’s kissing you again; this time it’s like you’re his sole source of oxygen and he’s in desperate need of fresh air. Your grip on his hand tightens as he deepens the kiss, and you pray to God that your heart won’t explode into a million pieces like it did when you thought you wouldn’t see him again. 
I’ve died and come back to life twice now, Rooster tells himself. 
And both of those times, you’re the angel that magically appears to save him from a certain, unfortunate fate. 
Tumblr media
tags, including people who may be interested (sorry if this list seems off, it hasn't been updated in a while hahah): @sarcastic-sourwolf @totomoshi @sebastianstangirl01 @purelyfiction @lunamoonbby @hazelgirl355 @multifandom-fangirl4 @paintballkid711 @buckysbeloved @lyn-lc @spawn0fsatan @milestomaverick @teacactusworld @cherry-waved @ellabellabus07 @vitanileon @lam-ila @criminalyetminimal @whatlovegattado @queenbbarnes @yeehawnana @t-stark35 @thesunsetphantoms @danirose-0420 @callalily2000 @the-untamed-soul @shizzybarnaclee @bananaa @luvfurdogs @shalaniela @unordinare @and-claudia @lgg5989 @katiemcrae @elenavampire21 @joyfullyswimmingface @nyx2021 @cosm1cfae @ellabellabus07 @vane28282 @bittergomez @littlebadariell @tallrock35 @whotfatemywaffles @hoedameronsworld @aerangi @julia-marshal @uwiuwi
(also if you filled out the general taglist form/top gun taglist form and you're not on here, that means i couldn't tag you for some reason)
1K notes · View notes
quartzalynlove · 6 months
Text
Coming Home Injured
Pairing: Liu Kang, Kenshi, Johnny Cage, Raiden, Sub Zero, Scorpion, Smoke, Reptile x fem!reader (separately)
Summary: returning from a mission with a few bad injuries
Warnings: Canon typical violence, some descriptions of bad wounds
A/N: let's see if I can make personalized pet names for each of them without them being cringe. Feedback encouraged. Also if we're gonna keep writing for all 8 of these guys at once it's gonna take a minute for me to post so sorry abt that but more mk1 content is coming
Liu Kang
Tumblr media
The two of you sat in silence from the moment you returned home. You had completed the mission, but only by an inch of your life. The image of Liu Kang's concerned face, before you fainted in his arms, was still clear in your head.
Liu Kang assessed your injuries before treating them, trying not to be alarmed by the long, deep gash cut from your side into your abdomen. All the while, that look on his face never faded. You had seen Liu Kang when he was concerned many times, but this was different. That crease between his brows was deeper for some reason. As his hands shook, uncharacteristically, while he cleaned your wound, you finally identified the expression. It was the same one you saw when Kenshi lost his sight on the mission to capture Shang Tsung.
"Darling," your voice was weak as you looked down at him.
Immediately, Liu Kang's eyes shot up at you. With his worry growing, he placed a hand on your thigh.
"My light, please do not exert yourself."
Slowly, your hand took hold of his. Your grip was so weak that Liu Kang could hardly bear it. Instead, he took your hand in his and kissed your knuckles. You felt a shuddering breath against your skin as he pulled away.
"Don't you think you're a bit too concerned?" You asked.
With deep regret, Liu Kang bowed his head, not able to look at what he'd done to you.
"You shouldn't have returned this injured," his low voice started to break. "I shouldn't have—"
You stopped him before he could say another thing, "Lift your head," you told him.
Liu Kang looked up at you, slowly, his breaths still heavy and unsteady.
"You used your judgment as well as you could, and I fulfilled your orders. I came back to you."
Starting to calm, Liu Kang nodded in understanding.
"Not every round of Kombat is easy, but I'll be okay."
Upon seeing your reassuring smile, Liu Kang's breathing finally steadied, and his grip on your hand started to soften.
Kenshi
Tumblr media
You winced in pain as Kenshi finished a stitch on a rather brutal injury. If he hadn't gotten to you sooner, the blood loss would have killed you. What you did lose on your staggering trek back home already made you lightheaded. Kenshi insisted on you resting; he made you something to eat and made sure you were drinking water. As you laid on the couch, resting yourself after a tough mission, Kenshi was rubbing your feet. You noticed his clenched jaw and the tight line his lips formed. Part of you wished you could sit up and hold his face, but you didn't want to risk popping a stitch while it was still fresh.
"What's on your mind, Kenshi?"
He turned toward your voice before trying to dismiss you with a shake of his head. "Nothing, my flower. Please try to rest."
"Don't say 'nothing' when it's clearly something, love."
You didn't say anything else, still too out of it to try and coax anything else from him. Thankfully, he wasn't going to make you do the work.
"I should've been there," He said quietly. "If I were there to protect you, you this wouldn't have happened."
Kenshi was such a gentleman, your very own knight in shining armor, but he often piled too much on his plate without noticing. He did know he didn't have to save you every time, didn't he?
A lazy smile graced your face, "Honey, I'm fine." You told him.
"You aren't fine—"
You interrupted, "I'll be fine," you said slowly. "You've patched my wounds, forced food and water down my throat, and you're even keeping me company here and rubbing my feet. You've saved me already, my hero."
Kenshi sighed as your words put him at ease, silently accepting that you were right.
"Besides," you continued. "I'm a big girl; I can handle myself. You should ask Sento to show you the other guy."
As Kenshi started to chuckle, you wore a proud smile before feeling yourself fall asleep on the couch.
Johnny Cage
Tumblr media
Johnny was all over the place. While you held onto your side on the couch, he searched the area frantically for God knows what. All you could hear was his half-rambled sentences around.
"Johnny." You tried to get his attention.
He stopped for just a second just to point a finger at you. "Hey, don't move over there. I just gotta..."
As he left again, you let your head fall back, sighing in pain.
"I'm calling Liu Kang." You said.
Something in the kitchen clattered as Johnny shouted. "No, don't call him; I've got this!"
"I've been bleeding on our couch for five minutes!"
Sighing, Johnny came back again and looked at you. In any other circumstance, it would be cute how frantic he was over you. Unfortunately, however, your life was at stake and he was running around the house like the Roadrunner. Finally, Johnny finished assessing your injuries.
"Water," he snapped his fingers. "I'll get you some water."
"Johnny!" You stopped him before he could take off again.
In Johnny's defense, he was very worried. It was written all over his face. As you sighed, you spoke to him very carefully.
"I keep a first aid kit in the bathroom cabinet."
With many understanding nods, Johnny seemed to calm down before heading to the bathroom.
"First aid kit," he said to himself. "Why didn't I think of that?"
Raiden
Tumblr media
You didn't know how you were still alive, and if it weren't for Raiden, you'd surely be dead. Once you got through the portal, you tried to make it home to him, but Raiden ended up finding you collapsed on the academy grounds as blood quickly made a pool around your stomach. When you came to, the only sensation you could make out was Raiden's feet striking the ground as he ran with you in his arms. You must have managed to say something because you saw his eyes meet yours before darkness obstructed your vision again
The next time you woke you were somewhere indoors. A bright yellow light blinded you before your eyes could adjust. You felt Raiden squeeze your hand as your head turned.
"You're awake." He gasped.
All you could muster was a faint smile. That searing pain from the gash that opened your stomach still wasn't gone.
"Not for long." You said weakly.
Raiden's face became worried as he inched closer to you from his chair at your side.
"I must keep you awake," he said almost as a plea to you. "I've taken you to the medics, and they said if you wake I couldn't let you close your eyes again."
You whined with a frown. "It hurts, Raiden."
Raiden brought his free hand on top of yours, trying to comfort you with small rubs.
"I know, but I am here. I've got you."
As you looked at Raiden, the pain seemed to lessen. Everything felt warmer as long as you focused on him.
"I bet Shao thought he killed me." You said.
A bright smile appeared on Raiden's face at your decision to stay with him. "He is in for a surprise the next time you meet."
Sub Zero
Tumblr media
You were a victim of Bi-Han's cold frustration. Honestly, it agitated you more than the searing pain caused by the cleaning of the open wound across your side.
From the moment you came back to him, limping through the front door with the last of your strength, he didn't utter a sound. You remained in awkward silence as he had you sit on the kitchen counter with your back straight while he patched you up.
As he stitched you up, Bi-Han was moving at a harsh pace. It wouldn't harm your wound, but it was almost more painful than the wound itself. Bi-Han was aware of the sharp breaths you sucked in and pained gasps, but they were no deterrent to quickness.
"Bi-Han," you finally snapped at him.
With a cocked eyebrow, Bi-Han stepped back, eyeing you with such an icy glare and that scowl you thought wasn't welcome in your home.
Your eyes searched his face, hoping to find your lover buried beneath that avalanche, "You're hurting me." You said.
A scoff came from Bi-Han as he attempted to work on you once again. "This can't hurt nearly as bad as your other injuries."
You wouldn't let him come back to you, however, pushing him back with the palm of your hand. "Well, it isn't exactly helping."
Bi-Han folded his arms over his chest. "Do you expect me to coddle you?"
"Some sympathy wouldn't hurt." You spat back.
In disbelief, Bi-Han came back to you, forcing himself into your view. "You want my sympathy for the consequences of your reckless actions? My assistance is enough comfort."
He readied the needle for the next stitch, but before he could jam another hole into you, you took the needle out of his hand.
You didn't look at him as you spoke. "I would rather help myself."
After staring at you for a moment, Bi-Han walked away with a grunt. However, even as he started to leave, your wincing continued. You tried to finish the stitching yourself, but the wound was in such a place that you couldn't reach it without straining the rest of your body. Not to mention aggravating the wound itself.
Bi-Han couldn't bear to watch and listen to you struggle. You were only hurting yourself more. Casting his face down for a moment, Bi-Han exhaled before returning to your side.
Before you could begin another stitch, you felt a cold hand stop the needle.
"The stitching will be ineffective this way."
That growl had left Bi-Han's voice, and his face softened, save the deep crease between his brows. Although his gaze would not meet yours, you gave the needle back to Bi-Han, feeling in the air that his anger had dissipated. As he went to work once again, he was much more gentle, and his work didn't hurt nearly as much. Still, he was very quiet. It was clear he wasn't angry with you anymore, but something still troubled him.
Once the stitch was finished, Bi-Han went to tend to your smaller injuries, remaining so quiet and drawn away from you. As he went to clean a cut on your cheek his eyes remained fixated on the wound, not once glancing towards you. Becoming concerned for him, you stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.
"Bi-Han," you began turning to face him, but his face turned away. "Will you look at me, sweetheart?"
He couldn't; he was ashamed to do so. Although he should have had better control over himself, Bi-Han lost his temper with you.
"I was worried," he said, his face finally falling. "Seeing you come home in this state concerned me. I'm sorry I let it contort into anger."
With a small smile, you took the side of Bi-Han's face in your hand, fixing it towards you. It melted him a bit to see your face. Even after how he had acted, you still smiled at him.
"I knew of your anger long before we got together," you said. "And while it can be frustrating, that doesn't mean I'm not willing to work through it as long as you are."
Bi-Han leaned into your touch, sighing as he let his eyes close. "Just promise you'll act more carefully on future missions."
Scorpion
Tumblr media
Kuai Liang tended to the large gash across the length of the back. The wound was deep and wide, he could hardly fathom how this had happened to you. However, his focus remained on bandaging you before it suffered any infection. Kuai Liang worked gently as he secured the bandages around you, but you dreaded turning back to him. Once you did, you turned away quickly from his gentle face, eager to get away from where his eyes gazed. Confused by this, he stopped you, taking a soft but firm hold of your arm.
"You should let me help with getting you ready for bed. I don't want you exhausting yourself, precious."
You huffed, but couldn't lose your temper with Kuai Liang's warm eyes gazing at you. Still, you snatched your arm back, turning your back to him again.
"I can manage, Kuai Liang." Your tone wasn't exactly angry but somber instead, bringing a confused expression to Kuai Liang's face.
He started to catch up to you again, "Your injuries are very serious, Y/N." He said as a word of caution.
As your jaw clenched, you quickly turned back to Kuai Liang, your tone more serious now. "And I said I can manage."
Suddenly, a sharp pain radiated through your shoulder, causing you to wince and grab at it. You turned too fast. Kuai Liang placed a hand on your shoulder, generating the softest heat to ease the pain.
"Beloved, what is wrong," He said with concern as he turned back in front of you. "It can't just be your injuries making you this upset."
With a soft sigh, you started to break your frustration, letting the sadness you truly felt manifest in your face, "Aren't you disappointed?" You looked up at him.
Kuai Liang's brows furrowed in confusion. Your expression was so sad and apologetic. How could you think he was disappointed?
"In you," he asked in disbelief. "Of course not, precious. Why would I be?"
Gesturing to yourself, you let out a shuddering breath, "Look at me," your voice began to break. "This is no state for a champion to be in after Kombat,"
Kuai Liang felt his heart break; he knew you always held yourself to a status that kept you worthy of the mantle that was Earthrealm's champion, but he hated to see you acting this harshly towards yourself.
As tears started forming in your eyes, you continued. "You and your brothers fight to bring honor to your clan's name; you persist no matter the challenge. How can I be a champion when I haven't done the same for Earthrealm?"
You faced the floor as tears streamed down your cheek, but Kuai Liang wouldn't let you shut yourself out from him again. Lifting your head with his index finger, Kuai Liang started wiping your tears as his hands cradled your face.
"Beloved," his voice was soft as he spoke to you. "You accepted your challenge and fought with all you had. Honor isn't about winning but fighting valiantly in the name of your clan. By engaging in Kombat for the glory of Earthrealm and its champions, you have brought honor. For that, I am proud of you as I always am."
As your tears slowed, Kuai Liang gazed into your eyes with a nod of understanding. Once you nodded back, he planted a kiss on top of your head.
Smoke
Tumblr media
Tomas hadn't left your side since you returned home last night, and though he tried his best to conceal it, you could feel how worried he was. All of your wounds were patched up, and you were starting to feel better, but he still insisted on doing every little thing for you. It was sweet; you knew how much he cared for his loved ones, especially you, but he did know you'd be okay, right?
By the time you had woken up, Tomas was in the shower, and you were starving. It wasn't going to strain you to cook breakfast, so that's what you went to do.
You had just begun cooking when Tomas came out of the shower. When he returned to your bedroom and found the bed to be empty, he froze in fear. Frantically, he hurried around the house, looking for you. It didn't take him long to reach the kitchen where you were cooking at the stove.
"What are you doing out of bed, my love?"
You turned to see Tomas' concerned face. Smiling, in hopes you would put him at ease, you gestured to the pan of bacon on the stove.
"Cooking," you answered him. "I'm hungry; I bet you are too."
With a small frown, Tomas sighed softly as he leaned against the island, "I could've handled this." He said.
As you turned back to the stove, you nodded. "Yes, but you were in the shower. Besides, I felt like cooking."
You could hear Tomas grumbling behind you as he came closer. Suddenly, he put his hand on top of yours, trying to take the pan from you.
"I'd much prefer it if you stayed in bed, my love."
Tightening your grip, you looked back at him. "I've been in bed since yesterday evening, let me cook us breakfast."
By this point, Tomas didn't know what to do other than pout disapprovingly, but you weren't going to have it.
"Tomas," you called him. "Look at me."
With a sigh, he listened, backing up to eye you before you explained your instruction.
"I'm doing better. It's not like I'm going to fall over at the stove."
He tried to interrupt, "You don't—" But you silenced him with a hand on the center of his chest.
You continued softly. "Go sit down and wait for your food."
The two of you shared a brief look before you closed your eyes, waiting for him to kiss you. Once he did, you opened your eyes to Tomas walking to sit at the table.
Reptile
Tumblr media
You hissed as Syzoth finished a stitch on your shoulder.
"I know it hurts, but we're almost done." He tried to calm you.
Usually, you tried to fight him when he patched you up, but you came home in pretty rough shape. The only complaining you could manage was in the form of winces and grunts. Syzoth never really minded, though. If anything you reminded him of his younger siblings when they'd hurt themselves playing.
"There," He said, putting the needle down. "You'll be fine in a few days."
As Syzoth looked at you with a soft face, you couldn't help feeling a small sense of shame.
"I'm sorry." You apologized, playing with your hands in your lap.
Syzoth tilted his head at you. "For what?"
"I can be so stubborn when you're only trying to help."
An incredulous slithering laugh started to leave Syzoth at your words, confusing you a bit. Putting your hands in his, Syzoth looked into your eyes.
"Firefly, I have faced much worse than you upset about getting a few stitches. As long as you're okay, you can bicker and grunt at me all you like."
Syzoth kissed you on the forehead before leading you to the bed.
"I never did ask how your opponent ended up." He looked over at you.
With a proud smile, you answered him. "Let's just say if I was injured the same, would have done more than bicker at you."
2K notes · View notes
tojipie · 6 months
Note
adah … reader sliding toji her panties during a visit … him jerking off with them in his cell … (i know realistically it wouldn’t work bc regulations blah blah blah guards would see it and all BUT but indulge me for a sec) this man would go FERAL FOR THEM ((satosugu would try to steal them deprived freaks))
prison bf toji series linked here <3
content: jerking off, mentions of violence, panty kink .. ? if that’s not a thing ignore that tag
Tumblr media
you don’t know what had gotten into you today, truly. 
the idea had popped into your head as you were getting dressed, a little voice in the back of your brain directing your thoughts toward the maxi skirt you’d bought on an outing last weekend.
the fabric was opaque, impossibly silky. ebbing and flowing along the dips of your body all the way down to your ankles. tight enough to show off your figure but not enough to restrict your movements. easy to maneuver in without being too obvious.
that’s precisely why you have no issues wiggling your panties off each hip under one of the prison’s many visitor tables, letting the black lace slip over your knees and around your ankles.
you let one foot slip out of the garment, lifting your leg to brush against toji’s calf slowly.
huh? 
he whispers, amused at what he thinks is a little game of footsie. the inmate palms at the meat of your calf lovingly, traveling down down down until calloused fingers close around your ankle.
oh.
he’s quiet when he says it, eyes blown wide with a mix of shock and arousal. you barely hear him over the bustle of the visitor hall, the small smile gracing his face being your only indication of what he’s about to do.
toji delicately lifts the fabric from around your leg, scanning the perimeter to make sure no one’s looking. emerald eyes bore into yours as your boyfriend balls the garment up in his fist, bringing his closed hand up to his mouth.
and then he kisses it. kisses your panties through the gaps in his fingers without ever looking away, sending a lightning bolt of arousal straight to the deepest pit of your stomach.
you swear you see him stuff the fabric down the front of his pants before he heads back.
˚ ✧ ───
your little gift doesn’t last a chance in the shitty hiding place he picked, haphazardly thrown under the swell of his pillow while he eats lunch in the mess hall. all toji knows is that they were in his cell mates’ greedy little paws by the late afternoon, the two insufferable men huddled around the item like schoolgirls reading a magazine.
“how the fuck did you get these past customs?” geto asks in disbelief, turning the fabric over in the dim light. gojo runs a lithe finger over the lace border in silent interest. 
“didn’t get it in the mail dumbass,” your boyfriend sneers, snatching the black lace from both men with a huff. 
“so y’r broad snuck them to you, huh?” gojo teases, head hanging off the edge of the bunk with boredom. 
toji couldn’t stomp the two young men half to death like he usually would, disappointing as that was. he did only just get visitation rights back again after his last infraction.
the last time he’d beat geto’s face in was after the younger man had got his hands on a picture of you, earning toji 2 months in solitary confinement.
he really did think he was starting to go crazy, spending 22 hours a day in that padded room with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. being fed through a tray slot in the wall like a fucking zoo animal. 
more time in solitary meant less time with you. less time with the picture of you he tacked to the underside of the top bunk with a wad of gum, palming himself slowly as he takes in the sight of your sweet little smile he knows all too well.
less time with the soft clutch of your panties caressing the underside of his dick, catching milky ropes of cum as he finishes all over his stomach on the slab of metal this place calls a bed.
and a whole lot less time of getting to rut into you under the dim light of a spare storage closet, hours after dark. hand closed right around your lips as he takes you over and over and over.
so if toji had to bite his tongue till he drew blood and settle for jerking his dick raw as a distraction, then so be it. at least your little present would keep him good company till’ your next visit.
Tumblr media
taglist🏷️
@honeybee54321 @m150-50up @kuryoomi @t4naiis @serendippindots @sillyalo @levixbby @powerrwa @tojishugetiddies @wheredidmycrowngo @unknownspecies @ushygushybaby @ebiharachan @hoshigray @crazychaoticizzy @denypipa @watyousayin @tempest1art @sakuraryomen01 @kariito-art @vkeyy @mxtokko @inumakiiz @rosieee491 @loveme-b4by @suguxo @namjoonsbuspass @tojis-luver @complexivelovely @dancingwithdeities @sunflwrsugar @catvader101 @ktsgrl @princessos-blog @4ut0p5y @swiftsongs-mp3 @mycocoapuffs @adrenepinephrine @na0koz @suguscape @jaswonder3 @bokutosprettylittlebimbo @getousrep @jeannieboys @darkstarlight82 @freebananabeard @vivian-555 @kentokaze @subarusuguru @aroxwq @i-literally-cant-with-this @emikokomura @moonriseoverkyoto
2K notes · View notes
scuderiahoney · 21 days
Text
Tumblr media
Oscar Piastri x Reader // In Motion Pt. 4
Summary: a very bad snowstorm, bears in the ice hockey arena, and a one night only poster board pick-me-up. 6.6k words
Warnings: mentions of physical violence, small mention of alcohol
“So. You and Oscar spent a lot of time together over the break,” Lily says, carefully.
You roll your eyes and set the glue stick in your hand down, sensing this is going to be a long conversation. “We were the only ones here for like, a week. And we were bored. And then Max showed up, so it wasn’t just us.”
Lily isn’t looking at you. She has a wine glass in one hand and a magazine in the other. The two of you are making vision boards, which Max had called “glorified collages” when he called five minutes ago to ask about family dinner for tomorrow.
Lily hums. “He’s just so… quiet.”
You shrug and take a sip of your wine. “He’s not, really, once you get to know him. He’s just… it’s easier for him one on one, you know?”
Lily nods. You nod, too, and lean over to pick up another magazine. You flip through the pages, looking for whatever sticks out. Your friends collect magazines and newspapers and fun posters and give them to you, and you hoard them for days like these. A little sun drawing pops out at you from the page, and you reach for the scissors.
You clear your throat. “Nothing happened, if that’s what you were trying to say. We just. We had some movie nights, played some video games, took a couple walks. That’s all.”
Lily looks up at you and stares. “Right.”
You stare right back. “What?”
“Did you want something to happen?” She asks, and you freeze, the magazine page half turned.
“What?” You ask again.
“You said nothing happened,” she says. “Did you want something to happen?”
You stare at the wine in your glass, the way the warm light of the lamp catches on the red liquid. Your stomach swirls. Did you want something to happen? He’s your friend. Your study partner. He’s your best friends’ teammate. Did you want something to happen? He’s a sweetheart once you get to know him. He holds your hand when you walk by the soccer field and he doesn’t push you when you can’t do it. Did you want something to happen?
You shake your head. “We’re just friends. We bonded over physics trauma. We were just bored.”
Lily nods and reaches for the scissors. “Okay.”
You want to say more to defend yourself, but you think that’ll be even less convincing. So you move your focus back to the vision board and try not to think too much about what she asked you. It doesn’t matter what you wanted, anyways. He’d never see you that way, and if he did, he’s probably too scared of his teammates to do anything about it.
…..
January slips away faster than you’d expected. It’s full of syllabuses and assignments and far too much homework for this early in the semester. You do a lot of it at the kitchen table in the guys’ house, sat across from Oscar even though you’re not in a class together anymore. It’s just nice to have someone to study with, even if he has no idea what you’re talking about when you whine about your biology assignments.
February brings with it the warnings of a winter storm for the ages. On a Thursday night, you sit on the couch in the living room, giving your homework a feeble attempt. The guys are back from an afternoon practice, and everyone is settling in for the evening.
“You know who we play next week,” Carlos says, leaning over the back of the couch and looking at you.
“Can’t remember,” you answer, not even looking up from your book. “Not the Badgers.”
The Badgers are the Timberwolves’ sworn enemies. The rivalry game weekend is one of the most anticipated events on campus. It’s marked on the calendar in the kitchen with a dark red X. It’s weeks away.
“No,” Carlos says, raising his eyebrows when you finally look up at him. “The Bears.”
For just a moment, you wonder what sort of significance that’s supposed to hold. They play a lot of teams. Most of them, they’re relatively civil towards. A lot of the players grew up together on junior teams, and they’re still friends outside of game weekends. You’re about to ask if he has beef with a Bears player when you notice Oscar’s stiff posture where he sits on the floor in front of the couch. He’s been half watching the TV, half working on homework. Then you remember.
Oscar played for the Bears for two years. That was his former team. The ones who treated him so badly he quit hockey. You blink up at Carlos and pray he doesn’t take the route you think he’s going to.
“You know who used to play for the Bears,” Carlos starts, a lilting tone to his voice.
Oscar turns over his shoulder with a grimace. “Play is a strong term,” he says. “I did a lot more sitting than skating.”
Carlos shrugs and wiggles his eyebrows. “I am just saying. Maybe we should be worried that Piastri here will go easy on his friends.”
“Not my friends,” Oscar says, quietly.
You slip your hand off the couch and press it to his shoulder blade, hidden from Carlos’ view behind blankets and cushions. Oscar relaxes slightly, and his eyes flicker to yours. Carlos is just trying to rile him up, probably. There might be a hint of truth to it- trying to test Oscar’s loyalty, which is stupid.
You turn to Carlos and blink. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Like your own apartment?”
Oscar laughs and tries to disguise it as a cough, muffling it into his elbow. Carlos grins, gaze flickering between you and Oscar, mischief in his eyes.
“Oh, Bunny has claws,” he teases.
By Sunday, everyone is panicked about the impending snow. The stores sell out of all the essentials before you can even bother to plan the week’s family dinner. You and Max will have to make do with what’s left on the bare shelves of the grocery store. The aisles are packed with people. You’ve lost Logan in the fray.
“He’ll be fine,” Max says, trying to maneuver the cart around a small child. He makes a funny face at her, and she laughs. “He will find us, and if he doesn’t…”
“Oh my god, please sound more concerned,” you say.
He shrugs and reaches for a box of Kraft Mac and cheese.
“You have to be kidding,” you say with a glare.
He nods, looking at the grocery list again. “I am. We are buying more TimTams?”
Your face grows hot against your will. You snatch the list from his hand as he eyes you, brows raised. At that exact moment, Logan, your lifesaver, appears from the crowd.
“I got so lost,” he says, eyes wide. “This place is a madhouse.”
Max nods, and he looks around, set determination on his face. “Alright. Let’s get what we need and get out. Logan, hold onto the cart.”
Logan rolls his eyes. “I’m not a child,” he says, but he grabs the cart anyways.
By the time the three of you get in the car, the first few snowflakes are falling. Max sits stiffly in the passenger seat the whole drive, like he’s worried a little snow will send you into a violent crash. You make it home safely, of course, and unload the groceries together. Charles is sitting on the couch in front of the living room window, staring at the snow, a cup of hot chocolate in hand.
“It’s already pretty,” he says, softly.
You ruffle his hair. “Is there more hot chocolate?”
He nods. “Oscar’s making it.”
You head for the kitchen, bags in hand, and find Oscar and Alex huddled around the counter. You give them a smile as you unpack the groceries, and Max and Logan do the same. Oscar looks up at you, eyes bright.
“What do you want in yours?” He asks.
You stand with your hands on your hips, thinking hard. He’s got plenty of supplies- mini marshmallows and sprinkles and caramel drizzle and whipped cream. You shrug.
“Keep it simple,” you say. “A couple marshmallows and some whipped cream.”
He nods eagerly and gets to work. By the time your bags are empty, it’s ready. He hands it off to you with a happy smile- the whipped cream sits in a perfect spiral atop the mug. He looks so proud, and it’s such a sweet gesture, you almost lean over and kiss him right on the forehead. Almost, before you remember half his teammates are here, and Max is watching, and everyone is apparently suspicious. And that it would probably be a strange thing for you to do. You just smile and thank him quietly instead.
You head back into the living room with the mug, trying to shake his soft, proud grin from your brain. Charles is there, in the loveseat next to the window, and he pats the cushion, beckoning you to join him. You sink down, turning so you can look out the window, too. He tosses a blanket over your lap.
“He gave you more whipped cream than me,” he says, pouting.
You shrug. “Maybe he likes me better.”
Charles narrows his eyes at you. “Do you remember, a few months ago, when you thought he hated you?”
You nod. “Funny how things change, huh?”
Oscar walks in then, a mug in his hands. His gaze slips to the window, brows raising on his forehead, and he smiles happily. You smile, too and turn back towards the window as he walks over.
“Pretty,” he says, softly. “Wow, it’s really starting to come down, huh?”
You sigh. “God, I hope they cancel classes tomorrow.”
Charles sighs and sits up. “That reminds me. I have an assignment due at midnight.”
He stands up and stalks off, taking his hot chocolate with him. Oscar makes a sympathetic noise, but he doesn’t hesitate to steal Charles’ spot on the couch. You smile at him when he sits down. Both of you put your legs up on the cushions so you can stare out the window. You rest your head against the back of the couch and let your knee rest against his. Outside, Logan pulls up with a full car, having offered to pick up a few of the team members who didn’t want to walk in the snow. Carlos climbs out of the front seat and leans over, already trying to scrape together a snowball. Oscar sighs. You turn to look at him, and he’s got a look of apprehension on his face. You nudge your knee against his.
“What’s up?” You ask.
He shrugs. “Maybe they’ll cancel the games next weekend, too.”
He doesn’t want to play against his old team. From what he’s told you, you can’t really blame him. He’d hinted at a toxic environment when he first told you, but the longer the two of you have been friends, the more information you’ve pulled out of him. He’d mentioned something about a scar on his upper lip, how his old team captain had left it there when he pushed him onto the ice. Your heart breaks for him.
Under the blanket, you reach out and rest your hand on his knee, lightly. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
He grins widely at that, and then hides it behind his mug of hot chocolate. You smile right back. Outside, Carlos hits Logan directly in the stomach with a snowball. The others are making their way towards the house. You brace yourself for the impending chaos.
Charles and Max cook dinner, and there are enough people in the house that you end up eating in the living room on one of the couches. Lando sits next to you, while Oscar sits on the floor in front of you, his back against the couch. The news is playing on the TV, and you all steal glances at the bottom of the display, where the area snow closures are being announced.
Max pokes his head into the living room from the dining room. “Snow’s getting bad. Anyone who doesn’t live here should probably go now, yeah?”
People begin to stand up. You almost follow suit, figuring it’s about time you headed back to your apartment, and not really wanting to walk in the snow. Lando grabs your wrist and tugs, though, and Oscar’s head whips around to look at the two of you.
“Maybe you should just stay,” Lando suggests, a small smile on his face. “It’s a storm warning, you know.”
You blink softly at him, though you sit back down. “Lan, I don’t have any of my stuff. I don’t have clothes to sleep in. I have an 8am class, and I don’t want to sleep on the couch and have a sore neck-“
“Oh come on, you know they’re going to cancel classes,” Oscar says, nudging your knee lightly.
“And if they don’t, I’ll go get your stuff,” Lando suggests. He pouts. “And you don’t have to sleep on the couch, I’ll get the air mattress out. C’mon. What if your power goes out?”
“When my power goes out, yours also goes out,” you remind him.
“But we can all be powerless together,” Charles chimes in from the other end of the couch.
You groan. “You guys. I’m an adult. I can take care of myself in a little bit of snow.”
You hear Logan’s car start up outside. You try to get up again, but Lando wraps his arms around your arm, and Oscar reaches for your ankles. You let out a squeaky laugh and try to break free just as Max walks back into the living room, brows furrowed.
“Max! Tell Bunny she should stay here,” Lando calls out.
Max blinks, eyes darting over the entire situation before he turns to look at you. “There’s a winter storm. You live alone. You are not going anywhere.”
You grumble, but you go limp anyways. Lando lets go of you and high fives Max as he walks past. Oscar holds onto your legs for slightly longer, and he squeezes your calf softly before he pulls away. You try to act normal about it, though from the side eyed look Lando gives you, you’re not sure you were successful.
Eventually, you head to the kitchen to help Max clean up from dinner. Lily, Alex, George, and Oscar sit at the dining room table, playing cards, while you and Max do dishes and Lando and Charles clean counters. When your eyes stay on the Oscar for too long, watching him laugh happily, the sink nearly overflows. Max nudges your shoulder.
“You can go hangout, if you want. I can do the dishes,” he suggests.
You shake your head. “M’fine. Just spaced out a bit.”
Max nods, though you can feel him watching you every so often. Lando and Charles start slapping each other with rolled up wet washcloths, and that distracts Max enough, at least for a few minutes. There’s music playing, and you hum along as the soapy water warms your fingers. When the dishes are done, Max ushers you to the dining room, and you take a seat in the chair on next to Oscar. Lando and Charles join, too, and you smile around at everyone. Snow is falling in the backyard, and the world feels quiet. Oscar’s fingers brush against yours when you both reach for a card, and you can’t help but smile. You’re exactly where you want to be.
At 9:30pm, just when you’re starting to yawn, and Lando is talking about going and setting up the air mattress, everyone’s phones go off. Little dings and chirps and vibration sounds echo through the dining room. Alex is the first one to open the email.
“Classes are canceled!” He calls out. “Snow day!”
The room erupts into chaos. Lando and Max hug each other, George stands up and cheers, while Charles collapses forward onto the table in relief. You turn to Oscar as he wraps an arm around your shoulders and shakes you gently. Alex leans over and kisses Lily on the cheek as she cheers. The joy in the room is infectious. Snow days have the ability to turn you all into children again, apparently.
Oscar leaves his arm around the back of your chair for the rest of the game. You try desperately to act like it’s not there, like you can’t feel the warmth of him on the back of your neck or the way his fingers brush against your shoulder. It’s consuming your thoughts, though, making it insanely difficult to focus on the card game at hand.
He’s one of the first to go to bed, and you miss the feeling as soon as he’s gone. You head up to bed eventually, and you pass Charles in the hallway on the way to brush your teeth. He gives you a sleepy half hug and stumbles into his room. You find yourself looking at Oscar’s door and wondering if he’s still awake, but you’re not sure what you’d even do if he was.
You wake up the next morning to Lando still out cold, snoring loudly into his pillow, and the early sun inching its way through the blinds. The air mattress is partially deflated, and you slide off of it and onto the floor with a soft thud. There’s a hoodie laying on the floor that seems relatively clean, and you pull it on. You know immediately it’s not Lando’s- it smells like a different laundry detergent and cologne, but it feels familiar and warm, so you leave it on. Then you wrap a blanket around your shoulders before you head downstairs.
Oscar’s sitting on the loveseat, still rubbing sleep from his eyes when you find him. He turns and blinks up at you, eyelids heavy. You blink back, long and slow, the way you’d been told to do with pet cats. It seems to work on him- he smiles. Without a word, you head for the kitchen.
You return with two mugs of tea, and he smiles up at you. He makes room for you to sit, and you do so happily, curling your legs under you and fully facing the window. It’s a winter wonderland outside. You can’t even see where the front yard ends and the street begins. Snow is still falling, though at a slower rate.
“It’s so… quiet,” Oscar whispers.
He stretches one leg out behind you on the couch, and bends his other knee up next to you. When you lean against him lightly, he doesn’t protest or move away. He just smiles.
You nod in agreement. “Pretty. I love snow.”
You blink a couple times and take a sip of your tea. Oscar’s leg is warm against your side. He reaches out to brush a stray lock of hair from your face. You sigh and let your eyelids flutter shut.
“Still sleepy?” He asks.
You nod. “Yeah, but the air mattress is deflating, and Lando’s snoring, so…”
“Here,” he says, and you blink at him in confusion.
Oscar’s hand brushes against yours where you’re holding the mug. Your grip falters, and he slips it from your hand and sets it down on the nearby table. Before you can blink again, he leans forward and wraps an arm around your middle. Then he uses it to haul you towards him, your back against his chest, side by side on the little sofa. You’re nestled between him and the back of the couch, surrounded in warmth, your skin burning up. You can feel the soft rise and fall of his chest behind you.
“Okay?” He asks.
You nod, too sleepy to form the words, too sleepy to worry about what this means or if it’s weird or if someone else will see the two of you and have questions. He lets out a little laugh, his hand slipping into the pocket of the hoodie you’re wearing.
“Is this my hoodie?” He asks. You shrug. “Think it is, there's a hole in this pocket.”
“It was on Lando’s floor,” you mumble, burrowing deeper next to him. “So it’s fair game.”
He laughs, but he lets it go. You rest your cheek against his other arm and bask in the softness of it all, blinking at the falling snow and the soft morning light. Sleep scratches at the back of your brain, and as much as you want to fight it, as much as you want to stay present, it melts over you. The last thing you feel before you fall back asleep is the press of his cheek against the top of your head.
When you wake up, he’s in the kitchen, talking lowly with Alex. There’s a pillow wedged behind you to keep you from falling over and off the couch, and the blanket is pulled up around your chin. You don’t blame him for getting up, and you’re a bit relieved that he seems to have done it before the rest of his roommates are up, because you might have never heard the end of it. Though, when Lando rolls out of bed and joins you on the couch, with Max not far behind, and the three of you squeeze onto the little sofa together, you wonder if they’d have even questioned it. Maybe they’d have seen it the same as this- friends curled up on a slow morning, sharing space and warmth. Maybe that’s all it was for Oscar, too. You’re probably the only one who felt butterflies over it.
Oscar pouts when he walks in and sees his spot taken, though. Behind him in the doorway, Alex meets your gaze with a smirk, eyebrows raised, and you start to wonder again. Eventually, the rest of the people in the house join you downstairs, and you all start to make snow day plans. You close your eyes and listen to them talk. Whatever they come up with, you’ll enjoy, you know it already.
…..
Unfortunately for Oscar, the snow clears, and the first game against the Bears goes forward as planned that week. It’s a mess. The Timberwolves are up by two by the time they’re halfway into the second period, but the Bears are playing like, well, bears. Not a lot of penalties, but cheap shots and bad moves and what looks to be exhausting hockey. They’re frustrated by their own inability to score by the third period, and that’s when the claws really come out. The refs send a Bears player to the box for slashing. He gets back on the ice, and then another one gets called for tripping. There’s a few minutes left, they’re down a player, and they’re desperate.
When Oscar gets locked into a battle for the puck with his old team captain, you hold your breath. He manages to bat it away and send it skidding towards Max, but his helmet and face mask get shoved askew in the process. Somehow, you just know. Everyone in the arena follows the puck, but you watch as the captain on the other team rips his gloves off. You grab onto Lily’s arm and watch his fist connect with Oscar’s jaw. The Timberwolves bench erupts into chaos. The fight is over before it even starts, because Oscar just pushes the guy away and doesn’t swing back. The team captain gets sent to the penalty box. Oscar gets his helmet back on and gets back in the game.
An hour and a half later, you sit at the kitchen counter in their house, a mug in front of you. The house is quiet. You’re not sure why you’re still here- Lando went to bed a while ago, and Max had retreated to his room even before that. You’d made the excuse of staying to clean up the dishes, but now you’re just… here, still. Waiting. You should really go home. It’s bordering on midnight. If you walk home much later than this and any of the guys find out, they’ll be pissed.
The front door creaks open. Soft footsteps echo down the hallway, and you look up from your mug of tea. Oscar doesn’t seem surprised when he walks into the kitchen and finds you sitting there. He stops in the doorway, shoulders dropping. There’s a bruise shadowing his jaw. You wince.
“It looks worse than it feels,” he mumbles.
You stand up from the stool and head for the fridge. You can hear him walking closer as you rummage around in the freezer, finally finding one of the ice packs they keep in there. On a whim, you also reach into a cleverly disguised bag of frozen peas, and come out with two chocolate dipped ice cream bars. When you turn back to Oscar, items in hand, he looks perplexed.
“We have ice cream?” He asks, quietly.
You smirk. “Max hides them. But he can’t keep secrets from me. He won’t mind.”
He takes a seat on the stool, and you flip the switch for the overhead lights. He grimaces.
“I already had it looked at,” he says, brows furrowed. “Trainer said it’s fine.”
You hum as you step closer, pretending your heart doesn’t thud in your chest when you come into close range. “I know,” you say, reaching up and placing the ice pack against his face gently. He hisses. “This is actually an interrogation.”
His hand comes up to hold the pack, fingers brushing against yours. He laughs, then winces. “Yeah? What about?”
You drop your hand to your side. “Why didn’t you fight back?”
He sighs heavily, looking anywhere other than your face. You roll your eyes and open one of the ice cream bars and hand it to him. Then you sit down on another stool, facing him, before you open your own ice cream, too.
“I don’t wanna get suspended,” he shrugs. “And I don’t really fight.”
You decide not to bring up the guy at the party last semester and the way Oscar had been ready to punch him. “Even if they hit you first?”
He nods and makes a little noise. You wonder if he ever fought back when they were on the same team, or if he just accepted it. Your heart aches for him. He shrugs again, eyes flickering up to yours. He looks so sweet, despite the harsh kitchen light, despite the purple tinge on his skin, even more with a bit of chocolate in the corner of his lips. You take a bite of your own ice cream in the hopes that it’ll cool you down.
“Just never felt worth it,” he admits. “I don’t know. Some people are in it for that, for the hits and the fights and the… aggression. I just like hockey. Besides, the guy got a penalty. So now he’s out for a game. That’s better than getting a hit on him.”
The tone he says the guy in is interesting- like he’s distancing himself, like it’s easier if he pretends it was just some guy and not the captain of his old team. You overheard some of Lando and Max’s hushed whispers. You know the guy said some shitty things about Oscar on the ice. And tomorrow, he has to play the rest of the team all over again. Oscar takes another bite of his ice cream and purses his lips.
“I’m okay,” he promises. “And if the guys think I'm going easy on them because I have some weird sense of loyalty, I’m really not.”
“Oh, Osc,” you say quietly, shaking your head. You reach across the gap and press your hand to his wrist, the one holding the ice pack. “Nobody thinks that.”
He shrugs. “Carlos was-“
“Carlos was being a dumbass, but he doesn’t really believe it,” you promise. “After the game, all they were worried about was you. That’s it.”
He lets out a huff and takes another bite of his ice cream, cracking through the chocolate shell. “I don’t wanna be worried about.”
You almost pull your hand from his wrist, but as soon as he says it, he winces, closing his eyes. You wait, rubbing your thumb against his skin. He takes a deep breath. You press your finger to his pulse point, and his breath hitches. You watch his shoulders move.
“I don’t mean that. It’s nice. Just. Had a bad day,” he says. “And we have to do it again tomorrow.”
You nod and squeeze his wrist. “That’s the shitty thing about the way college hockey works, huh.”
He nods. The ice pack bumps against his face, and he hisses. You muffle a laugh and reach to put your hand over his to steady it, keeping your grip gentle. He inhales through pursed lips and closes his eyes. He slips his hand off the ice pack and lets you hold it, and blood roars in your ears. It feels so trusting. Strangely intimate. His hand falls to your knee, and you try to breathe normally. You’re probably failing miserably. You swallow all the feelings down and try to come up with something to say.
“Tomorrow is a new day,” you remind him. “We can wake up and pretend today never happened. A new game, a new start.”
He sighs and closes his eyes. “I can try.”
“That’s all anyone could ask for,” you tell him. “That’s all you can ask yourself for.”
A wavering smile crosses his lips. You take a bite of your ice cream to stop yourself from leaning in to brush your own lips against his cheek. The two of you eat the rest of your ice cream bars in the peace and quiet, under the fluorescent kitchen lights. His hand stays on your knee, barely there, just resting. Your fingers go numb holding the ice pack, but you don’t complain. You can hold this for him, for a little bit. He’s holding onto enough.
…..
You wake up on the couch the next morning with an ache in your neck, because by the time you finished the ice cream Oscar insisted it was too late for you to walk home, and you hadn’t wanted to wake Lando by sneaking into his room. Upstairs, you can hear the guys starting to wake up. Soon they’ll be donning their suits and heading to the rink to get ready. You push yourself to sit up and run a hand through your hair. Then you head for the front door.
Once you’re home, you call Lily. “I have an idea,” you say, ”and I need your help.”
Lily, to her credit, doesn’t ask a lot of questions. You’re sure she sort of understands what’s going on without having to ask, but you’re grateful either way. The two of you shuffle into seats in the arena, eager to watch. You’re wearing your jersey today, hoping it brings good luck, and you’ve both gone full out with lines of blue face paint under your eyes.
When they come out onto the ice, Lando’s the first one to spot you. He does a double take, nudging at Max’s shoulder. They both stare, heads tilted. You can’t blame them. Instead of your normal seats, the two of you are in the front row, right down by the boards.
You’d sit here every game if you could, but the tickets are outrageously expensive on a college student budget, especially when you can sit in the student section for free. Today, though, you’d splurged. There’s a poster board sitting at your feet that you’ve worked painstakingly on all morning. It needs to be seen, and for that, you need to be up close.
Lily lets out a squeak when Alex skates over. “Oh! Hi!”
You roll your eyes affectionately at your friend as she makes hand gestures at her boyfriend through the plexiglass. It’s too loud for them to hear each other, especially through the glass, but Alex’s big smile says more than words ever could. For what’s definitely not the first time, you find yourself wishing you could have what they have. You want someone to smile like that when they see you. You want to feel that giddy feeling.
Lando skates over, tapping his glove against the glass. You just shrug and laugh. He points at the poster board. You shake your head, and he rolls his eyes. It’s not for him. He’s not the one who needs it. Out on the ice, Oscar’s next to Charles, heads bent together as they stretch. Max skates over and points at you, and from this close, you can see Charles' affectionate eye roll, and the way Oscar smiles. He goes from apprehension to adoration quite quickly. Something turns in your chest. Lando, who’s still standing nearby, quirks a brow, and you wonder how plainly it’s written across your face.
While they’re all looking, you take a deep breath, pick up the sign, and raise it above your head. Alex bursts into giddy laughter, Lando’s shoulders drop, and Oscar’s face lights up like the sun.
Tumblr media
Kick Some PiASStri, it says. The letters were cut out of magazines and glued down this morning, and you’re still a bit worried it’s not dry enough, but it seems to hold for now. Max and Charles bump their heads against each other as they laugh. Oscar shakes his head, absolutely beaming. It’s a new game, a new start, another day, another chance. And maybe, what he needs is a little bit of encouragement. A reminder that there are people rooting for him.
He skates over, playfully shoulder checking Lando, who’s talking to Alex, now. Oscar takes his stick and scoops up a loose puck off the ice. He flips it over the barriers to you, and you catch it, shrieking at the temperature when it lands in your hand. It’s nearly as cold as the icepack you held to his face the night before.The bruise on his jaw is visible as he looks at you through the glass, but he’s smiling so wide all the same.
He yells something. You can barely hear, but between that and the lip reading you’ve learned to do after years of watching hockey, you think he says something about his “number one fan.”
You just smile and laugh and hold the puck up in the air, hoping the giddy feeling in your chest isn’t painfully obvious. He puts a glove against the plexiglass, and you place your hand there, too, and you know you can’t but you swear you feel the warmth of him. It’s probably just your brain playing tricks on you. He shakes his head, then pats his hand against the clear surface, and then he takes off across the ice.
When you turn to Lily, she’s smiling knowingly. “That was…”
“Shut up,” you grumble, rolling your eyes. “I don’t wanna hear it. He just needed some encouragement.”
It seems to work. He’s on fire that night, skating across the ice like it’s exactly where he belongs. You’re proud to be there, proud to hold the poster up when he scores, proud to call yourself his friend.
After the game, you find yourself in the back hallway of the arena, waiting. You can hear the music in the locker room from here, can hear the intermittent shouting and cheering from the guys. The other team is long gone. Lily’s back at the house already, getting things ready for the inevitable big party they’ll be having after a win like this. The poster you’d made leans against the wall.
Oscar’s the one to find you. His smile seems permanently set on his face tonight. His hair’s a mess, towel dried and sticking in every direction. “You kicked ass,” you call out.
He doesn’t stop at the socially acceptable distance apart. He walks close, so close you have to lean your head back just slightly to look him in the eye, so close that you can smell his shampoo and see the freckles on his cheeks. His hands are in his pockets, and your heart is in your throat. There’s something wild in his eyes. The bruise on his jaw is dark, almost blue now, and you reach up to brush a finger against the outline of it. He blinks and pulls his hands from his pockets.
“It was nice to see you in the front row,” he says.
Your pulse is pounding. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it. Those tickets are expensive. Just needed to make sure you could see the sign.”
He juts his chin out. “Yeah?”
You swallow, then nod. “Yeah. Did it work?”
He doesn’t answer. He just reaches out, and his hand lands on your hip. His other hand comes up to cup your cheek, thumb brushing under your eye, and you hold your breath. His eyes search your face, darting between your eyes and cheeks and lips. You lean closer, closer. His cheeks are rosy and blotchy, from the game and the post game shower and- and maybe, from this, too. Is he feeling it, too? Is his heart racing, is he holding his breath, are there butterflies swirling around in his stomach?
Just when you think you can’t hold your breath any longer, he closes the gap, pressing his lips against your cheek. You wonder if he can feel how warm your face is beneath his lips, if he can hear the way your heartbeat picks up. It’s just a kiss on the cheek, but you let your eyes fall shut anyways, let the warmth wash over you, down your spine and all the way to your fingertips and toes. This is better than a thank you, better than anything, really.
There’s a loud bang of a door being flung open, and both of you break apart in a rush. You wobble, and he does his best to keep you steady. By the time you stand up straight, the two of you are standing a respectable distance apart, and the door to the hallway swings open. It’s Carlos, first, followed by the rest of the team. You try to compose yourself. Oscar’s face is bright red.
“Bunny!” Charles calls out, eager and bright eyed. “We won!”
Oscar backs away when Charles rushes up to hug you. Nobody comments on his red cheeks, or the poster sitting at your feet. You’re sure they’d teased him about it, but they won the game, so anything that got them there is seen as a good thing. Max is the next one to wrap you up in a hug, and soon you’re being pulled along in the stream of hockey players, out towards where the rest of their friends and families wait, out towards the walk back to the house where the party will already be in motion.
“Your face paint is smudged,” Lando says, pointing at your cheek.
You laugh and brush Lando’s hand away from your face. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch Oscar wipe his thumb on his pants, as discreetly as possible, and your heart flutters in your chest. There’s a blue streak of paint left behind on the fabric. It’s some sort of evidence that it really happened. It’s enough, for now.
Later that night, when you’re falling asleep in Lando’s room after a long night of celebrating, you think of deep blue bruises and bright blue face paint, and how much you wish you’d gotten the chance to mix them both together. It would look nice, you think, as you drift off. Paint smudged on his rosy, freckled cheeks. It would’ve been nice.
You dream of Oscar. You’re definitely not complaining.
a/n: happy oscar’s birthday to all who celebrate! 🥳
Series Taglist: @sourskywalker @ivyvlair @gwginnyweasley @annispamz @bearlul @aresriiots @ggaslyp1 @putting-it-into-parc @black-fireproofs @smilinlemon @arieslost @floralkoi @vicurious28 @likedbygaslyy @rorabelle15 @bwormie @treatallwithkindness @fandomnerd11 @adhxmoony @insunia @mindflay3r @talking-raw @colmathgames2 @assholeinatrenchcoat @saachiep81 @venusacrossthestars @v1naco @anthonylockwoodandco111 @whalebursoot-main @ellen3101 @k-pevensie28 @ninifee1802 @not-nyasa @pleasecallmeunhinged @andruuu28 @aceofwordsandarrows @dreamsarebig @secretunnels @ginsengi @yayahnaise @f1petra @lovecarsgoingvroom @lalloronaisreal @fangirl125reader @tpwkmera @booksandflowrs @elizanav
580 notes · View notes
whatsnewalycat · 12 days
Text
SURRENDER
Tumblr media
Part Two of Ruthless | Stepdad Joel Miller x f!Reader
Rating: Explicit (18+ ONLY)
Word Count: 6.2k+
Warnings: non-canon, Boston Joel, dub con, step-cest, sneaky sex, use of the word daddy in a sexual context, dad kink (that’s a thing right?), age gap, degradation, praise kink, avoidance, silent treatment, sneaking into bedroom at night, angst, collective grief, mentions of explosions and gunshots (nothing graphic), *it’s about the yearning*, hair pulling, no physical descriptions of reader aside from hair can be pulled, reader is 18-19, Joel being a bad dom and a bad caretaker, hot shower, food mention, mentions of religion, unethical D/s dynamics, dry humping, anal sex, physical restraint, face fucking, sub-space unlocked, dirty talk, dd/lg maybe i think, masochism, like a lick of fluff if u squint 
A/N: Heeeey buddy. As stated above, this is a second part to Ruthless. Big thanks to my love @frannyzooey for the help and hype, you're the best. Please be mindful of the warnings and tell me what cults you think exist in post-outbreak tlou.
[ my masterlist ] [ taglist ] [ AO3 ]
———
As the 19-year anniversary of Outbreak Day draws near, unrest festers in the streets of Boston.
Whenever August ticks over into September, residents of the QZ seem to divide into three distinct categories: people who want to forget, people who won’t let them forget, and people who are too young to remember. 
Born post-apocalypse, you fall into this third category. 
Which doesn’t mean the ripples of loss don’t touch you, contrary to what some may think. You still lost something. Everyone did. 
This fact is apparent when you take the scenic route home from your job posting at the distribution center. 
Rubble crunches under your shoes as you walk down the crowded sidewalk, passing by a message spray-painted over the battered brick building: WE’VE BEEN FORSAKEN. 
Graffitied sentiments like these pop up constantly this time of year. Overnight, almost. Your mom and Joel mostly blame Fireflies for the vandalism. The bombs, too. Apparently they stir shit up to make people uneasy, then recruit those who seem susceptible. That’s what your mom thinks, anyway. ‘Leveraging their grief against them,’ she says. 
You think it might be more than that, though. 
Yesterday you saw three separate arguments break out in the streets. When you were taking inventory of k-rations this morning, an explosion went off so close-by that boxes rattled off the shelves. It was the second bombing this week, and you don’t foresee it getting better until October. 
Sure, the Fireflies lay claim to the lion’s share of vandalism and destruction, but their activity is consistent year round. They are the baseline. But this? This is different. 
You attribute the excess chaos to this heavy, static feeling in the air. It clings to your skin and gets stuck under your nails like a thick cloud of invisible dust or spores. Microscopic particles embed themselves in the cracks and creases of each person inside the QZ, fertile ground for clusters of violence to sprout up at every turn. 
If you had to guess, you’d say this phenomenon probably spans the globe. All of you felt the loss of Outbreak Day, the whole human collective. Echoes of what humanity lost will likely still be heard a thousand years from now. 
Some people refuse to accept this. 
Like the guy a few strides ahead of you, who walks by an orange spray-painted message that reads REMEMBER WHAT YOU LOST and sneers, “Almost twenty goddamn years, fuckin’ let it go and move on.” 
You watch him. See his neck get all red as he mutters to himself and clenches his fists at his sides. He looks around like he expects someone to challenge him. Nobody does. 
This doesn’t seem to satisfy him. 
Further up the sidewalk, he encounters a memorial made up of candles and wilting flowers hugging the side of a residential building. He kicks it over and repeats his earlier sentiment, this time louder and directed towards the brick wall. 
“It’s been twenty fucking years, get the fuck over it already!” 
Of course, a passing spectator indulges him. 
“Hey—watch it, asshole!” 
The two men puff up their chests and start yelling back and forth, so you cut right down an alleyway to avoid the situation completely. 
When you arrive home, you find Joel at the dining room table, hunched over a map, holding a glass of whiskey like it’s a lifeline. 
Neither of you say hello, but when you glance up while untying your gritty shoelaces, you catch him staring at you. 
A jolt of electricity shoots through you. 
He corrects himself, returning his eyes to the map as he takes a big swig from his glass. 
“Mom home?” 
“No.” 
Nodding, you rise to your feet and slip out of your shoes, squirming with the excitement that one syllable brings you. 
“When’s she gonna be home?” 
He doesn’t look at you. Just shrugs and takes a sip of whiskey, too engrossed in his project to spare you attention. 
For weeks, he’s been trying his hardest to pretend you don’t exist, which would be typical behavior if he didn’t fuck you dumb a few weeks ago. Sometimes you’re not even sure that what happened between you was real. 
But, then again, sometimes… sometimes you feel him staring at you when he doesn’t think you’ll notice. Sometimes he touches your waist as he passes by. Sometimes at night you hear him pacing the hall outside your bedroom, the faint squeak of the warped floorboards giving him away. 
When this happens, you stare at the door and will him to do it. Aching with something stronger than want, you pray for him to cross the threshold. But he never does. 
You exhale through slack lips and wrinkle your nose at the canned goods. 
“Hungry?”
He grunts in response, which is Joel for ‘I could eat.’
Tilting your head at the handwritten labels, you present the options, “Stew or… meat and beans?” 
Another grunt, roughly translating to ‘Both options are fucking terrible,’ a sentiment with which you wholeheartedly agree. You grab the stew and empty it into a saucepan on the gas stovetop. 
While it heats, you steal glances at Joel, noticing the rigidity in his demeanor. His set jaw and tense muscles. The deep creases in his furrowed brow. 
You’ve coexisted with him long enough to understand he’s not immune to the heady thrum of anguish in the air this time of year. Like you said, nobody is. 
Joel distinctly falls into the “people who want to forget” category of the forsaken, but carries whatever or whoever he lost on Outbreak Day like a ten thousand-pound weight on his broad shoulders. He white-knuckles his way through the season of chaos and mourning and tries to act like it doesn’t affect him, but it does. 
You can tell, not just from the way he holds the grief captive in his body, but also from the obvious indulgence in his favorite coping mechanism: planning. 
Joel is a meticulous planner. 
Between smuggling runs, he comes home after a long day of manual labor at some job site and unwinds by plotting logistics. Drinking, too, but he clearly has a favorite. 
Hours will go by while he pours over reference material, maps or blueprints, making addendums of any notable changes he and your mom discovered. After this, he deliberates. Joel could chew up weeks with this step. He plots out each possible route, taking into consideration all the penciled-in shortcuts and caches they’ve stashed within a 30-mile radius, then determines the most beneficial path for their next big adventure. 
Given FEDRA’s current paranoid state, with the increased patrols and surveillance and whatnot, your mom and Joel won’t be making a trip outside anytime soon. But still, he drinks and plots and winds himself up into a tight obsessive knot. 
You divvy up the simmering stew into two bowls, placing one next to his glass of bootleg booze while you take a seat across the table from him. He ignores your presence, just flicks his eyes around the map like it’s supposed to give him the answers. 
When you’re halfway done with your bowl, you gently prod him, “It’s gonna get cold.” 
Sitting up in his chair, he sighs and scrubs his face with his hands, then folds up the map and sets it aside. 
The two of you eat in silence. Each wordless second twists hot beneath your skin. Your mind wanders to the dig of his fingertips in your soft flesh. The sting of his flattened palm. The stretch of his thick cock. The things he said to you—fuck.  
You’re tempted to tell him to do it again. To tell him that you’re still abiding by his rules. That you don’t sneak out anymore. That you haven’t felt the sweet bliss of release for weeks because you don’t fucking come without his permission. 
Over and over, you rehearse it in your head. You imagine yourself telling him, ‘I’ve been so good for you and you haven’t even noticed.’
The sound of him clearing his throat pulls you from your thoughts. 
He shifts in his seat a little, studying you, “You still seein’ that boy downstairs?” 
Your heart stutters. Heat floods your veins as you shake your head. 
“Why not?” 
All you can do is stare at him while trying to verbalize an answer. For weeks, you ached for his attention. And now that you have it? The words are stuck in your throat. 
You shrug, pushing your empty bowl away to lean your elbows on the table. When you look up at him again, he blinks. Waiting for a response. 
A rush of adrenaline makes the world around you buzz. 
“Why do you care?”
He clenches his jaw for a moment, then parts his lips to respond. 
The apartment door swings open. 
Both of you start at the intrusion. You jump to your feet to collect the dirty dishes while Joel turns to greet your mother. 
“It’s a fucking madhouse out there,” she grumbles, then pulls out the seat adjacent to him and starts telling him about her day. 
———
You step into the shower and hiss in reaction to the scalding hot water. 
The fact that it's warmed at all surprises you. Not an unwelcome surprise, even if it hurts a little. Most days the water comes out tepid at best, and you’d gladly accept a third-degree burn over a lukewarm shower. 
Besides, the sting feels right on your skin, as weird as that sounds. You relish the pain while washing yourself, thinking, ‘this is what I deserve for feeling this way.’ Hell fire, if the sidewalk preachers are right. If there is such a thing. If you’re not there already. 
Only once the water runs cold do you turn it off and go back to your room, leaving the door cracked open behind you. After putting on a big t-shirt and some underwear, you turn off the lights and climb into bed. 
For a while you stare at the water-stained ceiling and listen. You hear the roar of FEDRA’s armed vehicles patrolling the streets. Far away, gunshots ring out into the night. Some kid starts crying next door, then his mother lulls him back to sleep. 
Closing your eyes, you try to tune it all out and focus on the noises within this unit. Concentrate on the drip-drip-drip of the bathtub faucet. The ripping sound of your mom’s snores. 
Then, you hear it. 
A creak from the floorboards. Footsteps. 
Their bedroom door squeaking open. 
Everything goes silent long enough for you hold your breath and scream inside your head, please please please—
It starts again. One careful step, then another. 
His presence hovers there at the door for six restless seconds before he opens it and steps inside, closing it behind him. 
Your pounding heart squeezes your breath ragged. It comes out this shallow, shaky push and pull that broadcasts your consciousness. 
Still, you pretend. 
You keep your eyes pinned shut and listen to the advance of his footsteps to your bedside. 
Down by your feet, the mattress shifts under his weight. He doesn’t touch you for a while, only watches you, his gaze burning into your skin. 
Then, he murmurs, “I know you’re not sleepin’.” 
You blink your eyes open to look at him, in boxers and an undershirt, all hunched over at the foot of your bed. Always carrying that weight on his shoulders. The glow of the street lamp outside your bedroom window casts this perfect golden light on him that makes you kind of hate how good he looks. 
“What are you doing?” you ask in a whisper. 
Over the blanket, he rests his hand on your calf, then takes it back and shakes his head. 
You roll onto your side, swinging one leg over the blanket and tucking it between your thighs, a wordless plea for him to touch your hungry skin. Joel shifts further onto the bed, turning his body to stare down at you with a straight spine. His gaze drifts up your exposed skin, fingers twitching in his lap. 
This faltering self-discipline compels you. 
Joel is nothing if not self-disciplined. That much is true for all the forsaken, yourself included. 
Your working theory is that nobody wants after the world ends, they just need. Need to sleep, need to eat, need to fight. Anything to survive one more fucking day. It’s all any of you can ask for. 
So do you want him, or do you need him? 
And what about him? Joel fucking Miller, with his reinforced concrete walls and heavy heart. Was he ever capable of wanting? 
“Joel,” you reach out to touch him, beckoning him to meet you halfway. 
His eyes flick to your outstretched hand, then back to your face. He shakes his head, as if declining the offer, but you don’t retreat. You sit up and crawl across the bed to him. 
The column of his throat bobs, head rocking back as he watches you come to a stop. He almost lets you touch his cheek when you try again, but snatches your hand away before you can make contact. 
“Don’t,” he warns, the tone of his hushed voice deadly serious. 
He squeezes your fingers while you study his stonewalled expression, tilting your head at him, “Why did you ask me that earlier? If I’m still seeing Bert?”
“I was curious.” 
“Curious why?” 
His lips part, then close, gaze dropping to your mouth. 
Heat pulses through every inch of your body. You drop your voice to a breathy whisper. 
“Were you thinking about what you did to me?” 
Something flickers behind his eyes when they snap onto yours. It draws you in, urging you to scoot so close your knees butt-up against his jackknifed leg. 
“You fucking loved it, didn’t you?” you ask quietly, smirking a little when his stern face twitches, “You loved how it felt to make me surrender—” 
The dull throb of his tightening grip around your hand makes you gasp. A rumble slips from his chest, which could be read as a warning if you had an ounce of self-control left. If you didn’t need him to combust. 
You let your gaze drift from his burning gaze down the slope of his nose to his lips, “Do you think about it every time you see me, like I do with you? How fucking good it felt?” 
“It was wrong—” 
“Then why are you here?”
Your question comes out louder than you expected. It ricochets through the charged space between his body and yours, popping the bubble of awareness around you. 
All the little sounds you picked up on earlier seep back into the foreground. FEDRA patrolling. The whiz-pop of firecrackers going off maybe a block away. A faint murmur of conversation in the upstairs unit. 
He holds your stare, but doesn’t make a sound until a snore rips from your mom’s chest, signaling crisis averted. When he speaks, his words come out hushed and calm. 
“You need to be quiet. Understand?” 
The command liquifies your bones. 
You lick your lips and nod, “I understand.” 
“Good.” He studies you as if deep in thought, finally releasing your hand to pinch your chin and assert, “You know why I’m here. Stop pretendin’ you don’t.” 
It’s hard not to fall in line when he’s looking down at you like this, all hot-blooded and self-assured. Cocky, almost. But you try to push his buttons anyway. 
“I thought it was wrong.”  
“Don’t get cute with me. Yes or no?” 
Your pulse flutters. Tongue goes numb. All you can do is nod. 
He jostles your head a little, “Say it.” 
“Yes.” 
“Say yes please.” 
“Yes please.” 
He works his jaw back and forth, studying you, then tugs your shirt.
“Take this off.” 
While you pull the offending garment over your head and toss it aside, Joel moves further onto the mattress, leaning back against the wall. 
You follow him, swallowing the static buzzing in your throat as he ushers you onto his lap. The scrape of his rough hands on your waist may as well be a live wire crackling across your skin. He pulls you closer and closer until your belly presses into the worn cotton of his shirt. The heat between your legs settles on his stiff length. When he twitches against you, a heady electric current courses through your body and coaxes a whimper from your lips. 
It seems too intimate to look at him, so you cast your gaze downward. Your shaky hands lay flat against his chest, absorbing the rhythmic thud of his heartbeat beneath your palm. 
Being with him like this feels strange. Not strange how it sometimes is with a new partner, that clumsiness before you know how your bodies work together. 
It’s strange in a fucked up out-of-context sort of way. Of course, growing up around him never conditioned you to think of him like this. Joel fucking Miller, with his scarred-up knuckles and unending apathy. The only man who could make big brown eyes like that seem cold. 
All those years, you never considered him anything more than an obstacle. 
Even then, if there was some tiny shimmer of attraction lingering under your skin, a piece of you that wanted more from him, you never thought he could feel so solid and soft and alive. You never dreamed he could make you feel so fucking good.
“This stays between us,” he tells you, more of a command than a request. 
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” 
The tips of his fingers dig into your hips, and he purrs, “You’ve been good for me, haven’t you?”
You preen at the warm timbre of his voice, body arching into him as you breathe, “Yes.”
Under your touch, his muscles tense. He exhales hot against your cheek and guides your hips in a rocking motion, slow and steady, rubbing all those aching nerves hard against him. 
“You liked it, too. Didn’t you? How I fucked you last time?” 
A low-frequency hum throbs deep inside you, amplifying every sensation tenfold. You nod, rolling your hips faster, “I did, I liked it.”
“Yeah, you liked it? Or did you fucking love it?” he hisses, “Dirty little slut like you. Bet you loved getting fucked in the ass, didn’t you?”
“Oh my god, Joel—” 
“Tell me.”
“Yes yes yes I fucking loved it—” 
Too loud. 
He ceases all movement, locking you in place with a steel grip. All ten of his digits bury themselves in your skin. The exquisite pain makes you gasp. 
“Hush.”
You clamp down on your lips in an attempt to stifle yourself. Each heaving breath wiggles down to your core and back. 
“Look at me.” 
If you do, you’ll dissolve at the edges. You know it. You are sugar paper and he is a humid room and you are so incredibly fucked. 
Pinching your eyes shut harder, you shake your head and whisper, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” 
“I’ll come if I do.” 
The confession makes him throb underneath you. He husks, “Do it, look at me.” 
You do. 
Even in the shadows you can make out his features, his parted lips and hooded gaze. The desire etched into his face as he stares at you, looking mystified in a way you’ve never seen before. Heat percolates beneath your skin, sending your heartbeat racing. 
His hips arch into you just so, then he pulls you in and pushes you back, rubbing your body against his, “Do you wanna come? Come for me just like this?” 
“Please—please,” you whine, feeling pleasure branch out from your middle as he slides you back and forth, “Please I wanna come for you it’s been so long—” 
“Will you be quiet?” 
Swallowing a moan, you nod frantically. 
His eyes flicker around your face and he breathes, “Go ahead.”
You’re not sure if it’s the flames in his eyes or the fact that you haven’t had an orgasm in almost two months, but the second he gives you permission, the ecstasy you tried so hard to contain spills over the edges and floods your body. It pulses through you hot and hard and makes your mind go white. You have to clasp your hand over your mouth to muffle the guttural noises that try to escape. 
“That’s it,” he coos from far away, still grinding your twitching body against him, “There we go. That’s my good girl, hmm?” 
“Oh my god—” you whimper at the sharp aftershocks that shoot through you, “It feels so good, Joel, fuck—” 
“Do you wanna come again?” 
Nodding, you link your hands behind his neck and set yourself in motion, rubbing against him a little faster than his set rhythm. His eyelids flutter as he throws his head back, the muscles under his shirt going taught. Beneath the thin fabric of his boxers, he’s hard as a fucking rock. 
Releasing the tight grasp on your hips, he roams up your sensitive skin to your breasts and tests their weight before squeezing. It shoots through you, the pleasure and pain indistinguishable, just a throbbing rush of need. Your breathing comes in heaving gasps and you pinch your eyes shut again, tilting your head towards the ceiling as you once again find yourself struggling to keep quiet. 
“Eyes on me,” he reminds you. 
You snap them open and meet his. 
“Good girl.” 
And—god, the way he looks at you, his gaze hungry and wild. Fucking maddening. Simultaneously, you wish he would stop—the contact too intense, too intimate—and pray that it never fucking ends. 
Heat bubbles up inside you. You bury your fists in his hair and roll your hips faster, chasing the scorching need for more. 
He hisses and pushes back against your thrusts, murmuring, “That’s it, grind that pussy on me, make yourself feel good.” 
“Fuck—fuck yes, it feels so fucking good—” 
“I can feel how fucking wet you are, leakin’ all over me. You do love it, don’t you, baby?”
You start to tremble and nod, trying your hardest to whisper when you tell him, “Yes yes yes I do I fucking love it—I wanna come again, can I please come again, please please—” 
“Listen to you. So good, askin’ for permission.” He brings a hand to your face and brushes his knuckles against your cheek, “Such a quick learner.” 
“Joel—” 
“Do it. Make yourself come again.”
Something untethers inside you. Heartbeat pounding behind your ears, you work your body against him in jerky movements, each one more delicious than the last. His eyes burn into yours, all heavy-lidded and lust-blown in the darkness, watching your face twist up with pleasure as the hot gooey feeling between your legs stretches wider and wider, then overtakes you completely. 
You give in to it with a shattered breath, burying your face against his shoulder to muffle your moans. He holds you down, making sure you smother your cries in the damp cotton of his t-shirt as wave after electric wave washes over you. 
When your spasms start to peter out, and your rolling hips come to a stop, he releases his stronghold to pet your hair. Your heaving chests meld together, breath syncing up into a steady ebb and flow as he smooths his palm up and down your spine. 
For a moment, it’s just this. Just the soothing motion of him rubbing your back, calming your boneless body. Soft and quiet with everything else stripped away. 
Emotion swells in your chest and tingles up your throat, behind your eyes. You try to hide it, the fact that you’re crying, but it becomes obvious when a sob escapes you. 
Joel shifts a little, then tilts your chin up to meet his eyes. He searches your face and frowns, furrowing his brow. 
“I’m sorry,” you wipe your tears and cast your eyes downward, “I—I don’t know why this is happening, I’m sorry. I’m stupid.” 
“No—hey, no,” he assures you, “It’s fine.” 
You shake your head. 
“Look at me,” he commands, and when you do, he cups your cheek and holds your gaze, “It-it’s normal to feel… emotional. Really, it’s ok.” 
The warmth and sincerity of this—his touch, his eyes, his words—makes your heart stutter. It curls up inside you and sedates your jumpy nerves. 
You sniffle and nod, “Ok.” 
His adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he studies you, bringing his hands to your waist. The longer you stare at each other, the more all the subtle signs of his lust come back into focus. How his tongue peaks out to wet his lips when he looks at your mouth. The heavy thudding of his heart. His strained breath and throbbing cock. 
Your gaze drifts to his lips. A needy, aching desire simmers at the base of your spine. It seems wrong to kiss him. More sensual than sexual, rooted in something he will never have for you. But still, you wonder. 
You wonder how soft his plush lips would feel against yours. How he would taste. Whether or not he would use tongue, or teeth, or both. 
Your fingertips twitch hesitantly towards his mouth. He doesn’t pull away or admonish you, even though you give him ample time to protest. When you make contact, smoothing your touch over the pillow of his bottom lip, he murmurs against your fingers, “I’m not your boyfriend. I’m never gonna be, either, I wanna make that clear. That’s not what this is.”  
“I know you’re not my fucking boyfriend, Joel.” You scoff at the thought, “Boyfriend. I don’t want that. I don’t need a boyfriend. What I need…” you watch your touch drift from his mouth to his jawline, where you scrape your nails through his scruff, “What I need is someone to fuck the thoughts out of my head.” 
“Fuck the thoughts outta your head,” he repeats, almost a chuckle, “That’s what you need, huh?”
“That’s what you need, too. Isn’t it?” 
Something smolders behind his gaze as he searches your face. 
“You can use me, you know. Take whatever you need from me. Use me like a fuck toy, Joel, I fucking need it.” 
His whole body reacts to your request, muscles flexing taught as he clenches his jaw.
You bat your lashes at him and pull yourself close enough to feel his breath on yours when you ask, “Don’t you need a little fuck toy like me, daddy?” 
“You’re a sick girl, you know that?” 
“You like it.” 
Neither of you can deny the other’s accusation, resulting in a stand-off that tingles beneath your skin and makes your heart pound in your throat. 
Subconsciously, you rock your hips forward and suck in breath when his cock throbs against your clit. He pushes back, flooding your veins with fire, “Are you gonna keep quiet if I fuck you?” 
“Are you gonna shut me up if I can’t?” 
He lets out one single amused chuckle, then asks, “Are you really tryna test me right now?” 
Suppressing a smile, you shake your head. 
“That’s what I thought.” 
Something in the way he says it blooms heat in your chest. His tone teasing, almost playful. 
He gives your ass a light smack, then tugs at your underwear, “Take these off.” 
You roll off him onto the mattress and slide them down your legs while he stands to strip naked. Seeing his cock makes your body hum. It stands at attention, bobbing a little when Joel catches you staring. 
Sidling up to the bed, he beckons you closer, so you follow his silent guidance and crawl over to him, wrapping your hand around his thick length. You glance up at him, licking your lips as you await further instructions. 
“Get it nice ‘n’ wet for me.”
Nodding, you bring your mouth to the head of his cock, exploring first with your tongue, licking up the salty dribbles of lust. You taste a hint of yourself on him too, arousal that soaked through his boxers and marked him yours. Temporarily, at least. At least for tonight, or at least for right now. 
A pleased rumble erupts from his chest when you wrap your lips around him and start to slide up and down his shaft. He feels solid and warm and fills your mouth completely. The first time he hits the back of your throat, you gag and pull off him, working him with your hands as you catch your breath. 
“Do it again.” 
You take him in your mouth, rutting up and down a few times before sitting up taller to drive him down your throat. He buries his fists in your hair and thrusts his hips forward, “There we go, that’s it—fuck, you’re so fucking good at that.” 
His praise sparks at your core. You whine around his cock and bob against his thrusts. It doesn’t matter that you can’t breathe. You don’t need oxygen, you just need this. The sting of his grip prodding your movements, the raw stretch of him fucking your airway, the wet squelch that fills the room. 
When he yanks your head back and unclogs your throat, you gasp for breath and stroke him with both hands, churning his slick length. Fire roars in his eyes when you look up at him. 
He grabs your chin and husks, “Say thank you.” 
“Thank you.”
He smacks your cheek and grabs your chin again, “Say thank you for fucking my face.” 
“Thank you for fucking my face, I fucking love it—”
“Say please can I have some more.” 
“Please can I have some more, daddy?” 
Stifling a groan, he crams it back in your drooling mouth, down your throat, snapping his hips in sharp, quick thrusts that make you gurgle with pleasure around him. Far away, you hear him panting, “Take it take it take it—”
The chorus makes your body tingle. You think about your mom sleeping in the other room, how there’s just a wall between her and this. How she could wake up at any moment and follow the muffled, hedonistic noises. How she would find Joel balls deep in your mouth and you giving him something she never could: control. 
This time when he pulls you off his cock, he uses his white-knuckle grip on your hair to make you flip over and turn around, ass in the air towards him. 
The head of him nudges up against the tight ring of your asshole. You hear a wet splat, then feel the heat of his spit trickling down between your cheeks. Your body clenches with anticipation as he smears it around. 
“Remember, you gotta relax,” he murmurs, releasing your hair to smooth a palm against your spine. 
You inhale a deep breath and exhale the tension from your muscles, letting your heart melt into the mattress. 
“Good girl,” he arches forward, breaching your entrance. 
The sharp sensation splits you open. It pulls a wanton moan from your lips that rings through the silent apartment like a siren. 
Yanking you up by your hair, Joel secures your back to his humid chest and clasps a hand over your mouth. Stars invade your field of vision as he drives his cock deeper and deeper, only stopping when he can’t go any further. You sob against his palm, so he pulls it down harder, muffling the noise until you stop. 
Everything goes silent and still, but you can’t even bring yourself to worry that you woke her. Not when all you can hear is your thudding heart and his ragged breath, coarse with what you assume is rage or lust or both. Not with his lightning rod cock vibrating hot up your middle. 
It doesn’t matter that she could walk in to find her common-law husband fucking your ass, or that this discovery would burn all your lives to the ground. All you care about is more. More stimulation, more attention, more Joel—more more more—
You try to move your hips in an attempt to create friction, but his vice grip renders you immobile. So you stay in place and try not to make noise as the flames lick at your insides. You squirm and ache and claw at his arms while he muffles your whimpers. 
Then your mom snores in the other room. 
He pulls his hand from your mouth and you gasp for air. 
Thinking you can get ahead of the inevitable scolding, you plead, “I’m sorry—” 
He drags his cock out of your body, then plunges it back inside, all the while hissing, “If you’re gonna be my little fuck toy—” 
“Holy fuck—”
“—You have to be fucking quiet. Do you understand?” 
Nodding, you gasp, “I understand, I’ll do better, I promise—please just fuck me, please please—”
You strangle a moan in your throat when he slips a hand between your legs and draws tedious circles on your clit. 
“Try ‘n’ breathe through it,” he coaches, “I’ll go slow for you this time, ok? Just remember, shut the fuck up and take deep breaths.” 
You suck in air until your chest is full, then release it, restricting its flow through a narrow space between your lips. You do it again. Tension begins to melt from your bones. It has a clarifying effect, allowing you to relish in the heat of his touch. You take another deep breath, only hitting a snag when Joel starts to rock his hips. 
It feels fucking unreal. Rough and raw, the steady drag of his cock fills you with static electricity over and over. 
“Oh fuck—”
“Shhh…”
Your inhale stutters, but you regain control on the exhale. Everything disappears except him. His heated skin sticking to yours. How fucking full he makes you feel with each thrust. The thick swell of pleasure that accumulates every time he flicks his wrist. You surrender to all of it, to Joel, entrusting him with everything except your breath. 
“That’s it, baby, let go.” 
“It feels ssso gooood,” you whisper, head rolling back onto his shoulder, “Nothing’s ever felt this good, holy shit—”
His lips tickle your ear as he purrs, “Such a good little fuck toy, aren’t you, baby?”
You gasp a little when the velvet of his tongue rolls against your pulse. Nodding, you reach back behind his neck to scrape your fingernails through his curls. He does it again, this time sealing his lips to suck on the sensitive skin. Your heart pounds thick and hot through your body. The edges peel back at the corner of your mind. You push back against his thrusts, panting out subdued whimpers as the fire in your belly begins to spread. 
“Do you wanna come?”
“I do, I wanna come—oh my god I wanna come, please make me come, daddy—”
His hand covers your mouth and holds you down so he can fuck you harder, stretching you out wide and filling you deep. He works your clit faster. The bed frame thumps against the wall in a frantic rhythm that matches the wet slap of his thrusts. Tears prick your eyes and heat swells beneath your skin, pressure building more and more until you think you can’t fucking take it anymore—
His palm smothers your moans as you fall apart, breaking into a million pieces and coming back together again with a choked sob. Joel buries his face in the crook of your neck and groans as his hips snap forward, then stutter to a stop. 
The two of you go slack propping each other up, too loose-limbed and lethargic to peel yourselves away at first. He makes the first move to separate, though, uncovering your mouth to brush the damp hair from your forehead, “You ok?” 
“Yeah,” you tell him instinctively, then second-guess yourself and look up to meet his eyes, “I mean, I don’t know. I think so.” 
He studies you, nodding. 
Hesitation buzzes in your chest when you contemplate whether or not to return his question. It seems unlikely he’d cooperate even if you wanted to know the answer.  So instead, you give him his out. 
“Is this goodnight, then?” 
“Suppose it is.” 
A flicker of something passes between your bodies as you stare at each other. It feels so hot to the touch that you chicken out, glancing away as you whisper, “Will you do something for me before you go?” 
“Hmm?” 
“Tuck me in?” 
The noise that comes out of him is half-grunt, half-chuckle. Joel for, ‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.’ But he obliges, pulling his soft cock from your body at a mercifully slow speed before allowing you to make yourself comfortable. He sorts out your blanket and drapes it over your body, then starts fishing his clothes off the floor. 
Tugging his shirt over his head, he asks, “Need anything else, princess?” 
You’re sure it’s a dig, but choose to ignore it as you snuggle into the covers and hint, “Don’t make me wait so long next time.” 
He sits down at the edge of your mattress and threads his legs through the boxers, “I’ll make you wait as long as you need to. What else?”
“Mmm. Goodnight kiss?”
“Goodnight kiss,” he scoffs to himself, then looks back over his shoulder at you, “Fine, then I’m goin’ to bed.” 
He turns to face you more directly, folding a knee onto the bed as he leans in and tilts your head to the side, pressing a gentle kiss into your cheek. Even though you wish he had kissed your lips, you close your eyes and savor the affection while you can. 
After murmuring goodnight, Joel leaves. He crawls back into bed with your mother while you memorize the sound of his retreating footsteps.
892 notes · View notes
metal-mouse · 1 year
Text
Because You're Mine
pairing: Ominis Gaunt x f!MC (m/f pairing)
themes: smut. troping tropeily. ye olde patch him up and then bang him.
warnings: 18+. Minors DNI. p in v. unprotected sex. fingering. horrendous pull out game. possessive!Ominis. someone threatens to dose you with a love potion. blood. mentions of violence. everyone is aged up.
summary: 3.9k word count. You are most surprised to see Ominis Gaunt return to you with a broken nose and a black eye from a fight. He's being awfully cryptic about who he got into a fight with, until you've finished healing him and he confesses why he's so upset.
note: Had a dream about this recently and decided to share it as a treat and also sometimes the best way to break through writer's block is to lean on the tropiest of tropes. Come get y'all juice. left MC house as ambiguous - I'm very Slytherin coded my b. i take liberties on what kind of undergarments they wear. Not an ounce of editing to be found.
@anto-pops @localravenclaw look guys i finished it
You didn’t look up from your book as the door to the Room of Requirement groaned open. There were only two people who knew of this room besides you, and as Professor Weasley hadn’t stepped foot in it since your fifth year, that left only one person. 
“Hello Ominis.” You called out your greeting, nearing the end of the page. He didn’t respond, which made you look up. You dropped the book and sat up straight at the sight of him. His cheeks were pink, there was a gash on the bridge of his nose which was steadily dripping blood, and one of his eyes was beginning to swell shut. Worry filled you, as your mind went to all of the worst case scenarios for what could have caused this. You stood up and hurried towards him, urging him to sit down on the sofa you had just been occupying. 
“Hello.” He said finally, in a dejected voice. 
“Are you alright?” You asked, a table appearing next to you with a bowl of water and some cloths. You very gently took his jaw in your hands as you tilted his head up to inspect his wounds. The cut on his nose was deep, and now that you were up close you could see his nose was slightly crooked. His pain was very evident, and his frown likely wasn’t making it any better. 
“I’m wonderful, thank you for asking.” Ominis hissed as you turned his head to get a better look at his eye. You were fairly certain his cheekbone wasn’t broken, which was more than you could say for his poor nose. 
“What happened?” You asked, ignoring his irritated sarcasm. If anything, it only suggested to you that he was fine beyond the wounds on his face and possibly a bruised ego. You weren’t sure if you had the skill to repair his nose. In the last year, you’d taken to spending more time in the hospital wing with Nurse Blainey. You’d assisted her during a detention once, and she had been more than happy to show you some of the healing arts. You knew the spell… perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to try? 
“I got into a fight.” He said, skirting around your question. 
“Well, obviously. I would love some detail, if you’re willing to provide. When Sebastian comes around all beat up like this it makes sense, but you mostly keep your hands to yourself,” You said while taking one of the cloths and gently pressing it to his nose, “hold that. I’m out of wiggenweld, I’m going to brew some.” His hand replaced yours as he held the cloth to staunch the blood dripping from his nose. You looked down at his uniform. His shirt and tie were covered in blood.
“Is detail truly important? I was in a fight, and now I’m here.” Ominis’ voice was muffled from the cloth. You poured some water into the cauldron atop your potions station. He was usually very open with you, content to tell you all of his deepest thoughts. Somewhere deep in your mind you wondered if this fight had somehow been caused by you. He had gone to Hogsmeade today with Sebastian, and Rookwood’s Ashwinders still tried to prey on you. You prepared your Horklump juice and Dittany leaves, waiting for the water in the cauldron to begin bubbling. It was strange that he would keep something like that from you, even if he didn’t want you to worry. 
“It’s clearly bothering you a lot, Ominis.” You said softly. He made an angry noise and didn’t respond. Now that the cauldron was bubbling, you added the ingredients and stirred the correct amount of times. You turned away to let it brew until it was ready, and returned to Ominis’ side. You wordlessly took the cloth from him and pulled it aside. It was drenched in blood, but it had mostly stopped the bleeding coming from both his nostrils and the gash on the bridge of his nose. 
“Ouch!” He hissed as you reached up and gently poked at his nose. 
“Stay still. It’s broken. Does anything else hurt?” You mumbled, climbing into his lap and holding his face steady with one hand. You fumbled for your wand, and he let out a little panicked breath and shook his head a little.
“What are you doing?” He asked, his good eye widening slightly.
“The Wiggenweld can’t straighten a broken nose. Don’t move. Episkey!” You said. He yelped as his nose cracked back into its normal position and the gash healed. You nodded in approval, pleased that the spell had worked. You’d never cast it beyond Nurse Blainey’s watchful eye. 
“There. I bet you can breathe a little better now.” You said, removing yourself from his lap to check on your potion. Ominis took a long, very audible breath. You watched him as he reached up and felt his nose. He looked absolutely miserable. Your lips pressed together in a frown, it was worrying how little information he was willing to divulge. 
“Have you seen Sebastian?” He asked. 
“No, I thought he was with you.” You said, scooping some of your completed wiggenweld potion into a glass. Anxiety briefly pulsed in your chest, worrying that whoever had attacked Ominis had also gotten Sebastian. No. He wouldn’t have come to you unless he knew Sebastian was safe. 
“He never met me. Must be with Violet.” He snorted, sounding absolutely furious with his friend. You tilted your head, making a small sound of agreement. Violet McDowell was Sebastian’s particular flavour this week after you’d forbidden him from asking Poppy Sweeting on a date. You had promised him swift and painful retribution if he had even looked at Poppy without the intent of marrying her and loving her forever. 
“Here. Drink this.” You said, handing Ominis the glass full of wiggenweld. You crouched in front of him, a hand on his knee balancing him as he drank. The bruising around his eye faded, and he sighed with relief as he set down the now empty glass. You stayed crouched before him, your fingers drumming on his knee as a sign that you would love an explanation. 
“You really can’t just let it go?” He asked. 
“I’m sorry, I’m worried. It’s frightening when you get hurt.” You squeezed his knee a little. He let out a little sight, his frown softening.
“No, please don’t apologize. It should be me apologizing, I can see how someone arriving covered in blood would be worrying - especially for you.” He put his hand over yours. You stood then, setting your wand to the side as you settled down beside him. 
“If you really don’t want to tell me what happened, please just tell me if this is going to be a recurring problem.” You said in compromise, taking his hand again. He looked deep in thought, clearly battling with his inner thoughts.
“I heard two sixth-years plotting about how they were going to slip you a love potion.” Ominis said finally. You blinked in surprise. Out of everything that could have come out of his mouth, that had been the one you least expected. 
“A love potion?” You echoed. He nodded, and you admired the rage on his face. He’d fought two boys purely because they wanted to give you a love potion. You fought the smile spreading on your lips. For someone who was awfully composed, he was certainly prone to his jealous moments. 
“Yes. A love potion. They’re lucky I haven’t gone directly to the Headmaster. I should have them both expelled.” He sneered. Your face went hot at the arrogance in his voice. You leaned in, loosening his bloody tie and tossing it to the side.
“You’re covered in blood.” You informed him. He wasn’t really listening to you at all, instead he was caught up in his own rage. You took that opportunity to unbutton his shirt so you could remove it and try to clean the blood off. 
“Foolish, impudent worms. Gryffindors always think they’re entitled to that which is not theirs.” He pulled his arms out of the sleeves when you tugged on his shirt. He may not have been paying attention to you, but you were hanging onto his every word. That which is not theirs? That statement certainly held some heavy implications. You were grateful he’d stepped in of course, love potions were risky and you did prefer to make your own decisions.
 Ominis continued his monologue, describing precisely what he had done to the Gryffindor boys for their crime. You took a clean cloth and dampened it to wipe the blood off his neck and chest. He’d been exceptionally cruel to the boys, and every word he spoke had your heart beating faster. It was becoming difficult to pay attention to your cleaning. He’d taken their threat personally, and had essentially destroyed them for it. Broken their wands, hanging them upside down from a tree, blackened eyes, he had truly done a number on them. Out of your little trio he was widely regarded as the most peaceful, with Sebastian being the most violence-prone and you falling somewhere between the two. He was incredibly protective of you, something you’d discovered even when your friendship had only just begun to bloom. 
His hand closed around your wrist suddenly, and you realized you had stopped moving. You looked at his face, his hair was a mess, his cheeks were still pink, and he held an expression you’d never seen before. You were suddenly desperate to break the silence. His other hand lifted to your cheek, his fingers delicately tracing along your jawline. 
“They can’t have you.” He whispered, his fingers moved down your neck slowly. Your breath hitched at this display of possessive intimacy that you had never seen before. You and Ominis had your fair share of intimate moments, but this? Never anything like this. This was an entirely new side to him. It was something you’d expect of Sebastian, the man who moped over girls he’d barely been involved with for longer than a week, but never Ominis. You didn’t know what to say. When you had first crossed that border between friendship and something more, it had been relatively laid back. You went for walks together, bought each other sweets and butterbeers from Hogsmeade, and spent late nights in each other’s arms in the Room of Requirement or the Undercroft. This change was almost as unexpected as its impact on you. You knew deep down that this should not be making you so aroused.  
“Where has thi–'' You were cut off when Ominis leaned in and kissed you. You dropped the cloth from your hand as he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you onto his lap. You draped one arm behind his neck, and rested the palm of your other on his cheek with your fingers in his hair as you matched his passion. It wasn’t rough, so much as it was claiming. His cold hands pressed against the skin of your back making you gasp and arch against him. He took this opportunity to deepen the kiss, his tongue moving so sinfully your core was steadily aching now. You knew precisely what that tongue was capable of, and you’d grown to anticipate it. Dream about it even. 
His rapidly warming fingers stroked your sides as he brought them under your front and withdrew them from your shirt entirely. As Ominis began to unbutton your shirt, you began to lightly rock your hips to create some friction between you and the bulge in his trousers. He let out a low groan and proceeded to rip your shirt open. Your eyes snapped open as you sat back a little bit in surprise, but he pulled you back against him with a single tug of your shirt. His hands went to your chest, and he let out a dark laugh against your mouth when he felt only skin. You weren’t wearing anything under your shirt. His mouth lowered and he left hot, wet kisses and little nips down your jaw and onto your neck. You couldn’t contain the small moans and gasps that tumbled from your lips. 
Ominis’ tongue ran along your collar, and his hands roamed to your backside where he wrapped his arms around you and lifted you up more. The hand you had in his hair shot to the back of the sofa to brace yourself. You cried out as he bit down on the side of your breast. His tongue delicately swiped out licking the hurt he’d just caused. He held you up with one arm, his other hand running along your backside and between your legs. The fabric of your trousers was disappointingly thick, and you felt far too constrained while wearing them. His hand moved to cup your breast as he swirled his tongue over your sensitive nipple. He stopped suddenly, his hands falling to your waist as he pushed you back slightly. 
“Take off your trousers.” He commanded. The bark in his voice sent a wave of heat to your core. You stood up, fumbling with the buttons before finally pushing them down. He reached out and made a sound of displeasure when his hands ran over your underwear. He hooked his thumbs in the waistline and yanked them down. You stepped out of your trousers and undergarments, and Ominis checked to make sure you’d done precisely what he had wanted. He made no move to remove his trousers. You stared at his bulge desperate to see him undressed. It wasn’t fair that you were now bare in front of him, and he was still half-dressed. 
“I want to taste you.” You pleaded in an attempt to get him to take his trousers off. 
“As reluctant as I am to deny you, don’t you think you’ve taken enough care of me today?” Ominis’ lips twisted into an arrogant smile, as he turned you around and pulled you back. You fell into his lap. One of his arms looped around you pulling you back against his chest. His lips pressed to your neck, leaving kisses and small bites all along the smooth column. He pushed your legs open wide, biting down hard on the flesh of your shoulder. You cried out, your eyes squeezing shut at the pleasurable pain. One hand ran along the inside of your thigh, and the other stayed planted on your belly. 
“Those fools think they could have this. That they could have what is mine.” His breath was hot on your neck. You whined as his hand stroking your thigh got closer and closer to where you wanted it. 
“Please Ominis.” You complained when his fingers brushed next to your wet and aching center but he didn’t touch it. Your lip curled, two could play at this game. You began to rotate your hips slowly, grinding down on the bulge in his pants. Your hands covered his and you moved them to where you wanted them to be. One between your legs on your heat, the other cupping your breast. He huffed out a laugh.
“Eager, aren’t we?” He chided. 
“I thought you wanted to prove I’m yours.” Now this spurred him on. Without warning he curled two fingers inside of you. Your back arched as you let out a gasp and Ominis began to pump his long fingers deep inside of you, ensuring the heel of his palm pressed against your clit while he worked. While his fingers curled against your sweet spot, you shamelessly rutted against his palm to elevate you even higher into ecstasy. 
“Is that better, darling?” He asked, nibbling on the back of your ear. 
“Uh huh.” You moaned, nodding your head. You wished you could kiss him. You wanted to face him and have him buried deep inside of you. You would have turned around if this didn’t feel so fucking good. There was something about him being in complete control and doing what he wanted with you. You weren’t even tied up, yet you felt useless to do anything to pleasure him beyond grinding against his bulge. There was a tantalizing pressure building inside of you, and you knew you weren’t going to last much longer. Ominis seemed to have realized as he pressed further into you and his fingers kept up the exact same pace. Your head fell back against his shoulder, his free hand coming up to wrap around your throat. 
“Right there?” He asked. You nodded against him, unable to form a coherent thought. You writhed against him, pressing his palm hard against your clit. Your eyes squeezed shut as you fell over the edge and bolts of pleasure made your toes curl. You let out a sinful scream that may have been his name. Ominis didn’t stop, letting you ride out your orgasm on his hand until your knees clamped together and he withdrew. You were a panting mess as he gently guided you to lay on your back. You heard the sound of his belt hitting the ground, and you opened your eyes and watched him pull down his trousers. You moaned at the sight of his cock springing free, delightfully pink and large. 
Ominis knelt on the couch between your knees, lowering himself over you. Impatient and greedy, you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him to press your lips to his. You were hungry for him, your tongue swiping over his bottom lip prompting him to open up for you. You were certain the way he tasted would stay with you for the rest of your life, so damn sweet and addicting. Reaching down, you gently wrapped your hand around his cock and lined it with your entrance. Slowly, Ominis pressed into you with a low moan. You were distracted from your kiss at the feeling of his cock filling you up. He always went slow when he started, knowing it drove you crazy. Once he was sheathed fully inside of you, he stayed completely still aside from the hand that laced in your hair lifting your head again to press a sweet kiss against your lips. 
“I’ve always been yours.” You whispered as his forehead rested against yours. His eyes snapped open at this, his fingers curling so he was pulling your hair. He ground into you, and you choked on a moan. Ominis pulled out nearly all the way and slammed back into you with a husky groan. He hooked his free arm behind your knee, pushing your leg up and out of the way as he settled into a slow and steady rhythm. 
“Of course you have. I fit s-so perfectly, it’s like you were made for me.” The little stammer in his sentence made your heart flutter. You gasped when Ominis rolled his hips forward deepening his thrusts. Your nails scraped across his shoulders as your mind was overtaken by pleasure and thoughts of him. The moans and small praises that came as a steady stream from his mouth paired with his cock hitting every angle inside of you had you on a high you didn’t think possible. 
You arched your back in an attempt to let him deeper inside of you. Despite being connected at your most intimate part, you wanted more. You wanted inside of his heart, inside of his soul. Through your pleasure, you opened your eyes to look upon his face. His eyes were heavy-lidded with pleasure, his mouth hung open and his skin completely flushed, his hair an absolute mess. You loved it. Without warning, Ominis picked up the pace slamming into you without restraint. You dug your fingernails into his shoulders now, forcing him down to kiss you. His arms wrapped around your waist arching your back even further and changing the angle which he fucked into you. Between the feeling of his lips on yours, and his cock inside your already sensitive cunt, you were rapidly tumbling towards another orgasm. When Ominis took one hand from under you and reached down to rub circles on your swollen clit, your head fell back.
“Come.” Ominis ordered, and you didn’t even have it in you to scream this time. Ominis muttered a string of curse words as your walls clenched around him and you rose up to clamp your teeth down on his shoulder. It was almost painful how hard he had made you come, and some primal part of you needed him to share in that feeling. He kept his steady pace, not faltering once as he chased his own pleasure with a great moan. The hand that had been rubbing you clamped around your neck and squeezed. You watched him and saw in his face he was close. You met his thrusts, matching his rhythm. His chest heaved and a light sheen of sweat had formed across his body. In that moment you were certain that it wouldn’t matter if someone gave you a love potion, Ominis was all you’d be able to see. 
“Yours, Ominis.” You whispered, incapable of telling him truly what you were thinking. His fingers dug into you and his grip on your neck tightened. Almost there. You watched in awe as his head dropped and he let out a guttural groan that slightly resembled your name. His cock twitched and his body trembled as he emptied himself inside of you with shallow thrusts. Ominis’ hand let go of your throat, and he collapsed on top of you. Both of you were breathing heavily, and you wrapped your arms around him holding him tight to your chest. You pressed kisses to the top of his head and he let out a wordless groan. After a few moments passed, Ominis slowly pulled out leaving you feeling empty.
“We should have conjured a bed.” He mumbled. You let out a little laugh as one appeared next to the sofa. Ominis rolled over, taking you with him so that you were laying on his chest instead of him atop of you. You knew that you should get up and probably clean yourself off, but with his arms around you and your genuine concern about your ability to stand, you were content to just stay. 
“Maybe you should get into more fights.” You sighed, reveling in the lovely feelings of your afterglow. He laughed, gently rubbing your back.
“If men don’t learn how to behave, I just might.” He said. You could do without him getting injured, but if this was how he reacted when he was jealous or feeling possessive? You could definitely get behind that. 
“I’ll be here when you do.” You sighed, thinking about how you should really restock on your wiggenweld potions. 
“And, for the foreseeable future, I will be tasting your food and drink before you.” Ominis said, making you snort. 
“What am I, the Queen of England? I don’t need a food taster, Ominis, if anything I’ll just start carrying around an antidote to love potions.” You told him.
“You can be my Queen.” He grinned at you.
“You’re not allowed to speak with Sebastian anymore, he’s rubbing off on you.” You sat up a little bit to get a better angle as you looked down at his face. 
“That’s your job, Darling.” 
“My point has been proven.” You smiled widely at the sound of his laughter. When you were with Ominis is when you were happiest. You were safe, comfortable, and content. You were in love, and you were his.
3K notes · View notes
p0ssywhippedcream · 9 months
Text
Zuko has been with the gang for a while now and you've been able to teach him how to do most any chore. He can set up tents, bathe Appa and even dry clothes off without lighting them on fire (it happened a couple times tho). But the one thing he just can't get is cooking.
He stands beside you as you lower a pot over the fire gently, his eyebrows knitted. He watches as you angle it so there's no chance of it falling as it small bubbles appear; signaling its commence of boiling. You sit down on a flat stone and take out a small knife, gesturing a c'mere motion with the blade.
"Can you hand me the tomatoes?" He grabs them and passes them over, ears flushing when your hand brushes his.
"You're going to boil them?" You giggle and shake your head.
"No, this is for the broth and the beef. Everybody has been craving it but Aang is a vegetarian, remember?"
He nods and pops a squat next to you on a large rock. Your ankles touch and his toes flex. "You're making him something separate." You agreed with a hum and begin to slice the fruit over a bowl in your lap.
"That's nice of you." You glance up briefly and give him a sheepish grin. He finds it endearing.
As you focus your attention back to the task at hand, Zuko wonders what he should say next. Before he can really consider it, you toss a piece of tomato at Momo and ask, "Your uncle makes tea right?"
"Uh, yeah. Uncle loves tea."
"How come you haven't learned how to?"
He doesn't want to admit that he didn't pay attention when he should've, when he had time to notice how Iroh did it. "I wasn't taught."
"Do you want me to teach you?" You look up and pause your slicing. The bowl has a small stack of tomato piled inside that tumbles when you shake it.
"I'm not very good at uh.. making things." You snicker, remembering when he burned lettuce a couple weeks ago.
"Yeah, I noticed," You smile to let him know you're teasing and he returns it a little shyer. "I could, though. Teach you. You don't have to be good at it."
"What's the point of teaching me if I'm not good at it?"
"I like spending time with you." You shrug and reach for an avocado across him. Your arm is just too short and he takes the opportunity to grab it for you, turning his head so you don't see his blush. "And you'd get the hang of it, tea is like.. your birthright."
Zuko chuckles. He always thought his birthright was violence. He wonders if it still is. He doesn't say that. "Because Uncle owned a tea shop?"
"Yeah," You laugh, "And you can use your fire bending, yunno? But I'm not sure if you have the patience for it."
"Why's that?" Suddenly Sokka is next to him, holding a pile of sticks and asking you where you want them. You point next to the fire and notice the water jumping in the pot. Standing up, you motion for the broth ingredients and Zuko hands you the pre-mixed bowl. Sokka is quickly distracted by Toph demanding to know where Aang went and Zuko turns back to you.
The crackle of the fire comforts the atmosphere as the sun sets, giving your face an orange hue that dances dramatically from your chin to your nose. You tuck a piece of hair away and Zuko can see the way your eyes glitter in the soft glow, your pupils swallowing the color of their rims.
It's silent for a bit, Zuko simply watching as you stir the pot and occasionally call out for Sokka and Toph to stop arguing. You set down the ladle and pick up a bowl of assorted vegetables and fruits, passing it to Zuko.
"Can you find that bread from the village? I think it's in Katara's bag?" He disappears to rummage and returns holding a half-eaten loaf.
"Okay, that should be enough," You remark as you turn away from cooking and towards his returning figure. You make eye contact with him and your nose wrinkles in the moonlight as you smile, "Can you cut that in half and make a sandwich?"
He sits down and follows your instructions, first wiping the knife you'd used earlier before slipping it in the loaf and beginning to separate it. His dominant hand slices down as he keeps it steady in the other and as he gets to the end, he takes his chance to look at you.
Your feet are bare on the ground, a little dirty and as you shift from side to side, your heels lift enough he can see your bridges. A daffodil is stuck to the bottom of your left foot, staring at him before being engulfed in a step again. You move around the pot, pushing the ingredients stuck to the side back in the middle and the flower is left upside down on a rock.
His finger burns in pain and he notices a small cut. He had finished slicing the bread and had dug into his hand. Cursing, he sets aside your assignment and stands up holding his hand as blood flows slowly. You notice immediately and rush over. You bend down and rip a bit of your skirt, wrapping it around his hand and shushing him back down onto the rock again.
"It's not too deep, you should be okay." He nods, hissing as the fabric rubs the sensitive flesh. "It hurts?"
"Yeah." You press his hand towards you, checking it again and clutching it from the palm.
"You can go back to cooking." You look up at him confused and he continues, "It might burn."
"It's fine, it needs to marinate. You need my attention more."
The firelight covers the furious burning of his face, "Are you sure? It's a small cut."
Your expression is hard to see in the dark but the coy fluttering of your features is obvious enough. You're nervous, and a shade darker on your cheeks and oh, you're blushing too.
"I care about you." You murmur and it's a blessing he hears it.
"I- I care about you too," He offers, the urge to look away would be worse if you weren't already doing that. He watches the twitch of your nose as your smile takes your lips again. You meet his gaze and he realizes how close you are. He feels your hot breath on his face and leans in just a bit more. "You look really... really pretty."
Your eyes crinkle in the corners as your mouth spreads wider and reveals your teeth, dimples making his heart flutter as he confesses, "You're glowing. The- the fire makes you glow."
You digest his words with a gentle laugh covered by your hand. "Yeah," You pause and quirk your head to the side, "You do."
He wants to faint and of course he doesn't know what to say. You help him out again and suddenly your nose is brushing his. "You like me?"
He nods because he's not sure he can speak without squeaking.
"I like you too.." Your words are felt on his lips as you get even closer. Your eyes dart across his face, seemingly checking for affirmation before your mouth is on his and all the blood rushes to his head. His hand comes up to hold your head as he kisses you back. For a second, it's so amazing as you lick across his bottom lip until pain is shooting up his hand and he has to pull away.
Your hair had brushed his still open cut and he cradled his hand a little closer to himself as you re-examine it. "Sorry.."
Zuko looks at you like you're crazy, "Don't be sorry."
You glance up and away, still flustered.
"I've liked you for so long," His admission fills the night wind and you prompt him to continue with wide eyes. He's a little quieter as he finishes with, "Since Ba Sing Se."
He misses your voice dearly as he waits for your answer. He gets it in the form of giggles ticklish as butterflies. He watches you with curiosity until you say, "I was wrong, you are patient."
He laughs too now and you both shake beside the fire with hands holding bellies. The spurt of broth leaping out of the pot brings you back and you scramble up to stir it. Zuko watches as you step over the daffodil again and it flips upright, showing him that it was two, smushed so closely it looked like one. He looks up at you in admiration as you taste the stew and feels a surge of affection for whatever luck landed him at your side tonight.
"You were wrong too," His face contorts in confusion and you elaborate, "You're good at making things... you made me like you."
He's the luckiest guy in the fire nation. He goes to tell you but you speak first. "And I want to teach you how to make tea, but I think I should let Iroh. When we find him."
Zuko's left with a mouth hanging open and a heart stuck between missing his Uncle and loving you for all your kindness and thoughtful nature. He settles on both. "I don't know if he'll forgive me."
You make a strange face as you gaze at him over the open flame, it looks intense in the orange heat. "You don't give his love for you enough credit."
Then you're coming over and pecking him on the cheek, making him dizzy again. You bring your lips to his ear and whisper "I think he'll do anything if you let him teach you to make tea."
His smile is warm and flustered when you teasingly add, "I would, and I like you a little bit less than he does."
3K notes · View notes
kiss-theggoat · 4 months
Note
Gonna need a part two where the slashers realize their s/o is alive >:’(
Slashers Fix You Up
Slashers Included: Thomas Hewitt, Billy Loomis, Stu Macher, Asa Emory, Michael Meyers, The Sinclair Brothers
TW: Violence and Gore
Thomas Hewitt:
The wound to your stomach was deep. It tore through deep tissue and muscle, but lucky for you, Thomas knew exactly what to do.
Not only had he been stabbed like that, but he’d become really good at sewing and stitching up human skin.
You woke up, feeling groggy, but immediately recognized the basement you were in. You laid on Tommy’s workbench, shirt off and torso numb.
When you looked down you saw Thomas hunched over you, huge hands trying hard to delicately sew you up, fingers covered in your blood.
You whispered to him, and you could’ve sworn you saw his heart skipped a beat. He jumped up, immediately grabbing the side of your face with relief written all over his face, eyes wide and breath heavy. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he lost you.
Billy Loomis:
Nothing when like it was supposed to that night. Sydney got away, Stu stabbed him too hard, and the worst of all…he stood above you, watching your blood pool on the hardwood of Stu’s living room.
He bent down, putting pressure on your wound while looking around the room, taking deep breaths and trying to think rationally…he needed to get you out of here. He quickly lifted you, trying to ignore your pained groans. He hated seeing you like this.
The moment he got your arm around his shoulders and your feet on the ground, he heard them…sirens. He was conflicted. Relief washed over him. He knew you’d be getting help soon but…if he didn’t run…Syd would tell them everything. He’d go to jail, be found guilty for murder.
In that moment, he didn’t care. He helped you limp towards the front door, pushing it open. You’d lost too much blood…you didn’t even realize that Billy was sacrificing himself to save your life.
Stu Macher:
Stu watched his entire world fall apart when Billy stabbed you. He watched you fall, holding your gushing stomach, blood seeping from between your fingers.
He rushed to your side, hands covering your wound as he laid you back onto the ground.
“Just look at me. Don’t worry, keep looking at me.” He refused to let you look at your wound. He didn’t want you to be scared about how hurt you were. He lifted your hands to inspect your wound…he sighed in relief.
“It’s okay baby…the bleeding is slowing down…you’re gonna be okay…”
Asa Emory:
Asa never expected you to fall into one of his traps. He was beating himself up about it, but there was no time. He lifted you onto his operating table, covering your entire body with gauze.
He started slow, sutures and thread in his precise hands. You were covered in deep wounds, caused by rusty nails…he whispered his apologies, holding one hand as he poured antiseptic over you. It burned, it was unbearable…but you trusted him.
He carefully sewed each wound with a single suture, making sure to reassure you and stop the bleeding whenever it happened. It took him hours, but nothing would stop him from fixing you. Fixing your skin, fixing his love.
Michael Meyers:
For the first time in his entire life, he felt guilt. He felt a storm of emotions, but as he stared at your knife wound- the one his dumbass caused…- he knew it wouldn’t kill you. He’d never felt so terrible and so relieved in his life.
He quickly scooped you up, carrying you into the bathroom with shaking fingers. His hands had never shaken before…
He slammed open your medicine cabinet, hard enough to crack the glass, and popped open the first aid kit, sending gauze and band-aids onto the bathroom floor. You’d patched him up plenty of times so it should be easy…right?
Six butterfly bandages, four bandaids, and two complete rolls of gauze later, you felt like you might be suffocated by the first-aid supplies but…he’d tried his best. And, you weren’t bleeding anymore.
Sinclair Brothers:
The blow to the face had broken your eyebrow and sliced your skin, and the fall to the floor left you with a concussion and a sprained wrist. Vincent carried you downstairs gently, knowing he had the supplies to fix you up in his workshop.
All three brothers stayed by your side, and you were never alone over the course of the next week, especially while you were sleeping, until your concussion headache finally went away.
Your face was bruised and swollen and it hurt like nothing else you’d experienced, especially the cut on your eyebrow.
But, every morning when you walked downstairs, you received a kiss on the eyebrow from each Sinclair brother, and they all treated you like you were made of porcelain, even Bo.
739 notes · View notes
ddejavvu · 7 months
Note
hi hi, I loveee your animagus collection!! I was wondering if you could do one where reader appears all scratched up and injured cuz she got in a fight with another cat in her animagus form. thanks!!
part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6
--
Sirius knows to expect your presence from your spot on the map that's moving hurriedly towards his dorm, a powerful stride from how you're blowing past other names quicker than they can step out of your way. He's glad that none of them seem to stop you or confront your seemingly abrasive speed, and he's equal parts curious and petrified when you finally burst through the door.
Most of it melts away though, heated and liquified and dripping into his stomach by a burning panic that seals itself around his heart and lungs instead.
Your face is scratched, lines of blood-red crust slowly darkening the more you expose them to the air. He's sure they'd dried and scabbed quickly as you'd stormed through the castle to find him, and he's worried they're contaminated before he's had the chance to clean them out.
"Darling," He stands abruptly, noticing similar scratches across the rest of you, and even a bite mark, pinpricks of violence and spit laid into your arm like twin red flags, "What- what happened to you?"
"I got in a fight," You grumble, and for all of the enthusiasm you'd had storming into the room, you stand there now, letting it leak out of you like air from a balloon that had once been close to popping.
"With who?" Sirius's brain does not register the conflicting statements; how a punch to the eye could result in fang prints in your forearm.
"Muffy," You spit the cat's name like a dirty word, emphasizing it's dull stuffiness, "She came and sat in my sunspot, and I was gonna let her share it, too, but then she started bitching at me to move!"
Sirius's limbs loosen from where they'd been locked tightly in place, and he remains standing where he has been all this time, watching you explain your tussle with astonished curiosity written on his face.
"I didn't, but then she started batting at me," You recall with bitter disdain on your tongue, the same sting that you'd felt when the other cat's claws had sunk into your fur, "Before I knew it, she was just going at me, like- like some fucking animal! Well- like- like some other kind of animal."
Sirius steps forwards to take your arm in his own, and inspect the only bite mark he can see. It's angry and vicious, though it doesn't look like there's blood seeping from it anymore, and he makes a mental note to disinfect all of your abrasions in case Muffy had indulged in something unsanitary for breakfast.
"I'm sorry, darling." Sirius says, both because he means it and because he doesn't know what else to say. It's teetering on the edge of absurdity that you managed to scrap with a cat and come away looking like you'd lost, and he wonders if you'd fled the scene on four paws, or two legs. Both would be comical to him if you weren't hurt, so he pushes the thoughts out of his head and steers you into the bathroom by what he hopes is an uninjured shoulder.
He sits you on the counter with ease, and from the hiss that you let out, the cool marble bites at the scrapes on the backs of your thighs. But they seem to mellow into a soothing effect, and you relax into them, your flesh flattening out as Sirius rummages through the cabinet below.
"Muffy's quite vicious," Sirius muses, rubbing disinfectant on a cut along your cheek, "This one might scar."
You groan, the sound nearly gruff enough to be a growl, "Oh, get her back for me Sirius, would you?"
"Get her back-?" His raven-black brows furrow, and he glances away from the cut up a few inches to your eyes, "What do you mean, darling?"
"I mean you're a big scary guard dog," You push pleadingly at his shoulder, "Just- snap your jaws at her, or something! Please?"
"I'm not sure Prewett would like it very much if I traumatized her cat," Sirius muses guiltily, but he's persuaded when you let loose the most devastatingly gut-wrenching pair of puppy eyes that he's ever seen, far more powerful than anything even his canine form could produce.
"Oh, fine," He sighs, his lips finding purchase at the bridge of your nose, in an awkward crevice between your brow-split and your eye, "Darling, you know I love you, but next time, please tussle with a cat that isn't so terrifying?"
2K notes · View notes
rafeandonlyrafe · 3 months
Text
i am a rich man
Tumblr media
words: 1k
warnings: misogyny, brief mention of violence, reader is a kook
a/n: im on vacation starting tomorrow monday 1/22-friday so i will not be posting any new fics for this week!
“have you decided what car you want baby?” rafe asks, pressing a kiss to your cheek as you scroll through the dealerships website.
“i’ve narrowed it down to two.” you tilt your phone towards rafe, letting him look at one car before navigating to the other tab to show him.
“why don’t you test drive both and decide after that? and if you like both, just buy both.” rafe shrugs. it was weird for him at first being with someone who had even more money than his family, but now he’s grown used to it, liking knowing you can support yourself if needed, even though rafe likes to buy most things for you.
“good point.” you hum. “i’d have to park one on the driveway though, my dad is only giving me one spot in the garage.” you pout. your dad has a mild obsession with sports cars, and therefore three of the four spots in the garage were already taken.
“lets not worry about it now, figure it out after you see them in person.” rafe says, and you nod, getting up off the couch to head to the dealership, glad that rafe agreed to drive you and test the cars with you, mainly because you didn’t want to spend the day without him.
it’s a long drive to the nearest dealership that had cars in your price range, but you don’t mind as you sing along to your favorite songs playing through rafes trucks speakers, always letting you be the dj even if he can’t stand some of the girly pop songs that you play.
“almost there.” rafe reaches over, squeezing your thigh as the dealership finally comes into view.
“thank god.” you groan. “my butt is starting to go numb.” “don’t talk about your butt when we are about to be in public.” rafe warns, glancing over at you as you giggle.
“sorry baby.” you say, in a voice that tells rafe that you’re not at all sorry.
“let me drop you off at the front, i’ll park the car then join you inside.” rafe says upon pulling in and realizing that there are no close parking spots, and he doesn’t want to make you walk outside for longer than he has to.
“mmkay, thanks baby.” you lean over and press a kiss to his cheek, always extra appreciative and lovey on rafe when he does sweet things for you, even if its just something little.
you hop out of the truck, heading inside the main showroom of the dealership.
“hello, ma’am!” a sales associate instantly hurries over to you. “i’m john, did you have an appointment?” “no, but i’ve checked out your inventory online and i know what i’d like to test drive today.” you say with a fake smile right back, already not liking the condescending attitude that john is giving off.
“alright, well lets take a seat at my desk and you can tell me your budget.” john walks you over to his cubicle, and before he can begin talking you’re joined by rafe.
“this is my boyfriend, he’s helping me pick out a car today.” you say as he sits down next to you, reaching over and looping your fingers through his, already eyeing up john as he tries to size him up.
“hello, sir.” john smiles. “so what is your budget?” he addresses the question at rafe, making your eyebrows scrunch together.
“well,” you answer, making johns gaze flick quickly to you, “budget isn’t an issue. i know what two cars i would like to look at.”
“okay, if you just want to tell me the models i will pull them up.” john turns the computer screen so you all can see as you tell him the two cars that peaked your interest the most.
“and i assume you will be financing?” he hums. you glance at rafe, shocked that he would have the audacity to assume anything.
“no.” rafe answers for you. “in full.” “okay, that makes sense that you will be paying, sir.” john says, nonchalantly as if he didn’t just imply that you wouldn’t be able to afford the car.
“as said before, i will be the one purchasing the car, so while my boyfriend is here to help me, i am your customer.” you clear up, hand squeezing rafes as you try to hold back your anger, knowing you can get just as fired up as him.
“sorry, just don’t see many young women being able to buy cars like these outright.” he says before quickly switching the subject, going through some of the specs of the vehicles. “and the cost on that one is $94,000.”
“wait a minute.” you rub your forehead, getting tired of this mans bullshit. “while i said money was no issue, that doesn’t mean that i’m going to let you get away with scamming me. that car is worth no more than 75.” “well, ma’am, there are various-” “no.” you shake your head. “i have done my research on these vehicles and i know that ever 75 is on the high end.” “let me double check my figures.” john swallows nervously, turning the screen so only he can see it as you send a look at rafe, seeing he’s struggling just as much as you not to reach across the desk and smack the misogynistic sales associate across the face.
“my apologies, i must have accidentally selected an additional maintenance package. it is $74,000.” john says.
“that sounds much more reasonable, but i will not be purchasing a car from someone who tries to scam me out of my money just because they think i’m a dumb girl. get me a different sales associate, now.” you command.
john scurries away from the desk, the stark opposite of the cockiness air that he had when you first arrived.
“jesus, you’re hot when you’re scary.” rafe says, looking you up and down as you smirk at your boyfriend, knowing while you’re usually sickly sweet, when a man irks you wrong, it brings out your full wrath.
taglist: @winterrrnight @bejeweledreverie @drewstarkeyslut @rafecamerongirl @f4ll-for-you @dilvcv @jjmaybankswifes-blog @rafescokenostril @jjsmarijuana @jjmaybankisbae @seeingstarks @angelofcigs @cece45450 @babygorewhore @vanessa-rafesgirl @michelleisheres-blog @outerbankspov @drewstarkeyswifehoe @cutielando @kamninaries @buckyswhxre @rafeinterlude @bellbottombaby @deeaardiary @rubixgsworld @emma77645
798 notes · View notes
shibaraki · 7 months
Text
EXCERPT FROM EDEN ┊ AIZAWA SHOUTA
Tumblr media
synopsis: the further you delve into the forest the farther you find yourself from your village's good graces—subsequently pushed into the arms of a creature you were warned to stay away from.
tags: NSFT, AFAB reader, fantasy au, naga aizawa, human reader, childhood friends to lovers, mention of violence (reader has bruises), reader is an outcast, bathing together, nesting, monsterfucking, mating bites (not A/B/O), aphrodisiac venom (so no prep needed), dubcon (for the venom) but v enthusiastic consent, non human genitalia (hemipenes), grinding, unprotected vaginal sex, multiple orgasm, creampie, aizawa carries reader (he is big n strong)
wc: 7.3K
Tumblr media Tumblr media
There are monsters in the night.
Adults would spin tales about them when you were young. You were warned not to go near the forest. To never stray from the path. If a voice calls to you, do not answer. Look at your feet and cover your ears. Thoughts filled with blood-steeped, ugly stories of such creatures: half man half serpent taller than an ogre swallowing impious people up whole. Naga, the true tempter, the harbinger of misfortune.
Children spent idle time feigning courage and taunting the so-called beasts in spite of it; playing at the treeline, skittering over the border and rushing back with a surge of adrenaline, as if the creature had been right there awaiting a meal. But above all they liked to frighten you, the runt of the litter. Snakes like to eat mice, they would jeer. Little mouse they would call you. Perfect bait.
It had been dewy that fateful afternoon. You were chased deep into the unknown. Petichor hung thick around the trees after a sun shower. Summer was drawing to a close. Shorter days, darker mornings. Your elders would call the weather ‘temperamental’ and you liked that. As though the Gods were children clinging onto those last dregs of heat, unwilling to let go.
Grass flattened wet under your bare feet, you ran from sharp stones and sharper words. Ran until the only voice left in your head was your own. Lungs tight and spasming for oxygen. You felt eyes on you the moment foliage snapped under another tentative step—but the figure before you did not move. He remained on his stomach, arms folded beneath his head, body stretched long and bare across the narrow clearing to bathe in the sunspot. Lower, right at the base of his spine, pale skin faded seamlessly into black scales that made up the thick, sinuous tail of a snake.
Your knees stung where small open wounds touched the air. A gentle breeze flowed in through the underbrush, took your slight apprehension and whisked it into the thinning redwood canopy. As a child you simply couldn’t connect something so non threatening and lazy to the monsters of old.
You approached the naga with slow, telegraphed movements. Thin pupils drenched in vermillion glow observed behind a half lidded stare. Closer then, trembling hands tugged and stretched the hem of your shirt, popping the old stitching. “Hello,” you said, voice small even to your own ears. “I—I’m not a mouse. Just so you know”.
Something flickered in his expression; a stifled inhale, a brief shift, the naga sighed. It rolled through his body, belly turning toward the sky. Sunlight reflected on the exposed underside and shimmered iridescent, stealing your breath. “That much is obvious,” he replied tiredly.
“Then, you won’t eat me?” before he had the chance to answer, you’d already been emboldened. You tottered toward him with a surge of energy and sureness. “Thank you. Can we be friends?”
“No,” he muttered, retreating into his coils.
A familiar sensation stung behind your eyes and your bottom lip trembled fiercely. It built up in your body and collapsed. Loneliness, shame, the incessant, throbbing ache in your limbs after sprinting so far. You tried again, a quiet warble. “Please?”
But a stern voice rumbled from the layers of muscle, uninterested in your swelling emotions. “Go away kid,” the naga demanded. “It’s not safe out here”.
“M’not a kid,” then you kicked the dirt in a burst of wounded anger. While bigger than you, this naga wasn’t even close to towering an oni, so you bluffed petulantly, “You’re a kid too”.
“While that may be true I am still older than you,” came the disgruntled remark. Then, faster than you could register, an arm shot out from between the dark coils and took you by the throat.
Reflexively, you gripped the naga’s wrist with both hands. But you didn’t flinch. Rather than fight his hold you waited, rabbit-footed heart beating in your chest. Violence was nothing new to a runt like you. The hand slid up to your chin and forced you to keep his gaze. His eyes flickered strangely there in the darkness. Red like fresh blood. The ire in them faltered at your spiritless reaction.
“Annoying human. Your lack of instinct will get you killed,” the creature stated. You said nothing. He continued, “You’re far from home. Follow the river to your settlement. Do not come back here”.
You recall how abruptly your senses sharpened at his mention and latched onto the distant sound of running water. He freed you from his grip, pale limb slinking back into the recesses of his twisted tail. He reminded you of a snail receding into its shell. Boring, lazy and slow moving. Naga were not so frightening, you concluded.
You returned with reluctance, following the riverbank until the end of your new world where it broke into a wishbone shape and wound around the village. Adults frowned at the dry mud caking your feet, ankles and calves. Their calloused fingers squeezed roughly around your wrists and dragged you to the springs to scrub you raw.
“Where on earth have you been?” one asked, mouth set in a frown. Another held you by the shoulders, thumbs pressed into your collarbone with intention to bruise. “Your stupidity is going to curse us all,” they shook you in place and their strength only grew the more you fought. “Do not provoke the naga. Understand?”
Faces twisted in disappointment haunted you all through the night. Eyes sore and puffy. Tears soaked into your shirt; you could taste them in the back of your throat. Oval-shaped bruises adorned your collar yet your throat and your jaw remained unblemished, if not a little tender. You were hurt, but not by the one you were warned against.
Your second excursion into the forest to see the naga was of your own volition. He was not where you first met him but nearby, curled up beneath an ancient tree, right where her bole has spread and warped to create a small depression in the trunk. The wind billowed. Branches swayed and bent their spindly fingers, pointed at you, almost accusingly.
He appeared to be sleeping. Again. Arms folded atop his tail, chin rested on the cradle it made. Perhaps there was something wrong with you—as the elders often stated—but you were not entirely stupid. You kept your hands to yourself, letting only your eyes wander as you crept close enough to see the soft curve of his jaw, the sloped nose, the youthful cheeks.
Long dark hair draped loosely over pale shoulders, expression serene while he rested. You thought he was lovely. Not at all beastly. Right down to the dip of his stomach, where skin vanished into bony hips and an obsidian tail.
A guttural hum startled you where you stood. Unmoving, the naga murmured, “Do you have a death wish?”
That voice untied every knot in your body. “N—no,” you held strong. “I told you, I want to be friends”.
“And I told you that’s not happening”.
When he peeked at you through dark curtains into those dim eyes there came a softness, as though atoning for his harsh words. Under that gaze your stomach started to rumble. “You’re hungry,” you shrunk, palms pressed flat as though to snuff out the sound. “Humans need to eat multiple times a day, do they not?”
“…Sometimes,” your agreement was barely a mumble. “If there is enough for me”.
The naga scrutinised you and your answer, displeased by it. After a long silence he unravelled and asked, “Do you want food?”
Hope filled you from root to stem. You bloomed. Stretched for the open sky like a flower seeking sun, bouncing on the tips of your toes. “Food?” you echoed excitedly. You trailed after him and nearly tripped in your haste. He caught you with the end of his tail and sighed. It coiled tightly around your middle and inched you along with him.
Having glanced surreptitiously in his direction, your warm human hand swept across the cool dark scales. They were glossy and smooth, unlike anything you’d ever felt. As he moved you sensed the power in his limb.
“What do naga eat?”
“Anything. Fish, birds, insects,” he told you. The coil around your waist flexed as if to check you were there. Hearing your trepidation his tone lilted as he added, “But what you’re really asking is if I eat humans, aren’t you?”
You rubbed where you thought his belly might be and pondered aloud, “Would you, if they deserved it?”
He scowled over his shoulder and came to an abrupt stop. “What kind of a question is that, kid?”
You wilted at the sharp verbiage, feeling scolded, though unable to understand his offense. After all, that is exactly what the villagers would say of you if ever he decided to.
That only seemed to fuel his frustration. You worried in the face of it, for a weak moment. Warnings you’ve clamoured in your conscience, soon chased by immediate guilt. Your new friend had offered kindness and there you were, assuming the worst of him.
Sensing your turmoil the naga cautiously brought his hand to your head. Front to back, pausing at a vulnerable, unmarked nape. He attempted to pet you. Wide eyed, you stared ahead until every leaf in the grove coalesced into a green blur. His touch had been deliberate, soft and soothing despite the tension set in his face.
Laid in the palm of his other hand was a pile of plum red berries. The coils relaxed to recline you into a comfortable position and wordlessly, you shared the small treat together. Teeth glinted sharp in the daylight, made to rend flesh from bone. They sank tender into thin skin until it burst and he hummed at the flavour enjoying a simple pleasure like any human boy would.
Their fruity tang clung to your tongue. You took your fill and more. “Thank you…” your voice lost strength, no name to fill the blanks.
“Aizawa,” he muttered. A rough swipe of his thumb across your lips wiped away the citrus. “It’s Aizawa Shouta. And don’t speak with your mouth full”.
The sky darkened on the eventide. Aizawa bid you a flippant farewell, your name at home in his mouth, and you erred on caution, changing course to wash the dirt and foliage from your body. Loud was the pounding of your heart against your ribs, a frantic beat. But nobody batted an eye at your presence, nor the absence of it.
Those short excursions continued for some time. Be it a stroke of boredom, or loneliness, you would find yourself treading back through the banks, to Aizawa’s territory. There was never a discernible path leading to him. Your legs would simply take you there, heart magnetised like the arrow of a compass. Whilst the village raised you with harsh, inattentive hands, he became your North. Years passed together and eyes turned as your insatiable curiosity grew, along with your carelessness.
And with that carelessness came consequences.
Fate is a funny thing. You are sprinting through the forest, feet pounding against the dirt alongside the ghost of your childhood self. The enraged shouts have long since tapered into silence yet you can’t allow yourself to slow. Your limbs ache, a bone deep permafrost, fatigued muscles clenching.
They’d followed you yesterday. Unexpected, given how deliberately people avoided the village border. Everything collapsed in one fell swoop. A single misstep and your life was upturned. You heard their plans to confine you in the shrine and knew—you’d never be able to see Shouta again.
Lost in your muddied stream of consciousness your foot is caught in a bundle of jagged roots. Mossy fingers coil around your ankle. You stumble, taking impact to the knees. The sting is muted as it knocks the air from your burning lungs.
You gasp, a wet and raspy breath; an apocalyptic spring fills your chest. The trees are in bloom. High above the blossoms are pale pink, like branches covered in snow. Ash flowers fell slowly to coat the ground. They get in your hair, your clothes and your eyes.
Shouta finds you there. He has always had the uncanny ability to sense you in his territory, as though the forest were an extension of himself. Your neck strains to lift your head, looking through lashes to see his silhouette. Red eyes flash in the distance, and in a mere blink he is at your side.
“Shouta—”
A low, guttural sound reverberates in the back of his throat. You’re scooped into his embrace. He is gentle with you, always aware of the difference in size and strength, and your heart beats harder for it. “You’re early,” he says. “What happened?”
You exhale through the fresh tenderness searing, “They know”.
Shadows shift above you. A curtain of hair hangs in your periphery. Shouta sinks until your eyes are level. Big. He hit a frightening growth spurt after his juvenile shed. A broad chest, shoulders corded with muscle, his long tail heavy enough to disturb the natural topography of the forest floor. Uneven scars littered across his skin from territorial disputes that you were not privy to. The most recent curves along his right cheekbone, fresh and pink.
Your gaze lingered as you took in his expression. Mouth downturned in obvious discontent but eyes dark, pensive. Beautiful even when he is doing nothing at all.
Shouta’s irises flickered in the softening light of the afternoon sun. Fingers drumming on lacquer scales. “They know?” he repeats. Irritation coated the words, as it often did when speaking of your village. “They should have realised years ago”.
Like him, you had shed your own urgent adolescence. The world became smaller and you preferred it that way. It spun around Shouta as if he were your own axis. When you were with him there was something much bigger than childlike wonder.
“That’s different. I wasn’t anything important. But now I’ve… been slacking on my duties to see you,” embarrassed, you tear up the thinning grass, seated at the foot of his coils. “I’m old enough to be of use, so my absence is noticeable,”
“You were a child. Running off God knows where. You’re lucky an orc didn’t decide to pick his teeth with you,” the snap in his voice almost hurt, but there was no bite nor true anger aimed at you. You’ve had these arguments before.
“I’m lucky because I had you to protect me,” you amended gently, a small smile curled at the corner of your mouth. It took a while for you to realise that he tailed you home each time you visited, just to be sure. His scales shift at your back, carrying the praise through his body. “I know it bothers you, Shouta, but this is just how things are. Don’t worry, I’ll be more careful from now on”.
“This is not about you being careful,” Shouta mutters, though you get the sense he has no energy to truly argue. You hesitate in the brief silence. He takes you by the wrist, not the hand, and you pout about it.
He encourages you to come. You tread through the thick, clammy air as the sun beats down on your shoulders. Shouta takes you up the valley. Where the treeline ends the mouth of the river funnels south, surface glittering softly as the currents part around a large rock in the centre; top smoothed down flat for sunning. You watched while he sunk into the water, tail disappearing behind him as it submerged and disturbed the silt.
“Come on,” he coaxes begrudgingly. You dither by the edge, picking at your sleeve.
“I can’t get my clothes wet”.
Shouta reaches the rock, bracing an arm against it. Draped in open sunlight he turns to level you with a flat look. “Then take them off. Don’t bother giving excuses. I already know you’re wounded, I can smell it”.
Shit. You wince, resting a hand over the marks across your ribs and hip. You were so sure he hadn’t noticed anything.
Anticipation churned in your stomach. You’ve never been nude in front of him before—though not for lack of wanting, and you suppose he himself has always been naked in human terms. You swallow down trepidation and lift your shirt over your head, gaze resolutely pointed away from the river, which rippled with every minute shift Shouta’s tail.
The currents are a cool caress against your body as you step into the river, soothing the bruises. Tentative, you wade further, arms folded over your breasts for some semblance of modesty. Once you’re standing in waist high water something hard, smooth—Shouta’s tail wraps around you and pulls you close.
“Deep water,” he mutters softly. You’re pressed skin to skin. His throat bobs and he looks away. “Can’t have you drowning”.
“Right,” you say, left breathless by the proximity. You can feel his chest rise and fall. Sinew and muscle expands. Rigid scales dotted along his navel press against your abdomen as he sprawled around the sunning rock. “Thank you”.
He hums in lieu of a response. Small waves lap up your spine as he adjusts his grip, holding you with one arm around your lower back. Shouta traces his thumb over the large mark on your pelvis, the claw tip catching. “You said they found out. So this is the result?”
You grimace weakly at the subject. It was naïve to hope he would let it go. “It’s my fault. I was careless,” you tried, slumped in his embrace as though filled with wet sand. “They’re just afraid of what they don’t understand. I should’ve tried to explain years ago—”
“You and your misplaced guilt,” Shouta’s jaw ticks. He inhales deeply, his next words quieter on a long exhale. “Stop rationalising their mistreatment. They’re stuck in their ways”.
“Maybe. But I…”
The truth was that an ugly part of you had never wanted them to change for the better. You wanted Shouta to yourself for as long as he’s willing and their ignorance made it so. Fear kept them away. But it also stoked their anger.
“I can’t help but wonder why they're so against it,” you tuck your chin and smile despite the lump lodged in your throat, suddenly feeling naked in all manner of ways. “They treat me like a curse. And I know it’s natural to fear what you don’t understand, but if they just knew you—!”
“Humans should fear my kind,” Shouta interrupts, a bite to his tone. Your eyes dipped low, and you traced your fingers over the intricate mosaic of scales across his clavicle to avoid his sharp gaze. A short moment passes. “Your association with me doesn’t make you a harbinger of ill omen,” he murmurs, sweeping his hand along the planes of your back in silent apology. “If anything you’ve been protecting them from one”.
You lift your head. His pupils dilate, soften. “I have?”
A broad palm wraps around the nape of your neck, the other resting over your bruised hip. Shouta’s thumb brushes over your pulse. “If not for your insistence and naïve altruism I would have killed them for neglecting you,” Shouta admitted, bringing you tighter to his front. You’re taken deeper, until your feet no longer reach the riverbed and the cold no longer bites.
“When will you prioritise yourself?” he continues. “I’m starting to think you would pull out your own teeth if it could guarantee you’d never hurt anyone”.
You smile, a little dazed by how favourably he regarded you. His skin is cool under your fingertips. “That’s not quite true,” you trace the scar beneath his eye and he slows, turning into your palm. The pad of your thumb brushed the corner of his mouth. There you find those monstrous teeth, large and sharp behind his lips. The touch feels momentous, like something only lovers do. “And either way, I’d still have yours to protect me”.
Shouta rumbles at that. The vibrations loosen up the tension in your chest and satisfaction gathers warm in your belly. “Lean back,” he murmurs. Anticipation swoops through your belly as you recline in his arms, cradling you above the ripples to wash your body with his own hands.
“This water has healing properties. Further down the mountain the river splits and forms a hot spring,” Shouta’s claw-tipped fingers brush your nipple, pert under his attention. Your breath hitches. He pays it no mind, palm sliding over each breast and along your shoulders, wiping down the sweat and dirt. The pressure remains delicate around your waist, careful not to agitate the bruises.
Shouta kneads the soft parts of your body even after the filth is gone. You hum, allowing yourself to enjoy his attention. Everything feels heavier. Gravity bears hard on your arms as they lift to brush the wet hair back from his face and you marvel at how his eyelids flutter closed, one after the other. You comb through his roots, scratching lightly over his scalp before working loose the knots at the ends.
Something is beginning to swell beneath you but a quiet contentment overwhelms the reciprocal arousal stirring in your gut. Watching the tension in his face trickle away, eyes falling closed so dark lashes fan over pale cheeks. Your fingertips trace along the smattering of scales by his temple and notice a new vivid sheen to them.
“You look brighter,” you murmur, curious.
Awareness flies over his features. You almost miss it given how swiftly he buries it, taking on that familiar monotonous air. After years spent detailing the subtleties in every fleeting expression and spoken word you’ve become quite accustomed to Shouta concealing his embarrassment.
Turning away from your prying eyes, the line of his jaw becomes sharper as he swallows. “It’ll soon be my seasonal rut,” he tells you, feigning indifference. “My scales are more vibrant for the purpose of attracting a mate”.
“A mate?” you echo uselessly. Dread churns in the pit of your stomach. You knew well what having a ‘mate’ entailed. A white hot sensation prickles at your nape that not even the cool water can quell. In your naivety—and perhaps, selfishness—you’d never considered that he might find somebody else. Somebody suitable. “That’s… really great, Shouta. But who? I thought you chased off the last bed of naga that passed through?”
At this, a frown etched into Shouta’s brow. “You’re making a few unnecessary leaps in that head of yours,” he mutters. “At what point did I say my mate needed to be a naga?”
There’s something in his voice that gives weight to what he’s doing. It echoes an unspoken proposition. Unbidden from the recesses of your mind rose the wishful thoughts you’d imagined so often they were practically dogeared. A shiver trickled down your spine, caught in a gauzy yet comfortable silence as Shouta continued to clean your body.
The tip of his tongue peeks out to taste the air once he’s done. You fruitlessly will your body to temper its desire, to feign some semblance of control as you lift your head, no longer denying him the answer written plainly on your face.
“…I want that,” you confess, picking up the thread he left. You rub across his shoulders and bring your palms together in the middle of his chest, folded over his heart. “I can't go back. Take me home with you. Keep me”.
Shouta looks surprised—a microexpression, if anything; imperceptible to anyone but you—as though he hadn't expected you to accept. You’re warmed by the idea that he might’ve been hoping for more without expectation.
That’s all you’ve ever known, failed expectations.
A beat passes. You think he might be giving you a grace period—allowing time for a regret that never comes. When he realises you’ve no intention to take it back he sucks a hiss through his teeth, and you’re close enough to see his thin pupils spill into his irises until they’re inky black.
The river breaks around you, water foaming at the surface as Shouta unwittingly guides your knotted bodies to the shore. “I see you’re still as reckless as you were when we were children,” he says, sounding hoarse. “You have no idea what you’re agreeing to”.
“I’m saying yes to you, Shouta,” your voice strains, desperation creeping in when you feel his arms loosen and your feet brush the wet bank. “Teach me what I don’t know because I hate leaving. I hate missing you”.
The rough sensation of Shouta’s scales against your inner thighs rippled through your body, core tightening as he retained his grip around your waist. “This is not a conversation we’re having in the open,” he takes you both out of the water and you shy away from the cool air.
He bends over to collect your clothes and drapes them in your naked lap. You clutch the fabric close, “Where are we going?”
“To my den. No questions until then”.
The journey to Shouta’s den is long, deliberately so. Caught in his coils you go, without trepidation—like a willing little mouse, your mind whispers. Only on the third cycle do you realise that he is purposefully traveling in circles to cover his tracks. Aside from the occasional birdsong and cicada you don’t hear anything for miles. It’s so peaceful that you forget that a world exists outside of this vast, sprawling forest.
In time he reaches the den. The sky has darkened to an early dawn, the gloaming orange light casting shadows over Shouta’s face as he leans over you to shield you from the overgrowth to get to the entrance.
Arched tall and gaping, the bumpy outer walls of the cave are fissured with fingerlings of old tree roots. Shrouded in darkness, Shouta slithers around the stalagmites protruding from the floor with ease. Inside the air is thick, humid as he carries you deeper, metres further down, refusing to release you from his coils.
Meandering into a broader section, Shouta spreads out easily in the cavern. You blink around as your vision adjusts and notice narrow streams of light threading through the stalactites hung on the ceiling. Twinkling are various trinkets, tied around and dangling from the spikes. Jewels, chainmail, rusted daggers, cutlery.
When you were a young you’d spend sleepless nights imagining where Shouta lived, conjuring possibilities only a child could. Despite that curiosity you never asked to see his home—you knew, innately, as an avid observer of creatures big and small, that it would be an invasion of his privacy. But of everything you imagined it had been nothing like this.
There’s a wide alcove at the back of the cavern, housing what appears to be a nest near an extinguished fire pit, still carrying the faint scent of smoke. Shouta lowers you into it and slinks away for a moment to discard your clothes. Warmth engulfs you, insulated in the structure. There are branches both large and small intricately woven and padded with an assortment of pelts, lichen and moss. Most notable is the snakeskin used to hold together the joints of the nest.
You pinch a piece delicately between your thumb and forefinger. It’s thick, smoother than expected. “Is this yours?”
Though far off his voice reaches your ears, “Is that your first question?”
Shouta returns holding what looks to be a blanket. His tail drags behind him. The sound ripples around the space. When shaken out and draped over your bare lower half you discover that the blanket is actually the rest of his shed. It’s beautiful, inexplicably silky while being heavy and tough.
You tug the snakeskin higher up your body and note how fervently he tracks the movement. “Yes, it’s mine. It strengthens the nest,” Shouta explains, beginning a languorous dance circling the nest as though he were adding himself to it. Your attention does not stray as his tail coils upon itself, lap after lap until you’re entirely surrounded.
“You’ve been planning this,” you comment. How long had it taken for him to craft it? Did he imagine what you’d think? “It’s beautiful”.
Pleased with the height, Shouta’s upper body slinks down into the centre where you wait. Home. Not simply a place but an extension of his body, like the forest. You’re directly in the heart. A place that you alone have been allowed to see.
Your mind drifts to the feckless creatures and travelers who’ve wandered this way only to be killed. But rather than fear, or sorrow, a distinctive emotion welled up inside you. You felt special.
“It’s mainly instinct. Not much planning,” he says.
You reach to cup his cold face in your hands. Cheeks flush, like all the blood in him had rushed to the surface to greet you. He rumbles as your thumb traces an arc along his newest scar, tucking his chin to nuzzle into your palm. It’s cute, though you wouldn’t dare say that.
A content hum vibrates behind his ribs, “You’re so warm”. Then you feel the tentative press of lips and of fangs underneath. He kisses your heartline. You falter at the uncharacteristic show of affection, clutching his snakeskin tighter. His dark gaze falls to your partially covered chest. Low and supple he asks, “Do you know what it means to wear a naga skin?”
You slowly shake your head.
“Naga gift their sheds to be used in nests or as armour for their mates,” propped onto his arm Shouta presses closer, forcing your thighs to bracket the thick of his tail. “It’s viewed as a public claim,” he stops short a hair's breadth from your wanting mouth, sharing a shallow inhale.
Filled with intrepid awe, your fingertips walk the slope of his throat, hands laying flat to his chest. A hummingbird’s wing, a pulse belying his nerves. You reach for your voice, “Does this make me yours?”
Shouta blinks, pupils dilating. The distant trickle of water dripping from the stalactites echoes throughout the cavern. You feel his stomach clench where your touch slips lower, “Are you sure you want to be?”
“Since you fed me those berries in the east valley”.
“You were a child,” Shouta huffs, doing a poor job at appearing unaffected.
“Children sometimes imagine falling in love, you know,” a small, sad smile comes unbidden to your lips. “I never had anyone to play pretend with,” you tell him softly, meeting his eyes. “You always took care of me. Back then I wondered if that’s what it’d be like to have a husband when I came of age”.
With a furrow in his brow, Shouta cradles your jaw. He tucks his thumb against the corner of your downturned mouth, “A husband?”
“The human equivalent of a mate. A husband or wife,” you say. “Marriage is a promise to be together for the rest of your lives”.
“And you want that. The rest of your life,” Shouta’s words are hoarse, they sound thick in his throat. He brings your foreheads together, almost reverential, and dark tendrils of hair fall around you. “With me?”
You swallow. “Yes. I want…”
Your wandering hand stills at his navel, right in the bend where skin turned to scale. You’re reminded that he isn’t a human man. What you’ve been taught about sex and the parts that go along with the act—that knowledge is mostly worthless here.
Curious, you palm the growing bump where a cock would be, index finger tracing the thin slit along the middle, teasing him as you would tease yourself. Shouta grabs your wrist, arm braced above your head to rock into the touch, a frisson of iridescence rippling through his scales.
The airy groan in his throat quells your anxiety and feeds your longing. Chin tilted, your mouths aligned, a petal-soft brush that shakes him from his reverie and draws him back. You complain and curl your arms around his neck, missing him. He huffs a short laugh but doesn’t retreat any further.
“Careful,” he lifts his upper lip and pushes the tip of his tongue to his left fang. A pinprick of his blood wells there. “You’ll catch yourself”.
“Are you venomous?” and you pout, noticing the mirth flickering across his face. “What?”
“Not in the way you’re imagining. Pay attention,” he answers, and bends to tuck his nose into the hollow of your throat. His jaw unhinges, tasting you with a deep inhale. Oh. Your pulse rockets when he drags his fangs there in suggestion of a bite—breath held as they barely break skin and an abrupt heat tingles around the scratch.
“Wh—what does it do?” you gasp in wonder, poking the blooming mark as Shouta hums, descending to drag his lips over the peaks of your breasts.
“Humans call it a lot of things. An aphrodisiac, drug, relaxant,” he says. Each word is a kiss left everywhere but the one place you need it. Blood rushes to your ears. “A mating bite eases the burden. Makes sure your body ready for me,” you watch on with bated breath while he reaches lower, and jolt, ensnared in his half lidded gaze as he lightly drags his knuckles through your wet folds. His thumb finds your clit, massaging a few light circles around the swollen bundle of nerves. Your hips twitch, and Shouta grins at your soft whine, “Though you’re already doing that beautifully on your own”.
Desperate, you grapple at his shoulders. He rises with an indulgent smile and you lean to kiss him. A clumsy thing, open mouthed and needy, receding enough to make room for protest before kissing him again, and again, nipping the seam of his lips. Hair stands on end as the world suddenly tips on its axis and your positions are reversed.
You’ve no chance to mourn the loss. Shouta lay on his back. He sinks into the nest and draws your knee over his hip. A shiver licks up your spine as you sit low on his navel, entirely bare and wet; with him being so sensitive to his surroundings there’s no doubt he can feel the beat of desire between your thighs.
The flesh spills between his fingers as Shouta squeezes your waist. “I can feel you throbbing,” he murmurs. His own heat is swelling between you. Sticky arousal smeared on your inner thighs. Shouta’s vent pulses in time with his heart—and yours. You exhale a shaky breath, relieved and exhilarated that he wants you too. The growing pressure pushes against your clit and your hips twitch, a fleeting stutter to relieve the ache.
Shouta groans. Large hands find purchase at your hips, appreciating how your body yields to his touch, and encourages you to move. “Oh,” comes a soft gasp, feeling his swollen slit flower open beneath your cunt, leaking arousal. The friction, or lack thereof, is incredible, and you repeat the motion, seeking it again.
It’s slick where your bodies meet. The obscene wet sound of you rocking together leaves you dazed. Shouta’s lower half shifts as arousal zips through him and the nest creaks. “Fuck, feels good. More,” you demand breathlessly. Something else nudges against your clit with every pass, two heads budding from the vent, and your eyes screw shut—
Two?
A groan falls from Shouta’s mouth and your frantic realisation dissolves. You can hardly think. He licks the curve of your throat, nuzzling the barely-there-mark he’d left. Infinitesimal and yet it hasn’t stopped throbbing. An ache spreads through your hips, his hands rutting you against the swell with a desperate rhythm.
“Shouta,” you say, overwhelmed. “Do it. Bite me, fuck me, please. Please. I want—I want to—!”
The sharp pain is dulled so quickly you’re not sure it was ever there. Shouta sank his fangs into the juncture of your neck, a hand firm at your nape to keep you still. Vision blurred, your mouth drops open around a silent scream as your orgasm rips through you—the venom close behind, forcing your seized muscles pliant and stoking your arousal until it’s burning from the inside out.
Shouta releases your neck and trails his fingertips along the length of your back. You whine, a helpless and confused little sound, when the heat allays under his affections. Your thighs are trembling, slipping down his hips as you use the last of your inertia to curl into his chest.
He cradles your limp form amongst his coils, creating a protective barrier around you in such a vulnerable state. “I have you,” he says, the shaky baritone of his voice coaxing your eyes open. Half-cognisant, not quite in and not quite outside of yourself.
“…It’s too much,” you pant.
“I know,” Shouta kisses your temple, paving his way to the corner of your mouth, “You’re doing so well”.
You turn lazily into the kiss. Your thighs have fallen open further, and you subconsciously raise yourself up to better the angle. The blunt tip of one of his cocks nudges through your folds and a white hot sensation prickles over your skull. Shouta lowers you onto his cock with care, muscles corded tight in obvious restraint, wanting to ease you into the stretch. He’s thicker than a human, subtle soft ridges lining the sides, caressing you in places your fingers could never reach.
You begin to tremble and the air is pushed from your lungs with a gasping sob as he splits you open. The sensation is hard to decipher through the haze. Your ears ring, the sound high and metallic. It isn’t numbing—no, you can feel everything, every minute shift, pulse and ridge. It’s an intrusive, satisfying ache, an insurmountable pressure. There’s no part of you he isn’t touching. You consider, the thought vague and half-formed, that when Shouta bit you something in your brain must’ve rewired itself. Synapses crossed, addled by venom, convincing you of pleasure where there would otherwise be pain.
Your small world grows ever smaller. Shouta is all encompassing. His dark hair is tickling your face, smooth scales rippling under your cheek. He’s saying something—he must be, because his mouth is moving above you, murmuring what sounds like sweet incantations of your name.
An immaculate red glow pools into his irises as they roll skyward, brow furrowed in concentration. His second cock drools across his belly, where it lay trapped by your bodies. The slick underside of his cock wet and pulsing against your clit, fully sheathed.
“Do you have any idea how you feel—fuck,” Shouta’s jaw clenched as his cock recedes, leaving only the tip kissing your folds, before he fucks into you again. A shudder quakes through his coils. They constrict around the nest and Shouta pins you to his chest, thick arms held firm around your shoulders and back, tightening with every squirm. “Mine. Knew it had to be you,” came his hushed babbles, composure finally fraying at the seams.
With the surety that you’re not in pain, his pace grows, his rhythm earnest. Laved in shared arousal, you’re so wet every ingress is indelibly easy. To call yourself helpless would be to imply that you wanted to escape. You surrender to the unending, overbearing rapture, sprawled over your Shouta’s lap like a pile of loose skeins with a drunken smile. Chest heaving in exertion despite doing so little. The atmosphere is so oppressively humid that it’s hard to catch your breath.
It feels like he’s carving out something irreplaceable inside of you. A space that only he can fill, a craving only he can sate. Your hips stutter uselessly, grinding your clit against his other cock. Rather than building to a climax it feels as if you’ve toppled into one that never ends, only ebbs and flows without ever ceasing.
Shouta pulls you impossibly closer, so close your could feel the long stretch of his torso, every raised scar and curve. He nudges your temple until your head lolls back against his shoulder, and you’re looking at him. “Soft. You’re so—shit. You’re so soft. Human,” he rasps, pressing a kiss to your forehead. There’s a sheen of sweat on his brow, short tendrils of hair sticking to skin. You flutter around the flared head of his cock as it pulls out, “Look. I can feel you sucking me back in. Made for me, weren’t you?”
You follow his gaze, watching the dark, inhuman length of his cock disappear into your folds again and again, strings of moisture stretching between you. “Shouta,” his name feels thick in your mouth. You blink, air cool against your wet cheeks. “I need—I need you to—”
Nodding deliriously, his bruising grasp on you shifts. Shouta fucks into you feverishly, with an intensity that you fear might engulf you.“Fuck—!” a tremor quakes through his coils. Something audibly snaps in the nest. Shouta’s hips stutter, a long, breathy moan pulled loose deep in his chest, drawn out as a wet, sticky heat fills you—so much that it leaks between your thighs—and the immediate relief of his release has you clawing crescent moons into his shoulders.
Tipping over the crest, a final wave crashes over you. The convulsions force your eyes shut, so tight that pinpricks of light pierce the solid darkness, transforming into a kaleidoscope of vivid colour. The world falls away for a fleeting moment and you only feel yourself clamping around his cock, soaking his lap.
You resurface slowly, as does the sensation returning to your limbs. Venom remedied, easing in your system. You inhale, wince at the tenderness making space beside the contentment in your body, and Shouta runs a smoothing hand down your spine. It sweeps back up to your nape to gently trace the bite on your neck. “How’re you feeling?” he asks. “Did I hurt you?”
You press a kiss to his collar, another under his jaw, “I’m sore and sticky. I’ve never orgasmed that hard in my life. But you didn’t hurt me”. Shouta purrs at that. It’s a noise you’ve only ever heard in the golden hour, when he’s sunning himself. Pure contentment.
You cup his cheek and gently turn him to face you. You kiss him, mouth bruised, fangs peeking through parted lips. Dark eyes soften. He’s no longer inside of you, noted with a weak clench, and his second cock remains half hard between your stomachs. Free to move, you wiggle in his embrace until it lines up, the suggestion kindling to the now twinging emptiness.
Shouta huffs, a loving admonishment, and carefully guides his second cock inside you. You hiss at the sensitivity but it isn’t unpleasant. Satisfaction balloons in your chest and you curl up against him with a pleased hum; no urgency, together for the sake of closeness.
“I’ll feed you and help you wash after I’ve calmed down,” he says. There’s no sign of discomfort or regret in his voice as he stares toward the mouth of the cave. Just a primal need to be alert, to stay vigilant for his mate. “I’ll be a little overbearing for the rest of the night. Be patient with me”.
Your gaze too lingers at the maw, recalling those blood-steeped, ugly stories of monstrous creatures. Indeed there are monsters in the night. But none of them are here.
A wide smile pulls at your lips, “We’ve got all the time in the world”.
Tumblr media
946 notes · View notes