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#''they meant so much to me'' ripped my heart out and shredded it into tiny pieces
TXF season 9 works great if you take it as a spinoff following Doggett and Monica and ignore the mytharc (which is, in fact, the way I watch that season), but if you take any of the mytharc or Jump the Shark into account, it sucks in the worst way possible
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ultram0th · 3 months
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Can you help me out? i love my boyfriend a lot, BUT, i also think his dad is super hot. what should i do?
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You and your boyfriend had just gotten back to your place after a lovely date night. You enjoyed your time with your man, whom you truly love with all of your heart and you can imagine spending the rest of your life with, but there was one teeny tiny issue that lingered in the back of your mind:
You couldn’t help but make mental comparisons of your boyfriend with his dad. Whereas your boyfriend was skinny and youthful, his dad was a pure rugged man. Seriously, he oozed masculinity and looked like he belonged on the front packaging of a certain paper towel brand.
You’d almost drooled when your boyfriend had introduced you to him, and then started to get hopeful that your man had inherited his manly genes.
“It’s a little early still,” your boyfriend said, snapping you out of your daze. “It’d be a shame if it were to end.” He gave you a coy grin, making you laugh.
“Well, c’mere then,” you slyly responded, beckoning him towards the bed where you sat.
In a manner that was meant to be sexy, your boyfriend slowly began to unbutton his shirt, shimmying out of it when the both of you paused.
“What the…?” he wondered aloud as he ran a shaky hand over his flat chest, feeling the thick hairs that had magically sprouted over it.
Usually, your man was smooth, so the new chest hair was a jolt to you both. 
Before either of you could react, the hairs started to grow more, traveling out across his slender chest and down his stomach. It thickened over his limbs and even moved upwards to his neck and jaw, giving him some serious scruff.
Your boyfriend ran his hands over his new body hair in confusion, but then winced as soon as his body began to expand.
“What’s happening to me?!” he panicked, watching as all the muscles in his body ballooned.
Your boyfriend’s newly hairy pecs inflated and packed on size as they rounded out, protruding out in front of him. His little, pert nipples shuddered before they expanded and stuck out in large nubs. His shoulders broadened as his back widened, his arm muscles inflating too. Next, his legs grew bigger as his thighs widened, and calf muscles packed on more meat. The new size of his lower half ripped his pants to shreds, leaving the tattered denim to fall to his feet. This gave you an uninterrupted view of his cock, which lengthened out in spurts before it rocketed to attention, standing at an impressive eight inches.
Finally, you witnessed your boyfriend’s face become rougher as it matured. Slight wrinkles that were more indicative of experience appeared on his face as his lower jaw widened and squared out. As a last touch, his hair progressively lightened until it was a grayish color.
Where your cute boyfriend had stood mere seconds before was now his manly looking dad.
“What the hell…” your boyfriend, now in his dad’s body, muttered, shocked by the deeper quality of his voice. However, he also winced at how familiar it sounded.
In a hurry, he rushed over towards the bathroom (with you tailing behind), his hard cock bobbing in front of him the whole way. He slammed himself inside and looked in the mirror, paling at what he saw.
“Babe?” he asked in his deeper voice. “Why do I look like my dad?”
His meaty, hairy pecs heaved with panic as he explored his new daddy body. He ran his hands over his larger muscles in shock, confused by how good it felt to run his fingers through his new chest hair.
You couldn’t help it. You were so turned on by watching the man you loved turn into the man you lusted after. “I think you look great…” you smiled, “…Daddy.”
On cue, your boyfriend’s bigger cock twitched at the sound of you calling him Daddy.
Your boyfriend’s very smart, so it didn’t take much for him to put two and two together. Still, he was so insanely turned on in his new body, and he swung you over his broadened shoulder, carrying you towards the bedroom where you can explore his new daddy body.
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iamasaddie · 7 months
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Never Have I Ever read a Librarian! Marcus P fic. 🥰 I’m not really a Marcus P kinda girl, more of a Dave York (iykyk) girl BUT as someone who works at a library, Marcus P would be the best guy to get lost in the book shelves with 🤭😏
Hi, birdie <3 This is actually such a sweet idea! I haven't seen fics like this either! At first, I was just gonna send this ask out sending writers that see this your idea for a fic. But then I thought about it and something hit me, so here's my take on librarian!Marcus Pike. I gave it my own twist, but I hope you can still enjoy it <3
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you're such a heavenly view
paring: Marcus Pike x f!Reader rating: explicit (18+ minors DNI) word count: 2.1k~ summary: He wants to be in love again. He's just not really sure how. a/n: This was written on a whim. Thank you to the amazing anon for planting the thought of librarian Marcus in my head <3 Not beta-ed, all mistakes are my own so pls don't plagiarize them. warnings: pining, Marcus Pike is shy and horny, male masturbation; no use of y/n MY MASTERLIST
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Marcus loved the quiet. 
He loved the whisper of turning pages and scribbling pens being the only noise in the spacious library he worked at. A humdrum nine-to-five that most people tried to escape became his salvation. He felt calm, at peace, a feeling that wasn’t prominent in his life before.
When he came here over two years ago just to help his old friend out, with his heart ripped to shreds and falling apart, the walls of this place held it together. And then you and your gentle smiles as you checked out books put bandaids all over it, so it started healing.
Marcus first saw you a year ago, by that time he was already comfortably moving along the labyrinths of the abode of books, knowing every section almost by heart. He still remembered your tiny manicured fingers nervously tapping the reception table as he looked through the computer base for the availability of Giorgio Vasari’s "Lives of the Artists". Before you, art section was one he never frequented for two reasons: first, he didn’t need the reminder of the past that he tried to separate from his present; and second, he knew pretty much every book there by heart. 
As his eyes bore into the screen, looking for the right title, with his peripheral vision he saw you burning a hole in the side of his face. Marcus couldn’t help but chuckle, it was a while since a beautiful woman had been interested in him. Or since he noticed. You hurried to stray your gaze away, and his smile became bigger, now showing his teeth. You saw him noticing you and got flustered, that only meant that you staring was intentional. Marcus confirmed that the book you needed was available, but since it was a rare edition you couldn’t leave with it. The library was surprisingly empty for the first month of autumn, but at least you wouldn’t have any problems with staying and doing your research there. You nodded, agreeing with him. The place was quite cozy, you thought that to yourself the moment you entered from the windy autumn street.
"Let me show you to the art section, it’s pretty difficult to navigate these corridors the first time you’re here." Marcus left the librarian desk he had been occupying for the last year and motioned his hand to the right direction.
"Only the first?" You raised your eyebrows and smiled. Damn, you were beautiful in your flared jeans and a big white t-shirt with a warm-looking sweater on top. Your hair in a messy bun, either it was messy because of the wind or because you wanted it to be. Anyway, you looked fantastic like that, so Marcus smiled back automatically.
"Well, the first fifty."
You laughed, and he stumbled at the sound. Marcus felt his cheeks burn with pride, he forgot how pleasant it was to make a pretty girl laugh.
It was over a year ago, and still he remembered that beautiful sound you let out. One of the beautiful moments you shared that he kept sealed in his mind. Even though all your interactions were friendly, and sometimes borderline flirtatious, something always stopped Pike, and he got used to seeing you leaving with a nod and a tight-lipped smile, now almost never lifting your eyes up to meet his as you sat studying behind one of the many similar wooden tables. 
He cursed himself, cursed his cowardice and the fact that he got panic attacks any time he tried to tell you a compliment. He hated that he became tongue-tied whenever you asked his opinion on one of the books you checked out. And when his brain was swarming with knowledge, the influences the author had, or the way the work was transcending the time it was written in; his mouth only said ‘it’s a good book’ or worse ‘it’s not bad’. He wanted to punch himself, but that would mean lifting his arms that were numb and limp on both sides of his body.
Today was not an exception, unfortunately. Marcus was sitting behind his desk, pristine, clean and occupied only by his work computer and a book he had been reading during the quiet times. You came over less than half an hour ago, saying your usual hello and asking about yet another book on art. You’d almost read them all, and Marcus was frantically thinking what would happen when you check out the last book from the art section, a place in the library that no one else went to. He told you where to find a copy of "Janson’s History of Art" and you nodded, going in the right direction without needing his help anymore. You didn't look up at him when you took your usual place near the window and placed the book on the table.
Marcus sighed, looking as you brows furrowed when you read something and started rewriting it in your notebook. Art section was your place. Yours and his. It was special, at least for him. He had walked you there exactly forty nine times. Not because you couldn’t remember where to go, no, you were confident in your stride the third time; but because it became a sort of a joke between the two of you. Sometimes you’d just come over and ask him to show you where the art section was, telling him that it was only your 21st, 33rd, 45th time in the library and you didn’t have the opportunity to learn all the right turns yet. He laughed, but always walked you there. Sometimes you were silent, sometimes you’d ask him silly questions (‘What is the rarest book here?’ 'First edition of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince and Other Tales" with the author's inscription.’; ‘What is the worst thing a person did in the library?’ ‘Tried to rip a page out of the first edition of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince and Other Tales"’; ‘Did you stop them?’ ‘Kind of.’; ‘Is the horror section haunted?’ ‘Yes.’). You hadn’t asked him to walk you to the art section for a month now. Marcus even wanted to suggest it himself, but his tongue felt too heavy and big for his mouth whenever he tried.
So he was left with watching. Just like dozens of times before. As he quietly observed from a distance, Marcus couldn't help but lose himself in the beauty of your presence amidst the mundane decorations of his workplace.He thought that he knew you face better than his own by now. The structure of your cheekbones, the curve of your lip, the depth of your cupid’s bow. He could close his eyes and draw you in his sleep. You were engrossed in the book when another wave of hot air from the AC above you tousled your hair. Winter this year was abnormally cold, so to keep the building warm Marcus had to turn up the temperature on the AC pretty high. Maybe he overdid it today. He saw you wiping a lonely droplet of sweat running from your temple. Yes, he definitely overdid it today.
He reached to stand up and go to the temperature controller when you started tugging up your usual bulky green sweater, and dropped back into his chair as the material of your sweater and t-shirt stuck together, so you almost took both items off. Marcus choked on his saliva seeing so much of you that he never saw before. Sure, you wore knee-length shorts and oversized t-shirts during summer, sometimes you even put on a dress when it was too hot for anything else, but this was different. The swell of your naked stomach, the almost-not-there lacy edge of your black bra, fuck, it felt so intimate. 
Marcus squeezed his thighs under the table, his cock getting hard with every thought his brain provides. Fuck, it was really not a time or a place for a boner, but you looked so… He pinched the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes and trying to relax, but instead of that he saw images of your naked skin over and over again, followed by fake scenarios where he ripped the shirt off you, kissing your willing body with his greedy mouth. Marcus could almost feel the softness of your skin under his palms, and he bit his lower lip at the phantom feeling, trying to suppress a moan.
He didn’t notice how his legs brought him to the secluded area of the art section, his hands hysterically pulling out his stiff cock from the confines of his pants, while his mind completely shut off. 
It was almost primal, the incandescent feeling inside him that made him spit in the palm of his hand before wrapping it around his shaft.
"Fuck," his whisper was quiet, even though it was unlikely that anyone could hear him anyway. There were less than eight patrons when he left the main hall, all of them engrossed in their literature of choice, and he still had an hour before he had to close.
His spit-slicked hand tightened around his cock as he moved it up and down, circling the weeping head every time. Goddamn, he was sick. Fucked up. Getting hard after seeing the stomach of the girl he had been swooning over for almost a year. What in the teenage hormones was this bullshit? 
Your skin, the swelling of your stomach, the tiny dip of your belly button. Fuck, he wanted to dip his tongue in the little canyon of your body and hear you suffocating on giggles.
Up, down, up, down.
He looked down, watching his hand methodically moving around his fat cock. As he got closer to his orgasm, the veins that led from the base to the tip of his cock became more pronounced, the head getting darker with every stroke. "God-fucking-dammit, baby," he dropped his head back, punching a wall but barely noticing any pain as he got succumbed by his pleasure. "So fucking gorgeous. Mine. Mine. Only mine."
If anyone heard Marcus, they’d consider him a psycho, his hoarse whisper feverishly calling someone his when he was the only one in the room. He didn’t give a single fuck. In his little fantasy, right now, you were his. Only for him to touch, only for him to love. He tripped over the edge, as his mind flooded by the memory when you first laughed at his joke, and he came all over his fist moaning your name as quietly as possible, as four thick ropes of cum painted his skin pearly white.
Marcus didn’t hear the footsteps, orgasm claiming every sense in his body until he heard a quiet ‘oh’, the voice too familiar to mistake its’ owner.
"Fuck, fuck, oh God, sorry, this is not what you think it is." His eyes went wide at the sight of you. You were pressing your copy of "Janson’s History of Art" to your chest, face curious and almost… amused? He pulled his boxers up, trying not to wince when the thick rubber band scratched the sensitive skin of his spent cock.
"Isn’t it?" You raised your eyebrows at Marcus, and he remembered that he was still standing in front of you with his pants fully undone and his boxers stained with the cum he wiped on them in a hurry. 
"No." He shook his head frantically, tugging on the zipper and trying to quickly zip it up when the hem of his shirt stuck in it and he cursed, almost tearing it out.
"So you weren’t just masturbating thinking of me, and the fact that you moaned my name as you came was just a coincidence?"
'How long had you been standing there?' Marcus thought. He heard your steps closing in on him, but didn’t dare to raise his eyes to see the disgust on your face. Instead, he continued fighting with the zipper.
"Yes," he nodded, and then immediately shook his head. "No. Look, I can explain." Marcus searched his brain for the right answer, for something that could fix all of this mess, but coming up empty. His sigh was deep, almost hurting his lungs as he gave up. "Okay, I maybe can’t explain, I’m just… Sorry."
"I’m not." 
He snapped his head up so fast that the sides of his vision went black for half of a second. "What?"  
You were close. Very close. If you reached your arm out you could help him with a zipper he abandoned in stupor.
"I was planning to come over at the last moment tomorrow and ask you to walk me here," you stepped even closer, placing your hand on his chest and feeling the rapid fire of Marcus’ heartbeat. "You know, for our last time."
He just nodded, the blood pumping in his ears made it almost impossible to understand what you were saying, so he just stared at your lips, unconsciously licking his.
"And then," both your hands circled his neck, burrowing in the slightly damp hair at his nape, "I was going to blow you right against the rare editions shelf."
"Wha..—" 
Marcus wasn’t able to finish when your lips crushed into his, tasting each other for the first time. Suddenly, he wasn’t so tongue-tied anymore.
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PLEASE WRITE A COMMENT IF YOU ENJOYED THE STORY ♥︎
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yn-ymn-yln · 3 years
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Can i request a klaus mikaelson x reader where the reader is in hayleys place… a pregnant wolf but in the end klaus and her fall in love?
Okay lovie I got pretty carried away with this so it's kinda long... but thank you for the request! I hope you like it!
Clarification
Klaus Mikaelson x reader
*I didn't want to copy the show verbatim so I basically made this completely different from what happens to Hayley I hope that's okay!*
“Nik I’m sorry I didn’t mean it!”
“LIAR!” The pain in his voice has you recoiling. How had things gotten so fucked up?
“I swear, I love you! Please stop!” The hybrid’s furious gaze turns to your father who challenges him for what you all know is the last time.
“STOP IT! PLEASE!” Your father’s corpse drops unceremoniously to the ground within seconds. You can’t take your eyes off of the man that had raised you, tears slipping down your face.
“Remember this day Y/f/n Y/l/n. This is what happens when you betray the original hybrid.”
Three years ago, to the day Klaus Mikaelson had slaughtered every remaining blood relative of your pack right before your eyes, leaving you the sole survivor of his man-made massacre.
Standing at the entrance to the compound you hoped today would go smoother than that day had all those years ago.
Klaus didn’t speak after you’d said your piece. Letting the shared history between the two of you cloud his judgement he’s on you in a second. His hand is wrapped around your throat, pinning you to the wall before you even have the chance to react. Instantly your own hands fly to his wrists pulling harshly to try and free yourself and continue the conversation without conflict.
Klaus doesn’t let up though. His grip gets tighter with each passing second. As his eyes begin to glow, the veins beneath them appear in a show of dominance.
Problem was, you were never one to back down from a challenge.
Growling lowly, you refuse to submit to the hybrid before you. With all rational thoughts out the window you sink your teeth into the arm of the man holding you. His unrelenting choke hold falters offering you your only chance to slip free. You push past him and take shelter behind his oldest living brother.
“Please do tell, what exactly is going on here?” Ever the noble gentleman, Elijah tries to diffuse the rather abrupt display of aggression.
“I’m pregnant.” The words fall past your lips without warning. Elijah didn’t know who you were, none of the Mikaelson’s did except for Klaus.
“Pardon?” Turning towards you, you can already see the look of disbelief color his features.
“She’s a liar! I’LL KILL HER!” The threat did little to scare you off. If he had really wanted you dead, he would have killed you three years ago when he had the chance.
“I’m not lying and we both fucking know it!” Lunging at you Klaus tries to maneuver around Elijah only to be stopped with a hand to his chest.
“I think that’s quite enough. What is your name?” He addresses the hybrid, then you.
“Y/n.”
“I find it hard to believe a woman I’ve never met harbors the child of my brother.” You chuckle humorlessly then.
“I do know him, have for years. He just doesn’t want you to know that.” Admittedly you had wounded more than Klaus’ pride when things had gone south between the two of you.
“Niklaus?” Elijah gives his younger brother a look that reads don’t fucking try lying to me. He doesn’t offer Elijah an explanation, opting instead to leave the room in a huff.
“I know this isn’t ideal, but I promise it’s his.”
“Very well, make yourself comfortable, we’ll find a witch in the morning.” You don’t ask him to elaborate, you knew they all needed proof, he needed proof. Without a word more you trudge up the stairs, Elijah following closely behind you. “If you’re lying about this, I’ll rip your heart out myself, you have my word.” hastily leaving the room you both had entered, he quietly shuts the door behind him.
There was nothing left to do now but wait.
Klaus Mikaelson should have been the last person you wanted to see. The remaining hatred you had for him should have been simmering but it wasn’t. You had never gotten a proper goodbye from the man that had stolen your heart. Your alcohol fogged mind told you there was no better time for a good bye than right now, and what better way to say it then to fall into the bed of the man you had once loved?
Klaus had eyed you suspiciously, his heart locked behind the walls he had built that fateful day.
You hadn’t even spoken, words had never been your winning feature. You had grabbed him by the collar pressing your lips to his.
It was heaven
He didn’t ask questions, choosing instead to lead you out of the bar hand in hand to the only safe place he knew.
His bed.
The months that had followed had been nothing short of chaotic. The witches of New Orleans had “officially” confirmed that you were in fact carrying the child of Klaus Mikaelson. He had taken the news rather poorly. Disappearing for weeks before finally surfacing at the compound again. Though he had returned, his icy demeanor towards you had stayed ever present. So, you kept as far away from him as you could. Until you didn’t.
You had been passing his study when the door had opened quickly causing you to stumble. You were sure your face was about to become very acquainted with the hardwood floor of the hall way when a pair of strong arms hand wrapped around your waist. You hadn’t meant to grip his wrist desperately, one hand flying to your barely showing baby bump.
“Your alright, I’ve got you.” His sentence was clipped, but that had been the most he had said to you since you stepped foot in the compound all those weeks ago.
“Thank you.” You’re not sure what had possessed you to bury your face in his chest but the warmth and comfort was worth the ire you were about to face. You’re surprised to look up and see him peering at you through confused eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t- It won’t happen again.” You leave before he has the chance to yell.
After your bout of clumsiness Klaus had laid off his harsh temper with you. You were sure it had been Elijah’s doing, probably some speech about stress being bad for the baby, but you didn’t mind. The somewhat calm atmosphere had brightened your mood considerably and gave you the tiniest shred of hope that maybe this wouldn’t be such a nightmare.
“ELIJAH!!!” You had never seen a thousand-year-old vampire move so fast in your life.
“What is it?! What’s wrong?!” His panic laced tone has a sheepish smile spreading on your face before you feel the tiny flutter again. Grabbing the originals hand, you place it on your stomach and wait.
“Come on little bean, you can do it.” The look of utter surprise that spreads across his face as a tiny thump reaches his hand is priceless.
“KLAUS COME HERE!” Elijah doesn’t move his hand, the wonder of human life making his undead heart melt. Klaus rushes into the room in much the same manor, the only difference being the glowing eyes and raised fist.
“Come feel!” You don’t hesitate to place his hand over your ever moving child. Elijah leaves the room then, wanting to give you and the father of said child a moment. “Do you feel it? Feel her?” A small smile spreads across the hybrids face his hand pressing slightly harder to the fading kick.
“I do. It’s amazing.” Silence fell upon the two of you, with it your doubts grew.
“What if I can’t do this?” The vulnerability in your words has Klaus looking at you in shock. He had never seen you so unsure of yourself.
“You can love, you are going to be a great mother.”
“No, I’m not, this baby is screwed and we both know it. Fuck, you can’t even look at me half the time. What kind of a family is she going to have?”
“This family isn’t perfect but it’s hers.” His words do little to comfort the growing fear inside your heart.
“I wish my dad was here.” The sob that rips from your throat is deafening, not for the first time Klaus wishes things had happened differently between the two of you.
“I’m sorry love.” You don’t let him finish, far too hormonal to not hug the father of your bastard kid. Klaus holds you tightly letting you release the built-up emotion, kissing your forehead every so often. “We will get through this, I promise.” Nodding your head, you stay firmly planted against the hybrid’s chest.
You hope he’s right.
Things weren’t perfect between you and Klaus, but with each passing day you saw the tension leave his shoulders and felt your anger slip through the cracks.
You loved him. It was simple, but none of it mattered if he didn’t love you back.
Sitting on the couch watching T.V. you traced patterns onto your stomach, mindlessly humming a melody that lived rent free in your mind. Klaus made his way into the living room, lifting your feet before placing them in his lap.
“What are you watching love?” The nickname had become a staple in the conversations between the two of you as of late.
“I’m not sure, I’m not really paying attention.”
“Why? Are you feeling alright?” Rubbing his hand up and down your leg you watch the man before you. Things had been so corrupt between you both, at one point you were sure you could never go back. Now though? You weren’t sure what to believe.
Nodding lightly, you try to defuse his worry.
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Us.” The word hangs heavily in the air.
“What about us?” Inhaling a lengthy breath, you burst the perfect bubble you had been living in.
“I’m in love with you.” Klaus pauses his movement on your leg shifting his gaze to stare into yours.
“What?”
“I know a lot of shit happened between us Nik, and I know you don’t trust me but I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped. I know you might not feel the same” Your sentence is cut short by the hybrids lips connecting with your own.
“I thought I would never hear you say that again.” Closing the gap again, you press your forehead to his.
“We both made mistakes. I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.”
“I forgave you a long time ago.” At his words you feel the moisture begin to pool in the corner of your eyes.
“Me too.”
The love you and the hybrid shared had never faded, you both just needed a little clarification to see it.
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loki-hargreeves · 3 years
Text
Loki x Reader - Thanos controls You
Warnings: angst, mentions of torture, mind-control, fighting, choking, blood and gore, more angst (it's a lot ok)
Word Count: 5,8K
Summary: After failing to deliver the Tesseract, Loki has been living in fear that Thanos will one day find him again and seek revenge. You have been missing ever since Loki was imprisoned after what he did in New York. Little did Loki know that you were with Thanos all along. During the events of Infinity War, Thanos makes you battle Loki in order to obtain the Tesseract
Author’s Note: I know Thanos doesn’t have the mind stone at the beginning of Infinity War but it’s fiction and I’m gonna do what Marvel does best, ignore canon. Let’s blame the Other’s powers, okay? Please enjoy this angsty little thing! :)
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YOUR POV
“There’s room for more!” Loki yelled over the cries of scared children and their crying families. There was no way he would send a half-empty escape pod on its way to Midgard. That’s when he saw a child all by herself a little further away. She was clinging onto the wall for dear life and the ship trembled due to the impact of getting shot at. Her parents were nowhere to be seen. Dead. Loki felt sick to his stomach when he knew they were most likely dead. Thanos’ children were slaying kids and their parents heartlessly and they had the audacity to say they were being rescued. That their deaths were part of something bigger than life itself.
They viewed Thanos as a god who was being merciful even when he ripped a beating heart out of someone's chest.
Loki’s heart clenched in his chest painfully. Before it would be too late, he made his way to the tiny child and picked her up carefully. She seemed to recognize the prince but she wasn’t afraid of him. Instead, she hugged Loki so she wouldn’t fall out of his grasp.
“Where’s mommy?” The girl sounded absolutely petrified.
Loki didn’t know what to say as he made his way to the pod. Once he reached it, he saw a woman by the entrance.
“You’ll be safe here,” Loki promised the child as he handed her over to the lady. That’s all he had time for as he returned to the corridor. A particularly loud blast made him stumble over his feet and he had to catch his balance by taking support from the metal wall. The lights flickered, which meant the electronics of the ship were injured. There was a strange smokey smell in the air, which lingered with the irony stench of blood.
Loki couldn’t believe this was happening. Had Thanos finally come for him? Or did Thanos somehow know of the tesseract? Either way, if Thanos succeeded, he would kill two birds with one stone. The thought of this being all his fault made Loki nauseous. Guilt was nibbling at his skin and he knew it would eat him alive in the end. He never wished for this to happen!
As he ran down the corridors frantically searching for Asgardians that needed help, he heard different kinds of cries. People were letting out guttural screams. Others were pleading for their lives. Listening to the massacre that was taking place was worse than any nightmare Loki ever recalled having. They were all drained after Ragnarok and now Thanos had found them. It was haunting how ruthless fate could be.
Footsteps began to approach Loki and they were awfully close. Too close for his liking. He was quick to grab his daggers and turn to face whoever dared try to sneak up on him. When he saw a familiar figure, he nearly dropped the blades from his hands. Seeing you there was like shock itself punched him in the face.
You were there, real and clear as day.
How long had it been since the last time he saw you?
Ever since Loki had found out about his true nature, his life had gone downhill. After he ended up with Thanos and went through pure hell with him, he had changed. During his time away from Asgard, he had only missed one person truly - you. You, who had been by his side through everything. You, who hadn’t loved him any less when you saw his deep blue skin and those crimson red eyes that in Loki’s mind resembled blood. You, who had seen him as the rightful king of Asgard when everyone else betrayed him. The light of his life, the angel that had cared for him even when he felt like a monster.
You, who hadn’t been on Asgard when Thor brought him back to face Odin in trial. Loki had spent a lot of time in his cell, alone. He waited for you to appear but you never did and no one ever told him why. They rather left him to drown in his own vicious thoughts. It wasn’t until Loki pretended to be Odin that he began to learn what had happened on Asgard during his exile.
The people at the palace loved to gossip. Some claimed you had stolen a ship and left Asgard behind for good, that living as Loki’s widow had been too hard for you. In Loki’s darkest hours, he wondered if you truly felt ashamed for being associated with him. So ashamed in fact, that you had left it all behind and started anew. Sometimes, he believed that, but it never stopped him from trying to find you. He had searched night and day but it seemed like you had vanished into thin air. It had killed him more every day living in the unknown. His only wish had been that you were okay.
Now there you were, looking like you had never left. In a moment of pure shock, Loki couldn’t even begin to comprehend how you appeared on the ship - seemingly out of nowhere. He was happy to see you, despite how appalling everything else was at that moment.
“Y/N,” Loki spoke your name softly and dared to blink. When you were still there as he opened his eyes, he felt goosebumps all over his skin.
You looked at him so innocently, but then he noticed that something was off. The look in your eyes was cold. You weren’t in your typical Asgardian gear. Instead, you were dressed in dark armour that Loki could’ve sworn he had seen before, but he didn’t know where. Nevertheless, it made him feel uneasy.
“It’s been a while, Loki,” You attempted a smile as you walked closer to him, your husband. It still counted since he had never truly died, right?
Loki didn’t stop you as you walked right up to him. His eyes never left yours. Part of him wanted to kiss you, to hold you and feel you were real, but the shrieks in the background reminded him of how dangerous everything was. The daggers disappeared from his hands and Loki held you by your shoulders. He needed to see that his hands wouldn't go right through you, that he hadn't lost it.
“You need to get off this ship, Y/N!” He told you seriously. There was profound fear in his voice.
Instead of being worried at all, you just smiled back at him.
That was so unlike you.
“Y/N, do you hear me?”
“Oh, I do,” You confirmed nonchalantly, “I’m not going anywhere. Not yet.”
A bloodcurdling cry startled Loki. They were coming closer and closer. The two of you wouldn’t be safe in that passageway for long. By now, his heart was racing with his thoughts. He felt panic settling into his bones.
Before Loki could say another word, you cupped his face rather gently. The fact that you didn’t seem disturbed by what was happening was eerie to Loki. He knew that you had a heart much bigger than anyone else he knew of. The version of you he remembered wouldn’t have been so calm. Something was terribly wrong.
“I need something,” You admitted and batted your eyelashes. Before, Loki would’ve found that quite adorable, but at that moment it was so wrong. He had been so ecstatic to see you and know you were alive, but now he almost wanted to run the other way.
“What?” Loki barely found his voice at that point. He felt sick and heartbroken. This had to be a nightmare, the worst kind.
“The Tesseract, Loki. I really need it,” You blurted it out.
Shivers ran down his spine. How did you know about it? Why did you even care? He was unsure if he could even trust you with the knowledge that he had it in his possession. Usually, he would’ve trusted you with his life without any hesitation, but you had been gone for years and returned like this, with bizarre motives.
You returned at the same time as Thanos and you were looking for the tesseract. Loki wasn’t a fool. He finally put two and two together and the realization was too arduous to believe. The idea of you and Thanos even meeting was something Loki could only see happening in his worst nightmares, but he was afraid it had already occurred. If so, he needed to hear it from you,
“Is Thanos making you do this?”
The tone of his voice seemed to offend you as you sent him a nasty glare. Your softness turned harsh and you pushed Loki against the metal wall with a loud thud. Before he could get out of the way, you grabbed your own dagger and pressed it against his neck so it was ever so slightly pressing against his exposed skin.
“He is not making me do anything. I am glad to serve the all-mighty Thanos. I won’t fail him, unlike you,” You snarled at Loki spitefully.
Never in a million years had Loki imagined this moment to happen. One where you would be fighting against each other. It was supposed to the two of you against the nine realms. Being held like that by the one person he loved more than anything was tearing his heart to shreds, but he tried not to show it.
Deep down, he knew it wasn’t truly you. He knew exactly what Thanos had done to you so you would act like this, and it only made it hurt so much more. It felt like someone was pouring salt into an open wound, and his entire body, heart and soul were wounded.
“Now give me the tesseract and we will be on our merry way,” You tried to obtain it again. This time you seemed more serious. Was it the tone of your voice or your weapon pressed against his pulse? Loki didn’t know.
“I don’t have it,” Loki lied as smoothly as he could because even thinking straight at that moment felt impossible. The world was caving in around him at supersonic speed.
You pressed the sharp edge of the blade closer to him, feeling how just a little bit more pressure would've broken his skin “You’re a great liar, my dear, but I know that’s not the truth.”
Loki didn’t want to fight you, but he didn’t see another way out. And it was good for him that you had learned most of the tricks from him. Your every move would be more easily predictable for Loki. He had to find a way to distract you.
“Why do you need it?” That was a foolish question. He knew damn well what Thanos would do if he got his dirty hands on the infinity stones.
“Why do you care?” You didn’t answer his silly question.
Suddenly, Loki grabbed your wrist tightly and yanked your arm to the side. He tried to be as gentle as he could, but Loki knew you wouldn’t go down without a fight.
At least your weapon fell out of your hand, but you knew how to defend yourself without it. So did Loki.
Loki tried to turn things around so he would have you pinned down against the wall, but you didn’t let him get that far. As he turned you around so your back was pressed firmly against his chest, you kicked your legs against the wall hard, pushing both of you back. Loki took the biggest impact as he fell on the floor, with you on top of him. Quickly, you rolled out of his grasp, turning around in one swift movement so that you were now sat on top of him, with your legs tightly against both his sides.
A powerful orb of magic grew above your fingertips and you brought it closer to Loki’s face - so close that he could feel the heat of your burning powers. The magic created an electric sensation on your skin. It felt like you pushed your fingers deep into warm sand. Toying with it was exhilarating, and seeing the astonished look on Loki’s face made it so much better. The green light of your powers cast light in his eyes, only deepening the look of disbelief that was painted all over him.
“It’s sweet that you’re trying not to hurt me,” You taunted him at that point, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you.”
“This isn’t you, Y/N,” Loki groaned. He was so sure of himself.
You tilted your head and smirked, looking at him like a cat would at a mouse. “I don’t know, Loki. It’s been a while,” You explained casually and leaned closer and closer to his face, stopping when your noses brushed against one another. By now, Loki was frozen on the spot. He was trying to come up with a plan and he felt hopeless.
“I’ve changed,” You whispered to him and felt tempted to kiss him, to taste him. Would you taste his fear? His heartbreak? You were sure it would taste sweet.
“The torture must’ve been painful,” Loki pushed his feelings aside. Yes, he felt like his heart had been ripped to shreds, but he had to do something. He had to surprise you, even if it would hurt. Words could hurt more than actions, and if Loki wanted to survive and to help you, he needed to reach the real you even if the only way to do so was cruel.
How did he know? You narrowed your eyes and surprisingly, found yourself waiting for him to continue.
"I was trained well."
"Trained?" Loki spat out harshly, "I know you're afraid. He has promised you something worse than the pain he has inflicted on you already. It won't happen. If you let Thanos continue his reign, he will not care about your loyalty!"
"Shut up!" That was too much for you. With tears brimming your eyes from anger, you put your hand over his mouth to silence him. He didn't budge and you didn't know why.
You pushed the memories aside. The painful memories of the time Thanos first found you. It was wrong to think of it as torture. No, he had shown you what you're truly capable of. It was training. Training to become a stronger person after the hell you endured on Asgard.
But now that you found yourself thinking about it, it seemed like the memories were all blurred as if you were looking into the past through a broken lens. Someone had spilt oil all over it and the pictures were warped.
"I know you have it," You needed the tesseract. "Give it to me and then this will all be over," you removed your hand from his mouth because it looked like he wanted to speak.
Loki knew that if he’d push you, your magic could burn him, but at the moment he couldn’t come up with another plan. He couldn’t just stay on the ground as people were being killed on the other side of the wall!
"Okay," Loki blurted out. Okay?
For a moment, he had you surprised which was the perfect distraction.
Loki grabbed your wrists tightly and pushed you to the side, but not quickly enough. You released your magic and it graced the side of his face, making him growl out either in pain or frustration - or both. The two of you rolled over and this time Loki was on top, holding your arms pinned above your head. You were trapped because of one mistake. You couldn't believe Loki had used the element of surprise to turn the situation upside down.
Furiously, you tried to kick your legs free, but he had you pinned down beneath him and Loki was strong. There was no point in squirming, you had to come up with another idea.
The two of you faced each other and Loki revealed his face and the damage you had done. Your magic had burned his skin and left a bloody cut on his eyebrow. It had just barely missed his eye. If he lived, it would surely leave a scar.
You flinched when a drop of his blood hit your cheek and it rolled down the side of your face.
"What are you going to do, kill me?"
Loki could never bring himself to kill you. He wouldn't be able to live with himself with your blood on his hands. No. He had other ideas. Loki remembered what it was like to be under Thanos' control. He remembered how much it hurt to even think about the torture. He had to remind you, he had to make you see that this wasn't the real you.
"This version of you, or I certainly hope so," Loki replied mysteriously. Before you could ask him to elaborate, Loki released your wrist and slammed the palm of his hand against your forehead. In a split second, you were in a different place - in your head. You could've sworn you heard him mutter "I'm sorry," before everything turned black.
It was hot, burning hot. Metal chains were attached to you and they were glowing red. Torching. You could only scream in pain as the metal sunk into your skin, your bones, your nerves. It felt like he had chained your mind and with the tiniest movement of his finger, he could make you do his dirty work.
He, Thanos, was sitting on his throne. He was the puppet master and you the puppet. He didn't look at you fondly. No. He was smiling as he watched you cry your lungs out, letting out animalistic growls as the pain got worse. It was so overwhelming that every once in a while, you would scream until you passed out. But every time, one of his children would be there to wake you up.
It was time for another round. And another. And yet another. Would it ever end?
Each time you tried to resist the chains, the strings that were sewn onto you and connected to his fingertips, it hurt more. Eventually, you learned that allowing the strings to tighten around you made it hurt less. It almost felt good, like a long embrace after a long day.
"I don't want to hurt you, my child."
Lies. You knew that all he said were nasty lies, but sometimes it was easier to believe lies than the truth.
"Make it stop!" You would beg him. How long had you been there?
You could remember Thanos touching your face gently, which was so comforting after everything you had endured. At the same time, it made you sick. You couldn't believe that the one who had caused you distress could have such a gentle touch.
"You're ready," Thanos had realized. The Other had appeared right before you and his fingertips were pressed against one another, making him look like he was deep in thought. You had no idea what they were doing, but the next thing you knew was that you no longer felt pain.
The chains, the strings, they were all invisible. It looked like you were free, but the weight of the metal was still pressed against your skin. Had you imagined it?
No,
Deep down you knew that the strings were still attached to you, but they had only made it seem like you had a choice.
"Excellent," The Other's voice surprised you. You merely blinked and you had returned to the vessel. Loki was above you and the Other was standing right there, "You found him."
The Other used his powers to push Loki off you. Shock had made your entire body numb and you couldn't scramble up to your feet. It felt like your limbs had been turned to stone and you were anchored to the floor.
Loki got up slowly with his arms raised in surrender. He was well aware of the powers the Other had and Loki wasn't going to fight him now. If he followed you for long enough, then maybe just maybe he could come up with a plan. Loki looked at you as you finally got up. As you stood next to the Other, you couldn't believe your legs carried you. Something was so wrong. You felt sick and you couldn't shake it off. It felt like something had snapped within you, but you didn't know what.
"He is waiting for you," The Other explained as he turned to walk away, most likely to wherever Thanos was waiting.
Loki had no choice but to follow, and you walked behind, making sure he didn't try to escape.
Why did Loki make you remember that? What did he think he would obtain with making you relive something so awful? It hadn't worked, right?
There he was. Thanos was standing by a hole that had been ripped into the side of the ship. Magic was keeping it sealed so the vacuum of space wouldn't suck everyone into it. But still, the emptiness of space wasn't frightening at all compared to the titan who was standing right there.
Loki swallowed thickly as he saw him again. It had been years but he remembered everything like it had happened yesterday. Seeing Thanos standing in the middle of the piles of bodies, in the room that smelled like smoke and blood, was sickening. Thanos hadn't just killed a part of Loki. He had just slaughtered these innocent Asgardians with the help of his so-called children. He had taken you.
He will make you long for something as sweet as pain
Loki closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. They had stayed true to their threats.
"I know what it’s like to lose," Thanos turned around now that he knew Loki was there. At long last. Thanos had not forgotten what Loki had failed to do, and Thanos was a man of his words.
"To feel so desperately that you’re right yet to fail, nonetheless," Thanos continued dramatically and slowly made his way closer to Loki. He saw Thor on the ground, bloodied and weak. The brother of Loki. As tempting as the idea was to torture Thor right in front of the god of mischief, Thanos had different plans. If there was only one way Loki would ever give him the tesseract, it was going to be in order to save you. You were Loki's true weakness.
"It’s frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you, to what end?" Thanos looked Loki right in the eye. He could see that Loki was afraid, yet Loki never looked away from him. He was either too proud or fearless. Thanos had liked that about Loki initially. But he had failed Thanos greatly. It had cost him infinity stones.
"Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now, it’s here. Or should I say I am," Thanos finished his dramatics because it was time for action, to turn the wheels and see the bigger picture. This was the end of an era and a new beginning for a different universe. In Thanos' mind, only he could bring balance and order. He gestured for you to walk up to his side.
Too afraid of the idea of what would happen if you disobeyed, you walked right up to Thanos, feeling like a fly that was willingly flying into cobwebs. When you were close enough, you kneeled and dipped your head so he wouldn't see the worry in your eyes. It wasn't there before.
"I didn't obtain the tesseract from him, but I am sure that he has it, father," You muttered quietly. Why did you say that? There was a pounding headache growing within your skull. You didn't know what was right or wrong anymore and you couldn't fight it either.
Father
Loki clenched his jaw as he followed the situation closely. Hearing that made his blood boil. He wanted to rip Thanos apart after this. Never in a million years had he imagined this, to see you pledge your alliance to Thanos, kneeling before him and respecting him. Thanos didn't deserve that. Hell, Thanos didn't even deserve to look at you. It was wrong.
At that moment, Loki worried that his trick hadn't worked. That the memories hadn't awakened anything within you. That it was all too late now. This was the end, the one thing in life that was inevitable.
"I know, my child," Thanos let out a sigh. Then he grabbed you by your jaw like he had done before, forcing you to face him. "I know he has it," He repeated and suddenly his touch turned violent. He closed his hand around your neck tightly and you gasped for air helplessly. Your hands - tiny compared to his - grabbed his fingers and you tried to pry them apart, but he was tougher than you. Panic shot through your entire body when you realized you couldn't breathe. It turned your blood to ice and your poor heart was beating so hard you were afraid it would explode.
What was he doing?
The moment he pulled you to your feet, so high that you had to stand on the tips of your toes, he spoke, "The tesseract or her life," Thanos smiled devilishly, showing no remorse. He didn't care about you. You were a pawn in his game and if you would die at his feet, he would just walk over you and carry on.
"You choose," Thanos put the weight of the world on Loki's shoulders.
Loki wanted to rescue you from that monster, but he wasn't stupid. With all of Thanos' children surrounding him, he knew that he would be dead before he could reach you. Nonetheless, it didn't mean he wouldn't try. Seeing you clawing at Thanos' hand, fighting for something as simple as air and not getting it was heartbreaking. Loki's body was trembling with hatred and hurt. Tears blurred his vision and he struggled to keep his composure.
How had it all come to this?
The thought of Thanos with the tesseract was haunting. Soon he would have all the stones and he would destroy reality as they knew it. But Loki could live with that. He couldn't live knowing you had died when he had a chance to save you. Perhaps he was selfish for choosing you over the entire galaxy, but Loki didn't care. Nothing mattered if he would lose you again.
"Alright, stop!" Loki made up his mind. "I choose her," Finally, Thanos released his grip on you and let you fall on the cold ground. Your hands wrapped around your throat gently and you coughed painfully. It took you a while to finally breathe again, which was a huge relief for both Loki and you.
And now Loki was holding the tesseract. It was so bright that it painted the space blue. It was almost too bright to look at. The power within the stone was so strong, you could sense it like heat from the sun in spring after a long and cold winter. Loki was tempted to use the tesseract to grab you and escape, but he quickly shut those thoughts away. Thanos would follow him for the end of all days.
"You...you really are the worst, brother," Thor was following the situation to the best of his abilities. He spat out blood as he watched Loki holding the cube. It made him sad. Everything they ever knew was destroyed in the name of power, pure and raw power that the tesseract could offer. Was it worth it?
Loki glanced at Thor who was too weak to even get up. He didn't care too much about what he had to say. Then he looked at you. There you were, on the ground struggling to breathe after Thanos had crushed your windpipe. There was bruising on your skin that would only deepen with time. Time that you possibly wouldn't have after this.
He saw the tears running down your face, but you didn't sob and whimper. It seemed like you were as still as stone. You couldn't bring yourself to face Loki.
"I assure you," Loki found his voice and he addressed both you and Thor with his words, "the sun will shine on us again."
What did he mean by that?
You were ashamed to tilt your gaze to see him, to see the tesseract. The damn infinity stone had ruined it all! It was why Thanos had wrecked Loki, why he had destroyed you too. Why so many people were now dead. If you had one wish that could come true, you would wish for the tesseract to be destroyed forever.
Thanos had his back turned to you. Loki was slowly but surely making his way closer to the titan, almost like he was afraid to move but he forced his body to comply. Why? Why would he trade the tesseract for your life? It seemed like whatever spell you had been under had worn off. You were free, but it was more terrifying than being under Thanos' control under these circumstances. He didn't need you, and soon enough the vessel would be blown to bits. All of you, even Loki.
Would you be able to tell him how sorry you were?
"Your optimism is misplaced, Asgardian," Thanos wasn't fond of Loki's strange choice of words.
"Well for one thing I'm not Asgardian," Loki replied quickly. It sounded a little bit witty, which was confusing. Where did the boost of confidence come from? Was he up to something?
"And for another," He continued dramatically. This time it was Thanos' turn to be confused.
"We have a Hulk."
Everything that happened after that happened so fast that you could hardly keep up with it. Loki dropped the tesseract and he leapt toward you. Thanos barely had time to turn around when a huge, green beast appeared out of nowhere and it seemed angry. It was eager to fight the titan.
Loki had you up on your feet in no time and the two of you ran away from the immediate danger. He led you to one of the many corridors on the vessel until no one could possibly see you. They were too distracted by the Hulk to even think about Loki and you. It wasn't until he was right in front of you that you could comprehend what was going on. He was kneeling on the floor and you were sat against the wall for support. Your hands were trembling so hard, it seemed like you were freezing up and you couldn't make it stop.
Loki had tricked Thanos.
He was relieved when you didn't fight him, yet he was unsure if it meant you were no longer under Thanos' control, or if you were simply too tired to fight.
He cupped your face gently and searched for answers in your expression. Back in the day, he had been able to read you like an open book.
You put your hands around his wrists and pulled him closer. You were desperate for the comfort he could bring in the midst of the living hell you were stuck in. How did he not hate you?
"I'm s- I'm sorry," You whimpered, finally cracking like a plate that had fallen on the floor. "I'm sorry."
"Shh, it's okay," Loki couldn't possibly let you apologize for what had happened. He was possibly the one person who understood exactly what you had gone through and what it was like to follow orders from that monster. There was not an ounce of judgement to be found in his heart.
What mattered now was that you were together again. You could come up with a plan, but you had to work fast. As much as Loki wanted to hold you and comfort you, to feel that you were real, he knew there wasn't enough time for that.
"We need to get off this thing," Loki's mind was running a marathon as he tried to come up with an escape plan.
"They're gonna blow it up," You explained, feeling how bad your lips were quivering as you spoke. The moment Thanos had what he came for, they would leave and destroy everything they'd leave behind.
Shivers ran down Loki's spine as he heard that. It only confirmed that you had to act quickly. Loki wasn't sure how long the Hulk could fight Thanos. Would they be able to rescue Thor? How much time did they have?
The blood in the wound you had caused on his face was beginning to dry. It looked gnarly and all you wanted was to make it all better. Knowing that you had hurt him made you sick with guilt.
"I'm sorry, Loki. I didn't w-want to fight you," You sniffled, breaking Loki's train of thought. For the first time, he felt lost. He didn't really know what to do. Were there any escape pods left?
"I know," Loki assured you. "I know that. I was in your shoes when I was on Midgard," He explained briefly, unaware whether or not you knew of it. Had Thanos talked about him to you?
A sense of impending doom weighed you two down. If this was the end, then at least you were together, right? You and Loki against the nine realms, you would face the end together if there wasn't another way out. Whenever you had pictured your final day, you had imagined something entirely different than this. You would be old together, with hundreds of stories of your shared life. You would be surrounded by people you cared about. It would be calm, the exact opposite of this.
"I love you," You needed to tell him that. Any moment could be your last. The world would cave in and you would be gone forever.
Loki hated how much that sounded like a farewell, but at the same time, it had been so long since he had last heard those three words, let alone from you. Perhaps it was sick and twisted, but it made him smile.
"I love you too," Loki was sure of it. He had never stopped loving you and he didn't think he was even capable of that.
It seemed like you acted on instinct. You found enough strength to push yourself right against Loki. There was no hesitation in your actions as you kissed him. Loki closed his eyes when he felt your trembling lips pressed against his. Your scent, still sweet and familiar despite it all, punched its way into his lungs. He held your face gently but the kiss was passionate, almost despairing.
You wanted to scream out in agony because at last, you were reunited with Loki but not in the way you imagined. You felt like the shell of the person you were before, and now you knew for a fact that Thanos had done the exact same things to Loki. That titan had killed your souls beyond repair. But all you could do was kiss Loki and hold him and hope that he could feel how sorry you were. You didn't want to let go, afraid that if you did, it would all end. Just like that.
Loki broke the kiss, and for a moment you rested your foreheads against one another like you had done so many times before. It was comforting. You both wanted to stay close like that, but you recognised that you couldn't. Letting go of each other and getting up on your weary feet was so incredibly difficult, but it had to be done.
The world around you began to glow brighter. You quickly held onto Loki, startled as the mysterious light surrounded the two of you.
Loki held his breath as he studied the warm glimmering magic that had swallowed you. In between the bright rays of light, he saw all the colours of the rainbow. Shimmering. He saw reds and blues, yellows and greens, shining brighter than the other and it changed smoothly.
The Bifrost
He didn't know how or why, but he knew for a fact that you were in the magical portal. He couldn't see beyond it anymore. He couldn't feel the floor beneath his feet. It was like he was levitating mid-air, with you tightly in his arms.
Heimdall must've conjured the forefathers, letting their powers flow through him one last time. Where to? Loki assumed that anywhere would be better than where they had been mere seconds ago.
And it was a miracle.
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A/N: I think it would've made more sense for Heimdall to send Thor or Loki to earth rather than the Hulk. So that's why I ended it like that
I'd absolutely love to hear your feedback! <3
TAGS:
Loki: @yuna-belikova @ornella0910 @castiels-majestic-wings @lucywrites02 @myraiswack @prettysbliss @weirdfangirl2416
Forever Taglist: @iraniq  @embrycallsgirl  @blackroseyaz @badass-psycho @r-alexandra01 @p3aches13 @your-pixels-are-showing @disasterren @iamsuperjenna @yuna-belikova @ornella0910 @optimisticpeacecollector5 @thehumanistsdiary @your-pixels-are-showing @klanceiscannon14 @i-have-arrived-bitch
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yellowsuitcase · 4 years
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In the Prefect’s Bathroom Part 3 // Draco Malfoy
A/N: Hi guys! I’m so excited for y’all to read this. This series has gained a lot of traction and tbh it’s a bit scary but I really hope you guys like this. There WILL be a Part 4 and it WILL be the FINAL part! Look forward to it! Thank you so much!
Summary: Y/N deals with the aftermath of her breakup and Draco comforts her. The pair grow closer and Draco can’t ignore his feelings, but is Y/N able to accept them?
Warning(s): Swearing, mention of breakup, lots of crying, violence
Word Count: 3.8k
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Part 1 Part 2 Part 4
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{Not my gif}
Y/N didn’t know where Harry had gone. Three hours had passed, and he'd never come back to his dorm. Y/N knew she ought to leave. She couldn’t stay in his room, not anymore. Luckily, it was Saturday, which meant no classes. Y/N slid off Harry's bed, the same one they'd cuddled on almost every week, and walked over to his mirror. Her reflection didn’t surprise her; her hair was knotted, and her eyes were bloodshot from all the tears. They hadn’t ceased until an hour after Harry left. While letting out an exhausted sigh, Y/N rubbed her hands down her face. She just felt so disappointed in herself. And not to mention her newfound sense of loneliness. It was crippling.
But when she felt well enough, she stepped away from the mirror, walked through the wooden door, and all the way down the familiar stone steps. The closer she got, the louder the voices were. Of course, she thought. It's Saturday; it makes sense that everyone would be in the common room. Once Y/N was near the last few steps, she could see fellow Gryffindors hanging out by the fire while others were doing their schoolwork. But when Y/N emerged into the room, all conversations quieted, and all eyes turned to her. It seemed as though word of the breakup had already reached their ears. She did her best to block out the whispers and avoid eye contact with anyone as she continued walking to her bedroom. Once she arrived, she was surprised to find that her roommate was inside.
“Oh, there you are. I was wondering when you’d be back,” she said. Y/N stood still in the doorway for a moment, debating whether or not to reply. Ultimately, she decided she didn't have the energy to fake a smile. Instead, she stumbled to her bed and collapsed on top of it, face first. “Did you get breakfast?” her roommate, Stephanie, asked. Y/N groaned in reply. Of course, she didn’t get breakfast; she wouldn’t be able to stomach anything in such a state. Stephanie stood near Y/N's bed, wondering if she should say or do something. Eventually, she decided she was uncomfortable with the tension in the air. “Well, I have some Charms homework, so... I’ll just… leave you to it,” she said awkwardly. Y/N heard her footsteps, then the sound of their door opening and closing. Tears instantly rushed to her eyes. Not even her roommate wanted to be around her. And based on the reaction of the students in the common room, nobody did. But Y/N couldn't blame them; she wouldn't want to associate with a cheater either.
The Gryffindor turned over on her plush mattress, her back now pressed against it. Upon opening her eyes, she noticed she’d stuck a photograph of her and Harry onto the ceiling. A jolt of pain struck her chest, but she forced herself to her feet and jumped. Her legs propelled her high enough to rip the picture down in one swift motion. It felt heavy in her palms. She breathed in shakily as she examined it. Her head was on Harry’s shoulder in the photo, and his arm was around her waist. It was from one of their trips to Hogsmeade earlier that year. The Y/N in the picture was smiling brightly as Harry squeezed her tight. Y/N gripped the paper, and with tears falling from her eyes, she ripped it down the center. The sound of it caused a painful cry to escape her lips. But once her hands stilled and she saw the destruction clutched in them, her suppressed anger took over. Forcefully, she put the pieces on top of one another and ripped through them again. And again. She kept going until the image of her and Harry was reduced to tiny little shreds of paper.
Y/N then cried for a couple minutes, wetting the shreds with her tears as she mourned what once was. But when she got a hold of herself, she clutched the pieces in one hand and slid off her bed. Stephanie had left the windows open, so Y/N walked over to them and stuck out her closed fist. With a heavy heart, she opened her palm and watched as the pieces scattered into the wind. 
When all of them were out of sight, Y/N grasped the windows' handles and pulled them towards her, shutting out the late morning air. Defeatedly, she sunk into the seat below the windows and breathed in a shaky breath. She felt so broken, so stupid. Even though Harry hadn’t been the perfect boyfriend, Y/N knew she was the one who fucked up; she was the one who cheated. And despite everything that happened between them, Harry didn’t deserve that. Not at all.
--------
Later on in the day, Y/N’s hunger finally got the best of her, so she dragged herself out of bed and cleaned herself up. She threw on a comfy sweater, a simple pair of sweats, and pinned her hair back with some clips. It was late in the afternoon, surely the Great Hall would be nearly empty as it was Saturday. At least, that was what Y/N was hoping for. The idea of the entire school staring at her made her feel uneasy. But she shook the thought away, grabbed her wand, and headed out the door. The people in the common room, once again, looked up upon her arrival but said nothing. Y/N could feel their judging stares on her back as she rushed through the archway, closing the Fat Lady portrait behind her.
The hallways were pretty deserted, save for a few wandering Slytherins. They were always rather fond of slinking around corridors. Y/N paid them no mind as she walked down the stairs to the Great Hall. It was, as she suspected, nearly empty. The Gryffindor table was clear except for some first years. Y/N started to walk towards it when her elbow was grabbed. She instinctively whipped around and wrenched her arm from the person’s grip. Her heart clenched when she saw who it was. 
“Hey… I heard about you and Potter,” Draco said. He looked sheepish as he fiddled with a loose thread hanging from his dark green sweater. 
“Is that all?” Y/N almost whispered, her voice scratchy from all her crying. 
Draco’s eyes seemed sad when they met hers. “I… don’t know what to say. But I do know that if I were you, I’d want someone to check up on me, so...” he paused, looking away from her. “Are you okay?” he finally asked. Y/N stared at him for a moment. She was not expecting those words to come out of Draco Malfoy’s mouth, but when they did, and when they registered, she couldn’t stop the sob that fell from her lips. 
Draco froze in shock. He had definitely not been expecting the girl to burst into tears right in front of him. But now that she was, his instincts screamed at him to comfort her. It was just...he didn’t quite know how. Draco was unfamiliar with girls. All he knew was how to have sex with them, and usually, that was a fun activity with no strings attached. Well, except with Y/N. Something about her was simply different from the others. The first time they did the deed, he’d pushed away the fuzzy feeling in his chest. The second time, however, he cleaned her. He cleaned her. Usually, he’d leave the girl to do that on her own time, but for some reason, with Y/N, he had taken it upon himself to fulfill that gesture. And not to mention the fact he kissed her. Twice! Granted, they were only on her temple, but they were still kisses for Merlin's sake.
But here he was, facing the girl responsible for all his confusing emotions, and she was crying. Draco glanced around the hall and noticed people beginning to stare. He shot them mean glares without thinking twice. They averted their eyes. When he turned back to Y/N, he found that she was looking at him. Her eyes held so much sadness that they made Draco’s heart physically hurt when he looked into them. So he did what his mother would always do when he cried. He lifted his arms and gently took Y/N into them. She hesitated at first but then buried herself into his chest, still heaving heavily with sobs. Draco rubbed her back in a soft, soothing motion. But then he quickly remembered where they were, so he put down his right arm, leaving his left on her back, and led them out of the Great Hall. 
Once in the corridor, Draco wasn’t sure where to take Y/N. He couldn’t take her to his common room. His housemates would likely be doing all kinds of illegal shit, and he didn’t want to surround Y/N with that while she was in such a fragile state. And, of course, her common room wasn’t an option since Harry and his friends would probably be there. It was too dark to go outside, and they wouldn’t be able to talk properly in the library. Draco was beginning to panic, but then it hit him; the Astronomy Tower. It was one of his favorite spots, and it was relatively likely that no one would be there. He wrapped his arm tighter around Y/N and began walking towards the tower. 
After a few minutes of walking and climbing the long staircase, the pair came to the top and shuffled into the Astronomy Tower. Y/N’s cries had died down already, she was only sniffling now, but Draco still kept his arm around her. “Why are we here?” she asked. Draco said nothing; he only walked them over to the railing. Y/N stared at him, perplexed, but Draco remained silent as he turned his nose up towards the sky. He loved looking at the stars. They reminded him how small and insignificant he truly was. And for someone like him, who had what felt like the weight of the world on their shoulders, it was comforting. 
When he was finally able to tear his eyes away from the sky, Draco dropped his arm from Y/N''s back and turned to her. She, too, had been staring at the sky. But when the blonde faced her, she tilted her head towards him and raised an eyebrow. Draco cleared his throat as his fingers found that loose thread. “Do you wanna talk about it?” he asked. Y/N scoffed. “Talk about what? How I’m the shittiest girlfriend ever? Or rather, was the shittiest,” she asked, her eyes shifting back to the stars. Draco sighed. “Well, I’m at fault here too, you know…” he said. Y/N rubbed her fingers on her forehead; she looked exhausted. “Draco, I appreciate it, but I made the decision to have sex with you. I knowingly and willingly cheated on Harry. You may have been the one I did it with, but that doesn’t put you at fault for my actions.”
“But I knew you were—,” Draco cut himself off with a sigh. “Well, why’d you do it then?” he asked. Y/N gave him an unimpressed look. “I already told you why. He didn’t satisfy me in the bedroom. Point, blank, period.” Draco shook his head. “But you obviously loved him, so why did you go through with it?” he pressed further. Y/N said nothing as she sunk to the floor and stuck her feet out so that they dangled off the edge of the tower. Draco didn’t join her initially, but after a minute or two, he sat down beside her and leaned his arms against the lower rung of the railing. Y/N played with her fingers anxiously for a bit before responding. “I guess…I felt like he and I were growing distant from each other. We stopped going to Hogsmede, we stopped studying together, we just...stopped,” Y/N said quietly, her voice deep and rough from her tears. “But that doesn’t make it okay; nothing makes it okay.” Draco’s eyebrows furrowed together. He could hear the pure pain in her voice, and he didn’t know what to think of it. All he knew was that it made his fists clench and his heart squeeze. 
Draco gazed at the girl beside him. She was so beautiful in the moonlight. Her skin looked soft. He so wished he could reach out and stroke her cheek, but he knew that would likely put her off. Instead, he unclenched his fist and wrapped his hand around hers. He felt her jump slightly upon feeling his touch, but then, she smiled at him. God, how he loved her smile. It made him feel warm. He wanted to share that warmth Y/N, so he scooted close to her. Their shoulders were now pressed together. He gazed down at her, studying her face. “How do you feel?” he asked tentatively, not knowing quite where the question came from. Y/N hummed and replied with one word. “Alone.”
“Well...for what it’s worth, I’ll be here if you need someone,” Draco replied in an uncertain tone. He still wasn’t really sure what he was doing, but he trusted what his gut was telling him. And it seemed like it was the right thing to say because out of nowhere, Y/N’s arms wrapped around Draco’s neck, and her body pressed up against him. Instinctively, Draco returned the hug. He pulled her close and nestled his face in the crook of her neck. Nothing was okay, not yet, but at the very least, they now had each other. 
-------
A few weeks later…
Draco twirled his wand between his fingers while he strolled through the stone corridors. He had a free period this school year and would often spend it by riding his broom around the quidditch pitch and trying out new tricks. He was on his way there now. He’d even asked Y/N to meet him there, considering she too had an open slot in her schedule. 
After their night at the Astronomy Tower, they started spending lots of time with one another. They played gobstones, hide n seek around the castle, and had recently begun studying together. Surprisingly, the two of them had become pretty good friends despite having only started talking about a month ago. But when Y/N had mentioned to Draco that she hadn’t ridden a broomstick since first year, he had insisted she join him for one of his joyrides. She resisted at first, but Draco promised her he’d let her choose another activity for the two of them and that he wouldn’t protest, no matter how stupid he thought it was. He was quite proud of himself for thinking up that one. Truth be told, Draco had gone soft for Y/N and would probably do whatever she wanted to do, but she didn’t need to know that.
While Draco was walking down the corridor, he heard the faint sound of laughing as well as a thud. It seemed like it was coming from ahead, so he increased his pace. When he turned the corner, he was surprised to find Y/N sprawled out on the floor with some Gryffindors standing above her, snickering. “What a piece of shit. Fucking slag,” one of the girls spat. The rest of the group laughed at her words and even began to kick Y/N’s sides. Draco felt anger rising in his chest. How dare they. How fucking dare they. 
Without thinking, he ripped his wand from his pocket and shouted, “Stupefy!” A shot of bright light flew towards the group. It knocked them off their feet and into the air. They each landed with a loud thump, but Draco couldn't care less. He ran over to Y/N just as she was getting to her feet. “Are you alright?” He asked her as he scanned her body, looking for injuries. Y/N nodded, but it was clear that she was frightened. Before he had the chance to comfort her, Draco’s attention was taken by the sound of a soft chuckle. He looked past Y/N to see the Gryffindors back on their feet. 
“Would you look at that? The man-whore came to save you Y/N. Why don’t you drop to your knees for him and give us a little show?” said a tall, light-haired boy. Draco’s shoulders heaved with fury, and he raised his wand again. “Draco, no!” Y/N shouted desperately, but the Slytherin was already casting the curse. “Petrificus Totalus!” Draco bellowed. Instantly, the boy’s body froze in place and fell over, causing his head to hit the stone floor. His friends jumped to his defense, raising their wands towards Draco, ready to strike. But Draco was smarter. He pointed his wand towards a pile of books on a nearby bench and whispered, “Oppugno.” The books quickly shot into the air, and with another wave of Draco’s wand, they were directed towards the two remaining Gryffindors of whom were confused at first. However, when a book slapped one across the face, they realized these objects were attacking them. Hastily, they scrambled for their previously discarded items, grabbed them, and bolted down the hallway, screaming as they went. 
Once they were gone, Draco marched up to the frozen boy lying on the floor. He glared into his eyes and lifted his foot. “Draco, don’t you dare,” Y/N warned as she followed after him. But all Draco could see was red. There was no way he'd back away from the chance to give the boy a taste of his own medicine. So, he pretended he hadn't heard Y/N, and rammed his foot into the Gryffindor’s side, just as he had done to Y/N. “Stop!” Y/N shouted. Draco continued to ignore her. He kept slamming his foot into the boy with absolutely no remorse. But to his dismay, his rampage was stopped by Y/N grabbing his arm and yanking him backward. He flailed for balance as he stumbled back. “Draco, that’s enough,” Y/N stated firmly before she quickly cast the counter-curse, effectively freeing the boy. He jumped to his feet, shooting daggers at the two of them. “Just go, Jack,” Y/N mumbled. The boy hesitated, but an angry look from Draco ultimately sent him on his way. 
When Jack was out of sight,  Y/N let go of Draco. “What the fuck was that? You could’ve seriously hurt them!” she yelled. Draco gaped at her, absolutely shocked. “They were hurting you! I was only giving them what they deserved, those arseholes. How dare they call you such things; who do they think they are?” he grumbled. 
Y/N sighed softly and rubbed her fingers against her temple. “By doing all that rubbish, you only proved that you’re no better than them. You should’ve just let me handle it,” Y/N retorted, trying to get her friend to understand. But Draco was not having it. “Y/N, you were lying on the floor getting kicked. I had to do something. I couldn’t just watch you get harassed—”
“Well, you know what, Draco? Not too long ago, you were the one harassing me, or did you forget?” Y/N screamed, her eyes welling up with tears. 
Draco paused. He didn’t know what to say; she was right. He only watched as Y/N rubbed her eyes and mumbled, “Fuck,” while she slid to the floor, her back against the wall. “You always treated me like shit Draco. Always... And besides, they were giving me what I deserved. I cheated on someone, and if that isn’t deserving of kicks and harsh words, then I don’t know what is,” she said sadly, her face in her hands. She couldn’t see that Draco was adamantly shaking his head. “Don’t say that; you didn’t deserve any of that bullshit,” he said through gritted teeth.
Y/N’s head shot upwards, and her fists clenched. “That’s rich coming from you. Since when did you become my protector, huh? You hated my guts a month ago, did you not? Why the fuck do you even care, Draco?” she shouted angrily, her eyes boring into Draco’s back since he had turned and begun walking away from her in frustration. But then, suddenly, he spun back around. “Because I like you, okay!? It’s because I like you.” 
A few awkward seconds passed before Draco found the courage to look up from the floor and to Y/N instead. She was staring at him with a look of panic on her face. The dreadful feeling of guilt began to swirl in Draco’s stomach. Nevertheless, he breathed in deeply and started walking over to his friend. She said nothing as he neared her, but when he crouched down beside her, she turned her head away from him. “Y/N...” he started. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I just...I couldn’t stand to see you hurt. I acted on my anger without thinking, and for that, I apologize.” 
Y/N maintained her silence. Draco took a chance and hesitantly put his hand on top of her knee. When she didn’t push him away, he continued to speak. “Y/N, I really like you, and I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I know that sounds cheesy and probably a bit unbelievable, but I promise you it’s true,” he said while stroking her knee through her corduroy pants. She still didn’t meet his eyes, but Draco was in too deep, and he didn’t know if he’d get another chance to say this. So he inhaled sharply and spoke his thoughts into existence. 
“I think I want to be with you, Y/N.”
For what felt like hours, neither teenager said a word. Draco’s heart was pounding nervously in his chest. He felt like he might cry if she didn’t reply. But then, she turned her head. By the look on her face, Draco knew whatever she had to say wouldn’t be good. Y/N glanced at his eyes momentarily but couldn’t keep the contact. “What is it?” Draco asked gently, trying not to upset her but also wanting her to break her silence. Y/N breathed in deeply and scooted her feet forward, causing her legs to straighten and Draco’s hand to leave her knee. He pulled it close to him, feeling as though he’d been punched. 
“Draco, I..." she started. “I can't. I’m not ready for a relationship, not after Harry. I’m sorry.”
Draco felt his hands begin to shake. This couldn't be happening. “Y/N, please, I promise I—”
“No, no, I can’t do this, Draco. Not right now,” Y/N said firmly as she got to her feet. Draco stammered to find the words that would convince her to stay, but she was already breaking into a run. All he could do was watch as her figure grew smaller and smaller as she traveled down the corridor. Draco considered chasing after the girl he wanted so desperately, but he knew he had to let her go. He closed his eyes, regretting his decisions. When his eyelids reopened, she was gone.
Taglist: @beiahadid @pastelpuffbar @cutie1365 @dracoxmgg @lumlfy @sambucky8 @emilianamason @orangecrayon​ @obsssedwithjustaboutanything​ @hustlinhufflepuff​ @goddessofgames @dracocanslytherin8​ @superbturtlemakerathlete​
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oilivia · 3 years
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"It could never be me" - Tooru Oikawa x Reader
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a/n: i just want to say sorry in advance cause i broke my own heart writing this one. no beta and i hope there aren’t too many mistakes! no one asked for this, but here it is, i accept hate mail.
cw: angst, mentions of sex and slight explicit language, friends with benefits
wording: 1.2k
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It started with an "I met someone, love". That 'love' he threw at you so casually. Like it meant nothing. And suddenly it felt like the walls were closing in around you, like every stolen kiss, every caress and caring word meant nothing.  Just like the nonchalant 'love' he'd call you in that silvery voice of his,  your limbs entangled late into the night, covers draped over your sweaty bodies. It was your favorite word. Oh, the irony, how it bit and tore at you.
"Congratulations, Tooru." You tried not to stutter as you spoke, wanting to let the words come out and not the tears. He didn't seem to notice. He looked happy, happier than you’d seen him in a long time. You felt the burn of jealousy in your chest, gripping your heart and squeezing. The bitter taste of the false hope you hid so well within the darkest crevices of your heart - now getting choked out and bursting, flaming poison running through your veins instead of blood.  
It hurt. You stood there, talking, but you didn’t register a thing he said. He told you about her, how beautiful she was, how her eyes sparkled when she laughed. You would just nod with a smile that wouldn't reach your glassy eyes, mechanically chanting 'Oh, I'm so happy for you'. A tiny voice in your head pleaded, desperate, trying to convince you that it must be a cruel joke. That soon he'd yell 'Gotcha!' and wrap you in a tight hug, a grin on his face and he’d make fun of you for taking him so seriously. But you knew, you knew that wasn't true. Not this time.
You hoped it would be you. Against all odds, you really hoped he would choose you. You gave yourself to him, spread yourself paper thin for him. You held his hand when he was sick and kissed his lips when he was lonely. You let him enter and claim the deepest parts of you and you cried his name like a prayer each time his hips snapped into yours. You kneeled before him as if he was your god. And waited. You waited for him to tell you that he loves you, that he wants more.
And you hoped. Hoped, that he'd see how perfect you are for him, how well you knew him, how you'd bring him exactly what he wanted even before he asked for it. But he didn't want you. He told you that, didn't he? 'We're just friends helping each other kill loneliness'. That's what he said. But you didn't listen, you didn't want to listen. You only wanted to hope, that maybe, just maybe, he would want you too. 
All the embraces felt like lies, all the times he told you how pretty you looked with your thighs spread for him, your face messy from the drool and tears, your body bending and shaking and your back arching. It all felt like betrayal. You remembered that time he said ‘If we’re still single at 40, we’ll marry and move to the country’ quoting some lyrics of a song you now learned to hate. It was such a cliche, but he told you he meant it. And you both laughed and you fucked with that song playing in the background.
"Why?" You couldn't hold the words in anymore. They burst out of your mouth before you could stop it, before you could lie again and tell him just how happy you were for him. "Why not me?" 
"What do you mean, love?" There it was again. That cursed word, the one that didn't let you sleep at night, the one that made your bed feel so damn cold unless his body was lying next to yours, unless his lips were wrapped around yours. You laughed. A laugh that felt as if it ripped your soul to shreds. It hurt so much. How dare he use that word when he didn’t know what it meant to you? How dare he call you love when all you did was love and all he did was take. He took your love and drank it like it was water in the desert. He wasn't thirsty, yet, he still drank it all, leaving you empty. 
And you hated yourself, hated yourself for being selfish. He told you, didn't he? He said you were just friends. And yet you didn't listen and you fell, you fell so deeply in love with him, letting it consume you, body and soul and aching heart. You fell for your best friend. Tooru Oikawa. The man who would never want you, such was fate's cruel joke. 
He watched as tears spilled from your eyes on the skin of your cheeks, how your mouth trembled, slightly opened as you looked at him. A look that spoke what you couldn't 'Please tell me I'm the one'. He brushed the hair out of your face and cupped your cheek gently, as if you’d break if he didn’t handle you with care. His touch so soft that you felt your breath hitch and the tears stop for a moment as you looked up into his chocolate eyes. He was beautiful, so beautiful and so out of reach.
"I'm sorry, love." Again with the love.
"Please stop." There they were, the tears, falling even harder than before. "Please stop calling me that. Not when you're ripping my heart out of my chest." 
You couldn't decide what was worse, the confusion or the pity on his face. You gulped and you laughed. And you couldn't help but reach for his lips, prying them open with your tongue. One last kiss. One last embrace and then you'll go. You couldn't stand to watch him happy with her, you knew that and now he’d know as well. His lips tasted like strawberry and salt, the chapstick you bought him mixed with your tears as you kissed, as you bit his lip and sucked on his tongue one last time. So twisted and so bitter. And yet you didn't want to pull away. You knew that once the kiss ended you'd never feel him again like this, you'll never taste his skin or tangle your fingers through his hair.
The kiss ended when you felt the sting in your lungs, so out of breath and aching, almost as painful as the torment in your heart.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have fallen in love with you. I know I shouldn’t have. But truth is, I've loved you longer than you've felt my skin on yours. I've loved you since way before you climbed in bed with me and tore my clothes and my defenses off. " The words cut new wounds, but you couldn't take anything back anymore. "I'm sorry I couldn't be the one you wanted." 
And then you left, closing the door behind you. He didn't run after you, he didn't call your name. He let you leave, he chose. You weren't the one. He chose her and it could never be you.
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© 2021 all content belongs to @cherrysdollhouse​, please do not modify or repost without permission
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aimeelouart · 3 years
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Repurposing a bit of server freewriting for part 2 of purring!Cloud (Saving Subject C AU). Lil’ bit of whump, lil’ bit of hurt/comfort, and lovely fluffy cuddles
Also doubles as a preview if we end up going in a certain direction, but tbh I doubt it. Either way, spoiler free.
--
Cloud held pressure across his stomach, grimacing as the pain came and went in throbbing waves. He’d already pulled the shrapnel out so his body wouldn’t seal around it. Now it was just a matter of staying still and keeping pressure on until it closed enough for him to safely move.
His chest was doing the fucking thing (he refused to put a name to it) but he couldn’t make it stop, which didn’t make any sense. Didn’t cats only...do the thing when they were happy? Why was it happening to him now? 
Fuck, at least the SOLDIERs weren’t around to hear it.
“Cloud!”
The call was still fairly distant. Cloud loosed an involuntary, irritated grunt at the sound. Shit, they were persistent. Maybe that wasn’t surprising. He had run off and destroyed Shinra property at the first available opportunity. With any luck, his hiding space would work until the hole in his side closed and he could make a proper escape. It didn’t have to be long. Just...long enough.
Gaia, he was starting to feel lightheaded. He cracked an eye open and checked the size of the blood puddle spreading from his side. It was much wider than he’d hoped. He might be in more trouble than he thought.
“There you are.”
Cloud breathed out a heartfelt “fuck” as Sephiroth’s voice reached him. Grimacing, he tilted his head enough to see the silver-haired demon kneeling and peering into the dark space beneath the broken lift Cloud was using for cover. He snarled at the man, but it was half-hearted at best. Even if he somehow found the strength to take up his commandeered knives again, he was too weak to run, never mind fight.
He’d miscalculated, and how he was going to pay for it.
But…
But.
Sephiroth didn’t sound angry when he dropped down onto his stomach and slid as far into the narrow space as he could. “Cloud, where are you hurt?” He sounded…concerned, alarmed, maybe even a little bit…afraid? “Cloud?”
“Fuck off,” Cloud slurred, confused. His sight was starting to gray a little bit around the edges. A real pang of concern shot through him. Had he missed an exit wound?
Sephiroth snorted a little, disbelieving. “Even when you are bleeding out, you still…” He reached, but even his long arm wasn’t quite enough to snag Cloud’s shirt. “Cloud, can you move toward me? Just a little bit.”
He hunkered down into himself, trying to apply more pressure. The pain was fading, and he still couldn’t make the stupid rumbling stop. “No.”
“I can’t help you unless you move a little bit, Cloud.”
“Fuck off,” he repeated, eyes starting to slide shut.
Another voice. “Seph?”
“He’s here. I can’t reach him.”
Cloud’s eyes shut all the way.
“Let me try. Here, Angeal, take my coat for a second.”
The voices were starting to sound like they were coming from underwater. Cloud felt, distantly, that this was definitely the point at which he should have been outright alarmed. He’d missed something. Probably an exit wound on his back, based on the blood loss. He’d be fine, even if they left him where he was, but they weren’t going to do that. He wished he had the strength to grab one of his knives.
“Cloud, sweetheart, can you say something?”
He found the will to say “fuck off” a third time. It sounded like “f’k ov.”
Genesis—that was Genesis—snorted. “Okay. Okay, I’ve…” Fingers snagged the edge of his sleeve. “…got you! I’ve got you, come on.” He pulled, sliding Cloud across the blood-slicked ground until he could grab an arm, and then Cloud was dragged from the safety of his hiding space and out into the light. Alarms were still going off in the distance. He smirked weakly.
“Shit, kiddo,” someone breathed as he was rolled onto his back. He couldn’t quite find the strength to keep his hand over the wound and it fell limply to the ground. “Did you⁠—is this a shrapnel wound? Cloud, did you pull it out?”
Duh, he thought, unable to articulate his disdain.
“Later, Genesis,” someone else said. Large, strong hands provided the compression Cloud wasn’t able to any more.
“I need to see his back. Get the shirt off.”
His shirt was cut off as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was shifted, then propped up across someone as two more hands pressed down on either side of his torso. Magic flooded his body, sealing the path carved through his flesh. The gray retreated a little as another flood of magical energy compensated for his blood loss until his body could make up the difference. 
And, finally, the stupid purring stopped. He really, really hated that it seemed to be involuntary.
Cloud was shifted again, wrapped up in something primarily leather and then picked up like a swaddled infant. Fucking rude, he thought, struggling to drag his leaden eyelids up. A vaguely silver blur hovered above his face. He tried to object, but what came out of his mouth was closer to a grumpy kitten growl than articulated displeasure.
“Hush,” someone said. It might have been the silver blur. A water bottle was pressed against his lips and since he wasn’t completely self destructive, he drank.
“Little idiot. What was your plan, hmm? To bleed out under there?”
That was probably Genesis. Out of pure spite, Cloud managed to spit out a “yeah” in response.
A frustrated noise. A tired sigh. A rumbling, half-stifled laugh against his ear.
“Stop antagonizing him,” someone said. A hand passed over his face, brushing his staggering eyelids down. Tired, he let them stay closed. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about appropriate responses to severe bodily harm later.”
And Cloud was...increasingly confused. It was hard to think, drained and cold and barely hanging on to consciousness, but none of this was what should have been happening. They were threatening...scoldings? No one was angry. He’d destroyed a massive amount of Shinra property, practically spat in their faces, and somehow no one was angry.
He shivered, and it had nothing to do with the chill.
--
Cloud’s little stunt had scared the hell out of them. It wasn’t that they didn’t care that he’d demolished Shinra property and made their job fending off the Turks much, much more difficult—they did—but when they’d started searching, they really had thought it would be a tiny, lifeless body they found. Any anger and frustration they might have felt paled in comparison to the sheer relief of finding him alive.
Sephiroth was the one watching him (hiding him, more or less), while Genesis and Angeal dealt with getting all of them back to the Tower in one piece. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Cloud was so little and this event just reinforced the fact that only SOLDIERs had any hope of containing him. Hopefully that would bolster their argument rather than encourage Science to get involved, because...well, forget what he and Genesis and Angeal would do to save the kid, Cloud himself would rip the whole department to shreds using only his teeth if they even tried to take him.
On some distant level, Sephiroth wondered how Cloud had managed to ensnare the three of them (and more SOLDIERs besides) so quickly. Or at all. Sephiroth wasn’t supposed to have a heart. He was supposed to be the pure paragon of SOLDIER, a soulless weapon forged only to mete out death. But here he was, holding a child safe in his arms and feeling his breath stutter every time he wondered what it would have been like to find a cold, unmoving body beneath that broken equipment.
Cloud was asleep, face milk-pale where it rested against the dark leather of his coat. He had proper blankets now, and Sephiroth’s own body heat besides. Angeal had been very clear about that—Cloud was not to be without a heat source until he was no longer anemic.
Not that Sephiroth would have willingly put him down. He found himself oddly agitated at the thought of not being able to feel the boy’s heartbeat beneath his palm. And, more than that...he felt unwilling to give up the strange, powerful contentment he felt just having Cloud safe in his arms.
“Seph?”
He startled a little, moving his eyes from Cloud’s face to find Genesis standing with one hand on the door frame, watching them with an unreadable expression. “...yes?” Sephiroth responded when Genesis didn’t continue. He realized that he had been shifting back and forth from foot to foot without noticing. When had that started?
“...you’re purring.”
What? He stopped—he stopped breathing entirely, actually. They’d told him about Cloud’s near-violent reaction to his own purring weeks before, but only now did he really understand. Because humans weren’t meant to be able to do that.
“Hey,” Genesis said quickly, crossing over to touch his arm, “stop. I know what you’re thinking.” His eyes were unusually gentle, maybe because he was riding the same relieved high Sephiroth was. “But...aren’t you glad Cloud isn’t alone?”
Aren’t you glad you’re not alone?
And he...was. He really was, once the thought was put to words. Cloud had been frightened by his own body and abilities, but he didn’t need to be anymore. Not when Sephiroth was with him. Neither of them were alone.
The rumbling started back up. He thoughtlessly leaned his head down and pressed his cheek to Cloud’s damp, unruly hair. The boy smelled like mako and blood and explosives. Sephiroth didn’t mind at all.
Genesis huffed a laugh, but it choked a little, and Sephiroth cracked an eye open inquisitively. “You’ve...you’ve never been injured enough or happy enough to do this before, have you?” he asked.
Oh. Was that it? He thought it might have been in response to Cloud, somehow, but...he really hadn’t ever felt such powerful relief and contentment until today, had he? Objectively, that was probably sad—that’s what Genesis’s expression was telling him. He didn’t much care though. There were more important things to think about.
So he just hummed noncommittally and gathered Cloud a little closer, shutting his eyes again. When Genesis huffed a second laugh, it was much lighter.
“So,” Genesis said, nudging him, “when is it my turn to play space heater?”
Sephiroth growled.
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Common Myths
An excerpt from Memoirs of a Flesh Eater, never published.
Next Excerpt
Everyone knows about ghouls, right? Everyone grows up hearing scary stories about us, from parents telling you to brush your teeth or the ghouls will get you, to your friends on the playground lying about how they saw one with their own two eyes and it was so scary no really even scarier than that, to - eventually, as you get older - news stories about mass murders and human slaughterhouses and graverobbers digging up your grandma and biting open her bones to get what’s left of her marrow.
The stories are terrifying and vivid and mostly sensationalist garbage. It’s kind of a shame, honestly - a lot of them are really well-written. With the best ones, it’s hard to tell sometimes if they were written by a human with an overactive imagination, or by one of us.
Weird, right? You wouldn’t think we’d want to spread stories that make us look even worse to the rest of humanity than they already think we are, but as far as I can tell, we’ve been making up horror stories about ourselves forever. Our records are spotty at best - oral histories don’t always get passed on before the person carrying them dies, and there are none of us who can trace our family line more than a few generations before it gets too muddled by death to trace any farther. And as for physical records, those are even more vulnerable. Those can’t just be lost - they can be stolen. Used against us. As far as I know, there has never been a written record of ghoul lore circulated. Not until this one.
{Editing Note: Too dramatic? Maybe. But I like it. I’ll think about it}
That being said, though, I think we used to tell these stories to enhance our reputation. To keep humans too scared of us to mount a serious resistance when we came hunting. If they believed we couldn’t be beaten, they wouldn’t try as hard. I think we lived more openly back then, back before automatic firearms and high explosives and kevlar body armor and chemical weapons leveled the playing field. Back when those of us who chose to could hunt humans with near impunity.
{Editing Note: I don’t like ending the paragraph there. We weren’t all killers then any more than we are now. But we did kill. We did hunt them, and I think we hunted them more. I need to make them understand us, but how can they understand us if telling them the truth just makes them hate us more? It needs another pass}
Even then, there were a lot more humans than there were of us. That’s basic ecology - there have to be more prey than predators {Editing Note: I need to find a better way to say that. There are gentle ways to be truthful, and there are hard ways. Do better}. Working together, humans could threaten our existence even then. The stories helped, I think. If they were too scared to work together against us, then we had a better chance of surviving another day, another month, another year.
Times are different now. Fear is no longer a tool that helps us. Human fear threatens our existence. But we still make up these stories and spread them. I spread my share on the elementary school playground. Whenever any of the other kids told a scary ghoul story, I could always come up with a better one. Scarlet’s were even better. He’s always been able to make words dance.
He was my best friend growing up. We were the only ghouls in our grade, maybe even in the whole school. I couldn’t tell for sure - we didn’t see the other grades as much. But he was enough. He was someone I could be myself with. I didn’t have to pick all of my words carefully, or make sure that the thing I was telling him was a normal human experience. It was such a relief to truly be me, even if it was only outside of school hours and well out of earshot of anyone nearby. It didn’t hurt that we actually had some common interests, you know, like friends do. We used to play imagination games together. He’d conjure dragons into existence with his words, and he’d help me use mine to slay them.
{Editing Note: My academic advisor would rip this into shreds, but this isn’t a research paper. This can’t be dry. This needs to be full of heart, not just information. They need to understand. But I might have gone overboard a little}
Scarlet’s an aspiring author now. I’ve read a few of his short stories. Horror and romance, always hand in hand {Editing Note: That’s too identifying. Make that less specific}. I asked him why he thought we still told these stories about ourselves, why we still want them to think of us as more terrifying than we are, why we make ourselves seem larger than life.
He told me that it’s because they hate us. Because there is nothing we can do to make them stop hating us, so why not give them something more worthy of their hatred? Why not give them a comically exaggerated monster - one that bears only a passing resemblance to us - to hate instead? This way, we can laugh at them for their foolishness amongst ourselves, laugh at how little they understand us. If what they hated was closer to our truth, we wouldn’t find it as easy to laugh at. It isn’t always easy as it is, to look at the world around you and know that 98% of the people you see burn with hatred at the mere thought of you, and to meet that with laughter. How much harder would it be if what they hated was who we really were, complex and vulnerable and as human as them? How would we ever endure it if they beheld us for all that we were and still called for our annihilation?
Scarlet’s always been good at giving words to truth. I hope that I’m as good at using words to make a new truth. I want to make him wrong. So here is some truth for you. Here is the truth beneath the myths about who and what we are.
Ghouls eat people
This is true, at least in part; we eat human flesh. That isn’t always the same thing. I’ll go deeper on our dietary needs later, but for now, know that we don’t have to kill to eat, most of the time. I’ve never killed a human, and I hope I neve have to.
Ghouls like hurting people
Not as a rule. There are ghouls that like hurting people. There are humans who like hurting people too.
Ghouls don’t feel pain and can heal from anything
Ghouls have two foot long prehensile tongues
I can tell you from experience that this one isn’t true. We feel pain as acutely as any human, I think, though it does take a little more to hurt us. Our skin and bones are tougher, harder to break. Our muscles are a little stronger too. Not enough that the weakest ghoul is stronger than the strongest human, but it’s not an insignificant advantage. I was always one of the best performers in PE, and I’ve never worked out in my life. So we’re harder to injure, and our strength lets us push through some injuries that would incapacitate a human. But we don’t heal any faster than humans do, or any cleaner. 
Contrary to what the politicians said when they passed the Chemical Exterminants Act.
… I think this one started with a human fetish artist, actually. No. We do not.
Ghouls have two sets of teeth
This one is true, although most of the time you’d never know unless you did an autopsy on one of us. Fetish artists, go nuts with this one.
{Editing Note: Do I really want to directly address ghoul fetishists in the book that will redefine the relationship between ghouls and humans that has existed for as long as anyone can remember? Maybe. At least they have a vested interest in keeping us from being wiped out?}
Ghouls can’t eat human food
False, at least in the most literal sense. If we physically couldn’t eat human food, we’d have all been found and killed a long time ago. We can consume things other than human flesh, but they don’t do anything for us nutritionally, and they don’t taste good to us either. That doesn’t always mean they taste bad, though. If we eat too much it will make us sick, however, and some things will make us sicker faster, or make us more sick than other things. Some of us even have allergies. For example, grapes give me hives. A single chicken nugget will trap me in the bathroom for the rest of the day. French fries, on the other hand... I almost manage to enjoy french fries sometimes.
Ghouls have better senses than humans do
This one’s a mixed bag. Our sense of smell is definitely better. That’s how Scarlet and I found each other; we could smell the flesh on each other’s breath. But as for the rest… Some people say our hearing is worse, but I’ve never come across anything conclusive one way or the other. I might just have bad ears. Our sense of taste is definitely different, but I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse. We’re just adapted to taste different things. I’m pretty positive our sense of touch is the same. As for sight, our night vision is better, but only sometimes. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Ghouls true forms are terrifying and inhuman
Definitely false, but there’s a tiny kernel of truth a little to the left of this one. Most of the time, we look indistinguishable from humans, which is definitely an evolutionary advantage. But we have three traits that help us when we hunt. They mark us as distinctly inhuman, so it’s a good thing that they only come out when we want them to. First, our nails are a lot harder than human nails, and we can cause them to extend, like claws. They can rip through flesh and most cloth without breaking. Second, that second set of teeth I mentioned earlier. They’re sharper, better for tearing flesh. Our mouths have to distend a bit to make room for them, so that’s a dead giveaway when they’re out. Third, our eyes. We can dilate them a lot wider than humans, and we can control their dilation consciously. That’s what I meant about better night vision.
Last one.
Ghouls are monsters. They must be exterminated
Keep reading. Maybe by the end of this book, you can answer that for me.
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hiddendreamer67 · 3 years
Note
girl u KNOW im a predictable bitch and need to know everything about Caden and Nameless-Giant-Whom-I-Already-Adore (plus uuuuhhhh caring prompt "let me take a look..." if that gets anything going for ya)
Bro you know I was so hype to get this ask! It seems a lot of people to read more about my bois, who are now officially Caden and Markus. :D
Part 1 | Part 2 (here) | Part 3 | Part 4 tbd
Summary: After being sacrificed by his people to the beasts of the village, Caden finds himself rescued by a giant and taken back to Markus’ campsite.
Word count: 1,604
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“Let’s have a look…” The giant murmured, and once again Caden found himself in front of his scrutinizing gaze. Caden squirmed, not liking the way the massive bonfire made the shadows dance across his captor’s face. He liked it even less when he caught the glint of a knife twice his size in the corner of his eye. “Oi! Sit still, would ‘ya?”
Caden whimpered, trying to do as instructed lest he be punished for disobedience. After all, the fingers curled around him could at any moment squeeze together and crush his ribs. That imagery was terrifying and did nothing to ease Caden’s internal panic.
“Good lords, your heart’s beating faster than a sprite.” The giant sighed, his thumb brushing atop Caden’s chest, taking in the younger boy’s pulse. “Settle down. I’m not going to harm you, alright?”
“Mhmm.” Caden gave a stiff nod, his eyes never leaving the blade clutched in the giant’s other hand, hovering nearby and pointed in Caden’s direction. “What uh… what’s that for, then?”
“Well, I imagine it’s not pleasant being all tied up.” The giant brought the knife closer, his gaze intense in his focus. “Now don’t move and I won’t nick ya.”
“Easy for you to say.” Caden murmured, stiffening as he imagined all the ways the tiniest slip of the giant’s wrist could lose Caden an entire arm; a blade that size was quite the formidable weapon. Nevertheless, Caden did as instructed, breathing as steadily as he could when he felt the steel tool come between his arms and glide along, cutting the thick ropes with ease.
“Told ya.” The giant gave a cocky grin, repositioning to aim for Caden’s legs. This knife cut through the ropes as if they were nothing.
Caden cleared his throat, forcing himself to breathe as he brushed the scraps of rope together. The open palm Caden was cupped in shifted as the giant repositioned to put the knife away.
Of course, Caden wasn’t sure if he was any safer now that he was free of his bonds. After all, Caden was still in the hands of a gigantic stranger, alone in the dangerous woods with no way to defend himself if things turned ugly. What did this giant want with him, anyhow? He seemed… human, or human enough, but given Caden’s track record that didn’t mean he’d be granted any mercy.
The giant hummed, his attention fully on Caden once more, tilting the human back and forth before his eyes. Caden stumbled, grasping one of the nearby knuckles to keep himself balanced. After all, he was still mindful of the fact he was several dozen feet off the ground, even as the giant sat upon the ground. Caden rubbed his arm, unnerved by the sensation of Markus’ fingers occasionally brushing against his side, as if Markus himself wasn’t even fully aware he was doing it.
“You got a name, kid?” The giant asked, first to break the silence.
Caden blinked, not expecting the question. “Um, Caden. My,- my name’s Caden.”
The giant nodded. “I’m Markus.” With introductions out of the way, Markus lowered his palm to the ground, causing Caden to shoot him a confused glance.
“Are you… letting me go?” Caden questioned.
“Letting you go?” Markus raised a disapproving eyebrow, glancing between Caden and the darkened forest surrounding. “Kid, if you want to be torn to shreds, that’s between you and the banshees. The woods aren’t exactly friendly at the best of times, least of all when the sun goes down.”
“O-oh.” Caden flinched, looking to the trees with fright as if the shadows themselves would prove hostile. A loud sigh was heard above him, and Caden felt himself nudged in the back by Markus’ finger.
“I’m just setting ya down, need my hands free.” Markus instructed, watching the human hurriedly depart onto the ground with an amused smirk.
Caden shifted his weight, watching Markus take off his gigantic backpack and set it on the forest floor with a thud, the trembles in the ground making Caden stumble slightly.
“So… what are you doing out here? Do you live here?” Caden glanced around, taking in more of their surroundings. There was the roaring fire in the middle of the clearing (hard to miss, really), and the bag Markus was currently rustling through. And… that was it.
Markus shrugged. “‘For the time being.”
Caden frowned. What a depressing response, after all this clearing wasn’t exactly a home. But then Caden came to the horrible conclusion that even with Markus’ meager possessions and patch of dirt on the ground, Markus was still doing better than himself.
Caden had nothing. He owned nothing save for the clothes on his back, no tools to help him survive out in the wilderness. After all, Caden was never meant to survive. As far as his home was concerned, Caden was already dead. He wouldn’t be welcomed back. In fact, if he tried to return Caden didn’t doubt they would throw him to the beasts a second time, and the next creature to find him was likely to be more bloodthirsty.
It hurt, knowing everyone who had ever known Caden viewed him as a traitor and a liar. Caden had cried out for their sympathy and gotten nothing but blank stares. Who does that? What use were rules that could be exploited so readily? Caden shuddered, thinking of any individuals who were sacrificed before his time. Were they too innocent? How much unnecessary bloodshed was on the elder’s hands?
“Hungry?”
Caden blinked, broken out of his musings by the rumbling tones of Markus’ voice. “Pardon?”
Markus held a scrap of bread between his fingers, to the giant a miniscule portion but to Caden a loaf the size of his head. It was ripped off of a larger loaf still held in Markus’ other hand, clearly what he had been searching for in the bag. Markus offered the scrap in Caden’s direction.
The human paused, carefully considering the offer. He should probably eat, but with the events of the day still weighing heavily on his mind, Caden found himself without much of an appetite.
“Take it.” Markus advised. “It’ll help.” Caden gave him a confused glance, to which Markus only shrugged. “When your burden is heavy, I find it’s best to focus on surviving. Then the rest will follow.”
Caden blinked, surprised at the wisdom in Markus’ words. “Are you a mind reader?” He asked, stepping forward to carefully grasp the bread.
Markus chuckled, releasing the bread into Caden’s grasp. “You’re not exactly subtle with your brooding.” Markus teased, taking a bite of his own loaf almost as large as Caden himself (not a pleasant comparison). “Besides, it’s not hard to guess what you’re thinking with the day you’ve had. I’ve been there.”
Caden bristled, a bit peeved that Markus would pretend to understand his plight. “You’ve been kicked out of the only home you’ve ever known and sacrificed to beasts?”
Surprisingly, Markus gave a nod. “Something like that.”
Caden blinked, having not expected that response. He stammered for a moment, searching for the right words to reply, before settling on none and filling his mouth hesitantly with bread. It was a bit stale, and perhaps flavorless, but with nothing better to do, Caden diligently nibbled on his own loaf. At the same time, Caden tried to tune out the sounds of munching far above his head that did nothing to help Caden’s lack of an appetite.
“I’ve only got one blanket.” Markus spoke up again, drawing Caden’s attention upward to make eye contact. “But you could probably sleep in the bag tonight. Didn’t exactly think to bring tiny accommodations with me wherever I travel.”
“Oh, uh…” Caden glanced at the bag, having not even thought of something as trivial as sleeping arrangements. It hardly felt relevant in the grand scheme of Caden’s current miseries. “I’m not really tired.” He admitted, for despite the exhausting events of the day, Caden was still on edge with the fear of what might happen to him in the night outside the safety of familiar walls. There were the beasts prowling the forest, and Markus himself could still be a very real threat if Caden’s luck turned.
Markus squinted, considering Caden’s response for a moment. “You’re not gonna run off and get yourself killed in the night, are ya?”
Caden took the time to truly consider the question. Of course he didn’t want to get himself killed, but given the opportunity, would Caden run from Markus?
“No.” Caden shook his head with confidence. “Not tonight.”
Markus snorted. “Alright, the offer still stands. Stay near the fire at least, it keeps the rabble at bay.” Having given his last words of advice, Markus pulled the blanket out of his bag, setting the bag closer to the fire for easy access. It was a small detail that Caden appreciated, even if he still didn’t plan to take advantage of it. Markus himself curled slightly around the fire at a distance, almost as a barrier between Caden and the outside world.
Or a way to keep me in, Caden reminded himself. It was easy to forget that Markus was virtually a stranger. Caden knew nothing about this giant or his motives, only that Markus had spared him when it could’ve been so easy to abandon him entirely or kill Caden himself. What did Markus have to gain helping Caden? And what would Markus expect of Caden come morning?
“Goodnight, Caden.” Markus murmured, his eyes closed as he settled in.
Caden sat by the fire, giving his savior a contemplative glance. “...goodnight, Markus.”
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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years
Note
"you're not helping..."
CW: Teenage OCs (Izzy is 17, Jamie is 14), children of whumper and whumpee, trauma response, referenced past captivity with parental whumper/child abuse but the references are vague
Jax Gallager (referenced) belongs to @comfy-whumpee
Izzy is seventeen years old when she grabs the post to bring it inside on her way in after school and comes to a sudden stop just outside the door, staring down at the envelope, battered and beaten after its long journey not just across a country but over an ocean and through customs, too.
Her little brother Jamie very nearly walks into her, lost in his own game on his phone, and he just barely swings to the side to avoid her. “Iz!” When she doesn’t react, he pauses. He’s taller than she is already, and sure to be even taller before he’s done growing. 
Where Izzy is all skinny knees and sharp elbows, her brother has the sort of bulk that’ll turn to muscle with time. He’s a gentle sort of giant, and it’s concern and not annoyance that shifts in his expression as he reads the wide-eyed stare in hers. “Izzy? What’s up?”
Izzy swallows, her throat clicking so loud she’s surprised the flock of birds lurking in the gutters and on the roof of the place next door don’t take off startled by the sound. She can’t, for a moment, remember how to speak.
She can’t remember how to breathe.
She just holds the card out for Jamie to look at as heat burns behind her eyes, her heart racing. She feels inside her the absurd urge to be polite and sweet and well-mannered. To somehow try to ensure safety in an unsafe space.
But she’s not there anymore.
She’s not there. She’s here.
And still... 
Jamie takes the envelope slowly, looking over it himself, his lips moving as he reads the return address. Then he pales, lips thinning. “How-”
“I don’t know,” Izzy whispers. “She’s not supposed to know where we live, Jamie. She-... she’s n-not allowed, but that’s... that’s her handwriting, that’s-... she isn’t supposed to know-”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Iz.” Jamie glances towards the door - Jax is inside, and he’ll know if they’re more than ten minutes late either way, he’ll be looking at the clock and thinking about their safety, worrying over them the way Izzy worries over everything, too. “Look, hide it and we’ll look at it in your room, yeah? I’ll handle Dad.”
She nods, a jerky sort of motion, but she stuffs the envelope into her school bag and the two of them head inside. Izzy blames a headache for being quiet and if their dad suspects, he doesn’t say anything, just lets her go to lie down in her room. Jamie takes more time, talking about his day, getting something to eat and drink.
His skin prickles with impatience, with the need to go look. Izzy’s terror doesn’t translate to him - he mostly feels curious about the woman who makes up half his genes, who he has no memory of at all. Curious, and angry on behalf of a father and sister who struggle with what she did to them. Maybe a little angry that this shadowy woman built the boundaries of his life and made the fears that keep his father and sister up at night, and he doesn’t even remember her. 
Plus, he doesn’t want Izzy to be scared alone. That’s been their deal his whole life, their agreement - Izzy doesn’t have to be scared alone. They’re scared together, and brave together. 
His lips move in memorized words like a prayer as he heads down the hall. He’s been prepared for them to have to be brave together his entire life, urged on by Izzy’s careful planning, the go-bags they still keep hidden from their fathers, just in case. 
My name is James Timothy Gallagher and my sister is Isabella Nicole Gallagher...
Please don’t let this be something like that.
She’s not on the bed when he comes in with a bag of crisps and some water. He finds her pushed against the wall under a blanket between the bed and her desk with a flashlight, still staring at the writing on the envelope.
“Someone e-else wrote the address,” She says when Jamie pulls up the edge of the blanket and sits beside her, squeezing into the tiny space as best he can. Her voice is shaking and her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. “Not M-Mom. She wrote my name, but... but that’s it. Oh, God, she started writing Isabella M-Marcoset and had to cross it out-”
“Bint,” Jamie says amiably. “Everything’s Gallagher now. But there you go.” He nudges her with an elbow. “She doesn’t know where we are, still, right? Someone else wrote it for her.”
“That’s n-not helping,” Izzy says, and sniffs. “That means someone helped her send it, someone who does know, someone w-who-... I can’t. I can’t look.”
“Probably her lawyers or something, they’d have our address I guess. If we tell Dad he’ll rip them to shreds over it, you know his lawyer chews them up for breakfast. If you can’t look, I can.” Jamie takes the envelope from her before she can stop him and tears it open, casually ripping half the envelope apart to get to what’s inside. 
When he finds it, he blinks. “What the fuck?”
“Don’t let Dad hear y-you say that,” Izzy says automatically, with a weak smile.
“Like he’s one to say much. I think you mean don’t let Kie hear me say that.” Jamie’s eyes roam over the contents of the envelope. “Iz, this is a card for you.”
Izzy looks slowly over, peering through her fingers.
On the front, it’s pastel pink bordering a black-and-white print of a child’s chubby hand against a polka-dot dress. 
It’s okay to miss your mom, the outside of the card reads.
Izzy’s lips pull back from her teeth in a snarl.
Jamie opens the card to read what’s inside, in his soft voice. He might look more like the Marcoset side than his sister does, but his voice is nearly indistinguishable from his father’s when he speaks softly like this. “... Because she sure misses you. Though we've grown apart, I really do miss you. I remember my sweet little girl on her special day. Happy birthday, Isabella. And she wrote in here her prison address to write back. Tell me about you. Love, Mom.”
He sits there for a second in silence and then says, slightly dumbfounded, “Well, shit.”
Izzy starts to cry, hands pressed over her mouth to keep it silent.
The tears run in a waterfall, burying themselves in the minute space between hands and skin. She tastes salt at the corners of her lips. Jamie slides an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close, pressing a kiss to her chopped-short hair, starting to slowly grow out on one side. 
“Oh, Iz. D’you want me to get Dad?”
She shakes her head viciously, little hitched sobs and half-sounds coming from her and little more. Even if Jax had his ear pressed to her door, he wouldn’t hear her, Jamie thinks. His big sister learned how to cry silently, to keep herself safe by not doing anything to bring her mother’s attention on her.
She knew how to be silent out of fear before she learned how to speak in full sentences. Jamie heard someone say that, once, he can’t remember who. He wasn’t supposed to hear it.
They tried not to let him see how hurt she was, but Jamie has always known his sister was shattered and he wasn’t, and he’s always felt like he has to be the one who stays whole for her. 
“Please, Iz. He’ll know what to say. I, I don’t know what to do-”
“It’s not my birthday.”
Her words are muffled behind her hands at first, and so quiet he nearly misses them even in the stuffy silence under the blanket.
“What?”
“The-... the c-card said happy birthday, but my birthday was... was seven m-months ago.” Izzy’s tears turn to bitter, cynical laughter, no less worrying than the crying had been, still nearly soundless. “She doesn’t even know when my fucking b-birthday is. You’d think since s-s-she’s the one who fucking made me-... oh, my God. She doesn’t even know my birthday.”
“No, I-... I guess she... doesn’t.” Jamie opens the card again to look it over. He hadn’t even thought about that, but now looking, he can’t help but start to laugh, too. “Iz, why’d she-... she could have just asked someone when your birthday was, it’d be in the court stuff, right? Birth certificate and shit?”
“Right. She wouldn’t want people to kn-know she didn’t remember. Or she just didn’t care.” Izzy’s shoulders shake, now, laughter or tears or both. “She doesn’t want to know me, she can’t even bother to know my fucking birthday. She’ll just-”
“Ask about Dad,” Jamie whispers.
“Right.” Izzy stares down at the card, then hands Jamie the flashlight and takes the card right out of Jamie’s hands and tears it right down the center, then again, and again, and again. The sound of the thick cardstock paper shredding is the loudest sound in the room.
“She doesn’t fucking know me, she doesn’t know anything about me, she doesn’t know she doesn’t know me and she doesn’t even fucking want to try-”
Finally, when all that’s left is a scattering of little bits of paper with the occasional visible word, like the world’s most irritating puzzle, Izzy shoves the blanket off entirely, picks up the pile in both hands and throws it up into the air, giving another bitter laugh as the pieces float down like confetti. 
“She can’t even be scary right,” Izzy declares, and Jamie watches his big sister force down her fear to mock the monster under the bed, the nightmare mother who never quite leaves her mind. “That’s how awful Mom is. Even when she’s trying to scare me, she can’t do it r-right.”
“I don’t think she meant to be scary,” Jamie says, a little hesitantly. “I think that was her trying to be our mam and fucking that up.”
“Well, she’s not a mam, is she? She’s not. She’s a fucking... she’s... Fuck her!” Izzy sweeps up the scattered bits of card and dumps them into the little bin she keeps by her bed, covers them with some tissues to hide them from anyone who might see. 
She turns to look at Jamie. “Don’t tell Dad, okay? He doesn’t need to know about this.”
“Iz...” Jamie stands and reaches out to pluck a piece of card that had gotten stuck in her hair. There’s a clearly recognizable Isab- visible on it. “You should tell him.”
“But you won’t.” Izzy’s eyes search his, looking up at her younger brother. They’ve always trusted each other, been each other’s backup more than anyone else, in the way of children who know they might have to keep each other safe when adults can’t. “Promise, Jamie. Promise you won’t tell Dad.”
“I promise,” Jamie says, uneasily. “I won’t tell, Iz. But you still should. Or at least tell therapy, or... something. Not just sit on this like it didn’t happen.”
Izzy doesn’t say anything either way, half-chasing him from her room so she can duck into the little bathroom and wash her face, wiping away the evidence of her tears, leaving only the hint of red in the corners of her eyes to give her away. 
She comes out and blames it on her headache, promises Jax she’s taken something for it, disappears back into her room. He can’t tell if Jax believes her - their dad is hard to read sometimes. But... Jamie thinks maybe he knows something’s up. 
Jamie settles down to play his game on his phone a while longer in the living room, and he wonders if she’s in there digging the pieces of the card back out to put in the box under her bed she thinks nobody else knows about.
But he knows.
He’s seen the CD cases, printed out photos from old interviews, an old magazine she’d nicked from a hair place after getting her hair cut once. Their mother’s face again and again and again, younger or older, in prison and before prison and between prison, too. 
The monster literally under the bed. 
He should tell Jax, probably. It can’t be healthy, to keep all those things. Right? But he can’t bring himself to break her trust, when Izzy trusts almost nothing and no one outside her own home. He can’t be the one to wreck even that for her. 
He can’t.
He promised. 
Jamie glares down at his game, the little tinny sound coming from his phone’s speakers, a repetitive melody, the soft sound of explosions. 
He should tell Jax.
He should tell Kieran, maybe.
But he swore he wouldn’t, and they’ve always been there for each other even when no one else could be, and so Jamie doesn’t tell anyone at all.
-
@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @wildfaewhump @moose-teeth @orchidscript @sableflynn @raigash @whumptywhumpdump  @eatyourdamnpears @pretty-face-breaker 
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coexiising · 3 years
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Fade Into You - Chapter Two
SUMMARY ✦ You meet with the mysterious stranger and finally learn who he is, Vader. You also learn that the Jedi Council may have not been as truthful with you as they say they have.
WARNING(S) ✦ N/A
MASTERLIST ✦ Here.
I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.
Your eyes opened and you were once again standing in the long, dark hallways of the building that no longer felt unknown to you. In fact, you reveled in the way that the duracrete was the exact same way as the night before and the one before that. You focused inward, conserving your energy to attempt and get some answers while you were here. Time seems slower here, like you could stay forever and it would only be an hour in the real world.
Making your way down the same passages you had grown accustomed to, you searched for the window, which was in the exact same place, with the stranger still there. Instead of keeping his back to you as you walked close, he turned and glanced at you, golden eyes scanning your face before going back to the outside world. A phantom push sent you closer, until your feet stopped in the place that they always did. The interaction was vaguely familiar to the one you had with Obi-Wan when you were awake, looking over the buzzing life of Coruscant. Except now you were looking at nothing but lava and ash, and darkness surrounded you.
“Y/N.”
You weren’t sure if you imagined it, the way that he spoke so loudly and clearly, obviously remembering the last tiny conversation you had together. He said your name with such certainty, like he was greeting an old friend. You remembered that the only thing he knew of you was your name. He didn’t know that you were a Jedi, that you worked with the Order, or that you were a commanding general in the Republic Army. Typically when you met someone new, they immediately were told of the small title you held as a Jedi Knight. But not him. You were just Y/N with him, and that calmed you in a way you’ve never felt before.
“That is your name, isn’t it?” He spoke again.
You nodded. “Yes, it is.”
“What are you doing here, Y/N?”
He was looking at you now, in the same way that he did last night. It sent a shiver down your spine.
“I don’t know where ‘here’ is,” You responded. “I don’t know who you are either.”
There was a tiny, inaudible whisper that sounded like it was coming from behind you, but when you glanced over your shoulder, there was no one there. It was just you and him. The whisper sounded again, this time closer, in your mind. It felt like a tiny flutter. Vader. A voice sounded in your brain. And then again, Vader, louder now and more clear. All around you, little whispers said the same one word over and over again like a broken record that had no means of stopping. Vader. Vader. Vader. But the man seemed unphased like he couldn’t hear anything. It was all in your head. The Force called to you through all sides, overwhelming your senses and almost pushing you out of balance.
He chuckled, like your confusion amused him. “You know more than you think.”
“Vader,” You spoke his name out in the open, testing the feeling of the word on your tongue. It was weird, foreign, you’ve never heard of it before. It grew the notion that perhaps he wasn’t real after all, that you were creating all of this within the confines of your own mind. Still, he seemed too unknown and powerful to be just your imagination.
“See? The Force is supposed to guide you,” Vader stated.
“What do you know about the Force?”
“I know enough to sense that you’re a Jedi.”
“And what are you?”
Vader didn’t respond. When you finally saw his face, there was a sense of playfulness in his stature. He seemed calm, unlike you who began to buzz with anxiety. He didn’t look like he was out of place, he had been here before, walked these halls other than now and looked out these windows without you. You didn’t know how you had never seen it before. His eyes that shined orange like the sun, the power of the Force flowing through him, the dark clothing that fit his body snug.
“You’re Sith.” The words echoed through the silent hallways.
You took steps backwards, the clicking of your boots sounding as you tried to make distance between yourself and him. Vader was Sith. Out of instinct you reached to the side of your hip, hand grasping around nothing in the holder where your lightsaber was supposed to be. Resorting to your last hope, you brought your hand up, hoping to push him away with your abilities. But nothing happened. You were completely powerless and weaponless. And you were just about ready to run when your eyes traced to his side, seeing no lightsaber, and inferring that his power wouldn’t work ever. Both of you had no way to fight, the Force didn’t want you to fight for whatever reason.
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you did this! What do you want from me? Why are these dreams happening?”
He took a step closer and you took one back, keeping the same distance between you two. You held your hands up, knowing that if he was to strike, at least you could use some form of hand to hand combat you had been trained to do.
“I had nothing to do with this. Trust me,” Vader said. “I am just as confused as you are.”
You shook your head. “Why should I trust a Sith?” All your life, you heard stories of the Sith and how they reigned terror on anyone they came into contact with, whether they were innocent people or Jedi who tried to stop them. Obi-Wan was the first to kill a Sith in over 100 years, and you knew that Darth Maul was the one to kill Master Qui-Gon Jinn, a powerful Jedi. A constant darkness loomed over the galaxy, knowing that there were always two Sith. There was still one out there, maybe you even found them now. Sith were evil and needed to be dealt with. They didn’t use the Force the way that it was intended to be, the Force was supposed to be used to create peace, not to destroy planets and lives. You could never trust a Sith.
“You shouldn’t, you’re smarter than that,” He spoke. “I have no way of proving my-” Vader paused. “-Innocence, for lack of a better word, to you, so take it as you will. Every day I wake up and wonder why the Force would connect us in such a way.” He holds his hand up, the one from last night that grasped onto you. Wiggling his fingers, you could see the dark red splotches of burnt skin on his fingertips, curled around them like the rounded shape of your wrist. He too was facing the physical complications that came with your connection, which led you to believe that maybe he was telling the truth about having no involvement in this. You raised your wrist, showing the same type of burn that you adorned. He walked closer now, this time you didn’t back away, allowing him to once again be as close to you as he had been before. Vader’s hand reached out, almost to grab your wrist to inspect, then remembering the effects of last time, put it back down to remain at his side.
“Is there any way for us to figure this out?” You asked, your tone much calmer than it had been before.
Vader shook his head, a sigh coming past his lips. “Not without . . . Seeing you.”
“You’re seeing me right now.”
“Not in a dream.”
Oh. He meant in the real world, not this dream world that you had somehow created together. You wondered why he seemed so . . . calm from a Sith (or at least, the things you had been told), perhaps it was in his dreams where he was the most vulnerable. In this world you were safe from his power, his possible destruction and anger, but in the real world you were not. There was a chance that you two would meet and a fight would break out, and you weren’t sure if you were ready to truly fight the darkest side of the Force.
A dark, inescapable mist started to seep through the halls of the building. It built up around your ankles and began to pull you away from your dream. This had never happened before either. Typically something would just push you towards consciousness, but this mist felt as if it was ripping you from your mind. Your eyes darted from him to the floor, knowing that you didn’t have much more time left. Maybe a minute or so, if you really held on. You began to shake more now, feet becoming unsteady. “I can’t hold on for much longer,” You yelled towards Vader. He did nothing, only stared.
Just as your mind seemed to shred into two, you heard him speak:
“Meet me on Mustafar if you trust me.”
~
Your screams were the only thing that could be heard within the confines of the Jedi Temple, in the ears of every Master, Knight, Padawan, and Youngling that resided there. Master Kit Fisto was the first to hear them, being in one of the rooms closest to yours. At first he only intended to wake you from whatever nightmare you were having, but when you showed no signs of stopping, almost detached from the real world, he quickly ran to get help from the other Masters of the Order. A crowd began forming in the hallway outside of your room, Younglings and Knights alike wondering what was going on. If they didn’t know any better, they would think that you were being tortured or killed, your screams rippling through the air. When all the unwanted bystanders were cleared out of the way, half of the members of the Jedi council stood in your room along with someone from medical.
Master Yoda put two fingers to your temple, soothing your thoughts and silencing your screams. As you laid there as though you were sound asleep, the medic checked your health, seeing that there had been nothing physically harming you at all. It was as if you snapped.
Your eyes fluttered open, heart lurching when you came face to face with your Masters all standing before you. Sweat was dripping off of your forehead, chest heaving up and down in deep breaths of air. It was like something was jammed down your throat, you didn’t know what to say. You were sore all over. They were all waiting.
“Knight Y/N, Master Obi-Wan has told us about your dreams,” Master Windu told you. “Do you have any idea who this man is?”
You could only think one thing, form one word. It was the same word the whispers told you, the same one you knew would consume you the moment you said it out loud. The name of the man that confused you, though knew you, and filled you with deep senses of grief and calm at the very same time.
“Vader,” You croaked out. “His name,” You took a deep breath, throat raw from screaming. “Is Vader.”
All of the others in your room looked as if they had seen a ghost. Their expressions were emotionless, but you couldn’t help but notice the way that Obi-Wan seemed to grow white in the face. To your surprise, even Master Windu looked alarmed. It was clear that everyone knew something that you didn’t know.
“For you to know, it is time, Knight Y/N. The truth, we must tell,” Master Yoda said.
The Council ordered you to come up to their meeting room on the top level of the Temple immediately, you only had time to grab a brown blanket and wrap it around your shoulders, shivering. The moment you stepped in the room, which was dark except for the moonlight spilling in. It was late, well past midnight and everyone looked tired. Though no one had any intentions of going to sleep, not when there was something important like Vader to discuss.
A droid came and handed you a cup of tea, which you accepted with no questions asked and sipped it. While everyone got situated in their seats, you thought back to your dream. It was there that you remembered what Vader had said.
Meet me on Mustafar.
You had only read about the planet, never having been there. What was Vader doing in a place like that? Then you could hear his voice through your subconscious:
If you trust me.
Putting your trust in Vader seemed like the last thing you should be doing, but the thought was tempting to say the least.
If you trust me.
If you trust me.
Meet me on Mustafar, if you trust me.
~~~~
taglist:
@dripobi @ajeff855 @geekologiste
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Whisky Secrets (sequel)
Here's something different. Before I ever thought about posting fanfic here, I used to write things inspired by fanfic I found by some of the incredible writers I found on tumblr. I've never posted any of them but I've really felt like writing something for Aleister Black/ Tommy End lately.
So I reached out to one of my original favourites on this site, @ghostofviperwrites and asked her if she'd mind if I published this sequel I wrote to her story Whisky Secrets. She gave me the ok (for which I thank her very much).
You absolutely have to read her piece first or this won't make any sense. It picks up literally at the point where hers leaves off and the entire premise is based on what she wrote. I think this goes in a very different direction than what she had in mind, though.
Since this is an old story, some of the characters are very different than they are now. It was set at around the time I wrote it. Based on events in the story, it's pretty clear when that was.
It's a bit dated but I hope you enjoy.
Pairing: Aleister Black x OFC (hints of Roman Reigns x OFC)
Word count: 7,031
Content advisory: graphic sexual content, language, incidental roughness that some might find stressful
You rested on the sofa for too long, knowing that you had to get to work, that you were already behind on an assignment that was due that afternoon. As much as you desperately wanted to cling to the scent and the feeling of him being there with you and the idea that he might someday want to be there with you for longer, you knew that you were only wasting time by indulging in a fantasy. Once again, you reminded yourself, he saw you as a friend, a landing pad after he was finished his adventures. And so you dragged yourself to the computer and tried to focus.
It was a fluff piece you’d been hired to write: places for new residents of Orlando to meet people. You’d accepted it because the pay was good and it had seemed easy. But what the hell did you know about meeting people? You’d barely met anyone and the only ones that you’d call friends were the ones you met when you’d done an in-depth profile on the WWE and their development territory NXT. Of those, only Aleister had remained close and even then, you couldn’t say that the two of you had ever properly opened up to each other. Nevertheless, you’d stayed in touch with a number of them, occasionally meeting for coffee or drinks. None of this was in any way useful when it came to recommending locations to connect with strangers.
You’d tried to start the article the day before but now when you opened the file, you discovered that you’d only come up with a half a dozen corny titles and one word of text:
When?
The word was too painfully appropriate.
When were you going to run out of luck and be unable to find further work as a journalist?
When were you going to admit that what kept you here, rather than moving to another state and pursuing more secure work, was the fact that you were in love with a man who was only interested in your capacity as a friend and caregiver?
When was your hopeless love going to break you beyond repair?
Annoyed with yourself, you deleted the word and tried to start again. You could meet people at the gym classes that were ubiquitous in this city. You could meet people at get-togethers for shared hobbies like hiking or pottery or basically anything. No one had to meet people by getting thrown into their orbit and being unable to extricate themselves.
About half an hour into your resentful hammering on the keyboard, you were startled by your doorbell. For one sweet instant, you imagined that it was Aleister dropping by to pass some time with you. Then you realized that he never came to you without an invitation unless it was dead drunk in the middle of the night. Even when you invited him, it was only every fourth or fifth time that you asked that he agreed to come over and watch a movie or go for a walk in the nearby park. There was no way it was him at your door at eleven o’clock in the morning.
In fact, the person at your door was Bayley, chipper and warm as always, returning the spare laptop you’d lent her a few weeks before.
“Thank you so much,” she beamed, thrusting the computer into your hands. “You are a lifesaver. I’d have lost my goddamn mind if I hadn’t had this while mine was in the shop.”
“It was nothing,” you insist, smiling at her unconstrained warmth even though you didn’t feel very positive about your life at that moment. “Do you want to come in for a minute?”
She nodded cheerily and stepped across the foyer. You never really knew how you fit in with the women of WWE, even though you’d spoken to many of them in depth. Bayley stood out because she was determined to be your friend despite your introvert’s reluctance. And, indeed, she was irresistible. Much like her in-ring character, she cast sunshine wherever she went and her glow was contagious, even in your darkest and lowest moments.
You motioned her into the kitchen, offering her a choice of lemonade, iced tea or water. Her eyes immediately fell on the empty whiskey bottle you’d left on the counter, her expression growing more serious as she focused on it.
“Getting started early?” she cajoled.
“A friend left that here,” you replied guiltily.
She narrowed her dark eyes as she looked at you. Sweet and optimistic as she was, Bayley was not naïve. She knew exactly what friend had left the bottle behind and she knew how you felt about him.
“I’ll have a glass of lemonade,” she said, the smile slowly returning to her face.
You joined her and the two of you jokingly touched glasses before drinking.
“So, a few of us are getting together tonight,” she said hesitantly. “I thought you might like to join us.”
Your first instinct was to ask if Aleister would be there, but you thought better of it. Instead, you responded, “Well, I have an article I need to finish.”
Of course, your article was due by the end of the afternoon, which meant that your evening was free regardless, but part of you wanted to be at home in case Aleister came staggering over again.
Bayley’s jaw set in a determined expression you’d only seen from her in the ring. “We’re having a party for Roman, to celebrate him going into remission.”
Well now you felt like a bit of a bitch for making excuses and didn’t know what to say.
“It won’t just be wrestlers there. Some other journalists are even coming. And I know that it would mean a lot to him if you were there.”
When you’d done your article on the WWE, you’d interviewed Roman Reigns and he’d been incredibly generous with his time. He’d even contacted you after your interviews to confirm that you had all the detail you needed. He was the face of the company and had done everything possible to make sure that the company had provided what you required. He’d clearly wanted to make sure they’d left a good impression and you couldn’t help but be impressed by his PR skills. Although you knew it wasn’t true that it “would mean a lot to him”, you were touched by the idea that he remembered you and might like you to be there to celebrate his great news. At the same time… you needed to be there for Aleister.
“Look,” Bayley insisted, “I’m going to text you the details for the bar where we’ll be. It’s not a big deal, just a bunch of us getting together to be happy for our friend.”
There was no way that you could refuse that, so you shyly thanked her as she gulped the rest of her lemonade and made for the door.
“I’m serious,” she said as she departed. “You work so damn hard you deserve a night off. Finish what you’re doing and come have fun with us.”
As soon as she’d left, you once again sat down at your computer. Before you could return your attention to your work, however, you couldn’t resist checking Instagram.
Someone had tagged Aleister in a photo on Instagram.
Yes, you were that pathetic that you always checked.
With trepidation, you clicked the link to look at what was there. As it too often did, the notification came from an airbrushed-looking woman, her collagen-enhanced lips pressed against his. She looked arrogant and proud, while he looked smug and inebriated.
“Guess who I got to hang with last night?” the caption gloated.
You knew damn well what “hang” was a euphemism for. He never cared that the Barbie dolls he hooked up with advertised their conquest on social media. He was single and hot. Why should he care if people knew that he always scored with the sort of women other men lusted after? Why should he care that it ripped your heart to shreds every time you saw him with another woman so unlike you in every way?
The woman had posted a few other photos of the two of them together, embracing. Every part of her magazine-ready body was on display, save those parts that would have gotten her in trouble. Her artificially perfect breasts were spilling out of a tiny tube top while her endless legs were shown in their full glory between the edge of a skirt that likely required her to trim her pubic hair and the sky high heels that raised her enough to press her lips to his without having to stretch herself awkwardly. She was nothing like you, with your unkempt hair and loose, bohemian dresses, your comfortable ballet flats and blandly natural face. She had all the glamour that you lacked and he ate it up.
The images of the two of them cut into you like a laser and, for once, all you desired was to break free from the pain of feeling. A few minutes later, when Bayley sent the text she’d promised with the details of where you could find the party tonight, you immediately responded.
“I’ll be there. I promise.”
To hell with Aleister and the designer women he adored, you told yourself as you returned to your article with a vengeance. Tonight you were going to do whatever it took to break the spell he had cast over you.
*
It was just after nine when you found yourself teetering to the entrance of the bar where the party was taking place. It was marked only by a subtle sign, no words, just a stylized anchor, and it was hidden away on a tiny street that was hardly more than an alley. In your fit of pique, you’d finished your article two hours before your deadline and then, having examined the options in your closet and found them wanting, headed out and spent entirely too much money on a new dress that clung perfectly to your breasts before flaring out to highlight the movements of your body, while covering just the bare minimum to maintain decency. You’d also picked up a stylish pair of ankle boots with heels higher than you were used to and that posed a legitimate threat as you made your way down the roughly paved road to the speakeasy-style bar.
A little further down the alley, you see a couple leaning against a car, taking turns swigging from a liquor bottle. The woman is one of those glamorous animals that makes you so insecure, laughing in drunken delight in a way that only confident people can. In one quick movement the man spins her around and bends her over the hood of the car. He immediately takes out his cock, stroking it a couple of times before he thrusts into her, one hand on her back while the other holds the bottle that he continues drinking from. And it’s a moment before you realize that it’s Aleister, fucking away at a woman whose name he won’t remember in a few hours.
The sight makes you want to curl up and die, makes you want to say that you’ve made a mistake and run along home so you can bawl your eyes out while you wait for his inevitable drunken arrival. But, if nothing else, the damage that you’ve done to your credit card in order to make yourself look just a bit more sexy and edgy than usual, as well as the glasses of wine you had already consumed to fortify your courage, push you forward. This is a test. In order to pass, you need to be able to ignore the man whose indifference is killing you and enter the world of others, where someone who wasn’t up to the standards of the rarified model girls might be willing to give you a second look.
Aleister doesn’t even glance up as you enter the bar a few feet away from him, can’t feel the dark weight of your eyes on him or the force with which you tear them away as you step through the door.
As soon as you do, you are once again frozen with the idea that you’ve made a mistake. When Bayley characterized this as a “get-together”, you’d assumed it meant a group of people spread out around a few tables chatting away and toasting Roman’s health. Instead, what greets you is a basement club full of people with a dance floor alive with writhing bodies. You recognize a few journalists but for the most part, the space is taken up with every WWE and NXT star you’ve ever heard of. It’s a convention of beautiful people and you can’t help but feel dowdy even in your overpriced finery.
You slowly descend the stairs, fully intending to look around, say hello to a few familiar faces and then bolt for the exit, but you’re immediately greeted by a familiar voice that fairly shrieks. “Oh my god woman, just look at you!”
It’s Sasha Banks, standing at the edge of the stairs with Bayley, who gives you an exaggerated round of applause.
“Miranda, you look amazing,” Sasha continues breathlessly. “Seriously, you’re putting everyone to shame.”
You don’t feel like you’re putting anyone to shame, least of all Sasha in her body suit that hugs every curve of her perfect little hourglass, but you blush at the compliment.
“Come on,” Bayley gushes, “we need shots to celebrate your hotness!”
She pulls both of you through the crowd to the bar and somehow is able to get the bartender’s attention almost immediately, ordering two rounds of tequila shots because, she tells you and Sasha, there’s no point in getting just one round when you know you’re going back for seconds. The three of you toast and toss down the shots and then immediately do so again and you have to admit that you’re feeling the warm glow already. Sasha, apparently feeling something herself, wraps her arms around you and once again reassures you that you are devastatingly beautiful.
Another shot is thrust into your hand, this time by Dash Wilder, who’s arrived with his Revival partner Scott Dawson. Wilder has always been attractive to you, so you give him as radiant a smile as you can manage and you swear he blushes a little just before he downs his shot. Dawson is hugging Sasha and Bayley close to him, allowing Dash to edge a little closer to you and you’re feeling a little high on yourself when another voice cuts through your circle.
“Miranda? Holy fuck I can’t believe you’re here!”
Roman Reigns pushes right through the bodies close to the bar and grabs you firmly by the shoulders, his eyes gradually focusing on yours. He’s grinning with an intensity that clearly comes from his being a little past feeling no pain but it doesn’t hamper the thrill it gives you when he wraps his arms around you and nearly crushes you in a hug.
“I mean, shit, I don’t think I’ve even talked to you since you did that interview,” he pouts. “Thank you so much for coming.”
You smile as another shot is pushed into your hand, biting your lip self-consciously. You down about half the shot before Roman grabs it from you and finishes it, breaking up with laughter. He signals the bartender for another round, keeping an arm around your back until the tray of shots arrives. You’re all toasting each other and you wonder why you ever questioned yourself for coming here because this is exactly what you needed.
“Come dance with me,” Roman chuckles, grabbing your wrist and pulling you towards the dance floor. He’s clearly floating on a sea of drunken bliss, goofing around and happy to have someone to have fun with, someone he didn’t expect to be there. Even if you wanted to resist his offer, you couldn’t because, while he isn’t doing anything that might hurt you, his grip is strong enough and the rest of him powerful enough to compel you forward.
The two of you deliberately dance like complete nerds in high school, awkward movements and ironic posturing until you’re both laughing so hard you can barely stand. It’s then that you realize that you’ve become the focus of some attention; Roman goddamn Reigns, the face of the company, the locker room leader, the man who everyone has come to celebrate, is dancing with you. Most of the people here have no idea who you are but because you’re with Roman, you are somebody. Basking in the subtle attention and envy, you close your eyes and allow yourself to get lost in the music, swaying to the beat until you feel a large pair of hands on your hips.
You open your eyes to see Roman pulling you closer to him with a devilish grin before spinning you around and pulling your back against his massive chest. You continue to move but at a slower pace, your movements limited by how close he’s holding you and the sensual way in which his body moves against yours. Keeping one arm loosely around you, he lets his other hand fall against your thigh, lightly playing with the hem of your dress. It makes you gasp.
“You never responded to any of my texts,” he murmurs gruffly in your ear.
You remember at least half a dozen messages asking if he could clarify anything or if you needed any additional material for your article. You hadn’t needed anything else but you suddenly feel terribly rude for not answering.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, “you were very professional and I should have at least told you that I had what I needed.”
His voice drops even lower as he speaks. “I didn’t mean to be professional about them. And I was hoping that you didn’t have everything you needed.”
He pulls you up and firmly against him and for the first time you can feel his hardening cock through his pants. You can’t help but thrust your hips into him, barely able to process what’s happening to you. The two of you are still ostensibly dancing, although it’s more like a rhythmic grinding to the music as he reaches down and pulls the hem of your dress up, rubbing your thigh and then your ass as he presses his lips into your neck. His hands are everywhere on you and you’re aware that your entire lower body is basically on display for anyone who cares to look but you don’t care because it feels like you’ve won the lottery. You moan at the feeling of his growing excitement against your flesh, both his large hands grazing up the front of your thighs and for a moment you think that you’re ready to beg him to take you right there when you’re violently spun away from your dance partner, a bruising grip on your arm.
It’s Aleister, eyes incandescent with rage as he tells Roman, “I need to speak to her for a minute.”
Roman looks confused and tries to speak to you but Aleister drags you away and a gaggle of women immediately descend on Roman, desperate to take your place.
Aleister flings you against the wall, glaring at you with an intensity that you’ve never seen outside the ring.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he growls.
“I was dancing before you interfered,” you snap back at him, rubbing your arm.
“Dancing?” he repeats with derision. “That’s what you call that?”
“I was having fun.”
“What the hell are you wearing?”
For the first time since you saw him with his woman of choice outside, you feel ridiculous, like a girl trying to look glamorous by donning her mother’s clothes.
“I wanted something a little different.”
“A little?” he hisses back. “Do you realize what you look like? You’re all tarted up and letting some guy grab at you and get you half naked in front of a bar full of people.”
“What I look like?”
“Everyone could see practically your whole goddamned body. They could see what you were letting him do to you.”
“You mean to say I look like a whore.”
Aleister crosses his arms and glances away, refusing to confirm what you’ve said.
“So what, Aleister? So what if I’m letting a man touch me and show me that he wants me? Who cares who else sees? Maybe that’s what I want!”
“Are you so stupid that you think he wants you for anything other than a one night stand?”
The accusation stabs at your heart and your confidence but you’re determined not to let him see that.
“Again, so what? Maybe I’m happy to have this big, gorgeous man want me. Maybe I’m fine bringing him back to my place for a few hours of fun because at least it means someone is thinking of me as a sexual being for a change.” You pause, knowing the danger of what you’re about to say but unable to stop yourself. “Maybe I’d be fine if he just took me outside and fucked me over the hood of a car.”
For a second, you think that Aleister is going to strangle you. The look on his face is like the moment before the sky erupts in thunder and lightning. Truthfully, you expect that he’ll turn on his heel and walk away from you and never come back, and perhaps that’s what you need him to do so that you can get over him.
Instead, he grabs you, pinning you to the side of his body and pulling you towards the door. His movements make you stumble, and the more you try to resist him, the more ungainly you look.
“She’s dead drunk,” you hear him assure a few people, “I’m going to make sure she gets home.”
And while it’s true that you are drunk, you’re not nearly as drunk as he’s making you out to be. The second he has you outside, you try to twist away from him and go back, only for him to wind you closer, pulling you off balance so that you look even more inebriated.
You hear him whisper to Seth Rollins, who’s observing the spectacle through the corner of his eyes. “Look, tell Roman that she’s falling down drunk and I just had to get her home. No disrespect meant.”
Seth has a confused expression on his face but nods and tells him, “Sure thing.”
Realizing what Aleister is doing, you once again try to rush past him, but he blocks you, gripping your arm and pulling you after him so that you really do appear pathetically unable to take care of yourself.
“Why the fuck are you doing this to me?” you shout at him, figuring that there’s no reason to worry about who might hear you, there being no further you can sink in their estimation. “Why can’t you just let me enjoy myself?”
“Jesus, Miranda, you’re loaded. You can barely stand up.” He emphasizes this by jerking your arm forward, which almost causes you to keel over onto your face. “You’re just embarrassing yourself.”
“No,” you insist, pulling yourself to a halt. “I knew what I was doing. I knew what I wanted. Sure I’m a bit tipsy but-“
“You don’t want that,” Alesiter snaps, threading his arm through yours and continuing down the street. “You don’t just want to whore yourself out for a night because you think it might help your self-esteem.”
“You don’t get to decide what I want, Aleister.” You’re crushed against his side and he’s moving so quickly that your feet only graze the ground every third or fourth step. “Let me go. I’m sick of playing the surrogate mother for someone who’s incapable of seeing me as a real woman. I want to go back there. I want to have someone make a show of wanting me. I want to get fucked so hard I can’t walk tomorrow.”
Aleister shakes his head like a parent frustrated with a misbehaving child. “Stop it. You’re being ridiculous.”
“So let me be ridiculous!” you yell back, trying unsuccessfully to extricate yourself from his grip. “What the hell is it to you? Are you worried that for once I’m not going to be there when you need a place to collapse at four in the morning?”
The two of you reach the corner where the alley meets the street and he swings you to face him, glowering at you with a terrifying expression, gripping your biceps so hard you know you’ll be bruised in the morning. He says nothing but stares at you until he whips his arm out and hails a taxi seemingly out of nowhere.
He launches you, there’s no other word for it, into the back seat of the car and snarls your address to the driver as your tears start to fall. The cabbie is noticeably uncomfortable with your quiet whimpering and seems confused by the fact that Aleister does nothing to comfort or engage you. He sits with his arms folded, scowling, until you arrive at your building. Reflexively, you reach for your purse only to have Aleister swat your hand away and pay the driver himself. You try to keep pace as he yanks you towards the door, but stumble because of your unsure footing in these strange heels and because your vision is glazed by the tears you’re fighting to hold in.
When Aleister pins you against the door and rummages through your purse to find your keys, it somehow feels more invasive than Roman gripping your ass for an entire bar full of people to see. You feel, for a moment, that he is looking at you with tenderness. But when the door opens, he simply guides you through it. As you hear it click shut, the last of your strength, physical and emotional, gives out and you drop to your knees, finally allowing the tears to fall. It’s a full-on ugly cry, punctuated by guttural, anguished sounds you’d never allow anyone else to hear. Despite everything, you desperately want to hear the door open again behind you and to hear him say that he’s realized he loves you.
But no, in the end, he’s just found it gross that the woman he sees as his caregiver might have another side. He found you pathetic in your overpriced dress and shoes. He knew that you were desperately trying to act like something you could never be: like someone who could compete with the perfected Instagram beauties he fucks every night. You could never be that. He knew that you were just a sad little woman decked out in a gaudy outfit. You’d never be that sexy, desirable person who stopped men dead in their tracks, no matter what your dance with Roman had temporarily led you to believe.
You’re on your knees for what seems like hours, choking on tears and snot and trying to restrain yourself from howling. Just as the sound overpowers you and a low wail escapes your lips, you’re startled by a pair of arms, familiar, tattooed arms wrapping around your waist from behind.
“Shh. There’s no need for any of that,” he grunts into your hair.
And while you’re shocked and thrilled that he actually stayed behind to make sure that you were ok, it’s also even more humiliating that he’s seen you fall apart so spectacularly. Your body feels limp with defeat and unable to react at all as he gathers you up and carries you into your bedroom, setting you gently on the edge of the bed. He rests his hand on yours for a moment and you’re able to stem the flow of tears until he stands up and heads back towards the door. This time, you’re determined to hold in the worst of your misery until you’re sure he’s gone, even though you can’t stop the tears from running down your face.
But after a few minutes of straining to hear the door close, you see Aleister return, a damp washcloth in hand, and he sits once again beside you on the edge of the bed. He presses the cloth, cool and soothing, against your cheeks and then holds your chin as he delicately wipes it across your face. It takes you some minutes to realize that he’s removing your smeared makeup, cleaning you off so that you look good as new, so that you look more like the plain girl who lets him into her home in the middle of the night, his touch filled with a tenderness that you never imagined him capable of. When he’s satisfied with his work, he tosses the cloth aside and wraps an arm around you, pulling you close against him. The sweetness of his friendly gesture makes you want to cry all over again but you choke it back, knowing that you’ll have plenty of time for that when he’s gone.
“Can I stay here tonight?” he whispers, the sound of his voice making you feel weak.
You nod and roughly pull back from him, unsure of your ability to stop yourself from throwing yourself at him and begging him to wreck you. You fumble with the zipper of your boots until Aleister slides off the bed and onto his knees and removes it for you. He glides his hand along your calf, up to your thigh and then moves to your other boot. As he slides it off, he presses his head against the side of your knee, giving the skin a light kiss before rocking back on his haunches. You know he’s being gentle with you because he feels sorry for you. He finds you pitiful, which is even worse than finding you asexual.
The feelings are too much for you to take and all you can think of is that you want to get into bed where you’ll be safe and where you can sleep off the nightmare your evening out has become. You clumsily shed your dress, stockings, bra and panties without thinking much of the fact that you have an audience. Why should it bother him seeing you naked, after all? Normally, you put on some nightclothes but you don’t even have the strength to bother. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see that Aleister has turned his head towards the door. He’s embarrassed for you, the way you would be if a parent or sibling was undressing around you.
You crawl under the covers with a grumbled “good night” and immediately start to feel yourself drift off. You’re jolted back to wakefulness when Aleister climbs in beside you. In all the time you’ve known him, as many nights as he’s come and collapsed on your sofa, you don’t think he’s ever seen your bedroom. Now, having seen it, he’s apparently happy not to leave it, indulging in the comfort of your bed without even asking permission. It makes you a little self-conscious that you’re nude but it’s hardly the most humiliating thing to happen to you tonight, so you let yourself ignore it. If you can just fall asleep, this night will be over and you can begin the process of trying to forget it.
It’s only a matter of seconds, though, until you feel his body pressed against yours from behind, one hand coming to rest flat on your stomach and pushing you back against him so that you are acutely aware that you are not the only person naked in the bed. The hand on your stomach flutters downward until his fingers are moving lightly over your pussy, like he’s plucking the strings of a harp. His other arm wraps around your shoulders and keeps you flush against him, close enough that you can’t mistake the feeling of his erection against your back.
He presses his lips and tongue against your neck, making you whimper as you try to keep your heart rate stable. Your little noises seem to motivate him further, his touch becoming more insistent and one of his legs snaking over yours, pulling it back to give his hand greater access.
“Such a little fool,” he murmurs, his fingers stroking insistently along your fleshy folds. “Thinking I don’t see you as a sexual being.”
He sinks his teeth into your shoulder, making you cry out- more from the shock than the pain. His mouth continues to move around your neck and shoulders, nipping and sucking on the skin there, his grip on you tightening until it’s nearly painful.
“What are you doing?” you manage to ask.
“Leaving marks,” he says matter-of-factly.
You’re at a loss for what to say, but are saved from having to answer as he pushes two fingers inside you, his thumb rubbing slow circles over your clit. You’re embarrassed that he must have felt how wet you were just from being in his presence but he says nothing, quickening his pace and giving satisfied little growls when his touch elicits gasps and cries of pleasure from you.
It’s pity, you remind yourself; what he’s doing to you, he’s doing it because he feels sorry for you and because he’s drunk and horny despite his encounter earlier in the evening. But the thought gets whisked away as he brings you closer and closer to what you’ve desperately needed from him for so long. You let out a little shriek when he removes his hand, unable to believe he’s so cruel as to bring you to the precipice and then deny you. But he simply flips you onto your back before pressing his fingers inside you once more, watching your reactions to be sure he’s hitting just the right spot before burying his face between your legs. His tongue, lips and fingers work together like an orchestra. Your knuckles are white from the force of clenching on the sheets and you’re biting down so hard on your lip to muffle the sounds you’re making that you’re worried your teeth will end up permanently embedded. He unexpectedly raises his head and stills the movement of his hand inside you and the shock is almost enough to make you start crying again. You look down at him, his eyes sparkling in the low light with an expression you can’t read.
“Why won’t you let me hear you?”
Because you don’t want him to know how good his merciful little gesture is making you feel. Because you don’t want to admit to yourself that it’s better than you’d imagined. Truthfully, whenever you’ve thought about the mechanics of sex with Aleister, you imagined that it would be fast and rough and hedonistic, much like his other sexual encounters seem to be. But he’s chosen this moment to take his time, to focus on his partner, rather than go for a quick, dirty fuck in a darkened corner.
You don’t tell him any of this, instead croaking out, “I’m shy.”
He raises himself up and over your body with the effortless grace of a serpent, pressing his head close to yours and kissing along your jawline.
“What do I have to do to make you not be shy?”
“I don’t know… I just… am.” You wriggle a little under him, turning your face away when he looks directly into your eyes.
He cups your face in one hand and runs the other, still wet with your juices, over your breast, teasing the nipple and making you shudder involuntarily.
“Am I moving too fast?”
You shake your head, not quite trusting your voice.
“Is there something that you’d enjoy more? Something you want me to do for you?”
You give him another little shake of the head.
“You don’t have to be shy with me. Whatever you want, I want you to tell me so I can give it to you. Anything.”
For the first time, he kisses you on the lips, his tongue, that still tastes of you, slides against yours and the hand at the side of your face slides to hold your neck, cradling your head so that you don’t have to tense any muscles to stay in that position. Your body has nothing it needs to do but experience the sensations he’s creating. Of course, you still answer his kiss, hungrily flashing your tongue against his, reveling in the light scrape of his lip ring against your lips. His hand glides back down between your legs, and even the proximity is enough to draw a couple of little mewls of pleasure. You feel him smile a little against your lips at the noises and he pulls away from the kiss.
“Am I making you feel good?”
You nod as he starts to work his fingers around your entrance once again.
“Do you want my mouth down there again?”
You nod even more vigorously than the first time but he shakes his head.
“Tell me. Say it out loud.”
You open your mouth to do so and he immediately thrusts his long fingers into your g-spot and your clit at once, making you yelp in pleasure. It’s almost enough to make you cum on its own but he eases the pressure before you reach that peak.
“Yes?” he asks again.
“Yes, fuck, yes!”
“Then let me hear you. Please.”
He returns his attention to your core and has you making all manner of unholy noises in short order. He expertly teases you and then holds back, so many times that when he does finally take you over the edge, you feel like you might pass out from the intensity of it. Your gasps for breath sound cavernous in the quiet room.
He keeps the palm of his hand firmly against you as he leans forward and presses his lips into your neck, letting out a satisfied purr every time an aftershock rolls through your body.
When he’s satisfied that you’ve fully come down, he raises himself up on his arms, giving just the hint of a smile when you grab onto his biceps to steady yourself.
He’s so rigid that he doesn’t even need a hand to guide himself into you. He simply presses forward in one slow but sure moment, his eyes closed as if it’s a kind of religious experience, not opening them until he’s fully seated inside you. It’s been long enough since you’ve been with anyone that the feeling of being stretched draws a little whimper from your throat. He remains still, his eyes open and bearing down on you with a delirious kind of excitement, aching prick twitching inside you, desperate to proceed but waiting for a signal that he can.
And it’s at that moment that you allow yourself to think that this isn’t pity or a drunken mistake, that he’s as hungry for you as you have been for him and that what’s happened tonight has just served to connect a circuit. The fiercely possessive look in his eyes as he watches you, the fury when he thought someone else was claiming you, the need to mark you to make you his, the flush of pure lust on his face and chest… it is just a little frightening, something you suspected was in him but never that it was focused on you. But you’ve always known you could handle his darkness if he let you in. So you thrust your hips a little and wrap your legs loosely around his waist to show him that he can continue. Just as he starts to move, he cups your face and presses his mouth to your ear.
“You deserve so much better.”
“Stop trying to make those decisions for me,” you moan, feeling your insides flutter with his movements.
“I’ve never felt anything like that jealousy.” He’s staring into your eyes as he confesses. He lifts one of your legs over his shoulder pressing deeper inside you and gasping at the feeling. “Knowing that everyone could see how sexy and beautiful you are… And I’m an idiot for waiting for that to happen before I did anything, I just…”
He grimaces and slows his pace a little, obviously trying to prolong the sensation.
“You mean it?” You have to ask because you still can’t quite believe that this has been on his mind for all this time when he’s shown no sign of it to you.
“God yes,” he answers through gritted teeth, once again allowing himself to move faster and more urgently.
You can’t completely banish your fears that he’s going to regret this in the morning and just shut you out again but every second with him is pushing them further away. You lace your fingers through his hair, nipping at the shell of his ear as he lets out his own stream of desperate, lusty noises, running your nails gently down his back as he approaches his crescendo.
His head drops to your chest and he cries out as he releases inside you.
“Fuck I love you, fuck I love you, fuck I love you.” He repeats it like a mantra that brings him back down from his high, saying it a final time as he looks into your eyes.
Slowly, he rolls onto his side, gathering you close to him like he thinks an errant breeze might carry you away.
“I have…” he begins quietly, “… there’s a lot that goes on in my head… Bad things, I guess. I thought you’d run away. Or that I’d pull you down with me. I still don’t know that won’t happen.”
He looks so vulnerable that it makes your heart hurt but at the same time you have to stifle a smile.
“Well I’d rather you let me try to deal with it. I’m a lot tougher than you give me credit for being.”
His expression grows a little guilty and he nods. He wraps his arms tighter around you and you do the same until the two of you are lying in your bed, wound around each other.
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wickedgamesoyaoya · 4 years
Text
At first his presence was not detected, creating an opportunity for Osamu to observe your intoxicated state and to deliberate what action the situation called for. From the colourful curses uttered into the device snug against your ear he was able to ascertain who you were speaking to. The nickname ‘flamingo head’ could only reasonably be directed at Hanamaki, after-all.
But what Osamu did not know was that the conversation you were engaged in was rapidly shredding the limited energy you had conserved to refrain from collapsing. Administering a lecture to a heavily intoxicated person was not a calculated decision on his part. Further, Hanamaki’s annoyance with you solely stemmed from your treatment towards Iwaizumi. Not a single comment was issued to critique your decision to poison your liver at seven thirty in the evening. Rather, an implicit message of understanding laid at the foundation of his speech. These were details that the cook was struggling to discover, since all he could catch were the limited and short responses you shot back between various cries of irritation.
“Oh my God. Can you just stop. I can’t hear this right now!”
The distress seizing your throat had overwhelmed him with the protective desire to sooth you. Instinctively he proceeded a step closer, although he had to stop himself mid-step when your startled gaze landed on him. The quizzical expression etched into your features compelled him to lower the hand that was subconsciously raised in your direction. The emotions that were empowering him seconds prior were instantly washed away in a current of guilt.
A piece of him knew that he should have called Bokuto once stumbling onto the alarming scene, since he was someone you were willing to speak to and receive comfort from. And yet, the cook could not bring himself to abandon you – his heart would not allow such an action, particularly because he knew that he was the one responsible for your ache.
He wholeheartedly believed the curses spilling from your rouge coloured lips would soon be aimed at him. And so, when you suddenly pinched your eyelids shut and titled your chin skyward, confusion was added to the mixture of emotions boiling inside of his stomach.
“Fuck. I’m hallucinating again.” There was a hint of humour in the supposed realization that was proclaimed to the heavens. But the elongated sigh that followed the declaration indicated that you were becoming quite tired with the illusions your mind was projecting. Internally you had come to the conclusion that your mind was plotting against you, that is, it was partaking in an act of revenge in response to your recent increase of questionable decisions.
“Y/n… I’m not a hallucination.” Osamu vocalized the clarification solemnly, while remaining a safe distance away. However, based on your level of disorientation, he correctly assumed the counter-position would not be accepted.
Instead of responding immediately, an incoherent farewell was issued to the male continuing to scold you on the phone. Exhaustion weighed on your eyelids, forcing them into slits as you ended the call, before sloppily slipping the device into your jacket pocket. Osamu watched your every movement with careful precision, knowing well that excess amounts of alcohol would place you into a drowsy state. 
Usually, when you first bypass your regular intake of alcohol, illusions would lace through your conception of reality until the fine line between fact and fiction blurred. Drowsiness was the symptom that generally followed 10-15 minutes later. Although, he had only witnessed you in this state a few times, and so his data was limited. But he knew one thing for sure. You only elected to push past the point of no return when reality was far too much to bear.
And he knew this time it was his fault.
It was meant to be a day of celebration, but you were not drinking to commemorate your latest success. You were drinking to forget him.  
“That’s exactly what a hallucination would say.” The clever retort was accompanied by a short-lived laugh as you dipped an eyelid into a wink and tapped a finger against your head. At this point he knew anything vocalized would be categorized as fictitious, and perhaps it was for the best. What good could come from a conversation infected by liquor?
Osamu had now accepted that texting Bokuto was the correct decision, one that would satisfy you once you regained your sobriety. However, his resolve to text the Ace withered away in seconds as you sauntered over to him, gesturing strangely with your injured hand.
“Oi. Don’t ignore me.”
The cook blinked down at you, unable to rip away his stare as you halted a mere inch away from him, skeptically surveying him. The change in proximity not only prompted his heart to alter its rhythm, it flushed his pale cheeks with a rose hue. How was it that after eight years, you still managed to impact him to this extent? No one could draw out his emotions as effortlessly as you.
He had to fight his initial desire to brush away the stray strands of hair decorating your face, causing his fingers to twitch. He did not want to upset you, nor take advantage of the situation. However, his worries were silenced as you unexpectedly planted your palms on either side of his face, squishing playfully until his lips were slightly puckered. The physical contact stunned him, though he did not mind it. Even though the pressure exerted was a little aggressive, he welcomed it. He would accept anything from you, for he was at your mercy.  
“Shit. You really do look real.” Amusement led your eyelids to expand in size, and the glint decorating your irises resembled the one worn by children on Christmas day. “My mind did a really good job… But you can’t fool me.” Based on the teasing giggle that followed your words, Osamu knew whatever came next would not be pleasant. “Are you wonderin’ what? Your eyes, silly. The real ‘Samu hasn’t looked at me with that much love in forever.” The word ‘forever’ was slurred unnaturally and was accompanied by a little sway of your head. While the smile painted across your lips indicated that you enjoyed the odd enunciation, your explanation had amplified the guilt gnawing at his conscience.
Did he even deserve you anymore?
The self-pity party commencing inside of his head was quickly brought to an end as you unlatched your palms from his face, allowing them to return to your sides. A dreamy sigh was blown out as languor draped around you, increasing the influence of gravity on your knees. He watched you sway drowsily for a few seconds, not knowing whether you would accept his support if offered.
But when your remaining sliver of energy was spent, he shook his head, dispelling his concerns before slipping his arms around you, and ushering you to find support against him. His heart twisted inside of his chest, dancing in joy from the forbidden embrace. Tears stung at his waterline as you naturally snuggled against him, relishing in the sense of security his embrace granted you.
“You know… you’re pretty warm for a hallucination.” Pressing your cheek against the fabric over his chest, you were overcome with tranquility. “Wow… my mind even got your heartbeat right…”
Allowing his eyelids to flutter shut, he inhaled a breath to keep the tears at bay.
He was a fucking mess.
“Y/n. I’m sorry.” The apology was mumbled against your hair lowly, and did not reach your ears, as you were slowly slipping out of consciousness. “I’m so sorry…” While your current state did not permit you the luxury of comprehending his words, the way he trembled against you had led you to gently rub his back.
“You’re okay, big guy.”
A small smile tugged at the ends of his lips, the only sign of happiness on his swollen features. Only you would be trying to comfort him without realizing it – when you were the one in pain. Leading you head away from his chest a smidge, he leaned down to press a kiss to your forehead, as tiny droplets paraded down his cheeks. 
“I love you, y/n.”
He acknowledged that based on his past mistakes, he did not deserve you. But he vowed that one day, once again, he would become worthy of your love. Or at least, he would spend his whole life trying.
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Let’s do it again, shall we - i’m sorry 
Masterlist - Previous - Next
A/N: I TRIED, ALRIGHT. 
taglist: @idiot-juice-enthusiast @vicassa  @iloveanime691 @bringmelily @newfriendjen @hikarichannn @anime-simp @tsukkismamagucci @laughingismorefun @astronomyturtle @shegrewupwithoutafather @hyskoa1998 @deephumandragonperson @pretty-setter-bois @raenebalgaire @sugawarabby @justanotherfangirl2 @keijisworld @90s-belladonna @momoinot @sempiternal-amour @cherryblosom111 @yqshirov @haikyuufairy @volleybloop @bloody-bella @sadkaashistan @seikamuzu @namyari  @toaster-stick​ @coconut-dreamz @roseestuosity @prcttylittlcthing @uzumakioden​ @nerdynstoned​ @kenmasgameboy​ @unstableye @ouijaeater15​ @aquariarose​ @fandomtrashpandasposts​ @helloalex80​ @stfucanunot​ @envyusshades​ @cuddlesslut​ @seijohiseliterambles​ @chaichai-the-weeb​ @meiikuki​ @cuddlejeongin​ @tchalameme​ @ditu-m9​
Taglist continued in the comments from my personal  ❣️
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libradusk · 4 years
Text
Utterly Devoted | Kix
Word Count: 4,370
Pairing: Clone Medic Kix x Reader
Summary: You and Kix demonstrate to each other just how deep your devotion lies
Warnings: Explicit smut, tender sex with lots of feeeeeelings because I’ve made this man suffer through the previous chapter, eating pussy as a thank you gift because why the fuck not is there really a better way to start your morning when you’re stuck in the middle of a shitty war, some soft pillow talk to top it all off.
a/n: This is a belated bday gift to @morganas-pendragons​! Hope you enjoy the Kix pipe hehe
Its also a continuation from this chapter of my Touch Starved series, consider this the smutty sequel that touches on some of the events that happened the night before.
Tagging: @thatonesakudere​, @kaminobiwan​ and @simping-for-fives​ (Send me a message if you wanna be tagged in any of my future fics!)
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The first thing you notice when you awaken is how groggy you feel, it's as if there is a solid weight pressed against your body and mind, it fights with your half-delirious state of being in an attempt to drag you back down to slumber.
The second thing that dawns on you is that you are not dreaming and there is indeed a heavy weight slung over your chest, but his name is Kix, and he’s currently snoring into your shoulder with the rest of him draped around you like a loth-cat in a sunbeam. He’s also currently dominating the majority of the bed space, which was cramped to begin with, yet you can’t help but smile and relent into the warmth he offers with little more than a roll of your eyes that he won’t see.
It's just nice to see him so peaceful. You can’t confidently recall the last time you had seen him with anything less than a crease to his brow, and a sleep-deprived scowl poisoning his handsome face in the rare moments he allowed his composure to slip. This is nice, it's warm and safe and feels like home for you both despite the hell you had both endured barely a full 10 hours earlier. You’re determined to grasp onto this ribbon of tranquillity for as long as the galaxy permits you to.
The buckling pain that bites down your side when you twist too suddenly to get a better look at him is a painful reminder of that. You force it down in order to run a gentle touch over his cheekbone as he too begins to stir awake, as if the bond you have forged has demanded that he too be pulled from his slumber to meet the morning air alongside you. Two violet rings of exhaustion circle under his eyes as they flutter open to meet your own. Your fingers glide to brush against the one decorating his left socket on impulse. It takes a moment for him to swallow down his disorientation before his vision focuses completely. You note the spark of confusion that flashes across his expression before it dawns on him that no, this isn’t a dream and yes - you are settled in his arms in the same position you had been the previous night when he had curled into your chest until his tears had ceased soaking your shirt’s fabric.
There's a hint of shame that trickles into those tired eyes then and you smile openly in the hope that it will quash any guilt squirming in his gut before it forces him to voice it. 
“Good morning, my love.” The sound of your voice is soft and still swaddled with drowsiness. It still manages to pull the corners of his own lips into a sleepy smile, and there's a twinkle in his honey-coloured gaze as his eyes open wider now. The sight of it settles oddly in your stomach, it's the first time he’s looked like himself in a while, the realisation of that fact hurts a little, but you try to focus on the happiness that bubbles alongside it instead.
You’re both alive and you’re together - you’re lucky in so many ways to be squashed into this tiny GAR-issued cot with the man you love. It’s a privilege so many others would kill for, and right now all you want to do is sink into him and forget all about your injury and the God-forsaken war that has caused it.
You lean forward to press a kiss against his forehead, right where the crease of his frown usually sits - thankfully, it's absent this morning, replaced by a honeyed mixture of amusement and adoration as his eyes drift over the sleepy bliss that dances upon your face.
“Good morning yourself.” He waits until you pull away to speak, words tumbling out in a deep purr. They catch in his throat before he clears it of any remaining evidence that indicates he had spent the previous evening crying in both relief and frustration at your situation.
You thread your fingers around the back of his skull to stoke across the seam where his hairline meets his nape. The action is meant to be comforting, but it appears to stoke something deeper in his eyes as he sighs into the contact, tilting his head back in such a way that makes the rumble that echoes through his throat all the more prominent. Kix attempts to keep the lazy smirk on his face as he peers at you through heavy, dark eyelashes, but there's a hazy lust swimming beneath them now. It pairs itself beautifully with the spread of blush peppering his cheeks and the tips of his ears. The whole combination taints his attempt at playing off his bravado with an unmistakable bashfulness that has you smiling even wider against the pace of your own quickening heartbeat.
Your fingers continue to wind teasing little circles down his neck as you still to watch his reaction, lying in wait and thinly veiled curiosity to see what his next move would be. Kix watches you with just as much intensity, tongue jutting out to wet his lips for a moment as his blush grows darker under your touch. His grip around your middle flexes with uncertainty as he cocks an eyebrow when you drag your hand down to rest on his shoulder, digits drumming against the muscle in silent anticipation.
The air between you has shrugged away it's quiet serenity now, what has sunk in to replace it is much more charged, but still apprehensive of crossing the final line with the fear that the other was not completely open to the idea of embracing it, considering all that had unfurled the night before.
He kisses you then, shattering it. The press of his lips is hungry, and carries a hint of the same desperation they had tasted of the previous evening when he’d told you he loved you between the salty bite of tears and yearning. But even so, this is different, because he’s yours and the pain attached to his confession feels long spilled now. By the second time your lips meet, you’re openly sighing into his mouth and you catch the hitch in his own breath as you do so. The fire is all but blazing in his brown eyes when you finally part, though you only get the chance to stare completely into its flames for a moment before he’s pushing himself up to loom over you, fastening you down against the mattress with little more than the press of his hand against your own beside your head.
“How about I help you wake up properly, hmm?” Gone is the tiredness in his tone. His voice reaches you in a husky, thickened wave that wraps down your spine in a shiver. A quiet giggle of delight leaves you as you stare upwards at him, and his smile cracks wider to reach his eyes at your reaction. It sings of the old Kix, the real Kix, and that knowledge warms your heart even deeper than where mere lust could ever hope to reach it. There's still a nagging hint of concern tugging at the corner of your soul however, even despite the heat licking between your thighs at the thought of having him completely. It reminds you that you’re still concerned about his well being considering everything he had endured as of late, as well as the fact you were very much still sore from your own physical injury. Kix seems to read your thoughts because in the second of silence that separates the two of you, his expression softens in time with his voice.
“I’ll be gentle with you, I want this too, so much.”
Another kiss, this one soft and prolonged, whispering adoration and assurance into the very heart of you.
“I love you.”
You seize the forbidden fruit and completely melt into his embrace.
The next thing you know, you’re stripped bare and writhing beneath him as he kisses his way down between your thighs. He’s attentive to each catch of your breath and the buck of your hips when one of his hands ghosts over a particularly sensitive patch of skin in the dip of your hip bone. You have to remind yourself to breathe each time his lips edge further down your torso, the muscles of your abdomen rippling beneath his teasing caresses and the fan of his breath as he chuckles to himself at how you squirm at the slightest indication of him travelling lower, towards where you crave him most. Kix is as naked as you are, having wasted little time tearing off his blacks alongside each article of clothing he stripped away from your own body. His hand was quick to recapture your own in its grasp once he had you exposed to his satisfaction. Your fingers remain caged amidst his own, held hostage while his other hand continues to grope and explore the expanse of your flesh, only breaking their journey to bat away your own free hand each time you reach out to attempt to grasp at him.
“Ah, ah, ah, nope,” His voice is playfully frustrating as he reprimands you, another chuckle slipping through it when you finally relent and flop down in exasperation at his refusal to let you touch him in return, “this is about you, lay back and let me take care of you, cyare.”
You’re about to clap back at him with a sarcastic rebuttal when the sensation of his breath over your core rips any remaining shred of coherency from you. You briefly register him mutter something about ‘thanking you for everything’ and the feeling of him hauling one of your thighs over his shoulder before the sound of your own moaning echoes in your ears. It forces you to clamp your trembling free hand over your mouth in an attempt to keep your noises of delight secret from the rest of the base. It’s counterpart remains laced with his own as he pulls it down to rest near your hip and squeezes it reassuringly to ground you both from floating away with the clouds of lust permeating the room.
Kix groans against your folds as he drags his tongue over your clit in long, drawn out stripes, clearly revelling in the taste and slickness coating his lips. You can feel the scratch of his stubble brush against your inner thigh with each movement of his jaw and it only heightens the fire spreading across your nerves further. It takes a good minute before you can find the strength to push yourself up to lock eyes with him from where he’s stationed between your legs, the heavy-lidded expression decorating his face only pushing you further towards your peak. He looks positively love-struck as he lathes his tongue against your cunt, relentlessly switching between circling your clit and teasing the tip of the slick muscle inside of your entrance in such a way that has you seeing stars once your head tilts back once more, never quite letting you adjust to one pattern before catching you off guard with another. You lift your hips and grind against the pressure his tongue lavishes on you, chest heaving with the threat of a quickly approaching climax, one that’s only spurred on further when Kix’s chest rumbles with a shuddering moan as your slick runs down his chin and onto the sheets below.
It's dizzying almost, and he has you sobbing and babbling sweet nonsense into the pillows when your first orgasm hits you with a shock that threatens your vision white. Kix remains between your legs even as you begin to come down from your high, rubbing soothing circles into the twitching flesh of your thigh as you take in heavy gasps of warm air to steady your breathing.
“You ok there, cyare?” The warmth bubbles upwards to your chest once you register the care cradled in his words.
“-Mmhmm,” You’re more than ok, despite the tremble in your legs you feel fucking elated after his display of ‘gratitude’, but the intensity of your orgasm has left you feeling so dazed it takes a substantial deal of effort to simply nod your head as you remain slumped against the pillows and crumpled sheets. 
Kix waits patiently for you to regain composure, his fingers dancing over your hip now as he admires you in your afterglow. You suddenly feel a little shy, spread out, spent and wet beneath where he cranes over you, but the feeling quickly fades as fast as it surfaces because it's Kix and he makes you feel safer than anyone else in the universe.
“I’m great, actually,” Your voice is somewhat raspy from the strain of your moaning, but Kix still grins at you like you’ve just serenaded him instead. The sight of it flusters your words all over again, “‘wanna - want to make you feel good too though, want you, Kix.”
His blush deepens further as the air appears to leave his lungs through his nose at your blunt confession. He swallows thickly, and you can see the remnants of your wetness glistening around his mouth in the dim light.
Now it's your turn to smirk.
He’s lost for words for a moment before he can bring himself to crash down and kiss you again. This time you can taste yourself on his lips and the knowledge of what you’ve shared only makes you groan louder and buck your hips against him, finally released from the cage of his bicep around your thigh. You can feel the length of his cock, hot and heavy and desperate as it skims against your stomach and smears a trail of precum across your skin. His hands remain planted at either side of your head, holding his weight up on his forearms so as not to crush you or potentially aggravate your injury any further. The care he takes in handling you softens your heart, but you note the hesitation stiffening his muscles.
“...Hey,” your tone is as soft as your eyes as you reach up to cup his cheek and force his gaze to yours, marvelling in the way the heat of his body so quickly envelops your own, “I’m not going to break. It’s already healing thanks to the bacta so you don’t need to worry. Please.”
“...Ok.” He keens into your touch as you once again rake your fingernails over the seam of where his tattoo meets his hairline, you make a mental note to remember the reaction such a mindless gesture draws from him. When his eyes reopen to lock with yours, they’re practically swimming with a gilded stream of desire. “I love you.”
You don’t have a chance to repeat the declaration back to him before the words are stolen from you and replaced by a stuttering moan as he pushes into you. Your head hits the pillow the same moment he bites a mark into the curve of your throat and stills his hips against yours, completely submerged within your cunt until his pelvis kisses your own. You both moan in tandem as you flutter around him, split open and stretched in the most delicious way with his pubic bone grazing your clit. 
You’re sure you hear him bite down on a whimper as you give an experimental buck of your hips, his eyes closing the moment you wrap your legs around his middle to force him impossibly closer still. Kix’s hands fist the sheets beside your head, and you’re confident you’ve never seen a man look more beautiful than he does in this moment. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth and you crane your neck upwards to press a kiss to his chin, a silent plea for him to move and drag another wave of pleasure from your body. Broad hands fly to cup your face the moment he begins a slow pace inside you, the weight of his body falling to his elbows as his eyes snap open to watch for your reactions. He feels incredible, pulling out nearly all the way before snapping his hips back to meet your own each time in long, deep thrusts that have you moaning obscenely each time he comes to the end of you. He steals each sound from your lips with a series of sloppy open mouthed kisses, showering you in stumbled words of praise in a mixture of basic and mando’a. 
The bed creaks beneath the force of your bodies, and at this point you’ve all but abandoned your attempts to keep quiet in favour of whispering just how much you love him and how good he makes you feel. You cling to his shoulders as he fucks you deeper into the mattress, holding onto him just as tightly as he does to you - it's a wordless promise that you aren’t going to disappear and abandon him, that you’re his as much as he’s yours.
“-Feel so good, so good to me cyare, always been so good to me-”  his gritted-out praise tightens the coil in your stomach and all too soon you feel the familiar creep of another orgasm approaching you. His hands skim over your chest, stomach, face, before settling themselves with one cradling the back of your head whilst the other snakes downward to rub at your clit in tight little circles that have your eyes rolling back into your skull.
His praises fall off into a string of hurried curses as his hips begin to stutter to an erratic pace, however, his eyes never leave your own all the while. His jaw is clenched tightly, pulled taunt like the muscles in his arms as he angles his thrusts to drag against something delicious within your walls that has you mewling in delight. Despite the intensity of his actions, he’s still so gentle, so attentive in how he handles you. Ever vigilant to note each reaction you make to his touches and taking care not to jostle your still-healing body too violently.
“Fuuuck… Fuck! I love you - look so pretty like this, so perfect - just wanna stay like this forever.” His words are borderline incoherent now as he resigns to losing himself inside you, punctuated by rattling groans and a sigh that gets knotted in his throat as the emotion of the moment washes over him time and time again with each thrust. 
The moment he dips down to moan into your open mouth as he sheathes himself completely to the hilt once more, you let go. You topple over the edge into a second orgasm that's so strong that it tears a silent scream from your lungs and forces fresh, hot tears of relief to gather in the corner of your eyes, body and mind wrecked in unison from the over stimulation of it all.
Kix follows you into climax straight after, succumbing to the way you tighten and flutter around him as he attempts to fuck you through your orgasm until your toes are curling against where they rest on his lower back. His hips falter and he all but whines as he stills inside you abruptly, eyes finally screwing themselves shut as he pulses within you and paints your insides in thick, hot ropes. He keeps your lower body close against him even after his breathing begins to even out and his cum has long since began to drip out of you from around his softening cock.
You feel thoroughly spent now, limbs heavy and head spinning with the force of the orgasm that had just claimed you. Kix is the first to shift properly, withdrawing from you slowly with a kiss and a low groan that you feel more than you hear. The medic takes a moment to give you a quick visual once over, but you swat at his shoulder in mock annoyance despite the fatigue clinging to your joints. He relents, flopping down beside you and taking up an embrace the mirrors the one you had awoken tangled within that same morning. 
“I love you.” You swallow thickly around the words as you gaze at him, despite the lull of your afterglow, they come easily to you and you relish in how normal it feels to say them, to be held in his arms as if you were the only two souls awake in some private little galaxy you had created together. “I love you and I want to stay like this forever with you, Kix.”
His eyes hold a different tiredness now, this one is satisfied and soulful and free from worry - at least for a little while. You hope that this happiness lasts for him, he deserves it more than anyone else you know.
“I love you more, mesh’la.” His fingers reach up to brush against your cheek before pulling you in for a tender kiss, humming in contentment before parting slightly to mutter against your lips, “m’just sorry I don’t have much more to offer you than my charming looks, taste in brandy and my unofficial record for being the fastest at stitching up an incision in the whole GAR.”
You snort into his neck in response to the ridiculous quip before nuzzling your nose against his pulse. He squirms a little at the tickle of your breath against him and you make another point to remember the location of the sensitive spot for a later date.
“But honestly,” his tone drops to something more serious and your eyes wander back to lock with his own, a ghost of a frown pulling at your brow at the change, “you’ve always had to put up with a lot when it comes to me… you’re only going to have to deal with more where loving me is involved-”
“Kix, stop.” You’re firm as you catch his hand in your own, squeezing it to stress the finality of your statement before gracing his knuckles with another light kiss, “Nothing is easy at the moment and loving you is the one thing that's come so naturally to me. I don’t want anyone else because simple or not, they aren’t you.”
He smiles, wide and true before he begins to slowly encroach towards you to steal another kiss-
Until the shrill beep of your comlink shocks you both apart. 
You shoot the device a glare, grumbling in annoyance as you untangle yourself from Kix to fish the offending item out from where your clothes lay in a crumpled pile on the floor. He chuckles into his fist and you give him a sideways glance in warning before raising the comlink closer to your face, winching slightly at the brightness flashing from the thin strip of its display. 
“Hello?” The annoyance bleeds into your voice before you can think to stop it, a cold pang of panic shoots through you at the realisation that you forgot to check who it was contacting you before accepting the transmission.
“Good morning, am I right to assume that Kix is with you currently? It’s just that he was supposed to be present in the medical bay this morning to relieve me from my shift and yet here I am still - and I happened to bump into a trooper that claimed he saw you bundle him into your room yesterday evening.” It’s Officer Eir, and judging by the dryness coating his tone, he’s in a foul mood and more than aware of why Kix is late to tend to his duties despite the concern he had shown towards your lover the evening prior. You suppose the lack of sleep would do that to anyone.
Your cheeks automatically swelter with heat, quickly beginning to regret trusting the Medical Officer with the closeness of your bond with Kix. The man in question looks mortified at the circumstances he’s found himself in, but he still cockily mentions for you to tell Eir ‘hi’ despite fully knowing that the irritated clone could easily hear him over the line. You can envision Eir’s deadpan blink from all the way over in the medical ward.
“Honestly, I don’t know why I even wasted my time thinking about calling Kix first. I’m glad that you made sure he wasn’t alone last night, but need I remind him that stimshots are too important to waste on a hangover… or any other activity related fatigue that doesn't benefit the Republic.” You hear a sigh from over the comlink, the digital rendering making it sound crackled and disjointed - but it still makes you feel as though you’ve been singled out for committing a heinous crime all the same. “...I’ve taken the liberty of finding him a spare pair of scrubs, because I know he won’t want to risk returning to his bunk late while there are Jedi milling around.”
Kix raises his eyebrows thoughtfully, clearly touched that his fellow medic took the time to cover for him despite no doubt being desperate to lay down his head and rest.
“Um, yeah ok Eir I’ll… pass on that information to him - goodbye.”
You’ve never hung up on a call so quickly, and you hope to the Maker that no one had somehow managed to intercept your communication line. Kix still carries a bashful flush of his own, but it doesn’t stop him from grinning boyishly before another quip leaves his lips.
“Should’ve told him that I’ve already eaten breakfast too, bet that would have flustered him even more than you.”
The comment earns him a sweaty pillow to the face.
You still send him on his way with a ration bar all the same, taking a silent delight in how unsteady his initial movements are when he rushes to slip out of your door and down the hallway. He flashes you a wink and the hint of a loving gaze before slipping back into the role of a disciplined soldier once more as his long legs carry him away.
After he’s gone, you take a moment of private reflection to delight in how your spirit seems lighter and your heart feels fuller than it did yesterday.
Cyare.
You would never grow tired of hearing that fall from his lips.
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ambrial-blog · 3 years
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Someone had left the gates open, and he had slithered past them,  watching the apple red horse from afar flutter about his amber-hued-ruby-red eyes, alluring beckoned him from the shadows. Spiral yellow eyes narrowed as he listened to the candy-coated colt chatter away with the prestigious Ares Goeita.
Striker's tail wraps around Blitzo's midsection,  pulling him closer and away from the Goeita pony. Blitz blinks back in confusion. One moment, he was talking to a flirtatious Stolas who was offering him a bite of apple underneath the apple tree.
Next, he was staring into the blazing yellow eyes of a peach-skinned  Feral.  Blitzo gulped, taking a step back, listening to his tail rattle. This was bad. Blitzo was trapped in a corral with a Feral in heat.  His older brother: The Moxie Pony, had drilled into his head two things at a very young age. One: you must never go near another pony while they are in the heat: and two never mingle with the wild ones: the untamable brutes who like to bully and harass the smaller.  
Striker was both- a pure hybrid self-sufficient and always on the prowl looking for a Superior mate. Taking what he wanted regardless of anyone else.
The snake pony hissed evilly, Cornering Blitzo while nuzzling his cutie mark.  Forcing Blitz onto his back, his hooves stomping onto tiny bat-wings keeping Blitzo pinned beneath him. His cowboy hat shades his face as he dips down, nuzzling and nipping at Blitzo's neck. Striker has his skull choker in his mouth, dragging Blitz along, making a pleasing chortling sound as Blitzo drags his hooves on the ground.
"Let go! I am not ready for this! " Striker nuzzles his butt before nipping his ear.  He uses his nose to push the red-skinned pony further into the open. Forcing Blitzo to the ground, he bares his teeth. Nuzzling his nose into Blitzo's chest. Blitzo stares up, his hooves half curled into Striker's red bandanna as he tries to push against his chest. His ruby-red eyes shine as an apple drops onto Striker's head from above.  
The Ares Goeita pony is circling them, his wings gliding in the wind.  Striker pushes Blitzo against the wall and hides him from view as he snarls at Stolas for interrupting. Blitz manages to wiggle out, running through Striker's legs, but before he can run far,  Striker lays on him, his entire body engulfing Blitz crushing his wings.  Striker laughs, swatting Stolas away: like a pesky fly with his tail.
Hissing and snarling at the Ares Goeita who was fluttering about, his bright red eyes had a murderous glow to them.   "Go get Moxie and Mamma Millie,"  Cries Blitzo as Striker grunts and settles into the dirt, waiting for the blue blood to pass.
The Murderous foal twitched in the sky, afraid if he flew away to find the others, the little red-skinned foal and the lecherous fearl would slink away into the night. "Hurry, Stolas! Cries Blitzo earning another grunt from Striker, the rattler laughing at him from the shade of the tree. "Yea, run along, sweet prince. By the time you get back, I will have sown my seed deep into this spitfire.
"And what is that silly little miniature going to do, talk me to death while going over what's right and wrong and ask me- no, no, I prefer it if he begs me out the goodness of my black heart, to give back this frisky little foal." Striker hisses.
The Outlaw rolls his eyes, laughing as Blitzo sticks his head out, "Stolas! Screams trying to escape. Striker just bends his head, nuzzling Blitzo. His tongue licks his face as he nips on his ear.  Blitzo makes a disgusted face before burrowing into Striker, trying to get the saliva off his face. "I can smell your purity Blitz, no one has broken you in, Blitzy. It must be my lucky day that I happen across your sweet-sweet- almost pheromone-like scent." " you may be only a tiny foal right now, but one day you'll grow into a superior breed, like me, and that's a day I look forward to the most.  I wonder what you'll look like while in heat? Hisses Striker, flicking his tongue at Stolas.   "I'll enjoy listening to the sound of your heat when your begging me to take you and make you mine." "I've been watching you for a long time, Blitz-longer than I care to admit, you smell of wilderness so this corral isn't meant for our type I've come to take you home."
Stolas did one last sweep in the air before flying away to the stables where Moxie and Millie were last seen.  Loony, the wolf-hound, looked up with sleepy eyes as Stolas entered the barn. His eyes burning red, the stables were empty.
Striker stood up so that Blitzo could get a bit of fresh air. The red-skinned pony stood underneath him, flexing his wings. His legs wobbled underneath him. As Striker brushed his face up against Blitzo one last time before running towards an open fence, grabbing a lasso with his teeth, he hooks it around Blitzo's neck.
Blitz reels back as Striker continue to tug, his body scooting across the dirt, looking up, Blitz eyes filled with tears as he no longer saw the Ares Goeita in the sky. Blitz trotted backward in hopes of stalling for Stolas, his ruby wings flapping at his side as he dove for the outsider. Snaring a hoove into Striker's face. Striker snarled, throwing the pony into the side of a barn. "Yes, I'll definitely enjoy breaking you in," hisses Striker.  
A blood-curdling scream echoes from Blitzo's mouth as Striker stomps on his wings, tearing one of them and shredding the other with his teeth. "No more flying away, no more back-talking he grunts as Blitz shoves a hoove into his chest. Striker leans down to nuzzle the little spitfire.
Blitzo cries out as  Striker's teeth sink deep into his neck. He holds Blitzo down while he finishes giving him a mark, out in the open where everyone can see- A premature mating mark. Before taking him by the scruff of the neck. Blitzo had his head bowed, his eyes downcast.
 He was halfway out the coral doors when A bright red horse with a black flowing mane appeared over the horizon, hellfire burning in her eyes. Not far behind was an ivory pony with golden eyes set ablaze while above circled Stolas.
Millie tears down the fields, kicking up fire and brimstone teeth bared; she rams into Striker, knocking Blitzo from his mouth. Who slumps to the ground. Moxie is beside his wife, flanking her while Stolas circled Blitzo.
The tiny foal lay motionless in the hot sun, his battered wings flap helplessly as Stolas lands. He nudges Blitz, but the colt doesn't respond.
"Blitzy... Now, come on- stop playing games, Blitzy." Stolas whines.
Millie tares into Striker's neck, ripping it open,  her hooves claw at his face. Striker laughs through the pain, his teeth stained red with blood. His tail whips smacking across Millie's face. He headbutts her- but gets derailed by Moxie, who slams him into the fence.
Striker licks his teeth, tasting Blitzo's blood and some of his own. Millie staggers to her feet, seeing her husband corner the feral.  She looks for her foal.  Stolas had dragged Blitzo into the shade of the tree and away from the fighting.
He nuzzles the heart-shaped cutie mark giving a soft whine when Blitzo doesn't respond.  He gives a sad little helpless look to the mare. Millie's eyes churn red as she charges over towards where she had last seen Moxie duking it out with Striker.  They were gone. The fence was broken, with blood smeared across it.  She looks around, frightened. She tares back down the brimstone, hearing her mate cry out in pain and hissing laughter.
"Millie... Moxie calls, his voice hoarse. Mildred finds her husband skewered on a broken fence. "He is after Blitz, you need to go back,  Stolas is in danger," Moxie coughs, coughing up blood. "Moxie No!.... NO! we can fix this. It doesn't look too bad," Mox-baby." "Octavia she can fix this," sobs Millie. "Go unless, you want your son to be forcibly  mated to a serpent-pony, I'll be here when you get back, Mills our son needs us," chokes Moxie.
Back in the corral, Stolas had found a dirty blanket underneath an empty basin. He struggled with it before freeing it and heading over towards the red-skinned pony. Pulling the tattered cloth over Blitzo's prone form, trying his best to keep him warm.  He was all-too-aware of how much blood the tiny colt lost and how on earth a slithering feral got into this corral, let alone ranch?.
He nuzzles the colt in hopes of stirring him, but Blitz is out cold. He bows his head as tears fall from his eyes. He nuzzles him repeatedly, sighing deeply when Blitzo's head drops down. " Blitzy, please forgive me for not coming quicker. I shouldn't have left you; I should have stayed, then maybe this wouldn't have happened to you my little impish one."
The Ares Goeita then tries for that empty basin, breaking the water nasal and overflowing the tin basin; he drags the bay over, splashing Blitzo in the face.  He tries to cool down the colt, forcing water into his mouth. But suddenly still upon hearing the distant sound of a rattlesnake.  Stolas springs into action shielding Blitz from those glowing yellow snake eyes and those blood-stained teeth that are pulled into a grin.
Striker was back, and he was ready for round two.
To Be Continued
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