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maxineswritingcenter · 3 years

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You Saved Me - Derek Hale x fem!reader part 15

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Derek and I had taken off after the Kanima on foot. Stiles and Scott followed in his Jeep. We made it to an abandoned parking lot, halting a moment.

“You stay behind and wait for Scott, I’ll follow the scent this way.” He took off over the fence as Stiles and Scott pulled up. Scott got out, and jumped over the fence. I followed behind him down the tunnel.

“Okay! I’ll be here!” I heard Stiles yelled. I caught up to Scott, and we both ran in the direction of hissing and growling.

“Where’s-” He came to a halt and froze. I skidded to a stop as well. Gerard Argent stood there, almost like he had been waiting. Well, there goes my alibi of not being a werewolf, but odds are he already knows. We took off in the opposite direction, eventually finding a boiler room below a nightclub.

“Why the hell is Gerard here?” I panted.

He shook his head, “I have no idea.”

“What do we do now?” We turned around and yelped. Stiles was standing behind us.

“Sorry, sorry.” He apologized, “Did you see where he went?”

“We lost him.” Scott panted, resting his head against the red brick wall.

“What? You can’t catch his scent?”

“I don’t think he has one.”

I leaned against the wall, “That’s how he gets the jump on us, we can’t smell him coming like any other werewolf.”

“Alright, any clue where he’s going?”

“To kill someone.” Scott narrowed his eyes at Stiles.

“ Ah. That explains the claws, and the fangs, and all that. Good. Makes perfect sense now. “ Stiles’ voice dripped with sarcasm. Scott continued to stare.

“What? Scott, come on. I'm one hundred and forty-seven pounds of pale skin and fragile bone- sarcasm is my only defense!”

I looked him up and down, “You’re only a hundred and forty-seven pounds? We gotta bulk you up for the finals, you’re gonna get killed out there.”

“Not the time for lacrosse advice, (Y/N).”

“Yup, got it.”

“Just help me find it.” Scott said, getting frustrated with our back and forth.

“Not “it”. Jackson.” Stiles corrected.

“Yeah, I know. I-I know.” Scott looked around the corner.

“All right, but does he know that? Did anybody else see him back at your house?” Stiles asked.

“Everyone who knew saw. Lydia missed it though.” I said, trying to hear anything.

“I mean, I don't think so, but he already passed Derek's test anyway.”

“Right, because that test was so accurate.” I smirked.

“But that's just the thing, how did he pass the test?” Stiles asked.

"I don't know." Scott said his favorite sentence. But the fact of the matter is, there were no answers for anything.

“Maybe it's like an either-or thing? I mean, Derek said that a snake can't be poisoned by its own venom, right? When is the Kanima not the Kanima?”

“...When it’s Jackson.” Scott and I said in unison. Stiles’ eyes went wide and his mouth was pressed firmly shut. I followed his gaze and gasped, quickly covering my mouth. Scott followed our gaze, seeing the slimy green tail of the kanima disappear into the attic of the club.

“He’s inside.” Scott said, staring up.

“What's he gonna do in there?” Stiles asked, peaking around my shoulder.

“Well, I don’t think he’s looking for a date.” I said, staring at where the kanima went inside.

"I know who he's after." Scott stared at the window.

"What? How? Did you smell something?" Stiles asked, staring at Scott.

"Armani." Scott stated. We moved around the corner and looked inside the window of the building. The origin of the Armani just happened to be Danny. He was walking towards the entrance of the club, named Jungle.

“Well... At least he’s getting out.” The corner of my mouth twitched up. We walked around to the other side of the club to the back door. Stiles attempted to open the back door, but alas it was locked.

“Ah come on.” Stiles groaned, backing away from the door and looking up, “ Alright, maybe there's, like, a uh-like, a window we could climb through, or some kind of-” Stiles was cut off by Scott ripping the handle off the door and handing it to Stiles.

“...Handle that we could rip off with supernatural strength? How'd I not think of that one?” He threw the handle over his shoulder. Why was this place familiar? We all walked into the club. As we got into the actual club, we stopped. The loud music and lights reminded me of a party from high school. There were four disco balls on the ceiling surrounding one large one in the middle of the room. Beams of colored light were bouncing off the sweaty club goers. There were aerial silk dancers throughout the room, there were also shirtless men dancing on tables. That’s why I recognized the name.

“Dude, everyone in here is a dude! I think we're in a gay club... “ Scott said, astutely observing his surroundings.” We turned back, looking at Stiles who was flocked by two drag queens.

“Man, nothing gets past those keen Werewolf senses, huh, Scott?” Stiles said sarcastically.

We managed to get Stiles away from the queens and over to the bar where we found Danny. But before I could make it there, another drag queen pulled me away from them.

“Miss girl.” She drawled. This queen was all pink. Pink acrylics, pink outfit, large poofy pink wig. Her makeup was very dramatic, but in an aesthetically pleasing way.

“Um... yes?” I cracked a nervous smile.

“Do you know where you are? Because the lesbian night club is a town over.” She pointed towards the door.

“I uh, my brother,” I pointed towards Stiles, “He just came out and was too nervous to come alone.”

“Oh, how sweet.” She said, looking over at Stiles. Stiles looked back at us. The queen smiled and winked, waving dramatically. Stiles smiled back nervously and waved before turning back to the conversation they were having.

“See, he said he wanted to go try to talk to someone alone, but he’s just so skittish.” I put my hands on my chest.

“Well good luck, doll.” She put a hand on my shoulder, “It is the beginning of a long journey.” I smiled, watching the queen walk away. I rushed back over to Stiles. Where he was unsuccessfully trying to get a drink. "Three beers." Stiles smiled. The bartender stared at us.

“IDs?” We all took out our respective IDs. He stared at them, then back at us.

“How about three cokes?” He asked.

“Rum and Cokes!” Stiles grinned, “Sure.” The bartender looked unamused.

“...Coke's fine, actually. I'm driving, anyway.” Stiles backed down. We turned around and waited, scanning the room.

“Your drinks are paid for.” We looked back at the bartender. He motioned his head to the end of the bar. There was an older man who smiled at us, toasting his beer to us.

“How bi.” I smiled, waving back. Stiles looked at Scott who was trying not to laugh.

“Awh, shut up.” Stiles glared.

“I didn’t say anything.” Scott said innocently.

“Well, your face did.” Stiles sneered, we looked back towards the dancefloor where we saw Danny dancing.

“Hey, I found Danny.” Stiles said.

“I found Jackson.” Scott said. We looked up, watching Jackson stalking the ceiling, twisting and turning through wires. Right above where Danny was dancing.

“Get Danny.” Scott said.

“What are ya gonna do?” Stiles asked as we watched Scott’s claws come out, “Works for me.” We started maneuvering our way towards Danny’s direction.

“Danny!” Stiles shouted over the music. Danny was dancing with a guy, but as we got closer, we lost sight of him.

“Danny!” Stiles called again. Smoke started coming down from the ceiling. Was there a fire? No, the smell wasn’t the same. That’s when the screaming started. I frantically looked around, trying to find anyone. Soon the smoke cleared, and there was a line of paralyzed men on the floor, Danny being one of them. “Danny!” I called. The music was shut down and the lights had come back on. I went down on my knees to check if he was breathing. He was looking around, fear in his eyes.

“(Y/N)?” He asked, his voice trembled.

“That’s right, Māhealani. I’m right here.” I smiled.

“What are you doing here?”

“Uhhh..” I looked around, “Stiles was questioning but... I think after tonight he’s gotten his answer.” I lied.

After questioning Danny, Scott made his way back to the jeep. I was sitting in the back, looking back at a very naked Jackson who they had found in the back of the club; naked and covered in blood and black goo.

“Couldn't get anything outta Danny." He said.

“Okay, can we just get the hell out of here now, before one of my dad's deputies sees me?” Stiles said anxiously. Stiles started the Jeep, but a police cruiser pulled in front of the Jeep, keeping us from our escape.

“...Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Could this get any worse?” Stiles groaned. Suddenly, Jackson groaned and sat up.

“That was rhetorical!” Stiles sighed. We turned back towards the cop car. Scott pointed to the car, “Get rid of him.”

“Get rid of him? We're at a crime scene, and he's the Sheriff!” Stiles said anxiously.

“Shit.” I ducked down, realizing that if Uncle Noah saw me, it was going to be even more awkward.

“Do something!” Scott motioned with his arms. Stiles fumbled with the door handle and got out.

Jackson sat up in the back, “Wha-...What’s going on?” I pushed him back down.

“Jackson. Jackson, be quiet.” Scott said urgently. He looked towards Stiles, then back to me.

“Why didn’t you get out with Stiles?”

“We’re not attached at the hip, ya know.” I avoided the question.

“You know what I mean.”

I sighed, chewing on the inside of my cheek, “I got into a fight with his dad. I told him that he wasn’t my dad and to stop acting like it.”

“A little harsh.” He titled his head.

“I am aware of that-” Jackson tried to sit up again.

“What’s going on?” He groaned, holding his head.

“I’m sorry, Jackson.” He punched Jackson in the jaw, sending him back down.

“Ow.” Scott winced, waving his hand.

“Don’t be sorry. I’ve been wanting to do that this entire year.” I grinned, a little impressed.

Stiles came back shortly, not saying a word as he started Roscoe and drove out of the parking lot.

“What’d you tell him?” I asked, leaning between the seats.

“I told him we took Danny clubbing because of Damon.” He sighed.

“Excellent.”

Stiles and Scott dropped me off at Scott’s house so I could get to my car and drive it back to the railroad depot. I needed to talk to Derek about what had happened tonight, if he missed it that was. He seemed to disappear after we split up.

I need to apologize. But he also needed to explain himself. What if he had gotten to Lydia that night and killed her, what did he think I would do, accept that, especially since he was wrong? I got inside, I went up to Derek’s room. He was lounging on his bed, looking at the photos. He looked up from the photos, avoiding my gaze.

“Derek, I’m sorry that I was trying to distract you... But I didn’t know what else I could do to stop you from killing Lydia.” I walked in, sitting on the edge of the bed, “I don’t know why she failed your test either, she must be... I don’t know, immune or something else that is immune.”

“You’re right, okay? I should have trusted your instincts.” He said, setting the pictures on the bed in front of him. I moved closer, looking at them again. He had the pictures of us together. There were three teens in the picture. Me, another girl, and Derek. She had long, dark brown hair, kind brown eyes with a very distinct beauty mark under her right eye. Flashes of her face filled my mind, smiling, laughing.

“Wait... Do I know her?” I picked up the picture, “I do know her.... That’s Paige.” Derek’s emotions rose higher: guilt and sadness. Looking back at him, I saw his face. He looked so broken.

“Derek, what’s wrong? Did something happen to Paige?” I asked. He leaned back against the wall.

“You were friends. She was my girlfriend.” He sighed, “She was bitten by another alpha. And she was rejecting the change. I killed her to put her out of her misery.”

“Der...” I reached out, putting a hand on his knee. Derek sat up quickly, moving the pictures onto a box next to his bed. He pulled me closer, hugging me close to him. He rested his head against my shoulder, breathing deeply. I sighed, lightly brushing my fingers over his knuckles. Derek was followed by tragedy, plagued by guilt and fear.

“I’m sorry.” I whispered.

“It’s fine, you didn’t remember.”

“Not about Paige, about everything. I just wished I could remember so I could help you more. It isn’t fair that you’re going through all of this by yourself.”

“I’m not alone.” He picked his head up off my shoulder. He brought his hand up, turning my head so I could see his eyes, “I have you. And that’s all I need.” My lips pulled up in a smile, turning so I was kneeling between his legs.

“I love you.” The words fell off my lips like they had always been there.

He grinned, “I love you.” His lips brushed against mine with every syllable. He pressed his lips to mine.

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Read part 16 here!

This one is a little shorter because... There really is no reason, it be like that sometimes.

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#derek hale x reader #derek hale fic #teen wolf x reader #teen wolf fic

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honeysidesarchived · 3 years

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THE LAND OF GODS AND DEVILS, a sequel.

—part ii.

word count: 9.2k

rating: m for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop, tags will be updated accordingly.

warnings: naughty language, massively canon-divergent, roman gets his own tag because he’s a fucking nutso, canon-typical violence, established relationship that might not be the healthiest, age gap, domestic murder family. if you’re here i imagine you know exactly what he’s about.

notes: hello! it has been a hot minute since i updated, but i promise i am not dead. i just went on a real vacation and juggling two longfic projects at once is (surprise) very time consuming! but i am here with chapter two. it's a lot of roman pretending not to be jealous when he's actually seething inside (we love to see it), as well as a few little drops of intrigue. yes, i know, i TOO wanted an entire longfic about roman and varya just making out between dramatic proclamations of their violent devotion for each other, but alas, alack.

special thank you to my beta @starcrier who of course helped me proof a good portion of this, and is eternally my cheerleader and the loml, as well as @shallow-gravy who put her eyes on the very very rough draft of this when i wanted to bash my head into the top of the desk a-la-roman's theatrics. without you this chapter would not have happened!

and thank you to everyone who has read this so far! carry your throne was truly my baby and so getting to write a sequel for it is the most incredible feeling. your support means the world to me. <3

Roman did not like sharing his things.

It was perpetually difficult enough to have let Varya waltz around the club so that she might have happily enjoyed being lavished attention on (attention that was, to be kept in mind, not his)—but watching a stranger, an interloper from her past, indulge himself in her, that was excruciating. Because that’s what it was, in the end; less about his girl enjoying herself and more about people enjoying her, realizing they would never have her, that she would always be his.

So as Irina took the twins back upstairs and Roman ushered her back into the throng of partygoers, he did so with intent; Roman watched Varya wind her way from person to person, lingering at their friend Dorian—dutiful member of the press always content to show her in a good light—before she and Maxim connected.

Roman watched them. He watched the way Maxim beamed at her, the way he ducked his head to hear her say something. He laughed and rocked back on his heels a little, and when Varya brought the glass to her lips, Roman saw it—saw Maxim’s eyes dart down to her mouth, their ascent short-lived as he busied his hand with sweeping a stray curl from her face. Maxim seemed very comfortable touching Varya, he thought. Men were never comfortable touching Varya. They were either—he had found, at least—aware of her proclivity for having hands cut off or (what he could only argue was the most correct deterrent) understanding of the simple politeness that came with not putting your hands on another man’s woman.

More than anyone, Roman appreciated having the things which others could not, so that he could be envied: but this?

This was treasonous. Poisonous. Heretical. Not in my fucking house.

Puzzling yet was Varya’s willingness to let her childhood friend conduct himself in such a way. She was a greedy thing, his girl; he knew that she so loved the attention, preening and glowing under the adoration. Greedy and hungry for love. Had she always been so active a participant in the act of touching, of being touched? Even by a stranger?

Not a stranger, he reminded himself tartly. Childhood friend, the man whose father she killed. That’s two fathers now, in her ledger—her own and someone else’s. And petulantly, he thought it a bit unsettling that it was a bond he could never have with her—dear old dad was already dead as a fucking doornail, wasn’t he? No chance Varya would want to ice him for Roman a second time.

He had determined to swallow his pride (impressive, gracious, generous) and make his way over when Dorian swept in; Dorian, preening and wrapping his arms around Varya from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder and making the noisy announcement, “Stealing her away, thank you!” just before he steered her past Maxim. There, the crowd shifted and scooted out of the way to reveal the birthday cake getting wheeled out on its little tray, decorated in gem tones and sparklers.

The determination to close the distance between himself and their newfound associate did not abate, even with Dorian’s well-timed interjection. As he wove through the crowd of milling partygoers, accepting compliments on his good work, he waited until he got within a foot or two of Maxim to stop. Everyone was applauding the cake. Everyone was having a great time looking at the expensive cake glimmering under the oh-so-obnoxious chandelier, but mostly he thought they were applauding his wife.

So, Roman clapped. He clapped, because the cake was out and the sparklers were fizzing and popping prettily, dancing golden light across his wife’s delighted face. He clapped, because everyone else was clapping, too. He clapped, and he flashed an all-teeth smile at Varya from over the top off the elaborately decorated cake (tasteful, not gaudy, of course).

Over the fizzing and popping, and without taking his eyes off of Varya, he said to Maxim, “Did you fuck my wife?”

Maxim clapped. He clapped, too, and he stood there for a moment and blinked a few times and replied, “What?” His accent was thicker than Varya’s, and thicker than Ilarion’s had been.

“You speak English, don’t you?” Roman snipped, his words and perhaps some of his annoyance masked by the party chatter. Varya shrieked delightedly when Dorian dabbed frosting on her nose. “I asked if you’ve fucked my wife?”

The blonde cleared his throat. He rubbed the back of his neck, apparently grateful that the attention had gone from clapping now to cutting the cake. In the corner of his eye, Roman could see Zsasz lurking—watching, keeping an eye, making sure he didn’t need to intervene on Roman’s behalf. Always a good man.

“No, Mr. Sionis,” Maxim replied, talking over the din of music and laughter.

Good, Roman thought. And then: “Do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Fuck,” Roman bit out, “my wife?”

Maxim barked out a laugh. He looked caught off-guard by the question—like maybe he wasn’t sure if Roman was asking to threaten or offering to join their marital bed—and then he said, “You have put me in an uncomfortable position. If I say no, I am insulting my childhood friend. If I say yes, I am insulting my new boss.”

There was something about this that flared a little spike of victory in Roman’s chest. Yes, that was right—he was Maxim’s new boss. And Maxim should be nervous about pissing him off, shouldn’t he?

“But,” the blonde plunged on, “I imagine having something that other people want feels good, does it not?”

His eyes narrowed. He smiled thinly. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? “Yeah,” he agreed, “it sure fucking does.”

There was a moment where it looked as though the other man was going to say something, his mouth opening but no words coming out, brows knitting together at the center of his forehead; but then silk and warm stretches of skin were filling up Roman’s vision, Varya having swept around to come to him, eyes bright. They’d only been at the party for a little while, but already his fingers were itching—he wanted, having stood by idly while greedy hands brushed against his Varya, and it was time to erase them all, he reasoned. Wipe her clean of them as best he knew how.

Still, she had not looked so happy in a while, he thought. Varya always beamed around the twins, practically glowing radioactive from the inside out, but it had been a long time since he’d seen her so delighted without them in her arms. And surely, this was a testament to his doing—his meticulous, flawless planning, regardless of whatever wrench Maxim Kuznetsov was trying to throw. Yes, Roman thought, he had done exceptionally, in this as in all things.

“Romy,” she said sweetly, “are you playing nice?”

“I’m always nice, kitten,” he demurred, sliding his arms around her waist and nosing the hair at her temple automatically. Every time she came around, the gravitational pull was inevitable—hands on, hands on, hands on, making sure everybody knew exactly who she belonged to. “But you can ask your little friend, if you’re worried I’ve hurt his feelings.”

He said, you can ask, but he kissed her after he said it, purring against her mouth and keeping her otherwise preoccupied; when she did pull away, still encircled in his arms, she smoothed her hand along the exposed skin of his sternum and looked inquisitively at Maxim.

Roman mimicked the tilt of her head. The blonde regarded him for a moment, and then Varya, and then smiled.

“Your husband is very accommodating, Varushka,” he told her, shrugging as if to say, and what else would he be? “I have never met a man like him.”

He felt his mouth downturn—Varushka, the same pet name Ilarion had used with her. It was one thing to accept that his wife’s twin brother would always be held in high regard in her memory, that he’d had to endure the Varushkas and the closeness that they had shared that purposefully, intimately excluded him.

“That’s because there’s nobody like me,” Roman idled, despite the venom thrumming in his veins. He was cool. He was cool and fine and totally cool. Varya hummed and planted a kiss against the slope of his jaw; her nose brushed the hollow of his throat, more than content to remain there.

But even though their exchange remained pleasant, for a second, the blonde Russian regarded him with the same deadpan, venomous gaze that Ilarion had so often. It was so close to the way his wife’s twin had looked at him, in fact, that the disdain which had been almost exclusively reserved for Ilarion himself now prickled up the back of his throat like a bile—instinctual, muscle memory.

He had seen the same look crossing the faces of the men from St. Petersburg, flown all the way to Gotham to meet their new pakhan, as Varya had put it: disdain. We’re not for you, those fleeting glances said, despite the acknowledgment in all other things that they were. What do we want with some American gangster?

He was vaguely aware of Varya and Maxim saying something, exchanging words, but their voices had dulled to the cartoonish wah wah wah of an old-time cartoon, with Varya’s occasional laugh vibrating against his sternum. Maxim waved a hand dramatically. There was ink, there; he hadn’t noticed it before. He’d been too busy inspecting the man’s stupid fucking face, trying to find the lip of his mask somewhere in there. False fucking face, that’s all it was.

And yet: Roman could not help but feel a little burn of intrigue at the sight of the inked Cyrillic letters on the back of the man’s hand.

“—stairs, my darling?”

Varya’s voice bled through the dull static that had overtaken his mind. He glanced at her, reaching up and tracing the slope of her jaw with his thumb, his other fingers splaying along the spine of her neck. Obediently, her chin tilted. She was complacent like this—docile, even; he could have snapped her neck if he wanted, dug his nails into that warm, dusky skin and watched the blood well, and she would have let him—so much so that he wondered at it for a moment. All of his hard work, all of his tempering, cupped right there in his hand; she was his.

Rather than admit to having checked out of their conversation, Roman pressed the pad of a gloved thumb against her lower lip and deferred, “Whatever you want, kitten.”

Briefly, the thought that he had agreed to let Maxim into his loft occurred. Oh, what a dreadful thought.

“Then it’s settled,” she replied. “You can stay while the party goes on, of course, Maxi.”

Maxim lifted his head, regarding them with a gaze that was no longer venomous, but playful. “Of course.”

“And you’ll leave the address of where you’re staying with Armazd?”

“If you want it, I will.” He cocked his head, smiling politely. “Goodnight, the both of you. I am happy to finally put a face to the name Roman Sionis.”

What the fuck is it with these people, he thought wearily, and with no absence of annoyance. This is just how it had been before—everyone saying things beneath the things they were saying, layers and layers and layers, piling up over each other. Didn’t any of these stupid fucking gun dogs say anything exactly the way it was?

“Yes,” Roman agreed, “I bet you are.”

With great purpose—and having determined that Varya was quite done with the evening—he planted his hands on her hips and turned her, steering her towards the doors which exited out of the club and into the hallway housing the elevator. It was her birthday, after all; there was nothing he could do except whatever it was she wanted.

“Goodnight, Maxim,” he said over his shoulder, steering the brunette in his grasp toward the door. A distressed ugh! sounded to his left, and he turned to see Dorian glaring at him accusingly.

“You get her all the time, Roman,” the journalist announced. “Surely you can spare her for a little longer?”

“Afraid I can’t,” he replied over his shoulder, squeezing Varya’s hip when she stifled her laughter. “You see Dorian, close to a year ago, Varya and I decided that we had plenty of other uses for cake to be explored on our birthdays—”

Another disgusted sound came, but it was too late; Roman was already nudging Varya through the doors to the hallway, and down to the elevator. Once the door clicked shut behind them, it was quiet; it was the one area of the building where it seemed like the air conditioning didn’t quite reach, having so many accesses to the outside, and so the air already felt a little humid and muggy.

“Oh, we forgot the cake,” Varya pouted, trailing ahead of him. She’d collected the hem of her silk dress loosely in one hand, keeping it from the floor as she wandered to the elevator to push the button. The neon red of the Exit sign cut across one side of her, illuminating her in half crimson and half shadow. It reminded him of the night he’d come back to the loft to find her covered in another man’s blood, kitchen knife in hand.

And mine, he thought. Varya Astakhova, the gem of St. Petersburg, only living heir to the Astakhov gun-running fortune, his wife.

“Darling,” she purred, breaking him out of his thoughts, “are you going to just stand there all night?”

“Maybe,” he replied idly. “Maybe I will just stand here all night and stare at my wife, hm? Who would stop me?”

“Well, certainly not me,” she demurred, turning to look at him fully now. “But you can hardly kiss me from there. And what am I suppose to do, go without cake and without your hands on me?”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Roman thought about the way Maxim had looked at him—just for that tiny split second—all of the disdain and venom welling in his gaze before it was wiped away. Your husband is very accommodating, I’ve never met a man like him. And that fucking tattoo on his hand. It nagged at him, dragged his attention away from the very, very delicious task at hand.

“Roman?”

“You go,” he announced. “I’ll be up in just a minute.”

A plush, ruby lower lip pouted out. Roman sidled over to the elevator, planting a gloved hand on the doorway so that the doors wouldn’t close, and she prompted, “What could you have possibly forgotten when all you need is right here?”

“You are most spectacular,” Roman agreed, reaching up and twisting a curl around his finger. “But it’s just a quick thing. Don’t worry that pretty head, kitten. I’ll be up in no time, and you had better—”

When he leaned in, their noses brushed; Varya hooked her fingers in the space between the buttons of his collared shirt and tugged a little, playfully, humming sweetly.

“—have this dress off,” he finished, voice pitching low and warm, “by the time I get up there.”

“And what if I don’t?” The cloying, saccharine tone of her voice belied the little spark of rebellion in her words. Roman made a pleasant sound against her mouth, a humid warmth plunging down his spine when she closed the tiny space between them to kiss him; it was entirely unhurried, and on instinct his free hand went to the small of her back, pulling her more flush against him as her lips parted prettily beneath his to sigh.

He said into the kiss, “Why don’t you try it and find out?”

“Is it a test?” Roman felt her smile. “I love tests.”

“Get upstairs,” he growled, unable to resist a final kiss. “Wicked thing.”

Varya did pull back, reluctantly and with a dramatic, long sigh. She’d always had a thing for the dramatics. “Fine, I will go upstairs all alone,” she drawled. “Don’t keep me waiting, Romy.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He stepped back, dropping his hand from the elevator door and turning around to head back to the club. The party was still in full swing; people wouldn’t even begin to start leaving for another few hours, patiently and dutifully babysat by Armazd and Zsasz (well, mostly Armazd—Zsasz was not good at being ‘patient’ or ‘dutiful’ if it didn’t include face-carving). It was like having three nannies on payroll, instead of just the one.

The door swung shut behind him. People chattered brightly over the music, lingering around tables in clustered groups. He could see at least half a dozen mobsters and their families, associates of Varya’s from overseas, socialites she had charmed and wealthy businessmen determined to get into their good graces before the weapons chokehold came into full effect.

But there was only one man he wanted to see.

Dorian Young had been smitten with Varya since the moment they’d met, through Roman—and since then, they’d been nearly inseparable. Dorian had even done her the kindness of writing Ilarion a flattering obituary. It would have been annoying, if Roman considered Dorian a threat in the least. He did not.

“Dorian,” he barked out, catching the brunette’s attention. He smiled, full-teeth and as charmingly as he could. “Buddy-mine. I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Oh?” Dorian arched a brow loftily. “A favor outside of the eternal wisdom of Gotham’s madonna, Roman? How scandalous. You know I can’t resist a special in.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Roman adjusted one of his gloves absently, glancing around the room before inclining his head and taking a few steps outside of the cluster of milling partygoers. He didn’t have many concerns about being overheard, given the noise level, but it was better safe than sorry. “You have access to certain records, don’t you?”

Now two perfectly-manicured brows arched upward before Dorian cleared his throat, dark eyes fluttering in a bat at innocence.

“I’m a journalist, Roman,” he intoned somberly. “If someone were to give me access to records that were anything but public, it would be a grave and disgusting infringement on the American Privacy—”

“Yeah yeah yeah, shut the fuck up,” Roman interjected, waving his hand. “I don’t give a shit about that. How about this: you don’t use the records you aren’t able to access, and you don’t dig up literally everything you can on Maxim Kuznetsov.”

“The ex-boyfriend?” Dorian tsked his tongue. “Roman, green is not your color.”

“Hey? Dorian? Don’t be a fucking moron.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Well just say you’ll do it.”

“You mean,” Dorian amended, “that I won’t.”

Roman let out an exasperated noise, clapping a hand onto the man’s shoulder and giving him a little jostle that was meant to convey he wished that he could instead be strangling him in that moment. Varya would have been upset if he did. Dorian flashed him a pearly grin.

“Consider it done. Or not-done, as the case may be.” He took a swig of his drink, sucking his teeth. “Anything I should be on the look-out for?”

“Any red flags. Suspicious shopping behavior. Outgoing calls to private numbers. He’ll likely have two separate phones—one burner, one not.” Roman dropped his hand from Dorian’s shoulder. “Armazd will have his address, if you want to get that from him before you leave tonight. And—one more thing.”

The journalist looked at him expectantly, waiting.

“Not a word,” he continued. “To anyone. But especially not to Varya.”

“If you’re sure,” Dorian ventured.

“The surest.”

It was when he turned to depart the party—for real, this time; he was tired of waiting to unwrap his wife—that Dorian said, “Roman?”

A deep, calming breath. I need Dorian, he reminded himself, and V’s fond of him. Roman pulled another one-eighty. “Yes, Dorian, beloved of my wife?”

“How is Varya?” Dorian’s eyes narrowed. “I mean, really?”

The question was not one that Roman had anticipated. Why would she be anything other than great, glowing, in love with her life? Sure, the last year had been full of turmoil—but they had come out of it fine. Better than fine. Roman had gotten everything he had wanted, and Varya—well, much the same, hadn’t she?

Dorian’s prying reminded him of the way Varya’s body had stilled, the way her expression had hardened, that dark, wild look slipping into her eyes when the lights in the club had blinked on to reveal the surprise party. She’d looked frigid, the softness wiped clean from her in that split moment.

“She’s fine,” Roman replied after a minute. “I mean—she’s great. What do you mean?”

“I can’t get a good read on her. You know,” Dorian pointed out. “And she did watch her supposed-to-be-dead daddy unload a round into her twin brother while she was drugged to the gills on ketamine.”

Well, when you put it like that, Roman thought dryly.

“Some of us, Dorian,” he said primly, “are able to rise above our trials and tribulations and come out better, hm?”

The journalist smiled. He didn’t looked swayed by Roman’s words, but eventually he said, “I’ll contact you as soon as I find out anything.”

“Good man.”

It was only a few minutes from the club’s main floor up to the loft, but those few minutes felt like an eternity; stretching out, impossibly long and endless in front of him. Varya’s birthday was supposed to have been a problem-less occasion, and now he had several problems lining themselves up in front of them. Chiefly, Kuznetsov. And the rest of them, too, but mostly Maxim.

Roman tugged the gloves from his hands and shrugged the suit jacket from his shoulders as the doors to the loft slid open, the gentle ding announcing his arrival. Faintly, he could hear the classical music that Varya favored to play in the twins’ room as they slept; there would be a little speaker on the table closest to her side of the bed, so that she could rouse the second either of them needed her, but they were good babies, like she’d said; it was rare when they didn’t sleep through the night.

He tossed the articles he’d disrobed from onto the long dining table as he passed, nudging the door to the bedroom open.

“Ah,” he sighed, eyes roaming expanses of warm, dusky skin exposed to him as Varya lay stretched out on the bed, “I see we went with behaving tonight?”

“I told you,” she replied demurely, “I love a good test. I can hardly resist the challenge.” Her eyes glittered playfully, and she propped herself up on her elbows, the silk of her underclothes rustling in a way that beckoned him—his hands, his mouth. “You didn’t bring any cake up?”

A quick laugh billowed out of Roman as he sidled over, stepping out of his shoes before climbing onto the bed. “It’s vanilla, you know. Not chocolate. It would have been sacrilege, in memory of our first big fight.”

“Was it chocolate?”

“Oh, yes,” he told her gravely. “I’d never forget. Don’t you remember? You were a terrible brat to me, and then you didn’t speak to me for a week, and then you showed up with a cake—”

“Terrible brat?” She laughed, feigning insult. “On my birthday, no less.”

He grinned. Leaning down, he pressed a leisurely, open-mouthed kiss to the top of her sternum, hooking one hand in the crook of her knee to yank her down the bed so that she was more firmly under him, eliciting a playful little shriek out of her before he tugged the tie of her robe loose.

“Your birthday, yet here I am, unwrapping a present,” he murmured, leaning down and pressing a kiss to the slope of her jaw. He rumbled, pleased, “I’ve been thinking about you all day, you know.”

Varya made a sweet little sound. “Is that so?”

“Mmhm.” Roman kissed down the pillar of her throat, dragging his tongue over a faded love-bite bruise. He’d need to renew that. “Especially when you put on that dress. Admittedly, I am a bit disappointed—I was looking forward to cutting it off of you if you misbehaved.”

“For someone who spent all day thinking about me,” she murmured coyly, “you certainly spent long enough coming up here.”

Roman paused in what he was doing—his fingers hooked in the top hem of her underwear, scandalous things that they were—and glanced up at her. He was trying to gauge where she was actually at, emotionally, but true to what Dorian had said, it was almost impossible to get a read on her.

“It’s just business, baby,” he replied.

“Oh. Of course.”

“You see? I told you not to worry about it.”

“Yes,” Varya agreed, “what would I know of business?”

Roman groaned, pressing his forehead to the smooth plane of her sternum. The scent of her jasmine perfume washed over him, and even though he was this close to indulging himself (which he, above all others, deserved the most), he knew Varya wouldn’t let go of the conversation so easily.

“It’s nothing,” he insisted. He let the fabric of her underwear snap back into place against her hip bone, sliding down her body to kiss down her abdomen. “Focus on enjoying your birthday,” he added, “and let your man worry about everything else, hm?”

Varya’s lashes fluttered lightly, eyes watching him hungrily as he worked his way lower and lower still.

“Ambitious,” she murmured, “to think that I will let go of it so easily.”

“Well,” Roman replied against her skin, “I suppose it’s lucky that I love tests, too. And I always—”

The thin, silky fabric of her underwear made the most delicious sound as it ripped, tearing satisfyingly. Varya made a soft, sweet sound, and he glanced back up at her.

“—pass with flying colors.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

In his experience, Roman found that the best time to approach Varya about things was first thing in the morning. If he was exerting any amount of true self-awareness, of course, he would have acknowledged that “approaching” Varya about anything was not about the time of day, but rather how it was done—a skill Roman thought he had only honed in their short time together.

It was nearly ten; they’d roused late, thanks to the previous evening’s festivities—including an after-hours indulgence that Roman was more than pleased to drag out— and now Varya was chatting conversationally with Zsasz, who provided minimal noises between mouthfuls of food. It was as though her annoyance from the previous night had faded with the glow of morning, which left only the bones that Roman had left to pick.

Therefore, in a show of good faith, he let the chatter carry on for a little while before he decided to Broach(TM).

“So,” he said, sitting in his usual spot at the head breakfast table, “Maxim is funny.”

To his right, the brunette hummed and idly stirred her coffee. The gentle clink-clink of her spoon against the side of the mug was almost soothing; little creature comforts Roman hadn’t realized very often that he truly liked.

“I don’t remember you ever mentioning him,” Roman continued casually.

“I do not like to talk about boring things.” Varya’s brow was furrowed, lips pressing into a little line as she read the newspaper. “Pass me the cream, my love?”

She was feigning disinterest, but he thought she might have been listening more closely than she let on; one wolfish little ear swiveled in his direction, always.

He did as she asked. “He has an interesting tattoo on his hand.”

“I did not notice.”

“No?”

Varya finally tilted her head to look at him, dark eyes inquisitive. She didn’t ask what it was she was thinking, not right away; instead, she waited, did that thing where she let him sit in silence, maybe in the hopes that he’d fill it with his own chatter. He didn’t, of course. He wasn’t stupid.

“Romy,” she said sweetly, setting the paper down and resting her chin in her hand as she gazed at him, “won’t you just ask me what you want to ask me?”

There was no room to stop the irritated noise that came out of him at her words. He scoffed and settled more comfortably in his chair, lifting his chin a little and watching her.

“Or we can play the little game,” she acquiesced, as though she were speaking to a particularly tedious child. “You don’t really care about Maxim’s tattoo. You just care what I think of him.” She fluttered her lashes. “Hm?”

“No,” he replied tartly. “I’m curious about the tattoo.” He paused. “And also what you think of him.”

“I think he is boring.”

“Well, I could have told you that.”

A smile curved her mouth, delicate and fine a gesture as gossamer spread across those soft, Renaissance-features. That painting of her that had been done in the ballroom of the Astakhov mansion was still around somewhere, wasn’t it? Not that he needed a painting when he had the real thing, but maybe he’d hang it in the foyer, as a reminder to anyone who just happened to pass by.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Roman continued idly, “this man of yours—”

“My man, is he?”

“—is just one more obstacle to getting what I wanted. How do you think he’s going to react when he finds out that you put his daddy in the ground?”

“If,” Varya replied. “And what do you mean, obstacle?”

Another scoff came out of him. “Varya,” he chided, voice welling with a patronizing tone, warm and buttery, “come now.”

“Roman,” she replied. Her tone mimicked his. “Explain it to me like I am five.”

“I know the oh-so-omniscient lords of St. Petersburg and Moscow are dragging their fucking feet because they don’t like me.”

“You are trying too hard.” She settled back, dipping a bit of cream into her coffee and stirring again. Clink-clink. It offered him no comfort now; it had become a way for Varya to dismiss him. Don’t you see, Roman, how busy I am? “They are like cats. If you try too hard to gain their affections, they will balk and bolt. They hate being coddled, except by a woman. It’s terribly outdated, but what can you do?”

“I’m—” A sharp, incredulous noise came out of him. “I haven’t spoken more than a handful of words to the lot of them!”

“You see? That is already too much.”

“Well, I don’t want them to like me,” he managed out, feeling the bubbling frustration rising up in him. “I couldn’t give a shit if they like me or not. I want them to accept that leadership is changing hands and they have a new boss to answer to, now.” He leaned forward, forearms rested on the table. “And I know Daddy Astakhov liked to brand his things, hm? So what’s Maxim’s tattoo mean?”

Varya leaned forward, too. “I do not know,” she replied evenly, “and I wish you would stop bringing that man up in my presence.”

“I can’t very well erase him from the conversation completely when I’m inheriting his business.”

“My,” she snapped out viciously, suddenly, “you are inheriting my business, Roman.”

It was just a split second. It was only a split second of venom welling up in her expression, suddenly so wicked that not even Roman was shielded from it; it was worse, now, than it had been before. Those times he’d seen the switch inside of her flip had been under great duress. Was this duress to her, now?

Women, Roman thought, watching her smooth dark hair from her face and collect herself. Perhaps motherhood had not made her soft, but rather emotionally volatile. He couldn’t afford to look more hysterical than his wife, so he waited—with great patience and grace, he thought—for her. She cinched the silk robe at her waist more snugly.

“You know that I am happy to do so,” she continued, as though she’d not just bitten his head off in front of Zsasz, “and that I have no problem with it. I just want...” Now, her voice trailed off, and she skimmed the pad of her index finger along the rim of her coffee cup before she picked up the newspaper again, as well as the red-ink ballpoint to her right. “I want it done right, that is all. And if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

A buzzing sound vibrated from the marble hallway leader to the elevator. Roman was waiting for Varya to issue her apology (which she was certainly going to do), and Varya wasn’t looking up from the newspaper.

“Who could be coming so early?” his wife idled, spurring on that molten-hot frustration inside of him as she continued to avoid the topic at hand. “Not someone you called on, Romy?”

The buzzer was the last thing that Roman wanted to think about, let alone deal with. He had much more on his mind; Varya’s elegant dodge of his questions, and—most importantly—her blatant dismissal of his concerns about their current timeline. She was all well and peachy over there, wasn’t she, drinking her coffee and reading her paper and not doing him the courtesy of looking at him?

She had always been a needler, Roman reasoned; she had always had a wild, stubborn streak in her. He’d watched her sit and push Ilarion’s buttons for an entire dinner, once, just to see him get to the edge of snapping at her. She was good at it. He liked it about her, liked watching her do it; might have even made a past-time out of the whole sport of it. How quickly can my little viper unravel a man? Place your bets, gentlemen, time ends when the idiot’s screaming his fucking head off in a public place.

And he would have been foolish to think that she never did it to him.

“Zsasz,” she said, without looking up from the paper, “be a darling and get that, won’t you?”

Zsasz, who had been sitting at the far end of the table watching all of this unfold the way a man might watch a trainwreck happen, moved to come to a stand. Roman barked out, “Stay,” and the movements stilled considerably, immediately. It was satisfying, at least, in an exchange which had been everything but up until then. He turned his gaze to the brunette on his right.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” he said tersely. He gestured to Zsasz. “Sit.”

The blonde did. Roman could feel Victor’s eyes darting between them.

“Oh, darling, you are spoiling my morning.” Varya set the newspaper down on the table and smoothed it out primly, the thin paper edges fluttering between her fingers. “Why would you ever say such a silly thing?”

“Varya.”

“Surely you do not mean to.”

“V,” he snapped.

“Well, I do not know what you want me to say,” she replied after a minute, leaning back in her chair to finally look at him. “My father never deigned to share his operations with me. It was always ‘what a tedious child you are, Varvara’ this, and ‘since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved’ that. I mean, the man spent most of my life quoting Machiavelli at me. Do you think he told me what all of his little art projects meant?” She shrugged, picking her newspaper up again, ignoring the second sound of the buzzer. “You could just ask.”

The irritation spiked high and hot in his throat. Of course, he could just ask. Of course, he could, but he was the fucking boss, which meant doing things like asking an employee what a stupid fucking tattoo meant were below him. He replied tersely, “Why don’t you figure it out for me? Clerical work and employee management is your forte, after all.”

Varya hummed. It was a prim, musing hm, the sound she made when he’d said something she found to be particularly annoying. “If you wanted me to personally manage Maxim,” she demurred, glancing at him through dark, sooty lashes, “you only had to say.”

Somehow sensing this particular phrasing was not going to go over well with Roman (it wasn’t), Zsasz said, “Can I buzz ‘em up?”

“Yes,” Varya replied.

“No,” Roman insisted.

“Romy, there’s a guest.”

“I’m not through with you,” he snapped.

“I’m gonna buzz ‘em up,” Zsasz announced.

Roman felt the frustrated note rising in his throat, strangling it before it could quite make its way out of him. His jaw set; his eyes followed Zsasz on his way out of the main room and toward the elevator to—presumably—let up their guest (intruder). He drummed his fingers against the top of the dining table and said, “You think you’re very funny, don’t you?”

“Darling.” Varya leaned forward, elbows on the table, lacing her fingers together and cradling her chin atop them. She looked awfully pleased with herself, the little snake, that gigantic stone sitting on her finger. “If I knew what the tattoo meant, I would just tell you. Why not? I could tell you what the word is, but that is hardly ever what the tattoo actually means.”

Darling, she said, as though she hadn’t just snapped her teeth at him moments before. Roman sucked his teeth. Yes, it was very reasonable, he thought; Nikita had always cherished his son over his daughter, had always anticipated Ilarion taking over the business, as Varya had framed it—and even once, Ilarion had confirmed himself. He wanted you and only you, Ilya, and that’s why you couldn’t look at him when he died. That’s what she’d said, and the memory of that night—of Varya, needling the person she was closest to in the world, weaned from venom and taking so much pleasure from inflicting it on someone else—reminded him that there was still much about his wife left to be unearthed.

And it would be an unearthing. Roman had no doubt that it would be a graveyard he would be turning over, full of skeletons—not just a closet.

From the other room, the sound of an infant’s cry drifted down the hall. Varya’s gaze flickered to the space over Roman’s shoulder, behind him, and she came to a stand.

“I will ask, if you would like me to,” she told him, coming around the table and smoothing her hand along his shoulder in what was supposed to be a peace-making gesture. “But I don’t think there is a reason to bother yourself with the detail.”

He felt his mouth press into a thin line. Fine, he thought, fine, the tattoo isn’t a big deal. But what about everything else? “This is all taking a long time, V.”

“I know.” She paused, and then softened a little, all of her button-pushing and needling having dissipated for the moment; Varya leaned down and kissed his temple, and then the top of his cheekbone. “These things take patience, you know. It is not just a—used car business we are inheriting. There are processes, formalities, the like. The men have to know they can trust you.” She paused, tilting her head and regarding him with dark, inquisitive eyes. “You just have to trust me, Romy.”

Roman sighed. I do, he thought, turning his head to look at her. Don’t I?

Of course, he did. She was his wife, the mother of his children—and Roman hadn’t even wanted kids, not really. Not until he realized how much they, by proxy, made Varya belong to him. There was nothing quite so devoted as carrying someone’s child, was there? So yes; he did trust her, in the same capacity at which he supposed a man trusted a relatively-domesticated panther on a chain. Maybe just a smidge more than that. But enough to expect she’d bite off someone else’s hand, and not his.

“Fine,” is what he said, and the word still came out a little petulant. “I will. I do.” Reaching up, he snagged her wrist when she started to pull away, keeping her in place. She watched him expectantly.

When he didn’t say anything—just watched her, gauging her—she prompted playfully, “Are you going to scold me?”

Roman pressed the pad of his thumb to the pulse point on her wrist. His eyes narrowed. “I ought to, vicious girl. You just can’t resist pushing a button when you see it, can you?”

Her pulse jumped pleasantly under warm skin, whether by the term vicious girl or his touch, he didn’t know. It seemed that storminess had passed as soon as it had arrived; and though she hadn’t yet uttered the words I’m sorry, he almost preferred her like this. Coy.

“You would be bored, otherwise.” Her eyes glittered, mischievous. “Don’t you think?”

His fingers stayed curled around her wrist, but she didn’t try and pull away. Watching the flutter of her eyelashes, the way the corners of her mouth quirked upward in a smile, he felt nearly won over. How tedious, Roman thought, that even when he was irritated with her, he found her endearing. That’s amore.

“Don’t goad me,” he warned, and Varya smiled dreamily at him.

“I love you,” is what she replied, and then leaned down to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Let’s never fight again.”

He dropped his grip from her wrist and she stepped around his chair, the silk of her robe fluttering behind her as she started to the sound of babbling infants. The one or two cries that had roused her initially had melted down into baby-chat. Roman was reminded, once again, that they had a nanny on the payroll for seemingly no reason.

“Varya,” he called, taking the newspaper from where she’d left it on the table, “I mean it.”

Her voice drifted from down the hall: “Of course, Romy.”

The sound of the nursery door opening echoed, and then Varya’s voice; saccharine-sweet, honeyed and muffled by distance. He glanced over the front of the newspaper, but it was impossible to focus on the words—what did they matter, anyway? He didn’t give a fuck about what was going on in Gotham. He had bigger fish to fry. Bigger, Russian, potentially radioactive amalgams of different fish that seemed to be stalling on a deal that should have been up and done with already. Not to mention, one of those fish breaking off of the nightmare-fish and showing up, unannounced, sporting tattoos likely administered to him by Nikita Astakhov himself?

These things take patience.

Roman suppressed a scoff. Like he didn’t have patience. He’d been the most patient. Varya had dragged her feet for about a month after they’d put Ilarion in the ground, but after that, things had typically moved fast—the engagement, the twins. Everything except the thing Roman had been waiting for since the beginning. Of course, he’d never anticipated inheriting the business himself and had only gone into the whole thing wanting an exclusive deal, but now he knew better. He knew what was owed to him. He knew what belonged to him.

The elevator door down the main hall dinged. Roman didn’t bother stifling the sigh that wanted to come out of him; it was only ten in the morning, who could possibly need him and for what? He pushed the chair back from the table and came to a stand, sucking his teeth and prepping what he thought could only be the tranquil expression of a man ready to murder before Maxim stepped inside.

He blinked. The tranquility fled his face. Zsasz trailed in after him, looking uneasy. There was something about his expression that didn’t sit right with Roman, the hard lines of the blonde’s face setting him even further on edge. Would his suffering never end?

“Oh, Maximillian,” he greeted, keeping his voice the pinnacle of lazily annoyed. “Clocking in for work a little early, aren’t we? Over-achieving?”

“I am an early riser,” the blonde acquiesced. He looked genuinely apologetic, the fuckhead, in Dolce & Gabbana, no less. “I hope I did not disturb you.”

“A big wager to make, first day on the job.” Roman trailed Zsasz with his eyes, watching the blonde pace around the far end of the table. What had gotten into him since he’d gone to buzz their guest up? Idly, he sat back down at the table, resuming to glance over the words of the newspaper he couldn’t have given two shits about.

And he said nothing. He instead enjoyed, immensely, the act of letting Maxim stand there in silent uncertainty. It was probably almost a full minute before Maxim cleared his throat, prompting Roman to set his newspaper down with a sigh, as though it were very troubling that he had to stop this thing he didn’t even want to do.

“If you’re here to play catch-up with Varya, she’s busy today,” he deadpanned, turning his gaze reluctantly to where Maxim stood. “And every other day. Generally, I think it would be safe to assume she’s much too preoccupied to assist with whatever problems you might have; that type of work is beneath her now, you know.”

“I am sure being a mother and wife is more than enough to keep her busy,” Maxim agreed soberly.

“And transitioning the business in my name,” Roman replied pointedly.

The blonde shrugged, smiling a little. “Of course.”

He felt his eyes narrow. He leaned back in the chair, interlacing his fingers while his elbows rested on the armrests of the chair. It was impossible to figure out what it was about Maxim that Varya might have liked; the man was painfully well-mannered and non-confrontational, which Roman knew wasn’t her style at all.

Never mind that Varya had not once said that there was a romantic interaction between them. That didn’t matter. He knew how men looked at his wife, and Maxim had been a little too comfortable touching her for there to have been nothing at all.

“But, I did not come here to speak to Varya,” the Russian continued, taking a few steps toward the table. “I actually came here to speak to you, Roman.”

Roman blinked. Well, that wasn’t what he expected.

“What?” he asked flatly.

“I wanted to come and see if you were free today,” Maxim elaborated casually. “I was Nikita’s man. Now, I am yours. It only seems right I get to know you better.” He gestured with his hand. “I know you have more than enough help around here, and I was tied up in Turkey before, but...”

Roman’s lips pressed into a thin line. He saw no trace of yesterday’s venom in Maxim’s face, no indication that he was trying to be sarcastic or pull some kind of joke. Instead, Maxim’s face looked completely open and earnest.

“You’re here to ask me on a fucking lunch date,” he began, “and not Varya?”

“Varya,” the blonde replied demurely, “is not my boss.”

Huh, Roman thought. He swept his gaze over Maxim scathingly, and then looked at Zsasz, who remained unreadable. Well, wasn’t that just the most unhelpful thing? It did feel nice to hear Maxim say it, even if Roman would rather see him crying or begging or bleeding out.

“I’m busy today,” he replied after a moment, turning his attention back to Maxim. “But you can swing by the—”

“Maxim.” It was Varya’s voice. Roman turned to look at her. There was no baby in tow. This wouldn’t have been unusual, if Maxim had been a stranger; she tended to keep the twins as far out of reach of people she did not know as much as possible, nested away for safety. But Maxim had been her childhood friend, hadn’t he?

“Good morning,” Maxim greeted her warmly. “I was just asking Roman if he would—”

“I know what you were asking,” Varya interrupted. “You overestimate yourself, showing up to your boss’ home unannounced, don’t you think?”

Maxim looked about as lost as Roman felt; the sensation that he’d stepped into a fever dream very suddenly was washing over him. He looked at Zsasz. The blonde gave a little shrug, as though to say, Why the fuck would I know?

“Varushka,” Maxim ventured after a moment, “you know I did not mean...”

“I don’t know anything at all,” the brunette replied coolly. “You should have called ahead.” She paused, and then added purposefully: “Temka never showed up unannounced.”

Roman found himself in the very strange position of feeling...bad (?) for Maxim, standing there a little helplessly, the poor thing. Varya’s words had gutted him. He could only assume that she was referring to the blonde’s father when she said Temka, by the look on his face, and that—

Oh, you wicked thing, he thought, affection welling up inside of him as he looked at Varya, you know just how to unravel a man. Sticking a salted hot-poker straight into his grief-wound, aren’t you?

“I am sorry,” Maxim said after a minute. “I did not mean to be so thoughtless.”

“The transgression is not mine to forgive.” Varya swept around Roman then, sitting back down in her seat. She looked at him, expectant. “Roman?”

“Me?” he asked.

“It is as Maxim said,” she replied. “You are his boss, not me.”

He waited to see if there was some kind of strange undertow to her words, but he could find none; just Varya waiting, expectantly, for him to excuse Maxim’s showing up without having called ahead. It was odd, and he couldn’t figure out why it was that she was acting like this toward Maxim now—had it been the Varya is not my boss comment? Was she trying to make up for their little spat?

It was commonplace for nothing to be straightforward, with Varya. This was different.

“So,” she continued primly, turning to look at Maxim now, “apologize to your boss.”

“I am—” Maxim stopped, like he didn’t want to do it, drawing Roman’s gaze to him. Quite suddenly, Roman thought he knew exactly what his wife was doing; putting the blonde in a position where he’d have to put good faith behind his words. Varya is not my boss, he’d said, but did that matter if he couldn’t even apologize to Roman?

He finished, more smoothly now, “I am sorry, Roman.”

Roman beamed. “Insolence forgiven,” he replied, all thoughts of his disagreement with Varya gone now. He reached over the table, snagging her hand and dragging the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand. “As I was saying—I am busy today, but you are welcome to swing by the club later this evening. Before midnight. We get busiest just before the witching hour.”

Maxim ducked his head. “Of course.”

Varya’s nails skimmed Roman’s palm. She didn’t look up when she said, “Was there something else, Maxim?”

“I do not think so.”

“Then,” she replied sweetly, “have a lovely afternoon.”

A moment stretched where the blonde looked a little unsure, and then he cleared his throat and said, “Of course,” and excused himself down the hall. Varya circled something in the newspaper with her red-ink pen, her other hands still interlaced with Roman’s.

“Mr. Zsasz,” she began, “did you let Maxim up?”

Zsasz looked at Roman. “I didn’t,” he replied after a minute. “Armazd did.”

“Hm,” came the reply, even as she noted something in the margins of the paper.

“Were you apologizing for your tantrum, just now?” Roman asked. He would puzzle out why Armazd letting Maxim up was worthy of a hm later. Now, he could see the hint of a smile ticking the corners of Varya’s mouth upward, but she did not sway from whatever it was that had captured her attention in the news of Gotham; instead, she circled something absently.

Varya said, “Did you find it a suitable apology?”

He considered. “Well, I would have liked it better if you’d made him cry.”

“It would have spoiled my appetite,” she demurred, folding the newspaper primly and coming to a stand. “I am taking the twins to the park with Irina. And Zsasz too, if you’ll spare him. I won’t be back until late afternoon.”

“Late? Then you’d better come here, wife.” Roman tugged on her hand, watching her expression warm when he said wife. Once, he might have squinted at loaning Zsasz out to her. Now, he didn’t mind; especially if it gave a peace of mind that she and the twins be that more secure. “So that I can get my fill of you before you’re gone.”

The brunette laughed, letting him tug her down onto his lap. She carded the fingers of her free hand through his hair and brushed their noses together; it was all glowing affection, now, warmth buzzing under her skin.

“Oh, darling, now I want to leave quicker, and more often,” she murmured, “so that you’ll never have your fill of me.”

Roman supposed that was how she’d gotten him in the first place. Hooked him with being inaccessible, with being coveted—as if she had always known he was not a man could resist something considered off-limits—and now that he had her, he couldn’t get enough of her. He’d seen the way that others looked at her, and by proxy him; with want. With envy. Bruce Wayne could eat shit.

“Roman,” Varya said, “I want you to be careful when you are around Maxim.”

He paused, pulling back to look at her a little. She smoothed her hand over the slope of his collarbone affectionately.

“You are right,” she continued. “When Maxim finds out what I did—if he does—he will be angry about it. He is used to being the right-hand man, you know. Do not...” She glanced down, looking for the words. “Do not give it to him so easily. Make him work for it and prove himself to you.”

Tracing the lines of her expression—soft, concerned—Roman dragged his thumb across her wrist.

“I told you, doll.” He planted an affectionate kiss to her wrist. “Don’t worry about these things. I’ve got it perfectly under control.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I know you do, Romy—��

“Then stop this fussing,” he interjected mildly. “You’re spoiling your very charming apology. You know I love a good public humiliation. Which park are you taking the twins to?”

The dark eyes of his wife swept over his face for a minute, contemplative and impossible to gauge, before she smiled at him warmly.

“The one just a few blocks away. It has the most shade. Mr. Zsasz, won’t you bring the car around?”

And just like that, things were back to normal. Varya swept away to busy herself with getting ready and loading the twins, and Zsasz went to pull the car around, leaving Roman at the table for a rare moment of peace. Soon enough, he’d have all the information he needed from Dorian, and he could well-and-truly mitigate Maxim Kuznetsov as a problem, and everything would be back on track. He could bet money Varya didn’t think he’d had the foresight to dig up information on Maxim—it wasn’t his style to get his hands dirty, but extreme circumstances called for extreme measures.

Roman sighed, quite pleased.

Back to normal.

#spilled ink #f: the land of gods and devils #roman sionis/oc #x: this smile is a loaded gun #c: varya astakhova #c: roman sionis #c: victor zsasz #c: maxim kuznetsov #honorable mention to dorian for being a true homie #birds of prey fic #birds of prey oc #i think uhhhhhhhh yeah i think that's it!#thank you thank you thank you everyone who has even given me a tiny bit of love for this #it's definitely a project that's self-indulgent but !!!!#<3

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davidmann95 · 4 years

Note

So... Crossover #1: any thoughts?

Anonymous said: You seemed not to think much of Crossover #1 on Twitter. Your full thoughts?

wcwit said: So Cates' Crossover #1, best bad comic of the year or just regular pretentious trash?

An incidental note upfront: What you’re seeing there is the apparently SUPER-RARE SECRET VARIANT COVER I unwittingly picked up at the store - at first glance indistinguishable from the standard cover, the kid getting four-color-fucked by mysterious comic book rays is in fact themselves reading a variant cover of the book, rather than the main cover again in an infinite painting-within-a-painting sort of deal that’s the standard.

So I wasn’t gonna get this: my initial post on the comic and what an obviously awful idea it was back when we only knew half the premise and it was known as Pray The Capes Away actually got some out-of-nowhere traction recently, and I’ve grown rapidly tired of Cates’ Marvel work. Even learning that it was going to be Image’s biggest debut in decades - Jesus fuck, how and why - mostly just made me wish it was Commanders in Crisis getting those kinds of numbers. But Sean Dillon/@deathchrist2000 and Ritesh Babu both got early looks at it and assured me that I, specifically, needed to see the last page, so in I dove. I’ll be posting my reaction to the last page below because I recorded it for their amusement, and below that I’ll talk about said last page. It may surprise you, however, that that wasn’t my main takeaway from the issue.

Let’s accentuate the positive first! This book is gorgeous. Geoff Shaw was terrific back with Thanos Wins, but this is an incredible stylistic level-up aided and abetted by Dee Cunniffe’s colors: it’s rote as hell to say “They mix the elevated and the mundane so well!”, but even beyond the obvious ben-day dots stuff there’s such a tangible sense that the comic book beings don’t belong here, that they’re of higher, misty, platonic stuff and we squishy non-paper-people inevitably crumble and break and bleed in their wake, communicating that big idea so much more powerfully than the actual loads of text on the subject. And if we’re talking good things, I’ll concede it’s possible that there could be subtleties that play out in more interesting ways as it goes on, and that not everything is meant to be taken at face value: a smart friend who actually did like it mentioned being interested in it as clumsy but potentially effective exploration of ‘what if the fun hobby you had inadvertently became contaminated and stigmatized by forces beyond your control?’ In a post-Comicsgate world where we recently ended up inches away from the Superman logo almost certainly becoming a fascist propaganda symbol ala the Punisher skull for at least a generation, that’s a defensible lens to view this book through.

For all Donny Cates’ legitimate talents however, I don’t think an expectation of subtlety is gonna work out with this one.

Okay first off getting into the rest of it the main characters’ name is Ellipsis because “Those three little dots...they can become anything”, so there’s that. More importantly, in the world of this story where comic fans face social oppression after superpeople materialize and fuck up Colorado, they face EVERY KIND OF OPPRESSION: there are clear parallels drawn in here to the violence and harassment faced by people persecuted for their religion, people seeking abortions, queer people, and people of color; this motherfucker even drops a “hates and fears” to let us know comic collecting basically makes you one of the goddamn X-Men. Which in theory could be a purely misjudged allegory rather than stemming from actual, obscenely inflated to the point of disgusting fears of ‘nerd oppression’, except that the book literally opens with a quote from Wertham. If Cates didn’t want to make the message “Hating comics? That’s bad. Like, racism bad”, he utterly, grotesquely failed by inextricably intermingling imagery of real-world bigotry with systemic, deluded fanboy paranoia, at least as of this first issue that’s supposed to meaningfully convey the premise. As a queer dude I think I’m somewhat in my lane to say it’s too blunt and broad and dopey to be particularly offensive, but the co-opting of oppression is what this is rooted in.

The idea of ‘comics good no matter what people think, ain’t it?’ extends to the last traditional local comic store standing in this world: much as superheroes are the primary cause of suffering in this world but the point of the story is still supposed to reveal the beauty in them, part of this is that the comics community isn’t perfect but it sure is great. Which is expressed here via Ellie’s boss Otto, a loveable asshole who yells at people coming in trying to sell the wrong kind of comics to fuck off, but at heart is we’re supposed to understand a good enough dude that the shop he runs is “the only home a lot of (the benighted nerds) have left” (because I guess in this alternate universe the physical stores are still the main hub through which comics fans talk with one another?).

So here’s a story of my very own! That’s me in 2013, it must’ve been some kind of special day because I’m wearing a shirt with a button. I’d at that point only frequented one of what would be my thus far four regular comic shops. The first was a great place, and while to say I had a sense of community there would be overstating it a bit, I was on really good terms with the owner and we regularly chatted when we had the time. When I left for college my store there wasn’t as well-stocked, and for some damn reason all variant covers were double-price, but I got along really well with the owner there too. The third I wasn’t so lucky; the guy regularly behind the desk was never overtly hostile, but clearly wanted to wring my neck every time I asked when a missing comic might get in or if I could update my pull list, and given I’m in the ‘ideal’ demographic for being a comic book store regular and was dropping a solid lump of money there every week, I wonder how others were treated there (the store nearly went under, was saved on the last day of operation by another store that wanted to incorporate it as part of its franchise, then shortly afterwards DID go under and is now I believe a beef jerky place). My current store is fine, I didn’t chat much with the folks behind the counter even before we all had medical incentive to get in and out of places fairly quickly but it almost always has what I’m looking for.

Just because those were my regular stores of course doesn’t mean those are the only ones I’ve ever gone to. About a year before that picture was taken - it’s the closest I could find - when I was 17 my store didn’t have something or another I was looking for, so I head across town to see if another place I had looked up had it. This other place didn’t have what I was looking for either, though I distinctly remember picking up a few issues of Hickman’s FF while I was there since I had foolishly fallen off, hence my remembering the year. I bought a couple issues, but hung around for a bit looking to see if I might grab something else out of a dollar box, setting my comics down. Without realizing it, I’d set my books down on top of another issue, and when I decided I wasn’t getting anything else, I just picked that up along with the rest of the pile and was about to walk out before the owner stopped me. He explained what I had done though assumed it had been deliberate, and because I was a good-hearted little geek I even recall thinking “Well, he’s gonna chew me out, but I guess I deserve it. I’ll try and take this to heart as a learning experience.”

Then he pulled up his shirt a little to show me the gun on his belt. He pointed at the security camera monitors at his desk, and explained to me that if I ever did something like that again, he would have it on tape, and he would pull that gun on me and hold me there while he called the cops.

As it turned out, the comic was free.

The whole thing was so sudden and bizarre and unexpected I didn’t actually freak out until the drive home. It wasn’t until weeks or maybe months later that I managed to tell my dad about the experience, because I *had* nearly stolen a (free) comic and my guilt was mixed in with my nerves and I guess I was somehow too close to register just how disproportionate his response was. It wasn’t until now, nearly a decade later and thinking about it for the first time in a long time as I write this, that I wondered if that might have gone differently - especially living in the midwest - if I hadn’t been a white, squeaky-voiced 17-year-old.

So, minor spoiler, when our cantankerous but well-meaning LCS owner yells to call the cops and grabs and yells at a small kid for pocketing a comic (and later displays fantasy racism towards said kid), I am not filled with nostalgic love for the brotherly safe space that is comic book stores, where this guy while not meant to be seen as perfect is still framed in part as a charming, witty representation of Why We Love These Places, And This Community, And This Genre, And This Medium. Cates is clearly drawing on real time at his local stores, but he equally clearly has a very different takeaway from those experiences than me. And I am, again, in a demographic - white, cis-male, abled, bi but more interested in women, disposable income, a lifelong collector - that the industry and a lot of the guys who sell it to us contort themselves around catering to, even if I had a single very negative experience and later an ongoing low-key uncomfortable one to help disabuse me of any notions of the purity of the dork community. In the world of Crossover as of #1, toxicity is intertwined, deliberately or not on the part of the creators, with what we love on the cosmic and small business scales alike, but at least in the latter case it’s the whole picture that’s beautiful, not any single kernel that needs to be worked on to be dug up.

So underneath is my video reaction to the last page of Crossover #1. Very minor spoilers because I mutter the last two words of the comic to myself, but under the video I discuss said final page and some other scattered thoughts. Whether you read that or not, my takeaway is this: I’m fascinated with wherever the hell this thing is going, I’m glad my dad liked it well enough to want to keep getting it because now I’ll get to see where it heads, but my first impression is that this is at heart meant as cheapass Oscar-bait for people who only read Batman. It’s big and high-concept but also small and intimate! It’s meta and about how great you, the reader are for your consumption, especially the consumption of this! It’s going to be in large part about a forbidden love between a couple divided across impermeable social lines (a couple where they’re a seemingly straight white man and woman, but one likes comics)! Maybe it’ll become Not That, and I’m sure it’ll do at least something interesting along the way because Cates has done good stuff before and there are some inherently interesting big ideas for him to play with here, but for the love of god if you’re thinking about getting this buy Commanders in Crisis too or instead, it’s another new book out of Image about superheroes dealing with the collapse of the multiverse but that one is really fucking good.

So the final page splash reveal is that when the comic book child discovered in here got out of Colorado, which has had an impenetrable energy shield erected around it by one of the heroes for years, she and others were ferried out of there...by Superman, as the narration declares that “This is a story...about hope.” They don’t say the word, but she sketches her savior, Ellie and Otto freak out and go “Is that---” when they see it, and on that last page we see that while a crude drawing it isn’t a rough analogue character, it’s a guy with a cape and trunks with an S on his chest. Surprisingly, I don’t have much to say: it’s just another blunt signifier that superheroes rule and are the best, paired with the most utterly devalued notion as of late of what makes Superman special in ‘hope’. I mean, I’m perversely excited to see whether this is building the entire series on a hook it can never deliver on, or if Cates actually has talked DC into an intercompany crossover; believable given they’ve done a bunch of those over the last several years, and why else would Mark Waid be supervising as ‘story editor’ on this? I guess it’ll shake out one way or another with #6 given Cates has said it “has one of the more epic and — I would argue historic — sequences in comic book history in it.” But I’m far less convinced this is gonna truly go into the meaty question of “What does Superman mean and what makes him unique in this world where superheroes in general are indisputably either failures or monstrous bastards given the scale of destruction their presence has brought about, and he himself failed to stop that?” than as some kind of holy grail of how great superheroes are despite how dang violent they’ve gotten these days for the crew to chase after, whatever additional twist will surely be placed upon it. At least he’s kinda helping an immigrant kid get over a wall, if that’s deliberate?

Random final thoughts:

* If I wrote the opening essay and turned it in in a college course, I would be expelled for plagiarizing Grant Morrison. This is not a joke.

* If mainstream American superhero comics ended January 2017 in this universe, its own last ‘crossover’ was Civil War II, which is hilarious.

* God, please tell me if it takes the dive after all that this isn’t somehow tied into whatever Waid’s Superman project is.

* I wouldn’t normally crap on issues with the finer details of worldbuilding, but A. This is rooted in a nominally ‘real’ world playing by recognizable rules, B. I’m ragging on this anyway so what’s the harm, and C. It’s really obvious. So: Why is one of the racists against the superheroes the guy who loves superheroes so much he’s the last holdout in the entire world still selling comic books about them? How does this modestly-sized shop exist long-term with apparently a significant regular customer base if there are no new comics or even reprints to restock with, ever? Who’s buying the serialized cop/cowboy comics that the U.S. government apparently created pretty much overnight (nobody, it’s just another Wertham dig)?

* The solicit for issue #3 proclaims “Don't miss this one, folks. If you do, it just might drive you...mad.”, so now I fear some kind of Ultra Comics riff.

* “Kids love chains” is the most metal-ass quote of all time and I hate that it’s being wasted as an arc title on this book.

#Donny Cates #Geoff Shaw #Dee Cunniffe #John J. Hill #Mark Waid #Me #Superman #Opinion

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exhaustedfander · 4 years

Note

Okay uhhh I‘m not good at giving requests. How about prinxiety and them seeing each other again after a long time! Or sth like that.😅

I had three sperate ideas for this one, but this is the one I settled on. Here’s a fluffy little human au. I’d love to hear what you think!

a03 link

materpost link

word count: 1,638

The Best Gift

Virgil rocks on his heels, glancing at his phone. According to Roman’s text, his plane landed about fifteen minutes ago. He’d be outside to greet him any moment now, and that in itself fills Virgil with more joy than he’d felt in a while.

Roman does what he could to avoid performing in shows too far away from home. He’s always scouring for gigs in the area, or at least not too terribly far away, not exactly eager to spend long periods away from his emo nightmare. However, sometimes there are roles that Roman can’t shy away from, as much as he hates the idea of leaving Virgil, and this had been one of those times.

It isn’t as though Virgil doesn’t understand; dating a traveling actor, his boyfriend actually traveling, sometimes, isn’t something that can really come from a surprise. More than that, Virgil’s incredibly supportive of his partner. Roman’s a hell of an actor and he knows it. He deserves to grace every stage that will have him, larger ones, especially. But that doesn’t make the time apart any less difficult.

Sure, they call each other a ton, Roman insists on Facetiming nightly, and they keep in touch as best they can. But it’s never any easier, facing that empty bed at the end of the day. It can be a lot to handle, realizing audiences of strangers are being graced with Roman’s presence while Virgil is home alone eating Ramen Noodles and sulking.

It’s not as though Roman is Virgil’s entire world – he’s damn close, though. Virgil has friends he loves spending time with. He works as a freelance artist, so holing himself up at home is usually more fun than depressing, painting all day long. But god, he misses Roman when he’s away. Maybe more than he’s willing to admit, sometimes.

Three months has got to be the longest they’ve spent apart since they’ve been dating, at least as far as Virgil can remember. The gig was a role of a lifetime, Roman would’ve had to be sufficiently stupid not to take it, but it wasn’t easy on the couple. Virgil flew up to see one of Roman’s shows, and that was great, but it made going back home all the more challenging. Roman’s been gone so long, Virgil’s aching to see him, and any minute now, he’s gonna get to.

Virgil can certainly think of worse ways to spend a birthday.

“Virgil?” Virgil swivels around, grinning ear-to-ear when he sees Roman walking his way, suitcase in tow. Virgil practically sprints toward him, immediately pulled into a firm embrace the moment they make contact.

“My love, my angel, mi amour,” Roman drawls, dramatic as ever but Virgil can’t find it in himself to be irritated with him, “I missed you!” Roman gets on his tiptoes (Virgil would be lying if he said he hadn’t always found their height difference adorable) pressing their lips together soundly. If they weren’t in public, Virgil would want nothing more than to keep kissing Roman for eternity, but alas.

“I missed you too, dork,” Virgil says with an unshakable grin as they pull apart, though his hand quickly finds Roman’s free-one as they walk towards the taxis, the sound of Roman’s luggage wheeling behind them. “How’s the jet lag?”

“Absolutely abysmal,” Roman declares, and Virgil’s fairly sure he’s being a little dramatic, if such a thing is even possible, “Can we have a quiet day at home? I want nothing more than to lay on the couch with you and watch Disney movies, and continue to declare my undying love for you.” Virgil snorts.

“Aw, you poor baby,” he says, only half-sarcastically, “Sure, babe. Whatever you want. Sound good to me.”

The two talk of their missed time together in the cab, Virgil telling him of some of the new pieces he’s been working on and Roman filling him in on how the play went.

“That’s the last far-away show I do for a while,” Roman says once they’ve arrived home, flopping down on the couch, “God, it’s good to be home with you.”

“That’d be nice,” Virgil admits, sitting beside Roman, which quickly turns to settling into his lap, Roman’s fingers threaded in his hair, “Not – not that you can’t do shows wherever. I get it.”

“Hey, I mean it,” Roman says, voice edging on seriousness, “I’ve missed you terribly. I’ve missed us. I loved doing the show, and I met some very wonderful people, but very little compares to you, my love.” Virgil laughs lightly as Roman presses a kiss to his lips, firm and overwhelmingly loving.

“Jesus, you’ve managed to get even sappier than usual.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, darling,” Roman says, “And, also, shut up! You love it.” Virgil glares playfully at his boyfriend.

“And what if I do?”

“And you looove me,” Roman says, drawling out the ‘o’ as far as it’ll stretch. Virgil rolls his eyes, but his expression betrays nothing but fondness. “Yeah, I do. I really fucking love you, Ro.”

“More than angsty emo bands?”

“Well… let’s not go that far.” Roman squawks in offense.

“You wound me!” Virgil laughs again, the sound far more content than he’s felt in the last few months, his arms winding around his boyfriend so that he’s lying against his chest.

“I’m teasing and you know it,” Virgil says, kissing Roman once more as if to further his point, or maybe just because he’s really missed kissing him, “I missed you like crazy.”

“One of my co-stars flirted with me; would you believe that?” Virgil hums in place of a response, lost in the feeling of embracing Roman against for the first time in what feels like forever. “I have you as my lock screen, and I talk of you constantly. Also, where in the world did she get the impression I had the slightest interest in women?!” Virgil snorts at that.

“Must’ve been an off-day for her if she was delusional enough to think you were straight, or bi, or anything that isn’t insanely gay.”

“I know, right!”

Virgil’s missed this so much. Their playful back-and-forth, innocuous teasing, cuddling on the couch and basking in each other's company. As far as he’s concerned, he’d like to keep holding onto Roman like this and never, ever let him go. Virgil can’t recall when he’d become such a fucking sap, but there’s no changing it now. He’s just gonna have to live with it, and he really doesn’t mind the thought of that.

They watch Disney movies as discussed, Virgil critiquing and pointing out plot-holes all the while (Virgil, everyone knows Beauty and the Beast is a little problematic, and frankly, I don’t want to hear it!) He can tell the long flight really wore Roman out, so he decides not to comment about the fact that it’s his birthday, instead putting all of his focus on being together again.

That is until Virgil comes out of the bathroom some hours later, having just gotten ready for bed, and finding Roman sitting on their bed with a sullen expression.

“Whoa, hey, Roman, what’s the matter?” He asks, quickly sitting beside his partner.

“I’m a terrible boyfriend.” Virgil blinks. What the fuck?

“What? No, you’re not. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your birthday,” Roman supplies, sounding gut-wrenchingly guilty, “I forgot your birthday!”

Oh. Virgil had kinda forgotten himself, too caught up in having Roman by his side once more. He glances at the clock.

“It’s not midnight yet,” he says, “You didn’t forget. Just remembered a little late.” Roman buries his face in his hands.

“I didn’t get you anything! I didn’t wish you happy birthday! I-I’m terrible, you must hate me!” Virgil sighs, settling a hand on Roman’s shoulder.

“Roman…”

“I’m sorry,” Roman mumbles weakly, embarrassedly.

“Hey, it’s okay. I don’t hate you.” Roman peaks up from his hands, daring to make eye-contact.

“You… you don’t?”

“Jesus Christ, of course not! I love you, you idiot. It’s just a birthday, I’m gonna have more of those, you know. It’s kind of this annual thing.”

“But- but I didn’t –.”

“It’s fine, babe. Seriously, I kinda forgot, too. Having you home again is gift enough, as it is. I can’t think of a better present than that.”

“I’ll make it up to you.” Virgil shakes his head, planting a kiss to Roman’s cheek.

“No need. There’s nothing to make up for. You look ready to pass out right now, as it is. I’m not mad at you for forgetting; you’ve been so fucking busy for the last couple of months, and you had a long-ass plane ride today. You’re permitted a little forgetfulness, okay?” Roman sighs as he slides into bed with Virgil and shuts out the light, his head resting on his boyfriend’s shoulder.

“I’m taking you to dinner tomorrow.” Virgil lets out a sigh.

“You don’t have to –.”

“I want to,” Roman insists, “It’s the least I can do since you’re being so gracious.”

“What, were you expecting me to force you to the couch, or something?” Roman pauses. “Roman?”

“…Maybe.” Virgil can’t help but bark out a laugh.

“Are you kidding me? After all those nights without you, I’m not letting you go anywhere.” To make sure things are crystal-clear, he tightens his hold on Roman, pressing a kiss into his hair.

“That’s good because I really wasn’t looking forward to it.”

“You’re such a dramatic doofus. Lucky that you’re so cute,” Virgil says, feeling Roman begin to go lax with exhaustion.

“Mm, love you, Virgey,” Roman mumbles sleepily.

“I love you too, Ro.”

“Happy birthday…,” Roman says before sleep greets him and he drifts off. Virgil shuts his eyes, contentment washing over him as, too, welcomes slumber.

Despite Roman’s insistent apology, Virgil still can’t think of a better birthday present.

=+=

Taglist:

@nadiestar

@unoriginalgayboyalex

Please let me know if you wanna be added to my taglist! I’d be happy to add you!

#prinxiety #romantic prinxiety #human au #fluff #so much fluff #I like to write them soft #their dynamic is just so #*chefs kiss*#SO good #Roman Sanders #Virgil Sanders #request #exhaustedfander writes #exhaustedfander

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lesbian-percy-weasley · 4 years

Text

Late Night Games by Gay-Natasha-Saves-The-World on Ao3 (aka the best fanfic writer this side of the Rockies)

Series: None

Ship: Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood

Content Warning: Teenagers being drunk and kissing

Description: It was a stormy night and Oliver was bored out of his mind. Maybe Percy would be up to do something fun?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a lazy night in Gryffindor tower. There was a strong storm brewing outside so most people went up to their dorms early. That included Oliver Wood. Quidditch practice had been canceled for today which meant he had a lot of energy and no way to burn it. Sure, he could study but that was boring. He wanted to have a bit of fun and he knew the exact person to mess with.

Unlike Oliver, Percy thought studying was a good way to spend time and that was exactly what he was doing. He was trying to read a book for arithmancy, but the absolute state of the weather outside was distracting him. No use in trying to absorb anything with hail hitting your window every millisecond. But alas, he knew he had to so he persisted. That was until his dorm mate, Oliver entered the room.

Percy acknowledged his entrance and returned to reading his book. Oliver rolled his eyes. He never thought anyone could like school until he met Percy. He thought it was odd. His brothers were nothing like him. Maybe that’s why Oliver was so intrigued by the boy. Well, that and he thought Percy was the hottest out of all the Weasleys.

But still, Oliver was bored out of his mind. He flopped down on his bed and looked at Percy. After a while, Percy noticed and gave Oliver a very quizzical and uncomfortable look. He didn’t like feeling observed. It took a few seconds of them staring at each other before he finally talked.

“What do you want?” Percy said in a very dry tone of voice. “I’m bored,” Oliver said while folding his hands under his chin. “And, what does that have to do with me.” Percy turned his attention back to his book.

“Let’s do something.” “I’m already doing something.” Percy scoffed. “I meant something fun. You already study every day. Don’t you have any hobbies?” Oliver sat up. “For your information, I crochet sweaters for hippogriffs on the weekends.” Percy sarcastically quipped. “Why don’t you just hang out with my brothers or anyone else?”

“Because I want to hang out with you.” Oliver shrugged in reply. Percy gave a heavy sigh and set down his book. “Fine. What do you want to do?” Oliver thought for a second. “Oh, let’s play a game,” Oliver said while moving quickly to get something out of his trunk. Much to Percy’s dismay, it was fire whiskey.

Percy let out a disgusted noise. He hated playing drinking games and getting drunk, especially when it’s on cheap liquor. “What? Do you think you’re above fire whiskey?” Oliver said teasingly. “That shit is vile. It’s only like one tier above potion maker’s punch. And I don’t see getting drunk as entertainment.”

Oliver scoffed. “Well, there’s nothing else to do, is there?” “Speak for yourself. I was doing something.” Percy said reaching for his arithmancy book but before he could reach it, Oliver grabbed it and chucked it across the room. Percy sighed defeatedly. “Fine. You win. What game do you want to play?” He said reaching for the whiskey and taking a giant swig of it.

Oliver thought for a minute. He honestly didn’t think he’d get this far. He had tried to hang out with Percy like this so many other times before to no avail. He took the whiskey back from Percy and took a drink for himself. The alcohol gave him some newfound confidence. Which is probably why he suggested the game that he did.

“I know. Why don’t we play a game where we both touch and kiss each other and the first person who stops loses.” Oliver said with one of the biggest shit-eating grins Percy had ever seen. Percy was a bit taken aback. Was Oliver into him, or was he such a lightweight that he was already drunk? He knew Oliver was bi but he didn’t know Percy was bi.

“What’s in it for me?” Percy asked, raising his eyebrows. Oliver shrugged “Satisfaction for winning.” Percy thought about it for a bit. He didn’t really have anything to lose and Oliver was proper fit.

“Fuck it why not,” Percy said grabbing the whiskey and taking a giant sip of it. Oliver sat down right next to Percy. Percy stared back at him like he was challenging him to do something. Oliver smirked knowing he was about to give this prick the time of his life. He grabbed Percy’s shirt collar with a bit of force and pulled him down to kiss him. Percy might have the advantage of height but Oliver was a great deal stronger.

Percy very gladly reciprocated the kiss and grabbed onto Oliver’s shoulders in the process. Percy had never done anything like this, especially not with a boy, but he wasn’t gonna let his facade crack after being so smug. They continued for a while, making out but not doing much else.

They broke apart for a few seconds to catch their breath. Percy looked Oliver straight in his eyes. He was no longer baby, he wanted power. He smirked and asked, “Is that all you got?” Oliver put his hands on his chest and whispered “I haven’t even started yet, Weasley.” into his ear.

With that, he pushed Percy down onto his bed and got right on top of him. He pinned his arms above his head and started to attack his neck. Percy tried to stifle a moan but Oliver heard. Oliver stopped for a second.

Was Percy into this? He didn’t really think he liked men, just that he was stubborn enough to agree to this. To be honest, it motivated Oliver even more than before. Maybe he’d get something after this. He looked up at Percy, who was slightly blushing, Not so smug anymore, was he?

Oliver smirked at him and continued attacking his neck. He had taken his hands away from Percy’s arms and worked on removing both his and Percy’s shirts. They took a few seconds to stare at both of their bare chests. Percy didn’t expect it to end up like this. Never in his life would he have thought the first time he would get this far with anybody would be with his Hogwarts roommate on a drunken dare. But he was trying not to be so controlling of everything lately so fuck it. He didn’t care if either of them remembered it in the morning he wanted to feel good. And again, Oliver was really hot.

Oliver grabbed the back of Percy’s head and pulled him into a bruising kiss. He in return grabbed onto Oliver’s back and then proceeded to touch themselves all over.

They both knew where it was heading but Percy was becoming concerned. Did he really want to lose his virginity with his drunk roommate? What if he regretted it in the morning? What if Oliver regretted it in the morning? He couldn’t let this go any further than it was already at.

Oliver, however, was drunk and didn’t care about the consequences. He wanted Percy more than he had ever wanted anything ever before. That was the whole reason he suggested the game. He wanted Percy and it was clear Percy wanted him too. So he didn’t understand why Percy was moving away when Oliver reached for his belt.

Oliver looked up at him in confusion? “Sorry, Oliver. I can’t. Not tonight.” “Why not?” Oliver said quite indignantly. Percy put his hand on his face. “Because you’re drunk,” “Am not!” Oliver replied with his accent stronger than usual. “Yes, you are. And besides, I don’t want my first time to be on a dare.”

Oliver looked down at his hands. He was honestly quite upset but he understood why. Percy scooted up next to him and put his arm around him. “Maybe next time when we’re sober.” He said, giving a quick kiss on the cheek. That cheered him up quickly. He liked the prospect of next time so he nodded and rested his head on Percy’s chest

They laid right next to each other on Percy’s bed for the rest of the night. Oliver was going off on drunken rambles and Percy was mainly wondering where Oliver had thrown his jumper. Not enough to move out of his arms though. Was it selfish to want this more often? He had honestly never felt like this about anyone before. Despite what his heart was telling him he knew he made the right decision. Maybe next time they could do without involving silly games or fire whiskey. Merlin, he hated fire whiskey.

#harry potter #hogwarts #percy weasley #gryffindor #oliver wood #perciver #fanfiction #percy weasley x oliver wood #drunken kissing #stormy night #Percy Weasley / Oliver Wood

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tox-city · 4 years

Text

Ravishing, Aren’t You? John Laurens X Reader

I was asked by an anon not to continue my “Proud Bastards” fic.

Like, there goes weeks of writing. But hey, its fine. I was also asked by the same person to write a Laurens x Reader one shot where the reader is triplets with Thomas and Lafayette. Smut. Yay.

Please note this is my first time doing smut. so like.. yeah

Female reader & Bi John

Y/N Your Name

Y/N/N Your nickname

***John's POV***

~~ Heavy Sex Scene in Movie~~

A/N Oh boy, prepare for sexual tension. Almost smut. Not that much sex, but a lot of detail. Basically I build up the tension...

I hope it wasn't too much detail.

2135 Words.

Okay, maybe I got a little carried away with this chapter. Consider it a gift for me not posting often guys.

888888888888888888

I couldn't pay attention to the scene playing in front of me. Nor was I aware that Y/N stole my popcorn. I could barely concentrate on the fact that her hand fit mine perfectly. No, my body wouldn't let me do any of those things. Almost all of my willpower was being fixated on the growing problem between my legs.

I was horny, there's no way around it.

Shifting in my seat, I forced myself to look at the screen; The two protagonists fell in love an were now becoming involved in a heavy makeout session. It would be wrong to say I was turned on at the sight of that, but I was. Not because I enjoyed watching others display their love for one another by making love, but because I imagined myself in a scenario like that with Alexandra.

Even before the kiss we shared.

I had never been more thankful for the dim lighting of the movie theater, or else Y/N/N would most likely notice, and who knows how she'd react. Maybe she'd think that I was hard because I was watching people strip down. Even if it was all staged movie shit.

I moved my hand down my thigh and rested my fingertips on my throbbing dick. Biting back a groan, I turn to face Y/N. She was taking in the sight of the man's body. From his regal face, down to his chiseled chest. I couldn't help but feel a bit jealous watching her flushed expression. That didn't help my cause at all. I moved my hand down a few more inches, fighting the urge to palm myself right then and there. I decided on a compromise, I'd take care of myself later-- Preferably when there isn't a bunch of other people in the same room as you, as well as the source of your horniness.

Thank God no one was sitting beside either of us.

Y/N finally tore her eyes off of the dude and turned to face me. Or that’s what I thought. Y/N decided that, at this exact moment, she wanted to rest her head on my shoulder and place her hand on my thigh. This was it, I thought numbly, it's over. As soon as her hand touches my erection, I'll come and then she'll call the movie off.

The tips of her fingers grazed my dick. As soon as the two of them made contact, her right hand sipped down lower, intentionally touching me.

"Fuck," I had barely managed to spit out. Resting my head back, I moved my hand so hers had more room. Call me needy if you must, but every male has his breaking point when it comes to sex. I was so close, Y/N/N might as push me over the edge.

Y/N moved her hand with such skill, you would of never thought she was a virgin. I wanted nothing more than to take her home, but the damn movie didn't end for another hour or so.

As if reading my mind, Y/N purred in my ear, "We could always leave early, John. I'm not that all interested in how this movie ends."

To emphasize her point, Lexi gave my cock a harsh squeeze before kissing my cheek.

I raise a brow as I turn to face her, "Whatever you say, Darling."

~*•*~

We left the theater in a rush, both eager to get to my car. The drive was silent and full of tension. She didn't dare pull any punches-- Should she of done that, I would of taken her in the damn vehicle. Alas, that couldn't happen, I didn't have any condoms in the car. I was not taking any sort of risk with Y/N.

One for her own health and body and second, her family would kill me. Especially her father and Thomas.

As I pulled up into the driveway, a thought suddenly dawned upon me: I'd be taking Y/N’s virginity. Shit, I really hope this works out.

Unlocking the car, we both got out and walked towards the house. Y/N/N grabbed my hand and nestled herself into my side. As soon as I opened and locked the front door, I pushed Y/N against it. I dived into a kiss. She tilted her head to deepen the touch as my hands found their way to wrap around her waist. To my surprise, they fit together perfectly.

I grazed the bottom of her lip with my teeth, nipping here and there, until she opened her mouth slightly. Pushing my tongue inside, I was met with her own. I pushed mine in deeper, wanting how much of her mouth I could explore before I exploded.

Pulling away, I noticed her hands were intertwined in my hair. Letting them slip loose, she looked me in the eye, both of them gleaming with curiosity.

"Follow me," I said as I took her hand, leading her towards my room.

Finally, the front door long behind us, I let go of her hand and starting searching for a condom. I only had them because of health class. And Alexander, last time he was here with Eliza, he left a box for me (like I would use them) with a sticky note engraved with "Get some." I knew how to put them on, as I had lost my virginity last year to some dude cheerleader that moved away over the course if the summer. I hadn't talked to him since the last time we hooked up; He blocked my number.

After searching for a long time, I had finally found them, hidden in my closet. Quickly, I slipped one on, pulled up my pants and turned to face Y/N. She was already struggling to unclip her bra. It was one of those expensive lace ones. A deep shade of green lace held up her large breasts. She wore a D-cup, I think.

Smirking, I walked over to where she sat on my bed. Looking up, she still held her determined expression from earlier. Y/N stopped what she was doing to make eye contact with me.

Sitting down, I shook my head with a smile on my face, "C'mere, Y/N/N." I pat my lap.

She was quick to accept the idea as she obeyed and straddled my thighs. I felt the heat of her panties underneath her jeans. Just the thought alone made my dick twitch again, this time with the pressure of her sex kneading against him.

A moan escaped my lips as she rolled her hips like an expert.

"John," Was all she was able to whine, over and over again. Y/N’s tits shook from the movement, I thought I'd do them one better. I moved my hands from her waist to find the clasp at the back of her bra, with a strong tug, it opened.

Her breasts spilled out as the fabric hung loosely of her shoulders. Carefully, Y/N shrugged the garment off.

"Damn, Y/N." I breathed out as I reached to palm the nearest one. They fit perfectly in my hands-- Full, yet just enough room for me to massage them. I did precisely that; I wanted to test her-- Find her limits and then some. I roughly played with the taut bead of flesh that stood up against my fingertips, desperate for the attention that I was giving the surrounding area.

"John, please," Y/N bounced down on my dick for the umpteenth time, trying to increase the pressure being applied to her delicate pussy. Meeting her eyes once more, I slipped my hand underneath her crotch, curious to know how much she wanted this.

I moved my hand to the front of her jeans, right where the button and zipper were. I took my sweet time undoing the two fasteners. As soon they were opened, Y/N started shifting in my lap, trying to get the pants off. Soon, we both managed to slip the jeans off her.

Y/N sat back down, now with the wet lace that covered her pussy pressing down on dick. She had no idea what the hell she was doing yet somehow this turned me on more. Maybe it was just idea of fucking a virgin.

"Get on the the damn bed," I growled in a voice that I barely recognized as my own. Thankfully, Y/N/N didn't question it. Normally she had argument for everything.

"Lie down," I said as she moved into position. Unzipping my jeans, I had to let out a sigh of relief as soon as my cock sprang free. It's been rubbing against the harsh material of both my boxers and pants. Quickly, I slipped out of my boxers. I was near desperate when I saw Y/N lie down on my bed, looking sexy as fuck with her tits on full display and only a soaked strip of fabric covering her.

I walked over to her, and placed my hand on her leg. Moving it down, I was met with her deep green panties that matched the colour of her bra. Hooking my fingers around the rim of the undergarment, Y/N let loose a needy whine.

A small part of me wanted to rub small circles against her panties, seeing how far I could push her without entering her. Clearly that wasn't going to happen because the majority of me wanted to either eat her out or fuck her. And the amount of time I waited for this to happen was enough.

I tore of her panties without any hesitation. That left her completely naked to my gaze, whereas I still had my button down shirt on. Taking it off, I climbed on top of her.

Squirming noticeably, Y/N looked me in the eye then later put her hands of my chest. Taking in a shaky breath, she broke her stare and closed her eyes.

"John?" She mumbled, head still down.

"Yes?"

"Could we, uh, could we ... ?" She trailed off, unable to finish her sentence. I figured I knew what she was going with her question. I mean, it was her first time having any sort of sex; The furthest she'd ever gone with a guy was kissing, even then, it was on a dare.

"Go slow?" I offered, hoping that I could make her feel a bit more comfortable.

"Uh, yeah. Could we do that, please?"

I smiled, pleased with both her and myself. Her because she was willing to try something new and myself because I didn't rush her into anything.

"Of course, Y/N/N."

~*•*~

"Fuck, John," Y/N moaned as she came, clutching onto a fistful of my hair. This was maybe the third or fourth time she came over the course of the night. We had both decided that we could pick up the pace. I was going a bit faster than I was at the beginning.

It took her awhile to adjust to the sudden intrusion the first time, but other than that, it felt fucking amazing to be with her.

With a grunt, I came shortly after. I pulled out and faced her. A small smile painted her features.

"That was," she paused for a breath, "great. Amazing, I don't know what it was, honestly, but ... I liked it, John."

I smirked, "Well, I'm glad you liked it, Darling, but, uh, did you want to spend the night. I mean, it's like what, ten-twenty P.M.?"

Nodding, she looked around the room, "I'd like that, but, uh, I need to call home to tell my brothers where I am. You still have the extra bags of clothes I left here last time I came over, right?" She asked while looking for her phone.

"Yeah, yeah, it's in the closet, Y/N/N."

"Perfect,"

She kissed me quickly then opened the closet, got some of her clothes, took her phone with her, and left the room.

As she was calling home, I looked around my bedroom. There were fluids and the remains of Y/N’s orgasms left on the sheets. So, while she was phone , I took the liberty of changing the sheets on my bed as well as removing the condom I was still wearing. I had just finished cleaning up when she walked back in, now in a New York themed pajama set.

"Hey,"

"Hey, so, can you, uh stay over?" I asked, wanting to know if I could have her stay for just a while longer.

"Yep, or at least I think. I couldn't really tell due to Laf's squealing." Y/N deadpanned while she put her phone away.

I shook my head with a smile of my face, "Oh really, who's he fangirling over this time?"

"Us,"

A/N Hello from the other side, first time writing smut of any type. I hope it wasn't too much detail.

2135 Words.

Okay, maybe I got a little carried away with this chapter. Consider it a gift for me not posting often guys.

#john laurens x reader #hamilton #x reader #thomas jeffershit #lafayeet #lafayette #john laurens #anon #broadway

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jawritter · 4 years

Text

I Kinda Like The Disease....

WattPad Request: If you could do a demon dean smut something kinky, and for the girl use the name Krystal. Or KK please.

Word Count: 1689

Warnings: Smut!, Unproteced Sex, Public Sex, Choking, Hair Pulling, Demon Dean (Yes he has his own warning.) Language, This is pretty much porn with a vague plot lol.

A/N: As always all mistakes are mine, and feedback is appreciated! If you want to be added to my tag list let me know! Hope you guys enjoy this one!!

Pairing: Demon!Dean x OFC Krystal (KK)

Want More? Check out my masterlist?

******MASTERLIST******

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Krystal and Sam had been tracking down the Demon version of Dean for months now, neither of them had gotten any closer to finding him. Dean didn’t want to be found, and Demon or human, if Dean didn’t want to be found, finding him was almost impossible. All those years of hunting, and hiding from shit that wanted to kill you had evidently paid off for him, add a supernatural ability to that, and what you have is a lost cause.

Krystal couldn’t give up though, if they had a chance of finding and curing Dean, then that’s what she’d do, even if it killed her.

Her search had taken her to Downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, following a lead by Garth. A man had been murdered at a gas station just outside of New Orleans by a man on the security camera fitting Dean’s description. The only problem was that the same story had been said to have happened in a town just outside of Queens, New York..

So that means she and Sam had to split up, and while he didn't like the idea of leaving her alone to look for his brother, she welcomed the silence.

Sam had become increasingly annoying. Constantly trying to convince her, or himself she thought more than her, that this would all work out and be alright, that they’d find Dean and together cure him. Then work to get that damn mark off of his arm that started all of this in the first place.

She didn’t want to hear more “It’s all gonna work out” pep talks though, She wanted results. The rest was just words, and words didn’t mean shit. You could talk all damn day long, but until he was found and he was her Dean again they meant nothing to her.

Krystal had chosen to go to New Orleans because there was word that Crowley had also been seen there, and she was almost willing to bet that where Crowley was, Dean would be to. Sam chose New York because he said it was more “Dean’s Style of a killing.” She disagreed though. They seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

Upon arriving in New Orleans she was almost sure she had the right place. It was Mardi Gras, and this place was currently a Demon’s playground. Insecure little bitches running around nude or almost nude. Adultery, Fornication, Murder, Glutteny, all of your big time players in the deadly sin game were on full display, and Krystal knew that any Demone worth his salt would be here, and wouldn’t pass this up.

Alas so far besides all that she’d had no luck. So she made her way through the crowded streets in search of her way back to her hotel room. People were packed shoulder to shoulder. Drinking, dancing, waiting on the parade floats to make their way through, It was loud, and disorienting.

Just as she found her way back onto Canal street. A hand reached out from behind a dark alleyway and grabbed her, pulling her with inhuman strength towards the dark alley.

“Hello sweetheart.”

Turning her around, and slamming her into the hard brink wall of the building she was between; she came face to face with Dean’s face and the haunting black eyes of a demon.

He was the same, but so different. His eyes snapped back to the green she loved so much, the one that haunted her dreams at night since he’d left her, the ones she’d wanted to see more than anything. Right now they were right there in front of her, the same, but oh so different.

He was thinner, his hair was combed over in a way that Dean would have never worn if he were himself. He cast this creepy feeling with him that made her stomach curl, and even though he wore Dean’s signature smirk, it wasn’t her Dean that was standing here before her. Looking at her like she was something to eat.

“I told you and Sammy to stop trailing me, but no, you just had to keep right on at it. Well you found me, now what? Not what you expected?” He said with a mincing chuckle, and for just a moment her blood ran cold.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, and he didn’t miss her apprehension. Tilting his head to the side he looked at her quizzically.

“Aww what's wrong baby girl? Don’t you miss me?” He didn’t give her time to answer before he had his hand wrapped in her hair. Pulling her head to the side, and exposing her neck to him. HIs teeth sinking into her pulse points, drawing a moan out of her that even she didn’t expect.

It had been SSSOO long since they were together, and she missed the intimacy that he’d give her if he were her Dean.

Even though he wasn’t her Dean his mouth felt the same against her sink, his hot breath fanning over hers in the night air, creating little bumps to erupt everywhere in his wake.

Arousal polled in her underwear, making her shift her legs uncomfortable.

“You know what? I think I missed that tight little pussy more than I realized. You want me baby, want me to fuck you right here in the alley. In front of all these people that could catch us? Hmm?

She couldn’t answer, because if she was being honest. She did want him to take her right there, just to feel him inside of her, his skin on her skin, after she thought that it would never happen again. She’d give anything to have him balls deep inside of her right now.

“KK don’t lie to yourself. You know you missed my dick… It’s right here. All you got to do is tell me you want it, and if you can keep that pretty little mouth shut while I fuck you, you can have it.”

And boy did she, she just for some reason couldn’t make her mouth form words right now.

“You know what I’m gonna take your silence as a yes” He said, snapping reaching down and pulling his belt loose, freeing his already hard cock from his boxers and jeans, forcing her hand to touch him, and she couldn’t stop the moan that fell from her lips at the feel of him in her hand again. Hardening even more under her touch.

“Too close sweetheart. That shits got to go.”

Pulling the first blade out from nowhere he ripped her jeans right at the crotch, she can’t figure out how he didn’t slice her, but the tip of it just grazed against her throbbing clit as it slipped through her layers. Making them fall open in just the right places.

The cold night air hitting her soaking folds as the parade music started up. Cajun music floating through the air, along with the sound of screaming drunk people.

Dean looked at the direction of the parade as the first float passed. The blade tucked away again. He put his long finger to his lips, shushing her, letting his eyes flash black for moment to reminder her exactly who she was dealing with, and that it would do her well to keep her fucking mouth shut.

Without warning he sipped his hand around her throat and squeezed it just enough to make breathing a struggle. Running his other hand over her folds, testing to see if she could take him. When he was satisfied that she would need any prep he smirked at her. Making even more silk slip down her already soaked thighs.

“Is all that for me KK? Miss me that much baby?” He asked her, his deep rumble almost drowned out by the music and people. “Well let’s not make you wait another minute then.”

Without that he slapped her hand away from his leaking cock and spread her legs with his thick thighs. Slamming his full length into her before she could even get her legs wrapped around him properly. Doing her best to hold onto his shoulders and bite back the screams she wanted to let escape her as he pounded into her cunt at a brutal pace.

Stretching her in a way that she’d missed so much. Hitting the spot deep down inside of her with each hard thrust that only he could hit. One hand still squeezing her throat leaving bruises and marks as he sucked at sensitive skin behind her ear adding to the sensation even more. The other hand holding up her leg to help her balance.

“So fucking tight baby?” He grunted in her ear as his hips started to falter and her world started to spin in combination of her own release and the lack of oxygen.

“Cum for me Krystal. Now '' He growled as he spilled himself into her, and she did, her walls milking his thick length for all it would give her, his lips meeting hers. Swallowing down her moans and cries as she exploded around him.

When they both came down from their high he let go of her throat and dropped her hard to the ground, tucking himself away before kneeling down next to her. Jerking her panting form up by her hair. Making her look into his black eyes.

“Now you and Sammy keep to your own damn business, and leave me be…” His lips met hers again in a bruising kiss. “I’ll be seeing you soon, and you better stay ready Krystal, because you never know where I’m going to show up.”

Before she could respond he disappeared. Leaving her laying alone in the dark alley, used and his cum still running down her thighs, leaking out of her. All she had left of him.

Even though she failed to get him this time. At least she had him one more time before he left again, and couldn't help the anticipation of his return that he’d promised.

If she had to admit it, she liked the disease maybe a little too….

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Tag List:

@deanwanddamons @imabitch4jensen @rvgrsbrns @bi-danvers0 @onethirstyunicorn @i-love-superhero @akshi8278 @alanegaming

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bensakindofmagic · 4 years

Text

Chapter Fourteen

A/N: there’s a hint of the bisexual, (i’m not definitively saying reader is bi, though you can totally see her that way if you want, but that’s not going to be a feature of the story. i just don’t want it to come off as insensitive or obtuse or anything, peace and love man)

Warnings: British superiority, swearing (also I haven't proofread it so pls just ignore typos -- not that I spot them all usually, I'm so bad at typing)

w/c: 3.5k+

Chapter Fourteen

You were in Ben’s kitchen making dinner, having skipped out early while the boys were still in costume getting de-‘Queen’ed. The dinner was bubbling away contentedly on the hob and you had your music hooked up to Ben’s speaker.

“Oohh, show me heaven, cover me, leave me breathless. Ooooohhh show me heaven please,” you sang at the top of you lungs, no doubt much to the chagrin of the neighbours, and swayed dramatically as you added some seasoning. You didn’t register the door opening or the keys being thrown down on the hall table.

“I’m not denying, I’m frightened as much as you, though I’m barely touching you. I’ve shivers down my spine and it feels divine.”

You twirled with a flourish, belting without thought or care if you were in tune, only to see Ben standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, biting back a laugh. You looked him dead in the eye and serenaded him, flinging your arms out in your best 90’s-power-ballad singer impersonation. You clutched at your heart and threw your head back, your face contorted into a pained, lovestruck cry. Ben finally broke and his face split into a grin, waves of rich laughter sweeping across the room above the music. When closed the small distance between you and took you around the waist you all but melted into his arms.

“You’re such an idiot,” he bubbled, pulling you closer.

“Well, you like the dorky ones, don’t you?” You rested your hand on his cheek and met his lips with your own. He was soft. You felt the weariness evaporate from his bones as your bodies met, skin on skin.

When you pulled away he buried his face in your neck and sighed deeply, breathing you in. His breath was hot; it tickled your skin and you giggled. Strong arms wrapped themselves tighter around your waist, close enough that you could feel it in your stomach like nervous excitement.

“You hungry?” you purred, stroking his hair. He hummed his affirmation into your neck and slowly detached from you.

“This looks delicious Y/N, thank you,” Ben declared as you sat down to eat.

“Mm, don’t get too used to it, I’m no 1950s domestic housewife that’ll have dinner on the table for you everyday.”

“Believe me,” he grinned, “I know. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“So tell me, how was your day?”

He frowned, confused, “You were there, you know how my day was.”

“I know,” you said timidly, “I just want to hear it from you.”

“Why?”

“It’s what normal couples do, isn’t it? They get home from work and talk about their day,” you huffed.

“Are we not a normal couple?”

You rolled your eyes, “You know what I mean. How did you feel today? What did I miss while I was off running around sweating my tits off?”

“Okay, um,” Ben shifted in his seat, “I was pretty tired, I guess. You’re keeping me up late,” he goaded, a devilish grin dancing on closed lips.

“You have no one but yourself to blame.”

“I beg to differ little missy. You can’t come into the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of knickers and expect me to do nothing.”

Your mind wandered back to the night before, what Ben had done when he caught sight of you in the mirror. You squeezed your thighs together. “Okay we can resume that discussion later, what else?”

He raised an eyebrow but continued, “Um, Joe was very impressed with how you handled Rami today, he wouldn’t shut up about how he could just see someone kicking off and causing a scene, but you just handled it perfectly. He was gushing about it all afternoon.”

You shrugged, “I was just doing my job, I’m there to manage you guys so that’s what I did.”

“Joe didn’t think so, he kept saying that you’re the best PA he’s worked with.”

“Well that’s very sweet,” you inclined your head.

“I think he’s right,” Ben said, eyes firmly focused on his plate of food. “I mean, I’ve told you before I think you’re great at what you do. You should be producing, top of the ladder.”

“Maybe,” you hummed, unenthused. “I don’t know that I want to be a producer.”

Ben looked up at you, “Really?”

“I like working so closely with the cast. Maybe I’ve just been lucky this time, you guys were my first, and I don’t think there’ll ever be another job like this, but still, it seems a little lonely to me at the top.”

“So, you have no ambition to climb the career ladder?” Ben’s face said that he couldn’t quite comprehend the concept.

“I have ambition, but I suppose it doesn’t take me upwards. I want to work on good projects with talented people. I don’t even know if I want to stay in the film industry forever. I might try something else one day.”

“Like what?”

“Who knows?” you smiled. You sensed that Ben didn’t understand, and looking to avoid a dispute, you hurriedly changed the subject, “Anyway, you excited for tomorrow?”

Ben shifted in his seat, “Yeah, we kept talking about it today, Joe was rinsing me about whether I’ll look as good as Roger did as a woman.”

“Nervous?”

“Nah, I think it’ll be fun.”

You left the guys in makeup the next morning as you were needed elsewhere, but you weren’t mad. You were excited for the big reveal of them in full drag, especially Ben. The call came over the radio that they were ready for the guys on set, so you went off to collect them from their trailers. Your face grew with each one (you particularly delighted in seeing Gwil’s painted nails. However, when Ben stepped out of his trailer you stopped in your tracks.

“God Ben, you make a terrible woman, I thought you’d be way better looking,” Joe jibed. Ben scoffed, and mumbled a “Fuck off” under his breath, but he caught your eye to see you biting your lip.

“Come on then, they’re waiting for us aren’t they?” Ben declared, and the boys went marching off to set. You skipped after him and whispered, “You look pretty.” He looked at you, raised and eyebrow and shook his head. You laughed and hurried after him.

It was one of the most fun days on set; everyone was in good spirits and the guys were constantly larking about. Joe teased Ben constantly, much to his chagrin, but you shot him winks throughout the day.

“You’re disgusting, your thighs are way too thick,” Joe mocked.

“Mmm, thicc with two c’s,” you hummed as you walked behind Ben. You imagined sidling up behind him, wrapping your arms around his hips and leaving open-mouthed kisses all along his neck, but alas you had company. Still, your bisexual bits were buzzing. Ben caught your eye and frowned, intrigued, but you simply laughed and went on your way.

“How is it fair that you’re so beautiful?” you chuckled exasperatedly while you were sat around for lunch. “You’re a prettier woman than I am!”

Ben’s gaze snapped towards you, “You don’t actually think that?”

“You’re gorgeous, I’d kill for cheekbones like that.”

“He is startlingly pretty,” Gwil affirmed.

You pumped your eyebrows, “What, have you got tingly bits Gwil?”

“Ben always gives me tingly bits.”

Joe frowned deeply, but you conspicuously ignored him.

“You best not be trying to steal my man, Mr Lee.”

“I would never,” he winked.

Joe took the piss out of Ben all through lunch, constantly telling him how disappointed he was that he didn’t make a more attractive woman, that Roger looked so much better. Ben laughed along and played his part, but kept glancing at you every few minutes. You smiled sweetly, but the ones he returned had an aura of the heartsick about them. You were following the guys back to set when Ben grabbed you by the arm and pulled you aside to a quiet corner, sheltered from prying eyes and intermeddling ears. He pushed your back against the wall and enclosed you in himself. He searched your face, but for what you didn’t know. “What’s up, Benny?”

“What you were saying back there… you’re so beautiful Y/N, you know that right?”

“I know,” you said, struggling to keep a straight face. Ben was being so sweet and sincere but all you could see was the wig and the eyeliner and the bows. You twirled one of his curls between your fingers, “So are you.”

He lifted his hand to yours, holding it still, “I mean it. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” His eyes bored into yours, desperately communicating his earnestness.

“Thank you,” you breathed. He nodded, seemingly satisfied that you had understood him. “But I still think you make a seriously hot woman. Just look at that face.” You grabbed his chin and pulled him closer.

Ben sighed, laughing. His tongue protended slightly over his bottom lip.

You hummed, “It’s that little pouty face that you do. So innocent, like butter wouldn’t melt.”

“You know I got that face from you. I watched what Roger did in the video obviously, but I did that face cause that’s the one you make.”

“Are you serious? When do I make that face?”

“You used to do it all the time in bars when you were just listening to the music, daydreaming.”

“Ben, that is my ‘I’m-trying-to-look-sexy-and-disinterested-so-men-will-want-to-chat-me-up’ face!” you gasped, embarrassed.

“Well it worked ‘cause it made me want to chat you up,” he smirked.

“Not that you bloody did, I had to chat you up.”

“That was definitely not chatting me up. You had verbal diarrhoea in my general direction.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Make me.”

Your chest went tight as Ben smirked. Beneath all the makeup and costume he was still his cocky, provocative self: a stallion of a man. Unintimidated, you thrust your lips to his and kissed him fiercely, owning his mouth with yours. You deliberately pulled away abruptly, just as Ben was expanding into you, and tucked one of his golden locks behind his ear.

“I guess that was kinda weird for you.”

You shook your head, “You think that was my first time kissing a woman?”

“It wasn’t?” You shook your head, giggling. “Huh, well that’s one thing we didn’t learn in ‘Never Have I Ever’.”

“Oh there’s plenty you don’t know about me, I’m full of secrets.”

“Alright mysterious girl, what else don’t I know?”

“Telling you would spoil all the fun.”

“Anyone seen Ben? And where the hell is Y/N?” you heard someone yell from set.

---

“What are you guys doing for bonfire night?

“Oh of course, it’s the 5th of November today,” Gwil remarked.

“Bonfire night?” Joe queried. “Isn’t that a fireworks thing like 4th July?”

“Oh Joe, my sweet, naïve American friend, it is nothing like that shitshow of excessive patriotism and fried food.”

“Hey, Independence Day is an important part of American history.”

“Yeah, a history that’s all of five minutes long.”

His mouth fell open like a goldfish and he looked around for someone who shared his indignation.

“Rami, help me out here.”

Rami just laughed, “My heritage is Egyptian, their history is literally ancient.”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, tutting.

“I hear Blackheath does a great bonfire. Joe, we are going to show you the wonders of Bonfire Night.”

“So, what exactly is this all about?” Joe challenged as you walked through the rows of stalls that evening, weaving between crowds of people.

Despite the chill that crept through your many layers, a warmth pooled in your heart at the mayhem of sensations. The smells of many food vendors competed for your attention: hot dogs with onions and ketchup, toffee apples so sickly sweet, mulled wine, spiced and fragrant. Children giggled and squealed, people laughed merrily, and the bonfire crackled in the distance. As autumn was beginning to fade, the world was blanketed in earthy hues, reds and oranges and browns. The leaves were vibrant in their last flourish before death, glowing bright but so dry you could almost hear them crunch, and the fire engulfed everything it touched in a golden embrace. You inhaled deeply, allowing the atmosphere to seep into you, and grinned.

“Bonfire night is a big celebration to commemorate when this bloke called Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and the King in the early 17th century, basically ‘cause he was a Catholic and they were Protestant. But he was caught laying the gunpowder and they executed him, so every year we light a bonfire and burn an effigy of him on the top, you know, kids make them out of papier-mâché, and we eat and drink and watch fireworks.

“So you burn a papier-mâché man on a big fire to celebrate a failed terrorist attempt?” Joe frowned, perturbed.

You laughed, “Exactly.”

“Brits are weird,” he decided.

Ben defended, “It sounds weird when you say it like that, but really it’s an excuse to have a good time.”

“Come on,” you declared, “Let’s go to the bonfire.” You marched towards the blaze without waiting to see if the others were following.

The fire was feverish up close. You were soon roasting under your winter coat, with your hair falling in gentle waves from underneath your wool hat and a scarf wrapped around your neck. It was so hot on your skin that you feared for the fate of your eyelashes, but you wouldn’t move away. You stood in awe of the flames as they leapt and cracked, dancing their vicious dance, sparks frolicking in the stars. You watched, mesmerised, until Ben caught up with you, threaded his arms around your waist, and rested his chin on your shoulder.

“Isn’t is beautiful,” you whispered, filled with terrible wonder.

He hummed his concurrence and nuzzled his face into your neck.

“Wow, hot isn’t it?” Gwil remarked as he came to stand beside you.

Joe scoffed, “Yeah, no shit. It’s a giant fire.”

“Can you see the Guy on the top?” you prompted. The remains of the Guy were still there, propped on a chair like a throne, disintegrating into ash before your eyes.

“Oh yeah,” he mumbled, disconcerted. “Gwil’s right, this is really fucking hot, let’s go play the games.”

You had an hour until the firework display, so occupied yourself on the fairground games. Rami and Lucy had wondered off together, no doubt for a romantic ride on the ferris wheel. The other boys were endlessly competitive, always trying to one-up each other on the games; you played along but mostly just laughed at them and their poor attempts at trash talking. Afterwards, you got mulled wine and held it in your hands, letting it warm your frozen fingers. You breathed in, cinnamon and orange and nutmeg swirling together through your senses, thinking that there really is nothing like mulled wine on a cold autumn night. You walked through the stalls as you drank, perusing the trinkets on sale, and Joe inevitable bought himself a huge bag of marshmallows like the big kid he is. You passed the coconut shy and saw the best prize was a teddy bear the size of a small child. You turned suddenly to Ben and grabbed his arm.

“Will you win me the teddy like they do in the movies?”

He laughed and fished in his pocket for some change. “You’re a hopeless romantic really, aren’t you?”

“Through and through babe.”

“You gotta knock off all six to win the bear,” said the vendor in a thick cockney accent. He had eight balls to do so. It was just a game but you saw the absolute determination on Ben’s face as he took the ball and lined up the first shot.

He missed with the first ball, but muttered something about getting his bearings — to which Joe immediately shouted, “BEARings! Geddit? Cause he’s trying to get the bear?” You rolled your eyes.

The next five shots where bang on, and the coconuts fell off their stands one after the other. You were starting to get excited when he missed with the penultimate ball. He one chance to get the final coconut.

You went onto your tiptoes and leaned into Ben’s ear, whispering, “You got this baby, do it for me.”

He looked deep into your eyes. You bit your lip in that cutesy-but-sexy way the girl always does in the films, but Ben was all sincerity. His eyes skipped to your lips for a second before he turned, threw the ball, and knocked the last coconut off the stand. You laughed, incredulous, and jumped up and down before tossing your arms around his shoulders. Placing a big, sloppy kiss on his cheek you grinned like a cheshire cat.

The vendor, somewhat begrudgingly you thought, handed over the giant teddy and you bounced on your heels excitedly, cuddling it tightly to your chest.

“Are you happy?” Ben chuckled.

“Very,” you beamed and slipped your hand in his, feeling warm and full.

You found a good spot to watch the fireworks, ‘ooh’ing and ‘aah’ing along with everyone else. It was a beautiful display, and in the midst of all the families and groups of friends, laughing and cheering, you felt so at home in Ben’s arms. You spotted a young family nearby with a baby in the arms of its mother. It was all wrapped up in a coat and blankets, with big headphones on to protect its ears, but you could see the innocent wonder in its eyes as the lights flashed and sparkled in the sky. Its gurgle of delight reached you over the noise and squeezed your heart. Tiny, chubby fingers reached up and tried to grab the lights from their inky black perch.

“How precious,” you whispered to yourself. Somewhere in your stomach that yearning for a baby stirred and writhed.

Ben, behind you with his arms locked around your waist, rested his chin on your shoulder.

“Feeling broody?” his voice rumbled in ear.

You hummed, “Always.”

Just then the baby turned and caught your eye, smiling widely. You waved and it stretched out towards you. It’s mum noticed and smiled at you, bouncing the baby happily on her hip.

“You’ve got a few admirers,” Ben simpered, nodding to the older sister who had her eyes fixed on the teddy bear you were still cuddling.

Laughing softly you detached yourself from Ben and knelt in front of her.

“Do you like my teddy?” you asked her gently. She held onto her mother’s leg with one hand and sucked on the fingers of the other. Looking up at you through her eyelashes she nodded shyly.

“Do you think you could help me come up with a name for him? I’m really stuck.”

She frowned, pensive, then said decidedly, “Ted.”

The laugh that flowed from you was full of the joyful delight that only children can offer. “I like that, how about Big Ted?”

She nodded enthusiastically, and stroked Big Ted’s arm. She looked at the bear with such fondness, such longing.

“Do you know what, I don’t think my flat is big enough for Big Ted to live there too. Would you like to take him home with you? Do you think you could look after him for me?”

Her little eyes lit up and looked to her mum eagerly. Mum just chuckled and said, “Are you sure? That’s very kind of you.”

“Absolutely,” and turning to the girl you said, “As long as you promise to take good care of him.”

“I will, I promise.” With a smile you handed over the bear to her — which was easily as big as she was — and she cuddled him close to her chest.

“Thank you,” she whispered, so quiet you could barely hear it but none the less heartfelt.

“You’re very welcome.”

It warmed your heart to watch the way she held that bear so tightly, and you were sure she’d get years of love out of it, and probably her baby sibling too. That knowledge was more than worth the ribbing you got from the guys for being so broody.

“I worked hard to win you that bear,” Ben pouted, deliberately trying to make you feel bad.

“And I appreciate it very much,” you cooed, placing a kiss on his pouted lips. “How about I show you just how much when we get home?” you added in a whisper.

He seemed to like that idea.

You wondered around until it started to get quieter and the chill seeped through your coats and into your bones, Gwil loudly complaining that his bollocks were freezing off. Joe seemed to be the least keen to leave.

“I thought you were Mr Skeptical about Bonfire Night,” you teased.

“Okay, to be fair this was really fun. I am fully on board with your super weird ceremonial burning tradition. But you have to be open to Independence Day.”

“In all honesty love, it sounds like a big barbecue and day drinking which is right up my street. You invite me to a 4th of July party and I’ll be there.”

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