#with scant bits of fluff

[theskeletoninthegarden]

I know that if I had my characters miscommunicated and argued more often my comment count would increase. But I cannot bring myself to write that.

#personal #I'm sure I could try to do it in a way that's less painful #but your honor when I write about idiots in love there is pining! But the majority of the time they're getting along #perfectly fine and dandy #and that's boring for most but #I've sat through tens of chapters where I'm watching this back and forth of angst between two characters #with scant bits of fluff #and it's damned painful

[physalian]

Humanizing Your Characters (And Why You Should)

To humanize a character is not to contort an irredeemable villain into the warped funhouse mirror reflection of a hero in the last 30 seconds to gain “narrative subversion” points. To humanize is not to give said villain a tragic backstory that validates every bad choice they make in attempt to provide nuance where it does not deserve to be.

To humanize a character, villain or otherwise, is to make them flawed. Scuff them up, give them narrative birthmarks and scars and imperfections. Whether it’s your hero, their love interest, the comic relief, the mentor, the villain, the rival, these little narrative details serve to make all your literary babies better.

Why should you humanize your characters?

To do this means to write in details beyond those that service the plot, or the themes, or the motifs, morals, foreshadowing, or story. These might be (and usually are) entirely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So, if I wrote lengthy diatribes on pacing and why every detail must matter, and character descriptions and thematic importance, why am I now suggesting go free-for-all on the fluff?

Just like real people have quirks and tics and beliefs and pet peeves that serve our no greater purpose, so should fictional people. Your average reader doesn’t have the foggiest idea what literary devices are beyond metaphor, simile foreshadowing, and anecdote, but they can tell when the author is using motif and theme and all the syntactical marvels because it reads that much richer, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

And, for shipping fodder, these tiny little details are what help your audience fall in love with the character. It doesn’t even have to be in a book – Taylor Swift (whether you like her or not) never fills her music with sexual innuendo or going clubbing. She tells stories filled with human details like dancing in the refrigerator light. People can simultaneously relate to these very specific and vivid experiences, and say “not that exactly, but man this reminds me of…” and that’s (part of) the reason her music is so popular.

What kinds of narratives need these details?

All of them. Visual media, audio, written, stage play. Now, to what degree and excess you apply these details depends on your tone, intended audience, and writing style. If your style of writing is introspection heavy, noir character drama, you might go pretty heavy on the character design.

But even if you’re writing a kids book with a scant few paragraphs of setting descriptors and internal narration, or you’re drawing a comic book – if you have characters you want people to care about, do this.

Animators, particularly, are very adept at humanizing non-human characters, because, unlike live acting, every single stroke of the pen is there with intent. They use their own reflections for facial references, record their own movements to draw a dance, and insert little bits of themselves into signature character poses so you know that *that* animator did this one.

How to humanize your characters.

I’m going to break this down into a couple sections: Costume/wardrobe, personality, beliefs/behavior/superstitions, haptics/proxemics/kinesics, and voice. They will all overlap and the sheer variety and possibilities are way too broad for me to capture every facet.

Costumes and Wardrobe

In the film Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where, after Boromir is slain by the Uruk-Hai, Aragorn takes Boromir’s Gondorian vambraces to wear in his honor, and in honor of their shared country. He wears them the rest of the trilogy. The editing pays no extra attention to them beyond a split second of Aragorn tightening the straps, it never lingers on them, never reminds you that they’re there, but they kept it in nonetheless. His actor also included a hunting bow that didn't exist in the book because he's a roamer, a ranger, and needs to be able to feed himself, along with a couple other survival tools.

Aragorn wears plenty of other symbolic bits of costume – the light of the Evenstar we see constantly from Arwen, the Lothlorien green cloaks shared by the entire Fellowship, his re-forged sword and eventual full Gondorian regalia, but all those are Epic Movie Moments that serve a thematic purpose.

Taking the vambraces is just a small, otherwise insignificant character moment, a choice made for no other reason than that’s what this character would do. That’s what makes him human, not an archetype.

When you’re writing these details and can’t rely on sneaking them into films, you have to work a little harder to remind your audience that they exist, but not too often. A detail shifts from “human” to “plot point” when it starts to serve a purpose to the themes and story.

Inconsequentiality might be how a character ties, or doesn’t tie their shoelaces, because they just can’t be bothered so they remain permanent knots and tripping hazards. It might be a throw-away line about how they refuse to wear shorts and strictly stick to long pants because they don’t like showing off their legs. It might be perpetually greasy hair from constantly running their fingers through it with stress, or self-soothing. A necklace they fidget with, or a ring, a belt they never bother to replace even though they should, a pair of lucky socks.

Resist the urge to make it more meaningful than “this is just how they are”. If I’m using the untied shoelaces example – in Spiderverse, this became a part of the story’s themes, motifs, and foreshadowing, and doesn’t count. Which isn’t bad! It’s just not what I’m talking about.

Personality

In How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless does not speak. All his personality comes from how he moves, the noises he makes, and the expressions on his face. There’s moments, like in the finale, when his prosthetic has burned off and Hiccup tells him to hold on for a little bit longer, and you can clearly see on his face that he’s deeply uncertain about his ability to do so. It’s almost off the screen, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Or the beat of hesitation before he lets Hiccup touch him in the Forbidden Friendship scene. Or the irritated noise he makes when he’s impatiently waiting for Hiccup to stop chatting with his dad because they have a giant dragon to murder. Or when he slaps Hiccup with his ear fin for flying them into a rock spire.

None of those details *needed* to exist to endear you to his character or to serve the scenes they’re in. The scenes would carry on just fine without them. He’s a fictional dragon, yes, but these details make him real.

Other personality tics you could include might be a character who gets frustrated with tedious things very quickly and starts making little inteligible curses under their breath. Or how they giggle when they’re excited and start bouncing on their toes. Maybe they have a tic where they snap their fingers when they’re concentrating, trying to will an idea into existence. Or they stick their tongue out while they work and get embarrassed when another character calls them on it. They roll around in their sleep, steal blankets, drool, leave dishes in the sink or are neurotic with how things must be organized. They have one CD in their car, and actually use that CD player instead of the phone jack or Bluetooth. They sing in the shower, while they cook, or while they do homework, no matter how grating their voice.

They like the smell of new shoes or Sharpies. They hate the texture of suede or velvet or sticky residues. They never pick their socks up. They hate the overhead light in their room and use 50 lamps instead. They hate turning into oncoming traffic or don’t trust their backup camera. They collect Funko Pops and insist there’s always room for more.

And about a million others.

Beliefs, Behaviors, and Superstitions

*If you happen to be writing a story where superstitions have merit, maybe skip this one.* Usually, inevitably, these evolve into character centerpieces and I can’t actually think of one off the top of my head that doesn’t become this beyond the ones we all know. A few comedic examples do come to mind:

The Magic Conch in “Club Spongebob” and the sea-bear-proof dirt circle in “The Camping Episode”

Dean Winchester’s fear and panic-driven actions in “Yellow Fever” and “Sam, Interrupted”

The references to the trolls that steal left-foot socks in How to Train Your Dragon

I’m not a fan of wasting time writing a religious character doing their religious thing when Plot Is Happening, but smaller things are what I’m talking about. Like them wearing a cross/rosary and touching it when they’re nervous. Having a specific off-beat prayer, saying, or expression because they don’t believe in cursing.

The classic ones like black cats, ladders, broken mirrors, salt, sidewalk cracks can all be funny. Athletes have plenty, too, and some of them, particularly in baseball culture, are a bit ridiculous. Not washing socks or uniforms, having a team idol they donate Double Bubble to and also rub their toes. A specific workout routine, diet, team morale dance.

Other things, too. A character who’s afraid to go back downstairs once the lights are off, or fear the basement or the backyard shed. Or they’re really put-off by this old family photo for no reason other than how glassy their eyes look and it’s creepy. They like crystals, dreamcatchers, star signs, tarot, or they absolutely do not under any circumstances.

They believe in all the tried and true ways of predicting the weather like a grizzled old sailor. They believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, skinwalkers, doppelgangers, fairies. They talk to the cat statue in their kitchen and named it Fudge Pop. They whisper to the spirit that possessed the fridge so it stops making all that racket, and half the time, it works every time. They wear yellow for good luck or carry a rabbit’s foot. They’re not religious at all but still throw prayers out to whoever’s listening because, you know, just in case. They sit by their window sill and talk to the moon and the stars and pretend like they’re in a music video when they’re driving through the city in the rain.

Haptics, Proxemics, and Kinesics

These are, for all you non-communication and psych majors out there, touch and physical contact, how they move, and how they move around other people.

Behold, your shipping fodder.

Two shining examples of proxemics in action are the famous “close talker” episode of Seinfeld (of which every communication major has been subjected to) and Castiel’s not understanding of personal space (and human chronemic habits) in Supernatural.

These are how a character walks, if they’re flat-footed, clumsy, or tip-toers. If they make a racket or constantly spook the other characters. If they fidget or can’t sit still in a seat for five seconds, if they like to sit backwards or upside down. How they touch themselves, if they do a lot of self-soothing maneuvers (hugging themselves, rubbing their arms, touching their face, drawing their knees up, holding their neck, etc) or if they don’t do any self-soothing at all.

This is how they shake hands, if they dance while they cook or work. It’s how much space they let themselves take up, if they man-spread or keep their limbs in closer. How close they stand to others or how far. If they let themselves be touched at all, or if they always have their skin covered. If they always have their back to a wall,  or are always making sure they know where the nearest exit is. If they make grand gestures when they talk and give directions. If they flinch from pats on the back or raised hands. If they lean away from loud voices or project their own. If they use their height to their advantage when arguing, puff their chest, square their shoulders, put their hands on their hips, or point fingers in accusation.

If they touch other characters as they pass by. If they’re huggers or victims of falling asleep on or near their comrades. If they must sleep facing the door, or with something solid behind them. If they can sleep in the middle of a party wholly uncaring. If they sleepwalk, sleeptalk, migrate across the bed to cuddle whoever’s nearest with no idea they’re doing it.

If they like to be held or like to hold others. If they hate being picked up and slung around or are touch-starved for it. If they like their space and stick to it or are more than happy to share.

Do they walk with grace, head held high and back straight? Or are they hunched over, head hung, watching their feet? Are they meanderers or speed-walkers? Do they cross their arms in front or lace their hands behind them? Do they bow to authority or meet that gaze head on?

I have heard that Prince Zuko, in Last Airbender, is usually drawn sleeping with his bad ear down when he doesn’t feel safe, like on his warship or anywhere in the Fire Nation, or on the road. He’s drawn on his other side once he joins the Gaang. In Dead Man’s Chest, just before Davy Jones drives the Flying Dutchman under the waves, two tentacles curl up and around the brim of his hat to keep it from blowing off in the water.

When they fight, do they attack first, or defend first? Do they touch other characters’ hair? Share makeup, share clothes? Touch their faces with boops or bonks or nuzzles and eskimo kisses? Do they crack their knuckles and necks and knees?

Do they stare in baffled curiosity at all the other characters wholly comfortable in each other's spaces because they can’t, won’t, or don’t see the point in all this nonsense? Do they say they’re happy on the outside, but are betrayed by their body language?

Voice

Whether or not to write an accent is entirely up to you. Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God writes dialogue in a vernacular specific to its characters. Westerners and southerners tend to be written with the southern drawl or dialect, ripe with stereotypical contractions. Be advised, however, that in attempt to write an accent to give your character depth, you could be instead turning off your audience who doesn’t have energy to decipher what they’re saying, or you went and wrote a racist stereotype.

Voice isn’t just accent and dialect, nor is it how it sounds, which falls more solidly under useful character descriptions. Voice for the sake of humanizing your characters concerns how they talk, how they convey their thoughts, and how they become distinct from other characters in dialogue and narration.

If you’re writing a narrative that hops heads and don’t want to include a big banner to indicate who’s talking at any given time, this is where voice matters. It is, I think, the least appreciated of all the possible traits to pay attention to.

First person narrators have the most flexibility here because the audience is zero degrees removed from their first-hand experiences. Their personality comes through sharply in how they describe things and what they pay attention to.

But it’s also in what similes and metaphors they use. I read a book that had an average (allegedly straight) male narrator going off and describing colors with types of flowers, some I had to look up because I just don’t know those off the top of my head. My immediate thought was either this character is a poorly written gay, or he’s a florist. Neither (allegedly), the writer was just being too specific.

Do they have crutch words they use? like, um, actually, so…, uh

Or repeat exclamations specific to them? yikes, yowzers, jeepers, jinkies, zoinks, balls, beans, d’oh!

Or idioms they’re fond of? Like a bat out of hell. Snowball’s chance.

Do they stutter when they’re nervous? Do they lose their train of thought and bounce around, losing other characters in the process? Do they have a non-Christian god they pray to and say something other than “thank God”? Are they from another country, culture, time period, realm, or planet with their own gods, beliefs, and idioms?

When they describe settings, how flowery is the language? Would this grizzled war hero use flowery language? How would he or she describe the color pink, versus a PTA mom? Do they use only a generic “blue, green, red” or do they really pay attention with “aquamarine, teal, emerald, viridian, vermillion, rose, ruby”?

How do this character’s hobbies affect how well they can describe dance moves, painting styles, car models, music genres?

This mostly matters when you’re head-hopping and the voice of the narrator serves to be more distinct, otherwise, what’s the point of head-hopping? Just use third-person omniscient.

If you really want to go wild, give a specific narrator unique syntax. Maybe one character is the ghost of Oscar Wild with never-ending run-on sentences. Just be sure to not go too overboard and compromise the integrity of your story.

In the book A Lesson Before Dying, a somewhat illiterate, underprivileged and undereducated minor has been given a mentor, a teacher, before they face the death penalty. At the end of the book, you read all of the letters they wrote to their teacher. There’s misspellings everywhere, almost no punctuation, and long, rambling sentences.

It’s heartbreaking. The subject matter is heavy and horrible, yes, but it’s the choice to write with such poor English that has a much bigger impact than perfect MLA format.

How to implement these details

Most of these, in the written medium, need only show up once or twice before your audience notices and wonders why they’re there. Most fall squarely under character design, which falls under exposition, and should follow all the exposition guidelines.

These details exist to be random and fluffy, but they can’t exist randomly within the narrative. If you want to have your character be superstitious, pick a relevant time to include that superstition.

Others, like ongoing speech habits or movements, still don’t overuse, especially if they’re unique. A character might like to sit backwards in a chair, but if you mention that they’re doing it every single time they sit down, your audience will wonder what’s so important and if the character is unwell.

And, of course, you can let these traits become thematically important, like a superstition being central to their personality or backstory or motivation. These all serve the same purpose of making your character feel like a real person instead of just a “character”.

Just think about tossing in a few random details every now and then and see what happens. One tiny sentence can take a background character and make them candidates for the eventual fandom’s fan favorite. Details like these turn your work from “This a story, and these are the characters who tell it” into “these are my characters, and this is their story.”

#writing advice #character design #writing tips #writing resources #exposition #writing tools #writing a book

[sinisterexaggerator]

Fair Recompense

Tech x Gen! Reader

Warnings: None. Small bit of fluff and a kiss.

Word count: 1.3k

Notes: I decided to write a series of "goodbye" ficlets where the reader takes / removes something from each of CF99 as they part ways, however this one, along with Wrecker, deviated a little bit from that path. In this case, the story is left open-ended.

Crosshair || Echo || Hunter || Wrecker

---

Luck was your business, born into a family who owned a bit of property on Ord Mantell. While most had to search out creative ways to eke a living, you had it made.

As the proud owner of a spacious hangar, it meant you did not have to want for much. Credits were earned not by hard work, but by allowing patrons to dock their starships; there were never enough empty bays to go around.

Still, you were fair; you did not make it a habit to overcharge. Not only that, but you offered droids, specialized equipment, and your mechanical expertise when needed to those who could use a helping hand to make repairs.

It was here that one particular man caught your eye. While his companions found better things to do, this clone remained.  Besides being one of several million replicas of a long-dead bounty hunter, he looked familiar to you. You vaguely recalled witnessing his chiseled mug somewhere on the HoloNet; he was plagued by notoriety for a Riot Race he had won back on Serolonis, yet you failed to mention it.

Tech was his name; he did not pay you any mind as you watched him work from day-to-day. You were careful not to get too close, hoping that he would not take notice of your studious appraisal – at least at first.

Then, you found it was hard to capture his attention, even if you desired to strike up a conversation. So caught up in his own affairs, he barely seemed to register your presence except when rent was coming due.

You asked about his travels, and what he liked to do for fun. You offered him fresh Jawa Juice, and even tried to inquire about his ship.

Answers were scant, his patience sparse when it came to what he perhaps thought was frivolous small talk that served no purpose, or so it seemed. You had become so enthralled with him that your heart felt heavy in your chest with each rejection, even if it was only something you yourself perceived.  

Determination took hold as you decided to attempt a different tactic, hearing that he would soon take off on another mission for Ciddarin Scaleback. Word traveled fast in these parts, and rumors had begun to circulate; Tech was wanted by the Empire, but as far as you were concerned, his secret was safe with you.

“Tech?” you asked, more so to alert him to your approach. He turned; he was undeniably handsome, no matter that his gorgeous brown eyes rarely lifted from off his datapad.

“Yes, what is it?” he questioned offhand, fiddling with some unknown sequence of code that was reflected within the transparisteel lenses of his round goggles.

“I hear you are heading out tomorrow,” you remarked, twisting your foot against the flattop of your hangar; you kept your hands behind your back on purpose.

“Do not worry, I shall settle our bill before we vacate the premises,” he reassured you dryly. He did not give you a second thought, or even a second glance.

“I’m not worried,” you shyly stated, admiring the distinctive features of his face. “I want to give you something,” you timidly informed him.

Tech’s forefinger pressed against the bridge of his eyewear, pushing it snug against his nose. Finally, he looked at you, amber-colored eyes even more beautiful up close, or as close as you dared.

“I do not understand,” he replied, his tone neither harsh nor excited. It was an honest declaration on his end; suddenly your palms were sweating, your hold loosening on the item stowed away just out of sight.

Tech arched a brow, taking note of the minor change in your appearance with muted curiosity, yet he could not keep from adding his two credits. “You appear to be ‘under the weather,’” he said laconically, Tech’s tone changing to emphasize the usage of this specific idiom. “Perhaps you could do with some rest.”

“I’m— I’m fine, really, I—” You bit your lip, gazing at him as if there was a gulf the size of Yavin Prime between you; you felt like you might cry, however asinine the notion. “I brought you a laser-caliper, since you keep having to borrow mine,” you whispered.

“Why?” he asked; it was a sincere question, Tech unsure how he had earned such a gift when he had done nothing to warrant this show of kindness.

You brought the small tool out from behind your back, fiddling with it in your hands. You hoped your answer would be good enough to satisfy him. “Because— because you need one of your own,” you humbly offered.

“And what do you want in exchange?” The query baffled you; you had not thought that far ahead. Should you want something? All you had wished to do was make his life a little easier.

You glanced about, anxious, and suddenly unsure. Was this somehow too forward? Was it obvious you had grown to enjoy his company, however short he was with you? Were you making a fool out of yourself?

“To see your eyes,” you blurted out. The man paused any movement, his attractive countenance, as always, an unreadable mask of what you assumed to be near-cold indifference.

“I beg your-?”

“-Please,” you interrupted, your voice laced with desperation. The word had exited too quickly from your lips; you felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry—” you corrected, not knowing which way to turn, which way to walk in order to rid yourself of this overtly embarrassing predicament.

“The recompense you have requested seems fair,” Tech asserted plainly.

You mildly gasped, a small intake of breath that caught in your throat. The tall, handsome clone strode forward, holding out his hand to take the laser-caliper.

“And a kiss,” you added, too brazen for your own good; you presumed you had pushed your luck too far. Still, you waited, your wincing becoming more defined the longer his silence stretched between you both.

“Fine,” he answered tersely, causing your eyes to widen and expand. He stood before you, inactive, delaying his departure back to where the Marauder camped, eager for his tending.

Slowly, thoughtfully, you extended your arm, gifting to him the laser-caliper you had promised. He took it from you, taking the time to inspect it before squarely staring through to your soul.

“Well?” he asked, both hands full up with his datapad and the tool now in his possession. Nervously, you searched his face, then you sought to do what had previously been thought unthinkable.

Meticulously, and with the utmost care, you lifted and removed Tech’s goggles from off his nose. Once loosed from his ears, you were deliberate with your intentions; you made sure not to pull a single strand of his curly hair.

Though you now appeared mostly as a blur, Tech could still make out your expression. He noted you looked pleased, and in turn he felt slightly amused, his feelings marked by the smallest upturn of his shapely lips.

“Now?” you asked, afraid he might change his mind at any moment.

“Now is as good a time as any,” he responded, Tech going so far as to tilt his body forward, his mouth mere centimeters from your own.

You craned your neck, taking a new liberty, your free hand meeting the turn of his cheek. You cradled his firm jaw in the crook of your palm as you unabashedly lingered, pressing into the soft flesh of his downy lips.

Then, he surprised you; he had clipped his datapad to his belt in one fluid motion, the backs of his gloved fingers tracing the curved line of your jaw. His caress extended from the base of your ear to the start of your soft neck; you could not help but to relax at his welcomed touch.

Your eyes closed as he attempted to deepen your kiss, the sound of your heartbeat drumming in your ears as you allowed Tech to take the lead.

It would last longer than you had ever hoped for, stealing your breath away. Once you found the wherewithal to break free of your shared embrace, Tech gave you the equivalent of a knowing smirk.

“Truth be told, I thought you would never ask.”

#Tech x Reader #TBB Tech #Bad Batch Tech #Tech #Gender Neutral #Clone Wars #Clones #Fluff #Fanfiction #Tech x You #the bad batch #cf99 #clone force 99 #TCW #My writing

[hannibals-favourite-meal]

I’ve been on a bit of a walking dead kick recently and fell in love with your writing. I was wondering if you would do a fluffy Daryl x reader. Where reader has been part of the group from the start and is super outgoing but is almost always with Daryl. They do everything together and he’s trying to work up the nerve to confess (maybe around Alexandria). Then one day she goes “how come you never kiss me?” And he’s so confused and she’s all like I mean we’re dating aren’t we? Could be a cute idea?

A Long Time Coming

Daryl Dixon x plus size reader

Daryl has loved you since the beginning; with all your softness and beauty, you always felt unobtainable to the hunter but as it turns out, he had nothing to worry about, because you were already his all along

Warnings: A big old load of fluff, Daryl’s usual angst and he’s a little dumb (is that news to anyone), implied smut

WC: 1.3k

Minors DNI

Spring hit Alexandria hard. Flowers popped up everywhere and it seemed that the forest around the township was coming back to life. But for Daryl, that meant he had to get back to work.

The sun was just barely over the horizon as the hunter quietly slipped from his home, crossbow slung over his shoulder. By his count, the scant deer population should be returning to Virginia about now and their meat stores have run dangerously low by the winter months.

He did like the silence of the early morning though. Everything was still and if Daryl closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could pretend that the world was back to normal and he had just woken up from a fucked up nightmare. 

The houses around him were still dark as he walked the main road towards the gate. Well, all except one. He knew that he shouldn’t bother you, you were probably asleep on your couch again. But he really just wanted to walk in and take you into his arms and fall back to sleep with you.

It was a habit he had developed long before they found safety behind Alexandria’s walls. He was the natural protector of the group even if it was a reluctant roll at first, but he had always had this urge to constantly make sure that you were safe. If he couldn’t see you, his stomach would drop and his veins fill with dread as he imagined the terrible things that might have happened to you. Yet as soon as you would trot back into his line of sight, all of that fear was washed away in an instant. 

Daryl knew what he felt was love during one night at the prison. He had been on night watch in one of the guard towers when you sleepily stumbled into the room, blanket wrapped around your shoulders, a pillow tucked under your arm and only one of your feet had a sock on it. Without any words, you plopped down next to him and cuddled into his broad shoulder before falling asleep.

You were his sunshine and he would do everything in his power to keep it that way, even if that meant hiding his feelings for you. In Daryl’s mind, there was absolutely no way that you would want him, he was far too broken, far too old. But still he yearned.

With dragging feet, he continued to walk past your home. He kept his head down, his greasy hair which was long overdue for a haircut falling over his eyes as if the dark strands could shield him from the ache in his chest that he always seemed to get when he thought of you. 

Abraham opened the gate for him without a word and Daryl slipped quietly into the wilderness, determined to run from his feelings, at least for a while.

——————

“Daryl Dixon you are a god!” Your squeal broke said man from his daze. The cigarette he had been smoking was now mostly ash and hung precariously between his thick fingers. You stood below him on the street, looking up at him as he sat on his porch.

“What’d I do now?” He answered sharply, eyes darting away from you since you had decided that today was the day you would wear the most distracting outfit in the world (one of his flannels and tight jeans). 

Your smile somehow got even brighter and you took that as your cue to skip your way up the steps to his home and plop down beside him on the small bench. Heat exploded all over Daryl’s body as your thick thigh pressed against the side of his leg. Your arms wound around his bicep so you could prop your chin up on the hard muscle. 

“You brought home the biggest buck I’ve ever seen! And now we all get to be well fed for a good while. You’re my hero.” You cooed. Daryl felt his brain short-circuit and, he hated to admit it, his pants tighten at the sight of your gorgeous eyes fixated on his face as you called him your hero.

Clearing his throat, he spoke with a slightly shaken voice. “It was nothin. Jus doin ma job.” You tutted and gave him a stern look while squeezing his upper arm.

“Stop it. You did good today, just like everyday. You deserve some celebration for all the amazing things you do for us, for me.” And his heart stopped. The way you held onto him, the way you looked at him, the way you spoke to him, it was all too much. The urge to confess to you how he truly felt was becoming an overwhelming need. It grew like a wave, slowly getting larger and larger until it was like a tsunami.

Your gaze softened as you looked up at the hunter. The wave was beginning to crest. A hand unwrapped itself from his bicep and was placed firmly on his chest, right above his heart. “Daryl?”

His words were caught in his throat, he couldn’t answer you so he nodded instead. You took a deep breath before speaking again. “Why don’t you ever kiss me?”

The wave broke, shattering against the shoreline of his heart. “What?” It came out as more of an exhale than words but obviously you understood him because your fingers curled into his shirt and you looked away as if ashamed.

“Well, we’ve been together for such a long time and you’ve never even tried to kiss me or initiate physical contact. And I know you don’t really like touching people but you always let me hug you and hold your hand. So I was wondering why you have never kissed me.” You spoke quickly in an almost panicked manner, the words falling from your lips in a torrent.

Daryl was frozen. “We-we’re together?” Your head tilted cutely as you regarded him.

“Yes? Daryl, we’ve been together since the farm. Remember, I told you that I loved you after you got shot and then I held you all night.” The memory slapped him in the face. You were right, that did happen but evidently, he forgot because of the copious amount of pain medication he had been on at the time.

“Fuck.” He growled. There was only a moment of hesitation as the air between you went still. His eyes dropped to your lips, then traveled back up to meet your gaze and then he kissed you. 

Your lips were softer than he had ever imagined. They tasted faintly of your homegrown tea and honey you farmed yourself. With his free hand, he cupped your soft jaw, his thumb brushing against your full cheek. His body was alight with electricity and a little bit of self-deprecation. How could he have forgotten you proclaiming your love for him?

He could kiss you forever but soon enough, you pulled back slightly so you could catch your breath. But Daryl needed to keep touching you. His own lips travelled down the length of your throat to the base of your neck. “D-Daryl.” You clutched at him.

He didn’t stop, he couldn’t stop, not now, not when he finally has you in his arms. 

“Jesus! Get a room!” You shot apart, startled by the sudden voice. Carl had his arms crossed as he glared at you both, a stern look on his face. “Nobody wants to see that.” He spat.

You rolled your eyes while you stood, pulling Daryl to his feet beside you. “Maybe we will.” You stuck your tongue out at the teen and he responded likewise as you walked away and into Daryl’s home. 

“We will?” The hunter asked quietly. You looked back at him from over your shoulder with a smoldering look.

“It’s been a long time coming, Dixon.” Daryl tripped over his own feet as you led him back to his room.

TWD Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Join my taglist!

All works

@im-a-slut-for-fluff @alexxavicry @ravenwings73 @avada-kedavra-bitch-187 @silverfire475 @psychadelichues @mvyalx @faefanatic @evansqueen54

TWD

@Becausedarylsaidso @hopefulatrocity

Daryl Dixon 

@minervadashwood @livingdeadblondequeen @honkytonkbabe @nini-trash-forever @itsbqueenthings @blasianbitch @springdandelixn @l9ckheed @tinyinfluencerharmony @goobysgoobers @capsheadquaters @stabmemaybe @marvel-mistress @bking4000 @graciespies @ruinedbythehobbit @sydsicr

#daryl dixon x plus size reader #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon x you #daryl dixon x y/n #daryl x plus size reader #daryl x reader #daryl x you #daryl x y/n #daryl dixon #daryl x female reader #female reader #plus size reader #fluff #reader insert #request #anon

[outtoshatter]

Author spotlight of the week: @aurevell! They have heaps of fics to choose from!

Under 10k:

Returning the Favor | T | 5k tags: established relationship, same age Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski, fluff, Stiles doesn't know about werewolves Summary: Stiles pays a nighttime visit to his boyfriend in secret, or so he thinks. Unfortunately, the Hale family has keener ears than he realizes.

When Derek peers down into the dark, he finds the worst thing imaginable: his boyfriend, scaling the side of the house like some deranged cat burglar. "What are you doing here?" Derek hisses.

Burial Rituals | G | 4k tags: necromancer Stiles, cursed Derek, meet-cute Summary: The necromancer freezes halfway over the fence, stuttering to a halt the second Derek flashes his red eyes. It’s an awkward pose to hold: leg hiked up over the waist-high bars, hands gripping the rail for balance. The fence’s wrought-iron spears dig into his calf a bit as he settles, clearly caught off guard.

“Uh,” he says lamely, his face pale in the scant moonlight. “Shit.”

Derek guards an abandoned cemetery. Stiles is the necromancer trying to break in.

Sugar in my Coffee | G | 3k tags: no werewolves, established relationship, domestic fluff Summary: Derek’s not a morning person. Stiles would live on sugar if he could.

Lessons in Catiquette | T | 3k tags: creature Stiles, slice of life, pack bonding Summary: The pack’s resident werecat is kind of a mystery to Derek. Luckily, Stiles offers one-on-one tutoring.

It May Simply Lie in Wait | G | 5k tags: getting together, declarations of love, magical Stiles Summary: “This place is haunted as hell,” one boy says under his breath.

The house remembers itself, letting out a subtle upstairs creak to let them know what they’re in for. They enter anyway, inspecting its shamefully crumbled furnishings, running fingers over its tattered walls, crouching to peer at the ceiling tiles fallen on its floor, and the house—

The house does not chase them away.

Years after the fire, Derek and Stiles return to the Hale House. It isn’t sure how it feels about this.

Stories Over 10k:

The Only Thing Left | T | 13k tags: angst, no werewolves, creature Derek Summary: “You don’t need air,” Stiles echoes. “You swim. That doesn’t tell me much. What are you?”

Derek stares. He slowly lifts his shoulders and drops them back into the water.

Or, Stiles meets a stranger at the spring outside of town.

Where we Both Could Live | M | 16k tags: shy Derek, meet cute, friends to lovers Summary: Derek’s having a hard time falling asleep in his noisy new apartment.

His next-door neighbor, who always seems to be talking or singing, is surprisingly helpful with that problem.

The Third Sacrifice | T | 21k tags: magical Stiles, dark fairy tale elements, human sacrifice Summary: Stiles can see the writing on the wall. Everyone knows the Stilinskis are cursed, or magic, or both. He knows he’ll be picked as the third sacrifice—the one that dies for the sake of the harvest. But he doesn’t intend to let some ancient god rip his heart out, not if magic can help it.

If only Derek, his estranged best friend, would stop hounding him about his plans to escape.

A Badge for Everything | T | 11k tags: good alpha Derek, BAMF Stiles, boy scout Stiles, getting together Summary: Stiles Stilinski is the only loser left in a pack full of wolves who’d do anything to leave their loser days behind.

(Everything’s the same, but Stiles is a boy scout. That’s it. That’s the story.)

The Beginner's Guide to Everyday Magic | T | 29k | 8 chapters tags: magical Stiles, Stiles is pushed out of the pack, fluff, angst, Studio Ghibli vibes Summary: When the latest threat sweeps into Beacon Hills, Derek decides that the very-much-human Stiles needs to be severed from the pack for his own safety. But when the ritual goes unexpectedly wrong, Stiles finds himself alone—and unable to reach out for help when he needs it most.

Cue a retreat to his mom’s old house, where he finds that magic is more real than he ever could have imagined.

Go check out aurevell's AO3 page, and don't forget to mind the tags, leave a kudos and maybe even a comment!

#sterek #sterek fandom #teen wolf #derek hale #stiles stilinski #author spotlight #aurevell #spotlight saturday

[yeyinde]

Just saw a TikTok where a kid send their favorite stuff animal to his dad who's deployed. Just imagine this happening with 141 🥺 (I'm actually sending this to my favorite writers hoping I can get a cute scenario 😅)

I admire your honesty lmao. So. Here ya go:

—Gen. Reader (but tbh, *you're* a very minor part of this). Child is not named or gendered, either, and can easily be read as adopted instead of bio (with cheeky little hints geared toward this). Fluff(ish).

—I'm not really sure if this constitutes as cute but I wanted to try and write something that was extremely vague but also incredibly...not vague. Transparent, almost. This is that. A thought experiment. Enjoy.

On the surface, the package isn't anything special. Nondescript beige. Square. It's a bit beat up from its journey, bruised and dented like most boxes shipped halfway across the world tend to be, and much too light to be a care pack. 

He sits in his assigned cot with a heavy sigh that creaks through aching bones and tender muscles, eyes already half mast from a day staring at sand dunes and trying to divine answers in gunpowder, reading bullets like tea leaves. Sleep isn't beckoning, it's screaming. Howling loud in his ears and knocking all his thoughts asunder. 

He has half a mind to tuck the box aside, lay down with his boots still on, and sleep until it doesn't make his head split at the seams to keep his eyes open. It's needed, too. They head out tomorrow. Sure, firm, and bound in brass. An unavoidable calamity as they chase shadows with grasping hands, fingers always a hair too short to reach. He might, yet, he thinks, but the box is nearly weightless in his hands, and despite its featherlight heft in his lap, it calls to him. 

If he waits, it'll never leave the sanctity of this safe house. It'll get lost in the shuffle. In the tumult tomorrow morning, a breath before dawn, will surely bring. 

So, he opens it. 

Clumsy fingers, numbed from curling around the butt of a gun all day, paw at the tape until it unravels in a messy cluster, sticking to the palm of his hand. He presses it to the side before slipping his fingers through the flaps. 

It might be a letter asking for a divorce. He thinks about laughing, maybe, but the humour is bereft of reprieve. 

You'd hit him, he thinks. Smack him upside the head for the very thought. 

(Maybe dislodge the monsters in there, too.)

But when he peels back the lips, and peers inside, it isn't a letter. It's a bear.  

Pocket sized, he remembers saying. A negotiation tactic in the middle of a toy aisle to keep the tears from flooding over a glistening lash line. It was as effective as he expected it to be, but the compromise, however shaky, was reinforced with the promise of McDonald's if they didn't cause a scene in the middle of the shops. Sniffles meet his ears still, but they slow, considering the offer. Head tilts adorably to the side (ladies in the aisle over coo). Then, sticky, wet fingers slapped his palm. Deal made. Done. 

Done. 

The bartering tool—a subpar toy for less than twenty dollars in lieu of a roaring dinosaur that was nearly seventy (Jesus fuckin' Christ)—becomes a reluctant ally against a set of imagined enemies, and then trusted friend. A companion, one carried everywhere—the bath, school, bed—and its loved state is shown through its disarray. Carried in patches of scant fur, in a nose that lost its glossy shine from too many kisses at night and in the morning, and just because ("because he's cute and he needs a kiss!"), and from rips and tears, and clumped cotton when it was hung to dry lopsidedly after spending a day at the beach. It's in the missing button on the little dungarees it wears, and the loose threads that split the seams. 

It's just a bear, but—

"If anything happens to Mr Bear, I will die, dad!" 

Little feet pounding the pavement, frantically searching for the fallen friend who slipped from the basket after a walk to the park. Eyes wide, wild, and filled with tears. Head swivelling in all directions. 

"Why will you die, exactly?" He hedges, brows drawing taut. He's not versed in this well enough to know if this is alarming yet. Maybe. He thinks it might be, has a nagging suspicion that it is, but you offer a shrug in response, and he's calmed a bit by your nonreaction. Normal, then, he thinks, and turns back the way they came, peering at the grass for any signs of an ugly little bear. 

"Because!" It's snapped in that waspish huff only children can muster—the one that says, duh! despite the absurdity of it all. "We share a heart. That's what mum says. And if a cat got him and he's all chewed up, and—"

You have the wherewithal to be a little bit sheepish when he turns to you, mouthing the words back. 

"It was—," you start, shrugging. A touch embarrassed. A little flustered. It suits you, he finds. You wear it like an endearing garment. "It was just a joke, but kids take everything so literally, and so now—"

"Mind, body, heart, and soul!" 

More little stomps. A pout forms. Wobbles. He bends down before the tears fall, gentle as he thinks he can be (and gentler some, because if parenthood has taught him anything, it's that his patience for a little being that picked him, that looked at him and said, you, you, you; I want you, is infinite) he places his hands on trembling shoulders, and tries to soothe the pain that etches in glossy eyes. Hand bearish and uncertain, but quivering from holding back, from offering nothing in this moment except liquid adoration and unfettered devotion. He feels it writ across the lines in his face.

"It's alright," he gruffs, and then hides a wince when the boney, fragile shoulders beneath his hands tense, shake. Soft as smoke, he adds: "we'll find the bastard—"

"Ahem!" 

"—the bear."

A sniffle. "His name is Mister Bear and I love him to the moon and back."

It melts him in ways he never expected. Unthaws tundric parts of himself he thought were lost to permafrost; empty and void of life. It cracks, shatters. He moves, tugging the little body wracked with sobs tight to his chest as if he means to tuck them between his rib cage where they'll stay, a little bird safe and sound and untouched by the uglier parts of the world that wants to maim and hurt. Gentle shushes fall from his lips. Clumsy affection he doesn't know how to give but will learn if it means he can whisper the same words—to the moon and back—until his throat rots and his words turn to ash. Until his bones are brittle and weary, and the earth reclaims his life. 

He says them, then, stilted and unsure, but firm. Heavy. 

"Love you, little bird," he rasps, lips pressing tight to a plump cheek. "Now let's find that Bastar—" ahem! "—bear. That bear. Okay?"

The bastard was in a pile of rubbish by the side of the road. His ear was lost to the many washes he went through to rid the stench of trash and cat piss from his fur. 

You'd scrubbed the bear in the sink before, it's little dungarees hung up to dry in the garden. He startled you, then, when his hands wrapped around your middle, tugging you tight to his chest. Your ring caught, cutting a clean stripe through the one beady it had left. 

He paid it little mind at the time, too busy nipping the nape of your neck as you offered weak protests that fell apart when you arched into him. Pretty and wanting. 

"Maybe another?" He'd rasped into your ear, eyes drifting down to the ugly, sodden bear in the sink. "Call up the stork and have one delivered tomorrow, mm?"

"You're ridiculous," you huffed but it wasn't no. 

And it wasn't meant to be, either. He was called away three days later, the words murmured out while you stitched up the misshapen mess of a teddy bear in the living room. Patient to a fault, you'd simply smiled at him, taut and painful around the edges, and said, be safe. 

The announcement of his departure wasn't nearly as smooth, though. A tantrum, fraught with heavy sobs and howled no's seemed to threaten to topple the house down over them all. 

But you'd spoken words he couldn't hear, and moon-shaped eyes turned to him, fogged over with tears. There was acceptance buried in the webbing nebula, but it was shaky. Tenuous. 

Childish hands hold him tight before he leaves. "Mr Bear always keeps me safe.

The sentiment was overlooked at the time. A passing murmur that was lost in the shuffle of packing, leaving. Kisses and whispered worries in the middle of the night. 

But he thinks about it now, and tries not to laugh. 

At the bottom of the box is a note. He'll keep you safe, too! Love you to the moon and back.

He tucks the bear into his breast pocket where it'll be the safest on this journey, and wonders what you thought about the whole mess. It makes his lips curl. 

Halfway across the world, and they still make him smile. 

#feels like im reinforcing bad behaviour #but #ahhhh well #no names are used in this #captain john price x reader #john price x reader

[petrichorium]

BAM: Flower Crowns

in which gojo satoru, your beloved king and betrothed, knows his time is best spent in your company riling you up.

gojo satoru x fem!reader

word count: 2.5k reader: fem (she/her pronouns, fem terms, fem clothing including dresses) tags: fluff, royal au, childhood friends to lovers, once again hes pushy n the reader's a lil bit hesitant but hed stop if she rlly wanted, vague references to violence note: see i was gonna do a few lil scenes but the first one got away from me.... but basically the period of him courting the reader (which full disclosure isnt technically courting bc that should be happening before one proposes but this occurs while theyre engaged bc Gojo Didnt Get That Memo but i digress) is just him being WILDLY inappropriate for cultural standards, everyone silently pitying the reader, and the reader having a whole ton of conflicting emotions but ultimately rlly liking it 😭😭😭

usurper!gojo tag || masterlist

“they say you’re inhuman, you know.” you’ve finished the flower chain. his eyes don’t stray from your fingers as they nimbly connect the two ends and tie them together with a final stem into a thick circlet. “they said it a lot that night. they said you were the gods’ fury made mortal.”

he snickers. “how dramatic.”

you lift yourself up onto your thighs, shuffle towards him further and reach out, and he bows his head to let you place your creation upon it. your hand trails down when you let go, drifting over his ear and along his jaw as he lifts his head from its bow to look at you. you certainly mean to pull it away but his hand beats you to it, darting up to keep your palm against his cheek as you settle back down on the backs of your heels.

“i know why they came to that conclusion,” you say. “you terrified me when i saw you.”

“did you think me inhuman?”

you hum, eyes tracing along the band of flowers now gracing his forehead, falling to rest on his hand over yours. “no. never. monstrous, perhaps. odious. but very human.”

Satoru finds you out on the grounds, tucked away at the edge where the manicured gardens give way to rough forest. The weather has been turbulent, but for the first time since the coup there’s enough sun to stand being outside the castle longer than a scant few minutes. You’d said that morning that you planned to venture out, now that early spring flowers were beginning to bloom.

You’re cloaked in heavy furs, layers of skirts and wool protecting you from the cold, all elaborate garments that he’s gifted you. It's adorable (satisfying) to see you dressed up in his presents. He tells you as much when he finds you, delves into the treeline long before you see him so that he can sneak up upon you and whisper it into your ear to make you yelp and jump away.

“You mongrel,” you accuse with wide eyes and a hand on your heart as you work to steady your breathing. “Have you no respect for your future wife?”

“Ah, she admits it readily now? Progress.”

Your face twists as if someone has struck you. He chooses to ignore it and drops to sit sprawled out on the grass, beckoning unabashedly for you to join him on his lap. You won’t relent, he’s well aware, but he’ll have his desires known either way.

“Presumptuous,” you say. He'd die a happy man if you kissed him as many times as you called him that, but in lack of the former he’ll be content with the latter.

“Sit with me, my queen. I've missed you.”

“I am not yet your queen, Satoru,” you correct out of obligation. “You saw me an hour ago, we ate together.”

“Ah, but every moment apart is agony.” Satoru wonders if you know how serious he is beneath the breezy tone. From the way you wrinkle your nose, he doubts it.

“You have a meeting with your advisors now. You should not be out here.”

He pouts. “But you’re out here, and if I have to spend more time with those old fools than you today then I'll throw a tantrum tomorrow.”

You roll your eyes, let out a sigh that sounds long-suffering, but you shift your skirts and ease yourself down to sit gracefully before him with your legs tucked next to you. His threats aren’t empty and you know it.

“Fine.” You look down, as if inspecting the grass, spreading fingers along the blades as you begin to pluck wildflowers. Then you pause and glance up at him. “Remove those… oh, whatever they are. Let me see your eyes unhindered, at least.”

“Anything for my darling bride,” he coos at you, immediately doing as asked. He’d have done so anyway, if only to watch you lose yourself in staring when he reveals his eyes, catching yourself once he blinks and snapping your head back to the ground to busy yourself once more with plucking your blooms.

“How do you see a thing through those,” you grumble lowly, certainly just to break yourself from being flustered. It works too well; Satoru immediately jumps on the chance you’ve given him.

“Would you like to try them?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for a response, mind already conjuring an image of you draped in every golden chain and precious stone gracing his chambers.

He removes them from his face, pulling the chain from around his neck, and swiftly transfers them to yours before you can refuse—tilts your head up to look at him and tugs your hair out of the way with deft fingers, eases the gilded extremities onto your ears and lets the pads of his digits linger on either side of your head before pulling away. Pausing in your work and tilting your head back down to peer at him over the top of the frames, you blink at him owlishly from behind the glass, unused to staring through it. Precious, he thinks, and wishes briefly to kiss you—but he has to be smart about kissing you, calculating. Too much attention too fast and you have a tendency to pull away from him like the ebbing tide. It's agony for him, wanting nothing more than to hold you as much as he wishes, but as much as he wants there’s very little he hates more than when you tense under his touch and turn away from him.

“They suit you better,” he tells you, because they do. You look good adorned with jewelry of his design. “You oughtn’t wear them in public, though, or all the courtiers will be scrambling to get themselves a pair. Just for me, I suppose.”

Your nose wrinkles at the mention of your newfound influence, eyes darting to the side and lower lip pouting, an expression that makes him cast aside all his convoluted schemes to ease you into his affections. He leans down to peck at your lips, kiss away the pout, gone before you can complain. It’s fast enough that you don’t immediately recoil and give him a lecture on decorum, or perhaps you’re simply getting more used to it.

Satoru’s attention doesn’t stray as you return to your work. You’ve gravitated towards flowers with long stems, he realizes; collected them in a pile on your skirts, which you seem to have deemed large enough as you pick a notably long one up and begin to string them together in a chain. You don’t bother removing his glasses either, simply allowing them to slide down to the end of your nose. The golden chain clinks softly with every movement of your head.

He wonders when you learned to make them. You’ve always been so careful about the skills you acquire, but he thinks perhaps your mother might have taught you. Or his aunt, for how much she loves flowers, and for how much of her time as queen (he’s been told anyway) was spent doing such frivolous things as making daisy chains in the gardens. You’re so very meticulous with your actions, every choice carefully constructed. He knows you’ve been doing that less and less around him—perhaps it’s finally sinking in that he cares very little about your actions, that he finds everything you do to be enthralling. More likely you’ve exhausted yourself trying. You’ve certainly exhausted yourself attempting to rein him in, though he’d like to believe you’re beginning to allow yourself to enjoy his antics.

Posterity, he thinks, will paint him as you do—bold, brash, uncaring of tradition, unapologetic in pursuit of a woman far beneath his status. There are a great many reasons you hesitate to marry him, he doesn’t blame you for your doubt. Certainly when he was younger he’d never imagined himself the type of man you’d end up betrothed to; he couldn’t count on his fingers the number of more suitable matches for the both of you in the eyes of society, but whereas in his youth he might silence himself and go along with the whims of his advisors he’s lost all sense of decency now. His close call with death and the coup he’d spent years preparing for had rid him of any desire to compromise, and he stands now in a position where he can certainly refuse the very people who once held sway over him. And you appreciate all of that, he knows it. It’s one of the reasons he adores you so; beneath your veneer of decorum lies not a lady but a queen with desires all too different from those you’ve been forced to portray. He’s always known this, and to an extent he can’t find it within himself to regret the events that have led him to where he is today because if they hadn’t transpired he wouldn’t have you.

Satoru remembers a time in his youth when his mother made a passing mention that she enjoyed a certain hairstyle on young girls—two long braids, tied with ribbons. For months afterward all the upcoming court ladies wore it diligently, yourself included. He found it painful to see on you until he discovered that they made a lovely way to pull your nose from a book and fix your attention onto him, and that he could tug on the ribbons at the ends until they unfurled and he could pocket them to return later by tying them around the necks of one of his hunting dogs and sending it after you.

(If he were the kind of man you’d marry without hesitation he’d feel remorse for his childhood actions. Instead he’s the man you will marry, and he plots how to steal one of your hair ribbons again and return it in the same way. For memory’s sake.)

“They say you’re inhuman, you know.” You’ve finished the flower chain. His eyes don’t stray from your fingers as they nimbly connect the two ends and tie them together with a final stem into a thick circlet. “They said it a lot that night. They said you were the Gods’ fury made mortal.”

He snickers. “How dramatic.”

You lift yourself up onto your thighs, shuffle towards him further and reach out, and he bows his head to let you place your creation upon it. Your hand trails down when you let go, drifting over his ear and along his jaw as he lifts his head from its bow to look at you. You certainly mean to pull it away but his hand beats you to it, darting up to keep your palm against his cheek as you settle back down on the backs of your heels.

“I know why they came to that conclusion,” you say. “You terrified me when I saw you.”

“Did you think me inhuman?”

You hum, eyes tracing along the band of flowers now gracing his forehead, falling to rest on his hand over yours. “No. Never. Monstrous, perhaps. Odious. But very human.”

“You wound me. I might die by your cruelty.”

“Die, then.”

Satoru makes a show of it just for you. Falling back to sprawl on the ground, he gags violently, stabbing at his own heart with an invisible knife and convulsing with his tongue hanging out until you shriek for him to stop, voice filled with giggles. He takes that as a cue to still, to fall limp as if truly dead with eyes fluttering shut—then beckons you closer.

“I need…” he rasps out, barely audible.

You indulge him and do so. “My king?”

“…iss…”

“What?”

“True love’s kiss,” he repeats louder, pursing his lips expectantly. He doesn’t truly think you’ll do it, and you don’t—you lean in like you will, but bypass his lips entirely and bite his cheek instead.

He yelps, just for you, just so you’ll feel accomplished. And so he can see your smile, hear the smugness in your voice as you say, “It’s a miracle, you’ve come back to life.”

But he doesn’t give you weakness for free. No, he snakes his arms around your waist before you can pull back, and uses the grip to all but pull you on top of his lap as he sits up. Perhaps it’s his lack of insistence on you giving him a kiss, or perhaps he’s simply started to break down your walls enough, but whichever it is you don’t protest. Instead you seem to find flaws in the flower crown you’ve gifted him. Your lips purse, hands coming up to fiddle with the blooms. He realizes that he can’t stand a single moment of your attention on anything other than him, even if your fingers are nearly tangled in his hair.

“If I return to court with a crown of flowers made by my lover still on my head, do you suppose they’ll think me less inhuman?”

Your face falls at the suggestion, eyes widening in mortification. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“It's far more comfortable than that heavy gold. And I happen to personally adore the artisan who made it, so—”

“I don't trust you anymore, take it off! You’ve lost the right!” You attempt to remove it, but he reacts with the very reflexes that make him so inhuman, uses that monstrous height to lift his head higher than you can reasonably reach, though it doesn’t stop you from trying.

“It'd be rude of me to refuse a gift, my queen.” Laughing, Satoru holds you back with ease, eager for the excuse to put his hands all over you while you’re too worked up to feel self-conscious.

“Not yet,” you wail. “Not your queen yet, you knave!”

“Mine either way, though,” he replies smugly with a playful tug to the chain you still wear. “Covered in my presents. It’s only fair that I get to display a token you’ve given me, no?”

“No, it is not. You’ve stolen all of my outerwear and replaced it with these, I've no other choice. But you will not return to your advisors displaying that—that childish trifle, I won't allow it, you will not expose to the court that I made such a thing for yo—oh!”

He tackles you to the ground, careful not to even knock the wind out of you, though he steals your breath the moment you’re safe in his arms by pulling you into a kiss to keep you from talking further. He’d intended it to be faster, but his nose crashes into the tinted spectacles still upon your face and he’s filled with such ardor that he can’t help but deepen it.

Your hand slides behind his head, threads through his hair. He feels you snap a single stem between your fingers. The crown comes apart just as he takes a moment to pull away, and the flowers fall to scatter in the grass beneath him, a halo around your head. There’s a little smile on your face, your chest huffs with quiet laughter, and your palm slides down to the base of his hair. You use that hold and your other hand, which has fisted his tunic, to yank him down and connect your lips again.

Above, a cloud passes. Satoru can feel the sun shine warm on his back, hear the wind in the budding trees, smell the bite of melting snow and the petals of your wildflowers, yet there’s nothing that could distract him from the feeling of your kiss. His eyes close, he pushes closer though he hardly needs to with the way you still tug on his shirt. His arm comes up to brace next to your head, just to make sure he’s holding his own weight rather than crushing you, and the other leaves your waist to trail down your thigh and grip beneath your knee, shifting your leg to hook around him. If your mouth weren’t occupied he thinks you’d be lecturing him for such an obscene display in a place where anyone could stumble upon you—so he does well to keep it occupied, refusing to part even as your grip on his tunic loosens and he’s forced to grab your newly freed hand to pin it to the ground with fingers intertwined.

It's the first time you’ve ever kissed him. He already plots how to push you into doing it again when he finally pulls away, eyes locked on your swollen lips.

#gojo x reader #gojo x you #gojo x y/n #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk x y/n #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #mine.🌧 #char.🌧 gojo #usurper!gojo

[venusjeon]

dragon bond

you're forced to marry your older brother in the tradition of your house, but it's the younger one who owns your heart.

♔ PAIRING: prince!hoseok x princess!reader

♔ GENRE: house of the dragon au, angst, fluff, smut

♔ WORD COUNT: 5.2k

♔ WARNINGS: incest!! yup, they're targaryen bro&sis. JEALOUSY, underage making out+groping+grinding (hs 15/oc 17), swearing, drinking, bloodplay, "cheating", +18 oral, loss of virginity (guys i think i have a kink)

♔ AUTHOR'S NOTE: you don't really need to have watched house of the dragon or game of thrones to understand this (there are no spoilers btw) but just know it's its own medieval fantasy world. also, sorry it took longer than usual, school and the tedious smut bit at the end are to blame:(

120 AC

Today of all days, he was doing it again.

Your brother Yoongi was only five and ten years of age, yet he didn’t shy away from flirting with every lady or maid that crossed his path. It mattered not to him that your parents had betrothed you to one another, nor that most girls only indulged him because he was heir to the throne.

To you, his future queen, it did matter.

Crossing the great hall full of nobles who’d travelled to the capital from all over the Seven Kingdoms to celebrate your thirteenth name day, you reached Yoongi and dismissed the lady whose cheek he was caressing. Although she curled her upper lip at your curt tone, she wasted no time in running off, glad you’d intervened. Your brother wasn’t, especially when you grabbed his hand and dragged him to an empty balcony.

The views were beautiful, of the whole city and beyond, but each time you stood there you couldn’t help but wonder how many brothels in that labyrinth of alleyways Yoongi had frequented. In various occasions already, you’d heard him slip out of his chambers in the dead of night, seen him leave the Red Keep from your window… He always wore a cloak that covered his hair so no one on the streets would recognise him, but you reckoned the whores of King’s Landing knew well enough whom he was.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he spat after shaking you off assertively, with scant regard for whether he’d hurt you. He had a little, but you were too used to being treated so by him to complain. “Have you forgotten who I am?”

“My betrothed. Have you forgotten that I’m to be your queen, stand beside you when you sit on the Iron Throne? I think you must have, else you wouldn’t woo other girls so openly.”

Yoongi rolled his eyes. “I can do whatever I want, and it’s no business of yours.”

“Of course it is! You’re humiliating me before the court! How can I expect to be respected as a queen if my husband won’t respect me as his wife?”

“You’ll not be a queen, you fool,” Yoongi laughed, the sound pricking your heart as though it were a dagger. “You’ll be my consort, there to just breed me heirs. Nothing more. But this is not about respect, is it? It’s about jealousy.”

There it was, the twisting of the dagger. You couldn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know w-what you’re talking about.”

Yoongi sighed. “Listen well, you’re a freak and I don’t like you, the only reason I’m marrying you is because father’s forcing me to. It’s getting annoying, your following me around, so stop it! Go play with your dolls, or sew, or whatever plain little girls do, but don’t make me suffer your presence any more than I have to.”

He left you there, frozen in your spot as his hurtful words sunk in. And that was it.

Unbeknownst to you, Hoseok was hiding in the shadows, had eavesdropped the whole thing. Two years younger, he was your other brother, and after witnessing Yoongi leave you in tears for demanding a crumb of mercy, he wished he was the only one.

✩ ✩ ✩

You were spending the night of your name day heartbroken, crying in your bed curled up in a ball.

It was true, what Yoongi claimed. You held a torch for him.

How could you not? He was older, dashing, handsome. You watched in awe as he trained in the courtyard, or flew around on his mighty dragon; blushed whenever his eyes landed on you—even if it was momentarily—or he mentioned you by name, or held your hand in public events.

Now, you weren’t stupid. It was clear he didn’t return your feelings... You had just hoped someday he might.

Were you from any other family, it’d be a blasphemous scandal, but intermarriage to keep the lineage pure was the norm for yours. Targaryens were said to be closer to the gods than to men, after all, so different rules applied.

Perhaps people thought that because you were dragonlords, could ride the magical creatures that helped your ancestors Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys conquer the Seven Kingdoms some hundred and twenty years ago. Perhaps they did because you looked like deities, with your silver hair and purple irises, and still spoke the language of old Valyria. Or perhaps it was because the future was shown to some members of your house through dreams.

It didn’t matter why. It wasn’t true, anyway. No goddess could be as pathetic as you, rejected by her own intended on her birthday.

Then amid your woe, someone knocked on the door of your chambers. Wiping your wet cheeks, you sat up. Who would bother you so late, past midnight? Part of you wished it was Yoongi bringing a sincere apology, but when you gave permission to enter, it was your other brother who came in with a lit candle in hand.

“Hoseok?”

He approached the bed shyly, almost embarrassed. You guessed why when he asked, “Can I sleep here with you tonight?”

Nodding, you made some space for him. “Had another nightmare?” It was your mother’s bed he usually climbed to, yours only when she had been called to your father’s. You didn’t mind it at all. Tonight, in fact, you were glad he’d cuddle up to you like a pup.

Hoseok placed the candle on your bedside table and lay beside you under the sheets, shaking his head. “I didn’t want you to be sad on your own. I heard what Yoongi said to you earlier…”

“Oh…” You were the embarrassed one now. “It’s fine. He’s always like that, so I know not to take it to heart. I’m not sad... but thank you for caring. You are sweet, brother.”

Setting aside the clear lie for a moment, Hoseok held in a sigh. Brother. Why did you never call Yoongi that?

“He doesn’t deserve it, you know?” he muttered, making you frown. “Your heart.”

Were your damned feelings common knowledge? It was supposed to be an ideal situation to fancy one’s betrothed, but if people learned it was one-sided, your humiliation would be twice.

“H-He doesn’t have it.”

“Stop lying, yes he does!” Hoseok was upset, but you couldn’t fathom why. What was it to him if you chose to keep your infatuation secret? Despite the mutual affection, you weren’t that close. He took a deep breath to regain composure, then said quietly with his purple eyes cast down, “It should be me that you were marrying.”

A chuckle escaped you. “What?”

“Yoongi is a cunt and a bully. He treats you like– Well, he mistreats you! Yet you still follow him around, hoping in vain that he’ll turn into a charming prince like those from the poems you read. I know I’m not one either…” he found the courage to look up and hold your hand under the sheets, and your smile disappeared, “but I would never be mean to you, Y/N. I’d be honoured to take you to wife.”

Afraid of rejection, Hoseok had promised himself to never reveal he was smitten by you. How could he meddle in the betrothal of his siblings? He’d learned to endure the nightmares in which you faced a lonely and miserable married life, but after seeing Yoongi make you cry, he couldn’t let you forgive him again, pretend nothing had happened.

You, in all honesty, were shocked. There hadn’t been a moment when you’d thought of Hoseok as anything other than a little boy. Although… that was exactly what Yoongi thought of you.

Had you been in love with the wrong brother all along?

It wasn’t something one could choose, sure, but Hoseok’s confession had felt like a slap back into reality. The Yoongi you loved and were loved by was fictional, the Hoseok who’d always been kind to you of flesh and blood—the same blood as you.

“I think that, like Aegon the Conqueror…” you took his hand in yours, “I’ll keep company with one sibling out of duty and with the other out of desire.”

An exhale of relief quickly turned into a blushing smile on Hoseok’s face, and you smiled too, pleased at the turn of events.

Your name day was ending on the loveliest note.

By the time you were seven and ten, you still hadn’t married Yoongi. And thank the gods for that.

Alliances were achieved through the means of marriage, and your father feared tying two of his children with a knot might mean two missed opportunities, so the wedding was indefinitely delayed. What worried you was that if your hand was given to some distant lord, you’d be forced to leave King’s Landing and in doing so, Hoseok.

As the years passed and you grew up, so did the love you bore each other.

He was the only person who made you lose track of time, so at ease did you feel when you were with him—which he made certain was constantly.

And when you weren’t together with smiles plastered on your faces, he was learning how to play songs on his harp to later recite to you, or training to win every joust and dedicate you his victory with a wreath of flowers; and you weaving him garments with threads of gold so everyone would envy his riches, or writing to travellers so they’d come to court and tell him about the world he so longed to explore on dragonback.

Hoseok had been knighted recently, and that being added to his fine looks made every girl at court drool for him. He payed attention to none. His heart was yours alone. The knighting had meant nothing for Yoongi, however, who mocked him for not yet having bonded with a dragon.

Whatever interest you’d once harboured for your older brother had sailed away, never to return. Now, you didn’t hesitate to send him to the seven hells whenever he hurled words of abuse at Hoseok. You’d then assure the latter that his worth wasn’t measured in whether or not he was a rider, and that he would get a dragon one day. In the mean time, he sat behind you on the saddle with his arms wrapped around your waist when you flew your own above the clouds.

But all that was during the day. At night, Hoseok had made a habit of slipping into your chambers.

Fortunately, he’d not suffered from nightmares in years, which led him to believe they weren’t premonitory dreams. So even if you were married to another, Hoseok could and would make you happy.

You’d spend hours talking, laughing, caressing each other, kissing... It was hard to hold back when all you wanted was for him to consume you like fire, but contrary to popular belief, Targaryens weren’t immune to the flames, so if you burned, you wouldn’t rise again. That is, if you fell pregnant and the affair was discovered, society would brand you as a whore for the rest of your life and beyond. Without doubt, history books would record such shameful conduct.

Besides, Yoongi wouldn’t take kindly to it. Not at all out of jealousy, but because the only aspect in which he cared about you was procreational. If he couldn’t be sure your children were his, he’d get rid of you once he became king. Of Hoseok too, knowing him. Fear of that demise was enough to scare you into stopping right before matters ever escalated.

That night, however, neither seemed able to stop.

Lying on your bed, Hoseok was devouring your lips with a hunger foreign to him. His kisses were usually chaste and slow, now wet and urgent, as if he was going to die the next day and wanted to make the best out of what time he had left.

His tongue didn’t tire of exploring yours, sliding across it, tasting it, producing the lewdest sound. The only instants he put it out of your mouth was to lick his lips and in turn coat yours with his saliva, eager to keep going, keep taking your breath away.

When your arms curled around his neck, Hoseok got the hint that you wanted his body against yours and readily obliged, drawing close enough to feel your chest rise and fall as you panted, and your heart race. His hand travelled from your cheek down to your neck, and he had to restrain the urge to choke you. How pretty you’d look with his hand around your throat… But no, he moved lower and cupped your breast. Hells, why were you still wearing clothes? He wanted to lick your nipples until they hardened. His cock was certainly already so.

To his delight, you moaned against his lips when his grip tightened, so he kept groping your breast, though careful not to near the edge of pain—the only of which you felt was in your core, uncomfortable enough to make you squirm.

Hoseok noticed, sneaked his knee between your thighs so his own would come to contact with your aching spot, and he began grinding, the friction making you pull away from the kiss to gasp. Only then did you realise how wet you were, juices likely dampening not only your nightgown, but your brother’s also.

“Hoseok…”

Shaky breath warm against your skin, he whispered in your ear, “I know, darling one. It feels good, hm? I’ll give you just what you need…” He next kissed your neck, sucked on it as he had your tongue. The feeling was so lovely that you minded not he would mark you. You minded not a single thing in the world, actually. “Gods, Y/N… I want to kiss you between your legs too...”

It took a few seconds, but the spell did break.

You pulled Hoseok away. “How do you know that is a thing that is done?”

This was the same boy who, some weeks past, was convinced running his fingers through a girl’s locks brought her pleasure, so there was a hint of sudden fear in the purple of his eyes. That he’d been caught.  “I was told by Lord Taehyung. He is married, as you know.”

At once, you got up, hugged yourself. Hoseok sank his elbows on the bed, and with his gaze followed you pace around nervously. “Nobody knows you better than I. Do you think I can’t tell when you’re lying?”

“I’m not!”

Anyone would call you a fool, tell you that you should’ve seen it coming, that possessing a man’s heart was no assurance he wouldn’t stray from fidelity. But Hoseok had proved to be different… Was it your fault, then, because you’d failed to satisfy his needs?

“Who is she?”

Hoseok dropped his head on the pillow with a deep sigh, then laboriously sat up. “It was in a brothel.”

You felt a lump form in your throat, tears in your eyes. “You went to a brothel…”

“It’s not what you think.” Hoseok moved to the edge of the bed, but you took a step back, so he knew to remain sat. “Yoongi dragged me there. He said it was time I became a man. I wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t let me, made me at least watch... I touched nobody and nobody touched me, I swear, Y/N. The only good thing I take from it is that I learned some ways in which to please you.”

You stared at him in silence for a while. He was telling the truth, but then, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want Yoongi to upset you again.” He looked down, voice sinking into a whisper as he confessed, “And it is a hard claim to defend… I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”

“My love, I believe you.” Having exhaled the air from your lungs that anguish had been withholding, you sat beside Hoseok and held him in an embrace comforting for both. “Yoongi will pay for this. I promise you, someday he will.”

Your brother buried his face in the crook of your neck, and you caressed his silver hair. “I love you more than I hate him. If he’s to pay, let it be by another’s hand. Don’t let him come between us.”

“He won't. Ever”

Your father made up his mind when you reached the age of twenty.

In front of half the realm’s nobility at the great hall, you and Yoongi were dressed in traditional Valyrian robes, performing the rites of marriage.

Harder than he should’ve, the bastard sliced your lower lip with a sharp piece of dragonglass, then dug his thumb in the small wound and smeared its blood on your forehead, tracing the shape of a rune. You did the same to him. Next, each cut into your respective palms and joined them over a goblet while a priest explained that the mixing of blood signified becoming one with the other. You had to suppress a gag when made to take a sip, for it was plausible Yoongi’s blood was all kinds of diseased.

“With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife.”

“With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband.”

In the crowd, Hoseok turned his head away. He had not wanted to attend the ceremony—in fairness, neither had you or Yoongi—but your parents forced him. They were about the only people who could make him do anything anymore.

Ever since he’d bonded with the world’s oldest and fiercest dragon, nobody dared fuck with him, not even his older brother. That was why, when he caught some lords watching him turn away from the kiss, they immediately looked down in fear. Unfortunately, the rumours about the affair you were having with him being whispered at court weren’t so easily scared away, and you’d had to spend less time together in public so as not to spur them on.

Above the clouds, though, there were no witnesses.

That’s where Hoseok’s mind was during the feast, up in the sky.

You looked so beautiful in that white dress, with your soft, silver hair tied in a long braid that fell down your back, but he couldn’t stand seeing you sat at the end of the table next to Yoongi, who’d caused you both so much pain; kept bouncing his leg, playing with his food, giving curt answers to anyone who spoke to him… because the worst was yet to come.

Once the sun disappeared below the horizon, you’d be escorted to Yoongi’s chambers and deflowered.

He would get to be inside you.

Would he hurt you? Or would he… satisfy you? It was horrible, but Hoseok genuinely didn’t know which was worse. What kept him from deciding was the lively song that the musicians started playing, and everyone rushing to dance.

Your mother gave Yoongi a look at which he rolled his eyes. Dance with your bride, it commanded. Grudgingly, he held out a hand to you, who turned to your father with a pleading expression only to receive the same look. Dance with your groom. So with a sigh, you took Yoongi’s hand and followed him to the centre of the hall.

And Hoseok had to watch you dance with him just as your dragons had danced together in the air.

That was it for him. He quickly excused himself to your parents on the account of a headache and stormed off, pushing through the people who’d flocked to act as an audience to those dancing. He was about to go up the small steps leading to the entrance when someone grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Please, don’t go. I need you close.”

How you’d slipped out of the dance floor unnoticed, Hoseok didn’t know, but still, he freed himself from your grasp carefully so as not to hurt you, and whispered, “I can’t see you with him.”

“He means less than nothing to me, my love. And I to him.”

Hoseok knew that. Yet when he glanced down at the cut on your lip, he was reminded of the fact that you’d become of one flesh with another in such an intimate ceremony. It made his blood boil.

“I can’t take it, Y/N. I’m sorry.”

He walked away and left you there, having to face the rest of the day without him. Could you blame him, though? You’d react the same way, would’ve left ages ago... It was the gods whom you damned for making Yoongi the older brother.

✩ ✩ ✩

Past midnight, Hoseok couldn’t sleep.

It must’ve been what, a quarter since the bedding had begun? He wondered if you were still at it, plaguing flashes crossing his mind of your bare body under Yoongi’s. Were you moaning? Gripping the sheets? Begging for him to go harder? Disgusting. He couldn’t shake them away, every time he tossed and turned a new one surfacing among his thoughts. He was going to resort to pulling his hair to make them stop when his chambers’ door opened.

Hoseok sat up without delay, reaching for the blade under his pillow, but from the shadows it was you who emerged.

“Y/N? What are you doing here?”

There was some light, at least, that of the moon entering through the window, and it made something you carried shine. Hoseok got up from the bed and walked over, once he was close discerning the piece of dragonglass from the wedding in your hand.

“I’m right where I belong,” you declared. “With you.”

“It’s your wedding night. What of your husband?”

“He drowned in his wine cup at dinner. The second he lay on his bed, he was snoring… All the better.”

Hoseok pressed his lips together and sighed through his nose. “If it’s not tonight, it’ll be tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow, I’ll already be yours.” You raised the dragonglass and once more cut into your lip. It hurt as much as earlier, but this time you did it willingly. Hoseok frowned when you placed the piece on his lip. “I may be married to our brother by law, but I’m marrying you for love.”

He flinched at the cut. “But this means nothing to the world.”

“It does to us. And not only that, don’t you understand? After tonight, whatever children I have will be assumed to be Yoongi’s. The risk keeping our bodies apart is gone.” You drew the rune on Hoseok’s forehead with his blood, and on board, he did the same to you. “A goblet?” He ran to get one from his bedside table, gulped the wine inside it as he returned to your side. Soon, it was filled with the blood of both, emptied when each drank from it. “Targaryens are dragons, Hoseok. Fire made flesh. And once a dragon bonds with a rider, it is to the death. I bonded with you long ago.”

The moonlight made the tears forming in Hoseok’s eyes shine just as it had the dragonglass.

“With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife.”

“With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husb–”

You hadn’t finished saying it when Hoseok smacked his lips on yours, impatient to make you his, make up for too many years of restraint[PG1] .

Neither therefore wasted a breath in taking off the other’s nightgown, and Hoseok swallowed hard when he saw your naked body for the first time since infancy, you almost feeling faint at the sight of his... Your brother was clearly a man grown now and as a woman, you couldn’t keep away any longer.

He let you drag him to the bed and have him lie over you, knees and elbows sunk at your sides, but did nothing more than admire your features with half-lidded eyes as if he didn’t share your hunger anymore. You tried to kiss him again, and he even pulled back.

“Lykirī,” he murmured in High Valyrian as a rider did to their dragon.

Be calm.

Much as he struggled to resist your tempting, Hoseok knew it’d be over sooner than hoped for if you lost yourselves to lust so early.

He placed a finger under your chin and raised it. “Dohaerās.”

Serve me.

Oh, he needn’t ask twice. Your fingers skimmed across his back and waist until reaching his hard erection, then curled around it to move up and down painfully slowly, at which Hoseok gulped. In part, you wanted him to wrap his own hand around your throat and order you to stop teasing, behave, but the excitement to please him betrayed your mischief.

Eyes locked with yours, a scorching sensation was building up in his core that spread through his body like wildfire the tighter you gripped, the faster you pumped, and he wanted to let go so badly… But the reward of coming inside you was a great incentive to find a distraction to focus on until then, such as his erratic breathing.

You felt it on your skin, hot like a dragon’s. It mingled with yours and scented the air with wine and desire, and seeing the latter reflected on your eyes made Hoseok’s tensed arms begin to shake out of weakness. You quickly caught up on it and so sat up, forcing him to do the same.

“Y/N, what–”

“Sh, my love…”

Hoseok didn’t know what you were up to until you bent over and took him in your mouth, sucking hard as your head bobbed up and down his length. Despite the stinging of your cut, you found yourself revelling in the feeling of his throbbing gliding against your lips and tongue, becoming wet enough to ease right between your legs.

“Ah, just like that…” Hoseok wondered if you could tell he was only just quelling the urge to pin your wrists over your head and pound you until sunrise, until it hurt for both—you could. It made you want to try harder to provoke him. At least, you were satisfied he was unable to contain the groan that followed when you took all of him in, the tip of his cock hitting against your throat a few times until you had to pull it out to cough. “Gods, Y/N…”

You laughed, rather embarrassed, “Gainly, I know…”

Hoseok smiled before he cupped your cheeks and led your lips coated with saliva and blood still to his. All flushed, you’d never looked prettier. “As I want you.”

The way he looked at you, so devotedly and without judgement, you felt no shame whispering in his ear, “How else do you want me?”

You could’ve sworn you caught Hoseok’s pupils engulf the purple of his irises as a nervous, low chuckle escaped him. It was always fun to entice him. He whispered back, “Lie on your back and spread your legs.”

You followed his command with eagerness, welcomed the pain in your wound when he leaned in to kiss you deeply, and your delight in turn sweetened his blood, driving you to suck on his lip. He did want to be consumed by you in any way, but a hiss forced him to pull away. The two of you couldn’t help but laugh, yet the butterflies returned with the first kiss of the trail that Hoseok began leaving all the way from your neck to your thighs, each marked with blood on your skin.

His breath hit against your maidenhood the second he hovered over it, making you shiver with anticipation, and seeing this he decided against torturing you any longer. While his hands groped your breasts as he knew you liked, Hoseok’s tongue delved between your wet folds until reaching your clit and licking it side to side without pause, occasionally straying downwards again to tease your entrance with his tip. You could barely keep still, squirming and bucking your hips into Hoseok’s face, moaning from behind the teeth sank like fangs into your bottom lip. He’d dreamed of making a feast out of your cunt for years, and now that he was finally tasting your juices, your pleasure, he realised the wait had been worth it.

“Keligon daor, valonqar…” he heard amongst your pants.

Don’t stop, brother.

But he was going to. He knew you needed more, and it was time he gave it to you.

The pressure of Hoseok’s tongue was straight away missed, but the tip of his cock replaced it after he’d got closer to kiss you again. It rubbed on your clit as a consequence of stroking himself, and with an exhale your head dropped on the pillow, your eyes closing.

Hoseok took the chance to gently push his erection through your entrance, earning a gasp he interrupted with a kiss. You would’ve smacked him for taking you off guard had he not started rolling his hips like that, moving in and out of you slowly so you could get used to the stretch. There had been a slight stinging but now it felt so nice that suddenly, all your brain could think of doing was wrapping your arms and legs around him to pull him closer.

“You want me deeper?” he whispered before nibbling on your earlobe. You had not the strength to answer, only whimper, but Hoseok understood. And burying himself inside you all the way in a few times, with the scant moonlight shimmering on his blood, sweat, and purple irises, you’d never been so attracted to him. “You’re so tight, I can’t believe it…”

“Hoseok… More, please,” you begged, and it was an order he was keen to obey.

Intertwining your hands, he started pounding you hard enough to send you into a daze similar to the one wine would heave you to, only, overflowing with desire. Hoseok grunted in the crook of your neck with every thrust and you moaned loudly in return, not caring whether all of King’s Landing would hear. There was no need to hold back anymore, not now that you were both so desperate to reach your high.

Soon enough, your walls did indeed begin to clench around Hoseok’s cock, which forced him to fuck you so fast that tears of pleasure formed in your eyes and you had to hold your breath as a heavenly sensation engulfed you whole. You didn’t return to your earthly body until Hoseok finished too, his warm seed filling you.

Afterwards, he kissed you softly and with your eyes closed, both remained still for a while.

“I love you, Y/N.” His tone told you that there should be no doubt of it, that he was there and not going anywhere. The corners of your lips curled into a smile.

“I love you too.”

You kissed his nose, then opened your eyes to see Hoseok already looking back at you, like nothing else in the world mattered more. His gaze wandered about your face, then fell on your mouth. He scoffed, “The court will be suspicious when they see my lip is sliced also.”

“Then let me kiss it better, brother.”

#bts au #jung hoseok #jung hoseok x reader #hoseok x reader #hoseok imagine #jhope #jhope x reader #bts jhope #hoseok smut #hoseok fluff #hoseok angst #bts #bts x reader #bts fanfiction #bts scenarios #bangtan imagine #bts smut #bts fic #house of the dragon au

[winchesterandpie]

Spotlight

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x shy!fem!reader

Word Count: 3512 (I may have gotten a little carried away, and I'm not sorry)

Warnings: highly self-indulgent, a couple of comments that could be insecurity, but really nothing to worry about. This is just fun with my favorite fictional man

A/N: As promised, I am back with some fun and fluff. This is structured like one of those "5 times they do something and 1 time you do it back" things. I had a great time writing this, and I hope you enjoy it!

The first time Bradley pulled you to the piano with him, you were caught completely off guard. It wasn’t that you’d never been there when he’d pulled the plug for the jukebox and played the piano for everyone, but he hadn’t ever tugged you with him.

You resisted at first, shy and hesitant to be so near the center of attention. Bradley would have let you go immediately if you expressed your discomfort, but something about the wild glow of him made you want, however hesitantly, to go along. At least, you did until you were both sitting on the piano bench. Then the reality of everyone starting to turn toward you set in as Bradley started playing around on the keys.

He must’ve felt you tense up beside him because he leaned into you, one hand coming off the keys to sit lightly on your knee. “You okay? You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’m okay. I want to stay, I’m just… just a bit nervous.” You tilted your head to look him in the eye, wanting to make sure he knew you meant it. Bradley’s eyes softened more than you’d ever seen when you said that. He pressed a quick kiss to the side of your head, returning his hand to the piano.

“You tell me if it gets to be too much, alright?”

“Yeah, thank you,” you grinned, leaning your head against his shoulder.

You may have only known him for a year and been on a scant handful of dates, but you were starting to see deeper into how wonderful it was to have Bradley Bradshaw in your orbit. You didn’t want to get ahead of yourself, but you hoped he would stick around for a while. 

He started in on “Great Balls of Fire,” a favorite in his repertoire. You could hear how much he enjoyed playing like this, which was enough to make you smile on its own. His warmth at your side kept you steady and secure. 

You could feel the weight of people’s gazes, but you were able to ignore it in favor of watching Bradley have fun. He rewarded you with a wink at the line, “kiss me baby,” and a quick peck on the cheek. The way his hazel eyes sparkled when he looked over at you made your heart beat a little harder in your chest. 

“Thank you,” he murmured to you after the number.

“It was fun,” you replied as he started to steer the two of you out of the bar. “Might have to do it again sometime.”

“Is that so, little lady?” Bradley’s eyebrow lifted teasingly. You flushed at his tone, looking away in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice the heat rising in your face.

“I guess you’ll have to find out, big guy,” you said when you mustered the courage to flirt back. You risked a glance up at him to find him gazing adoringly at you.

“I look forward to it.”

“Me too.”

The second time you were pulled to the center of attention, it was unintentional on both your parts. It was Bradley’s day off, and he had brought you to the beach. 

You spent the morning trying not to stare too much while you splashed water at each other. In your defense, he was also admiring you in your swimsuit. Neither of you minded. 

When he caught you staring, he winked and flexed a little extra just to make you laugh. You got bashful when you caught him, flicking water in his direction. He grinned, surging toward you in the waist-deep water to pick you up.

“What are you doing?” you giggled, though you had a suspicion it involved you and submersion.

He just laughed, walking deeper into the ocean. You grabbed around his back, hoping you could either prevent the inevitable or bring him down with you. As predicted, he lifted then tossed you out a little further. Despite your efforts, your arm slipped, so you couldn’t save yourself.

You had managed to get a good breath of air, so instead of coming up spluttering right away, you dove a little deeper underwater, grabbed his ankle and pulled. He went under too--you suspected you had caught him off guard. From under the water, you dodged his grasp and came up laughing. Bradley wasn’t long behind you, his wet curls plastered to his head as he surfaced.

“Not bad, little lady,” he congratulated you with a blinding smile. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

“With reflexes like that, I’m shocked they let you fly planes,” you teased.

“Oh, it’s like that, hmm?” Bradley advanced on you, a dangerous, playful spark in his eyes.

You knew that look--a look that had led to you being pinned against the side of his car on a particularly notable occasion. Backing away apprehensively, you were soon forced to swim rather than walk. He kept coming, making your stomach flutter as he approached deliberately.

He finally made a move and you couldn’t push back fast enough to avoided his grasp. He caught you in his arms, so as a prevention against getting dunked again, you wrapped your legs around his waist. You had a moment’s warning to take a breath before he dunked both of you underwater.

Bradley rolled you both over in the water so he could blow a cloud of bubbles in your face. You surfaced already laughing, pressing your face into his neck as he started to walk the two of you back toward the shore. He was laughing too as he pressed kisses into your wet hair. You pulled back just for a moment, your gaze dropping to his lips.

“Can I--” you started to ask, though he interrupted before you could finish the question.

“Please.” The word was more of a sigh than a spoken word.

You didn’t wait, surging forward to catch his lips in a kiss. He tasted of salt from the sea and sunshine and you couldn’t think of anything better. Bradley’s arm was across your back, his hand resting between your shoulder blades to press you impossibly close. It was like you were drowning and he was the air you needed.

You grinned against his lips as his other hand moved from your back to hold your thigh. The world melted away, and all you could feel were his fingers pressed into your flesh, his lips on yours, the heat of his sun-kissed skin, and the waves buffeting you about.

When you heard the wolf-whistles and cheers, you pulled back, suddenly aware of the people watching you. He pressed his forehead to yours when he saw your wide-eyed look.

“Just keep your eyes on me, sweets.” Bradley assured you. “It’s just the two of us.”

“They’re all staring, Roose.” You hid your face in his neck as you felt your skin flushing.

“They’re just wondering how a guy like me scored someone as beautiful as you, little lady.”

That made you laugh, “You’re a sun-tanned god and you think they’re staring at me?”

He laughed too, and you relaxed at the rumbling noise in his chest.

“Have they gone back to whatever they were doing?” you asked at last, still not picking your head up.

“You’re adorable when you get shy like this, y’know,” he murmured in your ear. “But yeah, they’ve stopped looking.”

“I love you, Bradley” you hummed against his skin.

He paused then, as he processed what you said, and you froze. You hadn’t intended to say that quite so soon, but here you were, watching the gears turn in his head and hoping you hadn’t just scared him off. 

When he hadn’t responded for long enough that you worried he was going into shock, you spoke up again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put that on you. You don’t have to say any--”

“You mean it?” he interrupted gently, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Yeah, yeah, I do. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The third time, you had some warning that you were going to be near the center of things, and you were nervous. 

Bradley had been called back to Top Gun for a top-secret mission, and had asked you to come to North Island with him. You agreed, of course, but realized about an hour ago that it meant meeting a whole crowd of loud naval aviators. There was only another half hour before you got to the Hard Deck where everyone was meeting, and you were trying to keep your nerves steady.

“What if they don’t like me?” you finally voiced the thought that had been bouncing around your head.

“Of course they will,” he reassured you immediately, reaching across the console for your hand with his free one. He glanced at you only briefly, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove, but he held your hand in a fierce grip. “They’re going to love you, I promise.”

“But what if I freeze up? You stuck around long enough to get to know me, but--”

“I’ll be right there the whole time. And if it gets to be too much, you tell me and we’ll get out of there, okay?”

You took a long, slow breath, gripping his hand in both of yours. “Okay. Okay, it’ll be fine.”

“There’s my girl,” he praised, lifting your hand to his lips. He didn’t release your hand for the rest of the drive.

Your nerves struck again when he pulled up to the bar, the neon lights making you realize that you had to go in there an socialize with a bunch of new people. Bradley came around to your side of the car, opening the door. He leaned against the side of the car with a sympathetic smile.

“You sure you want to do this?” Your sweet man was giving you another out.

You leaned forward, resting your head against his torso. His arm settled across your shoulders, letting you relax into him. You were enveloped the scent of him, breathing deeply. At last, you nodded and let him help you out of the car.

“They’re gonna love you, sweetheart,” he repeated his promise from the car ride, pressing a kiss to the side of your head as the two of you walked into the Hard Deck.

He was right, of course. Despite all of their bantering at each other, they welcomed you easily. You made fast friends with Phoenix, despite her initial jab at Rooster. Hangman was less friendly, but with Bradley’s arm around your shoulders and Phoenix at your side, you felt bold enough to fire off some decent comebacks.

“Don’t let him get to you, big guy, he’s just jealous,” you murmured to Bradley when Hangman moved away.

“Of course he is,” Phoenix chimed in, leaning around you to look at Bradley. “You got yourself a keeper here, Rooster. Bagman wishes he could get someone like her.”

“You are pretty great, little lady,” Bradley said, only to you. “I’m thinking I might move to the piano if you want to come with me.”

“Sounds fun.”

Even if the only reward you got for saying yes was that bright, beaming smile, it would have been worth it. The disappointed groans when he unplugged the jukebox weren’t even enough to distract you from the way he lit up the room as he tugged you over to the piano bench. Unlike the first time you had joined him at the piano, he sat you in his lap rather than beside him.

You were realizing he must’ve done this regularly when he was stationed closer, based on the crowd starting to gather around you after the cheers of “overboard” died down, replaced with cheers of your boyfriend’s callsign.

He started on his signature song, one he’d told you was his dad’s favorite. You let him have the first verse to himself, joining in at “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!”

Bradley grinned at you, and you felt like you were the only one in the room. Certainly to each other, you were the only ones that mattered. You tilted your head against him as you sang along.

When you reached “kiss me, baby,” you twisted to kiss the corner of his mouth, to the cheers of the other Navy pilots. You both kept singing gleefully, though he ducked his head to kiss your shoulder briefly.

You may not have been sure what the next weeks would hold, but you did know that with Bradley Bradshaw by your side, you could do anything.

The fourth time, you were unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight by catching a foam football. You had been sitting in the sand, reading a paper for work, when it landed in your lap. Looking up, you saw several overeager aviators charging toward you. 

What were you supposed to do? You did what any sensible person would do and scrambled to your feet, weaving around them to where Bradley was beckoning you as he ran toward you.

“Over here!”

Your evasion got the aviators to trip over each other, allowing you to escape. Bradley came up alongside you, encouraging you in the right direction while Phoenix tackled Fanboy to let you keep going. You made it to their unofficial goal to score, and were swept up immediately into a triumphant group hug.

“What was that?” you laughed the question to Bradley, who was packed close to you in the group.

“Dogfight football.”

“I hope you know how little that clears it up.”

You were pulled into more of the game after that, a perfunctory explanation of the rules doing little to clear up your confusion. Fortunately, you were out of the spotlight quickly. You didn’t score again, but you did get knocked down running interference for Bob’s game-winning touchdown. Hangman offered a hand to pull you to your feet, patting you on the shoulder with a kinder grin than you had seen from him before. 

You grinned back, happy that they weren’t all antagonizing each other anymore. You had heard about the day he struck too low, and you weren’t about to give him a pass for it. However, you were also aware of the level of danger they woulld be facing, if only because of Bradley’s refusal to tell you anything. They would need to have each other’s backs in the air.

The fifth time you were pulled into the spotlight by Bradley Bradshaw, you didn’t even care. You got his call when the ship was almost back to port and all you could feel was relief. You couldn’t meet him there due to your work, but you did manage to intercept him just as he arrived at the Hard Deck to celebrate with all of them.

Bradley caught you in his arms when you launched yourself at him, burying his face in your hair. Neither of you mentioned how both of your arms trembled from how tightly you held each other. You tucked your face into the crook of his neck to inhale the smell of him, reassuring yourself that he was really there.

When he pulled back to kiss you, you met his lips eagerly. The close press of his body against you slowly filled in the hollow that had grown when he left. You broke the kiss only when your lungs begged for air, but you kept your forehead pressed to his.

After another kiss, albeit a brief one, he nodded toward the door of the bar. “Can I buy you a drink, little lady?”

You laughed, the first laugh since he’d gone. You laughed yourself to tears, and once you started, you couldn’t stop. Neither could he. So the two of you stayed there a minute longer, leaning into each other as you got your giggling under control.

“Well, we probably shouldn’t deprive them of one of the guests of honor,” you said, wiping the last of the tears away as your laughter calmed.

“They’ll survive,” he bargained, tilting your head up to allow him to steal another kiss. And another.

You hummed into the last one, then pulled back a little farther with a grin on your face. “There’s plenty of time for that later, Lieutenant.” Your grin turned a little softer as you continued, “For now, you all deserve to celebrate together.”

“Always so smart.”

“I knew you kept me around for a reason.”

He barked a short laugh as you set off toward the bar. Bradley caught up to you quickly, and you settled your arms around each other before pulling the door open.

The cheer that went up as you entered didn’t faze you. No, nothing could from your position under his arm. You hardly noticed all the people reaching out to give him a congratulatory pat on the shoulder or back for his success in the mission. Both of you made it to the rest of the Dagger squad, who were monopolizing the pool table. Even there, Bradley was getting quite a bit of praise, which was turning him a little bashful.

“Rooster.” You recognized the change in his face at the familiar voice.

“Hangman.”

You didn’t know much about what had happened up there, but you did know that Jake was the reason Bradley came home. You slipped out from under Bradley’s arm to catch Jake in a hug before he could move away. He hesitated for a moment, but his arms found their way around you.

“Thank you.” Your voice was rough on the quiet words. He squeezed you just a little tighter before letting you go. He offered a nod in response, and you got the sense that he was holding back a flashy comment, but he held it in as he left to get something to drink.

You retreated back to Bradley, who pressed a kiss to your head as you leaned into his side.

“He’s growing up, isn’t he?” You shook your head fondly, proud that Jake had read the room well enough to not make a snarky comment just yet.

“I dunno that I’d go that far,” Bradley chuckled, “but it’s about time.”

The time you turned it around on Bradley, pulling him into the center of attention for a change, you were nervous. 

It was his birthday and you wanted it to be perfect. You had been practicing for weeks, thanks to Penny letting you come in to the Hard Deck for the piano before the bar opened. You just hoped that your hands wouldn’t freeze up on the keys.

The shared plan was for you to meet him at the Hard Deck along with the rest of the Dagger squad. The real plan was a little different. As far as Bradley knew, you were still supposed to be half an hour from arriving. Phoenix had been key in making sure he avoided where you sat in the corner, hiding in plain sight.

Your fingers drummed a nervous beat on your leg. At this point, you weren’t sure what you were waiting for. Everyone was here, and it wouldn’t be too long before the bar got busy. 

Deciding that you were just stalling, you pushed yourself up. You kept an eye on the group of naval aviators as you crept quietly to the jukebox. Taking a breath, you pulled the plug, cutting the music.

You moved over to the piano quickly as everyone’s heads swiveled you find the one and only Bradley Bradshaw. His confused expression would’ve made you laugh if you hadn’t been trying hard to keep him from finding you just yet. As it was, you sat on the bench, willing your throat to not dry. Payback had promised you he would film Bradley’s initial reaction, since you couldn’t see it from the piano, but you had to start playing. 

Before the silence stretched too long, you did just that.

“You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain,” you started, encouraged when you heard his bright laughter coming closer to you. “Too much love drives a man insane. You broke my will, oh what a thrill. Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!”

Bradley slid onto the bench next to you, his voice joining yours after he kissed your cheek. The other pilots came over too, surrounding the piano, but you only seemed to notice the one pressed against your side. His voice was the loudest to cheer when you got all the runs in the interlude and again when you hit the last chords.

“Happy birthday, Roose,” you said in his ear when he pulled you into a hug.

“I really love you,” was his immediate reply.

“I love you too.” You paused to lift your hand from the keys. “And look, I’m not even shaking!”

He laughed brightly, slipping his fingers between yours so he could lift your hand to his lips.

“You’re gonna have to marry this one, man,” Payback said as he passed you on the way back to the pool table.

“Oh, I plan to.”

#bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster x reader #rooster #top gun #top gun maverick

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Can I Stay? (A Baekhyun Story) Part 14.

Pairing: You x Baekhyun

Rating: M

Word Count: 7.6K

Warnings: Park Chanyeol word vomit. Crazy in love. Crazy, Crazy in love. Absolutely lost in the love sauce. FLUFF.

A romance between two adults with an unspecified age difference between them, an English story that uses the word Noona for lack of another word in English that carries the same feeling, if you don’t like this, then don’t read this story.

Tag list: @andimoon @his-mochi-cheeks

Links: Part 1, …. Part 13, Part 14, Part 15

He was tall and handsome, friendly and inviting. He shook your hand with animated enthusiasm and a wide toothy smile. Behind him, your boyfriend, Baekhyun stood with his arms folded over his chest, tapping his foot on the shiny marble tile floor. He cleared his throat noisily as his best friend Chanyeol shook your hand for what was going on now for too long. The smile on his face was almost manic. This guy’s energy matched his volume.

“Chanyeol can’t stay long. He’s got other things to do.”

“I don’t have anything to do. Do I smell Halmi’s food?”

Baekhyun’s face was passive and blank. You recognized the hesitation with the way he opened his lips and inhaled to speak and then closed his lips up again as he looked down at the floor below his bare feet. When he finally did answer, it had taken him a while.

“Yeah, Chanyeol. We went to see Mimi.”

Chanyeol’s forward steps hesitated and he paused mid-way between the long hallway that Baekhyun still occupied and the open kitchen space you stood in feeling underdressed and unprepared to suddenly be meeting Baekhyun’s best friend. You didn’t have a speck of makeup on but thank God you’d opted to wear a bra under this soft sleeping set because without it there would likely be no mysteries as to what you both had been up to before he showed up.

Chanyeol seemed to react curiously to the news that you’d both visited Baekhyun’s Mimi today. You did notice that Baekhyun didn’t ask if Chanyeol had had dinner nor did he make any offers to share food with the man.

He looked into Baekhyun’s face, his own eyes wide with a look of surprise that you didn’t quite understand. This must not have been about the food.

“You took her to Halmi?” Chanyeol asked with a step snuck closer to where Baekhyun stood with hands in his pockets.

Baekhyun nodded his head and Chanyeol turned back to look into your face.

You smiled in response, not quite grasping the significance of this detail that Chanyeol seemed to fixate on.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said quietly, not directing this at you but back toward the shorter man standing behind him.

“Yeah,” Baekhyun said, agreeing to something unspoken between the two of them.

“Mimi was very sweet,” you had to speak. This whole exchange was so cryptic and mysterious you could hardly stand it.

“She gave us some strawberries.” You said looking down at the container stuffed with bright red berries feeling just a little bit silly with the scant details you added to the story. You didn’t have nearly enough preparation for any of this and you honestly felt left out of their conversation about what you meeting Mimi seemed to imply to both of them.

Chanyeol responded with a bright face; matching your small polite smile with his own full grin, “Did she? She liked you then.”

“I liked her too,” you said softly to yourself. He was watching your face for a while with a pensive look before his smile returned to his face and he leaned a long torso beside you, propping himself on an elbow on the countertop.

“Well it’s very nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you, Noon—, uhh” his eyebrows furrowed and turned his focus to Baekhyun, “What do I call her? Is it too soon for Sister-in-law? I get to be your best man right? How long have you been dating? A half-year? If you took her to see Halmi then I’m going to say Sister-in-law. You have definitely been talking about her for at least a year.”

That didn't sound right, Baekhyun had only been working as your assistant for a few months. Sure you’d worked with him on a previous project but you’d had next to no interaction with the man, even if he seemed to remember you well enough. The more Chanyeol talked — and remarkably, he hadn’t quit yet — the more he sounded like an unreliable source. There were just so many words to this man and not nearly enough useful ones.

Baekhyun had joined you both in the kitchen and some sort of whispered exchange was happening that you decided you’d just let them have. Of course it was happening right beside you and you could hear everything they said.

“A month? No way, less than that? Well, what were you all up to here before I came? Is this your first date—-Ahhh,” Chanyeol let out a loud yelp of pain. Baekhyun had pinched him somewhere.

“Okay. I’m going…I’m going, settle down,” Chanyeol finally said with a deep frown. He was rubbing a palm over his ribs.

But he had turned to talk to you again. He’d said one thing while he actively did something else. He was fascinating to watch. Like a spinning top that once it got started just could not stop.

“I guess you already know that he’s crazy about you,” he said with his eyes wide and he giggled as he took a big step away from where Baekhyun reached out another hand with slim pinching fingers extended and grasping.

“Like crazy, crazy. Not cute, silly, rom-com crazy either — you know, for a while I was sure you were a symptom. I was convinced of it.” He took another big step away from your boyfriend who had switched to swatting. You heard the occasional smack that echoed out when a swinging hand made contact with a person’s back.

His stream-of-consciousness rambling was entertaining at least and you didn’t try that hard to hide your laughter, which only fueled more talking. You even nodded your head. Yes, you knew how much Baekhyun loved you. Yes, you also shared the same feelings. You’d already seen the closet full of things he bought — the troubling lack of self control he had was evident. But for you too, you’d already known first hand just how impossible it had been to keep yourself away from him.

Perhaps you were both just insane when it came to each other. Maybe you didn't want to be sane when it came to Baekhyun.

Folie à deux. A madness shared by two.

“Hey. I have things to warn her about,” Chanyeol was complaining at the unfair attempts to silence him, “like if Halmi calls you saying she’s on her deathbed and you have to get married right away before she dies, don't believe her, that’s just a trick. She did that to me once. That woman is built like an ox. I talked to her doctor myself.”

“If you don’t leave right now I’m canceling the card I gave you and I’m going to call your mom and tell her where she can find you.”

You didn't think it was possible but Chanyeol finally closed up his lips and pulled a black rectangle of plastic out of the pocket of his hoodie. The silence was temporary — just long enough for him to look down at the credit card he’d gotten from his best friend in exchange for going away.

“The only reason I’m using this is so she doesn’t know how to find me. I will not go on any more blind dates. She picks the weirdest girls. I wonder if my new Sister-in-law has a sister or a cousin as pretty as she is. You know, Baekhyun, I always thought you didn’t have any game. It turns out you’re just picky as hell.”

He was actually being pushed toward the front door but the words just kept tumbling out of the man.

“5-stars is fine right?”

“4 stars.”

“5 stars, come on.”

“3 stars. Holiday Inn Express.”

“Holiday Inn — How do you even know what that is? I’m staying at Banyan.”

“Chanyeol, I don't care where you go. Just go.”

“That counts as Banyan permission.”

A door clicked closed and there was an instant oppressive silence that filled the home. You could hear the quiet footsteps as Baekhyun made his way back into the kitchen and you watched for the moment when his pretty face appeared back in front of your eyes.

He had a tiny smile on his lips when he came back into the Kitchen and his footsteps were sluggish.

“Well that was fun,” you said softly as you bit down on your lips to control the grin on your face. He made a small sound like a single chuckle pushed through his nose.

“So that was my friend Chanyeol.” He said with his eyebrows lifted up high on his face and his eyes glancing down over the big bowl of strawberries you had been busying yourself with. You felt weirdly grateful that you had something to do with your hands during that entire exchange and after a little bit of snooping around this massive kitchen you even managed to find a hidden trash can in one of the side cabinets at the end of this kitchen island. You’d dropped all of the green tops there and the berries were washed and ready for a trip around this big house.

“He seems like he’s very fun at parties.” Chanyeol had been a lot. Chatty and pushy and loud, but incredibly sweet and inviting. You knew instantly that you would always be able to strike up a conversation with him easily, despite how intense he had been. Baekhyun inhaled a deep breath and his lips pulled wide as he squinted his eyes.

“Do you still like me?” His big brown eyes prodded against your own and you bit down on your bottom lip as you nodded your head up and down twice. You held the bowl of berries in one arm and you reached out your other hand to grab ahold of Baekhyun’s, slipping your fingers in between his and you squeezed.

“Do you ever just hang out in the naked lady’s room?” You wanted to see the house, but you kind of wanted to sit down somewhere with him and enjoy the fruit first. The bowl was rather heavy and you didn’t really feel like lugging it around through the entire place. Perhaps you could both start with a little picnic there.

Baekhyun had been watching your face with a sort of dreamy expression but when your question registered, you caught the shift of his eyes as he looked away from you for a second, glanced around the empty kitchen space without any actual focus and he looked back at you again with his eyes narrowing some.

It was a sudden shift.

“Why? Did Chanyeol say something?” His question was quiet with a very light panic just below the surface and it pulled a surprised laugh from your chest with simply how guilty his expression had turned in an instant, “because I haven’t done that since I was going through puberty.” You laughed harder, having to let go of his hand so you could cover your mouth to quiet the surprised laughter that erupted from you.

He had a smile growing on his face as he spoke of this and he was looking up into the ceiling with an inhale of air into his lungs, “but yeah, back then I used to spend a lot of time in that room with her,” he was laughing now with his mouth open and his face had turned pink with the belly laughs.

You couldn't help your laughter. It was your own fault for asking this question. You weren’t sure what kind of response you had expected but it hadn’t been his silly confession about his middle school sexual awakening and self discovery.

“Do you still like me?” He asked this again through the deep giggles that had taken him over. You nodded your head as a response and lifted your hand to run your fingers over the back of his head slipping them through his hair. You relished in the way his laughter quieted down when you did it. His scalp was warm below your fingertips and his eyes rolled closed with your sudden touch.

You still wanted to see it up close so you grabbed him by the hand and pulled him, headed toward the room with the statue so you could look at the beautiful artwork. You’d never had the chance to see something so precious before.

It was just as magnificent as you thought it would be. The room was round with a domed ceiling and the overhead lighting shone brightly on only the marble statue. The rest of the room had a softer dim glow that felt purposeful in its design, making the focus here only about her. You set the fruit down off to one side and Baekhyun took a seat on the floor beside the bowl and leaned against the wall with his hands folded quietly in his lap as you stood as close as you dared to this incredible work of art.

“She’s so beautiful,” you said in a quiet whisper as you looked up at the impeccable smoothness of her skin, trying your best to imagine the kind of care and precision that would go into carving something like this out of stone. It felt impossible. And yet here she stood in front of you with all of her intricate details from the waves of her hair made up of individual strands; her delicate arm lifted over her head; her nipples that stood erect over the soft mounds of her breasts; her belly button and the round bump in her belly where if she were alive, her life creating organs would hide; the swell of her hips and even the small dimples in her soft flesh that made her look so soft and so real. Even the expression on her face was sensual. Her thoughts only of her lover. That love eternally preserved on the tip of her tongue that sat just inside the hollow behind her parted lips.

You wondered about the emotions that such a piece of work would carry with it over the years and your heart swelled with the idea that maybe this woman actually existed once. Maybe she was adored by just one person, by her one person; adored enough to inspire the overwhelmingly all consuming, obsessive labor of love that it would take to create a masterpiece such as this.

“Can I touch her?” You pulled your eyes away long enough to ask your question. You’d been so transfixed by seeing this up close that you half expected for your words to pull him out of his own examination of the statue but you found Baekhyun’s eyes the second you turned to him. He wasn’t looking at the statue at all, but seemed to only have been watching you.

After a few seconds he nodded his head, “You can do anything you want,” he said.

You knew it was a rock. Your rational mind knew it, at least. But the way this looked, so real and life-like, as if it were made of warm flesh and bones, had what you knew in your mind and what you’d expected to feel under your fingertips at odds with each other. The cold temperature of the stone made you gasp when your fingertips touched the solid polished surface. You pressed against the stone, astonished that it had no give as flesh should have had.

You turned to him with amazement and delight evident on your face. But Baekhyun had a brilliantly wide smile on his own face that floored you. His eyes had pulled up into little moons making him look so damn beautiful you had to hold your breath and take a step back and away from all of the beauty you found yourself surrounded by in this place.

You had to sit down. Without having had a single sip of any alcohol, you felt overwhelmed and drunk.

You moved through the space to where he sat on the floor with his legs crossed and you took your place right beside him; your hip flush with his; your thigh touching his thigh; your arm warm against this arm and you leaned your head on his shoulder with the smallest contented sigh escaping from your lungs as you did it.

If you could bottle this feeling inside of you, surely it would change the world. If only you could hold it forever in the palm of your hand, surely you’d never ever let it go.

You felt the warmth of his head just above yours when he leaned onto you and when your hand squeezed around his bicep, the softness of his arm gave under your fingertips.

He was warm and real and alive here beside you. You could touch him just as easily as you touched the beautiful marble. You didn't even have to ask for permission first because he was your person. He was your love. And he responded to you. His hand landed over yours and he gave you a little squeeze. His warm palm rubbed over your bare knee and his fingertips flexed and dipped and pushed into the soft flesh of your inner thigh and your living flesh gave where his fingers touched.

“Can I keep you forever?” Your own voice surprised you. You hadn’t intended to say this outloud to him, but that drunk feeling had taken your common sense away from you. Once the words came out of your mouth, you pulled your lips closed and pressed the tips of your fingers tightly over your lips. You probably meant to only think this. You definitely didn’t intend to say it, but hearing the echo of those words you had just asked him and their heavy implication had your skin burning. Your heartbeat echoed noisily inside your eardrums. Not only were you surprised by your own words, but what shocked you more was just how much you really meant what you had just said.

Baekhyun’s movements, his thumb brushing lightly over your hand, and the other hand he lightly touching over your knee, even his steady in and out breathing, all of it had gone still.

You pulled your head off of his shoulder and he moved his head from where he had been resting on you. You felt downright silly for this intense reaction you were having, but you had just said something to him that made you feel so very vulnerable and exposed. But, god help you, you did actually mean it. You meant that you wanted him to be yours. Always. You meant that you never ever wanted him to say goodbye to you and you never wanted to say goodbye to him. You never wanted to be apart from him. You never wanted to sleep in a cold bed without him by your side and you felt absolutely insane knowing that you meant it.

Saying this out loud felt downright terrifying.

When you pulled your head away he looked at you and you looked at him; knowing for certain that the heat you felt all over your head would have made your cheeks flushed.

“Did you say that by accident?” He was tempering his response to your strong reaction. He was being your extremely observant and insightful Baekhyun.

“Yes,” you said softly, “but also no. I don’t know.” you added hopelessly as you closed your eyes, unable to stand how very much this man could tell from looking into your eyes.

“I meant it,” you began in about as soft a whisper as you could manage, “but then it felt like maybe I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Why not tell me that?” His hand had moved and you felt his warm fingers laid out over the side of your face. He was pulling your face back up so you could look into his eyes again.

You blinked your eyes quickly, touching lightly and delicately into his eyes for only a few short moments at a time. “Just feels a little embarrassing that I said that. Seems like maybe I told you a secret,” you said.

“Is that your secret? Hmm?” His gentle words felt as soft as the pads of his fingertips that touched lightly along your jawline.

“Do you want to keep me forever?”

Your small head nod came with the smallest pull of your lips into a hopeless smile. You closed your eyes with the acknowledgment you gave him. You felt the softness of his lips land over your temple as he placed a delicate kiss on your flushed warm face.

“I think we might have a problem,” he said with his voice raising in volume just a touch. Just enough for your eyes to open and for you to look into the brown of his eyes for the meaning to his words.

Had you made a mistake with your confession? You felt a grain of doubt rest just at your surface, threatening to sink in.

“Because I also want to keep you forever, and I’m no good with keeping secrets.” Your slow exhale came from deep within your chest and when you opened your eyes you found him watching you from up close.

“We should both stop talking — before —” you cut yourself off suddenly, taking in a deep breath that you exhaled noisily instead of finishing your thought out loud. The threat of saying anything else that you knew should not be spoken was simply too powerful and so you reached across his waist for a strawberry; gripping the biggest one you felt under your fingertips and you brought it up to your lips for a bite into the juicy fruit.

It was sweet and it was delicious and just as you lifted the rest to your lips you saw him move as his mouth opened up over the half bitten strawberry you held in your fingers and he pulled it into his mouth. The tip of his tongue and his teeth lightly grazed your finger as he did it and you bit down on your bottom lip as you watched him chew and swallow all the while he kept his knowing eyes on you, simply lifting a single eyebrow as licked his lips. He made no efforts to convince you to continue saying what you and he both knew you had been saying.

“These are so sweet,” you grasped ahold of your excuse as you reached for another berry and he was silent as he watched you do it.

Baekhyun’s lips parted as if he was waiting for something from you.

The other half of one of your strawberries, or perhaps a kiss. You leaned into him and captured his pouty bottom lip in between your own, lightly sucking the softness of it into your mouth; tasting strawberries and tasting him.

When you pulled away from him his eyes were closed and he opened them slowly to watch your face again.

“Want another one?” You asked with a smile, purposefully not defining what you were offering while keeping your tone light and innocent.

He nodded his head. You lifted the strawberry to your lips, took a bite into it as you leaned into his waiting mouth. He took the other half between his teeth from your lips as you had intended and his wet lips pursed into your mouth with a kiss before you pulled your face away, chewing what was left of the sweet fruit..

You’d only had enough time to swallow when he leaned into you again, lifting both hands to your face to pull you into him for another kiss. This one was deeper and you felt held in place by his hands that pulled you into his open mouth. He tasted so good. It wasn’t just the strawberries, the man had a smell and a taste that sunk deep into the very center of you, making it impossible to pull away from him; making you want to taste him again and again.

His lips were pinker now, probably from the fruit. “You taste like strawberries,” you said with a smile and another small kiss.

“You’re doing an awful lot of talking for someone who just shut me up five minutes ago.” His voice was playful and with his fingertips, he rolled the fabric of your shirt back and forth absentmindedly.

“I didn’t just shut you up. I shut both of us up,” you defended and a scoff followed by a small chuckle erupted from him.

“Oh right. What was it again?” His eyes narrowed as he pretended to recall the exchange you’d just, quite expertly changed the subject away from.

“We should both stop talking, before…before,” he did his impression of you again and you felt the blood rush just under the skin of your scalp, the feeling exploding like fireworks under the surface of your skin and with it came a wave of goosebumps that traveled down your neck; down the center of your spine. The danger of this talk had returned again.

He had already warned you that he was bad at secrets and you knew how shoddy his self control was when it came to you.

“Before what?” He casually and unceremoniously plopped a strawberry into his mouth and chewed on it a few times.

“Before I go crazy and ask you to marry me and you go crazy and say yes?”

His words landed with a big splash against your chest; sending rippling waves outward that rocked you again and again, making you feel dizzy and seasick.

“Baek,” you said quietly, feeling every single bit of the seriousness of this conversation. You felt flush and warm all over and when you looked down at your bare legs you could see where your skin prickled and poked with goosebumps from how overwhelmed this kind of talking had made you feel.

“I want to keep you forever and you want to keep me forever,” he said, “isn’t that what that means?”

He wasn’t wrong.

He was brave enough to speak it outloud.

You inhaled the smallest gasp for air through your parted lips. It was all you could manage with his deep brown eyes looking into you like this. With him seeing you so clearly and knowing you so completely like this.

“Baekhyun, this is—” You couldn't find the words. Your mind felt too jumbled and he was watching you with a look of seriousness inside of his rapidly blinking wet eyes. Your focus was pulled down where inside his hands he fidgeted with a strawberry and it trembled inside his fingertips. His hands were shaking.

“Crazy?” He whispered and swallowed before speaking again, “I know,” his lips hung open and he puffed out a breath, “it is.” His words labored through his whispered breaths. “I don't mean right now. It doesn't have to be tonight, or tomorrow, or next month. I’m just —”

“Don't say any more. If you ask me, I’ll say yes.” You’d closed your eyes and your hand had reached for his trembling hand to steady him. He didn’t need to be nervous about this with you. Even if you felt like you might float away with as much anxiety as you felt bubbling up inside of your stomach.

“You would say yes? Right now, you would say yes?” His fingertips wrapped tightly around your hand and you leaned forward to press your lips up against his. It was partly because of the love, but it was mostly to silence him, to keep him from talking about this any more. You didn’t have any desire to ever leave his side, but once either of you actually said it, it would become true. It would take on meaning. It would become fact.

You knew—you knew this was too fast. You knew this was crazy. You knew that taking this step would be fraught with obstacles that threatened to destroy the both of you. You knew how many challenges you both would face if you even dared to dream that this could be true for you with him. You knew it deep down inside your bones, and yet — and yet your heart was racing, running away by itself with its own little fantasies that maybe, maybe he wouldn't listen to you.

Maybe he would ask.

Maybe you wanted him to. You wanted him to want to ask you and you wanted to say yes.

“I love you,” he said softly into the small space that existed between your lips and his, “do you love me?”

You nodded your head and looked up into his brown eyes. Your ears had a hum that sounded out, it seemed to be coming from somewhere within your chest. Baekhyun was moving, he pushed his crossed legs apart and wrapped his legs around you where you sat beside him on this floor. He wrapped his arms around your shoulders and you felt encased fully within the secure warmth of his body.

“I love you,” he said again. Your saliva pooled inside your mouth and you swallowed it away, “do you love me?” A breath caught in your throat and you felt dizzy without the oxygen.

“Baby, do you love me? Do you love me?”

You were nodding your head again, opening your lips, desperately searching for your voice and begging that you could find it to answer him.

“Yes,” you said through a borrowed breath.

He was watching your face when you answered.

You felt drunk on the deep brown color you found in his eyes. You felt possessed by the adoration that flowed through your veins for him.

“Baby-”

He was looking into your face when he did it —when he said it.

“Will you marry me?”

“Let’s get married. Hmm?”

“I only want you.”

“I only need you.”

“I only love you.”

Your lungs had quit. Your heartbeat was drowned out by the loud humming sound that filled your head. Every cell inside of your body vibrated and you knew — you knew that if he hadn’t been wrapped around you so entirely you might not have been able to stay down on this floor. You might have just floated up and evaporated into lighter than air filled bubbles, carried by the wind until each and every one popped and you ceased to exist entirely.

You were spinning and spinning inside of your own head.

“Yes.” Your lips and your tongue moved on their own, pushed forward by your heart that was filled to the brim and overflowing with only him, “okay. Yes. If you want to marry me, I want to marry you.”

He watched your face so closely; his warm eyes pushing deep inside your own and the gasp for air from his parted lips didn't pull his heavy eyelids closed. The small tick of his eyebrow up on his forehead didn’t pull those eyes from yours and he watched you with a silent intensity; you burned inside of it.

There was a simultaneous movement between the two of you that happened. Your hands flew to your mouth as you gasped out in genuine surprise and he dipped his head, closed his eyes up tight and let out a deep laugh from the center of his chest.

You let one of your hands free to quickly swat against his chest. He was giggling. He was laughing with unbridled joy written all over his face and your own laughter you covered with the palm of your hand.

“We are crazy!” You said in wild eyed disbelief, “Baek, we are insane! This isn’t normal right?”

“I’ve never pretended to be normal about you,” he said through the wide smile that had taken over his face.

“But—but, I don’t even know your favorite color. Or your favorite school subject. I don’t even know your favorite food. Baek, what are we even thinking?”

It was a little late for you to suddenly be having these sorts of doubts. You’d already agreed to marry him and you were pretty sure if he took it back you’d cry and cry and cry for a whole year and probably shrivel up in a ditch somewhere.

He still had his arms wrapped around your waist and he pulled you closer into his chest as his eyes angled upward, he pouted his lips and his face took on a pensive expression.

“My favorite color is this color,” he lifted a finger and touched lightly over your bottom lip. You pulled your lips inward, biting down with your teeth to hide the wide smile that threatened to consume you.

“My favorite food is—” he reached with that same hand and grabbed another strawberry from the bowl, lifting it up to your lips and giving it a tiny push until you opened your mouth for him to push it inside. You’d expected him to let you just have it, but he was holding on long enough for his mouth to open up over the other end. You were too giggly for the kiss. You felt a bit of the strawberry’s juice dribble down your lip, you had to catch it with your fingertips. He was talking again with his mouth full, “—is half of your strawberries.” He was chewing and nodding his head appreciatively.

“My favorite subject is math,” he said abruptly while pulling his face back and squinting his eyes in your direction. You’d been spoiled by his answers already and you definitely expected him to say something else related to you. The surprise caught you off guard and he knew it.

“Math?”

“Mhmm,” he said as he grabbed another strawberry and popped it into his mouth.

You sat there with him quietly munching on fruit until the bowl was empty. There was no talk of rushing to define things. There were no discussions about the what’s or the when’s or the Dear God How’s that were involved in this monumental change that you had both decided was worth making for each other. You both simply ate these strawberries, smiled and sometimes giggled with each other, and enjoyed the stunning beauty of all that surrounded you in this magical place.

When the berries were gone and the tingling in your legs had settled with a few stretches and pointing moves of your toes, you knew it was time to get up off of this floor and take a walk with him.

“Am I ever going to get my tour?”

He was moving with you; carrying the bowl back to the kitchen, he simply set it on the counter and walked away as you curiously looked back at the white bowl with red stains splashed on the inside.

Your conscience nagged, “should we wash it?”

He was already pulling at your hand and leading you away from the kitchen into newer, unexplored parts of the house.

“Staff will get it.” You heard him say and you pulled lightly against his hand. The sudden resistance halted his forward progress and he turned a curious face to you. Your mind was whirling. You already knew about the butler (if that’s what that man was called) but he didn’t say that he would get it.

Baekhyun had definitely used an unmistakably plural term just now.

“Staff?” Your voice had a slight alarmed tone. You’d just made peace with the fact that at any time that you were here alone with him, a strange man might suddenly clear his throat from the shadows and catch you making out with your boyfriend/fiancé (!!!!) — but, staff?

“How many people are actually here right now?”

You pulled your hand out of his and wrapped your arms around your stomach, feeling just a little self conscious about the short shorts you wore and the very obvious, very intimate kissing and sweet giggling, and extremely personal conversation you and him had been taking part of inside that room with the statue. What if everything had been overheard, or worse, overseen?

Baekhyun tilted his head and glanced upward here and there, his focus flirting around in a few directions above his head. You had a sinking feeling the longer he pondered.

“Like…five at night. More during the day.”

“So we aren’t alone here, at any point in time?” You did your best to keep your voice neutral.

“We are absolutely alone inside my room. I promise. I don’t have a whole lot of say about the estate. It’s funded by the trust and run by an estate manager.” He was speaking to things you had no experience with, and while the words he spoke sounded fancy you really didn’t understand any of this. You at least found some solace in the fact that everything that took place in that comforting and familiar feeling bedroom of his was completely private.

Baekhyun was leading you around his home. The place was as enormous as you suspected. There were entire spaces dedicated to a single use. Like the home theater or the actual ballroom with its ceiling lined with crystal chandeliers. The excess was shocking. Baekhyun told you that when he was younger, his mother often threw elaborate parties here but he confessed that he had only been to some of these rooms once or twice and you struggled with the idea of living in such a place and never actually using any of it. He mentioned that his mother was in another country, and had been for some time. He shrugged when you frowned at this and he said he always had his Mimi.

As impressive and as breathtakingly beautiful as everything was, you could see how he might have felt quite lonely here.

You longed for the comfort of his bedroom again. You stood in a long white winding hallway and your eyes had focused on a piece of artwork that hung on the wall here. It was something that was obviously extremely expensive and maybe even extremely old. This was something that one might expect to find in a museum gallery in Paris or London. The longer you stared at, the more emotions you felt filling your chest.

It was a pair of lovers locked in an eternal kiss. Their faces were hidden but everything about their bodies and the desperate way they clung to each other felt like the mad kind of love you felt for the man who patiently waited behind you as you took your time with this particular painting.

His fingers in particular were doing you in. He cradled her face with one hand; fingertips dug into the soft pillows of her plump cheeks and with his other hand splayed at the small of her back, he pulled her into his body.

It was a desperate passion. It was insatiable and hanging here in this hallway it would remain as such forever.

“This is incredible.” You whispered and you heard a soft hum behind you moments before a body’s warmth descended over your back and his arms wrapped around you. “I think this is me and you,” you giggled at how silly you sounded and you felt his pointed chin rest over your shoulder. You could make out his face, despite how close he was to you. He was looking at the painting now, paying closer attention with a small smile.

He spun you around inside his arms and he leaned his head into you, his hand lifting to your face and you felt the warm softness of his lips as he kissed you here. His hand gripped tightly around your lower back and his fingertips dug into the soft flesh of your ass and his lips and mouth and teeth and tongue and he took and took from your mouth with a demanding need that surprised you.

Your ears picked up on a sound somewhere in the house. Not close enough to make you panic but you were once again reminded that this was not the place for such things.

You pulled away from his kiss. He bent at the waist and he followed you but with two hands planted firmly over his shoulders you put enough distance between the two of you that afforded the opportunity for some words.

“Baby, I heard a sound. This shouldn’t happen here. Someone might see.”

He closed his eyes and licked his lips, straightening his spine and lifted a hand to rub over his face. Baekhyun nodded quietly and the smile that broke on his face was small and sheepish for a moment. Just for a moment because he shifted quite suddenly, his eyes widened, and his mouth hung open as if he had just had some sort of epiphany.

It took a few moments of him standing with this shocked expression on his face before he inhaled to speak.

“It’s not the sex, the sex wasn’t the problem we have at work.”

You shook your head, needing him to elaborate for you to understand what in the world he was so excited about.

“We can have sex.” He said with a smile and another nod of his head, your own lips pulled into a smile despite having no clue where he was going. “In fact we should. We should have lots and lots of sex. As much as we want, right? Just… get it out of our systems.”

“I mean—” you began cautiously. His eyes were wide. He was excited. Hell, you were getting rather excited with his idea of a sex marathon. It sounded much better than, say, a Star Wars marathon.

“What if we bring in another person?” His frantic eyes looked into yours and you closed up your lips immediately as you pulled your face back and away from him.

No?

No.

Hell no.

Hard pass.

What was this?

Absolutely not.

“Baekhyun.” you spoke his name clearly and plainly, without any hint of amusement in your voice. The sudden change in your demeanor pulled his lips closed and his eyes shot into yours with rapid speed.

“Baekhyun… like… a,” you leaned and lifted a finger up toward his face, his eyes nearly crossed to look down at your pointed finger as you harnessed your most disparaging whisper, “like a threesome? Baek, no.”

His eyes went wide again and suddenly he was erupting in laughter. You couldn’t quite catch up. Your finger was still raised and he was cackling and grabbing ahold of your finger with his hand shaking it lightly as he held an arm over his belly and groaned, panted, laughed some more and tried to reign it in.

“Hey. Lady. Get your mind — out of the gutter,” he said through the fit; still trying to breathe through the noisy laughs that had taken his breath away.

“In the office! Another person at work in the office with us, Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking funny I can’t,” he was holding a hand over his closed eyes, wiping moisture from his closed eyelids.

“Sunny’s project wrapped already. She can come in tomorrow and shadow me, learn the job before I leave,” he lifted up one finger, “so, good idea number one,” his second finger joined, “and good idea number two, we definitely will behave if someone else is there with us, right?”

“Why would you say it like that? We can have lots and lots of sex what about bringing in another person?” You’d dropped your voice and scrunched up your nose, doing your absolute best to sound like this silly giggling man who stood in front of you giving you a damn heart attack with his terrible sentence structure choices. “You scared the shit out of me. I mean, oh my god? My boyfriend, hours after becoming my fiancé, wants to what?!”

You felt that you were very worked up. But you had genuinely and seriously misunderstood him just now. Your hands were still shaking from the shock of it.

He grabbed you by the shoulders and gave you a good shake. “Get it together woman! I would never. Never! I am a one woman man. And you are that one woman.”

“And that was a terrible, awful impression of me. Do you think I sound like that? God. I love you.”

You crossed your arms over your chest and rolled your eyes. Your impression was awesome. You had his speech pattern down to a science.

“Oh my god, shut up. I sounded exactly like you. I love you, too.”

“Oh my god.” He lifted his voice playfully, reaching out with his fingers to poke along your ribs, “You shut up. I love you more.”

You evaded the pokes from him and made your way out of this maze of hallways and theaters and fitness rooms and ballrooms and countless dining rooms and you headed in what you hoped was the direction of his bedroom. You got turned around but with a few light pushes steering you in the right direction you eventually found the familiar kitchen with its spotlessly clean countertop and you could definitely find your way back to the comfort of his bed and the comfort of his arms from here.

[To be Continued]

Links: Part 1, …. Part 13, Part 14, Part 15

#exo #exo fanfiction #exo smut #baekhyun #exo fic #exo scenario #baekhyun smut #byun baekhyun #fanfiction

[darkdarkstucky]

Enchanted, S. Rogers and C. Kent.

Summary: In a world where Omega's were scant and decent alpha's even more so, you think you're one in a million to be in a relationship with Alpha's who not only take care of your every whims and need, but also love and respect you unconditionally. However, your marital bliss of two years is interrupted by the concept of ‘true mates’.

pairings: steve rogers x reader x clark kent.

warnings: cursing!! fluff only. may be horrible and tad repetitive, i'm trying my best though🥹 i just need to write more to get over a slump. (((more self indulgent than anything)))

*** — flashback.

“You guys are fucked.” Bucky utters with certainty, directing a steely glare towards Steve. He had just ended a phone conversation with Natasha, during which, she reluctantly confided in him, about your apparent state of distress.

Granted, he was vehemently reprimanded and cursed up and down by his own wife; her threats still ringing true to his ears should it be proven that he had a hand in his friends' potential adultery— He, along with Steve were now made aware of your suspicions, and could recitify the situation according to what you think you know.

For the meanwhile, he repeatedly assured Natasha that it was all a huge misunderstanding, and if possible, help ease your misguided worries.

“She's getting skeptical, Steve. Sooner or later, you guys are gonna have to tell her the truth.” Bucky advices, though Steve appeared abnormally composed and stoic.

Dare he say, indifferent, opposite to his anxious and tensed demeanor. It was as if, it wasn't his marriage that was on the verge of collapsing, nor was he close to losing the love of his life. Bucky found his behavior increasingly strange, which did not help the predicament one bit.

Steve was like a predator gearing to pounce.

“You and Clark both need to calm down.” Steve finally looks up from his laptop screen, before reclining back on the leather seats with ease. “Nothing has happened. Nothing, will happen. My fealty is to my wife; my eyes have never strayed, not even once.”

“You know very well that's not what i meant.” Bucky sits opposite of him with a tired huff, the low hum of the jet filling the empty silence. “I'm pertaining to the whole Sharon and Lois fiasco. What with the lab results being back, and their claims being authentic.”

“It's merely numbers on paper, Bucky.” he scoffs.

“I'd like to agree with that. But you know the repercussions to your designation will be grave if you continue to ignore the pull.” He replies with an equally heavy tone.

“What do you want me to say, exactly?” There was an evident shift to his composure, blue eyes turning a stormy shade, telling of the rage simmering under his perfectly crafted façade. “I'd tell my wife that i'm leaving her, because my base insticts yearn for another?”

There was a tense silence between them, neither Alpha's willing to back down from their assessing stare.

“We're doing more tests.” Bucky says slowly, conceding. It was not his intention to ruin, dollface, as he and his wife fondly call you, and his bestfriend's marriage just because he cares for your well-being in general.

In some ways, it was considered a betrayal for both Steve and Clark to entertain the possibility that they've made a mistake. That perhaps, you weren't in fact their true mate, and they've essentially ruined your life for any man. Bucky only ever wanted to make things as easy and painless for you.

“I don't care if you bleed them dry, or carve their bones.” Steve utters with a firm baritone, “You know what i want to hear.” that this was all just a twisted joke.

“I understand.”

***

“Princess? "Steve calls out to you softly as he peers into the room where you had somberly buried yourself beneath the blankets and piles of pillows, curled up there in your satin and extremely pink nightgown like a dejected but undeniably adorable little princess.

You grumbled as tears started to form in your eyes and fell on the pillows. You tried your best to breathe in his and Clark's scent to calm your raging emotions, but you were powerless to stop the sob from spilling past your lips.

Why, why why. Why had nothing ever went the way you want them to? Why are you such a failure of an omega? Why can't you give them the perfect little family the three of you had always dreamed about?

Two pairs of footsteps make their way into the bed, and despite your head spinning with endless thoughts of self blame, you could feel the bed dip and arms and-and warmth enveloping you in both sides.

“Sweetheart..” Clark brushes his nose on your nape, chest rumbling with a purr in an effort to provide you comfort, as his most base instict twisted and turned at the mere sight of your tears, let alone your evident heartbreak.

“You want to talk about it, pretty girl?” Steve breathes out in a hushed tone. In a tender gesture of support, his fingers traced soothing cirles on your exposed skin.

You shake your head, or tried to, with your limited space, being crowded by their bulky frames on both sides. “I don't want to. I'm a disappointment.” your words were muffled, but the implication were relayed nevertheless which made both your alpha's tense.

“No one's disappointed with you, sweets.” Clark enunciated firmly. “It isn't your fault.”

“But it is.” you raise your head, hair sticking to the sides of your face, eyes reddening with tears.

“But it isn't.” Steve reitarates, cupping your face gently, feeling your warm cheeks and wiping your tears. “It will happen, when it needs to happen.”

“And all this pressure and stress that you put yourself through is never worth it. For anything, at all.” Clark stresses, pressing a kiss to your shoulder which made you shiver.

“B-but, i really really want it.” You stutter through a choked sob. “I want a baby, with your eyes.” you almost whine in a soft voice, staring at Steve's baby blues. “and one with your curls.” you tip your chin at Clark, lower lip wobbling as your vision cloud once more.

“And you want it too, right? that's why we've been doing it more.” your nose scrunches adorably while the men chuckles, both eagerly pressing a kiss to any part of your skin that they could reach. “You're laughing?” your eyes squint, taking offense.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Clark noses on your temple, in apology. “We don't make love to you simply because we want a baby.”

“We will never make love to you with that intention alone,” Steve nuzzles his face at your neck.

“You see, when a man, or in our case, men loves a woman—” you hit Clark's shoulder before he could further tease you, choking on a giggle.

“He fucks her.” Steve continues, while your mouth gapes. “because she's irresistible.”

“and gorgeous.” Clark adds on. “the sweetest girl in the entire universe.”

“and looks extremely delightful, writhing on our knots.” Steve trails kisses to your neck, starting off innocent at first, yet it soon turned into something much more intimate.

“any man wouldn't be able to resist.” you tilt your head back as clark nips at the other side of your neck. “and she will have everything she wants.” you could barely let out a startled squeal when you were flipped to your back, your lips pulled into a searing kiss.

#steve rogers x reader #steve x reader #soft!dark steve rogers #steve x you #soft!dark steve rogers x reader #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x female reader #alpha!steve rogers x reader #alpha!steve x reader #alpha!steve rogers #clark kent x reader #clark kent x you #clark kent x y/n #clark kent x female reader #soft!dark clark kent x reader #alpha!clark kent x reader #alpha!clark kent #alpha clark kent x omega reader #soft!dark clark kent

[halfway-happyyy]

lonely traveler (rooster bradshaw x reader)

AN: the one where rooster takes his girl on a scar tour. this is short and sweet and full of fluff.

Nothing lasts forever-

She’s vigilant of this fact always, but even more so when she's had the pleasure of his company for more than a scant couple of hours at a time. Raindrops race each other in misshapen lines down the length of his bedroom window, and the early morning sky above San Diego is an ominous steel gray. She shivers involuntarily against him as a crack of thunder booms overhead, and he instinctively pulls her closer to him, the pitter-patter of his heartbeat against her sternum helps to ease her mind. Low light from the candles scattered around the room bathe her nude companion in a pale-yellow glow and highlight his marred skin exquisitely.

“Rooster?” Her voice hovers above a whisper.

Burnt-honey eyes slide open slowly, and pin-prick pupils adjust to the obscene lack of light before he answers her. “Hm?”

“What happened here?” She presses a featherlight fingertip to a razor-thin mass of silver scar tissue on his cheek.

Rooster smiles softly beneath her. “Car crash when I was twenty.”

She marvels at the healed wounds that decorate the expanse of his tanned chest like a warzone, and at the sheer amount of pain he has endured in the short span of his life.

“And this one?” She eyes an angry, crimson scar above his left shoulder blade.

Rooster shifts beneath her and reaches up to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You sure you want to hear all this? We could be here a while.”

She nods her head in earnest. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

And it always amazes her how easy it is to be truthful with him.

“That one was an emergency ejection over mountainous terrain.” She peers down at the shadow of stubble on the underside of his jawline, then up at the circles that bloom violet beneath his eyes and speak novels of how exhausted he truly is. “Your thoughts are loud,” He murmurs sleepily, and the low reverberation of his voice causes her to tremble violently against him once more. “You must think all of this is hideous.”

She falters against him; taken aback at the side of Rooster Bradshaw she so very rarely sees. “Quite the contrary, Bradshaw. I find you nothing short of mesmerizing.”

His lips quirk up into a small half-smile that never quite reaches his eyes, but he lifts her hand to his lips and kisses the back of it, gently. “What’s next then?”

~

She awakens in the morning hush to his sleeping figure still next to her. Relief washes over her at the notion that in this very moment, this time is still entirely their own. Charcoal grey sheets hang loosely off his hip, and she watches the steady rise and fall of his back as he sleeps. She longs to trace the scars there too- hopes that he’ll remain a fixture in her life long enough so that one day she may be lucky enough to know the origins of those as well. She reaches out to him, but a car horn blares in the distance below them, and violently knocks Rooster out of whatever shallow slumber he had been in. A cold sweat blooms over his body and his chest heaves under the weight of sudden dread. His eyes are wide and entirely unsure, and she finds his hand beneath the sheets and squeezes it thrice.

“It’s alright, Rooster.” Leaning forward, she presses a gentle kiss to his temple. "It's alright..."

He swallows hard and settles back against the down pillow beneath him, patting his chest as he does so. “Lay with me a little bit longer, please…”

She nestles down into the warmth of his chest and drifts off to the frenzied thrum of his heart as it beats to a more regular rhythm beneath her.

Nothing lasts forever.

But when she’s with him like this- when they’re tangled up together in the warmth of his silk sheets, and their combined embrace provides safety from every malignant evil the sky has to offer, a moment lasts an entire lifetime.

#soft thoughts only!! #rooster bradshaw #rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley 'rooster' bradshaw #bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x reader #rooster bradshaw imagines #top gun: maverick #drabble #fluff

[fayes-fics]

Moments: Chapter 10

Moments masterpost

PREV | NEXT

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

Rating: Teen and up (rating will change in Epilogue 1, can be skipped)

Summary: Slow-burn fic. Read previous chapters of this fic from masterpost linked above. In this chapter, which is a long one, we are witnessing moments during the two-week engagement. These two are really teasing each other now, so it’s getting a little heated as they test if they can stick to their pact. Also readers parents arrive for the wedding.

Warnings: none really… fluff, fluff. A bit suggestive with some kissing, bed sharing and errr finger sucking.

Word Count: 4.4k (this chapter only, 18.8k total for all chapters to date)

Authors Note: We made it, people! This is the end of the line for the main story. Strangely, a family tragedy spurred me to finally complete this last chapter, having been sitting 80% written for the better part of a month. Please note, there will also be two Epilogues for you to enjoy. The first one, the wedding night, will be explicit but can be skipped (i.e. scant plot, all porn). The second is very short but should not be missed! Thank you as ever to my wonderful beta @makaylan <3 I couldn't have done this without her. I hope you all enjoy this!

Chapter 10: Moments from an engagement 

The first person you see upon return to Aubrey Hall is Violet. She takes one look at you walking arm-in-arm and knows. She bustles over, announcing James is napping and embraces you, kissing you on the cheek.

“Y/n, I am so happy,” she chimes, “I'm so glad my son finally admitted to himself, to you, his true feelings. I will never forget how happy he was all those years ago when he met you and how sad he was after. And, well, anyway, this is the best possible outcome. Welcome to the family, my dear.”

“Thank you, Violet,” you respond a little bashful, “I'm so happy,” you admit freely and squeeze Benedict's arm. He smiles down at you as you look up at him. “So happy,” you repeat, holding his gaze.

“I assume we will need to make that announcement to the family after all,” Benedict chuckles.

“Less than a week later,” you laugh, “they will be confused.”

“No, I think it will make more sense than it did a few days ago,” Violet opines. “We all have eyes; we all knew.”

Benedict rolls his eyes. “Point made and point taken, mother.”

She smiles enigmatically and swans away with a wink.

You giggle and kiss his cheek. “See you at dinner, my love.”

“Wait, you are leaving me already?” he pouts, pulling you into a loose embrace.

You run your hands up his arms. “Just to freshen up and get ready for dinner,” you breathe, “now if you hadn't made that other rule, you could have come with me, shared a bath, and gotten changed together. But you and your rules…” you tease with a smirk.

“You little…” he growls, his grip on you tightening, and you know he is picturing everything you just outlined. 

“If you think I will give up teasing you now we are getting married, you are sorely mistaken,” you murmur.

He raises an eyebrow and leans in. “No, my love, I think you are the one who is mistaken,” his voice is a deep dusky whisper, lacing your fingers with his and locking your joined hands behind your back. “Do you not remember all the times I teased you? Hmm? I've had six years to think of new ways to drive you to distraction. Can you imagine? Oh, my love, you have no idea what awaits you.” 

It's a delicious, loaded, filthy promise, and you are breathing heavily when he is done talking.

“But please…” he concludes, releasing his hold on you, “go enjoy that bath. Alone...”

“You…” your turn to growl at him as he backs away with the most devastating crooked smile. He winks and turns his heel, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

—

You are sitting at your vanity table, washed and freshly dressed for dinner, when James wanders in from his adjoining bedroom in his pyjamas.

“What's wrong, my darling? Why aren't you ready for dinner?” you bring him into a cuddle on your lap.

“Mummy, I don't want to have any dinner. Can I just go to bed?” he whines, snuggling into your shoulder.

“Aww, my precious child,” you indulge him. “Are you not hungry?”

He looks sheepish. “I might have eaten too many biscuits at afternoon tea. Mrs White, the cook, well, she said that I could have as many biscuits as I wanted because I'm so handsome,” he grins.

“So you made yourself all full up on biscuits?” you laugh.

“Maybe…” he looks contrite.

“James Darby, you are a naughty boy,” you say with mock outrage, hugging him closer as you do.

“But you still love me, right mummy?” he argues back, giving you the full hazy blue-eyed puppy dog look—Benedict’s look.

“Yes, I do,” you admit, kissing his forehead. God help me, you add silently in your head, realising you will soon have a house with two of them pulling this trick on you. Dear god, what are you letting yourself in for?

“There's something I want to tell you, James, before I go to dinner and you go to bed,” you sway him slightly in your lap. “What do you think of Benedict moving in with us? Or us moving in with him?”

“Did you ask him like I wanted mummy?” he answered animatedly. “Did he say yes?”

You huff a laugh. “Actually, Benedict asked me if we would move in with him. So you both had the same lovely idea.”

James smiles proudly at that.

“He also,” you hesitate briefly, “he also asked me a very important question, and I said yes.”

“What question, mummy?”

“He asked me to be his wife.” You are so nervous.

“That’s nice,” he says unphased. “Does that mean Benedict is my new daddy?”

“Well, it means he loves you very much and wants us to be a family - the three of us. Officially he will be your step-father,” you obfuscate, “But you can call him whatever you want to call him, James darling,” you explain. “He will never replace your Papa, but he wants to be the best father he can be to you.” Your heart hurts a little at all the half-truths you have to tell him, but more than anything, you want James to believe he is the rightful Viscount.

James pats your hand as he sits in your arms. “I like Benedict very much, mummy; I will call him daddy for now. Can we live in his cottage with all the paints?”

You laugh, “Yes, James. And we can all live at Darby Hall or our little cottage. And you can set up an art studio together.”

He claps his hands together gleefully, “I'm so excited, mummy!”

There is a knock at your door. “Come in,” you call, not bothering to look up, assuming it is likely to be your lady's maid or James’ nanny.

“Benedict!” James calls out, and your head whips up. He is dressed in a beautiful blue ensemble that steals your breath. James wrestles himself out of your arms and runs across the room to him. Benedict instinctually drops to his knees, and they hug.

“Mummy told me we are going to be a family, and I can call you what I want to call you. I want to call you daddy,” James enthuses.

Benedict looks at you, full of emotion, then back to his son. “Yes, it's true we are going to be a family, James. I would be so happy if you want to call me daddy,” he replies, swallowing thickly.

“And we can set up an art studio together at our cottage AND your cottage,” James peals with excitement.

Benedict scoops him up and stands. “We can do whatever you want, James. My son,” he kisses him on the cheek as he says those momentous words. James smiles at him, and then they both look over at you.

“Mummy, come join our hug,” James gestures. And you do.

Being in the joint embrace of your fiancee and your son is the best feeling in the world. It's like your world is suddenly whole. You will need to reapply your eye makeup.

“I came to bring you both to dinner,” Benedict offers by way of explanation, “but I see someone is ready for bed.”

“James doesn't want dinner,” you explain to Benedict, wiping away a tear as you all hug, “but I'm sure he would be delighted if his mummy and daddy put him to bed together before we go for dinner.”

James nods rapidly, and Benedict's eyes soften to the point of being dewy.

“It would be an honour,” he replies, his voice cracking, looking between you.

You walk hand in hand into James’ room, and he climbs happily into his bed as you both take up a place on either side. You pick up a book and read him a fairy tale, taking turns to make funny voices that delight your little boy. As James’ eyes droop, Benedict grabs your hand and stops reading. 

Your eyes meet, and he whispers, “Thank you for this.”

“We can do this every night if you want, my love,” your voice thick with emotion.

“I can't wait for the rest of our lives together,” he confesses. 

Yes, you definitely need to reapply your eye makeup now.

___

Benedict takes your hand as you descend the main staircase to the dining room and raises it to his lips, kissing the back of it as you approach the door. 

“I know my family can be overwhelming, but don't forget they already adore you,” he whispers against your knuckles.

You smile at him. “I adore them too.”

And two hours later, you have had the dinner of your dreams, being warmly welcomed into his loving, spirited family.

“Benedict,” you whisper as you leave the room a little drunk on wine, “can we sleep together tonight?” you plead.

“We have our agreement,” he reminds, sounding somewhat reluctant about it, as a hand sweeps around your back.

“No, I know; I mean actually sleep. Very chaste. Just,” you sigh, “I want to fall asleep in your arms.”

He pulls you into a tight embrace. “That sounds wonderful, my love. Do you promise nothing untoward?” he smiles against your cheek.

“Your honour is safe with me, Mr Bridgerton,” you giggle, “at least for tonight,” you add.

“Then I accept, soon-to-be Mrs Bridgerton,” he chuckles, and your stomach flips at the idea of that being your name in just a few short days.

A few minutes later, you are lying on your bed, fully clothed, your head on his chest, your bodies entwined—just the embers from the fireplace give the room a faint glow. Your eyes droop from the wine and the warmth of his body seeping into yours. You listen to the steady thrum of his heartbeat under your ear and trace mindless shapes on his forearm with your fingertips.

“I love you so much,” you hear him whisper as you drift off.

“Love you too,” is your slurred reply as sleep claims you.

__

Waking up in Benedict’s arms is blissful. Somehow during the night, you have ended up as the little spoon in a hug. His embrace is warm and enveloping, a lovely place to be.

It's also not entirely unproblematic. You can feel something hard and insistent against your bum cheek through your joint clothing. The temptation to reach back and squeeze is strong, but he is sleeping so peacefully that you dare not disturb him. Or break your pact. Tempting as it may be to do precisely that. 

So you just lay there quietly and daydream about how things used to be when you woke up together and how things will be once you are married. You are in a unique position to know so much about intimacy with someone before marriage. Most people have no idea what they are getting into. You know this man’s body almost as well as your own and thinking about it makes your hips flex on instinct.

A warm hand grabs your hip bone. “Stop that,” he growls, thick with sleep.

“Sorry,” you reply. 

“No, you’re not,” he grumbles amicably.

“You’re right,” you flip over to face him, “I’m not,” you smile and crowd your head closer to him, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Kissing is acceptable, yes?” you whisper against his skin.

You feel his smile more than you see it.

“Yes, but maybe not whilst lying in bed together,” the hand on your clothed hip squeezes, “it’s entirely far too tempting…,” he breathes, ghosting against your lips.

“Mmmm, then get out of my bed, Mr Bridgerton,” you tease, capturing his bottom lip between your own and sucking it gently, enjoying the hitch in his breath and the flex of his fingers.

“You are a menace,” he murmurs when you release his lip, his breath warm against your cheek.

“And so are you. I just said you could leave my bed,” you kiss his lips, “but… here… you… still… are,” you challenge; between each word, you kiss him lightly, holding his face with your hands.

He growls, and suddenly you are pinned under him on the bed. Your senses are alight; hands caged under his against the pillow, his warmth and weight on top of you causing your heart to flutter in your chest and a warm tingle elsewhere. He stares down at you, his pupils blown wide, his lips damp from your kisses, breathing a little ragged, just like your own. 

“Mummy….?” 

You startle and look aside to see James standing in the now-open doorway to his adjoining room, rubbing his eyes sleepily. 

“Daddy…?” he adds hesitantly upon recognising Benedict. 

“James!” You both respond in unison. Jumping away from each other as if burned.

“Good morning, my love,” you add, smoothing down the dress you slept in and rounding the bed to kneel and hug him. 

“Why are you and daddy in the same bed?” he asks.

“Remember how I used to share a bed with your papa? Well, your daddy and I will be married soon, so we will share a bed too. Does that make sense?” You try to explain as best you can, feeling Benedict’s eyes on you.

“Yes, but does that mean I can’t sleep in your bed anymore, mummy, like when I am scared?”

“No, no, James,” Benedict interjects and walks over, dropping to his knees next to you. “If you are scared, you can always share a bed with your mummy and me. We will give you hugs and help you sleep, my son, always.” He ruffles James' hair, and James crowds into him, seeking a hug.

“Thank you,” James replies.

“Now, shall we get ready for breakfast? Your mummy has a busy day today, James; that means we can paint together,” Benedict explains.

“Hurrah, I’ll go get dressed,” James chimes happily, extracting himself and running away to his room.

“I do?” You look at Benedict, puzzled, as you both stand up.

“Mother said last night she is taking you into Canterbury for a first fitting with the local modiste there, remember?” He teases.

“That’s today?!” You go wide-eyed.

He chuckles. “Two weeks is not much time to make a wedding dress, especially one that needs to be as special as you,” he adds, his voice soft but with an undercurrent of heat.

You close your eyes briefly and sigh. “I love you, but please get out of my bedroom Mr Bridgerton. You cannot say such things and expect me to keep the terms of our pact,” you finish, staring him down.

His eyes flash something sinful, but he bows respectfully. “Fair enough. I shall take my leave, fair lady.”

He opens and disappears out of your door. Then he swings back in on one arm suddenly, his face smirking. “If it helps, I like you in ivory; it looks so wonderful against your flushed skin when you’re about to come apart in my arms,” he whispers dangerously with a conspiratorial wink.

He has to duck, laughing, to avoid the pillow you lob at him—total menace.

__

“Oh, that looks wonderful on you, my dear,” Violet assures as you stand on the raised platform at the modiste. You stare at the mirror, nonplussed; all you can see is some raw silk (in ivory, for him) and many pins.

“Violet, you flatter me; this is just a first fitting,” you shake your head affectionately.

“You will make a beautiful bride,” she assures.

“Thank you,” you demure. 

“Have you yet written to your parents to inform them of the happy news?” 

“Yes, I did. It’s such short notice, but hopefully, they will be able to attend. I’m sure they will be surprised. I think they expected me to stay a widow for life,” you chuckle.

“Did they not know of your history with my son?” She seems curious.

“I was matched from birth to my previous husband; they would not have taken kindly to the news that I was with someone else. On my part, at least, it was a secret—it had to be. Much as I would have preferred it otherwise,” you sigh, smoothing down the front of the silk, suddenly rueful for all the lost time without your true love.

“You loved him then,” it’s not a question as much as a statement:

“I loved Benedict from the moment we met,” you admit quietly. “And I hated my life after. I tried to make the best of the situation, and John was never a bad man. It would have been easier if he were the villain of the piece. He was a good man and a good father. But… he wasn’t my heart.” You shrug.

She reaches over and squeezes your hand. “I knew Benedict was in love from the moment he came home one evening. He just looked so at peace. Like he had met someone who made his future clear. He told me about you not long after. And then, when you had to be married, it broke his heart. He has loved you for as long as you’ve loved him; I can assure you of that, my dear” she draws you into a hug as she sees your misty eyes.

You are grateful she does not mention James in this semi-public setting. And as she pulls away, she gently touches your cheek. 

“If your parents cannot make it, I am certain the Viscount would be honoured to walk you down the aisle to marry his little brother,” she says softly. 

“Thank you, Violet. It truly will be an honour to join your family, and I cannot wait to be a Bridgerton.” You confess.

“You already are, my dear,” she smiles.

—-

The next ten days are a whirlwind of wedding planning, decisions and appointments, managed mainly by Violet, who seems very happy to lead the charge.

Except at dinner, you barely see your intended or even James, who seems ecstatic to be Benedict’s shadow while you are occupied. Every evening he regales you with stories of their adventures together that day - swimming, hiking, painting, horse riding. And every evening, you wish you had been with them instead. 

In the afternoon, three days before your wedding, you finally get some alone time without a wedding-related commitment. James is napping while you take tea on the outdoor terrace, revelling in some quiet time with a book and the sun's warmth. 

You hear footsteps up the stairs to your left, and suddenly there he is. Your fiancée. Looking so handsome in a maroon waistcoat and cravat. He seems surprised to see you.

“No wedding commitments this afternoon, my love?” He teases, leaning over and kissing your cheek. 

“None,” you smile, “I’m enjoying a quiet moment after days of hubbub.” 

“Hmmm I can imagine,” his crooked smile in sympathy causing your stomach to flip as it always does.

You bite your lip, deciding to tease him. “I’m feeling so very… excited to be your wife.”

“Excited, hmm?” He raises an eyebrow and drops to his knee in front of you, the same stance as when he proposed.

“Yes, perhaps you can help me with that,” you whisper, grabbing his hand and using it to gather the layers of your dress in your lap.

“Y/n,” he warns, his voice a low rumble, “we agreed, remember?”

“Benedict, please,” you murmur, “just touch me.” He shakes his head and lowers your dress back down as you pout.

He gently grabs your left hand, lifts it to his lips, and kisses the betrothal ring. Then with a sinful smirk, he suddenly envelopes that finger with his mouth, hollowing his cheeks and sucking, his hot tongue swirling against the jewellery and your flesh. Your breath stutters hard, something hot blooming in your chest.

“Don’t mistake my proposal to be chaste for lack of wanting, darling,” he drawls after sinfully pulling off your finger with a wet pop. “It is, in fact, very much the exact opposite.” His breath is warm over your knuckles as he looks at you through his lashes.

“Are you actively trying to kill me, Mr Bridgerton?” Your voice breathy, leaning your forehead against his.

“Maybe…” his little smile is something dangerous.

There’s a fizzing slide of want down your spine, and you grab his left hand and mimic his actions. Engulfing his ring finger in your mouth, tasting his tangy skin. Sucking insistently and running your tongue into the slightly webbed skin between his fingers, his knuckle trapped against the roof of your mouth. He groans and surges against your leg. You intend to remind him of what you have done to other parts of his body in the past, and the message does not go unnoticed.

“Anything you can do. I can do too,” you challenge with a raised eyebrow keeping his finger there gently with your teeth. 

“This is a dangerous game,” he concedes through gritted teeth. “Three days,” he adds, his voice tight, as his finger slips from your lips.

“Indeed, my love,” you wink. 

__

The morning of your wedding feels momentous. As if your whole life has been leading to this day. The day you wished you could have had six years before. 

You greet your parents as they arrive from their journey, so pleased to see them. They are so very keen to know more about your seeming whirlwind courtship and surprise engagement and you have a few moments with them before your fiancé joins you. 

“Lord and Lady y/l/n,” Benedict greets respectfully as he walks in, “it’s so wonderful to meet you.”

“Mr Bridgerton. I trust you will treat my daughter well,” your father stated, shaking his hand firmly.

“Of course, my lord. Y/n and James are the most important people to me in the world.” Benedict replies solemnly, looking over at you.

Your mother nudges you as the men start to talk. “I see why you like him. He reminds me so much of little James. You seemed to have picked a husband to match your handsome little son.” Her comment is offhand with a chuckle, but your stomach lurches. You may have to tell them the truth someday. “But it seems like such a short courtship. Are you certain about him, my dear?”

You decide to tell a partial truth. “I knew Benedict in the past, mother. He was a friend of a friend. He’s a trustworthy gentleman.”

“Oh of that, I have no doubt,” she nods, “the reputation of the Bridgertons as an illustrious family of excellent pedigree is known everywhere, my dear. It’s more about if you are certain this is a good thing. For you? For James?” Her motherly concern is touching.

“Benedict and James adore each other,” you assure her.

As if wanting to prove your point, James comes running in. He makes a beeline to Benedict, who picks him up instinctively and kisses his cheek.

“Hello, son. Look who came to see us for the wedding. It’s your grandparents,” Benedict tells him softly.

James whips around to look at you and your mother, then your father, who has moved to pour himself a brandy. 

“Did he just call him son?” Your mother whispers, a smile plastered on her face as she watches Benedict put James back on his feet. “Good lord, now I see them together; the resemblance is far too striking. Daughter, I think we need to have a private discussion, do we not?”

“Not now, mother,” you answer through gritted teeth, refusing to meet her questioning gaze.

James walks over and greets his grandfather, the embodiment of manners.

“My dear boy. My, how you’ve grown since we saw you last,” your father chimes, “come sit with me. Tell me all about your latest interests.”

“I like painting, just like my daddy does,” James announces proudly, taking a seat next to your father.

“I don’t recall the Viscount being a painter,” your father muses out loud.

“Not my papa, my daddy,” James corrects with a little frown.

“James means me,” Benedict admits quietly, taking a seat next to you.

The look of surprise on both your parents' faces is a picture.

“When we announced our engagement, we allowed James to call Benedict whatever he wanted,” you offer by way of explanation, “he chose that.”

There is a moment of silence then your father clears his throat.

“So you are a painter Mr Bridgerton?” Your father begins. “What sort of income does that afford for the provision of a family?”

Benedict looks sheepish and goes to answer, but you cut him off.

“Father,” you admonish, “James and I are more than adequately provided for by the Darby estate. It matters not what Benedict can provide financially. I love him with all my heart, and that is all that matters. All that will ever matter. Even if the Darby fortune is taken from us somehow, know that I will still choose this, him, every time. Always.”

You feel Benedict’s eyes on you, his mouth slightly agape, surprised at your impassioned outburst.

“I love my daddy too,” James pipes up, wriggles off the sofa next to your father, and walks over, climbing into Benedict’s lap. You ruffle James' hair affectionately as he twines his arms around Benedict's neck and lays his head on his shoulder. The three of you truly are a little family, and you couldn’t be happier.

Your father looks utterly bewildered, as if the concept is entirely alien to him; he just nods politely and swigs his brandy. You feel a sudden melancholy at the realisation that your parents never had the privilege of a love match. While they have companionship, their marriage was arranged, much like yours with John. It makes you reach out and grab Benedict’s hand. So grateful for him, for what you have had and will share, the journey you’ve had to experience to finally be together, somehow making it even more rewarding and all the sweeter. As your fingers entangle, you share a look - a moment - that tells you everything you will ever need you will find in or with each other.

And a few hours later, as you stand next to your father looking up the petal-strewn church aisle ahead you see your two boys awaiting you - Benedict and ring bearer James, with smiles on both their beautiful faces - and you know this is the moment you will treasure the most. Forever.

— The End —

Tagging: @makaylan @foreverlonginguniverse @iboopedyournose @wysteria-clad @colettebronte @aintnuthinbutahounddog @severewobblerlightdragon @margofiore @writergirl-2001 @heeyyyou @enichole445 @enchantedbytomandhenry @ambitionspassionscoffee @chaoticcalzoneranchsports @queenofshinigamis @khaleesjjj @starslibrary @magical-spit @honeylovemoon @justwant2read8421 @nikaprincessofkattegat

[uselesssomebody]

reader that didn’t have a lot of emotions before she turned (to whatever you want) but now the bite made her feel things she never felt so she just asks everyone “why is my heart tingling 😠” HAHA

complete masterlist | teen wolf masterlist

words || 𝟙.𝟟𝕜

summary || in which the reader feels - maybe a bit too much

a/n || yo anon i love this request, and i'm sorry i haven't gotten to it in a hot minute. not gonna lie, i did make this a bit more romance-y and a bit more stiles-y than originally intended because: surprise! i'm a whore!

➵ alright the rest of the requests will be out within the next two weeks so stay tuned!

➵ next non-request fic is one i'm so excited for: a bucky fic inspired by a halsey song and a buzzfeed unsolved episode. if anyone can guess it, i will dedicate the whole fic to you hahaha

➵ me to myself while writing this: you didn't expand on the romance enough

➵ also myself to me: whore it is two in the morning go to bed

warnings || fluff, i suppose

➵ a wee bit raunchy, esp. near the end, but deffo not smutty so that is why i am not putting an 18+ warning

➵ if you still think you will be uncomfortable/are not suited for that type of content: hey! come back later or check out my other fics!

it’d been weeks since they’d had an occurrence. while everyone else was happy to finally focus of school, work, or each other - stiles seemed like he was gasping for another wild, supernatural goose chase. 

y/n could see it in his eyes, everytime he overheard one of his father’s radio transmissions, and the light in his eyes fades when he has to hear about a regular violent assualt, as opposed to one where a ‘strange, furry, four-legged creature’ was the perpetrator. similarly, stiles had been careful to monitor his best friend’s - he’d never admit it to scott - condition over the coming weeks.

she’d been bitten no more than a mere week and a half ago, and she’d taken it surprisingly well. he knew he shouldn’t, but stiles couldn’t help comparing her reaction to scott’s - during a time that seemed so long ago now. he’d noticed both the big things - the noticeable flinches and disgust at the school bell or when a loud motorcycle revved along the road. he’d abused the fact that her hearing was uber-sensitive; scott had been trying to wean stiles away from the sheer invasion of privacy the power granted. but stiles wasn’t having it, happy that y/n shared in his somewhat-immoral curiosity. he also noticed the small things: the twitching of her eyes when listening out for small noises during their otherwise quiet study sessions. the cold weather of the growing winter meant she would wear gloves often, but he’d seen the small, crescent-shaped scars littered on her palms. 

he didn’t know if he could attribute it to the bite, but he also seemed to notice that she was much more emotive than usual. before it, shows of insecurity or joy were both scant; a tear being shed was almost unheard of. because of it, stiles was almost bombarded by the sheer giddyness and depression that seemed to follow her around for the past few days. she laughed more - it was akin to a cackle now, but stiles thought it was cute - and it had done wonders to stiles’ self-esteem, happy that at least someone was appreciating his jokes. and he could have sworn that, as lydia convinced the lot of them to go to the movies, tears had dripped on to his sweater - the one she’d been leaning her head against - as one of the main characters in the film died a rather upsetting death. and he could have also sworn he hear her quiet sniffles as he drove her home. 

he was at a stalemate - unsure as to how to approach her about it. would it be insensitive? was he in the right to say anything? was anything even actually different going on? he was pondering the questions as he walked out of class - and walked into someone. shaking his head in shock, he’s happy to see scott.

“hey, man. you doing okay?” scott must’ve noticed his penseive state, and stiles was quick to brush him off.

“yeah, yeah, i’m good.” they walked to their lockers in silence, before stiles realizes that the answer to all of his questions in standing right in front of him, “hey, scott?”

“hmm?” 

“uh - when you first turned, did you - well, was there any difference in your emotions?” he stumbles the question out, somewhat unsure of exactly how to phrase it. scott looks confused, implying stiles probably hadn’t done a good enough job.

“emotions? uh, you remember that i’d get angry and that would lead to me changing, but-”

“no, no, not like that. i meant - were you more, like, expressive? did you just feel happier or sadder or whatever?” scott pauses to think about it.

“uhm, i - i guess, i mean - yeah, i guess i was.” stiles wasn’t fully convinced by his answer, but thanked him anyways, bidding him goodbye before heading out. the only way he’d get an answer was by going to the source - y/n.

he’d let himself into her place - the spare key in its familiar place in the potted plant by the patio. he had immediately noticed the silence on the lower floor - evidently, her parents weren’t home. however, he could hear light music from upstairs, so he hollered a greeting to her as he walked up the stairs.

she didn’t even glance up at him as he walked in, instead offering a quiet greeting as her eyes stayed trained on the work in front of her. she seemed… stressed. god, stiles had never even seen her stressed - how on earth does she consider him her best friend? realizing that now wasn’t the best time to bombard her with questions, he instead found a comfortable place on a cushioned chair by the wall, swinging his legs over the armrest as he pulled out his own textbook. 

there was silence between them for a moment, with just the soft melody of the song she had playing. 

“your book’s upside down, ya know?” she broke the silence by pointing at his book, still refusing to take her eyes off her paper. it was true, he really han’t been paying attention to his book - focusing instead on if she was okay. he was quick to correct it, muttering a small story, “you should be,” she responded in her usual humor, but her voice quivered a bit as she made the light-hearted joke. stiles didn’t know whether or not to press her, but decided that making sure she was okay outweighed the potential awkwardness of the following situation. he cleared his throat.

“y/n, are you okay?” he was looking at her in earnest, and he saw her eys flit up to hers, before quickly fixating back on her paper. even in the dim light of the room, he noticed that she wasn’t actually focusing on the text, instead sporting a gaze that was unfocused and distant.

“why-” she cleared her thoat, her voice-crack obvious, “why do you ask?” stiles gulped.

“i - i dunno, you just seem a bit stressed. you need help with something?” 

“no, of course not, it’s just this stupid lit paper and-” her voice broke off before she could continue, and stiles could see small drops glisten as they fall onto her lap. was she crying? he rushed to her side, quick to take the paper that had been causing her such misery away from her. 

“hey, hey - it’s okay, it’s okay - you’re fine - i…” stiles trailed off, unsure of what to say to his best friend - the person who never cried, the person who walked around with such a confidence that it almost came off as arrogant, the person who barely showed her emotions. he opted instead to wrap her in a hug, allowing her to shake against his shoulder.

he listened as her little gasps and hiccups dwindled down, and she slowly, begrudgingly, untangled from him. she was quick to wipe her wet face with her sleeve, and stiles waited patiently as she calmed down.

“i’m so - so sorry, that was so dramatic, i didn’t mean to spring that on you, i-” in an attempt to justify herself, she had begun rambling, but stiles was quick to reassure her.

“no - no, it wasn’t. you okay now?” she smiled - it was small, but it was there.

“yeah, much better.” she grows silent, and that small smile fades. she bites her lip, as if she’s unsure if she wants to say something or not. obviously deciding she should, she takes a final deep breath to calm herself, “it’s just - ever since the bite, i’ve been feeling like everything’s hitting me all at once. i mean, i got used to the lights, noises and smells, but - shit - i can’t deal with all this fucking stuff. i’m swinging from happy to sad so quickly, and over the dumbest things, and it just feels like my heart’s always tingling! and i can’t get it to stop and i hate it - god, i hate it so much.” stiles’ theory had been correct, but now he was wondering as to why exactly she hated it so much. she had started fiddling with her sleeve, her confession leaving her in a state of vulnerability.

“i - why exactly is that so bad?” he said it in an earnest tone, hoping not to come off as confrontational. she looks like she’s not going to answer him, and he’s about to gently press her further, when she exhales deeply, and throws her head back a little.

“you wanna know why it’s bad?” it’s rhetorical, but stiles nods nonetheless. instead of a verbal answer, she grabs his hand - bringing it slowly up to her chest. finally placing it on the dip between her breasts, he lets out a soft exhale at the rapid beating of it, “that’s why.” her voice isn’t above a whisper, and stiles’ mouth is dry as a bone, “i can’t even look at you anymore without my brain going into overdrive, and-” she laughs, a breathy laugh laced in uncertainty, “i don’t know if it’s one of those ‘primal urges’ or whatever but…”

“i-” stiles had regained his voice, and had dropped his hand in shock, “i - you-” instead of allowing him to continue an incoherent ramble, y/n inches closer, and starts closing the gap between the two. she could hear his heart, already beating inconsistently, somehow still manage to pick up the pace - as she lowered her lips to his. she can feel the sweetness of his breath.

“i need you stiles. god - i need you so bad it hurts.” she can see the small movement of a nod as she presses down on him, the meshing of their bodies perfect in an almost indescribable way. the heat from his body enhanced the inferno of emotions she could feel in her own, and every graze of his fingers over her hips, his hair on her forehead, and the press of his lips felt amplified to a unignorable extent. as much as she’d hated the sensitivity to everything over the past few days, she was relishing in every sensation provided by the man - her best friend - in front of her.

when they broke away, they were both a bit breathless. she had his head in her hands, and ran her fingers lightly through his hair.

“still worried about that lit paper?” she laughs, even at such a serious moment, she loved that he could still make a joke.

“should i be? i thought i’d have all night to work on it.” similarly, he laughs.

“not anymore.”

#teen wolf #teen wolf x reader #fluff #stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski x reader #stiles stilinski imagine #stiles stilinski oneshot #stiles stilinski fluff #dylan o'brien #stiles stilinski request #teen wolf request #uselesssomebody

[yeyinde]

Hello :) English isn't my first language , so please correct me if anything is wrong . First of all you're writing is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING ! ! ! I don't know if you're taking requests but if you do can you please write an RZ|Michael Myers x shy reader , in which Michael comes home after a kill and finds his S/O showering and can it be smut ? But , if you don't take requests right know and you don't want to write about Michael , that's totally fine . Anyways , I hope you're having a wonderful day <3

ahhhhh, thank you so much!!!! 🖤🖤 i am absolutely taking requests, and i do write for Michael (i have been working on some peepaw Myers smut on the DL for a bit now, so my apologies if some of OG Myers mannerisms bleed in), but love all versions of MM, so thank you for giving me an excuse to flex my hand with some RZ Myers~

and sorry for the delay! i wanted to get reacquainted with RZ Myers so i spent some time watching the films again to get a better grasp on his movements, mannerisms, and the little idiosyncrasies i could spot!

i really hope you enjoy this! and - sorry, again: this kind of got away on me, and its maybe-sorta-kinda clocking in at 11K. oops. 🥹

⤷tw: gratuitous smut, fluff, mentions of gore and death, Michael being Michael, dom!Michael

You tell yourself you're not nervous, that there is nothing to be nervous about in this strange little microcosm you've fallen inside (snatched, dragged, locked in a gilded cage where you are tucked away from a world that might lash out and hurt). 

No, nothing at all. 

In this ethereal, otherworldly place inhabited only by two (and your cat - cats, really, because you love all of your strays equally) there is no set routine; therefore, there is nothing to be worried about since something like this could only be fretted over had you the luxury of normalcy. Of established rules. Regulation. Schedule.

It's silly to worry, then. Silly and stupid and pointless. 

You're not nervous. You're not.

But the anxious knot that gnarls inside of your chest spools and thickens with each passing minute calls you a liar. 

The clock in the corner ticks the time down like an augury, and your eyes bounce between it - this ugly grandfather clock with a pendulum that hangs too much like a noose for you to ever enjoy the sonorous lull - and the back door, as if in those scant microseconds, he would appear in the doorway, head hanging low to avoid clunking his forehead off the trim - because he's just so tall, just so massive -, and would just be standing there, watching you. Like he always does. Staring. Assessing. 

For such an indomitable, unfathomable mountain of a man, he's surprisingly catlike. 

A silent, stealthy jaguar hidden in plain sight. 

(There is a predator in this picture!, your aunt shares on Facebook. Can you spot him?

You never do. You don't have an eye for locating hidden danger, and when you scroll down, spotting the cat lurking in the red circle, you realise you weren't even close.)

When you look at the back door once again, there is nothing crowding the archway. No one lingering near the basement stairs. The open hallway is empty save for your bins lined up in the small mudroom that connects to it by a set of three steps on the halfpace.

You know the layout of your house like the back of your hand, just like you know the places he likes to hide. To wait. The little enclaves barely conceal the sheer, absurd bulk of him, and they're all empty. 

You hear nothing. Not the rattle of the lock. The creaking of the cellar stairs. Nor the unmistakable sound of his muffled breathing. 

You're not worried. Saudade doesn't belong in your heavy chest. 

Tick tick tick… 

There is nothing to be worried about. 

Tick tick tick… 

Your gaze tears away from the door, the clock, when the familiar jingle of the local news station cuts through the tenebrous clouding your living room. 

The man - clean, sharp, greying around his temples - jogs a stack of papers on the curved desk, his mouth set in a grim line. 

It's been nearly a month since you've seen him last. 

He comes and goes like the many strays you pluck from the alleys and take home, nursing them back to health, feeding them until they're plump and nourished, and then letting them wander back from wherever little corner they originated from, knowing that you'll see them again when the rats thin and the new litter is able enough to hunt on their own. 

Scarcity is what brings your family together. 

"...A series of murders are once again shaking up the county. No curfew is set as of late, but the police are urging the public not to wander at night alone, to stay in large groups, and to lock all windows and doors…"

Hunting in Haddonfield is scarce lately. 

You taste copper on your tongue before your bottom lip starts smarting as your teeth break the flesh. Your tongue rolls out, smoothing over the irritated skin, and wiping away the droplets of blood that pool in the seam of your mouth. It's salty, astringent. The metallic tang makes your mind wander, drifting to him. 

Like a magnet, your eyes are pulled back to the hallway. 

The taste of blood reminds you of him. The thick, heady scent of rust seems to exude from every pore on his body. The burning miasma of decay. Death. 

(Danger, something in the atavistic recesses of your mind spits. Danger and doom. Demise.)

"...Seven more bodies were found-," you blink, gaze focusing on the dim hallway that sits, stagnant, vacant, and turn your head back to the television. Faces flash on the screen behind his head. Their names sit in a little white rectangle below the last image of them alive, happy. 

The one in the middle looks familiar. A familiar stranger. 

It hits you when you spot the little mole on her chin. 

The bubbly clerk at the mum'n'pop grocer on the outskirts of the city. She always pretends to ring up your tampons and pads, but each time you sit in your car and glance at the receipt, they're never there. 

It's done with no words. She isn't seeking recognition, or plaudits.

The last time you saw her, she added a bag of chocolate clusters to your order, perching them on top of the box. You walked in looking like death and hunched over from the cramps that turned your face nearly ashen with pain that day. No words. No inclusion of nearly nine dollars and forty cents on your bill. She even grabbed the expensive brand - the one that uses all-natural ingredients. 

She winked when you looked at her. A secretive little thing meant only for you. 

And now - 

You suck in a shuddering breath through clenched teeth. The temperature drops. Your teeth ache from the cold. 

Sometimes you like to pretend that the world doesn't exist outside of the four walls that close in around you. That everything else is a bad dream, an illusion. It's just you on this lonely island on the outskirts of a town that bred the unequivocal evil that haunts the shadows and hunts down those misfortunate enough to stumble in its ravenous path. 

Just you, him, and your cats. 

And he, of course, is the shapeless chasm of evil skulking the town and butchering the lovely shopgirl who gives you free chocolate when you wander in like an omen of death. 

It's not his fault. 

The excuse is thin. Sorrow gnarls inside of your chest, edging into the anxious thrum that steady billows up, polluting you with that fretful, nauseating sense of worry. 

You know you can't just mark down the residents that are off-limits. No such thing exists to him. The concept of unkillable is as confounding to him as this whole thing is to you.

But - 

As much as you like her - liked - you've made your choice, haven't you? The sorrow is overwhelmed by the worry. 

What if the police found him? What if someone hurt him? What if, what if, what if - 

What if he never comes back? 

This whole thing started on an ephemeral moment of happenstance. You wandered out into the alley right beside your house, pstpstpst'ing in the dark with an open bag of Temptations whilst you searched for that little stray who ran off with your socks - the cosy kind that keeps all your toes warm - when you stumbled into a wall. A warm one. Fever-hot. A hand lashed out of the caliginous recess, sealing around your arm before the gasp in your throat had a chance to pass your lips. 

It felt like a vice. 

The unrelenting coil of iron wrapped around your arms, squeezing the bone with such unfathomable force that your knees quaked from pain leaking into your forearm. 

The bag dropped from your shaking hands, spilling shrimp and lobster flavoured cat treats all over the dank, grimy alley floor. 

You couldn't see anything through the gloom or the sudden vertigo that ensnared you when you glanced up, trying to catch a glimpse of the mass of pure strength perched in front of you. Your head swam as the man's sheer length stretched on for aeons, never ending, roiling up nearly two metres tall. 

Your knees buckled. 

His hands gripping you was the only thing that kept you from collapsing into the murky puddle below. 

Through the town, murmurs erupted about the Shape. His history leaks blood and misery - mayhem and calamity follow him wherever he wanders. He's an omen of death. Decay and pain, murder, is his auspice. 

He's pure evil, the flashy doctor on the television set ground out, tone severe. His brows furrowed tightly together as everyone else around him hurtled blame and reason. He ignored them, his gaze unwavering as he stared into your very being through the monitor. Stay away from him. If you see him-, there was a hitch in his voice; and then, solemn. The silence of the newsroom was palpable: well, you'd be better off praying for a swift death. 

And so, that's what you do. 

"Please, please-," you don't pray to god. Gods. Your pleas are meant for him even though the black eyes that gleam in the low moonlight that hangs over you like a portant all tell you that it's futile. He doesn't listen to prayers. Your breathless orisons fall on deaf ears. 

You think about your cats. The ones locked inside your house right now with no escape. Food will run low. Water. You don't have many friends that keep up with you often enough for them to notice your absence. 

It's then, at that moment when his hands squeeze and your bones creak under the strain, that you wish you didn't prefer your own company over that of others. Cats. That if you weren't so docile and content to be alone, someone would notice the glaring lack of you, and rescue the poor strays you trapped inside your charnel. 

"Please," you choke, eyes burning with tears that stream down your face in rivets. It's your last adjure, plea, to whatever humanity is left to rot inside of him. "P-please just open my door…? My cats are inside, and I-"

The clouds overhead split apart. The milky glow of the moon illuminates the dim alleyway, cutting through the tenebrous cloaking the being that grips you from the shadows. 

The murky light makes the deep splashes on his chest look almost like ink. 

You thought it was his head. 

Oh, god. You'd been pleading with his chest this whole time. 

You glance up, nervous, shaking, and are met with the waxen mask, creased with age and covered in grime. Blood, perhaps. The sight of him, the way the back of your head has to nearly rest on your spine to stare at his face, makes you shiver. Makes your hands tremble and your heart thunder inside of your chest.

It would be very logical for the blood in your veins to run cold.

But with the intense, piercing way he stares down at you, chin tipped toward his chest, it spumes molten, liquid heat that rushes through you with enough force that you feel a little dizzy with it. 

Oh, no… 

Oh -

He bends down, and the thick, metallic scent of blood overwhelms you. Dirt. Sweat. The miasma of rot makes your heart give a painful thud. Fear. Terror. 

(And something else.)

His breath turns stertorous. 

You brace yourself, tensing for the sudden paroxysm of a vicious attack, your mind flashing with all the things you did, didn't do, should have done, and will now never get the chance - 

- He lurches, and then like a pendulum, swings back. 

You're jerked forward when he falls into the trash behind him, clattering against the bins stacked up near the garbage shoot. 

The silence that settles over you is smothering. 

You expect him to get up, to finish what he tried to start, but he doesn't. He lays, motionless, in the gutter. His grip on your arms slackens, and they fall, limp, to his sides. 

It's then that the damage to his torso reveals itself to you. The blood coating his body wasn't, entirely, foreign. 

He's injured. 

You hesitate. 

You should leave him here to die. Call the police. Thank your sudden stroke of luck. Kiss the ground and look for some deity to worship for this salvation. 

You should, but you don't.

(You've always had a soft spot for dirty strays.)

He comes and goes, now. Like the many cats you feed. 

Wandering around before slowly ambling back to your house in search of more sustenance. 

Somewhere in the muddled awakening, when he blinked his eyes open and found himself staring at the white popcorn ceiling in your living room, catching sight of you careful dabbing at the sweat drying on his brow after the rupture of a fever, you - and your house - become something victual for him. 

It was tense, at first - and really, it still is - but in the interim of patching together the gory remnants of his abdomen and breaking down in the solitude of your bathroom, huddled in the basin as water rippled across your skin in a baptism of sin, you found purpose in the murkiness that enshrouded you. 

The dubious morality nearly crippled you, leaving nothing but an empty husk of regret and terror as his skin knitted itself together, sealing over the wound that, had it been left in the trash, would have killed him. The infection, poisoned blood, animals - it would have all contributed to a corpse in the alley. 

The stench would have drawn notice to his final resting place, and the reign of terror the chasm of evil, the Shape, brought to your town would finally be over. 

And yet -

There was something itching in your pericardium that made leaving him alone feel tithe abysmal as the brief relief of letting him die. 

This is your fault. 

Your lip aches. Your tongue lolls over the broken skin, soothing the sting. 

Whatever it was that made him decide not to kill you when he felt your hands on his forehead, when he saw you trembling in the corner, gasping for breath and praying for a swift end, is a mystery to you. 

But maybe there is no logic. You feed the strays because you want to. 

You buy the extra cat food, and litter, and spend your earned money to get them spayed and neutered and cared for, not because you have to, but because you just do.

And maybe it's the same for him. 

You're somewhere in the middle of unkillable - for now - and nourishment.

Or you were. 

Then something inside of him snapped, evolved. 

You weren't here when he slipped inside of your home like he belonged, flinching at the state of him dripping gore in your mudroom, and then slowly, cautiously, skirting around him, fretting in the background. 

You weren't there.

No -

You were at the vet. 

When you returned, cat cradled under your arm and dozing off the effects of anaesthesia, you were met with an eerie silence, and bloodied footprints pacing across your floors. 

You had just enough time to set the cat down on the landing when his hand lashed out through the aether once more, grabbing your delicate neck and slamming you against the wall so hard the photos you hung (all pictures bought from Ikea to make your mudroom a little less drab) clattered to the ground, cascading glass and broken wood over the messy floor.

His breath comes in great, heaving rasps; anger seeps into every crevasse as his eyes, feverish with bloodlust, bore down at you. 

The apoplectic fury that roars through him is sudden, unexpected. He'd been so docile toward you thus far. Your defences lowered, almost, when weeks passed and he made no move to end your life. 

He crept around your house like he belonged, watching you from the doorway of your bedroom as you slept. It was the most he'd done to shake your sense of comfort and privacy. 

He never touched you, except that time in the alley and when he'd first woken up, both times grabbing you out of reflex rather than intent. 

This - 

This is purposeful. 

The quick rise and fall of his chest makes your toes curl in confusion, fear. 

Why now? Why he is - 

He leans in, the wheezing breath sounding muffled and garish behind the latex, and then he - 

Sniffs.

It's so unexpected, so jarring, that your head thumps against the wall when you flinch. 

Why is he - 

His hand reaches up, grasping at the wispy, tangled hair of his mask, and with a great tug, it's pulled from his head, and dropped - discarded - on the floor. 

You've only seen him barefaced when you lugged him into the mudroom, and settled him on the carpet between your couch and coffee table. It wasn't his choice; you'd removed it in your search for additional injuries. 

This, however, is all him - his choice, his decision.

And it baffles you. 

You don't know why he took the mask off, why he's so angry - why he keeps coming back, why he stares at you so much, why he does what he does, why you - 

You find out with the briefest flutter of his eyelids narrowing at you. His nostrils flare. And then he moves, plunging his head closer to you until your foreheads are pressed taut together, and suddenly - unexpectedly - his mouth is on yours. 

He doesn't move. His lips are lax. It might not even be a kiss, you don't think, but then his head tilts, slanting his mouth over your own, and his lips part, only just, and it's then that you realise that he is kissing you. 

Or in proxy of it, anyway. 

He mimics the right movements, but there is no action beyond that. It's almost as if he doesn't know how people kiss, just that they do, and this is what it looks like when you stand off to the side and watch. 

Movies. Real life. The images you've seen play in your head over and over again, lining up perfectly with the way his head moves, the way his body leans into you, bracketing you against the wall. His hand around your throat keeps your chin up, your head immobile, while he cocks his head to the side in a mockery of romance that's so utter endearing you nearly pass out from blood that rushes to your cheeks. 

Oh, god. 

Michael Myers is kissing you. He doesn't know how, but he's trying, and it's - 

Oh, god. Oh -

It changes the chossy foundation established between you. 

Michael stakes a claim on you, on your house, that is incomprehensible to you; this abstruse chasm in which you're precariously balanced on the precipice, gazing in at the inscrutable abyss that looks back at you, and kisses you, and pulls you close, and smothers you with the sheer absurdity of it all, is confounding. Beyond reason. 

You haven't initiated any of it. 

All the lines crossed between you were at his hands, his whim. When he strips you bare and looms over you like a starving breast, a ravenous god, you let him - willingly, eagerly - but you never breach those parameters on your own accord. 

The abrupt physicality of your evolving - something - with Michael Myers wreaks havoc on your poor, straining heart. The embarrassment comes in a maelstrom. You skirt away from his grasping hands, gasping and flushing scarlet as the blazing heat of his body sears your skin. 

It's too much sometimes. 

To go from near death, to a ramshackle symbiosis of sorts - a ghastly, unspoken agreement in which you are not to be killed provided that you aid him when he comes skulking through the alley, and meandering about your haven like the very same alleycats you pluck from the barren streets -, to this, is, well, odd, to say the least. 

Was it there the whole time for him? Did he look at you with his lidded gaze from the onset? Did that dark hunger spool inside of him from the beginning or were the embers flamed by something you did after? 

Was it the empty house he wandered into that set him off? 

(Does it really matter?)

"...If you see any suspicious figures, do not engage, and call local authorities right away-," click.

You toss the remote on the cushion beside you, leaning your head back on the rest, gazing listlessly at the ceiling. The swell of panic hasn't subsided, but it's all futile. 

Michael has no collar. He comes and goes on his own, driven back to you by that strange unknowable thing that makes him desire you, that makes him tug you on his lap and paw at your body until you're quivering from his touch. When he finally sinks inside of you, all thought is dissolved into frayed synapses that spark, filled with nothing but pleasure. Logic, reason, questionable morality, the existential ennui that drapes over you like a stormcloud, only seeps into the tenebrous when he is around. 

And he hasn't been around for nearly a month. So, it comes in vicious waves, now. 

Maybe he found whatever he was searching for in your flesh, and didn't need it any longer. Maybe the tremble in your hands caused by his touch, the briefest brush of his skin nearly overwhelming you, and the etiolated countenance you carried when he loomed large and imposing, in your space, was disinteresting to him. 

You've seen it before in the others, haven't you? 

Hunger satiated. Thirst quenched. They wandered away from you, no longer needing the aliment you provided. 

You should be thankful that his curiosity has been abated. 

(But like most things you ought to be, you aren't.)

The only constant with Michael is a trail of bodies and the habitual sense of fear and unease as he lurks in the crevasses of Haddonfield, waiting to happen upon his next victim. 

He leaves you in a state of pell-mell and uproots your bucolic existence with his confounding presence, and the strange way he fits you inside of his world. 

Your thoughts are plagued by uncertainties that make your stomach churn with knots; a festering mass of unease and anxiety. 

You need a distraction. 

Your eyes glance furtively toward the hallway - barren as it has been for the last month - before the little sigh of dejection passes through your lips. 

It's silly to worry. 

With one last hopeful glance at the still empty hallway, you rise from the couch, and drift toward the washroom adjacent to your bedroom. You'll scour the nerves off under the scalding nozzle, and then watch something cheesy and stupid - a mindless movie you turn your thoughts off before falling asleep. 

Peanut Purrter and Jelly swarm you when you stand, mewling for the food they already ate, and you bend down, scratching behind their soft ears. Out of all of the cats, these two are the most affectionate. They never leave your side, either. You picked them up out of a bin, took them home, and they quickly decided that the outdoor life was just not for them. 

It happens sometimes. 

All their wants are fulfilled in the sanctity of your four walls, and they seem content to live out the rest of their days wandering through the halls, and watching the birds from out the window, or the fish in your tank. 

Jelly pushes his soft, orange head into your palm, eyes slipping shut as his loud purrs fill the hallway, and you can't stop the little thought that slips out of the recess where notions of grandeur and impossibilities are let to rot, wondering if one day, Michael will find that, too. 

(And then, embarrassedly, selfishly, you wonder if it would be with you.)

You bury your flaming cheeks into Peanut's lush fur, and use her as a shield to hide the silly little thoughts that roll inside of your head late at night. She's happy to go along for the ride, content to paw at your hair and flick her tail over your arms. 

"How stupid," you murmur into her fur, the flush spreading like a fever. 

She bleats in response.

⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮

The shower eases the tension that builds, settling the cortisol that pools inside of you.  

Thoughts of Michael slip down the drain, but only just. He lingers in the periphery - has since you first found him in the gutter and dragged him inside - like an inescapable shadow. Your hands scrub over your face in a futile attempt to wash the blush off your cheeks. 

It's easy to push the idealistic musings into the chasm that chews them up and spits out realism. 

It's the worry of the unknown that refuses to relent. 

Is he hurt? Did he get caught? Why hasn't he come home -

Home. 

No. This isn't his home. His home is a dilapidated house in the suburbs of Haddonfield. 

Your little bucolic abode on the fringes of the wilderness is not home to him: it's a refuge. A place to get his needs met and lay low. 

A means to an end. 

The thoughts gnarl inside of you, festering under the weight of uncertainty.

You wish you could ask him, but even if he was here, you know you wouldn't. The words sat on your lips so many times before only to be swallowed down quickly by the fear of rejection, of pushing him into a corner. 

You reach for the soap and wonder where this is heading. Maybe he wouldn't return. Maybe he didn't need you anymore.

Maybe -

There is a rustle. A looming shape just outside of the blue cover. And then your curtain is wrenched back. 

The startled scream is smothered in your oesophagus at the sight of him, brooding, massive. He takes up all space in your small washroom - so tall that he has to duck his head down to look at you lest his view is hindered by the curtain rod. 

(Can you spot the danger? You didn't even know it was there-)

He appears almost as quickly as he disappears. His eyes never waver as he watches you huddled under the scalding spray of the shower head, hands curled between your breasts as you lather a bar of soap in your hands. 

(Sea salt and eucalyptus. The loam scent reminds you of him.)

You flush, hunching further as his usually impassive stare hardens, brimming with an intensity that is only matched when he's angry or victorious after a kill. 

Michael peels back the shower curtain, exposing more of your nude, wet flesh to his burning gaze. 

"M-Michael-," you start, stuttering over his name, but the rest turns into a breathless huff of surprise when he pulls off his mask, and ducks under the rod keeping the curtain in place, clambering into the shower behind you. 

As soon as the water hits the leg of his jumpsuit, grime and dirt bleed off of him in rivets, turning the pooling liquid black. The brackish water sloshes as he steps in beside you, looming over you. 

The shower seems comically small in comparison to the length and width of him. His shoulders hunch, head dropping to avoid hitting the waterproof ceiling. You shuffle back, numb with surprise at his unexpected appearance, and with the way he moves - agile and graceful, despite his size. 

He fills the space, pushing you back to the opposite wall with the nozzle directly over your head. It reaches to his sternum, the weeping spray drenching his jumpsuit until it's nearly black from the water and the dried blood that runs down the length of his torso. 

It must be uncomfortable, you think, but he makes no move to undress, and seems completely unbothered by the oddity of the situation. 

It's been a month. Not much has changed. He is still the same strange - deadly, dangerous - man he'd always been. Always is. 

Your smile is a touch wobbly, filled with nerves of a new kind; the same anxious thrum wells inside of you at the sight of him. Your mind oscillates between terror, fear, and that primal pool of self-preservation that quickly rips through you, and bellows to stay still, to hide so that the hulking predator can't see you, can't devour you; and the unmistakable sense of relief at the sight of him standing so close to you. 

He's here, your mind chants like a broken record, tone shifting like a swinging pendulum between nervousness, fear and happiness, solace. 

Michael has a tendency to wring out every iota of intensity in each emotion you feel. There is no slight, no halves - it's whole. All. You're never slightly happy to see him. You're exuberant. You're never a little scared of him. You're terrified. 

You've never felt this way about anyone else before. The visceral emotions he makes you feel leave your mind spiralling on a downward descent off the edge of a steep precipice. 

And even now, with him towering over you like an inescapable wall of pure strength, you're wracked with tremors from the force of the relief, the conflict of fight or flight, and the undulating sense of contentment at having him so close to you. 

"Michael…" you murmur again, caught between terror and need. 

The slightest narrowing of his eyes is all he gives you in response. His chin dips down, meaningful, purposeful, and you know, you know, what he wants. What he came for. 

Covered in blood that doesn't belong to him, fresh from the abattoir he makes of your town, you can't help the thrum of want, need, happiness that spumes inside of your chest, consuming the worry, the fear, in one quick bite. 

It's gone, dissolved by hydrochloric acid and the unrelenting urge to close the chasm between you and the bulk of his body where you stand, barely brushing past the last rib of his torso. Michael knows. Of course he does. 

You were naïve in the beginning when you assumed him to just be a mindless killer; that the eyes that gazed at you were vacant and unseeing. 

Michael Myers is more observant than you could have ever fathomed. 

Nothing escapes him. 

Not the tremble in your lip, the spasms of your shaking fingers, the glistening water that runs down your flesh, already prickling with goosebumps despite the steaming heat of the shower.

He can see the need, the want, brimming up in your eyes as you gaze at him fleetingly, unable to match his stare, and overcome with that burning tang of embarrassment, shyness, that overwhelms you when he stands too close. 

He can see the war in your mind: 

Yearning for proximity until all you can feel is his heavy flesh on yours, merging together into a muddled mess of euphoric pleasure.

And;

The hesitation to get too close. The nervous thudding of your heart when he moves, like a scared little animal of prey stumbling upon a resting predator. Unsure what to do. How to approach. And if you even can.

It becomes too much. Your eyes drop - submissive, docile - to the white panelled floor below, watching the blood run over your feet, staining the mat pink with the gory residuum of seven - known - victims. It makes you recoil slightly, toes curling in the river of ichor. 

Michael’s head tilts. Another display of impatience. 

Right. Your teeth sink into the soft bed of flesh. Nerves turning to ash. 

Your hands shake when you reach up, knuckles brushing over the metal chain of his zipper as your trembling fingers grasp the pull. Michael keeps his intense, heavy gaze on you as your fingers spasm, too nervous to take the lead and undress him. 

Like a skittish little mouse under the paw of a cat, you tremble. Paralysed. But not with fear - with nerves. 

It's been a month, you want to say. You're not prepared. You're not - 

It's a lie, though. You laid in bed for the last four weeks with your hand under the covers, and his name on your lips like gospel. 

If anything, you're over-prepared. All too eager to feel him. To let the boogeyman take you. 

The thoughts running through you make you shiver. In your musings, Michael's head tilts.

The amplitude of his patience is deep, but not endless. 

His hand reaches up, closing in your own. His palm swallows your hands with an effortless ease that makes your knees quake. 

The implication in his action is clear: hurry up. 

You nod, mostly to yourself and you scrounge together the nerve that is quickly being eroded by the cascading water pouring over you. The grind of the metal teeth peeling back on the zipper, the rush of the water, and Michael's deep, even breaths are the only noise that fills the small - too small - shower. The muted cacophony echoes against the ceramic walls, reverberating through you. 

The zipper snags on the grove, and can go no further. You swallow thickly, eyes darting up to catch a glimpse of his expression covered under the damp, tangled curtain of his long brown hair. An inky abyss stares back at you. Under the impassivity of his expression, the vat of unfathomable black churns and froths with intense, burning fervour.  

He shrugs his shoulders, and the jumpsuit slips down from the weight of the water, pooling at his ankles. 

You flinch when his cock springs up, freed from the loose confinement of his overalls, and you think you catch a glimpse of his canines when he spots the bloom of blood spuming under your cheeks. 

You peek up at him, stomach knotting with a flutter of nerves that batter relentlessly at your soft lining, anxious to escape the prison it's kept in. His teeth are hidden by the even seam of his lips, expression veiled with a thick veneer of that same implacable nothingness that's reflected on the latex laying dormant, forgotten, on the carpet. 

When you finally meet his gaze, Michael's eyes flutter. And then he drops. 

Michael sits in one swift movement, dropping down to the shower bench behind him. His knees jut forward on the seat that's far too tiny for someone so big. 

Without him looming over you, you feel like you can breathe again. Quick breaths are eagerly stolen into your starved lungs. His proximity alone makes you sweat, makes you feel like you're being smothered. Hypoxia sets in until you're dizzy with it.

His hand reaches out, wrapping around your arm in that same too-tight, too firm grasp he always uses. 

It would be a lie to say he doesn't know his own strength by now. Michael Myers is very aware. Very attuned to himself in a way that you don't think any other person could ever manage to be. There is no unknown with him, no indecision. No unease. When he does something, it's always with purpose. 

So, when he takes hold of you like this, a shade away from burgeoning pain, you know that this, too, is done with meaning. And when your gaze drops to the floor, unable to meet the burning smoulder that stares at you, expectant, waiting, you see the purpose very clearly. 

He's hard. 

The moment your gaze brushes across the pearlescent precum pooling on his flushed, engorged head, his cock twitches, jerking against his broad, firm stomach. 

The hot water is limitless with your tank. It'll never run out so long as the electric light keeps it burning. But the spray that grazes your skin feels icy compared to the heat thrumming in your veins. You feel hot. Feverish. 

Panting into the steamy, oxygen-starved basin, you hastily snap your eyes shut, squeezing them tight to stem the sudden torrent of want that rages inside of you at the sight of him - knees spread in the perfect picture of languour, one hand on you, an effortless shackle keeping you from escaping, and the other limp by his side, knuckles brushing against the ceramic shower seat. 

He's probably tilting his head in that way he's wont to do - a little dip of his chin that conveys and implacable: well? and you can almost hear the accompanying, what are you waiting for? echoing in the stifling chamber. 

Your face is on fire. The embers flicker and drop sparks across your chest, spitting at the tips of your ears. 

You can't - 

Well. You simply can't. 

But Michael doesn't understand the concept of no, of wait, of this is too much and it's been so long and he's too -

Overwhelming. 

Everything is: his presence, the way his intensity feels like physical weight bearing down on you, his absurd size, his indomitable prowess and strength that sometimes makes your knees buckle and your limbs slacken in fear, his insatiable appetite -

He's hungry. Your teeth chatter from the shiver that rockets down your spine. 

There is no preparation for when his hands seal around your waist, unamused by the embarrassment that overtakes you. It happens too fast for you to keep up. His muscle coil, tightening, and then you're being heaved up into the air, suspended over his lap by nothing but his brute strength. 

Michael moves you around like you're a life-sized doll, filled with nothing but spooled polyester cotton. And to him, maybe you are. You're a malleable thing that flushes blood red in his presence, the hue never failing to catch his rapt attention immediately, and pique that little part of his brain that wants more. Little nips decorate your chin, neck, collarbones, chest - all a buccaneer smear of blossoming brands in the shape of his teeth; his insatiable lust for that particular cardinal shade manifesting on your flesh. 

He stares at them after. Eyes fixed on the burst capillaries that pool blood just under your skin. His breath is always a little quicker when he sees them the next morning, a little raspy, ragged. 

(He'll push you, then, against the wall and take you there, eyes never straying from the soot-coloured stains smearing flaxen and violet.)

There is no illusion of control with Michael. No sense of shared power or leeway. The ebb and flow begins and ends with him - his whims, his wants. You're merely adrift in the current, clinging to driftwood as his currents drag you along. 

It's here, perched on top of him, in a position where - had it been anyone else, you might have considered yourself in control, where the truth of that really stands apparent. 

Your knees aren't even touching the bench. They're folded up, caps pressed into the seam of the wall and Michael's hips, legs folded under your thighs, and toes dangling off the edge of his bent knees. 

He holds you tight, refusing to let you go, and pulls you taut to his chest until you can go no further. 

Even with you perched atop him, he has to angle his chin down to meet your gaze. Big. Towering. Mountainous. His arms flex, muscles coiling under the tawny flesh that barely contains it, and it's the jut of his veins that makes you gasp, eyes lidding as desire spools inside of you. 

Sometimes you like to imagine what he would be like had he chosen a different path in life, one void of bloodshed and terror. A model, you think, delirious with the hard press of his body against yours - so fragile and delicate by comparison. He'd be lusted after by an endless stream of people desperate, like you, for just a graze. 

It feels a little taboo to touch him, but you're imbued with the visceral sense of cacoethes.  

Unable to stem the itch in your palms, you press them against his chest, feeling the hard plains of his body under your fingertips. His skin is warm. Chest dusted with a flaxen smattering of ulotrichous hair. It prickles against your skin when you rub your hands across his broad torso, tentatively running them up toward his collarbones.

It had taken quite a substantial amount of courage - of the liquid kind, no less - to touch him of your own accord. He seemed rather pleased when you did, when your hand reached out and felt the bulk of his forearms, so wide that there was still a finger-width of flesh poking out around your thumb and pinky. His muscles tensed under your curious prods. The first tightening of his corded arm seemed largely out of the unwonted brush of your skin on the outside of his usual demanding design. Then he relaxed. His muscles flexed, as if to show you a proper demonstration of his indelible strength. 

His skin rippled. Veins bulged, pressing taut to his flesh. 

The sight of it made your mouth water. 

Still does, you think, eyes greedily taking in every inch of his exposed skin, the expansive flesh offered to you is irresistible. Your hands roam, free and unhindered by the usual hesitation that encapsulates you. It's the distance. The time apart has chiselled open a rapacious hunger inside of you. 

Michael watches as you paw at him desperately, eyes widening, breath stuttering when his chest expands under your hands. Your palm passes over his heart, and the steady thud is almost jarring. It knocks through the haze of want that overtook you, and you find yourself almost surprised, like always, when Michael's humanity is confirmed. 

He's not a husk driven by basic needs. Evil. 

He has a heart - one that beats just like yours. 

You pull back, your palm lifting off of his chest until just the very tops of your fingers remain on his skin. 

Sometimes you convince yourself that he's a spectre. Ichor and evil are confined in the pulpy sinew of a human. A matryoshka of sorts where the exterior seems largely normal - or as normal as someone as massive as he is could ever seem - but the inside is filled with empty layers all stacked together. 

Murder. Bloodlust. Mayhem.

Carnage. Death. Decay. 

It muddles together in your mind and makes you think of him as a quietus. A being that does not belong in this realm where ghosts and demons and ghouls are relegated to the altar where they are condemned by a vicar. Cast out of the established spectrum in the material world that closes in on you like a noose. 

The dense, solid flesh under your hands confirms corporeal nature, but everything else about him mystifies you. 

A little part of you wonders if he really is a quietus prowling around in this moral plane; an escapee from the pits of hell left to wreak havoc on the world of the living to satiate that lust for calamity that brims inside of his slate-coloured gaze; the same hue as death, decay.

The same eyes that ensnare you - captivate you - rendering you mute, silent, in the echoing cacophony of the dead that bellow at you, their blood running down your drain, congealing on your toes. 

(You wonder, then, what it says about you that you're willingly perched on the lap of Stygian ilk like a poised queen on a throne of skulls. 

Right where you belong.)

You meet that smouldering gaze.

He's surprisingly accommodating today, you note, glancing at him through the wet veil that hides his expression from you. Your fingers twitch on his chest. You're overcome with another inadvisable whim - the urge to sink your hands into his hair and scrub the dirt away from his ashen locks is hard to ignore, but that might be pushing the limits of what he allows too far. 

You dig your nails into the flaxen hair on his chest instead, grounding yourself against the silly notions brimming up inside of you.

It's in those musings over your unexpected caprice that Michael's patience wears. 

His jagged nails bite into the flesh on your hips, the stinging prickle of a furze meant only as a warning. He wants something. You're taking too long. He's getting impatient. 

But the thing is: you don't know what it is he wants. 

Your lower lip juts out, and you sink your teeth into the plush skin. It would be easier if he spoke, telling you what it is you're doing wrong, or if he showed you what it was he wanted. But it's futile. 

He does neither. Michael gave you a warning, and now he waits. 

The nervous gnashing in your chest grows under the intensity of his stare. His eyes narrow just a touch, fixed on the pink slip of your appendage poking out. He's so focused on it, that you feel like you can breathe a little better without the weight of his gaze penetrating into your being. Eye contact with Michael Myers fills you with the maddening urge to roll over and show your soft belly, to bare your vulnerable neck in submission. 

Your tongue flicks up, swiping across your upper lip. His eyes follow it. 

You do it again. Again -

Just as you're beginning to catch on to what he wants, he tires of the little game you're (unintentionally) playing. 

To him, you're toying with him. Holding up a piece of meat and dangling it in front of his maw. 

You flush, stuttering out a simpering apology, but Michael cares very little for the placating words you attempt to persuade him with. The burn of his unyielding grip burrows into you again, and it's the only warning he gives before he wrenches you forward, pulling you until your breasts are flush with his chest. 

He devours the broken gasp of his name that stumbles from your lips, feasting on you like a starving beast. 

Michael is a quick learner. Almost as soon as you opened your mouth, moulding your lips against his, he picked up the finesse behind the action, and consumed you. He doesn't let you take control of the kiss - once he learnt the little things that make you pant into his mouth, moan brokenly against his tongue, his hunger grew. His kisses leave you breathless in a way no one else has ever managed. 

Like most things in your life before Michael, kissing was always just okay. A prelude. A chore. 

And now you whine against his lips as his tongue lashes out, filling your mouth in search of more of your taste. 

It's good, now. Great. Amazing. An explosive sensation of searing heat, and kiss bruised lips. You pull away, gasping for air, and feel the sting on your mouth from the force of his ardour. 

Lidded, hazy with want, you pull yourself closer to him, whimpering when his cock presses into your navel, smearing precum across your wet skin. 

It's been a month. A month of nothing. The scent of him left your pillows weeks ago, and your imagination was barely enough to quell the rapacious ache inside of you that longed for the firm, unyielding press of his body over yours. 

And now, he's here. He's yours for the taking. 

Your fingers itch again - the urge to touch is strong. Consuming. 

But you don't. You flush a deep maroon, tipping your chin away from his gaze, and rock against his lap, seeking a quiet, unnoticeable pleasure. 

He's too much. 

You can't ever bring yourself to give into the greediness inside of you, and instead take what little you can get away with. The idea of just -

Taking feels a little too sacrilegious. A little too bold. It's not in your nature to do so, and the idea of testing those implicit boundaries with Michael is a little too daunting. 

So, you cant your hips against him, squirming in his lap to abate the ache growing inside of you with what little motions he'll allow as Michael nips down the column of your throat. His mouth on his skin, teeth burrowed into your pulse point, the thick length of him so close to where you want him, need him, is too much. 

He catches the bloom of red under your skin when you blush, feels the stutter of your breath as it crawls up your throat. The want in your voice, the need, is palpable when you choke out his name. A soft, meek little thing: the coo of prey, begging so prettily for reprieve.

Michael buries his chin into the curve of your neck, forcing your head back. His hands slide, bracing over the delicate vertebrates of your spine. They're almost fluid in his hand. The bones in your body are as easy as papier-mâché for him to snap. To break. He could ruin you. Sink his canines into your jugular and tear out your flesh, letting you bleed to death in his lap. He could keep the sensual arch of your back going, pushing and pushing until he snapped you in half. You're so -

Fragile. 

His cock twitches against you, spitting prespend over your belly. His cock burns hotter than a brand, molten against your skin. 

Michael's arms tighten around you, fingers digging into the knobs of your spine. Panic wells inside of you. He's going to do it - snap you in two -

-and Michael -

-picks you up effortlessly once again, and holds you over his aching cock. 

There is no foreplay tonight. He won't slide his hand between your soft thighs to feel how wet you are for him, fingers toying with your slickness until you moan out his name in that particular cadence he likes best. He won't drag them up, making you see them glistening with your desire. Forcing you to acknowledge your want for him, to see it glimmering on his hand. Evidentiary proof that your body yearns for him. That you belong to him.

He won't because he's impatient, now. Your wiggling, the little gasps of his name, the way you cling to him and fit in his lap, have all worn his patience down to nothing. 

(To Michael, he's had nearly a month of edging, foreplay, with each of his kills that left him half-hard and aching, and on the verge of wandering back to your familiar abode to satiate the burn in his loins.)

He'll take you like this. 

And maybe later, when he wakes in the middle of the night with you slumbering peacefully beside him, in the spot you belong, he'll slip under the covers and spread your aching thighs apart, rousing you to the sensation of his mouth devouring you, tongue greedily lapping at your centre until you're a quivering mess, begging him for respite that'll never come. Not when he hasn't had you in nearly a month. 

This is only an appetiser. 

You know this by the darkening glaze in his eyes as he pulls you close, grasping you tight, until the flushed head of his cock slips between your thighs. Shuddering from the way the blunt tip presses against you, you scramble to find purchase as he steadily lowers you down. His cock slips inside, stretching you wide to make room for the rest of him. 

Michael doesn't do things in halves. 

There is the slightest hitch to his breath once the first inch passes, bringing tears to your eyes at the burning stretch of him filling you. Once he's found his mark, he leans his head down, nuzzling into your neck.

You know what's coming. You know - 

But there is no time to prepare yourself for the suddenness of being split apart while his teeth sink into the soft flesh of your neck. 

A shrill cry is ripped from your throat when he bludgeons into you, the head of his cock battering into your cervix in a way that has you seeing phosphenes with your eyes wide open. Your toes curl, fingers dig into the flesh of his broad shoulders, body spasming with the sudden paroxysm of him being seated so deep within you. 

His jaw is vice on your neck, and for a moment you fear that he's going to pull away with a chunk of your flesh, but it's gone when his teeth go slack, and his tongue runs out with rapacious greed to lick up the fresh blood that spills down your chest in pink rivets. 

You sob, quaking from the suddenness of it all, and try to abate the hypoxia from inking out your vision. The abruptness, the pain of the bite, the burn of the stretch, all knocked the air from your lungs, and you struggle to come to yourself through the overwhelming sensations he ripped through you. 

It's a mercy that he stays still, letting you adjust to his girth as he laps at the blood he spilt, nipping at your broken flesh. Michael is big. You barely had time to marvel at the size of him before his urgency to fill you became too much, but you feel it now with incredible clarity. 

It pushes to the very edge of your mettle, teasing the resiliency of your body until you feel like you're on the verge of splitting apart. Broken, irreparably, by the thickness seated to the deepest depths inside of you. You shift, wincing at the way his cock moves when you do, the base of him stretching you in a way that has you heaving brokenly into his chest. 

It aches. He feels endless. You pry your fingers from his shoulders, only slightly remorseful at the sight of four indents cutting through his flesh, and drop your hand down to your stomach. More than a little delirious on that white-hot pain, you almost think you can feel his cock through the layers of tissue, pressing against the skin of your abdomen. 

"Michael-," you sob, head spooling with the thick haze of pleasure-pain that ricochets down your spine. 

He knows what you want. What you need. He always does, and while he might be a right bastard when it comes to giving it to you when you want it, he never leaves you dissatisfied. But this - the watery stream of blood leaking over your collarbones, dripping down your breasts, is what he cares for most, and so -

You'll wait. 

You pant. Squirming on the throne of his lap in a desperate attempt to find that spot inside of you that makes you see an array of refulgent nebulae behind your eyelids. 

Your walls tremble, body shaking, but slowly, slowly, the ache inside begins to spool, coiling into something different. Numbed pleasure seeps out of the place he's nudged, seated so firmly against, and begins to leak into your bloodstream. 

The first, quiet gasp that's ripped from your chest verges on absolute bliss. It's a call. A beacon. 

And Michael answers. 

Michael plants his feet firmly on the floor, and you feel the flex, the coil, of his strong hamstrings pull taut. Too busy admiring the strength in his body, you fail to recognise the signs. His hips jerk suddenly, pushing upward with enough force to jostle you. You gasp, slipping on his hard, wet skin, and slamming into his chest. Your hands reach up, holding onto his shoulders as Michael begins to move under you - the prowess of a tiger, a caiman, pure muscle barely contained by the prison of its flesh. 

He doesn't wait for you. 

All you can do is cling to him desperately, eagerly seeking purchase from the deep, demanding thrusts he batters into your body from below. 

His mouth is on yours again, swallowing the hiccuping moans you make, the keens, as he pistons into you. The pace he sets is rough, a touch brutal: he forces himself in as deep as he can go, pauses there just to let you feel it, and then pulls out until only the tip of his cock remains, and he waits again. It's a brief second, but they come so sporadically that you can't work out a pattern, not when the firm press of his cock inside of you knocks all logic out of your head.

Synapses overheat with each delicious drag of his cock against your gummy walls until they misfire, filling with a slurry of oxytocin and dopamine, rendering you stupid, dizzy, and drunk on the thickness of him, the way he fills you, and slams into the places inside that make your nucleus accumbens coruscate like a supernova. 

His hands clench around your hips, lifting you up off of his aching, hard cock, and forcing you to meet him in the middle of his next thrust. It rattles through your core until your voice is hoarse from the cries he rips out of you. It borders on the blissful equinox of being too much, too painful, and too good, too euphoric. 

All you can do is cling to him. Let him move you around how he pleases.

His breath quickens in tandem with your mewling sobs, head nuzzling into your chest when he lifts you up, and he pants into your wet flesh, head cushioned by pillowing softness of your breasts. 

The flesh is much too unblemished for his liking. 

His teeth sink into the soft underside of your breast, leaving behind a ring in the shape of his teeth that has your walls fluttering around him, squeezing him tight as the sudden burst of pain is perfectly complemented by the brutal pleasure he forces into you, head battering harshly into the gummy walls that have you singing his name in adulations. 

The sweet sounds you make spurn him on. The brands he decorates on your flesh split and bleeds as he trails his mouth through the valley of your breasts. 

His molten mouth seals over your aching, hard nipple, and pleasure whites out that place inside your head that worries. Your hand snaps up, burrowing in the messy tangle of his locks, pushing his mouth firmly into your chest, unwilling to let the way his tongue feels rolling over your buds go. He's sadistic, you think, fringing on utter delirium. He'll let go. You know he will.

His body rumbles with a growl when you tug on his hair, forcing his mouth to stay latched onto you. It vibrates over your sensitive flesh and makes you paw at his chest when the pleasure liquifies, roaring through your core until you can taste the cosmos on your tongue. 

It's not a warning. You know this because his mouth turns harsh, ravenous. He brutally fucks into you, pulling your body down to meet him with each thrust until you're howling his name so loud that you're sure the police department can hear your echoing cries rattling through the city. 

Your body dissolves in his hold, limbs turning phospholipid. The only thing keeping you together is his burning hands on your flesh as he moulds you in the ways he wants, bouncing you on his lap as molten pleasure courses through you. 

The coil tightens. Michael pulls away from your nipple, pushing his head between the valley of them, and pants into your sternum. The deep, haggard breaths he takes has you shuddering over him, so close now that you can feel it spreading liquid bliss through your body, pooling in the pit of your belly. 

Pleasure congeals in your marrow, and all at once you're on that precipice, careening over as you cum on his cock, sweet hymns falling from your lips as Michael's cock bludgeons deep inside of you. 

His hips shift, canting into you in a thrust that feels distinctly weakened, lax, compared to the others, and it's then that you hear it. A little grumble in the pit of his chest. He batters inside of you in quick succession, hands gripping you tight enough that you wonder, vaguely, drunk on the feel of his cock spearing into you, if he'll break your ribs before he finishes. 

In the muted slurry of your mind, you have the wherewithal only to glance up at him through your wet lashes when another rumble reverberates through your being.

And really -

It's enough to send you careening over that precipice once more.

His eyes flutter, full lashes dusting over his ruddy, wet cheeks. His chin tips back, jaw clenching to bite back the groan you feel ripple through his chest. You stare, mesmerised as his Adam's apple bobs. His fingers squeeze you tight, pushing your hips down on his lap as he struggles to fill you with every last millimetre of himself. 

Michael holds you steady, powerful thighs flexing under you, and then he lifts his hips, bludgeoning into you with enough force that you cry out his name, eyes widening at the deep pleasure, the burn of the stretch, the too-full feeling of him forcing his cock as deep as it will go. He jerks once, twice, and it knocks the air from your heaving lungs. Liquid heat fills you as he spills himself inside of you, and you mewl at the feeling of being too full. It's too much. Your eyes roll back as he grinds his cock inside of you, chasing the frayed ends of that intoxicating cudgel of pleasure that ripples through the two of you. 

Your spine is liquified. Body dissolves with the spray of the shower that patters across your back. 

You slump in his grasp, falling against his heaving chest. 

It's too humid. Too hot inside the shower, but your legs are mush, bones brittle and charred from the surge of electrifying pleasure that lacerates through your being. You can't move. Won't. You gasp wetly into his chest as the deluge of bliss spools inside of your veins. 

You blink, then, dazed. 

When Michael fucks you, it always ends up feeling like a battle. Like you rolled out of the combat zone, battered and bruised, aching in ways that sex shouldn't make you feel. 

But it's good. So good.

He's ruined you. Now, forever. You don't think you can live without the feelings he wrings from your being - the white-hot pleasure that rockets down your spine until you're screaming hymns in his name. 

It's the sensation of a freefall of a vertiginous precipice, and the unrelenting waves of panic that envelops you as you spiral downward toward an unseen end. What lay at the bottom is hidden by the murky abyss that spools inside of your mind whenever he's close, chasing out all logic and thought, all reason, until you're putty in his hands. 

You slump in his lap, sucking in desperate gasps of balmy air as your body reassembles; atoms fusing, molecules merging until you're flesh and bone once more.

You can't speak. Your throat aches, ripped raw with the force of your cries, but you whimper out just to confirm that you are, in fact, alive; that his intensity, the brutal way he fucked you, didn't send you into the heavens. It's a coo drenched in repose. A satiated sound. Lax and languid. 

Sagging into his chest, your limbs melt. Bones turning once more into putty. Reassumebed just to dissolve in his hold once again as the electrifying aftershocks of the post-orgasmic haze thicken in the spiralling slurry of your mind. 

Your head nuzzles into his chest. Another sigh passes your stinging lips, ghosting over the thick expanse of his chest. 

You could sleep like this. 

Tired eyes smeared with the residuum of many sleepless nights blink, wet, sticky lashes fluttering over his skin. It's a struggle to stay within the confines of reality. Your mind slips, easing into that metaphysical place where nothing except these four walls and the solid bracket of his body exist. The world fades into the aether. Forgotten. Discarded. Nothing matters but you and Michael. 

Under your temple, his chest rumbles with another sound that makes you keen in response. The modern synapses have faded into ashes, leaving nothing behind but pure primalism. 

And when your predator calls for you, you answer.  

It's the only affirmation he needs. His arms close around you, locking behind the soft curve of your ass. The movement makes you purr into his chest. The coarse dusting of hair tickles your nose. 

You're slipping, slipping - 

And then Michael stands. Abrupt. Purposeful. 

You squeak at the sudden movement, eyes snapping open, and dizzy vertigo overtakes you as your weight drops into the solid plinth of his arms. 

Michael's breath ghosts across the shell of your ear in something that might be almost mirthful, humourous, had you not known him. 

A burning flush singes the apples of your cheeks and the skin of your chest when he moves, and the motion jostles him - his cock still deep inside you. 

"M-Michael-," your whimper ends in a gasp as his spent cock twitches inside of you at the sweet way you mewl his name. "You-"

He ignores you, stepping out of the shower without even bothering to turn it off. 

He makes no move to grab at the fluffy towels you keep in the closet by the sink, nor does he seem bothered by the puddle of water each footstep leaves behind. You shiver when the cool air grazes across your wet skin, burrowing your head deeper into his neck, greedily seeking the warmth that seems neverending with him. 

In half the steps it usually takes you, he arrives at your bedroom, slipping inside with ease that warms your chest. You know he isn't the type to dawdle or worry about preamble, but the familiarity and comfort in which he moves inside your space, your home, fill you with the threads of contentment, happiness. You hide your blossoming grin, this silly little thing that tugs at the corners of your lips, into his flesh, and breathe in the loam scent that still clings to him. The heady musk of ozone and humus that is so uniquely Michael it makes your heart flutter. 

When the squall of that mushy affection recedes and your face isn't making the most outrageously gooey expression, you pull back, glancing up at him. 

You'll dry off, dress, and slip beneath the sheets with him beside you, finally getting the rest that evaded you for nearly a month. You wriggle in his grasp, straightening yourself for when your feet meet the ground. 

But it doesn't happen. 

Soaking wet, he stands at the end of your bed, and then turns on his heel, dropping down with you still perched in his lap. You gasp, jerking upright, but he doesn't let you go. 

In a fluid motion that leaves you reeling at the absurd agility of a man so damn big, he tightens his arms around you and shuffles on the bed until his head is under the pillow. He sinks into the mattress, unbothered by the way the bedding sticks to your skin, and the growing wetness under his back. 

The deep heave of his chest as he exhales in something that can only be utter contentment quickly dissolves the protest that pools on your tongue. They stick to the roof of your mouth before being swallowed down when his arms wind around you, closing out the modicum of distance that separates you as two beings. He tucks you under his chin, securing you to his body. 

You barely surpass sixty percent of his overall body weight, and the fact quells the little fear inside of you, the one digs in deep and says, oh no, you're going to crush him. Michael seems more than content to use you as a weighted blanket, his body lying supine on the bed that feels much cosier with him in it. 

Weeks of fretting over his safety are dulled under the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, and the feverish heat of him that seeps into your marrow, making you repose in the unintentional succour his arms bring you when they wind around your back, locking you against his chest. 

There is no escape from the prison of his arms.

This gilded cage sometimes feels too overwhelming, too stifling, too much, but he wasn't the one who locked you inside. You shut the doors of your accord and handed him the key - free to come and go as you tended to your plumage and your strays. 

All thoughts and fears are adrift in the somnolent haze that fills the anxious flurry of your mind. Who cares about the linen? About morality and the consequences of lying with a devil. Does any of it matter when his arms around you feel like home. 

You nuzzle your cheek into the coarse hair on his chest, pressing your ear against the steady beat of his heart. Your pericardium pickles. Ataraxia floods your being.

"Welcome home," you murmur. 

And under you, Michael sighs. 

#Michael Myers #RZ Myers #Rob Zombie Michael Myers #slashers #smut #requests #michael myers x reader #michael myers x you #rz halloween #rz michael myers #rz michael myers x reader #rz Michael Myers x you #slasher x you #slasher fic

[ddelline]

wip wednesday (feat shibuya groundhog day/time loop multi-ch goyuu)

blurb | holy shit y’all, I’ve got another multi-ch jjk fic on the block. and it's not interfering w adsr. I have never had the mental capacity to as much as consider two multi-ch fics at the same time; if I’m working on a multi-ch wip, and inspiration suddenly strikes and forces me to get another one off the ground, I just abandon the former for the latter. they can never co-exist. well until now apparently.

maybe due to the fact that this is like, the first longish fic I’ve ever set out to write, that I know needs to start with x, and contain y, to equate z (in less dumbass terms: I know what the fuck I’m supposed to write (which I never do lmao, as a writer I operate on 0 thoughts 100% vibes in the purest sense, which is idiotic when all I can write is plotty as sh*t)). which is why I’m slowly fleshing out ch 09 of adsr alongside chapter 1/2 of cv/sm (title isn’t necessarily all that spoiler-y, but in a sense it is, so keeping the full thing under wraps for now). estimating chapter length to be around at least 10-ish k each.

annnnd bc it’s fun to dump a wip somewhere whilst in-progress, I’ll be doing these wip wednesday updates whenever there’s something to say about it.

premise | unlike what I told @voxofthevoid, this is not post-jjk light novel reading, crack-adjacent, wholesome goyuu fluff: this is ‘a groundhog day/timeloop two-shot feat satoru trying to move mountains/himself w limitless inside prison realm, wherein he succeeds in breaking out (and into different timelines), only to have his every attempt at righting various wrongs turn to shit’

may or may not turn out well; will absolutely contain 1. goyuu 2. post-apocalyptic timeline 3. bb!satoru timeline (& various ??? canon + non-canon timelines) 4. sports metaphors (sry but y’all know me by now)

jaySUS enough of me click on the cut to read a first (very rough) excerpt. if you want to get in to The Vibe I recommend listening to: 01. VTSS — Why we don’t deserve nice things 02. Tzusing — 戴綠帽 (Wear Green Hat) 03. Low — Poor Sucker

01. full time elapsed  | t = tf (tf = 5 259 492 000) – t0 (t0 = 31/10/2018 21:22)

The shore is not so much a shore anymore.

Satoru shields a hand—and himself—against dank, bloodspill red rays of supposed-to-be-sunlight. He squints, for the second time in very short—a novelty—as he slowly treks up a quasi-path in sand that’s less sand, more earth-adjacent carnage. There’s as much splintered rock and powdered mineral, weighed down by radioactive algae, as there is—

Bone. Satoru didn’t pay all that much attention to any of his number of biology classes, but via this or the other, he knows that he just stepped clean through the porous curve of a partial ilium crest. 

Bone. And calcified curse. Whoever’s pelvis he just crushed beneath the heel of his boot is fifty fifty, somehow. Curses have weight to them: Satoru doesn’t mean that in an abstract, flighty sense; curses weigh literal kilos, if realized enough. And this bit of so old it’s become brittle-bone isn’t brittle because it doesn’t have the amassed density of dense bone mineral and weighty curse—

It’s brittle because the curse which blankets the very atmosphere—and by extension Satoru—like the incredible opposite of stepping out into balmy, subtropical climate after so long breathing recycled air on long flight, is so much heavier.

Satoru swallows against a parched throat he hadn’t realized was this dry. Bile amasses sour at the back of his tongue. He’s not so naïve as to not believe his eyes; they’ve never deceived him, though he has admittedly, a scant number of times, seen only a partial piece when he’s supposed to have zoomed out, regarded the whole frame. So he won’t do himself the discourtesy of cowering for what he is indeed seeing, right now, either.

Wherever he is might be Tokyo; might be Japan. It might not be. The thought occurs to him that there might be no such thing as ‘Japan’ at this point.

He scuffs a toe in the wet kind of-sand. At least the ocean remains a steady, squalling, sucking depth of blue-grey-black: a constant. He puts a cupped palm to shield his eyes as he scans his immediate surroundings: the carnage-filled slope of the once-beach hitches up into a small rock jut. Satoru climbs it with wary, though loping steps. Can’t reach the peak far enough, just as he can’t wait to wake up, startled out of horrid, nightmarish slumber by his senses wavering, flickering out of active guard for a millisecond.

Fucking ironic, how being imprisoned in an alternate dimension, whilst your comrades are no doubt slaughtered, picked off one by one on the outside, can apparently measure up and beyond to a certain iteration of reality.

The world beyond Satoru’s meager outlook spot, for lack of actual, original words, looks like a most fleshed out iteration of Ducasse’s juxtaposed sewing machine and an umbrella, flayed bare and egregiously stitched together, there on the dissecting table. A subcutaneous fissure in the earth yawns wide and open ahead of him, having broken through what was once maybe an inlaid asphalt road, which might’ve bisected the dry landscape, made it into something traversable. Farther ahead, vines have staked their claim on man made structures: lampposts and road signs lilt askew, overgrown now and mostly impossible to identify by cursory glance alone. To his left, far up ahead, a probable once upon a time-gas station has been half-gouged out of place, bits and pieces of the foundation strewn, alongside the disembodied hood of a car, and the shriveled spirals of torn-apart rubber, like so much collateral, structural shrapnel.

The air is heady and thick with curse. It’s invasive, and everywhere, muggy and humid; it fills his pores to the brim, snakes into his clothes, mingles so thoroughly with the oxygen that it might as well be one and the same.

Satoru doesn’t have the personality to become overwhelmed: whatever typical strains of reactionary, knee jerk, emotional responses might’ve once been ingrained into the core of him, he’s successfully whetted away over time. Has picked out, grasped between the thumb and pad of index finger, and ripped out by the root.

He sinks to a crouch by way of slow inching. Drops his weight until he’s dislodged most of his mass to be temporarily suspended in the aborted motion of balancing himself between the flat of his sole, and his knees. He puts his right hand to rest on top of his rocky underfoot, not in support, but to feel dense, solid earth under his knuckles as he tightens them. He dispels Infinity, in this instant giving less than a flying fuck about what might happen to him as a result of it, and digs his blunt fingernails into the meat of his palm until it breaks into gaping, blood pulsing lesions.

#wip wednesday #work: fic #fic: cv/sm #A New Goyuu wip Appeared! #take 84 of ddelline can't write anything but plotty angst 2 save her f*cking life #¯\ (ツ) /¯ #fandom: jujutsu kaisen