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monstersandmaw · 4 months

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Changing Tides - human prince 'cursed' into merfolk body (sfw)

Hello! This has been up on my Patreon for my $3 and $5 tiers to read for a week now. If you want to get early access to stuff, and to access my entire back catalogue, here's a link.

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Anon sent me this message and I responded with almost 8000 words:

"human prince who got cursed and turned into a merman, and while his family and the royal court struggle to find a way to break the curse he finds he's actually happier as a merman"

It's 3rd person, sfw, and features an orca clan who adopts our frightened prince, and there's a hint of mlm romance for one of the orcas with a human in the future... Anyway, I hope you like something a little different.

Content: some mild elements of body horror during the curse/turning scene, brief but not gory/too explicit mention of marine animal death, some implied trauma resulting from a transformation against his will/separation from family and previous existence at a young age, brief description of blood/injury from a harpoon to another character

Wordcount: 7965

Dusk gathered over the gentle swells of the open ocean, gilding the new yardarms and painting the perfectly crisp, white sails of the Royal Navy’s flagship with a pink and orange watercolour glow. The ship’s guests drank and laughed, and celebrated The Sea Rose’s maiden voyage, utterly unaware that they were enjoying their final few moments of life as they knew it.

Unremarkable in almost every way, a small porpoise had been playing in the bow wave, its small, dark body darting mere inches from the stem each time it plunged in and out of the spray and waves.

It didn’t hear the warning from the sea witch racing to catch up with it, and when the young porpoise’s concentration slipped and the black-painted stem of ‘The Sea Rose’ collided with its solid little body, no one on board noticed the tragedy of its passing. Even if the guests hadn’t been half drunk on the heady mix of wine and their own self-importance, there was no one on lookout in the crow’s nest that day; the new ship was flanked for her safety by two frigates a little way off, both crewed with the Navy’s finest and bristling to the gunwales with cannon and ammunition. There was no need to keep a watch this time.

There was, after all, no danger.

And yet, the animal’s accidental death would not go unmarked, unmourned, or unpunished.

Heedless of the vengeful danger rising swiftly from beneath the ship, the king himself strode along the main deck in his white and gold finery, leaving his guests for a moment as he spotted his thirteen year old son standing at the taffrail on the afterdeck and staring out at the ship’s trailing wake.

He slapped the skinny boy on his shoulders by way of a greeting, and nearly sent him toppling over into the sea from the force of his jovial blow. Hauling him upright again with a meaty fist at the scruff of his velvet doublet, the king laughed, cheeks red with drink and the bracing sea air, and he grinned down at his second eldest son.

“What’s got into you, lad?” he asked, his words a little thick and his green eyes a little glassy. “You’ve begged me for years to be allowed to go to sea, and now you’re here, you look like you’d rather be anywhere else! You’re not seasick, are you, lad? You’re going to be Admiral of the Fleet when your brother ascends the throne — can’t have you turning green at the slightest bit of swell!”

“It’s not that, father,” he said, mustering a smile for the king. “I’m sorry. I was just… thinking.”

Down below on the deck, the little prince’s older brother was talking with a few of the captains and admirals, and the boy felt suddenly every bit as young as he was. ‘King’ Eolan was a title that would suit his brother one day, with his regal bearing and his noble features, while the younger boy was gangly and too skinny to fill out the doublet he wore or the fine leather boots on his small feet.

He didn’t get the chance to observe the Crown Prince in action for much longer though, because a shudder ran the length of the new ship, and conversation sputtered and died.

The sails quivered and the rigging shook like spiderwebs before a coming storm. All the hands looked to their stations while the royal guests shifted uneasily and someone dropped a wine flute into the silence of the swelling sea. The Crown Prince scuttled up the stairs to the afterdeck and joined his father, tense and alert, though not before laying a hand on his little brother’s shoulder and offering a reassuring smile.

While the ship sailed past the stricken porpoise in a foaming, heedless rush, the creature bobbed past with its back broken, dead on impact, and the sea darkened around it and then began to boil and churn along the sides of the ship.

Finally, a shout went up and someone standing by the rail on the port side pointed and then reeled back in alarm. They were joined by more guests and sailors until half the ship’s company was hanging off the side and staring into the water that had turned an inky black around the corpse of the sea creature.

The thirteen year old prince followed his father to the railing of the high afterdeck and peered over in time to see a humanoid figure rise from the water. Her long, wet hair hung around her shoulders like a veil of moonlight, and her eyes flashed the colour of the ocean on a summer’s day. Her skin was freckled and oddly iridescent and the air around her seemed to shimmer like the road on a summer’s day. In her right hand she held a staff that was the silvery brown of old driftwood, wrapped around with seaweed like the leather on the grip of a quarterstaff, and her lower body appeared to be that of a leopard seal.

The prince’s breath caught and he stared, slack jawed down at her, forgetting to be afraid.

At the sight of her though, the guests recoiled and grabbed at the charms and holy pendants they wore around their necks, but it would do them no good. The witch raised her staff and let out a wordless scream of grief. As if whisked by a winter squall, the sea rose up around her at her call and a huge wave sloshed against the side of the ship, rocking it and sending a wall of spray and foam across the main deck.

Wherever the droplets of water touched, a flurry of white feathers appeared, and from the afterdeck, the king and the two princes watched a flock of startled seabirds flounder upwards into the sky. In their wake, the main deck lay completely deserted.

The king swore and unsheathed the steel sword at his hip but the young prince simply clung to the wooden railing and continued to stare down at the sea witch.

All his life, he’d heard tales of merfolk and of the magic they wielded, but he’d never dared dream they might be real. He’d spent hours begging the merchants who came to the castle for stories from the fish markets, since every sailor claimed to have fallen in love with a selkie or kissed a mermaid on one of their voyages, but he’d never truly believed that merfolk really did exist.

“What is the meaning of this?” the king bellowed down at her over the sound of the settling sea. “Return this ship’s crew and my guests to me at once, witch!”

“Never!” she snarled. “They’ve flown far away now, oh great king,” she added sarcastically, still sneering, “Your pretty birds won’t return to you now!”

“Why? What prompted such an act?” he barked. To his younger son, he suddenly gestured and added, “Come away from there!” With a desperate look over his shoulder, he hissed at the Crown Prince, “Eolan, protect your brother!”

The witch smiled and the younger prince saw tears tracking down around the corners of her smile as it turned from malice to grief. “Father…” he breathed, wanting to warn the king, but not knowing quite why or of what.

“Quiet!” the king hissed with a sharp motion of his hand. “Eolan, fetch a harpoon. I will have her hide on my wall!”

The Crown Prince snuck away down the stairs, out of sight of the sea witch, and then disappeared below decks. As he left, the younger boy finally let go of the railings and came to stand behind his father.

“Your ship,” the witch called above the wash of water against the sides of the vessel, “Is an abomination! You toss your refuse into the sea to choke the life from those who live there, tangle us in your nets, capture us… skin us!”

She paused and choked something raw and visceral and far beyond articulation. Drawing energy into the staff in a swirl of mist, she came to the real crux of her grievance.

“Your ship took my familiar from me and you didn’t even care to notice!”

“Your what?”

“Shadow!” she wailed, and that sorrow finally crystallised into rage. She pointed as the body of the dead porpoise floated over towards her and then with another heartbroken shriek, she raised the staff not at the king, but at his son. “I curse you!” she spat at him. “I curse you! May your son’s frail human legs fail him and may he know the plight of our people first hand! May the air choke him and the water you disdain be his only solace!”

A bolt of lightning seared down out of a clear sky and struck the deck of The Sea Rose behind the king in a spray of splinters. Ozone and singed wood filled the air as he turned around at the wheezing gulp that left his son’s throat. At the sight that greeted him, the gilt steel sword dropped from his fingers to clatter across the deck at his feet.

The boy’s legs had gone completely limp and he hit the deck hard, eyes wide with terror.

“Father,” he tried to choke in panic, but the sound lodged in his throat.

He brought one hand up instinctively to claw at his neck as he failed to breathe, suffocating in the ordinary sea air, and a moment later his fingers found the three slits of gills in his skin that had not been there before the lightning of the witch’s curse had struck him.

Before the true terror of his discovery could sink in, however, a blinding pain erupted in his chest and his hips, and his legs began to spasm.

The boy tore at the trousers which were suddenly constricting and strangling him, cutting into his legs, and he rolled on the deck as he ripped them off to reveal the distinctive opal-green and black pattern of a mackerel’s skin beginning at his hips. He clawed wildly at his skin in horror trying to halt the change, and his father dragged the fabric away just as the transformation ran its course, and his son arched his back and writhed on the deck like a landed catch, unable to breathe and blind with terror.

Footsteps on the stairs announced Eolan’s return and when he saw his brother lying on the deck with the barbed tail of a mackerel, he crashed to his knees beside them, the harpoon forgotten.

Not knowing what to do, the king knelt at his son’s side and stroked his curly, black hair out of his eyes which were bulging as he failed to breathe.

“Father,” he mouthed, chest spasming.

The skin of his remaining human body turned a grayish silver, like tarnished pewter, and between his fingers as they scrabbled at the deck the king could see a thin webbing stretching and flexing. Black, wickedly sharp claws raked the wood of the deck to splintered furrows as the boy twisted and panicked.

“What do we do?” Eolan whispered, tears filling his eyes. “Father? He’s dying… He can’t breathe!”

Acting on the most fragile of hopes, the king picked his son up in his arms and held him briefly, kissing his forehead. “I love you,” he said. “I will find a way to reverse this.”

Before the cursed prince could work out what was happening, he had been flung over the side of the ship and hit the water with a heavy smack.

The rush of cold seawater across his new gills was a relief beyond anything he’d ever felt. Instinctively, he drew in water through them and let his body start to sink.

Above, the shadow of a second ship, the frigate ‘Persistence’, announced itself with a volley of musket fire, and the sea witch dived out of sight, dragging the body of her slain familiar with her into the depths, the young prince forgotten entirely.

In all the commotion, the prince disappeared into the depths of the coastal waters, alone and afraid for the first time in his life.

The clan of orca-folk cautiously breached the surface and paused to watch the selkie on the shore light the driftwood pyre with the tip of her staff, and dipped their heads as one in respect. The creature at the heart of the kindling blaze was most likely her familiar, and they decided not to trouble the witch in her grief.

Leaving her, they swam in silence out of the cove and moved along the rocky shore, casting uneasy glances at each other. Magic was rare among the merfolk, but those who changed their shape at will, like the selkie folk and their distant, inland relatives, the kelpies, had it more strongly. There had been turmoil on the sea that day, and even now that the stars had blinked to life in the sky above, the waters still churned with unease.

A younger member of the clan swam on ahead, not quite understanding the wary reverence her relatives had for the sea witch, and, distracted by the passing of a very ordinary but still very quick seal, she raced off in a stream of bubbles to play with it. Yes, her kind hunted seals, but when they were being that obvious about their pursuit, the seal was in no danger.

She blasted around the rocky promontory but splayed her wide flippers to bring herself to an abrupt halt when she spotted a boy about her own age lying curled on the sandy bed of the next cove’s floor. He was hunched in on himself and seemed to be in some kind of distress, so she swam slowly over to him. He had the dizzying markings of a mackerel — black lines and opal shimmers like summer sunlight on the sea’s surface — and she wondered if perhaps he’d been left behind on the annual migration.

As she approached, he raised his head and his mouth opened in a soft ‘o’ of surprise, gills flaring.

“Hi,” she grinned. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “You alright?”

He shook his head.

“Pearl?” Her older brother’s voice sounded from close behind her, wary and warning, and she glanced back over her bare shoulder at him. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just found him.”

Hook swam past her, pushing her roughly to one side, and he loomed over the terrified stranger and bared all his sharp teeth at him. Hook was only a year older than Pearl, but he liked to play the grown up with her, and it irritated her no end. She grabbed the wide flat of his tail as it wafted past and yanked him sharply backwards. It wasn’t enough to move him much, but it brought his long, black and white hair drifting into his face and undermined his attempt at a tough persona a little.

The strange boy cringed away, hands above his head, and Hook relented when he saw he was no threat, and clearly terrified.

“You hurt?” he asked, though he could taste no blood in the water. “Where’s your shoal?”

In no time, they were joined by the whole orca-folk clan, and it was decided that the stranded boy would swim with them for the winter until his people returned to these waters to claim him. The boy didn’t speak, but he seemed able to understand them, and something told Pearl he’d been through something more awful even than being abandoned by his shoal.

Over the next few weeks, she first coaxed some tentative smiles from him, and then, when they had stopped to rest one night in another rocky cove further to the south, he laughed.

It happened when Hook got his finger clamped by a massive lobster and he swore and flung the thing away before washing it further from him with a great sweep of his tail, scowling. He was growing into his body and would one day outgrow even their father, and the motion sent the offending crustacean spiralling away on the temporary current.

When the wash of water in their ears had settled, they heard a quiet giggling and looked around to see him sitting near a bed of kelp, one hand over his mouth, and laughing softly. His eyes were the most beautiful brown, like a seal’s, and when Hook saw who was laughing, his indignation at the incident melted away like the ice in the spring, and his whole body softened.

Pearl watched as Hook swam over to the strange boy, the one they’d taken to calling Mackerel for the beautiful patterns on his tail, but the boy stopped laughing almost immediately. Hook’s shoulders dropped and he looked mortified when he saw unease and uncertainty in the boy’s eyes.

“It’s alright,” Hook said with a half-smile. “I deserved to get pinched the way I picked her up,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. You want to see if we can find another one and I’ll show you the right way to do it?”

Tentatively, the boy nodded, and Pearl watched as the boy swam off at Hook’s side. He didn’t swim like normal merfolk, but more like a newborn still getting used to his tail. Sometimes he started to sink and panicked, and the first few times it had happened, Hook had actually had to lift him up to keep him from sinking completely. Unlike them, he was a piscine merfolk, meaning he could breathe water and not air, while they were mammalian and needed to surface. When Hook went up to gulp fresh air those first few times, Pearl would watch the boy and make sure he didn’t sink until Hook returned.

He seemed to grow in confidence though over the winter, and by the time of that first laugh, he was just a bit awkward in the water. He couldn’t hope to keep up with Hook, but her brother had a kind streak to him for all his brash bravado, and he kept pace with Mackerel. Slowly, the boy began to talk with them, but he never spoke of what had happened to him, and any time they asked him where his shoal was or where he’d grown up, he shut up tighter than a clam and refused to talk. Eventually, they stopped asking.

He did till them his name though, and they were surprised to learn it was a human name. Pearl had been named for the lightness of her irises — such a pale blue it was almost silver — and Hook had been named because the patch of white under his tall dorsal fin looked like one of the barbed devices that humans used to catch fish. Mackerel, however, turned out to be named Theo, and when asked why he had that name, he just shrugged and said his parents must have liked it. They stuck to calling him Mackerel, or Macks, and he didn’t object in the slightest, only smiling shyly the first time Hook used his new name.

When spring came to the waters where Pearl’s clan hunted, no piscine merfolk came looking for Mackerel, so he simply stayed with the orca folk.

One year became two, became three, became five.

Hook grew into a monster of a merman, with muscles rippling over his body and a reputation for taking on anything he deemed a threat to his clan, from great white sharks to fishing boats. Mackerel grew as well. Gone was that awkward, faltering motion as he swam — he could out pace any of them in a race and he was lithe and graceful and elegant when he moved. He laughed a lot too.

Pearl noticed how he would watch her swim past and then look away, and when Hook caught him staring at her like that, he washed him playfully away with a wave of his massive tail and sent him spiralling off into the murky depths with a laugh and told him to come back when he could win against Pearl in arm-wrestling.

Then, one summer evening, Mackerel disappeared.

They’d been swimming nearer to the shore than was wise in the warmer months, when humans often gathered on the shore with their fires to dance and sing and make a strange music of their own. Hook and Pearl’s mother called the clan back from the shallows and led them away when they heard the strange notes of human song and saw the orange lights dancing on the shore like strange, swirling blooms of plankton that spat sparks into the sky, but when Hook turned to Pearl to ask her something, he tensed and looked around.

“What?”

“Where’s Macks?” he asked, his hold tightening on the driftwood spear he usually carried in his right hand. Its ghostly-white blade was made of honed whalebone, and it had gutted a great white from nose to tail only the week before. The colour had drained from Hook’s usually tanned face, and he looked around frantically in the gloom that night had cast on the sea.

“Maybe he didn’t hear mother calling?” Pearl whispered.

“Stay here. I’ll go back for him.”

“Careful!” Pearl hissed, but he was already sliding away like a shadow, consumed by the growing darkness.

Hook searched the cove where they’d been intending to rest until they’d discovered the humans too close for comfort, but found nothing. Panic began to rise as he looked further along the dark, jagged rocks of the shoreline.

Eventually he started to run out of air, and surfaced carefully, mindful of the massive dorsal fin that stuck up like a sail behind him now that he was full-grown. If the humans spotted it glinting in the dark, they’d hurl harpoons at him or try to snatch him for a trophy. Merfolk — both saltwater and freshwater — didn’t last long in captivity, and he had no intention of being taken.

Then, at the far end of the sweeping cove, he spotted the opalescent glimmer of Mackerel’s scales and saw his greyish body draped over a rock. He was leaning on it, staring at the humans. His black hair, which, in the water, was flat, had started to curl, and Hook couldn’t believe he was out of the water at all. He was going to asphyxiate if he stayed up there too long, but the orca kept watching him a little longer. He liked Mackerel’s body; how it was different from the powerful orca folk. He was built for speed and agility where Hook was built for a combination of wild bursts of power and slower endurance. He might have begun courting him, bringing him gifts of carved whalebone and rare trinkets from the seabed, if Mackerel hadn’t clearly been attracted only to his sister or her female friends. So, he’d kept his affection for him chaste, and now as he watched, he realised with a jolt that Mackerel was crying.

Slowly, he swam over to him, keeping in Mackerel’s line of sight, and when his best friend turned to look at him, Hook’s heart cracked and sheared apart at the look on his face.

“What?” Hook asked, pausing and bringing his hands up to speak in the Hunter’s Tongue they used with each other when they needed to be silent in the water. He’d taught Mackerel himself, and he’d soon picked it up like he’d been speaking it all his life.

Mackerel only shook his head though and then dipped his neck below the waterline to breathe before rising up and staring again at the humans.

Hook turned to watch, but didn’t he understand. Humans were fascinating, sure, but they weren’t beautiful enough to make grown merfolk cry, surely?

Strange structures had been erected on the soft, pale sand, which looked like they were made of the same material that humans used to catch the wind and drive their boats and ships. These though were coloured the same shade as the urchins and starfish that hunkered down in rock pools at high tide, and whatever they were made of glittered occasionally like the sun on the water. The humans were laughing and moving around in odd patterns around their fires.

“What is it?” Hook whispered when he was close enough to Mackerel that their bodies touched all along one side.

“I miss them,” Mackerel rasped back. His voice didn’t work very well above the water, needing the cool caress of the waves to make it audible.

“Miss who?”

“My family.”

Hook went still. Macks had never talked about his family in all the years he’d lived with Hook’s clan. He looked from Mackerel to the humans and back again. “What do you mean?”

Mackerel bit his lip. “These people…” he said. “I know them. Hook, I was —”

A shout went up and something lanced down out of the dark, piercing the water and glancing off Hook’s large, rounded flipper. He cried out in shock at the sting of it as blood blossomed in the dark water, and he yanked Mackerel down into the waves just as another spear flew into the waves like a diving bird.

This one landed in Hook’s flat tail, and it wasn’t a spear. It was a harpoon.

Thick and barbed, the weapon lodged itself in his tail and he found himself hauled up the beach by a small party of humans before he could even flounder or lash out. His own spear had been dropped when he’d reached for Mackerel and he only prayed that his friend had the sense to swim for the depths. Not that he was about to go down without a fight, he thought as he readied himself to lash out with his fists, and even his teeth if he had to.

Of course, Mackerel had the self-preservation instincts of a piece of seaweed in a Spring Tide, however, and he breached the water a second later with a screech of distress that made even Hook’s eardrums hurt. For an instant, the tearing pressure on his tail was relaxed and he heaved his body with all his might, knocking the shadowed figures aside and sending them tumbling into the sand.

Then he saw Mackerel hauling himself up the beach, and the men started to run for him too.

Panic set in to Hook until he heard Mackerel yelling at them. He was yelling a name. A human name.

The figure at the front of the group skidded to a halt in the wet sand and stood there in shock while a wave washed up the shore to him and sloshed over his boots. “Theo?”

“Eolan…” Mackerel wheezed. “Please… Let him go…”

The figure crashed to his knees in front of Mackerel and tilted his face up to look him in the eye.

Hook seized the opportunity and swung his tail again, scattering the last of the humans tugging fruitlessly on his line now that there were too few of them. The barb of the harpoon was right through the meat of his tail and it was bleeding everywhere, turning the sand a nasty dark hue.

“Let… him go… Eolan. For me.”

“Brother? Little brother?” the human choked, bowing over him.

“Yes. It’s me. Let. Him. Go.”

The human turned his face to look at Hook then, and Hook recoiled. He looked like Mackerel, just… older. And harder too.

“Get back into the water,” Hook growled at Mackerel. “You’ll choke up here.”

That made the human — his brother? — look sharply back at him, and when Mackerel nodded and his lungs started to seize, the human dragged him unceremoniously into the water himself by the tail.

Hook meanwhile clawed his own way back down the beach, dragging the harpoon with him. If it ripped out of his tail, he’d bleed to death, but if he didn’t get away from these humans, they’d hang him up like the sharks and the tuna they took great pride in catching, and they’d wait til he bled out or died from the stress of it.

He yanked at Mackerel’s tail and dragged him the last way into the water too, then half-swam and half-sank down into the safety of deeper water. Pearl was waiting for them with Hook’s spear in her hand and swam at him, crying out when she saw the harpoon in his tail.

“It’s bad, Hook. We have to take you to the sea witch,” she said. “Mackerel, what in the name of the Deep were you thinking?”

“I…” he croaked. Like a piece of flotsam caught in the grip of the tide, he didn’t know whether to return to the beach or follow them into the sea. Hook didn’t have time to wait though, and he let his clan bear him away, looking back over his shoulder at Mackerel in disbelief and confusion.

Pearl drew Mackerel after them, and he followed in mute shock.

The sea witch’s lair was somewhere most merfolk avoided, mostly because magic was as unnerving to them as human fire, and the sea witch was powerful. She had never been known to turn away anyone in distress however, and when she scented blood in the water and saw Hook being borne into the protective ring of rocks around her home by two of his kind, weak from blood-loss and pain, she darted over immediately and hissed a curse.

“Humans,” she said through gritted teeth as she instructed the orca folk where to leave Hook. He found himself drifting in and out of consciousness on a soft bed of woven kelp, and when he looked up she smiled at him. “Easy, sweetheart. We’ll get you taken care of. I’ll need you to be brave, and you might need to hold onto someone while I take it out. There’s no easy way to do it, but my magic will patch you up afterwards. It’ll scar, but at least you’ll have your tail, eh?”

He nodded. “M… Mack…” he moaned, but Mackerel didn’t appear. When he cracked his eyes open again, he saw Mackerel staring at the witch with abject terror in his big brown eyes.

“It’s alright, lad,” she laughed, waving him over. “Come. Your friend needs you now.”

But Mackerel didn’t move.

When he remained, drifting on the currents like a mindless jellyfish, the witch tutted and gestured more impatiently, until she went still and really looked at him. “You’re… You can’t be… By the Deep, you’re him, aren’t you?”

Slowly, he nodded.

When Hook let out a groan as the water drifted over his injury and moved the harpoon, the witch focused again and said, “No time for that now. Someone hold him while I heal him up.”

Mackerel did move then, and he swam right around her and came to hold Hook’s hand in a firm grip. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault. Humans are awful. I hate them,” Hook spat. “I hate them all, I —” He cut off as the witch yanked the harpoon out and immediately began to heal it. Hook’s eyes rolled and he lost consciousness at last.

When he came to, he found Pearl at his side, curled up asleep the way she had done when they were really young. He stroked his hand over her hair and she stirred, blinking and rolling over.

“You’re alright?” she asked and he nodded.

Moving his tail experimentally up and down, he found that the pain had gone, and the wound had been mended to leave a silvery scar in the top and a pink one in the white of the flesh underneath. “Where’s Macks?” he asked and she swallowed and looked away. “Pearl?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Hook jerked upright and glared at her. “Gone where?”

“He talked with the sea witch for ages and she gave him something, and then… he just left.”

“Without saying where he was going?”

“He swam to the surface like he was one of us running out of air. I don’t know what happened.”

“Where is she? Where’s the witch? I want to ask —”

“I’m here,” came the witch’s harsh voice from nearby. “Don’t get your flippers in a flap,” she added, rolling her eyes. “And something tells me your boy will be back…”

“He’s not my boy,” Hook growled.

The witch just rolled her eyes. “Maybe not in the way you wish, but he’s not for you anyway. Your blood told me an interesting story when I drank half of it in by accident earlier. How are you feeling?”

She moved her seal’s lower body from side to side in a sinuous sweep and lifted up his enormous fluke, nodding with a satisfied grunt when she inspected the scar.

“I’m fine. Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s not really my story to tell, if he’s not told you already,” she said carefully, “But I lashed out a long time ago when humans took my familiar from me, and I took it out on the wrong person. I wanted the humans to know what it was like to suffer at the hands of someone you feared, so I gave one of them a tail and gills in a fit of pique to make his father pay. I was so wrapped up in my grief at Shadow’s death that I clean forgot about the lad when the humans opened fire on me, and I’ve not thought about him from that day to this.”

“Mackerel…” Hook exhaled, his blue eyes wide. “He… He was human, once, wasn’t he?”

The witch nodded. “Pampered little princeling out on his father’s brand new ship. Shadow got too close and the ship hit my familiar. The shock of it broke something inside me that day, but I never should have taken it out on an innocent child.”

“Where is he now?”

“I gave him the means to return to his people. If he stays on land for longer than a single cycle of the sun and moon, he’ll stay there and never return. If he returns to the sea within that time, he’ll never be able to return to his human form again.”

“Why would you make him choose like that?” Hook demanded, face like a thunderhead.

“My magic isn’t infinite, boy,” she scoffed. “I can’t give him a shifters gift. He must choose, his family in the water or his family on land. By all accounts, the humans have scoured the land looking for a way to get their cursed prince back, but no witch has been willing or able to help them.”

Pearl shook her head. “Probably no one wanted to go against the Sea Witch…”

The witch blew a stream of bubbles from her mouth and shrugged. “If they had, I might have heard about the situation and remembered the poor boy I tossed into the ocean like a piece of discarded bait. Your clan shamed me with your honour in taking in the boy as your own.”

Hook swam out of the witch’s lair not long after that and made straight for the cove where the humans had been frolicking on the shore like spinner dolphins in the surf before they’d spotted him and Mackerel.

There, sitting close together on the beach by the dying embers of the fire, he saw his best friend and the human who’d called him ‘little brother’.

For a long time, he watched, transfixed.

Mackerel was wrapped in a piece of fabric that looked like a small, patterned sail, only it fell softly around him, and from under it, Hook could just see a pair of feet. His gaze snagged on them, and he wasn’t sure how long he stared. He wondered what it was like to have two limbs instead of one — perhaps it was like controlling his flippers and his tail separately…?

Suddenly, on the rocks above him and to his right, a male voice cleared his throat, and Hook jumped, lurching away with a snarl.

“Sorry,” the man said with an earthy chuckle. “Didn’t want to spook you, but I figured you should know I was here, and that you’d better not try anything either,” he warned.

Hook’s upper lip peeled back to show his row of sharp teeth. “If he wants to be there, I won’t stop him,” he growled. “Who are you?”

“Crown Prince’s bodyguard. You?”

“His friend.”

Hook eyed the man up and down and found he didn’t dislike him, physically. Like Hook, he was clearly a warrior, since he had what the humans called a ‘sword’ belted to his hip, and he carried a long spear in his right hand. His clothes looked like they’d been made of fish scales though, and Hook immediately wanted to touch. The fabric shimmered in the torch light and clinked softly, almost musically.

When he saw where Hook was staring, the man chuckled. “Yeah, mail’s a bit like fish skin, I suppose.”

“Mail?”

“This,” he said, plucking at the shirt that ended halfway down his thighs.

He crouched down, leaning on the spear for balance, and at the sight of the dark, soft fabric underneath the mail and covering his legs, Hook’s curiosity surged and he swam a little closer.

“Fuck,” the man breathed when he saw the way Hook moved.

“What?”

“Never been this close to one of your kind.”

“Without hurling a harpoon at us, you mean?” Hook growled, gripping the rock at the man’s boots and raising himself up out of the water enough to reveal his entire torso. Then, with one hand, he grabbed at the man’s mail shirt near his neck and hauled him close.

The spear dropped from his hand and clattered onto the rocks, but the human didn’t resist him.

“Holy shit,” he exhaled instead.

Hook snarled, lip rising again on one side, and he heard a shout of alarm from the beach.

Flinging the man aside so that he toppled and landed hard on his backside on the rock behind him, Hook looked over to find Mackerel standing shakily and staggering on the sand. The ‘sail cloth that wasn’t sail cloth’ fell to his waist and he grabbed at it, just as his brother lurched to his feet and helped to steady him.

Together they walked shakily around the cove and over to the rocks that jutted out into the sea like a dock, but the shore was too jagged for Mackerel’s bare, human feet, and besides, he was too unsteady on his unfamiliar legs.

He beckoned Hook over though, and Hook glanced back at the Crown Prince’s bodyguard, then sloshed into the water and drove himself at the shore with a few powerful sweeps of his tail. There, he half-beached himself, looking up at Macks.

Mackerel crouched, keeping the soft fabric around himself and half hiding his strange limbs from Hook’s view for some reason, and the older man stepped back when Mackerel nodded at him. “You’re human?” Hook croaked, looking up at him.

Mackerel made a little sideways motion with his head. “For now. I’m sorry I never told you what happened. I… I was afraid you’d… that you wouldn’t want me in your family anymore if you knew the truth. I know how you talk about humans…”

Shame twisted in his gut and he looked back at the man on the rocks who was standing up at the approach of Mackerel’s brother.

“You going to stay with them?” Hook asked.

“I’m not sure. I want to talk with my brother a bit longer. While I can. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Hook nodded. “I understand.”

“Hook…?”

He met Hook’s blue eyes with his brown and reached for him. His skin was warm and soft in the firelight, and Hook found he missed the stony grey it had been before. Being human didn’t suit him, but he didn’t feel it was his place to say that, so he just swallowed and nodded. “Take your time. You know where we’ll be.”

“Hook, whatever I decide, you're family too. All of you. Pearl and you and the whole clan. You took me in and cared for me in a way my family on land never really did. They sheltered me and they loved me, but… not the way you did. I’ll always love you all for that. You know that, right?”

Hook nodded once and shoved his weight backwards in the sand, awkwardly carving a channel in the wet shoreline with his massive body. He glared as Mackerel’s older brother strode back across to join them, and he helped Mackerel to stand. His legs trembled and wobbled, and he laughed and leaned into his brother, and the two retreated up the beach to talk some more.

At the whispering of metal rings sliding like scales across one another, Hook glanced to his right and saw the guardsman approaching along the sand. He set down his spear and held up his hands, laughing softly. It was a warm, chuffing sound, and it stirred something in Hook’s gut that he’d thought only awakened for Mackerel.

“What do you want?” he asked, though it came out more petulant than threatening, and it only made the human warrior snort another little laugh. “You sound like a seal with a cold, making that noise.”

That made the man’s laughter grow and he shook his head. Hook saw that his hair was wavy and dark brown, and it looked impossibly soft. A shiver ran down his whole body and he felt a spark of arousal thrum through him. He was glad he was lying on his front, for one.

The two princes talked long into the night, and Hook stayed with the guardsman.

Slowly, he got over his hostility and started to ask questions about the humans’ world, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. The guardsman had plenty of his own questions too, and by the time the sun was well up into the sky and hammering down on them, Hook’s deep voice was hoarse and his golden-brown skin was dry and prickling.

“I should…” he rasped, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the water behind him. “I’m going to turn into one of your baked fish soon.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” the guardsman said. His name was Kit, it turned out, which Hook thought was a very funny sounding name. “You need a hand getting back in the water?”

He didn’t, but the thought of having this human’s hands on him sounded suddenly and bizarrely appealing, so he shrugged. “You strong enough to actually help me, or are you just looking for an excuse to get your hands on a merman?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Again, Kit laughed. It seemed so easy, so natural for him to laugh, but Hook felt a little flicker of pride all the same at having made him do it.

“With all that muscle you’re packing? Probably not,” Kit admitted. “Seemed polite to ask though.”

Hook snorted too, and shook his head. His hair had dried while they’d been talking and it was tickling his face. The guard surprised him by reaching out and tucking it behind his ear with a smile. “I’m glad I met you, Hook,” Kit said. “Maybe… no matter what His Highness decides, you’ll meet me here again some time?”

“His… Highness?”

“The one you call Mackerel. He’s a prince, you know?”

“He’s just… Macks,” Hook scowled.

“Yeah.”

Kit straightened with a grunt and dusted the sand off his legs, and Hook used his forearms to back himself back out into the surf, tail lifted so it didn’t drag like an anchor.

His back was burned, and the saltwater was agony to start with, but it had been worth it to spend so long in the company of the strange human. He ducked beneath the water without a word and vanished, deciding to wait out the rest of the time until Macks’ spell conditions were met in the solitude of a nearby kelp bed.

Occasionally he surfaced, but he didn’t go back to the shore, and finally, when the moon was starting to rise again, he breached the water one last time and looked to the beach. There was no sign of Macks this time, and he realised he’d probably made his choice.

Grief struck him a worse blow than even the harpoon, and he curled inwards with a grunt as saltwater leaked from his eyes and he realised he was crying. He doubled over and turned towards the open ocean. His scarred tail gave a throb of pain as he pushed himself to the limit and blew past his clan who had been waiting nervously out in the open water all day.

Pearl yelled after him but he ignored her. He wasn’t sure how far along the coast he swam but eventually he doubled back to familiar waters and located his clan.

And there, in the middle of all of them, was Mackerel.

Hook halted and stared, and the motion of his black and white tail attracted his best friend’s attention enough that he stopped mid-sentence and darted away from the girls, his body flashing like a minnow between the figures of orca merfolk. He shot out and blasted over to him at a pace even Hook hadn’t known he was capable of, and collided with him with the speed of a racing tuna fish. He gave a soft ‘oof’, a cloud of bubbles rising up to the surface in a foam as the air was knocked from his lungs and he started to cough. Mackerel tugged him up to the surface and made sure he got a good gulp of air before hugging him again.

“I know you don’t see me as your brother,” he said, “And I’m sorry I can’t give you what you wanted, but… I hope you’ll accept me back into the clan all the same.”

“I love you,” Hook said, “No matter what, or how. I can’t believe you stayed though. I thought… I thought…” He squeezed him tightly, using his flippers as well as his arms, and Mackerel laughed.

“Turns out I actually prefer being a merman,” Mackerel laughed. “I was always out of place on dry land, but here… I think I’m meant to be here.” He waited a beat and then said, “My brother’s guardsman seemed quite taken with you. Maybe you can keep flirting with him when I go and visit my brother?”

Hook shoved him away and then used his trademark tail-wipe to wash him even further away, and the two of them laughed.

“Race you?” Macks asked.

Mackerel did an easy back-flip in the water, rolling gracefully and then twisting like a strand of kelp in the current. When Hook thought back to how he’d been in those first few weeks — when, he now knew, he’d only just acquired a tail instead of legs — he realised how Mackerel had really grown into that pretty tail of his.

As pretty as it was though, it somehow wasn’t as appealing as Kit’s legs anymore, and Hook hid a secret smile as he let his slippery friend scoot away from him before setting the muscle of his tail to good use and powering after him like an incoming breaker.

Relations with the humans changed after that. The old king died some years later, though not before he got to see his lost son one last time, and over the course of the next year, trade and new laws governing fishing rights and shipping lanes were established for the safety and benefit of the merfolk.

And if Hook disappeared from the clan for extended periods of time, and if those periods happened to overlap with Kit’s time off duty, well, it was only a sign of better things for both worlds, surely?

I really hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please consider showing your support by reblogging. It really is the best (and totally free!) way to help the artists and writers whose work you enjoy.

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#merman #merfolk #cursed prince #curse #orca merfolk #3rd person #exophilia #fairy tale

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fiveraccoonsinatrenchcoat · 1 year

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Quiet My Fears (With The Touch Of Your Hand) Ch. 3

Steve Harrington x f!reader

Description: Dramatic reveals are revealed, dramatically (or, you and Steve tell the gang about Baby Harrington and it does not go well).

Warnings: language, food mentions, everyone is angry all of the time

Word Count: 7965

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My Masterlist! - Series Masterlist!

Notes: I'm so sorry this took as long as it did! I've been going through it lately but through the power of boygenius I was actually able to finish this bit the other day! Please enjoy and also no one is allowed to be mad at me lol

Steve Harrington was going to be a dad.

The funny thing that came along with that was that Steve was actually going to have to tell people.

He imagined that there were many couples who would be very excited about this prospect. There were lots of young men out there who had mothers begging them for grandchildren. His hadn’t quite gotten there yet.

You had told him that you wanted to put off telling people for as long as you could. He entirely understood why; times had changed quite a bit since his mother’s day, but still, being an unwed mother in Smalltown, USA was relatively frowned upon. Honestly, considering just how gossipy the population of Hawkins tended to be, Steve was surprised the front desk ladies at your doctor’s office hadn’t already spread the news like wildfire, HIPAA be damned; golden boy Steve Harrington and his childhood best friend, having a baby out of wedlock? That was some front page stuff, right there.

Married or not, though, it was going to have to happen sooner rather than later. In a few weeks time, it was going to start getting very difficult to hide. You were going to begin showing any moment now, and as Spring started to settle in, it brought its warmer temperatures with it. You could only hide behind your winter coat and thick sweaters for so long.

And not just your bump; your friends were beginning to pick up on the fact that there was something going on.

“Steve!” Robin barked before tossing a wadded up ball of old receipts at him. It hit him square between the eyebrows. “Stop moping and do your job, please?”

“I’m not moping,” Steve defended (he absolutely was), before turning back to the pile of returns he was supposed to be sorting through.

“Fuck off, yeah you are,” Eddie very helpfully added.

“See, this is why I don’t like it when you hang around here,” Steve said, pointing a pen toward Eddie. “You two always gang up on me!”

“Why do you think I’m here at all?” Eddie quipped back with a smirk.

“Because you don’t have anywhere better to go?” Robin supplied.

“That, too.”

“Either way, I’m not moping,” Steve assured. “I’m fine.”

“That’s a fucking lie if I’ve ever heard one,” Eddie said over the click of the markdown gun, as he emptied its bright orange stickers down that back of his arm. Steve couldn’t help but notice that he had set the price to ‘WAS $4.20, NOW $0.69’.

“Stop that,” Robin huffed as she whipped the tool out of Eddie’s hands. “Steve, I can practically see the rain cloud floating over your head.”

“Oh, my god!” Steve didn’t really want to snap at his friends, but he did it anyway. “Nothing is wrong! I am fine, everything is fine!”

Eddie and Robin just stared at Steve like a pair of deer in headlights from across the counter. They both knew how easily frustrated Steve could become, and they’d be the first to admit that sometimes they can poke at him a bit too hard, but an outburst this quickly had been unexpected. Neither said anything, and Steve just sighed.

After a moment of awkward silence, Eddie spoke up once again.

“Lady problems?”

“Get out!” both Steve and Robin exclaimed, in unison.

“I thought you guys liked me.” Eddie feigned offense.

“You do not work here!” Robin said as she grabbed onto his shoulders and shoved him toward the door. “And Keith’ll get pissed if he finds out you were here and didn’t spend any money, so go home.”

“Fine,” Eddie relented from the entryway. “Hey, I’ll see you guys on Saturday, right?”

“Of course!”

“Probably not.”

“You claim nothing is wrong,” Eddie said, pointing to Steve. “And yet, in the same breath, turn down free beer?”

“Leave!”

“I love you both!”

The bell above the door rang as Eddie walked out, and Steve was left in Robin’s concerned gaze.

“Y’know, Eddie does kind of have a point,” Robin said after a moment. Nine times out of ten, Robin was able to coax Steve out of his quiet and get him to talk about whatever it was that was eating at him, a fact that Steve was highly aware of.

“No, he doesn’t,” Steve barked back. If this conversation didn’t end in the next two minutes, he would jump off the roof.

“You haven’t hung out with any of us in weeks!” Robin exclaimed “Weeks, Steve!”

“I’ve been busy,” Steve lied.

“Busy with what?” she inquired. “Do you have another job I don’t know about, or something?”

“I’m allowed to do things without you around. You know that, right?” It was meaner than he needed to be.

“Oh, god, this isn’t about your lover, is it?” Robin drawled with a scowl.

“You know her name, and you don’t have to say it like that,” Steve responded.

“You two got back together, didn’t you?”

She hadn’t quite gotten it head on, but it was probably as close as she was going to get.

“I knew it!” Robin looked like she was going to explode. “I fucking knew it!”

“Please don’t turn this into a thing,” Steve pleaded.

“Me turn it into a thing?!” She was mad now. “You two are the ones turning it into a thing! You cannot keep sneaking around like this, it cannot possibly be healthy!”

“We’re-” Steve huffed out a breath. This tightrope he was walking across seemed to be growing more and more thin. “Working on it.”

“Can you work on it a little bit faster, please?” Robin asked as she punched out. “You two are so fucking weird about each other. Split, or make it official, just do something, because I hate having to keep this secret for you, it’s exhausting!”

“We sort of already did. I think,” Steve confided. Partial truth is better than no truth, right?

“Split?”

“Make it official.”

“Oh, thank god,” Robin sighed, tossing herself across the counter, all dramatics. “I can finally quit having to cover for you.”

“Don’t say anything yet.” Steve was quick with his damage control. “We, uh, we wanna do it. Ourselves. Figure it’ll probably go over a little bit smoother that way, y’know?”

“Fine, but if you don’t tell everyone soon, I’m going to,” Robin said. “Don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed something off with you lately.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“Everyone is worried about you, Steve, it’s not just me,” she explained. “Dustin was about two seconds away from showing up at your house after you bailed on us last week.”

Steve didn’t know that. It sent a lightning bolt of regret through his chest.

“The faster you two can get your shit together, the better. I’ve been happily cleaning up this mess for you, but I’m starting to get fucking tired of it, Steve.” Robin looked at her watch. “I was off ten minutes ago.”

She was out the door before Steve could even think up an apology.

Steve and Robin didn’t get into fights often, but he absolutely hated it every time they did. Even silly little arguments left him wracked with guilt sometimes, but proper, go-for-the-throat type fights made feel sick.

Pair that with the fact that he was making Dustin worry, and Steve felt about ready to hurl.

God, this was difficult. Stupidly difficult. Maybe, if he asked nicely, you’d agree to just run away with him so he didn’t have to deal with any of it.

If he could just pluck up the courage to tell his parents, that would at least be a start. They were the difficult ones, the conversation he was dreading more than any of them, and the wild anxiety ate away at him for the rest of his shift. By the time seven o’clock rolled around and he was finally able to go home, it was entirely all-encompassing.

Fuck it. It had to get done either way, right?

The drive from Family Video to his parents house, no longer than ten minutes, felt as though it stretched across half an eternity. The vicious anxiety ate away at his stomach as he drove, and with each turn, each mile crossed, it only increased. Maybe he should just turn around. Maybe he should go home to you, and his parents could just figure it out on their own. He was sure his dad would love that.

Steve pulled into the driveway and was very close to losing what little nerve he had. He turned off the ignition, this is a bad idea. He got out of the car, this is a bad idea. He walked up to the front door and let himself in, this is a bad idea.

He could hear the commotion of his mother making dinner in the kitchen. Something was sizzling; popping and crackling with the smell of onions and garlic, of bell peppers and roasting meat.

Steve had lots of reasons to be jealous of other peoples’ parents, but at least his knew how to cook.

“Steve!” his mother exclaimed once he walked into her view. One hand was occupied by a wooden spoon stirring a pan of vegetables, the other holding a frosty glass of white wine. “I didn’t know whether or not to expect you.”

“You barely even live here anymore,” his father chided from where he was sitting at the counter. His suit coat was off and he had a matching wine glass sitting on the table in front of him. Nine times out of ten, Steve’s parents were able to be amicable with one another. At this point, they acted more like roommates than husband and wife, but at least they were roommates that were able to stand being in the same room as one another. Usually. “Didn’t think I’d get to see you before I left.”

“Sit down! Have a drink,” his mother insisted. She pulled another wine glass out of the cabinet and the bottle out of the fridge.

“Oh, no, I’m alright,” Steve said as he sat down. His mother poured him the glass anyway.

He was about to ruin a perfectly good dinner, Steve thought to himself. His mother probably poured over it all day. The roast that just got pulled out of the oven was probably expensive.

“So, what’s been going on with Steve these days?” his father asked him.

Now or never.

“I actually wanted to, uh,” Steve stuttered out. “I wanted to talk to you guys.”

“You didn’t crash your car, did you?” his father said, only half joking.

“No, the car’s fine.”

“Is this about that girl?” his mother asked as she turned the stove down to low, mischief painting her voice.

“Girl? What girl?” His father pointed his gaze over to Meredith.

“He met a girl,” she responded. She seemed almost giddy with excitement.

“Finally,” his father said. He said it like it was a joke, though it didn’t feel all that well meaning to Steve.

“Oh, tell me it’s Giada’s daughter from down the street,” his mother said. “Have you seen their kitchen? I’d never have to host another Thanksgiving ever again.”

“No, it’s not- no.” Steve wasn’t even sure he knew who Giada was, let alone her daughter.

“Well, at least give us a name, Steve,” his mother said. “Is she cute?”

When Steve said your name, he felt almost like he was condemning you. Like just uttering it strapped you to him, so now you’d both be falling from grace.

“The one who grew up across the street?” his father asked, as if you hadn’t known him your whole life.

“Oh, that’s just too sweet!,” his mother exclaimed. “It’s like a movie, ugh! I’ll have to give her mother a call, she’s going to be thrilled!”

Good luck with that, Steve thought to himself. She won’t even answer the calls from her own daughter.

“Took you long enough,” his father said, leaning back in his barstool, lackadaisical.

“What?” Steve responded. He was wildly unimpressed by his father’s haughty attitude.

“You two have been making googly eyes at each other since you were eight,” he explained. “Frankly, I didn’t think you had the balls to do anything about it.”

“Ron,” his mother chastised at the choice of words.

“What? Obviously, I was wrong.” Ron pointed his gaze back to his son. “Y’know, I think she could be a good influence on you. Steady job, good work ethic. She’s a bit of an oddball, though, but I guess with a father like her’s, could you really blame her?”

Leave it to Ronald Harrington to judge other peoples’ parenting skills while simultaneously insulting his son’s girlfriend.

“Don’t be rude,” Meredith said. Her back was now turned to the two men, arms elbow deep in the sink. “Such a shame her parents moved away, though. I couldn’t imagine going that far without bringing your daughter with you. Is she still living on the south side?”

“Yep.”

“That’s not the safest area in town,” she commented. “Did you hear about that house fire down that way? The woman on the news said that it might have been arson. Arson!”

“It’s alright,” he placated. “Not as bad as it used to be, at least.”

“I still don’t know if I like the idea of a girl like her living all by herself in an area like that,” she said.

“You’ll have to invite her over for dinner once I get back,” his father said, entirely oblivious to the topic of conversation between his wife and son.

There was a moment of silence between the three of them. His mom took a sip of her wine and stuck the meat with a cooking thermometer, his dad refilled his own glass, and Steve felt his stomach do a backflip. This was going poorly.

“If there’s something else you have to tell us, you might as well just rip the bandaid off quick.” His father hit the nail on the head, that was for sure. He paused for a moment before making the kind of poorly timed, borderline insulting joke only someone like his father could.

“God, she’s not pregnant, is she?”

Steve went rigid, and he kept his gaze trained on the swirls in the marble countertop. He didn’t say anything, he couldn’t bring himself to, so he just left his parents to piece his silence together on their own.

“Steve,” his mother demanded. She had a carving fork gripped tight in her white knuckled fist, planted hard against the edge of the countertop. Steve was pretty sure she was about to stab him with it. He couldn’t look either of them in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to squeak out. He could feel tears beginning to well up in his eyes.

“Goddamn it, Steven!” his father exclaimed, slamming his hand onto the counter. It made the glasses rattle. “This has to be some kind of joke!”

“I’m sorry!” Steve said, louder this time. “Fuck, I didn’t-”

“Didn’t what?” his father asked. “You didn’t mean to? You didn’t think it would actually happen?”

“I don’t know,” Steve responded. He suddenly felt very small, confronted by his father’s booming voice.

His mother stood silent in her spot on the opposite side of the kitchen island, but there were definitely tears running down her cheeks, and anger radiating off of her in horrible waves that Steve wasn’t used to.

“No, you don’t, because you weren’t thinking at all, were you?” His father fumed. He was standing now, towering over Steve despite the fact that the two of them were almost the same in height. “For Christ’s sake, Steven!”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ll have to marry her-”

“We already talked about that. She said she wants to wait,” Steve explained quickly.

“No. No, this is not a question of want, Steven. I don’t care about what you want, you’ve forfeited that right! You both have!” his father spat back.

“I’m not gonna force her to marry me against her will, dad, I’m not evil!” He shouldn’t have said it that way, he knew that. But god, he was mad, and a low blow like that was just as satisfying as he thought it would be.

At least this hadn’t happened when he was 16. He would have been well and truly fucked if this had happened when he was 16.

“You know what? Maybe this is just the thing you need,” his father snapped.

“What?” Steve asked, confused.

“A big mistake for you to finally learn a thing or two.”

Steve wasn’t particularly fond of his father’s use of the word ‘mistake’.

“I leave for Santa Monica tomorrow morning. I’ll be back in a week,” his father stated. “I want you out of my house before then.”

“Ronald,” Meredith broke her silence, exclaiming from behind the tears. Steve knew she wouldn’t explode the way his father was doing, but she really looked like she wanted to.

“No! We have been defending him and making excuses for years, Meredith. Years! If he wants to go play house with his little girlfriend, that’s fine by me, but he’s not gonna do it under my roof.” He doubled down and turned his gaze back to where Steve was sitting. “I think it's a damn good time for him to learn that his actions come with consequences.”

The older man turned away at that and pulled his keys off of the hook on the wall.

“Where are you going?” Meredith called after him. He didn’t bother with an answer, only walked out and slammed the door behind him.

Steve was left alone with his mother, which was simultaneously much better and far worse.

“We were already planning for me to move in with her,” Steve said. If his father had stuck around for a minute longer, he would have been able to explain that to him, too. “She needed a roommate anyway.”

His mother scoffed and shook her head.

“Look, I know that-”

“You make it incredibly difficult for me to be on your side sometimes, Steven,” his mother interrupted.

“I know,” Steve agreed. He did know.

“I wish I could say that I thought your father was being irrational, but I don’t know if I can,” she sighed. “For once, I think he and I might be on the same page.”

“You are?” Steve asked. His father’s vitriolic anger hadn’t come as a surprise, he’d been expecting it, but he thought his mother would be at least a little bit understanding. She always had been before. Steve guessed that this was different, though.

“You’re not going to be able to live in that apartment forever, Steven,” she said.

“I know that.”

“And you’ll definitely need a better job. I highly doubt your father’s previous offer still stands, by the way.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” she asked him. Her voice had a bite to it that he had never been on the receiving end of before. “You’ve been saying ‘I know’ for years now, Steve. You know you need to grow up, you know you’ll have to move out someday, you know you have to do something with your life, yet you have never made any actual effort to do anything about it!”

“Mom, that’s not true-”

“If you want to start making big, adult choices like this, you’re going to have to start acting like one. Clearly, you’re not a child anymore.”

His mother untied her apron and tossed it onto the counter before leaving the kitchen, heels clicking on the tile.

Steve’s whole family had been waiting for that thing; that final, fatal event that would break the Hawkins Harringtons for good. Aunts, uncles, cousins, all piecing together whatever bits of gossip they could, knew that the string that tied Steve to his parents was being pulled thinner and thinner and thinner. His mother could only do so much mending for him, and everyone had spent the last few years waiting with bated breath for that string to snap, for Steve to lose his footing. Once it did, he would plummet.

Steve was now standing alone in his childhood home, scissors in hand.

Steve didn’t know what to do, so he stood up and turned off the stove. He pulled out a tupperware container and boxed up the vegetables. He wrapped the meat in foil and left it out on the counter, because it needed to cool before it could be put away, or else it would screw with the temperature inside the refrigerator. He found a stopper and closed the bottle of wine, placing it in the fridge before gathering the three glasses. His was still full, and he wanted to chug it, but thought better of it and poured it down the drain. He cleaned all of the dishes, dried them, and put them away. He turned off the oven, and wiped down all of the countertops, and neatly hung the towel to dry. He turned off the lights, making sure to leave the one above the stove on as a nightlight.

Truly, there wasn’t much left of his personal belongings that he really cared about that he hadn’t already taken to your apartment. Most of what he needed was already there. He could grab the rest of it when his mother wasn’t home; the rest of his clothes, important documents, that kind of thing. What all do you even need to bring with you when you're being forced out of your childhood home, anyway?

Later. This was something he could deal with later.

So he left. Unsurprisingly, his father’s car was nowhere to be seen. He wanted to keep talking to his mom, to explain himself, to apologize, to say anything, but he knew it would just make it worse than it already was, so he just got into his car and pulled away instead.

He did need a better job. He’d been needing a better job for a while now, actually, but he definitely needed a better job now. And his mother was right, there was no way he would be able to work for his dad after that.

He wished he was able to explain to his parents that hey, funny story, due to atrocities he won’t be explaining right now, the government actually gave him a frankly absurd amount of money a few years ago, and he’d be alright for a while. It wouldn’t last forever, but it was enough to keep the pair of you afloat, especially with yours, too. You had used a bit of it on rent right after your parents had left, but Steve’s money sat mostly untouched in a bank account his family didn’t know he had.

See, the thing about government hush money is that you can’t just go out and spend it on something wild, because then people are going to ask where it came from. Believe him, if he had been able to go out and buy some fancy sports car or a bunch of designer clothes, he would have. His father would have told him to buy a nice watch and invest the rest of it (Steve wasn’t entirely sure what that actually meant, or how to even go about doing it). He was just grateful to have it right now.

He could put a down payment on a house for you and him. That seemed like something a responsible adult would do with it, right?

Steve pulled up to your building and was shocked with how well he’d held it together up until this point, because he felt like he was going to explode. When he got to your floor and walked into your apartment, you were sitting on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, textbooks and paper spread before you. The sound of him walking in pulled you away from your schoolwork and when you turned to look at Steve, you were clearly upset.

“You told me you were off more than an hour ago!” you said as you wiggled out from behind the table and stood up. “I was starting to get really worried, Steve, where were you?”

“I, uhm,” Steve started. He felt his voice crack, the sting of tears beginning to well in his eyes. He had to keep his shit together, for your sake.

“Did something happen?” you asked him. You brought your hands up to the sides of his face, and there went any chance of him keeping it together.

“I told my parents,” he confessed. He was not going to cry in front of you. He wasn’t.

“What?” you questioned. You sounded a little bit hurt that he did it without asking you, but mostly just horribly concerned. “I thought we agreed to wait.”

“We did, but it was eating away at me, and I just couldn’t sit on it anymore, and-” The floodgates broke and Steve’s words were cut off by a strained sob.

“Oh, Stevie.” You pulled him into a hug and Steve wanted nothing more than for these stupid tears to just dry up, but it felt like weeks and weeks of pent up worry and fear were being pulled to the surface, and he didn’t have it in him to try and stop any of it. He was supposed to be the strong one for you, but Jesus Christ, that was difficult. “It was bad?”

“Well, they kicked me out,” Steve said.

“What?”

“Which, I mean, my dad’s right. I barely even live there anymore, so I guess it doesn’t really even matter,” he rambled out, wiping his nose on his sleeve like a child.

“Yes, it does,” you assured him.

“And I’m pretty sure that this is my mother's worst nightmare, so I don’t know why I didn’t expect her to be pissed.”

“I’m sorry,” you said. You pulled Steve towards the couch and carefully lowered onto the cushions, your grasp on his wrists bringing him down to your side.

“And Robin and I got into a fight, too.”

“You didn’t tell her, did you?” you questioned.

“No, but I think if I don’t do it soon, she might disown me,” he admits.

“She’s not going to disown you,” you protested. “She’d never do that.”

“My parents just did,” Steve lamented. “My mother just did. Who’s to say Robin isn’t next, huh?”

Steve would never, ever be able to make his father proud, because his father would never, ever let him even get close. He had known that for a long time, and maybe there was a part of him that was relieved by that. He knew that it was an entirely unattainable goal, so he never really bothered to reach for it. His mother, oh so cruelly, always made sure Steve knew that he could do great things. Why did she have to go and do that? Steve knew his mother held him to a high bar, he just hadn’t ever considered the possibility that he wouldn’t be able to jump high enough.

So maybe that’s why it hurt so badly when you curled into him that night when he finally crawled into bed. Maybe that’s why he called into work the next day, even though he knew it would probably make Robin totally freak out. Maybe that’s why he waited until he saw his mother’s car leave the driveway before going into his - what used to be his- house to box up the last of his things.

Maybe that’s why he missed the Hawkins Police Department truck parked outside of your apartment building when he was bringing groceries inside a handful of days later.

“I’m back!” he called into your apartment after releasing the wildly heavy grocery bags onto the kitchen counter. Making more than one trip is for suckers. “They didn’t have any pineapple juice, so I just got a pineapple, figured it can’t be too hard to just-”

Steve cut himself off when he looked up from the paper bags to see more than just you sitting in the living room; Joyce was sitting on your left with an arm wrapped protectively over your shoulders, Robin on your right with her legs pulled up underneath her and a tissue box in her lap, and Hopper was propped up on the arm of the couch. You were in the middle of the array, in tears.

“Hello,” Steve nervously greeted, eyes wide as frisbees and blood running cold.

There was absolutely no universe in which this went well.

Robin’s expression, which had clearly been soft and sympathetic before Steve had interrupted them, quickly changed into anger. She shot up from the couch, earning her a disapproving tut from Joyce and making you wince away from her. It took her three wide stomps to cross the small space and grab onto Steve’s wrist with more strength than he knew she had in her.

“Ow, Robin!” Steve complained as she dragged him out into the hallway. She slammed the door hard behind her and it made Steve jump.

“What the fuck, Steve!” she demanded.

“Robin-”

“I mean, seriously, what the fuck!” Steve could already hear the noise complaints from the neighbors as she chastised him. “You lied to me!”

“I-” didn’t, is what he wanted to say, but he knew better than that. “I’m sorry.”

“How long have you two been back together then?” she questioned. Steve really didn’t want to admit it. “How long?”

“Six months,” he replied, sheepishly.

“Six months?!” Robin shrieked in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, you really did lie to me!”

“Robin,” Steve said, hushed and ashamed and really fucking mad at himself.

“For half a year! You lied to me for half a year!”

“I’m sorry!”

“She had to turn down her job offer from the school,” Robin barked.

“I know that.”

“The job that she’s been talking about for, oh I don’t know, six months? Probably more than that, actually!”

“I know, Robin, alright?” Steve assured her and crossed his arms across his chest. “You think I don’t? I am highly aware of that!”

“And, I’m sorry, but you’re far from the King of Responsibility!” Robin said.

“What does that mean?!” Steve questioned, a tint of frustration layered over his words.

“I’m just saying, you aren’t exactly known for your maturity,” she spat.

“You think we wouldn’t be able to take care of-”

“She can. I know she can. She’s more than capable of doing whatever the hell she puts her mind to, but you?” Anger and resentment dripped from her mouth with each word. “You, I’m honestly not sure. If you were more willing to lie to my face for six months than you were to just tell me the fucking truth, I’m sorry, but that’s really winning you any responsible adult points, is it?”

Tears pricked behind Steve’s eyes. He wanted to yell, to scream at the top of his lungs that, no, Robin, you’re wrong, I can do this!, but he really wasn’t sure if it was true. If his closest friend, one of the people he trusted most in the whole world, really thought that he wouldn’t be able to do this, then maybe she’s right, right?

The apartment door next to Steve slowly creeped open.

“Everything alright out here?” Hopper asked, carefully planting himself just slightly between Steve and Robin.

Robin lost her vitriol like a tea kettle after the burner got turned off, leaving her with no more steam to fuel what she needed to say.

“I’m waiting out in the car,” she muttered as she whizzed past Steve and turned down the stairwell. The two men in the hall listened to her descending footsteps. Once they heard the front door open and slam back shut, Jim broke through the quiet.

“Robin wanted me to check up on you after you called out,” Jim explained. “She was worried you were mad at her, after your fight.”

“Right,” Steve said.

“So, imagine my surprise when your mom answers the door, only to tell me that you don’t live there anymore,” the older man said. “She wouldn’t tell me why, just gave me an address and shut the door.”

“Look, if you’re here to give me another angry dad talk, then you don’t have to bother. Mine did a pretty damn good job all on his own,” Steve asserted.

“I’m not here to be angry.” Steve could tell that Hopper was choosing his words very, very carefully.

“Oh, that’s unlike you,” Steve commented, arms still crossed and eyes on the floor.

“Don’t be shitty!” Jim snapped. Steve withered.

“Sorry,” he muttered, still not able to look the man in the eyes. Jim just sighed.

“Do you have a plan, Steve?” he asked.

“Yes. No,” Steve replied. “I don’t know. She seems to have one.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m just not sure if I fit in it,” Steve confessed.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jim huffed. “Maybe you do need another angry dad talk!”

“What do you want me to say?” Steve interrogated. “That everything is under control and totally normal? I have no idea what’s going to happen! None! And, honestly? I’m fucking terrified, Hopper!”

“Steve-”

“I have to be good at this. I have to! Because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I’m not, but I am so terrified that I won’t be able to, and I’m going to let her down, and I can’t do that!” It all came out as some sort of paranoia fueled stream of consciousness. “I’d rather die than be anything like my dad, but what if it’s just in my blood? Like, I’m just predestined to turn out just as shitty as him!”

“You definitely won’t,” Jim said, as if it were just a simple fact. “I can assure you, there are very few people on this earth as shitty as your father, and you are not one of them.”

Jim wasn’t overly fond of Ronald Harrington; he was an all-around asshole to most people he met.

“Look, as much as I hate to admit it, you two aren’t kids anymore,” Hop said. “You’re grownups, you two are smart. You can make your own choices. If this is the choice you two wanna make, then make it.”

“You’re making it sound so simple,” Steve snarked.

“It kind of is,” the chief replied.

“Really? Because this feels like the least simple thing that’s ever happened to me,” Steve said. “You’re really not mad?”

“Well, I’m not thrilled,” Hopper grumbled. “But, like I said. You two are grownups. You can do whatever the hell you want.”

The pair stood in silence for a moment. Steve knew that Hop was more than likely lying about how mad he was, though he had been preparing himself for Jim to completely lose it on him. He probably would have deserved it.

“Does it ever get less terrifying?” Steve asked, genuinely wanting to know.

“Nope.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“And it’s not just the fun parts,” Jim added.

“I know,” Steve responded.

“It’s more than just tiny socks and decorating the nursery.”

“I know that.”

“Just makin’ sure.” Jim was far from happy, but he gave Steve a nod and a pat on the back, which was as close to congratulations as he was going to get. “I know the kids give you a hard time, but you’re smart, and so is she. You two know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you.”

“She’s really, really scared, Steve,” Hopper said. There was something in his voice; a silent question of ‘do you really know what it is you’re getting yourself into?’

“I know,” Steve replied.

“You don’t get to panic now, alright?” Jim told him. “And you don’t get to change your mind.”

“I won’t. I promise,” Steve said; ‘I do know, and I want all of it.’ “I would never do that to her. Never.”

The pair went back inside, and you seemed to be in slightly better spirits now, even if you still had a sea of tears in your eyes. Both you and Joyce turned to face the two men with questions in your eyes, and Jim’s small nod seemed to be enough of an answer for Joyce to shoot off of the couch to envelop Steve in a tight hug.

“I have lots of baby things I can bring by for you two,” she gushed after pulling away.

“You don’t have to do that,” you said to her, but she was having none of it.

“Don’t worry about it,” Joyce assured. “It’s all just collecting dust anyway.”

Which left Dustin, who in a lot of ways, Steve was the most worried about. He could take the anger from the grownups. Hell, he could take it from Robin, but Dustin, he was less sure about.

In true Henderson fashion, he found out about Baby Harrington a few days later, entirely by mistake.

“I still don’t understand why they kicked you out in the first place,” Dustin stated from his spot on the living room floor of your (Steve’s!) apartment. He was digging through a pile of old clothes Steve decided he no longer needed. He had a lot of things, he’d realized while moving in, and he really only wanted a few of them, needed even less. He would donate whatever went unclaimed, but Dustin wanted first dibs for himself.

“Because they’re assholes,” Steve responded.

“Okay, yeah, fair, but hasn’t Robin been begging you to get a place with her for, like, a year?”

“It’s not like I was able to really take my time apartment hunting.”

“I still feel like crashing on Robin’s couch for a while would’ve made more sense than moving in here,” Dustin supplied. Steve rolled his eyes.

“I needed an apartment, she needed a roommate, that’s it. Alright?” Steve loved Dustin like a little brother, but good lord, he could be obnoxious sometimes. “Now pick out what you want so I can clean this shit up.”

Dustin finished his haul, though he grumbled about how Steve was rushing him the whole time, and gathered the previously neatly folded clothes into a messy pile.

“I didn’t think of how I was gonna get any of this stuff out to the car.” Dustin, at not- quite- eighteen years old, had finally gotten his drivers license. ‘Thank god,’ Steve had remarked, ‘that I don’t have to be your fucking chauffeur anymore.’ That sentiment only lasted a little while, though, as it quickly became clear that a drivers license meant that Dustin could come and bother Steve whenever he wanted to. And he wanted to all the time. “Will you help me carry it all out?”

“No, I won’t, because there are more trash bags in the cabinet under the sink.” Steve pointed towards the small kitchen. Dustin got up off the floor, going into the kitchen and checking in seemingly every cupboard you had.

“I said under the sink, dude!” Steve heard the squeaky cabinet hinges open and shut, the rustle of the plastic trash bag.

“Steve?” Dustin called after a moment. The apartment was small, and the only real thing separating the kitchen and living room was a few feet of counter and the floor switching from tile to carpet.

“What?” Steve responded, not bothering to look up from the clothes he was shoveling back into their own trash bag.

“What’s this?” Dustin asked him. When Steve finally looked up at him, he was pointing towards something on the fridge, and it took Steve a second to realize that what Dustin was referring to was the ultrasound pictures that he’d forgotten to take down.

Well, shit.

Steve rocketed towards the fridge to put them away, but Dustin was faster and grabbed them before he could. The damage was already done.

“Dustin, please give me that,” Steve asked.

“This has her last name on it,” the younger boy observed.

“Put it down, alright? You weren’t supposed to see it in the first place, so just-”

“Is she fucking pregnant?” Dustin demanded.

“Dustin, please.”

“I didn’t think she was dating anyone, though?” the boy thought out loud. “Oh, my god, I wonder if it’s someone we know!”

Oh, it definitely is.

“Dude, c’mon, please just give me the picture.” Remember what Steve said about Dustin being obnoxious?

“Wait, why are you moving in with her if she’s pregnant?” Dustin inquired. “I’m pretty sure that extra bedroom is gonna be pretty occupied in nine months.”

“It’s closer to six, actually,” Steve clarified, and Dustin’s eyes widened. “But that isn’t the point, can you please just-”

“Steve?” the boy asked, tone shifting away from curiosity into something Steve found much more concerning.

“Yeah?” Steve sighed.

“Why did you move in with her?” he asked again, although the way he spoke the words made Steve think Dustin probably already had it figured out.

“Why do you think?” was all Steve could come up with to say.

“Oh, my god.”

“Dustin-”

“Oh, my god!”

“You cannot tell anyone, okay? This is totally top secret,” Steve begged.

“Did you-? You two-!” Dustin stuttered out. “Oh, my god!”

Dustin was about to start hyperventilating and Steve was doing his best to keep that from happening, pulling the glossy image out of Dustin’s hand as if it were made of precious porcelain, when the sound of keys jingling in the door distracted them. Both boys fell into bitter silence as you opened the door and took in the sight in front of you; a very frazzled Steve and a very distressed Dustin.

“Hi?” you greeted. “What’s going-”

“You’re fucking pregant?” Dustin exclaimed.

“What?” you spat out in response. Steve could tell that your mind was working a mile a minute to come up with a way to cover for yourself. “I-I don’t, uhm-”

“I left the sonogram on the fridge by mistake,” Steve confessed. He felt awful. “I’m sorry, it didn’t even cross my mind.”

“Oh,” you replied. You hadn’t moved from your spot in the entryway, hadn’t put down your bag or taken off your coat. You just stayed frozen.

“Oh, I have so many feelings!” Dustin wheezed, leaning forward. “Oh, my god!”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned him.”

“You’re having a fucking baby?” Dustin asked you.

“Yes,” you timidly responded, slowly placing your work bag onto the side of the couch.

“With Steve?!”

“Yes,” you said again.

“That Steve?” Dustin pointed a thumb over his shoulder to where Steve was hovering behind him. “Steve Harrington? Our Steve?”

You nodded. “That Steve.”

“Holy shit,” the boy breathed out.

“Please don’t be mad,” Steve requested.

“What? Mad, why would I be mad?” he asked. “Who’s mad?”

“Well, so far, everyone,” Steve explained.

“Wait, is this why Robin’s not talking to you?” Dustin asked.

“Robin’s not talking to you?” you piped up, concern dripping from your words.

Steve hadn’t mentioned that part to you yet.

Robin had been giving Steve total radio silence ever since she had found out. Even at work, she was refusing to say a single word to him. She went and hid in the bathroom anytime Steve tried to say anything at all, and she had even recruited Keith to be her disinterested, detached middle man and relay VHS-related messages if she really needed to.

To say the least, she really hadn’t taken it all that well.

“Later?” he said to you, silently begging you to table this conversation for a time when you didn’t have a very upset teenager in your kitchen.

Sticky silence fell over the three of you, sealing to Steve’s skin and filling his lungs up in a way he hated. Dustin was the one who peeled through it first.

“Are you actually having a baby?” The question was directed to Steve this time. Dustin was wildly expressive, he always had been, and he looked very, very overwhelmed. Steve felt about the same. He just nodded, and it took a second for Dustin to properly process the news.

“Gimme the picture again!” Dustin insisted.

“No, dude! We only have a few and-”

“Excuse me, it’s my nephew, I think I get to see the picture if I want to!”

The tension dissolved as soon as the words came out of Dustin’s mouth. Steve had been so, so worried that he’d be mad, madder than Robin was.

“Hah! See, Dustin thinks it’s a boy, too!” Steve exclaimed to you. Reservation made way for excitement. Like Dustin said, it’s his nephew.

“Oh, god, please don’t start with this again,” you said, smiling despite the faux exasperation in your voice.

“You think it’s a girl?” Dustin asked.

“I think,” you say as you shuck off your coat and lean against the counter, across from the boys, “that Steve is going to get his hopes up about it being a boy, and then be disappointed if it isn’t.”

“Not possible,” Steve clarified with a smile. “Besides, you don’t have to worry about it because I’m right, and it’s gonna be a boy.”

Dustin didn’t end up leaving until a good few hours later, when Steve noticed how your eyes kept fluttering shut as you leaned against his shoulder. He had to manhandle the boy out the door; he had a seemingly unending vault of questions (“you guys have been sleeping together this whole time?!”), but you were totally wiped.

You really just wanted to just go to bed, but Steve insisted you ate something first, and a mug of soup later, you were practically dead on your feet. He cleaned up any dinner mess (canned soup doesn’t really result in any mess, but he’d be damned if you had to put your own dishes into the dishwasher), and sent you off to get ready for an early turn in.

He’d just put the pot away when you summoned him into the bathroom.

“You alright?” Steve asked, leaning against the doorframe. You were standing in front of the sink in your pajamas. He could smell your mouthwash.

“Come look.”

Steve took a step into the bathroom to sidle up next to you as you pulled the bottom edge of your too-big t-shirt up. Your fingers ever so gently ghosted over your stomach.

“That wasn’t there before,” you asked, tilting your head back against the crook of Steve’s arm to look up at him. “Was it?”

Steve was entranced by your reflection in the mirror, by the way the swell of your tummy absolutely gave you away.

“I don’t know.” Steve spoke just barely above a whisper, the way he would have if he was standing in a church. You felt like an angel beneath his arm. “I don’t think so.”

“I feel like I would have noticed it if it was,” you said, eyes glued to the mirror just as Steve’s were.

“Definitely would’ve noticed,” Steve quietly gushed. “You officially have a baby bump.”

Realistically, you still had a couple more weeks before anyone else would actually be able to see it. Still small enough to hide behind your clothes, but absolutely, undoubtedly there.

You hummed, and Steve noticed the way you were trying to hide your smile.

“You’re allowed to be happy about it, you know,” Steve reminded you. Your eyes caught his again, and your small, shy smile grew just a little bit bigger as you pulled his hand away from your hip and placed it firmly against the slope of your tummy. He felt his breath hitch, like the action of touching you was breaking some sort of cardinal law, but he stroked his thumb up and down, up and down across your skin, and you flattened yourself as deeply into his chest as you possibly could. He pressed a kiss to your temple, lingering in the scent of you for as long as he could allow himself to.

His hand stayed glued to you for the remainder of the evening.

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#stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x female reader #steve harrington x you #joe keery #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader #stranger things x y/n #stranger things fanfic #stranger things x you #stranger things imagine #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington x f!reader

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triplesilverstar · 6 months

Text

Day 21

Rating: Explicit 18+ Minors DNI

Pairing: Satyr Vash X F!Reader

CW: Nudity, Blood, bleeding, awkward conversations, shower sex, hand job, oral sex, blow job, penis in vagina sex, riding, cock warming, cream pie, lots of cream pies, consensual somnophilia, time jumps, mentions of pregnancy

Word count: 7965

A/N: Day 21, Since I seem to like causing myself pain. Have another giant monster Vash fic. This time with a Satyr! This fic came to be because of a find of mine and you can find their art here!

You honestly hadn’t expected it, after moving back to the old country and taking over your grandmother’s estate. The grapevines overrun with other leafage and foliage wondering what she had done in the past few years for money. At least you had enough funds sitting in your bank account from your corporate job to cover a few years of working to get some kind of money to keep yourself afloat.

So one day, in an old pair of coveralls and beat-up sun hat seeing what you thought was a pair of goat legs in among the grapevines you’d smacked its hindquarters, expecting the goat to run away. You sure as hell hadn’t expected it to yelp and stand up revealing a human torso. A heavily scarred human torso.

A heavily scarred attractive human torso with pretty teal eyes and blond hair, who was looking at you like a scared animal. As your gaze went downwards you felt the blood rushing up your cheeks, quickly turning around. “Oh, my god.”

“Ugh, hi there. I have to admit I’m not used to seeing anyone in these fields, sorry about that.”

Whipping around so quickly you’re certain some of your bones creaked “You can talk!” Surprised by your reaction and slightly taken aback, rubbing his one hand along the back of his head.

“Well yea.” Tilting his head as if he’s confused even more at your words. “How else would I communicate?”

That had been the start of you getting to know the Satyr, sitting down with him that afternoon and talking, learning more about him and him about you. His name was Vash, and he’d been hiding on the property for almost a decade, having picked it because your grandmother hadn’t been that active. Turns out he’d been helping her without her ever knowing, something you thanked him for.

As the two of you spoke, you kept looking at his scars and his missing arm, trying to not be too obvious but he had to have seen your wandering eyes. His voice grew somber as he stated not all humans were kind. That had burned your heart, offering him a hand and telling him you’d like to be kind to him. He’d taken it and smiled.

When you saw where he’d been sleeping, you’d sighed, offering him a room inside the large house if he wanted it. Hoping it wouldn’t come across as rude with you essentially saying his home was a dump. He’d taken you up on your offer, choosing a small room on the main floor saying he’d want to come and go as he pleased and didn’t want to bother you.

It hadn’t taken long for a friendship to form between the two of you, him helping explain more about the local flora while you worked. He always helped you in other ways since he was taller than you and knew far more about the land that belonged to you at least on paper. At this rate, you’d have grapes for next year to try and turn into wine, and Vash said he knew a little about that too. He was a gold mine of information you were beyond happy to have met and call your friend.

Weeks passed, and before you knew it an entire season had come and gone, changing from spring to summer. A time you found yourself working in the mornings and evenings and hiding from the midday heat. You’d also taken it upon yourself to try and get Vash to start wearing pants. A concept that confused the hell out of him.

“Why do I need these? They look stupid.” Holding the end of the loose pants you had made for him that would hide his hooves and well.

Permanent erection.

Something you tried to avoid looking at.

“Vash. It’s because you’re very distracting.” Frowning at you and the light blush you’re certain is visible on your face because of the burning you feel.

“These won’t make me less distracting.” Slapping your hands to your face and dragging them downwards.

“Vash. I swear, they very much make you less distracting. At least for me.” Muttering the last part under your breath.

“Look this is just terrible!” Letting go of the fabric and watching it drop to the floor as he walked away, blond tail swishing behind him clearly annoyed. How the hell were you supposed to explain it was distracting seeing a part of your friend on display that you wanted to do terrible things to.

The next morning Vash reappeared, the telltale twitch of his tail telling you he was still a little upset with you. Running a hand through your hair before setting the worn sun hat back on your head and approaching him. “Vash.”

“Oh. Am I not too distracting this morning?” His one hand tucking on some of the invasive vines from some of the fruit trees that had been being choked by the flora growing around them. Clearly frustrated.

“Vash. Can I try and explain a little better?” Watching him raise an eyebrow before turning towards you. Feeling the blush starting to grow across your cheeks.

“I. Find… a part of you very distracting” trying to keep your voice soft and hoping he won’t press too much. Instead, he’s just tilting his head at an angle, like he still doesn’t understand. “I” making a vague motion towards his abdomen and the thick appendage hanging there “find that distracting.” Well aware of the heat radiating from your cheeks, certain you’re flushed with embarrassment.

“Oh. OH.” Looking down before looking back to you, concern growing on his face as he stepped closer dropping the flora from his hand to touch your cheek. “You feel warmer than normal. Are you alright? Is it too warm for you?”

You almost laugh at his concern “I'm ok. It’s more the feeling awkward about my explanation.” A small chuckle passes your lips, watching the concern fade away but his hand stays on your cheek.

“Is that why humans wear clothes?” It’s asked so innocently you just smile at him.

“Yea. It’s part of the reason. Sorry humans are strange like that.” A brief nod before he removes his hand, reaching down to grab the removed flora to bring it to the growing pile he keeps telling you will make good compost for the grapevines one day. Watching him go you smile, the blush remaining on your face well into the afternoon.

When he reappears that evening you notice he’s wearing them, grumbling a little about how strange they look and feel. You don’t fully know why, but you close the distance wrapping your arms around him from behind and pressing your face into his scarred back. “Thank you, I know this is more for my comfort than yours.”

Unaware when you leave him and head back to your own self-appointed evening chores that his face is a bright pink, Vash is well aware of the reason for his blush and well aware such feelings would never be returned.

More time passed and you made Vash a few pairs of shorts since he understood the reason for them better and not wanting him to feel like you were ashamed of him. You had to admit to yourself, he was a very attractive fellow, and damn did he have one sweetheart of a personality to match. Sighing as you thought about it, it is not like he’d ever have feelings for a human, you were just a friend.

Hearing a familiar yelp you dropped what you were doing, running across your property towards Vash jumping and darting around obstacles. Seeing Vash on the ground and hissing, his hand bleeding as he tried to remove something from around his leg. Dropping beside him and moving his hand you find yourself hissing as well.

A coil of rusted barbed wire wrapped about his leg slicing into the back of his calf, the white fur stained pink. “Hang on Vash. Let me go get the wire cutters.” Darting off again, and making a small detour into the house to grab the first aid kit. Back at his side you quickly cut the wire, hands gentle as you remove it from his skin, looking around to see if there aren’t any other pieces sticking out of the ground. A sigh of relief that this seems to be the only one on the surface.

Opening the first aid kit and grabbing a sterile bandage you pour a bit of alcohol onto it before looking into his eyes. “This is gonna sting. Probably a lot.” Nodding for you to continue, you dab away from the cut trying to keep the dirt out away from it, hearing him hiss you stop. Reaching for his hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze, watching as he bit his lip.

“It did sting. A lot.” You laugh at his comment, watching his face flinch ever so slightly as you keep working trying to keep your touch gentle.

“It doesn’t need stitches or anything, but I’d like to try and wrap it” another nod, and you press a new sterile bandage to the cut and start to bind it in place. “You’ll tell me if it’s too tight right?” A brief nod and you keep working, happy with how tight it is, and securing it in place. “Can I look at your hand?” Taking the hand and cleaning it the same way, his fingers needing a few bandages, most of the cuts shallow from him trying to free himself.

Once done you pat his thigh, smiling at him and blushing all of a sudden at the way he’s staring at you gazing ardently at your face. “Thank you.” All you can do is stammer out an acknowledgment as you stand up. As Vash pushes himself he almost lands on the ground again, but not before you’re wrapping your arms around him. “I… Think I might need help getting back to the house.” Adjusting so you’re under his shortened arm, supporting his injured leg and the two of you hobble back to the house.

As you both get inside and help him into his room and onto the mound of pillows he uses as a bed you smile kneeling down next to him. “Anything I can get you while you rest up in here?”

“Not right now.” Smiling back at you while he leans back “You’re a good caretaker you know.” For whatever reason that has you blushing as you head back out, heading back to where Vash had been and going through the soil pulling up several feet of wire and dropping it into the metal scrap pile beside the house and ensuring nothing is sticking out.

Later when you check in on him you have to smile, softly snoring and his foot twitching once in a while. Moving closer and running your hands along his leg near the injury, still fascinated by how soft his fur is. Another short snore and you smile, leaving him be and feeling the blush returning to your face.

The next day Vash is just moving slowly, and both of you work together to see if you can find more wire, not wanting to see Vash injured because of something like that again.

When a heat wave strikes out of the blue in the middle of summer, the pair of you stay inside the house trying to keep cool. Both of you laying on the floor heads next to one another while you talk and your feet pointing in different directions.

“Alright, best fruit?” You ask, looking up at the ceiling.

“Apples. Easy.”

“Really? That took like, no time to come up with that answer.” Turning your head enough to take in his profile.

“Apples are the best fruit.” His voice is clear he’ll accept no argument.

“I think grapes are the best fruit” you fire back. “They can be made into wine, and they can be frozen. A great snack for a hot day.”

A snort from him. “What a human answer.”

“Hey now! I’m human, what’d you expect?” Turning your body to slap his shoulder in mock anger.

“And I” Vash rolling over to face you “have never held that against you.” Surprised when he closes the distance and presses his lips to yours. A light chaste kiss that you don’t get to respond to, and Vash reels back as quickly face going red. “I… I need to go for a walk.” Standing and moving quickly, hearing the door open and close before you’re even on your feet running to the door in your bare feet. No sign of him as you look out across the yard, running your hand through your hair and looking down at the ground.

It’s almost evening before he comes back, and you’re sitting at the small table in the kitchen when he walks in. “Hey” his head snapping up as you speak, face flushed before looking to the side. Sliding off the chair and walking to him “You kind of ran away before I could say anything.” Reaching up to cup his cheek and turning his head to look at you “You worried me a little Vash.”

“I didn’t want to stick around. I…” one of his hooves moving and sliding along the floor, a clear sign he’s nervous. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“If it was just the heat of the moment it's ok Vash.” Keeping your voice soft and starting to pull your hand away.

Or at least you tried to, his own hand coming up to keep yours in place against his skin. “What if it wasn’t?” He sounds like he’s ready to be thrown out of your life and it breaks your heart.

“Then that’s ok too.” This time you choose to take the risk, pushing yourself up onto your tip toes and pressing your lips to his keeping the kiss as chaste as he did, pulling away and landing flat on your feet. “It’s umm. Kind of nice knowing I’ve got someone as attractive as you kissing me.” Feeling your cheeks heat up at the admission.

A long pause and you’re afraid it might have pushed him a bit too far, feeling the smile drop from your face. Maybe it was you who shouldn’t have done that. Vash removes his hand from yours, and you pull your own back feeling so small.

Suddenly up in the air, your back pressed against the wall and Vash kissing you like his life depends on it. His one arm wrapped around you, hips being used to keep you up in the air and you find your hands moving to tangle in his hair. Elbows pressing into his shoulders as you part your lips to deepen the kiss, moaning against him and the taste of apples on your tongue.

Panting when you break apart and look into his eyes. “If you say you shouldn’t have done that I am going to be, so mad.”

“Then I won’t say it” laughing you kiss him again, and again. Until you feel lightheaded, the back of your head hitting the wall while you try to catch your breath.

That night you sleep with him in his pile of pillows, listening to his heartbeat and tracing some of his scars.

In the morning you’d woken up to him playing with your hair, and once he realized you were awake pulling you closer for another kiss. Well more of a round of kisses, that you found easy to enjoy since you could already feel the heat of the day building.

When the heat wave finally broke you kept sleeping with Vash downstairs, enjoying waking up and going to bed each night to his lips on yours.

One day you also laughed as you and Vash enjoyed a short lunch under an apple tree, Vash having an apple in his mouth and another in hand. Looking at you cutely as you asked him something, unable to answer and looking at the apple in his hand like he didn’t want to put it down.

Reaching up to take the one from his mouth while a few petals from the tree fell onto his hair, making him look somehow even cuter in your eyes. Question forgotten you lean closer for a kiss under the tree, watching his cheeks darken, pulling away again to take a bite of his apple before offering it back to him as a tease. Watching him grin as he opened his mouth to take it back and keep eating it.

Another nice result that came from your closer relationship, still not sure what to call it, was that any chance he had Vash liked to touch you. From running his hand along your arm or pressing his chest against your back and rubbing his face along yours. He liked it even better when you had less clothes on.

One day closer to the waning days of summer you were sat on the floor in a pair of shorts and your bra, running your hand along his calves and hooves. “So these are the bones of your foot?”

“My hooves are, like your toes.” Laying back while you play with the soft fur, pressing your fingers against the bones you feel.

“So. This” pressing around where what you would call his ankle is “is like the bones in my feet? Or is it an ankle?”

“Like the bones in your foot” Still looking at his foot and leg you start running your fingers through his fur. Humming as you start using both hands, watching the fur slip through your fingers.

“So soft” you whisper, tracing patterns in his fur where the gradient changes from the same blond in his hair to the pale white.

“Your hair is soft too” feeling your face flush, and he’s sporting a similar look as he sits up. A thought comes to you, and you blush a little more.

“Can I brush your fur, hair, and tail sometime?”

“Um. I should be clean before you do. I’m kinda dirty right now” his hand rubbing against the back of his head. Sending him what you hope is your best bedroom eyes you smile, shuffling closer to the main part of his body and kissing his throat.

“Can I help you get clean too then?” A blushing mess as he stammers out a yes, both of you heading to the bathroom he uses to get clean in. A coarse brush to clean what skin and fur he can reach. As you strip yourself a little nervous, you feel those nerves fade away as he touches your skin gently, exploring some of the skin he’s never felt before. Before either of you get too distracted you look into his teal eyes. “Can you show me how you use the brush?”

“Right. Yea.” Picking up the brush you watch the way he lathers it up with an old bar or soap before pressing it against his skin and then moving to his fur. The pink hue remained on his cheeks.

Getting the idea you take the brush from him and get to work, hearing him moan as you scrub along his back, taking extra care around his scars. Still working on his backside and reaching his tail you smile, the occasional twitch taking it from your hands as you lather the soft strands. “How does it get so tangled?” Laughing as you grab it once more, almost done.

“I go through the bushes and stuff gets stuck in it.” Laughing with you and letting out another happy hum.

“Maybe we should do this more often than to keep it from getting too tangled?”

“I… Can’t reach parts of it. So that would be nice.” Voice a little somber and you flinch, realizing your mistake.

“I’ll brush it every night if you want. You just need to ask.” Getting him to turn so you can face his front after you finish with his tail, placing a kiss on his scarred chest before starting to clean it.

Washing his arm is interesting, as he giggles and laughs so much, learning the underside of his arm is ticklish. Something you plan to use to your advantage if you ever need to, his shorter arm not taking as long. He’s watching your face intently as you finish with the stub, catching his gaze and keeping eye contact as you kiss the end of it.

Now as you face him, you find yourself swallowing. It makes sense to start at the top of his thighs and work your way down his legs so the suds would trail down his fur. Biting your lip as you look at his bobbing erection. Heading lifting as you feel his hand slide along your arm. “I can look after that area if you want.” His voice is whisper soft, and he’s smiling at you.

“Um. Can I… Can I try something?” Your own voice is just as soft, and when he nods you reach up to get him to bend forward a little to kiss him. Wrapping your hand around his cock as you deepen it, making him moan into your mouth. Pulling away so he doesn’t have to bend you keep moving your wrist, adding a twisting motion while he keeps moaning.

Tip to base and back up again, enjoying the way he twitches in your hand as you keep repeating the motion. Pressing your head to his chest at an angle so you can watch his cock as you keep working him. “Can I. Touch you?” his voice hoarse and starting to pant you smile, tilting your head to look up at him.

“Of course, you can.” As soon as the words are out of your mouth his hand is pressing against the skin of your ribs, touch gentle and explorative as he dips his fingers down to your abdomen before sliding up and pressing against your breast. Humming as he touches you, moaning as you like certain things, and still pumping him.

Looking back towards his cock, noticing the head has turned red, you smile, kissing his chest and twisting your wrist as you tighten your grip. Vash whines in your hold and you start to pump him faster, keeping your hand closer to his tip. His hand is no longer wandering, moving to your back so his arm is wrapped around you, whining his head falling forward against your own. Tightening your grip just a bit more, and after a few more pumps Vash groans in your ear, his cum spurting upwards with enough force to hit the underside of your breasts as his hips strutter. A few more slow pumps to get the last of his seed from his balls and you stop, releasing his member and giving your hand a flick before sliding it along his belly.

“Feel good?”

A soft moan is your answer, amazed his cock is still erect, and when he feels more stable you look up. Vash is quick to close the distance and kiss you again, when you break away you start cleaning his lower body, enjoying the feeling of his soft fur between your fingers. Once he’s washed you brush out his dried fur and find Vash far too curious about bringing you to a similar release before you go to bed.

A new routine added to your day, and you can’t complain, every night brushing his fur and learning more and more about each other's bodies with your hands.

As summer turns to fall, while it’s still rather mild at least compared to where you had lived previously, you and Vash are working hard, harvesting fruit from the different trees around the property. Bins of them being stored in the earth cellar, enough that you almost think you might fall over them, even if you have to giggle at all the bins of apples.

Heading back outside you don’t get far, almost running into Vash. Whose cute pointed ears are pulled back, a bring pink blush across his cheeks. And an arm load of apples.

“Ugh. Vash. Sweetie. I think we have enough apples.” Watching the blush on his face slowly darken into a deeper hue.

“These are special apples. I umm” one of his hooves is doing that cute little nervous drag thing and you reach out to rub his upper arm. “I got them for us. For something special.”

This time it’s you going a little pink, pushing some of your hair behind your ear “oh.” Moving backwards you open the door and run to get a bin for him to put his precious prize into “what makes them special?”

A short flinch and a swish of his tail, unsure if he’ll answer you based on his response. “They’re from a special tree. A little ways away from here… my brother looks after it.” The way his voice drops leaves you reeling, learning your sort of, well you aren’t even sure what the two of you are, but learning he had a brother was interesting.

“Oh. You have a brother? You don’t talk about him much.” Taking the apples from his arm and placing them into the bin, once the final one was stored in the wooden container you turned your attention back to Vash, his voice serious.

“He’s my twin. We don’t really see eye to eye. On a lot of things.” Stepping so he’s close enough that one of his legs is brushing up against yours, his hand moving to cup your jaw. “Including how we feel about humans. Please, don’t go looking for him. Ever.” You don’t miss the note of desperation in his voice before he pushes his lips against yours. The way he kisses you this time feels so different than any other time like he’s afraid for you.

As his lips leave yours, both of your hands move to tangle in his hair making sure when you open your eyes you stare into his. “I promise. I won’t.” Body still pressed to his, as he nods closing the distance between the two of you once more.

A few weeks later, during a spell of rainy days you find yourself in a baking mood, rolling out crusts and making a few pies. Making sure when you picked the fruit you didn’t take any from the apple bin that contained the special apples.

As you worked, hair tied up and elbow deep in flour you were unaware of a pair of eyes watching you. Focused on your work, and humming to yourself, a small skip in your step.

Vash is watching you, a soft smile, you’re so different from all the humans he’d met before, those that thought him a freak. He’d been attacked, rocks and worse thrown at him, some wanting to catch him to sell him off as some exotic pet. But you? You just looked at him in a way that made his heart swell in his chest, treated him like he was a living being that deserved to be treated as such. You’d offered him a home, listened to him speak, treated his wounds, shared his bed, and in all these things you never tried to get him to do something he didn’t want to do.

Kni had disagreed when Vash told him he thought he was in love with you, told him it wouldn’t, couldn’t last. Humans weren’t worthy of being out of the squalor they lived in according to his brother. Vash could see his brothers’ point, but he didn’t share them, he cared about humans and wanted to be a part of their world. Now he had one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

You were still humming away, sliding the last pie into the oven before setting a timer, and starting to wash the dishes. Yelping as a warm arm wrapped around you, and an upturned nose buried itself in your hair, giggling. “Hi Vash, I was wondering where you’d disappeared too.”

Pressing a kiss into your hair and swaying his hips against your backside “Around.” Moving his hand down your chest and lifting your shirt so he could feel your skin directly. “Whatever you're making smells good.”

“A couple pies, one of them just for you.” Giggling as you keep washing the dishes and rinsing them before placing them on the rack to air dry. Last item washed you empty the sink, slowly turning around to face him, letting your damp hands rest against the nap of his neck. Tilting your head down and raising your eyebrows seductively “apple.”

Vash grins, already aware two of the five pies you’d made had been apple, excited at least one of them was just for him. Closing the distance and kissing you, the first kiss turning into a series of kisses shared between the two of you. Nipping at one another and dragging tongues against one another's skin, the smell of the baking pies reaching your nose. Starting to deepen the kiss you groan as the timer goes off, pulling from Vash and grabbing your oven mitts to pull the pies out.

Once the five of them are on the rack, you bite your lip glancing at Vash, who still looks as hot and bothered as you feel. Taking his hand you smile “can we try something new?” Eyes hopeful and feeling your lower body starting to burn.

“I like trying new things” he teases back, letting you lead him to his, your, both of your shared room. Once inside you gently push him onto his back, grasping his cock and pumping him and peppering kisses over his chest. You settle your body between his legs, slowly moving downwards, and kissing the scars you find along the way. Eyes flicking up to his when you reach the part of his legs covered in soft fur, watching to see if he doesn’t want you to keep going, and you have no worries. His eyes are wide watching you and licking his lips, keeping eye contact as you wrap your lips around the tip of his cock and hear him hiss in pleasure.

Humming you pop off the tip, still pumping him and nibbling the sensitive skin, watching as pre cum starts to pool at his slit and pressing your tongue against the small opening. Vash is moaning above you, watching your every movement and your core feels like it’s on fire. Switching to licking the head and twirling your tongue around the sensitive skin, as Vash jerks his hips upwards towards your lips. Smiling as you look at him pulling back somewhat adding a twisting motion to your pumping.

“Want me to keep going?” Teasing him and biting your lip.

“Please!” A low whine and you tilt your head before going back to his cock, pausing to adjust your hold on his warm flesh before licking a hard strip from his balls to the tip. Tongue flat so you can touch as much of his skin as possible, enjoying the feeling of his mad twitching before engulfing the tip in your mouth and starting to suck. Setting an easy pace for yourself, you don’t go too far down, just past the end of his head so you can focus on the sensitive area. Your hand can do the rest of the work. Another low whine reaching your ears, and you have to admit it sounds a lot like the noise he makes when he’s close to coming. A few more pumps and bobs of your head, it turns out he was making the noise he makes when he’s close, mouth filling with the astringent taste of him. Swallowing his cum as best you can, and pulling away from his cock as he shakes and shivers in the pillows.

Blissed out against the pillows you give him a few more pumps, aware he’s watching you with hooded eyes, a final glob of cum pooling on his slit which you lick off. Looking at him with adoration as you release his cock and crawl up his body to press against him, feeling his arm wrap around you tight. “I’m going to return the favor later.” A kiss pressed to your forehead as both of you doze off.

The next day after having a slice of cooled pie, Vash does return the favor, more than once watching you come undone beneath his touch and tongue. As your back arches Vash thinks to himself that his brother has to be wrong, how could someone like you respond to him like that if you didn’t love him. Maybe someday he’ll be brave enough to tell you how he feels.

Eventually the air turned cooler and you started wearing some thicker clothes, watching as Vash tended to shiver in the early morning air while both of you were outside working. And in the evenings you went to work, going through the items left behind from your grandmother. Working on knitting him a long scarf, that thankfully only takes you about a week. Work might have gone a little faster if you and him didn’t end up in bed as often as you did as part of your nightly routine.

And after the pants incident you had far more tact when you gave it to him. “I noticed you’re looking a little chilly some morning, and this isn’t me trying to get you to cover up. I just thought you’d like something to help keep warm.” Handing him the red scarf, and watching him smile.

“Thank you.” Pressing the hand made item to his chest, a wide grin splitting his face as he felt the fabric. “I know it will help, especially because you made it for me.” Something about his words makes you turn red.

The next morning, he had the scarf wrapped around his neck a few times so the loops fell more around his chest. Smiling at you as the two of you finished the last few items before any time outside would be recreational.

After spending so much time outside getting the property cleaned up, you found yourself cleaning out more of the inside now. Not that it was a mess inside, more taking stock of what had been left behind by your grandmother and the generations before her. As you found things Vash often found himself out of sorts, unsure what to do with most items and there was a steady growing pile of things you didn’t plan on keeping.

One thing that caught your eye had been some smaller carboys which Vash knew more about, and you were trying to make some fruit wine from the extras stored in the earth cellar. It would be a while before any of it was ready to try but you’d agreed it would be a good test for the summer when hopefully grapes would be growing on the vines.

As you moved through the rooms of the house you came across a few stools that left you confused. Showing them to Vash, who seemed surprised. “These look more like seats for my kind to sit on.” Taking one of them and sitting showing it left his legs balanced at an angle that was comfortable for him.

“Maybe one of my ancestors had better relationships with your kind then? At least if there are this many chairs in the room.” Walking by as you look more in the room, a thick layer of dust on most of the objects around.

“It’s a nice thought. Both of our kinds living together.” Something in his voice grabs your attention, heading back to where he’s seated.

Reaching out to run your hand along his shoulder and down to the stub of his upper arm. “In case you missed it. We live together.” Smiling at him as he reaches out to rest his hand against your hip.

“Yea. I guess we do.” Voice wistful and his ears flicking back.

“What do you mean you guess? Last time I checked we share a roof, share a room. Not sure what else you’d call that then living together. Come on Vash what’s really on your mind?” Reaching up with your free hand to cup his cheek, which he quickly nuzzles against.

“I…” licking his lips before taking a deep breath. “I care about you, a lot more than I should I think. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I. I want to be your mate.” This is the most embarrassed you’ve ever seen him and it warms your heart to hear him make that admission.

Bending over so you’re eyes level with him, a soft grin on your face. “Mate huh?” Pressing your lips to his for a long tender kiss, when you pull away your lips are close enough to still brush against his. “I like the idea of being your mate.” Watching the grin grow on his face.

With one arm he’s pulling you into his lap, grinding up against you making you moan as your lips meet once more. Panting and groaning against one another. Both of your hands moving to press against his shoulders, nails scraping along his neck and hair. “Vash?” Voice almost breathless as you pull apart. “Do you want to be inside me?” A low soft yes is your answer and another roll of his hips against yours.

Scrambling out of his lap your fingers and moving quickly against the belt around your waist, undoing your pants and pulling them off as quickly as you can, underwear with them before crawling back into his lap.

Lips reconnecting and you can feel the precum flowing freely from his tip as your hand reaches for him, a few pumps to smear the fluid around before lining him up and slowly lowering yourself onto his cock.

Both of you gasping and you feel your neck arch back as he fills you, and as you slide down you know you never want to feel anyone else inside you again. Vash fills you in such a way that it makes a line of sweat break out across your back, beading between your shoulder blades and rolling down. You start to ride him in no time, the veins of his cock making you squirm, his one hand moving to pull your shirt off, burying his face in your breasts and panting against your skin as well. Biting and sucking the skin as you keep moving, a line of fire building inside your belly. Arms wrapping around his head to keep him close and you scream as you cum around his cock, feeling his seed paint your walls, both of you coming down from your high together.

As time passed, the two of you often found your days either starting with a long slow session of making love before moving about the house for the day. Or retiring early for a hot steamy session, trying to see how many times you could spasm around Vash. One thing was certain, Vash never seemed to run out of stamina, always had a load ready to push deep into your core. You’d also told Vash he didn’t have to wear pants inside the house if he didn’t want to, which led to both of you sometimes having sex in random places and at random times.

On Christmas eve, the two of you were laying down on a pile of blankets and pillow in the living room, a fire going in the small fireplace that had been hidden behind a sheet of drywall. Laughing as your hands wandered over his skin, where it met his fur.

“I just don’t understand how it can be that soft” giggling as you rub circles into the area.

“Maybe because I eat such a healthy diet.” Wiggling his eyebrows at you and you snort.

“Oh yea, almost nothing but apples.” Pressing a quick peck to the center of his chest. You watch as his face shifts, almost thoughtful. Rolling over, and running a hand along your side before standing and walking away.

“I’ll be back in a moment my heart” his tail swishing the floor behind him.

You rolled your shoulders, before reaching out and grabbing your glass of wine, listening for his return. At the sound of his clicking hooves you roll over to watch him again, tossing an apple in his one hand. “Really. Another apple?”

“It’s one of the special apples, I brought for the two of us.” Right, you’d almost forgotten about those, still unsure what made them special, but you had listened to the warning and made no motion to ever find or find out more about his brother.

“So, what makes them special?” You question as he rejoins you on the pile of pillows and blankets.

“It’s said, they help bond two souls together, and bring those in love good fortune.” He’s grinning as he settles, holding the apple between both of you.

You smile “So. Were you hoping for an outcome like this?” Watching his face flush and his ears twitch, a telltale sign of his having been found out. “I’ll stop teasing you. So how does it work? I assume we have to eat it.”

“Yea, we eat it together.” Placing the apple to his mouth and sticking his tongue out to hold it up, and seeing it balanced on his tongue does things to the lower parts of your body.

“Wait. You mean we eat the apple together, as in at the same time?” Waiting his eyebrows wiggle again, waiting for your head to move closer and as you bite into the apple, you hear Vash do the same. It has to be the most awkward apple you’ve ever eaten, feeling Vash place his hand against the back of your head, helping to keep the pressure on the fruit between both of you. The apple, also, is the best apple you’ve ever eaten, something about the favor being almost perfect.

In no time the fruit is gone, the core tossed into the fire, your and Vash’s mouths pressed together, tasting more of the apple on his tongue. Rolling you onto your back and grinding his hips against yours.

The angle like this isn’t the best for him and the way his legs are shaped, but a few adjustments and your legs are draped over his, your back still on the floor so he’s in charge, your pants tossed somewhere else in the room. Feeling him starting to grind harder against you, lips reconnected once more. Struggling a little, his hand is occupied, being tangled in your hair as his tongue explores your mouth. Reaching down you line him up and in one thrust he’s as far as he can go. Breaking apart Vash sets a quick pace, and it isn’t long until you’re cuming on his cock, moaning as he keeps going. Pulling a second from you in no time.

Panting in your ear how he’s going to fuck you all night long and into morning, and you tell him to keep going even if you fall asleep, high on the sensation of Vash plowing your insides.

Waking up Christmas morning, you find Vash under you and still in the living room, the fire has turned to a few dying embers. Snoring away, his one hand pressing against the center of your back and his cock still seated deep inside you. You lower your head back to his chest, listening to his heartbeat lulling you back to sleep again.

The next time you woke up, you were humming, stretching your arms up towards Vash’s shoulder chests pressed together and Vash on his back, his hips pistoning in and out of you. “Good morning handsome” letting out a shaky breath, sliding one hand up to tangle your fingers in his hair.

“M-morning” stuttering and you can see a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, the veins of his neck standing out. Shifting your legs so the movement of his hips has his fur rubbing against your clit, moaning as the pressure builds inside of you. A few more thrusts from under you and he’s freezing, a whisper of your name and you feel him filling you up.

Pushing himself up to change the angle of your bodies so he can kiss you, the taste of apples still strong on his tongue. “How many loads is that?” You whisper against his mouth, smiling as he nips at your lips.

“Hmm, six, maybe seven?” That makes you laugh, taking a moment to adjust before starting to roll your own hips.

“Let’s have a whole day of this, I just want a day of us together. Nothing else.” Vash is quick to agree. The two of you only leave the living room for bathroom breaks and a small amount of food and water. By the end of the day you’re both too tired to move anymore, cuddling together and soft touches shared between you.

When spring comes, you’re amazed at the difference you can see from all your hard work, the grape vines full and lush covered in the small flowers. Even the fruit trees cleaned of the thorn vines that had been strangling them seem even more vibrant. That day as you took in the view and came across the area you’d first met Vash in just a year ago you find yourself swinging around and running towards him, jumping into his arm, wrapping your legs around his waist and kissing him full of laughter.

Five years later, you’re sitting in the office you made out of one of the rooms in the house. The camera turned on your laptop working out the final arrangements with the distributor wanting to sell your wine in specialty shops. Grinning as you hammer out the facts the barrels will be picked up and brought to another location to be bottled.

All of those details settled, you grin when asked if you want a name on the label besides the region and grape type. Letting a more comical side take over “The Satyr’s wife” you don’t hesitate as the name slips from your mouth with a grin.

A week later you have the final contract in hand, as well as a final draft design of the label for the market. Taking the design to Vash to see what he thinks, heading down to the living room where Vash has his hand full, literally with a set of smaller hands held in his. Both father and son grinning as you appear, handing Vash the piece of paper and replacing his hand with both of your own. Taking your son around the room as he walks a bit more steadily on his smaller hooves, hooves that are still soft in comparison to his sire's hardened ones.

That had been more than a painful feeling with those kicking your insides but the day he came into the world with your hair and his fathers eyes you couldn’t have been happier. Learning that any child you had with Vash would be male since his species required mates from another to reproduce, and you found it more than alright to know you’d have to deal with more hooves inside your belly.

Eventually Vash laughs pulling you back to the present as he looks at the name and the design of the label, a stylized Satyr with a set of reed pipes held up to its lips.

You have to admit, you’re glad your grandmother left this place to you, glad to have found someone to love, just for being themselves and loving you the same. Even if you did find him tracking mud over your floors after it rained, annoying.

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