#Air Rescue Service | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pseudowho · 3 months

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The JJK Crew as Firemen

Okay lads and gentlebugs, it's damsel time! This is how they meet you, rescue you, and fall in love...all in their fully uniformed line of duty.

Starring: Nanami, Gojo, Geto, Ino, Megumi, Yuuji, Higuruma, Sukuna and Toji

Warnings: Building fires, road traffic collisions, suicide attempts, injuries, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, near-drowning, Ferris wheels, highly irresponsible use of fire-trucks

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Gojo

Satoru had agreed to take an extra shift, with the threat of bad weather, and he regretted it-- this storm was biblical. The skies were so black and pregnant with rain, it may as well have been night. The billowing rains slapped and stung Satoru's cheeks. Drivers were blinded, their wipers failing to clear their windscreens even at maximum speed. People stumbled, buffeted into the roads by violent winds. And Satoru's sense of humour could only get him so far when members of the public made increasingly irrational decisions, and placed themselves in danger.

But not you, he thought, as he stepped into the wild torrents of overflowing river water, to the dismayed shouts of his colleagues, you absolutely don't deserve to die like this.

Trying to head home, kept cruelly late by a manager who didn't care how far you had to travel, you had missed your bus, and had to take a dangerous detour over a little river bridge, public transport services all abruptly cancelled. One violent sweep of wind was all it took to rock you over the little fence, and you clung desperately to weeds on the riverbank, soaked, shivering, gulping at murky, frigid, terrifyingly climbing waves.

"I'm coming," shouted the fireman, white-haired, tall, throwing off his heavy uniform jacket, with no regard for his own safety, "just hold on, I'll get you out, I promise--" Satoru sloshed and slipped, his t-shirt muddy and plastered to his chest as he slid down the riverbank. He allowed his colleagues to hurriedly harness him. Hitting the water, his abs clenched painfully with the cold, and he began to wade towards you.

You cried out, feeling your grip on life be washed away as the riverbed crumbled, releasing the weeds you clung to. As the river grasped you, your hands flung desperately out, holding your breath, praying, praying--

An enormous hand gripped your own, and a long forearm drew you close with one almighty heave. Satoru dug his fingers deep into the river wall, feeling the jarring rub of stones embedded in smooth wet squelch.

"Don't let go, just hold onto me--" Satoru reached under the water, gripping your thighs and making you grasp them around his hips. You flung your arms round his neck, your face in his chest, and he held you like this, stepping back against the onslaught of the river as his colleagues reeled you both in.

Still carrying you, his arms locked under your bum, Satoru staggered up the riverbank, drenched, chest heaving you up and down against him. You glanced up at him meekly, trembling and cold. Satoru sighed, grinning down at you.

"Come on then. Tell me your name, 'cos we're gonna have to get undressed for me to warm you up."

Nanami

A wave of heat slapped across Kento's face, and he pulled equipment to his body in a practiced rush. A smash and a roar burst from the inferno in front of him, as a window exploded, blackened glass spraying through the air. The apartment block was being gutted as he watched.

"Sir! Sir!"

"What is it, Ino?"

"Evacuation incomplete, sir. There's someone left on the second floor."

Kento pulled his mask down, eyes shooting up to an opened window, a white sheet hanging out of it, flapping as the heat rose from below. Crews around him shouted to be heard over the roar of flame, with cannons shooting water, attempting to quell the fire from the lower floors. Crowds of pyjama'd residents were herded away, confused and bleary-eyed as flames ate their homes.

"Is the left stairwell clear, Ino?" Takuma faltered as Kento stamped his boots into place, yanking on his gloves.

"For-- for now-- you can't be serious sir--" Kento huffed inside his mask, clapping Ino on the shoulder, Ino buckling slightly at the strength behind it.

"I'm always serious, Ino."

Without another word, Kento stepped towards the building, sweating in his suit as he moved into a stairwell, belching smoke. His senses were dulled, his vision boxed-in, hearing his own panting breaths in the fishtank of his helmet. Taking the stairs two at a time, he hesitated and turned at the top; Kento looked down the stairs, feeling heat scorch up towards him, the fire spreading rapidly, closing off his exit.

Out of time, he thought. Approaching a corridor, its doorway jammed, swollen and warped, Kento lifted a foot and kicked it effortlessly through with a roar, the door splintering and buckling under his boot.

"Are you here? Shout for me," Kento bellowed into the corridor. His ears pricked at the shouts and coughs from the end of the corridor. Building into as much of a run as his equipment would allow, he reached another door, its paint raised and wrinkled by the heat.

Kento stepped back, turning sideways as he rammed the door with his shoulder, once, twice, three times, and barrelled through as it splintered under his weight.

Spinning his head, he saw you, crouched on the floor beneath your window, terrified and relieved in your pyjamas. Kento stepped to you, kneeling, his gloved hands moving over your body, checking you for injury. You stared into him, unable to stop yourself from grabbing his forearms, hands shaking and cold despite the blazing heat churning through the floor.

"I thought-- I thought I was going to die here," you gasped, trembling. Kento's heart creaked, and he was surprised, shaking it off-- do your job, Kento, he chastised himself.

"At least if we die here, we won't die alone. Can you stand?" You nodded, rising on shaking legs, and immediately dropped down, your eyes stinging and burning from the smoke billowing across the ceiling, pouring in from the corridor.

Kento's heart dropped to his stomach as the floor shook- an almighty crash down the corridor signified its collapse. Keeping you close with one arm round your waist, Kento leaned out of your window. With a grateful lurch, he could see his colleagues ready with the parachute canopy, waving, calling, beckoning him down.

Kento pulled you close, your back against his chest, both arms wrapped in an arresting grip around your belly and chest-- "Do you trust me?" His heart skipped again as you turned your head, gazing into him through his visor, nodding.

Kento sat backwards on the window ledge, forcing you to sit on his lap. He tried to bracket you with his arms and legs, giving a satisfied grunt as you pressed yourself hard against him.

"On three," he toned, low and heady in your ear, "...one." You squealed and squeezed his arm as he dropped backwards, both of you gripped by gravity and hauled earthwards. Kento grunted as you landed in the parachute, shielding you from impact.

The weightlessness continued as the parachute was carried from the building and placed gently on the ground. Shouts and cheers and roaring flames rang into the night, and heavy gloved hands clapped on Kento's arms and shoulders, from which you had not been released. You trembled in his lap, feeling his chest heave against your back.

When Kento broke out of his reverie, he caught your eyes staring up at him, soft and grateful, trying to see him through his helmet.

"My hero," you whispered, just quiet enough for him to hear. Kento's heart stuttered. He lifted one gloved hand and removed his helmet, blond hair messy, a fine sheen of sweat across his cheeks, his brown eyes flickering amber in the firelight. You bit your lip, drinking him in. He still had not let you go.

Geto

The whispering crowd was infected; the morbid curiosity of a thronging mass, negated the base empathy of its participants, and replaced it with a spectacle-hungry monster.

Suguru felt the grumbling rubber-neckers by the bridge be reluctantly pushed back by police officers. The first out of his fire truck, Suguru pushed through, sleek as a fish swimming upstream, and ducked under the police officers' arms, unhindered due to uniform privilege. He picked up pace as he approached the stairs, his heart in his mouth.

And, on the railings of the bridge, stood you; you trembled, so exposed and vulnerable. Nothing could make this better. Nothing could ease this naked agony. Nothing in death could be more painful than the burden of life. Nothing could possibly eke you back from the edge of this--

"Hey. I'm Suguru. I'm sorry this is happening to you."

His voice pierced your reverie, and the world slowed around you both. The passage of leaves on the wind stilled. The collective voice hushed. The railings gripped you tightly by the hands.

"And it's not going to be easy. Coming back from this. Getting better."

Your lips puckered upwards and you hiccuped, your sobs wet, your nose dripping. As you shook, one foot slipped off the edge of the bridge and the crowd shrieked as you partially dropped, the collective voice now drowning you, leaves twirling on a whirlwind, railings forsaking you--

You felt two strong arms grip around your waist. Scrabbling against them with stress-bitten nails, your foot tried to gain purchase again. Your weak little heart caved at the effort required and you teetered, weeping and floppy, half-on and half-off the bridge.

"I can let go of you. If you need me to. I understand. But...I don't think you do want me to."

Embraced like this, you felt warm. It was much easier leaping from the cold air than from warm arms, which had given you permission both to die, and to live. Your heart creaked, the choice suddenly made easy.

"Pull me up," you sobbed as you felt the arms tighten around you, "pull me up pull me up pull me u--"

You fell with a thud against the warm voice, and grasped onto it, curled into its lap, sobbing your heart out, the crowd beneath you sounding both relieved and disappointed. The warm voice soothed you, rocked you, stroked your hair.

You found yourself, in a few slow blinks, sat in the back of an ambulance, hands trembling around a hot drink, wrapped in a silver foil blanket. You stared blankly, numb, into the rising steam. A few short taps came from the ambulance door.

You looked up to see a beautiful man who you didn't recognise, handsome, slanted eyes glimmering, his long black hair pulled up into a bun. Your heart skipped a beat as you recognised to whom the warm voice belonged.

"You should be proud of yourself. It's not easy accepting help. Can I sit with you?"

Ino

The road was carnage, with debris scattered across tarmac, the remnants of one car smouldering weakly in dying flames, and the cries and sobs of a bloodied man being carried away on a stretcher. Still, the queue of traffic behind beeped and cussed, so outrageously inconvenienced.

Your car was crushed around you, the splitting pain in your leg made so much worse by the anxious claustrophobia of these crumpled walls, and not knowing how injured you really were. The sickening speed of the crashrolltumblecrash that had trapped you here, replayed in your mind on repeat. You felt panic claw up your throat, tasting your own blood as it dripped down your cheek and into your mouth.

"Wow, girl! You really didn't like this car, huh?"

The ridiculous flippancy of the statement was so incongruous, you laughed. Sniffling and trembling, you looked sideways through broken glass. A young man, his face friendly and open, squashed in his helmet, stared back at you, a sympathetic smile in his eyes.

"My name's Takuma. I'm here to get you out of this car, me and my friends. You look like you could use some help." Your lips pinched and you moved to nod, but Takuma's hands darted out, his fingertips to your cheeks and temples, holding your head.

"No. Don't. Your neck could be injured. Just...still as you can, okay? Good girl."

Takuma reached into a pocket, pulling out earplugs and putting them in for you, gingerly pulling a pair of goggles over your eyes. He removed them again briefly, gently swiping his thumb over a drip of blood about to run into your eye, wiping it on his trousers, replacing the goggles.

Takuma and his crew made short work of cutting through the pillars of your wrecked car, lifting the roof and doors off as if they were made of cardboard. After paramedics confirmed the integrity of your spine, hips and legs, Takuma managed to kneel beside your seat, working to release your trapped leg.

Fearful, your hand reached out, lying on Takuma's shoulders, gripping the back of his collar. Wordlessly, and without looking back, Takuma shook off one glove as his other hand worked, and reached up to hold your hand in his, rested together on his shoulder. You felt a curious tranquility run through you at his effortless kindness.

Your foot released, with a rush of pain as blood throbbed in your toes. You felt a twinge of disappointment as Takuma stepped back, allowing himself to be replaced by the concerned hands of medics.

"Not every day you get to be rescued by someone so handsome, huh?" Takuma laughed, framing his jaw faux-smugly between his thumb and forefinger. You smiled up at him, cute and appreciative in a way that made his belly clench.

"No. It's not every day I get to be rescued by someone so handsome."

You did not realise heroes could blush so sweetly.

Megumi

"Here. C'mon boy-- over here. You-- over there. Good boys."

Megumi expertly directed his dogs, one black and one white, against the threat of night-time's approach. News crews inconvenienced him, and he scowled, traversing rubble and wires as shouting rescuers tried desperately to set up floodlights. A chill bit through the air.

"...tonight, as a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the city. The search for survivors continues as..."

Megumi raised his head to the tune of three short barks from his dog, and he jogged to the corner of a collapsed school, feeling his heart drop to his stomach. His black dog pointed keenly to a crushingly large pile of rubble, no building left for lessons and lunchtimes. Megumi reached into his pocket, offering his dog a treat, scratching its ears and head to the tune of a proud wagging tail.

"Good boy, good boy. Wait here for me." Megumi headed to the rubble, keen eyes scouring, ears astute and listening. He found an opening, the remnants of a collapsed doorway. He heard shuffles, coughs. He shoved some loose brickwork aside, and you felt rays of evening sunlight pierce what you thought was to be your grave.

"Can you hear me?" shouted Megumi, and you clung to his voice from your little coffin. Your eyes pricked with tears as the shadow of a young man blocked the rays of light, and he raised a torch, creating a beam of light, illuminating yourselves to each other.

"You got under a table?" Megumi asked, impressed, appreciative, "That saved your life. Good job."

You smiled wetly, your cut hands clotted with brick dust, and you moved to come out from under the table towards him. A perilously leaning wall teetered above you as you emerged, and you felt a shadow begin to drop over you.

With a scream, and Megumi's harsh shout, you braced for impact...and felt none. Your body felt suddenly warm, pleasantly cushioned. Opening your eyes you felt the young man lying full-length across you, his forearms braced on the floor, impossibly strong as he shielded you from the collapsed brickwork. You gasped, still and shocked, as he planked against you.

"Get yourself out. Now," he grunted. You nodded, slithering out from underneath him, leaving bloodied handprints on the brickwork as you clambered out to safety. A rough groan behind you signified Megumi somehow shaking most of a wall off his back, and crawling out to meet you.

Again, impossibly, you were the one who swayed on your feet, and Megumi reached his hands out to steady you. Two eager dogs sniffed around you both, and Megumi's frown deepened with a pretty pink blush as you gazed into him with unabashed admiration.

"Get yourself to the medics," Megumi grumbled, rubbing brick dust out of his spiky hair, "they'll help you from he--"

"I will. If you give me your number."

"You-- you are out of your mind."

Yuuji

Yuuji lowered his visor, and regretted it immediately as the rain slapped against it. Reluctantly, he raised it, feeling instant cool trickles from fringe to eyebrows. Blinking water away, he crowded amongst his colleagues, all fresh fire-service arrivals to provide relief and rescue from this flooded valley town.

Twisting round, flicking muddy splatters, Yuuji's ears pricked as his Captain, Nanami Kento, barked orders.

"Ino, Maki-- provide aid and rescue for the eastern quarter. Kugisaki, to the west. Itadori--"

Nanami hesitated at Yuuji, who would have been wagging his tail if he had one. On a hitched breath, Nanami continued.

"Itadori, survey the northern lane's integrity before we move towards evacuation. Do not," Nanami warned, slanted eyes narrow through his visor, "do anything dangerous."

Yuuji appeared thoughtful; "And by dangerous, you mean...?"

"Itadori."

"Got it sir. Nothing dangerous," Yuuji offered with a wink and a salute. Nanami stared after him with silent despair as Yuuji jogged, splashing down the waterlogged lane.

Yuuji hummed to himself, his voice breaking and springing as he jogged, blowing rivulets of water away from his lips, slipping through the mud road between lanes, hedges, trees, descending down a winding hill. He heard the hushed roar of torrents of water, and rounded the corner curiously.

The river had burst its banks, submerging a hidden dip in the road. The water sloshed, murky with sediment, lapping at an enormous felled tree, underneath which--

"Shit...shit!" Yuuji cussed, seeing a small car, almost completely submerged, partially crushed under the weight of the tree. Yuuuji sprinted, feet slapping and skidding in the wet slop of the road. Inside the car, splashes, and a desperate wet voice.

"Oh fuck--hang on, just hang on, I'll get you out." Yuuji sloshed into the flood, chest deep, keeping his footing as the undercurrent threatened to sweep him away. Leaping over felled creaking branches, rattling in the wind, Yuuji met a pair of small pale hands at the window of the car. He pressed his broad palms flat against the glass, your last remaining barrier to complete submersion.

Tear-stained, awaiting death, you stared out at him, hyperventilating, gasping, "I don't want to die here-- not like this-- I can't get out--" Yuuji took a step back, eyes wide and fearful, brimming with doubt. You saw this in him, and your lips puckered, sobbing, snotty and cold.

"I know," you reassured him as you shook, "there's nothing you can do...the tree-- you can't move it in time. I can't-- I can't--"

"I can."

You stopped, palms flat against the glass, sweet eyes boring into Yuuji, and he was possessed by malcontent.

"I can," he insisted, throwing his yellow jacket and helmet off to sink away into the muddy depths. His black t-shirt clung to his form. Even young and drenched, he looked...powerful. Still, you shook your head, slowly at first until you filled with certainty.

"You can't," you insisted, assuaging him from guilt, "you're not strong eno--"

"No, I'm strong. I'm really strong. Not smart, but--" Yuuji pulled his gloves up, taking a staggered stance with his palms flat under the tree. He turned sideways, eyes wide and innocent as he grinned.

Teeth gritting, Yuuji roared as he heaved the tree trunk. His arms shook, wet biceps bulging against his sleeves as he heaved and bellowed. As you opened your mouth to insist he stop, the words caught in your throat-- somehow, in a masterclass feat of strength, you saw the tree trunk begin to lift off the roof of the car, taking pressure off the frames and doors.

"Oh my god," you squeaked, voice strangled in amazement, "keep going, you're doing it, good boy good boy good boy--"

With one final wild exertion, Yuuji shunted the tree, and it rolled with a thick splash down the bonnet. Wading towards the car, Yuuji gripped the door handle, ready to pull against the stunning mass of water.

"When I open this, the car's gonna fill up," he pondered aloud, "so..."

"I'll reach out for you," you nodded, gasping, the water up to your chin. Yuuji's lips curled appreciatively, and he maintained eye contact as he counted down.

"Three, two, one...go!" Yuuji grunted, heaving the door open, filled with terror as your face disappeared in a rush of brown. Shoving his thick thigh into the gap, he reached in, begging, praying--

-- Yuuji felt two cold hands grip his forearms, and he gripped in return, heaving you through the torrent into his arms.

In mutual relief, chests heaving against each other, you coughed and spluttered in Yuuji's arms, fingers sinking into his hair, planting wet kisses of thanks to his cheeks.

"You saved my life," you pressed, voice breaking, "How am I ever...how can I ever...?"

"You can...just call me 'good boy' again? Just once more?"

Higuruma

"Shit-- it's spread so fucking fast--"

Higuruma Hiromi wasn't sure if the crushing, oppressive heat was coming from the sun, the scorched earth beneath his feet, or the wall of flames devastating the dry summer forest before him.

Eyes wide and appalled, his frown wrinkled his hooked nose, drips of sweat trickling through spiky black hair and onto the thirsty earth. His black t-shirt was claustrophobically tight against prickling skin, and he ran two hands down his chest before pulling on his yellow jacket and helmet.

With a sharp intake of breath, he began to boom orders to his scurrying team; "you know what to do-- restrict the spread, we have to stop this encroaching on the--"

"Sir, please! Please, listen, there's someone in there--"

Hiromi's head snapped round, hawkish black eyes like beetles in the firelight, and landed on a park ranger, fighting to be heard over the roar of flame and barrier-arms of police officers. Hiromi stomped over to him, one harsh finger pointed in the officers' face to prevent his interruption before he could start.

"You say there's someone in there? In the forest? Be clear," Hiromi commanded. The park ranger gulped.

"One of the other rangers, she-- she's trying to save some of the bird-boxes-- endangered species--"

Hiromi laughed, humourless, as he rubbed his face, gazing to the heavens, between two long-fingered hands.

"Endangered species-- she's a fucking endangered species, at this rate--" Hiromi laughed again, breathing in through his mouth, and out with a sandy groan and a decision.

"Begin at the edges," he commanded to his team, jogging towards a break in the trees, "I'll be back, if I'm lucky." Hearing the frantic shouts of his team beckoning him back, Hiromi's boots stamped over the embering earth, all noise fading and replaced by hellish heat and the lick of devil's tongues.

Hiromi panted, chest heaving as it gulped in heavy air and ashes, embering leaves wisping to the floor around him. Spotting a sign, its information barely legible as the paint wrinkled up from the surface, he sprinted onwards through the inferno, leaping over logs, skidding through wafer-dry foliage, the flames in the branches above him creating the burnt-umber sunset of a hellscape.

Approaching a circular fence, the bird sanctuary was engulfed, and inexplicably, a woman halfway up a tall wooden ladder was detaching a bird-box from the side of a tree. Hiromi skidded to a halt, incredulous, snorting in derision.

Your skin felt as dry as tanned leather on your cheeks as you tucked the bird-box under your arm and began to step down the ladder. Just one more, you thought, I can get just one mo--

"I don't like to interrupt someone passionate about their job, but are you quite finished?"

You jumped, clasping the bird-box to your chest as Hiromi loomed over you, his anger rising so much taller than he was. You swallowed, tongue like sandpaper, answering honestly.

"I'm not, actually, I've got one more to--"

Hiromi's gloved hands had cupped around the birdbox, gently plucking it out of your hands and into his. You squealed indignantly as he ducked, throwing you over his shoulder with one arm, grunting as you wriggled and kicked.

"Do as you're told," Hiromi chastised as you thumped at his back with your fists, crying out, sobbing as he carried you away, "I appreciate your diligence but--"

"No, please-- just listen--" you sobbed, reaching back as he carried you and the single bird-box away, "--the eggs-- the last breeding pair--"

Hiromi stopped despite himself, feeling the flames ringing closer around him. He tapped his foot, furious, considerate. Placing you down with a huff, he walked back to the ladder. As he picked it up, he shot you a hot-eyed look of sarcastic inquisition. Lips puckering mulishly, you pointed to the tree beside him.

Wordlessly, his body language dramatically muted, Hiromi placed the ladder and took it two rungs at a time. Removing the birdbox, gripping it in one fist, Hiromi slid down the sides of the ladder and stamped back to you, pressing the bird-box into your arms beside the other.

As your eyes melted at him in a soft little smile, embracing your bird-boxes, Hiromi blushed, glaring at you without venom. He ducked down in front of you slightly, not breaking eye-contact. Your head tilted owlishly, and Hiromi felt his belly twist in odd delight.

"What are you--" the air was thumped out of you as Hiromi hefted you over his shoulder again, and he huffed out a laugh as you swore at him. You clung to your bird-boxes as he ran through the flames, gasping and squeaking as he leapt over, under, through...

Hiromi burst out of the forest and into the open, cooled instantly by the wind-carried cool spray of a dozen hoses. Hiromi dropped you down, and you fell to your knees beside each other, panting, feeling the water drizzle down your bodies.

"So," Hiromi gasped, throwing off his jacket and t-shirt, groaning at the cool water dripping down his chest, "tell me about your birds."

You pressed your forehead to his bare-chest, breath grazing across it as you laughed, sending shivers down Hiromi's spine. Resting your cheek on him, looking up with lovestruck, appreciative eyes, Hiromi wondered faintly that he could listen to you tell him about birds all night.

Sukuna

This was the worst day of your life. You had made a horrible error of judgement, and you prayed to the god who had forsaken you, steeping in the consequences of your own actions. You would live the rest of your days in terror, stomach cold and gripped and roiling with fear, never happy again--

To the amused intrigue of onlookers, you were enjoying an extra-long ride at the top of a colourful Ferris Wheel. But you were afraid of heights, and had chosen a beautiful summers' day to challenge yourself. And then the Ferris Wheel got stuck. And now you were going to die up here.

You slid off the seat and onto the floor, and sobbed as your little carriage rocked in the wind. The Ferris Wheel creaked, and you felt a cold terrified sweat drop down your chest, your hands flinging out to clutch the seats. Head tipped back and eyes closed, you felt panic settling in--

"Oi. Woman. Do you want this, or not?"

You shrieked at the suddenly-appearing pink-haired man clung to the outer bars of your carriage, his face nothing short of bored and pissed off as he held a bottle of water out to you.

"What the fuck-- are you doing up here-- did you climb here?"

Sukuna snorted at you, eyes narrowed and cruel as he took you in, all sweat and tears and skirt tucked all the way up to your hips.

"Look at you, what a fucking mess," he cooed to your furious blushes, eyes brimming with tears again, "you're normally my type, but--"

"Are you just here to make fun of me?" You hiccuped, snatching the bottle of water out of his hand, unscrewing the cap as Sukuna laughed at you. With a wicked glint in his eye, Sukuna jumped his feet against the bars, rocking it, and you shrieked, clinging to the seats and sloshing water over your thighs as he laughed harder.

"Oh baby," he mocked, "you scared of heights? Want me to hold your hand?" He lifted his feet to rock the carriage again, but stopped, frowning as you answered.

"Yes," you hiccuped, "please. Hold my hand." As your little hand slid up the wall of the carriage towards his gripped around the bars, Sukuna snorted, turning his face away from you.

"It's hot," he stated, blunt, "I was told to bring you water. I've done my job. I'm not gonna hold your--"

"Please." His stomach flipped, cock twitching involuntarily inside his uniform as you begged. Sukuna snorted again, ignoring you. As you started to sniffle, weeping, your hand slid down away from his. A heartbeat passed, and you felt a strong, warm hand reach in, fingers plaiting through yours.

"You're pathetic," he mocked, still staring out across the sea, his voice a little softer now, "what the hell are you doing in a Ferris Wheel if you're afraid of heights?"

"I wanted...I wanted to see if I could--"

"Idiot. Now you're stuck here," he snapped, almost sounding concerned, his heart fluttering in a way that made his neck prickle as you rested your tear-dampened cheek against his hand in yours.

You and Sukuna stayed this way, your cheek against your fingers plaited in his. The carriage became gradually bathed in a warm pink sunset, lighting up the coral of his hair. The sway was gentle, a little boat on lilting tide.

Finally, a short jolt rumbled the carriage to life, and it began to trail in a circle back towards the ground.

Just before your carriage ground to a halt, Sukuna spoke, slow and mischievous.

"Hey. Woman."

"What?" you answered, unaware of your skirt hitched up around your waist.

"Cute little panties you've got there."

The shrieks of rage and cackling laughter could be heard all the way down to the beach.

Toji

"You've called-- you've called him in? Are you out of your mind?" Satoru gaped at Nanami, his fellow Captain, gobsmacked as Nanami pursed his lips in irritation.

The fire-truck was parked to the side of the main road; all cars were halted, abandoned, swarmed by rioters in scarves and balaclavas, hundreds upon hundreds of them, a swirling mass of destruction in the streetlights. Riot police vainly attempted to form a blockade, stumbling as bodies slipped past them, shop windows smashing, flaming bottles tossed.

"We need the bodies," Nanami pressed, stripping his t-shirt off, thick muscular arms reaching into the truck to find a clean one, "how often do the riot police call us in for support? Besides, he looks...intimidating. He may serve as a...deterrent."

Satoru snorted derisively, "He was fired for a reason, Nanami, mark my--"

"Hey, kid, long time no see."

Satoru stiffened as a shadow loomed over him, one heavy hand clapping down on his shoulder. Toji smirked, his scar twisted, raising his boot to put out his cigarette on the sole. He stamped his boots into place, his yellow rubber trousers tatty and worn, jacketless and terrifyingly ripped in a tight black t-shirt.

"So..." Toji continued, staring into the chaos ahead of him, "support the cops, yeah?" He sucked his teeth, rolling his shoulders. Nanami nodded, brisk, shoving a helmet towards Toji, grimacing as it was immediately rejected. Nanami shrugged, not wishing to waste time arguing, and directed the firemen towards the crowd to encourage some form of calm.

Toji stayed back, choosing where to go. At a glance, he saw a young woman duck down behind a car, arm raised to toss an egg at the back of a police officer's head. You caught Toji's eye, a bandana pulled up covering your lower face, and he laughed under his breath as your eyes twinkled mischievously.

"Little minx," he muttered, admiring the quiet subversion. Laughing out loud as you tossed the egg, landing a direct hit, Toji moved on, stepping towards a shop, his passive presence alone enough to scatter the looters inside.

The pressure from the crowd built, peaking, and Toji felt the mood in the air change from rave gone overboard to aggression and spite.

Seeing the crowd pulse and surge, Toji spotted you in the front, crushed, buffeted against the officers' riot shields. You caught his eye again, now desperate and pained, instead of playful. Toji felt himself clench, stepping in behind two of the riot officers, who barely had time to glance at him between wild shouts at the crowd.

Easily, with two strong hands, Toji parted the shields just enough for you to drop through, and he caught you, lifting you as if you weighed nothing. As you stared up at him, speechless and waiting to be arrested, he looked down at you, the glimmer in his eyes threatening shenanigans.

"I don't know about you," he drawled, low and slow, "but these clowns couldn't break a nail, let alone a crowd." You laughed, tinkling and sweet, and Toji felt a burst of ego for having caused it.

"Ever been in a fire truck, sweetheart?"

Moments later, the fire truck rumbled to life, its sirens ringing and flashing in warning. The pressure of the crowd eased for a moment, hundreds of enquiring eyes on you and Toji in the front seats, one of his hands resting across your belly, protective, shielding you in place.

The enquiring eyes turned fearful as the fire truck reversed, then slowly swung to face the crowd and riot officers alike, revving.

With a smirk, Toji allowed the truck to jolt forwards. The crowd cried out collectively, its stance breaking, dozens of people scattering to escape the scene. Revving again, the truck jolted forwards once more, harder this time. Half the crowd stumbled, falling over themselves to run. With one final booming rev, the crowd shrieked and shouted, scattering like spiders up and down the length of the street, no act of protest apparently worth getting run over for.

And as you and Toji were pulled, laughing, from the fire-truck, both being slammed and cuffed against the nearest police car, your eyes met, and your bandana slipped down to reveal your lovely grin.

Toji smirked, heads on the car facing each other. Shooting you a wink which made you giggle and blush, he snorted to think that maybe he was just the right dismissed ex-fireman to get the job done.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Wheeeee, rescue me fire daddies 🚒🔥

821 notes · View notes

devilmademewriteit · 11 months

Text

Dark Paradise

part 3 of Salvatore

read part 1, Salvatore, here

read part 2, Playing Dangerous, here

pairing: javier peña x afab!fem!reader

summary: left alone in javi’s bed, you go looking for distractions. finding them only leads you further into his world: a world of danger and violence, where no one can protect anyone.

warnings: rough sex/smut (fingering, fem penetration, super SUPER light choking) so 18+ only content; pet names (cariño, hermosa, querida, sweetheart, baby) afab fem reader; reader is American; mentions of hair pulling; allusions to SA; attempted SA against reader (not by javi); violence against reader (hitting, slapping, manhandling); smoking; dubcon (power imbalance, trauma sex??).

word count: 7k+

no use of y/n in this fic

u guys. it is here. and the most exciting part is I can already promise u a part 4!! pls be mindful that this part is darker than the rest. it has many triggering themes, so many sure u read the warnings & stay on the safe side of things.

as always, love u all so effing much. feedback, reblogs, comments & asks are always appreciated, & don’t forget to join the taglist in my pinned post !

-em<3

—

No one compares to you. I’m scared that you won’t be waiting on the other side.

- Dark Paradise

“Girl, where did you go?”

You’re on the landline with Carrie, one of the few half-friends you'd made living in Medellín, thighs sore and bruised from the backseat-loving you’d received the night before. While Javi’s at work, you’re on (his words) 'house arrest,' and lounging alone in his apartment feels eerily quiet. The occasional car drives by—you try not to listen for the sound of scraping tires.

So, around 9:30, you’d decided to fill the silent space with a bit of vapid conversation, realizing that last night's antics (and your unexplained disappearance) may have caused a bit of confusion.

You start by filling Carrie in on the generalities: the guns, the car, and the rescue, at first planning to leave out the more… personal details.

Like the one you'd filed away under 'Riding a Cop to High Heaven in the Backseat of his Jeep.'

You also leave out the part where, afterwards, you’d kicked off your heels by his front door, let down your hair in a sloppy, half-drunk movement, made a beeline to the familiar crinkles and folds of his unmade bed, and swiftly passed out in his embrace.

Oh, to fall asleep between those arms for the rest of eternity.

Given your more cynical—okay, borderline self-denying—approach to life, you felt downright ashamed of how much you’d enjoyed it. How much you’d enjoyed him and all of his lasting touches.

And in the morning… Javi’s hardness biting into your hip was a more efficient wake-up-call than the trial nuke sirens back home; the soft kisses laid down the length of your neck and the long, lazy fingers creeping down your abdomen had you surging to consciousness with embarrassing speed. You’d shivered into wakefulness, flattened against his chest.

“Good morning, cariño.” His words were molasses, melted caramel, thick and damp with sleep.

“Hmmmh,” was your only reply, sloping into your highest octaves as his hand sank to push aside your already-ruined underwear, dipping lower to toy with the switch only he knew how to turn on best. Arching into his spine, last night’s dress crumpled up above your waist, leaving him to feel more, more, more of you.

“Thought it would take more convincing,” he breathed against your shoulder, a breeze of late august air.

“Wh’time z’it?”

“We have time, cariño, we have time.”

When his digits pulled a moan from your lips, no other answers really mattered. He’d loosed that deep, guttural rumble of approval that made your chest swell with pride, your legs part in service and need.

“Can you hold this leg up for me, baby? S’all you need to do.” He’d helped fold up your knee, and you’d turned to meet him with pleading, drooping eyes, dutifully contorting to mold into the shape of his body. “Perfect, baby, good job,” a rough kiss to your temple, “n’I can do the rest, hermosa—I’ll do the rest.”

He slid in effortlessly, harmonizing to your sigh of relief with a “shit, s’wet,” and sheathing his cock between the folds of your morning slick. Brows furrowing, mouth falling open, you had every detail of your bliss etched on your expression, all for the beautiful man looming over you. “Always fuckin’ askin’ for it, huh, sweetheart?” He'd mused. “Woke me up moanin’ in your sleep, cariño—dreamin’ about last night?”

An “mhmm,” was all you could muster. Javi’s hips rolled against your ass, and the resulting feeling of overwhelming fullness had you swearing you were still in reverie. When he paused, snaked his arms under your neck and around your waist, and pulled you flush against his chest, you remember it feeling like a dirty, desperate hug.

“M’sore, Javi,” you’d whined at the stretch of your opening, the continued drag of Javi’s fingers against your aching, weary clit.

“S’no excuse, baby,” he’d grumbled into the shell of your ear, pressing hard into that tender bundle of nerves. “Gotta get you used to it.”

A harrumph as he’d turned up the intensity, punishing you for your protests. “Y-you’re a mean-mean man, Javier Peña.”

Soft, gravelly laughter danced, twirled, traveled along the dip of your neck. “‘N you’re gonna come so hard for this mean, mean man.”

He was right, bringing you to the brink of orgasm with the thick, rough pads of his fingertips, the tip of his cock sliding up and down, over and over, in and out of your guts.

“Yeah—yes—m’gonna come for you, Javi,” you’d admitted.

But he’d stolen his magical digits away, used them to turn your jaw, to square your face off with his own concentrated, lust-filled expression. “Show me cariño, yes—gonna be picturin’ that pretty lil’ face aaaaall fuckin’ day,” and you’d tumbled over the edge the moment he’d slid back down to the apex of your thighs, drowning in the darkness of his cinnamon-brown irises and the tantalizing circles—drawn from memory—against your clit.

“J-javi—it feels—feels s-so good—”

“I know, hermosa, s’just what you needed, fuck—”

He was already close enough, but your climaxing trembles and your whining, choked gasps had him wrapping his hand around your throat, pushing you further and further down the length of his tensing shaft.

“Shit—you feel like heaven, baby, so good for me—”

His release came fast and hard, leaking his hot spend into you, painting your insides like brushstrokes on canvas with his final thrust.

He seemed to lay there for forever, softening between your walls as sweet slumber carried you off once more. “Go back to sleep, baby,” he’d advised against your shoulder (as if you’d needed any kind of encouragement), “Did such a good job; go back to sleep.”

It was easy to accede to his command.

You’d come to for a half-second as he’d placed, fully dressed, the clink of his belt and the crisp waft of his cologne rousing you to near-consciousness, a deliberate, lingering kiss to your forehead. “Don’t answer the door for anyone else, okay, hermosa?”

“Huh? Oh—mhm.”

And you’d vaguely registered a low laugh. “Good to know you’re so well behaved when you’re half-asleep.” His finger traced your cheekbone, dragged down to pull teasingly at your bottom lip. “Means I’ll have to keep fuckin’ you to the point of exhaustion.”

“Mhm—please." Squished and mumbled, guttural and breathless.

Another soft laugh, and then echoes of receding footsteps.

Waking up a few hours later, you’d peeled your sticky thighs apart, confused at first by the mysterious pool of wetness between your legs.

You didn’t bother cleaning it up, already feeling the loss of your DEA officer. You somehow chose to dial Carrie's number to kill some time on your day off (or else, you feared, you’d have quickly found another use for your bored fingers).

Being alone in his room leaves you feeling very young. Lying in his bed, thinking about the past night’s events… you feel giddy, like a highschool girl after her first time, and anxious, on edge without Javier’s protection.

You just want to gush about it.

“Do you remember that DEA agent? The Texan?”

You barely have time to finish your thought before Carrie’s cutting your question short.

“Sexy Javi?”

She giggles. You snort indelicately into the receiver.

“I never called him that.”

“You didn’t have to,” she returns. “I deduced it from the amount of times you ranted to me about his… callers.”

You fiddle with the telephone chord, smiling artfully to yourself. “I’m in his bed right now.”

There’s a slap. No doubt the sound of a hand clapping over a set of slack lips. And then—

“I thought he lived outside the city?!”

It’s a strange reaction. You’d expected something a bit more on-topic, confused at your friend’s preoccupation with Peña’s living quarters when you’d just divulged such an out-of-character, personal detail.

Well, at least the enthusiasm is there.

“No, he lives right by the embassy.” You respond, rolling lazily onto your side. Opening the top drawer of his bedside table, you grimace to yourself, taking in (on top of the empty bottle of men’s cologne and an old, broken watch) a box of tissue paper, a pair of handcuffs (not regulation), a smatter of sex toys, and a few scattered, unopened condoms. “That new… fancy building on the corner,” you continue, swiping a few tissues between your legs, trying not to giggle at the teasing Javi was in for tonight, “Carrie—are you seriously not gonna ask how it was?”

There’s a pause. You hear a rustle in the background; the sound reminds you of students in class, whipping out pens and notebooks.

Is she taking notes?

“Tell. Me. Everything.”

That reaction felt more appropriate.

It all comes bursting out of you—the night out, Javi’s rescue, your backseat escapade. Carrie’s an ideal audience, gasping and ‘oooh’-ing and ‘girl!’-ing at all the right moments.

When you get to the end of your tale, your cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Carrie pries for more and more specifics, keeping you on the phone for close to an hour. You don't give her everything (did she really need an approximation of his size?) but you do make sure to remind her, often, that Javier Peña was an excellent fuck.

Finally, the conversation dies down. Sitting up, you realize just how desperately you’re in need of a shower. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, the smell of sex, tequila, and Javi’s day-old cologne clinging to your skin, but his place gets hot, and you hadn't anticipated the need to pack deodorant in your purse during last night's going-out prep.

Either way, Carrie's become distracted, the length between your words and her responses growing with every passing minute. You notice a Spanish conversation taking place in the background, no doubt the reason for her decreasing attentiveness.

You’re about to hang up, launching into a polite, “alright girl, I’ll let you go” when she goes back in for more.

“Is he home now?”

She blurts it out, and you're a bit taken aback. Frankly, the urgency of her tone feels a little jarring.

“Um, no,” you answer, uncertain, stretching out your vowels, “I think he went in early today.”

“Good.”

Her clipped tone continues to confuse you. It’s… not playful anymore. It’s administrative.

Commercial.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh,” a flutter of shrill laughter, “Just wanted to make sure he’s not listening in on our—”

There’s a knock at the door before she can finish. You call out just a sec! automatically, pulling on your rumpled clothes from the night before as the receiver tumbles onto the unmade bed.

It’s only once you’ve lumbered over, wiped the grogginess from your eyes, once you’ve unlocked the door and twisted the handle—it’s only once your head is covered with a thick, scratchy fabric, once the world’s gone dark and a cry of surprise is wrenched from your throat—that you recall Javi’s warning:

Don’t open the door for anyone else.

Something else takes over. Something primal. Fight, fight, fight. Find the flesh and punish it, scramble for purchase into any detectable, softer areas. Squirm until your legs give out, 'till your knees hit the floor and the beginnings of bruises scatter across your burning skin in a plethora of vulnerable places.

But when you thrash around like that, make sure your head doesn’t hit the doorframe.

Because then? It’s lights out.

—

The first thing you notice is the smell.

Weed and tobacco. Wet weed and tobacco. It’s not a smell you’re accustomed to (you worked for the DEA, for crying out loud). It makes your already-pounding head spin, so it takes a second before you remember that you’re not safe—you’re not at home, you’re not at Javi’s, and you’re not with Javi.

Instincts kick in. Your stomach aches with fear, lighting you up from the inside, energizing every inch of your body. You wrench, pull, struggle against the restraints suffocating your wrists, binding your hands around the back of a rickety, wooden chair. You can’t kick at anything, either. Your ankles are crossed, squished on top of each other and secured by a firm length of (what you assume to be) rope.

And then the canvas is unceremoniously yanked off of your head, taking a few hairs from your scalp along with it.

You squint, blinking into the dim light, slowly adjusting to your surroundings: some sort of musty basement with concrete walls and floors, decorated by nothing except a couple of small, rectangular windows near the too-high ceilings. It’s completely empty—save for your company.

One, two, three strangers. All men. All Cartel, by the looks of them.

And all positively leering.

The one nearest you, holding the bag in his hands, speaks down to you. It’s quick and harsh, mocking and cruel. Spanish and unintelligible.

Your hatred towards the captor blinds you; it coaxes the animal out of its cage. You spit: “I don’t speak Spanish, motherfucker.”

(Even if you did, the adrenaline coursing through your veins wouldn’t allow you much room for comprehension).

From the shadows, another man appears. He lumbers over to you, and you notice the peculiarity of his European-looking hat as he squats down to level with you.

He clicks his tongue, dousing you with a look of disapproval. “That’s not very nice, hermosa.”

You shiver. Javi had called you that before, many times. And even though it sounded totally different coming from this foul man’s mouth, shrouded under the veil of a thick, Spanish accent, it sticks.

You hold your tongue, biting it to keep from sobbing. The glint in his eye, visible behind his glasses, moves from playfulness to exasperated ire.

He sighs, stands, and grabs your hair, tilting your head back harshly to look down at you. “You’re very hard to catch, you know that?” He muses, darkness trickling across his features. “But you’re alone now, Americana. No DEA—no Javier Peña to protect you.”

He makes a mockery of his name, oozing cockiness as it comes spitting out of his smirk. You glare up at him, simmering anger and bubbling fear claiming you. Would they go after Javi?

No. They wouldn’t dare.

Only an American like yourself—low-value, replaceable, unnoticeable—was expendable.

“What do you want from me?”

He smiles, releasing your head and taking a step back.

“You’re the assistant, aren’t you?” And that deceptively sweet tone is back, frightening you more than his rage. “We need directions, hermosa. You’ve been in all the government buildings—we know, we watched you. Why don’t you give us some assistance,” he pauses, leaning down towards you, “And tell us where your evidence against Pablo Escobar is filed.”

You snort, unimpressed, shocked, and a little humoured by his little monologue. This was what they were after?

This was why you'd been fearing for your life?

A fucking… map?

“Find someone else. I don’t know shit.”

It’s honestly true. The bastards could not be barking up a more wrong tree. For all their criminal genius, they hadn’t managed to catch the fact that you really, truly didn’t give a flying fuck about the particulars of your job.

But if this was about Escobar—the Pablo Escobar—then these were men from the Medellín cartel. The same Medellín cartel that left scores of expendable bodies in its wake, that bombed, assassinated, and tortured government workers like they were no more than rats in a science lab.

You weren’t the end-all, be-all of this operation.

No, you were just another lead.

A lead that (only you knew) led to jack-all. Unless they were scrambling to learn about the best places to go out dancing or the worst brands of moisturizer, you had very little to offer the thugs.

The one with the strange hat—the ringleader, you decide—shares a smile with his co-conspirators, and you begin to regret the arrogance of your statement.

“There are many ways we can do this,” he warns, voice sloping down to a dangerous hum. “It can be easy…” and he lowers a hand to his belt buckle, setting every cell in your body on fire, “Or hard.”

It‘s a plea to God more than a question for your captor, your desperate, self-pitying: “Why me?” It can't be above a whisper, but the asshole responds anyway.

“It’s more enjoyable when we get to work with something pretty.” A dark laugh. “Who’s going to come looking for you, hermosa? Your family? Your friends? Your… government?” He clicks his tongue again, looking down at you in mock concern. “Like I said, we’ve been watching. You have a habit of disappearing. Running away.”

Figures.

Figures that the reason you’d wound up with your life on the line, your body in danger, was because of you. Once again, it boiled down to the lack of attachments you’d curated over the years, passing from one thing to another, quick on your feet the second they hit solid ground. For God’s sake, the only reason you’d made it this long in Medellín was because it hadn’t managed to bore you yet.

Figures that the closest thing to stability you’d been able to find was in the crime capital of the world. It was poetically honest, laughably ironic.

Of course, the American government would assume you’d fucked off—just another ditzy contractor swept up in the thrill of a south-American life.

The other part held water, too—no one would come looking for you. Your boss might huff about ‘these flighty secretaries, can’t hold ‘em down for anything,’ but beyond that, your disappearance would cause less than a stir.

Somehow, that thought comforted you. The lack of collateral, the lack of another’s suffering… very little harm would befall the world in the wake of your absence. Peace was beginning to crest upon your settling soul. And, either way, you’d worked in this line of work for long enough to know that your death warrant had been signed the very second they’d seen you as a target.

You give the bastards what they want? You die.

You hold off? You die.

All things considered, you resign yourself, making up your mind.

Still, your defiant voice quivers as you say it.

“Fuck you.”

The ringleader smiles, like a predator cornering its prey, taking that first bite into hard-earned flesh. Your brain responds, screaming warnings in big letters, in flashing red ink. He barks an order to his underlings in Spanish, and the other two men come forward, roughly undoing the holds along your ankles, your wrists.

“Get the fuck off of me!”

But they don’t listen, yanking you upright and shoving you onto the ground. Your vision becomes hazy. Something takes over, a protective instinct, perhaps, barring you from your own body. Distantly, you observe yourself fighting, but really all you feel is beyond. The words ‘I am not here, this is not happening’ wash over you over and over again, like a cleansing, salt-water wave.

Hands on cement. Clothes torn, destroyed—the cold barrel of a gun to your head, a man barking orders, hitting, slapping—and right as the worst is about to happen, everything just…

Stops.

It’s like they’re spellbound, bugs frozen in amber.

You hear the cause of it well after your torturers do. Footsteps upstairs, and gunshots, screams followed by the definite sounds of a creeping squadron.

The men get messy. Scrambling around, they gather their options. In your dazed periphery, you watch their eyes latch onto one of those open windows, 8 or 9 feet up from the ground.

A hushed conversation ensues. You're familiar enough with the more violent side of the Spanish vocabulary to string together their meaning.

“Shoot her? — no, the noise, they’ll find us faster — kill her? — too long — take her? — too messy — we have to go, we have to go, we have to go.”

Your ruined shirt is shoved down your throat, and then you’re gagging on it, ankles bound once more, shaking and naked on the freezing concrete. The trio uses the little wooden chair to frantically sneak out of the window.

It would be downright comical if you weren’t so terrified.

Soon, you’re alone, choking on cotton and wriggling to flatten your back against the wall. Centuries pass before the movement upstairs graduates to the basement below.

Relief doesn’t grace you. Any man—DEA, cartel, or Colombian police—would likely perform the same violence as your previous captors had planned to. A naked girl, roughed up and completely unprotected, in a dark, hidden basement, totally at their mercy… Shit. You were basically an invitation. A free meal, offered up to a different, hungry crowd.

You just pray that this one might be gentler.

The stairs creak under the certain weight of bodies in motion.

Tears run down the side of your face, dripping down from your temple onto the ground below. You compress into a ball, making yourself as small as possible.

The echoes grow louder, closer and closer. At this point, you just hope they’ll assume you’re an enemy or get trigger-happy and give you a quick taste of lead. Put you out of your misery.

Giving up was well within your comfort zone.

Someone gasps when they see you, and a single name hurtles through the space.

An out-of-commission part of your mind recognizes it—the name—knows it as a comfort. Still, you only tremble, trying to disconnect yourself from what must be a wishful, crafted, deceitful version of reality.

Then someone else comes forward. Your eyes, weary of keeping you in the dark, fling open just in time to watch a tall, dark-haired man push through the crowd of soldiers. You watch his expression—shock to rage, rage to relief, and then rage all over again.

He rushes you, falling to his knees before your wrecked form.

His first move is to wrench the fabric from your mouth. You croak out the most desperate sob of relief, all those stifled, unvoiced expressions of terror tumbling out in great-big-heaves.

“Are you hurt?” He asks.

“No.” You respond.

“Did they…?”

“No.”

Javi tears his big doe-eyes, filled with worry, away from yours, twisting to impatiently address the frozen crowd of four or five behind him. “Can somebody take these fuckin’ ties off?”

Switchblades slice through twine. Someone brings you a blanket, and Javi bundles you up in it, gathering you and lifting you in his arms. You don’t resist, clinging around his neck and hiding in the comfort of his shoulder.

“Hermosa—”

You regret the way you flinch. “Please—please don’t call me that anymore.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t ask questions, sounding a little softer, a little more unsure when he presses on, muffling the desperate edge to his tone. “Did you see where they went?”

“The window. Out the window.”

Most of the rest take to that almost immediately, scattering to start on their chase. Javi delivers a set of orders in his native tongue.

Then, he grows silent, carrying you through the house with two soldiers in the lead. “Close your eyes, okay? You don’t wanna see this.” But now that they’re open, you can’t seem to shut them. You only glimpse flashes of the upstairs area. Tables covered in paper, glass contraptions and coke, so much coke, which is almost more impressive than the quantity of blood splattered against the peeling walls.

And Carrie.

Carrie with half her brains hanging out, long, dark, red-soaked hair fanning around her crown like a rotten halo, lounging on the couch, fingers splayed and palms to the sky as if she were ready to wrap them around a glass of white wine—as if she were ready to catch up on girl-talk.

What’s Carrie doing here?

Should I ask her?

She’s dead.

No, she’s not. She’s right there. She was waiting for me to be done so we could catch up. That’s just how she always sits—it’s just the scoliosis.

That’s why she always showed up so late to the club. She… she couldn’t dance too long because of the scoliosis.

You’re still debating whether or not Carrie would be up for a bit of gossip, another debrief, when big, strong arms lower you into the passenger seat of a Jeep Cherokee.

Javier buckles you in.

“We can’t go to your place—that’s…” and you trail off weakly, throat burning with effort. “That’s where they took me.”

He nods, his face a complete mask of concentration.

But you know him.

He’s holding everything back. You appreciate him for that, never wanting to hear a man shout for the rest of your cursed time on Earth.

“Steve’s, then.”

It’s your turn to nod.

—

Javier drives in complete and total silence, only speaking the occasional clipped sentence into his radio. Despite your vulnerability, despite your overwhelming gratitude, you feel guilty for taking him away from his work, from his team. For forcing him to rescue you once again.

For sure, he’s angry. Would he have to move? Find a new place? Leave all his stuff at the old one? Would a better captive have paid better attention, taken note of the exact direction her kidnappers had taken off in after clearing the window?

Soon, you’re settled against a couch, the light from the opposing window breaking in and dancing across Javi’s face. A blonde woman—fiery, familiar, concerned—hands you a glass of water.

Javi watches you, eyebrows notched together, lips drawn into a thin line as you take a slow sip in silence. The liquid slides down your throat, cooling and soothing the rips and tears there.

And they both won’t stop staring. Truly, their joint study makes you self-conscious, watching on with unapologetic intent as you shiver under the scratchy blanket.

Finally (thankfully), Steve's wife—Connie, you recall—speaks.

“You can go, Javi. I'll take it from here.”

“No.”

She looks borderline offended at his line in the sand.

“I don’t think she’s in any shape to talk, Peña.” It’s authoritative, protective, clearly marked with harboured resentment.

She'd make a good mom.

He scoffs. “I’m not gonna make her talk, Connie. Just don’t wanna leave her like... this.”

Connie looks confused. They share a glance, and an eventual understanding passes over her expression. In fact, even in your distressed state, you’re almost certain you catch a hint of a smile.

“Well if you’re both staying, we’ll need food.”

Javi nods absentmindedly, lighting up a smoke. You look away, still feeling the weight of his eyes boring into your ducked head.

She clears her throat. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Remember to lock the door, Javi.”

Then, swinging her coat on, she traces an awkward line out of the apartment.

Silence flits across the room. The agent continues to study you from his seat at the counter across the room.

“Are you okay?”

You pick at your nails, internally asking yourself the same question.

“I’m just glad you were there,” you muster up, looking up at his softened, warm gaze. Concern etches a couple of fresh lines on his face.

Javi nods, taking a long drag. “Always, sweetheart. I’m glad I was there, too.”

You shiver at the thought of what could have happened if he and his team had showed up just a few minutes later. What shape he would have found you in, or if you’d ever permit yourself to feel the touch of a man again. Of anyone again.

“Why were you there?”

The question comes out of nowhere, bursting out the moment you realize that you hadn’t yet bothered to ask him how he’d pulled off yet another well-timed rescue.

It couldn’t have been in answer to your prayers—those had never worked for you before.

“Carillo’s been following Escobar’s cousin for a while. Zeroed in on the neighbourhood, but we spent all morning doing searches. Honestly,” he breaks off for a moment, rubbing at his temples, “It was just damn luck that we found you when we did. Wish I could say it wasn't, but it was. We were gettin’ ready to call it off. I had… no idea you weren’t at home.”

He blames himself for it. You can tell. In turn, you blame yourself for that—for his misguided, self-inflicted anger.

There’s more left unsaid.

“My friend—I called her this morning. From your place. She was there. She was… dead. I think.”

Javi doesn’t react, evidence of the years of gore, wreckage, and betrayal he'd witnessed.

You swallow, soldiering on.

“I told her. I told her where I was. Could she… could she have told them?”

Is she the reason this happened to me?

Slowly, lips pressed around his cigarette, Javi nods. “I’m sorry,” he barely mumbles.

Strangely enough, you’re not. That’s what you say: “I’m not.” And it’s true. “She was upstairs when it was all happening. I’m glad she’s dead.”

Now, he looks at you with a consideration that swells into a kind of respect. Not a respect, no not respect. A knowing. A new kind of understanding, of equal footing.

You meet him head-on with it, basking in your retribution, revelling in the immediate justice she'd been served. You’d mourn the person you thought she was when your wounds weren’t so open, so fresh.

"They wanted directions, Javi," you suddenly blurt out, voice hoarse, "Isn't that insane? They were gonna... they were gonna do that for directions. Not even the evidence, just fucking directions-"

Javi lifts his hands in the air, signalling for you to slow down. Normally, it would make you want to tear his arrogant head off. Now, however, you just do, although the silence isn't very comforting. After a moment, you can tell there's something Javi’s been avoiding, something he’s holding in. The agent clears his throat, finally calling it quits on his tiptoe-ing around the subject.

“Cariño," he begins, "I know you told me earlier, but I... I gotta be sure. Did they hurt you in… any way?”

God, he sounds so deeply wary, unable even to speak his fear into existence. You shake your head no, prompting his shoulders to relax.

“Okay. Good,” he breathes, crossing his arms and looking down at the rug. “Don’t think I could…”

Panic ripples through your frame.

'Doesn’t think he could' what? Bear to look at me, knowing the enemy had been where he’d been, done what he’d done? Touch me in the same grooves they'd left on my skin? Javi’s not that kind of man—is he?

“Don’t think I could forgive myself if anything were to happen to you under my watch.”

The rush of anxiety quickly dissipates, replaced by a stifling bloom of admiration and adoration across your chest. Like soft tendrils, warming your shivering body from within.

You smile self-consciously, scoff, and meet his eyes. “I wasn’t ‘under your watch,’ Javi. I opened the door. It was my fault.”

He raises his eyebrows, huffing a breath before ashing his dart, rising, carving a path towards the couch-cushion next to you and taking your glass of water from between your hands. It clinks as he sets it on the table. Taking your unsteady hands between his hardened palms, he coaxes you into meeting his golden eyes.

“It’s not your fault, herm—” a pause as he corrects himself, noticing your flinch, “—cariño. It’s not your fault.”

He waits for your nod of acknowledgement before pulling you into his arms. You let yourself go limp, dragged into the plushness of the couch and the firmness of his chest.

He lays a kiss to your forehead. He fidgets with your hair. He traces long, lazy lines up and down your spine.

How had you gone from that youthful giddiness this morning to this dark, anxious wreck in a matter of hours? It wasn’t even two o’clock yet.

The comfort your agent provides is good—will always be good—but you want more. Every inch of attention he gives you is just another step away from that cold basement, a foot towards freedom.

Time heals all wounds, and you want a distraction while you face those excruciating seconds. Something to move it along. Something to keep you busy, to keep the harrowing images at bay.

So you tilt your head up. Finding his lips, you press into him, shuddering when the rough hairs of his mustache tickle your top lip. When your body asks for more, when your tongue meets his and your hand drops to his thigh, Javi tenses, pulling back and breaking off the kiss.

“Sweetheart—you’re not in a good place,” he whispers, lovingly running his fingers through your hair.

You look up at him with eyes full of need, wordlessly begging him to give in. “I am now,” you assure him, tossing a leg over his hips and straddling his body. His expression darkens as you slowly chip away at his resolve, one touch at a time. “I’m with you.”

He smiles, plucking your hands from his chest. Every kiss he lays to your knuckles sends a ripple of electricity up and down your spine. “That right?” He muses between embraces. “That all you need?”

You nod, the pace of your shallow breaths picking up in anticipation. “When you touch me, Javi, it’s like you’re cleaning them off me,” you croon, leaning forward to brush your lips against his jaw.

“You’re in shock, baby,” but his hands defy his words, slipping down to circle your waist, “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Slowly, deliberately, you lean back to stare directly into his heavy-lidded eyes. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

You feel him tense at that, his body hardening alongside the weight building underneath your thigh. He lets you go on, deft hands pooling onto your hips.

“Get rid of them for me,” you plead, grinding down onto his bulge.

“Make me all yours again.”

That does it.

His hands shoot up to your face, firmly cupping your cheeks between their heat. Then, Javi’s kissing you harder than before, warming your desire up to a feverish level. You moan into him, turning to putty in his grasp.

He peppers kisses down your jaw and up your neck, allowing you to clumsily untuck his shirt and undo his belt. It’s frantic and needy—it’s pure business. You free his length from the confines of his clothes, heavy breaths mingling when you look down in tandem, hungrily watching your small, delicate hand pumping up and down his cock.

“Fuck,” he groans, his dark crown of cropped curls falling back against the couch, “You make it fuckin’ hard to be a good guy.”

You smile, spreading the slick dribbling at his tip around the head of his cock.

God, the sight of him never gets old.

“Good guys listen, Javi,” you tease, managing to pull off an air of sultriness, “Not just to no—also to yes.”

A lazy, roguish grin spreads across his face. “You are feeling better, aren’t you?” and he knocks a squeal out of you when he cages you in his arms, flipping you over ‘till your back’s digging shapes into the worn-in cushions below. “Gettin’ mouthy already.”

You giggle up at him, but all of your noises dwindle when a few rough fingers push your torn, ruined underwear to the side. You grow especially wordless when one separates your folds and makes its way inside you.

Javi gives you his signature look of condescension, of mock pity.

“What happened, sweetheart?” He taunts, thumbing that aching bundle of nerves. “All the ways I’ve had my dick in you, just this—” he makes a point to curl his fingers towards himself, pressing against the most desire-stricken spot, “—‘n you can’t find your words?”

Your throat won’t open, choking around your own pleasure. Instead, you nod with enthusiasm, desperately clinging onto his forearm. “More.”

He quickly accedes, pushing another long and thick finger inside you. You shudder at the perfect sting—the stretch—as your opening hugs his knuckles. Javi mutters curses to himself, angry and lustful, supervising your writhing form.

“No one else gets to see you like this.” He speaks low, sitting up to work you with both hands. Your body responds without your permission; Javi clicks his tongue and shoves you back down when your hips buck up. “Don’t deserve it,” he continues voicing his thought as if no interruption had occurred, “I’d have to track ‘em down and kill ‘em.”

His tone goes beyond protectiveness, easily veering into the realm of the possessive. “I-I wouldn’t be good f-for them, Javi,” you manage, wanting to comfort him, to calm him, “Wouldn’t—wouldn’t listen.”

“Oh,” he smirks down at you, finally pulling his fingers from your soaked, ready cunt. “Like you listen to me?”

You spread your legs for him, shimmying down until he’s hovering right above you. He strokes himself, taking you in with hunger, playfulness and… something else.

Something like devotion.

A smile. You stroke his jaw. “You come harder when I misbehave.”

He shrugs and nods, a silent, ‘you got me there,' before lining himself up at your entrance.

You whimper, a pathetic, pleading sound, when the head of his cock finds your opening. “Then make sure to misbehave.”

He rocks inside you, taking note of the way your jaw goes slack, hanging open, and the way your brow furrows, grateful eyes glazing over, showing high praise for that feeling of fullness.

And he laughs to himself.

“Needy fuckin’ thing,” he coos, settling into a comfortable rhythm. “Beggin’ for cock after bein’ kidnapped. I shouldn’t be feedin' into your crazy, cariño.”

It is crazy. But you don’t care, giggling along to his taunt.

“Just makes me feel so-so good, Javi,” you breathe.

“Yeah?” He coaxes, sitting back to tower over you, pressing your thighs to your calves; the new angle has bliss rippling through your centre, your back arching involuntarily. “What feels good?”

He shoves your hips down, lowering a finger back to your clit.

“Oh—God—y-yourcock—” he nods approvingly at you, beckoning you to go on, “your—your fingers, too.”

He slows his pace, pulling out fully before slamming back inside you.

“Look at it, cariño,” Javi instructs, steadying your hips once more. “Watch me fuck your pretty lil’ pussy.”

You struggle onto your elbows and obey, mouth slack and perpetually open. Pressure builds at your core as you watch every inch of his hard, dark length disappear, over and over, inside the shelter of your body. It’s so dirty, and somehow the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

“M-made for you, Javi.”

And he moans, an animalistic sound you’d never heard from him before.

“S’right, baby, made just for me.” He flattens his fingers against your clit, applying just the right amount of pressure. “Can you come for me now?”

You nod, grateful for his permission as soon as you start to feel your thighs shake. The tension snaps within you, and you tumble over the edge of your climax with a high pitched whine.

“Good girl,” he praises, low, deep, and bristling with pleasure, “Good fuckin’ girl.”

You ride it out. Javi shows no mercy, squeezing your waist and bouncing your lower half against him. His biceps and shoulders strain against his shirt, the sight making your eyes roll to the back of your head.

After having him a few times, you were well aware of his impressive stamina—Javi wasn’t going to finish without giving you another one. Nonetheless, the overwhelming pleasure has you squirming away from his unrelenting grasp.

He pulls you back against him, steadying you between two forceful hands.

And he fucks you harder.

“Still remember them, querida? ” He breathes.

You find your voice, using great effort to stammer out a “y-yes."

It's not the correct answer.

Javi growls, “Then I’m not fuckin’ done with you.”

His shirt grazes the insides of your thighs, and you're certain that every part of his form is working to set your skin on fire. A skilled hand wraps around your jaw, and Javi leans over you, lowering his lips to latch around a hard, peaked nipple.

Your whimpers do nothing to stop him. He just keeps rhythmically rocking into you, the head of his cock reaching impossible, beckoning depths.

An almost-sob wracks your lungs. “S’a lot, huh? Takin’ all this cock inside you…” Javi shushes you with feigned sympathy, nipping and suckling at the softest spots at his disposal. “S’okay, baby, s’okay.”

Then he makes his way to your lips, forces you to kiss him—deeply—as your lungs scream for oxygen. He locks your hands above your head in just one of his own, the pressure of his weight the only thing keeping your squirming limbs in place.

And then his mouth is sliding down your jaw, his breaths hot and heavy next to your ear.

“Fuck—can feel you gettin’ close, sweetheart, gonna come again?”

All you can do is nod.

He rolls into you—hard and deep—forcing tears to pull from the outer corners of your eyes.

“S-so good to me,” you manage, seeing pure white as your third orgasm of the day blooms from between your seizing legs.

He groans, freeing your hands (which immediately find stability in the firmness of his shoulders) to clumsily wipe the tears from under one dazed eye. Above you, he resembles a hungry, lustful angel, eyes darkened with unbridled need, affection, approval.

“‘M’good to what’s mine, baby,” he whispers, pulling you into the crook of his neck as he chases both your highs. “Come, cariño—s’right, come for me.”

And you do, aching, ruined cunt squeezing and releasing, fluttering around Javi. He moans a downright sinful ‘fuck’ at the sensation, reaching his own peak almost in tandem with yours.

Only once his every last drop is spent, once his groan and your whines have stopped echoing around the unfamiliar, open space, does he pull back from your neck.

And when he looks at you… God. There’s something you’re both not saying.

“Only wanna see you cry like this, baby,” he tells you, laying a long, lingering kiss to your forehead. “Never gonna let them—let anyone—lay a finger on you again.”

Your breath hitches, the words thick and sticky in your throat. The both of you are dazed, breathless, and completely wrecked. “I’m… I’m glad we met. That you—that we’re doing this.”

He raises his eyebrows, crooning a soft ‘yeah?’ as he pushes your hair from your face.

You nod. “You make all of it worth it.”

He’s appreciative when leaning in for a kiss, slipping out of you and groaning against your lips. You tangle your fingers in his damp hair, leaning up into him with every aching muscle in your body, wanting nothing more than to become a part of his whole. When he pulls away, it's only to tuck his softening length back into his briefs. He focusses on you again, leaning over to affectionately stroke your knee.

“Is it just sex for you?”

His question comes as a bit of a surprise—you’d never heard him speak so openly, so innocent and vulnerable.

You cup his face. Despite the fact that he looks like the men from earlier, carries the same guns and ammo, knows what they know, even speaks their language, he’s never seemed so separate from them, an entirely different species.

“No—at first, maybe, but now… No. Not for me.”

He eases into a soft smile, wrapping you back into your blanket before laying back, manhandling you to rest against his still-unsteady chest.

Those masterful hands comfort you in a million different ways. He plays with your hair and traces the highest points of your cheekbone. He massages your knuckles, pulls you in for little kisses, dips into the curve of your waist.

“How about you?” The question is small, even though you anticipate the answer.

He takes a second before answering. When he does, his voice is low, quiet.

“Not at all, sweetheart.” He tilts your head up, his soft, caring gaze probing into every corner of your own. “Honestly, I think it’s been more than that since the first time you said ‘go fuck yourself, Peña.’” He whistles under his breath, exaggerating his approval. “Shit was hot.”

It makes you laugh, but it's also enough to make your heart soar. Settling in to the nook of his neck, you breathe in his familiar, earthly scent, until the exhaustion of the day eventually weighs on you.

You fall asleep with a smile on your face, entertained by the fact that while you really should be a wreck, you feel perfectly at ease, wrapped in the arms of your favourite DEA agent. In fact, you can hardly remember what your kidnappers looked like—or sounded like, for that matter—succumbing to slumber, you only think of him.

—

Less than three hectic, hazy days later, you’re pulling a suitcase through the Medellín international airport. There was no sense risking it anymore—you'd have to be transferred to the States until the assholes were caught. Ambassador's orders.

Javi flanks your side, eyes peeled for any abnormalities in your surroundings.

Your heart breaks with every step you take. He comes all the way to the gate without saying a word, merely holding onto one of your bags (that he'd insisted he carry) in a white-knuckled fist.

You’re running behind. There’s not much time.

He doesn’t say he’ll call—knows he’s not that kind of man. You don’t say you’ll visit. You don’t say you’ll write.

No, all you do is lean up on your tippy toes to plant a tender, lingering kiss to his cheek. He returns the favour by cupping your face, leaning down and kissing you intently.

Too intently—as if he were memorizing the grooves in your lips.

Well, that’s what you’re doing, anyways.

Over the loudspeaker, your name is called.

“They’re paging you,” Javi translates, his breath hitting your top lip.

You pull away, doing your best not to cry.

“Thank you.”

It’s all you say—it’s all that needs to be said, really.

Thank you for showing me I matter. Thank you for teaching me patience. Thank you for saving my life three times. Thank you for wanting me. Thank you for making me wait for it. Thank you for giving me a reason to miss this place.

Thank you for loving me. I think that's what this is.

He hears it all, stuffed and contained, overflowing from the two uttered words.

Then he smiles, that well-trained, protective cockiness spreading across his face.

“You’re welcome, cariño.”

You scoff a laugh, slowly dropping his hand and turning towards your gate.

“If I ever visit home…” he calls after you.

You pause, smiling down at the glistening floor, shaking your head. “You’ll never catch me in Texas, Peña,” you call across the traffic of rushing families and over-packed suitcases. He smiles knowingly, hands in his pockets, watching you leave. “Just lock the fuckers up so I can visit. The weather sucks back home.”

You slowly walk backwards towards the exit, ignoring a few flight-attendant-glares, not daring to break off the playful eye contact linking you to your agent.

“I’ll do it just for you, baby,” he calls, grinning like a fool.

Strange. You’d never noticed how the teasing, that snarky back and forth you’d developed together seemed to put him at ease—to relax him. All that time he'd spent, driving you to the brink of insanity... it comforted him.

And that realization was enough to make you beam.

You commit that final glimpse to memory. Javi—smiling, calm, alive, yours. It was rare enough that you felt sure it would stick.

When you finally turn to face the gate, to face your future, you don’t feel like crying anymore.

It was enough just to have met him.

Maybe—just maybe—he felt the same.

—

All my friends tell me I should move on

I'm lying in the ocean, singing your song

Ahh

That's how you sang it

Loving you forever can't be wrong

Even though you're not here, won't move on

Ahh

That's how we played it

And there's no remedy for memory, your face is like a melody

It won't leave my head

Your soul is haunting me and telling me that everything is fine

But I wish I was dead (dead, like you)

Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise

No one compares to you

I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side

Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise

No one compares to you

I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side

All my friends ask me why I stay strong

Tell 'em when you find true love, it lives on

Ahh

That's why I stay here

And there's no remedy for memory, your face is like a melody

It won't leave my head

Your soul is haunting me and telling me that everything is fine

But I wish I was dead (dead, like you)

Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise

No one compares to you

I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side

Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise

No one compares to you

But there's no you, except in my dreams tonight

I don't want to wake up from this tonight

There's no relief, I see you in my sleep

And everybody's rushing me, but I can feel you touching me

There's no release, I feel you in my dreams

Telling me I'm fine

Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise

No one compares to you

I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side

Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise

No one compares to you

But there's no you, except in my dreams tonight

I don't want to wake up from this tonight

—

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velvetures · 9 months

Text

Vulnerable pt.1?

A/N: A not-so-little thing I've had for a few weeks, and wanted to see if a part two was something anyone would be interested in reading. If so, please let me know. Summary: You try and get Ghost to relax after a harsh mission and find a bit of a quiet moment. T/W: not proofread :)

Bad intel led to you and your Lieutenant being nearly hunted down and killed by a not-so-small group of arms dealers who caught on quickly to the pair of foreigners lingering just a little bit too close to their sheltered storage garage right in the middle of a market district in the South East. The task force assumed sending in an entire squad would be overkill just for some simple recon information and decided that you and Ghost would be the perfect pair for the job. ‘In and Out…’ Price had said quite offhandedly, sliding the prepared information in two files across the table to you. Only Price’s sources hadn’t double-checked if the area was secure enough for them to enter without full backup on standby. Not necessarily a lethal kind of mistake when bringing you and the Lieutenant into the equation, but there were too many close calls and stray bullets that were clearly heard for either of you to feel super confident in getting away unscathed.

Your only savior was a small farmhouse that had been recently abandoned due to the illegal and dangerous activity that had been surrounding the small city. Modest in size with two bedrooms and running water. Perfect for a makeshift safe house to keep the trackers off your asses until an extraction could be arranged and put into motion. Contrary to belief, the 141 didn’t have the bottomless pit of resources everyone believed they had at their disposal. Which included access to evac and trained air-support teams. This wasn’t a big mission that had a lot of working parts and multiple organizations involved that had enough liquidated funds to through out for a helo and heavy gunners to rescue two operators from the middle of who-the-fuck-knows-where.

That means with busted equipment, inoperable comms, hardly enough ammunition to fight out of a wet paper bag, and zero way of knowing when and if you’d be rescued, there was nothing left to do but try and relax in one of the most difficult predicaments. It left you searching through cabinets for maybe some kind of food to keep the both of you while Ghost did one of his favorite things. Pacing the house from window to window looking for the slightest bit of movement. The trouble being, there wasn’t anything for at least two miles in any direction. The people who owned this place were farmers of some sort, and had placed their home right in the middle of crop fields that gave a very advantageous sightline. While that information gave you quite a bit of comfort, it was not effecting Ghost positively in the slightest.

Your relationship with the Lieutenant was complex, to say the least. When you were first introduced it was for a succession of short co-op missions that were nothing if not brief and very impersonal leaving you with more questions than answers about the man who stayed hidden under the mask. Through some talks that you hadn’t been privy to being in the room for, John Price decided that your skills would be more useful to Task Force 141 than for the U.S. Division of Clandestine Service and offered you a position that you couldn’t possibly decline.

By day-in and day-out contact with Ghost, you got a lot more comfortable with him and learned much of his little idiosyncratic behaviors. Maybe a little too well…. He didn’t particularly act much differently towards you in the grand scheme of things, but something in you felt like trust had been developed to where he could depend on you when the situation called for it.

“Go hit the rack, I’ll take first watch.” He called gruffly from the living room where he had moved a chair from the kitchen to sit facing the front door head on with his MP5 resting lazily on his chest.

You couldn’t help but notice just how damn tired he looked under all that gear and through the black smeared around his eyes. He couldn’t be carrying less than one hundred pounds on him right now; even sitting in that chair with it wasn’t a good enough solution. Let you take a moment or two for yourself, stripping out of your tac vest and heavily weighted gear to drop it on top of the kitchen counter with a little grunt. Two days ago you both got the luxury of sleeping, and since then it’s been nothing but being on the run.

This would be the safest place for you that wasn’t in the belly of an evac bird, and the thought of Ghost not taking the time to sleep sat in your mind like a lead sinker. Leaning against the doorway and watching him for a long moment, you start having thoughts. Dangerous thoughts. Ones that normally wouldn’t surface if you’d been able to separate working with Ghost from the more personal aspect of literally sharing almost every part of your life with him. Thoughts about how you could make him feel better… even if just for the night. That no one was around for miles and whatever happened could safely stay between the pair of you.

By utter carelessness of your position with the team or lack of fear about how the Lieutenant might respond, you walk into the living room and kneel down right in front of him with your fingers reaching out to unlace his dusty boots. Off instinct alone, you expected and watched as his foot flinched away from you. His whole body jumps and stiffens at the contact and sight of you kneeling on the floor. He quickly pauses and collects himself, taking several moments before his gravelly voice breaks the silence.

“What’re you doin’ Sergeant?” His eyes grew heavy and showed more expression than the rest of his massive body as they flashed with confusion and a little swell of anger. That aloofness didn’t hide that slight guardedness of something that made him uncomfortable in one way or another.

“I’m perfectly capable of takin’ care of my fuckin’ self.” He adds with zero discernible sign of either offense or gratitude. You can’t help but smile tiredly, feeling like you’re attempting to soothe a feral wolf into letting you pull it’s paw out of trap.

“I never said you couldn’t L.T.,” You reply gently, reaching back to start unhooking the laces from their claws on his left foot. “Just thought you couldn’t use some affection.” Smirking to yourself, you can’t help but think something this small being considered ‘affection’ didn’t fit anyone save for Ghost. He was just too hard to approach. Walls so thick and tall that it would take someone with patience beyond that of a human to break through and see what rested behind all of that brash posturing and icy disposition.

“You know affection is something I’m averse to,” he utters, watching yet making no effort to stop you. “What you’re doin’ is unnecessary.” A small sound close to a growl escapes from behind the mask when my hand reaches to the back of his leg to help aid my effort of pulling his boot off.

Chuckling softly and sitting the boot down at your side you respond, “I know you don’t like affection,” You’re already working on the other one, purposefully moving slowly as not to overwhelm or spook him. “That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it, L.T..” You can’t help but look up at him almost exhaustedly yet still trying to be reassuring.

“M’fine without it.” He spits out quickly, looking away from your face back down to your progress on the laces, his masked face otherwise unreadable. “Didn’t ask you for this shit, Sergeant.” Tinged with an undercurrent of irritation his deep voice sounds near the bridge of turning to anger.

“Mothering me isn’t in your best interest.” He growls low and threateningly in your face as he bends down to grab the boot sitting next to you and giving it a quick look of observation before sitting it back down closer to him. You just finish taking off his other boot and sit it down next to the other without much more of a verbal fight and put a hand on his thigh to steady your sore legs as you get back up to your feet.

“I’m younger than you Ghost, I can’t mother you.” You reply, holding out your hand for him.

He doesn’t make note or stop you from using him to help yourself up, however, Ghost follows your movements carefully… closely. He’s doing everything in his power to hide his emotions, but there’s still a faint twitch of his lips when he looks down at his boots sitting at his side. You’d done something very unusual, and he knew berating you was what he should’ve done. Yet a flinch of a smile was what really moved Ghost’s mouth. It’s gone before it even surfaces, pushed down by the sight. of you holding out your little hand in front of him. The sounds of his deep breathing fill the quiet house as you both sit there unflinching of each other. The Lieutenant shifts in his chair, readjusting his rifle on his chest.

“Go to bed. It’s late.” His repeated command felt softer now. Wavering a bit with you hand still held out and your fingers wiggling a little.

“Come on,” You hold steady and patient.

Reward comes in the form of feeling Ghost’s heavy and large hand falling into yours and gripping just hard enough to allow you the phantom sensation that you’re actually helping him up from the chair, hearing a short grunt as his back straightens up. Without explanation, you lead the Lieutenant through the small house back towards the only bedroom in the house with an actual bed left behind by the owners, pulling him to the center of the room and turning around to face him.

“Put your arms up for me.”

“Excuse me?” Ghost’s frown can be heard from behind the mask. Despite his apparent bewilderment, he hesitantly obeys, extending his arms above his head with an exhale of a tense breath, looking down at you with dark and questioning eyes. “What are you doing now?”

You just smile and hum to yourself softly, reaching out to begin unclipping and unzipping the sections of his tac vest holding it on his upper body and the multiple ammo belts. Carefully draping them over you shoulder as you release his body from them one by one. Seeing the way Ghost’s body sinks into itself with the weight being pulled off after days without rest. You feel his eyes scan over you, over your hands finding ways to take off his gear for the first time in your life, feeling your way through sunch an unusual yet careful act.

“Bein’ fuckin’ ridiculous…” He growls, covering up the feelings of not being so concealed by barking at you a little.

“Shhh.” Your hush does enough to stop his quiet and brooding complaints.

Long enough for you to kneel back down at his feet and work at the thigh straps over his pants and even remove the ankle holster you’d left alone while taking off his boots. He doesn’t resist this part, just watching you undress him bit by bit with half a mind questioning just what had happened for you to start acting so strangely. You’d always been sweet. Much nicer than your job allowed for. Yet even this was quite off the edge of the character Ghost had built for you over the years. This felt downright intimate for just two operators to be doing.

Then again your shared situation wasn’t exactly one of professionalism at this point. You’d been improvising for nearly a full day just trying to stay alive. Once back on your feet, you take hold of his hand again, this time with a little less caution since you’d already touched him there, and begin pulling at the fingertips to slide his sand and dirt-cakes gloves off. Even seeing his bare skin under his gloves be seen in the dim lamplight of the house, Ghost doesn’t do more than flex his fingers once you’ve rid him of the stiff material.

Purposefully avoiding his mask, you get Ghost down to nothing more than boxers and a t-shirt, even with his help at certain parts without him growling more or acting like you were irritating him. While he still gave off a feeling of all-around grumpiness and more than a little confused as hell, you paid it no mind as you led him towards the edge of the bed and pointed to it with a short yet polite command for him to ’sit’. Right away you noticed his hesitation and the way that his shoulders and arms tensed, his attention solely on you, flashing between your eyes and mouth like he was trying to reassure himself that he’d heard you correctly. But with one small tug on his hand, he turns around and sits on the bed with his feet resting on the floor and his arms braced on both sides of him a little stiffly.

“Now what?” His voice held a bit of rasp to it as he tracked your movement from his side, seeing you climb up into the bed and position yourself on your knees behind him. The close proximity didn’t go unnoticed by the Lieutenant as he cleared his throat, once again interrupting the calm silence in the house. His tension filled the small space between you, heating the gap of air, almost electrifying it.

“Just relax Ghost.” Easily touching his shoulders, you begin working your palms flat against the slopes of his muscled neck.

Purposefully but gently rubbing at the stiff cords of muscle and introducing the sensation to him as easily as possible in the case that it was a bit too overwhelming for him all at once. You knew you’d pushed the boundaries with him much further past anything you’d expected to achieve in one night. But now that he was sitting here in front of you, it was hard not to smile brightly that he was trusting you so much. Allowing your hands to be on him. Accepting that you had positioned the both of you in a very vulnerable position that could lead to a lot more violent options than affectionate ones. Torture and nightmares had given more than a fair share to Ghost, yet he was patiently staving off his own clear hesitation so that you could play out whatever this was turning out to be.

Your command went unacknowledged just like all of Ghost’s from earlier had; His breathing steadily slowing down into a deep and rich, relaxed sort of rhythm. Power of your hands and calming attitude worked faster than you anticipated, leaving the massive man sitting between your thighs begin to release. Tension falling out of his body not only under your hands but by sight of his jaw loosening. You’re even lucky enough to spot him trying to take glances at you from the corner of his eye, only to look back ahead since you were in quite the blindspot. Taking your thumbs in a sweeping motion from the edges of his shoulders inward, you apply pressure on the back of his neck and experimentally reach higher up under the hem of his mask. A dangerous game to play. Rumbling sounds of appreciation filling your ears are better than any sort of medal you could earn or bet you’d ever cash in. His head rolls back slightly with each small circle of your thumbs and fingers, pushing against you. Silently asking for more pressure.

“Feel good?” You ask at just a whisper, not wanting to disturb the warm sort of feeling the room has right now by speaking too loud.

Under the safety of his mask, Ghost’s mouth curves into a smile hearing you. He rolls his head back again, arching slightly to accommodate your small hands struggling to find good purchase to keep working at the intensity he’d been hinting at. A much less controllable sound escapes his mouth when you begin working at a very sore spot he didn’t even know was present right at the base of his skull.

“Keep going,” His sleepy-sounding mutter makes your chest ache.

Grinning at the feeling of his harsh accent and sudden domestication you work away diligently down his back carefully and methodically so as to not miss a single thing. And while it’s not necessarily going to help him much, you go ahead and use your fingernails to gently scratch up and down. It’s then a groan interrupts your focus and you see Ghost shift on the edge of the bed. Believing you’d found the end of your time, you leaned back on your heels and expected him to get up and leave you in the bedroom alone. Watching him tug at his t-shirt and pull it over his head to toss it somewhere across the room was how you were told that Ghost did indeed want more. Only his shirt was getting in the way of something he wasn’t getting.

Hearing him give a deep sigh when your fingertips returned to his now bared skin gave you a rush of adrenaline and nearly caused you to wiggle happily that you’d been able to share this with Ghost. He leans back into you a little more, letting your hands and arms take more of the weight as he groans out;

“You’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, but not for a long time.” You answer, eyes smoothing over the muscles rippling as your hands work at them.

“You’re good,” He grunts, closing his eyes and zeroing in on how to focus his attention between your small hands working so efficiently and the conversation he’d begun. “How’d you get so good at it?” His head turns a little, trying to get at least one good look at you. He keeps shifting now, allowing him to keep you just in the edge of his periphery.

“Had a good teacher for a few years,” You answer, working in tight circles over a large ball of muscle fibers all collected just at the edge of his shoulder blade, earning another growling sound from the Lieutenant.

“Teacher? When?” He asks, giving a slow release of a deep breath giving a short indication that the muscle you’d been working to release was getting a bit uncomfortable. Pulling back for a moment just to give him and your hands a break, you hear him make a noise then lean back a little further, pressing his back against you almost like a dog wanting to be pet more.

“Don’t stop.” He requests in a husky tone. You chuckle aloud, returning your hands and taking a less aggressive approach by smoothing your palms over him in less-than-planned patterns, just enjoying feeling his tattooed and scarred skin under your hands as you think about how to answer him.

“A woman in London taught me,” you start, using your nails again on his skin softly. “In the year or so between my U.S. military discharge and acceptance into the task force with you.” You see the effect of your touch on Ghost as it takes him longer to respond and the way he keeps leaning more and more weight back into you, unable to keep himself from subconsciously trying to get closer. Wanting more whether he’d ever admit it or not. There’s no mistaking it between either of you, he’s enjoying this.

“I assume she was special to you.”

It was your neighbor just across the hallway from you. An older woman named Sarah. Eccentric in modern times, you’d always believed she must’ve been a force to be reckoned with when she wasn’t hindered by an aging body and an even more ailing mind. A massage therapist by trade, and a pianist by heart there wasn’t much that Sarah could accomplish without someone helping her once she became limited in movement living on the eighth floor of the apartment building you shared. Back then you didn’t have much in the way of contacts after leaving the country, and it led to a friendship with the old woman living across from you. Sharing stories, eating dinner together, grocery shopping together when she felt like going out, and trading some skills between each other. After telling Ghost this much with your fingers tracing out letters and shapes over his back, you can sense he’s listening carefully. And Ghost is feeling a slight fuzzy sensation building in the back of his brain, spreading out in a warm wave down to his fingertips and toes.

“She taught me massage since at the time I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life.” Your head falls to the side, examining how the lamplight shines on ghost and deepens the already significant definition in his physique.

Ghost falls against you even more, and this time he lets his head fall back against you. Trying to counterbalance his weight and keep both of you from falling backwards with just him limp he’s becoming, you wrap on arm around his neck and hold his head in the bend of your arm. He gives another sigh, and settles against you heavily. He. looks at you in silence out of the corner of his eye listening to your explanation.

“Why was she your only friend?” You can’t help but chuckle at his question, resting your chin on his opposite shoulder and bringing your other arm under his to begin scratching and rubbing at his chest, feeling deep and puckered scars littering nearly every inch of him.

“I didn’t know anyone else. And you know me well enough to know that I’m not exactly extroverted.” You smile, tracing lightly up and down his well-defined arm. Ghost couldn’t be more comfortable laid against you.

“Sorry to hear that.” His voice low and husky with his mouth so close to your ear. “She must call or ask about you…”

You shake your head. “No. She died just before I joined you all. Her mind was… failing her. And there was some kind of accident in the middle of the night The police told me she was likely trying to get to the bathroom and fell. She apparently died on impact… they didn’t say what, but I think her head hit something.” You explain quietly. “And you and I both know that means lights out. So she didn’t suffer.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he answers as softly as he can manage after hearing the darker part of your happy memories. “How did it become… intimate, like this?” He asks, nodding to the way you were leaned up against his back with your hand tracing over every inch of him that you could reach. The longer you’ve both let this go, the more boundaries get pushed further out of reach, making it hard for either of you to really know where it could end.

You smile with a blush creeping up your neck onto your cheeks, thankful you’re somewhat hidden out of sight. “This isn’t really what she taught me,” You mutter a bit quiet. “When i was massaging you… yes. That I got taught. But this, it’s… just me.”

Out of your sight Ghost’s face flushes slightly as well, his cheeks a warm rose-color. You’re touching him in a way that he’d never expected. But hearing that you’re not just doing it for… relaxation, it’s a heavy but welcome thought. And Ghost can’t help that his body reacts to it with chills raising all over his skin despite the house being perfectly warm. He lets out a deep breath focusing on your words, repeating him over just to ensure that you’re not saying it one way and him interpreting it differently due to your hands being all over him, making him feel so good. Mind racing, heart pounding, he truly realizes just how vulnerable he is under you at this moment.

“I can stop if you’d like?” You offer, preparing to move away from him.

“No,” His hoarse voice gives away his sudden dry mouth. No matter how much your touch is affecting his body, he’s not willing to stop you right now. You’ve crossed into a level of trust that he can’t think to make you abide by anymore. It’s a foreign feeling for him, but he wants to push through it. Hoping he can feel more of you if he just holds on a little longer to this.

“Don’t stop."

Comments & Reblogs are Appreciated <3

#simon ghost riley #ghost x reader #cod #cod mwii #simon riley x reader #simon ghost x reader #velvetures writes #velvetures

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neonghostlights · 5 months

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Christmas Lights

A/N: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said I was taking a break. In my defense I really am taking a break but I had this idea and had to write it.

Warnings: Fluffy, Neighbor!Eddie, Eddie smokes a lot of cigarettes, Reader and Eddie are mid to late 20's, Eddie's love language is acts of service.

You grumbled, cold hands slipping through the balled up maze of wires.

You had pulled out your box of christmas decorations from storage and were determined to have your house decorated and holly jolly before the day was over.

You had moved to this little house a month or so ago. It was modest, a two bedroom home at the end of Maple Street that needed a lot of love and care and you had a lot of love and care to provide. Right now though, it was your worst enemy along with the tangled up lights that you hadn’t properly put away after decorating your apartment last year.

It was your own damn fault.

You let out an annoyed huff, your breath blowing out in a cloudy puff in the cold December air.

“You need some help there, neighbor?” A voice crooned from behind you.

You jumped, and you would have dropped the lights if they weren’t wrapped around your wrists like some type of handcuffs.

You turned to face Eddie, your neighbor from right next door.

He was in his usual uniform of head to toe black but with a dark red beanie perched over his long hair. He had a cigarette perched between his lips and he looked at you with a face of concern that made you even more embarrassed than you already were.

He let out a breath of a laugh when he spied the way you were wrapped in the christmas lights. He plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it on the pavement behind him.

“Looks like you got yourself all tangled up,” he announced and your tummy did a little flip.

You looked down, embarrassed.

“Yeah, well, I was trying to get into the holiday spirit but..” you held up the tangled lights.

“I hope you weren’t planning on getting up on the roof by yourself,” he reprimanded you as he started working to unravel the lights from your limbs. His knitted gloves brushed up against your skin as he worked and you were jealous of how warm he probably was all bundled up like that.

You wanted to sneak your way up his jacket and steal some of his warmth.

You and Eddie had met when he helped you drag your couch up your porch stairs and into your living room when you were moving in. Since that day, he had made a point to help you with a lot of things. Car won’t start? He’s over in a heartbeat to fix it. Porch light out? He has an extra light bulb and up on your porch replacing it. No milk? No worries, he doesn’t have any either but he has to go to the store anyways.

Eddie had helped you time and time again throughout your few months living here and it made you feel kind of bad that he was always coming to your rescue like this.

“I wasn’t going to actually get on the roof,” you explained, thinking about how you planned on balancing on the ladder as you tried to figure out how to hang Christmas lights. You had never actually done it on your own before so this year was definitely going to be interesting in terms of decorating.

Eddie looked at you with a raised brow.

“Hey, if I fell off the ladder I was kind of hoping my neighbor would spot me lying in the bushes when he came out for his hourly smoke break,” you joked, poking him in the ribs with a finger as he choked out a raspy laugh.

There was a pause for a moment as Eddie got the lights out of your hands and started untangling them on his own.

“I can do it,” he muttered, so softly at first that you almost didn’t make out what he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I can hang them up for you. I was getting ready to put mine up too so I might as well,” he offered.

“Eddie, I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that,” you complained, feeling bad that once again he was coming to your rescue.

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering. All I ask is that if I fall off the ladder you make sure I have a cigarette while I’m waiting for the ambulance,” he teased.

You rolled your eyes with a laugh as he focused on getting the lights untangled.

It wasn’t long before Eddie had made you go inside where it was warm while he decorated your house for you.

You had refused at first, but he insisted that he wanted the final product to be a surprise for you.

You watched out the window as he tested the lights to make sure they worked, something that you had forgotten to do.

He turned sensing your stare through the blinds and gave you a cheeky wave. You rushed away from the window, shamed that he had caught you gawking at him like a teenager with a crush.

You sat for a moment, feeling useless before you decided to do something nice for Eddie, as a thank you.

There was a knock at the front door as you finished pouring the hot chocolate into mugs and topped them with marshmallows. The cookies sat cooling from the oven and the house smelled divine.

“I made some hot chocolate and cookies!” You called as he waved for you to come to the door.

He smiled, a wide smile that made you want to melt onto the floor like a snowman.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed as he took your arm and led you out the front door.

“Don’t open them,” he reminded you as he helped you down the steps, one at a time.

You squeezed your eyes shut tighter, not wanting to ruin whatever he was brewing up.

He positioned you somewhere in front of your house, both hands squeezing your shoulders for a moment as he put you in the right place.

He leaned down to you, his warm breath tickling the shell of your ear.

“Open.”

You couldn’t help the gasp of awe as you stared up at the beautiful lights on your house. It was a mix of colors, hung expertly and framing your house like something out of a Christmas movie.

“It’s beautiful, Eddie,” you whispered, unable to help the tears pricking your eyes.

“Do you like it?” He asked, some uncertainty laced in his tone.

“I love it,” you said as you turned to look at him. “You have no idea how much I love it. Why do you always do such nice things for me?” You asked, needing to know after months of his kindness.

Eddie’s brow furrowed as he looked at you in confusion then understanding. He took his gloved hand and placed it gently on your cheek.

“Because you deserve to have nice things done for you.”

You weren’t sure if you moved first or if it was him but one moment Eddie was saying something sweet and the next your lips were on his, kissing him with the lights shining on your brightly.

When you broke apart, you smiled at each other and he pulled you close to him, content to not speak as you both soaked in what just happened.

It was perfect, the way you and Eddie held each other as the snow started to fall and it was something you thought about every Christmas for the rest of you and Eddie’s lives.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson au #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x you #eddie stranger things #eddie munson fluff #Eddie Munson c you #eddie munson comfort

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celestialvoyeur · 6 months

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💛💙SPIRK FIC REC - MY FAVOURITES💙💛

As a follow up to my recent post about how few fics make it to my favourites list, and how special they are to achieve that distinction, I decided to share my current list.

I’ve shared some of these individually in the past but here you’ll have them all together.

If you've read any of these already then I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether you loved them as much as I did! 🥰

(NB: these are not listed in any order of preference. Mostly it’s the reverse order in which I read them)

Leave No Soul Behind by whochick Words: 258,951

AOS, AU Canon-Divergence. Spock, Kirk and the other valiant members of the Emergency Personnel Ambulance Service fight to save lives and turn the tide of the ongoing war against Nero and his fleet before it’s too late. Such a beautiful slow burn for Spock and Kirk.

Atlas by distractedKat Words: 135,529

AOS. Follow on from 2009, Kirk, Spock and the rest deal with the aftermath of Nero’s attack and rebuilding after the decimation of the ‘Fleet and Academy. An exciting tale with twists and turns involving black ops, bad-mirals, action, love and fierce loyalty.

The Lotus Eaters by aldora89 Words: 93,594

AOS. Stranded on a planet together, with multiple dangers and very little hope of rescue, Jim and Spock have no choice but to rely on each other to survive. Spectacular plot, amazing world building, fabulous original character and an epic slow burn Spirk love story!

With Your Feet on the Air and Your Head on the Ground by flippyspoon Words: 39,188 @flippyspoon

SNW. A phenomenal Spirk fic in which Kirk is stuck in Spock's mind while the crew work to find a way to retrieve his body. A wonderful getting to know you/falling for you hard tale. Wonderfully written and highly entertaining.

Evolution by Rhaegal (RhaegalKS) Words: 149,293

AOS. Covering the first year of their 5 year mission, this is totally flawless. The character voices are perfection, the prose spectacular. The whole thing plays like an AOS movie. It’s phenomenal.

Emotions by LadyRa Words: 35,569

TOS. Spock gets drugged on a shore leave and is overwhelmed with its effects. Kirk tries to pick up the pieces. A beautiful, and wonderfully grounded, story of realising how much they mean to each other.

And When the Bond Breaks by LadyRa Words: 24,631

TOS. Spock takes out a shuttle to investigate an anomaly and returns to an Enterprise that’s not his own. Time travel shenanigans with such emotional depth that it will traumatise you in the best way. Stunningly good!

All Our Tomorrows Come Today by flippyspoon Words: 18,156 @flippyspoon

SNW. A newly introduced Jim and Spock accidentally get a glimpse into the future and see what they’re going to be to each other (a.k.a. Spirk’s Greatest Hits). A stunningly told story about finding the great love of your life.

I Won't Make That Mistake Again by Moreta1848 Words: 69,402 @jennelikejennay

SNW/TOS. An epic story detailing Spock and Kirk’s love throughout their lives, beginning from their meeting on Pike’s Enterprise (SNW) and continuing on to an eventual Generations fix-it happy ending. Wonderful!

No Going Back, No Before by spirkme Words: 78,486 @spirkme915

SNW/TOS. Timeline shenanigans, spies, twists & turns, pining, angst, sacrifice and so so much love!

The 1,000 Hour Sleep by spqr Words: 27,227

SNW. Jim’s been infected with a pathogen that means he can’t sleep, but it he doesn’t he’ll die. Cue Spock and his Vulcan telepathy helping Jim to achieve the sleep he needs, while they get to know each other within their shared mindscapes. A sweet and exciting story about falling in love and overcoming your own inner demons.

First Best Destiny by Ophelia_j Words: 387,733

TOS/TNG. Such a very special fic. Epic in its scope, it covers the entire timeline of Spirk from their very first meeting through to a clever and satisfying Generations fix-it ending. It provides extra scenes, additional dialogue and internal monologues to expand on existing canon in a really compelling and effective way. Truly this is my new TOS canon.

The Steadfastness of Stars by itsnatalie Words: 61,566

AOS. After Beyond, The crew investigate sudden climate change on a frozen planet and find more than they bargained for. The perfect mix of great plot, fun original characters, action, mystery, world building and deep deep love.

Let Forever Be by gunstreet Words: 43,446 @gunstreet

TOS. A really compelling character study of James T. Kirk. An excellent companion piece to City on the Edge of Forever. Exploring what Jim and Spock got up to, and all they had to overcome, while trying to find Bones and their way back home.

Time After Time by spaceisgay (ChancellorGriffin) Words: 138,921

SNW. Kirk spends a 6 month rotation on the Enterprise as part of his command training. OK, if there’s a favourite of my favourites then this may be it. It’s such a stunning version of their love story, with a beautifully constructed plot. It runs the emotional gamut from moments that will have you laughing out loud to moments that will have you in floods of tears.

milk and honey by spaceisgay (ChancellorGriffin) Words: 28,651

SNW. Kirk and Spock meet for the first time when they wake up in a prison cell together. A really fun, and extremely clever, version of the ‘aliens made them do it’ trope. It’s intriguing and funny with a real depth of feeling throughout.

The Promised Land by gunstreet Words: 58,260 @gunstreet

TOS. A story that explores the time Jim and Spock spent apart between the end of the 5 year mission and TMP. It’s a beautiful story of reunion and renewal of love. Sometimes achingly sad, but it’s worth it for the happy ending.

Again, if you've read any of these already then I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether you loved them as much as I did! 🥰

#star trek #spirk #k/s #kirk/spock #spock #james t kirk #k/s fanfic #fan fiction #fanfic #fan fic rec #star trek tos #star trek aos #star trek snw #aos spirk #tos spirk #snw spirk

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milf-murdock · 3 days

Note

Hi!! I love love love your writing! Especially your 141!Reader series <3 I don't know if you take requests, but your last post about Simon and baby Joseph made me so angsty and I would love to read more angst from you. Could you please write about Simon thinking 141!Reader was KIA on a mission? Thank you!!!

Anon....who....who hurt you???? I’m kidding 😆 mostly 👀 But for real, this one HURT. Like. OUCH. This man has been through so fucking much…but let’s put him through a bit more 😈😈😈 also, I did very much hurt my own feelings with this one. So I’m thinking we might need a part two reunion because I don’t know if I can leave our Ghosty boy in shambles like this

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The rain patters against the window in a steady rhythm.

Simon watches the fat raindrops roll down the small window pane, one foot anxiously tapping against the concrete floor. He didn’t know why he was called to Price’s office, but there was an ominous charge to the air. Call it a premonition, or maybe an instinct, but he knew in his bones that something was wrong.

The click of the door handle pulls Simon from his thoughts as Price enters the office, a heavy silence filling the air.

“What’s happened?” Simon's voice has a hard edge to it, cutting straight through the bullshit. Watchful eyes appraise every detail of Price’s body language, and Simon notes the deep sunken look of his captain’s eyes accentuated by a somber expression.

Price avoids Simon's gaze, staring down at the oak desktop before him as he takes a seat. The captain wasn’t one to mince words or beat around the bush, but even he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the situation despite his many years in the service.

Simon's heart hammers in his chest, every second in the unknown feeling like an eternity. This isn’t right, he thinks to himself.

Price steels himself with a deep inhale, pulling his gaze from the desk to face Simon head on, looking past the mask, speaking to the man he knew laid beneath.

“I wanted you to hear this from me, son. You…deserve to hear this from me.”

Simon stops breathing.

With practiced determination, Price continues his speech, having rehearsed the words in his head the entire walk down to his office.

“Reconnaissance mission, Operation Blackout, suffered multiple casualties after a long-range detonation by enemy action. There’s been no contact with the team, and rescue attempts were unsuccessful due to the extensive damage caused by the explosion. All team members are presumed KIA. The official course of action…”

The rest of Price’s speech is drowned out by the dull roar in Simon’s ears; his blood runs cold, his rigid body barely breathing.

This can’t be happening. Not again. Never again.

Simon's thoughts grip him by the heart, squeezing painfully.

I can’t do this again.

He had already lost everyone once. Had built impenetrable walls, designed to protect him from this type of pain.

But you. You and your goddamn charm, and your soft smiles, and your relentless fucking attitude. You broke down those walls brick by brick, made Ghost–no, made Simon– feel more like a man than he had in years. You slipped past his ironclad defenses and took his heart without him even realizing it.

And just when he had finally opened up, just when he had finally convinced himself that maybe he could be happy–that you could be happy together. It all came crashing down.

In the distance, Ghost could hear shouting. A chorus of denials piercing the air, heavy ragged breaths filling the silence between.

A heavy hand fell on Ghost's shoulder and he found himself back in his body, looking up at Price, voice raw.

With a stark realization, Ghost realizes it was him. He was the one shouting, the one gasping for breath.

The world tilted out from under him.

____________

Ghost left Price’s office a different man–a mere shell of the man who entered. With every step he took, he felt himself slipping further and further into the familiar safety of Ghost, an unpierceable facade moving through the world.

Everything felt wrong. Every step. Every breath. He felt like he was moving underwater, every action taking twice the effort it should.

The next few hours pass in a blur. The official order that he was being sent on leave. The ensuing argument with Price over the orders. He eventually just gave up. Leave, no leave, it didn’t fucking matter.

None of it fucking matters.

Johnny tries to see him before he leaves, meeting Simon on the tarmac. He tries to be there for his lieutenant, his friend.

The red rim around Johnny’s eyes reminds Simon that he wasn’t the only one who had lost you. They had all lost you. But even that which should have been a comfort, a sort of kinship in the grief, meant nothing. Simon didn’t give a singular fuck. He turned away from Johnny mid-speech, leaving the Scotsman to sit in his grief alone as he watched Ghost disappear into the aircraft.

____________

It takes every ounce of strength Ghost has to make it through the flight. To make it through the drive back home. To make it through that door.

Keep it together, soldier. Don’t you dare fucking lose it, Simon Riley. Just a bit longer.

His belongings crash to the floor as the door slams shut behind him. He doesn’t even bother turning on the light, instead using the faint glow of the moonlight through the curtains to guide him to the cabinet.

Ghost pulls the bottle of bourbon from its resting spot, not even bothering with a glass as he pulls off the corked top and takes a hearty swig.

The burn of the liquid is invigorating, filling Ghost with a quiet simmering fire.

He takes another drink. And another.

He walks through the flat in a daze, the amber liquid dulling his senses, sending him even deeper into the haze of his grief.

Ghost finds himself in front of his dresser, staring at the wooden drawers.

Taking another drink, he steels himself as he yanks open the top drawer. Rummaging beneath the pile of socks and t-shirts, Ghost digs out the small velvet box. He grips it tight in his hand, the small object groaning in protest as waves of rage and pain overtake Ghost, threatening to pull him under. Hot tears slide down his face, but he doesn’t even notice.

With a roar he throws the velvet box across the room, the impact fracturing the drywall. Ghost’s knees go out from under him and he crashes to the floor, his heart shattering into a thousand pieces. There would be no repairing this. No amount of time could heal this type of heartbreak.

You were dead.

And as far as Ghost was concerned, Simon Riley died with you.

#y'all I'm so sorry this one HURT #simon riley #simon ghost riley #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #ghost x reader #ghost x you #simon riley imagine #simon “ghost” riley x reader #ghost call of duty #ghost cod #cod ghost #ghost riley

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f4iryyuiirz · 3 months

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🇹🇭🇪 🇼🇦🇾 🇼🇪 🇸🇭🇴🇼 🇴🇺🇷 🇱🇴🇻🇪 🇹🇴 🇴🇹🇭🇪🇷🇸

synopsis: what i think the main three boy's love languages would be (giving + receiving)

characters: stan, kyle, kenny

date written: 08/02/24

warnings: n/a

stan marsh

giving: quality time + physical affection

i feel like at times stan just wants to give you his undivided attention and not have to focus on the troubles of the world outside. like his dad, his sister, the farm. but all those worries disappear as soon as he can just spend time with you. you guys don’t even have to be doing anything; you could just be cuddling in silence, and he would still be comforted by knowing you’re still with him, and he can give you every ounce of the love he has for you. he also loves holding you in his arms after a long day and just listening to you talk or the sound of your breathing. he loves to pepper your face with kisses. he also loves to cuddle, so if you ever feel even a little upset, he’s got you.

receiving: words of affirmation + physical affection

there are days where stan doesn’t even have enough energy to get out of bed in the morning, which are the days where he needs your comfort the most. just hearing even the basic stuff like ‘i love you’ or ‘you are a good person’ would send chills down his spine because he was actually being treated like a human, and not a useless punching bag by his sister or as a walking campaign by his dad. at times, stan is just so used to being alone that he feels uneasy being so close to you, but he really, really doesn't want to let anytime soon, it was too late anyways. he already loved you too much.

kyle broflovski

giving: acts of service + quality time

kyle appreciates any time he has with you, even if it is doing school work together. he never finds the silence to be awkward, and doesn’t feel it necessary to fill the air with words. only sounds are of the pencil kyle is using scratching softly on his notebook and the click-clacking of the laptop kyle let you borrow because you forgot yours at home. which brings me to my next topic, acts of service. imagine you’re in class and you forgot your pencil, don’t worry kyle’s got a spare. you don’t like olives on you pizza? kyle is happy to scrape them off for you. didn’t want to bring a jacket and now you’re about to die of pneumonia? kyle to the rescue, but straight after he’ll give you a long lecture about how he was right and you should have listened to him and brought your jacket. but it's okay because he does that out of love as well.

receiving: words of affirmation + acts of service

kyle can get insecure; sometimes the guy’s words get to him. like the time he got voted the worst looking in the class. that hurt him big time so having you just say something like ‘i like your nose’ or ‘i think your hair is cute’ can make quite the difference. he also doesn’t mind letting you see him without his hat, because he trusts you wouldn’t go out of your way to hurt him and after a while of dating he might even let you touch it. as much as kyle does love doing things for you here and there he also would like the same done for him. he likes the idea of knowing you care about him and his feelings just as much as he cares about you. if he’s sick, he knows he can trust you to take notes for him so he can copy them or you could bring him some soup. it could be anything even if it’s small he doesn’t care. as long as he knows you care.

kenny mccormick

giving: physical affection + acts of service

now, we all know kenny is a very physical person, who loves rather sensual physical things but he also loves to just cuddle you after a bad day or just holding hands. he also loves kissing you, wether or not that leads to something more is up to you. he is also pretty cool with pda, as long as you’re comfortable of course. he gets handsy too; he might slip his hand in your back pocket or he’ll gently scratches your back and run his fingers through your hair, caressing your cheeks. He could also would wrap him and you in his parka while just rubbing your back.

speaking of his parka, he let’s you borrow it if you get cold. but before he does he would drown it in the cologne he ‘borrowed’ from stan. he would also get you flowers that reminded him of you from the park. since kenny doesn’t have alot of money and he would want to spoil you if he did, acts of service is the next best thing for him as he can still treat you the way you deserve to be treated. he could take out the trash for you if he saw that you didn’t like doing it or taking care of you when you’re sick even if he gets sick because he’s more worried about you. when he gathers a few bucks, he might even buy you a energy bar with chocolate in it. but whatever he does or gets for you just know that he does it with all the love in his heart for you and just you.

receiving: physical affection + gift giving

as much as kenny loves kissing you and touching you, he loves knowing that you actually like doing those things even more. kenny just wants the same he gives out. he’s pretty touch starved, even just a simple kiss on the cheek is enough to make his day. he also loves being held and kissed and cuddled just as he does to you. he gets pretty clingy because he gets lonely, the only people he has to talk to at home is karen. his parents are out drinking and his brother is doing only god knows what in his room with his friends. kenny wants to feel loved, and wants to feel like he's in a loving relationship with someone who truly cares for him. he wants to be held and kissed, and to feel like he's actually important to someone.

kenny might not have money, but he appreciates the small things. seeing you spend money on him and being excited to give him anything you buy makes him happy. he understands the value of everything and appreciates it. and it doesn’t even have to be things you bought, it could be something you made specifically for him, especially if it involves cooking, like homemade cookies or cakes or something more personal, like a picture or drawing. he isn’t really picky, but he is very grateful to have someone like you in his life and just hopes you feel the same about him.

a/n: it took me 3 days to write this but i can’t tell if it’s shitty or not.

#south park hcs #south park x reader #stan marsh x reader #kyle broflovski x reader #kenny mcormick x reader #south park #writing #my writing #x reader #gender neutral reader #stan marsh #kyle broflovski #kenny mccormick #marjorineirlwrites #chayungwrites #love language

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aoioozora · 2 months

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Simon.

Part 4

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9

Character: Simon Riley / Ghost Content: Biker! Ghost x Fem! Reader, strangers to lovers, fluff, civilian au

Note: Longer chapter! Hope you'll enjoy it. anyway, if anyone knows who the artist of this art below is, please let me know. I find it all on Pinterest and I can't seem to trace the artist 🥲.

The steady, bubbling stream of cold tap water hitting Simon's warm, weary, grimy hands as he washed them was a respite from the busyness of the day.

He was, by profession, a car mechanic in the servicing department for a glitzy car brand. The day was booked to the brim with cars that needed maintenance and repair from accidents, and it was enough work for him to feel a dull ache in his shoulders, and a tremble in his hands as he lathered them generously with soap.

A weary sigh tried to escape his lips, only to be hindered by the mask he wore day in and day out. He felt his own warm breath against his mouth and cringed; an unwelcome feeling after working in the sweltering garage.

When he found that he was all alone in the loo, he took the opportunity to take off his mask, actually and properly sigh, and wash his face. He quickly wiped it down with a handkerchief, and not allowing a moment for his skin to breathe, he put the mask back on.

A phone call came in as he was stepping out. It was her. He found it a little odd to get a call from her, as the two mostly texted.

“Maybe it's something urgent,” thought Simon, now stopping by the door of the restroom.

“Hey, you alright, love?” he asked as soon as he picked up.

“I'm fine, Simon, but I kinda have an emergency.” Her voice came from the other end, sounding a little frantic, making him worry a little.

“What's up?”

“My car broke down, and I don't know what it is. I have the bonnet open and everything looks so confusing.”

“Where are you now?”

She told him.

“Okay, you wait there. I'll be there in,” he looked at his watch, “twenty minutes… Or as fast as I can.”

“Thanks, Simon,” she exhaled her relief.

“Are you with someone?”

“No, I'm alone.”

Simon's jaw tightened. “Make sure you sit inside the car and lock the doors. It's getting dark and it could get dangerous.”

“Got it.”

The call soon ended and Simon quickly changed out of his uniform to his normal clothes which consisted of a v-neck t-shirt, jeans, and his staple: the leather jacket. Having taken all his stuff, he clocked out and immediately mounted his motorcycle to fly over to your rescue.

Seeing that the sun had set already, he went faster. He reached her in fifteen minutes. Upon spotting her car parked by the side of the road away from the traffic, he slowed down and parked his motorcycle in front of her car.

He saw the bonnet of the car slightly open, and was upset by it. “She's practically advertising to the world that her car's broken down. That could get more attention drawn to her,” he thought as he kicked out the stand and swung his leg over the motorcycle, now laying a heavy step on the asphalt.

The stench of rotten eggs filled the air, and he already knew what the problem was. While he took off his helmet, he watched as she quickly opened your door and came out of the car to greet him.

“Oh good, you're finally here,” she smiled, looking relieved.

“Tell me what's going on,” Simon got down to business immediately, now taking off his black leather gloves that had printed on them the bones of the hand and stuffing them in his pocket.

She led him to the open bonnet of the car, and the stench overwhelmed his nose even through the mask. She told him about a sputtering engine.

“Did you see any dashboard signs telling you to check the engine?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Can you sit inside and turn on the radio for me? And turn on the headlights too,” Simon instructed.

She did as told. The radio didn't turn on, and the headlights were dim. He turned to the open bonnet and stared particularly at the battery. One of the connectors and pipes was caked with a teal powder; he called her out of the car, pointing out the discovery.

“Your battery is leaking out acid, bringing out all this bloody minging smell,” he said, brushing a bit of the teal powder with his finger. “Leaking battery and a stench means you have to get a new battery.” He now rubbed the powder off and put his hands on his hips, asking, “When was the last time you had the battery changed?”

“Six years ago? When I bought the car.”

Simon was appalled by how nonchalantly she said it. He shook his head and exclaimed, “Six years? You cannot be serious.” he could feel his mechanic heart breaking at the sound of such neglect. “Your battery is ancient. The maximum life of this thing is six years.”

She could feel the heat rush to her cheeks in embarrassment as he said this. “I didn't know that. I'm not good with cars, you know. I just rolled with whatever the mechanics in the service center did.”

“Fucking hell,” Simon sighed, exasperated as he looked at the battery again. “Looks like the service center mechanics weren't doing a very good job,” he shook his head again. “Batteries dying of old age are common, but this looks absolutely nasty. Almost looks like it's been neglected. You've been duped!” He said with passion.

Her eyebrows furrowed at this and funnily enough, she couldn't help but feel like she was on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares with a blond Englishman scolding her; the only difference being that a failing car was involved and not a failing kitchen.

He glanced at her, and saw that she had her arms crossed as she looked at the open bonnet of the car with a guilty and helpless look on her face. Simon's eyes softened with compassion and he gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“I'll call someone to tow the car to a better service center. I know a good one,” he said, hoping to assure her, “If we can get there now, they can fix in a new battery for you.”

Without waiting for an answer from her, he immediately called a towing company for the car, and then the service center to give them a heads up that he was bringing a car in. He even managed to bag a discount!

She watched with amazement as he made all these phone calls, words flying out like a hurricane as he paced about the pavement, hand on his hip. The more passionate he seemed about wanting to help, the more the guilt and embarrassment pressed in her heart.

When all the phone calls were done, he let out a heavy sigh as he slipped the device back in his jeans. “Right then,” he said, “I've got you all covered. Now we wait.”

She nodded and watched him curiously for a moment before asking, “You know all those people?”

“Yeah, all friends of mine. I'm a regular at the service center for my motorcycle. As for the towing company, the boss is a friend of a friend.”

“Must be great to have a lot of connections, huh?”

Simon nodded. “I've always tried to have as many connections as possible because someone once told me that it's not about what you know, but who you know.”

She saw a solemn, distant, and thoughtful look pass through his eyes for a split second, as if thinking of a past memory. It was quickly replaced with annoyance. “It's too fucking hot here,” he hissed as he peeled off his leather jacket.

This action gave her the opportunity to see him in a short sleeved shirt, which displayed his pale yet muscular arms, which clearly were built strong out of continuous use and not for a mere decoration. The entirety of his left arm was inked with intricate black tattoos, all the designs of skulls, roses, and guns fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. It was understatement to say that she felt her ovaries explode at the sight.

Simon was intentional when he took off his jacket, although it was true that he did feel hot. A glance at her told him that she didn't seem to take notice of his muscles or his tattoos, a disappointment to him. But he wasn't keen enough to catch her quick, stealthy glances at his arms as her thoughts ran wild again in trying to be superfluous in her descriptions of them.

She couldn't help but think to herself that, “He'd make the perfect mysterious male lead of a dark romance.”

The tow truck arrived and before she knew it, she was Simon's passenger on his motorcycle, entrusted with his leather jacket. The two led the truck to the service center, and all the while, she was pressed against his warm back, highly conscious of the fact that the barrier between his back and her face was just a thin t-shirt and not a thick leather jacket like the first.

Her authorly brain couldn't help but turn this into a sort of metaphor. Was it a thinning of the barriers between him and her, now that they've been friends for over a month?

“Let's not overanalyze this, shall we?” she reminded herself, gently squeezing her arms around him as he sped down the roads, trying to ignore how she could feel the contours of his body under the thin fabric.

Fixing the car took a couple tedious hours, but Simon made sure to be with his friend throughout, explaining to her in excruciating detail whatever he could about the functioning of a car so that she would not be duped again. She appreciated his lectures and listened attentively, even though he wasn't the best at explaining things.

At the end of it all, the two sat down in her newly fixed car for some cold soda that she bought for him. The air conditioning was running well (Simon was relieved), and so was the radio, which was now tuned to a station softly playing some old timey American songs in the background.

“You were a great help,” she said as she cracked open the tab of the can as Simon did.

“My pleasure, love,” he raised his can and tapped it gently with her can. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” she grinned, and then paused to look at him, wondering if he would remove his mask, as he had never done so in front of her before.

Simon found himself in a bit of a predicament as he stared at his can of soda. He was usually more mindful of his mask when he was with strangers and acquaintances, but with the fuss of the car and all his chatting with her, he completely forgot that drinking soda would have to make him take off the mask.

Would he remove his mask when he didn't yet want to, even though he wanted to share this drink with her? He glanced back at her and found her silently drinking her soda and staring ahead, pretending not to notice his mental debate.

Gaz's reprimand came to mind again, “You're telling me you'll let a scar– a scar, of all things, hinder your chances at finding a girlfriend.”

He wasn't wrong. Now that Simon thought of it, the sooner he showed his marred face to her, the lesser it would hurt if she rejected him.

“Don't overthink it,” he told himself as he slipped his finger under the ear loop of his mask and pulled it over his ear, making the mask slip off to reveal the lower part of his face. He sat back, casually as he could, and took off the other ear loop so wouldn't awkwardly dangle from his other ear, all the while trying to ignore how naked he felt without the covering.

“Soda's pretty good, isn't it?” she asked, turning to look at him.

“Hm, yes,” he answered in a murmur, now taking the first sip of his soda and pulling away the can for her to finally look at his face.

He saw her looking, and his heart rate spiked and cheeks flushed (thank heavens it was dark), waiting for a reaction from her.

She finally had the privilege of seeing his face, and in a split second, she tried to make the most of it. His face as a whole was beautiful, pleasing to the eye. He had a rectangular face, high and prominent cheekbones; a long, sharp nose, thin lips, and a light stubble across his jaw and cheeks.

He squirmed slightly in his seat and looked away, taking another sip. Seeing that he was uncomfortable being looked at, she too looked away, now feeling shy that she was in the presence of such a gorgeous man. Why on earth did he cover his face was a mystery to her.

She began, her voice unwittingly rising to a higher pitch, “Seriously though, I don't know how I went years without having anyone to consult me about cars.”

Simon blinked in surprise that she didn't make any comments on his face after looking at him, and wasn't sure whether to consider it a good thing or a bad thing. He decided to worry about it later.

“Not a single person?” he asked, instinctively and slightly leaning towards her as she spoke.

“Not one.”

“And did you never notice any problems with the car before we took it to be fixed today?”

“I did, and I wheeled the car off to the service center many times only to be shut down saying that it wasn't a big deal and it would resolve itself,” she shrugged.

“They said that? Fucking twats they all are,” said he with a low grumble.

“Unfortunately,” she shrugged again, watching how his lips curled upwards into a sneer of displeasure and how his nose crinkled along with it.

“Tell you what, darling,” Simon shifted in his seat slightly and held out his can-holding hand at her, flicking out his pointer finger to make a point, “you don't need to worry about those bastards when you got me, yeah? If you got any car problems, I'll fix them for you.”

He saw her eyes soften at this proposal, but she glanced away for a moment, as if considering it with some hesitation. He knew her just enough to know that she had trouble accepting help when she needed it. Without waiting for an answer, he pressed gently to encourage her,

“You know I'm a car mechanic, and a fucking good one too.” He sat back in the seat, now drowning the last of his soda. “You won't have to call anyone else when you have me. Just hit me up, and I'll be there…” he paused to meet her eye, hoping to let her know he was completely serious, “... Just like tonight.”

This didn't fail to cause a flutter in her chest. She smiled, genuinely warmed and touched by how eager he was to help. “Thanks, Simon.”

His cheeks raised up to his eyes as he smiled, and the lady was taken in by how sweet it was. Their eyes met again, and the two felt an undeniable tension in the air; sparks flying around them, ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

The soft yellow headlights of a passing vehicle shone into the car, momentarily brightening up his pale face and his deep brown eyes into soft pools of honey. The light, for a brief moment, also revealed a prominent scar on his cheek, something that the earlier darkness hid from her sight.

Yet again did her authorly brain try to turn this moment into a metaphor. Was this gentle flash of passing light meant to shine upon a part of him behind his dark veil, his mask of mystery, to reveal bright, affectionate eyes, and a curious yet faint scar? Could this have been a sign of their ever growing closeness?

As the light passed, his honey eyes darkened again; they narrowed slightly and he leaned forward just a little, his breathing laboured, as if he wanted to say something. The lady squirmed in her seat and felt her chest tighten as she silently watched him, unable to look away.

“I was wondering…” he began, now pausing to inhale, “if we could hang out any time soon, just both of us,” he said, trying to sound as casual as he could, and he quickly added, “I'm about to finish your novel, Firefly Trails, and I was hoping we could talk more about it…” he paused, feeling his entire body grow warm with nervous anticipation, “And maybe you could suggest some more books I could read.”

Her eyes lit up at this invitation. “Sure! I'd love to. When are you free?”

“I'm free this weekend.”

“Alright, that sounds good.” she grinned.

Simon was relieved to hear the eagerness in her voice, and took it that she still wanted something to do with him. The two went on to decide the particulars of the hangout for a while, until a phone call interrupted. Simon pulled out his phone and sighed when he saw who was calling.

“What do you want, Johnny?”

“Where are ye? Ye were s'posed to be at the gym thirty minutes ago. I'm waiting!” complained Johnny.

“Ah, blimey,” Simon shook his head, “Completely forgot. ____ had some car trouble so I went to help her out.”

Simon was met with teasing jeers from his friend, making him groan. “Wheesht!” Simon hissed, only for it to make Johnny cackle. “Look, I'll be right there. Give me…” he looked at his watch, “Fifteen minutes.”

“Make it quick lad, or you'll get a bollocking from me.”

“Fuck off now. You'll delay me.”

The call ended and Simon looked at her, sighing. “Gotta go,” he said.

A subtle pout pushed out her lower lip. “Too bad, and we were just starting to get into our planning too.”

He chuckled, feeling warmed by her sentiment. “Yeah, but don't worry darling, we have the entire week ahead of us to plan comfortably, yeah?”

She nodded, smiling.

“Right then,” he slapped his knees, “I'll see you around then, alright? You take care on your way back.”

“You too, Simon.”

He sighed, pausing for a moment to take in the way she said his name. He never wanted to admit it to her, but he loved every instance she uttered it. The way she'd drag out the first syllable a little, and look at him with those gorgeous, killer eyes of hers as she did; it was enough for a man of his size and strength to melt like a little cube of ice in the palm of her hand. A simple action, yet it riled him up enough to want to kiss the living hell out of her.

He inhaled, trying to get every carnal urge under control. “Text me when you reach, alright?” he said in a mildly strained voice.

“Sure, will do.” she nodded.

That being said and good-night's exchanged, Simon quickly put his mask back on, got out of the car, and threw the empty can in a bin. She watched as he made his way to his waiting motorcycle, observing his gait, the way his hips, shoulders, and arms moved in clockwork, relaxed but determined. She found herself leaning against the steering wheel again to stare at the way he hoisted up his leg and swung it in a smooth sweep over his motorcycle, and then settled down on the vehicle, making the shock absorbers bounce back slightly against his weight.

She gazed with interest as he put on his gloves and then grabbed the helmet, only to raise his chin up to let gravity comb his gorgeous blond hair down so that it stayed out of his way as he put the headgear. His biceps flexed and tightened against the short sleeve of his t-shirt, and even from a little distance away, she could see how his tattoos moved against the contours of his muscles like ocean waves.

He looked back at her and caught her staring. At the sight of her relentless gaze, all he could hear in his head was Gaz telling him to shoot his shot. Her smiles, her acceptance to meet again were, and especially her stating were all massive green lights for him, yet he was still in partial disbelief.

Meeting her eyes again gave him a jolt down his spine, and waved one last time before he left. She smiled sheepishly and waved back at him, blushing at the fact that she was caught.

He rode off, leaving her the echo of the roar of the engine, and she sat back in her driver's seat, finishing the last sips of the lukewarm soda in her hand that she completely forgot about. His figure receded in the distance and she remembered the first time she met him.

“He's been saving me since back then.” she chuckled to herself, feeling a little ashamed at how helpless she found herself to be. But she was more than grateful for his help, and for the fact that he never complained and was so eager to assist her. It was the third time he helped her out, and it was almost as if he'd come running back all over again if she called.

He certainly lived up to his name.

And then there was his face. She allowed her mind to wander as she thought of his rugged, masculine features; she didn't know what to expect, but it was certainly unexpected to find such a handsome man hiding under that mask. She could make out only a little in the partial darkness, of his rectangular face and sturdy, stubble-speckled jaw, and of the slope of his shapely, sharp nose. She sighed, suddenly longing to study his face in proper light, and perhaps get lost in his honey eyes.

Shaking off her thoughts, she reached to her backpack in the backseat for her phone, and found that Simon had left his leather jacket in the back when they had sat down in the front to drink their sodas.

“Better send him a text.” she thought to herself as she informed him.

That being done, she kept the phone aside and took the jacket to inspect it. It was obvious that it was made of faux leather, but it was smooth to touch. The lining inside was tartan patterned with dark green and blue, which seemed an odd choice for lining, but she wasn't one to judge. She held the garment against her torso, and as she expected, it was huge.

“Let's not get creepy with it, shall we?” she reminded herself, now keeping the jacket on her lap as she got the engine running again.

She drove back home with the jacket, repeatedly telling herself to not be creepy with it, only for her to immediately try it on as soon as she stepped in.

“It's so comfortable!” she exclaimed as she felt the loose jacket sag around her body and her arms. She stuffed her hands in the pockets and found that they were massive. “Unbelievable... they make men's clothes so much better.”

She pulled away the front of the jacket to feel the tartan lining, and it felt like touching a thick blanket. The jacket was perfect for a cold winter and for the rains that had been pouring lately.

She pulled it closer against herself, and the lingering scent of his perfume wafted to her nose. It was the same smell of a damp rainforest and dark chocolate, the scent of which immediately took her back to the day she met him.

"Is this what it would feel like to hug him?" she wondered, feeling her cheeks flush warm as she thought of the prospect of being held in those finely sculpted arms.

Her phone chimed, indicating a message.

Simon Riley Biker: sorry about that, can u keep the jacket with u until we meet again?

Simon Riley Biker: also have u reached?

She smiled and started typing her reply.

Author Girl: Sure!

Author Girl: And yes I did just now

Simon Riley Biker: right then, I'll catch you soon, ok? At the gym rn

Author Girl: okay! Have a good workout :)

Simon Riley Biker: thanks darling

On the other side of the phone, Simon was seated in the gym locker rooms by himself, phone in hand, thumbs dancing over the screen up and down as he wondered what he should type next. As he did, a new message came in.

Author Girl: thanks again for helping me out with the car. You saved me yet again

He chuckled at and started typing, the smile not leaving his half covered face.

Simon Riley Biker: my pleasure, don't worry about it. U can call me again if you have car problems

Author Girl: you're too kind 😂 but thanks a lot again

Simon Riley Biker: anytime darling

Author Girl: alright then, I'm gonna get some sleep. Good night!

Simon paused, feeling his heart rate increase for a moment as he thought of something he wanted to do. Swallowing down his nervousness, he did it anyway.

Simon Riley Biker: [audio: 0:03 seconds]

He never sent an audio message to her before, and wondering what he could have sent, held the phone speakers to her ear and played it.

“Good night, love,” came the crisp, clear audio recording in her ear. His normally gruff voice sounded subdued and gentle, smooth, almost oozing with a soft, subtle hint of adoration, especially at the endearment.

The lady was left stunned, mouth hanging open slightly and her feet affixed to the floor, unable to believe for a moment what she just heard. Butterflies and tingles swarmed every inch of her body, and her cheeks flushed yet again. She played it again. And again. And again.

Simon, in the meantime, worried about her lack of response, wondering if he was too bold in sending her a voice message. He finally saw that she was typing, and she sure did take a while to collect her thoughts to write a coherent and absolutely calm reply in the form of:

Author Girl: good night, Simon :)

The conversation ended there, and he breathed a sigh of relief. So far so good. Standing up, he slipped his phone in his pocket and left to get to his workout done with Johnny, unable to stop thinking of her and her smiles.

In the meantime, she stepped into the bathroom for her night routine. Her thoughts too were filled to the brim with Simon while she bathed and did her simple skin care routine all on autopilot. Every other thing that happened during the day was completely overridden just by the presence of that biker, his voice, his warm gaze upon her, his smile, his face.

She couldn't shake off the feeling, especially of his voice message in her thoughts that played like a broken vinyl record. She was sure that every single interaction she had with him would make it into her next book in some form or other.

She slipped into her nightwear and then hung his jacket on the coat hook in the corner of her room, resisting the temptation to cuddle with the garment. She finally tucked herself in bed, surrounded by her cushions and plush animals. As soon as the night lamp was switched off and she had nearly sunk in and molded comfortably into her bed and pillows, she played the recording again, the cherry on top to end the long day.

“Good night, love.”

It felt like a kiss to the forehead.

End of Part 4.

Part 5

141 notes · View notes

hunnismokah · 5 months

Text

hi here’s a soft zoro thought that has been occupying my mind for a WHILE.

you and the strawhats on a mission attending a ball. you need to get very important documents from the man hosting it, and its your mission to seduce him to make him take you to his study to show you the location of the papers.

robin playing in the orchestra keeping an eye out, luffy and usopp as service staff, nami as a maid, sanji in the kitchen.

you’re disguised as a bachelorette attending the ball, along with zoro, who was put there to protect you.

he looks so different.. he showered and cleaned up so nicely.. hair pushed back with strands framing his face so beautifully. high waisted suit trousers, accompanied by a loose blouse tucked into it with the buttons half buttoned because he claims he “couldn’t breathe properly”. clean and shiny earrings sparkling and reflecting on his face that’s decorated so prettily by his scar. and is that… cologne you can smell on him?

“.. robin helped me pick it out..” he mumbles when he noticed you sniffing. you nod. you both standing right outside the mansion ready to go in.

you find the man you need to get close to, and start talking to him. zoro scoffs, it’s rather strange seeing you like this.. hair done and laid so beautiful, showing your back like this.. in that dress.. and fanning yourself so modestly with that hand fan. this poor guy is really falling for it. who can blame him? that corset really does a number on you, and your tits spilling out like that.. jesus.

but the man gets rather weird, touching you where you’re uncomfortable being touched. not enough for you to say something, but enough for you to understand his intentions. just when you clear your throat to say something you hear a voice interrupt you two.

“may i steal this lady for a dance?”

you blink, completely in awe of how well zoro adjusts himself in this role. is he really bowing in front of you? his eye so.. soft, eyebrows raised as if your answer is not crystal clear. his hand extended for you to put yours in, and you eagerly oblige, bowing slightly to the man and saying goodbye as zoro leads you to the dance floor.

“zoro… us and dancing? we’re gonna blow our cov-“”brook showed me a thing or two… don’t worry”

you sigh, your chest rising with your breath as you try to get some air despite the chest prison sitting so snug on your body. if you wouldn’t have closed your eyes you would see zoro glancing down just to immediately revert his gaze.

“you know.. you didn’t have to come to my rescue, i was fine on my own” you whisper as he rest his hand on your back, a bit shaky and unsure still.

“i’m here to keep you safe, just following orders..” he mumbles.

“well i was getting ready to stomp my heel into his foot if he tried something..”

zoro chuckles, looking back at the man who’s so obviously jealous. he’s glaring holes into zoro’s face, but that doesn’t stop the swordsman from grinning ear to ear. the hand on your back pressing you harder against him as he kept eye contact with the man. he whispers in your ear.

“atta girl.”

#BEFORE ANYONE ASKS YES I AM DRAWINF THIS AND YES THIS WILL BE THE ONLY TGING IM GONAN TALK ABOUT #ZORO #zoro x reader #one piece

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delta-pavonis · 3 months

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Ooh, from the wip game: former mafia hob :D

I know I have posted bits and pieces of this in various places on Tumblr and Discord, but below is probably the largest segment of the WIP I have ever posted at once. And this is maybe about a quarter of it? It features an OC that I made up and then it turned out I was prescient because in my head Sandro looks pretty much exactly like Ethan from Maneskin. Also, to no one's surprise, this gets NSFW at the end. (WHAT?!? SMUT?!?!?! FROM MEEEE?!?!?!)

"And this guy, this Burgess, just had him locked in a giant glass sphere in his basement!"

"A human? Wouldn't he need air?"

Hob was in an ex-pat bar on the south end of Okinawa, doing a very good job of continuing to live completely off the grid just as he had for the past eight years.

The old man started up again and Hob strained to hear him across the length of the bar. "He just looked like a human. I worked there sixteen years and he didn't age a minute, hell he barely moved. I heard Burgess bragging once about how it was the God of Dreams that he caught! All I know for sure is what I heard directly, which is that Burgess kept asking him for things – magic, money, immortality – and the pale fucker just kept glaring at him. Never spoke a word. Just stared daggers with those unearthly blue eyes. I am telling you, if looks could kill, that old bastard would be dead thirty times over. Whenever that fairy King or whatever the fuck that shaved panther of a human-looking thing is gets out…" The guy whistled, leaning back from the bar and shaking his head. "The entire Burgess family tree is going to burn."

This man had Hob’s full attention now. He grabbed his drink and moved around to sit on the barstool next to him.

"I am sorry, where did you say you are from?" Hob asked, trying for casual, sizing up the ex-military guy. He had a muddled accent, but with a heavy dose of south London. His salt-and-pepper hair had been kept buzzed even though he had clearly been out of the service for a long time.

"What's it to you?" The man was immediately bristly, crossed his arms over his chest. He was defensive and closed off and Hob was going to need to work to get more information. Hob sighed. Or take the easy way out… just pay him for the information.

The Okinawan summer was too hot for this. Hob would give it one shot, try to explain, but if that didn't work it was Plan E for Easy. "I have an interest in the supernatural. And you certainly seem to have seen something. Could I ask you a few more questions?" The old-timer just stared at him, completely deadpan, unblinking. It made Hob take a sip of his whisky with its melted ice and then press the glass to his temple. "I can pay you for your time."

He perked up immediately after that.

> > > > > | | < < < < <

Two days later – and after an exchange of enough money to set that old-timer’s family up for generational wealth – Hob was settling into his Business Class seat on the long haul from Tokyo Haneda to Rome Fiumicino. He tapped out an email telling Gio his flight to Palermo was going to get in at 08:20 and would he be so kind as to send around a car? He needed to stop and see il Barone first (because his knee was bad enough as it was without getting kneecapped for failing to pay his respects) and then straight to the grotta. And make sure the shovel is in the car? Grazii.

It was his Stranger. It had to be. The description was uncanny. And the quick sketch Hob had drawn on a bar napkin had resulted in a rather emphatic positive identification.

And even if it wasn’t his Stranger, there was something being kept in that basement that probably needed rescue. There were paltry few things in the world, as Hob had learned over the centuries, that deserved to have their freedom completely taken from them.

Almost 22 hours after sending that email to Gio, Hob stepped out into the salty Mediterranean air of Palermo and sighed. His white linen three-piece suit with light blue shirt fit the aesthetic of the region as much as the weather. The smells, the breeze, the sounds – yeah, okay, Hob had missed it. But this was no time to linger. Focus, Hob! First, he had to give his regards to Salvatore and then he could go dig up his stash from his time in the Family Business. He put on his hat and dark sunglasses and walked out into the sunlight.

In the aftermath of 1889 Hob had, unsurprisingly, a lot of anger and frustration to work out. He ended up falling back on a reliable skill set he hadn't tapped in awhile: violence.

It was bare knuckle boxing first, which earned him enough money to leave for the States without disturbing his securities in the UK. He continued with underground boxing for a bit, because he was fucking good at it, until he got noticed.

Hob got picked up by Giuseppe “the Clutch Hand” Morello and Ignazio “the Wolf” Lupo and the rest was history.

First they took him in as a base-level associate, just another meatheaded guy who could fuck people up for them. And he made it to the Castellammarese War, which was as good a time as any to fake his own death.

But, by pure happenstance and a whole lot of luck, Salvatore D’Aquila caught him in the act, pig's blood everywhere, mutilated body that clearly wasn't Hob at his feet and well. That had required a bit of explaining. Explaining lead to talking, talking lead to negotiating, and suddenly Hob was heading upstate to train with the best.

And so it was, with some excellent mentorship on handling firearms and his innate knack for getting himself out of trouble, Hob became one of the most feared associates in Cosa Nostra.

In fact, he became The Associate.

See, he was never going to be a made man; he didn't have the proof of a Sicilian, or even Italian, heritage that he needed to be a ranking Family member. But any capo worth his salt wasn't going to turn away this level of skill and finesse.

And in return they had kept his secret. Mostly because they knew they had given him the means to kill them all if it was otherwise.

Well, it wasn’t like the entire Family knew. Just Salvatore and his immediate blood relations. Who he needed to stop and say hello to first, then to business.

Once the meeting was done, he headed to the coast.

When Hob left the Family Business he had literally put all of his gear into an air-tight oak box and buried it. One of the things Hob had learned over the centuries was that, more often than not, symbolism mattered. So it wasn't a surprise to find that when Hob opened the wooden box with a crowbar it was like seeing good friends come back from the dead. His shotgun. His sabre. His pistols.

He buried these along with his career in Cosa Nostra in 1998. It should have been earlier, but the six or so years after 1989 were a bit of an alcohol and cocaine tinted haze and it took him another three years after getting sober to work on his exit strategy. But once he was out he had abandoned it all and never looked back.

In fact, it was only in the past few months that Hob had let himself pick up a gun again to do some target shooting. Suddenly he was very glad of that coincidence.

After filling his duffle Hob stared down into the empty casket of his former life. He had never, ever expected to be in this position again, most certainly not less than a decade after abandoning it.

Crouched amongst the sand and the rocks of the beachfront cave, he ran a hand through his sweaty hair and sighed. "The things I do for you, Stranger." He closed the lid.

"Ti Umbra?" Sandro had been watching Hob silently up until now. Even as a little kid, Alessandro had called the thing that haunted Hob his Shadow. He was an eerily perceptive child, often ostracized from his peers because of it – which of course meant that when Hob had arrived in Sicily in the early 1980s they had become easy friends. Now in his early 30s, Sandro was mostly a driver, but knew his way around a weapon, as any son of a Don should. Hob had hoped he would leave, go to college, get out, but Hob never did convince him to. He was a good kid, he didn't deserve this kind of life.

"Si." Hob put his hands on his knees and levered himself up. "I think that he needs my help." A sigh as he kept staring at the box. "Am I that obvious?"

"Only to me, Bettino." The nickname had come from the diminutive of the diminutive of Roberto, which Sandro’s family knew Hob as. It was an endearment used only between them. "Only He could bring you back to this, to the Family." Hob felt the other man's hand on his shoulder and laid his own over it. The feel of those fingers was achingly familiar. "Let me come with you. You should not go on the rampage you are about to embark on alone, my friend."

Hob picked up Sandro's hand, placed a kiss on the knuckles. "Not a chance. I won't put you in such danger. And I won't let you see me like that." Alessandro hadn’t even been born yet when the Associate was working hardest, in the heydays of Murder, Inc., and all that entailed, when Hob rarely had a night when he wasn’t washing the gunpowder from his hands.

Sandro laughed. "I have seen you every other way, why not this one?" His arms went around Hob's shoulders from behind and he moved his lips to the shell of Hob's ear before dropping into Sicilian. "One more go at it? For old time's sake? Last chance to use me as His stand-in." He laughed even more at Hob's sharp inhale. "You think I didn't know? Oh, Bettino." He nuzzled into the hair at Hob’s nape. "That's how I was able to pretend you really loved me."

"Sandro!" Hob pushed away and whirled around, looking over his former lover’s dark hair and olive-bronze skin, high cheekbones and pouting pink lips, wiry build and black-brown eyes. Not wanting to misspeak, he answered back in English. "I did – and still do – really love you, you know that."

"Yes, but not as you love Him." Sandro shook his head as he moved in to press their foreheads together, arms back around Hob's shoulders. "You would not come back to the Family for me. You would not go to war for me. And that is okay. I know my place. I made my peace with that years ago, when you left." He leaned in to speak against Hob's lips. "But I would ask if you would have me one last time."

Hob let Sandro pull him to the ground amongst the rocks inside the small cave. Hob's shirt and vest were already discarded, his sleeves rolled up and his collar unbuttoned. He unbuttoned Sandro's shirt and pulled it down so it caught in his elbows, draped down his back low enough for Hob to run his lips over the huge tattoo of Santa Rusulia – Patron Saint of Palermo, invoked for protection in times of plague – wearing a crown of roses and standing amidst a copse of lilies outside a cave not so different from the one they are currently in, looking out to the sun setting over the sea, that covered his entire back. Hob drew that image, originally charcoal on paper, while they were sitting on the beach watching the sun set on Sandro's 19th birthday in the early ‘90s. He didn't know that Sandro had even saved the picture until a shootout a year later had Hob ripping off the young man’s shirt to stop the bleeding and found the image permanently inked into his skin.

Sandro knew more about Hob than anyone living. They had spent four years as lovers in the mid-'90s. Hob had gotten sober for Sandro. He had left Cosa Nostra for Sandro, had begged for Sandro to come with him. But he was too scared of his father, Salvatore “the Baron,” to leave. He was worried about the fate of his mother, his sisters. Hob couldn’t begrudge him that. It still stung.

Hob shucked Sandro's pants down his thighs and moved his hand around to his ass, thinking that he would tease him dry before trying to find something slick back in the car. Instead, Hob's fingers found warm, flat silicone. He slumped forward with a moan and his forehead hit between Sandro's shoulder blades. "Oh fuck, Sandro. You have been full with this the entire time?"

"Ready for you, Bettino." He sighed, soft and sweet as candy. He let out a high-pitched cry as Hob slowly pulled the plug out and Christ it was huge Hob would be able to just…

There was a thmpt as the silicone object hit the dense sand a few feet away, flung aside as Hob frantically tried to get his slacks down as quickly as possible. As soon as his cock was free Sandro's hands were reaching back to grab it, lubricant that the horny little weasel must have been carrying in his bloody pocket smeared all over his fingers, readying Hob to just…

Sandro sat back and Hob slid into him to the hilt, all in one stroke, easy as breathing, smooth and perfect.

They stayed that way for a long moment, readjusting to each other. The first movement was Hob's hands stroking from Sandro's thighs up to his chest then pressing them together. When they started rocking Sandro let his head fall back with a sob.

"Did you keep your hair long for me, too?" Hob wrapped the waist-length ponytail around his fist and tugged. It made Sandro moan just as sweetly as it had all those years ago. "That's it, sing for me, bell'uccellino." He snapped his hips up and Sandro wailed; he always was such a vocal lover, his pretty bird.

#yes another mafia AU #in this one Hob is still canon immortal and Dream is still King of Dreams and Nightmares #fishbowl rescue fic #Dreamling #Pavonis writes

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mariacallous · 7 months

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“Did Israel Avert a Hamas Massacre?” That was the question posed by the headline of a Vanity Fair exposé published in October 2014. The investigative report laid out a sophisticated plot by the Islamist terror group to kill and kidnap Israelis on the Gaza border. The plan: to use underground tunnels to infiltrate nearby civilian enclaves on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, when the communities would be at their most vulnerable. As one intelligence source put it, the operation had two goals: “First, get in and massacre people in a village. Pull off something they could show on television. Second, the ability to kidnap soldiers and civilians using the tunnels would give them a great bargaining chip.” The Israel Defense Forces subsequently confirmed this reporting to other media outlets, but not the specific date.

The tunnels were real. But at the time the massacre-that-wasn’t received little additional media coverage. It seemed too cinematic and convenient. Maybe it was a Hamas pipe dream that was never operational. Or maybe it was a worst-case scenario concocted by the Israeli security services and leaked to the media to justify their own ever-expanding countermeasures. Years passed without a mass border incursion, the tunnels were gradually detected and blocked, and I came to the conclusion that the skeptics were right about the plot being too lurid even for Hamas.

I was wrong. Last week, Hamas executed something quite like the attack on the Gaza border that it had planned all those years ago. Instead of tunneling underground on Rosh Hashanah, it invaded aboveground on another Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah. Some 1,500 terrorists stormed nearby civilian communities by land, air, and sea. They murdered babies in their cribs, parents in front of their children, and children in front of their parents. They burned entire families alive. They decapitated and mutilated their victims. They wore body cameras and documented their destruction as though it were a video game. They executed a grandmother in her home and uploaded the snuff film to her Facebook page. They deliberately targeted elementary schools. They kidnapped toddlers and a Holocaust survivor. They paraded a battered, naked woman through the streets of Gaza like a trophy. All told, they murdered more than 1,300 Israelis, almost all civilians, and abducted some 150 others, including babies and the elderly. The death toll continues to rise as rescue workers recover more remains and reassemble mangled corpses for identification.

Somehow, few saw this eruption of inhumanity coming. Several months ago, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, then the European Union ambassador to the Palestinians, performed what he called Gaza’s first paragliding flight to advocate for a future where “anything is possible in Gaza.” Hamas terrorists would later use paragliders to massacre more than 250 civilians at an Israeli music festival, which is presumably not what the envoy had in mind. And he wasn’t the only one naive about the Hamas regime’s intentions.

The consensus was that Hamas was a mostly rational actor that could be reasoned with. To hawks, although the group was an anti-Semitic Iran proxy, it could be deterred through political and economic incentives, because it felt responsible for the welfare of the Gazan people. To doves, Hamas was a quasi-legitimate national resistance movement whose occasional bouts of violence were simply intended to draw attention to that struggle.

Successive Netanyahu governments and security officials, far less sympathetic to the Gazan plight, nonetheless spent recent years lifting economic restrictions on the enclave, granting thousands of work permits for Gazans, and transferring hundreds of millions of Qatari dollars to Hamas in exchange—they thought—for relative quiet.

But it turned out that Hamas wasn’t being pacified; it was preparing. The group was less committed to national liberation than to Jewish elimination. Its violence was rooted not in strategy, but in sadism. And in retrospect, well before the Rosh Hashanah plot, the signs of Hamas’s atrocious ambitions were all there—many observers just did not want to believe them. What Hamas did was not out of character, but rather the explicit fulfillment of its long-stated objectives. The shocking thing was not just the atrocity itself, but that so many people were shocked by it, because they’d failed to reckon with the reality that had been staring them in the face.

First, there is Hamas’s notorious charter, a Frankensteinian amalgam of the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the modern era—the very same that have motivated numerous white-supremacist attacks in the United States. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” the document opens. “It needs all sincere efforts … until the enemy is vanquished.” The charter goes on to claim that the Jews control “the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” According to Hamas, the Jews were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about,” as well as World War I and World War II. The charter accuses Israel of seeking to take over the entire world, and cites as proof the most influential modern anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian fabrication that purports to expose a global Jewish cabal.

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” Hamas declares in its credo. “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” In case anyone missed the point, the document adds that “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” In 2017, Hamas published a new charter, but pointedly refused to disavow the original one, in a transparent ruse that some respectable observers nonetheless took at face value.

In any case, Hamas communicated its genocidal intentions not just in words, but in deeds. Before it took control of Gaza, the group deliberately targeted Jewish civilians for mass murder, executing scores of suicide bombings against shopping malls, night clubs, restaurants, buses, Passover seders, and many other nonmilitary targets. Today, this killing spree is widely blamed for destroying the credibility of the Israeli peace movement and helping derail the Oslo Accords, precisely as Hamas intended. And it did not stop there. Since the group took power in Gaza, it has launched thousands of rockets indiscriminately at nearby civilian towns—attacks that continue at this very moment and that have boosted the Israeli right in election after election.

Hamas’s anti-Jewish aspirations were evident not only from its treatment of Israelis, but from its treatment of fellow Palestinians. Despite being the putative sovereign in Gaza and responsible for the well-being of its people, Hamas repeatedly cannibalized Gaza’s infrastructure and appropriated international aid to fuel its messianic war machine. The group boasted publicly about digging up Gaza’s pipes and turning them into rockets. It stored weapons in United Nations schools and dug attack tunnels underneath them. (Contrary to what you might have read on social media, Gaza does have underground shelters—they are just used for housing Hamas fighters, smuggling operations, and weapons caches, not protecting civilians.)

When dissenting Gazans attempted to protest this state of affairs and demanded a better future, they were brutally repressed. Hamas has not held elections since 2006. In 2020, when the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman held a two-hour Zoom call with Israeli leftists, Hamas threw him in prison for six months, tortured him, and forced him to divorce his wife. Why? Because his vision of a shared society for Arabs and Jews, however remote, was a threat to the group’s entire worldview. Jews were not to share the land; they were to be cleansed from it.

Simply put, what Hamas did two weekends ago was not a departure from its past, but the natural culmination of its commitments. The question is not why Hamas did what it did, but why so many people were surprised. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, quick to discern anti-Semitism in any effort to merely label Israeli products from West Bank settlements, somehow overlooked the severity of the genocidal threat growing next door. Journalists like me who cover anti-Semitism somehow failed to take Hamas’s overt anti-Jewish ethos as seriously as we should have. Many international leftists, ostensibly committed to equality and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis alike, somehow missed that Hamas did not share that vision, and in fact was actively working to obliterate it.

Today, in the ashes of the worst anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, some analysts have admitted their error of sanitizing Hamas. “It’s a huge mistake that I did, believing that a terror organization can change its DNA,” the former Netanyahu national-security adviser Yaakov Amidror told The New York Times. Others on the left have clung to their tortured conception of Hamas as a rational resistance group, despite it having been falsified by events. Perhaps some fear that acknowledging the true nature of Hamas would undermine the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. But in actuality, it is the refusal to disentangle Hamas’s anti-Jewish sadism from the legitimate cause of Palestinian nationalism that threatens the project and saps its support.

In 1922, The New York Times published its first article about Adolf Hitler. The reporter, Cyril Brown, was aware of his subject’s anti-Jewish animus, but he wasn’t buying it. “Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded,” Brown wrote, “and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers.” Two years later, the Times published another news item on the future architect of the Holocaust: “Hitler Tamed by Prison.” The Austrian activist, the piece said, “looked a much sadder and wiser man,” and “his behavior during his imprisonment convinced the authorities that [he] was no longer to be feared.”

Many got Hamas wrong. But they shouldn’t have. Again and again, people say they intend to murder Jews. And yet, century after century, the world produces new, tortuous justifications for why anti-Jewish bigots don’t really mean what they say—even though they do.

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