#EXIT THE FLY MENTIONED

[rachalixie]

can’t get you off my mind

all good love stories start with a drunk stranger, don’t they?

warnings: mentions of alcohol, fem!reader

genre: fluff, comfort

word count: 4k

it starts at a bar. 

or really, it starts with a man at a bar. one that you’ve seen before in passing, a familiar face in a sea of more familiar faces. someone who you’ll later learn is one third of your best friend changbin’s production team, someone who you should have met years ago probably, someone who you would find is the perfect puzzle piece that fits into your jagged edges.

but right now, he is just a man at a bar with a beer in hand and a ridiculously dopey smile on his face. 

“marry me, please,” he says, absolutely serious but it’s a bit diluted from the way his words were slurred around the edges. “or i’ll have to kidnap you.”

“excuse me?” you raise a brow at him, his image swimming a bit as you turn your head to fully take him in. you’re not drunk, but youre a couple glasses of wine deep and you’re not known for being fully articulate whilst sober anyways. 

“i swear i’m going to marry you,” he says, eyes wide as he looks at you. “you might be the most perfect person i’ve ever seen.”

you’re not overly fond of men you haven’t met hitting on you, but this one seems a bit harmless. if you ignored the part where he said he would kidnap you. at least he wasn’t grabbing onto you or trying to touch you - that would have sent your fist flying towards his face and probably a swift exit from the bar. it was a little weird that you didn’t find him weird, but in retrospect you must have known, even then. 

“okay, listen,” you put your hands on your hips, giving him an unimpressed look. “if you find me when you’re sober, ask me again and maybe i’ll reconsider.”

“okay,” he nods, hair moving along with his movement like a puppy’s ears. “i can do that. i’ll find you, i promise. i’m gonna marry you, did you know?”

“so i’ve heard,” you roll your eyes, already feeling a bit fond about him. you didn’t think you’d meet him again, but you were sure that you’d look at this night with a fond smile later. 

he sends you the brightest smile you think you’ve ever seen on a person and scampers off, and you stand rooted to that one sticky spot in the bar for longer than you want to admit.

–

he’s in the back of your mind when you wake up the next morning, in a better mood than most - you never liked waking up early, it always took you a good hour and some coffee to be able to stand without grimacing. this morning though, you float around your apartment as you get dressed with a small smile on your face. 

a cute stranger who kept his boundaries and called you perfect? that wasn’t something that happened often, at least not to you. 

the floatiness followed you all the way through your morning routine until you found your feet stopping outside the coffee shop that you and changbin all but owned. you had no stock in it, but you’re sure that you supply them at least half of their revenue, you probably sit on their rickety chairs more often than your actual couch at home. this place has nursed you through every college class and job interview preparations and beyond, and if it ever closed you might lose time off of your life span. 

your movements from the door to the counter to your usual seat were robotic, muscle memory taking over while your head did somersaults through the clouds. it’s only when you take the first sip of coffee, the bitterness and heat hitting your tongue in a delightful dance, that you notice it. 

another man is sitting next to changbin. a man that looks awfully familiar, and it takes you a moment to realize why. it’s the man from the bar. 

“changbin?” you keep your eyes on the other man as you direct your question at changbin, trying hard to keep your face neutral. “explain?”

“i’m chan,” the man interjects before changbin can answer, reaching his hand across the table for you to shake. it’s warm, his grip somewhere perfectly in the middle of too hard and too soft, and he lets go after an appropriate amount of seconds. despite the neutral passivity of the gesture, you feel something ignite within you, and it threatens to sputter out when you catch no spark of recognition in his eyes. was he that drunk last night that he doesn’t remember you? do his sober eyes not find you as perfect?

“he crashed at my place last night,” changbin’s voice filters through your turmoil, and you finally break away from chan’s gaze to level him with a look. “and he needed coffee, so i brought him along. chan, this is y/n, my best friend.”

the conversation that followed flowed more freely than the coffee dripping from the machines behind the counter, and you almost hate how much you like it. chan is a little goofy, the man from the previous night shining through moments of seriousness and rapt attention. 

by the time you had to leave to go to work you felt like you knew him. you learned where he lived (close to you!), that he worked with changbin (he’s a producer!), and that he loved all animals but he adored dogs (he has one named berry!). just an hour of casual conversation had led to you needing more of him in every aspect of your life, but still in the back of your head lived the thought of him not remembering you from the night before.

changbin leaves first, citing some meeting he had to run to in the middle of a yawn, and when you were left with chan the embarrassment began to set in. 

“i’m going to marry you,” he blurts out, startling you so much you almost jump out of your seat. 

“what?” you ask, a mixture of surprise and disbelief combining into a confusing vortex within your head - was he going to go through this again? you didn’t know if your heart could take it. 

“i mean, i remember you,” he says before you could awkwardly excuse yourself and commit to getting to work early for the first time in a year just to escape being in a room alone with him for much longer. “i’m sorry, i was just embarrassed. i didn’t want to make a fool out of myself in front of changbin.”

“oh,” your breath leaves you all at once and you slump into your chair, understanding hitting you like a train. “that makes sense? i think?”

“i’m going to marry you,” he repeats, a mischievous glint in his eyes, the boy from last night shining through. “one day. i’m going to do it.”

“take me on a date first,” you tease back, a genuine smile stretching across your lips when he laughs, a full bodied thing that drew in eyes from the patrons across the room. for once, you didn’t seem to care that others’ eyes were on you. he made you feel comfortable. 

“what are you doing tomorrow?” his mouth turns upwards into a beautiful smile that you can’t help but return. 

“eager, are we?” you open your phone, sliding it across the table with the new contact page open on it. “i’m free.”

“you’re the most perfect person i’ve ever laid eyes on,” he says, as serious and genuine as the way he had proposed to you last night as he taps his number into your phone. “sorry if i’m a bit desperate.”

“don’t apologize,” you take your phone back, making a mental note to text him later. “i like it, for some unearthly reason. you’re cute, chan.”

the sound of his delighted laugh follows your footsteps all the way to work. 

— 

he picks you up for your first date at noon, right on the dot. he wasn’t a minute late, a polite knock sounding through your apartment just as the hour turned, as if he had been waiting and watching the time outside the door. 

god, is everything about this man endearing? 

he’s wearing shorts and a light sweater, looking like something out of a posh magazine. his hair is curly and swept off his forehead and he’s wearing a smile with the most adorable dimples shining through. 

he leads you to his car and you have to hold back an impressed whistle. you knew changbin and his team did well for themselves, the name 3racha all over the credits of songs on the radio, but this car was nice. you were going to have a talk with changbin about why he still drove the same beat up sedan he’s had since college but that was a thought for later. right now all you wanted to think about was the man who held the door open for you to slide into the passenger seat and was now holding your hand over the middle console. 

“do i get to know where we’re going?” you ask, peering at the map open on his phone but it tells you nothing more than that your destination was 15 minutes away and that he had to make a right turn in one mile. 

“it’s a surprise,” he says, voice a little nervous but it was masked with excitement. wherever he was taking you, you would be happy to be there if he was this happy the whole time. 

four songs on the radio later, one of which you teased him for when he revealed that he wrote it, he was pulling into a parking lot illuminated by flashing colorful lights. he had brought you to the fair. 

“i’ve never been to the fair!” you bounced a little in your seat, wriggling in excitement. “i’ve always wanted to go, how did you know?”

“lucky guess?” he shrugs, avoiding your gaze as he cuts the engine and unbuckles his seatbelt. 

“changbin told you, didn’t he,” you smile at the thought of chan asking his friend about what you’d like. it was cute, a word that you were probably exhausting when thinking about him even after a day of knowing him. 

“yes, but,” he flushes, the tips of his ears burning red. “i asked him after i had decided to come here, just to make sure it was a good idea. i didn’t steal it from him.”

“hey, it’s okay,” you squeeze his hand in yours that he had yet to let go of in what you hoped was a comforting gesture. you didn’t know what brought him calmness yet, but you wanted to learn. you wanted to learn everything about him. “now, take me to the fair, bang chan. i was promised a date.”

he finally meets your eyes again and he’s grinning so happily that you feel like you had just won a prize. who needed a fair when you had your very own carnival game right here? 

it turns out, you did. by the time the sun was beginning to set, your arms were full of various plushies that chan had won for you, each one earning him a hug and a kiss to his cheek. you treasured every single one, the fluttering in your chest when he stepped up to the booths to throw and shoot various things never ceasing. 

“let’s go to the ferris wheel,” you tug at him with your free hand, thanking the skies when you see no queue there. “i bet the sunset looks beautiful from the top.”

he’s quiet when he follows you there and into the carriage, his thigh pressing against yours as he slides in next to you, but you don’t notice in your excitement. it isn’t until the wheel ticks to the top and stops that he grabs your hand again, trembling a little. 

“chan? are you okay?” you ask, concern warping your voice as you turn towards him. your movement rocks the carriage a bit and he turns pale, ducking his head into your neck to hide. 

“yeah, ‘m okay,” he murmurs, his eyelashes ticking your skin when he blinks his eyes shut. “just don’t like heights very much.”

“oh my god, why didn’t you tell me?” you cry out, jumping a bit and regretting it when you rock the carriage again. “nevermind that, what can i do? it’ll go down soon, you’ll be alright.”

“just keep holding my hand?” he squeezes your fingers lightly and your heart melts. you may have made a joke that he was just trying to trick you into holding his hand any other time, but the fear in his shaking body was real and you’d never tease him for that. 

“of course,” you press a kiss to his hair, moving your other hand slowly to wrap around your intertwined fingers. the wheel begins to turn again, swaying the carriage as it descends. you keep your grip on his hand tight the entire time, all the way until you’re on your feet again on steady ground. 

“i’m so sorry,” you begin to say, the horror of subjecting him to his fear creeping up now that the crisis has passed. 

“i’m going to marry you,” he says, cutting off your apology and lifting your hands to his mouth so he could press a kiss to the back of yours. “no one’s ever been able to keep me that calm. thank you.”

you were left speechless after that and all you could do was smile at him, the ghost of it not leaving your face for the rest of the night. 

–

your thirty first date with chan ends with you crying into changbin’s arms, utterly confused and the feeling of despair creeping up your veins. you had met him your cafe as you had done several times since the fair, but when you arrived he wasn’t there. he came late, dark storms in his eyes and a hard set to his jaw and you didn’t understand what had made him like that. the usual smile and twinkle in his eyes were missing, and when you and asked him about what was wrong he had snapped at you in a way you hadn’t been talked to in years. 

you had left after that, brushing him off when his eyes had widened and he reached for you while calling out your name. you know that you should have given him a chance to explain, but at the time you were too hurt to consider it. 

you made your way to changbin’s apartment without thinking, your feet taking you to safety before your head could catch up. changbin had taken one look at your face before wrapping you up in his arm, walking you to his couch so he could cuddle you properly while words spilled out of you like a leaky faucet. you felt like you were back in college, crying and blubbering over a boy who had rejected you at a party, and you hated it. 

you didn’t notice changbin sending an angry text to chan, but the sound of changbin’s door opening with a bang startled you out of your tears. chan bursts in like a whirlwind, his hair sticking up at weird angles and a look of panic on his face as he takes you in. he reaches the couch in a few strides and falls to his knees in front of you, holding a crumpled bag from the cafe in his hand and taking your cheek gently into his other. his thumb wipes at the tear tracks there and you could practically taste the guilt emanating off of him. 

“love, i am so sorry,” he starts, ignoring changbin when he scoffs at the apology. “i shouldn’t have snapped at you, i had no right to do that. i got some bad news this morning and i wasn’t feeling my best, and i should have been honest with you. i’ll never do anything like that again, please forgive me? i’ll do anything.”

it was more his voice than his words that did it - he sounded so desperate, like he was trying to hold

onto a ledge that was crumbling, threatening to hurl his body into eternal nothingness. you knew him, you knew he was sorry, and against your first instinct you trusted him when he said he wouldn’t do it again. 

“is that an almond croissant?” you eye the bag in his hand. 

“it’s two almond croissants,” he nods fervently, his hair swishing back and forth with the movement. you sit up, sliding out of changbin’s arms and onto the floor in front of chan. chan’s arms replace changbin’s easily when you lean into him, and it feels like coming home. 

“it’s not like i have a nice couch you could be sitting on,” changbin mutters as he leaves, shaking his head fondly at the two of you before making himself scarce. 

chan kisses you, cradling your head gently into his hands, and they’re so warm. he slides his lips against yours, slowly like he’s taking his time memorizing the planes of your mouth to commit to memory. even after kissing him dozens of times you still find new things to learn about each other. 

“i swear,” he says, pulling away to meet your eyes. “i’m going to marry you, someday.”

“keep getting me croissants as apologies and we’ll see,” you say, sniffling into his neck. 

—

your eighty seventh date was spent in your bed, your head spinning like both hands on a clock simultaneously and your body exuding more sweat than you ever have. 

chan is wringing out a cool cloth to place on your forehead and it feels so nice that you moan. 

“i’m sorry,” you mutter, and chan has lost count of the amount of times you’ve said it at this point. “we had a date and i ruined it.”

“we were going to see a movie,” he says, running a hand up and down your spine. “and we will. we don’t need a movie theater when we have a screen right here, hmm?” 

“but the popcorn,” you complain, closing your eyes in bliss when he runs a hand through your hair, scratching gently at your scalp. an apology for being so sweaty was at the tip of your tongue but you hold it back in favor of enjoying the feeling of his touch. 

“i’ll make you all the popcorn you want when you’re feeling better,” he promises, dropping a kiss to the side of your head. “for now, how does soup sound?” 

“popcorn soup?“ you ask, a wave of dizziness taking over your body; if you weren’t lying down already, you’re sure that too would be falling over. 

“yeah, baby,” and even in your delirium the fondness in his voice was prominent. he couldn’t hide it even if he tried. “i’ll make you some popcorn soup. get some rest okay?”

you’re asleep before he leaves the room, and you only wake up when he shakes your shoulder a bit and helps you into an upright position. he feeds you bites of what is definitely not popcorn soup after putting a movie on your laptop, the screen sitting at the foot of your bed. the both of you fall asleep before the movie finishes, but you don’t mind. 

he stays with you for days, making you soup and tea and toast and feeding you medicine and being an all-around angel as he nurses you back to health. by the time you’re better you think you’ve fallen back in love with him several times. 

as you had expected and warned him about, he catches your sickness the next week, and now it’s your turn to be his nurse. you try and do the same job he did, but his delirium seems worse. the silver lining is that his fever isn’t as bad, so you’re babysitting a babbling boyfriend more than a sick one. 

the night before his fever breaks is the worst, since he doesn’t even recognize you. you shake your head at his silliness when he asks who you are and calls you pretty. you smile when he takes your hand in his and asks you to come closer. 

you tear up when he tells you that he has a girlfriend that he loves very much and so even though you’re pretty he can’t do anything else because his girlfriend is the prettiest one in the whole world. you let a tear slip when he tells you that he can’t wait to propose to his girlfriend and that he’s going to marry her someday. 

you tell him that you have a boyfriend that you're going to marry someday, trusting that he wouldn’t remember it in the morning. 

—

your hundredth and fifth date was not unlike your fifth, or your tenth, or your ninetieth. two and a half years later, you were just as endeared by him and he was just as obsessed with you - even more so, if it were possible. 

he takes the time to tell you how gorgeous you look when he picks you up just like he does on every date, and you hide your disgustingly fond smile for him behind his back like you do every time you see him. 

he parks and runs around the car to let you out like he does every time you habit this restaurant, a little fancier than your usual best but it was a favorite of the both of yours - across the street from the bar the two of you had met at. 

you start walking before he does, letting him jog to meet you and complain about how you left him, just like you do every time. before him. you might have thought the monotony would have gotten tiring, but he had a fantastical ability to make every moment feel like the first despite their practiced nature. 

he calls your name from behind you right on schedule and you hum in acknowledgement, turning towards him absentmindedly. the second you lay eyes on him you’re completely alert, though; he isn’t jogging after you, but rather he’s kneeling on the sidewalk, a small box in his hands as he smiles up at you. 

“i’ve told you that i’m going to marry you more times than i can count,” he starts, eyes shining like the stars twinkling in the night sky above you. “but this time i’m asking you.”

“chan,” you choke out, hands coming up to cover your mouth as it quivers. tears spring to your eyes and you silently curse yourself - you always thought you’d be level headed when you got proposed to, but nothing could have prepared you for this, not even the thousands of declarations he had made to you prior. 

“i love you. you’re the only one in the entire universe that i need more than blood or breath, you’re the song that runs through my heart and the fire that leads my path when i’m lost,” his voice is thick, like he’s trying to hold back his emotions long enough to get his words out. “i never thought that i would feel so strongly for someone, i never thought that i deserved a love like this until i met you.”

he pauses as you walk closer to him, letting you approach him before he continues. 

“my love, my eternal light,” he’s tearing up now, blinking fast to keep the salty water at bay. “will you marry me?”

“chan,” you start, kneeling down next to him and taking his wrists in your hands. “i never told you this, but ever since that first day i knew. i knew that the drunk idiot that was hitting on me would be my husband.”

he chuckles, smiling delightedly as the tears finally spring from both of your eyes in unison.

“so?” he trails off, searching your face with his eyes, waiting. 

“oh!” you tighten your grip on him in an apology. “of course i’ll marry you, gosh i love you so much.”

#stray kids imagines #stray kids fluff #stray kids #skz fluff #bang chan imagines #bang chan fluff #bang chan x reader

[tojisbbg]

𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬

❝you're exciting, boy, come find me; your eyes told me, "girl, come ride me".❞  

♡ geto suguru ♡

a/n: was scrolling through twitter and stumbled across yunonoai's new geto piece here. i love the roommates idea and decided to write a quick little smutfic for him ;)

likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated! <3

content: roommate!geto suguru x fem!reader, modern au, smut, fluff/crack, not edited.

---

"yes, satoru." geto sighed, pressing his phone to his ear before raising his shoulder to hold it in place, one of his hands filled with grocery bags while the other dug inside his pocket to fish for the house keys.

"you're so rude, suguru. it's been so long since i've talked to you, i feel like i'm gonna die from lung cancer." gojo dramatically whined on the other side of the line, making geto roll his eyes.

"i just got home from work and we literally talked last night." he deadpanned, making gojo huff in discontent.

"that's still too long." the white haired man snickered.

"gay ass." geto mumbled under his breath, finally unlocking the door as he twisted the knob to enter.

"i have a girlfriend! unlike you. you're my bro, it's always bros before hoes." gojo poetically recited, half of his words flying out of geto's other ear as the man had a long day at work.

"surprised you got one before me." he yawned, slipping out of his sneakers to slip on his house slipper. geto distanced his phone away from his ear momentarily.

"y/n, i'm home." geto announced, but there was no response heard back from you.

"hater, you're just mad that my dick is better than yours. anyways, wanna grab dinner together? i need to tell you about what happened in my morning class today, i nearly busted my lungs out from laughing." gojo offered, already laughing midway through his sentence because he's a whole clown.

"some other time, i'm gonna cook dinner for y/n tonight." geto declined, walking inside the living room, tossing his keys on the sofa.

"feed her your dick instead."

"shut the fuck up."

"y'all didn't fuck yet?"

"hanging up, talk to you later." with that being said, geto could hear gojo about to protest, but he was quick to press the red button to end his conversation with the annoying man. he set the bags of groceries down on the counter, rubbing his temple in annoyance.

geto noticed how you weren't in the living room nor in the kitchen, where he usually finds you around this time. curiosity piques his attention, walking over to your room.

as he inched closer to your door, geto could hear soft whimpers and groans exiting your room. his eyebrows knitted in confusion... until he stood in front of your closed door.

"nghh~ feel so good, suguru."

"f-fuck, just like that!"

"ahhh~ need your cock inside my pussy, sugu."

"i-i'm gonna cum!! oh my go-god!"

geto's eyes widened at the mentioning of his name slipping out of your mouth in such a lewd manner. you were masturbating to the thought of him. he could feel heat creep up to his cheeks, bringing a hand up to his face to cover his mouth as he continued to hear your moans.

"shit." geto mumbled to himself, feeling his pants tighten as a tent now formed around his crotch area. he was so fucking hard just by hearing you whine for him like a bitch in heat.

eventually, your voice died down, red alarm signals going off inside his head. geto quickly left from his spot as quietly as he could, heading back inside the kitchen.

he had a silly little plan that he wanted to execute on you.

so, he continued on with taking out the groceries, as if he heard nothing; gathering all the things he needed to make a quick home-cooked dinner tonight. a little smirk painted over his lips, hearing your door creak open before hearing your footsteps.

geto looked up, meeting your eyes, as you were startled to see the man whose name you were moaning a few minutes ago appear in your shared kitchen. he gave you a small wave before going back to his work of chopping some veggies on the cutting board, some other things already sizzling in a pot next to him.

you quickly cleared your throat, offering him a nervous smile as you played with the hem of your t-shirt.

"o-oh, you're back home so soon, sugu." you stammered out, leaning over the counter as you watched him stir the pot, his broad back turned to you as his hair was wrapped into a neat bun.

"mhm, got off of work early today to get groceries." he responded, looking back at you as he took note of your flushed face and disheveled hair.

you looked like someone just fucked your entire existence out of you.

you chewed on your bottom lip as you began to overthink, trying to recall if you'd heard the main door open during your little private session. but, your mind was absolutely fucked out during that time, only being fogged by the dirty thoughts of geto plunging his cock inside of you instead of your pathetic fingers.

oh god... did he hear you?

the thought of him catching you moaning his name while pleasuring yourself created a huge wave of shame and embarrassment, colliding straight at you as you turned even more red. geto, who was peacefully cooking, could sense your panic as his smirk grew.

"i'll be in the living room." you quietly informed, dashing out of the kitchen where he was making a heavenly concoction, the aroma of different spices already welcoming your senses.

but, unfortunately, you had bigger things to worry about than the raging appetite in your stomach.

you sat on the couch, trying to knock some self-assurance into your anxious mind. you took in a deep breath, falling into your own train of thoughts.

surely, if geto were to hear you, he'd probably feel at least a little weird about it, right? like probably give you some weird stares, side eye you or like maybe not even talk to you???

yeah, you were freaking out.

you lightly smack your cheek, bringing yourself back. you convinced yourself that geto didn't hear you, he was still chopping veggies and loading the fridge when you walked out. this meant that he had to arrive after you were done.

besides, he was acting pretty normal with you.

you sunk into the couch, a heavy sigh leaving your lips as you tried to shoo away your thoughts. you've been roommates with geto for about two years now, the both of you meeting in your organic chemistry class during the first year of college.

you were still living with your parents, while he was living with his best friend, gojo. however, you soon decided that it was time for you to break away from your parents' protective shell, wanting to experience true adulthood and independence.

and for geto... well, gojo was a handful to live with, in short.

so, you both met by fate, sitting next to each other in the painfully boring and difficult class. about a month passed and you guys grew pretty close to each other, frequently partnering up for experiments and mini projects; which were done primarily over his place since gojo was barely home after sunset.

you were apartment hunting during that time, which was so hard as the rent was outrageous, especially near campus. when geto heard your little rant about it, he offered to be your roommate so that the rent wouldn't be so burdensome on you.

of course, you agreed without hesitation because the man was so incredibly nice. geto was a gentleman, every single good trait and positive word that exists in the dictionary could be used to describe his personality.

needless to say, you were not disappointed. he was clean, organized and responsible. geto paid his rent on time, did the groceries on days where it was his turn and sometimes on your days as well when he sees you stressed out. he cooks dinner for you both frequently since your cooking is very limited, if not, takeout is always there as a solution.

geto made sure to kill any bug, big or small, that threatened you; especially in the summer heat when those fuckers slipped in through the window. he was your knight in shining armor, whacking them dead with his slipper.

not to mention that it's rewarding to see such a hot man in your house every day after a depressing eight hours of lecture plus work. there was no denying the fact that geto suguru was incredibly attractive, and he was extremely popular amongst the female students as well.

on really hot summer days, you'd see him in skimpy tight tank tops, the fabric hugging his slutty narrow waist while deliciously exposing his muscular arms. his beautiful luscious black hair resting a little below his shoulder.

oh, and of course, he smelled so fucking good.

a mix of coconut from the shampoo he uses along with the scent of expensive cologne and his body wash.

with all these factors coming into play, having a silly little crush on geto suguru was quite reasonable to you.

"you feeling sick, y/n? your face seems flushed." the sudden intrusion of geto's voice awoke you from your trance, looking up at him as the man stood in front of you. he looked down at you with a concerned look, the back of his hand coming up to touch your forehead.

"hm, no fever." he concluded, eyeing you for an answer.

"oh, it's 'cause i just woke up from a nap and it was super hot in my room." you lied, making him cock an eyebrow.

"hot? it's the middle of november." geto snorted, making you mentally wince because you were slowly getting caught in your lie.

"the heater was on blast in my room." you defended, making him cross his arms over his chest as he looked like he was thinking really hard.

"weird, could've sworn i made sure to lower the temperature on the thermostat before leaving this morning. oh well." he shrugged, deciding to not pick on you anymore as he took a seat on the sofa in front of you.

you let out a sigh of relief, thanking god that he dropped his interrogation with you. your eyes followed his body, watching him plop on the sofa as he leaned back, shifting his hips forward before manspreading.

holy.

fuck.

you ogled at the sight, shamelessly eye-fucking him as your mind began to mentally strip him. almost immediately, your eyes fell on his lap, seeing the prominent bulge in his sweats. of course, geto's eyes noticed your staring, biting back a grin as his plan was working.

"you know, it's not nice to stare, sweetheart." geto playfully snickered, the petname that was directed to you sent heat between your legs, making your thighs clench together.

fuck, he made you feel so hot and bothered.

"i-i.." your words were stuck in your throats as you met his piercing onyx colored eyes, watching him give you a half-lidded smirk.

"hm? can't hear you from there, why don't you come over here and tell me." he patted his thigh, inviting you to sit on his lap. your eyes were the size of two full moons as you never expected to experience this side of geto.

either way, who were you to decline this gorgeous man's invite?

so, without hesitation, you got up from your spot and walked over to him. the both of you locked eyes, with you now standing in between his legs. geto's arms laced around your waist, pulling you down on his lap as you placed your legs on either sides.

as you pressed down against his lower half, you felt something poke your ass, making you gasp. geto chuckled, moving your hair away from your neck, exposing the skin.

"gonna help me take care of that, y/n?" geto whispered, pressing open mouth kisses on your neck, making you whimper as you wrapped your arms around his neck. you grind your hips on his hard on, earning a groan from him.

you felt his tongue swipe against your skin before feeling his teeth digging in ever so lightly, sucking the flesh. you let out a shaky breath, feeling him kiss, suck and lick all over your neck.

"s-sugu.." you stutter out, biting your lower lip to contain a shameless moan that itched to leave your throat. geto pulled away, looking up at you with lust clouded eyes. his hand grabbed the back of your head, pulling you towards his face as he crashed his lips against you.

geto could taste the sweetness of your fruity flavored lip balm, feeling his lips smoothly mold into yours. you sucked on his lower lips before giving it a soft lick, telepathically asking him to open his mouth, which he did. so, you shoved your tongue in his mouth, wet smooching sounds radiating off of you two.

he tasted like mint, so fresh and sweet. your hands cupped his face, angling your face in a way that you could kiss him deeper, his fingers dancing on your spine. you felt the wet muscle intertwine with yours, making you suck his tongue as you rubbed your clothed cunt against his bulge.

geto moaned in your mouth, the impact of your warm cunt against his painfully clothed cock sent waves of pleasure to his brain. you both soon pulled away, gasping for air as a string of saliva was connected to the both of your lips.

"can i help you with this?" you softly asked, pressing down on his cock once again, eliciting a gruff groan from him. geto looked at you, your eyes were practically pleading him, lashes innocently batting as you oh so politely asked him.

"of course you can, sweetheart." geto replied, making your heart jump to your throat as you eagerly slid out of his lap, now sitting on your knees in between his legs. with attentive eyes, he watched your hands tug down his sweats, which he helped you with.

it was adorable how impatient you were, so excited to have a taste of his cock. you've seen geto shirtless on multiple occasions, eyes always never failing to catch the deep v-lines that ran down the side of his body.

so, it meant that he definitely had a monstrously huge cock hiding in those tight calvin klein boxers.

you wasted no time in pulling down the waistband of his boxers, hand reaching in to grab his cock. however, as soon as you felt the sheer length and girth of it, unable to properly grasp it in your hand; you harshly gulped.

fuck, he was hung.

by the looks of your hesitation, geto's ego immediately jumped a whole tower up, leaning his head back against the sofa as he wrapped his arms behind his head.

you pulled his boxers down, his hard cock springing out and hitting his stomach, your eyes widening at the sight. he was huge and thick, standing no less than a good seven to eight inches in length. the tip of his cock was a cute blush color, leaking out so much precum as a single prominent vein ran on the underside of his cock.

you wrapped your hand around his cock, giving it a few teasing pumps, making him grunt as the soft flesh of your palms did wonders on him. your thumb cheekily made it's way up to his tip, circling it as the pad of your thumb became coated with his precum.

geto jolted at this sudden action, looking down at you with an expression that was so beautiful and arousing.

"f-fuck, why don't you give it a little kiss, baby." he requested, making you hum as you pressed a feather-light kiss on his tip, feeling the small bead of the wet liquid on your lips. you smirked at how his chest heaved up and down at your teasing, your tongue licking a long stripe up his vein.

"stop teasing." geto groaned, getting a little impatient. you giggled at his words, placing the tip of his cock on your tongue before wrapping your lips around it. you sucked on it a little before shoving as much of his cock as you possibly could into your mouth.

"o-oh my god.." geto's eyes screwed shut as he felt the warm encasing of your mouth around him. you began to bob your head up and down his throbbing cock, pushing him down your throat, while your hands simultaneously worked to pleasure the inches that you couldn't fit.

"mmm, just like that— being such a good girl for me." he praised, a hand coming down to encourage your movements, pushing you deeper. you gagged a few times, but that seemed to only drive him off the edge, as every time your throat contorted or tightened, it deliciously squeezed his aching cock.

you could feel tears prick at your eyes, your hands fondling with his heavy balls, giving them gentle squeezes. geto's thighs began to ever so slightly shake, small curses and whimpers exiting his plump lips as the movement of your mouth and hands quickened.

"gonna let me cum down your throat? take all of it like a good girl." his hips began to desperately buck into your mouth, one of his hands gathering your hair into a makeshift ponytail as he thrusted into your throat. you let him throat-fuck you, your nails digging into the flesh of his thick muscular thighs.

"shit." geto swore under his breath, feeling his cock twitch inside your mouth as his vein pulsated. with the release of a guttural moan from his mouth, geto came hard and deep down your throat; as thick wads of white cum spurted out.

you made sure to swallow every single drop, licking his cock clean before giving his tip one last kiss as you pulled away. geto looked down at you while you looked up at him with a cock-drunk smile, making him smile.

his hand came down to your face, long and thick fingers wiping away your tears.

"made me feel so good, sweetheart. let me reward you, yeah?" geto sensually spoke, making your clit throb with arousal. he helped you up, once again placing you on his lap as he pulled you in for a needy kiss, tasting himself on your tongue.

geto's hands sneaked inside your shirt, caressing your sides as you shuddered in response to his touches. you tried to focus on the kiss, but you soon felt his hands creep up to your tits, giving them a squeeze through your bra.

"suguru!" you gasped against his lips, making him bite your lower lip.

"off." he commanded, tugging at the hem of your t-shirt. you obliged obediently, pulling it over your head before throwing it on the floor. with very skillful movements, geto unhooked your bra, removing them before having it join your t-shirt on the floor.

your tits deliciously spilled out, perky nipples which were swollen from the lack of attention. geto wasted no time in taking a mouthful of your tits, sucking on the hard bud as you let out a whimper. you pulled his head closer to your chest, grinding your pussy on his cock through your shorts.

geto gently rolled your nipple between his teeth before giving it a playful bite, making you shake in his hold. he sucked the mounds of fatty flesh, making sure to leave a copious amount of purplish marks on your skin.

suddenly, he placed a hand on your back before shifting to the side, gently laying you down on one of the cushions. geto pulled down your shorts, eyes coming into contact with the wet patch on your panties.

your cheeks heated up in embarrassment, averting your gaze from him, which made him laugh.

"eager are we?" he playfully threw at you, making you whine. not pushing it any further, geto soon pulled down your panties as well, a thin line of your arousal being attached to the fabric. he threw your shorts and panties to the floor before taking in the sight of your soaking wet cunt.

"fucking hell, sweetheart, you're dripping." he commented, making you clamp your thighs shut from how bashful his vulgar words made you feel. however, geto didn't appreciate you covering up, strong hands now on your thighs as he spread them apart.

"don't be greedy, y/n. let me see, baby." geto scolded, pressing a kiss on your inner thighs, which made you yelp.

he wasted no time in giving your clit a feather-light stroke, making your thighs twitch from the sudden stimulation. geto liked that reaction, now using his thumb and middle finger to spread your wet folds open. he had to gather some self-control to not shove his face into your cunt.

"so fucking pretty." he complimented, gawking at your puffy cunt and swollen clit, giving it away that you indeed played with yourself moments before. you were so wet for him, it was absolutely ridiculous, your hole clenching on nothing as it leaked more of your juices.

"do something, sugu. need you so bad." you begged, bucking your hips up to feel more of his fingers. he snickered at your actions, landing a wet slap on your clit, making you whimper.

"good girls get what they want. so, be a good girl and be patient while i admire you, 'kay?" geto shortly lectured, making you softly protest at his constant teasing, needing to feel some part of him on your body.

the man watched you squirm and softly grunt with a contented grin on his lips, seeing how your thighs threatened to close every few minutes from his light touches. however, geto wasn't that mean and he's practically been dreaming of this moment ever since he’s met you.

and after what he heard earlier today? oh no, baby, he's gonna make sure to memorize every detail of your pussy today.

geto slid his middle finger between your folds, slowly rubbing it up and down, the tip of his finger nudging your clit once he dragged his digit back up. your breath hitched, hands flying to the back of your head to grip the cushion.

"tch, that's all you're gonna give me? you weren't so shy about being vocal earlier." geto scoffed, making your eyes widen as you looked at him with a shocked expression. he smirked, rubbing your clit in a quickened circular motion, making your brain stop working as you completely forgot about what he just told you, eyes screwing shut as you choked out a moan.

"fuck, suguru!" you cried out his name, breathing heavy as geto continued to stimulate the sensitive bundle of nerves, his free hand coming up to pinch your nipples and squeeze your tits.

"mhm, there you go. but, i gotta hear more from that pretty mouth of yours, sweetheart." with that being said, geto dragged his finger down to your needy hole, prodding it open.

you felt him enter his middle finger, groaning as it was longer and thicker than yours. geto began to thrust his finger in and out of your cunt at a slow pace, watching you fidget. he soon added a second finger, the stretch of his thick digits was too much as it made all the wires in your brain fuse.

"nghh~, s-shit, feels so good!" you cried out, feeling him scissor his fingers back and forth into your wet cunt. he suddenly plunged in a third finger, making you choke on your moans as they began to rub your tight walls.

"yeah? taking my fingers so well." he whispered, moving his body up, slotting himself between your legs while his fingers never faltered. geto captured your lips in a sloppy kiss, while you whimpered against his lips.

he moved his head down, taking your tits in his mouth once again as he continued to thrust his fingers inside of you. you babbled random things, eyes rolling back as you felt the familiar knot tightening in your lower stomach. your walls clamped down on his fingers, making geto grunt at the sudden squeeze on his fingers.

"such a naughty girl, you are, y/n. playing with this pretty pussy of yours while moaning my name when i'm not around." geto's voice was laced with faux sympathy, the squelching wet sounds of your cunt was like music to his ears, encouraging him to plunge his digits deeper and faster; hitting your g-spot.

"hnghh, g-gonna cum!" you squealed, hands coming up to squeeze his biceps, eyes pooling with tears as you could feel your brain becoming rewired. his palm rubbed against your clit while his fingers abused your hole, completely fucking out your senses as your brain became mush.

your throat released the most pornographic moan ever, clenching onto his fingers as you came hard on them. geto could feel your hole twitch and pulsate, your creamy cum dripping down his fingers and down your inner thighs onto the sofa.

"better than these, right?" he teased, using his free hand to bring your fingers to his lips, pressing a soft kiss on them. you nodded your head, not even comprehending what the fuck he just told you as you tried to calm down from your intense orgasm.

geto pulled his fingers out, making you wince as your hole felt empty. he shoved his cum soaked fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean as you watched the lewd sight of him eating your cum.

"so sweet." geto grinned, seeing you pant and flush into a deep red.

"sugu... p-please, hmphh—" you were cutoff by the sudden kiss, his lips smooching yours pretty noisily, coating them with his spit.

"what you need, sweetheart?" he whispered against your lips, tugging them between his teeth.

"need your cock in me, please." you breathed heavily against his lips, looking up at him with pleading lust glowing eyes. geto smiled against your plump flesh, sitting up on the sofa before pulling you up along with him.

"help yourself then." geto gave you the cue, helping you straddle his lap once again. you sat your bare cunt right on top of his hard cock, as it slipped between your folds, the warm leaky tip brushing against your clit. a soft whimper left your lips, eyes looking down at the porn-worthy sight.

you realized that his t-shirt was still on, pouting as you tugged the hem of it. geto cocked an eyebrow, feeling the fabric being yanked.

"off." you blurted out, the same way he did when undressing you. this made geto laugh, looking at you with teasing, narrowed eyes as he stroked your cheeks.

"so demanding." he playfully sneered, pulling his shirt over his head before discarding it with the rest of the pile of your mixed clothes on the floor. you placed your shaky hands on his shoulders before tracing his defined collarbones.

you moved down to his chest, intentionally brushing over his nipples, which made him shudder from the sensitivity. curious eyes shamelessly roamed around his upper body, seeing the well-sculpted abs he had from working out multiple times a week.

"like what you see?" geto playfully asked, making you scoff.

"like what i see? i'm trying so hard to not eat you right now." you grumbled, attaching your lips back onto his, muffling out his chuckle. you teasingly pinched his nipples to evoke a reaction, and you weren't left disappointed as he jolted, whimpering in your mouth.

you slightly opened your eyes, seeing from the corner of your eyes how his face was turning red from embarrassment.

"you're so adorable, suguru." you giggled, making him tsk as he landed a tight slap on your ass, making you yelp.

"yeah? tell me that when i'm sending you to poundtown." he countered your words, making you roll your eyes with a snort at the comment.

"looking forward to it, sugu." you said in a flirty tone, sending a wink towards his way, making geto's heart thud against his chest. you dug your face in the crook of his neck, kissing his skin as you began to mark it with hickeys.

you could feel his pulse point throb, lightly grazing your teeth against it, making him let out a heavy breath.

"you little minx." he grunted, arms kneading your ass before giving it a few slaps as a punishment, making you moan. his actions made you pout, wanting payback.

you began to slide your hips back and forth on him, feeling his hard cock easily slide between your wet folds. you trembled in his hold, feeling the grip on your waist tighten as you did this a few more times. the lewd wet sound of his girthy cock rubbing your dripping cunt made you even more aroused, his tip bumping into your clit, making you whine.

"hmm, i could cum from this." you shamelessly admitted, grinding yourself harder on him, watching geto bite his lower lip to suppress a moan. this annoyed you as you wanted him to be vocal, pressing your lips on his before shoving your tongue in his mouth, swallowing his moans as you glided your sopping wet cunt over his throbbing cock.

"stop.. i wanna cum inside you." geto said in between his breaths, forcefully stopping your waist as soon as his tip rested on your hole. he looked at you with a dazed look, his large hand coming up to brush your hair away from your neck.

"gonna let me feel you, sweetheart? pretty please?" he said in a low voice, kissing your collarbones before moving up to your neck.

"y-yeah.." you stuttered out, no longer being able to handle this game of teasing anymore. you raised your hips a little, taking a hold of the shaft of his cock, aligning his tip with your hole.

you began to lower yourself on him, slowly entering his fat tip in, your eyes shutting tight as you winced in pain from the sting. geto held onto your waist as support, his fingers gently rubbing your sides.

"there you go, easy, baby." he encouraged you, words being chased by a gruff grunt as you managed to shove a third of his cock inside of you. you could feel your knees slightly shaking, breathing heavily as you gripped onto his shoulder tightly to support yourself.

"need some help?" he gently murmured against your neck, eyes peering up to see tears forming in your eyes as you struggled to take in his cock. you nodded your head, making him hum in acknowledgement. geto sneaked a hand between the both of your bodies, the pad of his thumb stroking your clit.

the sudden mix of the pleasure from stimulating your clit along with the stinging pain of his cock bullying into your hole made your body shake. geto could feel your hole start to relax a little, using the arm around your waist to gently push you down as he continued to play with your clit.

"t-too much, it's too much!" your breath hitched, feeling yourself sinking in a few more inches of his lengthy cock. his mouth latched onto your nipple, sucking on the swollen bud, while his thumb continued to pleasure the tiny bundle of sensitive nerves between your legs.

"nghh~, f-fuck.." you let out a long moan, finally shoving in the last few inches of his cock, completely bottoming out. geto let out a guttural moan, throwing his head back on the sofa, as you both stayed like that for a minute.

"shit, baby, y-you're squeezing me so tight." geto choked out, while you tried to adjust to the stretch of his cock. you slouched your body forwards, hugging him tight as you craved for more skin-to-skin contact with him. geto happily accepted, firmly wrapping his arms around you as his hands stroked your back as you both breathed in each other's scent, molding into each other's body.

"feel so full, sugu, you're so big." you chuckled, laying your head on his shoulder as you pressed tender kisses on his jaw and chin. geto hummed, a proud grin painted on his lips as you stroked his ego.

"is that so?" he turned his head to the side, kissing your forehead. you began to slowly rock your hips, as geto progressed to shallow upward thrusts; the both of you letting out a blissful moan in sync.

you decided to completely lift yourself off of his, only his tip remaining inside you before slamming down on him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. geto looked at you with half-lidded eyes, jaw wide open, as he moaned shamelessly at the tight grip of your dripping cunt.

you adjusted to the size of him, beginning to bounce on his cock while holding onto his chest for support. geto squeezed your ass before giving it a spank, making you squeak.

"fuck, feels so good!" you cried out, feeling your knees burn as your hips went up and down on his dick, the tip of his cock kissing your cervix each time you pushed down. geto pulled you in closer, watching your tits bounce in front of him before capturing one of them in his mouth, sucking harshly.

you cried out in pleasure, beads of sweat beginning to form on your temples as it dripped down the sides of your face. your eyes fell down, watching where you both were connected, seeing how your pussy swallowed his entire cock in one swift motion.

your juices were dripping down on his shaft, wetting his balls and the fabric of the couch below you guys. the vein that decorated the underside of his cock deliciously grazed against your walls.

the living room was filled with heavy breathing, wet skin slapping, the shlick and squelching sounds of your drooling pussy colliding with his cock; along with the mix of moans and curses.

geto released your now swollen nipple from his mouth, his drool coating the bud as he looked at you, completely pussy drunk.

"you don't know how hard it was to resist you. u-ughh, had to fuck my fist to the thought of you every night." geto confessed, making you imagine the picture of him laying on his bed with his legs spread open like a whore, fisting his hard dick while moaning your name.

this alone made your pussy flutter, unintentionally making you squeeze him; earning a gruff groan from the man.

"you liked hearing that, didn't you? dirty girl." he let out a breathy laugh, making you frown as you grew embarrassed at how your body betrayed you.

"shut up, you talk too much." you grumbled before shoving your nipple back in his mouth to hush him and save whatever dignity you had left remaining. geto smirked, playfully giving your nipple a bite.

"suguru!" you yelp as you smacked his upper arm. as an apology, geto swirled his tongue around the bud, pinching the other neglected nipple as he fondled with both of your tits equally.

you could feel heat slowly building up in your lower stomach, that knot tightening feeling once again returning as your thighs began to tremble while you bounced on his cock. geto noticed your struggle, deciding to help you out as he grabbed a hold of your waist, still suckling on your nipple.

suddenly, he began to thrust upwards, his pelvis meeting your clit each time you bounced down on him. the impact of his action made your eyes roll back, feeling your orgasm draw in closer. your hand reached for your clit, rubbing it fast as geto began to increase his pace in thrusting his cock into you as you rode him.

"fuck! g-gonna cum! oh my god— hnnghh, i-i.." your voice died down, mind completely fucked out as you began to babble random shit while geto pounded into your cunt. a ring of cream began to form at the base of his cock, your pussy so incredibly wet that it was easy for him to slide in and out with no problem.

"fucked you dumb already? you're so needy." geto mumbled against your tits as they smothered him while you tried to chase your orgasm. your shaky hand reached behind his head, smoothly pulling off the hair tie that kept his hair in a bun.

you watched his ebony locks fall on his shoulder, nearly cumming right then and there at the sight of him.

god, he looked so babygirl.

geto's face was completely flushed, swollen lips suckling on your nipples, hair tousled, and sweat dripping down his face as his eyes were closed shut.

your fingers found home in his hair, tangling with the smooth locks as you pushed him closer to your chest, bouncing on his cock while he thrusted upwards in you.

geto felt your pussy twitch and squeeze around him, indicating that you were gonna cum soon. so, he made sure that his movements remained sharp and fast; plowing into your messy cunt, his balls were completely coated with your slick as they slapped against your ass.

"make a mess on me, sweetheart." he said, not sure if you were able to hear him from how fucked out you were. but, you didn't need to hear him as with a loud moan being ripped out of your throat, the intense stimulation on your clit and nipple along with the harsh pistoning of his cock into your cunt made you gush around him.

geto let out a soft whimper, feeling the warmth of your juices leaking down on his shaft. with a few more desperate thrusts as his tip brushes against your cervix, he came deep into your pussy. you shuddered at the feeling of his thick cum painting your walls, as he dumped in a huge load inside.

you both were a moaning mess, breathing heavily as your mixed fluids began to messily trickle down his cock. geto released your nipple from his mouth with a 'pop', looking at you through his fuzzy vision.

he noticed the dried streaks of your tears on your cheeks, the corner of your mouth with drool. you tugged on his hair, pulling him in for a sloppy kiss full of tongue and the sound of teeth clashing, riding out your highs with small thrusts.

you sucked on his lower lip before releasing it, pressing one last soft kiss on his lips before pulling away. you looked at him in a daze, pushing away the single messy bangs that covered his eye.

with his cock still plunged deep inside you, you hugged him while resting your head on his shoulder; trying to cool down from your orgasm and catch your breath.

"you okay, sweetheart?" geto asked softly, his fingers coming up to your cheek to stroke the burning hot flesh. you hummed with a nod.

"yeah. you feel so warm, sugu. don't wanna let go." you mumbled, pressing a soft kiss on his pulse point. geto decided to indulge into you, wrapping his arms around you as he held you close, both of your heartbeats synchronizing.

"we should clean up soon, it's well past dinner time." he deeply chuckled, making you sigh.

"okay." you responded, picking your head up before leaning in to give him one last kiss. geto looked at you with playful eyes as you gave him a shy smile.

oh yeah, his plan worked out perfectly.

---

"mmm, this tastes so good, sugu!" you gasped, trying to speak with your mouth full, as you praised the taste of his food. geto made one of your favorite dishes, coconut shrimp curry with rice; his culinary skills were seriously no joke.

"hm, make sure to eat up then." geto chuckled, ruffling your hair before taking a bite out of his own plate. you both ate peacefully, talking about each other’s day along with making jokes here and there; as if he didn't rearrange your guts like twenty minutes ago.

"y/n?" he suddenly called out, making you look up at him with anticipating eyes.

"hm?" you hummed in response. you watched him clear his throat before playing with the shrimp on his plate with his chopsticks.

"i didn't want that to be like a one time thing between you and me. the thing is— i've liked you for a while now." geto confessed, making you nearly choke on your mouthful as you quickly chewed on your food, swallowing it.

"i like you too, sugu. although, i thought i was being pretty obvious." you sheepishly smiled, averting your gaze away from him as you grew shy.

"i guess i was being a little dumb. but, masturbating while moaning my name was definitely a game changing sign!" he teased, watching your nostrils flare up in embarrassment as your cheeks now became tinted with a soft blush.

"suguru!" you threw a balled up napkin towards him, making him burst out into a fit of laughter.

"i'm kidding! but, i won't lie, that shit made me so hard." geto casually stated, making you drop your eyes to the table.

"god, how much did you hear?" you gasped, growing a little worried. geto grabbed his chin, pretending to think hard.

"hmm, let's see. up till the part where you were like nghh~ need your cock inside my pussy, sugu! oh my god, i'm gonna cum!" he imitated your moans in an obnoxiously high-pitched voice, making you cover your face in embarrassment. geto let out a quick laugh at the sight, making you pout.

"damn, can't even fuck myself in peace." you mumbled to yourself, making him snort.

"well, now you can fuck me instead." geto nonchalantly replied with a smirk, making you choke on your food.

"god, you're so shameless!"

"i was being straightforward."

"whatever." you sighed out, rolling your eyes.

"go on a date with me this friday to the carnival." he suddenly offered, his smirk now replaced with a warm smile. your heart fluttered, feeling it stuck in your throat as your lips curled upwards.

"i'd love that." you accepted, and the both of you continued to finish up dinner.

since geto cooked for you both, you insisted on doing the dishes in return, although he tried to convince you that he had it covered. nonetheless, you were pretty stubborn, and geto decided to step away and let you clean up.

he made his way to the living room, sitting on the sofa as he grabbed his phone, clicking on the second person on his favorited contact list. geto waited patiently as he fixed his hair on the camera and after two rings, he finally picked up.

"you call me at the absolutely worst times, suguru. i'm literally about to dick down my girlfriend." gojo whined on the other side of the line, a frown tugging on his lips, making geto roll his eyes at his best friend's complaint.

"let's grab dinner tomorrow. i got something to tell you." geto smirked, and as if gojo telepathically knew what his best friend was gonna tell him, the white haired male gasped.

"no fucking way!"

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[localkiss]

Heavenly sin

virgin pastor's son!leon kennedy x virgin fem!reader

cw: guilt!! p in v, porn watching (has some "intense" sex ig??), needy sex, virginity loss, creampies, thinking about god during sex, humping (dry at one point), oral (f receiving), awkwardness, CHECK-INS!!!, dirty talk, begging, soft ish dom!leon, pet names, mentions of daddy kink but only once, pregnancy mentioned a couple times, Leon's a sweetheart, goofy ending, rough ish treatment only once, confessions!!

wc: 6k...🧍🏻‍♀️

note: barely proof read and I don't know shit about church or anything like that... Lmk if I missed any tags! Also inspired by @moolvn's bot!

@valkyrurr @rigorwhoring @marymustdie @tatumrileyslover @frostywintersnow @queenofstresss haii yall ! :3

It's around 10 in the morning, and you're dressed in a flowy black dress with flower patterns on it. Perfect for church and for this wonderful spring weather. Pulling your hair back into a low ponytail, you get out of your parents car. They have already gone inside the church.

Walking briskly to the entrance, you take note of the flowers that are planted on each side that're beginning to bloom in the glowy sunlight. You make it in time to sit next to your parents before the prayer begins.

You bow your head and begin to listen to it. Soft shuffling is heard, and then there's a warmth on your right side, as if a heater were turned on.

Peaking out of your right eye, you see the pastor's son, Leon. Dressed in dark wash jeans and a white button up. He tilts his head towards you and smiles, mouthing, "Hello."

You smile and shake your head, closing your eyes to listen in on his father recite a prayer, so that the Holy Spirit will help us all understand God's words.

Despite trying to listen to him preach, your mind wanders off to the boy next to you. How his muscles ripple underneath his shirts. (which are always fitting for him. Like how?) And the way his beautiful oceanic eyes shine with purity. Especially when he's preaching about how God is constantly saving and bettering him and how important he truly is in his life. The way his brown hair flows in the wind and how it falls into his eye whenever he looks down.

It's all beautiful to you. You'd rather worship Leon than God. Would it be a sin to worship man instead of the Lord? Probably.

Every time you spoke with Leon, you felt dirty. You were filled with these disgusting, sinful feelings. You were afraid of it rubbing off on him and getting into trouble. Getting called the devil. Shunned and kicked out of the house for having feelings you didn't know how to fucking handle.

After all, you were only human. One with needs, thoughts, feelings, and insatiable cravings for a certain man beside you.

Once the pastor stops the prayer, everything else goes by quickly. You try not to stare at Leon while his father is reading aloud hymns. But it's impossible.

He catches your eye and flashes you a boyish smile. You look away. It's quite embarrassing to have been caught staring at him. You couldn't help it.

A couple hours later, the service ends. You get up and stretch your limbs, ready to leave.

A large hand grabs onto your forearm. Warmth surges through your veins, all the way up to your midsection.

Turning your head, you see that it's Leon. 

He lets go of you with a smile. "Are you busy today? I was wondering if you'd like to come over."

Biting your lip, you think for a moment. Looking over at your parents, they give you a nod of approval.

"I'm free. I can come over today." 

Both of you walk towards the exit, and he opens the door like a gentleman. You mutter a small "thank you" and step outside. 

The cool, light breeze washes over your body like a cold shower. It feels refreshing after being in a stuffy room for more than an hour. Breathing it in and letting it out, you turn towards Leon.

He squints at you with a small smile, motioning to follow him. You oblige, putting your hands on the bottom of your dress and bunching up the fabric so that it doesn't fly up.

By the time you guys make it to his house, your feet are dying in the black flats you're wearing. Rubbed raw on your heels by your pinky and big toes.

You sigh in relief as you enter his house, slipping your shoes off by the door.

The both of you walk into the kitchen and grab a cup of water. Heading upstairs to his room. You try to push down the nerves and excitement bubbling in your guts, but it's so hard. 

All you guys ever do is read, listen to the radio, and talk about your guys's jobs. Not all exciting, but laying in his bed and being so close to him is what gets your panties soaked. Maybe you are the devil's spawn. Getting aroused by just being in Leon's vicinity. It's bad. Real bad.

He opens his door and walks in, laying down on his plush queen-sized bed. His hair falls to the sides of his face as he closes his eyes. Breathing in deeply and then exhaling slowly.

You sit on the bed, eyeing him up while his eyes are closed. Noticing the way his veins on his hands are popping out, the small little freckles that paint his face and neck, and the way his lips look so velvety.

Wondering what it would feel like between your legs, your calves, and your neck. You shouldn't be thinking about him like this. It's wrong. But it feels so right.

"So, uh, what are we going to do?" You mutter quietly, tearing your gaze away from the white man beside you.

"I thought that we could just hang out." 

"Okay." You scratch your head for a moment, looking at one of the posters on his wall. It's a poster for The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. It's probably one of the only games his parents approve of. 

"Actually, hold on." He sits up slowly and begins to walk towards his desk, fishing something out. He holds up a CD with a grin. "I found this lying around on the bookstore floor. I thought that we could check it out."

Motioning with a nod of his head towards his computer. The thick monitor has the circular silver Dell logo on it at the bottom. Paired with his grey and black mouse.

Popping it into his PC as it whirrs on, you snatch his swiveling chair, making him sit on the uncomfortable wooden chair next to it. Maybe you should get a new best friend, thinking about how you come over so much that he has gotten another chair just in case you guys get on his computer.

You take over and open the Windows Media Player, then double-click on the CD's name. Spice it up in the bedroom! What an odd name. 

Turning up the volume on his mini speakers that're alongside his monitor as you wait for the media to load.

A woman and a man appear in the frame, with a messy bed behind them. She's hardly wearing any clothing, only her undergarments and stockings are on her figure. Meanwhile, the man is only dressed in his briefs.

You feel your cheeks burn red hot, swallowing thickly at the video. Afraid of what's going to happen next and afraid of looking at Leon after this surprise of a CD, you continue to look straight ahead.

They don't even introduce themselves, but they say one thing: "Here's how to spice things up in the bedroom. Watch and learn."

Shifting in the cushiony chair, you unconsciously grab onto the armrests.

The next part shows the woman lying down with her legs spread open. The man walks into the frame and sits on the floor next to the end of the bed. Putting his face in between her legs, he kisses her thighs. Trailing up to the bend of her knees and then to her ankles. Repeating the same for her other leg. 

Then he begins to leave small bite marks and bruises on her inner thighs. With each of them, her hips jump, and small moans leave her lips.  

You squeeze your thighs together, feeling your most sacred parts ache with need. Hoping Leon doesn't notice it. 

But he did, just didn't want to point it out and embarrass the both of you even more than you guys already are. He's always staring at you subtly. He's not doing any better on his end, cock filling out in his jeans, begging to be freed from its confinement.

He's just thinking about the kind of noises you'd make if he kissed you there. But he shouldn't think about that. His heart sinks into his stomach, feeling guilty for even having those sorts of thoughts about you from time to time. He wanted to baptize himself again and again until those thoughts clouded him no more.

Leon always had to shower in cold water to make all of the pent-up need go away from his dick. He was afraid to touch himself. Especially to the thought of you. He thought you didn't deserve to be sexualized. How wrong it is to even imagine your lips on his! How soft and plush you'd be against his body.

Feeling like the devil has made its way into both of your bodies. Lust coats both of your frontal lobes, coaxing you into continuing to watch this sinful CD. 

The man begins to lick and kiss her panties which makes her noises grow louder and breathier. You hope to God that his parents don't come home anytime soon.  

He slips her panties off, and her precious parts are exposed to the camera. Leon makes a small gasping sound, and you snap your head towards him.  

"Leon, I.. I don't know if we should watch this. This is... wrong. I feel dirty, Leon." You search his eyes, hoping he'll agree, but he just blinks slowly at you.  

"I-I think we should continue. Don't act like this doesn't pique your interest," he mutters back. His eyes are slowly beginning to darken. 

Turning your focus on the screen, you hear him noisily slurping away between her thighs. The woman begins to get louder, and her fingers slot through his hair and pull him closer.  

She yells out, "I'm cumming!" And soon her legs squeezed shut on his head, her body convulsing and lunging forward to curl in on itself.  

"Fuck baby, that was so hot," He comes up and kisses her, grabbing a fistful of her hair and flipping her over onto her stomach. Fumbling with his black briefs, tugging them down and stepping out of them.  

You squirm uncomfortably, not sure if you can handle seeing a random man naked. But you gulp down the bile crawling up your throat, mixed in with sickening guilt.  

His cock stands up to attention, the tip as red as a tomato. A patch of hair surrounds it, leading down between his legs. He strokes it a couple of times, lolling his head back with a loud groan.  

"You ready, slut?" Tapping himself against her folds. 

"Y-Yes sir, I'm ready." The woman frantically nods and pushes up on her elbows, watching him sink into her hole.  

He grips her hair as soon as he's fully sheathed inside, pulling her towards him. Making her see how they're connected. You bite your lip as you watch this couple go at it for about five minutes. Watching them change positions and get louder and louder with each minute that passes by.  

He puts his hand on her throat and slaps her face, breasts, ass, and privates. It all makes you feel fuzzy inside, like you drank too much alcohol. The world is slowly starting to spin, with all thoughts going straight down between your thighs.  

But the way he talks to her is what really gets you.  

"You like that slut? Fuckin' taking daddy's cock so well, fuck."  

"Good girl. I know you can take it." 

"Yeah, cum on me, baby, squeeze this fat dick."  

"Stupid fucking whore, practically crying for me to creampie this tight little pussy. Isn't that right, baby? God, you know you want my cum stuffed in you."  

Her punched-out moans—the way she's clawing at the bed and sometimes at him—is what gets Leon excited. The way she can't even say anything remotely coherent to the man gets him so hard, it fucking hurts. Leon's boxers are practically stuck to his cock. 

Leon's hand drifts towards his groin, shifting it so it doesn't press against the zipper of his jeans. He lets out a soft hiss, putting a hand to his mouth as he slumps back against the wooden chair. Leaning onto the left armrest.  

Your ears pick up on Leon's strained noise, and you pull your knees up to your chest, breathing heavily between them. It's almost over, you think to yourself. Just a couple more minutes, and we can do something else. Forget about this, and maybe read the Bible to cleanse our minds.  

The guy on the screen pulls her up so her back is flushed against his chest, his arm wrapped around her throat to keep her there. Her body is shaking uncontrollably, and he groans deeply, thrusting a couple more times before he comes to a halt.  

"Fuck, baby girl, fuck. Take it. Mmhh, I want to get you pregnant so bad. Gonna suck on those fat tits until they're squirting milk into my mouth. I'm gonna love seeing you so swollen and full of my seed. God damn."  

That's it. He pulls out of her, and you can vaguely see a white liquid pooling out of her and onto the bed. Her body is so red and bruised. It makes you take a deep breath.  

By clicking out of it, you eject the disk and put it on the desk. Quickly shutting down his PC.  

Both of you sit there in silence for a little while. Afraid to look at one another.  

The air is so thick and hot, as if someone turned a heater on. It would make sense, as both of you have red faces and sweaty palms.  

Leon's the first one to clear his throat and shift in his seat. "So, um. What did we watch?"  

"For heavens sake, we just watched two people make love, Leon!" You whisper-yell at him, looking directly into his eyes.  

He tugs his bottom lip between his teeth and looks to the side, clearly embarrassed. "Right."  

You get up and flop onto his bed, face first. The coolness of his sheets is washing over you like an ice pack. 

Leon sits next to you, practically burning his gaze on your thighs. Lost in thought of the possibility of doing something like what you both saw just mere moments ago. His hips are bucking upwards, seeking relief. Looking like a damn fool for humping the air.  

"Do you think that felt good? Would God like...allow them to seek pleasure like that?" You mumble into the bed.  

"I think so, but I don't know if God would be happy if they were to continue..without repenting for their sins and asking for forgiveness."  

Yeah, you figured he would respond like that.

"I feel gross, Leon."  

"Me too."  

You turn on your side and look him up and down slowly. "Are you... aroused?" 

Leon gulps and tilts down to meet your gaze with a small nod.  

"Me too." Your voice is soft and hushed. Rubbing your thighs together for some relief.  

At this point, you don't even care. God this. God that. Those women at the church don't seem to care when they get pregnant. They just pray and repent for their sins and move on with their day like nothing happened. So, God doesn't fucking care if you have intercourse or not. So long as you ask for forgiveness.  

His baby blues drop to your lips and back up, licking his own lips. Then, he leans down and boxes you between his firm body and the plush bed.  

Your breath catches in your throat as you feel him tremble above you. Heart thumping wildly in your ears, wondering if he can hear it too.  

Unconsciously, your legs spread open to accommodate his hips. He shifts his weight nervously, his groin settling on top of yours.  

Both of you moan and buck your hips towards one another, wanting more. Becoming insatiable beasts filled only with lust and need. Logic? God? Who needs that when you have horniness on the brain?  

Leon groans and buries his face in your neck, panting hotly against your skin as he begins to dry hump you. "Please... It-It hurts. I'm sorry." He stops himself from rambling on, nosing up to your earlobe.  

"Leon, it feels really good. Don't—don't stop, please." 

His hips stutter, and he lets out a soft whimper, touching his forehead to yours. "May I... may I do what the video showed, to you?"  

"Yes," you say as you connect your lips to his, tangling your hands into his thick locks of brown hair. Lightly pulling on it, earning you a groan into your mouth and a thrust against your clothed mound. 

Tongues uniting sloppily, moans spewing out, and desire floating in the air. A perfect recipe for disaster. 

He sits up on his knees, his eyes blown out, his lips red and glossy with spit. How can he get even prettier? It's not fair. It really isn't. God really gave him the best of the best, honestly.  

Leon quickly made work of his button-up, throwing it across the room. His wife beater is the only article of clothing shielding you from seeing his chest and abdomen. What a shame. Though you do see a small silver chain, most likely it is his cross that he always wears, no matter what.  

Breathing out of his mouth like his nose is fucking clogged, he hesitantly reaches up to the hem of your dress. "May I?" He whispers, pushing it up to where your shorts stop at your waist.  

You nod, your hips lifting up to help him get rid of your dress. It soon hits the floor next to his shirt. Immediately feeling embarrassed, you cover your black bra with your hands.  

Leon just stares in awe, his hands slowly trailing up your sides and tracing every contour and bend in your body.  

"So beautiful," he mumbles. His thumb feels nice and is also ticklish where the sun doesn't see your body. He carefully removes your arms away from your bosom, kissing the inner parts of your wrists and making eye contact with you for the entirety of this undressing. 

You gasp as he kisses down to your clavicles, making sure to take his time mapping out your figure with his lips now. Dipping down to your cleavage, his hands grab ahold of your waist, thumbs rubbing against the wire of your bra.  

Leon presses his lips across your entire chest, making your skin buzz and your soul leave your body. 

Never in your life would you have imagined Leon doing this to you in his own bed.  

He fumbles with pulling your cups down, trying to get rid of the bra. "Can you, um.. take this off?"  

You lean forward and unclip it, letting it fall forward into your lap. Getting your arms out of the straps, you are now topless in front of him. Topless in front of someone for the first time ever.  

God is getting ready to punish the both of you for sinning, and you know it. Closing your eyes tightly for a few moments as you try to battle with continuing or just leaving Leon to deal with his own battle. That would be just mean. And if you were going to sin, why not together?  

Gulping down the acid that clawed its way up your pipes once more, you shake off the guilt as much as you can. Opening your eyes, you see Leon getting closer to your chest. Ready to plant his love on them.  

He slowly kisses around your areolas, nosing his way from breast to breast. You let out a nervous giggle as he makes eye contact with you as best he can.  

Finally making contact with your nipples, he dips his tongue out and swirls around it. Pulling away with a soft 'pop', you card your fingers through his hair.  

"Did that feel good?"  

"Yeah, it felt really nice." You give him a shy smile, and he returns it.  

Leon does the same to the other one before leaning back and admiring you once more. "You are honestly beautiful." 

Covering your face with your arms, you push him with your knee, mumbling an embarrassed "thank you." You still have your manners, even for being the devil's best friend.  

Some shuffling, and you peek through your arms and see he's taking off his white wife beater. You bite your lip and shift to your haunches, running your hands up his abdomen. Mesmerized by the way his muscles tense under your fingertips, dipping down to a small patch of hair trailing down beneath his jeans.  

Smiling up at him, you wish to return the favor. Putting your lips near the belt of his pants, kissing each of his hip bones softly. His body twitches towards you, and he lets out a broken moan, putting his hands on your shoulders. You decide to be experimental and graze your teeth all the way up his stomach, stopping at his chest. Leon's sounds are going straight down south; you'll be surprised if your shorts aren't completely wet by now too. 

"Can I?" You grab ahold of the button on his jeans, toying with it. Asking him for permission to undress him as well. He shakes his head, yes, and you immediately start undoing his fly. With a soft gasp, you see his bulge with a wet spot near the tip, staining his dark blue boxers. You continue to tug his pants down to his thighs so he can do the rest himself.  

Leon's pants join the rest of your clothes on the floor. You shimmy your shorts and tights off. Both of you dressed in your undergarments.  

You lay back, eyes on his cross necklace, hoping that God will accept you both as you are after this experience. Making love before marriage isn't acceptable, and you've been told your bodies are sacred temples and to not let anyone in or touch you inappropriately. Both of you would be shunned, and God knows what else would happen. 

Leon begins to kiss his way down to your ankles and back up between your thighs. Slowly breathing in the scent of you. Pressing a few on your clothed mound, making you squirm, your thighs daring to close on his head. He gently pushes them away and up as he leaves little love bites where your legs connect to your most sacred spot. 

Moaning softly, you cover your mouth. Your eyes dare to roll back into your head as you try and watch Leon explore your features before he removes the last article of clothing, keeping him away from seeing you completely bare. He moans into your panties, kitten-licking to taste your arousal. He is doing his best to try and copy the video from earlier. 

"Please, Leon.." you whine, your hips pushing against his face, aching for more.

Leon nods his head and nuzzles against you, his nose stimulating you even further. He pulls away to remove your panties to dive back in. 

Getting messy with it, he drools onto your folds, pressing open-mouth kisses all over. Paying attention to where you moan and squirm the most. 

He dips his tongue down into your pulsating hole and groans, his eyes rolling back at the taste of you. "Tastes s'good, baby," he continues to ravage your poor, sensitive pussy, iron grip, keeping your thighs open. 

You squeak and grab ahold of his hair, trying to push him away as you feel an unfamiliar warmth spread throughout your body. "Leon! Wait, wait, I-I—" 

Leon moves his mouth up to your little pearl and begins to suck and nibble on it. That's what truly sends you over the edge. 

Back bowing, legs shaking, head thrown back with your mouth open in a silent scream. You can't even feel your lower half; pins and needles are crawling down your legs and into your feet. You're sure your legs snapped shut on his head, as you feel him so much more now. 

Soon you come back into reality with Leon hovering over you, his dick freed from its prison, poking your thigh. "You okay? Did that feel good, my love?" It's so sweet how he's checking in with you after giving you the best time of your life! 

"Y-Yeah," you breathe out heavily, pulling him closer by his silver cross. Toying with it between your fingertips. "That felt amazing. Thank you." 

Giving him a soft, sensual kiss. Tasting a bitter liquid on his lips. He chases you as soon as you part, dipping his tongue between your lips and asking for more. You oblige, and his thick muscle is invading your cavern, touching each tooth and swirling around your own tongue. It's turning hot and heavy as he presses his hips into yours, putting weight on you. 

He starts humping your leg, his cock pulsating and leaking transparent sticky fluids on your skin. He is moaning and panting into your mouth as he cups your breasts. Slowly pulling away as he takes you in once more, completely infatuated with you, it seems. And it also seems the feeling is reciprocated by yours truly. 

"Can I put it in, please?" Leon grabs ahold of his dick and clumsily strokes it over your cunt. His body is stuttering forward, and his grip on your breast is tightening just slightly. 

Biting your swollen bottom lip, you nod slowly. Bracing yourself for the intrusion down there. It doesn't even look like he'll fit inside of you; you're afraid he's going to somehow rip you apart down there. But you push down the fear with a shaky sigh. 

"Just, um.. let me know if it hurts," he swipes through your folds a few times before sinking into you gradually. 

Your body tenses up, and you grab hold of his hand, squeezing it as you let out high pitched breathy whimpers. Squeezing your eyes shut as you try to get used to his size. You can't believe he's taking your virginity. 

"W-wait, stop, stop, please... It hurts." You feel tears forming in your eyes, and Leon immediately halts. 

Pressing chaste kisses to your eyes and one on your lips, his body bucks forward. With a groan, he murmurs, "God damn. I-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, baby."

Your pussy flutters around his length, and you breathe in and out, getting used to him. Canting your hips up to get more of him on your terms, you roll your hips with a gasp and say, "Leon."

He takes that as a sign to push more of himself into you, filling you to the brim. Shifting to lay down on his forearms, next to your head, you wrap your legs around his waist. Your nails dig lightly into his back, eliciting a low growl from him as he tries to calm himself down. Too aroused with the feeling of you wrapped around his shaft so tightly that he can't even begin to think properly. 

Taking a quick breather so that he doesn't accidentally fall on top of you. Lazily humping against you, stimulating your clitoral area while being so goddamn full of him. 

"Baby, god," Leon starts to clumsily push in and out of your sopping heat. Barely even disconnecting himself from you. If anything, he doesn't ever want to pull out of you. You feel too good; it would greatly upset him to stop now. 

It feels so intimate as he continues to hold your hand, sloppily kissing you as his dick slowly penetrates you deeper and deeper. Swallowing each other's noises, afraid of getting caught by his parents, is always lingering in the back of your mind. 

"Mmnn, you're so tight, it's hard to move." Leon drops his forehead onto yours, staring at you intensely. His eyes are soft yet lustful, carrying love in them, you see. 

Maybe you just hope that he loves you because you've loved him all your life. Having known him since you were 4 and he was 6, you couldn't have asked for anyone else to take your virginity but him. Even though he's the pastor's son. 

"I love you," you can't help but blurt out. Biting your lip as he speeds up his movements for a few thrusts before going back to his lazy ones. 

"You mean it?" He pants heavily into your mouth, feeling you nod your head against his. "I love you too. God, I really, really do. I promise, baby." 

With those heartfelt (sort of) confessions, he begins to pick up his pace.

Growling softly when you clench around him or make squeaky noises that can't be discerned by a whimper or a moan. He loves you and all your little noises. The freckles that paint your body. The way your body curves and your stretch marks—everything about you is so gorgeous to him. He wouldn't want to do this with anyone else. He's tried giving you signs and hints that he wants to be your boyfriend, but he is always too scared to say it outright. But now he's glad about how things turned out. Including giving you his virginity.

You claw at his chest, grabbing ahold of his necklace as he fucks you harder. Looking down at his member, you see a white ring around his base. Throwing your head back into his pillows, you feel another orgasm creeping up your body. 

"I'm gonna—it's gonna happen again, Leon, mmphh," you whine out as your legs try to close up, only to be blocked by his body. 

Leon lets out a pained whimper, and then all of a sudden he grips onto your hair and starts to gently bite under your jawline next to your earlobe. It's syrupy and slow this time; your mind goes fuzzy and blank. No thoughts, just Leon. And his manhood bumps into your cervix. 

"Please, let me... inside—can I?" His words are all jumbled up, and you can't help but say yes. 

He speeds up even more, which seems impossible, but it really isn't. It has your chest bouncing with each thrust, and soft cries are leaving your lips. He keeps on holding onto your hair and hand, bringing your face up to meet him halfway to make out with you. Drooling into your mouth and his eyes rolling into the back of his head. With each thrust, his necklace bumps into your neck. 

Hips stuttering into yours, he almost collapses onto your figure. Threatening to bury you into his mattress as he lazily thrusts a couple more times.

A hot liquid squirts into your womb, and Leon lets out a strained moan, dropping his head into your neck. Slowly letting go of your hair and letting your scalp relax after such harsh treatment. Your cunt clenches around him tightly. 

His hips continue to jerk into yours, almost making sure his cum stays inside of you. It's like his body already knows what to do after watching one video of people making love. 

Leon presses soft kisses up to your temple before getting off of you. Shifting back to his haunches, he hesitantly pulls out of your hole. Watching your cunt flutter around nothing, his seed slowly drips out of your hole. His dick jumps, hitting his toned stomach, almost ready to jump back into action for round two. 

"Baby, just so beautiful. I love you." 

You can't help but giggle at that, making more of the sticky white liquid squirt out of your hole and onto his sheets. He quickly notices that and grabs a few tissues to wipe it off, leaving you and himself clean. 

"I love you too, pretty boy," you sigh deeply, truly enamored with the way Leon just is. He's so sweet without even trying. 

You go to sit up and grab your undergarments, but your legs are too shaky to even stand up, and you almost fall over. Leon maneuvers you back onto his bed and fetches it all for you. Getting himself dressed as well. 

Hell, maybe it wasn't so bad to become a sinner. It was definitely a heavenly sin, that's for sure. 

You two stare at each other, lips swollen red, eyes swallowed by the black and flushed pink faces. Your hands interlocked as you slowly began to kiss. But this time, it's much sweeter and softer. No rush to feel skin on skin; just relaxing in the now. 

"What're we going to do?" Mumbling into the kiss, you pull away. 

"What do you mean?" 

"You.. you did it inside of me. What if I get pregnant? I can't be a mother right now, Leon," you frown, looking down at your stomach. 

"I'll figure it out, okay? And—And if you do end up carrying my child, I'll be there. I'm not just going to leave you."

And with that, your worries washed away, nodding alongside his words as if they were God's words. In a way, he is God to you. Constantly saving you, bettering you, loving you unconditionally, and listening to you. You'd get on your knees any day for Leon. He'd just have to say the word, and you'd do it. 

"Was I too rough? Are you hurt anywhere?" He presses a few chaste kisses on your forehead and temple. 

"No, but I am hurting... down there. It feels a little sore. But everything else is fine." You give him a thumbs-up with a goofy grin. He returns the silly smile, nuzzling your jawline. 

"I can see if there's any ibuprofen; I'll be right back, okay?" 

Shortly, he returns with two pills and sets them in your palm, bringing your water over to you. You take them with a gulp of water. 

"I think I've got to use the restroom as well. I'll be back." You let out a breath and walked into the bathroom across the hall. Doing your business, flushing, and then washing your hands before returning back to him. 

Joining him on his bed, under the covers, to snuggle up close to him. 

"You're so warm. I love it." 

"I'm glad you do, sweetheart." 

You both end up talking for a few more hours about work, your friends, hobbies, and, lastly, how long you've liked one another. 

"Wait, wait, wait," you giggle and lay on your elbows, resting your head in your palm. "You've liked me ever since elementary school? Why haven't you told me?" 

"I tried. I tried giving you hints; I even brought you a flower that one time, remember? And, like, I always let you borrow my shirts and sweaters. I thought that was enough, and you saw that, and, uh, just didn't like me back." Leon rolls his eyes and pulls you into his arms. Attacking you with kisses on your ear and behind it.

You squeal and squirm in his grasp, letting out a breathy, "Okay, okay! I see it now!" 

"What about you?" 

"Since middle school. Remember the time on Valentine's Day when I gave you like all my candies? And then, when we did bingo at church, I gave you my prize and said I didn't want it. Yeah, well... I wanted it, but I gave it to you instead." 

"So cute. I love you, baby bug," he mumbles into your neck. 

"I love you too, handsome," you answer into his shoulder. 

It is safe to say that you both fell asleep holding onto each other. With smiles on your faces. You both are dreaming of the day that you both get married and have the whole white picket fence, dog, children, and everything in between.

You'd risk your relationship with God again if it meant that you'd be with Leon forever.

He would absolutely risk being called a devil's spawn if it meant that he'd get to be your lover forever. 

Maybe God would forgive you if you decided to sin again and again. As long as you are happy, it doesn't matter what happens. If and only if, you have Leon, the pastor's son, in your arms, everything will be alright.

#leon kennedy #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x you #leon s kennedy #leon x reader #resident evil x reader #resident evil smut #pastors son!leon #leon smut #leon kennedy smut #re2 leon #localkiss

[twizzie-lairs]

My Darling, My Honey

Alastor X Fem!Reader (Part 9)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |

Part 9

Part 9:

Just as you exited the door to your now former apartment, you heard the sound of an explosion.

You just sigh at the sound, it doesn't phase you as much as it used to. Always startling enough to make you slightly jump, but you knew it was the start of the turf war one of your acquaintances told you about ahead of time.

It was a favor they owed you after you saved them from being killed by the Overlord boss they work for, which happened to be the one you were being commissioned by back then.

To take advantage of their insider info/tip, you decided it was needed to pick up the pace so you could get out of there in one piece- so their risk of getting that info to you wouldn't be in vain.

The pace at which the explosions happened quickly increased, along with the sounds of bullets and glass breaking that joined the chorus of chaos.

"Shit, shit, shit shit!" you quietly cursed to yourself as you quickly exited the building however you could, because you could feel the foundation and walls starting to give way.

So naturally, the easier and quickest way out was through a window in the stairwell. Unfortunately, you were up quite a few flights and though you tried your best to roll and fall safely, you still landed on the ground with an unceremonious thump.

The shattered glass underneath you from the window gave you a lot of ugly cuts. Not to mention you could already feel many bruises forming all over your body, maybe you broke a rib or two, you couldn't tell. It's been a while since you've had to make such a messy escape- that was probably a couple decades and rings ago.

Pulling yourself up from the ground, you wince through the pain and make a quick dash to grab your briefcase of supplies that went flying during the fall.

You couldn't really hear too well right now because of all of the warfare going on, everything sounded so muffled, so you couldn't tell what direction the danger was. But you knew you had to run, or else you would get into even deeper shit.

You were a woman on a mission, so you ran as fast as your legs could carry you, ducking, dodging, weaving, sneaking, and even having to get rid of a few goons yourself along the way to where you'd be able to enter the Pride ring.

It was quiet here, the sounds of warfare and screams of the damned were muffled from all the way out here at the edge of this ring of Hell. And it wasn't muffled because of your hearing, your hearing went back to normal after spending a few minutes in some quiet corner to regroup yourself after the hellish way here.

It was here, you decided, that you'd make your way into the Pride ring using your special power.

Your real power wasn't to make enchanting paintings or portraits, that was just skill you've honed after many years of life (and death).

But this...it made you nervous, even though the power was truly your's, you were nervous because you felt like you'd get caught breaking the laws of how Hell is supposed to function- like fundamentally. Sinners like you weren't supposed to be able to travel freely through Hell, but for some reason, you could with this power.

You took some supplies out of your briefcase, and drew a complex crest-like symbol on the ground in front of you.

Ever since you landed in Hell, this symbol felt like it was etched into the back of your eyelids. You always felt like it defined you, the essence of you, and that held power- the type and magnitude you still weren't totally sure of. You never had any close connection you trusted enough to teach or help guide you through any of this...

With a deep sigh, being careful not to agitate any broken ribs or bones, you knelt down in front of the symbol, placed both hands on the symbol of the ground, and closed your eyes.

You focused your energy into your hands, feeling power surge through you until your felt your hands disappear into the ground- your body following right after.

The one downside to this power, spell, ability- whatever you want to call it- was that you couldn't really control where you landed.

After much trial and error, you've honed it to the point where you could go from one ring to the other, but you couldn't really pick where you got dropped in the specific ring you wanted to go to.

Not to mention it drained so much of your energy, it made you so extremely weak to the point that almost any weakling that came across you could nudge you with their foot and you'd be near double death already.

All that said, you wanted to avoid using this power at all costs unless it was an emergency. So unfortunately your search for your love Alastor was hindered greatly by this caveat- you had to stay "alive" if you wanted to be reunited.

Too many attempts before you mastered this power would likely end in your (permanent?) death if you were found that weak and vulnerable so many times by who knows what type of demented soul that would witness your sorry state after you used the power.

And once more today did you fall to the ground with a thump, though a very small distance this time that was fortunately cushion.. by... garbage in a dumpster...

"This falling shit is getting really old..." You thought to yourself.

"Ugh shit..." You slowly roll out of the dumpster, your briefcase appearing by your side with a tiny *poof*.

As you lean against an alleyway wall, it hits you like a truck- the price you pay for defying the laws of Hell. The previous injuries from escaping the turf war made this time hit so much worse than any other previous time.

You accidentally stumble forward from the wave of pain that slammed you suddenly, vision blurring, energy fading fast enough to the point where you're just about to pass out at any given moment. But you try to hang in there as you attempt to refocus your vision.

Your stumbling around likely looked like you were a drunkard making an idiot of themselves after a bar fight.

As you kept accidentally bumping into random strangers that you could hardly see due to your blurry vision, you kept getting shoved around by people thinking you were being a public nuisance- and that says a lot, given you're in Hell and all.

All the shoving and little jabs from random strangers hurt so fucking much, that your body gave out, you couldn't keep it together any longer.

You couldn't get yourself together this time.

Your vision turned sideways as you fell to the ground, except you didn't hit the hard and unforgiving concrete.

You felt a pair of arms catch you. All you could see was a girl's face talking at you, but you couldn't hear a goddamned thing. Hell, you could hardly see her even though she was right up in your face.

"Oh my gosh, are you okay? Do you need help? Oh my god, Vaggie, we need to help them!"

"Charlie, are you sure about this? They could be dangerous! You don't even KNOW them!"

Then everything went black.

"But I can't leave them to die here, we need to bring them back to the hotel!"

"Ugh, alright, fine! But if they pose a danger to you or anyone else in the hotel, they are OUT."

-> Part 10

#hazbin #hazbin hotel #fanfic #hazbin hotel alastor #alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor x reader #alastor the radio demon #alastor x you #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel x you #radio demon #alastor hazbin #hazbin alastor #the radio demon #hazbin hotel x y/n #alastor x y/n #hazbin charlie #charlie morningstar #vaggie #hazbin vaggie #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel vaggie #hazbin hotel fandom #hazbin hotel fanfiction

[jeonginslut]

┊NOW OUT. two boyfriends dress them up like twins. (psh x afab!reader x kjw)

┊synopsis. youre the head basketball cheerleader at your university and just so happen to be hooking up with the captain of the basketball team, yang jungwon. you may also be hooking up with the co-captain and jungwon’s best friend, sunghoon. what’s the worst that could happen?

┊WORD COUNT. 7.6k

┊WARNING. MINORS DNI. 18+. smut.. porn little plot. reader is messy as fuck. jungwon is also messy. isa is mentioned just for some plot building. p in v, squirting, protected sex (yay), unprotected sex (not yay), face fucking, swallowing, fingering (f. rec) , oral (f&m rec.), threesome, cumming inside, sorta some angst. i think that’s everything!

┊authors note. WOWWW after 5 months, i finally finished and posted this! i’m so sorry for such a delay on this, but i wanted to make sure i put my best into it! i will be working on the next installment of this fic soon! it will definitely not take me five months to post! should i do it in chronological order or who would you guys like to read about next? it’s been a long time since i’ve written a smut fic, so hopefully this is up to your standards! likes & reblogs are appreciated! my asks are also open so please send me some! thank you!!!

┊taglist! @strawberrywonz @denleave1088 @sunjaywoning @having-an-internal-crisis-rn @sjakewrld @lovewonkiki @rikisly @forrds

You loved game days. You loved how everyone would buzz with excitement, how you got to dress up, how many eyes would be on you. Everyone knew who they came to watch, and it wasn’t the basketball team.

Even the team knew it, their eyes lingering a moment too long instead of focusing on the court.

Especially when the captain, Jungwon, would noticeably bite his lip and miss the basketball flying at his head. That was a moment for the books, especially because it was his co-captain Sunghoon. You basked in the attention.

You giggled to yourself at the memory as you adjusted your red bow to sit comfortable at the top of your head.

As you were about to apply your lip gloss, your phone buzzed once, then twice, then three times. You were going to yell at your phone in annoyance, but quickly changed your demeanor when you saw who it was.

wonnie 🎀: hey pretty girl

wonnie 🎀: will i be seeing you tonight?

wonnie 🎀: you ditched me after the last game, i think you should make it up to me?

Instead of replying, you left him on seen. He thinks you owe him because you “ditched” him?

Jungwon is many things, but he is not a fool. He knew that you didn’t ditch him, you just weren’t going to wait around while he felt up one of the other cheerleaders.

So if he considers you ignoring his phone calls and texts asking where you are, or “please pick up angel” ditching him, sure.

You weren’t making it up to him though, that’s for damn sure. However, you’re sure it would be fun to fuck with his head.

y/n 🌷: okay :).

y/n 🌷: i’ll see you after the game.

Your message was almost read immediately, but you quickly closed out of it, not wanting to give him any satisfaction of you waiting for a reply.

Instead, you clicked out of his name, muted his messages, and scrolled to the one you really wanted to see tonight.

y/n: are you busy after the game?

Within seconds, a reply came through.

BEST DICK EVER: for you? never.

y/n: perfect <3. meet at my place?

🤍

The moment the game was over, you felt relief take over your entire body. It was a rough game, and unfortunately your team lost by a plethora of points.

They looked sad, and as hard as you tried to keep cheering them on, even your spirits were slightly crushed.

So as soon as the final buzzer rang and the players went back to their respective locker rooms, you booked it to the parking lot.

There was only so much time you had to get ready, and you couldn’t waste even a moment. Your teammates noticed your quick exit, but decided not to comment on it, towards you at least.

You would have to send out a group message later to explain yourself later, but for now, your mind was set on getting ready for your company.

The first call came in as you were turning into your apartment building, and you decided to let it ring. Maybe Jungwon would think you fell asleep, but you both knew better than that.

The second call came in as you unlocked your door, and this time you decided to answer.

“What?” You asked in an annoyed tone, “I didn’t answer for a reason.”

“Where are you?” Jungwon replied in an even more annoyed tone, “I don’t see you.”

“Because I’m not there,” You threw your keys onto the table and removed your white tennis shoes before walking towards your bedroom, “I have plans.”

“Yeah, I know,” He bit back, “With me.”

“Oh no,”

“What?”

You tried to stifle your laugh at his reaction, “Oh, so you weren’t too busy feeling up Isa to notice that I left?”

Jungwon groaned into the phone, “Get over that y/n, it’s not like we exclusively fuck.”

“Last time I checked, you were begging to see me after that game, begging me to let you hit because you, in your words, couldn’t wait to feel how tight I am around you, couldn’t wait to make me come undone your fingers because I looked so hot cheering for you,” You spat back, “I don’t remember you telling me you meant to send that to her.”

“She approached me, and plus, I tried to call you later that night,”

“I don’t want her sloppy seconds,” You cut him off, “So let’s try this again next week.”

You hung up the phone and threw it on your bed, anger boiling inside, who the fuck did Jungwon think he was? You are nobody’s second option.

Instead of dwelling on Jungwon, you carefully removed your cheer uniform, hanging it up in the closet and removing the bow from your head.

You could not wait to get the tight ponytail out and let your curls breathe before they get ruined in other ways.

Ping!

Again, your phone went off, and you knew it wasn’t Jungwon, he was still muted from earlier. A small smile plastered on your face, and quickly dropped because you were not ready.

You stood in nothing but the team branded sports bra and your safety shorts, but fuck, it didn’t matter. It’s not like they would be on for too long anyway.

BEST DICK EVER: i’m here angel

Quickly, you went to open the door and practically swung it open.

There stood none other than Park Sunghoon. His dark hair was damp from the shower he must’ve taken at the facility, and there was an unreadable glint in his eyes.

“Well, are you going to invite me in or just stare at my arms?”

You scoffed, “Was not.”

You shifted to the left to let him in, eyes lingering on how defined his chest and arms look in that confining white tee.

“Maybe a little,” You admit as he takes his shoes off and makes his way to your couch, “Or a lot.”

Sunghoon took his place on the couch, looking at you expectantly as you made your way to stand between his legs.

“Missed you,” His hands came up to hold your hips, “You did great tonight.”

“Did great or looked great?”

A laugh escaped his lips and his thumb began stroking your hip bone, “Can’t it be both?”

You closed your eyes, basking in his touch for a moment before he pulled you down to straddle his thighs, “You did great tonight too, Hoon. You always do.”

He stared at your features, taking you in as you looked at, biting your lip ever so slightly.

“So,” He broke the silence, hand traveling to the small of your back, “Are you going to let me eat it?”

You hummed in thought, “Maybe,” Your hands went up to his shoulders, fingers gracefully skimming over his silver chain, “Only if you let me wear this.”

He cocked his eyebrow, intrigued nonetheless, “You wear all of your sneaky links chains?”

“Maybe,” You shrugged, “But that doesn’t matter, I wanna wear yours.”

“What my pretty girl wants, Sunghoon removed his hands from your thighs to unclasp his necklace, “She gets.”

Sunghoon brought it around your neck, watching it lay between your tits, “And damn do you look good in Tiffany.”

Your face flushed, at a loss for words as Sunghoon moved you to lay back on the couch and he was now sitting between your legs, “You look so pretty wearing my chain, I bet you look even better wearing just that .”

His hands moved up to your sports bra, fingers dancing over your nipples before sliding them under the hem.

The contract made you gasp, his lithe fingers were cold against your nipples. Sunghoon pushed your bra up until your tits were on full display, bringing one of your nipples to your mouth.

Your fingers dug into his shoulders, small moans leaving your mouth at the contact.

Sunghoon began to kiss down your stomach, hands still rolling your nipples around in his nimble fingers. Once he reached your safety shorts, he looked up at you with a lustful look.

He took the thin fabric between his teeth, pulling it down slowly, exposing your glistening cunt to his hungry eyes. His fingers hooking underneath the fabric to pull them down your legs.

Sunghoon stared at you, his hand caressing your right thigh as he lifted your left thigh to rest on his shoulder.

“I fucking love this cunt,” His sweet tone dripped like honey, “You get so wet for me so easily baby, I’ve never seen such a more perfect cunt.”

You let out a sigh, unsure what to say, but you didn’t have to say anything. Sunghoon used two fingers to spread you before laying his tongue flat against your core.

His free hand held your leg in place as he started kitten licking at your clit. Your hands came to grip his hair, tugging at it gently.

“Hoon,” You whimper as he flickers his tongue against your clit, “Feels good.”

He grinned up at you, pushing two fingers into your cunt as he continued swirling his tongue around your clit. Sunghoon’s fingers were going at a brutal pace, causing broken moans to leave your lips and legs shake underneath his grip.

“Hoon, I’m gonna cum if you keep doing that," Your grip tightening on his hair.

"Make a mess all over my face, baby." Sunghoon said, not slowing the pace of his fingers, "Show me how good I make you feel."

With Sunghoon's praise, you let the knot in your stomach finally let go. Your orgasm hit you harshly and all you could do was moan Sunghoon's name and rut your hips against his lips.

His tongue or fingers didn't stop, lapping up the mess from your orgasm. The overstimulation felt too good, and you could feel your hips chasing after his fingers.

Sunghoon pulled his fingers and sat up, looking down at you.

And what a site to behold.

His hair was disheveled from your pulling and lips were shining with your wetness.

“You think I’d let you cum again on just my fingers?” He asked, hands trailing up to pinch your nipples, “Baby, I’m not done with you quite yet.”

Sunghoon brought his hands to your hips, flipping you onto your stomach. He forced your hips up, “Come on baby, arch for me.”

You complied, sitting up on your knees and leaning forward. All of your weight was on your palms, and arched your back the way Sunghoon wanted. You could hear rustling behind you before his hand came back to hold your hip.

“Think you can handle it?” He leaned down, his bare chest pressed against your back.

A scoff left your lips, “More than capable, but do you think you can handle this?”

“Mm, I don’t know” Sunghoon whispered, kissing down your back before pushing into you, “Definitely the best pussy I’ve ever had.”

You pushed your hips back against him, moaning at the stretch of his cock, “Definitely the best dick I’ve ever had.”

Sunghoon gave you a moment to adjust before fucking you back onto his cock at a fast pace. You tried to keep yourself up, but fell to your elbows and face smushed into the cushion below you.

One of Sunghoon’s hands snuck underneath your stomach and began rubbing figure eights into your clit, causing a borderline scream to escape your lips. He laughed at your reaction, letting up on you ever so slightly.

“God y/n,” He groaned, “I’ve never seen somebody go crazy for my dick like this before, must’ve really missed it.”

Sunghoon pushed your back down into a deeper arch, groaning when you clenched around him, “Fuck baby, you gonna squirt on this cock?”

The pleasure was too overbearing to the point only broken moans could leave your lips, the familiar knot in your abdomen was forming once again. Sunghoon’s brutal pace only quicked, causing a silent scream to escape from your mouth as you let your orgasm take over once again.

Sunghoon slipped out of you, slapping his tip against your sensitive folds as he looked at the mess between your thighs, “What a messy baby, squirting all over my dick like that.”

You could barely hold yourself up, trying to compose yourself as you came down from your high.

“You didn’t cum yet,” You breathed out, turning yourself to lay on your back, “And I wanna feel it.”

Sunghoon smirked at you, leaning down to kiss you as he slid himself back into your cunt, “Anything my pretty girl wants.”

You were busy sucking a hickey underneath his jawline as he fucked into you slowly, groaning into your ear.

“You’re the best fuck ever,” Sunghoon whispered, hips stuttering as he approached his own orgasm, “Nobody takes me as well as you do.”

A laugh escaped you, hands playing with his hair as you continued leaving small hickies down his neck, “Have fun explaining these to your other bitches.”

“You’re the only person I fuck, y/n,” He rolled his eyes, pulling out of you.

“Oh.” Is all you said, sitting up as you searched for your safety shorts, pulling them back over your hips.

Sunghoon threw his clothes back on lazily, stretching as he stood up, “Well, have a goodnight.”

“You aren’t gonna stay?”

He laughed as he kissed the top of your forehead, “Do I ever stay?”

Sunghoon gently kissed your lips before opening the door, “Call me?”

“What about your chain?”

“I’ll get it next time.”

🩵

“Who’s chain is that?” Jungwon asked, stopping in front of you with an accusing look, “That’s new.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes at him, “It’s nobody’s, and like you said, it’s new.”

Jungwon stared at you, looking for any reason to accuse you of lying, “Are you still mad at me?”

The truth was, not really. You kind of forgot about Jungwon and Isa for the last few days, thanks to Sunghoon. He really knew how to make you forget things. Must be his dick.

“Nah,” You shrugged, “Don’t care. If you don’t mind though, I have practice.”

This time, Jungwon scoffed, “I know, we practice at the same time.”

You laughed at him, turning away and letting your hair hit him in the face, “If you are sorry, well, prove it.”

“See you after practice?”

Bingo! You thought to yourself, sparing him one more glance, “Sure.”

Jungwon watched as you walked away, noticing how good your ass looked in those shorts and how easily your hips swayed.

“Whatcha starin at?” Somebody asked from behind Jungwon, making him jump.

He sighed in relief when he saw that it was just Sunghoon, “Oh, nothing.”

Sunghoon’s eyes caught you just before you turned the corner, “Ah, nothing.”

Jungwon paused for a moment, eyes catching something he hadn't noticed until just now, “What happened to your necklace? The one you swore you wouldn’t take off even when you reached the pearly gates?”

“Oh,” Sunghoon said casually, “Needed to be cleaned, supposed to get it back soon.”

“Right,” Jungwon replied, “Let’s get to practice. I have plans.”

🩵

Jungwon met you at your apartment, waiting for you to open the door at any moment. He regretted wearing a sleeveless top in the nippy weather, but he knew that his arms made you go insane.

Finally, when you did open the door, Jungwon felt his slight annoyance melt away with how dolled up you were.

You wore a purple knitted headband, curls pushed back and spilling over your shoulders. You wore clear coated lip gloss and shimmering silver eyeshadow, matching your jewelry. Jungwon noticed something significant already missing.

“Took your new chain off, huh?” He asked, waiting for you to step to the side, “Guess you didn’t like it that much.”

“Guess not,” You rolled your eyes, moving to let him in, tightening your robe around you, “Sorry for the wait, I had to get ready.”

Jungwon winked at you, shutting the door as he followed you to your bedroom, “All dolled up for me, darling?”

“For myself,” You corrected, holding a candle in your palm and you lit it, “But I guess for you as well.”

He waited for you to come to him, leaning back on his arms as he watched you move, “You know, y/n, with you ditching me, I was wondering if there was somebody else who took my place.”

A cackle escaped your lips as you looked at him with a challenging look, “Took your place? Oh, I guess you noticed after you were done fucking my teammate when you know, you should’ve been in my bed.”

“One, I didn’t hook up with Isa,” Jungwon stated, “Just some heavy petting, and two, you know you’re the only girl I take seriously.”

“Grow up Jungwon, even you know that isn't true,” You stalked closer to him, “Because I don’t take you seriously.”

“Aw, you don’t?” He asked, sitting up and leaning towards you, “Such a shame, I would love to be your favorite on the roster.”

You met him halfway, “There is no roster. I thought you came to fuck, not try convince me you want to take me out or some shit.”

“I do wanna take you out, pretty girl,” Jungwon whispered, thumb grazing over your cheekbone, “And ruin everybody’s day.”

Jungwon laughed loudly as you pushed him back, slowly moving to straddle him, “You don’t think that would be fun?”

“Nope,’ You emphasized, coming nose to nose with him, “You’re just a sneaky link.”

A playful pout appeared on Jungwon’s face, “Aw man, if I knew that, I wouldn’t have let you borrow my necklace that I never got back, I might add.”

“Get it before you leave.” Is all you said before connecting your lips with his.

The two of you softly kiss for a while, Jungwon running his hands up and down your smooth thighs, squeezing them periodically.

Jungwon pushed his hips up into you eliciting a quiet moan from your plush lips. His hands move up to your hips, pushing them down as he rolls his up.

“Wonnie,” You whimper, fingers digging into his shoulders as you felt him harden underneath you, “Missed me bad, huh?”

Jungwon smirked up at you, his thumbs teasing at the waistband of your shorts, “The way you’re rubbing yourself on me, I think you missed me bad.”

You rolled your eyes as you removed yourself off his lap, Jungwon immediately sitting himself up on his elbows with a pout, “What are you doing?”

“I think you’re the one who missed me badly,” Was all you said before dropping to your knees and in between his legs, playing with the drawstrings of his joggers, “Take these off,”

Jungwon looked down at you, lifting his hips up to pull them down, kicking them off next to you. His thumb played with your bottom lip, pushing it into your mouth and smiling when you automatically started to suck.

“Such a good girl,” He cooed, pulling his thumb out and replacing it with the tip of his cock, “So me how good you can make me feel.”

Like second nature, you stuck your tongue out and Jungwon slapped his cock against it, forcing a moan out of you. Slowly, he pushed his cock into your mouth, groaning at the warmth.

His hand came behind you, putting your hair into a makeshift ponytail as he pushed you down on his length, making you gag.

Your hands gripped his thighs, hands digging in as he began to fuck your mouth, letting out soft moans around him.

“Your mouth feels so fucking good,” Jungwon moaned out, tugging on your hair a bit tighter, “Fuck.”

All you could do was moan, bringing a hand to wrap around the base of his cock, eliciting a string of moans from Jungwon.

Jungwon’s thrusts got sloppy, and you knew he was getting close to his orgasam. His hips stuttered as you squeezed the base of his cock and sucked harshly on the tip.

Jungwon’s hand pushed you as far down on his cock as he could, his cum spilling down your throat as he let out a loud whine.

That was new.

You waited a few more moments before pulling off his cock, looking up at him.

What a sight to behold, your eyes were watering and your shimmering eyeshadow was running down your cheeks. Jungwon was pretty damn sure that your lip gloss was on the base of his dick, but who’s paying attention to details.

His hand stroked your hair, adjusting your headband before pulling you back onto the bed.

“Still doing okay?” Jungwon asked, looking down at you and rubbing your thigh gently.

You gave him an enthusiastic nod, lifting your hips as he pulled down your shorts and panties.

Jungwon ran two figures between your folds, biting his lip as he looked at the wetness that coated them, “So wet just from sucking dick, huh.”

“Stop,” You covered your face in embarrassment, because Jungwon knew you like the back of his hand, unfortunately.

“I like it,” He cooed, rubbing your clit and taking in your moans, “Glad to know I make you this wet, only I can make you this wet, huh?”

That wasn’t entirely true. . . but it’s not like Jungwon knew about the other people you see in explicit detail, and it’s also not like he tells you about his other endeavors.

“Just you, Wonnie.” You moaned out, hand wrapping around his wrist as he continued rubbing your clit.

He leaned down to kiss you harshly, slipping two fingers into your cunt and causing you to cry out.

Jungwon fucked his fingers in and out of you as he sucked hickeys into your neck, it completely slipping your mind what he was doing.

One of your hands was tangled in his hair, tugging on it while the other hand was wrapped around Jungwon’s cock.

He was particularly whiny, which is new, Jungwon doesn’t typically whine despite you telling him how hot it was to hear.

“Won,” You moaned as he continued sucking on your neck, “Fuck me already, please.”

“Condom?”

“In the usual spot.”

Jungwon pulled himself away from you, leaning over and opening the drawer. He rummaged around before pulling the foiled package out and slipping the condom on.

“Ready?”

You nodded, moaning at the stretch as Jungwon pushed into your cunt slowly.

Jungwon waited a few moments to let you adjust before slowly moving his hips, “Fuck, your cunt feels so good around me.”

His pace began to pick up, causing you to dig your nails into the back of his t-shirt and moaning against his neck.

There wasn’t much to think about except how good Jungwon fucked you, and your mouth couldn’t fix itself to say much besides his name.

You lifted your hips to meet his own, causing his cock to hit your sweet spot and have you seeing stars.

Broken moans and the slapping of skin were the only noises that filled the room, your hands moved all over Jungwon’s back.

Jungwon was getting close, the way his hips stuttered and his eyes squeezed tight.

“Close so soon?” You tried to tease, but immediately regretted it when Jungwon thrusted particularly hard into you, “Let me finish on top.”

He shook his head, “No baby, have to make up for making you upset. Let me do the work, you just lay here like the good girl you are.”

With words like that, how could you resist being a pillow princess right now? Jungwon wrapped your leg around his waist, moving his hand to rub your clit as he fucked into you with more passion.

“Your cunt feels so good, y/n,” He moaned into your ear, “Nobody could take my cock the way you do.”

Instead of coming up with a reply to Jungwon, you just grinded back onto his hips, helping yourself reach your own orgasm.

“Won,” You whimpered as he continued rubbing your clit in figure eights, “‘M so close.”

“Finish baby,” Jungwon kissed down your neck, “Cum on this dick, make it yours.”

You arched your back and your eyes rolled to the back of your head as your orgasm hit you, clenching down on Jungwon which pushed him over the edge, spilling into the condom.

Jungwon rested on his elbows as he looked down at you, taking in the sight of how fucked out you were, “Your pussy is for sure the best I’ve ever had.”

“That’s quite a compliment considering how many girls ran through you,” You teased, kissing his forehead, “But get off, you’re heavy.”

He winced as he pulled out, standing up to dispose of the condom before coming back to you.

By time he reached the room, you already cleaned up and scrolling on your phone, “Didn’t even let me clean you up.”

You just hummed in response, “Are you staying or going?”

He scoffed, pulling his joggers back on and fixing his shirt, “As if you ever let me stay, plus, I’m seeing somebody else after this.”

What an ass, you thought, rolling your eyes before turning back onto your side.

“Whatever, grab your necklace before you go.”

Jungwon visibly frowned at your nonchalant behavior, but turned to your dresser to retrieve his prized necklace.

His fingers danced over the cherry-wood box, opening the side where you normally keep your necklaces. He ran his index finger over the necklaces, stopping on a familiar one.

His eyes must be fucking with him, they had to be.

There is absolutely no way he is touching a necklace that has PSH on the clasp. A necklace that he knew was one of a kind. One that he never saw the true owner without.

“Holy shit,” He whispered, grabbing his necklace and slamming the door shut a bit too hard, hoping you wouldn’t notice.

You were too engrossed in your phone to notice, were you texting Sunghoon?

“Bye.” Jungwon bit out, trying to subside his anger as you bid your farewells.

This was fucking great.

🩵

You haven’t heard from Sunghoon or Jungwon in about a week and a half. It was quite odd seeing that Sunghoon always texted back, and Jungwon reached out first.

Every time you tried to catch their eyes at practice, they would revert on their own and focus on whatever they were doing more intensely.

Jungwon always acted like that though, and he was the one who went to see Isa after he was with you, so you’re not sure why he was upset.

Sunghoon said you were the only one he was seeing, and he always wanted to see you when your schedule allowed for it.

Did they figure out that you were– No that is impossible. There is no way they would have reason to even talk about you. Sunghoon maybe, but Jungwon? Absolutely not.

Even then, Jungwon is not the type to keep quiet about something like that.

This bothered you, but what could you do when they avoided you like the plague?

Nothing, the best thing would be to act nonchalant to see who cracks first.

And that’s what you would do.

Game on.

🩵

It was Friday night, which meant it was game night. Playoffs were tonight, and you needed to make sure you looked and did your best tonight.

You glanced at yourself in the mirror, admiring the work you did. There is no way that those two can resist you tonight. From the shimmering eyeshadow to your glossy lips to the two necklaces that adorned your neck, your plan was now in motion.

The hard part would be to not look at them if they looked at you, probably harder than you imagine it to be because you face the court all night.

When the game started, you stood in front of the locker room that the team comes out of, holding your hands together as you anticipated their arrival.

As soon as you saw the doors move ever so lightly, you began your call off to the other girls that it was time.

The anger, annoyance, and the small sliver of excitement rippled through you as you stomped and shaked while the basketball team ran out on the court.

Of course, Sunghoon and Jungwon would be last to come out of the locker room, so you tried your hardest to keep your eyes forward, staring at your teammate across from you.

However, your facade almost slipped when Sunghoon glanced your way for just a second, eyeing you as you cheered for him.

You almost stumbled over yourself trying to get back to the stands after that, wanting to quickly shake such an interaction from your mind.

It was going to be a long night.

And it was a long night indeed. You had no idea that the team your school was playing had such good skill. Maybe it’s time to return back to your MaxPrep days after this.

There were a few fleeting moments of Sunghoon and Jungwon looking at you, but you only watched them out of your peripheral vision, not letting either of them have the satisfaction of you looking their way.

Instead, you would send flirty looks to another player, Jay? You think that was his name. Who cares? He was hot, plus you just wanted Jungwon and Sunghoon to give you attention.

For the remainder of the game, you focused on leading your team and hoping the two noticed you ignoring them, rather focusing on their blonde teammate.

The buzzer rang indicating that the game was over, and unlike last week, your team won by a plethora of points.

Winning this game meant your team was heading for playoffs, quite a comeback from the insane loss of last week.

You were sure the basketball team and by extension, the cheerleading team, would be out celebrating together.

Was Sunghoon or Jungwon going to be there? Shit, who cares. Maybe Jay will.

If either of them won’t give you attention, their teammate definitely will.

“y/n,” One of your teammates, Isa, came up to you as you were grabbing your cheer bag from underneath the bleachers, “Are you coming to NV?”

You shrugged, “Depends on who’s going.”

“All of the basketball team,” She purred, twirling hair around one of her manicured fingers, “Jungwon asked me to invite the girls.

Dickhead. You thought, but let the smile remain on your lips, “Sure. When are we going?”

“Now.”

“In our uniforms?” You asked, “Kind of tacky.”

Isa’s smile seemed a bit too sweet, “Well, we figured we would win, so we talked about it earlier this week. Everybody brought something to change into.”

“Must’ve missed that memo,” You rolled your eyes, knowing that it must’ve been somewhat purposeful that nobody told you, “But luckily, I have clothes in my car.”

Thank God you never cleaned your car out from that one time Sunghoon fucked you in the backseat.

“See you there,” Isa sang as you sauntered off to your vehicle.

You hummed to yourself as you threw your duffle into your trunk, not noticing the tall figure standing next to you.

A yelp left you when you did take notice, and it was none other than Park Sunghoon. He was wearing a simple white button down and jeans.

He looked good, but you didn’t want to show any interest in him, not right now anyway.

“Do you have my necklace by any chance?” He asked, eyes looking everywhere but your face, clearly nervous.

You scoffed, pulling it from underneath your cropped turtleneck, quickly unclasping it and practically throwing it at him.

He caught it, but he still stood there, “You’re not going to speak to me?”

Turning towards him, your eyebrows furrowed and stepped closer, “Just returning the fucking favor, Sunghoon.”

Now he had the audacity to roll his eyes, “Well, given what I know, it was warranted.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” You threw your arms up, “Was I supposed to just text you and beg for your attention?”

“Clearly that wasn’t needed, seeing how you were eye fucking Jay,” He spat, “Who’s next? My roommate Heeseung? My fraternity brother Jake? God already knows you conquested Jungwon.”

You took a step back, trying to mask your horror of him knowing this, “Don't threaten me with a good time. I’ll make sure they leave a Google review too. You’re not my boyfriend, Sunghoon. What do you care who I fuck?”

Sunghoon’s face had a flash of hurt, “I know I’m not, y/n. But Jungwon is my friend, and you should’ve told me. I don’t know why you didn’t.”

You ran your hand down your jaw, looking down at your feet in shame, “Because Sunghoon, Jungwon and I just fuck. He is just a sneaky link, and I’m just a sneaky link to him. There’s a whole roster, and I know he doesn’t take me seriously. Same for you. We just. . . fuck, and just because you said there wasn’t anybody else doesn’t mean that’s entirely true.”

A sigh left Sunghoon’s lips, “y/n, I like you. I think you’re great, and I thought I made that clear.”

“But you didn’t,” You felt your heart contracting, as if it were tightening up, “You only came over to fuck, and I begged you to stay. Every time. Which is fine, that’s what we did, so don’t try to make me feel bad for fucking your friend because I don’t feel bad.”

“I let you wear my necklace, that’s clearly meaningful. I’m never without it, so sorry I didn’t stay the night, but I showed it in other ways.”

“God,” You laughed at him pathetically, “You sound even more delusional than your friend. You like me so much to fuck me and let me wear your necklace, but don’t stay the night. At least Jungwon was semi-realistic.”

“Oh so now you’re comparing us?” Sunghoon laughed, squeezing his jaw, “Who’s better then, huh?”

“Don’t.” You spat, slamming the trunk of your car closed, “Your ego is already fucking bruised.”

Sunghoon moved closer to you, “Oh, you think Jungwon’s better then, huh? He makes you squirt all on his dick and into an incoherent mess?”

“Well—no,” You began, breath hitching as Sunghoon continued to move closer, “But he does things better than you do.”

“Like what?” His hands reach out to grab your waist, pulling you close to him, “Tell me so I can show you how much better than I am.”

“That’s not being a good friend,” You whisper, fingers playing with the ends of his hair, “But he is a way better kisser than you.”

Sunghoon closed the gap between you two, his plush lips warm against your own. You moved your arms to wrap around his neck, gently biting down on his lip to push your tongue into his mouth.

He moved his hands to your thighs, fingers dancing over the hem of your cheer skirt. They slowly began to creep underneath the thin material, making you shiver at the contact.

“Starting without me?” Somebody interjected, causing the two of you to pull away.

Your face became hot when you saw Jungwon standing there, a wide grin and arms crossed.

“Don’t be embarrassed now,” He continued, “Sunghoon just can’t seem to accept the fact that I had you first and I’m better.”

Sunghoon rolled his eyes, “In your dreams.”

“Tell him,” Jungwon motioned towards you, “Tell him how I make you whine.”

“Um,” You bit your lip, “Actually, I’m the one who makes you whine.”

It was Jungwon’s turn to blush as Sunghoon let out a very loud cackle, “That’s great, but I’m still better.”

“I think we should let y/n decide,” Jungwon shrugged, trying to take the heat off him, “y/n?”

You pondered for a few moments, trying to piece together what exactly he’s asking, “Like. . . now?”

“Not here,” Jungwon giggled, “But maybe your place?”

The heat between your legs seems to be unbearable, fucking Jungwon and Sunghoon? Did you die and go to heaven?

“Yeah,” You nodded almost too enthusiastically, “But what about NV?”

“What about it?” Sunghoon asked, wrapping an arm around your shoulders, “Let’s go, angel.”

You slid into the driver’s seat, waiting for the two boys to get in the car. You felt like you were shaking the entire ride home, with excitement and nerves.

There’s a lot of things you’ve done, but a threesome? Never.

The two boys were silent, probably feeling the same nerves of anticipation that you were.

Pulling into your driveway, you shakily put your car in park and practically ran up the slope to your front door.

Your grip on the keys were tight, trying to not drop them. When you heard the soft click, you pushed the door open and the rep followed in behind you.

Kicking your shoes off, you turned around to face Jungwon and Sunghoon. You bit your lip, waiting for one of them to say or do something, anything.

“Um,” Sunghoon coughed, “So?”

Jungwon busted out in laughter, ignoring the glare Sunghoon shot at him, “You never had a threesome before?”

You and Sunghoon both shook your heads no, causing Jungwon to step forward and wrap an arm around your waist, “Well, I’ll show you how to do this, Hoon.”

Jungwon looked down at you, a glint in his eyes as you leaned in closer. You could feel his breath fanning across your lips, gently pressing his lips onto yours.

The kiss started off gently, hands gripping your waist as your arms wrapped around his neck. Jungwon’s fingers delicately slipped underneath your top, grazing your back. As he bit your lower lip gently, Jungwon pushed his tongue into your mouth as you felt a presence behind you.

Sunghoon pressed himself into your back, hands dancing underneath your skirt. Jungwon’s kiss got more feverish, fingers moving to the front of your top. His thumbs circling your nipples over your sports bra, eliciting a moan from you.

Jungwon pulled away from you, forcing you to turn and face Sunghoon now, who looked like he wanted to devour you.

His lips crashed against yours, replacing his hands back under your skirt and resting on your ass. You pushed into his hold, moaning into his mouth when Jungwon’s nimble fingers found their way underneath your sports bra.

You whimpered when Jungwon pinched your nipples, rolling them between his fingers as Sunghoon squeezed your ass. The safety shorts you wore under your skirt felt uncomfortable as they cling to your thighs the more wet you got.

Sunghoon pulls your shorts down, waiting for you to kick them off your feet before he slides his hands between your thighs to your cunt. He dragged his fingers between your folds, circling your clit to elicit a moan from you.

You gripped his forearm and leaned back into Jungwon, who was still playing with your tits.

Jungwon leaned down, placing kisses and hickies along your neck. You exhaled roughly through your nostrils when Sunghoon slipped a finger into you.

The two men found a rhythm between themselves, Sunghoon pumping his lithe fingers in and out of your cunt while Jungwon used one hand to pinch your nipples, the other rubbing your clit.

Your knees went weak minutes ago, pressing your weight between the two boys and making borderline pornographic noises. Sunghoon smirked at you, picking the pace of his movements up and Jungwon made slow figure eights on your clit.

Pressure rose in your stomach, the familiar knot beginning to form and Sunghoon noticed, watching how your thighs spasmed.

He picked up the pace of his fingers, leaning in to attach his lips to one of your nipples and suck harshly.

A string of moans escaped from your lips, one hand wrapping around Jungwon to grip his forearm and the other on Sunghoon’s back.

You tighten your thighs around Sunghoon’s hand as you reach your orgasm. His lips muffled the borderline scream that left you.

It took you a few ragged breaths to untangle yourself from this awkward position, Sunghoon pulling his fingers out of your cunt and into his mouth.

Fuck, he’s so hot. You felt like you could go again.

“I need to fuck you, like now.” Sunghoon said, interrupting your train of thought, pulling away from you momentarily.

Jungwon unattached himself as well, quickly pulling his shirt over his head and somewhere in your living room.

You followed suit, pushing the rest of your sports bra up and over, keeping your eyes on the two men in front of you.

Sunghoon pulled his sweats off, no underwear, slut. The tip of his dick red and leaking precum already.

He grabbed you by your waist, bringing you to sit on his lap when he settled onto your couch.

“How should we do this?” Sunghoon asked, looking at Jungwon, then at you.

You shrugged while Jungwon tapped on his chin thoughtfully.

“Have her ride you in reverse so I can get a taste of that sweet cunt,” Jungwon purred, winking at you when he noticed your flustered look.

Sunghoon kisses your shoulder before effortly turning you around, “You heard him, angel.”

You wrapped your hand around the base of Sunghoon’s cock, stroking it a few times before pushing the head into your heat.

His head rested against the couch as you slowly sunk down, your walls clenching at the stretch that was painfully delicious.

It took a few minutes for you to adjust, laying your back against Sunghoon’s chest. His lips dance against the nape of your neck.

Jungwon’s fingers dug into the plush skin of your thighs and he brought himself closer to you.

Sunghoon’s hands gripping your waist in a way that you were sure would leave bruises as he started to move you on his dick.

A string of moans left your lips as his thick cock split you open. Jungwon waited before you adjusted before he finally put his lips on your clit.

Your hands tangled in Jungwon’s hair as Sunghoon continued fucking you, causing your clit to hit Jungwon’s nose.

Whimpers left the younger boy’s lips as he ate you out with vigor, pushing you closer to your peak.

“You feel so good around me, y/n,” Sunghoon groaned, “It’s like this pussy was made for me.”

You were too fucked out to even come up with a coherent response, letting out a whimper and clenching around Sunghoon’s dick.

Jungwon continued eating you out, slipping his tongue into your cunt alongside Sunghoon. The grip you had on his hair was probably painful, but if it was, Jungwon didn’t seem to mind.

“Isn’t Wonnie so nice to help me fuck you into oblivion baby?” Sunghoon whispered, “Go on, show him how I make you finish.”

You squeezed your eyes tightly shut when Sunghoon practically slammed you back on his tongue as Jungwon’s tongue deliciously pushed into you.

A familiar coil in your stomach began to come undone, whimpers and moans leaving your lips as you let both men use you.

Jungwon pulled his tongue out as your cunt forced Sunghoon out, liquid spraying all over your thighs and Jungwon’s face.

“You ever make her do that?” Sunghoon smirked at the younger boy, pushing back into you.

Jungwon rolled his eyes, but a glint of pleasantries were in his eyes, “y/n, baby, can I fuck your throat?”

A chuckle escaped both their lips as you desperately nodded, tongue out waiting for him.

Hurriedly, he pushed his shorts and boxers down, pressing the head of his dick against your tongue.

You swiped over the tip quickly, eyes rolling back as precum seeped into your mouth.

“Such a doll,” Jungwon groaned, pushing his dick further into your mouth, “Choke on it baby.”

His head hit the back of your throat bluntly, causing your eyes to water as he started to thrust into it.

You used a hand to wrap around the base of his dick as Sunghoon began to thrust up into you again.

Both men found a rhythm of fucking you, muffled noises leaving your mouth as you took Jungwon.

“Fuck,” Sunghoon’s head fell back against the couch, “I’m so fucking close.”

You pulled off of Jungwon, the younger boy whining from the loss of contact, but you paid him no mind.

Your watery eyes locked with Sunghoon, leaning in to whisper, “Finish in me.”

Sunghoon’s eyes rolled back as he began to fuck into you with even more vigor, you going back to Jungwon’s dick.

The younger’s hand coming to the back of your head to push you flush against his pelvic bone, spurts of cum shooting down your throat.

You swallowed all you could, some dribbling down the side of your mouth as you pulled off with a wet pop.

Jungwon tsk’d, wiping it up before shoving his thumb into your mouth, “What a shame, normally you take it all, baby.”

You wrapped your own hand around his wrist, continuing to suck on his finger as Sunghoon’s cum filled you to the brim.

A squeal left your lips as your orgasam approached, thighs shaking and feeling such a pleasure of ecstasy.

The room was silent for a few minutes, jagged breathing heard from all three of you as you processed what just happened.

Sunghoon whimpered from the overstimulation of you on his dick, gently lifting you up as he pulled his dick out. You felt empty with the loss of contact, but laid against the arm of the couch as you recovered from an intense orgasm.

“So,” Jungwon was the first to speak, “Since I didn’t get to fuck you, I believe that this experiment is inconclusive, and we should test it again.”

Your eyes widened as a laugh escaped you, looking at Sunghoon.

“You’re so on.”

#enhypen hard headcanons #enhypen hard hours #enhypen hard thoughts #jungwon hard hours #jungwon hard thoughts #sunghoon hard thoughts #sunghoon hard hours #park sunghoon smut #sunghoon smut #enhypen smut #enha x reader #enha smut #enha imagines #enhypen imagines

[rafeandonlyrafe]

daddys home

words: 1.8k

warnings: 18+ only!, smut, establish relationship (theyre married!), dad!rafe, mom!reader, p in v sex (protected), female receiving oral, mentions of pregnancy/breeding, readers stretch marks are described briefly

“when is daddy getting home?” your daughter asks for what feels like the millionth time since rafe left for work this morning.

you sigh, rubbing your forehead, hoping it alieves your splitting headache. “any minute now, poppy. why don't you go get a cup of water for him and leave it on the counter?”

you know that the task will occupy her for some time, having to drag her step stool that she uses when helping you cook around the kitchen to get a cup and fill it.

you let out a breath of relief when you hear rafe pull into the driveway.

“daddy! daddy!” poppy hears the noise as well, running to the garage door, jumping up and down excitedly as she waits for rafe to come in.

she jump-tackles him as soon as he opens the door. rafe laughs, catching her in his arms.

“hi baby.” he presses a kiss to the top of her head, toeing his shoes off onto the mat.

“welcome home.” you say, moving over to rafe, pressing your face into the shoulder that poppy isn't currently resting hers against.

“you okay?” rafe whispers into your ear, pressing a kiss to the side of your head. he sets poppy down carefully, only half listening as she begins to tell him about getting rafe a water all by herself like a big girl.

“yeah, she's just been… a lot today.” you sigh, wrapping your arms around rafes waist, snuggling into his warm body.

“hey, poppy. wanna spend the night at aunt wheezies?” rafe asks.

“yes! yes! yes!” poppy screams, quickly flying up the stairs to her room with her unstoppable toddler energy to pack a bag.

“thank you.” you look to rafe, taking a moment to press a kiss to his lips.

“wheeze has been begging to have her over, she'll be so happy.” rafe says, rubbing a hand up and down your back. “and you can get a real break.”

“god, i need it too.” you laugh, pulling away from rafe but not before giving him another kiss. “i love poppy to death, but she can be so exhausting some days.”

“aw, baby.” rafe coos. “why don't you go get in the bath, ill help poppy pack a bag then take her over the wheezies.”

“mmm, sounds perfect, can't wait to spend a night just us.” you wink at rafe before both heading further into the house and up the stairs. poppy has had a string of clinginess lately, especially at night knowing you and rafe are just down the hall, so she fakes nightmares to sleep in your bed.

it's nice having her so close, but at the same time you haven't been intimate with rafe in months.

“poppy.” you call into her room, seeing her stuffing pajamas into her backpack. “you be good for auntie wheezie, okay? ill pick you up in the morning and if you behaved, we can go to the park.”

“okay, mommy.” poppy nods, a serious look on her face.

“daddy is gonna help you pack then take you over.” you finish, looking to rafe.

“thank you again babe.” you whisper, rubbing your thumb over his cheek before heading towards your bedroom. you turn on the hot tap in the master bath, letting the jacuzzi tub fill as you scrounge in the cabinets for your epsom salt.

you let out a groan when you sink into the bath, eyes closing as you relax into the hot water, your muscles finally getting a break after entertaining poppy all day.

you relax in the bath until the water starts to turn room temperature. you pull the drain before getting out, toweling yourself dry. you go through your skincare routine quickly before pulling your robe on.

you exit the bathroom to see rafe on the bed, back against the headboard, having changed out of his work clothes to sweats.

“was she excited?” you question.

“poppy or wheezie?” rafe jokes, a soft smile on his face. “both of them were so excited, but i think wheeze might have more fun than poppy does.”

“that's good.” you laugh before taking a deep sigh.

“how are you feeling now?” rafe asks, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. you move to stand in front of him, letting your knees press into the side of the mattress.

“a million times better. no more headache.”

“good.” rafe tugs at the strap on your robe, not hard enough to undo it, but making his intentions clear. “wanna lay down?” 

“just lay down?” you smirk, raising one eyebrow.

“if that's what you want,” rafe takes your hands in his, bringing your knuckles up to his lips, pressing kisses along your skin. “mrs. cameron.”

“i want you.” you tell rafe, taking your hand out of his grasp to tug your robe open, revealing yourself to him. you slide the fabric off your shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.

“you're so beautiful.” rafe says, eyes sweeping over your naked body. he rubs a hand over your stomach, the small lines running over your skin, the physical reminder of your pregnancy.

“this part of you is the most beautiful.” rafe leans forward, kissing the stretch marks. “because it shows that you carried our daughter. kept her safe inside you for nine months until he she was ready to see the world.”

“you're gonna make me cry.” you sniffle, feeling tears start to form.

“wanna make you cry a different way.” rafe says, standing up suddenly while turning you swiftly, pushing your hips down so now you're the one sat on the edge of the mattress.

rafe sinks down to his knees, spreading your thighs open for him, revealing your cunt.

“you know-” you gasp when rafe begins to kiss along your inner thighs, inching closer to your center. “i was worried when i first got pregnant that you wouldn’t be attracted to me after i gave birth.”

“really?” rafe questions. “why would you ever worry about something as impossible as that?”

“pregnancy brain.” you shrug, eyes fluttering closed as rafe spreads your thighs further, wrapping his hand around your ankle and bringing your heel up onto the bed.

“well, mrs. cameron-” rafe leans in, licking a stripe straight through your folds. “no need to worry anymore, i find you very attractive.”

you smile, bringing one hand to rafes hair, clutching it between your finger as he dives in, tongue swiping through your wetness, tasting you on his tongue. rafe works his way up from your entrance to your clit before lapping over the sensitive skin there.

“taste so good mama.” rafe hums, letting his tongue flick and play with your clit. you let out a cry, glad that you’re able to be as loud as you want with poppy out of the house.

“more.” you whine.

“all these years later, carrying my baby and you're still my little slut.” rafe tsks, bringing his finger to your entrance and plunging it in, thrusting in and out slowly as his lips wrap around your clit, giving gentle sucks to build you up, tease you.

“can’t wait for you to fuck me.” you toss your head back, pushing your hips even further into rafes face.

“yeah, you miss my cock?” 

“all the time.” you whine, bringing your other foot onto the bed as well, spreading your knees wide open to give rafe even more space to work into you as he adds a second finger.

“you think after being married for five years you’d be sick of me.” rafe jokes, but you shake your head.

“never, daddy.” the nickname impacts rafe differently now that he is actually a dad, knowing it comes from a different place.

“god, i was gonna have you cum on my tongue three times before i fucked you, but i need you too badly.” rafe stands up, but not before pressing another kiss to your clit, now puffy and red from the attention.

rafe hesitates before reaching for the nightstand drawer, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by you, but before you can comment on it, he is removing his clothes and rolling the condom onto his length and lining himself up with your cunt. 

he rubs briefly through your folds before pushing in, sinking into your pussy. you let out a loud moan, unafraid to get interrupted by your daughter as rafe copies your moan right back.

“such a perfect pussy for me baby.” rafe coos, beginning to pump his hips forward. you wrap your legs around his hips as he leans forward, pushing until your back is resting against the sheets. he hovers over you, pressing your lips together. 

you moan into his mouth, moving your hips up and down in sync with his thrusts. your bare chests are rubbing together, yours still slightly damp from the bath. your nipples catch as rafe moves, making you whimper.

“so big.” you cry out, hands moving along rafes back, feeling the cords of muscles as they stretch with his movements.

“filling you up real good, huh?” rafe smirks, cocky that he can still get you in this state just from his dick.

“so good.” you turn your head to bite rafes earlobe, tugging on it. “you know,-” you gasp when rafe speeds up. “this is the same position we were in when i got pregnant with poppy.”

you remember the night well, when you ran out of condoms and decided together fuck it, were married, and you were blessed with your little girl soon after.

“yeah? want me to take the condom off mama? fill your belly up again?” rafe asks, moving a thumb to your clit, rubbing it quickly.

“yeah, daddy, yeah i do- fuck!” your back arches off the bed as rafe pumps faster, your body quivering as his thumb strokes you to orgasm, the tightening of your cunt causing him to spill into the condom.

rafe breaths heavily, hips slowly grinding into you as you work through your highs.

rafe pulls out as you try to stop your deep gasps of breaths. he pulls the condom off and tosses it in the trash can before climbing back onto the bed, flopping down next to you.

“were you serious?” rafe asks.

you don't need any more context to know exactly what rafe is referring to.

“i wouldn't mind having another baby.” you say honestly. “besides, poppy will start kindergarten in around a year, so think about in around nine months having another little one.” you feel yourself already beginning to tear up at the thought, wiping a tear from your cheek.

“oh, baby.” rafe coos, pressing a kiss to your forehead and pulling you into him. “well, since poppy is still at aunt wheezies…” rafe trails off, moving his hand from your waist lower to cup your pussy. “we can get trying right now.”

“it only took you one try for poppy.” you remind rafe, slinging your leg over rafes body, twisting yourself to sit on top of him, rubbing your cunt over his length.

“yeah…” rafe places his hands on your hips, flipping you over so your back is against the bed. “but maybe i want more than one try.” rafe says as his cock slides back inside of you.

taglist: @drewstarkeyslut @rafecamerongirl @f4ll-for-you @dilvcv @drudyslut @jjmaybankswifes-blog @rafescokenostril @jjsmarijuana @jjmaybankisbae @seeingstarks @angelofcigs @cece45450 @babygorewhore @vanessa-rafesgirl @michelleisheres-blog @outerbankspov @drewstarkeyswifehoe @cutielando @kamninaries @buckyswhxre @rafeinterlude

#rafe smut #rafe cameron smut #obx smut #outer banks smut #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron fic #rafe fic #rafe cameron fanfic #rafe cameron x reader #rafe x reader #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe fanfic #rafe cameron x you

[ssahotchnerr]

could we maybe get some momfriend!reader and jack dynamics, maybe from before her and Aaron were even together?

something special

<333 cw; fem!bau!reader, very tiny blood description (& yes i know you're supposed to wash a paper cut right away but for the sake of the setting and aaron being cute i didn't include that step 😭), mentions of haley, mutual pining

"whatcha drawing?" you asked mid-writing, your pen flying across your paper but still finding the opportunity to peek over.

"spiderman and superman." jack replied happily, switching from a red to a blue crayon. "see, they're teaming up to fight the bad guy because he keeps doin' crimes."

about an hour or so ago, jessica had dropped off jack at the bau. long story short; she was called into work urgently and with aaron in a meeting, you were quick to volunteer yourself to keep him company. rather than cramming into the small space of your desk, and jack potentially hearing conversations or details not fit for a six year old, you've made home in the roundtable room. you could work, jack could color.

you had also fired off a quick text to aaron; letting him know jack was with you, a brief synopsis of the situation and where he could find you both once his meeting concluded. it had, and he was about to join, but found himself pausing outside the door, listening to your easy, lighthearted conversation for just a moment.

when it came to you and jack, there was just something about it. something extraordinarily special.

"i see," you nodded along to jack's words, an encouraging smile on your face. "that's really good. since when did you become an artist?"

"since always." jack grinned proudly.

"then you have to promise you'll make me a drawing soon. my desk is pretty boring, i need something to brighten it up." you held out your pinky, eyebrows raised. "promise?"

"i promise." jack linked his pinky with yours, and turned back to his masterpiece with renewed vigor.

a sense of warmth filled aaron's chest, the ends of his lips turning upwards into a faint smile at the natural bond you and jack had developed so quickly, over the course of a few weeks. deciding it was as good a time as ever to join, aaron reached out to fully open the door when a wince-gasp came from jack, stopping him.

"oh no," your head turned. "paper cut?"

jack nodded meekly, grimacing as his gaze shifted to you. his big, sweet eyes were tearful, "it stings."

"can i see?" he offered his hand limply, hanging downwards at the wrist. you cradled his small hand in yours; it was just a tiny cut - no more than a few centimeters, a faint line of red gradually seeping to the surface.

"hm, well," you huffed a breath, turning his hand face-up face-down - vaguely exaggerating the examination. you got up to retrieve the first-aid kit stationed in the room, aaron sidestepping a bit to keep out of potential view. "i think luck was on your side today, i don't think we'll have to amputate this time." you spoke with an airy tone, quick to bring light to the situation. it worked, jack stifling a laugh as you retook your seat. "nothing a bandaid can't fix."

there was the click of kit opening, a slight shuffle of what sounded like paper.

"and don't tell anyone i told you this," you applied a bit of ointment onto the bandaid before wrapping it onto his finger - not too tight or too loose, all to avoid cutting off circulation and to let the wound breathe. "we gotta keep extra band aids around because your dad always seems to get one himself."

"dad gets paper cuts? really?" jack's eyes widened in surprise.

just as his son, a breathless chuckle exited aaron; that wasn't necessarily true, but your intentions were clear: cheering jack up.

in addition, the last time he had heard someone talking to or interacting with jack like this - empathetically, attentively, motherly, was, well... haley.

it touched the usually unattended part of his heart that had been vastly empty since the divorce. since that one, horrible day. while the emptiness still lingered, you had made a pull at it. for a moment, you had healed it, even.

again, there was just something special about you. and again, the only way aaron could describe it was extraordinary.

"really." you nodded convincingly, tossing the little plastic scraps into the nearby trash bin, giving top of jack's hand a consoling pat. "it happens all the time."

aaron mentally rolled his eyes at that, a smile itching at his lips.

jack picked up his brown crayon, pain forgotten, eager to get back to his drawing. "i'm gonna draw daddy and put a bandaid on him. he's a superhero too, y'know?"

"yeah," your smile was rather bashful, your tone of voice so admirable it caused a blush to rise in aaron's cheek. "i know."

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fluff #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner x fem!reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x fem!reader #criminal minds drabble #aaron hotchner drabble #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds fanfiction #hotch imagine #criminal minds x you

[thatsdemko]

flights to Tokyo - c.leclerc

masterlist | pairing: Charles leclerc x gasly!reader. summary: on your flight from Bali to Japan there is a certain someone you didn’t want to see. warnings: forced proximity trope + mentions of choking(in a lighthearted and fun manner) + flirting. a/n: hi hi!!! it’s been awhile since I wrote a fic and specifically a fic of this length ��� I don’t know too much about flights from Bali to Japan so I deeply apologize but I hope you enjoy xx

of course he’s on this flight. it was one of the only few leaving Bali to Tokyo, unless you wanted to miss good food and a great race, you weren’t going to be on the next flight until two months from now.

you suppress a groan from escaping your lips, but a sound still alerted Charles attention from his phone, over to you lurking towards him down the aisles.

he couldn’t help the annoyed look that plastered his face when he watched you struggle to throw your bag over head, and the look deepened when you slipped into the aisle seat beside him.

“yeah I don’t want to be here either, but look.” you shove your boarding pass into his face for proof that you were to be in the spot beside him for the next twelve hours to Tokyo.

the plane was small, only a few could afford to fly private, but even fewer could afford the once every two month trip to Japan leaving you and a few other passengers on this flight.

Charles was sure one of the men would be kind enough to offer their empty rows up for you, but seeing as they looked as grouchy as they came, he suppressed the thought and shoved his headphones on.

if he had to sit with you, that was fine, but having to listen to you? he’d rather be held against his will at the emergency exit seat.

you didn’t have the best past with Charles. with on again and off again sexual rendezvous, and your brother being his best friend, things plummeted rather quickly that they did to skyrocket.

and if Charles didn’t want to speak with you for twelve hours you could live that, but you couldn’t live with his intoxicating cologne clogging your nostrils and his music blasting through his headphones. but you just shoved your headphones in and watched whatever movie the plane provided for the rest of the time.

HOUR ONE

“that movie again?” he grumbles softly with a shake of his head. you’d seen crazy rich Asians more times than you could count, but the movie was too comforting to skip, and you’d bored yourself with a French classic the second the plane took off.

“I’m sorry, weren’t you just listening to your own music on repeat?”

heat creeps against his skin as he turns from your seat and towards the window. wherever you were, the sun was setting, and across the sky was beautiful blue and pinks.

if you were attempting to avoid Charles, you were doing horrible. because you hated how beautiful his face looked with the pink and gold dancing across his face. why did he have to be so beautiful? couldn’t he have been a gremlin with a tiny dick? but no, god had to make him beautiful in all aspects.

“I think the view is a bit past me.” a smirk lifts against his face, and if you had anything valuable to throw at him, you would. but a pair of headphones, a neck pillow, and your phone weren’t worthy.

“you’re such an asshole.”

“you’ve got eleven more hours of me, cherie, unless you want to sit with one of them.” he directs your gaze towards the rows of elder gentleman passed out snoring,

a scowl holds your face as you turn to him laughing, “you think you’re so funny,” you shove his shoulders, “I hope the flight attendant spits in your food.”

HOUR THREE

you could tell he was becoming restless. Charles very rarely slept on planes, and if he did they were his own private planes with his group of friends. however, he couldn’t find comfort cramped beside you.

he’d moved seats, leaving one in between you both, but that wasn’t enough. he was large, he took up more room than you, and that seemed to always stop him before he extended his legs across the seat.

you begun to notice his tiredness, but you didn’t dare say anything and stuck to your movie, top gun, and continued to read when possible to ignore him.

except Charles was an awfully loud distraction to your peaceful hour three of the flight.

“oh my god, what is your problem?” you ripped off your headphones and give him a glare of annoyance.

“I can’t get comfortable.”

“well find a way.” you growl back slipping your head phones back on. Charles wiggles around a bit more. a gasp escapes his lips that pulls you away from your book. wherever you were, heavy clouds covered the sky, but there stood the icy mountain tops peaking through.

you leaned across Charles lap, phone in hand, you snapped as many pictures as you could before your senses alarmed you how highly inappropriate this was.

the smell of his cologne was stronger. his breathing was as ragged as yours, and if you turned your head just slightly, your lips could practically touch.

this was bad, but every part of you couldn’t pull away. the scene in front of your eyes was beautiful, but the man you’re stretched across, is ten times more powerful. it took every bit of you to not look his way.

“cherie,” he whispered so faintly you could’ve sworn you were dreaming. his fingers ghost your mid, one hand pressed against your back, “I think snacks are being served now.”

warmth spread all across you, sweat built up on your forehead as you slip into the seat beside him and accept the small bag of peanuts before the flight attendant scurried down the aisle.

“you embarrass so easily.”

“I hope you choke on a peanut.”

HOUR FIVE

everyone was asleep but him.

even if he wanted to sleep he just couldn’t, and with you beside him it made it even more impossible to do so.

your hair curled over your face, a hoodie pulled over just above your eyelids, and your head rested on the seat in between you two.

how could he sleep when he was watching you?

he remembers nights when he used to just crash beside you and never take the time to notice how angelic you looked. now, he wishes he took in that moment.

because despite all the shit you went through— the longing and hating— Charles could never shake you from him.

“are you thinking ways to poison me in my sleep?” you stir awake to the vibrant of the plane’s turbulence, eyes fluttering open, you spot Charles greenish blue eyes masked over darkness, but staring into you.

“maybe,” he grumbles in response.

sitting upward, you glance down at your phone, seeing it’d only been a few hours of rest, “Pierre wouldn’t have it. his only sister dead by Charles.” you yawn and take the opportunity to move closer, your head just barely resting on his thigh.

all movement stopped in his body. like if he were to make a sound or a sudden change you’d resort back to your seat.

your breathing was shallow and even. your eyes flutter close and you find all comfort in him beside you. like you didn’t spend the first hour in agony over this seating arrangement.

Charles knew that whatever was rummaging through his mind about you Pierre wouldn’t like, and that was enough to force his eyes shut and relax under your touch against his legs.

HOUR TEN

two hours to go.

breakfast was being served and Charles was starving. you were taking your time to butter your biscuit, carefully having plucked his butter as extra, he waited impatiently for your knife.

“for the love of god,” he muttered taking the plasticware out of your hand and beginning to cut up his food without giving you a spare thought.

“patience has never been a virtue for you has it?” you snatch the knife back with a low growl and continue working butter onto the warm biscuit while carefully taking bites.

the flight made you appreciate a few things: 1. You and charles had much more of a friendship besides sexual encounter 2. while Charles was still a dick, you appreciated his humor to keep you sane throughout 12 hours.

“what’s your first time in Tokyo?” you ask.

“a comfortable bed, what about you?”

you nod in agreement ready to even out the kinks you’d formed in your neck, “same.”

“I was thinking,” Charles says, snatching the knife from your hand again, this time only to grab your attention from your breakfast, “do you maybe want to travel around Japan with me?”

shock waves ripple down your spine. you hadn’t done much together in broad daylight— at least nothing acceptable for the sun to see— it would be the first time you and Charles do something appropriate without Pierre involved.

“you’re really missing joris’ company that much?”

he scoffs at your response, “what if I just want to be with you and your shitty remarks? ever think about that?”

butterflies attempt to swarm out your stomach, but you refuse to let them slip. you couldn’t fall for Charles again, mistakes of the past were made, but you could change the future.

“and what do I get out of it?”

“food and great company. just friends,” he smiles taking the quick chance to reach over and eat the last of your biscuit in your hand, “and a new one of these.”

exhaling a long sigh, you lean back against the uncomfortable seat, “fine. but you owe me a biscuit.”

“not if I choke on it first.”

#charles leclerc #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc fic #f1 fiction #f1 imagine #f1 imagines #f1 x reader #f1 x you #f1 x y/n #f1 x female reader #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #f1 fluff #formula 1 fanfic #formula 1 x reader #formula 1 x you #formula one x reader #formula 1 fic #formula one fanfiction #scuderia ferrari #cl16

[fatesundress]

⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader

summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.

tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people

note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡

word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)

You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine. 

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones. 

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary. 

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly. 

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile? 

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up. 

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about? 

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers. 

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession. 

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary. 

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure? 

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning. 

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with. 

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge. 

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books. 

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls. 

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin. 

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated. 

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again. 

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now. 

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice. 

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all.  You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else. 

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them. 

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten. 

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.) 

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true. 

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer. 

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t. 

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid. 

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless. 

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately. 

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end. 

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight. 

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes. 

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand. 

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain,  a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him. 

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love. 

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock. 

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly. 

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it. 

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.) 

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish. 

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same. 

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much. 

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition. 

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal. 

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it. 

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don���t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —” 

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor. 

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident. 

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be. 

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop. 

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece. 

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that." 

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval. 

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will." 

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis. 

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain. 

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.” 

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back. 

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake." 

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster. 

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating. 

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself. 

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh. 

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes. 

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you. 

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle smut #tom riddle angst #(the trifecta) #tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world #ftltutbh

[holymusicalmothman]

I Can See You - Live Action!Sanji x Reader

Saw a post about wanting a fic with Sanji and this song that @its-a-show-stoppin-number posted and I knew I wasn't gonna get anything done until I wrote this. I've never written anything like this before to be honest. I kinda word vomited in a sense. The story just exited my fingers and here it is.

Warnings: Suggestive, kissing, secret relationship, nothing explicit, only implied, objectification of Taz Skylar's jawline, like. Why’s it so fine. Like. Dear lord.

No use of y/n, or those weird descriptor things, reader is gender neutral. Reader is however you imagine them

Word Count: 1.5K

Main Masterlist

It wasn’t something you had seen coming. It wasn’t like you, to be honest.

But he was just so damn charming. How were you supposed to resist?

Sanji hadn’t been part of the crew for long. A few weeks at most. But you had been watching him from the moment the crew walked into the Baratie. 

Tall. Strong. Nicely dressed. Polite. Respectful. Suave. Not to mention good looking. That jawline–in your defense, you HAD tried to ignore the blatant attraction.

Fleeting glances for almost a week, brushing past each other in the ship’s hallways. Fantasies filling your head. One specific dream of exchanging heated kisses in a dark corner had your mind racing whenever you were in the same room as the chef. 

It was impossible to function properly. 

Your job aboard the Going Merry was to document the events that occurred. Luffy thought it would be perfect to write down all of the adventures that would eventually lead to him becoming King of the Pirates.

And writing anything was impossible.

Blond hair and grey blue eyes kept your mind far too distracted.

So you decided to do something about it. 

Especially since you had caught his eyes on you repeatedly throughout dinner. 

So you took your time eating. A phrase which here means wasting your time until Luffy, Usopp, Zoro, and Nami had vacated the kitchen for the evening. Leaving you alone with Sanji.

As he stood to clear the dishes, your hand shot out, grabbing his sleeve and stopping him in his tracks.

You looked up into his eyes, your own wide with adrenaline. 

"Please tell me it's not all in my head." You said softly. "If it is, I promise, it'll be like this never happened."

"And if I say it's not all in your head?" He murmured the words, the tension so thick someone could have cut it with a knife. 

"Then I'd ask if you'd worry what the others thought. I'm not sure if relationships between crewmembers are allowed here. They weren't on my last crew. And I'm not too keen on asking Luffy if I'm entirely honest." You took a deep breath. "But I can't get you out of my head. It's like I'm addicted."

Sanji moved to rest his hands on either side of your chair, effectively caging you in. "So more like a secret mission. Just the two of us." He bit his lip and watched your eyes zero in on the action, a smirk spreading on his face instead.

You nodded, knowing you were in too deep to back out now.

Sanji continued, despite the fact that his eyes flicked down to your lips every few moments. "Everything professional, except when it's just the two of us."

You nodded again, your heart racing and palms sweating as the object of your desire leaned forward a little more, waiting for you to reach across that last gap separating the two of you.

Your eyes fluttered shut as that gap closed. 

As your lips careened into the chef's, he exhaled heavily through his nose, pulling you up to stand and then closer so you were pressed to his chest, your hands flying to tangle in his hair. 

The world around the two of you was a blur as you lost yourselves in each other. Clothes were shoved unceremoniously to the floor as you each tried to pull the other closer. You barely registered Sanji lifting you to sit on the kitchen counter, much less registering when the two of you had even moved from the table to the counter.

"You sure you want me sitting here?" You asked breathlessly, your newfound lover placing kisses down the length of your throat.

His laugh was husky against your throat. "It's a kitchen, darling. All the best meals happen in a kitchen."

That moment was the first of many. You had never regretted sharing a room with Nami more. While there were many kitchen escapades after that first one, the two of you still found a little thrill in having your secret. 

You spent time talking as well. You learned about each other. Likes and dislikes, pasts, dreams of the future. Sanji told you about his childhood with Zeff and his quest for the All Blue. You told him of your dream to be a famous poet one day and of your life on the sea. 

Something changed along those talking sessions. Something you liked. You wouldn’t call it a friends with benefits situation. You both knew it was something else, something deeper. 

Those words were just waiting to be said.

You two would lock eyes at random moments throughout the days and his eyebrow would quirk and you'd look away.

Nights would be spent with each other, sometimes words weren’t even exchanged. 

It was bliss.

One afternoon caught the two of you on the lower decks, encased by shadows. You had originally been working on writing down events in the logbook, but your lover had sought you out. 

Sanji had you caged up against the wall, kissing you with a fervor. As if you were the last meal he'd ever receive. 

He always kissed you like a starving man. 

However, you heard Usopp's voice getting closer to your hiding spot, calling for Sanji, and the two of you quickly separated and righted yourselves. 

He winked at you as you adjusted your skewed shirt. "You'll tell me more about how that dream of yours went later, right, darling?"

You smirked. "You wouldn't believe half the things I see inside my head." 

Sanji grinned, unable to resist capturing your lips in another kiss before slowly pulling away and heading down the hallway.

Nami cornered you later that day. 

"You've been hard to find lately." She stated. 

You shrugged. "I've been hiding away trying to find a quiet place to work on the log." This was the go to excuse. 

And Nami wasn't buying it. "It's been hard to find Sanji too."

Your eyes met her brown ones in questioning silence.

"I knew it." She muttered. "Sanji left his jacket on the floor in the hallway the other night. You do know we're not like other pirates, right? Nobody's gonna care if you two get together. 'Sides, pretty sure the only ones who haven't figured it out are Luffy and Usopp. But that's just a matter of time."

You were flabbergasted. "How in the--"

"You guys aren't very sneaky. Zorro found you two the other day. Plus the jacket."

Of course Zorro would find out first. But knowing that a relationship would be fine was also a relief to hear. 

You had just finished telling Nami about your's and the chef's so-called "secret mission" when Sanji brought lunch around a few minutes later. When he got to you, he handed you your food and your logbook. "You left this in the kitchen." And with a wink he walked away. 

"He's not even subtle about it." Nami stated.

You laughed. Sanji hadn't been subtle from the moment you met him at the Baratie. He had only stopped calling you 'madame' because you told him it made you feel old. 

He had immediately switched to darling, being far too suave and charming for his own good. 

You opened up your logbook. It had gotten easier to get back to your job lately. Apparently the dark hallway meetings and late night rendezvous worked perfectly in helping your focus.

You immediately noticed his note. 

"Meet me tonight"

You snapped the notebook shut, grinning like a schoolgirl,and Nami only rolled her eyes and shook her head. "You two are the weirdest." 

It was late when you began to make your way to the kitchen that night.

He must have been impatient, because you found him waiting down the hallway, still dressed in his suit and necktie. 

You never knew blue could feel like fire, but his eyes were smoldering as they met yours. He had you up against the wall in moments, his lips on your own.

He never did anything halfway, it was all or nothing. That thought crossed your mind as you began to lose yourself in the way he kissed you. In the way it was tender and yet passionate. In the way he caught your lip with his own. In the way he would sort of nudge his jaw forward in little movements. In the way his tongue always seemed to ask permission by gently touching your own lips and leading you into deeper and deeper kisses. 

You could drown in this man. 

The words slipped out in between kisses before you could stop them. 

"I love you."

But he just grinned. A smile so bright, were the sun out it would have felt threatened. Remarkably sweet for the heated exchange that had been occuring only seconds prior.

"I love you, too, darling."

And the heat was back. His hands, which had been holding you gently at your hips, slipped to lift you and press you harder into the wall as the passion returned. 

Only to come to a screeching halt as someone cleared their throat. 

Luffy stood a few feet away, struggling to mask his shock.

"While I'm happy for the two of you, maybe the hallways are not the best for such...activities?" he said.

You both nodded, mildly embarrassed to have been caught. 

As your captain disappeared further down the hallway, a laugh bubbled out of you.

Sanji turned to look at you, bewildered. 

Grabbing his hand, you led him away. "You heard our captain, gotta go somewhere other than a hallway."

Understanding spread across his face in the way of a knowing smirk. "I completely understand, darling."

I can see you, waiting down the hall for me, I can see you, up against the wall with me.

I can see you, throw your jacket on the floor, I can see you, make me want you even more

#opla sanji x reader #one piece live action x reader #vinsmoke sanji #sanji x reader #one piece x reader #opla #opla sanji #thismothwrites

[ptersparkers]

reckless (aaron hotchner)

summary: After two years with the BAU, you get the feeling that Aaron Hotchner isn’t your biggest fan. That’s too bad, because you really like him.

notes: hello. this is singlehandedly the longest fic i’ve ever written (like 21.7K words). i didn’t intend for it to be this long and i tried to see where i could break it up, but i think it flows better if it’s in one piece. happy reading! x 

(edit: adding in that the reader is fem)

a huge thank you to @hotchsdoormat​ for being the best person alive and for listening to me rant about this piece. love u forever.

warnings: typical criminal minds speak, kidnapping and mentions of broken arms and ribs and typos, probably. 

***

Years of dreaming of becoming a federal agent for the Behavioral Analysis Unit led to the beginning of an illustrious career solving crimes and traveling across the country. It had only taken guest lectures by none other than the BAU themselves for the idea of catching killers and outsmarting them to do so to seep its way to the back of your mind.

You just wish you liked your job.

You like your work. You like walking into the office with a sense of purpose and you like profiling bad people and saving the good ones. You even like the shitty coffee that never seems to run out and you don’t mind the early call times and the sudden departures. 

What you don’t like, however, is your boss. But you know that’s just because he doesn’t like you. 

In your two years with the BAU, you don’t think you’ve ever seen Aaron throw a smile in your direction if it wasn’t meant for someone standing next to you. Two years of Aaron being dismissive and choosing to sit farthest from you in the conference room and on the jet. Two years of watching him foster friendships with your coworkers without sparing you a second glance. But work is work.

You’re an outsider. It’s almost what you expected. 

Emily’s the first one to tell you that you don’t need to take it personally. Her rocky start with the BAU and stories of learning that trust takes time eased your worries for a while, but Aaron never seemed to give you the time of day aside collaborating with the rest of the team. Everyone says he’s notorious for being stoic and intimidating, but you don’t see it that way. In your mind, he loathes you. 

Which is unfortunate, because you liked Aaron the most.

The guest lecture had sent you into a spiral of researching recently closed BAU cases and watching hours of press conferences led by Aaron. You appreciated the way he spoke about his work. He spoke about it like it was his due diligence and you liked that he treated each victim and their loved ones with grace and kindness. 

It kills you to know that he doesn’t trust you despite doing your best in the field. Your six month review approached and you passed with flying colors, earning a short-lived celebration from Erin Strauss before she exited Aaron’s office. But he kept quiet the entire examination, aside from putting his own input with how you acted in the field. He said you were diligent, followed orders well enough, and could listen to directions. It was the most you’d ever heard Aaron speak about you, but the swell of pride didn’t last long.

Sometimes people compare the two of you when it comes to your worth ethic. Last ones to leave, can’t be bothered when focused, and the need to excel in your career field while downplaying your contribution. Perhaps the need to do good in the world catapulted you into considering a role where you’d be actively helping others instead of a career where it would be too late. 

But every time you sit at your desk, opposite of Aaron’s office, you find yourself frowning. The blinds are always closed and you always wondered if Aaron could feel you staring at the emblem on his door when you wondered how you managed to keep your job. 

“I can hear your brain all the way from here,” Derek says, leaning against the stall of your desk. You avert your eyes from the door to his voice. “What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”

“Nothing,” you say.

Derek gives you a look. “I know it’s not nothing, sweetness.”

“Just tired,” you lie, “I slept poorly last night.”

Your gaze focuses on the files in front of you and Derek looks between you and Aaron’s office. He does his best not to let you know it’s been affecting him too; everyone’s noticed how Aaron’s been giving you the short end of the stick and that his wavering trust hasn’t disappeared like it had for the rest of them. It doesn’t do any good for team morale. 

For a moment in the beginning of your time with the BAU, you think he’s asking you to prove yourself. You’re new, you need to get used to team dynamics, and you need to prove yourself capable before he can trust that you’d have everyone’s back. You understand that. 

What you don’t understand, however, is why he treats you like a first-day agent after your contributions. 

“Alright,” Derek says, knowing better than to pry you out of your work. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

He leaves you momentarily when Aaron steps out of his office. You try not to look up, but it’s hard to ignore him when your desk is pointed in front of his door. He’s wearing a classic black suit with a red tie, belt and shoes to match. You know what the look on his face means–there’s a case. 

“Everyone in the conference room,” Aaron pointedly says.

Derek finishes pouring two cups of coffee and brings it over to the room where he sees you sitting in front of the screen. You thank him for the cup as he sits beside you and Reid gives you a small ‘good morning’ before everyone files into the conference room and their attentions are focused on the faces on the screen. 

“Two children have gone missing in Los Angeles, California,” Penelope begins. “Gracie and Olivia McCormack, four and six respectively, were last seen in their shared bedroom last night and LAPD has contacted us to help find them.”

“Looks like the mother reported going into their bedroom to wake them up, only to find them missing,” you say, frowning. 

“Is the father in the picture?” JJ asks. 

“Jaqueline, the mother, divorced Scott McCormack before her youngest was born,” Penelope informs.

“New flame?” Emily wonders. 

“Yes ma’am. Logan James.” Penelope presses a few buttons and Jaqueline and Logan appear on the screen. “This is where it gets tricky.”

“It looks like both Scott and Logan were abusive towards Jaqueline during their marriages,” David reads from the file. 

“Jaqueline’s pretty familiar with the local hospital,” you mutter. 

“We can talk about the file and start to strategize on our way to LA,” Aaron says, packing his file in his go-bag, which is already in hand. “Wheels up in thirty.” 

***

The six hour plane ride doesn’t feel as nauseating as you had predicted. Your second cup of coffee sits on the table in front of you as your file is displayed on the surface, along with everyone else. Departure wasn’t terrible, mild turbulence followed but nothing you couldn’t handle. The armrest becomes your best friend on these flights. 

“Did Scott kidnap Gracie and Olivia because he wants his kids?” Derek says aloud. 

“Most likely,” Reid adds. “Scott’s a migrant construction worker. I can’t imagine anyone letting him raise two children without a steady home or income, though.”

“So he’s angry at the loss of his children and wants them back,” Aaron says. “Garcia, does Scott have any background of domestic abuse prior to his marriage with Jaqueline?”  

“One count of domestic battery with a former girlfriend, but his childhood tells us a whole different story.”

“What is it, babygirl?” Derek beckons. 

“Scott was born to heroin addicts and they’d leave him in hotel rooms for days while they tried to rob local convenience stores for money, presumably for their next high. Poor kid, he never stood a chance.”

“Damn,” Derek says, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine growing up like that.”

“He was put into the care of his grandparents on his mother’s side until he was six and–oh, ouch–he apparently caused too much trouble for himself that his grandparents gave him to the foster care system.”

“I can imagine that abandonment took a toll on Scott,” JJ says.

“Take the kids away from Jacqueline as punishment,” adds Rossi. “Makes sense, especially when Jacqueline was the one to file for divorce.”

“What about Jaqueline’s marriage with Logan? Haven’t we established that Logan was abusive during their marriage?” you ask. 

Aaron raises his eyebrow. “What about it?” 

“I think it’s important to consider him in all of this, Sir. If Logan was abusive to Jaqueline throughout their marriage, maybe Scott sees this kidnapping as some sort of effort to save them from harm.”

All eyes are on you now. It makes your skin crawl and you hope you don’t say the wrong thing.

“Go on.”

“If Scott really did take his kids, I don’t know if he did it to get back at her by kidnapping them. It makes more sense that Scott would want to save his children from an abuser. I mean, he knows what it’s like to live with abusive and absent parents. What if Scott wants to protect his children from suffering what he went through?” 

“Interesting,” Dave hums. “You’re theorizing that Scott considers this kidnapping as rescuing?”

You nod. “It makes sense. Maybe he has some animosity towards Jaqueline for letting Logan into their lives and retaliates by taking his children away from her because he thinks he’s saving them.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Aaron says pointedly. 

“I’m just spitballing,” you say. “I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes.”

“Well, let’s keep it that way.”

You shut your mouth and revert your eyes back to the file that’s in your lap, desperate for any minute distraction it can give you. The rest of the team is stunned in silence and Spencer tries his best to fill in the awkward silence by reviewing all of the facts that have been listed in the report. 

At this moment, you feel small. Aaron’s dismissive attitude makes you feel somewhat inadequate at your job and you find it difficult to remind yourself of all the cases you’ve helped close when your boss has just undermined your work in front of your colleagues. 

His coldness towards you is what you don’t get. Aaron has a reputation for maintaining professionalism, which you can appreciate, but it seems like his stoic tendencies extend far beyond keeping it civil in the workplace. It feels like you’ve been isolated and boxed out from day one and despite having gotten to know the rest of the team on a deeper level, you still walk on eggshells around Aaron. It makes you wonder why he hired you at all.

From the other side of the plane, Aaron takes a seat in an empty chair and looks out the window pensively. He knows he’s being hard on you and he knows it’s unfair that he’s treating you much harsher than the others, but Aaron knows that it’s for the best. 

When you walked into his office for your initial interview, there was no doubt that you were the perfect candidate to fill in the role as a new profiler. Your past experiences had clued you into profiling and he promised Strauss that your addition to the team would benefit the BAU as a whole. 

And Aaron was right. Cases were closing at a higher rate than previously, your quick thinking and problem solving skills aided the capture of many prolific criminals, and it almost felt like you’d been with the team since the beginning. 

What Aaron didn’t account for, however, was developing feelings for you. 

All it took was a simple undercover operation to see you in a completely different light. The unsub had targeted women who looked like you and you were more than ready to step up to the plate to catch him. It took seeing you in a sleek black dress to make Aaron’s heart lurch out of his chest and make him feel like he was a teenager in love all over again, and he hated it. 

He hated feeling this way towards his coworker. For weeks, his mind bounced around the idea of what it might cost the team; your respective positions might cause an interference because of the dating policy set in place and how it would look from the outside. Aaron didn’t want to jeopardize your career by making it seem like you were providing unprofessional favors if news were to come out that you were romantically linked with him. He didn’t want your career to be damaged just because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. 

Moreover, Aaron hadn’t felt like this towards anyone since marrying Haley.

He had dated casually but never thought about the possibility of anything serious coming out of it. Aaron thought he might’ve come close to it when he had dated Beth for a while, but her career taking her across the country made him realize how unstable his life already was. Dating became a question of who gets along with Jack and the rest of his family and who is able to handle his frequent absences. His marriage to Haley showed Aaron the downside of traveling all the time and he’d be damned if he made that mistake again.

The idea of liking you in any capacity that wasn’t professional scared Aaron to death. He hates that he’s willing to find any excuse to walk by your desk or strike up a conversation with you if time permitted. He hates that his mind often wanders to a life of domesticity with you. The only logical possibility for him to combat his feelings for you is to keep you at arms length and treat you like he would any of his coworkers, which means keeping your personal lives separate and maintaining professionalism at all times.

It works a little too well and Aaron doesn’t realize it. He misplaces his anger—the frustration of knowing he can’t have you the way he wants you—and you’re at the receiving end. Aaron thinks he’s doing his best by delegating and separating you from him in the field, but he doesn’t realize that it’s causing professional tension because you constantly think you aren’t doing enough to help the team solve cases and catch criminals. 

Aaron spends the rest of the flight looking over reports the precinct sent over before the plane lands in Los Angeles. You elect to keep your nose buried in your reports for the fear of looking like you aren’t working hard enough.

***

The Los Angeles weather has cooled down when you land and Aaron has ordered everyone to head to the precinct first thing after touching down. The detectives are kind enough to reserve a room for all of you to work out of and you waste no time setting up the white board with the missing girls and timeline of the abduction. 

The stakes are high and you can feel the tension in the room. You aren’t a stranger to cases like these and you know that everyone is trying their best to keep themselves together for the sake of the department and the family of the victims. You try not to read into Aaron’s coldness to you too much. You’ve convinced yourself enough times that it’s the stress of the job and being away from his home that keeps him running on pure stress and adrenaline to prevent you from overthinking your position on his team. 

Aaron has you and Spencer stay behind in the precinct to work on the profile and piece together a timeline of the abduction, and you’re more than grateful you don’t have to spend time in the field with him. The relaxation enters your body the section you see him step out of the precinct and Spencer can’t help but pry. 

“You okay?” he asks.

You turn around from the white board and your sleeve smudges the freshly written text. The annoyance bubbles up in your chest and you hastily erase the mess you created and rewrite it before turning your attention back to Spencer.

“Stressed out, but otherwise I’m good.”

He pauses. “You’ve seemed that lately, though.”

“Can you blame me?” you ask defensively. “Our job isn’t exactly low-stress.”

“It’s just that every time Hotch enters the room, you stiffen up and you seem to lose your voice, and you play with your nails. It’s your biggest tell, actually.”

You give Spencer a pointed look. “Reid, I did not ask to be profiled.”

“Sorry,” he relents. “I just…look, I care about you and I hate seeing that you feel like you can’t share your ideas with us. Is something bothering you?”

You know Spencer knows. You’re sure the team knows why you’re apprehensive about your work and second guess yourself every time you bring forth a new theory or concept. But it’s hard to admit it out loud when all you’ve done is complain about him in your head and push your feelings aside for the sake of solving cases. 

But you know Spencer has always looked out for you after the first time you took a bullet for him a week into the job after barely getting to know each other. It’s the same way that he looks out for you in the field, protecting your cover and being the first to volunteer partnering with you when Aaron asks. He’s keen and perceptive, and you know you can’t hide your feelings from him unless you want to jeopardize another relationship with your coworker.

“I feel like Hotch doesn’t like me,” you say earnestly. “And I mean it in a way that seems almost personal.”

“He’s been pretty distant,” Spencer adds.

You shake your head. “It feels like he doesn’t trust my judgment or values what I have to say unless one of you backs me up. I can’t really tell you when I started to feel this way, but I’ve always felt like I have to walk on eggshells around him or else he’ll fire me.”

“No one’s going to fire you,” Spencer reassures. “You have an exceptional skill at finding unsubs and getting into their heads. It’s quite impressive how you’re able to put yourself in their shoes.”

“Thanks, I think,” you say with a laugh. “But you saw what happened on the plane. Hotch shot down my theory and told me not to jump to any conclusions even though I was just theorizing. I feel like he doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say because he doesn’t think there’s any value in it.” 

Spencer pauses. He sees your grip on the dry erase pen and knows how frustrated you feel. He knows you, the way you think, your work ethic, and just how badly you want to save these girls. He also knows how to distract you from your own feelings.

“Then tell me about your theory,” Spencer chides. 

“Scott might’ve taken his children as a form of punishment against Jaqueline. Sure, I think that’s a plausible theory to go off of, considering she was the one who filed for divorce. But he was never abusive towards the girls, whereas Logan was abusive to all three of them.”

He smiles when he knows it’s working.

“So you’re thinking that Scott is trying to rescue Gracie and Olivia from further abuse?”

“Yes,” you confirm. “As a parent, I can’t imagine tolerating a stranger abusing your kids. Maybe in Scott’s mind, Jaqueline was allowing Logan to abuse them without realizing he was doing the same to her.”

“The wife had full custody of the kids too,” Spencer adds, opening a case file. “He was only allowed supervised visits with a social worker present if she allowed it to happen and in the time they’ve been divorced, she hadn’t let Scott see them since she and Logan got together.”

“Okay, so Scott had enough and wanted to take matters into his own hands. If his ex-wife won’t take care of the kids and neither will her new husband, it’s up to him to take care of the girls.” 

“It looks like Scott’s had a problem with authoritative figures his entire life,” he says, frowning. Spencer turns the case file towards you. “His grandparents were physically and emotionally abusive and social workers did nothing about it. Looks like he was also a truant during his time in foster care.” 

“Get this. He’s been fired from multiple construction sites because he couldn’t follow orders,” you read. 

“Jacqueline was also the breadwinner of their relationship. I think Scott resents people who hold authority.”

“Scott wants to raise his kids,” you say, snapping your fingers. “It’s a rescue mission because he thinks he can raise them better than she can.”

Spencer grabs his phone and dials Aaron.

“What is it, Spencer?”

“Y/N and I talked more about her theory on the abduction. I think she’s right.”

Aaron doesn’t say anything. You’re almost sure he’s going to tell you to change the profile.

“We’ll meet you at the precinct in fifteen.”

***

You consider yourself lucky that Spencer backs your theory with claims and evidence. Your voice wavers multiple times when Aaron asks you to make your case, and the way he’s looking at you makes you doubt yourself. 

But everyone comes to the realization that you’re right. A few conversations with Jacqueline and an interrogation with Logan convinces Aaron that your theory had been the correct one all along. You should feel happy, but you don’t. 

You feel like you have to piggyback off of your coworkers and get them to support you before you can make your case heard. You feel like the smallest person in the room when you stand next to seasoned profilers who you’re sure Aaron values more than you. The weight of the world is on your shoulders and you carry it with you every time you formulate new ideas you want to share with the team. 

But you don’t dwell on this too long. 

Aaron has Spencer comb through security footage of local gas stations while Emily and David talk to Scott’s most recent employer. Derek and JJ are searching his last known whereabouts and searching for the girls, which leaves you and Aaron.

You’re barely able to hear his command. He wants you to talk to Jacqueline and try to coax more information out of her while he connects with Penelope about financial records and possible places he’s hiding the girls. She’s your age and he figures you might connect with her better than JJ did.

Jaqueline is understandably crying when you walk into the room. You hand her a box of tissues upon entering and she doesn’t say anything. She starts to open up after you tell her about yourself, your nieces and nephews, and you show her photos of them to prove yourself. You let her know you’re not a mother and can’t imagine the immense pain she’s going through, but you know what it’s like to care for people and how much it hurts when something bad happens to them.

Slowly, Jaqueline begins to talk. You ask her about her relationship with Scott and Logan, and all the important places that hold significance between the two marriages. She lists off a few and you make a note of it for later. Aaron calls you from the interview when Jaqueline has started to close herself in. He lets her go and gives her his business card in case she wants to talk, but tells her they’ll be in contact soon.

He doesn’t say a word about the interrogation. He just tells you to see if Derek and JJ need help canvassing more area. 

Two days later and the team is nowhere near finding Jaqueline’s children. Scott’s previous employer had less than stellar things to say about him and you’re beginning to panic at the thought of your ability to catch him and save the girls. Penelope calls with a development and thinks one of two locations is where Scott might be hiding the children. His trailer in East LA or a small house a friend of his owns. 

Aaron dispatches Dave, Emily, and JJ to the trailer while he commands you, Derek, and Spencer to follow him to the house. It’s located off of the freeway off the beaten path and you have a bad feeling about what’s about to happen.

Aaron’s driving like he knows something you don’t. You’ve taken a seat in the back with Spencer and listen as Derek points Aaron in the direction of the house. It’s getting dark outside, the sun is just barely above the horizon, and you know everyone has to be quick in order to save the girls if they’re in the house. 

LAPD officers drive behind the SUV. Aaron pulls over and you can hear the gravel underneath the tire. You swing the door open with all your might and draw your gun out as the rest of the team does, following Aaron’s orders to follow behind him as they explore the house. 

It’s quiet. Too quiet. 

The floorboards creak underneath you and Aaron tells you he’s going to clear the back of the house while you take the front. Everyone calls a distinctive ‘clear’ and you’re about to breathe out of frustration and ask Aaron if they’ve found the girls at Scott’s trailer when you hear the faint sound of someone crying from behind you. 

You’re careful not to step too loudly despite the hardwood floors. Derek finds you and calls out your name but you put your finger to your lips and he silences himself. The sound of feet shuffling sounds incredibly quiet, but you swear you can hear footsteps somewhere behind you. 

Spencer and Aaron join the two of you after hearing silence despite calling your names. Derek tells both men to silence themselves as you walk about the room, unsure of what you’re looking for. For the most part, nothing looks out of place. That is, until your hand falls on a set of books that feels much too hollow to contain any pages. 

“What is it?” Derek asks from behind you.

“I don’t know…I think this is a false backing.” 

And you’re right. You pull the books to reveal a small hidden entryway that’s dark, and it looks like it doesn’t lead to anything. Aaron’s halfway through telling you to let another police officer look through the crawl space because you have to take off your vest and gun to fit, but you’re not hearing it. 

“Hotch, I’m the only one who’s small enough to fit through here,” you say. “I’m shorter than the rest of you and all of you are men. I don’t think Gracie or Olivia want to see someone who looks like their dad.”

“She’s right,” Spencer mumbles. You don’t wait for Aaron’s approval, venturing into the crawlspace. 

Gracie and Olivia are understandably scared until you tell them their mother’s waiting for them at the police station. You help them out of the small room they’ve been kept in and notice how relatively furnished it is–a mattress, blankets, pillows, and coloring material–and make note of how your profile was right. 

You don’t spare a glance at Aaron, too invested in making sure the children are safe with EMTs while they’re being checked for harm. Olivia asks you to stay with them and holds your hand, and you don’t bring yourself to leave them. When the EMTs let you know they aren’t injured and can visit the police station without going to the hospital, Aaron reluctantly lets you accompany both of them back to the precinct. 

It’s well after dark by the time both children leave with Jaqueline. JJ and Emily have worked out a deal with local police to keep them under surveillance and protection until Scott has been captured and are instructed not to let Logan near the three of them for the time being. 

You aren’t able to say goodbye to the three of them, instead recounting your story to the local detective who needs your statement for the paperwork while it’s fresh in your memory. You’re on a high after seeing the two girls reunite with their mother and the entire team congratulates you on a job well done when Aaron storms into the office, angry.

“Y/N, go back to the hotel.” 

Aaron stands tall, his hands on his hips and his mouth etched in an angry frown. His voice is low and you can’t believe the words you’re hearing. 

“To the hotel? Hotch, you can’t be serious.”

“You made a reckless decision to abandon your gun and vest. That could have gotten you killed,” Aaron says. “You are not capable of working under pressure.”

“You told the entire team to use our instincts and that’s exactly what I did. I saved two little girls, for God’s sake.”

“You are hot headed and have this overwhelming urge to prove yourself when nobody cares how well you perform,” Aaron says angrily. “The entire time you’ve been with the BAU, you’ve barely contributed aside from piggybacking off of someone else to reach a conclusion.”

That, you know, is a lie. Aaron just wants to hurt you.

“At this very moment, you are incompetent and can’t hold yourself together for the sake of the victims and their families.”

“We have to catch Scott.”

“You can’t do your job, go back to the hotel.” 

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t have to be.”

“Hotch.”

“I want you gone, Y/N,” Aaron says firmly. “Go back to the hotel or hand in your badge.” 

Unbelievable. 

You don’t spare Aaron another glance. Your feet carry you out to the lobby and your breath is so uneven that you need to step aside into an empty interrogation room to calm yourself down. Your jaw clenches and you ball your fists to gather some sort of relief, but you don’t find it. Instead, your nails dig into your palm until it turns white and you let go, exiting the room without another word.

The keys to the SUV are still in your pocket. You don’t necessarily care that the team will have to squeeze into the remaining vehicles and you don’t care enough to let one of them know you’ve made it outside. 

Your hands shake when you reach into your pocket. The warmth of the metal is familiar and your hand pulls it out when a stray tear falls from your face and splashes onto your cheek. Hastily, you enter the car and slam the door shut and lock it when you feel yourself overcome with sadness and anxiety. 

The tears fall freely at this point and you bow your head to the steering wheel, your breaths hot and mouth wet from crying. The back of your sleeves are soaked as you try to wipe away your tears to no avail and your vision becomes too blurry to drive. 

You allow yourself a few minutes to cry. The sound of your gasps echo throughout the care and your shoulders feel heavy with every sob. The weight of the world is truly on your shoulders now and you aren’t sure if you have a job when you go back to Quantico. 

But you pull yourself together and drive back to the hotel. It feels much longer than it needs to be and you sit in the driver’s seat for a moment when you park the car. You hate that you feel incapable of being a member of the team without Aaron breathing down your neck. You hate that you can’t live up to his expectations and that you try to in the first place. Working at the BAU wasn’t supposed to be a nightmare. 

You exit the car and lock it behind you, another stray tear escaping. You feverishly rid yourself of the tear and walk to the entrance of the hotel when you feel someone grabbing you from behind and an acute sense of pain at the base of your neck. 

It’s black after that. 

Back in the station, the local police have distracted themselves with their case files and other happenings while the rest of the team looks at Aaron in shock. Spencer's looking at the empty space where you stood and Emily is looking at Aaron like he’s grown a second head. 

“Are you serious?” she begins. “Hotch, we need everyone on this. We need Y/N.”

“She’s too hot headed,” Aaron replies. 

“Oh yeah?” Derek chimes in. “And how about you?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“You know damn well that Y/N adds as much value to this team as the rest of her. Two years with the BAU and stellar reviews from the board has proven that. Why are you still treating her like a first-day agent?”

“Y/N needs to learn to let go of her ego,” Aaron retaliates. “I don’t need to explain myself to any of you.”

“You’re wrong about her not contributing anything,” Spencer says. It surprises Aaron to hear Reid defy him on your behalf. “For the cases that we’ve worked on with her, she’s been the one to take lead on the preliminary profiles for most of them. Some of our biggest leads have come from her.” 

Aaron breathes and doesn’t say a thing. He looks at his team and knows they don’t approve of his choice to send you back to the hotel, but he stands by it. David looks at him like he’s almost disappointed in him and JJ holds his stare. 

He knows why he’s being extra hard on you. He knows he’s pushing you to your limit by keeping you at arm’s length. Aaron doesn’t want to admit that he sees you as anything other than his subordinate and coworker, but he does. He doesn’t want to be the reason why you don’t advance within the bureau and why there might be a future workplace ban on relationships. Even if he disagrees with how you handled things tonight.

Aaron doesn’t communicate any of this with the team while he stares them down. Instead, he fixes his posture and clears his throat. 

“Get back to work.”

***

When you come to, you’re acutely aware of the handcuffs around your wrist. 

The air is cold and you realize you’re bound to a pole in a barn, and you’re not sure where you are. Everything is suddenly hazy and your vision blurs until you blink rapidly with the hope that you’ll regain full consciousness.

The first thing you can feel is a headache. Your head’s pounding viciously and you wince at the pain, inadvertently tugging in your wrist and against the handcuffs. The metal is cold and it sends a chill up your spine when you realize you’re alone. You try your best to recite what you can sense over and over again in your mind.

The air is cold. You’re sitting on a hard floor with straw and other debris around you. The air smells like manure and hay. You can hear crickets and wind blowing just outside of the barn, and you can see hardware tools towards the back of the building.

The influx of emotions that creep into your chest is enough to make any person an anxiety-ridden mess. Your heart feels like it’s going to lurch out of your chest with every second that passes by because your reality becomes more real; this isn’t a nightmare you’re desperately hoping to wake up from. 

“Look who’s awake.”

It’s Scott. 

He flickers the lights on and that’s when you realize he’s holding a gun. 

“You took quite a while to wake up, actually. I’ve been waiting here for two hours wondering when you’d return to the land of the living.”

Scott dons a smirk that you wish you could wipe off with both of your fists. His right hand grips the gun haphazardly and he waves it around as he gestures while speaking, and the fear of dying has finally crept into the forefront of your mind.

“Where are we?” you ask. 

“South of Los Angeles,” Scott replies. “Far enough that your little team won’t find this patch of land.”

“Why’s that?”

His smirk widens when you stay quiet.

“You know, Agent, I find you interesting.”

“There’s nothing remotely interesting about me,” you say. You try your best to remember the profile and give him what he wants. He hates authority and between the two of you, you legally have all of it. So, you downplay yourself, 

“I beg to differ,” he laughs. Scott takes a step towards you and you recoil. “I’ve been watching this investigation unfold because I need to keep tabs on what’s happening so that I don’t get caught. It’s worked so far, but you were just lucky to have found my little girls.” 

“We found them because you made a mistake,” you chide. “You slipped up.”

Scott’s smirk turns into anger, and he takes another step towards you. 

“I made a mistake because I wasn’t thinking far ahead, Agent.” 

He takes another step and he’s by your thigh. Scott bends down to your level and you’re aware of how close his gun is to your abdomen, and you pray that you don’t say the wrong thing.

“I wasn’t thinking far ahead because I couldn’t see the bigger picture. But it came to me a few nights ago when I realized that you and I are people that don’t naturally get to be in the spotlight.” 

Scott caresses your cheek and you shudder underneath his fingertips. He retracts and stands up, pacing back and forth in front of you. 

“See, you and I are people who don’t get enough credit for our work. All it took was one moment watching your horrendous boss dismiss you for your work. I knew you’d be the key in getting my girls back to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Scott leans forward. “You’re smart enough to figure it out.”

Unfortunately, it comes to you quickly.

The team had gathered around the house that Jaqueline and Scott had lived in when they were married. Penelope had clued the team in on this location. A new couple lived in that house with no connection to Jaqueline and Scott but you thought it was worth checking out.

Aaron disagreed. That house hadn’t been occupied by either of them for years since they got a divorce but your gut had been telling you to visit the property to look around for extra clues that might’ve turned up. Your insistence angered him, who accused you of disobeying orders, and it was David who had to intervene and remind Aaron never to leave any stone unturned.

Reluctantly, Aaron ordered the team to the house and you successfully convinced the new owners to let you look through their property with the promise that nothing would be disturbed. Two hours into searching and Aaron was ready to write your mishappenings in the file report when he returned to Quantico, but your sudden interest in the backyard piqued everyone’s interest.

You had discovered a well-hidden doorway to an underground room. The new family would’ve never seen it, as it was tucked away with roots and other invasive plants that covered the wooden doorway. When you and Morgan entered the space, it was clear that Scott had been there recently.

Unbeknownst to you, Scott has been hiding out a few houses down watching everything unfold, including the way Aaron distrusted your judgment. He’d been using that bunker as a living space, careful to work around the new family so as to not get caught. It was far enough that they couldn’t see him from where the windows were placed unless they were out in the backyard the same as he was.

“Remember now?” he asks.

You nod, complying. “You watched my boss reprimand me for wasting everyone’s time.”

He nods. “You and I are overworked and underappreciated. We don’t get credit or recognition even though we deserve it.”

“You knew we’d find Gracie and Olivia.”

Scott’s jaw locks but he agrees.

“I knew there was no way I’d be able to get to my girls in time to move them someplace else. So, I let you find them because I knew that I’d have no other chance to get them back if you arrested me.

“Then I followed you all the way back to the precinct so I could keep tabs on you and see where you were staying. It was just my luck that I happened to hear your boss yelling at you because of an open window. I knew my chance was when he ordered you to go back to the hotel.”

“How do I fit into all of this?” you ask.

“You, Agent, are going to help me get my kids back from Jaqueline and cover for me.”

“No chance in hell.” 

Scott doesn’t like that answer. He lunges towards you and tugs on your hair, enough to make your scalp feel like it’s being set on fire. 

“You don’t have a choice. I want my kids back and you aren’t in the position to make any demands.” 

He doesn’t say much after that. Scott looks into your eyes with a murderous expression before letting you go. Your head hits the pole behind you because he pushed you away with enough force that it makes you dizzy again.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Scott says from the barn’s entrance. “I need some sleep and so do you.”

He doesn’t uncuff you and you’re left wondering how you can sleep when you’re being held captive.

***

When the team leaves the precinct, everyone is too drained to continue talking about the case on the ride back. They’d only been there two hours after you left but Aaron gets the feeling that the rest of them aren’t happy with him dismissing you. 

The ride is silent and everyone retreats to their rooms respectively. He tries to forget the aching feeling in his chest and goes to sleep. 

He wakes up to a cold sweat. 

Aaron’s still not happy what perspired last night. He nearly made the choice to knock on your door and apologize for being harsh in front of the team and the local police, but he doesn’t. It’s better to put distance. It’s how he rationalizes how he’s treating you because he’ll fall apart if he imagines the consequences of being in a relationship with you. 

You’re the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up. He’s surprised he didn’t hear you knocking on his door to give him a piece of your mind, but he was too tired to consider that you didn’t. 

His clock reads six A.M. and he’s sure the rest of the team is waking up and heading to the police station like he is. Aaron feels more tired with each day passing and it feels like his body is on autopilot mode with how fast he’s able to change and get to the precinct. 

The team trickles in one by one and everyone makes their coffee before picking up where they left off last night. Penelope had sent the team a list of possible places that Scott might be and Aaron wants to cover as much ground as possible.

When he’s more awake, he mentally groups the team and the other police officers to search each property. 

He stops when he realizes you’re not in the precinct. 

At first, Aaron feels annoyed because he thinks you’re late. It isn’t completely out of character for you, as he’s watched you stumble into the office a few minutes before debriefing. Still, he prays that you’ll show up so everyone can move on with their day. 

But you don’t come in. Every person that walks through the door isn’t you and Aaron’s annoyance becomes a question of curiosity with fear at the end of it. 

“Where’s L/N?” Morgan asks from beside him. 

“Probably slept in,” JJ snorts. “She sleeps like a brick.” 

Everyone laughs at her comment in good fun because they know it’s true. You’re a heavy sleeper. But Aaron isn’t convinced. Something doesn’t feel right to him but he can’t quite place what it is. 

He gives it another ten minutes. Aaron’s bouncing from leg to leg, anticipating your arrival. He’s waiting for you to hastily apologize about not hearing your alarm and he’s waiting for you to jump right where you left off because of your tardiness.

But you never walk through the door.

“Something’s wrong,” Aaron mutters. Spencer nods at his disheveled expression from where he sits and Emily looks down at her phone.

“I know she’s a heavy sleeper but there’s no way she’d be twenty minutes late with the stakes this high,” Emily points out. 

JJ walks out of the room the BAU is occupying and inquires with everyone outside if they’ve seen you come in, but all of them say they haven’t seen you since last night. JJ walks back into the room with shaking hands and she’s almost reluctant to tell Aaron that nobody has seen you yet.

Emily tries to call your cell phone one more time with no luck. Aaron sends Derek to check on you at the hotel and doesn't bother to respect the speed limit on the ten minute drive to the hotel from the station. The receptionist is more than willing to give him a key to your room when you don’t answer your phone. 

When he walks in, he notices that you aren’t sleeping in the bed. Your room is clean. The bed is made and there’s no indication that you slept in it last night. Your go-bag is perched on the table and a few clothes are haphazardly thrown on the chair beside it. Nothing seems out of place. 

It’s when he walks back outside to return to the station that he hears a phone ringing from the bushes. Derek walks towards the sound and his breath catches in his throat when he realizes the phone is yours. He curses and picks up the phone to see Emily’s contact.

“L/N?”

“It’s me,” Derek says through your phone. “L/N’s not here and her phone was tossed in the bushes.” Metal catches Derek’s eye. “Wait a minute.” 

He walks forward with caution and his heart drops when he realizes it’s a discarded needle and your gun right next to it. 

“What is it?” Emily asks from the other line. She hears Derek sigh and she knows it can’t be good. 

“It’s a needle and her gun, Prentiss. L/N not showing up to the precinct and her belongings being discarded can’t be a coincidence.” 

From the police station, Emily panics. She hangs up when Derek lets her know he’s coming back and her panic rises when she sees her teammates looking at her quizzically. The lump in her throat grows when she realizes everyone is looking at her for an answer. 

“Did you find her?” JJ asks. Emily doesn’t speak for a second. 

“Morgan found her cell phone in the bushes by the front of the hotel,” Emily explains. “He also found a discarded needle...and her gun.” 

Aaron’s attention shifts from the file he’s holding to Emily, who’s fidgeting with her hands. 

“Her gun?” Dave asks for clarification. “Found outside of the hotel room?” 

Emily nods. “Morgan picked up L/N’s phone and said he found it tossed aside.”

“And none of us saw her when she left the precinct?”

Nobody says anything. 

“I think she’s been kidnapped,” Reid says abruptly. “None of us saw her when we got back to the hotel nor when we arrived at the precinct. Scott must know Y/N was the one who rescued his daughters and he’s either kidnapped her out of revenge or because he wants them back.”

Aaron doesn’t like that answer. 

His hands feel warm and his heart is racing too quickly for his liking. Aaron can feel his exterior start to wither away with the realization that you’ve been kidnapped and he doesn’t second guess himself when he calls Penelope and asks her to track Scott’s cell phone and to triangulate his last known location.

This is now a rescue mission and he hates that you’re the victim. 

The team doesn’t spare a second in finding a third location he could’ve taken you too. Penelope foregoes any of her other responsibilities to find you and Aaron can hear the frantic pace of her keyboard typing as she speaks. Derek and Spencer are visiting locations that hold significance to Scott in the event that he’s returned, but Aaron's doubtful that he’d make that mistake. 

It’s when JJ explains what’s happening to the lead detective does Aaron feel like his world is crumbling around him. He’s put himself at arm’s length so much as to push you away from him and right into the arms of the unsub, and he feels like he might pass out in the middle of the precinct. 

Emily and Dave pick up how quiet Aaron’s been ever since Penelope hung up. He’s too busy staring at the white board and it doesn’t help that your handwriting is all over it. Aaron’s throat is dry and he’s a second away from starting to blame himself for your disappearance, but he knows that he doesn’t have enough time to feel sorry for himself if he wants to find you.

When Derek comes back and tells the team there’s been no luck in finding you, Aaron’s heart sinks. He’s running out of options and he knows his head isn’t where it should be, but he can’t help it. Aaron does his best to keep himself composed when Spencer tries to piece together your timeline and he hates that they’re treating you like a abduction victim because you should be in this room with them. Instead, you’re God knows where and Aaron doesn’t bring himself to imagine that you might be dead already. 

It’s Spencer who makes the connection between you and his children. He theorizes that Scott must’ve been present when you had rescued the children and kidnapped you for one of two reasons: to exact revenge or to force you to help him get his children back. JJ suspects that it’s the latter because of your profile. Scott wants to get his children back and he’d do anything to do it. 

Dave wonders why Scott would risk kidnapping a federal agent and how he knew you’d be at the precinct or the hotel, and Spencer doesn’t hold his tongue when he said the only common link between the two of you is the way you’d both been treated by your superiors. 

The room goes quiet and Spencer thinks he’s overstepped, but he doesn’t regret his choice of words. 

Everyone looks at Aaron, who’s been silent the entire time. He thinks about how angry you were last night and how he convinced himself he didn’t see you shed a tear as you passed him. The guilt of sending you home and not checking in on you when he got back to the hotel is eating him alive because you’ve been missing for twelve hours and nobody knew about it. 

“Reid’s right,” Aaron says. He feels his voice start to break. “We know why he’s taken L/N but now we need to understand how he’s going to use her in order to get his children back.” 

Aaron’s phone rings and he’s grateful for the distraction. Penelope informs them of a house that was paid in all cash and purchased under a false identity a few months ago, and confirms that it was Scott who paid for the property after speaking with the realtor and showing her a photo. Aaron wastes no time ordering the team to head to the house and he feels like he’s running out of time when Penelope says the property is seventy miles from the precinct. 

The ride to the property is agonizing. Aaron’s grip on the steering wheel is lethal and he’s swerving between every car with the hopes that he’ll reach you in time. Emily’s sitting in the passenger seat and she knows there’s nothing either of them can do except hope that you’re alive and well.

“We’ll find her,” she says after a long period of silence. “You know L/N. She’s strong and won’t go down without a fight.”

Aaron hesitates to speak. He gulps and he feels like his mouth is far too dry to hold a decent conversation because while he knows that Emily’s right, he can’t help but feel utterly hopeless on the freeway while you’re being held hostage by Scott. 

“I shouldn’t have told her to go to the hotel,” Aaron says. “I should’ve left it at reprimanding her for going in alone. We could’ve avoided all of this.”

“You of all people know you couldn’t have predicted that Scott would’ve done,” Emily said. “It wasn’t in the profile. Neither of us could’ve predicted that he’d kidnap L/N.”

“I know.” Aaron signals and passes three cars who are driving far too slow for his liking. 

He’s silent again, which doesn’t surprise Emily. Aaron sits in the driver’s seat, a million thoughts racing to the front of his head but he can’t seem to choose the right words to speak. He knows how unfair he’s been to you and all the anger and frustration about not being able to be with you has transpired into this mess he’s found himself in. He should’ve never let his feelings get to this point nor let his frustration shift from the forbidden relationship onto you. 

“I’ve been unfair to her,” Aaron croaks. He hears the crack in his voice as it starts to falter, but he keeps talking because he thinks he might go insane if they sit in any more silence. “I’ve pushed her aside and made her second guess herself as an agent of this team all because I couldn’t keep my feelings in check.” 

“What do you mean?” Emily asks. Aaron sighs and he grips his steering wheel, embarrassed that he’s been an unfair leader and that he’s admitting it to one of his colleagues. 

“L/N is an exceptional agent and it’s no wonder why I fell for her.” 

Emily’s quiet and Aaron’s sure he’s made a mistake by confessing that to her. He wishes he could take it back and lie instead of being honest with his friend, but he can’t take back the words he’s said. And he stands by it. 

“I’ve been so busy trying to pretend like I don’t have feelings for her but every day I’m scared that something like this could happen to her. I hate it when she’s reckless and disobeys orders because I’m afraid that it’ll get her killed.

“I know what it looks like on the outside to see me and my subordinate in a romantic relationship. She’s young, career-driven, and I’d hate to stand in the way of whatever’s next for her. I don’t know how to act around her and I thought that pushing all of this down would help me lose feelings for her, but I haven’t.”

“You sound like a teenager,” Emily says. It shocks him and when he looks at her quizzically, Emily chuckles. “What, you think I couldn't see how hopeless you were when it came to L/N? Hotch, you’re like a kid in a candy store when she’s around. The rest of us were ready to start placing bets on you two until you started giving her the short end of the stick.”

He feels awful. Aaron’s guilt causes him to flex and rev the engine. 

“I never meant to hurt her,” he confesses. “But that doesn’t matter now.”

“What matters is that we’re on our way to rescue her and there’s nowhere else she could be,” Emily reassures. “Scott wants his kids back and he knows they’re in LA county. There’s no way he would risk taking her somewhere else when he doesn’t have Gracie and Olivia.” 

“Right,” Aaron says, clearing his throat. Neither he nor Emily need to chide him for how he’s been treating you. He knows he’s wrong and Emily knows it too. 

“L/N is the strongest out of all of us. She’ll make it through this.”

Aaron has a sneaking suspicion that Emily’s trying to convince herself, but he doesn’t say anything. 

When the team reaches the property, it’s notably quiet. The next neighbor is two miles down the road and Derek’s ready to search the house when Aaron steps out of his vehicle. 

“More backup’s two minutes out,” Aaron explains, “but we’ve got enough people to start the search. Reid and JJ, check the backyard. Prentiss and Rossi, check the house. Morgan, you’re with me. We’re checking the garage.” 

Aaron orders the police officers to check elsewhere before he and Morgan make their way to the garage. With his gun and flashlight in his hands, he approaches the enclosed space with caution and his heart spikes with anxiety. Before he can think about the worst that could happen, two police officers manage to open the garage door as he and Derek search the place. 

It’s empty. 

Aaron curses under his breath as they check the confined space but find nothing out of the ordinary. The rest of the team relates the same information and Aaron feels like he’s losing hope because he doesn't know where else you could possibly be. 

“Guys, there’s a barn across the landing,” comes JJ’s voice from the communications line. “There’s a truck parked outside and I’m willing to bet it’s Scott’s.”

Aaron’s heart stops beating for a moment. 

“We need to search that barn,” Aaron commands. “Everyone pull your resources and let’s head out.” 

It feels like slow motion to him, the way he diverts his attention to the barn that JJ pointed out. He feels like he’s watching the scene unfold in front of him from another person’s perspective and desperately prays that you’re in there, safe and alive. The grip on his gun is falling from how his hands are trembling but he reminds himself that he has a job to do. 

Dave touches the hood of the car and says it’s warm, which means Scott is most likely inside of the barn. The lead detective is ordering his team to secure the back entrance and surround the building so that Scott has no place to run and Aaron instructs his team to do the same at the front. Under hushed voices, he can almost make out the faint scout of scuffling coming from behind the large wooden doors and feels his throat close. 

Then he hears a gunshot. 

Everyone rushes inside and he’s overcome with dread when he walks inside. Aaron’s heart is racing; he can feel the grip of his gun slipping because of how unsteady his hands are and he’s nearly tripping from all the hay that he’s stepping on. He fears the worst when he enters and does his best to prepare himself to see your lifeless body.

But you’re laying on your stomach with a gun in your hands. 

You don’t process the ringing in your ears until Aaron moves beside you to reach for the gun in your hands. He’s tossed it aside and maneuvers you to check for any injuries. Aaron glances at your face and notices a deep bruise forming on your left temple with scratches and smaller bruises adorning your face, and he hates it. 

He hates that your body and face is covered in Scott’s blood. He hates that your hands are still shaking with fear. He hates that there’s nothing he can say or do that will make everything better for you. 

The shirt you’re wearing is covered in Scott’s blood spatter and you’re barely able to process that you’ve most likely broken a few ribs. You don’t say anything. The overwhelming urge to cry resurfaces and this time, you don’t stop yourself. 

Aaron catches you before you hit your head onto the ground and moves his body to sit behind you. You’re stationed between his legs, your back pressed against his chest as you slump over and grab his arm for support as your tears wet his dress shirt. Aaron foregoes all standard procedure and lets you cry in his arms instead of calling for the EMT to whisk you away from the hospital. 

You don’t care that your cries are almost louder than the ambulance sirens. Your adrenaline makes the blood pump loudly in your ears and you grip onto Aaron like you’re afraid Scott will come back to life and kill you if you let go. 

His free arm is secured around you. Aaron’s eyes become glossy as each second passes by and his heart breaks in two when he hears your continual cries.

“You did so good,” Aaron whispers. “So good. You’re safe now.” 

Aaron doesn’t let the EMT get close to you when you’re trembling in his arms. He tells them to wait a moment and they try to argue with him, but they relent when they see Aaron’s stern expression. His voice cracks when he tries to speak upon hearing your soft whimpers. Your eyes are screwed shut and Aaron strokes your hair as you bury yourself further deeper into him.

Dave and Spencer canvas the scene and look around for anything out of the ordinary to report. Derek's speaking with the EMTs while JJ and Emily are patiently waiting with blankets and bottles of water for you. But you don’t get up. Your legs feel numb from sitting down and Aaron’s grip on you is so tight that you feel like you’ll fall back down if you try to stand up.

Your sobs have turned quiet and you almost feel like you’re at peace. But then you remember your bruises and the blood still on your body. You remember Scott’s body and find yourself crying even harder.

“Let’s get you to a hospital,” Aaron says in your ear. “We can get you cleaned up and on your way home. Does that sound good?”

His voice is like honey. Sweet.

You nod and you try your best to sit up to no avail. Aaron tries to help you up and the EMTs catch you before you can fall back onto the ground. He reluctantly lets the EMTs take you to the ambulance where JJ and Emily are waiting. He watches as they drape a blanket over you and as you’re wheeled up into the vehicle. Emily offers to follow you to the hospital and JJ steps away, letting the ambulance drive off.

Aaron doesn’t process anything. He doesn’t hear the sirens, the police chatter, or Dave approach him with a concerned look.

“She’s gonna be okay, Aaron.”

Dave’s voice is nothing but a hollow shell to Aaron. It feels like an empty promise even though he knows you’re going to make it out alive. Still, Aaron doesn’t say a word.

“Let’s go meet her at the hospital.”

***

The doctor explains that you’ve suffered a concussion, a couple of bruised ribs, a broken arm, and a grazed bullet wound. You’ll be relatively fine, but Aaron’s heart is racing and can't get past seeing you covered in blood to pay attention to anything the doctor is saying. He hasn’t had time to beat himself up for sending you back to the hotel without accompaniment and he hates that the guilt is crashing in on him when you need him the most.

Aaron looks down at his sleeves and they’re covered in blood, dirt, and your mascara. He stares down in shock and his mind flashes to the barn, and he realizes it’s the first time he’s ever seen you cry before. It breaks him.

The doctor explains that they needed to sedate you because of your sudden adrenaline rush. Your shock had caused you to lash out when a nurse had grabbed your wrist, and through your clouded judgment, you’d swung at him with all of your might. Your fretful apologies made you uncontrollably sob afterwards and the nurse could only look at you with sympathy. 

Two hours later, the team was still waiting in the waiting room. Under the guise of wanting to get you something to eat other than stale hospital food, Aaron leaves to buy you a meal. But he needs to get ou and get fresh air before he suffocates. 

Aaron’s guilt eats him alive. He walks aimlessly towards a deli and scolds himself over and over again for making you drive to the hotel unsupervised. In hindsight, Aaron knows his personal feelings came into play when he berated you for your recklessness. He knows he was unfair to you because he would’ve done the same thing if he were in your position.

When he returns, Dave’s looking at him like he knows what he’s thinking, but doesn’t say anything. Aaron appreciates his friend’s concern but the guilt doesn’t relent. He fidgets in his seat and tries to calm his spiking anxiety but nothing seems to work. His mind retracts to the moment he found you covered in Scott’s blood and your cries are enough to make Aaron feel like he might shed a tear in front of his teammates.

His thoughts are disrupted when he sees your doctor approach the group. 

“She’s a little out of it,” says the doctor, “but she’s conscious. You’re all welcome to say hello, but only for a few minutes.” 

When the doctor directs the team to your room, she explains what happened after you reached the hospital. Aaron can’t process anything she’s saying. His ears are ringing and he feels like everyone around him is talking too loudly for him to be able to hear anything the doctor is saying. All he can pick up is “dehydrated” and “concussed.” 

Everyone hastily walks to the room you’re in. JJ files into the room first. It takes Aaron a few breaths to find the courage to step inside of the room and he’s sure Emily’s the one who helped him take the first step.

“What’s the prognosis?” your croaked voice asks. JJ sniffles and laughs at the same time, and the rest of the group watch you try to prop yourself up.

“How you’re able to joke at a time like this is beyond me,” JJ gushes. She takes a pillow from the bed and helps you sit up.

“What, a few broken ribs and a concussion? I’m lucky the bullet only grazed me.”

Nobody laughs but you can tell they’re trying their best.

Aaron towers over everybody easily and he’s in between trying to catch your gaze and trying to avoid it. Emily hands you the sandwich from the local deli and you waste no time, opening the wrapper and letting the aioli slide down the side of your mouth.

It’s easily the most adorable and most heartbreaking thing Aaron has ever seen.

“Slow down, Tiger,” says Derek. He grabs a nearby napkin and wipes the sauce away while you smile sheepishly.

“Sorry,” you mutter, taking slower bites. Spencer’s next to hug you and you welcome the way he refuses to let you go.

Everyone looks at you under the harsh lights of the hospital room and you feel like you’re being observed. The sedative you’d been given is enough to make you feel somewhat normal because no matter how hard you try to panic over the last few hours, you can’t. 

You feel like you’re numb to your experiences and the pain Scott inflicted. Staring at your team feels eerily normal and you almost forget that you’re sitting in a hospital gown with enough injuries to put you out of the field for a few months. 

“You broke my heart, kiddo,” Dave chimes in. He grabs your free hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, accompanied by a kiss to the back of your hand. JJ pulls you into a mother-like embrace, kissing the crown of your head. You lean into her touch and Aaron wishes he were the one comforting you.

“I feel like shit,” you confess. “I woke up feeling groggy and I feel like I’m about to pass out.”

“We’re so glad you’re okay, Y/N,” Emily says. 

“Thanks, Em,” you say. You take another bite. “This sandwich is good.”

“Aaron bought it,” Emily speaks.

You look at him. It’s the first time you’ve acknowledged his presence since he walked into the room.

“Thanks,” you mumble behind the sandwich. “I could eat five of these.” 

“I don’t want to deal with you puking on us,” Spencer jokes, and it makes you feel somewhat normal.

You don’t like feeling as though you’re a delicate piece of glass that’s close to being dropped. You hate feeling useless and pitied. Everyone’s looking at you with sad eyes and it makes you feel like you’ve let your colleagues down, even though you know there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent what transpired.

“I’m really sleepy,” you say, haphazardly throwing the wrapper on the table next to you. It isn’t a lie, but you say it with the hopes of being alone.

“We’ll be back in the morning,” JJ says. She looks at the clock in front of her and doesn’t realize that it’s four in the morning. You squeeze her hand when her eyes well up. JJ wipes her eyes and blinks her tears back and you lean against her side.

Aaron can’t help but stare. You look so vulnerable at this moment and you’re doing your best to keep yourself awake, but the sedatives are making you drowsy. The team says their goodbyes and reluctantly trek back to the hotel, but Aaron can’t bring himself to walk into the building once he’s parked.

“Get changed,” Dave says after a brief moment of silence. Aaron looks at him in confusion. “Take a shower, eat something from the vending machine, and go back to the hospital.”

“She doesn't want me there,” he says slowly. 

“She’s asleep,” Dave dismisses. “She’s not going to know you’re there and I’m sure she’ll want to see a familiar face when she wakes up.”

“I’m not sure I’m the person she wants to see.”

“You were the first person she reached for when we entered the barn,” Dave explains, “and I know you won’t be sleeping a wink tonight unless you’re by L/N’s side. Go get changed and get back to the hospital, Aaron.”

“I just–”

“I know you feel guilty. Whatever feelings you have towards her never went away and that’s why you’ve been so hard on her.” Aaron’s not surprised that he’s picked up on this habit. “I don’t have to agree with how you handled it, but what matters is that she’s alive and she’s resting. We got her back, Aaron. She’s here and Scott isn’t.” 

Aaron knows Dave is right. He thanks him for being a good friend and trudges back into his hotel room, hastily freshening himself up before returning back to the hospital.

***

You wake up later in the morning with little to no recollection of how you got there. You feel extremely out of it, like someone removed a ton of bricks from your chest after keeping it there for a fortnight. You look to your left and see a window that shows you a gloomy D.C. morning. You look to your right and see Aaron Hotchner slumped over in a seat, asleep. 

This wakes you up. You’re blinking the sleep out of your eyes when you realize he’s snoring. It’s soft and unassuming, but you don’t remember the last time you’ve ever seen him sleep. 

The chairs must be uncomfortable, too. You do your best to sit up—which is when you notice the sling on your arm—and manage to prop yourself up on the pillows until you’re sitting upright. Aaron stirs in his sleep at the sound but he’s still asleep.

You’re not close enough to reach him and wake him up. You aren’t sure that you want to either, for the fear that he might start telling you a laundry list of all the things you did wrong throughout the case. 

The doctor from last night walks in and knocks on your door, which shifts your focus. Aaron’s still asleep and the doctor, who reintroduces herself as Dr. Aguta, gently walks around Aaron and to your bedside.

“How are you feeling?” she asks you while holding a clipboard. You notice her colorful print skirt first and it’s a contrast to how grey it is outside. 

“My head hurts,” you say with a croak. It’s the first thing you’ve said since you woke up. “And I realized my arm’s broken. But other than that, I feel fine.” 

Dr. Aguta gives you a pleasant smile. “I’m glad to hear that you’re doing okay. The sedatives we gave you last night seemed to help ease your pain, though I’ll be giving you a prescription for the rest of the month when it wears off.”

She hesitated before speaking again.

“Do you remember why you’re here?”

Unfortunately, you do. You remember Scott, the gun, and Aaron coaxing you to go with the EMTs. It’s mostly a blur and you can’t remember the details but you remember enough. The softened expression is a dead giveaway and Dr. Aguta doesn’t press any further.

She sees your gaze shift to Aaron, who still hasn’t woken up.

“He came last night and insisted on staying with you,” Dr. Aguta informs. “Typically I’d only let immediate family stay overnight, but your boss seemed extremely worried about you.” 

“He did?” you ask. It’s news to you.

She nods. “When I saw him for the first time last night, I could tell he’s a man of few words and the leader of your team. But last night he was a stuttering mess and I let him stay overnight with the condition that he doesn’t wake you.”

You don’t say anything. Aaron’s mouth is partly ajar and you know he’s going to wake up with a lot of back pain from how he’s positioned. Dr. Aguta performs a routine check up on you and lets you know that you’ll be discharged from the hospital the following day. You thank her profusely and she can only give you a reassuring smile. You ask her to wake Aaron up for you just before she leaves.

Aaron blinks and remembers he’s not in the hotel. Dr. Aguta excuses herself to give the both of you privacy and he sits upright, stretching his back unpleasantly. 

“Morning,” he says, clearing this throat. “How do you feel?”

You’re getting tired of answering this question but you humor him.

“Better,” you say honestly. “Aside from my broken arm and concussion.” Aaron’s gaze shifts to your arm and he almost winces.

“Did you sleep well?” 

“For the most part, but I think the sedatives had more to do with it than anything.”

“Good, I’m glad.” 

An awkward silence falls over the both of you. Aaron desperately tried to pull himself together by waking himself up and you’re fiddling with your hands. You noticed he’s changed since you saw him last night, now in slacks and a quarter zip, and you don’t remember the last time you’ve ever seen him look so casual.

Aaron’s trying to think of the right words to say. As your boss, he wants to tell you that none of this was your fault and there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent it from happening. He wants to tell you he shouldn’t have ordered you back to the hotel, not without anyone accompanying you.

But as someone who has deep feelings for you, Aaron wants to say he was scared to death and thought he might lose another person he cares for. His anxiety skyrocketed through the roof when he saw what you had done to Scott and he wishes that you didn’t have to work through this trauma.

But he doesn’t say anything. You watch as he swallows and you know his brain is working overtime by how often he pulls his eyebrows together. You don’t have it in you to be angry at him like you were the night he sent you away. The sedatives, along with your exhaustion, leaves little room for anger. 

“I’m getting hungry,” you say to break the silence. 

“I can get something from the cafeteria,” he offers immediately, touching his pocket to make sure his wallet didn’t fall out. 

“That would be nice.” You’d be lying if you said you weren’t touched by the offer.

Aaron leaves for a short while and you try your best to process what just happened. He chose to stay with you overnight. He offered to buy you breakfast. You didn’t think Aaron would care for you like that.

He comes back a while later and apologizes for both the sandwich (that looks haphazardly made) and the time it took, as there was a long line. You thank him politely and eat the meal, and you’re grateful that you have anything to eat at all.

Aaron watches you and feels like he’s invading your personal time. He bought himself a fruit cup, knowing Dave would reprimand him for not eating if he were able to buy something. 

“I shouldn’t have told you to go back,” Aaron says softly. You almost didn’t hear him say it. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. I did the wrong thing and it got you kidnapped.”

You don’t tell him that it’s okay, because quite frankly he’s right. He shouldn’t have sent you home, but you know it’s not his fault that you were abducted. 

“It’s not your fault that Scott took me,” you say matter-of-factly. Aaron can sense what you’re trying to say and his eyes hang in shame. “But I’m alive. I’m going to have one hell of a transition back to work, but I’m alive. I’m here. That is, if I still have my job.”

Aaron’s eyes snap to you.

“The job is yours for however long you want it,” he says immediately, and he means it. “What you did was reckless but I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing.”

This makes you smile a little and Aaron soars when he sees it. 

“I didn’t mean what I said back at the precinct either, Y/N. You’re a fantastic agent and we’re lucky to have you.”

There are a million things you want to ask him. Why have you been second guessing me? Is my work not satisfactory enough? Why did you stay in the hospital with me? 

But you don’t. There are too many things you want to say to Aaron that it ends up turning into a frustrating mess every time you think of the right question to ask. Aaron doesn’t seem to notice your lack of conversation. Or if he does, you think he’s trying to fill the awkward silence like you are.

“I don’t mean to be a burden,” is what you settle on. “I don’t purposely challenge your authority or how the team operates. I know I haven’t been here as long as everyone else but I like to think I make enough contributions.”

“You do,” Aaron says. “You aren’t a burden.”

You don’t believe him. “I just…lately I feel like I've been getting in the way of things.”

“You haven’t.” Aaron means that honestly but you don’t pick up on it. “You’ve shown immense critical thinking and problem solving skills. This case alone has proven that.”

You don’t disagree with him, but your mind reverts back to Scott and you start to deflate. 

Aaron knows he needs to apologize for how he’s been acting towards you. The abduction and his guilt is eating him alive and it forced him to be truthful with himself about how harsh he’s been treating you upon realizing he likes you more than a colleague should. But he doesn’t know whether this moment is appropriate or not. Ever the professional.

Both of you are saved by Dave showing up unannounced. He’s dressed casually too, with jeans and a sweater for an unusually cloudy day in Southern California. His knocking brings both you and Aaron out of your heads.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dave laments. He enters the room after you beckon him in and gives you a gentle hug on the side that doesn’t have your sling. “I won’t ask how you’re feeling because I’m sure you’re tired of that.”

“Thank you.”

“But I did want to check up on you,” Dave continues. “The rest of the team are slowly waking up, I imagine.” He turns to Aaron. “I assume we’re grounded here until Y/N can fly back.”

“That’s right,” Aaron says. “Tell the team they have the rest of the week off. I don’t think Strauss wants us spending more of our budget on flights.”

“Already done,” Dave says with a smile. “You had us worried for a while there.” 

“I’m sorry,” you apologize, even though you know you have nothing to be sorry for. “I didn’t mean to make any of you worry about me.”

“We always worry about you, kid. It’s our job.”

“Are the girls okay?” you ask him. 

“Safe and sound. That’s actually why I came to visit, other than to check up on you.” 

You blink out of confusion.

“Jaqueline called the precinct and asked to speak with you,” Dave explains. “Long story short, she got in contact with me and wanted to know if you’d be willing to speak with her. She wants to thank you in person.”

The thought never crossed your mind. Saving her children had always been your first priority, even when Scott threatened to kill you if you didn’t help him. You’re not a mother by any means, but Jaqueline is around your age and you have plenty of nieces and nephews to get an understanding of how difficult this whole ordeal was for her.

And if you were being honest with yourself, you wanted to make sure Jaqueline would be okay. 

“Absolutely,” you say immediately. 

“Y/N, are you sure?” Aaron asks. “You just got to the hospital.”

“I’m sure,” you confirm, turning your attention back to Dave. “They can come visit me here if they’re willing to. I don’t think I have it in me to go to the precinct.”

“Of course,” Dave says with a small grin. It’s almost like he knows this will heal the both of you. He leaves the room and tells you he’ll be back later this afternoon.

Aaron sits in silence and he’s in awe of your resilience. He’s sure it’s the shock and sedatives talking, but he’s always known you to be someone who puts other people first. 

“I should call Strauss and let her know the situation,” Aaron says. “I’ll be back in a little bit, okay?”

“Okay,” you say, and you’re strangely reluctant to let him go. But you do anyway and he walks out of the hospital room, leaving you with your thoughts. 

***

Dave lets you know Jaqueline is here with the girls a few hours later. 

“Agent Y/L/N?” a voice says from beside you. The young mother knocks on the door as two children hide behind her legs. You beckon them inside, with Aaron and Emily supervising from beyond the threshold.

“Jaqueline,” you say, propping yourself up to seem more presentable. “Hi. It’s great to see you.” 

“I’m sorry for barging in like this,” she apologizes, but you’re already waving her off when you see the two children emerge from behind her. “I wanted to thank you in person. For saving my kids.”

“It’s no problem,” you downplay. 

But Jaqueline shakes her head and rushes to grab your hand. She pulls away when she thinks she’s crossed a line, but your grip is devastatingly tight when you squeeze hers. Jaqueline looks at you and tears slip from her eyes, and her children hug her legs like they know something’s wrong.

Jacqueline composes herself and brings Gracie and Olivia in front of her, who each have hand-decorated thank you cards made of colorful cardstock paper, stickers, and glitter. Your heart swells at the gesture and you will yourself not to alarm the family in front of you with your tears, so you promise yourself you’d cry when they leave.

“Hi, Munchkins,” you greet. “What’s all this?”

The girls shyly give you the cards, the eldest taking initiative to put them in your hands.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. “Mommy says you were very brave and saved us.”

“We drew these last night!” the younger one exclaims. “Mommy let us stay up late because we couldn’t sleep, so we made these for you.”

“They’re beautiful,” you compliment, looking at the colors below you. Jaqueline hasn’t let go of your hand. “You girls are very talented.”

“Thank you,” the young one says bashfully. “I hope you get better soon.”

Your heart swells and Jacqueline squeezes your hand again before letting go. You watch her lips flutter and as her children become preoccupied with their dresses, Jaqueline surprises you again.

“Would it be alright if I called you from time to time?” she asks. “To let you know how we’re doing. That we’re okay.” You reach for her one more time.

“I’d love that,” you say honestly.

Jaqueline doesn’t say another word, but the look of gratitude and her quivering lips is enough to make all the hurt from the past few days disappear.

You watch as they leave the room and as the young girls save goodbye. David escorts them to the front of the hospital, which leaves Aaron awkwardly standing in the threshold with his body leaning against the doorframe.

Aaron watches you. Your eyes glaze over and the cards in your hand are slipping through your fingertips, and your lips move as if you’re trying to find the right words to say. But nothing comes out. Aaron listens as your breathing becomes shallow and watches a stray tear slip from the corner of your eyes.

Before he can think, he rushes by your side and envelopes you in his arms.

He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, somewhere between wanting to give you enough space and wanting to pull you against him. Your fingers are tight on his forearms when he hears your labored breathing become erratic and as your tears soak the fabric of his t-shirt.

Aaron takes the liberty of moving you in front of him, his back against the pillows you were sleeping on. He looks at your frail body in front of him; you always carry yourself as a strong-willed, independent agent on the field, and now he sees that he mistook your brazen character as recklessness when it was false bravado.

His heart aches when your grip on him tightens. Aaron reaches out to move the cards to the side table and pulls you against his chest, thankful that this bed is barely enough to fit the both of you. Aaron notices your craned neck, bringing the hand that isn’t wrapped around your frail figure to your head and gently moves your head to his chest.

Your soft whimpers are enough to make Aaron’s heart break all over again.

“You’re an amazing person,” Aaron says. “You are selfless, caring, and generous.” His words compel you to cry even harder and Aaron lets you weep in his arms until your eyes are dry and you’re hiccuping. 

Aaron doesn’t let you, not for a second, feel embarrassed about breaking down in front of him. His thumbs are drawing soothing circles on your arm and he’s wiping away your tears with a tissue, allowing you to unravel before him. 

Your dry heaving doesn’t bother Aaron, but he coos into your ear and tells you he’s going to get you a bottle of water when you grip his arm. He pries your fingers off of him and melts when you snuggle your head closer to him, but he knows you’re thirsty and the best thing he can do for you is keep you healthy. 

“I’ll be back in two minutes,” he promises. “I’m all yours after that.” 

You nod reluctantly and let him go. The bed feels empty when he leaves and you feel pathetic for hanging onto him like he’s your lifeline, but you don’t care. You just want to be held.

True to his word, Aaron comes back a few minutes later and uncaps the bottle for you. A soft ‘up’ utters from his lips and you sit up straight. He brings the bottle to your lips and tilts your head back enough to let the water slide down your throat. 

Aaron puts it aside when you’ve signaled that you’re done and slides into the spot next to you once again. He puts his arm around your shoulder and brings you to his chest again. 

You don’t tell him, but you feel his heartbeat. It’s irrationally fast and you don’t know what to make of it. You tighten your hold on him as you start to fall asleep and you miss the way Aaron rocks you to sleep. 

***

When it’s time for your discharge, you’re feeling better than you did a few days ago. The team welcomes you back on board once you’ve been cleared to fly and it feels like nothing’s out of place. 

JJ bought a bunch of pastries from a local cafe and everyone (save for Aaron because he was with you the entire time) has written little messages on a decorated card. It’s Spencer who frets over you the most, bringing you cups of tea and asking if there’s anything he can do to ease your pain. You’re quite touched. 

You know you’re in no shape to drive home when you land. Your dominant hand is broken and your car sits in its designated spot, no doubt gathering dust and debris. The team is tired from the trip and everyone checks in on you one by one before leaving, and you don’t know how you’ll get home until you realize your car keys are still in your desk drawer.

Aaron watches you for a moment. He notices your apprehensiveness and the way you look at your car keys, and he puts two and two together. Before he can register what he’s doing, Aaron’s making his way to you and offering to drive you. You start to tell him you don’t need a chauffeur and that he should go home instead, but he’s more worried that you might hurt yourself inadvertently. He persists and you reluctantly say yes because you know he’s right. You could barely open the door to the building, let alone drive home. 

The car ride to your apartment is quiet, save for the sounds of cars passing by on the freeway and the sound of gravel underneath the tires. You look up at your apartment complex when you tell Aaron the code to get into your garage and he parks in the visor spot after you’ve directed him.

The sling on your arm is a nuisance and you already can’t wait to get it off. You’re able to unbuckle yourself with your free hand and you’re surprised that Aaron opens the door for you.

“Thanks,” you mumble. 

“It’s not a problem.” You can tell he means it.

When you get to your apartment, you’re somewhat surprised that you haven’t lost your keys. You struggle to put them into the lock correctly with your non-dominant hand and Aaron can see the quirk of your eyebrow and how you’ve bit your lip out of frustration.

He fears he’s overstepping. He takes the keys out of your hands gently and opens the door for you anyhow. 

When you walk inside, you don’t think you've ever felt happier to see your small one bedroom apartment. Aaron sets your go-bag on the kitchen counter and you stand still for what seems like an eternity until he brings you out of your haze and encourages you to change out of your clothes and take a shower. 

But you don’t move. You stand in the middle of your living room and stare blankly out of your window, unable to appreciate the breathtaking view of D.C. like you always do. Your throat feels dry and your feet feel like they’re permanently planted on the hardwood floor beneath you.

Aaron comes to stand beside you and he leaves distance between the both of you. He looks at the sight before him and makes a comment about how he’s jealous of your view, but not even that gets a reaction out of you.

“I don’t want to be alone,” you mumble after a long pause. “I-I can’t be by myself right now.”

Aaron knows Jack is at sleepaway camp for a school trip and doesn’t get back for another few days. He doesn’t have to think about keeping you company so you don’t feel alone.

“I can stay with you,” he offers. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

You turn to look at him and the offer is enough to bring tears to your eyes. 

Aaron sounds so soft, caring, and unlike himself. Your heart tugs at his caring nature and you’re overwhelmed with the notion that he’s caring for you like he cares for your colleagues.

“Please,” you croak.

Aaron nods. He puts his hands on your arms and ushers you into the hallway and you point him in the direction of your bedroom. He’s acutely aware that this is the first time he’s ever been in your apartment, let alone in the room you sleep in, and tries not to dwell on it for your sake. 

“You should take a shower and sleep,” Aaron suggests. “It’ll help clear your head.”

You follow Aaron’s lead. He guides you to your dresser and you grab an extra change of clothes and he accompanies you to the bathroom next door. 

“I’ll be in the living room if you need anything, okay?” he says. “Don’t be afraid to get me.”

“Okay,” you say meekly. Your voice is far too dry to speak normally.

Aaron closes the bathroom door and you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror. You’re sure you look like a mess, despite being taken care of in the hospital back in Los Angeles. But you feel sticky from the flight and the sudden change in temperature, and you want nothing more than to cleanse yourself of the memories from LA.

You remove the sling from your arm and try your hardest to take your clothes off but you find it exceptionally difficult with your arm being in a brace. It hurts to lift your arm and you nearly cry out of frustration and exhaustion when you realize you can’t take your shirt off by yourself.

Embarrassed, you contemplate on showering with your clothes on, but ultimately know you’d need to take them off anyway. You open the door and call for Aaron, and you hear his steps as soon as you do.

“Are you okay?” he asks when he realizes you’re still in your clothes.

“I can’t, um, take my clothes off,” you say, clearing your throat. “I can’t bend my right arm and my left one is extremely sore. I can’t take my fucking clothes off.”

Aaron isn’t offended by your defensiveness. He gathers that it’s your coping mechanism because you feel embarrassed, but Aaron doesn’t care. He doesn’t say anything but he nods like he knows what you’re going through and you have a suspicion that he might.

“I’ll close my eyes and take your clothes off for you,” Aaron says. He says it in a way that’s so sincere but it still makes your cheeks redden at the innuendo. Aaron tries to ignore it because he feels a blush coming.

“It’s so pathetic that I can’t do this by myself.”

“It’s not pathetic,” he reassures. “You have a broken arm and your body’s still in pain. Let me help you.” 

You don’t say anything and Aaron takes it as a cue to move closer. True to his word, he puts his arms on your waist and turns his head away from you, careful to not hurt your broken arm. He maneuvers the fabric until it’s free from your body and he’s acutely aware that he’ll need to touch you in order to take the rest of your clothes off.

Aaron’s surprised when you move his hand to the button of your slacks. He clears his throat while you look up at the ceiling and bite your lip, pretending that the situation you’re in is completely normal to keep yourself from blushing too much. Aaron’s fingers work on the button and he’s careful not to put his hands where it’s inappropriate. He almost laughs at the thought, considering he’s your boss and he’s helping you take off your clothes.

You shimmy out of your slacks as Aaron slides it down your legs. He blushes at the thought of what’s to come next and swallows hard. Aaron returns to his stance and finds his neck is sore from craning, so he keeps his eyes closed and faces you.

“I’m sorry,” you apologize again. “I-I don’t think I can unclasp my bra.” 

You wince at your words, but it’s true. You tried to reach behind you when Aaron worked on taking off your pants, but the ache in your shoulder was too much. 

Aaron doesn’t say anything and you’re afraid that he might leave you. He’s so quiet that you can barely hear his breathing and you look at his closed eyes and see that his jaw is clenched. He mumbles and you’re barely able to catch it. Aaron lifts his hands to find your shoulders and you nearly shiver underneath his warm hands, despite the fact that your body might be just as hot. 

Aaron reaches behind you and searches for your clasp. You can feel his fingers on your back as he feels for it and he’s incredibly aware that your gaze is on him. It takes all of his willpower not to open his eyes. He’s imagined undressing you before, but not like this. Aaron’s fingers find the clasp and he’s slow to undo it, afraid of tangling the metal.

You feel yourself free from its constraints and Aaron slowly moves his fingertips from your shoulders and down your arm. You comply the best you can with your sore arm and your broken one, and your breathing hitches.

Aaron ignores how fast his heart is beating when he hears your bra drop to the floor. His mind is in overdrive and he bends down again, his fingers immediately coming to your waist and gripping them with gentle care. You look down at him and your mouth is wide open with your jaw hanging when you realize he’s on his knees in front of you. Aaron’s fingers hook on the material of your underwear, but you can’t bear to see him take them off.

“Wait,” you say, squeezing your eyes shut momentarily. 

Aaron forces himself to keep his eyes closed and he can hear your shallow breathing. His fingers are wrapped around the fabric of your underwear and suddenly he’s aware that it’s an intimate piece of clothing. Aaron’s cheeks redden and he’s desperately hoping you don’t notice.

“I can do it,” you say. Your voice wavers and you aren’t sure that you won’t be in pain when you take them off, but seeing Aaron on his knees with his hands practically down your underwear is too much for you at this moment.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, clearing his throat. His fingers detach themselves and he abruptly stands up. Aaron keeps his eyes closed still.

“No, it’s okay,” you say, and you mean it. “I really appreciate you helping me out…I’m sure this has crossed a lot of boundaries.”

Aaron wants to tell you he doesn’t mind it one bit, but he holds his tongue to refrain from making you uncomfortable. His eyes feel heavy and he stumbles when he stands up but catches himself when he feels the doorknob behind him.

“Like I said, I’m here if you need anything.” 

Aaron stands still for a moment and it feels like the both of you had the air knocked out of your lungs. He doesn’t want to overstep or make it seem like he’s taking advantage of your vulnerable state, so he exits the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

You lock it immediately and pin yourself against the door. Your heartbeat is irrational and you turn the water on, fixing it to your desired temperature. Bending to take your underwear hurts and your shoulders feel like they’re about to pop off, but you manage.

You’re acutely aware that Aaron’s in your living room, no doubt trying to rid himself of the awkwardness. You aren’t sure if you’re grateful at what transpired because while it’s enough to help you forget about Los Angeles, it makes your cheeks flare into a hot mess and you feel uncomfortably turned on.

Aaron, too, feels the same way. He feels filthy sitting on your couch and results in pacing around the room. His shoes are discarded by the door and it feels all too domestic. Aaron’s tie is suddenly too tight so he tugs on the knot to loosen it. He rids himself of his suit jacket and places it neatly on the arm of the couch, and thinks about anything but you, naked in the shower. His slacks feel a little too tight, so he takes out his phone to check his email. It works for a while,

A while later, Aaron realizes you’ve walked out of the bathroom and you’ve managed to change without his assistance. You comment about how the shower loosened your muscles and you were able to get your clothes in relatively painlessly, but all he can think about is how cute you look in an oversized shirt and sweatpants.

He’s too preoccupied admiring how undone you look because it’s the complete opposite from how he sees you at work. In Quantico, you’re somewhat put together, always wearing appropriate office attire and taking your caseload with grace while the rest of the team complains to no end about the amount of paperwork that needs to be filed.

Now, you’re standing in front of him with wet hair and an old shirt that has lost some lettering. It’s domestic and Aaron loves it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about offering you the bathroom,” you say timidly. 

It’s nerve wracking for you to be in Aaron’s presence because of what happened a few moments ago and because you’re not sure why he’s been so nice to you. It’s fresh and strange at the same time, as you’re used to him looking over your shoulder.

But you don’t feel like he’s being domineering. 

“I’ve got a few shirts that might be your size,” you announce. “And a bunch of sweatpants too.”

Aaron’s heart flutters at how welcoming you are considering all that happened to you, but he’s also found himself standing with jealousy when you mention that you have men’s clothing. Are you dating someone? Does he know he’s there?

“I love thrifting and sleeping in big shirts,” you explain, overcompensating for how awkward you feel to be standing in front of your boss looking like a disheveled mess. “I tend to thrift for clothes in the men's section because you guys have really good clothes for dirt cheap.”

Aaron’s worries are quelled and he doesn’t know why he feels so relieved to know you aren’t seeing anyone. 

“That would be great,” Aaron says. 

You nearly skip to your room and huff at your awkward demeanor, pulling out a large shirt from your dresser and a pair of sweatpants you hope is big enough. When you walk back to the living room, Aaron is still standing in the same spot and you’re somewhat touched that he’s nervous to be in your apartment.

“You can change in the bathroom,” you instruct. “Take as long as you need. There’s an extra toothbrush on the counter and a towel on the rack.” 

Grateful, Aaron scurries into the bathroom and you walk away before you can think of imagining him getting undressed. Instead, you busy yourself by fetching extra blankets and pillows for him. There’s an extra thick blanket in your closet and you pull two pillows from your bed, unsure if Aaron’s the type of guy to care about his pillow count. You find yourself stumped for a moment, each hand two with pillows as you debate on how many to give him, before you realize how idiotic you must seem if someone were to take a peek inside your head.

You settle with two pillows. 

You’re fixing a cup of tea for the both of you when Aaron walks out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later. You know he likes to drink chamomile tea on the plane when you’re coming back from a case late at night. You’ve seen him make it a million times. It feels weird to be making him a cup, but you figure it’s the least you could do after he helped you change out of your clothes. 

“I made you tea,” you say lamely, setting the cup down on the opposite side of the kitchen counter. Aaron walks towards you and he feels the hardfloor beneath him and how hot the mug is when he touches it. Thinking about this distracts him from your broken arm and the swell of guilt he has in his chest. 

“Thank you,” Aaron says. 

“I put in a little bit of honey. I hope it’s not too much.”

Aaron raises his eyebrow. “How’d you know I liked honey in my tea?”

“You drink it a lot on the plane,” you explain. “I see you make it a lot. You always scold Spencer every time he puts too much of it in.”

He can’t help but smile, but he hides it behind the cup.

Neither of you say anything. You don’t know what more you can say. The words cause you to choke every time you think about what happened back in Los Angeles. Realistically, you know there’s no way Scott can hurt you anymore, but it doesn’t stop you from panicking at the thought of being alone in your apartment. 

But you look at Aaron, who’s looking at you, and you’re able to let your guard down for a little while. 

“Thank you,” you muster. “For taking care of me back at the hospital and back at the barn. It…it meant a lot that you stayed.” 

“Of course,” he says a little too quickly. “You’re a member of this team and your safety is my top priority.”

Your gaze drops to the floor. You aren’t sure what you were expecting. An apology? A confession? Truthfully, you don’t know what you want to hear from Aaron but it hurts knowing that he views you as just another colleague.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t made you feel that way in a long time,” Aaron starts when he realizes you’ve grown quiet. “A member of the team, I mean.” 

“I-I just felt like I should’ve been doing more,” you confess. 

“You’re doing everything right, Y/N. You’re an exceptional agent and an outstanding person. Any part of the bureau would be lucky to have you.”

“Yeah?” you ask quietly. 

“Absolutely.” Aaron means in.

You finish your tea and it all becomes too much for you. The pain of your arm is quelled by the medication your doctor prescribed and Aaron helps you open the bottle. It makes you feel silly that you need someone else’s help to do something so simple and you feel your frustration get the better of you. 

“I’ll be out here if you need anything, okay?” Aaron reassures. “Please don’t hesitate to wake me up.”

“I promise,” you say and it’s one you’re planning on keeping.

You close the door behind you and turn off the lights. It feels weird to be in your apartment because you feel like everything should be back to normal, but it isn’t. In your years with the BAU, nothing as serious as this kidnapping has ever happened to you. You’ve been trained to deal with kidnappings before and how to talk to the victims and to the survivors, but you’ve never thought you’d have to deal with the aftermath yourself. 

You can’t sleep on your side because of your cast and your body feels like it’s constantly being run over by a stampede. The soft mattress is a contrast of how stiff your body feels and it all feels like it’s too much. 

Aaron can’t sleep either. He’s been staring at the door for the past thirty minutes as he tries to fall asleep. His phone is plugged into the wall behind him and he checks in with Dave, who texted him as he drove you back to your apartment. Aaron briefly thinks about Jack and his heart softens for a moment, but then he hears your soft cries from the room.

Aaron lies completely still and hears your whimpers. He hears you sniffle, blow your nose twice, and he’s acutely aware of the fact that he has no idea what to do. He has half a mind of barging into your room to comfort you until you’re asleep, but he doesn’t want to overstep his welcome more than he already has. Aaron feels frozen on the couch and doesn’t know if you’re too nervous to ask him for comfort.

He’s surprised when you walk outside. You don’t turn the lights on and he can barely make your face when you step into the moonlight. But you look frail, broken, and like you’ve been tormented by your memories. Aaron hates that.

“Aaron?” you call out. Your voice is small and his heart cracks. “Can you keep me company?”

Aaron doesn’t need to be told twice. 

He lifts the blankets from his legs and follows you into the bedroom. You sit on the edge of the bed and sniffle. Aaron sits next to you and carefully puts his arm around your shoulders, pulling you into his side.

It’s comforting and it aches. The pain of trauma and knowing that your life will never be the same again makes it seem like you’re never going to recover. Aaron doesn’t say anything, letting you cry into his shoulder and ignores the way your tear stains have soaked through the fabric. 

He’s imagined being in your apartment before; he often wonders what your decor looks like and how often you spend time here. He’s imagined cooking breakfast for you before you wake up, making you cups of your favorite tea, making the bed after you’ve both woken up, and kissing you goodbye when you walk out the door. Being in your bedroom like this feels too intimate, but if he was being honest with himself, Aaron doesn’t really mind it. He likes that he’s the person you choose to lean on. He feels like this is the first step in holding himself accountable for how he’s treated you in the past. 

Your shoulders are shaking and Aaron does everything he can think of to coax you through your sadness. He whispers praise and allows you to cry when you keep apologizing for your behavior, and he keeps telling you that he’s not going anywhere. 

When you manage to calm down, you’re tired. Aaron lets you climb underneath the covers and tucks the blanket under your chin. His hand brushes your skin and he blushes, though he’s sure you can’t tell because of how dark it is. Aaron bids you goodnight and starts to walk back to the living room but you reach out for his hand before he gets the chance to leave. He turns around and feels your soft grip on him. 

“Could you sleep with me?” you ask. “Or at least stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“Of course,” Aaron says. He throws all caution in the wind and starts to walk to the other side of the bed and he’s surprised when you open the covers for him.

Your mattress is soft and your blankets smell like you. He tries not to think about it and leaves space between the both of you.

“Did you know I joined the BAU because of you?” you ask in the darkness.

“What?” Aaron says of shock.

You laugh lamely. “You guys held a few seminars at my alma mater and I knew then what I wanted to do with my life. I applied to the academy the next fall.”

Aaron doesn’t know what to say. His cheeks are hot and you’ve rendered him utterly speechless. In your tired state, you push yourself as comfortably as you can until the back of your head is leaning on Aaron’s chest, mindful of your broken arm. 

Aaron’s stunned and his body stiffens. But he thinks of all the times he’s thought about laying beside you like this and decides that he’ll cherish it as much as he can. His arm snakes itself underneath you as he tugs you closer, and he whispers a soft goodnight.

***

D.C. is a little cloudy when you wake up. The light peeks through your blinds and you’re made aware of the man sleeping beside you when you realize your face is buried in his chest. Your good arm is beneath you while the other is on top of the blanket. Aaron’s arms are encircled around you and when you feel his warmth. 

You don’t rush to wake him up. Being here with him somehow feels right despite the part of your brain telling you he’s your boss and nothing more. But Aaron wouldn’t stay with you if he didn’t want to, right? 

Part of you thinks he’s doing it just because he feels guilty. You know that there’s some truth to that, but you wonder if it’s the only reason he elected to take care of you. But you decide it’s too early to think about this. Instead, you close your eyes and bask in Aaron’s warmth, and fall asleep again. 

This time, Aaron wakes you up twenty minutes after you fall back asleep. His arms are numb from your weight and he feels like he might try to kiss you if he doesn’t wake you up. 

Your eyes flutter open and you bury your head in his neck. Aaron doesn’t bring himself to push you off of him. He pulls you against him and the both of you lay in silence for what feels like an eternity. 

Eventually, Aaron has to leave because Jack’s coming home from a sleep away camping trip. He apologizes a thousand times over because he knows he said he wasn’t going anywhere, but you tell him that Jack is more important. An unrecognizable expression flashes across his face before he’s out the door, promising you that he’ll call to check in once Jack’s home.

And he does. Aaron calls you a few hours later when Jack’s in the shower and asks you how you’re feeling, if you’ve taken your medication, and if he needs to do anything for you. You decline for his help despite desperately wanting him back in your apartment.

When night falls, Aaron lets Jack stay up an hour later than usual. They’re watching cartoons from the nineties when Aaron gets a sudden idea. He pauses the television and turns to Jack.

“Do you remember Y/N?” Aaron asks his son.

“Of course I do,” Jack says. “She’s the one who buys me snacks when I come to visit you.” 

“That’s right, buddy.” Truthfully, Aaron didn’t know you’ve continuously done that for Jack. But he rolls with it. 

“Is she okay?”

Aaron knows Jack can tell something’s up.

“Not really,” Aaron replies honestly. “She got hurt real bad in our last case and broke her arm.”

Jack opens his mouth in surprise. “Oh no. Do you think she’ll get better soon?”

“I hope so. She needs a lot of help right now because she lives alone.”

“Well she can stay with us until her arm is better,” Jack says as if it’s the most obvious solution in the world. Aaron can’t help but smile through his shock. 

“I’ve gotta ask her first, but I think that’s a great idea. That’s actually what I wanted to ask you.”

“It’ll be fun!” Jack exclaims. “Me and Y/N can watch cartoons while you’re at work and she can help me with my homework. She’s nice like that.” 

“Yes she is,” Aaron says, nodding. 

“Do you think I should make her a card so she feels welcomed in our home? I think I have leftover paper and glitter. Girls love glitter.”

“Y/N would love that. I’m going to talk to her first and if she agrees to stay over, you can make her a card.”

“Yay! This is gonna be the best sleepover ever.” 

Aaron’s ecstatic that Jack’s receptive to the idea. He calls you the next morning and proposes the idea of staying at his place until your cast comes off. When you lament how long that’ll be from now, he insists and tells you Jack was the one who came up with the idea.

You can’t say no to Jack. 

Aaron helps you gather belongings from your apartment and tells you that he’ll drive you back here or pick you up any time you want or need to. You double check that you’ve packed enough clothes for a week.

It’s a gradual and awkward start. You feel out of place as you try to navigate his apartment and where he keeps everything, not wanting to feel like you’re already welcomed in his home. But Aaron keeps reminding you that his home is your home and you don’t need permission since you’ll be here for a while.

Jack is sweet, too. He helps you by telling you where everything is stored and goes so far as to hold your hand while doing so. He insisted on tucking you in while you slept in the guest bedroom just to make sure you were comfortable on your first night, and you thought you might start crying in front of him.

At first, you walk on eggshells. You tiptoe around the boys and feel like a burden when Aaron brings home dinner for three or when he buys extra groceries, especially when he refuses to let you chip in. Jack tries to ease your worries after sensing your discomfort by asking you to build legos with him and you do your best despite the pain in your arms.

Aaron reminds you of your medication (and in turn, Jack asks you if you’ve taken your pills), cooks your favorite comfort meals, and drives you to mandated therapy sessions whenever he has the time. It warms your heart at how helpful he’s been since you know how busy he is typically, and you’re not sure what to make of your emotions. 

Time passes by and suddenly staying with Aaron feels somewhat normal. You’re off of work until your arm is healed and you’ve seen your therapist a number of times, and you know you have a couple of months of doing whatever you want until you go back into the field. Against the advice of Strauss, you continue to help with cases and the paperwork load so Aaron can spend more time with Jack.

Gradually, you start to feel comfortable when you’re alone. You use his kitchen, clean his dishes, and busy yourself with tidying Jack’s messes. You explore his neighborhood and have found a few cafes and restaurants you’d like to try out. You feel more comfortable lounging on his couch instead of keeping yourself in the guest bedroom.   

It feels domestic and you can’t tell if it’s a good or bad thing. There’s still so much left unsaid, including how you’ve felt being his subordinate prior to your abduction. Aaron’s apologized over and over again, has given you time to heal from it and chooses not to ask for forgiveness in lieu of letting you find it yourself. It means a lot. Deep down, you know Aaron isn’t a bad person. You just wish you knew why you were different.

A week turns into two, then into three, and soon enough you find yourself caring after Jack. You feel useless if you sleep in and start waking up early to make breakfast as best you can for everyone (limited to cold breakfasts until you start to feel confident using your dominant arm when it’s out of the sling). Aaron walks into the kitchen to see you making oatmeal one day and you’re worried that you’ve overstepped, but he thanks you profusely.

Jack waddles in and he takes the oatmeal without question and asks if you can put brown sugar and fruit in it. You look around and see apples and blueberries, and Jack chooses the blueberries. He watches as you fix him a bowl and eats his breakfast in silence.

It becomes a routine for you after growing tired of doing nothing all day. Helping Aaron’s around the house as best you can, working remotely on cases, and spending time in his neighborhood feels like you’re recording.

Jessica, Jack’s aunt, has been informed of your stay by Aaron. You’ve met her before in passing but have never spoken to her in depth before staying with Aaron. She picks him up and drops him off, making small talk with you about her life and about your work. It goes so far as coffee dates when she’s available and it feels like your life is getting back on track.

Meanwhile, Aaron realizes he’s bit off more than he can chew when he sees you every morning. He hears your morning voice and finds himself wanting to wake up to it every day. He sees the way you are with Jack, how thoughtful and helpful you’ve been, and thinks it’s where you belong.

And it hurts. It hurts to know that all of his suppressed feelings are suddenly coming to the surface.

Your cast is coming off later today and you’re due for another mandated therapy session and a psychological evaluation before you’re able to return to work. He’s elated, but that means you’re okay to return to your apartment and he’ll have to get used to the house being empty.

Aaron’s parked his car at Quantico and he glances at you in the passenger seat. Your arm sling and cast are gone and you look as good as new, but he’s reluctant to step out of the car. You look back at him, hands fiddling in your lap.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” you begin. “I don’t know what I’d do without you and Jack.”

“You’d be just fine,” Aaron assures. “But it was nice seeing you recover. Is your arm doing okay?”

“It’s like I never had a broken arm.” You flex it in front of him for emphasis. “My shoulder’s still a bit sore but I think my physical therapist has expedited the healing process.”

Aaron smiles. “Good. I’m glad.” 

A brief moment of silence falls between the two of you before you both get out of the car. Your therapist had asked you whether or not you were ready to integrate yourself back with the team and was scheduled to supervise your initial day back in the office. You’re apprehensive, however, because you know that you never perform well if you’re being watched closely. 

JJ’s the first to greet you when you walk through the doors. The office smells the same and it looks the same, but it doesn’t feel the same. You spend a few extra seconds embracing JJ and gather that she needs this hug more than you do.

Everyone files in and it’s barely eight in the morning. David congratulates you on recovery, Derek and Penelope bombard you with jokes that make your stomach hurt, Emily shows you photos of Sergio upon your request, and Spencer gives you a side hug and tells you he’s glad you’re doing better.

The therapist arrives soon after and you’re on your best behavior without making it seem like you’re trying to be. 

In the end, she permits you to return back to the BAU with the promise of continuing therapy. She refers to you to a few others and tells you that you should try to go in at least once a week, or however frequently your job lets you. You’re clear to fly, yield your gun, and you’re reinstated as a profiler with the BAU.

Aaron drives you back to his place to pick up your belongings before he drives you back to your apartment. He and Dave had been kind enough to drive your car back to your place, where it’s been sitting untouched.

The ride is filled with music from the eighties and you’re so elated from your first day back at work that you don’t mind singing in front of Aaron and pretending you’re shredding on an electric guitar. He takes his time getting home, taking the long way instead of the direct route, and he doesn’t think you notice. Aaron hopes you don’t.

But he arrives at his place and Jessica’s greeting you at the front door, happy to see you’ve recovered before she goes home. The sun has barely set and Jack walks out behind his aunt, asking you what’s for dinner.

You’re stunned for a moment as the realization that this all ends tonight. Staying with Aaron, falling into a life of balancing work and domesticity comes to an end when he drops you off at your apartment. Jack’s tugging on your elbow and Aaron scolds him because you might still be in a little bit of pain. He apologizes sweetly.

Aaron beckons you inside where you've started to pack your belongings. The luggage you've brought seems smaller than when you brought it, as you find it difficult to pack everything. You make the bed and set the room as you found it (to the best of your recollection), and you’re ready to put your shoes on when Aaron rounds the corner.

“I was thinking we could have one last meal here.” He clears his throat. “To celebrate your recovery.”

You don’t hesitate. “I would love that. I finally get to show you my cooking skills.” 

Aaron smiles and Jack runs to your legs, beckoning you to the kitchen. You settle on making oven baked chicken with mashed potatoes and honey glazed carrots, all of which Aaron had in his refrigerator. Jack asks how he can help and you’re touched when he brings a stool to perch on, and you tell him he can help you by rinsing the potatoes. 

Aaron offers to help and you look at him with a silly grin, letting him prepare the carrots while you prepare everything else. Halfway through the process, Jack becomes somewhat irritable because of hunger and because the entire kitchen smells like a Thanksgiving feast. But he relents and waits for the meal to be done when you tell him the food always tastes better when it’s cooked longer.

You almost forget it’s your last time with Aaron and Jack when you eat your meal together. You forget it when Jack insists on ice cream for dessert and when Aaron makes you a cup of tea just the way you like it. You forget about it until Jack asks his father if he can be there when he drops you off at your apartment. 

Your heart breaks a little. Aaron agrees and lets you grab your belongings while he buckles Jack in the car. Your luggage is in the trunk by the time Aaron is done and he opens the passenger door for you before getting in the car himself. Jack talks the entire ride, thanking you for dinner and lamenting how much he loved spending time with you. Aaron’s grip on the steering wheel is tight and he doesn’t think his heart could swell any bigger.

Eventually, the boys walk you up to your floor and Jack lunges at your abdomen after the three of you have walked into your living room. 

“I’m gonna miss you,” Jack mumbles in your sweater.

“You’ll see her around, buddy. She’s not leaving the team,” says Aaron.

“But I’ll miss Y/N at home. I like spending time with her there.” 

You and Aaron share a look. You can’t tell what he’s thinking but you know you’re unable to control the influx of emotions that will eventually spill out of you when they leave. 

“Me too,” Aaron says quietly. 

They leave soon after that.

You spend an hour crying in your living room and you haven’t unpacked your suitcase. Living with Aaron and being so close to him made you realize how your feelings for him, albeit complicated, have always been there. 

You love him. You love his generous nature. You love the adoration he has for Jack and for his team. You love how he knows your beverages of choice and how gentle he’s been with you. You love the way he says your name and you love that you feel right at home with him.

It’s ten o’clock when you grab your phone and you know Jack’s been asleep for at least an hour. You dial Aaron’s contact and in your anxious state of mind, nearly regret your actions. But he picks up and you hear the sweet melody of his voice through the phone. Your voice falters at first, but you push through them anyway. You’re sure Aaron can hear your voice post-crying because of how raspy your voice is, but you don’t care.

You tell him you think you love him and it’s not because he’s been taking care of you. You pour your heart and soul into this speech and you panic when he doesn’t say anything.

“This’ll be one hell of a story we tell Strauss.”

And you laugh. You laugh because you know Aaron feels the same and you laugh because facing paperwork and recounting this conversation to Strauss doesn’t seem like the most frightening thing in the world anymore.

But just for good measure, Aaron tells you he loves you too. 

***

AAAND WE’RE DONE X 

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[halcyone-of-the-sea]

Run Away To Me (III)

AU MASTERLIST || FINAL CHAPTER

PAIRING: Blacksmith!Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish x F!Runaway Bride!Reader

WORDCOUNT: 5.1k

WARNINGS: Blood, wounds, medieval period-esc standards for women, arranged marriage, toxic family dynamic/relationship, blood, angst, protective Johnny, violence, hurt/comfort, speedy relationship, talks of sex/intimacy (nothing in depth) & virginity pertaining to marriage, religious symbolism & mentions, etc.

A/N: That's it for this AU - onto Werewolf!Ghost next.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You’re kept behind Johnny’s back as you both exit the treeline, and you feel yourself quivering with unease. 

What would Lord Wilkin do to you? Drag you back? As the shelter of the trees leaves you, you tighten your grip on the blacksmith’s tunic, breathing out a shaky puff of air. Cobalt eyes look back at you, trying to reassure you as the first calls start up from the guards.

Johnny whispers out, his accent deep. “It’s gonna be just fine.” 

“She’s here!” 

Hounds dash forward but with a sharp bark of, “Get back!” They skid along the dewy grass and halt with rabid barks instead, fur bristled and spittle flying. The men surge forward, and you gasp as they grapple at Johnny’s arms. 

One tries to snatch at the neck of your cloak, but a strong arm traps the armored wrist and twists it sideways, snapping the bone as you stare wide-eyed as the guard screams; jerking back and stumbling to his knees. With a fluid motion, Johnny grasps the handle of the downed guard’s sword as he writhes with agony, unsheathing the blade and laying it upon the breast of the other with a dim call. 

He glowers and glares, eyes like burning coals. 

“I suggest you step back,” you watch, holding your breath from over his shoulder as the blacksmith leans closer to the man, one arm kept behind him and resting on your hip. “‘Fore this gets bloody.” The guard raises his hands and backs up quickly, fear splashing his eyes. 

All of the others watch nervously from the sidelines, either reigning in steeds or holding their hands to the pommels of their weapons. Waiting. 

You swallow the saliva in your throat and ask, quietly, “Are you alright?” 

“Don’t twist your head about me,” Johnny reassures, eyes traveling around the homestead as the guards shuffle and share glances. The Scot grits his teeth and tries to think of a way out of this. 

If you had run, just as the man had anticipated, they would have caught up in no time.

The clop of hooves from your left draws both of yours’ attention in a quick succession of perked heads and pounding hearts. You feel your blood drop to pool in your feet at the face that meets you. Johnny growls and shoves you farther into his shadow as Lord Wilkin comes closer with a horse of bay coat, decorated with all the finery of his station. Gold, great coat with an embroidered tunic, and riding boots. Strapped at his waist was a dagger encrusted with gems made of blood and diamonds.

Never mind all that wealth, he looked ugly and cruel to you—a glint of arrogance in his eye. You glare and grit your teeth, rage coming off in waves from Johnny as well as yourself. 

Wilkin’s old face is the same you remember smirking down at you as he drove the ceremonial blade into your palm, and your entire hand flinches in memory, digging your nails into the Scot’s waist. 

He puffs a sound of reassurance but otherwise doesn’t move an inch from in front of you.

“And who might this be holding my bride hostage?” The Lord’s voice is sly. Black eyes dart up and down Johnny’s form and the man you latch to has to restrain a rabid grunt of anger. Stay his molten tongue. “A blacksmith?”

“It’s MacTavish, to you,” Johnny calls, tone dead and laced with danger. Your body restrains a shiver as his warm skin sinks into you; the memory of his lips on yours is addictive, even now. “Be best for you to remember it, eh? Considerin’ I’m the one who supplies your fucking guards with arms.” 

Lord Wilkin utterly ignores him, his gaze sliding to you halfway through his sentence. You stay silent, lungs tight inside of your ribs. The unfortunate truth was that Johnny still had more standing here than you did, anything that you said would come up as null and void; in fact, it would be better to be completely mute. 

But with how the Lord was looking at you, your teeth had to bite into your lip to silence yourself. You had to come up with a way out of this. Soon. 

“Take my bride away from this brute. Chain him.” Wilkin hides a smirk, pulling at his steed’s reigns to shift the beast away with a snort and a flick of a dark tail. “I want his head on the block in the town square by tomorrow. I have a wedding to finalize.”

“Let the fires of hell go cold if I go anywhere with you,” you say, stepping out slightly from behind Johnny, much to his hesitation, but still, he watches over you and lets you do as you please. The blacksmith would rather not have this Lord’s eyes anywhere near you if he’s being honest with himself.

This Scot had made you bold—his words gave finality. If he said nothing would happen to you, you believed him. Perhaps that made you foolish, but his word meant far more than anyone else. Johnny kept his promises.

Lord Wilkin’s horse is jerked to a stop, its head snapping back and forth with a frothing mouth. His eyes travel back and a slow sneer pulls at his lips, sitting under a mustache of white hair. You restrain a cringe, and Johnny barks an order to the advancing guards to stay back as his large feet set themselves. 

“If they grab me,” he mutters, speaking over his shoulder, “run, Little Lady. I’ll be sure to give you an opening.”

Your eyes widen in shock and horror, but before you can answer, your husband-to-be calls to you. The Blacksmith’s expression is the picture of defense as he angles the sword in his grip at the far-off Lord when even the barest hint of his tone indicates you.

A low grunt was ringing in his throat like that of an animal—as if the bear fur inside of the house had come to life and was a shield of muscle and iron shavings.

Your eyes blink, and something begins forming in your head, but it’s gone before you can really grasp it.

“My Lady,” Lord Wilkin states, his guards taking up places beside him, glaring. The hounds have still not gone silent, and Johnny eyes them nervously. “I believe you’ve been overcome by some…” He grumbles and gnashes his teeth in rage. “Spell of disobedience. I’ll have a physician examine you and keep you in my home for a stay of recovery—”

“The lady said she’s not goin’ with you,” Johnny seethes, pupils slits. Your hand rests on his back, spread over the swell of his broadness as you feel his pulse. Hot and racing. “So pack the fuck up and scatter! And take the bloody mutts with you!” 

You spare a worried glance at the back of his head. The blacksmith can’t possibly believe that threatening them will make Wilkin pull back, and when he meets your eyes, you know he doesn’t just by the wrinkles by the sides of his lids. 

He’s nervous, shifting his feet in small increments to try and push you nearer to the tree line. Your body hardens. 

You’ve already made your mad dash—there was no more running. Certainly not if your new center of affection and protective build wasn’t coming with you. 

Wilkin raises a brow. “Quite demanding for the man surrounded…Woman!” You flinch at the sudden shout, the quick rage of his snapping head, and the quick switch. Johnny glares and his hands are strangling the hilt of the sword, white and held still. The Lord barks, “Your parents gained valuable gifts for your well-bred hand—would you enjoy them being taken away? I can do so.” Dark eyes sweep over you. A smirk. “Forget this spark of madness and consummate what you know to be done.”

Johnny lunges with a snarl, eyes burning with horrible anger and the intent to cut the head off the snake. The guards meet him as he yells to you, “Run, Dearie!” 

But your feet are stone.

When the man realizes you’re going nowhere without him, his eyes gain a sheen of panic as his blade clashes with sparks of steel with another. A dance of feet and wit that speaks to years of careful study; practice from both parties. Wilkin looks smug as Johnny lets off a loud curse and has to turn his attention back to the fight.

“Seems the woman’s come to her senses. Praise God, perhaps there’s hope for her yet.” You breathe heavily, hands clenched under your cloak. Your mind wished for a dagger—one to show this pathetic excuse of a man how much it hurt to try and have someone mark you for the pleasure of ownership. Like some common branded cow. 

Wilkin nods to you as Johnny gazes on in horror, narrowly dodging a swipe at his side before he elbows a guard in the face, splaying him out along the ground in a heap of leather and fabric.

“What are you doing?” He yells, voice booming out over the forest. You don’t look at him before you suck down a breath and steady your nerves; standing taller and setting back your shoulders. 

The trained grace that had been shoved down your throat on a silver platter came back easily. Forks and spoons sliding under your teeth, all engraved with images depicting holy scenes of sanctity while the blood of your flesh spills at the poke of thorns sitting on your head. A halo of bloody martyrdom. 

A tool. 

You can be a tool, you decide, flinching when Johnny’s body is tackled to the ground; form ricochetting as he growls and writhes. His sword clatters to the ground. They have him in binds, cheek shoved into the dirt, and great shackles that skirt the line between animal and human restraint. A guard’s hand forces his face deeper into the earth and Johnny bellows, ordering with wild eyes, “Run, dammit! Get out of here!” 

Sending a stiff glance, you stare blankly into cobalt eyes and blink away just as quickly, standing and staring down Lord Wilkin as he watches in contentment at the scene of the raging blacksmith and his seemingly placated bride. At the twitch of his lips, you raise your voice high. 

“Release him.” Dark eyes turn to slits before they slowly slither back to you. 

“Pardon?” You grit your teeth and feel Johnny glaring, a snarl ripping out of his mouth as he coughs through the grass. 

“Dearie, no!” A punch hits his stomach as he’s jerked up to his feet and attacked; chains rattling as hounds bay for blood. You sense your gut roll with bile as Johnny fights back—tree-like legs laying a kick square into one's abdomen. 

The two guards hang onto his arms, shouting at each other to try and restrain him further.

“I ask my husband-to-be to release the man that graciously gave me shelter during the storm,” staring hard, you’re trying to stop yourself from running to Johnny. You know you have nothing to help him with—it would be pointless and utterly stupid. 

Your brow raises, but a nervous twinge is still in your voice. “Does My Lord not take pride in the fact that the men of his fiefdom are so open to taking in those less fortunate than themselves?”

Wilkin’s cheeks go tight, skin pulling as the eyes of the free guards travel to him. The struggle gradually dies down across the way; cobalt eyes darting back and forth with panic. 

“Don’t bloody do what I think you’re doin’!” 

A trade would happen, but only for a moment. In your head, you were whipping past possibilities and scenarios. There was something on the cusp of discovery—so close to giving you the upper hand, but what was it? Like a thorn in your foot, you continue to walk over it; ready and willing. 

Johnny had your back last night, it was time you had his.

“Let the honorable blacksmith go,” you level. “And name your price.” 

The response is immediate. A flashing smirk. “Deal. I’ll take my bride back, just as was intended.”

“No!” Johnny’s tunic is all ripped up, tears from gripping hands only making the damage larger—nail scrapes along his hardened flesh from the guard’s ruthless hold. Skin white from the force.

If you look at him, you’ll lose your mind.

Under your cloak, your hands shake as Wilkin descends his horse, coming closer. 

“Keep your fuckin’ bastard hands off of ‘er!” 

Think. His footsteps march closer—thin and sly-looking like a sharp-eyed Egret. Think! 

Before his hand can snap at your wrist your mind sparks in a panicked moment, and you’re exclaiming with a loud voice before you can stop yourself or think the sentence through. You stutter at first but quickly gain your footing. 

“I-In good faith, I cannot accept—I am unfaithful to you, Lord!” 

The entire homestead goes still, and those struggling with Johnny’s binds freeze. Lord Wilkin goes confused, his wrinkled visage peeling in like a rotted corpse. But no faces are quite as good as the blacksmith’s, who goes so pale and wide-eyed before he can school himself in secrecy; his jaw loose. His heart pounds in his breast, shreds of tunic waving in the wind. You continue with utter conviction, so much so that you even start to believe the lie you’ve crafted with a swift mind. “See the evidence upon the blacksmith’s sheets—where we lay last night in the throes of lust; I am no longer a pure bride.” Breaths get caught in throats; eyes bugging to a nonsensical degree. You swear someone choke. Your face burns as you continue, faking a shameful falling of your chin. 

“I cannot marry you!” It’s almost enough to break you, the realization on Johnny’s expression as he darts his vision to your hand—which you hide inside your cloak; wrapped around your waist with false fear. Blood on your hand. 

Blood on the sheets.

“It would be shameful to do so, do you not understand? I am not but a used good.” Fake or not, the last comment still makes Johnny’s hands clench his jaw working itself with a restrained growl. 

But pride furrows his brow. A smirk was forced back from his lips.

You just took away what Wilkin loves more than anything else—control. 

The older man halts, his mouth going agape and a vile sheen coming to his cheeks. He stutters, “I...what?” It’s a violent snarl, but the man balks back from you as if you’re infected. “You dare lie to me, Girl? Play off this fallacy?” 

“It’s no lie,” you say, gaining confidence with how Johnny watches you closely, only once rumbling at the guards that hold him when they tighten their grip. “The evidence is plain as day in the Blacksmith’s bed.” 

Wilkin’s eyes flash, and he barks an order to one of his men to enter the main house. Only when his dark eyes are off of you do you spare a look at Johnny. 

You sag softly, shoulders losing some tension. 

Blue eyes lock with yours, firm. Sending an apologetic squint of your eyes, the man only slightly shakes his head, mouthing out, “Don’t worry your little head about it.” A quick, barely-there smile flashes his lips—but then you have to look away before you let the shaking of your body be known. No matter how hard you plead with your muscles to stop vibrating, they do so instinctually. 

You know what lying about this will cost you, successfully or not. You’d be labeled for the rest of your life; separate. But Johnny’s eyes on you ease the pain. Lets you breathe. If the worst thing that could happen to you was living out your life in his homestead and being at his side, then perhaps social execution was the only thing that pleased you at the moment. 

You just hoped that it didn’t lead to an actual execution.

“Lord!” The guard returns as Johnny continues to watch you, panting, with sweat dripping down his chin. His ribs hurt something awful, but he only glowered at the men holding him and stayed his violent tongue to let you work your strengths like fine iron wrought in the fire of his hearth. 

Wilkin’s lackey was hurriedly carting the length of the Blacksmith’s sheets behind him—clutching in his fist the vibrant red stain of your blood and displaying it to the light. Thinking about what they saw it as, instead of your wound opening, you cringe and restrain a sound of disgust. 

Even being around Johnny for as little time as you had, despite the kiss and infatuation, you had forgotten how crude the rest of these men could be. It’s like this sanctuary of trees and dew-soaked ground was in an entirely different world, and these intruders were wrecking it. By Johnny’s face, he felt the exact same.

Half of the Scot wanted to save your honor and tell them you were lying, but the desperation of the situation was far more serious than that. He couldn’t let you go back to Wilkin—he’d promised. So Johnny took down a tight breath and stayed silent; face burning and glaring at the ground with clenched fists shaking for blood. 

The guards holding his arms slightly release their grip, listening intently themselves.

Blanking, the Lord’s eyes lock onto the stain as the man brings him the fabric. Not a moment later his hand snaps out to drag it to his face, looking daggers into the redness as his eyes snap from place to place.

“...You did this on purpose,” the slow dead tone takes you aback, hands around your abdomen digging further into your flesh as a dread spills into your stomach with blossoming unease. 

“M-my Lord?” Johnny tenses, eyes sharp like a wolf.

“You did this so you could spite me, you little,” the encrusted dagger is unsheathed from its scabbard. “Whore!”

“Shut the fuck up!” The blacksmith bursts with wrath, jerking forward so violently that he drags the guards holding him along the ground, their calls of alarms making the hounds go ballistic. 

You take a small step back as Wilkin gets nearer to you—the point of the blade setting itself right under your chin; tilting your head up. Breath going tight, you stare with wide eyes and a pounding heart. 

He wouldn’t kill you…would he? 

The Lord’s eyes are brimstone and deeper than Hell, holding sinners in the bars of his pupils while devils of brown specks prod the pool of obsidian. If a man could be on fire and still be living, Wilkin was an inferno incarnate. 

“You belong to me,” he grits his teeth as Johnny’s voice blurs in the background, having to be forced to his knees by three men yet still nearly throttling one with the force of his arms. “I paid for you.”

“Then you should find it a lost investment,” you shakily reply, not knowing how you have the strength to stare into Wilkin’s eyes. But you do. You stare and you hold your hands tight into your flesh until the skin under your gifted fabric aches. A small prick of the blade makes you suck in a tight inhalation, a tiny droplet of crimson sneaking down your throat.

It’s a battle of wills, and before you say what you’re thinking, you’re nearly sure that in less than three seconds you’ll be grasping a slit throat. 

You clear your throat softly and speak in a dim whisper. “How will your guards react to you killing a woman in anger?” Expressions freeze. “What does God say about that?” You swallow, throat bobbing. Hit him where it hurts. “...What would the townspeople say? Mercy is not above our great Lord, that is an earthly prospect. I believed that was your greatest quality, is that not what everyone believes?” 

Wilkin stares, his mustache twitching. Dead face. Dead eyes. 

It’s a long, long moment before anything else happens, and when it does, you flinch.

The dagger disappears from your chin and you instantly back up several steps, breathing unevenly. Pointedly, you place your uninjured hand on your slowly dripping skin. 

Johnny’s taken down three of the guards, their faces bloody and your blacksmith’s nose broken. He yells and screams curses. You feel your heart constrict at the sight, pain zooming down your veins in bursts of adrenaline, but it’s seconds later that Wilkin speaks, loudly so that everyone can hear.

“I would never harm a woman,” you hold back a violent scoff as your hands shake, wanting to be taken into Johnny’s arms now more than ever—feel his heat and inhale his scent. Wrapped in a blanket of steel and ash. “In my good graces, I will pray for your salvation, Miss. But being soiled—” 

“Bloody piss off!” You send Johnny a quick glance at the outburst. He’s forced back face-first into the ground with a grunt and sputtering of grass in his mouth. 

“I no longer wish to be joined with you in holy matrimony. It would be dishonorable to my station.” Dark eyes swim with hatred, but the tone of his voice is easy and pliable. The Lord was a good fake—he plasters on an appeasing smile for his men and waves a quick hand in the air as he turns to his horse. “Release the brute. Let the pair roll in their sin of carnal desire. God will be their judge.”

Johnny struggles as they unlock his chains, but the second he’s out he’s springing full-force towards you; his skin sliding across your cloak as you’re guarded far better than any loyal hound or King might be. 

“Johnny,” you grapple at his biceps, sighing raggedly in relief. He doesn’t brush you off, only curling his side around you and angling his head to the mounted horses; pupils slits and lungs heaving. His nose looks awful. “Don’t, don’t,” you plead, “It’s over.”

The man doesn't respond, looking feral as his hair goes this way and that; coiled around your body about to strike at anything that comes close. 

“I’ll kill him,” Johnny grunts. “I’ll rip his damn throat out for speakin’ to you like that—for puttin’ a knife to your throat. I’ll rip him into bloody bits and pieces, you just say the word, Little Lady.”

Your arms encase the one of his you’re holding, dragging the limb to your chest. Cobalt eyes dart back to your face. It’s a long moment, but his expression softens slightly—the wrinkles beside his eyes easing while his lips twitch down. Blood drips off his lower face, spread around his under eyes, and stains his stubble with crimson gore.

“Please,” you mutter. 

He looks down and nods stiffly, even if he doesn’t like it. 

The horses are rallied, the hounds called, and with a throw of dirt from their hooves the convoy is off. Silence returns in slow increments of nothingness. 

Wind, the call of a bird, and the babble of a far-off stream echo through the pines. Only when they’re entirely out of sight and the dust has cleared that Johnny swiftly moves, picking you up into his arm. You squeak as he carries you speedily into the main house, rushing to place your backside on the table. 

His large hands immediately tilt your head up to spy the tiny mark from Wilkin’s blade, and you feel his shuttered breath against your throat as you go heated. 

“J-Johnny, what are you…” But you don’t get an answer, the man disappearing before coming back with a wetted rag. Once more, the man cleans your wounds with delicate presses of the cloth—ridding you of all blood. 

His jaw is clenched, and as you watch, your hand in your lap twitches. 

In a broken act of pain, you lightly run your fingertips over the swelling of his nose. The man stops, but serious eyes stick to your throat—unable to meet your gaze; there’s a red sheen to his neck and ears. Anger or embarrassment, you know not.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper, guilty, and his widened gaze rips itself to lock with yours. Your vision blurs, afraid to touch him fully as if it might burn him.

“No,” he’s shaking his head. “No, you never tell me that. What you did, Dearie…I,” Johnny stutters, closing his mouth before opening it again. “I should be apologizing to you. It wasn’t fair to make you do that. Any of it.” 

A wobbly smile flicks your lips.

“Are you saying I should have left you?” Johnny moves his face farther into your hand, blood contaminating your skin but you don’t pull away. You let him sag into your palm instead, reveling in the scrape of his stubble against your soft hands. 

“I’d not see you harmed,” is all he answers. 

You sigh and blink away your tears, stealing the man’s rag so you can dab at the bloody nostrils. Johnny’s pulse is still fast under you—like the pound of his hammer. 

“Well,” his eyes dig into yours and you smile. “I believe my priorities are the same. I may have only met you yesterday, but I’ve grown quite fond of you.”

“Aye, well, everyone will know how fond soon enough.” He’s more worried about this than you are, a stubborn and almost grumbly tone to his words. 

“Is my purity that much of a sore point for you?” You can’t help but tease him, even in the circumstances. “I had no idea.”

His face goes more crimson than his own blood, and he blinks at you rapidly. 

“I…That isn’t what I…” You chuckle gently and press your forehead to his, whispering. 

“I was just joking.” He sags with relief, his hands coming up to rest on your hips with the care of a man unbefitting to his station. Again, you have to ask yourself how an individual so intimidating can be, at the same instance, kind and generous. 

His lips mutter, brows tight. “Are ya sure you’re alright, Hen?” 

You think, wondering about the run through the forest when this all began, the plea for shelter. Such a deep coincidence that you’d end up here—perhaps the most safe place in the entire fiefdom. Everything had lined up perfectly, barring a few bumps in the road. You doubted Wilkin will mess with this place after the spreading of your ‘promiscuous’ behavior.

He was too sly for outright violence if given the option.

“Yes,” you know, and thin your lips. “What about your nose? A-and everything else?”

“Don’t think about it,” the Scot smiles, eyes still glinting with worry. So many hours and you’d barely gotten any sort of break. “I just want you to rest, then, eh?” 

Maybe it was outwardly obvious, but the entire ordeal had left you drained; shaky, and still coming off of panic. What if they had killed Johnny…? 

You’d go back to Wilkin and live as his wife, producing heirs and locked away in his estate for the remainder of your life. What kind of existence was that? No, you knew, you’d never live like that. 

You’d never live like that here. 

With a shaky breath, you watch Johnny’s eyes flash with concern for a moment by your silence, but before he can speak you’re pressing your lips to his in a firm and honest kiss—sinking in every emotion you could. 

The man grunts in surprise, but doesn’t move back; if anything, his grip on your hips increases, sliding up to your waist. 

After a moment of tasting flesh, you pull back and whisper, “Thank you.”

Johnny breathes heavily, a glimmer in his blues, “Well,” he grumbles, “I’d say you did most of the work.” 

You both share a chuckle before you’re lifted again, carried gently over to the bed without sheets. You’re placed atop the bear fur and wrapped in that instead after your cloak is unclipped and folded neatly, set on the floor. Outside, the call of a far-off storm hits your ears and you blink to the window. 

“Stay with me?” You ask before you can stop yourself or can even think. 

The blacksmith’s breath catches, his fingers flinching as they were pulling the fur tighter around your neck. 

It’s a moment before he asks in a quiet tone. 

“You sure you want this, Dearie?” His lips go tight, eyes narrowing in inner conflict. You stare and already know the answer just by how he speaks to you. “I’m no King. I…I can’t give you fine jewelry or fancy clothes. There’ll be no grand suppers beyond the game I catch or what I can afford to buy. Long winters.” 

The air goes quiet with worship, and your eyes go wide with care. His broken nose is crooked, but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. You wonder if that was for your sake or his.

“I’m not someone worthy of your beauty,” he rubs at the back of his head, bending down by the edge of the bed. “Certainly not your smarts. I’m only a blacksmith, Little Lady.”

“Only?” You huff a chuckle. Johnny looks at you in confusion as the black clouds outside roll in, seen through the window of this quaint and lovely home. The hearth is warm, the scent of food still in the air, and the memory of a dash through the forest behind you. 

“If you’re only a blacksmith, Mr. MacTavish,” you’re sent a fake stern look as the back of a hand goes to brush your cheek. You shiver. “Then I’m only a runaway bride.”

“Aye,” Johnny admits with a growing smile of adoration, “but still a bonnie one, at that.” 

“...Stay with me?” You ask again. 

The man breathes out, “Tell me why.”

“The trees do not deny what they need to make them whole, Blacksmith,” you whisper. “Why should I?” 

He’s clambering under the fur, wrecked clothes, and blood on his face but never feeling more whole. Is so little a time enough to fall in love with someone? What deity had tied your souls together so soon with ribbon soaked in rainwater—tinged with blood? 

His lips meet yours as you sigh into him, hands gripping his arms as they circle your waist tightly. Johnny breathes you in and lets his hands span your back, fingertips digging into your clothes. Into his mouth, you whine a plea for him to keep you close and hold you tight. It’s all your need from him. It’s all you want. 

For the wise know best: there is nothing better than a simple life.

TAGS:

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#cod #cod x reader #cod x you #cod mw22 #call of duty #mw2 #mw2 2022 #x female reader #call of duty x you #call of duty x reader #soap call of duty #cod mw2 #cod mwii #mwii #modern warfare 2 #call of duty modern warfare 2 #call of duty modern warfare #mw x reader #modern warfare x you #modern warfare x reader #soap mactavish #soap cod #soap mw2 #john soap mactavish #johnny soap mctavish x reader #johnny soap mactavish #john mactavish #soap mactavish x reader #john mactavish x reader #johnny mactavish

[milswrites]

Failed Dates and Fated Mates

~ Azriel X Fem!Reader

Summary: Azriel had finally asked you on the date he has longed for ever since he met you. Only now the day has arrived, everything seems to be going wrong. Can Azriel still make this a night to remember or will his failed attempts of romance be enough to drive you away?

Warnings: None? (Ok maybe like one mention of snapping necks…and one mention of jumping someone)

The first thing that went wrong was that Azriel was late. Horribly late. In hindsight, planning a date on the same day that Rhysand had asked him to go and check on a rebelling war camp in Illyria was a terrible idea. Azriel had spent the latter part of his day glaring at the sinking sun, willing it to stay glowing in the sky for just a little while longer. Praying to the cauldron that the tedious meeting he had found himself trapped in would soon draw to an end, enabling him to promptly take his leave and fly back to Velaris as swiftly as his wings would allow.

But Azriel wasn’t so fortunate, the dull arguments still ongoing without an end in sight, the traitorous sun now beginning to softly kiss the horizon. The disgruntled shadowsinger sat and listened to the endless disagreements with a clenched jaw, resisting the urge to snap the camp leaders neck in order to put an abrupt end to this fruitless task Rhysand had assigned him.

Foot tapping impatiently against the floor, Azriel restlessly shifted in his uncomfortable seat as the final few words were spoken. The monotonous tone of the male speaking finally came to a blissful halt. Launching from his chair the very moment the meeting was finally over, Azriel flared his wings as he exited the dull tent, shooting up into the now night sky. The sight of the twinkling stars illuminating the swirling black canvas was usually a picture Azriel admired, yet now he found himself swearing at their appearance, their beaming light mocking his tardiness.

The cold bite of the wind numbed his reddened cheeks as he sped through the grey clouds. Cursing himself, Azriel wished he had never taken the mission. Anger building in his chest for being stupid enough to plan a date on the one day this month he was away from his home. Bitter that he had been too cowardly to ask Rhysand to move the meeting once he realized his mistake. So here he was, wings beating forcefully to carry him back to Velaris in as little time as possible, hoping that you would still be waiting for him. Praying that he hadn't spent months working up the courage to ask you on a date only to ruin it by not being there.

~~~~~

His heart never failed to cease its incessant pounding, even as he circled over Velaris in search of a florist where he could buy you some apology flowers in hope they’d make up for his tardiness. He practically threw his money at the startled vendor, snatching the first bouquet he laid his hands on, before once more furiously taking flight, this time in the direction of your home.

He landed roughly, knees buckling with the force at which he had landed. Anxiously stepping over the blooming plants he had crushed during his descent into your garden. Speeding to your door, he raised his shaky hand to knock against the wood. But before he even had the chance to do so, you opened the door as if you had been waiting there for him.

Azriel took the opportunity to admire you as he struggled to catch his breath after the exhaustion that had washed over him during his frantic flight. Allowing himself to take in your beautiful features he had spent the past few months admiring from a distance, noticing the extra effort you had put into your appearance for the date. The light dusting of rosy blush across your rounded cheeks and the deep rouge carefully painted onto your lips. Azriel was captivated, amazed at the skilled way you had highlighted your already perfect features. Trying to resist the hypnotizing urge to lean in and place a testing kiss against your plush lips. Wondering if the rouge would transfer onto his own, marking him as yours.

Chest still heaving, he pulled his arm from behind his back. Revealing the bouquet he had hurriedly bought you as an afterthought. Only, once he pulled them out to hand them to you, he was met with the sight of tangled stems, the violet petals having dropped from the flowers due to the hasty speed at which he had traveled.

Expletives rolled from his tongue at the disastrous direction this evening was already heading in. The date hadn't even begun and everything was already going wrong. But you, sensing his increasing frustration, happily grabbed the mangled stalks from his shaking hands, a teasing grin on your face as you spoke in an attempt to calm the male, “Looks like someone was desperate to see me! Surprisingly not the worst gift someone has given me on a date, I once got a half eaten bar of chocolate.”

“I’m so sorry,” he explained feverishly, beginning to ramble about the horrendous day he had endured, “Rhys sent me to some camp in the middle of buttfuck nowhere and I’ve been in meetings since dawn and I never thought they’d end and I tried to get here on time, I really did and-”

You interrupted his panicked explanation, “It’s ok Azriel, truly. We still have all night ahead of us. Unless you’d prefer to rest after the day you’ve had, in which case I don’t mind if you want to come in for a tea and we can just rearrange it.”

His nerves lessened at your gracious understanding, pounding heart beginning to settle in his chest. “I’d still like that date if I haven't messed up my chances?” he asked hopefully.

Flashing him a pleased smile, you lifted a hand to his hair and plucked out a rogue violet petal from your bouquet, laughing as you said, “you may want to prune yourself before we head off though.”

Azriel raised a scarred hand to his hair, attempting to shake out any of the petals which had found their home in his windswept locks, “better?”

“Almost” you hummed, carefully picking out the last few leaves from his unruly hair. “There,” you said, satisfied at a job well done, “back to your usual handsome self. Although I must admit purple is a good colour on you.” He blushed a deep shade of red at your words, shyly breaking eye contact before he offered a tentative arm for you to take, nervously mumbling as he did so, “shall we?”

~~~~~

The two of you walked contentedly through the cobbled streets of Velaris, Azriel helping to keep you steady as the thin points of your heels kept getting stuck between the uneven stones. He was leading you towards a fancy restaurant he had booked specially for the occasion, remembering how Cassian had raved about the good food and romantic atmosphere after he had taken Nesta there one evening. Swearing that his mate had never shown her appreciation of him more than after she was satisfyingly filled with their delectable food. Azriel hoping that you would enjoy it just as much as Nesta had.

You approached the hostess stand placed outside the heaving restaurant. Walking past a large, winding queue of people who hadn’t booked, eagerly waiting to see if there was a spare table available. Azriel, having walked here a week prior to make the reservation, ignored the line as he went to speak to the staff at the door, “Uh, a booking for Azriel please, party of two.”

The stern-faced hostess checked her books, haughtily flicking through the pages as her brows furrowed, stopping as she finally found the male’s name. “I’m sorry,” she said sharply, no remorse in her voice, “your reservation was for over an hour ago, we gave the table away to someone else.”

Azriel blanched, his face going deathly pale in his flustered panic. You tightened your grip on his arm in hope of easing his worry, opting to speak to the hostess for him before he sank into the shadows in embarrassment, “Is there any chance we could get another table? His work kept him for longer than expected. It was an unforeseen circumstance, we would have sent a message your way if we knew.”

The stone faced woman directed your attention to the long line of people which ran all the way down the street until it curled around the corner, flooding onto the next, “you can join the line like everybody else. Or get this, don’t miss your booking next time.” A miserable Azriel had to hold you back to prevent you from jumping the woman, showing her just what would happen if she continued speaking to you with her sour attitude.

“Fine. Fine!” You huffed, “we’ll find somewhere better. Come on Az.” With that it was your turn to lead the male, dragging him as far away from the restaurant and its insufferably rude staff as you could. The male groaned despairingly at the situation, “Cauldron I’m so sorry. I’ve really made a mess of things.” Brushed his negative words away you scoffed, “I think it’s for the best, wouldn’t want to eat at that snobby place anyway.”

Azriel’s sorrow-filled eyes landed on yours, “maybe we should call it a night? We can try again another day if you’d still want to? this night is a total failure.”

Rolling your eyes at Azriel's pessimistic attitude, you disagreed with the males intentions of ending the night early, “What? Azriel it’s fine! Come on we’ll find somewhere else, there's bound to be hundreds of better restaurants.”

~~~~~

Determined to find a better place than Azriel had booked, which by the look of things wouldn’t be difficult to do, you moved together through the winding streets. Azriel relaxing little by little as you worked to clear his memory of the bad day he’s been having as you talked animatedly with him, hungrily eyeing up every restaurant you passed.

The more and more you walked, locked deeply in an enthralling conversation, the further away you headed from the bustling streets which were full of life. Instead, finding yourselves in the remote backstreets of Velaris, the narrow winding streets home to a different type of breathtaking beauty than the rest of the swarming City.

You passed an empty restaurant, the sign bearing its name hanging on by a single rusted nail. Crooked wooden tables set outside, laden with slightly grubby checkered tablecloths. Anyone would have walked past this, opting to instead go and find a busier, better looking place to eat. But to you, the small restaurant was the perfect place for your date. “This one!” You enthusiastically declared, pulling slightly on Azriel’s hand to stop him from walking past the quaint building.

“Are you sure?” Azriel sounded unsure, having assumed that you would have wanted to be taken to somewhere nicer for your date than a hidden, grubby hole in the wall. “This one’s perfect,” you confirmed with a grin, leaning into the open door to speak to the elderly waiter who was sat in boredom at the counter. Gesturing to the table outside, you stirred him from his daydream, “Are you open? Do you mind if we sit here?”

The man startled to life, disbelief crossing his face that there were actually willing customers before him, ones he didn't have to drag in from the street. “Yes…Yes! Of course! Please, do sit down" he cheered, jumping to his feet before scurrying away to grab some menus.

Azriel helped you take a seat at the wobbly table before moving to sit himself. You closed your eyes in bliss, appreciating the cooling breeze which made the humid night air slightly more bearable. The exited waiter returned with a candle for the table and a cold bottle of wine which he poured into the two glasses for you, “On the house for such a beautiful couple.” The pair of you blushed, thanking the kind man for his generosity, ordering your food from the menu before he scurried off into the kitchen, undoubtedly going to make the food himself.

“I think this is much better than my choice” Azriel mused, eyes now seeing the hidden beauty of the place, smiling at the twinkling fairy lights above you which cast a warm yellow glow over the silent street. It was quiet enough that you could both enjoy a pleasant conversation together, not needing to shout at each other to be heard, nor needing to whisper lowly to avoid annoying any other customers. No, the two of you were free to fall into your own little world, loosing yourselves in a stimulating conversation.

~~~~~

The words flowed easily, never fading into an awkward silence. No, you could talk to Azriel forever and he would be all too happy to listen, so long as it meant getting to spend time with your magnetizing presence. His anxiety now forgotten, he allowed himself to enjoy what had turned out to be a perfect date, the two of you already able to joke about the previous events of the evening.

The food was divine, portions large enough that you could eat your fill until you were satisfied. Stomachs happily full as you continued to sit and drink at the rickety table as you talked for what must have hours.

Testing the waters, Azriel stretched out a tentative hand, hoping to connect it with your own which was resting on the table. Warm eyes never leaving your face as he slowly moved his hand along the top of the table, failing to notice the glass full of wine which was placed before you. Clumsily, he knocked over the glass. His shadows stirred to life, catching the glass before it completely fell over, yet failing to be quick enough to prevent the liquid from spilling all over your lap. The cold temperature of it causing you to squeal in shock.

“Shit!” Azriel cursed as he jumped from his seat, grabbing napkins to come and help pat the wine from your dress, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that! Cauldron I'm such an idiot.”

You placed a gentle hand on his wrist, stilling his panicked wiping which was making the damp stain on your dress worse. “Don’t worry Az,” you smiled sweetly, “it’s just some wine. It will wash out.”

The male sighed deeply, pinching his brow in exasperation, “this night really isn't going the way I wanted it to.”

“Oh yeah?” You asked, smile never faltering for a minute, even when you were faced with the sullen male, “and how did you want it to go?”

Roughly plonking himself back into his seat, Azriel inhaled a deep breath before speaking, “well I would have been on time for starters. Then we would have eaten that nice meal, I definitely wouldn’t have spilled your drink all over you. And I booked us tickets for the theatre…which we have definitely missed by now. I just...I wanted to impress you."

“I’ve never really cared for theatre” you dismissed, “it usually puts me to sleep. And Az we did share a nice meal! You don't need to try and impress me, you already do that every day.” You lay your hand upon his, smoothly completing the move he had attempted to do to you, thumb lovingly caressing the scarred skin of his hand, not put off by the uneven skin that made Azriel feel self-conscious.

You sat in thought, thumb still absentmindedly brushing his skin, “you know what? Come on, this nights not over yet.”

You excitedly pulled the Illyrian to his feet, thanking the generous waiter as you tipped him nicely before taking your leave. This time walking through the streets of Velaris with a destination in mind.

~~~~~

Hand in hand, you and Azriel walked along the Sidra, admiring the way the water glistened underneath the moonlight, Approaching a small empty beach, comprised of small rounded pebbles rather than sand, you removed your shoes so you could walk along it. Holding them in your free hand, the one which wasn't locked in Azriel's warm hold, the two of you made your way onto the beach. Walking towards the Sidra, you released Azriel's hand, allowing your bare feet to be submerged by the chilling waters of the river.

“Do you come here a lot?” Azriel asked, appreciating the way you seemed at home here, feet happily kicking through the flowing water as it soaked through the bottom hem of your dress. You looked like a nymph, wandering the shores of a City that appeared alien compared to the natural beauty of this small hidden piece of paradise.

“Sometimes,” you shrugged, “it’s a good place to think. Nobody ever really comes here.”

“It’s beautiful” he concluded, eyes not straying from your angelic form, the moon perfectly placed behind your head like a halo.

“The perfect way to end an incredible date don’t you think?” You grinned, leaving the water to come and walk by his side, his wing moving to curl around you to protect you from the wind which was steadily getting cooler as the night progressed.

Azriel snorted, shoulder bumping against yours playfully, “I’d say it’s been far from perfect. You deserved a better night I’m sorry.”

“Will you stop saying sorry?” You begged, eyes rolling at how pathetic he was making this pleasant evening seem, “I didn’t say yes to a date because I wanted to go to a fancy restaurant or the theatre. I said yes, Azriel, because I wanted to spend time with you. I never cared about what we were going to do. I still don’t! I just wanted to be with you.”

Azriel suddenly stopped in his tracks, you turned around in order to face where he was stood. The male looked like a god. His large winged form illuminated by the soft, warming light of the City which was now far behind, his tangled mane of hair blowing lightly in the wind, as his well-structured face held a picture of surprise due to your words.

“But isn’t that what you’re supposed to do to get someone to like you?” He asked in confusion, Cassian had always told him how you had to treat a woman like a princess. That if you took her out and spoiled her there was absolutely no way in hell they would be able to resist your charm. But what you were saying, that you didn’t need to be spoiled because you just genuinely wanted to spend time with him, had Azriel questioning everything he thought he knew about women.

“You don’t need to do anything to make me like you Azriel. I already do, I always have. From the very moment I first laid eyes on you" you shrugged, unafraid to reveal your emotions for the male who made it all too easy to love him, "you’ve had my heart for longer than you realize, and one - admittedly slightly failed but not completely terrible date - isn’t going to convince me otherwise.”

"But why" Azriel questioned, still not quite understanding how you were so willing to look past everything that hand gone wrong, all caused by his own wrongdoing.

"Azriel I would sit through a million failed dates with you, it doesn't matter! Not if it means we're doing it together." You sighed as you took in his still bewildered expression. Were you really going to have to spell it out for him?

"Cauldron Azriel, you're my mate!" you revealed, trying not to laugh as the males face contorted from confusion to a catatonic stupor, his eyes widening in alarm at your confession. Grinning at his reaction you continued, "If being your mate means I have to love your tardiness, ruined gifts and incredibly poor taste in restaurants then Azriel I would happily sit through every failed date we have. Nothing is going to change how much I long to be with you."

"Mates?" he replied, a crooked smile forming on his face at the realization. Liking the way it sounded on his lips. "Yes!" you beamed, stepping towards his relaxing body so you could throw your arms around him. "So I didn't blow my chance?" he whispered into your ear as the two of you hugged tightly.

"For my mate? I'd give him all the chances in the world!" you answered truthfully, "Although hopefully on the next date you won't freak out as much if things don't go as planned."

"Honestly?" he shyly spoke, "I think there's going to be even more pressure on the next one now I know we're mates. I'm talking major freak outs." You laughed at his words, making a move before he could say anything else, pulling Azriel closer towards you and sealing your lips against his in a passionate kiss.

Lightning struck, and the heavens opened. Torrents of rain falling from the dark clouds which had suddenly blown in from the mountains. It took less than a minute for the rain to soak through your clothes and a minute more for the male to reluctantly pull away from the kiss with a groan. Raging eyes glaring up at the sky as if his anger could cease the heavy fall of water.

Giggling you pulled his chin down so he would face you once more, the rain flowing down your face aiding in cooling your warm skin, which had heated up from the burning desire that was birthed from the lustful kiss you had exchanged.

"Don't" you whispered through swollen lips, admiring the claiming way your lipstick had smudged against his skin, "It's perfect. You're perfect". The uncomfortable way his sodden clothes were clinging to his skin forgotten, Azriel connected his lips with yours once more. The storm that raged around you not enough to deter him from deepening the kiss, tongue meeting yours as you allowed yourselves to get lost in the moment, hidden away on the desolate beach.

And as your lips sensually worked together as one, Azriel finally came to the same conclusion you had. It wasn't how well a date goes that determines whether or not it's perfect. It's the person who’s with you. The kind of person who can find the humor and beauty of a moment whether it’s good or bad. Azriel had found that person, his other half. His mate. And perhaps, he mused to himself as the searing kiss continued, perhaps tonight wasn’t a complete and total failure. Something good did come from it after all.

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

Notes: My first time writing on my laptop and boy what a difference it makes lol. The half eaten bar of chocolate given as a gift on a date unfortunately actually happened 🙃

#acotar #fanfic #acotar imagine #sarah j maas #a court of thorns and roses #azriel x reader #azriel imagine #azriel oneshot #azriel shadowsinger #azriel acotar #azriel

[wandasaura]

TOO IN LOVE TO THINK STRAIGHT

summary — when you mention to your dominants that you want to further explore the dynamics of your relationship, they’re all for it

warning(s) — established relationship, married wandanat, dom/sub dynamics, exploration of non-sexual bdsm, purposefully triggered subspace, implied mommy kink (never said), implied daddy kink (also never said), brief mention of sensory overstimulation, literal fluff to the fullest extent possible, men/minors dni

authors note — i committed to the lyric titles too hard, but wonderland perfectly describes this fic! daddy nat lovers, i see you

you are in love universe

♥️⊹ ˚ . 18+, men/minors dni ⁺ 𓈒 ꒰💌꒱ ♡ ･ mommy maximoff ✧

“Are you excited?” The soft vibrations have become a fond sensation as you peer out of the car window and admire all of the buildings that you pass. You’re not in the best area, one of the worst actually, but you find something so calming about the construction crowded roads and graffiti covered storefronts. You’ve been stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for the last half hour, a plethora of detours and u-turns standing in your way of where you really wanted to be, but every time Natasha eases her foot back onto the gas and shoots between lines of cars that don’t have the balls to make the move themself, you hum in contentment. You’re okay with being stuck if you’re stuck with them. 

They’d been promising you this day for months, and although it had been canceled two weeks ago when you came down with an unexpected cold that left you miserable and bed-ridden for three days, it was finally here. There was no time left for another extenuating circumstance to push the date back farther. You hadn’t stopped bouncing in the backseat since Wanda had affectionately buckled your seatbelt, your fingerprints are smeared against the backseat window from how you point out the exit signs that mean your destination is growing closer. Natasha had long since stopped asking you to refrain from touching the glass she kept spotless, looking back at you through the rear-view mirror with fondness whenever a lull in speed occurred. Now was one of those moments. The line of cars all waiting to merge back onto the Garden State Parkway kept the car still, the break was applied heavily and wasn’t going to be let off soon. Unlike the other times she had looked back at you, she craned her entire body now, and you grinned at the easy way about her expression. 

Your fingers left behind the glass of the backseat driver side window to press firmly against the tip of her nose, wanting to see it scrunch up in annoyance like it always did when you poked it. Natasha was less compliant with your need for physical touch then Wanda was, but she allowed you small victories every once in a while. Today was one of those days where everything seemed to fly. You had eagerly pulled her around the house all morning, sat in her lap at breakfast, and all but forced her to help you dress when you decided picking the perfect outfit was too hard to do on your own. The women had immaculate taste in fashion, you supposed it was something that needed to come with their high-profile occupations, but you’d never complain about them making your old clothes look fresh and new without adding anything tasteless or unnecessary.  You hadn’t wanted to be apart from her since your eyes had peeled open at seven, the excitement in your belly too strong to ignore despite Wanda telling you that you wouldn’t be leaving the house until eleven. You were so beyond grateful that Natasha had been serious about taking you out when her and Wanda’s schedules allowed, that it didn’t matter to you if your earlier than usual wake up time meant having a full four hours to merely sit around and wait. 

You nodded your head at her simply asked question, bearing a smile that compiled a list of words you’d be happy enough to use in a sentence if she so desired. She didn’t though, you knew she was well aware of how excited you were and was merely pulling your leg because she herself was bored. There was no way she could be oblivious to your hyperactive movements when your feet kicked the back of her seat every handful of minutes, but she’d not asked you to stop only rolled her eyes in fond exasperation and murmured to Wanda about the copious amounts of fingerprints and scuff marks she’d have to tend to later. Natasha and traffic were not things that should exist in the same sentence. For as patient as the woman was, she quickly lost her composure when ‘assholes in black hondas don’t know what the fucking speed limit is’. The first time she’d bellowed in annoyance you’d shook your head and giggled into your hand, your eyes connecting with Wanda’s who had glanced back at you in a silent threat to not egg Natasha on further. You’d tried to keep your amused reactions to yourself after that, but it was hard not to laugh at Natasha’s annoyance for anyone going under eighty miles an hour; especially considering the speed limit was only sixty-five. 

The drive wasn’t meant to be any longer than an hour and a half, Wanda had meticulously gone over each and every available route before she’d loaded you and Natasha up in the car, but construction hadn’t been something to consider while she was planning your departure. It seemed every major highway and backroad was under construction lately, even the roads that led down to the shore in Westview. You didn’t mind it, occasionally pointing out the names of the yellow vehicles as you passed them, but you worried how little time you’d have to explore as the second hour of driving came and passed. When your legs grew restless, you settled for sitting cross-legged in the backseat, your elbows pressing firmly against your knees as you craned your neck to see between the head-rests on the couples seats. The sky was open and blue, no trace of clouds but apparent wind. The trees on either side of the road rustled with the flow of the breeze, and if you stayed just quiet enough, you could hear it howling outside of the windows. The sight of wind was a ploy to get unsuspecting people out of their houses. The weather was hot and humid, temperatures climbing into the low hundreds, but your destination was indoors, so thoughts about how you’d melt beneath the sun didn’t have valid reasons to come. 

Wanda’s eyes locked on yours when Natasha eased onto the gas again, pulling off the exit ramp like a bat out of hell and dodging oncoming traffic that honk and scolded her boldness. You giggled when a particular car just to your left raised their hand at her, a single finger pointed toward the sky. She was unaffected, returning the gesture with passion. Your smile fell off your lips when your gaze shuffled over to meet Wanda’s, and the Sokovian looked at you with displeasure. “Feet on the floor.” Wanda reprimanded when she knew she had your attention, and you sighed but complied with the request. “We'll be there soon. Why don’t you tell me about what you're most excited to see?” 

That had inspired a full tangent of thoughts that were only half complete to spill from your lips like rushing water off a cliff, but neither Wanda or Natasha had tried to interrupt you and get the full version of your story. They were happy enough to listen to you ramble nonsensically, your fingers twisting together in your lap out of pure elation that you had no other way to express. Wanda was simply content with knowing that should Natasha crash, you were sitting properly in the backseat. It wasn’t another half hour before Natasha was grabbing a ticket from the machine at the entryway of the parking garage and pulling into a reserved spot on the very first level by the exit. You’d known they would go all out for today, they always did, but it never failed to make you feel incredibly special to be getting such attentive treatment from two of the most willing and powerful women in the world. You flew out of the car before Natasha even had the engine off, feet not even hitting the pavement beneath you entirely before you raced around the back of the Stingray so you could pull Wanda’s door open for her. You bounced excitedly on your toes throughout the entire exchange, grinning up at her with an expression of complete innocence. The Sokovian smiled down at your adoringly, capturing your face in her gentle hands and pulling you just close enough for your forehead to fall against her lips. 

“Such an excited little duckling.” Wanda mused with gentle laughter, her breath warm and thin as it fanned across your temple and shot sparks of pleasurable admiration through your belly and across your spine. You would’ve stayed permanently fixed on her tender expression had you not heard Natasha’s door swing closed. Your eyes trailed over the top of the car until they met the sight of her, dressed casually in a white t-shirt and jean shorts, her red locks had been pulled up and away from her face in a fleetingly worn ponytail that swung behind her head with every subtle move her body made. You could drool over the sight of her, but there were other priorities at the forefront of your mind. 

“Can we go now? Please?” You bounced eagerly beneath their transfixed stare, your hands grabbing eagerly at Wanda’s who still had a soft grip on your cheeks. You knew the rules of walking in busy parking lots well, and although they’d made you feel like an incapable child at one point, you adored and craved them now. The lawyers reminded you so often that just because you are a capable adult, doesn’t mean you have to act like one when they’re there to take care of you. You let them take control easily now, no willingness to fight left to linger in your instincts, even in something as simple as finding your way through busy parking lots. 

A smirk splayed across Natasha’s lips as she approached you and Wanda, her hand shoving her phone and wallet into one of the back pockets of her denim shorts. You should be ashamed for finding the simple action so attractive, but you didn't. You'd stopped letting yourself feel embarrassment for merely noticing their beauty long ago, and greedily your eyes trailed over the muscles in her shoulder and bicep that flexed as she reached toward her back. Natasha chuckled knowingly, sending a wink in your direction before she purposefully flexed her biceps. You wanted to roll your eyes and tell her to knock it off, but Wanda had beaten you to the punch and sent her wife an exasperated hit to the gut. “I don’t know, malyshka. Can we?” Natasha answered your earlier question, letting her feet carry her impossibly close to Wanda’s side. You wanted to groan aloud when the Russian’s hand slid comfortably into the back pocket of the Sokovian’s denim shorts, but you were too excited to dwell on the fact that Wanda’s ass had definitely just been squeezed roughly and possessively. 

“Yes.” You made the executive decision with a curt nod of impatience, already setting your pace toward the exit, dragging Wanda behind you with rushed steps. It was the exact opposite of what she intended to happen when she’d first implemented the rule of wanting you to hold either her or Natasha’s hands in busy spaces. You were now the one leading her around by the hand, and quite blindly if she wanted to put it nicely. You’d hardly noticed when you led her body straight into a traffic cone, her feet just barely able to avoid tripping over the bright orange safety measure. Natasha had to stifle her laughter as she followed, her hand still in Wanda’s pocket and effectively pulling the Sokovian in two different directions as she remained a couple of steps behind. 

Wanda placed a firm hand overtop of your wrist, catching your attention as you looked back at her with a whine of impatience toward the back of your throat, ready to be unleashed if she didn’t make whatever she needed quick enough for your standards. You were almost there, almost to the long line of parents and children that wrapped themselves around the building in an unruly line. You could see the electric blue sign on the top of the structure perfectly, the artwork on the sides of the building visible but intercepted by bobbing heads and tall bodies. Her abrupt stopping when you were so close to where you desperately wanted to be was the cruelest thing that had ever happened to you. “Why don’t you leave the dragging around to me, lyubov’. Unless you want me to end up in the infirmary before you even get to see the sharks.” 

You groaned at her teasing, a fierce blush crawling up your neck that couldn’t be blamed by the unforgiving heat. You didn’t let her words sink beneath your skin however, deciding that pulling at her hand was effective enough. “Will you hurry up then?” You groaned, smirking victoriously when Natasha laughed at your antics and placed a kiss on the top of your head. 

“Yes, milaya. We can go.” Wanda rolled her eyes but agreed with your demand, already beginning to set your pace at a significantly slower speed before the rest of her sentence even lingered in the air for your ears to pick up on. You practically skipped beside her, a broad smile on your face as you once again droned on and on about everything you couldn’t wait to see and have. Natasha had promised you a stuffed animal from the gift shop, knowing that you’d never had many in childhood. You’d decided that today would be one of the first times you explored your dynamic outside of the house, and the Slavic women were sparing no experience in giving you the purest taste at reclaiming your lost childhood. It felt too good to be true, to just surrender your conscious mind and let them take control, but you found yourself submitting to them easily. They wanted to do this for you, they enjoyed playing up their roles in this aspect. It was still hard to grasp that something that could be so kinky in bed could also be so pure outside of it, but they were allowing you to learn at your own speed, and selfishly they loved how inexperienced you were. There was no former training to unwind from your beliefs, there was no burned skin around your heart that had been failed by somebody else. You were fully theirs to shape, and they intended to show you the purest sides of this dynamic. 

You frowned when Wanda began to lead you toward the front of the building, getting farther and farther away from the long line of people waiting their turn to enter. Toddlers pointed at you and tugged on their parents arms, not so quietly wondering why they couldn’t follow you and go around the line. A blush settled onto your cheeks when a little girl, no older than six, tugged at who you assumed was her fathers hands and boldly declared that you were ‘cutting’. Natasha and Wanda were in their own little world it seemed, laughing and talking with one another in quick Russian that you couldn’t comprehend, not batting a blind eye to the whispered accusations that were being pointed at you. 

“The lines back there.” You whispered albeit a little self-consciously, not wanting to draw attention to yourselves anymore than the redheads adoring your waist already had. The sight of you together dripped with wealth. The diamond studded Chopard watch on Wanda’s wrist dazzled in the sunlight, the yellow gold Tiffany hoops in Natasha’s first piercing swayed when the breeze caught them. You looked properly out of place amongst the parents and young children all waiting in line. 

Wanda stopped walking at your timid statement, looking down at you with a look that could only be described as dominating. It wasn’t hard, wasn’t demanding, but rather apologetic and soft. You felt entirely small beneath her sage green stare. “What did you want to try today?” Wanda reminded you softly, her body language not portraying the suggestiveness behind her quiet words. To any of the parents standing feet away, it looked like she had simply paused to ask you a well-intended question, which you supposed was true, but it wasn’t as innocent as it appeared.  

You deflated slightly, leaning into the touch Natasha had placed on the small of your back minutes ago. You were becoming fuzzy, a feeling you’d associated with rough sex, but there hadn’t been any of that today. The closest thing to having their bodies had come when Natasha pulled you into a bruising kiss before you left the house. “Letting you have control.” 

Wanda hummed, content with your answer, knowing that once again she had full control. Her fingers that always seemed to be perfectly polished ghosted over your cheek, and you could assume she’d attempted to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear like she always did, but today your hair had been tied back into two french braids that Natasha had suggested. “So let Mommy worry about where the line is. That’s not something for little girls like you to be concerned about.” 

You nodded softly, unable to help the rush of something sweet that further propelled the dizziness in your mind forward at the Sokovian’s dismissal. Although you didn’t resume your skipping like you had been doing when Wanda guided you across the street, your footsteps came lightly and with a bounce as you became lost in the simple action of counting the many cracks that adorned the sidewalk as you stepped over them. At some point, your hand had grabbed Natasha’s, and you swung your arms back and forth absentmindedly. The day was hot, unforgivingly so, and the natural flush across your cheeks was becoming annoying. You were ready to start vocalizing your discomfort when Wanda guided you inside of the aquarium, saving her the headache of listening to you whine about something she couldn’t control. 

You gawked at the sight of light blue painted walls and elaborate glass tanks that held any color coral you could imagine. The front desk was a giant fish tank, and little orange and white clownfish swam around the enclosure blissfully. You were practically vibrating beside Natasha as you looked around at the little details that had been incorporated into the entrance of the building. The ceilings were high, and painted across them were sharks and whales and every kind of fish you could even imagine. There was no embarrassment when you pulled at Natasha’s hand and let your own little finger shoot up to the ceiling, excitedly pointing out a boesemani rainbow fish that swam beside a hammerhead. Wanda had gone to check you in for your reservation, or at least you assumed that was what she was doing as she stood closely to the front desk and nodded at the teenager behind the counter. His eyes briefly flashed over to you when he noticed your head craned toward the ceiling and overheard your loud exclamation, but Wanda must’ve said something that made his attention snap back to her just as quickly as it had left. 

“Inside voices, dorogaya.” Natasha smiled sweetly at your excitement, having no real issue with the volume that you had spoken at before, but she knew it would bother you if you caught onto the lingering stares of judgemental adults who couldn’t possibly understand that not everything was meant solely for children. You had just as much of a right to enjoy these little things as the toddlers who ran free, but she couldn’t change everyone's opinion even with her deadly glare. 

Your cheeks flushed pink, and not because of the blistering sun, but you nodded to her request and tried not to let it sting. You’d been told all your life that you were too loud, reprimanded by your mother until you’d just fallen silent. You knew she hadn’t meant it in any particular way, but some things still struck a chord in your heart. The crushing feeling hadn’t lasted long, too comfortable in Natasha’s presence to dwell in self-consciousness. Your eyes went back to trailing all of the open space that you could see, and when they landed on a particular tank beside the single hallway that led into the larger room that veered off in several separate directions, you attempted to jut off. A whine rippled through your chest when your hand was squeezed and Natasha didn’t follow you forward, cemented in the place where you’d been instructed to wait for Wanda. 

“Seahorses!” You tugged at her hand, earning you a disproving expression complete with a single raised eyebrow. You sulked back toward her, giving the tank one last sad glance before you focused down on your shoes, a frown on your lips.

“What are we meant to be doing, hm?” Natasha didn’t allow you to keep your gaze transfixed on your shoes, one of her slender and ring adorned fingers guiding your chin upward until your eyes flickered to hers. Her heart clenched at the sad frown that clung to your features that had been so happy not even seconds ago, but she didn’t let your pout sway her decision. After all, Wanda had given you a clear direction, and she expected that you follow it. “Can you tell me what we’re meant to be doing?” 

You sighed, glancing back over at Wanda who looked to be wrapping up whatever conversation she’d been having with the teenager behind the counter.  “Waiting for Wands.” The words slipped past your lips softly, your eyes trailing back over to Natasha’s. “But there’s seahorses.” 

“And the seahorses will still be there when Wands is done. We’re gonna have our listening ears on today, aren’t we?” Natasha was really laying it on thick, even she knew that, but it was hard to help herself when you looked so soft and pliant standing in front of her dressed in an outfit that she picked out. You nodded your head, shuffling into her embrace, sadness still tainting your features. 

Natasha kisses the top of your head, wrapping her arms around your torso as she lets you have your feelings against her chest. She knows they’ve been guiding you into a stage of subspace all day, it had been perfectly intentional, but how you handle it is still a wildcard. Much to your misconception, subspace wasn’t always brought on by getting railed, as you liked to refer to it as. Any form of submission could send you down that rabbit hole, including following instructions; which you’d been doing all day. Subspace wasn’t about the weight of the scene or how badly your body ached afterward, it was just about trust and the right amount of guidance. They’d been doing something right, and Natasha could recognize the glassy sheen over your eyes as you peaked up at her and then over toward Wanda who was finally, finally, walking back toward you. 

The Sokovian had three brightly colored bands in her hands, her lips curled into a bright grin that crinkled her eyes. She stopped just in front of Natasha, effectively blocking you from view as she felt the eyes of the teenager behind the counter try to burn into your form. “What’s with the frown?” 

“Seahorses.” You pouted up at her, much to Natasha’s amusement. The Russian’s hand ran over your back soothingly, though she couldn’t fight her bright smile when you again tried to wiggle out of her arms and rush over to the cylinder tank now that Wanda was back in sight. 

“She wasn’t very pleased that you asked us to wait for you.” Natasha filled in the gaps, your explanation rather vague and rushed; if you could even call the one word response you gave much of an explanation at all. “Why don’t you tell Wands what kind of fish you found on the ceiling?” Natasha nudged you, prompting your attention onto something other than seahorses. You beamed at the excuse to ramble again, your finger pointing up to the ceiling like it did the first time, and even if Wanda couldn’t follow your finger to the specific fish she was meant to be looking at, she smiled encouragingly. 

“It’s a boesemani rainbow fish! They get brighter when they get older!” You laughed, your pouty face no longer a visual that filled the entrance of the aquarium. Wanda had not the slightest care in the world for the fish you were pointing to, but she praised your knowledge either way. She’d pretend to care about anything if it meant seeing that bright smile linger on your lips even after the words stopped coming. “Can we see the seahorses now?” 

Already anticipating how the rest of the afternoon was going to play out, Wanda laughed at your eagerness but nodded her head. You were just out of Natasha’s grip when she captured you in hers. This time, you did whine, sad eyes stuck on the tank in the corner of the room. Neither redhead could blame you for your distress when you’d been intercepted on your way to the seahorses twice now, and so neither scolded you for the sharp sound that reached their ears. “What are the rules if you’re not holding mine or Natty’s hand?” Wanda quizzed softly, her voice taking on a tone that had made you weak in the knees too many times. It was a voice Natasha called her ‘Mommy Voice’, which usually led to the Russian getting slapped upside the head when Wanda overheard. 

“Stay where you can see me.” You bounced on your toes, still pulling at Wanda’s hand and glancing between her and the seahorses with a desperate plea in your wide and glassy eyes. “Please!” 

She nodded at you with encouragement, smiling fondly when you raced over to the tank, carefully not to place your hands on the glass though it was already smudged with little fingerprints and what could only be assumed to be saliva. You marveled at the seahorses that bobbed in the water, illuminated by an electric blue strip of lights that made the gradient of colors on their bodies pop. You would’ve stayed staring at the seahorses all afternoon had Natasha not been the one to softly guide you away after five minutes of soft oohing and awwing. There were so many more tanks and creatures to see, she didn’t want you wasting any more of your time on just one tiny tank. You’d been upset about her gentle hands guiding you away until you’d turned a corner and spotted a tank of hippos in the distance. Your eager hand had pulled her through the crowd with Wanda following hot on your heels. 

You showed the same level of excitement at every tank and exhibit, which neither lawyer thought was possible. There was no lull in your squeals and shrieks, and both of their wrists hurt by the time they sat you down for a late lunch. You’d abided by their every rule, including the ones that seemed stupid to you, what was so wrong about falling into the penguin exhibit, it was an easy enough climb back over the thin glass barrier? They’d expected lunch to go smoothly, you’d been so well behaved that they’d even considered buying you ice cream first, but unfortunately for them, the small cafe in the heart of the aquarium was directly beside the shark exhibit. 

“Milaya, we will see the sharks after we eat.” Wanda cooed sweetly for the umpteenth time, trying not to let her face crack as she contemplated just giving into your pleas. Their firm voices and whispered praise had guided you into what Natasha referred to as the ‘sweet spot’. You weren’t so blissfully fuzzy that you couldn’t comprehend their words, but you were beyond the point of making a rational decision, and listening seemed to fall into that category as you struggled against Wanda, eyes fixed on the large sign that comically had a massive bite mark in the side. It was the little things that lingered throughout the building that made it more immersive, like the stickers on the floor in the shape of penguin footprints that lead to their enclosure, and the bite mark in the sign that led to the sharks. Your eyes searched to find every little detail that anyone else would overlook. 

“I want to see them now.” Your crestfallen face was enough to weaken the reserve both redheads had been putting forth since your little meltdown had started. They hated to think that had you not been so high on endorphins and adrenaline, you never would’ve expressed how much you enjoyed all the little things that the aquarium had to offer, but they were still working to earn this level of trust from you when peptides weren’t at an all time high. With your head firmly planted in subspace, there wasn’t a single insecure feeling prickling beneath your skin. You were utterly free, control sitting in their hands and they had to force themselves to remember that. 

“Not now, detka.” Natasha stepped in, guiding you toward the only empty table in the cafe. Your lips were turned downward in a persistent frown, but by some miracle, you’d actually sat down on the chair and let Wanda name out the options on the menu. It was no surprise to either of them that you pointed toward the chicken tender basket, but it was good enough for them to fulfill your request immediately. 

Wanda left to order the food while Natasha kept you occupied at the table, ensuring that you didn’t start to fall out of the state they’d been working you into all day. She offered praise when you answered her little questions about the fun facts you’d been reading on all of the displays, and she tutted disapprovingly when your fingers ripped apart a napkin that some other family had left on the table. When Wanda came back with a tray of three chicken tender baskets because it felt wrong to eat any of the seafood that was offered, you were firmly engaged in a conversation about the stingrays that had been yet to be spotted. You’d explored more than half of the aquarium, finding out that the pink band around your wrist was a pass to all of the activities that lingered around. You’d fed the penguins, given the seals high-fives, and watched a 4D movie that made absolutely no sense, but had dispensed bubbles and sprays of water that were fun enough. All that was left to do was walk the roped path overtop of the shark exhibit, but that didn’t sound like something you wanted to put your faith in, even if hundreds of people did it every day. You, nor Wanda, would be walking across a shark infested tank, though Natasha had plans to do it herself. She’d always been the more daring of the couple. 

When your lunch was finished, or when your lunch was picked over enough for Wanda and Natasha to set you free again, you wasted no time in grabbing both of their hands and zipping through the families that stood in your way. You’d been too distracted with the bamboo sharks to hear Wanda mutter to Natasha about how your crowd direction was just as bad as her driving, but you’d turned around in time to watch Natasha roll her eyes and whack Wanda’s bicep. 

In your fuzzy headspace, their rules engraved in your mind, one of them being to show respect to others, you frowned and settled both hands onto your hips. “You broke rule number six!” You stated rather angrily, stalking up to Wanda with long strides that didn’t match the innocence in your eyes. You kissed her arm softly, the place where Natasha had hit her engraved in your mind. 

“Yeah Natty, you broke rule six.” Wanda’s amusement wasn’t so easily hidden in her tone as her lips curled into a smile and she pulled you into her chest, settling a kiss onto the top of your head as you both sent glares toward Natasha. Yours was littered with a protectiveness that almost outshone the glassy gleam that had settled, Wanda’s however, was riddled with enjoyment and humor. “What should she do, detka?” Wanda giggled, leaning down to whisper in your ear though it was loud enough for Natasha to hear, and the redhead was just barely keeping the smile off her face as she watched you and Wanda conspire against her. 

“She’s gotta say sorry!” They’d noticed that in your fuzzy state, you’d shied away from the bigger words that slipped into your vocabulary normally. You weren’t yet at a point where communicating your needs was impossible, but you weren’t actively fighting to clear your head and search for words like apologize and blasphemy either. Natasha would never forgive Yelena for throwing that word around so often you’d started to pick up on it.  

“Well?” Wanda jutted out her hip, placed a perfectly manicured hand just above where her bone rested. You mimicked her stance, though you were significantly less threatening than Wanda with your french braids messy from the humidity that drafted in from windows, and your baby blue colored corset shirt that was adorned with intricate lace patterns and ribbons that tied the back together. 

“Ona razob'yetsya v mashine.” Natasha hummed, and although you knew enough Russian to know that wasn’t an apology she had uttered to Wanda, no, it was a very true statement that you’d crash in the car on the way home, the Sokovian had accepted it and laughed. 

Despite your excitement to see the sharks, you didn’t hang around the exhibit for long. There were too many people and you seemed to become overstimulated more easily when you were flush full of endorphins, so Wanda had been the one to lead you away toward tanks of lobsters and jellyfish. She started walking down the hallway, leaving you with Natasha, wanting to find a sign that could lead the three of you toward the stingrays because she knew you wouldn’t enjoy the aquarium for much longer. It had been hours, and in your sensitive headspace, the bright lights and sounds were quickly becoming too much to handle. You’d been so brave, trying this out with them and trusting them fully, but Wanda wasn’t about to compromise your happiness for a few more hours of mindless walking from room to room when you’d already seen everything that interested you. All she cared about was making sure you had a good time, even if she thought aquariums were savagely overpriced now. 

Wanda frowned when Natasha found her way over to her without you. Her eyes flickered around the long hallway, searching for your blue top that stood out brightly against the sea of other colors that adults and children wore. It was such a specific shade that even if seventeen other people all crowded around to watch jellyfish bob had blue on, you stuck out like a sore thumb. “Where’s Y/N?” Wanda questioned and Natasha frowned. 

“I thought she was with you.” The Russian quickly realized that no matter how many times she spun around in circles, you weren’t anywhere in sight. She distinctly remembered you telling her that you wanted to go with Wanda, so she hadn’t questioned when you walked off and toward the direction that the Sokovian had gone in. Natasha was properly panicked when thirty seconds went by and she still couldn’t spot you, but Wanda at least had the thought to check the next hallway before she let herself spiral too. 

The stingray exhibit turned out to be in the next room over, crowded by kids and parents who talked about the sea creatures with excitement in their quiet tones. The occasional toddler bellowed in disgust when they realized how slick the back of a stingray was, but for the most part, the room only vibrated because of the sheer number of voices that occupied it, not because of volume. You were hunched over the edge, elbows deep into the shallow water when Wanda and Natasha spotted you. Each let out a sigh of relief, but nothing was going to stop them from marching over to you and pulling you away from the water. 

“What were the rules, milaya?” Wanda asked you, her voice not as soft as it had been all day, but not hard either. They’d never been out of the house while you were lingering in subspace, and though they never wanted to lose you, it hadn’t been something that never crossed their mind. You wandered away even when your head was clear, your lack of impulse control only heightened that need to trail off.  

“Stingrays!” You beamed at Wanda, not taking into account the thin line that settled over her eyebrows as she peered down at you. Your excitement was cute, a telling indication that you really hadn’t meant to wander away and give them the scare of their life, but it wouldn’t get you out of the scolding Wanda had ready on the tip of her tongue. 

“Not stingrays, utenok. What were the rules?” Natasha laid heavy emphasis on the last word of her question, and though your eyes were more glassy then she’d seen them all day, she could see the wheels turning as you tried to process her words. 

“Oh.” You mumbled when you finally came to the conclusion, your shoulders deflating as your head dipped down and set your gaze on your shoes. “Sorry.” 

Wanda, who had been prepared to dig into you, sighed softly and dropped the topic. She may be a stickler for the rules but she knew it would only cause further damage if she laid into you about listening. Your disappearing hadn’t been intentional, and even she could see the tears threatening to spill over as you brewed in your own feelings of disappointment. 

“I want you holding my hand, dorogaya.” She instructed firmly, “No more walking by yourself. We don’t wanna lose such a sweet little duckling, huh?” Wanda lifted your chin, smiling reassuringly down at you. Her rings caught the light, glimmering like a million little stars that cried to be released from the gold adorning her fingers. It was over after that, you’d fallen too deep into the sea of bliss to want anything other than her. You shuffled close, all thoughts of stingrays forgotten as you breathed in her scent. Sensing your loss of interest, Wanda shared a silent conversation with Natasha who nodded. 

“Why don’t we go check out the gift shop?” Natasha claimed one of your hands, engangling you from Wanda before you could sink any deeper. They needed you coherent enough to get back into the car, and then you were free to settle deeply beneath the blanket of comfort they’d slowly been laying over top of you all day. Natasha held back on delivering any further praise, knowing it wouldn’t help you coming closer to the light. 

She guided you through hallways and crowded rooms, occasionally squeezing your hand when you winced at crying babies and strong fishy odors. She herself was over the aquarium, but she’d been holding out for you. She was glad she didn’t have to fake her enthusiasm anymore, though Wanda was certainly getting a kick out of all the exasperated eyerolls the Russian hid from you. 

The gift shop was practically empty when you shuffled inside, clinging to Natasha who didn’t mind the contact. She led you through rows of toys and puzzles, some not having any connection to the aquarium while others quite boldly sported the name in a thick black font. You found interest in none of it, which she couldn’t blame you for. Everything looked tacky and far too cheap to be as expensive as the prices on the shelves said, but still she guided you around encouraging you to pick something out. She’d promised you a stuffed animal, but when you finally reached the back wall where all the cuddly toys were lined up in rows, neither of you liked any. They were all filled with stuffing that was too stiff to cuddle, and you retracted your hand quickly when you reached out to touch one. Whatever had been used as fuzz was scratchy and coarse, and you hated it with a passion. Eventually, when Wanda came up to you holding a soft gray crewneck with an embroidered whale shark and the name of the aquarium on the front, you agreed to let it be purchased for you, and although it was still in the highest temperatures that New Jersey had seen all summer, you wore it out of the aquarium with a smile. 

When you reached the car, there was no keeping you afloat any longer. Natasha had uttered the first bit of praise in minutes, and you surrendered fully to the warmth in your mind. Wanda smiled, usually the one who you attached to when you fell over the edge, but Natasha had been your chosen pick today. 

“Just get in the back with her, Talia.” Wanda rolled her eyes after three minutes of Natasha trying to detach you from her arm, each attempt ending with whines and stomped feet as you tightened your grip. 

Natasha sighed, able to count the number of times she’d let Wanda drive her car on one hand, but she wasn’t getting away from you right now, and she didn’t really want to anyway. “If you so much as leave one fingerprint on my radio you won’t be getting laid for a week, Maximoff.” 

Wanda rolled her eyes, snatching the keys from Natasha’s outstretched hand and opening the driver's side door more aggressively than needed. If anyone was going to be leaving fingerprints it was Natasha, who could never decide which type of music she wanted to listen to. Seeing that you had gotten your way, you smiled up at Natasha with a grin that was only right to describe as cheeky. The Russian rolled her eyes and settled you into the backseat, shushing your protests when she strapped the seatbelt over your chest and made sure your feet were planted firmly on the floor. 

She pulled you into her side when her own seatbelt was clicked into place, gently releasing your hair from the tight braids that had been twisted together all day. At the first pass of her fingers across your sensitive scalp, you all but melted into her chest and let your eyes flutter closed. It wouldn’t take six minutes before you were asleep against her chest, clutching desperately to the white t-shirt covering her torso. With the absence of your questions and excited statements, the car settled with silence, filled with only the sound of the engine revving when Wanda stepped on the gas. 

“Did you have a good day, moya lyubov’?” Natasha asked, extending an arm to run over fingers over Wanda’s shoulder. She couldn’t see the Sokovian’s face, but she knew there was a satisfied smile settling over her lips. 

“I did.” She breathed out softly, flicking the right blinker on when she merged onto the parkway, thankful that all the construction seemed to have been paused for the day and the road, though filled with typical traffic, was clear of any major dead stops. “Did you ever think we’d be here?” Although Wanda hadn’t been specific, Natasha knew she was referring to you. You were practically the sun in their own two planet universe, everything they did revolved around you now, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. Things got boring when it was merely her and Wanda in a universe void of endless light and warmth. 

“I hoped.” Natasha kissed your temple softly, glad that she hadn’t stirred you awake. 

When Wanda pulled into the driveway, you were still sound asleep and the sky was dark with nightfall. It was early to call it a night, but the couple did so without complaint. You settled into Natasha’s chest with only the aquarium crewneck on your body, and Wanda had shuffled into the space in bed where your body typically rested, laying her head down on Natasha’s shoulder and placed a heavy hand on the small of your back. 

“Goodnight my little utenok.” She whispered into the thick stretch of silence before sleep overcame her too, and although the night carried on outside of your small bubble of peace, none of you had any idea.

#wanda maximoff x natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #dom!natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff fluff #natasha romanoff comfort #daddy natasha #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #dom!wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff fluff #wanda maximoff comfort #mommy wanda #wandanat #wandanat x reader #dom!wandanat x reader #wandanat fluff #wandanat comfort #series: you are in love #minors dni ৎ୭

[cheolism]

✧ UNDER THE SKIN

✧ werewolf!choi seungcheol x reader ✧ synopsis: walking through the autumn forest you know you're not alone. there's a predator after you. but can you really be considered his prey if you're more than willing to be caught? ✧ wc is approx. 4.6k ✧ tags: supernatural au, smut, slight horror? prey-and-predator roleplay except your boyfriend is literally a werewolf. ✧ warnings: minors do not interact. feelings of being watched/stalked, being watched/stalked; prey-and-predator dynamics, mentions of being eaten; power dynamics, strength kink, overstimulation. one mention of breeding. consent !! sex without a condom, sex in the forest; multiple rounds n multiple positions. mean!seungcheol, possessive!cheol. pet names (baby, princess, babygirl) ✧ part of the svthub fall-ing for you collab!! make sure to check out the other works!!!!

the silence of the forest tries to convince you that you are completely alone. 

it was as if the entire wood was holding its breath. no breeze filtered through the leaves; no birds flew overhead. it was just you and the trees. 

it was completely still and you appeared to be alone. 

but you know you’re not. 

you wrap your flannel tighter around your body, the autumn air biting gently at your flesh. it wasn’t so cold that you found it intolerable, wasn’t so cold that you were searching for warmth. instead you sought comfort from your flannel, as if the fabric could shield you from whatever lurked in the forest. 

because you weren’t alone. 

you know that. you know that just as you know night would be falling in a few hours, just as you know that the full silver moon would soon begin creeping into the sky. 

you weren’t ignorant enough presume you would be lucky enough to escape the notice of whatever lurked in the depths of the forest. 

so you walk through the forest, looking up at the trees. their foliage was far prettier than the dull brown of the shrubbery. the trees boasted their beautiful colors, shades of vivid crimson and deep gold; there was an amber leaf on the ground larger than your hand, and you wishes that you had your phone so you could take a picture. 

instead you contine to walk. 

deeper and deeper you walk into the forest. it’s quiet except for your movements. even when you pass a brook, its cold waters rushing over smoothed stones, its song seems muted. 

maybe it was because you are all too aware that you were being watched. 

you can’t see your stalker. but you could feel them. you could feel the weight of their eyes on your body, could feel how the hairs at the back of your neck were rising. 

turning around only meant that you would be walking directly into their path. and so you continue onwards, deeper and deeper. 

you wish your boyfriend was here. 

seungcheol isn’t extraordinarily brave; he isn’t necessarily a hero. he didn’t push you in front of him when the two of you dared to go into haunted houses during halloween but he still rushed through them, his hand clamped tightly around yours as he tried to find an exit. 

he isn’t a physical fighter either. but there is something about seungcheol’s presence that humbled those around him. from his broad stature to his thick brows, seungcheols’a aura just said that he wasn’t someone to mess with. 

but you know him beneath that exterior. his cute pouts, his boyish laughter and charm. his devotion to you. that was who you wanted at your side right now, walking through the forest with that feeling of being watched never leaving. 

it would be nice to even hold his hand, you think. to feel his warm. even if you just linked your pinkie through his you would be all right. 

you pause beneath a maple tree. it is large, its leaves a gradient that shift from bright yellow to a fiery orange. 

a bird sings overhead. and you listen. it stops quickly, and you watch as it breaks from the treeline to fly away, abandoning you to whomever watched you walk through the forest. 

seungcheol wouldn’t abandon you. he would keep watch over you while you rested, would grab your hand and reassure you before leading you back through the forest. 

you continue on your way. 

eventually you come across a river. it is wide enough to where you don’t dare to swim and you know better than to think that you could wade across. fallen tree leaves float along, and you wish for a fleeting moment that you could be a leaf and just float away. 

but you weren’t a leaf. 

you follow the river alongside its muddy edge, walking quickly so your shoes won’t sink too far. there’s a bridge ahead, it’s black metal vivid against the beautiful and serene autumn scene. 

there is a gravel path that leads to the bridge. as soon as you step onto it, rocks shifting beneath your feet, you hear something. 

you can’t be sure of what it is. you couldn’t really make anything out, the noise quiet and muffled. but you know there’s something out there. 

you go still. 

you hear a bush rustling behind you, hidden, and that’s all you need to continue onward. you go onto the bridge, reaching for the cold railing. you slide your fingers along its surface as you walk, its frigidness biting at your fingers. 

you are halfway when you feel it. your entire body freezes, heart hammering so loudly in your chest that it almost sounds like thunder. you can’t move. you imagine this was what your ancestors felt like when they came upon a saber-tooth tiger or some other sort of apex predator. you imagine them frozen with horror; paralyzed with it. 

“look at me baby.”

as if his words were a commandment given by a god, you are powerless to do anything but obey. you turn on the bridge. 

and he’s standing there. 

he is stocky with broad shoulders and hips. his hair is a mop of black waves. you can’t make out his features, but you knew him and knew there was a smirk playing on his dark cherry lips, knew that his lips were twinkling underneath his thick brows. 

“you’ve walked awfully far, princess,” he says. he steps onto the bridge entirely. you watch him the way prey watches their hunters; fearful and observant. “don’t you think it’s time to stop? time to give in?”

for another horrifying moment you can’t speak. pure horror freezes your entire being. you were right, you had been followed, had been stalked through the forest. you wish you had been wrong. 

you knew him, knew the danger that lurked underneath his skin. 

your thigh twitched from being held so tightly for so long. you became alive again. 

you make a step back. he takes several more towards you, walking casually, uncaring of your fear. you can only move a little compared to his broad, relaxed steps. 

he continues to talk as he moves towards you. “i thought you would’ve given up by now, baby. would’ve turned back to the car before now.”

“you --” your voice breaks. “you’re -- you leave me alone.”

“aw,” he says, now close enough that you can see his grin. “it’s cute that you think you’ve got any authority here, princess.”

it’s horrible the way that his words electrify you. they send shocks of fear and something you refuse to name through your system; make your entire being alive with something other than fear. 

he looks up to the sky. you can’t help but follow his gaze. the sun was sinking, the light blue of the sky making way for sweet pinks and soft oranges. 

“the full moon is tonight.” he puts his hands into his coat pockets, looking back at you and still grinning. the two of you are still too far apart for you to make the fine details of him, such as his eyelashes but you swear you can see his canines; see hos abnormally long they were and how they glinted in the light. 

“the sun’s going down.” he keeps his gaze on you as he continues across the bridge, his footfalls striking fear further into your heart. “looks like we’ve missed supper, princess. but don’t worry. i think i see something temping in front of me . . . “

“and i just can’t wait to eat you up.”

his words seem to get you back into motion. you turn on him and begun to run to the other side of the bridge, footsteps loud, every fiber in your being screaming at you to get away. 

get away, get away, get away from him, get away from that wolf. 

you can hear him running after you. you need to go quick, need to go faster. 

“come on princess!” he shouts. you try to pick up speed. you need to go and go and go, needed to find your way back to your car. need to get in and lock the door and go far far away. 

the wolf was going to get you. and he was going to devour you. 

“stop running babe!” you leave the gravel path behind, breaking into the treeline and into the forest. “I’m gonna get you! running will just prolong it!”

the trees blend, and your breath becomes harsher. your heart hammers in your chest. 

you can’t keep running. you can’t hide either, not with his superior sense of smell due to his nature. 

you conclude that you will have to try and fight when you feel something grab you. you’re yanked back and you can feel arms wrap around you before the combined momentum of his body hitting yours makes you strike the ground. 

you don’t land on the ground but on him. for a moment you are breathless, hands clenching at his flannel as you fight for breath. he’s not out of breath at all, and his thick eyebrows are high on his face as he watches you. 

“told you i’d catch you,” he says, smug. his eyes flicker over your face, drinking you in. “now you’re mine, princess.”

you push back against him, trying to tear yourself out of his arm, thick arms. he lets you go for a moment, letting you think that you can get away. then his arms are wrapping back around you, pushing. 

he traps you against the ground. you can hear leaves crinkling underneath your body as you lash out against the man, trying to push his body away. but he’s sturdy, his thick thighs framing yours and his hands pressing against your shoulders and keeping you down. 

“come on, baby,” he says, thick lips pushed into a pout. “stop fighting me. i’ve got you.”

you nearly have your breath when he begins to lower his face to yours. you can’t help but look at him, take in his striking features. the set of his eyes, the sweet brown of them. his smirk and how his lips are slightly cracked. 

his breath ghosts over your face as he takes you in. his lips hover over your cheeks; your temple. his body is warm and heavy on you, to the point where you can no longer feel the bitter autumn air. 

he moves his hand to your face. he presses his palm against your cheek, thumb rubbing over your bottom lip. he has you in the literal palm of his hand and you were helpless. all thoughts of fighting has left your system and you can’t help but bask in his presence now that he’s here. 

“see?” he is smirking. his thumb tugs at your mouth. his canines look awfully sharp. “all the fight’s left you, baby. you’re in my arms, where you belong.”

that sends the fight back into you. you wrinkle your face, hands releasing their grip on his flannel to push at him again. “fuck you!”

he laughs. “come on, princess. just a taste, babygirl. just a bite.”

he shifts on you, weight going to your thighs. he moves his face back to yours, lips skimming over the curve of your cheek and the line of your jaw. 

“just a bite,” he echoes. as soon as you feel his teeth against your skin you freeze, hand going back to his coat and twisting. 

it’s horrible, you think. horrible that you’re so eager for him. 

you tilt your head back, baring your neck. 

you can feel his smile against your throat. he bites at your neck weakly, without any real intent. you can’t help but whine. 

“see princess? you’re so eager for me, so willing.” his words send a flood of warmth through your body and you can feel it as they settle in your cunt, could feel the way your juices begin to wet your panties.

you whine something that sounds like a name. he exhales against your skin, one of his hands moving against your body. he moves his hand up underneath your shirt. you can’t help but jolt as your body is exposed to the chilled autumn air. 

“don’t worry, baby,” he soothes. he presses his nose against your throat, breathing you in. his hands settles against your stomach, thumb swiping at your skin. “i’ll take good care of you, princess.”

it’s horrible, you think. your boyfriend is such a sweet man. he buys you more clothes and jewelry than you know what to do with, spoiling you relentlessly. he treats you as if you’re a princess. he loves you with every fiber of his being, loves your fiercely and treasures you more than any diamond. 

and here he is, body settled over yours. he stalked you through the forest, used his werewolf senses to track you down and make you feel like you were being hunted. he has you trapped beneath him, has you wishing so desperately he would just devour you. 

he was your kind, sweet boyfriend.

and here he is reminding you that underneath his skin he’s a predator. 

and you are his prey. 

seungcheol's hand moves further up your shirt as his mouth diligently works against your neck. he nibbles at your skin, alternating between biting gently and sucking. he's teasing you, you know; teasing you and making you nothing but putty beneath him.

"get off," you mumble, words quiet and body moving against him, trying to feel more and more of him. "leave me alone."

you can feel seungcheol grin against your skin. his fingers skim along the underside of your breast and through your bra, but you can feel the scrape of his nail against you. your mind focuses on the tingling sensation, and when he shifts on you again, his knee coming up and pressing against your cunt, you can't help but get truly desperate.

immediately you're flattening your cunt against his knee, rubbing against it through the layers of fabric.

he laughs at you. "see? i've barely even done anything to you and you're so desperate for me, princess. you could cum from just this, can't you?"

you shake your head in denial. seungcheol moves his hand over your breast, tracing your nipple through your bra. his begins sucking at your skin in favor, grinding his knee up against your cunt.

"cheol," you sob out, fingers grabbing at him. "need more."

"so much for pretending," he laughs. he pulls his face from your neck. "chasing you really got you all bothered, didn't it?"

"don't make fun of me!" you can't help but whine at him.

seungcheol chuckles again. he's grinning at you, eyes sparkling with affection. "what do you want to do? keep playing?"

you sniffle. "please."

his smile hardens into something more cunning. he takes out his hand from underneath your shirt, letting the cold air hit your stomach again. "hm? what's that, baby? want me to be the big bad wolf? want me to be mean and rough?"

you want it. horribly, you want it. the thought of your boyfriend, your big strong werewolf boyfriend, loosing himself.

"come on babygirl. use your words."

"please," you beg.

seungcheol laughs again. "fuck, princess. such a fucking slut, aren't you? so fucking desperate. you don't care what's going on as long as i'm fucking you."

"just want you," you agree. and you did. you wanted seungcheol so fucking much. wanted him, his strong hands pressing you against the forest floor, his fat cock fucking into your cunt. you wanted him in a way you never wanted anything else, a way completely foreign to except for when you were with choi seungcheol.

"cute." seungcheol moves off of you just enough so he could begin working at your pants. he pops the button of your jeans quickly, pulling your jeans off just as fast. you can't even despair at the cold air before he's moving his body back over yours.

"can't believe you ran from me." he pushes his knee back up to your cunt. now that your jeans were out of the way you could feel him better, could feel the scratch of his jeans against your cunt and through your panties better.

and it feels so fucking good. grinding your cunt down on his knee, using him. it sends sparks to your gut and cunt, and your hips move on their own, searching.

"ran from me and here you are, fucking yourself on my knee." seungcheol lowers his face back to yours, lips skimming over your cheek. he doesn't kiss you. normally his lips are constantly against yours, devouring your mouth. but he keeps his mouth away from yours, and it does something to your mind to know that your boyfriend, the man who would give you the world, won't give you this one thing.

"my hands are cold, baby," he says. seungcheol moves his hand back along your chest, letting his fingers skim over you. "guess i'll just have to use you to get warmed up."

you shake your head, trying to remember the plot. "nnn -- no -- pervert --"

but then you grab his hand and push it down. seungcheol slips his hand into your panties, finding your cunt and molding his hand against it naturally.

"fuck, princess," he sighs, lashes fluttering. "cunt's so fucking warm. gonna feel so good milking my cock."

your cunt tightens at his words, wishing it was his cock. he grins, mouth to your neck. he mouths at your neck, kissing sloppily while his hand slowly moves at your pussy.

he works his hand against you, fingers slow. he draws his fingers against your cunt and clit over and over and over, playing your pussy through your panties languidly; as if you were in the comfort of your bed and not on the forest floor, bodies surrounded by fallen autumn leaves.

seungcheol works you to orgasm slowly. satisfaction escapes you -- you want more. you want him fucking you, want him rough against you.

but seungcheol refuses. he bites and licks at your neck, marking you. he maneuvers his fingers so his thumb is pressing flat against your clit through the fabric of your underwear. he focuses on your clit, dragging his thumb over it.

and you hate it.

his hand at your cunt has you whining, hips bucking up and begging for more. your panties are soaked through, warm from the heat of your pussy. you can't feel him the way you want to, can't feel all of him the way you so desperately need.

"need," you rasp out. one of your hands moves to the forest ground beside you, grabbing. leaves crinkle in your grasp. "more, please. more, need more, cheol."

seungcheol removes his hand from your cunt. you whine high at the back of your throat. you wanted more, didn't want him to take his hand away completely.

"such a little slut for me," he laughs. he moves back, sitting. seungcheol grabs your panties in both hands and pulls. your underwear is ripped, and he tosses them aside. "all i had to do was get you beneath me, huh? just had to show some dominance and you're nothing but an eager little slut."

"not," you protest. his hands smooth over your thighs and then he's pushing them apart. "not a slut."

"no?" he moves his hand along your skin, fingernails dragging and sending sparks through you. "then what would you call it, princess? running from me only to give up as soon as i get my hands on you?"

"you're mean."

seungcheol raises a thick brow. he doesn't disagree. his hand finds your cunt naturally. two of his thick fingers hook into your pussy just as quickly, familiar with your body.

"i'm mean?" he slowly feeds his fingers into you, sliding them until you've taken their entire length. you can't help but let your eyes roll back, mouth parting in a wordless moan. his fingers were always so thick, stretching out your cunt and making it burn in the most delightful way.

"i'm mean and yet here i am, fucking your little cunt with my fingers on the forest floor."

"you're not," you argue, voice tight. "you're just sitting there. not moving them, just fucking using my -- my --"

he grins. "your what, princess?"

you refuse to say it, twisting your fingers against the leaves on either side of you. the autumn air bites at your skin but you can't care, can't care when seungcheol's body is framing you and his thick fingers are up your pussy.

"say it." with one hand in your cunt he uses the other to push back his hair, showing off how he has one eyebrow cocked. "gotta use your words, baby. or i'll just leave you here. make you walk all the way to your car with no panties, cunt wanting more."

you whine. "i -- cheol."

he hums, shifting. the movement has his fingers sliding, just slightly, in your pussy. it's just enough to remind you of how desperate you are.

"please," you beg, "please cheol. i want -- i want you to fuck me, want you to fuck -- fuck my pussy."

seungcheol laughs, and then he's pulling his fingers from your pussy. you don't have a chance to miss his fingers before he's shoving them back in. he isn't gentle, and he's fucking your cunt with his fingers the way he would use his cock.

the pain of being opened isn't pain so much as it is that pleasure-pain that you crave. the sort that you seek out after a long day. it's the sort that has you moaning and letting your legs fall all the way open, allowing seungcheol to move closer.

you could cum like this.

but then seungcheol moves his hand from your pussy entirely. you groan, hips still moving up in hopes of him sinking his hand back into your pussy. you want, you want and want and want and here he was, depriving you, turning you into this wanton creature.

seungcheol then works at his jeans and all the protests vanish. you watch hungrily as he discards his jeans and underwear.

his dick makes you drool as soon as you see it. thick and long and pretty. he wraps his hand around it, rubbing at the head. you can't help but watch, greedy, as a white pearl of cum begins to bead at its tip.

"want it?" he asks despite knowing you do. "should make you beg, shouldn't i? make you beg for my cock."

you open your mouth to do just that but then he's on you. seungcheol's large hands are on your body, moving you, manipulating you. he flips you onto your front, moving you to rest on your knees. you can feel him press his cock against your ass, and, like a slut, you push back against him, hoping he'd fuck into you.

seungcheol does. he fucks into your cunt, shoving his dick into your pussy and mounting you like an animal. as if you were both animals. he allows your pussy to adjust for just a moment, just long enough for you to grab at the ground and bury your face against the cold dirt.

and then seungcheol's fucking you. he rams his cock into your pussy, relentless. the angle due to the position has you drooling, has you biting your lips and moaning.

"take it," he commands, hands grabbing at your hips. he holds you still, making you take his cock. "running from me like you're not mine, like you're not mine to fuck. like your cunt isn't mine, princess, like you're warm little pussy isn't mine to fuck and breed and your body isn't mine."

and seungcheol fucks you like you're his. fucks you like you're his and nobody else's, like he owns you, owns you just to fuck you.

you could nearly cum like that.

but he doesn't let you.

because choi seungcheol looks like a cute, doting boyfriend. but underneath underneath that he's a mean, greedy wolf that wants.

seungcheol draws out of you, the slide of his dick making your toes curl. he manipulates you again, arms wrapping around your waist and lifting. he uses his strength to bring snap his dick into your pussy over and over, relentless in his search.

"fucking princess," he growls. and then his fingers are back to your cunt, sliding against your wet pussy and finding your clit. he matches his pace with how he rubs at your clit, and soon enough he's bringing an orgasm that comes crashing through your body.

he doesn't stop there of course. seungcheol continues fucking you. he rams into your pussy, shoving his fat dick into your warm pussy.

"mine," he says, voice low in the back of his throat. seungcheol ducks his head, pushing you back to the ground and covering your body with his. you can see his canines, long and white, glinting; can see the ring of golden that had begun to grow around his pupils.

"yours," you agree.

you quickly become oversensitive. each thrust in and out has you whining, has you wiggling in his grasp. seungcheol doesn't care. you don't protest and so he continues, fucking into you.

you orgasm again. seungcheol grins, teeth sharp. "that's it," he says. "milk my cock, pretty girl."

he's moving you again. you're light underneath his hands, his strength allowing him to move you however. he's moving you back onto your front, one arm looping around your middle to keep your ass pressed against him and his cock sheathed deep in your pussy.

but it's not satisfying. not to him.

and so he moves again. he pushes you, his hand between the blades of your back and keeping you still. each slap of his hips against you leaves a sting, but it's so delicious you can't, and don't want to, do anything other than take it.

in this new position he seems to find what he was searching for. seungcheol growls, something that sounds more animal than human. he rams into you, cock striking your core with each thrust, harsh and strong and rough.

you know you're making loud, obnoxious whines. but you can't stop. not when he's fucking you like he wants to breed you, when he's fucking you like this.

"fuckin' running from me," he hisses, "running like you're not mine. i've got you, princess. fucking got you."

when seungcheol cums he's filling you to the brim. he's painting the inside of you white with his spunk, marking you. when he pulls out he's still hard, and he takes himself in hand. seungcheol fucks into his fist as he looks at you, eyes roaming over your body as you lay against the forest floor.

when he spills again it's on your bare ass, marking you on the outside. you don't think he'll ever stop cumming. eventually, however, he does.

seungcheol drapes himself over you, ignoring the mess. he pants into your ear, arms wrapping around your body and holding you.

you don't know how long the two of you lay on the ground. the front of your body, the part pressed against the dirt, is cold. everywhere seungcheol touches is warm, and when he finally goes to pull away you whine, not wanting to loose his touch.

in the end seungcheol carries you back to the car. he holds you like you weigh nothing. you can see the gold begin to eclipse the brown of his eyes, and when he speaks its in a rasp.

he tucks you into the car, pulling the blankets around your body. seungcheol presses kisses to your face, lingering, not wanting to leave.

when he finally does move from you he's at the edge of transformation. he can barely speak, sweat beginning to dot his hairline.

but seungcheol darts forward for one more kiss despite this, clingy and wanting. because despite the werewolf exterior, despite the fact that he is, by all appearances he is a monster, seungcheol, under his skin, yours.

#svthub #svthub.collab #— jupiter writes #svt smut #seventeen smut #s.coups smut #scoups smut #svt fic #seventeen fic #kpop smut #kpop fic #choi seungcheol smut #choi seungcheol fic #svt #seventeen #scoups #s.coups #choi seungcheol

[ghost-with-a-teacup]

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐈𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 (𝐈𝐈𝐈)

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x F!Reader

Summary: Let's go back to the beginning, when you meet Miguel for the very first time.

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of loss.

A/N: Hello!! I'm sorry for the unexpected hiatus, but I'm back with the much requested first meeting for the couple in 'What's In Between' (read it here! and read part 2 here!) Enjoy :3

Alright people, let’s do this one last time.

You were bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last 2 years, you were your world’s one and only Spider-Woman.

Your job took you around the entire world, not limited only to your hometown (even if that one time you went to Paris was by hanging on for dear life on a hijacked plane), and while it was difficult, saving people was the reason why you did what you did.

It’s what led you to this predicament now.

“Oh c’mon Vulture! You gotta stop doing this, we’re practically best buds by now, aren’t we? So why don’t you just relax, let me take you to prison and we can call it a day, yeah?” you say as you swing from wall to wall.

“Get out of my WAY!” he shouts, flying around as he evades your attacks.

“Don’t be like that,” you snicker, leaping out of the path of a bomb he threw at you. “Alright, hear me out. If you stop destroying the place, quit the whole villain gig, and I’ll get out of your hair. Deal?”

He completely ignores you, continuing to fly higher and higher until he hovers around the highest point of the ceiling.

“Not much of an exit you can take there, bud!” you shout up at him before glancing around at something you could use to take him down. But before you know it, he’s nosediving straight down.

Straight into you.

Desperately you try to shoot out your webs to escape, but he extends his wings, expanding the area of impact and leaving you with nowhere to run.

He smacks you out of the air, and you’re hurling toward the ground as the wind is knocked from your lungs at the collision.

Right before you can hit the concrete floor, fluorescent red webbing emerges from a bizarre sort of glitching portal effectively saving you from the fall.

But then you’re flung back into the air with a yelp as the man uses your form to propel himself out and toward Vulture.

“WHAT THE FUCK DUDE!” you shout as you fly before slinging yourself to the nearby wall.

“I just saved you,” he says bluntly before promptly ignoring you again. You shoot him an incredulous look before rolling your eyes. Yes, you were grateful but this guy already seemed like a major asshole.

Shooting out your webs, you swing up to meet your ‘saviour’.

“So who are you, mystery man?” you ask.

“Do we really need to do this right now?” he glances at you before slinging further away, trying to grab ahold of Vulture.

“It’s just common courtesy!” you shout up at him.

“That’s classified.”

“YOU’RE classified!” you say back, and he only blinks at you for a moment. You knew it was childish, but this guy was very quickly getting on your nerves. Let’s be honest here, its not every day that some random man comes flying out of some portal straight into a fight.

Especially someone who was just like you.

You didn’t think it was possible that there even could be anyone else like you. While heroes were common in your world, no one had powers like yours. Telekinesis? Check. Super-speed? Double check. The list goes on, but someone with web-slinging, spider-like powers? As far as you knew, you were the only one.

Until now.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say,” he says, his webs wrapping around Vulture’s wings. Quickly you wrap your own webs around him, effectively hindering his movement and any means of escape.

“Surprised you hear anyone say anything, your social skills are atrocious,” you retort.

“My social skills are just fine, thank you,” he shoots back before sirens can be heard rounding up around the building.

“Alright, that’s my cue to escape. Bye, weird stranger!” you say, and with a single swing you disappear into the city.

“WAIT!” he calls out, but you were already gone.

~

You sat up on a rooftop, the lights of your city at night creating your favourite view. While you had to admit it had its issues, it was still beautiful. It was home. Your mask sat on the ground by your side, a tiny glimpse of your true self behind the hero persona.

“You’re impossible to find, you know,” a voice interrupts, footsteps barely audible behind you. But you had heard him coming from a mile away, or felt him was a better term to use, with you Spidey-sense and all.

“Usually the whole point of disappearing is because you don’t want to be found,” you say with a shrug, turning around to look at him. “What do you want, stranger? I have a city to take care of.”

While he would have never admitted it then, you truly looked beautiful with the glow of the city lighting up your form. Stranger or not, he thought you were beautiful from the start.

“My name is Miguel O’Hara, and as I assume you’ve figured already, I’m not from this world.” He introduces.

“I had a feeling you weren’t from around here. Considering the fact that you were trying to find me, it’d be safe to assume you already know who I am?” you ask.

“I do. I’m aware of all those with unique spider abilities in each universe,” he responds.

“So what are you doing here, Miguel O'Hara? Or better yet, what do you want from me,” you ask, standing up to meet him at his level (though he stood much taller than you, but it was worth an effort).

“I wanted to recruit you to Spider Society,” he says. “To become a protector of the multiverse, and the canon events that follow everyone destined to live the lives that we do.”

You can’t help the snort that escapes, and you look him up and down.

“If you knew about me, you would know that I don’t work with others,” you say, your eyes darkening for a moment. “It’s too much of a liability.”

You used to have a partner in crime, in the early days of your life as Spider-Woman. He was your best friend and…well, you know the rest. You never worked with anyone again, at least not extensively. You told yourself it was so that no one else could get hurt because of you. But selfishly, it was because you couldn’t bear the hurt of losing someone dear to you again.

Miguel’s mask disappears from his face, and you’re met with an expression of understanding.

“I probably know better than anyone the pain of loss that comes with this job. But what if I told you it was for a reason? That the loss we go through? That it wasn’t for nothing, it wasn’t just a ‘fuck you’ from the universe to make us suffer. It’s so that we could become who we are,” he says, and you can’t help but hesitate for a moment.

“I would tell you that it’s bullshit. I’m not one for the whole ‘fate’ sort of thing. Life is what you make of it, you have the power to change the course of your life, it’s not just some sort of higher power dictating every event of your life. I am who I am because I chose this life, and not because I was fated to be here.”

He sighs as he looks at you for a moment.

“I knew this would be harder than I thought,” he says, and you only shrug.

“Let me show you something. Lyla?” he says, and a hologram pops up.

“Yes?” she asks.

“Do the thing,” he says, and she sends him a confused look. “What thing?”

“The multiverse explainy thing, what? How many times have we done this?” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, and you can’t help the small laugh that sneaks out. Lyla sends you a wink in turn.

“Look dude, I’m just an AI, you gotta tell me what I need to be doing, I don’t have mind-reading capabilities yet,” she says, but quickly the city disappears from view, replaced with a complex interconnected web.

“This is the multiverse, are you aware of it?” Miguel asks.

“The theory that beyond the scope of our view are unobservable parallel universes that exist simultaneously, right?”

“Correct. Well, that theory is proven to be true as I’m from an alternate universe. Specifically, the one that holds Earth-928 where I exist as Spiderman 2099. You are from Earth-1550 where you exist as your world’s Spider-Woman,” he explains.

“How do I know I can trust you and your word?” you ask, and he deadpans. “You and I both know that you sensed I was not from this universe the moment I walked through that portal,” he says, and you only grin.

“Never hurts to ask, right?” you say, and he scoffs.

“Anyway, to continue. Each one of these nodes is a separate universe,” he points them out as he walks through the web. “And these,” he says, gesturing to the larger portions that each node connects to at some point, “are canon events. The parallel events that happen to every single Spider individual in every single universe.”

You look around at these so-called ‘canon events’, and every one takes you back to the moment you lived through them yourself.

The bite. The exploration of your newfound abilities.

…the loss of your best friend.

“They’re sometimes good, they’re sometimes bad, and sometimes they’re terrible. But each event is part of every spider’s life, and it makes us who we are whether we like it or not. I’ve observed and studied this for years, and the theory remains true in every new world I look at.”

“Okay…so my point is disproven, duly noted. But this whole ‘protector of the multiverse’ gig, what’s up with that?” you ask, still not understanding why he wanted you.

“The thing with canon events is that they must proceed, for the sake of a universe. The whole idea of ‘changing your fate’ through a series of actions was always going to happen whether you realize it or not. But with the emergence of more complex technology comes the capacity to multiverse jump, like in my case here,” he explains, and you take a moment to process his words.

“Alright, continue,” you say.

“These individuals are not part of that universe, and are in turn a new variable in the universe’s series of events that are supposed to occur. Disruption of these events can and will cause that universe to fall apart because they were never supposed to be there in the first place. My job is to ensure that no canon events are disrupted, in turn protecting that world, and the multiverse.”

“Okay wait, wait. I don’t get it, you’re saying that interference can cause a universe to just up and disappear? Just like that? I find it hard to believe,” you say, your suspicion growing.

“What do you not understand? Each minute decision made has a rippling effect. Disregard enough of what’s supposed to happen in one world and it destroys itself from the inside out,” he says, his frustration quickly growing evident (man, this guy has a temper!)

“I just don’t understand how one decision someone makes could destroy an entire universe, and you’re not really giving me much to go off of besides your word. I’m not one to blindly follow someone because they tell me to.”

“You want proof? Alright, I’ll show you proof,” he says, and all at once, the web disappears and is replaced by rippling holograms, transforming it into a whole new world.

A world that was falling apart at the seams.

All around you people are screaming as the buildings vanish without a trace, leaving not even dust behind. And one by one they too disappear.

Then, you see a familiar face. Miguel is running, and in his arms is a little girl no older than 9 clinging to him like he was her lifeline.

All she can utter is ‘Daddy’ before she too disappears, leaving Miguel behind with a devastated look on his face.

You can’t help but take a step back, a hand covering your mouth at something that looked like it only happened in movies.

Before you know it, there’s nothing left of the world. From behind his hologrammed form Miguel emerges, looking around at what was left behind of his former world.

Nothing.

“The reason I know it will happen…is because I was the cause of the destruction of a world myself. I found a universe where I had the life I always wanted. The canon event that happened was that the Miguel in that world was supposed to die, leaving Gabriella alone. But instead, I made the decision to replace him, living the life that I was never supposed to have.”

“For a while…I was happy. But little by little the world was collapsing at the seams because I was never supposed to be there. I disrupted the course of events, and it caused everything to fall apart while I could do nothing but watch,” he says, his eyes distant.

“Do you understand now, why what I do is so important?” he asks, his hardened voice now soft as he tries to conceal the hurt.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” you whisper, and that’s all you can say because you don’t know what else you could say.

He glances back up at you, his red eyes glassy for a moment but he blinks it away before you notice.

“So, will you join?” he asks, holding out a single watch expectantly.

“Okay,” you say, finally relenting.

Maybe this was the start of something new.

Taglist: @beiroviski, @scaraza, @blueoorchid, @remuslupinwifee, @phobia032, @local-mr-frog, @johfaam0, @rawegggohan, @honeycriess, @alexenoirex, @chimpkinnuggies, @rqdior, @banana—belle, @notasadgirlipromise, @6billionyearsold, @gods-perfectidiot, @ieatmunson, @honeii-puff, @wh0re4zaynmalik, @toplinehyunjin @theprettyarachnid

A/N: Real talk, I wasn't sure I was even going to post this today because I went dirtbiking for the first time yesterday and fell about a million times, and my legs are bruised to the hells because I don't know how to jump out of the way hgfjkghfdgjhkd. But here we are! Thank you for reading (and I'm sorry its not my usual fluff for this story, but this is how I imagined they met lolol)

#miguel o’hara x reader #miguel ohara x reader #miguel o'hara #miguel o hara #miguel x reader #spiderman #spiderman 2099 #spiderman across the spiderverse #across the spider verse spoilers #across the spiderverse #spiderverse spoilers #spiderman 2099 x reader #atsv #spiderman atsv #atsv miguel #miguel spiderman