#also on ao3

[danibee33]

The Queen’s Guard- Chapter 3: Closer

knight!simon riley x queen!reader - featuring our favorite Scot in this chapter👀

word count: 3.2k

[<<< chapter 2]

Smile. Nod. Greet. Don’t forget to give your husband a loving look from time to time- look at him like he were the sun, the great star you revolve around. Repeat.

The King’s departure feast is tasteful, though ostentatious to be sure- just how he likes. Especially when they are held in his grace’s honor. Oh, if you could roll your eyes right now without being seen, you would.

All this for such an arrogant bastard.. truly a waste.

But you can’t deny the beauty that surrounds you, no matter the reason. The Great Hall had been thoroughly lavished in emerald silks, dripping with jewels and flowers of your choosing-

It was one of the few duties you didn’t mind giving your input and opinions on, working with the different tradesmen of the kingdom; you found you rather enjoyed partaking in the planning portion, enjoyed the creative freedom given to you behind the scenes-

But.. attending them, well, that’s a different matter entirely. They were nothing but an exhaustive performance, a true test of your goodwill and patience-

“You look positively captivating tonight, wife.” The King drawls in your ear, his hand creeping up your thigh under the table. And it’s so difficult to fight the urge to jerk away from his touch when all you can think about is the last time that hand was on you, your lip had been bruised and swollen for days afterward-

Smiling down at your plate of untouched food, you give him a sweet and temperate laugh,

“You flatter me, Your Grace.”

The hand squeezes too tightly, not painfully, but certainly not gentle or loving- it’s a possessive touch, one that worries you, makes your shoulders tense and your movements turn robotic as you place your fingers over his,

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you battle-ready, My King.. it suits you.”

You exchange pleasant smiles, his eyes on you far longer than you’re used to. It does not soothe you though, or make your cheeks flush warm. No, they’re too invasive, and the feel of them on your exposed skin makes your stomach sour-

A quiet sound trickles into your ears from behind your seat, it’s one that you had learned is deliberate, purposeful- a simple series of taps, always the same, random to everyone but you. Simon’s way of communicating- I’m here. I see you.

You tilt your head toward the insignificant little noise, only just able to see the inky outline of his shoulder in your peripherals, but it’s enough. Enough to ease your nerves and calm your relentless mind.

Knowing that he’s right there, always keeping you within arms reach- but something is different now. You can feel it. And you can’t quite grasp how, or even the exact moment the already anomalous lines in your relationship had somehow become even more blurred, but they had.

And this fading of the proverbial line in the sand, the crumbling of all your boundaries, should most certainly not make you feel the way it does- should not make your core turn molten, or your head swim in a dizzying way by just the sound of his voice, his presence-

He hasn’t even touched you again since that night, after the King left your chambers, which must have been more than a month ago, you think-

Because it was a fluke, it was the man sworn to protect you simply aiding you- he saw you bleeding and was the only one around to help.

But, he also didn’t retreat.

No, you noticed the very next morning how Simon stood just a step or two closer than he did before, following behind you like your omnipresent shadow, the sinister black armor becoming well known in the castle.

Unsurprisingly, he had garnered quite a reputation within court by merely existing at your side, speculation about his history running rampant- and you only recently heard from your lady-in-waiting that many commoners, and noble folk alike, had taken to referring to your new guard as “The Ghost”-

And oh, how fitting of a name- because you feel truly haunted by the enigmatic man; haunted by those eyes, haunted by the softness of his touch, haunted by the yearning and desire to feel it again- No. No..

Wherever you go, your dark omen follows- and for more reasons you can’t explain or justify, you find equal parts pleasure and power in his presence. Because where Lords and Noblemen once might have dismissed you entirely; or the opposite, let their eyes linger or their tongues turn crude- they now avert their gaze, they regard you intently and with due respect; and their Queen’s guard, with fear-

Tap-tap .. Tap-tap-tap

A smirk tugs at your lips, and you hope he sees it- of course, he does, and if you were able to look back at him, you would see his own smile settle at the corners of his eyes as he watches you relax slightly.

After a moment longer, you force your attention back to the festivities, eyes widening as you hear a booming voice,

“Your Grace!”

The distantly familiar accent dredges through your memories until you’re finally able to recognize his face in the crowd- seeing none other than Lord John MacTavish, your Johnny, looking back at you.

It had been years since you last saw your closest cousin-

Well, cousin is a loose term, isn’t it? We aren’t technically related by blood- but, we had grown up together as family, and neither of us had ever seen or known each other as anything else..

Yet, despite time and distance, he looks exactly the same. Blue eyes bright and full of life, and his smile infectious as it stretches ear to ear. His dark hair is longer than you remember- but now cut extremely close to his scalp on the sides, turning the messy chocolate waves on top into an overgrown sort of mohawk-

Oh, Sweet Johnny.. never one to conform to any sort of standard-

“Lord MacTavish, it’s been too long.” You say, watching him sweep into a dramatic bow, his antics forcing you to bite back a wide grin,

“Your Majesty,” Johnny turns to the man sitting by your side, “With your permission, may I have Her Grace’s hand in a dance?”

The King watches him for a moment with utter disinterest, much like he regards most of his subjects, but eventually concedes with a nod- and you don’t hesitate to push away from your chair, your ladies rushing to straighten the flowing gown but you brush them away politely, gathering the skirts in your hands instead.

Rounding the long table, you take Johnny’s arm, letting him escort you through the crowd- and you wish more than anything in this moment you could just be another woman floating across the marble floor, you wish you could toss the crown on your head away, remove the green and gold colors of your husband’s house, the crest from around your neck-

“Still always so stuck in your head, eh, Hen?”

The dance you fall into is simple in its movements, with your palm flat against his above your heads, gliding in a slow circle as the music softly builds,

“Hard not to be- but this is helping, I must admit.” You tease, giving him a wry smile.

His head tips back with a warm laugh, and you’re instantly flooded by memories of your childhood with him- of growing up together, his ceaseless pranks and joking, of the hours you would spend scouting through the woods together, soiling all your dresses, and ruining the pretty braids the maids would put in your hair.

The trouble you got in for him was “unbecoming of the future Queen” as your mother would say, but Johnny had been your best friend- much to her and your father’s chagrin, and no amount of their preaching ever kept you away from his never ending mischief.

It was like that up until he left for the army, and while you both had tried your best to keep up through letters like you promised, after your coronation, time for anything other than your duties always seemed to escape you-

“So, how’s married life treatin’ ya, Your Majesty?”

You roll your eyes at his quip, giggling when he picks you up, your hands holding his wrists at your waist until you’re on the ground again and stepping in time with the next bit of music,

“Oh, I’m sorry, shouldn’t you be married by now, m’Lord?”

Again, he laughs, ducking under your arm before spinning you both gracefully- your back against his, though your heads turned toward each other to keep up the hushed conversation,

“Glad to see your tongue is still made o’ thorns, Grianach.”

His old nickname for you stirs up a sadness that feels overwhelming, almost tangible, and the sting of tears prick at your eyes as you turn back to face him- knowing the dance would too quickly be coming to an end.

It’s during the last, slow spin that you catch Simon’s gaze- watching you from just beyond the edge of the crowd, eyes raking over your body until he sees the turmoil in your expression. And it’s like your pinned beneath him with the weight it carries, holding the fleeting contact even from a distance,

“Sunny?”

You blink once, realizing the music has easily flowed into the next tune, something slower, more somber- and when you blink again, Simon’s moved, and you struggle to not immediately look around for his familiar form, seeking the comfort he unwittingly provides you.

“Ah.. Tha’ the new Queen’s Guard I’ve heard so much about?”

Johnny offers his arm again, looking down at you with a lop-sided smirk,

“It is. And, what of it?” You ask innocently enough, finally spotting him standing a head above the rest, stoically taking his spot behind your chair- eyes roaming over Johnny’s face, still sizing this unfamiliar man up, watching how comfortable you seem with him. He misses nothing-

“Not really your style, is all.. The big, gloomy bastard doesn’t seem like he fits for my li’ bit o’ sunshine.”

How could you tell him that his sweet nickname, Grianach, Sunny, was what actually didn’t fit you anymore?

But you suppose if he stays around long enough, he’ll surely realize you relate more to the dark side of the moon than you did the sun these days..

“He’s been a good guard.. better than any I’ve had.”

Johnny nods, watching the man in question as you approach the giant table,

“Good, tha’s good, Sunny.. you deserve the best, always have.”

You don’t know why his words take you by surprise, why they make your feet feel like lead in your shoes-

“Will you be staying, Johnny?” You speak lowly, not wanting to let go of him, not when he’s the closest thing you’ve had to home in so, so long,

“Aye.. a week is all I can spare, but I’ll be here with ya, all right?”

All you can give is a weak nod before he bows for the King, kissing your cheek and bowing in front of you, as well. And those usually vibrant eyes dull a bit when he sees your apprehension- but he smiles anyway, backing down the steps and disappearing into the crowd once more.

And you do your best to plaster a warm grin on your face as you move to take your seat again, brushing past Simon, you lean down, speaking only in the King’s ear,

“I’ve grown tired-“

He waves his hand at you before you’ve even finished speaking, focused on one of his advisors- the conversation of his imminent travel far more important than anything you might have to say.

Well, haven’t the gods granted me luck tonight..

Your exit is a quiet affair, and as soon as you’re out of the Great Hall, you feel some of the tension melt away- the further you get from the raucous, the easier it is to breathe, the weight easing itself off your shoulders with every step.

“Go ahead and ready my chambers, please, Elia. I’d like to take the air.”

She goes without question, your other handmaids flitting right behind her as you take the next hallway to your right- the one that leads towards the courtyard and the gardens.

You can hear him behind you, those long, steady steps contrasting your shorter ones. Neither of you speak, but you feel his proximity intensely- always so frighteningly aware of him when you’re alone.

And it’s enough to drive you mad, how much he affects you. Because you’re so certain he feels nothing, being in your presence is his duty. He’s a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, to let the likes of you get under his skin-

The guards bow their heads graciously as they push the solid wood out of the way for you to pass through; and it’s as if the night air were a salve for your restless soul- fresh and perfectly chilled, the whispers of fall in the breeze. Just enough to get you out of your head, if only for a moment.

“Ser Simon..”

You walking slowly, your steps languid as your fingers brush over the leaves and petals, absently studying the textures as they feel under the moonlight-

“People keep asking if I like my new guard..” You ramble, moving beyond the entrance of the tall, maze-like hedges, leading you both deeper as you speak,

“But, I don’t think I’ve asked the same of you..”

Don’t.. don’t do this. Just turn around- go back to your rooms. This is petty and useless, nothing but disappointment can come of it..

“Not sure I follow, Your Grace.”

A chill creeps down your spine at the rasp in his voice, from the cold or disuse, you’re not sure. You turn with a saccharine smile, though it quickly falls away as you take him in-

He’s so entirely otherworldly like this, cast in the milky light from above, the shimmering onyx of his armor almost glowing under the pale moon- and when he shifts his weight, the light dances around him, like it simply chooses to bend and move at his will.

Beautiful.. Can monsters be beautiful?

You turn away again, unable to stand it for a moment longer. This was indeed a mistake, you should not be here.

Alone. With him-

“Do you like it?” You ask the hedge, your voice soft now, your confidence having waned, “Your new post..”

Is it seconds that pass? It can’t be minutes.. surely- but gods, it feels like an eternity. The silence stretches on around you- infinitesimal in its reach.

See? That’s enough of an answer to a silly, foolish question. Like he really has a choice in the matter of liking or disliking-

You just barely feel him before you hear him- but how? How had you not heard him move before? Maybe you were right from the very beginning- he is no man; maybe the rumors are true, and he really is a ghost.

He isn’t touching you, but you think if you took even half a step back you would be able to feel the cold steel of his breastplate.

You keep your eyes focused ahead, the dark not really a hindrance because you aren’t truly seeing anymore, so consumed by him that hardly anything else seems important- that is, until something heavy is placed in your hand.

The weight of it is awkward, and you bring your other hand to hold the object before looking down.

His helmet.

It stares back at you, devoid of the warmth you usually find there, without his amber eyes, the black metal is just that- cold, and harsh.

You have every opportunity to turn, to finally gaze upon the face that you had pondered on far too often- to confirm the features you imagined late in the night.

But, you don’t. You wouldn’t, not with the trust he had very literally placed in your hands- you don’t want to betray that, you don’t want to betray him.

“I do.” He whispers against the shell of your ear, his nose grazing over the sensitive skin of your neck as his head dips lower- it’s a slow, tentative movement, and once again your mind goes to war with itself-

Danger. This is dangerous- he is dangerous. If anyone were to see you like this, they would have your head and his, too- Hells, the King himself would probably volunteer to take it from your shoulders-

Yet, when you feel him nuzzle just behind your ear again, your mind quiets, body moving on its own. Just like the moonlight, you bend to him without thought- letting your head tilt to expose more of your skin, your lips parting in a shuddering breath when he inhales deeply through his nose.

A growl resonates from his throat, it’s fleeting, but it ignites an ache so deep between your legs it nearly takes your breath away-

“And, have I served you well, My Queen?”

You shake your head, your grip on his helmet turning almost painful as you struggle to stand straight.

“Why must you insist on saying it like that..”

The low chuckle that rumbles through his chest sounds so perfect in your ears, and the weight of his forehead gently dropping to rest on your shoulder makes you bite your lip-

“Like what?” He coos, and you can hear a barely concealed smile in his voice now, one that has the most delightful shiver snaking its way through your entire body.

He was giving you so much, but you so desperately wanted more. You’ve never wanted a man’s hands on you in the way you need his at this moment.

What would they feel like roaming over your body? Would his touch remain as tender as he’s handled you thus far?

The thought alone hazes your mind even further.

A small hum escapes as you allow yourself to spare a glance at the deep ebony locks you can see now-

Hm.. do ghosts have hair? And are they suppose to feel so warm..

The thought brings a sad smile to your lips, your cheek settling against the side of his head, and your eyes slipping shut; you relish in the feel of his hair on your skin- but, it’s that very same feeling that causes you to tense, pulling away.

Because too suddenly, all you can imagine is the feeling of his soft hair in your hands, matted with blood as you hold his head in your lap- his body cold and lifeless..

No- I will be the death of him.. I can’t- I couldn’t..

He moves just as abruptly as you do, though his motions are still so gentle as he rises to his full height again,

“I apologize-“

“No..” You cut him off, turning only enough to let him take the helmet from your hands, “Please, don’t- I-“

Words fail you. And your heart sputters in your chest as embarrassment, and shame, and grief burn through you-

“I shouldn’t- I just.. We can’t.” You whisper hoarsely, your voice pathetic even in your own ears.

Strong hands turn you, and you don’t know why your eyes clamp shut, but they do- you keep them closed, breathing in through your nose, which is just another mistake because his scent is so strong now you want to wrap yourself in it. Keep it with you-

A single finger tilts your chin up, a silent command to open your eyes, to look at him.

He’s covered again, but his gaze is so open as he looks down at you- studying you in that way that only he can, though it’s impossible to miss the unrest behind his expression,

“I know..”

[chapter 4 >>>>]

#knight!ghost #and his queen #I can just hear the way he says my queen and it ruins me every time #cod fandom #call of duty #simon ghost riley #cod fanfic #john soap mactavish #ao3 fanfic #simon riley x reader #simon x reader #medieval au #lord mactavish #your honor I love them #fic: the queens guard #also on ao3

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

"Sonic vs. Tails - The Ultimate April Fools Battle"

AO3 link if you'd rather read it there ;)

6:38 a.m.

Early on a Monday morning, Sonic awoke to a rocking sensation. For a moment it was nice, soothing even, and he thought perhaps he'd fallen asleep on a hammock or something.

Except, it was in fact not soft fabric beneath him, but wooden boards.

A faint smell of salt alerted him next. Then a strong gust of wind. Then the cry of a seagull.

A seagull?!

His eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright, panic immediately flooding his chest upon seeing a huge mass of water all around him. He found himself sitting in a wooden fishing boat, smack dab in the middle of it.

He jumped up to his feet with a squeak of true fear, wobbling as the rocking of the boat nearly made him lose his balance.

He raced to the pole where the sails were attached and jumped onto it, full-body clinging to it with both arms and legs. "HOW IN MOBIUS DID I GET OUT HERE?!" he yelled indignantly, as loudly as he could for having just woken up.

A snicker sounded above him, and he jerked his head up so fast he nearly got whiplash.

And whom should he see perched atop the sails post but his little brother, Tails, his namesakes waving around and mischief practically written all over his face.

"Happy April Fools," the smug little fox greeted him, still giggling.

Sonic relaxed slightly, but shot Tails a feigned death glare. "It's on," he shot back, unable to hide a smirk.

-

8:23 a.m.

He had to be subtle about this. Tails was obviously very well aware what day it was. He had to be sly.

So, for his first prank of many, Sonic ran out to buy a cheap whoopie cushion, then slipped it in the Tornado's cockpit, at a perfect angle so Tails wouldn't see it until it was too late.

He was pretty proud of himself for keeping it cool, going on runs and swinging back by the workshop every few minutes to see when Tails needed to go out for a flight.

Except it was taking too long.

If he didn't get that over with, all his time to come up with more pranks for the day would be gone. And that simply wouldn't do.

"Hey, Tails!" he called from the roof, where he'd been leisurely lounging for the past five minutes. "Wanna go for a shopping run?"

After a pause of silence filled only with the sound of some metal clanging, Tails called back, "For what? I thought we were stocked."

"No, we need more— flour." He quickly improvised, having not actually checked the pantry beforehand.

"Why do we need more flour?" Tails sounded both distracted and confused as he continued whatever he was clanging around with.

"Because bread." Sonic flipped onto the ground and leaned his head through the window. "We should make bread."

Tails finally pulled back his goggles and shot him a look. "Why do you want to make bread?"

"Don't question it, Tails! Why can't I be allowed to wanna try new stuff?"

"Because it's April Fools, that's why." Tails smirked and pulled his goggles back down, studying the chunks of metal he was abusing. "There's probably a prank waiting for me at the store or something."

Sonic clasped a hand to his chest dramatically. "You seriously think I went and sabotaged public property just to pull a prank on you?!"

Without missing a beat, and without shifting his eyes from his work, Tails replied, "Yeah."

Sonic huffed and crossed his arms. "Well, I didn't. And the only way for you to see that is to come on shopping with me. I'll even let you pick the store so that you can be sure."

Tails looked at him, arching a brow and resting one hand on his hip. "You're so random," he said, shaking his head with a grin. "You realize you can go shopping by yourself, right?"

"Well, sue me for wanting to spend time with my darling little brother," Sonic pouted, trying his best to pull off a puppy-dog-eyes look.

"Since when did you become so clingy?" Tails laughed, finally setting aside his things and flying over to the window.

Finally!

"It was inevitable. You're too loveable." Sonic yanked him into a hug, right before letting him start flying towards the Tornado.

"I don't know whether to feel touched or suspici—" Tails abruptly broke off as he hopped into the cockpit, and the whoopie cushion immediately squeezed beneath him, filling the air with its awful sounds.

His face went beet red for a moment, then he closed his eyes and sighed. Sonic had already fallen over laughing, tears springing to his eyes at Tails's expression.

"Bread, huh?" Tails sounded way too calm as he turned to face his brother, but there was a terrifying glint in his eyes.

"You bet!" Sonic laughed. "Come on, what are you waiting for? Let's go get flour!"

Tails picked up the whoopie cushion and hurled it full force at the hedgehog's face.

-

8:52 a.m.

After the whoopie cushion incident, Tails forced Sonic to go out shopping anyway. He even managed to trick him into thinking he was doing it as an apology.

Oh, was that poor hedgehog mistaken. He was so in for it. Tails had sent him out shopping— alone— so he could set up his revenge prank.

He decided to go with a simple one. Perhaps he would save the more intricate and wild pranks for later in the day.

This one would still be personal, though.

Barely suppressing a little cackle of glee, Tails snatched a large bottle of clear super glue and generously poured it all over the welcome mat at his front door. This glue wouldn't fully dry for another twenty to thirty minutes, and since Sonic was only getting one thing from the store, he wouldn't take nearly that long.

Sure enough, five minutes after he'd laid the prank, he heard the distinct BOOM in the distance of his brother's impending arrival.

Tails already knew Sonic wasn't going to notice the glue. If it wasn't immediately obvious, and he wasn't in danger, he didn't pay attention to detail like that.

The door handle jiggled for a moment, then was followed by a banging on the door. His muffled voice called, "Tails, if you're gonna send me out to buy stuff we don't actually need, the least you could do is leave the door unlocked for me to actually give you the stuff we don't need."

"Oh, dear chaos!" Tails called back, deliberately sounding way too dramatically surprised. "How did the door lock itself?!"

It didn't matter if Sonic caught on. If he was banging on the door, it was too late for him.

"I don't like your tone, young man." Sonic definitely sounded suspicious, and Tails could barely suppress his triumphant laughter.

"Sorry, Dad." With a snicker, he unlocked the door and swept it open, where he found Sonic standing with a hefty bag of flour, shooting him a look.

He was standing right in the middle of the super glue puddle.

"Seriously, bro? Locking me outside? That's the best you g-GAAUHH!" Sonic broke off as he tried to take a step forward, only to pull the entire doormat up with his foot and lose his balance. He tried desperately to right himself, but only ended up pinwheeling his arms, losing his grip on the bag of flour, and falling square on his chest. A second later, the bag of flour came down on his head and immediately popped open upon pricking his quills.

After the flour dust settled, the two brothers looked at each other for a solid ten seconds, the younger standing tall with his arms crossed and a smug smile, the older slumped on the ground, covered in flour to the point of looking like a ghost, glaring daggers.

He sneezed. "That was low. I like my kicks."

"They'll be fine," Tails insisted, brushing off the flour that had drifted into his fur. "I've got a solution that'll cancel out the glue."

Sonic shook himself off, then stood up and sneezed again. "You owe me twenty rings for the waste of perfectly good flour that we didn't need."

Tails stuck his tongue out at him, then started blowing the spilled flour out the door with his tails.

-

9:35 a.m.

Sonic took a shower after the flour incident, and he made it quick enough so that Tails didn't have any time to try anything more on him, since he was still cleaning up said flour.

Once he'd gotten out and dried off, Tails brushed past him into the bathroom, and a few seconds later he heard the shower start up again.

No way there was this golden opportunity just dangling in front of him . . .

Grinning, Sonic first went to the kitchen and hit the switch for the power hose. Next time Tails went to wash the dishes, he was in for a little surprise.

Then, very quietly, he nudged the door open to the bathroom (where Tails was still in the shower), reached in, and flushed the toilet.

A second later, there was a high pitched "Yipe!" and one very startled, very wet fox kit scrambled out of the tub at the suddenly freezing water.

Sonic heard his name screeched furiously from over his shoulder as he laughed and booked it for the front door, only to catch on the doormat and faceplant the sidewalk, his socks now stuck in the super glue still coating the mat.

-

10:14 a.m.

He deserved this fate, Tails claimed.

"It's called revenge!" Sonic yelled through the door from where he lay on the ground outside in the yard. "Sweet, totally fair, revenge! Can I have the anti solution for the glue now?"

"Nope," Tails called back.

"C'moooon. These are my last clean socks, I can't just take them off and put on dirty ones. Do you want me to defile the house with smelly feet?"

"Ohh, manipulation. That's a new one!"

"Tails!"

"Just wear flipflops. Or go barefoot. I dunno."

"I don't like flip flops!" Sonic squirmed onto his side. "And I don't like being barefoot! Running barefoot is painful!"

"Ah, well. Guess you'd better apologize for ruining my lovely shower and forfeit all your desserts to me for the next three months, if you ever want to run again."

"Sorry, who was being manipulative?"

"You were!"

Sonic huffed. "You know, I could just do laundry. Yeah. Do laundry and be free."

"Wow!" Tails sounded way too amazed. "That's so genius!"

"I'll wash all my socks! I'll wash all the socks!" With caution, Sonic forced his way back onto his feet, then hopped inside the house, doormat still attached. "I'll be free in a matter of . . . hours." He frowned. "Hey Tails, can dish soap clean clothes? And how fast does a fur dryer dry clothes?"

Tails was standing in the kitchen, pouring the remains of the flour that hadn't touched the floor into a canister. He eyed his brother for a moment, then smiled sweetly. "There's one way to find out."

Without thinking, Sonic broke into a relieved grin and started hopping his way into the kitchen. "Good, because if I have to be stuck like this for one—"

He turned the faucet on, and immediately a powerful spray of cold water shot out at his face from the power hose. He yelped and sputtered, immediately switching it off as he suddenly realized he'd fallen for his own prank.

Or, more likely, Tails had seen right through his prank, and had made him fall for it.

Sonic looked down at him, water dripping down his face and off his quills. Tails had lost his cool composure and was doubled over, squeaking with laughter.

-

10:30 a.m.

"I deserved that one," Sonic grumbled, toweling off his face.

Tails sat beside him on the porch, eyes closed in smug contentment as he brushed out his tails. "Yes. You did."

Sonic turned and grinned devilishly. "You realize this isn't over, lil bro."

Tails turned a fanged smile right back on him. "Far from it."

-

11:04 a.m.

Sonic burst through Amy's door and immediately said, "Ames, I need a favor!"

Amy nearly jumped out of her skin, dropping her paintbrush onto the carpet. She sighed, but picked it up without complaining, set it on the ledge of her painter's stand, and gave him her attention. "What's up?"

"Sorry for that," he said quickly, then added, "Could you make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, but like, make three of them with raisins instead?"

Amy wrinkled her forehead even as she smiled. "Wait, what? Why?"

"It's April Fools. I need to get back at Tails."

"Oh, no." Amy laughed as she stood up and started heading for her kitchen. "What'd he do?"

"Oh, many things." As Amy set to making the cookies, he told her all about the events of the day so far. He told her about the pranks on both sides, just to keep it fair.

Amy was aware of their April Fools traditions. The same basic thing had happened the past two years as well.

It had been last year that they learned the hard way not to prank Knuckles. Or Shadow.

"You should really learn to bake," Amy commented as she eventually pulled the batch out of the oven. "It's really very fun! And satisfying."

"You know what'll be satisfying?" He snickered. "The look on Tails's face when he thinks he's gonna taste chocolate and tastes raisins instead!"

Amy shook her head with an amused sigh. "That too, I guess."

They hung out together for another twenty minutes or so, then Sonic bid her farewell and took off back to the workshop.

-

12:22 p.m.

Tails had resumed working on whatever project he'd been doing earlier that morning.

"Yo, Tails!" Sonic raced into the room, holding the container of cookies. "Amy made us cookies!"

"Ooh, she did?" Tails immediately paused what he was doing and lit up, but then suspicion clouded his face. "Wait . . . what's going on?"

"Bro, it's just cookies," Sonic laughed. "What, do you think they're poisoned?"

Tails kept hesitating, but Sonic could see him scenting the air. Since the majority of them were chocolate chip, he was detecting that— not the few raisins.

"Okay. I'll take one," he finally relented, and Sonic handed him one with raisins.

He started heading back to his project as he took a bite, but immediately stopped in his tracks. Sonic watched him stop chewing and look at the cookie for a long moment, then turn and shoot him a deadpan look.

"You're so mean," he complained, mouth still full with the bite he refused to swallow (he hated raisins). Then he tried to spit it out onto Sonic, who yelped and raced away, dropping the container of cookies on the floor.

Tails picked it up, having already figured out that most of the others were actually chocolate chip. Jokes on Sonic, now he had all the good cookies to himself.

-

1:01 p.m.

Their prank fest had delayed lunch a bit, so Sonic (after eventually returning) told Tails to kick back and relax while he made chili.

Tails seemed a little too pleased with the idea, but Sonic barely noticed, too hungry to care.

As he stirred through the pot, Tails watched him, grinning in anticipation for the meal. Earlier, while Sonic had been lying around the front yard with the doormat glued to his socks and complaining, Tails had switched out the salt and sugar.

Half an hour later or so, they sat down together to eat. It seemed Sonic thought they had reached a temporary truce, but oh, little did he know.

Tails deliberately took his sweet time in spooning the chili onto his hot dog, eyeing his brother in his corner vision. Sonic had made his in no time, digging in with two big bites before Tails had even finished dressing his.

Almost immediately Sonic paused, blinked a couple times, then kept chewing. Then paused again, frowning.

His eyes flicked to Tails, who quickly resumed dressing his chili dog.

Sonic finally swallowed. "That's weird."

"What's weird?" Tails asked innocently, actually being subtle this time.

"Chili tastes more like dessert." The hedgehog squinted at him. "Did you sabotage the chili cans?"

Tails sniffed. "How dare you accuse me."

"Did you?"

"No, I didn't. The cans were sealed, weren't they?"

"Hm." Sonic took another hesitant bite, but stopped again, shaking his head. "This tastes so weird. Have you tried yours?"

Tails shrugged. "Try salting it," he suggested, avoiding the question.

Sonic grabbed the salt shaker and generously covered his chili dog with its contents, then took another bite, only to actually choke over it this time.

"Okay, did you—?!" He snatched the shaker again, shook a little onto his finger, tasted it, then chucked it at Tails, who laughed and dove out of the way. "You switched the salt and sugar?!"

"Well, duh!" Tails switched to hovering over the table, snickering. "There are no truces today, dearest brother!"

Sonic threw the too-sweet chili dog at him next, inevitably splattering chili over the table.

"You're cleaning that up!" Tails called in a singsong voice. "I'm going out to Josef's Pasta Alla Paccico!"

"OH, NO YOU DON'T!"

-

2:10 p.m.

They both ended up eating out at Josef's, and even though they did truly call a ceasefire for a grand total of twenty-five minutes, they split the time between actually eating and blowing their straw wrappers at people, having mini sword fights with the butter knives, and constructing architecture with the plates and takeout boxes.

Needless to say, the only reason they didn't get kicked out was probably because both Sonic and Tails were practically world-renowned.

Not long after they returned to the workshop, Sonic inevitably crashed for a nap. He usually couldn't make it through a day without a nap at some point, which was always unfortunate for him on this particular day of the year.

Tails studied him where he slept, on a branch of the tree in his front yard. He knew he'd been the last one to pull something, but hey, who said they were taking turns?

There was simply no way he was passing this up.

First, he grabbed a sharpie and very carefully drew an elaborate mustache worthy of Eggman across his brother's face. He added a few random smiley faces on his cheek and arms, as well as the phrase "SLO-MO" on one shoulder.

Then he grabbed an assortment of potato chips and began carefully stacking them on his head, in his hands, on his stomach, in an entire tower.

He made sure to take pictures through the whole process, then— leaving him there to sleep, still covered in sharpie and potato chips— flew off to print the photos.

Going above and beyond, he put the printed photos in a fancy envelope, marked them as "priority mail," addressed them to Sonic's post office box, disguised himself, then dropped them off at the post office.

An hour passed after he had done all that, and Sonic finally stirred awake.

Upon seeing the stack of chips in front of him, he promptly fell out of the tree with a yelp, and Tails started giggling.

"What did you do to me?" Sonic whined, brushing all the crumbs off his head and chest as he stood up, still groggy.

"You think that's bad?" Tails teased. "Go check the mirror."

A look of horror filled his brother's eyes, then he was gone in a flash. Tails kept giggling, and laughed harder when he heard the yell from inside: "WHY DID YOU MAKE ME LOOK LIKE EGGFACE?!"

"It's called revenge!" Tails called back gleefully. "Sweet, totally fair, revenge!"

Sonic came storming back outside. "How dare you use my own words against me."

"Sorry," Tails told him insincerely.

His brother scrubbed at his cheek. "How long will it take for this to wash off?"

Tails shrugged. "A couple days, probably."

Sonic's resulting screech was loud enough to startle away all the nearby flickies.

-

4:32 p.m.

Sonic spent at least half an hour in the bathroom desperately trying to scrub the marker out of his fur, but only succeeded in making it fade a little.

"Taking advantage of my sleep cycle," he huffed, reaching out to mess up Tails's bangs from where the fox kit sat on the couch. "So rude."

Tails tried to fix his bangs, while Sonic flopped onto the other end of the couch. "Consider it payback for you dyeing my fur green last year."

"You still looked cool, at least!" Sonic protested. "If Egghead sees me like this, I'm never going to hear the end of it."

"I looked like a lime!" Tails shot back. "I had to hide from society for an entire month!"

"It wasn't a month."

"Three and a half weeks. Close enough."

"Mm."

Tails shot him a look, and Sonic reached over to mess up his bangs again. He was rewarded with a throw pillow to the face.

Sonic threw it back, and it was just about to escalate into a fully fledged pillow fight when the doorbell rang.

Both of them froze, and Sonic zipped away in a flash. "I'm not here! You don't know me! If anyone asks, I'm in Holoska on a nice, arctic vacation!"

"Chicken!" Tails taunted after him, then flew over to the door and pulled it open to find Amy and Knuckles standing on the other side.

(Thankfully, the super glue had dried hours before.)

"Hey, guys!" he greeted them, stepping back to let them in. "What's the occasion?"

Amy said sweetly, "We just wanted to make sure you and Sonic were doing okay!" at the same time Knuckles said, "We came to supervise."

Tails rolled his eyes. "We don't need babysitters."

Amy glanced around. "Did Sonic leave?"

Knuckles frowned as Tails snickered. "I guess he did. He's telling everyone he's going to Holoska."

"You can't stop me!" Sonic's muffled voice shouted from somewhere towards the back of the workshop.

"Nobody's trying!" Tails called back, his voice catching on a laugh. "Just be sure to warn Jari-Pekka about your new look!"

"New look?" Knuckles echoed.

Amy facepalmed. "What did you do to him?"

Tails waved a hand flippantly. "It'll come off in a few days."

"And this is why we thought you two needed supervision," Knuckles groaned. "Today always gets out of hand."

"Do we need to separate you two?" Amy asked, although she was grinning.

Sonic chose that moment to burst explosively out of the closet, zip to his brother's side, and pull him close in a protective hug. "No, don't separate us!" he insisted, forcing a huge smile. "Everything's going just fine!"

Knuckles and Amy took a solid ten seconds to stare at Tails's artwork all over Sonic's face, then started laughing, albeit good-naturedly.

Tails grinned at where he was still trapped in his brother's hold, only to start violently trying to squirm away when said brother slipped a sharpie out of hiding and started drawing his revenge on the fox's face.

-

6:00 p.m.

Knuckles and Amy chose to spend the rest of the day at the workshop with them, just to make sure things didn't get any crazier than they already had. By the time dinnertime arrived, both Sonic and Tails had sharpie all over their faces, although the "art" on Tails's face could hardly be called as such. Because of his squirming during the whole process, it was nothing more than random scribbles of blue in random places on his face.

"Next year I'll dye you blue," Sonic promised him as the four of them had dinner together (after Amy switched back the salt and sugar). "We can match!"

"Pass." Tails swallowed his bite. "I'll just look like some kind of mutant smurf."

Sonic snickered. "All the more reason to do it, then!"

Amy groaned. "Boys . . ."

"Hey, we should rope you into this!" Sonic exclaimed suddenly, staring straight at Amy.

"If you want a hammer to the face next, feel free!" Amy stuck her tongue out at him, although she had to hide a giggle.

"As long as you leave me out of it, do whatever you want," Knuckles put in wearily, sounding much like a parent tired of trying to control his children.

Tails smiled at all of them. Knuckles was right; this day was always crazy, and sure, things got out of hand sometimes. But he had no regrets. It was fun. It was a stupid way of bonding with his brother, and that was something he would never regret.

A Happy April Fools Day, indeed.

#happy april fools! #april fools fic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sth #miles tails prower #sonic and tails #unbreakable bond #they're brothers your honor #fic #sonic and tails fic #prank war #prank wars #brothers #shenanigans from start to finish #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #siblings #fluff #my fic #my writing #will rb this on Wednesday as well #april fools #long oneshot #long post #? #funny #silly boys #also on ao3 #will be on wattpad eventually

[number-one-shadisper-shipper]

There had to be something wrong with him.

The two tails were the most obvious. But there had to be something more. There had to be something wrong with him.

Why else did no one want him?

Little Miles curled up in the small cave he'd found for himself, burrowing in a pile of leaves he'd gathered up for a nest of sorts. The cave was far enough away from the village that no one should be able to find him here.

Why did they hate him so much?

He'd taken a few things, but that couldn't be the reason. They were mean to him before that. He only snatched scraps of food when he was really hungry because no one would give him anything and he couldn't find anything in the woods that was edible. And they'd already chased him away multiple times before he'd gotten that hungry that he'd risked sneaking back into the village to grab some food.

It had to be something else. Was it just the tails? Why? He loved his tails. They were warm and good for snuggling. He loved them. Or, he could love them. If it wasn't for everyone else telling him why he should hate them. He could never really hate them.

Maybe he was just a bad kid.

Bad kids took things. Bad kids got in the way. Bad kids weren't wanted.

Even his own parents didn't want him. He had only vague memories of them now, of golden-brown fur a little darker than his and loud voices that were angry a lot. He remembered them telling him to stay and wait, and then never coming back.

Maybe... if he'd waited just a little longer, just a couple more days, they would've come back. Maybe he was just a bad kid like that.

Maybe that's why no one could care about him.

Darkness was falling outside, separating his cave from the rest of the world. The night was always so empty and quiet, with no one around to protect him. He curled his two tails closer around himself, hugging them against his chest.

Was he always going to be alone?

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

"Tails?"

The fox glanced up at the sound of his favorite voice. Sonic was staring at him, head slightly tilted as he studied his face. "You okay, pal? You zoned out there for a sec."

"Yeah, yeah! Just got distracted."

Sonic chuckled and ruffled his bangs. "Imagine getting distracted," he said with a laugh, leaning backwards to lie on the picnic blanket. "I, for one, am ALWAYS focused."

Tails chuckled as he shifted. "Yeah, right."

He glanced around. It was a beautiful day in Green Hill, perfect for the Restoration (and friends) picnic that they'd set up as a celebration of foiling yet another world-ending catastrophe together. Amy, sitting on Sonic's other side, gave him a smile before returning back to whatever she and Sonic had been chatting about a minute ago. Knuckles was leaned back against a tree looking almost peaceful, until Rouge came and started poking at him. All of Team Dark had actually shown up, even Shadow, although he was sitting at the very outskirts avoiding conversation. Cream served out slices of cake to everyone. Her mom was cutting the slices while chatting cheerfully with Vector and the other Chaotix. Silver was showing off his telekinesis for Blaze by making a kite fly even though there was no wind. The Restoration girls; Whisper, Tangle, Belle, and even Jewel and Lanolin; had found all spots in the grass where they were chatting.

Sonic gave him another look, before stretching out his arm and patting the empty spot beside him. Tails grinned and shifted over next to Sonic, curling up into the spot that fit him perfectly. He rested his head on his brother's chest, hearing the soothing thrum of his speedy heartbeat. A comforting sound. The sound of safety, of home.

"You sure you're okay, little bro?" Sonic asked quietly.

"Yeah. I am."

He was more than okay, he realized, as he looked around at his friends. His tribe. His family.

He wasn't alone anymore.

AO3 link here

#wholesome sonic and tails wednesday #wholesome wednesday #wstw #COMBATING THE DEATH FICS WITH HAPPY ENDINGS! #angst with a happy ending #drabble #hurt/comfort #sonic the hedgehog #baby miles tails prower #miles tails prower #classic tails #sonic #sonic fanfic #sonic fic #ao3 link #also on ao3 #writer #my fanfic

[marisferasiop]

FUSE

Ao3 link

PART 2

Rating: Explicit

Archive Warning: Plot with Smut

Categories: F/M, M/M, Poly

Fandoms: The Mandalorian (TV), Prospect (2018)

Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader; Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Reader; Din Djarin/Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Reader

Characters: Din Djarin, Reader, Ezra (Prospect 2018), Grogu | Baby Yoda, Cee (Prospect 2018)

Additional Tags: Sex Pollen, Marathon Sex, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Kissing, Boys Kissing, Din Djarin Removes the Helmet, but only in the dark, Force-Sensitive Reader, Ezra loses the arm, no y/n, Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, oh no we got feelings in our sex pollen smut, Everyone in star wars is bi til it's proven otherwise, Ezra is definitely a mouthy bottom, Switch Din Djarin

Summary:

Din and reader are working as a Guild crew living on the Crest (and quietly pining for one another). Din picks up a bounty on a harvester dodging creditors who had fronted funds for prospecting work and finds a surprise: someone who looks exactly like him. While on the way to drop him to the client, the three of you are accidentally dosed with a pollinating spice strain meant for cold blooded biologies! Now you three have to ah- "get it out of your systems" somehow!

"Take the bunk, iisa. I’ll kip here,” he says, dragging Grogu off the panel and into his lap.

“Alright,” you say, not surprised, and head down the ladder. Mando’s bunk is narrow and not particularly comfy, but it sure beats the durasteel floor or being upright in the cockpit. He makes sure you have a stark two-thirds split of the usage of it, only using the other third because you prod him when he gets sore shoulders or a crick in his neck when he doesn't. You curl up on your side on the thin bedroll and next thing you know, the Crest is juddering to a stop outside of the hyperlane over a small, verdant green moon.

“I shouldn’t be gone more than a day. The mark is purported to be a charlatan, but not much of a slippery catch, despite the long chase. He doesn't even have a ship,” Mando says, a while later, hesitating on the ramp. "Just keeps managing to sweet talk his way into rides, but sounds like he got stuck here." He checks that the fob is still beeping and tucks it into his belt.

“Ah, a chatty one. A favorite trait of yours; I am familiar.”

Mando snorts and passes Grogu to you. “More encouragement to drag him back and slab him so we don't have to listen,” he says. The kid sends you a flare of annoyance and squirms to get down, so you kneel and set him down, and he immediately goes back to Mando’s shins, bashing them with his little claws.

"I can't take you, kid. The air is toxic."

But Grogu simply leapt into his pram and popped the bubble shield you had engineered, staring up at his buir in defiance. You stifle a laugh and Mando sighs, resigned and continues to equip his standard weapons.

“I’ll check the ship and do maintenance as needed. Comm me if you need backup,” you say needlessly. He’s never needed your field skills yet, but that’s because he usually takes the kid. You're glad when he takes the kid. Knowing he has some kind of backup is a relief with how often Mando manages to get his ass kicked. And Grogu hates being left behind, typically showing such feelings like now.

The reputation you’d racked up on Nevarro as a force-sensitive, retired, Rebel Alliance sharpshooter- cum- mechanic had done little for you in the way of an easy life, but when you’d fixed Mando’s junker of a gunship after a nasty crash, and talked to his kid like some Ahsoka lady they'd met, he’d hired you on his crew and you’d had an enjoyable time since (even if you wished the idiot would notice how hard you have been holdinf a torch for him for cycles).

But it did no good to pine after a Mandalorian, you knew. Especially one as adhered to the Old Ways as Mando appeared to be. You’d met others in your time, as a child when they weren’t so secretive, and later, in the galactic war. And later still, when there was a covert beneath the city everyone pretended to ignore, and their beroya was out working, another would surface now and again to find work or socialize. Sometimes you’d hire them on for a day to move product, or assit with a fix, or break old machines down for parts.

You’d taken two different ones to bed, even, on various holdovers. They never removed their helmets, but you’d enjoyed the ah- rides, nonetheless.

Not this one, though. He had to be either the most dense (or simply the least interested) Mandalorian in the galaxy. Which really did so much for your self-esteem.

So after Mando departs with the kid in his pram floating along, his amban glinting across his back, you turn off the ship's air scrubber and seal your helmet and head outside to check the landing gear. The Crest was balanced on a patch of thick moss, its feet embedded in the soil below. You tutted at the soft surface and carried on inspecting for damage.

That evening, you rehydrate a sachet of soup, attach it to your suit's feed hose, and sit on a fallen log a few meters from the ship, grateful for the susurrus of nature. The forest moon is rich with fauna and life, desite the dust in the air that makes it unbreathable for humans. You wonder for the thousandth time how Mando is doing on his hunt, and decide to go back inside for a brief nap, keeping your comm unit close.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Din is– surprised. Bounties don't often actually surprise him, but finding his quarry to be a lame-armed and barely- breathing man who looks and sounds uncannily like Din himself, hitched to a young woman by a length of tie-down belting strung between their suit loops in the middle of a dense forest has to land somewhere on his chart of weirdest discoveries. The fact that the young girl is aiming a strange blaster at Din and standing half-over the collapsed bounty is another tally on the list.

“Ezra May?” Din asks, leveling his amban rifle at the girl, seeing as she's the one with the weapon. The man sags against a tree and struggles to catch his breath in lieu of answering. He raises his his left hand and lists to the side a bit, which pulls on the girl and nearly knocks her down.

“I am indeed, my… shiny friend. I suspect that makes you a bounty hunter?”

Din faces the red- flashing fob at him and pockets it again. The man glances downward and cocks his head, looking curiously at the floating pram and little green kid in it. “Curious.” The heaviness of his labored breathing fogs the glass dome of his helmet.

“I am only here for you. The mark said nothing about another. Who is this?” Din waves the pronged end of his rifle at the girl, who eyes him with a feral glint. He keeps the rifle trained on her after a second thought spared for her shaking hands, but he straightens his finger off the trigger. He can shock her if need be.

“That is Cee. I stumbled upon her and her father's campsite and somewhat contributed to the death of the man after a bit of-- misunderstanding. I have found myself indebted to her, as she has attempted to save my life,” he shrugs his right arm with some pained effort and gasps to regain his breath, having been winded by simply shifting the injured limb. “But I am dwindling fast. My wound- it festers. The dust has gotten in the suit from the second injury," he waves to his chest with his left hand. "I suggest, Mandalorian, if you want that full bounty you’ve undoubtedly worked so hard for- you’ll help.”

Din watches the man’s chest hitch again and thick blood drools from the wound in his breastbone, causing the labored breathing. He motions for the girl to drop the strange blaster and she does, begrudgingly, after May murmurs to her that the Mandalorian has disintegration rounds in his bandolier and likely also loaded in that rifle.

He's not wrong.

“Can you walk?”

“I can, boss. But it’s slow going. My lungs are blocking up with infection from the wounds I have sustained. It is worse now with the new injury from our most recent aggressors,” he gestures at his chest again and wheezes a weak cough.

“Untie yourself,” Din motions to Cee, who glances at May and does so with a huff. “Go to that tree and sit.” He cuffs her behind her back to the tree, sitting propped against it, and goes back for the bounty. The man is in a badly damaged flight suit riddled with taped-over blaster holes and a vibroblade stab to his chest, from which the blood is leaking. His right arm hangs completely limp and the sleeve around it is soaked dark with blood, tied round with a tight makeshift tourniquet just under the shoulder.

Din slaps a tracking cuff on May’s ankle and sets about investigating the wounds since the suit is punctured anyway. He has a deep gash circling his whole bicep, nearly down to the bone the whole way 'round, that is blackened at the edges and still sluggishly bleeding, but has obviously cost him a lot of blood, and has indeed started to turn gangrenous with rot. “What happened?”

May chuckles and then coughs, his chest stuttering with the effort. “Another bounty hunter caught up to me in The Green, before I ran into Cee. And the fauna here… is far less forgivin’. Even if the aurelac diggin' is well worth its weight in credits. He shot me in the arm and I went down in a gorge of vegetation. Some of the dust, it released– and got in my suit through the hole, and thus into my wound. I tried to scrape out the black rot, but botched the excision. I went chasin’ radio signals looking for aid, and stumbled onto Cee and her father’s campsite, and simply pulled faster than the dearly departed Damon when I requested aid and he suggested at the end of a rail gun that I fuck off-” he chokes off a gasp and clenches his teeth when Mando flushes his chest wound with his flask.

Din works silently, zipping off the ruined suit sleeve at the shoulder joint for better access. He glances back at the pram. Grogu has floated a bit closer and is gurgling curiously. “No,” he says to the little outstretched claw, wagging a yellow-tipped finger at him. “Don’t waste your strength on a bounty. We’ll get paid either way.”

No small part of Din wonders if Grogu is wanting to heal Ezra May because Grogu is the only being in the galaxies who knows what Din looks like, and is staring at a face he most likely recognizes and might even be confused by. Hells, Din is confused by what he's seeing. Is the man related to him, somehow? Either way, Grogu's power shouldn't be used on a quarry of all things.

May frowns and flicks his dark eyes between them, endlessly curious or suspicious, one. His breathing has leveled out, at least.

“It is deeply infected. I’m going to have to amputate your arm if you want to live,” Din sighs, standing and pulling the saber from his belt.

“That…is a bold conclusion,” May huffs indignantly, trying to straighten his lean against the tree. He doesn't quite manage to make it.

“It’s gangrenous and still open. You’ll bleed out or die of the infection before I can get you to a Core planet, or a bacta tank.” He activates the saber and turns to Grogu. “Can you help? Just make sure he doesn't bleed out? No extra healing.” The child nods and turns his luminous eyes back to the man on the ground.

May frowns again. “Is your child a healer?”

“He is none of your concern. Leave this here.” Din lifts the bounty's dead arm, laying it outstretched and utterly limp on a fallen log beside May so he can slice clean downward. “The blade will cauterize. He will make sure you don’t bleed out. I’ll finish cleaning and covering the stump when we're back to my ship. You will behave, or I'll let you bleed out and take the lesser bounty, and leave her tied to that tree.” Din points at the girl and waits until May nods.

“I will do my level best to acquiesce.”

“Good,” Din grunts, and brings the blade down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dank farrik,” you curse, the top half of you in an exposed panel that is sending sparks out as you weld a loose wire clip back into place.

“Problem, iisa?” Says a familiar vocoder, and you smack your helmet on the panel frame trying to straighten back out of the hull. You snort at the timing of the nickname, if nothing else, rubbing the back of your head. Fuse- you grip the soldering tool more firmly in your hand and pull fully out of the hull.

“Mando! Glad you’re back. No, just cleaning up my emergency job from last time. Find your– oh,” you say, pausing when you see the body on a travois dragging behind the pram. There's a girl tied by the binders to Din’s belt as well. He has an extra (oddly shaped) blaster tucked in his belt and the kid seems a bit groggy but is happy to see you.

“That him? And a stowaway?”

“The girl is with him, he asked me not to leave her here. Promised good behavior for it, before he passed out.” You can read from the tip of his head and his body language that he's saying see what a nice guy I am? It makes you huff a laugh.

“How’s your field medic training?”

“I was on Hoth, nerfherder. You know it’s fine. I’ve patched your clumsy ass up more than once. What happened? You shoot him?”

“Found him like this,” Din waves at the travois and unlatches it from the pram, letting Grogu float inside. The girl scoffs at him and kneels by the unconscious man. “Well. Mostly.”

“He’s missing an arm and burning up!” you say, prodding the man's body and feeling. You check his pulse where the gasket of his suit meets glove; he’s alive, at least.

“His wound was septic. We’re days from a Core planet. I had to remove it.”

“You used the saber?!”

Mando shrugs. “It cauterized it.”

“Maker, the brashness of men will kill us all,” you grouse under your breath, and stalk into the ship to make a pallet on the floor. “Drag him in!”

Din does, sitting the girl near the ladder with her wrist cuffed to a rung. “Don’t imagine he’s going far, but leave that tracker on in case. If he loses the leg trying to get rid of it, he really won’t get far.”

You snort a laugh, used to Mando’s dry (and vaguely morbid) sense of humor, and get to work. The wound is large but indeed thoroughly cauterized. You clean and coat it in bacta gel and wrap it firmly, setting a hardening casting wrap over it for good measure and binding it to his ribs over the dressings on his chest wound. Finally, you set up a hemopak and dig out a bag of IV fluids and hang them off a racking hook in the hull. By the time you're piercing his vein in his remaining elbow, the man is stirring with a reedy groan and squirming away from your touch.

“Easy, mate,” you say quietly. He blinks awake and focuses on you after a moment. “Stay down or you’ll earn a better scar than this. Assuming you live to scar over,” you bite the end of the med tape in your teeth and tear it, smoothing the end down.

“My word, I was not aware I'd have such… stunning company on my final journey to certain death,” the bounty says, still surely delirious. You hear the leather of Mando’s glove creak as his hand tightens over the hilt of his blaster, and snort at Din more than the comment. The man’s impossibly deep eyes soften at your smile, flicking all over your face and hands as you work on his wounds.

“Easy, pretty boy, you silver-tongued devil,” you lean in and stage whisper. “You gotta wait til the big guy goes upstairs for that kinda chat.” You give him a ribald wink and pull away at the man’s baffled smile, organizing the medkit before looking up at Mando. “You gonna freeze ‘im?”

“I probably should. Him passing out after I cut the arm off was the only silence I think I've had in the last two days.”

You gasp in mock offense. “You’ve been gone less than one day!”

Mando tips his helmet at you as if to say: point.

You roll your eyes and huff. “Dick. If you do, his arm won’t heal right. Assuming he stays alive after the client gets him and it gets a chance to heal.”

“Assuming.”

“Any idea what they have planned?” you ask as you stow the medkit away and start digging out dinner. You can feel May’s dark eyes following you closely, watching your interactions. You're pretty sure he’s delirious from blood loss and pain, but you can't deny he’s a stunning specimen of a man to look at, even half dead and coated in sweat and muck.

“No, no questions asked. He is wanted for slipping on investment debts for prospecting though, so maybe they’ll put him to work til he drops. Although now I can’t imagine he’ll earn much, one handed with a rotten chest. You’ll mind him, then, iisa?”

You sigh the sigh of the deeply put-upon and nod, passing out food around the hold. “Here kid. Eat up.” You hand the girl a ration bar and flask of water, which she tears into greedily, before seeing to Grogu with a cup of rehydrated bone broth. Mando watches you for a moment before retreating up to the cockpit with his own ration bar. You leave him to it so he can take off his helmet.

“Can you sit up?” You kneel and ask the bounty, and he manages to get up to his remaining elbow and lean heavily on the hull while you rehydrate and heat another soup sachet. While it heats, you knock back your own cup and work on padding out his pallet on the floor.

Grogu stands next to the man’s boot and coos curiously at him, pushing you some errant thoughts and feelings. One makes you pause as he focuses on the bounty’s face and weighs it heavily against something guarded from you, limned in shadow even in his mind. You back away from the thread of thoughts, half sure it’s Din’s face for some reason, and go back to the task at hand.

“Here’s this,” you make sure Ezra is propped to a proper sit, back against the wall, before you pass down two painkillers and, once he’s tossed them in his mouth, a flask of water to wash them down.

“Dinnertime.”

The man allows you to tip the metal cup to his mouth and he swallows down the soup, humming at the spreading warmth. “Thank you, gem.”

You huff a laugh at the nickname and instead of retorting to what is surely a slip of the tongue in the man’s inebriated state, you provide your name. You watch his eyes soften as he accepts the gift for what it is.

“Ah. The sun shines on a dead man. My name… is Ezra, and that little bird that got lashed to my sinkin’ ship is called Cee,” he sighs, sipping more of the soup as you tip it into him. He brings his left hand up, curling his fingers very lightly around your wrist.

“My dear. I know I don't have a single bargaining chip to use as the gallows loom near. But. If I can beg something of you? Do not drag that poor girl into my mess. Convince your man to leave her on Coruscant. She can go to school, make somethin’ of herself. She doesn't deserve to see what happens next, or live through it. Or die, if they decide to extend to her the same fate. Cee is innocent in this. All she has done is try to help with my injury and tried to escape this damnable moon.”

You glance at the girl and meet her flat, steady gaze for a long moment. Grogu gurgles, and you glance at him, appreciating the sense of truth he pushes at you. You nod after a long moment of silence between you and the Child, tipping the rest of the soup into Ezra’s mouth. “I’ll talk to Mando. lay back down and rest. Those pain tablets should knock you out soon. I’m sure your rugged good looks can only improve with some beauty sleep,” you wink at him, pulling a chuckle from his chest.

”My word, gemstone. You are a wonder.”

You get up and clean and put everything away and scoop the kid up, checking the binder on the girl and putting one on Ezra’s remaining wrist for good measure, keeping them on opposite ends of the hold.

“You decent?” You call up the ladder, smiling at Mando’s snort and crackly yes as he replaces the helmet. You climb up and set Grogu in his seat, taking the third and meeting the flat expression of the T-visor when Mando turns.

“May begs that we take the girl to Coruscant and leave her at the Academy. He says he stumbled upon her in the Green and killed her father, and took her on as a mutual source for survival before he was injured. Mando.” You lean forward with your elbows on your knees. “If that is true, and the kid says it is- we can’t take her back to Canto Bight. She’ll be traded off as chattel, at best. Kept in a pleasure house more likely. She’s young, hon. We consign a life and get payment, but we save the other? What’s one more stop?”

Mando looks at you for a long moment and glances to the kid, who jabbers at him. “He agrees with me, by the way,” you translate. Mando shakes his head and turns back to the panel, plugging in new coordinates.

“If you want.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The drop off is significantly more emotional than you or Mando had anticipated.

You had spent the last few days in hyperspace listening to these two pickups talk and talk and talk, about everything and nothing. And now she was wide- eyed and clinging to Ezra’s lone hand, knowing she’d probably never see or speak to him again. She had explained over the days how no one ever talked to her, or how they always put her thoughts and feelings down, so she had learned to be quiet and how to appear thoughtless, even with her mind whirling. But Ezra had always engaged her verbally and probed her thoughts and gave her equalizing jobs to do and met her expectations with his own, rather than treating her like a starry-eyed mooncalf or a burden.

Ezra, on the other hand, didn't seem to give a shit if he was listened to at all - he just couldn't stand silence. It grated on him; so he filled it. He liked conversation and thrived on engagement from the audience; he could never get enough. He absorbed everything Cee had to say and conversated with her amiably or arguably enough. He talked with you when you were in the hold with them, but to be fair the man would talk to a wall if given the opportunity and enough isolation.

Your untrained Force senses are nowhere near as strong as Grogu’s, and you wonder what he is picking up as the girl rushes across the hold to Ezra the second you take off her binder. Mando stands on the ramp with the Child, waiting while Cee lingers and drags out her goodbyes. You can feel the anxiety and stress on her like deadweight.

“I don't want to leave you with them. We can- we’ll pay him off. You can stay with me. We’ll find a place, find some work–”

“As much as I would love to linger, and live long enough to read all the stunning stories you will assuredly write and put out into the universe, I don't think this Mando is the type to be paid off, Cee. And it would require credits we do not have at our disposal. Now go on, girl.” He nudges her away with his forehead, patting the back of her hand on his chest. “Take my chain code- I won’t be needin’ it. Clear out my accounts ‘fore I'm gone, rent you a little place. Go to school. Be a writer. Do everything we talked about. Go on,” he nudges her again with his knee when she doesn't move, her hand tight on his.

“I want one of your comm codes,” Cee says, standing on the top of the ramp, wiping furiously at her damp face and glaring at you and Mando. “You’ll comm me when you're dropping him to your– to whoever’s paying you to do this.”

You glance at Mando and huff at his approving head tilt, offering one of your various recycled comm links. Grogu babbles from Mando’s elbow at her as she leaves the ship, pushing a sad greyness toward you. “I know sprout. She’ll be okay. She’s tough.”

“That she is,” Ezra sighs from the floor, his head not far from your hip. He blinks up at you with one of the sardonic, sad little smiles you’ve come accustomed to in the last few days. You curl your hand into a loose fist to resist the urge to card your fingers through his hair in a consoling gesture.

“Need any shopping done?” Mando calls from the ramp, and you are quick to hand over your growing mental list of parts, soldering strip, replacements for the medkit, food, and water filters. And your favorite snack, if he has time.

“I’m going to find a travel station and run this guy through a wash cycle, he stinks,” you nudge Ezra’s knee with a boot and he gasps in mock offense, making himself cough for it but still grinning. You roll your eyes and start loading a bag. “Bring him back a change of clothes? He’s like… Exactly your size. Maybe a bit leaner. It’s weird.”

Mando hesitates almost imperceptibly before he nods and trods off with the kid tucked in his elbow and the girl, Cee, trailing after him. He intends to take her to the Academy grounds and then head for one of the many markets in the huge city.

You finish packing your bag and grab your coinpurse, intending to return quickly and grab a nap while the boys are gone. Assuming Ezra doesn't talk your ear off. Maybe you’ll dose him up and knock him out after you wash him down.

“Thank you, gem. I am in your debt. For as much good as that does anyone,” the man says, teetering even with his back against the hull where you left him while you gathered supplies.

“It doesn't do anyone any good, considering you're effectively broke and on the way to forfeit your life over your outstanding debts to the wrong people on a gambling planet,” you deadpan, hooking an arm behind his back and pulling him upright. He hisses when the motion pulls on his wounds in his chest, but the bacta patch prevents it from re-opening. “But at least your girl is safe.”

He hums in reply and nods, as somber as you’ve seen him yet.

“Careful. Swing your legs– there you go.” You get him ready to stand and kneel, putting your shoulder under his remaining arm, and get him up to his knees, then his feet in stages. Lots of pulling and grunting and swearing later, Ezra leans against the hull, panting, his short curls stuck to his head under a fresh sheen of sweat.

“Now I have soap and whatnot in my bag, and a change of clothes. Some of Mando’s old loungewear, which will be too baggy on you, but it’ll cover your bits until he comes back with something. I got mouth cleanser and all… deodorant. Can you wash up one-handed?” you ask as you stuff a clean rag into your pouch and flip it closed.

“To be honest, gem. I have not had the pleasure of a water bath since this injury happened,” he shrugs his stump and coughs lightly, still dislodging the dust from his lungs. “And surely not since your boss cut if off. So I do not know. But I'll make the best effort, naturally.”

“I’ll help. The showers are communal, and I trust enough that you understand how to keep that hand to yourself unless you want another appendage missing. Or to end up in carbonite.”

Ezra’s brow locks down in a scowl and he straightens his shoulders. “Of course. I am not in the habit of abusing my position, or women, gem. Despite what you must presume of a bounty, on principle.”

“Mmmmhm,” you hum noncommittally. “Come on,” you drag his arm over your shoulders again and fix your hand around his ribs, and start walking. The tracker on his ankle beeps low and steady, echoing in time with your wristcomm as you leave the ship. You trudge down the ramp and close it, locking the Crest up, and make your way down to the end of the line of docking bays to the traveler service station.

Thankfully the place is none too busy, being midday. There are a family of bluish Ortolan clumped together in one corner and a few straggler smugglers or merchant longhaul cargo pilots keeping to themselves along the rows of showerheads in the wall. There are thin flimsiplast dividers between the showerheads that come up to about chest-height but the back ends are open to the room. You push Ezra into one and help him strip off the flightsuit and his ratty-thin smalls.

“Kriff this suit stinks,” you scrunch up your face and drop the bundle into a nearby sonic clothing compartment to have the dirt and stench of infection and dried sweat buzzed from it. After a brief hesitation, you stuff your own clothes in as well. "How long were you in the green with your injuries?"

“I wandered for a day with my arm injury before I found Cee and her father. And she and I wandered another four before the other bounty hunter found us. And another full day before Mando found us. I do apologize for the smell, at least. Though I imagine you understand why it's so bad, considering your thorough care of me thus far in our odyssey.” Ezra tips his face up into the cool spray while it warms and sighs in relief, deeply appreciating both the pressure and refreshing cleansing after miring in his own stink for weeks. He watches you soap up a rag and drag it up his arm, scrubbing just enough to tingle and really get the dirt and sweat off.

“I do. Arm up,” you tap his elbow with the soapy rag and wash him down clinically, curling your lathered knuckles into the hair under his left armpit and carefully doing the same to the right, avoiding his arm wound, then spreading soap over his face and neck, curling into his scraggly beard and up behind his ears and then down across his too- lean torso. You hand him the rag to scrub over his own half-hard (and unfortunately impressive, you note) genitals before you instruct him to turn under the spray and do the same treatment down his back and legs.

Ezra talks the entire time, endlessly distracted with whatever tall tale crosses his mind and very pleased to have a listening ear to natter into. Right now he's animatedly detailing a yarn about massacring an infestation of channel rats, of all things. If the incessant chatter helps prevent him from getting any more hard under your hands, you're fine with it, you decide with an amused quirk of lips.

Ezra is certainly attractive as hell, but you're not just going to fuck a bounty in a service shower. Part of you can't ignore the abrupt thought that if he’d come up to you in a cantina, you definitely would have dragged him to an inn or ship as soon as you could. He is stupidly cute, with that charming wide, squinty, toothy smile and big, dark brown eyes and that wild tuft of white hair at his temple. Even the tiny, soft roll of his belly had been a surprising delight to find with how malnourished and lean the rest of him was. You definitely enjoy the tenor of his voice, remarkably similar to Mando’s, but unmodulated and thick as syrup with that twangy accent. You interject with little encouraging noises every now and then, spurring him on, even if you're hardly absorbing his story.

Soon enough you're scrubbing the shampoo bar through his hair, scratching your nails firmly into his scalp to get all the sweat and grime out. He practically dissolves under your hands, humming in deep appreciation until you push him back under the stream to rinse. Finally, you peel back the dressing on his missing arm to carefully wash the huge wound cap to prepare for redressing it.

“Stay there and let the water run on your stump for a few minutes, flush it clean. I'm going over here to wash, and then we’ll head back.” You hand him a capful of mouth cleanser and he knocks it back, gargling thoroughly and spitting.

Ezra watches you slip under the flimsiplast divider and turn your own water on. He leans against the wall under the showerhead and lets it flow down his shoulder and off the end of his stump, stinging only slightly as it washes out the scabbing wound and softens it. He has a single passing thought of making a run for it that dissolves down the grate in the floor as quickly as it had been formed; the debilitating combination of injuries and a rotten chest and you have very nearly declawed him. He thinks loosely about the imposing (but hardly unwelcome) image of the Mandalorian, too; tough and hardened but clearly not cruel; quite reasonable and fair, in fact, if his handling of Ezra’s request for Cee is any indication of his character. He even has a child. Ezra shakes his head to clear his swirling thoughts and watches you, keeping his eyes politely on your face even though he's quite tall enough to see all of you over the divider. Nevermind that you were just in here with him, bare and wet while you washed him over. He couldn't help plumping a bit down below due to proximity and general passive interest, but he steadfastly ignores it.

“Are you and our beskar-clad mutual ah- entangled?” He asks, genuinely curious.

You snort and scrub the rag over your body. “I’m not exactly sure Mando is interested in anyone like that. I suspect he had a questionable fling right before he met me in Mos Eisley, some half-feral desert Marshal in the Dune Sea, but I think it left him a little broken-hearted. He hasn't ever acted interested. And he’s my boss, maybe that's why, doesn't want to cross that line.” You shrug. “I mostly mind the kid and do maintenance on the ship and lend a second gun on bigger or tough bounties.”

“And he found you as a mechanic?”

“Yeah, I was working a recovery job for his friend, came in with a rickety heap of a M-111 I'd bartered with some Jawas for and he bought like half the parts off it immediately, had me and Peli knock his own Crest back into shape. And then asked me if I was interested in staying on as a crewmate, and I was, mostly to get off Tatooine. I’d actually first seen him on Nevarro when his covert was there, and he was working as a beroya for the Guild when Karga was running it. I left Nevarro after Karga started shaping it up and the Core started flavoring it too much. And then he found me on Tatooine; rest is history.”

“Beroya?” Ezra tests the word on his tongue and frowns. It's unfamiliar, and he so loves words.

You huff a laugh. “That’s his people’s word for bounty hunter.”

“Hmm. And the little green fella?”

You huff again, eyebrows dancing. “Long story short: Mando’s a bit of a collector, mate. Lost things, loners, the broken and the damned. He tends to save them, sort of despite himself, and then just keeps going, finding others. Gave me a job when I was considering spacing myself off the next public travel barge.... He saved the kid when the Imps wanted to experiment on him. Saved an old merc from a forced labor camp, saved a former drop trooper from her own hand... He flies in to save the day all the damn time. The list goes on.”

“Imps? You're friendly with these folks?”

“Kriff, no. Not intentionally. Way I understood it, the kid was a bounty. Mando couldn't bring himself kill him, so he turned him over warm for a substantial reward, and the guilt ate at him til he broke back in the compound and took the kid back, killed half of Nevarro on the way back out. Been running ever since.”

Ezra’s mouth turns down as he mulls the news over.

“Anyway. Just mind your manners and you won't end up slabbed.”

“I surely will, gem. Being thawed from that process is hell itself; I am unfortunately acquainted with the burning in one’s sinuses for days after. Nothing tastes right for weeks. I'll keep to myself until we must part ways.”

“Good. He doesn't mess around when me or the kid are involved; I'm sure it’s been impressed upon you by now that you’ll end up worse off than this if you even try,” you nod at his stump and shut your water off, ignoring the bounty’s frown.

Ezra watches your form just a little indulgently as you turn away and dry off, appreciating the glide of fine bones under your smooth skin, the soft curves and more toned muscles. He shuts his own water off and starts drying off, managing a patting motion over most of himself, though reaching his legs is giving him trouble.

You dress quickly and come back under the divider to finish his right side, carefully patting the scabbing end of his stump before stepping away for the single set of loose lounge clothes Mando keeps (even though he has never worn them near you).

“Sit and get your feet in,” you instruct, kneeling and holding each leghole open for him to slip his feet in. Ezra sits on the bench and does so, tipping to his left as he balances his weight with his hand planted on the seat.

“I do miss being– symmetrical,” he hisses, carefully maneuvering his stiff right shoulder as you stretch the neck and armhole of a tee shirt over his head and arms.

Despite yourself, you laugh at his complaint. His dark eyes flick up to you and a small smile ticks up one side of his face. “Alright, let's walk back and let this dry a bit, and I'll redress it once it does. Don’t let it touch anything,” you say, spraying the whole raw end of his stump with bacta and wincing at a sharp mental jab of empathic pain when he screws his face up from the sting.

“If you ah- have any of those tablets you have given me since the first day, gem, that would be… Just creamy,” he stammers through gritted teeth, getting back to his feet. “I believe the wash down was simply sinful, but I must admit my wounds are giving me some real grief for it, now.”

“They’re back on the ship. Let me get our clothes out of the sonic and we can go back. I’ll dose you up and feed you, you can sleep it off.”

Ezra nods and watches with his dark eyes as you empty the sonic clothes compartment into your shoulder bag and return, putting everything you brought to rights and shouldering the bag before holding a hand out to drag him upright.

When you make it back to the ship, it's still empty. Din hasn’t commed, so you assume he’s still out shopping, or trying to leave the loquacious and generally nerdy and strange Cee (who has warmed up just enough to be both demanding and overtly chatty) at the Academy. You stifle a laugh at the image of Din trying to deal with her, certain that Ezra won’t appreciate it while he mourns her loss. Even if he is not her father, they were clearly bonded from trauma and circumstance, if nothing else.

When you're safely inside the ship, you leave Ezra at his pallet on the floor and fetch down the painkillers.

“Damn, I only have one tablet left. Let me comm Mando so he can pick up more at the market.” You hand Ezra the tablet and dart up the ladder to do just that, waiting for an affirmative return before you go back down. You jump down the last few rings to find that Ezra has dry swallowed the tablet and managed to flop mostly into his bedding.

“I do appreciate your care of me, gem. Even if I am not meant to live beyond the next few days, you have given me a decent sendoff.”

You hum and start putting things away. “Canto Bight is always moving, and at the moment it's a long way off, so you can estimate it to be more like, eh… nearly a standard week?” You shed your outer layer and start rehydrating a sachet of bone broth for him, already keen on the way he’s listing from the exercise and mounting pain levels. He’ll fall right to sleep after getting a full, warm belly, you’re sure.

“Gemstone, could you be bothered to hand me the satchel I came on this fine vessel with? If you are out of painkillers, I have something to tie me over until our armored friend returns with a more performative narcotic.”

You frown at him and lift the bag, eyeing his outstretched hand. “What does it look like?”

“Kevva, woman. You just showered with me. I am not interested in harming you in the least, not that I imagine I could in my state. But if you insist, it would be a small, thumb-sized, off-white bottle. White lid.” You find it quickly and shake it, hearing tiny caplets plink against the sides. You don't recognize the swirly script the label is written in.

“What are these?”

“They are painkillers from an old field kit from Cee’s father’s drop ship. They are well past expired, but if it’s all I have, I will manage until our reflective leader returns.”

You roll your eyes and shake out a few pills into your palm, offering them. The dosage had long since worn off the label. Ezra takes them all and chews them up before you can snatch any back. “You better not have just OD’d, asshole,” you grit, handing him the cup of broth.

“I know it’s equivalent to asking a mountain to bow down, but do endeavor to trust me just enough to know I would not end my life before my time is due, gem. I said they are expired, I have only taken extra to ensure some semblance of relief for this incredible ache,” he shifts his stiff right shoulder and his whole face screws up with pain, body rigid with it.

“Let me-” you start, and move behind the pillow behind his head and shoulders. He is unconcerned but watches you with those fathomless dark eyes, curious. You lay your hands on either side of his neck and squeeze.

“If Mando shows up, you’re dealing with the fallout,” you say, massaging rhythmically. Ezra clenches his jaw on a sigh and rounds his shoulders out, seeking more.

“Understood, friend. Oh. I am– endlessly grateful.”

You find a tight whorl of muscle quickly, just under the right shoulderblade near his spine. You set to working your thumb into it, coaxing it back into shape, and eventually it releases, along with the tension you feel in his aura. The pained groan Ezra can't quite stifle is positively sinful, which nearly makes you laugh. He turns his head with a sardonic smile at your stifled snort.

“To be honest, gemstone. That spot has pained me more than the wound itself since I was injured. Your friend spared me much of the site pain when he cauterized the wound with his laser- blade. But that muscle, from carrying myself somewhat tilted, has only gotten worse. I find myself in your debt yet again.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just behave til the next port and we’ll call it even.”

“Now I must riposte, my dear. I have behaved quite admirably in your care, have I not?”

You chuckle, nodding. “You have, though you are also healing and no doubt getting an itching fever from being consigned, injured, to the hold of a ship in space with little leg room and now one less ear to babble incessantly into. I’m asking that you continue to behave, then.”

“Incessantly!”

“Ezra, you know full damn well that you could say half as many words in Basic and get your point across! You like the sound of your own voice!”

“Listen here, little bird, I wouldn't natter on so much if you didn't like how similar I sound to your tin man!” He grins quick when he sees you flush, caught.

“You do sound oddly like him. Not as uh-”

“That is a bedroom voice,” Ezra interrupts, breaking into a grin at your blush. “I thought the same thing when he leveled his rifle at me in the Green. He cannot be doing that on purpose all the time. It has to be the vocoder, something not wired right in his bucket.”

You laugh, which makes Ezra smile again, softer this time. “Have you truly never seen him?” you shake your head and his eyebrows lift. “Not even by accident?”

“He’s very careful. It’s important to him, his beliefs. I don't think he's taken it off without knowing I'm gone or dead asleep since he hired me. Maybe even before, with his kid. But I know the kid has seen him.” You wink, wiggling your eyebrows as if sharing juicy details. Ezra huffs a laugh and lays back in his netting.

“How do you know? Do you speak his language?”

“Grogu has the Force. I am Force sensitive, but untrained. He sends me thoughts and feelings now and again, and I translate, to a degree, for Mando. Though the guy’s getting good at understanding the kid’s coos and gurgles and body language by now; I don't have to do much. I know Mando’s name, because of that, but I believe it was an accident, a passing thought- and Mando has never told me it, so I won’t use it. Or share it!” You hold up a finger to stem off the next question just as the man’s mouth opens. He grins quick again, as if mysteriously proud of you for some reason, and you continue.

“Anyway. Grogu will tap his chin now and then, just under the lip of the helmet, and there is sort of a longing around the gesture, but he gets an image in his head- a memory- but he clears it or drops a wall between us before a face can form. I can only assume it's because of me.”

Ezra bites his lips and is quiet for a long moment. “I was going to ask about your powers,” Ezra defends himself, playing up his sulk, but his eyelids are growing heavy. He yawns hugely and you grin. Got him.

“Not much to tell. I’m like more of a– palpable empath than a Jedi. Go to sleep.” With his grumble of assent, you take his empty soup cup back and rinse it before dropping into the bunk across the hold, watching the comm link and waiting for Din to come back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Din returns to the ship a few hours after he left it, bereft of one child and holding that much more tightly to his own. He remembers well what it feels like (what it felt like) to give his own child away after too- short a time with him, because he thought Grogu going with the Jedi would lead to a better life for him. Grogu had been quiet as a womp rat since they left Cee at the Academy and the complete silence was grating on Din’s nerves.

He had received your comm for painkillers as he was leaving the market, so he doubled back and retrieved what you asked for at the first stall he saw with med supplies. By the time he’s scaling the ramp into the Crest, he’s ready for a meal and a nap before they take off again. The dock fees are paid up for the full day, after all.

He enters to find the bounty snoring hard on his pallet and that you are lightly asleep in Din’s own bunk. He stops and watches you for a long moment until Grogu gurgles excitedly at the sight of you and you stir.

You inhale sharply and roll over at the sound, blinking and sitting up by the time he seals and locks it. Grogu squirms and gets down, toddling off into the hold.

“Nice shopping trip?” You ask, taking some of the supplies and beginning to stow it.

“Not bad. I intend to nap for a bit and then we’ll head out, take him to Canto Bight?” He tips the helmet at the man snoozing on the floor and you nod. “Here’s those painkillers, iisa.”

“Ah, thanks.” You shake one out and dry swallow it, wincing at a pull in your lower back, and pull down the medkit to stow them and start putting everything else away, closing panels and hanging larger items in cargo netting. “Go on and nap, I know you pulled an all-nighter.”

“You can keep the bunk,” Din says, shifting his weight. Grogu yawns in the crook of his arm and droops over it, ready for his own tiny hammock. “Two of those please?”

You snort and grin at him, passing two tablets over. He never takes meds; he must be really going through it. “Yeah, point. I had a nap. Go on, take that bucket off and shut the door, get some rest. I’ll knock at the door when the docking timer goes.”

“Alright,” Din sighs and bumps his shoulder fondly against yours before crawling into the bunk. Just before the door slides shut he hears Ezra stir. You hear him, too, and take the clothes he got for Ezra and lay them in a folded pile on a low shelf near the nest.

“Gem, is our Mando back with those meds?”

“He is. Is your expired experiment not cutting it?”

Ezra huffs a pained laugh and shakes his head. “It is not, I'm afraid. May I pilfer some of those?” He tips his forehead at the bottle in your hand and you come over, shaking one out.

“You already had one, and it's only been half an hour. So you can wait for it to wear off, or you can have one, now. I'm not boxing your kidneys over expired meds and some site pain."

In answer, he reaches up and accepts the single tablet, swallowing it dry. “I am not eager to see how this feels with nothing in my system, gem.” He shifts his right shoulder and winces, hard. “Thank you.”

“Don't have much of a pain tolerance, do you?”

Ezra huffs a laugh and nods dreamily, still mostly asleep despite the chatter. “Never thought much of it before I sustained this injury. It seems I do not.”

There is enough room on the bundle of blankets for two, so you drop to a knee beside Ezra’s hip. “Shove over a bit,” you murmur, tapping his side with your knuckles, and he does, shimmying toward the wall. You glance back at the hatch to Din’s bunk and see it closed, and you can hear the kid already snoring from within.

You slip down and lay on your back beside the bounty, who is laying still but not quite tense. “Forgive me for not trying too hard to avoid you, whatsoever, gem. We did wash up together, after all. and I am a bit of a cuddler, truth be told.”

“Hush, dummy. He hears you, you’re gonna end up in carbonite.”

“Is he so possessive of you?”

You snort at the mental image. “Not how I'd put it. Overprotective, maybe. He has a loyalty streak a parsec wide, not that it ever does him much good. Mando gets his ass kicked on about half the jobs he does.”

Ezra chuffs a soft laugh and straightens on his back, uncomfortable with his unbalanced weight on his side. The move pulls on the still- sealing wound in his sternum and he hisses quietly.

“Just go back to sleep. The alarm will go off in six hours and we’ll leave for Canto Bight.”

“Well, gem. I can't think of a better way to spend my final hours than laying here peacefully with you. Maybe if our shiny friend joined us- sans the shiny, for the sake of comfort- it could be a real party.” Ezra yawns hugely and settles, falling asleep quickly as the fresh tablet hits his bloodstream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You stir awake to the sound of the bunk door sliding open, maybe an hour later. “Hmm? Mando?” You whisper and pop your head up, feeling sweaty and wildly overheated in the blanket nest. Ezra has curled against your side on the pallet but he’s not got an arm to drape over you; you're not even touching all that much. The heat can’t be from him. Not all of it.

Weird.

You sit up and see that Din is wriggling out of the bunk silently and very carefully, struggling to avoid disturbing Grogu snoozing hard in his little hammock. He slaps the door controls to shut it as soon as he is out.

“Osik!” Din gasps, falling to a knee. “Ii– iisa.”

You can feel the panic in him even as it's edging into his voice and jump up, rushing the few feet across the hold to him. “Mando! What’s wrong?” you hiss in a whisper.

“So– so hot. What’s- is it hot in here to you?” he shakes his head when you nod, watching the sweat roll down your temple and chin to soak into the collar of your flightsuit. "Okay."

“I am feeling it too, though I do not think it’s the temperature in the hold, Mando,” Ezra grits, struggling up to an elbow. “Did we all ingest something similar? Or were we exposed? Something is perhaps having a – biological response with each of us?”

You wipe at the sweat beading on your brow and try to think, which is easier said than done. Your thoughts are snarled tight and your blood is thrumming under your skin, pooling in your belly and thighs.

“We... Oh! We each took a painkiller. Or two,” you say, turning to Mando, who is on his hands and knees and panting under his helmet. He already seems far worse off than you or Ezra.

“Dank farrik. Soup. And – the tablets.”

“We've been having the same soup sachets for a week. That can't be it. What in Kevva’s name was in those tablets?”

You turn to Ezra and blink slowly. “Let me get them,” you fumble for the medkit and bring it down, digging for the white cylinder tube. “It’s just the usual standard medkit bottle- see? It says– oh. Uh, Mando? Where did you get these?”

Ezra reaches out his hand and you pass the shaker to him. It does look exactly like a standard over- the- counter Core painkiller bottle for a standard field medkit- but apparently recycled by spice runners and handed off by mistake in the busy market. The label reads Spiced Honey in Aurebesh and Huttese, though the script is faded. He squints and reads off the rest.

“‘Pollination Aid for Insectoid, Reptilian, Amphibious, and other cold-blooded sentient beings. Not recommended for mammalian biologies. For consenting adult use only; do not take more than one tablet in a standard cycle day. Common side effects in warm- blooded mammalian biologies include heightened basal temperature, undue sweating, erections lasting longer than four hours, hypersensitivity, amorous behavior, increased self-lubrication, and full loss of inhibition in varying degrees of strength. Do not combine with other intoxicants’. Well. We’re fucked, perhaps quite literally,” Ezra drops the shaker into the nest of blankets and curses under his breath, glancing at Mando mindlessly kicking off his boots and then to you.

“Gem, I know you have taken one as well, but I highly recommend you freeze me and lock yourself in the cockpit or the bunk before Mando loses his grip. He took two. And even with one arm and in a good bit of pain I find myself unlikely to hold back if this settles in further. I have no desire to harm you, especially against your will. I don't imagine he does either, but we may not be in control much longer.”

Your eyes are hazy, glassy, breath catching in your chest as you frown, deciphering Ezra’s words while the rest of your vision blurs. Your body heat feels doubled- tripled with both of the men’s suffering assaulting your heightened Force senses. Din is already sloughing his gambeson and flightsuit, leaving the armor attached to the connection points at shoulders and thighs, his breathing labored. Soon he is down to his compression bottoms and a ratty-soft liner shirt and the helmet, the neck stretched wide. You stare at his flushed bronze skin and the beginning of a thatch of chest hair peeking out of the neckline and lick your dry lips, abruptly very eager for a taste of the salt of him.

Both of them.

“Iisa, please. I don’t– what the fuck,” Din groans desperately, dropping his helmeted forehead to the durasteel floor. He’s got both arms crossed around his stomach, heaving deep breaths as if all the air being circulated by the scrubber is not enough.

“Mando, I suggest you come over here and slake that particular thirst with me, unless your partner is willing. You can take me if you like; I must admit the desire is mutual, and I do not mind being the passive party, especially considering neither my balance nor dexterity is what it once was.”

Din is already crawling across the space to the pallet, gripping Ezra’s ankle and tugging desperately until the other man is dragged to the edge of the nest of blankets. He mantles over Ezra and pauses, tips the helmet back and up to face you, still kneeling nearby. “Go up and lock yourself in the cockpit, or join us, cyar. I can't guarantee you won’t be– touched if you stay- my control is– slipping.”

“I want to stay. I want to watch you. I want to- touch you. Both,” you add, your hands shaking as you run them thoughtlessly over your body. Your nerves light up at every press, even over your clothes. Suddenly it’s far too hot and, like Mando, you start tearing at your flight suit and smalls.

You cup your tits and warmth pools low in your belly, rising to a rolling boil as you watch Din whine low and demanding as he drags Ezra’s bottoms off, too impatient to shuck the man’s boots so his loose pants get caught. They have a quick struggle which ends in the bounty with one boot off and leg freed, and his pants twisted around the other ankle. With a frustrated growl, Mando shoves Ezra's shirt up to his armpits. May wriggles the top off, tugging one-handedly at Mando’s liner shirt until he drops his head forward and the stretched neckline slides easily over the helmet. He throws the garment to the side and takes one of Mando’s hands, bringing it up to his face.

“Yes. Get them wet,” he demands. Din drives three fingers past Ezra’s loquacious lips to wet them on his tongue. He draws them back a moment later, thoroughly soaked, to wrap a slicked fist around both their cocks. Ezra’s head falls back to the bedding with a thunk, a strangled groan squeezing out of him.

The bounty’s single hand can’t stay still, he roves it over his own chest down to where his legs are spread around Mando’s thickly muscled hips and then up, catching on a peaked brown smudge of nipple. He pinches it with a twist and grins quick at the rough sound it earns. Din growls at the tease and ruts his hips forward, gripping a bit tighter if the noise that punches out of them both is any indication.

Din wants very badly to rub his bare face against the man’s chest- your chest- any skin. It feels like every instinct he has is to bury his face in skin. It is incredibly frustrating to be unable to, but he has just enough coherence to keep his helmet on, for now. He hopes idly that you’ll have the wherewithal to slap the lights off if he tries to remove his helmet. He drops his forehead to Ezra’s sternum, avoiding the weal of pink scar tissue that has healed up nicely under the bacta patch, and whines low and plaintive. The drag of his fist and wet and heat on his cock is not enough.

“I don't know if I have slick,” he grits out, lifting the visor to face the bounty below him. Ezra blinks slow at him, frowning slightly before it clicks.

“I may have some in my satchel. Gem, where did you set it?” He turns to face you, legs snapping shut around Din’s hips as the Mandalorian squeezes them tighter and ruts harder.

You whimper, a hand in your smalls and flightsuit shucked to your waist. Both men snap their attention to you at the sound and slow in their rutting. Din reaches his other hand out and makes grabby hands at you, seemingly past the capability of words.

“Gem, get the slick, then take off that suit and come sit on my face,” Ezra growls, rutting up against Din anew until the man plants a fist by his head and drives down, deeper and harder.

"Maker, yes, iisa. Do that," Din says.

You dump Ezra's bag on the floor and find the vial easily enough. You then squirm the rest of the way out of your suit and crawl over, eager and desperate for the press of skin on yours. Your own skin feels too tight, flushed and overheated.

“I want to–” you start, gasping when you reach them and Din pushes your face down to Ezra’s lips, coaxing you both into a desperate kiss that is mostly tongue and teeth and not much skill. Ezra clings to you with his hand, his belly flexing with the force of Mando's jarring thrusts from below.

“Come here, precious thing. Bring your leg over. There you go. Come down to me- I can’t quite–” he drags your hips down with a yank and your mound crashes into his mouth. The vial of slick skitters off toward the shelves, unneeded for now.

He growls into you, the vibration lighting up your entire body and you throw your head back, nails sliding on his chest, narrowly avoiding the bacta patch at the base of his sternum. You're kneeling over Ezra's head, facing Mando, struggling to keep your knees planted under the assault that is Ezra laving broad strokes through your folds and sucking on your clit in turns. His arm is an iron band just above your ass, keeping you planted on him. His nails are pressed into your opposite hip, a tiny bite of pain to accentuate all the swirling pleasure. Sweat beads on your skin, blood thrumming with need and lust and desire.

Ezra's tongue winds you up tighter and tighter, his hand alternately squeezing your cheek roughly before drifting round to cup and knead your breast. He thumbs your peak before he slides across to the other with a low hum of satisfaction into your core. You push your chest into his palm and, when he brings his hand back to pull you back down to his mouth, you tip forward and curl your tongue around the perfectly twinned tips of their cocks peeking out of Din’s fist. Din makes a choked noise and pushes his own cockhead at your lips, throwing his head back when you suckle them both at the same time. As a reward, Ezra flattens his tongue against you and encourages your hips to start grinding on his face.

“Bring yourself to completion on my tongue, gem. I want to drink from your fountain before our friend truly loses himself. I believe watching you come on my face will be the tipping point.”

You do exactly as you are told, planting both hands on Ezra’s chest and riding his face until you shatter. As you shiver through the come down, you abruptly want them both, desperately. You wildly consider fitting them both inside, somehow. But before the thought accumulates steam, Din is wracked with a wave of lust a good deal stronger than you or Ezra are feeling. He did take two tablets, after all.

Din makes a low, desperate sound and reaches for you. “Cyar. Please, can I?”

“Din. Please, yes. Come, come here,” you slip and use his name, but he barely notices, only enough to tip his head briefly in confusion as you drag him away from wedging between Ezra’s thighs and urge him behind you. “Give me your cock. I need it! I feel so empty,” you complain, grinding back against him when he kneels behind you, over Ezra’s crown.

“Mando, let me get you good and wet for our gem. Put that in my mouth before you spear into them,” he laves over you once more and tips his head back, catching the head of Din’s cock as it throbs downward, making the Mandalorian shudder at the sudden warmth and wet.

“Ours?” Din murmurs distractedly before it dissolves into a heady groan at whatever Ezra does with his tongue. He thrusts forward into the man’s throat and Ezra soaks his cock, thick spit clinging to the tip as Din pulls away and notches the head at your weeping entrance. "Iisa. Ours."

You bend forward and drop your mouth over Ezra’s turgid length just as Din pushes inside you to the hilt, his fat cock stretching you beautifully. You both groan at the stretch and tight squeeze, respectively. Din pushes his forehead into the dip between your shoulder blades and grinds his hips forward, staying sheathed deep.

“Oh! Oh, gem, my dear, your mouth– please!” Ezra paws at you desperately when you lift off to gasp, but you take him back in eagerly when he tugs on your shoulder. His stomach tenses to hardness when he lifts his head up, lapping at your apex while the rest of you is stretched tight around Din’s girth. His tongue traces where you are joined and Din makes a low sound that is barely human. Ezra’s hand can’t be still- he roams it over you and Din each, finally squeezing the Mandalorian’s muscular ass and encouraging him to thrust a bit more energetically, which drags your clit over the bounty’s tongue with each push.

“Oh, fffffuck,” Mando grits when you clench around him at Ezra’s additional stimulation, milking his cock with a rhythmic squeeze. He pulls out slowly, snapping his hips back in and pounding against that deep spot, high up by your cervix. It makes your eyes roll back, your jaw slack around Ezra's girth as you suck in a breath, and you feel the abrupt urge to pee and clench that much tighter, which just makes Din do it again.

Ezra’s tongue drags upward down Mando’s shaft and over his tightening balls, sucking one fuzzed globe into his mouth before Din pulls back and repeats the thrust, tilting this time to hammer repeatedly into that same spot. Ezra’s hand slides from around your hips to your belly, pressing up between your hipbones with the backs of his knuckles, pushing your deepest spot down until you're sure to shower him with your cum if Din keeps up the punishing strokes. He returns to sucking your clit, kneading the bud carefully between his tongue and teeth.

“Boss, I do believe our gem deserves to be filled with your seed. Pump this gorgeous pussy full, so I can clean it up,” he demands, urging Din on. His thrusts become more brutal, his hands gripping your hips turning to a bruising strength, and you love it.

“Yes- yes, Mando! Fill me up. I need your cum,” you gasp, thrusting your hips back on him. He growls beneath the helmet, the sound coming out flat and that much more grating for it.

You can feel your orgasm building low and insistent in your belly, the swelling heat and pressure of it blooming outward into every extremity. Ezra flattens his tongue against your clit, giving you something to grind against when Din knocks your hips forward. You suck weakly at the cock in your mouth, using your hand to move over what you can’t manage in the moment, more applying tongue and wetness and heat than anything akin to actual talent but Ezra seems to be loving it. His hand presses up on your belly again just when Din nails you deep and holds your head down on Ezra’s dick, and you– break.

Your cunt grips tight around where Din is buried deep, all the way to the hilt, grinding in firmly and giving you something substantial to milk. A gush of your juices flows into Ezra’s mouth as you choke on his cock, your whole body clenching and releasing in a full-body orgasm that steals the last wisps of your breath.

With a chest-deep groan, Din’s head falls forward again with an unforgiving thump of helmet against your shoulder. He grinds deep, coming with a ragged gasp as your insides milk an orgasm out of him that seems to last forever. He absolutely floods your channel, his movements making it gush out with every thrust and grind.

Ezra pops his hips upward, sucking greedily on your soaked folds, lapping your combined come, and dragging his tongue hungrily up the hard rib on the underside Din’s cock. Gasping and still rock hard, the Mandalorian pulls out of you and buries his soaked and still- hard length between Ezra's lips instead.

When he pulls out, Ezra picks up a low chant, murmuring depraved things about the taste of your perfect pussy, the salt of Mando’s come, your heat and wetness and deliciously slick insides. He buries his tongue in your channel, sucking more come out. The bounty thrusts up into your throat once- twice, and Din finally lets you pull away enough to breathe just as Ezra floods your mouth.

“Ffffuck,” Ezra cries out, turning his face into your thigh as he shakes through his orgasm, clinging to your body collapsed onto his. “It has- oh! Been a long time since I received such attentions, gem- forgive my abrupt– fffffff! Finish!”

You barely have time to swallow before Mando is already dragging at your hips again, rutting up along the cleft between your cheeks despite your still-pulsing cunt. He’s still rock hard and stifling a petulant groan. You pull away and he whines but lets go, only to turn his demanding hands on Ezra.

“Let a man breathe, Mando,” the man gripes, swatting uselessly at the hands grabbing him.

“I’m sorry. It’s– maybe you should freeze me,” Mando says to you, and you scoff.

“Not a chance,” you pant, and flop to the side off of Ezra’s chest.

He keeps his hand braced on Din’s ribs, asking for a moment to recover. “Would an intercrural rut suffice while I catch my breath, tin man?”

Din simply growls at the nickname and crawls back down over the other man, rolling them to their left sides and spooning up behind him. You watch, enraptured and overheated, noting with curiosity how very similar their bodies are. The mushroomed tip of Mando’s unceasing erection peeks in and out of the clench of Ezra’s thighs, made slippery by the slick you left on Mando’s cock. Din’s fingers claw at Ezra's chest and belly, holding him almost too-tightly. You feel the ghost of that grip on your hips and groan, feeling yourself leak afresh at the memory.

“Iisa, please. Are you alright? Did we–?” Din presses his forehead against the knot of Ezra’s right shoulderblade, growling at his loss of words. He can’t focus. Luckily, you and Ezra are more clear minded, if no less under the influence of extreme arousal.

“I’m fine, Mando. Just need a breather. Not everyone has highly- trained stamina and endurance,” you chuckle, rolling back toward the men. Ezra lays on his left side, hooking his ankles together to tighten the squeeze. Mando seems to appreciate it; his hips stutter forward sharply.

“I can’t- I don't think I can come like this. It’s not enough. I need– inside something. Friction isn't– enough,” he grits out, hands wandering down Ezra’s torso to drag his top leg back and up over his hip.

“Easy, boss. You can't go jammin’ that weapon in there without some prep, and something to ease the way. How about you come up here and abuse my mouth again, and we’ll see to the other, after, if you are still in need? Our gem and I seem to be faring better with the foggy mind. Perhaps another orgasm or two will help you?”

You prop against the adjacent wall of the hull and watch in abject fascination and want as Din crawls over Ezra, shoves him to his back, plants his knees in the man’s armpits, and feeds him his cock.

“Maker,” you sigh, a hand drifting thoughtlessly to cup your throbbing cunt. The tease of the touch is enough to make your legs shiver shut around your hand.

Ezra, for his part, takes Mando’s cock down his throat skillfully and a little greedily. He talks - filthy things- when Din slides out too far. It makes Mando growl and thrust deeper when he goes back in, which makes Ezra grin around his girth like he's won something.

“What I wouldn't give to set my mouth on every inch of you, you gorgeous thing,” he says before being choked on the fat tip nudging past his tonsils. You watch as the bounty simply rolls his head side to side to make it fit better, even deeper. Mando whines and shakes his head, already desperate for a kiss and struggling to recall why his damned helmet is still on. “I bet you are pretty, aren’t you?” Ezra drags his hand up Din’s torso, thumbing his nipples, tweaking one meanly.

“Tight body, pretty cock- why wouldn't your face match? It’s quite a sin and sacrifice to keep that mouth all to yourself, don't you think? Though at least you are willing to share this,” he tongues the throbbing head of Din’s prick bobbing against his lips, sucking the head methodically, working the tip of his tongue into the slit and grinning with Mando whines and shivers at the focused stimulation.

“Iisa,” he pants, gripping Ezra's wrist as his hand slides down his belly. He pins the man’s arm to the floor above May's head and thrusts deep and slow a few times, relishing how deeply Ezra takes it in his throat without struggle, though tears are brimming in the corners of his eyes. Din catches his breath when he slides all the way out and holds himself there, balances on his knees and one fist, the other hand still pinning Ezra's.

Your eyes are locked on the way Ezra breathes like a fighting bull up at him, nostrils flared, brow furrowed, fingers curled around the back of Din’s hand, jaw stretched wide around his girth. Your own fingers are absently strumming your seam, gently stimulating yourself back toward desperation. Din calls your name and your eyes flick up to meet the impassive visor, in stark contrast from the rest of his body language, broadcasting his need.

“The lights,” Mando prompts, and your breath punches out of your chest. He's going to take it off.

Belatedly, you reach up and slap the lights off. The only glow is from various controls dotted around panels in the hull, red and blue and a dim, grimy white that gives off the impression of shadows only- no details in the bleached space, only black form over an indistinct background. You hear the helmet grate across the floor and the wet sound of a mouth on something before Ezra (you think- they sound so similar) groans low and needy.

You crawl back to the pallet and find the men where they were, only now Din is bent double and plundering Ezra’s mouth with his tongue instead of his cock.

“Boss, I strongly– urge you to give our gem the gift of your mouth while you can. Let me attend to the fires down below,” he pants between kisses. You reach out to card your fingers through his hair and can feel that Din still has him fully pinned. In the next breath, Mando has you swept up to his chest with both arms around your back and he licks into your mouth, groaning into you as Ezra swallows him again, a pioneering finger tracing over his hole from behind.

“Cyar,” Din breathes against your lips. “Sit on his dick, while I fuck his mouth.” He grins against your lips when Ezra groans in disbelief beneath him and you scramble to obey, giddy off the high of feeling Din smile against your mouth, rather than hearing it through the vocoder. Din dismounts Ezra’s chest and turns, pinning his arm again, under a shin this time, and feeding the bounty his balls while he strokes himself. He hears you slick Ezra with your cunt by sandwiching it between your seam and his belly and rutting along the length before you position yourself over him.

You grip Ezra in your hand and can already tell the difference, even in the dark. Ezra’s cock is a bit leaner than Din's, though they are remarkably similar in both look and form. Each the full length from your fingertips to the heel of your palm, both uncut and a ruddy brownish-pink and flushed at the tip, framed with a thatch of tidy, dark curls and nicely bundled balls. Mando was perhaps a bit girthier, but then so was he compared to Ezra’s malnourished and ill frame.

When you line up and drag your dripping cunt over his length, you can feel Ezra’s whole body vibrate with a groan that is echoed when Din pulls back. He feeds Ezra his cock just as you sink down on the man’s length, ripping a desperate sound from his throat which vibrates around Mando’s root. Din can feel the forearm pinned under him scrabbling for something to hold onto. He adjusts and drags the hand up, holding it against his own chest as he tips his hips down. You grind forward, settling Ezra deep inside you.

“Come here, iisa. Give me your mouth,” you gasp at the softness of Din’s voice, unmodulated and hopelessly endearing. Your mouth meets his, cautious but desperate. He encourages you to o0en your lips, so he can tease your tongue with his own. It's not skilled, of course- how could he be? But the kiss goes from exploratory to hungry in seconds. Din licks into you, a low growl rumbling in his chest as Ezra swallows around him. He works his hand from Din’s grasp and grips your hip, rutting up into you and sucking desperately at the length on his tongue.

“Make him come,” Din demands, breathy and demanding, and you nearly swoon. Your core tightens impossibly when Ezra thumbs your clit, winding tighter until it snaps and your stomach unspools in clenching and releasing spasms. Your limbs feel heavy, legs no longer wanting to work as you try to lift and drop again. Under your hands, Ezra's belly is taut with tension, his hips working against your weight for a few more thrusts to meet his own end now that you have been sated.

Ezra clamps a hand on your hip and whines around Din, the onslaught of sensation almost too much before he simply- snaps. You feel him pulse and spill inside you, painting your insides that are already slick from Din’s come moments before, and you drop your weight, seating him deep, overwhelmed and incredibly tired. Mando is not anywhere near finished, though. The thought occurs that he might fuck you both unconscious before his stamina and the spice wears off.

“Kriff,” you groan, sliding forward off Ezra’s cock, your gushing-slick passage leaking all over his soft, lean belly. The man sucks harder at the length in his mouth and Din moans- the sound heady and desperate without the flattening of the vocoder- and spills on his tongue.

“Oh kriff is– is right, iisa.” Din flops bonelessly to the side, facing up but with his head by Ezra’s hip. You are still straddling Ezra's waist, but you list to the side as Din tugs you down between them

“You know my name,” he says quietly, brushing the hair off your sweaty face with soft, callused fingertips. You snort and duck your head.

“Yeah, ah- I think the kid thought it by accident once when our connection was open. I think it was an accident anyway. He makes sure I can't see your face in his memories, but that one slipped through, I guess.”

“I don't mind.” He pushes your foreheads together and you sigh, relaxing.

Ezra simply lays there and enjoys the afterglow, his face buoyed on your chest. The worst of the spice is out of your and his system, and the pain is creeping back into the wound and the knot of his shoulder. He speaks up:

“How are you faring, boss? Has the spice run its course through you, or are you still in the throes?”

Mando hesitates for a moment. “I am still painfully hard, though not as– inebriated as I was. I can- maybe make do,” he starts to pull away but you and Ezra tug at him.

“I said you could fuck me and I meant it,” Ezra chuckles, and the wind punches out of Din’s chest.

“I– yes. Please,” he asks.

“Well then. Did we find that slick, gem?” Ezra is already levering up to his elbow, letting Din paw at his hips til they are both on their knees. You pat around the floor, corner to corner, in search of the slick in the dark.

“Can you balance like this?” Mando checks in, pushing the bounty forward. He holds Ezra ‘round the ribs and supports his weight with ease, showing his strength. Ezra drops to his forearm with a grunt and wriggles, testing his weight and balance, before nodding.

“Yes. Just go slow, to start. I’m neither as turgid nor as numb to oversensitivity as you at the moment, boss. And I have already come twice under your and your partner’s skilled attentions, which I have not done in one sitting in a terribly long time.”

You crawl forward and pass off the vial of slick, accepting a searching, heated kiss as Din cups your face and drags you closer on your knees. “Lay under him, iisa. Meshurok,” he teases, calling you as Ezra does, in his own tongue. “Let him bury his face in these,” his hands drop and cup your breasts, kneading playfully. You huff and press another kiss to Din’s precious mouth before ducking to do as he says.

“Well hello there, gem. I can’t see you, of course, but I can tell by the firming of this beautiful cheek against mine you are feeling quite ebullient.” Ezra nuzzles your face, tucking his nose under your ear, and gasps at something Mando does from behind. You feel his hips lift and push back, and a low groan pushes out of him into the soft skin of your throat.

“Come here,” you say, gripping his sweat-damp hair and turning his face up to your own for a sweet kiss. “I’ll hold you- just relax, pretty boy,” you coo, carding your hand through his sweaty hair. You tug at the blonde patch until he exhales hard and melts against your whole front.

“I don't think that particular label has ever been granted to my generally- undesirable person,” Ezra mumbles, gasping quietly again when Mando adds a second finger. "But I can't deny I do enjoy it coming from-- you."

“You must not have met many folk with eyes, then,” Mando quips, scissoring his fingers before Ezra can retort, though the one-two combo punches a breathy laugh out of him. Even if Ezra looks an uncanny amount like Mando, himself, he can compliment the man without it feeling too much like narcissism. For as much as they look alike, they are quite different.

“I agree,” you murmur into Ezra's soft hairline. The gentleness of you both gets to him, quicker than anything else has. Gets under his skin and into his heart.

“That I can – Oh! Oh shit, oh shit-” he pants, rocking back on Mando’s fingers now, hardening against your thigh, despite feeling like he couldn't possibly. He ducks his head to your breasts, nuzzling and then slipping his mouth over the soft swell of one, panting at what Mando’s doing from behind, gripping at you while trying to balance his weight. You push your chest up into his face, encouraging him to change to the other breast, sucking your nipple into the heat of his mouth. You arch into the stimulation and can’t help but tighten your knees around his ribs.

Din feels animalistic. As bad as any time he's been separated from the kid in a battle, but different. He wants to rut, fuck, come, mark– rub his scent and grip bruises into flesh. He ruts his painfully hard cock against a spare curve of flank and curves his hand upside down, his palm at the top of Ezra’s cleft and fingers still curled inside, draping his weight all along the man’s spine. He nuzzles his nose and mouth against the back of Ezra's head, into his dark, short curls. The man smells like your soap and antiperspirant, and the flame of desire in Din’s chest blows wide into a bonfire of pure lust. He rubs his face all over the back of Ezra’s neck and shoulders, reaching under him for you, palming a breast, stretching forward and sandwiching the man between you for a kiss.

“Mando,” you sigh, scritching at the scruff under his chin. You unerringly find the sparse spot on the left side and press a kiss to it. Ezra growls a little between you, feeling somewhat neglected, and turns his head into the right side, finding the matching spot there and dropping a wet smear of a kiss on it.

Din presses back up to his knees and withdraws his fingers, pushes back in with three, bares his teeth at the stretch around his knuckles. Ezra makes a desperate sound and ruts back on him, his voice muffled by burying his face back in your chest.

“I could expire here and now, and consider myself surprisingly lucky, even imprisoned as a bounty and missing my dominant arm. Between you two is heaven itself. Mando,” he cries out at the firm curl of fingertips over his prostate. “Get in me or do that harder, you are driving me to distraction, gentle-man-!” He demands, only to be cut off with a wheeze as Din fixes his slicked cockhead at Ezra’s softened entrance and pushes just inside.

Slowly, inexorably, Din presses onward until his hips are flush with Ezra's rump, all of him inside and suddenly wildly overheated. He waits, still, until Ezra tips his hips up in invitation before moving back and then returning with a much more sharp thrust.

“Oh– stars, just like that,” Ezra chokes, nuzzling into your breasts again, licking slow over one curve to find the tip and latch on. He can’t keep his balance and paw at you or reach for his cock, but he enjoys the assault of sensations for now. Mando is so deep inside, stretching him nearly to the point of burn but not quite. Despite the spice clouding his frontal lobe, Din did a good job stretching him to ease the way. Each pass over his prostate causes a jolt of nerves that light up his whole belly and down his legs. His shoulder pain is long forgotten. There is only your soft skin beneath him and Mando’s hardness inside him and raw strength behind him.

Mando sets a firm, rhythmic pace that has his hips slapping hard into Ezra’s spare ass as he drives forward, but he knows Ezra is not getting the stimulation he needs. It takes several minutes to convince himself, what with the drugs in his veins telling him otherwise. Eventually Din slows to a halt and pulls out. He chuckles at the disgruntled noise from above and flops to his back.

“Come here, May,” he grabs a lean thigh and hauls the man over in a show of strength, nearly dumping Ezra onto his face before he can steady himself.

“Kevva waits, you could have just said come ride me instead of yankin', boss! I can barely fuckin’ balance as it is.” Ezra grouses. He gets his knees under himself and adjusts his weight, surprised to find plenty of room for movement under his thighs with how broad Mando appears in all his armor.

“Sit,” Din demands, pulling on the man’s hips. Ezra quirks a grin in the dark and resists, planting a hand square on Din's heaving chest.

“Gem, you hear that? He’s losing those pretty manners of his,” Ezra huffs a delighted laugh when Din growls a please at him. He reaches behind himself, clumsy with his off hand, and lines that fat cock back up along his well-slicked crease.

“Yes, please,” Mando groans and his hips jolt upward as Ezra slides down his length, impaling himself in a smooth glide.

“Mando, this magnificent- turgid- specimen could cure ailments, I swear to the Maker. Every- spot- stimulated so perfectly. Oh!” Ezra pants as he grinds forward and back experimentally, his belly jumping under Din’s hand at the consistent torment on his swollen gland. Din fists his cock and Ezra growls: “Gem come here, gorgeous gemstone. Come here and join us.”

You have been watching their shadows move together since they rolled and adjusted, cupping between your legs where the flesh is hot and swollen, wet with the dregs of the spice in your system. You roll to your side and then up to your knees, dipping over Din’s face for a thorough kiss before following his hands, letting him push your face up to Ezra’s. The bounty cups his hand around the back or your neck and hauls you up, his hips rolling insistently against the length he's impaled on.

“Kiss me, sweet thing. I need– nngh!” Ezra shivers around a particularly brutal thrust against his prostate and kisses you like you’re his last meal. You're both growing tired, the spice waning from your systems, but the buzz for one more orgasm is just there under your skin. You let him lick into you, taking over with your own hand where he is fucking forward into his fist and then back against Mando.

“Yes, your hand- so soft- thank you, gem!” He plants his palm on Din’s heaving chest again for balance and works the cock in his ass, lifting and dropping, grinding and rutting. Mando makes some truly impressive sounds before pawing at you.

“Come here, iisa. Turn. Across- now sit. Now fuck him,” he hooks his thumbs around your hip bones and pushes you down, facing him and straddling his belly, in front of Ezra. He grabs Ezra's cock and guides it into you, making you both gasp.

“Oh– Kevva! I will not last in this state, Mando! Gem- your pussy is as perfect a fit as I could hope for. So wet- warm! Ngh!” Ezra, bless him, reaches forward and strums your clit messily with three fingers, working you up where you are already dripping and panting between them.

Mando grips your hips, wishing he could see, but he will take the trade gladly if tasting you both- kissing, licking, sucking- is in the cards. He realizes belatedly that he has not got his mouth on either of you yet. If you all survive this round and don’t tap out, he decides he will.

You howl as you come hard on Ezra's cock, collapsing forward into Din while you catch your breath behind his palm (he’s clapped it across your mouth to avoid you waking the kid). He scoops you close and pins you to him with his arms wrapped around your back, sucking your lower lip between his teeth, holding you still for Ezra to fuck into and ride Mando’s cock until they both explode.

“Oh shit- oh shit, oh shit ohshitohshit–” Ezra grits his teeth and his ass clamps down, sitting down as hard as he can on Din’s hips to get him deep, milk his balls empty while Ezra paints the swollen, hot edges of your cunt with the last weak dregs of his come. The last of the spice fizzles out and the ache bleeds back in with nothing to stymie it.

You each fall to a side of Din, starfished in the floor and chests heaving. Every bit of each of you is wet and sticky and exhausted. Din whines in the dark, a small movement catching in the dim glow of the lit buttons.

“I’m still fucking hard,” he complains, sounding more offended than anything. “Dank farrik. This is ridiculous!"

You can't help but laugh at the complaint. You pop your head up, confused by Ezra's silence. Is he asleep? You suppose it’s not entirely out of the question; you feel awfully close to sleep yourself. But then he speaks:

“Boss, I am not sure either of us has the stamina to go again, but if you can be patient a short while, I believe I can manage for you to use me to find your end, if nothing else.”

He hums in contentment when Mando glides a hand up his belly and chest, scritching fondly in the scruff under his chin. Din catches himself being so casual and forward and curses internally, forcing his hand to drop. He must really be out of it. Not only fucking a bounty but dragging you into it just because he didn't actually look at the bottle of meds he'd bought. The self- doubt creeps in, lingering like a thick cold slab on his chest until you curl a leg between his own and slide your whole front against his left side.

“Ezra. Get over here.” You grouse sleepily, reaching across to curl your fingers around his wrist, laying on his own chest, and pull at him til he rolls to his side and snuggles in close.

Your warmth and gentleness dissolves that slab on Din's chest as thoroughly as the kid does. He's come to rely on it, which feels dangerous.

Soon, Din notices that you have stopped moving and your breathing has evened out. He huffs quietly in vague amusement, warring with the concern he feels over the perpetual throbbing in his cock. The mental fog has dissipated, but he’s still horny as fuck and rock hard to prove it.

“Does the sonic on this vessel fit two?” Ezra stirs and interrupts his thoughts. Din blinks and turns his head to the other man, running a hand possessively down his side. His skin is starting to crawl again with heat and need, already. He feels like it will never be out of his system. "Not really."

“Nested together as we will no doubt be, we could probably manage. Your partner took such thorough care of me at the service station, and I hate for those efforts to remain reversed due to these -- sticky circumstances. A clean- up would not go amiss. I can feel your seed leakin’ outta my ass already, though you are assuredly about to plant more.”

“Shut up,” Din grouses, rolling them, making Ezra snort. He lays on Ezra, belly to belly and knees on either side of the man’s narrow hips. He leans heavy over the bounty and mouths over his collarbones, pressing his teeth into the knotted muscle of Ezra’s damaged shoulder. “Can I have you again?” he asks into the other man’s mouth, breathy and heated.

“Ah, you found your tongue and your manners again, Mando.” He chuckles with Din bites down on his lip with a growl. “Yes, and let it drain the last of this accursed spice from your system. You have spilled so much under its spell. I don’t think I can manage to come again, but you are welcome to try. At least until the oversensitivity assails me.”

Rather than responding, Din licks into his mouth, opening his jaw wide with a thumb pressed to his chin. The kiss is heated and exploratory, stealing Ezra’s breath away handily. He wriggles under the weight of the Mandalorian, worming his hand between them to grasp the man’s cock and give him a firm circle to thrust into.

Abruptly, Din grips Ezra by the elbow and hauls him over to his belly, caging the man with his own forearm braced on the ground beneath Ezra’s good shoulder, his stump against the ground and his face and upper chest mashed into the blankets. He is thoroughly pinned, especially once Mando plants his huge palm on the side of Ezra’s head, fingers tangling in his hair to keep his face pinned to the side. If he even possibly could at this stage, Ezra wagers he’d be a hair’s breadth from coming again.

Din spits on his fingers and wipes the wetness over the head of his dick, smears it across Ezra’s hole, and presses in. Ezra whines but grits his teeth, knowing that if he can get over the first painful rush of frayed nerves, it will turn sweet again. Thankfully, Mando is tiring out after four rounds in what must have been scarcely more than an hour or so. The prospector feels the first twinge of something good, low in his belly, and tips his hips up against Mando's snapping thrusts. His cock hangs heavy and not quite half-hard, thoroughly spent between his thighs. Din has a fistful of hair in one hand and a death grip on Ezra's hip with the other, keeping him pinned with his only arm rendered useless. All he can do is take it, and that unlocked a particular kink the bounty had been secreting away for a long while.

Too soon, Ezra gasps and his hips turn down with a sharp pain. “Too much,” he chokes, and thankfully Din has the wherewithal to withdraw gently and let him go. Ezra pants into the bedding, spooling back out from how tightly he’d clamped up from the rush of pain. “Apologies,” he says, and accepts the pat to the back of his thigh with only a little chagrin.

“Stop apologizing.”

At Ezra's sharp complaint, you had stirred with a deep breath, stretching on the pallet beside them. “Oh,” you sigh, enjoying the shapes of them moving against one another in the dark. “Mando, Ezra is too sore. Come here,” you yawn, scooting closer to them. You see Din pause, pulling away from the bounty and reaching for you.

“Thank you, gem. I am indeed weary, and the pain is inching back in with the spice on its way out. Forgive me, Mando.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Din murmurs, and latches his mouth onto your seam. He tastes himself and Ezra, you at the edges. It's intoxicating. You squirm under his attention but spear your fingers into his hair and he leans into it with a whine. He craves the softness as much as the spice is making him crave the roughness. Once you're sopping again and your juice is running down his chin, he pushes himself up to mantle over you, hooking your knees around his narrow hips.

You run your hands up from his waist, curving over firm muscles and soft skin, the puckering of scars here and there. You wind his sweaty curls around your fingers and tug, eliciting a groan. He shakes his head, finding everything at once- his head being touched along with all the skin contact, his own flesh crawling with need and the sweat pouring off him- overbearing.

You release him and let your hands travel again. His rump is small but fits blessedly in your palms, and the feel of your fingers closing over his ass urges him on. Din hums against your mouth and slides the length of his cock through your folds, a tease, smearing the wetness gathered there. He notches his head at your entrance and slides in.

Din drops down over you, elbows planted by your head, your thighs spread by his hips, knees and calves hooked over his ass. You reach up and run a hand up the side of his neck, over an ear, dragging him down for a searching kiss. He growls into your mouth, needy and tiring out, unable to purge those tablets from his system just yet.

“I want you to come on my cock,” he says, panting into your open mouth. You grin against him, exhausted and unsure if your body can enmven manage another orgasm. “Felt so good earlier. Again,” he demands, pushing up to slide a hand between you, flatten his thumb on your clit.

“Mando, I'm not sure I can. I’m so tired,” you whine even as you feel your core clench around him at the added stimulation.

“You can. What else do you need? I’ll give you anything, iisa. Tell me,” Din implores, bending his neck to lick down your throat. He nips at a collarbone, recalling dimly that you had thoroughly enjoyed Ezra’s mouth on your tits earlier. He ducks his head and noses, laves over a plush mound until he finds the peak of your nipple and sucks it into his mouth.

“Oh! Both- the other–!” You cry out, back arching as he hits that spot deep inside your cunt and sucks just right on your nipple.

Instead of switching, Din grips Ezra by the upper arm and hauls him over to his belly beside you. You drop a hand to reach for him too, and your hands bump when Din fists a hand in the man’s hair and drags him into place latch onto your other breast, all without pausing in the suckling of the one between his own lips. Ezra catches on quickly and, after a quick peck to your mouth he obeys Din’s demanding grip.

You sob out at the feel of it, two strong mouths sucking, nipping, and laving over your sensitive breasts while Din pummels away at your cervix, thumbing your clit, stretching your abused pussy on his cock and taking what he needs.

You feel a tightening, an impossible new winding-up in your core that seems to take all the muscles in your limbs with it. Din brushes your clit with his fingers again and you shatter, screaming behind your teeth, your face buried behind your palms to keep quiet because of the kid. Ezra mouths his way up your neck and claims your lips again, capturing your noises, letting Din drop his face into your sternum while he finds his end in your impossibly clenching insides. You’ve turned into a limp doll, boneless with exhaustion and at least four orgasms- damn, you lost count.

“Maker,” you pant, struggling to catch your breath with the weight of Din’s collapsed heft on your chest. “We’re disgusting. Dammit, Mando, I just washed him!” you snark, making the Mandalorian giggle into your skin. You crack up at the sound, struggling to laugh quietly as you feed off his suddenly effervescent joy. He rolls to his back between you and Ezra, the lot of you sweaty, sated, bone-tired and delirious.

“I’m not sure we can go to the service station just yet, iisa. I’m still –”

“Hard as a pike?” Ezra interjects, dropping his hand between Mando’s legs, earning a gasp. “Go to sleep, man. The lust seems to be over, even if your biology hasn't caught on quite yet.”

You all lay there a few moments more before Din’s soft snores are echoed by Ezra’s. You snort at them and roll to your knees, keen on a thorough wipe-down and a nap if the kid will stay down.

But of course, as all kids are prone to do, he wakes the minute you finish yanking Din’s bottoms back on. You’d wiped him and Ezra down with a damp cloth and slung the new bottoms on the bounty’s lower half, but Mando’s compression leggings were a squeeze for him, even when he wasn't passed out and deadweight.

Sighing, you scoop the kid up out of his hammock and take him up the ladder with a snack, leaving the lights off and Din’s helmet beside his shoulder on the pallet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I still have your arm,” Din says, apropos of nothing. He is checking the star chart as the Crest exits Coruscant’s atmosphere.

“Excuse me?” Ezra whips his head around to stare at the back of Din's helmet.

“Your arm. I slabbed it when we came back. You were unconscious.” Din sets the course and turns to find Grogu in the bounty’s lap with a tiny claw fisted in his tunic, staring up at him curiously. Ezra has his remaining arm hooked around the kid, making sure he doesn't fall off his perch on the man’s thigh.

“Why?”

Mando shrugs. “In case you died. Easy proof of destruction. But now… I'm thinking I might drop you somewhere else for a few days. Go to Canto Bight, turn in the arm, collect the lesser bounty. Pick you back up.” he pauses and the flat face of the helmet stares back at Ezra for a long moment, waiting on a response. He tips it to the side. "If you're interested."

Ezra, understandably, is flabbergasted. “Why?”

“Iisa likes you. The kid likes you,” Mando tips his forehead down at Grogu gurgling up at him. Ezra’s eyebrows shoot up and he stares down at the child. “Despite the fact that you never shut up, I like you. If you're not interested, I can cut you loose and still get the bounty.”

“No I– I appreciate the sentiment, Mando, I do. You’ll forgive my wariness, considering the circumstances. I am not accustomed to men wanting to keep me around for anything more than manual labor or to warm a bed, and even then only for a short venture. If I understand you- you are meaning for a while?”

“Until you want to leave,” Mando shrugs. “Same as any of us.”

Ezra chews his lip and his brow threads together. “And what does this life look like? A one-armed former prospector with little in the way of domestic skills, and a sharpshooting force-sensitive mechanic, and a force-wielding xeno child, and a bounty hunting Mandalorian living on a small gunship together with one bunk?”

To his great amusement, Mando actually snorts at him and ducks his head. Ezra grins and waits. “Exactly that. We make port most days, stretch our legs. When we’re in the stars, we stay above lightspeed and head to the next job. I’ve got- friends- all over, especially in the Outer Rim. Finding places to lay low for a few days isn’t a hardship.”

Ezra nods and thinks of you. They’d woken and Din had put on his helmet and tugged on his thin liner shirt and helped Ezra into his own tunic. After, they had discovered you dead asleep in the cockpit with the kid playing with his ball in your lap. Mando had scooped you up, limp as a ragdoll, and you'd remained sound asleep as he had lugged you down the ladder and into his bunk.

Ezra thinks he would very much enjoy more chances to wake up like that. Or in a tangle of all of you.

“Where will you leave me?”

“It’s a bit of a back track but you have two options. I can hide you with my covert on Glavis, or leave you with a friend on Tatooine. To be honest, I'd rather leave you on Tatooine. Harder for other hunters to find you in the Dune Sea, and environmentally safer for you. My covert is currently under the ring world, and footing is dangerous even with two arms for balance.”

“And you will come back?”

“Yes. I will leave iisa and the Child with you, if you like. My trip to collect the bounty from Canto Bight won’t take long.”

“Mercy, man. You’re offerin’ me a whole new life. I can’t simply accept that it’s just because you three like me.”

“Would you rather take your chances with your pissed- off investors?”

Ezra scowls at him. Din grins behind his visor. “Don't toy with my heart, Mando. You know I would not. It’s just going to take some accepting.”

“Well. We’ll be at Freetown in two days. Think on it. If you decide not to stay with us, I'm sure the Marshal can put you to work in his town somehow."

"And what? You would schedule conjugal visits?"

Mando snorts and turns back to his charts, setting coordinates for Tatooine. "If iisa wanted. If that's your intent I'd rather not leave you in Freetown, though. It might be a bit awkward for me to negotiate frequent visits."

"Ah, your lost love in the desert?"

He bites his lips against a knowing grin when he sees Mando's shoulders flatten with tension, but is surprised to get a response. "Something like that."

"Well then. A few days to stretch our legs and a pickup would suffice. And I'll let you know if it stops being sufficient. Do we have an accord, boss?"

Din turns around and eyes the hand Ezra has outstretched. After a beat, he takes it.

"Deal."

____________________ end _____________________

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#din djarin #the mandalorian #ezra (prospect) #prospect movie #prospect 2018 #ezra/reader #din djarin/reader #ezra/din djarin/reader #sex pollen #sex pollen fic #marathon sex #smut #everyone is bi in SW #also on ao3 #ao3 writer

[leet911]

Can I

It is night in Jrusar, and Imogen tells herself that this should be like any other night in the Windowed Wall.  Because they’ve done this so many times.  It shouldn’t be different.  Even if Ruidus is hanging fixed in the sky casting its red glow over the world, none of that is visible from their room, with the curtains drawn and the lone window facing the wrong direction anyway.

So she brushes her hair, pretends it's a normal night, and Laudna busies herself tucking in Pâté and Sashimi.  While Imogen arranges the sheets for sleeping, Laudna fills a flagon with water to leave on the nightstand, and that too, is exactly the same as always.

“Goodnight,” they say in unison, each with a faint half-smile for the other.  But when they put out the lights and climb into bed, Laudna leans over, kisses Imogen on the cheek, and that is different.

Before Imogen can react though, the room is dark, and Laudna is settling into her side of the bed, pulling the blanket over her shoulders.  Imogen’s pulse pounds in her head as she slips into the sheets, fights the urge to slide even closer to Laudna than usual.  She hates feeling so needy.

The house is quiet, Zhudanna having long since retired, and Laudna’s slow breathing barely audible.  But each exhalation from Laudna still makes Imogen’s pulse more intense.

She doesn’t know how long she stays there, unmoving, counting Laudna’s breaths, thinking of covering Laudna’s mouth with her own (just like before), trying to figure out if Laudna is laying nearer or further than usual.  It’s not a particularly wide bed, and there’s no warmth seeping across the sheets, but Laudna’s never warm.

And Imogen thinks of moving, but she also doesn’t want to disturb Laudna’s sleep.  Laudna’s had a rough few days.  Laudna needs rest.  Even if Imogen wants nothing more than to roll over and kiss Laudna again (and again and again).

Just days ago, it felt like the world was ending.  And maybe the world still is ending, but it doesn’t feel so bad anymore.  Imogen’s heart is racing, but for entirely different reasons.  She lets out a long breath in an effort to calm herself, to no avail.

After an interminable wait, there’s a pause then in Laudna’s breathing, a lull in the slow rhythm, and Imogen finds herself turning to face the other woman.  It’s dark in the room, but faint light glints off Laudna’s open eyes, revealing inky pools of blackness.

Imogen shivers.  She never did quite get used to that.  “Laudna,” she whispers, “you awake?”

Dark eyes blink in the night.  “Yes, I can’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”  (Can I kiss you?)  But she doesn’t say that out loud.

Pause.  Laudna doesn’t respond for several seconds, and in the darkness, Imogen feels like her heart is bursting.   The question is on the tip of her tongue, and she wants to ask.  Even if part of her hates herself for needing this so much.  But if she’s honest with herself, she’s always needed this, even if she never let herself think it, never let herself consider asking before today.

“Imogen?”  When Laudna does speak, her voice is pitched high, unsure.

Imogen licks her lips.  “Yeah?”  (Can I kiss you?)

Another pause, longer this time, but Laudna’s breaths come in rapid succession during it.  Laudna’s head tilts, looking away at first, but then locking eyes with Imogen in the dark.  Imogen feels the gaze more than seeing it, as Laudna’s night vision is far superior.  But the words whispered by Laudna cut right into her.  “May I kiss you?”  The question is breathless and quiet, nervous and uncertain.

And Imogen melts.  “Please, I’ve never wanted anything more.”

She reaches out with a hand as Laudna presses closer, their fingers intertwining as their lips touch.  Imogen can’t stop the sound that comes from the back of her throat, the flaring of her nostrils, or the breath that rushes out of her.  Laudna’s lips are cool against hers.  Her hands too, if a little clammy, and the nails sharp when they grip Imogen just a little too tightly.

Laudna trembles, tries to pull away after one kiss, but Imogen follows her, kisses back, and Laudna gives in.  Laudna kisses her with determination, becoming firmer each time they touch, and when Imogen allows her tongue to poke out just a little, she’s met with Laudna’s long lithe one.  And it’s Imogen’s turn to shake.

“Is this ok?”  Imogen asks in between kisses, suddenly aware that she is the one leading here, even if Laudna started it.

But Laudna doesn’t answer.  Laudna covers Imogen’s mouth once more, runs her tongue down the length of Imogen’s and elicits a moan.  Laudna kisses from the corner of Imogen’s lips, across her cheek, and along the jawline, before finally stopping just under an ear.  Imogen is vibrating so much her fingers and toes feel numb.

Imogen buries her face in Laudna’s neck, kisses right where the pulse is, locks her in a crushing hug.  Laudna is alive.  And more importantly, Laudna makes Imogen feel more alive than anyone ever has.  As if on cue, a long tongue curls around an earlobe, and Laudna whispers into Imogen’s ear.  “You’re very capable.”

And Imogen promises herself she will never let go.

#cr spoilers #critical role #fanfiction #my fic #imodna #this is self-indulgent fluff #i wrote this for me #also on ao3 #can i kiss you #you're very capable

[cod-dump]

Last to Know

SoapGhost

___

Ghost was assigned to a mission out of country. He was only supposed to be gone for two weeks maximum but shit happened. Weeks turned into months and no one was sure when he would come back. Soap was scheduled to go on leave but he refused, choosing to continue working and waiting for Ghost to come back.

Soap wasn't worried about Ghost, the mission wasn't dangerous and if anything did go sideways he had no doubt the man could handle himself. But he missed him. God, he missed him so much. The weekly, single texts sent to update Soap and tell him he was fine didn't give him anything. He needed to hear his voice, see his face.

This was driving him insane and yet he couldn't tell anybody about it. Soap couldn't tell Price or Gaz why he was so anxious for Ghost to come back. Price had made it clear before that dating between 141 members was a big 'no'. So he kept quiet and tried to make it seem that not seeing Ghost for so long wasn't breaking his heart.

One day, Price pulled Soap into his office for a chat.

"You're going on leave."

"Captain, I'm fine-"

"I'm not giving you the option to decline again."

Soap groans, standing to leave when Price says something that makes him freeze.

"So, how long have you two been seeing each other?"

Soap stood there, back to Price while staring at the office door. He tried to keep his voice level as he spoke but there was still a shake laced with his voice.

"What?"

"I'm not blind, Sergeant. How long have you and Simon been seeing each other?"

Soap swallows and turns to Price, "What makes you think we're-?"

Price gives him a look and Soap cuts himself off.

"Since December of last year."

Price thinks for a moment before nodding, "That is the time you two started sneaking around."

"You noticed?"

"Stealth hasn't always been your strong suit, Johnny."

"Fuck."

Price didn't have any indication to how he felt about this. His facial expression was rather neutral and there wasn't any notable emotions in his eyes. Soap remained standing, unsure what to say or do next. He's gone against Price's rules and Soap knows Price isn't about to let Ghost go in favor of keeping him.

He was fucked.

Price was far too calm right now. Soap has seen his silent anger before and this was looking very similar to it. But there wasn't any obvious anger in his eyes and he was very relaxed in his chair. Leaning back, appearing rather relaxed and comfortable. What ever was about to happen wasn't going to keep Price up at night.

"Who started it? This... relationship?"

Soap blinks, Price staring at him intently, "Me..."

"Has Simon made you feel pressured into being with him?"

"What-? No, sir."

Price hums, seemingly satisfied by this.

"Couple weeks leave, Sergeant. Better be off base by the end of the day."

Soap was waiting for something else to come out of Price's mouth. Something brash, something that showed how disappointed he was, how angry he was that Soap went behind his back. But nothing else came and Price was looking at him like he was wondering why the hell Soap was still in his office gawking at him. Soap left, mind racing. He tries to keep himself calm as he packs his bag. Where was the hellfire? Where was Price throwing him out of 141? Man had a hell of a temper. Where was it?

He left base without incident though he was waiting for something, anything, to happen.

Soap made it to his flat, shaken from his all too calm encounter with Price. He just dropped his bag by the front door and chose to go lay down in bed. This was too much and yet nothing had happened. Did Price already get a hold of Ghost and tell him that he knew? Was Ghost given a different talk, something actually fueled by anger?

Has he even talked to him yet? No, probably not. No, Price must be waiting for Ghost to get back so he can chew him out in person. There is no way Ghost isn't going the third degree, not when he's gone against one of Price's big rules.

Soap laid there for hours, doing nothing but staring at his bedroom's ceiling. Then-

BANG!

"Fucking hell!"

Soap jumps out of bed, grabbing his gun from the dresser. He rushes into the living room and freezes when he sees Ghost laying on the floor, obviously having tripped over Soap's bag that he had left by the door. He was just laying on his stomach, face down on the floor, completely still. It almost like he was laying there in defeat.

"Simon!? What the fuck are you doing here!?"

Ghost didn't look up and just continued laying on the floor like that, legs propped up on Soap's bag.

"Wow, and I thought you would be happy to see me. Not even a kiss or hug or shit."

Soap puts his gun on the end table before rushing over to Ghost. He kneels beside him, touching his shoulder.

"I am- Fuck, are you alright?"

"Fine. Just tired as fuck."

Ghost finally climbs up, groaning as he sits on the floor, "Why would you leave your bag there for me to trip over?"

Soap lets out a short laugh, "Wasn't expecting company..."

Ghost tilts his head, "What do you mean you weren't expecting company?"

"I... wasn't expecting company?"

"What- You knew I was coming here straight from the air field."

"No?"

Ghost was very confused, "What- Didn't Price tell you?"

Soap blinks at the mention of Price, "He knew you were coming here?"

Ghost was more dumbfounded, looking around before looking back at Soap, "Yes! Fuck, he's the one who suggested it!"

"WHAT!?"

"Price was supposed to tell you before sending you on leave. Did he... not tell you?"

"No! He fucking called me into his office and asked about us dating then sent me on leave! He fucking knows we're dating, Si!"

Ghost grabs Soap's shoulder, trying to calm him, "Easy, Johnny. He's known for awhile, it isn't a big deal."

"What the fuck do you mean he's known for awhile!?"

Ghost was looking at Soap like he was insane. He opened and closed his mouth multiple times, not saying anything. Soap could tell he was thinking hard with his movements. Finally, he releases Soap's shoulder and lets his hand drop.

"Johnny... he's known since the beginning."

Soap blinks, "You're lying..."

"I'm not. I already had the talk with him back in January."

Soap gawks, "He's known since fucking January!?"

"Johnny, please tell me you're fucking with me. Everyone has known since January!"

"Not me!"

Ghost snaps his mouth shut, biting his lip. He's trying not to laugh because he's fucking with Soap or everything he's saying is true and he's trying to keep himself calm. Keep be either one. After several moments of silence, Soap groans.

"Oh my fucking god!"

"How are you the last to know!?"

Soap lays on the floor, mortified he's been 'sneaking' around everyone, thinking he was fooling them. God, he hasn't been fooling anyone but himself. Worst part was the heart attack Price gave him-

Price.

"Oh he's such an asshole!"

Soap stands, leaving Ghost confused on the floor. He marches straight into his bedroom and grabs his phone, calling Price. He waits, tapping his foot on the floor. He could feel his eye twitching as the phone rang until, finally, Price picked up.

"Sergeant-"

"You're a fucking asshole!"

Price immediately started to laugh. Soap's felt his face heat up with a mixture of embarrassment and rage.

"You fucking knew since January! How could you fuck with me like that!?"

Price wheezes, "Am I not allowed any fun?"

"NO! You're not! In fact- You-You're fucking grounded from fun! Banned! No more fun for you!"

Price was losing it on the other side. Wheezing and coughing, laughing like a maniac. Soap was so mad at him but he couldn't help but smile. He hadn't heard Price laugh like this in ages. Actually, he's not sure if he had ever heard Price laugh like this at all. Soap sits on the bed, most of his rage melting away with Price having a field day.

"Calm down, old man, before you pull something."

Price slowly calms himself but the laughter never left him, "Enjoy your surprise?"

"Yea..."

"Good. You both need a good bit to relax."

Soap sighs, "Thank you, sir."

"Have a good leave, Johnny."

Soap sighs and looks over, seeing Ghost leaning on the bedroom door.

"That's how you know he likes you."

"By giving me a heart attack?"

"He wouldn't have done that if he didn't like you."

Soap smiles as Ghost comes over and sits next to him. Ghost grabs him and pulls him close.

"Now give me my kiss, you neglectful cunt."

Soap laughs and leans over to kiss Ghost.

#call of duty #cod mwii #modern warfare ii #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #john price #soapghost #ghostsoap #fic #fanfic #also on ao3

[selineram3421]

*runs down hallway and kicks down door*

Look!

Wonder what they are talking about???

#fanfic art #art #art appreciation #falling snow doodle #fanfic on quotev #also on ao3 #my friend is the artist #thank you again #alastor x reader #x reader #gn reader #alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #alastor the radio demon #the radio demon #rosie hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel rosie #rosie hazbin #Falling Snow fic

[starbanmk]

promises/betrayals

—

It had been a couple months before the eruption, and Ashswagg had allowed Red to drag him to a nearby open field. The early summer breeze flowed through Red's hair as he laughed, watching Ash as he was pushed about by the wind, the smell of smoke filling the air.

Existence was easy with Reddoons. Ash wasn't a god with him. Ash was just Ash.

What a stupid thing for a god to think.

"I'm just saying, the old myths are more infuriating than anything." Red explained as the pair found a nice spot to settle down. The roman sunk into the grass. "Like, hey, a prophet told us our kid's gonna kill us? Let's send him far away so he has no emotional attachment to us and is more likely to not show us mercy! The logic is terrible."

"You just don't believe in fate." Ash reminded. "Suspend your disbelief."

"It's more fun to be annoyed."

Red was annoyed often. Never with Ash. Or maybe he was, but he never showed it.

"I think everyone in the multiverse is smarter than the people in myths."

Ash's head snapped to look at Red.

"The multiverse." Ash repeated.

Red raised an eyebrow.

"You're not supposed to know about that."

Red shrugged "Being friends with a god has is perks."

A part of Ash soured at that. Friends.

Instead he joked, "Wow, what happened to 'I'd do so many things for you'? Only worship me for the perks."

"I worship you because you were made to be worshipped."

"I was made to be worshipped by more that just one guy who's religion doesn't even align with the plane I exist on."

"I still like to think you were made to be worshipped by me." Red countered, and suddenly Ash's world was very quiet. After a moment of silence, Reddoons changed the subject, as things usually went.

"And you know I'm kind of a shoddy roman." He continued, plucking blades of grass from the field and weaving them into bands. "Don't really believe in those guys."

Ash snorted. "Hope Jupiter can't hear you. He's an asshole."

"Have you met him?"

"In passing."

Red shook his head in disbelief, a small smile playing on his lips. "I forget sometimes. That you're something so much bigger than me."

"Not here, I'm not." Ashswagg said, before he could really think about it. He wouldn't take it back, but he hated how Reddoons could make him say the silliest things. "I'm nothing like Jupiter, anyway. He actually does things."

"You do things." Red assured, gesturing for Ash to shift his from to something more solid. He slipped something akin to a promise ring onto Ash's hand. "Sometimes."

Ash rolled his eyes."I'm just a figurehead. For smoke, too, which is pretty silly."

Red hummed.

"I'm like what Queen Elizabeth the Second was for Canada. No Canadian really cares about The Queen."

"What's the hell's Canada."

Ash laughed. "Multiverse things."

A comfortable quiet settled across the feild, and Reddoons took the time to make a couple more woven bands before asking, "So, where do you exist?"

"Everywhere."

"Do I exist everywhere?"

Ash shrugged, "Maybe."

And things were quiet again. But never for long.

"I think I'd love you wherever we exist together."

And Ash couldn't help but smile.

—

But this Reddoons wasn't a rose guy. This Reddoons hadn't given him anything more than a cigarette and a black eye. This Reddoons didn't want to talk about it.

A couple months later, Reddoons would learn he'd developped chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from smoking so much. A few more months, and he'd pass.

Ashswagg left the timeline.

—

[end of part six]

#rosesandsmokeweek2024 #swagdoons #ashswag #reddoons #lsshipping #lifesteal smp #mcyt #lssmp #rocco writing #hmmmmm oh gosh he. dies. hope that doesnt happen to the others #day two #rocco rosesandsmoke #also on ao3 #btw

[solvskrift]

“What is this?”

Jim’s cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling, but he angled his PADD and took another snapshot.

“It’s a puppy!”

“Ashayam,” said Spock patiently, the effect rather ruined by the wriggling creature in his arms. “I am aware of what a canine’s young is called. I was referring to the situation. Where did you find this puppy, and why is it here?”

Hearing Spock say ‘puppy’ like he was talking about a photon torpedo was even better than Jim had dared to hope.

“It’s not an ‘it,’ she’s a ‘her,’ and I adopted her!”

That little crease of confusion appeared between Spock’s eyebrows. Adorable. “You – ”

“Well, we adopted her. I have paperwork for you to sign, by the way.”

Spock held the little brown ball of fluff out at arms’ length and examined her with a critical eye, then looked at Jim doubtfully. The puppy’s hind legs scrabbled at the air. “Jim,” he tried again. “Why did you not consult me about this?”

Jim summoned his best puppy dog eyes - which, he realized belatedly, he was going to have competition at now - and chewed on the corner of his lip in that way he knew made Spock melt.

Spock’s expression barely shifted, but Jim just knew he was melting on the inside. Gooey and delicious, just like that Betazoid chocolate they’d experimented with that time on Risa –

Jim shook himself out of that thought. God forbid he say this, but it wasn’t the time.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he pouted, reaching up to scratch the pup behind her ears. She flipped her tiny head this way and that trying to lick at his fingers. Jim giggled happily, and when he looked up Spock was giving him that look.

The one that said plainly to anyone paying attention that in Spock’s estimation Jim might as well have hung the stars in the cosmos.

“Fine,” Spock said. He shifted the pup in his arms so he was holding her less like a bomb and more like a - furry, yelpy, awkward - baby. “We may keep her.”

“Yes!” Jim punched the air and planted a noisy kiss on Spock’s cheek. He turned to their new dog, smooshing her face between his hands. “You hear that? You are officially the newest addition to the Kirk family.” Jim paused. “House of Surak family? What are we? Do you even have a last name?” He injected his voice with betrayal. “Why don’t I know these things? You clearly don’t trust me, I want a divorce.”

Spock just sighed, which was similar to him doing nothing at all, and turned away.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“I presume you did not prepare sufficiently before bringing her home – ”

“Uhhhh…”

“ – so I’m going to make a list of supplies we will need to make certain she is given proper care.”

“See!” Jim cried. He spread his arms wide to illustrate his point. “This is why we make a great team.”

“You may pick a name for her, if you prefer,” Spock went on as though Jim were simply part of the furniture and hadn’t just spoken. “But I reserve the right to veto any ridiculous suggestions.”

Spock deposited the puppy on the floor, and she promptly trotted after him to paw insistently at his heels.

Jim frowned. “Admiral Floof is not ridiculous.”

“I am not referring to our pet as ‘Admiral Floof’ to others with the ability to hear spoken language.”

“I don’t know,” Jim grinned, “that was pretty endearing. Say it again.”

The Admiral chose that opportune moment to pee all over Spock’s new boots.

Spock looked up at him and narrowed his eyes as if this were all Jim’s fault.

Jim slapped on an open-mouthed smile and shot both fists into the air. “Parenthood! This is gonna be fun!”

#spirk #star trek #aos #or tos either way you want #though kirk's energy here is a lot more aos lmao #solv fic #the whumptober angst!!! was getting to me!!! #so #fluff 🤍 #also on ao3

[ethien]

Another Bathhouse shenanigans

Fandom: Persona 3

Ship: Akihiko x F!reader

Genre: Smut

Words: 6.323

Summary: After getting caught by the girls, Akihiko struggles with finding a way to apologize to you. He would do everything to make up.

It was a pure disaster, Akihiko was sure. And he had no idea how to get out of it without any harm. Well, he already was harmed physically. What he struggled with was how he should solve it on the emotional level…with you.

He was sure this must be your first argument, or something along the line. He wished he could tell you it wasn’t his plan, that he also was a victim in the incident. However, he was sure you wouldn’t listen to him. Your eyes were wide, your intense blush and then your angry frown – he had messed up. And not even on purpose. Nevertheless, the situation was indeed not quite playing in his cards…or in any cards of the ones who were part of it.

He should have been more caution when Junpei suggested the hot bath. Akihiko really thought he could relax his body, enjoying the warmth, letting the stress being melted away. Instead, he got even more stressed. Junpei, and to some point Ryoji, somehow planned to visit the bath that late it would go into the women time. While Junpei casually joked it away, even saying they could just explain the misunderstanding, the senior had to wash everyone’s heads.

It wasn’t the fear of misunderstanding, or not having enough time to explain. It was the fear of execution by the hand of Mitsuru. It just happened once when they were just the three in their younger years. How could he forget the day he pissed her off somehow and got a punished which still haunted him? The imagine what end would linger if they get caught by Mitsuru was something he doesn’t want to think about. He informed them, and just in the moment of the go, it has to happen: The girls enter while the boys were still inside.

They did try an escape, even separating to find it out. Yet, luck wasn’t on their side…when [Y/N] looked up near the stones and caught them red-handed.

“I-it’s not what it looks like…” was Akihiko’s first and only attempt to explain himself to you. But he saw you. Surprised, then embarrassed…and then angry. It burnt down into his brain how disappointed you looked in that moment. And before any further explanation, Mitsuru hits the entire male party with an execution which would haunt him until he died.

It was deep in the night, and he was troubled finding any decent sleep. The image of your angry face didn’t leave him, but also not the fact how barely the both of you were clothed in that moment. Just a thin layer of a towel covered their bodies. Just a wrong move and he, or you, would have dropped it and reveal something before the other. Not that he wouldn’t mind it, or never saw it before – you both shared a romantic connection, and it wouldn’t be a lie that nothing intimate had happen between you. However, there was a difference between being naked on purpose or not.

There was also the slight disappointment readable in your eyes. Even with dragged into the mess, he was disappointed in himself either. It was such a lewd act, and he was part of it. He overstepped a boundary; he did something he promise he would never dare to do. Of course, you are disappointed in him. Akihiko sighed and left his room. Why should he staying sleepless in his room when he could be also somehow around the hotel and wasting time until he gets sleepy…or the idea how to apologize properly.

He put on the hotel’s kimono, walked out quietly out of the room and wanders around the slight dark halls of the hotel. Within minutes, he found a way to a, he believed, little garden with a hotel own little lake. A variation of flowers lightly dancing in the wind, a clear night sky. Normally, it would be a perfect and romantic date spot. Akihiko almost asked you earlier if they could meet later in the night. But that was before Mitsuru executed them. He still felt kind of sore in his whole body. And now, he stared alone in the sky. He sighed.

“Next time, I will punch Junpei in his face” he mumbled, the weight of the events heavy on his shoulders. The question was now how he could apologize to you. His dating guide suggested a little present, flowers, promising to do everything they desired. While the first ones sounded a bit cliché but kind of good in his ears. The last one seemed a bit weird. Well, not weird. It had a more…sexual touch on it that he didn’t want to admit it out loud. Or he was way hornier what he also didn’t want to admit out loud.

If you get a good taste, you cannot forget it and want even more. A short and very accurate description for Akihiko after you two started being intimate. Both of you might be still very inexperienced, yet he was eager to learn with you every facet of it. However, it was now a forbidden thing to think about it when you, his partner, was angry with him. It would never be a great idea to suggest sex as the solution for you forgiving him, not even if he would let you do everything you desired with him.

“Stopp” he scolded himself, shaking his head. His train of thoughts took faster a different way than expected. He sighed again, looking down to his feet. “It should be an honest apologize. Explaining everything and apologize. And if that’s not enough…” He wasn’t sure where his plan should go if his idea wasn’t enough. Yet, he thought he would surely come with an idea. He hoped it really.

A slight closing door, and approaching footsteps took him out of his thoughts. Akihiko’s eyes widen, not really expecting you of all people out there, not at this hour, and mostly not approaching him directly after the earlier disaster. Will he now get a better scolding off you, or even worse, another more personal execution?

“Aki?” you asked, a faint hint of fatigue in your voice. “Why are you out? At this hour?”

“…I could ask you the same.” He started, looking at you, trying to scan your mood. You sounded calm, yet it was not quite bright with the barely lights out. He wasn’t sure how your expression was. “I…cannot sleep. Was hoping a bit outside will make me a bit sleepy…” he continued while leaning on the railing, looking again at the sky.

“…it isn’t really working, or?”

“Not really…” he admitted. He tried to shout you a side eye, but felt kind of embarrassed to do. The events from the bath played again in his brain. Even with not believing in a fate, or in a god, it might be right now playing in his cards with you being here. He turned to you, facing you with a slight red on his cheeks.

“…[Y/N] …I am truly sorry what happened earlier. I can fully understand that you are angry and disappointed in me. Please let me explain what really happened earlier…or better, what leads in this awful situation…”

It was quite dark, so Akihiko didn’t see your surprised face. You could see the earlier events still plagued his mind, and you guessed they were the reason which keeps him awake. You decided to nod to him, giving him the opportunity to explain whatever the fuck happened hours ago in the bathhouse.

“…It’s like this…” Akihiko started, avoiding looking at you now. “I was just hanging out with Makoto, and then out of the sudden, Junpei asked us to go into the bath. We agreed. I was…ready for some relaxing. And when we were there…Junpei and Ryoji mentioned how funny it would be if the times for men and woman would change. He said it was just a misunderstanding…” He sighed, scratching the back of his neck. “I told them how stupid this was, and we agreed on leaving. But yeah, it was already too late. We tried to escape, but…” He looked to you; you could see his blush. “...you know how it ended. I swear, it really sounds like a lame excuse. However, you have to trust me, [Y/N]. It wasn’t my intention to peek… I was dragged into that mess…I’m so sorry…”

You let his words sink in, trying to see it in his eyes. It definitely sounds like something which would happen to him. It was kind of funny to you. If you would compare the boyfriend before you, truly in agony of the events, and the boyfriend when it gets spicier between you two. Worlds apart.

“…yeah, that sound like a typical Junpei idea…” you admitted, and you could see how fast Akihiko’s mood changed to the better. If you compare it with a dog, then his ears would stand up, and his tail would be wiggling. Yet, if you would tell him, he would be flustered. Maybe another time.

“So, you…believe me?” he asked hesitant.

You nod, looking to him. A soft smile appeared on his face, and the heaviness from his shoulders went down. “You don’t know how relieved I am you accept my apologize…”

Your face frown which confused the male.

“You…. did, or?” he asked, not sure how to read your face.

You crossed your arms. “I only said I believe how it turned into the event…but nothing about apologize…”

Now Akihiko’s face frown, concern filled his eyes. “…Okay…I see…” he said, unsure what to say or do now. Of course, you only believe the story.

“…I mean…” you started. “You might be a bit unlucky how you got into…but…” you stopped, looking up to the moon.

“But?” Akihiko asked. He really wanted to know what else he messed up.

“…You still stared at me…intensive…” you started, blushing lightly. “…and even when it wasn’t your intention…you also stare at the others…”

Akihiko wasn’t sure if he got it right… but you sounded a bit…not happy about it that he accidentally saw the other girls naked. Well, not really naked, the towels covered a lot. Wasn’t there a page in his dating guide? Girls don’t like it when you give another girl your attention, even when it wasn’t on purpose? What suggested the book? Whatever happens, always give in? Should he go with it?

He breathed deeply in and out, then looking to you, an honest and form feature on his face.

“I am really sorry, [Y/N]. You’re right, I did something I shouldn’t do. I might get dragged into, but I didn’t act like this.” Akihiko said, scanning your face for any change in your mood. “I only have eyes for you. I would do everything for you, and no one else.” And he meant it. Since he discovered his feelings for you, and even started admitting them, you were one of his top priorities. One of the dearest he wanted to protect. He wanted to learn more about you, wanted to learn more to love about you. Someone would say it cheesy, but he hopelessly falls for you.

“…everything…?” you asked, and Akihiko surely heard your tune in it. It wasn’t any hint of being angry, or being amused. Some hint of lascivious, there was this spark in your eye he knew very well. He couldn’t deny he liked the way the talk between you turned out.

“I meant it what I said…” he said to you, locking eyes with you. “Everything you desire…I will do it!”

“Even in a place like the hotel?”

“Even here!”

You seemed to think about his offer, but he already senses the slight smirk on your face, and the somehow hot sparkling tension between you two.

“How about you show me that you only have eyes for me?” 

Akihiko only nods, smiling shortly at you before closing the gap between you two. He sweetly took your face into his hands and placed his lips over yours. Gentle and slow, lightly massaging your lips while the kiss lasted. He parted soon after, yet only to grip your hips, pulling you even closer that your clothed bodies touch and reunited your lips again.

You put automatically your hands at his chest, leaning into him while you felt his hands claiming your hips. Sometimes, he let one hand wanders around, playfully squeezing your ass cheek. You softly yelped into the kiss which didn’t go unnoticed by the senior, a mischievous smirk appeared on his face during the kiss.

You parted again, both of you catching up with the own breath. Both of you had flushed faces, but also lightly raced heartbeats.  His eyes scanned your face. He could get drunk by your flushing cheeks, the taste of your lips, the soft touch of your skin under his hands. It always awakens something inside him what was hidden for a longest time.

“Was that all?” you provoked him on purpose, raising an eyebrow. He only chuckled when you felt his grip around you tighter.

“Don’t worry, love. I just needed to be warmed up for the real fun…”

And with this, Akihiko easily lifted you up, just for pressing you against the nearest railing. His strength always impressed you, and you were sure he sometimes just wants to show off before you. At least it got more visible after you two started dating. You quite remember good how Akihiko ran into a fight with way too much shadows even when Mitsuru said they should wait for the others. He beats them all, without any harm. Just to get the force of Mitsuru to feel.

You lightly caress over his arm, feeling the tense in his muscle, yet also the little goosebumps on his skin. However, Akihiko wasn’t here to enjoy your touch, he aggressively took you again into a kiss, biting at your bottom lip for entrance. As soon as you lightly parted your lips, he pushed his tongue as deep but also enjoyable as possible inside you, turning the kiss into a passionate, heated battle between you two.

You felt how he pressed himself more into you, softly rubbing himself between your legs which sends waves of pleasure over you. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop you, too, to put one leg around his hip, your hands roaming over his body.

“Take off your cloths!” you demand at him after parting, getting him a bit caught off-guard. There was again the cluelessness in his face which made him very loveable. His cheeks turned bright red.

“As you wish” he only answered, letting you down. As soon as you had ground under your feet, he started opening the kimono, letting the cloth falling off his body, soon to be followed by the underwear until he was undressed before you.

It wasn’t the first time you saw him naked. However, it was indeed cute that from time to time, Akihiko felt a bit shy being that bare before you. He was trained, and so was his body shaped. Not entirely bulky, but his determination into training all over the years paid off. Nothing to be shy for. You guessed it might be for him showing you his entire vulnerable side. Yet, the spreading red in his face speaks the story while you let your eyes room over his features. Any other girl would kill you for the beauty before your eyes.

“Oh my…”

Well, another reason Akihiko was somehow a bit shy showing himself naked to you is the easy fact how easily he got turned on. You already felt it before, yet seeing him naked and obviously painfully hard before you, it really did things to you. You could see his urge to cover himself with his hands, but he seemed to suppress it.

“D-Don’t stare at me…” he mumbles shyly, avoiding eye contact. The sudden shift was welcoming, but also confusing. It only made you laugh softly.

“But how can I don’t admire something marvelous right in front of me?” you asked teasingly, it worked.

“…you are staring at my dick…only…at my dick…”

“You cannot deny the welcoming view…”

Why he even felt hesitant when it comes to his dick, you were unsure. Groomed, not too long or too short, you would say average. He even cut down his pubic hair a bit. A good dick, you would say. He already knows how to make good use of it. Maybe, it was a guy’s problem.

“…and why…don’t you undress?” he asked after finding the courage. “Seems a bit unfair being the only one naked…”

“Are you demanding something…? Didn’t you say you would do…everything?”

The realization hits him. He shortly bits his lips, his face frowns to somehow forget where it all starts. He breathed in and you, then facing you again.

“You’re right. I am sorry, I shortly…got more into it and forget what the purpose of it was. Please, let me continue showing you”

“Go Ahead!” you said, and Akihiko didn’t waste any seconds to be close to you again. Without wasting any time, you felt his grip on you again, easily lifting up and slightly pressed against the railing, his body pressed now even more into you. If he did it by purpose that his dick was between your legs, you were sure he did. However, it was only his approach being fast, even a bit wild.

The kiss somehow was hesitant, shy. But also, gentle and sweet. It’s like he wants you to enjoy the short, sweet moment. Savoring the taste of his lips, feeling their softness. He parts from you; you could read the love he holds for you in his eyes. Yet, there was also a burning flame, a desire which needs to be pleased, as much as his hard dick between your legs earned for attention and touch.

Still, this was something he had to earn. And he knew it. Your eyes were locked, no one said something. It was more a silent communication between you two. Akihiko nods at you, softening his grip around you. With seconds, he went down on his knees. His hands softly caress your legs, slowly going up their way until they reached the hem of your kimono. The dances from his fingers over your skin sends a shiver down your spine. He stopped at the hem, looking up to meet your eyes. You smiled at him as a permission. With this, he worked up your kimono and opened the cloth to the point your legs and your clothed vagina was in sight for him. He shortly holds in, seeming a bit in thought what to do next. He decided to start with slowly tracing his fingers over your thighs, followed by a soft trail of peaks and kisses. 

You let out lightly hums while he continues his sweet trail of soft caressing and kissing your thighs. When his finger reached your underwear, he got a bit cocky. Instead of putting the cloth down, Akihiko let his fingers dance over your clothed vagina, knowing for sure the outside weak spots of you to press, to tickle out specific sounds from your lips. With the escape of your first loud and heartful moan, a winning smirk spread over his face.

“I love hear you singing to my touch…” he says in a melodic voice, not quite suitable for his devilish smirk on his lips. Normally, you pouted by his teasing behavior. However, he knew you and just pressed his fingers slightly which let you continue moan before you could even dare to pout.

Akihiko continued his way of teasing until he finally had mercy with you. With ad most slowness, his fingers went under the cloth, lightly brushing your labia before pushing it down, revealing your vagina to the outside, to his eyes.

Mostly unhear able to you, Akihiko mumbles something like Delicious when viewing you. A sight he could get drunk off. He enjoyed the view a bit too long for your taste, so you put a hand into his fluff of hair, pulling it a bit harder than usual. It didn’t go without a reaction, a mix of a painful little scream and a moan dropped out of his lips.

“For making something up, you enjoy yourself a bit too much, Aki…” you said, your tune a bit harsher, yet still filled with lust. “And you are far right now from making up…I’m waiting!”

You didn’t even wait for him to apologize or saying something else, you pulled him by his hair back between your legs. He seemed to grunt by the force. However, as soon as you let go off him, he slowly walked on his knees closer to you. His hands found a good place to lay on, and you could only see how his face got lost between you. And then, you felt his lips sweetly placing kisses but he fast changes it to sensual licking with his tongue. At first on the outside, but he didn’t waste time to dig it deeper into you, licking your inner walls, enjoying during it listen to the moans and hums escaping from you.

Akihiko changes out of sudden his pattern in pleasuring you and starts sucking you out. Sometimes a bit harsher, then slow and caring, and again a bit rougher, leaving your lips swollen, and yourself on a high rush of feelings. Which had a very high effect on him, his dick lightly wiggles, even pre-cum leaking, requesting to get some attention, some begging for releasing. He tried once to put down one hand to pleasure himself while he eats you out. You noticed and pulled again hard at his hair, to let him know his current place. His movements got sloppier, his mind clearly distracted with his own need but also his task to making up, for you accepting his apologize.

“Say…” you started, catching your breath from all the emotions you felt. “You seemed restless, Aki. Is something on your mind?”

You already know what was going on. His face flushed from the heat during the act, his hunger in his eyes, and well, his own need visible very painful. You know how hard he tried to control himself at this very moment. If he wasn’t here for making up, he would have let out his wild, animalistic side. A side where he showed you his true strength, his full stamina. It mostly leads to the fact he ravages you, even when he still is a sweetheart during the act. He was afterwards so ashamed about being reckless with you. You often said to him you didn’t mind, even enjoyed it. However, he is worried as hell, but also caring and sweet. You hadn’t told him but he was for sure a master in taking perfect aftercare.

He came out of your legs, heavily breathing. It was readable in his eyes that he knew your purpose with the question is teasing and provoking him.

“There is a lot on my mind, love…” he started, a bit hesitant in tune, still catching his breath. “Am I allowed…to voice them?”

“You are. Tell me, what’s on your mind?” you sweetly sing. Akihiko looked up to you.

“As much as I love it to make you feel good with my mouth…” he breathed in and out sharply. “…I cannot deny the desire that I want to be inside you…I want to feel you…I want to pleasure you with my dick…”

After telling, he let his head down, you could see how the heat crushed into his cheeks. He still wasn’t use to this bold dirty talk, even when he clearly enjoys it. You softly laughed, lightly patting his head, letting your hand ruffling his hair.

“…I have to say…you really are doing a great job down there. You are such a good boy… I think…”

You could feel how he looked up again with a kind of impatient look in his eyes.

“…I think…we can have a little change…Must admit, as much as I enjoy your skills…it is different not to feel you…I want…to feel you…” you said, a tiny hint of pink on your cheeks, allowing shortly the short shift in the atmosphere. “Please Aki…be inside me!”

A soft smile appeared on his face, slowly going back on his feet. You weren’t really a short one, not yet as tall as him. However, it still makes things to you when Akihiko stands before you, and you slightly have to look up to him. He closes the distant between you, placing his hands on your hips and capturing your lips with his again. You could feel his dick poking you which automatically let you spread your legs a bit apart. Clearly not going unnoticed by the male. He seemed a bit surprise about the speed in action. You only chuckle.

“I think we can agree we had enough foreplay, or?”

You didn’t even let him answer when you grab into one of your kimono bags, just for taking out some condoms. Akihiko’s surprised face even grew bigger. He cannot deny the thought the whole being angry and making up was just a charade to have an excuse to have sex with him in an unknown place. Not that he wouldn’t mind. Well, maybe he would be a bit hesitant about the idea being intimate in another place than his dorm room. A thing he would definitely trying to work on, being a bit…bolder with you. But that’s for another occasion.

He thankfully took one and prepared himself, your eyes glued to it. When the tiny layer of protection was on, you only smirked at him. You opened the loop of your kimono, revealing yourself naked before your already naked boyfriend.

“Show me what you can” you provoke him, a tiny spark in his eyes lighting up by the challenge. Of course, he now doesn’t waste any time, closing the distant between you. With one hand lifting one of your legs, he used the other to guide himself into a comfortable position to slide inside you. Even when the preparation was gentle, it wasn’t the entrance. It’s quite the opposite. With a rush thrust, hips hardly crushed against it, a sharp pain went through both of you. This would leave some bruises. “I’m sorry” Akihiko mumbles, slightly embarrassed by himself. “I promise, I’ll work on it the next time…” You just watched him, not saying anything. Instead, you just took his face into your hands, forcing him to look at you. Your fingers drawing the features, letting him feel a warm shiver crawling down his spine. Even for nighttime and the rare light, you could see his grey eyes shining bright at you. A glimpse of warm, kindness, love but also lust, hunger and desire. It was unbelievable for you that those eyes only looked at you, that those feelings were only meant for you. You considered yourself really a lucky girl.

“Don’t let me wait, Aki…” you breathed into his ear when you lean more into him. “Let me feel…alive!”

The words did their magic to the senior, the mood shifting faster than someone could count stars. His hands found his place gripping your hips, your body got pressed against the railing. To your both lucks, it was built out of steel. Any other material wouldn’t last the upcoming event. Which would be leading in both of you falling into the garden’s lake. Which would cause a very high amount of unwanted attention both of you didn’t desire right now.

He started with an uncoordinated pace, not sure if he should thrust slow or fast, and even unsure of the impact he wanted to add to it. His one hand pressed your leg against his hip, mostly for more stability for you, and a better angle for him. Your hands grabbed the railing, also trying to lay against it as much as it’s providing comfort. You let your head hung back in your neck, eyes closed, for letting the pleasure crushing down on you. Letting them room to wash over you, leaving the taste of desire for more. Hums and softly sighs left your mouth which let Akihiko known that he’s quite on the right path.

It took him some minutes to set to a pace which pleased you and himself. Not slow, but not exactly fast. He would describe it as a steady beat, mostly like a rhythm he uses when he trains his boxing. That you grabbed the railing gave him a bit more freedom in the angle he thrusted into you. He doesn’t have to think about if it would shake you and you would lose your footing. He watched how you had your eyes closed; enjoyment written on your face while he continued pounding into you. The way you enjoyed this so much made things to him, filling him with warmth and somehow more anticipation to pleasuring you even more. It also responded to the way your walls clenched around him with every thrust he gives you. Some grunts escaped his mouth, he closed his eyes down for also processing the flow and rush of feelings inside him. It caused him automatically to lightly speed up the pace, and also the force with each thrust.

He wished to say how incredible it feels for him, how much it thrilled him up. Yet, his lips were unable to form the words. Only pants escaped. It was for you either. You looked up, looking at him. You could admire for hours how the sweat lightly drops off his body on yours, how his glaze was locked on you. It was marvelous how his body moved with such easy grace in- and outside you, letting you feel a spark when the tip of his dick reached a very deep point inside you. You let go off the railing, just for grabbing behind his neck, forcing once again your lips on his. It took him a bit off-guard; it slightly broke his pattern. The kiss wasn’t gentle, it was a battle of hunger, desire and dominance. One hand grab into his hair, hardly pulling at it while the other digs the finger into his back’s flesh for support, leaving visible scratches. It caused him to moan loud into your kiss, yet he doesn’t even think of giving up, or letting up from the pace.

The kiss even thrilled him more up. While your lips battled, his hand on your leg pressed it even harder against his hip, the other grips even harder at your hip. He even dared to slightly made its way to your ass, clapping it playfully, lightly digging his fingers into your soft flesh, letting you know he can also play this game. You couldn’t resist a moan, but also not a payback in biting his lip during the kiss. You just hoped it wasn’t such a hard bite. It wouldn’t be the first time you bite a bit too hard. Well, it wasn’t in the end your problem to explain the swollen lip to others. To your liking, it fueled him even more with energy, and he changed again his pace. His brain was now fully consumed by the heated kiss battle, the way your body reacted to him and his own desire – fast and merciless. He didn’t even care that your body clutched against the steel of the railing. It wasn’t any harm for you, yet it wasn’t really quiet. It appeared it was a bit rusty, so it squeaks soundly. But he doesn’t care, you also don’t care. Your hips started moving alongside with his thrust, letting him grunt into the kiss. His grip got stronger, so as his pounds into you. You tried to scream into the kiss when his dick reached a weak point, it sometimes failed. It was somehow the moment you knew it wouldn’t take any longer for you to last, same goes for your boyfriend.

And he could sense it, for you and himself. Akihiko collected his last remain energy and jack hammered his dick inside you like a god-damn tantrum. You clenched extremely around him, he had to hold his breath how tight you were. You broke the kiss, throwing your head back to process the sheer amount of feeling crushing down. Akihiko could only watch how you got hit by the orgasm. Yet, soon enough to feel himself getting kicked over the clouds by how tight you were that it milked him out instantly.

He stopped abruptly with his movements, slowly letting go of your leg. He softly placed his hands on your hips, giving you support. Both of you just tried to catch the own breath. After minutes what feel like years, you gained back a bit of life and common sense into yourself. However, trying to saying something was another different topic.

“…that was…uhm…”

You just realized the whole situation. That you were indeed in a very intimate moment with your boyfriend, in a very unknow place and you were sure with one thing: You weren’t really quiet about it. The fact he was entirely naked and covered in sweat while you were part of naked, but also covered in sweat, count into the realization.

“We should leave as soon as possible!”

“What?” was Akihiko’s only response before you somehow chased him to dress himself up poorly and escaping through the next door back into the hotel. It doesn’t even let you both time to somehow clean up whatever mess you left. Both of you hide in the near bathroom for guests, just hearing some footsteps outside in direction to the garden. While you had to wait before the coast was clear, you both used it to freshen yourself a bit up as much as possible. Yet, both of you were a bit embarrassed to say something to the outcome of the situation. It was kind of frighting and thrilling at the same time, leaving a positive and negative mix of feelings inside you.

“Aki…” you said softly, gathering his attention. He walked up to you, looking curious at you. “Yes?”

“…I forgive you…for…earlier, you know…” you mumble. “You showed me how much I mean to you and…and I really did enjoy it…” You hugged him which he accepted in an instant.

“I am glad” he said, gentle caressing your back during the hug. “You had no idea how worried I was about a way to apologize…”

“Yeah, I can imagine. But I think our new problem is more to worry about…”

You heard him sighing. “I just hope no one saw us”

“I guess, they just…heard us…” you said, you heard him sigh again. “Will be some rumors in the next time…”

“Wonderful” you heard Akihiko saying, clearing seeing him rolling his eyes. Even when no one would ever find out it was the both of you – being the hottest topic in rumors wasn’t to his liking. Because he would know the rumors will be about you and him. It kind of let him feel embarrassed than being proud.

You parted, looking at each other. “I think, we should go back to bed to get some sleep. We will talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Yes, that sounds like a plan. Good night, [Y/N]!”

“Good night, Aki”

You shared a quick kiss, and leave to your rooms in hope not to get caught.

You didn’t get caught but Akihiko’s biggest nightmare came true the next morning. By the start of the last day, students were talking highly about the events they got a glimpse on.

“Have you heard? It seems we have some love birds among us, and they chirped a bit too loud in the night in the garden.”

“No way, really?”

“Oh, yeah. Some students woke up because they heard someone scream, so they alarmed some staff. But when they arrived, all what they found was a used condom.”

“How filthy. They didn’t get caught?”

“Nope. But can you imagine? Some people are crazy and horny enough to fuck in public…”

It was kind of hard not to feel insulted by the many descriptions of being naughty by plenty of students but both of you made it somehow. How Akihiko even ditched the questioning of Junpei who seemed not to believe him was impressive. In the end, both of you made it back into the dorm without being suspected.

Akihiko had texted you to come to his room, so you knocked at his door. Soon, he opens and let you in. Both of you sit down on the edge of his bed.

“It’s about last night…” he started, truly thinking about his next words. “I’m sorry I caused us such problems”

“Huh?” you asked surprised. “But it wasn’t your entire fault, Aki”

“Well…If I remember right, I…” his face turned a shade redder. “I was the one who made you scream…”

“That…might be true…” you also felt flustered. “But the entire idea was on my bucket, you just obeyed…”

“…but I also followed the flow, so…I don’t know…” he sighed. He felt a bit like a kicked puppy.

“Can we agree it was the fault from both of us?” you asked, seeing to his lightly troubled face. He nods.

“And even when it has an end, we didn’t see coming…I…really enjoyed it.”

Akihiko looked up, a faint pink on his cheeks. “You do?”

“Of course, I do, idiot. I always do. Because, it is with you, the person I care the most…”

You didn’t expect him to reaction bold with kissing you forcefully, letting you both fall on the bed. He parted, looking at you.

“You are also the person I care the most…You are driving me crazy with how tempting you are…”

You only chuckled, but got cut off by another kiss.

“Let me show you how much I love you…”

And you did let him do it.

#writing #ethien #spicy #only read when over 18+ #persona #persona 3 #reader insert #reader is female #f!reader #akihiko sanada #akihiko sanada x reader #akihiko x reader #one-shot #somehow written it and forgot its kinktober but i dont have a prompt list lol #smut #also on AO3

[lexyvey]

Run to the Hills

After everything happens, Eddie Munson's name has yet to be cleared. In order for Eddie to avoid prison and an unwanted reunion with his father, Steve comes up with a plan.

In Steve’s defense, he warned Hopper ahead of time. Hop knew that Steve wasn’t going to let this happen. Not if he could help it, and he could so…

***

Steve remembers the conversation the two of them had the day Hop informed him as to why Eddie was still being treated like a murderer after helping save the world.

It had been six days since all the shit with Vecna went down and the Upside Down began to seep into Hawkins following the massive earthquake. It had been four days since Steve found out Hopper was alive. That was one of the only good outcomes after their plan to kill Vecna failed. Other than Hop being alive… they lost. They lost badly.

The Upside Down’s rot was rapidly spreading. 100’s of people’s homes were destroyed in the splitting of the earth as the earthquakes wreaked havoc on this cursed town. And Max—

Max was still breathing, but… honestly, Steve thinks that death might have been more merciful than what she was going through. Braindead: that’s what the doctors said. They don’t know how much longer she’ll live until even Life Support can’t keep her alive. The government is still doing all that it can for Max though. El comes to her room every day using her mind powers to try to find Max and bring her back to consciousness. So far there hadn’t been any results, but Steve visits her every day hoping to see her awake.

She looks like a ghost of herself in that bed. Her eyes are no longer bandaged up, but a bone-chilling bruised blue and purple for all to see. Each of her limbs is in a full body cast, and the neck brace is like the cherry on top. Steve’s never seen her look so… frail.

It breaks his heart, every visit. He’s losing hope that she’ll wake anytime soon – if El can’t bring her back, nothing can – but he’ll never give up on Max. He refuses. She might look like a corpse in that bed, but she’s still the strongest person he knows, and that’s saying a lot knowing the rest of The Party.

He’d finally calmed down enough for the stray tears to stop falling when he left Max’s room for the day. He’s on his way out of the hospital when he realizes he hadn’t paid Munson a visit in a couple of days and changes direction. It’s as he turns the corner; he notices they still have Eddie’s room guarded.

Nearby, he finds Hopper talking to one of the Hawkins-Lab-type government people. And he knows he’s still high on emotions coming from Max’s bedside but fuck it. He storms right over, not caring before interrupting the two’s hushed conversation.

“What the hell, Hop?” he asks, gesturing with his arm toward the police officer stationed outside of Munson’s room. “They’ve still got an officer posted outside his door. What’s going on?” Steve swears, if they’re still treating him like the primary suspect in a homicide case and not just trying to protect the man from people like Carver he’s going to be pissed. Munson literally sacrificed his life trying to save the world.

“Listen, I know we’d expected Munson’s name to be cleared by now, but there’ve been some complications,” Hopper explained to Steve as the government official began to walk away, Hopper waving the lady goodbye.

“Wh-What kind of complications?” He asks the man dumbfounded.

“A lot of stuff is going on right now. The Upside Down is seeping its way into Hawkins, the public is in a panic. The government has a lot they’re dealing with right now. Owens is still trying to work his magic and pull some strings, but it’s going to take time.”

“Time?” Steve asks incredulously. “It took three hours last year for them to come up with the mall fire cover story. Why is this more complicated? It’s probably the easiest thing for them to cross off their list of shitty tasks to deal with.”

“Steve,” Hopper says as he puts a calming arm on Steve’s shoulder in that parental in a way he never experienced from anyone else but Hopper. To think he went a whole nine months without the man’s grounding presence. Steve felt himself getting worked up like an out-of-body experience. He knew he had to take a deep breath and calm down, but there were so many emotions flooding his mind. He was heartbroken at the sight of Max, pissed off about the way the government was treating Munson, but also, he felt the warring sense of relief knowing Hopper was back again but not quite believing it due to the lingering grief he’d been feeling the last almost year. It was all too much.

“Listen, kid,” Hopper began, ducking down to look into Steve’s eyes. His voice was soothing, miraculously gentle, and simultaneously gruff in a way so painfully Hopper. “I don’t like Owens’s current plan, but I understand why he’s doing this. We just have to trust him to come through, which he always has.”

“What’s the plan?”

Steve was getting too emotionally exhausted. He didn’t see any point in beating around the bush or softening the blow like Hop seemed to be doing right now. He appreciated the sentiment, but frankly, he was done.

“The public is fully convinced that Eddie killed a bunch of kids. They’re not going to just accept that Eddie’s innocent. They need someone to pay for what happened – they need the Munson boy to pay.” Steve’s mouth immediately opens, ready to argue with Hopper about this. Before he can, Hopper raises a hand to stop him, and Steve obediently closes his mouth.

“With all the ‘shitty tasks’ the government has to deal with concerning the aftermath of what happened and the public’s reaction to the murders, they’ve decided that the best course of action would be for law enforcement to continue their arrest of Eddie Munson.”

“What?” Steve asks, feeling his stomach plummet as anxiety begins to kick in. “They want him to be the scapegoat?” Steve asks in complete shock because that couldn’t be right. Munson just risked his life to save a town that hates him. He doesn’t deserve to go to jail for that.

“No, they’re still going to clear his name, Steve. I promise. Owens promises too. The residents of Hawkins just need time to cool off and the government needs time to get things in order. Once he’s good enough to transport, they’re going to move him to a detention facility. By the end of next month, Eddie will be innocent—”

“—He’s innocent now!” Steve shouts, his hands shaking in anger and fear on behalf of Munson. They can’t send him to jail. It’s not fair.

“Kid, I told you I don’t like it, but it’s a solid plan,” Hopper says, maintaining his calm in a way Steve is unable to right now.

“Solid plan, my ass Hop. You literally just escaped a prison sentence you were wrongly serving. How can you ask Eddie to do the same?”

He sees the small flinch Hopper does, and it makes Steve feel cruel bringing it up. He knows nothing about what Hopper went through.

“If anyone understands how much this plan sucks, it’s me, ok?”

And Steve knows he can’t argue with Hopper about that, but he’s not done arguing. Despite how emotionally fatigued he was moments ago, now he’s energized more than ever ready to go to war for Munson. So, he chooses another angle.

“Do you really believe that they won’t just chuck him in a cell and throw away the key?”

“Owens promises. He’ll be out by the end of May.”

“No,” Steve begins to say as he plants his feet shaking his head at Hopper. He takes a deep breath, choosing his words carefully before telling the older man, “I get that that’s what Owens told you. I know you believe him, and I believe you Hop, but… Munson’s a drug-dealing town freak. His only family is his uncle Wayne. He was like two friends aside from The Party? He’s a high school delinquent with no future ahead of him. Hell, he’s on his third repeat of senior year. No family,” Steve begins to point out, counting on his fingers. “No friends. A town that hates him. No future. If they’re putting him behind bars for a month because it’d be more convenient while they take time to put a story together, what makes you think they won’t just keep him there because it works out better long-term too?”

He watches as Hopper considers this. He sees the flicker of doubt in the man’s eyes and Steve takes that as his cue to continue.

“Who’s going to fight for his name to be cleared? His Uncle Wayne? A person who doesn’t even know if Eddie’s innocent?”

“Owens will come through, I promise kid. If not, we’ll fight him. Eddie’s one of us now. We’ll protect him if it gets to that, but it won’t. Owens will work his magic and make everything right. We just have to be patient.”

Steve just shakes his head in exasperation again,

“He better come through sooner than later. I’m not risking it. I won’t let them move him to prison Hop. He’s innocent. He saved Dustin’s life. He saved the world. I won’t let them take him away. I’ll break him out of here if I have to. He’s not going to be their scapegoat.”

“He’s not going to, kid. We just have to trust Owens,” he told Steve as he once again put a hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezing it in hopes of reassuring the boy. Steve wants to have faith in Hopper, but that meant putting his trust in those government dipshits and he couldn’t do that. He’d hold out hope that Eddie’s name would get cleared before they move him, but at the end of the day, he’d be working on a plan of his own. He wasn’t kidding. He’d break Munson out of there if he had to.

***

It should be noted, if it weren’t for Munson’s stupid pride (read: sacrifice to save Dustin’s life) making him get brutally and almost fatally injured in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this situation: with Eddie handcuffed to a hospital bed mentally preparing to be moved to the Indiana Department of Corrections tomorrow.

“Hey Munson,” he said to the older boy as he entered the hospital room. He wasn’t sure if Munson would still be awake, but he was relieved to see Eddie twiddling his thumbs lying in his bed fully conscious. While Steve had been planning this ever since Hopper told him Owens’ plan, now that it might finally be happening, Steve was getting anxious. He didn’t bother to sit in the chair across from Eddie’s bed, just stood at the foot of it.

“Hey, Steve-o. Thought visiting hours ended at eight,” Eddie says, straightening himself and trying to get into a comfortable upright position. He only slightly winced at the motion pulling at his stitches.

“It did. The guard outside your door is currently ‘taking a leak,’” he tells the boy with air quotes, before gathering the courage to continue. “Tomorrow, they’re going to move you and I don’t know if this will be the last time I’ll see you Munson, so forgive me for sneaking in.” He tries to play it off as lighthearted toward the end, but it seemed Munson saw right through it.

The man’s brow furrowed in confusion as he asked,

“What are you talking about? You planning on taking off and leaving Hawkins for good or something? Chief – well not Chief – Hopper told me they plan to have me out by the end of May.”

“Yea, Hop told me. The thing is…” Steve’s mouth opens and closes a few times as he thinks through what to say. “I think it’d be naive to believe that. I trust Hopper, and I genuinely believe Owens is going to try his best, but… the government has long lost my trust, ever since I signed my first NDA.”

“Harrington, you’re kind of scaring me here. Don’t tell me I’m going to live the rest of my life in prison. That’s not going to happen, right?” Munson asks with a stained laugh toward the end.

“I know I’m not the smartest in our group Munson, but I remember the flicker of doubt in Hopper’s eye when I confronted him about this. That’s all I needed to know I couldn’t let this happen… but at the end of the day, it’s your choice. I can’t force your hand here. I won’t, but we don’t have much time so I’m going to ask you: are you willing to let them take you away tomorrow?” Steve asks as he fishes a key out of his pocket and holds it up for Munson to see. “Or do you want to break out of here?”

“What?” Eddie says dumbfounded.

“It’s your choice. You can trust Hopper, Owens, and the rest of the government to come through on their promise to get you out a month from now with a cleared name and all the government hush money you could ask for. Or you can skip the fucking penitentiary, and we can get the hell out of dodge going 80 on the interstate. I know it’s a risk. And I don’t know if they’ll still bother to clear your name. And you probably don’t trust me outside of battling monsters in the Upside Down, but… if I was in your shoes… I know I’d want the option, no matter who’s offering.”

Eddie just looks at Steve blankly for a long minute. He doesn’t say anything until finally, he asks,

“How the hell did you get a key?”

It makes Steve lose himself to nervous laughter, taking Eddie with him as they dissolve into a fit of giggles like they were at some middle school girls’ sleepover and not in the midst of a life-changing moment.

“Found it in Hopper’s old uniform,” Steve tells him as their laughter begins to die down. “Well? What’s it going to be Munson?” He asks with a playful tone of voice.

“Fuck me,” the older boy mutters under his breath as he runs a free hand down his face. “You’re putting me on the spot here, aren’t you?”

“You’re also on a time crunch,” Steve unhelpfully adds. “We’ve only got until Daniels gets back from his unauthorized smoke break – I mean bathroom break.”

“Shit,” he hears Munson mutter to himself again as he thinks about the choice in front of him. He blows air out his mouth as he taps his cuffed hand on the railing of the bed.

“I’m really about to put Wayne through it again,” Steve catches him say as Eddie starts to bite the thumbnail of his free hand. “Okay,” he says to Steve before properly looking the younger boy in the eye. “Okay, fuck, okay. I don’t particularity like the idea of having a reunion with dear old dad, and yea… not really sure I can trust the government when they want to put me behind bars in the first place so…” he says trailing off with a frantic nod of his head.

Steve doesn’t hesitate after that, immediately making his way to Eddie’s bedside and uncuffing him. Neither of them talks to the other, but Eddie seems to still be externally processing everything as he mutters under his breath while the two of them exit the hospital room making their way through the maze of halls.

“Steve. STEVE.” Munson whisper shouts in urgency as he freezes in the hall, latching onto Steve’s arm looking at him with eyes full of fear.

“What?” Steve asks, watching as Eddie points up to the ceiling.

Oh. The cameras.

“It’s fine,” he tells Eddie. “Dustin will take care of them.”

While Hopper knew that there would be a breakout, only Steve and Dustin knew the finer details of it. The boy had been just as much, if not more, worried about what would happen to Munson if he was thrown behind bars. Steve initially didn’t plan on telling Dustin about trying to break Munson from his hospital bed arrest, he knew there was no way they’d successfully make it out of Hawkins without help from the boy genius.

So, a week ago, he spilled everything to the kid. He told Dustin how he managed to snag a key from Hopper’s old uniform when helping The Party patch up the cabin. He told Dustin how he saw Daniels take a smoke break every night around nine-thirty. He confessed that he had withdrawn enough cash to get them through a whole two and a half months on the run, not that it should take that long before Munson’s name got cleared.

Suffice it to say, Dustin was pretty impressed. Though he did manage to call Steve an idiot pretty quickly as well.

“You’re an idiot. See, this is why you don’t make the plans,” he told Steve as they sat across from one another on Steve’s couch. Before Steve could argue, Henderson explained to him, “You forgot about the security cameras.”

“Shit.”

He forgot about the security cameras.

“Yea, shit.”

“Ok, well I’ll still go through with it. So what if everyone knows I broke Munson out? We’ll be long gone by then.”

“Steve,” Henderson says, looking at him like he’s the biggest dumbass in the world. “A) they’ll just put out an APB and track your car down. B) you’re forgetting you have me.”

And oh, yea. He’s got Dustin.

Dustin managed to trick the security cameras into playing on a loop rather than showing a live feed. Steve doesn’t understand the logistics of it, but he trusts him.

Dustin was also helpful in making sure they had everything they could possibly need while on the run. He helped Steve pack a go-bag like the one he keeps with him in case of all Upside-Down-related shit. He helped with getting spare clothes that while they aren’t Munson’s typical style, would be better appreciated than Steve’s typical polos and brightly colored sweaters. Dustin helped him load the back of Steve’s car with extra fuel, an extra walkie-talkie (“in case you two get split up.”), tons of groceries and road trip snacks to get them by until they got far enough from Hawkins, and an assortment of cassettes including all of Munson, Henderson, and Steve’s favorites.

Steve will never not be grateful for the little shit.

As the date for Eddie’s move came closer, Dustin became more insistent that he come too. Steve had his work cut out for him in trying to explain all the reasons why Henderson couldn’t.

He needed to stay back to make sure The Party doesn’t try and follow them since it would only draw the feds their way.

It’d be unbelievably stupid if Dustin didn’t pass ninth grade. He’s too smart to be held back, and if he did, his mom wouldn’t let him return to summer camp to see Suzie again.

Speaking of his mother, she’d be sick with worry not knowing where her precious Dusty went. He’d be cruel to put his mother through that pain.

There were a lot of reasons Steve could have listed off as to why Dustin needed to stay, but after he told Henderson that someone needed to make sure Owens continued to clear Munson’s name so they could come back sooner, the boy conceded.

He wasn’t happy having to stay back, but he stopped fighting Steve on it.

Before leaving for the hospital tonight, Steve assured Dustin that he’d send letters to the boy whenever it was safe. He knew Dustin would hold him to that, but Steve has no intentions of breaking that promise.

“Stay safe. Don’t get caught,” Henderson told him.

“Will do. We’ll be back the second Munson’s name gets cleared.”

They both shed a few tears then. Dustin hugged his arms around Steve refusing to let him go, but eventually, they knew Steve had to leave.

“I’m going to miss you Henderson.”

He really was.

“I’m going to miss you too.”

“Watch after Buckley for me?” he asked, and Dustin nodded. Neither of them could tell Robin the plan. She wouldn’t have let them go through with it. And even if she did, they weren’t sure she wouldn’t just try and follow them. He loved her, but the last thing he needed was to put her in any more danger.

God, he’s going to miss them both like one would a limb.

They better clear Munson’s name soon.

***

There was a long moment in which Munson didn’t know whether to believe Steve about the cameras being taken care of, but eventually, he seemed to have bought it… or he just figured the damage had already been done. Whatever the reason, Munson eventually unfroze and the two continued making their way through the halls and toward the main entrance. The two of them barely managed to sneak past the front desk, but the second they did, Munson was cackling as they made their way to Steve’s car. Steve couldn’t help but laugh too. They did it. He broke Munson out of the hospital. Now they just had to escape this hellhole of a town.

#pre relationship #steddie #steddie fanfiction #steve x eddie #steddie fanfic #steddie ficlet #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #chief hopper #steve and dustin #dustin henderson #platonic stobin #eddie stranger things #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #also on ao3 #steve harrington x eddie munson

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

Posted this on Wattpad and AO3 a couple days ago and thought I'd share it with Tumblr as well! :3

Wachowski Family one-shots - "Going Shopping"

"Mother." Knuckles tugged on Maddie's arm, pulling her attention away from the book she'd been reading on the couch. "We have run out of grapes."

"Oh?" Maddie sat up a little, closing her book and flashing the echidna a quick smile. "Sounds like we need to hit the grocery store, then. I think we need more cereal, too."

"What has the store of groceries done to deserve our hitting it?" Knuckles demanded as she stood up and headed into the kitchen to find Tom and their other two boys.

"Figure of speech, hon." Maddie reached down and gently squeezed his shoulder. She glanced up again as she approached the kitchen and called through the doorway, "Hey, babe?"

She heard him call back, "What?" in something of a distracted tone, and walked in to find him rummaging through the cupboard, apparently searching for something. Sonic was sitting at the counter nearby, talking his ear off about his most recent baseball practice.

Tom looked over at her as she walked in, then immediately looked back at the cupboard. "I think we're running low on coffee. I can't find another bag."

"That works out, actually," Maddie replied with a grin, and he glanced back to her with a raised eyebrow. "I've been informed we're also out of grapes—" she flashed Knuckles a knowing smile— "and I know we definitely need more cereal. We up for a shopping trip? Or is it too close to dinner?"

Tom glanced at the oven clock, which read 4:02. "Nah, I think we can make it. Shouldn't take too long to just grab a couple things and go."

Sonic jumped off the stool he'd been perched on and was at Maddie's feet in an instant. He'd done this so many times now, Maddie no longer jumped when it happened. It was . . . a new normal, and one she didn't mind one bit.

"Can we pleeease get some more chili, too?" he pleaded, eyes sparkling. "Oh— and pizza! And guac?! Please please please please please!"

Maddie rolled her eyes with a laugh. "We'll see, sweetheart. For now, we're just gonna get what we actually need."

"Tails?" Tom called to the living room, startling the little fox from his fixation on the mini helicopter toy he'd been tinkering with. "We're all heading out. Make sure you put your stuff away where it's not going to get broken."

"Coming!" Tails scooped up his things and flew them upstairs to the attic, then flew back down a moment later to grab his shoes from one of the cubbies by the door (a more recent addition). Sonic had already put his shoes on, as had Knuckles.

As Tom locked the house up, the boys and Maddie headed for the car, with the trio making it a race of who could get there first. From what she could see, Sonic had definitely won, but then Tails protested something about they were supposed to touch the car door handle, not just the car, and Knuckles was demanding a rematch. With an amused smile, Maddie pressed the button on the key fob to unlock it so they could get inside.

By the time she and Tom had climbed into the drivers and passengers seats, Knuckles, Sonic, and Tails were all in their seats and buckled— Tails had to ride in a booster seat still, but he had no trouble buckling himself in. Occasionally he had trouble with unbuckling, but that was usually when he was rushing.

"Do you have, like, an actual shopping list?" Tom asked as he pulled out of their long driveway and started the five minute drive to the nearest grocery store.

"I'm pretty sure it's just those three things I mentioned." Maddie stole a glance in the rear view mirror to see their boys. Tails was fidgeting with something Sonic had left in the car from the other day, half listening to whatever Sonic was telling Knuckles. Or . . . telling himself. Knuckles was staring out the window.

It was hard to tell who Sonic was talking to at times. A lot of the time he just babbled to himself nonstop; a side effect still lingering from his prolonged isolation before he'd properly met her and Tom. It didn't seem to be harmful, so they hadn't made any attempt to stop it, but it did make them sad sometimes when they remembered the reason.

Maddie shook away those thoughts. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about that. Sonic— and the others— were okay now. She and Tom would love on them and be the parents all three of them had so desperately needed. They couldn't do much to repair the hurts in their lives from their pasts, besides try and make up for it now.

"That's good, then." Her husband's relaxed voice pulled her attention back to him. "With luck, this shouldn't take more than maybe twenty minutes."

In hindsight, they really should've known better.

Because honestly, even having the fastest kid alive, a child genius, and a warrior teen as their children, nothing ever got done fast.

It didn't help that the store they ended up at wasn't exclusively groceries. The second Tails saw the appliance and technology section, he was begging both parents to let him go have a look. And with the fox kit's big blue eyes, it was still difficult for Tom or Maddie to refuse.

(They knew they had to learn eventually. They'd never get anywhere with parenting this kid if he managed to get his way anytime he weaponized his own cuteness.)

Sonic had announced that he would find everything they needed in less than thirty seconds, but thirty seconds had long come and gone because every interesting thing on the way kept distracting him. It wasn't like he (or the other two) hadn't been to a store before, but for Tails and Knuckles, living on earth in a real family was still a new experience, and they spent most of their time treasuring every new thing they saw and felt. For Sonic, even though he'd now been living with Tom & Maddie for over a year, it still didn't feel long in comparison to the ten years he'd spent alone, watching the world from the hidden sidelines. Thus, to this day, he continued to relish every second he got to spend out in the open with no fear of being seen.

Knuckles was the only one who wasn't immediately drawn to go check out every new thing. Instead, he walked stubbornly by Maddie's side like a bodyguard (Tom had noticed he'd taken a special liking to her, as she had to him). Despite not joining his brothers, though, he still eyed them and his surroundings with a curious gaze.

Even though the presence of the otherworldly anthropomorphic children was not new to the citizens of Green Hills, neither Tom nor Maddie felt comfortable with the idea of letting one of them go off on their own. So, unable to resist the baby eyes, Tom ended up tagging along with Tails to the technology section.

Which was how Maddie found herself standing in the middle of the coffee and tea aisle with her entire family gone except for her eldest.

Knuckles peered up at her. "Would you like me to track down Sonic to ease your mind?"

"It's okay, hon." She smiled, trying not to betray the way her heart just melted at the kindness and consideration of the young echidna. "I can just call his phone real quick."

"I could call louder with my voice," Knuckles offered, but Maddie politely declined the suggestion and dialed her middle child's number.

"Hey, Mom, wassup?" Sonic's energetic voice picked up almost immediately. "You'll never believe what I found; remember that action movie series we watched a few months ago? They made a SIXTH one! Crazy, right?! Also I found a mess on the floor but I'm not sure if I should clean it up or not—"

"No, baby, don't—"

"Where are you, anyway? Oh! I was supposed to be finding the stuff we needed! What was it, again? Soup? No, cereal! Well, can cereal be a soup? Like a cold one that's sweet? Nah, that sounds like a dessert. Anyway, I'm coming!"

Maddie blinked several times at her son's rapidfire voice, and the next thing she knew, he'd already hung up.

Knuckles scowled. "He did not listen."

She shrugged with a little, knowing smile. "Your brother just isn't the best conversationalist. I think we know why."

The echidna's violet eyes softened, just for a moment. Then determination hardened them again. "I will find and bring him to you!"

"Wait, he did say he was coming—"

Maddie broke off at suddenly recognizing the voice hollering through the entire store: "MARCO!!!"

Her eyes went wide. "Oh, no—"

Then, a higher pitched voice: "POLO!!!"

A hyper giggle echoed from the direction of Sonic's voice, then he called "MARCO!" again.

Tails once again responded with an eager "POLO!" And thus their game went on.

Not sure whether to be humiliated or amused, Maddie chose to go find what they needed. She'd just grabbed the last thing when Sonic materialized at her side, giggling like a maniac, with Tails slumped over the hedgehog's head wearing an equally delirious smile of pure joy.

Tom was frantically running to catch up with them from further down the store, his eyes wide. "Not my idea," he panted as he arrived, and Maddie laughed.

"I knew that would work!" Sonic wheezed as he tilted his head and dumped Tails onto the tile floor. "Waaaayyy more effective than phones!"

Maddie narrowed her eyes, still internally battling as to whether this was acceptable behavior or not. "What, was this previously orchestrated?"

"No, no, no!" both Tails and Sonic fumbled over each other's words as they protested. Tails fell silent and nodded eagerly as Sonic quickly explained, "One of my teammates taught me that game at practice a couple nights ago! He said it was normally something that people play in pools, but his family sometimes uses it to find each other in places!" He trailed off, apparently uncertain as to whether he was in trouble or not, then quickly asked, "That's okay, right?" with just the slightest tinge of anxiety lacing his tone.

All thoughts of punishment had left Maddie's mind as he'd explained, and as she met Tom's gaze, it seemed he felt the same.

Having a family was still so exciting for Sonic. Hearing that he was trying out things with them that he'd heard other families did for fun . . . Well, something about that was just so touching.

So they didn't get back home till 6, and it wasn't a big deal. So their dinner was late and not as fresh as they'd been hoping. So what?

It didn't matter that things weren't perfectly orchestrated anymore. They'd done what they needed to do, their kids had had fun, no one had gotten hurt, and as far as they were concerned, the evening went just fine.

AO3 version

Wattpad version

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sth #miles tails prower #knuckles the echidna #they're brothers your honor #sonic fic #sonic wachowski #tails wachowski #knuckles wachowski #maddie wachowski #tom wachowski #wachowski family #the wachowski family #they're a family your honor #one shot #my writing #my fic #also on ao3 #also on wattpad #fluff #with just a smidge of angst but not enough to categorize it as angst haha #i love them #hope you enjoyed #family fluff #brothers fluff #adopted children #adoptive parents who are figuring this parenting thing out #movie sonic #movie tails

[frankchurchillsaysrelax]

would you give me your self or turn and run

part three of three.

A month after he returns home, Penelope reaches out. She doesn’t call but she does reply to his last email, and while it means he can’t hear her voice and the contents are quite terse, it feels so familiar that Colin nearly cries.

I will hear you out. Where would you like to meet? -Pen

Colin’s father was a hopeless romantic, his mother always said so. He remembers when he was younger and fresh flowers filled every vase in their home rather than lying at the base of a grave. He doubts his father ever screwed up quite so well but he thinks it’s a good first step. So with a bright bouquet of daisies in hand, Colin enters the cafe near Pen and Eloise’s flat on a bright Saturday afternoon with hope flowing through his veins and keeping his heart pumping.

She’s there already, sat at a small table against a brick wall reading a book. She glances up as the bell above the door announces his entrance and their eyes lock across the space, erasing the other people and objects separating them. At least on his part. Penelope breaks the connection after a few seconds, looking down to slip her book into her bag. Not once does the smile he’d so often taken for granted grace her features.

Colin approaches, the hope taking a chill and slowing his heart with each step. 

“Hi Pen,” he whispers at the edge of her table. He’d imagined this moment all week. How she would stand and give him a tentative hug, maybe allow him to boldly kiss her cheek. Instead, she stays seated, staring up at him with a mask of indifference dulling her features. Ice fills his veins. “These are for you,” he says, awkwardly handing her the daisies and still standing like a fool.

One eyebrow twitches upwards, a crack in the mask, as she reaches out to tentatively take them. “Thanks,” she says, a hint of confusion drawing the word out. “Sit,” she adds as she sets the bouquet on the table. 

An uncomfortable silence settles between them as Colin sits and continues to stare at her, taking in the sight of her after so long, wondering again how it is he went so long without her. Her hair is down and long again, brushing the middle of her back in soft waves. She’s dressed down but carefully so as if she’d chosen her outfit carefully to appear careless. She’s effortlessly beautiful. Poets would weep to witness her.

“Do you want to order something?” She nods toward the counter. He breaks his stare long to enough to glance down at the sandwich and cup in front of her before taking in the long line forming and shaking his head.

“Maybe later,” he says dismissively, not wanting to leave her side now that he’s here. “I missed you,” he adds before he can question whether it’s something she’d want to hear.

She frowns. “What is this, Colin?” she asks. Keeping her voice level she tilts her head and licks her lips, her frown growing. “You bring me flowers? You say you missed me? You ignored me for months, do you know how stupid I felt continuing to send those emails?” The whole time she doesn’t let her gaze go higher than his shoulder but now she meets his eyes and he can see the depths of pain there. “You hurt me. It might not have meant anything to you but it meant something to me.”

“Of course, it meant something to me.” He fists his hands in the pockets of his jacket to keep himself from reaching out to her, sensing that it would be unwelcome. “Pen, I am so sorry, you have no idea how sorry I am.”

“Then why, Colin?” she nearly shouts. The rest of the cafe doesn’t pay any mind to them but still, she blushes and looks around nervously. “You said you’d explain yourself, so explain.”

He tells her about the napkin. He has to. He’s known since the moment he decided to move back to London that he would have to. The look of horror that crosses her face as he recites her words is enough to break his heart and his resolve. He reaches across the table and places a hand over one of hers. She flinches but doesn’t retreat. 

“Oh God,” she nearly chokes on the words. “Oh my God.” 

“Pen, I-”

“All of this time,” she interrupts, “I’ve thought that it wasn’t anything I’d done. Eloise assured me it wasn’t my fault. Wait,” she pauses, stealing her hand from beneath his, “does she know about the note? Do your brothers? Oh, God.”

“Of course not,” he swears, hurt she would ever assume he would do that to her. “I’d never break your trust like that.” He runs his hand through his hair and sighs. “And you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m glad I know, I just didn’t handle it well.” An understatement to end all others.

“You didn’t,” she agrees. She takes a deep breath and passes her fingers beneath her eyes though there are no tears he can see. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

He suddenly wishes he had taken the chance to order something just so he’d have something to do with his hands. Instead, they shake in his lap as he begins his confession. “Because I didn’t think I could return your feelings, and that killed me. That I had the power to hurt you like that.”

She opens her mouth to say something, probably something of comfort knowing her and it’s the last thing he deserves. He continues, “I spent those six months trying to forget and just let things go back to before I knew. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wrote you so many times but never had the guts to send them. I came to realize something though, the more time went by.”

Penelope stares at him from only a foot or two away, with big blue eyes shining with kindness and still a twinge of pain. He isn’t sure if what he has to say will make it better or worse.

“My feelings for you were never going to change, just as I’d expected, but the feelings I have for you, that I’ve had for so long now it’s like a comfortable friend I carry in my heart.”

“What are you saying?” she asks, confused more than hopeful, concerned more than angry. 

“I love you, Pen,” he says loud and clear, not caring if anyone around them hears, happy for them to in fact. He yearns to reach for her hands again, to touch the skin he’s spent half the year dreaming of, but unsure if he has any right to do so.

Penelope looks as if the world has turned on its axis and she’s trying to get her footing. She opens and closes her mouth several times, a world of thoughts swirling in her eyes that Colin wishes he could read but finds the handwriting illegible. 

“You’re serious,” she settles on. She knows him, knows he wouldn’t lie about something so serious, knows he wouldn’t say the words if he didn’t mean them. Still, he can tell she doesn’t believe him.

“I am.” He tries to fill his eyes with all of the love he feels, fill the depths of his soul with equal parts lifelong friendship and newly bloomed passion, and drop all of the walls he’s ever crafted around his heart. It must work because Penelope looks away, a sweet blush rising on her cheeks.

“This isn’t what I expected from today, Col.” Her expression is still unreadable. 

He’s suddenly struck by the thought that she might not feel the same way she once did. Was six months of silence enough to erase him from her heart? Had he lost that which he only recently discovered he can’t live without? His brain tells him he’s being melodramatic but his heart doesn’t listen and begins to bleed his feelings all over the cafe. 

“I know it’s a lot. I’ve had time,” he winces, “to come to understand my feelings but you haven’t. And you said you wanted to let the dream go, to stop loving me. Have you? Please, tell me if you have and I’ll-” He stops himself not knowing what it is he would do. 

“God knows I’ve tried, Colin.” She shakes her head. “But it seems that a lifetime worth of feelings, especially ones felt as deeply as mine, aren’t that easily thrown away.” 

The hope he’d lost since sitting down begins to thaw. His heart turns over in his chest. 

“I believe you, but,” she pauses, takes a sip of her long cold cuppa, gathering strength, “I don’t know if I can trust you not to run again.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to be anywhere else,” he promises, knowing it's the truth.

“I don’t mean physically, Col. Although, honestly we all have wondered how long this decision to come home will last. But I mean emotionally. How do I know you won’t shut me out again? I don’t think I could handle that.”

He wouldn’t do that, would he? He’s never been in a relationship, he isn’t sure how he’ll react to things. He wants to think he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her again but what if he does? Does he even deserve a chance with her?

“So where does that leave us?” he asks somewhat pathetically. 

“I don’t know. But I’ve missed you too. So maybe we start with getting our friendship back and then,” she pauses, not wanting to promise anything, “and then I guess we’ll see.”

Pen, I know we’ll see each other again in a few days. I know it’s only been a few hours since I saw you last. But you said we should rebuild our friendship, and this is the best way I know how to do that. We’ve been friends for a long time, but it all really started with these letters didn’t it? So I hope you’ll indulge me. You also said you wondered how long I’d stay in London. Well, I truly mean it when I say I’m done traveling. Maybe not forever but never for so long. I’ve missed far too much of all of your lives. I intend to be a more permanent part of them from here on out. xx Colin

The flat is too big for just him and his one bag of belongings. Kate and Sophie, who had helped him by recommending their shared realtor, assure him that once he furnishes the place and buys the essentials it will feel much more homely. For now, it takes him a little over half an hour to move in his duffle and the few boxes full of things he’s chosen to bring over from his childhood bedroom. The whole thing is sort of depressing, sat at his feet in the wide open space.

Penelope, having offered to help him shop, wanders between the rooms and Colin finds himself hoping she likes it even if he isn’t sure how he feels. 

“This view is amazing!” she calls from the bedroom. The knot in his chest loosens but stays entangled around his heart like a noose ready to tighten again at any given moment. Today is going to be exhausting. 

Her face, sporting a large grin, appears around the doorframe before the rest of her body follows. “It’s great, Colin. I can really imagine you here.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he says, honestly. Her smile turns shyer, more private, and he really wants to kiss her. Before he can say anything to distract from that urge, his phone starts ringing. A quick glance shows him Anthony’s name and so he excuses himself to the relative privacy of the hallway outside the front door. “Hey, Ant.”

“Do you know how many features prams have these days?” Anthony begins without preamble. 

“Can’t say that’s something I’m aware of, no,” Colin responds, amused. “I would think Kate would be on top of the research for that though.” Kate is the most organized person he knows, even more type A than Anthony. Truly a perfect match.

“She is,” Anthony grunts, “but she asked for my opinion and I can’t just wing it.” 

“No, of course not,” he says thoroughly amused at his eldest brother’s distress. He tries to conceal it from his voice. “Why don’t you start with the safety ratings and go from there?”

“Safety ratings.” Anthony sighs deeply. “Right, yes, I’ll do that.”

“When are you going to tell everyone else? Not that I mind these panicked new father phone calls,” he adds. Anthony had confided his and Kate’s happy news on a whim while trying to cheer Colin up before his reconciliation with Penelope. He’d been honored to keep their secret but it has been weeks now. 

“Soon, soon,” Anthony says, distracted, probably already reading up on prams again and forgetting he’s on the phone. “Thank you, Colin. And congratulations again on the new place,” he focuses back on the call, his words heartfelt. “Today’s the big day, eh?”

“Not that big.” Colin basks in the glowing feeling he is newly bathed in at his brother’s pride. The knot in his chest unravels further. “More anti-climactic than anything. Pen’s here though, we’re just about to head out and buy some things to fill the place up.”

“Ah, of course.” There is a teasing lilt to his words that Colin chooses to ignore. “Well, I’ll let you get back to Pen. Make sure she tests out the mattress too before you buy it.”

“Goodbye, Asshole.” Colin is blushing as he slips the phone back into his pocket. He brings his cold hands up to the burning skin before going back inside his new home. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” It takes a moment to take in what he’s seeing but when he does, his face burns for a whole new reason. His words echo through the cavernous apartment and startle Penelope into almost dropping the journal she is reading pressed against a window. 

Instead, Colin marches toward her and rips the notebook out of her hands. He closes it before he can see which volume she’s had her eyes all over. His voice gets louder as he continues, “you have no right to look through this! Did you go through my bag? Find anything else to your interest?”

Penelope pushes off the wall and steps up to him, seemingly even shorter than usual as she pokes her finger into his chest, trying to appear intimidating while her voice drips with guilt. “I’m sorry, but do not yell at me.” Her big blue eyes flash with warning. Colin swallows the words he wants to scream. 

“Your bag fell over and it fell out. I was just picking it up and then, yes, I read it. I’m sorry,” she repeats, crossing her arms across her chest. “I thought it was a journal at first, which of course I shouldn’t have been reading, but I had no idea you were a writer.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks, confused yet still vexed. His whole body is tensed, pressure building as if he were a rocket about to launch.

“It’s a book, isn’t it?” Her confidence wanes and she deflates. “The prose is beautiful even if there are no real transitions, and some sections would need editing of course, but,” she pauses, biting her lip and staring up at his face. “It’s not a book?”

“It’s just a journal,” he says, sounding more like a question than a statement. The warm rush of anger is slowly draining out of him though it lurks nearby ready to strike again. “You thought it was a book?”

“I think it could be,” she confirms. “I’d bet that bag is full of these isn’t it?” He nods and she smiles, reaching out for him tentatively. Reluctantly, he takes her hand in his, the one not gripping his journal in a protective death grip. “I’ve always thought your writing was beautiful, your emails I mean. It was like I was there with you every time. I thought about suggesting you write a travel blog but this, this could be something so much more, Colin.”

He closes his eyes, trying to get a handle on the emotions at odds with each other in his mind. Residual irritation and confusion make way for pride and hope. This could be something. This could be his. If Penelope believes in him then, maybe, he can start to believe too.

…I reread that first email all of the time. Have I ever told you that? It meant so much to me that you would think of me let alone take time to write. But you have always been thoughtful and kind in that way. I miss my father sometimes. It’s odd how some memories don’t surface until after the person in them is gone. He used to buy me chocolates every time he traveled for work when I was younger. Switzerland, France, America, no matter where he went he always found the best chocolates and would slip them to me when my mother and sisters weren’t looking. Always with a cheeky wink. We never spoke about it but it was our little secret. Then he stopped. I don’t know whether he forgot or if my mother’s worries about my weight got to him but one day he came home empty-handed and didn’t even look my way. A good piece of chocolate makes me cry these days….

Colin falls into a routine: wake up, type up his old journals and edit along the way, have lunch with one of his siblings, more editing, and then, the best part, share that day’s progress with Pen when she comes over after work. She’s taken to bringing a bright red pen that she uses to make copious amounts of notes even as she speaks them all aloud, her critique at times harsh and others glowing. She’ll make a great editor one day. He tells her so.

He tells no one else about the memoir. He still can’t believe he’s done something worth writing a memoir about, never thought of his aimless wandering as a story someone might want to read, never thought of his mindless scribblings as real writing. He doesn’t think of himself as a writer, an author, most days. An imposter behind a computer screen seems a skin he fits better. 

It’s his father’s birthday and the first time in two years that he’s been present for the luncheon his mother puts on in his honor each year. It’s the event he’s felt the guiltiest about missing during his time away from home and this year it feels like mum has pulled out all the stops. 

All the usual suspects are present, but no one else seems to question Kate’s sister, Edwina’s, presence, except Pen who leans into his side on the couch and whispers her surprise in his ear. Colin doesn’t respond, simply wraps an arm around her shoulders and searches out a nervous Anthony to confirm his suspicions. Pen leans closer and lets it go, warm and happy at his side. He feels more than one pair of eyes on them but ignores his family’s nosiness this once and listens in on Pen and Pippa’s quiet conversation. 

A few minutes before lunch is set to be called, Anthony and Kate walk to the center of the room and call for the room’s attention. Colin faces his brother and sister-in-law but his eyes glance toward Edwina only to find her already looking at him, a mischievous grin on her face that he instantly mirrors. He should have known. A moment later everyone is on their feet, cheers ringing out across the room and the competition for who can reach the happy couple first begins. 

It strikes Colin that this is one of those moments he might have missed, a moment that would have been relayed to him over the phone later while he sat an ocean away, a well of longing in his gut. Being home is so much better.

…The first girl I ever kissed was Emma Baxter. It was terrible. Most likely my fault but I like to think she was just as nervous. Our lips were dry and our teeth were sharp where there shouldn’t have been any. Our noses didn’t brush tenderly so much as smash up against each other. It lasted maybe twenty seconds before she ran off and I don’t think we ever spoke again. You may wonder why I’m telling you this. I was just thinking that I could be called a scholar in Penelope Featherington. I like to think I know pretty much everything about you at this point, but what I love is that there are always more things to learn. One thing I don’t know is who was your first kiss. All I know is I hope that I’m your next….

Lady Danbury Publishing House, where Pen works, passes on his book. He’s not all that surprised but it still puts a pit of dread in his stomach that he falls into over and over again like a cartoon character as he wades through the rejections and waits to hear if anyone wants to publish his book or if he really is a charlatan.

Finally, nearly a year after he came home, nine months after he began this crazy journey, both a lifetime and no time at all, his agent calls with the news. A small up-and-coming indie house he’s never heard of has jumped on his manuscript. They say words like sensational and instant hit but all that Colin remembers is Penelope’s radiant and knowing smile across the booth in the dimly lit restaurant where he’d taken the call. He kisses her that night. 

“To the new darling of the publishing world,” Penelope says, lifting her champagne flute high in the air, already a little tipsy. They’re back at his flat, sitting on the couch she’d helped him select. 

Colin smiles, shaking his head. He clinks glasses with her even as he calls her ridiculous. His own buzz vibrates beneath his skin, gooseflesh rising on top as he watches her happily sip her drink. A loose curl has broken free from where her hair is pulled back and he’s reaching out to tuck it behind her ear not even wanting to stop himself. Pen’s smile softens and she sets her glass on the coffee table before curling up against his chest. 

He holds his breath, letting her listen to his heart as it plays a symphony just for her, cracking his ribs open to find its path to hers. Slowly, silently, he uses a finger under her chin to coax her until their faces are only inches apart. 

“Pen.” Forcing air back into his lungs, he releases her name on a sigh. He watches as realization blooms across her face, breathing color into her cheeks and a fire in her eyes. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” she whispers, a longing that reflects his own in her voice. 

For all their waiting, neither rushes the moment. Penelope presses her lips together to wet them and Colin uses his thumb to tug her plump bottom lip back out, running the pad back and forth across it, feeling her breath hot against his skin. All of his senses are on high alert, catalouging every detail, committing every second to memory. Perhaps he’ll write about it later. 

Infintesimly slow, he leans down until their lips are touching but once he’s gotten a taste, desperation prevails. Like a fog dissipating in a fresh rain, everything inside of him becomes clear. He’s known he loves her. He believed that fact. But facts are nothing when faced with feeling and now he knows that he was meant for Penelope Featherington. He was put on this earth to love this woman and he would do so for as long as she will have him.

…When one dream comes true the human mind has the ability to dream another. I think that’s one of the most remarkable things about us. You were my dream for so long Col and I can’t wait to see what is next for us….

One Year Later

One thing about having a large family, you get used to being in a crowd. 

The bookstore is full to capacity, a large portion of that being his highly supportive family. Even Greg and Hyacinth are here, someone else is Facetiming Frannie, and Augie and Edmund are running amok much to their parents’ frustrations.  

After his reading, he is escorted to the signing table. The line, winding around the shelves, is intimidating and exhilarating in equal measure. He listens to his publicist as she reminds him for the millionth time on how to keep the line moving. 

“Colin,” his mum says, her hand placed on his shoulder. He turns to face her. “Gregory, Hyacinth, and I are going to leave. I just wanted to tell you again how proud I am of you.” Her eyes are watering now. “You’ve finally found your place.”

He leans down to kiss her on the cheek, blinking back his own emotions.“Thanks, Mum,” 

He speaks a little to everyone in line. It’s weird calling them fans, he prefers admirers or better yet, fellow wanderers. Yes, he’s missed meeting so many new people, each with their own story or questions. He’s doing a poor job at being efficient but he’s having too much fun to care.

As the signing progresses and the crowd dwindles, the rest of his family make their leave as well, always stopping by for a quick hug and another hurried ‘congratulations’ until only Pen remains. 

He finds her tucked away in the romance section buried in a new book, her feet pulled up on the chair beneath her. The harsh lighting of the bookstore bounces off of the ring on her finger and he stands there watching her for far longer than he probably ought to with a silly grin on his face. He’s the luckiest man in the world. It’s never lost on him that there would be no book without her. There would be no stories without her. He would have probably remained a lost eighteen year old boy without her. 

“Ready to go?” he asks, softly. She holds up a finger for him to wait as she finishes her page and he rolls his eyes fondly at the familiar gesture. Once she’s done, she looks at him with a tired smile and stands. He follows her to the checkout counter so she can buy her book and they exit the store arm in arm into the cold London night air.

#my fic #polin #colin bridgerton #penelope featherington #bridgerton fic #bridgerton #also on ao3 #would you give me your self or turn and run #two years later and i finally finished it #i am posting this before i chicken out and without a final readthrough #what’s editing i don’t know her

[marisferasiop]

Interloper

a Transplant short

Ao3 link

Summary: when a new citizen of Jackson gets a little too aggressive when you turn him down (and a little too rough with Ezra, who comes to intervene) Joel ensures that he thoroughly understands the consequences.

Word count: about 4k

Warnings: canon- typical violence, jealous/overprotective Joel, boys kissing, slight internalized homophobia (or fear of it, at least), blow jobs, breathplay if you squint

Rating: explicit! Minors DNI

Note: set 1 year after Transplant. If you haven't, I suggest that you read it first so you're not lost! Also I forgot who made these dividers but I did rb them as asked when I saved a few 😭

Tags: taking a step outside my comfort zone and tagging those I thought would like based on previous interactions/feedback (if I tagged you mistakenly OR didn't tag you I'm sorry!) @for-a-longlongtime @wannab-urs @morallyinept @ezrasbirdie @luxurychristmaspudding @timelordfreya @chronically-ghosted I never tag ppl I'm freaking out a little at the idea of being p e r c i e v e d, sorry.

He had woken up in such a good mood, too.

Joel had stirred in the witching hour that morning to the feel of your cool, little hand curving over his ribs as you slid back into bed behind him.

“Hmm?” He’d grunted, tipping his head up toward the ceiling to look back. You had sighed back at him as you tucked your knees behind his, smothering your face between his shoulder blades.

“Had to pee.”

Under his chin, Ezra had stretched and turned into him, soft breath tickling his throat, and Joel had drifted back off.

When he’d been awoken flat on his back sometime later, the sun up and searing through your windows, it was to find you and Ezra each straddling one of his knees, sucking his dick in tandem.

He’d nearly come at the sight.

“Oh, Jesus fuck,” he’d quietly groaned, spreading his knees a little, reaching down to palm your heads. You had glanced up at him and grinned around your mouthful of him. When you popped off, you ran your hand up and over his spit-slicked length, making his hips twitch up into your grip. Under your wrist, Ezra had tucked his face and was coaxing Joel's balls down, laving at the wrinkled skin of his sac, sucking a ball into his hot mouth as it descended. "Agh!"

“Ooooh, Joel’s awake, baby,” you’d crooned at Ezra, giving another kitten lick to Joel’s weeping head. His thighs jumped under your palms.

Ezra had his cheek smushed into Joel's thigh and was staring at your hand greedily, his mouth wet and still stretched around a testicle, waiting. He pulled away, letting Joel's balls slide out of his lips and drop with a wet slap. Joel hissed and flinched. Ezra picked his head up and swiped his tongue over your knuckles, following them up to Joel’s cockhead and between your salty lips, licking his taste off your tongue.

“We’re wondering who sucks your dick better, Knuckles,” Ezra said up to Joel serenely, cupping his balls. Joel groaned, absolutely stricken dumb. He had never been woken up with head before, and you two were gonna absolutely ruin him.

Part of him wanted that. A big part. One that grew daily, now, the longer he was with you both.

You stroked his cock tightly in your little fist and leaned it over to fit the tip in Ezra's waiting mouth. Ezra sucked half of him down greedily, pressing himself hard to take the rest.

Instantly, Joel's hand had tightened in his hair. [Ezra likes Joel being rougher with him than he is with you. He recognizes that the man has to let all that aggression out somewhere, even if it’s really repackaged desperation]. He hummed around the fat cock in his throat as those fingers twisted tighter in his hair and Joel rocked his hips at the vibration, buried himself deeper. The sting of his scalp and the squeeze of his tonsils, the burning of his lungs, feels like success to Ezra, who has spent the last year diligently working his way under the curmudgeon’s skin.

Just as Joel was about to come, his balls up tight and his cock pulsing on Ezra's tongue, the younger man had pulled off and kissed his weeping tip, passing him back to you.

Joel wanted to jump up and shake the man, throw him under himself and make him swallow every thrust until he choked on his cum, but your gentle touch on the inside of his thigh gave him pause. The marked difference of your soft, sweet sucks to Ezra's deeper, stronger pulls on him was giving him whiplash. He settled immediately under you, caught between Ezra's teeth on his thigh and your urgent nursing on his tender head.

You’d both teased Joel for ages like that, trading him back and forth with a firm squeeze to his base every time he got too close. Eventually, he erupted on your faces, painting your lolling tongue and the scarred bridge of Ezra's nose and scrappy mustache with ropes of his cum.

After, he’d let you crawl up and lay on him for deep, indulgent kisses. He traced his fingertips down your spine, feeling you bloom under his touch. He gripped your cheeks and held you open while Ezra fucked you hard from behind. He eventually relinquished your hip into Ezra's hand only to move to assist better. He got onto his creaking knees and wound one unforgiving fist into your hair and used the other to allow his calloused fingers to strum your clit til you shook apart for them.

When Ezra pulled out of you to finish himself off, Joel had moved behind him. He pinned the man back to his broader chest with one hand wrapped snugly around his throat and the other around his cock.

"Lay back for us, honey," Joel told you softly, and you were flushed and eager to comply, rolling bonelessly to your back. You cupped your breasts together and played with them for their gaze.

Joel stripped off Ezra rough and fast, still pinned into position, til he shot his load all over your heaving tits where you lay beneath their spread thighs, watching them with lust- blown pupils.

Joel had gone outside to work on your rotting porch with a smile and some pep in his step some time later, grateful and happy.

Now, play time was over and he was far from amused. He’d been having such a nice, domestic off day and you and Ellie were dragging him out to socialize.

The inhumanity.

He knew grumbling would get him nowhere, so he simply remained surly and quiet about it. Until a thought struck, anyway.

“I don't see why’n the fuck you gotta run the bar. Or do rounds, like ever? Y’all are still in school. They even let you drink?” Joel grouses to Ellie, stomping through the crisp snow beside you from the house to the Tipsy Bison.

“If I'm old enough to take patrols, I'm old enough to run the bar for a couple hours,” Ellie says sardonically.

“And drink,” You say quietly, rolling your eyes at Joel’s continued grumping. She huffs a laugh.

“Everyone does rounds, now and then, Joel. Even me. So, even Ellie. And it’s only a couple hours. You can sit with us and Cee for that long and pretend not to be such a Grinch,” you elbow him.

He harrumphs, squeezing your hand where it’s stuffed inside his coat pocket with his own, and takes Ellie's teasing in stride. She’s mimicking his grumpy stomping behind them, her arm linked with Cee's.

“Knock it off,” he says with no heat. She rolls her eyes so hard she nearly falls into a snowbank, making Cee and Ezra giggle.

“Come on, old man. Get a drink, chill out. Watch your hot girlfriend while she dances with your pretty boyfriend. I have faith in your wallflower abilities,” she claps a hand to her chest dramatically, eyes closed, and takes a loosely-packed snowball to the face for her acting skills.

Still spitting out bits of grass and pine needles, Ellie holds the door and sticks her tongue out at a smug Joel as he passes by. Cee is the last to enter and picks a blade of grass out of Ellie's hair before dropping a kiss on her icy nose. “Let’s see if you can get me wasted,” Cee leans in and whispers, straightening and biting her lips when Ezra glances over his shoulder at her with a lofted brow.

“You coulda done that at home with some 'shine and had a far better time alone, rather than here in this sausage- fest tryna get drunk on watered-down shots,” he quietly conspires, and they dissolve into appalled giggles. “There's a three- drink- max anyway.”

Inside, Joel accepts a tumbler of whiskey from Ellie and follows you and Ezra to a tall, round table with four stools. The bar is already humming, mostly patrolmen who are fresh off the wall shift stopping in to de-fuse and socialize before going home. He casts a glance around the room, recognizing most faces now after a few years in Jackson, and takes the stool beside Ezra, both facing the bar.

You’ve shucked your heavy coat and are sitting pretty across from him in a tight top and what you had called a skater skirt with dark leggings and your trusty boots to keep your legs warm in the dead of winter. (If you had noticed the way Joel had sandwiched you between him and Ezra on the walk here like a guard dog, you hadn't commented on it).

Right now he wants to put your jacket back on your pretty little shoulders. Or his own flannel. As soon as you’d hung it on the back of your chair, you had eyes on you.

Ezra drops his hand on Joel’s lap under the table and strikes up conversation with you girls, asking about Cee’s final weeks of school and the hideously strict teacher, Marnie, who has both of them and seems to have it out for her. Cee is still training at the clinic, and is now training with you in surgery. Ellie is still at the stables. She’s been moved on to farrier training now that the last foaling is done, and is taking well to it, she explains in Ellie’s absence.

You and Ezra and Cee dissolve into idle talk about the clinic, allowing Joel to zone out a bit under the pressure of the hand curved over his leg, those lissome fingertips scratching idly at the inner thigh seam of his jeans, just above his knee- nothing impertinent- and keep his eyes on the milling crowd. You hook your foot behind his calf and when he snaps his gaze to you, he forces his shoulders to drop an inch at your goading smile.

You ask him to dance and he gives you a flat look. At your pout, he turns his look on Ezra, who simply squeezes his knee and gets up. “Come on, soleil. Let’s let Knuckles guard the table. I’ll lure you back into bed with my two left feet.”

Joel is helpless not to smile in the wake of your delighted laughter. He watches Ezra lead you and Cee to the parquet. His unit, everyone he cares about most is right here, in this room, it’s okay. He just doesn't like the press of bodies after half a lifetime in the overflow of the QZs, followed by the absence of trustworthy folks on the road.

He fingers his glass idly and enjoys watching you, how Ezra doesn't let you stray too far from his reach and how you grin wide and enjoy yourself, moving to the music and giggling with Cee. He catches Ellie stealing glances of her, between serving drinks, and hides his smile behind his glass.

The door blows open with a blast of frozen air and Tommy steps in with a handful of men crisped at the edges with snow, fresh off a day- long scouting run. He claps Joel on the shoulder with an easy, tired grin before leading the group to the bar for their drinks. Joel narrows his eyes at the men; he doesn't recognize half of them. Odd, he thinks, since he’s one of the patrol heads.

Tommy thanks Ellie with a playful wink and brings his beer back, dragging a stool over to squeeze in among the others.

“What did you do on your off day, brother?” He asks, drawing Joel away from his thoughts.

Joel shrugs and glances at his partners on the dancefloor. “Slept in. Cleaned the house. Helped Sunny replace those rotten boards on her porch. Got dragged out here,” he complains lightly, knocking back the last of his drink.

Tommy scoffs and draws a panting Ezra, who has abandoned the girls for a break, into conversation next. His eyes stick to the way Ezra’s hand steals back over Joel’s thigh under the table as he slides into his stool, but he says nothing and doesn't react, though Joel notices the glance and stiffens slightly at first. Tommy just takes a swig of his beer and keeps talking.

While the chatterbox catches his breath and spins a yarn about crossing paths with a mountain lion on their last foraging trip before the snow hit, and his anticipation of the next one when the snow melts, Joel scoops up both their empties and goes to the bar.

It’s crowded, and Ellie and the other lady, Rachel, are busy pouring for the scout team that just came in. You and Cee squeeze in beside him. He catches your eye quickly, of course he does, and you lean over with a salacious grin, stealing the bottle from Ellie's grasp as she’s about to pour in his cup. “What can I get you, handsome?”

“Two more. Pretty thing like you shouldn't walk home alone. When’re you off?” He flirts back with a warmed chest, looking down at your easy smile. He leans an elbow on the wood surface as you snort and watch Ellie pretend to gag and grab the bottle back.

“You guys are gross. Go away,” she mimes a dramatic hurl and you can’t stifle a giggle.

“In an hour or so, big guy. You can walk me home. But don’t let my boyfriend find out,” you nod at Ezra, who is watching your exchange with a bemused smile. Joel smirks and scoops up the glasses.

“I think I can handle him, sweetheart,” he winks at you and goes back to the table, leaving you to wait on your drink with Cee.

He’s drawn into Tommy’s story of the scouting trip today, listening to how he was training some new folks and how they’d taken the west pass through the mountain to check the dam for any issues after a power outage the day before. They’d found a lone infected wandering about, and managed to bring home three deer for the mess hall. Joel is in the midst of fantasizing about a nice venison steak when he hears your annoyed voice cut through the susurrus of the bar.

“Yeah, I don't think so, bud.”

Joel snaps his eyes to you, feeling Ezra’s hand curl back around his knee as if to keep him pinned to the stool.

You are watching one of the scout troupe closely, one who has decided to lean over you at the bar so he can leer at you better.

“Aw, come on, little lady. You’re all dressed for attention, ain’t you?” the guy drawls, making the acne-riddled guy next to him snort into his beer. “I’ll give you some.”

Joel’s hand curls around his glass hard enough to shatter it.

Idiot #1’s spotty friend elbows him and leans in. “You gotta watch out man. That guide today said the town doctor is taken. That's you right, miss?”

“That’s me, but a no should be good enough reason to lay off.” You roll your eyes and shift to turn away and continue having fun with Cee, but the first guy won’t let up. He just gets louder.

Joel's fist tightens on the table. He knows you can handle this. You can. It's the principle of it. You shouldn't have to.

“Ooooh, yeah? You’re the one with that old, mean fella, right? And the one- armed guy? At the garden center,” he laughs with a snide grin. “They share you or somethin’?”

“Hey, she’s not interested, dude. Either quiet down or leave,” Ellie intones, her voice hard. “Either way, you're cut off.”

Ezra presses down on Joel’s leg when he feels the muscle tense. He slides his palm up over Joel’s nape, leans in, and murmurs: “If you go over there and do what you’re wantin’ to do, Sunny or Cee is gonna end up havin’ to patch them up at the clinic. Let me talk to ‘em.”

Joel clenches his jaw but stays in his seat as Ezra gets up. The younger man grasps his shoulder and slides close behind him, between the wall and the stool. “If they decide to ignore my words and get physical, you’re obviously welcome to come have a tussle. But let’s take it outside if so, yeah?”

“He touches any of you–”

“Joel.” Tommy calls his attention. “You’ll take it outside.”

The muscle rolls in Joel’s jaw but he nods.

Ezra squeezes his shoulder again and drifts over to the bar, keeping his eyes on you. Unfortunately, he arrives a moment too late. In the second it takes Ezra to pause and talk to Joel, the guy has already stepped too close again and crowded you against the bar, his hand aiming for the hem of your short little skirt. He manages to get his other hand around your wrist before you yank it back.

"Hey!" You and Cee both exclaim. Cee quickly pulls you out of his reach.

“Hey! Back off,” Ellie grits. She's already slipping out from behind the bar to step between you and him before Joel can even react. He starts to stand and Tommy grabs his arm.

“Let Ezra try,” he says, and Joel growls under his breath.

You slip out of the man’s reach and your jaw tightens. “I said no, dude. Fuck off. Last warning.”

“Oh, and what are you gonna do about it? You and two girls? Town doc doesn't exactly scream fighter, princess. I bet your guard dogs do it for you. Speaking of, I don’t see ‘em? Or are you just the town slut, and two of your regulars are what you’re calling boyfriends?”

Ellie looks mutinous, but before she can cock her arm back to deck him, Ezra grips the guy’s collar and hauls him sharply backward several feet before he realizes what’s happening, giving you room to make an escape. The man crashes to the floor, caught off guard.

“Excuse me, partner. I suggest you turn your attention to me and have a civil discussion, and level your temperament, before you find yourself with a broken jaw, flying outside to bleed in the snow.”

The acne-riddled guy locks eyes on him first, noting Ezra's missing arm. Recognition sparks in his face. “Oh shit. Uh, Ray?”

“Ray?” Ezra sneers. He glances at you, clocking your burning cheeks. It makes his gut roil. You’re more furious (and now embarrassed) than anything, now standing between Joel’s knees. Ezra watches him assess you, his hands and words gentle (probably for the last time tonight) as they cup your chin. He swipes his thumbs over your burning cheeks and folds you into his chest. Ezra can tell that Joel very much would rather be pounding this guy’s face in than simply holding you, but he's waiting for his cue.

Ray has straightened up from where Ezra had dragged him to the floor, spitting curses, and turned to face Ezra. His friend has disappeared backward into the crowd to avoid the pending fight. Hell, half the bar has quieted down to watch.

“Imagine having a nemesis called Ray, soleil.” He winks at you and you grit your teeth against a weak smile at the joke. “Now, mister, I can tell you’re new here in Jackson. I'm inclined to ask you again to apologize for your boorish behavior toward our doctor, Sunny, and change your attitude. She gave you a final warning, and I will not ask again.”

“Oh, are you one of her mutts, then? Girl can spread ‘em for the elderly and disabled but not anyone else?”

“You need to make your way outside, Ray, before it's ensured that you end up with one functional arm, too,” Ezra says.

“I ain't scared of you, or her old man. And I sure as shit ain't scared of some slut who thinks she's too good for anyone.”

The glint in Ezra’s gaze snuffs out as his gaze darkens. “I suggest you find your manners immediately, Ray. You’ll find your way out of this town just as quickly as you entered it, if you don’t learn to manage that temper and hold that tongue. Perhaps even wrapped in a sheet, six feet under.”

“What are you gonna do, huh? Talk me to death, bitch?” Ray comes around and sizes him up, looming an inch or so above Ezra as he stands far too close.

To his credit, and much to do with his rough life before Jackson, Ezra doesn't so much as blink. You feel Joel's fingers tighten around your hips in anticipation. Ezra can feel the violent rage vibrating in the air a few feet behind him from Joel and smirks a little.

He’s got nothing to be scared of, unlike this idiot. He narrows his eyes.

“You are not understandin’ me, Ray. You will apologize to my girl. And then I think you ought to go home and get a good night’s sleep. You found some audacity and anger on the scouting ride today, and harassing the only doctor in town in front of her family and half your own crew ain't the way to go. She could be all that stands between your life and death, and much sooner than you anticipate. You’re showin’ your ass right now, when it’s long past time to turn tail. And besides, I'm not the dog you gotta watch out for.”

“I don't give a shit who she is. I am not apologizing to some snooty whore or her broken, pathetic little cuck boy toy.” He shoves Ezra hard in the chest.

There is an uncanny, absolute silence that happens before a bomb goes off. In the vacuum of noise, for that split second, all anyone can hear through the whole bar is the scrape of a stool across the floorboards.

All Joel can hear is your gasp and his own ringing ears.

Ezra grabs Ray’s collar as he falls, twisting so that he plants a knee on the asshole’s gut when they land. Before Ray can scramble to his knees and ready for another blow, Joel’s already on him.

“Outside!” Tommy commands.

Folks on the street see the pub’s swinging doors fly open and slap the walls as Ray sails clean out of it. He lands a good few yards into the walkway, crashing hard over a wrought- iron table and chairs before collapsing to the snowy ground in a heap. Before he can even scramble to his knees, Joel is on him, flipping him over, and a fist is crashing down on his face.

Joel feels the crunch of cartilage under his knuckles and grips Ray’s collar in his other fist. He shakes the man, straddling him with one knee in the snow and his other boot planted firmly on the other side.

“You touch anyone who's mine ever again; you so much as look at any of ‘em outside of the clinic, and your goddamned head is the only thing comin’ back from patrol next time. I'll stick you on a pike on the Wall. You understand me?” Joel seethes and shakes Ray again, rattling his brain, watching the blood pour out from his split nose and eyebrow, and finally hears the wet gurgle of his frantic yes.

"You say it. Ellie, Sunny, Ezra, Cee. Off limits."

"Off- fuck! They're off limits!"

Ray claws at the meaty hand still fisted in his shirt collar as Joel straightens his spine and turns back to you and Ezra, now watching from the doorway of the bar.

“Which hand he touch you with?” Joel asks you both, his voice raw as gravel and eyes dark with rage.

You shake your head, a tiny frown between your brows betraying your confusion at the question. Ezra flicks his eyes down at the man and sees his ineffectual grappling with Joel’s grip. Ray had used both hands, both when trying to grab you and when shoving him, but Ezra knows Joel enough by now to know what's coming next.

He also knows intimately what it’s like in this world with a limb missing.

“His right,” he says, feeling only a little vindictive. His frustration has not quite tipped over into murderous rage, unlike Joel, who is reigning his in.

Joel huffs an angry, foggy breath and turns back.

“Ray,” he spits with venom. “You’re gonna take your lousy ass home, and splint this your damn self. Same as you would have done before you came here.”

“Wha–AAAAAAH!” Ray screams as Joel takes his hand between his own and swiftly breaks his wrist.

Joel lets Ray flop back into the snow, cradling his hand, and leans in close. “You ain't gonna act like a rabid animal inside these walls. Because I will not hesitate to put you down like one. You hear me?”

“Fuck– yes! Get off me!” Ray yells, nearly pissing himself with the need to get away, his bootheels scraping the snow down to muddy slush beneath them.

Ray flops over onto his belly, army crawls forward out from under Joel with his broken wrist pinned to his chest, and scrambles up and off into the night.

Disgusted, Joel gets up and slaps the snow off his knee. He scoops up a handful of the fresh stuff off a nearby table and presses it to his bruised knuckles.

“How long you got left on your shift?” Joel deadpans at Ellie, a dismissive move to the scene that just took place. People are already drifting back inside, with the action over.

“Uhhh, it’s like an hour til close,” she answers. He nods and waves them back inside with an annoyed look that says let’s get this over with. Cee smothers a smile and turns back into the bar, herding the handful of onlookers who are still lingering away from the doorway. You and Ezra stay on the porch while the girls go inside.

Joel comes up and stands on the step in front of you, flexing his fingers before he hangs them down by his side, curling and twitching anxiously. He flicks his eyes all over you and the muscle in his jaw rolls once.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” you confirm, shrugging. “Some grabby asshole isn't enough to scare me. Not here. Ezra?” you hold out your palm and wiggle your fingers expectantly. Joel drops his hand in yours with a fond eye roll, feigning annoyance at your inspecting.

You both look at him and he nods. “I’m okay, soleil. Are you, Knuckles?”

Joel blinks at him and glances at you. You arch a brow at him. “I’m– he shouldn’t have touched either a’you,” he frowns, defensive, ignoring what you asked.

“No, he shouldn't have. That wasn't the question.”

Joel shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

You and Ezra share a glance and you top an eye roll with an arched eyebrow before disappearing inside, which makes Joel frown deeper.

"What?” He snaps at Ezra.

Ezra smirks at him and shakes his head. “She wants me to take you home.”

“We ain't leavin’ the girls here. Not after that,” Joel says flatly.

“I know. But we can wait out here a little bit, let her think I was successful. In luring you home with my wiles, of course. Not with making you see that they’re okay, even without us. If you hadn’t ‘a stepped in, one of our girls would have gutted him. Ellie was certainly ready to,” Ezra huffs, knocking his shoulder against Joel’s.

“Your wiles, hm?” Joel chucks his knuckles under Ezra’s scruffy chin, offering that little half smile before seeming to realize they are outside on the main thoroughfare, in plain sight. He stuffs his fists in his jacket pockets and frowns again, making Ezra chuckle.

“Speakin’ of the damned things- my wiles, that is– who won this morning? I mean, aside from you, who clearly benefited most from our friendly little competition.”

“Jesus,” Joel huffs, shaking his head. Ezra can see the shocked smile curling under the edges of his mustache and in the wrinkles by his eyes. “Sunny.”

“Oh, come now. I’m certain that I am the one who couldn't talk for an hour afterward with a raw throat from all your bucking. There's an alley just there, if you need a reminder.” he gives Joel a shove and the other man snorts.

“I was celebrating finally finding a way to make you shut up.”

“Only if I won, knuckles. Or if I'm next,” Ezra tries to give him a serious glare and dissolves into giggles at Joel’s wide-eyed, surprised, mooncalf look. He laughs harder when Joel shakes his head at him with a scowl.

He lets Joel shove him playfully into a lean against the part of the wall cast in shadow by the doorway loght. He lowers his voice, mindful of the open road and other milling members of the commune enjoying the evening just a few yards away. “Hmmm. I’m chiseling my way through that tough exterior, old man. What’re you gonna do to me when I do?”

Joel flicks his eyes over Ezra’s face, seeing that same goading, happy serenity he saw this morning, framed between his own thighs. He leans in, too close for mere friendship now. Ezra doesn't move, as if afraid to spook him. Joel doesn't think he will.

Not anymore.

Ellie cracked his carefully- bricked- up heart open, and you carved out a space for yourself easily after that. He knows Ezra's right there, ready, pickaxe in hand. His name was on the list tonight that he gave Ray, same as the girls'.

He lets his forward momentum knock him into Ezra, who cautiously steals a swift kiss. Joel lets it linger for a long second. When they pull apart, he finds Ezra's eyes glinting in the dark, honing in on his prey. It sends a shiver up his spine, different from the sort he used to feel, before Jackson. Before Ellie.

“I dunno,” Joel answers truthfully, instead of denying it will happen.

He knows it will.

#joel miller #the last of us #joel x reader #joel x you #ellie the last of us #ezra (prospect) #prospect (2018) #prospect film #ezra x reader #cee (prospect) #Joel x Reader x Ezra #poly dynamics #transplant #afab reader #no use of y/n #no description #also on ao3 #minors dni #minors do not interact

[iisasarcasticlittleshite]

How do you think the obey me cast would deal with a super super cautious MC?

Thanks so much for the ask, I had fun with this on my lunch break ❤️

Two words: protectively encouraging.

To demons, MC's an incredibly delicate being, mortal humans with their short lifespans and endless lists of ailments and injuries likely to end their short times on Earth.

MC's caution seems perfectly justified to them, but it can sometimes toe the line between caution and paranoia, and each learn ways to make sure MC still has time to enjoy their exchange program.

Solomon has the easiest time of this as the only other human, he leads by example. Simply by being himself, confident and at home in the Devildom.

Next to boost their confidence is Mammon, who, for better or worse, is always at their side. In his own way, he's assured MC that he'd never let anything happen to them, so they should just let loose already! The Great Mammon's right behind ya!

Equally proactive is Beel, who's a lot more direct about his claims to guard MC no matter what comes at them, even Lucifer.

Satan has a different approach, by informing MC about their new world, he hopes to make them more comfortable. He and Simeon often taken them to different spots around the Devildom, sharing culture or just bringing them out and about for the sake of it.

Caution is logical, but understanding is often the enemy of fear.

Levi can be a little...discouraging. He's not exactly adventurous himself, but he loves passionately and without restraint. Ironic that the only time he throws caution to the wind is when his heart is on the line.

Luke becomes someone Cautious MC actually throws caution to the wind for. He's so shy himself half the time and looks so young that MC ends up being the adventurous one for a change. Someone's gotta look out for the pup after all.

Now Lucifer, he's a catalyst of chaos. After about six months MC's fully convinced nothing can touch them when he's around, and they'd be right. The same could be said about Diavolo and Barbatos, and they come to find that without that natural caution holding them back, MC is a mad thing.

#obey me shall we date #obey me satan #obey me mammon #obey me lucifer #obey me #obey me barbatos #obey me beel x reader #obey me beelzebub #teeth rotting fluff #fluff #ask me anything #obey me hcs #obey me asks #x reader #also on ao3

[cod-dump]

Everytime Graves goes to Price or Nik to complain about Soap being mean to him. Soap reminds them the "HE SHOT AH FCKING TANK AT ME!!??"

If that doesn't work he goes to, or Ghost who will then follow Graves around while glaring at him a whole day.

Or Laswell who then spoils him, and Gaz, while telling Price and Nik that she can't believe they're treating the sergeants like that, after everything they've gone through. Laswell is extremely disappointed. This will make both of the men feel upset, because no one wants Laswell to be disappointed in them.

Selfish

Graves centric, PriceGravesNik

TW: angst

(my friend called me an emotional masochist for this lol)

___

It felt like everyone was against him. He couldn't blame them with the shit he pulled, but Graves felt like he earned a tiny bit of leeway by this point. Hasn't he proven himself to the others by now? Nik and Price keep telling him they're proud about how much he's changed but judging by how everyone else treats him... he doesn't feel like he's changed at all.

Soap was always fucking him over, getting Nik and Price to turn their backs to Graves (normally only for a few seconds but it still hurt). If Soap didn't succeed in getting Nik and Price on his side, he turned to Ghost. And Ghost never passed up on a opportunity to fuck over Graves. He never physically hurt him, but that man was a master in verbal abuse and had a glare that could kill a god.

It didn't take much for Gaz to get on the Graves hate train and it happened very suddenly. Graves had three against him and felt like he couldn't turn to Nik or Price about it. He was afraid if he said anything that they would realize that everyone was right. That Graves wasn't worth it, that they could do so much better, that him trying to change was laughable and he will never be more than what Shepherd had him do.

He will always be that person, no matter what. It was only a matter of time until they realized it. Graves could hear the clock ticking, there was a constant countdown in his head. Every time Soap said something to them, every time Ghost said something to Graves and berated him, every time Gaz went along with whatever was being said about Graves--

It felt like the countdown sped up, like it would drastically jump to lower numbers.

Graves felt on edge the entire time. Felt like everyone was looking at him, waiting. It was too much. It made his head spin, his heart race, made him lose his breath. Graves kept thinking about what Shepherd told him, that he was nothing more than a walking plague, infecting those around them all while wearing a grin.

He hadn't spoken or seen Shepherd in a long time now but those words were becoming more prominent in Graves' head. He was starting to think he was right. He was a walking plague and he was infecting Nik and Price because they stood too close to him. He was hurting them. Hurting their relationship with everyone. They were taking a leap of faith with him, trusting him to prove to everyone that he has changed and was trying to do good.

It was only a matter of time before that faith and trust blew up in their faces.

Graves couldn't talk to them about it, to anyone. He didn't need to, he knew already. This was a mess waiting to happen, and Graves wasn't sure if he could handle watching it. He was clinging onto the blindly given love and affection from Nik and Price. Their addictive trust, their warm hugs, sweet kisses--

He was being selfish by sticking around as long as he has.

Graves knew he had to leave after overhearing what Laswell told them. He knew Nik and Price cared about her and valued her opinion. They were very close friends, practically family. Graves had always tried to avoid her, he knew she didn't like him and will probably never go beyond tolerating him for Nik and Price's sake.

"You're throwing away your relationship with the boys over him."

Graves heard the venom in her voice, it made him feel sick. He didn't mean to eavesdrop and had stumbled by at the wrong time.

"Kate-"

"No, John. I don't want to hear it. You both have been acting like lovesick teenagers, caring more about a temporary fling than the more important relationships in your lives! Every day I get calls from Soap. Texts from Ghost. Guess what they're both saying?"

Graves leaned heavily on the wall, heart pounding and ache spreading through his chest.

"You're prioritizing a relationship that is going to end in flames. People are going to get hurt and I want you to guess who those people are."

He couldn't stick around. He just started walking. The silence from Nik and Price was loud, suffocating. It said everything that Graves had been telling himself was going to happen: They were finally opening their eyes. The countdown had reached the end and Graves needed to leave. He couldn't bear facing Nik and Price telling him to fuck off, it hurt to think about it. But he knew that they were done with him. After that talk from Laswell? Keeping him around afterwards would be stupid.

Graves could feel everyone's eyes on him. It was too much. He couldn't look up, he didn't want to meet anyone's gaze. He just focused on the floor and walked, trying to keep the ache in his chest from being too much. But that was hard when everything was too much. People talking, their gazes, their very presence made him feel on edge, under attack. Graves needed to leave, needed to disappear.

Graves accidentally ran into someone.

"Fuck- Graves?"

He wanted to scream at Gaz's voice. He couldn't look at him as it became harder to breathe.

"Phillip?"

He bolted. Ran as fast as he could. He couldn't find a door, an exit into the outside world. He found a window instead and climbed out it. He took off after hitting the ground, not caring anymore. He had to leave. Had to run before Nik and Price found him and got rid of him in a more forceful manner. Graves just ran, managing to get off base. He was surprised how far and long he managed to run with how fucked up his lungs were after the tank accident. No, not accident. Soap tried to kill him but failed. Graves was wishing he didn't fail.

Finally, he couldn't run anymore. He collapsed to the ground, breathing hard. His lungs were screaming and he felt even more panicked by his inability to catch his breath. Graves was told to not push himself too hard, that his lungs couldn't handle it anymore. Nik and Price usually watched him, kept an eye on him and made sure he didn't overwork himself. Well, no one was here looking out for him and now he was on the ground, wheezing with black edging into his vision.

He was kneeling on the ground, trying to breathe. He felt himself tip and fall onto his side, staring ahead of him. Sound became muffled, everything started to slow down. He heard something attempt to push against the barrier. He felt someone grab him but he couldn't understand what was being said. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe--

Graves felt himself drift in and out of consciousness, unable to focus on anything, not even a thought. He felt himself be moved, a pressure going up and down his back. Graves felt air slip into his lungs, little by little. After some time he could feel himself breathe better, hear better. He had his eyes shut because the sun was too much. He didn't know where he was or who was with him, but they were trying to keep him alive.

"-to be okay. Breath in... and out..."

Graves slowly followed their instructions, still unable to determine who it was. It couldn't be anyone that knew him, they would've left him to die. Graves felt himself tilt and the person leans against him, a hand going up and down his back, matching his breathing. Sound was returning and Graves could hear the person, a man, speaking calmly in his ear. Though there was a panic behind the calmness, his voice was soothing.

The sound of a vehicle pulling up, rushing footsteps--

"Fuck, what happened to him?"

Soap.

Graves feels panic wash over him again, trying to move away. The man holds him, cursing before he tries to get Graves to stand.

"We have to get him to medical!"

Graves was hauled into the vehicle, the person who saved him holding him while Soap drove (he assumes Soap was driving, unless there was a third, silent, person there at the wheel). Graves felt exhaustion hit him like a truck and he just leans heavily on the man holding him upright. Graves couldn't bother to react to the voices that were maybe talking to him. Didn't react when some grabbed him, held his face. He felt himself get picked up and get carried somewhere. And that's when he finally lost consciousness.

And while he was having difficulty holding onto a coherent thought, he did manage to have one thought that he could actually understand.

I hope I don't wake up.

And just like that, everything stopped being too much.

#i want to say that laswell is going off what the boys are telling her #they've been hounding her ever since nik and price started dating graves #call of duty #cod mwii #modern warfare ii #john price #cod nikolai #phillip graves #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #kate laswell #pricegravesnik #ask #thanks for the ask <3 #angst #fic #fanfic #also on ao3 #this is me throwing graves in the blinder and watching what happens #plus a little projection #nikpricegraves