i'm calling my old therapist
Nathan just has a way of making you feel vulnerable.
Warnings: 18+ (no actual smut but some small descriptions of rough sex, and language). Mentions of humiliation. Swearing. Somewhat mentions of aftercare but Nathan isn't that great. Everyone here is emotionally constipated. An awful lot of dialogue. "Friends" with benefits situation. Nathan - as usual - is his own warning. Both parties need therapy, honestly. Not my best work no matter how many times I edit it, proofread but will still have mistakes.
Word count: 1,882
GN!Reader, no use of Y/N.
Your arrangement with Nathan is just fine. Just. Fine.
It works well for you both.
If you talked about it to anyone, though, you were sure they would call you a degenerate. You could blame the fact that you needed to let loose, that what you really needed was to start seeing your therapist again. But Nathan was at the right place at the right time, and you gladly took up his offer of a casual fling.
‘Stress relief’ was what he called it.
You’ve come to find that he’s into some really kinky shit, which you are totally okay with. He’s all about consent and communication, despite his default attitude being irritable and sarcastic.
Your relationship with Nathan had been going on for about a year. He’s completely ruined you for other men; not only because he does absolutely filthy things to you, but because he owns you mind, body, heart, and soul. He just doesn’t know it yet.
You sink deeper into the bath, hissing as your aching muscles protest. It was a particularly rough session; you’d been pinned to the bed, Nathan jackhammering his cock into you, where you’d been overstimulated beyond your limits and he didn’t let up, no matter how many times you begged and pleaded, it always ended up with you screaming his name in ecstasy. You couldn’t stop cumming and he loved it.
Of course you had a safe word, but you seldom used it. You didn’t ever feel the need to. You knew you were safe with him, not matter what harsh and demoralising name he called you.
You’d been in the bath long enough. You step out of the tub, quickly drying yourself off, just so you can get into one of those warm, fluffy bath robes that Nathan leaves for you on hanging on the bathroom door (he won’t disclose where he got them from - you have the sneaky suspicion that he doesn’t actually know, but he likes to keep you guessing on even the mundane things).
The steam from your bath leaks into the hallway as you open the bathroom door, causing you to shiver at the temperature difference, despite the robe you were wearing. You wander out the bathroom and find Nathan on the couch, wearing sweatpants and an old vest, nursing a half empty bottle of beer, looking like he hadn’t just fucking rocked your world into next week. You note the other two empty bottles on the coffee table. He’s scrolling through his phone.
You try not to ogle at him (you did always have a weakness for his arms), but he catches you staring anyway. You can’t read the look on his face.
“Hi,” you say quietly.
“Hi,” he answers back, putting the phone down on the arm of the couch.
Aftercare has never been his strong suit. Sure, he doesn’t treat you like trash after, but he could use some work. Nathan’s idea of aftercare is a smack on the ass, and a hearty comment of ‘good job’. Sometimes he’ll get you a water, or – like this time – he’ll run you a bath and leave you to it. But this is fine too. He talks to you after like nothing had happened; like whatever was said or done was meant in any way.
“You okay?” you ask, just trying to find something to say.
Nathan nods, his eyes still on you. “Mhm. Are you?”
You nod. “Yeah. Tired.”
Nathan grins and chuckles, shaking his head as he finally looks away from you. “Yeah, that was a lot.” He takes another sip of his beer.
You hate how normal he looks, how unaffected he was after sex, when your legs were often still shaking for an hour afterwards.
“Yeah…” you breathe, taking a seat on the couch, sitting as far away from him as you could. But that was more for his benefit.
“No regrets?” he asks, offering you his half drunken beer.
You shake your head at him before answering, “No regrets.”
Nathan gives a nod, taking another gulp of his beer. After a moment he sends over a lazy grin to you. “Is it bad I want to do it again?”
You snort in amusement. “I might need a week to recuperate.”
“But you would do it again?”
“Yeah…” you say, biting your lip as you nod. “Yeah. I’d do it again.”
Nathan gives a breathy laugh, looking at you again. There’s a warmth in his eyes. “But you need a break first?”
You nod with a soft grin. “My holes can’t take much more.”
There’s a silence around you as Nathan stares. You squirm a little, about to ask him what was wrong, before he says, “I gotta say, I could get addicted to you.”
He said it so casually, as if it wasn’t going to send your thoughts spiralling or cause your heart to beat out of your chest. It was probably loud enough that he could hear it.
But you keep it light. You send a smirk over to him. “You aren’t already?”
He laughs, his head leaning on the back of the couch.
You watch his Adam’s apple bob with the movement, his neck straining as he leans his head back. You want to bite him.
“I might be,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s so tempting to do it all again.”
“Give me a few days,” you say.
“Why? You a little weakling who can’t take a good fuck? Can’t handle when I call you a good little whore? Can’t stand when I make you cum so much that you turn into a dumb little fuck toy?”
“Shut up,” you say, giving him a kick to the thigh, but it barely phases him.
“Oh, did I hit a sore spot?” Nathan mocks, his bottom lip sticking out at he looks at you with mirth. “Did you get embarrassed?” he asks mockingly. “Did you cry over it? Because you did, in fact, do both of those things - ”
“Hey, you’re into all’a that shit too,” you snap, your eyes meeting his again.
“I’m into you.”
You weren’t expecting that, but you only give yourself a second to react before you retort with, “That’s the sappiest shit you’ve ever said to me.”
Nathan just smirks at you, and you want to just grab his face and kiss it right off of him. “And you liked it.”
You study him for a moment as he turns from you, finishing his beer before that bottle joins the other empty ones on the coffee table.
You don’t know what it was. Maybe it was because he could open you up and expose the deepest parts of you that you don’t show to anyone else, or it’s because he’s so good looking, and so out of your league that you want him to want you, or it’s because – despite his attitude towards you, and everyone else he knows – you both deeply respect and trust each other. You honour each other's boundaries and decisions, and you feel secure in the relationship you've built together.
Despite the primarily physical (and it is feral) nature of your relationship (if you could honestly call it that, really), you've somewhat developed a level of emotional intimacy with Nathan (as much as you can, regarding your situation). At times, you find yourself yearning for a deeper connection with him. Maybe this is your opportunity.
“I love you,” you say.
There is a long, long pause as he stares at you. The longer he stares without reacting, the more you regret your words, your cheeks warming.
“Wow,” he says after a while, almost surprised. “I think those are the only words you’ve ever said to me that actually caught me off-guard.”
You avert your gaze, curling your arms around yourself, wanting to disappear.
But the next thing you know, he’s moving towards you on the couch, his stare unwavering on you. He reaches out, his hand landing softly on your forearm, where he squeezes gently. “Was that hard for you? To say you love me?” He asks with a small grin.
You can’t tell if he’s mocking you. You want to push him away, to tell him he’s egotistical and the world’s biggest asshole, because he knows it was hard for you. “You know I don’t express myself very well…I don’t ‘do’ emotions.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Nathan with a grin. “I can tell by the way you react around me when we’re not fuckin’.”
You merely roll your eyes.
“Or when I was saying the cruellest things to you and you just take it like the good little puppy you are,” he says with an almost sadistic grin.
You scoff and shove him away from you. “I take it back.”
“No backsies,” he says immediately, pulling you to him and wrapping his arms around you.
“No, I do backsies,” you say, and despite your words, you melt in his embrace.
“Nope, not allowed,” he says. “Because you told me you loved me, and now you can’t take it back. That’s not how it works.”
“People take back love all the time,” you mutter, your eyes closing as you bury yourself into his chest, where you could hear his heart beating rhythmically.
“But right now, in this moment, you just told me that you love me,” said Nathan, as if talking about the weather. “And I loved hearing it. So it doesn't matter if it's ever revoked, because you just gave it to me...and now you can't go back on that. It’s out there forever.”
“Jesus,” you breathe, the embarrassment rolling of you in waves.
“Hey, hey,” he says, cupping your face in his large palms, forcing you to look at him. You hate that he can read you like a book. “That’s all that matters here,” he says with another grin. “That said, I’m going make you say it again.”
You roll your eyes. He’s always so sure of himself, the cocky bastard.
He doesn’t relent. “Say it again,” he whispered, his eyes determined but soft as he stares at you.
You take him in and that’s when it hits you. He needs to hear you say it. He isn’t teasing you, he needs the affirmation, the feeling of being wanted; ironic, since the things he did and said to you earlier would make a nun blush.
“I love you,” you whisper back.
After a few moments, he smiles. “Did you have to stop and think about it that time?”
You shake your head. “No.”
“Good,” he says softly. “So I can take it as a given now that I can tease you relentlessly about it?”
“No,” you say, shaking your head with a laugh.
“I’m going to anyway,” said Nathan, pressing a kiss to your forehead as he lets you go, and he stands from the couch, stretching as he makes his way into the kitchen, probably to grab another beer.
It doesn’t upset you that he doesn’t say it back. You didn’t expect him to. He has his own issues and you have yours. The guy in an enigma and you honestly wouldn’t have him any other way.
You give a snort of amusement. You’re so fucked. “I’m gonna call up my old therapist.”
“You have a therapist?”
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Liushen AU where SY transmigrates into SJ's older brother, and subsequently nopes them right out of the slavery backstory by using his general knowledge of the story and actually being an adult in a kid's body to just leave (basically) with SJ and YQ.
SY carts them both up to Cang Qiong for the next sect trials. It's actually not all that hard, the trickiest part is getting enough to eat and finding safe places to sleep between leaving the slavers and taking the trials (SY manages just barely, with considerable help from his new little brothers.) Nobody bothers to go after them because it's before Qiu Jianluo and this style of human traffickers mostly operate by virtue of their merchandise having nowhere else to go. Chasing down runaways is an expense not worth indulging, given that most of them either come straight back or die of exposure.
Anyway, they take the trials, and as expected YQY gets chosen to become a personal disciple for the sect leader, and SJ gets chosen by the Qing Jing Peak Lord, but also as (kind of) expected (by SY alone) nobody wants SY. He's older the Yue Qi, so too old, and unlike YQ and SJ his cultivation potential isn't striking enough to make any exceptions for him.
SY, however, can't leave it at that. He's spent more than five minutes with the street kid codependency gang, so he's gotten attached to both of them. And he knows what will happen if they're left to their own devices and The Plot proceeds accordingly. (Also, they keep threatening to not stay at the sect if SY doesn't stay too, for some reason.) So with a heavy heart and internal candle lit for himself, SY heads to Bai Zhan Peak. Which is the only peak that accepts disciples by way of them turning up and refusing to leave.
SY's not much of a fighter. He actually really hates the atmosphere on BZP, he's not bad at physical cultivation (his health's pretty good in this life, ironic considering how much worse his situation was) but the random ambushes and survival-of-the-fittest stuff is just not his brand. But that's okay, because it turns out that BZP actually DESPERATELY needs disciples on the actual peak who are interested in things other than fighting and cultivating their own strength. Stuff like, filling out requisition requests for An Ding every time things break, apologizing to An Ding every time things break again, organizing schedules, browbeating senior disciples into actually teaching, educating disciples on virtually any artistic or social skill, hosting lectures on how to beat vicious beasts without just overpowering them, and etc.
Okay so some of this stuff isn't and has never actually been on Bai Zhan's curriculum but Shen Yuan is going to make this place tolerable. And stop these children from needlessly getting acid burns or lyme disease or scurvy or whatever. He keeps internally chewing out Airplane for designing a sect system that means there are a lot of largely unsupervised 12-year-olds running around the wilderness on a mountain picking fights all the time. (When he actually meets Shang Qinghua and figures him out he switches to doing it in person, of course, in twice-monthly bitching sessions that look a lot like budding friendship.)
Of course one of the worst offenders is the Liu kid, who SY would suspect was actually raised by wolves if he didn't know for a fact that Liu Qingge has a younger sister, and also the kinds of nice clothing and letters from home that strongly imply not only does he have a family, but that the family is pretty well-off. Liu Qingge is at first deeply offended by SY being a BZP disciple. He rarely fights anyone, and uses tricks and evasion tactics whenever a fight can't be avoided. And he does other annoying stuff, like pestering him about meals and baths and lecturing him on identifying dangerous plants and the early signs of qi deviation. This is not what their peak is about! He should get with the program already! Just fight stuff until you're too tired to keep fighting stuff!
Also SY's younger brother, SJ, is pure evil (at least according to baby Liu Qingge) even though his other younger brother (?) is cool and nice.
Anyway, Liu Qingge stops complaining about SY after their first mission together, where Liu Qingge doesn't lose a fight but does get into a kind of pyrrhic victory situation where he's really badly hurt, and it's SY who helps him win (correctly identifying the monster and then pointing out its weakness) and takes care of him afterwards and gets him safely back to Cang Qiong. SY expresses surprise at LQG actually being polite to him, and LQG realizes that he's been a colossal ass if people think he wouldn't be grateful to someone who saved his life, so the usual Liushen dynamic proceeds from there. Liu Qingge starts bringing SY fans he leaves behind and hunts down animals that are supposed to be useful for bolstering weak cultivation, SY invites LQG to tea and keeps the critters as pets, etc etc.
SY doesn't get the Head Disciple position, because that's only acquired via beating the current peak lord in combat and lol no. Also he's not interested in stealing it from Liu Qingge, to whom it rightfully belongs (in his mind). But that's fine, because Liu Qingge takes the position when the next generation ascends and then he lets SY exclusively handle all the peak duties SY actually likes (mainly teaching). It's perfect -- Liu Qingge gets to focus on his War God antics and occasional administration/meetings without having to deal with students his has no patience for, but the disciples of BZP don't get neglected because SY is actually teaching and organizing classes and student care. BZP hasn't enjoyed a golden age like this since it was founded!
Things are pretty good overall, but Shen Yuan knows that it's only a matter of time before The Plot shows up, and so he can't rest completely easily.
Meanwhile, the will-they-or-won't-they bets on Liushen have been going strong for a while now. The thing is, most of their martial siblings are convinced that these two are already "together", and just being circumspect about it. Those who know SY well (like SJ, YQY, and SQH) know better but think that SY's romantic obtuseness is to blame, whereas those who know LQG well (LMY, WQW, and MQF) are pretty sure that it's actually LQG's obtuseness that's the problem. Of course it's actually both of them, so efforts to "fix" matters by getting through one of their thick skulls inevitably run afoul of the other's.
An additional complication is of course: SJ doesn't like LQG (mutual), and now that he's the leader of his own peak, he wants to poach SY to come and live there. Not only so he can have one of the 2 people he trusts actually close at hand, but also because SJ also hates actually teaching the atrocious little brats on his peak, and would like to have SY come and do it for him. YQY is still a total pushover for him too, and is also now the sect leader, so YQY agrees that SY can change peaks if SY and LQG both agree to it.
Liu Qingge, of course, is a no, but he's a variable "no". He's not going to hold Shen Yuan against his will or anything.
As for Shen Yuan, it's... complicated. He doesn't really like BZP, but it's gotten a lot better than it was at the start. These days he's actually pretty proud of his accomplishments, and it's more comfortable, but it's still a rough and rowdy place with fewer creature comforts, libraries, or other appealing points than QJP. Also, if he goes to Qing Jing to teach, he can personally ensure that SJ doesn't go around persecuting any of his students!
But... SJ never lived with the Qiu family in this AU, and even though SY's not totally clear on what the PIDW backstory for SJ was, he knows he's a better guy now than the scum villain in the book was. He has a reputation for making cutting remarks, not for being an abusive snake or a lecher. SY's honestly less worried about him doing anything bad at all, and there are other people on QJP who can teach. It might even be good for SJ to promote more people to fill out a social circle he can rely on! That guy needs more friends, seriously.
And QJP really doesn't need more layabout literary intellectual types who get into pointless arguments, which is all SY would be if he went there. Just yet another nerdy scholar for the rich kids with middling cultivation that the peak favors to ignore. At least on BZP he's filling a gap.
SY is clearly torn, and the fact that SY's considering it has LQG upset, and LQG doesn't handle being upset very well, so of course they have an argument about it. SY storms off to cool his head and LQG is like, this is it, he's gone to Qing Jing Peak, I've drive him off by being too aggressive and he's probably remembering all those times I told him he didn't belong here and oh no what have I done maybe if I build him a heated bath and get him books he will come back???
Turns out that SY just went to An Ding to vent at SQH while SQH was like "I think you would have fewer problems if you and Liu Qingge just got married and my disciples could call you Shigu to your face instead of behind your back" and SY threw melon seeds at him and sulked on his fainting couch (which is always cold for some reason...)
Thus begins the Liushen Divorce Arc where SY tries to be anywhere but BZP or QJP, Liu Qingge tries to figure out what thing he can punch to fix this not-punchable problem, SJ is like "I don't see what the big deal is they should break up Liu Qingge is awful and I want my brother to teach my classes for me" like the spoiled youngest sibling he's finally allowed to be, YQY is trying to moderate this Hades vs Demeter situation and is all "well maybe SY could spend half the year on QJP and half on BZP?", and Liu Mingyan is going "I know my brother if this doesn't work out he is going to die single and pining like an idiot" and so keeps conscripting other disciples to y'know, lock SY and LQG into storage closets together (ineffective: LQG can punch through walls) or at least get them in the same room (underestimating SY's willingness to yeet himself out of windows to avoid awkward social interactions.)
By the time Luo Binghe joins the sect (as a Qiong Ding disciple), the drama is in full swing and is the main topic of gossip across most of the peaks.
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I am so sorry for this, I don't know what happened to me but once again, here I am writting angst instead of happily pretending everyone is alive and happy.
Alpha is a hard ghoul to scare.
He's ancient- not as old as Omega, Zephyr or Earth, but definitely older than most of the newer ghouls. He's seen things, in the pit and topside, beyond horrific, has blood on his hands, and is intimately familiar with its coppery taste.
And yet, as he holds a gasping Omega against his chest, Alpha has never been more terrified in his entire life.
Omega, sturdy, reliable Omega, unshakeable Omega, is falling appart in Alpha's arms, and there's nothing the fire ghoul can do.
Nothing but hold him tight and pray his suffering will end. In his despair, Alpha curses how human they've become, after spending so much time amongst them. Human enough to feel much more than a ghoul should. Human enough to get attatched, to fall in love. Oh, how Alpha curses love.
Omega is sobbing, gut-wreching cries that echo in his bedroom, clinging to Alpha like letting go would kill them both. It takes a while for the fire ghoul to realize the litany of broken noises escaping Omega's mouth are actually words.
I can't, I can't, I can't.
Alpha doesn't need to ask what Omega means. Omega cannot fanthom a world without Terzo. Cannot imagine his life without the one bright star that so thoroughly changed it. Cannot bear the agony of loss and grief. And Alpha is torn between terror and rage. Because he cannot help.
He grieves, too, of course he does. Terzo is- was his friend, Primo his first Papa and a man he highly respected, and Secondo...Alpha would rather not think about the man's rare raspy laugh right now. Something about the taste of missed opportunities isn't very appealing at the moment.
Alpha grieves, too, but he doesn't know what having someone who had weaved their way into his very soul torn away from him feels like. So he tightens his helpless arms around Omega, and prays that there will be something left of the quint's shattered heart.
So yes, Alpha, tough, I've-seen-much-worse Alpha, is trembling in terror as he witnesses the strongest ghoul he ever knew getting torn from the inside out by love's ugly twin, grief.
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