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weyrwolfen · 8 months

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Eidola: Chapter 12 - CT-441-9891 Frag

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Clone Trooper OCs, Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other canon members of the 501st/332nd

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, and substance abuse; PTSD; it’s post-Order 66 and nobody is having a good time (but they’re all working on it)

Summary: The mission was never to bring down the Empire. Not really. The mission was to save every single one of their chipped brothers. But if doing do helped break the Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy? Well, that was just a bonus.

“Mom and dad are fighting,” Lighter said in a mock-conspiratorial tone.

Frag stopped turning the makeshift spit over their cooking fire and craned to look back towards the dormant lava tubes which had become their base of operations. Sure enough, the Captain and Commander were back there, having what looked like a very heated argument. “What’s their problem?” he asked.

He wasn’t really expecting anybody to answer, until a long-suffering sigh drew his attention back to the group of brothers sitting around the firepit.

Lighter seemed to be as confused as Frag, but Echo and Tech were looking pointedly at their squad leader. Hunter was giving them both an annoyed glare.

Right, Hunter had been engineered to have better senses than the rest of them. So, he probably could hear whatever their commanding officers were on about. Frag put on his best tooka eyes and turned them on Hunter.

The unimpressed glower Frag got in return could have melted transparisteel. “You’re going to burn those again, kid,” Hunter said, pointing at the skinned and seasoned, lizard-adjacent things Frag was supposed to be babysitting for Eidan.

With a sigh, Frag started turning the spit again.

Maybe his piteous fishing for gossip had been doomed to failure, but Echo looked and sounded genuinely concerned when he prompted, “Hunter?”

Apparently that did the trick, because Hunter finally relented and said, “He doesn’t like that she’s planning on going into the temple without backup. And she’s pointing out that if it’s the kind of temple that pulls Force stunts, it’s very likely that none of us could follow her in, even if we tried.”

Yeah, that’d do it.

Jedi or not, natborn or not, the entirety of the 332nd had seemingly adopted the Commander as their collective little sister. Most of them would have liked to wrap her up in blankets and store her in a safe house, if they thought there was even a small chance she’d stay put.

Which of course she wouldn’t, because whether she claimed the title or not, she was about as Jedi as they came.

It was kind of funny, when viewed from a certain angle. Frag and his brothers had been raised, conditioned, to see the Jedi as the next best thing to gods. And yet, here they all were, worrying themselves ragged because they didn’t think their Jedi could wander around some dusty old ruins without getting herself killed.

On second thought, no, it wasn’t funny at all.

“He knows that he is going to lose the argument,” Tech said matter-of-factly, zapping the tangle of parts in his hands with a compact soldering iron. He’d been tinkering with the wiring of what looked to be a spare set of goggles for a while now.

The Bad Batch’s technical expert seemed to be completely oblivious to the sharp looks which had turned his way. “And how do you figure that?” Lighter finally asked.

“Because he asked me to make her this,” Tech said, holding up his half-completed project. “It will transmit live data on her location and vitals, as well as a visual feed I can use to generate a photogrammetric map of the temple’s interior, should we need to mount a rescue attempt.”

Frag was more familiar with the kind of electronics that went boom, but that sounded like the kind of stuff the commandoes’ fancier buckets could do. Neat.

“And if it transports her to a different point in space or even time?” Hunter asked dryly. At the blank stares that comment earned, he just tapped his ear. “I’m just relaying the potential complications she’s been laying out to Rex.”

Tech’s expression turned sour. “Spatial displacement is traceable with her existing comm tracker, but temporal displacement remains a highly theoretical area of research. I have no way to account for it at the present time,” he said, looking and sounding annoyed and almost embarrassed by his lack of actionable knowledge. On time travel, like that was anything anyone could seriously expect him to be able to handle.

These 99 brothers were something else.

They did have a point though. Frag really, really hoped the temple didn’t decide to get ‘highly theoretical’ on their Commander. That was just about the last thing they needed. Given the dour faces around the fire pit, he wasn’t the only one having similar thoughts.

Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Hunter seemed distracted and Lighter concerned. Echo was definitely keeping a discreet eye on their two, still-arguing COs, and Tech was once again fully absorbed with the electronics in his hands.

Frag traded hands on the jury-rigged spit when his arm started to get tired and kept going. His gloves were good for keeping him from getting burned, but they didn’t do a thing for preventing repetitive motion cramps. This was absolutely droids’ work. Maybe he could sweet talk Tech into making a little belt driven motor to turn the spit in the future. After he finished up his project for the Commander, of course.

“Hey, Frag!” Eidan called from the makeshift kitchen tent. When Frag glanced over at his brother, he was immediately asked, “Is that batch done?”

Frag stopped turning the lizard-things and gave them a critical once over. They looked… the expected shade of reddish-brown? Kind of crispy around the toes and the tips of the tails? Sort of like the last batch, minus the accidental charring?

“I think so?” he yelled back, not bothering to keep the question out of his tone.

“Then bring it here!” Eidan said before ducking back behind the packing tarps which had been strung up as minimal protection from wind and rain.

Frag stood up, grabbed the spit by the closest end, and lifted it out of the forked supports.

Echo rose with him, clearing an easier path for Frag to escape the fire circle without accidentally whacking anybody with the spit. “I’ll let them know the food’s basically done,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Captain Rex and Commander Tano.

He found Eiden stripped of gauntlets and vambraces, blacks rolled up to his elbows, piling up some chopped fungi into a pile on the stripped-bare inner surface of a repurposed stormtrooper cuirass. A mound of cooked leaves, green and purple and mushy-looking, already filled a similarly gutted skid plate. They’d have to get creative with how they’d been serving their food. The Jekai’s galley wasn’t exactly set up for preparing or doling out real food, it had really only contained a weird assortment of mismatched utensils and trays too small for anything other than single-serving field rations.

Frag pulled the lizards off of the spit and piled them up next to the others on a spare piece of shuttle paneling they’d coopted as a platter. Eidan had prepped enough for everybody to have one for themselves and several extras on top of that, just in case. They’d already figured out that Wrecker would easily eat three times the amount a regular trooper could pack away, and Lighter had shared the strongly worded message Kix had sent, basically ordering the Raiders’ medic to cram as much high-protein food into the Commander as possible.

“What else needs doing?” Frag asked once he’d balanced the last carcass precariously on the pile.

“Nothing really,” Eidan said, glancing down at his bare, food-smeared arms and shrugging. “Just comm everybody to let them know the food’s ready.”

“I think Echo’s already–” Frag started to say when the tarp behind him was pulled open once again.

“What’re you cooking?” the Commander asked brightly. “It smells great!”

She looked so cheerful. Any other day, Frag might have totally bought her act. Between Kix’s message, the argument he’d just witnessed her having with Captain Rex, and the couple of comments Hunter’s team had dropped about the situation back at the Imp base, Frag took a second, harder look.

She was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were red-rimmed and shadowed. She looked tired. Tired and sad and very, very young.

It was easy to forget that sometimes. In terms of cycles lived, she was older than all of the clones, especially Frag, who at ten was the often-teased baby of his Raider team. She was, or had been, a Jedi, a wartime Commander, but none of that negated the fact that there were several planets in the Empire where she still wasn’t old enough to legally purchase an alcoholic drink.

Ah hells. Who was he kidding? He was just as bad as his 332nd brothers.

“Some kind of fluffy lizard,” Frag said, handing her a tray and two of the piping hot carcasses, fresh off the fire. He might not be able to bundle her away somewhere safe, but he could do this. “Dunno if the leaves and fungi will agree with you, but they’re ready too. Dig in.”

Frag hung around the food tent, helping Eidan serve up the evening meal as their brothers filed through, picking up trays and making semi-joking bets about whether the evening’s food would be a success or only edible in the strictest, most clinical sense of the term.

None of that seemed to be setting the newcomers’ minds at ease. Apparently nobody had read them in on the culinary situation on the island.

All of them, even Wrecker, eyed the food with a little trepidation. In the end, Captain Rex had just joined the food line without saying a word, and Tech had made an offhand comment about all clones sharing an engineered resistance to most foodborne pathogens. That seemed to be enough to convince the rest of Clone Force 99 to dig in, even if they didn’t seem particularly excited about it.

Frag wasn’t sure if he should be offended. He’d snuck a few tastes, and the evening’s dishes were all pretty good. Nothing like those scrawny waders from their first week on Wadj, which had been nasty.

Hunter just wrinkled his nose and stepped into line after the Captain. Echo took substantially smaller servings than anyone else, splitting a lizard with Tech, who himself made up the difference with a sizable serving of the leaf stuff. Wrecker piled enough food on his tray to more than balance out his brothers’ smaller shares and then some.

When the last of their brothers had been served, Eidan and Frag loaded up their own trays and exited the tent to join the others. Frag was more than a little surprised when Trip immediately caught his eye and waved Frag over to join him.

Frag settled down between Wisp and Ripple, feeling unaccountably nervous. Not that he didn’t get along with their team leader. He did. It was just, Trip was... Trip. Getting summoned by an officer always made Frag’s stomach drop, like he was about to get dressed down for something. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t done anything deserving of a reprimand, the immediate attack of nerves came anyway.

But Trip knew that about him – by this point, he knew all of their team’s quirks – so he didn’t leave Frag in suspense for long. “You might be going into the Temple in the morning,” he said, cutting immediately to the point.

Oh.

Wait, what?

“I thought the Commander didn’t want an escort?” Frag asked, glancing around the small circle of clones. The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach worsened.

“She doesn’t,” Lighter replied, sharing a look with Trip. “Captain Rex talked her into some concessions. You’ll only go in if she runs into trouble.”

Well, that was wholly unexpected. “Why me?” he dared to ask.

Trip shrugged. “From what little we’ve seen of the inside of the temple, it’s a mess,” he admitted. “We’re expecting we’ll probably have to clear debris, assuming the interior hasn’t completely collapsed. In which case, it’ll be a short mission.”

So maybe some controlled demo work. It had been a while, but flash training wasn’t exactly something you forgot overnight. And bonus, he’d get to pull out some of his old toys and dust them off.

Assuming he didn’t get possessed by some ancient Jedi’s ghost or some other absurd Force garbage. What were the chances? “Any other recommended gear for reality-bending Force temples?” he asked, trying to bury his very legitimate concerns with dry humor.

Before Trip could say anything, Ripple answered, “Rations.” His tone was flat, and he kept his eyes on his own food, eating mechanically. “You never know.”

Four whole words out of Ripple, all strung together like that. Things were serious.

Frag felt kind of bad about cutting the column apart, but they didn’t really have any other options. Most of the floor-to-ceiling columns, decorated with carved figures and incomprehensible text, had somehow survived the eruption which had engulfed most of the building. They were oddly beautiful, and all the more impressive for their age, but this specific one fallen across the entrance of the only passage that seemed to lead further into the mountain. It had to go if they were going to explore further.

And Commander Tano was pretty insistent that she needed to explore further.

With a sort-of-Jedi on hand, shifting debris wasn’t really the problem, but this column was too big to easily maneuver without running into the other supports. Even Wrecker, with his obvious enthusiasm for blowing things up, had admitted that they shouldn’t worsen any of the alarming cracks which were already in the walls and ceiling. So Frag and his laser cutter had been tasked with carving a wide enough slice out of the column to reveal the door they could just make out behind it.

The row of figures under his hands seemed terribly unimpressed with him, but Frag was making an effort to cut along the empty band between the carvings and the next section of incomprehensible text. Whatever it was, it was too old to be in any current database, but Tech said that it looked similar enough to a few languages that he might be able to translate it eventually. Apparently he had co-opted the Marauder’s main computer to run a few analyses on photographs of the text on the building’s façade.

CT-436-6148 would have freaked out if he’d been here to see this. He would have freaked out over the whole temple really – he’d liked learning about the histories and cultures of other species – but he would have absolutely melted down over Frag destroying something this old.

But CT-436-6148 wasn’t here, and Frag didn’t know where he was or even if he was still alive. They’d been separated some time after their chips had activated, together in one disjointed memory and then not in the next. Frag tried to put his batchmate out of mind.

Instead Frag distracted himself by wondering who these Jedi had been. If they’d even been a Jedi. The Raiders had been calling it a Jedi temple, but was it? Really? It felt weird. Not bad weird, but too-peaceful-to-be-real weird. Like somebody really wanted them to let their guards down and rest, weird. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was just the light side of the Force, or whatever, but maybe it was a smokescreen, concealing something dangerous.

Nobody had been dumb enough to go poking around without an actual Force-sensitive on hand to make sure it wasn’t a trap, but Commander Tano was here now, and she seemed to think it was okay. Or at least okay enough to explore. He’d overheard her telling the Captain she could hear something singing underground, so that was a little disconcerting.

Frag could see most of the rest of the team milling around the temporary command center. Tech was doing something to his holoprojector, which was projecting a model of the temple’s entrance hall. It flickered and shifted, leaving ghostly, half-formed models of the people moving around the room.

This end of the huge entrance hall was just barely bright enough to limit the utility of their night vision settings. It was kind of creepy, in all honesty. Every time the model updated, or someone walked in front of one of their yellow chemlights, or just turned their head and sent their helmet lights shining off in a new direction, the shadows moved too. It made the carved figures look like they were moving. Frag wasn’t a fan.

“I’m about to make the final cut. Are you ready down there?” he called down to Wrecker, not able to see the big clone around the curvature of the column without standing, but knowing he was there.

“Just finish up,” Wrecker yelled back, sounding more than a little impatient.

Frag scooted himself into position so his helmet light could illuminate the right spot, double checked the laser cutter’s depth setting, lined it up so the sensors reported he was angled just right, and activated the beam. Centimeter by centimeter, the last sliver of rock holding the section of column in place burned away. He was tense, waiting for the rock to crack, to shear away unpredictably, but the gray-white, crystalline rock didn’t seem too prone to doing that. It held up, right until the last second, when Frag’s laser sliced through the last sliver of stone and the entire section settled with a heavy, grinding thud.

Frag pulled his cutter away, keeping his hands well clear of the gap, and then noticed with a lurch that the huge section of column had started to roll.

But then Wrecker yelled, “Got it!” and sure enough, the column’s progress continued in starts and stops, as if he was finding handhold after handhold to roll it along. Tech and Hunter had assured him that Wrecker was plenty strong enough to deal with a section of column twice the planned size of this one, but Frag hadn’t been entirely convinced until that exact moment. He wondered what the Kaminoans had done to their brother to make that possible. Human bone could only handle so much force before it cracked under the strain, and that wasn’t even getting into the material limitations of the body’s other tissues. Maybe they’d slipped some non-human genes into Wrecker’s DNA? Grafted something synthetic into his tissues? Who even knew?

Probably Tech. Maybe Frag would ask later.

Frag stayed where he was, on top of the main section of the column, and watched the doorway slowly appear as Wrecker rolled the huge slice of stone out of the way. It was arched, framed in the same mysterious writing that covered the walls and ceiling of the rest of the temple, and only a little crushed by whatever had sent the huge column crashing into the wall.

“Here,” Commander Tano said, from next to the holoprojector. “Let me,” and the column abruptly rose with her lifted hands, rotated to the side, and drifted towards the distant wall.

Frag sat up, secured the laser cutter in his pack, and then started to pick his way down the side of the column, finding hand- and footholds on the line of carved figures. The relief was low enough that he couldn’t manage that for long – plastoid boots were great for keeping your feet from getting crushed, but kind of garbage for wriggling into shallow, tight spaces – so Frag finally just let go, slithering down the side of the column in a semi-controlled fall. He landed with an awkward little stumble, but still managed to stay on his feet. Not bad, given that he’d needed the Commander to hoist him up there in the first place.

Captain Rex and Echo were already checking out the doorway, helmet lights shining into the dark corridor, when Frag finished dusting himself off and making sure nothing had been dislodged from his utility belt in the fall.

The hallway didn’t look like much. Dark. Creepy, just like everything else in the temple. The feeling of unnatural peace seemed to flow out of the door.

“See anything interesting?” the Commander asked, apparently done securing the section of column.

“Not really,” the Captain replied, turning to look back at her with his visor angled a little down and to the side so he wouldn’t shine his lights directly in her eyes. It wasn’t an issue for the other troopers, their HUDs could adjust, but the Commander’s modified goggles didn’t have that feature. “Can you sense anything?”

She nodded, expression distant and eyes unfocused behind her tinted goggles. “It feels like Ilum,” she said, not that Frag had any idea what Ilum was.

Apparently Captain Rex did, because he just nodded. “Your call,” he said.

“I’m going in,” she said firmly.

And that pretty well settled it.

Frag dropped his pack off next to his blaster, against one of the intact columns, and joined the rest of the team. The map had already updated itself, showing the shifted piece of column and a little bit of the hallway beyond the doorway. There were even little wisps of vaguely person-shaped blurs, where everyone was standing.

Commander Tano exchanged a few words with Echo and Captain Rex, made sure her hood wasn’t obstructing the camera or lights Tech had affixed to her goggles, and started down the hallway.

The darkness seemed to swallow her up.

“The floor is angling down,” she said, sounding calm. “No cracks in the walls or anything, so far everything looks to be in good shape.”

Frag snuck a sideways peek at the direct feed from her camera on Tech’s datapad, but all he saw was an empty hallway with blank, stone walls and a low ceiling.

The Commander kept up a steady stream of chatter, talking about the lack of carvings on the walls, the thick coating of dust on the floor, the song of the Force. That was part of the deal the Captain had cut with her. As long as her vitals were normal and she kept in touch over the comms, their team would stay put in the entrance hall.

The projected map grew, even if it wasn’t terribly interesting so far. The long, straight corridor narrowed down considerably, but it was in surprisingly good condition. Given the damage to the entrance hall, Frag had kind of assumed that things would get dicier the further into the volcano they went. So had everybody else. That was, after all, the entire reason he’d been assigned to the team: to help deal with any debris or ceiling collapses they encountered.

The first grave they encountered was a surprise. Much to Tech’s obvious annoyance, everyone pressed in close to get a better look at his datapad. Each rectangular nook, carved at chest height into the wall, contained the dusty, half-crumbled remnants of what had clearly been humanoid skeletons. A spray of crystals seemed to grow out of each ruined ribcage, some even anchored directly to the brittle bones. They caught Commander Tano’s lights, flashing and casting odd shadows on the back wall of the alcoves.

“Those are kyber crystals,” Commander Tano breathed, bending close to get a better look.

“The things Jedi use to power their lightsabers?” Hunter asked after a moment’s silence.

“Yes,” the Commander said, sounding almost reverent. “But they’re more than that. It’s… hard to explain.” She moved on to the next grave, looking, but not touching the remains or their crystals. “They’re not exactly sentient, but they might as well be.”

That didn’t make any sense. How could something without a brain be almost sentient? Frag just filed that under ‘weird Jedi stuff’ and looked back at the map. There could be miles of tunnels down there, filled with dead Jedi.

Creepier and creepier. He was kind of relieved that it looked like he might not be needed anymore.

“I thought the Jedi cremated their dead,” Captain Rex said carefully, as if he was worried he might offend the Commander with a more direct question.

“We do,” she said, but her voice faltered and she amended, “We did. But traditions change, and I’m not sure these are actually Jedi. I don’t mean that they’re Sith either!” She rushed to clarify, apparently realizing how that statement was being taken by her backup squad. “I just meant, these graves are old. I don’t know how old, but kyber crystals take a long time to grow. They might pre-date the Jedi order, or they might be a separate group, which broke away from the rest of the Jedi. Nothing says they have to be Force-users at all. There have been lots of religious sects who worshipped the Force, even if they couldn’t really wield it. Monastic groups, just all sorts of other possible things.”

Frag caught himself thinking about CT-441-9898 again. He would have loved this.

Frag didn’t love this. Sentient crystals growing on dead, not-exactly-Jedi were not his idea of a good time. Not that he was going to admit to anybody how much his skin was crawling over the whole situation.

“I should keep going,” the Commander said. She sounded distracted, like she was listening to something else. Or someone else, because obviously the situation wasn’t creepy enough.

She found more graves as she went. The single row became two, then four, lining either side of the hallway from floor to ceiling. Some of the skeletons were clearly not human, even though Frag would have been hard pressed to identify every species, especially in the dim lights of the Commander’s video feed. Others had crumbled to dust and fragments which could only be identified as bone with a little creativity. There didn’t seem to be a link between the condition of the remains and the extent of the crystal growth. A few of the smallest clusters of kyber had grown in the most decayed nooks, while one grave had been spilling over with crystals, glittering from the walls, the ceiling, mounding up over a shroud-wrapped body, pieces of the woven fabric perfectly preserved and encased in kyber.

The hallway forked numerous times, but Commander Tano never hesitated, taking turns and ignoring corners with uncanny certainty. She did switch back on her own trail once, making a series of four left turns in rapid succession. Frag thought that was weird, but then Tech made an annoyed sound under his breath.

Echo leaned over, giving the model a critical eye. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

Tech indicated the location of her first turn. “The model is now registering a wall across that entranceway,” he said, and sure enough, there was a faint barrier where one hadn’t been before. “I cannot explain it.”

“Could it just be an error in the program?” Lighter asked.

Tech gave him a nasty look. “No,” he said sharply, despite the clear evidence projected in his model.

“You still with us, Commander?” the Captain asked over the open comms.

The video feed from her headset jerked, like the question had surprised her, but then she finally answered, “Yeah, still here.”

But then her video feed winked out.

Tech barely had time to announce the oddity before the Captain had grabbed the datapad and flipped it around to get a better look. Frag couldn’t see anything from the new angle, but the map started to glitch oddly too. Disconnected fragments of hallway sprung up in isolated patches, spread far enough apart to suggest she was moving incredibly quickly, even for a Jedi.

“Commander, report,” Captain Rex snapped, watching more, disjointed sections of map spring to life.

She didn’t answer.

Tech snatched his datapad back from the Captain and looked at it, scowling. “Something is intermittently blocking her signal,” he said, scowling down at the device. “Her heartrate and cortisol levels seem to be spiking.”

Frag knew where this was going, even before Captain Rex spoke.

“We’re going in. Fire everything up,” he finally said, already striding in the direction of the dark entrance. “Beacons, lights, cameras, everything.”

This seemed like a Force problem, and not exactly a shoot-it-with-blasters problem. But, Frag wasn’t about to argue with the Captain. He also wasn’t about to just abandon the Commander down there alone, so he stuffed down his reservations, punched the correct codes into the keypad on his vambrace, and gathered up his gear.

“Tech, we’re going to need directions,” the Captain said as everyone formed at the tunnel’s entrance.

“I cannot guarantee your armor won’t be affected the same way as the Commander’s,” Tech replied distractedly, wholly absorbed with whatever data were rolling across the screen of his datapad. “I will guide you as far as I am able, but you may need to rely on Hunter’s skillset, if your comms are compromised.”

“Understood,” the Captain said, sounding a whole lot more confident than Frag felt. “We’re not here to collect souvenirs,” he said, turning his attention to the rest of the team. “Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

As if Frag had been considering grave robbing a bunch of dead Jedi, even before the Captain’s pre-dawn briefing on the Force complications they might encounter if they ended up following the Commander into the temple. Frag didn’t care what the black-market value for kyber was, it wasn’t worth getting haunted over.

Captain Rex and Hunter took point. Frag and Lighter followed them, with Echo and Wrecker covering their backs. The Commander’s smaller, booted footprints were clearly visible in the thick layer of dust on the floor. The team set off at a controlled jog down the tunnel, following her trail. Wrecker complained that he was going to hit his head if the ceiling got any lower.

He had a point. The hallway was claustrophobic already, barely wide enough to let the clones move in two parallel lines, and Frag didn’t have Wrecker’s extra height and bulk to consider.

The graves were just as creepy as Frag had expected, not that they slowed down to inspect any of them too closely. Empty eye sockets watched them pass. Crystals caught their helmet lights, scattering multicolored flashes against the walls of each carved nook.

The hallway didn’t feel peaceful anymore. It felt watchful, expectant.

Tech kept up a periodic commentary on the Commander’s location, and sometimes the Captain asked him follow up questions. She had apparently slowed down, she was circling back on her own path, her vitals were still within ranges consistent with significant stress and exertion, but not injury.

Most everyone else was quiet. It was silly, but Frag got the impression that if he spoke, if he even breathed too loudly, he might wake something up. For long stretches, the only sound was their footfalls, soft as they could manage in full armor.

They’d just turned another corner when their comms crackled to life. “Everyone stop,” Tech said, tone sharp. “Go back, you should have taken the other fork.”

What fork? Frag and Lighter shared a look, confusion clear even with their buckets sealed, and then glanced behind them at an equally bewildered Echo and Wrecker.

“Tech, there wasn’t a fork,” Echo said, turning to shine his helmet lights behind him. “It was just a turn in the hallway.”

The silence wasn’t exactly heartening. Finally, Tech said, “Show me.”

Frag felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see Captain Rex, who jerked his helmet a little to the side in an obvious request to let Hunter and him through. Frag shuffled closer to the wall to get out of their way, trying not to bump the closest skeletal occupant with his pack in the process. A glint in Frag’s peripheral vision caught his eye, and he turned his head to see what it was.

A half-crumbled skull with a spray of crystals growing out of its eye socket stared back at him.

Frag flinched, and then felt like an idiot for it. Sure, the light caught the crystals oddly, making them look almost alive, but that wasn’t any excuse. He really needed to get his helmet on straight.

“There’s no other hallway here, Tech,” the Captain repeated, shining his helmet lights over the graves in the offending section of wall.

“Rex, look at this,” Hunter said, crouching down and pointing at something on the floor.

Echo and Wrecker had shuffled closer to try to see what had caught Hunter’s attention, so Frag and Lighter were left to try to crane around them.

“What’s going on?” Lighter asked, apparently coming to the conclusion that trying to see around Wrecker was a losing proposition.

“Commander Tano’s footprints stop in front of that wall,” Echo replied without looking around. He sounded grim, but the words made no sense. It took a second for them to really register with Frag.

“What?” he asked, because surely he’d heard that wrong, but Echo didn’t repeat himself. He just rested his organic hand on the butt of his blaster, fingers clenching and unclenching around the grip.

“I really don’t like this,” Wrecker said under his breath, speaking for all of them.

“Tech, are you sure she went through here?” the Captain asked steadily, but there was an edge in his voice that sent Frag’s stomach twisting.

“Yes,” came the immediate reply, but it lacked Tech’s usual certainty. “But I will check my program again.”

“I don’t think it’s your program,” Hunter said, straightening from his half crouch. “It’s not just her tracks that end at this wall.”

Well, that couldn’t mean anything good. Hunter had to be referring to his other senses, but that was ridiculous. People didn’t just disappear through walls.

Except apparently, they did.

Right… Haunted Jedi catacombs.

Hunter cautiously pressed a hand against the floor separating two of the stacked graves, as if half-expecting it to dissolve in front of their eyes, but the stone was solid.

The Captain stepped up next to him, running his hands over the wall as well, obviously searching for anything other than rough-cut rock. “Frag, get over here,” he ordered. Frag jerked, surprised by the summons, but then hastened to comply, awkwardly shouldering his way past a very tense, uncharacteristically quiet Wrecker. “Can you cut through this wall?”

“Uh, yes, but…” Frag trailed off, really not wanting to question a superior officer, especially not this one. The wall was just stone; he’d come prepped to blast through even tougher materials. He just needed to bore a hole, insert one of the smaller charges from his pack, and boom. New door. But…

But dead Jedi, disappearing halls, sentient Force crystals… What if we wake something up?

The Captain gripped Frag’s shoulder, apparently understanding his silent reservations. “Start small, just something we can see through first. Then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

Frag nodded. He could do that.

“I’m guessing this is the interference Tech mentioned,” Captain Rex said, turning to look at each of them in turn. “Keep your eyes and ears open.” Then he motioned for Hunter and his team to follow him further down the hallway, obviously intent on continuing the conversation without the two Raiders. A moment later, their comm symbols winked out in Frag’s HUD as the open feed was shut down.

Frag kind of wondered what they were discussing, but then again, he probably didn’t want to know.

He tapped his gauntleted knuckles against the stone, working his way up and down the walls separating the neighboring columns of graves from the corner. It really did just feel like regular stone. He pulled out his laser cutter and started fiddling with its settings, increasing the diameter of the beam and dialing the depth of penetration way back. He figured he should try this in five centimeter increments, in case he cut through the wall and into the back of another grave or something.

Lighter was hovering at Frag’s shoulder, angled so he could watch the bend in the corridor not currently filled with their higher-ranking brothers. He wasn’t sure what the medic could actually do about shifting hallways and dead Jedi watching them with creepy, kyber eyes, but Frag felt better having someone watch his back all the same.

Frag eyeballed the center of the stretch of wall separating the graves and set the cutter parallel with the waist-height floors separating the alcoves, figuring that’d be the most structurally sound spot to cut. When the sensors read the correct angle, he activated the beam, burning a small hole into the rock.

Nothing happened.

Frag pulled out his backup flashlight and shone it into the fresh bore.

Yup, that was a small, round hole in a rock wall. And the Force hadn’t struck him dead for the transgression. So far, so good.

He dialed up the length of the beam and continued.

After a couple additional passes, his flashlight beam wasn’t strong enough to shine all the way to the bottom of the hole, but the cutter was still reading resistance every time he upped the depth. As best as he could tell, there wasn’t a hallway on the other side of this wall. As best as he could tell, there wasn’t another side to this wall, just a solid mass of Force-possessed volcano which had eaten their Commander.

Maybe it was going to eat them too.

Frag dropped his forehead forward to rest against the wall. When that didn’t do anything to alleviate the sick, twisting feeling that had set up shop in his gut, he pushed himself back with a frustrated snarl and set his cutter against the wall again.

“Force osik,” Lighter announced in between cuts, obviously trying to sound flippant, but failing miserably.

He was scared, too.

That made Frag feel both better and so, so much worse.

Lighter was a generation one, decanted around the same time as the Captain, so Frag wasn’t just being a total tubie about this situation.

On the other hand, Lighter was a generation one, a veteran of who even knew how many campaigns. He’d seen it all, done it all, and had the scars to prove it. Nobody could call him a coward with a straight face, so if he was scared, then maybe Frag should be terrified.

“That’s Mandalorian, right?” Frag asked, trying to distract himself.

Lighter nodded. “Mando’a, but yeah.”

Mando’a. Right.

Frag had been deployed early, when he was only eight cycles old. The Republic had been getting desperate near the end of the war, demanding soldiers at a rate the Kaminoan backlog of growing clones couldn’t support. He’d had maybe two weeks’ worth of advanced combat training with a human bounty-hunter named Gard before being sent off to Felucia, and then maybe two months before Order Sixty-Six had gone into effect. He’d barely earned himself a couple yellow stripes on his armor and picked out a name for himself before all of it had been taken away from him.

He’d heard that some of the higher-ranking, first gen brothers had learned directly from Jango Fett, and they’d picked up some Mando’a from him. After that, they’d been deployed of course, adding words and phrases, mostly insults and profanities, from the species and cultures they’d encountered. Then the next wave of clone troopers had been deployed, and the next. They’d all picked up new words and dropped old ones, adopting a seemingly random selection of slang from at least a half-dozen languages into their day-to-day conversations.

Frag could follow along, sort of, using context clues and repetition, but he’d barely been with the Raiders longer than he’d served in the entire war. It made him feel like a shiny still, despite the solid year he’d been on the front lines after his chip had activated, putting down local uprisings for the Empire. He’d been stuck with a mostly-natborn regiment, and none of them had cussed in anything other than Galactic Basic.

“That means excrement, right?” he asked Lighter, dialing up his cutter’s depth settings again.

Frag risked a glance when Lighter didn’t immediately answer. He couldn’t read the expression on the medic’s face, but he could guess what it was from the way his brother’s helmet was canted. “You’re seriously asking me to teach you to cuss, at the bottom of a Force-cursed Jedi crypt?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Frag replied, setting the cutter against the wall and adjusting the angle. “Kind of feeling like I don’t have the right words to describe our current situation.”

Lighter snorted at that. “I can’t argue with that. Yeah kid, osik means ‘excrement,’ but it doesn’t have to be literal.”

That made sense.

He was about to ask about ‘kark,’ which seemed to be one of the most grammatically confusing swears he had yet to hear, when the rest of the team’s open comm symbols flickered back to life in his HUD and the Captain asked, “Making any headway?”

“Not really, sir,” Frag said, letting his cutter fall to his side and turning around to face the rest of the approaching team. “Two point five meters in, and no end in sight.”

Captain Rex just nodded, like he’d been expecting that answer. Like that wasn’t completely insane. “We need to find out if any of the side passages loop back around to her trail. You two, stay here in case anything changes,” he said, obviously directing that last bit to Frag and Lighter. “The rest of us will scout up ahead.” He nodded towards the tunnel they’d started down, before Tech had stopped them.

Lighter cocked his head a little to the side. “Why not back the way he came?” he asked. “There were some side tunnels back there.”

Echo and Hunter shared an unreadable look behind the Captain’s back.

“The way’s blocked,” Wrecker said when nobody else seemed like they were going to answer. He sounded grim.

Wrecker never sounded grim.

“Like, a rock fall, or like…” Frag jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the out-of-place wall, not bothering to finish his question.

He really wanted it to be a rock fall. A rock fall he could handle, easy.

It wasn’t a rock fall. Quiet as the catacombs were, they would have heard something.

“Our tracks end in front of another wall,” Hunter said, confirming Frag’s suspicion.

Lighter said something under his breath that had the definite cadence of Mandalorian. Mando’a. Whatever. Frag couldn’t follow it, but it sounded rude, and angry, and resigned.

Frag just swallowed, not appreciating the way his stomach was twisting itself into knots at the news. “Okay,” he finally managed to say, sounding more than a little choked. “We’ll stay here.”

“Keep your comms open, we won’t be long,” the Captain said, but even though he sounded perfectly collected, something in his tone sent the skin down the back of Frag’s neck prickling.

Their brothers set off with the Captain in the lead and Wrecker last, trudging along like he was marching to his own execution. Frag couldn’t think of anything to say, everything that came to mind felt a little too close to a goodbye, and he refused to put that kind of thought out there for the cursed tombs and their doubly-cursed occupants to hear.

“First right,” Hunter reported a few seconds later, and then after a longer pause he continued, “Bypassing a left fork. Tech, are you getting this?”

Frag jerked when a loud burst of static assaulted his ears. Lighter did too, so it wasn’t just a glitch in Frag’s helmet. It must have gone out over all their comms. Tech’s designation had rolled up to the top of their group with the unexpected sound, but they couldn’t hear anything intelligible in the noise.

“Tech, say again?” Hunter demanded, as soon as the static stopped. “Te–”

Everyone except Lighter abruptly disappeared from Frag’s HUD.

The silence made the dark just that much more oppressive.

“Lighter, did your comms cut out too?” Frag asked, clinging to the hope that his bucket was just acting up.

Lighter glanced at him, visor unreadable, and then turned to look down the hallway where the others had disappeared. “Yeah, kid. They did,” he admitted.

If their comms had cut out, then the Captain and the others would notice too, right? They’d turn around and come back, regroup and decide what to do next.

Frag didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust his voice not to crack if he’d tried. He just checked his chronometer – it read 10:14 – and watched the hallway for their returning team.

They didn’t appear.

He checked his chrono again, but it still read 10:14, which didn’t make sense. Sure, he was being a little impatient. Given the situation, he thought he’d earned the right to be, but it had really felt like longer than one minute.

His chrono flickered, rolling over to 10:15, but then immediately skipping ahead to 10:49.

Maybe there was something wrong with his helmet after all? Could there be something down here that was messing with their electronics? Some kind of radiation or radio signal? That would explain at least a little of the weirdness, not the walls appearing and disappearing, but the comms…

Except no. Hunter definitely would have sensed something like that.

“Lighter, is your chrono acting up?” he asked, and sure enough his voice cracked like a mid-puberty cadet. Humiliating.

“What do you mean?” Lighter asked, just as Frag’s chrono skipped again, this time falling back to 10:46. They were both silent for a moment, and then Lighter said, “Yours just did that too, right? Went backwards a few minutes?”

“It’s gotta be something electronic, right?” Frag asked, but all he could think about was Hunter’s dry recitation of the argument between the Captain and the Commander yesterday. Time. Sometimes Jedi temples could mess with time. Had they just jumped back in time a few minutes, or forward a full cycle? Or more?

Lighter didn’t answer. He just took a hesitant step in the direction the other four had disappeared.

Frag forced himself to stop thinking too hard about it, because the other option was going to end with him hyperventilating right there in the hallway. He leaned against the wall, instinctively seeking out a little extra support, but stumbled backwards when his pack didn’t meet the expected solid stone.

His involuntary shout of surprise sent Lighter whirling around, blaster ripped from its holster and ready to fire.

They both froze. Frag’s arms were still flung out to his side, seeking balance or at least a handhold to catch himself.

He was standing in the missing hallway. The wall, complete with his drill hole, had disappeared again.

“Okay,” he said, mouth running with nerves. “Okay,” he repeated, forcing himself to lower his arms and look around himself.

Lighter stepped forward, blaster still out and ready. His helmet light skimmed up and around the doorway.

Frag looked down and sucked in another surprised gasp. “Lighter, look here!”

The Commander’s small tread was there, but now there were others too. One unusually large set, even if the tread was familiar, just the standard pattern on the bottom of all their boots to give them better grip on unsteady footing. One other was oddly angular, with a different pattern, and there were a few more that were a perfect match for the prints Frag himself had just left, stumbling through the dust.

Frag wasn’t a great tracker, but he knew a few of the basics. He’d lay every credit he’d ever seen on these tracks belonging to Wrecker, Echo, Hunter, and the Captain.

Or something wanted him to think that?

Lighter stepped forward cautiously into the hallway, lights joining Frag’s on the floor and the tracks left there in the thick blanket of dust.

“Do we follow them?” Frag asked, falling back on training and experience and trust that an older brother would know what to do.

But Lighter seemed just as shaken as Frag. “I don’t know,” he admitted, voice strangled. “What if it’s a trap?”

This whole place was a trap. What kind of question was that?

“Look,” Frag said, half trying to psyche himself up and half trying to legitimately work through the problem at hand. “Look, even if those don’t belong to the Captain and the others, the Commander’s were definitely real. Hunter smelled her, or… or whatever it is he does. They were real.”

Were they? Was any of this?

“Yeah, okay,” Lighter said, taking another step forward and scanning the hallway like he was still expecting an ambush. “You might have a point.” He still looked back over his shoulder, hesitating.

“We could leave something, in case…” Frag trailed off, not wanting to give voice to the numerous reservations and fears which were vying for attention in the back of his head. “Just in case. A note or something.”

“Did you bring some karking stationary with you?” Lighter asked sarcastically, but Frag would take it, if it meant the medic kept sounding more like his usual self.

“We’ve got to have something we can use, between our two packs,” Frag insisted.

In fact, they had several things. Lighter wasn’t about to give up any of his bandages as a banner, but they managed to tear a strip out of Frag’s thin, thermal blanket and the medic burned a message into the fire-resistant material with his field cauterizer.

‘Hallway to Commander opened. Following her. L&F’

The letters were a little wobbly, and the arrow Lighter added as a crude set of directions was worse, but it was legible, which was all that really mattered. They left it at the junction where the two hallways came together. Frag weighted it down with one of his containers of two-part explosive putty, much good it had done him so far on this mission. If he ended up needing some later, he had more.

“Eat something,” Lighter repeated with just enough of a threat behind his words that Frag gritted his teeth, but did not argue. His stomach wasn’t interested in food in the slightest, but arguing about it wasn’t going to do any good.

“Fine,” he grumbled, reaching behind him and finding his way into the correct compartment of his pack by feel alone.

Their chronometers were still acting up, skipping around or slowing to a crawl for no obvious reason. Nevertheless, when the broken thing had rolled over noon, Lighter had started pestering Frag about eating and drinking something.

Medics.

Frag slung his blaster rifle over one shoulder, opened the ration bar, then popped his seals and pulled off his helmet to start eating. They didn’t stop walking though; he could see well enough in the light from Lighter’s bucket.

The skeletons in the graves were less visible without his HUD’s light adjustment settings. He wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. It definitely didn’t make him forget the oppressive feeling of being watched from those dark alcoves.

Frag didn’t have a good word to describe how the hallway smelled. Dry, like old flimsi, and stale, like a shuttle whose CO2 scrubbers were in desperate need of changing.

The ration bars tasted like dust and something worse. Decay. When he’d finally gagged half of it down with a few swigs of water from one of the canteens he’d packed, Frag was more than relieved to seal his helmet back up. He had a sneaking suspicion that the pervasive dust wasn’t just coming from the stone walls.

“Your turn,” Frag said, extending the other half of his ration bar in his brother’s direction.

Lighter was silent for a few seconds, and when he answered, it was only to say, “Later.”

Frag still didn’t argue, even if the refusal made him grit his teeth. He understood the need to stretch their supplies as far as they could. Neither one of them had any idea how long they were going to be down here. But it still felt like Lighter was treating him like a cadet. Between the two of them, having a healthy and functioning medic seemed like a much higher priority than whatever Frag was on this mission. Dead weight. The most useful thing he’d done so far was follow Ripple’s recommendations to pack extra rations, but so had everyone else. He was less than worthless down here, just one more mouth in need of their limited food and hydration, with nothing tangible to provide in return.

Frag shoved the half-eaten bar back into his pack and promised himself to refuse another bite until Lighter ate something too.

The footprints in front of them kept changing. Sometimes there were multiple sets, from way more than four pairs of boots. Other times, they only saw the commander’s smaller tracks. Her stride was really long, a sure sign that she had been running at this point, but towards what or away from whom, they couldn’t tell.

Frag was trying to ignore the graves on either side of him, but when he spotted a half-familiar crystal formation spilling out of one nook like a frozen waterfall, he couldn’t help glancing into it as they passed. There was a skull there, near-human, but sporting a crown of small horns. They looked similar to a Zabrak’s, but the count and spacing weren’t quite right. The first time Frag had seen it, he’d distracted himself by wondering if maybe the horns’ owner had been a hybrid of some sort.

The second time he’d seen it, he’d stumbled in surprise and sudden fear. The hallway they’d been following since leaving their message for the others was long and straight, and they hadn’t turned off of the path once. He’d bumped into Lighter – the two of them had started walking so closely they were constantly bumping shoulders anyway, as if both of them were worried the tunnels might throw a wall up between them if given the slightest chance – and had cracked a joke about his own clumsiness. It had fallen thoroughly flat, but Lighter hadn’t questioned him further.

This was the fourth time he’d seen that same, distinctive skull, toppled over in the same, staring position. Frag clenched his hands around his blaster rifle and walked past it.

He still hadn’t told Lighter about it. The medic was being overbearing enough as it was. No reason to stress him out even more.

Frag tried to even out his breathing, catching himself slipping closer to shallow, panicked panting if he didn’t make an effort to calm down.

Same thing with thinking about the impossibly repeating skull, or the impossibly disappearing and reappearing footprints, or the impossibly moving walls, or, or, or…

He couldn’t think about any of those things, not without cracking up completely, so he just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the next and hoped.

The press of the darkness and the pervasive feeling that the dead Jedi were watching him were really starting to get to Frag. He kept thinking he heard footsteps or voices, echoing oddly up and down the silent corridors, but he didn’t want to ask if Lighter was hearing them too. He wasn’t sure if a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer would be worse.

Apparently his brother could follow his thoughts just fine though, because only a few minutes later Lighter said, “Whatever you’re seeing or hearing, just ignore it.” He sounded tense and harsh and almost angry. “This place is trying to kark with us.”

Yeah, Frag definitely needed to work out the exact definition of that word. He could use some descriptive profanities just then. He choked down a laugh he was pretty certain would have come out sounding more than a little hysterical. “It’s doing a good job of it,” he admitted, hating how unsteady he sounded.

“Don’t let it.”

Easier said than done.

When Frag didn’t immediately answer, Lighter caught him by the spaulder and yanked him around. “We’re getting out of here,” he said, his voice a harsh grate. “We’re finding the others, and then we’re leaving. We’re going to be fine.” He almost sounded like he believed his own osik.

“You don’t know that,” Frag muttered under his breath, dropping his blaster to one side, and then repeated, louder, when Lighter just stared at him. “You don’t know that.” He was sick of Lighter treating him like a tubie, sick of feeling utterly powerless, sick of the temple or the dead Jedi or whatever was playing games with him. Sick of all of it, really.

Lighter shoved him back against the wall of the hallway. Frag’s pack hit the uneven graves with a clatter of jostled equipment and plastoid. It sounded like something dry and brittle had snapped under his weight, but Frag didn’t have much time to really think about that before Lighter was in his face, hand locked under the bell of his spaulder, arm pressed against his chest where a little pressure could send it up and against his less armored neck.

Frag instinctively grabbed Lighter’s wrist with one hand, halfway towards executing a twisting maneuver to break the medic’s grip, when he paused. This was his brother. His older brother, who outranked him in every way that mattered. Everything in his training was screaming at him to not fight, to listen, to obey.

“So what’s your plan then, kid?” Lighter said, and there was none of the usual affection in the way he drawled over that last word. “Gonna tuck tail and run? Leave your brothers and your Jedi down here to die?”

Frag saw red.

He had no idea how he managed it, and probably couldn’t repeat the maneuver in a moment of sober lucidity. But even though Frag was pressed flat against the wall, he somehow managed to kick a booted foot between Lighter’s legs, hook an ankle behind his brother’s foot, and send Lighter and himself both crashing to the floor. After that, the situation devolved into a tangle of knees and fists and elbows.

The words streaming out of his mouth were mingled denials and the most scathing, insulting combinations of half-understood terms he could imagine. He was pretty certain he wasn’t making sense, especially around the point he’d managed to tear off Lighter’s helmet while suggesting the medic do something anatomically inadvisable with an acklay.

He didn’t care.

He knew he was going to lose. He knew Lighter had more training, and more experience, and just more of everything than Frag had been given a chance to learn. He knew he was the weak link on this mission, but that didn’t mean he needed to be coddled or guilted or lied to in order to convince him to do what needed doing. He wasn’t planning on leaving anyone down here in this cursed tomb, not if he could help it at all, but he was going to leave a boot print across his brother’s face if it was the last thing he managed to do.

“Force, kid, calm the kark down,” Lighter said through gritted teeth. He had already ripped Frag’s helmet off and was holding one of his arms twisted up behind his back. With his other hand, he was struggling to pin Frag’s face down against the floor in an attempt to subdue him further. “I didn’t mean–”

Frag bit Lighter’s gloved fingers. Hard.

Lighter yelped, and Frag used his momentary distraction to twist out of his brother’s grip, getting just enough leverage to half stand and throw himself backwards in a move that should have slammed Lighter against the far wall, dislodging him further.

It didn’t work out quite like that.

They both went sprawling into a side passage that had not been there when the fight had started.

Lighter let go of Frag completely and staggered to his feet, looking around wildly at their new surroundings.

Frag picked up a smashed helmet light, neither knowing nor caring which one of them had lost it in the fight, and hurled it down the new hallway with a snarl of unfocused frustration and rage at whatever was toying with them.

The broken light hurtled out of sight before it hit the ground with a sharp crack, bounced, cracked against the floor again, and then collided with something softer.

Frag froze, fear dousing his irrational fury in an instant.

Whatever it was, whoever it was he had hit with that stupid, thoughtless stunt, moved.

Frag staggered back, instinctively putting himself between his brother and whatever he’d managed to wake up.

Something scraped against the stone floor, sounding like booted feet, and a pair of eyes reflected back the lights from their helmets, red-orange pinpricks.

Frag raised his blaster and was instantly answered with a rush of static followed by a low hum of energy.

Two unfamiliar, yellow-green lightsabers blazed in the darkness.

“Oh, Kark.”

AN: Other chapters are available here.

Dividers by freesia-writes using helmets by lornaka. More designs available here.

0 notes

watevermelon · 3 years

Text

Touch-Averse | Kiyoomi Sakusa x Reader

✧ Summary: Physical affection was something you loved, and while Sakusa was not exactly the biggest fan, you didn’t want to encroach on him. You weren’t expecting your boyfriend to get jealous!

➳ A/N: Hey! This has been waiting around for so long; I think I steered a little too into the angst with this one asfdgfhj ;-; ➳ Tags: Angst with a happy ending, komori is a lil shit; ➳ Masterlist

—xXxXxXxXxXx—

By all intents and purposes, Sakusa was the perfect boyfriend.

You were friends before through Komori since junior high and one thing led to another before the wing-spiker finally asked you out. You knew long before as his friend that he was averse to physical contact — even if it was under two layers of gloves.

No, the germaphobe kept everyone at a distance further from arms length. He wanted to keep things neat and orderly and straying from that made him uncomfortable.

And it warmed your heart that, despite this life-long struggle, Sakusa still let you into his world in little ways.

He would hold your hand through the halls of school (of course, you had to thoroughly wash your hands first and then get his personal approval). And, on lucky days like when Itachiyama won their practice matches that week, Sakusa would kiss you on the forehead openly in public.

All you had to do was vocalize things, keep the roads of communication between you two and he would respond. If you wanted to come over to his family home or vice versa — just let him know ahead of time and he would be happy to accommodate you. You want to go on a date to the arcade? Sure, send him a text and he’ll pencil you in for a couple days from now. A part of you also liked wearing his sweaters, the ones that plastered his last-name across the back. And on request, Sakusa let you wear his own to school.

Sakusa was generally aware of your needs and was not against being vocal about your relationship. You knew all about this prior to being his official girlfriend and had even found it endearing how much he cared about your personal health.

All it took was a look.

A single look was enough to plant the seed of doubt and make it take root.

It was after volleyball practice — you had stayed behind after your student council duties and went over to the courts instead of heading straight back to the dorms. You hadn’t told Sakusa before that you would be visiting, just popping in so you can walk back together.

You waved at the others, Komori noticing you first from the sidelines and greeting you. Some others from the team took notice beside him and recognized you from being friends with the second-years.

Between the break, you approached Sakusa’s pack where you knew he would go, happy to greet him.

He shot you the most disgusted look you had ever seen.

After, Sakusa had greeted you in his usual monotone voice. Voice clipped and simply drinking his water, Sakusa was there for a quick minute before returning back to the match without so much as a goodbye.

Your walk back to the dorms was eerily silent.

It could have been nothing, just a look that he always had in his resting judgmental grandma face. But for some reason it stuck to you, how mean his tone was towards his girlfriend of all people and how quick he was to get away from you after.

You tried to wave it off, give him the benefit of the doubt as you lay awake in your dorm room. Not saying anything to your roommate, you internalized most of your feelings and let it continue to fester below the surface.

He already didn’t like physical touch with you. But you had just greeted him, hardly pushing into his comfortable space. But even so, it was clear Sakusa had still been disgusted with you.

Was this what he really thought about you?

You tried your best to wave it off — maybe he wasn’t feeling too well that day? Maybe the match was annoying him? Maybe something just happened with his other teammates?

And so the next day after you were done with your extracurriculars, you dropped by the gym again just to see how Sakusa was doing.

Sakusa was quick to find in the crowd of boys, his tall height and curly black hair bobbing along as he readied to jump in the air. Seeing him spike, hearing the smack of power as it slammed into the floor, it always made you so proud at how fair he had come.

That moment didn’t last long.

No, it was pushed out by another emotion entirely.

The coach called the players on the opposite side, ringing them in to give some tips to them specifically. Sakusa’s side backed off to grab drinks of their water, the main manager running up to him with a towel in hand.

And Sakusa let her wipe at his face.

A small dab at his forehead and at the sides of his face and the moment was over. But that was not what you saw. You saw your boyfriend, your long-term friend, allow someone in his close space to touch his face of all things! You still had to wear gloves sometimes. And here she was, noses only inches away from one another, as she was allowed into his world.

What was it that made you so undesirable?

Was Sakusa annoyed with you? Had you been asking too much of him? You knew he was averse to the things you liked, but you never thought that it would push Sakusa away to this point.

You loved Sakusa and you had tried really hard to accommodate what he was looking for in a relationship. But was that really fair? Was he being fair to you at this point? Did he even view you as anything special, as his girlfriend?

Walking out the gym without a single word, you turned around with all intents to go back to your room and reevaluate your decisions. You failed to notice Komori’s wandering eyes that followed you out the open doors.

Your roommate commented that you looked terrible that night and was a willing open ear for you. You were grateful beyond compare, she was an awesome friend that you shared classes with and was alsoa member in the student council.

But instead of venting, you just relished in the tight hug she gave you. This physical touch was what you crazed and, while it had never really affected you before, it made you sad that this was something Sakusa would never want.

Was it really fair to have to schedule a hug with him?

Did he even want you as his girlfriend?

You internalized this hard and the it was hard to even look at Sakusa the next day at school, these thoughts only propping up again and again. What hurt even more is that you were actively avoiding the wing-spiker and it seemed that he did not even notice. Just went about his day, avoiding most people and sticking to corners alone.

But you were his girlfriend. He avoided most people but should that really include you?

Did he feel like you were suffocating him? You loved him and didn’t want to lose him. And so if he wanted space, you were willing to give it to him. But for Sakusa to treat you so cruelly when you were trying so hard - was it even fair at this point?

A text-tone from your phone permeated the room and you felt your spirits almost physically lift themselves up at the prospect of Sakusa reaching out to you.

But his text only made your heart drop.

Give me back my sweater already. Sakusa’s words read, Don’t you have your own?

And suddenly your thoughts of doubt were solidified as fact in your mind.

Grabbing the sweater from your bedside, you almost cried as you folded it up. Sakusa’s terms of endearment were few and far between, you wearing his sweater was one of the few things you could compromise on. And now he did not even want that.

You went about your morning weakly, going into Sakusa’s homeroom and leaving the sweater in a bag there. Alongside it was only a small note that you did not have time to wash it while it was in the bag. You did not wait a moment longer, dropping off the package and hoping to avoid him the rest of the day.

And throughout the school hours, you were doing a good job. During lunch you were able to avoid spending time with both Sakusa and Komori, leaving your classroom the moment the teacher dismissed you and retreating to the outside area behind school. Would it do you any good to confront Sakusa over something that he probably did not even care about? Was he planning on breaking up with you?

These thoughts only continued to plague you throughout the day and the more you continued to ponder on it - the worse it got. Maybe he always viewed you this way, just humoring your relationship for the sake of your friendship.

Your mindset spiraled downward worse and worse and you had little initiative to even go to club activities after school. Your roommate had vouched for you at the student council meeting while you went back to the dorms depressed and very not well dressed.

The moment your phone dinged to life you shot up in repressed excitement, wondering if Sakusa had noticed your mood and reached out.

It was Komori.

Hey, missed ya during lunch. Wanna catch dinner together?

Of course, it was Komori.

You wondered for a hot second if it would be smart to go with the libero out to dinners the campus cafeteria. Odds are you were going to pour your feelings out to the boy and he was undoubtedly loyal to Sakusa. Komori was always one of your closest friends, even before dating the wing-spiker.

Another ding ringed out a second later.

Come on, you’re my friend too.

It was almost like he was reading your mind - the poor boy was probably so used to your evasiveness from before that it was no doubt he remembered it.

You typed back, Okay, I’ll meet you after practice.

See you then <3

You texted your roommate that you would be meeting with the libero, so as not to worry when she returned. In the meantime, you hung around your room and completed some of your homework early. Once Komori texted you that he was ready, you put on a large hoodie and some leggings, trying your best to look presentable despite your solemn expression.

“Hey!” Komori perked up when he saw you, already at a table in the cafeteria. Thankfully he was sitting alone. The moment you were close enough, Komori pulled you into his chest and wrapped his arms around your shoulders.

Komori always gave the best hugs and you squeezed your arms around his middle right back. It had been a while since he, or any male for that matter hugged you like this. Most of the male population at school was well aware of your relationship with Sakusa and all it took was a look from the strong spiker to get most to back off.

But with Komori being his best friend and also one of yours, he was one of the few people who could get away with sharing you in a warm embrace. However, you did notice as of late that he was withholding some of the best hugs from you.

“Thanks for joining me tonight.” Komori continued, leaning back while you were still in his arms. “I know you’ve been kind of down.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, you can tell me anything or nothing if you want. Whatever you’re comfortable with - I just wanted to spend this time with you so you know you’re not alone.”

You almost teared up on the spot, with the exception of your roommate, it had been so long since someone had been so considerate with your feelings. Komori was the best bro and just all friend anyone could ask for.

Nuzzling further into his chest, you shakily replied. “You’re the best, Komori.”

Komori guided you to the seats, telling you that he had actually placed a comfort food order and was waiting for the number to be called. You smiled at him in response, placing your hands on the table and mentally preparing for what you wanted to say.

It felt almost therapeutic, admitting to the libero all the feelings that you had bottled up over the past few days. Komori nodded along, listening to you without cutting in or interrupting with his own point of view. He took in every word, keen on gaining your perspective before he added on.

“It makes me wonder, does Sakusa even want to be in this relationship?” You asked aloud, baring your insecurity to him.

Little did you know that Sakusa was reacting exactly opposite to what you were thinking.

Komori had actually invited the wing-spiker to join this dinner, but he had simply walked away in silence back to his own dorm.

Sakusa would never admit this aloud, but he cherished you in so many ways that it frightened him. Your relationship was built on years of knowing each other. And from the beginning of it all, Sakusa knew that he was all in. From high school to the end of your days, he was sure that this was the only relationship he wanted to ever be in. You were the first and only person he ever loved and he wanted to be that for you too.

And with that thought, Sakusa had always been afraid of losing you. He wondered, on multiple occasions, if you would be happier with someone else. After all, yes you were friends for a while, but you were much closer to Komori before you were in a relationship.

Sakusa saw it all - he knew how you leaned into the libero for tight hugs and how the both of you were still fond of spending time alone together. He had never doubted you or his cousin’s loyalty; neither you nor Komori would ever do anything to hurt him, Sakusa was sure. But he had a much more looming fear, one that frightened him simply because it was probably true, that you would probably be happier with Komori.

The libero was capable of easily reading your mood and reacting to it properly. It was Komori after all that noticed you had left the gymnasium the other day without greeting either male. He was very in-tune to your personality and it seemed the both of you were very agreeable. Sakusa remembered the time that many of your classmates had thought it was you and Komori dating after all.

Sakusa would honestly never forget that.

And so the wing-spiker had thought on multiple occasions if you would be happier in the arms of another. Maybe someone who had more time for you, who liked being as affectionate as you did.

Admittedly, Sakusa knew something was off from the moment you returned the sweater. He knew that you cherished wearing it for some reason. But you had it over a week and it was time for him to wash it. After all, it must have been dirty from overuse at this point and he did not want you possibly getting sick from something he wore.

Besides, he could just lend you another cleaner sweater for you to wear.

This was simply the way he thought - cut and dry and oftentimes misconstrued by other people.

But the last person he ever wanted to hurt was you.

Sucking in a hard breath, Sakusa attempted to figure out what to say. Not that he was unsure what to get across, but that he wanted to get out the proper wording before he caused any true damage to you. He must have been standing in the middle of his dorm room for a good twenty minutes, trying to keep a level head as different phrases evaded him.

Calm and collected, he told himself as he got near the cafeteria.

The last thing he wanted to ever see greeted him - you and Komori standing alongside a cafeteria table, you in his arms as he held you tightly.

It seemed you were still in the middle of your meal, your trays of food still stacked with chopsticks to the side. Regardless of the situation, Sakusa stalked over quietly and made his presence extremely known.

From Komori’s nice hug to suddenly pulled into another, your ten seconds of panic morphed into surprise at seeing your boyfriend.

“Sakusa!” You exclaimed, head against his chest as he continued to stare down his cousin. “This looks bad, but I was just talking to Komori about something.”

Komori only laughed, picking up his tray and taking it with him elsewhere. “See you tomorrow, lovebirds.”

“I--” You stuttered over your words as the libero made his quick escape, “We were in the middle of a meal!”

“We need to talk.”

Wait.

Was Sakusa breaking up with you right now?

You felt fresh tears break your visage as you asked him outright, “Are you breaking up with me?”

Sakusa recoiled before grabbing your hand, “No. Let’s go.”

You allowed him to drag you wordlessly, following along as he led you back to his dorm. He unceremoniously brought you along with him - was he sparing your feelings by breaking up with you away from the public eye?

The worries must have shown up on your face since, once you entered the elevator, Sakusa took one look at you before pulling you into his embrace again. He lingered for a second, as if unsure where to place himself, then leaned down to put a small mask-covered kiss on your forehead. You stilled at the motion, surprised that he was willing to show any display of affection in public.

The moment was only broken when he pulled you toward his dorm room, closing it loudly behind you.

“Why would you think that I would want to break up with you?” Sakusa asked, not at all sugar-coating his words.

You hesitated, looking at the ground before back at him. “Sakusa, are you even happy being with me?”

His eyes peeking over the mask widened in surprise. In the next second, Sakusa pulled his mask off and threw it in the direction of his trash bin. You took a step back at his aggressiveness, but he only followed the movement and wrapped an arm around your waist.

Sakusa pulled you against him and stated clearly, “I want to be with you forever, if given the chance.”

“Really?”

He did not hesitate in response, “Yes.”

You smiled at how sure he was, but his actions from the last few days still had you on edge. With a hand on his chest, you bit your lip before asking. “You don’t feel like I’m suffocating you?”

Sakusa angled his head in question before shooting back, “Why would you assume that?”

“I just feel like you don’t really want me around?” You admitted, words coming out slowly. “I mean, the other day you just seemed like you didn’t want me at your practice. And then I saw your manager dabbing you with the towel and even I can’t even hug you without warning.”

Sakusa simply stared at you as you spoke, his full attention to your words as he recalled the past few days.

“I like spending time with you, but at practice I was sweaty and you were still in your school uniform. It would be unfair to you if I was the one to sully it.” Sakusa replied, “While I am not close to the manager, handling the towels is one of her responsibilities. And I prefer to get toweled down rather than do it myself then touch the volleyball with sweaty hands.”

“Oh.”

You were at a loss for words once he explained himself.

“What about the other day?” You recalled, “I get that you don’t like me wearing your sweaters, but you should have just told me outright.”

You were not expecting Sakusa to shoot you a tired smile.

He moved to kiss your forehead again, lips lingering above your brow before he spoke. “I like seeing you in my sweaters. It reminds everyone that you’re mine.”

“What?”

“But you had that sweater for more than five days, right?” Sakusa answered with a question, “I have the proper detergent to clean it. It would do you no good if you got dirty or even sick from one of my articles of clothing.”

“Oh.”

You were an idiot.

An overthinking, doubtful, big dumb idiot.

You felt the small exhale against his chest, tantamount to a small laugh from Sakusa. “Oh?”

“I just--” You tried to articulate yourself, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I’m sorry I doubted you.” You admitted, “There are just these moments. I know you don’t like physical touch that much, but there are times I want to hug you or kiss you. And I get the feeling that you don’t like it.”

You heard Sakusa exhale above you, before feeling a slight nudging at your chin. Using his free hand, the wing-spiker was guiding your gaze back to him. He had an oddly fond expression on, before he leaned forward to slot your lips against his.

Leaning forward into the kiss, you carded your fingers in his curly mop of hair, arms crossed behind his neck. He pulled you as close as possible, lingering in the moment of your passionate lip-lock before settling you back down on your feet.

“I love kissing you.” Sakusa stated fondly, eyes still glued to yours.

You laughed breathlessly, “I know that now.”

“Good.” Sakusa replied, “I’m not good at these things. I can’t comfort you like others do, but please trust in me. Communicate with me - not your roommate and not Komori.”

“Okay. I’m sorry that I closed myself off.” You apologized, receiving a second kiss back.

You were caught off-guard, like the hesitation Sakusa had before was suddenly lifted from its floodgates. He pecked you one, twice, returning over and over as he lost himself in the feel of your lips against his.

“I have two newly cleaned sweaters for you to choose from.” Sakusa whispered, as if this was his version of sweet nothings. “I would prefer it if you wore one tomorrow.”

You shot him back a radiant smile, one that he eagerly savored in the back of his memory. “I would love to.”

Your relationship did not magically fix in that single night, but you resolved to continue working on your communication. It was a two-way street, one that the both of you had to work on.

But by God, you two loved each other.

And that was all that mattered.

8K notes · View notes

kohakuarisaka · 3 years

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Untamed (chapter 2 of 5)

Takami Keigo x (fem!)Reader

[ SUMMARY ] Every year, without fail, Hawks went into a rut: when autumn began, and then again in early spring. He would honker down up north in a secluded cabin. For the first time, he brought you with him.

[ WARNINGS ] R18+ for graphic sexual content and language. Non-canon compliant: Hawks’ quirk does not work like this. Reader is a hero that works at Hawks agency. Pre-existing relationship. Reader is a female with female genitalia. Feral behavior. Rutting. Biting. Spanking. Slight BDSM. Consensual sex. Wing kink. Oral sex. Romantic relationship.

Chapter 1 • Chapter 2 • Chapter 3 • Chapter 4 • Chapter 5

[ My BNHA Fanfic Masterlist ] ~ [ Also on my AO3 ]

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As it turned out, 'secluded cabin' was a pretty accurate statement.

Hawks had arranged for a very discreet hero taxi service to drive you the 5-hour trip from Musutafu to a quaint mountainous village that was so small and quiet, you almost doubted it was even on the map.

Past the snowy village, through the winding roads and towering trees, over a bridge, past a frozen lake, and then some miles off the main road, tucked away in a small clearing, was a beautiful cabin.

While the days were steadily growing warmer as spring rapidly approached, it still snowed at night. The snow had melted off the trees from the warmth of the midday sun; but, there was still a light blanket of white on the rooftop and across the surrounding grounds.

There were no poles lining the street, nothing that could bring electricity to the house; however, you could see what was likely a generator tucked away in the back. Someone had propped the cover off and cleaned out the snow.

At that sight, it became obvious that Hawks had beat you here. He already taken to clearing the snow out of the entry way as well, exposing a beautiful cobblestone pathway.

You exited the vehicle and retrieved your bags from the trunk. The very second you closed the hatch, the driver made a speedy exit, wheels skidding in the snow as they backed out before doing a sharp U-turn and barreling down the road.

Luckily, the entrance to the cabin opened before you could worry that you had just been abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Sure enough, Hawks stepped out, wild blonde locks brushed back, a little fluffier than usual due to the change in humidity.

Despite how cold it was, he was wearing a black tank top and loose, light grey sweat pants. He even stepped out onto the cold stone pathway with bare feet. Yet, with a light flush to his skin, he didn't look cold at all.

You had been making a face when he approached, and he offered an explanation, uttering, "I told 'em not to linger. It's suspicious."

Some large plumes departed his wingspan and grabbed at your luggage, one even pulling your shoulder bag off your back. They whipped away, bags in tow, and zipped past Hawks and through the doorway, disappearing into the cabin.

The winged hero didn't immediately usher you inside, as he usually did in these types of situations, but arched over you suddenly, arms bringing you into a tight embrace while his lips captured yours.

The sudden closeness forced your back to arch. Unconsciously, your hands fell onto his barely clothed shoulders, and you felt how warm he was. If you didn't know any better, you would have thought he was running a fever.

The kiss was brief, but uncharacteristically messy, not that you were complaining. It was a kiss of longing, like he had missed you dearly, as if it had been months and not a day and a half.

He pulled back, a distant, albeit blissful, look on his face. His eyelids sagged as if he was tired, but the gold of his iris was bright and his pupils were focused.

"I didn't get to clean yet, but - ugh - do you wanna see inside?" he asked, some slight nervousness to his tone.

"Yeah," you breathed.

Hawks stepped aside and you gently brushed past him and stepped inside. The wood floors creaked softly beneath your feet as you crossed the threshold. Immediately, you were hit with a wonderful scent, earthy, like tree bark, but sweet, like raw honey.

It was a decent sized cabin, spacious and not heavily furnished. The kitchen was on the small side, but seemingly to accommodate a larger living room.

As Hawks had warned, there was a thin layer of dust all across the wood floors. The furniture was covered by clear tarps, shielding them from the debris.

The dining area tucked away in the corner had a chabudai in place of a western style table. It was small and clearly only intended for two people. You had a feeling it was new, considering how spotless it looked compared to the rest of the cabin.

A huge, stone fireplace rested against the north wall, surrounded by large windows that gave a beautiful view of the outside. They were adorned with heavy curtains, pulled back to let the sunlight in.

Hawks was lingering, following close, staring down at you as you walked around and took in the sight of the place. When your eyes landed on him, and you caught his unblinking stare, you realized he was awaiting feedback.

It startled you a little, for Hawks wasn't the kind to fuss over these sorts of things; but, you had a decent enough understanding of what a rut was to know what was going through his head.

"Relax, birdbrain," you cooed, reaching up to tap gently at his cheek with a closed palm. That seemed to knock him out of his stupor, for he blinked and suddenly looked sheepish. He flickered his gold eyes away, as if to give you space.

"I love it," you praised, looking back into the living area. "Cozy, and smells nice."

You heard him exhale a relieved sigh through his nostrils.

"We should get to work. Where's the cleaning stuff?" you asked, peeling your jacket off.

"Oh. I'll-" he began.

"You'll let me help," you interrupted him gently.

When you turned back to face him, and saw the bewildered expression he was wearing, you wondered if maybe that wasn't the right thing to fit with his current state.

"Unless that's... bad?" you offered uncertainly, shoulders sagging.

Hawks laughed suddenly at the sunken expression on your face, as if the joyous sound came sputtering out against his will.

"No," he answered softly, leaning in suddenly for another kiss, as if he couldn't help it. You didn't get a chance to kiss back before he was retreating.

"Don't change," he sighed. "I want you as you, not as my..."

"-subservient housewife?" you offered, just a little teasing.

He chuckled softly, breathing out a harsh, "fuck, no."

Hawks maneuvered around you and headed for what you guessed was a supply closet. Inside, the cleaning gear was also neatly packaged in containers and safe from dust.

It made sense, how neatly arranged everything was. Hawks was a fairly neat person; but, it was also clear that he had this whole thing down, neatly tuned and properly sorted out. He had been coming here for years, after all.

This place was special to him. That much was clear.

The two of you started to dusting and sweeping, followed by a diligent mopping, with the two of you working in tandem.

Hawks was fairly quiet during the whole ordeal, seemingly focused sternly on the task at hand. It had been his nest for years. This was hardly anything new; but, it was now going to be yours, too.

He didn't tell you that he had been worried he would react negatively to your presence. He didn't always react rationally during this time. Seemingly average things would sometimes irritate him, and a part of the possessive onslaught included this abode.

Fortunately, that hadn't been the case. Cleaning the cabin with you was soothing. He wasn't unaware of the obvious implication: that you were preparing a nest together, your shared nest. He didn't say it aloud, but you had come to that realization, as well.

It had actually calmed him quite a bit. He had been on edge before you arrived, skin prickled with heat and sweating unreasonably considering the cold. Those weren't abnormal during his ruts; but, it felt intensified with that knowledge that you were going to be here.

Darkness swept across the forest as the hours dragged on. Luckily, you were just about finished by the time it got dark.

There was a neat stack of firewood arranged on a carrier near the fireplace, making you wonder if that was what he had worked on before your arrival. The logs looked freshly cut and heavy.

Crimson feathers delivered logs to the hearth. Hawks retrieved a set of matches from a cubby near the carrier and then kneeled before the hearth. He set one of the matches ablaze and carefully ignited the firewood arranged in the pit.

Warmth and light flooded the cabinet. Plumes gathered along the edges of the curtains and pulled them back, covering the windows. When they returned to his wingspan, he stepped back and monitored the fire briefly.

While cleaning, you had learned there was a cellar and partial second story, as well as an indoor bathroom. It seemed that the main use of the generator was to power the water heater and indoor plumbing.

The cellar was small, down a short flight of stairs, with concrete floors and walls, the perfect size for containing a month's worth of food and supplies, far more than was necessary for just a week.

The second story was a loft that oversaw the living room, giving a great view of the fireplace. There was no safety railing on the upstairs, likely for the very obvious fact that Hawks could fly. There was, at least, a staircase.

Upstairs, there was a large bed frame with a plush mattress, wrapped up tight to protect from dust, a large chest pressed up against the wall, and a desk without a chair.

After he removed the bed cover, you watched Hawks pull neatly folded blankets and pillow cases out the chest. It was fascinating to see someone, who normally slept wherever his body landed, so meticulously prepare the bedding: layers and layers of blankets, followed by dressing the pillows and laying them out.

It was especially perplexing because of the intense, concentrated look on his face. He had been so focused that he hadn't even realized that you had paused what you were doing to watch him.

Luckily, you caught yourself staring before he did, and shuffled back downstairs before he could notice.

A sudden howling had startled you, before a sharp wind rattled against the shutters. Something was thumping gently against the roof and when the wind picked up, you could almost hear the trees shuddering outside.

"It's snowing," Hawks observed, suddenly at your side.

You could see a glimpse of crimson in the corner of your eye, and realized he had a wing fanned out around you, not quite close enough to touch, but hovering. Maybe, he hadn't even realized he was doing that.

"Oh," you answered quietly.

Together, you prepared dinner, settling for a classic favorite of his: yakitori chicken and stir fry noodles.

Eating dinner together, and talking about nothing, made you realize, it had been the first time in a long time, if ever, that you hadn't discussed work: nothing about the agency, nothing about heroes or villains, nothing about police business or missions.

It was just senseless conversations that amounted to nothing.

The dining table was small and the floor was cold; but, your hands brushed constantly due to the lack of space. It made you realize that you had longed to have this type of moment with him, something so utterly domestic.

"I know it's not super late," Hawks began, on his way to the kitchen with the dirty plates. "But, I'm gonna wake you up early; so, let's get to bed, okay?"

His voice was soft, surprisingly drowsy, you realized, and he continued, "it's - well, there's something I wanna show you, and it looks best in the sunrise."

He had started the dishes before you could; so, you stepped in close, deciding to tease him a little.

"I bet you do look best in the sunrise," you uttered, leaning against the counter top near the sink, where he had busied his hands. He was looking away from you; but, you could see his lip twitch into a faint smile.

Hawks laughed, a low chuckle that rumbled through his chest. "Not me," he replied softly. Yet, he found himself feeling enamored with the knowledge that that was where your mind had wandered first.

"Do you want me to wait for you?" you offered, standing upright and shifting away from the counter.

"Nah," he replied simply. "I'll join ya' in a bit."

You changed into your pajamas, brushed your teeth and pulled your hair back, before heading upstairs. Blankets and pillows were stacked high on top of the mattress, making the bedframe disappear beneath it.

It not only looked incredibly warm, but incredibly soft, and an inspection with your hand, smoothing over the surface, confirmed that. There were several pillows pressed against the headboard and even more at the foot of the bed.

If you hadn't seen him arrange it, you would have doubted it was even Hawks' bed. From the glimpses you had seen into his life, he was a minimalist.

His office at the agency was fairly large, but looked almost comical with the lack of furniture in it. He wasn't one to buy much of anything outside of perishables.

"Take those off."

You had heard that commanding tone many times before; but, in the peace and serenity of this cabin, it startled you. Your shoulders twitched a little and you turned to face him, having not heard Hawks approach.

His gold eyes were glaring at your body, shifting up to meet your gaze when you turned to face him.

You gawked back at him, dumbfounded by his boldness, and a little intrigued, if you were being honest. He had warned you about this, and you were about to comply when his dark expression suddenly softened.

"Oh fuck," Hawks blurted, embarrassment washing over his face. The intensity of the moment dissipated and you found yourself unable to hold back a faint smile at the way his face so rapidly changed from anger to shame.

"Shit - I - sorry - ugh," he stammered, some redness tinting the tops of his ears. His dominant hand came up and ruffled his hair. "That was messed up. Ah - what I mean is, can we sleep naked?"

It was clear he wasn't embarrassed about the request, but the way that he had asked. You couldn't hold back a soft chuckle at his frazzled state.

"Of course," you uttered, and began shedding your clothes.

He was staring at your nudity as if it wasn't something he had seen many times before, as if his hands and mouth hadn't explored every inch of skin, hadn't touched and claimed parts of you your own hands couldn't reach.

It made you feel powerful, beautiful.

"Did you brush your teeth?" you asked, knocking him out of his stupor.

He didn't respond, but made a face that gave you your answer. He turned away then, and hopped over the edge of the loft, floating down into the lower floor, and scurried off to the bathroom.

Promptly, you disappeared beneath the blankets, shivering from the cold, skin prickled with goosebumps. You were about to scold yourself for complying with him so eagerly, without demanding a compromise, mainly that you expected him to warm you up.

Luckily, it didn't take him long to join you, and you suddenly felt a very warm, and very naked, body slot into the space behind you, wiggling beneath the blankets. It was almost concerning how warm he was, like he had just flung himself into the hearth before running back over here.

You rolled onto your back to greet him and Hawks wasted no time slotting over you, tangling legs, arms falling on either side of your head. Wispy bangs fell over his forehead, longer strands catching on his eyebrows.

Your eyes peered over his shoulders, where you could see his wings were fanned out above him, plumes stretched wide, looming possessively. When your gaze shifted to his face, your breath hitched.

His stare was hypnotizing, as if he couldn't believe you were here, gold eyes practically glowing in the dimly lit loft.

It made you sad to think just your presence alone had pleased him so much, whereas nothing else had yet to occur. It made you think of all the years he had to endure this alone, the loneliness far more straining than the lack of a pliant body.

"Hey," he began, voice hoarse, distant.

His dominant hand shifted from the bed to cup your cheek, thumb gently prodding at your cheek bone. Just like the rest of his body, his hand was so warm.

"I know I said I wouldn't let you leave," he explained, fingers sliding carefully across your temple. "But, if you want to, at any time, I'll call the taxi and-"

You leaned up, taking his lips in a gentle kiss to silence him. He moaned into the kiss, clearly surprised by your interruption. His hand departed your face, lowering to caress the side of your neck.

When you pulled back, he chased, not letting you depart from him quite so quickly. The kiss carried on for a short while, Hawks only leaning back when he was satisfied.

"No," you disagreed in a soft hum, hands rising to push strands of his hair out of his face. "I'm not leaving. We're going through this together. Okay?"

He let out a sigh that fluttered across your cheeks. "Okay," he agreed, as if he couldn't believe it.

Hawks shifted until he was lying beside you, one arm loose around your waist. You turned a little to lay on your side and lean into him, cheek falling comfortably into the pillow beneath your head, and felt him nuzzle into your back, bringing you as close as he could without ruining your comfort.

One of his wings folded carefully over you while the other sprawled out across the bed. The light from the fire just barely reached the loft, an amber glow that flickered with the dancing flames.

The sounds of the gentle snowfall outside was a little louder upstairs. One of the nearby windows rattled softly, trembling weakly from the breeze that shook the shutters. The rafters above creaked occasionally in melodic hums.

Behind you, Hawks' chest undulated with his breathing, moving against the skin of your back. His wings shifted ever so slightly in harmony with the expansion and shrinking of his lungs. The longer plumes on the ends twitched occasionally.

"Keigo?" you whispered.

He didn't answer. Judging by the way his arm had slackened where it rested over your waist, you figured he had fallen asleep already.

The bedding was soft, and you had no doubt that he had washed them diligently; yet, mingled with the earthy tones of the cabin, they smelt like him. The hearth crackled distantly, the sound a faint echo through the cabin.

It didn't take long to slip away.

• • •

Sometime in the middle of the night, you were woken by a strange sound. In your groggy state, it sounded like a distant animal cooing into the night.

Once you properly came to, you realized the warmth against your back had retreated. The blanket had been partially ripped away in the process, leaving the skin of your back exposed to the cold air of the cabin.

What had sounded far away you now realized was coming from right behind you, pained little noises and harsh wheezing. You rolled over to take in the sight of Hawks, blindly reaching for him in a moment of panic.

Worry struck you when your skin touched his. He had already been warm to the touch before; but now, his skin felt scorching, sticky with sweat. Your hand had landed on his chest, where you could feel his muscles rapidly rising and falling with each staggering breath.

The noise that had woken you became obvious then; he was panting, sharp and labored breaths that whooshed in and out of him, occasionally accompanied with a quiet, pained sound.

He had shoved the blankets away and was laying on his back, wings tucked in uncomfortably tight beneath him. Through the faint glow of warm light from the fireplace, you could see his chest raising and falling rapidly, head tossed back, face contorted in pain. Some strands of blonde locks were clinging to the sweat soaked skin on his face.

"Keigo - Keigo," you called to him, hands rising to his shoulders so you could shake him.

It wasn't until he jerked suddenly, eyes opening and head whipping towards you, that you realized he had been sleeping. His labored breathing intensified, but only for a second, before he started to calm down.

His gold eyes were glossy for a second, staring at you blindly, before he started to wake properly. His lips were parted, sharp breaths still escaping him in harsh wisps.

"Are you okay?" you whispered harshly. "Are you sick? You look-..."

You could see a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. Now, with him leaning up a little, you could see the flush of red tinting his skin, all down his chest and across his cheeks. His shoulder muscles were tight and his wings twitched helplessly beneath him.

"I'm f-fine," Hawks answered, voice low and hoarse. He swallowed roughly. "It's - it's a n-normal side effect."

"You're burning up," you hissed, hands touching his skin so carefully, like you would hurt him if you were too rough. "Are you sure you're okay?" you insisted.

"Just need-" he growled, cutting off as he tried to sit up.

His movement had repositioned your hands, causing them to drag from his shoulders to his chest, less you lose stability and collapse on top of him.

It was a familiar touch, a place you had touched him many times before; yet, he froze suddenly, gaze shifting down to your hands as if they were grounding him to this plane of existence.

Hawks' gold eyes fluttered shut and his pained expression softened. He flopped back on the bed, giving up his attempt to sit up as if he had suddenly lost all strength in his body.

Catching on, you uttered into the cold air, "is that what you need? Keigo, do you want me to-"

"Yes," he answered sharply, hissing through the cold, chilled air. He sounded relieved, thankful that you had offered before he had to ask.

"God, fuck - I - I need you, need to - to - be inside you-"

His babbling briefly ceased when you pushed the blankets off yourself and rolled on top of him, a gesture you had done many times before, now a nearly perfect art.

You watched, hypnotized as Hawks arched his back off the bed and flexed his wings until they were sprawled out on either side of him. The beautiful crimson plumes stretched out across the sheets, shuddering in faint waves that matched his heavy breathings.

In the shift, his cock became pinned against your inner thigh. If you didn't known any better, you would have thought he was prodding you with an iron rod pulled straight from the fires of a forge.

It was unbearably hot, hard as steel and painfully poking against your flesh. You could feel his heartbeat through his cock, throbbing against you as if pleading to be touched.

Arousal had never struck you this hard before, with enough force that it made your never regions throb and chest tighten. Blood rushed to your face so quickly, you briefly feared you would pass out.

Now, hovering, looking down at him, it was almost unbearable. It was clear that Hawks was in pain, and you felt a tinge of guilt at the realization that his state had aroused you.

But, the truth was, he looked stunning.

Maybe it was the red flush staining his skin, or the glisten of sweat, shiny with the reflection of the fire burning in the hearth. Maybe it was the way his gold eyes practically glowed through the darkness, staring up at you like a starving predator, glaring with dangerous intent.

Some sort of inhuman growl escaped him and Hawks grabbed at your meaty hips, roughly pulling you forward. It didn't take you long to figure out what he was doing; but, your attempts to aid were waisted, for he simply dragged you down to his liking, until the heat of your sex collided with his face ungracefully.

The first thing you registered was his mouth kissing sloppily at your sex. His tongue followed, lapping at your folds impatiently before breaching your heat. Hawks was always the kind to give sloppy oral; but, this was something else entirely.

He moaned shamelessly when his tongue registered your taste, hips rising off the bed as if attempting to chase a sensation that wasn't there.

Your hands fall onto the wall, and you tried to keep yourself up; but, he wasn't having it, growling and pulling you back down. It was difficult to not go dead weight when his tongue was lapping at your walls, mouth suctioned around your entrance like he was trying to suck juices from a ripe fruit.

One of your hands weaved through his hair, gently massaging his scalp in a praising gesture. It was difficult to get out sensible words. Instead, you moaned broken pieces of his name, thighs trembling on either side of his head.

You had no idea how much time had passed before he seemed satisfied and finally lifted you up enough to remove his mouth. The wet gasp that escaped him, suggesting he had been holding his breath, riddled you with shameful lust.

"You made a mess," Hawks observed deliriously.

He sounded immensely pleased with himself and even leaned in to take another taste, this time honing in on your pearl. You felt more than heard his pleased chuckle when you whined at the sudden touch.

This time, when he pulled away, he let you retreat. As you shimmied down his body, you caught him wiping your essence off his face with a careful finger before popping it in his mouth.

Hawks' skin was still flushed red, all the way up to his ears; but, now, he looked damn smug to top it all off. You couldn't see the look you were wearing, but you knew by the heat on your face that it was lewd.

The cold of the cabin had been lost to you, especially when you positioned your hips over his and felt the head of his cock nuzzle at your entrance, threatening to breach your core.

Hawks' head fell back into the sheets with a whine, eyes squeezing shut. Tantalized by the sight, you intended to tease him a little; however, he nudged his hips forward with a sudden jerk, effortlessly impaling you on his cock, and taking that opportunity away.

"Ohhh, fuck!" Hawks shouted before sucking his bottom lip beneath his teeth. He released it after letting out a low hiss.

You closed your own eyes for a moment, adjusting to the sudden intrusion of his impressive girth, and felt his hands slowly slide up your thighs into the dips of your hips, slotting over a spot he had practically engraved for himself ever since this began.

When your eyes opened, you looked down and took in the deliriously beautiful look on his face. His thumbs nudged your hip bones pleadingly and his eyes opened, peering up at you through dark lashes.

Forgoing any thoughts about teasing, you planted your hands on his chest and rolled your hips. The motion punched a whine out of him. The sound drawled out into a growl when you kept the rhythm, chasing your own pleasure.

"Yeah," he hummed encouragingly. "Come on. Use me. Fuck yourself on my cock. Just like - ahh - fuck..."

You hardly needed the encouragement; but, the dirty words spewing from his lips further ignited the heat in your belly, and you whined in response.

He could have easily pulled your hips down to intensify the moment. Instead, he lifted his hips off the bed to meet yours, effortlessly matching your movement and chasing the delicious warmth and wetness of your core, while letting his hands hold you gently.

"Baby, do you feel good?" Hawks uttered lowly, his pleading question gently breaking through the moment.

"Y-ye-s, Kei - go," you sobbed, stuttering out your response and groaning halfway through his name.

It was always good; but, something about this moment made it more intense than ever before. You could already feel the sensation rising, thighs trembling every time his cock slid back inside, hitting the perfect spot again and again.

"Yeah?" he hummed, sounding so breathless and fucked out, despite you having just barely begun. "You feel good, so fucking good," he praised between labored pants and low moans.

"You're so fucking good to me," Hawks babbled on, head falling back into the sheets, where he closed his eyes. You watched his adam's apple bob, noticed how tight his jaw was clenched.

A growl vibrated through his chest, followed by a breathless sympathy of curses, "oh fuck - oh fuck. Come on, fuck my cock - yeah - ahhh. Ya' hear that? Those sounds. God, you're so f-fucking perfect."

Your union was loud, skin slapping together and wet, fleshy sounds echoing between the two of you.

His dominant hand released your hip and slid around, thumb prodding between your folds and seeking out your pearl. You were already so sensitive, feeling him so deep, teetering on the edge. When his calloused skin touched that spot, you let out a cry.

"Come on this cock," Hawks groaned. "Sooo close - f-fuck. Come on. Come for me. Fucking come. Gonna fill you up. You want that? My seed. Yeah you fucking d-hnn-"

His babbling ceased when your orgasm took you, the sudden spasms and fluttering of your walls making all sensible thoughts drain from his mind.

His hand returned to your hip, fingers gripping your waist, and he started roughly dragging you up and down to meet his thrusts. You went limp, letting him bounce you on his cock to your liking. Your hands slipped off his chest and you fell onto him, forehead knocking gently against his cheek.

You could hear him huffing and grunting, the occasional growl seeping through, right into your ear as he fucked you through your orgasm, and continued on, chasing his end.

His cock throbbed, firmly enough that you felt it and the sensation startled you a little; but, that thought was lost when he let out an uncharacteristically loud shout, crying out in ecstasy.

Hawks had always been loud; but, this was something else entirely, and the moans and growls didn't stop, along with his undulating hips, for what felt like an eternity.

To top it all off, you could feel it, spurts of his seed, burning hot as it filled you. In the corner of your eye, you could make out his feathers, each and every one trembling beneath him.

Then, finally, he went still.

Hawks' panting filled the room, almost loud enough to drown out the crackling of the fireplace. Even after his panting died down, he let out quiet groans, his orgasm having not yet waned in full.

Eventually, he turned his head and pressed a wet kiss against your cheek. You turned your head to meet him, at first catching the corner of his mouth before he angled his head to kiss you properly.

You could practically feel the praises behind each kiss, thank you's and love pouring from his mouth to yours in a nonverbal gesture. His hands ran up and down your back, massaging your skin but also ensuring that you didn't move and he remained deep inside you.

When he finally released your lips, you busied your hands with his wild mane, gently pushing strands away from his face. He seemed to like the preening, letting his eyes flutter shut and head fall back.

You didn't have to ask if he was feeling better. His all-body, harsh red blush had mellowed out and he wasn't panting like a parched dog.

You hadn't realized you were still trembling until he uttered, "it's okay," in a soothing, worried voice.

His hands shifted to your thighs, where he carefully pushed them back and rolled you onto your side, keeping his cock nuzzled deep. His arms wound around your back, bringing you into an embrace while his wings stretched out behind him before sagging comfortably to the bed.

You realized, as he brought you in, that you were still shaking a little. The worry was evident in his eyes, like he had done something wrong.

"D-do you want me to pull out?" he offered in a weak voice.

"It's not that," you replied softly. "That was... intense."

When your eyes locked with his gold orbs, and he took in the sight of your expression, it seemed to steadily become clear to him, what you were feeling. His lips sought our your skin, senselessly kissing whatever he could reach, all over your cheeks, down your chin and along the expansion of your throat.

Hawks’ head fell onto the pillow and his wispy blonde hair tangled with yours. The unease began to fade away as he held you close, bringing the blanket back over your forms when his intense heat finally started to wane. So did the spell, and something concerning struck him.

"Please, tell me if it gets too intense," Hawks uttered, breath fluttering out against your temple. “I’ll-...”

He cut himself because he wasn’t quite what he would do, what he could do. Could he stop? In this moment of clear thoughts, he sure hoped so. But, part of him feared that wasn’t true, and the last thing he wanted was to lie to you about what he was capable of.

You had figured that he had yet to hit the apex of his rut. Yet, his warnings hadn't frightened you in the slightest, especially after what had just occurred. If anything, you were enticed by it. Maybe, in some strange way, it was affecting you to.

"I can handle you," you promised.

You felt more so than heard the uneasy breath that stuttered out his nostrils. Your words stirred something deep in his gut, overcoming the fear, burning arousal and adoration.

#takami keigo x reader #takami keigo smut #takami keigo x you #hawks x reader #hawks smut #takami keigo fanfiction

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verai-marcel · 3 years

Text

Serendipitous Meetings (Arthur x GN!Reader, Modern AU, 18+)

Summary: You foolishly didn’t mark where you parked in the huge parking structure, and spend some time looking for your car. You run into a fellow who did the same thing, and things get ridiculously serendipitous from there.

Author’s Notes: How many tropes can I shove into this fic? Let’s face it, I just wanted to have Arthur fuck like the manly man that he is. Also going for gender neutral as much as possible, so all my readers who want a piece of Arthur can have him.

Tags: Arthur x GN!Reader, smut, light D/s tones, size kink, light spanking, neck grabbing, rough sex, dirty talk, modern AU

AO3 Link is here, li’l darlin’.

Word Count: 3764

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"Shit."

You let out a long suffering sigh as you looked around the packed parking structure. In your rush to meet your friends, you had forgotten to take a photo of where you parked. Now you stared at the large expanse of cars, racking your brain for at least a slight memory of how you got to the venue entrance from your car.

Sticking your hand into your pocket, you gripped your phone for a moment before letting it go. You had already shooed your friends away, insisting you had parked nearby and could get to your spot no problem. Swallowing your pride, you started to search the rows for the off-white bucket of bolts you dared to call your car.

After searching one floor, you trudged up the stairs to the next one, stopping a few steps past the landing to gaze upon the hundreds of cars before you. You faintly heard another set of steps coming down the stairwell, but you were so mired in your own despair that you didn't pay the sound any mind.

"Shit," said a gravelly voice next to you.

Glancing over, a very broad set of shoulders filled your view. Your eyes flicked over the red and black flannel shirt and blue jeans, with an almost hilariously large belt buckle. Then you looked up.

Oh no. He was gorgeous, in a rugged, manly-man sort of way. That chiseled jaw, the five o’clock shadow, that thick neck… he was the kind of man who could probably pick you up and throw you over his shoulder with ease. You were so busy staring at him in tired awe that he finally noticed you.

A pair of turquoise eyes met yours. "Sorry," the man said. "Can't find my truck."

It took you half a second to remember to respond. Then you gave him an empathic half-grin. "I can't find my car either."

He pointed upstairs. "What's yer car look like? Maybe I saw it up there."

You shook your head. "It's just a generic off-white Toyota Corolla."

The man shrugged. "Oh. Well, sorry darlin', there's a bunch of those up there."

You sighed, lamenting the fact that your car was one of the most popular cars out on the road these days. You also secretly enjoyed him calling you darling with that accent of his. He sounded like he had just stepped out of a spaghetti western.

"Maybe I saw your truck downstairs, if it stands out," you said, trying to be helpful.

"It's a blue Chevy pick-up. Really old, like one o' them classic trucks, 'cept it ain't been cleaned up like the ones you see in a car show."

Your memory flashed with the image of a dirty blue truck in your apartment complex's garage. You stifled a laugh at the thought. You had always wondered who drove the old thing, since you had never seen its owner.

"Nope, I didn't see a truck like that downstairs," you told him.

"Oh. Well, guess we better start lookin'," he said. He looked at you for a moment, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

You waited.

“Maybe,” he finally said, “maybe we could look together? For a bit. Keep each other company.”

“Okay,” you said easily. Part of your brain screamed that it could be really easy for him to just pull you into his car, but you dismissed the voice in your head. He seemed alright; you had a good feeling about this guy.

The two of you took off towards the left side of the structure. Putting your remote under your chin and hoping it would actually increase its range, you hit the button on occasion.

“Uh, what’re you doin’?” he asked, pointing at your remote.

“Oh, I read about this online, someone figured out that you can use your own head as an antenna, or something like that.”

The man raised an eyebrow, but eventually just nodded. “Huh, I guess that makes sense.”

You shrugged. “Haven’t tested it before this, so I’m hoping it actually works.”

The two of you wandered further and further towards the center when finally you heard that familiar beep.

*BEEP BEEP*

He chuckled. “Guess it works.”

You had never been so happy to hear that annoying little buzzer of a horn. You took off at a jog without waiting for the man, going towards where you had heard the sound, and as you turned a corner, you spotted it.

It was the big, old, blue truck from your apartment complex.

No way, you thought. There is no way. Maybe it's a similar truck.

Going back, you saw the man wandering around, still searching.

"Hey Mister!" you yelled.

He turned towards you.

You excitedly pointed towards the truck. "This yours?"

He started walking to you, and as he came closer, you could see the smile on his face and felt your heart skip a beat.

"Thank you," he said, stopping in front of you. "Where’s your car?"

You grinned and hit your unlock button. The little off-white sedan next to his truck let out a little beep, the lights coming on.

"Wish I had one of those," he said wistfully. "Sure woulda made my life easier." He looked at you with a small smirk as he opened the door to his truck. "But then I wouldn’t have met you. Thanks fer your help, angel."

You smiled, feeling your cheeks warm from his comment. "No problem." You struggled to find anything else to say, feeling pathetically desperate to hear him speak more. "Have a good night," you finally said.

"You too," he said, his voice a little lower, a little more breathy as he hauled himself into his truck and closed the door. Now that you had a pretty good feeling that he was a decent guy and not a creep, you half-wished he really would pull you into his truck and have his way with you.

Shaking the lewd thought from your head, you got into your car and set up your phone to listen to a podcast as you drove home. You eased your way out of the garage, through the local roads, and onto the freeway. For the next thirty minutes, you would spot the same blue truck out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes you’d pass him, sometimes he’d pass you.

Maybe it’s a different blue truck, you tried to convince yourself.

You couldn’t convince yourself any further when you pulled into your apartment complex right behind him. He parked at his usual spot, three away from yours. Climbing out of your car, you saw him walk towards you.

“You followin’ me?” he asked gruffly, though the grin on his face clearly showed his amusement at the coincidence.

“I can’t believe we live in the same complex,” you muttered, still in shock that you had never seen this handsome man before. “How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, ‘bout two years now.”

“Shit,” you thought to yourself.

“Why’re you cursin’?”

Oh crap. You said that out loud. “I, uh, um,” you stammered.

He quietly watched you, letting you stew in your own embarrassment, an amused grin on his face. The bastard was enjoying watching you squirm!

Feeling your face heat up, you blurted out the truth.

“We could’ve known each other sooner!”

It was an unfortunate tick in your personality that you had never managed to get rid of, and now, watching his eyes widen at your embarrassing remark, you wished the sidewalk would just open up and swallow you whole. But since that wasn’t going to happen, you opted to turn around and stalk away.

“Hey now, wait, you can’t just say that and leave,” the man said, jogging to catch up to you. When you wouldn’t stop walking, he swerved in front of you, forcing you to stop mere millimeters from him. You noticed how big he was, how little you were in comparison. You weren’t a small person by any means, he was just… large.

“Why’re you runnin’ away, darlin’?” he asked, his voice hushed as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. Perhaps with the way you acted, you seemed that way to him.

You took a deep breath, accidentally inhaling his scent, a mix of pine trees and a subtle hint of campfire smoke and musk that made you want to bury your face in his chest and stay there. Desire shot straight between your legs, reminding you that it had been a long time since you’d been with anyone. Letting out a shaky breath, you made the poor choice of looking up at him.

You were blinded by his kind smile and seduced by his deep voice. “Do you want to know me?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, I do,” you answered immediately.

He pointed to his apartment. “I live there. Want to share some whiskey?"

You paused. He was a stranger.

A stranger with beautiful eyes and the sweetest smile you had ever seen.

You followed him willingly into his den.

***

You blinked after he turned on the lights. When your vision cleared, your expectations were, fortunately, not met at all.

You had expected a bachelor pad with junk everywhere and clothing on the floor. What you saw was a clean and neat living room with a simple couch and a TV on top of a small entertainment center that held a few blu-rays and a blu-ray player. The short table in front of the couch had a plate on it, a smudge of ketchup and some crumbs on it, and a glass with a little bit of water left.

The man went to pick up after himself, putting the dirty dishes in the sink before going to his pantry. His kitchen looked pretty bare, except for the dried herbs, tied up in bunches under his cabinets.

While he shuffled around bottles, you went to sit on his couch, but not before pausing for a moment to look through the door to his bedroom. He had a bed that looked big and comfy, his sheets somewhat askew but otherwise in place. Didn’t look like there were any clothes or boxes lying around anywhere. So either the man was tidy, or he didn’t own a lot of things.

“Curious li’l one, ain’tcha?” he chuckled behind you.

Spinning around, you could only give him a sheepish grin. “Yup, sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”

He smiled and gave you a tumbler of amber liquid with a giant sphere of ice. “Curiosity like that could get you in trouble one day,” he said mysteriously, gesturing towards the couch.

You raised an eyebrow, but sat down anyway. You took a sip of the ice cold whiskey, enjoying its slow burn down your throat. It was smooth and sweet. “This is fantastic, what is it?”

“It’s a blackberry flavored whiskey,” he replied as he settled himself on the couch, a little closer to you than you had expected. “I thought you might like it.”

“Oh?” You leaned in a little closer. “And why is that?”

“Somethin’ a li’l sweet fer a li’l sweetheart,” he said with a grin. He knew he was being schmaltzy, but you didn’t care. You were eating up his words, spoken with that deep rumble that went right between your legs.

You continued to sip and make small talk with him until your ice had melted and the late night had become the witching hour. But he didn’t seem to mind, and you wanted to stay.

“You got a bit o’ whiskey here,” he said as he leaned in and reached for the corner of your lips, his thumb catching the drop that had escaped your last sip. You flicked out your tongue to catch him, and your eyes met. A heartbeat passed. The whiskey gave you strength.

Taking his hand in yours, you surged forward and kissed his lips, tasting whiskey and his woodsy scent. A low moan came from deep within him, but he did not reach for you. His hands gripped the cushions as he let you take the lead, climbing into his lap and wrapping your arms around him, your fingers kneading his broad shoulders. You kissed the breath from him, desperate to feel him against you.

When you finally broke away for air, you stared at his eyes, now filled with lust and longing, and realized you didn’t even know his name.

He came to the same conclusion. “What’s yer name, darlin’?”

You told him.

He nodded and repeated your name. It sounded so good when he said it. “Feels nice to say it out loud,” he said. “I’m Arthur,” he added as he wrapped his arms around you and held you tenderly. “How far do you want to go?”

“All the way,” you said, grinding your hips against his groin, making him take a shuddered breath.

Without a word, he picked you up and carried you to his big, comfy bed. He dropped you unceremoniously and took off his shirt.

He was ripped. He was built like a man who had worked all his life in a physical job, carrying & lifting. With his tall stature, his broad shoulders, and his huge arms, he made you feel small.

You had never been more aroused in your whole life.

Your body was ready to be thoroughly fucked by this man, and you hadn’t even taken your clothes off yet. You watched hungrily as he undid his belt and dropped his jeans & boxers, your eyes taking in his size. He wasn’t even at full mast yet, and you already wondered if you’d be able to take him all in.

“Your turn, darlin’.”

Taken out of your trance, you took off your clothes as he watched. You started at a normal pace, but when you saw him take himself in his hand and stroke himself while watching you with a lustful gaze, you slowed down, making an attempt to tease him. Already topless, you lay back on the bed and lifted your legs up, sliding your pants upwards. Slowly, you exposed your ass to him, winking salaciously.

He stroked himself a little faster. A soft moan escaped his lips. “Darlin’, yer makin’ it real hard fer me to stay in control here.”

You glanced down at him. “I can see it’s real hard,” you said with a playful smirk.

“Oh, yer goin’ ta get it now,” he said, his grin becoming predatory as he climbed onto the bed. Grabbing the rest of your clothes, he pulled them from you, flinging them over his shoulder before flipping you onto your belly. He gripped your ass and squeezed hard before giving you a firm spank.

“Ooh!” you yelped.

“You want more?” he asked as his hand soothed over his mark.

You could tell he was asking for permission. Turning back to him, you gave him your best pouty face. “Does Sir think I need more?”

Arthur looked immensely pleased with your response. “I think so,” he said, his voice deepening with a thread of command that turned you on beyond belief. He straddled your legs and rested one hand on the curve of your ass. “I told you, curiosity would get you in trouble.”

He spanked you hard once more. “That’s fer sneakin’ glances into my room,” he said. He gave you three more swipes, each in slightly different areas so you wouldn’t get too sore. Then he grabbed your ass with both hands and massaged your muscles, spreading you open as he thrust his cock along the cleft of your rear.

“Yer so obedient, sweetheart,” he murmured as his hips rocked, his eyes fluttering shut for a few moments. Then with his strong grip, he manhandled you onto your back, wrapping his big hands around you and pulling you into his arms. He cradled you for a sweet, gentle moment before rolling you around like you were as light as a pillow before setting you back down onto the mattress. He leaned over you as he reached for the nightstand, pulling out a condom. You watched him slip it on, but he didn’t move to enter you. Instead, he reached down and began to stroke you as he loomed above, watching your reactions.

You moaned and writhed under his deliberate exploration. His hands traveled languidly along every inch of you. When he found a sensitive area that elicited a soft noise of pleasure from you, he lingered, making you whimper and lean into his touch. He finally touched you lower, where you longed for his attention, but to your frustration he continued his study at the same leisurely pace. Soon his strokes became faster and he pressed harder against you. His eyes nearly glowed as he watched you lift your hips towards his hands, imploring him for more. Using his new knowledge to his advantage, he brought you to the brink and then shifted his touch elsewhere, making you cool off before working you back up again until you were going insane with need.

“Please, please Arthur, I need to come,” you begged.

He only smiled as he slipped a finger inside of you. He slowly worked you open enough for two of his fingers, then three. Soon he was dragging you to the edge again, and you hadn’t even had his cock. You were feeling like you were being denied the thing you wanted most.

“Arthur,” you whispered, “I want your cock.”

“Louder, darlin’.”

“I want your cock!”

“And what do you want me to do with it?”

“Fuck me!”

“Say it again. All of it.”

“Fuck me with your cock!”

His smile was wolfish, satisfied that he had heard you beg for your desire. Pressing the head of his shaft against your opening, he pushed, easing his way inside of you.

You were right. He was big, long, and oh so thick. He stretched you deliciously, and you keened softly as he took you, claimed you, made you his in the most carnal of ways. He reached up and slipped his hand under your head, gripping your hair at the base and pulling slightly.

“Eyes on me, darlin’. I want to see you while I’m takin’ you,” he murmured.

You couldn’t look away from him. His look was intense, as if he commanded your entire being, your body his to use for his pleasure. And you willingly gave it to him, letting him sheathe his entire length inside of you. He held you still while your body adjusted to his claim, watching you with an almost proud expression.

“Good li’l darlin’,” he said as he leaned over. He kissed you gently on the lips, then on the forehead, and as if he was overcome with affection for you, peppered kisses along the curve of your cheek and down your neck.

“I’m goin’ to fuck you now,” he whispered into your ear. “You tell me to slow if it’s too much for ya, alright?”

You nodded, sure that whatever he was about to do to you, you could handle it.

He lifted himself up onto his forearms, his hands framing your face. “You look so damn cute,” he murmured before his hips slowly pulled back. “So fuckable.”

Arthur slammed his cock deep inside of you with one forceful stroke. He immediately looked down at you when you let out a cry of surprise. He waited, quietly checking in.

“More,” you whispered.

You thought you saw relief cross his features before he gave you a teasing smirk. “Ask me nicely and I just might give it to ya.”

“Please sir,” you begged, “I need more.”

Arthur gave you a single nod before rocking his hips, building you up slowly, his gaze nearly burning a hole into you with their intensity. As your body stretched and accommodated him, you clawed at his arms, greedily clamoring for him to speed up. He let out a feral growl before wrapping a big, rough hand around your neck, his other hand gripping your leg and spreading you wider for him.

"You think you can take more, darlin'?"

You looked up at him and smiled a challenge.

He began a ferocious pace, angling himself to take you as deep as he could go. All you could focus on was the impact of his body against yours, his thick shaft filling you over and over, unrelenting as a tidal wave.

Soon he let go of your neck so he could sit up and grip your hips with both of his hands. He was fucking the breath out of you with each hard thrust, the sound of his hips slamming against yours filling the room with a lewd rhythm, intertwined with your breathy cries and his low moans of pleasure.

He reached down and stroked you, his touch rough and vigorous, matching the way he was ravaging you in a haze of lust. You could feel yourself sprinting towards that delicious finish line. The end was in sight as your hips jerked wildly, your legs wrapping around Arthur as he thrust even harder and deeper than before.

"Come fer me," he murmured. "I want to feel you lose yerself around my cock."

You screamed as his words broke the dam that was holding back a torrent of pleasure, your climax tearing through your body at breakneck speed. Your legs stiffened, your toes curled, and your fingers dug into his very muscled biceps as you came harder than you ever had. You shook with aftershocks as Arthur continued to thrust, his hands letting go of your hips as he fell upon his forearms, caging you in as he chased his pleasure.

"Fuck sweetheart, I'm comin'," he moaned before he buried his head into the crook of your neck. He gave three more erratic thrusts, then nearly crushed you with his weight as he pressed his hips against yours, keeping himself inside of you for as long as he could.

A breathless moment passed, the two of you trying to catch that elusive breath. Arthur rolled off of you, quickly gathering you into his arms as he tumbled onto his side.

"Goddamn," he finally muttered. "Wasn't expectin' to have such good company."

You turned in his arms so you could see the wide grin on his face. "For once, I'm glad I got lost in the parking lot."

He kissed your forehead. "Me too, darlin'. But let's make sure we don't get lost again." He found your hands under the covers, brought them up to his lips, and kissed your fingertips.

"After all, I only just found you, my li'l darlin'."

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End Notes: Been a while, and of course, all of my pent-up lust just came streaming out of me in a flurry of words and phrases. Hope it’s still hot enough for you, my lovely readers!

#arthur morgan #arthur x reader #arthur x gn!reader #gender neutral reader #nsft #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #writing #lemon fanfic #fanfic

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lucky-catttt · 3 years

Text

Maxwell Lord’s Aphrodite - Pt 2

Summary: When Maxwell Lord’s world comes crashing down, you, his personal assistant bring him back from the pits of despair.

Pairings: Maxwell Lord x Reader (female), Maxwell Lord x You

Rating: Mature 18+ ONLY, NO MINORS ALLOWED TO READ.

Word Count: 3,885

Warnings: Prepare to put a towel down or go touch some grass after, either or LOL Mention of genitals, oral sex, squirting, face fucking, choking, names, foreplay, degradation, aftercare, BDSM, sexism/sexual harrassment.

A/N: This is my first fan-fic, so the writing might not be fantastic, but if you have any pointers/advice please tell me! I’ve also added images and gifs to help readers imagine the scenarios and reactions!

“So what kind of proposal were we thinking of that would save Black Gold corporation?” Max quizzes, leaning back against his chair. You pause to think while finishing your pastry. “Well” you begin “This space is huge, around 4,300 square feet. The lease Black Gold is renting this office floor has no major restrictions on it, so you could potentially sub-let the space on the floor for a monthly or fixed term lease to people who work remotely or teams that don’t want to commit to a larger office space. It's becoming more common because of the GFC, people can't commit to large long term leases for whole office floors anymore. You could also rent out the boardroom by the hour & also lease the private manager offices to businesses that want their own private room. And we already have a reception near the lifts, just re-hire them and make them pretend they work for all the businesses on the floor, answering their calls, doing admin work like scanning and faxing etc. As far as the business’s clients that show up are concerned, each business looks like they own the whole floor.

If we do a cost analysis and then get a small investor to cover the startup costs, we could guarantee them a return if businesses pay contract deposits or pay their lease in advance up front. Plus the landlord we owe money to. And with the top floor with amazing views and location, we can charge top dollar” Max stares at you in disbelief. “Wow, are you sure you don’t wanna be CEO?” He laughs, still in shock. You laugh, blushing. “I started working on a business proposal for one of my university assessments, if we customise it for this project we could pitch it to some investors and banks and speak to the landlord about it as well” You reply. “I could kiss you right now.” Maxwell sighs, gripping his fist. “Please do” you giggle, leaning towards him. Max reaches out both hands to cup your face, before planting a passionate kiss on your lips. “Well, I guess we have a lot of work to do!” Max yells, before striding towards the bathroom to take a shower. Two weeks go by and the proposal is ready. Max calls you from the company car, on the way to your house to pick you up before the big investors meeting. “I’ll be right outside your place in a few minutes my sweet” He coos, beaming with excitement to see you. As his car pulls up, you collect your compendium, presentation cards and your pointer rod. Struggling with all you have to carry, Alfred rushes out of the car and up the steps to the front door, collecting all of your belongings.

Maxwell peers over the top of his shades but the sun from behind your house blinds him. He shuffles across the seat and opens the car door, the sun now hiding from his view. As he removes his shades and looks up the stairs towards your front door, he sees you standing there, fixing your outfit. He’s stunned.

It might be 1984, but you’re wearing a stunning outfit pulled straight from the 50s. A black suit dress with a pleat in the front with a thin gold belt around your waist. You accented the look with strap Mary jane heels, a black and gold handbag and a neat beret fascinator. Your hair was curled, accentuated with bright red lipstick and a single set of pearl earrings.

Max looks like he’s about to drop to his knees in awe, but his knees bend into a lengthy stride up the stairs, rushing to your side. “A heavenly vision of beauty'' Max gasps, giving you a kiss on the cheek in an attempt to preserve your makeup. He puts out his arm and you wrap your hands around it, as he leads you down your stairs to the car, staring at you the whole time, letting the universe guide his steps as this absolute goddess graces his presence. You both slide into the back seat of Max’s company car, his large hand immediately passing along your back and resting on your hip and ass, pulling you as close to him as possible. “I dont know how this presentation is going to go, but I can be absolutely certain that myself and every other person in that room will be enraptured by your presence”. he murmurs into your neck, squeezing your ass.

Max was wearing a pinstripe royal blue suit with black laced oxfords. His matching tie and pocket square peeking out. “I would kiss you right now but i don't want to get lipstick on your face just before our meeting” you blush, rubbing your nose against his. “I know. We have all the time in the world after” Max replies, running his nose down your neck, breathing gently against your skin.

“We should probably prepare for the meeting, Max” you chuckle, seeing the office building not far up the road. You pull out your compendium and flip to an architectural blueprint of the office floor.

“I had this drawn up by an architectural drafter last week. As you can see the large blank space is your office and private room, you already have the glass frosted for privacy. All the other office cubicles will be converted to private offices, as well as boardrooms, co-working areas and remote working hot spots.” Max’s eyes widen with surprise at the level of detail. “How did you get this done? I certainly don't remember commissioning this'' rubbing his chin. “I paid for it” you respond, nonchalantly. “You spent your money, for me?” Max inquires, now in disbelief. “Of course. I told you I would help you, Max. Consider it an investment”. You wink, flipping through more pages of the presentation. Just when Max thought he couldn't fall more in love with you than he already has, your hard work and giving nature makes his heart swell even larger to make room. After a few minutes the car pulls up to the investor’s office building. “Before we go in there, I want to ask you something.” Your eyes widen with intrigue. “While we're there, I’m not sure how these businessmen will react to a woman being anything more than my personal assistant. I’m not intimidated by you at all, but I suspect some of them might be” He continues, his eyes falling to your lap as he holds your hands. “Max, this project is my dream, but it’s your company, so i’m giving it to you to present. You’re the only person I trust with this”.

As Maxwell begins to get himself together, you take a seat adjacent to where Max is standing. Although your knees are together with one ankle behind the other, you can feel some of the businessmen closest to you looking you up and down like a piece of meat. You quickly turn to face Max, giving him your undivided attention. “Well, I know you’re all very busy, so lets get started” Max smiles, wringing his palms together. The businessmen listen intently to Max’s pitch for the restructure of Black Gold corporation, before they begin to ask questions on financials. You begin to notice the men losing interest and Max starting to lose his confidence. He looks at you, his expression half pleading and half embarrassed. Without any hesitation, you stand up from your chair, striding over to Max’s side, picking up the pointing rod from the easel and pulling it to full length with one swift pull.

The men all sit upright at attention from the sound of the rod. “If I may, Maxwell” you butt in, politely. “Gentleman” You steady the pointer rod against the chart on the easel “the profit figures on the project are as follows; 36 external view offices, charged at $3,000 per month each, generating $108,000 gross profit. The 25 internal offices with no view will be $500 per month, generating $12,500. We also have hot-desks with memberships starting at $20 per month. If companies want us to answer their phones, do their mail, bring them coffee, do their shopping, take their dry-cleaning, walk their dogs or bring them lunch, that's an additional fee. Essentially, we are looking at a monthly profit turnover of $150,000+. Our current lease fee is $50,000 a month with about $15,000 in body corporate and utilities, leaving $85,000 per month net profit, $225 thousand per quarter and over a million annually. We currently are looking for a combined setup cost of around $500,000. The more you invest, the bigger your return.” You swing the pointer road and rest it on your shoulder.

Silence fills the room and you panic. Your assertiveness may have turned them off, so you pretend to be ditzy and dip one of your feet inwards. The men who are all sitting up at attention, look between each other and nod. Your charm and business acumen seemed to have put them under some kind of spell. “Thanks for your time gentleman. If you have any questions please feel free to call” you finish, walking around to hand each of them Max’s business card. The men begin to chat amongst themselves, before one of them approaches Maxwell. They introduce themselves and begin chatting about the pitch “You should be very proud of your assistant Maxwell” they chuckle “she seems very switched on and driven”. Max shoots you a smiling glance, before turning back “Yeah, I’m actually going to make her the CFO” he responds. “Well, we’ll deliberate here and be back in touch with our offer”. The meeting finally wraps up and you both head back downstairs where Alfred is waiting with the car door already open. You both slide inside and Max wraps his arms around you before passionately kissing your lips as the car drives back to his office.

“You want to make me the.. CFO?” you pant, breaking from the kiss. “Yes” Max smiles, staring into your eyes. “You have worked so hard and today at the presentation..I know you’re the woman for the job. Do you want it?” You blush, holding his face “Well how can I say no?”. The company car finally pulls up back at the office and you both head through the lobby and into the lift. Max stands behind you with his arms wrapped around you and his head on your shoulder, talking about the enormous amount of work that will potentially need to be done if this deal goes through. As the lift doors open into the reception area, you both step out and Max hears the phone in his office start to ring. You give him an excited smile, encouraging him to go take the call in private. He begins striding through the empty office before making it to his office, pushing the doors open and heading over to his desk.

You take your time walking back to his office, giving Max time to finish his phone call. As you approach his office doors, you hear the click of the receiver as he hangs up. You watch Max’s shadow behind the frosted glass walk up to the doors and swing them open, a neutral look on his face. You look puzzled, thinking it was bad news before he burst out laughing with a smile, swinging you over his shoulder and carrying you to his bedroom. “You did it baby!” He yells, slapping your backside before throwing you both down onto the bed. “We did!?” you scream, a wave of relief and excitement washing over you. “Yes! I’m so proud of you. You saved Black Gold corporation. You saved me.” Max smiles, brushing a lock of curls away from your face before cupping your cheek and passionately kissing you.

You kick off your shoes, belt and take off your beret fascinator as Max removes his suit jacket, suspenders and belt, before kissing each other again. “I was so turned on by you today” Max moans, writhing his hands all over your body, before ripping the bust of your dress open, the two buttons pinging off onto the carpet. “Watching your voluptuous ass in that dress walking into that boardroom and how you commanded the room’s attention, took control and sealed the deal. I wanted to put you over that boardroom table and worship you like the goddess you are. But I guess I can do that now”. Something about wearing your favourite suit of his, the unwavering progressive support of women and eagerness to pleasure you unlocks your most ravenous sexual desires. You stop Max, sitting up at the foot of the bed. He gets up from laying down and looks at you, worried he said or did something wrong. “Whats wrong my love?” he asks, looking concerned. ****MAJOR SMUT WARNING AHEAD**** “Max… you’ve shown me the romantic love making version which was so beautiful, but I want to make you feel worshipped” Max gives you an interesting glance. “You’re such a giving person but I want to give back. You’ve suffered neglect and mistreatment most of your life. I want to give you a different kind of passionate sex. I have fantasies and wild ideas that I think will give you immense pleasure. I want you to….” You stop yourself, not sure how he will react. Max's eyes widened with intrigue. “Go on?” Max squeezes your hand. “Well” you begin. The passionate fire is burning hotter and hotter within you. “I want you…” you hitch up your skirt and sit across Max’s lap, with one leg over each side “to straddle my chest and fuck my throat while I rub my clit” you get closer to Max’s face, pulling on his tie “And I want to cum while you’re throat fucking and choking me with your cock” you begin to undo his tie “And then I want you to cum in the back of my throat and make me swallow it”. There’s dead silence, so you bat your eyelash extensions, throwing a sexy yet innocent gaze followed by “hmmm?”. Max’s mind goes completely blank, the blood rushing from every inch of his body straight to his cock, which you feel hardened against your crotch as you straddle him. “Uhh wow honey that sounds very dangerous.” Max chokes, embarrassed he's getting turned on at the idea of hurting you.

“For you or me?” You giggle, biting your lip. “For you” Max says, wrapping his arms around you. “Are you sure that’s something you want me to do to you Hermosa?”. “Yes Maxwell. I love the way you worship and pleasure me, but I want you to feel the same way. I have a kink when it comes to being dominated. Seeing my man so turned on and using his strength and body to please himself using me, makes me feel incredible. I know you would never hurt me, it’s something I would love for you to experience” You answer before kissing his neck. “You really are too good to me, princessa” Max sighs, running his hands down your back to your ass, squeezing both cheeks. “Of course, we don’t have to if you don’t want to, Max” you give him a reassuring look, worried you might have overstepped. “No baby, I’d love to, if that’s what will bring you the most pleasure” He coos, kissing your neck.

You begin to take off your dress, revealing under a black and gold laced lingerie set. “Black and Gold” you chuckle, watching Max’s eyes widen at the level of detail. “How did I get so lucky?” Max pants, pulling off his shirt and pants, leaving his boxers to contain his rock hard cock. You go to reach for Max’s crotch when his hand stops you. “Before we do this” Max begins “I want you to stop me at any time if it hurts or you can’t breathe or you just don’t want to do it anymore. That is the most important thing to me”. You nod and smile at Max, leaning in to kiss him, before your hands start to remove his boxers.

You reach down and begin to tease his cock, tracing your fingers tips against the tip. With your other hand you guide Max’s hand down, placing it at the top of your panties. As he starts to put his hands under your panties, he notices there’s a hole in them. Max stops to inspect. “Crotchless panties? Me vuelves loco” Max pants before he begin kissing and biting all over your body.

You’re in for it now. Like a virus, you’ve taken over Max’s brain, flooding it with animalistic desire and passion. A switch has been flipped and hell bent on blowing your mind, leaving all of his inhibitions and reservations about what he’s about to do to you at the door. Max climbs on top of you, wrapping his large hand around your throat, gently squeezing as you gasp for air. “Is this what you want?” He growls into your ear, nibbling on your earlobe before kissing down your neck. You manage to nod before moaning, indicating that you’re enjoying it. He’s never treated a woman like this before, but he manages to find the personality and words seemingly from thin air, like it was repressed all this time. “Start touching yourself for me now” Max commands. You slide your hand down into your panties and start rubbing your clit, sparks flying through your body and the slick now leaking out of your pussy. He groans at the sight of you touching yourself. Max moves up the bed before straddling over your chest. With your head propped up on some pillows, you look in Max’s eyes and ready your mouth and jaw for his throbbing cock. Max thumbs your bottom lip before grabbing just under your jaw to keep your face steady. “Open wide like the good little whore that you are” he hisses, smacking the tip of his precum soaked cock on your face.

The degrading name only makes you wetter, as you furiously rub your clitoris whilst pinned under Max’s legs. You moan as Max pushes his cock into your mouth and down your throat. “Oh my god my love your mouth feels incredible” Max moans, his character from before severely altered by the pleasurable sensation. He realises his mistake and compensates by pushing his cock as far as it will fit into your mouth and throat. “That’s it, take it all” he smirks, exhaling with a moan. You use two fingers to scoop up some of your slick and rub it into your clitoris, which is now super sensitive. Your stifled moans humming against Max’s veiny cock cause it to twitch. With your hips bucking from pleasuring yourself, Max takes both of his hands and puts them on your cheeks. “Fuck your mouth feels so good” Max moans, slowly thrusting back and forth out of your mouth, his cock touching your uvula and causing you to gag with each stroke. Your eyes begin to roll back in your skull as you continue to moan & choke, your swollen clitoris edging closer and closer to orgasm. “You like this huh? You like it when Daddy fills your throat up and fucks it?” Max hisses, wrapping your hair in between his fingers, gripping hard as his thrusts gain more momentum. Thick strings of spit is now spilling out of your mouth, down your chin and onto your breasts. “You look

The taste of Max’s precum coating the back of your tongue. You’re fighting to contain your orgasm but Max’s cock and brutal punishing words are sending you dangerously close to the edge. “Mmmmm, mmmmm!” You choke, tears welling in your eyes as you’re trying to nod and send Max a pleasured innocent gaze, driving him wild. You concentrate on breathing through your nose, each time Max’s cock leaves the back of your throat for a split second, giving you enough time to take in air. You decide to start moving your flattened tongue against the shaft, rubbing against the tip as it passes back and forth. Max let’s out a groan “You’re such a good little putá for papá”. There’s no holding back now, you increase your moans to signal that you’re on the precipice of an orgasm. “Cum for me” Max hisses, continuing the ecstasy inducing tempo of thrusts into your mouth and throat. You continue to rub your clit and gesture for Max to keep his cock still inside your mouth and throat for this moment, riding the crashing wave of your orgasm, squirting furiously onto your legs and sheets below. The writhing and shaking of your body underneath him, the sound of your squirting and muffled cries and moans from behind his cock is too much and brings him closer much faster than he ever anticipated. The eye-watering sensation causes the tears to flow down your cheeks, causing your mascara to run.

As your orgasm begins to subside you gesture for Max to continue thrusting, which he does as he moves his large hands to cup your face. “That felt fucking amazing” Max moans, continuing his fast and hard strokes. Your gaze, burning with passion and framed within smudged running eyeliner locks with Max’s, his domineering yet still showing affection. “I’m gonna cum” Max pants, keeping the pace as his grip on your face grows tighter. “Fuckkkk!!!” He shouts, holding your head still as he holds one final thrust as far in as it will go. Your eyes roll back into your head again as you feel the warm thick ropes of cum spurt onto the back of your throat. It was lucky you had taken a large enough breath before that moment, enough to sustain you for the few seconds Max held his cock still inside your mouth, throbbing and pulsing as he moans and shudders, cursing in Spanish. Coming back to reality, Max immediately pulls his softening cock from your mouth and wraps his large hands on the top and bottom of your face, closing your jaw shut. “Now Swallow” he commands, bending down so that his face inches from yours. With a cheeky gaze you oblige and swallow the remains of his cum tangled in your throat, before opening your jaw to allow him to inspect if there was any left. “My good little leche putá” he whispers, before spitting in your wide open mouth.

As if like breaking character on a movie set, Max immediately reverts back to his original self, climbing off to the side to lay next to you. “Was that good for you my love? How do you feel?” Max asks, worried he’s harmed your physical and mental state. “Incredible” you pant, smiling, lying in a pool of your own squirt. Breathing a sigh of relief, Max quickly brings up the blankets to cover you both, embracing you and peppering your spit, mascara and tear soaked face with kisses. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Max quizzes, checking your chest and throat over. “No” you reply, your throat somewhat hoarse. “Okay good. I love you so much” Max sighs, brushing your hair out of your face and kissing your forehead. “I love you too, Max”.

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I got impatient and wanted to post it now so I guess this chapter is finished 💀

@anaaaispunk @mandoalorian @pintsizemama

#maxwell lord #max lord #max lord x reader #max lord x you #max lord smut #maxwell lord smut #max lord x f!reader #maxwell lord x f!reader #javier pena #pedro pascal

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liptonsbabe · 3 years

Text

Chains of a family [B.W]

Bill Weasley x Grant! Reader

Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Summary: Molly knows about the reader’s relatives and she’s not so sure to put her trust in a girl that had just betrayed her own family

Word count: 1.9K

Warnings: Swearing

A/N: Hi! i’m so happy that you guys liked this thing! thank you so much for your support and, again, if you want to keep reading this let me know. Same note as ever, english not my mother language, so tell me if something’s is wrong.

Chapter 2: Not your family

The next morning turned out to be quieter than you imagined.

You slowly got out of bed and looked at everything around you noticing how quaint Bill's old room was. The ceiling was lined with grainy wallpaper with stacks of photographs of Quidditch players hanging from the reeds that moved from side to side, simulating the playing field; the right side of the room had a huge hole behind the small stool that tried to hide it, and from that hole a small garden gnome was sleeping peacefully with a small piece of cloth on top of his head. You stood up, walking towards the huge window that gave you a beautiful view of the Weasley's garden that at that moment was covered by a thin layer of drizzle that had fallen during the night.

Molly's fruit trees gleamed under the faint rays of the sun and you saw how a doxy from between the leaves poisoned Mrs. Weasley's apples, causing them to fall from the tree branches in a thick black mass with a foul smell coming out of it. You shook your head, excited to witness a very different way to wake up.

Even though several minutes have passed since you woke up, the house continued to remain in a strange silence that made you think that the family had decided to leave the burrow with the intention of buying more supplies or something like that. You knew that Bill wasn’t at home precisely for his obligations within the Order, so you didn’t worry about looking for him around the room, so you decided that a better option was going down to the dining room and know what was happening.

As you went down the spiral staircase, you cursed in a whisper when you forgot to put on your slippers before leaving the bedroom cause the floor was so cold that you slipped a couple of times. Back in the days, when you were still welcome in your parents' house, you had many servants who did all the things for you - putting on your shoes as soon as you woke up was one of those things - but now that your life had changed so much, you assumed that you would have to adapt and start taking care of your own needs.

Your curious eyes roamed the walls covered in family photos that caused a big warmth in your chest. In each of those photographs, all of Molly's children appeared along with their father, smiling for the camera and sending effusive greetings. A pic was hanging at the fireplace were Molly and Arthur were carrying a small white bundle crying his lungs out. You assumed it was Bill as his parents seemed too young back then and even as a small baby, you could recognize those tantrum features anywhere.

A giggle escaped your lips when you noticed a funny sequence from that same photo in which, even with Bill crying in his mother's arms, his father tried to carry him for a moment to calm him down, however the baby's cries didn’t stop. The baby was so annoyed that he ended throwing up the milk ration that he must have had before the photo session on his father's neat shirt.

You laughed because you knew that William's impertinence was something he had carried with him for several years now.

"Bill hates those photos." You jumped in your place scared to see Molly standing behind you. Your cheeks turned red “He says that it’s embarassing but i think that’s nonsense. He was an adorable baby”

"he was," you answered, looking anywhere but into Molly's shrewd eyes. "but I guess displaying them in the fireplace isn’t the right thing to do."

“Is it not?

"No, they should be at the front door where everyone can see them”

Molly giggled as you watched the sequence of photos over and over again. A silence settled between you, but surprisingly it was not an awkward silence, but one that was allowing you to create a bond that neither of you expected. Mrs. Weaslsey brought up a rag, wiping it around the corners of the photo from the dust.

"Arthur and I had to save up for months to take those pictures," she mentioned wistfully, "we just had Bill and it seemed like a good idea to welcome him into our family with a gesture like that. Arthur was new in the ministry and wasn't earning too much, but we had that quirk and decided we could afford to skip certain things to pay for the pictures. It cost us ten galleons and it still took us four months to gather them”

“Oh” You didn't know what to say, but you just kept looking at the photograph feeling a bit uncomfortable. You never had those problems at home because your family was insanelly rich thanks to the inheritance in life that your grandfather Tim had left to his son and later to his grandchildren. Even the descendants of your grandfather's servants came to work in your house, reason enough for you and your siblings to grow up with no sense of responsibility other than your own wishes. Molly sighed remembering those times when life seemed to be easier.

"So when Bill asked me to remove it from the fireplace, I refused. He doesn't know how hard it was to raise that money, but I think he has nothing to be ashamed of, he was too adorable!

"I don't doubt it for a second, Mrs. Weasley."

"You can call me Molly," she said, walking back to the kitchen where you continued watching the way the pans moved back and forth preparing breakfast. You were not very good at cooking - in fact, you had never cooked before- however, that didn’t stop you from offering your help. So you took a pan, placed it on the stove, and decided that you would find a way to make a good mountain of strawberry-filled pancakes just like your dear nanny did. Molly observed you carefully. "I think that now that you are living with us it is appropriate to have a more cordial treatment.My son told me a lot about you”

“Just the good things, i hope”

“Kind of” You stopped mixing ingredients to look at her carefully” He told us a bunch of marvelous things about you and how you two met. Actually, what worries me the most is what he didn’t tell us”

And there was the recrimination you were waiting for. You were aware that it had to arrive sooner or later, however, you would have been grateful that it did it when Bill were by your side to give you the opportunity to defend yourself properly. You cleared your throat uncomfortably, knowing that what Molly needed to hear from your own lips was which family you came from. You continued your task with the pancakes, turning out as bad as you expected.

"I'm sorry it turned out this way, Mrs. Weasley."

"Molly," he corrected.

"Molly" you smiled slowly "But believe me when I tell you that it was me who asked William not to mention anything about my last name or where I come from. I know that in this case, with the war above our heads, it is necessary to be certain of the people who enter your family and I apologize for that, it's just ... Bill is very important to me” Molly's eyes narrowed “Since we met ... I have found a home in him and well, all that feels when someone is in love. "Mrs. Weasley shook her head, understanding the feeling." I have experienced the rejection before. When people know that Tom Riddle is my family ... they run away in fear, curse my family and even walk away from us, as if sharing a blood bond makes us as evil as he is.

“And it’s not like that?” Molly asked with a hand on her neck. She didn’t want to be like the others and judge you without knowing the full story, just as she had promised Bill the night before that she would, but it was so difficult not to remember the death of his brothers by Voldemort’s hands and to pretend nothing had happened in the past. You sighed because the eggs you cracked on the bowl got mixed with their own shell “ I've heard of the Grants before, they're all Death Eaters, including your siblings!”

“It is difficult to have to choose a side when you don’t have your own convictions”

"And you have it?"

You looked at Molly in pain. Of course you expected those reactions from Bill's mother, she was within her right to be upset that her oldest son never told her that he was in a relationship with a girl who seemed to have the most fucking powerful and evil wizard in the world as a great-uncle. No, Molly wasn't mad, she was deadly angry, she felt like she was bursting!

Her hands became fists and without knowing how, you found yourself between the wall and Molly's big arms from one second to the other. The pancake batter was forgotten, as was the woman's promise to treat her son's girlfriend in a good way.

"How is it possible ..." Molly questioned in an agitated voice, pressing your arms against the wall, "... that a single deer leaves the nature of its own herd?" How can you ensure that one rotten apple even in a gold container doesn’t rot the others?”Your breath caught at the questions of the woman in front of you. Once again, you were aware that your presence wouldn’t be good news to them, but at least you hoped they understood your motives before judging you “Explain to me, (Y/ N) Grant, when have you seen a pig away from his equals?”

Your words caught in your throat at Molly's fierce question. Bill had talked a lot about the temper of his mother. Even if she could be really grumpy at times, she was in general a very sweet, pleasant and maternal woman with everyone; however, you didn’t fit into that generality because it seemed that the woman was determined to kill you with her own hands.

"If my presence bothers you so much, then you shouldn't have let Bill and I to stay here."

“He's my son! All I want for him is to be happy, and that's why I don't understand what he managed to see in you”

"Maybe the same thing you saw in your husband." Molly's lips twitched in anger, but you didn't stop. You hoped that she would at least understand what your words meant, because that would make it easier for both of you to try at least get along better, even if Molly seemed not to want to do it under any circumstances. How is it that this haughty little girl dared to compare herself with her dear and wonderful husband? "I'm sorry, but I don't think this conversation is going to take us anywhere."

"If someone betrays his own family ..." Molly stopped you before you walked out the front door. The others got down the stairs, seeing the scandal formed in the kitchen “The rest of us can't expect too much, can we?

Your eyes blured.

#bill weasley #bill weasley imagines #bill weasley x reader #harry potter imagine #domhnall gleeson imagine #domhnall gleeson #harry potter #fred weasley imagines #weasley

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jewishjon · 3 years

Text

His Father’s Son

A/N: I am so excited to finally be able to put the first chapter of this fic for the 2021 Grishaverse Big Bang (@grishaversebigbang) fic out into the world. Thank you so much to my incredible artists whose art you will find linked below and my amazing beta reader. You can find me on tumblr here or twitter @/vespabuddy and I will be updating on ao3 every Tuesday and Saturday until the 25th of September. Enjoy!

Beta Reader: @z-the-zebra

Artists: @hivertoautumn @wellwatersurprise @jsperfhey @lucentcorrigan (I’ll link their art soon, I’m making this post before it’s uploaded)

Summary: At fifteen, Wylan meets Jesper at a formal University event, falls for him, and never sees him again. Four years later, his father orders him to take down a criminal gang called the Dregs.

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33741277/chapters/83866909

Read the first chapter below the cut!

The morning of the grand opening of Ketterdam University’s Van Eck wing, Wylan’s father threatened his life.

The day began like any other. He woke to the clattering of carriages in the street below, the delicious smell of the servants preparing breakfast, and felt a sinking in his stomach at the thought of the dreaded event scheduled to take place that evening. He got out of bed and was helped into a tailored black suit by his valet. When he reached the dining room, his father was long gone, likely having been in his study since the early hours of the morning, and he was forced to endure the company of his father’s new girlfriend as he ate.

“Are you excited about the party?” asked Alys, a stupid smile plastered on her face as she watched Wylan. She was so young she could easily be Wylan’s sister.

“Really excited.” murmured Wylan dryly into his eggs. He was already stressed from the thought of enduring the rest of the day. He didn’t have the energy to deal with Alys.

Unfortunately, instead of leaving him alone, her upper lip began to wobble. “Do you not like me, Wylan? What did I do wrong? You know, I try so—” Alys gulped, “So hard to be a good mother to you.”

A mother? Wylan had known Alys for three weeks, and already felt he had years of maturity on her, and he was only fifteen himself.

Still, he felt a wave of guilt. Alys was trying her best, having been raised to believe her only worth in life was to marry a wealthy man, and his father was as wealthy as they came. Wylan may be set for a successful career as a mercher, but he knew well what it was like to be unable to fulfill the simplest task expected of him.

That was the thing about Alys. No matter how idiotic she was, she was always trying her best. So, Wylan caught her eye and mumbled a simple;

“I’m sorry.”

He fought back bile as she reached her hand across the table and squeezed his until he began to feel woozy. She wasn’t squeezing too hard, and Wylan was sure she had no intentions of anything but kindness, but the feel of her too-smooth skin against his was inexplicably as painful as any blow dealt by his father’s hand.

“Don’t worry, Wylan, honey. I love you despite all your imperfections!” Alys smiled sweetly. “All your imperfections.”

Somehow, that didn’t make Wylan feel any better.

As he was heading back to his room, hoping to use his free time to practice his flute or scream into his pillow about the pains of existence, he was stopped by his father’s assistant. Mieke was a middle-aged man with as little personality as he had hair on his balding head.

“Come to your father’s office. He wishes to talk to you immediately.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Fear festered in Wylan’s stomach as he followed the man down the long corridors of the Van Eck mansion. Surely he would have been told already if there were any changes to his role in the party that evening. Furthermore, he had no memory of having done anything wrong since he’d last seen Jan Van Eck, although his father always managed to find something.

Even the thought of the beating he’d received last time was enough to nearly make him turn and run as fast as his legs would take him.

Mieke opened the gilded wooden door leading to Jan Van Eck’s office, and, ever so slowly, Wylan entered. His father’s study had always been a source of intimidation, and not just because of the man who inhabited it. The walls were decorated with certificates celebrating his father’s many achievements, a massive painting of himself in his youth hanging above the table, stacks of paper in neat piles throughout the room. They all lead to the man sitting at the desk, looking at Wylan with a scowl on his face. There was no beating stick in view, but Wylan had learnt to never underestimate the power of his father’s fists.

His father made a gesture beckoning Wylan to come forward, and he approached the desk until he put up a hand signaling for him to stop. Wylan stayed silent, having been trained long ago to never speak to his father unless spoken to.

“Wylan.” said his father. “I’m glad you came.”

Wylan nodded in acknowledgement. They both knew well that he had no choice in the matter.

“You know, when I woke up this morning, I thought ‘Maybe I should kill Wylan today.’”

Kill. Kill Wylan.

Kill Wylan.

It took a few seconds for his father’s words to unscramble in Wylan’s head. The world became unfocused as the simple sentence’s weight hit him.

“‘End his suffering once and for all. It’s not like he has anything to live for.’”

Wylan let out a choked, strangled noise. His father’s next words flew past him without registering. He had to be joking… right? His father couldn’t have wanted to kill him. This was all some cruel new trick to manipulate him. Another one of his father’s endless strategies to bend him to his will. He told himself over and over that it wasn’t true. Even the continuous stream of his Father’s words failed to break his trance. Yet, as he replayed it in his head in the hope of finding any kind of meaning behind the threat, something about the tone of his father’s voice, or the knowledge of how he had treated him for all these years, told Wylan that his words weren't empty.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked. I didn’t do it, of course, or you wouldn’t be standing here right now.” He sighed. “You must have considered that now I have Alys, I soon won’t have need for my insolent, defective son.”

Wylan blinked, and realised tears had been slowly streaming down his cheeks.

All he’d ever wanted was to be enough for his father. He’d thought that despite all the beatings, all the insults, every time he was locked in his room until he could read a single sentence of a children’s book, his father still loved him. A tiny part of him, the part that had kissed his mother and read to him as a child and tucked him into bed, still cared.

“I’m sorry.” whispered Wylan. His voice shook as he spoke, barely loud enough to be heard above the clatter of his thoughts. “I tried, Father. I tried so hard.”

His father scoffed. “I should have known you’d react this way. You’ve always been too emotional, Wylan. You may as well leave now, make yourself respectable before this evening. Just take this as an incentive. Be better tonight and all nights afterwards, or I will go ahead with that threat.”

When he reached his room, Wylan punched his drawer over and over until his knuckles were cracked and blood stained the wood. He didn’t feel a thing.

***

The ballroom of Ketterdam University had been filled with professors, wealthy students, and the entirety of Ketterdam’s elite to celebrate the opening of the new university wing that Jan Van Eck had so ‘generously’ funded. His painting had been hung prominently in the ballroom, illuminated by the numerous glass chandeliers, and his name engraved on a large plaque outside the new building. Wylan could tell that he was loving every single second of it.

Under normal circumstances, Wylan hated parties. The bright lights, the hordes of people talking over one another and his father’s constant grip on his arm were usually enough to drive him to hiding in a closet by the end of the night.

After this morning, he just wanted to get it over with.

He knew he should be terrified. If his behaviour at this event didn’t please his father, it could lead to his demise. The constant threat of death hanging over his head would scare anyone else into unquestioning submission. But, inexplicably to even Wylan himself, he felt so numb. Since his meeting with his father, he’d been drifting unthinkingly through the day, the usual fear blocked out by an overwhelming, horrifying lack of feeling. A sadness that stole away every drop of hope he had left, that told him to give up, that whispered that he had never mattered to anyone anyway. He had no choice left but to believe it.

So, Wylan could barely find it in himself to care about his potential upcoming death. He couldn’t find it in himself to care about anything but the hatred in his father’s eyes as he stated his intention to end Wylan’s life.

Even now, his father looked so remorseless. So cold. As Wylan followed him through the university campus, he couldn’t see a single drop of emotion on his face. He’d always believed it was a result of being a mercher for so long that he’d become a master at faking indifference. He was beginning to suspect that perhaps his father truly didn’t feel anything.

When the Dean noticed Wylan and his father being let in by a guard at the doorway, he rushed over to greet them. Wylan’s father gripped his arm far too tightly in a clear warning.

“Welcome, Mr Van Eck and…?”

Wylan’s father’s expression briefly soured. “His name is Wylan.”

“Welcome to our university, Mr Van Eck and Wylan Van Eck. Everyone here is incredibly grateful for your donation, and we hope this event will show even a small part of our thanks.”

His father smiled, an action that made Wylan’s stomach automatically churn. “Thank you. I’m very glad to be able to help the next generation of merchers that are being taught here.”

The Dean gestured to the guard and he threw open the doors, making the party guests immediately stop talking and turn to stare at the new arrivals. Wylan’s eye was caught by a dark-skinned Zemini boy, deep in conversation with a professor. He looked as if he was Wylan’s age, maybe slightly older - far too young to be attending such a prestigious university. After a few seconds, he gave the drink to the professor, seeming to end his conversation temporarily, and left the room in the direction of the bathroom.

“Please welcome Mr Van Eck of the Merchant Council, and his son Wylan! Mr Van Eck is the reason we can be here tonight, as his extremely generous donation enabled us to build our new wing. Of course, it was only fitting to name it the Van Eck wing in his honour. We hope you and your son enjoy the party.”

The crowd clapped politely, a few merchers rolling their eyes at the praise directed towards Jan Van Eck. Once people had turned back to their prior conversations, he and Wylan entered the overcrowded ballroom. Wylan tried to head for the food table in hope of a temporary respite from the noise, but his father grabbed his arm again and steered him in the direction of a group of merchers.

“This is my son, Wylan. One day he will replace me in the Merchant Council… if he plays his cards right.” The merchers laughed as if Wylan’s father had told the funniest joke they’d ever heard. “Go on, Wylan. Say something.”

His chest tightened. In all the time he’d had to prepare for this event, he’d forgotten to decide what to say if his father forced him to make conversation with other merchers.

“I… Uh… Hi. I’m- I’m Wylan.”

Wylan’s cheeks blushed a bright shade of pink at the ensuing chuckles, and he tried to avert his gaze from the clearly amused merchers. His father put his hand on his arm in seeming reassurance and, almost imperceptibly, pinched the skin on the side of his arm until he had to stop himself from crying out in pain. There would be a large purple bruise by tomorrow.

Stumbling over his words in public was a rookie mistake. He should have known better, but parties always put him on edge. The social cues he’d practiced over and over in the mirror had been completely snatched from him.

At least he felt something again. His head was beginning to spin, his breath coming short, a growing sick feeling in his stomach. The noise of the people scattered around the room became increasingly louder until Wylan winced in pain. When he did so, the previously beautiful chandeliers became blinding pillars of lights, and people began to talk more and more, as if they were laughing in his face.

“Have you decided whether to invest in the new stock coming in from Ravka this month?”

“Can you comment on the instability of the Ravkan economy?”

“How long do you think it will be before you tie the knot with your new girlfriend?”

“What are your thoughts on the growing economic power of that gang from the Barrel - the Dregs?”

Everything was so loud.

Stop. Stop. Please. Stop. There was so much noise. Too many people talking at once. It was so loud. Stop. Stop. Stop. Please could they stop they needed to-

“Stop!” yelled Wylan.

Every mercher in the group turned to stare at him. A look of fury flashed on his father’s face before he forced himself to smile, his eyes still twitching in concealed rage.

“I’m afraid my son has been feeling… not very well recently. I’m sure he just needs some time alone.”

Before his father had time to grab him, Wylan ran. He pushed through the crowds of people, his vision blurring, until he reached the corridor that led to the bathrooms. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father take a deep breath and turn back to the other merchers. He was far more concerned about maintaining his public image than helping his son.

Wylan leant against the wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Whilst he was glad to be away from the party, the new environment had done nothing to quench the panic threatening to overwhelm him.

The bathroom door opened just as Wylan was about to enter, and it hit him square in the face. His head spun, and he was still trying to process what had happened when a figure came running out of the bathroom and slammed into Wylan. He jumped back as fast as possible, rubbing his injured nose, and gaped.

“I’m so sorry!” he blurted.

“Why are you sorry? I’m the one who slammed a door in your face! I should be sorry!”

Wylan looked up and began to splutter, unable to bring himself to say anything. The person he’d bumped into was the Zemini student from earlier, the boy who’d looked far too young to attend the university. From closer up, Wylan could see deep calluses on his hands - it came to Wylan suddenly that Novyi Zem’s primary source of income was jurda farming - and piercing grey eyes that were staring at him with concern. He was extremely, impossibly handsome.

“Are you okay? Because I’d never complain about a pretty boy staring at me, but it’s not usually after I’ve hit him in the face with a door.”

“You… you think I’m pretty?”

The boy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s the part we should be focusing on, Pretty Boy.”

In-between the embarrassment he felt at the compliment, Wylan realised he may be correct. It definitely wasn’t a good sign that the boy’s figure was swimming in front of him, or that his head was still relentlessly pounding. Whilst he wasn’t sure how much of that could be attributed to the door and how much to his ongoing panic attack, it would probably be best if he at least sat down.

“I- I’m not usually like this.” Wylan swayed a little. “You should come back and talk to me when I’m not dying… Oh wait…” He giggled. “I’ll be dead tomorrow anyway…”

“Okay, we’re definitely going to sit you down.”

The boy gently put an arm around Wylan’s back and helped him onto the corridor floor. They sat beside each other, slumped against the wall, in silence.

“I’m Jesper. I’m a student here. I didn’t want to go to this party anyway, but my professor made me come. Apparently I’m one of the ‘top students’ and they need me to ‘represent the university’ as their ‘youngest and most promising student’. I think there could be much better uses of my time than attending a party for some rich jerk.”

Usually, Wylan would have defended his father, but today, something in him was enjoying hearing him be insulted. Besides, he had a feeling that Jesper didn’t know his true identity, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t want to sit beside him anymore.

“I’m Wylan.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Jesper shoved three fingers in Wylan’s face, and he pushed them away, rolling his eyes.

“That’s not an answer!”

“You had three fingers up. I’m not concussed, you know.”

Jesper was silent for a while, until he noticed Wylan’s still-wet eyes.

“You do look like you’re about to cry, though. I’d like to think I can help with that too.”

It was nice of Jesper to try, but nothing he could do would prevent the inevitable punishment Wylan would face when he left this corridor. He needed to head back. The sooner he returned, the lesser his father’s wrath would be. He glanced back at the party - the loud voices, the crowds of people, his father engaging calmly in conversation as if nothing had happened - and found himself beginning to hyperventilate again.

He was going to die. His father hated him and he was going to die and Wylan would be dead and no one would mourn him because everyone hated him anyway and it would all be pointless in the end and—

Wylan felt soft arms wrap around his chest, holding him tightly. Someone was hugging him. Jesper. The pressure was just right, the other boy’s hands resting against his ribcage, and Wylan let himself lean into him. He buried his head in the crook of Jesper’s neck, letting the tears that had been building up for so long fall. Perhaps it was because Wylan hadn’t hugged anyone since his mother died, perhaps it was because he was the first person in months who’d treated Wylan like a fellow human, but Jesper felt like home.

When Wylan’s breathing returned to normal, he let himself pull away, but Jesper didn’t take his hands from their grounding position on his waist.

“Wylan, do you want to get out of here?”

“What do you mean?”

Jesper smirked. “You’ll see.”

#six of crows #crooked kingdom #ck #soc #the grishaverse #shadow and bone #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #wesper #gvbb21 #gvbbfic21 #kuwei yul bo #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #netflix #jan van eck #fanfic

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luvidzy · 3 years

Text

☆ genre: fluff, flower-shop!au

☆ pairing: jin yonghoon x reader

☆ summary: a man walks into your flower shop one day and completely changes everything in your life

☆ word count: 2.3k

The sunlight streamed in through the large glass windows of the store. The AC blew a light breeze through the main room, and you allowed yourself to deeply inhale the soft floral scents of the flower shop.

You always believed that getting a job here was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to you. It was so rare for people to find jobs that they truly loved, especially on the first try, but it seemed like you had been one of the lucky ones.

The day was fairly slow, as most of the weekdays were. A few people came in looking for bouquets for special anniversaries, or to ask about ordering a few arrangements for parties, but other than that you had been left alone to enjoy the ambience of the store and read a little bit of the book you always kept behind the counter.

You had only gotten a few pages through when the bell above the door chimed. Placing your bookmark softly into the book, you placed it on the counter and stood up to greet the customer.

“Welcome to Start of Spring, what can I help you with today?” you asked, moving to get a better view of the man that had just walked in. He was tall, with brown hair and brown eyes. He had his hands tucked into a tan overcoat, a white turtleneck peeking out from underneath it as he strolled into the shop. He was incredibly handsome and you could feel your cheeks heat up a bit as you watched him.

He turned to you and beamed. You had to shake yourself out of it, reminding yourself that you could not fall for a man that you had literally just met. He removed one of his hands to wave at you politely as you made your way closer to him.

“Hi! I need a bouquet of flowers, but I have absolutely no idea what kind to get. Do you think you could help me out?” he asked. You nodded happily, a smile slipping onto your face. You loved when customers didn’t have a specific flower arrangement in mind. It meant that you could take the reins and make something beautiful from scratch, just the way you preferred to do it.

“Sure! Usually I recommend making a bouquet of flowers that represent the occasion or what feeling you want to convey,” you explained, looking up at the stranger. You saw his eyebrows furrow a bit in confusion, and couldn’t help but giggle at how his nose scrunched as the gears in his brain turned.

“Flowers are a language. Each flower has a meaning, and even different flower colors can mean different things. It’s an amazing way to tell someone something when you can’t find the words to say it aloud,” you said, before pointing to the large bucket full of tulips that you were in front of.

“Tulips represent love, warmth, and comfort, so we usually include them in bouquets for anniversaries or weddings. Hibiscuses,” you pointed to the vibrant red flowers beside the tulips, “symbolize delicate beauty, so we include those in bouquets for dates, and even bouquets for certain family members.”

The stranger nodded, his lips parted in slight awe. He couldn’t help but observe you as you rambled on about the language of flowers, your eyes sparkling. Finally, you turned to look back up at him with a wide smile on your face.

“So tell me, what kind of message do you want to convey….?” You trailed off as you realized you’d never gotten the name of the customer that was in front of you.

“Yonghoon. My name is Yonghoon,” He finally spoke up, a shy smile slipping onto his lips. You smiled and nodded.

“What message do you want to convey, Yonghoon?”

“Well, these are flowers for some friends of mine. They have been working really hard lately with our new project, and I want to give them something to show how thankful I am. Our apartment is pretty dull, so I thought some flowers would be a good idea,” Yonghoon explained.

You nodded, taking in the information, before moving towards the counter to pull out a notepad. “Well, yellow roses often symbolize friendship, so I think those would be an obvious choice. Irises are seen as a symbol of admiration, and they’ll compliment the yellow of the roses quite nicely. And then I think some pink tulips would also fit well with the yellow and the white of the irises,” you said, jotting some things down on the paper.

“I thought you said tulips represent love?” Yonghoon said, which caused you to laugh.

“I did, but I also said different colors can mean different things. Red tulips mostly mean love, but pink tulips represent happiness,” you explained, before handing him the list you had written with the flowers and their meaning.

“Does this look good? Or would you like me to add anything?” Yonghoon’s eyes darted across your neat handwriting, before looking up with a smile.

“This looks perfect. You really know your flowers,” he joked. You chuckled, before moving to collect the flowers you’d need for the bouquet.

“I’d hope so. I’ve only worked here for 2 years.” Yonghoon laughed at your quip, his eyes following as you darted across the shop, plucking flowers carefully from their buckets and gathering them delicately in one hand.

Finally you walked back over towards him, tying the flowers together with a piece of string and wrapping them elegantly in brightly colored tissue paper.

“There, all finished,” you said, holding the masterpiece out to Yonghoon. He smiled at it, gently grabbing it with one hand. As he did, your fingers brushed and you felt yourself flinch slightly at the feeling of electricity that ran down your spine. Despite this, you forced yourself to ignore the now pounding heart in your chest in favor of grabbing the credit card Yonghoon was holding out to you.

“Thank you…?”

“Y/N,” you responded as you handed him his card back. He smiled softly as he slipped the plastic back into his pocket.

“A beautiful name. Thank you, Y/N,” he said, giving you one last nod before exiting out the door. You plopped back down into the chair as you reached for your book, letting out a deep breath you didn’t know you were holding. You shook your head, blaming your flustered state on the heat because, even though you knew the A/C was on, you didn’t want to admit the real reason for your burning cheeks.

Much to your surprise, Yonghoon continued to come in every week with a new reason to buy flowers. Each visit got longer and longer, with him asking millions of questions on different flowers to the point where you almost couldn’t answer them. However, as much as you did not want to admit it, you didn’t mind the visits he made. He was incredibly easy to talk to, his smile made your heart melt in your chest, and he seemed genuinely interested in everything that you said. Week after week, you found yourself falling deeper and deeper for Yonghoon, and every week you became a little less opposed to the idea of his visits.

Meanwhile, Yonghoon was enjoying every visit that he made to your store. His bandmates, however, could not say the same. Their dorms had been turned into a small flower shop of their own and, while it was pretty, it was not very functional.

“Yonghoon, I can’t even find a spot to put my coffee cup down on the table!” Kanghyun whined as he plopped down onto the couch next to his leader. The other boys nodded their heads in agreement, making mentions of the countless other things that Yonghoons flowers stopped them from doing. Yonghoon pouted as he slumped into his seat, arms crossed.

“But I have no other reason to go see them but to get flowers! I’m sorry that love comes at such a beautiful price,” Yonghoon huffed dramatically. Dongmyeong rolled his eyes as he sat up, crossing his legs.

“Why don’t you just tell them how you feel?” “Are you crazy? What if they say no?”

“They won’t. I’m sure they’re just as enamored with you as you are them. Come on, you can even do it in an extremely dramatic and romantic way, since that’s what you like best,” Harin argued, earning a punch in the shoulder from Yonghoon, who sighed soon after.

“Fine. But if this goes wrong, I’m never getting rid of these flowers.”

2 months after his first visit, Yonghoon walked into the flower shop already greeting you as you sat behind the counter reading as you usually did. You looked and grinned at him, the grin that made Yonghoon’s own heart flutter, before closing your book and standing up.

“Why welcome back. What can I do for you today, Yonghoon?” you asked, pulling out your pen and notepad to write down the flowers that he would need. He smiled as he leaned against the counter and smirked.

“I need a bouquet to confess to someone. I want it to be incredibly romantic, the whole 9 yards, you know?” Yonghoon said. You froze as you heard the words slip out of your mouth. A bouquet to confess to someone should not have made your heart sink the way that it did, but the thought of him romancing another person with the flowers you recommended made you want to throw up and cry at the same time.

“I… I see. Well, why don’t you tell me about them so I can recommend you a bouquet,” you asked, trying to settle your shaky voice. If Yonghoon noticed, he didn’t say anything as he continued to smile.

“Well, they’re extremely pretty and super smart. They are kind and generous, and always know how to make me laugh. I always feel warm when I’m with them, like I just drank the best hot chocolate, and they’re the perfect combination of tough and delicate,” he rambled, listing off thing after thing. Each note that you wrote down about this mystery person had your heart aching. This person sounded perfect, and you were happy for Yonghoon, but you couldn’t help but pity yourself at the fact that he was not buying these flowers for you.

“Well I think red roses are a must… and probably some peonies as well for beauty. We could add some carnations as well, if you’d like?” you asked, trying not to look at Yonghoon. You heard him hum in thought for a moment, before shifting his weight a little bit.

“I think some red tulips and maybe some hibiscuses would be nice,” Yonghoon said. You nodded quickly, writing them down, before handing the list to him with trembling fingers. His eyes scanned it like the first time he had come into the shop, before he beamed and nodded.

“Perfect!” You swallowed harshly, before moving to gather the flowers. You moved slowly, trying to stop the tears that threatened to prick your eyes with each flower that you picked up and held in your grasp.

Finally you had a bouquet of the most beautiful flowers, wrapping them gently and making them look as elegant as you could. After all, even if they were another person, you wanted Yonghoon to like them as much as you liked him.

“Here. I’m sure they’ll love them,” you said, plastering a small smile on your face in an attempt to not look as destroyed as you were feeling on the inside. Yonghoon chuckled lightly and nodded, smiling softly as he looked at the flowers.

“They’ll love them.” The credit card was exchanged, and then you both just stood there, neither of you speaking. You wished Yonghoon would just leave so you could cry in peace, but he fidgeted with the tissue paper around the flowers, his feet seemingly glued to the spot across the counter.

“It’s much harder to do this than I thought,” Yonghoon chuckled out. You looked at him in confusion, trying to figure out what he meant. It was only when you finally looked at his face, making eye contact with him, that he let a warm smile melt across his face, his hands moving to hold the flowers out.

“Is there something wrong with them?” you asked, reaching to take them and inspecting them to try and find the issues. Yonghoon chuckled, running a hand through his silky brown hair, before shaking his head.

“No, they are for you.” You felt like the world had just stopped around you. Your hands froze and you stared at him, mouth parted in surprise. These were for you? But he had said he wanted to use them to confess, and had even described the person to you!

“You were the person that I was describing, and I do want to confess. I want to confess to you,” Yonghoon replied, and you flushed as you realized that your thoughts had been spoken aloud. You held the flowers carefully to your chest, before looking up at him with eyes full of happiness.

“You idiot. You scared me, I thought you were buying these for another person!” you said, reaching out to hit his shoulder playfully. Yonghoon’s expression dropped as he realized his mistake and he sighed, before letting out a weak chuckle.

“Guess I’m not great at this confessing thing.”

“No… you’re wonderful at it. Seriously this is the cutest thing anyone has ever done for me. You used the thing that I love the most to tell me that you like me, and that overshadows any stupid assumptions I may have made,” you said. His expression lit up at your words and he smiled at you brightly.

“Does that mean I have permission to take you on a date?” He asked hopefully. You pretended to think, before nodding eagerly, giggling as you did so.

“It does, but next time buy me flowers from a different flower shop. I want to be surprised.” Yonghoon nodded happily, before he made his way behind the counter to give you a hug.

You melted into his arms, happily hugging him back with affection. There was nothing more perfect than hugging the man you loved in the place that you loved, and you were lucky enough to have that.

#onewe #onewe x reader #onewe imagines #onewe scenarios #onewe fluff #jin yonghoon #jin yonghoon onewe #jin yonghoon x reader #jin yonghoon imagines #jin yonghoon fluff #yonghoon x reader #yonghoon imagines #yonghoon fluff #yonghoon onewe

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camilliar · 3 years

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recs for someone new to omgcp

[February 2021.]

Reading, or not reading, OMGCP fics has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with artists newish to the fandom (ie. @jovishark; @decafffff), who are making OMGCP art (!!!) but haven’t started exploring fic -- but maybe want to? Which of course reminded me that I’ve never bothered to make an actual, concrete recs list for this fandom. So, I mean. Here is one.

The approach is, what do I think about when I think about OMGCP fanfic? What comes to mind, what stands out to me? I have excluded some very popular fics. Some of these I just don’t think are very good, and others I do think are good, and/or I enjoy them, but I don’t see why you’d need me, specifically, to recommend them. I am thinking of a story like maybe i’m waking up, which I discuss below because I link to a podfic of it. It has a lot of merits, to be sure, but it’s the second-most-read fic in this fandom by hits, and it’s got thousands of comments, and it’s by an author whose work is relatively widely praised and circulated. I am not sure what telling you more about this fic will add to the conversation; if you want to find and read it, you inevitably will. I’m happy to, say, answer asks about these kinds of fics, or talk more generally about them via DM or whatever. Feel free.

Also, I don’t think there’s a point to pretending to be objective about fanfic; this list has a perspective and that perspective is mine. In this fandom I largely read stories that navigate the tension around Jack, Bitty, and Parse, in various permutations. This is not to say that I’ve never read fic about the frogs, or that I have no interest at all in other pairings, but I am by no means an expert on Dex/Nursey and can really only speak to the one fic about them that sticks out to me because it goes beyond being merely Dex/Nursey and does something else. This is just to say that I am sure there are great and interesting fics about other things and ideas--but I’m not the person to hear about those from.

Likewise, I’m not super interested in stories that really reproduce that which is already in OMGCP. I like Zimbits--albeit maybe not in the ways or for the reasons most fans would--but I do not really need to see endless iterations of the same story about them falling in love and being cute together. I don’t think these stories are bad or they shouldn’t exist or that they have no merit by default. Still, I don’t need fanfic to give me more OMGCP. I need fanfic to complicate, to comment on, and to transform OMGCP. Many people don’t work like this! Totally okay! But I can’t rec you fics that do that.

What I have noticed, however, is that over time there appears to have been a shift in how people do write fic for this fandom. (Other than, you know, increases and decreases in activity pending the status of the comic, pairings going in and out of vogue, and so on.) Early on, say during Y1 and Y2, the comic was about the group of friends having a cool time at college together; about whether the burgeoning attraction between Jack and Bitty would manifest and, if so, how; and, especially, Jack’s past coming into fuller view for Bitty and how it would have to be dealt with in order for a relationship between them to work. YMMV on how great the comic executed there, but as Y3 went on these themes increasingly disappeared from the story. I think this means a lot of fic written over 2015-2016 or 2017 has one kind of tone, and was written mostly around these questions; after that, it feels like a new crop of writers and a new crop of ideas started circulating, that is, either embracing Jack and Bitty’s canon relationship and accepting its relative straightforwardness in text--or deconstructing it, imagining what readers aren’t seeing, or how problems not dealt with in the comic would manifest later. People who have read my fic know which of these I’m mainly interested in exploring.

All of which is to say, looking at what I’m reccing here, when the fics were posted or when I first read them probably has a lot to do with why they stick out to me so much. Because there’s no real culture of fanfic criticism--and I mean that in the positivist sense of broad evaluation not explicitly for fault and merit but rather, for context--I think it’s really hard to keep this in mind. But I’m obnoxious and I can’t just be easy about things.

Fic recs

In alphabetical order, somewhat unsorted; if a stand-alone fic has a summary I’ve included it, but in other cases I’ve recced a couple of conceptually related fics or series, which I’ve tried to just describe or explain as opposed to copying the summary off AO3.

There are so many more fanfics I think are great and worth reading! In an ideal world I’d come back and add more later, or create a secondary list that’s more along the lines of “if you like this, read these,” or whatever. But, being realistic, this is a starter kit. I’m open to talking about fanfic.

- - - - - - - - - - -

7-0-2 by Idday; Friends in Low Places and Sorry for the Blood in Your Mouth; I Wish it was Mine by blue_rocket_frost | I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I don’t like Parse/Tater, or that I’m not interested in Parse/Tater. I’m not interested in Patater a priori; I think it could be interesting, with teeth. These fics stick out to me when I think about this pairing, because they feel different. Accusations of a preference for just linking any two white men who happen to be hanging around have validity, but because of what hockey is and how it works and who’s hanging around it, it’s not exactly a leap to imagine what kind of gritty spark the friction between two closeted NHL players would create. A little violence in your sex? A little sex in your violence.

A Sight Worth Seeing by sadtomato | A four-fic Jack/Bitty/Shitty/Lardo explicit BDSM series. Either you want that or you don’t. It’s nothing hardcore, and not properly a four-way, really; more properly a kind of voyeuristic round-robin. There’s a more open and egalitarian view of sex here than I really get from the characters in the back end of the comic. It’s an expansive, propulsive view of sex and relationships that’s really nice to see. I love Lardo's detached coolness, and Bitty as a smooth operator; if you’re looking for some kind of Dom/sub dynamics world, this really isn’t it, but it’s a lively exploration into the sexual dynamics in a group of friends that’s super close to the good-times vibe you get from Haus scenes in the first couple years of extras.

call me son (one more time) by Summerfrost, Verbyna, and blithelybonny | This is a series, incomplete, and you will love it or be massively put off by it. I mean that as a compliment. I love it. The premise is, Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson have been having sex since Kent was, like, 19. Everyone in this story has been chewed up: by themselves, by each other, by hockey. Plainly, this is a pretty bleak view of what OMGCP, as a story, is supposedly offering. If you want fic that is dark and glamorous, treading the toxic melange of substance abuse, sex-as-sublimation, and so much money you can’t possibly throw all of it away without trying, this series has that sick-inducing shimmer to it. But, again, its strength is its examination of Kent Parson, textually and meta-textually, as someone to be projected onto. Bob, Alicia, Jack, and Bitty all impute certain feelings of their own onto him, displacing their own issues to a character who’s centralized in every fic but defies neat or total comprehension. Some critiques I’ve read of this series feel it’s too dark, and I’ve also seen it argued on FFA that an overwhelming amount of praise heaped onto these stories has made it tough for other writers to make headway in writing Bob/Kent fic. But I’m also not sure you could engage with Bob/Kent fic without going down this road at some point? I’m sure there are ways to scale it back, but ultimately it’s a story about how hockey’s violent, homophobic, old-guard gatekeeping has continued to set the terms for a younger and ostensibly less toxic culture. I fully embrace PWP fics that tread on the power dynamic without fully excavating it, but buried within any PWP is the fact that a 53-year-old man is ensnaring a 19-year-old, no matter how much the latter is, realistically, into it, and legally empowered to consent. Not to mention the dynamics of it being a 53-year-old man who is the father of the 19-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, and a 53-year-old man who is an eminence grise in the field the 19-year-old is trying to make a career in The sexual element--the vaguely incestuous nature of it--is making textual the subtext of how hockey works, actually: objectification of teenage bodies as older men’s capital.

Coach Z by thistidalwave | Just before the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, tp prospect Jack Zimmermann overdoses on his anxiety medication and is admitted to rehab. His future turns from a clear-cut road to the top into an uncertain path filled with therapy appointments, ignored text messages, a group of boys who aren't there to teach him a lesson about himself, and, of course, hockey. | I keep reccing this fic because it has 360 comments on AO3 but nobody, as far as I can tell, has ever read it; it never appears on rec lists. This isn’t the kind of fanfic I usually go in for, but I can’t help being charmed by it. This is a character study in the truest sense, a kind of Mighty Ducks-but-better view on what Jack’s time coaching peewee hockey might have been like. I have no interest in kids and my own aesthetic is maybe a little darker than this, but I admire this story because it injects vibrancy into a period of Jack’s life that OMGCP has left largely unexplored, and so has the fandom. We know nothing about what made Jack want to go to college, nothing about how he spent his days in between juniors and Samwell. It posits a very sympathetic and patient Jack/Parse dynamic, showcasing the exact kind of ragged teenage push-and-pull that would have led to the circumstances we see in Parse I-III. The outside perspective Jack needs is largely present in an OFC who’s not a love interest. Super unique, somehow both engrossing and low-key.

#dirtbags by angularmomentum | A series that is a Kent Parson/Claude Giroux fuckfest with feelings. I’ve long suspected that Parse is popular in part because he is the character who most easily elides OMGCP with the actual NHL, or rather, NHL fandom; I think he made it appealing to write OMGCP fics where the NHL is a factor. Case in point, this series, which is basically “what if Kent Parson was a real hockey player and therefore part of NHL RPS”? I have only read some NHL RPS, so I’m not the person to assess accuracy, but what I do know is superstar IRL hockey players take turns here as the caricature fanfic versions of themselves, and since Kent Parson is already that, it’s great how seamlessly he integrates into their social fabric. Rambunctious energy peppered with regret and loss, but ultimately this series is farcical, and it doesn’t take its sentimental ending too seriously--which, good.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible | 5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth. | As a fic format, 5+1 doesn’t usually work for me, but this one isn’t just front-loaded with five too-knowing vignettes; it then wraps up by using its +1 better than you might expect. Sometimes I talk about economy of fic, and this one exemplifies it. A zero-waste fic.

go ahead and move along by originally | "Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again. Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop. | Kent Parson is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario on the day of Epikegster. I’m sure you can imagine, just from that, what happens. And yet I think this fic is super entertaining, reserving some key surprises. What this story is doing is something a lot, and perhaps even the majority, of great Jack/Parse fic wants to do: digging into the question of just why this can’t work in comic canon. Most often this is approached from the past, by writing teenage Jack/Parse deep-dives that examine their lives mid-juniors, or by writing AUs where enough circumstances are shifted that it does work, or via future fics that posit enough growth has happened, and enough things have changed. But this fic makes Parse live the same bad day again and again, testing multiple theories about just how dependent on circumstance and incident real life actually is. Another day, another tone, 10 minutes sooner, not at all--you just can’t know why it didn’t work until you exhaust every possible variable. I worry that this rec has sucked the life out of the story, though--it’s so fun!

I Saw a Life and Strange Lovers by @bluegrasshole | Most AUs in this fandom seem to retell the story in a new setting or with some big detail change, following OMGCP’s rhythm beat-for-beat. I think of this as, “It’s the plot of Check, Please, but” -- they’re doing high school football? They’re acrobats? They’re a/b/o? They’re in a DIY punk band? And so on. These two stories are not that! They’re both 1950s AUs, each deeply felt, and yet hugely different from each other. I Saw a Life is about displacement and fragmentation, two sides of a similar but incongruent social critique; Strange Lovers is a finely wrought social drama about coal mining in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, centered around historical events. I suppose a theme on this rec list is something like, “I don’t even like this, but” -- yes, okay, I don’t even like Dex/Nursey, but--! This fic is so overwhelmingly complete, the AU laid out so carefully that the story breathes with all the background details informing the writing that aren’t actually, in the story; you just know they’re below the surface. (With the exception of one investigation of Jack’s character in a short, separate fic.) I Saw a Life, meanwhile, really tests the limits of the notion that Jack and Bitty are soulmates--not by calling it into question but by asking, rather innovatively, how the setting and place of the comic itself activates that.

Les Hivers de mon enfance by staranise | What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? 2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it. | Here’s a fic by someone who’s no longer around so much, but she felt ubiquitous in 2016-2019 OMGCP fandom. Before any of that, though, she wrote this one lovely fic about Jack’s pre-Samwell recovery. The author is Canadian and really irritated by hockey culture, and I think this fic benefits greatly because she is clear-eyed about Jack’s being caught in an exploitative system; it’s hockey he’s in recovery for, in a way. There’s an epistolary element that works for me, too. I read this early on in my time in OMGCP fandom and it really stuck with me.

Lysistrata? I Hardly Know Her! (by which I mean everything) by @tomatowrites | It feels somehow like cheating to recommend OMGCP fanfics by my OMGCP BFF with whom I make an OMGCP podcast where we talk about OMGCP. You know the fics I really want to rec, like truly the ones that speak to some kind of shared depravity, are the ones where Jack is miserably mpreg for the second time and accidentally lets his kid see Kent Parson’s Long John Silver’s shrimp scampi promo spot, which obviously would get twisted into a self-hating three-way. How many times do I have to rec this fic? As many as I need to, is my feeling. If you don’t know, Long John Silver’s is an American fast-food chain that sells, like, fried pollock sandwiches; it is nautical-themed; I have never eaten there; I don’t know where there is one; I don’t eat fried fish. (Shrimp, on the other hand?) All of which is to say that it takes a real genius to investigate a premise that far out. And while a lot of people almost certainly will start reading this humanity’s depths-themed sex scene and back the fuck out, readers with refined taste will note that Kent, the point-of-view character, is right there with you, despairing that he can’t help himself. And so long as you’re in that story collection, honestly, you’ll love petite gems like Jack is transmasc, Jack and Shitty play hockey in 18th-century England, and oh, right, he’s from Georgia. Tomato holds the distinction of being probably the gamest author I know in this fandom, just really like fearless in her pursuit of any range of concept she’s pushed to. (I can push her to?) See, for example, a sublime bandom AU; Bitty is cancelled for buying a maybe-unethically exported Roman fragment of a youth’s torso; or, god, the masterwork that is this future fic series where Jack keeps relapsing and Bitty exiles him to their guesthouse. Do I think you need to read a fic where Bitty is snide about the teen prostitute whose baby they’re adopting? Yes, I mean, he would be snide, don’t tell me he wouldn’t. I could go on, but my main thing here is, if I have to pick just one, I’m going to pick this Lysistrata fic. The premise, literally, is that Bitty reads the Lysistrata and it gives him ideas. Like most of Tomato’s OMGCP fic, it’s a stripping away of the comic’s polite fiction that Jack and Bitty could possibly attain the ideal it reaches in the comic without some kind of messy, efflusive breakdown. Life is like that, you see! Tricky. Like a lot of people, although it’s tough to say precisely how many, I have always intuited that maybe Bitty is kind of a natural top? But obviously when you meet him, as a literal virgin, it’s hard to see how he’d go from zero to self-actualization so neatly. This fic floats a theory, and it has a fun little side plot for Whiskey, something I never thought about or needed before Tomato built it out herein. In conclusion, BONUS: Dex’s gay lobster novel.

only fools rush in and the light of all lights by decinq | This person wrote of the nature of the wound, one of the early, formative Jack/Bitty fics that was oft-recced when I was getting into the fandom in 2016. It forms part of a larger series that deals deeply with how Jack has been shaped by his struggles (? I hate this word) with homophobia and his own mental health. It’s a picture of the character as you might have imagined him much earlier in the comic’s run. The formatting is atrocious and he author’s flair is what Tomato would call “AO3 house style.” It’s a voice that works great for her writing. I think it’s at its best in these shorter fics; the former is about Parse and Shitty stumbling into a relationship almost accidentally; the latter, an eerie PBJ vampire fic. I had begun writing a fic where Parse is a vampire early on in this fandom, only to read this and immediately quit, because you only need one, and this one’s all I need. The Parse/Shitty rare pair fic shares its exuberance with hockey RPS when it’s good: here’s how fun it can be when you’re young, rich, and jocular. And I don’t even like accidental marriage AUs, they’re usually boring, so that says a lot. By all means, read the wound fic; read the entire series. But these are highly unusual.

OVERDOSE and Oomph and a little spin-o-rama by jedusaur | None of these are long, or plotty, and they’re all a little experimental. OVERDOSE is an AU set in a world where you know how you’ll die, but no details; Oomph, a little fic where Jack hears hockey pucks talking to him. This is the kind of stuff I used to think I’d find in fandom forever, coming out of Lotrips lurking in the 2000s: short, zany bursts of energy that surprise and delight. a little spin-o-rama peers at Kent’s character through the grim reality of being the hypertalented superstar stuck on a dead-last team. All three are sparse and stylish in a way that’s really smart, practically economical.

Sowing Season by @agrossunderstatement | Parse and Zimms, Zimms and Parse. Kent Parson's life, from the Q, through his early years with the Aces, to Jack's senior year. Canon divergent. A story of love, loss, moving on, regressing, hockey, and found families of all kinds. | Effectively a novel, digging into Kent’s personal history, mostly concerning his life in juniors but expanding into his present, overlapping with the plot of OMGCP. I think there is room enough for endless speculations on what went down pre-canon; this one offers a fuller life for Kent than nearly any others, digging into him as a whole person rather than as a satellite to Jack or the plot of the comic. Which isn’t to say that the Kent/Jack stuff isn’t dealt with here; it explicitly is. But the fact of Kent Parson’s life, if we can begin to imagine it beyond mere text, would exist before, after, and alongside Jack; he gets to juniors without Jack, presumably, and he is the captain of a hockey team without Jack, and Pinkerton lays the foundation of Parse’s character within a junior hockey that Jack also inhabits, more so that Parse existing for Jack, so to speak. And I’m not implying this latter tactic is wrong; I have certainly employed it, and others have employed it to great impact and effect. But, still, the title of this series tells you what you ought to know: Kent and his story are the potentiality of OMGCP, up to a point; seeds being planted. Young hockey players, similarly. The question implied there is, what will be reaped? And the answer to the latter, in a sense, that reaping is a sort of violence. Which makes this series sound pretty heavy, but it’s not -- more like, realistic.

(tell everyone) you were a good wife by @queerofcups | The biggest problem with pretending that he doesn’t know that Kent Parson is fucking his husband is that Jack can’t tell Kent how grateful he is. | The ne plus ultra of PBJ triangulation; I’ve been squealing to the writer about how good it is since August, begging for behind-the-scenes insights, and I’d only do that if I really meant it. The precarious social fabric stretched across these three chapters is fraying before the reader’s eyes. The details are delicious, and I don’t want to spoil them, but they sing in chorus with the plot. My favorite OMGCP fics, honestly, remove the romance narrative guardrails that keep things in the comic itself humming along. I think Dann’s take is to ask who in this comic has power and what they would end up doing with it. (Or not doing, from another angle.) At one point, early on in its telling, OMGCP looked like it was going to be a story dealing with the compounded traumas of hockey’s discontents. Then, of course, it wasn’t. This is a fic that steps back and asks what the fallout of that oversight would be. But that’s just the moldering core of this fanfic; it’s actually embroidered, like I said, with glittering detail. The color of the suit Bitty wears to his wedding is burned into my brain. The gray manicure of a woman Jack knows. The ingredients in a cake. This is one of those fics I still haven’t reviewed because the thought of stacking everything I could say about it into mere AO3 comments is inadequate.

when you’re ready by megancrtr | The Aces’ director of communications gets the call at 3:13 a.m. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn from the draft. | “What happened at the draft” is so mythological it gets asked in the comic proper, and I’ve never counted how many fics attempt to answer this question--from Kent’s point of view, even--but it’s gotta be, oh, hundreds. This story replays the situation from the perspective of an Aces staffer who just wants to do her job, and gets at the jarring discordance between the plot of OMGCP in its quest for social justice and the business of actual hockey. Important context is that this story was written around the time the comic was playing out the end of Y3 and start of Y4, and Bitty pointedly asked Jack the question, “why can’t we?” This story reframes the question as literal, rather than rhetorical. A sterling example of fanfic being a gloss on its source.

BONUS, podfics

hockeyed up | There are many things on Jack's mind. Namely: hockey, hockey, Bitty, hockey, anxiety, hockey, hockey, anxiety, Bitty, hockey, hockey, anxiety, and hockey. | A fic read aloud by its French-Canadian author. Also a relatively early OMGCP fanfic; composed while the first semester of Y2 was posting, the story suggests a version of OMGCP that was in some ways more and in other ways less complex than what it would turn into not long after. The real power of this podfic, however, is that it’s read by the writer, so you can hear the intended emphasis in every line. Also, because she’s French-Canadian, Sophie’s intonation is what I picture when I read or write dialogue for Jack.

maybe i’m waking up | It’s almost funny. All he ever wanted was to play hockey, to play in the NHL, to win the Cup. This—Samwell, the team, the Haus—was supposed to be just a detour, but now it feels more like a destination he failed to realize he’s already reached.(Or: Jack signs with the Falconers, graduates, and leaves. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. What comes after is even harder.) | Don’t get too excited; this isn’t finished. A podfic of probably the best-known, most-recced fic in OMGCP fandom. Striking for its use of metatext woven into the story, this is one of several early longform Jack/Bitty fics that posits that maybe Jack has a lot more development to undergo before he can really, truly, be okay--or be okay enough to be with Bitty? To be honest, this story strikes me now as too long, but the parts in it that work are effective beyond that which fanfic demands. Meanwhile, this audio version only covers six chapters, but it’s so slick, so well-realized, so true to the story. Podfic as art.

my own dear friends | Ever since the day he met Jack Zimmermann, Shitty has seen it as his solemn duty to aggressively love him. (He just didn't know how aggressive the love Jack needed would be.) | There’s previous little Jack/Shitty in this fandom and a lot less quality BDSM,

the city’s ours until the fall | Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound. (Or: Kent Parson lets himself be happy, after all this time.) | I’ve never read this fic and I never will. I cannot imagine how, no matter how good it is, it could compare to the version that lives in my head, with Kent’s voice so totally realized. Vocal fry and pathos, a languid energy that I still think about when I think about Parse.

the model home | It’s going to be better, and that’s great, but sometimes Jack thinks, why can’t it be good right now? | j/k j/k, this is a self-reminder to finally one day review this.

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kyunisixx · 3 years

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ivy (chapter ii)

pairing: John Paul Jones AU x original fem!character

a/n: This took a while and I'm sorry for that. Anyway, I just want to point out that I did change the POV (previously 3rd person's view) to 1st and will continue for next chapters until epilogue. Anyways, good lord here it is.

theme(s): angst/hurt, eventual smut, and heavy description of every damn detail.

summary: After years of being a con artist, Hiraya Javier had mastered the ability to mask her real identity to get herself the life she had always wanted: adorned with jewelries, expensive dresses and be a wife to an influential and rich businessman.

When an urgent call demanded her husband, Neil Lewis' attention for a month, she met the quiet but quick-witted John Baldwin, a stable boy and the gardener of the manor. Then she finds that her facade wasn't so strong after all.

masterpost | playlist (tracks for this chapter has been added, go check it out.)

magnificently cursed

1954

Giggled.

Or was it an accidental snort of what was supposed to be a laugh but ended up sounding like a choking pig at the look on John's face from my statement.

“Odd? I do not have an odd posture.” His eyebrows narrowed at my random comment, he looked like I had said the most scandalous thing. I held back another laugh.

“Yes, you do. It's like,” I paused, making a pathetic attempt to mimic his hunched form, possibly ending up looking like a vulture with my shoulders bending forward and my head extending along. “Like this. Hunched.”

“Aurora,” he scoffed, “That ridiculous claim cannot possibly have come from you when you have a funny way of walking,” he added dryly and resumed briefly to his work.

It was a warmer day than usual, with more amount and a longer appearance from the sun since we have officially moved in. With Neil thousands of miles away, I wasn't sure how to spend the days alone in the manor house. Having to wake up early to watch the sunrise from the expansive window at the front of the king sized bed, memorizing each pattern of the pastel sky and smoke-like clouds of sunrise before eventually taking a shower and walking downstairs for breakfast.

The thick science textbook I had greedily indulged in had long been finished to the back over and now abandoned on the nightstand. Each one of the clothes I owned; worn or not had been sorted out by their purpose or color. Comforters were consistently tucked in on the sides, folded almost too perfectly neat without any signs of creases from the extra time I spent meticulously making the bed.

The times I spent walking over the long hallways, studying each portrait of the manor's generation of its past Lords and owners, I fear I cannot recount anymore. Just yesterday I found myself in an unconsciously endless staring battle against my husband's great grandfather's unmoving expression before moving to another face that held nothing but an image of impatience and knowingness of power they possess.

Even with the haunting beauty of the manor house⎯ antique furnitures that were dated back in the eighteenth century, plethora of grand decors and touches of warm colors, it only gave me an entirely different sentiment: a nauseating taste of unwelcomeness. Like walking in a graveyard, almost, with all these dead people forever encapsulated with grim faces that only seem to mock and belittle anyone who would dare to look at them.

Despite the effort of keeping myself occupied by doing little things I could find around the house, it only made me grow restless and itching to do something else.

Earlier today after breakfast, I took it upon myself to take the dishes I have used to the spacious sink. It wouldn't be much of a work anyway with a very few cutlery and a set of intricately designed porcelain Chinawares. A few hanging plastic vases hooked at the top of the overlooking window where English ivies are planted, spilling and dangling over. Instead of blocking the view, it added a delicate touch.

Ivy. A symbol of devotion, loyalty and fidelity.

In ancient Egypt, ivy was dedicated to Osiris, who represented immortality. And in ancient Greece, ivy was the plant of Dionysus because of its vigour. Interesting choice.

“My lady!”

Oh god. Not a much better contender than John's 'Madam'. I looked over to find the elderly woman striding towards me, reaching for the dishes out of my hand and gently turned the flowing faucet off. Cynthia. “There is no need for you to do that!”

“There's nothing else to do after this anyway. Let me wash them, it's alright.” I turned my body towards her and casted a smile, “And please, you do not have to call me that. Aurora would be fine.”

The woman audibly sighed and only watched as I turned the faucet back on. “Well, Aurora, if you're going to do the dishes,” she untied the ribbon of her cooking apron and handed it over, “You're going to have to do it properly or you'll wet your dress and ruin it, hm?”

“Oh!” I slid the apron over my head and tied it on the small of my back, “Of course. Thank you, Cynthia.”

As I smoothed out the front of the cloth and reached over for the plates, Cynthia leaned her hip over the kitchen counter, “Finding it a bit of a bore in here, eh?”

“It's starting to drive me mad,” I jested, swiping the sponge on a plate, eyeing the suds it left behind as I felt the woman's stare on the side of my face.

She nodded with a lighthearted laugh, “I understand. I reckon it's not an easy adjustment moving from a busy environment to something like this one.”

“Well, truly I do love it here. Quiet. Tranquil. When you grow up to the noise and all the busy lifestyle you'd long for a change.” I sighed. “It's just… I just miss the familiarity of home. Now, I don't even have my husband around. It's like I'm lost.”

There was something about Cynthia's congenial aura that made me instantly comfortable around her.

“I know that I could perhaps invite some of Neil's friends over but,” I paused, holding the China cup under running water before carefully placing it on the drying rack. “I don't know.”

Friends. Fake laughing hyenas in silk gowns, diamonds and tailored suits. Walls of insincerity were hard ones to build. But who was I to complain?

“You can always come around here if you need company,” she murmured gently. I could feel her warm pools of honey oozing through the pit of my secrets like she knew each one of them. She reminded me of a grandmother I never had the privilege to grow up to, yet I was afraid to look her in the eyes for too long.

I laughed with a shake of my head, “I don't really think the others would like me around.”

Cynthia gasped, “What makes you say that? Of course they do. You are the lady of the house!” she sighed, “They are perhaps just…trying to get used to your presence. Neil would rarely come home ever since his father died.”

I knew the primary reason for their reservedness, but I nodded anyway. “I'll keep that in mind, Cynthia. I appreciate it.”

For a while, I stared right outside the window as the cook left me by myself. I've always found washing dishes as a therapeutic activity back when I used to work as a dishwasher for a while to make ends meet.

In my current state of stagnation and having to do nothing, how I long to be in the stuffy little kitchen, where every inhale comes the strong pungent smell of chlorine they use to mop the floor with. Scrubbing food residues off of stainless pots and in the background the deafening noise of people clamoring outside during lunch time.

Now in the same bench that was conveniently facing the grand fountain I find myself lazily sitting about with a sleeping Ingrid in my lap. I snapped my head towards the gardener, hedge shears in both his grasp. He was crouched down across the lawn, now halfway through the arrays of shrubs trimming the hedge with careful snaps. His long hair fell brushing against his shoulders, framing his face and unusually looking healthy and shiny in the sun.

The gardener, to say the least, was an intriguing character. Expressive, almost theatrical with a dry humor.

“Really? Would you mind showing me exactly how I walk, please.”

“Not at all. It would be a pleasure, even.” He stood up after having placed down the shears, brushing the dirt off his thighs and faced towards me. Then propping his glove-covered hands on his waist, he glided forward with an emphasized exaggeration on the sway of his hips. His hunched shoulders pushed backwards, jutting his chest out into the air and even went to sweep his hair behind his shoulders. With a straight face, he said, “That's how you walk.”

“What?” I bursted out laughing, “That's not how I walk at all!” I shrieked, causing the purring feline to jolt. With a gentle gasp, I scratched Ingrid's soft cheek, a spot she seems to love getting affectionate scratches at. And quickly as she jumped awake, she was quick to decide it was time to go and have a walk then climbed off my lap, as if finding my exchange with the gardener dreary and boring.

“Absurd,” I mused, looking back up at John. My eyes took in the land covered in thick weaves of grass. Bursts of colors littered everywhere with different kinds of flowers, shrubs were strategically and purposely planted on the side of the cobbled pathway, hedges were shaped into a unique pattern. The cascading crystal water from the fountain created a stunning reflection of sunlight. It was all an exquisite sight.

I stood up, leaving my designated house footwear beside the bench. I sauntered, staring at the way the fibres of grass tickled between my toes. Walking over past his crouched form, I hovered my palm over the flat and freshly trimmed top of the hedge. “I'm amazed how you keep the garden well taken care of. Do you really do all this,” I turned to him and gestured around the garden and continued, “all by yourself?”

“No. Well, yes, technically.” John started, “My job is just to maintain the garden. Once in a while, a professional landscape gardener would come by just to check or by Sir Neil's demand, do renovations.”

“Hm.” I simply said. “Nevertheless, I think you deserve a raise.”

He chuckled, “Oh. A raise would be great, indeed.”

I now sat on the fountain. The large ball of flames made its raging presence known that the cement surface felt almost searing hot against my backside even through the thick layers of the skirt of my dress. I dipped my fingers on the water, suddenly getting a foolish urge to plunge entirely and have a swim.

“I⎯” John suddenly cleared his throat. I glanced at him, finding he already had finished his work and was now gingerly peeling the grey colored gloves off his fingers.

“What is it?” I asked as I eyed him. He looked as if he was hesitating to say something. He walked over to where I was seated and settled about a foot away to my left. I waited for him as I watched the calm ripples of water.

“Do you love him?”

My head snapped upwards to him, he was facing right ahead, avoiding any sort of eye contact. “What?” was all I could muster.

“Sir Neil. Do you love him?”

The question left me dumbfounded, “Why would you ask that?”

“You can simply answer the question, Aurora.”

“I believe that is none of your business, John.” I said haughtily, every word coming out as slow drawl but with unwavering firmness.

“Come on. We all know the reason why you're here,” he said simply.

If there was one thing the gardener was, it was that he wasn't afraid to speak his mind.

And spoke his mind he did.

The moment he said it all the moisture left my mouth and I blanched. He didn't even have to make further elaborations because I do.

I know the reason why I'm here and I know it all too well. But how did a simple statement, one that was free of any sound of accusation leaving John's mouth laced with nothing but nonchalance, felt like a thousand tiny needles pricking at my skin?

As I swallowed, my throat felt like it was pushing down with a large clump of sand. My palms are starting to perspire with cold sweat. I stood up, almost staggering from the quick movement. I cleared my throat and faced him with a tight-lipped smile.

“Why, thank you, John. Would you like a gold medal for your excellent judgement?”

Not waiting for his response, I walked⎯ or rather⎯ ran across the lawn, blindly heading for the main door. My entire body was rigid, but shaking profusely and I released a shaky sigh as I stepped inside, feeling the cold floor at my feet.

Fingers waltzed over the creme-colored keys, a resounding note echoed sharply in the empty room. Then my other hand pressed on the keys to the left, evoking a much darker tone that vibrated around me. Behind the mahogany grand piano, my fingers meandered over a familiar progression of notes.

If I closed my eyes now, it would bring me back to that living room with a matte black colored upright piano with a couple of framed photographs sitting at the top. Distantly, I could almost smell the aroma of a baked pastry and the sugary sweetness of peaches and mangoes. In that kitchen I hear a woman's voice, humming alongside Ella Fitzgerald in an outmoded little turntable. That day, I had asked her to turn the volume down so I could hear myself play. And after a while she would appear from the kitchen and lean herself at the doorway with her green oven glove clad hand perched on her hip.

“You play beautifully.”

I frowned. My fingers halted their dance and I glanced at the door. In that doorway wasn't her leaning on it. Instead it was a man.

John.

“May I?” he murmured and lifted his body into his full height, eyes searching mine for permission. I didn’t answer as I looked away but gave a single nod. I could hear his feet padding on the marble floor until he sat down at the edge of the bench. From the corner of my eye, I caught items on his clutch: my forest green slippers.

He gently placed then down on the floor, “You forgot them outside.”

I said nothing in response as I absentmindedly pressed on the keys until I heard the first few notes of his long, dextrous fingers moving to follow the same notes in a much lower octave as if talking back to me. In response, I hesitantly, but gently responded. The melody it elicited sounded like a question and pressing a few keys, he answered.

My hands moved on their own, matching the slow rhythm of his reluctant ones. It started slowly, like a molten gold slowly rushing through the gaping holes that a ball of flaming melancholia left gaping open. It coursed through my veins and seeped through my bones. The pace was unhurried, enchanting but heavy.

Then all reluctance vanished as it rose to a crescendo. The molten liquid was now flowing at a rapid pace and my heart thundered in my ribcage. My hands were almost a blur, I felt electricity bolting through my spine. What was once a melancholic harmony now transformed into what I could only name as the lover’s quarrel.

The speed was like a moving car, edging beside a cliff but never quite reaching the curve of where gravity defied. From the violent cries of each note, I could hear his uneven breathing. Strange enough, it matched my own. Gradually, it was starting to build up into chaotic trickles of falling drops of water. My arms felt like they were ready to give out, yet the adrenaline was greater than the pain. The melody kept pushing and pushing through to reach the peak of something.

Then it hit its break, stopping an inch before the edge of the road into the abyss.

Silence fell through not long before my shaky exhale cut through like a sharp knife. My arms fell limp to my sides as I caught my breath. Sweat was starting to form at the back of my neck, which I didn't take notice of until I felt my hair sticking to my skin. There was a faint ringing in my eardrums, my heartbeat was thumping so loud and overwhelming that the moment the music stopped I saw tiny dots swiftly linger in my vision.

I was the one to break through the fog of silence, “I didn't know you played.”

“Sir Lewis taught me, ” John murmured.

I glanced at him and raised an eyebrow, “Neil did?”

“No. No, not him,” he shook his head, “The late Sir Jacob, his father.”

I nodded and looked out the window. “I'm sorry.” he said solemnly after a while.

“It's alright, John.”

“It's not,” he said immediately, “What I said wasn't okay. I was being an arse.”

“Really, John. Don't worry abou⎯”

“You're right. It's none of my b⎯”

“Because it's true,” I said with firmness. “You were right. I didn't marry him out of love.”

John fell silent. After a few trickling seconds he spoke up, “Even so, I shouldn't have said that. What you do isn't and shouldn't be my concern.”

“John,” I sighed, “If it will make you feel better, then I accept your apology.”

From where my eyes have been looking, I turned my head back to stare at him with a small smile. But the smile vanished as I took him in.

Had he been looking at me this entire time? The orange flare of the sun reflected through the windows, lighting up his eyes. I never paid so much attention to them until now but their color was as rich as the color of the sea. To think I had a phobia of the deep ocean, endless depth of dark murky waters, I didn't feel an ounce of agitation and fear in my body as I swam through them. I didn't notice the small flecks of brown and a subtle reflection of other colors. Like a glinting stone of opal. His lips, red and… plush. The contours of his cheeks more prominent with the shadow casted upon them and seemed to have been carved with passion and care by the greatest sculpture to ever exist.

Bloody hell. Why was John Baldwin looking so scandalously handsome in the glow of the afternoon light?

permanent taglist: @jonesyjonesyjonesy , @jimmys-zeppelin , @dreamersdrowse , @thatiloveyouso , @salixfragilis , @rebel-without-a-zeppelin , @reincarnated70sbaby , @timetraveller4 @jimmylovesme (let me know if you guys want to be on the permanent taglist or a separate member taglist!)

ivy taglist: @kari-12-10

#john paul jones x ofc #john paul jones #robert plant #jimmy page #john bonham #led zeppelin #led zeppelin fanfiction #ivy #evermore #fanfic #classic rock #yeah i was inspired by corpse bride you can stop asking now

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indianamoonshine · 3 years

Text

Chapter 7 | Superman (Ice Cream)

Summary: Every summer you work on your father’s strawberry farm with your three sisters. It’s a way to take a break from the big city but summers in the midwest are hot and they linger. This year, your father’s old and mysterious friend shows up to stay on your land for a reason yet to be determined. Din Djarin seems dangerous, but kind enough, and the two of you quickly become…well, let’s fact it…smitten.

Rating: (+18) for future and explict sexual content.

A/N: Hi friends! This chapter isn't as long as the others, but I've already got a head start on the next one!

Warnings: I can't find anything in this short chapter that would trigger anybody, so yay!

One can tell a lot about a person by their choice of ice cream.

For instance: Rhea likes honey flavored. It’s a rarity, but Scoops specializes in it. It meant she was sweet, though refined, and organic in these regards. Charlotte prefers amaretto fudge which implies she is a hopeless romantic and the kind of woman who loves vintage films (that alone says quite a bit). You prefer Superman. Maybe that meant the obvious; you’re the youngest and a little bit of a fledgling with a silly sense of humor. You like to be doused in color and leave a sweet taste on people’s lips (some say you’d do anything to please and they could be right).

And Din, well, you were surprised to find that Din ordered sherbert; raspberry and just one scoop. When you questioned his choice (not to say sherbert wasn’t tasty, but at an ice cream parlor it just felt wrong) he justified it by saying he didn’t like the texture of ice cream. Ice cream reminds me of snot, he says to you. You still haven’t gotten that out of your head (and was a bit turned off when you received your cone because of it).

Scoops is in the next town over. It’s a tourist town full of counter-culture fanatics and overlooks the stunning landscape of Lake Michigan. The beach is always packed with families toting cheap red coolers or wild young adults slathered in sunscreen. The air is light and clean with no trace of salt, but it’s a glorious kind of smell you’ve never been able to describe. Lake Michigan is something of mystery – after all, it’s one of the biggest freshwater lakes in the world -- but its appeal might be because it’s watched you grow throughout the years. The great body of water is something of a deity, all-powerful and all-encompassing in its compassion and protectiveness.

The weather is still scorching, but while the ice cream helps, it melts quickly. Along the boardwalk where Scoops is located are dozens of shops all lined up in a neat row and bustling with smiling people, laughing with one another, and arms weighed down with chic looking boutique bags. Most of the population is wealthy because of its tourism and the ridiculous economic situation, so this comes as no surprise. Charlotte and Rhea fawn over the window displays, pointing out which expensive items of clothing they wish they could afford.

Charlotte squeals upon seeing a sundress with a silhouette that she couldn’t possibly deny; Rhea agrees enthusiastically. While they gaggle, you keep your eyes on some birds that dive for pieces of corn dogs fallen upon the walkway. There was a lot going on so it was only natural that your brain retreat to idle, given that you had little to no spending money in general.

“We have to go in,” Charlotte sings to Rhea. “We have to. I need it.”

Rhea admits that she couldn’t pass up the chance either but promises she wouldn’t buy the same dress. The two of them invite both you and Din inside, but you shake your heads, eager of the idea to be alone with one another. It was a risky thing, especially considering how your feelings for Din exposed themselves upon your face like traffic signs. While your sisters certainly knew of your schoolgirl crush on Din, they’ve made no indication they suspect Din of reciprocating those feelings. How embarrassing for you.

When the girls are out of view, door closing behind them with a ring of a silver bell, Din immediately turns to you with a grin. It’s a slight grin – the kind you wouldn’t have been able to notice had it not been for your keen observation of him. His thoughts, actions, and feelings show upon his face like a stroke patient’s might – a little lopsided and faint, but still genuine. You can’t help but wonder why he’s so hesitant to show any exuberant display around anyone else. Did that have anything to do with his family? Any past relationships? Even his career? The career you had no inkling of? It wasn’t like pulling teeth; getting him to chuckle seems easy enough, but his friendliness couldn’t be mistaken for jolliness in any sense of the word.

Either way, Din is smiling – albeit, faintly – as he appears next to you.

“Were you planning that?” he teases, spooning his sherbert.

You shrug, licking the sides of your waffle cone. “I was counting on it.”

The two of you smile at one another and continue your walk with pleasant conversation. You people-watch and he casually jokes around by creating exaggerated scenarios for each of them as they pass. (“That guy in the red swim trunks and sports shades definitely cheats on his girlfriend.”) You can’t help but wonder if you sound ridiculous by the way you snort with laughter each time he says something clever, but he grins pleasantly anyway. It’s difficult to not get a big head each time you manage to get him to do anything other than monitor his surroundings – you notice he has a habit of it, despite how hard he tries to pretend he doesn’t.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna try it?” you offer, ice cream cone melting a bit down the sides.

Din wrinkles his nose but sighs after a moment, maybe weakened by your puppy dog eyes. Wishful thinking. “Alright. Just for you.”

You smile widely with satisfaction, bringing the cone up to his lips. And just when he’s about to bend down to lick the sugary treat, you push the cone onto his face. Din blinks, expression blank, and you’re afraid you might’ve crossed a line. The colorful ice cream stains his chin, dripping down onto his neck, and then soils the collar of his t-shirt. You prepare for the blow, cringing a bit under his gaping. But just when you’re about to stutter an apology and run away, Din presses his lips in a thin line to stop himself from letting out a full-bodied laugh.

“Oh, you think that’s funny don’t you?” he raises his brows in jest.

You sigh out in relief. He’s clearly amused. “Yes actually,” you quip, donning a pair of innocent and fluttering eyes.

He nods a few times, lips pursed, and humming with consideration. “I see,” he muses, hands placing themselves on your hips and squeezing.

You shriek in a fit of giggles as he pushes you gently against the brick of a nearby building. It’s cold against your skin, but nowhere near as chilly as Din’s milky lips peppering chaste kisses against your cheeks. His lashes bat against you, tickling your cheeks, and you become sticky with fruity condensed milk as the gleeful bombardment continues. His name escapes your mouth between your humored twittering. He has you pinned between himself and a wall - you are quite literally trapped - and in front of the public no less.

He wasn’t ashamed of you.

It’s almost a reaction what happens next.

Your hands lock themselves around his neck, mouth pressing against his full lips for the very first time. The people surrounding you disappear, the noise of the busy street vanishing completely. You’d expected your first kiss with him to be serious, maybe even a little awkward with graceless fumbling. But the two of you are snickering against one another, the embrace as natural as breathing. He’s cupping your cheek with the caution he’d shown this morning; he must’ve been terrified you’d crumble beneath him.

You felt like you could.

He’s holding back, and you know this because his lips are soft and slow as a wounded butterfly with clipped wing. The hand that isn’t holding your cheek has pulled you in by the hips. It’s getting harder to breathe, even if it’s closed mouthed. He spoke and the world spun - but his lips make the world sing.

You’re the first to pull away, eyes fluttering open with an uncontrollable eagerness to perceive his countenance. What you expected, you can’t remember, because when you find his eyes still closed, relishing in the kiss with a full-bodied smile, you feel nauseous with excitement. It was almost too much.

Yet not enough at all.

The napkin around your ice cream cone is soaked, but you crumble it in a ball and bring it to Din’s face anyway. You pat against his cheek, wiping away as much of the ice cream as you could while he recovers. Some of it has collected on his dense mustache and you resist the urge to laugh at that.

He nods to himself like he’s trying to get a grasp on what just happened, eyes opening with caution to gaze into yours. He looks tired, but the kind that was delicious; the kind that you look forward to remedying. You must’ve taken an energy from him.

You hope you did.

Because he took it all from you.

He lets out a breathy laugh and you place a thumb against his jaw to wipe some stray remnants from him. “I think I like ice cream now,” he jokes.

•••

The two of you manage to escape.

This is after Rhea and Charlotte come bouncing out of the store, bags in hand, and giddy smiles upon their faces. You laugh with them as they show you their purchases while Din looks on from the sidelines, knee bouncing with alacrity.

You’re weak by the kiss, the blush from your cheeks still prominent. You were positive your sisters would notice, that tonight they’d drill you with questions they already knew the answer to. Women have a way of knowing when another woman has been kissed as zealously as you just had. It wasn’t just the pink in your face that would give you away; it was the dreamy glint in your eyes, the bit of Superman that you’d missed upon Din’s cheek, and the trembling of each item they forced in your hands.

You say your goodbyes to your sisters, promising you’d be home in time for movie night, and skip alongside Din while walking to Bessie. When he’s sure the two of you are in the clear, he takes your hand and massages the space between your thumb and forefinger. Tension subsides in your shoulders.

This was new to you. You’d kissed guys as a teenager; even had a few boyfriends here or there. But that’d been years ago and none of them alighted a fire in your belly like Din has. His company was ethereal - he was made of stardust; you were sure of it. And it seemed silly - even a little frightening - that your feelings have evolved so quickly. For hells sake, you’d just met him a few days ago. Could you really be just, well, stupid? And maybe he was feeding off that stupidity for his own personal gain?

This thought alone makes you feel guilty. You try to ignore the anxiety and focus on the feel of his hand, tanned and masculine, and breathe. The smell of fried dough wafts from down the boardwalk, the tune of an old carnival song muffled in the distance by the chaos of summer. The sun was still high in the sky; it was only five in the afternoon but your body felt as though it’d been up for an entire day, weak with the intensity from such a rush of adrenaline.

Upon arriving to the car, Din opens the door for you and a bit of paint from devoted Bessie showers upon the pavement. You can’t help but wonder if he knew you’d leave early with him and the idea of bringing two separate vehicles was clouded with hidden agenda. This, of course, starts up the cycle of mental dramatization again.

Gods, why can’t you just leave it alone? Why can’t you feel something for once in your life? You’ve spent so many years hiding in the corner in fear of getting hurt – of opening yourself to be exposed to new and terminal wounds even if the process was liberating. And Din was liberating in more ways than one; in ways that have surprised you, despite how little you’ve known him.

As soon as he climbs in, you scooch as close as possible to his side. Your bravery surprises yourself, but you wouldn’t overthink it, especially when he smiles cheekily your way. You’ve leaned your head against his shoulder just before reaching for his free hand again and placing it in your lap with a tight grip.

You may get hurt later. But for now, that pain was worth experiencing. Din Djarin already seems to be worthy of experiencing.

Bessie rumbles to life but he starts for the crown of your head first, lips brushing against you, and light as a feather.

•••

If Din hadn’t been such an experienced driver, he was sure he would’ve crashed by now.

No. He was positive he would’ve crashed. It was nearly impossible to concentrate on the plainness of the road when a goddess was sitting in the seat beside him, holding his hand, and gazing out into the fields you rush past. You exuberantly point out each time there was a farm where cattle and horses grazed, their tails flicking to shoo away flies. He realizes that you love cows (“especially the brown ones,” you had smiled) and makes a mental note of it.

The house is in view now, the strawberries blooming the land with color beneath their plants’ emerald leaves. Your sisters hadn’t beat you there and your father’s truck wasn’t parked in front like it normally was. Not that it would’ve mattered that his friend was home, but Din preferred your father find out…later; when Din felt confident in your feelings for him and you felt confident in his. You were too important to risk losing so soon or even at all.

And that terrifies him.

And just when Din’s about to turn onto the road that leads directly to the house, you gasp beside him.

It frightens him. He isn’t well acquainted with your exclamations yet, so it was hard to distinguish whether your outburst is harmless or exclaimed in the face of danger. He pauses, foot stepping on the brake pedal, and lunges Bessie forward with too much exertion. Upon instinct, he reaches out an arm to prevent you from slamming yourself against the dashboard by the sudden halt.

He immediately looks to you, brows furrowed in concern, and chest heaving with epinephrine. “What is it?!” he jolts out.

You’re staring into the nearby woods with narrowed eyes, silent as a bug. The thicket and vines wrap themselves around one another, graceful in their disorganized summer. Din couldn’t find any movement interrupting the overgrowth, but he had a suspicion you’ve seen an animal of some kind. What else could have caused you to gasp so randomly?

Something pretty incredible, apparently. Because just as Din’s about to repeat himself, far more concerned with your silence than anything, you swing open the rusted door and sprint into the woods.

{ Tag List: @steeevienicks, @hallway5, @t3a-bag, @dodgerandevans, @lumimon47, @dancingwiththeplanets }

#strawberryfic #din x reader #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #the mandalorian x reader

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