#if nothing else i think i kind of like running ?

[yeyinde]

touch starved reader with an oral fixation x kidnapper!Simon who’s all punishment and no physical affection? Please Simon just a little kiss? with tongues? :( (i just wanna make out with this man while my heart aches for him)

by Allah, you people are dogs. i will write the filth as usual.

DEAD DOVE, 18+ | dubcon. kidnapping. mean!Simon. dom!Simon. masking corporal punishment as affection. kissing. size kink, size difference. some thigh riding. degradation + humiliation (verbal). non-con pet play. marking (heavyyyyyy mentions of Simon biting you like a chew toy). choking. daddy kink (but in the awful, demeaning way). manipulation. forced affection. coersion. forced/manufactured dependency. brief mention of Simon stepping on your back to hold you down so he can whip you w a cat o nine tails. yanno. the usual Friday night.

idk. there's something so hot about you, completely naked, riding Simon's clothed thigh as he holds you up by your neck. tongue out, desperate for a kiss while he just mocks you the whole time.

It's survival. 

At first.  

A means of masking the innate horror of being stripped of your agency, your autonomy, by a man you barely even know. One you met once before (fate sealed), and now—outside of your apartment complex where he was idling by the foothold, smoking a cigarette as he leaned against the brick wall, head turned. Gaze narrowed as you approached. 

Waiting for someone, you assumed, thinking nothing else about the matter. 

Nothing else, except—

He looked familiar. You think you saw him before. He was staring at you. Hadn't stopped. Hasn't said a word, either. The silence was oppressive. Heavy. Your hands fumbled with the keys. Shaking. Trembling. 

He's pretty, you thought, suddenly. In the way car wrecks can sometimes be. Jarring and awful and hideous, but—

Mesmerising. 

Macabre. And that's what he is. Everything from the mask on his face (skulls, go figure), to the absurdity in his size, his width. The way space itself seemed to move around him, bending and distorting just to let him pass. His own gravitational pull. Magnetic. You feel it tugging on you as he pulls another lungful of smoke. Another. Another.  

(like an hourglass, a timebomb, almost. you wonder what will happen when it runs out—)

He gives you the creeps. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. A visceral sense of unease curdling in the pit of your belly as he keeps staring, staring. Eyes—crystalline under the broken headlamp, washout into crushed topaz—drilling into your back, sharp enough to flay skin. Everything inside of you says to run, but your key won't fit inside the lock. Won't—

Ever. 

And hindsight has always been a bitter thing, hasn't it? Cruel in her mockery. Had you known, then, that he wasn't a workman loitering by the complex, waiting for a friend; or a low-level drug dealer casting webs into the plum hewn aether, it might have saved you. Might have. 

Maybe. Because he was there, waiting for you, all along. 

Life has a funny way of paying back good deeds. All it took for your life to crumble down around you, rubble falling off of a shaking mountain, was kindness. Was seeing a large man in the pouring rain, already drenched. Black clothing sticking to the granite contours of his body, and offering sanctum in the shape of a rusting umbrella you found at a thrift store for three dollars. 

(“here,” you said, chipper. All smiles. “i live just down the street, and you look like you need it more than i do. do you want it?”

and he—

he simply stared. stared. his eyes liquid, molten, as they carelessly dropped, roaming down the length of your body at his own leisure. leering. assessing. it was odd. weird, but—

he huffed, then. seemingly satisfied by whatever you measured up to in his head. his neck lulled back, and he gazed at you from down the crooked length of his nose, tucked neatly away under the thick band of a facial mask. skulls. how could you be so stupid? 

slowly, like he was trying not to startle a mare, his gloved hand reached out, curling thick fingers around the hilt of it. he tugged once. in your stupor, you forgot to let go. embarrassment flooded in. he huffed again, quietly amused, as you untangled your numbed fingers from the umbrella. 

in your distraction, he moved closer. smelled of ash, of mildew. sweat and stale cigarettes. there was something predatory in the way he slipped through space. a preternatural quiet. an eerie stillness. 

you hadn't realised he was there, looming, until he rasped out, “more ‘n you could ever realise, pet.”

and you're sure why you do it. did it. but your hand slips into your shopping bag, eyes widen. heart thundering in your chest. 

“are you hungry? i, uh, i just bought some apples, um—”

his eyes are lavascapes. shackles. chains. “i could eat.”)

And now—

Forced to play this strange cat and mouse of his where he treats you like soot on the bottom of his shoe, and you pretend that it's affection. Love. How godless.  

Protection, he calls it. 

("mine," he whispers, orison soft, into your ear. "ain't go' nowhere else to go, do you, pet? world's big. would eat a small thing like you up. safer here. wit' me. only me.") 

You wonder what he'd do if you told him the biggest danger here was the madness nestled inside your head, the one that sometimes made you look at him like he was your salvation instead of the warden holding the end of your leash in a firm hand. Unyielding—like everything he does. Is. 

Withholding, too. Everything must be earned. Nothing given. Nothing handed out. And you know that this is a ploy, a tactic. Subterfuge meant to chisel into your sense of self, dehumanise you. Turn you into a simpering, obedient little doll for him to play with as he wishes. You know this, and yet—

It's survival, you promise yourself as he tugs on the hook latched to your collar, testing it for weakness. Survival, when his hands—bare, bare; warmed skin against skin, you could just weep—brush over your throat, nails skimming goosebumped flesh as he wedges one, then two inside, hirsute knuckles tickling your pulse. It tightens the collar to near choking. Intentional, you know. He likes it when you beg—for air, for food, water, him. 

Vile man. Awful. 

(You want to roll on your belly at his feet.)

This cold, cruel touch lights a fire under your skin. It's been months since he's last done so. Always wearing gloves when he has to. Using paddles, belts, when you misbehave. Never his bare hand. Not anymore. 

(“m’hand is for good girls,” he slurred, words merging, meshing together, painted with exertion. He wedged his boot against the small of your back, holding you down, and cracked the end of a cat over your bare ass, thighs. Unbothered by your howls, your screams, as the whip bit into your skin. You've never so much as been hit as a child for misbehaving, and now, as an adult, you have a madman standing over you, introducing you to something called a cat o’nine tails—a favourite in the army, lovie. “bad girls,” his boot pressed down harder, heel digging into your spine. “Bad girls get the whip—”)

Bad. Bad. Because you tried to run, to leave him. He dressed you up, called you Mrs Riley, and you—

Ducked out the back door when he turned away for a second. 

Stupid. It was poor timing. A test. He set you up, measuring your loyalty to him, your commitment, and you failed. Failed. 

(“this is what ‘appens when spoiled little cunts get their way too much. they act out, don't they? bitin’ the ‘and that feeds. you'll learn soon enough, though—”)

Ghost—sir, sir (master, maker, god; you'll call him anything he wants if he touches you again)—pulls his fingers away, depriving you of his touch once more. And it's all so stupid. So fundamentally wrong, deplorable, but you follow. Needy. Whining for it in the back of your throat. 

It's been months. Months without touch. Without sensation outside of leather lashing across your thighs, your ass; harsh, gloved fingers digging into your jaw, braced against the back of your head, as you swallow down his cock in an effort to prove to him you've been good. So good. Can be good. His good girl. 

You need to touch him. Need his touch. Ache for it, for something outside of this nook he placed you inside of, denied the privilege of living upstairs with him after you tried to escape. 

You want to. Badly. Your fingers twitch. Ghost sees it. Hums. 

“Need somethin', pet?” 

Your mouth is dry. You swallow. It burns. It hurts. “Yes—”

“Yes, what?”

“Sir—”

Behind the mask he's yet to take off for you fully, only ever hitching it under his chin to devour your cunt whenever you've been good, his jaw tightens, the fabric bunching up. 

You reel back from the look of sheer displeasure etching harsh lines into the hollow gaps of his eyes. Heart thundering. Stomach churning. 

“Mas—” he cuts you off with a soft sigh. Marked with his irritation. “D—dad—”

Dad. A new one. Daddy. He didn't seem like the sort to be into this type of play, not with his sardonic, deadpan eyes. His mockery. His dessicated humour, awful and biting. You'd have sooner expected him to laugh at you—in that slow, deep hum he gives; a little chuff, full of condescension and jeer—than to get off on it. On you, kneeling between his legs with your chin braced against his palm, mouth open, tongue out, as he fucks into the tight clench of his fist, groaning as you beg daddy to give you a taste. 

It's gross. Disgusting. 

It's not done for anything else other than to humiliate you. To crush you under the heel of his boot—little bug—so that you will always know where your place is in this scenario. His little wife. Mother, mum—

He pulls on the leash, jerking you forward. Purrs, “good girl,” and then steps back, moving away from you. Cruel. Dismissive. You hate him, hate him—

(Need him so deeply. With every fibre of your being—)

You watch him as he goes, mourning the loss of his presence already, as he paces around your space, your cage. Broad shoulders barely fitting inside. Head ducking to avoid hitting his crown on the popcorn ceiling. It's strange seeing him here like this. Prowling. He usually comes when he wants you, when he needs to enact more merciless punishment on you for whatever perceived evils you committed (not greeting him with a kiss when he walked in, not letting him suffocate himself in your cunt when he had you sit on his face, not making him cum all over your face quick enough when you knew he had other engagements to get to—), or when he ruts, heavily, between your thighs, cold and detached. Seeking pleasure from your icy flesh, and giving nothing in return but white hot agony. 

Him here, idling in your presence, is revolutionary. 

“S–sir—?”

He hums, quiet. Sits in the chair as you gather the fragments of yourself littered on the ground. His mood is malleable, it seems. 

You push, fingertips sinking into the putty of his agreeable temperament. “Can I—”

You waver when his sharp eyes raze over your bare body—clothes are for good girls, after all—pupils sloshing over the edges, bleeding into midnight blue. 

Your body is a battlefield. Every inch of skin branded with his mark—pretty, thrawn rings of teeth tattooed in silver, haloed in black and red, desecrate your flesh: neck, collarbones, breasts, belly, thighs (a particular favourite of his), ass, mons; all bitten through, chewed up. It weeps when you move, has blood trickling down your skin. The cracking scabs make him coo, poor thing, all bloody fer me? and he licks at them, sucks, until only a pinkish wound in the mimesis of canines remains. 

Uprooted, turned into something new—

His chest expands when he settles his gaze on the sliver of space between your spread thighs. Concealed in tenebrous, hidden from his leering, lecherous view. He cocks his head, considers something unknown to you. His thoughts, his mind, worlds away. Untouchable. 

(only to bad girls, he’d snarled out when you asked why—)

“Testin’ my patience still?” He doesn't rip his gaze away from your cunt, speaks to it sometimes more than he speaks to you. “Thought this alone time might’a cleared your ‘ead.”

You flush. Embarrassment roiling through you. His displeasure is a palpable thing. Heavy. You hate the weight of it. 

“I need—I need you.”

Another toneless hum. “‘Course you do. Ain't got anyone else.”

He's awful. Hideous. You want to rip his tongue out of his mouth. “I—I want you. Please.”

Ghost doesn't answer. You stopped expecting him to a long time ago, his moods odd measures of ebbs and flows; passive and mild, cracking terrible, awful jokes as he strokes your back, hands riveted to your skin, and then biting and caustic the next. Pushing and pushing until you lash out, snap, so he has a reason to push you down, punished and smothered under his bulk, as he ruts into you like a beast, a man starved. Tells you it's for your own good. That you need him. Would be lost without him. 

Bludgeoning a hole into you wide enough for him to crawl inside of. Poisoning you from the inside out with the same nocuous rot that flows in his veins. 

Maybe that's been his agenda all along. Maybe. To make you want him as badly as he wanted you. Desperate, obsessive. Going so far as to follow you home, lost little mutt waiting in the shadows outside of your door until you threw him another bone. And when that didn't work, when the food stopped being enough—

He took you. Held you captive in his house deep in the wilderness. A place so endlessly green that you sometimes stare out at it—unfathomable sea of phalthos and jasper—and feel dizzy. You'll get lost out there—

just like he says. 

As he turns your obsecration over in his head, you wait, supplicant to this man as you rest on your knees. Pretty pet with a golden collar adorned in gems. 

Fitting, you find. With his head cradled against his thick knuckles, you can't help but shiver at the way he looks shrouded in the gloaming embers of a fading twilight. Leonine. A king perfectly at ease in this thick, caliginous atmosphere.

His eyes burn, magmatic, in the low light. Vats of endless ink. Black holes that will swallow you whole if you get too close. But he's poised. Contemplative. Assessing. 

And then grips the end of the leash tight in his other hand. Tugs.  

You obey the wordless command, crawling on your hands and knees to where he's spread out on the recliner. Laxed, dripping with a careless indifference as you wander to him, resting your chin on the spread of his knee. 

Looking up, up, at him, waiting. Wanting. 

There's so much of him—a fact that has been the catalyst to your downfall the moment you saw him standing under the awning; this massive creature. Thighs wider than the width of your body. Burly forearms. Broad shoulders. He's big. Indomitable. Thick, endlessly so. But there's a give to his body. Valleys of softness hiding corded muscle. Firm, but—

Your fingers sink into the soft give of his belly when you reach out, bracing against stomach. Pulling yourself further into the bracket of his spread thighs, inching closer to him. 

He meets your reverent stare, eyes liquid along his lower lash line.

“Thought you were gonna keep me waitin’ all night,” he muses, giving another pull on the leash. It destabilises you. Your nose bumps into his sternum, and you moan at the sting. 

There's a dissonance in the back of your head. A hairline fracture in the line that keeps a degree of separation between pleasure and pain. They meet against the crack in the divide, merging into a abysmal polyphony conducted by his hand. 

He watches, amused, as you whimper, sniffing harshly against the burn. It's not bleeding, and not broken—small mercies, you suppose—and you let it simmer into a dull ache as you slowly clamber into his lap.

Ghost leans back as you settle, greedily taking in the sight of your thighs stretched wide over his leg, cunt pressed, tight, against the rough scrape of his jeans. The touch burns. He hasn't touched your pussy in weeks—

“C’mon,” he urges, hand spanning the width of your lower back. Coaxing. “Show me ‘ow good you can be.”

It's all the permission you need. Slowly, slowly, your hips start to gyrate, dragging your slit over the coarse material. The friction is agony. You need more—

He draws his other hand up, curls it around your neck, forcing your head back, back. You gasp, staring at him, dizzy, from down the slope of your nose. The clasp of the collar digs into your skin. It hurts. It's too much. 

you don't want him to stop. 

His hand is huge. It spans the entire length of your neck, thumb to your pulse, pinky grazing the hollow of your throat. It forces you to lift your chin higher just to let him fit.

He likes it, too, you know. His eyes darken as he takes in the sight of his bare hand, scarred and thick; dusted with a cropping of fine hairs along his scabbed knuckles, sitting against the whole of your throat. Swallowing you up. Can feel how much he enjoys the sheer depth between your sizes when his cock twitches, stiffening more

The look on his face is appraising, anatomising. There's a cold measure of distance in his gaze. A barren polynya. You want to cross it. Chart these untamed lands until they're deeply ingrained within your being. Cimmerian effigy burning to keep you warm. 

It's survival, you think, and arch into the palm of his hand. 

He holds you like a doll. One hand on your lower back, pressing your cunt to thigh. The other tightening around your throat. Bare skin against bare skin, and oh, you could just cry—

But this is not what you need. What you want. And he knows. He always does. Knows the inside of you like it's written down—inked on paper. Thumbs through the makeup of you, chapter by chapter, until no mystery remains. 

“Tell me what you need, pet. Beg for it.” 

“Let me—” his hands tighten, choking the air from your throat. Crushing your collar against your neck. “Lemme—kiss you, please, please—”

Tighter. Tighter. The world around you swims under a thin ocean. Phosphenes swim, untethered, in your periphery, ghosting along the curve of his shoulders. He might kill you yet. Keeping going, going, until those brittle, bird-like bones in your neck snap—

You'd let him, you think, muscles falling lax. Submissive. Just the way he says he likes even though you know he fucks you harder, touches you more, more, when you act out. Misbehave. 

“Kiss me?” He taunts, words abrasive. Strident. Scrubbing hard against your skin. “Ain't that jus’ the sweetest thing I ever ‘eard.” 

You burn, blister. “Please—”

“Reckon I ought to. Kissed your pretty cunt ‘fore I even kissed your lips, huh, pet?” 

Your chest folds over itself. Stomach knotting. Balling tight. Unease is a razor blade scraping your nerves. 

“Simon—”

“Ah, ah—” his hand tightens. Vicious. Chiding. “You ‘aven’t earned the privilege of sayin’ my name, ‘ave you? Cheeky thing. Might ‘ave to take a cane to you next.” 

“No, no, no—! I'm—”

“Sorry?” He mocks, cocking his head. Condescension drips from the corners of his eyes. 

“Please, sir—”

“Dad is gettin’ tired of this attitude of yours, pet—” his fingers dig into your skin, hard. Biting. A warning, you know. The blunt press of a blade to your jugular. But it thrums along the suture line to your desire, a wellspool of murk coiling low in your guts. You throb, cunt clenching down around nothing. Achingly empty. “Thought we got rid of it this time ‘round. Learned our lesson.”

The words are frank, prosaic. Had you any sense of self still malingering in the back of your head, you might have struck him for the blatant disrespect. But as you struggle to reach for it, pawing around in the vacuous abyss for any fragment of who you were before this, before him, you know—without any doubt—that none exists. Nothing. He’s too ingrained in your marrow, hewn into your skin. Copper sutures holding his filament within you. Cradled between your thighs, nestled in the rotting vacancy of your heart. 

He knows you. Every part—

“We did—we did, da—daddy, please—” 

It’s shallow. Muffled, like he’s trying to swallow it down, but you feel it rumble through his broad chest. A guttural sound. A groan. Drenched in pleasure, in want. So thick, you could almost taste it. 

He hides his need under a layer of derision. 

“Such a needy thing, ain't you? Desperate little slag like you wouldn't last out there, would you?” 

His hand digs into your hip, pushing you off of his thigh. Eyes skewering into the wet stain on his trousers. A huff spills out—the sound a near perfect mimicry of crushing charcoal in your hand. 

“No. You'd be eaten alive. Torn to pieces. World's too big for somethin' like you.”

Mindless, dazed, you nod. Arching into him. The leather leash snaps against your chest. “Yes, yes—”

His cock presses into your thigh, hard, fat. Your mouth waters. Drool dribbles down your chin. 

He smells of tinder when he leans in close, blood drenched words biting into your skin. “messy today, aren't you? Be lost without me. Tha’s why you wear a collar, isn't it?”

Pitifully, you nod. Eyes full of tears. Each word is a bludgeon into your resolve. Into your sense of self. 

But it earns you his affection, and his thumb presses into the corner of your mouth, unhinging your jaw until it falls open, lax. He holds you like that, mouth lax with his hand still around your neck. The other lifts away from your lips, goes to the thick band around the bridge of his nose, slips inside. 

There's no buildup to it. No lingering sense of anticipation. Practical, detached, he merely tugs it down, and lets it snap under his chin. 

Your breath is punched out of your lungs at the sight of him. Barefaced. Scarred. His nose is crooked; a jagged hook with scar tissue delineating the spots where it's been broken too many times. His lips are—

Full. 

Mangled. 

Scars run in thick slashes over them, denting the flesh in places. Burn marks line his pale flesh. Charcoal rubs into his eyes, highlighting the whites of his lashes against smeared soot. 

He's—

Pretty. 

Like a car crash. Calamity. The broken remains of a town after a hurricane, a tornado, ripped it apart. Ugly, brutal. His face looks like it's been mauled by a bear, a tiger. Scarred and hideous, and—

You shiver. His eyes drop, landing on your own lips. The soot on his brow flutters down, lands on his eyelashes when he lifts his brow up mockingly. Derision curdling an awful smirk on the corner of his mouth. Crooked. Like him. Like his teeth. His nose. His boxy jaw. His lips—

You kiss him. 

Can't help yourself, really. There's a pull. Gravitational. Magnetic. You need, need, to taste him. To quench this ache in your jaw that makes you want to wrap your tongue around something, play with it between your teeth. Soft and sweet—

Ghost's lips are plump beneath yours. The thick scar tissue is almost velveteen when it glides over your bottom lip. You moan into it, into the feeling; victory—however pyrrhic—swims like mercury in your veins. Finally. 

And he doesn't kiss you back. Doesn't make any effort to reciprocate at all, but he's not tense beneath you. Not stunned. Or reluctant. He’s pliant. Malleable. Agreeable, willing to let you devour his mouth, his taste, as much as you want. Doting. Letting you spoil yourself on him. With him.

Because you need him, don't you? 

Like the air you breathe. The food he gives you—apples, always, on rainy days; salmon and rice in a pretty bowl with your name etched into the porcelain—and the attention, the affection—

(suck my cock, pretty girl. don't make me put a gag on you—deeper, you can take it, can't you? take my fat cock all the way up inside your sweet little cunt—my pretty girl—)

—it’s all so divine. 

His hands on your body, your throat, spasm. Once. Just once. Against your leg, his cock twitches. Leaks prespend into the demin. You rut against his thigh, aching for it. Whimpering—

And then he's groaning into the kiss, snarling out your name until it wedges between your lungs, syphoned in from his scorching breath. Another brand in the shape of him. 

Ghost kisses the same way he eats—messy, sloppy; all teeth and tongue, and full pretty lips. Clumsy, like no one taught him how to properly hold his silverware and he's trying to mock what he saw on television. Brumish. A broken, contemptuous pastiche of sumptuosity. A starving dog, snarling around its plundered morsel. Protective. Possessive. 

It coils around you. Thick, smothering. 

He sucks your tongue into his mouth, catching it between his teeth. The sting brings tears to the corner of your eyes, and when you pry them open, you find him already staring at you (always, always, always—), lidded. Heavy pools of desire shaded in the brume of a winter dawn. A bonfire flickering in the distance of a whiteout. Sanctuary from the cold—

He seems to catch himself. Expression flickering. Warbling around the edges. It closes off in a blink. He pulls back. Locks into the ashlar veneer of this indifference he wears like a suit of armour. 

But you saw it. It was there. Within reach—

“Need me, don't you?” He drawls, timber a needlepoint between cruelty and desire. Sultry, low. Husky. He knows what it does to you. How he can unravel you at the seams with just his voice alone. “Need me so fuckin’ much, pet. Would be lost without me—”

“Please, Simon,” you whisper, feather-soft. Cunt throbbing, pulsing. Needy. “Please—”

The strident reprimand for using his name doesn't come. His hand tightens around your throat, unconscious. A paroxysm that has pleasure carving itself down your spine, electric. 

“Come get it, then,” he rasps, voice wrecked. Raw. Curling at the edges, thickening his accent until the words elide. 

Hand to your throat, he drags you close. Closer still. Keeps you sat pretty on his lap as he pulls you in for a bruising, hungry kiss. Tongue shoving between your teeth when you gasp.

His kisses are always hungry, but this is different. Greedy. He devours you whole. Eats you alive. His hand falls to your lower back, holding you tight to his chest.

You moan into it, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. Squeezing until your knuckles blanche, joints twinging in discomfort. 

After months of nothing, this alone is bliss. His taste soaking onto your tongue, drenching it in the bitter tang of sage, wheatgrass, and stale cigarettes. Intoxicating. It leaks into you, nocuous. Infects from the inside out. 

His plan coming to fruition, you think. What he sought out to do all along, ever since you wandered close to this untameable Tartarean guard, and offered yourself up to the jowls of a starving beast. 

He pulls away with a heavy breath, eyes charing around the edges; brittle briquette. 

“Gonna be a good girl from now on? Come upstairs, be a good mum for dad? Or am I gonna ‘ave to cane this—” his hand drops, grabbing a fistful of your ass in his hand, fingers digging into the skin between your cheeks. Possessive. It cracks like a whip down your nerves. “—tight lit’le arse?”

You shake your head instantly. Quickly. “I'll be good,” you whisper into his chin, tongue flicking out to lick across his scars. The dried sweat on his skin tastes briny. Reminds you of the ocean on a brumous November evening. The incipient yawn of a ravenous hurricane gathering its lot on the shore. 

Sirens blare in the distance. Fear curdles in your guts, sits heavy like a stone. An anchor. 

“So sweet f’me,” he mutters, words deepening as his head falls back, letting you pepper kisses across the underside of his jaw. Mouthing along the constellation of scars. His voice is rumble. It shivers across your lips, tongue. Shakes the marrow in your bones. “Better stay this way, pet.”

Into his pulse, you murmur, “I think you like it better when I’m bad.” 

You can feel the snarl brimming in the back of his throat. Your ass stings with the phantom burn of when he lashed out with the whip. It drags a whimper out from deep within your chest. 

His hand tightens around your neck. A warning. “Got some guests over f’dinner tonight. Would love to finally introduce them to my sweet little wife—” deft fingers slip across the dewy skin of your folds, knuckles grazing over your drenched hole. The touch makes you squirm. “But if you’re gonna be bad, then I’ll leave you locked up down ‘ere.”

“I’ll be good,” you swear, words a hushed breath over his jugular. His finger flattens, drawls soft, slow circles around your clit. “Ah, I’ll—I’ll be so, so good, Simon—”

“Good girls deserve rewards, don’t they?” His palm flexes possessively around your throat when you nip at old scar tissue. “Maybe I’ll let you sleep in our bed tonight instead of in your dog house. We can ‘ouse together. I’ll fuck you proper—” he roughly shoves two fingers into your hole, leering when you gasp, back arching in a bow. “Know this pretty pussy has been achin’ for me, ‘asn’t it? Gonna breed it full—”

There’s static in your head, ringing in your ear. The noise distorted, pulled underwater. You think you say something, plead—no, no, no, anything but that—but his hand tightens around your throat, fingers pushing up, up into you, notching against that spot inside that makes your head swim, your vision flicker. The abyssal chasm inside of you aches, rages; its waters swell, currents frothing, slamming against the ceiling of its iron prison, and—

Simon pulls away. Fingers stilling inside of you. No friction, no relief. Hypoxia renders the world silent. Muted. Held in stasis, stagnating at the edge of a gaping precipice he holds you over, secured by the fragile curve of your neck, fine bone china. 

Phosphenes swim by. The chossy wobbles.

This distance is agony. You need to be closer, closer, to crawl inside of him, to live in the brackets of his ribs, safe and protected from the world he warns you about. Stone cold. You mewl, whine—

“Gonna be my good little wife?”

Gasping with broken lungs, you nod. Nod, nod until you’re nauseous. Dizzy. Sick—

His spit cools on your lip. Your hackles raise, body shuddering in revulsion—some primal part rears, hisses it’s infectious. Wrong. Get rid of it—

“Not gonna run?”

Slowly, you lick your lips, catching his sickness on your tongue. Swallowing it down until it sinks like a stone to the bottom of your belly. Heavy, for such a small, damning thing. 

How absurd, you think. How absolutely mad. 

Then you whisper, paperthin, “kiss me again, please, Simon—”

And he moves. Liquid in the gloam. Made more for shadows, midnight, than for golden apricity, where the light is harsh on his face, unveiling ruins and ravines; monoliths meant to be paid tribute to in the dark. Your hands lift to his jaw when he moves in, catching your lips in a bruising, biting kiss. 

His touch is searing. Owning. He isn't laying claim: no, you're already his. 

It's possessive and angry. No finesse. All slate teeth and tender tongue. They slide together in a strange game; little fawn stupidly nipping at the tiger's heel. He lets you, groaning into your mouth when you arch back, hips pushing into his fingers, taking him deeper. A pale pantomime of what's to come when he lays you on his soft bed, sweet and divine, and buries himself deep. 

It should scare you. Ought to. And maybe it does. Survival, you think, but you still pull him closer. Deeper. Because it’s bliss, you find. The world around you falling dead. Silent. Pulled into a vacuum. Teetering on the edge of a black hole, event horizon. He drags you in. 

Simon hums, pulling you closer. Touching you—soft, sweet. Palms a gyve. Shackles, chains. His fingers lift from your neck, trailing down the slope of your throat until he reaches the golden loop of your collar's hook. His gaze glides, magmatic, down to where your leash dangles between your heaving breasts.

It's almost tender when he grabs it into his fist. When he pulls, pulls—

Your back arching. His fingers slipping deeper inside your cunt. Obedient little doll.

When he lifts his eyes, the look you find is hot enough to char bone. You taste blood in the back of your throat—

Into the seam of your mouth, he purrs, “good girl.”

—and you swallow it down with a moan. 

(after all, you know better than to run from starving dogs—)

#when your kidnapper is mean and rude as hell but you've been dtf since day one: the manifesto #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #i forget where i put peoples hands sometimes and then have to go back and remind myself where everyone's at lmao #hope you enjoyedddddddddddd #i'm gonna go pour myself a glass of bleach bye #simon ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #cod #ghost #simon ghost riley #simon riley x you #ghost x you

[watchmegetobsessed]

SOFT LAUNCH

A/N: luckily i actually wrote this concept for once lol

WORD COUNT: 2k

SUMMARY: You officially soft launch your relationship.

MASTERLIST | SUPPORT ME!

Your usual barely changed when your relationship with Harry moved from a friendship to a romantic relationship. Well, at least your public usual. 

Because in the privacy of your home or when around you it’s strictly the people you trust, a lot changed. The kisses, the touches, the looks, it’s obvious just how hard you fell in love with each other and your friends often tease the two of you for being great actors for hiding all of these the moment you step out into the public. Very early into your relationship the two of you agreed to keep it as private as possible, so the world didn’t see a single thing of how you eased from being friends into becoming a couple. 

Spotting you out and about together wasn’t a new thing, you’d been friends for a while before you finally took everything down another road, there were plenty of pictures of the two of you grabbing lunch or coffee, hanging out with friends or even attending events. The moment you were spotted for the first time rumors started spreading that you might be an item, but with time they died down and back then, they weren’t true. But what people didn’t see was the shift that happened behind all those simply friendly pictures, how you both fell for each other and your love blossomed steadily and undeniably behind the scenes while everyone else started to accept that you are nothing more than good friends. 

There were photos, still, but what the tabloids didn’t see was the kiss you shared the moment you were behind closed doors. 

It’s been over ten months and you’re definitely over that first phase where all you can see is the pink clouds, no one around you is questioning if this is just a fling, it’s quite clear you are planning your future together. 

There is a downside of keeping your relationship in the shadows however, a kind of freedom is taken away that’s given for everyone else. Date nights have been restricted to your or Harry’s place, if you wanted to go out somewhere you always needed extra people around you so it wouldn’t look romantic. You haven’t been able to go on a vacation, just the two of you, because it would draw suspicion, so it’s been always with others, friends and family. You can’t set your favorite photo of him as your lockscreen, because fans are always quick to spot him in the tiniest details. 

It’s not that you want to post about him day and night, that’s not your style, never was, you like to keep things private, it might be selfishness or consciousness, doesn’t matter. But some days it would be nice to hold his hand as you walk down the street, share a reassuring kiss as you wait in line at the coffee shop or share a photo to your Instagram that features him and only him. 

So it’s been lingering in the back of your head, the thought of being just the tiniest bit more public, allowing yourself to enjoy your love outside of the comfort of your home. 

This is what your mind is racing about as you watch Harry move around the room. The warm Italian sun is peeking through the curtains, calling your name for another wonderful day, exploring Rome. The white, rippled sheets are snaked around your body comfortably, the other half of the bed is still warm from his body. You’re currently residing in a villa that’s hidden enough from curious eyes to let you be yourself even in the backyard, not just inside. 

You mindlessly scroll through your photos from yesterday while Harry is showering and when he appears with a towel wrapped around his hips, hair still damp, water drops running down his chest as he is scratching his jawline and you already know what his question will be. He stops at the end of the bed and opens his mouth, but you’re quicker.

“Do you think I should shave it?” you ask, imitating his voice by lowering yours. He gives you a cheeky look.

“Well, should I?”

“Told you, I love you both ways.”

“Okay, but you surely have a preference,” he pushes.

Sighing, you sink deeper into the pillow, keeping eye contact with him. 

“The stache is… always more than welcomed.”

He chuckles and then walks back in. When he emerges a minute later he is dressed and his facial hair is still the same. 

“Up, up! We have a lot to see today!” He reaches under the covers and easily finds your leg, wrapping his hand around your ankle he tugs on you gently, to which you just grunt at him disapprovingly. 

“Just five more minutes!”

“Come on, don’t you want to explore more?”

“Yeah, but I also want to sleep more.”

“Think of all the pasta and pizza we could be eating right now…” He barely even finishes, you’re already jumping out of bed, sprinting towards the bathroom. Harry just chuckles.

A couple of hours later your little group is grazing the streets of Rome again. You haven’t planned anything major for today, just exploring and having a relaxing time. To be honest, your feet are thankful for a slower day, you feel like you’ve walked around the world these past couple of days. 

Sometime after lunch, your group breaks up. Some want to go souvenir shopping, others want to go back to the villa while you and Harry plan to check out a hidden little park you read about online. So now it’s just the two of you strolling down the streets and as you listen to Harry talk, all you can think about is how your hands are hanging by your sides, sometimes even brush against each other, but you can’t hold his. 

When you find a great spot with amazing view of the city you instantly want to take a picture together, one where Harry is hugging you from behind, the panoramic view of the city in the background, you can already see the picture in your mind and you also think of a place in your home where it would look amazing framed. 

But you know you can’t take a photo like that, you can sense how a few girls recognized the two of you, now they are a few feet away, pretending like they are just casually taking videos, but you know they are recording you and Harry, so you can’t risk it. 

Instead, you both just take pictures of each other, staying as friendly as possible. Your phone is still in your hand when the girls come up to Harry at last, starting a chit chat with him and asking for photos that you end up taking of them of course. They thank his time politely and the two of you move on. 

When you’re lying in bed at the end of the day you’re scrolling through your gallery, smiling to yourself at some of the candid pictures you’ve snapped of Harry today. These are your favorite, when he is just being himself and you catch a glimpse of his true essence, keeping it forever in that frame. 

Then you find a photo you took probably accidentally when the girls approached you earlier. You must have snapped it when you were putting away your phone, it features Harry standing on the cobblestone, but only his feet and his tattooed arm is shown, his skin is a warm tanned color from being out in the Sun so much lately, his tattoos look so cool, you always loved the edge they give him. It’s also such a candid picture and for some reason you just love it so much, it’s exactly the kind of photo you’d post on your Instagram story. 

The door to the bedroom opens and Harry walks in with two bottles of water in his hands, he places one to your nightstand before he joins you in bed, opening his. 

“Why are you staring at a photo of my… arm?” he asks with a chuckle, when he sees what you have open on your screen. 

“You have a nice arm,” you grin up at him. “I just… like this photo,” you add with a shrug. 

Harry hums, but doesn’t really get stuck on the topic. He turns his attention to his own phone, sneaking one arm under your head, pulling you closer to cuddle him. But you’re still stuck on the photo and all the feelings and thoughts you’ve been struggling with. 

“H?” you finally lift your head to look at him. 

“Yes baby?”

“Have you ever thought of… being a bit more public? About us?”

He locks his phone and puts it aside to give you his undivided attention. He never fails to make you feel like his number one priority.

“I have, yeah.”

“And what do you think if we just… went for it? What if we just stopped hiding.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I just… I would love to act like a couple more, not just when we’re alone, behind closed doors. I’m not saying we should make out on the street, but… Holding hands, a few tiny kisses, these would be nice.”

Harry stays silent and you grow nervous that he might see it all entirely differently. You know it better than anyone else that Harry values his privacy highly, however he is not the most private public figure either, that’s also fact. 

His gaze finds yours and slowly, you notice a tiny smile hiding in the corners of his mouth. 

“Whatever you feel comfortable with, I’m okay with that as well.”

“Really?” You let out a relieved breath as you sit up in surprise. He chuckles.

“Of course. I just wanted to protect you. And I will still be doing that, but if you feel like you’re okay with being a couple for the rest of the world as well, then let’s do that.”

At first you pout at him, touched at how calm and supportive he is about the whole thing, then you just throw yourself at him, kissing him stupid. 

“So then can I soft launch you?” you ask against his lips. 

“What?” he laughs, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“Soft launch. I want to post this picture,” you say holding up your phone again, showing him the photo from earlier, “on my Instagram story. Your face is not shown, but everyone will know it’s you. That’s a soft launch, posting a suspicious but not straight forward picture of your partner.”

“Okay, Miss Urban Dictionary,” he laughs, his hand cupping the back of your head to bring you down for another kiss. 

Cuddling to his side you open Instagram and then put the line ‘LOVE-ly day in Rome’ between his tattoos so it’s not quite what you notice at first, but it definitely catches your attention if you look at the photo for a few more seconds. 

“How do you like it?” you ask, showing him your phone.

“The best soft launch of history,” he teases you before you finally post it. 

Then you watch what happens together. Though you don’t have as many followers as Harry does, a lot of his fans engage with your social media profiles as well, hoping to get some content from you as well. Just a few minutes later the photo starts spreading across the internet of course, it reaches Twitter, Tiktok and other platforms, the reactions are mixed and pretty much all over the place, some aren’t the nicest, but Harry is quick to remind you just how much he loves you. 

When you both put your phones away, shutting the rest of the world out, you’re lying in bed, facing each other, your hands laced together between the two of you. 

“Now it’s out there,” you whisper.

“Softly,” he jokes and you just roll your eyes at him, smiling. “Is hard launch a thing as well?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that like?”

“Well, it has to feature your pretty face, preferably in a romantic setting.”

“Will we also be doing that?”

“Hmm… maybe.”

“Okay,” he smiles warmly. “But soft or hard, I will always love you.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed and buy me a coffee if you want to support me!

#harry #styles #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles oneshot #harry styles one shot #harry styles fluff #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x reader #harry styles blurb

[calypsocolada]

THE GREATEST | s. gojo

synopsis: the greatest has taken in interest in you. authors note: hello. rough two weeks huh. there are no spoilers in this for chapter 261 fyi. ive decided us gojo stans should just steal him from his creator. Who's in? also i am pretty sure this is the longest fanfic I wrote. I was continusly writing for almost a week after that last chapter. OH AND the song the greatest by billie eilish is about gojo and its devastating. this fic is loosely based of the song. cw: ANGST, light smut, happy ending (he deserves it), no spoilers, death impications, fem reader wc: 6.1k

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Gojo had never once questioned his fate. He’s known since he was able to think for himself that he was the strongest. That he was the monster people could turn to to fight the other monsters. He never minded. Not much at least. He knew it was grossly unfair. Knew such a fate pressed on anyone else would have him up in arms but… no one was up in arms for him. No one stood between him and the monsters. No one could. That should’ve hurt him and if he was being completely transparent and honest… it used to. When he was a teen and wasn’t able to hide his emotions as well as he could now. He was a weapon to everyone in the jujutsu society. A weapon and a monster and a savior and the greatest that ever lived. He was revered by his fellow colleagues. Was cheered by his students. He was the greatest weapon to ever live. 

But not to you. Not in the ways that mattered to most at least.

A measly second grade sorcerer with little to no battle experience. One that spends her time mostly in the background. Wasting away with Ino. Annoying Nanami. Steering clear of the greatest. When you first came around Gojo was sort of intrigued with you. You were quite pretty, smart and had a smile that made others smile. Gojo liked that about you. He’d do his usual routine… It usually worked. Usually… Gojo would annoy you, he’d try and charm you, he’d flex his powers in front of you and buy you sweets you didn’t ask for. Nothing worked.

When he flirted you’d make this face and although he liked the face you’d make he knew you weren’t impressed with him. It was like you saw right through his bravado. Saw right through the mask he wore, right down to the raw center of him. He knew you saw something sad. He tried to ignore it. Tried to misdirect your intuition but god you were persistent. You were smart. Smarter than anyone he’d ever known. And empathic as hell. It was frustrating. Not a single soul saw him the way you did. And it was all for nothing. You didn’t like him the way he’d come to hopelessly like you. And it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Gojo really tried to make you laugh but you never laughed when he wanted you to, never laughed when he made an effort to. You only laughed when he least expected it. Never when he was loud and boisterous but rather in quiet moments. Moments when he forgot to act like the greatest. Moments when he was Gojo Satoru and not the greatest. That’s how he knew you saw right through him. 

There was an instance when you completely threw him into a crisis. It was after a particularly gruesome fight. After all was said and done people clapped him on the back, congratulating him on another easy win. Gojo approached you, hoping for that same kind of hollow congratulations but you didn’t give it to him. You asked him if he was alright. Gojo remembered just standing there, remembering the full ache in his chest, the way you looked up at him with concern. No one ever was concerned for him. He replied something jovial. “Of course, don’t you know who you’re talking to?” And he smiled. But you didn’t return that smile as though he reassured you, you smiled sympathetically and replied.

“Must've forgot.” And then you slipped away. Gojo watched you walk away. Watch Ino run up and grab you by the shoulders. Watched you laugh freely and shake your head at something he said before the two of you left. 

A week later Gojo had conned Nanami into having some drinks with him. They sat beside each other, Gojo talking to fill up the dead space and Nanami chugging his third drink. 

“Are Y/n and Takuma dating?” Gojo had slipped into the conversation. Nanami gave him a sideways look. 

“I don’t know.” Nanami replied after a moment, it sounded more like ‘I don’t care’. 

“You’re with them all the time.”

“They’re with me. They bug me.” Nanami sees straight as Gojo sighs. 

“So they bug you. But do they do it together?”

“What a stupid question.” Nanami admonishes, shaking his head. “Why are you asking?”

“Just curious.”

“About Y/n?” Nanami asked and Gojo couldn’t help but look over at him. Nanami wasn’t much of a gossiper, he listened but that was the extent of it. Nanami softly chuckled at the older man’s response and shook his head once more. “No.”

“No, what?”

“They’re not together.”

That was all Gojo needed. He’d never felt threatened before but after seeing you and Takuma together the other day it made him wonder. Well, more than wonder if his lack of sleep the night before proved anything.

The next time Gojo saw you, you were having a quiet lunch in the courtyard. You had a book held lazily in your hand, the other popping grapes into your mouth. Gojo sighed, he’d tried talking to you many times before but his showboating kept you further than arms length. But if he didn’t have his ego to hide behind… What did he have? 

“It’s creepy to watch girls eating from afar.” You called over your shoulder. Gojo startled at the sound of your voice, his heart thumping unsteadily in his chest. You turned and when your eyes met his knees almost buckled. He thought for a moment, after his cheeks flushed red, that you smiled. It was a small smile, the corner of your lips barely turning up before you turned back away from him and to your book. He’d talked up many girls. But none of them made him stumble like you did. Nevertheless, Gojo walked forwards to you. 

“Thought you were out on a mission?” He asked as you flipped the page of your book, not meeting his eyes. 

“Keeping tabs on me?” She asked lazily as Gojo felt his throat tighten. He cleared it and shook his head. 

“Just something I was told.” He says and you scoot over, patting the spot beside you. Gojo stood there stuck for a moment. You usually couldn’t get away from him fast enough but here you were, inviting him to spend a moment with you. You looked up when he didn’t take your offer and cracked a brow up.

“Are you busy?” You asked. Gojo instantly shook his head, coming out of his little stuttered trance. He sat down beside you and reached for some of your grapes without asking. You didn’t say anything about it, just placed your bookmark in your book and sat it down on the blanket you’d spread out. “I wanted… to ask you something?” You said after a beat. Gojo’s eyes flicked to yours and up this close he noticed two things, your eyes had specks of gold in them and there was the lightest dusting of freckles across the top of your nose. He realized he was staring at you too long and recovered by grabbing more grapes. 

“Hmm, what is it?” He asks as he pops a few in his mouth. 

“Do you like sorcery?” The question hung in the air for a moment. Gojo was silent. He’d… never thought about if he liked it before. Never thought about whether these powers he possessed was something he truly wanted or if it was something he needed. 

“Why- do you ask?” Gojo asks, his eyes fixed straight ahead rather than on you. 

“Just curious.” You said softly. Gojo couldn’t help but look over at you now. 

“Of course I like it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” He answered and the words tasted sour in his mouth. And just like before you gave him that look, just a small squint of the eyes, your lips pursing barely. He could tell straight away that you heard his lie. You hummed as though intrigued and shifted your stare to be less piercing. 

“What’s so great about it?” You asked as Gojo swallowed. 

“I’m good at it. I’m the strongest.”

“Yes… everyone is aware you’re the strongest, Satoru.” You brushed off, slightly playfully. Gojo couldn’t get over you saying his name. Saying it that way, with the tiniest emotion in your voice, what he hoped was affection. 

“Are you?” Gojo asked. You raised a brow, cocking your head just slightly. 

“Am I what?”

“Aware that I’m the strongest.” He says as you blow out a laugh. A laugh, he made you laugh. He recorded it in his mind. He knew he’d probably not get another one of those in a while. 

“You don’t let anyone forget it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You go out of your way to prove it. You kill curses that other sorcerers can easily take care of. You put yourself in harm's way over and over again just to get a slap on the back. Of course I know you’re the strongest.” 

“I don’t do it for a slap on the back.” Gojo dismisses. 

“Why do you do it?”

“Because I have to.”

“Because you have to?” You echo and Gojo nods his head. You stare at him for a moment, before responding. “Cause you’re the strongest.” You didn’t say it as though it was a good thing, you said it as though it was his burden. Something heavy that weighed on his shoulders. It hit him deep. You knew him too well. He felt overexposed at this moment. 

“I don’t see anyone else riding my level.” He says, hoping he sounded level, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray him. 

“No one’s doubting your skill, Satoru.”

“You seem as though you doubt it.” 

“I doubt your intentions.”

“My intentions? What do you think I’m secretly going to let curses in to kill all of you?” He laughs sardonically, a little bitterly. Bitter that she saw him in a worse way than he originally thought. You laughed again, it was more of an exhale through the nose but it was another laugh. Two in one day. 

“No. I don’t think that.”

“What do you think?” Gojo couldn’t help but sound the smallest bit desperate. This is the most you two have kept up a conversation and he didn’t want it to end. He wanted to talk to you all day, maybe all night, although that was entirely too much to ask for. It's not like he ever asked for anything for himself before. But he wanted this badly. A normal conversation with someone who seemingly didn’t hold him up on a pedestal. 

“I told you already.” You said, reaching for your book. It was like an unspoken end to the conversation. But Gojo didn’t want it to end. 

“Please, don’t,” He says suddenly and your hand pauses on the spine of your book. You looked over at him and Gojo knew he wasn’t fast enough to cover the desperation. You swallowed and fixed him with a look. 

“I think you’re the strongest sorcerer to ever live.” You spoke as though any louder and someone would overhear you. Your voice soft and eyes piercing into his. His heart stuttered at your words. To know you did think of him. He glanced at your lips as they parted to speak another sentence. “But that’s all you think you are. Just the strongest weapon. Not a person with thoughts and feelings.” You say and Gojo can’t help but stare, can’t help but know he never tricked you, not one bit. 

“That’s… dark.” He tried to laugh, and tried to lighten the mood. You gave him a smile, one that stuttered his heart. 

“Sure is.” You affirmed. Your hand let go of your book as you reached in your cooler and grabbed two drinks out, offering him one. Slowly he took it. “Or maybe I’m wrong.” You say before taking a sip. “Maybe it’s not that deep.” Gojo takes a sip of his own drink and stays silent. Unsure of whether to bear his heart to you or keep quiet. The strongest would keep quiet. He’d bottle things up, after all being strong means you can take care of yourself. But Gojo found himself wanting to spill his darkest secrets to you. The cunning sorcerer that calls him out. The one he can’t look away from. 

“Maybe.” He says finally and the moment is over. He feels hollow. Especially with the way you glance at him, as though somewhat disappointed that there wasn’t more to him but a smiling face and quick witted words. The age old question came back to him. 

Are you strongest because you’re Satoru Gojo? Or are you Satoru Gojo because you are the strongest? 

Was strength a part of his identity or was his entire being centered on strength? He certainly didn’t want it to be everything he was but that’s all most people saw when they looked at him. Gojo drank another drink and leaned back on his hands. 

“Do you ever think of what you would be if you weren’t a sorcerer?” He asked suddenly. Your eyes cut over to him as you lowered your drink from your lips. It was clear you weren’t expecting that question but at the same time you knew exactly what to say. 

“I’m a shit sorcerer.” You said self-deprecatingly. “So I think about it all the time.”

“You’re not so bad.” He says as you turn to look at him. There was a hint of a smirk on your lips. 

“Liar.” You admonished jokingly, barely shaking your head. “I know my flaws.” 

“What flaws?”

“Alright, sweet talker.”You laughed and Gojo could swear he saw a hint of red on your cheeks. You shook your head as though to keep yourself from laughing more. So this is what it was like? This is who Takuma got to sit and joke around with all day long? Gojo felt sickly jealous when that thought crossed his mind. That he’d wasted all this time trying to flirt with you when he could’ve just talked to you. Sure he still wanted more than what you’d probably give him but this slightest bit of attention could probably keep him afloat for months. You ran a hand through your hair and sighed. “You know… I haven’t told anyone this but… I’ve been thinking of quitting.” You said. Gojo couldn’t help but react. Quit? Is that something you could just do? 

“And do what?” 

“My parents own a coffee shop back in America, they wanted me to work there out of high school but… you know this seemed more exciting. Now the prospect of fixing someone's coffee seems more exciting than facing some horrific curses.” You explained as Gojo smiled softly, nodding his head along to your words. He thought about it. Thought about coming into work, you waved him over as you explained some gossip about the other workers. Him tying your apron on and kissing your cheek, you ruffling his hair and smiling up at him. Fixing coffee for a living. Would he be the greatest at that? “I think…” you started, snapping him out of his reverie. “I think I might do that.” Gojo’s brows shot up. 

“Hmm?”

“Fix coffee. I was good at it in high school. And… I miss my family. I’ve lived too far for too long.” You said, a dreamy far off look in your eyes. Gojo can’t help but feel sort of lost. You leaving was something he never expected. People didn’t leave the Jujutsu world unless it was in a body bag. Gojo didn’t know there was another way. 

“You’ve never told anybody else this?” Gojo asks as you look over at him, the ghost of a sweet smile on your lips. 

“You’re… easier to talk to than I thought.” You said and Gojo raised his brows. 

“What do you mean?” He asks softly. 

“I just mean… easier to talk to than before. Before when you’d flirt with me incessantly.” You joke as Gojo reddens. He thought you hadn’t even noticed his attempts but not only did you notice but you avidly avoided him. Gojo bites hit to, cheeks blushing in embarrassment at this revelation. 

“I’m… sorry.” He bleated, shaking his head. You laughed, biting your lip. 

“I didn’t necessarily say I didn’t enjoy... some of it.” You said and when Gojo looked over at you, eyes hopeful Takuma called out across the lawn. You looked at the other man as he pointed to his watch and waved you over to hurry. “Oh shit. Sorry, Satoru. Gotta get going.” You said jumping up. Gojo followed, helping you gather your stuff up. When he handed you the blanket your hand brushed against his sending chills across his body. You gave him a kind smile and waved as you went to meet with Takuma. Gojo stared for a moment before his feet moved on their own. 

“Wait… Y/n,” he called out as you slowed, turning. “If you leave… to go home. I’d like to visit… sometime.” He stumbled through his words, you made him feel like a teenager again.  You gave him a look, an amused look, eyes lighting up. 

“Anytime, I’ll fix you my favorite.” You said and then you turned and met with Takuma. 

Gojo thought about that day all week long. Your voice swimming through his mind. How pretty you looked when he made you laugh. He didn’t flirt, or crack jokes the entire time. He just talked to you. And you seemed to like that. You seemed to like the real him. Not the him he plays up for everyone else. He thought himself into a hole so he got out of bed and winded his way through the hallways towards the lounge, a nice cup of hot tea might help him settle down. When he pushed the door open there you were. Sat at a table, sipping from one of Nanami’s cups. Gojo couldn’t help but show surprise on his face at seeing you up this late. You looked up and when your eyes met Gojo’s words died on his lips. 

“Can’t sleep?” You asked as Gojo cleared his throat, nodding his head. “Me neither.” You remarked with a gentle shrug of your shoulders. Gojo fixed himself a cup of tea and sat down across from you. 

“Why can’t you sleep?” He asked. You sighed, running a hand through your hair. 

“I got a flight in the morning. I’m sort of— uncomfortable with flying.” You said as Gojo couldn’t help but softly smile at you. It was endearing to him that you’d lose sleep over something like that. You gave him a look and barely smirked, shaking your head.

“Where you headed?” He asks. The smile on your lips slightly falters. 

“You didn’t hear?” You ask as Gojo’s brows furrow. He shakes his head. “I did it. Like we talked about a week or so ago. I’m headed home.” You say and Gojo can’t help but let his lips fall open in surprise again. Thinking about it was one thing but doing it so soon had his stomach in knots. You stared at him, drinking in his minuscule reactions. “Today was my last day.” You added as though that would soothe the pain in his chest. He couldn’t look up any longer so he let his eyes fall on his steaming cup of tea. 

“Oh.” Was all he said. Anything more would’ve been too revealing. 

“I— meant to tell you but… you’re so busy all the time.” You said and Gojo looked up then. You didn’t owe him your apologies. 

“It’s fine. You— we talked about it. I just didn’t think you’d want to leave so soon.”

“I’ve been itching to leave for months.” You said with a small turn of your lips. “This job isn’t for the weak and although I’m not entirely terrible I’m not exactly good either.” You laughed. Gojo shook his head, he disagreed with that both times you said it, but he didn’t voice it this time cause it seemed you understood. “It might be childish but I just miss home.” You sigh as Hojo shakes his head immediately. 

“It’s not childish.” He says and finally your guys' eyes meet. You’d be gone in the morning for good and Gojo hadn’t so much as gotten to know you passed a few brief talks. He felt slighted. It was his fault of course but he couldn’t help the bitter feeling that left him wanting more. 

“I… wish we could’ve talked like this sooner, we could’ve been friends.” You said and it was like the nastiest stake to the heart. He knew you didn’t mean it to hurt him because you didn’t know how he felt and he couldn’t only blame himself for that. 

“I do too.” He said softly. You two couldn’t look away from one another. Something dangerous growing, some tension that kept you rooted in this moment. Gojo was the strongest but you never really saw him with anyone. Sure he’d occasionally have drinks with Nanami but for the most part he was alone. It felt stupid to feel anything now, with you leaving in the morning. And unbeknownst to Gojo you had something that formed over the few years you knew him. He intrigued you, he was so strong so sure of himself one moment but there was this look in his eyes. Like a scream for help. He was constantly sent on missions alone, he’d come back battered and bruised and smiling, a smile so fake to you but so real to the others that couldn’t see past it.

You tried once, pathetically, to ask him if he was alright and stupidly gave up when he kept that mask up. You just didn’t want to step over a line and push him further away. But the years you spent here you were unknowingly doing it anyways. Dodging his obvious attempts at flirting because you weren’t sure if they were sincere or not and you couldn’t stand the thought of getting hurt. But here you were, hours away from never seeing this man again. You lied about being afraid of flights, you flew many times. The reason you couldn’t sleep was because of the ‘what if?’. What if you had flirted back years ago? Would you be hurt and jaded towards him? Or wouldn’t you have cracked through something deeper? Would you two be together? Would you be here? Watching him being used by a society that doesn’t care for him or would you steal him away from all this? Take him home and have him fix coffee at your side. Would he be happy or would he be bored? Gojo’s eyes glanced at the clock on the stove.

“It’s getting late. You should try to sleep so you don’t miss your flight.” He said, drinking the last of his tea. 

There was some sort of finality to that. You nodded your head, drinking the rest of yours as well. You stood up and walked to the sink, running water and washing your cup. When you turned the water off and dried your hands, Gojo approached. He sat his mug in the sink. He paused for a moment, as if contemplating something then spoke in an almost whisper. 

“Fuck it.” Before you could begin to ask he turned, hands sliding over your cheeks and bent to press his lips gently against yours. You froze. The kiss was unexpected and stomach achingly tender. Gojo kissed you as though he loved you. With gentleness and persistence. He stepped closer, your body trapped between his own and the counter. 

No, no, no… you thought. 

Why kiss me when I’m leaving? 

But there wasn’t a bone in you that didn’t want this and the revelation was anything but not obvious. You’d know with startling accuracy that you wanted this to happen. You just wished it would’ve happened sooner. You felt the kiss deepen. Gojo ducking his head ever so closer. One hand trailing down from your face, light fingers dancing down your shoulder, past your arm around your hip, fingers gripping and pulling you flush against him. You made a soft noise, your stomach bottoming out as Gojo’s mouth cracked yours open. His hand slid beneath your butt and with ease he picked you up with that one hand and sat you carefully on the counter. The hand on your cheek slid behind your head so you didn’t bump against the cabinets. You two stay like that for a while, feeling out the boundaries that were breaking by the second.

Gojo brushes a lock of hair behind your ear and trails kisses from your lips to your cheek to your jaw and neck. Your head falls back and to the side, your hands softly gripping the front of his shirt, something to keep you the least bit grounded in the moment. You needed to be grounded while Gojo was absolutely drunk on you. He couldn’t believe this was happening, all he knew was that he wouldn’t squander this moment. When you left he wanted you to remember him. You shiver at the sudden more feverish kisses and slide your cold hand beneath his shirt. Gojo doesn’t even jump, he makes a low sound in the back of his throat.

His grip on your hip tightening just slightly before sliding around your back, his warm fingers sliding under the hem of your shirt. You arched closer to him as he moved his lips back to yours, you met his lips with the same fevered kisses as him. You gently tugged Gojo’s shirt up and he moved away from your lips temporarily to let you tug his shirt over his head. His body was scared and lean, you traced a few of his scars with a light tip of the finger and when you looked back up at him he was looking at you with a curious expression. You cleared your throat. 

“Do you want to do this now? Here?” You asked, gesturing to the dimly lit lounge. 

“Do you?” He turned it back on you, his voice wrecked with wanting. You could see the answer clearly in his eyes, he didn’t care where you two were. He’d want you regardless. You thought about it. Was it meaningless to do it here? Would it be better to take him to your room? You were leaving for good in the morning, would it be a mistake to have a one night stand with the strongest? But the wording of one night stand seemed cruel, seemed so unlike what you two were actually doing. It felt deeper. And if it was deeper, were you going home tomorrow with a torn heart? Your hands were still on his stomach, still pressed near a scar. You did want this… but you couldn’t want it. That was the thing all along. Satoru Gojo was going to get himself killed one day. Sure he was the strongest but you could see him wearing down. The scars weren’t healing, he looked tired. Getting involved with him was insuring yourself of a broken heart. You sighed and shook your head. 

“We… shouldn’t.” You said and you couldn’t look up at him. You didn’t want to see how he would react. If you did look up at him you’d see just how much two words could break Satoru Gojo. He couldn’t mask it anymore. He wanted so badly to mean more to you. He wanted to be bare in front of you and for you not to flinch away. But you were flinching away and he knew it. It made him sick. Gojo grabbed his shirt and pulled it back on. Your hands fell away from him as you slid off the counter top. 

“Can… I ask why?” He said and you knew it wasn’t about sleeping together. It was the deeper sort of question. 

“Cause you’d break my heart.” You answered simply. Gojo looks at you. Break your heart? He’d rather die than do that. 

“What do you mean?” He asked, his voice soft, he wasn’t angry, just wanted to understand. 

“You’re… Satoru Gojo,” you gestured. “You’re the strongest. The greatest sorcerer. You… don’t make time to be anything but that.” You say, eyes meeting his for the first time since your rejection. And then he understood your meaning. 

“What if I did? What if I left it behind?”

“What if?” You asked back. “You’d need something more fulfilling to fill in the gap.” You supplied. 

“I found something like that.” He says suddenly.

“Like what?”

“You.” For a moment you two stare at each other. 

“I can’t… I don’t want to stay here.”

“I’m not asking you to stay. I— I’m asking you to let me come with you.” Your eyebrows shot up, eyes wide. You were shocked by his words. Spoken with such conviction. 

“Satoru…” you said, unable to quite grasp this statement yet. 

“I mean it. I… I could go with you. Work beside you… be with you… if you’ll have me.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am deadly serious, Y/n. I’m not willing to sit here and pretend like you don’t mean everything to me. You’ve consumed my every waking moment. You’re all I can think about, all I dream about. I— I fear if I stay behind and don’t take this chance… I might as well just end up dead.”

“Oh...” But his confession was breathtaking. Your heart was in your throat, beating and causing words to falter. 

“I’ll be your friend if you want. I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Just,” he takes a step closer and you have a sick feeling he’s never wanted something for himself as much as he wanted you at this moment. “Take me with you.” Your throat went dry as you gazed up at him. The things you were afraid of, of him choosing to stay, of him fighting alone and fighting to his grave had vanished in an instant with his words. So he was willing to choose between you and sorcery. Not only willing but had made his choice long ago and just now felt confident enough to let you in on it. Not to mention he’d made this decision long before your two’s lips even touched, that was a whole other story to unfold. His feelings for you were much deeper than you previously thought. Those dreams of stealing him away from the people that used him had dropped, real and tangible, in your hands. Your mind swam. 

“Don’t… you think you’d get bored?” You asked, but your head tilted and there was the ghost of a smile on your lips. All the tension that had been wrecking Gojo’s body soothed right at that moment. He couldn’t help but smile. 

“No. I really don’t think I would.” He answers earnestly. That ghost of a smile turned into a full formed apparition of a smile as you laughed. 

“We’ll see about that.” You said and you barely got the words out before he was kissing you again. No warning, all urgency. To feel you again. “Should we go back to my room?” You whispered as the kiss grew slightly more heated. 

“Mhm hm.” Gojo hummed, picking you up with ease and tossing you over his shoulder. You gasped in surprise as he walked towards your room. 

“You’re an idiot.” You laughed quietly. 

“What? You’d think I’d let you walk all the way there?” He asks teasingly as you dissolve into quiet giggles. 

“All the way there,” you mocked with a shake of the head. “Like I don’t do it everyday.” 

“Not on my watch.” He says, rounding the corner to your room. 

“What— what the hell?” You heard Nanami’s voice then and your face went bright red. Gojo didn’t sit you down, just tipped his head to the blond man and kept walking. You on the other hand covered your face and silently cursed Gojo out. 

“You have a filthy mouth.” Gojo said as he rounded the final corner, your room steps away. 

“Set me down you idiot.” You groaned. And he did but the moment your feet touched the floor his lips were back on yours, pressing you into your closed door. The kiss was needy. He must’ve been waiting a long time to kiss you in the first place. Those first two kisses were something but this one was different. It was like he’d rather kiss you than breathe as you fumbled with the lock and opened the door.

You two tumbled inside, Gojo catching the door in his hand and pushing it shut behind you two as you stumbled towards the bed.  Gojo couldn’t go another day without choking out what you meant to him, without showing you. He could feel it in his shoulders when he breathed, feel it in the uncomfortable twist and flip his heart would do around you. Could feel it swirling around in his sleepless nights. He was going to show it to you. Going to convey exactly what he felt.

He pressed his kisses harder, pushed you against the bed. Kissed any surface of your body his lips could find. Savored the noises you made. You spoke muffled against his neck, his name, the sound so sweet and utterly perfect on your lips. He never cared much for his name until he heard you speak it. He exhales sharply, his breath shuddering. He feels your deft fingers slide beneath his shirt again then to the waistband of his pants. You pause and when he speaks a shaky please you slip the pants down past his hips and he kicks the useless thing fully off. He does the same for you and suddenly you both are undressed. Equal, more or less. He kisses you a few more times to hide his nerves and just for a moment lets himself slip into the role of the strongest. He takes the lead, his hands parting your thighs as he trails kisses to your neck. He lines himself up, your hand just barely guiding him, there’s not much thoughts that go into his brain when he enters you. You both make a sound in the dark. Your hands sliding around him to his back, nails digging in there. 

“Satoru…” You whimper and he has to will himself not to come right then and there. He goes slow at first, letting you get used to the size. Your bodies are pressed together, he’s practically crushing you beneath him but you wouldn’t have it any other way. One of your hands grabbed his chin, yanking his lips against yours as he picked up his pace. He swallowed your moans and vice versa. He ground his hips against yours, loving the hitch in your breath. He did it again and again until you couldn’t kiss him back anymore and he couldn’t keep his head up, it fell into the crook of your neck as you came together. you both pull back, exhausted and Gojo’s surprised when you start laughing. He stares at you open mouthed, never once after doing something like that with a girl had she started laughing after. “S-sorry,” you giggled, shaking your head. He smiles despite not knowing what you found so amusing. “That was… well I’m sure you know you’re good.” You blushed. “I just— it’s a bit unbelievable.”

“Hmm? What is?” Gojo asks as he pulls the cover up to shield you from the cold of your room. 

“I was just… very wrong about you. For a long time. That’s all.” You said as you sat up, grabbing your night clothes and slipping them back on. Gojo does the same and expects that you’ll kick him out to sleep in his own room. “Hey,” you call out, patting the bed next to you. “Stay the night.” You say. You don’t have to tell him twice, he’s already practically back in your bed by the end of your sentence. You pull him close, laying your head against his chest as his arm winds around you. “I’m a clingy sleeper, just so you know.” You say and Gojo lets his eyes fall closed, a content smile on his lips as he kisses the top of your head. 

“So am I.” He whispers back to you, slightly turning to pull you closer to him. He feels you hum a laugh. For the first time in years Gojo fell asleep with ease, he didn’t have to be haunted with visions of you because you were real and tangible against him. And he’d never felt more fulfilled, more excited to leave all this bullshit behind and not be the greatest for once.

#satoru gojo #gojo satoru x reader #gojo fanfic #gojo satoru x you #gojo x y/n #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu gojo #satorugojo #gojou satoru x you #jujutsu kaisen smut #fem reader #jjk x reader #jjk

[imaybe5tupid]

On the hidden repressed suburban white emo boy darkness in Laios’ heart

LET ME BE CLEAR: i like Laios, this is not a hate post, his flaws and darker parts of who he is round out his character and make him the character I love. Also this isn’t proper meta or analysis just my literal sleepy off the cuff rambling

I think Laios can be very comfortably summed up as someone who feels he was never indulged and the person he is in the series grew over those scars. I really enjoy how much Laios genuinely has a lot of darkness in his heart his emo-boy ness is really underrated. He canonically thought of (and is implied to sometimes still think of) his bullies (and sometimes people in general) like this

Aside being autistic, well into his 20s Laios really inhabits this very imo teenage mindset/outlook thats a combination of outsider and contrarian (the latter secretly). And the Winged Lion sees this immediately for what it is, this idea of being an alienated outsider due to your unique understanding of the world (I don’t mean Laios thinks hes like a nobel prize winner but more that he has a lot of resentment for how the things he’s interested in are not valued in the way he values them) and the percieved dull conformism of others (eg. his father), and how these feelings of his come from a deliberate (as in i feel hes actively trying to make himself think this as a coping mechanism) lack of intellectual and emotional curiosity about people or things that he’s unable to box into this Different category i.e the grass is always greener (of course in addition to his Traumas). For example monsters obviously, but also his fascination with Toshiro’s foreignness, like the island was probably full of strong cool warrior types but they weren’t so distinctly “exotic” (unfortunate but true 😔, many such cases see Japanism and also ironically cause thats how i hc the toudens, the way scandinavia is weirdly idolised by a great deal of the world, or even the way people will see an indie movie set in like small town absolutely anywhere else in the world from where they are and be like waow so cool and different unlike my LAME hometown imagine that meme of the ships thats like their barbaric practices etc.) and an emblem of this cool different world that he could idealise and escape into.  Shuro represents a kind of escapist fantasy for Laios, like in addition to just being (to Laios) This Super Nice Guy Who Always Saves Me And Says Yes To Me And Never Gets Mad, he’s also Nothing Like Those Boors from the village/school/ the military. And he probably dgaf about Rin or like Eastern diaspora in Melini and would say offensive things to them running along the lines of what he said to Lycion (“so you only look different on the outside, nothing is different internally , how disappointing”). Like you can compare Kabru’s curiosity towards people which is driven by a genuine passion for humanity, to Laios’ at times objectifying curiosity toward Shuro which is shaped by the pain of the past and immediately see the sickness in the head Laios has lol. Unconsciously, Laios I think can also be a deeply self-centred guy at his core (evidenced by the nature of his curse at the end of the story too haha).

#I like to avoid posting anything but art on here but this idea i dont have an idea rn to portray it succinctly enough that I could do it #in the short time i usually dedicate to my drawings since I dont like spending too long on anything #just enough to convey my feelings is enough for me #but i was really in my laios feelings earlier #laios touden #dungeon meshi

[probablyasocialecologist]

When you look at Instagram or Facebook, I want you to try and think of them less as social networks, and more as a form of anthropological experiment. Every single thing you see on either platform is built or selected to make you spend more time on the app and see more things that Meta wants you to see, be they ads, sponsored content, or suggested groups that you can interact with, thus increasing the amount of your “time spent” on the app, and increasing the amount of “meaningful interactions” you have with content. I also want you to realize that anything bad that you see on the platform is a symptom of Mark Zuckerberg’s unwillingness to rate-limit or sufficiently moderate the platform. Logically-speaking, one would think that Meta would want you to have a high-quality Facebook experience, pruning content that might be incendiary, spammy, scammy or unhelpful, or at the very least, comes primarily from those within your own network, but when your only concern is growth, content moderation is more of an emergency measure.  And to be clear, this is part of Meta’s cultural DNA. In an interview with journalist Jeff Horwitz in his book Broken Code, Facebook’s former VP of Ads and Partnerships Brian Bolland said that “building things is way more fun than making things secure and safe…[and] until there’s a regulatory or press fire, you don’t deal with it.”  Horwitz also cites that Meta engineers’ greatest frustration was that the company “perpetually [needed] something to fail — often fucking spectacularly — to drive interest in fixing it.” Horwitz’s book describes Meta’s approach to moderation as “having a light touch,” considering it “a moral virtue” and that the company “wasn’t failing to supervise what users did — it was neutral.” As I’ve briefly explained, the logic here is that the more stuff there is on Facebook or Instagram, the more likely you are to run into something you’ll interact with, even if said interaction is genuinely bad. Horwitz notes that in April 2016, Meta analyzed Facebook’s most successful political groups, finding that a third of them “routinely featured content that was racist and conspiracy-minded,” with their growth heavily-driven by Facebook’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” features, algorithmic tools that Facebook used to recommend content. The researcher in question added that “sixty-four percent of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.” When the researcher took their concerns to Facebook’s “Protect and Care” team, they were told that there was nothing the team could do as “the accounts creating the content were real people, and Facebook intentionally had no rules mandating truth, balance or good faith.” Meta, at its core, is a rot economy empire, entirely engineered to grow metrics and revenue at the expense of anything else. In practice, this means allowing almost any activity that might “grow” the platform, even if it means groups that balloon by tens or hundreds of thousands of people a day, or allowing people to friend 50 or more people in a single day. It means allowing almost any content other than that which it’s legally required to police like mutilation and child pornography, even if the content it allows in makes the platform significantly worse.  As a result, Meta is kind of like an absentee parent, occasionally looking up from their phone and muttering “don’t do that” when something obviously awful happens, and even then they’re extremely hesitant to intervene. 

#meta #facebook #social media #internet

[hauntedhokage]

𝓂𝓊𝓉𝓊𝒶𝓁 𝓈𝓊𝓅𝓅𝑜𝓇𝓉

Marriage has its ups and downs. Being married Rin sometimes had more downs than ups due to his constant emotional conflict and inferiority complex. But he's always so good to you in return.

word count: 2.6k

warnings: vaginal fingering, my own headcanons for how rin acts as he gets older

Mornings were usually quiet in your house. Whether Rin was home or not didn’t matter, since he was normally up before you and outside running through his home drills to not disturb your sleep. When he wasn’t home it was just you and the cat who had an automatic feeder so you weren’t disturbed for that reason while sleeping (another insistence from Rin). A quiet house was the standard, so you’re surprised when you wake up to the sound of music coming from downstairs. Usually he waited until you were up and moving to start playing some music while he tidied up around the house, but the music was playing softly enough that you assumed he thought you wouldn’t hear it. 

But then you hear some glass break and roll out of bed, pulling your robe on and sliding into your slippers on your way out of the bedroom to investigate. Most likely just the cat demanding Rin’s attention, he was needy like that, but you still need to check in and make sure nobody was hurt. 

And yes; the cat was involved, held tight in Rin’s arm as he tried to clean up the mess with his other hand. This is where you step in, taking the broom from the closet so you can sweep up the glass more efficiently while he keeps the curious feline at bay. 

“What’d he do?”

“Not him this time.” Is the response you get, and you look up at him curiously. “I…bumped into it.”

“Please lie better,” you request, knowing that this vase sat by the entryway door, not near the kitchen. Not that you think he’d throw it, especially not with your cat running around, but there’s an answer that you need from him that you can tell he doesn’t really want to give you. “Tell me what happened?”

And he shifts on his feet, acting more like a child who’d been caught playing soccer in the house and breaking a window than an adult who had better control to ensure nothing was broken, leaving you to sigh as you stand with the glass shards you could sweep up. You’d never really seen him like this, only when you’d called him out for being suspiciously nice and he had to blurt out that he wanted you to move in with him, and again when he asked you to marry him. Rin didn’t look nervous. Ever. So for this to be the situation in your home was interesting.

“I…dropped it.”

“Okay? Why are you acting like you’re in trouble for it?” 

“You liked it,” is all he says at first, and you shrug while dumping the glass into the trash. “I’ll take that out.”

“But why was it by the kitchen?”

“I was going to put water in it, get some flowers to surprise you, that kind of thing.” You don’t necessarily buy that, but you know some things are worth pressing and others aren’t. This would be one of those things you don’t want to press. “What’s with the third degree?”

“I just wanted to know how a vase that sits by the door ended up broken by the kitchen, that’s all. You said you dropped it, that’s the end of it.” He huffs, and you roll your eyes as you stand and trade him the trash bag for your cat. “Be pissy, I don’t care. Just make sure the little shards get cleaned up so the cat doesn’t pay for your apparent clumsiness.” 

And you’re going back up the stairs, fussy cat in your arms (he always preferred spending time with Rin), and head to your bedroom to get ready for the day. You were going to take a hot shower and probably go grocery shopping without him. His bad attitude would ruin your shopping trip, even if you know there’s something else bothering him - Rin always unintentionally picked fights when there was an inner demon bugging him. Usually brought on by his brother, but he hadn’t seen or heard from Sae in a couple months so it couldn’t be that. 

You could get him a snack while you were out. Not quite a peace offering since you had nothing to apologize for, but a way to tell him that you saw him and knew him better than to think he was okay when he was doing things like that - it’s why he married you, after all. You knew him down to his very core, you knew how to see right through him, but you also knew when to leave him alone - not everything was worth pressing. 

He’s sitting on the patio when you head out, you don’t even bother to tell him you were leaving since he wouldn’t really hear you anyway. Not when he was feeling like this. You do send a text, just in case he looked at his phone while you were gone, so he wouldn’t get too concerned should he look around for you while you were gone. 

It starts to rain while you’re out, the trip back to the car and into the house have you wetter than you’d like and you see that Rin is still sitting outside. Thankfully under the umbrella that sat on your patio table, but it was getting cold out there so he couldn't sit out there forever. If it was warmer you’d let him sulk out there for as long as he wanted, but you’re a better wife than you often give yourself credit for and make your way to the patio after you get the groceries put away. Your clothes are still a bit damp, but you don’t care much about that as you step out on the patio and come to stand behind him with a hot cup of tea. He doesn’t flinch as you lean over his shoulder to place the cup on the table in front of him, your head coming to rest on his shoulder as he sighs. 

“You’ll get sick out here,” you warn, kissing his cheek and smiling when you feel the slightest quirk of his cheek as he reaches for the teacup. “Brought that out for you, you’ve gotta be cold.”

“Thank you.” 

You don't say anything, only kiss his cheek again before pressing your face into his neck. You feel the stutter of his breath, and your hands come to rest on his chest as his shoulders shake a bit. He wasn’t much of a crier, so this had to have been a very deep pain that he’d been trying to process. In these moments all you could do was be there with him, there wasn’t a single thing you could say that would make him feel better when he was emotional like this.

“It just sucks,” he starts, his hand coming to rest over one of yours that you turn over so you can hold it properly. “I know - I fucking know - that I’m good enough. For my career, for my team, for you, but I second guess it all the time even still. I feel like I always have to overcompensate and that shit is exhausting.”

So this was a Sae thing. That was interesting. Usually that happened after he saw Sae, either at a family function their mother demanded they both be present for, or a soccer related event. Not to this level of emotion, usually Rin just got mad and then you got some incredible sex so he could get the agitation out of his system. This was deeper, something he must’ve been suppressing for a while. Probably a couple years, it wouldn’t surprise you if that was the case.

“Rin,” you whisper, giving his hand a squeeze as he tries to even out his breathing. “You’re right; you are good enough. More than enough, actually. If you were lukewarm; you wouldn’t have this career, and you wouldn’t have me.”

“No?”

“I prefer my men hot,” you tease, kissing his head as he hums his approval. “Now, inside with you, let’s get you warmed up.” 

He hesitates, but you still step away while still holding his hand in an effort to pull him from his chair. When he looks up at you, you see the streaks on his cheeks from the tears shed and the pain in his eyes that he tried so hard to hide. He got so in his head sometimes, making himself the inferior man when in all actuality he was the best person you knew. The only man you could ever love, because he was the only man who loved you in the way you deserved to be loved. A bit stubborn at times, but he wouldn’t be Rin if he wasn’t a bit hard-headed. 

“Babe?”  

“I love you,” he whispers, and for a moment you wonder if he considers the words to be as fragile as the vase broken earlier in the morning. For him to be speaking so softly, the words likely carried off in the wind to be brought back to you like a boomerang. Rin’s love just happened like that. 

“I love you too, Rin,” you return the whispered affection, finally pulling him up from his seat, the teacup left forgotten on the table as you lead him inside. 

He takes the initiative to get you out of your still damp clothes, scolding you softly for going out in wet clothes and warning you that you’d get sick that way. It’s funny that you’re getting scolded for being sick, when you’d been warning him of the same thing - the boomerang returning in his signs of love and care in the little gestures he performed. 

“Warm shower?” Your question gets an immediate nod, leaving him to lead you up the stairs and into your bedroom. “You know it’s going to be okay, right? Like, we’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles back, stripping himself of his clothes as you start the shower. “I know that, but sometimes…I dunno. I know I will always have you, it’s the rest of it that concerns me sometimes.”

“There’s always Germany,” you assure with a shrug, stepping into the shower and reaching out to him. “Now get in here, Itoshi.”

“Yeah, yeah, Itoshi,” he grumbles, a smile on his face as he steps into the shower. He acted so put out sometimes, even when he’d just spent hours sitting on the patio feeling sorry for himself, but that was your husband and you loved him dearly. 

It was more for him than it was for you, but he still keeps you under the spray more because you’d complain about being cold. Eventually he’d get around to redoing the master bathroom of your home so it wouldn’t be an issue, but for now you’re content to have him pull you into him so you can share the warm water. His hands set to washing the skin of yours that he could reach, and you let him despite having already showered.

“Let me get your hair, Rin,” you request, stepping back and watching as he kneels in front of you. He presses a kiss to your knee as you lather the shampoo in his hair, making sure to massage his scalp as his mouth trails up your thigh. “Last time you pulled this shit, I almost broke my neck.”

“Learned from my mistake,” is all he says as he continues up his path, bringing your leg up to rest on his shoulder. “I want to take care of you like you take care of me.” 

“We support each other,” you say around a sigh, feeling his fingers glide over your clit on their way to your pussy that was already getting wet for him. “Whole point of being married.”

“Yeah, but I was a prick this morning and I want to make it up to you. Give me that.” You can’t deny a request like that, not when he’s looking up at you with bright blue eyes that serve as pools into the conflicted soul that belonged to Rin Itoshi. So eager to serve, wanting to keep you happy in any way that he can - wanting to make sure that you loved him for the rest of your lives. As if anything could make you want to leave him.

“Yeah, okay,” you murmur, cupping his cheek as he smiles up at you. These are truly the moments you cherish, when he’s relaxed and you see that smile that’s reserved for you and you alone - when he could just be Rin Itoshi the loving husband and cat dad who hummed while he cooked and would initiate slow dances in the kitchen while he waited for water to boil or rice to cook. The Rin who could relax, instead of the Rin that the public saw - the captain; cool, calm, and collected, who would show affection in public but nothing more than a chaste kiss on your lips or to the back of your hand, and only on occasion talked about the cat. 

With your approval, two fingers sign their day into your cunt and he kisses the inside of your thigh while he looks up at you. 

“You’re so beautiful.” The compliment has your face warming, something you’d blame on the heat of the shower. His thumb rolls around your clit, earning a soft moan to leave your lips as your head falls back against the shower wall and your hand finds its home in his hair. “My gorgeous wife. Love of my life.”

His fingers increase in their pace, curling in a way that he stroked against the spot that had you crying out in pleasure as the pressure builds in your core. He’s encouraging you to cum around his fingers, telling you how badly he wanted you to get off as his other hand rubs against your clit quickly. 

“R-Rin,” you gasp, your hand fighting in his hair while your other hand tries to find purchase anywhere on the slick wall behind you. Falling was not on your agenda for the morning but you knew he'd catch you if you did - learning from his mistakes or whatever he'd said. 

“That’s it, c’mon, cum for me.” 

And you do, crying out Rin’s name as you do and pulling his head as close to you as you could. All he could do is smile, his free hand holding your hip as he licks his fingers clean of your essence. Your leg is carefully removed from his shoulder, and he makes sure you’re steady before grabbing the body wash to continue washing your body. 

“What about you?”

“This wasn’t about me,” he retorts as he stands, massaging the lather into your skin as he does. “I’ll be okay. Let's get you cleaned up and into bed to rest while I make lunch for us.”

You make it easy for him to finish your shower, and he even dries you off before letting you get dressed while he did the same. And he does get you tucked in with some soft music playing on the speaker that rests on his nightstand, kissing your forehead as you relax into the pillows on his side of the bed. They still smelled like his shampoo, a rich minty scent that provided so much comfort, you didn’t think he’d ever understand while half-heartedly complaining  about how you messed up his careful arrangement of his pillows for optimal neck support or whatever it was he complained about.

“Have I told you that I love you recently?” you ask once you’re properly snuggled into the blankets while he sits on the edge of the bed stroking your cheek. 

“Yeah, but you can say it a few more times, I don’t mind.”

#do not perceive me as i post multiple things in one day #bllk x reader #itoshi rin x reader #rin itoshi x reader #itoshi rin x you #itoshi rin x y/n #rin itoshi x y/n #rin ithoshi x you #bllk x you #bllk x y/n #bllk imagines #bllk fics #rin itoshi fics #rin itoshi imagines #itoshi rin smut #rin itoshi smut

[intimidatingpuffinstudios]

Oh, please, dear author, how could we not love our little cutie patootie? Our babygirl did nothing wrong. <3

Beside that i always wondered why Mornie did that. (Sorry if you already answered this and i missed it!) I think i read one side story (which was from the second book i think?) from where i got the impresion that Mornie and Manny go waay back. So it always confused me why she suddenly decided to go against his orders. Not only that but why she then went to him after she failed him. Surely she must have known that nothing good awaited her? (And also, she doesn't seem to be too scarred from that bite, which should have been a horrific experience for her... Not that i am calling for blood ... or anything... haha... just you know... a nightmare or two cant hurt~)

Manerkol is forever babygirl ❤️☺️✌️

So uhh... Dis be a bit spoilery, but since it will never be explicitly touched upon in the books...

Mornie is kind of...in love...with him. Like, big time.

She is always trying to prove herself, have him look at her for just a moment longer.

But she was starting to realize that nothing she did ever made an impression on him.

Then, when he told her not to harm the MC, she was shocked to her core.

There was no strategic advantage to extending extra effort to ensure the MC's safety.

But what hurt the most was how Manerkol delivered the order.

His eyes had momentarily flashed with smoldering heat before he glanced to the side.

To anyone other than her, it would have seemed as something so small and unnoticeable that it was rendered inconsequential.

His voice got just a breath huskier, raspier. The sound of it alone was enough to shatter her concentration.

All her dreams, condensed to this one, fragile moment.

But the name that fell from his lips was not Mornie's.

And then he was walking away in a soft swiss of robes and the scent of jasmine left in the air.

So you will excuse her if she got a bit jealous. You will excuse her if she got a bit upset.

The way she saw it was:

1) Get the MC trussed up like a chicken, terrify them, make them feel as ugly as she was.

2) Bring them back to Manerkol as swiftly as possible and finally get the recognition she deserved. The attention.

3) Why wait for months to achieve what could be done in a couple of weeks with the right approach?

3) She was running out of time.

And then when she failed... She went back to him dreading what he would say to her, but she did not think for a moment he would actually hurt her.

She thought she was different from everyone else.

She knew he would forgive her.

As for the bite uh...she remembers that it happened. She understands what it means.

But she does actively remember it. She cannot recall images, sounds, nor a single detail.

Just a clinging, toxic black. As for her nonchalant behavior afterwards...

Trauma is a very peculiar thing, and suppression and disassociation can override everything else.

So, for those of you thirsty for her blood, I hope you can take some comfort in knowing that Manerkol did a stellar job punishing her...

That's not to say you may not get a chance to deal with her personally in the game lol!

Sorry if the answer got a bit heavy 😅

#the soul stone war #tssw #mornie #interactive fiction #manerkol

[chaifootsteps]

while it's nice to see Vivzie finally acknowledge Stella is worthy of pity 'in her own way' (something about the phrasing on that tweet rubs me the wrong way tbh, feels like they're implying her pain is like less important or valid or something? might just be me) it's kind of frustrating to see the end of the tweet say 'that doesn't absolve her of the pain she's caused', because like

I haven't seen many people making that argument, tbh?

like sure there are Stella stans who unironically say she was in the right to order a hit on him and it's fair retribution, but I don't think they're the majority

the majority of fans & former fans I've seen are just frustrated at how much of a caricature Stella is; as a portrait of an abuser she's incredibly poorly done and as an intended Hate Sink with no redeeming qualities she's frustrating because her backstory is just as tragic as Stolas', arguably more so because she has way less power & social mobility than him yet we're supposed to treat her like an irreedemable monster because the writers decided she was evil since birth.

I don't pity her because I like her or because I excuse anything she's said or done to Stolas. I pity her because I look at her backstory and can easily imagine how much of a nightmare her life is & how the fandom only ever seems to consider the 'arranged marriage' part of it and not the laundry list of other things that are awful about Stella's life. And I pity her because she reminds me of people IRL - mostly women - who are stuck in awful circumstances then are victimized twice by people who, if they even recognize the circumstances are bad, don't care about how that influences the person they currently are or why they behave in ways that seem inexplicable to us

for example the whole Stella likes throwing parties thing. we're obviously supposed to take it as a sign she's vapid and shallow, but what else is she supposed to do? at least if she throws parties misery can have company & her friends can visit. We see Stolas make fun of her for not knowing how to spell, but was she ever expected to be literate or allowed to have interests outside of raising a child she didn't want? the show just doesn't care to answer what society looks like for someone in her position. her interests only matter insofar as they provide a vector for the viewer to hate her some more

(going back to the recent discussions around MLP it's so noticeable they went out of their way to avoid 'stereotypical feminine interest = worthy of scorn' by having Rarity & Pinkie's interests be fashion and parties and the rest of the cast being chill about that even if they don't share that enthusiasm)

I know there are some proposed fix it scenarios in your inbox that often throw in 'and then Striker kills Stolas' as a closer but like even those don't sound like they approve of Stella or anything she does. far as I can tell they just hate Stolas and are tired of him because the show keeps insisting he's a perfect angel who never means to hurt anyone so that makes it OK. there's no chance of getting any catharsis seeing Blitzo or anyone else stand up to him, so we have to imagine it. It's even more galling considering Stella keeps most of her ire focused on Stolas whereas Stolas is exploiting and gaslighting a member of the lower classes. I mean at least Stella seems to have no delusions about who or what she is, she knows she's being awful and she revels in it. Stolas meanwhile is in total delusion about who he is and what he's done & the show is running out of chances to fix that

so like yeah, nothing Stella has suffered absolves her of her treatment of Stolas. But that exact logic applies to Stolas, too, yet the show wants us to show him more than pity - it expects us to like and empathize with him while he frees Blitzo from sexual slavery mainly because he feels entitled to love & affection that he's not getting and was never owed

That's what it boils down to, really. Stella's not allowed a free pass, while Stolas is allowed to hurt whoever he wants for any reason.

#Anonymous #actual blog post #helluva boss critical #viv stuff

[ysrjune]

hi! i know you don't usually write for clay, so feel free to delete this if you want. but, if youre up for it, I'd love to see inpatient!clay beresford x inpatient!reader (maybe also w heart condition i have one and i just think it would be cute). and like maybe they both have surgery on the same day or smth soft of them comforting each other through this or smth idk i just need patient!reader w clay so bad 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 ( if u like angst also im not against one of them dying at the end)

My Baby

i’m so sorry that I replied to this so late, but hey.. at least I responded, right 🥰⁉️ thank you for your ask <3

summary ✦ clay and reader have heart surgery the same day, and they comfort each other.

“We’ll be okay.” Clay runs his fingers through your hair in hopes it will calm you down. your surgery was less than a few hours away, and you were scared. what if the doctors do something wrong that ends up in death for you or clay.. or both. Clay was your everything, and you couldn't bare to lose him.

“You don't know that for sure.” she sighed, looking up at Clay to say something else, but he beat her to it. “Yes I do. what kind of hospital hires doctors that don't know how to be doctors.” he was just trying to make you feel better. he knew there were always risks in any situation for surgery. “After this, we're gonna be fine, sweetie. more than fine.” he kissed your cheek. “we'll start our own family and be happy the rest of our lives without being scared of randomly dying on the spot.”

Clay was always better with coming to peace with his condition, so much so that it didn't bother him to make jokes about randomly dying on the spot. you, on the other hand, were really scared of dying and not being able to fulfill a good enough life. you wanted to have fun, find a suitable husband to raise a family with, and be the best wife & mother you could be. so, the thought of death being able to take you out of nowhere was terrifying.

“clay, dont say that. It's not funny.” you look down to his chest. “I just.. want us to live the life we deserve.”, “and we will. I'm telling you, baby, nothing bad is gonna happen, you'll see.” he placed a gentle kiss on your lips.

—

the time finally came, and you were being pushed on the hospital beds to the surgery rooms. Clay held your hand the whole way there since his bed was next to yours. “I love you, clay. with all my weak heart has to give.” he wanted to burst into tears. this could he the last time you see each other. as much as he didn't wanna think about it, he did. his beautiful angel being taken away from him or him being taken away from you, ending up in not giving you the life you wanted with him. still, he put a smile on and looked at your wedding ring, then his. “I love you too, y/n. I'll never stop loving you.” even the nurses who were pushing your beds wanted to cry.

“if anything happens, you were the one for me, baby. the only one. the girl of my dreams.” he gives the softest half smile as you're close to parting ways to different rooms. “I'll see you out of surgery, honey.” you respond, kissing your fingers and placing it on his hand. he shed a tear and nodded as you split ways.

—

things were going great for the first half of everything that the doctors did. but then something went wrong.. very wrong. the heart wasnt receiving enough blood flow. the doctors didn't even notice until it was too late. how could they break the news? after the nurses told them about how all you two wanted was to stay here on earth with each other and raise a baby of your own. that didn't matter anymore. you were dead.

Clay woke up from surgery, his mother and a couple of friends by his bed. his first instinct was to look over to the bed next to him so he could see you. nothing. the bed was empty. it made his still fragile heart begin to beat fast in worry. “where is she?” he looked to his mother with teary eyes. “where is my wife?” his voice cracked. he was staring to cry. did you make it? please, God, he hoped you made it and you were just put in a different room.

All his mother and friends did was frown at him, crying as well. Clay sucked in air and started to cry. sniffling while shaking his head, he still kept looking to the bed. “No, no, no. this wasn't how it was supposed to go. youre all lying.” his cries were heartbreaking. “Mom?” he switched his gaze to her, hoping it was all a lie.. a dream.. a hallucination. anything but the truth.

“I'm sorry, Clay.” that was it. you were officially gone. his baby was gone. not just you, but the baby he could have given you. the baby he could love and see you through the eyes of your child.

Clay never emotionally recovered from that. he never dated either. never even dared to stare or flirt with another woman. all he ever did was work, drink, visit your grave, and go to bed. occasionally visit some friends and family, but that was it. his life was never the same without you. he kept all your things. he sprayed your signature perfume on your pillow thst he cuddled with to just pretend you were still there with him.

Clay Beresford was absolutely miserable for the rest of his life without you.

｡ﾟ•┈꒰ა ♡ ໒꒱┈• ｡ﾟ

taglist: @anakinstwinklebunny @heartsforanakin @anisscarletstarlet @sockiess @erosmutt @rottencandyblood @radiantvader @freezerbride95 @starsfortaylor 🎀

#june replies ౨ৎ #clay beresford x you #clay beresford angst #awake 2007 #hayden christensen #hayden christensen fic #hayden christensen x reader #hayden christensen imagine #hayden christensen angst #hayden christensen drabble #hayden christensen blurb

[bakughosts]

how real hunger has a real taste

Trigun Stampede ✮ Wolfwood/f!Reader, 18k. Also on AO3!

You want everything. You want the real and the not, who he is and what he sells people. You want to run your thumb across his jaw without the expectation of anything else afterwards. A touch for the sake of a touch. You’re struggling with understanding whether these thoughts are because of who he is or because he’s the closest thing you’ve had to an object of affection since—ever. Maybe if you closed your eyes, it wouldn’t matter if it was him or someone else. (It matters. And then he inevitably betrays you.)

notes: mutual pining, angst, wolfwood in early twenties but looks older & reader implied to be in mid-to-late twenties, a little praise kink for the both of you, love confessions (but who knows if they're real? definitely not you), spoilers for all of trigun stampede s1 (HEAVILY canon reliant so it probably won't make sense if you haven’t seen it; if you don't have the time etc. and still want to read this, reading on from 'before julai' should be just un-confusing enough to work for you hopefully???)

The Fall of JuLai

It’s not like Nick thinks he’s a good person by any means. 

He delivered Vash to JuLai Tower like he was supposed to, and even though he begrudgingly likes the guy, Nick knows that he doesn’t stand a chance against his brother. His ‘do no harm’ bullshit is gonna put paid to that. Meryl and Roberto are there, too, because they're nosy and got swept up in all the things happening on this hellish planet that Nick has too much to do with. You’re there for the same reason—and when you had your chance to leave, to get out of the city safely, you didn’t. Because you’re entirely too idealistic and you’re delusional enough to believe that Vash can save the world.

The streets of JuLai are crawling with vines and blooming flora, petals and leaves black as the heart of a killer. Fluorescent blue pestles illuminate ruined homes, collapsed buildings, bodies. Some moving, some not. 

People are crying out, begging for help—from others, from God, which is funny considering Nick has known since long before he signed his pastoral contract that there’s no way any God could’ve seen this planet and not been disgusted enough to destroy it.

Navigating the streets is easier now that there aren’t guards shooting at him every five minutes. He ignores the people around him—the moving ones and the motionless ones. Kicks rubble as he walks much too slowly towards the exit of the crumbling city. The cigarette that he bummed off of Roberto is mintier than the Skulls he usually smokes. He didn’t know you could get menthols these days. The taste is unpleasant. Explains why the old man always smelled a little like toothpaste under all that stale tobacco.

Roberto’s dead now. His blood is still drying on the floor of the elevator where his life abruptly ended. These people are going to die if they haven’t already. Meryl is going to die. Vash is going to die. You are going to die.

So no, Nick doesn’t think he’s a good person. He never has.

But his freedom is his own. The orphanage is safe. His family—whatever remnants are left, without Livio—are all safe. That’s what being the bad guy gets you, because no one gives a rat’s ass about how good you are. No one cares about anything but themselves. No one was gonna give Nick his freedom, give the orphanage its safety. Not without something in return.

He’s moving so goddamn slow that you wouldn’t expect him to have just given up everything—to have betrayed the only people that were kind to him, that cared about him when he saw his brother die, when his childhood home was almost obliterated. If he doesn’t start running, he’s gonna go down with this city, and all of it will have been for nothing.

He can’t stop thinking about the look on your face when you realized what he’d done.

Meryl’s nattering is something he hardly remembers, something about him being unbelievable, I thought better of you, why isn’t everyone a goody-fuckin’-two-shoes like me, but every time he blinks, he can see you in perfect resolution, like there’s a screen on the back of his eyelids replaying his worst memories.

You hadn’t even said anything. That was the worst part.

The street beneath his feet shudders, the entire city groaning, the metal hull on which it stands screaming out in protest. Nick stops. He stops moving, all because he can’t get you out of his goddamn head, like you’re some sort of worm that’s crawled its way in there, all cozy and nested where he wants you least.

Knives is gonna tear you apart. You and the bratty reporter. You’re strong—you’ve shown that to him in your travels, that you’re not one to back down from a good fight, and he liked seeing a gun in your hand, fire in your eyes, blood on your teeth—but Knives is on a whole other level. Even Nick couldn’t take him out, and he’s a freak of nature thanks to all the shit Conrad did to him. 

He and Vash moved a fifteen-ton ion cannon with their bare hands because they were built to, and you’re up there in that tower all soft and kind and human . 

“Fuck.” His cigarette burns down to the filter, the taste more like plastic than mint. His cross is heavy, shoulder protesting the one-handed hold with which he carries it. He’s not going back there. He did all this for a reason. He saved his own hide because he’s a bad person and that’s what bad people do. You shouldn’t have expected more from him. 

Even though you did. Even though sometimes you looked at him and he really thought—and don’t get him wrong, it’s because you’re delusional—that you might’ve actually believed he could be a better person.

“Fuck.”

He’s back in the building before the butt of his cigarette has a chance to hit the ground.

Following Meryl seems to be a bad idea, but you do it anyway. Even as she calls after Vash, climbing through the broken window of JuLai Tower’s penthouse office, even as you hear the sound of metal hitting metal, knives and bullets clashing in violent bursts of embers, even with Doctor Conrad behind you—a man who, not even fifteen minutes ago, you would have ripped apart with your bare hands—you keep going.

What else are you going to do? What else is left?

There’s the gleam of silver, the sound of something very sharp slicing the very air, and before you’re able to get outside, Meryl is thrown across the roof of the tower, the dome of the office collapsing inwards. Glass tumbles down on your shoulders and you have to move—that’s all you’ve ever known. Just keep moving.

You’re out of the window frame and running towards her in an instant, lungs burning, but Meryl is still rolling, still sliding towards the downturned side of the roof edge, and you’re going to lose her, you realize—she’s going to fall.

Maybe you call out to her—you’re not sure. Your throat is raw already from yelling, your bones aching from the multiple injuries you’ve sustained. You’ll die here too, most likely.

The realization feels peaceful in a very empty way.

But before it can settle in, you see a familiar figure��a dark suit, a too-large gun in the shape of a cross, and Meryl is yelling, “Undertaker?” and Nick is there and you hate him for coming back.

When you reach them, he barely looks you in the eye. Just motions to his shoulders, asks, “Think you can hold on?”

You don’t want this man to be your salvation. You don’t want him to have anything he can possibly use to redeem himself. But you’re not going to die because of your pride. You let him turn and kneel before you, and your arms are around his neck and he’s got his gun in one arm and Meryl in the other and you’re flying—

Honest to god flying through the air, falling far off the top of the tower and then further, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, Nick taking the brunt of each fall. You have to close your eyes or you’re going to throw up, and your legs are wrapped so tightly around his waist that you think you could cut him in half, and he smells like Roberto’s menthol cigarettes—and you knew something was different about him, that he was inhumanly strong, but the way he waltzes through the city from rooftop to rooftop while carrying a couple hundred pounds of extra weight is simply incomprehensible.

Things don’t feel real because there’s no way this could be really happening. You feel the wind against your face, the dulled impact of Nick’s feet hitting hard concrete and metal, and you can hear his labored breathing, hear Meryl scream for him to hold her tighter or she’s gonna fall, hear the gunshots of soldiers on ground level who have still, for some reason, decided that you are the enemy they should be after and not the miles-tall Plant aberration that’s growing out of JuLai Tower.

You can’t open your eyes even when Nick stops moving, when you’re far outside of the city. Even when his gun is on the ground, when he’s put down Meryl and lowered himself so your knees are on the desert floor. Prying your arms from around his neck would feel the same as dying.

Gently, Nick does this for you—moves your arms, but not off of him completely. Enough that he can turn so you’re both kneeling and facing each other, and only then do you open your eyes. He lost his sunglasses at some point during the escape. JuLai is a mess of pulsing blue behind him. He says your name very, very quietly. Your hands are curled at the back of his neck, fingers carding through the hair at his nape because at this point it’s instinct. His eyes are so dark they look black, and there’s blood smudged on his cheek, and your first instinct is to wipe it away for him—to remove any sign of hurt, any sign of injury. 

But Vash is gone, and Nick's the one that made sure it happened. 

You push away from him so quickly that you fall on your ass, sand dusted in a cloud around you. Maybe he was going to say something, some other half-assed excuse, but the hull of the ship that JuLai grows from groans loud, its metal body screaming for help into the desert night as if it’s not far past the point of salvation. The roots that pulse from the city begin to recede, crawling back through the holes they’ve made in infrastructure, curling back up to the top of the tower.

Much more quietly than it should, the largest city on the planet creaks, falls, and goes completely dark.

Before JuLai

Nothing annoys Nick more than routine gun maintenance, and the fight on the Sandsteamer had really done a number on the Punisher.

He always hated the way the doctor called him that—this is your duty, Punisher, this is what I created you for—as if he was nothing but an extension of his weapon. Though that’s all he’s really supposed to be. An executioner, an undertaker, a priest. A sentient trigger.

He doesn’t let things like that get to him. Seeing his brother as what he’d become, seeing him kill himself to escape the life he was living because he wanted to be just like Nick—

None of it gets to him. He doesn’t let it. He doesn’t care.

You sit down next to him when he’s in the middle of oiling one of the crossgun’s many chambers, kicking up sand in your wake. He probably shouldn’t have decided to sit out here to clean his gun, but where else is he gonna do it? In the car? Everything on the planet is covered in sand. He’ll have to deal with it. Still, he gives you a nasty side-eye for putting him back about three minutes of work.

“Am I interrupting? Sorry,” you say, and he can tell you’re not. “Thought you were gonna help us set up camp.”

“I’m busy.”

“You can get hot and heavy with your cross later. Meryl needs help getting a fire started.”

He doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t want to. The cloth he uses to clean the chambers is black with grease and he wonders when he’ll have to tear a piece of his shirt off to replace it with and he wonders if you got hurt earlier keeping the Bad Lads Gang off the reporter duo and he wonders what he could possibly do to get you to quit staring at him. His collar feels too tight even though the buttons start four inches down his chest. “Get Blondie to do it.”

At the top of the dune closest to camp, Nick has an excellent view of the stretch of absolutely fucking nothing that surrounds you all. Vash said his home was near here—needed to get his prosthetic arm fixed up by the people that built it. He probably isn’t in good shape to help anyone do anything. You both know that.

The wind pushes the dunes further out, transforming the desert into a rippling, golden sea. The sun is about to set, the sand already cast a shade of light pink by oncoming dusk. You’re silent for long enough that Nick is forced to look at you, which he doesn’t do often because it always makes him feel a bit hot under the collar, a bit hunted. He can’t explain it. Sure as hell doesn’t like it, though.

You’re not even paying attention to him. Instead, you take in the wide open desert as if it’s the first time you’re seeing it, and the sun touches your face soft like a lover and—there’s a pang of something in his stomach. Like jealousy. 

He can’t escape you. It isn’t like the others don’t try with him���he has to deal with Vash, who thinks he can befriend the entire fucking planet and bombards Nick with friendly remarks that he’s dying to see turn into banter; Meryl, who isn’t interested in him as more than a journalistic pursuit but still asks some very pointed questions; Roberto, who offers him a smoke every now and then and thanks him for doing shit that he didn’t do for anyone but himself in the first place.

And then he has to deal with you, too, but you approach him in a different way. A way he isn’t used to—not that he’s used to any of it—but that he can stomach. You’re open with him, but you don’t inundate him with things he doesn’t care about. You ask questions when they’re necessary. You give him disapproving looks when he runs his mouth a bit too much and much more pleased looks when he lets Vash wax poetic about saving the universe from evil. He finds himself shutting up sometimes just to see it—the slight curve of your lips, fond exasperation at Vash’s unyielding hope, a silent thank you in the pointed look you send his way.

“You grew up there?” you ask. “At that orphanage?”

You’ve decided, it seems, that these questions are necessary. He’d talked about the orphanage at some point in front of you, so he’s not exactly surprised that you know about it. Still, he’s in a shitty mood and he doesn’t want to talk about this with anyone. Especially you, even though most days you’re the person he’d be most willing to tell. “I never liked twenty questions. Too much talking involved.”

“I already know the answer,” you say.

“Then you shouldn’t have asked the question. That’s not how you win.”

“I’m trying to—I don’t know. Is it so ridiculous for me to ask you something personal every once in a while?”

He scoffs. “You’ve got more questions than bullets. And you fire them quicker, too.”

You fix him with a look, and he can only hold your eyes for a moment before looking back at his gun. Too much shit to do to get distracted, anyways. 

“How long have we been traveling together?”

“I dunno,” he says. “Couple months. Why?”

You shrug, and he can see it in his peripherals. You move fluidly, in a way he catches himself noticing too often. “Are you gonna tell any of us something real about yourself?”

“You should talk to Meryl,” he says. “I’m sure she could find you some kind of job in investigative journalism. Or maybe you could do some cam work, since you’re so far up my ass.”

“Fuck off, Wolfwood,” you say, but he can see the edge of your grin, hear the mirth in your voice. Something he likes about you: his attitude doesn’t piss you off. You take it in stride and on occasion, give it back. 

“I was here first,” he reminds you. “You should be the one doing the fucking off.”

You don’t fuck off. You sit next to him and things feel heavy but no heavier than they always do. 

He wants to hear you say his first name—a misplaced thought that he shouldn’t have had, like finding a coin in your pocket after it's already been through the dryer. (He’d kill to find a town with a laundromat, but they’re few and far between.) Wolfwood is so impersonal, what everyone he’s ever traveled with has called him. Punisher is out of the question. Nicholas he likes even less, somehow, because it feels like a name that was taken from him when he was too young to ask for it back. But thinking about the idea of you saying fuck off, Nick, or Nico, or whatever the hell you want to call him and trying badly to hide that little smile from him has his heart racing a thousand miles a minute. He looks at you and realizes what a bad idea it is because once he starts, he can't stop.

You frown—ruminative. Something’s on your mind. Something he’s worried you might try to tell him. “Are you ever, maybe…” you begin. Your words are quiet, measured. “Would you ever tell me something real?”

Nick’s hands are too clammy to keep working on the intricate parts of his gun. You’re setting him back even more. He hates it when you ask questions like this. He hates it when you mention the thing that sits between the two of you, the quiet understanding that even though you’d been a gun-for-hire traipsing around the planet and Nick had been tortured until his fucking eyes bled, you can somehow understand each other. He wants to knock you down a peg. To get you to leave him alone before he says something he’ll regret telling you. “I don’t know how you got the idea that you’re special,” he says, and the air in his lungs feels like too much for his body to hold, “but you’re not.”

You stare at him, hurt slowly curling your lips downwards. He shrugs his shoulders as if this isn’t how he wanted you to react and goes back to cleaning his gun. Tries to let himself breathe. It’s difficult. His big fucking mouth is gonna get him in trouble again if you don’t say something soon, or slap him, or leave, or—something. Nick doesn’t apologize for things. Never finds himself wanting to like he does right now.

“Forget it,” you say, standing to leave. “You—fuck. No, forget it.” 

You won’t look at him and he hates that you won’t. Some days it’s all he wants.

Traveling with Wolfwood is torture when he’s in a bad mood. He’s barely spoken to you since your conversation a few days ago—hasn’t even looked at you. That sucks for multiple reasons, but partially because today it’s you, him, and Vash in the backseat of the car, Roberto in the passenger (as always), and Meryl driving. 

You like Meryl—she’s sweet, and she has a lot of grit—but you don’t like the way she drives. The three of you slide all over the backseat like butter across a hot pan, your seat belts barely holding you in place each time she takes a hard turn—you’re in a desert, for Christ’s sake, and your destination is a straight line away from you, so you have no idea why she has to steer somewhere new every thirty seconds.

Vash had (without Meryl noticing, which would save everyone an earful) arranged the order of seating so you wouldn’t get crushed between him and Wolfwood, and took the driver’s-side seat so his prosthetic wouldn’t smack into whoever sat to his left and leave them with some nasty bruises.

Every two minutes your entire body slams into Wolfwood’s side, and he was already in a sour mood—by the time you reach the town you’ll be staying in for the night, he’s steaming, practically shoving Vash out of the car so he can leave the enclosed space he’s been forced to share with you.

Sometimes—or maybe more than sometimes, because you think about it often—you want to tell Wolfwood how childish he can be. You want to tell him that there’s more to life than smoking and sulking. But you prefer him when he isn’t giving you the cold shoulder, so you keep it to yourself.

The motel you find is cheap and clean. Well—clean might be a strong word, but at least it isn’t bug-infested like the last place you stayed, so everyone agrees to stay in town an extra day in order to rest. 

You all have lunch together (where Wolfwood ignores you), play games of pool in the motel lobby (where Wolfwood decides to go back to his room when you and him are finally up against each other), and even share a few drinks at the town’s bar after the sun sets (where Wolfwood flirts with any person that even so much as glances his way all night).

It’s not like you want to watch him shoot whiskey, head back and the long line of his throat exposed. It’s not like you want to hear the depth of his voice, its seductive edge, when he gets the bartender wrapped around his finger in under a minute flat. There’s just nowhere else to look, nothing else to listen to. The bartender leans in, smiling softly, as Wolfwood tells her something secret that has her face dusted a pretty pink. 

There’s a hand in front of you, snapping, and Meryl is asking you, “Are you even paying attention to me?”

“Yes,” you lie, “of course I am.”

She rolls her eyes. “What’d I just say?”

You genuinely have no idea. You didn’t even realize that Vash and Roberto had left the table, both fully concentrated on a game of darts across the bar.

“Yeah, thought so. Look—can you do something about it?”

“I still don’t know what you were talking about—”

“New subject. Keep up,” she says. “Can you and the Undertaker stop fighting? His moods drive me up the wall.”

Your eyes narrow. She’s doing that Meryl-thing where she asks you a question about something you’ve never established because she wants you to confirm whether or not it’s true. The amount of times Vash has been caught out by this technique is comical. 

“We’re not fighting,” you say. Fighting implies more than lukewarm camaraderie and routine disgruntlement. Fighting implies caring enough about each other to fight about something.

“Uh-huh,” she says, and you both watch as Wolfwood looks at the bartender and grins, all pretty white teeth, before glancing back at the table where you and Meryl sit. “So he’s doing this to, what, make me jealous?”

“I’m not jealous,” you say, and the speed with which the words leave your lips has already damned you. “And he’s not—it’s not for me. It’s—he’s just being Wolfwood. What else do you expect? He likes the attention.”

Meryl only looks smug when she gets someone to say something she wants them to say, and she looks very, very smug. 

“We’re staying here extra time to rest,” you tell her, “not to—do whatever he’s doing. I’m not jealous, I’m annoyed. If I have to cover his ass in a firefight because he spent his spare time with some—some random, then I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Some random,” Meryl parrots, using her fingers to put quotes around the word. “Would you rather it not be someone random, then?”

You stand too quickly, the booze going to your head. You haven’t had that much to drink, you don’t think, but you sway a little on your feet. “I’m not going to be the one that lets down the team,” you tell her. “So I’m gonna get some sleep. For the team.”

Meryl hmms, amused, playing at believing you. “Go get some sleep for the team. We all appreciate your sacrifices.”

You laugh, and though you can only see him from your peripherals, you think you see Wolfwood’s head turn just a little. Probably looking for back-ups in case the bartender loses interest.

The walk to the motel is brisk and cold with the sun finally in bed for the night, and you hate the way you think about the slope of Wolfwood’s throat and the points of his canines when he grins and the darkness of his eyes peering over the rim of his sunglasses when he glanced back towards you—

You sigh, stopping outside your door and pushing your thumb and middle finger against your closed eyes, as if you can massage the images out of your sight permanently.

You can’t. No matter how hard you try. And you know why—really, it isn’t even buried that deep down. You like his cocky grin and dry sense of humor and the way his inky hair falls soft across his forehead. You like the way his hands look when he cleans his gun, long and pretty fingers removing and reloading clips of bullets that he clicks into place one-by-one with his thumb, quick and confident. You like talking to him in the middle of the night when you camp out in the desert and everyone else is asleep, and even though you’re both in your sleeping bags, you look up at the same stars and tell each other about your worst fights or about the people you used to know, and sometimes he makes you laugh so hard that you have to cover your mouth in fear of waking everyone else.

Sometimes, you think that—maybe he feels something like that too. Maybe there are things he likes about you that he keeps to himself, little secrets lined up like cigarettes in a pack. But he keeps you at arm’s length and it kills you. No matter how much he gives you, it’s never enough, and he knows it. You know a lot about him, but you don’t know him.

So when he flirted with the bartender, it wasn’t him trying to make you jealous. Because making you jealous implies that he wants something from you. 

Maybe he just wants to fuck you. That’s another fairly viable option, but not your favorite. It’s not like you’re asking him to profess his undying love—that doesn’t exist out here. You meet people and you form tenuous connections and you enjoy the time you have until it inevitably finds its end. Law of the wasteland. 

You just want something a little more real. You want him to like things about you the way you like things about him.

If it’s a physical connection he’s looking for, he can find it with the bartender once her shift is over. You’re in travel clothes still, cargo pants and the most worn shirt you own, and you’re covered in desert grit besides. The bartender is clean and pretty and much more accessible.

He can do whatever he wants. He just lost someone. Even if you were on the other side of the Sandsteamer, you’re positive you could've heard Wolfwood cry out when Livio’s body tipped over the side of the ship and melted into the sea of sand below. Maybe fucking away the pain is what he wants to do. And that’s fine.

When you get to the door of your room, you hear hurried footsteps and your hand is on your hip, finger already ghosting the trigger of your holstered pistol—but it’s him. Not enough for him to plague your thoughts, apparently. He had to follow you back to the motel and remind you that you aren’t going to be able to escape him for the foreseeable future.

“Why’d you leave?” he asks. Blunt, for him. You wonder how much whiskey he’s had. There’s a cigarette in his mouth and the smell of tobacco overwhelms you, makes you want one yourself. Smoking’s an expensive habit.

“Got tired,” you say. You’re pretty sure he knows you’re lying. It’s hard for you to not speak out of bitterness after you've had a little too much to drink. “I didn’t think you’d care that I left.” 

You don’t know how to define what you feel for him. It’s a soft spot, maybe. You like the way he looks at you. You like the way he seems to enjoy you looking at him. Maybe you’re both vain. Maybe you’re both lonely. Whatever it is, it’s been going on for too long and you’re tired of the uncertainty. 

“Nightcap?” he asks. You hadn’t noticed the bottle in his hand, some unlabeled, murky brown liquid.

“Have one with Vash.”

“I don’t want one with him.”

“What do you want, Wolfwood?”

He meets you at the door, and sometimes you forget how tall he is. But not right now. His hand covers yours on the door handle, cigarette between two fingers, and he’s standing closer to you than he ever has outside of a fight. Nothing you’ve felt has been as warm as his skin against yours. The ash that falls on your hand burns a little. “I want to have a drink with you,” he says. “And I want to tell you something real.”

“You’re drunk,” you tell him. His palm is softer than you expected it to be. “But I’ll humor you.”

When he grins, there’s something animal to it—something on the wrong side of feral. He pushes your door open and you follow him inside, sealing your fate for the evening.

There are no chairs in your room, so the both of you sit on the floor, backs against the foot of the twin-sized bed. There are no glasses either, so you both take turns with the bottle, choking a little after each sip. Whatever’s in there could level even the rowdiest bars in November, where you’ve seen more bourbon consumed in one night by your then-traveling companions than you’ve seen altogether in one location since.

“This your way of apologizing to me?” you ask.

He laughs a little then takes a long swig of liquor, inhales sharply through his teeth as the liquid burns down his throat. “I owe my fair share of apologies. What am I sorry for, exactly?”

What are you going to say to that? He hurt your feelings? He didn’t call you special, like some sort of child that needs the recognition, the assurance? He gave you the cold shoulder for a couple days? The way he’d laugh himself to death would definitely bruise your ego more than you can handle. “Tell me what you want to tell me or get out.”

“Don’t sound too eager,” he says. He hands you the bottle, whittling down his cigarette. The smoke that escapes his lips seems to sit between you instead of floating upwards and dispersing. Everything is hazy, soft-edged. “What do you wanna know?”

You wonder if you’ll only get one question, or if he’ll have patience for more. You wonder what the hell you’re even doing here, sitting on the floor with him, making progressively worse decisions. “Who was he to you?” you settle on. “The person that attacked us on the Sandsteamer?”

“No foreplay, huh? Getting right to the main event?”

You try to hide the choking noise that wants to escape you by taking a sip of the booze, but this makes you choke harder, and you have to cough for a few moments before you can even begin to consider a response that doesn’t bring your mind closer to Wolfwood and foreplay. Once you’re able to breathe again, you manage to say, “You were the one that said you wanted to tell me something real.”

He pulls one knee up, leaning forward to rest his elbow on it, and you watch as he cracks his knuckles slow and loud. Not a threat—a nervous tic. You’ve seen him do it after confrontations with Vash, after Meryl asks a question that hits too close to home. “He was, uh… someone I knew when I was a kid. Someone I was supposed to take care of. But I didn’t do a very good job.”

You’re sure he’s also thinking about Livio falling hundreds of feet to the planet’s surface, the sound of the gunshot when he killed himself, Wolfwood calling his name, crying out as he watched this person that he was supposed to take care of meet an untimely and awful end.

Guilt is something that everyone on Gunsmoke is familiar with. Its constant presence doesn’t make it any lighter to carry, any easier to share. Wolfwood bears far more than the cross on his back. The look on his face tells you he already knows where your mind is going and that he doesn’t want to talk about it. He holds out his cigarette to you in lieu of speaking.

You accept what he offers. Close your lips around the filter, try not to think about his lips touching the same place, about the nicotine you could probably taste on him. The drag you take doesn’t feel deep enough. 

“Your turn now,” he says, his deep voice almost too loud in the small room. “I want something real.”

You clear your throat, hand the cigarette back. “I give you real things all the time. You just never reciprocate.”

“My stuff comes with a price. Not my fault you give yours out for free.” Without his sunglasses, his stare is piercing. It makes you feel warm all over. 

Your fingers brush his as you both reach for the neck of the bottle, and neither of you move away. As if the liquor is a safe-ground where contact is okay. It doesn’t have to be questioned, because there’s reasonable doubt when it comes to either of you wanting to touch the other. The problem is that you’ve never wanted so badly to touch someone before now. 

“Tell me something,” he says.

“I want you to kiss me.”

His brows raise, shocked by your boldness maybe, but the cigarette is already out of his mouth and he’s flattening it against the floorboards beside him. His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip and you need to know what he would feel like against you more than you need to breathe. “Yeah? You want that?”

You nod and everything else is forgotten. The liquor is pushed aside, his body flush against yours, his big hand cupping your jaw, and—how long has it been since you’ve been touched like this? 

His lips find yours too easily, the first kisses slow, exploratory, but he’s impatient—this shouldn’t surprise you. His tongue slides against yours, permission for more granted without the question ever being asked. You want him messy—you want him warm and whole and unrestrained. Every slide of his skin against yours feels electric, sparks flaring and wires buzzing. 

“This good?” he asks—as if he’s worried, as if this isn’t what you’ve wanted for weeks .

You can only hum in response, pulling him back to you by the lapel of his blazer—his dumb fucking blazer that he fills out so perfectly, all wide shoulders and strong arms and—it needs to come off. 

Pushing it down his arms yields little in terms of results, but he takes over for you, carelessly tossing it across the room before returning to the kiss, allowing your hands to run across his chest, up to his muscled shoulders, twining your fingers in his soft hair.

He doesn’t push—just takes what you give him, which means you have to give him more, breaking the kiss and hooking your leg over his lap to straddle him. 

“Fuck, okay,” he says, more to himself than you. His hands find your hips and squeeze, eyes locked on the touch, pulling you closer to him. Through his slacks, you can already feel how painfully hard he is for you. “Okay,” he repeats.

His uncertainty begins to worry you. You tilt his head up carefully, forefinger crooked under his chin. His stubble is rough against your hand and you can’t help smoothing your thumb across the cut of his jaw. “Wolfwood—you know we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“Are you—? Of course I want to,” he says, incredulous even though only a moment ago he looked absolutely at a loss for what to do with you. His hands move past the boundary of your shirt, warm palms against your sides, fingers digging into your skin a little desperately. “Fuck, baby, of course I want to.”

“But there’s something on your mind.”

From the way he pauses, you gather that there’s more than just one thing on his mind. He looks conflicted. His hands are still warm against you, and he squeezes your sides once again, warmly, before responding. “Use my name.”

“Okay,” you say, soft. You move your hands to the back of his neck, carding your fingers through his hair. It feels so good to touch someone after so long—but it also feels so good to touch him, specifically, after wondering what it would be like for all those months. “I can do that.”

“Nick.”

Something about the way he tells you this makes you laugh. “Do you think I didn’t know your name?”

He looks up at you, unimpressed. Even if you’re joking, he doesn’t like to be made a fool. “Didn’t want you to call me Nicholas.”

“Okay,” you concede, leaning closer to him. You won’t ask the reason because you’re sure it’s locked behind at least six boundaries you aren’t allowed to push. Into his ear, you whisper, “Is there anything else you want, Nick?”

You can feel his cock twitch against you, and he tries and fails to bite back a groan, exhaling hard, his lips ghosting your neck, the curve of your jaw. “Can you, uh—I just need to know that you… want this. You’ve gotta tell me. Keep telling me.”

Seeing him vulnerable is something you’re not used to. You get the sense that he’s not entirely comfortable with it either. He kisses your shoulder, bites softly at the junction of your neck, intent on not looking at you, you think, before you answer. 

“I’ve wanted this for a while,” you tell him, because it’s easier for you, too, when you don’t have to look at him as you say these things. “I’ve wanted—I want you.”

Before you can say more he takes your chin in his hand, pulls your mouth to his and kisses you hard, his teeth knocking against yours, and stands—stands while you’re in his lap, inhuman strength displayed in such a careless action. Your arms tighten around his shoulders, but his hands are on the underside of your thighs, holding you as if you’re lighter than air. He takes you to the bed and your back hits the mattress, a little dust springing up from the threadbare comforter. 

Looking at him above you is a religious experience. His eyes are black, clouded with lust, lips kiss-reddened, face flushed.

There’s an unparalleled need in his expression, his movements. He pulls your cargos off impressively fast, his knees hitting the wood floor hard enough that the impact rings through your bones as well as his. You’re wearing boxer briefs, you realize, because underwear is at a premium out here in the desert, and they’re fine but they don’t exactly make you feel sexy. Your face flushes a little, suddenly so worried about what he thinks of you, what parts of you appeal to him. “Nick—”

“What do you need, pretty girl?” He kisses the inside of your thigh after asking you this, eyes never leaving yours.

Christ—the pet name alone could kill you, but the look on his face is worse. Desperation doesn’t even begin to cover it.

His long fingers dip into the top of your briefs, and suddenly whatever you’re wearing doesn’t feel all that important. “I’m gonna take these off. That okay?”

You nod because you’ve been rendered unable to speak and he takes care of everything for you. He returns as soon as he’s physically able, kissing the inside of each thigh with a reverence you wouldn’t have ever expected to see from him. It draws a sigh from you, and it’s so nice to be touched, to feel Nick’s skin against yours, to feel the heat of his breath between your thighs.

The second his tongue is against you he groans, vibrations running straight through your body. “All for me, huh?” he asks, half-lidded eyes meeting yours, and you miss the heat of his mouth already. “I’m gonna make you feel so good. So good, I promise.” 

He kisses the inside of your leg once more and wraps his arms around your thighs, pulling you closer to the edge of the bed, closer to him, and he eats you out like a man starved—there’s some sort of technique to it, but it’s lost in the fervor of his movements, in the desperation of his mouth, in the depth of the noises he makes, like he’s been waiting for this for months and now doesn’t know what to do with all the pent up want inside of him.

You tell him he’s doing so good, so perfect, treating me so well, and the encouragement spurs him on, but when he’s opening you up with his long, pretty fingers, when he curls them inside of you just right, your words lose their shape. 

You’re at the edge before you realized you were approaching it, and Nick doesn’t stop his movements. He’s intent on getting you off, tongue moving in rhythm and fingers hitting the perfect spot, his other hand gripping your thigh hard enough to bruise. There’s nothing you want more right now than for him to mark you, to stake some sort of claim on you. To want you for more than just this. 

On instinct, your fingers curl into his hair, guiding him to where you need him—and a second too late you worry that it’s too much, that he won’t like it, but when your grip loosens and you begin to pull away, he grabs your wrist and places your hand back on his head, urging you to take what you need.

And you do—his soft hair thick between your fingers, your grip tightening as you pull him into perfect position, as he lets out a half-broken noise against you, grip tightening painfully on your thigh. His fingers reach a feverish speed and that’s all it takes—you cum hard against his face, your legs tensing around his head, and he couldn’t pull away if he tried. 

But he doesn’t—he works you through your orgasm until you’re oversensitive, until you’re tugging at his hair to get him to stop, until words come back to you and all you can say is please, please, Nick, please.

When he finally relents, he’s breathless, his mouth and chin shimmering and slick. He wipes his face off on the inside of your thigh, which instinctually you want to give him shit for, but immediately after he licks up the mess, placing a kiss to your sensitive skin when he’s finished. “Was that good, baby?” he asks, his breaths heavy, arms still loosely wrapped around your thighs.

He can’t possibly be serious. Yes, it was good. You don’t think anyone will ever be able to follow that up, and all he’s done so far is eat you out.

His face lights up wickedly, and—you said that out loud, you realize, without meaning to. You can’t find it within yourself to care. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so wholly true. “So far, huh?” he asks. “Think you can take more?”

You tug at his shoulder because you want him close—you want to kiss him again, because you’ve gone so long not kissing him that even now, only five minutes feels like too long without. He follows your commands with no complaint, a knee up on the bed, leaning over you to kiss you and you can taste yourself on him, on his swollen lips and the wet slide of his tongue.

“Nick,” you say when he gives you a moment to breathe, and—you had an idea of what you were going to say, but you can’t fully reach it. Any time you’ve slept with someone, it’s been quick and perfunctory. Either you ask them to fuck you or they do the same, and that’s that. But this is so different. You want him to fuck you more than anything, but telling him that you want him to fuck you feels too small for what you actually want from him. 

You want everything. You want the real and the not, who he is and what he sells people. You want him to kiss you when you’re not in a bed in a cheap motel, and you want to sleep next to him, and you want to run your thumb across the stubble on his face without the expectation of anything else afterwards. A touch for the sake of a touch.

You’re struggling with understanding whether these thoughts are because of who he is or because he’s the closest thing you’ve had to an object of affection since—ever. You want him to touch you again. Maybe if you closed your eyes, it wouldn’t matter if it was him or someone else.

“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t because he can’t, because everything that’s going through your head isn’t allowed because that’s not how the world works. Because you think even if you closed your eyes, he’d be the only thing in your head, just his name on a loop and the sounds he makes behind it. He kisses the corner of your mouth and you wish you were in a different reality entirely. “Give me—five minutes, and I’ll be good.”

So he knows what you’re asking for. And he can’t give it to you right now. “Did you already—?”

He stops you before you get further. “It’s—I, uh. Fuck.” His olive skin hides any blush that’s not very deep, but there’s pink staining his cheeks, painting the tips of his ears. “Yeah. You just—yeah.”

“Oh my god.”

“Look, if you’re gonna have an attitude about it—”

“I want you so badly,” you say, and nothing has ever been more true. You’re kissing him before you can stop yourself and you’d thought five minutes was a generous estimate, but that’s really all it takes, his body pinning you to the bed, your hips moving beneath him, your hands running up his back and fisting in his hair. You pull at his shirt, barely buttoned now. “Take it off?”

It didn’t even need to be a question. He stands and his shirt is on the floor in seconds, his slacks following quickly behind. His skin glows in the low light, dark hairs peppering his chest and trailing lower, and you can’t stop yourself from reaching out, running a hand up his stomach, feeling the indents of long-healed scars and the coarseness of his hair. When he breathes out, it’s shaky, poorly controlled. He, too, is wearing boxer briefs, and even though this is normal because they're best for the heat, you somehow feel less self-conscious about anything from earlier. He’s hard again, the boxers stained dark because he came while eating you out which you wouldn’t have believed possible before right now and he’s so disgustingly sexy without even trying that you need him to fuck you right now, actually.

You’d been too enraptured watching him to undress, and his patience is short. Your shirt is pulled up over your head and quick work is made of your bra, and Nick’s breath comes out a little less steady when he palms your breasts, when one hand runs up your sternum, up the column of your throat, before tilting your head up for a surprisingly soft kiss.

He smacks the side of your ass lightly, herding you up the mattress, laying you out fully. When he’s fully undressed, when he’s completely yours to admire, you can’t take your eyes off the precum rolling down the tip of his cock, down the incredibly pretty length of him.

The things you would do to this man if you had time—which you do, but it really seems like you don’t, the pent up energy making you both hazy, rushing you towards what you need. With him on top of you there’s barely any room to move, the twin not built to hold a man as large as Nick, let alone a second person. 

He kisses down the length of your neck and your eyes flutter closed. You tell him how pretty he is, how badly you want him, and his hands squeeze your hips in response, pulling your body so, so close to his. He’s hard against your thigh and you need him right now—you could die tomorrow and be happy if you could just have him inside you this instant. He sucks a bruise into the skin right above your collarbone, and you’re too far gone to worry about whether or not your traveling clothes will cover it tomorrow. “This okay?” he asks, moving a hand between the two of you to position himself at your entrance and ever so slightly push.

“You don’t ever have to ask,” you tell him, voice almost too breathy to be heard, because you would have him whenever, wherever—whatever he wanted. 

Slowly, he thrusts inside, and each inch has your legs clenching tighter around him, your nails digging into his perfect shoulders, most assuredly leaving marks. When he bottoms out you basically whimper—it’s embarrassing, the sounds he’s coaxing from you. 

But you can’t help it—he’s so deep you can barely breathe, and his face is buried into the curve of your neck, moans muffled by your skin, teeth digging into your shoulder.

“Kiss me,” you manage to stutter out, the pace he sets slow and deep, and you want him closer, somehow, as if you could have him living in your skin and it wouldn’t be deep enough. 

He does what you ask, hips snapping to yours, the old mattress squeaking in protest beneath you. The kisses are sloppy, wet, at some points your tongues simply pressed together. He pants something against your mouth—your name, you think, though it’s too quiet for you to know for sure—and with each kiss his thrusts get sharper, deeper, hitting spots you didn’t even know existed. 

Your vision spirals at the edges, white and black stars sparkling in your peripherals. And in the center, Nick: pupils blown, lips a perfect pink, cheeks reddened, and his eyes always, always meeting yours when they can, as if it’s essential whenever your lips aren’t slick against his, like he wants to be connected to you in every way possible.

“Want you to cum again,” he murmurs. “You can do that for me, right?”

All you have to do is hum an affirmative and his hand is between your bodies, thumb honing in on your clit and rubbing tight circles, his pace measured and even and so, so deep, and the closer you get the harder it is to keep your eyes open, to stop yourself from curling into him.

His forehead is flush against yours, his explicit groans all breaths against your mouth. “Look at me, pretty girl,” he says. “I wanna see you.”

You moan his name like a prayer, your eyes opening, still so close to him and he’s beautiful—sweat dripping down his forehead, face so open and earnest, as if this is the closest he’s ever come to being completely vulnerable with you.

It only takes a few more thrusts, his cock curved in the perfect way to hit the right spot inside of you, and you’re coming apart, arms wrapping around his neck and fingers gripping his hair and his name on your lips over and over, because he’s the one that did this and you want him to know that you’re only thinking of him. 

Your vision is blank, head hazy. It takes a long moment for you to feel like you’re a part of your body again, Nick still fucking into you, thrusts becoming sloppy, his hands gripping your hips, fingers digging in so hard you’d be surprised if they weren’t meeting bone. He mumbles something into your neck that you can’t hear, and you can feel his muscles tense, and you say please don’t pull out and he’s cumming inside you while holding your hips flush to his, and he keeps saying things to you like he can’t stop himself. When your senses return to you, you realize he’s saying so good, baby, knew you’d take me so good—and then, out of nowhere, “Love you. Fuck, I love you.”

After a moment, Nick pulls out, his chest heaving with heavy breaths. He lays his head against your chest, one hand curled into your hair, the other gently tracing your side.

You can feel the exact moment that he realizes what he said. 

His entire body tenses, his hand stills, and it reminds you of the way a prey animal locks up when it knows it’s been spotted. When panic fills it so intensely that all bodily autonomy is removed.

What he said isn’t true, obviously. The words barely faze you. There are people in some towns that you can pay to sit in a room with you and tell you how much they love you, that they would do anything for you, that they would die for you. There are so few people scattered across the desert. If you’re a lonely traveler passing through, or even someone city-based but just as alone, being able to say you love someone and hear it back is intoxicating. The chances of anyone saying it to you organically are essentially non-existent. 

It’s certainly not something you’d have expected someone like Nick to be into, but who are you to shame him for the things he likes? He wants praise, he wants to feel wanted, he wants to tell someone that he loves them—there are much crazier things he could like. You’re fine with this.

What you’re not as fine with is the strained look on his face when he pushes himself up on his elbows, the way his words tumble out so quickly when he says, “I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s okay,” you say, but a stupid part of you stings in the face of such an emphatic rejection of any feelings he could have for you. “I know.”

Connections on Gunsmoke are forged fast and broken bullet-quick. You could meet someone and travel with them for a week and convince yourself you were in love with them because they’re the only person you talk to, the only person to offer you kind touches and pretty words. But those connections aren’t real. They don’t have weight to them, a foundation to stand on.

You and Nick don’t really know each other, despite the nights you’ve spent talking. Despite the ways he’s made you laugh and the ways you’ve made him smile genuinely—even if it’s a small ghost of a thing that doesn’t often grace his handsome face. Logically, he doesn’t love you. You don’t love him. There’s not even a fraction of you that’s tempted to say it because you know it’s not true. 

And yet, a small part of you yearns to have something like that—to have Nick tell you he loves you and mean it, and for you to love him back.

His face is red despite the aplomb with which you handled everything. He doesn’t quite look you in the eyes. “I’m, uh… Damn. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” You still like him being close to you. You like the way he touches you, the way he looks at you. You don’t want this to ruin the chance of getting to do this again.

“That was—a lot.”

You run the back of your knuckles across his stubbled jaw, pull him towards you with a hand on the back of his head. He follows without any complaint, even kisses you back when you lean up to kiss him, which really was a gamble because some people don’t like any kind of affection once the sex is over. “You can tell me you love me if that’s what you like,” you murmur against his lips. “I can say it too, if you want.”

He breathes in deep—his exhale almost sounds like a sigh, as if he’s about to deliver bad news but has to gear up for it first.

“If you want to do this again,” you say, pulling back to look him in the eyes—to make sure he knows you’re serious. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so presumptuous. “If you don’t, we can go back to how it was before. That would be okay.”

“I want this,” he tells you, eyes flicking to your lips for an instant. “I mean—I want to do this again.”

Smiling at him is easy. Identifying the warmth you feel in your chest is harder.

He kisses you and you sink into the comfort of him, his easy grins and soft moans and light touches. He only stops to ask you very quietly if he should be worried about finishing inside of you, but years of radiation exposure from the dual suns have taken care of any risks there. In turn, you ask him to stay the night. The questions both somehow feel extremely intimate even though they’re normal questions to ask someone you’ve just slept with. He doesn’t hesitate to say yes, and you think—maybe this will end well. Maybe it’ll be exactly what you need for the limited amount of time you have it. 

When he falls asleep, he has one hand on the back of your head, holding you to his chest, and the other in yours, your fingers loosely intertwined. It’s sweet in a way you’ve never experienced.

Maybe this will end well, but you’re almost entirely sure it won’t.

For the next three days of travel to Ship Three—or Home, as Blondie calls it, which is a stupid name—Nick feels like he’s dying. He chain-smokes faster than normal, burning through a pack every couple hours. It’s like his skin is being express-washed with sandpaper and bleach. He wants to touch you so badly it burns.

And you just sit there all pretty, in the back seat next to him and in front of the campfire and on the car’s hood when you have to pull over because Roberto gets too sick from the driving and the alcohol. You sew up the bullet holes in his blazer because of course you’d do that for him, and you laugh at Vash’s jokes and talk to Meryl about the time you both spent in November and you look at Nick and smile like it’s nothing—like your eyes on him don’t drive him insane. 

He gets lucky on your final night of travel, everyone asleep except the two of you, and he takes his time kissing you against the side of the equipment trailer, the car shielding the two of you from your snoring companions.

He’s not gonna ask you to say you love him—when you told him you’d say it if he wanted you to, it felt like there was a bug crawling around in his stomach, an unnameable feeling that he didn’t ever want to experience again.

Saying he loved you in the first place was embarrassing as hell for multiple reasons. First off, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t. Secondly, it was his goal when he approached you that night to play it cool, and he ended up finishing before he’d even started because of how good you tasted, how much he liked the way you pulled his hair, how pretty you sounded saying his name—and then on top of that, you let him cum inside you and you felt so good, so fucking right, and he spilled those words because in that moment, he loved you like absolutely nothing else.

He’s half-hard thinking about it, kissing you slow and deep because fuck, he loves the way you sigh into him when he kisses you like this, the way your hands grip the open sides of his shirt right below the collar as if you wouldn’t let him pull away if he tried. 

There’s not a second where he’s not tempted to mark you, to suck a deep bruise into your neck right below the jawline so everyone knows exactly what’s happening when they’re not looking. But he won’t. He won’t. He’ll be good. He’ll stop kissing you, he’ll ask if you want to lie with him for a little before you go to sleep, he’ll talk to you until you begin to nod off.

Let it never be said that Nicholas D. Wolfwood isn’t a paragon of restraint. He’s the king of it.

The only slight relief he gets is when you all arrive where Vash grew up, when you get to stay in rooms that are a little more private. When he can sleep next to you at night, sometimes after he fucks you as quiet as possible so no one but him gets to hear the noises you make and sometimes after he doesn’t. 

He thinks it should only be about the sex—that’s what everything else he’s ever done with someone has been about. But he gets possessive over your time. He likes to listen to your soft breathing as he falls asleep, likes to feel the weight of you against his chest. Likes when you wake up before him and trace the angles of his face and the planes of his chest with a feather-light touch until he’s up too, and he could never be mad about losing sleep over you.

And he’s a shitty person for doing this. For letting you sleep in his arms, for enjoying the way your hands feel on his skin. There’s so much you don’t know about him, but that doesn’t stop you from asking. He can’t tell you his actual age, he can’t tell you exactly what made him into the freak he is, he can’t explain to you why Livio was after Vash and how he was like a brother to Nick. He doesn’t want to disappoint you, doesn’t want you to pity him. And most importantly—

He can’t tell you what his mission is. The cost of his freedom. You’d never forgive him.

He tries not to lie to you. He avoids questions, omits information where he can. And he knows that this is essentially lying. It’s the same as a broken promise. He’s a hypocrite for calling out Vash’s lies while adding on to his own burning pyre.

This doesn’t stop him from wanting you. He takes back all the paragon shit—Nick has never been very good at denying himself what he wants.

It’s when you’re having breakfast with everyone on an unremarkable morning that Nick reaches his breaking point. Vash’s foster parents are keeping you all fed well, vegetables grown in actual gardens and meat cloned from animal cells on your plates every day.

Nick doesn’t eat breakfast—doesn’t need as much food as other people. He has his coffee like always, a cigarette soon to follow. He sits next to you because that’s his unspoken and permanent spot during meals and at the campfire and absolutely anywhere else. He leans back in his seat, sips from his mug, chimes in on the chatter when he has something to say. Everyone else is chowing down, and Vash says some stupid joke about forgetting what greens taste like when they’re not covered in sand, and you laugh—and something snaps in him.

Nothing big. It’s wishbone-small, the slightest crack. But it’s enough.

He drapes his arm across your seat, cups the back of your neck with his hand, strokes his thumb over the dip of your spine right below your hairline. You swallow hard and he can feel the vibration in his palm.

Everyone is silent. You turn to look at him slowly and he can feel the heat that crawls up your neck. He thought you might be mad—but your eyes are wide, mouth parted in surprise, as if you thought he wouldn’t want everyone to know you were his, as if he’d never claim you publicly.

He’d do a lot more to you publicly if you’d let him, but he doesn’t want to push his luck.

“What?” he asks, as if this is something perfectly normal for him to be doing. He looks between the four of you, and every single one of you is looking at him dumbstruck. “Guess staring problems are an epidemic.”

Vash’s face is a deep pink. He stutters out, “Wow, guys—congrats. Or, uh—I mean. That’s nice that you’re… that—”

“It’s just puppy love, kid, you don’t have to make it awkward,” Roberto says—and Nick barely stops himself from bodily flinching at that word. It shouldn’t be spoken in the context of the two of you so soon after his mistake. “Let the Undertaker have his moment in peace.”

Peace isn’t what Nick was aiming to achieve by touching you like this—but he still got what he wanted. You and Meryl are staring at each other, communicating in a series of complicated eyebrow maneuvers. Vash is looking anywhere but Nick. Roberto, somehow the voice of reason in all this, is already shoveling the rest of his breakfast into his mouth.

He’s itching for a cigarette. He slides his thumb over your soft skin once more, then stands, curling a finger under your chin to tilt your face up. You don’t protest as he leans down, as he kisses you softly and extremely chastely. It’s not like he doesn’t know that he’s pushing boundaries right now, that you might be pissed at him for this. He’s not gonna stick his tongue down your throat in front of everyone. But he couldn’t stop himself from having just one kiss. 

Whatever broke inside him couldn’t be patched up, and he just—he needed everyone to know what you were. That you were something. That he was the one that’d take care of you if you needed it, that he was the one you were sleeping next to every night, that he was yours.

“Nick…?” You don’t look angry with him. Just confused. Concerned, maybe.

“Gonna go out for a smoke.” He knows you don’t like him smoking next to you while you’re eating, or he’d already have a cigarette lit between his fingers. His thumb swipes across your lower lip because he has a hard time keeping his hands off you once they’re on. 

He turns from the table and heads towards the hallway—where he’ll be breaking out his smokes, because he’s not walking through the entire damn ship to have a cigarette if they haven’t complained about him smoking inside yet. 

Before he makes it to the door, he hears Meryl loudly whispering at you, questions pouring from her lips, and Roberto saying, “Christ, Newbie, let her breathe.”

Outside the mess hall, Nick turns to the wall of the hallway. Presses his forehead against the cool metal. He’s an idiot for doing things like this. For acting on impulse. For not being entirely honest with you.

Maybe if he could get his contract from the church, you’d understand. You’d see the clauses on there that he remembers watching Conrad write— if this contract is breached, the Hopeland Orphanage will be destroyed and the lives of every child that resides within will be forfeit. You’d see the thick black line at the bottom that he was forced to sign when he was too young to know what a signature was. Vash wanted to see his brother anyway. All he had to do was deliver the kid to Knives. It wouldn’t even be extra work on Nick’s part. 

But he knows you well enough now. Too well to ignore the fact that you don’t forgive easily.

And this still doesn’t stop him, because he’s an awful person. Blondie’s arm puts you back a few weeks—weeks spent gathering materials and waiting for the old scientist to finish his repairs. 

And even as you spend more and more time with him, holding his hand when you walk into the mess hall for breakfast, laying against his chest as you read old books from the ship’s small library, kissing him goodbye when you or he take turns helping out on scavenging trips, he doesn’t tell you the entire truth. 

Even as he finds such simple happiness in talking to you about your day, even as he finds some kind of divinity in the way you moan his name, in the way your nails scrape against his scalp when he fucks you—always face to face, because he loves the way you look at him, like he’s the only thing that exists to you—even then, he doesn’t give you the most delicate, secret parts of him.

Just once—just one time while he has you laid out beneath him, while he has you in his ear telling him what a good job he’s doing, he considers taking you up on what you’d proposed to him all those months ago. He thinks about what it would sound like if you told him you loved him, even if you didn’t mean it, and he cums so unexpectedly that his vision whites out, that he feels a tipsy sort of dizziness, that you ask him if everything is okay after.

You mess with his head. He doesn’t know whether he likes it or hates it. Doesn’t matter how he feels about it, really—wouldn’t stop it from happening every time you smile at him after you’ve been away from him for a little while, the first time you woke up in his arms and said morning, handsome and every time after that.

When Brad finally tells everyone that he’s almost done with Vash’s repairs, Nick is disappointed. He wants time. He’s only had a month of this. He wants all the time in the world and more because he’s greedy and needs every part of you.

Only a few days later, you’re in the mess hall for dinner and Wolfwood is coming back from helping Blondie scavenge around for old ship parts. There are specific metals the scientist needs for his final repairs, all located in burnt out scraps of fallen spaceships that litter the wasteland around Ship Three. He’s been gone for eight hours and it’s been too damn long with you out of his sight.

It’s later in the evening—most of the crew have cleared out, but stragglers sit at the tables around the edges of the room and chat tiredly. You’re already done with your meal and Nick is so ready to pick you up and carry you all the way back to his room and get you in his shower, because he can’t wait to touch you until after he’s clean, free of the sweat and sand that feel like a second skin at this point. 

Except you’re talking to some asshole with a lopsided smile on his face, obviously already half in love with you. The guy isn’t even your type. Too soft, baby-faced, completely untested by Gunsmoke and its inhabitants. He looks like he wouldn’t know how to shoot a gun if Nick put one in his hand with the safety off and positioned his finger on the trigger.

He leans the Punisher against whatever’s closest to him and its weight causes the metal table it falls against to scrape across the floor harshly. You turn to look at him and you smile so softly despite the loud noise, and maybe he’ll just hoist you out of your chair and carry you to his room right now even though you’d complain about him being rude to this wet rag that wants to fuck you.

You greet him when he sits in the chair next to you and he missed your voice so much. The guy you were talking to looks at Nick, brows raised, as if expecting—what, that you’d actually want this asshole? Over him?

Nick shoots the guy a withering glare, then puts his arm around your shoulders lazily, murmuring hey, pretty girl into your hair while this idiot keeps staring at him as if it could intimidate him into leaving.

“I’ve heard about you. The Undertaker, right?” the guy asks, holding his hand out, as if Nick would actually shake it. “I’m—”

“Leaving,” Nick says. “Unless you’re looking for a problem.”

You turn to look at him, his name a protest on your tongue, but the guy is already getting up, muttering to himself about Nick having awful manners. Doesn’t matter—he’d rather have every person on this ship hate him if it meant keeping you to himself.

“You can’t talk to people like that,” you say.

“I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.” He could see the hunger in that asshole’s eyes, no matter how well he was hiding it from you. “He wanted something that wasn’t his.”

“Nick…” You pull back a little further away from him to really look at him, and he curls his arm around your shoulder because he doesn’t want you further away. He wants you against the wall of his shower right now, and then maybe on the countertop next to the sink, and then preferably in his bed for the rest of the night. “Maybe… we should go somewhere more quiet. To talk.”

Dread settles into his stomach so quickly that it’s like being hit by a bullet to the gut—and Nick’s taken plenty of those over the years, but none have felt quite as cold and heavy as this. He refuses to panic right now. “To talk,” he repeats.

You must see it in his eyes—the fear. Your hand is on his cheek in an instant, and you kiss him so soft and chaste, exactly like the first time he kissed you in front of everyone, and he feels safer. His heart stops beating out of his chest, the dread in his stomach warms to a tepid anxiety. He’s beginning to like kisses like these. Still not as much as when he can really kiss you the way he wants, long and deep and thorough, but there’s something in the simplicity of them that pleases him. They’re a message more than anything. An assurance. You still like him. You still want him.

Regardless, he follows you to your room with a stone in his throat. He’s not a big talker. Not when it comes to serious stuff. And this feels serious. You start pacing and his pulse quickens again, a raging beat against his sternum, an echo that rattles around his head.

When you stop, it’s sudden enough to rock you in place a little, as if you didn’t realize you were going to cease moving before it happened. “Sometimes,” you say, not looking at him, “you say things.”

He waits, but you don’t continue. “I tend to do that.”

“Nick—unless I’m not understanding things right, we’re not… we’re not together.”

Refusing to panic seems to be something he’s no longer good at. “We’re not together,” he repeats, because he’s an idiot that can’t string two words together if you haven’t already said them.

“Okay, that’s—that’s what I thought. I didn’t think you… yeah.” You still won’t look at him. You’re picking at your cuticles so hard that there’s already a little blood on your fingers.

His immediate instinct is to stop you—to step forward and take your hands in his, to smooth his thumbs over the wounds you’ve given yourself. “Look at me.”

When you look at him, your eyes are full of an emotion that Nick can’t name. Not desire—but want, on a certain level. There’s something you want that he can’t give you.

And he knows what it is. He’s not an idiot. He knows that the way you smile at him isn’t the way you smile at someone you’re not together with. He knows you don’t give him those reassuring kisses because you don’t want to be together with him. You don’t ever press him about it because this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. People don’t connect like this. Whatever the two of you are doing—it’s fragile, and you’re ready for it to fall apart at a moment’s notice. He is, too.

If there wasn’t so much he wasn’t telling you, then—he doesn’t even want to think about it. Because maybe he’d like that too. Maybe he’d be able to give you parts of what you want, to be enough of what you need in order for you to be happy. 

You’d do it for him, no question. You already do it for him. 

“I’m not great at this,” he tells you. He’s not. He’s slept with a lot of people, but that’s easy on Gunsmoke. If you’re even a little good looking, half the planet wants you. But he hasn’t held anything more real than that, hasn’t felt the weight of it in his palm. “But I want… just you.”

You bite the inside of your lip, unsure—because what has he given you, really, beyond vague answers and truths that aren’t fully fleshed out? He can understand your hesitance. You’re so devastatingly beautiful and he wishes he wasn’t a piece of shit.

“Okay,” is your eventual response. 

He can tell that what he said wasn’t enough. But it’s all he can give you. It’s selfish of him to want reciprocation, he knows. “Do you…?” 

“Yes,” you say, but you look so sad and he keeps fucking up more and more. “Just you.”

He wishes he could see what kind of thoughts are running through your head—whether you hate him now, whether you’re okay with just this, whether he could ever make you forgive him for everything he’s about to do.

“Kiss me,” you tell him. “Please.”

How could he deny you that?

He doesn’t take you to his shower but you don’t seem to mind the grit and sweat of the desert on his skin—you’re pliant underneath him, you come apart on his hands, you kiss him like you mean it, and when he’s inside you and he whispers I love you, I love you, I love you into your skin, you don’t question whether it’s real or not and he doesn’t tell you.

You don’t say it back, but he didn’t ask you to.

After JuLai

There’s nowhere you can go but Home.

The entire coast of the Great Sand Ocean is covered in the debris of JuLai, and even then—no Sandsteamer is going to stop on a random stretch of coast to take you somewhere safe. If you can all make it to Home, Meryl can go north to November, Nick can go back to December, and you can figure out what you’re going to do since you didn’t have the good fortune to die.

So many people didn’t make it. You should be happy you’re still alive. But traveling with Nick makes you wish that someone else was here instead of you.

Vash is nowhere to be found. You don’t think he’s dead—because it’s him. Even with everything that happened to him in that tower, you have such a strong belief that he lived through Knives’s torture, through that bright pink light in the sky that exploded up into space, through the collapse of the world’s largest city.

Maybe that’s naive. But if you can go look for him after you get situated, that’s—something. You can do something and not feel so empty. Or you could follow Meryl to November, become a gun-for-hire like you’d been for so many years.

It’s a week's journey to Home on foot. You barely sleep. You and Meryl take turns keeping watch at night, always right beside each other, because there’s no way you could trust Nick to keep the two of you safe after everything.

But you can’t kick him out of your little group, either, because you’re without cover and without your weapon, lost somewhere in the escape, and Meryl’s Derringer only has three low-caliber shots before the bullets Roberto gave her are gone.

As much as you hate it, he’d be your only chance of survival if you got caught in a firefight out here.

Nick doesn’t seem willing to leave, either. He doesn’t speak to either of you—out of shame, you wonder, or because he simply doesn’t care?—but he nods when you say that Home should be your next destination, follows quietly when Meryl begins to lead the trek with her unflappable sense of direction, smokes cigarette after cigarette until his borrowed pack of menthols runs out and he gets twitchy, bouncing his leg whenever he sits down, toying with the buckles on the cover of his gun tirelessly.

The noise doesn’t bother you when you’re walking, but in the middle of the night, it sounds like a fucking alarm going off. And he doesn’t sleep—at least, you never see him unconscious during your trek, even though you know firsthand that he’s capable of sleeping—but obviously there’s a lot he hasn’t told you about himself.

The night before you get to Home, it’s too much for you—you’re about to wake Meryl for her watch, and you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week, and he’s flicking a buckle open and closed, and you find the half-finished pack of cigarettes in your pocket that, before everything, you’d been holding for him.

There are no campfires these nights. You don’t have the resources, and you sure as shit don’t want to be spotted by anyone that might be heading to JuLai to scavenge its corpse. In the shine of the five moons, you make your way over to him—he’s never too close, maybe because he’s trying to be conscientious. 

He looks up at you, surprised, and—he’s terrible enough to have something like hope on his face. It’s not a good look on him.

“Here,” you say, and you hold out the crumpled pack of cigarettes. He takes it from you slowly, like you’ll scare if he moves too quickly. “You need to stop fiddling with shit so I can get a good night’s sleep.”

“Thanks,” he says, but you’re already walking back towards Meryl, shaking her from sleep. 

The sound of his lighter clicking, the sound of him taking a deep drag and exhaling a long moment later—it’s so familiar. You’ve fallen asleep to that many nights over the past month or so, when Nick hadn’t been able to rest without a little nicotine to calm him down. He was always thinking hard when you were quiet in his arms, something in his eyes that spoke of conflict. You wonder now if he was thinking about the things he was keeping from you. The way he was about to betray you.

Meryl eyes the lit cigarette in Nick’s mouth when she wakes up, but she doesn’t look at you with any kind of judgment. She squeezes your hand and smiles at you, quietly says, “It’s okay. You need some rest.”

Maybe she’s talking about the noise that kept you awake every night—maybe she’s talking about something less tangible, an unrest that lives deep within you. You still don’t sleep well, and it’s his fault. Without the sound of the buckles clicking, you can hear him smoke, hear his deep breaths in the silence of the night. When you dream, it’s a hazy memory on loop, Nick holding you close and whispering things he didn’t mean.

Luida cries when you arrive and tell her what happened. You can’t blame her—you want to cry too. It’s all you’ve wanted to do for days. You just want to get to a room where you can be by yourself and finally, finally be allowed to feel.

Brad tells you that the room you’d stayed in is exactly how you left it, and you leave Meryl talking to the two of them, leave Nick leaning against the wall next to his gun, quietly smoking one of the last cigarettes from the pack you’d given him.

You get to your room, untouched to the point that it still smells a little like the body wash you used the last time you showered here, a little like stale smoke from when Nick would come to you at night because he basically refused to sleep if it wasn’t next to you, and you find that you can’t even do what you’ve wanted to do this whole time.

There are no tears. There’s no terrible cracking of the makeshift foundation you’d built to hold yourself up over the past few days. No collapse, no city falling dark. There’s nothing.

You shower and sit on the tiled floor, letting the spray hit your hair, your back, until the water goes lukewarm. Even after you’ve scrubbed every inch of your skin, you can still feel the desert on you, sand under your nails, baked into your hair, seared into your bones. You lay in your bed in clean clothes—truly clean clothes for the first time in more than a week, comfy pajama shorts and an actual sweater—and all you can do is stare at the ceiling, waiting to sleep, or to sink into the sheets and melt away, or to simply cease to exist.

He comes to your door in the middle of the night, knocks and waits outside, as if he couldn’t simply open the door himself. They don’t lock. People on this ship are respectful about privacy. There’s a large part of you that wants to leave him out there. He won’t come in if you don’t let him. You may not know a lot about him, but you’re at least sure of that. 

When you open the door, he’s flicking the butt of a finished cigarette to the ground. It bounces, crosses the threshold of your room. “Shit—didn’t mean to do that,” he says. I didn’t mean it, you hear. “Didn’t even think you’d see me, to be honest.”

“Do you need something, Wolfwood?” you ask. Whenever you’re not speaking your jaw is clenched so tightly that you can hear your molars grind against each other. He’s doing irreparable damage to your teeth. “Or are we done here?”

His face falls—not that it hadn’t been in a state that could be classified as ‘fallen’ before that—and he jams his hands in his pockets, swaying back on his heels, looking more above you than at you. The mask he wears to hide his thoughts from you doesn’t fit very well anymore. “I’m leaving,” he says. 

It’s what you wanted him to do, but it doesn’t stop you from inhaling sharp, from feeling a sudden pain against your ribs. 

“Thought I’d, uh…” He shakes his head. He’s replaced his sunglasses, or maybe he had them the whole time, and you can’t see his eyes in the hallway’s ambient night-time lighting. “Nah, never mind. Get some sleep. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

He turns to leave and the lapel of his jacket is suddenly in your hand, sandworn and stitched through. You sewed up the bullet hole that rests snug beneath your thumb. You ran your fingers over the skin of his chest not long after that, marveling at its smoothness, the lack of scars to follow the wound. You thought then: was he disappointed that he didn’t have any marks to show for the trauma he’d endured? Or did he prefer that—a blank canvas that let him pretend that everything he’d ever known hadn’t really happened?

You had eventually come to the conclusion that he didn’t care. His scars were littered across bone and organ, never to be shown to another person. The cross he bore was his own terrible burden to shoulder.

Back then, you had been okay with that. After everything that happened, you shouldn’t care. You should let him shoulder the weight. You should let him leave. 

There are more holes in the blazer now, wounds he picked up on the way to his betrayal. “Let me fix this for you.”

He says your name small, quiet, the same way he’d said it when JuLai was burning with life behind him, exploding in flowers and vines.

“Before you go,” you say. You have no idea what you’re doing. “I want to fix it before you go.”

He swallows, nods. You can tell he wishes he had a cigarette right now. “Alright. If you want."

It takes a moment for you to let go of him, as if he’d melt into sand once you let go, as if this is only an apparition before you and your grip is the only thing tying him to the physical realm. 

He doesn’t melt. He doesn’t fade away. He follows you into your room and shrugs off his blazer, offers it to you. 

You take it from him silently. The sewing kit you use is somewhere in your travel bag, right where you left it before you were stolen away to JuLai. The sooner it’s unearthed from your stockpiled life, the sooner he’ll be gone. You should get it. “What did you come here for?”

He leans back against the doorframe, arms crossed, fingers drumming against his side. After a moment he takes his sunglasses off, puts them down on the table at the end of your bed. Drags a hand down his face like he’s the most exhausted he’s ever been. “There’s not a lot I can give you. I don't have much.”

You weren’t asking him for anything. You bite your tongue when you go to remind him of this.

“But I have answers now. The ones you wanted. Before.” He clears his throat. “If you still want them.”

You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. 

When you don’t stop him, he continues. “I had a contract.”

“A contract.”

“The people that drew it up weren’t above breaking a couple bones to get me to sign it. ‘Cause I’d just heal up, right?” He laughs, and it’s an awful, bitter noise. “I’d be back in one piece so they could break the same bones again.”

You’re quiet.

He holds out a crumpled piece of paper, obviously balled up at some point in time—at the top: Pastoral Contract. At the bottom: Nicholas D. Wolfwood in a series of childish curls and shaky lines. Nick had written the terms of his contract out in the careful cursive of someone still learning to use it. The word ‘receive’ is misspelled. “How old…?”

“Nine,” he says. “I’d just turned nine.”

The first thought that crosses your mind: how many people has he killed in his time as a pastor, and could he remember each one if he tried? “How long have you—”

“I’m twenty-two.”

You’re stunned into silence. There had been no question in your mind that Nick was older than you by at least four or five years. 

If things weren’t the way they were, he’d probably make a joke about looking good for his age. If things weren’t the way they were, you’d be examining how much his age matches up with the way he acts, his impulsiveness and brashness and possessiveness, the way he couldn’t even handle someone else looking at you.

But this is how things are, and you can only stare at him. “How.”

“Conrad created his perfect weapon. I paid a price.”

You sit on the floor. You’re not sure why. You just can’t be standing anymore. 

Nick looks at you for a moment, quiet—then slides down the doorframe, joining you. The room is small enough that there’s only a foot or so between you. His knees are bent, forearms resting across them, and he somehow looks small like this. Like there’s a weight compressing him, curling his edges closer to his center.

“You weren’t—when we… was it your first time?”

His eyes snap to yours and he’s incredulous, amused, unable to stop himself from laughing. “You didn’t defile my innocence, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Something about his smile makes you want to scream. He looks so soft when he’s not being entirely too serious, the kind of soft you can’t fully comprehend until it’s felt, like the leaves of lamb’s-ear you touched in Home’s gardens when Vash told you I have something to show you that you’re gonna love. Because you’ve always longed for softer things, for things that have no chance of survival in the desert. “How long have you… looked older?”

“Since I signed my contract.”

You try not to think about it and fail. How old did he look when he was nine? How old was he when the church he worked for sent him out on his first terrible assignments? You know what he’s done—you’d known the reputation of Nicholas the Punisher long before you met him—and though innocence isn’t something you find in spades on Gunsmoke, you can’t help but feel a gut-wrenching sadness because his had been ripped from him so early. When did he take his first life? When was the first time someone took advantage of him at such a young age without even realizing they were doing it?

Nick hates it when people pity him. He knows he was dealt shit cards—he didn’t hesitate to let you know that anytime he told you the smallest details about his childhood. Now you have the big details, and you’re positive he wants you to pity him even less. 

You toy with the collar of his jacket, resting atop your crossed legs, because you have to do something with your hands. You have to have somewhere to look other than him. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You really think that would’ve gone over well?”

How could he even be asking that question?

“Yeah, I do. You know how Vash is.” Was, your mind supplies. You’re so, so tired. “He would’ve understood. He would’ve gone with you anyway if he knew what you were being forced to do. He would’ve jumped at the opportunity to help you. He cared about you so much.”

He cared about all of you. And you’d all failed him. He was the only fully good person you’d ever met and you all failed him.

“He knew,” Nick says. “Before he got to Knives—we talked about it.”

You know without having to ask that Vash forgave him. He’d probably pieced it together already and forgiven Nick long before they even got to JuLai. There’s cotton in your throat, your tongue is a stone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

A memory crosses your mind—sitting in the desert with him atop a sand dune, his gun laid out before him, telling you that you shouldn’t think you’re special.

If he’d told you everything, maybe you’d be sitting with him and Vash and Meryl and Roberto in a bar in JuLai, drinking to your victory. Maybe you’d be here with everyone, and Luida wouldn’t have let out that awful noise when you told her about Vash—a long, drawn-out note that she couldn’t hold inside, a keening that begged the question of why? and tapered off into silence. 

Maybe nothing would have changed at all.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I should have. I just—I didn’t want to disappoint you. I thought that if I didn’t give you all of me, then it’d be easier when we… when I did what I had to. When things were over.”

So he’d also known from the start that things wouldn’t end well.

“I would’ve done anything for you,” you tell him. It’s embarrassing to say out loud. You shouldn’t have said it in the first place—shouldn’t have even thought it. But you’re past keeping things from one another, it seems.

He stretches out his long legs, leans a little closer toward you. His hand reaches out towards you, an invitation to be taken or refused. “C’mere for a minute?”

You let him hold you. Your legs are across his lap, your body pressed into his chest, your arms curled around him so tight that it can’t be comfortable on his end. He has your head tucked beneath his chin, one hand on your hair and the other pulling you closer by the thigh, like he could crawl into your skin if he just had you close enough. 

“Was it easier?” you ask him.

“No,” he murmurs into your hair. “I think it made things worse.”

“How?”

“I didn’t want things to be over. Still don’t.” His hand tightens on your thigh, his entire body shifting to get you closer. “I know I’m selfish for that. You don’t have to tell me.”

Maybe you’re selfish, too. Maybe the words are softening the wall around your heart because if you were in his position, you probably would’ve done the same thing. You still can’t forgive him. “Nick,” you say. Pull back and look at him. 

“What do you need, sweet thing?” His voice is quiet when he asks this. It reminds you of the first time you kissed him—the first time he said those three heavy words to you, accidental whispers that held no meaning. 

“I want you to tell me you love me.” Even if it’s not real. Even if it’s just for right now. Even if it’s something he only murmurs into your skin when he’s between your thighs, when he makes you see the face of God in the way he touches you.

You expect him to kiss you. To start this final goodbye. But he doesn’t. He pulls you close to him again, lays his cheek against the top of your head. “‘Course I love you.” 

It’s nothing above a whisper. It’s a breath released into the air, something you wouldn’t hear if everything else wasn’t completely silent. But it makes you feel like crying and maybe you don’t hate him like you thought you did, but why shouldn’t you? All this wasteland has taught you to do is never trust people. Nick showed you exactly what Gunsmoke had already shown you a million times over. There’s not a person you know outside of Vash and Meryl that hasn’t betrayed you at least once. 

You’ve committed your fair share of betrayals, too. Law of the wasteland.

When you pull away from him, he looks a little panicked—but all you do is perch yourself on his lap, your knees boxing him in on either side, your face above his. “Could you ever mean it?”

He looks up at you blankly.

“If we stayed together. If we traveled. Or settled down, whatever,” you say. “Could you ever be able to say that and mean it?”

His brows scrunch, confusion painting his handsome face. “I mean it now,” he says, as if it’s obvious. 

And it’s like everything comes to a screeching halt inside you: all the hurt, all the exhaustion, all the emptiness. Emotions flood into the cavity of your chest so quickly that you’re drowning, your lungs full of too many things that aren’t air. 

Because this doesn’t happen. Not on Gunsmoke. Not to you.

“How do you know it’s real?”

“How would I know it’s not? Is there a checklist I should be consulting?”

You don’t know how to answer that because you feel like there should be a checklist, something that was left behind on the planets before Gunsmoke, burnt up in the crashes of the ships that populated the planet. Something you’ll never know the contents of—only that it existed.

“I know because it’s how I feel. Not gonna argue with myself on that,” Nick says, and maybe it’s that simple. He cups your face with a warm, careful hand and you melt into the contact. The first time you’d touched him like this, you worried that it might’ve been the contact alone that you liked. Not the person providing it.

But you know now that anyone else could touch you like this and you wouldn’t feel even a shadow of the way he makes you feel.

“You’re being awful quiet,” he says.

“You hurt me really badly, Nick.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

You think he is. You want to stay angry with him but he makes it hard. He made a mistake. He didn’t trust anyone enough to share his burdens. And could you blame him for that? You know firsthand how frightening it feels to trust someone. To want to.

“Would you want that? Us—together?” you ask.

“Yeah, I want that.” He laughs, as if any of this is remotely amusing. “Thought I made it clear.”

“You’d have to tell me everything,” you say. “Be honest about whatever I ask.”

“For you, anything,” he says, because he’s a corny idiot who likes his one-liners too much and it’s this stupid line above anything else that actually brings tears to your eyes, that makes you realize how badly you would’ve missed him if he’d left without saying goodbye, how much you want to keep him and how much you want him to keep you.

You still don’t know what to do, so instead you kiss him and he kisses you back and he feels exactly like he did the last time you’d been together like this. Things devolve quickly, as they often do between you. He pulls your hips against his to create friction and you missed him. It’s messy and his teeth find their way into the kisses a little too often and he can’t even stomach moving from the floor before he touches you, it seems, because he’s already pushing your sleep shorts to the side, feeling exactly how badly you want him. 

“Shit,” he breathes. “Shit, I’m sorry, baby. I can’t wait.”

He unzips his slacks and pulls them down along with his boxers, just enough for him to free his cock, and you inhale sharply when he pulls you further into his lap, ruts against you, coating himself in your slick wetness. The noise he makes is haunting, a little broken.

You cup his head with your hands, fingers twined into his hair, and kiss him hard, licking into his mouth, grinding against his pretty length. He makes sounds you want to lock up and keep under your bed. He says your name as if it’s the name of God. “Can’t wait,” he repeats. “Need you to take it. Be good and take it for me, pretty girl.”

He positions himself so you can sink down onto his length, shorts pushed to the side, strong hands guiding your hips slowly. It hurts a little more than usual, but everything is so rushed, so feral, that it doesn’t really bother you. The warmth of having him so close, the delicious stretch of him inside you, the way he groans when he bottoms out—it’s all worth the pain. 

It’s almost a disappointment when he goes still, when he waits for you to acclimate to his size. “Okay?” he manages to ask, because he always has to make sure you’re okay with things, even when he’s being reckless. 

You nod and you don’t even get a chance to move against him—his feet are planted on the floor, still in his dumb little loafers, and his hands hold you exactly where he needs you for him to thrust into you over and over again, root to tip, so fucking deep that you can feel him in your stomach. 

Your hands are pressed flat against the wall behind him, your face buried in the crook of his shoulder to muffle the noises you can’t keep yourself from making. He just feels so good—so perfect inside of you and against you, where he was made to be, and you tell him this because he needs to know.

His hand finds the small of your back and pushes you into an arch that has you seeing stars with every thrust. Not even pressing your mouth to his skin can quiet the moans he’s eliciting from you, so you bite down on the junction of his neck and shoulder and he whines, body tensing, arms circling your waist to pull you against him in a crushing embrace as he buries himself deep inside of you. He twitches hard, talking without a thought like he always does when he finishes, saying that he needs you, saying that you’re the only person that's ever made him feel like this, saying that you’re the only person he ever wants to do this with for the rest of his life.

After his body loosens up, after he pulls out and his breathing slows to something manageable, he says, “One of these days I’m gonna be able to last more than a minute. Just need you to stop feeling that perfect.”

You laugh—honest to God laugh, and you want him so badly and you’re still so turned on and he’s exactly what you’ve always wanted. “You think that’s ever gonna happen?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” he says. His teeth nip at your bottom lip, the ghost of a bite. A hallmark of want. “Are you gonna let me take care of you?”

Always. You’ll always let him take care of you.

He carries you to the bed and your shorts are gone, your sweater is gone, your sense of dignity is gone because you would give this man anything right now. He lays you out and takes his time pulling you apart, breaking you down with his tongue, his hands, his long, pretty fingers.

When he finally gets you off he keeps going, driving you to a point where you can’t handle any more and then pushing you through it, and when you reach your second peak, he laps up everything you give him, sighing soft against you.

He tries to wipe his face off like usual and you stop him, pull him to you, gaze at the shimmering mixture of your slick and his cum that covers the lower half of his face. You run the flat of your tongue up his chin and you could get drunk simply off the taste of the two of you together. His eyes are half-lidded when you pull away, and he whispers, “Christ, you’re perfect,” almost more to himself than you. When he kisses you, he holds you so close you can hardly breathe.

The after with him is always soft. He undresses himself because you’re undressed, then holds you gently, kisses your hair, tells you sweet things that he’d never say in public.

At least—that he wouldn’t before. Maybe things are different now.

You’ve been lying together, quiet, for a long while before he says, “I’m not gonna ask you to say it back.”

The air conditioning kicks on, a low drone that hums through the room like a distant insect swarm. You feel frozen, unsure what to do with your body.

“But do you think you ever could?”

You sit up because everything suddenly feels too heavy. Your face feels hot. You’ve never been good at thinking through your emotions because you haven’t had to. You’ve been a mercenary for a long time. You’ve killed a lot of people for a lot less than they were worth. You’ve traveled with so many companions over the years that you can’t remember all of their faces anymore. There’s never been anyone you’ve had to think over your feelings for—it’s been either like or dislike for so long that it feels like it’s all you know.

The things you feel for Nick, though—would they be classified as like? Or something more? He makes you laugh. He makes you so frustrated you could scream. He makes you want to travel to places you’ve already been just so you can see them together. He makes you want to cry, sometimes, because you’re scared of this, and you forgot what fear was much too long ago to feel comfortable with it now.

“How can I know?”

He looks a little hurt by this. He’s terrible at hiding his emotions even though he thinks he’s good at it.

“Genuinely, Nick. I haven’t… had anyone like you. I haven’t wanted to be with anyone like this. I haven’t cared about anyone like this.” You look at his jacket, discarded on the floor, still riddled with bullet holes that you were supposed to fix. “But how do I know if that’s enough?”

He sits too, takes your hands in his. He’s always so beautiful like this—when he’s taken off all the armor he shields himself with and lets you touch what’s underneath. “It’s enough for me.”

You look at your hands, fingers intertwined with his. “I could, I think.”

“Don’t want you to feel pressured,” he tells you. “Just—if it happens, you know, I’d appreciate it if you’d clue me in.”

“I can do that,” you say, and you can, because he doesn’t look disappointed that you didn’t do something you weren’t ready to do. He doesn’t look angry. He smiles at you, so warm and genuine that your heart feels like it’s cracking open, like everything inside you is spilling out. “I do. I already do.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I love you.” You cover your mouth with a hand after you say it, because it feels so heavy and damning. But it feels so right , too, and you don’t know what to do with that. How to fit the rightness into the way you’ve built your life on the foundation of so many wrongs. After a long moment where he waits for you to collect yourself, you’re able to lower your hand. “I love you,” you tell him. “I want it to be enough.”

“It is,” he says, thumb caressing the back of your hand. “It’ll always be enough.” 

You’ve never expected to get everything you want in life, and you most definitely won’t. But you can have this. This delicate thing that you’ve been building together, despite the missteps. Despite the fear. And it’ll be okay, because there’s no checklist. No requirements. You just love him, and he loves you back, and you're both allowed to decide what that means.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

#wolfwood x reader #nicholas d. wolfwood x reader #trigun stampede x reader #yall idk..... idk how this happened. it just happened #let me get back to the massive bkg fic i'm working on rn sdlkfjdslkfjlsdksdfjlkjs #thank u for ur time sorry this is outside of my usual wheelhouse #fics

[15-lizards]

Friend was making me watch dance moms and I was relieving my ballerina days so here’s an ASOIAF dance studio AU for the soul

-Sansa is definitely one of the best at her studio she is the Lyrical queeennnn. One of the few competition dance girls who trains in ballet and is actually good at it. She doesn’t have insane flexibility but her technique is peak and she’s great at turn sequences. Always very consistent and stable. Gets mad when they have hip hop pieces cause she’s not good at it. Likes recitals more than competitions because she can do ballet more, tends to like the French style. Hair always sprayed and smoothed into a perfect bun even if she’s just going to class, not a single flyaway to be seen. Keeps a neat dance bag that she keeps her entire life in.

-Arya is only in there because Cat thought it would be cute to have the girls dance together. Immediately got proven wrong but she already paid for the full year so. DESPISES the slow ballet and contemporary pieces. Is a fucking prodigal jumper she can do switch leaps, ariels, toe touches, literally anything. Which means she likes the upbeat jazz and hip hop numbers wayyy more. Never has a neat bun it’s a miracle it can be tamed when she goes on stage. All of her tights have runs and rips up the sides. Stains on her leotard. Brings a Gatorade to class instead of a water and gets yelled at for it. Hides in the bathroom during ballet class.

-Dany has pretty good technique, nothing standout, but makes up for everything with her energy and facials. She’s got definite potential, but is unrefined. Pretty muscular and short because she used to do gymnastics. Really likes to try anything. Ballet, lyrical, jazz, contemporary, acro, hip hop, truly everything. Consistently places third in competitions, which pisses everyone else off because they think her technique isn’t very strong, and pisses her off because she wants to place first for once. Is currently working her ass off at the barre to focus on her basic technique, is improving at a rapid pace. Dance bag smells like actual ass, you can find probably anything in there though. Doesn’t wear any padding in her pointe shoes bc she’s kind of a psychopath.

-Marg is the top girl 100% she’s the teachers favorite. Every lead role and center position is hers. Sansa’s biggest competition but they’re such good friends and so nice to each other neither of them really cares. Focuses mostly on a slower Russian style of ballet, perfect for her long legs and arms. Every move is just so intentional and perfectly placed, she flows so well from step to step. Definitely is getting countless offers from academies, professional companies, and summer programs. Alwaysss has the cutest most expensive leotards and skirts. Makes sure to pull some of her curls out of her bun to frame her face. Makeup on during class that she somehow never sweats off. Usually super sweet but tends to be passive aggressive to other studios at competitions.

-Cersei who runs the rival studio, used to be a famous competition dancer, excelled at lyrical and contemporary. Makes all of her dancers take rigorous ballet, even if they’re just competition dancers, super adamant ab ballet as the basis for everything else. Notoriously insane with a hair trigger temper, but parents keep paying out the ass for her to train their kids because she produces results. Probably throws things if you fall out of a turn. Makes kids do pushups if they miss a step. Coddles Joff, Myrcella, and Tommen though, makes sure they always get good spots and roles. Jamie’s there to teach partnering sometimes but he always looks miserable and smells like cigarettes.

-Joffery is one of those insufferable tweens who gets special attention bc he’s a guy, a rare species in the dance world. But what’s even more infuriating is that he’s really good. Great flexibility, and focuses on big jumps and turns like most male ballet dancers do. Genuinely an enrapturing performer but never has any patience for his pas de deux partners, blames it on her if she gets dropped. A mean gay but no one’s really sure if he’s gay or not. Has a posse of tween girls that make fun of everyone not in their clique. Makes snide comments at the barre. Ridiculously cocky even when he falls out of his turns. Barges into the girls dressing room without asking. Demon child.

Bonus: Robb who has to take it because the football team needs to work on their balance or whatever. Really enjoys it actually and will defend it when Theon calls it gay. But don’t ask Theon why he kept staring every time Robb started stretching at the barre

#asoiaf #asoiaf shitposting #these are all just based off me and people I used to dance with #projecting hard this evening

[cooloddball]

Ok, so I would like to throw in my opinion on the "fell first/fell harder" Lestappen take.

Let me preface this by saying I'm very new to F1 racing and am learning quickly about the sport and the racers (and falling absolutely in love with all these adorable goobers too!)

I only looked into it because a coworker of mine is in love with Daniel lol. In searching Daniel I found a pic of Charles and was IMMEDIATELY like 👀👀 'Damn ok I see you, gorgeous, who are you??' And in searching him, I saw MANY pics of him and MAX.

In lengthy conclusion, MY hot take is this: Max fell first in a heavy moment of bi panic. Let's face it, Charles is the kinda guy that could definitely make "straight" men questions themselves for a hot minute. I can FULLY see, understand, and sympathize with the idea of Karting Day Max being genuinely confused about what exactly it is he's feeling for Charles because, no, absolutely NOT is he attracted to boys! (Read: his dad would probably get pretty pissed to hear/know his champion racing "straight" son has a huge boy crush on his rival of all people)

So it's treated like an early school crush where you're young and immature and kinda mean to them only because you don't want them to know you actually like them, y'know? Plus, he has to be a bit ruthless! This is his rival, for corn's sake!

Flash forward, Max goes to F1, his crush probably simmers/dies down now that he's got all new focus. In comes Charles to F1 bringing all those emotions and memories back to the surface. But Max is determined to stay focused this time. And in this time I believe is when Charles starts really dealing with HIS side of the crush because look at (his) Max now! All grown up and racing in F1 and giving him a serious run for his money and looking damn fine while doing it and Charles has trouble not letting it effect him.

Eventually time progresses, they grow and mature and come to realize they're both equally deserving to be where they are at and they're both amazing drivers and Max has now allowed himself to start letting go of the school yard crush tendencies and started really appreciating Charles for who and what he is. I think he's now allowing himself to just enjoy being with and around Charles. He's come to realize he LOVES the giggles and the dimples and the shimmer in the sea green eyes and, hey, Charles is a damn good driver so why shouldn't he be honest about that and tell the world?

I look at his body language and how he acts and speaks around Charles (and vice versa) and, for all the years they've known each other, they're still so bashful and giddy around each other. I've noticed that when Charles might be giving an interview, Max will just walk over and start talking, and Charles gives him his FULL attention despite the fact he was originally talking to someone else first. Maybe Max and Charles can't have each other romantically, so they take the best they can get.

I'm so sorry for such a long (and probably confusing) rant but I've really no one else to talk with about this and I'm OBSSESSED with their obsession with each other that I could go on for literal HOURS about these two lovesick knuckleheads 🥰🥰

no apologies needed i love you and this ask because long asks are the best. i also like the fact that you are of a different opinion because we can’t all see things the same way.

as for the who fell first vs who fell harder i get why you see it that way but from my side i feel charles fell first because that’s who he is, like it would take something very little to happen for him to get a him to like something/someone and he loses interest just as quickly. meanwhile max is the kind of person who takes his time to understand things/ people and it takes a while to like these things/people but once he’s in it’ll take a lot to get out/dislike something etc.

also, as i mentioned in an earlier post, it’s charles’ “hostility” towards max when they were younger that did it for me. like from the lore we have there’s nothing that max could’ve done that warranted charles disliking him so much. and no, charles got his revenge for the inchident. i think charles realised he had a crush and max was oblivious (at first) because all he was focused on at the time was racing (thanks to jos 😡) so he probably didn’t care to form many relationships/friendships with the other karters which probably made charles feel some type of way like max didn’t care enough to like him so he decided “if it’s only racing you care about i might as well give you something to remember me by” so he focused his energy on racing against him and just outright being a track terror. little did he know that’s what max needed to steer him to liking him (charles)but it was too late, max had a target on his back…and here we are.

if you ever want to talk about them, i’m here to listen and offer whatever take.

#asks #lestappen #lestappen dynamics #also can we get a body language expert please because i need to understand why they act the way they do around each other

[jethought-s]

Eddie Diaz, my love, you are wonderful and I will always defend you by all means.

I really think I have reached my limit. Leaving aside the fact that before Buck kissed the rat the 911 fandom was a paradise while now thanks to them it is practically a hell, I’d have no problem if they stayed in their hole to support Buck's relationship with a homophobic, racist, xenophobic rat and the thousand other virtues that distinguish him but no, from the height of their bad taste they allow themselves not only to insult the ship but even think they have the right to be able to question Eddie not only as a character but even as a father! So, welcome to my defense/declaration of love to Edmundo “Eddie” Diaz (I know that the episode is only an hour away, that some people have already seen it because it was uploaded to some platform, and that it is a very long post, but if you love Eddie Diaz like I do, please read it and let me know what you think. I have to share my immense love for him with someone)

If I were to launch myself into the experience of describing and analyzing everything we know about Eddie I would end up rewriting the entire Divine Comedy so let's focus on today's “problem,” which is the one that, for some, Eddie is a selfish character and a bad father. This honestly makes me laugh a lot, because the people who support this theory came out after the sneak peek that instead is absolute proof of the wonderful father that Eddie is and his growth as a character.

“Eddie called Buck, but what does he have to do with his mess?” “He cannot be so selfish as to hope that Buck will solve his problems.” “His problems are not Buck's problems”.

So, first of all, do you even know the other member of the ship you support? OF COURSE BUCK WOULD DROP EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE TO RUN TO EDDIE AND CHRIS. Second, what kind of miserable, affectless life do you have to even think such a thing? Taking the ship out of the picture, taking the romantic side out and keeping only the friendship, if one of your friends, someone toward whom you feel sincere affection has a problem, it’s normal that that becomes partly your problem as well. It’s love, because friendship is also love. And here we're not talking about a problem with the car engine, we're talking about a problem that Buck himself was already concerned about and that involves not only Eddie, but also his son. The son whom Buck loves so much that he fights for him as no one else would, and of whom he does in fact have legal custody should the reading of the will take place. That's why Eddie named Buck, and that already shows a great evolution in him, the fact that he recognizes that he has a problem, that he doesn't know how to handle it, that he needs help, and he doesn't shut himself off and somatize all these anxieties and fears but seek help.

Those who have suffered with their mental health know perfectly well how big this step is toward the right direction. In the healing process one has to come face to face with the problem and he has done that, unfortunately, however, not entirely because of him, Christopher has been involved. AND HERE WE GET TO THE POINT OF WHAT A WONDERFUL FATHER EDDIE DIAZ IS.

Contrary to what the same psychopaths claim, Eddie is fully aware that he screwed up, but, being a good father, he called Buck. Why? Because he knows his son so well that he knows, no matter how much it kills him, that there is nothing he can do to fix it at the moment and that the only one who can approach Chris in such a delicate situation if he cannot, is only Buck. The sneak peek scene clearly shows how Chris is at the center of his world, is literally his heart, so much so that he is willing to step aside for his sake.

Eddie is not asking Buck to solve the problem (Buck's response about how he doesn't think he is able to explain what is going on proving that he still doesn't totally realize how significant and essential his presence is in their lives) he knows that that is his job, but he knows his son so well that he knows he needs to talk and be heard, because nightmares become less frightening when you talk about them, but he knows he wouldn't do that with him because he needs time to be able to process it, but he also knows how risky it is to keep it all inside, and so he has called the one person he is sure Chris can confide in without pressure in a natural way. Eddie is not asking Buck to fix the mess he made, Eddie is simply asking Buck to be Buck, because he is all that Eddie and Christopher need. As he has been from the first moment they met and as he always will be.

Taking away the parallel to 5x12 (this would deserve a separate post), this sentence destroyed me. Eddie doesn't care about himself right now; he cares about Chris. His instinct as a father would lead him to break down that door, to apologize, to get him to talk to him, to hug him, but he loves him so immensely that he knows he can't do that right now, and with all the selflessness that only the strength of the purest love can give you, he steps aside to make sure he’s not alone. Eddie is a wonderful father because he is still learning, and I am afraid he will learn a hard lesson in this episode but I will talk about that once the episode airs.

I would like to say so much more, about how much this also shows Buddie in their essence, in always being there for each other, to always be the priority in each other's lives because essentially, even if they don't realize it yet, they are already one. Let's just hope the show decides to take the path of making them realize what they always have before their eye

One last point is necessary, however. What is written above is only 1% of the story, but that alone is more than enough to make you understand how BuckRats fans will NEVER be able to bother Buddie fans. Because there is no contest, we are talking about two characters, Eddie and Buck, sharing life, soul and heart, and two characters, Buck and the rat, sharing 4 minutes of screen time.

#buddie #buck x eddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #christopher diaz #buck and eddie #911 liveblog #911 spoilers #911 on abc #911 abc #anti tommy #buckley diaz family #anti tommy kinard #911 buddie #buddieedit

[ichorblossoms]

I WOULD LIKE TO ASK QUESTION ABOUT OCS IN FACT 🤲 how was meeting yarrow for the first time like for grimm? and reverse? i love them and how tender they grow together so dearly

HELLO THANK YOU FOR THE ASK AND THANK YOU IN GENERAL EHEHEHEEEE they are eating at my brain all the time <3

OKAY so a vague timeline of honeybee's three main parts is here BUT there is a (not actually secret) part 0 that is how they first meet. i want to include it in the story but i'm concerned telling a story like this

might get a little confusing for people so. we shall see

i DO have my reasons for wanting to tell it this way and also p0 is a single scene. but also i might combine it with p1 idk. it's a mess, i'm a mess

anyways at this point grimm is ~18 and still pretty freshly out of their whole "i was a bodyguard/scout for the people who destroyed everything i loved for several years because i fell in love [was manipulated by] the family's young heiress when i was vulnerable and also a child"* ordeal and now making a living for themself being an outlaw. it travels from town to town and takes on odd jobs, mostly recon stuff because it's very good at sneaking around. also having a robot dog designed to jam signals and camera feeds helps

*this is A Lot. i know it sounds edgy as fuck, but a consistent source of conflict in this universe is how people in power (those with a lot of money in this case) consistently fuck over everyone else and each other for the sake of more power/a perceived advantage/money and grimm is a victim of that to a more extreme degree than most

grimm takes a job that involves getting some sort of intel out of the offices of a medical clinic and gets caught halfway through. they can fight too, so they do get out, but not before sustaining a pretty bad injury to their jaw (originally this was going to be a gunshot, but after doing research i realize that hm sustaining a gunshot wound to the jaw usually requires reconstructive surgery that grimm would not have access to, so i think they were hit with something instead). on their way sneak-stumbling out, they happen across one of the interns in the stairwell, who sees them injured and bleeding and goes "stay right there i'll get something to help you!" because shit, why else are they working at a clinic if they aren't going to help people who are hurt

normally grimm wouldn't stay, fuck that, but it's dazed and possibly concussed, so it does. yarrow (who is about ~19) comes back with some bandages and painkillers, quickly does a quick patch job, and sends grimm off with a "i'm sorry this is all i can do" and grimm gets the fuck out of there

now yarrow isn't stupid, he knew that grimm wasn't supposed to be there, but if he can help, he will help, especially if someone's in pain. grimm wasn't anyone meaningful to them at that point, and i think that whole ordeal is something that occasionally crosses their mind in the next ~3 years before they cross paths again, but there weren't any severe consequences to their actions (if any, still dunno if they got caught) nor was their life really under threat, so it wasn't any more shocking than someone coming in to the clinic with a severe injury

ON the flip side though, grimm cannot stop thinking about this. it has encountered so little kindness in the previous ~6 years of its life that a total stranger helping them out is inconceivable. now, grimm will save its own hide first and foremost, so it doesn't stick around, but this whole incident leaves it with a sense of being indebted to yarrow, whose name they don't even know at that point. nothing it would go out of its way to act upon, but this "i owe my life to that stranger" thing it marvels at from time to time.

so, when the two cross paths ~3 years later in a different clinic in a different city, grimm feels compelled to at least get yarrow out of there before shit goes down; they've graduated to working riskier jobs with teams of outlaws instead of alone, so it's very much a "you saved my life, i'll save yours back and get you out of here and we can part ways for good" situation. or, that's what grimm tells itself :)

bonus pt0 grimm and yarrow designs hehe

#asks #confusedlucifer #thank you SO much for the ask #i was hoping to get it answered before i went to work but i am not quick at writing up responses bc i have So Many Words to say #and none of them are coherent until i reread everything #this part has existed in my brain for awhile i just haven't talked about it much #someone who is kind without thinking meeting someone who has encountered so little kindness in their life.......ough #like! of course grimm is going to be a little selfish and stick around when they know they should run away after saving yarrow #it's going to stay and hate itself while doing so because it loves like a dog and knows this. but also. nothing else is kind or gentle #yarrow's less intense with things but he's got his issues that mostly revolve around refusing to believe he'll ever do enough #to deserve good things? there's nuance there but that comes out more in p2 #just starts. barking. #honeybee #grimm #yarrow #grimmyarrow

[see-arcane]

Mina's incredible (and underrated) detective prowess would be very useful I bet. Put her on the helm Integra, Van Helsing praised her brains as being above everyone's including himself for a reason.

I honestly can't guess what the chemistry between Integra and Mina would be. Integra doesn't really click with me as a classically heroic character, for all that she does focus on saving humanity from the undead via Alucard and her forces, being the Boss Lady etc etc. She's miles away from being as insidious as an Amanda Waller, but...

The hotel. The fucking hotel will never leave me.

Yes, the order went directly against 'soldiers of the enemy,' but those soldiers had been lied to about who and what they were charging into. Which was obvious even without being a fly on the wall to know their higher-ups had fed them some BS to march them into death and win their own power grab from Millennium. She didn't tell Alucard to 'make it quick' or even just to 'neutralize.' She told him to search and destroy. Folding to Alucard's egging and negging to seem like a Worthy War Commander in the grand scheme~ of the plot

She's not heartless, exactly, but she is arctic and surprisingly quick to breeze past the loss of lives that aren't under her direct care/command. While she might respect Mina's abilities and investigative skills--I wouldn't be surprised if Mina could intuit Millennium's endgame well before the climax could happen--Integra inherited none of her ancestor's warm regard, supposing Abraham van Hel(l)sing had any of the original's tenderness in him (50/50 considering this takes place in aggro horror territory). We can't even say if this universe's Mina played any big role in cornering Dracula; she might just have been a targeted damsel.

All that said, I think Integra would see Mina as another time-displaced bleeding heart with a few useful skills, same as Jonathan. Someone to be an ally at best, a liability at worst. So I don't see her handing over any reins or offering to be co-girlbosses any time soon :c

#Integra is a good character #but not my favorite #Hirano let her look cool a lot and stand imposingly and smoke cigars #she got to shoot a few bad guys including the Major himself! #but the lion's share of development and interesting actions were all Alucard's and occasionally Seras' #I think the story kind of fumbled a lot of her potential to be more than Boss Lady who has cooler/more powerful people do stuff AROUND her #rather than let her really do anything herself without somebody else being the driving muscle/energy #Mina by contrast is ACTIVE #even working within the constraints of being a young woman in the Victorian era #she is hauling ass and making connections and paving the road to victory against Dracula himself #all while having a massively open heart that takes in so many people #like the rest of the original Drac Attack Pack it isn't just the loss of Lucy that drives them #she and Jonathan and Van Helsing and the Suitors all lock down on Thwarting Dracula #because if they just sit back and do nothing then He Wins and Humanity Loses--they became the OG Vampire Hunter Gang out of necessity #and goodwill #whereas Integra kind of just inherits Hellsing and its mission with the same vibe as someone inheriting Dad's job #maybe if we'd gotten scenes where it shows how she's handling the toll of running things; the sacrifices made in blood and its effects #I'd see more chemistry in potentia between her and someone as dynamic as Mina #but as it stands #I think Mina would just be another new accessory #anyway #integra hellsing #mina harker #dracula #hellsing

[milimeters-morales]

can i get Miles G with a fucked up sense of his own mortality pretty please :3 and some concerning views on his relationships with people and religious imagery in there with how he is the sacrificial lamb and the person killing it and the witnesses and the better good they all crave :3 and then don’t make him say it or even think it often just in the shower and when he’s trying to sleep pretty please with a cherry on top :3

#like he’s got a lot going on in there and out there would love to see it be kind of fucked up 👍🏾 please i want to save him so bad #<- is the one making it fucking awful for him #like how does he view his relationships with people his age? people older than him? younger than him? are they all flesh and bones at some+ #point to him?? he values his mother above all else. what is he willing to do (if his prowler is like that in the first place?) #how does he see himself? is he fucked up in a ‘i’m their favorite im perfect at my job’ way? or a beaten and broken down to where they + #can’t run because that would mean leaving their food home a loved one #how does he handle pain? does he do it himself? does he think he deserves it? does he deserve nothing? does he even consider himself a+ #human anymore?? #does he feel like a weapon that this wonderful woman gave birth to and is burdened with? they just look so similar yknow maybe he hates #that at some point. maybe he is intriguing in his own home and body. #has he already killed miles? when he looks in the mirror does he see anything at all besides someone who’s killed + replaced the real miles #hes so eldest daughter core it’s almost 9pm i can’t be thinking like this. it’s going to ruin me #??? #not tagging #atsv spoilers