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loveindefinitely · 5 months

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༊*·˚ NEW JOBS AND DEATH THREATS — cod x reader

CRAVE YOU — call of duty x reader CHAPTER ONE

featuring. simon 'ghost' riley + johnny 'soap' mactavish + kyle 'gaz' garrick + john 'bravo six' price + alejandro vargas + rodolfo 'rudy' parra + könig + keegan p. russ

warnings. nsfw, fem!reader, prison au, serial killer au, reverse harem, therapist/patient, medical inaccuracies, graphic violence, depictions of murder, everyone's unhinged, poly tf141, minor ships, threesomes, foursomes, gangbangs, this is not medical advice!!

series masterlist. read on ao3.

Life was hard. That was a fact.

Bills and groceries didn’t pay for themselves. That was also a fact.

Adding these two factors together, the final product will be a high-risk job in one of the highest-risk places on Earth. That’s… not a fact.

And yet, here you are, standing at the visitor entrance of Las Almas Prison, sporting a disgruntled grimace and a new pair of black slacks that you’d splurged on. They, at least, made your ass look good, although that was truly the least of your worries.

No. Your current list of worries looked something like this;

Getting Murdered

Getting Attacked

Vomiting Within The First Five Minutes Of Your New Job?

…Yeah. Something like that.

The early morning sun is blinding where it sits, just off to the side of the giant concrete building that was the main offices and Visitor Centre. The fact that you were standing in front of what was only a small part of the overall prison grounds was… alarming.

You were well aware that this was the largest prison in your country, housing the most lethal and awful of criminals. Some you’d seen either on the news, or heard of in passing conversations.

This was the real deal. And, somehow, you’d managed to find yourself being hired to work here. You. Work with serial killers. The worst of the worst.

With the stress on your bank account, and the endless struggle that was trying to find a stable career in the current job market, you simply had no other choice but to accept the offer. It paid extremely well, had great benefits, and your safety was… fairly considered.

The amount of NDAs, liability clauses and agreements, however?

Not the best at calming your nerves, to say the least.

The biting chill of the winter wind has you wrapping your arms around yourself, leather bag slung over your shoulder as you finally step through the automatic sliding door.

You’re not surprised to find that the chill only deepens inside the concrete walls of the building, with no heaters or air conditioning from what you can see. There is, however, bright white overhead lights that do nothing except aid the throbbing in the side of your head – probably due to the restless sleep you’d had the night before, anticipation and anxiety warring inside of your thoughts.

There’s an office in front of you as you step in, with only a few decades-old couches to your right, in front of a dingy TV that’s turned off. Saving their budget for more important things, you suppose.

The walls are a pale, grimy yellow, with sparse photos hung about, framing newspaper articles that are surely from the last century, and black and white pictures of the prison’s opening.

It’s an unsettling place, that much you’ve already gathered.

You haven’t even actually been inside the prison, you remind yourself, your stomach churning where it now lays at your feet.

Without a second thought, you continue with hurried steps to the front desk, where scratched plastic encases the sole woman inside, sitting behind a monitor. There’s a circle of holes that allow for sound to pass through, but other than that, there’s no way of entering from this room. With a quick study of your surroundings, you see a steel door to the left of where the desk sits, with a small square window covered in iron bars.

…Jesus christ.

“Can I help you?” The woman drawls, sliding her glasses further up her nose. Her voice is nasally, and the words come out in a slow drawl as she looks you up and down, unimpressed.

You give her your best smile, although even you can tell that it’s an uneasy one. “Yes! This is my first day, I think I’m supposed to be meeting Kate Laswell?” You ask, nerves betraying your voice with unsteady breaths.

The woman snaps her gum.

You stand there.

She blows it again.

You continue to stand there.

Her gaze is bored and completely void of any thought, before she nods slowly. “Laswell… I’ll call her.”

Really, you couldn’t be more shocked if you tried. What the fuck was happening? How could one lack so much… professionalism?

“Hi, Kate. Yes, it’s Jenny. I have a new hire who apparently wants to see you…” Her voice remains that unbearably slow, sloth-like delivery, before her eyes unhurriedly meet yours again. “What’s your name…?”

You give it to her, tone only the slightest bit impatient as you roll back on the heels of your feet. You can only hope that your black boots are appropriate; you’d figured that they were safe, closed-toe and still somewhat professional.

Time would tell. Jenny was giving you the impression that they were more than acceptable, because at least they got you to do your job in a timely manner.

Jenny says a few more words to who can only pray is Laswell on the other end of the phone, before she places it back in its holder.

“Laswell will be here any…” She pops her gum once more, and maybe, just maybe, you can understand the urge to murder. “Moment.”

You give her a tight, painful smile. “Thank you, Jenny.”

She doesn’t respond, and you decide to just stand back and wait. You certainly weren’t complaining – any more conversation with her would’ve ended with a severe lack of hair on your head.

A minute passes, before a buzz in the pocket of your slacks has your throat tightening.

Pulling out your phone, your next exhale comes out shaky as you read the text.

Charlie: get milk otw home used it all

No ‘good luck’. No… ounce of care for you, or the absolute stress that comes with a new job, let alone one like this.

When you’d told him about the offer, all he’d said was, “It might make you worth something for a change.” Didn’t even question, not for a minute, the risks that came with a job like this. He simply couldn’t give less of a fuck.

“Doctor?” The sound of a door opening, and the kind, almost motherly tone of the voice has you shoving your phone into your pocket once more as you turn to the source of the sound.

It’s a woman, her hair pulled back into a slick bun, one hand holding what seems to be a clipboard. Her other hand rests in the pocket of a white coat, not unlike one a scientist would be fashioning in a lab. Her smile is warm, the corner of her eyes crinkling as you direct a smile of your own her way.

“Kate Laswell?” You ask, extending your hand for her to shake. Taking her hand out of her pocket, she accepts it gracefully, nodding her head.

“The one and only,” she says, before gesturing to the steel door she’d entered through. “Now, today we’ll get you set up with a keycard, general rules, and I’ll have you meet two of your patients.”

You nod, following her as she swipes a card in a black reader, before the red light buzzes green, and she pulls the door open. Right behind her, you take an unstable deep breath as you take in the greyed, jagged walls, a complete contrast to the painted ones of the entrance room.

“We really are so glad to welcome you to our team,” she continues, her black work shoes clicking against the smooth concrete flooring. She doesn’t turn to you as she speaks, but her voice carries around the echoey hallway. “You’ll make a great addition. A necessary one, also. We’ve needed an innovative, young therapist for a while. Most of our… previous hires have held out-dated beliefs, and a lack of humanity for their clientele.”

That makes your brows furrow in confusion. “That’s… odd,” you murmur, before pausing your steps as Laswell stops, swiping her keycard, before entering another room.

As you step into the newly revealed space, your eyes go wide as you take it in.

It’s a wide, large space, with several floors. Metal staircases sit at either end of the vast space, allowing access to every floor. Guards sit at every level, some walking around the space where you and Laswell stand.

It’s a lot, all at once. You’d never even stepped foot into a prison – not before now.

“Most inmates are at the mess for breakfast,” Laswell supplies, turning to you with a neutral expression. She gestures for you to follow her back out of the space, and you do with hurried steps. “The ones you’ll be dealing with, however… they usually eat by themselves.”

You don’t decide to push that statement, not now, as you continue to follow her down the hallway.

“You won’t be seeing much of the prison,” she admits. “There’s heavily guarded spaces on the top floor for your sessions, both for your protection and for the safety of our staff and other low-risk inmates.”

You nod, humming a sound of affirmation as the two of you start heading up the cleaner steps at the end of the hallway. The staff staircase, you suppose.

“Today, you’ll be meeting two of our more… understanding ambers.”

You raise a brow. “Ambers? What does that mean?”

She turns her head over her shoulder, just enough to shoot you a knowing look. “Ambers are our highest-risk inmates. We house ten of them, and you’ll be dealing with eight as per your contract.”

Your stomach falls. You’d known, of course, that the risks were high when applying for this role. But… this was more than you’d imagined, in a way. Ambers. Huh.

Silence falls over the two of you as you make your way up the never-ending steps, no windows in sight. It’s unnerving, in a creepy, strange way. When you finally reach the top, you try and hide how out of breath you are from that small exertion.

Fucking christ.

Laswell, for her part, looks completely fine in an effortless way. You can’t eve find it in yourself to be envious. The feeling’s closer to admiration.

“Here’s the files on them both. You’ll be seeing Kyle Garrick first,” she hands you the clipboard she’d been carrying, and you accept it with only a slight tremble. She doesn’t comment on it, and you find yourself warming up to her already. “They’ll be restrained, and there is heavy security, so you needn’t worry about that side of things.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” you say earnestly, flipping through the files without reading much of anything, not yet.

She waves you off with a soft chuckle. “None of that. Kate’s more than fine,” she insists, and you give her a bright smile in return. Maybe this job wouldn’t be so bad – a boss like this was much better than a creepy middle-aged man any day of the week.

You don’t realise you’ve made it to a small room until she stops walking, scanning her keycard and pushing the door open, gesturing you in. “While you have your first two sessions, I’ll sort your keycard and the rest of the processes out. I wish you luck.”

With that, the door shuts behind you, and you’re alone in a small room.

It matches the rest of the hallways you’ve seen – grey concrete walls, grey concrete floors. The only furniture, however, is one metal table drilled into the floor in the centre, one chair on either side.

…It’s depressing. Not at all like you’d prefer, not for a fucking therapy session, but then again, you hadn’t met your clients yet.

Ambers. High-risk.

With a deep breath, you take a seat at the chair closest to you, finally reading through the top file on the clipboard.

Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick.

You skim over the height, weight, sex – immediately reading the comments made and his sentence.

Mass murderer. Motivated attacks.

Your eyes go wide, almost comically so, as you bite at your lip, folding one leg over the other as you continue to read.

Of course, you’d prepared, been made aware that you’d be dealing with murderers. But having it in black and white, right in front of you, is a whole other thing entirely.

Apparently, they were motivated attacks. Targets being large CEOs, specifically those with reported claims of misuse of power, and those against green laws. Anti-environment types.

The motive is… you’re aware killing is bad. You hadn’t spent years studying for a degree in Psychology to think otherwise. But it wasn’t as simple as some made it out to be. You’d done papers suggesting that certain motives implied healthier patterns, healthier outlets.

If you had to choose between him killing pregnant women, and CEOs with broken moral compasses?

It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out your answer.

You’re about to flip the page when there’s a knock on the door on the other side of the room, before it opens.

There’s two guards that walk in, before a man in an olive green jumpsuit follows, hands cuffed tightly together in front of him, head down. Another guard from behind shoves him in, too rough for your liking. You sit up straighter, eyes assessing as you take in the man in the jumpsuit.

He’s forced into the chair opposite you, before one of the guards grabs his cuffed wrists and chains them to a rig in the middle of the table. You’re grateful for the precautions, but there’s a part of you that feels guilty watching the manhandling of the seemingly calm man.

“Half an hour,” the most brutish guard of them all grits out, beer belly spilling out over his belted jeans. He jostles the chain attaching his wrists to the table unnecessarily, and your eyes narrow.

He goes to leave, along with another guard, but one stands to stay in position inside, beside the door.

Your brows furrow, and you speak up before you can stop yourself. “Sorry, sir, but my sessions will need confidentiality, as for the best results. I’m sure that I’ll be safe with his restraints.”

The guard stares you down, seemingly mulling your words over, before shrugging and leaving the room, door shutting behind him.

…Huh. Alright.

You find your posture relaxing, just slightly, which is odd, considering you’re now only a metre or two away from a convicted murderer.

His gaze is trained to the table, left foot tapping incessantly against the concrete floor.

“It’s nice to meet you, Gaz,” you say with a soft tone and a gentle smile. You figure that his nickname is the best bet, not wanting to stir up any possible traumas with his given name during your first session with the man. “I’ll be your new psychiatric evaluator.”

His eyes flick up, meeting yours, and he nods slowly, as if awaiting a punchline.

“Is it okay for me to call you Gaz?” You ask, tilting your head to the side and flipping to an empty page to take notes on. You’d need to grab a notebook from home, you decide.

He relaxes, only the smallest of movements, and he nods. “Gaz, yeah.”

Your smile widens at the small victory. Any step towards progress was a huge one, in your eyes. You’d be facing a lot of them in the coming days.

“Do you have any advice for this place?” You push, trying to form a bond of trust with the dark-haired man. “I’m gonna be honest, you’re my first patient, and I’ve only met Laswell and… Jenny?”

His mouth quirks at that, a dimple showing to the left of his mouth as he looks back up at you. “Jenny’s a character, ain’t she?”

You laugh, a genuine one, and nod. “She certainly is. You’ve met her?”

He shrugs, shoulders relaxing slightly. “Few times, yeah. She drives me up the fuckin’ wall.” His accent is only minimally apparent, but his voice is of a somewhat humorous tone.

Small victories.

“Well,” he exhales, settling into his chair a bit as he seems to ponder. “Do ya know who else you’re assigned to?”

You’d been sure to thoroughly go over your contract, and you were allowed to disclose your other patients between your others. They’d find out within the day, anyways, so there was no point in being discreet.

“It’s only you and a… John Price? Today. I’m sure I’ll find out the other six over the next few days,” you say, appreciating that he’s starting conversations. It’s more than you’d allowed yourself to hope for.

Gaz’s eyes light up, and even if you hadn’t been incessant in watching him, it’d be an obvious shift in emotions. “Price?”

You nod, quickly making a note on your clipboard, before folding your hands in your lap as you gesture for him to continue with a quick inclination of your head.

“He’s the best. Man’s a legend,” he enthuses. “Love ‘im.”

There’s… a hidden truth to that statement, that you make a mental note to unpack during a later session. Your smile is a natural one as you say, “He’s an amber, correct? Laswell told me I’d been assigned eight out of ten ambers… you’re one of them, right?”

Gaz seems to fold into himself, and you kick yourself for going back to square one. He answers, however.

“...Yeah. Only Ghost ‘nd Valeria are aggressive, though. We’re just… misunderstood,” he murmurs, and in the back of your brain, you find yourself believing his words.

“Thank you,” you smile, and he responds with a sharp one of his own. Maybe you’d covered more ground than you’d expected. “I think it’d been mentioned that I was only assigned men, due to the nature of the job, or something like that.”

Seeming to mull over your words, he starts to slowly nod. “Sounds ‘bout right. As long as you don’t get Graves, you’ll be alright. The others are… fuckin’ weird, but they’re good men. Mostly.”

That’s a lot of information at once, and quite frankly, it takes a moment for you to process.

“‘Good men’. What do you think it takes to be a good man?” You ask, curiosity laced into your tone. Getting to ask such questions of a convicted murderer, it’s a thrilling, exhilarating task.

His eyes don’t shift as he replies. “Good men do the acts others are too scared to do. They see the evil in the world, and rid of it with their own bare hands. You can be an ethical murderer, Doc.”

Those words, they’re – they’re authentic, and conviction aches in their structure.

You swallow around a dry mouth.

“You think you’re a good man?” You ask.

His smile would be seen as warm to any who weren’t aware of his acts, but to you – it’s chilling. Haunting in a way you’ve never experienced.

It remains as he answers.

“I think that I’m a man who people wish they had the bravery to be.”

a/n. okay so im really nervous about posting this, cause ITS EIGHT FUKCING LOVE INTERESTS and also im a humanities girl not a science one!! sociology all the way not psych!! so forgive me for all the inaccuracies and legality issues please. im just a girl. hopefully u guys will like this one? i mean, obsessed serial killers cod is smth i need so here we are. all comments and feedback mean so muchhh ty ily mwah mwah mwah

taglist comment/msg to be added. [nothing to see here.]

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fangswbenefits · 10 months

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Sharing is Caring (II)

Summary: Things get complicated, but you find yourself sharing a bed with Miguel… once again. Too bad someone else is in the room.

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x spider-woman!reader

18+. Sharing one bed. Semi-public. Blue balls. Sexual tension. Mutual masturbation. Creampie. Implied cockwarming.

* ˚ ✦ Part 1. (you don’t have to read it to enjoy this one, though)

You were fucked.

Extremely fucked.

Not only had the anomaly managed to slip through your fingers, effectively disabling the trackers scattered around, but you were also fucked, because now you were left to deal with the aftermath of a very intimate encounter with Miguel.

It was nearly five in the morning and the night was nowhere near being done. Fortunately, it had stopped raining, which helped with visibility and grip, and having Lyla assist you as in replacing the faulty sensors was also very much welcome.

“Sensor 24 up and running,” the AI’s sing-song voice announced, as the device bleeped green.

You leapt over the railing, shooting a string of web to the side of the hotel, so you could swing through the window.

As you landed with a clumsy thump, you noticed Miguel had already gotten back from his reconnaissance check.

He looked positively… pissed off.

Great.

“Lyla, call her,” her grumbled, checking his watch.

“Already did,” she announced, appearing by his shoulder. “Want me to run a diagnostics of the perimeter once again?”

“Do it in five minute intervals,” he said flatly. “The anomaly must be nearby.”

You removed your mask and considered sitting on the bed, but were soon reminded that not even thirty minutes ago, you were getting fucked by Miguel.

A shudder ran through your body.

“You okay?” he asked, his narrowed eyes on you.

You shrugged. “Sure.”

The problem with having impromptu sex was that now you were left to deal with the soreness between your legs, and the frustration of an orgasm that never came to be.

Did Miguel feel the same way?

Your eyes roamed his body, and you find yourself glaring at his-

“Hey! I need you to focus,” Miguel said with a snap of his fingers. “There’s still a chance we deal with it tonight.”

You were about to snap back when a loud distorted buzz filled the room, swirls of flashing lights nearly blinding you, as the inter-dimensional portal expanded quickly in pulsating waves.

Through came Jessica Drew, followed closely by Peter B. Parker.

Fuck.

“What are you doing here?” Miguel growled, pointing at Peter.

“What?” he asked, eyes widening in confusion.

Miguel wasn’t known to be a very patient man, and you reckoned his patience was now hanging by a thread. “I called for Jess. Not you.”

Jess let out an exasperated sigh. “Easy, Miguel. We were both on the same mission.”

He straightened up, but crossed his arms. “Right.”

“Care to explain why I had to leave to be here?” she went on, resting on hand on her swollen belly. “How did you lose track of the anomaly?”

He exchanged a brief look with you. “The sensors didn’t alert us in time.”

That was true.

“Weren’t you supposed to be monitoring, regardless?”

“We dozed off,” you chimed in. “Momentarily! Just for a while.”

Not really true…

Jess glanced at you, suspicion written all over face.

“Sleeping on the job,” she then chuckled, eyeing Miguel deviously. “Didn’t think you’d ever do that, Miguel.”

He narrowed his eyes menacingly. “We weren’t sleeping. We were just resting our eyes for a moment.”

A blatant lie.

“What’s that on your neck?” Peter suddenly asked with a worried look on his face.

Oh….

You let out a nervous laugh, rubbing the tender hickey spot. “Bug bite.”

“Allergic reaction,” Miguel blurted out at the same time.

Fuck.

You shot him a murderous look.

Jessica arched an eyebrow. “Which one is it?”

“An allergic reaction to a bug bite,” Miguel said with a shrug, growing visibly annoyed.

A wave of relief washed over you momentarily. That seemed plausible enough.

But…

“Oh, really?” she asked with a knowing smile. “What bug? A spid-”

But Miguel was already cutting her off. “We don’t have time for this!”

Peter walked to you, craning your neck to the side. “You should have it checked. It looks serious.”

Ah, Peter… ever the innocent.

“Jess, you stay with us,” Miguel says, dragging Peter away from you at once. “We need an extra pair of eyes.”

She frowned. “No. Peter stays. I need to get some sleep,” she said, patting her belly.

“No!” Miguel growled.

“Actually, I was thinking of heading back home,” Peter drawled out, rubbing the back of his head. “Mayday should be waking up soon.”

“And I’m pregnant,” Jess shot, holding her chin high.

Peter swallowed and fell silent. The deal was sealed.

“Lyla, any updates?”

The hologram popped up instantly. “No, boss.”

Jess glanced over at you one last time, before stepping into the portal once again. “You should really have that checked. Whatever bug did that seems… vicious,” she then slipped into the vortex, which vanished behind her.

You momentarily froze in place, feeling the dread of realisation hit you like a ton of bricks.

She knew.

“I’ll be right back,” Peter drawled out with a yawn and a stretch, disappearing into the bathroom.

The moment you heard rhe door click shut, you turned to Miguel.

“An allergic reaction to a bug bite?” you hissed.

He scowled deeply. “Because simply saying bug bite sounded ridiculous.”

“She didn’t believe it, regardless.”

Miguel was suddenly towering over you, his face twisted in annoyance. “Then why does it matter?”

“Because… you gave me a visible hickey!”

It was a silly thing to get upset about. There were worse things in life than having Miguel O’Hara marking you as a result of built up sexual tension.

But you didn’t want to give in.

“Got carried away,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah…”

He cleared his throat. “But I have a problem.”

You looked up at him. “What problem?”

“Well…” he said, glancing at the bathroom door.

“Peter?”

“No!”

You clicked your tongue. “Then what?”

His placed both hands on his hips and glanced down.

Your eyes followed suit.

Oh.

“What? Why are you… what?” you stuttered in disbelief at the sight of the outline of his hardened cock.

“Biology, remember?” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s not going away.”

You somehow managed to tear your eyes from the impressive bulge. “Go jerk off, then!”

He had you walk back until you hit the wall behind. “It won’t go away.”

Had you just given Miguel blue balls?

“How’s that my problem?” you huffed, staring intensely into his crimson eyes.

“This is all your fault.”

“Oh, really? I thought we were blaming Biology.”

Before Miguel could retort, the sudden squeak of a door being swung open, had you slipped past him.

Peter emerged, eyeing you both. “Oh, I see what this is.”

Miguel had to move strategically in order to hide his raging boner from him. “What do you mean?”

“I know what’s up with you two,” Peter said, with a playful grin. “All the whispering and whatnot.”

Great.

Were you two that transparent?

“Huh…”

Miguel had pursed his lips.

Peter paced closer to you, eyeing you with a knowing smile. “You’re deciding on Jessica’s birthday present, right?”

You blinked a few times and heard Miguel exhale nearby.

“Right? I knew it!” he threw his arms in the air as if he’d just won the lottery.

In truth, you were simply baffled at how innocent Peter could be. The immediate weight that was lifted off your shoulders was enough to draw a laugh from you.

“Sure!”

“Of course, Peter,” Miguel said, voice dripping with his trademark sarcasm. “We went on this mission, so we could go through birthday checklists.”

A layer of pride settled on Peter’s face. “Ah! You’re growing soft, Miguel.”

You winced at his poor choice of words.

“But fear not!” he said as if he was about to fight off the anomaly himself. “We’ll take turns watching. You two can get some rest and properly plan it out,” he then pinched his thumb and index finger together and dragged them across his lips. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Miguel didn’t budge at first, but you were all too grateful to stop this insane conversation altogether.

“Thanks, Peter.”

“Of course,” he smiled widely, pacing to the open hotel window, leaping into the the sky night.

You shot Miguel one last look before slipping inside into the comfort of the bedsheets, welcoming the softness.

But you were sorely mistaken if you thought Miguel wouldn’t have followed you.

Your heart skipped a beat. Or two.

You had turned to face the wall, hoping he’d take the hint, and leave you be.

But once you felt his erection pressing into your ass, you knew you were a goner.

There was something extremely empowering about having a man like Miguel be so needy and desperate.

He scooted closer until his breath fanned your ear. “Can you just…”

You scoffed, pride swelling inside you. “Go ask Biology to jerk you off.”

“Whawt?”

“You keep blaming it, so…”

Silence fell between you two.

His hand then came to grip your hip. “It’s you.”

“I didn’t catch that,” you said, feeling his thumb rubbing gently, as he pushed the top half of your suit increasingly higher.

He rolled his hips into you, letting out a shaky moan in your ear that had your skin raise with goosebumps.

You flipped onto your other side to fully face him, and Miguel immediately took your lips with his, kissing you hungrily.

His hand dragged the fabric all the way up until he managed to expose one breast, breaking the kiss only to move down to suck on your hardened nipple.

The thought that he might be too much vaguely crossed your mind. For the second time that night you were meeting a side of Miguel that you had never seen before.

A side you much preferred.

Your fingers dragged through his hair, silently praising him.

In no time, you watched his digital suit disintegrate, giving you full access to the beautifully sculped body underneath.

He gripped your wrist and lowered it until your fingers grazed his cock. Knowing fully well what he craved, you wrapped them around it, earning an immediate jerk of his hips.

“Miguel…” you moaned, letting him freely fuck your hand, spilling more and more precum.

He released your nipple and had his forehead resting on your shoulder, his hand on top of your, making sure you squeezed tighter and tighter.

It didn’t take long for your hand to be soaked with precum, making it easier for him to slide up and down.

You squeezed involuntarily and a gush of wetness spilled into your underwear, your body yearning for him to fill you up with his cock.

He moved his hips deliciously, and you focused on taking in the wet sounds that filled the room as well as his breathless grunts.

But such bliss was short-lived as you heard Peter bolting into the room with a swish of his web.

Well…

Miguel immediately stilled, letting go of your hand.

You didn’t let go of his cock, instead peeking over his shoulder only to find Peter rolling out a sleeping bag on the floor.

He then turned to face you, and your head immediately slumped against the pillow, eyes on Miguel’s.

“Are you okay?”

“What?”

Peter’s voice was but a whisper. “Your heart rate is accelerated.”

Ah… spider senses.

“Yeah… I’m just a bit tense… it’s fine,” you muttered, feeling Miguel’s cock twitch in your hand. “Go get some rest. I’ll take over.”

“Oh! Thank you,” he beamed. “Mayday has been giving us terrible nights, and I could use a few minutes.”

You watched as he fluffed out his pillow before settling down on his back with a yawn.

Miguel’s breathing has steadied momentarily and you eventually let go of him.

But he quickly got a hold of your wrist.

The implication of that action wasn’t exactly subtle and you widened your eyes.

“No,” you mouthed right away.

His crimson eyes had darkened and you spotted his fangs from behind his lips.

You shook your head vehemently.

This was a bad idea.

But as soon as Peter’s snores tore through the room, you felt your heart clench.

“Peter is right there… he will hear it!”

He pressed an urgent kiss to your forehead. “We’ll be quiet. I’ll help you be quiet,” he promised, pressing his cock further into your already soaked crotch.

Your eyes fluttered shut, and just as you were about to let out a low whimper, you felt his hand cover your mouth, effectively reigning it in.

“Quiet.”

The other travelled down painfully slowly, palm grazing your exposed breast briefly, before resting just above the waistline of your suit.

“You have to be quiet,” he warned in a barely audible tone.

You nodded and he lifted his hand from your lips.

“We shouldn’t…” you muttered under your breath.

But your words were not matching your actions, as you dragged your hand covered in precum across his hard chest, taking your time to gently rub his nipple with your thumb.

You thought Miguel had stopped breathing altogether, but soon realised he was merely attempting to hold back a moan.

His fingers quickly slipped past the the waistline, finding your clit and drawing small circles. You had to bite your lip hard to suppress a whimper, rolling your hips into him.

You found his cock again, gripping it desperately and giving him a few pumps that matched the tempo of his strokes.

The thrill of indulging in such experience even when someome else was in the room, and with the increased chances of being caught, merely added to the pleasure you were already feeling.

“You’re doing good,” Miguel praised you through a shaky breath. “So good…”

Impatience took over and you wiggled out of your bottom half of the suit, allowing you to grant him betterr acces, as hou parted your legs.

He immediately seized it and slipped one finger inside.

You had to clasp your hand over your mouth to keep from groaning, eyes fluttering shut.

His breath was on your ear again. “Can you take one more?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice. A second finger immediately joined the first one, slinding inside effortlessly.

Feeling that you had managed to keep yourself under control, you dropped the hand covering your lips to grip his cock.

“And another one?”

You shook your head, fearing that would be too much. He pressed a kiss to your neck with a sigh, as he fucked your hand in a slow rhythm.

The knots of pleasure in your lower abdomen let you know that you were headed towards the precipice. You kept on riding his fingers relentlessly, your mind suddenly hazy from the feeling of being so full of him already.

“I’m close…” he mouthed, his breath shaky and cock twitching.

He had bared his fangs, and you thought you’d combust on the spot, realising he was truly overwhelmed with pleasure.

Finding your voice again, you whispered sensually, “Where do you want to cum?”

His eyed widened, pupils fully blown.

Your hips faltered briefly, grazing your clit across the palm of his hand. “Inside?”

He pressed his eyes shut and dug his fangs into his lower lip. “I won’t last.”

“I know,” you moaned, dragging thumb across his tip, feeling more droplets of warm precum coating your skin.

Peter suddenly let out a loud snore that made you jolt.

“Are you close?” Miguel asked.

“I’ll be with you inside me.”

You shifted on the mattress, and he removed his fingers from you at once, a wet sound filling the room.

Your body shuddered from the loss, but you soon felt his tip proding your entrance.

Before you could take another breath, he jerked his hips and slipped past your fold effortlessly.

His hand was on your mouth again, and this time you could taste yourself, as he struggled to keep your moans at a minimum.

It was also evident the sudden position was taking a toll on him. His steady pace was faltering with each passing second.

You soon entered the familiar point of no return, feeling an intense wave of pleasure tear from within you, blinding your vision with each pulse and contraction. It took all of your not to moan out loud even against his hand, the few shreds of sanity having a hold on you.

Miguel joined you, clearly not able to withstand the rhythmic squeezes around his cock as you reached your high.

Your caught a glimpse oh him biting the back of his other hand hard. He would for sure draw blood with his fangs, but you couldn’t even stay properly focused.

He bottomed out as deep as he could, spurts of cum coating your squeezing walls.

The two of you were struggling to breathe, shallow pants surrounding you.

“Oh my god! Butterfly!”

Peter…

You jerked away from Miguel in distress but with him still buried deep inside you, catching a glimpse of Peter sitting on the floor, breathing rapidly.

“Go back to sleep. It was just a dream,” you said with a smile.

Miguel pulled you into an embrace. “You did good.”

“Me? Not Biology?”

He scowled deeply.

“You can slide out now…” you whispered with a yawn.

Miguel didn’t move. “I want to stay a little longer likes this.”

Masterlist

#miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara smut #miguel o’hara x you #miguel o’hara #miguel ohara x reader #miguel o’hara x fem!reader #spiderman 2099 x reader #miguel x reader #spiderman 2099

3K notes · View notes

leclercings · 26 days

Text

Je hebt mijn hart | Carlos Sainz

Genre: Fluff

Pairing: Carlos Sainz x Verstappen!Reader

Summary: Carlos is your schatje...

A/N: this was for a request, hope you guys like it!

You sit beside a sleeping figure. There are beeps of the machine and lines indicating your lover's constant heartbeat.

You heave a sigh of relief as you wipe your tears.

Carlos has been admitted to the hospital for appendicitis and you haven't left his side for a second, no matter how many times his parents and your parents have told you to get some rest.

You were terrified while he was in surgery. Although the chances of complication in a surgery of appendicitis are extremely rare- that isn't to say that they aren't there. You know it well, having studied medicine.

You want him to wake up as soon as possible. Your eyes are droopy and head is heavy, almost falling asleep. But you hear slight movement and jolt awake.

“Carlos.” You smile at him as he opens his eyes.

“Schatje,” you gently stroke his hand as he squints.

“Where am I? Do I know you?”

Carlos stares at you intently. Your heart sinks to the bottom of your chest.

You're worried. What happened? Why can't he recognise you? It was a surgery of the abdomen, not the brain. Is he still under the influence of the anesthetic?

“Schatje, schatje. I will call the doctor.”

Just as you get up, he pulls you back.

“I was just kidding.”

He starts laughing. You feel like hitting him because he scared the shit out of you. Of course you won't hit him…

You'll wait till he gets better. The mere thought makes you chuckle. You pull yourself back to reality as Carlos groans.

“How are you?” You ask him, as he loosens his grip on your forearm.

“It is a little painful but not as before.”

You nod.

“You haven't slept in a while, have you?” Carlos stirs in the bed, and the machines start beeping.

“You're supposed to rest, mijn liefje. Don't move.”

You tuck him back inside the blanket and check the monitors. All good.

“I feel better now, Y/N. You should go sleep, mi amor.” He holds your hand gently, making circles at the back of it. The feeling is comforting, although it should be the other way around, but you don't care. You’ve missed him. Missed his touch.

“Carlos! You're awake.” Your conversation is interrupted as his parents enter.

“Y/N, you should go get some rest,” his mom tells you as you stifle a yawn. “We’ll take care of him, don't worry.”

“I'll go in a bit, is that fine?” You reply and she nods at you.

“It reminds me of the time that I had appendicitis,” his dad sits beside him, where you were sitting previously. You and his mom occupy the sofa.

“Won't it be cool if he does an Instagram post as a throwback?” You laugh at your silly idea.

The two of them stop talking and look at you.

“Honey, I think that's a great idea!” His dad smiles at you, and Carlos copies him.

“Sainz 2, Appendicitis 0,” you say, before another yawn.

*****

It's race day. Carlos, your boyfriend, without a job for next year, and now, a missing appendix. It's an important day for your lover. He's back in shape despite the pain, despite the fact that the doctor told him not to exert.

You sigh. He won't listen to anyone. He says that he has a point to prove- the fact that he's worth staying in this fast paced F1 world.

A world where careers can shatter in a millisecond.

You're torn between the Ferrari and Red Bull garage. You decide to hang out at the Red Bull garage.

“I'm worried, Max.” You tell him as he prepares himself for the race.

“Don't be. He'll be fine. Go be with him. I'll be fine too.”

“Good luck, Max.” You hug your brother as you walk towards the Ferrari garage.

A few mechanics give you the side eye as they watch you coming from the Red Bull garage. You haven't made your relationship public yet.

Carlos is sitting with his race engineer, going through some last minute instructions. He spots you and gives you the biggest smile ever.

“Good luck,” you mouth to him. You wish you could hug him, or just reassure him. But you can't. If people get to know about your relationship with Carlos, chaos will ensue. So you've kept it pretty lowkey, for a while now.

The race is intense. You're sitting at the Red Bull garage with Christian, and you can sense his disappointment in the third lap.

Max is obviously disappointed. So is everyone inside the garage. You have mixed feelings- struggling between Max’s DNF and Carlos’s lead.

You hide your pride as the race continues. The last lap has a lot going on, but when it all ends, you cheer from within.

Carlos has won. It's a 1-2 Ferrari win and a McLaren at the 3rd position.

You let out a big cry of happiness and everyone starts staring at you. Christian shakes his head and Max and Kelly start laughing.

You smile in embarrassment.

*****

You're sitting at the dinner table. Max is on your right and Carlos on the left. You've booked a table at a posh restaurant. Kelly and Penelope have joined too.

“Schatje, have some more curry please,” you tell Carlos, before serving some curry to him.

“Congratulations Carlos. You had a good race today,” Max speaks. That's the thing you love about Max- no matter how he was earlier, no matter how competitive is F1 as a motorsport, Max will always support you and your relationship with Carlos.

“Thank you Max. I'm sorry you had a DNF today.”

“That's what life is.” Max responds back.

“Mien liefje.. do you want something else?”

“Mien liefje,” Max laughs. Kelly nudges him. “Looks like someone is in love.”

“You and your never ending saga of cute nicknames for Carlos…” He speaks, making you blush.

Carlos smiles at you.

You feel conscious throughout rest of the dinner.

Max, Kelly and Penelope give you your space with Carlos, leaving a little bit early.

“I'm glad you won today,” you say, taking a bite of your tiramisu.

Carlos stares at you in amazement.

“What, is there something in my teeth?”

“No. I just wanted to say thank you for always supporting me.”

“Of course, Carlos. Always.”

As you walk back to your hotel, it's almost 2 am in the night. The walk back is peaceful. You intertwine your hand with his. A warmth spreads across your entire body- a warmth of love and joy.

You're flying back to your home tomorrow. You'll miss Carlos a lot, but you have a job to take care of. And the best part about him is that he understands.

You stand in front of the hotel. You're both staying at separate hotels. Carlos insisted on dropping you first and then going back to his hotel.

He softly kisses you.

“Je hebt mijn hart.”

“What does that mean?”

“You have my heart.”

“Je hebt mijn heart,” he repeats, before kissing you again.

756 notes · View notes

hxzbinwrites · 3 months

Text

Vox x Emotionless! Reader | Ignorant In Love

(Lovestruck Part 2)

Warnings ⚠️: Cussing, Violence, Vox being annoying

————

4:30am

Vox woke up, yelping as he sprung out of bed. Not a great decision for his sore back as his clawed hand immediately went to brace it. Groaning, his eyes fluttered, attempting to recall what got him in such a tizzy waking up

Right. Another dream.

Vox had been, haunted, by that humiliating event last week. Even more so that he finally realize how incredibly enamored he was with her.

His screen flushing red at this realization of his current situation, Vox decided to rise out of bed. What good was sulking going to do?

Since that day, (Y/n) hadn’t smiled once more at him. Oh how he craves it. Vox acts like he doesn’t care, but he’s aching for another fix. Another high of seeing that smile. He would do anything and everything just to experience that euphoria one last time, just one drop of it.

Getting dressed for the day, Vox was looking at his bow tie collection, seeking out one of his favorite ties before realizing it had been ruined from the coffee.

Frustrated, he grabbed a random one from the pile, not really thinking too much about it as he put it on.

He stomped out of his quarters, his heels dramatically clacking against the floor as he made his way to his office. It was far too early in the morning for anyone to be active, too late for Val to be doing work (at least IN the office, and not at the club), so the quite walk gave his ever-running mind more time to think

What the hell has gotten into him?! He’s a VEE, THE VEE. If anything, this is woman should be loosing sleep and foaming over him!

‘That’s what I like most though’, He thought to himself,’She’s real. She doesn’t tell me just what I want to hear, or cause problems for me, she’s just…her, and she simply does it best.’

His internal conflicts were brought to an end once he finally sat down in his chair. Cracking his sore, aching joints, before booting up his monitor system.

————

8:30am

(Y/n)‘s heels clacked against the tiled floors, making her way to her desk. Her desk was one of those circular desks that curved around the middle and touched both sides of the wall. There was a small door on the side that she could enter from, but it blended in seamlessly with the black desk, so it would be hard for someone who didn’t work here on a daily to find.

Once she entered her cubicle-like desk, she logged onto her monitor, clocking in. 8:30am sharp, as always. She began to work on her boss’s meetings, but her eye caught a certain one for today “errand.”

This caught her eye, as Vox always made her run errands during work hours. Mostly for coffee, but she’s ran to the convenience store in the lobby for strange things as well.

“Hmm” she mumbled, before printing off the schedule regardless and putting it in her folder for later at 10.

That was her routine, print off the original schedule for the day, present it to him at 10, and if edits are needed, she’d come back and re-arrange some things, and repeat the process until it was to his liking.

(Y/n)‘s hardest part of the job was the PR portion of it. Normally, it’s for the PR team, but they got sick of the Vees tantrums and the entire department up and quit. Now, (Y/n) handles Vox’s PR, Velvette’s assistant handles hers, and Vox handles Valentino’s himself.

Speaking of PR, she was in for a doozy today. Last Friday, when the coffee incident took place, apparently Vox said some…choice words…to the Radio Demon, and Alastor relayed that information back to his listeners on his radio show.

Sighing, (Y/n) began typing a public rebuttal, going for the “deny and victim blame” strategy, as Velvette called it.

‘Why does Vox have to act so…stupid’ (Y/n) thought, her stoic face staying steady as her fingers flew across the keyboard,’For someone so smart, he sure acts dumb. Maybe he should just be a model for Velvette instead, he’s sure got the looks for it, but he doesn’t have the social skills for a public viewpoint like this-‘

“(Y/N). MY OFFICE. IMMEDIATELY.” Vox yelled.

Her eyes flicker up from her monitor, which was now adorned with two clawed hands gripping the top of it. Vox was leaning over it, his tall, slender frame allowing his screened face to intrude (Y/n)’s personal space, but it’s not like that hasn’t been done the before the weekend.

Locking eyes, he saw the flick of emotion run through her, he almost for a moment let his anger go, almost. He could hear her mumbling those things about him. About how “stupid” he was, his “dumb actions….how “he’s got the looks”….never mind that last part.

“Sir..?” She said, her face immediately turning back cold. Ah, there it goes again, fleeting like time itself.

“Don’t sir me,” Vox said, shoving the monitor who knows where. He crawled on the desk towards (Y/n), before grabbing her chin, pulling her towards him. The force from his arm made it where she was on her feet, but she was now hovering over her chair. Vox cocked his head at her, narrowing his eyes and he whispered towards her.

“I heard you mumbling about me over there. Insubordination will not be…tolerated, at this company. If you want to keep this job, and your soul, I suggest you meet me in my office.”

He let go of her chin, before sliding back off of her desk, and walking towards his office. Vox’s hands were clasped behind his back, as he glanced over his shoulder one last time to look if she was following him.

(Y/n) got up and started walking behind him, her face not giving away any emotion.

‘DAMN IT.’ He thought, his mood growing worse,’That whole little stunt was just to get a rise out of her. To get something!’

————

10:00am

Once they arrived in his office, the door slammed shut behind them. Vox’s electrical bolt from his fingertip locked the door, as he walked towards his chair, took a seat, and swiveled it around to see an unamused (Y/n) awaiting his words.

“So, (Y/n)” He started, his claws tapping against one another, “Would you like to repeat, word for word, what you were mumbling about me, or should I repeat it for you?”

“Okay, I asked myself why you acted so stupid. Your actions are ignorant and your social skills need heavy improvement.” (Y/n) said,”also, for your schedule today you have a meeting at-“

“No no no sugar.” Vox said, smirking as he crossed his legs,”Tell me everything you said.”

“I did” She lied, standing her ground.

“Ah, so Im not good enough to be a model anymore? That’s a shame, I would’ve loved to give you a show, but alas.” He sneered, trying to desperately to get a reaction out of her, but failing miserably.

“Ah, a shame indeed.” She said, deadpanned,”Now, todays schedule consists of one meeting with Valentino at 7:30pm and during your 3:30 slot all it says is ‘Errand’? Sir, I’m confused about that portion, don’t I normally run your errands..?”

Vox gritted his teeth, his hand now clenching the sides of his chair. This was getting ridiculous, no emotions out of this one. God, he should just pour an entire mountain of coffee on himself, muck up his PC and everything just to see her smile.

“I was originally planning to get my clothes back from the dry cleaners myself, but I see that as punishment enough for today. Do it and get out of my office.”

“A-Alright sir.” (Y/n) said. They locked eyes, and Vox immediately regretted pushing so far for a reaction. Her eyes showed hurt in them.

Vox couldn’t bring himself to say anything, his face contorted with many emotions. One side of him was over the moon, he made her show something! The other side was in immense regret, he didn’t want to hurt her, that was by far from the plan.

Once she left the office, he started throwing monitors again in frustration.

————

10:30am

(Y/n) didn’t even return to her desk, instead opting for a little stroll down to the convenience store down in the lobby. She picked up a drink and a candy bar to take back to her desk as a little pick me up

Well, she attempted to go back to her desk, she ended up just going to a secluded corner in the building, only adorned by a lonely bench, a plant, and a security camera in the hallway.

(Y/n) sat there on the bench, sighing from stress and she took a chunk of her candy bar.

Sitting there, she replayed the interaction in her mind once more. The way he was so, powerful, it made her cheeks dust pink, with equal parts admiration and humiliation as she smiled to herself, lowering her head. She softly chuckled before taking her wrapper of her snack and going to seek out a trash can.

Little did she know that Vox was watching her every move on his monitor, stalking every security camera that tipped off her motion. He was nearly short circuiting at her little smile. Vox noticed how her shoulders bounced as she chucked slightly. He really wished he could just call her into his office, but it was already time for her to pick up his dry cleaning. Sighing to himself, he adjusted his bow tie.

Out of his entire collection, he just had to pick the most irritating one out of all of them. It was entirely too tight and the material was so unpleasant.

Sighing, he just untied it and threw it on his desk, reveling a small sliver of his skin beneath it.

————

3:45pm

“I’m here to pick up Vox’s clothes.” (Y/n) said, making the worker scramble to go retrieve the Overlord’s clothes.

“H-Here you go ma’am! Do you mind checking to see if everything is in there? We don’t want to forget any article of our valuable costumer’s clothing!”

“Sure” She replied with her signature neutral expression, opening up the box of neatly folded clothes to see his entire wardrobe from that day, except something was missing…a key part of his ensemble.

“Ah, where is his bow tie?”

“Oh, did he not tell you? We had to return it to him, the fabric of it was too thin, it would’ve burnt up in the dryer.”

“Oh, well thank you.” (Y/n) said,”everything looks like it’s in order.”

“Have a good day!” The worker said, earning a nod from (Y/n) as she walked out of the dry cleaners.

‘He wore that bow tie often’ (Y/n) thought to herself,’ Maybe since I pissed him off earlier today, I can get him another to make it up to him.’

She strolled by the clothing district before entering the tailors shop, browsing the different selection of items for a while before the clerk cleared his throat.

“Ma’am, is there something I can help you with?”

“Ah yes, I’m looking for a bow tie with a certain fabric to it. It’s rather thin, I need a replacement.”

“You? A replacement?” The man chuckled, looking over at her,”I think I know which one you’re talking about, but I dare say I don’t think you’re in the tax bracket to be purchasing that.”

“I’ll purchase what I please.” (Y/n) retorted, her dead eyes looking into the man’s cocky ones

“Oh really? And who is this for?”

“Vox.”

The man started howling in laughter,”YOU?! FOR THE TECH OVERLORD?? OH PLEASE I-“

(Y/n) briskly walked over and slammed the man’s head down on the table.

“Yes. I suggest you make it quick due to your little interruption.”

“And why should I?”

(Y/n) gripped him by the hair, making his eyes meet hers,”Vox is my boyfriend, and so help me I’ll let him tear you limb from limb just because I said pretty please, now fucking do it.”

“Y-Yes ma’am.” He said, as she let go of his hair, he scrambled to the back room to give her a lavish tie. Instead of the navy blue one he had previously, it was near black with bright blue strips adorning the sides of the fabric where it curved in on itself.

“Hmm, this will do.” (Y/n) said, snatching the box before walking away.

“W-Wait, aren’t you going to pay?”

“Pay? You should be dead where you stand for messing with me today. This is your pay.”

And with that, she walked out of the store, leaving the man shocked.

————

8:00pm

Walking into Vox’s office, (Y/n) looked around to see Vox nowhere in sight.

“Ah right,” (Y/n) muttered to herself, despite the fact that very action got her in a tight situation with her boss earlier that day,”Meeting with Valentino. I’ll just set his stuff down here.”

(Y/n) looked around once more, before setting his clothes neatly on the desk. Patting it down to remove it of any lint that couldn’t accrued on the bag, before setting the nicely wrapped gift atop of it, adorning it with a letter signed to him.

————

9:00pm

Vox groggily walked back into his office, after his “productive” meeting with Valentino on his public image. Not a word went to that moth’s head. One ear and out the freaking other.

He closed his eyes, plopping down unceremoniously into his chair, not even bothering for the brooding dramatics this time.

Rubbing his eyes, he really contemplated calling it quits early tonight. But alas, Vox never does, that’s the mantra of a workaholic.

His digital eyes fluttering open once more, he gazed upon the clothes neatly laid there for him. Smiling he looked at it before his smile turned into confusion. Why was there a box? Wrapped with a ribbon…?

He slowly and gently grabbed onto the small box, unwrapping it like an inpatient child on Christmas morning, only to reveal a new bow tie, the one he ached for the entire day.

This one was nicer though, how she scrounged up some money to “buy it”, he didn’t know, but he was eternally grateful.

His eye caught the letter that was now sitting beside where the box was, it fell off when Vox took the box. He held the envelope and slit the seal with his claw like a letter opener.

“Dear Vox,

I sincerely apologize for this morning. I was out of line. I just don’t really know how to process everything. I feel like you’d understand being mechanical and all, but I don’t know how to process emotion.

Normally, I feel nothing towards anyone, but there’s something weird going on. This strangely warm feeling in my chest and my face, I feel clammy around you, and you specifically.

Feel free to ignore this, but here’s my number. Contact me if you are willing to help my predicament. Enjoy the gift regardless, you deserve it. Also, stop coming to work at 5 in the morning. You’re not sneaky, I see when you’ve clocked in on your schedule.

-(Y/n) (L/n)”

Vox was beaming, a pure genuine smile. He might be a lovestruck fool, but she’s ignorantly in love.

————

Word Count: 2,540

(Part 3?)

TAGLIST

@burningfishkidlamp

@koji-akeme

@callmechito

@neito327

@chocolat3pudding

@yellowsubiesdance

#hazbin hotel #hazbin #hazbin hotel spoilers #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin vox #hotel hazbin #vox x reader #hazbin hotel fandom #hazbin hotel fanfiction #hazbin hotel vox #vox #vox hazbin hotel #the vees x reader #the vees #hazbin hotel vees #vee #vees

663 notes · View notes

blughxreader · 7 months

Text

I've been watching natural disaster documentaries and I'm so down bad for the idea of Platonic Yandere! Batfam during a blizzard.

They obviously have enough supplies to maintain a small village, so no one is pressed when sudden snow picks up. Batman has special cold-resistant suits for all of them but when the windchill drops to the negatives, their patrols are an hour at a time.

When the blizzard finally hits, they escort stranded cars to safety for as long as possible before the white-out makes it impossible to work.

That first night, they're all huddled in the the smallest lounge, fireplace roaring and hot chocolate in hand. You're pulled to the very front of the pile, bundled in blankets and Tim's various school hoodies and up against the rolling heat of the flames.

Despite the temperature breaking record lows, you've never been more toasty. Chocolate on your tongue and cheeks hot from the fire, they only let you unbundle yourself when you complain about sweating.

However much the others bitch and moan, Jason and Bruce are the ones at your side. They're packed full of muscle and do a great job of trapping in heat, so the skinnier Bats have to settle for watching you. Jason and Bruce take great pleasure in draping a big arm around you, pinning you so close to their sides that you have to fold your arms to keep them from getting squeezed.

Bruce insists you sleep in his bed, since this is one of the few times he gets to fall asleep at the same time as you. Damian insists, on account of being the least efficient at maintaining heat (i.e. the smallest), he should join you two. Bruce relents with an amused smile. You fall asleep pulled almost fully across Bruce's chest with Damian wound tightly around you.

The whole situation would almost be reminiscent of a family enjoying the winter holidays, had it not been for the Bat’s palpable longing.

Normally, they're desperate to touch you, to hold onto some part of your person and bask in the closeness. But with their fingertips cold and a slight shake to their limbs—they're ravenous.

Their yearning mixes with the cold and spurs on their dark thoughts more than the heat ever has. They have to hold you or they'll die. They have to feel your warm breath fan their faces. They have to take your body heat and to give you theirs.

Physical intimacy seems so much more personal when they could die from the cold (never mind the fact that they're at a healthy temperature).

Fights break out faster as they get more clingy, and Bruce creates a rigid schedule. The Bats must follow the rotation by the second, no bartering time for favors, and no incapacitating others to extend your time.

The weak sun travels the sky and snow swallows houses whole. Almost two days in, the power cut and everyone was forced to move into the small living room. Using the back-up generators, they powered only a few important rooms in the house and set up space heaters in every corner. Blankets were nailed over windows and Damian and Tim had a mini bitch-session over the unusable internet connection.

Dick and Jason carried down mattresses, while Tim, Cass, and Steph found every blanket and pillow in the house. Damian and Bruce brought up laptops, monitors, and a radio for work. Alfred is forced into the recliner with an instant water heater and a teapot by his side. He hasn't complained once, but everyone knows the cold isn't kind to his joints.

Then there's you, sitting on a pile of blankets and pillows and wrapped in sweaters, throws, hats, and gloves. You almost threw a fit because you were warm enough, but Cass's darkened face silenced you immediately. She backed off when you settled into Steph's side, gloves and all.

The time passes slowly. On the third and worst day, the wind chill reached negative 50. The house rattled and creaked against the cold, and the Bats took turns nestled against you.

Dick flipped through his old high school year book and told you stories about the students, while Steph chimed in with made up-ones to add drama.

You and Damian played a game that involved finishing each other's drawings.

Tim pretended to be stuck on a video game level and let you help. Cass somehow procured a party horn that she honked to celebrate each victory.

Despite how hard Jason tried to avoid Bruce, they always finished their books at the same time and left to get more. They returned with arm-fulls of books and a frozen snack that they shared with you.

At the end of the week, when the sun finally began melting the snow and the were having an increasingly difficult time keeping Bruce from the cowl, they were all sick of each other.

It was slightly satisfying, considering you never caught a break from any of them and this was a taste of their own medicine. The Bats finally returned to duty after a spectacular meltdown from Dick after Bruce asserted his opinion one too many times.

You, however, remained locked in the living room nest for several more days because "it's still too cold for you to sleep alone" and "patrols will be very short until crime picks back up."

It was already safe to return to your room, but there was something so comforting about knowing precisely where you'd be at any given moment. And Bruce, settling into the couch after patrol to thaw his frozen limbs, melted at the sight of his kids all piled up together.

for more yandere batfam, visit my masterlist!

#yandere batfam #platonic yandere batfam #platonic yandere #yandere dc #yandere batman #yandere batfamily #yandere bruce wayne #platonic yandere batfamily #platonic yandere dc #platonic yandere bruce wayne #yandere damian wayne #yandere dick grayson #yandere jason todd #yandere tim drake #yandere stephanie brown #yandere cassandra cain #yandere #yandere headcanons #yandere scenarios

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starkwlkr · 9 months

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Hey it would be great if you could write Charles and readers initial days as first time parents with ruby and how Charles got separation anxiety when he left his daughter for Singapore gp.

only these words | charles leclerc

title is literally my favorite chris cornell song 🫶🏼 i miss him

Charles fell in love with Ruby the second he laid eyes on her. She was practically his twin. Y/n joked that she had basically given birth to Charles’ twin. His family and friends came to visit in the hospital. It was hard to get Charles to hand over Ruby.

After Y/n was discharged from the hospital, the new family was headed home. Charles knew that Ruby wouldn’t understand anything he was saying, but he didn’t care since he kept explaining any little thing to his daughter as he drove back home.

“Those floaty things are called boats. When you’re older, you can get on one.”

It was like that for several weeks. Y/n saw how in love Charles was with fatherhood. He would change diapers, feed her and even got up in the middle of the night to calm the crying baby. One time, Y/n had listened to Charles talk to baby Ruby through the baby monitor after she had woken up.

“You’re so tiny. You’re my little princess, don’t tell your maman i said that, she might get jealous.” Charles softly spoke

Y/n chuckled. She continued listening.

“No matter what, you will always be my little princess. I guess that makes me a king and your maman would be the queen. A little girl born to a king and a queen. Princess Ruby Jules,” Charles went on. “I love you.”

And of course Charles would say those words to his little princess every night.

Thankfully Ruby was born during a break from the races so Charles was home for the first days of fatherhood. Eventually, it was time to leave his girls and return to the track which was something he didn’t want to do. The day before his flight, Charles was in Ruby’s nursery watching her sleep peacefully. He felt guilty for leaving, but Y/n assured him they would be okay since Pascale and Carla would take care of both of them.

“But what if there’s an emergency? You two need me here.” Charles said to Y/n.

“Ferrari needs you too.” Y/n replied.

“My girls are much more important than Ferrari. They can wait.”

When morning came, Charles didn’t even want to wake up. He understood he had a job and he needed to leave, but the thought of leaving his family broke his heart even if it was just for a few days.

“Charles, I will call you every day and night.” Y/n assured him.

“Why if Ruby forgets me?” Charles wondered.

“How could she forget her papa? She’s never going to forget you.”

It took everything to get Charles on the flight to Singapore on time. He kept giving kisses to both of his girls and telling them how much he was going to miss them.

“We’re going to be okay, my love. Ruby and I will be cheering for our favorite red car.” Y/n smiled and pressed a light kiss on Charles’ cheek.

“Mine?”

“No, number fifty five.”

y/nleclerc has added to their story

#formula 1 #inbox <3 #anon #f1 x reader #formula 1 imagine #f1 imagine #f1 x you #charles leclerc #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc one shot #baby leclerc series #charles leclerc imagine

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fashion-runways · 2 months

Text

hi!! new pinned post, because the last one had gotten long again-- if you want to read previous posts, here's the first one, here's the second one. the tl;dr from those is that my dad got wrongfully imprisoned abruptly, our place was raided, the cops broke a bunch of shit and took a bunch of our things and still haven't returned them, they left all the broken things for us to spend money in repairing, we had to spend money on a lawyer, trips to visit him, new clothes, medicine and food for him in jail, etc. it was a mess, way more details in both posts. he's back home now, with an ankle monitor because technically his case isn't being investigated yet, they haven't done anything about it at all, the case hasn't moved one ounce lmao it's great, always trust the judicial system and cops!! ugh, anyway!

we found a therapist for my dad who can help her deal with all the stuff he had to deal with while in prison, all the bullying, the depression, the starving, the separation, etc. he needs to get a bunch of other medical appointments, has to get surgery, among other things, but for now things are much better on that front. that being said, he did lose his job and my old redbubble account got suspended without a warning months ago, plus argentina's economy is... really bad right now. food prices rise every day, public transportation prices went up like a 200% in a couple of weeks, salaries are low and stuck there, subsidies are gone, the local peso keeps falling, we have an absolute psychopath as a president who spends more time insulting or threatening anyone who oppose him than caring about people. it's a disaster. for updates on argentina in english, this person on twitter makes very good informative threads if you're interested.

anyway, i used to make around 30/40 dollars a month in redbubble, and that used to help adding up to the donations i got here, and it got suspended, so now i make like 1/2 dollars on teepublic monthly. so... it's a huge loss. there's a lot of things me and my mom are in charge of paying-- groceries, power and water and gas, medicine (she's diabetic, i have some sort of chronic sinusitis), our dog and cat's food and medicines, wifi, phone bills, public transportation, healthcare, my dad's new therapist... so, you know, i really need anything people can donate. even if it's just a single dollar, literally any amount helps. i love fashion so much and i love this blog, i work really hard on it even when my brain says no, and i really appreciate how much you guys love it too. i love seeing people discover new styles, new designers, new things to be inspired by. so, yeah... i'm never going anywhere, but i do need help to basically stay afloat.

as usual, my kofi link is this one: https://ko-fi.com/fashionrunways and my teepublic link is this one: https://www.teepublic.com/user/dinah-lance. thanks for being around and sharing and reblogging my posts, thanks for asking questions about fashion, and of course thanks for helping to the ones who can, and thanks to the ones who can't too, i know how that feels like, don't worry about it. love you 💖

#text posts

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cherryjuiceblues · 9 months

Text

𝐌𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐁𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐋 | 𝟐

➯ HARRY IS A LITTLE OBSESSED WITH Y/N AND Y/N JUST WANTS TO KNOW WHEN HE’LL HAVE SEX WITH HER AGAIN. ✰ dom!harry sexual content. dominant and submissive dynamics. minors dni. 𝑤𝑐 14k ッ mutually beneficial masterlist

Harry doesn’t love his job.

He doesn’t hate it either. But he certainly doesn’t love what he does.

It’s not the hardest of occupations; since becoming CEO (and after getting over the guilt of surpassing his colleagues in status), having the option of assigning others to complete otherwise arduous tasks for him has eased some of his tension.

However—inevitably—those smoothed over stress bumps are quickly replaced by bigger, more stubborn protrusions that take more than a gentle palm to flatten out.

But Harry is comfortable—he’s financially secure, surrounded by a loving family and loyal friends, and treated with respect, revered even, by some. So despite being true, what Harry had told Y/N—that You think I was wishing to own a finance company when I was a little boy? indicating that it has hardly been a dream come true—he is grateful for his position in life. Aware of his privilege but also immensely proud of how much his hard work had paid off.

However right now, as he sits behind his desk with his phone burning a hole in his pocket, Harry hates his job.

Hates the schedule that’s pulled up on his monitor, hates the squeak of his chair as he rolls over to the filing cabinet, hates the way the clock is ticking louder than he’s ever heard it before. And the seconds are taking twice as long as they should.

With each passing minute, the presence of his phone in his trouser pocket becomes heavier and heavier; its lack of buzzing and dinging feeling abnormally disheartening. And everytime his work phone—that’s lying face up on his desk—lights up with an email or a phone call and creates its shrill cacophony that pushes the line of Harry’s brow deeper and deeper into his already default frown, he becomes less and less of the easy-going boss he presents to everyone.

It’s enough to drive anyone mad; this torturous waiting. Harry feels as though he’s being dangled over the edge of a cliff but never dropped, never given the sweet release of death which he would gladly take over the pain of not knowing when he was going to fall.

One week. It had been one week since Harry first met Y/N. One week since they’d had maybe the best first experience he’d ever had with someone, and one week since he’d heard a single thing from her. And the memory of that night is enough to have Harry distracted. Enough to have him on the edge of his seat.

ㅤㅤ

“Please.” She whines—to Harry’s teasingly obvious question.

“More what?” He wants to ask. Wants to make her spell it out for him.

But he doesn’t. He’s nice.

Nice as he stretches her open with his fingers—intrusion more than easy with the copious amount of slick between her thighs—whilst his tongue plays with her masterfully. She pants and whines, bucks and wiggles. Loses the ability to say coherent words without stuttering over them.

He takes his time—relishing in the fierce, squeezing heat around his fingers—in the way her excitement makes his palm shine the longer he goes at it.

And he’s thorough in the treatment he gives her. Behaves as if he’s a professional that’s been paid to change her life. He imagines Niall as his agent who had come to him earlier in the day with a ‘great opportunity’ and demanded Harry give his absolute best.

Pretends that his entire career rides on Y/N’s enjoyment of this night.

Harry thinks, really, that Y/N’s lack of experience means he could do a subpar job in actuality—but the thought just makes him go harder. Makes every flick of his tongue and curl of his fingers feel like the best thing she’s ever known.

She’s soaking into his skin and it’s filthy; the way Harry’s throat rumbles out a groan at the thought of his stubble bathing in her—the resentment he’ll have in washing his face later.

Little does he know that Y/N is thinking the same thing—or rather, imagining the irritation of her thighs his facial hair will leave behind. The soreness that can only come from pure satiation, that she’s sure she’ll admire with great joy. Her first marks, her first memory-jolting piece of evidence of the night she was finally touched. The day she’s been waiting for—for far too long, in her opinion.

Especially now, as it’s happening, and Y/N doesn't know if she’ll ever be able to stop chasing this feeling. Her limbs fight between stretching out in tight, desperate attempts to grasp for her orgasm—and melting into the mattress in a mangled mess of flesh and bone. Harry’s mouth struggles to compete with the smile that overtakes his expression, watching Y/N’s body writhe in response to his ministrations.

This is his favourite thing to do.

She tightens, and squeaks, and drips—Harry’s fingers working her just right and tongue curling in fast, pointed flitters—as she propels further towards the edge. Close, so close; lips moulding around a string of garbled sounds and hips pushing up into the large span of his hand. She’s trying to beg but she doesn’t get the chance because Harry is feeling her spasm in contracting waves and she’s slicking down his fingers, crying out—

ㅤㅤ

Harry’s debauched daydream fizzles away when his work phone chimes insolently. The screen lights up, forcing his eyes towards it.

A reminder.

Team meeting | in 15m

“Fuck’s sake,” Harry runs his hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair as the leather stretches. His trousers are tighter than he would consider comfortable, but he’s safe—no recognisable evidence of unprofessional thoughts in his professional environment.

Harry considers himself to be a focused man—often finds solace in working to provide distraction—but this constant replay that has been leading his mind astray whenever he even attempts to shift his concentration is proving to be a hurdle too high for Harry to jump over. He thinks if he makes himself come then the unavoidable meeting that’s starting in thirteen minutes might be less torturous to sit through.

But just as he smooths a palm over his thigh, there’s a telltale knock on his door. The rapping a pattern that only his assistant uses.

Harry clears his throat, shifting himself higher to appear more orthodox in his chair.

“Come in, Mr Rowland.”

The door makes way as it’s opened, rattling the blinds that preserve Harry’s modesty—matching that of the ones on the full-length windows that look out into the building.

The man moves to stand stiffly in front of his boss’ desk, suit free of creases and long hair tied back to maintain formality. Harry used to have long hair once.

Mitch Rowland is a quiet man; stoic, but not unfeeling. Harry believes him to be the thoughtful type, and he chips away more and more of his exterior everyday, he’s sure. Cracking a joke that makes Mitch laugh feels like a reward—an acknowledgment of all the hard work he puts in to becoming closer to his reserved assistant.

“Time for a briefing, Mr Styles?”

Harry nods, gesturing to one of the armchairs facing his desk. “Yes, go ahead.”

He’s respectful enough to look intently at the man sitting across from him. As he speaks, Harry doesn’t drift off into his fantasy land full of strawberry embroidered dresses and passion fruit martinis—no, he converses with Mitch like the approachable boss he takes care to be, discussing the best way to go about conducting the team meeting and how to amicably pull up the areas that his employees are lacking in.

Truth be told, it’s life changing having someone like Mitch as his assistant. He demonstrates capability—enough so that Harry can often sit back and let him take the reins—it’s satisfying when their brains match up like they're connected via bluetooth. It’s an easy relationship to maintain, and Harry often ponders about how grateful he is.

But never has Harry been more grateful for Mitch as he is right now. (Which is cruel really, for a situation that would probably lose in a battle of importance if voted on by a large audience.)

The meeting is going fine, most likely—Harry wouldn’t know because his mind is elsewhere once again.

ㅤㅤ

“That’s it, take a deep breath for me, darlin’.” He’s good at maintaining composure, but God if Y/N isn’t testing Harry right now. She’s still fluttering—more than ready to let him start pushing into her—as her arousal coats copious miles of skin. He leans over her, pressing a soft kiss to the dip above her chin as he rolls a condom over his neglected cock. The throbbing gets harder to ignore now that she’s laid out for him; all stretched and wet.

“Are you sure it’s gonna… fit?” Y/N looks down, pupils expanding at the sight. Long, and thick, and hard.

“I’m sure,” Harry drags his nose against her throat, lifting back up to catch her blown-out eyes. He smiles.

“I… I want you to feel good too, Harry. Please?”

His heart thumps and his eyebrows pinch. She’s special. He wants to take such good care of her.

“I feel so good, love. I promise.” Harry drops his hips to prove it, sliding through her folds and nudging her sensitive clit as Y/N’s breath shudders. “Are you ready?”

“Can I—can I hold your hand?”

She’s a doll. (Maybe in more ways than one permitting she’d like to be pliable for him, but right now Harry knows she’s cuter than even the sweetest of puppies). He wants to coo right in her face, obnoxious and embarrassing, before his voice takes on a squeaky pitch and he expresses Of course, you can hold my hand—you’re just adorable, aren’t you?

Instead, he wordlessly transfers his weight to the now singular arm holding him up as he reaches for the girl’s empty palm and tugs it up beside her head. Their fingers entwine as the mattress creates a mould of their knuckles—and Y/N’s eyes clear themselves of the fear of rejection, gazing up at Harry with such appreciation that he doesn’t even receive from his employees. Not that he’d expect them to but the way Y/N is looking at him makes Harry feel as though he’s done something far more significant than hold her hand or coax a few orgasms out of her.

It’s almost sad.

“Ready now,” she whispers, and Harry’s forgotten everything else.

He reaches down to stroke over her hip bone in soothing circles. “Keep looking at me, okay?” She nods, eyes never wavering even as Harry guides himself into her drippy hole.

The first feel of intrusion is new—different to his fingers—exciting and tight as the mushroom tip of Harry’s cock presses in gently. Y/N gasps but it doesn’t hurt; it’s a filling sensation, one that makes her question why she’s not always been doing this. It feels right, like it’s meant to be.

And when she breaks eye contact to look down, she sees that he’s hardly an inch in and exhales heavily into Harry’s face. He squeezes her hand, green surveying her expression. It takes all of his composure to ignore how tight she is around him. It’s euphoria.

“H-Harry,” Y/N whines, shiny mouth falling further with each centimetre discovered inside of her.

“So good, baby, you’re so good. Keep looking at me…there you go.” His voice is taut, even Y/N can tell, and she blinks at him because it’s all she can do—hoping she is communicating well enough with her eyes.

As he gets deeper, she suddenly expels a great breath, jumbled words tumbling out. “Thank you, oh—that’s so—oh my god.”

And Harry is bottoming out, balls resting against her bum, as he lets out some air of his own. “Look at that, darlin’,” he smiles, “took all of me, first try.”

Y/N’s face suddenly splits into a grin. She chances a lift of her leg, to open herself up more as she stretches it to the side, bent knee pressing into the sheets.

“I didn’t know I had that much space in there.”

Harry laughs (it’s quite literally forced out of his lungs) and Y/N starts to let out endless strings of giggles—delirious with overwhelming happiness—as her stomach starts to contract. She can’t stop laughing. And every one has her core tightening around Harry’s cock in pulsing flutters.

If he wasn’t searching deep in his mind for the stability not to build up too quickly, then Harry’s heart would be bounding at the sweet sound of Y/N’s giggles. Pure elation in the form of prancing lilts. Bouncing off the walls and racing past their ears; slicing through any of the nerves she had left.

To see her face bunched up in laughter is to witness beauty in its rawest form, Harry is certain. All whilst she lays bare with himself inside of her—connected as far as he can possibly reach—this feeling doesn’t compel him very often. If ever at all.

ㅤㅤ

Sitting at the head of the table with absent eyes, Harry’s nodding his head in faux-interest whilst his mind is full of filth. Not many eyes are on him anyhow, as Mitch talks through the monthly rates but—understandably—when his personal phone starts ringing disturbingly loudly, the heads of everyone turn to watch their boss answer it alarmingly quickly. The same boss who most employees have never seen handle a personal phone in their entire career at his company; might have believed he lived permanently in his office, in fact.

It’s a shock when he holds the phone up to his ear, shoots his assistant a glance and says, “You’ve got this, haven’t y’Mitch?” before exiting the room with a curt nod and a rushed shuffle to squeeze around the chairs.

Harry knows it’s unprofessional of him, but he’s been waiting for his phone to ring all week. So he’ll be damned if he misses an important call just to maintain formality. He can’t fire himself.

The voice on the other end of the line doesn’t quite contain the lilt he was hoping for, however.

“Heyyy, Harry.” He can’t help but sigh as he closes his office door and slouches unceremoniously into his chair. “You’re at work, aren’t you? Surprised you answered.”

“The luxury of being your own boss, Niall,” Harry watches the seconds hand spin around the clock on his wall. Each tick is echoed by nails tapping wood. “You okay?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I was ringing to ask about you, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“You heard from Y/N at all?”

Harry looks away from his clock. “I haven’t. Is she alright?”

“Oh, she’s more than alright. She had a great time with you.”

He smiles a little, “That’s nice. She’s very sweet, Niall.”

“Mhm she is… I think you should see her again.”

Harry thinks so too. “I’d like that. But I haven’t heard from her, which is fine—I didn’t want to overwhelm her.”

“That’s the thing though—she’s so nervous, even though she’s been proper gushing about ya. She’d love to see you again, I’m sure. But she’s too scared to call you.”

Harry rolls his eyes at his friend’s dramatics. “Alright… what are you saying, Niall?”

ㅤㅤ

Y/N is shy.

Chronically shy.

She always has been and that certainly isn’t going to change overnight. Especially not if she were to meet the most attractive man she’s ever seen, have him take her home and then alter the very definition of pleasure itself. Especially not then.

But she so very wishes that was the case.

The post-it note hasn’t moved from the position Harry left it in when he penned his number. He’d been so sweet when asking if he could give it to her—like making her come multiple times wasn’t enough of an indication that she might want to see him again.

And she really does. God, she wants it more than anything.

But she’s an overthinker. She’s a worrywart, a nervous Nellie, a wet blanket—whatever. In every version of the phone call they have in her mind, she says the wrong thing, or Harry lets her down gently, or someone else picks up the phone. And if she texts him, her responses are awkward, or he leaves her messages on delivered—or worse read—or even worse he asks to see her again and then Y/N has to panic over fifty completely different hypothetical scenarios.

She decides that it’s just not meant for her—relationships, or human interaction, happiness—she’s not sure what specifically, but she knows it’s too much to handle. Harry would only be disappointed in the long run anyway; Y/N is simply saving his time—doing him a favour.

Niall isn’t inclined to agree—because of course the topic came up in conversation. Her friend had never been so eager to talk about anything in his entire life, and he loves talking.

The morning after Y/N met Harry, she was greeted by a dozen text messages, followed by multiple missed calls. (If Niall was ever in danger, Y/N thinks she’d be inclined to ignore him—never phased by the multitudes of spam she receives on a daily basis.) And at the first opportunity he had, Niall was knocking—no, pounding—on her door, sing-songing her name from outside her flat.

There was a reluctance in letting him in. This was all new territory for Y/N and Niall knew that. However in fairness to her—rather oversized golden retriever of a—friend, he attempted with all his heart to pretend he wasn’t bursting at the seams for as long as he could. Grinning in a somewhat subdued manner as she opened the door—elated beam withstanding his journey to her sofa—until he sat down and just couldn’t help himself, springing back up.

“You didn’t fuck on the couch, did you?” Half teasing, half deadly serious as his eyes widen and he shuffles away in an attempt to evacuate quicker if Y/N were to confirm his fear.

Y/N cowered behind her hands, cheeks burning, “No! Don’t say it like that, Niall.”

“Oh right, I’m sorry, hang on,” he cleared his throat obnoxiously, “You didn’t make sweet, sweet love on the couch, did you?”

She squawked and Niall cackled, holding his arms in front of his face when Y/N started to batter him with a sofa cushion.

“Okay! Okay, I’ll stop, I’ll be nice.”

He was nice. A relief to have someone to talk to, and never before has Niall been happier about anything, Y/N is convinced. She didn’t realise the status of her sex life was something to be so thrilled about, but his smile threatened to blind her.

And once the initial embarrassment had somewhat passed, Y/N was honest.

“He was so lovely, Niall. Far too good for me, I mean—God,” she smiled but it’s a little sad.

“Hey,” Niall’s eyebrows pinched, “don’t go there with me, young lady.” He flicked her arm. “Harry wouldn’t have initiated a thing if he didn’t want to. And he left his number, come on.”

And that’s how they’d ended up in a tizzy over calling him. Y/N just couldn’t make herself do it. No matter how sweet, and pretty, and kind he’d been to her. Niall had even offered to do it for her but that had sent humiliating shivers down her spine, imagining it play out. My friend has a crush on you—absolutely not.

The days pass and Y/N works. She eats poorly, often asleep standing by the time she arrives home—and if it is proper food she’s ingesting, it’s something she’s woken up at two a.m. to bake because she’d had a sudden itch to do it. The rest of her time at home is spent cleaning the mess she made whilst baking—which turns into moping with a feather duster in hand. Moping about the best night of her life and how she’ll never get a part two.

Nighttime comes and her fingers don’t feel the same. It feels fruitless to even try. She’s hardly got hands big enough and none of the curling does her any good. It only makes her angry, and that’s the one thing she was always told not to be when going to bed.

She asked Niall not to bring Harry up in conversation again; that it would only make her sad and she’ll just have to get over it. Over him—or over whatever he could’ve become.

So the last person Y/N assumes is at her door when she hears knocking, is the very man she’s trying to pretend doesn’t exist. She’s exhausted—been home for no longer than an hour after a long day of answering the phone to far more people than usual, trying to maintain equanimity as she booked meetings in the rapidly filling calendar. Her lunch break had been undeniably cut short—some may argue it was cut out completely—when the computer she was entering sensitive data into decided to crash (without saving) and Y/N had to compose herself in the toilet so she didn’t stain inky droplets all over her desk.

She was hungry, and tired, and sad, and—above all else—overwhelmed. Y/N’s not sure the last time in her life when she wasn’t, and it really builds up in a person. It’s near impressive that she’s even still running. If Y/N were a computer, much like the one at work, she would have crashed years ago. And point blank refused to turn back on again.

It’s unsettling, to say the least, when she hears that knocking. Because who could possibly be at her door right now? It’s too late for it to be the postman, Niall is still working—and that is literally all the people she knows.

In a panicked rush, Y/N scrambles to answer it, too startled to check her appearance or wipe the panda circles from around her eyes. It feels like everything happens in slow motion, from the door opening to reveal the man standing behind it—to the unveiling of his gentle smile and kind eyes. Y/N is half-inclined to slam it shut in his face with an affronted squeal.

She doesn’t quite squeal, but a noise is certainly made. One of terror, Harry might believe, as her eyes widen and flit around his face in a frenzy. The flowers in his hand are only just noticed, and she pauses on them for a moment, an expression of disbelief passing over her features before they become chaotic once again.

“Harry! I—” Y/N pastes a hand to her cheek in bewilderment, heart sinking at the sight of the man’s eyebrows kinking, migrating towards the centre. Then she trails further down, sees him still clad in his suit—crisp navy pressed to perfection. It’s jarring the way her brain switches from awkward to lewd for a split second, until she looks away with shame.

“Darlin’, are you alright?” He steps forward, hand reaching out. “You’re not going to faint, are you?” His voice is light and Y/N wants to laugh because what a ridiculous suggestion, of course she’s not going to faint! but she’s not so sure she believes it.

“No, no, I’m okay,” she lies.

“Let’s sit you down. Can I come in?”

Y/N swallows, exhaling as she looks up at him, before nodding slightly and stepping to the side to allow him room. Harry barely stops to assess his surroundings—only guides her to where he’s been before—her sofa feeling like the softest of clouds in this moment, while her heart is racing and her skin is tingling. He stays remarkably calm and light on his feet, whisking himself away to do God knows what but Y/N is hardly concerned. All she can think about is the fact that he’s here, and she’s a catastrophe, and she has not prepared for this. She has NOT prepared for this.

Harry finds the kitchen, near tripping over his feet to turn down the boiling pot of water that’s about to overflow. He throws some pasta in the saucepan—something quick he can fill her tummy with—and digs around for another that he fills with a jar of sauce. Then he’s rifling through cabinets to find a vase for the bouquet in his hand—which is something she apparently does not own, so a jug will do—before filling both that and a glass with water to take back to Y/N.

She looks timid and small—hands fiddling with themselves in her lap as she disassociates whilst staring at her coffee table. Harry places the jug down right where she’s looking and she blinks some. Her lips upturn just a little at the sight of the buttery petals.

“Drink.” Y/N accepts the glass easily, swallowing multitudes. Her face is dewy, a slight sheen of anxiety, and her knees bounce. “Better?” Harry softens his gaze, aware of the tension between his eyes—he knows he can sometimes appear cross without realising.

Y/N nods, rubbing at her nose like a little rabbit, he thinks.

“I’m sorry,” her voice is small, “you’ve been at work, and now you’re here and I’m… I’m a mess,” she tries to laugh but it falls flat.

“Don’t be silly. I’m a big boy, Y/N, you don’t need to apologise.” He’s encouraging as he smiles, rubbing over her knee soothingly. She’s still in her pencil skirt and white shirt—but she looks less like a sexy secretary and more like a sweaty schoolgirl. It’s hardly self-respecting.

Y/N grips the glass like it’s an anchor, altering her train of thought. “Uh… no one has ever… bought me flowers before.”

The smile he gives her is compassionate. A small curve of his lips and the widening of his eyes as if to implore his feelings to display correctly on his face. The way he disagrees with the fact of it—why could that be true? It shouldn’t be true. Everyone deserves flowers.

“There’s sunshine in your smile… yellow tulips, that’s what they mean.” He offers the information with zero insecurity.

Y/N’s face starts to burn, heart fighting to burst through her ribcage. She opens her mouth, and then she closes it. Harry’s watching her so, very intently, eyes crinkling when her hands press into her cheeks as if to will the heat away.

“I don’t know what your favourites are, but I thought you might like those.”

“No…” Y/N shakes her head, “yellow tulips are my favourite flower… definitely.” She chews on her lip to detain the smile threatening to break free.

“Yeah?” His eyes are shining, light reflecting off the sea glass of his irises and unlocking the depths of his spirit. “You gonna let me see your sunshine smile, darlin’?”

She laughs, a bright, bubbly giggle as her palms smother her face. “No!”

“What?” Harry grins. “What’s so funny?”

“Stop talking like that… it’s— I’m… flustered.”

“‘M just talkin’!” He insists, hands holding themself in a surrender.

“You’re being… a lot.”

“Too much?”

“No. It’s just— people don’t talk to me like you do. It’s nice… but I don’t know how to react.”

“Just show me your pretty smile, I think that’s a good place to start.”

She giggles again, eyes full of mirth—trying so desperately to embrace the fire in her cheeks. “Thank you for the flowers, Harry.”

They hold each other’s gaze.

“You’re welcome, Y/N,” his voice is soft.

“Can I— Can I make you dinner?” She starts, desperate to repay him in any way that she can. And then her eyes widen and she springs from the sofa. “Oh shit—”

“It’s okay, I did it, love.”

“What?”

“I turned the water down and put some pasta in. I’ve got it all sorted.” He touches her elbow, conveying his wish for her to sit back down.

She doesn’t.

“You— Really?”

Harry nods.

“I’m sorry, God, I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t be doing that! I can’t even boil a pan of water properly.”

“Listen to me, Y/N.” His voice hardens a little. Not enough to be scary, or rude, or suggest he has ill intentions. His voice hardens and suddenly Y/N wants to listen to him, just like he said. It’s relieving, almost, the way his words cut through the thick fog inside her skull.

“Sit down, okay?”

She does, eyes wide and nervous.

“You remember what we spoke about last week?”

The look on his face prompts Y/N to answer—to brush past the sex despite it being the first thing she thinks of. “About you being a— a dominant? Or… uh… taking care of… people?”

“Mhm. How would you feel about letting me take care of you?”

And Y/N is shy—it’s been discussed—but she knows she really has to be honest right now. Even if that means embarrassing herself.

“Guilty,” she murmurs.

Harry straightens up some. “Guilty? Now why would you feel like that?”

“Because! You’ve turned up today with—with flowers and you’ve put dinner on and I already want to pay you back. I don’t deserve it, I’ve done nothing to warrant all of this.”

“All of this?” Harry parrots. His eyebrows furrow but he maintains a gentle tone, shifting closer to Y/N and holding his hand out, palm facing up. She places her own on top with the hesitance of a newborn lamb, eyes meeting his. “Darling, I don’t mean to be blunt but… this is not a lot. Flowers are really the bare minimum, and putting pasta in a pot is hardly a back-breaking task. Lovely… relationships, friendships—they’re not transactional, okay?” His thumb drags across the back of her hand.

She’s going to cry.

“You don’t need to pay me back for anything. I’m here because I want to be. And I want to show you that you deserve to be taken care of. Because you do, Y/N. You do deserve it.”

A tear brims over her rapidly filling waterline. “I’m sorry,” she laughs wetly. “I’m just tired.”

Harry nods, “I know,” wiping her cheek. “You just need a little help. And that’s okay.”

“You wanna do all this… and you barely know me… why?” He’s cloudy in front of her eyes, tears obstructing his handsome face.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you all week. You know that?”

“Okay, sure.” Y/N rubs at her lashes, smearing more mascara around. But she’s smiling a little, at the absurdity of Harry’s words.

He replaces her hands, the soft pads of his thumbs doing an adequate job of preserving her dignity whilst he wipes the smudges away.

“Mean it. Been distracted at work remembering it all.”

She’s not laughing anymore. No, her skin is tingling now. And her throat squeezes around a swallow.

“But it’s not just about sex. I like you, Y/N. And I want to like you more—get to know you, spend time with you. Is that convincing enough?”

Y/N shakes her head. But Harry sees the glint in her eye. He narrows his own at her.

“No? Are you playing with me? I thought you were a sweet, good girl.”

The skin of her cheeks has never been subjected to so much heat in such little time. It spreads out to her chest, and down her arms. She must be praying to some sort of God to ensure her hands haven’t become sodden yet.

“That’s not fair,” she squirms. “I just… like hearing you talk.”

“Hm, you like hearing me say that I like you, is that it?”

“Maybe,” she looks down. “Never really heard it before.”

“Well, get used to it, love. I want you to become sick of those three words.”

“You don’t even know me.”

Harry just smiles. “Will you let me?”

ㅤㅤ

Y/N is confused.

Or rather, she is tentative. Anxious, uncertain, disbelieving—waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Harry sits across from her in the café they’ve frequented quite a few times in the last two weeks. His eyes are closed, taking in the first gulp of his coffee as it slinks down his throat and warms his chest, leaving a pleasant trail of heat in its place.

She admires him; something she wishes she could do more without his beady eyes on her and making her feel all embarrassed. He’s pretty—she likes to look at him. Especially when he’s not in his usual suit and slack attire. (Not that her brain doesn’t start to malfunction when he’s embraced by the flattering lines of fabric clutching to the muscles Y/N has had the pleasure of being crowded by but…) The contrast of seeing him comfortable and unfiltered is enough to make her relax too.

Or attempt to relax.

The first time Y/N and Harry came to The Little Snail Café, the former of the two had been nervous. (That is hardly information anyone would pay for.) It was a date as far she had been aware; Harry had explicitly labelled it so. And Y/N hadn’t been on a date since she was with her ex… but their time out was hardly ever impressive enough to warrant any kind of excitement.

Even remembering that she’d had a boyfriend renders every moment spent with him as less and less meaningful. As time spent wasted. He’d never told her her smile was that of sunshine. He’d barely ever told her he liked her.

But Y/N wasn’t thinking about him. Not on that day.

Harry had forced her to let him serve her dinner that evening he’d brought her flowers. Had implored that she change into something comfortable and sternly ordered glue your pretty arse to that sofa, little miss. That had been hard to argue with. Then he’d proceeded to plate up perhaps her first proper meal she’d consumed in a week and ask her about her day.

Y/N had been a little hesitant to admit the extent of her misery but Harry cottoned onto her pause quicker than most would. He was earnest in his sympathy, eyes void of ridicule as she detailed all her misfortunes.

“No wonder you nearly stacked it when I turned up,” he’d joked. “I’m sorry you had a rough day, love.”

It had been nice to have company. A pleasant silence whilst the two filled their stomachs. Y/N had missed it irrevocably—someone to breathe the same air with.

That had been when Harry asked about taking her somewhere the following day during her lunch break. A quaint place I think you’ll like. It wasn’t far and he’d have her back at work just in time. Y/N found that she trusted his word.

And although she had been worrying about it, as soon as Harry walked through the front doors and into the reception—wearing a chestnut suit that once again clung to him, like thick globules of honey, with his slicked hair that begged to curl onto his forehead in ringlets like that of a piglet’s tail—she had tunnel vision.

Her boss could have come in and fired her on the spot and Y/N wouldn’t have heard a thing. Only the rush of blood in her ears as her pupils expanded to the size of ten pence pieces and her stomach became the home to a dozen butterflies.

Harry had watched her reaction as she’d read the sign above the café—smiled at her bright eyes when she’d told him how cute it was. Had smiled even larger when he took her inside and let her discover the tiny snails etched into the edges of the tables.

“No one else has ever shared my passion for these little guys,” he’d emphasised as they sat down in the corner, sunlight flooding in through the windows and brightening up their irises, making Y/N giggle easily. Harry could tell she wasn’t laughing to make him feel better—or just to flirt—and that only made him try even harder to elicit those sounds from her pretty mouth.

He’d insisted he wanted to get to know her better. So that’s what he did.

Harry learned that Y/N eats far too much sugar, doesn’t sleep enough, and wishes she could have a pet cow. Or that is how he heard the words that exited her mouth. Y/N had only said she usually baked goodies in the dead of night and that videos of little fluffy calves make her cry.

The two never glanced away from one another. It was the kind of chemistry that drew eyes. Subtle glimpses from other customers sipping their warm drinks and cherishing that collective sense of human connection just from witnessing two people so innately into each other. Old couples nudging the other to reminisce on their younger days—workers wiping down tables and feeling a sense of respite during their long day at the unmistakable widening of the woman’s eyes in an attempt to see all of the man before her—to hang onto his every last word.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“What’s your favourite colour?”

“Pink.”

“Dogs or cats?”

“Dogs.”

Y/N had asked him lots of those questions. And had seemed very content with every answer he gave her. Perhaps apart from that last one. Y/N might have preferred cats but it wasn’t a dealbreaker.

It didn’t last long enough, in her opinion; their date. She had to return to work far too soon for her liking. But Harry paid for her toastie and hot chocolate, much to Y/N’s disarray, and dropped her off with a stroke of his thumb to the back of her hand and a kiss to her cheek.

She’d smiled so much she’d had to bite her lip to tone it down. Receptionists were never that happy.

ㅤㅤ

Their second date had been impromptu. And not really a date. Harry had knocked on her door once again—however this time, Y/N hadn’t jumped out of her skin. In fact, she’d just finished decorating a cake she’d hoped to surprise him with and the shock of his presence was replaced with elation at the coincidence.

The door opened, and before Harry stood a smiling girl with youthful glee painted all over her face. A pleasant difference from the last time. She giggled to herself and instructed he close his eyes as she guided him to her kitchen where the sweet smells were surely giving away any element of surprise. Still, Harry played up to it—feigning shock—(it’s not that he’s a cruel man but Harry remembered things about people and Y/N wasn’t so hard to read).

“Oh! It’s beautiful, darlin’… you made this f’me?”

Y/N nodded, grinning. A proper smile, unabashed and without premeditation. Harry felt its warmth; lucky to receive such a display from someone he’d previously seen so reserved.

The cake was cute; rusticly smothered in vanilla buttercream and decorated with halved strawberries circling the edges (Y/N was not so hard to read) and it tasted heavenly. Harry never believed he was much of a cake person—he’d always much preferred ice cream—but devouring a slice with the knowledge it had been made with care, especially for him, had his taste buds in a sugarcoated frenzy.

Y/N had been so elated to watch Harry enjoy her baking that she’d failed to realise that he had come to her home for a reason. And so had Harry, apparently—a look of epiphany crossing his face as he was placing his plate in the dishwasher. (Y/N had tried to do it for him but Harry had smoothed a large palm over the top of her head and all thoughts just melted away.)

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Mhm?”

“Weather’s supposed to be nice this weekend. Picnic?”

And Y/N still got flustered, sure, but…

“You came all the way here to ask me that? You have… you have my number, don’t you?”

Harry couldn’t help his smile, tongue stuffing his cheek to attempt to control it. “Yeah, I do. I do. Just wanted to see you. Good job I did too.” He nodded to the cake.

But Y/N was all twinkles. In her eyes, over her face, all the way to her toes. She had half the mind to believe Harry visited her just to garner this reaction; to inflate his ego.

“I won’t be able to take you for lunch tomorrow though, ‘m sorry.”

“Oh… that’s okay,” she smiled. It wasn’t okay. It was world-ending news. What was she supposed to look forward to now?

“Been offloading a lot onto m’assisstant lately—should really give him a break.”

Y/N frowned, “I’m sorry.”

Harry barely let her finish the word. “No. No, I don’t want to hear that.” He moved forward, nudging the back of his index finger under her chin. “Not your fault, is it?” His eyes bored into Y/N’s, stern but imploring her to not worry herself like that. To take the blame for something that was not her fault.

“I’m— I…” Words failed to form, eyelashes brushing her cheeks in repeated blinks.

Harry swept it under the rug. It’s not something he wanted her to get het up about. Another time—he’d thought—another time he’d make sure she understood never to apologise unnecessarily. To feel guilty about him causing an inconvenience just to see her; because God forbid she accepted that she was good enough to be treated with such consideration. Another time. “I’ll come see you the day after though, yeah? I still want you to try the beetroot soup.”

“Idon’tlikebeetroot,” the girl mumbled, lips downturning with the admission.

“What was that, love?”

“I don’t think I like beetroot, Harry.” Her eyes lifted…and there was that guilt once again. Fear that disliking something may cause offence or trouble.

“Have you ever tried it?”

Y/N’s silence was deafening. She smiled shyly up at him, skin tingling with the beginnings of heat—whilst Harry simply shook his head with a playful eye roll before stroking his thumb over her chin. The plush pad met with a soft indentation.

“Have an early night tonight, okay? Get some rest.” The syllables rolled off his tongue like a gentle caress; told her she looked tired in quite possibly the kindest way.

Y/N nodded, focusing all her energy on the feeling of his thumb on her skin.

And when Harry had gone, leaving her heart an overexerted mess of muscle and blood turned flower petals and bubbles, she’d simply looked to the ceiling with a shit-eating grin as she tried to swallow a giggle. There was nothing inside her that was not touched by Harry—and everything transformed from rickety and paint-chipped to sturdy and ornate—embellished down to the finest details.

ㅤㅤ

It had been a joy to wake up on Sunday.

Y/N felt the rays of sun through her curtains warming her sleepy face as her alarm blared—an alarm worth setting despite it being the weekend—and as her consciousness came rushing back to her, the memory of Harry promising to pick her up at eleven had her residual tiredness dancing away like it was performing the quickstep.

Dress weather made Y/N happy. Made her feel pretty and confident and giddy; something quite contradicting considering her skittish personality. And that’s exactly how she felt when she admired her sundress in the mirror of her wardrobe—square neck framing her chest, white fabric bunching around her shoulders in sheer puffs and cinching at her waist to flow into a floaty skirt. She looked sweet; the picturesque vision of a girl about to perch on a blanket under the sun and consume saccharine confections. Y/N pulled the hem between her finger and thumb, exposing the skin of her upper thigh, deep in thought at the fantasy of Harry taking her all in. His own confection.

And he did of course.

Though it didn’t unfold in perhaps the way Y/N had hoped. Which is why they’re called fantasies, she supposed. Because she was still her—despite feeling like a whole new person, she certainly wasn’t.

Harry had knocked on her door at two minutes to eleven, which may have been a problem had Y/N not been ready over an hour earlier than she needed to be. (With another bunch of flowers—white gardenias—“They mean I have a crush on you,” Harry leaned over and whispered as though it was some big secret. Y/N took them with a stifled titter and scurried off to place them in water, dress swishing around her thighs.) His gaze had dripped down her, as respectfully as he could manage when all he wanted was to glide his palms all over. The sight of soft skin contrasted by the sanctity of white cotton—her silky hands carrying a wicker basket (the true vision of a picnic) which Harry had plucked out of her grasp with little hesitation.

As a true gentleman would, he offered Y/N his arm to place her hand; the crook of his elbow providing a safe seat to rest from the weary necessity of holding the weight of her own limbs.

Y/N, however, would only be so lucky to mirror Harry’s formalities—to uphold the stereotype of womanly elegance—as her toe catches on a step down towards his car. Emulating their first night outside of her house, only this time it felt worse. It’s far more embarrassing, Y/N decided, to fall when holding onto the person you’re so enamoured by.

It was hardly a fall—moreso a drag of the foot, a buckle of the knee. But it was still enough to have her gasping and untangling herself from Harry. Harry who had kept her secure without any chuckling or patronising. Had his brows furrowed in concern and his hand to her elbow to steady her. Y/N still ripped herself away, turning so he couldn’t see her.

“Oh my god! Don’t look at me.” She was mortified; as the pair stood halfway down the steps, suspended in a moment.

“Darlin’—” Admittedly, Harry did have to try his hardest not to laugh. Not at her trip but her reaction; the drama! “Darling,” he tried again, “you’re alright.” His hand ghosted over Y/N’s shoulder blades, where fabric met flesh.

“That was—I’m mortified—that was so unattractive!” She barely meant it; was just humiliated as she’d said, but Harry shook his head behind her.

“You’re still very pretty, Y/N. Just a little clumsy. But that’s okay,” he turned her around, “you’ll just have to hold on tighter.” Harry admired the kinks in her brows, expressive in her shame, as he guided her hand back to his arm. “Very pretty.” He’d almost whispered it—not out of a wish that she had not heard but as an attempt to reseal their bubble—their intimate world.

The sun stayed magnificently bright for them.

As though it was watching its light bounce between their eyes; wanted the moment to last as long as it could maintain the warmth; the incandescence.

Harry followed the motions of her hands, fingernails painted in alternating shades of soft green and pastel pink, as Y/N devoured a punnet of strawberries. (She’d brought two.) She was a head-bobber, munching away with the occasional hum as her eyes transfixed onto his knees.

He was wearing corduroy shorts and a big floaty shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a white top poking out from underneath. Y/N admired his golden skin, the delicate tattoos bracketing his kneecaps, and the dusting of hair covering his lean limbs. It was still a joy to see him so underdressed, the true image of a boy she would take home to her parents.

The two looked symbiotic—two sides of the same coin, or heart, or strawberry—as Y/N offered one to Harry, who took it graciously with a smile and a scrunch of his nose. (Mild hayfever, he’d described it as.) From an outside perspective, they looked established. A relationship that surely began as highschool sweethearts. Enough so to have strangers whispering I’ll bet you a tenner he’s about to propose to her.

But neither registered any sort of outside perspective, they were the only two people that mattered, after all.

“You ought to be careful, love, you’ll get a bad tummy if you eat so much fruit,” Harry prodded, as Y/N opened up the second punnet of strawberries.

“Oh,” she frowned down at them. “My stomach sorta always hurts anyway.” He perturbed her none, eyelashes fluttering as she bit into a picture perfect fruit. Harry hardened his gaze—registering her unbothered tone with concern.

“That’s not… ideal, Y/N.” He was slow, cautious. “Y’shouldn’t be hurting all the time.”

Her eyes rounded out as she looked at him, lips plush as she took another bite. But she just shrugged her shoulders, tastebuds too preoccupied by the blossoming on her tongue. The wind picked up a little, blowing her hair across her face in soft streaks—as though the Earth was wielding a paintbrush, and using her strands as the medium. She whined a little, trying to avoid getting hair in her mouth as she finished the rest of the strawberry. Harry watched with starry eyes—zoned in on her shining skin—as a drop seeped out of the edge of her lips and dribbled down the side of her chin.

He reached over without hesitation, thumb swiping the liquid away, and Harry basked in the subtle widening of Y/N’s eyes as he brought that very thumb to his mouth to coat his tongue. Her fingers scrambled at her face messily, brushing all hair out of her eyes. It felt incredibly humid all of a sudden.

“Hey,” she pouted, refusing to be swept away under Harry’s ruse, “that was my juice.”

And Harry couldn’t help himself. Not when she was setting the scene just perfectly. “Mm, sorry,” he hummed, “d’you want it back?”

Y/N nodded, tongue darting out to wetten her lips.

“Hm?” He prompted.

“Yeah—yes, I do, please.” She swallowed; Harry’s eyes followed the contraction of her throat.

“Come here then,” he tempted. He was already in a very alluring position, elbows bracing his weight as he sprawled across the blanket, knee propped up and easily manoeuvrable. Y/N shuffled on her knees, the short space towards him, setting herself down with her hands placed on her thighs as though he’d instructed her to.

Harry pushed up, hand ghosting along the side of Y/N’s cheek. “What am I going to do with you?” Their breaths mingled, swirling across one another’s face and sinking into their skin. Y/N’s eyelids dropped closed, patiently asking, waiting. He took his time to admire her anticipating face, leaning closer to drape a sigh over her bottom lip.

“Kiss—kiss me,” she exhaled, eyelids twitching—wanting to open. But they didn’t. They stayed shut, stayed waiting, stayed hiding her from the world around them.

Harry smiled and Y/N swore she could feel it. Feel as he leant forward and brushed the tip of his nose down the front of hers. His hand stroked through the hair behind her ear, large digits coaxing her to melt and mollify into his hands, which she did so easily. She parted her lips wider, blindly tilting to try to meet his. Harry let them touch for a second—a press of flesh—before he leant back, nose nudging hers once again.

Y/N expelled a shaky breath, a little whine falling out of her neglected mouth. Her eyebrows kinked and her pretty nails dug into her thighs.

She chose to stay in the dark—from fear that it would be over if she opened her eyes. But that was something she needn’t have worried about. Harry leant back, enough to see out of the corner of his eye and reach for a strawberry.

He resisted the urge to indulge himself, mouth watering at the thought, and instead brought the pointed tip towards Y/N’s eagerly awaiting lips. Harry grazed his nose along her cheekbone, words finding her sensitive ears as he pushed the fruit to touch.

“Bite,” he whispered.

A noise of complaint lodged itself in Y/N’s throat, but she complied regardless, teeth sinking into the strawberry. Its juice coated her tongue and lacquered over her lips, the gooey pulp going down smoothly as she dared to open her mouth for another offering.

But as she did, suddenly the air around her face shifted, and the heat of Harry’s breath ghosted across her once more. Pointed and heavy exhales from his nostrils as she felt his tongue dart out to swipe across her bottom lip. It felt exploratory, leisurely—like he had all the time in the world to get to know her mouth. And it’s not like they hadn’t done this before—kissed—but it felt new, all the same. It had her breath hitching and her body leaning unconsciously into his touch.

Once her bottom lip stopped being enough, Harry pulled it down with the pad of his thumb and unlatched Y/N’s jaw in the process. He opened her up, and she let him completely, sat still on her knees as he played with her. She didn’t feel toyed with really—was still processing being touched in such a way and wondering if it would ever stop feeling so intoxicating. Harry took one final moment to bask in her blind trust; to watch the stillness of her face and feel the gentle (but rapid) breaths fan against his mouth.

And then he kissed her.

He really kissed her.

Y/N’s hmph quickly turned into a muffled mewl, open mouth accepting Harry’s tongue rubbing over hers as though it was her resuscitative medication. The only thing to stabilise her bloodstream, to soothe her fighting heart. He tasted like strawberries. And so did she. Sweet, and wet, and promising. It felt filthy but it felt clean at the same time—renewing and resetting, like running across soft sands to plunge into bracing sea water—Y/N would let him drip juice anywhere he liked, she’d let him feed fruit from his own mouth into hers. She’d let Harry spread her out and do with her as he pleased. Right there. Right then.

And it caught up to her all too quickly, the overwhelming heat of her thoughts. They were in public. But yet she couldn’t possibly entertain pulling away—not when Harry’s mouth engulfed her entirely. It wasn’t a cute kiss, a sweet reminder of affection or endearment. It was a kiss you shielded your child’s eyes away from, or grimaced at from nearby. It was sloppy, and sticky, and mind-numbingly dizzying.

Harry’s lips left syrupy residue wherever they landed—her top lip, her bottom lip, her tongue, her cupid’s bow. Y/N felt poisoned. Drip fed for weeks until Harry deemed the time right as he went in for the kill. She wasn’t sure she was even doing much of the kissing; perhaps she was simply being kissed. She tried to keep up, returned his tongue with her own and let her mouth encase his bottom lip in a frenzied attempt at reciprocation.

But his hands were holding her face, and then they were sliding into her hair, and all Y/N could do was feel.

Feel, and be felt, and—and—

ㅤㅤ

And Y/N is still confused!

She’s drifted away from their cosy table at The Little Snail Café—well physically, she’s right there but mentally… Her eyes are glossed over and she’s still very much contemplating the state of their relationship. Because… that kiss had been nearly a week ago and… well, Y/N doesn’t want to be thought of as some sex pest (she loses her virginity and now she’s clawing at the walls for orgasms) but she always thought—completely aware of her ignorance and unrealistic education—that the role of a dominant was to… fuck the living shit out of someone on the regular.

And even as she’s thinking that, with Harry right in front of her, she feels crude and disrespectful. But he hasn’t so much as hinted that he was going to have sex with her again, and that moment with the strawberries has been going round, and round, and round inside her head for days and nights and it’s driving her insane. Because, as previously established, nothing she can do matches what Harry made her feel, so any attempt at quelling the ache leaves her worse off than before.

“Don’t much like hearing how I feel about squirting, huh?”

Y/N blinks, and physically shakes her head as if to wake herself up. “Sorry?”

Harry sips from his mug, smiling. “Joke, love.”

“How uh—” she clears her throat, “How do you feel?”

“Hm… messy, but hot.”

She nods—perhaps a confusing reaction to such a sentence. Most people would probably quip back something flirtatious or coy. But Y/N just nods.

“What’re you thinking about in there?”

“Um… I was just wondering when— when you were gonna kiss me… again…”

“Y’are, are you? How uncouth.”

“Well— I just… When you said you were,” she leans forward, volume dropping considerably, “a dominant… I just thought… something different would be happening.” And then she starts to spiral. “Not in a— not because this is… this is great. I mean—”

“Settle down, darlin’, it’s okay.” Harry sighs, scratching the top of his head with a thoughtful expression on his lovely face. “‘s my fault, really. I haven’t explained much to you. And I have no doubt you are basing all of your facts on poor media portrayal.” Y/N scrunches her nose in a silent show of guilt. “It’s not just about sex,” he starts. “It is for some people, but for you I don’t think it is. And I’ve been slow, and cautious in fear of overwhelming you, and it’s resulted in probably a couple confusing weeks for you. So, I’m sorry.

“The whole point is for you not to worry, and you’re still doing that because I’m not doing my job properly, but I was worried you might change your mind so I held off. You can still change your mind, by the way.” Y/N shakes her head. Harry continues. “I’ll take you home now, if you like, give you the whoooole run through. Does that sound good?” Y/N nods. “And you’ll tell me if it’s too much, won’t you?”

“Yes, Harry. I will.”

“Can I take you to my home? Cook you dinner?” He asks, staring at the way Y/N’s head lays heavy against the headrest and her limbs are leaden, as she relaxes into his car.

She nods, lips quirking upwards with intrigue. At the blanks in her mind that will be filled. What to imagine when he’s in bed, when he’s watching TV, or eating… or… showering. “Can I help?”

Harry pretends to consider it. “We’ll see.”

ㅤㅤ

Harry’s house is… not what Y/N expects it to be.

Well, it is in some ways.

It’s large, and it’s expensive, and it’s astronomically grand. But it’s… it’s characterless. It lacks personality—and Harry Styles does not lack personality. Harry Styles is charming, and intelligent, and beautiful. But his house is stark white. There is no indication that his house is not a show home. It’s untouched, unlived in, unloved. And Y/N wasn’t expecting that.

“It’s too big, I know,” Harry gestures to the air around them as he watches Y/N take it all in.

“Not at all! No… it’s so beautiful, Harry.” And it is, it really is. She’s not lying. How can she lie when she’s staring at such a grand staircase? When the windows are so large, and bright that the space is nearly sparkling. And the garden she sees through the other side is blooming trees and unkempt flowers and just begging to be loved.

But as beautiful as it is, it’s still just… white.

He guides her through to the kitchen which…

“Woah,” Y/N admires, “you could make so many cakes in here.” She laughs and Harry grins just at the sight.

It’s true, there’s enough counter space to house at least ten separate mixing bowls. Impressively clean considering the observed shades of white. But there are signs of life in here—photos on the fridge, (one that catches her eye of two women that absolutely have to share his genes) post-it notes huddled around a pot of pens, a basket of cleaning products, a vase of flowers in the middle of the island. A comforting sight to see a little bit of the inside of Harry’s brain.

“They’re very pretty,” Y/N points at the photo on his fridge with a hesitancy that suggests she’s expecting him to berate her for being nosy.

“Mum’ll love that,” he laughs. “That’s her,” Harry points to the woman on the left, adorning sunglasses and a bright smile, and then to the right, “and m’sister, Gemma.”

“You look like each other.”

“Yeah? Y’think so?”

Harry shines when he speaks about his loved ones. Is so happy to talk about the photo of his father, his step-dad, his mum’s cat, the younger Harry surrounded by other young boys (“My mate Jonny, he was stoned as fuck in this picture. Had no idea.” His eyes crinkle around the edges and Y/N can only think about how beautiful those lines look).

Then he moves over to the island and tugs out a stool. “Come sit,” he pats.

He doesn’t let her help him cook—insists that she stay right where she is and carry on looking at him like that.

“Like what?” Y/N pretends she’s not shy about being caught.

“With those gooey eyes.”

“Gooey?”

“Mhm. You look one moment away from melting into the counter.”

“I do not,” she scoffs.

“It’s okay, I like it.”

ㅤㅤ

Harry owns the fluffiest rug in the history of the universe, Y/N is sure.

Obnoxiously cream in comparison to the rest of the colour palette. And in defence of Harry, the walls of his living room are painted a warm beige and his vast, velvet sofa is a deep forest green. The main attraction remains the rug, however. Long and shaggy and absolutely imperative to lie upon.

Y/N withholds the urge, but she stares pointedly and longingly towards it for too long to be considered a passing gaze.

“You can touch it if you want.”

“Hm?”

“The rug… that you’re eyefucking.”

“I—” she blanches, “It looks so soft.”

Harry makes the first move, blue jeans creasing at the knees as he crouches down. He pushes his palms into the strands and watches as they’re swallowed up into the depths of the faux-fur. Y/N hesitates, looking down at him on his hands and knees and wondering if it would be inappropriate to join him. But when he leans back, hands bracing himself behind him so he can lounge—mirroring the position of the day they had their picnic far too much—Y/N caves and drops to her own knees.

It’s sensory heaven—quite frankly—and Y/N knows immediately that she could get lost stroking this sole rug for hours. Harry watches her with an informed smile as she drags her fingers back and forth through the threads, already lost in a little world of her own.

“G’na have a mature and adult conversion now, alright, love?”

Y/N nods.

“Are you going to be able to listen and finger my rug at the same time?”

She narrows her eyes at him, adjusting from kneeling to crossing her legs. “I’m not finger—” she swallows. “Yes, I believe so.”

ㅤㅤ

“—I would encourage you to eat, go to bed at a certain time, turn your phone off. And I would want you to listen to me—not to argue, to trust that I know best.” That sounds easy, Y/N thinks. “I would want you to raise concerns in a polite manner—I don’t think it’s ever necessary to shout. And it would be important to me that you are always honest about the way you are feeling. No trying to make me feel better or pushing it down, okay?”

Y/N had feared it may be complicated, from the way Harry had suggested—had put off having this conversation for so long. But his commanding voice, and intense eyes make her feel so safe, and incredibly mellow. New feelings for Y/N. She nods.

“And when it comes to sex… trust is the most important thing. I don’t want to be doing anything we haven’t discussed, and I certainly don’t want you to make yourself uncomfortable in an attempt to please me. Now I know you may not be experienced with a lot of the things that are involved in these kinds of relationships but would you be interested in learning… with me? What you like and dislike?”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling now? Good?” When Y/N nods once more, Harry gets to his feet. His voice slicks down her spine when he drawls, “Come here then. And kneel.”

Whilst Harry had been speaking, Y/N can’t deny the fact that her insides had started stirring around in anticipation. But now, as he commands her to station herself so far below him in stature, the silly little brain inside her skull begins to melt into mush. She crawls the short distance towards him until her eyes are level with the tops of his knees, and she just waits, sneaking a glance up to see Harry towering above her with a subtle quirk of his lip.

He brings a hand up slowly, warm palm ghosting the heat of her cheek and smoothing over her head in a comforting stroke. “I want you to call me Sir. T’help you slip quicker. You wanna be all nice ‘n’ mellow? Forget about all your stress?”

“Yes… Sir.” It comes out as little more than a squeak.

Harry chuckles, “You’re so good.” Y/N quite nearly beams up at him, insides swarming. “You like that? You like when I praise you?”

“Mhm,” she nods.

“Well it’s just so easy for me, darlin’. Because you’re so lovely.”

She closes her eyes, bottom lip nibbled to hide the giddy smile that overtakes her. Harry’s hand in her hair, scratching and smoothing, is already doing enough to make her eyelids heavy. But she supposes sleep is not the end goal.

“Your first time,” Harry starts. “Did you enjoy it?”

What? “Yes—yes Sir, of course.”

“What would you change about it?”

“N-nothing! It was perfect.”

He hums, nails dragging soothing lines into her scalp. “Which part?” Y/N opens her mouth but Harry keeps speaking. “When I fucked you open with my fingers? Got you nice and stretched for me—had your little pussy just quivering and begging me to fill her up?” He fists a more substantial amount of her hair. “Or maybe when I finally got my cock inside of you, and you were so happy. Squirming underneath me like a wet dream.”

Y/N can’t help but grab for his thighs, nails trying to dig in.

“Hands in your lap, darlin’.”

She pulls away regretfully.

“Was it when I fucked up into you, hard enough to force all those pretty sounds out? Or when I stretched over you and held your hands above your head? Had your body arching for me.”

Y/N is on fire. She must be. Her body is aflame and her insides have melted.

“I think…” Harry bends over some, trying to catch the eyes of the girl who is fighting every feeling. Her eyelids are shut, concealing the windows to her soul, and her brows are knitted together so tightly that she might induce a migraine. He smooths them out with a thumb before stroking over the delicate skin of her lids. “I think—look at me, darling—I think… it was when I had your stomach pressed into the mattress and a hand around your throat,” thick fingers squeeze her cheeks together with care, “and all you could do was lie there and take it. As I fucked you for the first time, just like you deserve.

“And after you came around me for the third time, I flipped you over so I could see your pretty face, and I came between your soft thighs, didn’t I, love? Did you want it inside of you? Warm, and sticky, and all because of you? Is that what you’d change?”

Y/N doesn’t actually think he would have come inside of her—he’d worn a condom, after all—but if the thought doesn’t have her thighs squeezing… “Wouldn't change,” she shakes her head. “Liked having you— liked it on…”

“Mm, I think you’d say that about everything. What do you know, after all?”

He’s right, and she hates the way his condescension has her wilting even further into the palm of his hand.

Y/N leans her face into Harry’s hand as he begins tracing over her features with a curious thumb, dedicating every line and mark to his memory. Then he’s crouching down with a little exhale and securing his hands under her armpits to pull her up with miniscule preamble. Y/N gasps, and her hands shoot out instinctively whilst Harry is lifting her up to his height. She grabs his shoulders and wraps her legs around his waist using muscle memory she didn’t realise she had.

Her knees sink into the rich green of his sofa as Harry sits down, gently encouraging her hands down from his shoulders and behind her back. A buzz zips through her chest from the feel of his warm body underneath her. Warm, and strong, and solid.

“Wanna hold these here, okay?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Harry’s tongue darts out to wet his rose-tinted lips. “Gonna be a little rough with you. If you want to stop, you say Red. If you want to slow down—take a break—you say Yellow. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good,” he says, eyes trailing down her neck, deciding what to do, “good,” repeated solely to himself.

Y/N feels the frustration of choosing to put on jeans this morning, mind spiralling at the thought of being on top of Harry with just a skirt to hide her modesty. Just a skirt that would so easily be slipped underneath by his hands, and then her underwear…

But Harry seems less concerned. His gaze is transfixed to her chest; to the intricate lace of her camisole, that—in contrast to her jeans—provides very easy access. Y/N’s breathing picks up at the very thought, ribs expanding and only drawing his eyes further. She’s tugged forward by a hand on her hip, searing through the fabric, and the other holding her hands. Tugged until Harry is resting his forehead on her sternum and inhaling deeply.

Her lungs are working at an extreme rate, and more of his nose presses into her with every breath. Y/N is so close to his hair in this position—just has to bend her face down a little and his musky scent fills her nostrils. It seems they both have similar ideas—breathing one another in—but Harry seems far more relaxed than the near shaking girl on top of him.

It only gets worse for her when he pushes his lips against the valley of her breasts—small, tender kisses that have Y/N’s breath hitching. The straps of her camisole want to fall down her shoulders in angelic swoops but her cardigan prohibits all movement. Suddenly it’s the heaviest and warmest piece of clothing she’s ever worn.

“Har—Sir,” she breathes, head tilting back on her shoulders. The caress of his breath on her body is immobilising, and he seems content in moving at a snail’s pace for his own enjoyment. Whether he gets the message or not is unclear, but regardless, Harry lets go of her hands just long enough to shuck the chunky cardigan down her arms and discard it beside them.

As soon as he tightens his grip around her wrists once again, the strain of her arms has her camisole straps slipping down the curves of her shoulders, like a waterfall of silk. The fabric is so light and thin that it pools underneath her breasts—the crooks of her elbows the only things keeping the straps suspended. And Harry’s immediate response suggests he’s somewhat of a starved individual, teeth digging into the top of the left cup of her bra and tugging it down with haste.

He takes her nipple into his mouth and Y/N is all gasps and bucks. The sensitivity of her skin and the rough suction of his lips, the flicking of his tongue and the grazing of his teeth. It’s deafening; the blood rushing in Y/N’s head, it’s near predisposing. The spit, and the hot exhales from his nose against her chest, the indentations his teeth leave behind when he pulls away to admire the wetness of her breast. But he goes back in—bites at her flesh—chews, and laves, and consumes her entirely.

Y/N’s cunt is pulsating. She is wet, and fervently hot, and the subtle rocking of her hips is ceased by a large palm over hip, which has her whining into the air.

“Stay still f’me,” he slurs into her skin, desperate fingers pulling her bra down further and watching to make sure it stays, before he starts on the other side of her chest. Her wrists are encircled behind her back, and Harry pushes her forward—into his mouth, as if he’s not already practically eating her. And maybe she can try her hardest not to squirm but all that energy has to go somewhere, and she’s panting now—whimpering all these sounds that she’s never heard herself make before—and Harry can surely feel the vigorous inflation and deflation of her lungs.

“Oh—oh, H—Sir, please.”

Please what? Stop? No. Keep torturing her breasts? Also no.

Harry hums against her, long and unwilling as his mouth leaves her with a wet smack. He admires her skin, eyes flitting up to see the dazed girl atop him.

“Don’t like it?” He puffs, inhaling deeply, beginning to dance a hand around her ribs.

“I do, I do,” Y/N breathes, eyes still closed. “Too h-hot.”

Harry frowns though she can’t see, before he’s unclasping her bra and pulling her camisole over her head—standing her up on jelly legs and pulling her jeans down. Sat on his lap once again, he tightens his grip around her wrists and curls his fingers around her throat.

“Can feel your heat, baby,” he looks down to where her clothed cunt rests just before his bulge. His still very clothed bulge. “Give me a kiss.” And she still feels exceptionally inexperienced in the whole department but her body surges forward, urged by the pressure against her pulse, as her lips meet his shiny ones.

This time, when Y/N’s hips start moving on their own accord, Harry doesn’t stop her—tugs her closer in fact. Right on top of where he’s warm, and hard. Their mouths part a centimetre, just enough to pant into one another at the feeling. Of his hand squeezing her throat, and pushing her arms into her back. Y/N doesn’t even notice when he lets go of her wrists—never daring to move them—as his palm comes down in an experimental slap to her arse.

It’s light; enough to not hurt but suggest his intentions. And when Y/N gasps and twitches on top of him, he gets the idea. “Is that nice?”

“Yes.”

“You like that?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Sir, yes Sir,” she whimpers into his mouth, lips pasting to his cupid’s bow and falling away when he does it again. Hard enough to leave a tingle that spreads out to her centre and up her stomach.

“Unzip my trousers.”

There’s no hesitation, both his palms are holding her ass now, desperate to spread them apart but damned by the confines of her underwear. Y/N shakes a little but does what he says, exposing the hot pink of his boxers underneath—and the thick outline of his cock.

“Take me out, go on.” She meets his eyes—blown out and transfixed, mirroring her very own. “Take me out, Y/N,” he whispers, leaning closer to lick a stripe up the column of her throat, and then an open-mouthed kiss to her chin, and her mouth.

He’s heavy in her hand, and intimidatingly big. How did she ever fit this inside of her? But she feels the instinct to make him feel good. This was the one area she had experience in, afterall. The skin is so soft and all she has to do is spit down and watch as it drips from his head along his shaft. But Harry takes her hand instead and laves his tongue along her palm before guiding her down to wrap around him.

His breath hitches; their eyes don’t stray from one another’s. He holds her hand over him and starts to drag it up and down, his blinking lagging a little from the feel of her delicate fingers wriggling underneath his palm. It’s intense, and paralysingly slow—every second spent watching his face feels like sixty—and when she looks down, she feels herself clench around nothing at the sight of her smaller hand wrapped in his, and the way his cock looks between them. Red, and thick, and wet.

It must show on her face because Harry’s unwrapping her hand and reaching forward to press his fingers into the front of her underwear. “Put me in.”

“What? B-but I’m not… and you’re so…”

He nods, “I know. You can do it,” as he awkwardly fumbles for his wallet from his back pocket. Y/N’s heart jumps when he rips the condom open with his teeth—a true teenage fantasy—and slides it on with a swallowed grunt.

He tugs her gusset to the side, breaking strings of arousal and basking in the twitch of Y/N’s hips. She clumsily hovers over him, embarrassed as she holds onto his base. As she lowers down, Harry’s thumb finds her clit—swollen and hypersensitive—and she squeezes him reflexively. He groans, low and vibrating, content to roll her under his digit cruelly—distracting her from the attempt at swallowing him with composure.

Y/N whines as the thick head squeezes inside her tight hole, mouth ajar and eyes half-focused on the man who brings his shining thumb to his mouth and makes a show of relishing in the taste of her arousal.

“F-fuck,” the words force their way out of her shining mouth.

Harry rears a hand back and slaps her ass, harder than the other times, fingers staying on the skin to dig in and pull. “Don’t swear.” And Y/N doesn’t think he’s usually adverse to it but she’ll do whatever he asks of her right now.

“S-sorry, Sir,” she moans out as Harry sinks deeper and deeper inside. Maybe he should’ve stretched her out first but God if it isn’t the most blissful discomfort. That initial entrance—knowing what her body is accommodating for and how far he reaches inside of her most private place.

As soon as she’s seated on him, completely and utterly full, Harry confines her wrists once again as he sits up and encourages Y/N to lean into him. Her breasts squish into his shirt. His shirt. That he is still wearing. “Come on, baby. Tire yourself out.”

Exhaustion is already seeping into her bones but Harry’s voice croons into her ears so tenderly—it coats her skin in a sheen of glitter and pumps sparkling wine through her veins. She makes every effort in lifting up and sinking back down—in, albeit, slow and wobbly movements—but the concentration on her face is like a drug to Harry. It has him thumbing over her nipple and taking it into his mouth again, which only has Y/N stuttering and inevitably stopping. She pants, and wiggles, and whines, enough so to have Harry placing both palms underneath the seam of her underwear and gripping her bum like he’d wanted.

He squeezes and stretches to his heart’s desire, mouth still firmly attached to her breast, but his strong hold aiding Y/N in moving once more. She’s lifted up and down, and up and down—slow enough to feel every ridge of him opening her walls.

“M-my legs hurt. Sir.” Y/N wishes she were a gym fiend as she admits it.

“Do they, love?” He pulls back from her chest, discontent to stop nibbling her skin raw but her voice is oh, so fragile. He’ll take care of her like he promises all the time. “Lean your head on my shoulder—keep your arms where they are.”

When she doesn’t immediately listen, and looks up to his eyes with a silently begging expression, he cocks his eyebrow. “Can I f-feel you? Your skin, please, Sir.” He’d left his clothes on, somewhat intentionally, but he doesn’t feel so mean in this moment. A nod is all the encouragement she needs, as Y/N unbuttons his shirt with clumsy fingers, and pushes it off his shoulder to rest her cheek upon. Her arms go back behind her and her nose moves forward to press into his neck deliciously. He smells of allure.

Harry can’t help himself when he tears her underwear from her body. She’s too soft, and warm, and wet to simply entertain the idea of pulling out of her. And from the noise she makes—a surprised squeak but no beratement—and the clench around his cock, he can only assume she likes it. Likes the desperation, or the display of strength, or his pure animal brain—it doesn’t matter. Because Harry’s kneading her ass in heavy handfuls, and moving her faster and faster, and Y/N is flooding his neck in her warm, tight pants—sweet whines falling out of her mouth.

“Beg me to come,” he grunts, granting Y/N no kind of warning before his fingers dig in harder and his hips slam into her at a speed that has her lungs forcing out high-pitched squeals. The sounds are nasty, unmistakable and unexplainable. The slap of skin, the wetness between her thighs, the noises that leave both their lips. It’s raw, and scaldingly hot, and— and… she needs to rub her clit.

“I— Sir, I can’t—”

“No?” His thrusts don’t falter, not even once. She’s on her back in a second, and her wrists are trapped underneath her. He makes no move to readjust them, only stretches her knee to the side so it pushes into the back of the sofa before grabbing a throw pillow and stuffing it under her hips. “Come on, beg me, little doll,” his hand spans across her mound, thumb meeting her clit in a back-arching press. This, has her cunt tightening—pulsating, contracting, strangling his cock. And with the pillow angling her just right, Harry can feel himself underneath his palm; it drives him batty.

He fucks her into the sofa, hard and unrelenting, leaning over her to chew on her tits once more. It’s sweaty, and messy, and that only makes it hotter. “Beg, Y/N.” His thumb rubs faster, expelling the choked up cry from her throat. She’s so close, is writhing underneath him—fighting the rolling of her eyes into the back of her skull.

“Please! S-sir, I—”

“That’s it. Good girl letting me fuck you—your sopping cunt, baby. Beg better than that, come on.”

His words send her spiralling, orgasm racing up on her and she panics that she won’t be given permission before it happens. “Oh my god! Oh, pleasepleaseplease, Harry!— Sir, please l-let me, please.” It’s adorable, Harry finds, her minimisation of the English dictionary when she’s so bent out of shape. Her pleading is less begging and more repetition, but he’ll let it slide.

He’ll let it slide as he presses his thumb harder and leans back to watch as he murmurs something akin to the value of diamond. “Come. Fucking come f’me, darlin’. Look at you.”

Y/N can’t hear anything. Not now. All she needed was that first word of permission and she’s seeing stars. Spasming around him so tight that Harry’s own moans started flowing out, pace increasing as he rolls her clit under his thumb. “Fuuuck, there you are. Keep squeezing like that, there’s a good girl.”

It takes her a while to come down from, no surprise considering Harry is still pounding into her, and her whimpers echo his moans—desperate and unabashed, his lips red and brows tight. He looks so handsome. So beautiful above her with his flushed skin and his flexing muscles, unbuttoned shirt floating around him. Y/N’s not sure she’s ever felt so peaceful, in a dreamlike state in all her vulnerability. And she keeps contracting around him, like he asks—because when he groans like that, she’d have to be a sadist not to—and as his moans build up in pitch, and his eyes meet hers in frenzied pleasure, she’s sure she wants him to come more than she’s ever wanted her own orgasm in her life.

Harry surges forward, smearing his lips all over Y/N’s mouth. It’s messy, and uncoordinated, and his tongue is slicking her skin. But it’s the hottest kiss she’s ever had. And it feels so good when his groans hit a crescendo, and his hips stutter, and Y/N can feel the warmth of his spurts inside the condom. She whimpers against his open mouth, arms losing all feeling behind her back, but she doesn’t care because his eyelashes are brushing against her cheek and it’s the most intimate thing she’s ever felt.

They’re lethargic, Harry’s movements, and he’d like to be much more alert but his body is tingling and Y/N is looking up at him so trustingly—he wonders if she’s fallen into a stupor.

“Th-thank you, Sir.”

He strokes her hip bones, pulling out with a soft hiss. Y/N whines a little at the sensitivity.

“You can call me Harry again now, if you like, darlin’.” He leans down to kiss her forehead, consuming palms holding her cheeks.

She’s not really listening. “Mm, feels… feel kinda drunk.” She smiles, nose turning into his thumb. Harry gives her another kiss and pulls away, to knot the condom and collect her clothes. Minus the pair of panties that are no longer wearable. He doesn’t feel even an ounce of guilt.

He’ll make her some food, watch as she eats it with her eyes begging to close, and then let her sleep in his bed—hoping she’ll want him to stay.

Little does he know that Y/N will wake up in the middle of the night to raid his kitchen in a matter of ways that Harry will reprimand her for.

But for right now, he’ll keep her as happy as he possibly can.

#harry styles #harry styles one shots #harry styles x reader #harry styles smut #harry styles imagines #mutually beneficial #writing #domrry #dom!harry #fanfiction

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hecateslore · 3 months

Text

💌

Officesupervisor!Simon, walk with me!

"Have these documents uploaded, I have an important meeting with my boss at 1200. I need them as soon as possible." Simon drops the stack of papers on your desk with a loud thwack, causing others to look over their cubicles. You roll your eyes as he turns to walk back into his office. Not understanding military time you just assume before your lunch.

Working as a VSO had it's perks, you got to sit in an office, and if all of your work was done before a certain time you'd just dick around the rest of the day! Which was great at least when you weren't working the front of the office- answering calls, helping people apply for loans or setting old people up with life insurance.

You type away on your computer, air-pod in one ear as you try and quickly finish the task before 12:25 so one, you can take your lunch and have a smoke break (if you don't smoke ignore this lmao), and two; get away from the man child who employs you.

Finishing up at 11:56, you gather the documents into a large file and send them to Simon's work email. Getting a very dry response, you exit out the tabs on your computer and get ready to take an early lunch, hurriedly trying to clock out before someone stops you for some help or if you could finish this set of paper work.

A ping comes from your desktop causing your eyeballs to roll back into your head, fully expecting one of your coworkers emailing you about some unimportant time sheet, or a email you sent three years ago that they told you to void that day, but now they need it or whatever.

[email protected]

Subject: Brief Meeting

Come to my office, I need to go over what you just sent me.

Talk soon,

S.R.

A groan leaves your mouth as you push your rolly chair from your desk and get up, a pit in your stomach. Usually when Simon calls someone to his office they're getting ready to say bye bye! Simon was known for his no muss no fuss attitude, he wasn't completely stern but he was assertive. Extremely passive aggressive but everyone decides to ignore it. He likes his work a certain way, he's a punctual man, so when people failed to meet his employment standards- there was no trouble in ridding them.

The military background is no help either, he's very observant to the point it's annoying. Constantly calling staff meetings because he doesn't like the way a certain someone files the paperwork, greets a customer, writes a letter, answers the phone. You don't really care for him, You just come in do your work, greet your peers then leave, sometimes you work over time if rent is near, but that's pretty much it. You make good money here, you can't afford to lose your job, not now- not ever. Reaching his office door, You knock before hearing his muffled" come in."

Entering his room, Simon sits behind his rather large desk, clicking away at something on the screen, hand under his chin as if he's really paying attention. "You can have a seat right there" he points to the chair with a folder that was thick with paper work, you lift the "folder" handing it to him then finally planting yourself in the chair before him.

"I assume you're confused as to why you're here." Simon pushes his monitor for a better view of you. "A little bit. " you chuckle nervously,

"The documents you sent me I looked over them, and your work.." Simon pauses to pull up the file you sent not even forty-five minutes ago. "You managed to mess up 6 of these documents, not even adding the time you uploaded them." he sighs, "I don't see how you've been here for what? two? three years?"

"2." you answer, "I was crunched with time." you add, "Not an excuse. I told you I needed these done before my meeting, not rushed, not half-assed. Completed." you sit in your chair, the pit moving up slightly in your body "If we mess up, we can get sued; and you will lose your job, you're aware of that?" A lump forms in your throat.

"This is a warning, but If this happens again, I'll have no trouble finding a replacement." You nod quickly, "It won't happen again."

"I'm sure." he looks down at wrist, "It's almost your lunch I'm assuming." you nod once more, "Is there anything else?" you ask hoping to God this was it, "Stop wearing your headphones when you work, it's against the rules and make sure to close my door when you leave."

You get up from your chair and zoom to the door, making sure to shut it behind you. Your coworkers looking at you from behind their screens, some sending you a sympathetic smile as you walk back to your cubicle. You clock out on your computer, grab your bag and head towards the front to leave. You walk to the grocery store in the strip mall where your job's located, buying a Turkey and Cheese Croissant also a Matcha Latte (this is my order heheheeeee). You sit outside the stores mini patio, going over the events that just happened. "I'm sure" kept ringing through your head, this was the first time you ever been talked to! screw him (you'd like to! 😏).

You'd always been on time, your customers never complained about your services, you fill out paperwork for christ's sake. And god forbid you need some kind of stimulation while you stare at blue light all day. I mean who can work without music?

You finish your lunch and decide to walk around the mart a little bit before you get back. Dreading the looks from everyone, having to see the emails, talk to the elderly about burial benefits. It's all so annoying.

You make it back to the office doing your regular routine for after lunch, making sure to put your other headphone on the other ear so your boss wouldn't notice. You check your emails once more

[email protected]

Subject: Spread sheets

Attachment 1

Attachment 2

I need these filled in by Thursday next week, the first attachment is the paper work they've dropped off.

Second attachment is the spread sheet, match the date to the paper work. DOUBLE CHECK YOUR WORK!!

Thanks in advance.

S.R.

"Thanks in advance." you mock his accent earning a very hard sid-eye from the lady next to you.

"what a dick" you mumble to yourself.

supervisor!simon

#OfficeRomance💌#Supervisor!simon #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #simon riley #cod mw2 #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost x reader #ghost simon riley #ghost x reader #ghost x you #ghost x y/n #ghost cod #cod mw3 #task force 141

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teabutmakeitazure · 3 months

Text

Pinprick in the Backdrop

The background is something you should always pay attention to.

>Yan! Chrollo x Fem! Reader

>Warnings: not specified to avoid spoilers. please proceed with caution.

>Word count: ~15k (slow burn)

>a/n: proofread to the best of my capabilities. if there's any spelling error, pls ignore

There are always some people you see everyday without fail on the train. Some you find on your way to the station and in the train, some on the train, and some when you step out of it. Most of you have never talked to each other, but you recognise them. Even if the middle aged lady who always sits near the door of car 7 changed her hair colour completely.

You can still recognise them. Seeing their face isn’t a requirement. It’s their existence that matters. It’s especially funny when you call the teenagers by name on Halloween despite the costumes they’re wearing.

Perhaps you missed a great opportunity to go into criminology or become a detective. Maybe even a spy. However, what’s done is done. You can’t say you hate your job, so you suppose it’ll do as long as you’re able to live a comfortable life and send some money back home to your parents.

Speaking of money, your boss - or should you say the man who also overlooks the finance department - has been absent from work for two weeks. It’s the main reason why your salary this month hasn’t come in yet. Why they decided to not pay you all is a mystery, but why your boss has disappeared is a bigger mystery. The money you have left in your account isn’t enough for the entire month, so they better pay you all soon.

The penitence of innocents always baffles you. There was nothing you could have done, nothing you could have changed, so why? Why does the human conscience produce these feelings of guilt? Maybe it’s because you unconsciously recall times when you were cruel or times when you had ignored to cherish the moments.

At the end of the day, it’s puzzling feelings like these that make you human. Black jacket hugged closer to your body, you head back to your desk, shaking the mouse as you try to wake up the monitor. Your boss is dead. The reason why it took so long to confirm was because he died in a different country and his cell phone was destroyed.

Another mystery is why he flew to a different country on a weekend, and that too for just four days. He didn’t even have any family there. They all live here, so imagine their surprise when they find out his ‘business trip’ was actually a personal one. You don’t question why they didn’t bother to contact his workplace when he didn’t return.

Quite a lot has happened within the span of a few days. First there was the news of your boss being pronounced dead. That was followed by the memorial they had in the office, and lastly, your salaries finally came in. You can refresh your savings now.

Still, the radical change in circumstances you cannot get over. Your boss, the half bald guy whose biggest transgression was making jokes in poor taste, dead? The information you all were given is vague. He left for a different country, somewhere in the Mimbo Republic to be specific, from Yorbia, where you are. It’s not your job to dig into people’s business, but this seems too fishy because his family also refuses to utter a word.

Thus, like all women trying to find information on a man they are interested in, you turn to the internet. Scrounging through news articles of accidents and injury and deaths, you finally find a few noteworthy ones from the day he supposedly passed away.

The darkness in your bedroom adds to the suspense, light solely coming from your backlit keyboard and the open window. It doesn’t help that it’s past two in the morning, almost three, but you’re determined as you scan through descriptions of a ‘buy and sell’ gone wrong.

Two hundred people. That is how many died at that event.

To be fair, the entire administration and security also kicked the bucket, and the attendees were around one hundred according to the article. None of this still makes sense. Was your boss among those people? If yes, why would he be at such an event?

Scratch that, his family definitely knows something.

After spending a little less than an hour snooping around, you finally shut down your laptop and go under the covers. It’s understandable when sleep doesn’t come easily.

The commute to work was the same as usual. The only difference was that one of the girls in your neighbourhood was nowhere to be seen on the train. Maybe she skipped school today. Despite the ordinary day, you are in no mood to entertain when familiar footsteps grow closer and closer to your desk.

“Hi, [Name]!”

You wish you left the building for lunchtime after all.

“You’re not going out for lunch?”

With the most uninterested face you can make, you shrug, eyes not leaving the monitor. If he gets the hint, he leaves. If he doesn’t… you’ll just excuse yourself and leave.

“So you’re not eating?” He’s behind you now, eyes fixed onto your monitor as he tries to make sense of the gibberish. “Your work requires a lot of thinking. You should eat something.”

“Not right now,” you sigh. “I have a whole hour left. I’ll eat when I feel like it.”

You know what this guy is doing. His engagement recently went wrong when he found out his ex-fiance was cheating on him, and now he’s seeking out someone to fill the hole. Quite literally in his case, but whatever. Perhaps you would have given him the time of day if he wasn’t so obvious and desperate… or if you ever bothered to remember his name.

It’s worse when you remember that you didn’t recognise him after the break-up. Chills. That’s what you felt. It’s best to keep your distance. He isn’t the same guy who gushed about the love of his life 24/7. There’s something unstable around him.

“Well, whenever you feel like it, just shoot me a text.” His hands grab the edge of your backrest, just millimetres away from touching your back. “I want to treat you to lunch.”

Closing the tab and opening another one, you voice your response. “Sorry, but I brought food from home. I’ll be eating that.”

“Oh.” he sounds disappointed. “No worries. I’ll treat you some other time then.”

Note to self. Bring lunch from home everyday from now on. If that’ll help keeping him off your back then so be it.

It has now been two weeks since your boss’ memorial was held. His replacement has already been hired, but you can’t bring yourself to bother too much. Some of your coworkers have started cozying up to him and buttering him up which is intimidating the poor man. Workplace politics is something you could never have prepared yourself for.

Another thing you couldn’t have prepared yourself for is adulthood. Why is it so hard to choose what to eat? You can’t live off of takeout because it’s not healthy, and whenever you fail to finish eating the fruits you got before they go bad makes you feel like more of a failure. Thus, with great determination, you end up buying half a dozen apples.

If you eat one daily, you’ll finish them all in under a week. More items are added to your trolley and when you finally exit the self-service checkout, you roll your shoulders, readjust your backpack, manoeuvre the plastic bags into a more comfortable position, and begin the walk home.

It’s nighttime, just one hour away from the shops closing. You know you’re safe because almost all of the people you are familiar with. There are only some here and there who you haven’t seen before, but they’re all normal. It’s evident from the way ‘it’ is stable around them. ‘It’ is light and calm.

After a fifteen minute walk, you’re at your apartment building. Unfortunately, you wasted too much time walking around after you got off work and now you’ll have to eat dinner late. Well, it’s not like your sleep schedule is fixed anyway. Another day of sleeping late shouldn’t hurt. It’s the weekend now anyway.

It is on this wonderful Saturday afternoon that you realise you don’t have friends. Clarification. You don’t have friends where you live.

After graduating, all of your friends either stayed in the same city or moved away somewhere else entirely. None of them came here, or anywhere in Yorbia for that matter. It’s realisations like these that force you to ponder over your future. What are you going to do? What’s your aim?

Before, it was to graduate and get a decent job. Now that you have that, what now?

With the lack of ice cream in your freezer, maybe you should start with procuring dessert. What about takeout as well? You could go for an evening walk, watch the sunset and get food for dinner altogether. That sounds nice.

Laptop turned on, you type in the address of a shady website and start browsing through the movie catalogue. Today, you will relax. Having hours of screen time isn’t a good idea, but it’s the weekend. Mistakes don’t count.

Maybe I should get mama and papa to move in with me after papa retires. That’s your thought when you head to the supermarket to get ice cream with takeout in hand. Getting food before ice cream wasn’t the best idea since it’ll be cold by the time you get home, but what’s done is done.

Life is lonely here. Sitting at home, alone, eating takeout and ice cream out of the tub while shows you’ve rewatched more than five times play on the TV. Maybe you should make some friends, but where?

Your workplace doesn’t have anyone, let alone any girl, your age. You also haven’t met anyone you wanted to be friends with. They’re all blended into the familiar background.

Paying with your card, you leave the self-service checkout counter and ready yourself for the walk back home. It’s more fun when you’re leaving the house for a walk, not the other way around.

Still, you take in the people around you like you do all the time. Most people you know, you recognise. You’ve been seeing them for so long. There are always a few who are a little odd as ‘it’ is a little unruly around them, like your notorious coworker. However, ‘it’ is still light and faint but most importantly familiar. That’s the most comforting thing about it. The familiarity is what’s important.

So imagine the surprise and utter shock you feel when ‘it’ is as dark as the night sky around a stranger you have never seen before.

The darkest you have ever seen is something similar to how dark yellow is compared to pure white. So seeing something as contrasting as jet black to white, you can’t help it when the bags fall from your hand and onto the ground.

You’re frozen on the spot, mouth hung open as you stare wide eyed at the stranger who stands just a few metres ahead of you. He doesn’t notice at first, too busy speaking over the phone to pay attention, but when his eyes fall onto you, they’re slow and knowing, like he’s been aware of your gaze since you saw him among the others around you.

A few deep, trembling breaths, and you grab the bags off the ground and dash by him as fast as you can without it seeming too obvious you saw something. This time you do not pause to soak in the familiarity of the surroundings. Your only goal is to get home.

Bringing lunch from home is starting to get tiring. You have to wake up earlier and pack leftovers as well as make sure you have leftovers or cook something the night before in case you don’t. All because some weirdo who’s hung up on his ex can’t take a hint. To be fair you don’t have the guts to outright say no as well.

Maybe you should work on that.

Today, you decided to take a walk on the pier near your apartment building. It’s also a fifteen minute walk away since it’s close to the supermarket. Nevertheless, you sit down on a bench and just watch the water.

It’s soothing, being idle like this. God, you really need a break.

Families and couples who you usually see around walk about the area. There’s something so special about this. This comfortable bubble you’ve created. Sure, you’re lonely with most of your social interaction being the neighbourhood kids or the teenagers on the train, but it’s all so comfortable.

It’s warm. Maybe you should ask your parents to visit. They’d like it here. The accessible sea and half middle aged or above population would be something they’d like.

The sun has gone down now, and the moon has started to become visible. So, with reluctance to let go of the passing time, you get up, backpack once again on your shoulders, and start the walk back home. Maybe you should also get an actual bag instead of using the one you did in university. You know, something that’s more feminine.

Regardless, as long as this one works, you’ll use it. No need to get a replacement if the thing isn’t destroyed yet. Wait, scratch that. Should you get more ice cream? Brownies maybe? The supermarket is right here and they have a section for freshly baked items. The brownies were amazing when you last got them.

You abruptly turn on your heel, completely determined to get what you are now suddenly craving. One step forward and you collide with something, getting pushed back a few steps from the force of whatever kind of brick it was. Barely are you able to regain your balance. Had you fallen, your laptop would not have survived.

You raise your head to look at what it was you walked into, ready to curse while there are no children around, but are completely frozen when you see him again. ‘It’ is large, so much more prominent and stronger than what you have seen in all the years you’ve lived. It’s like it’s protecting him, gently swirling around him like a protective layer.

It’s menacing, to say the least. You have no strength to utter a single word when the stranger steps closer to you, tilting his head as he inspects you for any injuries.

Or at least that’s what you think he’s doing.

You’re absolutely horrified at how ‘it’ seems to dissipate as he steps closer, the presence of it almost completely gone. It’s now as noticeable as it is for everyone, but you can still see the darkness of ‘it’. No way does it help that you can now also feel the mancing aura it has.

“Are you alright?”

Blinking at him, you come back to the present situation, the background noises coming back to invade your senses. Your tongue feels like lead in your mouth, and your chest feels extremely heavy. Why is it so hard to breathe?

“Ah, it seems like the collision stunned you. It’s okay. I apologise for bumping into you.” The stranger smiles, and it causes bile to rise up your throat. You don’t like how he’s still looking at you like that. Like he’s looking for something.

“Hello? Are you alright, miss? Really, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he chuckles. You, on the other hand, fail to see what’s so humorous.

It takes a few more seconds to compose yourself, but your heart still beats loudly, spelling out the letters R-U-N in bold capital letters. However, social etiquette forces you to take a deep breath, bow, and voice your apology.

The stranger fails to get another word in before you awkwardly fast walk away with the nagging memory of the bandage covering his forehead and dark bangs messily falling over them.

Today, you walk home from the train station as fast as you can. The encounter yesterday has shook you to the core, and until you don’t see this stranger for a month straight, you will not cease the hurried travel back home.

Whoever this man is, you do not want to be within even a 10 metre radius of him. Something is definitely off about him, and in your experience the darker ‘it’ is, the worse person they are. You just don’t know what ‘it’ as dark as his means.

Nevertheless, fate likes to throw a pie on your face and laugh at you because he’s standing right outside your apartment building.

Fuck. That’s your only thought. Maybe you’ll hang around the neighbourhood or walk on the pier until he leaves. Yeah. better make yourself scarce. Unfortunately, fate throws another pie because when you turn your back and start quietly walking away, he notices you and calls out.

The bastard calls out to you.

Oh fuck me, you think. So much for not wanting to see him again. What does he even want? Does he want to know why you look at him like you’ve seen the man murder people countless times before?

“Ah, I’m sorry for disturbing your evening,” he says as he jogs up to you. How he noticed you while you were literally a building away you do not know. “I saw you leave this building in the morning, so I figured you live here. I’m sorry for intruding like this.”

‘It’ is still barely there like yesterday. That doesn’t mean you can’t feel the suffocating aura he has. Awkwardly, you sputter out a greeting. “Oh uh, h-hi.” The bandages aren’t there today, but those Godforsaken earrings are still there and his forehead is still covered by a hat. Does he have a receding hairline he doesn’t want to show?

He’s smiling at you, and you’re now noticing how wide and innocent looking his eyes are.

“My name is Chrollo,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Again, I’m sorry about the collision yesterday.”

You look at him for a few more seconds, heart beating erratically in your chest. “[Name]. And it’s okay. It was an accident on my part as well.”

Chrollo tilts his head slightly, eyes fixed on you and giving you his full attention. “Ah, that’s a lovely name. A lovely name for a lovely lady.”

You have never cringed this hard in years. Still, you force yourself to awkwardly laugh just to be polite and attempt to cut the conversation short. There’s no reason you should stick around. It’s utterly pointless and risky considering how his mere presence makes you feel.

“Excuse my forwardness,” Chrollo says, “but I was wondering if there are any good restaurants here I can try. I’m staying here at a hotel nearby until I find a proper accommodation, so I was hoping you could give me some recommendations.”

You open your mouth to say something just to stop short of any sound exiting your mouth. What comes next is an apology. Be useless to him. Don’t give him any reason to seek you out again. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t lived here long enough to know.” Wait, that makes it sound like I just moved here which makes me an easy target if he’s a serial killer. “No- what I mean is that I’ve lived here for a while but I usually cook, so I’m afraid I haven’t explored the food here. I only get takeout from the restaurant behind the supermarket nearby.”

Grey eyes blink at you, the gaze attentive. The corners of his lips are still turned upwards, and his lips slowly part to allow him to speak. Everything seems more detailed. You can’t wait to shrug him off.

“If I may, I’d love to explore the food here with you.”

Fuck. Did I just get asked out? No no. Be realistic. He just needs someone to cling to in this new environment or he’s a serial killer trying to make you lower your guard. You sigh. Whichever it is, you refuse his offer regardless. “I’m sorry, Chrollo.” The fall of his smile is instant. It’s almost creepy. “I don’t plan on eating out too much. I enjoy cooking, so I’d like to stick to cooking as much as I can.” Seriously. What is it with men and taking you out to eat? “Thank you for the offer though. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d love to get ho-”

“I don’t mind cooking together as well.”

“...” What? There’s no way he just said that to you.

“If you prefer cooking, I have no issues with cooking together.” He’s still looking at you, expectantly this time, and you feel like the ground beneath your feet is crumbling away. Why can’t men take a hint?

“Ah, I really should get home soon. Isasmo must be waiting for me. I promised him I’d be home early.”

“Isasmo?”

“Mhm.” You’re shaking your head now. The presence of a man awaiting your return or curious about your whereabouts always works. “He gets very worried if I don’t get home on time. I don’t want him to worry, so if you’ll excuse me…”

Chrollo chuckles. Closing his eyes, he gently shakes his head. The loss of his gaze is short lived, but when it’s back, it cuts through your being. “Sorry for keeping you. I didn’t know you had someone waiting for you at home.”

Like earlier, your heart starts beating in your ears. How he’s keeping you on edge you have no idea. It’s maddening. “Alright. I’ll be heading home now.”

He smiles. “No ‘see you later’?”

Because I don’t want to see you later! “Goodbye!” With that, you dash past him and quickly enter the comfort of your apartment building without looking back. Honestly, you should start coming home at different times. Just to throw him off in case he swings by again.

Today, you discovered that your other coworkers are ‘talking’. Due to your sad lack of friends, you have no way of getting in on what’s going on, so you’ve resorted to hanging around corners whenever you hear someone talking or walking around with headphones on so that people think you can’t hear them.

Oh you can definitely hear them.

After a few days of gathering information you have learnt that the coworker who has still not given up on his pursuit of taking you out for lunch is acting a bit weird. Honestly, you called it way back. The day his engagement broke, he started acting differently.

You know because you can see with your own eyes at a glance instead of having to rely on long term observation. It also doesn’t help that ‘it’ has become slightly darker. It’s no way as dark as Chrollo’s, but it is noticeable enough to be discernible.

Speaking of Chrollo, why is he at the pier? No, scratch that. Why is he looking at you?

Quickly, as to not make it seem suspicious, you grab your phone from your pocket, press it to your ear, and start acting like you just accepted a call. With that legendary tactic that got you out of countless social interactions in university, you turn on your heel and start walking in the opposite direction.

When confirmed that he isn’t following after you and is nowhere to be seen, you pocket the device and continue on your merry way. The wind is chilly, the moon is hiding bashfully behind a cloud, and a tub of ice cream has been picked up.

Goods in hand, you arrive at your apartment. It doesn’t surprise you that midnight comes quickly. It is only after the clock shows 12: 30 am that you release the unhealthy snack for the night from the freezer and sit in the extremely poorly lit bedroom and stare at your laptop screen.

This time, however, you aren’t gaming, only browsing through more than eleven opened tabs (you lost count after eleven) and growing more puzzled by the minute. The incident that may have led to your boss’ death is gaining attention, especially on the conspiracy theory websites. Some say that the entire thing was a result of the mafia’s activities, while some claim that a notorious band of thieves did that to steal everything.

You have no evidence or trails that your boss died while participating in that ‘buy and sell’, whatever that means, but it sure does make you suspicious because you recently found out one thing. His body wasn’t recovered.

The more you think about it the worse it gets. Despite not wanting to, you’ve doom scrolled for so long that you’ve ended up on a five year old conspiracy theory post claiming that a group called ‘The Phantom Troupe’ goes around the world stealing stuff. The comments are mostly people confirming it, some even claiming to be hunters and saying that it’s true and common knowledge among hunters.

If they’re that dangerous and destructive, why doesn’t the Hunter’s Association take action? It’s all just a bluff or an exaggeration.

Lights all off, you get up to place your laptop onto your desk, but catch sight of something moving in the corner of your eye. It was barely there, something black or dark, but knowing that you left your living room window open, you simply sigh.

It’s completely quiet. So quiet, in fact, that you can hear your own breathing. Setting aside the fact that the awareness forces you to have to manually breathe, you slam the window shut but rest your forehead against the cool glass. Eyes stare down at the empty neighbourhood, and you start wondering how you got here.

It sometimes feels like a dream. Highschool feels like just a few weeks ago, and yet here you are. It’s surreal.

Five minutes of reminiscence are all you allow yourself, hands promptly grabbing the deep green curtains and drawing them just to freeze when you catch sight of something shining right behind you for just one moment. Turning your head around at an unholy speed only gives you neck pain because there’s nothing there.

Curse you conspiracy theorists. You will be extremely mad if you have a nightmare or lose sleep.

Your coworker didn't show up today. It almost makes you feel sad because you can get lunch from outside without having to deal with him. Ah, but the food you brought…

Nevermind. You'll eat it at home. Shoving the lunchbox back into your bag, you grab your wallet and head to the elevator. Headphones are on like usual in hopes of catching any stray gossip from around you.

Oh and do you catch a big one. Your coworker isn't replying to any texts or calls. He's ignoring everyone. The guy from accounting said in the elevator that he might be hungover since he has a drinking habit. Honestly, you should try and advance your relationships with these people from simple greetings. They’re better information sources than the news.

Nevertheless, you breathe a sigh of relief, merrily heading outside the building to head to the little hole in the wall restaurant you've been eyeing for a while.

The streets are busy as usual, almost everyone's lunch hours overlapping at this particular moment, so it isn't a surprise that you bump into a few people while trying to make your way. Although… it is a surprise when you bump straight into Chrollo.

Headphones are promptly pulled down to hang around your neck, and you brace yourself to visually deal with the pressing feeling that’s constricting your chest. ‘It’ is there but the comfort of the crowd allows you to deal with it with less effort.

You still don’t know why he’s like that. You don’t know why ‘it’ is like that around him.

“I’m sorry,” he apologises, “we should really stop bumping into each other.”

It’s the middle of the day and he’s dressed like he’s going to a funeral. Long black coat, black hat extending over his forehead, black button down, black dress pants, black-

What the actual hell are those shoes? Is that big yellow thing a nail that was screwed in? What the fu-

“Is something the matter?” Head tilted to meet your downward gaze, Chrollo’s expectantly looking into your eyes. There’s a moment of silence between you both, but you fill it with action as you move to the side to not take up space on the street.

With a very noticeable deep breath, you sigh. “Nothing’s wrong.” Something is wrong. His thing around him is creeping you out and making you uncomfortable. “I’m just a little tired.” Make yourself seem uninterested. You don’t particularly like this guy, remember?

He nods. “I see.” A pause and the dreaded question is voiced. “Do you work somewhere around here?”

“Yes,” you reply simply.

“Is it your lunch break?”

“Yes…” you hesitate.

“Perfect.” Like how your luck with the male human specimen has always been, Chrollo proceeds to utter the most undesirable string of words. “If you haven’t eaten, I would love for you to join me for lunch. I found a restaurant and was heading there just now.”

Despite knowing it’s hard to get out of this, you still try. “Ah, actually, I only came for a walk. I brought food with myself.”

“It won’t go bad,” he negotiates. “Please. Just this once at least. I promise you’ll have fun.”

Chrollo’s voice is light, cheerful when he says that. You are tempted, but still want to go where you were originally heading. Maybe you could sneak to the restaurant you wanted after shaking him off somehow. But before that, just to confirm what he has in mind, you ask him where.

And being the joke that your luck is, it decides to practise its humour right now because he took the name of the restaurant you were heading to. It also doesn’t help that your eyes widened and Chrollo commented on it, saying that he ‘caught you’. Screw luck. Screw having your way. Life is just a horrible comedy show with dad jokes and shitty puns coming one after another.

A while later, you are seated across from a man who has broken the record of most uncomfortable you have ever been. This time, however, ‘it’ isn’t what’s making you uncomfortable. It’s the way he looks at you like he knows something or is trying to know something.

You hate to admit it but after spending more than five minutes in his presence, you’ve gotten used to the suffocating feeling.

Even if you would rather not be desensitised to it.

It’s quiet between you both, Chrollo choosing to observe you shamelessly while you try your utmost best to avoid looking at him or showing that you’ve noticed his blatant gaze. It’s not busy in here, so that doesn’t help either. Phone in your hand, you scroll through social media apps, tapping away countless stories of people out and about.

The silence got comfortable, but he opened his mouth.

“I forgot to ask,” he says, voice low, “what do you work as?”

Your eyes briefly flit up to meet his but return to the screen immediately. “Data analyst.”

“Data analyst? You must be quite intelligent,” he chuckles.

“If crying through eight semesters of school is smart, then I suppose so.”

There’s a smile in his voice when he speaks. “You got through it though. I count that as smart.”

Is he trying to flatter me? “Is that so?” You close the app and open a different one, indifference dripping from your tone. “What about you then? You didn’t say anything about yourself. For all I know, you could be a serial killer.” Fuck. Did I really just say that?

To your surprise, he laughs. The bastard laughs. “I’m afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you. I’m not a serial killer. I am, however, a fan of the arts.”

You remove your eyes from your phone screen, looking up at him even with your head tilted downwards. “You don’t look the part.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Those in STEM are all weirdos,” you state. Eyes move back to your phone, and you’re briefly reminded of the awkward lunches and dinners you went through during freshman year when you didn’t have friends. “The arts ones are pretentious. You look sophisticated, more like a theatre kid.”

Forearms now resting on the table, Chrollo leans towards you, an action you do not notice. “I’m quite sure that sophisticated and pretentious are synonyms, and even if they aren’t, they’re similar enough to be.”

You sigh. “‘A pretentious person works at the appearance of things. They want the appearance of substance, while either not understanding or not caring about actual substance. Sophistication, on the other hand, implies an authentic accumulation of knowledge and/or experience, and the ability to apply those things in advanced ways.’”

“...”

“That’s what an internet search says.” You look up, eyes slowly rising to meet his, but are startled when you see him considerably closer than earlier. He’s leaning forward, and out of instinct, you lean backwards. “So,” you continue, albeit nervously, “you’re wrong.”

Unfazed, he chuckles. “That means you think I have ‘authentically accumulated knowledge’. Why, I’m flattered.”

Again, you physically cringe with a crinkled nose at his smile and tone. “I’m only stating my observation. There are no intentions behind it.”

“Still,” Chrollo smiles, “you did think positively of me-”

“Food’s here!” He stops speaking immediately at your interruption, only shaking his head a little when you start eating. There’s not much time left for your break, so you’d rather get done with it and get back as fast as you can.

Not having the luxury of savouring the food to your desire is sad, but you don’t think about it. ‘Next time for sure,’ you tell yourself. The fact that Chrollo didn’t let you pay for your portion just makes you want to get takeout next time. At least you won’t stare at him in horror again.

Even if slowly being desensitised to ‘it’ isn’t a preferable outcome.

Good news is that you haven’t seen Chrollo for a little more than a week. Bad news is that you haven’t seen your coworker for a little more than a week.

If you had a jenny for whenever a superior at work disappeared for more than one week, you’d have two jennys. That isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice. There’s got to be some kind of haunting going on. First your boss, then him? Another coworker? Another superior?

Sure, it’s been more peaceful without him here, but you don’t want another person to end up missing just to be pronounced dead. Neither is it good for the company’s reputation, nor is it good for the work environment. There’s already been word spreading around that they’ve started looking for his replacement.

Maybe that’s smart. Maybe… because not even the police have found any leads on his whereabouts yet. His entire apartment is just as it was, dirty laundry in the laundry basket, his phone and wallet still on his nightstand, bed not made, food left to cool still on the kitchen counter…

It’s a little eerie if you think about it.

Scratch that, it’s downright creepy. Where could he have gone? They even found half drunk bottles of different alcoholic drinks on his dining table. Did he get drunk and run off somewhere? Where could he have gone? Did he… get killed?

You have no idea of what’s going on. That is why you, being the detective that you are, have your laptop open in front of you at 1 a.m. as you scrounge the internet for any missing persons cases from this town. So far nothing noteworthy is coming up, the most being missing girls but nothing about a grown man disappearing to never be heard back from or seen again.

An hour or two of more searching bears no fruit and an additional hour of trying to sleep is rewardless. With great annoyance, you get up and throw on the biggest coat you own, something dark grey that almost reaches your ankles. Grabbing your keys and phone, you make the most foolish decision to take a walk at what you think is probably four in the morning.

The pier is silent. The only person you saw was a police officer on his bike drinking a hot cup of coffee.

It’s empty too, and cold. Is the nighttime really so serene? Hands are shoved into your pockets and your feet bring you to your destination on their own. It feels like walking on cotton, yet it doesn’t feel bad. It somehow feels soothing.

The empty pier’s cool wind blows through your hair. Enjoying this kind of loneliness is somewhat of a liberating experience. Did your missing coworker seek out something like this before he went missing? Did he want to feel the kiss of the cool late night wind on his cheeks? You lean over to look at the waves below, hair cascading around your face. You are met with the reflection of the starry night sky, and it isn’t long before you pull back.

Fifteen minutes of waddling around are all you allow yourself before pulling yourself back home. The keychains jingle when you turn the key in the keyhole, breathing a sigh of relief when you are finally back inside. Your feet immediately take you to your bedroom, hands grabbing the coat and throwing it to the nearest surface, and you immediately jump under the covers.

Face meeting something pink and smiling, you sigh again. “Goodnight Isasmo.” The pink axolotl’s smile remains and you cuddle the plushie before snuggling into the bed’s warmth. You hope sleep comes easy.

Three weeks. It has now been three weeks since your coworker has been missing. He has now been promoted to ‘missing person’ and his face, along with his cinnamon(?) hair, is now on every other newspaper or screen. It has also been three weeks since you last saw Chrollo, but you aren’t bothered by that. It’s actually a good sign. Never seeing him again is a favourable outcome.

Regardless, your coworker’s name is now permanently etched into your memory. Raaz Olen. That's his name. He has no direct family left, parents having passed away around a decade ago, and the only sibling alive is an older sister who wants nothing to do with him. It's a sad background if you think about it.

You sigh, turning off the computer screen before rubbing your eyes. Life has been uneventful these days. The most exciting thing you recently did was video chat with your old friends. Your best friend, the one who is about to replace your position in her life, suggested downloading a dating app because according to her you need some ‘action’. Were the eight semesters of action not enough? What’s so wrong with peace?

Yet in a moment of weakness, you caved into the idea and committed the act. A cropped group photo to show your arm awkwardly cropped out was uploaded and now there have been quite a few messages and matches. This unfortunate experience has only further proved why you say you have bad luck with the male human specimen. Their first move is to ask about your past relationships, and being salty over their shamelessness, you recount in detail just how agonising it was to be in love with what only hurt you back, to pine after what only reduced you to tears.

You deliberately left out the part that the object of your desire was your degree. At the very least, their uninterested replies were entertaining. Ah, such laughable insecurity. The app will go when you’ve had your fun. Until then, you suppose you’ll use it as a last ditch resort for entertainment.

If you do end up scoring a free dinner… well, no. You would rather not risk a date with a serial killer or worse, someone who wants a second date. The chances are slim, but never zero.

Another notification from the app dings, and you briefly check your phone to see a notification from someone who matched with you. There’s a “Hey! You’re very pretty,” as his message, and you almost scoff at the repetition. The amount of times you have been called ‘pretty’ by strangers on this app is laughable. Did they fall short of words? Maybe that’s just the standard compliment in the world of men.

You end up placing your phone face down, ignoring any following dings, and get back to work. There is only one hour left until you get to go home, and you would prefer not to leave this task for tomorrow to complete.

An old lady you see everyday on the train on your way back passed away. Despite having only exchanged greetings with her a few times and carried her bags for her at least a dozen times, you felt oddly sad when you heard of her death. Yes, you only knew her name and that her kids, her three sons, never called after moving away, but you felt like something had been taken when you heard.

Not something big but something small. Something you would not be bothered with by being gone but something you would definitely notice and feel the absence of. You took a day off to attend her funeral since it was hosted by the old age home she was living in, yet you ended up taking a day off after that as well.

Three boys, three men, lost a mother that day and none bothered to show up.

“Okay mama. I’ll pick you guys up from the airport. No, I don’t own a car. We’ll get a cab- it’s perfectly safe here! You’re not going to get mugged on the way from the airport, relax!”

More fretting comes from the other side, and you simply continue stirring the soup. The worries aren’t what annoys you. It’s the panic.

After around ten more minutes of reassurance, the call is disconnected and your soup is ready. It’s been a month since Raaz went missing, yet you cannot say you have moved on. It bothers you that a man like him can just vanish. Also, seeing his replacement walk around the office simply makes it worse. You prefer a person who would make you uncomfortable with interactions because of how ‘it’ seems to be rather than a person whose eyes wander where they aren’t supposed to.

Alas, on this fine Friday evening, soup has been cooked and a plan for your parents to visit you at the end of the year has been made. Your father agreed to use his annual leave to come visit you, and the only thing left is for the tickets to be purchased. If they like it here, you could convince them to move here! Maybe even look into your father working at the same place as you.

All is going according to plan! Now what to do about the guy who keeps pestering you to meet up…

You switch apps on your phone to see that he’s sent another few messages, mainly asking if you’re free this weekend. If you consider the sleep you need to catch up on and the show you want to binge, then you have no free time. Besides that, you really don’t feel like going out on a date. Should you just uninstall the app? Messing with the people you matched with has gotten tiresome. Perhaps you should.

Thus, with a few taps to your screen, your account on the application is deleted and the application itself is uninstalled. Honestly, you consider that a job well done. That calls for a reward; the reward being a coupon that can be redeemed anytime which grants you permission to do one stupid thing.

You know you would do the stupid thing regardless, but having a sort of system like that makes you feel less guilty when facing the consequences.

Being pulled into an alleyway with a hand firmly planted onto your mouth is not what you ever could have expected to happen to you on this Monday afternoon. Maybe your condemnation for toying with all those men on the dating app has caught up or maybe it’s one of those men here to force you to accept his advances.

Either way, you did not expect to start crying first thing when in a situation like this.

A hand strokes your arm, attempting to soothe you, as the other remains over your mouth. You can feel your assailant’s body heat and his breath over your ear when he leans in to whisper in your ear. “Be quiet and it’ll be painless for both of us,” he says.

You furiously nod, sensing the threat, and he immediately lets go. Legs promptly spring to run, but the hand grabbing your arm renders your efforts futile. It is when your struggling ends in you falling onto the ground and him twisting your arm behind your back painfully that you relax, repeatedly tapping the dirty ground with your palm to show that you give up.

There are no faces that come to mind when you think of who you could've angered to this point, so the surprise that floods your blood vessels when you see Raaz’s face under the black hoodie makes you almost dizzy. His hair is dirty and unkempt, facial hair clearly not maintained as he was always clean shaved, and there’s a wildness to his eyes. You try your best to not pay attention to how ‘it’ is darker than before. You liken the difference to how dark brown is compared to beige, but you realise that ‘it’ is more menacing than it ever was.

Raaz is clearly unstable, yet you yourself can’t stop shaking from the lingering adrenaline.

“Stay quiet and listen to me,” he orders. “I need a place to hide. [Name], you have to help me. You will help me.”

Hide? What does he need to hide from? You dust off your clothes as you stand, a groan leaving your throat when the soreness in your arm makes itself known. He immediately grabs it again, afraid you’d run, but let’s go when you angrily shrug it off. “What happened to you?” you ask. “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“I will be if you don’t help me.”

Taken aback, you try to think over the situation. Raaz, someone who you always thought was or had the potential to be unstable, is here, clearly frazzled and on the run from something or someone, and wants you to help him hide. What does he want? To stay at your apartment? Risk your life for him?

“I-if it’s that bad,” you start, voice already shaking, “I can’t help you.” The betrayal on his face makes ‘it’ stronger, and you freeze, barely able to get your words out. “If you’re not able to hide in such a big city, I-I don’t- I don’t think you’ll be safe anywhere I can keep you.”

Raaz grits his teeth, his hoodie now pulled down to reveal dirty cinnamon hair, and takes a step forward. Out of fear, and to maintain distance, you take one back but panic when you’re unable to lift your feet. One glance down and you see something shiny protruding from the ground wrapped around your ankles. It broke pavement to crawl around your feet and now they’re stuck to the ground.

You gasp when two arms settle on your shoulders firmly. With a shaky breath, you gather the courage to look up into Raaz’s crazed eyes, all colour draining from your face when his hands grab your face instead. Nails dig into your cheeks, harshly tugging it closer to his. When you retaliate by clawing at his wrists, he simply grabs your hair instead.

Tugging the strands, your head is pulled back, neck exposed. You can see him breathing heavily, ‘it’ growing more erratic and frightening. Like all rabbits stuck in a trap, you thrash, attempting to free yourself from his grip, to miraculously free your feet and be able to run into the safety of the public street.

“You-” he pauses, eyes widening. Your hair is immediately let go of, and he whips his head at record speed, looking over his shoulder. The panic is oozing from his countenance, hands shaking and lips trembling. You think you’re looking at a man running away from death just to be caught up with at every corner and turn.

Curses spill from his mouth, and he turns completely. You feel the grip on your feet loosening, and taking the opportunity, you pry your feet out of the grip. Raaz has still turned his back to you, head moving as he searches for something. When he does not react to your escape from your restraints, you run.

A hand barely grabs your hair again, but you are out of the alleyway before his pursuit is successful. Feet hastily take you back to the office building, and the first thing you do is run to the nearest bathroom. No one is inside, and you take the opportunity to catch your breath, letting all tears escape from your eyes before you wash your face and fix your appearance. The adrenaline is still in your system, and you’re left not knowing what to do.

How the hell is Raaz still alive? And what is he running from? Why does he have a target on his back?

You do not know him beyond a coworker who was not over his relationship ending. Who knows? Maybe his ex-fiance did what she did because she found something out and didn’t want to risk staying with him.

Either way, you can’t get the look he had on his face out of your mind.

Embarrassment is all you can feel when you exit the police station with a ‘call emergency services if you see him again’. Why don’t they understand that you might not be alive to call emergency services if you see him again? Bitterness is in your mouth as you hop on the train to get home. It’s dark now, and you would be lying if you said you weren’t scared.

You honestly don’t know what you did wrong to have gotten caught up in all that. Regardless, you’re looking over your shoulder as you walk home from the station, adrenaline coursing through you as you make your way through. It’s when you’re home and have checked all the rooms and windows that you breathe a sigh of relief.

Whatever the hell happened, happened. You’ll keep emergency services on speed dial and try your best to dial them if anything happens again.

If only sleep comes easy after all this.

It’s been a week since your encounter with Raaz. Today is Tuesday, the previous week’s Monday being the fateful day. You’ve since been bringing lunch from home like before and find it a little funny how Raaz is the one who’s making you bring leftovers again.

Anyway, to the matter at hand. Someone’s been inside your apartment.

You can tell because you left a pencil lead in the gap between the door and door frame of your closed bedroom door. It was still closed when you got home, but the pencil lead was broken and on the floor which is something that could not have happened unless someone opened the door with the lead still in the gap.

You had been doing that ever since the incident with Raaz and today is the day your paranoia proved to have grounds. Now what are you supposed to do? Live with the information that someone has been inside your home?

Isasmo stares at you from under the covers, his dopy black eyes peeking out. You’ve checked the rest of your apartment and other than Isasmo and you, there is no one. Or at least no one you are aware of. Maybe you should look into moving.

Should you inform the police? Maybe you should, but what would you say? “I was paranoid so I put pencil lead in the gap between my door like a psychopath and guess what? It was broken when I got home! I’m being stalked!” They might laugh at you or place you under observation, the latter of which is preferable.

You end up sucking up the courage and going to file a report, a picture of the broken pencil lead on the ground being your only piece of evidence. It’s an uneventful walk, one where you are completely alert and looking over your shoulder as you get to the nearest station. After being ridiculed for being ‘delusional’ and ‘overthinking’, they agree to file a report and ‘look into it’ when threatened to find your dead body in your apartment one day. Seriously, what does a girl have to do to be believed? Die?

You shake your head on the way home as you think over your conversation at the police station. The older officers ridiculed you but thankfully a younger one got them to at least file a report. Though you’ve been told you’ll be contacted if their investigation yields results, you doubt there will be one to begin with. Well, at least the pencil lead was intact when you got home. That is a relief.

It’s been a little more than a week since you filed a report at the police station and none of your pencil leads have been broken again. You would have thought the first one to break might’ve been done by something else had you not noticed that you’re almost out of pencil lead. You had counted 7 in the package just this morning and now there are 4…

Who’s messing with you? Do they think it’s funny? What if you’re paranoid? Are you sure you counted properly?

A sigh leaves your lips as you drop backwards onto the bed. Is this really what you have been reduced to? Curse whoever is doing this. The police have not contacted you again, so you went there yourself today and they said they didn’t find anything. As if they actually searched.

It makes you mad, yet you can’t do anything. Since there hasn’t been anything besides the pencil leads in the closed doors’ gaps, you chalk it up to suspicion. Whether you are delusional or the authorities, only time can tell.

Work has been slow lately, and you are reminded every single day of how boring your life has become. There has been no new gossip circulating and your attempts at making any new friends have not bore fruit. Your old friends have also started contacting you less as they’re busy in their own lives. Sure, you hardly have time yourself with how your job takes up two thirds of your day but you also don’t have a social life. That’s why you basically have nothing to do besides work and binge watch stuff.

Goodness, are you turning into your father? The temptation to download the dating app again whispers into your ear sometimes, but you fight it. You will only do so when you are seriously looking for someone, not when you are looking for fun.

Bag on your shoulders, you pocket your phone and head to the elevator. Despite the fact that there isn’t much work, it’s dark when you’re done. Maybe you’ve gotten slow, not work.

The elevator doors open and you promptly leave, heading straight for the train station. It's an uneventful journey, and you choose to fill the silence by plugging in your earbuds. You step out of the train station, adjust your bag again, and head for the supermarket. The grocery list on your phone is pulled out, music flowing into your ears as you go about getting groceries.

Now with two plastic bags in hand, you make your way home. If you had restocked milk earlier - and not gotten lazy - you wouldn't have to haul two heavy plastic bags back home. Delivery is an option, but you won't be at home during the day to receive them. If only they offered delivery during the weekend.

Your phone rings, but you don't check who's calling. It's probably your mother, and it would be inconvenient to stop and drop the bags to pull your phone out. With a sigh, you continue walking. However, your trek is cut short when a hand grabs your wrist in a crushing grip, and pulls you closer. The music is still blasting in your ears, and you start sucking in a breath to scream only to stop when the grip turns almost bone breaking.

One look and you see Raaz's face under the black hood. He narrows his eyes at you and pulls you with him, bags still in hand and earbuds still in. When at his desired destination - a random alley like last time - you are pushed in front of him and you almost fall face first. You brace yourself and end up staggering but the bags fall and slide in opposite directions.

“Bad news, [Name].”

You barely hear him, hands reaching to pull out the earbuds and pocket them. Turning on your heel, you face him. He doesn't look any better than last time, only worse. ‘It’ is quieter, but you can sense how erratic it is. It feels like he's hiding how unstable he is only to do a poor job.

“You're going to go down with me,” he smiles. “Since you refused to help me hide, you now have a target on your back too.”

Disbelief contorts your expression into one of disgust. He's bluffing. He has to be. “Stop lying, Raaz. I'm not stupid and I'm not going to help you.”

He laughs, loud and sad. “That's what your mistake was. You never said yes to lunch and then I… then I ended up drinking again because another woman I love didn't want me.” A hand runs through his dirty hair before it slides down his hood. “I drank so much I bumped into the devil I was running from. And then… ah, fuck. I ended up telling him who I was thinking it was just another guy at the bar.”

Raaz looks you in the eye, and you take a step back from the sheer intensity only to find your feet restrained to your ground like during the previous encounter. It baffles you, but before you could question it or let alone panic, he's talking again.

“Now you're going to go down with me unless you help me. I'll let you go. I-I’ll get over you and Liza if you help me. You won't be harmed… probably.” He shrugs at the last part, and you find yourself not believing him at all.

Still, you prod further in hopes of making a false promise and being able to get away. There's no need to reason with him to go to the authorities. If it could've been helped, he would've gone there himself. “And just what,” you ask, “are you asking of me?”

“Money,” he replies instantly. “I burned all my savings trying to run. I need money so I can get a ticket and get the hell out of here.”

“I don't even know what you're talking about. How do you expect me to trust you?”

Your question makes ‘it’ flare up for a second before calming down, and Raaz doesn't miss the way your eyes widened for a minute. “I suspect you can see things. I'm right, aren't I?”

“Answer the questi-”

“Your legs,” he deadpans. A finger raises to point at your feet, and he continues. “I restrained them. Do you know how?”

You gulp, but humour him anyway. “How?”

He smiles. “I can manipulate metal.” A beat of silence passes before he talks. “That's why I'm like this. Someone wants me dead for this and I know he can do better but he's too busy fucking with me to make it quick.” Raaz inhales sharply, running a hand through his hair again. “I don't even know what he wants by dragging it out, but I'm going to make sure he regrets it.”

“You aren't even sure I'll be okay if I help you,” you state.

However, he just smiles at your complaint. “When someone's too busy chasing the big fish, they ignore the little ones.”

“Fine,” you concede. If it’ll get this psycho off your back, you'll give him money. “How much do you need?”

“Half a million jenny,” he says, clarifying when your jaw hangs open, “and I'm being generous. I'm going to have to fly illegally and it's going to take money.”

“I… I don't have much.”

“You're a data analyst, [Name]. You'll get your bonus after two months. Do something, anything.”

You suck in a breath. Maybe you could take some out of your credit card and some as a loan. You really don't want to pay interest, but you'll have to if you want this problem solved. “Okay.” The deal is sealed and you are sent on your merry way with an address typed into your notes app.

You can't believe you just agreed to that.

It's dark and quiet. The taxi dropped you off a few blocks away, leaving you to walk to the warehouses that once used to be rented by people for storage. The people running the business sold it off to someone who never bothered to continue it. Now you're here, cold and scared as you stand outside the dilapidated structure.

The garage door opens on its own, Raaz's face peeking from the darkness inside. His eyes light up at the sight of you. “You're here.”

You're ushered inside despite your protests. All you wanted to do was throw the bag of money to his feet and be back on your merry way but you just had to be pulled inside by a freaking metal pole of all things. Now you're here, standing with your feet restrained to the ground as Raaz counts to make sure you brought as much as he asked.

The only problem is, he's now talking on the phone and he just mentioned how he's got ‘both the girl and the cash’. Oh, and now there's something that's restraining your hands and despite how much you wiggle and pry your hands apart, it doesn't budge.

When Raaz glances your way from staring at all the money inside the bag, he just smiles. “I'm sorry for dragging you into this, [Name], but a man's gotta do what he's gotta do.”

Anger is the first thing that makes itself known because you took out a loan with interest for this dunce and he goes ahead to stab you in the back. Maybe you should've told the police about him. Shit. You shouldn't have been so stupid. But it is also the police's fault for never taking you seriously. If they had, you would've actually sought them out a third time.

“What are you doing?” Your voice grows louder, angrier and more desperate. “Let me go! You said you wanted money and you got it so let me go!”

Raaz clicks his tongue, and what he says next makes things clearer. “Don't get me wrong, someone has been after me but if I do as the boss says, he'll get me out of Yorbia safely.” Something fades in his eyes as he continues. “It's not like it's my first time. If I didn't have this side gig, I wouldn't be alive right now. There are too many people after you when you're like this.”

Something hard and solid slithers up your body and covers your mouth, cutting short any words from your mouth. Raaz stands, the light behind him hitting his back to make him look more menacing. “You'll be taken soon. I asked them not to hurt you and sell you immediately. Though cruel, it's a small price to pay for my own protection.”

You can hear an engine rumble outside, and a buzz in his pocket is all he needs to start stepping towards the garage door behind you. He moves while looking at you, hand awkwardly reaching behind him to pull up the garage door as his eyes remain fixed on your body. “Tie her up quickly. It'll wear off if I look away so make it-”

Thump.

Something heavy drops onto the ground and immediately the metal grip on you loosens a little. You can hear footsteps and a kick before the sound of the door closing. It's agonising, being forced to be still and helpless while something happens behind your back that is definitely not in your favour.

More footsteps and a figure in black stalks towards the bag of money only to ignore it entirely and head for the door in the back. You take the opportunity to fight against the restraints, wiggling and trying to move your arms but it's metal and you only end up exhausting yourself. You hear a sigh from the other room and freeze.

When the person is back, you are more confused and helpless when you see Chrollo's face. This time, there is nothing covering his forehead and you see something black covered by his bangs. It's when he steps closer that you make it out to be a tattoo of some kind.

“Your involvement was a surprise, but a welcome one,” he says. ‘It’ is calm and his voice is even calmer. He steps even closer, now standing just two steps away. “I had thought you were working with him, so imagine my surprise when it turns out he was using you. Or trying to, at least.”

You make a face but the metal wrapped around your mouth stops you from being able to convey it properly. Chrollo smiles at the display, the corners of his lips curling upwards out of amusement. “Do you need help?” His question only makes you grimace. “I'll free you if you tell me about your ability.”

You have no idea what the hell he's talking about, but you nod anyway, desperate to have the rigid metal wrapped around you gone. Chrollo steps forward and you expect him to reveal a chainsaw or some other tool, so it's perfectly reasonable when you shriek as his hand grabs the metal and literally rips it away from your body. As he pries away the last of it, you end up gaping at him, mouth wide open as you stare at him in disbelief.

Hands hanging by your sides, your features contort into one of fear as soon as he stands. Chrollo is now looking you in the eye expectantly and you have no idea what to answer him. Thus, you take a deep breath, confidence coming from the fact that ‘it’ is still calm and not threatening at all. Your lips part to speak and you briefly catch a hint of satisfaction is his grey eyes. “Do you… come here often?”

Chrollo blinks, once then twice. He raises a brow. “Pardon me?”

“You know… do you hang out here frequently?”

Confusion grows on his face, but he quickly recovers. “No. I don't.” A few moments of silence pass and he speaks up with a sigh. “You're completely clueless about the circumstances, aren't you?”

Embarrassment heats up your cheeks and you look down at your shoes as you nod. Nervousness makes you bite your lip. You were about to be who-knows-what by Raaz before Chrollo strolled in casually. Speaking of, where's Raaz? You turn around, eyes falling onto Raaz lying on the floor and a hat discarded next to him. A realisation hits you, a hand on your shoulder disturbing your thoughts.

“What do you make of this situation, [Name]? What do you think is going on?”

You carefully eye him. Not sensing a threat, you voice your thoughts. “Raaz… was involved in illegal activities. It's why he disappeared. He was running from someone too and the people he worked for promised that he'd be safe as long as he did what they asked.”

Chrollo hums. “And what did they ask of him?”

“A woman to sell off…?”

“You sound unsure,” he smiles. The hand on your shoulder slips down to your wrist, thumb massaging the skin. “He was involved in human trafficking,” Chrollo reveals. “His fiancé didn't cheat on him. She was trafficked.”

Your eyes widen in surprise, more pieces of the puzzle coming out of nowhere. Nevertheless, the most surprising thing is how Chrollo is here. The hand circled around your wrist is wiggled out of, and the question on your mind is voiced. “How are you here?”

Chrollo tilts his head at you. “I could ask you the same.” When you raise a brow at him, he chuckles. “I'm here for your coworker over there. He told you about someone who was after him. That would be me. However, I'm not after his life.”

You raise your brow higher, prompting Chrollo to continue. “You’re a Nen user, right?” When you ask him what he's talking about, he grows more confused. “You're a Nen user without the awareness of being one? Interesting.”

A hand finds its way to his chin, but Chrollo is lost in thought for only a few moments. “What do you suppose I should do with your coworker? He used to ask you out, correct?”

“Yes? Does that matter?”

“Perhaps,” he smiles.

You gulp, sensing a kind of game he's playing with you. “Don't hurt him. Hand him over to the police. They'll… they'll know what to do with him.” Your request is heard, but Chrollo does not seem to care for it because he clicks his tongue and pushes his hands into the pockets of his black trenchcoat.

Crouching down in front of Raaz, he grabs his hand and you look away. A moment later, you look again and Raaz's palm is flat against the cover of a book in Chrollo's hand. Where the hell that book came from, you have no idea.

“Now that that's done,” he says, now moving to stand, “what to do with you…”

Your blood runs cold at the question. If this situation is anything to go by, Chrollo is not any better than Raaz. In fact, he may be infinitely worse. Regardless, you still do not feel any kind of threat from him, ‘it’ being considerably less suffocating than it was the last time you had met him. Perhaps it is the lingering adrenaline that makes it seem so, but you are not afraid of him at the moment. Thus, being the person that you are, you try at making him spare you.

“Maybe,” you start, “you could, you know, let me go home. I'm not going to say or do anything. I couldn't be bothered about this. I'll take the jenny I was scammed out of and go home. Or you could keep the money if you want! As long as I get to go back home.”

Your negotiation attempt makes Chrollo think. He spends a few moments pondering over the situation, eyes still focused on you. When he parts his lips to speak, you have already prepared yourself to not be let go. “I'll let you go if you agree to meet me tomorrow evening. I suppose I can think over what to do with you in the meantime,” Chrollo says.

The offer makes you take a step back. “Really? You won't scam me like Raaz did?”

“I can make a promise if it eases your mind.”

You bite the inside of your cheek. He's smiling at you teasingly and you in no way are feeling any sense of danger from him. Begrudgingly, you agree. “Fine. Where should I meet you?”

“Give me your number. I'll send you the location.”

You make a face at the request, but surrender when he pesters you with promises of no ill will. An hour later, you are at your apartment, the bag of jenny still with you as you start planning to immediately pay off the loan you took out.

It is 7 pm. You stand somewhere to the side where Chrollo had asked you to come, the man in question nowhere to be seen. He asked you to come around 7 pm and you ended up getting here at 6:36 pm. It’s been 24 minutes since you’ve been standing here in wait.

Though you’ve been waiting alone with your thoughts for so long, the dread starts settling in now. It does not help that you can feel a familiar suffocating aura before you turn to look at its source casually strolling up to you on the busy street. It also does not help that your alarm had been explicitly painted on your face as soon as he was within a 6 feet radius.

“I was expecting you to not come,” he says. “This is certainly a surprise.” Chrollo smiles at you again, the curve of his lips somehow more menacing than the darkness around him. There’s a hat covering his forehead like before, you note. It seems that he certainly wants to hide the tattoo in public.

“I suppose my life is on the line. I would rather not walk around with another target on my back. You don’t seem like someone I would want after me, if Raaz’s condition was anything to go by.”

“An excellent deduction. I’m not someone you would want coming after you, at least not for your life or ability.” You gulp his clarification, proceeding to ask what he concluded for the course of action he must take. Chrollo chooses to let a few moments of silence pass, listening to the bustle on the busy street before replying, “I’ll tell you in due time. First…”

That is how almost half an hour later you are sitting at a restaurant, Chrollo across you, and a menu in front of you. What the hell is going on, you have no idea. You came here to find out if you’re going to be kidnapped or killed. Not to be taken out for dinner. When asked what you’d like to have, you insist that you aren’t hungry, something that Chrollo makes it a point to ignore as he ends up ordering for you. It is even more disorienting when it ends up being something you’ve had multiple times for lunch during the workdays.

“So,” you start, nervousness seemingly dripping from your countenance, “I suppose the final verdict will be given for dessert?” When Chrollogives no answer, you continue. “At least give me a hint. Death or imprisonment?”

He blinks at you. “It’s a surprise.” With that simple statement, he is back to observing you, one hand on the table and tracing the rim of the glass tumblr in front of him. “I hope Isasmo isn’t worried about your circumstances.”

Ah shit, he remembers. “Nope. He doesn’t know.”

“You hid everything? I suppose that’s reasonable. An axolotl wouldn’t be able to help in any way.”

Your eyes widen, heartbeat picking up. “You… how do you know?”

Chrollo’s response is simple, but it isn’t any less chilling. “You talk to him everyday.” He’s still watching you, eyes crinkling at the corners from his amused smile. It’s maddening having to be on the receiving end of this. When you do not grace him with a response, Chrollo does not say anything further as well.

The silence is excruciatingly painful. Chrollo's gaze, however, is more uncomfortable than being called out in class for an answer and not knowing it. Thus, a bright idea pops into your mind, a legendary question that easily makes any conversation better. “So,” you start, bracing yourself, “you like jazz?”

The only reaction you get is speechlessness before Chrollo clears his throat. “Not particularly. You?”

You shake your head. “Not my style.”

Resting your face in your palm, you look away, eyes anywhere but him. The surroundings seem more interesting, the two couples and a few lone people in the background having more to tell than the person you thought was going to end up hurting you. Well, it’s not your fault you got caught in the crossfire of whatever was going on.

“What,” Chrollo says, perking you up, “was your relationship with Raaz?” He’s tracing the rim of the glass again, something that bothers you because of the discrepancy between the action and his expression. Regardless, you answer truthfully. There is no guarantee he already knows and is simply testing your truthfulness.

“He was my coworker. He used to ask me out for lunch numerous times. That’s all.”

“And did you go to lunch with him?”

You shake your head. “No.”

Chrollo simply makes a thinking face before he’s back to normal again, hands sliding underneath the table. Silence once again hangs in the air, the tension thick enough to be cut through with a knife. You are completely unaware of Chrollo’s aims and motives, yet he knows you more than you could have ever thought.

Which reminds you…

“Chrollo.” He perks up at the call of his name instantly. You continue. “Someone was most definitely coming into my apartment during my absence. Was that you?”

The smile he gave you told you everything. A groan comes from your throat, the annoyance over being paranoid and doubting yourself while being sure that something was amiss catching up. “And just why were you breaking and entering?”

He clicks his tongue. “I thought you were working with Raaz.”

“Yet when you didn’t find anything the first time, you still persisted.”

“New evidence can pop up anytime,” he shrugs.

How someone can be so nonchalant over something like this, you have no idea. Sure, you were worried at first but annoyed later on, but still!

“So have you decided what to do with me?”

After a moment of contemplation, you are given a smile and a promise to be informed of your inevitable outcome after dinner. Yet after dinner you are taken to a nearby pier with no sign of the final verdict being given anytime soon. Now settled on a bench next to Chrollo, the little distance between you both resulting from your death glares whenever he slid close to you, you decide to enjoy the cool breeze before asking him again.

And you do. You ask him again what he’s decided to do with you, and all you are given before the knowledge of your inevitable end is a smile and a tilted head. This is when you notice how long Chrollo’s hair is.

“I was considering an… ‘arrangement’,” he says. The words cause your heart to start beating faster. “I wouldn’t harm a hair on your head or your family if you agree.”

He pauses, gauging your reaction, and you start praying he does not turn you into some kind of personal slave. “If,” he continues, making you start fidgeting with your hands out of nervousness, “you agree, you’ll live comfortably without a care in the world.” Another pause and the anticipation grows. The sound of chatter in the background is completely mute and the wind has already stopped blowing.

“What I’m proposing is… well, you allow me to court you. I will take the necessary steps, and you simply have to accept.”

The minute Chrollo utters those words, you freeze. A reply is on the tip of your tongue, and you know it is not a wise idea yet you open your mouth anyway. “If you wanted to ask me out so badly, you could’ve just walked up to me and asked instead of threatening to kill me or my family.”

All you receive in response is a shrug before he formulates a reply. “Would you have said yes if I asked under normal circumstances?”

“No.”

“Then my point has been proven.”

You bite the inside of your cheek. Maybe you should test the waters. “And what if I said no? What then?”

Chrollo leans back on the backrest, now more comfortable before he continues his negotiation with you. “Was Raaz’s predicament not enough of an example?” The wind blows again, and he leans forward, eyes on the water. “Not that I would prefer that, but you understand what I’m referring to.”

And you do understand what he’s referring to. You understand because you saw what became of Raaz. Nevertheless, you need more information to negotiate. Perhaps you might be able to find a way out during his ‘courting’. “Are you a homeowner,” you ask. “And do you live in the house you own?”

Chrollo looks at you from the periphery of his vision, suspicion making him more alert. “No, but I can purchase a home anytime.”

“Alright,” you nod. “And do you have a stable income?”

“As long as the world has treasure and resources, I will.”

“I see.” You pause, thinking of more questions to ask. “What about family? How much family do you have? Any siblings?”

“None,” he replies, “Any other questions?” He’s looking at you directly now. “Or would you like to leave some things to be discovered later on?”

You purse your lips at the comment. So he has money and no family. Sounds mighty suspicious or concerning. Depends how you look at it. You’re looking at it both ways. Silence settles once again as you think over what to say next. Chrollo seems content to leave you with your thoughts, as he doesn’t make any move to break the silence.

But when the silence is broken, it is broken by your capitulation. Chrollo is pleased as expected, yet there is no sign of relief or contentment on your end. Perhaps you could purposely make the relationship fail, and then he might let you go. At the very least, this arrangement is better than having your parents and yourself hunted down by a criminal.

It has been 3 entire weeks since you accepted Chrollo’s conditions. Your job is going fine, boring as usual, and seeing Raaz’s replacement still reminds you of the feeling of cold metal restraining you and keeping you in place.

It’s maddening, having to relive that feeling everyday. However, what’s worse is seeing Chrollo inside your apartment numerous times a week, mostly when you come home from work. He hasn’t made a move to stay the night yet, always excusing himself to ‘work’ or saying something along the lines of you not being ready for that step. It’s not that you’re ungrateful for it, but you don’t like being indirectly told that he pulls the strings and holds the power.

That’s why you’re here. Everything in the past several weeks has led to this and the tension and stress of those weeks has boiled down to reveal someone very tired and just a little spiteful. You knew he was someone to stay away from, and you did stay away from him. Or tried to at least.

“You said you wanted to speak to me about something?”

The devil has voiced your intentions, and you are now obliged to jump straight to the point. Having just got off work, you’re tired and a bit annoyed due to the lack of proper sleep. Despite that, you suck in a breath, continue strolling with him in the park, and give your response.

“We should break up,” you say, a sense of finality in your words that conveys your message that you shan’t be swayed in your decision. “Or stop this, considering this isn’t a normal relationship.” You had refused to hold his hand today, saying you want to keep them shoved into your pockets since they’re cold. They are currently sweating. “I don’t love you, and I don’t feel any bit comfortable. Continuing this would just make the both of us miserable.”

The break up dialogue sounded better in the TV shows you’ve watched, but you let it slide and continue. “Let’s just… see other people, okay? You’re probably just lonely. You said you have no family, and I can’t be the replacement. I don’t feel it working. I don’t feel loved and I sure as hell can’t love back.”

There is silence before Chrollo stops in front of you. He turns, facing you, and you are suddenly reminded of the children playing nearby and your bag being on his shoulders. “Is it because you remember the circumstances? If that’s the case, I can make you forget them.”

“What? No, that’s not what I meant.” You flex your sweating palms inside your pockets, nervousness skyrocketing. “I just… it’s not working Chrollo.” There is desperation in your voice now. “You may find this arrangement fulfilling, but it’s not the case for me. I don’t even know what you do for a living! I don’t know your last name and-” You cut yourself off. You’ve gone off-topic.

“What I’m saying is,” you continue, “I’m certain this isn’t working out. We should go our separate ways.”

Silence once again settles, but it is soon broken by the sound of footsteps. With your head down, you see Chrollo’s shoes when he walks up to you. A hand on your chin raises your head to meet his eyes, and you gulp out of nervousness when his lips part to speak. “The condition was that I would court you and you would accept. There was no room for rejection to begin with.”

He pauses, looking for any reaction on your face. When he fails, he continues. “If you don’t feel loved, you should communicate instead of breaking up. A relationship thrives when both parties communicate, right?”

You brush off his hold, lips twisting in slight disgust. “You aren’t getting my point-”

“Explain it to me then.”

“I just did.”

“Your argument lacks claim and reason. It isn’t even an argument to begin with.”

A frustrated groan and you bring your hands out of your pockets. With a few slaps to your cheeks, you try again. “I don’t like you and I can’t stand you. If this wasn’t something that came as a result of what happened to Raaz and I met you as a stranger and ‘it’ wasn’t as creepy as it was, I might’ve given you the time of day but none of it happened!” Chrollo looks at you like you’ve grown two heads during your outburst, but you do not care. “Chrollo, you creep me out and I don’t like you. I can’t accept you and fall in love with you. What more do you not understand?”

He blinks, once then twice, before grabbing your shoulders. The action makes you freeze, the suffocating feeling from ‘it’ growing and becoming more visible and menacing now prevailing. “Elaborate on ‘it’.” The grip on your shoulders slides down to your arms but you do not feel any less threatened. Maybe that’s why he never stayed the night. You’re too frightened at times.

“There’s… something around you.” Revealing this feels wrong, but you know you have no choice now. “It’s dark, the darkest I’ve seen yet on any person. It’s scary and overwhelming and I don’t like it. Sometimes it’s calm and tolerable and sometimes it’s huge. It doesn’t have anything to do with emotions, or that’s what I think.”

Chrollo hums, letting you go. ‘It’ does not simmer down until a few more minutes pass, and he only speaks after it does. “It’s your Nen ability. You cannot see Nen, but your ability is an exception.”

“What do you mean?”

Chrollo glances around before stepping closer. He points to his right palm with his eyes and in a moment, a book suddenly just appears in his hold. Any questions on your end are silenced with the excuse of being in a public space. The only answer you get that evening is that the book is Chrollo’s ability.

Any further probing is told off immediately. Chrollo does not wish to say anything further, changing the topic promptly and continuing to converse like you did not just attempt to break up with him. The lingering fear from his threats slowly starts seeping in, and you once again grow bewildered over how your circumstances have changed.

You're in the kitchen when Chrollo says you need to pack your bags. He had gotten up from the living room sofa and strolled into the kitchen when he broke the news. Now, as he stands in front of you, your back to the counter, and recounts the essentials you need to pack, you blankly nod. Everything is a blur. You cannot control your actions, only watch them like a third party.

He turns his back to you now, sighing at your silence, but before he can take a step forward, you plunge a knife into his back. The silence is deafening, but when you pull out the blade to see your handiwork, you are greeted with only a handle.

The blade sits in Chrollo's palm, and he's looking directly at you.

All your muscles are frozen, and you cannot discern whether the ringing in your ears is from the adrenaline or from being stared down. Minutes pass this way, and it is only when you throw the handle somewhere to the side that it subsides.

“Pack the essentials,” Chrollo says, his voice cutting through the silence. You’re now noticing the TV is turned off. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

You just noticed Chrollo’s palm is unscathed. How odd.

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