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#man typing these tags in again feels so odd
angelltheninth · 1 year
Note
Avatar boys/men and how they purr? I love your headcanons that they purr.
They should purr a lot. I demand it. I manifest it.
Pairing: Jake Sully, Neteyam, Lo'ak, Tsu'tey, Miles Quaritch, Aonung, Tonowari x Fem!Reader
Tags: fluff, established relationship, size difference, purring, cuddling, tail shenanigans, sneaking around, kissing
A/N: Love all of them so much, let me hear them purring please Cameron.
JAKE SULLY
Jake felt odd purring when he first got his Avatar. It was a sound he was never supposed to make before and now he made it whenever you did something to him that he really liked or appreciated. There's normally really quiet purrs, but when he starts he's like a cat, purring even after you stop touching him, signaling he would like more of what you were doing.
NETEYAM
He isn't afraid to show his liking of you when you cuddle up and lay your head on his chest, with your arms wrapped around him and just sharing the events of the day. He knows how much you love hearing him purr, sometimes even falling asleep to the sound and feeling of his chest rumbling. So there's no reason for him to try and suppress it at all.
LO'AK
Only purrs when it's the two of you alone. And man when he does he is loud. He's almost embarrassed by it but he can hardly help himself. You kissing him, pulling him close by wrapping your arms around him and scratching at the base of his ponytail has him sounding like an engine. Not only that but it gets his tail to wrap around your leg, keeping you against him, secretly not wanting the moment to end.
TSU'TEY
While thought to be the type that doesn't purr at all, much more known for his growls and hisses of warning, he does, on rare occasion purr. They're very short and very low mind you, almost impossible to hear unless you're right next to him, which lucky for you, you are. He lets his guard down the most when you praise him, then you can expect an occasional purr that will turn into a growl as he tries to mask it.
QUARITCH
He'd do just about anything other then allow himself to purr in your presence. He can't let you know he's got a weak spot for you, he knows you'd tease him for it. And tease him you do. From the moment you first heard that deep, rumbly sound as you lay against him in bed you had to figure out new ways to get him to produce is again. Good luck is what he said to you and it's been your mission ever since.
AONUNG
There was no woman who ever got Aonung to purr until you came along. And many tied, he was popular after all. Maybe there was a part of him hoping for you to be the first one to hear it, the first one he could let his guard down around in that way. Even when you're at the bottom of the ocean you can feel him purring hard as he holds you close against him, waiting for you to do the same.
TONOWARI
As much as he is proud and sometimes harsh he does show his softer side to you. Not just when you're alone either. He knows that he's someone others look up to, he wants to show them what true love looks like. What better way then letting them know how comfortable he is around you, his chest rumbling, tail swishing and tapping behind him whenever you kiss him or wrap your hands around his arm while you walk or swim.
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azulsluver · 6 months
Note
haunted house au??!! Is that a new event coming up? Will it relate to the last chapter 👀👀
Originally, bunch of ghouls who haunted this old house/apartment or whatever. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to that au but realizing the Halloween event was perfect for starters. For those who read the event then it would make sense of how the characters came to be in the world MC lives in.
Here are the basics of how they accustomed to their new life.
tw: yandere, ghost!twst, mentions of attempted suicide, obsessive/possessive behavior, mentions of gore-ish fantasies and acts, nudity (non-sexual), they watch you sleep every night.
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Your apartment is small. With them all inside as ghosts they can physically interact with each other so it gets pretty cramped. They’re attached to you, literally, they aren’t able to leave the place they’re in unless you track down Crowley or COUGH COUGH the man who owned the store. Also moving places since it is “haunted house”, will lead to them following along.
-What did he do to deserve this? To be transferred into a world with no magic, and to be a ghost again! He can't physically touch you or use any sort of magic to collar you, it's a nightmare for Riddle when you break some of the (unknown) rules.
-To keep it short, Riddle is a noxious ghost to have around. He practically breaths down your neck for everything you do. You'll mostly see Riddle inside your bedroom, along with many others who are trying to get comfortable. Besides the bedroom, Riddle is one of the many ghosts who will volunteer to go along with you for your errands. That is if people like Ace or Floyd who always wanna tag with you.
-The second person to be leaning over your shoulder is Trey, he’s more than curious of your everyday life. What type of shampoo you wear, lotion or perfume that reminds him of you. He’s not a nauseous but you’d wish he’d leave you alone as well. The veil covering his face burns into your mind of the people he tore so easily, no matter how much he smiles sweetly at you.
-Like clingy dogs, Deuce is nearly always on you. Be it a hug, hand holding, or trapping you in his arms, he can’t stand the thought of separation now that you’re here and alive. Second clingy dog; Cater. He’s so fascinated by everything and you, often times teasing Deuce to not hoard you all for himself. Cater does bother you as much as Deuce does, his odd fixation on you is unknown and sometimes freaks even Ace out. But Cater thinks it’s adorable, funny even.
-Nobody really eats anything. They don’t have the stomach in your world to actually enjoy cuisines like you.
-Ruggie and Ace are always pulling pranks on you, inside your safe haven has been stripped from you completely. Where privacy privileges are nonexistent as the ghosts free roaming in your home. You’re always on edge with these psychopaths who have no problem using your fear to their advantage.
-None aren’t as kind as Silver however, but he doesn’t bring you much comfort. When everyone feels no guilt of killing the innocent, Silver is nothing but human to you as he shared a deep meaningful conversation with you during the late night. Times where you couldn’t sleep and he just so happens to be awake there for you.
-Speaking of clingy, Leona, Rook, Jack, Kalim, Floyd, AND Malleus are there to make your mental sanity DROP. With their weird confessions and obsession of wanting to cut you open and eat you is bad enough. Their touches burn like hell. Oh will somebody solve the problem of these big mean demons….
-The shop is your solution. With the shop owner spewing nonsense into your ear, hope drains when you catch upon the fact ghosts like them will stay until your time has been served.
-Like death themselves, until you can no longer breath will you be free, not unless one of them manages to snag your soul into their realm.
-However, there is a part-time solution if you wish to have peace and quiet. A sacred scroll that mostly works like a phone seeing how it needs to recharge energy to work; as it is unbreakable, it’s used to ward off evil spirits for a whole week before falling into a deep recharge for a month.
-Was it a scam, maybe, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
-Now there are some who aren’t as obnoxious as the rest, that being Vil, Jamil, Trey, Azul, Jade, Lilia, and Silver. With your space being respected if asked, they’re more curious about your world. Not being obnoxious doesn’t mean they aren’t playful, often making comments on how you’re gonna die. What position, what days, places, all the scenarios that feeds into your brain like scratching chalkboards.
-What should be dreaded most is sleeping hours. The touches are faint and almost weak, something that had to do with your current situation and mood. As your drowsy figure stumbles into bed, somehow they too become more docile and quiet. That sounds good but it’s the fact they don’t sleep. Instead now that you’re state is dreaming off they can’t really interact with anything else. Other than watching you in a single room. Their touch is haunting.
-No one can see them, other than you and Grim. With you and your fat little feline friend have to deal with losers like these. Sadly, Grim can’t do much as no physical contact works, much to Idia’s pleasure.
-Absolutely no one likes any of your friends coming over. Surprisingly even Sebek is possessive over you. They’d glare so hard it makes you pass out from fear they might cause actual harm. As they can’t be seen doesn’t mean the force of their wrath will.
-Having friends over is not a good idea. But leaving home doesn’t get rid of their pissy attitudes. As spirits have strong emotions and auras; leaving you feeling sick and lightheaded by their constant bickering.
-Settling for agreements are tough, people like Azul and Vil have no problem with that. In fact they were one of the many to ask before doing things. You recognize Azul as the one who attempted to drown you, as Floyd dose nothing but babble about how much he cried and how he whines it hurts. Azul and Vil someone….respect you in a way? You certainly aren’t seen as equal but from everything that’s happened to you? A pat on the back is all you’re given.
-Get use to nudity. They sure are but they’ll still be dicks about it: Ace, Sebek, Jamil, Leona, Lilia, Floyd.
-More about their physical touches. It can cause a lot of harm to your body. Leaving marks and evidence of their abuse. Depending on your circumstances it can hurt as bad as getting your nails ripped out, they aren’t able to dig their fingers into your flesh to the point of slicing limb to limb.
-That has something to do with life and deaths they aren’t allowed to kill you ad your are bounded to the book. Serving the years of unknown disasters (murder, accidents, etc…but any attempt of self harm brings agony until you are waking up with their faces hovering above you.) or old age
-Rook makes most of your situations worse somehow. He’s always teasing the others for stupid reason. He wants to sit with you when Leona has a arm slumped over your shoulder on the couch. Invading your personal space in from of Malleus when engaging (not so willingly) conversations. Asking stupid questions like; do you prefer waking up to me or blah blah when you awake from your slumber.
-“Neither.”
-They don’t seem very useful other than bothering you whenever you come back home. The problem is how small room there is, and they complain about it a lot as well.
-Luckily for you they aren’t completely useless nor do their powers; it’s still pretty weak and does little. Malleus is ancient, his power weakens him if used, but he’ll use it for your advantage. Good luck.
-That’s the power, yep. Only key holders contain powerful magic as they did back in their world.
-Technically Malleus has the power to bring good and bad luck. Depends on how silly he’s feeling. Cue the blackish grey skies with green thunder causing crashes outside.
-Riddle’s power does more harm to others however, like his usual unique magic, and the reason why you don’t bring anyone over/ victims are forced to experience a choking hazard, one that’s not visible to touch or see.
-Leona can bring you golds and jewels, those are rare times if he ever thinks you deserve it. As I say when you have a whole drawer of them.
-Azul’s power allows him to create illusions, they are weak yet powerful on your still traumatized soul. When angered he’s petty enough to bring the faces or place of the events that happened in the book.
-Kalim is like a drug, his power is anything including smoke. Smoke that can make you sleep, intoxicate you, feel hunger or smell something like childhood.
-Vil is draining and giving. Having the ability to give or take your fatigues, when used more it can cause you to bleed from the nose and lead to hallucinations. It’s best to be on his good side if you ever feel the need for more enthusiasm energy.
-Idia can create skeletons to the living world. They don’t last long but are able to sedate and hold you. He doesn’t use them much as it quickly drains him. (Skeletons won’t be seen by others btw)
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Text
Mite Mischief
《What happens when two entities invite themselves to meet a vigilantes s/o..?》
[1/2]
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Nite-Mite Ver
"AAAAHHH! Help! It's a giant.. Floating.. Tiny Nightwing?"
You slowly fall to your knees after panicking. Seeing the small fella float close to you, you shrink in on yourself shyly. Watching him float around you, analyzing you...
Meeting you was not what Dyxl expected!
You were strange... Unfamiliar, sure. Nite-Mite knew of Richard Graysons' love interests in the past comic issues or alternative storylines.
Maybe you were a new character implemented by the authors?
"SO..."
"S-so...?"
The small creature sat on the desk chair of your room. Eyeing you carefully. While you sat nervously on your bed, half-expecting to wake up. "You must be the newbie! Or, more so.. For this plot. The love-."
You notice there's a knocking on your bedroom door.
"(Y/N)? Everything okay?" Dick calls out, half-way yawning.
You immediately grab a hold of the small individual, holding him close to your chest as you look for a place to hide him.
"Yeah-! Uhm.. I.. Thought I saw a mouse?"
There was silence from the vigilante, considering your words. "That so'?"
"Mhm, yup. Yes..?" You breathe out, getting closer to the door. Thankful it was locked. The vigilante heard your movements and sighed. "Oh.. Good! W-well, I mean- that you're okay! Not the mouse part."
You laugh it off quietly, agreeing as he finally leaves your door and heads back to his room. You sigh in relief as you slowly sink back to the floor.
You lean back against the door, head banging against as you wince!
"Ouch! That's gotta' hurt.." Your eyes widen as you look down at your small visitor who sat on your lap. Chilling out as if he didn't have a single care in the world.
-
"I think you have the wrong person.." You mumble quietly under your breath. Watching Nite-Mite buzz around your room as he grins at you.
"Nope!"
"But! I'm not exactly his.. Ya' know..?" You make a gesture as your face scrunched up. The words too sour on your tounge.
"Type?"
"Yes! That!"
Dxyl laughed it off. "So what? Sure, many.. And I mean.. MANY! People have fallen for the Grayson Charm, but that doesn't mean he always reciprocates those feelings."
"Then what makes you think -" You're interrupted by the fith dimensional imp. "There's just something un-canny about you. Your presence is there, but no romantic tension? I mean, seriously!"
Nite-Mite snaps his fingers as he shows a built-in board of notes, strings, and photos. Pointing at them as he tries to connect it all together.
You slowly smile, easing into this odd situation. Smiling as he holds up a issue of... Nightwing? Watching him ramble and point to the board, it reminded you of Dick. Who probably fell back asleep, hopefully.
Poof~!
Blinking, your clothes felt heavier as you look down. Dressed in old fashionable garb?! What!
"Though I'm sure whoever Dick chooses is up to him, it's fun to see other routes!"
Nite-Mite had become... Nightwing?
Instead of the usual skin-tight latex suit, the outfit showcased half of his bare-chest as the blue pants and brown boots reminded you of...
"P-pirate?" You laugh a bit, awkward and frazzled by these turn of events.
"Well.. -" Interrupted once again, the door rips open as a handsome young man storms in, his small puppy barked excitedly as she followed close behind. Yet stopped beside Dicks legs, blinking in confusion.
You immediately squeak in suprise. Your face a warm shade of color, too embarrassed to deal with all of these shenanigans so early!
-
[Ta-Da! Hey! Who wants an April fools event?? Also! Thank you for reading, I love Nite-Mite and the art for pirate nightwing. I need more content for both of them.. Please! Tag me if you do! Hopefully I can write a Bat-Mite Ver next! Comments and hearts are appreciated!]
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vamph00n · 15 days
Note
idea, but idk if you take ideas
reader gets turned on by hoon’s vampire like features, and convinces him to rp as one while they’re fucking
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mdni
tags: femreader, vampire kink, mentions of the twilight movies, hoon is jealous obv.
*not proofread will do later
wc: 1,2k
smut tags under the cut
i added my own lil spin on it annonie~ mainly cause i’ve been rewatching twilight rndjsoskdndknsla
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smut tags: biting kink, implications of sex, dirty talk, chest groping, etc
he doesn’t know how many times you watched those stupid twilight movies. all he knew is that you fawned over some guy in those films with the most victorian name ever. he wasn’t your type and sunghoon was sure of it, why would he be your type when he; your boyfriend, was right there? nah, he didn’t like that you thought of any other men than him. even if he was fictional.
you had all the books too, along with whatever smutty literature he saw on that well dusted shelf in your house. you lived in those dirty fantasies when he was right there. the way you’d kick your feet and giggle while watching those movies. it really pissed him off, it was all imaginary, pretend. it was stupid for him to be so jealous, but god there was one thing he hated the most about your little hyper fixation…
well, the thing is sunghoon doesn’t want to come off as a pissy bitch. he’ll happily go along with whatever endeavors you put him through. it’s just when you make him watch the same few movies with you again, he felt his ego shrink every passing second spent staring at robert pattinson play a vampire. especially when your comments consisted of comparisons between him and edward whats-his-face’s character.
“look at him hoon, he’s like all sparkly in the sun, n’ he has like this mad gaze.” Your eyes pan over to your boyfriend, watching him stare at the tv blankly, in a boredom induced daze.
he’s tuning out what you’re saying, because well, it makes him feel somewhat inadequate. it’s so rare for him to feel this way. he’s so self assured, maybe even a little egotistical sometimes. how can he not be? you yourself loaded up his little brain with compliments and ideas. saying how he’s the man of your fucking dreams, or the way your body contorted in different ways, becoming helpless when he did so little as touching you. hell yeah, you made him feel so damn special.
with his brows furrowed at the screen, he sees your odd stare from the corner of his eye. why do anything to reassure you of what you were thinking in that moment? he knows you, he can practically read your mind. before diverting your attention back to the screen a scoff leaves your mouth. call him petty or whatever you want, he just wants to get through watching this god forsaken movie for the millionth time without his brain frying.
sunghoon is so ridged. his arms are crossed, and he’s like, all stiff. whatever, you can deal with it. although it’s frustrating that he’s so oblivious.
you find yourself scooting closer, leaning and commenting on the movie. with each sentence you say, you can feel his dreary attitude loom over. it’s given, you’ve forced him to death watch your silly little movies to the point where he himself can recite each word.
“he’s like, —i don’t know. like can you imagine? getting puncture wounds, and hickeys at the same—“
that’s where sunghoon draws the line.
“can you shut up?”
dang. he was livid. you have right to your own thoughts but to think like that? when he’s right there? when he can well rip off your panties and fuck you the way this guy can’t because it’s all speculative? all you had to do was let him, just ask and he’ll deliver. you know it.
but then again, you boyfriend is as dense as concrete and dumb as bricks sometimes. guess you’d have to give him a nudge, a hint too probably.
“i mean, can you imagine what’s it like to be a vampire?”
you’ve practically told him what you wanted, and he still has that red cloudy look of jealousy with somewhat of a frown on his face and his overgrown bangs shading his eyes. if he wasn’t upset, you’d tell him how cute he looks right now. how dumb he is, is also what you’d tell him. then again you weren’t exactly being straightforward.
with your question slipping in one ear and out the other, he just tunes you out. yeah it’s pathetic he feels so strongly about something so meaningless, could he help it though? he was insane about you.
your eyes darken as you grab the remote, and thank goodness you turned it off. sunghoon finds you sliding on of your legs over his thighs as you take a seat. you gaze into his eyes, he looks annoyed. he’s suppressing the urge to just fuck the stupid crush you had on that twilight vampire out of you. it makes you laugh at how blind he is. nevermind, you probably had to spell it out for him.
“you can do that. you can bite me here, and here-“
you drag your two fingers indicating where he could, and his breath hitches. it’s like all his senses are tingly, and piercing. his ears are ringing, with the rush of adrenaline and the newfound excitement he had. just hearing you describe what you wanted him to do.
you saw his jaw hang slack, as you merely told him what you wanted. tracing your fingers down your abdomen and to your thighs, you tap on the fleshy inner part.
“you can bite here too.”
his hands grab your hips, he gets it now. he slides a hand up your shirt holding your chest. your mind drives him crazy. his touch sends shivers down your spine.
“here too?” he asks asks, so politely.
it makes you heat up, and become more wet than your imagination allowed. when you thought of him like the cold blooded undead he resembled so much, it made you infatuated with the idea of it. the idea of him. how could he not see it? when you drew comparisons that surely pointed towards his own features that you loved so much.
his pretty skin glows in the dim light of your living room unlike of that portrayed in the movie. he’s real, and right here.
“didn’t you ever think, perhaps..” you say it so sweetly as you feel his hand roam around your body.
before you can finish your sentence, your breath is cut short. your back is now against the cushions of the couch, and his arms trap you beneath him. sunghoon wonders how he got so lucky, to have someone like you to show him all the ways he can make you wet. your so sick and twisted, not for your little fantasy you wanted him to indulge in, but the fact you didn’t just tell him straight up. he ought to punish you.
he’ll let it slide though. partially because he feels his cock twitch restrained by his pants, and because he’s so willing to do what you ask of him. he knows this is the just the beginning, and honestly he’ll have fun woh it. so with his lips ghosting your neck, and his hot breath up against your ear he asks you a question.
“tell me what else you want me to do as your vampire. sweetheart”
copyright @vamph00n 2024
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d6volution · 6 months
Note
im a need a cain x reader smut, but like the reader can get in heat since there a type of animal i dont know what animal you can choose one. so like the reader chooses caine to release their thung idk i was thinkinh about it and now im trhiving to jhave it written so ofcourse i came to my fav writers inbox
i get it! im not the best at writing heat fics (i dont think??) but i tried 🤧
Caine/Cat Hybrid!Reader
(afab parts)
tags: bondage, reader in heat, man handling
minors dni | nsfw below the cut.
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It had been years in this digital world, and with every new person to enter Jax was  always the only anthropomorphic animal to be in the circus. Until you came along, cat like ears sprouted from your head and tail protruding from where your tailbone should be.
Of course the other members either reacted in awe, or just didn't really care. Or some in between like Jax who loved pulling at your ears and tail as it usually made you squeak like a toy.
Even Caine wasnt immune to your cuteness it seemed, he'd make the odd comment about your apperance here and there but it was always positive. Maybe that's why you chose him..? Or maybe it was because he was the showrunner, he had power and could protect you and ... your young. That's usually the things mates would looked for..? Right? Damn it you didn't know. You were human before all this was completely new to you. But your body didn't care, this.. heat cycle hit you like a sack of bricks. You'd been holed up in your room for a few days now, ignoring the knocks at your door.
Lest you jump on the person on the other side of the door and beg them to fuck you until you can't remember your name.
You thought maybe after taking care of yourself this .. feeling would go away but no, you came on your fingers several times but it wasn't close to being enough. It was like you were losing yourself to this feeling, all you could think about was being filled..
In the haze of your thoughts Caine came to mind again, you knew his opinion on things like this but you had to try. Something.. anything, and pray that in the process to getting to his room you wouldn't run into anyone else..
A few moments later when you got the resolve to finally peek out of your room you moved as quickly as you could in your state, luckily remembering the path to the ringmasters quarters. A big grand red door was at the end of the hall and you tugged at the door but it didn't budge.
"C.. Caine.. ? You there..?" Your voice sounded pathetic, dripping with need. A soft mewl even escaped your lips in frustration.
It felt like a century until you felt eyes on you, but.. from behind you. It was Caine just floating there, in the same confusion as yourself. "C.. Caine? Why aren't you in your room?" Your senses were going ballistic now, it cried for you to present yourself to him. Beg for him to take you right here and now.
"Simple, my dear! I don't sleep! This room is merely a prop of sorts!" He retorted, "Are.. you alright, y/n? You're looking a little, under the weather." He seemed to actually be concerned, and you started squirming.
"N.. No I need.." Your ears flattened out of embarrassment, tail wrapping around your leg for self comfort. "need.." Your voice trailed off, "... s'your fault Caine.. you made me like this..!"
"Now, now, calm down y/n I don't necessarily get to choose your new bodies—!" You cut him off by pawing at his leg, clinging to it to keep him in place. He tried to keep his balance.
"Please Caine.. need you.." You nuzzled at his leg, then moved up his thigh trying to nuzzle at his crotch as the smell of him was inviting you. "T.. This is hardly appropriate, let's *ahem* get you inside." Caine looked both ways to assure no one had saw you two. He then scooped you up by the waist, holding you like luggage and carrying you inside his room.
As soon as you two were in the room he dropped you onto the bed unceremoniously.
Caine tugged at his tie and allowed it to loosen up, "Well, now. What to do with you." He snapped his fingers and you were bound to the bed in a very lewd manner, knees bent and pressed at your chest being held by red ropes that seemed to match his suit. "C... Caine wha.." You whimpered, tears forming in your eyes as he seemed to just be toying with you.
"Tsk, tsk this won't do at all! You're making a mess of your clothes!" And now they were gone too, you instinctively pulled your binds helplessly. "Please.." You whined, not knowing exactly what you were pleading for.
"Yes, yes.. I think I know what's happening to you, now be patient dear! I'm breaking many a rule for you, y'know!" He said, now appearing suddenly in between your legs , two gloved fingers delving into your cunt suddenly. "Hhck..!" Your ears pointed straight up out of shock and your body moved against the binds again, "Come now you can handle this!"
"N.. Not that.. need.. you inside.. please.." Your cunt was senstive sure, but it was more frustrating that he was using his fingers, "Please Caine.. breed me.." Your words made him swallow and he had to compose himself. He was only doing this because he had to, he couldn't have to wandering off and trying to pounce on anyone else!
He pulled himself from his pants, he didn't realize until now that his cock was straining against them a few moments ago. You desperately wanted to present yourself to him, spread your cunt and open your legs but he had you tied up like some kind of animal.
His tip nudged at your cunt, the slick causing him to slip past your hole a few times. You mewled and bucked your hips a little as if to encourage him.
Another thrust and he buried himself completely inside of you, your cunt swallowing him up immediately, it was like he was made for you. You were made for each other. "Ngh.. there we go, stubborn little thing.." He said with a grunt, hovering over your body. 
He was finally inside of you and your body begged you not to let him go, not until he came inside of you at least three or four times at least! "Caine.. more .. mn.." He felt like you were calm enough to get rid of the bindings so he did, snaping his fingers and they seemed to fade away into the air.
Your legs immediately wrapped around him, tugging him closer.
"How impatient, very well then. Hold tight my dear," He said, hands planted on the sides of your head as he started to move his hips, rocking into your cunt. Your eyes fluttered shut, ear twitching a little as a soft purring sound rumbled in your chest.
His thrusts picked up speed quickly, you were responding so well to them that he was slowly beginning to loose himself as well. Family friendly? Behind the doors of his room that would have to disappear from now on. "Nh.. thats right.. to keep everyone.. in check!" His words matched the rhythm of his heavy thrusts.
"Hha.. Caine, caine..!" You cried out, legs tugging him closer, "N.. Need your cum.. make me pregnant p-please..!"
His hips stuttered a little, your words seemed to be getting to him whether he liked it or not. He shoved two fingers into your mouth to keep you quiet so he could focus. How distracting your dirty mouth could be was impressive. Your moans and cries were muffled, saliva dirtying his gloves.
Caine put his full weight behind his thrusts , your smaller form quite literally being fucked into the mattress. "Nnhg, almost there, y/n..! Be a dear and a cum with me." He said in a mocking voice, his hand removing itself from your mouth and instead pushing your lower stomach. Adding more pressure to your already stuffed cunt.
"Gh..hhaa.. Caine, cu.. cumming.. cumming..!" You yelped and clung to him, legs keeping him locked in so he couldn't pull away from you. He'd be force to fill your cunt to the brim. "Inside.. fill me up..!" Your tongue lulled past your lips , cunt clamping down on his dick as you hand a nearly blinding orgasm.
Caine couldn't help it, your cunt was practically milking him and he spilled into your cunt without a second thought. Though he didn't seem at all out of breath.
"Well that sure was.. something.." Caine noted, his dick still twitching inside of you as the last few spurts of cum filled your stuffed cunt.
You panted, looking up at him with half lidded eyes, a lewd smile painting your lips. "Caine.. m'not done.. need more.."
Did he really think one round would be enough?
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temis-de-leon · 2 months
Text
Replaced MC AU/AU - Part 2
Characters: demon brothers, fem!MC and flirty! fem! NES (MC x NES)
How’s it gonna be , Intro – Part 0 , Part 1 , Part 3
Masterlist
CW: rejection, abandonment, women flirt hard from my experience but this is mild i think, suggestive but also mild, lession 16 mentioned, MC is not stupid and deserves to vent, no comfort in this one folks, my favouritism is showing
A/N: Jesus Christ guys. On another note, for those who couldn't be tagged: please check if you can fix the problem! I don't mind sending you a private message, but it's easier this way :)
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It was a surprise for Lucifer, somehow, seeing someone like MC so content with someone like NES. When one smiled, the other frowned; sweet and spicy; beauty and brawn. The brothers had naively thought having MC share her room was bound to cause problems, but how wrong they were.
Four months into the second year of the program, the two girls had already merged their closets, creating a unique style with their combined clothing. They’d also decided to use one of the beds for storage, sleeping together in the other. The first time that happened and all of them had to face Belphie’s resentment, Lucifer had feared for NES’s safety and even considered confining his brother in the attic again. Thankfully, and surprisingly, the younger demon had opted for the pettier option: ignoring MC altogether and treating NES like a rotten piece of furniture.
He was probably hoping for MC to feel guilty enough to completely ignore NES and come crawling back to him, but, as different as they were, both humans quickly became two peas in a pod, always walking hand in hand, shoulders brushing while exchanging secrets that no one else was allowed to hear.
Overall, the whole situation had become a recurrent topic in the brothers’ groupchat and, while Lucifer wanted to remain as nonchalant as ever, it was impossible to hide his opinions on the matter.
He wasn’t happy.
None of them were.
.
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Mammon wanted her gone.
He wanted her gone now.
Who did she think she was, stealing MC’s attention from him and acting like she didn’t know what she was doing? Sitting next to her at every meal, massaging her scalp during movie nights and waking her up at odd hours because she liked ‘those late night talks’ in the kitchen?
What type of talks were ‘those’? MC could have them with Mammon; she didn’t need NES! She had him, after all. Her first man!
“Well, I’m her first woman then” answered NES the time they argued over who was gonna sit next to MC in class.
Who did she think she was?!
“Are you okay, Mammon? You seem upset”
And there she came, the bane of his existence, already dressed up in her RAD uniform and dragging MC by the hand. Both of them looked tired and Mammon realized with primal horror that no noise had come from the kitchen that night.
“Why are you so tired?! MC!”
Her only answer was a yawn, so NES gave herself the right to talk on her behalf; but not before handing MC some food for breakfast, of course. 
Although half of it was burnt, Mammon still hoped MC would like it.
“Oh, we were up for a long while, barely slept at all. Right, MC?”
She nodded, happy under the pampering, but her eyelids were half closed and she didn’t seem to notice she was eating her favorites. 
Mammon stared at them in shock and distraught before sparing a glance at Lucifer, who was too occupied checking his DDD and drinking his coffee to pay attention. Had he really looked at him, though, he would’ve seen a twitch in his brother’s forehead and a stillness in his eyes; he wasn’t reading at all.
“Then maybe MC and I could take a nap after class”
They all looked at Belphie, who had started to show an unusual interest in going to RAD those last few days. He was smiling like a kid in a candy store, already gawking at the idea of spending quality time with MC, or, at least, what he considered quality time.
His expression dropped, however, when MC shared a complicit glance with NES and smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry Belphie, but I already made plans with NES”
“We’re going to Majolish” added said girl with a sly glint in her eyes “MC saw some clothes and wanted an outside opinion” 
Belphie looked downright offended, but not as much as Mammon felt. What did she mean they were going to Majolish because MC wanted an outside opinion? He was there! He was literally a model!! Hell, even Asmo would've been a better choice!
“I’ll go with you!” he announced, not asking for permission “I’m a professional, you know? You should be thankful I’m even considering wasting my time on some dumb humans!”
The youngest demon rolled his eyes, but NES’s expression briefly flickered and that was almost enough for Mammon. Beside him, at the head of the table, Lucifer sighed. 
“Do what you want, but if you end up third wheeling, that’s on you”
MC laughed, neither confirming nor denying anything. NES watched over the brim of her mug, challenging them with unsaid words.
Mammon wanted her gone.
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Famine woke Beel up, like always, so he went to the kitchen, like always. It’d been MC’s turn to cook that night and he was pretty sure she’d stored some leftovers in the fridge for him. It was nice, being remembered even when she was too occupied with NES to pay them attention anymore. It brought some comfort, as well as a small smile to his face.
But much to his chagrin, the kitchen light was already turned on when he arrived, and his mood soured when he saw what was happening. Beel’s heart dropped and plummeted through his guts, deepening the black hole in his stomach. MC was leaning against the counter, creating some concoction in a bowl, while NES hugged her from behind. Both of them waved at him when he made his presence known, getting no greetings in return.
“Hi, Beel! I left food in the fridge for you!”
He wanted to be happy and thank her for the trouble, but he wasn’t able to think properly, not when NES’s face was snuggled into the fluff of MC’s hoodie, hands sneaking around her waist and disappearing under the material.
What was she doing? Should he stop her? But MC looked so cozy… not uncomfortable at all. His throat closed at the same time his stomach roared loud enough to fill the silence in the kitchen.
“Beel, are you okay?” 
“You seem upset”
MC looked worried, but NES’s words crammed his mind. She’d said the same thing to Mammon that morning wearing the same self-satisfied expression.
Ignoring his needs and his emptiness, Beel turned around and left them alone.
.
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MC was seething. Her thoughts were a mere blurr and a sting in her throat left her unable to speak her mind the way she wanted to do it.
Was he serious?
Were they serious? Those self-righteous hypocrites! 
“We think it’s for the best, MC” spoke Lucifer like she was a child too slow to get his point.
“She’s playing with you, honey! She’ll hurt you!”
The gall. The audacity. The… ugh!
She stared at Asmo baring her teeth, never a threat to them, but a gesture so uncharacteristic of her that it was impossible not to treat the situation seriously. The common room was silent, yet MC was sure every single one of them was able to hear the violent thumping of her heart.
“We’re doing this for you”
“FOR ME?” she screeched at Belphie.
A scream would’ve made her feel better, but she guessed the high pitch got her point across good enough, her anger reaching every corner of the room. The brothers stayed silent, eyes wide open and muscles tense, waiting for her next movement. Not even when she got up from her seat and paced they spoke.
“YOU DO THIS FOR YOU!” 
“MC, lower your voice”
“NO”
Lucifer glared at her, the red in his eyes glowing dangerously. MC wanted to keep going just to spite him, begrudgingly giving up in the end. She was close to crying out of frustration and her throat hurted, so screaming would only hurt her more.
“You were the ones that insisted so much on having another human exchange student” she reminded them, stopping in front of the fireplace and basking in the warmth for some comfort, pointing to the eldest brother with clenched jaws “You said it would improve the program!”
“She’s holding you back, distracting you and using you for her own entertainment!” intervened Satan before Lucifer could speak.
“Oh, because you were so altruistic last year! Treating me with all the respect I deserved! Totally not threatening me all the time or even killing me for selfish reasons! You’d never do that to me, would you?!”
They lowered their gaze, suddenly very embarrassed, and MC felt a part of her healing. Then she saw Levi’s glassy eyes and Beel’s defeated expression. Neither Mammon nor Belphie weren’t even looking at her anymore. And she could live without Belphie’s half-hearted apologies, but not without the brothers under a pact.
“I believe this is enough, MC. Calm down and we’ll talk again in the morning”
Lucifer got up, his voice completely neutral, but his eyes pleading and desperate. He started to close the distance, but she got away, walking towards the door without breaking eye contact.
“You were so on board with this, Lucifer!”
The tears swelled in her eyes. Hot tears breaking her a little more, fuelling her anger. 
“Do you really think I’m not aware of what she’s doing? We share a room, you morons! I've lived with her more than I’ve ever lived with you!” 
There was silence again, four of them looking at her with visible pain and the other three leaning against each other.
Fuck it then.
“It’s all good and awesome when you’re the ones in favor, but when I’m the one having fun, suddenly NES has to go away?! Do you hear yourselves?! I’m so done with you thinking I owe you anything at all, let alone my fucking soul! Half of our pacts weren't even born out of friendship, so hear me out and hear me well! Get your heads out of your asses and for once in your life: LEAVE ME ALONE!”
MC walked away, closing the door at full force and leaving them behind in more ways than one.
How could they ever get over this?
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Taglist: : @stfuchaase @k1-an @meggs-wonderland @kkeromenoo @va109 @marvelous-maniac @cruzerforce4256 @blarsh @marathedemonoverlord @junni-berry @arylleb @b-a-m-2006 @jonielunar @piercedddriver @cosmidaydreaming
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mylovelies-docx · 10 months
Text
Sorry, I Love You - Part 2
Womp, womp. I apologize in advance for this part :)
Plot: You and Bucky have a good thing going - best of friends that also have more than a little chemistry between the sheets. Everything is fine until you develop feelings for the man who doesn't want a relationship. What will happen when Bucky finds out?
C/W: ANGST x3, unrequited feelings, arguments
Word Count: 1,550
Tag List: NOW CLOSED! If you'd like to keep up with this story, please follow my blog and turn on notifications! ❤️ you :)
Part 1
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Over the next couple of days, you’re kind of glad that Bucky doesn’t reach out. You see each other in the common areas, but he doesn’t offer to hang out or train together, and neither do you. But you’re the type of person that can’t hang on to negative feelings for too long, so after about a week, you’re ready to be ‘just friends’ with Bucky again.
You start by sending him a text, totally innocuous and about something random you’d seen, but his reply is short. A little odd from him, but hey, he’s probably busy at the moment and still feeling a little weird. You’ll try your hardest to get you both past this awkward phase in your friendship.
You glance up from the reports you’d been writing all morning. It’s close to lunch now, so you head to the kitchen to find something appetizing. You hope the chef has been in…
Walking into the kitchen, you see Bucky and Steve sitting at the island. There’s a large spread of food between the two of them, but you know it will be tucked away to their stomachs in no time.
“Hey, boys!” You greet cheerfully.
Steve turns around and gives you a broad smile and a “hey” back. Bucky just slightly nods his head and throws you more of a grimace than a smile.
You squint your eyes at Bucky’s ‘greeting’, but continue on into the room to start preparing a sandwich since there’s no stealing what’s left on the island. You and Steve start up a conversation which Bucky barely participates in except when one of you asks him a direct question. You can see Steve throwing Bucky exasperated looks when he thinks you won’t notice.
You throw everything into the sandwich press to heat up and turn around to lean against the counter and peer over at the boys. Bucky sits at the island, just spooning food into his mouth and ignoring you and Steve to the best of his ability.
“What’s up with you?” you finally question him.
Steve shoots a panicked look between you and Bucky, which lets you know that Bucky must have told him about what you’d said. Which, to be expected, you suppose. They’re best friends. And you’d already told Nat and Wanda about everything, anyway.
“Me?” he questions. Bucky looks at you kind of puzzled before going on, “I’m just… trying to help?” He says this more as if questioning the validity of his plan than giving an actual answer.
You’re quick to laugh it off. “Jesus, Buck. I agreed we should stop fucking, not stop being friends.”
Steve’s eyes widen further and Bucky chokes. He has to clear his throat before he can respond properly. “I guess that’s not a secret anymore, huh?”
You frown at him. “I figured you’d already told him everything – Nat and Wanda know.” You throw an apologetic look Steve’s way. “I’m sorry, Stevie. Didn’t mean to upset your delicate constitution.”
“Har har,” he quips. You smile brightly back at him.
Bucky sighs deeply. “I just don’t think –”
“Stop,” you interrupt him. “I told you to forget about it.”
“Well, it’s kind of fucking hard to forget,” Bucky gripes, stabbing his spoon down into his bowl.
You freeze for a moment before saying anything. You blink several times and take in a deep, calming breath.
“Hey Steve, could you give us a second?” you ask quietly. The man needs no further prompting; he’s immediately out of his seat and through the doors with a supportive little grin thrown your way before he’s out of sight.
You’re still leaning back against the counter, but now you pull your arms up to cross over your chest. You hate that all your hard work over the last few days might derail so quickly. You were already vulnerable once, and it didn’t turn out how you wanted; you’re not sure if you can do it again.
“I said I’d handle it, Buck.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I can’t.” Bucky looks up at you, his jaw tight. 
His anger is so far from expected, you’re unsure what’s going on. You pitch your head forward, disbelieving.
“What?”
“Maybe I can’t handle it; did you think of that?” he repeats. His chair scrapes across the floor as he stands up, fists gripping the edge of the counter. “Did you think that maybe I’d be uncomfortable knowing how you feel about me?”
“Buck–” you try.
“No, Y/N.” There’s reproach in his voice. He takes a visible calming breath and lets up on the countertop before it begins to crumble.
As much as it hurt the other night, this is a million times worse. This isn’t embarrassment about being rejected anymore – you can live with that – but his genuine anger over your confession guts you. You inhale a shaky breath and prepare yourself.
“I told you time and again that I don’t want a relationship. We agreed before we started anything that there wouldn’t be feelings. You promised me. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie,” you try to defend. “I honestly didn’t feel like this in the beginning.”
“But when you started to get feelings for me, you didn’t try to stop us! You let it go on, thinking that I’d change my mind!”
“Now wait a minute –”
“I’m just…” he takes a deep breath in and out. Again. His shoulders drop and he shakes his head, the fight leaving him. “I’m trying my best not to be angry. But I am.” 
Bucky looks up from where he’s been staring at the floor, trying to avoid looking at you more than necessary. You can only imagine the look of hurt on your face as Bucky fights back a defeated sigh.
“Look. I know it’s not your fault – I never should have suggested it in the first place.”
“Bucky–”
“And I wish I hadn’t.”
You suck in a tight breath between your teeth. Bucky wishes he’d never suggested it? That means he wishes he’d never slept with you at all, right? Regrets spending all the time with you that lead to being as good of friends as you are? Or were, you guess.
He regrets it? Regrets you? 
Goddamn. There’s a pain so deep inside your chest, you can’t distinguish the feeling from having a bullet lodged in your lungs. You rub deep and hard with your knuckles against your sternum, drawing the pain outwards.
There’s silence in the room.
“I see,” you whisper shakily. You suck your bottom lip roughly between your teeth and nod your head slowly, looking away from Bucky. 
You’re unsure of where to go from here. Obviously you and Bucky can’t go back to the way things were – you can’t just pretend like you hadn’t taken a sledgehammer to your friendship that night after the movies.
You catch sight of Bucky from your peripheral vision. He takes his rough hands and runs them through his long brown hair, gathering it into a bun at the nape of his neck. You know it’s a nervous habit more than functional, given the situation you’ve found yourselves in. 
It guts you to realize that your admission has caused him this much stress, caused him so many negative emotions. He’s worked so hard after all the shit Hydra put him through. Worked to make himself into a normal man with boundaries he wanted and needed respected.
And you hadn’t done that. You’d trampled all over the lines he’d drawn in the sand, barrelled right up and over to the other side.
“I didn’t mean –”
“Don’t you dare apologize, James Barnes,” you command. He looks slightly surprised by the hardness of your tone and the sound of his real name in your mouth. You hadn’t called him by his given name since becoming friends. “I’m the only one responsible for my own decisions, no matter who brought up the idea. I agreed. I caught feelings. I ruined it. Not you.” Your voice softens to make sure that Bucky knows you’re not angry with him. Not over something you did. “Don’t apologize for my mistakes.”
You step away from the countertop, moving so that you’re on the same side of the island as Bucky. Face-to-face now, but with a meter of space separating you, you look directly into Bucky’s eyes.
“I’m sorry.” 
It takes him a moment to stop reeling from the sheer intensity of your apology. The sincerity behind those last two words blowing through him but also rooting him to the spot. Bucky swallows thickly and nods once, accepting your apology.
You blow out a breath and crook him a sad smile. You place one foot back, taking half of a small step away from Bucky, giving him space. Giving you space.
“I’ll go see if there are any extended missions. Maybe go help out with some of the conflicts going on.”
Giving him a lot of space.
“Doll.”
“It’s alright,” you say, still with the sad smile. “Maybe Nat can go on that mission with you, huh? You’ll have more fun together, anyway.”
“We would have had fun together,” he said. 
The ‘if you hadn’t messed it up’ left unspoken, you thought sadly. You flatten your lips and put on a thoughtful expression, nodding your head after a moment. 
“Yeah, we would have.”
Part 3
@jackiehollanderr @aboobie (will not tag) @rabbitrabbit12321 @12345sebby @blackwood-bodecker-housewife @lauraashley93 @themorningsunshine @happinessinthebeing @nash-dara @calwitch @stany0url0calwh0res111 @pono-pura-vida @learisa @introverbatim @kentokaze
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thesharktanksdriver · 10 months
Text
Determination (Platonic)
Part 1 Part 3 Shanks
Tagged: @peachsuka28 @emptynessinmyworld @badluckinfrench @j-s-l-m @tigerfang-rage @madokamagicaa @rymtea
Please give some suggestions of others y/n has met on their journey in the comments. I wanna see who else people want them to befriend/meet
I plan to later on do an entire thing for marineford. Be prepared for that and more stuff about y/n’s devil fruit
Once again this is non linear. Partially cause it’s easier that way and cause y/n has lived so long that their memories are kinda jumbled/they don’t really perceive time anymore (I kinda focused on that in this)
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At some point in your eternal journey you began to write down your adventures into a small notebook
It’s leather bound with bright lettering on the front
A custom clasp in the shape of a star to keep the soft yellowed pages tight together
Sometimes you read it when out at sea with nothing to do but letting the wind guide your way to place of new and old
Before tucking it away into the pocket of Roger’s coat
Old ink of a dark navy blue stands out on the paper
Stark against the light yellow
With your feet dipped in the salty water of the place you called paradise you pull it out once more
Content in relaying over memories and people you’d once met
Let’s see who we have in store for today
Sengoku
Waking up on Marineford of all places after dying was certainly not on your list of islands you wanted to visit
An island dyed white and blue with golden accents sprinkled throughout the crowds of marines that walk through the area
The headquarters sat at the very top, loud and proud on the crescent moon shaped island
Honestly you very much contemplated just jumping into the sea to end up somewhere else
But as you stood at the very edge of the bay , leaning a bit forwards as the sapphire blue waves crash against the old stone walls
A hand grasps your shoulder
Turning around your met with the sight of a marine you had vaguely remembered Garp talking about
Sengoku, the Buddha
Your eyes trail upwards past his face to the pelican sat atop his marine hat
It stares down at you as does the marine who looks at you with concern
Especially since he sees no fear in your eyes along with contemplation
You had seriously thought about jumping into the sea all Willy nilly
It wasn’t even accounting the fact you may have a devil fruit
He quite literally drags you into the base, you don’t really complain since he gives you crackers
Similar ones to Garps favourites though a different brand
He sits you down, trying to get as much information out of you
It…isn’t successful
Your just chilling in his office, eating, looking around and giving the vaguest answers ever
Like he asks you about the island your from and you respond “a summer island a long ways from here. A place where fruit is plentiful and the corrupt hands of society do not touch” or some shit
He’s too stressed to deal with that type of shit so he doesn’t push further
Garp has been in his ass as of late along with the fact he’s worried about Rosinante
So his solution is to for now allow you to work as a delivery person for letters and documents
You actually quite enjoy it
Meanwhile this poor man is stressing over the fact that there is seemingly zero leads to any parents?
He’s just gotten somewhat unclear reports about a child on a raft drifting from island to island
Someone who reportedly has a track record of befriending the most unlikely of people
His migraines are getting worse at this point
You come to like the somewhat stern marine, oftentimes talking to him once done delivering letters and such around base
Most conversations are on ethics, morality and life
It’s odd but the way you talk about it seems as if your a weathered person who had seen more than the eye can see
Something in him leads him to feel as if your older than you looked
And then you somehow end up doing the most child-like thing and that feeling momentarily goes away
It’s weird and conflicting
But something he comes to get used to
In a lot of ways you remind him of his adoptive son
You have his smile and kindness that you extend to others even if they had sneered at you in the halls
The energy to complete a job no matter how big or small
A pension for somehow ending up in some sort of danger, though now it’s not from having two left feet
It’s from a lack of spacial awareness and not having any care for your safety
You’d think after such a long time seemingly on your own there would be some sort of fight or flight instinct
But from what he could observe there was absolutely none
It leaves him scared
He grew to care for you
See you as someone he’d take in within a heartbeat
But despite that and the offers he gives you of a home with fresh meals and someone who would care for you
You decline every time
Your tired from going to place to place yet you decline all offers of a stable life
A child should want some sort of stability, yet you throw that to the wind
He supposes that your burning determination and self sufficiency are good factors but a child your age shouldn’t have that
You should be carefree and going on a whim
But instead as he looks in your eyes he sees the tired visage of someone who had long lost their innocence to the world despite the laid back nature you show
It’s sad, it leaves him sometimes awake wondering what exactly you had been through
Maybe it was marines, it would explain your apprehension at first around him
Hair standing on end despite the lax facade you put up
Eyes looking at him with caution like a frightened and cornered cat. Calculating how to best go about the situation
The way in which you discuss with him about justice and what it meant
He digs more and finds scraps of nothing
Meanwhile as all that happened you were blissfully unaware of his spiral of worries
Just focusing on your job as you memorized the headquarters and marine procedures
You had nothing else to do plus it could come in handy
Along with that you befriend some of the few decent marines
One of which you spend quite a lot of time with despite Sengoku complaining about the smoke smell that hangs off your uniform…and the second hand smoking risk
Not like it can kill you quick so you don’t really care
You listen in on a lot of juicy marine rumours
There is quite a surprising amount of it
Despite your comfortable happiness here it’s merely an afterthought
You know you can’t stay here long
It feels as if it betrays Roger and the many other pirates you had found yourself in the company of
You desire freedom and marines are in direct opposition of that
But with this experience you find growth in your views
Marines weren’t all bad. They served the purpose of keeping order, something naturally needed in the world
But they are overstepping, wanting entire control when there needs to be a balance of both order and chaos to keep things in line
Plus you met a few that you’d otherwise consider good people in a system they thought would do good
You can’t fault them for that, not when so many sought out with good intentions
Secretly you prepare your leave, your boat already having washed up in the bay a few week back
Your not sure why but it always seemed to show up where you were
Maybe another aspect of your devil fruit? You don’t know it’s full capabilities but don’t question it
You’d rather let life do what it does best and put things in order if the stars align
At this point your prepared to leave but hold out for a bit longer for Sengoku’s sake
But then you delivered to him a letter whilst he was having a meeting with a fellow marine
Even before you enter the room you can recognize Garp’s boisterous laughter
Despite his now more apparent age from time he’s still eccentric and buzzing with excitement
As you enter the room you keep your head down and caps brim tilted as to shadow your face
Sengoku notices this but doesn’t voice it aloud as Garp laughs about something
He barely gets a image of you before your out the office
Heading to the small room designated as your own as you write a letter saying goodbye
You can’t stay, can’t risk it
Sengoku arrives a couple hours later completely exhausted from Garps usual rambling
He’s not sure how someone can go from business to about his grandsons
He has your dinner in hand, apparently you never showed up at the mess hall
His voice and knocks are responded with silence
Worry gnaws away at him, the feeling of something being wrong apparent more than ever
the door creaks open and your not there
What he’s met with is an open window with sheets cascading down the wall and a note
He runs to the pier despite knowing your not there
It’s there he takes time to actually read the note
A thank you but an explanation about how you must leave. Head off towards yet another adventure in the grand world you called home
Tears cascade down his cheeks as he reads it
They do not get better when it tells him that you would always remember his kindness
And that he taught you something valuable to viewing the world
Heading back to his office he thinks back to his son once more
Something finally coming to mind
He swears he remembers Rosinante mentioning someone similar to you as a childhood friend
The only person him and his brother had as children
He shoo’s off that thought though
They were dead
His son watched that firsthand
But because of that he knows that Rosinante would want to know of you
He takes the picture he took of you in the delivery uniform and placed it in a letter
He’d have his son look into perhaps finding you
Or at least extending a helping hand if he hand found you adrift at sea
He’d stash away the reminders of your stay lest he get an earful from Garp
Speaking of which, the idiot hero of the people seemed more alert for some reason. Just saying he was on the look out for an old friend…odd
Kid pirates
They find your ship as your drifting at sea
You were fishing at the time, passing the time plus trying to get some potential food
And then you see this giant ship pull up near yours
Your not really scared though a bit surprised cause you recognized that Jolly Roger
You’d heard a lot about this crew, but you didn’t know who was the captain
Seems like your question will be answered
Staring down from the side of the ship is someone with fiery red hot hair and someone wearing a mask with an equally wild mane of golden locks
For some reason though the red head looks familiar
Extremely…ohhhh you knew him
Oh shit you knew him when he was a kid
And now he’s grown up (you’d hadn’t even realized it’s been that long) and your still as young as you were back then
With no possible explanation to write you off as a different person
Shit-
Before you can do anything your lifted out from your ship via a metal bracelet on your arm made of wire and screw
Curtesy of Kid all those years ago who stares at you with a mixture of confusion, shock and anger
His crew is watching with batted breath wondering what he’ll do
“I’m guessing you want an explanation”
“No shit”
“Captain let’s take this someplace private”
With that the two take you to his workshop, a place similar to the one he had growing up
Yet it’s now not just a shack
Around the room there’s metal scraps and almost completed projects scattered around
It smells of iron, rust, determination, stubbornness and oil
All of which you’d come to associate with the red haired captain you now sit across from
And of killer who you now recognized despite the mask
You don’t have much of a choice to tell the truth
Especially since you know for a fact both would be able to tell if your lying
Kid is angry, perhaps not at you but for the circumstances of your life
It’s no wonder that even as children you were a bit odd
Staring off into space as you’d say some weird cryptic shit
But it also explains the sadness as well
The few times he caught you silently mourning something or someone in the dead of night
His anger fades though and becomes something else when you mention you didn’t know the years had flown by and he was grown up now
It scares him
You hadn’t realized the large passage of time from when you left that one night to now
When you admit that your even a bit shaken and confused but shrug it off
That really fucking terrified him especially when you begin to recount some of what you’d done in that time
For so long he and Killer assumed you died but perhaps you had something worse than that
You’d lived through so much
Through bloodshed and war
Through loss and grief
Countless deaths of not only the people you’d formed a connection with but yourself
Pain was now a meer concept to you
He sees how strong you are (and he heavily respects that) but at the same time how close you are to the breaking point
When Kid cares for someone it’s akin to molten steel
It’s burning brightly and protectively forming a hard barrier towards it and danger
There are a few people he’d ever stick his neck out for to protect (that being his crew and Killer)
And one of them is you, the only other person in his childhood that ever stood through thick and thin with him
By god will he ever admit it through words but with actions
And his actions are subtle as hell to those who don’t know him
On deck as his crew are rowdy he makes sure to keep out and eye for you, especially considering how your prime bumping into material for being so short
Luckily for him though your usually on someone’s shoulders or being playfully tossed around
Despite how clashing the rest of the crew’s personalities are from your own you fit in. Your calmness allowing you to go with the flow of their escapades
It’s not really surprising to him, but there are a few of the crew who comment about it
There were a lot of ways to describe you but he thought the best was the eye of the storm
A peace and calm within the swirling winds of danger and chaos
Bringing a calm breeze and momentary warmth
It’s easy for him to notice but his men are more content
Happy as you indulge in games with them or give a break from the hecticality of life at sea
This is of course all good and nice but Kid is somewhat huffy when you spend too much time with them
When this happens killer usually gives you a signal so you go spend time before kid ends up destroying something
One of his favourite pastimes with you is having you help with his tinkering
Sitting in a small chair made of metal and scrap as he works diligently
During these times he doesn’t talk, just listens as you tell stories or stay silent with him
It’s therapeutic in some way
Especially since the only background noise is the clanking of metal
Sometimes you ask about his devil fruit power and he shows off
Making you oh and ah about the versatility of what he can do
It makes something in him swell with pride especially since you look at him with awe
Just as he did as a kid when you told stories of pirates
During the late nights in which his crew are asleep you both talk
He digs deeper into your stories and gets madder and madder when more and more of your life is exposed
Most of your responses when hearing the truth is pity but his is anger
A weird but validating reaction that makes your long died out anger ignite a little
He lets you punch, scratch and scream to let it all out. Encouraging you to do so
Sometimes you swear you can see a brightly shining star in him. His determination for something that burns like a furnace used to heat up metal to bend to his whim
Killer is much like kid in the fact that he’s worried about and cares but he goes about it a much different way
He’s the only voice of reason on this ship
And he’s honestly glad to have someone else who’s level headed
As much as he loves his captain and crew it can kinda get annoying sometimes when he’s the only responsible person
Your at least not jumping to set the ship on fire every 3 minutes unlike some people
Hearing your situation now makes a lot of sense when thinking back to when he and Kid where young
There were a lot of inconsistencies and things that didn’t make sense
But now they do on the fact you were a seemingly immortal traveler
It makes him upset like Kid though
Your situation wasn’t fair
Your life wasn’t the dream your once made it out to be
Sure there are moments of happiness dispersed through the cold harsh waters but it took you dying in horrible ways to get there
You didn’t see that but you felt it’s affects
The occasional times he’d have you help cooking and then you’d blank out
Be stuck in your mind till he snaps you out of it and you explained how you were once eaten
It’s terrifyingly eye opening to how the world treats someone like you
A kind and calm soul who only wants freedom amongst the waves
Yet though they are sometimes treated with kindness there is also cruelty
Like Kid it leaves him angry
Upset on how you let yourself be treated in such a way along with brushing it off
Not only that but it’s also concerning
How you endure the worst things he could imagine yet it seems to be an afterthought
Until he finds you in the middle of the night staring out at the darkness with a certain look in your eye
There’s not much he nor Kid can do but he promises himself he’d try
Try for your sake to actually value yourself
Killer on the ship is the cook amung other duties as well, but cooking is his favourite
He has you help out as a second pair of hands
To be honest he doesn’t trust anyone else on the ship to cook without accidentally (or purposefully) poisoning someone so he usually does it alone
It’s the only time of peace on this madhouse that he calls of home
And it’s nice he gets to share it with someone
He assigns small tasks for you to do on the account your still a kid (despite how much you protest and say your literally older than him)
Cutting vegetables, grabbing ingredients, taste testing and stirring are your main priorities
But occasionally he has you help with other things as long as he can keep a close eye on you
He knows for a fact if you hurt yourself you wouldn’t tell him and brush it off
And by god he doesn’t need you to die of something stupid just cause you didn’t care to tell him
Unlike Kid he’s not afraid to verbally give affection
It’s just in private moments that he prefers it
Soft thank you’s and moments in which he admits he had missed having you around
The logical side of him knows he and Kid can’t convince you to stay but the emotional side tries anyways
Showing you how happy you could be if you stayed here
How the crew saw you as their own
How much safer you’d be rather than just drifting from place to place
It’s a loosing battle but one he tries anyways cause he cares
And he knows Kid cares despite the fact he tries to deny it
Cause Killer knows Kid
Seen how the red haired captain had been more motivated as of late
How much happier he is
The fact that when you bring up leaving the red haired captain locks himself in his workshop for the night to try and distract himself
He wishes you’d see how much you affected people, affected them
Cause despite what you thought of yourself your able to do the impossible
You leave a real impact on those you’d met even if it was for a short time
The crew sometimes pester him for answers on how he and Kid already knew you but he doesn’t budge
That’s a private matter that only you could disclose if you so wanted to
But for now he just says you were friends beforehand which gets some confusion
Speaking of the crew, he watches as you interact with them
Quickly somehow worming your way into their hearts as you did his
Watches as you play poker and they teach you how to cheat at the game or sing shanties while they drink
He may or may not have gave a few a good knock on the head for letting you take a few sips
(Kid hides the fact he gave you some as well)
He carry’s you off to bed and sneaks you some sweats he snagged at a port
Even allows you to brush and braid his hair in private
Kid once walked in and laughed his ass off about killer going soft
And then the two had a playful fight
Meanwhile you sat there laughing
It was like old times
As always you eventually leave but not before the crew throws a large party in your honour (and partially to drink the feelings away)
Before you set off again kid gifts you a bracelet made by him and a small piece of paper
To always find them if you needed their help
You smile and set off, not knowing how the crew stares with ignorant hope you’d turn around
Crocodile
Your not sure how but somehow you ended up in a desert with absolutely no idea of what island this was
Naturally you decided to lay in the sand and wait to die so you’d wake up somewhere else
But a few hours into that a shadow obscures the harsh sun that had been glaring at you for hours
A man, black slicked hair and elegant clothes with a golden hook for a hand
Beside him is another man, what you assumed to be a bodyguard of sorts
“Hi what desert is this?. I’d like to know where exactly I am before I die”
Yeah they definitely didn’t expect that for an answer
But with what you said you seemed to intrigue the hooked man
“Alabasta. What are you doing out here in the first place alone kid?”
“Woke up here. Was waiting to die”
Admittedly crocodile was just gonna save you as to make his imagine of being the hero of this country even better but now you’ve really got him interested
Even Daz was somewhat surprised and intrigued by your comment and lax attitude towards death (even your own)
So as he takes you back to the city, taking in the fame that came with it, he decides to “look after you” until your parents come to claim you
As any kind Samaritan would do
Your calling bullshit on that but amuse his words anyways
At his casino he talks to you as he does paperwork and take mysterious calls you leave the room for
While your curious you respect his privacy which he seems to appreciate
Crocodile is a peculiar man
Someone of specific interests and a golden viper-like tongue that leads to fools eating out the palm of his hand
You can see that though, quite easily actually
Eyes looking past the hand he holds out to the hook he hides behind his back and goons just behind the corner
He honestly applauds that you see it
In his words your “a smart kid.” Which you assume is something he doesn’t say often
Much like an oasis in the scathing sands of the desert
Your conversations with him are much more personable rather than focusing on his clearly defined goals and plans
That isn’t your business to divulge in, but his character is up to your judgment
He’s obviously not a good person but half of the people you’d called friends were criminals and killers alike
Sure some had morals but there’s still a stated fact that they had taken lives in pursuit of their goals
Roger included
You’d be a hypocrite to think otherwise
Talks often involve subjects of death and the goal of freedom
And what freedom meant in this world that was quickly having it taken away
Crocodile is tinged by death much like the lingering smell of his cigars
It follows him like a plague, like sand stuck to your clothes after getting wet
Yet despite that it’s a clearly interesting topic to him especially since you disregard your own safety
He’d seen it in the desert and at his casino where you nearly got shot by an angry patron
You don’t care about your own death
But when it comes to others it’s a different story
It’s interesting to him
Why were you so selfless in the fact you’d carelessly throw your life away for someone else’s
In this world it’s one only won by the selfish
He’s a prime example of that
At his core he knows he’s selfish, his goal is an example of that fact
Yet despite how foolish it is to not be selfish…with you it’s admirable
You don’t have some sunny and innocent view on the matter. You know it’s a loosing game yet you pursue it anyways
Perhaps it’s more foolish in that way but you don’t care
Not when you have the freedom to choose and make those choices anyways
Freedom matters to you more than words can describe and he relates
It is freedom that let him make the course of his own destiny
Changing who he once was to the person he is now
Now comfortable in his own skin and confident in his abilities and identity
Perhaps it’s cause you had your freedom taken away at some point but you relate in some way
Not having the choice in a matter and suffering due to it
He doesn’t go into full detail on the matter but you have a knowing look in your eye and a semblance of deep respect because of it
It makes a part of him feel light and airy
Despite all the clearly scummy aspects of himself that are as clear as day to your eyes….you respect him
Some still deeply insecure part of him curls up at that and wants to cry
You respected him
That’s something he’d always wanted
It’s not motivated by fear and greed but true respect for the hardships he’d been through to get here
Worry curls up in his gut, swirling and violent like the sands storms he creates
Shit, he’s attached
What’s worse is that you’d wormed your way into the others hearts as well
Even Daz has to admit you grew on him
Your a lot like a cancerous sore. Growing and spreading to a new part of the body
Yet he can’t will himself to cut you off
And neither does his inner circle
It complicates things but at this point he accepts it after a brief moment of reflection and thought
He hadn’t thought of trying to find your parents and had the posters taken down
Now fully intending to keep you as his own
He doesn’t ask you on the matter, just slowly begins the process
Decorating your room to your preference
….which was very hard considering you didn’t have one and settled for the bare minimum most of the time
Yeah it’s a bit of a challenge especially since your beginning to catch on real quick
It’s kinda easy to tell when someone goes from “I’m keeping you around for entertainment” to “I’m keeping you around as my kid now”
While you appreciate the offer and effort you don’t particularly like your freedom being impeded upon
“You know that’s hypocritical right?”
“Yes but when have pirates ever been people of their word?”
“Touché…but I’m still not happy about this”
As this happens he begins to dig deeper to who you are
Intent on figuring out if you had parents and if he could perhaps…get “custody” to put it broadly
But that becomes a challenge when there’s seemingly nothing about you except for vague whispers across the sea
A legend
A story
A song
It’s old, going back to the days of Roger and references to before that as well
A tale of a star that never really died
It’s forgotten to many but to a few it still lives on
And he has the vaguest idea from the description in the song that it’s you
But for awhile it’s a mere speculation
Until you end up dying in front of him from a deal gone wrong
Despite the fact you knew the bullet would pass through his body you instinctually throw yourself in front of him
The bullet piercing your chest
A deafening silence filling the moment between him and his inner circle of baroque works
And then chaos
Their swiftly dealt with, the perpetrator personally having their body liquids drained within mere moments
And then he’s at your side as Bentham does their best to stop the bleeding
Despite the fact your bleeding with a piece of led stuck in your chest your unfazed
Shrugging it off as “pain is a concept to me at this point”
It makes him angry, sad and determined all at the same time
Angry at the fact you must’ve experienced so much pain that something like this is nothing to you
Sadness that you’ve went through this before
And determination to stop it from happening again. To have the ability to protect you
“Let it be known that when you come back I’ll be looking for you”
“So you know?”
“Had some connections…found an old story but you just confirmed it”
You giggle lightly at that, not even wincing as you cough up some blood with your laughter
They all watch as your eyes fade of their light and then after that your body breaks into sparkling dust
Crocodile is a selfish man, one driven by ambition and greed
It’s funny you think he’d let go someone he considered to be a diamond in the rubble
One that shone as bright as a star in the sky
He extinguishes his cigar under his boot, grasping the small bits of starlight in his hand before it slips through his fingers like sand
He chuckles, how ironic
In the world populated by the greedy he intends to be king
And a king guards his treasure especially something that is as priceless as you are in this world
“Watch out kid. You’ve gotten me attached and there’s no undoing that now”
Boa Hancock
For a brief time you had spent a couple months or so as a celestial dragon’s slave
It was by complete accident that you were kidnapped and subsequently sold
But in that time you’d come to learn more of the politics of the world
Specifically the inequality of rules for nobles from the world government
You don’t spend much time as a slave but it’s torturous
Permanently scaring your mind with the pain of being branded as property
Seen as an object that can be broken
In your time there though you remember 3 girls
That time is a blur in your mind but you remember giving your limited food to them
The group being taken aback by the kindness as you explained you’d be fine
It went on like that for awhile
You never got their names but you gave them yours
They were sisters, the one with black hair being the oldest of the trio
It was a friendship made out of desperation
Of knowing that none of you were alone
The eldest of the group is one day forced to kill you for the pleasure of the sick bastard who had branded you all
She’s sobbing
He’ll kill her sisters if she doesn’t
You tell her it’s ok, that she must do what she can to survive and keep them alive
That death didn’t scare you
Her devil fruit turns you to stone within an instant but not from romantic love
It’s from the love of a friend
Of someone who’d cared for her and her sisters enough to give up your own for them
For her to keep them safe
The statue crumbles and she’s left sobbing
Gold floats from the grey dust that scatters around her
She thinks back to some of your last words
She had to be strong for her sisters
Make sure they get out of here lest your sacrifice be in vain
She’d be strong so she can protect
Just as you protected her and them from a violent fate
Even through the scar isn’t there anymore you scratch at your back
Remembering the pain of that seal
You can’t remember who the symbol belongs to anymore
Other than then being some type of royal
The cycle begins again
Smoker
You met him during your brief time at marineford
One of the only Marines whom you found to actually be good
Not just seeing things as simply black and white good and bad
Sure, he had a job to do and accomplish but he at least had a sense of morally grey justice
A well weighted scale so one side is not preferred over the other
It’s because of him that the smell of lingering smoke now leaves a sense of comfort to you
Admitting this to him makes the rather gruff man go completely red
Much like the lot end of those cigars that he loves so much
Despite how own duties he’d help you deliver things at the base
Having his smoke help carry letters across the island within minutes as to give you a small break
Speaking of which, he basically forces you to have mandatory breaks from work
Oftentimes literally dragging you off to go get something to eat
You have the feeling he has a soft spot for kids but vehemently denies that fact
(The way he buys you ice cream and lets you sit on his shoulder says otherwise but ok)
Another thing supports this fact is that he grows quite concerned at your complete disregard for your safety
The man has a panic attack every time you make an odd comment about “do you think I’d die from this height or shatter my legs” and “could you theoretically give people cancer or kill them via smoke blockage in the lungs?”
You can’t convince him that you had a happy childhood before this
Sengoku not being able to find your parents makes this thought worse
You didn’t know him for very long but you hope to one day run into home again
Charlotte LinLin
Somehow you ended up at an orphanage after someone found you asleep and adrift at sea
It most cases this would’ve been a blessing
To you it was an annoyance as they left you at a place for the abandoned and mourning
A reminder of where you might have ended up if you haven’t ate your fruit
Hadn’t taken the reigns of fate in your hands and steered it towards the endless blue sea
Immediately you want to leave the moment you can, especially since you get off vibes from “mother caramel”
That woman is up to something real bad
You can feel it deep in your bones
But you end up staying when you meet a peculiar girl
She’s young but not little, she towers over you like a giant
Puffy pink hair kept in two buns and freckles cheeks paired with a large toothy smile
She’s an interesting character, so like always you end up staying
Her name is Linlin, someone with monstrous power yet is innocent to a frightening degree
She has a kind heart yet doesn’t realize her strength
Something you try to help her with
Linlin is ecstatic to have you as a friend especially since you don’t seem out off by her size
You stay by her side, more specifically on her shoulder and tell her stories that make her eyes widen in curiosity
Telling stories of other races, showing her that the other children who aren’t human aren’t needing to be fixed like she initially thought
Their all perfect
She’s still a little confused but she gets the gist of it
Another thing she doesn’t get is discrimination and thinks it’s stupid
She expresses a dream of a place where everyone can live in peace
It’s a beautiful dream but one that is far fetched, yet you can’t help but tell her to go for it
Because there’s no harm in trying
Mother Caramel seemingly assigns you as Linlin’s impulse control
Seemingly since your the only one who can actually make her listen when she’s blind from rage
As much as you don’t like the old woman, she’s got a point
Linlin is a hurricane if made angry and you’re the key into keeping it at peace
She seems to note that to herself for some greater reason
In the end you didn’t know Linlin for very long but she seemed to hold you in such a high regard she deemed you her “bestest friend!”
It’s nice
But like all things they come to and end
But surprisingly it’s by her own hand
At her 6th birthday everyone had come together to make her sweets knowing she loved anything sugary
She was in tears, grin so wide you thought it was big as the red line
She ate and ate
Until there was no cake left
But like in those blind rages she didn’t see
She didn’t see there was nothing left
Didn’t notice what she now began to eat was the rest of the children sitting nearby
Mother caramel
And finally you
Eventually she woke up, finding herself alone and confused
Glitter flowing up into the sky
Years later you hear about some island meant to be a utopia for all people
It reminds you of that little pink haired girl
But that can’t be, you heard the pirate behind it was a maniac
That couldn’t be the innocent girl you met and became friends with
…how did you die that time again?
All the deaths have merged together or you can’t remember which death went where
For all you know the one where you got eaten was that one
But that can’t be
From what you remember Linlin was kind if not naive
She couldn’t
Wouldn’t
The cycle begins again
Katakuri
For awhile you stayed at an island that specialized in baked goods
And that served as a calling for the famous pirate known as “big mom” and her children
The island was not yet under their…”protection” but was being negotiated with as of when you visited
And on that island you found yourself at a bakery buying sweets to your hearts content
Specifically donuts
The one where we’re apparently particularly good
And honestly it’s been awhile since you’d treated yourself to a good meal
Soooo you splurged a bit and bought them all
And that leads to an odd meeting when you run into the giant of a man with a pink tattoo and fur lined scarf covering the bottom half of his face
The chefs cower as they tell him that their all out of the sweet treat
Despite the evident frown he doesn’t look as if he’s about to trash the place like the chefs are making it seem
He simply seems disappointed and a bit sour
Despite how everyone is clearly afraid of him you poke his arm making him look at you
“We can share if you’d like. I don’t mind”
From the mortified looks of everyone in the room it’s evident everyone is half expecting him to flat out obliterate you on the spot
But much to their surprise he seem to think it over
“If you see me eating I’ll kill you”
“Aight, that’s fine with me. We can eat back to back, then I won’t see you”
The bakery is left silent as you leave with the pirate
They prey your alright
Just as your promised you eat back to back. He creates a small house of mochi as you put down the donut box and you both eat
It’s peaceful and nice
He half expects for you to turn around but you don’t
You don’t even seem to consider it as you happily eat and engage in small conversations
It’s odd being asked such mundane things like “how was your day?” And “what do you do for a living?”
Let alone by someone who isn’t currently shaking in fear
….it’s nice
You let him have the last donut much to his surprise
He enjoyed this much more than he thought he would
So he comes up with an ultimatum
“I’ll be too busy to buy them before they sell out…would you be willing to buy them and then we do what we did today?”
“Sounds fun to me.”
He leaves with a warm feeling in his chest
Not even his siblings treated him in such a relaxed manner…it was refreshing
The next day ticks by and he finds himself awaiting for the meeting to be over
He stops himself from tapping his foot but his irritation occasionally seeps out
It goes to help speed up conversation though and then he’s free
Like the day prior you both meet at the same place
He insists on paying you back but you refuse
It’s confusing but he doesn’t make a comment about it
In the grande scheme if things this is such a small thing but it begins to mean the world to him
He’s only intended to stay here for a week yet he dreads that final day
So much so that he finishes business early
When you go to the shop you find that their already sold out much to your displeasure
You go to tell the sweet toothed man you befriended and find him already with the confectionery
You eat back to back once more for the last time
Enjoying the donuts that bring him momentary relaxation and relief from the pressure to be the prefect son
The perfect big brother
It’s nice
And for once he feels as if he was his true self around someone
You hear him cry but don’t turn around out of respect for him
Instead you just offer him more food and gently pat his arm
A small “thank you” falls from his mouth and you smile
You thank him in return for the pleasant company
He wonders if this is what is mother experienced when having her “bestest friend” all those years ago
The one story that him and all his siblings had heard growing up
About someone much like yourself
He leaves the island with a smile beneath his scarf and a noticeable better mood
His siblings ponder about what happened but he doesn’t speak a work of it
This was a treasure he’d like to keep to himself
For some reason his mother has a knowing look
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Btw wanted to thank you all for liking this so far. I was honestly kinda scared to actually post for one piece but I’m glad people are enjoying my content for it. I recently got into the show and wanted to write about it cause I love it so much.
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yeyinde · 1 year
Text
ode to a conversation stuck in your throat
Captain John Price x Reader
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》 WORD COUNT: 12,7k
》 WARNINGS: 18+ | MATURE: allusions to smut but nothing graphic/explicit
》 TAGS: Gender-Neutral Reader. Angst. Mutual Pining. Idiots in Love (but in Romania). Fluff. Love and Romance described as death and decay and broken religious imagery. Y'know. The usual Yey tags.
》 NOTES: I recently got into Augury (just a fancy word for bird watching, innit??) so this feels more whimsical and nonsensical than usual. Good luck with this one, lads.
It's like clockwork. 
A text comes—some variation of are you awake, or are you home? in that strange Price-esque way he manages, even through the stark face of a message (biting derision, Gaz calls it, adds: man can't pretend to be a little less angry even over text)—and then a phone call. 
Always after midnight. 
Devil's hour. 
When your phone rings at half past three in the morning, hearing Price's gruff perfunctory greeting of "alrigh'?" bleeding through the phone, and right into your ear doesn't surprise you anymore. 
(Not much does, really.)
These phone calls are a strange, almost paradoxical thing that both happens often enough not to be considered rare, and yet: it still seems outlandish enough each time it happens for you to ever really let yourself expect it. Odd. Price doesn't strike you as the type of man to need to rely on his friends—the seldom few he does have, you often joke (always a shade too close to the truth like most jokes are; the one that makes him dip his head in a nod of quiet acquiesce, and make you wonder if you went too far)—but he's never given you a reason for them. 
Never answered why. 
They just—
Happened. 
(Over and over and over again—)
The brief conversation in the oddest hour of the morning started a new tradition. A routine. Expecting a phone call from Price at least once a week was now so commonplace, you almost felt empty when days had passed, and your phone never rang. 
He can't sleep. Neither can you. 
And so, he calls you. 
It's not always about a mission. Most of the conversations that take place are about absolutely nothing. Everything, sometimes, when you pry apart the bones locked around your chest, and bare your insides to the warm cellphone clutched in your hand. To the voice on the other line. 
A man you know—have known since you first stepped into his training ring, and into the orbit of Captain John Price—and barely understand at all. 
You know everything about him—his name, his title, where he grew up, went to school, his favourite food, his least favourite drink, what he does after a mission; his greatest fear, his biggest worry, the insecurity that gnarls in his chest, and the weight of the world that sometimes feels like it might splinter his bones, grinding them into gun cotton—and nothing at all.
The reason why he called you all those months ago, invited you on a mission you had no real part to play in, and why he still does is a mystery. 
(Loneliness, maybe. 
Insomnia, you find, is more bearable when it's shared between two.)
But that was before. 
The last phone call you got from Price had been nearly three months ago after you touched down in Heathrow following a botched mission in Tenerife. 
You heard the murmurs about Shepherd, about Zyani that trickled through the mess hall (when there was no battle to be fought, they gossiped), and so his radio silence makes sense considering he was halfway across the globe for the bulk of it. 
In the midst of it, though, you would find yourself staring blankly at your phone, screen black and void of any calls, and wonder if it had anything to do with your offer. With his swift rejection. 
When it rings after an aching expanse of time, you can't place the gnarled tension in your chest. The uncomfortable feeling that blooms in your heart at the sight of his name flashing in neon blue. 
Price seems almost surprised to hear your voice on the other line instead of the monotonous droll of your voicemail. 
"Up for a trip?" He asked when you cleared the sleep from your throat, and rubbed blearily at your eyes. "Jus' me and you."
It feels like nothing at all had changed since he last called you with an offer to accompany him to Tenerife. 
"Just like old times," you murmur, a touch distant. Hedging. 
"Right," he says, words glueing to his throat. You hear the click when he clears it, and pretend you're only pulling the phone away from your ear to check the time. 
Half past three. Of course. Of course. 
"Got a proposition for you." 
Typical Price: he gets right to the point. 
There is no staying up talking about everything, nothing, and all the in between until well past five in the morning when your alarm sounds for your run. Or his for a shower before heading into headquarters at Hereford to reach a new class of hopefuls when he isn't saving the world with his infamous team. 
The very same one he refuses to let you be a part of.
(Better on your own, he says.
You think you'd be better with him—
His team. Team. Not—)
The blooming heat under your cheeks is never acknowledged in the sanctity of your lonesome bedroom with his rough voice pitched low enough to squeeze through the little holes of your speaker. Tucked away to pine while still somehow making a fool of yourself. 
You're only half listening when he murmurs about his proposition. 
It's a simple mission, he tells you. The usual grab and go. 
Usual, because only in this work could kidnapping bad people in foreign countries be considered normal. Routine. 
(Legal, kind of.)
"It's in Romania," he murmurs, and the tinny sound of his voice through the old dial phone of the inn he's staying at between missions makes him sound lighter than he usually does. Airy. "I know you liked visiting the last time—"
It drags a snort from you. "Yeah, on holiday. Something about this whole ordeal tells me I won't be enjoying mici in Târgovişte much." 
"Well. Consider this a pre-paid holiday. I'll do all the work, you just 'ave to sit there, and—"
"Look pretty?"
"—listen."
You hum. "I think I'm much better at looking pretty than I am at listening, John."
"Yeah," it's dry, derisive. "Don't I know it."
Silence lapses between you—intentional, of course. He's letting you think it over. Weigh the pros and cons of a free trip to Romania. With four hands and two heads you could clear it up before the allotted time frame, giving you those extra, precious few days to linger in the country. 
Tying up loose ends is what will end up on the official report. Discouraging witnesses from coming forward with stacks of Euros stuffed deep in their pockets. 
Making sure no stone has been left unturned—the Americans, in particular, like that one. They never ask questions when you wax about patriotism, and ensure there's no chance of calamity. They like their ends tied, and their witnesses happy. 
It's all a cash business. More than enough money wired to an infant account under an preconstructed name. Passwords and identification handed to you in a sealed envelope. It's unlikely that anyone would ever track said witnesses down to discover the person given hush money was actually a nightclub in Mamaia or a fancy pub in Cluj. 
Illegal, of course. Should you ever get caught, you'd be reprimanded. Punished. Made an example of. 
(But who doesn't skim a bit from the top? Especially when the pile is given to you by the military.)
"Fine," you huff, and aim for some semblance of acquiescence in your tone despite knowing full well that you've yet to turn down these impromptu partnerships with him since they started two years ago. 
Moldova. Egypt. Chad. Canada. The Philippines. Taiwan. Tenerife. Your odd partnership has taken you further across the world than the sedentary office job of pretending to make a difference ever did. 
The place he said you were better suited for. You refuse to wonder what that means. 
"Okay. I'll go. But I'm not doing anything at all except enjoying the Romanian countryside." 
"Wouldn't expect any less from you." 
You want to say, then why bring me at all? Why not take Gaz or Soap or Laswell? Why sideline me so blatantly only to keep asking for my help when it's never really needed? but the words are stuck in your throat. Trapped in their esophageal prison.
Instead, you say: "count me in then, I suppose," and wonder when you became such a coward. 
"Mm. I should let you get some sleep, then."
You make a noncommittal noise in the back of your throat. It's been three months of nothing but unanswered texts that gradually faded into nothing by the third week. An island of uncertainty. Worry. Dread. Fear. Wondering what you did wrong, and coming, quite conclusively (and indignantly) to the conclusion that you didn't. 
Hearing his voice again, tinny and always shades softer than you've ever heard him speak before, unearths the sarcophagus you laid your feelings inside; a sudden and abrupt disinterment of everything you tried hard to ignore. The desecration cracks the tomb wide open. The flood of everything you tried to bury blooms; the foetid sickness of your festering wants taste a little bit like regret, and even more like hope. 
Helpless, your finger gnarl around the blossom of what laid bare, bones and rotted flesh, and the weight of it in your palm feels more comforting than ever before. Made more potent, you think, by the absence of him. 
It's an unignorable truth that you missed him. 
And so, you cling to the offering like it's a sacred trinket. 
"How—," the words are rough, gritty, when they slip through the moulted dirt clogging your throat. Dredged up in the wake of the sudden excavation. You swallow hard when he makes a noise. Force yourself to claw through the humus. "How are you, John?"
You want to add something you know will make him huff, call you cheeky, something a little coquetry in the wake of your exhumation. Such would be your exequy, but the words are buried once more when the dirt shifts as he draws in a deep, staticky breath. 
He's not usually a loquacious man in person, but something seems to crack open, shift, when it's well after midnight. A secret, a new side of him, shared only with you. 
You don't expect him to respond. You hope, but you don't assume. 
When he sucks in a breath, a staticky little noise that reverberates through the receiver, victory snakes across your vertebrae. Unwarranted and unearned, but the stinging reminder of it does little to stop it from nursing on the marrow of hope pullulating inside of you.  
"Been better," he offers, and the muted shift of him relaxing into the starchy pillows cuts through the line. Settling, you think, for the beginning of your routine. "Didn't have much of a chance to call you. How've you been?" 
"Been better," you echo, a wry twist of humour snaking across your lips when he offers a huff in response. "Lots to get caught up on, I suppose."
And you do. 
You talk about nothing. Everything. 
Your darkest secrets were spilled out in those phone calls at Devils Hour—fears, uncertainty, failures. This is no different. He tells you about Shepherd blinding them all with his dedication to the cause. About how he would have let Laswell rot to save his own arse, but knew, of course, that not letting Price and Gaz rescue her would have raised even more alarms. 
They cornered an animal, he spits. One who led them around by the nose for years. 
Bloody American Politicians, he grumbles. 
No better than the bloody English, you snark back. At least they're honest about their motives when it all comes tumbling down around them, and don't hide it under layers of the blooded elite. Of status. 
He mumbles to himself for a moment before begrudgingly conceding your point. 
It buzzes in the static. A lapse in the midst of espionage tainted catch-up that makes your hindbrain tense for what he might say next. 
He shifts, then, offers even softer than the hello he greeted you with: 
"What about you? Get up to any trouble while I was gone?"
He listens to you bisect yourself in a midnight confessional, letting your rotted guts tumble out in deep lags of silence you wish weren't as comfortable as they are.
He talks, too. 
Tells you about woes of nepotism, and the muppets they send him for basic training. The fleet of soldiers he doesn't want to carry on his back, but does anyway. The losses he couldn't prevent. The monsters he made. 
"I wouldn't change anything," he always says, as if you don't know him by now. As if you need reminding of just how tar-coated his heart really is. "I'd do it all over again." 
You say, "I know, John." And when you hear the hitch in his breath, you add: "you wouldn't be you if you did. I trust your judgement—no matter what." 
Explicit trust. He runs from it. 
He makes a noise in the back of his throat. It always sounds a little bit like a mourning toll. 
"I… should let you get some sleep." 
It's something he always says during your late night phone calls. 
Par the routine, the same question claws through the mess of words unsaid in your oesophagus until it reaches the seam between your teeth and lips. 
Why me, Price?
But every tradition has its rules. 
You let him run, and wonder if he feels as cleansed as you do after baring your soul to someone who knows you better than most of your closest relatives, your friends. 
(Or if the silence that lingers when you hang up feels just as oppressive and empty to him as it does to you.)
Wishful yearning. 
Instead, you say: "try to get some sleep, John. I'll talk to you later." 
And then, like the hypocrite you are, you lay awake and wonder why. 
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He meets you at Heathrow, and really—
It sometimes surprises you just how intimidating a man like Price is. 
He glowers down at the phone in his too large hand, eyes downcast, and brows pinched by whatever is irritating him now—emojis, you later discover.
(Bloody things make no sense to me, he grumbles, shoulder knocking against yours when you make yourself comfortable on the plane. 
You gently remind him he's barely even forty.) 
Price is an indomitable man. 
Tall. Broad shouldered. The heft of his bicep is actuated when he curls his hand around the strap of his duffle bag, muscles bulging. Flexing. 
It's hard not to stare at him. 
His shoulders roll back when you approach, eyes flickering up from unravelling the nuance of modern text messaging from a man who came out of the womb a fully fleshed adult with a mortgage. 
The corners of his eyes relax from their narrow slits when recognition bleeds into ashlar blue. His mouth parts a little; the flash of nicotine stained teeth. 
The furrow of his brow flexes like it wants to smooth itself out, but something passes across his face—unknowable, brief; the incipient markings of something that makes him look a little more at ease in the bustling confines of Heathrow (hell on earth you have both very quickly, and unanimously, acknowledged)—and it's pulled back together. Irritation, but not at you. Never at you. 
(But if not at you, then who? 
Why, you wonder, does he always look so cross in your presence?)
He clears his throat. The grumble of his voice, full and robust, and so different from the tinniness of a phone, nearly makes you jump when it glides across your ears, abrasive and raw. A rough growl. 
(You wonder sometimes if the brassiness of his timbre is from choking back apoplectic snarls all day.)
"Took you long enough."
You huff. "London is a nightmare at this time of day, John. As if you could've gotten here any faster." 
"You chose to live in it." 
Another sigh falls from the split seam of your lips. "It's not that bad."
"London smells like shite." 
"As if Liverpool smells any better," you volley back, watching the subtle shift in his expression fade from the pinched world wariness almost permanently etched into the lines of his face into something more relaxed. Agreeable. Or rather, as agreeable as Price could be in the middle of Heathrow, and surrounded by people. 
He opens his mouth, then, as if to remind you of the sea-salted scent of Liverpool, briny and bitter. Smog and hardwork. Oil, gun cotton. The city smells like the working class. Blue collar. Hands gnarled from the factories, and stained permanently with grease. 
A distinct thrum of pride, of home, rumbles through him with each new add-on to why Liverpool, in his opinion, is the best choice to call home.
(And London, he always adds, if only for another barb, another insult in your choice, always reeks of selfish ambition. The kind that rots your insides into something askance, and is deprived of decency.)
His biggest gripe with London, however—
"They never fuckin' smile." 
You passively nod in agreement—you mostly get looks of outright suspicion when you smile at passers-by in central London, so: point to Price—and then undercut the small victory he gains with a mocking grin in his direction. 
Price's nostrils flare when he catches the derisive bite of your lips curling over your teeth.
"You think you're smart, mm?" 
"I'd rather hope so, considering."
"Bloody annoyin' is what you are, considerin'—"
His words are swallowed by some boarding announcement ringing shrill overhead. You pull away from him, and the mocking smile fades into some facsimile of genuinity when you watch him shake his head, put-out and already annoyed by whatever thought skimmed through his thoughts. 
London always seems like a sore topic, but you've known him long enough that the edge in his voice is less severe and more mocking. There is a distaste for the city, but the reason has evaded you much like—
Well. Everything else. 
You've thought about asking why nearly hundreds of times in the past, but that line of questioning has always been a terrifying endeavour. There is a locked door: a proverbial floodgate keeping all of the other why's at bay. Opening it now, in the middle of a crowded terminal, feels reckless. Stupid. 
It's nearly four hours from here to Transilvania. 
You think of all the insubstantial reasons he could offer, and find the idea of them all rather bitter. Anguishing. It sends a ripple of hurt through your chest, and the sting alone is enough to seal your lips.
Words stuck, once more, in the back of your throat. 
Price says nothing when you quiet, eyes flickering between the throng of people rushing through the terminal, listless and impassive. 
There is always a degree of separation between you and him whenever you meet in person, as if the personal, raw conversations whispered into the early hours of the morning are just some strange dream. A fugue wanting, unslaked and bothersome, that ripens inside your virgin sulci. A sickness that manifests in the fibrils of your desire, covetous and greedy; gnarled gyri breathes life into the dreams you reach for until the delineation between reality and fantasy wanes, fades to cinders. 
So, you bite your tongue, letting the noxious words pollute, rot, inside their esophageal prison, and pretend the claw marks on the walls aren't from your own bloody hands. 
You follow his lead, and he's always seemed so content not to speak of the vulnerability you whisper into his ear. The fear he rasps about at quarter to four. 
Gone, then. It doesn't exist when you can see the lapis of his eyes listing toward you periodically, expression oscillating between a rendition of something that feels a little worrisome, and—
Tenerife. 
That unnameable thing that broke through the gleaming sapphire when you whispered his name, and broke your own rules for the very first time. 
(You'll call me anyways.
Does it bother you?
Never. Wished you called more—)
You turn away from him, from the weight in his gaze when it finds you. Worried, somehow, that a single look will be enough to ferret the secrets out of you. 
A man in fatigues lingers in your periphery, standing awkwardly by the Starbucks entrance. He nods sharply when you catch his eye. 
"Guess we're up," you murmur, smile fading into placid neutrality. Getting caught riling up Captain John Price won't win any favours back in the concrete vacuum of Hereford. "Ready, cap?"
If he notices your sudden distance, he says nothing about it. His eyes drop to the phone clutched in his hand, before he rolls his massive shoulders. 
"Suppose so," he grumbles, slipping his phone into his pocket. 
Out of sight. 
Selfishly, you wonder who else he calls late at night, and find the burn of bitterness, jealousy to be some torturous form of retribution. 
It burns like a knife to your gut. You wallow in it. 
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Price isn't a man known for his garrulity, and so, when he takes his seat on the plane, and immediately reaches for the files stuffed haphazardly into the zippered fold of his duffle bag, you take no real offence the undeniable abolishment of conversation. 
You're used to it, really. 
Silences that stretch on, culled by the hum of the engines cutting through the thin air some several hundred kilometres above sea level, are nothing novice. 
In turn, you take to flipping through the worn, jaundiced pages of a book you packed away in your carry-on specifically for this. Whatever secrets lay nestled in the crease of his rumbled folders doesn't matter to you—not yet, anyway—and you're content to enjoy something that you can pretend to be immersed with for the four hours you'll be sharing the scant space that separates the two of you. 
Pretending, of course, being the operative word. 
Price is a breathing furnace. The seams of his tight jacket crackle with unbridled heat that wafts against your arm when you settle into the chair. There is no armrest allotted to you with his sinewy bulk taking up most of the aisle and middle seat, and you feel each exhale when his frame almost melts into your own. 
Broad shouldered. Thick biceps. A tapered waist. Thighs quite nearly the width of a gnarled, hardened fir. It's hard to find space, privacy, with him bleeding out around you. It's hard to concentrate on anything that isn't the muted press of his covered flesh on yours, and, rather illicitly, the way it makes you feel. 
It's a rush of singular emotions nearly indistinguishable from each other, but all leaving you feeling like a raw nerve scrapped from muscle, and dissected from bone. Flayed with just a touch. 
The tremulous wake of them makes your body fight against the onslaught of the roaring deluge that rips through you. An amalgam of wishful anticipation, trepidation, and fear of being caught. Discovered. Having your dirty secrets, the one's you're not willing to share over a tea after midnight with a man who, despite knowing his greatest fear (the lives of his team over the stakes of everything, everyone, else), and his proudest accomplishment (getting the fuck outta Hereford while he still had the chance), galvanised out of you. Spilled into the open air. 
It comes too close to the lowered inhibitions you felt in Tenerife to ever sit well in the churning pits of your stomach. 
And so, you try to force some semblance of distance between your bodies despite there being none. The curved ledge of the plane window digs harshly into your forearm, but you still press into it more. 
Welcoming the ache, almost. 
It doesn't feel good, but it's a harsh reminder that the feelings pooling inside of your chest are wrong. 
A part of you, then, almosts hopes that the pain will soon become an almost Pavlovian reminder whenever you think of Price, and of—
Everything. 
Negative reinforcement. 
(Price and you; the thought brings pain.)
He mistakes your tension for nerves, and drops his chin down when you keep wriggling about, struggling to find a modicum of distance between the weight of him pressing against you. 
His expression is always oscillating between lour surliness and a pinch of frustration, and something in the middle of the two—glum, you think: stoic impassivity weighed down by heavy shadows—but the usual ire dims as the jet lurches down the runway. It's washed away in the tenebrous that leaks in from the empty interior of a military craft where it's just you and him and the pilots. 
A world where the stench of London dissipates into the familiar filtered scent of recycled oxygen that wafts through the open vents. Sterile, almost. Void of the grime, the pungent smell of stale petrol on the wet pavement, the distinct scent of the tube—sweat, fungus; putrid and ripe with something mouldy; tobacco and marijuana—and old cigarettes. 
(Smells like shite, he'd gripe if he knew you thought of it with fondness.) 
When he looks at you, you have to force yourself to remember hierarchy, propriety. Decorum. 
Distance. Reality. 
It aches, but you push it down. Swallow the words until they leak back into their cage, glued against the soft tissue of your oesophagus, and force something neutral, unbothered in your countenance while pretending as if you weren't choking yourself to death. 
"Alright?" He murmurs, words uttered low. Susurrus, almost. It's different from the phone calls where his voice is relaxed, muted; saturated in an ease, a warmth that lacks the usual snarl choked in the back of his throat. He talks with a degree of distance. Boxed into the role of unflinching, infallible leader even in this microcosm that bubbles between you. 
Still. It makes the air in your lungs stutter all the same. 
"Fine."
He hums, and the guttural vocalisation is adorned with the flat press of his disbelief. Price isn't the type to pry, though, and he takes your virginal lie with a mere shift of his eyebrows; a soft buoy of skepticism that is just scrutinising enough to let you flee if you so wish. 
You do, and so, you take it. Offering him a tight smile that you know will never reach your eyes, or any semblance of believability, but it's the most you can manage over the drumroll of your heart (now making serious threats of breaking through your ribcage, and leaping out of the jet), and the shallow gasps of your breath, a desperate struggle to quench the flames billowing in your lungs. 
He's so warm, you think, that he burns you. Fire spread from the heat of him, catching on the cindered embers lying in the soft fibrils of your being, and igniting you in a flameless smoulder. 
Price nods once, and you're unsure if it's in a gentle acquiescence of your bold-faced lie, or your quick prevarication, but you find yourself mimicking it all the same. 
Good, then. Settled. 
But he leans down instead of returning to the urgent press of files and papers all neatly stacked in a manila folder, and you come undone at seams when the scent of him envelops you. 
Crushed tobacco leaves, stale smoke, ambergris and vetiver. 
The headiness of his smell smothers you, and makes your hindbrain tense at the familiar, enticing miasma that seeps into your lungs, and fills your sinuses until it washes everything out but the gun cotton, and leather he reeks of. 
"Hmm, a bit early to start lying," he rasps, the words just as brittle as your crumbling resolve. "Ain't it?" 
Your breath shudders out of your lungs. Caught, then. Called out. The idea of confessing everything to him, all at once, passes through, but it's immediately dismissed. Shoved back into whichever crevasse it slunk out of. 
The fact that it even drifted through, sneaking past the tightly guarded prison it was kept in is enough to make you fluster. 
As if to hold them in, you sink your teeth into your tongue to keep from speaking the words that still echo in your head, and offer nothing more than a simple shake of your head, and some facsimile of a wry smile tossed in his general direction. 
He hums again, and the coo rumbles through his flesh and ripples across your skin. Electric shocks. Static buzz. The vibration of it shakes the doors of the mausoleum where everything is left to moulder, rot. 
A plume of nicotine dusts across your nose when Price shifts in his seat, much too small for a man with such broad shoulders, and thick thighs, and when you breathe in the heady scent of it, your head spins.
"We're all entitled to our secrets," he murmurs. His hair scratches against the fabric when he turns his head, chin notching down to bore into the side of your face. It's all you'll offer him when the rattling at the doors of your tomb dislodges a piece of rotten wood; lignin crumbles to the floor around you in stripped, fleshy white. A hole big enough to sink your fist through. 
"And that's fine, but—," his tone dips, timbre scorching through you when he speaks. The words are gritty, and coarse. They sink into your ears until the flesh is rubbed raw. The change in pitch makes you look up, wordlessly following the command that tangles around each vowel. Sharp, authoritative. This isn't John right now. It's Captain Price. 
His pelagic eyes are hardened into firm, dense sapphire lined with unbreakable obsidian. 
"But," he stresses the word again, brows arching high on his forehead until three, four, lines are carved into the pale skin. "Those secrets can't interfere with the mission, yeah?"
His stare is intense. Firm. Unyielding. He doesn't look away. Doesn't cower under the strange, too hot sensation that fills your head whenever you're forced to make eye contact for more than a few moments. 
It occurs to you, then, when he holds your stare for three, flinching inhales, that the only reason he's saying this is because he knows. Maybe not everything, maybe not all of it. But he knows enough that you're acting strange. Odd. Not yourself. 
Price sits back, and the loss of his intense stare boring into you, stripping you down to basal parts—raw and vulnerable—allows air to inflate your burning lungs. Oxygen bubbles and seeps into your bloodstream so quickly that you feel a little sick with it. Dizzy. 
"We clear on that?" 
His expression is guarded, pinched. 
You swallow thickly against the deluge of emotions that run down your spine, and wonder what he knows. What he pieced together already. It makes your heart slam against the flesh and bone cage it's prisoned in. 
His flat, phlegmatic expression seems to wobble. A frisson ripples, and splinters his reticent resolve, and he looks, in that moment, like the man who speaks to you late at night about his biggest worries, and fear. Touchable, reachable. It's a sharp contrast to the impenetrable man who stands at the top of the command post, and makes decisions of life and death. A stalwart leader made human.
You drink it in, trying to make sense of the softening of his gaze, the tremble of his moustache as his lips relax into an even line, but it's indecipherable. Unknowable. You struggle to piece the pensive, almost contemplative look together, but the gingerness in his expression snaps shut. 
All at once, it's forced back, and pulled taut. The drawing of a bridge. 
His lips flatten into a grim line. A divot forms between his brows. The tick in his jaw speaks of frustration, but—
Not at you. Never at you.  
You can't make sense of the enigmatic distance in his eyes—a floating island in the middle of the open ocean. Separated by the turbulent sea. 
Something changed between you. You feel the incipient shift trembling through your bones; a novice crack. The plates deep below the surface surge, and split; shattering into the other. The waters froth white as something begins to emerge from the depths. 
A new landmass, maybe. 
"Alright, then," he rasps, turning back back toward the files spread out on his lap. "Try to get some rest. We'll be jumpin' into the thick of it when we land."
You can see the hesitation in his eyes. The uncertainty in his mein. It's a sharp juxtaposition to how these strange missions usually unfold, where you both pour over documents, and leads, and have easy conversations between sharp, playful barbs, and impish quips to always devolve into some debate over something trivial. 
The silence is stifling. Oppressive. 
Tenerife, you think, when you drunkenly stumbled down the stairs, and into his arms, and—
Coldness. Frigid distance. He cut you off after that, and it was radio silence until last night when he called you.
You don't know what it all means, but Price is startlingly observant when it comes to you, and you wonder, with your heart thudding in your throat, just how much you gave away. 
A snag in the middle of lush green. You tremble. 
Into the thick of it, huh?
His words haunt you. 
(But when don't they?)
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The novel—a neo noir mystery disguised as a romance—does little to capture your attention. Threads of interest snag on the ends of the protagonist's steadfast determination to not to let crime run rampant in the city he's taken a reluctant appreciation for, and to rescue his penultimate damsel from the crumbling affair she's trapped in with a married man of the mafia, but it dwindles after the discovery of the red herring. 
It sits, untouched, in your lap as you gaze out of the circular window. Plumes of thick, white clouds blanket the world below the plane, and look dense enough for you to almost believe you could stand on the curled peaks of the cumulonimbus. A mirage, maybe. 
(Or wishful thinking: you've always enjoyed chasing the unattainable.)
The sky above is a midnight blue that fades into lighter shades of lazuli as curves around the earth. 
A shade lighter, flecked with greens and golds and greys, and it might have looked just like his eyes. 
(Chasing, always chasing.)
The shock of it makes your leg twitch as your muscle tense back into that familiar state of constant fight or flight that Price always seems to put you in. Stage fright. Fear of discovery. 
Sometimes you wonder if it would be easier to just spit the words that have been coagulating in the back of your throat for years out now into the world, and let him run from them. 
Flee, like Tenerife. 
Does it bother you?
No, I wish you called my more—
—can't, love. Can't do that, you know I—
Dreams pop like rubber balloons around you. The snap of the recoil blisters your skin. 
A lesson, then, that there are certain words that should never be uttered, or mentioned.
He drew a sharp delineation between you and him. A line in the sand. Uncrossable. Unspeakable. 
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Unignorable. 
Your heart aches, but you know it'll soon pass. Soon. Soon—
"Ready?" He asks when the wheels of the plane kiss the solid ground with a jolt, and the single word feels more augury than you'd like. 
It feels almost instinctual, then, to glance through the small window, eyes listing to the pale blue sky. Two chaffinches chase each other in the blooms of white, their plumage harsh against the idling clouds overhead. 
"Sure," you say, and wonder if he'd asked the same thing when you touched down in Tenerife. It doesn't matter. You shake the thought from your head, and try not to linger on the birds. 
Leave it for Agamemnon.
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Despite his insistence to the contrary, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what was promised. 
Your idyllic vacation to the Romanian countryside is forfeited for the cold interior of Brașov where the man you're after, Iulian Mitrea, is hidden somewhere in the near hour long commute from here to Sinaia. 
Somewhere, of course, because no one is willing to tell you anything at all. From the moment you landed at Târgu Mureș Transylvania Airport, help from anyone within the country evaporated, dissolved. Mistrust was rampant between the soldiers here to help you on your hunt. 
You couldn't blame them, really. Not when their orders to stall, delay, and interfere came directly from above. 
It makes sense when you're trying to capture a well-known friend of several high ranking politicians worlds over. 
The pinch in their brow as they say, we don't know where he is, despite confirming only an hour earlier that they did, in fact, know where he was speaks volumes to their reluctance to participate in this farce. It needles inside of you because despite the irritation of the delay, you get it. 
If they help you catch him, their name will be in the report. People will talk to you. You get to go home with a wanted man nicely wrapped in a bow for Lady Justice, and they stay behind and face the ramifications of letting a man go who greases paws with men in power—politicians, businessmen, foreign diplomats. 
So. 
You get it. It doesn't make it any easier to swallow when you see them on the radio each time you get closer. 
It'll be a wait and see mission until someone either relents enough to let you get a headstart, or the bigger people in power finish the behind the scenes negotiations to protect as many people as possible from the fallout. 
Either way—
You're landlocked in a city that's never felt more hostile to you; stuck in stasis in the middle of a brutal winter. 
The inn is nice, you suppose. Old architecture. Its age sings with each movement you make against the wood that is nearly three generations older than you. It's plumed a dusting of disuse that sneaks into the corners where it rots, and stinks of mildew. 
But it feels unwelcoming each time you catch the eye of a soldier, a local police officer. The lady behind the counter of the front desk is oblivious to the tension bleeding between everyone, and offers toothy smiles whenever she catches you. Eager, you think, to talk to someone who doesn't respond in clipped tones. 
You soak up the rapid Romanian, and try to remember the phrases you picked up—much to her amusement. 
Her hand fixes itself permanently against her chest with each new pronunciation of the Romanian alphabet you pick up—breve, circumflex, S-comma, T-comma—and she seems eager to listen to prattle on in stilted Romanian with more appreciation than the men who are meant to be your partners. 
They linger, listening in on each conversation you have with the woman. Combat every effort of your futile attempt to salvage some holiday from this mess. 
They undermine Price at every junction. Cut his opinion down until it's shredded paper snowflakes on the icy cobblestone. A forgotten arts and craft project now mushy from the snow blanketing the world around you in an endless white prison. 
It's easy, you think, to just give up. 
But you know Price. 
Despite their delays, and mutterings to each other every time a lead pops up only to quickly slip through your fingers, he doesn't falter. He won't. Not until this is seen through. 
He'll fight to the bitter end. 
(You think he just might prefer to do his fighting on the battlefield instead of dabbling in subterfuge.
So. 
You do it for him.)
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Your efforts amount to a burst vessle: a rumbling eruption spewing anger and tension at your feet like an angry volcano. 
And with it, you feel the words you try to swallow down buoy to the surface. 
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This mission makes you feel like little more than some ornate polyptych, folded away for convenience sake, and unravelled in the privacy of his borrowed office. 
It's there where Price poses questions, and piques at you for more information. 
His tongue is too thick when he tries to speak the language echoed around you, unable to catch the proper slur on the t-commas and drag the breve out the way it should be spoken. It sounds somehow more French than it does Romanian, and you resolve to take the mantle of lacklustre translator for him, wondering whether he took your words as coming only for the holiday as sincerely as possible. 
It makes a needle of fondness grow in the gyral folds of your beating heart. A sudden deluge of empathy, and affection that makes you idealistically moony-eyed at his penchant for keeping promises. 
Still. 
It's unneeded. 
You take a proactive role in trying to find the man who keeps evading the grasping fingers of the law (however twisted it might be), and make it quickly known to him that you're here as a partner, at his behest, and not as some fancy tchotchke to be placed, indiscreetly, on the sidelines. 
It's unlike him, though. And you wonder more about the potential ramifications of this mission each passing day that you're stuck in the stifling confines of some luxury inn where the men around you whisper furiously to prevent your success. 
You ask him about it, and receive a piercing stare in response. A gruff, don't worry about it. This is my muck up, not yours. 
It hardens your resolve. 
All it takes is a few words whispered while rolling sarmale, and you manage to find a man in Brașov who might be hiding the person you're looking for. 
Information that turns out to be more fruitful than anything else thus far. 
You tuck it close to your chest. The man is landlocked and stuck, hidden in plain sight by the soldiers there to help you. He isn't going anywhere. 
But you might be. 
The lack of progress is noted by the people who requested your aid on this—the ones that must have conveniently forgotten that the person who kidnapped foreign dignitaries was also the man they had over for summer parties at their luxury estates in Dorobanți.  
They dangle Price's visa over his head during a massive row after—yet another—delayed piece of information is forwarded to you by the local police. By the time it lands in your hands, on his desk, it's too late. 
More blocks. More opportunities to catch the man squandered, lost to politics. 
The schism between Price and them widens. A wide chasm, uncrossable. 
You catch his eye, and wonder if you should share the secrets you keep, but you don't. Not yet, anyway. There's a mountain on his shoulders. A mess of politics that you know makes his blood boil. 
You want to ease the burden. The tension. 
But it doubles to a new height when one of the men jabs his finger in your direction, eyes blazing, and calls you his assistant. 
"My what?" Price's words are eerily calm despite the gyre welling in blue. "What did you say?" 
The man doesn't back down. Neither does Price. 
It's his warmth by your side, unflinching, as he stands tall and guarded, leaking anger and ruin at the slight against you. A white night in red-hot anger. 
You've fought your own battles, cutting your knuckles on cracked teeth until bone embedded itself into your cartilage like a macabre set of brass knuckles in jagged ivory. You throw punches like you're fighting for your life behind the screen of a computer that ticks away for eight hours, and pretend the emblem on your lapel doesn't weigh you down to the pavement below. Your own weight to carry. 
And you don't need this, don't want it, and a little part of you wants to rebel, to throw your fists around like they're the white-hot slugs spat out of the barrel of a firearm, but it's tapered down when he seethes beside you. 
His hands curl into fists before swinging up, latching onto the straps of his tactical vest. A defensive manoeuvre, you once thought, but now you know better. 
Price isn't clinging to the woven fabric to keep himself steady, to ground himself. It's to keep those burly fists from sinking into the gullet of the first man who wanders too close to the rapacious maw of a starving beast. 
Your eyes are fixed on the hairs dusted over his knuckles as he flexes and tightens his grip until they bleach white like dead coral, sharp bones threatening to break skin. 
Those hands once pressed you tight to his front, holding you steady as you stumbled through the haze of want, and longing, and kept you steady as the boat rocked with the calm waters of the neverending sea. 
(—wish you called more—
—don't know what you're sayin', love. What you're startin'. Gonna let you turn around, and pretend this never happened, mm?—
—but—)
They tightened then. Hard enough that the skin around your hip bones bulged between his thick fingers. Your flesh filling in his gaps. His eyes dropped there, fixed on the way you fit between him despite the pain that bloomed where his fingers dug deep. 
(—jus'... Walk away, love—)
Tenerife feels like a dream. A wisping cloud of want dredged from the depths of your subconscious yearning. 
But the ache in your side where his hands rested the night before kept you from casting away the words as drunken ramblings and masticated dreams. 
Those hands whiten under the strain of holding himself back, and you recognise the colour as the same shade when he held you. Paperweight. Featherlight. You wonder, then, your eyes only for him as the world you've been invited into erupts into chaos and blame tinged with the palpable weight of unwelcomeness and claustrophobia when he hasn't been holding himself back—
"Talk about 'em that way on more time, and I'll stick your goddamn heads on a post for that slimy bastard you want to protect so fuckin' bad to see—"
—from you.
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You find him near the window, gazing out at the snow-covered roof-tops of the sprawling village below. 
He stands, his back angled toward you, with one hand curled around the crystalline glass, filled with three fingers of scotch—the perfect amount, he stresses, and gives credence to his sincerity with each winkle in his brow—and a lit cigar in the other.
Price brings the cigar up to his lips, eyes roaming across the smear of lights in the distance. You catch the spark when he inhales, the orange intensifying into an angry red. 
It casts a halo of orange on his face, and the fire makes him look somehow older and younger than he really is. An timeless visage of a man who, hours earlier, was recklessly throwing himself into the very same fire he syphons from as it burns the tobacco in his stem. 
The brief flash of red is complemented by the harsh dandelion-yellow from the illuminated city when it spills through the glass, frosted with condensation from the heat in the room, and the brutal chill kept at bay by a two inch glass panel. 
He's a composition in contrast. 
The only light inside the room is from the kindling fireplace, and the jaundiced lamp on the desk table, spilling over the documents you'd come to talk to him about. The dimly lit interior bathes his back in a clouded tenebrous, darkening the crevasses, divots, and the contoured folds of his body until they're shadowed in the gloam. It's perfectly juxtaposed to the highlights that catch in the warm golden glow of the sleepless city just below. 
A perfect chiaroscuro, you think. 
The sight of him, then, at peace—or as close to it as he can manage—steals the air in your lungs. The words on your lips. 
The look on his face is pensive, yet coloured in a hue of consternation that seems to quiver through the dark pools of blue gazing back at him. A ripple of disquietude. A splash of rumination. It all coalesces into an unfathomable knot of emotions that bloom in the deep divot of his brow. Ones you can't even begin to unravel. 
(But your fingers itch to try.)
There is something about him in absolute stasis—completely unguarded, and unburdened by the devastating world around him—that spools under your skin like a fever. A webbing nebula that weaves with the threads of venial sin until it tangles around you. 
When it tightens, it feels like a noose.
This moment of privacy between him and the thoughts locked tight inside his head makes you feel a little bit like you're intruding on a moment not meant for your eyes. A sacred thing. A voyeuristic spectator. 
You should leave. Let him have the sanctity of this moment to himself, where the pensive, introspective look etched into his brow is shared only with his reflection, and no one else. 
An unwitting birefringence. A glance inside Pandora's box. 
You try to tiptoe back in the direction you came from, a manila folder tucked under your arm, but the wood is worn. Aged. The floorboards creak when you press your heel into them, letting out a loud, jarring noise that seems to reverberate through the arched ceiling, and against the frosted glass that encompasses the vast majority of the eastern wall.
Loud enough, you think, to crack the class. His reverie. 
Price makes a noise in the back of his throat when he turns to you, brows drawn tight in wordless displeasure at the intrusion. Recognition bleeds into ashlar blue. His shoulders ease when he sets his steeled gaze on your cringing form, one foot out the door, and the other fixed firmly in your mouth. 
The way he relaxes when he finds it's just you melts some of the embarrassment away. The tension dissipates, sheds itself from his coiled muscles pulled taut from carrying the weight of everything on his broad back. 
(The world, then, is tucked into the corner when he dropped it earlier.)
"Sorry," you murmur, hiding another wince. "I didn't realise you were—" Brooding. Another grimace. Your foot slides deeper into your mouth. "Uh—"
"It's fine," he says, his voice hoarse from the growling threats he made against the Romanian diplomats who insisted on your help only to shrug off everything he suggested. 
He clears his throat before he speaks, taking the brief lull to drag his gaze down your form. Tendrils of something soft liquify the hardened edges of sapphire—a look you haven't seen on him since Tenerife—but it pauses at the folder you try, and fail, to discreetly tuck further into the crevasse of your body. Hiding it, futilely, from view. 
Something sours across his face. The half melted azure firms into unbreakable obsidian. 
"Business as usual, then?" 
You huff. "Not if you don't want that." 
Price inhales deeply at your words, and you know that he can't. He won't. 
You mourn the loss of that soft, unfathomable look on his face when the only concern he had was the condescension from his breath hiding the view of Sinaia from his appreciative gaze. 
A look full of something aching. A want, maybe; a need. Things you can't begin to connect to your stalwart captain. 
But then you think, again, of Tenerife. When he caught you mid-stumble, hands heavy and hot on your flesh. The look on his face ages younger than the grey around his temple would lead you to believe. 
"Careful," he murmured, eyes lighter somehow as he pulled you in closer to his side. "Can't go falling all over the place." 
It was your quip of, "but you'll catch me, won't you?" that made him feel almost reachable when he turned away from you, the tips of his ears dusting a pretty pink. 
"Jus' watch where you're goin'."
You think about it now—about the unfathomable distance between the stars. 
Between you, and him. 
(And then of broken walls you mend with your own hands.)
"Jus' bring it here," he mutters, moving toward the desk cluttered with everything he was trying to avoid. The desk you brought him back to. It pinches something sour inside of you. "I'll 'ave a look at it."
Price sets the glass down, and reaches for the crystal ashtray left near the edge of the table. When he drags it closer to the fish-shaped map of Romania, decorated with little red stickers of possible hideouts for the man you're supposed to be catching, you count four ends of a cigar in the mess of ashes, all smoked down to the stem. 
Concern gnarls in your gut. 
"Busy day for you, Captain?"
All he gives in a noncommittal grunt in response before eying the chair with a touch of wariness as if sitting down now will prevent him standing up again. It might, you think, tentatively taking stock of the neverending pages on the desk just waiting for him to tackle. A ceaseless maelstrom that tries to drag him down that endless abyss that leaves stress marks on his forehead, grey hairs around his temple, and grinds his bones down until marrow below is exposed to the rotten air. 
He doesn't sit. A pointed gesture. 
The heels of his palms rest on the edge of the table, and he leans forward over the papers strewn in his familiar organised chaos, and drops his head down between the bracket of his arms, locked at the elbows. 
He's the very picture of exhaustion. 
"I don't have anything good to share with you," you murmur, tone low and susurrus as if raising above an octave will shatter the fragile glass that houses the two of you from the brutal storm outside these four walls. "Mostly a complete repeat of what already happened—"
"Bullshit," he grinds the cuss out like the potency of his tenor will somehow strengthen it into a hex. "Fuckin' politics."
"Nothing we haven't dealt with before," you note, turning to lean against the desk. You mirror his pose in the reverse, fingers curling around the ledge. "It'll smooth out eventually."
He considers your words, lids sliding to half-mass. Lost in thought. In—
Something. 
You're not privy to the war in his head. The battle he struggles through. 
But you want to be. 
You'd give anything to fight alongside him in this moment of quiet contemplation. To aid him in the pursuit of victory, and help ease the burden he carries on his broad shoulders. A weight that makes his heels dig deeper into the ground than any other man you've met. Gravity falls on him harder than the others, but he never folds. Never falters. 
Something shifts when you tilt your head toward him, waiting. Watching. 
Irritation drips down, polluting the cenote until it's a gyre grey. Clouded with the poison of choices that lay in front of him. 
"Maybe," he settles on, rolling one shoulder to alleviate the burn in his tense muscles. "Would be easier if they'd just bloody listen—"
"They will."
His eyes flicker up to you, curling with something playful, you think. Or as close to mirth as the shadows in his brow will allow. 
"You gonna make them?" 
The tone of his voice—smoke cured, molasse thick—is blunt, but—
Baiting. 
Loose tendrils of smoke weep from the end of his forgotten cigar, and curls in the air between you. You taste ash, and feel the burn of nicotine when you breathe in. 
It does little to quell the spike of nerves gnarling in your chest; the itch under your skin. 
Something brims in your pulse. A rapaciousness that seems to burn through your arteries until they're blistered from the heat. You lean back on the desk, knees locking until your legs are straight to alleviate the anxious knot growing in your stomach. 
His gaze drops to your legs when your ankles cross, sliding up to the softness of your thighs now spread plush over the wood. 
Another shift. Poisoned grey darkens into thick tar. Bog water. You wonder how long it would take for anyone to find you if you sunk below the thin film of pleats, swallowed whole by the fen. 
Imprisoned in his clutch. 
"For you? Anything—"
The words slip out before you can stop them. 
His head jerks up. The roundness of his almond shaped eyes can only be derived from your slip-up, to your unintentional confessional between secondhand smoke, and borrowed nicotine. 
A mistake, you think. An accident. A follie. 
But the words are lodged under the syrup-y thick water that leaks down your throat. 
You swallow again, but it feels like you're drowning. 
An impasse. Brutal, and uncrossable. You wonder what he might say, what he might do, and try to ignore the ache in your chest, the bitter throb of anticipation as the lines in his brow deepen, darkening with the stains of his indecision. 
That same wellpool of emotions buoys in ashlar blue when he stares at you, plain faced and—
A touch uncertain. 
It's strange to see him so unsure, so hesitant. 
Price isn't a man who falters in the face of anything. Who concedes, and surrenders. 
His tenacity is what drew you to him. That staunch perseverance that you sometimes wish you could fill each hairline fracture in your soul with. To somehow syphon the staggering presence of him, indomitable and ferocious when he needs to be, into your marrow where it'll congeal and paint the walls of your bones with the same stalwart dedication to a singular gospel that he carries with ease.  
He huffs, then, and the exhale reeks of stale cigarette butts in a damp ashtray. 
"Don't know what you're getting yourself into, love—"
Something flickers across his face, and you wonder if he even meant to say it. Or if the endearment slipped out, oiled by the same elixir that covered your throat and coaxed something closer to the truth, to your hidden wants, out of the depths of your yearning. 
It's unfathomable, though. The mere idea of it being drug from the same hidden well as yours itches between your ribs; a blossom of something featherlight. Hopeful. 
When you look at him, eyes scouring the dividing lines between the face he shows the world—the one with a deeply furrowed brow and obsidian clotting in the crevasses of liquid sapphire; a stalwart sense of detachment, and pointed distance—and the one he shows you.
With you, though—
With you, he's always asymmetrical. 
A singular brow notching up at something audacious you said; one side of his mouth lifted in a crooked grin. The flash of teeth when you murmur under your breath about the stuffy politicians you're meant to be saving. 
Rusted picket fences. Faulty hinges. Open, lax. Void the usual symmetry that makes him Captain John Price; a stalwart presence on the battlefield, shoulders strong enough to lift the morale (and morality) of every soldier under his commands. Has to, you think, or he might implode, crumbling under the stifling weight of his utilitarian choices, and the actions guised under the moral grey dust of patriotism. 
It clings to him. Scars shaped like canines: the teeth of an old, rotten dog. Nightmares in absenteeism. 
He never tells you about them, ever; but you've gotten more than a handful of phone calls during devil's hour to know they haunt him just as much as they do you. 
(And if you've taken to turning your ringer on as high as it will go—just in case—then that's a secret between you and midnight blue sheets.)
The look on his face now makes you think of that mission in Tenerife, when his fingers curled around your wrist after landing in Heathrow. Warm, flushed skin. Rough like a cat's tongue when it slid over your flesh. 
He stopped you from leaving, eyes shaded in stagnant blue as the taxi idled in front of you. 
"Could go for a coffee. Want to come?" He asked, and it was unlike him to stall, but the prospect of more time, and coffee, numbed you to it all. 
You didn't give it much thought, but the words feel almost sibylline now. Hindsight, you think: that pesky little thing that makes you feel like Lleu, caught in the crosshairs of a feud between Arianrhod and Gwydion.
Over burnt, bitter beans and coffee flavoured water, he said: "don't get much sleep anymore." 
"Our late night phone calls don't bore you to sleep?" 
It was a pawkish barb not meant to be taken seriously, but Price, you find, is percipient when it comes to you. 
"No, they don't." He shifted in his chair, eyes cutting toward the mid-morning haze dusting the streets of London in a fine periwinkle blue. He looked older, somehow, in the virginal rays of the dawning sun. The words that slipped out felt softer, subdued in a way that made you wonder if they were meant to be uttered at all. "I sleep much better after them, actually."
Price has a strange ability to leave you both speechless and full of words. Of things, mundane and inconsequential, that you long to spill out over the linoleum countertop. 
More often than not, they're just naked, bare. Raw words not yet shaped or formed into any semblance of meaning, but ones you want to say, anyway. If only to keep the conversation going. To keep him around a moment longer. 
(After all: if the conversation does end, he can't leave.) 
But your lips are glued. Words stuck in the wet ashes that congeal in your throat. 
Your eyes followed the breadcrumbs of his gaze, and found the quieted road of Liverpool Street staring back at you. Drenched in cobblestone grey, and smeared in industrial neon. An uninspiring visage of some secluded corner tucked away from the tourist trap of central London. 
The near hour long drive from Heathrow to London for a cup of coffee is another mystery. Why he invited you where, of all places, isn't known to you. 
He paid for the coffee, the taxi. Said nothing at all but walked you back to your flat in London, the place you stay after each mission brings you back to Heathrow. It's a near twenty-nine minute commute in the opposite direction.
Said no when you offered him a place to sleep for the night, and you tried not to let the bitter sting of rejection show while his fingers curled around the wooden frame of your front door, knuckles turning white from the strain of—
Hindsight, you think. 
The shift in his gaze when his hand snared around your wrist. When he hailed a taxi for burnt coffee in the middle of a city that he couldn't stand—a place you'd heard many tirades about in the middle of the night, all leading back to the same reason for his staunch hatred of London: it's too bloody far from Liverpool. Too bloody far from him. 
When he turned to look out the window to watch your reflections contrasted against drab, grey London. 
Earlier, when he was gazing at the city below. 
It clicks, then. 
He wasn't staring out the window. He never was. 
"Why didn't you come into my flat?" You ask, words thick. Heavy. 
His nostrils flare. "What—?"
"That night in London, after Tenerife—I asked you to spend the night. Why didn't you—"
White knuckles. The look on his face was—
Pensive. Dusted with consternation. Just like—
Now. Then. All the moments in between. 
Like many things in conjunction to this, it's probably your fault. An unignorable truism that sits under your skin like an itch you can't scratch no matter how viciously you claw at your dermis. 
You could have asked, but it wouldn't have mattered. 
The answer was staring at you this whole time. 
Why he called you in the middle of the night. Why he never even bothered to entertain your application to join the 141. Why he looked so troubled when you invited him in. Why he kept you at arms length this whole time, but let you see the gnarled ruins of his soul in the middle of night. 
The delineation of your relationship was drawn in the distance of a phone call at midnight, ones made not because he was lonely or bereft of comfort—
But because he could hang up before he said too much. Widen the gap with a press of his finger. 
You can see him try to pull back again. To put a distance between you greater than this lonely hotel in the middle of Brașov  to Orion's Belt. 
Words—stay, don't, why—caught in your throat. They refuse to come out. A conversation trapped. One you can't start. 
(You've always been better with actions than words.)
And so, you kiss him instead. 
A cacoëthes. 
It's less of a kiss and more of a messy punch to his mouth with your blistered lips. 
Your trembling fingers curl into the straps of his tac-vest. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes. 
His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. Words, you think, like: what're you doin'? or this is sexual harassment and I swear to god I'll sue—
You don't let him finish. Don't let him start, either. 
You fall back on the desk, yanking on his straps. He jerks forward. 
You meet, clumsily, in the middle. An awkward assemblage of limbs; bodies cut across each other like an unfinished T. 
It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss. 
There are moments leading up to this that, in hindsight, make everything seem almost inevitable. The look on his face. The ache in your chest. It blooms from the same vine; a want in spades. You almost weep when he groans against your mouth, teeth knocking together. You taste heme in the back of your throat, and nearly choke on it when his fingers curl under your jaw, holding you steady as he tries to devour you whole. 
It sheds threads of kismet, and tastes a little of finality when you brush your lips against his again, meeting in the middle: a perfect equilibrium. Absolute congruence. 
(Or, maybe, it's the thrill of his taste that shades everything else in a roseate veil; that swallows down the other moments, trials and tribulations that felt more gruelling than your training, and lets the others surge to the surface. Moments of heartache, and pain, and—
And it doesn't matter, you think, a touch delirious; not when you know what his hands feel like when they curl around your waist, when his fingers dig into your skin, and he pulls you closer.)
"Listen—" the word is mangled in his throat; charred from the fire that burns in his lungs. "You need to know what you're getting yourself into."
"You say that like I haven't been thinking about it for years, John." 
It sobers him a bit. He pulls back until a thin strand of space sits between your wet lips and his moussed beard. 
The implication in your words makes his eyes darken. Lids fluttering. 
Want, palpable and thick, pulses in the charged atmosphere between you. A microcosm of your own design: a place carved from stone, ashlar, and shaded in the midnight blue of his eyes. A roseate gossamer falls, veiling you in that corusating haze that makes the world look prettier than it really is. 
Shades of rose. 
The breath he pulls in is tremulous.
When he speaks, it sounds like an orison. A plea. "That so?"
It's a weighted question. Benediction paints his throat, stains the words when they slip out. 
 "Kept me waiting for quite a while."
"Didn't think you were waiting." His hands sear your skin when they slide up your back. His forehead falls, resting against yours. "Not much to sit around and pine over, love." 
It makes you scoff, a wet noise in the back of your throat. "You think I answer my phone in the middle of the night for just anyone?"
"No," he murmurs. His hand lifts, cups your cheek in the seat of his palm. "But I'm not jus' anyone, am I?" 
"Nope. Your a walking contradiction on how—sometimes—nepotism isn't all bad—"
"Watch it."
"Or what, John?"
You're distinctly aware of the age-old idiom about playing with fire, but when he dips his chin, and narrows his eyes at you like that, you find you don't really care much about getting burned. 
His nostrils flare, eyes dark, and hungry. A warring pelagic storm looms over ashlar. Gyre grey. Arsenic white. You want to stain the tips of your fingers in the liquid blooming in his gaze. 
"Might need to teach you a lesson in respect."
"Might need to teach you not to keep someone waiting." 
His mouth is searing it when it presses to yours. 
"Touchè."
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Price tastes of saltpetre. 
Thick, ichorous. An heady elixir that sits heavy on your tongue, leaking down the back of your throat when you swallow. 
A fine sheen of nicotine paints his teeth from the forgotten cigar burning in the ashtray on the table, and when you swipe your tongue across them, chasing the secondhand buzz, it feels anxiolytic. Your head is a slurried mess from it all, and the way he feels beneath you. 
Hard edges, broad—massive. 
His chest expands with each deep inhale. Shoulders tense with the effort of holding himself back. A fact, you find, is more intoxicating than the nicotine on your tongue, or the saltpetre blooming in your veins. 
The width of his thighs make your muscles burn when you perch your knees on the cushion beside them, the stretch a deep burn that feels more arduous than a workout. 
You're not supposed to be kissing your captain. 
To be sat on his lap while his big hands roam your skin, sliding down the knobs of your spine, thumb pressing the grove of each one. Massaging your sides when you gasp into his mouth, a wet noise full of the burn in your joints, the want in your belly—an ache, a need for more. More. More—
It was meant to be professional. 
At work, on the field, in the stuffy headquarters of the SAS building in Hereford, it's meant to be distant. Cold. And—
And not this. 
Not spread open in his lap, one palm cupping the soft cheek of your ass and squeezing until the flesh bulges from between his splayed fingers. Not heaving his name out in a palpable supplication drenched in want. Need. 
Needy. 
"Look'it you," he'd rasped into your neck hours earlier, slick with sweat from your impromptu training lesson in the comfort of his office. "So fuckin' needy—"
And you were. Are. 
"C'mon, cap," you gasped, nose pressed taut against his temple, tongue chasing the briny tang that saturated his hairline. "Give it to me—"
He did.
Over and over and over again. Bending you over hard wood of his desk until your face was full of reports and papers, missions and confidential files on things, and people you'd rather not think about while your captain was spreading you apart with his tongue, and three fingers, and—
It was too much. Not enough. A paradoxical realm where pleasure and pain melded into a single entity. It's veins coursed with a potent cocktail of everything you could easily become addicted to—oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins rich enough to make you dizzy for aeons when it saturated all those gullible receptors in your head—and when he touched your skin with his bare hands, you felt the prickle of it leaking into your bloodstream. 
The rough husk of his voice rasping out his pleasure in your ear is an audible opiate; euphoria condensed into decibels. It rattles your synapses. Your bones. You quiver under his bulk, eager for more. 
Aching for it, really. Want him so badly that it hurts. 
Even after he'd taken his time to prepare you, made you cum from his mouth, his fingers, more times than the chemical slurry of your melting mind could ever try to keep up with, it isn't enough. 
Wasn't. 
His cock feeding into you, stretching you open around the thick of him, until the world around you was awash in pure bliss in the most beautiful shade of blue, wasn't enough. 
"More," you gasped, nerves throbbing like a bruise. Bones battered, rusted from the force of him taking you over and over again. "More, John—please—"
He obliged each time. Sliding home until all you could feel was him pulsing inside of you. The heavy weight of his hips notched against your ass. The branding heat of his hands gripping your hip, fingers curling around your shoulder, as he held you steady for him. 
(Over and over again—)
Price smells of tobacco when he leans in close. Damp ash. The wet end of a cigarette butt. Stale smoke. Mossy, loam. You breathe in the bitter scent of him until it floods your lungs, clotting in each fibril until it's heavy with the tarish resin that leaks from the end of burning cigar. 
"Greedy fuckin' thing," he hissed in your ear, fingers delving into you, feeling his release squelch around him. "Ain't you?"
"Always," you huffed, struggling through the onslaught of your mind buzzing for one more, just one more hit, and your body screaming for respite. "Always for you, John—"
"Stubborn, mm?" 
He didn't give you one more. John is attune to you in ways you'd never anticipated. He just—knows you. Can easily see through the desperation for victory clawing at your throat, sinking it's nails into the delicate skin of your jugular, and hissing rapacious demands that rattle through your vocal chords. 
When he meets the apogee of your mettle, he pulls back. Edging away from the battered fold of your limits once he brings it to a new precipice, a new level. 
Price pulled you against him when your fawn-legs quiver, knees threatening to buckle, and tucked you against his chest, a protective embrace while he murmured words of gratitude, admiration, into your crown. 
That was hours ago, and now—
The hunger rears. Your want is a perfect personification of greed, lust, pride, gluttony all coalescing into a molten desire that spools together, knotting tight against your chest where it tightens in a vice. A pretty bow of your searing need for the man whispering heavenly words of ardour into your damp skin. 
"Price—"
He stops the whine with a nip of teeth against your jugular. "Come on, now," he bares the flat of them on your skin, pinching soft tissue between his incisors. "Rest a bit, love. Jus' wanna hold you, yeah? Jus' like this." 
He leaks benzene, arsenic, and formaldehyde when he murmurs your name into the sticky column of your throat. 
(And when he whispers it so softly, reedy benediction dipped the brush of his blunt affection, how could you ever deny him anything?)
Your arms thread around his nape, wrists locking together behind him. 
The ticking of the clock on the wall is just another reminder of how little time you have, and yet— 
"Stay," he murmurs against your jaw, whiskers scratching your chin. 
Jet-lag. Exhaustion. Wishful thinking. 
Whatever the reason might be, you pry your lips apart and choke out the words that have rattling inside your head from the moment you felt his chest bloom beneath your palms, and knew—without any doubt or uncertainty—that you would follow this man to hell and back if it meant you stand inches away from him for the rest of your meagre existence. 
A tortuous whim. An exquisitely agonising proposition. 
But you've always been rather smitten with poems that break your heart into pieces. Ones where you leave a little part of yourself between the lines that eviscerate your pericardium until you taste heme in the back of your throat. 
Price reminds you of those poems. Ones that blugeons into you with a force so heavy and full, it feels as if it was written just for you. A pain so robust and brutal, that you're sure the lines in Times New Roman were first etched into your bones before they were spilled across the stark white page in black ink. Rotten blood between the pages of your barren soul. 
Your fingers run through the mess on his crown, slick with sweat from earlier, and you nod, mind wandering down that path that leads to closed doors, a locked mausoleum, and with your bruised knuckles, broken nails, and bent fingers, you pry it open. 
Finally, finally—
The words claw up your throat, grasping at the stretch of freedom within reach, and you—
Let them go. 
"Wouldn't go anywhere without you." 
(Not ever again.)
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fatuifucker · 1 year
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IVYYYY!! I SAW THIS NURSE SCARA AND DOCTOR DOTTORE FANART ON TWT A COUPLE MONTHS AGO AND I CANT FIND IT ANYMORE :sobs:
but like imagine going to a hospital and finding out both of em were assigned to help you feel better and they do that by fucking you…
hehehe I follow that artist so I know exactly what you're taking about! there's this one with dottore, this one where he steps on you, and a new one from a different artist
[cw: nurse! scaramouche x sub gn reader x doctor! dottore, medical malpractice, questionable actions, injections, aphrodisiacs, threesome, everything is consensual!]
tags: @midnxght-sweet-time, @barbatosfavouritenun, @edenialucas, @fluffyganyu, @nejibot, @lovediluc, @yumixxn, @teallapril
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Okay sooo I really like the trope of a reader with a weak immune system so imagine that no hospital is able to help you for so long and then you're admitted to this hospital. The doctor you have been assigned to is claimed to be the best doctor in the country. You remember the first time you met him.
You're sick and tired from moving from hospital to hospital. But then you see this man — a crow-like mask covering his eyes and blue hair combed in a neat yet messy way — striding in your room while a petite man in a white and purple nurse's outfit follows him. You recognise that man as that ill-tempered nurse that has been watching over you from afar. You have mixed feelings about being in his care. As the nurse informs the doctor about your condition, the doctor flashes you a toothy smirk before taking your hand in his and kissing the top of it.
"What a poor little thing. Don't worry, from now on, you're in good hands."
Somehow the way he says it is very ominous...
Surprisingly, he rumors were true. With the doctor's specialised treatment, your condition has improved drastically. The doctor — he tells you to call him Dottore — says you can even be discharged in a few months time. It's truly a miracle but somehow...the thought of you leaving this place without seeing your nurse and doctor again arises a little pang in your chest.
Nurse Scaramouche is definitely as ill-tempered as they say. He brings you your meals with a scowl, glares at you from afar and it's like the only reason he sticks by you is to insult you for hours. One time when Dottore was giving you your medicine, you brought up the idea of changing your nurse.
"Is that so? On the contrary, I think he's rather fond of you."
"What makes you say that, Doctor?"
"He never puts this much effort to care for any of his patients. You're the first. I'd say that you...interest him."
That guy? Interested in you? You couldn't possibly picture that. But then slowly, you do realise the subtle details. From the way Nurse Scara would glare at other nurses that touched you or whispered behind your back, to the way he would 'reluctantly' comfort you when you felt miserable for being too weak to do the most menial of tasks, it's through these things that make you grow an appreciation for him.
Soon enough, you realise you're enamoured with both of them, and their feelings are mutual.
It's then when the 'treatment' becomes...promiscuous. It starts off with Dottore putting his palm on your thigh for too long, stroking it up and down way too close to your nether region or even placing his stethoscope on your chest for too long as he roams his palm around your chest for a heartbeat. Then it turns to Scara fingering/stroking you in the middle of the night when you can't sleep while you whimper for more.
This weird predicament feels so odd. Almost wrong. But you're aware they both know you want them. And when they touch you, you crave for more, you need more. It just feels so right.
One night, Dottore and Scara comes into your room with a little reward for putting up with all those exhausting treatments: a syringe filled with bright pink liquid. You recognise it since Scaramouche showed and explained to you various types of medicine to lull you to sleep after a nightmare.
"I'm scared of shots."
Dottore's chest rumbles as he chuckles. "That's fine. Scaramouche has ways of calming you down. Take off your pants and we'll do the rest."
With shaking hands, you remove your pants and sit on Dottore's lap. Immediately, Scaramouche goes to his knees and buries his face in between your legs. His tongue tastes your sex, deftly using the appendage that makes your mind go blank that you're forgetting all about the needle beside you until you feel your body become increasingly hot and you're out of breath. Dottore discards the needle, positioning you on your hands and knees.
"Hush now, we still have one more special treatment for you. A warm, filling medicine from the both of us that will instantly make you feel better."
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themanicwriter01 · 5 months
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Douma Headcanons
TAGS: NSFW
PAIRING: Douma x anyone really
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he has been a psychopath since he was a child.
he is not going to change out of the blue for ANYONE, even if he admires them in some way.
like let's be for real, he likes the way he is, it gives him advantage over others in a different, twisted way.
compared to other demons and even the demon slayers, Douma does not let emotions get to him and works methodically to accomplish his goals.
but of course, he finds amusement in teasing and harassing people, but this is just a way for him to satisfy a dark and hidden part of himself.
and by that, I mean he poses as a human, entirely looking the part, but kills and eats women like a sport.
with that being said, even if you had some sort of talent, intelligence, etc., Douma would not hesitate to keep you alive to amuse him or simply just kill you.
I truly believe the only way for him to start feeling again would be to get him to a state of near death to where his body turns on his emotions again as a last instinct.
and let's say that did happen, that sounds like a fucking nightmare.
to be the object of affection for a hundred-year-old demon that just regained feelings??
good luck.
he'd kill everyone and everything out of an emotional outburst the second it happened, relishing in the way killing feels before coming back to you and demanding your love.
if (and hopefully) he regains some sort of emotional stability, he'd entirely focus on his s/o because the feelings of love are so addictive compared to his emotionally cold past.
he's very obsessive, to the point his identity becomes his s/o's.
if you like swimming, he likes swimming! if you like art, he likes art!
but with that being said, I canon him to be someone who enjoys philosophy because of his original nihilistic viewpoint, but regards it in almost every conversation after gaining his feelings back.
he also likes classic literature.
but relationship wise?
fuckin' hell.
good fucking luck.
he reminds me of a hyperactive kid always rambling about something, skipping from one topic to the next, simply because he is so happy talking to someone he loves.
he's a natural anxious attachment.
a lot of, "where did you go?" "can i come with you?" "please, don't leave me."
if you're more avoidant, this relationship will turn into an addictive cycle very fast, to when if you push away subconsciously, Douma is coming right back wondering what happened.
but lets say this is a normal relationship with him (which i find near impossible), but he enjoys physical touch and quality time the most.
imagine its sunset, Douma is about to join you outside by the gardens the second the sun dips down from the sunset, and cuddle up next to you in a blanket, reading, and serving you hot tea <3
so cute
he likes more lowkey outings where his main focus is on you.
"A heartless cardinal is like a moving iceberg that can laugh."
NSFW:
his sexual nature is certainly odd compared to that of a human man.
he spaces and thinks about things during sex, like how the tile of floor would be a beautiful color in another shade or how your hair was different compared to last Tuesday.
it's canon that he is kind of slutty, from changing lovers extremely often in order to feel some type of 'childish love'.
if he was in love, by all means do I think he would be a passionate lover, if not a very service kind because he feeds on the reactions of others.
his reliance on others is very. concerning.
he will study your breathing, your scent, your facial expressions; every tiny detail of you will be under critical analysis as he performs a sexual act.
your entire being consumes him as he caresses your skin, as if he was trying to absorb you through sheer touch alone.
but he cant cause you're not dead
lol
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siriusleee · 5 months
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iii. sterling silver
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Zombie Apocalypse AU | SIMON RILEY x f!READER
↳ SUMMARY: The world is trying to knit itself back together after fracturing apart. You're trying to put yourself back together with it; Simon Riley is just trying to stay alive. ↳ WORD COUNT: 2.2K ↳ TAGS: mentions of cannibalism, mentions of shooting things, mentions of dying. smut to come. canon typical violence to come. additional tags to come as the story progresses. female reader. no mentions of "your name". reader is given a nickname. ↳ AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you to the discord girlies for letting me bounce things off of you guys. If you guys like the works, consider donating to my ko-fi. ↳ TAG LIST: There will not be a tag list for this story, as Tumblr has issues with letting me tag people. To get notifications of updates, please subscribe on AO3 or turn on notifications for my blog.
additional chapters | ao3
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You don’t want to tell him your name - it feels vulnerable - the type of vulnerability you couldn’t feel in years; the type of vulnerability that you don’t want to have with a man who’s treated you like he has. 
“Tell me yours first,” your voice feels raw - you haven’t spoken this much in years. 
His fingers flex on the rifle; in his eyes, you can see that he’s having the same internal struggle you are - the same fight to keep every little part of himself that he can. Finally, his hands loosen on the gun, and he sets it down, leaning it gently against the wall. You keep your eyes trained on his hands, on the scars that litter the skin, watching to see if he’ll suddenly snatch the weapon up again.
“I’m Ghost.” The words roll off of his tongue heavily, as if he’s speaking a foreign language he hasn’t spoken in years. As if the restrained gentleness is so odd on his tongue that he can hardly stand the taste of it.
“That’s not your real name.”
“‘Course it’s not.”
It’s not an explanation, not one that’s going to stretch this conversation out longer and keep you from giving up a piece of yourself to him. So you don’t, the first thing coming to mind spitting from you with half-hidden vitriol at having to say anything.
“My dad used to call me Dove.”
It feels strange to tell a stranger something about yourself. This stranger who nearly burnt you to a crisp and force marched you through the forest. Apprehension and a sort of giddy feeling hang in the pit of your stomach - there hadn’t been a single person you’d told that too since before the ending.
His expression doesn’t change between the black fabric of his balaclava; without a word, he disappears into the back room with your bow and arrows still clenched in his hands.  His absence causes your brain to kick into overdrive: you could run now, but would he catch you? Would he need to catch you - why did he even bring you here? He still has your bow, and without it, you might as well resign yourself to starving between the trees.
You could take his rifle, but those are loud and attract Biters. Then there was the problem of finding ammo, so sparse these days that you might as well use it as a club for all the good it would do for you.
Before you can make a decision, Ghost arrives back into the room, hands empty of your equipment. He gestures to a chair on matchstick legs, hauling his pack onto the table. You hesitate to sit down, but finally give in when he shoots you a poisoned look.
It’s an immediate relief to be off of your feet. Blood rushes back into your toes, they sting painfully as you flex them in your threadbare boots. The skin that blistered beneath your burning pants itches terribly, and your chest feels like a weight of bricks lay on it, but it’s nice to just sit after nearly a day of walking. The muscles in your back ache terribly, and not for the first time since the entire world fell to shit, you find yourself wishing for a hot bath.
Your eyes never leave Ghost as he pulls two brown-gray packs from his bag; he tosses one at you, and you catch it on the end of your fingertips. You trace your fingers on the plastic package, your stomach grumbling and clenching at the sight of it.
“How did you get one of these?” You ask in awe, ignoring the suspicion that’s been plaguing you for the day.
“Does it matter?”
No. It doesn’t matter. Your hunger is stronger than whatever suspicion or anger you have at Ghost; anomalistically you rip into the bag, spilling the contents out across the table.
Crackers. Instant coffee powder. The little water-heated bag of lasagna. A chocolate chip cookie. Three different types of water flavors. Strawberry jam. 
It’s more food than you've seen in one place in months. 
You start with the cookie, shoving the entire thing into your mouth - it’s old and brittle. The chocolate has the chemical flavor of a cheap candy bar, but the sweetness is still so strong after having nothing similar in five years. Crumbs fall out of your mouth and onto your shirt, you hear your mom’s voice in your head chiding you about being ladylike, but you push it away. It’s not the kind of memory someone needs right now.
Ghost slides a half-filled bottle of water towards you; you snatch it up to activate the water heater of the food, holding it in your hands as it heats and reveling in the feeling against your cold fingers. 
“You haven’t eaten much.” 
It’s a statement, but there’s no judgment in Ghosts’s voice as he watches you grip the food, waiting for it to be done. You feel like a stray dog with a bone; you’d kill him if he tried to take it back from you. But he doesn’t do anything but lean back in his matchstick chair, his MRE unopened in front of himself. 
“I eat what I can find.”
“Can you find much these days?”
You don’t like how he talks to you, like you’re a dog he’s trying to placate and earn its trust. Running your tongue across your teeth, you watch him, suspicion creeping back in again. It doesn’t feel right - the tone he’s talking to you in.
“Why did you kidnap me? Are we supposed to stay here forever?”
Ghost’s jaw works beneath his mask.
“I told you: I don’t know who you might run off to.” Each of his words is measured, bitten off at the perfect size.
“And tell them what? That a man with a skull mask nearly burnt me alive?”
“Yes.”
It’s maddeningly vague, but before you can retort Ghost speaks again.
“You should eat that. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Annoyed but starving, you tear into the package. The smell makes your mouth water, and for a second you’re back to dinner in your mom’s kitchen, but that second passes and you’re tearing into the hot food with your fingers. You’d be embarrassed if you weren’t so hungry. But all you’d had for weeks was the smallest squirrels that were too slow for your arrows. Most of them you’d eaten raw, your stomach getting hungrier with each passing day. A few you’d laid out in the sun to turn into jerky when you could spare the time to sit in one place. Deer were too large for you these days, muscle tone disappearing with the summer.
You lick your fingers clean, and then the package too. When you’re done, you turn your attention to the crackers, smearing them with the strawberry jam and then licking the crumbs from the package. 
The only light left is the oil lamps gently illuminating the room. Once you wash the taste of the food from your mouth, your suspicion returns. Ghost hasn’t moved the entire time and when you’re done, he pushes himself out of the chair. His MRE sits abandoned on the table - you eye it suspiciously. There’s a test here, but you can’t work it out.
“You can sleep over there,” he says with a jerk of his head towards the dusty couch. “I’m taking watch.”
Watch for what? You want to ask, but you keep the thoughts to yourself, the taste of jam lingering on your molars. Ghost stares at you for just a moment too long, until you stand painfully and walk to the couch. Sitting for so long has made the pain in your side sharper, the feeling inside of your chest at being locked inside of this small cabin with a strange man more hollow. Curling onto the end of the couch, you settle yourself so that you can see the front of the cabin through the adjacent window, plastic yellowing where it had been taped over a broken pane. The forest outside shivers with the coming snowstorm - you should have been halfway to your winter camp by now. You don’t even know how to get back on the trail.
Ghost slams the door shut behind him; the sound makes you wince. It’s as if he’s completely unafraid of noise, of drawing attention to himself. You don’t like it.
It makes your stomach twist on itself, and you regret eating so fast. You think you might throw it all up. Ghost settles down onto the little stairs right outside the door, rifle resting across his knees. You let your head recline on the arm of the couch, watching him, and waiting for the right moment.
It comes deep into the night when your eyes are fighting to stay awake and your mouth tastes like cotton. He stands, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, and shakes his arms out. His boots crunch over the snow and frozen leaves as he walks at a measured pace along the edge of the cabin.
The moment presents itself to you, and you take it. The door opens with a ragged creak and slams with a shut that rattles the night behind you. But you slip against the snow, knee hitting the hard ground painfully. You let out a pained grunt, and the sound must alert Ghost to your escape.
Feet pounding the ground, you slip on the snow that’s gathered in the night. Behind you, Ghost breathes heavily, but even as the sound of his boots hitting the ground follows you. You should have gotten your arrows from wherever Ghost had hidden them.
You do a hairpin turn around an oak tree, and you hear Ghost shout from behind you.
“Stop! You're going to run right into them!”
You barely have time to think about his words before the ground drops out from below you for the second time today. Your hands scramble against the roots and vegetation that cover the drop-down, trying to find a purchase as you plunge toward a thick darkness. 
In the snow-covered night, you crash into a ravine. The ice-cold water immediately pulls the breath from your lungs. You hear Ghost muttering curses as he slides down the drop-off. 
You sink up to your wrists in icy mud as you try to crawl away from him, but your body is too broken from the day, the pain that scorches through you is too heavy and cold for you to go too far or fight back as Ghost wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you, your hands squelching as Ghost drags you from the mud. 
He clamps his hand over your mouth, whispering harshly for you to shut up as he drags you back towards the wall of dirt and roots.
You try to kick him, but pain lances through the hip you fell on; Simon slings you behind the edge of a half-fallen tree covering your body with his, still hissing in your ear to shut up. You nearly bite your tongue from shivering so hard. He pushes you hard into the ground; you try to push yourself away from him when you hear it.
The cadence of human feet up above you, the steady clink of chains, and the low moan of Biter's. It comes from the bank opposite of you and Ghost. A sliver of flashlight appears at the top of the ravine, sweeping along the banks. Men’s voices sound out in the darkness.
“It was probably a fox screaming.”
“Check all around, just in case.”
You think you’re going to throw up, your heart is in your throat as Ghost presses himself harder onto you, trying to fold the two of you into the ground so that you’re not spotted. 
Ghost hisses in your ear, close enough to make you shiver. 
“That’s the body snatchers you’re so worried about.” He shives, his elbow digging into your side painfully, your surely broken rib seeming to crack harder beneath the weight of him, “Ought to let them catch you for this.”
The threat is enough to make your heartbeat quicken; you wonder if Ghost can feel it in his chest as it’s pressed against yours. The sound of chains and Biters moaning rolls through the cold night air, Ghost’s breath is warm on the shell of your ear. The men talk, quietly enough that you can’t make out their distinct conversations. It’s hard to breathe with Ghost’s hand wrapped over your head, keeping it held closely to the ground.
You want to look up and see if their flashlight is hovering over the two of you; you may have laid there all night and into the next night for all you know. But when Ghost lifts himself off of you, you shiver violently from the loss of his warmth. Pink tinges the horizon even though daylight is still hours off. 
The mud coats almost every part of you, Ghost grabs your shoulder roughly and flips you over, brown eyes boring into yours, and his fingers digging painfully into the bones of your shoulder.
“You try to run away again, and I will let them catch you. Do you understand me?”
You don’t answer; you don’t think you can make your jaw work, but Ghost shakes you, loosening your tongue. The sterling silver moon is being pushed out of the sky above him, his brown eyes hard.
“I understand.”
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bunnystalker · 5 months
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albert wesker hcs (re0-1)
hi!! first post! let me know if it's ooc or not, i'm trying. tysm for reading! tags below.
cw; fluff, angst, hurt/no comfort, follows the events of re1. boyfriend! wesker bc he's so sillypants and i love him lol. not proofread, written under the influence, whoops! somewhat clingy but mostly cold reserved bf wesker. jill and chris mentioned, valenfield implied.
petnames used; primrose, little dove.
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boyfriend wesker!, who's not always the most affectionate but makes sure to always have a hand on you at all times, unless you're apart. he's always holding either your hand, your waist, or the back of your neck. his hands are slightly calloused, cold, and smooth from both his lines of work. you'd shudder upon initial comment, mutter something about his fingers being "cold as ice," and melt into his touch anyway.
boyfriend wesker!, who, when you're away, sends you updates on his day so you're not worried where he's gone. if he's reading a book, he'll send you a line that makes him think of you, be it a fact or something a character said. when he's working and you're at home, he's frequenting his Nokia 6150 in his office to see if you've messaged him. he's private about your relationship with all his coworkers, Umbrella or R.P.D.
boyfriend wesker! who hasn't told you about his job at Umbrella, and likely won't for your own safety. He can't risk getting his little dove involved, especially if you're not the science type. he only tells you things you'd want to hear about his position at the R.P.D.- stories of Chris being an astounding meathead and Jill's crush on him. he'd update you on developments because he knows you like that sort of thing, even if you say you don't. off-handedly, he'd mention Barry's family, and look at you with some odd kind of longing.
boyfriend wesker!, who is incredibly protective deep down, but refuses to act out or make either of you look foolish. if you're getting hit on, he'll intervene on your behalf and simply pull you aside. he knows it's not your fault. he could never be mad at you, his primrose.
boyfriend wesker!, who has a very big soft spot for you. while he's cold with anyone else, you are the only one he'll let some of his walls down for. he feels bad for lying to you about certain things, but he has good intentions- or so he thinks.
boyfriend wesker!, whose feelings are stronger than he thought they could be for someone. his heart yearns for you at all times, and though he doesn't say it often, he would kill for you. his own feelings scare him at times- when he wakes up in the middle of the night, you by his side snoring away, and wonders how he got here in the first place. it's those times he might pull away and try to close himself up again.
boyfriend wesker!, who pushes you away when he can't handle his feelings. he reprimands himself for not being in control of himself- that's all he really wants, control. he tries to keep himself at a good distance so you're content with him, so you trust him. he doesn't realize he's manipulating you, nor that he's hurting you. he doesn't think he can.
boyfriend wesker!, who, when you end up leaving him (as you should), doesn't bat an eye. although it does hurt, he knows better than to beg, god forbid cry, at your feet as an attempt to keep you for longer. he has never been that kind of man. instead, he wishes you well and helps you pack your things. of course he's curious as to why you're leaving and in due time, he'll make all your suspicions come to life. soon enough. he'll confirm your worst fears- that he's been hiding from you, lying to you, for your entire relationship.
ex-boyfriend wesker!, who, months after the breakup, isn't over you. still sleeps with a shirt you left behind used as a pillowcase for a pillow he hugs to get comfortable. he'll wake up in the morning at times and feel around for you, his heart sinking in his chest at the reality of your absence. when he gets ready and stares annoyedly at himself in the mirror while he brushes his teeth. imagines it's you slicking his hair back with a light-feeling gel instead of himself. if he thinks about it for too long, he can hear you making little comments about how long his hair has gotten or how soft it is. his lips press into a thinner line at that, and his jaw clenches.
ex-boyfriend wesker!, who carries out his plans to get rid of S.T.A.R.S. and wonders what you'd think of him now after he's tried to kill his employees (and almost succeeds. that damn Chris.) you wouldn't look at him the same, but the twisted and frankly delusional part of him hopes you'll tell him that it's okay. that you'll still kiss him how you used to, or touch his arm and reassure him that he didn't do anything wrong, that he's justified in his actions. although these delusions would only carry him so far, as he needs the real you- not just an apparition of you.
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bonny-kookoo · 10 months
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Yoonkook
𝓓𝓸 𝓡𝓮 𝓜𝓲 [Intro]
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They say it only takes one bite for a vampire to get addicted.
Tags/Warnings: Vampire!Yoongi, Vampire!Jungkook, Human!Reader, Angst, poly AU, emotional confusion, blood (duh), did I mention Angst, fluff, romance, drama
Length: 3k words I think
There is no taglist for this fic!
A/N: Hi yes I wrote this somewhat drunk at a barbecue restaurant guys pls I didn't check ANY grammar this time
🩸.━━━━━━━━━━.🔴.━━━━━━━━━━━.🩸
Jungkook never wanted this life. He never chose to be like this, never made the same mistakes Yoongi did when he was younger. So even to this day, Yoongi sometimes feels a certain sense of pity for the young man.
Yoongi got infected when he was not even twenty years old. He chose the risk- knew what could happen if he was to participate in underground blood trading. But he needed the money. He needed to survive. And back then, even now, the quickest way to make a lot of money, is by offering your blood.
It didn't even take a month until he noticed the first signs of infection.
Fatigue, loss of sensation in hands and feet, odd food cravings and night sweats. It turned into cramps, dizziness, headaches and migranes, soon to be followed by nausea and the inability to really function anymore. He couldn't concentrate on anything. He couldn't live like this.
When he was sent to the ER by a roommate of his, back then, he already knew what would happen. And later that night, he was diagnosed.
Vampirism.
Yoongi wasn't surprised. Neither was Seokjin, his roommate, who knew what he had done to gain the money he needed to fund his survival. It didn't surprise anyone.
Everything changed.
He had to carry a specific passport of some sorts with him from then on, one that would hold all information regarding his condition, blood donations, everything. Even criminal records- though to this day, Yoongi has never had anything written down like that in his booklet. He's a calm one- or so the nurses say whenever he visits the donation center to receive his monthly donation.
Yoongi actually worked as an introductory patient here and there- helping new donors who feel scared of donating blood to someone with vampirism for the first time.
It's how he met Jungkook.
jungkook got infected only two years ago- by a now former lover, who never told him that she carried the infectious disease. She had promised, assured him that she wasn't carrying the active variant of vampirism- but that she instead was a 'sleeper', unable to infect other people by bite. And with jungkook so in love and trusting, he had believed her.
She had almost killed him, Yoongi now knows. Had almost murdered the young man who had done nothing to ever deserve to be used like that.
Today, Jungkook trusts again. Jungkook is happy again- he smiles, and grins, and loves everything around him again. Well- or so he would, if he could.
"Maybe today.." Yoongi offers, helping his now partner up the small set of stairs into the donation center. "I'm sure they'll have something for you today." he mutters, though he doesn't really believe it himself.
It's been months.
It happened almost three months prior, when suddenly no blood donation seemed to improve Jungkook's situation anymore. He just got sicker and sicker, like Yoongi when he was first infected and refused to get help or seek treatment- but for Jungkook, there was no treatment. The only thing they could do was test out other blood types-
but nothing worked.
And today, he waits again. Hour after hour, Jungkook already asleep on his shoulder in the waiting room, patient after patient being called in and leaving again-
but no one calls his name.
🩸.━━━━━━━━━━.🔴.━━━━━━━━━━━.🩸
You almost trip as you walk into the waiting room, apologizing silently to the people sitting down close by. There's an elderly lady, a mother with a young child- and two young men, one of them sleeping against the shoulder of his friend next to him, who seems to anxiously type away on his phone.
"Ah yes, we got your blood results today.." the nurse says, typping through some things before her eyes widen. "Let me just.. uh- let me ask something real quick, yeah? I'll be right back!" she rushes out, walking into a different room with some papers she'd printed out, leaving you a bit concerned with yourself as you stand there, next to where the two young men sit. One of them groans a bit, as if in pain- and you now notice how pale he is, sweat covering his forehead.
"I know, I'm sorry.." the man next to him sighs, watching how his friend's face scrunches up for a moment. "Fuck this." he suddenly mumbles, waking his friend up. "hey- Jungkook, come. I'll figure out something better." he says, helping his friend stand-
though he trips, falls right into you, who barely manages to keep him upright.
"Fuck- sorry, He's harmless." The man next to him apologises, and you wave him off.
"No problem." you say, keeping your hands close to the young man you now know is named Jungkook, who seems to almost lean into your touch, hazily turning his face towards you- eyes a deep cherry red.
"Vampirism?" you say, and the man next to him clicks his tongue.
"he's harmless." he repeats, as if you just insultet Jungkook- which you didn't actually intend to do.
"Oh, no no I didn't mean it badly!" you say, earning the gaze of the stranger on you. "just surprised, is all. Will he be okay?" You worry, and the man sighs.
"...yeah." he simply says. "I'll figure something-"
"Mister Min!" the nurse who just talked to you comes out the room, waving some papers. "We have a match!" She smiles, and mister Min next to you suddenly seemed to have turned 180 degrees- because now he looks almost cute, with wide open, round eyes and slightly parted lips. "miss, if you would follow me?" she says, and you nod, walking after her- mister Min and Jungkook right behind you.
"Oh, so he needed a donation?" you wonder, looking at a struggling Jungkook.
"Yes, his body has rejected all other blood options we've had." the nurse informs you, and you hum.
"Will she have enough?" Mister min from behind you mumbles, helping his friend walk. "Have you donated before?" he asks you almost as if to accuse you, and you shake your head, a bit nervous now.
"no- like, no I never donated, I don't know how much blood you give at these appointments." you say sheepishly, and the nurse opens a door down the hall before she steps aside to have you all walk in.
"for first-timers, we typically don't take too much blood." she explans, motioning her hand for you to sit down on a chair that looks awfully similar to the one's at the dentist. "So don't worry." she smiles.
"but-" you ask, watching Jungkook mostly fall into the chair next to you. "won't he need more than just a bit?" you worry, and the nurse sighs.
"anything will help." she tries to reassure, earning a glare from mister Min. "your donation is important either way."
"I'd like to give as much as I can." you say, determined- earning a surprised look from mister min- and even Jungkook seems to move his head to look at you with tired eyes. "I don't have anything else to do today, and the day off tomorrow. And I feel great!" you proudly exclaim. "I did all the stuff the clinic sent me- like, eat healthy, do regular sports, all that." you announce happily, and you could swear that Jungkook looks almost-
as if he wants to smile.
"we'll see how you do, okay?" the nurse says, a hand on your shoulder. "you can tell me to stop at any time, no shame in it." she makes sure to tell you, and you nod as you watch her leave for a moment.
"you don't have to do this." Mister Min says. "like she says, even the beginner amount is enough." he mumbles, but you shake your head.
"no, it's fine." you reassure them. "I wanna help. He looks like he really needs it." you joke a bit softly, watching Jungkook quietly bow a little. "are you guys close friends?" you wonder, and Mister Min scoffs.
"oh- Oh! I didn't know!" you laugh. "It must be hard to watch your partner suffer like that." you say, and he nods.
"somewhat." he says. "we've been together for.. two years now." he says, and watches how you seem to turn a bit red at that.
"I didn't know what to do." he confesses. "I'm.. thank you. For doing this." Mister min tells you. "he never chose this, so I'm glad you can help him for now until we can figure out something long term." he says.
"Oh I can keep donating!" you say. "I'm not scared of needles and stuff. See?" you point towards your ears, which are both heavily pierced with pink and silver jewelry. "I don't mind coming here regularly."
"you don't have to." Mister Min says again.
"I know." you say. "but I want to." you tell him almost teasingly, and he cant help but smile to himself a little.
reassured.
When the nurse comes back in, and sets everything up, you're still calm. "Blood pressure is nice." the nurse says to herself, writing something down. "we'll monitor how your body behaves during this donation, just to stay safe." she informs you, connecting some things. "and we'll monitor him, to make sure he doesn't fall into a blood-rush." she reassures you, and you nod, a bit unsure.
"what's a blood rush?" you wonder, and she nods.
"Sometimes, if people infected with the sleeping variant of vampirism, a blood donation can trigger the disease to 'wake', so to say. It could become active in that case, and would cause his body to go into shock." she explains, wiping a spot on Jungkook's arm with a disinfectant wipe before she places a needle there so he can receive the donation. "It's also why we won't let him.. reiceive the donation normally. We have to monitor and control how much exactly he receives." she explains. "because he might not be able to control his hunger."
"oh." you simply say, nodding.
"he won't go berserk and try to eat you." Mister min clarifies, glaring at the nurse. "but it's like refeeding syndrome in a human. You can't just give a starving person a buffet and expect them to only eat a bowl of soup." he tells you.
"yeah, that makes sense." you nod, cringing a bit when the needle is pinched into your arm as well.
For a good while, it's silent as you get comfortable, looking at the ceiling lights while you feel how your arm weakens a little. Meanwhile next to you, Jungkook seems to breathe deeper, stronger, color returning to his complexion.
"So.. what do you work as?" you wonder, a bit awkward as you look at Mister Min. "you don't have to answer.. just.. the silence is kind of weird." you giggle, and he nods.
"I guess." he agrees. "I'm a producer. I make music." he offers, and you nod, lips parted. He catches himself staring at them for just a second.
"Oh that's so cool." you smile brightly. "I always wanted to do somehing with art too, when I was younger. But my dad thought that was stupid, so he didn't allow me to go study it." you say, and Yoongi can spot the way you seem to grow a little more tired now.
"What did you do instead?" he wonders, speaks softly, gentle, as he watches you.
"hm, at first I studied finance and stuff. Because my dad wanted me to." you explain. "I always aimed for his praise, but I realized years into my studies that it wasn't worth the effort. So I dropped out." you shrug. "Now I'm an author, for like, fantasy novels. They're pretty embarrassing though, I won't lie." you giggle. "I work as a waitress on the side. To have enough to live comfortably, you know?" you mumble now, and the nurse chimes up.
"Can you sit up a bit for me?" she asks you, and you nod, doing as she says. "your blood pressure is dropping a little. How do you feel?" she checks in, and you look over at Jungkook, who takes in a deep breath as if for the first time.
"I'm fine." you smile with your gaze on him. "I think I just got a bit too comfortable in the chair." you giggle, and Yoongi watches.
You're odd.
"Hmhm-" she hums in approval. "we'll stop in a few minutes to not overwhelm him. You're doing great, miss." she praises, and you nod happily.
"Do you have someone to drive you home?" mister Min asks, and you shake your head.
"I'll take public transport." you inform him, but he shakes his head.
"I can drive you. That's safer." he offers, and you shrug, before nodding when the nurse gets up to clip up the narrow tube connected to Jungkook's arm, waking him up it seems like.
He blinks a couple of times, before he rubs his eyes, like things are too bright for a moment. His arm is free of the needle, as he looks around, at Yoongi- then at you. It's like he just woke up- his eyes finally open, his posture a lot straighter, and while he's still a bit pale, he doesn't look as bad as before.
"nice to meet you." you joke, slurring your words a little as you hiss when the nurse accidentally removes the needle too fast.
"Nice to meet you too." Jungkook answers for the first time-
voice gentle, and forever ingraved into your mind.
🩸.━━━━━━━━━━.🔴.━━━━━━━━━━━.🩸
You're yawning in the back of his car as Yoongi drives through the busy town, having received your adress earlier from you. "How do you feel?" he asks Jungkook next to him.
"hungry." he laughs. "honestly, I've not felt this good in a while. Like I can breathe again." he chuckles, before looking back, watching you in the mirror of the car- his eyes smiling at you when you smile back, sleepily leaning against the car door next to you. "You really didn't have to go all out for me." he says back at you, but you wave him off.
"nah, It's fine." you reassure. "I'm a big girl, I can handle it!" you joke, and Jungkook laughs in the front, shaking his head. You seem really bubbly and energetic- well when you're not all exhausted from donating blood, that is. And you also make him taste a bit of a bitter aftertaste- because you seem just like him, before he was so harshly kicked in the gut by his ex partner. So trusting, helpful, selfless. He hopes you won't have to make the same experiences that he's had to go through in the past.
You don't deserve that.
"Do you live alone?" Yoongi asks from the front- you've finally gotten his name a few minutes before. You nod, and he seems to think a little. "Will you be okay?" he asks, and you nod again- stubborn as ever, it seems like. "why did I even ask.." he sighs a little playfully, making Jungkook laugh from the passenger seat.
"Can I maybe have your number?" Jungkook asks. "Just to check in with you. If that's okay." he asks, and you nod, pulling out your phone to have him type in his number into your contacts.
Yoongi kind of wishes he was this bold too. But maybe that's where Jungkook fits him well- makes up for his own shortcomings.
"I'll probably leave you on read for the entire day today though" you laugh when you get your phone back. "I'm absolutely beat." you giggle, and Jungkook nods.
"I can only imagine." he watches you a bit, when Yoongi pulls into a parking lot in front of the tall apartment complex you live in.
"Home sweet home!" you exclaim, stretching your arms before you open the door. "thanks for bringing me home. I'll see you next month!" you joke, and both men say their goodbyes as you close the door behind you, walking towards the entrance of the apartment complex before you dissappear behind the door.
And in secret silence, as Jungkook and Yoongi drive home, both can't help but wonder.
Why does next month sound way too far away?
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kangen-wanshi · 11 months
Note
300 man, that's a lot of followers congrats!!!
For the event, “We should get married.” + Childe and/or Welt would be fantastic (idk if you're allowing two different characters from different series though, if not feel free to pick between them) congrats again!
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A Proposal ft. Childe, Welt Yang
The question in regards of marriage often orbit the two of you - yet, either of you seems to ever took the question to heart. Or at least, that's what the two of you thought.
Tags: Fluff, separate, marriage stuff duh, no gendered pronoun used
A/N: Ty anon!! Here have some marriage stuff with best boys of the series:))
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Childe, He always asks you
He’s naturally a big family man - both of you are aware of this. And ever since he saw how you’re getting along well with his family, his urge to marry you just keeps getting stronger and stronger each day. He likes to propose to you ‘jokingly’. Throwing the question of “Will you marry me?” as a way to compliment you everytime he finds himself falling in love with you, every time he sees you doing something even remotely small. Cooking? “We should get married so I can taste your cooking everyday.” Bandaging his wound? “You’re so careful in taking care of me.. Let’s get married so you can dote on me all you want when I return to you all bloodied and bruised.”  Just walking around enjoying each other’s presence on a date? “You’re so lovely. Marry me?” Maybe you’re just dense, maybe it’s just his way when he delivers those lines, but you often reciprocate his question with a light “Sure” and a fit of giggles that color your cheek red. And he never said anything after! Honestly his fault for being too busy falling head over heels for you.
It was just like any other day. Visiting Liyue Harbor, taking a stroll when the sky slowly turns to the color of red, fading into night every minute as the air grows colder.
You had ended your walk on the piers of the harbor, leaning on the wooden railing, watching ships come and go - merchants resigning for the day, fishermen going into the night sea. And as usual, in his eyes, you’re as stunning as ever.
“Hey,” his gentle voice coaxed you out of your mindless trance. His gloved hand came to hold yours, as he gave you a gentle squeeze, “Let’s get married.”
You laughed - ah, he could drown in your voice of delight over and over, and he would swim back up just to hear it all over again. He looked at you shaking your head lightly at his request, before finally settling your eyes on his smile.
He waited for your usual answer, ‘Sure’, or ‘Of course’, followed with flattering giggles. But it never came. He was then greeted by your look of surprise. Did his question come out a little odd this time? Was it the way he looked at you so carefully, so lovingly - so gentle, an absolute contrast to his bloodthirsty attitude, that you managed to catch your words stuck between your tongue?
When you looked at him again for sure, you spotted an adoration you’ve never seen before. A hopeful gaze, a loving look, a side he preserved just for you, waiting for an answer.
You mirrored his eyes and crinkled on your cheek when you smiled back at him, squeezing his hand in return with as much adoration, leaning closer to him as you placed a chaste kiss to his lips.
“Let’s.”
And this time, you promised him about the true meaning behind your answer.
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Welt Yang, He keeps wondering..
It’s a running joke in the Express Family at this point. As much as March and Caelus like to call Himeko their mom and Welt their dad (or sometimes uncle), they kept encouraging you and Welt to get married already. To the point that even Dan Heng has become part of this cheering squad. You always blushed and waved your hand dismissively at their remarks, followed by Welt who also shares a similar amount of embarrassment, sighing before pinching the bridge of his nose.  All their efforts always ended with the two of you leaving the question hanging in the air. Not an uncomfortable type - but the one where the two of you let the question circle in your brain without explicitly mentioning to one another. Welt have thought of marriage - as obvious as it seems. Perhaps it came with age, perhaps it came with his past experience, perhaps it came from a place within his heart full of his love for you, either way, it’s rare to see a day where he doesn’t think about marrying you. He’s thoughtful about these things. Careful planning, watching your reaction every time he brought up the topic subtly, seeing your view on marriage itself, attempting to answer the questions he’s been asking himself through normal conversation.
Both you and Welt had finally managed to step foot in Jarillo-VI, after much much asking Himeko - who, simply giggled at your request and let you go to explore the land of Everwinter.
Both of you had a curious yet fun expedition together treading through Belobog and the various areas around it. Welt continuing to observe the corrupted areas, while you, enjoying the culture and befriending some of the locals you’ve heard so much about from the trio.
It’s only when Welt returned from exploring the Underground to visit you at the Museum, that he found a rather.. Endearing sight. You were walking through the hallways of the Museum, a blonde little girl and another boy seemingly leading you through the various artifacts on display. 
You seem to be highly invested in what they’re saying, even though Welt swore some of those stories couldn’t have been true. 
Either way, he saw how you entertain the children in their stories and guide, providing the truth of your own (that you already know about), but twisting it so that it’s believable for children with high creativity and much, much spirit like the pair.
He didn’t even realize that he’d been staring at you from a distance, watching your cheek and your eyes lit up and softens at the childrens’ antics. 
It was not until a lady with blue hair in white came to your aid to peel the children off of you that he realized he’d been staring - and that you had spotted him from a distance, gesturing him to come over with a smile and open arms. 
“Why didn’t you come over to me earlier?” You giggled as he sink himself into your embrace, burying his face to the crook of your neck with a chuckle, “Sorry, love. I was just.. A bit in a daze when I saw you and those kids having fun,” he pulled away, “You looked like you had so much fun - I.. Wouldn’t want to ruin that.”
“What nonsense, I’m sure if you were given the chance to tell tales to them, they would be smitten with your every word.” You giggled, kissing his cheek before pulling him along to sit on one of the many benches in the Museum, sitting in front of a painting, with your head leaning on his shoulder, hands still intertwined with each other as Welt traced circles on the back of yours.
In comfortable silence, your eyes are stuck on the painting hanging on the wall, while his eyes have stolen few, if not many adoring gazes towards you. 
“If I were to ask you to..” He inhaled, “.. To marry me, will you?”
You giggled, pulling yourself away from his shoulder as you looked up to him with a grin, “Oh? Where does this bravery come from?”
“Just.. A thought.” He rolled his eyes playfully, now holding your hand within both of his, tips of his fingers found their way to your empty ring finger, “If we could.. I would love to tie it together with you.”
His words weigh many emotions behind it. If he were to stay and bind himself to you - what about his home? What about his planet? His final destination? Dozens of questions flashes through your mind and various reasons to not just because you don’t want to trap him with you, but when he looked at you so softly, when his pursed lips held his words true, you swallowed your questions and smiled up to him.
“If you asked me to marry you..” you leaned your head back on his shoulder as one of his arms wrapped around your shoulder, his head resting atop of yours, “Of course there’s not other answer than ‘yes’.”
Welt speaks true with his eyes. And at that moment, you saw your reflection in his eyes - one that shows how he truly sees you.
As his home.
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misspanicdead · 1 year
Text
Eddie is the type of kid that can't be left alone at the playground.
Wayne's only officially had the kid for a few months, but Wayne can already see the way the other kids are wary of Eddie. Maybe it's because his boy is just a little too loud, a little too daredevil, swinging from the monkey bars and nearly giving Wayne a heart attack. Maybe it's because Eddie's still not great at talking to strangers, preferring to hide behind Wayne's legs until he knows they can be trusted. Or maybe it's because their parents tell them in hushed whispers to stay away from the trailer park kid who's daddy's in jail and showed up at his uncle's doorstep in the middle of the night littered in bruises.
Either way, Eddie's usually the odd man out with no one to play with. So, naturally, Wayne steps in. He spends entire afternoons squatted underneath the play structure, pretending to be a troll under the bridge, chasing Eddie from one end to the other. Every time he manages to grab a foot the kid screams so loud it echos off the surrounding trees and Wayne has to bite back a smile- he's supposed to be a bloodthirsty troll afterall, and he's pretty certain they wouldn't smile at their victim so fondly.
He plays tag, hide and seek, and just generally angers his already aching knees, but it's all entirely worth it to see this kid- his kid now- smile and laugh so carefree.
Wayne had never wanted kids, but he already knows that he'll never regret having this one.
When the beginning of the school year starts approaching them, Wayne begrudgingly leaves Eddie planted on the swingset and marches over to the bored looking housewives gossiping on the bench. He hates to do it, knows the kind of stares they give him and eddie when they're supposed to be watching their own kids, but he has to start figuring some things out about the school. Like what kind of supplies Eddie's going to need, and where he should take him for the mandated vaccines.
Surprisingly, the women are very helpful. They even give him information on things he didn't even know he needed to ask. When suddenly one of them lets out a horrified gasp, followed by several others. Wayne already has a hunch, but he follows their line of sight to the swingset where Eddie is currently licking the chain of his swing.
"If you'll excuse me ladies," Wayne says and starts making his way over to his nephew. He's not really surprised, Eddie's taken to licking a lot of things recently, claiming he "just wants to know how it tastes." But Wayne can't say he isn't worried about the germs.
Eddie instantly perks up when Wayne sits beside him on one of the sturdier looking swings. He hops up and climbs his way into Wayne's lap, boney little elbows and knees stabbing into his stomach and thighs. Wayne grunts but otherwise let's the boy get settled.
"Are we gonna go high today?" Eddie asks, looking back at him with a gap tooth grin.
There's already a twinge in Wayne's knee and Eddie's arms are starting to turn a little pink from the sun and they really should go find some water to wash Eddie's mouth out with from the swing chain. The women are staring at him reproachfully again as Eddie curls his little fingers around the chain just below Wayne's, ready for takeoff.
And that's what Wayne cares about. This little boy who doesn't trust anyone but trusts him. His kid who makes Wayne's life and his home and his heart feel full.
Wayne sighs, presses a kiss to the kid's mop of curls, and says, "Yeah, kid, we're gonna go high."
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