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effortandmore · 11 months

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worth all your while (ch.6) | knj x f!reader

chapter summary: you figure some things out, namjoon figures some things out, and the two of you finally talk about what that means for your future

pairing: namjoon x f!reader

rating: explicit (18+ please)

genre: smut, fluff

au: celebrity

chapter warnings: swearing, this is like... 4k of smut with feelings and then a few other words. it includes: unprotected piv sex (use condoms irl pls), oral (f!receiving) which includes biting (a little bit), nipple play (kind of), a little bit of cum eating, there's some hair pulling (but not like... aggressively), they finally DO communicate well which is such a departure it feels like it should have a warning

chapter word count: ~5.9k (total 35.6k)

a/n: hello, this story is finally over! thanks for going along with me if you have, i really appreciate the support this one's received. thanks to @the-boy-meets-evil and @ugh-yoongi for their support of this fic, although this chapter is unbeta read, so all mistakes are my own. please feel free to lmk what you've thought, i always appreciate your kind feedback so much!

previous chapter | masterlist | read on ao3

Even though you’re upset, you think the least you owe Namjoon is a reply to the messages he’s left.

After a lot of thought, and a lot of listening to Taehyung (who is always so smart about this kind of thing), you send him a simple, “I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk.” It’s true, and you will, but you can’t quite get there yet. It’s not even mostly his fault—at least your irritation about the night before isn’t. The clearer light of morning helps you see things less emotionally, a little more rationally. The immediate sting of him saying there was no one special in his life is gone—you get it, you really do. What’s left, though, is the wondering why the two of you never really talk about your relationship, why you’re more than six months in and he still won’t say he loves you…

It’s not the public denial of your relationship that’s really bothering you. It’s the silent, private ones. It’s the way he was clearly still upset about Jeongguk when he said it—you’re not sure if he said it because he was mad. That kind of pettiness doesn’t sit well with you.

Without all those, what happened the night before wouldn’t have stung so badly.

To his credit, he accepts your message, doesn't push you, replies quickly. “Whatever you need. I’ll wait as long as you need.”

And it’s a conflicting feeling, because you believe him. You really, deep in your bones, know that he will. But you need something more. Something solid and concrete and true. There’s a prior version of you that would have thought it was silly. Thought that words are words and they only mean as much as you let them. But now, you need him to say it. Because he says what he means (you know that much by now), you want so badly for him to say he loves you, because you’ll believe him, because you’ll know he means it, just like he means it when he says you can take as much time as you need and he’ll wait.

Is not saying it the same as not meaning it?

You can’t decide. It’s unfair, you know, to discount all the kind and wonderful things he’s done for you, to not count them as small (or big) declarations of his feelings. You know there’s meaning in the everyday, in the way he’s made space and time for you in his life.

But he’s a poet; words are his tools and his weapons and his offerings. So, as selfish as it is, you want his words more than anything.

These are the things you think about all week. You go back to work, and mercifully, you don’t have to proof or help edit the interview with your maybe-still-boyfriend. You spend relatively quiet nights in with Tae and Jimin, and you spend a lot of time on your own, just thinking. You write in your journal, you drink too much coffee, and you do the hard (but silent) work of figuring out how you want to move forward.

On Friday, you’re at a small cafe by your apartment, one you used to spend a lot of time at before you started spending most of your time at Namjoon’s. Headphones on, journal out, you’re sort of mindlessly scribbling out short writing prompts while you nurse your latte. It’s something you’d taken up with Namjoon—gave you something to do while he worked and kept you feeling creative, which your job sometimes doesn’t. You’re not sure if it’s been fruitful professionally, but it’s cathartic to weave fiction, to let sentences meander across your page with no direction sometimes, no deadline. It’s a good way of working through all the noise in your head that can be so, so loud.

“Hey,” you hear above your headphones, a familiar voice that you don’t place until you look up from your notebook.

“Oh! Hey, Yoongi.” You slide your headphones off and motion for him to sit. Seems like the polite, if awkward, thing to offer. And to your sort of surprise, he takes you up on it.

“How are you?” he asks cautiously.

“Is that you asking, or Namjoon?”

“Does it make a difference?”

You smile. He’s got a point. “I’m okay,” you answer. “You can tell him I’m okay.”

Yoongi leans back in his chair and considers you. “Maybe you should tell him.”

“I’m getting there. What’re you doing here, anyway?”

He hums and drinks his coffee. “Your roommate told me you might be here. Had to come back three times this week before I caught you. He misses you.”

It’s a partial answer, but it’s enough. You’ve seen Namjoon in a bad mood before, you wonder how it’s affecting his work; Yoongi’s work. It makes your heart take a little pause. You figured he did, you miss the hell out of him, too. But it’s still nice to hear. No reason for Yoongi to say it if it wasn’t true.

“I miss him, too. But it’s not that simple.”

“I know. And I also know that it gets more complicated the less you talk about it.” You nod, not sure what to say, but Yoongi keeps talking, so you don’t have to know quite yet. “Have you thought about what it would be like for you if he’d said he was in a relationship? Really thought about it?”

You get the sense that it’s a rhetorical question, so you don’t give him an answer, just take a drink of your latte and wait for him to continue.

“It would maybe take less than a week for people to figure out who you are. Then it’s cameras and reporters and fans following you everywhere. All the time. You see how it is for him—it would probably be worse for you at first. They’ll dig up everything about you. Even thought about being mean to someone in high school? You’re a bully. Ever drank too much and made embarrassing drunk videos with your friends? They’ll be on the internet. If it’s hard now, it’s going to be almost impossible after.”

“Almost feels like you want me to walk away…” you say carefully.

“No.” Yoongi shakes his head. “I think you’re good for each other. I think you love each other even if you two can’t figure it out. What I’m saying is that you might think it’s not fair for him to keep things between you private, but it’s a lot more unfair if he decides to make things public without talking to you first. It has to be your decision, not his. Your life is the one that’s going to change.”

You pick at the corner of your notebook. It seems so simple when Yoongi says it, but you’d never thought about it that way. Makes a lot of sense when you consider it.

“I think I understand that,” you concede. “But what he said that night isn’t the problem.”

Yoongi smiles. It’s a little smug, a lot knowing. “Let me guess—it’s what he hasn’t said that’s making you nervous.”

“How’d you know?” It feels a little weird that this guy you don’t know that well yet can see through you so easily.

“I’ve known Namjoon for a long time.”

“And?”

“And I know he loves you.”

“I wish he’d tell me that himself.”

“What did he say when you said it to him?”

And that stops you in your tracks. Because you, logically, know you haven’t said it either. But now that someone’s sitting in front of you making you face it, it seems a little unfair that you’re holding him to a standard you can’t even meet. Or haven’t yet, anyway.

“I—”

“Look,” Yoongi says, standing up from the table. “I don’t know you well enough to know your reasons, but I know his. Just talk to him. Maybe it’s less complicated than you think.”

You tilt your cup toward him and give him your best smile in exchange for everything he’s given you to think about. “Thanks, Yoongi. He’s lucky to have you.”

“I know. And we’re lucky to have him,” he says, soft and fond.

The thing is, you know Yoongi’s right.

It’s late when you find yourself standing outside the door to Namjoon’s studio. You know the code to get in, but you don’t know if you’re in a place where letting yourself in would be welcome. Feels like you’re back to the beginning, where you might need to announce yourself. Your finger only shakes a little when you reach to press the small button with the lightbulb icon on the keypad. The first time you’d seen it, you’d thought it was so clever—of course he’d never hear anyone knocking, but the flashing light gets his attention quickly. It’s just a matter of him being in a place where he can stop what he’s doing to open the door.

You shift your weight from left to right and wait.

You fiddle around in your pocket with a gum wrapper you’d shoved in there after lunch. It’s one thing you don’t get about Seoul, how it can be so relatively clean compared to cities back home, but there’s never a trash can around when you need one.

You should have texted, shouldn’t have even assumed he was here.

Maybe he just left the light on last time he was here.

Maybe those aren’t his stupid custom Nikes sitting outside the door.

Mayb—

“Hey,” he says, a little surprised sounding as he opens the door.

“Hi.”

Neither of you move for a long beat. It’s not awkward, it’s never been awkward with him, really. You just aren’t sure where to start, don’t know how much you can ask for, so you start small.

“Can I come in?”

But Namjoon’s already pulling the door open wider, gesturing for you to come into the room. You notice right away that there’s still your favorite pair of slides by the door. It makes you smile even though this whole thing seems so serious.

“You thought I’d get rid of them?” he asks, eyes fixed on you while you stare at the shoes.

“Didn’t know what to think.”

“You want to sit?”

You nod, slip your shoes off and exchange them for the slides, and pad over to his couch. It makes you feel a little nostalgic—it’s strange how much can change in a matter of days. You hate that your last memory of being in the studio was weird, desperate, jealous sex with him. You hate that you haven’t taken the time to replace it with any better memories. You especially hate that you don’t know if he wants more memories with you.

Namjoon looks a little wild when he sits in his studio chair and swivels it around to face you. Behind him, you see the pile up of water bottles, spent konjac packets, a couple chicken boxes, a few beer cans… The man himself has mussed hair under his hoodie and dark circles under his eyes, looks like he’s been throwing himself into work at the expense of everything else. Well, you see gym clothes in the corner, so maybe not quite everything. He’s predictable in that way, likes a physical manifestation of his moods, whether it's in his music, exercise, or anything else.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” he says cautiously.

“I think we should talk. Sorry it’s taken me so long.”

He shrugs, and there’s the Namjoon you know. A little pouty, a little selfish, always battling to let a better version of himself come out—one that’s more confident than you think he truly is. “S’okay,” he mutters.

“It’s not. Even if we’re fighting, it doesn’t help anything to shut you out. I know that, and I’m sorry I did it to you.”

“Thank you,” he says, raising his eyes to meet yours.

You let out a long sigh. You’d thought about what to say the whole way here, but nothing sounded quite right, nothing really conveyed wholly what you wanted. Sometimes, you think it’s because you know how important words are that they’re so hard for you to find in situations like this.

“This isn’t working,” you start.

Namjoon lets out something that can only be described as an honest to god whimper. He looks like you just broke up with him or something.

Then, you realize it sort of sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing.

“Let me finish,” you add. “This thing we have? Where we laugh and fuck and go on dates… Where you’re basically my best friend—don’t tell Seokjin—and the best sex I’ve ever had at the same time?” This, at least, makes him smile. “This is working. But the thing where we don’t ever talk about it? That’s not working for me.”

He nods in agreement. His smile is gone, but at least he doesn’t look hurt anymore. Looks like he’s thinking, like he’s trying to decide what the best response would be. Really, given how little you’ve spoken over the past week, month, months if you’re being honest… you’d take anything.

“That’s fair,” he says. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“Is this about the jealousy or about the interview?”

You smile. “Neither and both?”

Namjoon laughs. It’s still shier than you’re used to, but bit by bit you feel the chill between the two of you beginning to thaw. It’s starting to get easier the more you talk, and you kick yourself for thinking you couldn’t have always just been this honest.

“I think the jealousy and the interview wouldn’t have been issues at all if we were better about talking to each other in the first place. Sometimes, I think… I guess I’m just not sure where you stand. I want this so much… Want you so much. I know why you said what you said at the interview. It only stung because I thought you were still upset with me about Jeongguk. Saying that because you’re mad is hurtful. Saying it because it should be my choice, not yours, to tell people I’m your girlfriend is actually very kind. But being with you… like loudly and publicly? It’s a lot to put on the table when I don’t know where your head’s at.”

He looks a little bewildered, and that’s understandable, because you feel like you just talked the equivalent of a marathon. “You don’t know where my head’s at?” he repeats as a question.

“I think you like me?” you reply, just as unsure.

Namjoon scoffs and stands up from his chair. He crosses the room and sits on his knees in front of you, takes your fidgety hands in his. “No,” he says firmly. “I definitely love you.”

“Oh,” you breathe out, not expecting that. Not expecting the way it rolled off his tongue so easily.

“I thought a lot about us this week,” he says, squeezing your hands in his. “And I realized that all the times I was sure I’d said I loved you and you hadn’t said it back? Turns out, I hadn’t really said that at all. I said I wanted to see you, I wanted to know you, that I didn’t want you to push me away… But now I am saying, and I really want you to hear me, that I fucking love you. And whenever you’re ready to say it back, I’ll be here. Even if it takes another 200 days. Another 200 of our 200 days.”

“Joonie, we’ll be dead in forty thousand days.”

“I’m not a mathematician.”

“I’ll probably still be in love with you though,” you admit softly. “In forty thousand days.”

“Yeah?” Namjoon sits up so you’re eye level with each other and grins the sappiest of wide, dimpled grins.

You nod and squeeze your fingers around his.

“I’m sorry and I love you,” you say.

“I’m sorry and I love you, too,” he says right back. Just like that.

And Yoongi was right again. It’s not that complicated.

It’s not complicated when Namjoon’s lips press into yours, slow and unhurried, sweeter than you’d let yourself remember. Certainly softer than the last time you’d been in the studio together.

It’s not complicated when you then reach down to pull your sweater off. Namjoon’s eyes widen watching you on his couch in your bra—like he’s never seen you this way before, and you find it helplessly endearing.

“You want it off?”

All he does is nod as you reach behind yourself to unclasp your bra. Grinning, you take it off slowly and let it drop to the floor.

And you want to savor the moment, memorize the look on his face, the way his fingertips trace careful tributaries across your ribs, the way he sighs like he’s at peace just looking at you. But it feels like you’ve been waiting to be back with him forever, even if it’s only been a week. It’s hard not to touch him in return, hard not to chase the pleasure you know he’s capable of giving you.

So, you reach down to guide his hands up to your chest and say, “You can touch. I want you to touch me.”

A groan escapes him and he stretches up to kiss you again as he begins to knead your breasts in his hands. You lean your head back and sigh as he takes a nipple between his fingers and teases it out taut. In your vivid imagination, you can see the smirk he’s giving you before he takes the other between his teeth, gently biting, then running his tongue over it, alternating between the two in a steady pattern.

It’s a helpless feeling—you’re reduced to just soft moans and snippets of his name rolling off your tongue. You think you almost tear up when he caresses your jaw, tells you that all he wants is to be able to make you feel good, to hear that you want him, to hear that you love him.

Overwhelming in the best way.

The only time he pauses is to lift his head and capture your mouth again in his, tongue more insistent than before.

“I can’t do what I want with these on,” he whispers against your lips and tugs at the waist of your jeans.

“And what’s that?”

“Fuck you so well you forget the last time,” he says, with too much regret and too much sincerity.

You lean back on the couch to let him unbutton your jeans and pull them off. “How about we remember the last time a little,” you say with a grin, “because the hair pulling was kinda hot.”

“Oh baby... you can’t just say things like that.” He sighs as your pants hit the floor, “You’re beautiful.”

He takes a minute to let his eyes run up and down your body; his hands follow them, tracing your curves. When you let your gaze drift from his face, you can see he’s hard just from looking at you and from teasing your breasts.

Everything in you tells you to kiss him again, but just as you start to sit up, Namjoon halts the movement with a kiss and gentle hand on your chest to push you back. You move so you can sit up on your elbows instead and watch him run his hands down your thighs, pushing your knees further apart as he scoots closer. And you’re already so wet; skin slick, ready for whatever he has planned next.

“Is this okay?” he asks, breathing against you and kissing the insides of your legs as he reaches out to hold one of your hands.

“Yeah... really okay.”

Two fingers meet your clit and he starts stroking you softly, giving you a second to adjust. But when you squeeze his hand and whimper, he moves a little faster and your noises get more insistent, a bit louder.

“Can I taste you?”

“Oh god… please Namjoon.”

You almost laugh; you think you’ve never seen him move so quickly; replacing his fingers with his tongue. Long, flat strokes over your clit and lower, letting out a moan against your core, and then pausing to tell you how good you taste, how much he’s missed you.

His fingers tease at your entrance as he sucks your clit into his mouth… runs his teeth just barely across it.

You reward reward him with a, “Fuck, Joonie… yes,” so he does it again as he pushes a finger inside you.

You’re all whines and whimpers and trembles as he adds a second finger, and then a third; not even bothering to be patient anymore. How can either of you possibly be patient with each other? You: squirming and dripping wet and saying his name like it’s the only one you can remember—him: persistent and knowing exactly what you like, exactly how much you can take.

As he licks over your clit, his fingers curl inside you and he strokes there, moving with a bit more purpose as you push your hips up to try and take him deeper.

“Namjoon, please...” you whine when he lays a hand across your hip to hold you in place and slows his movements, trying to draw it out for you and for him, too—it’s sweet the way he’s still trying to make it last.

But it won’t, not much longer. “I’m so close,” you breathe out.

Your head falls back as your thighs start to tremble against his face, and you grab a fistful of his hair, forcing him to keep his mouth on you as he lets your hips go. The moan he lets out when you tug a little just pushes you even closer—you finally get to arch your back up to push his fingers deeper inside.

“Oh fuck… oh my god.”

A small smile makes its way across his lips as you buck your hips up into him and go stiff, pulsing around him and giving a drawn out moan of his name as you come on his hand and tongue.

As you collect yourself, or at least catch your breath, Namjoon climbs onto the couch above you and starts kissing and sucking on your neck, mindlessly brushing one of your nipples with his thumb.

“Joonie?”

“Sorry, is that too much?” He freezes and you almost laugh again. It’s such a 180 from the last time you slept together.

“No... no, it’s great. I mean, you could do anything to me right now and I think I’d let you.”

He smiles at you, “That good huh?”

“You’re always good to me.” You scoot up to get your legs underneath you on the sofa and he matches you, sitting upright so he can keep eye contact. “It’s just that this all feels very one-sided.”

“I’m having a fine time.” Grinning, he moves his hand to his mouth and licks your orgasm off of his fingers one by one as if to prove it to you. And christ, you’ve never been so turned on by anything in your life—a million options rush through your head, wishing he’d let you get your lips around his fingers, his cock, anything just to make him feel good, really.

“But we’re not done,” you say as you reach over to stroke him through his joggers.

Namjoon chokes on whatever he was going to say when your hand makes contact with his cock.

“Can I?” You ask as you sit up and move to start lifting his shirt off.

“Yeah, ‘course you can.”

Bold fingers skim over his skin once his shirt is gone. As you watch him watch your movements, you swing a leg over and straddle him, feathering kisses over his neck and chest, capturing each of his freckles between your lips.

“Love you so much,” you say as you catch the one right below his bottom lip. Every single part of you feels like it’s absolutely on fire thinking about how he makes you feel so much more of everything than anyone else ever has. “Namjoon, you’re gorgeous you know?” you ask as you place hot, open-mouthed kisses over his neck.

“Fucking love you like crazy,” he groans when you hit a particularly sensitive spot under his chin. “Can’t believe it took us this long to get it right…”

His muscles flutter beneath you, and it’s incredibly cheesy, you decide, that it matches the sensation inside your chest. Beneath you, his cock is filling out, fully hard now. And you’d been nervous before, to even show up here under the circumstances, but now you’re just ready.

You’re ready to do anything for this man, and it still wouldn’t be enough. All you can think about now, worries forgotten, is everything he’s given you. As ridiculous as it sounds in your head, you’re ready to spend as long as he’ll let you giving him something back, figuring out how to keep making each other happy. Shimmying back to give yourself room, you notice him looking at you like you’re his whole world, and god do you want to be. “Still okay?”

He nods, watching watching watching you touch him, still letting one of his hands skim your skin anywhere he can reach, as if he can’t bring himself to stop touching you now that he’s been granted renewed permission.

You lift off of him to pull his joggers off, and this part, this you’re sure you’ve always been good at together. “Gonna touch you now, Joonie,” you whisper before you lean back in to kiss him.

“I’ll die if you don’t.”

It’s an easy laugh you let out against his lips between kisses and you wrap one hand behind his neck to play with the short, soft hairs at his nape. With the other, you run your fingers through your own wetness and then begin to stroke him, grip on his cock firm and steady. You run a thumb over the tip and then stare in his eyes as you bring it up to your mouth and lick his precum off.

Payback.

“I’ve always loved the way you taste,” you tease, as Namjoon groans and lets his eyes roll back. “But now you should remind me how you feel,” you say as you slide off his lap and lay back on the couch and let your own hand drift between your legs

“Jesus...”

“Please? I want you to fuck me like you love me,” you say quietly.

“I think it’s the only way I know how,” he admits, looking just as lovestruck as you feel.

Moving in between your knees, he slides his hands under your ass to pull you closer. It’s a strange fit on the couch, but you just barely manage it—one of your legs dangles off the side, but it gives him better access. He strokes his tip across your entrance and sighs at the contact, at how wet you are maybe, at how you’re literally begging for him, and then he lets himself push inside of you slowly.

It’s completely attention-stealing: watching the way he slides into you, his kiss-swollen lips twitching as he starts moving his hips, skin shining under the effort. This is it, you think—you’ve never been so hopelessly in love with anyone before. And instead of being overwhelmed staring at this man who you know is your future, it’s all contentment and peace in your head. This is perfect, and having him love you, having him inside you knowing that he loves you is better than any other feeling you can think of.

“Oh my god,” you moan as he thrusts into you.

“You feel so… fucking good...” His speech is a little stuttered, it would be cute if he wasn’t doing what he was doing to you.

He slows his movements while you circle your own clit—it’s driving you a little wild feeling your fingertips brush against his cock, hearing the little breathy moans he lets out each time he fucks into you—and he’s played you a lot of music, but those are your favorite sound.

“Fuck...” he groans, “love you… can’t believe you’re real.”

His hands slide up to your face and he cups your cheeks as he kisses you, tongue moving with yours. Feels like he’s trying to channel all of the everything you know he must be feeling into some kind of action. That physical manifestation thing again. So, you start to move your hips up a little harder, getting him deeper than he had been. It’s more of a demand than a request.

“Namjoon, more...” you whine.

He runs his tongue up your neck to your ear and murmurs, “Can I make you come again?”

It’s all you can do to respond with a long moan as he moves one of his hands down to replace yours, stroking your swollen clit.

“Harder... please...”

Namjoon rocks back onto his heels while he grabs you and pulls you up to rest your thighs on his. It shifts his angle inside you, and he fucks you harder just like you asked, matching the movements of his hips with his fingers, seemingly not able to stop his eyes from fluttering shut.

“Come on baby, one more time?”

“I’m close again,” you sigh as he increases his pace.

There’s barely any time before the combination of faster and deeper and a better angle has you clenching up around him, and your arm up snakes around his neck to bring him closer. Namjoon kisses you hard, all messy and hurried tongues and teeth as you both start to come.

A moan pours from the back of your throat and into his as you come again, squeezing around his cock while you ride out another orgasm. He follows you with a few final snaps of his hips as you throb around him.

It’s almost like you can’t breathe, can’t feel or see anything but him as he spills into you—you’d gladly live every moment of the rest of your life this way if he’d let you, you’re sure. It’s a sappy, ridiculous thought and you wonder if you’ll ever be rational about him again. Probably not for a while, anyway.

Your foreheads press together as you breathe heavily in between lazy kisses and grins. You run your thumbs across his cheekbones and then push them into the divots where his dimples should be as you kiss him again. When you finally catch your breath, you say, “Love you, Joonie. You’re incredible.”

“You’re welcome.” He smirks at you and pinches your side before you roll your eyes in mock exasperation, but start laughing. Slowly, you sit up and pull away from him, letting him scoot back. His couch might never recover from the mess you’ve made.

Namjoon finds a t-shirt and wipes the both of you off as best he can, then lays sideways on the couch and pulls you down into him, your back pressed tightly to his chest. He places lazy kisses along the skin between your neck and shoulder.

“You know what I thought when I ran into you at Heathrow?”

“No... do I want to?”

“I thought you were the girl of my dreams.”

You smile, it’s cheesy, but you love it. “And now?”

“And now I know you are,” he whispers into your ear.

It’s exactly what you’ve needed from him, the simple and direct confirmation that you’re not alone in the way you feel. Turns out, clear communication is pretty sexy. “You’re gonna make me want round three, Joonie.”

“We could set records together.”

“I bet we’ll have a lot of chances to try in the future.”

“I hope so,” he whispers.

“Thanks for waiting for me.” You say it quietly as you slide your hand into his at your waist.

“Completely worth every minute,” he murmurs into your skin.

A month later, things feel like they’ve fully righted themselves between the two of you. There has, of course, been a little fighting as you negotiate the terms of what is about to be your new, public relationship. On the plus side, there’s been a lot more fucking and a lot more of actually saying what you’re feeling on both sides. It’s not easy, but it feels inarguably good to do this with him—to do it the way you should have from the beginning.

You know now that love should feel easy, but it only feels that way if you work at it. It’s a contradiction you think he’s going to write at least a couple of songs about, and you can’t wait to hear them. He always makes things make just a little more sense.

So, you’re not even that nervous as you walk up the steps to the small gallery in Hannam-dong. The terrace on the second floor is filled with people you know from work, everyone excited to see the Villet installation that’s opening officially tomorrow with a VIP preview tonight. You don’t know how, but Taehyung spots you from up there, camera hung around his neck, and gives you the dorkiest thumbs up you think he could muster—it’s cute, really, how he’s always there to support you, even when he’s working.

“You ready?” Namjoon whispers as you get to the last few steps below the gallery doors. He looks more nervous than you feel. His palm is a little sweaty against yours, but he’s solid next to you—it feels like you’ve brought a little piece of home with you when you feel the cool metal of his ring against your own warm fingers.

When you look up at him, you smile and nod, swallowing down any residual nerves. These are your people, and even if you’re not working tonight, even if you’re meeting them in a different capacity, you know it’s going to be alright. Tae calls your name, and you both turn to face him, to see his camera pointed at you with your joined hands, your dress matching Namjoon’s tie. He gives you a few extra beats, longer than any other photographer would, and then he’s snapping the picture—later, you’ll know it looks like this: looks like you looking straight into the camera with a bright smile less serious than the occasion calls for and Namjoon looking at you like you contain the whole universe.

Later, it will become a favorite, framed in the bedroom of the apartment you will share.

But tonight, it’s an announcement.

Once you get inside, you have minutes, maybe less. Just enough time to grab flutes of champagne and start toward the next set of stairs that lead to the main gallery space. You’re stopped by a familiar voice before you can head up, though. A colleague from an online art magazine—you’ve known him since you were just out of grad school.

He looks delighted, and you know why—Namjoon’s fingers tighten over yours. When you look over at your boyfriend as your colleague starts asking him questions, he looks delighted, too. It’s your favorite thing, to see him happy like this. You’re lost in it and you don’t even hear the questions, but you do hear a response.

“...Yes, let me introduce you to someone incredibly special.” You stifle a laugh—you know Namjoon knows the two of you already know each other, always running in the same small social and work circles.

But you stop laughing and just give him a beaming smile when he adds, “She’s the love of my life, actually.”

#namjoon fic #bts fanfic #rm fanfic #kvanity #btshoneyhive #namjoon smut #bts smut #rm smut #namjoon imagine #namjoon x reader #namjoon x you #rm imagine #bts imagines

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rayasland · 2 months

Note

You ought to learn how the tags on this website work, the definition of pedophilla, and how to prevent trivialising acts of pedophilla against children. Focus your efforts on real children, instead of bitching about authors aging characters up, ie. Imagining them as fictional adults and not thinking about abusing fictional children.

Your behaviour is not productive, and not benefiting anyone. Advocate for real children being sexually abused, it will be a far better use of your time. + Puritanism is inherently bad and hinders on depriving us of our rights.

[edit] oh mb i didnt actually read it gimme a sec b4 i reply

[edit2] the excessive use of the tags were on purpose, just scroll if u find that annoying or send someone asks whos constantly doing it

im aware of how they work, it was just a way to get peoples attention cuz we all know nobody would see it without them. im also now aware of the fact i may have over done it with the tags, i didn’t register how many i “clogged up”

u couldve moved along instead of wasting UR time writing this

even if its not real its just… weird to do theres nothing more to say

the post wasnt meant to say “pedophillia against real children isnt as important as aging up anime kids and we shouldnt pay attention to them” just seeing how many people agree with me abt whats on that post and if u dont or js dont think its important dont bother interacting please🙏🏾

i do agree w u that we should advocate for real children going through sa which im pretty sure a lot of people are already doing, but i wanted to bring to light how normalised js writing smut for minors(although fictional) is and how justifying it by saying “its a character” or saying “i aged them up” is strange

part of my point is writing smut involving underage anime characters, even if they are "aged up" or fictional, is still inappropriate and can contribute to the normalization of harmful behaviors irl as well as minors objectification because even if they’re “aged up” in your head it doesnt erase the fact you’re fantisizing over a fictional character who is meant to be treated and viewed as a child

also idfk what puritans rlly are only that they’re a different version of catholic which i dont know of either so idk what u mean there

this was written late at night if sum doesnt make sense lmk have a great day

btw im adding tags AGAIN to spite u 💋(referring to all that went in my asks to complain abt it)

thats all im saying for now im going to bed 🫡

#cryyyy abt it #getting people angry #gojo fluff #satosugu x reader #satosugu fluff #gojo x reader #choso x reader #geto x reader #toge x reader #megumi x reader #itadori x reader

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woman-of-balnain · 1 year

Text

The Claim Part 5/5 (Alpha Rick x Omega Reader)

Previous Part | Collection Masterlist | AO3 Ver. | Next Work

Pairing: Rick Grimes/Fem!Reader

Summary: Now that your heat has arrived, Rick fully claims you as his.

A/N: Okay, here is the final part. Happy Valentine’s Day lmao.

First thing: I forgot to add earlier that this part will involve breeding kink elements from both Rick and the Reader. Sorry, I added it on the ao3 version but not here. So if that’s not your thing, don’t read.

This is like the size of two normal parts lol and out of the roughly 8k words, approx. 7k is smut 😅

The last bit is just some plot to wrap the story up. I feel like that bit is a little too short, so I might extend it later.

I’ve given it one read over before posting but it’s so damn long and there might still be some typos and/or errors. Hopefully nothing major.

Lastly, I do plan to write some more stuff with this particular Rick/Reader pairing, exploring some other stuff that will take place later in twd series. If you have any requests for them lmk.

Anyway, enjoy 😏

Warnings: Rick has A LOT of stamina, multiple male orgasms, multiple female orgasms, multiple creampies, shower sex, doggstyle, cowgirl, oral sex (male and female receiving), mentions of tasting blood (from claiming bites), deepthroating

Word Count: 8,308

Dividers by: @newlips + @cafekitsune

Rick and Glenn had found a small and abandoned hunting cabin, that sat secluded in the woods. With your mind addled and hazed from your heat, you barely took notice of the setup, but your inner omega was happy to see that they’d established a perimeter with empty cans and bottles that would make noise to alert Rick if any walkers came too close.

Your alpha didn’t waste any time once you arrived. Rick threw you down onto the bed, his hands instantly falling to the waistband of his pants once you were laying down in front of him. You watched with a hungry gaze as he unbuckled his belt, your slick pooling between your legs with anticipation.

“You think this is a show, ‘mega?” He growled out, still angry from seeing you taking comfort in Daryl. “Clothes off. Now.”

He pulled the belt away from his jeans, flinging it off to the side, but not before unsheathing the knife he kept holstered on it. Despite the way your heated skin made your clothes feel like they were scratching uncomfortably against you, every fiber of your being was so entranced by him that your hands fumbled clumsily with your dress, not wanting to take your attention off him.

Rick was much more calculated and composed in his movements, eyes watching you intensely as he slowly unbuttoned his shirt. When he’d gotten rid of that too, and you had still made no progress in getting rid of your own clothing, Rick came onto the bed, moving on top of you and caging your body beneath his.

“These damned dresses,” he muttered with a mix of annoyance and appreciation.

He moved one hand down over your chest and then your stomach before he bunched up the skirt of the short summer dress, revealing your clothed pussy. You were soaking wet, causing the material of your white panties to be practically transparent. Rick glided two of his long fingers over you, teasing your clit, which caused your back to arch and your hips to buck with desperate need.

“Please, Alpha…” you whined, unable to wait any longer.

Rick’s gaze was dark and fiery, showing that he was just as eager, but he still had a lot more control than you did. When he raised the knife still held in his other hand, pointing it down at you, logically you should have been scared.

But you knew that Rick wouldn’t hurt you, and the deep lust in his gaze reassured you of that fact. He brought the blade down slowly, applying just enough pressure to the material of your dress to cut into it and give him an opening.

He flung the knife off carelessly after that, letting it clang onto the floor somewhere across the room. His hands were all over you then, as he tore your dress apart, desperate to explore the skin it concealed underneath. His gaze only grew impossibly darker when he saw that you weren’t wearing a bra.

“Naughty girl,” he chastised you heatedly, his hands moving to squeeze your now exposed breasts.

“Oh god,” you moaned, eyes fluttering shut.

His fingers teased your nipples, tugging and stroking them until they were achingly hard. Then you let out a salacious moan as Rick’s head dipped, taking one of the sensitive peaks between his lips, his tongue and teeth tormenting you further.

Your hips bucked again, and he moved his free hand between your legs, right where you were desperate to be touched. Rick’s attention on your breasts never faltered as his fingers pushed your panties to the side, giving him access to your dripping wet pussy.

He thrust two fingers into you, sliding in easily due to the amount of slick there. Your body moved wildly, the heat inside of you driving you crazy and sweat coating every inch of your skin. You were desperate for release, felt like you needed it, and Rick was quickly getting you there.

But then his mood darkened as he pushed his fingers in a little more roughly, while his other hand and his teeth tugged hard on your nipples.

“You were curled up to another alpha,” he pointed out angrily, pulling back to look you in the eye. “While you were this wet, Omega.”

“I… I’m sorry,” you cried out, not wanting him to be mad. “I needed you so badly and you weren’t there…”

“You’re mine,” he reminded you possessively. “This body, this pussy… everything about you is mine.”

“Yes,” you moaned out instantly, agreeing wholeheartedly. “I’m yours.”

Rick pressed his body closer to yours, his bare chest coming into contact with your heated skin. His nipples brushed against yours, teasing you both and his eyes fluttered shut with a groan. He rested his forehead against your own, his warm breath fanning out over your lips as his fingers continued their rapid thrusting in and out of your pussy.

“Show me,” he requested breathlessly, his thumb moving up to rub against your clit. “Cum for me, omega. Show me you’re mine.”

He curled his fingers inside of you, hitting that one perfect spot, while his thumb continued rubbing and flicking against your clit.

“Fuck,” you whined. “Rick, I… I’m…”

“Let go, baby,” he murmured soothingly, rubbing his cheek affectionately against yours.

He pressed down hard against your clit and your body gave him exactly what he wanted. You felt the waves of pleasure overcome you, your eyes squeezing shut and your mouth falling open as a deep moan escaped your lips.

“Good girl,” he praised, loving the way you tightened around him.

You saw stars and your mind was in a state of euphoric bliss. Rick trailed kisses along your scent gland while his fingers continued to stimulate you, waiting patiently for you to come down from your high.

When your eyes lazily fluttered open again and your body settled, you found Rick gazing at you with a mix of emotions. There was still that dark and heated lust in his eyes, but there was also deep care and affection and you thought, that due to the intensity of it, maybe it could have been akin to love.

He didn’t give you much time to ponder over it though, because he quickly bent his head down and captured your lips in a searing kiss. The burning feeling of your heat had settled temporarily thanks to your orgasm, so you let yourself enjoy the feel of his mouth languidly caressing yours.

Rick gently pulled his fingers from your pussy, allowing both of his hands to tease your inner thighs. He alternated between squeezing you possessively, his fingers digging into your skin, and lightly caressing you, leaving trails of goosebumps in the wake of his touch.

His lips, the bottom one so much fuller than the other, enticed your own with their slow and calculated movements. His tongue moved in perfect harmony with your own, leaving you breathless.

Eventually, his head pulled back and you tried to lift yours too, chasing his mouth to continue the heated kiss. But Rick just bit down on your lower lip, gently tugging on it before he completely moved away, leaning back to take you in with his lustful gaze. The effects of your heat were building up again, demanding more.

“Rick,” you moaned out. “Please, Alpha, I need you.”

His eyes fell to the apex of your thighs and his fingers tugged a little at your panties before his impatience won over. Pulling his hands away from you, Rick moved them to his jeans, quickly unbuttoning them and pulling down the zipper before tugging them down his hips.

Then his hands were back on you, pushing your panties further to the side so that your pussy was exposed enough for him. Not wasting a second, Rick pushed forward and thrust into you deeply, almost to the hilt and causing you both to let out desperate moans.

“Damn it, Omega,” he grit out in pleasure. “You’re so tight, squeezing down on me perfectly.”

As if in response to his words, your pussy clamped down even harder on his cock, causing his hands to reach for your hips instinctively, gripping them tightly. He kept his hold on you, using it for leverage as he pounded into you over and over and over again, setting a brutal pace.

“You’re not…” he got out between his thrusts. “Ever gonna… even look… at another alpha… again.”

He said it like it was a promise, as though he intended to imprint himself somehow on your body so that you were constantly reminded of him. Apparently, he didn’t realize that he’d already pretty much done so.

“I only want you,” was your response, promising him exactly what he wanted.

Rick leaned down, kissing you hard. The change in his angle caused him to move deeper and his cock brushed against that bundle of nerves inside you again. You gasped and moaned into his mouth, hips thrashing wildly in desperate need.

He kept you steady with the hold he still had on you, stopping you from thrusting your hips so high that he would slip out. Instead, he ensured that you felt every inch of his bare cock, the silky texture of the skin brushing against your sensitive walls and driving you closer and closer to the edge.

He never let up in his forceful thrusts, fucking you hard, deep and fast, until your thoughts drifted away into a mindless haze and the only thing left was Rick and how he made you feel. All the while he kept kissing you, lips claiming yours possessively until yours were swollen and bruised and aching for more.

With each push into your pussy, the sweat-slicked skin and light hairs on his pelvis brushed against your clit and stimulated you further. You were clinging to his back, nails digging into his skin, but Rick didn’t seem to care.

Finally, his lips left yours and your eyes opened to see his own lost in a state of ecstasy. He was just as close to cumming as you were, if not closer.

“’m gonna fill you up, sweetheart,” he promised in a daze, one of his hands moving to rest on your lower stomach. “Fuck my cum into you until your belly’s swollen with my child.”

“Oh god, Rick,” you moaned with an eagerness you’d never felt before.

“Gonna make sure everyone knows you’re mine,” he continued heatedly, head dipping again to kiss along your neck.

You nodded fervently, loving the sound of everything he said, but you doubted he noticed, since he was preoccupied by lavishing your scent gland with attention. Rick gave a few more deep and forceful thrusts before the head of his cock hit your cervix and he groaned out desperately.

His fingers dug into your waist, holding you steady as he came deep inside of you. The warm feel of his cum filling you up and the way his cock throbbed against your tight walls sent you over the edge. You spasmed around him, pussy clenching him even tighter, milking him completely.

Rick’s teeth grazed against your scent gland, and you tilted your head obediently, offering yourself for him to claim you. But then he pulled his head away and you let out a whine of frustration, not understanding his reluctance.

His gaze was still addled with lust, but there was an underlying sadness in his eyes that you couldn’t comprehend. When your legs wrapped tighter around him and you squeezed around his cock again, he lowered his head to your shoulder, biting down hard.

It wasn’t where you wanted or needed him, but the shock of his teeth piercing into your skin and the fact he was still thrusting deeply into you, albeit more slowly, sent you over the edge yet again.

It was like a second wave of your first orgasm, with the intensity becoming even greater. It was enough for you to lose yourself again, forgetting about your disappointment for a moment and just enjoying the feel of Rick completely surrounding you.

As your bodies settled, his tongue soothed the bite he’d left on your shoulder and his fingers caressed along the feverish skin of your stomach and waist. Your breaths calmed and you sunk back into the mattress and then he was pulling out of you slowly, careful not to cause any more friction.

You absentmindedly noticed that he was still completely hard, but your body was spent, and your eyes were droopy, telling you both that you needed some rest. The mixed fluids of his cum and your slick pooled out warmly between your thighs, but you paid it little mind.

Instead, you turned tiredly on your side and snuggled up into the sheets. Rick moved behind you, his body fitting against yours like you were two pieces of a puzzle, and he wrapped an arm around your waist.

“Get some rest, ‘mega,” he murmured, nuzzling affectionately into your neck. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

That wasn’t your concern, though. You were upset about him not claiming you, despite the way he was so insistent that you were his. Still, your exhaustion won out for the time being, so you let your eyes fall closed and your body relax against him.

You’d sort it out later. For now, you just wanted to bask in the afterglow and the warm feel of his body protectively pressed against yours.

When you woke up again, the first thing you noticed was how you were even more feverish than earlier. It was unbearable in a way you’d never experienced before. Your skin felt like it was on fire, as though there was a raging inferno inside of you that couldn’t be soothed.

Your sweat soaked into the sheets and your fever made you feel slightly delirious, like a haze was clouding your mind. You couldn’t think, only feel and when the fog of sleep finally left, you felt nothing else but Rick and the desperate state of your heat.

You were on your back now, legs spread wide with Rick’s head buried between them. His hands were gripping your inner thighs, holding you steady while his tongue gave slow, languid licks along your pussy.

“Alpha…” you moaned, fingers tugging lightly on his hair.

The scruff of his beard scratched along your thighs, and you felt his lips curl into a smile against your wet folds. He flicked his tongue back and forth over your clit, his lips sucking down at the same time and sending you into a frenzy.

He already seemed to know your body well and as your pussy clenched, aching for something inside of it, Rick moved his tongue down and away from your clit. His tongue pushed into your dripping core right as his nose brushed against your sensitive nub.

He fucked you with his tongue, lapping up your slick while his hands squeezed your thighs in a vice-like grip. His hold on you was strong and a little painful, but the way he was showering your pussy with attention made any discomfort fade away.

Then, Rick moved up again, bringing his mouth back to your clit and his fingers plunged into you instead. He moved them at a quick pace, in and out, curling up with each thrust to stimulate your inner bundle of nerves.

All the while his tongue stroked against you and then he let out a deep, guttural moan. You were already a squirming, lust addled mess, but when the vibrations reverberating from his throat pulsed against your pussy, the extra simulation made you cum like never before.

“Rick…” you moaned out in a complete daze.

You repeated his name like a mantra, over and over as your body sang with its release. He just kept licking and sucking and fucking you with his fingers until the wild movements of your hips became too frantic and he pulled away.

He was grinning at you, his gaze heated and devilish, promising that he wasn’t anywhere near done with you yet. As you settled, he moved up your body until his face was just above yours and then he brought his lips to your own in a slow and sensual kiss.

His tongue moved with precision against yours, reminiscent of what he’d just been doing between your legs, and it made desire pool deep in your belly all over again. Your arms were wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer until his cock was pushing against your entrance.

“Not yet, ‘mega,” he groaned out, breaking the kiss and rubbing his cheek against yours, scenting you.

“Please,” you begged, fingers moving down to scratch lightly along his back.

“You’ve gotta eat first,” he pulled back completely. “You need to drink some water too. I promised I’d take care of you, ‘mega.”

You were breathing heavily, and you wanted nothing more than to have his cock back inside of you. But your heat was also a little more sated after your last orgasm but that wouldn’t last for very long. So, you relented, sitting up and nodding.

Rick sat on the edge of the bed, reaching over for his backpack and taking out some of the food and water he’d managed to salvage while you’d all been on the road. You took the water first, taking long sips and letting the cool liquid soothe you.

His fingers traced light patterns along your legs as he bit into a granola bar, needing to keep up his own strength as well. As your mind cleared, you remembered the bite he’d placed on your shoulder and decided that you needed to ask him about it.

Remembering his marriage and how he and Lori had never claimed one another, you wondered if he had some kind of aversion to it.

“Rick?”

“Hmm?” He looked over at you with a lazy but affectionate smile.

You didn’t want to tiptoe around it, so you just asked him outright.

“Why didn’t you claim me?”

He coughed, like he hadn’t swallowed his last bite properly and looked away from you again.

“You wanted me to.”

It was a statement, showing that he had known what you wanted and despite that knowledge, along with all of his words and possessive actions, he still hadn’t done it.

“I still want you to,” you told him. “Don’t you?”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair and you watched him worriedly.

“Rick, I meant it every time I said it. I’m yours. But if you don’t want me to be, then –”

“I do,” he cut you off earnestly, finally looking at you again. “I just… can’t.”

“Why?” You asked, trepidation over your relationship washing over you. “Is… is it because of Lori?”

“No,” he assured you, taking your hands in his. “I mean that I really can’t. I… I tried, with Lori. It never lasted on either of us and I just… I didn’t want to disappoint you. I didn’t want it to push you away. I can’t lose you.”

His gaze held such raw emotion that you realized it was a deep-seated insecurity for him. It was something he’d been internally struggling with for a long time, and it must have been hard for him to open up to you about it.

Nevertheless, it was a lot to process. It made the breakdown of his marriage make a lot more sense, but that was the least of your concerns in that moment. Instead, you found it hard to come to terms with the fact that, from what he was saying, you would never be able to truly claim one another.

Maybe that was why he was so possessive and adamant about the fact that you belonged to him.

In the end though, it didn’t really matter to you. Sure, it wasn’t what you’d been expecting your relationship with him to turn out like, but everything with Rick, from the moment you’d met him had just felt right. Like fate or whatever the hell else meant for you to find each other and be together.

So, as you felt his scent change and his anxiety over your silence fill the room, you were determined to set his worried mind at ease. You got up, climbing into his lap so that you were facing him and stroked your fingers along the short and coarse hairs of his cheek affectionately.

“I don’t care,” you told him, your gaze holding his.

“Don’t lie,” he cast his eyes down, but never stopped touching you, holding you close.

You leant forward, placing soft kisses over his cheeks, his jawline and finally one on his lips before pulling back again.

“I’m not lying,” you insisted gently. “I want you, whatever that entails. And yes, I do want you to claim me, to bite into my gland over and over again if you have to. I don’t care if it doesn’t stick. I’m yours and I don’t want you to hold back.”

His eyes met yours with trepidation, his uncertainty clear. But he must have seen the sincerity in your own gaze because his expression softened, and he looked at you with so much adoration you thought you would melt right there in his arms.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” you promised him.

And then you brought your lips to his, sealing it with a kiss. You wanted to show him that your desire for him hadn’t wavered and that your words were honest. One of his hands seemed to automatically find one of your hips, keeping you close to him, while the other trailed up and down your back.

He deepened the kiss and lifted your hips a little. You knew what he wanted so your hand moved down and grasped around his cock, lining it up at your core and pushing back down. His lips left yours as his head fell back with a groan that was filled with lust.

You had more control in that position, and while he still gripped tightly onto your hips, you set the pace, grinding down onto him.

“Fuck, baby,” he breathed out, still lost in the ecstasy of it all. “You always feel so good for me.”

“Mmm,” you hummed in agreement, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “That’s ‘cause you fill me up so well.”

He started guiding your hips, while his own thrust up and into you, his movements a little more frantic. He’d still been rock hard when you fell asleep and was the same when you woke up. You wondered if his erection had gone down at all due to how desperately he seemed to ache for release.

He opened his eyes to look at you again and it was like he got lost in the sight of you, with the way you were grinding down onto him and squeezing around his cock. He reached up to tuck some hair behind your ear and his thumb brushed against your cheek.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, gaze still transfixed on you.

Your cheeks heated up in a faint blush and you looked away, shy from the intense look he was giving you.

“Hey, don’t do that,” he took hold of your chin, bringing your gaze back to his. “I mean it. Don’t hide from me, sweetheart.”

You nodded, biting down on your lip, and allowing yourself to get lost in his piercing blue eyes. It was raw and unyielding, the range of emotions in his gaze and you hoped that your own was conveying the same back to him.

“I can’t hold back much longer,” he admitted softly.

“I don’t want you to,” was your honest reply.

He moaned at your admission before flipping your bodies over so that you were on your back again and he was hovering over you. Rick took hold of your waist, making sure he had a steady grip on you before he thrust out nearly all the way and then pounded back into you, right to the hilt. You both let out desperate and guttural sounds at the feeling of him filling you up entirely once again.

He moved with precise thrusts, but his pace was quick and frenzied. You knew he was close, eager to cum inside you again, because it was clear through his expression and the way his body was tensed up with desire and anticipation.

You moved one hand down between your thighs, fingers finding your aching clit and your body reacted instantly to the added stimulation. Your pussy contracted down on his cock, squeezing and pushing him to the brink.

He was pushed right up against your cervix again, not enough for the pressure to be unpleasant, but enough for the insinuation of where his cum would go, to make you insanely turned on.

Rick looked wild, his blue eyes feral and barely holding onto control. He gave you one last look of trepidation and you just nodded before exposing your neck to him.

“Please, Alpha,” you begged, voice filled with desperate need.

That was enough to make his control snap and his head bent down with lightning speed before his teeth sunk into your neck and the first spurts of his cum filled your fertile womb. Simultaneously, he lapped up the warm blood that spilled from your throat and your pussy milked every last drop of his hot cum deep inside you.

The mixed stimulation all throughout your body made another orgasm crash over you like a tidal wave. You were clenching down so hard around his cock that you thought it might be painful for him, but Rick didn’t seem to mind. All of his attention seemed to be on your mating gland, soothing the sore skin like he was in a trance.

You realized, as your body settled and your orgasm calmed down, that suddenly you felt so perfectly whole. As though for your entire life you had been missing half of yourself until that moment. You weren’t as unbearably hot anymore and your unbearably fevered skin seemed to relax until it just felt like you were in a regular heat.

Rick’s fingertips glided over your lower stomach absentmindedly and as the blood flow from your neck slowed to a stop, he pressed countless kisses against the fresh mark. You didn’t care, in that moment, if he had to mark you time and time again. It felt too good and right to you, having his claim on your body.

When his slow and languid thrusts began to pick up again, you realized that he was still hard. You weren’t complaining though, because your body was clearly willing and eager for more. After what felt like hours but was likely only a couple of minutes, Rick peeled his lips away from your neck and pulled back to look at you.

“Feeling okay?” He asked, never once letting up in his powerful thrusts.

“No,” you grinned up at him, not missing the way he raised an eyebrow in question. “’Okay’ would be a severe understatement.”

He let out a light laugh, and you could tell he was relieved by it. Then you hooked one leg around his waist, pushing a little with your hips and he seemed to realize what you wanted. Rick flipped you both over, settling back into the bed and letting you adjust yourself above him.

You ground down on him again, circling your hips and reveling in the way he stretched you out and filled you up. With each time his cock thrust deep into you, it pushed his cum further inside. You could hear the sounds of your mixed fluids every time he entered you, and it was sinfully good.

You loved watching him stretched out beneath you, allowing you to fuck yourself on top of him and the way he was getting lost in the feel of you. His eyes were closed, his head thrown back against the pillows, and he was letting out quiet moans and groans, showing you what you were doing to him.

You leaned forward, entwining his fingers with yours to steady yourself before you moved your hips a little harder and faster, bouncing on top of his cock and making you both wild with desire.

“I wanna mark you,” you moaned out, still sliding up and down his hard and thick cock. “Please, Alpha, I need it. I need to claim you as mine too.”

His eyes snapped open, and he looked at you with hesitation again, just like he had before he claimed you. But then his gaze fell down to your neck, to your mating gland which must have still been swollen and red, with the possessive mark of his bite standing out and showing who you belonged to.

Once his eyes settled on that his features softened, and he looked back at you with a nod.

You didn’t hesitate then, your hands leaving his as you leaned down closer to him. Your fingers ran through his hair, and you nuzzled against his neck, rubbing your nose and cheek along his gland to scent him.

Rick gripped your hips, making sure your pace never faltered as your mouth worshiped the gland you were about to bite into so you could claim him as your own. You could hear his moans getting more frequent and desperate, his lips right beside your ear.

When he thrust deep into you, holding you tightly against him, you let your teeth sink into his skin.

“Fuck,” he groaned, his hips stuttering from the intensity of it all.

He came hard for the third time that day, stuffing you just as full as the other two times. He was insatiable, his stamina doing more than just rivaling anything you’d ever experienced. Trickles of his blood pooled into your mouth, the metallic taste filling your senses. Just like Rick had done, you licked and sucked against his gland, soothing the sensitive skin and attempting to stop the blood flow.

“Baby…” he breathed out, his voice betraying how turned on he was. “I can’t stop. You’re driving me crazy.”

As you continued to suck against the fresh mating bite you’d made on his neck, the blood slowed to a stop, and you pulled back. Shifting slightly, you realized he was still fully hard.

“Again?” You asked, a little incredulous, but no less enthused.

He didn’t answer, just lifted your hips until his cock slid out of you. You couldn’t stop the whine that escaped you at the empty feeling it caused. But then he was getting up and giving you a look that conveyed his deep-seated and still yet unsated lust.

“On your knees,” he ordered, moving behind you.

It was an alpha command, telling you exactly what he wanted. So, you lifted your body, holding yourself on all fours and presented yourself to him enthusiastically. He let out a low chuckle at your eagerness, but you knew that he was just as lost in his desire for you.

You choked on nothing but air when he thrust back into you, your fingers gripping the sheets beneath you tightly. It was the best kind of pain, with how tender your walls were but how good it felt, nonetheless. One of Rick’s hands sat on the small of your back, while the other moved up your spine, fingers tickling your skin until he grabbed hold of your hair, pulling your head back slightly.

“Alpha,” you moaned out, lost deep in the throes of the pleasure he was giving you.

“That’s it, baby,” he coaxed. “Let me hear you.”

“Fuck, I can’t take much more,” you cried out desperately. “But you feel so good.”

He gave a harder, more forceful thrust into you, making you whine with need.

“You love my cock, baby?” He demanded to know. “You need it?”

“Yes,” you moaned out. “I only need you.”

“That’s right,” he said, satisfied with your answer. “And I’m the only one that’s ever gonna know this tight, sweet pussy.”

“Mmm,” you agreed, nodding your head but unable to form anymore words.

“You want my cum again, ‘mega?” He asked. “Deep inside you?”

“Yes, Rick, please!”

The sound of his hips smacking against yours filled the small cabin, the continuous slapping together of sweaty skin a tell-tale sign of the illicit and sinful things he was doing to you. He let go of his grip on your hair, bringing his hands back to their familiar place on your hips and held you steady before he groaned and came once again.

Your upper body sank down into the bed as your own orgasm wracked through your body. Your pussy spasmed and your hips moved wildly, but Rick made sure to keep you wrapped around his cock, so that you were milking him dry for the fourth time that day.

You both stayed like that for a while, breaths panting, and bodies relaxed. Finally, you felt him soften inside you and as much as his relentless fucking had turned you on, you were glad for the sign of some respite. Rick slowly pulled out of you, and you let your lower body relax before turning onto your side.

He came to lay down as well, facing you and looking just as tired as you felt. He reached out to brush his fingers along your cheek, eyes already drooping before he dropped his hand to caress against your mating gland. The bite he’d left was sore and sensitive, but his touch didn’t irritate you.

You snuggled closer against him and then he wrapped him arms around you, laying on his back and resting your head on his chest. It wasn’t long before you both drifted back off to sleep, both of your bodies spent and sated for the time being.

The next time that the fog of sleep drifted away, and you woke up, you were still in Rick’s arms, and he was absentmindedly stroking his fingers up and down your back. Tilting your head to look up at him, you saw that he was deep in thought, his brow furrowed like something was bothering him.

“Hey,” you reached out, touching his cheek so he’d look at you. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just…” he trailed off, gaze falling to your mating gland. “Something feels different.”

You realized instantly that he was talking about the claim he’d left on you.

“Good or bad?” You asked, a little concerned.

“Good, I think,” his eyes returned to yours. “But I hate that it’s only temporary.”

“Rick,” you sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I already told you; I don’t care if we have to do it countless times. I’m yours, and you’re mine. Nothing can change that except us.”

He nodded but still seemed upset about it. You figured it was something you could come back to later though and watched as he moved to get up.

“You wanna shower?” He asked over his shoulder, changing the topic quickly.

“Desperately,” you sighed. “But that’s a luxury one can’t afford when the world ends.”

He moved a little more to face you again, lips turning up into a grin.

“This place is solar powered,” he explained, reaching out for one of your hands.

“You’re kidding,” you lit up at the revelation.

His smile just widened, and he squeezed your hand.

“Come on, baby, I’ll go with you.”

That just sweetened the deal. Warm, running water along with soap and shampoo was one thing, but showering with Rick? The symptoms of your heat began rising within you once again at the thought.

He led you to the small bathroom and maybe before civilization fell you would’ve lamented at the small, tight space of the shower. But such things were luxuries now and you couldn’t wait to feel the water trickling down your skin.

Neither one of you had clothes to worry about, so Rick turned the knobs of the shower and happiness filled you at the sight of hot, running water. It was a tight squeeze, but you stepped in beside him and he moved out of the way to let you enjoy the water first.

It was heaven; the feel of it running through your hair and down over your body. Rick picked up a bottle of body wash from the shelf and squirted some out onto his hands before lathering it up. One of his hands fell to your hip, rubbing the soap over your stomach and thighs, while the other squeezed one of your breasts.

“Rick…” you sighed happily, your head falling against the shower wall behind you.

His touch was gentle, teasing you a little but he still kept his primary goal as cleaning you of all the dirt and grime and the remnants of incredible sex. Your nipples hardened as his thumbs brushed over them and your pussy ached to be touched again.

But Rick stayed focused, scrubbing the soap along your body until it washed away, and you felt cleaner than you had in over a week. Then he turned you around, his fingers running through your wet hair and his nails scraping over your scalp. It was relaxing and his touch conveyed the deep care he held for you.

You didn’t notice him reach for the shampoo bottle, but when he massaged it into your hair your eyes closed in bliss. He was being so gentle and affectionate with you and your inner omega loved it.

Eventually, you turned to rinse out your hair and then Rick stepped underneath the water, and you were eager to return the favor. Your movements were less slow and had much more devious intentions behind them.

You ran your hands over the expanse of his chest, the lathered-up soap spreading across his skin. He watched through hooded eyes as you moved your touch down to his lower abdomen, fingers gliding softly over the light hairs there.

Then you got down on your knees, eager to have his long, thick cock in your mouth again. One of his hands moved to the back of your head, tangling in your hair, but he remained silent, waiting in anticipation for you to make your move.

You got him to break the silence that had settled around you when your lips wrapped around his hardened length and a deep groan of pleasure escaped his throat. His grip on your hair tightened and he thrust into your mouth, getting his cock deeper inside you.

A moan sounded deep in your throat, and you began bobbing your head up and down along his cock with enthusiasm, eager to taste his cum again. You sucked down on him and teased him with your tongue.

It gave you a deep sense of satisfaction to know you could make him come undone and when the movement of his hips faltered slightly and all you could hear was his desperate moaning, you knew that he was already close.

Using one hand to cup and tease his balls and the other to grab the back of his thigh and keep him close, you pushed your head down further, bringing the head of his cock to the back of your throat.

“Fuck… sweetheart…” he groaned, barely managing to get the words out.

You felt the full length of him pulsate as he pushed all the way in and then his cum was spurting down your tight throat. You took it all, relishing in the way he clung to you and kept your mouth wrapped around him.

When his hands eventually relaxed around your head and you were able to pull your mouth off him, you looked up at Rick with an amused smile.

“Really?” You asked, before giving another quick glance to his cock that was still right in front of your face.

You shouldn’t have been surprised by that point, over the fact that he was still rock hard. But his stamina amazed you. It wasn’t something you were complaining about though because your heat left you filled with just as much desire.

“Come here,” he said gently, lifting you up to stand.

He brought you close, so that your chests were pressed together, and he lifted a hand to gently stroke along your mating gland.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered softly, eyes filled with honesty. “You know that?”

“You’re perfect to me,” you answered, your own gaze soft and affectionate. “I know that much at least.”

He gave you a small smile and then his lips were on yours, now so familiar in the way they felt to you and the way they seemed to work expertly against your own. His desperate need from earlier had settled and now Rick seemed intent on lavishing you not only with pleasure, but with soft affection too.

He moved you back gently, until your body was resting against the wall of the shower and then he was lifting one of your legs, wrapping it around his waist.

“I need more,” he admitted against your lips, his length rubbing up and down your slit.

“It’s okay,” you told him breathlessly. “I do too.”

He pulled his hips back slightly and then he was back inside you, filling you up perfectly once again. Your pussy was still slightly sore from how many times he’d fucked you just on that day alone, but it was nothing compared to the sense of fulfillment he gave you as he moved his hips back and forth.

Rick was kissing you again, one hand tangled in your hair and the other squeezing your ass, keeping you close to him. His thrusts weren’t as fast or frantic; he fucked into you with precise and deep movements, taking the time to enjoy the way you felt around him.

It was loving and intimate, showing that he didn’t just see you as an omega to get through his rut with. He was proving to you that you meant more than that to him, and it made your emotions swirl with happiness and the sense of feeling truly content.

You clung tightly to him, one hand pressed against his back and the other at the nape of his neck. Rick trailed his lips down to your jawline, pressing kisses along your skin while he kept slowly fucking deep into you. Then, he moved down to your throat, and it wasn’t long before he sought out your mating gland.

He kissed along the bite mark he’d left, and then affectionately nuzzled against it. He was too lost in the haze of his rut and the feel of your pussy wrapped snugly around him to notice the change in your scent. The way it was perfectly mingled with his own and gave a clear message that you had been claimed. That you were his omega.

Without that realization, he kept lavishing the bite with attention and eventually his teeth scraped along it, teasing you to the edge.

“Rick…” you moaned, instinctively squeezing down even harder on him.

It was exactly the friction he needed, because then he was cumming deep inside your pussy and you loved the fact that it still felt just as good as when he’d first done it. The intensity of it seemed to be too much for him because he sank his teeth into your gland a second time, opening up the wound and claiming you all over again.

Your own orgasm ripped through you, and you clung even tighter to him, keeping his head buried against your neck. His lips and tongue soothed your agitated skin, and you slowly came back to yourself, the cool tiles of the shower wall behind you giving your body some relief from the heat you felt all over.

After a while, Rick’s lips left your throat, and he pulled back to look at you. His gaze was soft and tender, conveying the depths of his feelings for you. When his forehead fell down to rest against your own, you realized that he wasn’t done yet.

“You’re insatiable,” you quipped, squeezing down slightly on his still hardened length.

“I’m not the only one,” he retorted, his voice gruff but no less playful.

His lips captured yours once again and you let yourself get lost in him. If this was how all of your heats would be in the future, then there would be nothing left to complain about or dread. You briefly wondered why you’d been so worried over your inability to continue taking suppressants before your mind became clouded and all you could think of, yet again, was Rick.

Your heat was over after two days. It was the shorter than you’d expected, and you wondered, with a small, devious smile if Rick had fucked it out of you. His stamina never let up and by the end you were a sated, but exhausted mess.

Your dress was ruined, but Rick had packed some spare clothes and you returned to the rest of the group in one of his shirts and a pair of your own jeans. And he still seemed to have the need to touch you, to keep you close. You didn’t mind, but the way that the eyes of the others lingered on you both when you returned was a little disconcerting. Sure, heats and ruts were a natural part of the world, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing.

Rick and Daryl exchanged a look and then a nod, silently conveying that Rick’s earlier display, when you had both gone into rut and heat, respectively, was forgiven and forgotten. Then, after you both came back, the whole group set out on the road again.

Two weeks had passed since then, and you often found yourself absentmindedly touching the claiming bite Rick had placed on your neck. Sometimes, your gaze would also linger on the one you left on him.

It was confusing, because neither of them had shown any sign of truly healing. They had healed to some degree, in the normal way, with the redness around them fading and the skin no longer feeling agitated. But they weren’t fading away and once you were both no longer distracted, you and Rick realized that your claims over one another had stuck, and you were truly mated to each other.

So, that was how you found yourselves talking to your father, with Rick asking if the older man might know what it meant. He was happy and relieved by it, but no less confused.

“I looked into it,” Hershel told Rick. “Before we lost the farm, like I said I would.”

You glanced between them, a little surprised by the fact that your father seemed to have known before you did about Rick’s inability to claim Lori and vice versa. But you stayed silent, interested in what he had to say.

“We have a book, in our family,” your father revealed. “It keeps a record of omegas and alphas in our line that mated with each other. Some omegas in our family tree mated differently than others, though.”

“What do you mean?” You asked.

You’d never heard of that book before, and you were surprised to only learn of its existence now.

“There are a few omegas in our ancestry where their bodies would reject attempts to claim them. The records that have been kept show that only a particular alpha, their true mate, could actually claim those omegas.”

“True mates?” Rick asked in disbelief. “That… that stuff’s just fairy tales, stories for kids. It’s not real.”

Hershel just gave him a look, one that conveyed his lack of amusement with Rick brushing off his words.

“The evidence is in the two of you,” he continued. “You weren’t able to share a true mating bond until now, Rick. You’re the only alpha able to command Y/N… I’m sure there are other signs I’m not aware of and that I don’t want to know about.”

Rick looked taken aback by your father’s words and you felt just as surprised.

“It doesn’t matter, in the end,” Hershel said, placing a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “You were able to claim each other. That’s all that matters.”

Rick just gave a nod, still a little stunned and then Hershel walked off, leaving you both alone. The idea left you feeling uneasy though, and you bit down on your bottom lip, looking off to the side.

“Hey, you okay?” Rick asked, reaching out to take your hand in his and picking up on the change in your mood instantly.

“Yeah, I just… it’s a lot,” you admitted. “I mean, what if the connection we felt before we claimed each other was just… some weird thing like fate that was pushing us together? I’ve never even considered true mates to actually be a real thing, so I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, but I just… I don’t want those feelings to be fake or forced… I don’t want the way I feel about you to not be real somehow…”

“Y/N,” he took hold of your chin gently and brought your gaze to his. “Whatever this is between us, however you want to label it, it’s real. I don’t know about all the other stuff, but I know how I feel about you. You don’t ever have to worry about that.”

His words caused relief to rush through you and you nodded, giving him a small smile. He returned it before pulling you closer to him and capturing your lips in a kiss. It was soft and affectionate, and his lips moved languidly against your own. All of your doubts left your mind and only one thing remained – the knowledge that you both belonged to one another, fully and irreversibly.

And with both of your mating bites sitting proudly on your necks, showing that you had claimed one another, there was no way for anyone to either doubt or deny it.

Next Work in this Series

Taglist:

@bking4000, @starsaroundmyscxrss (sorry but the tag wouldn’t work for one of you!

#rick grimes x reader #rick grimes/reader #rick grimes x f!reader #alpha rick grimes #alpha!rick grimes x omega!reader #omega reader #fem reader #rick grimes fanfic #rick grimes smut #twd smut #twd fanfic #the walking dead fanfic #rick grimes/you #rick grimes x you

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littlejuicebox · 5 months

Text

I want to hold your hand.

Pairing: Astarion x Original Female Character/Ranger AKA AstarionxWren

Chapter number: Ten

Rating/Warnings: PG-13 / All fluff no smut in this one / Act 1 Spoilers / Angst / Anxiety / Feelings Realization / Violence / Gore / Past trauma / Alcohol / Swear words / Lae'zel being a butthole again (I promise I actually really love her character but, come on, the behavior in this chapter pretty in character for her.) Word count: 2.8K Masterlist: Click here. Song inspiration: "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - The Beatles (But really, more so the version in Across the Universe because the yearning is palpable in that version.) Notes: LMK if you'd like to be added to the tag list for this series in a message. :)

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Astarion took a long time gathering enough gumption to finally exit the Druid’s bedchambers. By the time he made his way toward the center of the grove, all the stars were gleaming in the sky, and more than one campfire had been lit. It appeared everyone already ate dinner, made evident by the empty tables full of used crockery and roasts picked nearly to the bone. He heard faint notes of music and an increasing amount of chatter as he made his way up the stone steps to the camp… it sounded like a party.

His other traveling companions were already there, and their tents had all been pitched. He spied Karlach kindly putting his tent up, and Astarion walked over to help her finish the job. Typically, he would've just left the tiefling to the grunt work and walked off to flirt with Wren or merely lounge about, but since Wren had stormed away from him earlier in the evening after their little tiff… he had nothing better to do.

Apart from Wren, Karlach was probably the vampire's favorite companion. Her easy-going nature made it so he didn’t have to perform too terribly hard around her, and he appreciated their rare moments together. Shadowheart was good for some quick banter, of course, but now the cleric’s preoccupation with Lae’zel made that relationship less ideal and he'd found himself avoiding the cleric whenever her green guard dog was around.

The silver-haired elf took one of the tent ties from Karlach and scanned the crowd for Wren. He spotted her sitting by an attentive Halsin. The unexpected sight created a dull ache in his chest, right around where his undead heart sat stock-still. Gods, he had to find a way to fix things before she found herself enamored with someone that was clearly a better alternative and he wasted all his time and effort for… what exactly? What was this thing between them?

The Archdruid towered over the little bird, especially when she was in a seated position. But despite the size difference, the mountain of a man held her arm in a remarkably gentle grip. The vampire tried to ignore the new duo as he thanked Karlach and then meandered toward the pile of booze. Maybe if he just… loosened himself up a bit, he’d be able to talk to Wren about what he was feeling instead of putting his foot in his mouth again. But what was he feeling, exactly? Astarion didn't have the words. Perhaps that wasn’t the point. Perhaps the point was that whatever role she wanted him to perform, he would do it, if it meant he would stay in her good graces. Surely that was a fair price to pay to be rid of the ache in his chest.

As much as the rogue tried to ignore the scene that was making his insides churn, his eyes kept roaming back to the two of them. The vampire watched as Halsin thoroughly, too thoroughly, spread some kind of salve on Wren’s forearm while she occupied herself with chugging whatever she had in her cup. Astarion had a fleeting thought that it should be him applying that salve on Wren's arm, not the big bear. If not him, then surely Shadowheart. Who the hell was this druid, anyway?

Wren had changed from the chemise he’d given her a few days back and into an entirely different, and significantly more revealing outfit. Where the hells had she even found a set of leather trousers? And was she truly just wearing the bodice she wore under her armor on her torso?

After Halsin was done playing doctor with the little bird, the pale elf was sure the sickening rendezvous would end. But then Wren was digging through her bag and revealing the pipe she’d stolen from Halsin with a guilty grin. The Archdruid seemed very entertained by this; he threw his head back as he laughed in pure delight. Halsin said something with a lifted eyebrow and then smiled and returned the pipe back to the little bird.

Gods, Astarion wished he could hear what they were saying from here. He had the strange sensation of being left out, and he bristled at the thought. ‘They are getting along far too well.’

The vampire reluctantly dragged his eyes away from the scene and snatched a bottle of wine from the booze pile. He was in no mood for this little party, but he supposed he would play this part if he had to.

-----

Wren was tired of performing. The whole self-sufficient, strong ranger woman act was getting exhausting. What was the point? She kept making mistakes, anyway… first losing her own eye, then blowing their cover with Minthara, and then the absolute dragonshitshow of a conversation she’d just had with one of her strongest and most versatile campmates. The campmate that she’d bedded the day before, effectively ending her entirely too long streak of voluntary abstinence. But… had her time with Astarion really been a mistake? She couldn't be sure.

Truly, Wren just wanted someone to hold her. And maybe Halsin wouldn’t hold her, but he’d hold her arm with his warm, comforting hand… and slather some sticky, honey-based salve on her charred skin while she chugged whatever Alfira had just poured into her cup. She liked Halsin. He was nice. He was mature, kind, and held an attractive air of relaxed confidence. It was easy to be drawn to his comforting energy; she saw why the grove trusted him.

Before long, the Archdruid wrapped her arm in a bandage, refused the return of his pipe with an explanation that he had several more, and told her that he didn’t know how to remove the parasites, but he had some ideas they could discuss tomorrow. He cut the conversation short and pushed her into the party, insisting she go and have some fun before returning to business-as-usual tomorrow morning.

Wren wasn’t in any mood for this party, but she begrudgingly obliged. After downing whatever was left in her cup, she found herself roped into a few dances with some of the tieflings and one with Gale. By the third cup of — what was it, wine? — she and Karlach tried to dance without touching, mostly just shimmying and spinning around one another like lunatics before falling on the ground laughing at the stupidity of it all. She needed that laugh, and if she could’ve hugged the tiefling woman then, she would’ve.

After the chortling was over, and the ranger's ribs hurt beyond belief, the two women wandered back to the libations. Karlach flicked her gaze over toward Astarion, who appeared to be brooding and trying to hide the fact that he was brooding, and then she looked back to a buzzed Wren. She filled two more cups with some cherry-scented liquid as she addressed the half-elf. “What’s going on with you and Fangs, anyway, soldier? Normally you two are attached at the hip… or the lip.”

“Karlach!” Wren yelped, her eyes widening as she quickly glanced around to see if anyone else had heard the Barbarian. Her already alcohol-flushed face began to trail the rosy blush up her ears and down her neck.

“Oh, come off!” Karlach exclaimed with a chuckle, rolling her eyes at the ranger. “First of all, you’re a grown woman, so you can do whatever and whoever you’d like. Second of all… it’s not really a secret, Wren. We all know. You should’ve seen the absolute state Astarion was in for those few days you were knocked out after that Gur encounter. I doubt he’s like that for just anyone.”

Wren didn’t know what to say in response to Karlach’s revelation. Her fingers moved up to nervously touch her lip scar and then she shrugged, “I guess… I didn’t know how he felt. I… don’t know how he feels.”

“Well… did you ever really ask him?” Karlach responded with a shrug, as if the answer were quite simple to her, cocking her head just slightly at the ranger before shoving the filled cup into her hand.

Wren almost laughed as she lifted the cup to her lips for a drink. She didn’t ever ask him; she’d been too preoccupied by the parasite, and then losing her eye. She didn't stop to speak to him at all, really. The archer soaked in the irony of her own words from her earlier encounter with Astarion swinging like a boomerang right back to her. The substance in her cup tasted better than the previous drinks she’d been given, and the brunette woman eagerly took another sip as she considered her friend’s words with a soft hum. “Alright. I'll ask him."

-----

Astarion watched Wren dance with more than one partner. Should he ask her to dance? Would that smooth things over? He knew how to, of course. But then, if she was so angry with him that she rejected him in front of everyone… well the rogue’s pride truly couldn’t stand for that to happen.

The vampire sat frozen in indecision, sipping from his bottle as his eyes tracked the little bird around the camp. She and Karlach had a bit of conversation by the booze table — it must’ve been about him, because Karlach looked his way more than once. Annoyingly, he couldn’t pick up what they said from this distance over the clamor of other conversations and Alfira’s music. The knowledge that he was being discussed made him uneasy, and he huffed, suddenly scanning the party for a distraction. Just as he was about to throw a line at some tiefling in a futile attempt to stroke his own ego, he heard Wren’s enraged voice thundering through the party.

“What the hell did you just say, Lae’zel?” The little bird was standing face to face with the Githyanki, hands clenched into tight fists.

“You heard what I said. I do not need to repeat it.” Lae’zel responded coolly, stepping even closer to the ranger, answering their group leader’s challenge.

The entire crowd had fallen silent, watching the scene unfold. Wren quickly hooked her right arm, and Astarion stared in a ridiculously juxtaposed mixture of horror and delight as it connected with a solid pow on the other woman’s eye socket. Lae’zel, to her credit, took the punch with barely any reaction and then returned it with one of her own. It landed on the ranger’s nose with a sickening crack.

Astarion rushed forward, along with Karlach and Shadowheart, just as Lae’zel was about to withdraw her blade. But Astarion was faster than the alien and he pressed the edge of his dagger against the Githyanki’s neck in warning.

“Now, now, I think not, little viper. You’re clearly drunk. Go lay down with mommy Shadowheart and take a nap before we all do things we will surely regret in the morning.” His voice warned, tone measured but scarlet eyes heated as they glared into Lae’zel’s.

Shadowheart had hold of Lae’zel’s forearm, staying her blade, while Karlach stood a few paces behind the half-elf. Wren was holding her nose, which was now pouring thin streams of crimson. Astarion couldn’t see the blood from where his face was pressed so closely to the alien, but he could easily smell it. Oh, how his fingers positively ached with the desire to slice into Lae’zel’s neck and repay the debt.

Shadowheart spoke, trying with all her might to remain calm and be the voice of reason. “Come on, Lae’zel. You’re drunk… you didn’t truly mean it. Come with me, let’s go lay down.”

The Githyanki relented, inhaling deeply and stepping back, away from Astarion’s blade. The cleric offered an apologetic look to her other campmates before grabbing her lover’s hand and pulling her away from the party, towards their tent.

“Sorry about that, folks! You know how it goes among family!” Karlach shouted, and soon everyone shrugged off the dispute and resumed their conversations, followed by another swell of music.

After Astarion stowed his blade, he turned to check on Wren. She’d already walked towards her own tent and hidden herself inside the little nest. He followed after her, swiftly ducking himself into the canvas shelter before kneeling down to face the little bird. She’d held a cloth over her nose and fixed her closed eyes toward the ceiling, hoping to slow the bleeding.

“I heard it break. Can’t you heal it yourself?” He murmured, cocking his head slightly as he lifted his hand toward her face, removing the cloth for a moment to examine the damage.

“I tried. But it seems I’m out of spellcasting power. I used it all up at the goblin camp. I’m obviously not going to Shadowheart for help, Halsin already helped me with my arm, and fuck Nettie. So… here I am.”

“Hold on.” Astarion murmured, exiting the tent with no further explanation. Wren’s brows furrowed in confusion as she watched him exit, but that caused a sharp pain in her nose, so she groaned and looked back at the ceiling.

The vampire returned a few minutes later, wearing a large amulet with a jade-colored stone that Wren didn’t recognize and carrying his own backpack. He sat back down and moved his slender hands forward, bidding the little bird to lower the blood-soaked cloth. Long, lithe fingers pressed to the woman’s nose and then Astarion uttered a healing incantation.

Wren blinked in surprise as she felt the familiar warmth of a healing spell seep through her skin and into the fragile bones along the center of her face. Soon enough, her nose felt practically back to normal. Astarion seemed to be watching her for an indication that his efforts worked before lowering his hands. She nodded subtly.

The rogue quietly removed his hands and quickly undid the clasp of the heavy amulet, stowing the piece of jewelry back in his pack. Then he rustled around, withdrawing a small bottle of water and a small scrap of cloth. After dampening the cloth, he lifted it to Wren’s nose and began tenderly cleaning the dried blood off her face. He saw the question in her eyes and answered it without her prompting.

“I found it among Counsellor Florrick’s things, when I found your chemise. Seemed worth keeping, but it’s awfully noisy when I move so I don't wear it all the time.” He says in a hushed voice, pausing for a moment when Wren winced as he pressed too firmly to her still-tender nose. He looks at her for a beat and then continues, “Figured I would hold onto it, just in case...”

'Just in case I end up on my own and I don't have Shadowheart or you to heal me.'

A bit of quiet fell between the two as the elf focused on his task, and the woman focused on one of her pillows instead of the rogue. Astarion noticed this, because she normally watched him so intently with those two-toned eyes of hers. It stung, her lack of attention on him, but he kept working, hoping somehow this was a step in the right direction. At least she hadn’t pushed him away. It was clear that in the thick silence of the tent, which was such a sharp contrast to the raging party outside, that the two of them felt the weight of things unsaid hanging between them.

“What did she say?” Astarion questioned in a low murmur, scarlet orbs wandering from Wren's upturned nose to her distant stare, pulling her attention back to him.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Wren huffed, beginning to bristle in response and starting to pull away from the vampire, but his other hand clasped onto her forearm and kept her in place.

The rogue paused for a moment, squinting his eyes at the ranger. Wren could see the subtle prickles of annoyance on his face; her eyes took in the scrunch of his nose and the clenching of his jaw. His tone was stiff, curt, as if he were trying to maintain hold over his emotions. “You said you would tell me anything if I bothered to ask. So, here I am, asking.”

Wren fell silent, as she felt the sting of her own words flipped against her for the second time that night. She moved to thumb her lip scar, and Astarion’s eyes followed her finger for a moment before returning to holding her own eyes in an unyielding stare.

“She…” The little bird looked up at the tent and sighed. Hells, it was going to sound so ridiculous when it came out.

“She overheard Karlach asking what happened to Kol, and I told Karlach that Kol had died. I told her what I told you about the ambush. And then Lae’zel said that I have a type… elves with silver hair and red eyes. And that my history of poor leadership would probably get you killed, just like it had the first one.”

Wren’s mouth hardened into a line, and her voice crackled at the end. Fuck Lae’zel for knowing exactly how to cut into her with words and lay bare one of her biggest fears. Wren didn’t want to be the leader… she didn’t fucking want it! So why did Lae’zel or anyone else have to make it so hard? Didn’t they know she was already beating herself to a pulp for every misstep along the way?

Astarion watched as the little bird rolled her gaze up to the ceiling where she stayed intently focused on the canvas of the tent, trying to conceal her tears. He had half a mind to storm across the camp and cut out the Githyanki’s tongue. Maybe they would all be better off for it; her pessimistic nature wasn’t doing the group any favors, after all. But instead, he sighed, grabbed Wren’s hand, grabbed his own pack, and then stood up, pulling her with him.

“Come on, darling. Let’s get away from this party. The wine is shit and the only company really worth keeping is in this tent, anyway.” He grumbled before walking out of the canvas shelter and heading away from the crowd, toward the grove exit. He kept his fingers wrapped around hers as he led her along.

Wren followed without much of a thought. She spent so much time being a leader, she supposed she basked in the few moments when she got to be a follower. She didn’t know where they were going; she didn’t care. She just wanted Astarion to keep holding her hand for as long as possible.

-----

Taglist: Hiii @mancsunite

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skz-streamer · 8 months

Text

Solace - Sfw

COLLAB W @cherry-edibles NSFW VERSION

Pairing: Skz x fem!reader

Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort,

Warnings: mentions of death, crying...lmk if there's anything else

Notes: Hi Hi!!!! Bae here :) so cherry and I decided to do a collab cause she writes smut and I write fluff n stuff...idkkk I dont like posting smut on this acc so her ver is linked above :)

Summary: You hate your annoying roommate Hyunjin, but after what happened…maybe you find solace in him.

-please read responsibly, and remember that this work is fiction and meant strictly for imaginative fun. the idols used in fics are more accurately faceclaims and personality outlines for imaginary characters, and should not be interpreted as factual representations of existing people

Full word count ~1.2k ;)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You live with Hyunjin, and to be honest, he’s a pain in the ass. He's always teasing you and annoying you, like a persistent fly buzzing next to your ear. But despite your feelings, you have to suck it up and live with him because you both share an apartment. You don't really know what he does, and you don't really care. Your focus is mainly on your college workload. All you know is that he trains at some entertainment company or something. Whatever.

"I'ma head out," you say, preparing to take Kkami, the dog you both love equally, to the vet. Kkami has been feeling sick recently, so you both decided it would be best to get him a check-up. You walk out of the apartment, with Kkami happily wagging his tail by your side.

"Sure, keep me posted," is all you hear as you exit through the door. You're determined to take care of Kkami, even if it means putting up with Hyunjin's irritating presence for a while longer.

You drive your way over to the vet, gripping the steering wheel tightly, trying to convince yourself that everything is going to be okay. But deep down, you can't shake off the nervousness that is pulsing through your veins. As you park the car and step out, you take a deep breath, hoping it will steady your racing heart.

Entering the vet's office, you take a seat, your leg bouncing up and down rapidly, betraying your anxiety. The minutes seem to stretch into eternity as you anxiously wait for the vet to emerge from her office, carrying the weight of the verdict you so desperately need to hear.

Finally, you hear the click of the lock on the office door, and there she is, the vet, her blank expression a stark contrast to the warm smile she wore when you first met her. You try to maintain your composure, mustering some confidence even though your heart feels like it's about to burst.

As she speaks, her words hit you like a tidal wave. "He only has a week left, and he is in deep pain right now," she says, her voice filled with empathy. "You can either choose to put him down or wait. Take your time in making this decision."

The weight of her words crashes down upon you, threatening to break the fragile composure you've managed to hold onto. You can feel tears welling up in your eyes, threatening to stream down your face, but you fight to keep them at bay. This is not the time to break down. This is the time to be strong for your beloved companion.

Nodding your head in acknowledgment, you thank the vet for her honesty and advice. You rise from the chair, your legs feeling weak, but you steady yourself as you make your way back to the car. As soon as you close the door behind you, the floodgates burst open, and tears cascade down your cheeks.

Sitting there in the driver's seat, memories of all the moments you've shared with Kkami come rushing back. The joyful walks in the park, the endless cuddles on the couch, the mischievous games of chase. Each memory tugs at your heart, reminding you of the irreplaceable bond you've formed.

Through the tears, you reminisce about the times when Kkami's playful spirit brought laughter into your life, the times when his comforting presence helped you through your darkest days. It feels as though time is slipping away, and the weight of the decision hangs heavy on your shoulders.

Eventually, as the tears begin to subside, you wipe your cheeks and take a deep, shaky breath. You know that you will cherish the remaining moments with Kkami. With a heavy heart, you turn the key in the ignition and drive away from the vet's office.

You somehow manage to drive back to your apartment, adrenaline coursing through your veins, and you burst through the door, slamming it shut behind you. The loud slam echoes through the apartment, startling Hyunjin, who was lying in his room at the time. He instantly jumps up and walks out of his room, following the sound to find you crying in a mess on the floor.

Hyunjin wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about you, he liked you but he also didn’t want to lose you as a “friend” he wasn’t sure why he teased you. Maybe it was because he loved the cute faces you made while rolling your eyes, or while scrunching your nose every time you sighed. But as soon as Hyunjin saw you in such a fragile state on the floor his brain immediately stopped working and his heart gained control over his body.

Kneeling down beside you, he sees your hands covering your face, your hair a tangled mess in front of your tear-stained cheeks. The sight of you like this is something he has never witnessed before, and it breaks his heart. As the realization dawns on him that Kkami, his beloved dog, is not with you, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. His eyes well up with tears, but they come spilling out no matter how hard he fights them back. You look up to see that Hyunjin is also crying. What was once an annoying happy face now turned into a confused teary one makes you wail even louder.

Gently, Hyunjin tries to calm himself down and takes hold of your trembling form. He guides you towards the couch. You shift your entire body weight into him, your tears creating small dots on his shirt. He sits you down on the couch taking a seat next to you. You hiccup through your sobs, looking up at him with red, puffy eyes. His eyes stare deep into yours, even though no words are being spoken it seems like with a simple look a whole conversation was exchanged. He reaches out his fingers and tenderly wipes away your tears, only for more to flow freely down your cheeks. His hands cradle your face, providing a comforting warmth and a sense of security.

Between the pain of kkami and this current situation, life feels like an ongoing torment. You've reached a point where even the simplest acts seem daunting, and the weidght brings forth more tears. It's overwhelming. You try to focus on Hyunjin, to discard all the thoughts that disrupt the peace you once had.

Now, as you stare a fleeting glance at him, you can’t deny the undeniable attractiveness that emanated from his features. His eyes, perfectly placed on his face, drew you in like magnets, while his nose complimented them in a way that seemed almost too perfect to be real. And those plump lips, oh, how they captured your attention. They were so tempting, so inviting.

Hyunjin pulls you closer, enveloping you in his warmth, and you welcome it, desperate for solace. Breaking away from the embrace, you meet his gaze. His expression carries a mix of concern, worry, and tenderness, all wrapped in his gentle warmth. Your attention drifts to his lips, slightly bitten in nervous anticipation. The sight makes them appear even more enticing, fuller, and more inviting. And in that moment, you decide to act on your impulse. You lean in and kiss him.

Taglist: @eee5533 @mixtape-racha @ren0325 @felixvsp @hwangchu @sanriiolino @painstakingly-juno @herarcadewasteland. @dabiscrustyfeet @kai-lee08 @sungiesoonie @slvtty4channiee @revelaffee @interstellarairwaves

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monstrouslyobsessed · 1 year

Text

been a minute since i've answered yall asks, sorry about that. been having health issues again. sighs.

tw / tags: monster fucking, snake anatomy, breeding mentions

Do you have any thoughts about slime-like monsters? I personally find monsters with… unstable??? body structure quite interesting cuz of their potential lol. Like, even of they're slow and trembling like jittery jelly, once they have grip on you – you gone, whoops. Struggling r useless, u will only get urself deeper and you can't even do a lot to escape. And bonus points if they're kinda dumb, so by acting silly and goofy they're practically gaslighting lmao —anonymous

i actually have a musing in the work about that one!! its...been in my draft forever...whoops....i'll work on that in just a bit then.

but yes!! theyre also super versatile too! imagine if you have one as a pet...its going to make a pet out of you, oho rip darling.

I wonder how the 6 arms snake god eat. Does he just shallow his prey whole? chew them? Tear them apart then eat them piece by piece? I wonder what is his favorite part of his prey, and his less favorite. I imagine that some times, he eat messy, so reader clean the blood around his mouth with a clean napkin. —anonymous

i actually kinda imagine him opening his mouth like a snake would since he's no longer a human (w a pic below). but in the beginning, when he's still merging with the snake god, he'd probably start tearing his, ah, meals apart, yeah. i actually don't think his transformation was actually completed by the time he started his initial rampage + he wouldn't have any arm when he first started out too.

oh geez i can see him being super clumsy and floppy trying to learn how to move his new body. poor thing.

his mouth would be like this, maybe with bigger fangs tho. that said, i cant find the original source now :( so if any of you know who this may be by, lmk so i can link the artist!!

Hey-hey! Have you read Mieruko-chan by any chance? Maybe it's only me, but i find designs for ghosts from here rlly cool and some chapters can give some pretty cool concepts/ideas.

Gl on ur day! ✨ —anonymous

i actually have been keeping up with it! poor mc, she's trying her best...I'm crushing on the yandere tentacled head lady atm lol

☆ Put this star into the inbox of your favourite blogs. It's time to spread positivity! 💖 — @berrychan03

dawwww <3 thank you!!! i'll be sure to spread them around~!

Your Jaguar Trube story is really good! I like it. Are you going to make the part 2 for it? —anonymous

im actually kinda stumped on how to continue this one mainly because of the breeding kink being the primary focus and the reader initially being gn. i feel iffy doing this to my fellow gn readers as well, as i don't wish to exclude them and i don't think im that good of a writer to pull off a gn smut.

i could just do two versions tbh because its a little different between if the reader is afab and if they're amab.

if afab, theyre actually kinda in for some bad time because there's so many males around, possibly around 30 to even 50, and there's a lot of dp to go around because they're sharing them.

if amab, there's not many females around at all, maybe around 4 young adult ones (with the rest being old ladies), though that's not to say the males wouldn't touch them because they def would though lol but i kinda imagined that being amab they wouldn't be in too high of demand and would be given breaks. plus, they don't have to worry about getting pregnant.

i'll take feedback regarding this matter though, so lmk your thoughts on how i should proceed!

anyhoo, gonna try and work on couple overdue commissions i got, but in the meanwhile, feel free to send in whatever (that is currently open lol) love ya bunches!

#ghosts are curious.👻#☠️not writing...#anonymous #asked #answered #☠️monster is whispering...#a momster's recommendation.🦇

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jinkookspencil · 1 year

Text

so.... i think i've decided to take a turn with my fics.

minors dni with this post

i think i'm staying away from writing smut. i will still write borderline smutty and suggestive things (i have sooo many of those i want to write) but it won't reach the point of them going through the whole "process" if you know what i mean. talking about s3x, the lead up, and the aftermath i'm okay with but the actual... "happening" when they "reach a certain point" is what i'd like to stay away from.

i can't explain it idk if this is a passing feeling but i've been pretty sure about this for a few months now, to the point where i'm considering doing something about my current, uploaded smuts.

the fics that would be affected are:

don't be so gentle

game night (i'd likely delete a paragraph only)

take off your glasses (this one is making me reconsider the whole decision lmao >.< so i might leave it until i figure out how to rework it i'll likely delete a huge chunk)

the only smut that will stay safe is a better grip because it's a chubby girl smut <33333

when i do write smutty things going forward they will be more in the style of:

comfortable, bare, and hungry (fluff but they're naked post-s3x)

this love (making out heavillly and his hand is in a certain place :))

no pyjamas (the fic ends suggestively after he's already making out with her and they're both turned on - might get the axe if i end up feeling even stronger about this)

i'm not sure if there's a certain etiquette, but: should i edit my fics or should i delete them entirely (& possibly reupload as a less smuttier version?) is there a "proper" way to go about it? in either case i'd make it clear (this is an edit/reupload)

i don't know when i'd do this, i have a smutty thing i want to upload (might post it for a bit then delete it or i might just leave it up since it involves curvy readers and we need more curvy reader fics) but i just thought i'd ask while it was on my mind also if u see me upload smut in the future after all this... just... respectfully.... mind ya business and remember the hold these men have over us kskjwdnjkwe

so yeah lmk please <3 sorry if this is disappointing to anyone, it's disappointing to me too, they're literally among my most popular fics but... i can't shake this feeling

also my other 2 requests wips are coming! one is done i'm just waiting a bit before uploading since i just uploaded one recently

#bts fanfiction #fanfiction advice #fanfiction tips #pen is having a crisis #pen talks

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willowrites · 5 months

Note

can you do a smut with chubby fem reader and sam? tysm !

WOULD WE?

SUMMARY. you were a big fan of sam and colby for years and when the opportunity to finally meet them presented itself to you…with no hesitation you took it …

PAIRINGS. (non-specific) chubby!fem reader x sam golbach & colby brock

WARNINGS. oral f!receiving, dirty talk, praising and a little bit of degradation, threesome ...

AUTHORS NOTE. hello! i’m sorry if this didn’t meet your expectations i wasn’t sure how to go about this or the specifics you wanted but hopefully i did the smut part right! enjoy ! lmk if u guys want a part 2 …!!! AND ALSO SORRY FOR LACKING! its been a crazy month …

“so guys next week is halloween and as you guys know we’re throwing a big party. you have to be over 21 i’m sorry,” colby said and shrugged. your heart jumped.

say it’s in la say it’s in la. you repeated.

“it will be in la, we’ll drop the address the day of. please come if you can and bring your ID!” sam confirmed.

you were there. mentally and physically you are going to be there. you already have a really sexy halloween costume planned so it was about time you used it.

you pressed play on the video after you had paused it.

“okay so truth or strip.” sam clapped. “if you can’t answer you get a bunch of ice dumped on you. should be fun.”

“we’ve done this before guys but this time, we’re gonna get a little spicy, we’re in a pool, and doing the ice bucket challenge.” colby said running a hand through his hair.

you were excited about this video. something about both of them just made you so happy.

“okay rock paper scissors who goes first,” sam said.

“okay okay.”

“rock paper scissors shoot!” they both exclaim.

scissors.

“rock paper scissors shoot!”

paper.

“rock paper scissors shoot.”

rock and scissors. sam won.

“noooo!!” colby whined.

sam pumped his fist and continued. “okay first question, have you ever lied to me. if so what was the lie.” after he asked that he eyed colby.

“well…no not outside of like a prank. i don’t think i’ve ever truly lied to you." he said frowning.

“not even once? like back in the day,” sam asks.

“nope, because i’m just real like that guys.” colby brags.

sam rolls his eyes. “well technically you didn’t answer soooo..” sam trails off while grabbing hold of one ice pack.

“no no no please.” colby whines but sam still pours the bag of ice.

“oh my god so cold so cold so cold,” he repeated.

“damn i should’ve had you take your shirt off first,” sam said but rolled his eyes as colby took his shirt off.

jesus, you wish you were there in person.

you continued on with the video until colby asked a very interesting question. both of them were shirtless and colby was in his boxers while sam was still in his swim shorts.

“would you have a threesome if i was the other guy.” sam widened his eyes.

“woah now that’s a question,” he said awkwardly while colby laughed and covered his face.

“well i-.” sam hesitates to answer the question. “i don’t know?” sam was blushing so hard.

he was just so cute.

“well i mean we have kissed and made out with the same girl.” colby shrugged.

“i…guesss yeah i mean. sure why not,” sam answered.

you were speechless. that night you dreamt of what it would be like to have both of you giving you sexual attention.

i mean…dreams come true, right?

“y/n are you almost done?” your best friend elena said.

you were finishing up touching up your hair and once you were done with that you would be finished getting ready.

you finished tying up your light blue ribbon on the other pigtail of your dorothy costume.

you were more like a sexy version of dorothy from wizard of oz.

you were wearing a white lacy bra that was more of lingerie which showed a generous amount of your cleavage. you then were wearing the light blue plaid dress which was silky on your body. it flattered your ass and you were so confident in it. then you were wearing thigh-high sheer white socks with light blue ribbons on top of where they meet your thighs then lastly you had red sparkly heels gracing your feet.

you checked yourself out in the mirror as you finished up your last curl.

“yes i’ll be out in a minute one sec!” you yelled out.

you did a natural makeup look not wanting to look too dramatic for dorothy but you applied more lip gloss as you got done with your curls.

“okay because we gotta go.” elena said through the door.

you tried to tidy up your space but it was no use. you would tend to it tomorrow.

“okay, how do i look.” you spin revealing your outfit to your friend.

“oh my god fuck me till i come you look so hot!!” your friend hyped you up. “what about me?” she spun around.

“thank you thank you!! and you look so hot let’s scissor right now.” you look her up and down. “elena dressed as elena gilbert? sexy!!! now let’s gooo i hope i get to talk to them.” you jumped up and down. you were so excited.

you heard the music bumping as you walked up to the mansion.

you wondered if this was their actual house or not. probably not or else they’d get bombarded by fans every day.

you held elena’s hand as she led you through the crowd of people chilling outside. we then reached the front.

“IDs! get your IDs out everyone!” the security said. you took your ID from your phone case not wanting to bring your purse or anything.

“you’re good lady’s have a good night.” the guard told us.

we smiled and then entered the house. it was a little less crowded than outside but it was very warm. all the windows were propped open to most likely try to keep the air flowing.

“i’m going to go get us drinks!” elena shouted over the loud rap playing through the speakers.

you nodded to show your understanding and just stood there.

you looked around the place trying not to fangirl over looking for sam and colby.

your eyes looked over the area. your eyes met the stairs and the kitchen but nothing. you were sure there were more rooms they’d probably be in doing their own business so you just wanted to leave it and have some fun.

“got the drinks!!” elena handed you a red plastic cup filled with god knows what. “just drink it and let loose a little!”

“i think i’m just going to get a soda.” you said not feeling the drink anymore. “i’ll be right back.”

she nodded “okay whatever you’re comfortable with baby i’ll be right here dancing!!”

you and elena were complete opposites. she was the partier and you were the …not partier?

let’s just say you’d prefer to be home but tonight is halloween you want to make the most of it.

as you were opening a can of soda someone bumped into you from behind causing you to cut yourself on the rim of the cup. you didn’t know how but you winced and saw as blood started making its way up to the surface of your thumb.

“oh shit! i’m so sorry!” you heard a familiar voice.

no fucking way no fucking way.

“are you okay? are you hurt?” the man says. the man? no, it’s fucking sam golbach.

“oh…i’m uh.” you stuttered. you couldn’t help it he looked so good. “yeah i’m okay.”

you were just staring at him. you tried to snap out of it but you couldn’t.

“a-are got sure?” he smiled and laughed at you. “mmm mm let me see your hand.” he grabbed hold of it and inspected your thumb. his hands were soft and warm.

you looked and inspected him while he inspected your thumb.

“shit this looks a little deep. i can’t really see right here follow me,” he yelled and took your hand and led you to and up the stairs into a room. he closed the door and led you to the bathroom.

“much quieter up here huh?” he started looking into the medicine cabinet. “go ahead and sit on the toilet for me.”

you sat on the covered toilet waiting patiently but trying to figure out if you were dreaming or not.

sam was right in front of you. you were in someone's room, if you were lucky you were in his.

"im really sorry by the way. i was trying to talk to one of my friends and i didn't see where i was going." he took your hand in his trying to clean it with a towel. "this might hurt so im just warning you, talk to me to distract yourself. what are you doing here?"

he grabbed the alcohol, poured it on a swab, and put it over your thumb.

"fuck." you whispered trying to pull your hand away but sam kept it there looking at you. "um..i saw it on your youtube. and i follow you on instagram."

"oh? so do you watch colby and i?" he's still rubbing your thumb.

you nodded. the way he was speaking had you wanting to get on your knees right now.

"how did you like our most recent video-" sam got interrupted by a knock.

"yo sam! you in here bro?" you heard colbys voice. colby. you were genuinely nervous.

"yeah in here." sam talked back. you heard colby close the door and walk your way.

"hey bro where did you go...oh." he saw you sitting on top of the toilet as sam was cleaning your tiny wound. "hello.." he smiled or more like smirked.

"hi..." you whispered wincing again as sam did his last rubs on your cut.

"im sorry im sorry," sam whispered throwing the swabs in the trash and digging for something else in the medicine cabinet.

"i like your costume." colby complimented you leaning on the doorway.

"thank you...i thought i looked good." you softly smiled looking down at your sparkly heels.

"she said she's a big fan of ours colby." sam looks at colby.

"oh really?" he grinned looking you up and down while crossing his arms in front of him. "im very glad you're a fan. we have the most attractive fanbase out there for sure then.”

“i guess so..” you laughed nervously. the way you saw the outline of his biceps from his fitted shirt.

“okay you’re all bandaged up,” sam said. you inspected your hand seeing he did a good job of bandaging it up.

boyfriend material.

“thank you…” you stood up. “i’m sorry if i ruined your experience or your fun.”

“no, you didn’t babe. you practically saved me from all the drunks.” sam moved so that you could get past him and exit the bathroom.

you smiled and walked past finally being able to inspect the room you were in.

kind-sized bed with an interesting color palette.

“going so soon?” colby questioned? taking two steps forward towards you.

“uh…well i assumed you didn’t want a random girl i-in your room and that you just…um wanted to have some space after cleaning up my mess.” you looked down at the ground.

“my mess silly.” sam chuckled.

“you seem nervous. what’re you nervous about, baby?” colby purred. you clenched your thighs together hoping it wasn’t visible.

“i’m not- i’m not nervous.” you denied not wanting to show any weakness even though you literally are about to fall to your knees right now.

“you sure?” he bit his bottom lip. “what’s your name?”

“y/n…” you felt the room get hotter as sam turned off the bathroom light and stood next to colby.

“mmm pretty name for a pretty girl.” colby said brushing a few frizzed curls on your head. “don’t you think sam?”

“yeah i mean very very pretty girl.” you couldn’t see but sam was checking you out. he was wondering if he would have to leave to hide his boner.

“pretty girl…watching our videos. you watch our videos a lot?” his voice was laced with a tone you couldn’t detect.

“yes i’ve watched every single one.” you walked backward the back of your knees hitting the bed causing you to sit down.

“well i mean, you deserve a reward don't you think? for being such a good fan?” colby’s hand moved to your chin. “if you’re looking for one of course. your choice princess.”

“what kind of rew-“ you started but got cut off.

“mmm think you know…” sam whispered.

“i’m confused…you don’t even know me why would you…” you didn’t realize what was fully happening until colby was moving the strap of your blue plaid dress down your shoulder.

“we could get to know each other…more ways than one.” he chuckled. “white lingerie..so pure and innocent.”

"colby let her breathe." sam stepped forward. "we'll do what you want beautiful girl. just say the word."

you felt lightheaded. was this really happening. colby was straight-up flirting with you and suggesting some...insane things.

reward? what kind of reward? a quick fuck?

"can i?" colby kneeled on one knee and whispered in your ear. he was toying with the strap of your costume.

before you even processed anything your head was nodding to his question.

"gonna need you to say something for me, baby. verbal consent you know?" his hand trailed down your arm causing goosebumps to play follow the leader.

"yes.." you let out breathlessly.

he was bringing your costume down your body; his lips ghosting your delicate skin. then he puckered and placed kisses on where your costume's strap once sat.

his lips made their way from the shoulder to your neck and then to the base of your throat. “such a good girl.” he said in a praising tone. “don’t worry baby i’ll give you a reward. a really really good one. i’m on my knees anyway. then sam will be able to have his fun with you. sound good baby?”

you were already so wet from his dirty words. you looked up and saw sam. his eyes darkened. he peered at you waiting for your response. he smiled when you made eye contact with him and you saw the flood of lust in his eyes.

“yes…” you nodded frantically. as if on command as soon as his hands made their way in the middle of your thighs they spread apart like magic. his touch giving you goosebumps and causing your hands to prop yourself up behind you.

"already so desperate for me? dirty dirty girl. barely even know me." he started kissing your thigh then made his way in between them. "its crazy how sam and i were just chatting about threesomes and shit, and now we have an innocent little angel right here for the both of us."

you could tell colby’s fortey was dirty talk…

“can’t even speak to me? being a bad girl, baby.” he scoffed. “can i punish you like one?”

and degradation too…jesus.

it was embarrassing how soaked your cunt was.

“such soft skin.” he kissed his way up your thigh. “wanna mark it up. imagine how gorgeous you would look.”

“she looks beautiful.” sam spoke up. he sat on the bed right next to you combing your hair to one shoulder and planting his lips on your neck. “prettiest fan out here.”

their words were making their way straight to your hot pussy.

speaking of, colby’s lips finally reached your white lacy underwear.

“so delicate and so innocent.” he whispered, his lips against your clothed clit. “wanna make you come so hard. do you wanna come, baby?”

you nodded frantically as sam starts sucking tiny love bites along your collarbone.

you felt colby’s lips kiss your pussy and place his tongue on top clicking a stripe up. it was killing you how your thin underwear was preventing a sensation you were begging to have.

he sucked and licked making you tug his hair and try to push him closer for more pressure.

"sam hold her hands." he groaned, the vibration sending you in shock.

"mmm let's just have her lay down." he whispered loud enough for both of you to hear.

"right then, scoot back baby." he stood up. you scooted backward on your elbows until your head hit the soft pillow on the king-sized bed. "can i take these off?" he played with your underwear.

you lifted your hips up in response so that he could slide them off.

he took them off with one hand and flung them across the room. he leans forward propping himself on his arms face to face with your womanhood.

"sam make sure the door is locked, yeah? can't have anyone looking at our angel." he kitten licked your clit afterward catching you off guard.

his tongue on your hot pussy was what you craved but not what you needed. you needed him to dive in. you wanted to be devoured and afterward wanted both of them in you, as deep as possible.

you heard the knob of the door of the bedroom click and sam lie down beside you.

"so beautiful," sam whispered. you turned toward him enjoying his repeated words. his eyes landed on your lips then to your eyes once more. you took this as a chance to connect your lips with his.

immediately he responds molding his lips with yours. his lips were soft and intoxicating. his hand came in contact with your chin taking control of the kiss. you were deep in not thinking about anything else when all of a sudden colby gave a harsh lick upwards on your clit, he then started sucking giving you no time to catch your breath.

you moaned into sam’s mouth and pulled him closer to help you gain control of yourself.

colby licked, sucks, pulled and you couldn’t stop the feelings of tightness in your lower belly. his tongue tepidly moving on your puffy clit, the sensitivity of it growing more by the second.

“oh fuck…” you moaned having to pull away from sam’s kiss.

“taste so good.” colby groaned against you pulling you impossibly closer to his mouth. he picked up your right thigh and threw it over his shoulder while pushing down your other trying to get you to open up more. you involuntarily start grinding your hips against his mouth to increase the friction you so desperately need. “that’s it, baby. use my mouth. cmon make yourself come.”

colby’s words spurred you on to continue to move your hips at a fast pace and you were doing great, your eyes clenched shut while you chased what you wanted but your hips stuttered at the feeling of two fingers making their way inside of you.

“o-oh god.” a breathless moan escaped your pink lips. you open your eyes and look at the sight beneath you. colby dripping in sweat. his tongue on your folds paired with his palm facing down and two fingers deep into your cunt.

he was thrusting his fingers painfully slow and you needed more.

“colby, please…need…need” you couldn’t get your words out.

“what do you need baby?” sam caressed your hair.

“need you guys…fuck. need it so bad,” you begged. you wanted one if not both of them deep inside you to snap that rubber band that was waiting to be cut.

“aw, sweet thing. begging so soon.” you glanced at his face as his words reached your ears, the sight of him pleasing your eyes. saliva dripping down his pretty mouth and onto your lower lips wetting your pretty pussy even more; as if that was possible. “still haven’t gotten enough of you. you’re addicting.”

he sped up the pace of his fingers drilling into you. you saw in a quick moment he swiftly took his shirt off and then dove back in. his back muscles moving as his hand penetrated your sensitive spot.

you felt that tight band in your lower stomach on the edge of exploding. whimpers involuntarily escaped out of your mouth.

he tongue repeatedly stroking your irritated clit pushing you more and more to the edge.

“oh my god fuck…” you screamed as you were right there. you wanted to let go so bad.

“that’s it, pretty girl, scream. wanna hear how good you feel.” sam spoke, trailing his fingers alongside your body.

you were repeating the word please over and over again as if it’d bring you off the edge faster.

as if to distract you sam kissed up the side of your neck and reached your ear. “can i take this off you?” he motioned towards your lacy bra.

you nodded wanting to please him.

he tapped the side of your body as if to sign for you to arch your back up and in perfect timing colby took a bite of your clit with his lips and pulled it towards him causing you to groan hard and arch your back; pleasing sam.

sam unclasped your bra and immediately started kissing your perky breasts. he sucks one of your tits in his mouth while massaging the other.

the actions sam was performing on you were just what you needed before your body seized in ecstasy. pleasure washed over your body. your lips slammed shut trying to muffle the sounds of your impending orgasm.

“go on baby. let us hear how good you feel.” sam kissed you causing your moans to escape from his mouth and meet his.

colby didn’t stop devouring your sweet leaking juices; disregarding how sensitive you were.

you screamed and whimpered while you were coming down from your orgasm. half of you trying to push colby’s mouth away and the other half wanting more. his mouth was addicting.

your clit was so sensitive but colby continues to devour you flicking his tongue on your bud.

“c-can’t… too sensitive,” you whined. colby laughed and continued his antics.

"okay baby." he kissed your pussy. you felt empty as he pulled out his fingers and suddenly wanted more.

he climbed back up the bed and gave you a chaste kiss before tapping your lips with his fingers.

"open up. c'mon taste yourself," he whispered. you opened your mouth and took his digits in tasting yourself on his fingers.

you had kept eye contact with him before making eye contact with sam. sam had a deep blue shade of lust in his eyes so you had decided to pull your mouth from wrapping around colby’s fingers to grabbing sam in a heated kiss.

he had moaned into your mouth making your pussy pulse once again.

“need you..” you moaned reciprocated wanting to make sure he’s aware of how much you’re enjoying this as well.

“want you so bad.” he moves his lips to your chin and then neck. “you’ve been such a good girl.”

“she has.” colby groaned from behind your head sitting beside you and finding a way to show you how large the erection in his baggy costume was. “want my cock?”

you nodded eagerly.

“i’ll give it to you baby. we’ll both give it to you.” colby started to grind himself on you.

from then on out, let’s just say you didn’t stop having fun.

#✮ ⋆˙ 𝑾𝑰𝑳𝑳𝑶𝑾 #colby brock smut #colby brock imagine #sam and colby imagine #sam and colby smut #colby brock #sam x reader #sam goldbach #sam golbach #sam and colby #colby x reader #colby brock x reader #xplr #colby

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selfcarecap · 2 years

Text

Faking It [p.p]

pairing: Peter Parker x reader

summary: Peter’s right arm is bigger than his left arm because he jerks off too much. MJ makes fun of him because of it. You defend Peter and somehow end up in a fake relationship with him to save him some embarrassment.

(can’t believe i’ve never written fake dating (to real dating/lovers obviously) and the first time i’m writing it it’s this version of it adhbfaldjaekj💀)

if the summary didn’t make that clear, this is crack wuskshs (but i had fun writing it). cool mutuals (so.. all mutuals) do not perceive this. strangers, you’re free to read <3 ahskshs

also MJ is very focussed on making fun of Peter but it’s just teasing and she has no ulterior motives whatsoever jadjabdh

warnings: this is the last time I'm warning you, this is not a very serious fic, smut (it turned out so short?😭), lmk if I forgot something

word count: 5k omg no wonder it took so long 😭

thank you @simplyparker for helping me proofread ily🥰🥰🥰 all mistakes are of course my own <3

You try to shush Ned and MJ as they giggle, giddily pointing at Peter like two little school kids, “Look, you can even see it on his forearm.”

You watch as Peter approaches the table you’re sitting at, getting in a break between college classes. He looks innocent and he’s oblivious to the absolute bashing he’s about to experience; you almost feel bad for him, knowing how easily he feels embarrassed.

He notices MJ and Ned talking about him as he takes the seat next to you, eyebrows raised, “Do I have something on my shirt? Did I spill something?”

“I’m sure spilling has something to do with it,” Ned mumbles, making MJ laugh while Peter looks down at himself, looking for a stain.

“What?” He asks as he doesn’t find anything unusual about himself.

“Leave him alone, guys,” you plead, rolling your eyes at your best friends.

“No but you can see it perfectly. Peter’s the prime example of it,” MJ argues.

“Can someone please tell me what you’re talking about?” Peter asks, looking between all of you.

MJ and Ned giggle one more time and then Ned’s the one to say it, “Your right arm is bigger than your left one. It’s more muscular.”

“It is?” Peter lifts his arms in front of himself, “What does that mean?”

“Don’t say it—” you try one last time before Ned interrupts you.

“That you jerk off a lot.”

You feel Peter freeze next to you, his eyes going wide as he starts stuttering, “Um...uh.”

The other two laugh their heads off while you throw a shy smile in Peter’s direction, not looking him in the eyes because it’s like you can feel his embarrassment floating through the air, over to you.

“Okay, guys. Now we know Peter masturbates, just like every other person on this planet,” you try. You love Peter, and while it’s all just a bit of fun that even he will be able to laugh about in a few weeks, the discomfort he feels right now is nearly painful to witness.

You couldn’t look at him if you tried, you don’t need to watch to know how red he is, most likely sweating too.

“Yeah but he fucks his right hand so much that his whole bicep is noticeably bigger,” Ned laughs, MJ holding on to the table to prevent falling from her chair, her body shaking with laughter. You should check what’s in their drinks, even if you were unbiased you couldn’t see it being that funny.

You wait for Ned to stop crying from laughter and look at him.

“You know, my finger also has more muscles than the others cause I use it to masturbate, it’s thicker than the others.”

“Wait, is that really a thing? Show me,” he demands.

You grin as he falls for your trick, amused as he curiously glances at your hand as you lift it, only for you to show him your middle finger.

His look of anticipation immediately changes into one of annoyance but he starts smiling shortly after, “Aw, that was so simple but I still fell for it. But now tell me - is it a thing?”

You hold your hand out in front of you, glancing at your fingers, “I don’t think so but it’s quite surprising that I haven’t developed more muscles on my middle finger considering how much I use it. And I don’t mean being rude to people,” you’re not necessarily enjoying talking about this in such a public place, but you don’t mind it either and if it helps Peter feel less mortified you’re willing to expose some of your secrets.

It’s not like MJ, your flatmate, hasn’t ever heard you using your vibrator and neither is Ned oblivious to the fact that women masturbate too.

“If it was a thing then MJ’s fingers would break a record,” you add, “I had to leave my own room last night cause she was fucking Carla so loudly even my headphones weren’t enough.”

“No! I thought you broke up,” Ned almost shouts, shaking MJ by her shoulders. She scowls at you but you know it’s all playful. MJ doesn’t care enough to feel embarrassed and you’re only trying to distract them to alleviate at least some of Peter’s humiliation. Plus, she’s the one who started talking about Peter’s arm in the first place.

He nudges your shoulder with his, giving you a small but grateful smile while MJ briefs Ned on the situation with her “ex”girlfriend.

You smile when you notice them completely engrossed in their own conversation, satisfied that you could give Peter a break.

They’re wrapping up their conversation and MJ looks at you, taking a sip of her drink, “At least I’m fucking someone else and making them feel good. I bet when you went to Peter’s to get away last night he had to stop jerking off to let you in.”

You roll your eyes now that she’s brought the topic up again, out of ideas what to say next.

“Stop acting like Peter gets any pussy,” MJ says and although they’re friends too and she only means it in a teasing way, you don’t like her attitude towards Peter right now.

“He does!” You say, feeling protective all of a sudden.

“Yeah? When was the last time Peter had sex with someone?” MJ challenges, smirking at you and you feel Peter shift in his chair now that the attention is back on him, and he’s not even the one talking.

“Last night,” you blurt out, knowing damn well that’s far from the truth. While you’ve always been a little attracted to Peter, nothing has ever happened between the two of you. You wish it had, but all you did last night was talk and play video games.

Peter looks at you now, intrigued to see what lie you’ll come up with. He knows you’re only trying to defend him but he doesn’t expect you to lie to your friends for him.

“With who?” Ned scoffs, knowing his best friend would have told him.

“Me,” you say with full confidence, your brain running on autopilot now.

You’re glad that MJ and Ned’s gasps are louder than Peter’s, so your lie isn’t obvious.

You glare at Peter for a split second and he clears his throat, “But I.. we weren’t— I,” you pinch his thigh under the table and it twitches for a second, but he recomposes himself, “..I thought we weren't going to tell them?” He adds, and you’re happy he’s bright enough to understand the plan you made to be nice to him.

“So you two are fucking?” MJ asks, hands on the table and leaning forward, not believing you’d keep that secret from her.

“Actually,” Peter intertwines your fingers with his and lifts your hands with a cocky smirk, “We’re together.”

You bite the inside of your cheek as your heart flutters, but you squeeze his fingers tightly—not that he takes any notice of it—at him taking your lie even further unnecessarily.

MJ kicks her feet against the floor in excitement and you feel a little bad about how happy she is from something that’s a sheer lie, “I knew there was something up with you, I swear. You’ve been acting so different. And now it makes sense that you keep talking about Peter’s arms!”

You sputter, “I-I don’t. You were the one who noticed that Peter’s right arm is bigger. Which is very straight of you by the way,” you regret the words as soon as they leave your lips.

“Don’t you dare call me straight,” he smile fades as she crosses her arms but you quickly hold your pinky finger up to her like you always do.

“You’re right, that was too much. Forgive me?” MJ rolls her eyes, smiles again, and wraps her pinky around yours.

“But you need to stop making fun of my boyfriend now. I bet he can make me moan louder than how loudly you make Carla moan,” if Peter wants to take it further, so can you. Only you don’t know why you’re that intent on defending your boyfriend who isn’t even your boyfriend.

“I doubt that. Since we’re talking about your boyfriend’s masturbation arm being bigger, I feel sorry for you because he obviously uses his arm more for himself than he does for you,” MJ says, thanking the waiter as he brings your food.

You try to think of something to say until the waiter is gone but come up with nothing, “I don’t care if you say that because I know it’s not true,” you counter lamely, out of ways to save the situation.

Peter surprises you when he speaks up.

“I make her ride my fingers at least three times every night. With consent I mean—…” his words die in his throat when you look at him with wide eyes and an open mouth; you’ve never heard words as explicit as that come from Peter.

“Um… so that’s enough of our sex life,” you swallow, feeling hot, “I bet Ned has some secrets— hey where’s Ned?”

You all look around to find Ned talking to a girl from college a few tables further down.

“You think they have something going on?” MJ inquires.

“Not yet but he told me that he likes her. You see the looks they’re giving each other though? We should get out of here before they fuck here right in front of our eyes,” Peter says and you laugh, looking at him instead of the bedroom eyes Ned and the woman are giving each other.

As your eyes meet Peter’s you feel your face heating up and at the same time you both turn away from each other. You’ve never been shy around Peter.

But during the time you’ve had a little crush on him, you’ve never considered what it would really feel like to be his girlfriend.

❀༓❀✿❀༓❀

“Thanks for... earlier. Defending me and everything,” Peter tells you later in his dorm room while he browses through his DVD and video game collection, looking for something to keep you two entertained.

“No problem. Well, there is a problem which is that they think we’re together now.”

He turns around and throws you a look, glancing away again quickly, “Oh no. How bad.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” you wait until he looks at you again to give him a reassuring smile, “I just mean it’s not true and they’ll be expecting us to act like a couple now.”

“We’ll just tell them we’re not into pda and whenever you get a real boyfriend we’ll say we broke up but still want to be friends,” Peter shrugs.

“What if you get a girlfriend first?” You wonder, ignoring the spark of pain in your chest.

“Nah. Not interested. Don’t need a girlfriend when I have you,” he smiles at you and you return a shy grin, resting your face against your hand to hide how flustered you are.

Peter walks from his shelves to his mirror. He takes off the hoodie he put on earlier, and you try not to stare at his back muscles when his shirt underneath lifts too.

He pulls his shirt down again, throwing the hoodie to the floor.

“Is my right arm really bigger? I swear I don’t do it that much,” he lowers his face in shame.

You frown; you don’t want him to take any of that conversation to heart.

“Come here, show me,” you tell him.

As Peter sits down on his bed next to you, you realise you’re asking him to put his stupid, big muscles right into your face and you have to force yourself to even out your breath.

He’s been working out a lot more lately, you can tell. That’s why you mentioned it to MJ and she pointed out the slight difference between his arms in the first place.

Or maybe you’ve just been painfully single and horny lately, but whenever you go on dates, you can’t help but compare the guys to Peter.

“So… uh… yeah,” he mumbles, not knowing what to do with himself as he shows you his arms.

“Um I... I think anyone looking at your arms would be too distracted to compare them and see if one is bigger so uh.. they’re great— I mean fine. They’re the same size, yeah,” you can’t think straight when he’s so close.

“What if everyone sees and thinks I’m a pervert?” He drops his arms back to his sides, shoulders slumped.

“Jacking off does not make you a pervert. Plus, you use your right arm for so many things, it’s your dominant side generally so it makes sense that your arm is bigger on that side.”

“Okay... to reduce my own embarrassment, I’m choosing to believe you.”

“And anyway, you’ve got a girlfriend now so you don’t have to masturbate as much anymore.”

“What- wait, I thought we were faking it? Are we really going to–”

“I was joking,” you say, grinning, feeling more and more hope blooming in your chest at how excited Peter just sounded.

“O...of course, yeah. Um, MJ was talking about you acting different though. Do you really have a secret boyfriend or something?”

Your cheeks feel hot as you remember MJ saying that. You don’t know why you thought you could hide your growing crush on Peter from her. It’s a miracle she hasn’t yet figured out that you’re acting differently because of him.

“No, she was… I don’t know what she was talking about. Have you picked out a film we can watch yet?”

❀༓❀✿❀༓❀

It’s been a few weeks since you entered your fake relationship with Peter.

To convince Ned and MJ that you really are together, you’ve been hanging out a lot more as a pair. You could easily make up a lie, it’s not like they check to make sure if you’re really spending time together.

But you enjoy his company. It’s not the first time that it’s just the two of you, but knowing that Ned and MJ are probably thinking you and Peter are doing who knows what type of things together has changed the situation slightly.

You’re aware of the sexual tension every second you’re with Peter, but it’s a pleasant tension.

You don’t know if it will be today or in a few months, maybe even years, but you do know that one of you has to give in at some point.

It’s crazy to think that you’ve become so close all because the circumference of Peter’s right arm is ever so slightly bigger than that of his left one. It’s not like you ever measured, so maybe you’re all just imagining it anyway.

Either way, you’re not complaining that you get to spend so much time with Peter.

Sometimes you wish Ned and MJ were more sceptical of you and Peter suddenly being together, not believing you until you kiss Peter in front of them.

Sometimes you just want to kiss him.

Sometimes you nearly do.

Sometimes you wish you didn’t listen to your head so much and you’d just do it.

You spray on your perfume and decide which lipgloss to apply to your lips while you wait for Peter.

You’re nervous about seeing him today.

When MJ and her girlfriend had sex so loudly you could barely concentrate on anything else and it continued for so long that you barely got any sleep last night, you decided you wanted to give her a taste of her own medicine.

Besides, she’s been making comments about how Peter “couldn’t even make you sigh let alone moan” and you’d like to believe that that’s not true. After all, you started a whole fake relationship with him to protect him from MJ’s negative assumptions about him, so you can’t just stop now.

You hope your plan will work and won’t make things between you and Peter awkward.

You go to the living room where MJ’s doing something on her phone.

“You look pretty,” she tells you, “But won’t the lipgloss get in the way when you’re kissing Peter?” She raises her eyebrow.

Shit, you didn’t think of that.

“I would have thought you’re the last person who wants me to go out of my way for a man. Besides, he doesn’t mind.”

“Okay, just saying,” MJ shrugs and you wonder if she’s suspicious after all.

You hear a knock at the door of your shared apartment and feel your heart skip a beat. MJ stays seated but you glance at her when you open the door for Peter, checking to see if she’s even watching you.

While your head is still turned towards MJ, you go in for a kiss on Peter’s cheek, only he has the same plan and somehow your lips meet in the middle and you plant a kiss on each other’s lips.

You look at each other for a few seconds, getting lost in the other’s eyes, looking for and finding the confirmation that yes, that just happened, and yes, it felt incredible.

You snap yourself out of it and take his hand, pulling him to your bedroom with you.

“Don’t forget to use protection,” MJ shouts, her voice flat and uninterested but you’re intent on doing this.

You push Peter to your bed and straddle him, “Okay, so MJ and Carla were so loud last night that I could barely concentrate on anything else, so I thought we’d show her what it’s like so she might be a bit more considerate in the future.”

“We-we, you want us to have sex?”

You pull your eyebrows together, realising how this must sound to him. “No,” you get off him, not knowing why you even sat on him in the first place, “We’ll jump on the bed or something and put on porn so it sounds like we’re fucking.”

“Oh-okay,” Peter says. While you stand up on your bed you see him adjust his pants and smile to yourself.

“So uh…” you start shifting your weight. You haven’t had sex since you’ve had this bed, so you don’t know how much you even have to move for it to make a sound.

When Peter stands up too, the mattress dips and you nearly go tumbling into him, but he catches you with ease.

“Here,” he says, holding on to your hands while you rock your feet back and forth, shifting your weight and the bed starts squeaking.

Peter’s expression is serious, wanting to help you with your plan and making sure you don’t fall again, but you can’t help but giggle at the whole situation.

He grins when he hears your laugh, the crinkles by his eyes becoming more pronounced. You don’t even care about what MJ thinks anymore, Peter never cared about what she said in the first place, or at least not for the same reasons as you. He was simply embarrassed for a few days while you didn’t like anyone making fun of Peter.

You’d feel stupid just stopping now though. Plus, it’s already fun and you haven’t even really started yet. Anything you do with Peter is fun.

“Is that loud enough?” You wonder.

Peter starts moving too, the headboard now drumming against the wall and MJ has to hear that.

“Okay, don’t stop, I’ll put on some porn.”

“What was that for again?”

“The moans.”

“That’ll sound unrealistic,” he says.

“Well I’m not about to start moaning in front of you and MJ— ah,” you slap a hand over your mouth after Peter tickles you by your neck and you moan, dropping your phone.

“What the fuck?” You whisper-shout at him.

“I mean, it worked.”

You squint and pull at Peter’s hair, and a moan comes bubbling from his throat. He immediately blushes and looks surprised, “How did you know that would make me moan?” He questions.

“Lucky guess,” you shrug, happy that all the times you imagined pulling Peter’s hair hadn’t been some unrealistic fantasy, he really does like that.

“How did you know I moan when someone tickles me?” You ask now, not remembering that Peter knew that embarrassing fact about you.

“A few months ago we were studying together and then at some point we ended up tickling each other and you moaned and I got so hard and— um,” his eyes go wide when he realises he should have stopped talking before that last revelation.

He’s stopped bouncing on the bed and you just stare at each other.

You don’t know what’s stopping you from kissing him right now. He’s made it clear how attracted to you he is, you have zero doubt that he likes you back.

But he’s become such a good friend, and you’re scared of ruining this beautiful friendship.

“We need to continue or MJ will think you’re bad in bed,” is the only thing you can say and the moment of intimacy is over.

“I don’t care what MJ think— uh,” his face reddens more when the moan escapes his mouth, “I thought you were supposed to moan, not me.”

“It’ll sound better if we both do. Now try tickling me again, but I don’t know if it’ll work when I’m expecting you to— oh fuck,” you slap your hand over your mouth again. You can’t help it.

Peter’s smile becomes cocky even though he’s still embarrassed.

You roll your eyes in playful annoyance, giving Peter the heads up to tickle you more; it does the job, after all.

Peter can’t stop fucking grinning while he tickles your neck, your belly, under your arms and you have to moan every single time his fingers touch you there.

A few giggles come out too between the moans, but you’ve long forgotten to care about making MJ think you’re having sex when Peter is touching you.

He won’t stop tickling you as you giggle and moan, and you end up falling on the bed, limbs tangled and his hand still under your shirt from tickling your tummy.

He retrieves his hand from under your shirt and that motion alone makes you moan—right in his face.

There’s not even an inch between your faces, and when Peter finally kisses you, you feel like you’re going to explode from happiness.

His lips push against yours—his whole body pushes against yours and you bury your hands in his hair, making him moan.

You smile into the kiss, your heart beating against your ribcage the whole time.

You’re both panting, and apart from your breathing, your tongues meeting is the only thing you can hear. It’s just a kiss but it’s so dirty, you quickly feel a puddle forming in your underwear.

Even Peter is out of breath and has to force himself to pull his lips away from yours, but you bite his lower lip and pull him back in.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, and this time you really need to pause to catch your breath or you might pass out.

You notice how Peter never fully pulled his hand away, and it’s slipped down to your front, between your hips, “I mean, that is another way to make me moan,” you tease.

He lifts his hand quickly, “S-sorry, I didn’t realise.”

You smile, “That’s okay.”

Seeing his Adam’s apple bob up and down once, his eyes—full of hope— searching yours for a similar feeling, you ask, “Pete, do you like me?”

He blows air out of his nose and nods, smiling, “I do. I like you a whole lot.”

“Good,” you beam, your hands moving to the back of his neck to pull his face closer to yours again, so your lips can meet.

The atmosphere has changed, and while you’re grinning from joy, you feel nothing but the need to feel Peter inside of you.

You wrap your legs around his waist and roll on top of him, “You wanna do this?”

“Been waiting so fucking long for this to happen,” he says, ripping off his shirt.

Your hands glide over his chest as he lifts and repositions you on top of him, and you end up with his cock right against your pussy and you both gasp.

“Get this off,” you pull at his belt and get up to take off everything that you have on as quickly as possible.

When Peter’s trousers are off and he’s fully naked, you stop to stare at him and take a deep breath. He looks so good. You can’t wait to see how much better he looks when he cums.

He whines when he sees that you’re not fully naked yet and pulls you onto your bed to help take off the rest of your clothes.

He has no time to appreciate your naked body because you immediately straddle him, hovering over his lap as you take his cock and line it up with your pussy, rubbing it through your folds while you barely manage to stay quiet.

Peter sits up to be closer to you, hands running up and your back, your chest against his.

You sink down on his cock fully, your pussy swallowing him whole and Peter rests his head against your chest, “I’m not gonna last long. You feel like heaven,” he whispers.

Your fingers find his chin and lift his face. You arch your back and feel him go even deeper inside you as your lips meet in a bruising kiss.

With your hands on his shoulders, you slowly push Peter’s upper body back on the mattress.

You take his hands and place them on your tits as you start riding him.

You’re bouncing up and down, his cock hitting your sweet spot over and over as your wetness pools between you two, your clit throbbing.

“Fuck, I’m close,” you moan, taking one of Peter’s hands off your breasts and pushing his hand between your legs. You keep it there as you continue rocking your body back and forth, your high approaching quickly.

You’re gasping with pleasure as you listen to the sound of your wet pussy around Peter’s dick, and your skin slapping against his again and again.

You accidentally lift your hips too high and Peter slips out of you just as your orgasm drowns you in waves of pleasure, but you shamelessly keep grinding against him, rubbing your pussy on his cock.

Just as you start to slow down, thoroughly fucked out from that one orgasm full of months of bottled up tension and anticipation, Peter grips your hips—hard—and rocks you against his lap a few more seconds until he cums, streaks of his pleasure shooting across his abs while his mouth hangs open in bliss.

His hips buck up against you one last time as you both come down from your highs, out of breath and skin glowing.

“Fuck, Pete, that was so hot,” you mumble as you collapse against his side and he catches you with ease, wrapping his arms around you, “You look so pretty when you cum,” you kiss his nose and he blushes.

“You look prettier…” he trails off and you both look up as you hear footsteps in front of your door, paired with MJ’s voice.

You both notice too late to stop her.

“Okay, I know you two are faking it,” she opens the door, “there’s no way Peter can last that long— ahh!” She screams and bangs the door shut.

You sag back against Peter, quietly giggling into his neck.

“Shit, sorry— I should have heard her,” Peter frowns.

“Don’t worry, it’s not the first time she’s seen me naked. I think she screamed because she saw you naked,” you say.

Peter lowers his chin to his chest, raising his eyebrows and looks at you, questioningly.

“We live together. It’s happened once or twice,” you explain.

“So if I stay here will I get to see you naked too?”

“Peter I’m literally naked next to you right now,” you laugh.

“Oh yeah,” he giggles, hands gliding up the side of your thighs, your hips and your waist and eventually his thumb finds your nipple as he starts playing with it, marvelling at your goddess-like form.

“You’re adorable,” you peck his lips, “You wanna take a shower together?”

❀༓❀✿❀༓❀

An hour or so later you two find yourselves in front of MJ’s room, ready to apologise that she had to see that but instead she gives Peter a speech about how she expects him to treat you—her best friend— right.

You look at Peter and see the guilt on his face, “Should we tell her that we’re not—”

“Just friends? Yeah, I think she’s seen enough to convince her that you are my boyfriend.”

You can tell Peter wants more, but you figured since you haven’t explicitly told him that you like him back, he thought it was just sex and wouldn’t ask for more if that’s all you wanted.

Peter beams at you, grin brighter than you’ve ever seen. He lifts your intertwined fingers to softly kiss the back of your hand.

You giggle and— “I’ve seen enough today, you’re banned from my room,” MJ gets up and closes her door as you and Peter take a step back.

You look at him and smile; you don’t let go of each other’s hands as you go back to your room to cuddle up and finally get to be with each other how you’ve wanted to for so long.

☆.｡.:*support a writer and reblog if you enjoyed, it helps out a lot.｡.:*☆

#peter parker x reader #peter parker smut #peter parker x you #peter parker #peter parker fluff #spiderman x reader #spiderman #spiderman no way home #spiderman smut #fake dating #friends to lovers #fem!reader #selfcarecap

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angelaiswriting · 2 years

Text

Sunlight | Reiner Braun

✏️ Pairing: Reiner Braun x fem!reader

✏️ Summary: The smile that stretches on your lips is another one of those genuine smiles you’ve grown unaccustomed to, and as you crouch down to sit next to him, you realize you haven’t been this happy in a long time. It’s not just the here-and-now with Reiner, it’s more of a general feeling. Being home. Hanging out with your old friends. Finally letting yourself open up and move forward, as Zeke put it.

✏️ A/N: I haven’t written a word in forever, so this is me experimenting, both with a new fandom and with 2nd POV writing lol the idea for this story has been in the making for literally a year, I can’t believe I’m finally posting it.

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU + fluff, angst, and smut, so 18+ only. Mentions of death (reader’s mother and (briefly, in passing) Reiner’s mother + Armin’s parents) and funeral. Mentions of alcohol and alcohol consumption. Vaginal fingering. Thigh riding. Protected vaginal sex. Oral sex (f/r and m/r). Hand job. Multiple orgasms (both m/r and f/r). Mentions of shower sex. Idk, suggestive stuff I guess. A whole lot of feelings. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 23,8k

SUNLIGHT

It’s surprising, the way everything seems to lead back to this coastal town. All the choices you made before leaving everything behind, and then the way life went after venturing off in search of a new path. Of new people. Maybe even better chances than what this place has to offer aside from the salty breeze blowing in from the ocean, or the white, polished pieces of wood and shells that wash up on the shore. The smell of fish. The calls of the fishermen on their boats.

You left because home started feeling like it was closing in on you, suffocating, asphyxiating, and then you realized life in the city can also make you feel the same way. Small, and alone. Insignificant. Like you never belong. Like you’re standing on the sidelines, watching everyone else go on, do things, become different versions of themselves.

It’s a fist in the gut, to come back with the mid-spring torrential rains, and to have this feeling bubble up from deep inside, some recondite corner of your soul you haven’t felt in forever – or maybe you have, and it was just a too-hard pill to swallow all along.

I’m home.

Which is a random, almost out-of-place feeling to have. You’re going back – not home – for your mother’s funeral, after all, that same mother you always blamed just to find out way too late in life that it was never her fault. That it was the other way around. That you put yourself on a pedestal and looked down on the only person that didn’t leave. The only person that stayed by your side.

The house is still the same. A little run down, maybe, with overgrown ivy wrapping around the two middle columns of the porch and the right side of the house. What’s changed is the way you feel as you sit there, behind the wheel of your car, with the windshield wipers rushing back and forth against the onslaught of the downpour. There’s an abyss between you and the house, like that’s someone else’s place. Like that’s not where you spent the first seventeen years of your life before you had enough of it. Before you blamed her for the last time, took your stuff, and left in search of someone who never gave you love in the obtuse illusion that he finally would.

You think that maybe you shouldn’t be back. That maybe you should have stayed in the city, despite that not feeling like home either. You weren’t there for her for the last ten years, so what gives you the right to be here now?

The lights inside are on. There are silhouettes moving behind the white curtains every now and then. Probably the same curtains you hung up a week before leaving, all those years ago, both you and your mother fighting with each other because of who knows what – because of a boy, because of your father, because of you wanting a life far away, a real life, someplace else that won’t chain me down to an existence in some small-ass hole in the boonies, Mom! I’ve had enough of this place! I don’t want to-

“-end up in a miserable life like yours.” The words leave your lips in a whisper, eyes trained on the three steps that lead up to the porch, the screeching of the wipers fighting against the hum of the heater and the rage of Mother Nature. You don’t remember what the reason for that fight was, but you do remember those words. You remember the venom in them. The way they burned on your tongue. The way the sunlight shone into the living room – hot on your face, and blinding, spitting fuel into the fire of your headache.

It’s late for a lot of things now – you tell yourself – but it’s not too late to leave. To put the car in reverse, and hightail your way out of there. Your hand is already on the stick when the front door opens and a young woman walks out, arms wrapped tightly around her waist to keep the lapels of her sweater in place when the wind picks up. A heartbeat later, she’s waving an arm in the air, and the heartbeat after that, she’s beckoning you forward.

It’s a weird feeling, that of your heart beating in the back of your throat. You don’t even remember when the last time you felt like that was. Life away from home – or what you realized too late was home – did end up feeling miserable. Or like a chain around your neck, allowing you some freedom but never enough, like an old dog tied up to a pole in the yard.

You park the car right where your mother used to park hers, and you try to convince yourself that it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Death is a part of life, and mistakes are, too. Even when you’ve made so many – too blinded by the heartache and the anger of a stubborn teenager you barely recognize now when you look back.

One deep breath in. One deep breath out.

The rain is strangely warm on your face when you get out of the car. It tastes like tears. Or maybe it’s just the sea. You wonder when tears will come, however – you still haven’t shed one since Historia phoned you last night to inform you about your mother’s passing.

“Y/N!”

She wraps you in her arms, and you have to bend down a little to give her an automatic hug back. An embrace halfway between a hug back and something along the lines of ‘just pull away, just let me go’. Historia – you recognize her only when she calls your name again, this time not fighting against the howl of the wind. You haven’t seen her in forever. She’s changed. You can use that as an excuse if she mentions anything about you not recognizing her straight away.

“Dear, I’m so sorry,” she whispers in your ear.

She’s warm. She faintly and vaguely smells like your mother, and her hair tickles your cheek. The saltiness on your lips makes you wonder whether that’s due to the ocean so close by, or whether you’ve finally started crying.

“It was so sudden,” she goes on, breaking the hug to grab your hand and give it a gentle squeeze. “She never wanted you to know she was sick, and you know, I… I tried telling you, but she stopped me every time. It was almost like she knew what I was about to do one minute before I even thought of doing it. I know you left all those years ago and n-” She cuts herself off.

And never came back. You want to tell her to just say it. That it’s okay. That there’s no shame in the truth. Because that? That is true. You never came back, not even once. You cut everyone off – your mother, Annie, Bertolt, Zeke, even Reiner. You did look back, however – after finding your father, after confronting him, after getting your own one-bedroom, starting a new job a million times over – but they don’t know because you never reached out. Never called. Never texted. Life went on for everyone – your old friends in this old town, and you in your new city.

“I had to call you when she…”

When she passed away. That’s something else she can’t say out loud. Tears well up in her eyes and you’re just left standing there, feeling like a stranger out of place. Why’s she on the verge of tears for someone else’s mother? Why aren’t your roles reversed? Why aren’t you the one sniffling into your sleeve, eyes drifting down to the age- and sun-bleached wooden planks of the porch?

The tears come much later, though. You’re left to your own devices when your old friends leave to go home for the night. Zeke pinned his number to the fridge, just in case you need anything. Reiner gave you one last one-arm hug, and Historia squeezed your hand one more time before leaving in silence with Mikasa and Ymir.

The rage of the storm has passed, and now the rain is simply pitter-pattering outside instead of washing over the windows of the house almost as a way to scold you.

You haven’t looked at your mother yet. She’s lying there, in her open casket, surrounded by flowers – the same flowers she’s spent her whole life selling in her shop – and you just… can’t walk up and look at her. The very last millimeter of the tip of her nose is the only part of her you can see from where you’re sitting, on the other side of the living room. The furniture has been moved around to make space for her, and now the room feels a lot bigger than it ever did when you used to live here. It feels bigger and, at the same time, so very small, the walls closing in on you like in some Indiana Jones adventure, a trap designed to not let you get out of there alive.

Is it the house? Or is it your sense of guilt? Of shame?

“I didn’t know better.” Your voice seems to boom in the room, even though it shivers like the leaves on the trees outside.

And how could you have known better? When she never spoke up? When she never said anything? When she let you believe she was the one to blame for your father leaving?

I’m sorry – sorry for leaving. Sorry for being a bad daughter. Sorry for never coming back. Sorry for putting my pride before anything else. Sorry for never apologizing, and only coming back when it’s too late. But the words don’t come. Your tongue is lead in your mouth, and you can’t spit them out.

You’re out on the porch before you even feel your feet moving. Your heart is a loud thump-thump everywhere in your body – your ears, your skull, your throat, your fingertips. It deafens you; it’s suffocating. It’s the same feeling you had when you were seventeen and dreaming of running away, but at the same time everything’s different now. You still do want to run away, however – from this house, from your mother, from this town. The same things that grew too tight around you in the past are what’s choking you again right now, ten years later. But this time there’s nothing you want to run towards. All you want to escape is death.

You wonder what everyone might think of you. After all, you never showed up at your sick mother’s door to check in on her. You couldn’t have known, of course – Historia must have told you that at least three times today, at a loss of other topics of conversation, before Ymir pulled her out of the kitchen for a breath of fresh air before she had the chance to start bawling her eyes out again.

“You’re gonna catch a cold.”

The unexpected voice makes you jump.

You hadn’t seen him standing there, his elbows resting on the balustrade of the porch.

“I thought you had gone home.” The words struggle to get around the lump in your throat. Maybe now you will cry, you think. Even if it’s in front of Reiner, which is the last thing you want to do. Not because it’s Reiner, but just… You feel like it’s not right. Like you lost the right to cry over your dead mother a long time ago – many, many words ago. Which is a stupid thought, really, but you’ve been living with this sense of guilt gnawing at you from the inside for so long now that this is the kind of shit you convinced yourself of.

“I almost did, but my bike wouldn’t start,” he says, pointing a thumb towards the willow in the garden. He’s still riding his old dirt bike, you notice, the one he gave you lifts on countless times when you still lived here and you had no clue how to deal with the fat crush you had on him. “I’m glad it didn’t, though,” he continues, smoking the last of his cigarette before stomping it out in the pot of an already dead plant. “I don’t care what ‘Toria says, you shouldn’t be alone.”

He looks tired, like something’s carved its claws into his flesh and made him fight for too long. That’s why you say, “It’s alright, I’m okay.” It’s the same lie you’ve been telling yourself a million and one times, every time some new or old struggle comes up to open new or old wounds. Because it is alright and you will be okay – maybe not now, but definitely one day, whenever that is. You’re proof enough of that.

“Are you really, though?” His eyes bore into yours and even though you do your best, you can’t help but look away – first at your car, standing lonely in front of the house, and then at the street that leads back to the rest of the town. Maybe if you focus on the street lights hard enough, he won’t hear how loud your heart is beating. “You looked like you were on the verge of a panic attack a minute ago.”

Maybe he can hear your heart. He’s always been able to read you like an open book, after all – minus the crush-on-him part, of course, which he either never really realized or simply decided to ignore for your own sake, so as not to break your heart when he’d eventually turn you down.

“I’m fine.”

“Your mother’s dead, though.” He tilts his head to the side, and the movement makes light glint on the piercings in his left ear.

You feel your eyebrows furrow the same way you’d notice them on someone else’s face. With your heart hammering in your chest, and the breeze blowing in from the coast, and your dead mother in the living room, you wonder if this is what it feels like, to finally let the ache you have carried inside for so long free. To unleash it and let it wreak havoc, because what else have you got to lose?

“I’ve known you long enough,” he continues, “to know when you’re about to lose it.”

Suddenly the overhead light keeping darkness away from the porch is the most interesting thing you’ve ever seen. You notice the yellowed glass, the two dead flies lying inside, the way an old spider web waves in the breeze. Annie made you spend too many nights to count on this same porch when you were kids – camping out during the hot summer nights she used to spend at your house when her father went out at sea. If only you could rewind time… Go back to those days, to the horror stories you told each other to scare each other just enough to make the night thrilling…

She didn’t show up to see your mom. Or maybe she did, just not today. She’s never dealt well with death, so it doesn’t surprise you, although she did text you a couple of hours ago.

You look at the overhead light keeping darkness away from the porch, and you still feel sunlight on your face. The same sunlight that had warmed you up on that day, when you had hung those goddamn curtains up because your mother had sprained her wrist, and so you were fighting like cats because you didn’t want to do it and she just couldn’t ask nicely and a billion other things at the same time.

You look at that fucking light and you feel them – spiky, treacherous tears poking at your eyes, welling up so much that your vision gets blurred, and your throat closes up, and you can feel the trembling start off in your fingers.

There’s this rip, inside of you, and it gets deeper with each passing second as it tears you at the seams, pulls you into two different directions. I want to cry. And please don’t let me cry. I want to feel it. And I want to run away again.

Is that the only thing you can do? Run away? – you hear your mother’s voice on that day, as she stood on the second of those three steps of the porch, staring at your backpack as you walked away. Then do! Run away! You’ve only ever been good at that! Go find him, and then run away a little further!

“I just-” You just, what? The words don’t come. Your brain can’t think them up, and your tongue can’t vomit them out.

I just- You’re just seventeen, running away in search of your father’s love, not knowing you won’t find anything there. The well wasn’t dry, just- not full for you. The well wasn’t dry, just- not willing to give to you.

You see yourself walking away, and it’s not under a bright, mid-June sun, barely a week before your eighteenth birthday, but under today’s rain. You, and your red backpack with some clothes and all the money you managed to save over the years, no plan in mind, just- an old picture you found in the basement. Mom and Dad, barely nineteen, smiling at the camera while holding beers.

You want to tell yourself Stop! Come back! We don’t have to go! but the past is the past, it cannot be changed. So you let yourself go, standing in your mother’s shoes, watching helplessly as life unfolds the way it’s always been meant to.

“‘He left us because of you and I hate you for that’.” You have no clue why you’re telling Reiner this, nor where you find the strength to speak, although your voice trembles and dies out into nothing in the end. Swallowing feels like choking. Like trying to push down a rock that just won’t budge, and you have no clue how to breathe when your lungs are made of fiberglass.

He takes a few steps forward. Slow. Tentative. Like you’re some wild animal he’s trying his best not to scare away. You’re already scared shitless, however – not because of him, of course, just- life, you guess. Life and death. Life, death, and anything in-between. All those tiny dots that create a picture between the two extremes. Paper flowers on Mother’s Day when you’re five. A school trip out at sea to watch the dolphins when you’re seven. Trying to complete a puzzle in candlelight during a storm, when the power goes out and you’re too afraid to go to bed. Annie on the porch. Watching Zeke try and teach Bertolt how to play baseball. Making flat pebbles skip on the water with Reiner. Kissing your mother’s cheek. Playing with your mother’s make-up, walking around the house in your mother’s too-big heeled shoes. And then all those fights, black stain after black stain, and that void tearing you apart from the inside.

You wonder how many of those dots have been painted on your canvas between the moment you were born and now. You wonder how many of those dots have been painted on your mother’s canvas between the moment she was born and the day she died. You wonder how many of those dots have torn her canvas one word at a time because of you. Did she notice? Did it hurt? What did it make her feel like? Unloved? Alone?

He smells like the cigarette he’s just smoked, Reiner. Like that cigarette and then like the sea, and like some cologne you never smelled on him before, when everything was alright. He’s standing two steps in front of you, and yet you cannot look at him. You struggle to breathe, and you can’t even call for help.

You think about your mother, who’s definitely not breathing in that casket of hers, surrounded by flowers and all the love you never managed to fully give her and that she had to look for in someone else while her sickness ate away at her.

“I told her I hated her.” You whisper because that feels like the smartest thing at this moment. Your voice won’t come, but it’s also for the best – if you speak out loud, you know your voice will break. And then you will. It’s happened countless times before, so it for sure will happen again. “I told her I hated her, and then I left.”

It’s quiet. There’s only the pitter-patter of the dying rain – again, dying. Reiner’s breathing feels just as loud as he braces for impact.

“I told her I hated her, and then never spoke to her again.”

You don’t think you’ve ever cried in front of Reiner until you do now, and all those past times come back crashing in like the waves onto the shore.

You’re four and crying over a scraped knee.

You’re six and crying because an older boy in school tore up your drawing.

You’re eight and crying after Father’s Day, because everyone at school brought a Dad or a Grandpa to class and you had no one to call your own.

You were crying, and crying, and crying.

It feels like all you ever did was cry, and maybe that’s why you fell for him in the first place. Why you fell for Reiner. Because you felt safe with him. Because you could be vulnerable and open yourself up like one of your mother’s flowers. Because you needed someone to hold you and stuff that void inside you with illusions as soft as cotton so that it wouldn’t feel as cold for a while. Because his hugs would shield you from the rest of the world and you could finally breathe again.

And you’re crying now. And when he simply puts both hands on your shoulders, you cry even harder because he’s not hugging you. Because he’s not keeping the rest of the world at bay. Because you can’t breathe. Because you have no right to wish for him to hold you now, after you tore yourself from his life. From your friends’ lives.

“I spent my whole life being wrong and now I can’t even apologize.” One word at a time, the confession comes out in-between sobs, your teeth clattering together because of the cold and the exhaustion and the tears and that fucking hole in your chest opening up some more, until all you can feel is it. It feels like being chewed alive and then spat out again onto that stupid porch, in front of that stupid house standing in that stupid town.

Or maybe you are the one who feels stupid. Stupid for wearing blacked-out glasses, for never looking back. For never calling, never texting, never writing. You live your whole life thinking you have time, but then, suddenly, it’s too late. The door closes, locks behind your back, and there’s no way for you to open it again. Like an intercom with no one else on the other end of the line.

That’s when Reiner closes the distance and wraps his arms around you. He’s grown and buffed out, and he dwarfs you out. It should feel like choking, but he still has that effect on you. He still makes you breathe.

His left hand is soothing on your back, moving up and down, up and down, slowly, grounding you. His right hand is on the back of your head, tilting it up, forcing you to breathe, to stare at the overhead light and at those two dead flies resting forever inside the glass covering without Reiner knowing.

You don’t know what it is about today. Your dead mother. Those dead flies. The dead pot plant in the corner of the porch. Something cracks and dies inside you – a part of yourself or the part of your mother that’s always lived in your heart, you don’t know, you have no strength to find out.

“There’s not one thing I did right in my life.” Your tears stain his cheek, and his stubble prickles yours. You whisper those words against his skin, into his ear – or maybe not. You don’t know anymore. All you can hear is your last exchange with your mother, and then your father’s words drown out the rest of the world. “And I was too much of a coward to make right by her.”

He’s silent, Reiner. You want him to say something, anything, to lie to you and reassure you it’s fine, everything’s fine, everything will be alright. But it’s not his job – it never was and probably never should be.

“You should get back inside,” he simply says after endless minutes. It takes you fifteen minutes to calm down to a point where tears are still trailing down your cheeks, but at least you’re breathing right. “You will catch a cold.”

It makes you want to cry again. The way he speaks. The things he says.

You want to hear it’s alright, or you’re fine, or I’m sure she knows you’re sorry, but all you’re met with is silence. He looks at you, but at the same time, not really. It’s something you don’t know how to explain, but it’s true nonetheless.

Maybe you did lose him, too. Maybe you did open up a fracture between you and him when you left, when you didn’t come back.

“You should rest.”

He’s guiding you up the stairs before you even know it, always standing one step behind you. His gaze on the back of your head makes the baby hairs at the back of your neck stand to their ends, and the ten-year feeling of having fucked up deepens that tad bit more.

Your room is still exactly how you left it, save for some cardboard boxes piled up in a corner. There’s no bedspread to cover your mattress, but all the pictures you hung up on the walls once upon a time are still there. A sunrise over the ocean. A picture with Annie, Reiner, and Bertolt. Your childhood cat. The stars at night. A reproduction of Van Gogh’s vase of sunflowers. One of those random pictures you used to take, a candid polaroid of Reiner reading a book on your porch, sunlight kissing the side of his face. You remember staring at that picture for long, endless minutes every night, before falling asleep, asking yourself whether tomorrow would be the day you told him you had it real bad for him – you never did, of course.

He drops your duffel bag onto the mattress and stands next to you in silence for a while as you take everything in.

“How long are you staying?” he asks as you’re staring into the lifeless eyes of the tattered teddy bear sitting on your old desk by the window.

Just what is strictly necessary.

I’m not leaving again.

I don’t know.

He must see the reflection of it in your eyes, of the struggle you have inside, because he gives your shoulder a light squeeze and then smiles. “Hey, Y/N, breathe.”

You want to tell him you are breathing. That he’s always had that effect on you. But you realize you are, indeed, not breathing, that you’re starting to cramp up again, and your lungs hurt, and you know you’ll spend the night sobbing into your pillow until you either run out of tears or exhaustion overtakes you.

“What matters is that you’re here. Right now.” He pulls you in again, even though it feels forced – although it might also just be in your head. He has an arm around your waist and one hand on the back of your head, your face pressed into his chest as he leans his chin against the side of your face. You swear you can almost feel his heart beat against his ribs, but that for sure is just inside your head. “Being here now is the only thing you can do, and you’re doing it.”

He doesn’t stay the night. He tells you Annie won’t come, not until your dead mother is in the house – and probably a while after that, until any trace of her death will leave these rooms. What he does is call Historia, who you’ve never been super close with but who’s always been nice to you – she’s also taken care of your mother for years, after you left and she got sick. And Historia comes, helps you make the bed, and then sleeps by your side – or at least lies there, having the mercy of pretending she doesn’t hear you quietly cry into the pillow case until well past three in the morning.

You find him in the kitchen, however, when you wake up at half past one and walk downstairs with red eyes and tousled hair. He’s reading a book sitting at the table, and it brings you back to the polaroid picture in your room, and then to the day you took it.

“What are you photographing?” He’s smiling, doing his best not to chuckle, and you feel so at peace and excited at the same time that you have no clue what’s wrong with you. Maybe it’s just your stupid, first crush, you tell yourself, and smile some more.

“Just the butterflies on Mom’s flowers.” But the butterflies are in your stomach, as strong as albatrosses, making you giddy as you stare at the way his left iris looks golden with the sunlight hitting the side of his face.

In the spur of the moment, you think that if you’re ever to give love to someone, then it’s going to be him.

He takes you back home after the function. After lingering behind for an hour, while you cry your last tears kneeling on your mother’s grave. After you tell her you’re sorry, that you were wrong all along. That she was never the reason. He just didn’t want you. That you shouldn’t have left, but also that you’re glad you did – glad that you went after him, that you made peace with that part of your past, that you tried to give yourself what this town never could. But also that you’re sorry you left her behind, and never did anything to remain a part of her life.

He takes you back home after the function, and everyone’s already there. You don’t want them there – you just want to wallow alone with your sorrow – but you can’t kick them out. They’re not there for you, after all. They’re there for your mother.

The realization that they were definitely nicer to her than you were during your last years here makes you panicky. It digs its claws into the flesh of your back and bites down, and you feel them piercing your lungs, making your throat constrict, your breath come out short.

“Tell me what’s going on.” Reiner’s the one to unbuckle your seatbelt, right after turning off the engine of your car and unbuckling himself. He doesn’t make a move toward the door handle; he just sits there, next to you, and lays his hand above your cold, clammy one. “What’s going on inside you?”

You want to tell him, but at the same time you have no clue what to tell him. What words to use, or whether they’d even make sense in the first place. How do you put a groan and tears, the demon clawing inside you, all those feelings and emotions into words when you can barely process them yourself?

“I can’t breathe,” you reply instead, eyes too dry to cry, head pounding too much to even think. You’re just there, struggling to breathe, and it’s raining again. Not the biblical downpour, but enough to force Reiner to make the windshield wipers work almost at full speed. And you’re cold, so very cold, wet from the rain after you categorically and stupidly refused his umbrella, despite the blanket on your legs and the heat he cranked up to the max until he cut the engine off. “I can’t breathe.”

There’s a stain on the rooftop of your car, you notice when he tilts your head slightly up and draws circles with his thumb into the base of your head as he cradles it with one hand. One of your exes had this bad habit of smoking inside, and he put out a cigarette against the fabric of the rooftop during one of your usual fights before calling you names, breaking up things with you, and finally stepping the fuck out of your car and out of your life. You thought you had erased every trace of him, you think as a giggle almost bubbles up in your throat, but you guess you were wrong.

“You know,” he starts at some point, after shaking his head when Zeke comes out onto the porch, probably to call the two of you inside. He retreats, brows furrowed – in confusion or worry, you don’t know, you were never the best at reading Zeke Yeager and his emotions. “She never held a grudge.”

She – your mother.

It should make you feel better, but it somehow doesn’t. It would have probably been better if she had been angry at you all along, but hearing she wasn’t somehow throws you off. Maybe you really just were a piece of shit of a daughter. Maybe your father saw right from the very beginning, before his already very lacking presence in your life stopped being there altogether a few months before you turned four.

“I was so mad at you,” he continues. “I was so mad when you left. And then when you didn’t pick up the phone, or didn’t text back.” His sigh is deep and tired, and you feel that solitary tear trail down the side of your face. But you can’t wipe it away – his hand is still on yours, and you just want to be held, for once, even though your pieces feel scattered everywhere. “I thought I was in love.”

“With me?”

Your heart is in your throat.

Someone sneaks a peek from the kitchen window, but it’s so quick, the curtain is back into place before you can see who it was. Then, it’s just you and Reiner. And the rain outside.

He shrugs his shoulders. His thumb is still drawing soothing circles into the base of your head, the rest of his fingers splayed out on your cheek and your jaw. “Yeah. It passed, eventually, but back then I was just mad. I thought I had all the time in the world to find out what I was feeling. You were always there, following me around, at school and then outside. Until one day you weren’t anymore. I don’t know, maybe I was more mad at myself than I was at you.”

Breathing comes easier now, despite his words making you want to curl up under the blankets, praying for this to be just some nightmare. Praying to wake up and find out you’re still seventeen, and that you still have time to make all the right choices.

“I helped your mom out with some leaking pipes one day, a few months after you left. I think it was around Christmas, I don’t know. I guess I was still mad,” he chuckles. You can feel him looking at you, but you don’t have the strength or courage to look back at him. You just stare ahead, at the chipped paint of the front side of your childhood home that feels so small compared to how huge and empty your one-bedroom in the city feels. “And so I asked her, and she explained.”

“I’m sorry.” You’re not exactly sure what you’re apologizing for. Leaving him? Leaving her? Just, leaving? Being a mess now? Being a burden when he could be inside with his friends, drinking beer to commemorate your mother’s life?

“She said she was proud of you for confronting your father for disappearing. Or at least attempting to do so. Said she never could and that she regretted it her whole life. She regretted her words to you as well.” Your eyes meet his when he says that, and he must sense something going off inside of you, for his thumb picks up its movements once again, and he gives a small smile. He looks pretty, and tired, his eyes light and the circles underneath them dark. “She was just sad you never called.”

His words feel so comforting, but then also like salt being poured into the wound. Like a ‘but’ slapping you square in the face when you least expect it. I love you, but. We think you’re perfect for this job, but. I wanted to invite you, but. But, but, but. You just want an ‘and’ for once, but you guess you deserve it, this time. One day you’re sure there will be a you did some wrong things, but. And you’re waiting for that moment – ‘but’ and ‘and’ combined into one, and then maybe you’ll be able to start letting go of some of the weight you’ve been dragging behind all along.

“I wanted to, but…”

I wanted to, but. You also have ‘but’s.

“I know.”

He’s there when you take a quick shower to warm up after standing in the rain, after sitting soaked in the car, and he’s there when you walk back downstairs, hair still damp, and join your old friends. Maybe it shouldn’t, or maybe it’s right just the way it is, but it makes you feel safe. Like no matter what they all think about you, at least he’s been honest with you, back there in the car.

The kitchen is cramped, but the beer is cold, at least. It distracts you from how clumsy the conversation feels at the beginning. It’s been ten years, after all: they have no clue who you are now, and you have no clue who they grew up into. But then, somehow, Zeke manages to make everything flow smoothly.

You don’t talk much, you let them do the talking. You’re not exactly ‘out of it’, but you’re also not exactly fully there. Reiner’s the person your gaze is set on, and you look at him like he’s your anchor – he’s always been, after all, and you can pretend he still is, standing with his back against the counter of the sink.

“Hey, huh…” The blond man sitting next to you catches your attention timidly. He’s also been quiet all afternoon, letting everyone else do the talking for him, too. If it wasn’t for Eren, who’s somehow tagged along with his older brother, you wouldn’t have recognized Armin with how much he’s grown. “Ellen’s– I mean, your mom’s shop– I work– Ah, I’m Armin, by the way. Arlert. You used to help me out with science when we were kids.”

It’s probably the beer, but you’re smiling at him. He’s still shy around you. You think it’s cute. Yeah, it’s definitely the beer. “I remember you. What’s up?”

What a dumb ass question, you scold yourself. You cringe, but, eh. At least you can brush it up to reality slapping you in the face, to today’s funeral, or the breakdown you had in the graveyard, even to the beers someone bought and stocked up in the fridge. Well, your mother’s fridge. But your mother’s dead and the house has been passed down to you, since she didn’t write her own will, apparently. So yeah, does it even matter whose fridge it is?

“I’m–” He looks conflicted, but then again he’s looking at you like you’re some ticking bomb ready to go off. “Okay, I guess. A bit shaken up, but we were… I mean, we were sorta expecting it, y’know?” Not exactly, but you don’t say it. “What with the sickness and all… She stopped coming to the shop months ago. I used to– I mean, I still do. I work at her shop.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Polite small talk. You wonder whether you’re being fake. Whether it’s obvious. Whether he can see right through you and knows how clumsy you still are, that you don’t know how to approach any of them. Whether the rest of them are looking at you. Listening. Judging. You have no clue why you’re so afraid of being judged, but deep down you know. You’ve never been good at facing up to your shit, but – and this is a positive ‘but’, you reckon – you still have time to make amends for that. Well, now you know you don’t have all the time in the world, but maybe you still have enough to look back the way you didn’t when you should have. “You’ve always had an eye for nice compositions. She always praised you. I sucked at that, I still only barely know the names of basic flowers.”

He chuckles at that, but then tones it down by sipping on his beer. “Eh, there’s still time to learn if you want,” he smiles. He smiles like you really have all the time in the world, and the lie reassures you for a moment. It feels like ‘it’s okay, everything will be alright in the end’, and probably no one knows how much you need to hear that better than you do. “But I mean, you should– I mean, if you want to, of course– and when you’re ready– come down to the shop. Decide whether you should keep it open or what. I can keep the business running until you’re ready, but just– let me know.”

“I–” You meet Reiner’s gaze, looking at you while Eren is talking his ear off about some football game they must have placed bets on. Reiner’s never really liked Zeke’s younger brother that much, but it’s still sort of amusing, to see how they still hang out after all these years, despite their differences. “Yeah, I will, I– I just–”

“You take your time.” Armin’s hand is burning hot when it wraps around yours on the table. Either that, or yours is cold. It’s a weird thing, to feel your body but also not at the same time. To still be in that graveyard despite sitting in your childhood home’s kitchen, surrounded by childhood friends. “I know it’s not easy. I don’t remember much about my parents, but I still miss them terribly.”

Right. You tend to forget they also have their own struggles.

They leave at around midnight, and when they do, the house gets terribly quiet.

Historia insisted on staying, while she was helping you carry the take-out pizza cardboard boxes to the trashcan in the storage cabin outside, but you told her it’s alright. That you gotta learn to do this. That you’ll have to go back to your life, and she won’t always be there. It’s okay, really, don’t worry. You’ve been taking care of her for years now. You should go home, rest. If anything, I should be the one offering you comfort.

When you walk back inside, Reiner’s just getting out from underneath the kitchen sink, a wrench in hand. He hits his head against the cabinet when he’s caught by surprise by the sight of you standing there, and he curses underneath his breath, rough fingers coming up to rub the sore spot on his forehead.

“It should work now,” he grunts when he stands up to put the wrench back into the toolbox. But you don’t move, taken aback by the domesticity of him standing there, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, knowing his way around your old house, fixing broken things without a second thought almost as though he’s been doing that his whole life. He kind of has, actually. You don’t move, so he smiles. “Try the faucet, I’ll put this back in the utility closet.”

He finds you staring at the running water when he comes back, freshly washed glasses resting on the rack to dry. You know he’s standing there in the doorframe, looking at you, checking your breathing, trying to understand where your mind is, what you’re thinking, but you don’t move. You don’t turn back to look at him the way you would have done ten years ago, and you don’t move to turn the tap off.

It’s peaceful, really. The rain has stopped pouring outside, but the sound of the water in the sink puts every single one of your thoughts to rest. All the excuses for not coming back. All the self-accusations that have come after leaving, and all the misdirected accusations that came before that. All the second-thoughts, all the fears, all the self-guilt.

“Don’t they teach you to save water in the city?” Reiner jokes, managing to pull a chuckle from your lips as you watch his hand turn off the tap.

He stands there, right behind you, and although he’s not even hugging you, you feel like you can breathe a little better. Like the light hanging from the ceiling is a little brighter. The room a little bigger.

“I’m sorry,” you say instead, but admitting it is now a little easier. Reconnecting with your old friends wasn’t as bad as you had thought it would be, and even getting to officially know a new face – Ymir’s – wasn’t as hard as you had feared. “For leaving,” you add. “And never coming back or reaching out. I realized too late this is not how I wanted things to go, but then I let my pride and my fears get into the way of doing anything to make amends.”

He’s a little closer now, you can feel his body heat from where he’s standing, hands on either side of you on the counter.

“I wanted to,” you admit. “Come back, apologize for hurting any of you. Especially– especially Mom. And– you.” You whisper that last word, your fingers trembling. “You– I…” A sigh escapes you, and your eyes close for a moment as you take a deep breath in. “I crushed on you so bad, Reiner… And when I left you that letter, I– I thought I’d come back. I thought I’d text you, I really did. But then I found my father, and I thought, ‘If I wasn’t enough for him–’”

Swallowing is hard once again, even more so when Reiner rests his forehead against your shoulder as he waits for you to continue. If there’s something about him that hasn’t changed, it’s the fact that he waits for you to go on. To say what’s on your mind, speak your truth. He either doesn’t realize how hard some things are to admit, or he doesn’t care – and it’s not in a bad way, he just wants you to open up.

“‘If I wasn’t enough for my father, what makes me think I’ll ever be enough for someone else?’ And I desperately wanted to be enough for you. So I–” You swallow around nothing, that stupid lump forming in the back of your throat all over again. Maybe if you had managed to cry when Historia called, then doing things now wouldn’t be as hard. “I guess I let that fear eat away at me.”

He groans, deep in his throat and right against you. It’s hard to say what’s on his mind, especially when he doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t do anything aside from standing there, behind you, as you stare out the window at the muddy garden in front of the house.

“To think that we could’ve had it so much different…” he mutters in the end, lips barely brushing against the cotton of your shirt, the thumb of his right hand barely brushing against the pinky of yours. “It makes me even more mad.”

Then, his phone rings and he’s gone.

The few days you originally planned to spend at home quickly turn into a week, which turns into two. It’s like a whole one-eighty: you’ve gone from wanting to run away from the town, to wanting to run away from the city. The city, where you’ve lived for so long now, feels gray in your memories. Your hometown is blue and green and all colorful, pretty flowers everywhere – even the steely gray of a storm on the sea feels much more comforting than you remember it ever being in the past.

But it’s the people that make it a warm place to stay.

Annie, despite the initial fight over the way you left all those years ago upon first meeting her now, feels like the same Annie you used to be buddy-buddy with when growing up. You’ve already met up with her for breakfast for ten days in a row, now, and catching up with her feels like coming back home every single time.

Zeke has stopped by the house quite a few times already, either with Marcel or Porco or even his younger brother and his friends in tow, to help you move around the furniture of the living room despite you insisting you could do it yourself, that they really didn’t have to take the time of their day just to do this for you. Nonsense, Zeke said on the first day as he sat at your kitchen table. Plus, I quite enjoy bossing the kids around.

Your mother’s old shop – now, somehow, your shop, although you’re constantly thinking of changing that – has unexpectedly become a safe nest to hide out at. There’s always just Armin there, aside from the times customers walk in and make the bell above the door jingle, and Armin loves what he does. You see it on his face, in the way he lights up every time someone asks for a recommendation – flowers to gift to a lover, or to take to the hospital, or to liven up the rooms of someone’s house. He tells you what each flower means, he teaches you their names, and you don’t even listen because you want to learn or because you’re that interested in flowers and herbs and plants. You listen because his eyes spark with the passion he carries inside as he forgets about the fact that he’s recently lost a friend. Your mother, of course – you tell yourself she was important to a lot of people, and you’re still trying to come to terms with the fact that you never gave her the importance she probably deserved.

Historia has also become an unexpected friend. She’s shy and bubbly all at the same time, always moving around, always tending to her patients in the elderly home she works at, and she sometimes tells you about them. She’s also passionate about what she does, and takes both the ups and downs of her job in stride. Most importantly, she tells you about your mother. Fills in the ten-year gap you weren’t there to witness. She shows you pictures, even a home-made video of that one time she won the town’s florist competition for the fourth year in a row. It’s through her stories that the ghost of your mother becomes fainter and lighter, the very last millimeter of the tip of her nose no more staring at you in the darkness of your old room when you lie awake at night, unable to close your eyes.

She stops by with Ymir sometimes, when she comes over with Armin with the excuse to take care of the flowerbeds, although you know it’s just because they want to keep you company. Ymir is quiet and reserved – she hasn’t opened up to you yet. It was the same with me at the beginning, Mikasa told you once. Ymir sits with you on the porch and looks at her girlfriend with a smile on her face, and sometimes tells you about the random things she’s done abroad. Skinny dipping in a freezing river. Fishing for prawns at night. A particularly beautiful painting she’s seen in a museum once – Lovers in the Rain –, seven years ago, or a poem that still makes her tear up when she remembers it.

Her company is nice, it puts you at ease. It makes you forget everything about the way you left, and about your life far away from the coast. It makes you want to come back here, time and time again.

It’s Reiner that makes you want to stay, however. Reiner and his eyes. Reiner and his smile. Reiner in your bathroom, humming a tune while fixing the hand spray of your shower after it spat water everywhere a week ago. Reiner in your car, behind the wheel, as you sip on cold coffee while staring out at the moon reflecting on the water.

Reiner, and the way he makes you breathe.

He has a hand thrown absentmindedly over your shoulders as you huddle around the fire in the back of Zeke’s property and roast marshmallows. It’s just the three of you, plus Annie, Porco, and Pieck. Bertolt couldn’t come, and Marcel is sick.

“You start singing, and I’ll bite your head off,” Annie warns in a grunt, punching Porco’s arm, when Pieck walks out with a homemade birthday cake.

“Party pooper,” but Porco’s smiling, sitting right opposite you at the other side of the bonfire as he looks down at her.

“They’re cute,” you mutter under your breath, careful not to let the others hear you, but then Zeke’s tone-deaf singing Happy Birthday with Pieck, so the volume of your voice doesn’t even matter.

Reiner hums next to you, his fingers digging deeper into the side of your arm when he leans forward to fetch the stick with your marshmallow before it burns black. “They dated for a while– I don’t know, five, six years ago?” He shrugs his shoulders as he hands you your sugary treat. “It didn’t last long, and we don’t talk about it. Bert is still salty about it, so…”

He shoves his own marshmallow into his mouth, and you stare as he chews on it. The flames of the bonfire dance in his eyes and on his face, and the sound of your breath catching in the back of your throat makes him turn to face you.

He’s smiling. And damn – every time he smiles you realize how badly you missed him. “I’m sure that has to do with the reason why he couldn’t come, but don’t tell him I said that.”

The others are staring at the both of you when you turn back towards the quiet party, amused and knowing smirks on their lips. Annie moves to sit next to you with the excuse of giving you a paper dish with your slice of cake, and Pieck takes care of giving Reiner his own.

“Happy birthday,” you grin at your friend, and her immediate response is an eyeroll, although she still has half a smile tugging at her lips.

“It really is a happy birthday now that you’re back.” The confession is rushed, and before you can fully register her words, she’s already digging into her cake – the largest slice of them all, since she’s the birthday girl.

The night is quiet, and with Reiner next to you and the bonfire you’re sitting in front of, you barely notice the chilly bite of the last April breeze before the month of May starts in a few hours. It’s like never having left; it’s all as it used to be, despite Bertolt and Marcel not being here, and despite Zeke’s presence as well. He was never around much when you were younger, what with the difference in age and him going off to college on a baseball scholarship. But he’s nice company – great company, even, when he pulls a guitar out of nowhere and gives a tipsy Pock the chance to start singing nonsense. He sings the Happy Birthday song one last time, and you hold Annie back as he does, your laughter in her ear until she’s laughing, too, still trying to get out of your grasp.

“So, tell us something about the city,” Zeke says, eyes twinkling behind the light reflecting off of the lenses of his glasses. He’s still strumming chords, and when he speaks, everyone’s head but Reiner’s turns in your direction.

It makes you feel the center of attention, the spotlights suddenly shining down on you instead of your – old but maybe still – best friend finally turning twenty-eight.

You shrug. “What about it?” You look at them, a somewhat smile on your lips, but your fingers are pulling on grass blades. Reiner feels the shift inside you even without looking, and his thumb is suddenly brushing back and forth on his sweatshirt, the one he left at your mother’s place when he stopped by two days ago and you almost – almost – kissed before his phone went off. “It rains just like it does here,” although you’re glad today the sun timidly peeked through the clouds.

“Oh, c’mon!” Annie pushes you into Reiner, amused but still, you perceive veiled annoyance in the way she looks at you. You figure you deserve it, but you also hope she’ll come to forgive you – that they all will, one day, somehow. “Something must be really nice if it kept you there for so long.”

You look at her, and then up at the stars and the silvery clouds in the night sky, lost in thought. What kept you there were the hurt and the pride, but how can you tell them that? “I don’t know, it just… wasn’t as great as you think.” Wasn’t – not ‘isn’t’. You have no clue why that past tense slips past your lips, but later on in the night, as you’re walking up the steps of your porch, you’ll find yourself wondering about it. “The pay isn’t that bad, I guess. There’s a lot of distractions. My district breaks out in celebrations every year when spring and summer start. No one knows you unless you make an effort to mingle, so you can pretend to be whoever you want.”

Everyone nods, but then Zeke grins and, “I had plenty of hook-ups when I was studying at university. I loved that about the city.” It makes everyone groan, and Pieck and Porco gang up on him and push him left and right.

It makes you blush, because damn, there’s some truth in that, you had it easy, too. “Yeah, you’re not that wrong.”

You miss the way Reiner’s thumb stops moving on your shoulder for a split second before Porco drags the conversation into another direction and challenges Reiner to whoever can stomach the most beer before getting drunk.

Zeke’s the one taking you home this time, after leaving you in the car as he walks up the steps of Reiner’s apartment to drop his drunk friend off. He stays in there for a while, and you look up at his window, waiting for the light to switch off again. You think back to Zeke and his hook-ups, and to yourself and your own hook-ups and failed relationships. And to how you always wished for it to be someone else from the very beginning, some big ass man who’s being put to bed because his other friend outdrank him at Annie’s intimate birthday party.

It makes you wonder whether he has someone in his life, or whether he did in the past.

Then, before you even have the time to come back to the present moment and see that the light upstairs has been turned off, Zeke is buckling himself in and turning the engine of his truck on again.

It’s quiet for a while before he asks, “So, what are your plans?”

“My plans?”

He hums and nods, taking a turn at the crossroad before briefly glancing at you. “The house, your mom’s shop, you know… The whole shabang.”

“Oh…” You stall, opening and closing your mouth a couple of times before admitting, “I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it yet.”

“Hmm?”

“Yeah, I mean…” It’s weird, being locked up in the car with Zeke. You never paid him much mind when you were younger, he was just some younger friend’s older brother back then, although Reiner definitely did hang out with him and dragged you along every once in a while. “I don’t know shit about flowers, they’re really not… not exactly my thing.”

“And what is your thing?” he wonders. “Running away?”

That’s what my mother told me the last time I saw her – you think but don’t say it out loud. You’re still taken aback however, and you have no clue how to reply to that.

“Chill, I was kidding,” he chuckles. “So, are you closing the shop down?”

You hum, shaking your head and staring out of the passenger’s side window. “No. It’s silly, but I was thinking of– yeah, passing it down to Armin.”

“Yeah?”

You hum again. “I’ve been there a few times already, and he loves his job. I mean, he could surely find something somewhere else, but… I have no business there. He’s the one who grew up in it. My mom should’ve left the shop to him from the beginning.”

“What did he say?”

“I haven’t told him yet. I actually had that idea last night.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

You shake your head. “I never can here.” You don’t know why you’re confessing so many things to him, but you find it easier to let your mouth run free with Zeke than with someone you used to be much closer with when you still lived here. “I sleep during the morning, that’s why I’m never around town at those hours.”

“So what about the house, then? Are you selling it?”

“Why? Do you want it?” you chuckle, and he laughs with you.

“Well, I mean. It has a pretty view. It’d be a beautiful place to raise children in.”

You furrow your brow, trying to hide the smile curving the corners of your mouth upwards. “Zeke Yeager is ready to settle down?!” You jokingly ask, laughing at the expression on his face when he turns to look at you before taking the turn of the road that leads up the cliff and to your house. “Gee! Who is it?”

“I was merely saying,” but he’s blushing to the tips of his ears when he pulls up in front of your porch.

You see the ghost of your mother standing on the second step, baby blue dress waving in the breeze as your seventeen-year-old self walks away from home.

“But yeah, I’m thinking about it,” he admits eventually, voice low and quiet. He’s smiling at nothing when you turn to look at him. “It’s not official yet, but Pieck and I…”

“Damn, really? Pieck?”

He glares at you. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing,” you shrug. “You’ve just been buddy-buddy for so long… To be honest I never thought I’d live long enough to see the day you two would look at each other as more than merely friends.”

“Says the one who used to be a love-sick puppy running in circles with the drunk idiot we just dropped off.”

You feel the blood rush to your face, and instead of replying, you just shrug.

“Did he tell you?” he asks.

“That he felt something for me? Yeah. Took me off guard. I lived so long in the belief I wasn’t reciprocated…”

He hums quietly, the music on the radio still humming in the background. “You were so close… I never thought I’d ever see him mad because of you.” His voice is quiet. Neither of you make a move to get out of the car.

“Yeah, I…” What do you say to that? That you’re sorry? That you’re apologizing? Again? You feel like all you’re good at now is apologize, and it hurts so much inside. It hurts to know you never did it in the past, when it would have had a meaning – with Reiner, with your own mother, with your friends. Most of all, with yourself – you’re yet to make peace with yourself, the way you left, the things you said, the guilt and shame you wrapped yourself up with. “There’s not one thing I haven’t fucked up.”

“It happens to everyone.”

You look at him like he’s grown two heads in the span of a second, and it makes him laugh for a moment.

“What? That’s true. It’s what makes us human. The mistakes.” He smiles. “We all fuck up. Your father fucked up. Hell! Mine did, too. You think I wasn’t mad at Eren and his mother at the beginning? But then I took a step back and realized I was misdirecting my feelings. My father cheating on my mom wasn’t Carla’s fault, not when she knew nothing about us in the first place, and it sure as hell couldn’t be Eren’s. It just…” He shrugs, and his fingers twitch on the buttons of the radio before he pulls his hand back and lets the music play a little longer. “It’s just life. It doesn’t come with a manual. Your mother was a real bitch, too, with you, sometimes. No one’s perfect.”

“So, you’re not judging me?” You don’t know why you ask. You can’t even look him in the eye, your hands in your lap suddenly much more interesting than whatever expression his features might be morphing into.

“Is that what’s been bothering you?”

You shrug a shoulder. “Among other things.”

He’s quiet for a while, and the way this silence makes you feel makes you long for Reiner and the calming effect he has on you. “Well, I did, at the beginning. Look at this brat, tsk!” His chuckle makes you smile timidly, your gaze still fixed on your hands as your throat dries up. “But then… you had some balls, up and leaving everything to go after someone you hadn’t seen in fourteen years, I had to admit it. Then you went back to being an annoying brat when things went to shit with Reiner. But now you’re cool.”

You hum, questioningly, biting your tongue out of some emotion you can’t quite put a finger on.

“He was mad. I’d never seen him cry before, it really fucked me up at first. He didn’t go to college because he was too busy being mad at himself and then at you. Then his mother passed away, and he had to sober up when he had to take Gabi in. He went from growing up without a father to trying to be one for his cousin.” His hand is warm when he tilts your chin up and toward him, and he looks straight into your eyes when he says, “He’s made mistakes, too. We all do. We just apologize and move on. That’s how life goes. It doesn’t stop just because you want to wallow in your own self-pity.”

When he lets you go, you’re quick at turning to face your house. To face the ivy leaves trembling slightly in the breeze. The windchimes hanging from the porch jingling quietly. Your mom’s not on the second step anymore, and you guess that’s one step forward. Still, it’s hard to stay and face your shit head-on.

“What are your plans?” Zeke asks again, this time turning off the radio and throwing his door open. He doesn’t step out, and he doesn’t motion for you to do it. He knows you’ll get out sooner rather than later; you probably just need a minute.

What are your plans? You’ve been asking yourself that same question for two weeks now. Probably since the night Historia called you to deliver the bad news, the day before you hopped into your car and drove the thirteen-hour drive back to your hometown.

The easy answer is that you don’t know. The harder one is that you’re not even sure what you’re supposed to do. Go back to the city? To the same city you’ve felt yourself drowning in for so long now? Or stay here? Somehow, coming back home was never the plan. You wanted to run away and stay there – wherever ‘there’ was. But now you’re back, and you’re suddenly confronted with a taste of what you left behind. Of what you could have had had you stayed.

“Are you planning on staying for long?”

It’s almost as though he’s trying to help you make order among the thoughts stomping around in your head. Stay or leave. Live or drown. But it’s not exactly of help, not when you’re so afraid of fucking up again.

“I don’t know,” you say eventually, fingers wrapped around the door handle. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” That’s the truth; you hope admitting it will help bring clarity upon your mind.

“And what do you want to do?”

I don’t know. The truth is that you’ve been living with that ‘I don’t know’ hanging above your head like Damocles’ sword for so long, ever since closing the door of your father’s home behind your back all those years ago. You wanted to find him. To find him and for him to love you, or even just give you shreds of the love he never gave you when you were a kid. But things didn’t go according to plan, not when you found him happily married and with a kid on the way, and then pride and shame and guilt kicked in.

“What ties you to the city?”

You can physically hear and feel your heart in the middle of your chest. It’s heavy and loud and so, so stubborn. As stubborn as the tears threatening to prickle your eyes. “Nothing,” you find yourself whispering back – not your apartment, not your job, not the river, and not even your district’s seasonal celebrations. “No one.”

He heaves a sigh. You feel his stare on you, and suddenly you’re just a scared little kid in Zeke Yeager’s passenger seat. Too afraid to go back, and too afraid to move forward. Too afraid even to run away after the way things went the first time you did. You don’t want to be known as the one whose only talent is running away.

“I can’t tell you what to do. Nobody can.” And yet, you wish he would. You wish he would make the decision for you. That he’d tell you to stay – in this house or in a condo downtown, it doesn’t matter. It hits you a moment later that you’re simply looking for someone else to blame in case things end up not going well. “But whatever you choose, don’t lead Reiner on.”

You swallow, the need to breathe burning incredibly hot in your lungs.

“I see the way you look at him, and the way he looks at you. The way he is when he’s with you,” he continues. “And it’s only been two weeks. If you want to stay, stay. If you want to leave, leave. Just, don’t give him hope just to then run away again.”

Zeke’s words keep you awake that night. You toss and turn in bed, trying to jumpstart your brain so that you can think. Ponder your options. Weigh the pros and cons of staying here and of going back to your one-bedroom. Until you realize that what you’re lacking is the pair of balls you had when you left at seventeen. It’s like you used all your courage to go find your father, and then burned it all when he pushed you away.

A new job would be easy to find, you tell yourself when the first light of dawn peeks through the lacy curtains of your bedroom and finds you still awake, eyes red and tired, Jasper clasped between your arms. You never thought you’d find yourself hugging to your chest the teddy bear you had when you were a kid, but here you are, caught red-handed.

You technically have a florist shop to your name, despite the idea of passing the property to Armin. It could be your safety net while you look for something you can actually do, something you won’t fuck up.

This house is nicer than your city apartment, and costs a lot less to handle. Sure, it’s too big for you, and too empty, but it’s not as asphyxiating as when you were younger.

And there’s no one waiting for you back there, no friends. It’s always been a competition with your colleagues, no matter the job. Maybe because you grew up somewhere else, and they were born in the city. Maybe it’s because you never managed to go to college. Maybe it’s because you simply never belonged, and that fact stuck to you like some nasty stench everyone else but you could detect.

You have people here. People you grew up with. People you missed. You still have time to make up to them, you think, and that knowledge is what finally allows you to close your eyes for a moment.

As you fall asleep, you find yourself thinking that yeah, maybe you should give it a shot. An actual shot – stay and do your best, and see where that takes you.

By the end of your third week back home, you’ve already told Armin about your plans for the shop.

“Uh… Are you sure? This was your mom’s shop, after all.”

You smile. “And now it’s mine, I can do whatever I want with it.”

He stares at you for a long moment, not uttering a word, his eyebrows set into a frown of confusion as he sits there, behind the counter, and watches the way you’re smiling. You haven’t felt yourself smile like that in so long. Like you’re being genuine, like your happiness is genuine, for once – and it is. And you are.

“Look, you know your way around all things flowers and plants much better than anyone else I know,” you say, sliding the papers for the transfer of ownership forward on the glass surface of the counter. “This place would just go down if it stayed in my hands. You don’t have to say anything just yet, just… Promise me you’ll think about it.”

Annie was the first person you told your plan to. She’s always been your best friend, ever since you were digging up mud on the beach and wearing diapers. Things are different now between you – you’ve both grown up, had experiences without the other, and… well yeah, there’s the whole running away card you pulled. But she’s still the same kid you trusted with all your secrets. And she’s still on your side.

“Have you told you-know-who yet?” she asks as she shoves the blue cooler she’s filled with food and water onto the backseat of your car.

“Who?” Your mind is only halfway there, locking up the house before running down the steps of the porch as the screen door slams behind you.

“Reiner! Who else?” She’s already buckling herself in, and when she speaks, she does so with her head out of the passenger’s window. The sight of her makes you laugh and you’re hit with the sudden realization that this is going to be your first car trip ever with her. And hopefully it won’t be the last.

“What’s up with everyone talking about me and Reiner?” you mutter underneath your breath, but she still somehow manages to hear you and starts saying something about how lovesick you both still are. You block her halfway through her rant with a hand on her mouth before saying, “I’m meeting him now. I’ll leave the car at your place so that you can put your bag in the trunk.”

You thought he’d let you up into his place, but Reiner takes you on a walk by the bay.

The silence between the two of you is tense, but the sunlight is warm on the skin of your face and when you turn to look at him, he looks like a dream in the midday sun – golden eyes and tan freckles on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

It’s like that afternoon on your porch, when you were both sixteen and he was reading some random book whose title you don’t remember anymore now. You had butterflies in your belly as you looked at him as you took a photograph, and you have them now as you walk side by side.

“So,” he says, clearing his throat. He’s looking out at the lighthouse, at the way the waves crash on the rocks. A man you don’t recognize greets him as he jumps off his boat, and the seagulls scream as they fly above your heads. “You’re leaving again.” He doesn’t look at you as he says that, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his bleached jeans before he sits down on the docks and lets his legs dangle above the water.

The hem of your dress, the one Annie let you borrow when the temperatures unexpectedly rose a few days ago, moves slightly in the wind, barely brushing against your knees. Reiner looks up at you, still standing next to him, but he’s quick at looking away, the tips of his ears turning red.

The smile that stretches on your lips is another one of those genuine smiles you’ve grown unaccustomed to, and as you crouch down to sit next to him, you realize you haven’t been this happy in a long time. It’s not just the here-and-now with Reiner, it’s more of a general feeling. Being home. Hanging out with your old friends. Finally letting yourself open up and move forward, as Zeke put it.

You hum.

“Well, at least you gave us the heads-up this time.”

You can’t read him, and you know it’s because he doesn’t want you to. He’s not looking at you to make his job easier; he keeps staring out at the ocean so that you can’t read in his eyes what’s going on inside his head.

“That’s some character development,” he nods, his left hand fiddling with some of the loose strands of one of the holes in his ripped jeans. You see the muscles of his thigh move as he dangles his legs.

You chuckle at his words, and a muscle in his jaw twitches. “Wanna know what some real character development is?” you ask, humming, taking a hold of his hand and looking at the way he automatically intertwines his fingers with yours.

You’ve grown closer in the almost month you’ve spent back here. He stops by your house to check if everything’s alright – with the old pipes, with the old TV, with the old fridge. There’s a lot of old things in that house, you realize, and you have no clue what Zeke finds in it, what all that ‘raising kids there’ nonsense is, but it’s still home. And all those old things are perfect the way they are because each one of them gives you the certainty that Reiner will be back.

He’s let you in, bit by bit, after the heartache you caused him and which his friend Zeke was so kind to inform you of. He’s let his guard down – not completely, of course, and you wouldn’t even demand that of him. You still have time.

Yeah, you smile softly. We still have time.

“Enlighten me.” Again, he’s not looking at you, but at least now he’s looking down at your clasped hands resting on his left thigh. He’s warm, you notice – warmer than usual thanks to the late May sun.

He makes you breathe.

You smile. “I’m coming back in a week.”

He scoffs.

“What? Don’t believe me?” You can’t blame him, but you’re still grinning brightly up at him.

The corner of his mouth twitches as he tries not to smile back at you.

“Annie’s coming with me. You can think of her as your guarantee that I’ll be back.”

He looks at you this time. His eyes really do seem molten gold in the sunlight, but there’s something in them, something you can’t quite identify. Like some internal struggle, torn between choosing to believe you and… “Hmm? Yeah? Why are you going back if it’s just for a week?”

You tilt your head to the side, trying to avoid the sun from blinding you. His hold on your hand tightens, and so does his grip on your heart. “I need to take care of a few things before moving back here,” you say. “Leave my job. Rescind my lease. All my clothes and things are there. I’m not about to spend a fortune just to replace everything I own. And then there’s–”

“You’re moving here?” He’s surprised, you read it in his eyes, in the frown of his lips, in the way he almost gasps before he gets a grip on himself again.

You nod, laughing. “Ironic, isn’t it? After all the running away I did, here I am, consid–”

He’s kissing you before you can realize what’s going on. His lips are warm and soft against yours, a little chapped, and his hand cradles the back of your head before his tongue brushes against your lower lip.

The rest of your sentence simply evaporates into nothing, and you have no clue what you wanted to say anymore.

There’s just Reiner, his thigh pressed up against yours as your upper bodies are turned toward each other. His hand in yours, and his other hand holding the side of your face. His lips on your lips, and his tongue slipping into your mouth to brush against yours. It makes your heart beat like a drum in your chest, in your head, in the back of your throat.

You taste the salt of the sea on his lips, and feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, when your hand wraps around his wrist.

Then, he’s pulling back, just enough for your noses to brush against each other still.

“Promise me.”

You’re out of breath. Your brain is struggling to start up again as you stare dumbfounded into his eyes. There are specks of gold in his hazel irises. There are tiny freckles under his left eye, and you’re not sure you ever even noticed them before today. You’re not even sure you’ve ever been this close to him to begin with. When your gaze drops to his lips, yours part slightly of their own accord and all you want to do is kiss him again.

It’s as though all you ever wanted to do ever since you started seeing him as something more than a friend was kissing him, and now that he did kiss you – after that almost kiss in your house, and after that almost kiss when you dropped him off at his place last week – you know you want to spend the rest of your life kissing him.

It makes you dumb, the way your heart leaps in your chest, does summersaults alongside the butterflies in your belly. And yet, you’ve never been so much at peace. It’s because it’s Reiner, you realize. Reiner, and his ability to make you breathe. Reiner, and how the sunlight on his skin makes you feel.

Warm.

Safe.

Alright.

“Promise me you’re coming back,” he insists, leaning in closer, his lips barely brushing yours with every word he speaks. “One week, and then you’re back here.”

You’re almost out of breath when you whisper, “I promise,” and then he takes care of robbing whatever air is left in your lungs with another kiss.

When you’re pulling up in front of your house exactly one week later, after dropping Annie off at her place, your phone on the passenger seat rings with an incoming notification. There’s absolutely no lying about the excitement that bubbles up inside you after such a long drive – despite the fact that you and Annie took turns driving – when it’s Reiner’s name the one you read on your screen.

[10:37 PM] Reiner: heard you’re back

[10:37 PM] Reiner: how was the drive?

You smile. At him texting you. At your own sudden spurt of giddiness when all you wanted to do just a minute ago was crawl through the front door and collapse on the uncomfortable rattan couch standing exactly where they had placed your mother’s casket.

It takes you a full minute to snap out of it and realize the three dots of his typing and deleting text are still going strong. The thought that maybe he’s just as nervous as you would be if you were in his shoes makes you melt just a bit inside.

[10:38 PM] You: a bit tiring tbh

You figure there’s no use in lying, especially not to him.

[10:38 PM] You: what’re you doing still up? don’t you have work tomorrow?

He texts back at the speed of light.

[10:38 PM] Reiner: I took a couple days off since you were coming back

[10:40 PM] You: aww cute

You sit still in the car, the moonlight shining down on the yard. Your cheeks are on fire, you feel it when you press the back of your hand against your cheekbone. It’s both because of Reiner and because of how wild your heart is beating at that last text you sent, after typing it out and deleting it and typing it out again before saying fuck it! and just hitting ‘send’.

[10:43 PM] Reiner: it was just in case you wouldn’t be back 😅

[10:44 PM] Reiner: anyway. Wanna hang out?

It hits you like a slap, that first text of his. You know he’ll try to play it off when you meet in person, play it cool and joke about it as he tries to take it back, but right now it makes you stop and think. You never thought Zeke was lying, that night in his truck, when he said he’d never seen his friend cry and that then he suddenly did because of you. But right now his words come echoing back in the cabin of your own car.

He was mad. I never saw him cry, it really fucked me up at first.

And then the words that came after those – If you want to stay, stay. If you want to leave, leave. Just, don’t give him hope just to then run away again. You tell yourself you’re not ‘giving him hope’ – if anything, he’s giving you hope. You tell yourself it’s alright to try. To move on. That it’s useless to cry over spilled milk that dried up ten years ago. That there’s nothing between you and Reiner. He said it himself, after all.

I thought I was in love.

With me?

Yeah. It passed, eventually, but back then I was just mad.

And yet, there was that kiss, at the docks, and that’s what gave you hope. What still is giving you hope that maybe you still have time.

You’re left wondering what the hell ‘passed’ – his feelings for you? Or him being mad?

[10:48 PM] Reiner: no worries if you’re not in the mood of course

[10:48 PM] You: no! no id love to!

Fuck, what an idiot. Why did it take you so long to reply? You’re back to feeling like a teenager dealing with her first crush. It hits you a second later that while you’re not a teenager anymore, Reiner still technically is your first crush.

[10:49 PM] Reiner: Marcel’s bar’s by the pier. We’re all here for some beers

[10:49 PM] Reiner: I can come pick you up if you’re too tired to drive :)

You smile at that old-style smiley he sends. He really is cute, you think – or maybe it’s just your crush on him starting to blossom again. You’re honestly too tired to hang out, but you still don’t want to miss out, and you’re honest enough to admit to yourself you don’t want to miss out on him.

[10:50 PM] You: thanks! i’ll be waiting on my porch then! ;)

He finds you there, twelve minutes later, and you’re quick at jumping into the truck he temporarily stole from Zeke. He’s smiling so brightly at you, you think you might combust into fiery butterflies.

“Hi.” You have no clue why you’re out of breath. It’s just Reiner, for fuck’s sake. But Reiner’s also… well, Reiner, and he looks even more handsome today – white t-shirt, khaki pants, stringy bracelets wrapped tight around his right wrist.

No welcome-home kiss? you want to ask, but bite your tongue just in time before you can embarrass yourself.

“Hey there,” he breathes out. “You look tired, now I feel guilty for asking you out so late and after your drive.”

He nudges you when you smirk. “Get going,” you chuckle, leaning back comfortably against the seat and buckling your belt.

It’s only when the coast comes into view, with all the pretty lights of the bay twinkling on the placid water, that you grin like a child. “So… you asked me out?”

He looks at you for a moment before he snorts as he pulls up into the parking lot. “Kinda,” he replies with a shrug and before you can stop him, he’s already out of the truck.

You’re also quick at getting out, purse in one hand and phone in the other. For a split second, you wonder whether you locked your car and you pray you won’t find its windows smashed and your belongings gone by the time you’re back, but then you’re standing in front of Reiner and there’s no more time to think. “‘Kinda’?” you pout.

He shrugs, and it’s only now, under the light of the streetlamps, that you fully realize how broad his shoulders are, and how well he fills out the material of his tee. “Yeah, next time I ask you out on a date, it’s gonna be just the two of us.”

Butterflies go off in your belly again. For all you’d care, fireworks could be going off in the sky and you still wouldn’t be able to tear your eyes away from him as your smile turns into a giddy burst of giggles.

“I missed you, you know,” you say just as you walk through the door of the bar. “Back in the city.”

You don’t have time to notice the shade of pink tinging his cheeks at your words because you’re being pulled upstairs by a tipsy Bertolt and made to sit down at your friends’ table.

Your friends. You smile. You’re glad you’re back. You’re glad you can still call them as such.

Reiner sits down opposite you, but it’s not that bad. You’ll be able to look at him this way, you tell yourself.

“Annie?” Bertolt pouts when he finally plops down next to you with a beer for you. “She didn’t even read my text.”

You meet Porco’s gaze, sitting between Eren and Jean, and you can see the conflict in his eyes, him wondering whether you know or not.

“She’s probably out cold,” you answer back. “She took the last turn to drive back, she looked pretty beat.”

Bertolt huffs, and everyone at the table chuckles. Next to you, Mikasa whispers something in your ear along the lines of He’s hopeless when it comes to her, and then giggles with you as you clink your beer bottles together.

“Aren’t you tired as well?” asks Jean. It still surprises you how much he’s grown in the last ten years, and it doesn’t matter that you’ve already seen him a couple of times since you’re back. “Reiner said you left early this morning.”

Reiner, huh? He hides his blush behind his beer when he’s suddenly brought up, and you try not to grin at the way his lips twitch to stretch into a smile. “Nah, I’m alright. I’m glad I was invited to come. I didn’t have much else to do anyway, I think I’ll leave unloading my car to when I’m in the mood. There’s no rush anyway now that I’m here.”

The night is chill, with the late May breeze slipping in through the crack of the open French window of the terrace. Sasha tells you Marcel opens up the whole terrace when the weather is warm enough, and sitting out there with the view of the ocean on one side and the town on the other is simply breathtaking. You don’t doubt her.

Chatter flows freely, and at some point Bertolt sobers up enough to stop sulking over Annie being asleep when Jean and Connie challenge him at a game of dart a few minutes before Eren and Mikasa sneak downstairs together. Armin just laughs and shakes his head at his friends’ behavior, and then bids everyone goodnight when he sees how late it is.

“Oh and, Y/N!”

You hum when you look up from Sasha’s phone to smile at him.

“I’ve been thinking about your offer.”

“And?” you grin. “That a yes?”

When he nods, you stand up to hug him goodbye – and also hug him thank-you.

“I’m sure you’ll win the yearly competition this year and keep Mom’s tradition going,” you whisper into his ear before he blushes red and leaves.

Marcel kicks you out sometime later, at half past one, when the rest of the empty bar has already been cleaned and tidied up. You feel remorseful at first at the idea of you and your friends having stayed for so long, but Connie just waves your worries aways when he tells you, “We’re good for business,” as he trips over his own feet even though Sasha and Jean hold him up on both sides.

After you say your goodbyes, you’re left standing there with Reiner. There’s not much noise coming from the town, and for all you know, you could be alone in this world, with just the sound of the waves lapping up at the shore.

“I’ve been drinking,” he says. “I don’t wanna risk driving you home.”

“It’s alright, I can walk. The weather’s nice.” And it really is. The warmth of the summer is finally coming, and soon you’ll all start going to the beach together, if that’s something your friends still do.

“I was thinking…”

He steps closer to you, and you can feel his warm breath on your face. When you look up, all you can think about is that you want to kiss him – his lips, his freckles, every inch of his handsome face. His fingers intertwine with yours, and you feel his calloused skin brush against yours as his hand slips into place.

“What about?” You’re this close to reaching a hand up and touching his cheekbone, his jaw, his stubble. The brine of the ocean floods your senses when you breathe in deeply, and you stare at how utterly pretty he looks in the moonlight as well.

“Gabi’s at a friend’s for a sleepover.”

“Yeah?”

He hums. “You can crash at my place. I’ll help you unbox tomorrow if you need a hand.”

He lights up when you say yes – to both of his offers, but especially to the first one – and you have no clue whether that’s due to the beers he’s had or, much more simply, to you. Zeke warned you not to drive Reiner’s hopes too high, but he didn’t tell you you would also have to keep your feet on the ground. It’s almost as though that kiss you shared sitting on the docks, in the sunlight, with your feet dangling above the water changed everything, put things into motion, and now you can’t stop thinking about him. His lips on yours. His hand in yours. The freckles on his face. The texts he sent you while you were away during the past week.

The walk to his place is quiet, and you both spend it in silence. You feel his gaze checking you out every now and then, but then again, you’re also doing the same. His hand in yours makes you giddy, and you give it a squeeze when the butterflies in your stomach start flying around all over again.

Order and mess clash with each other when you walk into his apartment. There are books neatly stored away on a bookshelf, and then what you assume is his cousin’s algebra book left open on the coffee table in front of the couch, pens scattered everywhere on the wooden surface and a red pencil even on the carpet.

“Damn, I told her to tidy her stuff up!” he mutters under his breath when his gaze lands on her sports bag next to the television. “I kind of understand how my mom must’ve felt when I was Gabi’s age,” he continues in a groan when he picks a basketball tank top off the floor.

You chuckle, trying to imagine him being a father for Gabi. Does he make her breakfast? Does he help her with her homework? Did he show up to her school for Career Day when she was younger?

“Let me help you,” you grin as you kneel down next to the coffee table and start putting pens and highlighters back into the jean pencil case on the couch.

“It’s alright, you don’t–”

“I know it’s been ten years, but have you really forgotten how stubborn I can be?”

He looks down at you, Gabi’s sports bag slung over his left shoulder and her sneakers in his right hand. The smile on his lips makes you all sorts of warm inside as you stay there, unmoving, one hand on the book on the table and the other reaching for the red pencil on the floor.

It’s two in the morning, but you help him tidy up the mess his cousin left behind before she left the house. It’s quiet and cozy, and it makes you want to stay here forever. Not necessarily in this apartment, but simply by Reiner’s side. You work as a team, and it’s as though time hasn’t even passed. As though you never left. You both picked up right from where you left off, and you don’t feel worthy of it, of him, but fuck, if this isn’t what you want.

You end up collapsing on his bed at 2:17, and the taste of beer is still faintly lingering on his tongue when you kiss. He’s slow and steady, his hands on your hips as you straddle him. You gently scrape your nails on his scalp, even more gently pull on his silky hair, and the gasp he lets out into your mouth makes your breath catch in your throat.

Fuck, you could get drunk on him and him alone.

Kissing him becomes second nature before you even know it – and in between, you talk about your mothers, about life, about work, life, death, and anything in between.

He kisses you when he stops by your house to check if everything is alright, and you kiss him back.

You kiss him when you drive him to the other side of town, and he kisses you back before throwing the door open.

He gives your lips a peck when you run into each other, and you peck his cheek when you’re hanging out with your friends and they’re not looking.

You tasted him once, and now you want him every day.

It’s exhilarating, the way he makes you feel without going further than a kiss, although the touches you share surely are scalding. He makes you want to slap yourself at the thought of having left all those years ago, but he also doesn’t make you regret ever doing so. It’s just how life had to go, so that you could find yourself here, right now.

This is what you’re thinking about as you sit on a towel at the beach, both of your legs thrown over his right one and bent at the knees, your feet planted onto the ground. He has an arm slung over your knees, and his fingers dance along the side of your calf as he talks with Porco and Pieck.

You’re supposed to be here and hang out to celebrate the fact that you found a job at the local inn, but you’re too distracted to even remember that.

You have no clue, literally no clue, what Annie’s telling you because you’re too busy leaning back on your hands and looking at him. Reiner, of course – the side of his face, the line of his jaw, the freckles on his skin, the way the corner of his lips rises into a smile, that single earring on his right earlobe, or the way he laughs. He grabs a hold of your ankle every time he laughs, and every time he does that, you feel yourself burn a little hotter.

You also try not to let your gaze wander lower than his neck. You know he has a few fine golden chains resting on his collarbones, but you also know that if you let yourself look down at his bare torso, at all those tight muscles, you won’t be able to stop yourself from trying and pushing whatever this flirt you have going on between the two of you is to the next step.

“Stop drooling, you’re making it obvious!” Annie whispers into your ear before leaning her chin on your shoulder. The contact jolts you out of your thoughts, and you turn to look at her, cheeks burning, although you’d like to blame that on the warm, June sun. “I could cut the sexual tension between the two of you with a fucking butter knife.”

She pinches your side, throws a quick ‘bye’ your friends’ way and drags you away from Reiner’s lap – you try not to think about the way you always end up in his lap when kissing gets a bit more heated than it should and he drags you onto him.

You’re walking on the water’s edge before you can stop her, her hand in yours tugging you forward, toward the ice cream kiosk at the beginning of the pier. Laughter bubbles up in your throat, and soon you’re both running together, tugging on each other, splashing water with your feet.

She buys you both a slushy to share and when she takes the first sip from the straw, she looks you dead in the eye. “So.”

“So…” you parrot back, voice hesitant, before snatching the paper cup and quenching some of your thirst and heat.

“You and Reiner…”

You feel your face heat up, your lips break out into a grin, and soon you’re hiding your embarrassment behind the cup of your slushy.

“Fuck, stop being so cute, Y/N!” she jokingly scolds you, walking with you until you’re both sitting on a bench. The cement is scalding underneath your butts, and it makes the both of you yelp. “It’s good to see him finally happy.”

A group of children runs past you at the speed of light, screaming and laughing as they tail the dog that stole their frisbee. Your gaze follows them; they remind you of when you were a kid, always playing around with Reiner, Annie, and Bertolt. Sometimes you’d join the others as well, but most of the time it was the four of you, plus Porco. It feels like at least ten lifetimes ago and yesterday at the same time.

“Although I think you should fuck.”

Her crude words drag you back in a second, and you’re quick at exclaiming her name in warning.

“What?” she asks, playing the innocence card. “That’s what you want, too, don’t lie. He thinks the same, you just have to look at him in the eyes to realize it,” she shrugs. “Or, well, between his legs.”

“Damn, no need to be so upfront about it, Annie,” you groan, snatching the slushy back to use it as an excuse to hide the embarrassment painted all over your face.

“I’m just saying,” she shrugs again. “Just fuck the awkwardness out of your systems so that we can all hang out normally. It’s already hard enough with Eren and Mika–”

“What?” you cut in, confused. “What awkwardness?”

She raises an eyebrow, and just stares at you in silence, suckling from the straw until the last of the slushy has gone and she’s left making noises with the straw.

“What awkwardness?” you insist.

“You’ve been giving each other the bedroom eyes ever since we came back from that quick trip to the city. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore them.”

“What bedroom eyes?”

She parrots you childishly – what bedroom eyes? “There’s three types of couples in our friend group,” she eventually says, matter-of-factly. “One: Historia and Ymir. They’re cool. Just like Mom and Dad supervising their kids. Affectionate just enough in front of them, and then they do their business behind the scenes. Two: Eren and Mikasa. The horny rabbits. If they’re not with us, they’re fucking. If they are with us, it’s only a matter of time before they sneak off to – you guessed it – fuck.”

“Damn, such finesse,” you groan with a roll of your eyes.

“And then three,” she continues, unperturbed, ignoring your comment completely, holding up three fingers. “You and Reiner. I don’t know what’s up with the two of you, you just… don’t fuck. Even though it’s clear on both of your faces that you’re dying to.”

“Damn, you’re annoying,” but your cheeks are burning and you can’t help but look back to where you left your friends… and Reiner. You see a fourth person there, blond hair, red swimming trunks – he’s standing right behind Pieck, and you guess it must be Zeke.

“That’s what BFFs are for,” she grins, turning your head back to face her.

“What about you and Bert, then?” you smirk.

“He’s just pissed I dated Pock for, like, five months and didn’t date him. What about that?” she scoffs.

“He’s into you. Are you into him?”

She rolls her eyes. “Mind your business.”

You’re on a constant gravitational orbit toward and around each other, you and Reiner. When you go back to your beach umbrella, his hands end up on your legs again, and your legs end up in his lap again. And then, later on in the day, when you end up in Zeke’s backyard for an impromptu barbeque night, you end up sitting next to each other.

The meat is incredible – and it couldn’t be any other way when Connie and Jean team up on grill duty. The beer is nicely cold, and it goes down like water, although neither you nor Reiner end up drinking much.

After Annie’s words on the beach, you end up observing your group of friends a bit better.

The way Bertolt sneaks glances at your best friend, and the way she doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

The way Pieck and Zeke help each other with plates or bottles or taking away the trash – never obvious, always subtle, but they still work as a team together. You wonder how long it’s been going on between the two of them, whether he’d really like to have your house. To settle down with her. Have kids. You wonder why they’re not coming clean, but you guess everyone has different timings.

Then, you notice the way Reiner’s thigh brushes up against yours. Your sarong doesn’t do anything to prevent his burning skin from touching yours.

You notice the way his knee bounces up and down, under the table, as he talks about a basketball game with Pock and Marcel, Reiner’s lips barely kissing the rim of his beer bottle.

You feel your chest open up when he turns to you for a moment, all smiley, his eyes crinkling, before he’s back to bickering with his friends about the match’s final results.

Maybe Annie is right, you think. Maybe it is clear on your face that you want to do things to and with him, because you can barely take your eyes off of him. His skin has tanned just a bit ever since you arrived for your mother’s funeral, and a few more freckles have made an appearance on his face. The blond of his hair is a tad bit lighter as well, lightened by the sun and the salty water.

Carefully, doing your best not to get caught, you slide your hand from your lap to his thigh, and you give it a light squeeze. You feel the muscle, the way it moves under his skin when he contacts it for a moment before relaxing, not losing a beat as he keeps on talking. His knee stops bouncing, and if you’d paid attention, you would’ve noticed his breath catch in his throat for a second.

But you’re not paying attention to that. You’re thinking about the way he looked this afternoon, at the beach. In the water, on the towel, running after some kid’s soccer ball after she yelled for help when her friend’s kick had sent it too far away. All flesh and muscle, with sweat and water glinting on his skin under the sun.

You feel yourself pulse everywhere, and you’re not even aware you’re spacing out until Sasha plops down on the bench next to you with a full plate of ribs and hearts in her eyes.

“Wan’ one?” she asks with a full mouth, and it’s as though she’s grinning with her eyes as she looks at you, a rib held tight between grease-stained fingers.

You shake your head no, your fingertips digging into Reiner’s thigh as you press yours together. “No, thanks, I’m good. I’ve already eaten enough.”

“If you say so,” she shrugs and goes back to digging into her food.

Her love for food hasn’t changed over the years, and you find it cute. She makes your appetite come back if you watch her eat long enough, that’s for sure.

“I think I could do with some dessert, though.” That’s what Reiner whispers into your ear, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear, before he’s back to chatting with the Galliard brothers.

It’s like thunder goes off inside your head, it catches you off guard. For once, Reiner makes it hard for you to breathe. Making out with him does unspeakable things to you, but that veiled innuendo… You’re suddenly aware of your pussy, and you’re forced to cross your legs in the vain attempt to get a grip on yourself.

This is not the time for this, you unsuccessfully tell yourself, but now all you can think about is Reiner’s head between your legs.

Your grip on his thigh tightens and when you glance at him from the corner of your eye, you see him smirk.

The night drags on slowly, excruciatingly so.

Sometime after ten, your legs end up crossed over both of his, his left hand wrapped tightly around your right shin to keep them in place. You can feel him. You’ve already felt him while making out, of course, but now he’s half-hard against the side of your thigh and under his swimming trunks, and your lungs squeeze again.

The look in Annie’s eyes as she stares at you brings you back to your shared slushy on the beach. It seems to say I told you so and Please, just get out of here already, but you have no clue how you’ll manage to get up and trust your legs not to give out underneath you – at the thought of Reiner, at the thought of you with Reiner, of that hand of his wrapped about something that’s not your shin.

The calloused skin of his fingers is making goosebumps wash over the skin of your legs when Connie and Jean finally drag Sasha away before she has the chance to empty Zeke’s pantry, and Eren and Mikasa take care of picking a way-too-drunk Armin up on his feet.

“The shop might stay closed tomorrow morning,” Mikasa grimaces when she glances at you and then tilts her chin into Armin’s direction.

You just laugh it off. Plus, it’s not your shop anymore, and Armin’s been overworking himself for way too long, according to Annie, so you’re sure he deserves more than just one morning off.

“Less beers next time, Marcel,” Pieck warns, looking at the man in question with pleading eyes.

“Noted!”

Zeke has already closed down the barbeque, and both Annie and Pieck are gathering the dirty dishes on the outdoor picnic table to bring them inside. When you finally spring up to your feet to help them, feeling guilty at making them do everything while Pock and Bertolt placidly share a cigarette on the deck chairs a few meters away, Annie’s the one to shoo you away.

“Go home, please, I’m tired of seeing your face for today.”

A hand on your shoulder makes you whip around, and you’re not exactly surprised to meet Reiner’s gaze.

“Come, I’ll give you a lift home.” The look in his eyes seems to tell you a whole different thing, however, and you feel those butterflies in your stomach for the billionth time today.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe everyone and their mother has caught up on the way you two look at each other, you think when you see he’s wrapped a sweatshirt around his hips, conveniently covering the front of his pants.

You don’t make it back to your house. He stops his dirt bike right in front of the two-floor building that hosts his apartment and before you know it, he’s dragged you up the stairs and pushed you through the door, all while kissing your breath away.

“Fuck,” he grunts, picking you up like you weigh nothing and kicking the door closed.

His skin is burning hot against yours, and it’s like something inside the both of you snapped. All the pining of the past few weeks, all the glances, the touches, the kissing. It all escalates until he drops you down onto the kitchen table and his lips move from yours to your neck.

The sucking and marking goes straight to your core, and you find yourself breathless much faster than you’d ever be proud to admit. But he’s so rough and tender at the same time, his hands tugging at the knot in your sarong and yours tugging at the sweatshirt still wrapped around his waist… You feel your sanity slowly drip away.

When you open your eyes, you see a picture hanging on the wall – a teenaged Reiner, his mother, and his kid cousin Gabi.

Gabi!

You gasp when she crosses your mind, and you’re quick at pulling Reiner’s head away from the crook of your neck with a tug on his hair that makes him moan out loud, the sound shooting straight to your core.

“I’m sorry, I–” He’s panting, lips redder than they were at Zeke’s house, and breath just as cut-short as yours. The unfocused look in your eyes makes you clench around nothing.

“We can’t.” You can barely talk above a whisper, eyes glancing rapidly into the direction of the corridor that leads to Gabi’s room.

The expression on his face shatters and falls, and you watch it happen live, front row and all. “I– I’m sorry if I misinter–”

“You think I don’t want you?” you chuckle, trying to be as quiet as you can while keeping an eye on the hall. You really don’t want to see Gabi again for the first time after all these years while you’re tongue-deep down her cousin’s throat and half-naked on their kitchen table. “Fuck, Reiner, I’ve been thinking about you being balls deep insipe me all night!” you grunt, a hand sliding up his chest and behind his neck, and the other down his stomach until it rests on his crotch.

Fuck.

He’s big.

When he groans out loud at the way you palm him through his swimming trunks, your hand shoots up to slap against his mouth, a stern shh! slipping past your lips that makes his eyes go wide.

“I don’t wanna fuck with your cousin in the house,” you whisper-yell, and for a moment he’s too taken aback to even breathe, but then he’s full-belly laughing, his hand wrapping around your wrist to take your hand off of his face.

“Shit, you almost scared me,” he smiles when he calms down, leaning forward over you, his hands on either side of your butt on the table. His eyes slip downward for a moment, looking at the way your chest moves with every breath – or at the way the top of your bikini can’t conceal the way your nipples pebble. “Gabi’s out.”

“Huh?”

He nods, leaning his head down and catching your lips with his for a quick kiss before he’s pulling on your lower lip with his teeth. “She went out with her friends for Falco’s birthday or something like that, so she’s not coming back tonight.”

His hands grab your hips and pull you forward, until you’re right on the edge of the table and he’s pressed right against you. The feel of his erection against your core makes your head dizzy and the panties of your bikini even wetter.

“We can still stop here if you–”

“I want you.”

It makes your head spin, the way he’d stop if that’s what you wanted, even despite the fact that he feels rock hard against you.

His hands slide up your sides, thumbs brushing over your nipples before they move back down and unknot your sarong. Fuck, you want those hands everywhere.

“You want me?” he hums, lips attaching to your neck once again. “I want you, too,” he says, giving your hips an experimental roll of his own. The feeling shoots up your spine, it makes your head fall back, and he’s quick enough to move a hand and cradle the back of your neck.

“Not here,” you whisper. Gabi might not be home, but you don’t want to do it on the table she has breakfast on every day.

“‘Course not.” His chuckle is whispered into your ear as he picks you up again.

A look in his clouded eyes and you’re kissing him again, and it’s all tongue and teeth and lips. Your nails lightly rake down his back, and you feel him thrust up against you again as you close your eyes, dizzy and wet and pulsing all over. You pray to whoever’s listening that he knows his way around his house even with his eyes closed.

You’re both naked before you know it – Reiner sitting on the edge of his bed, and you kneeling between his legs, your fingertips digging into the flesh of his thighs. His cock is heavy on your tongue and the longer you blow him, the more you feel your jaw grow sore. His moans keep you going nonetheless, and when he tugs on your hair and you whimper around him, he’s quick at pulling you off.

He looks so good, you think as you look up at him – breathing raggedly above you, with the upper part of his chest flushed red and his eyes closed, his lips parted.

The tip of your tongue teases his slit and you barely have the time to wrap your lips around the head of his dick again that he’s whimpering, a sound low in the back of his throat, and pulling you up harshly.

“You’re gonna make me come if you keep that up,” he pants against your lip as you straddle one of his thighs.

“Yeah, genius,” you giggle against his jaw as you roll your hips against his quad. His skin is burning, and the way your wet labia drag against his thigh only makes your own temperature rise higher. “That kind of was the plan.”

With your hand wrapped around his cock, slowly pumping him, it takes him a moment before he’s able to think again. In the meantime, you take his expressions in. The way his lips part, and the imprints of his teeth in his lower lip – you suck it between yours. The way his eyes lose focus as his head tilts back. His hips stammer, caught between the need to fuck himself up into your fist and the need to fuck himself into you. When you look down, you see the way he twitches in your hold, dripping pre-cum – it doesn’t take you long to wipe your thumb over his flushed-red tip.

His only word is a whispered, “Please.”

You don’t think you’ve ever heard him beg for anything in all the years you’ve known him, let alone in the bedroom. The quivering of his timbre tugs at something within you, however, and you let your hand slide down to cup his balls, your other hand holding his shoulder tight to keep your balance as you keep on slowly riding his thigh.

“I want you to come, Rei,” you whisper back, lips barely brushing against the shell of his ear, and he grabs your hips in his hands, fingertips digging harshly into your flesh as you keep on pumping him and teasing his tip with your thumb.

“Inside you.” The look in his eyes when he tilts his head back forward and stares into yours is desperate and insistent, it makes your breath catch in your throat. His lips catch yours into a barely-there kiss, but he’s keeping his eyes open and you can’t break eye contact.

You grin when he twitches in your hold, your thumb teasing the underside of his cock’s head. “You can do that later, too.”

A few more pumps of your hand and he’s seizing up, moaning. He twitches in your hand, and you feel his cum drip down onto and in-between your fingers as you gently fist him through his orgasm until he eventually comes down from it. He’s breathing heavily, and he’s barely able to keep himself sitting up straight as he takes it all in – your dripping folds still sliding along his thigh with every lazy roll of your hips; your pebbled nipples brushing against the flushed skin of his chest; your butterfly kisses and licks along the line of his jaw and down the side of his neck.

He grunts your name when you tease his head with your thumb. “Fuck,” he whispers, and then laughs when your only answer is “Me.” Because you do want him to fuck you. Into the mattress, into the next morning. Hell, into your next life if you’re so lucky as to have one.

After all the kisses, the lingering gazes, the barely-there touches… A brush of his hand on the back of yours. His hand wrapped around your ankle on the beach. Your fingers combing through his hair on your porch. His lips barely kissing the rim of a beer bottle. And then all your texts back and forth when you went back to the city to finally leave everything behind – innocent and then suggestive and then back to innocent.

He has you whipped for him, and the way he’s staring at you now, panting lightly, makes you think he also is whipped for you. You have him wrapped around your little finger and he…

His hand wraps gently around yours and pulls you away from his sensitive, softening cock.

“I’ve been thinking about having you like this for so long,” he mumbles into your cheek before he presses a kiss to your skin. His left hand trails up your side, and his right hand slips between your body and his thigh to cup your sex. “Fantasy still doesn’t compare,” he continues in a grunt when his fingers tease your wetness.

His touch makes you gasp, and when he tentatively slips a finger into you, your nails dig into the muscles of his back as a moan of his name leaves your lips. He doesn’t seem to mind that one of your hands is still covered in his cum when you use it to push yourself closer to him.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you today.” His voice is rough in your ear as he fingers you, first with one finger and then with two. Your hips roll into his hand out of their own accord as you slowly lose the ability to control yourself. “You and that goddamned bikini of yours.”

You can see your bikini bra slung over his bedside lamp when you lean your cheek against his shoulder, panting into his skin as the pads of his fingers massage that sweet, sweet spot inside you and his thumb teases your clit.

“Couldn’t even keep my hands off of you.” He kisses your shoulder, and his free hand moves up your back, making goosebumps tug at your skin as his fingertips trace the line of your spine.

Your body is pressed so close to him that there’s no chance he can’t hear the heavy thump-thump of your heart against his chest, stomping like hooves inside your ribcage, against your lungs, cutting your breath short. This time you are the one to let out a whispered, strangled, “Fuck,” as his fingers hike you higher and higher toward your orgasm.

It’s there, barely out of reach, and yet still brushing against your skin.

“And then at the barbeque…” He breathes you in, and the way his chest inflates against yours makes you shudder. “Could barely listen to what Pock was saying.”

His thumb flicks your clit, and you feel your toes curl against the tiles of the floor. Your thighs tense and quiver, and the rhythm of your hips picks up just slightly when he manages to fit a third finger inside you.

The stretch is a pleasant burn that spreads throughout your whole body, but you know you need all this to fully take him.

When you lean back slightly and move one of your hands to lean against his chest, nails slightly digging into the muscles of his pecs, you know you’re close. Words and praises bubble up in your mind, but nothing but moans and whimpers leaves your lips as you stare into his eyes. He’s smiling and fuck, is he the prettiest view you’ve seen in your whole entire life.

He’s getting hard again, you notice when you shift your leg, the one trapped between his, and that’s enough to make the whole room spin – or maybe it’s just your head as it tilts back and you ride his hand.

“Fuck, Reiner.” Your voice is breathless and you can’t even keep your eyes open anymore, your eyelids are forcing themselves shut.

He does something, then. It’s in the way his fingers drag against the walls of your vagina, in the way he circles your clit, in the way he bounces his leg up. You’re sent spiraling head-first into pure bliss as your walls clench around his fingers and your legs around his thigh. Your nails drag down the expanse of his chest and his back, one hand in the front and the other on the back, and for a moment there’s nothing else beyond your body curled into his and his breath against your skin, his lips kissing and his tongue licking over the hickey in the crook of your neck.

It takes you a while to come back down from your high. You’re out of breath and tingly all over, and when you manage to restart your brain, you’re almost painfully aware of how sensitive you are between your legs. His fingers in and on you make you whimper loudly, and you’re so glad Gabi’s out because there’s no way in hell you’d ever be able to muffle the sounds slipping freely past your kiss-swollen lips.

He’s there when you come back down to planet Earth, Reiner. He sucks his fingers clean of your juices and then pecks your lips, and when he deepens the kiss – slips his tongue into your mouth and right against yours so that you can taste yourself – you swear you’ve never breathed better.

His hands on your hips pull you closer to him and right into his lap, and his erection presses up between the two of you. You barely hear him hiss as his splayed-out hand on the middle of your back pushes your chest flat against his.

“Fuck, I need you,” he mumbles against your lips when he eventually breaks the kiss. He picks you up just enough so that he can lay you down onto his bed, and when he hovers over you, his necklaces dangling in your face, you grab onto the fine, golden chains and pull him down again.

Your taste on his tongue is addictive, and when his hips roll against yours, you can’t help but moan into the kiss. Your hand is already trailing down his chest and abdomen when he pulls back and sits on his haunches, between your spread legs, and keeps your hand pressed against your belly.

He looks at you as though he wants to commit you to memory – every line and curve of your body, every angle, every scar. The way you’re panting. Your parted lips. Your unfocused eyes. The way the fingers of your other hand come up to play with a nipple. And then that soft Reiner, drawled out until you go silent and buck your hips up. And you live for every second of it – every second of his eyes on you, every slight twitch of his cock, the way he so effortlessly has you pinned down to the bed.

“I need you,” you whine, voice barely there, repeating his earlier words.

It switches something inside him: his breath catches in his throat and he groans once, low and drawled-out, before he’s fishing a condom from the drawer of his bedside table and sliding it down his length.

When he finally settles back between your legs, he lets you pull him in for another kiss. It’s sloppy and slow this time, both of you tasting and consuming the other, tongues brushing together as your breathing deepens. Then, he’s pushing three fingers back into you without build-up to make sure you’re ready for him, and you feel his uncertainty when he starts slowly fingering you again before you dig your fingers into his back and moan a Please, Rei right into his ear when your fingers wrap around his dick.

You see him shut his eyes for a moment and when he pulls his fingers out of you and you brush his tip against your entrance, you see the way his lower lip quivers when he exhales.

Then, he’s sliding into you. It’s one slow, long thrust into your heat and it has your back to arch into him, and he’s quick at wrapping his lips around one of your nipples, your fingers tangling in his hair.

His name falls from your lips in a drawled-out moan and by the time his hips finally press against yours, you’re panting, legs wrapped tightly around his waist with his left hand keeping your right thigh in place.

“Fuck, you’re tight.” His eyes are squeezed shut when he leans his forehead against yours.

The stretch burns for a while, and his hand moves from your thigh to in-between your bodies to play with your clit. The added sensation makes sparks go off behind your closed eyelids and you barely have the time to feel his cock twitch inside you that he’s already pulling his hips back before rolling them back into you.

The rhythm is slow and controlled, focused more on making you relax around him, and when the volume of your moans finally rises, he ruts into you, groaning and grunting into your ear as you hold him to you.

You don’t even think you’ve ever felt this full before; it borders on uncomfortable as your walls flutter around him. But his mouth on your neck makes you forget about anything else as he bites and sucks at the sensitive skin.

Your orgasm unexpectedly pulls you under when he ruts his hips into you slightly harder, at a slightly different angle, his hands underneath your ass to pull you up a bit. It’s quick and sudden, and it doesn’t take you long to come down from it, but it still leaves you breathless. When you open your eyes and find him staring down at you, you can’t help but chuckle.

“Am I that good?” he wonders, surprise laced with his voice as he keeps on relentlessly pounding into you, now sitting up straight with your legs still wrapped around his waist. When you can’t even answer, he says, “Fuck, that was hot.”

You’re barely able to whisper out a I didn’t even feel it coming, but your breath is cut short when he leans forward, his hands trailing up your sides until he’s squeezing on your breasts and kissing your sanity away.

His lips on yours and his hands on your body build your pleasure up again, and before you know it, you’re both moaning and grunting into each other’s ears, his hips relentlessly rolling into yours as his dick hits that one spot inside you that always makes your toes curl. It’s like he’s already got you all figured out, and goes straight to the target until you’re whimpering nonsense again, and this time you feel him right behind you, his cock twitching as he moans into your ear.

When you come this time, it’s intense, the angle he’s taking you in heightening the sensation of his pelvis brushing against your clit, and you have to fight against yourself not to lose consciousness. You feel him empty inside you, sheathed in his condom, and he trembles when he collapses against you, hips still sloppily thrusting into you. You barely catch what he says before you close your eyes for a moment, that You’re enough for me whispered softly into the crook of your neck as you hold the back of his head.

You’re sore all over when you wake up the next morning, and you realize you didn’t even notice falling asleep.

His body is warm against yours, and his chest rises and falls slowly as he sleeps peacefully with an arm wrapped around you. It makes you smile, and the butterflies that start fluttering around inside your belly at the thought of him – and of you in his arms, in his bed, sore between your legs after last night and most definitely marked up all over – but when you push yourself up onto an elbow to look at him, peace washes over you.

The first sunlight of the morning is seeping in through a crack in the curtains in a blade of light and it makes his skin almost glow golden. It hits the right side of his face, and you raise a hand to shield him from the light.

“What are you doing awake?” he mutters, eyes still closed but lips slowly stretching into an amused smile. His arm tightens his hold around you and when he shifts his leg and brushes up against your sensitive core, you hiss.

“Just admiring the view.”

His eyes open and he seems taken by surprise when he finds you looking down at him and not at the ocean visible through his window and the see-through curtains. “Me?”

“What else?” you chuckle, leaning down to peck his cheek.

Lying there with him is peaceful. You just listen to the steady beat of his heart as you trace invisible lines on his chest. You know he’s looking at you, and it makes you all giddy inside – he just looks, doesn’t say a word, until his hand moves up from your lower back to the back of your head and tilts it so that you’re looking up at him.

He looks at you as though there’s something he wants to say, but he eventually just smiles and sighs before pecking your lips. “Let’s shower,” he says. “I’ll make you breakfast when we’re done.”

He ends up going down on you again in the shower, and you pay him back with a handjob that has him coming over your stomach as you kiss under the warm jet of the shower.

When you walk back into the kitchen, dressed in a pair of his boxers and a t-shirt too big on you, you’re caught red-handed by Gabi eating cereal straight out of the box, sitting at the table. Reiner tenses up behind you, and you feel blood rush to your cheeks as you stand there barely dressed, your hair still dripping water onto the cotton of the t-shirt.

“Hey,” you break the silence and Reiner’s fingers twitch on your hip.

Gabi gives you both a once over before her face morphs into a grimace. “Gee, I’m glad I didn’t sleep here. Gross.”

A minute ticks by before Reiner speaks. “I didn’t think you’d be back so early. Did something happen?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know, ask Falco and his stupid crush.” She munches on her quick breakfast before adding: “Anyway. Who the hell are you?”

She ends up blushing when she recognizes you, but you know you’re the one burning hotter at having been caught like this. You remember her as a kid, and now that you see her for the first time since then, you can’t help but think of how much she’s changed. Of how much she’s grown. And when you hang out later on in the day, after Reiner’s given you a lift back home on his dirt bike and you’ve had the chance to wear proper clothes, you can’t help but think about what a good job Reiner’s done, raising her.

Exactly one year after your mother’s passing and all that it brought along – a change of heart, a change of mind, regaining your old friends, starting over with Reiner – you’re sitting in your childhood home’s living room, with the only difference that it’s now not your house anymore.

Zeke wasn’t kidding when he said he’d love to buy the house, and buy it he did. He changed some things, brought over some of his old furniture – and some of Pieck’s as well. All the old appliances have been changed, and all that needed to be renewed has been renewed. The house has changed its appearance, but it’s still just as lively as it used to be when you were a kid.

It gives you a peace of mind you didn’t even know you needed.

“So,” Zeke clears his throat and everyone at the dining room table quietens.

You’re sitting next to Reiner and you have his warm hand between yours, resting in your lap under the table. He’s smiling down at you, but when you turn to look at him, he whips his head back forward. You know what kind of mood he’s in, and you can’t wait to drag his ass back to your place so that you can give it to him.

“There’s something I wanted you all to know,” Zeke continues as Porco and Bertolt come back with cold beers.

He looks over at Pieck and finds her already smiling at him, and as you look at them, you can’t help but smile yourself.

“Yeah, we already know,” Eren butts in, bored, grabbing the beer he’s being handed and passing it to you.

“What?”

“You and Pieck,” he shrugs. “We been knew.”

You all minus the two ‘adults’ laugh at the way Mikasa slaps Eren’s shoulder at his language.

“All this time?” Pieck asks, baffled.

“Maybe not since the beginning,” Marcel confirms. “But for the past two years and a half…”

“Pretty obvious, yeah,” Annie agrees, and everyone else nods.

Zeke and Pieck look at each other, and it’s then that Eren says, “It got even more obvious when you bought a house with her.”

The disappointment of a spoiled surprise passes quickly among friends. You all chat, and drink, and then eat some of the apple pie Pieck baked for the housewarming party. When it comes to opening the unexpected gifts, you even have the chance of laughing at the way Zeke unexpectedly stammers at the box of condoms his younger brother got him.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Reiner says when you both walk out the door and down the three steps of the porch. You haven’t seen your mother’s ghost standing there for months now, and all the times you’ve stopped by in the past six months, you’ve only had Pieck or Zeke greet you back home. “Here, with me,” he goes on, slipping his hand into yours and intertwining your fingers.

The sun shines down warm on you, and you look at the way it kisses his skin. His freckles have started to darken again now that spring has come and he’s been spending more time outside.

You smile, inhaling deeply and leaning up to peck his lips. Jean and Eren holler behind you, and you briefly see Annie flip them off from the corner of your eye. It makes you chuckle.

“Yeah, I’m glad to be home.”

“What about me?” His pouts always make you warm inside. Over the past year, you’ve gotten to see this new side of him. The Boyfriend – and all that comes with it. Coffee dates. Movie nights. Late night car rides. Walks along the shore. Basketball games, the both of you sitting on the benches as his cousin plays with her team.

“You’re so obtuse sometimes,” you joke, waving at your friends as you drag Reiner by his hand. It’s not going to be the quickest walk back to your place, but you love spending time like this with him, just the two of you. “What else do you think I consider home?”

He doesn’t have time to blush because your phone goes off with an incoming text and when he sees Gabi’s name pop up on the screen, he’s suddenly alarmed.

[3:47 PM] Gabi: girls’ night tn?

[3:47 PM] Gabi: i need tips for That Thing

Reiner frowns, and you smoothen out his expression with your thumb, massaging between his eyebrows, when you catch him like that. Then, it hits him. “Is she fucking someone?!”

It makes you chuckle, the way he worries about her, how close they are. You consider yourself lucky and honored that she took you in as a sister figure.

“Not yet, she just needs help telling her crush she likes him,” you eventually answer, shooting her a text back to tell her to be ready to be picked up at seven. Then, when you look back up at him, you smile and kiss him. “Don’t worry, I won’t let her make dumb decisions.”

“I’m glad you two get along. Makes spending the rest of my life with you a lot better.”

He’s grinning, eyes burning golden under the afternoon sun, and the longer you stare at him, the more your lips break out into a smile.

They make breathing a lot easier, Reiner and the way he shines in the sunlight.

Yeah, you think to yourself, sliding your hand back into his. I’m home.

Tumblr runs on reblogs, so if you’re in the mood, consider sharing this fic with your friends. However, any form of feedback is welcome :)

The video used for the gif was downloaded from Pexels.com last year and since my laptop broke in the meantime, I lost the link and have no clue what I typed to find it. Credits to owner/s! Nvm, I found it: https://www.pexels.com/video/flowers-plant-plants-flower-4273471/

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