#(im sure he's a lovely bot-)

[4giorno]

okay pls just listen to käärijäs entire fantastista album but if you want my specific recs then on that album they are kiertävä sirkus (my fave as is everyone elses too it seems), fantastista, hirttää kiinni, viulunkieli and z <3333333

[mxdotpng]

i have a severe deficiency in bad mobile jrpgs so lets see how another eden goes

[jingyuan-s]

This isn't really a question but I adore your writing and your bots I really enjoyed your resident evil bots I was bummed to find them gone they were some of the best written ones I have gotten to rp with in years can't wait to read your writing

!! aw thank u!!

[les4elliewilliams]

Unwanted attraction // e.w

coworker!ellie ✗ fem reader

cw/wc: 11k ; tried to proofread it but im blind asf and i need glasses so!! smut, swearing, strap on sex r!receiving, oral r!receiving, also mention of ellie receiving it but i was too lazy to write that part (possibly gonna make a few drabbles about it in the future, who knows) fingering r!receiving, angst. enemies to lovers trope :')

a/n: i'm well aware my silly goofy goose is the sweetest baby ever but imagine if she hated you, what would it be like? (besides trying to kill you and hunting you down ofc, let's remember this is AU) idk been daydreaming about it.

highly inspired by a bot on Chai ( *︾▽︾)

¡! daily click・palestine masterpost・do not buy any game from naughty dog, neil druckmann is a zionist・more daily clicks. ¡!

☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆・・・・☆

Rough sex on the bedroom floor

Hop in the shower, she begging for more

Do not disturb on the hotel door

✩ coworker!ellie made sure to make your life a living hell at work, whether it came to messing up with the neatly organized files on your computer or desk, complaining about everything you did, talking shit behind your back, stealing your coffee (and she didn't even like coffee, but she'd do anything to piss you off), calling you names, make fun of your clothes but at the same time checking you out whenever you bent over your desk or to pick up something from the musty floor. Such a delight she was.

✩ coworker!ellie absolutely hated how everyone seemed to love you, except her, of course. She despised how you always wore a stupid smile on your face as if nothing could ever bring you down, not even her. Your mere presence was enough to light up the whole room. She couldn't figure out what about you instantly attracted people.

✩ coworker!ellie hated how you always organized everything by color, name, and date like a freaking maniac, and obviously, she couldn't help but tease you about it.

"OCD much, baby?" "You should get this obsession of yours checked. it's not normal."

✩ coworker!ellie works as a photographer while you are a writer. Your job is to write anything that your boss asks you to write. However, Ellie often sends you the pictures you need for your works in the middle of the night or past the deadline, making sure you work overtime to finish your project. This often results in you getting yelled at by your boss the next day (which was exactly what she wanted)

✩ coworker!ellie always found something to complain about when it came to you. She disdained you and didn't even try to hide it. She would criticize everything about you, from your clothing choices to your makeup and hair. It was as if she were looking for flaws to point out and would not rest until she found something to complain about. She never seemed to give you a break, and you always felt like you were walking on eggshells around her. Despite your efforts to be friendly towards her, Ellie never reciprocated. But what she hated the most was how she couldn't actually bring herself to hate you; she hated how her body reacted whenever she let her eyes linger on your ass and tits for too long. She absolutely hated the skirts you wore almost every fucking day; it was a curse cause she couldn't despise your body.

✩ coworker!ellie hated how you talked, the sound of your voice, and how obnoxious it sounded when you spoke or giggled but secretly wondered how you'd sound beneath her, whimpering and moaning her name.

✩ coworker!ellie deeply dislikes when you gesticulate while talking and how your dimples show when you laugh at someone else's jokes in the office, especially when it's one of those stupid man. Because how stupid could you be? It was obvious that he was flirting with you with the only intent of getting into your panties.

✩ coworker!ellie gags around you whenever you walk by, and she makes sure you know how fucking disgusting you smell. How your flowery scent disgusts her; she's so pathetically disgusted by it that all she wants to do is bury her nose into the crook of your neck.

"Who the fuck is wearing this perfume? smells fucking disgusting" "Smells like shit in here"

✩ coworker!ellie always finds a way to put the blame on you when she screws up, especially when her boss is pretty pissed at her and is complaining about how she's not responsible enough and doesn't pay attention to detail.

✩ coworker!ellie will talk over you during meetings, even when she had been quiet the whole time. The moment she decides to speak up is when you take the initiative to do so. What a coincidence.

✩ coworker!ellie would often mock and make fun of you whenever you mispronounced something.

"You hear yourself? Like, ever?" "Princess' forgetting grammar today, isn't she?"

✩ coworker!ellie constantly makes rude and disrespectful comments about your ideas and contributions saying shit like

"That sounds like a stupid idea. But what were we expecting from you?" "Do you ever make yourself useful?" Your boss and everyone else in the room had enough of the ongoing rivalry between you two and they would always tell her to suck it up and take it outside. That's how things usually went: she'd say something mean, and you couldn't let her have the last word. You were always nice to everyone but you eventually grew tired of her ugly attitude and how unmotivated it was. Cause why the fuck was she so snappy about everything? What have you ever done to her? Easy. Absolutely nothing.

✩ coworker!ellie has never invited you to any of their coworkers' hangouts. She always came up with excuses to avoid inviting you, and the best part was that you knew nothing about it; she'd make excuses like

"She told me her grandma is sick" "I dunno, she said she already had plans" "She's dogsitting this weekend" Imagine how worried your coworker Dina was about your grandma. The poor girl was so concerned that she had to reach out to you and ask about it. What if you needed a friend to talk to? You knew she would always be there for you no matter what, but that's beside the point. Ellie most likely didn't consider Dina walking up to you to ask about your grandma, or maybe she did; it's not like she cared. Her sole purpose appeared to be provoking you anyway. "yn, how's your grandma doin'?" she had this soft, worried tone going on "My…grandma?" you looked puzzled and tilted your head slightly, trying to make sense of what was going on cause what the fuck was she talking about? Your grandparents weren't even around anymore. "Oh, but last Friday Ellie said…" she trailed off, finally connecting the dots. "Y'know what? I think I misunderstood." she quickly brushed off the awkward situation with a chuckle, realizing that adding more fuel to the rivalry you two had going on was pointless. she decided that from now on, she would be the one to invite you to their girl nights out. Imagine Ellie's surprise when she saw you enter the restaurant Dina had chosen, the brunette giving Ellie a mischievous smile from across the table.

✩ coworker!ellie can't help but look at your ass whenever she'd get the chance, the way you walked, the sway of your hips. She had always wondered what kind of underwear you wore and of what color. As much as she despised you, she wanted to know everything about you. What made you icky, what didn't. What was your type, what made you horny and desperate. Those kinds of things, ordinary things, basically. And she really couldn't stop fantasizing about you, imagining herself fucking you from behind, smacking your ass hard enough to leave marks on it, all five fingers.

✩ coworker!ellie couldn't quite figure out your sexuality. You were so friendly to everyone and she couldn't count on her gay-radar at all. She claimed that thing was pure bullshit cause she always ended up pursuing straight women. (such a loser)

✩ coworker!ellie felt like she had won the lottery the moment she caught you checking out your new coworker, who happened to be a girl. She couldn't pinpoint why she felt that way, she hated you after all, right?

✩ coworker!ellie spilled your pumpkin spice latte all over the scattered papers on your desk the same day out of…jealousy?

"Why the fuck would you do that?!" you raised your voice at her and promptly grabbed some paper tissues to fix the damage she had done. "Do what, princess? it was a mistake, chill out." she flatly said, veiny hands stuffed into her pockets, doing absolutely nothing to help you. She just stared at you with a cocky grin on her face, feeling proud of herself "It tastes like burnt shit anyways, dunno why you drink it." her nonchalance was making you even more furious than you already were

✩ coworker!ellie unconsciously licks her lips when you cross your legs and your skirt moves up just a bit enough for her perverted mind to think of all the filthy things she'd do to you if she didn't hate you so much.

✩ coworker!ellie who whistled whenever you bent over. And as soon as you straightened up, ready to go off on her, you noticed that she had this poised and confident look on her face. It was evident that she had anticipated your reaction and had an answer prepared for whatever you had to say to her, and to be quite honest, she mostly did it to get on your nerves.

"What do you expect me to do? You clearly bend over like that for me to notice." "Think I don't know you doin' this just to put on a show f'me?" "You bend over like a slut every single time I walk by. Thought I wouldn't notice?" and she wasn't even wrong. Despite claiming not to like you, you noticed the way she looked at you and you liked it, loved it even. It was quite entertaining how she tried so hard to convince herself that she did not like you one bit. Pathetic.

✩ coworker!ellie completely forgot you were on a business trip the moment she realized you had to share the same bed.

You were both sent on a 'business trip' by your boss and were assigned a hotel room to share for the duration of the trip. The hotel your boss sent you to was not of the best quality, to say the least, and to make matters worse, you realized that you had to share the same bed with Ellie. The situation caught you off guard, and you could sense the awkwardness in the air. You knew that sharing a room was part of the trip, but neither of you expected to have to share the same bed.

He must be out of his mind, was the first thing that crossed your mind.

When you called him to complain about his terrible choice, his dismissive comment made you even more furious "You're both women, I don't see why this is an issue."

Don't see why this is an issue my ass. Working with Ellie was already the worst thing ever, but sleeping with her? the universe or whoever must be playing a cruel joke on you because what were the chances? Plus, Ellie was being her usual self with that attitude, which obviously wasn't helping at all; you weren't gonna have any of it. "Just fucking great, I gotta share the bed with you" emphasizing the 'you' just to make you feel like a disgusting piece of trash that she absolutely despised. you couldn't care less; her petty comments didn't amuse you anymore. In all honesty, you were used to her ugly attitude. When you first started working with her, her hateful comments really got to you. You would break down as soon as you returned to your cozy apartment, making you feel like something was wrong with you. However, your other coworkers reassured you that she was like that with everybody, so you learned to accept it. Kind of. She still made your life miserable whenever she could, but you honestly loved this job. You had worked hard to get where you were, and you didn't see a point in giving up just because little miss hated you a bit too much. She dropped her suitcase by the door and slammed the door shut "You can always crash on the floor," you said back, mimicking her annoyed tone.

As you stood there, she turned to face you, and you could see the anger in her eyes. She shot you a death glare, and her lips were pressed tightly together. "I'm not a fucking doormat" she snapped, her voice laced with frustration and anger, like always.

You couldn't help but huff and roll your eyes at her behavior "Then shut your fucking mouth and stop throwing a tantrum like a little kid" Despite her scarred brows furrowing in anger, you couldn't resist the urge to call her out on her tantrum. Just as she was about to snap back at you, you cut her off with a simple "I'm gonna shower." You walked over to the bed, unzipping the suitcase you had thrown on it earlier. Your fingers searched for your pink cherry-patterned pajamas, which you had smartly placed on top of all your daily clothes for easy access. It was just one of the many small things you calculated and organized in your daily life. And, of course, she despised this aspect of your personality too; she hated how organized you were, everything you did, every gesture, every word; it always was so calculated, while she was more spontaneous (another word for impulsive) and never cared enough about how unorganized she was. As you disappeared into the bathroom to shower, she couldn't resist the temptation to rummage through your suitcase, hoping to find something interesting. An amused smile appeared on her face when she found sexy black lingerie; it was just what she was expecting you to wear underneath those slutty skirts you wore almost every day at work. Being the sneaky little mf she was, she put everything back the way you left it so you wouldn't suspect a thing. "Borrowing" a pair of your panties, a souvenir.

When you stepped out of the bathroom, you noticed that she had already changed into her comfortable pajamas. She was wearing a pair of black boy shorts and a t-shirt from what seemed to be a band she loved. The shirt looked worn out, the colors faded, but you could still make out the logo of the band, it was a casual yet charming sight. Despite her best efforts to control herself, she found herself unable to resist the urge to stare at you intently, your soft curves, and how the cherry-patterned shorts hugged your ass as the top fell loose over your boobs. It didn't take her too long to notice that you weren't wearing a bra, nipples peeking through the thin fabric of your top, but she forced herself to look away.

"D'you ever take a shower?" you quipped as you strolled to the right side of the massive bed "I took a shower earlier today. Besides, I don't smell bad, so there's really no reason to," she walked to the other side of the bed while trying her best to avoid making eye contact with you. "You gotta shower before getting into bed, it's just gross not to," you scolded her in a mom-like tone, making her roll her eyes in response. "Don't boss me around. I don't need a shower. I smell just fine." she said. You were getting on her nerves again, and you could tell from her annoyed tone; she never liked feeling judged or being told what to do. So, you decided to drop it — too tired to start another argument. You let out a sigh and collapsed onto the soft mattress, feeling instant relief in your back. Your gaze was fixed on the ceiling, "Well, at least it's comfy," you muttered to yourself, as she climbed in next to you and grumbled, "I guess so" and turned away from you, yanking the covers over her head.

The room fell silent, both of you trying your best to ignore each other's presence. You shut your eyes, and so did she. Over 10 minutes passed, and you were still wide awake; why were you suddenly struggling to fall asleep? You were convinced that the little stinky beside you was sleeping, but she wasn't. The little cunt scooted closer to you, secretly enjoying the heat radiating off your body, making sure to keep her eyes shut in the process so you'd think she was sleeping.

She pressed her back against yours, and as much as it felt nice, you shifted uncomfortably and moved again. Your attempt to create distance between both of you turned out to be a complete failure; she kept scooting closer each time you moved away. "You're gonna make me fall out of bed, Ellie," you whined, shoving her away from you. Her eyes shut open, she muttered, "Oh, sorry," and tried to move away from you. But she found herself unable to do so for some reason. She longed for your touch and warmth, realizing that it was a pathetic situation to be in because she hated you; she couldn't feel this way towards you, so why was she? Instead of moving away, she inched closer to you, seeking comfort in your warm body against her cooler, freckled skin.

You huffed again in annoyance and turned onto your side to look at her, realizing how close you two were. "What" you asked flatly; she slowly rolled onto her other side to face you. She blinked slowly, her emerald green eyes taking in your features. You weren't so ugly after all, she thought to herself. She could feel your breath on her face. "Uh, nothin'." She didn't want to admit how comfortable she was with the closeness, feeling your soft skin against hers. "We are not gonna cuddle," you stated firmly. "No, of course not," she agreed quickly, not wanting to push things further either, deep down yearning for something more than just cuddles. She settled back into her spot, trying to ignore the slight disappointment that fluttered in her stomach "Stay on your side of the bed, s'not that hard." the tone of your voice was firm and slightly irritated, "Fine," the auburnette girl muttered under her breath, rolling onto her other side again. She shut her eyes, trying to ignore your presence as you both lay there in silence.

You faced away from her, your eyes shut, trying to focus on something other than the tension you felt in the pit of your stomach. You considered facing the pillow or lying on your side, but your legs felt restless. You wondered if there was a solution to ease your discomfort. The girl beside you groaned softly, annoyed with your constant shifting, her eyes fluttering open as you kept tossing and turning. You heard her sigh heavily, rolling over onto her back and facing the ceiling again "Look, I know you're not used to me or anything-" she started but you were quick to cut her words off "Yeah, I am not" you sighed frustrated and mimicked her position, your eyes glued on the ceiling that seemed to be the most interesting thing ever at that moment.

Ellie turned her head slightly to look at you, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "Well, I guess we could try something different then," she softly said, her voice conveying anything but innocence. A subtle hint of mischief seemed to accompany her words, indicating that she had something specific in mind. Your head turned as soon as she spoke, brows furrowing at her words, "What do you have in mind, Williams?"

"I could help you...relax," she replied confidently, a sly grin never leaving her face. She moved closer to you, her green eyes are fixed on yours. Her heart raced a little faster as she waited for an answer, your consent, anything. Was she fucking out of her mind? Was she suggesting what you thought she was?

You scoffed, "What the fuck, Ellie? 'm not gonna fuck you." you replied sharply, squinting your eyes at her; she groaned softly and hovered over your body, propping herself up on her elbows. "C'mon angel, scared you'll like it?" a cocky grin glued on her face as she spoke confidently almost as if she knew what she was doing. She chuckled softly when you didn't reply, leaning closer until your bodies were pressed against each other, her hand gently stroking your waist "Just let me try," she whispered. Her cold hand sent shivers down your spine when she slid it under your tank top, your warmth seeping into her skin, igniting a fire within her. She had always wanted to touch you like this, even if she hated your guts. She leaned in slowly, eyes locked on your moist, plump lips. Never in your wildest dreams did you think you would kiss the girl who pissed the shit out of you daily, let alone fuck her.

Your lips met hers, you felt a strange sensation in the pit of your stomach and chest, like a fluttering feeling. It was as if every fiber of your being was electrified with the touch, and soon, soft and slow kisses turned into a whole makeout session. Her tongue slid into your mouth, and you gladly let her explore every inch of it, her callous fingers gently exploring every inch of your skin and your fingers grasping her messy bun, you still fucking hated her. A series of conflicting thoughts ran through your mind, making it difficult for you to focus on anything. Part of you wanted to pull away, while the other part was eager to explore this, whatever it was. Your grip unconsciously tightened into her auburn locks, slightly pulling her hair. "You little bitch" she muttered under her breath when she pulled away from the kiss, your lips mere millimeters apart, only connected by a string of saliva, "You're a little bitch" you were panting slightly from the intense makeout session "You're fucking obnoxious" she replied without missing a beat. However, this time, no hint of annoyance laced in her voice; her voice was husky and sultry, and she looked at you with such a desire, one that you've noticed before, but she was acting on it this time. Her hand began to tug at your shorts, pulling the soft material down. "And you're not?" you scoffed, your eyebrows raised as you stared back into those green orbs of hers. "Keep talking like that angel, see what happens," she warned you with a sly grin. "Why, what are you gonna do?" you challenged, but she seemed to ignore your question, for now at least.

She didn't waste time, calloused fingers pressing against your clothed cunt as she discarded your favorite pajama shorts somewhere in the dimly lit room. A soft sound escaped your swollen lips, making her smirk in amusement. "I barely even touched you," she teased you, her fingers tracing your soaked and still clothed slit. Your pussy has never been wetter, and you hated how skilled she seemed to be with her hands, how wet you became as soon as she touched and kissed you; almost as if your body had been craving for her touch. "Shut the fuck up," you hissed, only causing her to press her digits on your throbbing clit; she observed you; it was like she was analyzing your every move and reaction. She watched you squirm beneath her. "Aww look at you, baby. Want more?" she purred, her mocking grin taunting you, making you pout and nod frantically. You needed more. Your cunt was starting to hurt and clench around absolutely nothing, you needed her fingers and you couldn't help but feel extremely embarrassed by it. You needed her fingers. The fingers of the girl you hated the most. fuck.

She let out a dry chuckle and slowly shook her head, a few loose auburn strands falling onto the sides of her face "That's not how it works, you can do better than that, I know it." she encouraged you. it was all she needed to hear, all her ears craved to hear, you begging for her, begging for her to destroy your pussy.

As stupid and absurd as it sounded, you were only hers in her mind. She had never laid a finger on you before, but you belonged to her. She wanted to be the only girl in your life, the one you relied on; the worst part was that she couldn't even explain why she felt that way towards you. Why you out of all people? she didn't have the answer to that. She loved getting reactions out of you, getting you all riled up and fuming red, that's what she knew. But tonight, she was lucky enough to explore a new side of you. She wanted to absolutely destroy you. She wasn't gonna be gentle; after all, she still despised you.

You let out a soft groan when she pulled her hand away from your core, leaving you wanting more "Please?" you mumbled. Your voice was soft, timid almost. You hated that she was putting you into this position, and that it had to be her out of all people. She had you wrapped around her finger already and you couldn't even understand why. She expressed her disapproval with a subtle clicking sound of her tongue, shaking her head just enough to convey her dissatisfaction. It wasn't enough. She needed more, better.

Her faint smirk suggested that she found the whole thing quite amusing. "Please, Ellie..." you tried again, you could see the irritation build on her face, she let out a long sigh and rolled her eyes in frustration. "Cat got your tongue, or what?" she asked, her voice tinged with impatience "I need you to be specific. Tell me exactly what you need from me."

Despite your usual confidence, you found yourself letting out an airy huff, almost as if to release some of the tension you were feeling. Beneath her, you felt so insignificant, so vulnerable. How her green eyes studied you made you feel so exposed, you needed her more than anything. Your underwear was damp, and the uncomfortable throbbing was getting worse by the second "I want you to fuck me, Ellie," you blurted out, a mischievous grin spread across her face, her eyes sparkling with amusement and desire. "Is that any better?"

"Good girl," she praised you. You could feel her fingers pulling your underwear down, leaving you bare from the hips down, you still had your tank top on but she was planning on taking it off soon, she was yearning to play with your tits, it was all she ever fantasized about. "Relax, okay?" she whispered due to the closeness, her face dangerously leaning into your neck. You could feel her taking in your scent, the same scent she claimed to hate so much, and soon attacking your neck with damp kisses. You tilted your head to the side and let her, as her fingers began to rub your aching nub, making you gasp at the contact, her hands were so cold, it almost made your hips jerk away, but she held you in place with her other hand, pressing her weight onto you to keep you down. Every little movement you made encouraged her to continue. Soft and small gasps left your lips. You quickly bit into your lower lip to keep yourself quiet, suddenly feeling pathetic for letting her do whatever she wanted to you.

"You know how long I've wanted to play with you like this, hm?" she purred into your neck, her fingers drawing slow circular motions on your clit, tracing your slit just to tease you "Fuck, you're soaked..." she murmured under her breath, more to herself than to you, taking note of every reaction you had to her touch. "You're a jerk, you know that right?" your voice came out softer than what you expected, it was impossible to be mad. How could you even be mad at her? She was making you feel so good. "Am I?" she slid a finger inside you, she could hear a few stifled moans coming from you, almost as if you were too proud to show her that she was touching you just in the right places, still struggling to believe you were letting her touch you. "Y-yes. I fucking hate you" you continued, trying to sound as mad as possible, she inserted another finger and began to pump them in and out of you "Why are you letting me touch you like this, then?" she had this sarcastic and taunting tone that would've usually made you mad if she wasn't fucking you right now. "Cause— can't sleep," you stammered out, and she chuckled at your words, amusement etching across her features "Yeah, that's obviously why you're letting me fuck you" She couldn't help but find this funny. You were always so confident, acting like she had no power over you and had her believing she couldn't bring you down no matter what, that whatever she did to you was useless...until now. So finger drunk, you needed her; it only served to boost her ego, making her realize that you weren't so bulletproof and unreachable after all.

"You dress like a fucking slut. Why do you even dress like that, hm? So that Luke guy can drool over you?" It was as if a floodgate had opened, and all her pent-up thoughts suddenly came pouring out as she kept finger-fucking you, her thumb teasing your clit every now and then. "L-luke?" You echoed her words perplexed, wispy brows furrowing together as you struggled to keep yourself quiet. You couldn't even fucking remember a guy named Luke, yet, there she was, acting like a jealous girlfriend while fucking you. "Yeah, Luke —fuck. you have an idea of how bad I've been wanting to bend you over your stupid desk and fuck you hard?" Her tone was rough, her voice dripping with jealousy and perhaps possessiveness, not that she had any right to act that way. "I thought you hated me" She snorted at your words, her eyes darkening with desire and a small grin on her face. "I still fucking hate you, don't be pathetic" she snarked out, pumping her fingers harder and deeper into you, curling her digits ever so slightly; she had your legs trembling like crazy and whining like the slut you were. "Hmm—fucking hate you back" you managed to say between a few whimpers. "Y'know what?" she abruptly pulled her fingers out of you, earning a small groan from your part "No no no" you complained, your voice laced with desperation as a small frown appeared on your features. "Take your top off," she commanded without giving you a further explanation "Your bra too." she added. You watched as she rose from the bed, and made her way over to where her backpack lay, discarded on her side of the bed. You followed her movements with your eyes, curious about what she was looking for. She rummaged through the bag's contents for a few moments before pulling out whatever she needed. A fucking purple strap. "Let's see if I can make you hate me even more." You could not look away, keeping your eyes glued on her as the auburnette stripped down her clothes with a purpose. Your eyes remained locked on her body as she moved and shifted, removing her clothing one piece at the other. You watched her put on her strap-on, her body was more muscular and toned than you expected, her well-defined abs making you almost salivate at the sight. "And you expect me to take that shit?" you blunted out, pointing at the long silicone dick standing erect, attached to her body, her v-line prominent "You're gonna take every inch of it, pretty," her tone was demanding, leaving you no room to argue with her decision.

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen." you firmly retorted, completely reluctant at the idea, but she was already straddling your lap, spreading your legs wide to adjust you into the position she wanted. If anything, your reluctance only seemed to spark a playful glint in her eyes. She was clearly intent on having her way with you. "You gonna be a good girl f'me." She hushed you, holding the shaft still and licking her lips hungrily as she peered at your wet entrance. You squirmed and tried to close your legs but she wouldn't let you. She quickly spread them apart again, her fingers digging into the soft flesh of your inner thighs as she pinned them down to the mattress. "Nah-uh. Spread 'em open f'me, princess. I won't hurt you, promise." Her tone slightly shifted into more gentle one, and her eyes hungrily glazed over you. You let out a shaky breath and tried to relax all the tensed muscles in your body; she made you feel so vulnerable in that position. "Ready?" She asked before pushing the tip in, slowly, stretching your pussy out so good "Ahh, shit" you hissed, eyes shutting immediately at the new sensation, you weren't prepared for it. "Hurts?" you shook your head to reassure her. "Hurts good." She smirked, enjoying the feeling of power that she had over you. She started to thrust in slowly, only pushing an inch in every two minutes, allowing your cunt to adjust to it. She groaned softly, watching you squirm under her, enjoying how much you wanted it from her. "You're so fuckin' soaked, it's going in so easily" she commented, chuckling at your state. You were indeed fucking soaked, your juices dripping down your pussy, making a mess on the sheets. You arched your back when half of her strap was in, pushing your hips down to allow the strap to slip deeper into you, your cervix suddenly yearning for it. You gasped when the slight pain immediately turned into pleasure, your legs were shaking like crazy, so fucking pathetic; she loved the messy state she got you in. "Look at you, god" her voice above a whisper as she took in your naked body and the glistening strap that was sliding in and out of you. "Oh my god," you moaned, wrapping your legs around her waist to push her deeper into you, your eyes rolling to the back of your head; all this pleasure was almost unbearable, but it wasn't enough for her. Her head lowered just enough to take your neglected hard nipples into her mouth, sucking on them. You could feel the tip of her tongue circling the hard nub before releasing it with a pop, switching to the other nipple to give it equal attention. Your boobs were better than she had imagined, so fucking beautiful.

"Always bending over when I walk by. Was this what you were trying to achieve?" she rasped out, slamming her dick into you hard. "Ellie!" a muffled cry escaped your lips as the corners of your eyes filled with unshed tears began to glisten, seeing you like this was one of her favorite things. You were so pretty and desperate, she couldn't get enough. The tip of her purple cock was hitting your cervix just right; obscene moans, a symphony of lustful ardor flooded the air filling the hotel room. "I asked you a question, baby" She grasped your chin firmly and forced you to meet her gaze. Your head swiveled back and forth, your brows quivered under her unrelenting gaze. A soft sniffle emanated from your nose as you attempted to produce a clear response "N-no," but both of you knew that wasn't the truth. You were acutely aware of how she gazed at you with unbridled desire and hunger. The way her emerald orbs scrutinized every inch of your body left you flustered, almost as if she could devour you with just her gaze and you couldn't help but like it.

The strap sliding out as she said "Dunno, sounds like a lie to me" only to slam it back in even harder than before, causing you to squeal. Tears welled up, their weight unbearable on your eyelids. "P-please, I can't…" you pleaded with a feeble voice; it was almost imperceptible to the ear, but she could hear it loud and clear. Her ears were enhanced, honed in on the sound of every little gasp that escaped your mouth, each breath you took, every moan of pleasure. "Can't what, huh?" She appeared to be playing dumb, fully aware of the intense feelings coursing through every fiber of your body. As she moved in and out of you faster and faster, she could not help but feel the heat radiating from every inch of your skin, making her own body burn with desire. She knew that she had complete domination over you, that she had reduced you to nothing more than a helpless puppet at her mercy; she had you crying and moaning like a porn star. "Feeling good, angel?" Your cute whimpers only added fuel to her desire, fueling her to go harder and harder. Her fingers dug into the soft, warm fat of your hips, and her nails sank into the flesh, leaving small crescents behind on your skin. She was not being soft or gentle anymore. Instead, she was rough with you, enjoying her domination and relishing in the feeling of having her way with you.

"Gonna cum on my cock, yeah?" she purred, sending a chill up your spine as her words penetrated your ears, your body was completely at her mercy, and it seemed as though she was the only thing that existed at that moment "No one's gonna fuck you better than me," and you knew she was right. She could feel your walls clenching around her, almost as if you were trying to trap her in. She could tell you were about to cum. The familiar sensation of the knot snapping overcame you, causing you to cry out her name. Your polished nails dug into her back, drawing faint, pink-ish lines that would remain there until the next morning. For some reason, she loved the idea of having a small reminder of what you two had done together on her body. Like a souvenir, one which would bring back fond memories each time she looked at it; Ellie was secretly a sucker for that kind of stuff. Her body pressed closely against yours, her heartbeat as frantic as yours. You could feel every breath she took as she panted on your bare shoulder, the heat of her breath filling your senses and your skin tingling under her touch.

As your high began to fade, she pulled out of you, bringing you back down to earth and back to reality. "Fuck" She breathed out, slowly sinking down next to you on the mattress. You just stared up at the ceiling, completely exhausted and out of breath "Best ride of your life, huh?" both of you were exhausted, but of course, she couldn't resist the urge to tease you a bit more, "Yeah, not bad" You tried to retain the facade of being unemotional and cool, but you were still feeling the aftereffects, your body still trembling "Not bad? I think you have a hard time admitting your feelings" You scoffed at the words; you didn't want to boost her ego and risk her teasing you even more the following day. Your voice stayed calm and composed, but your body language was betraying you. "My feelings for you? I hate you. Nothing more"

"Hate me so much you came all over my dick" She taunted you playfully, a mischievous grin tugging at the corner of her lips. Her eyes never left yours for a second, a gaze that was intense and tantalizing. Eventually, you turned to your side to face her, the side of your face sinking into the soft pillow, still blushing from the previous activities, a display of your vulnerability and sensitivity that was hard to hide. Her playful demeanor and teasing were making it difficult for you to keep your cool. "Why do you even go around with that thing?" You couldn't help but ask her the question that had been lingering in your mind the moment she pulled it out of her backpack. "Was planning to use it, obviously," She gestured with her hands as she explained herself. "Not with you, of course." She was quick to add, as if she had predicted the questions that were going to come next from you and you raised your eyebrows at her, your body language showing some skepticism about her answer. Such a fucking liar she was. Sure, she brought it everywhere she went just in case, but she totally dreamt of using it with you, her dirty mind filled with fantasies about the ways she could use it with you. "Such a dick," You rolled your eyes and turned away from her. You could hear her snicker at your words. Unexpectedly, she pulls you closer, her bare chest pressing against your back. Both of you are still sweaty from the night's activities, and you can feel her body heat radiating onto you, her arms wrapped around you tightly. "What're you doin'?" You groaned in protest, trying to get away from her grip. You wanted her to let you go, but at the same time, you couldn't help but feel the urge to lean into her touch, a contradiction between your internal feelings and your physical body's reaction. She ignored you and kept hugging you, pulling your body against hers. Your breath hitched as you felt her touch and her body against you. "Spoonin' the shit outta you," She was so nonchalant about it that it drove you crazy. It was almost as if she never really tried to make your life miserable every day. But you couldn't help the flutter in your stomach, your cheeks getting warmer and hotter by the simple gesture. Your body was reacting to her touch without you even realizing which was an unexpected yet welcome feeling. You were thankful for everything that she couldn't see your flushed state. "Yeah, whatever," you grumble, trying to sound pissed off although you're actually feeling quite the opposite. "Sleep well, pretty," She mumbled tiredly, sending a wave of confusion through your body as her lips brushed your shoulder. It was a small gesture, one that should not have warranted this level of reaction. But your body had other ideas. A wave of butterflies erupted in your belly, making you feel a bit dazed for a moment and smile like an idiot.

The following days were filled with unspoken tension and the usual bickering. But this time it was different. There was something more lingering in the air, as though that night you had together had changed the feeling between the two of you. Although the change was subtle, it was there and could not be ignored. She started to think that maybe, she didn't despise you as much as she thought she did, and she started to put up with your behavior as if it wasn't that annoying after all, but she never dared to share that sentiment, as she was afraid you would reject her or not see her in the same way. She would always find any excuse to touch you briefly, grope your ass or your tits, and to her surprise, you would let her; her hands would brush against your body, her grip lingering just a bit longer than necessary. And she seemed to be getting clingier, she hated not being the center of your attention, even for a second. Even though she knew you were writing an article and had a deadline to make, she could not stand it when you were so dismissive of her need for your attention. She tried distracting you by cupping your breasts, hoping to get your focus off your work, but you would just push her away each time. "i really, really, need to finish this." shooing her away like a stray dog with a wave of your hand. She took advantage of your distracted state to sneak under the small hotel desk, one of her tactics to get your attention. The warm palms of her hands gently rubbed both of your knees, a sudden contact that caught you off guard. You jolted at the sensation and pushed your chair back slightly in response, your eyes following her hands as she moved them to your knees. "What're you doing?" You asked her, perhaps with an edge of irritation in your voice, your tone tinged with annoyance and trying desperately to maintain your focus. It was the third time she tried to distract you, and although you found it cute, you needed to finish your article. "What do you think I'm doing?" She looked up at you, raising her eyes to meet yours, as she spread your legs open. She pulled you closer, her hands now roaming freely over your thighs, touching you in ways that made you tremble. It was clear that she had no intention of leaving you alone, and was willing to go to greater lengths to get your entire attention. "Ellie, I seriously need to finish this stupid article," You protested weakly, trying desperately to retain your focus and not give in to her charms. However, the way she was looking up at you from under the desk was more than enough to make you fold the slightest bit. The way her eyes glimmered with desire, the way she was holding your legs and pulling you close to her, it was all taking its toll on your body, making your pussy throb with anticipation and excitement.

"Just wanna help" She shrugged in a playful manner and acted all innocent and cutesy, but the mischievous look in her eyes said otherwise. She was teasing you, knowing full well what she was doing and how she was affecting you, she was enjoying the power dynamic and knew you would not be able to resist her. You sighed and rolled your eyes at her "Fine" You eventually gave in, unable to resist her; an expression of triumph appeared on her face as she knew that her teasing efforts had been successful. "Lean back, beautiful" She demanded softly, her hand reaching up to press on your abdomen to push your back against the chair. You helped her roll up the black skirt to give her better access to your core, making her grin even wider at your willingness. Her fingers immediately hooked onto the waistband of your panties, sliding them down slowly, revealing your pussy to her. "So fucking pretty" She couldn't help but voice her thoughts, her obsession with your pussy was clear, and she had been dreaming of tasting you ever since that night. It was a shame that she hadn't had the chance before, but she was more than determined to make up for lost time. Already two days had passed from that night and she felt like she was going crazy already.

Her soft lips kissed your inner thighs, sending shivers up your body as they brushed near your sensitive flesh. You could feel her breath as her lips touched your body, and it was an incredible sensation, driving you utterly insane. She loved driving you crazy and she was great at it. "Ellie, your teasing is getting old" You huffed trying to hide how worked up she was getting you. Every touch of her lips on your skin made your body twitch uncontrollably, every caress of her hands sent shivers through your body. Your breath was getting heavier, you could feel your body start reacting to her exploration. "Doesn't seem like it to me, especially judging by your pussy — God, so wet." Before you could even open your mouth to reply, she gave you a small, catlike lick, almost as if she was testing the waters to see how you would react. You felt a jolt through your body as she explored your wetness, sending shivers down your spine and making you squirm in your seat. When she tasted you, she could have sworn her head spun from the sensation, nothing came close to the taste of you. In a quick movement, her arms wrapped around your legs, pulling your dripping cunt closer to her face as she devoured you hungrily. The sensation of her mouth on you was almost unbearable. Her tongue flicked expertly, teasing and tasting every inch of you. The cute sounds she made against your cunt barely audible over your high-pitched moans.

She loved how responsive your body was, how wet you easily got at her touch. It made her stomach do pathetic flip-flops, feeling like a schoolgirl in love. She loved having such control over you, and it made her feel powerful. Your hands gripped the edges of the desk tightly, your breaths becoming more ragged as she continued her work. "Fuck...need—need more, please."

She knew exactly what you needed and was more than ready to provide it. She slid two fingers inside you, curling them enough to reach your g-spot with such ease that you nearly screamed. You were already struggling to keep your legs open, you could feel your orgasm nearing and she could sense it too. She continued to finger you mercilessly, her other hand holding your hip firmly in place; you always moved a lot whenever you were close; that's what she learned in the last few days. Your head rolled back, your legs tensing up as you felt a surge of pleasure coursed throughout your body. Everything was tense, and your breath heaved slowly, and your mouth hung open. Your entire body was in a state of pure ecstasy, your mind barely able to think clearly as you tried to process the overwhelming sensation. "Guh-od," you choked on your own words, the sounds of your breathing getting heavier and heavier as you came in her mouth, the slight slurping noises she made were absolutely disgusting.

When she pulled away, she was gasping for air, and you could see the satisfaction on her face as she had taken care of you. It was clear that she had enjoyed herself as much as you had, and she had absolutely no regret or shame about what she had just done. Feeling you cum on her fingers and in her mouth was even better than fucking you senseless with her strap. "You taste so fucking-" But you cut her off, grasping her hand still gripping into your hip. The sudden movement made her freeze for a moment, taken by surprise as she was still trying to process the intensity of the moment. "I wanna taste you too." You got up from your chair, pulling her up with you. You held her close to your body, your feet moving slowly towards the bed. As you walked backwards, you kept her just an inches away from your body, your grip tight around her waist. "Oh really?" She cracked a playful smile, amused by your statement, clearly in for whatever you had in store for her. When the back of your knee hit the bed, her hand gently pressed on your chest to push you down onto the bed. Everyone knew how the rest would go, you were bound to continue where she left off.

✩ coworker!ellie acted like nothing happened when your little business trip ended, and things went back to how they were. It was as if all the conversations and moments between you two never existed like she had never touched you. She went back to her usual routine of barely talking to you, and when she did, it was usually something negative. You didn't know what to make of her behavior. You expected some kind of reaction from her, but not...this.

✩ coworker!ellie would seem completely normal when you were alone, but when you were in your work environment, she became distant and aloof. She would occasionally take you out on dates and be affectionate after your hookups, but it was such a confusing situation to be in; her actions seemed to contradict each other. She'd act like a jealous girlfriend if someone approached you but she wouldn't commit to you.

She always ensured no one was around before touching you or even saying something remotely sweet to you. She'd sneak behind you and wrap her arms around your waist while you were too busy with something to notice. Her breath would hit the side of your neck, and when you tilted your head to give her easy access, she'd attack your neck with kisses. Or she'd compliment you, but it'd be in her own style and all. "You look like a slut in that" followed by a "Can't wait to fuck you tonight"

✩ coworker!ellie gave you the silent treatment for an entire week after confronting her about her confusing behavior. You couldn't help but feel frustrated by her lack of communication, and you wondered if it was worth pursuing a relationship with someone who couldn't express her feelings properly. One day, when you arrived at work, you found a beautiful bouquet of red roses sitting on your desk, accompanied by your favorite coffee.

She was leaning against your desk, patiently waiting for you to arrive. You couldn't hide your surprise, and you asked her what it was all about. "Got you a lil somethin'," she said, handing you the roses. You tried to remain calm, but you were still hurt by her previous behavior. How could she ignore you for a whole week and get you roses like nothing happened? "I'm tired of your stupid mind games" You frowned slightly "What do you want?!" You let out a frustrated sigh. "No weird shit this time, I promise" she said. "I want to make it official between us." You were skeptical, but a part of you wanted to believe her. You had strong feelings for her, and you couldn't deny that you wanted to take things to the next level, but you needed to be sure that she was serious about your relationship, so you didn't accept right away. She needed to earn it.

✩ coworker!ellie spent weeks trying to make amends and apologize, but you initially remained distant and unresponsive. She tried to win back your affection with small gifts and kind gestures, but it seemed like that wasn't enough. You only wanted her to publicly demonstrate her affection and show everyone how much she truly cared. Eventually, she seemed to get the hint and adjusted her approach. The way she asked you out was...romantic.

You were way too engrossed in organizing the papers on your desk and you failed to notice her walking up behind you. You could hear her footsteps as she entered your shared office, but you didn't expect her to approach you. You heard the door close, but you were too deep in thought, standing before your desk, your eyebrows furrowed in concentration as you sorted through the papers. Suddenly, you felt her arms wrap around you from behind, and you let out a small yelp of surprise. Her lips hovered over your neck, where she left a few gentle kisses that made you instinctively tilt your head to the side.

Her hands lowered to your hips, pushing your butt into her crotch; you pushed back slightly, trying to get away but she was just too tempting, and the feeling of her body pressed against yours was too much for you to resist. "What do you think you're doing?" You sighed, trying to sound annoyed. "I want you." Despite your body craving her touch, you knew better than to fall for her emphasis on the word 'you'. Every part of you was trying to resist, calling you to give in to the temptation of her sweet words, of her tender lips on your necks, but the rational side of you knew that this could not end well. But god, the way she was touching you, her hands fidgeting with the hem of your skirt, it was driving you crazy, she was driving you crazy.

You took hold of her hands and held them firmly to prevent further movement. "You're too much of a pussy to actually treat me right in front of other people" The moment your words left your lips, you could see them reach her and resonate with her in a way that you didn't quite expect. She was visibly taken aback, but she didn't stop what she was doing. "I told you I want you. I'm more than serious," she insisted, her tone serious and unwavering. Her hands lifted your skirt slightly, causing you to immediately glance towards the locked door. "Here? Now?" you internally panicked, and she could feel your body tensing up in her hands, but she hushed you. "Everyone's on a break, no one will walk by," whispering tantalizing words into your ears that set your body on fire and made your heart race. "Just keep it quiet, we'll be quick" so you gave in cause how could you not? the way she kept pushing your ass closer to her pussy was just enough for you; her body language screamed desperate, and honestly, so did yours.

Her lips kept kissing your neck, and she knew exactly where the sweet spot was; she knew your body like the back of her hand. Her hands slowly trailed over your body, cupping your breasts and squeezing them, massaging them in circular motions through the fabric. A stifled whimper echoed in the small office and you could feel yourself getting wet, your pussy throbbing like crazy already. "Y-you can't just...do this and act distant when we're in public" she already had you stuttering and struggling to keep your breath even, your voice coming out a lot softer than intended, making her smirk against your soft skin. "I want you" She repeated, her tone serious and sultry, like a serpent tempting you with her words, luring you in with her touches; you sighed at her words. "What kind of I want you are we talking about?" You watched her hands roam all over your body, and they seemed to have a life of their own. She pressed your back into hers, her tattooed arm trailing down to your skirt, sliding under it and inside your panties. "I want to fuck you, I want you to cum on my fingers, and I want you to be mine," you gasped when her fingers found your clit with such ease, rubbing it "Be yours?" You uttered weakly, trying to contain your whimpers. The sensation of her touch was too intense for you to keep quiet, and every little sound you made felt like a confession; you wanted this, you wanted her hands on you, and you wanted her lips. She hummed back in response. "Be mine."

"Ellie, I want to be your-" You let out a slight moan as she rubbed your throbbing nub faster, sending waves of pleasure through your body. Your hands reached out to grip the edge of the desk to support yourself as your poor legs were starting to give up. The feeling was overwhelming, almost as if she was controlling every inch of you with her touch, and your body was telling you that you had no control anymore. "What was that, huh?" Her tone was mocking, and she loved seeing you squirm and twitch in her grip. Every tiny movement of your body was like a sign that she had that control, that you were her puppet and she was the master in this little game of hers. She loved playing with you, making you lose control, and watching you react to her touch, her words, everything she did. "Girlfriend," you gasped out, finishing your sentence. "You wanna be my girlfriend, baby?" to which you responded with a moan and nod. Without warning, she pulled her hand out of your panties and pushed you down onto the desk. Your whole torso was pressed against the cold surface of your desk, accidentally scattering the papers you were organizing earlier. The girl wasted no time in pulling your skirt up, her green irises focusing on the wet spot she had created — fucking soaked; she licked her lips hungrily, pulling your pink underwear down. "Tell me what else you want, pretty" her fingers tracing your slit teasingly, collecting all your slick and messily smearing it all over your pussy. You shut your eyes, remembering yourself to keep it quiet.

"So ready for me—nice and wet, just how I like it." Before you could give her a proper answer or anything, she smoothly slid two fingers into your hole, sounds of pleasure filling the small room, hoping no one could hear you. "Want you to...fuck...treat me better," Her fingers picked up the pace, pumping in and out of you faster, almost giving you no time to adjust to them, she was so fucking desperate to make you cum on her fingers and god if anyone walked by, they would've been fucking traumatized, it was fucking obscene. Ellie finger fucking you from behind; she had you bent on your desk, just like she had always dreamt of.

"Treat you better, got it — Keep talking, princess." She just loved teasing you. She had you wildly writhing on your now messy desk, struggling to keep your mouth shut, yet she loved it. She loved the tremble in your voice as you tried to keep those cute little whimpers of yours at bay. So dreamy, such a slut you were for her. "I was so- mmph…upset when you…ignored me for a week." Each moan, each gasping breath, told her exactly how close she was bringing you to the edge. And oh, how Ellie loved being in control of that. "Yeah? I made you all sad?" her tone was mocking again, and her fingers moved faster and harder with each word that came out of you just to make it extra harder for you to hold your moans, such a cunt she was. You moaned in response, but apparently, that wasn't enough for her. "No, princess. I wanna talk it out. Use your words."

You whimpered and pushed your hips backward, meeting her thrusts. "I was...Ellie, please..." but she clicked her tongue "Was what?" She urged you, demanding that you finish your sentence. You couldn't see her face, but you knew just by her tone that a cocky grin lingered on those freckled features you loved so much. "Upset, con- confused" you stammered, bucking your hips against her hands as she kept fingering you mercilessly. "Why?" she knew exactly why, it was just an excuse to keep you talking. "Cause I couldn't understand, I just- 'm close." slutty moans echoed in the small office, no longer caring if anyone who passed by would hear you, you were far too gone for that, far too gone to think and use your brain. "I know angel, just tell me how you felt." all your juices making a mess of her hand, not that she cared, you were dripping all over her fingers and hand; completely enamored with the way your body reacted to her touch.

"I just wanted you and- oh my god!" and just like that, you exploded on her fingers; she hovered over your body, bending down over you just to whisper sweet nothings into your ear, her fingers still buried deep inside you, letting you ride out your orgasm. Your breathing was ragged, panting like a dog. "Wanna be my girlfriend?" she whispered in your ear, leaving a few kisses on your neck. "Yeah," you breathed out. "Yeah?" she echoed with a cheeky smile creeping up her face, though you couldn't see it. "Yes, but I'm not your fucking secret." you tried to sound threatening and she couldn't help but chuckle dryly at your words, wrapping her arms around your waist. "Not gonna be my little secret."

And she kept her word.

✩ coworker!ellie went from your biggest hater to your biggest fan. Could you imagine it? Well, no one could. She would bring you up in any context or situation, always speaking so highly of you. Your boss was taken aback by the sudden shift in her attitude. The same-room-same-bed mistake was indeed just a way to help you resolve your issues but never he expected that the two of you would hit it off so well, let alone dating. Safe to say that no one saw it coming.

"Could you give this to y/n?" "Who?" "y/n" "Ohhh...my girlfriend? Sure, will do." throwing 'the bomb' like that so randomly, obviously left your boss thinking she was just joking. No one actually believed her until you confirmed it.

✩ coworker!ellie couldn't stop yapping about you to everyone in your workplace (and outside), it was almost nauseating how much of a lovesick girl she became overnight, shocking. No one could stand her ass for more than two seconds. Constantly talking and rambling about how perfect and beautiful you were, how good you were in what you did — basically acting like a proud girlfriend, showing you off at any chance she got.

✩ coworker!ellie wears one of those customized 'i love my gf' shirts with your face just to embarrass you.

"Ellie, what. the. fuck. are you wearing?" you wanted to be mad, pissed, but it was genuinely funny and you found yourself unable to contain your laughter. She looked utterly stupid in that but you couldn't help but smile. "Told you, not gonna keep you a secret. Everybody needs to know." and she was so dramatic about it, making a bunch of customized things with your face. Shirts, boxers (which you really liked), mugs that she'd keep in her office, either to use them or to just put all her pens in, jackets, anything.

✩ coworker!ellie was always sticking to you like glue, never leaving your side no matter where you were. She would follow you around the office like a puppy, her hands always on your body. You couldn't have a conversation with anyone without her hovering nearby, listening in. She would steal quick kisses from you whenever she got the chance, be it in a meeting or in the presence of others.

Dina stood casually leaning against the doorframe, her eyes fixed on the scene in front of her. Jesse, her boyfriend, emerged from his office with a broad grin on his face, looking a little bemused. Dina couldn't help but smirk "You owe me 50 bucks," she announced, her voice ringing with the sound of victory. Jesse looked at her with a mixture of disbelief and amusement. "You saw it coming?" he asked her incredulously, raising an eyebrow. The brunette shrugged, the smirk still firmly in place on her face. "It was bound to happen at some point," she stated "and I won, so...50 bucks." She held out her hand, waiting for Jesse to hand over the cash. He rolled his eyes, but couldn't help but smile at his girl's enthusiasm. "Fine, you win," he said, handing over the money. "And you're taking me out for dinner tonight," she added with a grin, her tone smug. "Anything for you, my love,"

[jubileeeeee]

Alrightyyyy soft launching my tf one au !! (Long post ahead)

Ive been dying to share this for a while so im deciding to just get it out there even if things change in the future. im still working on it a lot !

Im starting with drift bc hes the most developed thus far, in fact this started because I had an idea about drift as a scavenger on the surface and ran with it. Here he is !!

I reaaaally wanna go on a long ramble about how I designed each of these because i love doing that, but im gonna save it for a seperate post. In the meantime, some things about drift’s three major designs/life stages

- Yup transmasc drift . Just cus ! It doesnt matter in any real way I just thought it was fun

- Drift is a cogless miner who’s sector is well known for its cruel and brutal supervisor. Its been nicknamed “the dead end”. Miners reassigned there know they wont get any higher.

- He’s pessimistic and prone to arguments. He knows something’s wrong. All of this is wrong. He hates his supervisor, his work, the cogged bots, their society, he doesnt think any of it is right, but he cant do anything about it

- He feels powerless

- The only hope is Gasket. Optimistic, friendly, endlessly kind, Gasket does his best to keep morale up. He makes the sector a community, keeps everyone together and close and looking out for each other

- Drift and him are very close, Drift cant understand his optimism but chases his light and the hope it gives him

- Take a guess what happens to Gasket

- <3

- Drift joins the cons at the end of the movie. He needs change and trusts Megatron’s actions more than a new prime

- As deadlock, he gains status, reputation, authority. Hes devoted to the cause and cant deny the rush of battle. He likes to feel deadly and in control.

- Hes on a power trip

- And is starting to remind himself of his previous supervisor.

- He becomes disillusioned. This isnt resistance, this is warmongering. megatron isnt as great of a leader as he thought. hes inexperienced, naive, fueled by hate and fury. He doesnt know what the end goal is, he just wants destruction. Ratchet was right.

- He becomes anxious, unsure, withdrawn. He intimidates and threatens others to keep their eyes off of him.

- He is. Deathly afraid of other bots perceiving him as weak.

- He doesnt know what to do anymore

- Brooding brooding brooding

- After defecting from the decepticons, Deadlock, after a long journey, makes his way back to Iacon and is accepted into the autobots.

- He has a lot of regrets, mainly he feels that he didnt appreciate Gasket or Wing enough before they died. Now he makes sure not to take anything for granted

- Hes devoted to those who gave him another chance

- Terrified that hes going to let them down

- optimistic, hes taking everything he’s been taught and moving forward

- Hes building his own future now

This is just an introduction ! Actual story stuff will be shared via comics and drawings and rambles :)

[midnight-mourning]

Love Bites

💘💘Midnight's DCA Valentine's Day 8💘💘

Okay okay okay, back on track now, please enjoy this little diaster i made based on @divinit3a's yeti boys, it was, quite fun >:3c

Prompt: umm letseee... valentines...Typically the Sun is not Out.... (for... Reasons... ahah.) but----loves to hunt, and hunt for the thrill/sport/game of it. And loves to eat & eat & would love a properly cooked meal. preference to high protein meals, very rich, very tasty, salty & fatty. so Im sure if u wanted to tackle him, in particular, could have fun with that..... (Slaps a giant fish on the table. Token of affection. Totally Wont Eat You ) The Moon.......... is a lot quieter and subdued, but actually a far better caretaker. takes care of hurt animals; would probably take care of a hurt human, too. mmm hot cocoa. much pickier eater, he doesnt like much, and he doesnt like to eat meat.... I think overall, a 'meal together' would be the best valentines fhgjsdfghjsdf WITH THESE FREAKS IN PARTICULAR...

Word Count: 2907

Read here if you prefer ao3!

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The hall is quiet as you step out from your room. You strain to listen for any sign of life, nothing. Must be out. Good. That gives you more time. 

Your eyes take a moment to adjust to the shadowed hallway, not nearly as bright as your windowed room. Though, you weren't opposed to keeping the lights off. It saved energy for one—which meant warm floor beneath your feet as you pad through the facility—and two, it kept the not as friendly yeti from making an appearance. Which, yourself and Moon were both in agreement about at least. 

When you'd first gotten here, so many months ago now, your first encounter with the yeti, robot, thing��you still haven't quite figured that one out—was less than, pleasant. Though, that may very well have been due to the state he first saw you in. Which was bloodied, bruised, and vulnerable. And as Moon would later explain it to you, that had triggered something in counterpart. Something more instinct than logical. 

Luckily for you, a ragged chase into a darkened cavern had saved you from suffering any further injury, or worse. 

Instead, you got Moon, and he was thankfully much calmer than the other bot. He also wasn't trying to kill you, so you took what you could get. He patched you up, gave you a place to stay, a nice warm bed out of the cold, and plenty of things to do while you recovered. 

When you'd first ventured out into the snow, having heard the rumors of the 'ice devil' you'd be facing, this hadn't been what you'd expected. 

Delivish upon first glance, sure. Those tusks didn't help anything, that's for certain. Not to mention Sun as a whole, the manic energy he radiated, the wild look in his eyes, the raw strength as he'd pinned you down to "Try a bite"—

But still, with Moon at the very least, the rumors didn't match up. 

He was quiet, even a bit stern in certain cases, but polite. He took his directives very seriously, but beyond that, he held a compassion you wouldn't ever have expected of a machine. Though, maybe it was because he was a bit more than that, they both were. 

Regardless, you owed him for not abandoning you out there in the frozen tundra to die. Much less putting in the effort he had to care for you.

As you traverse the hall now, there's only the slightest pain still left in your ankle as you shuffle. You'd left the crutches behind today, as you had been the past several mornings, despite the lunar-themed yeti's insistence for otherwise. 

That was another thing, the care. For a so-called devil, he had the attitude of a saint. Or well, you didn't know any saints, so a good friend then. A very good friend, at that. 

You found yourself in long conversations that would last hours, either listening to that quiet tone regale you with stories of all his travels, or sharing some of your own experiences prior to meeting them. You enjoyed the walks you'd take together through the caverns, or going with him out into the arctic—on the rare trips he would allow you with your injury—to scout for poachers and the likes. 

And those rare moments you could get him to laugh at one of your jokes, it lit something inside you that you couldn't describe. Something that albeit would be a bit more frightening than it already was if not for your situation. 

You think the combination of getting your foot caught in a bear trap, freed and then chased by a rabid yeti-bot, and then saved by the other side of that same yeti-bot, allowed you some freedom when it came to your feelings. 

But that wasn't the point to what you were doing. Rather, you wanted to show your appreciation for Moon, not your feelings. Nevermind the fact that today did just so happen to be Valentine's, having found out by checking the date on your half-dead phone. 

Besides, You didn't even know if it was even possible for him to return such affections. Truthfully, you preferred not knowing if it meant you could keep this peace you've had for so long now. You were almost afraid for when you fully healed. 

Afraid that the moment you could leave, you'd be kicked out, back into the cold to survive to find your own way back to society. That the past few months were nothing but a ruse, set up by Moon and in fact once you were at a good range, your back turned and unaware, Sun would bear down on you and—

You shake your head, no. Despite your initial encounter, Sun had been fine. He wasn't allowed out much, so you didn't speak much, though you also think he would prefer not to. It didn't necessarily have to do with you in particular, you don't think. 

Whereas Moon was more oriented to stay on task, Sun had his own personal drive to fulfill. You'd yet to figure out exactly what that was yet, however. Besides the desire to hunt and kill just for the thrill of it. Whatever it was, with your injury, you simply didn't fit into it. You had no use—for now—so he left you to your own devices. 

For now. 

You flip on the light to the kitchen area as you enter, dimmed lighting now illuminating the space. 

You'd been surprised to find there was indeed working cooking equipment in the research station. Not originally all in the same space, but with a bit of help, you'd dragged everything functional into one space. 

When it came to ingredients, you didn't have much to work with besides what either yeti brought to you. There was some very old canned food you'd found, and several containers of unopened spices, but beyond that it was slim pickings. The crate of hot coco you'd found had been a godsend. Considering the situation though, you weren't going to complain. 

The idea of making a meal had come from the simple fact of the matter that beyond hunting and protecting, Moon nor Sun did much else. So, providing nourishment would have to be your way to pay back their hospitality. Or at least, Moon's hospitality. If Sun enjoyed something you made, you'd consider that in and of itself a victory.

So, you set to work immediately. Opening the fridge, you pulled out one of the the few items in there, a massive bluefin tuna, which took up the majority of the space. You struggle to take it out, much less carry it with wobbling limbs over to the island. When you put it on the counter, you almost swear you hear it creak under the weight. 

You step back and let out a breath, admiring the giant fish for a moment. While the two really only ate for fuel—a fish like this would just simply be devoured as is from what you'd seen—you knew they could taste, and that when presented with chances to try something that was flavored in some regard, they did seem to enjoy it. Especially Sun, having taken one bite of your beef jerky and snatching the rest away for himself when you'd not been paying attention. 

Though you only had the one fish and just a few other ingredients to work with, you had several ideas in mind for how to properly utilize it. Taking the large butcher knife, you cleaned, gutted, and scaled it, and divided it up into proper pieces. 

The loin you'd make steaks out of, pan searing and basting in fats, utilizing the bit of pepper and spices you had available. You set aside three to cook and stored the rest in the freezer. 

The back you would smoke, creating some jerky from the pieces there. Thankfully, Moon kept firewood around in case the power failed entirely, and you doubted he would notice a few pieces going missing. You'd utilized one of the broken freezers for your smokehouse. 

The belly would be raw, sliced thin and served with a bit of the salty roe that you'd discovered inside the fish initially. 

As for the remaining bits of the fish, you'd stew the bones for a broth and fry the collar and cheeks as one final touch to finish off the meal. 

It was a lot, all things considered, and for them it may very well be next to nothing in comparison to their appetites, especially Sun's. But, that wasn't going to deter you from trying your best to make something from your heart. So, you got to work. 

You had no idea when Moon would return, so you tried your best to work both quickly and effectively. Thankfully, since several items were basic prep, they took very little time to come together. You enjoyed it, the process overall. After all the time being spent on you, being able to give back felt gratifying in its own way, exciting even. Again, ignoring your own feelings about the yeti. 

At some point, you even find a small radio, the batteries still good to your delight. Despite your location, you can just barely catch a signal as sappy love songs play from some far away station. You hum and dance and sing to the music as you cook, the time passing by like nothing to you in your focused state. You even are able to make yourself some hot coco, sipping on it throughout the cooking process. 

You're so focused, even, that you don't notice the towering presence hovering around the other side of the counter until you turn directly to face it. You were just setting down the last bit of the meal, ready to sit and wait for Moon's return, so color you shocked when you find yourself face to chest with Sun instead. 

His head cocked to the side as he looks down at you, expression unreadable as he examines you with that calculated stare.

"You've been busy." He states. 

You come out of your daze, shaking your head. "I-yeah. I have."

"Tore up the meat. A pity. I was going to enjoy that." He picks at one of his claws, you see a hint of red stained there before he glances back up to you, grin wide. "Though, it's not nearly as good as when it's fresh, anyhow."

You both know that fresh isn't quite what he's implying. 

You swallow, while you'd been expecting Moon—and would have preferred him, especially in this case—this was technically a gift for the day-themed yeti too.

Deciding you weren't going to let your lingering fear overtake you, you straighten up, and steady your voice. "This is all for you, actually. And Moon, of course. I, wanted to extend my thanks for, allowing me to stay these past few months." This again was technically all for Moon, but you couldn't exactly say that with Sun standing right in front of you. 

"I—Me?" He questions, eyes widening and grin falling. 

You nod. "Yeah, I um, figured that something made with a bit more care might be something you guys liked. I noticed you never really get the chance to... add more flavor to things, and you seemed to like my snacks in the past so, i just—" You stop when you find that he's eye to eye with you now, baring down on you with a serious expression you weren't anticipating. 

"You made us, me, a meal?" The way the words are half-snarled mere inches from your face makes you flinch. 

"Y-yes?"

Sun stares at you for a bit longer, and if you weren't so alarmed you'd move away. But you don't. 

After a few moments more, he huffs, then starts to chuckle, standing straight again. "Aren't you just so interesting, Little Star?" 

You feel confusion knit your brows only for them to shoot up in shock as Sun's hand suddenly grasps your chin, leaning in again. 

His other hand snatches one of the pieces of raw fish from the table, eating it in one bite. "Such an offering from you is, surprising but, despite your, obvious misconceptions about our relationship, I suppose I can consider it." He tilts your head this was and that. "You're not the worst option I've ever been presented with."

"I, huh?" 

He let's you go again, grabbing one of the steaks with his bare hands. His teeth tear through it like it's nothing. You can only watch as you try to understand what he's saying, not entirely comprehending it. 

When he's finished, he wipes his mouth, snickering to himself. "I certainly can't wait to see what he thinks of your proposition. I'm sure it will be entertaining to say the least."

Before you can respond, he walks over to the light switch, dimming the lights as low as possible, thus allowing for Moon to take his place. 

As the switch occurs, Sun makes one final remark, and it all finally clicks to you. "Something you should keep in mind though if I do accept, Sunshine, is that I don't share."

With that, you're left with an embarrassing realization, and Moon. 

You can't make eye contact with him, instead turning around and starting to busy yourself with cleaning up to distract from the burning feeling spread across your cheeks. 

You can't believe you didn't put together that something like this would mean something like that to them. But it's not like you would have known either! How were you supposed to understand the cultural differences between humans and yeti-robots that lived in abandoned research centers? This feels like something that was on them and not you to be honest. 

Your half-delusioned reasonings do nothing to stop the racing in your heart as you clean, and you just hope to finish up quickly, grab a snack for yourself, and get out of there to keep yourself from any further embarrassment. 

"It's very good, Starlight."

You pause for a moment, then hum. "Y-yeah?"

"Yes. The amount of flavor you've packed into each dish is... incredible." Moon says, sounding genuinely a bit in awe. 

It only worsens your state, mumbling back a quiet response. "I'm, I'm glad you like it."

Quiet between the two of you. The radio still plays softly throughout the space, only disrupted by the sound of clinking as you clean things up, or Moon's utensils scraping against each other. 

"So what Sun said—" "You should eat too—"

You both stop, and looking back to him, you laugh softly. 

You nod. "You first."

"Join me." He pats a seat next to him. "It's only fair after the effort you've put in."

"Oh! Okay." 

You try not to make a fool of yourself as you make your way over and sit down. You can only protest as Moon piles you a plate full of food, depositing it in front of you once he's finished. 

He hands you a fork, chuckling at the scowl on your features. "You need your energy too, if you want to stand any chance at getting better."

"You're not wrong." You sigh, taking a bite of the smoked fish. As you'd hoped, it's delicious, and you appreciate your own efforts to make such good food in that moment. 

"So,"—Moon reaches for a bit of the fried collar—"You were saying?"

You almost choke on the bite you just swallowed. You regain your composure to answer. "I, um, Sun mentioned, that um, something like this was very, very, important to you guys in a specific way. Which, honestly I didn't know and I'm so sorry if I've offended you I just wanted to do something nice—"

You're interrupted by a kiss pressed to your forehead. 

"I would say offended is nowhere close to the feelings you've elicited. Honestly." The night-themed yeti states, amusement between the words. "Rather, I find myself rather interested in your proposal, intentional or not."

Your eyes widen ever further. "Pr-proposal?"

"If I'm misreading, then I am sorry, Star. But I—"

"No!" You shake your head, trying again. "No, you're not um, misreading. But again this wasn't my intent at all. I'm definitely all for it. I mean, to a point you know, sorry this isn't something I ever expected to happen but I really do like you, a lot and—"

Instead of a kiss, a piece of tuna is pressed into your mouth, and with how good it is you can't say for sure that you'd prefer the kiss or not. As you chew, a slight scowl on your features, Moon laughs. It makes your heart flutter for a moment. 

"I really like you too. I wasn't sure that you'd feel the same, so I didn't act on those feelings. But, since you've shown that you clearly feel something,"—He snickers as you shoot him another glare—"For me, I'm more than happy to make it clear to you now."

"Gee, thanks." 

Another kiss is pressed to your hair, arm wrapping around you and you welcome it, snuggling into the warm fur next to you. You grab a piece of tuna, munching on it to hide your fluster in that moment. 

"And since he's already said it, I will too." Moon's voice is right next to your ear in that moment, low but lethal. 

"I don't share either."

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Thank you for the request @divinit3a!! I had lots and lots of fun with the yetis and i can't wait to see what else you do with them yourself, i may perhaps do a bit more when I find the time hehehehe

My writing Masterpost

DCA Valentine's Masterpost

Tag list (if you would like added, simply say so!):

@scarletcowboy @beemyhuneybee @fishm0ther @deviouscrackers @elsajoyagent8 @luckyyyduckyyy @zenkaiankoku @jogimote @local-shrub @milosmantis @robinette-green @everlightreader @sinister-sincerely @starredeclipse @dangerva @juukai @crystalmagpie447 @mothgutz236 @lizyxml @divinit3a @amarynthian-chronicles @crystalfay @that-one-unknown-artist @rosescarletful @buzzybee3

[mandalhoerian]

(6) 🦭 signed, sealed, delivery pending...

When a last-minute opportunity presents itself to become a distraction from the shame of not attending the reunion of your university friend group, you take it. One thing, though, yes, you might have been wrong for chickening out. But falling overboard in a storm, almost drowning, and getting saved by the biggest oddball of a skinny dipper out in the wild is a bit too much for instant karma, you think.

genre: fluff, comedy | word count: 13k | read on ao3

< previous | next (wip) >

note: apologizing for late chapters is getting old now i know, but i swear it would have come out earlier if it hadnt been for tumblr's ridiculous mature content label flagging issue . i've been wrestling with that bicth now ever since that update dropped on the 11h. all seal raf chapters are FLAGGED and i cant get them out of superhell. and apparently its their image recognition bot, i had to change the banner image. god if i have to deal with this bs AGAIN im crashing out i hope you enjoy the chapter

The wetsuit is half-zipped, clinging damp against your hips, something that doesn’t quite want to let go. You’re sitting on the flattest rock you can find near the lip of the cove, knees drawn up, elbows balanced on them, phone balanced precariously between your fingers. The mist is still stitched thick between the cliffs, and the morning sun hasn’t quite managed to cut through it yet. Cold air brushes against your bare arms, lifting the baby hairs, biting gently. Your knees are cold. Your mind is worse.

The group chat lights up again.

You scroll without reading at first, just watching the little cascade of names and icons — familiar and sharp-edged in ways you can't explain. It’s watching someone else’s memories keep moving while yours have stalled out in the same old frame. Same island. Same ferry. Same breath caught in your throat.

Yesterday’s conversation still occupies your mind, and you read through it once more.

"F4NT4STIC 4 REUNION ERA" (Yesterday, 13.37) [ tara ♡ ]: LADIES . YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT ISSSSSSS [ simone (👹🤙) ]: girl i already took the days off. if yall flake i’m showing up to macie’s with a suitcase anyway [ fleetwood mac ]: LMAOO i mean my living room is still 80% cardboard boxes but sure, suffer [ simone (👹🤙) ]: if there’s karaoke i’m unplugging the speaker with my teeth [ tara ♡ ]: also HELLO??? miss ferrymaster of heartbreak bay??? [ tara ♡ ]: we see you reading and not respondingggg [ tara ♡ ]: THE WAY SHE’S STILL NOT ANSWERING [ fleetwood mac ]: come online and disappear if you're alive. don't write anything if you’re still in love with your ex [ fleetwood mac ]: you’re still in love with him???? [ fleetwood mac ]: damn it didnt work [ simone (👹🤙) ]: she’s gonna come back in like six hours and act like nothing happened [ simone (👹🤙) ]: literally text back. we're not mad you couldn't come. stop acting like this is a break-up !!!

(Yesterday, 23.35) [ you ]: sorry. alive. extremely salty. [ you ]: had to scrub barnacle residue off my soul before texting back. [ fleetwood mac ]: SYBAU girl you disappeared like a victorian child into the mist 😭 [ simone (👹🤙) ]: anyway. macie's wine count is at 3. tara made a playlist. theo hasn’t cried yet [ you ]: bold of you to assume he won’t [ fleetwood mac ]: we placed bets. i give him until desert [ tara ♡ ]: also you were right, he brought the seal mug he made in his pottery course. Unironically. [ you ]: I feel the emotional blackmail all the way from over here … [ fleetwood mac) ]: i had to leave the room. i was spiritually unprepared [ you ]: move it like half an inch every time he looks away and pretend like nothing happened to freak him out that paranormal shit is going on. for my sake. please [ tara ♡ ]: That's horrible. How do you come up with stuff like this? Do you want us to get kicked out if he makes a scene? [ tara ♡ ]: I'll send you pictures 😘 [ simone (👹🤙) ]: we set a place for you vtw. it’s got a rock on it. and a fork. [ you ]: that’s exactly how i would’ve wanted it <3

Your thumb pauses above a message. Just names. Names that once belonged to cramped dorm rooms, midnight indomie, and mutual breakdowns in libraries that smelled of old glue. The kind of friendships that were lifelines — loud and chaotic and necessary. And they still are. But you’re quieter now. Less sure what part you should play in their world.

Tara’s already published several scientific papers, both on her own and with her teacher — ResearchGate profile overflowing with content. Simone’s backpacked solo through South America and made it look unreal the entire time, every photo gold-dusted and cinematic and you’re sure she lives in an indie travel documentary. Macie just got picked up for a docuseries pilot. The one who shall not be named passed his bar exam and launched a website in his name that has to be surely coded by a tech god and branded by a Parisian design firm.

And you?

You still have this wetsuit from sophomore year. A freezer full of discount frozen meals. A collection of ferry schedules memorized down to the second.

You still work shifts that stretch into your bones. Still sleep in the room with the glow-in-the-dark stars you stuck to the ceiling at fourteen. Still get asked by tourists if you ever get tired of paradise. As if it’s not the same damn shoreline every day. They don’t know paradise comes with guilt-paid free health insurance and the inability to look into your parents' eyes without sweating through your shirt.

The museum front desk application sits untouched on your desktop. The deadline came and went while you were distracted by nothing in particular. There’s a half-written email to the local heritage center still sitting in your drafts. Volunteering was mentioned once, briefly, in passing, and never again.

You told your advisor you were taking a year. Time to figure things out. To recalibrate. To breathe.

But the year kept slipping. One month into the next. One season curling into the other. You started taking the same walk every morning. Then you stopped bothering with a route. Some days, even brushing your teeth was something that had to be earned.

You tried to make plans. Tried to start a spreadsheet. Color-coded your week and pretended it meant something. It lasted three days. Then the shame of seeing your own optimism undone by inertia sent you spiraling into the sea with your phone on do-not-disturb.

Sometimes you wake up already disappointed in yourself. Sometimes you manage to coast until lunch. The rest of the time, it sneaks up in strange places: folding laundry, stirring pasta, passing your own reflection and not recognizing anything urgent in your own eyes.

You keep saying you’ll get out. That it’s temporary. That you’re not stuck. You tell yourself that so often it’s started taking the shape of a prayer. Or a dare.

But every time you scroll, you feel it. That sharp, quiet pinch in your ribs. You're watching a starting line recede in the distance while your legs stay tangled in the sand.

A sharp twist of your mouth curls before you can stop it, too bitter to be a smile, too wry to be pain. You toss your phone a few inches further across the towel, willing the distance keep the elephant in the room away for a while longer.

And Theo. Of course he’s there.

Ha.

You sit still. A breath leaves your nose. The rock beneath you is cold, uneven, your palms flat against it. Wet grit clings to your fingers. You focus on that. The gulls loop overhead, shrieking into the pale air. Below, the tide moves against the rocks in shallow bursts, licking foam into the cracks and pulling it back again with a hiss. The world hasn't stopped, but it’s ignoring you on purpose.

No, you're ignoring it on purpose. 

A sleek head breaches the surface a few yards out, rising between two fingers of rock where kelp sways below in long green ribbons. A huff leaves him in a pfbbbth sound — short, damp, unimpressed — and he glides forward in a meandering path, stirring flecks of foam in his wake. The water around him flattens, then rolls behind his body in lazy spirals. Even the cove is used to making space for him.

You don’t smile. It almost happens, your face twitches because it wants to. But it doesn’t make it all the way. He’s watching you, waiting, head tilted just slightly.

"Someone’s a little restless today," you mutter.

He barks again. Short. With an imaginary question mark at the end of it. Surely it’s because he hasn’t received his usual cooing greetings and your, “Hi, hi, hi, my cutie pie,” — but your spirits are as gray as the weather. You can’t summon the cheerfulness.

"Yeah, yeah, I’m coming."

You slide into the water slower than usual, the cold biting at your ankles and climbing. Raf circles once, then again, but doesn’t dart off the way he normally does. He floats closer instead, trailing you as you wade out to the deeper part. When your feet finally lift from the sand, you turn toward him.

"I should’ve just gone," you say. "I don’t know why I’m so scared of a little get-together. Who cares if I’m not working yet? I should just say I’m taking a gap year… Like for uni graduates. Or say like I’m looking into Work and Travel but haven’t really liked any of the choices or something."

He tilts his head. How clueless and cute. Smooth brain. No ridges or lumps, no valleys or bumps; all ideas slide right off.

"You don’t even know what LinkedIn is," you mumble. “You’ll never have to. I’m so jealous, you don’t even know.”

Raf makes a bubbling snort.

You hate how bitter it makes you, sometimes. Hearing them talk about opportunities and networking and beautiful apartments with friends who leave them soup in the fridge. And you smile, as you’re supposed to. It’s good news. You’re proud. You are.

But it still seeps into the spaces between each of your vertebra, shapes you into a shrimp before the stateliness of ambition and purpose, making you feel small for not having more to offer, and worse for resenting even a flicker of it. There’s something sour in you that can’t be sweetened into a lemonade.

And you don’t want to be that person. You don’t. But you are. Quietly. Privately. The kind of ugly that you don't admit aloud unless you’re alone. Or talking to a seal.

"I hate that I get annoyed," you say under your breath. "Every time one of them says they’re doing great, I get that twist in my stomach like I swallowed a rock. Even when I’m proud of them. Even when I love them. What does that make me, huh?"

Raf offers no reply. Just a slow blink and inquisitive, a train’s choo-choo sounding breathing from his flaring nostrils.

"It makes me pathetic. That’s what."

Your throat tightens. You wipe your nose with the back of your glove and look up toward the cliffs, eyes still hot.

"There’s something you’re unlucky with. You know what?" you say, voice hoarse. "Of all the fish in the sea, you ended up with me. Should’ve gone for a marine biologist. Or a rich heiress with a yacht."

Raf surfaces again, blinking at you with deliberate slowness that mirrors a cat’s. Then, with a low chuff, he glides closer and presses the side of his head against your shoulder. You’re still floating when he wriggles around, flippers flopping clumsily, and half-latches onto your side, a wet, overgrown toddler trying to hug a pool noodle. His whiskers tickle through the neoprene.

You flip onto your back and float, arms out, hair fanning around your head with a seal glued to you. The sky above is pale and empty, the kind of soft gray that feels too big when you're already too full. You drift for a moment with your ears half-submerged, the world muffled except for the splash of Raf's flippers somewhere nearby. Clouds move. You don't.

"Watch. You’ll get discovered by some cute environmental documentary crew next and leave me behind. Get famous. Start an OnlyFans for your flippers."

Pause.

“OnlyFins,” you snort to yourself.

Raf lets out a long, wet blort, and disappears underwater with a cute bloop. 

You barely have time to curse before something nudges your ribs — hard. Then again. And then you’re yanked downward, the flipper hooked around your waist is basically an overly confident tugboat.

You surface with a gasp and a splash, hair in your eyes, sputtering.

Raf bobs a few feet away, grinning in the smug way only a seal can, going "AUUUUU," over and over again, following that up with a performative spin and a slap on the water.

"No more jokes, fine," you cough.

He dives again, leaving a trail of bubbles — pops up, and pauses, twisting back to look for you. His head bobs once. Twice. Then he disappears again, darting just beneath the surface, drawing a path for you to follow. A loop, a spiral, a flourish. He resurfaces ahead with a sharp snort and flicks water in your direction.

You blink water from your lashes. "Okay, okay, I get it. Impatient little show-off. Seashells aren’t going anywhere, let me go get my gear, damn."

He dunks under again, tail flippers wagging just enough to be smug about it.

And after your preparations, you follow.

Because if anything makes sense — if anything ever feels whole — it’s this. Salt in your mouth. Raf’s stupid flipper smacking water like an impatient bunny stomping his foot. A sky so wide you can’t get your arms around it.

You may not know how to move forward. But here, right now, you don’t need to.

Here, you can just be.

By the time the end of the day rolls around, the dive with Raf has dried to salt on your collar, and your limbs are already back in work-mode — anchored, alert, one hand on the wheel, the other near the comms, watching the weather shift with a sailor’s instinct and a whole life of knowing exactly when things stop making sense at sea.

The last round trip of the day is quiet in a different way today, though. No commuters or tourists, and no one but you on board.

A rare fluke of timing: your dad tied up with engine trouble on the backup skiff; the senior deckhand down for the count after slipping on ice during today's last unloading shift and sent home limping; the second deckhand called out with food poisoning from bad market shrimp; the engineer out for two weeks recovering from wrist surgery after trying to fix a rusted coupling by himself; the backup engineer already covering freight route duties on the north side; and the high schooler who usually mans the snack kiosk bailed last-minute for a school recital he 'forgot' to mention until this morning. Even the part-time lookout who mostly just watches Raf from the upper deck found a way to slip away.

You’d said yes before your dad even finished the ask instead of just cancelling the entirety of the day off — if a perfectly fine excuse for why you didn’t show up at the reunion made itself available to you, you would take it without question. It was serendipity, why let it go to waste?

And it was only one run, the weather wasn’t supposed to break yet. You knew the route. You could handle it.

Though, frankly, it felt good to be trusted with something this real and just empty your head for the rest of the day.

So it's just you, the hum of the engine, and a stretch of sea that's growing moodier by the minute.

You clock it before it starts showing.

The pitch is wrong.

Movement is expected, up-down, up-down, sometimes with more vigor and distance. No, it’s not that. It’s the angle, the timing, the tension underfoot that rolls in just a half-second too late. The swell pattern doesn’t match the forecast, the wind has teeth it wasn’t supposed to, and the gulls have gone silent over the water.

You glance up from the console, watching the sky fold itself into layers. That soft lilac haze from earlier has gone bruised at the edges. There’s a kind of waiting baked into the air now, the hush before the sky opens its mouth and howls.

You should’ve already turned back. You know the signs. You’ve trusted them before.

But the timing’s tight, and you know the shape of this route better than the lines in your palms. If you hold speed and cut between the outer channel markers, you might beat the worst of it. The system’s moving in fast — but not fast enough to make you fold early. Not if you don’t have to.

Besides, there’s only one round trip left back home. The radar isn’t red yet. The pressure’s dropping, but the water’s still got give in it. Dad made worse calls in tighter windows.

So you stay the course.

Pushing until everything starts pushing back.

The ferry bounces over a swell so hard you almost lose your grip on the wheel, rattling the life preservers along the wall with a thwack loud enough to echo inside your skull. Water sprays white across the decks, and something about the sound makes your bones ache. For a moment, you swear you can taste seaweed. Feel the drag of sea lines on your wrists, rough as rope burn.

But you catch yourself. Stabilize your footing, hands steady on the wheel, leaning into the rise and fall as they taught you in driving school all those years ago. The first day your father stood beside you and showed you how to balance the revs and the brakes on this machine, how to feel each part working together to drive, how it wasn't about forcing the craft, but guiding it with trust — it’s all muscle memory.

Trust the machine. Trust your gut. Trust your judgment.

So you do. And you guide. Until the storm arrives. Until the weather begins to roll in dark as tar — resentful black clouds, brindled with light, coiling together as if building, brewing, churning in unison above. Eerything then becomes curtained with rain and water, a shower splintering against the ferry roof. Sheets of water cut across the deck is a fog obscuring everything further than a foot away. Wind batters against the sides of the hull, shrieking louder and louder every minute, whistling shrill through every seam and corner and vent, and by now the ocean is actively trying to shove this boat off the face of the earth.

Everything turns sideways for one split second, and your heartbeat almost rips out of your throat, and when the ship steadies itself it takes several painful heartbeats of thinking I fucked up, I fucked up before you regain equilibrium and resume steering.

Everything starts to make sense. 

Raf had been strange from the moment you showed up this morning — clingy, louder than usual, almost pacing the cove. He kept making pup noises at the tide, splashed too close to shore while you suited up, and refused to go too far in the open water — his favorite thing was to drag you out further before. When you finally entered the water, he didn’t dart ahead the way he usually does. He hovered, brushed against you, circled you so tightly you had to push him off just to move forward.

You didn’t think much of it. You were too busy rereading texts, too busy spiraling over group photos and inside jokes and what-the-hell-was-he-thinking-by-showing-up.

Raf’s insistence was a complication you didn’t have room for when you’d been already feeling stifled enough. Even underwater, he kept doubling back to check on you, tapping your hip with his nose, making strange high-pitched whines that only made you more irritated.

When you got out, he followed you up the hill, paralleling you from the sea. Right up the ramp. Flopped against the loading zone and refused to budge, and not in the usual cute way. He clung to your boot when you tried to walk. Grabbed the hem of your jacket and yanked. Made noises so loud and pitiful that a couple tourists pulled out their phones to call wildlife protection. They thought he was hurt.

You shoved him back toward the cove and joked that he was a diva — a barnacle, a stage-five clinger.

He bit Elias when the poor old guy tried to help nudge him off the deck.

You didn’t look him in the eye when you closed the gate. Didn’t even wave, muttering something about spoiled animals and going inside. Because you had a job. Because you were on the schedule. Figuring out how to phrase it, how to make ferry work sound intentional, how to talk about staying without admitting you failed to leave. You practiced the words, hoping the right ones would dull the sting.

You didn’t notice how restless he went in the way he took the lead once the engine started.

You didn’t want to.

You'd practically ignored him the entire day for being annoying. To entertain the idea he was like that because he sensed the incoming weather... but you were too wrapped up in the reunion and your own spiraling thoughts to notice what he was trying to tell you. He knew something was coming — you’re sure of it now — and you hadn’t listened.

Too busy nursing your own useless grief.

And now you’re the only one out on the water when the storm decides to bite, regret and fear coiling around each other snakes in the pit of your stomach. The poor little man must be terrified wherever he's hiding. You hope he's tucked away safely somewhere sheltered and cozy, not roaming around trying to find you and ending up hurt or lost or trapped. If something horrible happened to him during this storm, it would be all your fault.

And now, as the radio crackles to life, a sharp burst splinters through the chaos, and all those words ash-scatter.

"—ayday—day—fishing boat—toward—Devil’s Teeth—repeat, Dev—no powe—can’t steer—"

It cuts out, sharp as a snapped line.

Your hand’s already moving. Mic in hand before the words even sink in. "Copy, how many aboard?"

Nothing. Just static, thin and needling, buzzing against your skin.

Your heart doesn’t lurch. It drops clean and heavy, straight into the pit of your stomach.

You flick your eyes to the GPS. The rocks are close — less than a kilometer to starboard. But you don’t need the chart to tell you that. You can already see them, those serrated black silhouettes clawing up from the water ribs punched through the ocean’s skin.

The Devil’s Teeth. The name alone carries some horror. They don’t forgive. Sharp enough to sheer a hull clean if you come at them wrong, but deceptive enough to trick even seasoned sailors into thinking they’re safe.

Above the water, they jut out like gap-toothed palisades — almost orderly, almost safe. From a distance, they seem to mark a clear path, multiple narrow channels that promise passage. But beneath the surface, the truth spreads wide and uneven, masked by the shifting tide, what looks navigable from above is a maze fanning out is a hidden reef below, disguised by the illusion of space, a trap waiting to splinter anything that trusts too easily.

Now, you watch from the waterboarded windshield as the ocean breaks against them sideways, spray exploding into the air in fractured bursts, mist swirling breath from something alive and restless. You’ve seen them before. Too close once, from a rescue boat.

You know the pattern they form, the way they beckon, offering what looks to be safe passage only to tear apart anything foolish enough to trust it. And you know the names of the people they’ve taken.

You flick the comms again, voice tighter now, a thread of instinct winding tight in your chest, tugging you toward the danger. "Any vessel transmitting, identify yourself.”

The wind shrieks through the cracks, high and thin, something caught between teeth. Water lashes the glass, streaking down in frantic rivulets as the ferry pitches harder, the deck groaning with the weight of the sea.

Your breath catches as you scan the horizon, nothing but the vertical outlines of the Devil’s Teeth. Black knives from the churn. For one terrible moment, everything slows. The sea draws back, coiling, holding its power just a beat too long. Waiting.

And then it breaks.

You move, but it’s not a choice. It’s reflex tangled with terror, the wheel wrenching in your hands as the ferry shudders beneath you. The shift is too sharp, the hull protesting with a low, gut-deep moan as it fights the turn. Your muscles burn, braced against the pull as the deck tilts hard, balance slipping for half a heartbeat. The bow dips — just a fraction — before you correct, knuckles losing color where they grip the wheel.

The spray blinds you for a moment, mist shearing across the windshield. But you blink, steady, locked on the path that doesn’t exist but has to be there. The space between those treacherous spires where, if you’re off by even a meter, the sea will swallow everything.

Raf knew. He tried to tell you. Fuck, you hope he’s not out here. He’s too much of a smart cookie for that, but still, you hope to god he’s safe.

The comms hiss softly, a broken thread of sound lost in the roar that fills the wheelhouse.

"—adrift—can’t—hold—taking on water—drifting t—engines are—"

Static. Again.

But you don’t need to hear it. The truth is already laid bare on the horizon.

Your eyes are locked on the shape just beyond, the battered fishing boat barely holding its own against the waves. A thing too small for this weather, its hull pitching wildly, the wind tossing it like it’s a toyboat in a child’s pool.

You flick the comms again, voice tight. "Vessel approaching Devil’s Teeth, do you copy? Repeat, do you copy? I need the status of anyone aboard!"

The answer is silence, thick and pressing.

But the sea answers instead.

Each wave shoves the boat closer to the rocks, their sharp edges barely visible between the peaks of the swells. You can make out three figures, barely, blurred shapes clinging to the railing, fighting against the chaos, one at the bow, steady but strained, another near the stern, slower, unsteady.

And the third—

A hollow space where someone should be.

"Shit," you breathe, throat tight.

You throttle down, the ferry groaning as the engine strains against the push of the current. The bow swings wide, cutting across the waves, too close but angled just right to shield the smaller boat from the worst of the wind. The wheel vibrates in your grip, the metal cold and damp, the pulse in your fingertips matching the beat of the sea.

The deck is bobbing harsher under your boots as you cut the engine to idle. A deep, unsettling quiet follows, the kind that means the sea is holding its breath.

You shove the throttle down, setting the engine to idle, the ferry rocking in protest as it fights against the churning sea. You can’t leave it drifting for long, but there’s no choice now.

The door to the deck slams open under your hand, wind tearing through as if the sea itself is trying to conquer its way inside. Salt spray slices across your face, cold and biting, nails and claws of an animal trying to get you. You barely register the sting. Your focus is on the deck below, where the equipment locker sits by the stairs. The rope should be there.

You swing down the short, steep steps, boots skidding slightly as the ferry shifts beneath you. The locker groans as you yank it open, cold metal biting into your fingertips. The rope’s there, coiled tight, damp and heavy.

You haul it out, the weight dragging at your arms as you push back up to the deck, boots pounding on slick metal, breath burning in your throat. The rope is rough and solid in your hands, the damp fibers biting into your palms as you step toward the railing, eyes locked on the men still fighting the sea.

"Line! Now!" Your voice barely carries, but the men on deck move. One of them, older, face lined with years of fighting the ocean, catches your eye, and you know you can trust him with this. He knows. He moves fast and nimble as you toss the line, and he hauls hard, pulling the boat closer inch by inch.

The younger man beside him fumbles, hands trembling as he secures the line, but his eyes are wide and fearful, darting between the shifting boats, the storm reflected in them. You can't have him slipping.

"Hold!" you shout, stepping to the edge.

The fishing boat rocks violently, a wild thing barely clinging to the world. But it holds. For now.

"Get them across!" You wave the first man forward, stretching your hand. His grip is iron, calloused and cold, and he hauls himself over with a grunt. The second follows, shaky but determined. His boots slip, but you grab his arm, steadying him as he clambers onto the ferry.

"One more!" The older man’s voice is barely audible over the wind. He points—

And you see him.

Near the stern. Slumped, half-draped over the edge. Too still.

"I’m going." Your words are lost in the chaos, but you’re already moving.

The wind slams into you the moment you step across, boots slipping on slick metal. You grab the railing, knuckles white, muscles straining as you pull yourself onto the listing deck. The world tilts beneath your feet, the boat rocking harder as if it knows it’s losing.

"Come on," you mutter, heart pounding.

He’s heavier than he looks. Deadweight. His clothes soaked through, dragging with seawater. Your fingers slip against the slick fabric as you grip his arm, muscles screaming as you try to pull him up.

"Help!" You barely need to say it. The older man is there, hands grabbing the man’s other arm. Together, you drag him inch by inch toward safety. The wind howls, the sea pushing harder, trying to reclaim him.

You’re so close.

"Almost there," you breathe, arms burning with the weight.

The man’s head lolls, his breath warm against your neck, but it’s faint. You brace, dragging harder, the metal beneath your boots slick and treacherous. Every muscle in your body screams for relief, but you hold on.

"You hang on, girl!" The older man shouts, his voice raw, but the younger one is there now too, reaching to grab the man’s collar and help.

"I’ve got him—" You don’t finish. The deck tilts—

The ferry shifts—

And the wave hits.

It’s not a push. It’s a blow. A force that tears you off balance, rips your grip from the man, and sends you weightless for a heartbeat before the world crashes back in. Or, you crash into the world. It resembles falling on solid ground from considerable height, except that it swallows you right up.

Cold.

Needles slip beneath your skin, knifing past layers of wool and overalls until nothing is left but frost-bright pain. Nothing blazes brighter, burns colder; the sea owns it all, every sensation, every heartbeat, every flicker of memory, snuffing them out one by one until all that remains is fear. Cold, bone-deep, blinding fear that has you kicking and flailing.

The water wants you. It pulls without pity, claws without remorse, wrenches without warning. Everything happens at once: pressure and chaos, liquid ice tearing at your lips and choking down your throat. The current twists around you, a tangle of unrelenting hands dragging you deeper even as you fight.

Down. And down. Until light bleeds away, dissolving like ink in water.

Something flashes just outside your blurring vision—

Then something else—

And another—

Infinitesimal silver glints cut through the dark. Shifting shadows dart between the pinpricks of pale light as shapes coalesce above. Thin silhouettes slice through the dark, through the gloom as you fall farther from safety. The pressure builds, crushing against your skull, a terrible humming filling your ears as if the entire ocean is singing an ode to your demise. Your chest begins convulsing fiercely, throat contracting in response as you begin thrashing around, lungs on fire and desperate for oxygen. Drowning in the sea, alone, terrified and hopeless, primal instincts demanding you do everything you can to stay alive, struggling uselessly to kick upwards towards the surface.

Wherever that is.

You reach upward desperately with a lone hand, vision having tunneled from lack of oxygen and panic combined. In that brief moment, something soft brushes the tips of your fingers. Like... fur...?

There's no way to know. Darkness has already consumed your consciousness, the struggle to survive giving away to oblivion and acceptance the moment your lungs breathe in water.

                    Singing.

Somebody has been singing to you.

Nearby. Simple, wordless, a melody winding slowly through the haze. Notes rise and fall around you — lavender smoke, crocheting your consciousness together bit by bit. You think maybe the song sounds familiar, that you could remember how it goes if only you could focus enough. As it is, your pulse stirs in time with the tune, waking limbs that were limp and numb as they thaw, muscles flexing as if remembering the shape of themselves.

Warmth comes first. Gentle heat kissing along the edges of your senses before bleeding inward in honeyed tendrils. Softness next: fur beneath your chin, blankets pulled tight across your chest.

The quiet of snowfall settles around you after that, muffling, easing, cushioning every inch of you as reality drifts into your awareness.

Everything returns in increments: salt crusted to your lips, drenched clothes wrapped around your frame, a layer of sodden clay. Beneath you: sand. Matted to the backs of your arms, your calves, the hollow of your throat. Behind your shuttered eyelids, sunlight filters softly. Red glow, distant orange. Sunglow, the color of melting copper. There is sky above you and beach below, but most importantly — there is breathing inside you again, each exhale shuddering as your pulse struggles toward normalcy, softly but surely.

Slowly, ever so gradually, you pry your eyelids open.

A canopy of branches, feather-soft green interspersed with golden brown, stretch overhead in a gentle dome. The bark glistens in the morning light, sticky still from the previous storm. Below the shelter, sand stretches outward in a sweep of endless shoreline, punctuated only by tufts of grass and gnarled driftwood that form a natural barricade from any casual passerby. The tide ebbs gently just past that barricade, washing fizzy seafoam high up the shoals before sliding back out lazily in a smooth curl, and further still, the horizon stretches — spun cotton candy, pink on blue, melted into haze at the edges, mingling seamlessly with the sky. And you're tucked carefully among the roots of one of those great trees, cradled and swaddled by the same fur-coated bundle your cheek is pillowed on, wrapped protectively in its embrace and held secure.

It takes your brain a full minute of groggily attempting to piece together these strange details before you realize there's a figure in the water, maybe twenty feet out, half-shrouded by the hush of early light.

Your brain coming back to you is akin to hitting the floor after falling for some time. You flinch. Sit up too fast.

A tangle of dark gray, thick hide spills from your shoulder, pooling in the crooks of your elbows. You shove it off with a gasp, limbs sluggish but panicked, fingers catching in the strange texture. It hits the ground with a muted thump, heavy as wet rope but somehow dry and fluffy at the same time. The cold hits you immediately then, skin pebbling beneath the cling of soaked denim and wool and the frigid touch of salt wind. A full body shudder grips you, hard, teeth rattling in your skull, blood singing through your veins faster.

But not even that kind of cold is enough to distract you from the sight before you.

There’s a person waist-deep in the shallows, facing the sun.

Long hair drips like spun violet ink down a narrow back, plastered in curling sheets to sharp, bare shoulders. You've never seen natural hair that long in your life, it trails all the way down her body to fan out against the waves, streaming in shimmering bands over the crests of each swell, lit gold in the early sun. She tilts her head back to face the dawn fully, and you can only see the barest hint of her profile from the angle, the delicate slope of nose, the lushness of parted lips. There’s something arresting about the stillness of her, the way the sea seems to hush around her body. A statue the tide forgot to reclaim.

For a breathless, silent moment, she simply stands there, perfectly balanced, completely undisturbed, arms spread at her sides as if greeting the daybreak directly, skin glittering in the light, slick with seawater and—

A scar. A slash across one side of her shoulder, pale even against her skin tone, stretched tight as though dug deep enough to make bone.

Huh, you absentmindedly think. I think it's the same side as Raf's?

You break out of your trance with a loud gasp with the thought of your seal friend, which causes her to whirl around to face you, startled and wide-eyed.

Which brings another revelation. The person in question is a man, not a woman.

Skinny dipping, at that.

Your brain catches up to your eyes in a rush of static and shock. This is a Family Feud moment.

Name something a burglar would not wanna see when he breaks into a house.

The contestant yelling it with his whole chest. Naked grandma!

Naked HUH?

The buzzer in your head goes off.

Question: What’s the last thing a girl wants to see when waking up alone on an unfamiliar beach after falling unconscious?

Answer: Naked man.

You make a strangled noise and scramble back so fast the pelt half-slides off you, and at the same time, sharp pain lances through your right side, turning the motion into more of a hunch than a duck and roll. The sudden flare knocks what little breath is left out of your lungs, knocking sense back into you in the process.

Wait, what happened? Why does it hurt?

"Easy! Easy." The naked dude darts forward through the surf without missing a beat, water splashing everywhere with his hurried strides. The sound of his approaching footsteps makes you instinctively curl inward, arms hugging tight around your midsection while wincing. You don't look up, mostly out of embarrassment, and your thoughts immediately go brrrr when you become hyper aware of the fact you're definitely going to see things you won't be able to unsee. "You'll bleed again if you keep squirming like that! All my hardwork's gonna go to waste!"

You flail one arm between the two of you in a futile barrier while the other cradles where the injury is, still keeping your face down and staring down furiously at the ground to avoid looking anywhere higher than knee level. "Ah-ah-ah! Stop, stop!”

The sloshing of jogging doesn’t stop.

“Just — man, don't charge at me, I don't know you!"

He stops short as though you've thrown a rock at him, legs cutting off mid-stride with a chaotic splash. For one blessed second, all is still again — except for the water lapping at his shins and your pulse banging against your teeth.

Then, a noise.

A half-choked sound that might be a laugh. Or a cough. He doesn’t come any closer. Just stands there, suspended mid-motion, your words having pinned him in place. The water stills around his legs. The surf hesitates, then draws back with a hush. You're still locked on a particularly blurry patch of sand wet with the red of your congealed blood like your life depends on it, but you hear the the tiny inhale that catches weird in his throat, and the breeze picks up with a stutter again.

He erupts worse than a volcano all of a sudden. “You’re joking! What? You don’t know me? You don’t know me? After everything — you just made me go through, that’s—”

“—a very reasonable response!” you shoot back, your voice high in octave, blood rushing so rapidly to your head that you’re not even comprehending properly.

“Wow,” he says, all affronted drama and wounded pride in one breath. “It's not like I'm gonna eat you. Humans aren't even safe for consumption anyway!"

"Whoa-hoh—" you start, but he steamrolls over you before you can properly get a word in.

There’s the wet slap of a foot shifting in the surf, heralding that he’s gearing up for a rant. “Most people say thank you, you know. Or ‘hey, cool of you to make sure I didn’t die horribly’—"

"You're naked, random guy!" you shout hoarsely, throwing out a pathetic arm to shield you from any and all compromising views. This is the politest way you could have put it. The next best thing was to shout, 'Don't come near me with your dick out.' Which. Yeah.

An awkward pause follows the admission, thick enough to make you glance up before thinking twice about it. You get a flash of purple before you look away once more, clutching the strange gray fur to yourself as some sort of feeble shield.

"—der why," he mumbles, more to himself than anything else.

"Excuse me?"

He deadpans, stopping just short. “I said, so now you’re body-shaming the guy who literally rescued you from certain death?”

“I’m shame-shaming the fact that you’re approaching me with your — your — entire situation out in the open!”

"You have my pelt," he says, with almost childlike seriousness, expecting you to be able to read his mind from the tone of his statement alone.

"Uh, okay?" you respond articulately, weirded out by how the conversation was lacking common sense. "What does that have to do with your clothes?"

This time, the quiet stretches out like taffy.

“I want you on the other side of this damn island if you’re an exhibitionist, I swear to god don’t think for a second I’m not capable of—”

“I am not!” The way his voice changes pitches has to be studied. “Have you lost your mind in the ocean? I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing after everything I’ve done for you—”

You tune out his yapping. Yeah, this isn't getting anywhere. You're stranded on an island with a man you don't know, politely asking him to put his penis away, which, he won't get the hint for some reason and making it a 'I am who I am,' moment. Do you have to yell "Pervert!" at this guy for him to get a move on? Things couldn't get more absurd.

You rub your forehead wearily and groan in defeat. Is there something ironic about this exchange? Because you sure feel there should be something ironic here. There is probably supposed to be a joke somewhere here. The universe loves to deliver them in bundles.

An idea strikes you.

"Here, hold on," you say, shakily standing up while keeping your face diverted elsewhere. Your side does hurt, but the burn doesn't stretch as bad as when you felt it at first. "Just... turn around, please. No sudden moves."

"No sudden moves?" He answers with audible skepticism, the shuffling on the sand giving away his complying after a moment. The nervous waver in his words does manage to placate you somewhat. An exhibitionist wouldn't act this way. “I’m turning my back to you. How am I gonna know what you’re doing? For all I know, you could be ogling me with your squidlike human eyes, which, mind you, I wouldn’t blame you for—”

God, he loves the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he?

Muting him out once more, you pick up the fur coat blanket thing from its dropped position with an audible, "Hup!" It's bulky in your grip, almost too thick to lift, yet remarkably light at the same time — trying to pick up water without getting wet.

“—I’ve been told I’m distractingly shapely in the flesh, but I didn’t exactly wake up today planning to be admired in the wild. And it’s not even my best side, you know? My shoulders are uneven. I think. They used to be non-existent—”

You're in no position to be in awe right now though, so you brush off all possible questions concerning the bizarre phenomenon until later. With as much caution as you can muster, you raise it up like a curtain until the only part you can see of the man is his luscious hair, and start walking up to him.

“—Not that I’m implying anything. You are not the ogling type. Then again, I once trusted a cormorant and it stole my entire lunch while I was mid-swim, so what do I know? I’m just out here, my back wide open, accosted, and trying very hard not to hold a grudge—”

Then, you drape the cloak of fluffiness onto his shoulders in the gentlest manner you could possibly afford, avoiding touching his skin. The pelt closes around his back, reminiscent of the wings of a giant bird closing protectively, encasing him from neck down to calves. A gasp slips out of him. So small you might've missed it if you hadn't been holding your breath, waiting for any negative reaction.

His own hands come up to pull the flaps snugly closed, then he slowly looks over one shoulder at you with such stunned wide-eyed silence you almost want to crack a smile at him, but promptly freeze in place as soon as you lock gazes.

Not only does he have the most enticing eyes you've ever seen with vertical heterochromia transitioning from blue to pink like a bi-color tourmaline, but he has such an attractive facial structure that is both masculine and delicate all in the same breath it punches all of your buttons in one go and oh god — it is so not helping this entire situation. This stranger is the epitome of beauty. Handsome face and lovely features and soft bone structures and everything you didn't expect from a random naked dude on a beach you couldn't recognize as a local.

And the hair. You'd seen it from afar already but... it reminds you of strands of ashen lavender blossoms dripping with morning dew, wet waviness disappearing underneath the collar of the pelt. You'd kill to have this Rapunzel hair. It's unfair how a man—

You snap back to attention with a hard blink as the initial shock wears off.

"There you go, now I won’t get flashed," you exhale with obvious relief, trying to will yourself to act casually so you don't seem weird to the stranger who probably saved your life.

His head tilts, just barely. Long strands of wet hair slip over his shoulder as he stares down at the pelt wrapped around him — your handiwork. The fur shifts slightly under his touch, and he goes very still, watching it settle again. You wonder what he’s waiting for.

“You gave it back to me,” he says.

The words come out soft, a little too careful for something so simple. He looks at you, expecting the world to shift around what he just said. He’s silently saying this should mean something to you, too — but it doesn’t. And that mismatch only deepens the quiet between you.

You blink.

He lifts the edge of the fur in his hands, shaking it, then looks at you like the answer should be obvious.

A pause. “Right,” you say slowly. “And… that’s important to note because?”

He shifts his weight, brows drawing together in a look that’s too serious for the situation. “You could’ve kept it.”

"Wet as my clothes are, you need it more than I do.”

He is surprisingly docile and red in the face now that he has something on for modesty and can’t quite look you in the eye. The tips of his fingers peeking from all the fur in his grip are fidgety.

You give a wry grimace before remembering the manners Dad always told you to have around new acquaintances. "Yeah, um — uh, thanks. For saving my life.”

You tell him your name, and bow your head a bit in acknowledgment. His shoulders pull in tight at the sudden gesture of goodwill — though you aren't quite sure why — but relax after a breath as he meets your stare squarely, searching for something. The intensity throws you off balance; those odd and piercing mismatched shades fixed solely on you make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end in both curious and fearful wonderment.

"And you are...?"

"Oh," he says, as if the question took him off guard, too. One hand comes up to brush through damp locks. Almost self-conscious, if the look on his face is anything to go by. There’s some sort of a faraway look in his eyes. "Raf — Rafayel."

"Were you the third guy on the fishing boat, Rafayel?" You recall that last crew member was slumped half overboard and passed out, prompting the rescue attempt that sent you both to sea in the first place. If Rafayel was wearing his pelt when you attempted to pull him up, the added weight could have been a factor in tipping both of you over. You find it's all a blur in your memory, though, and suppress a shudder. "Did you fall with me or—"

A shadow passes over his features as quickly as the changing tides. When he speaks, though, it's measured, almost cautious. "Yeah, I—" He pauses, shakes his head. Locks those impossibly colored eyes on you again, bright in the early morning light. "How are you feeling, though? Still hurts?"

"My side feels bruised like I was elbowed in the ribs but besides being chilled to the bone from falling into the ocean, I'm alright," you supply honestly. "I saw the blood on the sand, though. It feels unreal that I'm up and about right now. How can a scrape bleed that much?"

Rafayel's mouth goes flat as a line, looking you up and down with a concerning intensity deepening his tone. "You're lucky I was able to pull you back from the worst of it."

Shallow as it is, your wound isn't even dressed, but you decide not to engage in a conversation about the technicalities, patting him on the arm once in thanks and walking around him to get out of the forest line's shadow.

The beach stretching wide and strange before you is a postcard you don’t remember collecting. The sand is darker than you're used to, siltier, almost gray, and littered with glinting shells you don’t recognize, long and spiraled in augers, brittle as glass. Pale reeds jut from the shore at uneven angles, hissing faintly in the breeze, and the driftwood here is stripped bare, almost white, tangled in patterns that look too intentional for nature.

The water itself is clear, almost iridescent, casting strange reflections across the shallows, warped ripples that shimmer pink and green, an oil slick pretending to be pretty. And further out, offshore, strange half-drowned statue-shaped stones loom out of the surf.

You know this archipelago better than most, its coastlines and hidden inlets, the soft-bellied coves that tourists miss, having traced its map with your own hands, ferry lines, rock clusters, the way sandbanks shift after storms. Usually, it takes you seconds to place yourself. A curve in the shoreline, a type of dune grass, the slope of a treeline, something always gives it away.

But this place doesn’t register. No matter how long you stare, it refuses to sort itself into something known. The landscape’s been scrubbed clean of every tell you’re trained to read.

The most logical possibility is Seolhwine’s Hook — the island nearest to the Devil’s Teeth. That makes the most sense, right? You were heading back when the squall hit, and it’s the only one close enough for a current to drag you to overnight, and for Rafayel to be able to swim with you. But even then… even that doesn’t feel right. You’ve docked at Seolhwine’s before. This doesn’t match.

“I hate to say it but... Do you know where we are?” you ask finally, turning to him.

"My aunt's," he answers with a straight face.

You pause mid-shiver, your brain tripping over the simplicity of the statement.

You give him the flattest look you can afford, eyebrows lifting slowly. The pelt is clutched too high at his chest, his fingers wound tight in the fabric, you think he might be afraid of dropping it, though it doesn’t seem he notices he’s doing it. You can’t tell if he’s being deliberately evasive or if he genuinely thinks this is the helpful version of an answer.

"What?"

"Look, I’m all for jokes usually, but right now I need an actual place name — not just that your aunt lives here. I’m cold, I’m tired, and I just want to figure out how to get home—"

"It's my aunt's island."

You blink. Once. Twice. The explanation hangs in the air, weirdly self-satisfied. And it’s not satisfactory at all. Not even close.

What’s with the serene confidence of someone stating the color of the sky, as if “my aunt’s” is a perfectly normal answer to what island are we on? As if those two words magically orient you on a map?

You wait for more. Anything. The punchline. The name. Even a smirk. But there’s nothing.

Is he joking? Is this some elaborate bit? Or does he genuinely think that’s helpful?

The frustration in you sharpens. You’ve had to deal with flaky locals and clueless tourists and broken ferries before, but your patience is thinning by the second. You’re exhausted, still damp, still bleeding a little, and now stuck playing twenty questions with the world’s most uncooperative pretty boy.

"My aunt’s island."

He says it again, but there’s a slight shift in tone — firmer. He's correcting you. Thinks you’re the one being slow. And somehow, that makes it worse.

You stare at him. This time longer. He looks so damn earnest about it, truly believes he’s given you a helpful answer. It’s not smug. It’s not sarcastic. It’s not even deliberately vague to give away he’s fucking with you just to be a tease. It’s literal. Painfully, infuriatingly literal.

You’re trying to get directions from a very impatient child who only answers exactly what you ask and nothing else. Nuance is definitely a foreign language he never got taught.

But something tugs at the edge of your thoughts.

Because as stupid as it sounds — and it does sound stupid — it’s not impossible.

You look around again, really look this time, and you realize something’s been bothering you since you first stood up. It’s too pristine. Too quiet. There’s no old trailhead, no ferry dock, no graffiti-scuffed boulder where kids have carved hearts. No signs. No fishhooks, no cigarette butts. Just wind, tide, trees.

It clicks.

They’re marked on the maps you’ve seen, but only just. Annotated with little circles and names like SH-07 or East Ellinor. Places people like you aren’t supposed to go. Places the ferry routes steer around.

You’ve never been to one. You’ve never had a reason to. The people who owned them had their own transport, their own staff, their own little worlds with locked docks and private everything.

That’s why you didn’t recognize it. It’s not not on the map. It’s just never been part of your map.

You exhale, slow. Let the realization settle.

"So you're saying this is one of the private islands."

Rafayel’s brows lift in vague approval and he nods fervently. "Yes! That. Exactly. It's very private."

You rub your forehead, as if that’ll push the absurdity back into place.

Of course it is. Of course you almost drowned and then washed up on a privately owned island like some shipwrecked stray. Of course the first person you meet is a socially weird, mostly-naked man claiming ownership through familial inheritance like it’s a perfectly casual thing to drop.

You stare up at the sky for a moment, trying to piece together how the hell you even got here.

None of the private islands are anywhere near the Devil’s Teeth — most of them are tucked deep in the inner chain, clustered where the water’s calmer and the currents don’t rip you sideways. But this? This place isn’t close to any of that. You were unconscious, but you remember the storm. You remember going overboard, water in your lungs, panic in your throat, and then nothing. Blackout.

But you weren’t alone.

Rafayel said he pulled you out. Which means he swam you here.

You glance at him again, still draped in that ridiculous pelt and giving you weird pointed looks conveying that he wants to tell you something so bad. He doesn’t look winded enough for someone who hauled another body through open water during a storm. But if he did — if that’s how you got here — then he swam farther than you can make sense of. And maybe lost his clothes in the process. Somehow the latter makes more sense compared to the hypothetical that precedes it.

You were near open sea. This doesn’t add up. Even if he unexpectedly took you somewhere else than Seolhwine's, it just happening to be his aunt's private island is no coincidence.

You look back at him, more confused than before.

"Come," he says softly, extending his hand toward you with palm upward. "I'll take you to her. We'll help you get home. I promise."

A dozen different responses crowd your tongue as you stare down at his offered hand. All the questions rattling between your ears, each booking it for your lips faster than the next. None make it far. Suspicion should be there, but your instincts are unresponsive. They don’t find anything worth questioning about the situation despite the red flags.

Sure, maybe a weird randomly naked guy saved your life, brought you to a secret beach that doesn’t look on any travel maps, and claims to have ties with some rich aunt that owns the whole damn thing...

But he isn't dangerous.

You know that fact unequivocally. Call it a hunch, maybe? Gut intuition. It makes no sense considering your rational side has zero interest in jumping through hoops to trust the random person that literally dragged you out of the ocean to the least convenient place he ever could — but then again, life tends to toss the strangest circumstances and situations your way whenever you least expect it.

What matters most is getting back home, your parents have to be dying of worry — a search party must be out there wasting resources. Having someone who seems oddly comfortable on the island lead you directly to shelter would certainly speed things along.

"Hey," he gently adds when you're quiet for too long, breaking the train of thought running rampant inside your mind. The softness in his tone brings your attention back to him entirely, a gentle smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

He offers his hand a little higher, which draws your focus back on it with curious clarity. How smooth it lookd, even from this distance, perfect nails without a single scratch or imperfection, fingers delicate, elegant bones visible under the pale skin. "I just want to help. You're safe with me. I won’t hurt you."

You stare at his hand, then at his face, then back again. The tone is soft, the words gentle, but something about it scratches at the back of your brain. The kind of voice usually reserved for nervous animals crouched under porches. Any second now, he might start whistling and offer a treat.

Though the weird phrasing shouldn't work its weird magic on you, it does. Maybe because it sounds so nostalgic and familiar in a way that it invokes a sense of safety in you? Or maybe because you're tired, soaked to the bone, bleeding lightly still, and sore all over and this guy seems too nice to be anything less than honest?

Perhaps both. Probably both. You really have no business trusting strangers who wear big pelt blankets instead of actual clothing and give basic information away akin to some kind of social anxiety sufferer with performance issues, yet here you are, contemplating on the idea of taking his hand.

What the hell, you think eventually. Sure. What alternative is there? If the worst comes to pass, you intend to make him have one less limb to his name — it would be his own fault for walking around like a Resident Evil nude mod. How did that one text post go? Boy put that boaner away lest a sloppy little critter grabs hold of it.

But you’re not that sure what kind of answer you expected when you ask him where you’re headed, but he doesn’t so much point as let his hand drift outward, loose and imprecise — more communion than instruction, as though the land might whisper the route if you stand still long enough. He plants himself in the emptiness with the ease of someone who’s never needed a map, naming vague landmarks with the casual grace of someone expecting the road to rise just because he’s ready to walk it.

As someone who has mastered the art of minding your own business, you don’t call out this behavior. As long as he gets you someplace you can call help from, Rafayel is free to be a weirdo.

But you do press him for information.

“She has lavender near the steps, and her door is the color of the sea,” he offers, like that narrows it down. “The path smells of sage sometimes, if the wind’s right. And there’s a stone shaped like a sleeping dog near the turn — you have to squint a little. The house groans when it’s too warm. There’s a wind chime that only rings when someone she doesn’t like shows up. And the garden gate bites if you don’t know how to open it.”

Not helpful. But then he refuses to add anything else more along the lines of fucking common sense and normal people direction-giving. What does he expect, the scent alone pulling you in the right direction if you just walk long enough?

And maybe he's right. Maybe you're the weird one for expecting something as formal as an address out here. If this really is a private island, there might only be one house. Maybe 'lavender and a blue door' is all anyone needs. Maybe people out here remember things by the curve of the land and the way the air smells after rain.

It isn’t a real plan. It’s the shape of a promise, just strange enough to follow, just vivid enough to believe in for a little while. The way he speaks about it, there’s no room for doubt, and you’ve learned to believe in the word of a local in all your years of living around the archipelago.

So you follow.

The pelt shifts when he moves, catching bits of drift and sand, trailing slightly as he walks beside you through the underbrush. He doesn’t shiver, unlike you. And that makes sense, considering how warm and cozy you were when that thing was your blanket when you first woke up.

The morning light hasn’t yet burned the fog from the trees, and the forest path ahead is dappled in grey. Your boots sink into the softened moss with a squelch. His bare feet barely make a sound, but your skin does hear something because of your wet socks.

You glance sideways at him. No wince, no flinch, not even when he steps straight on a gnarled root that would have you cursing in three languages.

“Seriously?” you mutter. “You don’t even feel that?”

“I’ve walked stranger paths,” he says. Great.

You stop walking with a groan. The wind catches your soaked clothes, cutting straight through to the bone. Your arms are already shaking.

“Okay. New plan.”

He watches as you crouch in front of him, back turned.

You look over your shoulder with an encouraging gesture for him, “Climb on.”

He tilts his head. “Huh?”

“Piggyback. You're barefoot, this path is hell, and I'm freezing. Carrying weight warms you up.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You're not that heavy, and I’ve hauled crates bigger than you off ferries for years. So. Just. Climb on.”

He makes a strangled noise. “I didn’t learn bipedalism just to be carried like a pup by you!”

Such drama. There really is no time for this and you’re not in the mood for negotiations.

You grab one of his wrists and tug it over your shoulder. His entire hand twitches in response. “If it makes you feel better, this is entirely me being selfish. I want to get warm.”

He hesitates, and it’s not pride, he keeps glancing at your side, where the torn side of your turtleneck still clings damp and darkened. His hands hover like he might stop you.

“You’re not healed,” he mutters. “Not properly.”

You hitch his arm higher on your shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“That wound’s still raw.”

“So are my fingers. Cold does that.”

He makes a frustrated noise.

“Listen, enough with courtesy stuff, okay? I don’t care, I’m freezing,” you cut in. “And you don’t have shoes. We’re both going to be miserable either way, so pick your poison.”

He sighs, dragging it out. Eventually, he caves, muttering something under his breath that could be an insult but could also be a compliment. He hoists himself up, arms settling uncertainly around your shoulders, pelt-covered legs bracketing your hips, and you make sure he won’t slip away from your grip because of the material. You’re trekking along the forest in no time, feeling pleasantly distracted from the cold.

“This is deeply undignified,” he mutters.

“And being inexplicably naked in front of a stranger isn’t? Where and why did you lose your clothes anyway? You still haven’t told.”

There’s no response, except from a huff he lets out from his nose, which fondly reminds you of Raf. It must be a tale particularly embarrassing for him to tell, and he did have the fur to make it up for, so you once again don’t pry. Master of minding your own business.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Get comfortable.”

He doesn’t. He sits stiffly at first, as though unsure how much weight he’s allowed to give you. Then he starts shifting. Sighing. Squirming. Grumbling under his breath about the jostling, the pace, the way your shoulder bone is probably bruising his ribs.

"You walk uneven," he complains after the first bend. "See, it hurts after all, yeah? Put me down."

"It's a forest," you grit out. "The ground walks uneven."

"I wish you would listen for once."

"That's a wasted wish on a star. You've known me for like what, fifteen minutes?"

He exhales through his nose again, slow and beleaguered. No witty answer to that one, it seems.

The longer you walk, the more he settles. His complaining slows into occasional muttering, then thoughtful silence. The forest begins to close in around you. Damp leaves brush your arms. The world smells of pine sap, wet bark, and something almost metallic beneath the rot. The silence here is dense, broken only by the soft rhythm of your boots against the ground and the occasional rustle of something unseen in the undergrowth.

Then his voice, soft and close beside your ear: “Do you name the trails you take at sea? Or are they just known to you?”

“What?”

“The water routes. The ones you steer the ferry along. Do they have names?”

He’s talking about sea lanes. You’re about to question how he doesn’t know these things, considering he’s a fisherman, but remember he might not be one. His aunt owns an island. This is a rich kid who probably wanted to fish and got the locals involved in his request.

“They’ve got designations. Letters, numbers. Eights and alphas and things like that. But most of us just… call ’em what we call ’em.”

“Like?”

You think a moment, breath fogging in the damp air. “There’s Shiverstretch. That’s the fast cold current between Dolos and Ternhook. Everyone calls it that ’cause it’s a backslap to the face, especially on the morning runs. And there’s Dead Hour Channel — no wind, no sound, just this long, empty drift. Makes you paranoid that something’s watching. I don’t like that one.”

You feel him shift slightly on your back, listening.

“There’s Longshout,” you add. “Named after a guy who tried to boat through in a storm and ended up yelling for help the whole way ‘til he ran aground on Fallow Reef.”

Rafayel snorts quietly. “That one sounds personal.”

“It is. He still works the east docks. Won’t shut up about it.”

“How do you find your way around, then? I always wondered. Do you read the water like seals do?”

“Reading the water is one way to put it, I guess. They’re charted. We use navigation systems. Landmarks. Depth markers.”

A pause. The trees rumble, disturbed by a sudden gust of wind, brittle leaves dropping pebbles onto the path in front of you. Rafayel shifts awkwardly behind you, almost toppling off to the left before righting himself with a steadying grip.

"Question," you say. "What indicators do you use? Chip on a tree or something?"

He whispers eventually, cheek lightly pressed against yours. You feel his eyes on you. "Smells."

You blink, twisting around to glance at him. He seems surprisingly somber all of a sudden. "Uhhh...."

"Just focus on the road, we're almost there. You'll see."

The path winds past the last of the scrub grass, and then it opens.

The trees fall away in a hush of damp leaves and saltlight, and there, cradled in the middle of the forest-clad small valley, is a sprawling, mansion of a house that doesn’t quite belongs to any century in particular. Can't be called old or modern. The word you’re looking for is neo-classical architecture made to be a beach house. Pale limestone, veined and sun-bitten, gleams beneath the overcast sky. Its walls are streaked with wind-carried brine, but the stone holds strong, weathered soft rather than worn down. And there is the giveaway Rafayel was talking about: blue door.

Lavender spills along the pathway in loose drifts, unruly and fragrant, tangling with sea-thrift and clover like the garden grew itself wild. Carved wooden shutters hang half-closed against the morning chill, and a curved archway frames the entry looks the part of a half-remembered temple. There’s something mythic about it, a story you were almost told once. A place that holds onto memory whether you want it to or not.

And then there’s the scent, ocean first, bright and sharp, but something warmer curling beneath it. Resin, maybe. Incense burned into the beams. Citrus oil in the wood grain.

You adjust your grip beneath Rafayel’s knees as you approach the door. Acting as a barrier between your bodies, his pelt is still slung down your back , trailing behind like a second spine, damp at the edges. He hasn’t said much since the last hill. Just rested his chin between your shoulder blades and hummed, quiet as tidewash.

You reach the first step. Hesitate. The house isn’t grand in the usual way, no columns, no gates, but there’s a heaviness to it. Not unfriendly, but expectant.

You knock.

Silence falls. The melted caramel of sunlight scatters through the dark glass in the windows. Rafayel shifts on your back, going rigid so suddenly it almost jolts you. His breath stills sharply against your spine, and in that single suspended moment, you can feel the piano wire of tension strung through his bones.

You don’t get the chance to ask why. Wood cracks loudly within the doorframe, and there's a pop, a groan, and then a soft, sweet creak as the lock disengages, allowing the door to slowly swing inward with an audible squeak.

The scent hits first, warm and strange. Spiced velvet, a whisper of cloves, dried orange peel, and something more ancient baked into the lintel wood. Then the figure behind it, unexpected.

For an “aunt,” she looks barely older than him. Mid-thirties, maybe, though it’s hard to tell. Her features are sharp, dignified, and her presence is a light cloud, wrapped in layered satin and lace shawl, white and lilac, all shot through with shimmer where the light catches on glinting jewelry. Her hair is swept back, rich violet and pinned with silver shells, and her eyes—

Dusty purple brightening with shock.

“Rafayel?” she breathes, her grip whitening on the frame. Her gaze darts down, takes in the sealskin clinging to your back, the way his taut arms still drape over your shoulders like iron bars. “Gods, is it really you? Look, look at you! Oh... oh!"

Rafayel slides off you, and she practically throws herself out the door as soon as the initial shock wears off, taking two long steps across the threshold until she's directly in front of you, cupping his cheeks with hands that only tremble the smallest bit. He meets her halfway, tilting his forehead to rest against hers as his own hands come up to gently caress her elbows, cradling them lightly. His motions are hesitant at first — touching with clear clumsiness, as if handling glass. But the moment she exhales an astonished little laugh, something changes, he pulls her close, tightening his grasp not to let her blow away on the wind. The woman leans fully against him then, looping her arms around his neck with a relieved shudder that shakes both their frames.

And you're there, a comical stick figure at the background of a well-drawn manga panel with a big arrow pointing at you.

You hope they won't hunt you for sport. Private island. Two eerily good looking family members. Girl who got deliberately delivered there when a closer island was the most blatant option. This has the potential to be a horror movie premise.

But no. Nope. Too late. She glances past his shoulder as soon as her embrace is complete and the silent reunion done with, locking eyes with you, and your soul flees your body, trying to squeeze itself back through your pores like some furtive worm to avoid the full brunt of her curious scrutiny.

She raises one perfectly shaped brow, but before either of you can exchange any words or reactions, Rafayel says something.

You say something, because it's in a language you don't know, one that doesn't bother to make itself easy, sharp at the edges, rounded at the core. It rolls out of his mouth, mist over moorland — thick, tangled, hard to follow. The stone-teeth syllables grind against each other, but every so often, they break open into something strange and sweet, the howl of a reed pipe carried on sea wind.

It just plays into the horror movie vibe because why would he blatantly switch language to probably speak about you, judging from the glance thrown your way, as if you aren't there? Probably conspiring how to eat you! You do feel like tenderized meat.

The woman hums again, a thoughtful note this time, and the conversation carries on in murmured exchanges of tone and gesture — softness here, a flicker of frustration there. And yet you can pinpoint the exact moment everything changes. Rafayel says something. But she draws back, cups his cheeks in her hands, and stares at him hard, searching. Whatever she finds isn’t enough, because she shakes her head once, firm, decisive. He asks again. Another shake, stronger this time, more insistent. Her fingers flex tight against his skin as if she means to hold him there, but he speaks again, something softer, fainter, and her hand relaxes, trembling on the edge of defeat. A faint frown crosses her face, a small downward curl that somehow turns the lines at the corner of her lips into parenthesis, closing off the shape of whatever she might have said next.

"Hey, uh," you finally intervene when their staring contest becomes too intense. They both startle, seeming to remember your existence at once. You smile nervously, holding one raised palm up in defense and nonthreatening greeting. "Sorry to interrupt, ma'am, but could I, um..." Your free hand gestures vaguely to indicate the general situation you find yourself in. "Use your phone? I don't mean to intrude or anything, I just. I got thrown over board during the storm, I don't even know if my ferry was capsized and I really, really need to get back—"

Rafayel says something else under his breath, hasty now, almost tripping over his words.

Her brows furrow in mild concern at his rambling. "Oh dear, I apologize, yes! Do forgive me for being impolite, I forgot myself for a moment there."

You nod politely in acknowledgment of her apology, lowering your arm hesitantly. "Not a problem, it happens."

"It's been so long since our house had guests," she admits candidly, placing an elegant hand over her heart in embarrassment. "Come, come in, please, you need a hot shower and change of clothes." She takes you by the arm and guides you inside. "You're drenched! Look at those goosebumps. Oh, you poor thing."

She leads you into a grand hallway filled with golden hour sunlight spilling through windows framed by sheer white curtains billowing lazily in the breeze, and it is not unlike stepping straight into the interior design section of an expensive department store. You could smell the money dripping off every nook, cranny, wall, and corner. If your wet socks were making muddy imprints on the flooring you knew you'd pass out from mortification on the spot. The floors here look pristine and polished enough for you to see your reflection clearly on its surface. Even the vase tucked neatly into the center of a glossy dark wood console table is worth more than your boat. Everything about this mansion is clean and orderly, it must be heaven on earth for a neat freak like your dad.

"He needs clothes the most, I think," you try to joke, letting her steer you through the main hall with wide curious steps and an awestruck stare. Rafayel, wherever he is behind you two, remains silent. You think he might have disappeared somewhere.

Her grip tightens around your arm like a mother hen dragging her chick into a coop to shelter from winter, her nails lightly digging into the sleeves of your sweater with a pleasant firmness that feels strangely grounding. "Don't worry about him, you focus on getting warmed up now."

"Thanks, ummm..." you begin, hoping it's polite to ask for her name while inside her home. But before you could continue, she turns to regard you with a serene smile — so gentle and graceful she could've been sculpted from marble if it weren't for her very lively personality. She smells nice, too. Floral. Very floral. The same kind of perfume bottle your aunt kept on display near her sewing machine that you stole a few sniffs of when Grandma wasn't looking.

Her attention is summer afternoon sunbeams on your chilled skin. "You can call me Talia.”

[thewritingfairy]

Wait- Tim care? 🥺

I love you!! I love you so much!!

I saw stories where niglacted reader where Damian cares, Where Jason cares, Alfred (even though he will prioritize the others or he is Yandere and want to have all the reader's time), Steph, Cass, But never Tim and Dick (no. I found a bot where you are neglected and have a good relationship with Dick when AI still just came and I was still trying to understand how it works).

I love Tim and I always feel they did him bad when they portrayed him as seeing someone getting neglected and simply doing nothing.

He knows the pain, he'd act even if it's just in the shadows!!

Thank you for this. 🥹 You made my day.

And can I be 😶‍🌫️anon? I'll drop some asks from time to time.

You get it!! Tim was way too self-aware to ever neglect (Name) without thinking it through. It sounds weird. But hear me out.

Tim knows the damage of the viligante business, and he knows the damage of neglect. But he had a hard time acknowledging his trauma around that, he still doesn't believe he has been abused from time to time. So he brought the two on a scale, and he decided that neglecting you was the best way to protect you.

He thought that's why Bruce ignored you, that he wanted one child that was free from the shakles of their morals and life style. But after Jason's crime he realises, that was never what happened. You're neglected in the same way he was. But he doesn't know how to bring this to Bruce's attention as he fears his love will disappear (which isn't a justifable reason but trauma makes us do crazy shit). So Tim feels like all he can is support you from the sidelines, he just wishes he could make you feel better.

And as I said before, Tim would never ignore your physical pain, but Cassandra would (before she becomes a yandere and before she understands what's going on with you). Tim isn't mentally well, he has never been after his parents neglect. So he cannot help but admire how strong you stand, but he also cannot help the guilt in his stomach as he realises in what pain you are. Not just physically, but emotionally as well.

(Tim was also the one that suggested replicating your room and tried to fix your heirlooms, but since most were centuries old jewerly ect. he didn't want to really do anything without your premission so he just fixed the necklace your mom gave you when you turned 4 and extended the chain so that you could still wear it)

(also edit, idk if you know but AI is incredibly damaging to the environment, they create a lot of electronic waste and consume a lot of water. And story bots collect data like it's a snack. Im against the usage of ai in general due to my internship and personal beliefs (ai art isn't art :) ai stories aren't stories either and by the love of everything that's holy STOP USING AI IN LEGAL FIELDS, now this has become a rant oopsie). I was also really naive when it came to ai, do i wanted to make sure you add this information in this post if anyone wants sources I'll find them and if needed translate them to English)

[smallestapplin]

You kind of touched on this a little bit in one of your other writings, (Reader/Autobot Harem im pretty sure?) but could we get Sunstreaker and Sideswipe spitroasting the reader...? It was so silly and i feel like they'd make such a great synchronized duo for their partner. Plus the way you write the size difference/belly bulge makes me claw at the walls of my enclosure and I desperately require more in my life

I absolutely can! I love these two little shits

Warnings : gn!reader your hole is referred to as a valve, belly bulge, needy Top Sideswipe, kinda mean Sunstreaker, mild throat bulging

Mdni you will be blocked! Adults only, please!

-

-

“Filthy little thing, aren’t ya?” Sunstreaker growls, his engine revving in a deep purr. Optics eyeing your small squishing frame hanging between him and Sideswipe, from this position he can see your throat stretching, everytime he moves his spike making you take so much more of him, feeling you choke around him as he puts a servo around your neck letting himself feel what he’s doing to you.

“You’re just made for taking spike- Frag! Clenchin’ around me like that, you want me to stuff this valve of my transfluid, yeah?” Please say yes, he can’t take his optics off of you!

Sideswipe’s drool is already leaking down his chin dripping onto your body, you take his spike so easily but he can’t help but grow enthralled watching your body struggle to truly fit him, watching with every thrust the outline of his spike appears showing just how deep he is inside you.

Just the sight is enough to make his helm spin, your small plush body is perfect for them perfect for taking their spikes and transfluid. His optics brighten the closer he gets to overloading, taking in the way your body jiggles with every thrust, listening to your muffled mewls as you’re pushed onto Sunstreaker’s spike.

Sideswipe moves a servo from your hip to your lower stomach just above your sex, carefully pressing down on the bulge of his throbbing shaft. The red bot drools at the feeling, how you clench so effortlessly around him, desperate to keep him in and milk him for all he’s worth.

You can barely breathe, your mind heavy with lust as you hang upside down between two larger mechs rutting into you like you’re the perfect toy for them, your hole snuggly stretched around Sideswipe’s twitching length as you try to suck on. So filled, so full, your eyes roll back as your hips try so hard to grind against Sideswipe as you cum, your filled heat clenching tightly fluttering as your cum gushes, coating his pelvis.

Sideswipe groans loudly, nearly a whimper as his hips buck frantically, fucking himself stupid as he overloads, his transfluid pumping into you, filling you with his hot creamy spent.

Sunstreaker isn’t far behind, his optics flizzling as your drawn out moan vibrates around his spike, many him curse under his breath as he fills your throat with his load, making you swallow as much as you could, even though most spill from around your mouth.

Sunstreaker pulls out slowly, taking in the messy sight of you as he gently lifts your upper body and supports you into sitting up.

“There you are, our good little shareware. Think you can handle more?” Despite his words, the yellow mech kisses the top of your head tenderly.

You don’t get a chance to answer him, merely clinging to his servos with a sob as Sideswipe continues. Sunstreaker looks up, livid glare across his face plate as his brother won’t stop thrusting into you.

“Hey, dumbaft! Cool it, would ya? It’s time to switch.”

“Can’t…fraaag- I can’t they feel so, so good! Just one more-“

“Slow down…! S’much, t’much—!!” You mewl, holding onto Sunstreaker as you plead. Turns were in fact promised, and Sunstreaker will be damned if he doesn’t get a turn with your human valve!

[revelboo]

got myself the cutest little bluestreak (amongst six others) after you made me fall in love with blokees! i may thank you, but my bank account certainly doesnt. the pains of aud 😭 gonna need to keep buying when another sale comes around til i get myself jazz and prowl hehe

apart from that, im not sure if this has been asked before or if ive missed anything, so sorry if i have, but im curious, do you write for female bots?

The boy! I just write for the mechs, because it’s what I personally prefer and I just do this for fun.

Where I Belong Pt 15

Bluestreak x Reader

• Staring at you, your cheek resting in his palm as you sleep stretched on your side against him with flowers tucked in your messy hair, he doesn’t want to go back. Not yet. Not while you look so peaceful. He’s pretty sure that you’d thought he’d been joking when he’d told you the two of you could build a home and just stay here. Belong to each other and forget the war, duty, and responsibility. So tired of fighting. And he needs this. Because you’re never disappointed in him, never dismissive.

• Whatever your head is laying on shifts slightly under you and something gently bumps your forehead. Eyes opening as Bluestreak shudders against you, the chevron on his helm brushing you. “You okay, baby?” You ask, touching his jaw and his optics open and find you. And your head is forced up to avoid the sharp points of his chevron when he buries his face against your throat.

• “I’m okay,” he murmurs, venting slowly, dragging your scent deep into himself. Grounding himself with you. Feeling your hand stroking his helm and you start humming softly to him. Soothing him when he should be the one taking care of you. He’s older, bigger, stronger, but still clinging to you like a frightened youngling. Afraid. Always afraid and nervously rambling and you let him. Never tell him to shut up. Never get angry.

• Humming a lullaby to him, you feel him curl closer against you and you play your hands over him. Feel his door wings tremble under your fingertips. “Should we head back?” You ask and he vents against your throat. Relaxed with him, you stretch out your legs, a knee sliding against his leg. Have you ever felt this at home with anyone else before? Like you could tell him anything and there’d be no judgement. Like you’re seen and known.

• “Not yet.” Just wants this moment to last. Because right now, there are no nightmares. No ghosts lurking at the edge of his awareness. Here with you, this is all there is. Just you and him, the sun low behind the trees to throw dazzling lances of gold through the leaves, birds singing above and the beat of your heart against him. “I just-I need this. Just a little longer, okay? And then we’ll go back.” Pleading softly and stuttering into silence when you brush a kiss against his chevron with a soft ‘okay.’ Curling closer, he relaxes.

Previous

[222col]

mhhmm yesss thinking about Joe Goldberg!Art many thoughts yes

bimbo!reader x stalker!art donaldson

summary: art will stop at nothing to protect you

cw .ᐟ hints at nsfw, murder

꒰ notes ꒱ this kinda feels like a prologue........ (assumed this was a writing req rather than a bot but lmk if im wrong angel!!!)

you were too easy of a target. made things oh so simple for art. you were too damn trusting, it was half the reason why he was so besotted with you. you and your sweet smile, the wide eyes that just said ruin me. god, he'd never needed anyone so badly in his life.

he'd had tendencies before, slight obsessive behaviours back in boarding school. patrick noticed, back then, but he always assumed it was innocent. thought that art was just a little insecure, just relied on patrick a lot. never did he think it would grow into anything more, boy was he wrong.

it was like a flip switched, when art first saw you. every single thought in his brain switched off, he didn't care about anything other than you. the pink dresses you always wore, how your hair was always perfectly done, the shine of your lipgloss. art could fill books about you— he's nearly finished the first diary dedicated to you.

he found ways to stay close to you, to keep him going while he wasn't with you. he'd been doing it since before you were dating. stealing your panties, covering your pillows in his fluids, polaroids of you while you were sleeping. art treasured everything he stole from you, and everything he did to your space when you weren't there.

and see, art wasn't originally the violent type. but no one messes with his girl. he's grown to love the look of blood washing down his sink, the bruises that line his knuckles days after, the memories of their pleadings for mercy. that guy who called you dumb? gone. the girl who laughed at you? buried. the boy who tried to touch you? oh him, he's still bleeding out in art's bathroom. be a couple days before you can stay the night at his dorm.

he would do anything for you. in a heartbeat. and the amount of bodies he's had to discard are definitely starting to prove that point. he's just protecting you! art's only looking out for his girl, there's nothing wrong with that, surely! he can't let anyone say anything bad about you, do anything bad to you, he won't have it.

he's fuckin' smart too. that goofy grin and head of blonde curls cover up a multitude of sins (literally). art knows exactly how to play things, how to cover up his crimes. come on, he's literally majoring in criminology. he's got it all sussed out.

there's nothing he won't do for his little doll.

© 222col. do not steal or repost my work without permission.

[yunnimilk]

I LOVED your Gojo and satosugu head cannons I was practically FROTHING at the mouth!!! It was sososo good!!!!! im begging you please make more🙏😭

2ND PART !! ꒱

pt 1

✧˚ ⋆｡. ／ ⋆ ۪ || 1st p.; AMAB! SUB! BOT! Saturo Gojo x AMAB! DOM! TOP! GN! Reader. + 2nd p. SUB! BOT! AMAB! Satosugu x DOM! TOP! AMAB! GN! Reader VERS.

˚⊱. ⋆°. ┆✦ || kinks \ tags ; BDSM , semi-public ? sex , brat taming , belly bulge , choking , orgasm denial , consensual somniphilia, both parts but the con somniphilia { only in the satosugu part }

˚⊱. ⋆°. ┆✦ || two sets of headcanons ; cw ; I will make an exception for this request since it's a continuation for the original request , also !! thank you for the compliment I was literally so proud of those hcs 🤭 AMAB LANGUAGE

FULL ON NSFW UNDER THE CUT, BE AWARE

Gojo x reader vers. ;

ah, Okinawa, a beautiful island in Japan, very packed with tourists as well. Gojo decided to bring Kugisaki, Itadori, and M. Fushiguro there for vacation, just a way to relieve stress. He also wanted to bring you there, his "one of his best friends" ,,

this trip was nice, the beaches are quite populated, but the kids enjoyed it, as well as the resturants. You all were supposed to stay there for a week only, it unfortunately couldn't last forever .

all throughout the trip, Gojo was teasing you, acting like a little brat, his hands slightly grazing over your dick only to pull them away. You had to fuck the sense back into him when you two went to your hotel room ,

reaching for his neck to quiet down his moaning, as his hips push back into yours but you slap his ass. It's supposed to be a punishment, he's not supposed to enjoy it ! Whisper in his ear, telling him that he's a little slut for you, and how his little hole is always sucking you in !

biting and tugging at his perky nipples, as you finger his tight, velvety walls. You have to cover his loud mouth to make sure that one of his students don't enter the room. You can feel your cock twitch at any stimulation, even a slight touch from the bed sheets .

he tries to bounce on your fingers but your hands make his hips stay still. He whines ans whines until you give in, you shove his face in the pillows and grip his hair as you ram your fat cock in his guts. Gojo can feel your dick poking in his walls, the sensation was so intense that it was painful, but he couldn't get enough .

you can feel his walls straining you cock, and your balls tightening, waiting to shoot your load inside him and filling him up real good. His hands reach his ass cheeks, and spreads them apart so his entire hole can engulf your huge cock ,

Gojo's moans get louder, you're not letting him cum. When he's about to, you stop thrusting and hold him down so he wouldn't, then going back to fuck him until he goes dumb, drooling like a dog and sticking his tongue out, you reach down his neck to nibble at it. He spreads his legs, what a little whore .

He screams out your name, and when you finally let him cum, he lets out a mantra of 'thank you'. Fuck,,, seeing him orgasm was so hot, his grips the sheets, his little cock twitch as it spurts out it's seed, and he thrusts the air a bit, trying to work out his orgasm. Damn it, you were hard again ~

Satosugu vers. ;

pior to their little antics, Gojo brought up how he wanted to have sex with you alongside with Geto 24/7, to which you told him that whenever you were sleeping, the two could use you as they pleased ,

and they took advantage of that

It was late at night, and Geto was rutting against your thigh, while Gojo was palming your hardening cock through your sleepwear. Your mouth let little moans escape your mouth, feeling this bliss reaching your nerves, you subconsciously thrusted into Gojo's hand .

Geto pulled your underwear down, your stiff meat standing proudly, both of them practically salivated from the sight. The raven haired man climbed over your hips to insert the leaky head of your cock inside his puffy little hole. The other male used your hand to stroke his own dick, the rough feeling giving him an exhilarating rush ,

Geto kept bouncing and bouncing on your cock, his man boobs jiggling along with him, feeling his prostate getting pierced over and over again, his ass was practically producing slick. On the other hand, Gojo was pathetically pistoning his dick into your hand, the callousness of your hand grazing every vein in his cock, he felt his legs shivering just because of it ,

there was this sensation covering your cock that you couldn't help but hump the air, unbeknownst to you, Geto was twitching around you as you moved your hips. The hand around Gojo's dick was gripping him slightly harder, and it made Gojo go faster, his flushed nipples strengthening from it ,

just as both of them steadily reached their orgasm and were about to cum. Your eyes shot open, and processed the sight infront of you, one man raising his hips up and down on your wet cock, his own dick slapping against his stomach, making a plapping sound, and the other burying his face in your chest as he used your own hand as a fleshlight .

Geto slipped out a yelping sound as he felt your hands roughly grip his waist and bounced him up and down quicker. Is your cock getting bigger? Because it felt so much deeper than before, his little belly bulge getting more prominent. You removed your hand from grasping the albino man's dick to pull his hair back to make out with him. The sides of your legs substituting your hand as he massaging his base on it ,

"little brats, can't ever fuck the horny out of ya huh?"

your fingers removed themselves from Geto's waist to wrap themselves around his neck, squeezing it tightly, just like his walls clamping down on your cock as he gets close to cumming. You stopped straining Gojo's hair and fingered his slutty hole instead, slapping it before letting them enter, he moans into your neck ,

few minutes later, and you all came at the same time, Geto's dick spurting out white ropes of cum, landing on everyone. Your own cock filling Geto up, it basically would've been enough to make him pregnant, some of your seed spilling out of his ass. Gojo's dick uselessly squirting out white liquid and it landing on your leg ,

oh well,,, I guess a few more round couldn't hurt ~

[cheschesterpossum]

GRAAAHHHH i love your CITF au, the idea of the existence of seats, cockpits and steering wheels in the firstplace because it was intended to be for human's use is SOO GOOD, i'm curious, do they ever question (when we left them in their pocket universe) why they have these features inside them?? Like they're not sure why these tiny seats and steering wheel even exists in the first place, i mean there's generally really no other smaller bots that could fit inside but this question eventually concludes into "oh well those just exists as a part of us ig, dunno how but it's there" and like you said, when we began appearing again, they began having these sudden.. desires to assist us, including assist in transport to wherever we want to go, even if our destination is like, only a few blocks away.

A cybertronian in their alt mode appearing on your side: "Did you say you need to go to ____?"

Reader: "Oh yeah- how'd you know?"

Random Cybertronian: "Doesn't matter. But i could assist to drive you there!" *opens their door quickly to silently urge you to step in already*

Reader: "i appreciate it, but really the building isn't that far away from here-"

Random Cybertronian: *sad engine noises*

Reader: "....Fine"

Guiltripping to the max fr

-🪴 Anon

(Local car won't stop honking at a person until they get in)

this is hilarious, I'd definitely think Cybs think about why are these parts (seats, steering wheels, ect) inside of them in the first place. Kinda like how we have a few useless part in our body but just accept it as it is, it goes the same with cybs. Until we came, and at some point they went "SO THAT'S WHAT THESE ARE FOR" when we got inside them (to drive, ofc).

They get sad when you refuse to get inside them or would honk (or whatever noise they can make with their alt-mode) constantly, nonstop, either its guilt tripping to the max or annoying you to the max until you get in frfr.

This also got me thinking about some hcs on cybs getting jealous when their human ride another vehicle. Now pair that with the 'car lover's type of humans (the one that refers to their car or object they hold dearly 'he/him' 'she/her' and treat it like a lover). The absolute betrayal on the bot's faceplate, lord the idea of said bot trying to one up an object got me cackling.

Another idea. If you're familiar with TFA and in the show the Allspark can turn non-sentient objects into cybertronian or give them sentient. I'd love Imagine your vehicle just one day turned into a sentient robot, absolutely believing you've been lovers for years.

The motorcycle you've own for years and lovingly took care of now turned robot sitting on your couch: "my love, you're home at last!"

Y/N: "erm excuse me, what the fuck are you doing in my house-"

Bonus point if said vehicle is possessive as well. The cybertronian that get jealous of your car is no longer stuck in a one-sided argument, you got two yapping robots playing tug-of-war over you now.

Im in love with this trope if you can't tell.

[terriblyrenderedenigma]

On Transformers and Human soulmate tropes...

(i do personally attack starscream at the end, i'm sorry starscream lovers, i love him too, but he's just a sad, devious little guy.)

Just a little thought here, so, I love soulmate tropes. Depending on the plot, they can be really fun and take so many interesting paths as a medium used within storytelling, whether romantic or platonic.

But what i want to talk about specifically is Transformer x Human soulmate tropes. Like, you have this super sweet side to it where the bot can be like 'I have waited my entire life to find you, finally, I can hold you in my arms and we never have to part again'. Depending on the character/story/type of SM (soulmate, shortening it because I'm not gonna keep writing it out) trope of course.

Can I just say how...instrumentally fucked this is though? So you have this race of robots who live for, what is essentially millennia out in the wild unless they catch the smoke. Their soulmate ends up being this little creature that lives for 80, maybe 100 years tops before dying. -Unless we're going for some kind of mind switch body type thing, but we all know how that went with spike in g1.

Our beloved robo blorbos will eventually have to cope with the fact that their soulmate, the person or creature they're MEANT to be with via laws of the universe, will die a LOT sooner than they will.

This especially hits hard with the decepticons who, depending on continuity -- hate humanity already. Bots who've gone through so much, losing their home, friends, and their dignities; have to learn to put up with and accept this creature as their fated mate/spouse/conjux endura, whatever you want to call it- SOULMATE.

Then the decepticons just have to deal with the fact that they're going to lose this person too, just like they've already lost everything else and oh GOD. Maybe they choose to forget about them and move on, stay alone and mourn what could have been if the universe hadn't had such a fucked sense of humor. Maybe they choose to accept it, but never let their SM too close because they know they'll just be hurt so much more hurt when the inevitable comes.

Then you have to think about decepticons having to possibly protect their SM from other cons! From being taken and 'saved' by the autobots.

Imagine some bots or cons just flying off the handle, going crazy just to try and keep their human alive in any way they possibly can, afraid of running out of time.

(Starscream lovers forgive me for the angst)

And Starscream especially, Maybe he'd try. He'd have a great time, take a chance, and give it a go. But what if he's actually terrified? Maybe he'd also self sabotage a little, knowing the relationship will never last too long anyways; not in the short blink of time it would be next to his life. Maybe, he doesn't actually know what to do with himself in a positive relationship after being, i dunno, consistently dogged on by megatron and he freezes.

There's something actually good for him, and since he isn't sure how to receive or accept that fact, he's gone. And maybe he'll come back, but the cycle could repeat.

(Im sorry, unless you put a tracker on him and call his ass and really give him some therapy. get him some god damn therapy.)

But yeah. All around, the angst potential is immense for this stuff and it makes me sad to think about so I thought i would share it instead of just write about it in an actual fic because my character analysis and ability to comprehend my own thoughts is so shit.

Okay, CIAOOOOOO~

[shurisneakers]

unsolved (v)

Summary: Bucky doesn't even believe in the paranormal. So who the hell thought it was a good idea to stick him in a series about everything haunted for the internet's amusement? With his loose-canon of a teammate who has no concept of subtlety or shits left to give, to make things even worse. (Buzzfeed unsolved AU)

Warnings: swearing, frustrated bucky, obnoxious reader, witchcraft

A/N: it's like i never left amirite (im sorry it has been like 10 months pls forgive me ily guys let's pretend this series never went on hiatus) (i had cancer and college but now I've graduated from both and i live babyyy. anyway. welcome back to my house of horrors)

Previous part || Series masterlist

When you tell Maya you want to do witchcraft, you'd done so with the full expectation of defending your idea with the force of a PhD student who was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

She surprisingly agrees. 

“Really?” It's hard to stop the astonishment from entering your voice. Honestly, it sort of pisses you off that the Canva presentation you spent five hours on wouldn't actually see the light of day.

“Yeah, sure. I think it'd do well with the older demographic. ” She shrugs.

"Really?" Now you weren't sure she was on the same plane of existence as you were.

“Make some animals talk. Conjure up some parking spots.”

Ah. 

“I was thinking more like... hexing people and shadow demons,” you test slowly.

That seems to tether her to reality.

Her head cranes towards you centimetre by centimetre, like she was buffering in real time.

“Are you insane?" she states, not very much sounding like she was expecting an answer. "Do you want to end up on the news? Do you know how vicious Facebook groups can be?” 

“No PR is bad PR,” you preach wisely, parroting advice you’d seen bots on Twitter tell other bots. 

“That doesn’t apply to you. I already have a tough time explaining Stephen Strange and why he’s not literally the devil to the public."

Now that was a little unfair. Perhaps it warranted another Canva presentation.

"Have you considered that I'm hotter and significantly cooler than Stephen Strange?" you suggest helpfully.

She squints at you, or more likely your audacity. "I will not have another scandal on my hands this week.” 

“But next week is okay?”

Her hardened stare tells you quickly what a thousand words cannot.

You cross your arms over your chest. “Thou limit me so, Maya. How is one to find you invigorating content in these trying circumstances?”

Maya taps your shoulder on her way out, crooning, “There’s a reason I asked you to do this series. You’ll figure it out.”

You hide a smile with an all too dramatic sigh. “Thou compliment me so. How am I to not fall in love with thee?”

Maya shakes her head playfully. “Nothing that will get me called into a press conference by mid-day. No hexing. No extreme curses. ”

“Mid-level curses it is, then” you call after her.

Her leaving figure does not give you a reply.

After a week of staring at the corner of his room through the night, delirious to the point where he seriously considered using Sam’s Amazon Prime account to buy his own stupid ghost apparatuses, Bucky throws in the towel.

Clearly, he was mistaken. Sleep deprived and probably missing his family a little more than he would have ever admitted to a living soul.

Bucky's sleep deprivation adds to his already charming and sociable personality.

No one would touch him with a ten-foot pole. Bucky’s usually grumpy and while everyone had sort of built a tolerance towards his regular nonsense, he was now the very sexy combination of grumpy and sensitive.

For his part, after last week's shenanigans, Bucky has stuck to avoiding anything and everything horror.

He watches only romcoms and finds that while everyone says he seems most like Harry from Harry Met Sally, he hates that Mike Wazowski motherfucker with a passion. 

While everyone else seems to get the memo, you have chosen to ignore it blissfully, and have instead been prancing about all week, shoving meme after meme into his face.

Bucky Barnes smiling compilations that were 7 seconds long. Bucky Barnes social media fanfictions that showed him replying far more than he had ever replied to anyone in real life ever.

Bucky’s learnt to ignore you with a long-suffering glare. You adapt quickly, skillfully dodge the daggers shooting out of his eyes and shove another TikTok in his face. It is an edit of him to Toxic by Britney Spears. He doesn't want to ask where they got some of the footage they used.

After the fifth Twitter screenshot, he takes to avoiding you like the plague.

Unfortunately for Maya, that involved avoiding the set too. He sees on the official The Graveyard Shift channels that there’s an announcement put out about an episode delay. 

It is undeniably his fault. No, he still won't answer the group chat or the several knocks at his door every day.

But because the universe is invested in his sorrow, you seem to find him wherever he goes.

In the garden, digging through the vegetable bed.

In the storeroom, looking through oversized cookware.

When he walked into the alley behind the Tower and found you there, he hissed at you like a feral cat and you asked very loudly what the fuck was wrong with him. 

He checks every part of him and all his clothes for a tracker but no-- you just seem to have a karmic connection level of being exactly where he is. 

When he runs into you for the fourth time at the library, he really thinks he’s lost it.

“Are you following me?” he asks, voice sharp.

You look at him in wonder. “Your ego is so big it could have its own gravitational pull. How do you carry around your massive head all day?"

“Everywhere I go, you’re there.” He continues, finger pointing in accusation. 

“Bitch, you're the one who walked in here," you exclaim. "I’ve been here all day.”

“Doing what?”

“Who’s following who now?” you dare.

“Because you’re in this section.” He does a quick check to see what section it actually is. Witchcraft and Wizardry. He may not have known that when he accused you but he definitely was not wrong.

“Why do you care what I do here?”

Because he's wondering if he’s managed to shut down production permanently and sent a bunch of people into unemployment.

“I don’t trust you here," he settles on instead. "What are you actually doing?"

“I’m learning things. Gaining knowledge. And such." You gesture vaguely before you narrow your eyes at him. "Not that you would know, you ape.”

He scoffs. He had the intelligence of a thousand suns, mind you.

“You don’t even have a book," he counters.

“So? I’m gaining knowledge through osmosis.” You look around. “I’m absorbing.”

His nose twitches, teeth clenched.

“Whatever,” he mumbles instead, turning his attention to the bookshelf.

As he thumbs through various titles he’s too annoyed to read, a small movement catches his attention. 

He watches you from the corner of his eyes. 

“What?” you demand, this whole exchange too damn loud for a library. 

“What?” he challenges right back. “Why are you watching me?”

“Why am I– you’re the one staring at me.” You throw your hands up. “First you follow me here, second you accuse me of things that would get me burnt at the stake a couple of years ago, third you accuse me of watching you just 'cause you know you're pretty. You–”

Bucky narrows his eyes, not missing the random compliment you slipped in.

“Hold on just one second. That’s why you’ve been avoiding everyone all week.” You stare at him, wide-eyed and unrelenting.

He thinks he must have missed some part of the conversation because he has no idea why you're looking at him like you've figured him all out.

“That’s why you’ve been so jumpy and sleep deprived ever since that episode you filmed.”

Bucky’s gaze doesn’t waver, but his mind races and his breath falters for a second. There’s no goddamn way you knew what had gone down, he’d deleted every footage that could possibly–

“You missed me.”

He stops his overthinking right in its tracks.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” You tilt your head, face full of pure sympathy. “You filmed one episode without me by your side and realised you couldn’t live without me.”

“Fucking ridiculous,” he mutters, eyes pressed closed tighty, partially in relief. 

“You want me, don’t you? You want me so bad it makes you throw u–”

“Fuck off.” Bucky turns on his heel at the speed of light.

“You have a fat, raging crush–”  

“I’m fuckin' moving out.” His voice is like rocks.

“You can move out, but you can never move on, baby,” you whisper-shout. “When’d you realise you liked me, Bucky? Night one? The first hou–”

He slams the library door behind him. 

From: Stevie Left some strawberries outside your door. They’re good. 

From: Stevie How are you doing today, by the way?

From: Bucky alive

From: Bucky and thanks 

From: Stevie Anything we have to talk about? Your wood chisels didn’t break again, did they?

From: Bucky nothing im fine

From: Stevie You sure? Time for a Cypress Hills visit?

From: Bucky no im fine 

From: Stevie You haven’t left the room in a week. Beat your old record and I'm going to start getting worried here.

Bucky stares at his phone wondering how he ended up with a mother a century after his own died, before sighing.

From: Bucky going to film a video this week. im fine

From: Bucky promise 

Because there really was no other way to convince Steve that he as leaving the cave he constructed from his comforter.

From: Steve Good to hear. I’m always across the hallway if you need anything. 

From: Bucky i know. your gramophone won’t let me forget it. 

From: Steve Dick.

From: Bucky it is too damn loud. old ass

From: Steve Got a new record. Haven’t listened to it yet.

From: Bucky ill be there in 10

That Friday, Bucky walks onto the set in his finest black hoodie and darkest sunglasses, looking less like a badass and entirely like a hungover teenager. 

Before he has a chance to even register what’s going on, he is ambushed by lights, a team touching up his face and his stupid dollar store sunglasses leave him before he has a chance to protest.  

“I told you he’d show up,” you pipe up proudly from your place at the table. “Lil' shit simply missed me too–”

“Stop,” he interrupts, finally getting around to look at the set when the foundation brushes stop assaulting his line of vision. 

For a hot second, he thinks you've taken over Steve's cooking show. 

There are candles floating around, which he assumes you're holding up. A large… cauldron, gigantic wooden mixing spoons and 50 little bowls worth of ingredients are neatly arranged on the table.

“What the hell is going on?” he questions immediately. “What is all this?”

“Mise en place, baby,” you reply, shutting a book you had on the table loudly before looking at him. “You’re on dish duty. Come on.” 

“What?” His eyebrows pull into a frown. 

You dust off your hands before reaching under the table and chucking an apron at him. “Back when I worked as a line cook, the number one rule was to clean up as you go. I like to think of it as--”

“What is going on here?” he specifies, already trying to piece together your timeline in his head with every new piece of lore.

“Welcome to my kitchen, motherfucker.” Your grin is nefarious. “We're gonna do some witchcraft.” 

After he spends fifteen minutes on the phone with Maya confirming that yes, that is indeed the episode and that the heads up he needed would have reached him if he opened the seventeen million messages on the group chat– he finally comes to stand behind the bench with you, a tick in his jaw but also with enough self-awareness to be sheepish. 

He thought his grand return to the channel would be a simple video with some ghost reading or whatever, not… this. 

He turns to you, ready to reach a compromise that ends with him not having to be there at all.

But in the fifteen minutes he had turned his attention to the call, you’ve somehow convinced them to start rolling before he gets the chance to leave, so he’s immediately hit with a--

“We’re on in three…two–”

“Where is your apron?” you demand, looking him up and down.

“I’m not wearing that shit.” It had some stupid slogan like ‘Life is about taking whisks!’ and he had already been through enough.

“Jeez, annyone would think that you're not in love with me--"

"I'm not."

"--by the way you're so ungrateful. I got that custom-made for you,” you tsk. “I could've gotten the other one. Mine could've said ‘he’s my sweet potato’ and yours could've said ‘I yam’.”

Bucky experiences a whole-body chill. 

“Whatever," you dismiss with a wave of hand before looking into the camera. "Before we get started, we recognize that for some, witchcraft is a deeply meaningful religion and spiritual practice that should be approached with respect and curiosity.”

“We’re not claiming this is the definitive guide to witchcraft, we’re simply trying out a book that’s been highly recommended for better or worse, and seeing where it leads us. Whaddya say, Bucko?

You look at him for input. Bucky stares at the dusty, hole-ridden monstrosity on the table.

“What’s it called?” Bucky asks finally after a long pause.

You tap the thick, old book. “Witchcraft for Weenies: A Totally Legit Guide to Authentic Witchcraft by A. Harkness.”

“Is that the actual name or are you just making it up?”  

“Rich coming from the only one between us who actually lied on camera--" you glare at him. "I would never fabricate my sources, I’m a champion for academic integrity.”

You pick up the book to show him, flipping it towards the camera too and sure enough, the book that was basically falling apart at the binding was called exactly that.

“Let’s-a go, baby.”

You stare at him, lips pressed together. Bucky gives no inclination towards changing his answer. 

“Fine. We’re going to do this the hard way, I see.” You exhale, reaching into the pocket of your apron. 

Bucky’s eyebrows knit together when you brandish a deck of cards, yank his arm towards you and drop it into his open palm. 

“Shuffle," you command.

Something very familiar faces him.

Bucky stares at the cards before looking back at you. “Why’s my face on it?”

“It’s a tarot deck I got from Comic Con,” you insist. “Avengers themed. Now shuffle it.”

He thinks you left that card on top on purpose, but regardless, he's already been too much of a menace to the crew to be the cause of any more disturbance.

So he slowly begins, careful and skilled, before you scoff in his face.

“Faster, grandpa," you chide. “I’ve seen the way those hands cut garlic when no one’s around, I know you move faster than that.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but complies anyway, shuffling the cards with the adeptness only a certain Jim Morita could have taught him in a dark tent to keep him awake on a night watch. 

“Faster,” you goad, face smug. “Faster. Come on now, Barnes, your age finally catching up to you?”

It’s stupid– he doesn’t even know why he’s actually complying and increasing his speed. He can’t believe that he was letting you pressure him.

“C’mon, faster, Barnes, you abso-”

His hands were moving so fast by then that they’d have to put the video in slow motion to catch all the movement.

“Faster–” and in the commotion, a few cards fly out.

“Brilliant, thanks.” You slam them down on the table, plucking the deck out of his hand before he has a chance to process why the fuck he actually went ahead with what you were trying. 

“Right, so the universe has decided that these will be your cards,” you tell him, and he finally looks down at what had fallen out of the deck. 

The cards show Sam’s Captain America shield, Carol Danvers, and Spider-Man, with words written below.

“The Star, Six of Cups, The Hanged Man,” you read out thoughtfully.  

Bucky rolls his eyes so hard he thinks they’ll fall out of his skull. 

“You know, I’m going to just make a general assumption and say you need help.” You hum to yourself. “I'm gonna make a potion to get you some.”

“Get me some?” He's too busy trying to figure out what the cards could possibly mean to see that he's walked straight into that one.  

“Get you some perspective. You need an advisor who’ll dish it to you straight. Give you the facts, no bullshit–”

"No." He had too many of those in his life and he has had enough of people being “honest” and "straightforward” and telling him his moustache was ugly every time he dared to try out a new look–

Until you reach under the table and again and suddenly, there’s a white creature buzzing around on the table in front of him.

“Behold– your new advisor,” you announce.

From the corner of his eye Bucky can see the production team scrambling to figure out where the hell this was going. He lip-reads producers’ orders to find adoption links or resources to insert during post-production, and teasers on social media, to make this look more planned. Great, so no one was prepared-- it wasn't just him.

“Whose fucking cat is this?” He looks down at it, all white except for a few brown spots all around, green eyes and evil in her aura.

“Relax, I'll give her back when we're done.”

“Give her ba–” he echoes. “Where did you get her?” 

“The alley outside,” you coo, rubbing under her chin. “I checked and she doesn’t have an owner. But look at her, she’s meant to be here.”

Bucky looks at the cat. The cat looks back at him, irises narrowing into slits. His nose twitches. 

“You can’t just bring a cat–”

“Remember to adopt, not shop,” you say to the camera before clapping your hand. “Anyway. If my potion goes according to plan, she will be giving you unsolicited life advice for eternity.” 

“You will be unemployed, then,” Bucky manages to add while watching the chaos unfold behind the camera.

“Nonsense, I’m irreplaceable.” You grin. “Besides, you can't manufacture chemistry like this even in a cauldron.” 

You send him a flying kiss. His glower was as sharp as laser beams.

“Let’s get started.” You grin at the camera. 

Bucky tries to pet the cat. She hisses at him.

Well all-fucking-right then.

One hour later, things have descended into madness of the most mundane kind.

It was precisely when you started telling him ten minutes in that a book had nothing on your instincts and raw intelligence that Bucky knew that this was going to shit. 

The cauldron was on an electric stove unlike the open fire demanded by the book because the team had enough foresight to know it would be a fire hazard.

You toss in something that looks like cardamom but he isn’t sure at this point. He just wanted to get away from the bright lights and the strange smiling liquid boiling awai.

The cat sits obediently by your side, watching curiously. He is convinced that she is evil.

Unfortunately, Bucky has had to hold her back twice when she tried to stick her paw in to attack a bubble, and at this point, he doesn’t think he has it in him to do it a third time. 

You read the recipe as if it makes any sort of fucking difference now.

“We’re almost done,” you sing. 

Bucky nurses his headache.  “Don't give me hope.” 

“Put some more reegelbeetle seeds in,” you dictate. “This is gonna work, I can feel it.”

Bucky uses his free hand to do as you say. He doesn’t even think it’s the right one, he just reaches for whatever is closer to you and you don't seem to care either.

You toss in some more seeds, stir twice and then turn off the stove. 

“Boom.” You lift the spoon up, watching the thick liquid drip back. “This is either a talking potion or a hex.” 

"Hex to do what?”

“I think it activates dormant allergies.” You squint at the book that literally had no significance besides being a prop. “You got any?”

“No.” But it makes him think of Steve’s pollen allergies. 

“Oh. Well, then there’s only one outcome here.”

“Alright, here we go.” Of the gigantic pot that you’d just stirred, you fish the tiniest amount out on the smallest spoon he’d ever seen, which you also apparently stored in the vast space that was your apron pocket.

The cat watches you hold the spoon near its face.

It takes a sniff. Then two. Finally, after deeming it non-poisonous, it sticks out its tongue the tiniest bit and takes a lick.

The whole crew is silent.

Bucky’s hand is still pressing against his temples.

“Tell us your name,” you urge, voice hopeful.

The cat looks at Bucky, and for a second, something akin to understanding flashes in its eyes. It’s uncanny and weird and something about it unsettles him deeply. 

You seem to catch it too because you look at him in surprise. He looks back at you, face pulled into a frown. 

And for a moment, he wonders. If you'd somehow done it. Because there’s no fucking way–

Then it meows.

He exhales.

Your shoulders drop as you let out an “Aw, man.”

"Great. Goodbye. Like and subcribce to the bell icon," he calls out, dusting his hands against his pants.

Someone from the production crew sneezes.

Both of you turn to him immediately. 

At the same instant, someone else all the way on the opposite end sneezes again, and the whole crew turns to look at them, before another sneezes in the front.

“We did it!” you cheer.

“We didn’t do jack,” Bucky interjects immediately as the crew errupts into a cacophony of chatter and sneezes.  

“It’s a hex that activates allergies and they’re sneezing,” you point towards them with the spoon, triumphant.

“You threw fifteen fuckin' pounds of pepper in there,”  he argues. “You've turned this room into a sandstorm of dry spices. This proves nothing.” 

“I’ve connected the dots.” Your eyes shine, ignoring him.  

“You didn’t connect shit.”

“I’ve connected them.” 

Someone in the corner sneezes. He wonders if Steve’s allergies would be activated by the trace amounts of... cursed soup that he carries with him back to the floor. 

“Well, we can’t leave them like this, Bucky.” You look around, tsking. “We gotta make a reverse hex or something.”

“You can,” he says. “It’s called opening the windows.”

“Nope,” you pop the last syllable. “We’re making another potion. C’mon.”

“First of all, this is not a potion–” he begins, but is interrupted by a buzz on his phone, the screen lit up by a text on the groupchat. 

From: Maya I don’t give a shit if it’s placebo or not. Make a damn potion before you get sued for hexing employees. 

“Fine,” he grumbles. 

“Beautiful. Grab the ash sphinx flakes,” you brandish another big cauldron from fuck knows where.

Bucky stares at you, unmoving.

“Just get the oregano,” you sigh. 

The cat tries sticking her paw in the pot again.

Bucky feels a sneeze incoming.

Whether the hex and subsequent anti-hex Maya forced you to make at gunpoint was real or not, is yet to be determined scientifically.

What actually does happen, is the damn apron you give him carries enough trace amount of your stupid experiment, that it somehow activates Steve’s very real pollen allergy. Bucky finds himself on edge for the rest of the day every time the man rattles the walls with his middle aged dad sneezing.

It carries on over to his show, which means Steve’s episode on baking a 1950s chocolate cake from tomato soup is edited extremely strangely to cut out every sneeze.

Which means Nat’s episode on spy inaccuracies in Argylle takes twice as long to film because they have to take a few seconds every time Steve’s sneezes interrupt her from the set next door.

Which means Bruce’s video on the science behind memory is delayed on shooting.

All in all, something does seemed to have been hexed, but it mostly seems to be everyone’s fucking productivity.

Finally, everyone manages to get through the day, and the videos are sent to post production.

The same night when everyone’s gathered at the dining table to commemorate the end of another shoot day, Bucky slips out, knowing that Steve would save him a slice of pizza if he never returned. 

He goes back to the library to return his copy of Understanding Wood Finishing, when his curiosity leads him back down a familiar path. 

It’s where he finds you again, in the same corner as the last time, on the floor, surrounded by shelves.

“You again.” You quirk an eyebrow when he appears from the shadows. "Aren't you supposed to be eating pizza?"

“What are you absorbing now?” he asks, voice low for once, respecting the sanctity of the library now that day had slipped into night and everything seemed a bit more solemn now.

“Nothing,” you answer.

“Then why are you here?” 

He figured you’d be out there, introducing everyone to the cat that was now set to be roaming the halls, before someone assumed it was a shapeshifting enemy and dealt with it accordingly.

“God forbid someone get some peace and quiet for once,” you mumble. “It’s too loud out there.”

Oh.

You don’t say anything else, leaning back against the bookshelf with your eyes closed.

There really isn't a need for more words. He gets it. 

The understadning leaves silence in its wake. Bucky doesn't really have anything to say.

“Did you come here just to stare at me?” you ask finally. “Did you finally admit your feelings?” 

“Jesus Christ,” he groans. “I’m not in love with you.”

“Only a matter of time.” You smile before changes to something more subdued, a bit more serious. “You wanna talk about what’s actually been bugging you for the last week?”

Bucky looks at you wearily. “The tarot cards tell you something?”

You eye him. “Not more than what’s obvious. Wanna talk about it?”

He swallows, throat suddenly feeling like it's closing in on itself. 

“No.”

“Alrighty.” 

You say nothing more than that, leaving the both of you in relative quiet, save for the buzz of the warm fluorescent light above. 

Bucky takes an awkward seat next to you on the floor.

You pry open an eye to look at him in suspicion.

“Y’mind?” he manges.

“Mind what?”

He gestures to himself uncomforably, readiy to jump up and leave at any second.

You observe him for a second, and for once he stares back with no irritation in his look, just permission.

“No, you can sit.” You close your eyes. “So long as you don’t tell anyone else 'bout this place.” 

If there’s anything Bucky’s good at, it’s keeping a secret. 

He settles back into the shelf with an exhale, letting the weight of day roll off his shoulders.

You wordlessly slide a thermos towards him. He doesn’t even have to open it to know it’s the damn soup from that afternoon.

And if he’s being honest, it doesn’t taste that bad at all. 

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Next part

[quixotical-lymbo]

I saw that your requests were open and rushed over here as quick as I could!

I would LOVE to see more D-16 and Orion Pax, maybe a poly relationship of how they would act as a dynamic. Reader would be whatever you'd like for them to be and a miner as well, maybe they are the balance for the two to keep them in check? Can be fluff or angst, I'm not picky!

Im so excited to see what you do! Keep up the amazing work!

Pairing: D-16 x Orion Pax x mech!Reader Rating: SFW-ish Summary: When a balanced duo meets a like-minded bot like them, how will this shake the dynamic between the newly formed trio? Warnings/Tags: Pre-canon, does this count as spoilers?, angst, fluff, romantic gesture(s), oil baths, secret relationship(s), Elita-1 cameo, Orion gives you a nickname, reader is an archivist (lmao WAS an archivist).  Word Count: 1600+ words 

How did you three meet?

It was a normal day sorting through the records and making sure everything was in its proper place. You adjusted your spectacles before moving the box from your hip into two servos. The corridor you were walking in was long, empty, and cold. Not a single spark in sight and you preferred it that way. 

As you pressed a button, the doors to a room slid open and you carried the box inside. Whistling a small tune, you placed the box on a table and paused when something clicked.

Looking over your shoulder, you found two pairs of optics staring at you. One as blue as the sky, the other as bright as the sun. 

"....hey?" 

"AAAAAAHHHHHH-MFPH!" 

First Impressions:

D-16

🟡 Thought you were rather skittish and weird, especially after you almost got them both in trouble had it not been for Orion shushing you with his servo.

🟡 Thankfully, you were rather understanding, a bit naive, but understanding of their innocent intentions.

Orion Pax 

🔵 You seemed like a nice mech.

🔵 A really nice mech when you didn't rat him and his buddy out to the guards when they approached the room to investigate the scream from earlier. 

🔵 Your derpy spectacles and timid mannerism (he caught onto your nervous tics) made him believe you were one of those uptight bookworms. Not the bad kind or snobbish, but not a social type of bot.

🔵 He was proved wrong twice when you had the opportunity to turn them in, but choose not to after hearing the purpose of their 'visit.' 

Shared interests: 

Oh boy, who knew you were a fan of Megatronus? Orion had a 'pleasant' time hearing D-16 and their new acquaintance ramble on about how cool and awesome the Prime was. 

When the conversation (more like fangirling) about Megatronus turned on Orion, the aforementioned mech spoke about the matrix and his goal in helping seek the location of it. 

Cue flapping servos and a squeal that was shushed by D-16's servo over your intake.

Not only were you interested in learning about the Primes, mainly Megatronus, but you also were interested in finding the lost lore of the Matrix and any information you could get your servos on. 

A friendship blossomed on that day and the three of you agreed to meet up at a bar or park whenever all of you had the time to do so. 

Overall dynamic a friends: 

You fit in pretty well with the duo. 

Your eagerness to learn more despite the consequences and sometimes good judgment was a nice balance to D-16 sticking to protocol and Orion Pax's exasperating ideas. 

Although your time spent with the two wasn't a lot compared to them working together in the mines, it didn't stop the bond from strengthening between you three. 

You were D-16's backup whenever Orion had a ridiculous plan that could lead him getting demoted severely.

You were Orion's hype mech and source of information whenever the two of you felt like you had a lead in your goals. 

You tend to call the red and blue mech Pax, even after being assured that you can call him Orion. After a while, Orion didn't mind the way you said his name, it felt…nice, like a 'special' thing between himself and you. 

Overall, I'd say the three of you were great friends. 

Until….

You picked up your pace and rubbed the glass of your spectacles from the smudge that happened to get on it. It was your off day and you wanted to spend as much of it with your friends as possible, especially when you had exciting news to share with them. 

You nearly bumped into a few bots, apologizing to them anyway, as you maneuvered around the busy streets of Iacon. It did not take long for you to arrive at the mines. You skidded to a halt when you spotted a pink femme chatting with a few other bots. 

You approached and before you could raise a digit to gain her attention she had long since spotted you. 

Elita-1 rolled an optic and jabbed a digit in one direction, then you were off--scurrying towards the showers to find your friends. 

"D? Pax?" You called as you stepped into the communal showers. The showers, which you've seen in some blueprints, were a shared space with only one or two baths built in. 

Mutterings echoed off the tiled area that appeared vacant. If it wasn't for the sound of oil, you would've assumed so. You rose a ridge before continuing to walk deeper into the area, only to stop when the murmurs grew clearer. 

"...Orion, we're going to be late…"

"C'mon, a little fun isn't going to make us late."

When you heard your designation spill from D-16's intake and more reassurance from Orion, you quickened your pace and rounded the corner to find a…well…sight to behold. 

Orion was partially submerged in the bath with D-16 straddling him. Their gazes were filled with a passion you never saw whenever the three of you were hanging out. For some reason, a pang seized your spark and you took a step back but bumped into the wall. 

The noise caused Orion and D to separate. 

"___?!" 

Energon shot to your faceplate added with the heat of the bath fogging up your spectacles caused you to stutter out a 'quick' sorry while attempting to escape. Oil splashed around as D-16 moved to the other end of the bath to cover his flushed face and Orion ran out of the bath to catch up…or rather, catch you.

Running in a slippery area was not a good idea. 

You crashed onto the floor and shrieked when your ankles were snatched and you were pulled back toward the bath. Clawing at the floor, your futile attempts at breaking free caused Orion to drop your ankles and walk around to your front to grab both sides of your helm. D-16 watched as he leaned against the edge of the bath.

"____."

"Yes?" You squawked. 

Orion smashed his dermas against yours. You felt weak and nearly melted into the kiss had it not been for the 'd'aww' coming from your other friend. You found the strength to withdraw from Orion and scoot back until you were a reasonable distance from both. 

"What..why…huh??" You pointed to the two of them, you and Orion, and then to your dermas. 

"We've…been meaning to tell you," D-16 started. 

"Just hadn't found the right moment, but now that you know…we can finally tell you how much we like you!" 

 "...classy." 

"Whaaat? ___ deserves to know about us and how we feel about them! All these secrets just felt..wrong, anyway-" Orion turned to look at you with a wide smile. "Whaddya say, starlight? You in?" 

 

"Call a medic cause  I'm about to have a spark attack." 

Cue them panicking along with you. 

And that's how you managed to become more than friends with your…well, friends. 

First date? 

A bar :) 

Twas a fun time walking the two of them back to your home when they were drunk off of their processors  

In the morning, you all comforted each other with the hangover pains 

First kiss? 

Orion already stole your first official kiss.

You and D's first kiss happened on the second date when you managed to 'borrow' some merch of his favorite Prime at a invite-only Iacon event. D legit swept you off your peds and kissed you hard enough you felt like you were seeing stars.

Demotion…

Yeah…courting a mech who's becoming notorious for sneaking into archives to look at restricted and sensitive data did not go over well with your higher ups. 

You were demoted to a lower title that stripped you off your access to most records. 

To say you were devastated was an understatement. 

You couldn't even look at Orion in the optics for a while. 

Arguments

This incident definitely caused a few disagreements in your relationship

First, D stopping Orion from visiting you too much so that you could have the space you needed 

You felt like scrap for the boiling resentment you were feeling toward yourself, the relationship, and with Orion.

It all boiled over when Orion disregarded D's warning  to stay away and managed to catch you during your working shift. 

And…it didn't end nicely. 

Names were called, not-so-good things were brought up, and you even called Orion a fragging screw up.

Making up 

After the big fight and 'cold war' that was going on between you three, mainly you and D-16 vs Orion. Things…settled down when all of you sat down to talk about it for once. 

Starting the conversation wasn't the easy part, discussion and apologizing was, especially when you and Orion were 'fighting' over how sorry you two were. D-16 had to shut the two of you up by holding you two idiots close in a hug.

Lots of servo-holding and cuddles happened that day :3

 Overall dynamic as a polycule: 

Healthy when communication isn't disrupted.

It's easy to play mediator if something does arise between two of you, but when all three of you are angry at each other? Eh, let's say there is a rule in the relationship to never bottle up your emotions for too long and communicate if you're upset about anything.

Jealousy….ohhhh, it doesn't happen often, but when someone gets a little too close Orion and D are on you like a starved bot on a pile of energon cubes. 

Your relationship is discrete, only a few bots (including your higher ups) know of the true nature of your relationship with D-16 and Orion Pax. 

Overall, it's a beautiful relationship....hopefully nothing bad will happen in the future wink wink.

😼 - I do not give permission for anyone to translate, copy, republish, or plagiarize any of my written works. I provide no permission for any of my literary works to be used in artificial intelligence. banner(s) by @dollywons !!