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nochukoo97 · 1 year ago

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venom

pairing: boxer!jungkook x boxer!reader

summary: after a nasty breakup with your ex, who was a boxer, the person who introduced you to the sport, you decided to make life easier for yourself and switch clubs. little did you know that your club leader, also known as ‘venom’ in the ring, would eventually spark your interest. no matter how much jungkook interests you, you can’t bear to risk another failed relationship, you’re still hurt and traumatised from the inside. but will jungkook manage to crawl his way into your heart?

warnings: MINORS DNI! dom!jk, sub!oc, oral (f&m), fingering, unprotected sx (pls dont), kissing, oc is a little whiny heh, i hope thats all

wc: 10k+

teaser | masterlist

When your ex-boyfriend, Jaehyun, had introduced you into boxing, you immediately fell in love with the sport. In fact, Jaehyun had personally trained you, he had been a boxer for many years, and he had been the one who had taught you all your skills and techniques you know today.

Little did you know this relationship that seemed perfect, both of you being interested in boxing, would turn upside down. Jaehyun had been the sweetest, most charming guy at the beginning of your relationship, but the moment you had turned 20, he had begun tormenting you, using boxing as an excuse to purposefully hit you a little harder than needed, to push you to the ground and belittle you.

The man who you once thought would be your forever partner, became your biggest nightmare. He became unrecognisable to you, making your insecurities shoot through the roof, degrading you to the lowest of the lowest.

Hell, you didn’t know how you managed to put through months of that treatment, before one day you eventually snapped after spotting Jaehyun with another girl from the club, Jisan, at the gym late at night kissing.

It broke your heart, but at the same time you knew that it would be dumb to stay on and even try to forgive him, no matter how many times he had begged at your feet to stay, claiming he would change and be a better boyfriend to you.

That’s how you find yourself trailing behind Jimin, the man who had offered you to join their club.

You researched beforehand, Jeon Jungkook, leader of the club, ring name ‘Venom’, he’s won too many competitions to count.

“Don’t worry, most of the guys here are pretty friendly, there’s another girl here too, so you won’t be alone either,” The man you follow tells you, he had introduced himself to you, Jimin, saying that he was one of the members of the club.

“That’s nice to hear, I didn’t really have good company at my old club,” You let a smile out, Jimin seemed friendly and approachable, your new start was already looking good in your eyes.

“Anyways, this is where we train,” He leads you through a glass door, the familiar sounds of heavy breathing and sand bags being punched immediately reach your ears, it’s almost satisfying, being back in boxing after a month of break.

“And that’s our team leader over there, we call him Venom in the ring,” He chuckles, head nodding towards the man going at the black sandbag.

You watch as he goes at the punching bag, eyes narrowed, focused, his black gloves attack the bag, the gold lettering on the gloves spells out his nickname, ‘Venom’.

“Jeon! New girl is here!” He calls out, making the man halt, turning to look at the both of you. Jimin’s words attracted the other members, there were a few who rushed to you before the team leader did.

“Damn, we got a pretty one,” The guy nearest to you nudgest your arm playfully, as you blink, unsure of how to react.

“Tae, stop it,” Jimin nudges the guy back, “Sorry, he’s usually like that, he doesn’t have the intention to make you uncomfortable,” he scratches the back of his neck.

“Leave her alone, go back to what you were doing,” You spot Jungkook pushing the guys away, grumbling as he approaches you.

Or should you not call him Jungkook? Maybe it was disrespectful.

“___?” You whip your head up to meet his gaze as he calls you, more in a questioning sort of way.

“Yes,”

“I’ve heard good stuff about you,” His stance towers over you, it makes you a little wary of his already brooding aura.

“I want to see her skills,” He tells Jimin, who nods in response.

“You ready? This is your first test to see if you can truly survive here, I’m not gonna go easy on you,” He warns you, tightening the strap on his gloves.

“I’m ready,” You walk over to your bag sitting at the corner of the room, fetching your gloves as you quickly wrap your hands and put the gloves on.

To say Jungkook was impressed, was an understatement. Hell, he did not expect you to dodge and hit every attack so precisely.

“You did well, good job,” He tells you, removing his gloves and watching as you smile back at him, panting slightly as you bow.

“What on earth did I just hear,” Another guy deadpans from the side, jaw dropping to the ground.

“There’s no way Jeon just let out a praise,” He gasps, “Come on man, in my six years of knowing you you’ve never complimented me once!”

“Whatever,” Jungkook grumbles back at him.

You make eye contact with Jimin, who also seems amused at the team leader’s behaviour. Was he not acting normal? Why was everyone so amazed by his words?

“I gotta say, ___, that was impressive, I’m Yoongi,” Another man, around the same height as Jimin, approaches you, extending a hand. You politely bow, shaking his hand.

It seems like joining this club wasn’t so bad after all, it seemed like a welcoming place with good support already.

unknown number: hi __, this is jungkook, jimin passed me your number.

unknown number: come early tmr, you’re gonna meet your trainer.

You pick up your phone, the screen lighting up caught your attention.

you: okay, thanks.

The next day you quickly head towards the club, grabbing a quick breakfast along the way. Before you push open the glass door to the entrance, you spot Jungkook training with another man whom you had not seen previously.

“___, come,” He calls out to you, heaving when he abruptly stops punching the mitts, “This is Woojae, he’s my personal trainer and I want you to train with him,”

WHAT?. Jungkook’s personal trainer?

“I’ve told him not to go easy on you, just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean you’re weaker than anyone else here, am I right?” He leans closer, whispering into your ear as his hand clasps around your arm.

“Yes,” You almost shudder at the close proximity, you’ve never felt this intimidated by someone before. To be honest, you were proud of your strong aura that you carried while boxing, not afraid to spar with even the burliest of team mates. Yet somehow Jungkook, or Venom, had a different effect on you.

“Hi ___, nice to meet you,” Woojae, quickly shrugs off the mitt on his hand, shaking your hand.

“I’ll finish up here with Jeon and then I’ll analyse your performance ‘kay?” He tells you, while putting the mitts back on, you nod your head, taking a seat on the floor to watch while wrapping up your hands.

You noticed Jungkook’s eyes had a different glint in it whenever he began boxing. The way his eyes would narrow, focused on whatever was in front of him, the grunts he let out after releasing a strong punch, his heavy breathing filling the air.

It was fascinating to you, having always dreamt of being in Jungkook’s position. But being a female in a male dominated sport was hard, if you were lucky, you had competitions with other females. But the majority of them were still males. Yet you didn’t feel this was a disadvantage, after all you still managed to win.

“___, your turn,” Woojae calls you out, as you quickly get up, getting onto the mat.

The first few minutes of sparring was not bad, it definitely wasn’t easy considering you could tell Woojae was not going easy on you. His attacks back at you were much more complicated, it often took you by surprise.

WACK.

You don’t even realise what’s happening before Woojae’s glove comes into contact with your left cheek.

A groan emits from your throat, hand reaching up to touch the area with your gloves.

“Gonna give up? Or are you gonna continue to fight like a strong fighter?” Woojae nudges you a little harshly with his glove, he definitely was not going easy on you.

But still, who were you to give up? You’ve been hit multiple times before, but this time it simply felt different. With your team leader’s gaze trained on you.

You quickly get back into your starting position, attacking back at Woojae. With each punch you throw, your ponytail swishes slightly, a pant comes out from your mouth.

Jungkook notices the change in your demeanour, you have this determined look in your eyes, hands up and ready to fight back. It’s impressive to him.

You weren’t about to give up so easily. You were gonna prove you are worthy of being in this club.

“___, out of my many years of knowing Jeon, he’s never once offered anyone else his personal trainer,” Mingyu, another team member whom you had recently gotten to know, whispers as he gazes to where Jungkook was, punching a sandbag.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” You wave him off, chuckling, “Maybe he just wants to toughen me up with training so he assigned the same trainer?”

“Nah, I think you’re different. The other girl here, Yubin, she’s currently on holiday, but she practically begged Jeon to train with her and his trainer,” He starts, “It’s like a miracle to see him like this,”

Hoseok, you came to learnt who was also another teammate, leans in to join your conversation, “Yeah, and just warning you, shes like fucking delusional about him, our leader gets so annoyed whenever she clings onto him,” He laughs, as you nod, eyebrows slightly raised at the new information.

“___, I’ll start with you today,” Woojae comes up to you, reaching out a hand to pull you up from where you were sitting on the floor.

“Have fun!” Hoseok calls out, as you laugh at him, turning back to trail behind your trainer.

You had been told today was a match between Jungkook and someone else from a neighbouring team,

“That guy’s name is Eunwoo, he used to be best friends with Jeon, but they’re aren’t on the best of terms,” Jimin tells you, pointing towards the other guy in the ring, “Jeon’s in for a lot of money,”

Another thing you learnt was that Jungkook and Eunwoo had fought before, and after Jungkook had won, Eunwoo insisted on a rematch immediately.

The match was held at your club’s gym, people from different clubs surrounded the ring, chatters filled the room and both guys prepared in their own rooms. It seemed to be a huge thing, considering even though it was only two clubs fighting, there were at least five others who came to watch.

“Okay! Settle down, we’re starting now,” The announcer spoke through the microphone, catching everyone’s attention as the noise reduced to mutters.

“First, we have the one and only ‘Venom’, the previous champion!” Jungkook enters the ring, with Namjoon by his side, another team member. His eyes are trained on his opponent, who was currently outside the ring, preparing to enter.

“Next, it’s Eunwoo, who challenged Jeon back for a rematch, he seems prepared today,” Eunwoo enters the ring with his cornerman, chest puffed out as he approaches Jungkook.

“Nice to see you again Jeon, hope you’ll enjoy the taste of defeat today,” He sneers, coming a little too close to Jungkook for his liking.

“Fuck off, you better watch what you say,” Jungkook grits his teeth, his black mouth guard showing as he shoves Eunwoo back to remain a distance.

The crowd releases a series of ‘oohs’ and ‘damns’, as Namjoon pulls Jungkook a little further back, in an attempt to call him down.

The bell rings, both cornermen step aside, as Jungkook and Eunwoo approach each other, both their fists kept up.

Eunwoo launches the first attack, jabbing at Jungkook who blocks all the attacks, his fists remain up, not faltering once.

But throughout, Jungkook doesn’t attack back at Eunwoo, he only dodges and defends all his attacks, making the crowd confused.

“What the hell is Jeon doing? I placed so much fucking money on that guy, is he wimping out?”

“What’s going on with Venom today? I’ve never seen him like this,”

“Jeon, are you being a pussy? Gonna lose that ‘Venom’ title?” Eunwoo provokes, but Jungkook doesn’t respond, he only glares at him, dodging another punch.

“Why is he not attacking back?” You turn to Jimin, who’s sitting beside you.

“He’s using a new technique, but it’s surprising, he’s never practiced this before and it’s usually discouraged,” Jimin turns to face you, “He’s basically trying to tire Eunwoo out and conserve his energy till the last minute,”

Your mouth opens to form an ‘o’, nodding your head as you watch Eunwoo continuously provoke Jungkook.

“Come on! Are you sure you’re just gonna put your fucking hands up and dodge my attacks? Why? Too fucking weak to even attack back, what happened to you Jeon?” Eunwoo spits in his face, laughing while pulling his hand down to jab Jungkook in the rib, making him falter back and groan.

“Shit, he got hit pretty hard there,” Hoseok mutters beside you.

“Or is it because of that new girl in your club huh? Fancy her? Maybe when I win, I’ll ask the pretty girl to come and kiss me on the cheek, huh? Would you like that?” You stiffen at the mention, some people amongst the crowd letting out reactions and turning their gaze to you.

That was all it took for Jungkook to growl back at Eunwoo, deciding he was done playing games with the guy and waiting for him to tire out.

Jungkook quickly regains his composure, this time he isn’t waiting to tire the guy out anymore, instead he throws full-blown jabs back at Eunwoo, grunting harshly.

“Fuck! That really got you going huh?” Eunwoo attempts to dodge, slowly losing his energy.

“Eunwoo! What the fuck are you doing! Wake up!” His coach yells from the crowd, watching as Eunwoo takes a hit from your team leader.

Jungkook sends a jab to Eunwoo’s rib, causing him to falter, his glove makes contact with Eunwoo’s jaw, watching as the guy falls to the floor, groaning.

“Are you gonna get up? Or accept that I’ll always win you,” Jungkook sneers, launching another jab to the guy’s rib.

“10, 9, 8, 7,” The announcer begins counting down into the mic, Eunwoo attempts to get back up, but groans as his arms give way and fall back to the ground.

“Awww, gonna accept defeat again like the last time?” Jungkook leans down, pressing his glove into Eunwoo’s torso.

“Fuck- Off,” Eunwoo grunts, using all the strength he has left to push Jungkook off him.

“6, 5, 4,” The cheers begin filling the room, “3, 2, 1!”

“Venom takes the championship again! Jungkook wins the match!” The announcer lifts Jungkook’s arm up, signaling victory.

The room bursts into cheers and Jungkook smirks, turning to face his club. Eunwoo’s team on the other hand seemed the opposite, having lost all the money bet on him.

“Try again next time, huh Eunwoo?” Jungkook turns to his opponent, laughing as he exits the ring.

Eunwoo can only mutter curses under his breath, his cornerman quickly aiding him to stand up.

“___,” You hear Jungkook’s voice call out to you, as you whip your head up to face him.

“Did I do good today?” He leans down to whisper into your ear, as you shudder, his hot breath fanning onto your skin, “Hmm?”

Your cheeks are flushed, as Jungkook pulls back to read your expression. Why was he suddenly being so bold in front of so many people?

Of course, people amongst the crowd noticed this, they sent a few reactions, which made you even more embarrassed at the sudden attention.

“Yeah, you did great,” You can’t even look him in the eye, eyes trained on his chest, heaving heavily as he catches his breath.

Jungkook nudges your chin fondly, chuckling as he pats your head, heading over to his room to change and cool down.

“I’ve never seen our team leader do that in my whole life, what’s going on,” Jimin nudges you from the side, as the rest of your club members join in agreeing.

“Honestly, I don’t know either,” You mutter, cheeks still tainted a bright red from the previous situation.

“Hi! I’m Yubin! Nice to meet you, seems like I’ll finally have a friend,” The girl in front of you seems more friendly than you had expected. When Hoseok had mentioned Yubin to you, you had initially thought that she would be snarky and mean, maybe she wasn’t as bad as she seems.

Okay nevermind, you’ve definitely made an assumption way too early.

“Kookie, can you please help me hold my mitt?” You watch, wincing slightly at the scene before you. Yubin is clinging onto Jungkook’s arm, the tattooed one, as she holds out the mitts in front of her.

“Don’t call me that,” Jungkook grunts, shoving Yubin away from him.

She doesn’t take this too well, whining as she dramatically pouts in front of him, “Please? I want to train with you,”

Jimin cringes from the side, nudging your shoulder to check if you were witnessing the scene unfold before you. Oh, for sure you were.

“I can’t, I’m gonna start training,” He turns away from the girl, grunting under his breath.

“___, come here,” When Woojae suddenly calls you out, you whip your head up, grabbing your gloves and the wrap and heading towards him. The trainer makes Jungkook hold on to your mitts, to which Jungkook doesn’t reject.

Yubin doesn’t like this one bit, she immediately drops her jaw in shock, glaring straight at you as you approach the man.

“I need to wrap my hands first, hold on,” You tell Woojae, dropping your gloves to wrap your hands.

“Bring it here, I’ll do it,” Jungkook takes the roll from you, skillfully wrapping up your hand quickly.

“Kookie, how is that fair?” Yubin whines from the side, standing beside the both of you as she watches Jungkook finish up wrapping your hands.

“Yubin, get out, I’m trying to train with her,” He turns to glare at the girl, making her cower away.

“That’s so unfair, suddenly she comes in and has all his attention,” Yubin mutters under her breath as she walks away, but you manage to catch that. It somehow makes you proud inside.

“I want to spar with ___,” Yubin announces, as Jungkook crosses his arms, frowning at the girl sitting across from him. Most of the guys were sitting around at the couch, right before practice. Today was meant to be a more laid back practice, so it meant the trainers were not in the gym today.

“Why?” Jungkook questions the girl, “I’m not sure you’re at her level yet,”

Yubin gasps, purely offended at that, she stands up, declaring, “Don’t care, gonna spar with her today, I’ll tell her when she arrives.”

The sudden news definitely shocks you when you enter the gym, but nonetheless you still accept it, putting on your gloves and getting into the ring.

To your surprise, since you weren’t aware of what her level was, you managed to get her on the floor easily within the first few minutes of sparring. One jab to her rib and she had already landed on the ground, unable to get up.

“I think I broke my rib,” She sobs, sounds rather fake to you, but you still rush to her side, apologising as you ask her where it hurts.

“Piss off, you purposefully hurt me,” She grunts, launching a punch to your face unexpectedly.

You only feel the harsh contact between her glove and your nose, a loud crunch sounding out as you groan.

“Fuck, are you okay? Hey! Someone get a towel, she's bleeding quite badly!” You can hear Jimin yell, as someone scurries to retrieve the towel

Pain sears through your face, your nose throbs as you wince, hissing at the pain.

When you open your eyes, there’s a puddle of blood in front of you, blood dripping down from your nose as you quickly remove your gloves.

And yet Yubin has the audacity to fake whine, “Guys, I literally broke my rib here and you’re all attending to her?”

“Yubin, your rib is fine, I felt it just now, there isn’t even a bruise so quit complaining,” Tae groans, nudging the girl to get up from the floor.

“I’ll do it,” Jungkook comes back with a wet cloth, but pulls it away from Jimin’s grasp when he tries to take it.

“What?” Jimin is dumbfounded as he watches Jungkook carefully grab your chin, making you turn to face him as he wipes off the blood from your face.

“What the hell is going on…” Hoseok mutters, watching in awe as Jungkook, the man known for his powerful and brooding aura, tenderly wipes your face with a cloth. It astounds everyone to see their team leader be so gentle for once.

“Yubin, what’s your problem?” Jungkook turns to face the girl, eyebrows furrowed as his expression contrasts to his hands gently tending to you.

“She hit me too hard! Jungkook, can’t you see she almost broke my rib!” Yubin’s being unnecessarily dramatic at this point, and everyone else can see right through her.

“Don’t bother coming back tomorrow, you’re suspended from here until after tomorrow. The rules are clear, no foul play, and you clearly punched her after the sparring was over.” He orders her, making her exit the gym.

“Come, go to the medical room, you busted your lip too,” Jungkook grabs your hand, leading you into the room and closing the door behind him.

Your heart is erratically pounding in your chest, your breathing is slightly heavier, from both the previous sparring and Jungkook’s ministrations.

You sit on the couch in the room, hands fiddling with each other as Jungkook shuffles through the medical kit.

“Thanks for that just now,” You whisper, but Jungkook catches it, turning to face you, the corner of his lips turning up into a smile.

“Just ignore her, she’s usually like that.” He tells you, taking a cotton bud and applying the ointment on your busted lip. You wince at the sudden contact, hissing as the cut stings.

“Sorry, it’ll be quick I promise,” He tells you, eyes focusing on applying the cream.

Seeing Jungkook so up close does things to your heart, you notice his two lip piercings, the chain necklace he has on, his hair covering his eyes slightly.

You unconsciously reach up to swipe his hair out of his face, before quickly pulling your hand back once you realise what you were doing.

“Hmm?” He hums, looking back up to make eye contact with you. Jungkook’s heart pounds in his chest as he scans your face, cheeks tainted as your eyes stare back at his. Fuck, you do things to him.

“Am I making you soft? Why does everyone act so surprised when you do this kind of stuff?” You whisper, maintaining eye contact with him.

“Maybe you are,” He brushes a strand of hair away from your face, it makes your heart skip a beat. “Why? Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” You mumble, looking down at your hands in your lap. Your voice wavers as you reply, not trusting yourself to speak fully.

“So you’ll let me do this?” He leans in, breath fanning against your ear. Your breath hitches, his close proximity is so familiar to you, yet not. Even though it wasn’t the first time he was playing with you like this, it had caught you by surprise every time.

You stiffen slightly as you feel his lips make contact with your ear for a split second, eyes widening as he pulls back to face you.

“You’re cute when you're flustered. A whole different person. When you’re fighting you look like an angry cat,” He chuckles, teasing you as you gasp.

“No I don’t!” You slap his chest playfully, feeling at ease with the man already.

“Mm, okay,” He muses, turning back to place the ointment into the medical kit.

You clutch onto your chest for a second, processing what had just happened.

He’s about to be the death of you.

“___, there’s another girl from a team who requested to spar with you, her name’s Jisan, you’ll be in a match with her next week,” Namjoon approaches you, telling you.

“What?” You gasp, raising your voice a little as Namjoon is taken aback by your reaction.

“Nothing,” You sigh. There was no way Jisan, the girl Jaehyun had cheated with you on, had the nerves to even set up a match with you like that. But still, it gave you an opportunity to get your revenge back, so who were you to back down from this fight?

For the next week following up to the fight, you’ve been staying late at the gym, punching the same sandbag as you push yourself to work harder. There was no way you were letting yourself fall to Jisan.

“___, go home, you’re exerting yourself too much,” Jimin tells you, holding the sandbag to stop it from swaying.

“Can’t” You pant, resting your palms on your thighs as you catch your breath, “Can’t lose to her, need to practice,”

“I’m telling you, you’re gonna over exert yourself and not do as well during the actual match,” He warns you, but leaves you alone, packing up his stuff to leave.

“I won’t, I just need to train as hard as I can to beat her.”

Oh, how wrong were you.

Jisan currently has you pinned against the floor, you groan as she lands another punch square to your jaw.

“___! Get up!” You can hear Woojae shout from the side, but everything’s hurting from how hard the girl had punched you.

“Jisan! Jisan! Jisan!” That’s all you hear as the crowd cheers, the countdown already starting as you struggle against her.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, no wonder Jaehyun left you for me,” She sneers in your face, as a tear escapes from your eye.

“Hah! What a pussy! Babe, take a look at her, pathetic,” She calls over to Jaehyun in the crowd, making you growl underneath her. It’s too late, the bell shrills, indicating your defeat.

You don’t bother to wait for Woojae to come and assist you down, instead, you run out of the ring, out of the gym and far away from the crowd, to a place behind the gym where no one went to.

It hurts your pride, especially to lose to someone like Jisan. You didn’t miss the way Jaehyun had laughed right in your face as he watched you get beaten up. It made you so mad that you let yourself lose to someone like her.

There was a sandbag hanging there, as you relentlessly attacked it, releasing all your pent up anger. Despite how many times you tried to punch the bag, your emotions built up on top of each other.

It’s like your world is crashing down, as you slide down and curl up into a ball, sobbing. Your pride was at your lowest, to be tormented by your ex, have him laugh in your face, have the girl he cheated on with you to beat you in a boxing match, it made you feel like you were worthless.

It’s been almost an hour as you sit against the wall, sobbing into your arms as you stare at the ground. Why did you have to lose? You spent so much energy into preparing for this match, yet you lost.

“___,” You hear someone call out to you, hand wrapping around your sobbing figure. But you push whoever was there away, there was no way anyone could see you in this state.

“Come here, it’s only me here, everyone else left,” You recognise the voice now, it’s Jungkook.

“Go away, I’m fine,” You sniff, whipping away the tear rolling down your cheek. It was even more embarrassing to you that Jungkook had seen you fail in front of his own eyes, and now he’s watching you weep pathetically because you lost to Jisan.

“It’s fine to lose you know, ___,” He squats next to you, but you only turn away, refusing to show your face.

“It’s not okay when that’s the girl my ex cheated with me on in my old club,” You spit out, a scoff coming out from your mouth at the thought of them.

Jungkook stiffens slightly at this, having not known much about your previous experience with your old club. He had only merely known that you had been with another club but it wasn’t ideal for you, which was why you had switched over.

“I have lost to many people like that before too, people who I want to get revenge on, you know?” He starts, sitting next to you, “But because I was so focused on the fact that I hated them, and I wanted them to lose so badly, I put aside my focus on actually implementing my skills during the match,”

You turn over to watch him through your teary eyes, noticing his gaze softening the moment he makes eye contact with you.

“And I know you aren’t weak for a fact, in fact everyone in the crowd could tell that it wasn’t the fact that you weren’t capable enough. We could tell you were distracted with something else, which is why I also came to find you,” He brushes your hair away from your face, tucking it behind your ear.

“I know how strong you are ___, or else why would I accept you into my club, hmm?” He tells you, “Don’t let this defeat indicate your strength and level in boxing, our whole team knows how strong you are,”

“The most important thing is to put aside everything else, and just focus on your skills in the match. Never let anything else falter you,”

You can’t help but smile at the praise, even though your heart still feels heavy after the loss, maybe his words took a little of that weight off your chest.

“If you want, I’ll spend extra time after training to train with you,”

You whip your head up, eyes widening in shock.

“Really? You don’t mind?”

“I wouldn’t mind since I can see the potential in you ___,”

So you and Jungkook had begun staying back after practice and training together, and the both of you had definitely grown closer than before.

“Good!” He praises as you relentlessly attack his hits, punching the mitts with all your might.

“One more round then we’re done,” You nod your head, catching your breath and taking a sip of water before returning back to the mat where Jungkook was waiting.

“Start,” You’re about to hit the mitt, preparing to launch a jab before you’re cut short, both you and Jungkook were shocked to hear the door to the gym open.

Practice ended at least a good hour ago, so everyone should have gone home by now.

But of course, you shouldn’t be surprised that Yubin was the one entering the gym, a fake gasp coming from her mouth as she runs up to Jungkook.

“Yubin, what are you doing here,” Jungkook shrugs her hand off when she clings onto his arm.

“Are you giving ___ private lessons? Can I join?” She flutters her lashes at him, pouting and attempting to give him puppy eyes, remember, attempting.

You decide to take matters into your own hands, why must she get in the way of you and Jungkook?

“No Yubin, we’re specifically only training together, besides, aren’t you supposed to be home now? I’ll see you tomorrow,” You tell her, grabbing Jungkook’s arm and pulling him back to the mat. He raises an eyebrow at you, smirking as he lets himself get pulled by you.

Yubin scoffs at this, she doesn’t have any intentions of giving up, as she approaches you both again.

“Jungkookie~, You’ll let me join right?” She asks him, standing a little too close to Jungkook to your liking.

“No Yubin,” He grunts, putting the mitts back on and ignoring her shocked reaction. You can only laugh watching her stomp out of the gym.

“Jealous, huh?” He taunts you, smirking as he watches your reaction.

“No, I just wanted to train, didn’t want her in the way,” You mumble, pulling your arms up to get ready.

Jungkook finds it amusing, but he doesn’t comment on your behaviour further, simply complying and returning back to train you.

To say you and Jungkook had grown close was an understatement, he would treat you to dinner or food after your training, and would constantly text you to check up on your health. You were content with this, but your heart said otherwise. There was always this small part of you that craved for more, that yearned for a deeper relationship with him. Yet the possibility of a new relationship failing just like your old one with Jaehyun, led you to push those feelings aside.

You sigh, punching the sandbag again as you snap out of your daze. Ever since Jungkook’s fight with Eunwoo, he seemed to be more interested in you, playing with your heart and teasing you here and there. It made you go crazy, thinking about him when you went to bed and the moment you woke up.

“Hey ___, what are you doing after this?” Mingyu taps you on the shoulder, catching your attention.

“I’m gonna train with Woojae and Jungkook, then I should be done for the day, why?” You tell him, holding the sandbag in place to stop it from swaying.

“Wanna get drinks with me? I’m bored and I wanted to go to this bar,” Mingyu smiles at you, waiting for your response.

“Sure, I’ve got to tell Jungkook to cancel our extra practice today, hold on,” You were definitely taken aback by the sudden ask, but you weren’t opposed to it either. Mingyu seemed like a friendly guy anyways, to you it was good to make some friends here and there.

You approach the said man, who was currently talking to Jimin.

“Jungkook,” He turns around to face you, the corners of his mouth pulling into a smile.

“I’ve got plans tonight with Mingyu so can we cancel the extra practice today?” You tell him, Jungkook’s eyes widen, since when did you have plans with Mingyu, his friend out of all people?

“Yeah sure,” He starts, “He asked you?” Arms folding as he looks over to the guy.

“Yeah,” You reply, noticing a slight frown forming on his face as he gazes over to Mingyu, but you choose to ignore it anyway.

“Okay you’re done today, good work,” Woojae pants, reaching out to bump his gloves into yours. You notice Jungkook standing at the side of the gym, so you head towards him.

“Did I do well today?” You playfully nudge him, giving him a smile as you await his response.

Instead you’re met with a cold “Yeah”, from him, Jungkook doesn’t even spare you a glance before he heads to one of the sandbags, beginning to jab at it a little too hard.

“Jeon, lay back a little, you’re gonna burst another one of those bags,” Woojae jokes, laughing as he packs up his stuff. Jungkook doesn’t respond, he only continues to punch it harder.

“Don’t worry about him, to be honest this is his normal self, ever since you came along he’s been more soft, so don’t be too surprised,” Woojae whispers towards you, as you only meekly nod.

But why was he being different all of a sudden? Did you do something?

“Hey ___, you’re done right? Let’s go,” Mingyu wraps his arm around you, as you giggle, following him. But you also don’t fail to notice the punching sounds in the back growing unconsciously louder.

It was the morning of your huge fight, you headed to the gym to warm up before the match, expecting to see Jungkook there. Yet when you enter the gym, you’re met with cold, hard silence.

Maybe he just wanted more sleep? He’ll be watching your match for sure right?

When you enter the ring, even though a whole crowd of people was cheering you on, a huge sum of money was placed on you, you couldn’t help but enter with a heavy heart.

Looking over to where your team sat, your team leader, Jungkook, was nowhere to be seen. The spot where he usually sits empty.

Was he really that mad at you to the point he didn’t come to your match? You honestly thought deep down inside, maybe you and him had something together, it made you want to believe in relationships again.

You don’t have time to look over and wait for the said man to arrive, as the announcer introduces you and your opponent.

Throughout the first round, you were constantly being attacked, you failed to defend yourself, your opponent managing to catch you at your weakest moments, jabbing you right and left. And everytime you tried to attack back, she managed to block your hits, tiring you out instantly.

You couldn’t help it, not when Jungkook was in your mind. Not when you couldn’t spot the man sitting amongst the crowd.

The bell shrills when you land on the ground, unable to get up. You still had one more round, yet you were ready to give up.

Woojae walks over to help you up, “___, what’s up with you today?”

“I don’t know,” You can’t even bear to look him in his eyes, head hung low as you walk to your prep room.

“Whatever it is, you have half an hour to sort it out, whether you lose or win, put in your best effort, not whatever happened out there,” He strictly tells you, before closing the door, leaving you alone in the room to gather your thoughts.

“Where is he? Did I really do something that bad to anger him?” You mutter under your breath, a string of curse words escape your mouth, frustration boiling from you.

“I’ve been watching you from in here,”

You immediately jump at the voice, chills running down your spine as you whip your head up. Jungkook’s standing against the wall, back leaning on the wall with his arms folded, you can’t read his expression, but he nods his head towards the TV mounted to the wall, the empty ring displayed on the screen.

“You scared me,” You whisper, letting out a sigh of relief, at least it wasn’t what you thought it was, some kind of ghost.

“Did you forget what I told you?” He approaches you, slowly walking towards your seated figure on the couch. “To not let anything else distract you and focus on your skills in the game?”

“That’s bold of you to say when you were the reason why I couldn’t focus just now,” You scoff, before stiffening up, realising that you had just exposed yourself.

“Hmm? You were thinking about me?” He leans closer to face you, both your faces inches apart.

Your breath hitches in your throat, your heart pounds in your chest, you’re pretty sure he might even be able to hear it.

“No, I mean, not really,” You turn your head to face away from his gaze, but he only puts a finger under your chin to guide you to face back to him.

“You sure?” He taunts you, a smirk clear on his face as he watches you flush. “It’s fun to see this side of you, hmm? All flustered under my touch?”

You can’t even reply to him, your eyes only widen as he leans further.

“So you won’t mind if I do this?”

Before you know it, Jungkook’s lips are on yours. Jeon Fucking Jungkook, Venom.

You halt for a second, before wrapping your arms around his neck and kissing him back.

When he pulls apart, the both of you pant heavily, staring at each other.

“Been waiting forever to do that, you know?” He breaks the silence first, “Now since you’ve gotten your kiss, you better not be distracted in your second round in ten minutes,”

You gasp, still flustered from a while ago, “How am I supposed to focus now when you just kissed me?”

“Win the match and I’ll give you a reward later,” He pecks your lips, sending you a teasing smile.

You can’t even process what has happened, in the last twenty minutes of your break, Jungkook had kissed you. THE Jungkook kissed you.

This time, Jungkook sits amongst the crowd, you make eye contact with him before going up into the ring, it gives you a boost of motivation.

You’re curious, what reward would he give you if you did win? If you didn’t, would he be disappointed? But he just kissed you, so what does that mean?

“Last round!” The announcer calls out, as you step into the ring. You shake any thoughts off your mind, “Don’t think about anything else, focus,” you tell yourself.

You land a few jabs on your opponent, causing her to falter back. Another right uppercut to her jaw and she falls to the ground. You don’t let her take the opportunity to get up as you jab her again.

The countdown starts, as she tries to get up, with every second that counts, your heart beats harder and harder.

“3,2,1!” The announcer shouts, “___ takes the champion!” He holds up your hand high, as you smile, feeling a surge of relief. Finally, victory is yours.

You spot your team cheering up and down, Jungkook smiling proudly as cheers flood the arena.

“I knew you could do it!” You laugh as Jimin pats you on the back, the other club members had come over to congratulate you as well.

The whole club had decided to go out for a meal as a celebration for your first win, finding a restaurant near the gym.

You decide to text Jungkook, who was sitting across from the table to you.

you: so what’s my reward? 🙃

His phone lights up on the table, catching his attention.

jungkook: you’ll find out later

jungkook: follow me back to my apartment

Your heart thumps in your chest, looking up to make eye contact with the man.

Jungkook gestures towards your phone, signalling for you to check it.

jungkook: follow me outside, im going for a smoke break

“I’ll be outside,” Jungkook stands up, as the rest of the table nods before quickly engaging back in the conversations.

You quietly excuse yourself from the table, scurrying behind Jungkook.

“Come here,” He calls out to you, walking into the alleyway next to the restaurant. You scuttled behind him, watching as he pulls out a cigarette from the box and lights it, inhaling.

“I want to know my reward,” You demand, hands planted on your hips as you stare back at him.

“Patience sweetheart,” He sighs, turning his head to the side and blowing out the smoke.

“So what are we?”

Jungkook’s a little taken aback by the sudden question, but he doesn’t let it show, walking forward to cage you against the wall.

“What do you want us to be?” He whispers, pecking your cheek tenderly.

You don’t reply, tugging his collar to make him lean down, connecting both of your lips.

“Just want you,” You mumble after breaking apart the kiss.

“Yeah? You’ll get me later,” He chuckles, pulling his cigarette in to inhale another breath.

You almost choke on your saliva, gulping as you realised what he just said.

“But for real,” He laughs at your flustered expression, “Be my girlfriend?”

You nod your head, pulling him in for another kiss.

You and Jungkook should have definitely not left the dinner this early considering it was literally your celebratory dinner, but the both of you simply would have gone crazy if you did so.

“Kook, close the door,” You laugh through a kiss as Jungkook hums, mindlessly shutting the front door to his apartment with his foot.

“Fuck, been waiting to do this since forever,” He mumbles, as he trails kisses down your neck, sucking on a spot that makes you grip his arms a little tighter.

The apartment is filled with your soft moans, Jungkook kissing your neck passionately as he groans.

“Up,” He taps your butt, signalling for you to jump up.

You do so, and he carries you into the room, gently placing you on his bed.

You giggle as he peppers more kisses down, before halting to remove his shirt, his torso now full on display for you to see.

You use this opportunity to remove your shirt and pants, leaving you in your underwear, as Jungkook groans at the sight.

“Pretty girl,” He sighs, kissing down to your cleavage, as you giggle, playing with his hair and hands roaming his back.

“Kiss me,” You whine, tapping his shoulders to get him to move his attention back to your lips.

“So needy, huh?” He chuckles, “Gonna make this good for you, yeah? Give you your reward?”

He unclasps your bra, gazing intently at your boobs as he pinches one of your nipples, making you arch your back, a whine emitting from your mouth.

He trails down to your lower body, teeth clasping the band of your underwear as he pulls it down, the sight itself sends a rush of heat to your pussy.

“Jungkook,” Another whine, he shushes you quickly, nose nudging against your clit as you sigh in relief.

His tongue makes contact with your clit, sucking on it as you mewl, sensations overwhelming you already. His fingers begin to trace over your slit, gathering the slick as he slowly pushed two fingers in.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking tight, how is my cock suppose to fit in here later, huh?” He laughs, breath fanning on your pussy as you shudder.

“I can,” You tell him through moans, hands finding its way through his hair as you tug on it.

“Mm, gonna stretch you out,”

His fingers hit that spongy spot inside of you, as a choked moan escapes your mouth, chanting his name. Sensations overwhelm you as he continues to finger you, sucking on your clit, you’re so close.

“Mmhm- No!” Just as you’re about to climax, Jungkook quickly removes his fingers, your hole clenches, as you whine at the empty feeling.

Jungkook steps back a little, removing his pants as his cock springs up, slapping his stomach.

This time, you immediately take initiative, sitting up from the bed as you take his cock in your hand, slowly stroking it, making Jungkook hiss above you.

You peer up to him, making eye contact as you stick out your tongue to trace over the slit on his head, Jungkook groans at the sight.

“Good girl,” He praises you, as you sink your mouth further down, taking most of his cock, while you continue to stroke the rest.

You bob your head up and down, as Jungkook’s moans grow louder, his hands grip onto your head, slightly pushing your head down as you let out a strangled moan.

“Fuck, fuck enough,” He quickly pulls you back, angry cock red and throbbing as you smile, looking up at him.

“I was about to cum, you don’t know what you do to me,” He sighs, wiping away the drool at the corner of your mouth.

You climb back onto the bed as Jungkook follows you, crawling on top of you as he locks his lips with yours again.

“Ready?” He breaks the kiss, tapping the head of his cock at your entrance. You quickly nod, wrapping your legs around his waist.

A sigh comes from both your mouths as Jungkook sinks in, the stretch bringing you more pleasure than pain.

“You can move,” Jungkook nods, beginning to pick up a rhythm as he pushed his cock in and out of you, moans growing louder.

“Hnggh please” Another strangled moan emits your mouth, as Jungkook chuckles from above you.

“Please what baby? Use your words,” He whispers into your ear, sucking on the skin right below it, making you arch your back further, inching closer to him.

“Faster, please, need you,” You pant, hands roaming his back as he picks up his thrusts, watching as you roll your eyes back in pleasure.

“Yeah? Like that?” You nod, moaning as your nails drag along his broad and muscular back, pleasure overwhelming you.

“Right there! Don’t stop please,” You sob, tightening your grip on his back as he grunts above you, cock slamming into your pussy.

Your thighs begin to shake around his waist as you climax, Jungkook’s cum spurting into your pussy as he lets out a guttural moan.

Quickly pulling out, he kisses you, pushing the strand of hair away from your face. You pant, smiling into the kiss as the both of you catch your breath.

“Good?” He hums, pecking your forehead affectionately.

“Mm, best reward ever,”

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sentientcave · 2 months ago

Text

Masquerade

You've come to this masquerade ball to finally dispatch the man you've wanted dead for nearly ten years, but he's always ruining your plans, one way or another.

Contains: 2nd POV OC (sorry about all the blushing), werewolf MMC (sadly he doesn't do any fun werewolfy things he's just a guy with sharp teeth here), vague fantasy setting, murder attempts/reminiscence of murder attempts, a long and storied history only alluded to, what do you do when your bitter enemy turns out to be a silly little guy who just wants you to love him?, oral sex (w receiving), P in V sex, this spawned a whole ass novel and it's so so different but this lowkey holds up.

See end for Notes

~10k words - NSFW - 18+ MDNI

“My, don’t you look exquisite,” a voice purrs in your ear.

You freeze in place, glad that the mask hides the colour that springs to your cheeks. You feel like a naughty child caught with your hand in the cookie jar, an unwelcome guest at his masquerade. You thought you could escape notice, slip through the crowd of finely dressed nobles and plunge your knife into his chest at last. But he had managed to find you first. You weren’t ready. You hadn’t been to the garden to pick up your hidden cache of weapons, you had nothing but your silver hair-stick to dispatch him with.

His heavy hands land on your shoulders. “Don’t muss up your pretty hairstyle just yet, darling,” he whispers in your ear, his voice rasping like sandpaper. It’s as if he can read your thoughts. Or perhaps, after all these years, you’re simply predictable. “There will be plenty of time for that later.”

You flinch at the cold press of his mask against your bare shoulder. You shouldn’t have disguised yourself as a guest. You feel defenceless, wrapped in silk and sheer chiffon, a neat little morsel delivered straight into the wolf’s jaws. He could shift in a second and shred you into little pieces, like he had threatened to do so many times before. You try to still your frightened, thumping heart, and pull away, turning to face him at last. “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean,” you say, because it’s worth a try at least, but he’s laughing before you can even finish, the smiling mouth of his gold wolf mask mocking you. His yellow eyes glitter from it’s depths, watching you.

“Oh darling, I would recognize you anywhere. I hoped you would be unable to resist my invitation.”

“Your invitation?”

“Yes, dearest. All of this was for you. I knew you could not resist the chance to get so close to me again.”

“To kill you,” you remind him hoarsely.

He chuckles and takes your hand. “Perhaps. For now, a dance, I should think. You haven’t danced all night.”

You dig in your heels, trying to resist his insistent pull, but he simply wraps an arm around your waist and tugs you closer. “I don’t dance,” you tell him sharply. “Let go of me.”

“You’re a liar,” he replies, spinning you into place, one hand on your lower back, pinning you against his chest, and the other still clasped around your wrist, sliding up to engulf your hand. He simply tugs you along with him as he moves, sweeping you along to the music, holding you so unbearably close. He could lift you off your feet with ease, if he chose to, and you don’t have enough power to resist. His scent clouds your mind, cedar soap and clean, animal musk, one of many hints of the wolf that dog him even in his human shape. “You forget, I knew you in your past life. Or have you forgotten that I once sat in your father’s halls? I have seen you dance.”

It was so long ago now, another life, before he was only the wolf to you, and before you were the thorn in his paw, that you almost had forgotten. You had hardly given him a second thought at first, he was just another visiting knight, here one day and gone the next, handsome, but beyond the concerns of the girl you once were. “You failed to make an impression,” you tell him sharply, although it’s not true. You do remember his yellow eyes watching you one night, though he never asked you to to dance. He never spoke to you at all.

Not until after. He saved you, of course, from the bloodbath, because he had claimed you. He hadn’t so much as said a word to you before he burst into your bedchamber, monstrous jaws dripping with your fathers blood, yellow eyes wild. You still remembered beating him back with the fire-place’s iron poker, and jamming the tip into his chest before you ran for your life.

“I knew you were mine from the first,” he continues. He seems frighteningly aware of your thoughts, as if his own version of the memory is playing out behind his own eyes. “My lioness, avenging her wicked father with a poker. I still bear your mark, just above my heart.” He presses your entwined hands to his chest for a moment. “I’m certain you remember that, at least.”

“Unfortunately.”

“The only unfortunate part,” he says patiently. “Is that I did not take you as my mate that night.”

His words lance through you like lightning, burning everything in their path. Your knees nearly buckle, and if he were not holding you so securely, you would sink to the floor in a useless puddle of silk. How dare he make you weak, after everything he’s done to you? But anger gives you strength, reinforces your spine with steel, and you wrench away, glaring at him, wishing you could set him ablaze with your eyes.

The music falters. You look up, at the musicians gallery, then around the room. Everyone watches, pretending not to, jewelled masks concealing furtive eyes and whispered words. Your own mask feels insufficient, lightweight and flimsy under the wolf’s eyes when your eyes return to him. He takes your arm, his grip tight, but not bruising, and guides you out of the ballroom, into the cold night air. The dark gardens are just a little too far for you to jump down from the wide stone balcony, and there are no stairs leading down. If you jump, you’d probably break your leg, and then you’d be helpless.

“What do you think of our home?” he asks. “Have you snooped around yet, my darling? Planned all your exits and hidden away your weapons and armour? I made sure you’d have plenty of opportunity. I know how you love to prepare.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t found them already.”

“I have been busy with other preparations,” he says mildly. “But I thought I smelled something of you in the corridor by the library.”

You flinch, only confirming that you had in fact been there, hiding your leather armour inside a large vase. “Preparations for what?”

“Your homecoming. The king has made it clear that it’s time to reign you in, or he will have someone else deal with you.” He pulls the mask off at last, setting the golden wolf on the balcony. Sweat glimmers at his temples, catching light from the ballroom behind them. He offers you a wry smile, his sharp white teeth flashing. “I’ve been too lenient with you.”

“Lenient?” you ask, incredulous. “I’ve been trying to kill you.”

“Those who attempt such things do not usually live long,” he reminds you. “I don’t often show mercy. I’ve allowed you to live free, in the hopes that you would come to me willingly, in time. Now it seems I can no longer afford to continue our little game. You will stay with me, or someone else will be sent to arrest or kill you.”

You press your palms into the smooth railing, wishing desperately that you could absorb the cool, dependable steadiness of stone through your skin. You look at him for a moment while he stares out over the dark gardens, his yellow eyes tracking movement you can’t see.

He’s always dressed in black, like a man in mourning, his black curls cropped short around his slightly pointed ears, beard neatly trimmed. He wears little jewellery for a man of his station, just the yellow-gold signet ring with it’s heavy, dark blue sapphire on his finger, and the gleam of jet buttons down the front of his tunic. You were more used to seeing him in his armour. The heavy black plate suits his brutality better than black-embroidered silk.

Silk offers no protection, no shield over his wicked black heart.

You pull the hairpin from your own neatly arranged curls and move fast, striking at his chest, but he catches your hand easily, his amber eyes meeting your fury with amusement. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” he asks. “Stubborn creature.”

He plucks the pin from your hand and spins you around, pushing you into the railing with the oppressive weight of his presence. Your protests are weak and hardly noticed, but you fall silent when you feel the rough pads of his fingertips on the back of your neck. He gathers your hair up and pins it back in place, not as neatly as you had done earlier, but sufficiently.

“What are you doing?” you ask numbly.

He turns you around, still standing far too close. You stare forward, at the point where his skin meets the collar of his tunic, your eyes glued to his pulse. You wish for teeth as sharp as his own, so you could tear out his throat. His fingers curl under your chin, nudging your face up, forcing you to look him in the eye again. “Just returning your pin,” he says, smirking. “Why do you seem so flustered, darling?”

“Why don’t you just kill me?” you ask. Your hand lifts up to knock his away, but you touch him instead, fingertips ghosting over his knuckles. You know he’s capable of crushing you with hardly a thought. You’ve spent the last ten years learning all you could about him, hunting him down again and again and again with a single-minded determination. He likely could have killed you a thousand times over, if you’d been just a little less careful, or he a little less eager to capture you instead. He should have killed you. You don’t know how to stop anymore, you don’t know how to let go of the terrible anger that burns you up every time you think of him. You want him to suffer, to lose everything, to hurt the way he hurt you. “I’ll never stop.”

There is a flicker of sadness in his eyes, and it pings against your heart uncomfortably. “I never could,” he says, all traces of his smirking, superior air gone. His thumb strokes along your jaw. “I begged the king for your life. Your father may have been a traitor, but you were an innocent girl, and I do not enjoy killing innocents.”

“I’m not innocent anymore.”

“No, I suppose not. But you’ve committed no crimes that I cannot forgive.”

“I don’t want your forgiveness.” Your voice is hardly more than a hoarse whisper. You want to shout, but his hand on your skin seems to leech all the power out of you.

“You have it regardless,” he whispers back, low and intimate as a lover. He touches his forehead to your mask, his eyes boring into yours, twin suns scorching everything in their path. “And someday I will earn yours.”

“Never,” you hiss. You return to your senses and push his hands away, shoving hard against his chest. “I hate you. I’ll always hate you.”

He tugs your mask off and tosses it to the side, tired of pretense. “If you hate me so much, why does your heart beat like that?”

“I’m afraid of you,” you snap.

He laughs harshly. “No you’re not. You’ve never been afraid of anything, my darling. It is one of the things I love best about you.” He leans in closer, the tip of his nose just brushing yours. You can feel his breath on your skin, the sharp smells of whiskey and mint setting your nerves on edge. For a moment, you think he’s going to kiss you, and you freeze, heart pounding, face turned towards him, waiting for the axe to fall.

But he withdraws instead, leaving you to face the consequence of unrealized want. His words prick at you like the point of a sword. Love. As if he would know the first thing about it. As if he knew you.

But he does know you, you realize with a start. He made you. His actions had set you on your path, and his choice not to kill you, each time that he should have, had created the determined, single-minded, furious woman that you had become. The carefree girl who you had been was long gone, dead the first time the wolf’s jaws closed around your throat. It burns you to think that he’d shown you mercy all along, that you had escaped capture or death by his leave, rather than by your own cunning and skill.

His eyes remain on your face, reading your thoughts like you’re a book laying open, waiting for him to happen by and discover all your secrets. “You have become worthy of me,” he continues ardently, pressing your hand to his chest again, anchoring it with both of his own. “I would have kept you like a bird in a cage if I’d taken you then. A pretty thing to amuse me and adorn my halls. But you are no trophy, my love. You will not survive in captivity. Even now, with the king’s sword hanging over your head, I will not force you to stay.”

“Is this some sort of trick?”

“I used to wonder the same thing. A cruel trick of fate, that my mate would hate me so fiercely.”

“You killed my father,” you hiss at him. You yank your hand away, desperately stoking the anger that has kept him at bay all these years. Each time he calls you mate and darling and love your resolve quakes, and you have no sword in your hand to make him regret it, like you usually would.

“He was a traitor. I had orders.”

“And what comfort will that be when your orders are to kill me?” you ask, sneering up at him. “What will you do when your orders are explicit and undeniable, and you are to kill me on sight?”

“I’ll never see you again.”

You aren’t sure what you expected, exactly, but it always trips you up when he speaks plainly. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you snap.

“What do you think it means?” He hurls the words back at you, his anger lighting from your own. “It means I would pluck my own eyes out before I’d kill you. If the king ordered me to hunt you down I’d stay one step behind you until we reached the very ends of the earth. If he came outside this very moment and told me to snap your neck—” He shudders, shaking his head like a dog shakes off the rain, and when he looks back at you the anger is gone, hidden away again behind his steely resolve. “Loyalty only goes so far. He knows not to make an order I cannot follow. If he truly wants you dead, he’ll ask another.” He glances over his shoulder, keen yellow eyes fixing on a point somewhere inside. “I hope it does not come to even that.”

“But why?”

He lets go of your shoulders and turns around, stalks a few feet away, and turns again, pushing both of his hands through his hair in frustration. Because I love you!” he snarls. “You had me the first day you tried to run me through. Oh I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, beautiful thing that you are, but it was the first moment that you tried to cut my heart out that I knew there could be no other. You have no idea what it’s like, to love such a stubborn, foolish, bitch of a woman? Do you understand what it will do to me, when you leave? But I have never been able to keep you by force.”

“But you let me go,” you say numbly. “You said—”

“Let you go?” He laughs, striding back towards you. “Oh my love, you misunderstand. Just because I couldn’t kill you does not mean I didn’t try to keep you. But you have slipped every chain I’ve placed upon you. I’ve never pulled my punches. I would not disrespect you so.”

“You called it a game—”

He inclines his head towards you. “I did. Perhaps I should not have. But it was easier to think of it as a game. A test of my own worthiness. I admit, I have always looked forward to your attempts on my life. It’s good, I think, for a man to be beaten once in a while, to keep him sharp. Otherwise he forgets to be vigilant.” He sighs, touching the edge of an old, silvery scar on your shoulder, brushing a loose strand of your hair out of the way. “Besides. We’ve both made our marks upon the other.”

“I’ve gotten you more times than you have me,” you say, lifting your chin imperiously. “Two or three times I really thought I’d finished you off.”

“Are you so certain of that?”

You think about it. “Yes.”

“Care to make a wager, dearest? If you’ve left more marks on me than I on you, you may ask anything of me.”

You draw in a steady breath. “And if I lose?”

He grins. “Not so confident now, are you? I only want what is freely given, so you needn’t worry. You can name your own penalty.”

“How magnanimous.”

“I can be,” he says. “Now, shall we inspect each other here, or would you prefer somewhere more private?”

The thought of being alone with the wolf makes you shiver, but it’s not revulsion that you feel, it’s something far worse. The dark, cold balcony seems a world away from the golden ballroom with all it’s legions of beautiful, elegant guests, but it’s only panes of glass that separates you from them, hazy from condensation, opaque enough that you doubt anyone can see through them. It makes no material difference, in the end, but it’s winter, and the cold seeps through your dress easily, your skin only warm where he touches you. “Ah, yes,” you say nervously. “Perhaps somewhere more private.”

“And warmer,” he adds. “As stunning as you look, I do not believe you are dressed for the weather.”

As if on cue, a snowflake descends from the dark sky. You reach out your hand, catching it against your palm. A moment later, the sky is thick with snow, fat, fluffy flakes catching the light and turning the world white. You look back at him. He looks softer, somehow, with that little dusting of snow catching in his thick curls, melting flakes glittering like diamonds on his shoulders. For the first time, you’re struck by how young he looks. He was a man grown at your first meeting, and you had always thought of him as much older, but you know now that he couldn’t be ten years your senior. You suspect it’s much less than that.

It changes something in your perception of him. Softens him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, stepping in close again. Although you’ve hardly moved an inch since you came out to the balcony, he’s full of restless energy, moving away and back again like he’s tethered to you by some invisible string. He tilts his head to the side, his keen predator eyes practically glowing in the soft light.

You were glad your face was already flushed from the cold. “I was just thinking. You look so…” You trail off, thinking of the best way to phrase it.

“Handsome?” he suggested. “Strong? Irresistible?” He wiggles his thick black eyebrows, grinning wickedly, making you laugh despite yourself.

“I was going to say young, actually,” you say. “I was wondering what sort of boy you were.”

He holds a hand out to you. “I’m sure there’s a portrait somewhere, if you’re curious. Now come along, pet, I don’t want you catching a cold out here. I do have a wager to win.”

You hesitate. All the ancient, bitter anger and sadness wars with something new in your chest. It’s been so long since you wanted anything more than vengeance. Ages since the last time you felt deep, aching want for someone’s hands on you, if you ever even had. The obsession between you, at least, was mutual, and you had traded the excitement of romance for the thrill of the hunt, the clash of your sword against the wolf’s. His taunting sounded better than flowery poetry to your ears, and you could not help but seek him out every time the loneliness of your new life became too much to bear. He had been your focus, your centre, your reason for existing for so long that you can no longer deny what this is.

Love is not always kind. Between the two of you, it’s become a desperate, wretched thing, living on scraps of attention and hungry looks traded in battle.

His fingers close around yours, and you realize that you’ve reached out and taken the offered hand. You look at him, and he’s smiling in a way you haven’t seen before, half-hitched up on one side, almost shy.

He twines his fingers through yours and leads you back through the ballroom, slipping around the edges of the crowd like the wolf he is. No one seems to pay either of you any mind, although you feel curiously bare without your mask, as visible as a hare in a field to the eyes of a hawk. But your hunter is holding your hand, his thumb stroking over yours soothingly, like he can sense your unease.

Despite that small reassurance, you’re grateful when you step into a nearly empty corridor. A few well-dressed servants carrying trays bustle between the ballroom and the kitchens at the far end, but your wolf leads you the other way, through a few hallways littered with decorative items and portraits of long-dead nobles with eyes that seemed to follow you. You had been there only a few days earlier, but it looks different now. Perhaps it’s that you aren’t on constant guard for the wolf. He’s already here, holding your hand, pretending that he’s not watching you, just as you pretend to look at the portraits and statues and expensive looking vases you pass by, stealing glances at him only when you think you can get away with it.

The silence between you is almost comfortable, both of you too caught up in your individual tumble of thoughts to put anything to words. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. You wonder if he feels like he’s won already, but there’s none of his usual taunting or his infuriatingly handsome smirk. He looks serious, black brows lowered in a sort of pensiveness that you’ve never seen from him. Of course, you had only once gone so long in his company without attacking him physically, and you had been tied to a chair, at the time.

“Do you remember, a few years ago, the hunting lodge just above Lake Pym?” he asks.

You laugh. “I was just thinking about it. Why?”

He stops in front of a door and leans against the frame. “Do you think you’ll be able to go as long without trying to stab me this time around?”

“That depends on whether or not you tie me up again,” you quip back.

“Don’t say such things,” he warns you, opening the door and holding it open, letting go of your hand for the first time in ages. Your fingers feel cold without his touch. “You’ll give me ideas.”

“You’ve made far too many confessions tonight for me to believe that you didn’t already have ideas,” you tease. Funny how easily that comes, like you’re old friends and not enemies. A tidy little fire burns in the stone fireplace, with a cozy arrangement of rugs and furs laid out before it. A low table sits ready, carrying wine and glasses and a few plates of the sort of interesting finger-foods that they had been serving in the ballroom. Raising your eyebrows, you look back over your shoulder at him. He hadn’t spoken to anyone on the way in, which meant that it had been all prearranged.

He closes the door behind himself and leans against it, grinning sheepishly. “I live in hope.”

The room - his room- is neat, a big bed with four posts carved like small trees, green-velvet curtains tied back neatly, is the first sign that he might actually like colour. You imagined him always in sombre black and white, dark hair, white teeth, dressed like the reaper and often so employed. But perhaps he isn’t as stark as you’d always thought. His furniture is solid and well-made of warm-toned wood, and the bookshelves that flank the fireplace are stuffed with books, the odd space cleared out for knick-knacks and trophies. You had never considered that he might like to read. It isn’t something that has ever come up before.

The wolf sits down on the furs and nudges a black lump by the fire. The shape uncurls into the biggest, fattest, blackest cat you’ve ever seen and pads over to you, sniffing your skirts suspiciously.

“You have a cat?” you ask, because it seems unlike the picture you’ve built up of him over the years. Another thing you missed. You had been so focused on him as an enemy that you had hardly stopped to consider him as a man. You sit, and the cat drapes itself across your lap, purring already in anticipation of a good scratch.

“I don’t have a cat,” he corrects you loftily. “Smudge is the matriarch of a proud line of excellent mousers, and she is a valued member of the household. One cannot own a cat, I have learned. One co-habituates with cats.” He leans over and gives the cat a little scratch under the chin, his knuckles just barely brushing your knee as he withdraws. “She isn’t usually very friendly, but she must recognize a fellow assassin when she sees one.”

“I’m not much of an assassin, I’m afraid she’d be terribly disappointed in me. I’ve failed to kill my only target, and I have been at it for quite some time.” You give the cat a scratch behind the ears. “I’m sure her record is much more impressive.”

He frowns and looked at you in a funny way. “Have you never taken a life?”

“I’ve tried very hard to avoid it. You’re the only person I ever wanted dead, and I— I wanted to be better than you. I wanted my hands to stay clean, so I could beat you and still keep my sense of…” You look down at the purring black puddle of fur in your lap rather than at the wolf. “Oh I don’t know. Righteousness, I suppose.”

“So sweet that you wanted me to be your first,” he teases.

You know he means first kill, but you turn pink anyway, and there is no cold wind to blame for your rosy cheeks this time. There were many firsts that you had missed out on, in your bid for vengeance. “Perhaps I still do,” you snap, not thinking about the double meaning until after the words have left your mouth. You scramble to clarify. “My first kill— Not— Ugh.” He begins to laugh, and you cover your face with both hands, wishing the floor would open up beneath you and swallow you whole. “Stop laughing!” Your voice is muffled by your hands, but there is no way that his keen wolf’s ears don’t hear you perfectly. “That’s not what I meant!”

He snorts. “I know, pet. It’s a bit late for that, I should think.”

You peek at him between your fingers, and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Darling.” He leans over and gently takes hold of your wrists, prying your hands away. He is mercifully no longer laughing, but the look in his eyes only makes your face burn hotter. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve never taken a lover.”

“There was never a good time,” you manage to squeak out. It was half true. There had been offers, and moments when you’d been sorely tempted to share someone’s bed for the night, but the few fumbling kisses you’d shared with young men had failed to thrill you the way that crossing swords with the wolf did.

He sits back with a groan. “You’re always throwing wrenches into my plans.”

“How on earth could that have anything to do with your plans?” you ask hotly.

“Darling, don’t be so naive. My plans were obviously to seduce you into my bed so I could out-perform every man who had ever touched you, forcing you to admit to yourself that we belong together. But I suppose that would have been too easy.”

“Too easy!”

“I would never imply that you would be easily seduced, my love, only that I am fairly confident that you would have a harder time denying what we are if I were to employ my considerable athletic ability with the task of making you come undone.” He smiles ruefully. “But seduction isn’t fair if you’re a virgin. I’ll have to win your heart the old fashioned way.”

“The old fashioned way?” You stare at him, incredulous. “What, you’re going to court me?”

“I’m certainly going to try,” he says, turning toward the table to pour you a glass of wine. “It’s the long road, but you’ll find I’m usually more than willing to take the scenic route.”

“You’re insane,” you say weakly, accepting the offered glass. “You must be.”

“Must I be? Like you said, I’ve made far too many confessions tonight, you must know that I do not mean this as some passing fancy. I think it would be a waste to continue this bloody crusade of yours. For both of us. I confess my bias in the matter, as I rather enjoy living.” He shrugs, looking at you over the rim of his own glass. “Do you? Has your life been all you wished for, these past ten years? You’ve forgone comfort, education, friends, romance, children— Do you want none of those things?”

“Of course I do—”

“Then take them. Everything you want is yours if you stay.” He takes a sip of wine and winces, face screwing up like a child tasting something bitter. “Ugh, I hate wine.”

“I know. I was wondering if you were going to drink from that glass you’ve been waving around.”

“I just wanted to indicate that it wasn’t poisoned.” He sets the glass to the side, still grimacing. “Just in case you were wondering if I was still trying to trick you.”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“Perish the thought, my love.” He stretches out in front of the fire, propped up on one elbow. “I’ve laid down my arms. If you must end this once and for all to free yourself, so be it. But I do think my alternative is better.”

You set your wine to the side as well and reach back to pull the silver hair-stick from your curls. You consider it, for a moment, pressing the point into your fingertip, not quite hard enough to draw blood. He watches with an inscrutable expression, making no move to disarm you. The cat slips out of your lap and stretches, moving off into the shadows again, either unaware or uncaring of the danger to her house mate. Or perhaps she’s simply more aware than you that there is no longer any danger.

You reach out and place the make-shift weapon on the rug in front of him.

The crackle of the fire is the only sound for a long moment. The wolf was rarely rendered speechless— getting him to shut up was usually the more difficult task. But he simply looks at you, like you’ve performed a miracle in front of his very eyes.

You slide one of the plates of food off the table and set it on the floor between you, something to hopefully distract his attention a little. You pick up one of the little triangle pastries and take a bite, catching crumbs with your other hand. You eat two more, realizing that you haven’t eaten in hours, and wait for him to break the silence.

He sighs and rolls onto his back, tucking both hands under his head. Firelight dances over his skin, burnishing his features like well-polished bronze. Although you have known him a long time, you’ve never studied him like this, while his eyes are closed and his usual grin is smoothed out into a peaceful smile. He looks noble, like a hero from the epics you used to read as a girl, more like you remembered from the days before everything changed.

“You’re staring,” he says without cracking an eye.

“How would you know? You haven’t opened your eyes in ages.”

“And how would you know that, if you haven’t been staring?”

He has you there. “Alright, fine. I suppose I was. I was just thinking about… about before.”

He opens his eyes. “How long? We do have a rather storied history, don’t we, love? I myself have been thinking of Lake Pym.”

You smirk. “I bet you have. I had a feeling you were rather enjoying yourself.”

“I was. It would have been more fun if you were a more willing guest, or if I at least didn’t have to keep you tied to a chair the whole time.”

“You wouldn’t even let me feed myself,” you lament, though you can’t help the traitorous note of amusement in your voice. “It was terribly humiliating.”

“Revisionist drivel!” he snarls playfully. “I did untie you so you could feed yourself, and you tried to stab me. You forced my hand.”

You blink. “I suppose I did.”

He leans closer. “I suspected you just wanted me to take care of you. You were too proud to ask me for what you wanted, so you forced the situation. And snapped at my fingers the whole time like an absolute menace.” He holds up his right hand and displays a white mark around the first knuckle of his thumb. “That’s one, by the way.”

“I only bit you because you stuck your finger in my mouth,” you reminded him.

“Ah, I suppose I did get a bit carried away, didn’t I? There was just this moment when I touched your lip…” He reaches out as if he wants to repeat the remembered gesture, perhaps hoping for a better outcome, but he hesitates, dropping his hand. You almost wish he hadn’t. “Are you still too proud, my love?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

He senses your weakness. The way the answer drips with doubt like blood from a wound. “Will you let me kiss you?” He moves closer, anticipating your answer before it leaves your lips.

Your breath catches in your throat. “Yes.”

At long last, he closes the distance between you, hands cradling each side of your face. He just barely brushes his lips against yours, and holds you back when you try to chase him, his familiar wolfish smile lighting up his face. “Not so fast, my darling. You’ll have to ask nicely, if you want a proper kiss.” He unbuttons the cuff of his black shirt only a moment later, his eyes dropping away from yours for a moment, and then rolls up his sleeves. “Two and three, respectively,” he says, pointing out two more scars along his forearms. They were both from similar situations. Two times that you had disarmed him and made him bleed for it. You reach out and touch the silvery marks, feeling the smooth gap in his arm hair and the fully repaired muscle underneath the flawed skin. “You’re a better swordsman than I,” he says, reaching up to unlace the top of his tunic. “I might have had the edge of experience, at the beginning, but you quickly caught up to me, didn’t you? It was a good thing you were so scrupled about killing people other than me, or I’d have lost far too many good men to your blade.”

“You’re just trying to flatter me.”

“Is it working?” He pulls the tunic and shirt off in one go, baring his chest. There are a few scars there that you could not claim, and two that you can, although your eyes are drawn to one in particular. The ugly, uneven star right next to his heart, where you had run him through with the iron poker on the night of the wolf. “This one is my favourite,” he tells you, pressing one of your hands to the scar. “The first time you tried to kill me. Jon had to half-heal me himself, or I wouldn’t have made it to a proper healer in time. It’s partially why there’s such a scar. He’s always been terrible at the more subtle magics, but if you want something blown up, Jon’s your man.”

You laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Make sure you also note, in that treacherous little mind of yours, that he will not employ his considerable magical gift with the task of making me explode. He is still rather fond of me, even after all these years.”

“It is good, I think, to have a king that is so well-versed in the art of restraint,” you say mildly.

“Oh yes, I imagine it is.”

“So is it really just the five scars?” you ask. “That’s all?” Despite the truce the two of you had settled into, you felt strangely disappointed that your obsession with killing him over the last decade had resulted in only a handful of scars. It all felt like a waste. You try to console yourself with the knowledge that he heals more rapidly than most men. The scars you have left are despite that.

“There’s one more, on my thigh, but I imagine you probably don’t want me to take my pants off.”

You do want him to take his pants off. “Yes, that’s very thoughtful of you,” you say instead. “I suppose you’ve won, anyway. I have a lot more than six scars from you.” You had expected that his life as a warrior would have marked him more significantly. You’re covered in scars, faded and fresh alike, and there is no getting around the fact that you feel like you’ve stitched yourself up so often that you look as worn down as your oldest, ugliest shirt.

The disappointment in his eyes is gone so quickly that you aren’t entirely sure you hadn’t imagined it. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it, won’t I?”

“You’re just trying to get me out of my dress,” you say hotly.

“Obviously. You look very lovely in it, of course, but I have been hoping for the chance to peel it off of you.”

You shake your head. “I think you’ll be a bit disappointed.”

“Never. What would possibly deter me at this point, darling? If stabbing me through the heart didn’t erode my affections, what could?”

“Oh I don’t know,” you say thoughtfully. “I could have scales, or a tail—”

“I have a tail,” he reminds you. “And I’m quite positive that you’re human, so I’m not worried about scales. Or strange birth-marks or stretch-marks or scars, either, by the way.”

You take a deep breath and stand up, turning your back to him. “It would help if you could undo all these buttons for me,” you say, sweeping your hair in front of your shoulder. “There are so many of them.”

He jumps to his feet and scrambles to help. A few buttons plink to the floor, torn free in his haste. “I’ll have it fixed,” he says hastily. “And I’ll buy you new gowns. As many as you can stand.”

You glance over your shoulder, nervous laughter stilling on your tongue when you see the look in his eyes. You turn forward again, sliding your arms through the sleeves and shimmying the gown to he floor. He gives you a hand to steady yourself as you step free. “I— I don’t want— I won’t stay.”

He hums in response, gathering up the gown and laying it over the back of a chair.

“I won’t,” you repeat yourself, as if the words will sound convincing the second time. They don’t.

“I already told you, darling, I won’t make you stay. It’s up to you.”

He draws you back to your seats in front of the fire, and you offer him your arms. You’re riddled with fine scars, most of them faint, little nicks from his blade. His hands slide up to your shoulder and gently tug the capped sleeve of your chemise to the side, baring the imprint of his jaws. His thumb runs across the marks, his other hand landing on your knee.

“I wondered if I’d bitten you that night.” He moves closer, his tongue moving over his sharp canines as he sighs. His fingers trail down your arm as his touch drops away. “You never turned, so I wasn’t sure.”

“It doesn’t always take,” you say, using his shoulder to help you back up to your feet. “I think it depends on the moon. New moon, that night. If you were any other wolf you never would have shifted.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” He settles back on his heels, looking up at you. “I can’t say I’ve thought about why some bites take and some don’t. I’m not as observant as you, my love.”

Laughable, when his senses are many times greater than your own. It’s not his observations that are the problem, it’s the connecting cause and effect, thinking about consequence for more than a moment. He’s faced so few consequences in his life that it doesn’t come naturally to him. You, on the other hand, are a mess of consequence, action and reaction measured and weighed, failures poured over until you can see every mistake you’ve made, follow the tracks to how things could have been, if you’d done it all just a little differently.

You pull your skirt up so you can untie the ribbon that holds up your stocking, and he slides it down to your ankle. “This one’s only indirectly your fault,” you say, angling your leg so he can see the trail of pocked scars that wrap around your knee and up your thigh. “When I jumped down that ravine. Scraped myself up on the rocks.”

He tuts, hands reaching for these scars too. It’s just an excuse to touch you, certainly, but you make no move to stop him. You just hold your skirt up, giving him unfettered access to your skin. His amber eyes flick up to your face, and he leans forward, pressing his lips to your knee.

There’s no halting the soft “Oh” that falls from your lips, but he would have heard even the softest catch of breath. There’s no hiding from him, and it terrifies you, leaves you so unsteady.

His eyes flutter shut for a moment, his exhale warm against your skin. “You shouldn’t show me any more,” he tells you. “I find myself wanting to kiss every inch of skin you show me, and I worry that you won’t stop me if I try.”

You sink back to his level and pull your stocking back up, tying the ribbon around your thigh again. “Would that be so bad?”

He groans and lays back on the furs, hands neatly folded on his stomach. “I am trying to be a good man for you, darling. You deserve more than I can give in one night. I need at least a few weeks to make you fall hopelessly in love with me before I can do anything that would tempt me to take you to bed.”

You run your palm over his stomach, feeling the soft pelt of hair over his warm skin, letting your curiosity guide your fingertips. You feel the expansion and contraction of muscle as he breathes in and out, tucking one hand under his head so he can watch you more easily, his eyes barely open.

You have to admit, he is handsome, especially relaxed like this. Only a few short hours ago you would have found the idea of him kissing any part of you abhorrent, but now you find yourself similarly compelled. You take his hand and kiss his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, the palm of his hand.

“Come here, you little minx,” he growls, trying to pull you down on top of him. You pull back, and he lets go, still worried about pushing you when you’ve made so many overtures in such a short time.

You had expected him to hold on tightly, however, and overbalance, tipping over the other way with an inelegant little squeak. He laughs as he sits up, and you do too as he helps you back upright. He lays back again, and there’s no resistance when he takes you with him this time. He tucks you into his side, and you look down at him, chin propped on your hand.

“I rescind my earlier statement,” he says.

“Which one?”

“You don’t have to ask nicely for a kiss, darling. I worry that you’re too prideful to admit that you might like one, but if you can steal one whenever the mood strikes you, I might be lucky enough to receive a few impulsive ones that your good sense isn’t fast enough to stop.”

You huff. “Is this your way of asking for another?”

“It’s my way of asking for as many as you might want to give me,” he says. “There is, of course, a standing offer of anything you might like that is within my power to supply. I think it prudent to remind you.”

He’s a ridiculous kind of man. You’d always thought his tendency toward verbosity was just him grandstanding, but now you see it for what it really is. He wants to be understood by you so desperately that each sentence becomes overwrought, less clear for his efforts to imbue each word with meaning. Your own tendency toward blunt, inelegant language is an almost laughable counter. You say little, and hide everything you can, and he reads you plainly. He speaks like a poet, puts everything out in the open, and you misunderstand him on purpose.

Perhaps that’s why you didn’t see this for what it is a long time ago. If you were not so determined to make an enemy of him, perhaps you would have noticed the softness in his eyes, the way he looks at you as though you’re the sunrise and set, like you’re the moon and all the stars in the sky.

You kiss him, before he can open his mouth to speak again. There’s nothing lacklustre about the way your lips slide over his, the way your breath mingles, the way he makes little noises of satisfaction, unable to be quiet even with his tongue flicking over your top lip, encouraging you to open up for him. Angling your head to keep your noses from smushing together, you oblige, letting him lick into your mouth, his arms circling you, holding you tight against his body.

You can't put a name to the feeling that sparks between you, but it's the thing that's been missing from every kiss you've had before.

The heat, the need of it all burns away all that remains of your carefully maintained resolve. He loves you, fool that he is, and you're not sure you could survive without him now. Is that what love is? To mourn even the thought of their absence from you, to cling tightly and never let go? To sink into each other until you're one, two halves of the same whole?

He kisses you until you're breathless, lips swollen from the tug of his sharp teeth, jaw curiously sore from moving in a new way. You pull back first, braced on one arm as you look down on him. He's beautiful, more than human, wild-eyed and fey, but solid and warm beneath you in a way only a man could be. His imperfections make him dearer to you, not just the marks you've drawn on his skin, but the gap between his two front teeth, the way one brow arches a little more than the other, giving him that permanently skeptical look that had always made you feel he was making fun of you. The crooked smile, the notch in one ear.

You know his face more intimately than your own, but you still want to look at him, especially through this new lens.

“I don’t think I want to wait,” you admit. You’ve waited long enough, haven’t you?

“Are you certain?” he asks.

“I don’t see what difference it makes, really.”

“It makes a great deal of difference. I’ve taken enough from you, I don’t want you to regret it.” He gazes up at you, tracing along your jaw with careful touch.

Your heart races rabbit-quick in your chest, and although you're the one looking down at him, you feel pinned in place by the wolf's eyes alone. "Then make sure I don't," you say softly. "I can even promise not to make another attempt on your life until the morning."

"Darling…"

"Please. I don't know how I'll feel tomorrow, but tonight I think I want your hands on me."

"You think?" His fingers catch around the back of your neck, as though he's waiting for some cue before he pulls you back into his arms.

“I know.”

He pulls you down for another kiss, rolling the two of you so his big body stretches over yours, your underskirts bunching up as he slots his thick thigh between yours, pressing against your core. He holds most of his weight off of you, but you’re still trapped beneath him. For the first time in a long while, there is no panic, no desire to fight furiously for freedom. You feel quite content where you are, especially when his thigh flexes, rubbing against you firmly, sending a shower of sparks through your belly. You gasp against his mouth, your hands skimming down his sides gingerly. When he does it again, you dig your fingers into the muscle of his back reflexively, murmuring apologies as his lips leave yours and slide down your bared throat.

“Don’t,” he growls against your pulse, dragging his tongue roughly over your skin. “Don’t apologize. You won’t hurt me.”

His teeth graze the slope of your shoulder, finding the older scar from his lupine jaws. You let out a shuddering gasp when he bites down lightly, not even hard enough to leave a mark. There’s a part of you that wants him to leave a mark, a bruise if not something more permanent, but you’re not sure you’ll be able to convince him out of gentleness tonight.

He kisses down your chest, grinning up at you when he reaches the top edge of your corset. “You are still wearing far too much clothing, my love. Come here.” He stands in a smooth movement, and you’re untethered without the weight of his body against yours, but only for a moment. He helps you to your feet and leads you to the bed, taking a seat on the edge and pulling you between his knees, turning you so he can loosen the laces of your corset.

You shed the garment as soon as you’re able, as well as the extra petticoats. Your chemise is thin, loose material, obscuring little, but you leave it on while you sit beside the wolf, toeing your heeled slippers off and nudging them under the bed and out of the way. Hands folded, you wait, heart beating like a drum. You feel so strange, almost outside your own body, watching him unlace his boots and tug them off impatiently.

He stands to strip off his trousers, and you quickly avert your gaze, looking down at your hands rather than see him in his fully undressed state. You have a rough idea of what you’d find, you’ve been in the public baths more than a few times, and even doing your best to be respectful, it’s hard not to see something. But seeing something in a setting where everyone is minding their own business is a lot different than seeing something up close, especially when you might be expected to do more than just look.

“We don’t have to do this, love,” he says, kneeling in front of you, clasping his hands around yours. Your eyes fly back up, landing on his face. His chuckle makes your cheeks burn. “If you’re nervous—”

“No,” you say quickly. “I want to. I’m just— I hate not knowing what I’m supposed to do.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that darling. It’s your first time, I should think the responsibility rests on my shoulders. All you have to do is tell me when you like something and when you don’t.” He leans forward, forcing your thighs apart to accommodate the bulk of him, and kisses you, all sweetness. “And if you want to stop, we stop. Anything more than that can wait at least until the second or third time.”

It sounds so simple, put like that.

“Besides,” he adds, giving you a wicked grin as his hands move to your hips, the movement rucking your chemise up further on your thighs. “You’ve always been a quick study.”

Well, he’s right about that. His lips find your throat again, pressing languid kisses down your chest until he reaches the edge of your chemise. His eyes flick upwards, seeking permission before he goes further. You untie the simple knot with one hand, the other petting through his soft curls.

He noses aside the thin fabric to find your nipple, latching on with a contented hum. The act sends tremors down into your core, intensifying as his tongue flicks across. You pull in a shuddering breath, and your exhale becomes a whimper when his teeth nip at you, his other hand coming up to grope at your other breast, his touch warm and appreciative before his grip slides down to your hips and he tugs you to the edge of the mattress.

He pulls away from your breast and kisses you properly again. “Do you want more?” he asks. “Can I taste your pretty cunt, darling?”

The desire in his words sends a shiver down your spine. You nod, and he sits back on his heels and kisses all the way up your thigh, although he pauses and pulls back to your other knee, kissing his way up again, this time sinking his teeth into your inner thigh, not hard enough to really hurt, just enough to make you jolt, your pearl begging for any kind of friction. When he passes over your cunt to mouth at your other thigh, you whine, shifting even closer to the edge of the bed. You can feel your cunt dripping, the air strangely cool on your wet skin.

A pair of mischievous eyes glance up at you. He’s doing this on purpose. He started all of this, and now he has the gall to tease you. Glaring in response, you grip him by the hair and pull him in, determined to put his clever mouth to better use than smirking and biting you when you need him elsewhere.

To his credit, he makes no complaint and does what he’s directed, slipping his tongue between your folds, lapping up the slick arousal. His big hands push your thighs up so he can get a better angle, and he kisses your cunt with as much passion as he did your lips, if not more.

The feeling is electric. His mouth scorches, sets you alight in ways you’d never imagined, the occasional scrape of his too sharp teeth against you thrilling. It’s too good, has you fighting his grip even as your fingers are still tightly wound into his hair, holding him close. It’s too much, but if he stopped it would be so much worse.

If he minds your writhing, he doesn’t show it. You can’t help the sounds he pulls from you, but he’s louder, as though this is more for himself than for you. He groans when your hips buck against his mouth, pants when he lifts himself away enough to breathe, his amber eyes gleaming, fixed on your face, except the few times they flutter closed, just for a moment, savouring your taste.

His nose nudges your pearl as his tongue presses inside you. You grip him so tightly to your core, your hips shaking so hard that you’re surprised you don’t break his nose. The hot, molten cataclysm that’s been pooling somewhere behind your belly button overtakes you, sweeping you away, limbs seized, unable to out-swim the current. You can’t see past the stars in your eyes even after your legs relax and you force your hand to unclasp his hair, finger by finger, so you can lay back on the mattress, breathing hard.

He crawls up onto the bed and pulls you toward the centre, a self-satisfied grin on his face. His cock presses into your thigh, insistent for attention, the tip peeking out and leaking against your thigh. He ruts against you when he kisses you again, his close-cropped beard soaked with your arousal. You can taste yourself on his tongue, tangy and bitter-sweet.

You lay twined together, forehead pressed against his as you both catch your breath. One hand gently brushes up and down your spine, the other pulling your leg up over his hip. “How was that?” he asked.

There may not be words for what you feel. Maybe there are, but they’re beyond you right now, washed away with all the resistance in your body. You settle on nice, which makes him laugh.

“Only nice, hm? I suppose I’ll have to work harder.”

“Better than nice,” you assure him. “I— I liked it a lot.” It’s still insufficient, so you kiss him again, hoping he won’t ask any more questions.

He does, after a long moment. “Are you ready for more?”

“There’s more?” you ask. “Or— for you? Do you want me to—”

“No, there’s no need for you to do a thing, love. The next part is for both of us.” He rolls onto his back, taking you with him effortlessly. He reaches past you with one hand while he kisses you sweetly, tongue pushing into your mouth at the same moment you feel his cock slot against your entrance. He pushes in gently, halting when he meets resistance, fucking shallowly into you until you relax enough to let him bury himself deeper into your body.

You tuck your face down against his chest, focusing on the feeling of his cock stretching your cunt, so deep inside you that his presses against your womb. He tries to keep himself still, but his hips buck slightly, tearing a groan from your chest. There’s no stopping the way your cunt squeezes down on him in response, nor the way your hips grind against him. He makes a choked sound, breathing out shakily when you push yourself up to look at him.

The angle change nearly has you collapsing back down, but he takes pity on you and flips you both so he can take the lead. “Hello, pretty thing,” he says, giving you another kiss and a firm grind into you before he starts moving his hips, slowly working himself in and out of your cunt, lips settling against your ear so he could tell you how well you’re taking him, how good you feel around his cock.

Any ability to respond is quickly fucked out of you, your breath punched out with every deep thrust, your world shrinking down to a handful of sensations: his lips on your ear, the weight of his body and the delicious drag of his cock against your inner walls.

He works his hand between you to rub at your pearl, the heel of his hand pressing down on your lower belly. The thought that he can feel himself inside you with your hand is one of the last fully formed ones that cross your mind, because he growls and picks up the pace, unrelenting until you’re shaking and babbling and clinging so tightly to him that you’re certain you’ll leave permanent marks.

He drags you up another precipice and throws you over, his forehead pressed to yours, watching your face as you shake and cry out. He ruts into you, and you can feel him fill your cunt, his cock twitching, rooted firmly inside you. He doesn’t pull away, just throws himself onto his back, holding you tight to his chest.

His heart beats like a drum under your ear, slowing gradually as he catches his breath. His cock slips free, and you stiffen slightly as his spend leaks from your swollen cunt, spilling onto his belly. He pops his head up as soon as you tense, and huffs out a laugh, kissing the tip of your nose.

“Sex can be a bit messy. Come on, love. Let’s get cleaned up.”

Your legs wobble when you try to stand, but he happily slides a supportive arm around your waist, leading you into the adjoining tap room. Once you’re both cleaned up, he coaxes you out of your sweat-soaked chemise and wraps you in one of his shirts and you both sit back down in front of the fire.

You pick up your abandoned wine glass, holding it with both hands as you eye the wolf. He looks content, satiated, like he’s had his fill of you. There’s a little tremor of unease that settles in your belly. Now that the chase is over, will he still want you? Do you still want him to want you? At the beginning of the evening you had been determined to kill him, and now…

He looks back at you through half-closed eyes, and unfurls his arm. “You’re too far away,” he tells you, voice a warm purr. “And you’re thinking too much.”

It’s still unfair, how easily he reads you. An open book, pages left open for him to flip through at his leisure. Despite your trepidation, you walk forward on your knees and sit against him, knees tucked under his arm. His fingertips trail up your thigh, over your knee, down your calf, and back, over and over, as he waits for you to speak.

“What happens now?” you ask at last. “Do we go our separate ways?”

Hurt flashes across his face before he can hide it behind a neutral mask. “If that’s what you want.” His fingers continue retreading their path while silence builds between the two of you. At last, he pulls in a fortifying breath. “Is that what you want?”

There’s raw desire in his eyes, not tempered in the least by your coupling. He offers you everything so easily that it feels like it must be a trick, but he wouldn’t work so hard to hide his feelings if he didn’t care for you, if this were a trap. If you stay, it has to be your choice, not made because of his own want for you to remain by his side.

The anger that kept you warm in all your years out in the cold is gone. Killing him won’t bring your family back from the grave, it would just place another soul in one. The desire for revenge truly burned out a long while ago, and you couldn’t admit that only embers remained. It was why you were so desperate to end it tonight, to close the chapter and look forward to something new.

It’s so like your wolf to ruin your plans. This time, you’re not sure you mind.

“I’d like to stay,” you say at last.

He’s on you so fast that you drop your wine glass, spilling red over the furs. It’s hard to stop laughing enough to kiss him back, trying to point out the mess to him. He growls something about not giving a damn as he gives up trying to kiss you through your smile, and presses his lips to your pulse instead.

In the end, with all the history between the two of you, what’s one more mess?

It's been almost five years since I started writing this short story, and I had fully expected not to finish it. I was caught up in the story in the peripherals, the potential history between Cat and Valter. This scene no longer fits in the overall narrative, even if there are still threads of it that remain unchanged, so I feel like it's safe to share. I'm working on the third draft of The Night of the Wolf, sorting out the mess of my second draft (so many changes it might as well be a second first draft) and I think there's a very real possibility that I can actually finish it, and that's in no small way thanks to all of you. I have been writing for a long time, but it's only been in the past year that I've shared my work with anyone, and it's been a really lovely experience. Thank you for reading my silly fanfictions, thank you for reading this, and I hope to share more bits of original work going forward, if there's any interest. (But don't worry, I'm still gonna finish the fanfictions. I show no signs of stopping yet)

C. T. Cutter

(Also, special thanks to my best human person @dragonnarrative-writes for making me finish this and being so so kind to me about my work and encouraging me always. I am bad at accepting compliments but I appreciate them all the same)

Image Credits: 1 - 2 ~ Dividers by @/cafekitsune

#Cave Writing #original works #enemies to lovers but in a you can't hate someone without also loving them way #in a “I keep my nemesis' picture in a locket around my neck” way #Night of the Wolf #OC: Cat #OC: Valter #This is the sort of work that can happen when you dare to ask the question “What if Rahul Kohli was a hot werewolf?”#This is pretty much my one year writing and posting fanfiction-aversary! How time flies #I've written more this year than the previous 4 combined and it's been so much fun #And I've learned a lot #especially about putting myself out there #Writing other works definitely stretches a different muscle but fanfiction helps with dialogue and characters and writing sex lmao #I have sooooo many stories that stop right before a sex scene because I used to be so bad at writing it #But now? I'm all over it #Anyway these tags are not helpful to anyone I am just dithering to delay posting at this point #It's written in second POV because I was in the monster romance circles before the COD circles and it's popular there too #but I was never brave enough to post anything anyway lmao #Thanks for helping me be brave!#monster romance #but only kind of because when werewolves aren't actively shifted they're just some guy #He spends a lot more time being wolfy in the actual novel

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thyras · 21 days ago

Text

→ of the rings of power

PAIRING → halbrand | sauron x female!elf!reader

WORD COUNT → 5k words

SERIES → of sauron & the moriquendi

WARNINGS → canon divergence

SUMMARY → you have the means to save your people, but can you grapple with what that might mean?

AUTHORS NOTE → so there is MASSIVE canon divergence in this part, it will be righted in the end but I just wanted to clarify this going forward. it needed to be done for the sake of what I have planned. also I had to split up this part because it was already 10k words and I doubt y'all wanted to read all that lol 💕

PARTS → one // two // three // four // five // six // seven // eight // ten

“Why am I not surprised?” Gil-galad said, his voice cool and cutting, as you and Galadriel ascended the grand stone steps where he and Elrond stood, framed by the soft golden haze of Lindon’s light. The words hung in the air like an unsheathed blade, gleaming and poised to strike. You swallowed hard against the weight of them, your breath catching at the implication. Your secret—the delicate web of silence you had spun—was unraveling strand by strand.

Galadriel strode beside you, her expression as poised and inscrutable as ever. She knew who he was. She had peered into the shadow he cast but had yet to see how deeply you were entwined with him. The truth, terrible and unrelenting, thudded against your ribs, a drumbeat that would not let you rest.

Yet you could not lie to your High King. Though you had bristled at his decisions, and his ambitions chafed against your own convictions, the ancient bond of elven loyalty coursed through your veins like an unbroken chain. To deceive him would be to sever a part of yourself. And yet… you already had.

The lies you had spun were not mere words but deeds—a betrayal that had cracked like thunder across the Ages, leaving wounds that bled into the present. You had sacrificed two of the most precious things you possessed, binding them into a cause you believed would shield your people. And then Elrond, with his clear eyes and resolute heart, had taken them and fled, not out of spite but duty. A duty you could not begrudge him. He, too, sought to preserve what little hope remained.

You reached the summit of the steps, and together you bowed low before the High King. The light of the sun bathed Gil-galad in gold, and his gaze, sharp as tempered steel, seemed to pierce the very fabric of your being. Galadriel spoke, her voice steady and measured despite the storm brewing in the space between you all.

“High King,” she began, her words cutting through the rush of blood pounding in your ears.

You kept your head bowed, unwilling to meet his eyes. When Galadriel rose, so did you, though your movements were slower, your body heavy with dread. For a moment, you dared glance at Elrond, his expression unreadable as stone. Your own gaze, pained and pleading, went unanswered.

“Herald Elrond carries three Rings,” Galadriel continued, but before she could finish, the words spilled from your own lips.

“A means of halting the fading and saving our people,” you said, your voice trembling but resolute as your eyes finally met Gil-galad’s. His gaze bore into yours with an intensity that made your chest constrict. He already suspected, you realized. He would not stop until he unearthed the truth, no matter how deeply you had buried it.

“We will discuss the Rings,” he said, his voice hardening, “once one of you answers the question.”

You saw Galadriel falter under the weight of his scrutiny, her usual composure fracturing like ice under pressure. You clenched your hands, clasping them tightly to stop their trembling.

“Elrond just informed me, Lady Galadriel, that this Halbrand is not who he claimed to be,” Gil-galad continued, his voice rising like a storm. His gaze swept over the two of you, thunderous and unyielding. “Yet you chose to withhold this knowledge. From him, from Lady Thilwen, and from Celebrimbor. Why?” He paused, his piercing eyes locking onto you. “Though by the look on your face, Lady Thilwen, it seems you know the answer to my question.”

Your breath hitched as his words struck home, and you dropped your gaze to your hands. The truth burned within you, a flame you could neither extinguish nor control. You could feel Galadriel’s eyes on you now, sharp and questioning, as if she believed you still unaware of the depths of the deception. But how could you be?

Your heart beat to the rhythm of his. Even now, under Lindon’s radiant light, you felt his presence, a dark tendril reaching for you across the expanse. He pulled at you, whispered promises of healing, of restoration. But you knew better. You had seen the fire smoldering in his eyes, the hunger for power masked by righteousness. He would take the Rings and twist their light to shadow, bending them to his will.

“I do,” you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. The Sindarin words tasted bitter on your tongue, and you dared not lift your eyes.

“Who is he?” Gil-galad demanded, his tone unrelenting.

“He is not who we thought,” Galadriel interjected, her voice softer now, tinged with an emotion you could not place. Your eyes met hers for a fleeting moment, and in that shared glance, you found a fragile thread of solidarity—two hearts bruised by the same cruel deception.

Gil-galad shook his head, his patience fraying. “Why do you dance around the truth?”

“High King,” you said in Sindarin, the words flowing from you like a prayer. “You must believe she would never knowingly endanger our kind.” The lie came easily, though it left a bitter ache in its wake. For you could no longer say the same of yourself.

Even now, his presence seeped into your mind, his voice a song you longed to answer. But you would not. You could not. Whatever love you had borne for him, whatever thread still tied your fëar to his, you could not let him have the Rings. Not now. Not ever.

You had already betrayed your people once. You would not do so again.

“I will believe you when I no longer see the lie behind your eyes,” Gil-galad said, his voice sharp as flint, cutting through the growing tension like a blade. His gaze bore into you with an unrelenting weight, and you felt yourself crumbling under the combined force of his scrutiny and Galadriel’s silent grief. The weight of your secret, heavy and jagged, pressed against your chest, and for a moment you thought you might drown in it.

“Now,” he demanded, his voice colder still, “who is this Man?”

“He is no Man,” Galadriel began, her voice calm yet strained, like the taut string of a bow about to snap. But your attention wavered, your focus shifting past the High King’s piercing stare to Elrond, standing just beyond him. You watched as the realization dawned in his eyes, subtle but unmistakable. He knew now. He understood.

Galadriel’s words continued, unspooling like a thread unraveling from a tapestry. “He has been… masquerading as one. Appearing in fair form, to hide his true self.”

You swallowed hard, the lump in your throat growing tighter with each word. The guilt surged through you, a tempest rising in your mind, and for just a moment, your defenses faltered.

And that was all the opening he needed.

“Y/n,” his voice breathed against your ear, low and honeyed, wrapping around you like the velvet caress of shadow. The sound of your birth name on his lips froze the blood in your veins, chilling you to your core. He always wielded it like a weapon, a sharpened dagger aimed at the heart. He used it when he wanted to break you, to remind you of the bond that bound you to him like chains.

“You are going to have to tell them at some point,” he murmured, his voice dripping with malice and cruel amusement. The words coiled around your mind like smoke, suffocating and inescapable. “And they will chastise you.”

The air seemed to thin, your breath hitching as his presence grew heavier. You could feel the brush of his lips, not physical but ghostly and invasive, curling at the shell of your ear. “Exile you… And then where will you go, hmm?” he taunted, his voice dipping into a low growl. “You’ll come crawling back to me.”

Tears burned at the edges of your vision, spilling hot and unchecked down your face. You fought against the tremor in your hands, against the shadowy hold that wrapped around your throat, his touch intangible but no less suffocating. You could feel him trace the lines of your strained neck, his presence as real as the pounding of your heart.

Across from you, Elrond’s sharp eyes locked on yours. Concern flickered across his face, mingled with wariness. He could see the turmoil in you, the raw emotion that had taken hold. He did not understand its source, but you knew he saw enough to know something was deeply wrong.

“Get out of my head,” you hissed, your voice trembling but defiant, throwing the words like a lifeline into the void where his presence lingered.

“Only when you stop letting me in, divine,” he purred, his voice laced with mockery and sweetness that made you want to scream. His ghostly fingers brushed over your lips, teasing and cruel, before his presence faded like the last whisper of a dying breeze.

And just like that, he was gone—for now. The air around you felt lighter, though the ache in your chest lingered like the phantom grip of his hand around your throat.

You wiped at your face quickly, forcing yourself to stand straighter, to steel your composure. But as you turned your attention back to Galadriel, the words you had been dreading fell from her lips like a death knell.

“He is Sauron.”

The silence that followed was deafening, as though the world itself recoiled at the revelation. You felt the weight of it crash over you, an unrelenting tide pulling you under. And though you had known it was coming, the truth spoken aloud struck like a hammer, reverberating through the hearts of those around you.

Gil-galad stood unmoving, his face a mask of unreadable stone, but Elrond’s expression was a different story. His gaze shifted between you and Galadriel, his disbelief and horror plain as the rising moon.

And you? You stood there trembling, your nails biting into your palms as you fought to hold the walls of your mind upright, to keep him from seeping through the cracks once more. Your truth, your shame, and your devotion to him clung to you like chains, binding you to a shadow you could never truly escape.

“Let me speak with him first,” you said, your voice steady despite the unease twisting in your chest. Gil-galad, who had begun to swing his leg over his mount, paused at your words, then settled back into his saddle with a measured glance. His silence pressed on you like the weight of the sun at its zenith, but when he nodded, the tension eased only slightly.

After Elrond’s leap from the cliff with the Rings, chaos had followed—the frantic search, the uncertainty, the unanswered questions that hung like shadows over Lindon. While others scrambled to piece together what had happened, you had taken it upon yourself to find him. Not only because you knew him, not only because you bore the weight of responsibility, but because you understood Elrond’s heart better than most.

Galadriel might have been the wiser choice to reason with him, her words as sharp and unyielding as the swords she once wielded. Yet you knew it was not sharpness Elrond needed now. He would turn to Círdan, or to one who carried the wisdom of many long centuries, someone who could temper logic with understanding. Though impartiality was far from your grasp at this moment, you prayed the years of trust you and Elrond shared would be enough.

“Please, High King,” you implored, your voice softer now but no less resolute. “Give me a chance to reason with him.”

Gil-galad’s brows knit together for a moment, his piercing gaze weighing your request as though to test the sincerity of your motives. Finally, he inclined his head, though his tone was clipped as he replied, “Reason quickly.”

You nodded, dismounting swiftly, your shoes crunching against the gravel-strewn path. The cool breeze kissed your cheeks, but it did little to calm the heat burning within you. With each step toward the workshop, your hands twitched, your fingers curling and flexing as if they sought to grasp the right words from the air itself. You rehearsed them silently, each phrase echoing in your mind, turning over every angle, every possible reaction.

The walk stretched out before you, each step drawing you closer to the confrontation you dreaded. The road was quiet, save for the occasional whisper of wind through your hair and the gentle cresting of the waves against the shore. It gave you too much time to think—of what had led you here, of what had been lost, of the choices that had brought Elrond to this moment.

When at last you reached the door, you paused, your hand hovering over the weathered wood. You exhaled slowly, the breath trembling as it left your lips. For a moment, you closed your eyes, steadying yourself. The weight of everything unsaid pressed against your chest, but you pushed it aside.

You opened the door slowly, the hinges creaking in protest as the dim light of the workshop spilled out to meet you. The room smelled faintly of wood shavings and the salt of the nearby sea, a scent that had always brought you a sense of calm. Now, it felt hollow. Elrond sat at one of the craft tables, his back to you, his gaze fixed on the harbor beyond. The gentle lap of the water against the dock seemed almost in rhythm with his thoughts, though he made no move to acknowledge your presence.

“Elrond?” you said softly, his name slipping from your lips like a plea.

He turned slightly at the sound, just enough to glance at you from the corner of his eye. His shoulders sagged under the weight of his burden, and though his face betrayed no anger, the sorrow etched into his features made your heart ache.

“I have come to coax you out willingly,” you continued, taking a careful step forward. “Please.” You paused, your voice faltering as the enormity of the moment settled on you. “He will remove you by force if I fail to do so.”

Elrond turned away again, his gaze returning to the water. The slump of his shoulders deepened, and you knew then that he was caught in a whirlwind of regret, his mind teetering between the justification of his actions and the guilt that gnawed at him.

“Elrond, we have been friends for centuries,” you said, your voice carrying a quiet urgency. “We have worked side by side, through trials and triumphs alike.”

You stepped closer, your movements slow and deliberate, as though any sudden action might shatter what fragile thread of trust remained. When you reached the table, you noticed a cup resting in front of him, its contents nearly gone. Lowering yourself, you knelt beside the table, your hands resting lightly on its surface to steady yourself. You hoped the gesture would show him the depth of your sincerity, the desperation in your heart.

“Please,” you said again, your voice almost breaking. “I only ask you to trust us. Trust that the Rings will help us.”

Elrond finally turned to face you, his expression a storm of doubt and disappointment. His gaze bore into yours with a piercing intensity that made you falter.

“How can you trust someone who was deceived?” he asked, his voice low but firm.

The question struck you like a blow, and you felt the walls you had carefully constructed around your guilt begin to crumble. Your breath hitched, and for a moment, you hesitated. But as the silence stretched between you, you realized you could not carry this weight any longer. If there was to be any hope of mending what was broken, he had to know.

“Because I too was deceived,” you admitted, your voice trembling under the weight of the confession. Tears welled in your eyes and spilled down your cheeks as you reached for his hand, clasping it in both of yours. The warmth of his touch was a fragile, though his eyes remained cautious, guarded.

“I met him ages ago,” you began, your voice thick with emotion. “In his first fair form. My fëa sang so heavily for him, like Eru himself had woven us together, destined us to be as one.”

Elrond’s eyes narrowed, suspicion darkening his features, and he pulled his hand from yours abruptly, rising to his feet. His sudden movement startled you, and you looked up at him, the tears on your cheeks glinting in the dim light.

“I married him,” you continued, the words tumbling out now, unbidden and unstoppable. “I loved him, devoted my entire life to him. Morion was him, but back then, there was no trace of shadow in him, no hint of what he would become.”

“Thilwen,” Elrond interrupted, his voice sharp and disbelieving. “How do you think—”

“I am telling you this,” you cut him off, your voice rising in desperation, “because you need to understand how deeply I have wanted to atone for my guilt, for the ruin I helped bring to this world.” Your hands clenched into fists as you looked up at him, raw anguish written across your face. “I sheltered him for centuries, blind to the truth of what he was. And when his master returned, I was cursed—damned to never have my husband back. He burned my city to the ground in a diluted, twisted hope that Morgoth would free me.”

Elrond’s face hardened, his lips pressing into a thin line as he stared down at you. His silence was louder than any words, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low and filled with quiet fury.

“How am I supposed to trust you on any subject after this?”

The words struck with the force of a hammer, and your composure shattered. The room seemed to close in around you, the walls pressing against your chest as you struggled to breathe. Yet you did not look away from him, even as your tears fell faster.

“Because,” you whispered, your voice breaking, “I have nothing left to hide.” You stood once more, your legs trembling but steady enough to hold the weight of your resolve. “I sacrificed my most cherished items to make those rings,” you said, your voice firm despite the crack of emotion that threatened to betray you. “I know in my heart that he has not corrupted them, even if they were his gifts to me.”

Elrond’s expression darkened, his sharp eyes narrowing as he took a step closer, his presence imposing though his voice remained calm, measured. “But are you?” he countered, his tone cutting through the space between you like a blade. “Is your heart still pure, or does he still hold a tight grip on that as well?”

The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. You looked down at the stone floor, the cold surface grounding you as the memories you had tried so desperately to bury threatened to rise once more.

“I would not be telling you this if I was still tied to him,” you replied, your voice softer now, but no less resolute. Slowly, you lifted your gaze to meet Elrond’s, your eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I loved Morion, not what he became. I mourn my husband, not his shadow.”

You paused, your words sinking into the silence between you. The ache in your chest was raw, exposed, but you would not flinch from the truth. “For all intents and purposes, Elrond, my husband is dead.”

The admission left you hollow yet oddly lighter, as though speaking the words aloud had finally released some small piece of the burden you carried. Elrond’s gaze softened, though his eyes still searched yours for any flicker of doubt, any trace of the shadow you had renounced.

But there was none. Only the pain of loss, the weight of guilt, and the unyielding determination to right what you had once helped break.

“Elrond, where are the rings?” you breathed, your voice trembling with quiet urgency. You took a step closer, searching his face for any trace of honesty, any flicker of the truth he might have been concealing. But as his gaze shifted, avoiding yours, the realization struck you like a wave crashing against the shore. This had all been a stalling game—a deliberate attempt to buy time.

“Where is Círdan?” you pressed, the name sharp on your tongue as your heart began to race. The dim light of the workshop seemed to grow heavier, the air thicker, as the weight of what Elrond had not said settled over you. The faintest flicker of guilt crossed his features, a shadow too fleeting for anyone less familiar with him to catch.

Your breath quickened, dread coiling in your chest like a serpent as you turned to look out at the horizon. Whatever had been set into motion, it was already far beyond your reach.

As the ring rested at the tip of your shoe, the soft singing rose to meet your ears, weaving a melody so familiar it felt as if it were carved into the very essence of your being. The harmony resonated with your soul, a piece of the song that had first called you into existence.

You bent down, your fingers trembling as you picked it up. The silver gleamed brilliantly in your hands, its light radiant and pure. It had once been your hairpiece, a relic of your past, but now it was something far greater: the object crafted to save your people. Your heart hammered wildly in your chest, the weight of the moment pressing down on you.

The Valar had chosen you.

A creature who had once been so pure, untainted by the darkness that had swept over so many. You were of Eru’s song, created to exist in harmony, and yet your fëa was bound to the very shadow you now sought to resist. Over countless centuries, you had been tempted by that shadow, tested by its alluring whispers, and yet you had never lost the core of your elven purity.

You saw the beauty in Eru’s design, the passion and love in his song for his Quendi. But you also understood the evil that had twisted the hearts of those who had stayed behind, who had become the Moriquendi. You had never faltered in your belief that even in the darkest places, there was light. Even in shadow, beauty could be found.

Mairon had taught you that.

Though he had been a being of shadow, with you he had radiated light. The centuries you had spent together in the brilliance of his better nature had shown you this truth. And now, as you accepted the ring into your hand, the Valar had entrusted you with a sacred honor. To be the bearer of Nenya.

Your gaze shifted to Galadriel. She stood nearby, her expression a mixture of stunned awe and quiet reverence, her sharp eyes drawn to the way the ring glimmered, as though it encompassed the very light of the stars.

You slipped Nenya onto your fourth finger, letting it rest above your silver band—the one that had once brought you so much pain to even look upon. Now, it bore its delicate blue inscription anew, shimmering in harmony with Nenya’s beauty.

As the ring settled on your hand, the weight of the air around you shifted. The shadow of your curse seemed to lighten, lifting like a veil drawn back from the horizon. For the first time in an Age, there was no taunting whisper, no pull to the Void, only a profound and radiant silence.

The silver chain around your neck, once a reminder of your burden, felt lighter as well, no longer heavy with sorrow. You stepped forward, moving toward Círdan and Gil-galad with a newfound grace. The three rings began to hum in unison, their melodies weaving together, resonating with the deep song that had always sung from within your fëa.

You looked up at them, your smile soft but certain.

The light of the tree grew brighter behind you, its radiance washing over the courtyard. The once-dead leaves began to sprout anew, their golden glow flourishing with a brilliance that defied description. The air was filled with life and energy, a harmony that resonated with the essence of all creation.

You turned, your breath catching in your chest as you took in the sight. Your world—your home—was coming alive again.

A smile of pure joy spread across your lips, the first in an Age untouched by sorrow or longing. The song, the light, the life surrounding you felt like a promise fulfilled, a sign that even in the darkest times, the light would always find its way back.

As it finally had with you.

You carefully covered the seeds, your fingers pressing the soil down gently before you whispered a few soft Quenya words into the earth. Rising, you looked up at the wooden relief of Calandil etched into the tree’s bark. Your fingers brushed away a few vines that had grown over it, revealing the finely carved features of the being who had once saved you.

A fond smile touched your lips as you gazed upon the image. Calandil—the elf who had sacrificed himself so that you, his family, and others might escape the burning city.

A part of you knew, even back then, that he had always known. He had seen through Mairon’s facade, sensed the darkness lurking beneath the golden veneer. But you had been too blinded by the pull of Mairon’s fëa, too consumed by your love, to listen.

Tears welled in your eyes, but you held them back. That final moment with Calandil was forever etched into your memory: the fires consuming the city, the cacophony of screams, and his bloodied, grime-streaked face as he pressed you to leave. You had clutched at the cool metal of his armor, begging him to come with you, but he had refused, knowing his place was to buy you time.

You had never loved him the way you loved Mairon, but Calandil had shown you a kindness and devotion you could never forget. Even after all that had happened, he had stood by you, believing in you when few others did. His sacrifice would never be in vain; you had vowed it.

Your left hand rested lightly on the bark of the tree, and you spoke more words in Quenya, your voice a soft prayer. The faint chime of the ring on your finger joined the melody, and a bittersweet smile graced your lips as you leaned forward to press your forehead against the bark.

“Thank you, my old friend, for everything you did,” you whispered.

A soft creaking of the wood responded, as though the tree itself acknowledged your gratitude, and for a moment, you felt Calandil’s presence, accepting your thanks.

“Talking to the trees again?”

You turned at the sound of Elrond’s voice. He approached slowly, his face impassive, but you could sense the agitation simmering beneath the surface. He was not pleased that you had willingly accepted the ring, knowing what he now knew of your past.

“They talk to me, and I listen,” you replied with a soft smile, but Elrond did not return it. He stopped beside you, his gaze fixed on the relief carved into the tree.

The silence stretched between you until, finally, he spoke.

“If what you’ve told me is true, then you should not return to Eregion,” he said, his voice low and measured.

“But that is why I must go,” you countered without hesitation.

Elrond turned to you then, his gaze sharp as it locked with yours. “You are hardly capable of withstanding his influence, Thilwen. Your very fëa is bound to him. Willing or unwilling, he will take the ring from you.”

“Elrond,” you sighed, turning away to look at Nenya gleaming on your finger. The sight brought a lump to your throat, but you swallowed hard, your voice steady as you continued. “The ring chose me because, out of everyone in Middle-earth,” you paused, tears spilling freely now, “I am the only one he will never see betray him. I have stood loyal to him, devoted to him, for Ages.”

“And what makes you think he won’t manipulate you, twist you into giving him the power of that ring?” Elrond pressed.

You slid Nenya off your finger, and immediately, the weight of Morgoth’s curse descended upon you. Pain shot through your body, the dark tendrils spreading across your forearm like wildfire. Pulling back your sleeve, you revealed the mark to him.

“I was marked by Morgoth so that he could keep his faithful servant at his side,” you said, your voice even but laced with emotion. Elrond’s fingers hovered near the mark, hesitating as though he feared to touch it. “Sauron’s one wish in this world is to see me healed, to see his master’s curse lifted. It is what drives the very core of his being. I am his greatest weakness, and Morgoth knew that. He will not harm me if he believes I can be healed.”

“Thilwen,” Elrond sighed heavily as you slipped Nenya back onto your finger. The pain eased instantly, the tendrils receding as though the ring’s light banished them.

“You are playing a dangerous game,” he said, his voice filled with concern. “The risk is too great.”

You reached up, your hand gently brushing against Elrond’s face. “Have trust, Elrond Peredhel, for I have walked these shores longer than your ancestors have.”

A faint smile broke through his worry, and he wrapped his fingers around your wrist, steadying you. “I have trust in you, my lady, but it is him I do not trust.”

“Rightfully so,” you said softly, a wry smile touching your lips. “But how about you let me worry about that.”

Elrond chuckled lightly, his smile warm but tinged with sadness. The two of you stood in silence for a while, letting the tension ebb between you.

“We will see each other again, my friend,” you said after a time, your voice firm with quiet conviction. “I promise.”

#trop fic #the rings of power #sauron x reader #rings of power fic #sauron #halbrand #halbrand x reader #mairon x reader #mairon

48 notes · View notes

magpiepills · 9 months ago

Text

Kill Shot

Rating: EXPLICIT 18+ only, MDNI

Pairing: Ezra x f reader

Word count: 10k

Summary: Alone on the green, you’re ambushed by a stranger. Defenseless, you have no choice but to put your trust in him.

I’m combining three parts into one. Sort of. It’s long. Take a break if you need to. This was originally posted 11/22/23. I’m rebuilding my masterlist, so feel free to skip this if you already saw it the first time.

Warnings: Smut, porn with plot, bit of angst? Oral (f receiving) fingering, weapons, minor violence, dubious consent, masturbation, pet names, homemade sex toy, butt stuff, unprotected PIV, oral, fingering, spitting, dirty talk, bondage, doubled penetration, misuse of valuable root pesrls, teasing, thigh riding, masturbation, etc., etc., so on and so forth. No use of y/n, I’ve tried to make sure the reader is not racially coded, and that physical descriptions are limited to the type of genitals the reader has.

A word from the author: well it’s here! My baby! The story I’ve wanted to write for months and worried over and dreamed of and wouldn’t be quiet about is done. I know tomorrow I’ll think of things I should have put in that I didn’t, that I’ll go back and find typos, that people may not like it, but this has made me happy. This is my birthday present to myself and this fic has been a very useful distraction from some pretty heavy things. I’ve got a soft spot for this fic. I have a soft spot for Ezra. I love him. I love Prospect. I loved getting to spend time there as I wrote. Many thanks to all my magic sluts for the love and encouragement and for reading this shit. I love you.

ACT I: Fool’s Gold

Maybe you should have taken your grandmother's advice. “Nothing out there for a girl on her own. Just trouble. Won’t be worth it.” She had said, shaking her head. You could hear the weariness in her voice even as she sat wringing her hands on another planet. You knew she was right. Nothing could stop you though, not when your mind was made up. You’re a stubborn woman in a long line of stubborn women, and both of you knew that no amount of good sense would keep you from sinking all of your savings into a second hand environmental suit, a new laser scalpel, and a deposit on a parcel class drop pod that looked like it may not make it past Central in the first place. You scavenged for the rest of the equipment, building a small cache of slurry packs, a few refreshers, enough chem to extract several cases worth of the rare gems you sought, and borrowed a thrower. It was folly at best, elaborate suicide at worst and most likely. But what was the saying? “No guts, no glory?” Maybe it was best not to think of your guts right now. Maybe “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” was more apt. It didn’t really matter now, anyway. Nothing mattered after his first words pierced the peaceful bubble of your harvest.

“Don’t move.”

You froze, knelt on the soft, damp earth. Your knees grew cold and wet, elbow deep in the shallow cavern where the aurelac spread below the surface. The raspy voice crackled through your ear piece, stilling your heart, slowing your blood.

You didn’t need to see the weapon to know what was pressed against the back of your neck. The weight of the metal held you in place. You closed your eyes, and resigned yourself to your fate, readying yourself to meet Kevva much more readily than you thought possible. You’d like to have fought back, but you couldn’t reach your own side arm, it lay uselessly next to your scalpel and the bottle of fazer that, tipped into the cavern below, would surely kill you both. “Don’t even think about going for that thrower, either.” The voice was so casual, threatening your life like he was reading the weather report. You did as he said, accepting defeat, hoping your life and your harvest was all he wanted. There are worse ways to die than choking on the dust. “Gooooood,” he purred, “Now lay on your belly. Don’t try anything.”

Again you obeyed, but before you were settled on the ground, his boot connected with your hip, sending you rolling to your back with a yelp. Before you could get your bearings, his boot was on your chest, enough weight behind it to hold you down, compressing your sternum uncomfortably. From this angle, you could appreciate how beautiful the green moon was, soft pinkish-blueish clouds diffusing across the sky where Bakhroma was setting. Dust floated up and for a while you could forget that it was poisonous. You stared up at the sky and the canopy of green until the sunlight on his rail gun caught your eye. You stared down the engraved barrel, waiting for him to shoot you, or worse. Whatever he was going to do, you wished he’d just do it.

You grabbed feebly at him, hoping that if you put up more of a fight he would do something or say something, but he didn’t. What was he waiting for? It was infuriating and terrifying to wait while a stranger decided what to do with your life. You wanted to yell, to tell him off, to beg, but when you finally looked at him, all the words escaped. His visor was scratched and pitted, his suit was ill fitting and dirty, but his eyes were big and sad and desperate. His lips were parted, as if he were as speechless as you were.

His aim faltered almost imperceptibly, and he furrowed his brow. “Looks like I’ve got a rabbit in my garden.” Your anger boiled back up and you dug your nails into his calf as best you could through his insulating layers. Your efforts were in vain and he chuckled. “Not a rabbit. A pussycat.” You wanted to scream. Finally he shifted his weight and moved his foot so that he was standing above you, straddling your hips, his grip in the thrower more relaxed. “What’s in the case, pussycat? Show me.” He tilted his head toward your aurelac case, only half filled with your spoils. “Go on. Let’s see what you’ve got. Easy.” He stepped back, giving you room to get up. You took your first full breath since his shadow first fell on you, then unlocked the case and shoved it toward him.

Eyes sparkling, he silently tabulated the value of your pull. You hoped he would just take the case and run, that would be the best case scenario. You could still get home, prove your grandmother right, lick your wounds, and find an honest job back on the Pug. Forget this disaster ever happened. Try to find another way to pay off the debt of the wrecked and destroyed pod.

“You harvest all this yourself?” He asked, and you weren’t able to determine what answer might be safest. Do you tell him you’re alone? Pretend you’ve got a whole crew waiting for you on the other side of the ridge? Before you could decide which tack to take, he continued. “Haven’t seen anyone in this sector in some time now. No landers, either. You’re alone, I reckon. You got a camp?” Resigned to whatever fate awaited you, you shook your head. You didn’t have a camp. You had a tent that you put up every night and took down every morning, counting on your impermanence to offer some safety. Fat lot of good that did. You chest was suddenly tight and tears welled in your eyes faster than you could blink them back. “It’s not safe out here for a girl on her own.” The irony of his warning did nothing to stem your crying. He looked away, out of disgust or pity or embarrassment for you, you didn’t know. You wished you could wipe your face.

After a humiliating moment, he spoke again. “Alright.” He gestured around at your meager equipment with the barrel of his thrower, “Get your kit. You’ll come with me.”

“No.” You said, not sounding half as sure of yourself as you’d hoped you would.

He raised his eyebrows at you and lifted the thrower again, careful not to point it right at you this time. “I wasn’t askin’, pussycat. You’re alone, you can harvest, and now you’re coming with me. This is the best case scenario for you. Move.”

The image of your scattered bones, covered in moss and ferns, little yellow flowers sprouting between your ribs flashed in your mind as you packed your things. All the things but the aurelac, which the man with the gun held onto.

He gestured toward an opening in the woods, “Ladies, first.” Chivalry is alive. You trudged in silence, following a path so lightly treaded you could barely see it.

The air was thicker, heavier with motes of poison dust than it seemed to be when you were alone. It gave you a sense of hopelessness and dread. A heaviness in your chest that you hadn’t known even when you found yourself lost in the dense forest. Your captor never fell out of step, always right behind you with his rail gun trained at your side, your case of aurelac banging against his leg as he picked carefully through the woods. He talked as he walked, introducing himself simply as “Ezra” and lamenting the dust, cursing his equipment, pointing out things in the landscape that were supposed to be of interest, but failed to pull you away from your singular focus of trying to remember your path. Your eyes darted around, looking for any anomaly in your surroundings, anything you could use to find your way back somehow. “Back when these hills were full of raiders…” his voice droned on, “There was a fella that went by Alam that used to…” on and on for what felt like hours while your skin itched under your wet clothes. “Here it is. Home, sweet home. Doesn’t look like much, but it is adequate for the savvy returner.”

Ezra stood before a tattered and faded tent, obscured by vegetation and dust that had collected along the seams. You would have walked right past it if he hadn’t guided you here. He unzipped and quickly ushered you inside with a hand on your back. Zipped back in, he turned on a space filter, it popped and whirred for a moment before Ezra began tossing aside his helmet and undoing the snaps and fasteners of his suit. He must have seen the panic on your face as he undressed. “You can take the cot on the right.” His voice was careful, and he turned away from you as he shrugged out of his suit, leaving him in a long sleeved white shirt and gray thermal pants that fit snugly to his legs. “There’s a refresher in the back if you want to clean up, and whatever you want for supper as long as it’s Pastors Henry.” Ezra smiled warmly and you nodded, acknowledging his hospitality without a word.

You sat on the creaking cot and removed your helmet, then rummaged through your pack for clean underclothes before closing the refresher curtain around yourself to finish undressing. You felt more naked than ever before, more vulnerable with only the curtain between you and your unwanted companion, but it did feel good to wash off the sweat and grime from your body and hair. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been able to bathe without needing to hold your helmet and filter tube while you swabbed at yourself with a damp cloth.

When you emerged, fresh and dressed, you found Ezra sitting on his own cot with your aurelac case on his knee, admiring your haul with a small loupe.

He looked up and allowed himself only the quickest glance over your body before settling on your eyes. “This is excellent work. Near master level harvesting. Look. Nary an imperfection. Did you really do all this yourself?”

Without his helmet on, standing this close to him, you could hear him wheezing as he breathed. You could see the delicate curve of his nose and the silvery scar on his cheek, the shock of white in his uncombed hair above his temple that made him look right at home on the untamable moon.

“I did. Taught myself, wasn’t always so good.”

He passed you a pouch of slurry, bumping his own against yours before taking a hearty swig.

“What are you doing out here alone?”

“Same as you, I imagine. Trying to make my fortune before the BG line shuts down for good. Thought it was worth the risk. Thought I could make enough to spend the rest of my life on Lao. Thought wrong.” Your voice dropped and you studied your hands in your lap at the last sentence, embarrassed at the accusation against the man who was feeding you dinner and giving you a bed to sleep on, even if you didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“It’s dangerous out there.” He said, not for the first time. “There are still raiders, kips, only desperate men left now that the rush is past. And that’s only the men, Pussycat. Do you understand? I think we could help each other. I’ve got the equipment, the chem, and the weaponry. I just need your steady hand. I can keep you safe, girl. You’d be top hand. We could be rich.” You met his gaze, but didn’t speak, waiting for him to continue. “I know you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me either, but I want you to consider my offer. An equal partnership for a limited engagement.”

It sounded too good to be true. If Ezra was willing to help you harvest, take care of the details so you could make the extractions and offer some protection, it might not be so bad to take one more risk.

The soothing cadence of his voice let you imagine the possibilities he was presenting. It lulled you, gave you time to study the thick vein on the side of his neck, the wide expanse of his shoulders, the strength of his thighs, and the thickness of his paddle-like hands. You didn't doubt he could protect you, but for a fraction of a second, you thought of other ways he might help a girl who was all alone. As quick as the thought came, you chided yourself. This man had just held you at gunpoint, he may yet kill you in your sleep. This was no time to think of meeting any needs but survival. Even if it had been a stand or two since you knew the comfort and pleasure of that particular human touch.

“Let me sleep on it. We can’t do anything tonight anyway.”

He nodded and hummed. Your lingering gaze hadn’t gotten past him. He knew the look well. He ran his hands slowly from his thighs to his knees, a casual thing, but he hoped to tap into whatever you’d seen when you’d let your eyes rove over him.

“A judicious measure. We will let it simmer and come back to it in daylight. I’m going to hit the refresher myself, I can’t be good company filthy as I am.”

•••••

In the narrow refresher stall, Ezra stripped off his clothes, eager to wash away the sticky layer of sweat that clung to him, anxious to run his hands over his body under the tepid stream of recycled water. He thought of you, how close he was to dispatching you, a lone prospector, until you were on your back and he was close enough to see a much bigger picture. His ship, his gems, a way off this forsaken moon. It seemed too easy, too perfect. And now? The unmistakable gleam in your eye added an extra layer to the whole scheme, an auspicious twist in his designs.

Following the trail of water running down his chest and belly, his hand found his cock half hard. He tipped his head back with a heavy sigh, and stroked himself. He thought of the fear in your eyes, thought of how easily you obeyed him, how your thin tank top did nothing to hide your pebbled nipples. He imagined you on your knees, or under him, the sounds you’d make for him when he filled you with his cock. Close to release, he squeezed the base of his cock hard, staving off his orgasm, letting the moment slip away. For so long he believed he might never see another woman. The green is all but abandoned, but even when the rush was at its peak women were scarce. The green moon is harsh and unforgiving, the poisonous atmosphere seemed suited only to the foolish, the reckless, and the criminal. Here you are through, not just on the moon, but in his tent, on his cot, and ripe for the taking.

•••••

While Ezra freshened up, you sat on the little cot, repacking your harvesting kit, making sure nothing was broken when you hastily packed. He hasn’t been unkind. Not really. You knew that prime territories on the green moon used to be fought over, and that people died when they harvested in someone else’s dig. You’d assumed that since the green was mostly abandoned now that would be a thing of the past, but maybe you’d been wrong. Could you really blame him for defending his claim? Maybe you’d have done the same thing if you were him. Your shoulders relaxed a bit. This could work, you thought. You hadn’t planned on having a partner, but if you were both lonesome out here and you could team up for mutual benefit, why not? And it didn’t hurt that he was handsome. You’d keep your guard up, of course, but what harm could come from an alliance?

If your mind wasn’t made up to accept his offer, it would have been when he stood at the end of the tent, bathed in the orange light of the singular lantern illuminating the small space. Wearing only a pair of snug black undershorts, he was a vision. In his suit he looked scrappy, but like this he looked more virile. Broad at his shoulders and narrow at his hips, he cut a fine figure. You didn’t mean to stare, but it was as if he had his own magnetic field drawing you in. Sheepishly he sat on his own cot. “I’ve only got the one set of clothes. Never bunked with a woman in the crew like this before, I hope you don’t mind.”

You shook your head and he leaned back on both hands, smiling. “I’ve got to wash my clothes,” he explained, “you might as well throw yours in too.”

You only had one spare set of clothes, the thin tank top and leggings you wore and the warmer set that you had under your suit. It could all use a wash. Before you could list the pros and cons of your actions, before you could consider the outcome if this didn’t go like you thought it might, you stood up. You fetched the first set of clothes, then hesitated only a second before taking off what you had on. “Might as well start with everything fresh.” You smiled at your new partner.

Ezra exhaled roughly, not hiding the way his eyes wandered over your naked body. You bundled all your clothes together, crossed the short distance to the other side of the tent. He watched you in silence, chest rising and falling, breath catching on every inhale, cock responding instantaneously. “Might as well.” He agreed. One pointed downward flick of your eyes had him stripping off his final layer of modesty as well.

The snap might have been audible. You couldn’t tell. It could have been his patience, or it could have been the saturation sensor on the air filter. Once his lips were on yours it didn’t really matter. His kiss was suffocating and urgent. He held you tight, right arm banded around your waist, trapping his hard cock between your bodies, wetting your stomach with the sticky fluid he wept. His left hand cradled the back of your head, holding you just how he wanted you, you were dizzy with his kiss.

You melted into his embrace, his scent, his sounds, his radiating heat. You let him guide you onto his cot, onto the blanket that smelled like him. “Ezra” you whined, needing him to give you something to meet an intangible need that was thrumming in your core.

“Mm.” He mouthed against your neck and ear, across your collarbone, scratching your skin, leaving a tender path where his lips had been. “What are the odds, little pussycat? What are the odds that I found you here? Maybe the last two people on this moon. All of time and space, and I’m here with you, pretty girl.”

His words made your face feel warm and your heart pound harder. They hung heavy in the air around you as he shifted down the little bed, propping himself on his elbows to cup your breasts, gently squeezing them in his warm palms. He licked and sucked at your nipples, marveling at how they hardened, shiny with his spit, he blew across them, sending a chill up your spine that made you arch up into him.

“A girl like you shouldn’t be here.” His words were whispered against your stomach as he sank down further, “need to be looked after.” He kissed and licked the tender skin below your belly button. “Need me to take care of you, don’t you?” His voice was so soft and hypnotic. Your eyes met and he didn’t drop your gaze as he kissed your mound, your thighs, making your breath hitch when his tongue dipped into your slit. Ezra groaned at the taste of you, at how wet you were, how pliant to his will.

“Ezra” was the only language you spoke, slurring it as you threaded your hand through his hair, stroking the little patch of white with your thumb while his own was slipping up and down through your folds, spreading your slick over every velvet ripple. You rolled your nipple between your fingers and felt as if you were being taken up a mountain, up and up and up he pushed you, each lick, each kiss a step closer to the peak, every breath and coo, every word of praise and pity brought you higher. His fingers found your entrance and pushed inside, making you cry out into the dim light of the stuffy tent.

Ezra watched with his cheek on your thigh as you rocked your hips against his hand, searching for release. He could do this thing all night, making you a boneless little mess, making you cry just for him, he liked the power. He wasn’t a cruel man, though, and he showed you how merciful he was when he returned the flat of his tongue to your clit then sucked the swollen bud between his lips and he curled his fingers inside you, sending you over the edge of unmatched pleasure.

Cum dripped over Ezra’s knuckles as he watched you ride out your orgasm, and he considered bringing his hand to your mouth to see if you’d lick it clean, but he thought better of it, wiping it on his blanket instead. Another time, he thought. How he would love to see your pretty face painted up with his seed.

•••••

“Do you think this was meant to happen, Ezra?” You asked him, nipping at his chin as he held you, tucked against his chest on your cot. “Were we destined to find each other out here?”

You felt his warm breath against your hair as he thought. “I think the stars aligned in our favor, and fortune is all but assured.”

Sleep came easily in Ezra’s strong arms, safe and secure, knowing tomorrow would be a new start.

ACT II: Wild and Woolly

Daylight didn’t look much different from night in Ezra’s tent. Light filtered in through the leaves of the trees and the accumulated dust just enough to let you know that the sun had risen. The soft orange glow isn’t what woke you, though.

It was the heavy weight on your back, hot and crushing, it wrapped around you as you slept half on your stomach. As your groggy mind filled in the details of the last day, you felt the weight shift and wheeze. Ezra. He wasn’t a dream. He was real and he was here and he was nearly on top of you. With every movement his grip around you tightened. One arm was under your neck, with a hand anchored to your shoulder, the other was around your waist, fingers tucked posessively into the front of your panties. You couldn’t tell if he was awake yet, so you stayed still, hoping he would stay just like this a while longer.

You grew wetter while you tried not to move, savoring the tension, feeling the firm length of him on your thigh, listening to his ragged breathing. It would take so little to just shift over a bit and let it rest between your thighs. Your mind wandered to distant times and places, places where the two of you had pulled every bit of aurelac from this miserable place, socked away a fortune beyond your wildest dreams, and lived together forever, indulging in every possible pleasure. You thought of how he might look with the juice of some exotic fruit dripping down his chin as you sat astride him, jewels even rarer than the ones you’d found all hung about your neck, his cock inside you, deep as he could get, drawing orgasm after shaking orgasm from each other on the plushest bed money could buy. Two hedonists, drunk on their spoils.

You imagined what his cock might look like. It felt heavy against you now, but was it thick? Was he uncut? What did he look like when he took it in his own hand? Would he look into your eyes while he worked his length with familiar strokes until he made himself come? Would he bite his lip or would he moan? The image you crafted of him with cum dribbling over his knuckles, onto the drab green of his environmental suit made you clench. Suddenly, seeing how he looked when he came was the most important thing you could think of. Damn the aurelac.

“What are you dreaming about?” He murmured against your neck, snapping you suddenly from your daydream. “It must be good, the way you’re twitching.” When you didn’t answer he rocked his hips into you. “Want to know what I dreamed about? Hm? I dreamed about a lake. It was dark and deep and I could feel it callin’ to me until I walked into it. I couldn’t swim though, and I was about to drown until I felt you bucking into me.” That hand that was slipped into your underwear was cupping your mound now, fingers flat against your slit, giving you enough pressure to let you know he knew exactly what he was doing to you, that devil. His lips brushed against your ear as he dropped his voice even lower, “What do you think it means?”

The tent was stifling. Too hot to think, too close to him. You stammered, unable to formulate any logical response. The question forgotten, Ezra pushed into you, grinding his cock harder against the plush of your ass as his hand slipped lower, dipping into your wet folds to spread your slick messily over your pussy, making circles with his flattened fingers. Twice he circled your entrance before returning to your throbbing clit, teasing you with the promise of more, making you whine and cant your hips into his touch before he pulled his hand back, sucking his wet fingers into his mouth with an exaggerated hum of satisfaction and smack of his lips. Obscenity was second nature to him, it seemed.

“Guess we will have to think on it. Get suited up. Time to go find our paydirt.” With a gentle smack to your ass with his wet hand, he stood and went about his routine, packing his kit, scrubbing filters, cleaning his rail gun, and fastening his helmet on. You watched as he busied himself, not daring to finish what he had started, even if you could feel your heart beating in your core.

Trudging back through the thick vegetation, you listened to Ezra breathe and murmur his promises to you. You walked a few paces ahead of him and he covered you from behind, admiring the way the curves of your ass and hips filled out your suit. They weren’t made for figures like yours, and he was grateful to get to watch how you strained against the thick material. He dreamed of peeling it back off you and memorizing your shape with his hands, that he might be able to remember how you felt one day after you’re gone, when he’s alone in the tent, fucking his hand and dreaming of the lost girl of the green.

For what felt like hours you trekked through the forest, dispassionately studying the moss, the ferns, the vines, the flora and fauna of this strange place with the poison dust that glittered all around you. You ambled along as Ezra prattled on about his crew, his ship, his trials and tribulations, exaggerated for dramatic effect you were sure. It didn’t matter, because you liked his voice. It was so rich and thick, and his inflection and cadence made everything so much more exciting. His foreign drawl was a viscous thing that washed over you, warmed you, disarmed you. It was an elixir he administered with practiced precision for maximum effect. He knew exactly the dose to put you under his spell.

When you make it to a small clearing, you see the telltale signs of an aurelac deposit, the earth just slightly raised in small clusters. Anyone with an untrained eye would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary, but you and Ezra spotted it immediately. Excitement hummed between you when your eyes met his, dark and shining.

“Look At this. Look at this!” He dragged out the last syllable, rocking back on his heels, he had to stop himself from diving in, extirpating the first heavy node on his own. He took a breath. You’d been cautious, moving slowly and quietly, checking your channels and covering your tracks as you hunted a nest of the fabled root pearls. It was easier to work with a partner, you had to admit. Alone you always had one eye out for danger, and both hands in the ground. Clearly your system wasn’t foolproof, as Ezra had managed to catch you unawares. It still stung to remember your failure. It hurt to know you really couldn’t do it on your own. How few cycles had it taken for this man to find you and take you for his own, to decide for you that you needed him? There was no time to rehash your mistakes, though. You’d wear them with pride.

Ezra paced, checking vantage points around you as you set up. He reminded you of a panther, with his eyes focused and his movements smooth and sure. Your body responded to him, breath quickening and pussy clenching around nothing. You watched and admired how easily he commanded this place that to you seemed untamable, unknowable, so liable to chew you up if it just had the chance. Ezra just made himself at home here. Determination took hold in your chest. Letting your hips sway more than was absolutely necessary, you went about your own unsophisticated routine for setting up your dig. Your laser scalpel, fazer, forceps, diffuser,and tray were arranged on the ground and you were ready.

At Ezra’s assurance that the way was clear, you began the intensive process of harvesting aurelac. First reaching into the ground and locating a node, then clicking on your scalpel to open its fibrous husk. Carefully, you dissolve the membrane inside, and feeling the weight of Ezra’s stare, you barely breathe as you excise the carrom blister- the trickiest part. These things never come away easily, necessitating a firm hand and a decisive slash. One slip of the hand here could compromise the pull. You can’t afford to waste precious time or ruin even the smallest Aurelac pearl. You didn’t need to be reminded that your ability here was the linchpin in the whole operation. Dousing the gem in fazer solution to finalize the process, holding up your bounty for Ezra to see. It was a beautiful specimen. Roughly the size of an egg, and glowing with amber flecks from within. A low whistle came over the radio. “That’s a decent pull, Pussycat. Very nice indeed. I think you better stow that one away for yourself. A little reward.”

Riding high on your first triumph, you tuck the gem in a small case and stash it on the arm pouch of your suit. Ezra’s praise stayed with you as you worked, not bothering to mute yourself so he could hear your panting and groaning as you worked. You knew he could hear you even if he couldn’t see you, and you could hear as he breathed. He was relatively silent for a while as you worked, quickly filling the first collection case and the second, and almost all of a third. The fertile nest had proven itself to be deep and generous. You tried hard to not add up what it all might be worth. It was a lot. A voice inside your head urged you to snap it all up and run. Take it all for yourself. Figure out your own way home. You could buy a space in steerage on any working ship. If you just had Ezra’s rail gun. If he didn’t see your trophy cases, if you could hide them out of sight until he was asleep, if you could get his gun…the plan wasn’t to be.

When he did speak, it nearly caught you by surprise. You were reaching deep into the ground, fingers stretching and fumbling for a bulb when he came across.

“I’m watching you, pussycat. Don’t think about runnin’. I’ll chase you and I’ll catch you every time. I know you haven’t forgotten our deal. I bet you haven’t forgotten how good I can treat you, either. How I’m going to take care of you. I bet you’re still wet from this morning.”

How could you not be? You’d been wet since before he was even awake, wetter when you could feel him watching the sway of your hips as you walked through the forest, and wetter still when your mind swam with dirty thoughts of him taking you right here on the ground.

“Of course.” You answered breathily, looking around to find him a little ways up the ridge to the west of you, his rail gun in one hand, and palming his cock through his suit.

“You tasted so good last night, I can still feel you on my lips, got me aching for more of you.” Your soft whimper in his earpiece egged him on. “Are you going to be good for me? Let me touch you again? You want to feel how hard you’ve got me? What a desperate man you’ve made of me?”

You could hear the way he was fighting to maintain composure and it ate away at your own ability to focus on your delicate work, the reason you were here in the first place. “I want to be good, Ezra.”

Had you been closer you could have seen the way his lip curled into a half smile, just this side of sinister. “Pack up. We’re done.”

By the time you’d gathered and hastily packed everything, Ezra was at your side, shouldering your pack and one of the cases while you took the others. You’d only started to walk back toward the tent when he stopped and turned toward you, tapping his visor against yours, finding your eyes in the dim light. “Follow me and stay close.” Your heart picked up at the change of plans. The twisted path he picked wound up and back down into a hollow in the hills. There, looking battered and abandoned, sat a small ship. It was an early model, a Testin Screamer that was popular back at the beginning of the rush. It looked like it belonged here in the verdant landscape.

The interior was cleaner than you expected, bright and tidy, with the cabin lights and filter in proper order, humming along like it could lift off with the flip of a switch and get you as far as the outer reaches of Spiria if you wanted, maybe further. Awe and confusion collided, giving way to your anxiety again. “Ezra what is this?” You were afraid to ask anything else, not wanting to hear any answers that didn’t suit you.

He didn’t answer at all, though. He just pulled off his helmet and the cumbersome filter rig he wore, dropping them on the floor, eager to get to you and divest you of the same. Your helmet first, then the zippers and snaps, heavy handed and without finesse he stripped you down, leaving you in your panties, suit crumpled around your ankles.

“Ezra” you tried again as he tugged his own zipper down, grunting into your neck as he kissed, hungry and wet from your shoulder to your ear, pinching softly at the side of your breast. He stopped only to free his arms, “My ship.” He finally explained as he stepped on your suit and pulled your legs free in turn before kicking his own aside. “Just needs a starter. All the works are in order, if we can trade some of our aurelac for the right part, we will be creamy. You and I.” He spoke tenderly and earnestly, smoothing your hair, leaving you no space to question, only to trust and abide.

Your partnership with Ezra, enigma that he was, seemed to be ordained. Your cooperation was irrelevant to Kevva’s designs. Ezra is here, you’ve got enough aurelac to give you a life of ease, and now, it seemed, you even had the ship that would take you to that life. It was intoxicating. His scent, the warmth of the air in the hull, the way his grip on your waist tightened as he sucked your stiff nipple into his mouth. It could be so easy to give in when he eased into a seat next to the beeping, humming control panel, pulling you against his chest, sticky with sweat. So easy when his cock was against your belly to just give yourself to him. Let him take what he wanted and sate himself. Something told you though, that he needed the chase. He’s a hunter. Too long without a challenge and he might grow restless and unpredictable. He needs a little fight to keep him sharp. The glimmer in his eyes, when you tried to twist out of his grasp was the confirmation.

“Don’t fight me, kitten.” He warned, pulling you tighter against him, squeezing and lifting to grind your mound against his length. “I can make this wholly enjoyable for you. Let me.” Clearly unsatisfied with your soft eyed silence, he brought his hand down on your ass, making you cry out, more from surprise than pain. Before the sting subsided he repositioned you so your slick cunt was against his thigh. “You want to come? Let me see you take it.”

You started with a timid roll of your hips, watching him watch you as you moved against him, spreading your arousal over his thick muscle. “That’s it. Make a mess. Filthy.” His fingertips dug into your hips as he guided you faster, harder against him. Ezra panted along with you, sweat dampening his hair and running down his neck. “Don’t stop. I know you just want to come. Come for me and I’ll give you what you really want.” He watched your face with parted lips and furrowed brow as you inched closer, rutting against him, desperate, grinding your clit with every backward motion. His hand moved to your breasts, plucked at your nipples, splayed over your chest, felt the pounding of your heart, moved to your neck, your jaw, where his thumb rested on your bottom lip, swiping over it until you opened and let him press it in against your tongue. As you sucked his thumb, the coil that had been winding low in your belly finally snapped. His thumb muffled your cry and his fingers tapped against your cheek.

Without a chance to catch your breath, he held out his hand to you. “Spit.” He looked at you expectantly. “Look at me, pussycat. Look how hard I am. This is because of you. Now, what are you going to do about it?” You let a pool of saliva drip onto his palm, and he spread it over his cock. It was every bit as big as you’d imagined, and beautiful, heavy and thick, foreskin sliding as he stroked himself, revealing a fat and leaking tip. “You’re going to be good and you’re going to get on your knees and help me get it good and wet. The wetter it is, the better it’s gonna feel in that tight cunt. Go on.”

Settled between his knees you couldn’t help but question how you’d gotten here. You felt as if you had been funneled straight to this wild, woolly, articulate man, still a mystery to you but joined now it seemed, the aurelac a contract between you, your alliance more than business. Here now, his throbbing turgid member in your hand, and him, smiling or smirking down at you as you licked lewdly, eyes half lidded, following the hard ridge onto the head where you swirled your tongue. When you worked him into your mouth you felt him jerk, whining softly. His taste was salty and mild, smooth on your tongue and nice. It felt right and good to suck his cock. You lost yourself in his pleasure, varying the speed and depth that you took him, cradling his balls in your palm. You didn’t look to see his face, you didn’t see him bare his teeth. You only felt him tensing and squirming, then his hand in your hair as he pulled you off of him and covered your mouth with his own, kissing you hungrily.

“Don’t get carried away. I’m going to fill you up,” he looked from your eyes to your swollen lips, “but not here.” The implication in the low rumble of his words silenced your mind. There was nothing there but him.

“Ezra.”

“I wanted to bide my time, be a gentleman for you.” Ezra laid you down on the floor, caging you in with his broad, silver scarred shoulders and his strong arms. “The instant I saw you I knew I had to have you, gentle girl. Knew you’d be what I needed.” He dragged the wide head of his cock over your folds, smearing your wetness over your puffy lips and teasing your clit before he lined himself up, but left you in agony as he refused to go any further. No, instead he shifted his knee up under your thigh so he could hold himself up and thumb slow circles over your clit. “I tried to be a good man.” It wasn’t enough. He was so close. He pressed into you a fraction of an inch and then retreated, giving you a delicious pressure but nothing to clench on. You cried and writhed, lifting your hips uselessly, trying to will him into you. Ezra just chuckled. “If you want mercy, you better beg.”

“Ezra!! Ezra, please! Fuck. Fuuuck! Please Ezra, just fuck me!”

“Shhhh.” He hushed you sympathetically, “You can have it.” In one smooth motion he was fully seated, pushing the air from your lungs with all his weight seemingly focused on spearing you. As deep as he could get, Ezra pulsed his hips, making sure you felt every bit of him before he drew back like a bow and plunged forward again, loving the sound you made as he filled you again. He set a slow pace, and you moaned softly at the stretch and fullness of him inside you. The way he dragged against your clit with every being of his hips. Your hands were restless, moving from his shoulder to his neck, up the back to grasp his short, tender curls. Impulsively, you pulled them and were rewarded with a much harder snap of his hips. The force of his movements pushed you up, a problem he remedied by dropping to his elbows, closing you in, holding you close to kiss your neck and breathe into your ear all that he had been consuming him. “Needed you.” He panted. “So good. Taking everything I give, let me do anything. Let me make you use you up…” He trailed off as his thrusts grew sloppy, his tempo uneven. All you could do under his heavy weight was hold on, his neck, his arms, whatever you could reach and your legs around his waist. You gave him one more fluttering orgasm around his cock before the wet sounds of your bodies and the moaning and panting slowly faded as he spilled inside you, filling you with his spend.

All was hazy as you drifted back to yourself. Ezra had stayed inside you, nuzzling you’d neck and jaw, kissing the side of your face. Getting off made him docile and sentimental.

“You don’t belong out here.” He reminded you again. “What if I hadn’t found you? Do you know what could happen to a woman in the green? One sweet like you? As pretty?” He shook his head in disgust.

“You did find me though, Ezra. You’re taking care of me. You found me and we found aurelac and now we just have to get off this moon. We can do what we like now. We never have to put on another helmet again. We never have to leave Lao if we don’t want to. We can swim,” you kissed his bottom lip, “we can eat.” You kissed his nose, “and we can fuck.”

Ezra nodded, sighing and releasing the tension from his shoulders.

That night you tucked yourselves into a bunk on the ship. The filter was better here, and the bed was a better fit for you both, though he still curled around you, tucking your body into his, letting you sleep soundly in his arms.

•••••

Morning on the ship was bright and clear, the sunlight streaming in from a large window above the control panel. You slept better than you had in ages, yawning and stretching and smiling to yourself. It took several blissful moments to register that you were alone.

You called softly for Ezra, hoping he would come if he heard the needy lilt in your voice. Hoped he would remember that you were warm and sleepy and naked in his bed. Hoped he’d come and show you how he thought you ought to be treated.

But he didn’t come.

And he wasn’t in the ship. Not in the cockpit, not in the small hold below.

Panic gripped you as you put on your suit, realizing his was gone and so was the rail gun. You realized that you hadn’t seen which compartment he had

Locked your aurelac in and that you didn’t have a key to open them anyway. Where had he stowed your kit?

Cursing him, you dashed out of the ship, eyes fixed on the swirling dust so you wouldn’t cry. The tent, you decided, was the first place to go. Your tent was there, you could take it maybe you could find Ezra and get your thrower back. Maybe he would be stupid enough to give it to you so you could shoot him. Your heart ached at the thought.

ACT III: Gut The Fencer

Blood rushed through your ears, pounding with your heart as you darted back up the little hill, not caring to cover your tracks. Let them find him! you thought. If you got to him first it wouldn’t matter. Your anger and rage gave way to humiliation and despair. You’d trusted him and you’d been had. What chance did you have now of ever getting back home? Ezra was gone. Gone the aurelac, gone your kit, soon you’d be gone too, one way or another.

You felt sorry for yourself. You thought of something else your grandmother used to say. “Broken hearts want broken necks.” It ached to think of her. You cried, unable to wipe away your tears, they dripped down your cheeks. Your pace slowed as you tried to follow the almost imperceptible desire path that had been made back toward Ezra’s tent. You had to watch your step, ever vigilant of the spore producers that could overwhelm your filter, the rocks and vines, the biting insects, the animals in the trees. So many threats lurked.

You were glad the BG line was shutting down. This Kevva forsaken moon was cursed. Everyone who came here was cursed. Nothing good was here. You kicked and shoved at the branches in your path and as if on cue, you snagged your boot on a vine and fell forward until you were abruptly snatched back up by your arm.

“What are you doing out here?” That familiar voice hissed. “Where are you going, pussycat? Where are you running with no thrower?” His voice was low, angry with a top note of suspicion. Jerking from his grip, your spun to face him, hurt and seething. “YOU left ME, Ezra! I don’t have a thrower because YOU took it. YOU took MY aurelac!” There was more to scream at him, but your voice was cracking so you charged at him instead. You could take out his knees, knock him down, disarm him, and dispatch him. That was the best plan. It was your only plan until your shoulder met his chest and he barely wavered. He just put an arm around you and dared to laugh. “Pussycat. I met with the Sater. They are early risers and I didn’t want to disturb you. I should have told you I was leaving. I apologize for the oversight.”

You softened against him, trying to work out if you should believe him or not.

“Why’d you meet the Sater?” It came out more accusatory than you meant. Ezra smiled at you, wide and boyish. “Let’s discuss this back on the ship. While we walk you can tell me where you were going to so fast that you nearly rolled down this ravine?” He took your hand and led you, looking back every few steps to watch with a sympathetic scowl as you told him how you were frightened when you woke up alone, how you thought he’d used you, abandoned you, left you to die.

By the time you made it back to the ship, apologies were made and re-made, vows to never leave you again sworn, and looks of devotion and care and desire exchanged.

nside the ship, your suits were stripped, his hands cupped your face and yours twisted in his soft undershirt.

Your back met the paneled wall as Ezra’s forehead fell

against yours, he lifted you and held you in place against him. “I’ve got to tell you. I wanted to wait until

It was all finished, but I can’t wait. I went to finalize an entente with the Sater. Our smallest gem for a starter that I can hot wire to this derelict ship. It won’t be long.” You were speechless. It was too good to be true. “Ezra…” you started, but he stopped you with a kiss. “You need to understand me now, Pussycat. I found you for a reason. I’m not keen to give you up. The aurelac is yours, this ship is yours, and you are mine.” He punctuated the last word with a firm push against your wet pussy, making you whine and rock your hips. “This pussy is mine. These tits are mine. Your hands, your mouth, all mine.” His cock swelled against your mound, more precum beading at the swollen head.

“You’re going to let me have you however I want, and I’m going to give you a little present.” You nodded, servile and soft for him.

He moved you back into the bunk where you woke up alone, and called you his sweet girl, his good girl, his only one. He kissed you and squeezed you, made you putty in his rough hands. Arousal dampening your panties so that they stuck to you, translucent, making you throb just to this side of discomfort. He sat up and pulled you across his lap, ass up, legs splayed. He murmured something unintelligible and loving caressed the back of your thighs, up over the swell of your ass, tugging your panties to wedge between your cheeks and pull taut against your aching pussy. Back down, he massaged you, everywhere but where you needed him most. Down your inner thighs, nudging against your puffy lips. As one hand made it’s way up your calf, the other kneaded your ass and inched down to tease at the wet fabric over your entrance.

Circling your ankle in his hand, he pulled your foot toward him, bringing your toes to his mouth and sucking two at a time, making you jump in surprise at the strange sensation. No one had ever done such a thing. It felt dirtier than anything else he had done. While he sucked and hummed around the little digits, his other hand played lazily with your pussy, smacking it gently through the wet fabric, pressing the saturated cotton into your folds to show every detail of your center. He finally turned loose of your foot, but returned his attention ten-fold back to your cunt. Both hands were on you, rubbing, pressing, massaging, smearing slick as he praised your obsequiousness.

You tried hard to keep your breathing steady, so worked up but with no relief, you pinched, pulled, rolled your nipples and keened, rolling your hips looking for more anything. Ezra answered your prayers with one more loud, stinging smack to your pussy.

“Are you ready for your present now? I think you are, if the way you’re soaking my leg is any indication.” You thought he might leave you, go get your gift, but he pulled a small case from under the pillow. An aurelac case. An odd gift considering the amount of aurelac you had struck, but you watched with curiosity as he slid the case in front of you, leaving you across his lap, adjusting his cock.

As expected, inside you found a small aurelac pearl. It was shiny, as if it had been polished and refined, making the reticulation of the amber inside sparkle. It was lovely. “Thank you, Ezra. It’s beautiful.” You twisted back to kiss him, but his eyes had darkened and he had begun running your through again. “Take it out.” He instructed. You carefully plucked the litttle gem from

The case and saw it had been carved. It looked like a spade, an objet d’art. You turned it in your hand, appreciating the fine detail of the shaping and the way the small stand at the bottom was shaped into a perfectly flat circle. It would be perfect on your desk. “Do you recognize it? That’s the first gem you harvested. The Sater are deeply religious, but they do undertake art as well. When you agreed to be mine, well, I couldn’t resist. And now you’ll have a little memento from this dig and from me. Wear it in good health, Pussycat.”

“Wear it?” Was it jewelry? “Ezra, I don’t understood. It’s very pretty though, very sweet of you. Thank you.” You reached for the box to tuck the gem away for safe keeping, but Ezra took it from your hand. “I’ll show you how you’re going to wear it for me. He closed the little sculpture in his hand, warming it as he resumed his ministrations. Sliding his fingers through your folds, brushing over your clit, teasing your entrance, he completed that circuit a few times while you rocked your hips slightly. On the last pass, he dragged a slick finger over your tighter hole. For the second time tonight he made you squirm. “Have you done this before?” He teased, and you shook your head. He dragged his middle finger through your folds and brought it up to join the first, pressing against your tight ring of muscle, you felt him move again, the rustle of fabric, and the snap of a lid. Unable to see what he was doing you could only guess what he was doing.

Soon enough the answer came in the form of a drip of cool liquid. It dripped down, mixing with your own arousal. Ezra spread it around and slowly, determinedly pressed the tip of his finger into your ass. You whined, he soothed you with his soft voice, his free hand rubbing your back gently as he worked. You weren’t aware of the effect it was having on him to be the first one to explore you this way, to have you so wrapped around his finger that you didn’t protest at all as he readied you for the next step. Adding more of the liquid and twisting his finger before joining it with another, the stretch was foreign and new, not exactly uncomfortable, your body seemed to adjust to each new thing he introduced, something you pondered on as he pressed further, sliding the two fingers in and out gently, shallowly, as he thumbed your clit. Your pussy ached for attention.

When Ezra decided you were ready, he positioned the aurelac where his fingers had been inside you, gave a few testing presses, added more liquid, and set to work, pressing, twisting, easing the gem into your asshole as you whined and whimpered, until it was settled, just the wide base remaining. Ezra admired his handiwork. “You’re a marvel. How’s it feel? Big?” You nod, “Yeah, Ez. Big. Full.” Ezra pressed on the little toy, watching with glee as it sank in.

He rolled you carefully to your back, soaking in your naked body, spread out and open for him, and him alone. He bent to kiss and suck at your nipples, up your chest, and licked into your mouth, kissing you deeply, with more passion than you’d ever experienced. The kind you thought existed only in movies. But here he was, so giving and tender, so mad for you and your body, so eager to give and take. You were breathless, both of you when he pulled away, searching your face, staring at your lips. “Open up.” You obeyed. “Stick out your tongue.” You were unsure, but you obeyed. Grinning, he spit onto your tongue. Your eyes went wide as it dripped to the back of your tongue. “Don’t swallow it. Leave it right there while I take more of what’s mine.” You could only nod, breathing hard through your nose as he dragged his cock through your folds, smacking the head against your clit for good measure before easing into your pussy, aware of how much tighter you were, how sensitive you were with your aurelac in place. He moaned, feeling his cock rub against that defiled gem while he fucked your cunt. Slow and easy, gentle, he rocked back and forth, listening to your cries and moans, knowing you couldn’t make the noise you wanted to with his spit in your mouth. “Swallow it.”

Watching you follow his every instruction without question, a toy for him made him hard like never before. He fucked into you faster, spurred on by your uninhibited sounds. He slid his hand between your bodies to tend to your clit, giving you the last little push you needed to come. “Yes! Yes!” You squealed, bucking your hips, squeezing your tits, reaching the highest height you could imagine. You were hot and cold, boneless and rigid, you were nothing until he was inside you. Ezra hadn’t stopped his own pursuit, just slowed until you settled, but now he was on the hunt again, bouncing your ties with every thrust, making wet, sticky sounds fill the air with his sneer. Remembering last night, you reached up and took a handful of his hair, pulling him down to kiss you, never letting go until he was coming with a strangled shout, leaving you dripping his cum. It was exhausting to love Ezra. Terrifying to admit that you loved him. Such a short time in the grand scheme, a tiny tick on the timeline of what would be the rest of your lives together.

You tangled your limbs together, holding each other, whispering sweet things, kissing for a long while until he sat up. “I’ve got one more thing for you, pussycat. Do you trust me?” You promised that you did and he left, rummaged a minute before returning, holding a short length of rope. He climbed in above you and kissed you again, the sort of kiss you wanted to feel forever on your lips. “I want to tie you up. Are you going to let me?” Happy to please him, you held out your wrists. He kissed each one, and crossed one over the other, thing an intricate knot that looked like a bow. You liked being a little gift for him. “One more thing.” He whispered, and ducked out while you waited for his return, eager to see what he had in store, wiggling to feel his gift inside you. You heard movement, and opened your eyes, expecting Ezra, but seeing a figure in black, a Sater. You screamed for Ezra to come save you, but he stepped into view with his hand on the sater’s shoulder, starter in his hand. “You really shouldn’t trust anyone out here, Pussycat.

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littlealienproducts · 8 months ago

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stylessencefinejewellery · 9 months ago

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olaqueenbeeofastrology · 3 months ago

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arielsoicyjewel · 1 month ago

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averagewriter-inthedark · 2 years ago

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Queen of the Halfpipe 🏂 | Jake Seresin Imagine

Takes place before, during, and after the events of TGM

TGM Masterlist

Characters & Pairings: Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin x pro snowboarder!reader (romantic), the dagger squad (platonic)

Content Warnings: fluff, profanity, | female!reader (she/her) | wc: 10k

Requested 📨 yes/no—for @gizmodear 🤍 (rules for requests)

Premise: Dedication, determination, blood, sweat, and tears. That’s what athletes put in when they say they want to compete on the world’s greatest sporting stage. Years of hard work that come with sacrifices. At a young age Y/n L/n knew she wanted to be the best when it came to snowboarding, devoting herself to the Olympic dream. Love wasn’t something she thought would happen for her as she was so focused on her career. But, as someone once pointed out to her years after she did in fact find her happily ever after, she was living in her own little Hallmark movie.

Note: ah I’ve finally finished and I’m so happy with how it turned out! @gizmodear I apologize for the long wait (i think you sent this request at the beginning of February) but I hope you like this and I delivered with everything you could’ve imagined 🥹 I really love writing the athlete!reader x dagger squad paring fics so this was so fun to write. I did so much research to be as accurate as I could since I am not familiar with snowboarding. I did watch Chloe Kim in 2018 & 2022 so a lot of what reader accomplishes in this fic was inspired by her so I hope you don’t mind that I did that (except the ending since the 2026 Olympics hasn’t happened yet obviously 😂). Please let me know what you think!

——————————————

“So one last run, huh?”

“One last one,” she confirmed, hoping he couldn’t pick up on the slight sadness in her tone. All good things must come to an end.

“Better make it count,” he encouraged her. “You got this, okay? Don’t think about it-like I always tell you: don’t think, just do. That gold medal is calling your name.”

“I better go claim it then.”

“We’ll be cheering when you do, babe. Go show them who’s the Queen.”

Some people like the heat. Going to the beach and riding the waves of the ocean. Others enjoy the rain. The soothing sound of water hitting the pavement brings comfort to their ears. Then there are those who prefer the cold. Not as popular as the other two. People feel the only way to enjoy it is by staying indoors to sit by the fire and watch the snow fall through the window.

Y/n L/n loved the snow. Having grown up in the mountains of Colorado, she was used to blizzards and snowstorms. But she loved it mostly because of the sports associated with it. You know, the ones millions of people gather across the globe every four years to watch at the Winter Olympic Games. Athletes who’ve spent their entire life working to achieve their dream of glory. People who are not even patriotic rep their colors. Children watching for the first time think, “That’s gonna be me one day.”

That’s how it was for ten year old Y/n Ln watching the 2002 Winter Olympics on the small tv screen in the living room of her home. It was a special year of the Games. Hosted on US soil in Salt Lake City, Utah. Taking place in the months after the country was met with tragedy following the attacks on the World Trade Center in September 2001. Not a dry eye in the stadium or on those watching from home as the flag that flew on Ground Zero was brought into the arena by members of Team USA along with the NYPD & FDNY.

The Olympic torch was passed by members of the 1980 gold medal winning hockey team, coach Mike Eruzione lighting the cauldron. One of the most notable teams in US Olympic history. They were just college students up against the number one team in the world in 1980, which ironically enough, was also on US soil in Lake Placid, New York. Anyone who watched them play could recall the chills they felt when the buzzer counted down to zero with sportscaster Al Micheals yelling, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” Winning that game didn’t deliver the gold medal, no, it only secured their place in the final match. There they defeated Finland 4-2, shooting themselves into history.

Y/n was familiar with many of the sports she grew to love watching. Her family owned and lived on a ski resort, so the art of skiing and snowboarding came to her at a young age. She was around four years old the first time she went down hill with her father. By the time she was around eight she could do it on her own with little help.

While her parents enjoyed skiing, Y/n was drawn to snowboarding. More specifically, the halfpipe.

At a whopping 11 to 22 feet in the air and slopes between 16 to 18 degrees, the halfpipe brings fast momentum to snowboarders allowing them to perform difficult spins and skills as they pass from wall to wall. For the Olympics, 22 feet was the typical height of the walls.

The first time Y/n attempted to drop in on the halfpipe was at the age of ten. After watching Team USA sweep the medals in the mens and watching Kelly Clark win gold for the women, Y/n was determined to one day stand on the podium and be crowned the queen of the halfpipe. Nerves were present, as they usually are when one tries to do something they’ve never done. With her parents and a snowboarding instructor present, Y/n became the little daredevil she was and tried her best.

Of course she couldn’t be bold and attempt spins and jumps just yet. Surely that would end her career before it could even start. No, instead they would work on getting used to traveling down the slopes first. On top of that Y/n would have to unlock her inner gymnast so she could do the flips when she got air.

Her preteen years were dedicated to training. Homeschooling became a thing. Everyday she was out working tirelessly to the point her legs would ache. Often there would be a bad run where getting up from the snow would take an arm and leg to do. Balancing a social life as a teenager was impossible. Y/n pretty much sold her soul to snowboarding. But that’s what one has to do when they dream of Olympic glory.

By the time Y/n was 15 she was already making a name for herself after joining the U.S Snowboarding Team. She won titles left and right that people were coming to her family's ski resort just to watch her train. A competitor of the Winter X Games at age 16, Y/n secured the gold after her second run in the women’s superpipe final with a score of 83.75. Rumors speculated she was going to go for the 2010 Olympic Trials. Having just turned 18, Y/n was a leading contender for the Games.

But you know how there are always bad runs? Yeah….the Trials seemed to give her that.

Y/n was hoping to be the first woman to land the 1080 in competition since no one had done it before. Men had been doing the trick since 2002, not as difficult as some of the other moves they were keen to do. While practicing Y/n had successfully landed it a handful of times. So once she felt she was confident, she planned to put in her trial runs. Her coach insisted she’d wait, but Y/n was determined.

And unfortunately it was going to cost her.

After failing to land on her 1080 on both attempts, Y/n was left at the bottom of the leaderboard even with the lowest and highest dropped from her scoring. Embarrassed and humiliated, Y/n made no effort to hide how devastated she was. Tears fell from her puffy cheeks, the cold doing nothing to help. She tried to avoid the cameras but they followed her everywhere she went.

“Y/n, what does this mean for you going forward?”

“Are you going to train for Sochi?”

“Can we expect to see you at next year’s Winter X Games?”

Returning home from the trials, Y/n spent the first week watching the footage back to see what went wrong. Her coach of almost ten years was with her, scribbling furiously on the white board the error and how to fix them.

“You opened too late,” he told her, circling the area in bright red where Y/n messed up. It made her glare at the spot. “When you do that you come in contact with the snow much quicker than you want—that’s why you lost your balance and fell. You didn’t give much time to stop the momentum from spinning. You need to hit this mark—,” another red circle appeared just above the marked one, “to land on time on your feet without losing balance.”

“You’re gonna make me run this at least twenty times today huh?”

“You bet your ass I am,” he flicks the cap at her, “Now go get ready—we’ve got work to do!”

And so for the next four years Y/n worked harder than she ever did before leading up to the 2010 trials. She’d been snowboarding almost fifteen years at that point, nearly seven at the competitive level. 1080s were what kept her up at night. One of the most difficult moves in women’s halfpipe, Y/n spent the four years working to perfect it. Kelly Clark, the 2002 Gold medalist and 2010 Bronze medalist, ended up becoming the first woman to land it at the 2011 X Games, Y/n taking second place and becoming the second woman to land it the following year.

“Remember what I told you,” her coach squeezed her shoulders just before her turn at the 2014 Winter Olympic Trials. “Let the snow and air guide you, don’t guide them. Keep steady and eyes open—you’ve trained for this and you can do it, Y/n. Just do what you’ve been doing the last four years.”

Taking the advice sure as hell paid off. When Team USA marched into the dome of the opening ceremonies at the Sochi Winter Olympics, Y/n was amongst the 222 athletes representing the red, white, and blue.

Qualifications were nerve racking, but Y/n put her blood, sweat, and tears into the competition. The 1080 had everyone buzzing since it was to be the first time competed in women’s snowboarding at the Olympics. “Just get on your feet,” she told herself, placing her goggles down as she prepared to drop in. “Don’t think about it too much, just do it.”

“And here is 22-year-old Y/n L/n from Aspen, Colorado gearing up for her first run in the women’s halfpipe qualifications. This has got to be a big moment for Y/n, having missed out on the Olympic team four years ago for Vancouver. Here in Sochi she’s a favorite to make the podium after great runs at the Winter X Games, becoming the second woman to land the 1080–which we’ll see her in a moment. Y/n’s been snowboarding since the age of four—as one does when their family owns a popular ski resort. We’re excited to see what she’s got for us today.”

“For those of you watching at home who are new to competitive snowboarding, here’s how the scoring works. The athletes are given two runs—or attempts to score big by doing tricks between each wall as they go down the slope of the halfpipe. A team of six judges will then determine the scores through amplitude, another word for height, difficulty, variety, execution, and progression. The highest and lowest score are then thrown out and the remaining four are averaged together for that run. The highest of the two runs is what will determine their position on the leaderboard.”

With her first run of 90.00 and second a 86.75, Y/n advanced to the semifinals along with Kaitlyn Farrington, and Hannah Teter. Kelly Clark secured her place in the finals as the top qualifying score after qualifications. During the semifinals Y/n brought in a 92.50 and 93.50. Her coach was jumping up and down, her parents screaming and Y/n ran over to them when the results came in.

She was heading to the finals.

A silver lining moment was what she was met with after claiming a score of 91.00 following her two runs. Team USA sweeping the podium: Kaitlyn with the gold, Y/n taking silver, and Kelly the bronze.

At the press junket following the podium ceremony, Y/n could not stop smiling. Even when she was asked the question, “How does it feel to be wearing the silver medal after what happened at the trials four years ago?”

“It feels amazing as you can imagine,” chuckles erupt from all sides. “I try to erase the 2010 trials from my memory, but ultimately that is what made me determined to work so hard these last four years. Being able to represent Team USA and bringing home the silver medal alongside my teammates Kaitlyn and Kelly, who I’ve admired my entire career—and watching Kelly win gold in 2002 is what kickstarted my dream of going to the Olympics…” Y/n pauses, grin growing wider, “It’s truly an honor. I-I’m still coming down from the high of it all.”

“Y/n over here!” The athlete points to a lady, who proceeds to stand from her chair to ask, “I know you’re going to be asked this a lot so let me be the first to, are we going to see you in four years for Pyeongchang?”

Biting her lip, Y/n gave a shrug though her smile remained, “I’m gonna train so the hope is you will see me in 2018, but you never know in sports. Anything can happen. For now I’m gonna celebrate with my coach and my family who traveled all the way from the States with me and then get back to the snow when I get home.”

When one already has established themself as a name in their sport, with an Olympic medal, several national and world titles under their belt, then going bigger is to be expected. Higher difficulty in tricks, more air and speed, fighting with gravity to not fall on your ass. Y/n felt the pressure.

“You want me to do back-to-back 1080s?” She nearly dropped her granola bar, staring at her coach dumbfounded.

“You can do it,” he said as if it were obvious. “You’ve been getting so much momentum on the landing that you’re getting massive height on your 720. You can easily go for the 1080 on that.”

It seemed tricky, but Y/n wasn’t one to say no to a challenge. “Fuck it, let’s do it.”

The first time resulted in a face plant in the snow. The second time she lost balance and skidded the rest of the slope on her ass. Finally on the third attempt she managed to catch her feet, exclaiming “Holy shit! I did it!” Off to the side her coach was fist pumping, in a heap of joy for the athlete. Never had anyone successfully landed a back-to-back 1080. But Y/n did in a fucking practice run. “Pyeongchang, here I come!”

When Y/n landed the movements at the 2018 Olympic trials, she was the highlight of the competition.

“The 2014 silver medalist in this event, Y/n L/n dropping in. Great start—setting up for her 1080….beautiful landing—she’s been working hard to perfect and—-OH! Oh my gosh she just did another one!! Did we just witness what I think we did? Holy moly folks I don’t believe it—Y/n L/n has just done the impossible with back-to-back 1080s in a single run!! That’s gonna have a massive score I can already tell.”

Adrenaline was pumping through her veins like never before when Y/n came down from the slope after her final move. Giggling like a maniac, her hands covered her mouth as the crowd roared around her. Her coach was going crazy, as were her friends and family who came out to support. A score of 95.00 sent the audience into a frenzy. And even with her second run, there was no doubt in anyone's mind.

Y/n was heading for Pyeongchang.

“It was a successful Olympic Trials this past week with 241 athletes from across the country qualifying for Team USA in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Team USA will be competing in 15 sports, with many returning to the stage—including two time gold-medalist in the Men’s halfpipe, Shaun White, and 2010 Olympic champion of the women’s downhill in skiing, Lindsey Vonn. The women’s hockey team is looking to return to glory after not having won the gold since Nagano in 1998–the team claiming either silver or bronze in the past Games. There’s been a lot of excitement among supporters for returning Olympian Y/n L/n, who will be competing in the women’s halfpipe once again—L/n was the 2014 silver medalist in the event and became the talk of the trials when she completed back-to-back 1080s in her first run of the final competition, securing her place on Team USA with a massive score of 95.00. L/n has stated she will be attempting the 1080 duo at these Games. If she can pull out a score like she did at the trials of even higher, we could be looking at a new Queen of the Halfpipe.”

For the Games in Pyeongchang, each competitor would do two runs in qualifications and those who make it to the final will get three chances to produce a big score. It was smooth sailing to the finals for Y/n. Both runs received a score of 90.00, making her the top qualifier and securing one of twelve spots in the final.

February 13, 2018 was the best day of Y/n’s life.

It was a beautiful morning in South Korea. Sun beaming down with clear skies making the snow sparkle. Y/n was the last contestant in each rotation, spending the time in between her runs to keep her mind at ease. The playlist she made was blasting through the headphones she wore, a mix of genres that included artists like AC/DC, One Direction, and Beyoncé. Sometimes the cameramen would catch a glimpse of her dancing while mouthing the words to the songs, making viewers at home and the NBC commentators chuckle. Throughout the competition people were tweeting about the athlete:

@ sassycassie: @Y/nlikesthesnow is such a mood at the @Olympics. I wonder what’s on her playlist.

@TeamUSA✔️: we’re all jamming with @Y/nlikesthesnow.

@Marvelicious: Petition for the @Olympics to include music in the halfpipe from here on out.

When it came time for her run, Y/n rolled her neck, said a mental prayer, and dropped in once she was given the green light. Her heart was racing by the time she finished her first run, which did not get a good score due to falling on her second 1080. A rocky start to her competition, the number came back a 41.00.

Quickly the athlete brushed it off. “There’s still two more,” she told herself, approaching her coach who voiced the same thing. Two more chances to score big. All she needed to do was land the 1080s and get high altitude on her 720 and backside 900. Once that happened the gold medal was practically hers.

And she did just that.

On her second run, Y/n delivered what everyone was on the edge of their seats for. She screamed in victory going into her 720 because she had landed the second 1080 perfectly. Letting the remainder of the slopes guide her, Y/n finished her run with a beautiful 900 and shot her arms into the air, the people in the audience cheering. When she crossed the line she fell to her knees, board still attached to her feet and let out a cry of joy.

“Wow, wow, wow! That was absolutely incredible! She completed the back-to-back 1080s—I know we already saw it in the qualifications, but seeing it today was even better—and that 900 was massive, she could’ve thrown in a third! Look at Y/n, she’s taking it all in—the fans are going crazy, Team USA are already celebrating. And we still have one more run left! Remember the judges drop the highest and lowest scores and it looks like it’s gonna be……A 98.75!!! THAT IS HUGE—THE HIGHEST WE’VE SEEN YET!!”

Y/n was doing her best not to cry when her coach and parents hauled her into a group hug. There was still one more run to do, but it would be her victory lap no doubt. No way would anyone be able to touch her score.

Smiling the entire time, Y/n was effortless in her final attempt. One couldn’t even call it an attempt when she was already the gold medalist. The remaining competitors had already gone, none close to the number she produced in the second run. Tears finally flowed when she finished her 900, coming to the end of the slope and unclamping her board before dropping to the snow. The sound of the cheers was so loud she could feel the vibration.

Cameramen surrounded the athlete. Feeling giddy she made a snow angel, laughing the entire time.

When the score came back a 93.50, Y/n was officially named the Olympic champion of the women’s halfpipe. She wasn’t the only member from Team USA on the podium, Arielle Gold claimed the bronze, pushing out 2002 Gold Medalist Kelly Clark by nearly two full points. Liu Jiayu was the silver medalist.

At the podium ceremony Y/n felt like she was in a dream. Even when the announcer said, “Gold medalist and Olympic Champion, from the United States of America, Y/n L/n!!” With the medal placed around her neck and the sound of the national anthem echoing for all ears to hear, Y/n thought she’d wake up in her bed and it would have all been a dream.

But it was far from a dream. The press conference assured that. Reporters and journalists from sports magazines and media swarmed the place, Y/n more nervous about answering their questions than performing tricks in the air that were life threatening if landed wrong. Several questions were to be expected:

“Y/n, how are you feeling after your big win today?”

“Can you tell us anything about your plans when these Games come to an end?”

“Is it true you and actor Dylan O’Brien have been getting rather close?”

“Y/n, are you going to train for Beijing in four years?”

Exhausted and in need of food, Y/n kept her answers simple and minimum. “I feel like I could run a marathon—but mostly I could use some snacks. Oh thank you so much—,” A volunteer brought over an apple they had, and a reporter gave some crackers. “I feel even better now, thank you.”

“Well for one I’m gonna sleep at least a whole week,” chuckles rang out. “Then I’m gonna go see Black Panther since it comes out in three days—anybody gonna go see it? The trailer looked amazing.”

At the question of Dylan O’Brien, Y/n refrained from making a face, “Dylan is a good friend of mine—we met at the 2015 ESPY’s and he’s been to my family’s resort. Not to mention I was a fan of Teen Wolf when it was running. There’s nothing more going on, he’s a great buddy of mine and that’s all.” Internally groaning, Y/n could already picture the internet reacting to her answer. No doubt would they start shipping the two. Dylan would likely get a kick out of it, but like she said they were just good friends.

Responding on the topic of Beijing, Y/n said, “I’m very lucky to call myself a two-time Olympian and would love to continue my Olympic career so yes, I do plan to train for the next Games.”

The rest of 2018 was memorable for Y/n. She was invited to award shows and movie premieres, including Avengers: Infinity War, The Maze Runner: The Death Cure (which only fueled more speculation about her and Dylan) and Spider-Man: Into The SpiderVerse. She even filmed a cameo in the upcoming remake of Charlie’s Angels with fellow athletes Aly Raisman, Rhonda Rousey, and Danica Patrick. At the 2018 ESPY’s, Y/n was nominated for four awards: Best Olympic Moment, Best Female Olympian, Best Female Athlete and Best Female Action Sports Athlete. She took the latter three, in disbelief each time her name was called.

Her personality drew people in and many young girls were interested in snowboarding because of her. Within weeks she accumulated 500 thousand followers on instagram. People begged her to start a YouTube channel, wanting to follow the journey as she trains for Beijing.

“Hello friends of the interweb,” she waved to the lens of her camera. “You’ve been shouting from the rooftops and I’ve heard you loud and clear. Today is my first attempt at…vlogging? Is that what you call it?” Shrugging, she starts to walk down the hallway of her home. At age 26, Y/n moved out of her parents home shortly after her first Olympics—-having went pro—and bought a cabin on the resort so she could remain close with her family and coach. Plus it was where she trained—a nice little plaque on the entrance of the resort reading, “Home of Olympic Champion Y/n L/n.”

Fans loved seeing a more in-depth look at the Olympian. Y/n would do Q&As, give snowboarding 101 lessons, collaborate with Olympians from other sports she grew to become close friends with, and do daily vlogs of training.

“Hi, I’m Y/n L/n,” she smiled at the camera from where she was sitting, a pale pink background behind her. “And I’m here with Buzzfeed where I’m gonna be answering some questions while playing with puppies.” Clapping her hands excitedly, she grinned, “Let’s do this!”

“Was Snowboarding always your first choice when it came to sports?”

“Yes it was,” there was a tiny bulldog in her lap, drifting off to sleep while an excited lab pup was trying to chew at Y/n’s shoes. “When your family owns a ski resort in the mountains of Colorado, usually snowboarding or skiing is going to be the first sport you’re introduced to. In my case it was just like that and while my parents were more for skiing, I loved snowboarding because it was like surfing….but on snow.”

“Where would you be if you weren’t a professional athlete?”

“You know I haven’t really thought about this,” she makes a face that reads, ‘is that bad?’. “I’ve always loved animals so….probably a vet or a career that involved animals. Since I’ve started my YouTube channel I’ve grown to love creating videos and editing them—that whole process. I would not go as far as to say I’d be an Internet personality but I would maybe use those skills to go into film work. But in all honesty, I’d probably be running the resort with my parents. It’s the family business after all.”

“Do you have any tattoos?”

“I do,” flashing her forearm, the Olympic Rings inked her skin with tiny lettering that read, Sochi and Pyeongchang. “I got the rings shortly after returning from Sochi—already set on where it was going to go. The names were done after Pyeongchang. I have other tattoos on my legs and back, but this one is my favorite because it represents the dream I achieved.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Ooh we’re getting to the hard questions now,” she laughed, grabbing a puppy that was tugging on her sleeve to hold. “Ummm…..not really. While I’ve been in relationships I don’t think any has made me feel what love is supposed to be like. It’s probably why they didn’t work out,” again she makes a face. “I had a genuine care for them, but there’s a certain way people describe being ‘in love.’ And from what I’ve heard, none of my experiences would be like that. I hope that doesn't make me sound heartless,” Y/n shrugs, not embarrassed at all by being honest. “I got too much going on right now to be worrying about love though. When the time comes, it will.”

Well she was right on that. However she wasn’t expecting it to be sooner than what she thought.

Around December of 2019, Y/n had returned to Colorado after being in New York for a couple weeks for a friend’s wedding. Since becoming a bigger name in the world of snowboarding and in popular culture, the resort got more attraction throughout the year where bookings were full. During this time Y/n would help run things to get some stress from her parents. She’d train early mornings and late at night, leaving the middle of the day to assist in any way she could. Regulars who’d been coming before she was an Olympian would treat her the same, whereas tourists coming for the first time were usually starstruck.

Y/n loved interacting with supporters. Every smile she received and autograph she sighed was met with love. Kids would ask questions, the Olympian kneeling to their level to answer with full transparency. Adults would shake her hand and say they can’t wait to hopefully see her in Beijing. Those moments are what motivated Y/n to do her best with each session.

“Y/n, could you come here for a second?” her mother called out one night after Y/n finished her final run for the day. She’d just entered the lobby to say hi to her parents before heading back home when she spotted them with a group of people. One of whom looked very familiar.

Removing her scarf from face and pulling the hood down, Y/n was met with several pairs of eyes that immediately went wide. She could imagine why, considering there was a huge photo of her with the gold medal framed on the wall dedicated to the gallery of famous visitors the resort had.

Moving closer, she noticed that the group consisted of about eight people, seven of which were guys and one lady. The older gentleman who appeared to be roughly her father’s age was beaming at her. Quickly he was introduced by her mother.

“Y/n, I don’t if you remember since it’s been so long, but this is Pete Mitchell. He and your dad go way back and he’s visited a few times since we took over this place.”

Now the face brought memories with the mention of his name. Grinning, Y/n shook the hand that was extended to her, “Yeah, I remember. Maverick, right?”

“That’s right,” he smiled. “Wow, it’s great to see you again. Congrats on everything you’ve accomplished, Y/n. I’ve been watching you compete since your first trials.”

“Thank you,” she tries not to look flustered. “Sorry for looking so busted—I just finished a run and was not expecting a reunion so soon.” The words have the older adults chuckling. Glancing behind Pete’s shoulder, Y/n nodded to his companions, which had the pilot scurry to introduce them.

Pointing to each person, he lists off, “these are my lieutenants and members of my Top Gun striker team. Bradley Bradshaw, Natasha Trace, Robert Floyd, Mickey Garcia, Reuben Fitch, Javy Machado, and Jake Seresin.”

As he calls their names they each go to shake Y/n’s hand, saying, “nice to meet you.” When she gets to the last person, Jake, Y/n feels a light spark as their skin touches, making both of them flinch.

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” the tinge of a southern accent nearly makes her knees go weak, a dazzling smile to compliment the pilot.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” she returns before moving back to stand beside her parents. “Thank you all for your service. What brings you to Aspen?”

“Well we’ve seen enough of the beach and ocean—now that we’re all stationed in Miramar—and thought we’d like a scene change,” Pete explained, gesturing to her parents. “I called your folks up after our assignment to book us a getaway since these guys were in need of a break. We’re here for the weekend to hit the slopes—and teach some of them how to ski.”

“Fun,” she hums, glancing to see some nervous eyes among Bob, Javy, Mickey, and Jake. When she caught Jake’s gaze he smiled at her, making her look away before she blushed. “Who all knows how to ski?”

“Reuben, Nat, and I do,” Rooster answered, “this is the first time those clowns are seeing snow.”

“I’ll have you know, Bradshaw,” Jake lifts a hand, giving a mocking glare. “I have seen snow, but seeing as I am a Texas man we don’t get it down there.”

“I get snow where I’m from,” Bob interjects, blushing a bit, “But I was the type to stay indoors when it did. I’ve never skied though.”

“Well there is a first for everything,” Y/n beams, “and once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy. Although I’m probably not the best judge…..since I pretty much live on the snow.”

“I personally wanna try snowboarding,” Nat admits, smiling when Y/n gives her a thumbs up and mouths, “good choice.”

“I’ll do it if you do it,” Mickey says and the two high five.

“Maybe Y/n can give you some pointers” Y/n’s dad suggested, glancing at her with a tilt of the head. “She’d be the best teacher here.” The Olympian smiles, offering a light shrug.

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Mickey and Nat nearly turned into school children right there, but where Nat was calm on the exterior, Mickey was unleashing his inner fanboy.

“If it’s not out of your way—.”

“Oh my God, to be trained by an Olympic gold medalist? Life goal complete.”

Y/n couldn’t help but giggle at the man, “That settles it then. I hope to see you on the slopes first thing tomorrow morning. How does ten sound?”

“Shit that means we get to sleep in,” Reuben said in relief, the others making the same expression. At Y/n’s confusion he adds, “we normally all get up at four in the morning. Ten o’clock is a dream.”

“I know what you mean—I get up at five for training. So I would definitely want you all to get a good night’s rest. Hours on the slopes will have you running to your bed,” checking her watch, Y/n lets out a yawn, chuckling when she finishes. “Speaking of running to bed, I am beat if you haven’t noticed.” She goes to shake their hand once more, “It was so nice meeting you all and I look forward to tomorrow. Pete, it was great seeing you again.”

Saying goodbye to the group and her parents, Y/n waves one last time and heads to the door. The entire short drive to her home, her mind wanders to Jake. A warm feeling she couldn’t describe boiled in her chest, not sure if it was a little crush or just that she was attracted to him. With his green eyes, sun kissed skin, blonde hair, and dazzling smile, the man was a looker. She definitely could see him being a charmer, maybe even a playboy.

She didn’t want to think about that possibility.

Compared to her snowboarding career, relationships were something Y/n didn’t have the best record with. Yeah she dated, shared a kiss or two with someone she was interested in, but she never saw someone more than five to six months. It wasn’t easy to balance time and energy for a partner. Snowboarding was her life and she permanently lived in Colorado. She stopped dating people in Aspen because they usually were driven by what Y/n could bring them. Relationships with fellow athletes were more difficult since they were dedicated to their sport just like she was to hers. The one time she did get involved with an athlete lasted less than two weeks.

Then you had the people in Hollywood. Since winning the silver in 2014, Y/n made plenty of friends in the film and movie industry. Anytime she was pictured with someone it sparked rumors. Even when they were with a group of friends it didn’t stop the gossip. Y/n did, however, get involved with an actor that was a friend of Dylan O’Brien. He introduced them at the 2017 Teen Choice Awards where they hit it off. It only lasted five months but it was enough to get the internet buzzing with excitement.

Since then Y/n hadn’t been serious with someone, focusing solely on training for the Beijing Olympics. As the defending Olympic champion in the halfpipe Y/n was determined to defend her title. There wouldn’t be any time for romance.

But that weekend left Y/n with a newfound feeling. One she wanted to keep the more she got to know Jake. Each night he was at the resort they’d meet at the lounge to have a drink, sometimes with a group, or by themselves. They’d catch each other in the mornings to get coffee, Y/n feeling the giddiness rise each time with every conversation. The boys caught on quickly what was happening, going as far to joke with Y/n about his history with women.

Her confidence dropped a bit, but Jake shut it down instantly, “I haven’t been with anyone in about a year. And I wouldn’t want something with you to be one and done, Y/n. I want to get to know you better and see where this goes.”

“Jake, how would this even work?” The two were sitting on one of the lounge couches the night before he was set to return to California. It was a good point to bring up. With him being in San Diego and her in Aspen, it would be difficult. “I like you and have enjoyed our time this weekend—a-and I’d love to see where this goes….but being with me isn’t easy.”

“Why’s that?” He asked, oblivious to her concern.

She gives him a knowing look, “Well first there’s the distance like I mentioned. But also I’m in a career where I prioritize that more than anything. I have to go out of the country for competitions several times a year,” her hand makes a motion to show emphasis. “This is where I train—and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. My goal is to make it to the Olympics again.”

Jake is quiet for a moment. It worries Y/n, thinking that he was going to get up and leave without another word. But then he gently places a hand on top of hers that was resting on her lap, “I admire and respect you for being honest with me. Not many people are like that—hell, Lord knows I wasn’t five years ago. But even though it may be difficult, I don’t want to avoid it just because of the ‘what if’s’. So it doesn’t work out, that’s okay, but I’d like to at least try.”

Biting her lip, she looks at their hands, “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” he smiles, “plus it gives me a reason to continue coming out here. I think I’ve fallen in love with this place,” glancing around the building, his smile gets bigger at the sight of the sun setting making the mountains look beautiful from where they were. “Being from Texas, we don’t get this type of scenery. I thought I wouldn’t like the snow but it seems to have grown on me in the few short days.”

“Well, Lieutenant, you’re gonna have to get used to it if you roll with me.”

“I think I can adapt well, darling.”

When the squad left the next morning, a little piece of Yn’s heart left with Jake. She didn’t believe in love at first sight but there was no denying the feelings swarming like butterflies each time they were together. FaceTimes became their thing. Usually a couple times a week with casual texting since both had busy lives. Jake then flew out a couple weeks later to spend New Year’s with Y/n, the two sharing their first kiss that sparked like the fireworks in the sky.

Y/n traveled to San Diego in February with Jake returning to Aspen in March. What was supposed to just be a weekend turned out to be Jake having to stay for nearly three months due to the world shutting down. The pandemic was something no one could’ve predicted. Both Y/n and Jake had to scramble to figure out what to do, her parents offering him a cabin to reside in since they had to close down the resort. The competitions Y/n was set to compete in were canceled, Jake having to work remotely with meetings through zoom. There was no indication if he’d have to return to San Diego and frankly he didn’t know how he would since airlines were shut down.

It was a blessing in disguise, however, because it brought the two closer. Jake and Y/n were able to do things together despite being confined to the resort. Since it was only them, her parents, and her coach on the premises, Y/n was able to still train and even taught Jake how to snowboard downhill. He told her about his career and what it was like being in the air competing against the speed of sound.

“It’s an adrenaline rush most of the time,” He explained one night as they laid by the fire, a random movie on the Tv mounted above the mantle. “You can probably relate when you do your runs. Not being able to really think and just let your body take over. Feeling a high that’s indescribable and praying it will end how you think it will.”

In the mornings Y/n would drop off breakfast and coffee to his cabin on her way to training. After his meetings he’d bring her lunch or dinner since she was practicing most hours in the day. The 2020 season was canceled, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t prepare for 2021. Athletes training for the Summer Olympics would have to wait a whole year, meanwhile the plans for the Winter Olympics in 2022 remained. Speculations already arose that by the next spring things would slowly go back to normal with the implementation of a vaccine. Jake returned to San Diego as soon as the green light was lit, mostly because the Navy was ordering him to. Airlines only allowed certain people to fly with regulations set to accommodate social distancing. It was a bittersweet goodbye for the couple, Jake promising to return as soon as he could.

Their relationship continued to be long distance for a long time. San Diego locked down several times preventing either from traveling to see each other. Y/n kept busy by training from sunrise to sunset, Jake running missions the Pentagon tasks the Dagger squad with and the two FaceTimed consistently. Luckily by spring of 2021 things did in fact calm down. A vaccine was introduced, both wasting no time to receive it, and making plans for Y/n to fly out to San Diego.

When she landed she was met with the clear skies and warm rays of the sun, catapulting into Jake’s awaiting arms after exiting the terminal. “I missed you so much!” She giggled as he spun her around.

“I missed you more, darling.”

Everyone welcomed her with smiles, the pilots excited to see Y/n again after so long. They took her to The Hard Deck to celebrate her and Jake’s one year anniversary and for her qualification in the 2021 Winter X Games.

“Excited to get back in the pipe, Y/n/n?” Reuben asked her.

“You bet your ass I am,” she clicks her beer glass with his. “Can’t wait for the world to see what I’ve been practicing.”

The squad cheered on Y/n from Fightertown during the Winter X Games, watching her claim the gold of the women’s Superpipe for the sixth time. Jake was the loudest, his reaction to her win captured by Rooster, “That’s my girl!!”

Flash forward to January 2022. The team rang the year in, Y/n joining festivities where she and Jake celebrated their third New Year’s before they all traveled North to Mammoth to watch Y/n compete in the Mammoth Grand Prix. The first completion of the year, it would be where the Beijing Olympic Team members were named.

By the end of the competition, Y/n was going to have to set an appointment with her tattoo artist to add Beijing to the list of Games.

“YEAHH!!!” The scream released, arms shot into the air as her name shot to the top of the leaderboard following her second run, the score a 96.00. On the ground Jake, her coach, parents, and friends were losing their minds. Rightfully so, they just witnessed Y/n make her third Olympic team.

“And there you have it folks, the defending Olympic champion in the halfpipe is heading to Beijing in her third Olympic appearance. Y/n L/n has shown greatness this whole weekend, proving herself as one of the best in the sport. There’s been so much improvement in her form—the Winter X Games this past year was the last time we’d seen her since the pandemic shut everything down, but that didn’t stop Y/n from getting ready for Beijing. She is unstoppable. It'll be an exciting Games next month, not just for the women’s competition—Shaun White will return to the stage for the fifth time in an attempt to defend his gold model.”

A celebratory party was in store for the Olympian. Champagne was popped and music blasting in the restaurant the members of Team USA rented together. All their friends and family were there having a grand time. Y/n and Shaun got pictures together, the internet calling them the king and queen of the halfpipe. Pretty much all of the dagger squad, minus Jake of course, were chatting up with the Olympians—Bob received a thumbs up from Y/n when she spotted him talking with Mikayla Shiffrin.

Halfway through the night, Jake pulled her aside, “How you feeling?”

“Good,” she breathed, still coming down from the high of excitement. “Excited, nervous, internally dreading the long flight but overall I’m happy.”

“I’m happy for you, darling,” he kissed her head, “You deserve this. After watching you bust your tail these past two years, I can’t describe how proud I am of you.”

Y/n felt a wave of love course threw her, kissing him softly as a thanks. When they pulled away Jake asked what was next to which she replied, “What do you mean?”

“Well…I hear Italy is hosting in four years.” She made a sound of ‘Ahh,’

“That’s what you mean.”

Jake quickly explains, “I just wanted to know if that’s in your sights. You’re gonna get asked plenty next month, so see it as me wanting to be the first to know……and because I’m already planning on being there if you do.” Unfortunately due to covid restrictions, Jake and her family are unable to attend the Games in person. Only her coach was allowed to travel with Y/n, meaning everyone else would have to cheer from home.

Italy wasn’t even on Y/n’s mind. After a career of over fifteen years and having celebrated her 30th birthday, the next chapter was something she thought about often. Jake was her longest relationship, the two at two years and Y/n fell more and more in love with him each day. While the long distance was going well, it would only be a matter of time before one of them would want to settle. Marriage. Children.

Going for a fourth Games was possible—look at Shaun. Beijing was his fifth Games, and Kelly Clark competed in five.

“Confident you’ll be around by then? 2026 is a long way from here,” teasing at first, Y/n felt her heart skip by the look she received. It was one of love, determination, and admiration.

“I’m confident in a lot of things, Y/n. And when it comes to us,” two fingertips come up to hold her chin steady, green eyes boring into hers. “I see a cabin with a front porch and gorgeous sunrise over the mountains as we drink coffee and reminisce over our glory days before the little ones left the nest. That’s what I see when I look at you.”

February 2026–Livigno, Italy: Final of the Women’s Halfpipe in the XXV Olympic Winter Games.

“So one last run, huh?” Jake squeezes Y/n’s hand, easing her nerves as she feels the metal of his wedding band on her skin. She had yet to put her gloves on, waiting for someone to escort her to the top of the slope.

“One last one,” her tone was laced with sadness, not doing much to mask her anxiety. She was one run away from winning a third conservative gold medal. Beijing was already four years ago, Y/n adding a second gold to her collection to retain her title as queen of the halfpipe. She was met with international recognition following the Games. Her performance in Beijing resulted in the first 100.00 scored in the Olympics.

On the cover of Sports Illustrated and winning big at the 2022 ESPY’s, Y/n was on top of the world. Appearances on James Corden and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Y/n not only showcased her gold medal, but a diamond ring on her finger where she told the world her love story with Jake.

“Hi, I’m Y/n L/n,” she waved at the camera, a MacBook in front of her and trying not to laugh at where Jake was sitting in his own chair beside the producer of GQ, videoing her with his phone. “Two-time Olympic gold medalist in the women’s halfpipe and I’m here with GQ, about to go undercover on the internet.” Opening the laptop, she shakes her head with a nervous grin. “This is gonna be interesting.”

Ironically enough, she chose the username Y/ndoesntlikethesnow. “I’m sorta scared at what Twitter and Reddit will bring. Just because….,” she makes a face, “I go on the bird app religiously so I know what that’s like, but also I’ve heard horror stories about Reddit.”

“I wanna know how @Y/nlikesthesnow managed to get up after planting face first in the snow at her first Olympic trials. On live television. If that was me I would’ve retired right then and there.”

The laugh that escaped Y/n was equivalent to a wheeze, sending Jake into his own laughter. Calming down, Y/n had to wipe her eye, “oh my goodness what a great start. Okay,” her fingers hovered over the keys, typing away with each word she spoke. “Thank you for bringing this memory up—it was truly a defining moment in my career I would say. Not only did it humble me, but had it not happened I probably wouldn’t have busted my butt as much as I did to get to Sochi. So it’s kinda sentimental now….though I do die inside each time someone tags me when they use the gif.”

Clicking send, Y/n clapped, “next!”

“Does Y/n L/n and her fiancé know they basically lived in a Hallmark movie? Guy comes to a small town and meets a local girl who’s family runs a ski resort and they fall in love in just a few short weeks. I think about that a lot.”

Both Y/n and Jake make a snort, “Jake is here with me now,” she points to though he can’t be seen. “We both love this question. And to answer it, you know it never crossed our mind that this was happening, but if Hallmark would like some inspiration for their next movie we’d be happy to give some.”

The wedding took place in fall of 2023. Shortly after Y/n made the decision to move to San Diego to be with Jake, finding an indoor halfpipe training facility to train in. She continued to dominate the 2023-2025 seasons. By the time she made her fourth Olympic team, Y/n became the most decorated female snowboarder in Winter X Games history and won the Mammoth Grand Prix for the sixth consecutive time.

Now in Italy for her final Olympic appearance, the pressure was on.

Currently Y/n was in last position, shocking many as she had multiple errors in her first two after being the number one qualifier. Eight years ago in Pyeongchang, her friend and former teammate Shaun White stunned the world when he went from the bottom to the top of the leaderboard in the final rotation of the men’s final, claiming his third gold medal.

People were itching to know if the same would happen to Y/n. Commentators and twitter alike saying it was deja vu happening.

Only Jake, the squad, her coach and family were the ones to know she would be retiring. Her last run marking the end of an era in snowboarding. With her first two a disaster, Y/n wanted to end on a high note.

“Better make it count,” Jake told her, cupping her face in his hands to stare deeply into her eyes. “You got this, okay? Don’t think about i-t-like I always tell you: don’t think, just do.” Kissing her forehead, he adds, “That gold medal is calling your name.”

Confidence filled her, Y/n lifting her chin high to show her determination. “I better go claim it then.”

Jake mirrored her grin, winking just as the volunteer was calling her name. “We’ll be cheering when you do, babe. Go show them who’s the Queen.” Giving one last kiss of support, Jake says goodbye to his wife, “I love you.”

“I love you,” she returns and he watches her leave before heading to the area where the others were waiting for him.

“How is she?” Javy asks him, adjusting the lapels of his coat. It was a cold but beautiful day in Italy. Perfect for snowboarding.

“I can tell she’s worried,” Jake takes out his binoculars, setting up to see Y/n take her place. “But she’ll pull through. She always does.”

“Welcome back to our coverage of the women’s halfpipe final here in Livigno, Italy. Y/n L/n, the defending two-time gold medalist is about to take her final run in this competition.” The title card appeared on the screen for viewers watching at home, reading: “Y/n L/n-Seresin—Gold Medalist: 2018 & 2022, Silver Medalist: 2014–Hometown: Aspen, Colorado, USA.

“It’s been a rocky day for L/n—failing to produce a big score on her first two attempts: 39.00 in the first and 49.00. She’s got one more chance to beat the 92.25 and is currently in last position. If you can think back to 2018 Shaun White was in the same position, managing to come back in his final run to take the gold. In just a few moments we shall see if Y/n can do the same.”

It’s said that your heart beats on average 60 to 100 beats per minute. That’s a normal heart rate. Throw in emotions such as anxiety and you’ll find it increasing. If a doctor were to place a stethoscope over Y/n’s chest as she secured the clasps of her snowboard, pulling the goggles over her eyes, they’d find the number of her bpm to be at least 110 maybe even 120.

“Don’t think,” Jake’s voice echoed in her head, bringing a sense of calmness. “Just do.”

“Don’t think,” she repeated under her breath. “Just do.” Maneuvering her board once she was giving the go, Y/n starts her decline into the halfpipe, dropping in one last time. Unlike her previous runs where she focused too hard that led to the mistakes, Y/n moved effortlessly like the board was in control. Back-to-back 1080s, her signature move. Getting high in the air she spun. Backside 900 and frontside 700. Opening at the right moment to hit the snow correctly and set up for the next trick. Showing off her talent as one of the greatest athletes of her generation.

Thinking back to her first time her feet touched a board, Y/n felt the nostalgia in her veins. It was comforting, masking the nerves it soon replaced. She was in her element. Picturing the mountains of Aspen and the snow she grew up on.

She could hear the crowd getting louder with each move. It fueled her, pushing the Olympian to get higher in the air, spin faster, and land perfectly. When she came down on her 1260, a difficult move usually seen in the men’s competition, Y/n felt her heart stop as she hit the snow.

It was a golden finish.

A roar ignited from the crowd, Y/n’s hands flying to her mouth, making her final descent down the pipe across the line and falling to her knees like she did back in 2018. It was so loud she could barely hear her own thoughts, audibly shouting, “Oh my God!” Desperately searching for her husband, she found Jake jumping up and down with the squad, screaming like their lives depended on it.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, Y/n throwing off her goggles and unclamping her board from her feet to run towards them. The fucking aviator broke the rules and hauled is ass over the barrier to meet her in the middle, catching Y/n when she jumped into his arms. “You fucking did it!!! You did it!!”

Suddenly their little hug was interrupted by her coach, parents, the squad and members of Team USA joining in. The score hadn’t even come in, but it didn’t matter. Y/n just pulled the comeback of the decade. Going from the bottom to the top in the blink of the eye.

“All eyes on Y/n—here she goes dropping in. Good start on the grip to gain momentum as she sets up her first trick. Here’s her signature move as we’ve seen time and time again…two 1080s often called ‘the cork’ and she’s had trouble all day with this—well no problems right there that was beautiful. Now with the backside 900….looking good—if she maintains this then the gold medal is hers. It’s gonna be that last trick, the McTwist, that could make or break this run…..no problems on that frontside 700. All there’s left is the 1260–very difficult we don’t see it in women’s halfpipe but Y/n is determined to land it—can she do it for the gold medal…..AND SHE’S GOT IT!! She landed it—oh my goodness that was incredible! That’s gotta be enough—there’s no doubt in my mind, Y/n L/n has just won her third consecutive gold in the women’s halfpipe after being in last place for two rotations—putting on a show stopping performance in the final run.”

“She knows it too. Members of Team USA and Y/n’s support team including her coach and husband are celebrating with her. She needs higher than a 92.25 to take the lead—will it be enough? It has to be…..A 99.75 SHE’S DONE IT! A QUARTER OF A POINT AWAY FROM PERFECTION, Y/N L/N HAS WON HER THIRD GOLD MEDAL IN THE WOMEN’S HALFPIPE HERE IN ITALY. THE QUEEN OF THE HALFPIPE REMAINS ON THE THRONE.”

Y/n’s lifted onto Jake’s shoulders when the score comes into the uproar of cheers around her. American flags wave in her face, a sea of red, white, and blue against the glistening snow. It was a scene she would remember in the years to come following her retirement from snowboarding.

The Olympic Rings staring back at her along with the American Flag rising to the sound of the national anthem. Gold around her neck, the heaviness leaving a lasting mark as it would be the last time she would be crowned the Olympic champion. Jake clapping with tears streaming down his face as she waved to him in the crowd. Her parents crying with him, the guys and Nat are whistling and jumping up and down. Pete in a side embrace with her coach and former teammates beaming like they were witnessing history.

In fact it was history. Y/n became the first woman to win the gold in three consecutive Olympic Games. From a little girl with a love of snowboarding who missed out in her first trials. To become a silver medalist and most decorated Winter X Games title holder. To a three-time Olympic champion.

She truly was the queen of the halfpipe.

………….

TGM tag list: @avaleineandafryingpan @caitsymichelle13 @poppyalice2001 @cutelittlepotatofry @luckyladycreator2 @americaarse @elenavampire21 @back-tooo-black

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