#Come at me smudged-red-ink

[the-ellia-west]

I have 2 mutuals, One is a good friend, the other I wish to be my greatest nemesis.

[smudged-red-ink]

Five minutes ago I decided would like a hobby that requires skill and my hands but also no computers then I realized it is December 1st so...

I will be drawing something every day of December(or at least until the end of finals) to try and revive my severely atrophied art capabilities.

I failed NaNo, so the confidence isn't high, but there will be an attempt.

Anyway, expect some bad art soon.

[softshuji]

𝟏𝟎:𝟎𝟏 | 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐌𝐀 𝐒𝐇𝐔𝐉𝐈

Title: The Hanma's

Summary: Hanma and you know those intimate moments are few and far between. But you always find a way to make the most of them. Back to masterlist here!

Cw: fem!reader, established relationship, reader and Shuji have kids, some suggestive content, pet names (sweetheart, baby, pretty girl, princess, mama, doll),some mentions of violence, this is kinda self indulgent lol. Reblogs appreciated!

Hanma Shuji has a morning voice like no other. It’s gritty, rough, laced with the aftermath of disuse and sleep, cigarettes and alcohol. It’s gravelly, inflected with the slight slur of fatigue, but it rolls over your body in such a way that makes the heat in your stomach thrum with energy. 

He swears the nights are deliberately shorter when he’s at home.

The mornings arrive too fast and the covers are pulled too quickly and he winces a little when the cold draught slips past the door left ajar and he thinks this is maybe the karma for spending so much time at work and never enough at home.

He pulls the blanket over his head and groans, his head of tousled curls now lopsided and flattened against the soft downy pillow.

Your arms come around him instinctively, your breath warm against the pronounced clavicles, the hollow of his throat flexing when he swallows.

The sleep grit is crusting in the corners of his eyes and he pulls up one hand to rub at them, the other pulling you closer against his chest, secretly relishing in the sigh of contentment he hears when you press a chaste and soft kiss to the dip in his collarbones.

‘Mmh Shuji,’ you say, your voice caught in the confines of fabric and cotton and sleep. The nicotine and alcohol, gunpowder and metal has left a scent on his skin, imprinted into the fine hairs that dance along his navel and you brush a hand along the toned ridge of his stomach, the muscles flexing under your soft touch. 

He loves this part of coming home the most, (among other things). The part where you sigh, his name leaving your parted lips and it sounds like a promise, like a heady rush of adrenaline, and your murmurs against his neck are the food for his daydreams in his absence.

‘Don’t wanna get up.’ A mumble that kisses your cheeks like a breeze, an inked hand snaking its way around the small of your back, past the harsh bruises, purpling spots that are red and pink smudges on your skin left just a few hours before under your loose shirt, past the bite marks that now rub against the swell of his bicep when it comes to rest on your shoulder. 

‘I know, but you gotta. We said we’d take them out, remember?’ Despite this, you make no move to leave, opting to bury your face in the curve of his neck, your lips moving over the telltale marks you’d left of your own, still lightly singing with a pulse of barely perceptible pain. Because Hanma Shuji knows you are as insatiable as he is, that your appetite for each other knows no bounds, that you drown in each other nearly every night, climbing out of the current when you come down from your high only to throw yourself in again. 

‘Mhm, you're giving me orders now Sweetheart?’ And the other inked hand comes to tilt your face to his, a thumb brushing the stray eyelash on your cheek, parted lips forming an O that he thinks is worth dying for. He thinks you are worth dying for, a single avenue of repentance, his single saving grace. 

You frown and tut under your breath, rolling your eyes in mock exaggeration, all faux annoyance and indignation. ‘You promised.’ You poke his side for effect, and it’s pathetic to admit your heart does a tiny leap when he giggles, teeth nipping at the flesh of your ear.

‘I know , I know, ‘m getting up birthday girl.’ And he cracks his eyes open to see you swirling a pattern onto the ink of sin, your eyes lidded and brow pinched as you fight the sleep still threatening to take you under. I love you, painted with your finger onto the same hands that the blood splashes on when he pulls a trigger, crusted under his nails and harder to wash off since the day he had met you. And smiling, always smiling at him, no matter how bad, no matter how many times he knows he breaks your heart. 

'Birthday girl huh?' you say now, a teasing and sleepy grin curling at your lips as you rest your cheek in his upturned band, big palm coming up to brush at your cheek. 

'Mhmm, my Princess's special day isn't it?'

'It is, you got something planned for me?'

'Might do, I guess you'll have to wait and see won't you?' 

You feign a tut under your breath. 'No clues?'

'No, be patient Pretty Girl.' And he brushes his thumb across the apple of your cheek, presses down on your lips till your teeth lightly bite down on it. 

'Mhm please?' You say now, a hand moving to rove over his bare chest, fingers tracing the whirl of fine hairs on his navel before he's catching your wrist between his thumb and forefinger, bringing it up to his mouth to press a kiss to the inside. 

'Behave yourself Sweetheart.' 

You huff playfully and It hits him for the barest of moments, how often he comes close to losing this. How the blood he’s wrought could catch up with him one day, the pile of bodies he has gladly crushed to reach his desires could grab his ankle and pull him down and that would be it. And you would break trying to put yourself together again. Maybe it’s selfish to keep you knowing that, knowing he could be cut from you like a loose end any day now. But, he is insatiable with you, redeemed by the constancy and feel of you when the weight is heavier than usual, when the burden threatens to-

‘Shuji?’ 

‘Mhm?’ His eyes are pulled to yours again, your bare face free of makeup, lips soft and warm and just as inviting as they usually are. 

‘You were lost in thought for a second. Everything okay?’ 

He knows you mean it from the heart, the heart you carry for the both of you, a necessary recompense for the blessing of being his, because a man like Hanma Shuji won’t get far carrying his heart on his sleeve. So you do it for him.

‘Fine Sweetheart,’ he says and tucks it all away, the insecurity, the thoughts, the edge that has softened since knowing you, cut glass that no longer stings or slices when touched. Today is about you, he thinks. His Princess, his Pretty girl, and all the ways he can show you he knows it all- the things you do, the ways you care that he never mentions,  hair swiped back when he bleeds out on the sofa, towels pressed to his forehead as he mumbles in fitful sleep. 

And then it happens.

The door flies open and your head lifts to see your two springy children burst into the room, their curls bouncing as they race across the carpet.

They climb onto your bed, all short limbs and smiles and toothy grins, giggles and onesies and smelling of sleep, and they jump into your arms, tucked safely between you and the man you love the most. He laughs, full and beautiful, laced with the sluggishness of the sleep that’s still threatening to pull him under and pulls all four of you safely to his side.

You look at his hands as he playfully tosses your daughter into the air, her giggles and grins matched by his, and you think of all the blood and grit they’ve seen, all the splashbacks and gunpowder that he’s washed off in grimy bathrooms to come back to you time and time again. The same hands that now hold your children with a gentleness he doesn’t know he’s capable of, hands that hold yours and trace circles along the knuckles. In the safety of these four baby blue walls, with the sunlight pouring in through the slat in the window, falling onto the baby blue carpet, it is almost easy to believe you are just like any other family. 

‘How’s my little man?’ Your Husband says and winks conspiratorially at your son nestled into your side. 

‘Are we still going out today? You promised!’ Your son says, a frown creasing tiny brows that look so much like his Father’s that it knocks the wind from your chest. It’s almost terrifying to see the resemblances sometimes, the dark tousled curls that bounce when they pull their heads through tiny shirts, golden eyes that swirl just shy of copper. Both your twins that is, spitting images of their Father come to life and a sprinkling of you somewhere in the middle. If you were to ask him, he'd say they looked more like you. You and your winning smile and all the light it brings that now lives safely in their tiny hearts. 

‘I don’t know, have you been good for Mama? Both of you? It's her birthday y'know,’ he says and grins when they nod fervently, pleading eyes that turn to you to back their statement, wrapping their tiny arms around you with a whispered 'Happy Birthday Mama,' and It occurs to him, at moments like this, how greedy he has been to ask and want something that he’s spent so long denying to others. To grab at a life, snatch it from death’s hands, and take it for himself. He has a polaroid of the four of you in his wallet somewhere, behind cards and receipts, numbers of mob bosses, gang leaders, other people whose crimes are too heinous to name, and you safely at the back, tucked away for him and him only, as if this simple act is enough to protect you from the spray of bullets and contents of shady clubs.

‘Come on kids, go get changed.’ And your children scurry off, scrambling off the bed to run to their rooms, excitedly chattering, their curls disappearing through the doorway, voices high with laughter.

He flops back onto the bed and reaches absent-mindedly for the glasses thrown haphazardly onto the bedside table the night before, running a hand down his tired face. It never fails to feel foreign to him on days like today. When the sun is at its zenith, the watery bask of its light leaking into the room, and he wonders at what point his priorities changed, what point he started to think of you more often than he wanted to admit, some time in the past when he was younger and sporadic and chaotic. And while it hasn’t left, that zing of boyhood curiosity, wonderment and thirst for drama, he knows some part of him has softened enough to do this, to not flinch from family, to run his hand over the indentation on the soft cotton sheets, an imprint that remembers you as well as he does.

‘Shuji? Baby?’ And again, like a song, your voice pulls him from his reverie.

‘Yeah?’ 

A beat, your hand moving to hold his, to pull it to your heart, where the memory of his name lives, where he has etched it into your ribcage. ‘Thank you, for doing this I mean. For taking the time out for them and me.’

He doesn’t expect it to hurt like this, the sharp and visceral drop of something into his stomach, and he falters, the quirk of his Cheshire cat grin slipping into something more concerned, something more sombre. 

‘I didn’t mean- I mean I know you’re working hard, I’m grateful Shu’ baby- I am,’ you say, and the rambles of all the pent-up frustrations, nights made lonely by his absence, the whir of the refrigerator and the drone of nighttime Tv the only company, tumbles out before you can stop it. ‘But I miss you sometimes, and the kids-they miss you too. We all do.’

You can’t pretend that the calls made between meetings, between surveillance on the road, between drives from one shady establishment to the other are enough to suffice, to sate the need for him and sometimes it’s so clear, so sharp, that the pain of his absence cuts clean across your lungs.

‘I know…I miss you too, Pretty Girl.’ Said against the crown of your head, his lips slightly dry, chapped and still as full of love for you as they always are. He gets it, you know he does. It’s in the way he sends random messages to you in the small hours, when he knows you’re asleep and he’s watching a rat sell them out and he misses you in an urgent way, in a way that feels like an ache in his chest, the punch of it that hurts more than a kick could.

‘Come Home to us every time okay? Not just today, not just on my birthday, but every day,' You say, because it scares you to think otherwise, because you could run your hand over every ridge and bump of him and name every scar, every mark and it’s beginnings, because you could kiss the eyelashes from his cheek, and spend days and hours counting the calluses on his hands and it would still not be enough to bring him home to you every day. 

‘I will, y’know me Doll, I never lose.’ He knows It’s more for you than him. 

‘I mean you got your ass handed to you by Draken when-’

‘Well excuse me,’ he says, all faux annoyance, the grin curling at the edge of his perfect mouth. ‘What happened to you saying you missed me?’

You giggle, hiding against his chest, your hair tickling the collarbones that still betray the memory of your heated moments just a few hours prior.

‘I do! I always do. You’re like… my hero.’

‘That’s a new one, Doll.’

‘Like it?’

‘Mhm, y’know what I like even more?’

‘What?’

‘I like when you moan my name all sweet-’

‘Shuji?!’ And you slap a hand over his mouth, warm breath on your palm and the sound of his laughter muted and muffled as you spare a glance towards the door slightly ajar. 

And he smiles at you, softened, warming as you pull your hand away, pressing a kiss to the wrist he’s grabbed, tender and heartfelt. 

And you fall and tumble into love for him all over again.

A/n: I wouldn't be me without a self indulgent birthday fic for myself and about my darling boy, the apple of my eye, my heart and soul. (It's the 28th in case anyone wants to know ;)) thank you everyone always.

taglist: @reiners-milkbiddies @mxnjiros @prettyiolanthe @sugusshi @snakegentleman @haitaniapologist @lonnie19 @nafarsiti @bejeweled-night-33 @rinnndoll @the-travelling-witch @orchid3a @rottingreveries @qiiuusoup-xo @hoetani @sinfulseashell @welcome-to-the-internet-it-sucks @obitohno @sweet-seishu @burnishedcrown @saintokkotsu @nikokopuffs @sin-and-punishment @haruwuchiyoo @mochimiyaas @bertholdts--butt @theaonlax @blackfire2013 @wotakuhime @severellamahottub @anxious-chick

[sunsdiary]

( @ ) PAINT IT BLACK ૮₍ ´ ꒳ `₎ა . . .

toji fushiguro & gn reader · rockstar au · domestic fluff · hubby!toji · step-son!megumi · nail polish · family bonding

"papa, still-" your three year old son slurs, his tottering hands finding the bottle of black nail polish that posed somewhere at the edge of the table. toji was lucky enough to see it in the corner of his eye and catch it with his spare, unvarnished hand when it tipped.

he let out a snort soon after, relieved to find it had not spilt a single drop on the floor, but instead, his clothes. that ease quickly washes out of his body and his mouth turns downward, a palm coming up to his forehead.

"kiddo, we have to be more careful..."

megumi turns his head up to his father through a glare and a pout, almost as if he was out of breath—not because the bottle had spilt on his daddy, but because he smudged his nails!

"you didn' 'tay still!!" his sulk deepens and he brings the older mans hand up to his little round face to inspect it, sticking one of his fingers in his mouth to wet it before rubbing around the cuticle of toji's nail. an achromatic shade instantly sticks to the underside of megumi's own nails before he reaches over and uses his dad as a towel to wipe off the rest.

toji grumbles and almost deadpans before he hears your laugh reach his ears, compelling him to turn to you with a face that screams 'help me'.

you stand from afar with a perceptive and loving gaze as your bubbly son catches his attention again. the dark ink of tattoos that litter his arm do more than enough to hide the polish anyways.

"have 'tart over!" he grumbles, "you bette' 'tay still this time, dumb dumb." he dips the polish brush back into the varnish again for a second attempt, having to stand up on the chair now just to be level with him.

toji watches him silently for the next few minutes, trying to keep as still as possible while leaning his freshly smudged hand against his cheek to avoid skin-to-nail contact. little wisps of his jet black hair fall over his forehead in waves, and you notice the dimples slowly curving into his cheeks when little megs looks up at him.

it was a moment of realisation that toji deserved the title of a great dad.

his eyebrows raise at the youngling in sarcastic delight when he shows him his finished product. toji hums.

"what cha think?"

megumi plonks his butt back onto the chair and awaits dads approval, his thumbs twiddling in his lap—they weren't obviously the most perfectly painted nails, but they'll wear off eventually around the corners over time.

"they're good, kiddo."

"wha you mean, good?" he blinks at him and slouches sadly. toji can see tears welling up in megumi's eyes when he looks back over at him and his mouth drops open in slight panic.

"they're great!"

he huffs, "don' lie to me, papa. i can take it!"

"papa ain't lying, bean."

"HMMPH!"

you then stealthily walk over behind toji, seizing his hands above his head that catches him by surprise. he leans back against the chair to look up at you momentarily, not sure what to articulate back but just stare into your eyes.

"you did this, sweetheart?!" you look away from toji and ask your son with sheer curiosity and animation. he nods his head frantically at you.

"mhm!"

"they look beautiful. i'm sure your papa appreciates them a lot, right?" you look down at your husband again and his ears turn red. he looks away from you and brings his arms back toward his body.

he lets out a cough.

"i love them, bean."

[wandamaximoffsbadgirl]

Now It's Always Summertime

History Professor!Reader x Student!Natasha Romanoff x Student!Wanda Maximoff

Summary: You're just trying to get your thoughts together for the upcoming semester, but there are a few distractions.

Word Count: 850

Warnings: Mentions of getting high, student professor relationship, age gap everyone is over 18.

A/N: I watched a Tik Tok that had the right vibes and this came to mind so here you go. A little treat.

You poured the black liquid from your stove top coffee maker into your glass mug. Your favorite mug with a world map on it. The steam bellowed from both the maker and your now full mug. The overhead lights of the office were off leaving the strings of fairy lights that adorned the bookshelves behind you and the warm glow of your desk lamp as the only sources of light. A Golden pothos falling over the sides of the shelves like waterfalls.

The leather bound notebook sat on your desk with coffee ring stains from setting your mug atop of the blank page. You always thought it gave the page character when one found its way to a page. You transferred your thoughts from the newest edition of the history text book you received for this upcoming semester. 

Going over your previous semesters lesson plan and improving on it with the new text book in mind. You taught a few different classes and with the short summer semester coming to an end only to pick back up. Before you'd have time to do anything it would be Autumn with a chill in the air worthy of the hot cup you sipped on.

A knock against the open doorframe brought you from your thoughts. Looking up over your glasses, hair slipping past your ear as your head moved. Your two favorite students stood in your doorway, Natasha Romanoff and Wanda Maximoff. Neither were history majors, but you seem to have captured their attention as they've now taken two of your classes. Your Western Civ I class along with your Mythology class. The two were already in your schedule for the Fall semester for Western Civ II and Wanda somehow snuck her way into your Norse mythology class. 

“What can I do for you girls?” You asked setting your pen down and picking up your mug, refilling it once more before taking a sip. The two girls stepped in and closed the door behind them. Natasha coming around to beside you and looking at the notes you took. 

“Is this for next semester?” The redheaded Russian asked as her finger ran over the words, a small smudge coming at the bottom where the fresh ink resided. You took her hand in your own after setting the mug down. Much like a mother would you licked one of your own fingers and used it to wipe the mark away on her finger.

“It is and I'd appreciate if my notes could stay intact. My thoughts are jumbled enough without you smudging them Tasha.” You looked up at the red head with a smirk plastered on your face and hers adorned a blush as Wanda came to your other side arms wrapping around your shoulders. 

“We wanted to know if we could help you with anything?” You felt her breath on the shell of your ear. Your attention moving from the Russian to the Sokovian. 

“I'm sure you two could be studying for your finals instead of coming to ask if I need help.” You raised an eyebrow to the brunette, the smirk still on your face as her forehead found your cheek. 

“Need some stress relief.” She murmured against you making a chuckle bubble up from your chest. Wanda let out a whine in protest of your chuckle. 

“Well she needs a stress relief. I'm getting high later.” Your head spun back to the redhead. 

“Without me? Rude.” Natasha started laughing along with you.

“Well I can bring it if you say we can come over tonight and then we can all have a good time.” Natasha wiggled her eyebrows and tugged on your hand that was still in hers. Another whine falling past Wanda's lips is what made you give in. 

“Okay. Okay you two can come over. We'll get high and have some stress relief from finals for everyone's sake.” Both girls became excited at the thought of getting to come over. 

You lived a ways away from campus so you never worried about anyone seeing the girls come over since the three of you started up this throuple of yours at the beginning of the summer semester. 

The classes were smaller and the two girls had already caught your eye. Since neither was a history major you figured once they got their history credits you'd never see them again. The campus was huge and the history building was nowhere near where these two spent the rest of their day. Yet when you saw their names once more you knew you had to say something. So as the old saying goes; one thing led to another and here we are. 

You wrapped and arm around Wanda, pulling her into your lap where her face now buried its away into the crook of your neck. Natasha just leaned against you. More than content to have you against her stomach. You never thought this is where you'd be when you started teaching here, but you couldn't be more happy, more full, more loved than you are with these two in your life.

[trappolia]

NEVER LOVE AN ANCHOR ── dan heng x gn!reader x blade, former dan feng x gen!reader x yingxing, 2.4k

you dream of blood.

the golden ichor that seeps through the jagged cracks of an old, divine blade. the deep red that drips from your wounds as a cruel reminder of your mortality, an ever existing shadow that haunts you through all the ships you travel through.

you dream of love.

a golden hairpin that catches your eye while walking through the bustling streets of a marketplace. the red paint that smudges on a lover’s lips when you exchange kisses. strokes of black ink upon parchment, reading words more poetic than one can ever have the courage to say aloud.

it is dizzying, in the way all dreams are. you are sitting under the moon and sharing a drink with someone you consider your friend, family, lover, and the next you are driving your spear through his chest. there are no blades of grass on this ship, no grassy fields for you to hide in, and the tendrils that you feel swaying, rustling, in waves past your ankles, are the chains of the sins you bear as someone they call their beloved.

the crew of the astral express are a welcome distraction, kind and warm as they offer you their companionship in their own personal ways. you help march 7th pin up photos in her room, laughing as you reminisce over your past travels through silly selfies and scenic photos. you sit with himeko during breakfast over a cup of coffee (yours brewed by yourself rather than the gorgeous redhead, thank the aeons) and indulge in the peaceful silence, a sense of normality that the woman is more than happy to give you after all that you’ve been through. mr yang tells you stories of other universes, weaving the already existing threads of all the lives you’ve seen around you into something completely different yet the same— and sometimes you can’t help but wonder if he lived a different life before all this.

but no matter what, you always find your way back to dan heng.

though you have your own assigned room, the simple arrangement of a flat pillows and a blanket on the floor of the archives is as much of a home to you as it is to dan heng. you’ve spent many a night in his room, poring over texts and books with him, more often than not passing out on his lap or in his sleeping area.

( “they come as a pair,” march 7th once told the trailblazer when they asked about the two of you. “himeko said that arrived on this ship together. whatever they went through in the past, they made it through because they had each other. but that’s just what i think.” )

it’s true, in a sense. what would you have done without dan heng, travelling through all those ships that always met the same end? you wonder if you would’ve lasted long enough for himeko to find you and bring you to the astral express.

probably not.

dan heng feels responsible for you. he doesn’t say it, but it’s obvious. you once confessed your insecurities to him on a dark night, back when the two of you were still getting used to having a proper roof above your heads without fear of the ship getting attacked or waking up to security banging through the door.

( “what if they think i’m useless because i’m always clinging onto you?” you had asked him in a small, weak voice.

“…they don’t seem like those sort of people.”

“but what if?”

dan heng had looked at you, his expression tired and soft all at once as he sighed.

“then they’ll have a problem with me too.”

“why?”

“because,” he brushed his fingers over your gaunt cheekbones, worn from all that you’d been through. “i’m just like you. if something took you from my side, then i might as very well be useless to them.” )

there’s a known truth between the two of you, one that you never speak of; but you both know that it’s a fact. if you hadn’t been involved with dan heng — with him — you’d still be at home in the xianzhou alliance. you’d be blissfully oblivious to the convict on the loose, the exile who has returned home. you’d be living your life— a normal life.

but you aren't.

instead, you dream of him.

it should be impossible. bracers are not meant to be shared between a trio, and whatever gift you had been planning to share between the three of you was lost upon the exile. and yet, even without the ancient magic of the vidyadhara, he somehow manages to make his way into your dreams, haunting you like a ghost.

some nights, you dream of those arms that had always held you with such certainty, an impenetrable shield even when bloodied and battered. other nights, you dream of those hands driving a blade through dan heng’s heart, squeezing your throat until you take your last breath through a broken windpipe.

and every night, when you wake up from those dreams in dan heng’s arms, you feel that pain welling in your chest, settling for days as it finds comfort in its new home, made up of your aching lungs and your shattered heart. the days and nights blur together like this— haunted by a man still living and breathing, though not quite human, in the nighttime, and traversing through the worlds like a ghost searching for meaning in the daytime.

you don’t remember how it ended up like this. or do you? it all feels like a dream, all the details and images blurring together to be forgotten by morning. but it isn’t morning, and you can’t wake up from this reality. your head throbs. a concussion? who cares.

you can’t afford to let your guard down on this ship you once called home. you’re here for a reason, and though that reason is your top priority, you can’t afford to be caught either. the cloud knight that found you and dan heng — sushang — doesn’t seem to recognise either of you, and neither does the strange tradesman luocha, but you still can’t take any chances. panic blossoms in your gut, unsettling as you grip your weapon in your weak hands.

ah. that’s right. you’re fighting. reason grounds you with the fuzzy memory of your enemy standing before you— an ambush, because whatever forces are at work here clearly play just as dirty as the antimatter legion and that damned aeon they serve.

a fight you can’t lose, no matter how badly your head is throbbing right now, because you still have to find the others, have to save them from— from—

“ren,” your grip on your weapon loosens as the dust clears, revealing the man standing before you.

the enemy, your brain screams, though it can’t even make you move away. the word that slips through your lips is familiar, and yet not. your head hurts thinking of calling him by his true name, the name you called him before he turned into this.

blade, is what kafka called him.

ren, is what it means in your mother tongue, the language spoken in moonlit nights as the three of you sat under the stars, the silence broken only by a whisper of their names.

the name comes out as a quiet, pathetic croak, staring wide eyed at his figure. he’s frozen just as you are, his broken blade aimed straight at you with an arm that wavers just the slightest.

it’s like a domino effect; your walls crashing down the moment you see his mask slip for the smallest moment.

“yingxing!” your voice breaks as you call out to him again, almost desperately (it does not occur to you that you've let your memory slip, called out for a man long dead). your feet are moving from under you before you even realise it.

blade lunges forward, his sword drawn.

a desperate cry of your name wretches itself out of dan heng’s throat in a way that makes your heart ache, but it’s too late now. his warning comes only seconds after you’ve begun to run straight to danger, death, a threat to your life seemingly unseen to you as you surge forward like a blind lover, but you can see him.

the sharp angles of his face, the familiar bracer on his calloused hand, the searing heat of his vermilion eyes. he’s so close— close enough to kiss, close enough to kill, close enough to be reality rather than an illusion forged by a dream.

his blade is not what meets you. instead, it’s his hand. dan heng’s panicked screams is barely audible over your hammering heartbeat, your pulse quickening as blade’s calloused fingers wrap around your throat. he’s stronger than you — you would know even if he hasn’t been haunting your dreams all those years — and so he can easily snap you in half the second you’re in his clutches.

but then you’re pressed against him, back to his front. blade pulls you as close to him as humanly possible until you’re both flush, sharing the same, saccharine oxygen after years of breathing stale air through stone lungs. despite the sharp end of a sword held over your throat, you allow yourself to close your eyes, reveling in this single moment as if you’ve lived an eternity where the three of you had never once hurt each other. though he had an eternity without a single regard to how you’d hurt each other. in these stolen moments, you let yourself be stupid, oblivious, selfish, just to breathe properly for the first time in what feels like a millennium.

“let them go,” dan heng hisses, breaking you out of your reverie.

“no,” blade’s eyes narrow. there is no mocking in his expression, no sardonic smirk or cruel taunts. his walls are still up, none of that broken emotion that you’d only seen for a split moment when your eyes first met, but he lets himself drop the bravado. between the three of you, there is no such thing.

you whisper a soft cry of his name, making dan heng’s grip tighten on cloudpiercer as he moves to snatch you out of blade’s grip, but your former lover only growls.

“come any closer, and i’ll cut them.”

his voice is scratchy, worn like the calloused hands that are wrapped around your nape, squeezing almost painfully. a distant memory flashes in your mind, of these same calloused palms washing your back after a long day, cleaning the blood and grime.

these same hands could be stained with your blood, if he so wishes.

“you won’t,” dan heng hisses, and you hear something in him break like glass shattering on the floor. “you can’t.”

he sounds so sure of it, that this man will not slice that blade over your throat and take your life just as he had taken dan heng’s in so many eternities.

you’re reminded of the fact that no matter how many times the hourglass has turned over for dan heng, no matter how muddled his memories become, he once loved this man just as you did— once relished in his presence and touch as it lulled him back to sanity, masking the weight of all the sins the three of you had committed over the lifetimes your strings of fate had been entangled.

blade moves as if to cut your throat, to finally take the first life, the first step in the nth round of this cycle of violence, but his sword only manages to press down just the slightest against the skin of your neck before he stops himself. his hand — the one adorned by that damned bracer — shakes as he glares at dan heng with a look that can kill.

“fuck,” blade mutters under his breath. the word is not meant for you, but you hear anyway. blade pulls back from you roughly, and a barely audible whimper tears out of your throat when he suddenly pushes you forward and into dan heng’s arms.

dan heng’s eyes widen, clearly just as surprised as you when blade relinquishes his hold on you. he catches you with unsteady arms, trying to keep cloudpiercer levelled at blade as if the man will suddenly lunge forward and take him from you again.

blade stares at the two of you for a moment, watching as dan heng clutches you to his chest like you’ll disappear if he let go, as you hold a palm to your neck where the thinnest line of red bleeds through. his eyes narrow, and the only other indication of emotion in his face is the slightest downturn of his lips.

“i’ll be back,” blade says, and then there’s that cruel smile on his face again, a taunting glint in his eye as he looks at dan heng. “i’ve stolen your little eternity countless times before. what’s one more to the tally?”

dan heng growls, his grip tightening on cloudpiercer, “you damned—!”

but then blade’s already making his exit, leaping off the platform in a manner that gives you deja vu.

( a memory flashes in your mind, the image of him jumping off your balcony as jing yuan knocked on your bedroom door to make sure you were still asleep while dan feng dove under your bed for cover, a mundane moment of peace and carefreeness almost forgotten from where you had pushed it deep into crevices of your mind. )

i’ve stolen your little eternity countless times before. what’s one more to the tally?

after a breathless moment that seems to drag out for an eternity, dan heng’s arms finally uncurl from your frame, his eyes tracing your figure to make sure you’re unharmed. his eyes drag over the thin cut across your neck in an adagio, his breath hitching as he sees you bleeding the same colour of blade’s eyes.

“he didn’t kill me,” you breathe out. you don’t know why it’s only settling now. the relief is clear in your tone, but it’s obvious from the violent tremor of your hands that it’s only to mask your own uncertainty. "he didn't kill me."

dan heng is quiet. you’re too scared to look at him, at the expression on his face. you just stare at your shaking hands, and watch as he rests his palm over your own to soothe the tremors.

“he always had a soft spot for you,” dan heng whispers, something breaking in the tenor of his voice.

© trappolia 2024

[cupids-chamber]

— “ FOREVER IN LOVE “  Overblots x Reader / Gender neutral reader |         [ Can be read as yandere / non-yandere ]

— “ RED ROSE “ 

| Gender Neutral Reader / Overblot Riddle 

The lights dimmed, as the garden darkened—your surroundings were cold, heartless.. dead.. even, the beautiful garden was nothing on par nor comparable to what it once was, the pride of Heartslabyul.. just like its ruler. Marvelous and adorned in black and red, similar to his emotions at that very moment—everything was distorted and irry, as ink covered all corners in sight. Like smudged ink on plain white paper. 

You watched him walk up to you, no one else in close sight— The familiar clank of heels, as he walked in your direction, looking directly at you... "My dearest rose.. something tells me, you don't quite like what you're seeing.." you heard the man chuckle as he approached you slowly, his soft and sweet smile, no longer there.. "Why, my love?", he laughed once more, except this time it came out in a more threatening tone then the last.. “I’m still your beloved Rosehearts, my red rose.” 

— “ ROTTEN INK “ 

| Gender Neutral Reader / Overblot Malleus

The nulling, sickeningly sweet lullaby rang in your ears, you heard him chuckle and sing along.. that perfectly synced melody, that could calm anyone—struck fear within you, your movements hastening, hoping to run out the door as fast as you possibly could. 

"Why the hurry, my dearest treasure" he hummed softly, hugging you from behind.. You could feel the slight wetness of the ink, staining your clothes.. how his body reeked of a sickeningly pudent smell of ink—rotten ink, if that even existed.... "Just close your eyes, my dearest... and then we can be together.. forever…", you felt his grip tighten, as he continued humming that melody, nulling you to slumber without much of a choice.. 

— “ BELOVED APPLE “ 

| Gender Neutral Reader / Overblot Vil 

You felt the claws dig deeper into your skin, as he mumbled sweet nothings in your ears.. he looked odd, different. Vil embraced you tighter, needing to feel all of you—too feel your skin, on his own. He smelled of poison, a strong one. It was overwhelming and you couldn't help but want to escape his cruel grasp, as you felt those cold claws dig into your raw flesh, easily ripping through your skin. "You aren't leaving, are you?... You won't be leaving, will you.. my beloved apple..?"

— “ ALL HE WANTED “ 

| Gender Neutral Reader / Overblot Azul 

You could feel the tentacles wrap around your leg, pulling you deeper into the waters... back into his crushing embrace, where he refused to let you go. Refuse to allow any form of space, he was suffocating—he knew he was suffocating, he was well aware of how forceful he truly was... yet when you were in his arms, where he could feel you, keep you, call you sweet names, hear your voice, the sound of your breathing—everything... it was all he needed.. all he craved.. all he wanted… 

— “ NEVER-ENDING EMBRACE “ 

| Gender Neutral Reader / Overblot Idia His breathing was heavy, as he pulled you closer into his embrace. You could hear the soft curses coming out from his mouth, as the salty teardrops fell from his eyes. He refused to let you go—it was getting hard to breathe, in his crushing embrace. It's as if he wanted to hold you close, until you melt and mold into him, into an extension of him, and everytime you'd try and escape, he'd only pull you closer, his grip would grow a tad bit harsher as he tightened his hold on you…

© cupids-chamber, do not repost, plagiarize, translate, or adapt my work without prior permission and or confirmation.

[moondirti]

𝟏𝟒. WANT

CHAPTER FOURTEEN OF ANIMALIC | MIGUEL O'HARA X F!READER

↼ chapter thirteen / chapter fifteen ⇀

summary: miguel finally gives in to what you both want

explicit (18+) | 8.6k words warnings: SMUT, it's seriously just all smut, unprotected p-in-v, choking, light degradation, dirty talk, interrogation as foreplay, praise kink, mentorship with benefits, dirty talk, belly bulge, power play, bondage, dom/sub dynamics, teasing, angst, unrequited feelings, eye contact kink notes: figured i'd add in some fluff before shit gets rough

“Let me go.” Miguel growls. “Lest I change my mind about fucking you silly, you bold little thing.”

Enclasped in the yawning dark of night after twelve, you wonder how you must look to him. The lack of light, on your part, obscures his harsher lines – shadows smudging the sharp apex of his cheekbone, bleeding to his aquiline nose, where the feature dips into an ink-blot puddle with the rest of him. What you can deduce is based on what you can see; hardly anything, really, save for what’s highlighted by the window to your right. The mole by the corner of his mouth, bobbing upwards with the curl of his lips. The red, acute glint of an eye. 

Are you as hidden as he is? Is his vision better adjusted to the murk? 

You hope not. You pray he can’t pick apart the shock that flits across your face, the spate that washes you off your wit. It’s timidity. A stricken bashfulness you haven’t felt in a long while. Seafoam that froths and clogs the blood supplied to your lungs, draining all warmth to feed the stocks behind your cheeks. Your waterline stings, desiccated by the breeze that whistles in through the aperture left open – and out of everything that occurs to you, what manages to refine into clarity is the urge to high-tail and jump out of it as soon as possible. 

Your fingers search for stability on his calf, clasping around its tense length as you clamber off him. Air syphons from you in rapid bursts – in, out, in – to sate a seemingly bottomless need for oxygen. He must be hogging it all, you reason, dismounting from his hips. Him – in all his grandeur, in all his broadness, stealing from you what precious left you can use to calm down. Everything he does feels purposeful in that way, curated with regards to both past and future, his contemplation on both. Like neglecting to mention that this was even a possibility, blindsiding you with the very thing you spend hours fantasising about. 

It wouldn’t surprise you if he knew this whole time. If he had somehow read your guilty conscience as fluently as an open book, saw where your fingers gravitated to in your free time. The way he says it – filthy language dripping in promise, so unlike the clinical ways with which he’s approached this before – makes you suspect one of two things. Either he truly recognises what the prospect does to you, and is therefore employing it to petition for his release, or– 

Or. He means it.

The rumble in his voice, charred and ready to snap into ashes, supports the latter. And try as you might, you can’t begin to understand it. His desire, if real, has come completely out of left field. 

“Well?” 

“I–” You swallow the rock lodged in your throat, patting your hips like a solution will materialise in your pockets if you pray hard enough. You can’t help but baulk at your poor planning. “I don’t have anything to undo you with.” 

Miguel releases a sharp breath from his nose, tipping his chin back. You glance anywhere but at the skin stretching along the column of his throat, contoured by taut sinew. 

“If you point me to the kitchen, I can get a knife?” 

“No.” The dismissal comes perhaps a little too quick. He doesn’t seem to consider the possibility, and it does little for your hope. His proposition – fucking you silly – feels like it exists on condition of a time limit. Like the longer you put it off, the more opportunity he’s given to retcon his lapse of judgement. This lust born from adrenaline. You’re familiar, and therefore appreciate how short it can last. “Just let them dissolve.”

Ducking your head, you take the acquiesce to observe the artificial webbing that binds him. It sparkles under indirect moonlight, dull white and wet-like, resembling the morning dew that would bud on blades of grass. Thin slivers branch out from the main line to wrap about his more complicated curves. With a more competent solution, it would prove almost impossible to get out of. You reason that only then would you have remained proud of the handiwork. 

“They will dissolve?” He stresses. 

“Yea– yes! Give it fifteen minutes.” You squeak, shaking out of your stupor to see him eyeing you incredulously. “What?” 

“You expect to get anything done when your webs last fifteen minutes?” 

“Hey, it’s not like I’ll be regularly apprehending bad guys back home.” Offence batters you back to your regular snark, conversation swaying until it clicks back into a comfortable tone. “Besides, it’s a prototype.” You shrug, turning on your heel to wander the room you lept into. It’s a clumsy segway away from the point, awkwardness rolling off your tongue in ugly chunks. “So… this is your place huh.” 

He doesn’t fall for it. “Tell me how you got in.” 

“It’s nice. Big. Of course when you own the building, the penthouse is kinda yours by default.” There’s not much you can see in the dark, the colours and aesthetics of his interior remaining lost on you. But it’s hard to ignore how high the ceilings rise, or the wide sweep of his tiled floors. 

“Did you phase through the door?” He attempts to reel you in.

You dodge the line. “Wish you told me you were rich though. I could’ve really milked those rewards. A dog for ten push ups. A motorcycle for a hundred.” 

“I wouldn’t get you a motorcycle if you stitched the multiverse back together yourself.” It’s amusing that, out of all baits, he should bite on the most ludicrous. You throw a small smile over your shoulder, forgetting yourself for a minute.

“So a dog’s still on the table?” Yet the sight of him fettered, immobilised on the ground, forces you to face your circumstance once more. His words, those parasitic words that’ve been gnawing on the supple tissue of your brain, worm their way back to the forefront. Bold little thing. Fuck. If he knew. If you recounted for him the events of the past half-day, how you’ve been following him since lunch – would he be more or less inclined to spread you out underneath him? “I jumped through the window.” You add, tentatively, toeing unsteady grounds. 

His jaw flutters, tensing, though he doesn’t give much else. You traipse over to said window, winding the casement shut with the crank at its edge. It seals smoothly, expunging the ambient street noise until the room buzzes in its own, overwhelming silence. Given the sudden contrast, you puzzle about how he forgot to close it in the first place. 

“You really ought to worry about security.” You continue your blind tour of his home, skimming the wall that guides your path. It’s harder to change the subject now that it’s been spoken out loud, your confession filling the gaps left by the outside tumult. Car horns and traffic, construction and wind – all substituted with a tension that drips like a leaky faucet, adding to a pool bound to drown you. 

“How’d you do it?” He asks, hoarse and hedging a more dangerous accentuation. 

“Dunno.” You trace the doorway he’d come out of, letting the coated stone frame cool the pads of your fingers. “What’s in here?”

When he doesn’t answer, you take a peek. Based on the rough shapes you make out, it could be an office. Had he been working before you arrived? It’s so late you can scarcely imagine it, especially after the already packed day you observed him to have. 

The thought is suffocating enough that you back away, rounding the corner of the living room instead to find yourself in a galley kitchen. 

“Fancy!” You shout, echo bouncing around the cavernous space. Counters and other facilities line either side of the spacious hall, one side breaking off into an L-shape by an attached island, which functions to divide the kitchen from the dining room at its end. Floor-to-ceiling terrace doors take up the wall directly opposite you, backing the table with views of the Hudson river. It’s gorgeous enough that you think about revisiting during the day – when the sky pulses cerulean blue and the sun butters the sight with warmth, painting a picture you’ve only read about in architectural digest or seen in film. 

One where the title sequence jumps to upbeat music, dancing credits cutting onto screen. The genre that calls for a place like this is doubtfully a sombre one. Perhaps a musical, then, or a comedy. Something where you’re introduced as the main character while sitting out on the balcony, cradling a mug of steaming coffee. You’re stressed about work, or the date that hasn’t texted back, but none of your issues will summit at death. Not when your next meal is always guaranteed, or a shower whenever you’re down. When this is home; not just the house, but the world itself. Clean and functional and packed with life. Slated in shades of green, of life – so different from the red and grey hues of antimatter fallout. How grateful you’d be.

But then you remember where you are, why you’re here. The reality spurs you to move again, stumbling stupidly out of the kitchen to where Miguel is likely fuming at your unwelcome exploration.

(On your way back, though, you take notice of an abandoned object by the fridge. It’s rubber, oddly moulded. Bright pink in a similar shade to Lyla’s glasses. Condensation beads and drips upon its surface, the insides certainly filled with ice, and it takes you a short bout of confusion to realise that it’s a teething toy. 

When you imagined Miguel as a father, it was to a child burgeoning school-age. Now, your imagery morphs to accommodate this new information. A baby girl, no more than seven months old. One who might live with her mother given his busy schedule, but visits constantly because he would make the time for her. That is, if the toy is any indication.

You can take comfort in the fact that, if not you, someone else leads that imagined life. Someone more deserving.) 

“You hanging on in there?” You call out, checking up on the man whose presence you’d temporarily forgotten. He doesn’t respond. It isn’t as worrying a development until you re-enter the living room and notice it looks bigger, emptier now. A nest of snapped webs cushion where he once lay. “Hello?” 

That’s what you get for taking your eye off him. It certainly hasn’t felt like fifteen minutes – maybe ten, at best – but he’s escaped irregardless, shedding the disadvantage as you remained entirely oblivious.  Trepidation blossoms like a mushroom cloud in your gut, billowing smoke and the migraine-inducing smell of petrol. He can be anywhere. Judging you from a secret alcove or on his way out, already regretting the salacity he’d resorted to. Each possibility is a shot to your flesh. You hadn’t realised how much you’d been counting on it; to be pinned down the instant he breaks free, fucked until you forget your name. And now, that’s been flipped on its head when he’s…

He’s–

Where the fuck is he?

Trailing the perimeter of the room with cautious scrutiny, you watch the ceilings, the pockets between couches in which he might be hiding. He isn’t in his office when you check, nor had he snuck up behind you into the kitchen. There are a few more doors – a laundry room, a toilet – that remain steadfast and shut. He isn’t in any, though you sense his presence as you always do. This universal force of attraction that draws you in, bound to his centre of gravity, negligent of all things physical. You track it – the direction in which your arm hairs spike, spider-sense tickling – until you reach the bottom of a spiral staircase. 

“If I hadn’t made it clear before, you’re a dick!” You hope he internalises it too. The second floor to his penthouse was the first thing you’d noticed on your self-guided tour, yet ascending it felt like trespassing beyond the degree you already have. Based on the amenities you’d counted, there’s only one left that could be stationed up there. His bedroom. A space that is wholly, privately his. 

And while you don’t know where you stand on Miguel’s hierarchy of interpersonal relationships, something tells you it’s not at that level. 

(Then again, you’ve experienced him in deeper ways. More intimate. And now–

He’s gonna fuck you. That’s what he said, at least. And of course you have half a mind to take it with a grain of salt. Though the credulous part of you poses – a little recklessly – what the harm could be in indulging him. 

In indulging yourself.)

“O’Hara.” You warn, tension gnarling in your chest. There’s only one way this’ll end for you. Anticipation makes it pretty clear. So, perhaps you bark his name rough and short for decorum’s sake. To prelude your concurrence, the foot you slot up on the first step. Then, the second – marching gradually upwards, clasping the railing all the while. It’s frigid and bites your goose bumped skin, licking up the heated flesh. 

Eventually, the loft sinks below your eye line. Forehead looming slightly over the landing, you try to piece together his whereabouts. It’s no easy feat – his bedroom is trapped in the same tenebrosity as the rest of his place. You have to strain to separate hazy forms; lamps from his towering frame, a dresser and not his crouched self. Through increasing efforts, you find yourself standing in the midst of it all, the trench-parallel staircase long since abandoned for a more preferable angle. 

Despite it, you can’t locate him. 

Hope wheezes, deflates, shrinks until it inhabits only the pinched area between your ribs. Whatever – you whisper to yourself. It doesn’t matter, even if the gaping hole it leaves behind pulses, devastating to everything on its horizon line. He probably had something to attend to, a commitment more important than this game of yours. You won, anyway. You hadn’t been promised anything but your own satisfaction, and while that’s been long diminished, swapped with notions of his body pressed against yours, you still won. Pinned him down in a plan entirely of your own creation, counter to all odds, when all you’d been given was a corrupt method and told to make do. 

That should be enough. 

(A lie you have to tell yourself to dissuade from the disappointment of his lacking praise. The need itches violently within you, marring your insides with crimson dissatisfaction. It’ll be your ruin, you think)

“Have it your way.” You say. It’s a last proffer of your will, extended to ears that might not even be listening. You wait a beat, riding the anticlimactic wave, before giving up and heading towards the staircase again. 

Until hands pluck your waist. 

They’re big, enveloping, heavy clutch seizing the sides of your abdomen. The fabric of your shirt glues to your skin where they radiate steady warmth, and your heart chokes with how high it soars, skyrocketing to pump thundering bursts of blood. The sequence of events that follows is tumultuous, a rapid execution away from the expected, of which you have a hard time understanding yourself. You try to break it down – have to, actually, to abate the erratic flutter of your chest when all of a sudden, you find yourself shoved on a plush surface. Wrists pinned behind your back, face half-smooshed down.

In short, this is how it goes–

You’d been unobservant. Too quick after his absenteeism, your guard had lowered enough that your spider-sense had dimmed with it. 

It allowed him to grab you. That much was clear the instant you felt it. Grabbed and hauled you to his bed, across which you’re currently bent. Your terrified shriek still rings in the gagged lull that follows.  

So now, it’s his crotch pressing flush to your rear, closely mimicking the position you’d found yourself in that morning in his office. Relentless hold, tungsten wrought around your limbs. Hips curved over the edge, toes barely reaching the ground as the mattress bolsters you upwards. This time, though, he fits his chest to your back so he’s folded above you, mouth caressing the shell of your ear. Your temples bloat with pressure and your tongue wrings dry. On the opposite end, your panties slip over the wettening slit between your thighs. It’s erotic, delicious in the manner that makes it hard to focus on anything else. 

Hot air wades through the piqued hairs on your neck when he speaks again. You jerk away from it, face shrilling like a kettle kept over flame. It’s almost impossible to shift under the heavy moor of his body on yours 

“That’s how you sneak up on someone.” He whispers, nudging the locks that fall between you away with his nose. The attention is too much too fast, flaying you alive until your innards and secret mortification spill, exposed to the elements. “It’s not so good, is it? Being ignored.”

All you can do is whimper, lower half wriggling for a friction that could abate the ache waxing in your core. It drums to the rhythm of his breaths, expectantly tensing everytime his chest swells. The act is desperate, much like the worm that still cleaves your brain apart. Rumbling promises, blasphemy, about leaps of faith into your mentor’s apartment. Or revelations like being fucked silly.

His voice takes on the same quality when he presses for a reply, canting forward to eject the burden from your lungs. The hard line of his erection stamps onto your ass, roughly illustrating an example for what’s to come. “Hm?” 

“N-No.” You stammer, nails grazing the calloused layer on the heel of his hand. His grip readjusts around your crossed arms, momentarily affected by the gentle brush.

“No.” And if you’d been a stranger to the nuances of his expression, you would have assumed he’s unaffected. But you’ve honed an ability to read between the complexities of Miguel O’Hara. (Majorly for self-preservation, however it’s proving useful now.) The mock is hummed in a husky, dulcet note, whipped somewhere in the back of his throat that turns the simple reiteration into a taunt. He’s teasing you. 

Fuck, why is that hot? You have to be a special grade of messed up to find his derision sexy.

(You’re convinced anything could be in this moment, though. Reality warped through rose-coloured glasses; except it’s your own, debauched lens.)

“Here’s how this is going to go. Are you listening?” Words gather on your tongue like clods of parched soil, too weak to build or nurture anything. They fall, crumbling in great flakes, until you have to recourse to nodding wildly, face stuffed into his sheets. They smell like him. Softer, sure, but woven with the same cedar-spiked musk, patchouli in diluted volumes. Your pupils roll to the back of your head – and even if you could reign your senses, you can’t stop your bottom from bucking for release at the aphrodisiacal scent. He continues. “You’re going to answer every one of my questions. I want total honesty. That means don’t sell yourself short.” 

The squirming must bother him. His free hand dips to your back, smoothing along its subtle arch. He applies just the correct amount of pressure to tame the feral movement of your hips. 

It lingers afterwards, warning you to hasten your reaction time. You can’t manage anything other than:

“Ok–Okay…” 

But he takes to it. 

“Good.” 

Shit. It almost feels fucking purposeful. He has to taste the potent head of your desire, the shameful state curling in your marrow. It sucks the soft tissue and imbues the calcium with diffidence instead, until all that’s left is a dependency on approval. Admiration. And he has to recognise it, because how else does he strike exactly what you search for? Good. Gruff and terse but still directed at something you’ve done that’s pleased him. Good. Planting a spot of heaven in your mind, forcing you to spend forevermore chasing a similar rapture. Your consequential whine is high-pitched and needy, muffled on the canyons of his wrinkled duvet. 

His palm treks lower, kneading the plump of your ass. It threatens to permanently configure to the valleys of his fingers, the hard press pad of his thumb. 

“How did you get in?” He tests. You give him the same explanation you did last, albeit broken with hoarse yearning. 

“T-the wind… window.” You cock your head to the side to be better heard, but find yourself face-to-face with him. The sudden eye contact burns a straight hole through you, snapping your skull into a million little fragments. You flinch, synapses firing at you to turn away, scalded as if you’d touched a piping stove. But Miguel catches on faster than you, left hand unwinding from your arms to instead hold your head down in place. Everything is automatic. Instinctual. The both of you resort to whatever path brings the most pleasure. For him, that must mean maintaining mutual gaze. You certainly feel him, harder now, rubbing on the back of your thigh. 

And you–

The second you’re released, you shoot to grab his right wrist behind you, rummaging for purchase against the determined path of his fingers. Lower, they skim the cliff where your cheeks meet. You think, if it wasn’t for your leggings keeping them together, he would’ve spread open like a packaged feast already. 

But he stops. Doesn’t work to shuck off your pants, or to rip them off entirely (of which you’d be willing, maybe overly enthusiastic about.) He just… 

Stops. Then, sweeps the wisps away from your hairline so your face is fully unsheathed to his scrutiny. His handle is familiar in a way that’s crept up on you – successively learnt, like resilience or courage, over the course of your tutelage. You’ve come to anticipate the dry scrape of his palm, the overwhelming warmth of it. Even so, you shiver against him, biting your lip when he asks again.

Stricter this time. “How?” 

A small part of you understands what he’s digging for. The complete picture, colours mixed and painted exactly how it’d happened. Yet a haar of delirium creeps up around your memory, obscuring details you’ve no mercy to exclude. And if you could wrap your mouth around them, you wouldn’t be able to choke it out with how close he veers. His nose brushes yours and his lips fold in that tantalising way they do when he’s pushing patience. A little closer and you’d be kissing him. 

You don’t, of course. Instead: 

“You left it– ah!” His caress picks up again, gliding over to your inner thighs. “Open… You left it open a-and I vaulted over. F-from the hall outside.” 

“And how’d you know to find me here?” He probes, tapping the firm plate of your crotch, teasing a descent to where you need him most. Encouragement, you realise. He’s rewarding your compliance in the medium that’s proved successful in the past. 

That’s why, when you finally register his request, you blanch.

“I–” The truth flutters on your tongue like a cornered bug, frantically evading every attempt to pin it down for dissection. You’re reminded of the rather extreme lengths you went to to execute your plan, and its aftertaste is foul. You do the only thing you have the strength for, then. Dodge his severe stare and lie. “I guessed.” 

No sooner after it exits your mouth does he call you out on it. In a cruel play on irony, he finally reaches your cunt, swirling over the clothed centre. For a blissful, naive moment, you actually believe he buys it. He can’t read your mind, after all, and your eye-contact avoidance can be misconstrued as bashfulness. It seems so when he touches you in the way you’ve been praying for, delicately tracing up and down. All’s well and good. Yeah– 

And then he pinches you through the fabric.

Pinches. Gathers your puffy lips between forefinger and thumb, made simple by the thin material, and nips them together until your clit is sandwiched in the smarting hold. Your jaw unhinges for what’s either a silent moan or scream. It’s hard to infer, your body oscillating between various conditions under his command. What feels like a bruise – dull, a gradual onrush of heat that laps at your limbs like water on a sun-drenched shore – melts on your nerves. It blooms and wears down to the colour of ripe plums, deliciously tender in the way all contusions are. Press on the pain enough and you get used to it, start salivating at the thought of doing it again.

(Penance, you muse, then shake it off. This delight is no holy thing. Nothing can fool you to think you’re doing it for a greater reason than yourself.)

Your skin prickles – glitches, more like, body flickering back and forth from materiality in different sections. Its consecutive order is the only factor preventing you from falling through the bed. 

Then, when Miguel eventually lets go, you find yourself wishing he’d do it again. Do more. Spank you until you relive the memory every time you sit. Come loose, like when he’d grabbed your face and fucked it within an inch of asphyxiation. You couldn’t speak for the day afterward, and for some reason, it’d please you to carry a similar mark now. 

He pulls you from your thoughts by directing your gape to his, locking you onto those carmine irises once more. Vaguely, lined up at the back of your concerns, there’s the throb of your scalp as he uses your hair to steer you around. Tears smudge the bottom of your vision, blurring his already shadowed expression. 

“Try again.” He mutters. A thickness accompanies it; molasses poured onto an open bonfire, popping as it hardens. You have no choice but to listen, intoxicated by his perpetual presence. It properly hits you, perhaps all too late, that this is his room. You’re being defiled on his bed, on sheets he wraps himself with every night. And they smell like him, but soon enough, they’ll smell like you too. The very concept – that you might have as much of an impact on him as he does you – could make even the strongest of spider-heroes keel. 

“I followed you.” You groan, blinking through the milky glaze that spools over your lashes and douses the world in a layer of euphoria. Though he keeps your gaze on his, you’re unfocused. Delirious. “Since lunch, I’ve… I’ve been f-following you. To catch you at th– what I supposed would-d be the perfect time.” 

“Why?” 

You expect he knows why, has known why. That he surmised all the answers himself the moment you pinned him down to gloat your victory, and that this whole thing is just an elaborate ploy to squander your ego. 

“I w–” You hiccup over the word, unable to voice it. It strikes a primal fear in you, subconsciously altered by the several instances where it went wrong. Want. Though he mouths it, hovering right over you. Want. Guides you into the house haunted by the enormity of your desire. You purse your lips around the letters; the round start and harsh end, teeth clicking before you ever make a proper sound. He circles where your pussy dampens the layers separating you, chest bearing down on your shoulder blades, forcing you to surrender your panting to his more consistent pattern. 

And, as you breathe in tandem, air ultimately supplies power to the verb. 

(Or, he does.)

“I wan–wanted to win.” You relent, echoing the confession when he flattens two fingers over your clit, winding it in firm circles. “I wanted to win.” Then again, over and over, coherency petering out until you’re left blabbering in splintered heaves. “I… wanind. W–” Miguel works you through it, contrasting the catharsis with a sort of gentle pleasure. Not enough to make you cum, not yet. Just peeling back petals to expose a bud in early development. Making you aware of it, of yourself.

“There we go.” Beyond the hazy realm of your current cognizance, you hear clicks coming from where his fingers rub you. You’re wet enough now that it’s soaked through your panties and leggings alike, and that’s him having barely done anything. He notices it too – or otherwise enjoys the way your clutch tenses around his wrist, humiliated – because his thumb soon wedges itself into the divet between your folds, teasing your hole. “And what do you want now?” 

Why ask? Your body has been begging for it, striking fervent flashes of light, rolling between his arms as you disperse all your energy into convulsing flesh. What do you want? Everything. Everything he has to offer you – more praise, more nicknames born of success and not strife. For him to rip a hole at your crotch and slip his cock in until you’re stretched over it. A ripple of universes, each plea and possibility greater than the last. Seaweed lashes around your ankles and you find yourself tripping into the wave, skull inundating with so much seawater that all you can yell out is: “More!” 

Miguel’s thumb creeps away, objecting to your answer. Too simple. Not the type he was looking for. You whine, nails digging into skin to keep his hand where it is, and drive forth. 

“This! More of- of…” 

His fingers follow soon after. It’s a noiseless deterrent, but an effective one nonetheless. If you didn’t catch the hint, he throws the gruff addition. “No.”

“Shit. Shit, I jus’… W-want more– Please please…” Drivelling until you can find the magic plea that’ll get him to yield. It ends up finding you; thrashing up your gut, possessing every muscle to bid a madcap decree. You squeeze your eyes shut and twist away from his face, screaming into the sheets until you can’t stall any longer. “Want you! Miguel, please! Fuck me, fuck me. Fuck…”

It doesn’t hit you when he orders you to bring your knees up and arch your back for him. Or as you crawl to the centre of the bed, thrusting your haunches up to present your ass. Not when you extend your arms in front of your bowed head, and he peels your shirt off to your wrists, twisting it so both are forced together, keeping you bound and in one position. You’re too lost in the woes of titillation – manna sliding down your gullet – to process what you said. Food to feed a thousand. Forever sustained. Godsent. The evidence of it smeared over your chin in drool, over the swollen mound of your sex as he pares off your pants. There’s no space for it as cool air hits you, or when he grabs either ass cheek and pulls them apart to inspect your readiness. No space for anything apart from the thrill blistering down your spine.

So–

No. It doesn’t hit you (for all that it should) that this is the first time you say his name out loud. Not when it feels so right. A perfect seal, trim to the edges of this molten encounter.

(Much, much later though, you’ll wake up in a cold sweat with it still flaming on your tongue. Miguel. Miguel. And when you sober up, turn the memory over in your mind, you’ll clasp your chest while it flops rebelliously, betraying the fact that – despite your mortification – you’ll want to say it again. 

And again. And again.)

Given the makeshift handcuffs, there’s not much you can do besides knot your knuckles into his sheets, clinging on against heavenly ascension. There’s a shuffle, the sound of fabric rustling as his one hand remains on your rear, kneading the tacky softness of it as if to say hold on. You moan in spite of it, wiggling your hips impatiently. You’ve waited enough. Evidence to your arousal coats your inner thighs, dribbling from your clenching hole and carving a line down the already damp-with-sweat skin. He, better than even you, should be able to see that. 

A hazy picture refines in your mind’s eye in the meanwhile. This scene, reimagined through his perspective. It’s tinged with the liberties of your own ignorance – the extent of your vision ending where your forehead nuzzles into his comforter – but succeeds in that it builds itself off barebone facts. Where night still rages on, dousing everything in parallel values. Navy, black, grey – broken up only by the lurid blue light that would highlight your edges, streaming from the sloped windows on your right. It’d offer a vague suggestion of your form; curves folded in a pose resembling a cat’s stretch, rounding where your glutes plummet to anchored knees. They spread obscenely wide, affording him your unobstructed cunt.

“M- Mmf, pmfeeease. J-jutht… just fuck me already, you b-bastard. Need it so bad.” You wail. The scent of patchouli that had swamped his bed has since been watered down by brine – tears and saliva that mottle your face, glossing it with a sort of wetness that has you sniffing, heaving through the suffocating layer. You’re thankful he stays crouched behind you. If he has to witness your desperation, then let it retain a modicum of attractiveness, in contrast to the pathetic display up front. 

“Need it?” He taunts, tapping his cock on your clit. It’s done lightly, the heft of it controlled in his grip. Nevermind, you lapse. You wish you were laying on your back instead, neck propped on a pillow as you crane to watch the gorgeous thing sway between his legs. You haven’t seen it since you’d sucked him off. It’s always been about you; your pleasure, your satisfaction – not that you haven’t tried to return the favour. Several occasions had you reaching for the bulge in his pants, glowing in a post-orgasm high, only to get swatted away to continue whatever the two of you were working on that day. 

“Shhh-Shut up! Oh my God, I–” Your temper wanes, a crack splitting its centre, threatening to expand with every hit he aims at it. His length glides between your folds now, absorbing the searing heat like he has any reason to stall further. If you’d been closer to your inhibitions, you’d think he’s hesitant to do it with you – but lust isn’t always an inebriating force. You’re honed in on other matters; the leaden heaviness he grinds on you, fully stiff and about to burst. The way it slips, up and down and back up again, veins catching on every crevice. It’s plenty of indication that he’s as far gone. “Keep t-t-teasing and I’ll… I’ll le-eave.” 

“Mhm.” He huffs, but tugs on one side of your ass to pry it further apart. You don’t understand why until he repositions his tip to catch onto the brim of your hole. “I don’t think you will.” 

And then he bottoms out. 

In one, swift move. Wholly plunges in, groyne slamming your behind with a force that strikes the air straight from your throat. Your jaw falls open, meant for a scream that becomes a wheeze instead, energy diverting to better serve the effort of taking him in. You were under no illusion to his size, his cock searing bright in your memory. Long, thrumming, thicker than what you can wrap your hand around. But it’s almost like he’s gotten larger, somehow – nourished by your walls that squelch and suck him in deeper. The skin around your opening aches like a taut elastic, stinging with the stretch, and in a completely contradictory condition, you wish he should’ve gone slower. Allowed you the time to adapt.

As though he senses your affliction, he returns to your clit, easing things by flicking the swollen bud while he steadily draws back out. Your pussy sheathes every ridge, every vein that adorns his ample muscle, rippling until just his head plugs you shut. 

“Solid?” He checks. And it’s so unlike the croons he’s used thus far, so much more like him, that it polishes you up to a clearer state. Sniffing, you count the sensations battering you from all angles. The tension headache. The pressure at your core. The undefinable pleasure buzzing from where his cock continues to stuff you. 

It’s better than you could’ve imagined. Intense, yes, but in varying multitudes. None of your begging had taken that into account. You’re no virgin, yet all the people you’d slept with before had been strangers. Back then, it had seemed absurd that things could feel any different when sex sprouted from rich history. (Pleasure is pleasure.) Or more satisfying when, at each thrust, you’re preoccupied with the person behind them and not your own, selfish desires. (Because what could matter more than your next fix?)

It startles you that Miguel is the first non-stranger you’ll get to know in that way. In different ways. With every wave of pleasure, he proves your previous experiences wrong. Cups the foundations of your worldview and slips them over one another; breaks the ground and crust in magnitudes. Rolls an electric ruin on the valley of your legs. 

Though, you suppose, that’s always been his role. 

(Non-stranger because there isn’t any other word for what you mean to each other. Not friends. Nor lovers. Dancing the wary line between all plights, concurrently. Foolishly. One trip and you’ll find yourself barrelling down onto a term you’re not ready for.

But for now–)

For now. 

You shake the tangent off and harrow out a playfulness that got lost in the mix. It flips and curls like a ribbon, bouncing around in your gut, generating the courage necessary for you to push your hips back on him. As you do, you note that it’s just as much of an adjustment the second time. Swifter, smoother now that he’s lubed with your natural slick, but he bulges thicker midway, and it takes force to push past that on your own. Once you manage though, your eager cunt engulfs the rest with ease, seating you on the base. You make sure he has no room to pull out, wiggling onto his crotch until he’s nestled right against your cervix.

Dragging your arms back until you’re situated on your elbows, your neck twists to the side, a wry smile winding across your cheeks. His eyes are closed, fluttering, grappling with your tight clutch. You speak anyway. “You plan on warming your dick forever? Or are you gonna fu–ungh.”

He’s quick. You’re barely able to perceive the furrowing of his brows before he dives to wrap his arms around your midriff. Chest slotting neatly onto your back, hand grinding onto your lower belly, feeling for where his cock dents as he snaps his pelvis back and thrusts into you. Or– doesn’t thrust so much as he manhandles, slamming you back and forth onto the ample breadth. Brutally done, rough in all the right ways. It spurs him, you realise. This back and forth. Snatching the power from him like a bone from a dog, throwing it out for him to fetch. It makes it all the more rewarding, perhaps, when you bend and break and become the dog yourself, snarling under his heavy pet. He’d take greater satisfaction that way, boiling you down to a keening mess. 

Which he does, in record time. Nose mashing onto your shoulder blade and fangs extended to skim the flesh there. He kneads your clit and targets a very specific part of you – that patch of spongy tissue on the flipside of your mound – pounding until it memorises the mushroomed shape of his tip. It should hurt. The sounds spilling from you are those of a wounded animal, snivelling like every inhale is your last. The expanse where your bodies meet should rub abrasively, but you’re both sweaty enough that it’s a frictionless process. And you’re both sweaty – both, because he’s affected by this too. Up from his pelvis, to his palms, to his pecs. Bare pecs. 

He’s shirtless. 

You don’t know how you missed it. Like a shot of espresso as warm as the naked muscle that cradles you; he’s shirtless. Your moans escalate, cranking to a higher octave. They fluctuate, thumping in your lungs to the sharp beat of his pumps. There was no reason for him to strip. Your shirt was used to keep your wrists fastened, and your bra still cups each breast. Your nudity is a given, as it’s always been, but there could be no purpose behind his. Not if what you assumed is true, about power play and how it turns him on. If anything, this only knocks him down to an equal peg. You’re on level ground. 

Not that you’re complaining, of course. As it stands, you can feel every part of him. His body is a furnace, rolling coals onto your own, enveloping you all around. Forearm barring your tits, pure brawn keeping you from peeling your frame off his. Abs grate across your back, happy trail chafing the small of it, the vale running along the centre. He noses your shoulder, doesn’t kiss. Just runs his chin and teeth along the curve of it, groaning inaudible phrases in both English and Spanish, of which you strain to pick up on. You want to hear it. To be closer, to be privy to what he has to say about you. About this. To crack open his mind and pick his complicated psyche for the tasting. 

And– 

And maybe he wants that, too. Maybe he took his top off to feel closer in the most material sense. You won’t fool yourself into thinking he holds similar admiration, but your body has gained definition in the past weeks. Physically, you’re more spider-hero than you’ve ever been. It wouldn’t surprise you if that’s what’s got him going. The fruits of his labour. Your progress. With the way he takes in your form, all the questions, his demeanour cleans up to seem vaguely… proud. 

Proud. 

Is that it? Did he ask you to recount your achievements because he’s pleased with you? Don’t sell yourself short. That’s what he said when forwarding his interrogation. It would make sense – for all that it settles at the forefront of your brain, refusing to dissolve.

But God, you think, it doesn’t even need to be true. The mere notion lights your nerves until they whistle like soaring fireworks. You watch as pyrotechnics burst behind your eyes, lashes drooping with tears, jaw strained as you clench your teeth. Miguel fucks in short, hard pegs, forgoing pulling out all the way to instead beat your g-spot in rapid succession. His breath bursts hot and heavy, lips – those perfect, full lips – pressed to the shell of your ear. He’s stroking your sore clit with three fingers now. 

“Ay, mierda. Shit.” He curses. “I-Is this it, huh? Is this what… all I had to do to shut you up, you needy little thing? A good fucking. Just a little attention and you-you’re happy.” 

“Nnnngh. M-Mi… Puh-ple–” 

“No. I want to hear it.” He squishes your cheeks together, squeezing with one large hand. When you try to speak again, your words come out slurred. “Use your words.” The grip guides your head back until you can catch his gaze in your peripheral. He’s already looking at you. 

“G-Gon…” 

“Hm.” 

“C-cuuuu… mmuh uh uh–” 

“All together now.” He picks up pace, practically battering your insides. It’s enough to threaten your enhanced healing, bruising your walls at a quicker rate than it can work. You’ll hurt in the morning, you’re sure.

(At least, you hope you do.)

“Gon’ugh cum. Gonna– Mig… Please.” 

Your spine goes rigid. Blood rushes to your head. 

“Do it, then. Go on. Fuck.” His middle and forefinger push past your mouth, hooking behind your teeth to hold it open. “Cum. Cum on my cock, p-pretty.” 

The world burns white-hot and bright. You can’t see, can hardly feel him anymore. Just that word, branded onto your skull where it’ll stay forevermore. Pretty. He thinks you’re pretty; or is otherwise too wrapped up in the moment to dispute the intrusive conviction. It should be concerning that you don’t care either way. That, in any reality, it still bestrews a kaleidoscope of butterflies in your gut. Your insides flutter with them, frantic and galvanised at the deluge of dopamine, flooding through every synapse until everything, everything, becomes about the high. 

Your orgasm finds you a ragdoll in his arms. Bones liquid, riding the wave that continues to scroll over. He doesn’t stop jackhammering into your spent pussy, still seeking his and draining you of all the evidence of your devastation in the process. You’ve no doubt soaked his lap. That’s if the noises are any indication, downright sloppy from where you’re attached. Schlicks and slaps and low grunts that tell you he’s close. 

Before that happens, though, you’re flipped over on your back. He holds your legs together and pushes them high so your ankles sway mid-air. You’re tighter like this – something even you can feel when he re-enters you, cock cleaving you apart. Another, weaker orgasm pulses in your core. You’ve no energy to voice it, let alone moan. It’s all you can do to take him in. The striking sight he’s allowed you access to.

Not as bronzed in this lighting, but fit just the same. Grainy shadows stretch around the canyons formed by sinew, delineating the anatomy of his torso as though it senses your ogling. He’s huge. Bigger, brawnier when not constricted in a tight top. With arms that curve and cut perfectly into his broad chest, bridged by shoulders that seem to have a life of their own. They provide a golden ratio to the trim angle of his waist, partially hidden behind your thighs. 

A curl falls over his forehead. It’s heavy with sweat. His palm crushes into your flesh. 

“Inside.” You croak, exercising the title that started this all. Bold. 

“No me haga eso.” He shakes his head, pinching his eyes shut. “I–” 

“Y-You sca…scared?” 

“Fuck– Fuck!” 

It’s misleading. You’d think – with how his voice breaks, winded and tight – that he’s about to accede. Burst and pipe you full of his seed. But he pulls out, dropping your legs to scramble on top of them. A trade off, you reason. It’s hard to rue with disappointment when his cock finally makes an appearance, fat and heavy in his hand. Your palate immediately salivates with the thought of sucking him clean after this is all over, putting your talents to good use. Maybe, if you do good, he’ll soften enough to call you pretty once more. 

That’s getting ahead of yourself, though. 

Miguel cups your neck, pinching either side to cut your oxygen supply. Your vision dots with stars – black holes and supernovas, dying suns blazing on your eyelids. It’s the combination of everything; the victory, the suffocation, the weight and magnitude of his presence. The sheets you lay on, the room you occupy, the heights you leapt across. They weave to create a shroud that slowly descends on your consciousness. 

You don’t pass out, but you’re barely lucid when he spurts out onto your stomach. Dense, searing fluid coats your skin, pooling into your belly button and reaching the ravine between your breasts. 

“I’m–” Voice hoarse, you cough to rid of its scratch. “You c-coulda done, y’know. I can’t… The spider radiation–” 

“I know.” He says, then scoops some cum onto his finger. You automatically open your mouth when he reaches over to smear it on your tongue. “Good.”  

It’s a peculiar scar, you dwell. Buttressed on his deltoid. Geometrically circular in a way vaccine marks aren’t, with marks like teeth equidistant around its circumference. Blinking heavily, you try to deduce its origins on his otherwise unmarred body, only to give up as you draw blanks, unable to think at all. Sleep looms, a heady fog lurching up your neck.

Miguel sits, picking apart the complicated knots of your shirt. It still circles your arms, looser with his effort thus far. When you flick your study over to his worn face, you find that his attention is centred onto your own blemish. Situated above your wrist – four discoloured punctures in the same size of his claws. 

“If you think that’s bad, you should’ve seen the other guy.” You quip, smiling minutely. The man just shakes his head, pretending to reoccupy himself with his self-assigned task. 

What do you say in this situation? When you can’t separate guilt from the fraught expression he dons. It’s not okay that it happened. It’s not fair that you have to bear that memory for the rest of your life. But… you don’t mind. Your self-respect is nonexistent and you don’t mind the fact that he’d resorted to whatever he could when desperate. You've done the same. Worse, even.

You’re about to speak up when a crackle on your left fills the silence for you. A radio he keeps on his bedside shelf, to connect him to all emergency personnel, blares a hurried alert. 

“Possible superhuman event. Downtown city hall. Suspect is–” 

He sighs, rising to a stand to shut it off. Your shirt slips off your limbs.

“It’s late.” You pose before you can stop yourself. The protest is instinctual – even you don’t know where you’re going with it – and no sooner does it leave your mouth do you cringe. It’s too big now to stuff back into your throat, spoken out loud and stupid. You’re free now, aren’t you? Unbound, literally. There’s no reason to stick around.

“So?” Miguel calls you out on it. 

“You– um. Just, good luck.” Is all you come up with, curling into a foetus position to dissuade the embarrassment blooming behind your ribs. Now that his body isn’t on top of yours, his room seems that much colder. 

“You’re right.” His briefs slide back up his legs, fitting snug around burly thighs and snapping low on his hips. “It’s late. You can sleep here tonight. I have to go deal with–” He gives a vague gesture to your left, referring to the dispatch call. 

“Right.” 

He offers nothing else, oscillating between attached rooms in the quiet that follows. A bathroom and closet, you assume; confirmed when he walks out in full spider garb. The sight of his suit knocks you back into place. The fact that it’s more familiar than the bare skin you were only just getting used to is a sobering enough fact. 

And you watch as he moves to leave, shucking a window frame open to allow him access to Nueva York’s skyline. Perhaps it’s his back – turned to face you, at a guarded distance once more – that spurs you to ask. A distressed attempt for any tenderness he might have left.

(That wounded animal, raking for solace before death.)

“You opened it, didn’t you?” You ask, pitching the suspicion you’ve been ruminating over for a while. 

He stops, turns his head to indicate he’s listening. 

“You opened the window. You knew I’d been following.” 

You wish the mask didn’t obstruct his reaction. What a small blink, or smile, could do to dissuade the charged pace of your heart. Eventually, though, he nods.

“Why?” 

And there’s really one answer you’re hoping to hear. A comfort, along the lines of for you. But Miguel is funny in that way. Sometimes – as seen by the cum that glazes your abdomen, or the soreness between your legs – he gives you what you want. Readily. Seems to want the same thing too, if you’re lucky enough. 

And then, there the other times.

“To see what you would do.”

follow @moondirti-archive and turn on post notifs to be alerted of future updates!

[horsegirlwarcrimes]

For drabble ideas: MQF and SQH feat. rare medicinal plants.

(I feel like SQH doesn't know it but on MQF's side they're totally friends)

Hope you like this one, thank you for your hard work! ^-^

I LOVE THIS. and i liked it so much that i didnt answer for like 3 weeks im s o so r r y. HOWEVER it is also twice as long as my usual prompt fills so i hope you enjoy pt 1

—

As the Lord of Qian Cao Peak, there are few things which cause Mu Qingfang to make anything like a ‘walk of shame’ across his peak. He is an esteemed scholar, a competent fighter, and a doctor who is considered by many to work miracles. People come to him to solve their problems, and when he must consult his sect siblings, it is with the self-assured confidence of an expert in one field seeking the wisdom of an expert in another.

It is with a heavy heart that he is forced to trudge across Qian Cao, over the rainbow bridge, through Ku Xing Peak, around Xian Xu Peak, and up to An Ding to knock at the Peak Lord’s door in the middle of the night. 

Shang Qinghua answers on the second knock. He appears in the doorway, backlit by the lanterns behind him, accompanied by a wave of cool air and an anxious smile. The man is still fully dressed, guan in place and ink turning his fingers black and smudging darkly across his jaw. No—a bruise, blooming purple. Mu Qingfang’s hands itch to check it, but instead he folds his hands in a shallow bow as Shang Qinghua’s eyebrows go up at the sight of him. 

“Shang-shixiong, this one apologized for disturbing you so late.” 

“Mu-shidi! A pleasant surprise. Don’t worry about it, there’s no way I would be asleep at this time. I thought you were gonna be one of my disciples telling me something was unexpectedly on fire, so really, this is an improvement. What can I do for you?” 

Mu Qingfang sighs. He really hates doing this.

“I’m afraid I must ask your expertise on a sensitive matter.” 

“Oh—? Ooooh. One of those nights, huh? Come on in.” 

Shang Qinghua steps aside, waving lazily over his shoulder for Mu Qingfang to follow him. He calls out, facing his sitting room, 

“Make yourself at home, Shidi. Sorry about the mess, you can push some scrolls over if you need to.” 

Mu Qingfang steps into the front room, taking in the familiar papers, scrolls, and cushions scattered around the floor, the desk, the shelves… he sees one booklet poking out of a plant pot. A Snow Lion Bush, red berries gleaming and viny tendrils swaying as if in an invisible breeze—maybe that is what’s responsible for the unusually cool temperatures Shang Qinghua always seems to keep his rooms at. Mu Qingfang almost wishes he’d worn an extra layer. 

Shang Qinghua starts making tea, and Mu Qingfang moves to take the kettle from his hands.

“Please, allow me. I’m the one who is disturbing you so late.” Best to step in before they both end up sipping bitter tea. 

Shang Qinghua chuckles and raises his hands in defeat, stepping away to ease himself down at his overflowing desk. Mu Qingfang makes a note—stiff, moving gingerly. Fatigue, muscle strain, or an injury he’s avoiding aggravating? He roots around Shang Qinghua’s cabinets until he locates slightly stale dried danshen and curcumin, makes a note to bring more by later as a thank you. 

“So… who’s the lucky victim?” Shang Qinghua asks. 

Mu Qingfang nudges some scrolls aside with his foot and sits in front of the man’s desk, pushing more paperwork aside to set down the pot and two cups of tea with Shang Qinghua’s consenting hand-wave. 

“You know I can’t tell you that, Shixiong.” 

“Ah I know, I know. Can’t blame me for asking. I really want it to be that one guy from Qiong Ding who keeps denying my funding requests for—anyways, it doesn’t matter. What are you looking for, exactly?” 

Mu Qingfang knocks his tea back like downing a cup of wine. “I have two victims of a spring plant. Contact based—their clothes were coated in an opalescent pink powder, fine grained. I spoke with them both individually. One described it as ‘vine like,’ the other ‘bush like.’ Both said the flowers were white and pink, with green stems and leaves and a darker pink tear drop shaped metal emerging from a soft, fur-like white bud.”

“Ahh, ‘Drawstring pulled tight upon sweet fragrance pent within’1?” Shang Qinghua asks, quoting something Mu Qingfang doesn’t recognize. He tilts his head, and Shang Qinghua waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. Those sound familiar! Should I assume the sect members in question are, ah, feeling some effect?” 

“They have refused the… ordinary methods of relief from a trained service worker, myself, each other, and any other member of the sect who might be asked. One of them has a fever that’s making them hallucinate, and the other has developed an unusual rash.” 

TBC...

1王文英 (Wáng Wényīng) Poems of a Hundred Flowers: number 70 - Purse Peony

玲珑奇巧涎欲滴

[ceilidho]

prompt: Soap being a funny, goofy flirt with his barista whenever he's on leave back home….super cocky and charming, then a couple months go by …. and he comes back sort of rougher around the edges after Las Almas. less trusting. a bit meaner when he talks to her….. [soap/reader] 2.5k; nsfw (on ao3)

-

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

He’s back again. It’s not a usual occurrence, but when it happens your heart kicks into overdrive. He appears like clockwork every couple of months, and then back to back over a quick succession of days. Like he’s in town one week and then gone the next. 

You look up from where you’re organizing the muffins in the display case to find him grinning down at you from the other side. His hair is freshly shorn on both sides, the stripe of hair down the middle likely barely long enough for him to work his thick fingers through it. He’s got a cocksure grin spread across his lips. A fresh cut over his right eyebrow, a butterfly bandage over it. 

“Hi John,” you say. It’s almost a struggle to say the words. Your hands shake a bit where they’re extended out amongst the pastries, fingers pressing into a carrot muffin a bit too hard. It dents beneath your fingers. You pull them out, rest the tongs behind you on the countertop. 

“Hi kitty cat,” he purrs, folding his arms over the pastry case, leaning as close to you as he can. If it were anyone else, you might be tempted to scold them for smudging the glass. It’s you that’ll have to clean that up later. “Not Johnny anymore? Have I been gone for too long?”

Charm like butter spread thick over freshly toasted sourdough, already melting into the bread, dripping onto the plate between the pockets of air. You know he could ruin you if he wanted to, if you let him in. 

You know it won’t be long until you fold. He hasn’t been subtle about it. “Sorry, Johnny, we’re all out of scones.”

“Aw, that’s how you apologize for tossing up my morning?”

You twiddle your thumbs. “Sorry.”

“‘Have to do better than tha’, kitty cat,” Johnny says, lips drawn into a faux pout that has your heart skittering in your chest like it’s been let loose from the stables for once. “I was waiting for those scones for near a month."

“We have cream buns,” you offer. He snorts.

“Not in the mood for anything cream filled just yet.” 

There isn’t a shade of red deep enough to describe your face. “Pardon?”

“Ye fancy going for a bevvy tonight?” Johnny asks instead, evading the question.

You probably look as gobsmacked as you feel. It’s not like you haven’t been asked out on dates before, but Johnny is leagues away from any of the men you’ve dated. He’s cockier, back straight and chest out, flaunting the muscles strapped across his chest and arms. You think it’s reasonable that you’ve chalked his flirting up to habit, something he does with everyone; whatever distance you’ve put between yourself and your inevitable nervous breakdown has been built on assuring yourself that Johnny surely didn’t mean for you to take his flirting seriously.

Apparently, you were wrong. 

“You want to take me out?” you ask, sounding a bit dumb. 

“‘Course I do.” He cocks an eyebrow, leveling you with an obvious look. “Haven’t been shy about it; s’a bit tough when I’m all over the place these days, but I’m in town for the next two weeks, so we’ve got some time. When you getting off today, kitty cat?” 

Johnny leans farther over the countertop, towering over you now that you aren’t standing on the raised platform by the pastry case. Palms spread wide over the granite; when your eyes flit down, you can’t help the way they’re drawn to the dark, livid tattoos crawling up his forearms. Dark ink like they’re new trophies on his skin. 

His attention is always like the sun; your whole body burns under his gaze. There’s something about being stared at so intensely, blue eyes raking down the front of you, that makes you unsure. 

He buys a croissant instead, tenner pressed gently into the palm of your hand. You're tempted to deflect, tell him you aren't interested.

“Seven,” you whisper instead, hands shaking when you hand him his change. 

His hand closes around yours, callused fingers rough against your skin. “Got it. Pick you up seven sharp.”

When he leaves, you barely hear the jingle behind him, the blood pounding in your ears. You have a date. 

Your chest is tight for hours, thinking about your date later that evening. He picks you up after your shift, just as you’re locking up; you thought you’d have a couple minutes to head back to your apartment and freshen up, but you find him waiting outside the coffee shop for you, clad in a black hoodie and the same jeans as earlier. 

He’s as slick and gentlemanly as you might’ve anticipated, walking you to the pub with a hand nestled against your low back. You talk for what seems like hours tucked away in the corner. Johnny makes good conversation, but sometimes it feels a bit like an interrogation. He’s talkative, but there’s a faint edge underlying everything he does; he makes you wait for him at your table while he orders for the two of you at the bar, taking the seat facing you so you’re ensconced in his shadow, hidden from anyone else in the pub.

He insists on walking you back to your place, boots splattering through the puddles accumulating between the cobblestones. He makes sure you walk on the dry side. Every light you pass under sweeps across his face in a golden arc, illuminating the corner edge of his jawline, the plush spread of his lips, the furl of his ear like a nautilus shell. Brows that slope over deep set eyes. 

When he leaves you off at the door, Johnny’s hand curls in the hairs at the back of your neck and tugs you up for a kiss that goes scorching hot. Fingers tangled in your hair, other hand coming up to cup your cheek, holding you in place. You feel trapped, helpless against the onslaught of him; a hot tongue flicks into your mouth and he groans, making your head spin. You feel it resonate through you. 

“Johnny—” you mumble when he pulls away for a second, cut off when he leans back in to suckle at your bottom lip. His beard is bristly against the soft skin around your mouth. 

You feel him smirk against your lips. He nips at the lower one. “I’ll see ya tomorrow, a’right, kitty cat?”

Johnny only looks the slightest bit disheveled when he pulls away. A thumb traces your lower lip. He briefly looks regretful, like he wants to bend down again for another one—you feel the intention when he presses his thumb ever so slightly past your lips—but then he pulls back, walking backwards down the street away from you. A hand raised in goodbye.

Then the next day, he’s gone. Vanished into thin air. You glance up whenever the wind chimes over the door jingle, but it’s never him, always someone with a different hat, a different face. 

You thought he promised you two weeks this time. Your chest collapses when the door opens and someone else walks in. Apparently he spoke too soon. 

Two days go by; you’re fighting the desperation to know. It oddly never crosses your mind to think that he’s ghosting you. Maybe it should. You hardly know him outside of the brief interactions you have every other month when he’s back from wherever he works (and you know that it’s all top secret, hush hush, you’ve seen the military tattoos and kept your questions to yourself), but it doesn’t feel—and you think this with no small degree of irony—like something he’d do. 

On the walk home, you often catch yourself looking for the familiar shape of him. Wandering past the shops closing up for the night, people piling into the bars, raucous voices tumbling up into the smoky sky; you stand on your tiptoes on the other side of the street and peer in, looking for the broad shape of his back. 

You never spot him. There is a cold gap in your life that goes unfilled. It smarts at the root of you; you didn’t think you could miss Johnny. You thought you could feel a twinge of regret every now and then for not indulging his flirting a bit more, but you had honestly shelved him higher than you could reach in your desires. Until he took you out and listened to you ramble on, listened deeply with his attention rapt, his cheek pressed into his fist as he leaned against the table towards you. Until he whisked you safely back home and held you in place while he sipped kisses from your mouth until your lips were swollen. 

It’s months later when you hear it. 

“Hi kitty.”

Your blood goes hot at the sound of his voice. When you whip around, Johnny’s on the other side of the counter like he never left. Black shirt that clings to the curve of his biceps, old jeans with fades around the knees and thighs stretched around his thighs. 

When you meet his eyes, they seem charged, steadier than usual. Flat lips turned up just at the corner, one side only. Johnny’s not usually so still, so grounded on his feet; there’s usually a frenetic undercurrent to him, like catching a live wire. You don’t know what he’s like out in the real world, but in your world he looks like he paces and runs to work himself free of all the extra energy. Maybe other forms of cardio.

“Johnny, you’re—” You catch yourself before the words tumble out, before you make it known that you’ve been tossing and turning late at night wondering where he went. Blue eyes sparkle like they hear it anyway, the faint note of desperation seeping into your voice like a hoarseness. 

“Fancy going for a bevvy tonight?” he asks you again. Less of a question this time. 

You feel pulled to him on a string. He doesn’t leave you in peace this time. He waits you out, sits at a table in the coffee shop facing you. Customers you’ve known for years seem entranced by him, and how could they not? They don’t make them like him often—tall and blue eyed, roguish; ruggedly handsome when the mood strikes. Pretty boy until he turns the full weight of his stare on you and you’re forced to contend with the fact that he is, in fact, all man. 

Your amity turns to enmity when someone stares at him for too long. Placated only because Johnny never so much as turns their way. 

Dinner is a long, drawn out affair. His conversation is rougher than usual, punctuated by bouts of silence. His eyes are murky waters. Something’s changed, you think, salad speared on your fork, hovering just in front of your mouth, studying him. Something happened in the months that he was away. Whatever it was, it’s left Johnny a bit more calculating, less trusting. He sits facing the door this time, eyes flicking up whenever it opens on the other side of the restaurant. 

“Sorry, angel, don’t have it in me to be sweet and gentle anymore,” Johnny says when he walks you to your doorstep. “‘Fraid it’s gonna be rough for you from now on.” 

His words make you tremble. 

The kiss at your doorstep doesn’t end there this time. Maybe this is all an extension of that moment months ago, the natural endpoint. You were never going to end up anywhere else but flat on your back under him.

“Pure gaggin' fer it, aren’t ya, kitty?”

Johnny’s voice is rough, barely a rumble over the sound of your own keening. Your whole body slides up the bed every time he ruts into you, thick cock spearing you open. Your hands slip over his shoulders where a layer of sweat has built up; your bodies slide together like you’ve been at it for hours, rather than just the thirty minutes since Johnny bodied his way into your place and made you guide him to the bedroom, shucking his clothes the whole way there.

“No, I would’ve—” You gasp on a particularly rough thrust, teeth clenching together, “—I would’ve w-waited. Oh god, oh god.”

“Haud yer' wheesht, bonnie, quit whining,” he grunts. “Dinnae act like you weren’t asking for a big cock in this cunt. Could hear her purring behind the counter. Needed it for months, didn’t ya?”

You knew this was in him somehow, this penchant for dirty talk. He’s always moved like it was in him. You feel swept away by it, scorching under his hands and tongue and dick. Tightly wound. Only capable of holding on, one hand clenched now in the lowest part of his mohawk while he ducks his head to suck your nipple into his mouth. When he gives it a mean bite, you squirm and cry out.

“Never thought you were s-serious,” you admit, whimpering when he nips again at the tender spot there. 

Johnny draws back onto his haunches, still deep in you. There are scars across his chest that you didn’t notice before. New skin frosted over, deep gouges across his arms; what you think looks like a bullet wound. Your eyes go wide. It’s impossible to think what he must have been through.

He looms over you, hand coming up to curl delicately around your throat. Just enough to let you know that he’s there, that he’s got you right where he wants. Johnny smiles wide, wicked, white teeth stark in the darkness of your room. 

“Oh, I’m very serious, kitty,” he laughs, deep and throaty. He thrusts languidly into your heat now, drawing it out. 

He makes a show of it when he comes, fingers tightening around your neck. Your breath hitches in your throat. It strikes you in the moment that you let him in bare, trusted him despite months of absence and no real excuse for it. When he pulls out, you feel it leak from you. Frustration boils under your skin because you haven’t come yet; you feel almost betrayed, a whiplash reaction that has tears welling up in your ears. 

“Don’t worry,” Johnny coos at the sight of your pinched face, “you’ll get yours, bonnie. Gonna treat this kitty real nice.”

You struggle against his hold when he forces your legs wide and slots himself between them, making his way down the bed. He tongues deep into your cunt to lick his own spend out. Your thoughts dribble out of you, head empty; there’s nothing left in you except bone-deep exhaustion and the feel of his bearded cheeks scraping against your inner thighs. 

You flinch like you’ve been shocked when he sucks at your clit, hypersensitive. He laughs when you do, doubling his efforts. His hot mouth on the place where he still drips from you might make you lose it completely. The most wounded sound bubbles out of you. Your hand trembles in his hair, torn between pulling his mouth closer and pushing him away. 

He doesn’t relent until you’ve come twice, your face flush with blood. When his tongue flicks over your clit again, it’s for the pleasure of seeing your legs spasm. 

“Johnny, please—can’t anymore,” you beg, trying to press your foot against his shoulder to push him away. 

His chin glistens with your juices. When he runs his tongue across his bottom lip, plump and swollen, you drag in a harsh breath. Maybe you could go again.

“Kitty, I’ve had a rough couple weeks,” he says, voice light but for where it descends into a memory, deep and dark. “Just let me eat your cunt and we’ll talk about everything later, okay?”

Your fingers tingle like they’ve fallen asleep in his hair. When you give in, it feels inevitable.

[crazypersonslayy]

[Lessons in love]Severus Snape x Prof!Reader

~~Part 2

Summary: Y/N is the Herbology professor who has worked in Hogwarts for a few years since Professor Sprout retired. She has never really interacted with Snape, until Dumbledore assigns the both of them to work on combined lesson courses to improve student engagement. Things seem professional, maybe with a hint of unspoken attraction simmering beneath the surface. Until one thing leads to another.

~~

Two days had passed, yet they hadn't spoke a single word about the arrangement. She was starting to worry. What if he didn't want to work with her? Was she that unbearable? Surely he had forgetton about it. She paced around her room, debating whether or not to go down to the dungeons and find him herself.

Speak of the devil. Her owl flew in the window, dropping a letter on her desk. She took a closer look, realizing it was just a small piece of parchment paper that read:

Professor L/N,

Come to my classroom in 10 minutes.

S.S.

She almost choked on her coffee. His handwriting was definitely nice. More than that, it was an elegant script, and she liked the way he wrote his "l"s in a loop. Her thumb brushed over his writing, smudging the fresh ink. Her heart thumped in her chest as she imagined Snape bent over his desk, writing the letter, writing her name. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Then she paused. What am I thinking? He's my colleague. Shaking her head, she folded the piece of paper paper and tucked it away, then grabbed her wand before heading down to the dungeons.

~~

She dragged her feet begrudgingly towards Snape's classroom, goosebumps erupting on her skin as a gust of cold wind travelled through the dungeons. She shivered, making a mental note to herself to bring a coat next time. She reached the wooden door to his office, hesitating slightly. Knock, knock, knock.

"Come in." His deep voice instructed from the other side.

She pushed the door open, the loud creaking of the rusted hinges made her cringe internally. She stood between the doorway, looking down at her shoes as she mumbled a "Hello, professor". "Sit", she raised her head slightly and saw him gesture to a chair across him. She hurriedly closed the door behind her and made her way towards him.

The first thing she had noticed about him was his reading glasses, which were rested on his crooked nose, threatening to slip further down. His onyx eyes were fixated on the mountains of papers in front of him. They were stacked neatly into piles, some littered wlith red crosses and scribbles in the same handwriting she had admired a few moments ago. His posture was ever more perfect, he sat upright in his wooden chair, legs crossing beneath the desk. She sat down across him, then looked down at her hands.

A moment of silence passed, the only thing that could be heard was the sound of scratching parchment. She figeted with her hands, clearing her throat, "So..Professor, is there anything-" Snape cut her off, "I sent that letter at exactly 1107 hours, I had expected you in ten minutes. It is currently 1115 hours, you sit and wait." He continued with his marking. "..Oh, alright then" She mumbled. What a jerk he is.

"Excuse me?" He looked up again, his eyes staring daggers into her soul. Her eyes widened. I swear I didn't say that out loud.. "I hope you realise that your thoughts are quite loud" Oh. He's a Legilimens. Shit. Her eyebrows scrunched together, "Please stay out of my head, I prefer for my privacy to be respected". He scoffed, removing his glasses, "I did not call you here to tell me what or what not to do. " She stood up from her seat, "We are here to work together, not bicker like children. I expect to be treated as an adult". He pinched the bridge of his nose and put down his quill, standing from his chair, "Let's just get this over and done with". God save me.

"I have the new timetable for this year, we have combined lessons on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. 1300 hours to 1400 hours for the sixth years, 1400 hours to 1500 hours for the seventh graders. I was thinking we could teach our separate subjects on Mondays and Wednesdays, I will be free to assist you if needed. Then on Thursday we could have half an hour each." She explained. "I will not require your assistance whatsoever, not after that stunt you pulled". He hissed. What? Oh.. She did in fact blow up a cauldron by accident back in sixth grade. "That was once." She grumbled. "Once is enough to blow up my entire classroom, I would advise you to stay out of my teaching. I will teach Mondays, you on Thursdays. And on Fridays we will have theory lessons in my classroom, understood?" She sighed, fighting the urge to roll her eyes, "Alright. I will send a letter to Dumbledore to inform him of our plans."

She turned away, walking towards the door. Then he called out to her "L/N," before she could react, Snape appeared in front of her holding a small vile of potion, "Your hand," She looked down at her hand confusedly, realizing there was a gash between her ring and pinky finger on her right hand, with dried blood smudged around it. She hadn't noticed it before, it was probably from handing those thorny plants that morning, "Drink this, before it gets infected." She hesitantly took the potion from him, "Oh-I uh, thanks" Her cheeks flushed as their hands brushed ever so slightly, a jolt of electricity shot down her spine. Snape had merely nodded, his expression unreadable as he stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. She had sworn she saw something more in his eyes: maybe concern, maybe kindness.

She shot him a small smile and pocketed the potion, before turning around and walking briskly out of his office. Walking through the halls, she felt another gust of cold wind against her cheeks. But this time, instead of the sharp, freezing sensation, her cheeks felt warm.

Maybe he wasn't that bad after all.

~~End

A/N: I hope you enjoyed this! Feedback is always appreciated :)

Tags: @pear-1206

[mudandmire]

Contrasts

Azris Week - Day One: Contrasts

~~~ Hello hello! I found the Azris ship and the community this year and have absolutely been consumed by it. I love this idea, I love these two characters, and I love that there's so much potential between them and for them to feed and inspire such a wonderful community. I've never participated in the acotar fandom apart from this, and I'm so excited! Thank you so much to @azrisweek for putting together this event, I have had so much fun letting my brain run free like a dog off a leash with these prompts :D ~~~

Tell me

Azriel calls him tatlım, and Eris doesn’t know what it means.

It’s a secret, he supposes he can accept it—relate to it. Nooks and hidden corners itch and snarl with the weight of his own. An enchanted drawer he keeps in the washroom holds his greatest wonder and his greatest shame.

The journal weighs heavy in Eris’s mind. He traces back the parchment pages with intangible fingers during lulls in his father’s council meetings. The drone of bees, lazy and fat in the afternoon sun becomes the hushed whisper of a canyon gale through dried grass. The lines he inks, stroke by stroke, Azriel matches in full, thrumming strides. Words next to his are clean, unbroken, while Azriel’s remain thick, written in charcoal with smudges at the corners from where his fist has run over the line.

When it’s dark, a time when even shadows cannot creep and loom larger, Eris presses his own fingertips to those words. The smears of charcoal because Azriel had told him early on in their budding friendship when they were young that he can’t use quills.

“They're too thin, my hands shake too much.” A smaller version of Azriel speaks the memory into his mind. The whorls and pockmarks on his hands hidden between the gap of his thighs.

Eris had taken it as a challenge—and now he revels in it. Azriel is messy with his charcoal pencil, too free with his mistakes and smudges and it leaves Eris half a country away and entirely breathless.

‘Tell me what bothers you, tatlım.’ Azriel had written him earlier, the familiar scrawl of his heavy hand appearing stroke by stroke in the filled pages of Eris’s enchanted journal.

Two were made, Eris gave one away. He could not bring himself to regret it even if his life were on the line.

‘Tatlım?’ Eris had asked, his letters looped and coiled together in the way they get when he rushes, when he needs answers.

There was no sound save for Eris’s own steady pulse, the whistle of air through his nose as he waited for a response. And yet he could’ve swore he heard Azriel’s laugh, the breathy one, brush against the point of his ear.

The words appear in the space between one breath and the next: ‘Maybe one day, gach’lilit, I will tell you. For now, stop avoiding my prying.’

Eris places a hand on the rise of his chest. Holding in something that seems to be rising from his stomach to his throat and lands gently on his tongue like the orange and black patterned butterflies in the garden.

‘Tell me now,’ he begs, ‘and I will tell you whatever you wish, Azriel.’

‘Come back to visit me, sweetheart. That’s all I ask.’

It had formed a pause in their effortless back and forth. Eris wanted to—Azriel knew that. No, the issue wasn’t in Azriel’s plea, he knew just how much Eris longed for the little village in the Illyrian steppes. The stable in the field and the small, knobby kneed, black lamb that follows Azriel around like ducklings in the Forest House pond in spring. He misses the creeping, ruby red moss and the yellow and sage aspens that crop up from out of the golden plains like the jagged teeth of a cliff.

Most of all, most desperately of all, he misses Azriel. There is not one inch of his soul that doesn’t.

The inked tip of his quill hangs over the page, a knife poised for the final push. Through skin, muscle, bone, to the heart of everything—the rot that waits, festering under the floorboards of his adamant desire to run. It is one thing; it is also a collection of things Eris has stored like the most gruesome of trinkets, the most harrowing of trophies.

Because Azriel calls him sweetheart. He writes in his tongue letters of longing and punctuates them with words like tatlım, and gach’lilit. As much as Eris wants to stitch those given titles to his chest, he already has one.

Eris Vanserra. Heir of Fire. Son of Autumn.

Sweetheart. Tatlım. Gach’lilit.

He cannot have both. The heir who wears the crown, who feels it’s golden spiked thorns pierce the thin skin of his head knows this. Eris Vanserra was not born with room on his chest for titles other than this: his father’s son.

When his quill meets the page, a heaviness in his hand that wasn’t previously there, he knows Azriel already knows what he will write.

‘Soon,’ he lies, ‘when the festival of the summer sun comes, I’ll visit.' Eris Vanserra cannot flaunt about the wilds of the Night Court without purpose or reason. Even less if the hint of the reason is his desire to see an Illyrian male—but he can set out on inter-court business to strengthen alliances, break down information, and gather intel. Eris Vanserra cannot winnow straight from the quilts of his bed into the hay-strewn floor of Azriel’s stable.

No matter how much he wants to.

His chest pinches, a sharp point digging into the sensitive skin between his ribs when Azriel takes a minute longer to reply. The page remaining horribly empty with their spare words, their delicate dance.

‘Then I will just have to hold onto these words a little longer, besheirt. I wish for you to hear them in person, for they are as sacred to me as you are.’

Something cracks, folds then splinters and out pours a smile like evening sunlight through the painted colors of autumn leaves in the canopy. The tension building in his shoulders leaks down and pools around his feet, an unwanted puddle he completely forgets about. Eris may be an heir, a son of autumn, and child of a loveless, forced marriage; but he is also sacred. Something holy and divine by only the rights of Azriel, and Azriel alone.

Eris has his titles. The stitched corners of his heart taken up piece by piece, but he will forever play the game of keeping himself in between the two if it will let him keep Azriel.

He has his own titles to give him.

~~///~~///~~///~~

(Key for words:)

Tatlım - ‘Sweetheart’

Gach’lilit - ‘Firefly’

Besheirt - ‘Notion of a soul mate, but mostly means Intended in terms of spouse’

aH. Alright okay cool I'm so normal about them. This is a short little thing, and it doesn't follow canon lore lol sorry about that. I really loved the idea of contrasts because for me it's what first drew me to this pairing. At first it seemed like there were too many contrasts for them to even be compatible, and then through softening my perspective of both of these characters and their flaws (and no small amount of delusion in which we merely squint from afar at SJMs portrayal of these characters) I found that maybe these contrasts actually enhance their chemistry. what crazy imagine that.

[urlocaldesertdweller]

Reader X Mafia! Venture pt2

ah yes the wanted and requested pt 2

(PLEASE READ PT 1 BEFORE READING THIS, or don't idc)

https://www.tumblr.com/urlocaldesertdweller/757756682688495616/reader-x-mafia-venture?source=share

srry yall i took the more wholesome route cuz im a wuss. :,)I made Venture a hopless romantic cheesy kind of possessive person.?? help me (I also confirmed them listening to love songs during all of this thinking about u<3)

That one night you encountered the Sloan Cameron, you thought it was the only time you were going to see them, you thought that was that. You really thought you were going to have a normal life after that.

It's only been so many eventless days after that night that you noticed these "gifts" appear on your front door. First was a bouquet of thornless yellow roses. Considering you always doubted your own beauty and looks, you thought it was a mistake until you picked it up to find a pale brown envelope with "To (Y/n)" written in a yellow glitter gel pen.

In this city, you would've had the right mind to not pick anything suspicious with your name on it, the number of horrible things people can plan to lure people out of their protective homes to sweep them away. But considering you almost seem to be known for making bad choices you pick it up and rush into your safe home quickly locking it and shutting your blinds.

You felt like a little detective when you set the flowers and letters on the table under the light looking for anything you can find. A sign, a signal, a message something can bring a thought or an idea to your head but nothing came up until you finally opened the letter. Everything was written in what seemed to be an attempt at cursive and many smudges and cross-outs with more ink can be seen it makes you chuckle. This love letter you see looks like a messy 5th-grade paragraph.

"Well, you finally got the courage to pick up this letter mi amor! If you manage to figure out who sent this, well you got me! But anyway I just wanted to send you this so you wouldn't be too scared when more gifts come your way. I'll keep things simple for your pretty head gorgeous. You caught the eye of a dangerous but sweet person you have already met, everything you do and say makes my heart skip a beat more than any heist I can pull off. I want to give you every rose in the world and make you mine for the rest of my life. You truly catch my eyes more than any other relic or artifact from the past."

You have to admit that whoever wrote this was clearly in some cheesy romantic mood, but being honest the words made your stomach stir with clear interest despite the red flags appearing in your head. But looking further into the letter to find much smaller text, it seem that they completely had given up on the cursive and went back to normal handwriting.

"-P.S. If you know who I am (did I make it too obvious?) Please find me during the night, but you won't find me but I'll certainly find you! ;)"

You feel your hand twitch wanting to slap yourself in the face feeling the second-hand embarrassment radiating off of this goofy letter. You didn't have to think too hard about wondering who could've sent such a letter. You turn to the bouquet, picking it up. You inhale the sweet subtle scent, these would certainly brighten up the place along with its beautiful fragrance.

The realization finally hits you as you fill up your best vase with water. Someone likes you. Not only that but they like you enough to send you roses with a cheesy letter full of effort. Until your heart stops to remember who likes you, you know easily it's Sloan Cameron. But why? What could have possibly caught their interest about you.? Not only were you going to confront Sloan but you were going to question them.

It's night once more, you have mentally prepared yourself for this moment as you pull your jacket on. A normal life they said, a normal life that feels so out of reach now with a gang member having a crush on you. These past few days have certainly been full of mixed feelings, to say the least.

You step to your door, and you hesitate to reach for the knob a million thoughts rush to your mind. One was thinking about Sloan waiting for you and they will be waiting with a weapon in their hand, another says that they'll kidnap you and keep you as a love toy or something weird like that... It's really telling how you were feeling with most of the thoughts ending in a negative and dreadful outcome.

No, you can do this! If you can watch them bury a body, and outrun them, you can certainly face them when they supposedly confess to you about like like you. Yeah, you can do this!

You throw your palm onto the knob, completely ignoring the fact you just drenched it in your own sweat, but you swing the door open and step out with confidence! You were almost full of too much confidence as you nearly left the house with the door wide open, you scramble to lock it as you huff returning to your nightly stroll.

Of course, you always felt like something was watching you even before your encounter with Sloan. You stuff your hands into your pockets, and you keep on glancing all over the streets even taking a look from the rooftops as if Sloan would be there watching you from above like Batman.

It would be some time until you thought of walking towards where you first found Sloan, at the rotting graveyard where you caught them slacking during their work. You huff watching the environment change in minutes until you finally stop at the edge of the dry grass looking upon the tombstones.

You realize that where the fresh hole was now filled up with a pile of dirt with a wooden cross. You figured that this was the grave that Sloan Cameron just finished days ago. Despite Sloan killing numbers of people you can't even imagine, you felt that it was somewhat bittersweet for them to have some sort of respect to give the people proper graves.

You hummed and whistled shuffling around waiting. You almost thought about moving somewhere else until you heard boots echo through the small alley from your side you saw a figure in the shadows which made you jump a little. You seemed to always act innocent and dumb during situations like these.

"Hello.?"

You say loud enough to echo towards the walls of the alley. The figure starts to walk toward you, and the long silence makes you more nervous thinking there's a good chance that this isn't Sloan. Your legs feel the blood rush and you feel like running all of a sudden.

You panic as the figure starts to run towards you, they are too close for you to even try to run. You yelp to see the shadow enter the light. Even though you see Sloan stop right in front of you, you are still scared as you pull your hands up defensively with a yelp.

"Please dont hurt m-!"

"(Y/n) calm down it's just me!"

You hear them giggle which frustrates you with how cheery they can act after almost giving you a heart attack.

"...Sloan! Dont ever scare me like that again! I thought you were some crook wanting to kill me.."

You lightly shove them in the shoulder with a pout. They only keep on chuckling which makes you almost want to break your sternness for a moment.

"Alright alright I won't do it again I promise mi joya!"

They say with a wink which reminds you of why you came out here in the first place. You keep a stern look which seems to get the message towards Sloan and they almost seem to look like a kicked puppy. Besides the butthurt look, they can tell that you want to say something. You take this moment to finally take a peek at their clothing, it seems that they were still wearing the same work outfit but lost the thick jacket allowing you to glance at their well-built arms, the loss of their jacket gives you the possible idea that they were off duty.

"...What is it.? What happened.? Did you not like my gift.?!"

They seem to say everything out in a heartbeat clearly worried about what you are going to say. You only sigh and push a finger towards their lips hushing them before they can assume what's wrong. You tighten your eyes to which theirs widen but they quickly pipe down.

"You think too much. Just let me talk okay!?"

They dont bother with moving away from your placed finger and they nod with a mhm! Again you ask yourself how someone like them got such a dangerous and dark job.

"First of all. The flowers were nice and so I thank you."

You watch them smile a little clearly feeling proud of themselves that you liked at least half of their gift but they are quite down to hear you out once more.

"But! The letter dear god the letter..."

They cough and you watch their faces upturn into a nervous smile as they shuffle uncomfortably tugging on the collar of their tucked button-up.

"I dont know what to think honestly. And I was hoping that tonight could be where we can talk about this...thing you have on me. That's all, don't get all sweaty and scared yet!"

They look like they have been holding their breath for a while you guess suspecting a complete rejection. They exhale and they bend over their bends catching their breath before quickly shooting back up bright as ever.

"...Yeah we can talk! Yep, talking is my...number one thing heh..."

Never mind they still seem tense around you. You only sigh as you shift on your feet wanting to move around instead of staying at this gloomy graveyard.

"You dont have to keep up an act with me, I just want a simple walk and talk with you, set some ground rules know.?"

They perk up and step aside letting you leave the graveyard first with a bow. You can't help but chuckle at their charm with you, you can't deny that it warms your heart a little at the thought. You step out from the rotting wood fences and Sloan follows behind you eventually walking up beside you, you notice that ever since they have been keeping almost a look on you not the creepy kind but the more admiration kind which makes you chuckle.

"So... Was it all too much.? Yknow in the letter.?"

You look at Sloan with a small grin.

"Being honest, yeah if I hadn't met you before I would definitely think that I'd have a stalker."

They feel their cheeks redden up and they look down at the sidewalk stuffing their hands in their pants pockets.

"But whatever is going on, between you and me right now. I'm just going to need some time to think right now okay.? That's all I need, you can send all of the gifts to your heart's content but if you want you and me to know be a thing much more talking and discussions will be in order.!"

They lift their head and look up at you with a small grin, they look at you like a fallen angel for you gifting them a chance. You bump your shoulder into theirs jokingly to lighten the mood to which they find themselves giggling and bumping back.

"Me? Oh yeah! I'm surprised you haven't called the cops on me for finding me during my job! It's a gift alone that you are even talking to me with my kind of reputation! But yeah you can take all the time you need."

The two of you share a comfortable moment of silence seems that both of you are content with how this meeting is going. As you walk further up the street you pass the bar you left that one late night that led the two of you first meeting. You thought that you were going to pass and eventually do a turnaround until you felt Sloan's hands grip on your wrist stopping you right in front of the large entrance.

"Hey, my gang owns this building and bar yknow.? There is a really nice view from the high levels I promise you!"

Before you can even turn to look at them to speak they whip out their best puppy eyes shining straight into yours, they tug on your sleeve hoping that you play along...walking into the same building the gang that your supposed stalker also works for.? Yeah, you are dead before you know it. You only sigh which sends the signal to them and they smile the biggest you've seen them smile and before you know it they pull you towards the entrance ignoring the long line that stretches along the street then cuts around the corner.

You remember waiting in this long line just to get a good drink, you feel the pairs of eyes burn holes into your back as Sloan stops in front of a tall bodyguard who only glances at you and then at Sloan.

"Heya Tuilp! ...Dont worry about them, they are my guest!"

Tulip grunts and nods and Sloan drags you into the bar where the music blasts and the whole mood seems to shift in the main bar. The bar already made you feel out of your element until you had some drinks to relax your nerves.

But Sloan glances at you and giggles then continues to guide you through and past the main Bar to where the overall vibe and aesthetic of the building changes to one of more professionalism. From the high ceiling to the complete sets of marble walls and flooring. The glass elevator further amazes you and you are tuck in with Sloan. Your gaping mouth at everything tells Sloan everything about you during this.

"So I can tell you haven't been in this part of the building before!"

"This place is...certainly gorgeous..."

If the bar alone made you feel the odd one out, this much cleaner rich lobby-looking room made you feel like a wanted target. Sloan pushes one of the highest buttons and before you know it the elevator shoots up faster than you could think, which makes your heart race, the feeling alone of quickly gaining height makes your legs shake...it also didn't help that you had a bit of a fear with heights.

Sloan leans forward noticing your yelp then quick silence, soon watching your shaky legs they know. They can't help themselves so they grab onto your hand and hold it tight. You look at them and only grin and soon enough your mind starts to focus on the warm skin-to-skin contact between your hands instead of the continuing elevator.

Soon enough you hear a ding and the doors open behind you. And you smell the fresh air and feel the cool wind hit you, Sloan still holding on your hand interlocks your fingers into theirs and they lead you out into the warm night. You eventually let go of their hand and you walk towards the railing.

"Pretty nice huh.? I like to come out here from time to time when times get too rough for me..."

They join you by your side on the railing looking at you with a smirk seeing your stare into the sky. Sloan wasn't kidding, although you could easily see the stars back down from the streets. All the way up on the building Sloan's gang owned, you couldn't help but feel closer to the night sky and further away from the chaotic city. You feel yourself leaning on the railing feeling your eyes never cease to pull away from the tinkling and blinking stars.

"This is beyond beautiful..."

The two of you continue to look upon the shiny sky, the moon is bright enough to place a light on the two of you. Your eyes finally break away to look around on the surrounding floor. You quickly realize now that this was the sky roof and a part of the roof garden. Now you know how Sloan got the roses for you, you can't help but think that this was slightly planned by Sloan and you eye them up with a smirk before nodding towards the large garden. Surprisingly everything looks happy and thriving for living in a city like this.

"Did you plan on taking me up here to the garden as well, ya charmer..."

"Well, you could say that I did have some sort of plan to show you one of the prettiest places I know! I'd just thought it could be nice to share it with someone who isn't from the gang yknow.?"

You walk further into the garden, and you hear Sloan's boots thump against the floor which makes your heart beat just a little faster, you never thought that you could have such a fun time with a gang member on a rooftop. You turn all around to look at the variations of plants ranging from vegetables, and fruits, to flowers.

"Oh? Would you say that all of this gang stuff weighs down on you from time to time.?"

They stay quiet and you turn to look at them with a look of concern.

"..."

"I'll take that as a yes then..."

You'd figure on changing the subject with taking their hand in yours and taking them towards the thorny rose bushes. A wave of the scent reaches you sense and you hum hopping to talk about roses instead of prodding with personal business with Sloan. They already seem to set their mind on the flowers, they take in a white rose in their hand cupping it, and bring it close to their nose. They slowly inhale and exhale seeming much more happier now which makes you relieved.

"Good to know where the roses came from then.!"

You chuckle as you glance at the bright moon finally noticing how bright it is with being able to see your...at this point, you'd forget with names and call them your date considering how intimate this is looking. They chuckle finally pulling away from the roses to look at you with the sweetest smile, maybe it was your unnecessary jacket for tonight but you felt a little warmer with their smile towards you.

"Yeah, I always looked for the best for you!"

The two of you share a laugh comfortably together once more until you hear a click... This makes the both of you widen and awake, but it seems that Sloan looks more nervous than you, which makes your heart race.

"Um, Sloan what was-!"

They grab onto your hand running which makes you yelp, you hear one more click then you realize what it was. Timed sprinklers, water shoots out all over the place. At that moment it almost felt like the sprinklers were getting more water on you and Sloan than the actual plants...

You both scream as you feel your clothes get soaked with water giving the extremely uncomfortable feeling of the clothes sticking to your skin. You walk too far into the rather large garden, and you watch Sloan just stop in the middle still getting hit with water they turn towards you their hair no longer fluffy and messy. You both look into each other's eyes feeling a message being sent through eye contact.

You can't bear your awful jacket anymore and you finally shuck it off feeling completely relieved and feeling 10 pounds lighter. Honestly the water eventually just felt like a nice outdoor shower...with your date.

"..."

"..."

You share a moment of silence before breaking out into a fit cheering and jumping. You had to admit the city would have its heatwaves even during the night somehow so this felt heavenly. It takes you a moment to realize that Sloan wrapped their arms around your waist and your jumps match in rhythm. Honestly, you didn't care what they did to you because, in your equally messed up head, you felt yourself catching feelings for the Mole.

"Whoo! This is amazing!!!"

"...I LOVE LIFE!!!!!!"

Eventually, the sprinklers stop leaving the two of you soaked, you stop jumping and you have nothing else to do but look at each other. Maybe it was the soaked feeling kicking in. Maybe it was Sloan holding you by the waist. But you felt yourself leaning in forward...

Honestly, when you closed your eyes you didn't know what to expect but you felt something soft against your lips. You open your eyes to see that Sloan is holding a freshly plucked rose between your lips and theirs. You felt a little embarrassed not only with how Sloan juked you but also realizing how much you fell for this person. Nevertheless, you pull away to watch them grow a smirk and they chuckle. You playfully beat against their shoulder which only makes them laugh harder to the point they start to wheeze.

They drop you on the ground as they hold their chest and whip a tear away.

"Oh my! I'm sorry I couldn't help it I'm sorry!"

You quickly find a way to get back at them by taking advantage of them being busy with laughing. You cup their cheek which stops them completely and you lean in to peck their wet cheek with your lips. They go from a laughing mess to a flushed stuttering mess, they bring their hands to their face trying hard to cover it.

"I wasn't ready... How dare you surprise me! Mind you I loved it but...yknow.!"

You only grab on their arm now you are the one dragging them away out of the gardens to find some method to dry each other off...

i did it :,) im rlly hoping yall like it even if I went the more cliche cringy route, maybe soon I can write a different more dark route if you want!

[zhalfirin-binds]

Details of my bind of A princess of Mars

Since I kept making small mistakes. Starting with the wrong printing format, then forgetting to adjust the sewing so I could trim (I did not plan for margins quite as large as they are... ). The backing turned a bit wonky too. So I decided I'd try some new things on this book.

I wanted to use the interference colours I have with a different base coat. They come out best with a black or dark ground colouring. Before I used oak gall ink, because that was what I had (and I love to watch the magic happen when it turns from translucent blue to black), but iron, in whatever form, is the last thing you want in a book because it will rust and damage the paper over time.

So I did some testing with a few different inks to check for effect and smudging and eventually switched to a china ink.

The one I got has a really nice black with a slight gloss to it. That should have tipped me off, but I kept going and just painted the edge with the interference colour acrylic ink just to watch how it gathered in the lowest part (I did the front edge with the curve first) and took forever to dry. Trying to help that with a hair dryer only needed me up with a pattern of tiny ripples. When I opened the book I could see the paint had been too thick in some parts and flaked off a bit. I diluted and kept painting, with way better results, eventually, but it's still not completely even on the front edge (the picture here is the 3. or 4. result... I was just tired to keep going at that point). The top and bottom edge look fine though.

Covering the case was a bit of an adventure too for a few reasons. I wanted to avoid and gaps... but first I failed to accurately estimate the stretch of my different papers then I forgot to consider the overlap and figuring out which part should overlap which was a challenge. I went of the green layer that wraps all around the case as top layer so it could cover all pointy edge I had not covered yet. The pointy bits are always the most likely to take damage or get loose. So I had that taken care off. I still have a small spot on the backside that's not the layer it's supposed to be, but it blends in well enough with the other colours.

Another thing that I did not think of was, when I cut the onlays was how overlapping would impact the shape. the yellow was supposed to be a nice slanting hill in the foreground... well, I would have had to keep that in mind for the overlapping toplayer.

I also thought about titling the cover and even got as far as test titling with copper, gold, creme, red and brown (the line between creme and brown, that's red, I know it's turned invisible, bu it is there). None of the results made me overly happy though so I skipped it.

Last thing, but I'm not sure whether it's a mark of the construction or the hinge is too small, the backing not sufficient, is the opening angle of the covers. It opens alright, but when I push the cover a bit down it drags the text block along and it looks like there's too much tension on it to me. I'll have to see for my next binds if I can optimise that.

I liked the spread out design enough to make it a picture for my wall ^^

[zvdvdlvr]

— Are You Gonna Kiss Me, or What?

🎵 synopsis. Mike’s normal, utterly boring day is pleasantly interrupted by a diabetic whirlwind.

🎵 warnings. Finger pricking. Foul language.

🎵 author’s note. Shoutout to @paxamillius for writing this with me and for helping me write a realistic diabetic character.

🎵 tracklist. <Track One.> <Track Two.> <Track Three.>

—— 👾

mike shook his head, re-reading the sequence of numbers written in small, practised handwriting. a small smile pulled at his lips. despite having already memorized the number and how to spell your name, he kept glancing down at the slip of paper and running his thumb over the now-smudging pen ink.

with abby already asleep, mike debates if he should call or not. he doesn’t want to wake abby, but he really wants nothing more than to keep talking with the woman that (quite literally) fell into his arms.

mike exhaled. as long as he was quiet he supposed he could stay up and talk to her- y/n. y/n l/n.

slowly mike dialed her phone number; already imagining her voice from the other line.

the line didn’t ring twice before she picked up. “hello?” she answered, her voice having that smile that mike swears made the sun shine a little brighter.

“uh, hi. this- this is y/n, right? it’s-“ mike started, tripping over his words.

“mike! mike schmidt from the mall, yeah?”

another smile: wider this time though. mike beamed. “yeah, that’s me. mike from the mall.”

——👾; 6 hours earlier

the world was spinning, blurring. y/n cursed herself once again for her forgetfulness- she had a tendency to completely ignore her health until something like this happens.

y/n’s blood sugar was extremely low. she knew she needed something fast acting: juice, fruit snacks, soda… a slushie even. but with the way y/n could function, ordering something for herself would be out of the question.

maybe walking blindly into someone will help, was y/n’s rationale. so she carefully walked the best she could to someone, occasionally slamming into a bench or counter.

y/n’s head was spinning. she cursed her pancreas for failing to do it’s one and only job.

"oh dear lord," y/n mumbled. her legs struggled to keep her upright, let alone get her anywhere. her vision was fuzzy and the edges faded in and out, black dots swimming in her line of sight. y/n cursed herself- yet again- for being as careless as she was.

getting a few weird stares and several people backing away from y/n, someone finally approached her.

"are you drunk?" a blob- man?- asked . "ma'am, consumption of alcohol and being under the influence is not permitted inside of the mall, so i'm going to have to-"

"nononono, ‘m notdrunk…" y/n's words were sloppy and rushed. Hoping and praying he believed her, she wobbled a little bit on her feet.

Her body was trembling from the adrenaline and her legs desperately threatened to come out from underneath her. "im… diabetic," she paused, swallowing. "imhaving a hypoglycemia episode." sweat trickled down the back of her neck, making her wince at the feeling. "i need… i need food, like, now, beforeipassout, andgo intoa coma" y/n took a deep breath.

the man looked around. y/n was getting weaker by the second. her legs still felt like toothpicks and jello, with nothing left to support her. "i need… i need to sit…” y/n tried to stay on her feet, but her legs went slack and she was suddenly falling.

An arm wrapped around her waist. “No,” he mumbled quietly. “You gotta show me what to get you.” The man asked. He hoisted y/n in the air, shifting her weight and carrying her bridal style to the food court. “Alright… we got… pretzels, pizza, slushies, popcor-“

"slushies." y/n answered, a barely audible sound.

he nodded.

the man cut in front of the small line at a vendor and carefully set her in a chair. "i need two red slushies, the biggest size you have. please." he pulls out his wallet and slams a few crumpled dollar bills on the counter.

the worker stared at him for a second. "mike, you work here but you have to go to the back of the li-" the woman started.

"I’m sorry, Wendy but it's a medical emergency, she's diabetic and is really close to going into a coma, so im gonna need you to hurry,” mike rushed out, sneaking a glance back at y/n. She was pale and very clammy. It was obvious that she’d pass out soon.

Wendy followed Mike’s gaze and swallowed nervously. Then she turned on her heels and got to work.

y/n had her head in her arms, resting it on the table. she felt like shit. I wish i knew his name, she thought to herself. heat flashed through her body and her hands shook furiously, she felt like she had just run a marathon but hadn't moved an inch. she tried to distract herself from how horrible she felt, what had she done to get this low? Ah that's right. she had overcorrected for a stubborn high, then guess the amount of insulin for a giant drink, which she then proceeded to spill. Shit! she hadn't eaten anything to make up for the insulin she had given.

the man came back with two huge red slushies and says: “please drink this." he sets one down in front of her, and y/n pulls it towards herself and takes a sip.

mike- focused on making sure that the woman was alright- finally registered the whispers and snickers of passerby.

“Come with me," he murmurs. Mike gently grasps her again, handing her the second slushie. "Hold on to those for me, please.” Mike carries her into a small, office-looking room. He carefully sets y/n down against a wall, and he sinks down the wall beside her. Mike holds his hand out for his slushie and waits until y/n hands it to him.

"Uh… wait, i think that's the one i drank out of." She took the drink out of his hands and placed the other one in it. "No, actually this is the one i didn't drink out of. Here switch me again."

"Please just drink the slushie," he sighed.

After about 10 minuets y/n’s blood sugar started to come back up. it was hovering in the 40-50 range which was better than what it had been but still way too low for y/n to drive home. “Hey can you check something for me?" she asked, her vision still a little swirly and her hands still shaking.

Now y/n was able to read Mike’s nametag- which thankfully had a large font. “Hi Mike,” she added with a smile.

Mike smiled back at her, eyes softening slightly at her smile- it lit up her face. “What do you need me to do? Oh and, uh, what’s your name?”

"My name is y/n, but I need you to check something on my insulin pump, my vision is still a little...weird." She motioned towards her eyes. Unable to see small things with her current impaired eyesight, it would be quite a struggle to do it herself. She pulled out the small device. Turning it on she opened it up and turned the screen towards him. "That really little number down at the bottom."

Mike takes the device and squints at the tiny numbers. "It says... 10.7 u. Is that good or bad?" he blinks.

"Oh my god,” y/n groaned. “The one time i decide to pre-bolus, this happens. 10.7 units of unnecessary insulin. Sorry for interrupting and everything. I really should've been better about it." y/n shook her head.

"Hey as long as you're okay then it's totally fine. We can spend as long as you need to in here. I don't really have anywhere i need to be and this is a lot more eventful than what I normally do anyway… I’m not really complaining." Mike glances at his watch.

After a while of waiting and periodic finger pokes y/n's blood sugar returned to a safe enough number to drive home. They had sat talking to each other the entire time. y/n learned about Abby and about Garrett, and how his mom died and dad left.

"Well, I should get going. Thank you so much for everything, Mike." y/n smiles and smiles at him. A smile that just… lights up her face. Her eyes crinkle and a dimple appeared on her right cheek. Mike swears he almost swoons- he’s never had a (pretty) girl look at him like that.

Before she gets up, y/n tilts Mike’s head towards her and she places a delicate kiss on his cheek.

Mike swallows. He knows he’s probably overthinking it, just a simple thank you he reasons. So why did y/n’s eyes dart to his lips before getting up and heading for the door?

y/n has her stuff packed up before Mike realizes it. He watches her pick up her empty cup and toss it into the trash can. But before she leaves-

"Can I- uh," Mike stops y/n, voice breathless. "Is there any chance i can get your phone number? Just, uhm, in case you....y-know... need something again."

So Mike watches y/n write down her name and telephone number on a piece of paper. He watches the way a flush appeared on the apples of her cheeks. Mike watches her offer the paper to him and delights in the way she smiles again. But this time her smile is more bashful, more shy. Mike thinks it’s adorable.

“Thank you,” Mike murmurs, taking the paper. Her fingers brushed his and the flush darkens.

“I should be thanking you, Mike,” y/n says.

Mike can’t think of what to say next. He just stands there, falling further and further into y/n’s eyes. Slowly, cautiously, Mike reaches a hand out to y/n’s waist. She closes the space between them, letting herself be pulled into Mike’s arms.

Her hands wrap around Mike’s back in an embrace, but still looking at him, waiting for his next move.

“Mike?”

“Hm?”

“Are you gonna kiss me, or what?”

Mike leans down and presses his lips to y/n’s, tasting the flavor of the slushie on her lips. He feels y/n sigh against his lips, like she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

All too soon, y/n pulled away. “You should get back to work,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” Mike whisperes back.

“Call me, Mike.”

“I will,” he murmurs, lips still tender from their kiss.

——👾; present time

“I’m free this weekend- if, y’know, you want to go get dinner or something. Abby can come too if you want,” y/n says over the phone.

In all honesty, Mike’s surprised y/n remembers Abby, even though they only talked about six hours ago. “Sure! Where do you-“ Mike swallows, “where do you want to go?” He doesn’t want to go anywhere too expensive even though he wish he could. He just couldn’t afford that.

“I’m okay with anything, homestly. Abby can pick if she comes.”

Mike smiles. “I’ll talk to her about it.” He knows Abby would say yes.

The phone crackles as the two fall into momentary silence.

“I’m glad you called,” y/n admits.

”I’m glad I called, too,” Mike replies.

He doesn’t remember the last time he’d felt this happy. In fact, Mike doesn’t think he’s ever been this happy. Ever. So as he sat there, talking to y/n, Mike told himself that she was good. Good for him, for Abby. This had to be the start of something better; a change in his life, perhaps.

Even later, when Mike was getting ready to sleep, he fell asleep thinking of her.

[belovedstill]

svsss 10th anniversary snippets ◀ [ 2/7 ] ▶ fan art @ ao3 | bingqiu | post-canon, married, sqq paints himself some merch

If there was one thing the original goods could do well, it was painting.

He was, of course, also well-versed in subterfuge, angry hatred, and attracting 'scheming bastard!' flags left and right. And in making the Sect Leader look like a kicked dog. And in raising everybody's blood pressure. And in avoiding any shred of human kindness. And in—

Anyway. He was good in many things that currently don't serve Shen Qingqiu well, but at least his muscles remembering the movements and amount of pressure to put on a paintbrush for quality paintwork is quite neat!

In his past life, Shen Yuan couldn't draw for shit. His only genuine attempt at an illustration for his then-5-year-old sister's favourite fairy tale was met with frightened sobbing and countless nights spent sharing his bed with her whenever she woke up from yet another nightmare induced by his terrible scribbles. (In his defense, the monster terrorising the town was the coolest thing in that story.)

Having his disciples ohh and ahh at the simple scrolls he paints is quite the difference from terrified tears. If you ask him, he quite enjoys it! The best thing about being able to draw well, though, is getting to finally draw his own fanart—

"What's Shizun painting?"

—away from where anybody can see!

He very gracefully slams his hand over the scroll, completely intentionally smudging the dash of diluted red ink he's just applied to the smiling lips of the pained Luo Binghe as his husband looks over his shoulder. He hasn't even heard him come in!

"Is that...?"

"No," Shen Qingqiu says immediately and for a good measure flips the page over. The small bowl with red ink topples over and spills.

Binghe's breath hitches next to his ear.

Despite being the Peak Lord of the Qing Jing Peak, or maybe exactly because of it, Shen Qingqiu has always been aware that scroll paper is a finite resource and shouldn't be wasted. That's why when he draws in private he uses up every blank spot. The other side of the painting is filled with countless sketches of Luo Binghe in various poses and states of undress. Sleeping. Cooking. Fighting. Commanding. With a laugh on his lips, or tears in his eyes, or suggestive tension rising in the arch of his eyebrows.

"Shizun..."

Shen Qingqiu slowly reaches for his fan, unfolds it, and presses his entire face against it.

Binghe lays his gentle hands on Shen Qingqiu's tense shoulders and presses his forehead against his temple.

"Is this how Husband sees me?"

Any answer would be damning! No, this husband does not see Luo Binghe, the man above all men, as a mess of rough, imperfect, rushed lines! Yes, he does look close enough to commit every minor detail to memory! Anybody would!

For some reason, that final thought settles heavily in his stomach. He turns his head slightly, so his forehead rests against Binghe's.

"Mn."

"Does he, really?" There's a teasing edge in Luo Binghe's voice and Shen Qingqiu knows, even with his eyes closed, that the look on his face must be truly ungodly. "Husband should look whenever he likes."

"...Mn."

"He should open his eyes and look now, too."

Not a chance! Shen Qingqiu does the only thing that ever truly distracts the tempting husband of his: he leans in and steals his lips in a kiss, and holds them captive until they yield in sweet surprised surrender.

The scroll paper gets torn, the fan forgotten aside, and both of them end up with red-ink fingerprints all over their skin.