#FUCK THIS DRAWING! IT BEAT ME! I GIVE UP! I CONCEDE!

[seaworthee]

tall child

[sluttyhollow]

Who you think you talking to?

Sanemi x Black GN! Reader

Warnings: smut, switch(?) sanemi & reader, degredation (both give and receive), canon levels of violence, mentions of blood, swearing, fighting, aggressive sex, oral sex, reader wears chest bindings and has vagina but I think I managed to not use any vagina specific terms except for “wet” so this might be safe for more than nb and fem folk, fluffy ending, no condoms, let me know if I missed anything

“Concede” you force out your throat. Your wooden blade pressed up against his throat as His hand wrapped tight around your airway trying to force you to do the same.

“Fuck you” he spits back, kicking knee between the two of you and pushing up forcing you to flip over the top of his head, slamming you flat on your back before you had a chance to regain your footing. Knees on either side of your body with your wooden blade pressed securely to the underside of your neck “you give up yet” gravely voice filling your ears

“don’t be stupid Shinazugawa-Sensei,” the sarcasm dripping like acid from your tongue, a silly smile plastered across your face.

“As if I’d give you the satisfaction of a tap out”

It had been about six months since you and the wind hashira started training together. Oyakata-Sama requested that you train with each other after he heard how quickly your skills were developing. You had only been a corps member for six months, joining after coming to Japan from abroad. You had met the man after being found wandering close to his estate, one that should have been invisible to many peoples' senses except for the hashira. After speaking with him and being regarded with nothing but love and reverence in his words, you accepted his offer to join the corps. That’s how you ended up living in the butterfly estate with the insect hashira you had grown to adore and the rest of the girls that lived there.

When you first met the hell-spawned demon slayer himself, you were excited to learn from someone so strong. However, It didn’t last long; the second he opened his mouth to speak that you looked weak, you’d fixed him with the nastiest glare you could find and told him to fuck himself. Being the kind and patient man that he is, Oyakata-Sama told you two to behave and find peace for the greater. Fixing you both with a gentle smile and requesting that you all train and battle on missions together. Though he has not witnessed the two of you in combat, he could feel the energies the two of you radiated when nearby. The two of you, too volatile in your hatred for one another, fought In battles as if trying to outdo each other, not noticing how flawlessly your techniques aligned. Movements flowed together like well-choreographed routines. The fluid teamwork and subsequent positive emotions towards each other “disappear " with your opponent's defeat.

You and Sanemi understood early on that speaking to each other wasn’t worthwhile. Both of you are fixed with equally explosive personalities. Just the sound of the voice of the other would have each of you ready to draw your blades on each other. Though you couldn’t stand his nasty personality, you’d be lying to yourself if you said he wasn’t attractive. And the fact that he parades himself around half-naked like a common whore you’d be silly to have ignored his muscular frame, adorned with scars that matched his persona. Yeah, he was attractive when his fucking mouth was shut, which brought you back to your current situation.

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“I have your sword at your fucking throat, and you still think you can beat me in a fight. You’re still as naïve as you’ve been since we started. Still as fucking useless as ever,” the man in front of you never knew when to shut his fucking mouth. Always took it a step too far to grind at your nerves, always trying to set you off. You’d had enough of his constant bullshit and trying to make you feel inferior to him. Knocking the wooden thing out of the way and pulling your fist back, you aimed a quick jab at his balls. Dropping to his knee, catching himself directly above you, you leaned your head back, cracking your skull against his. The force of the impact sent you both falling back toward the ground, him landing on top of you. After a second of catching your breath, you groaned out, “get off me, you big fucker” Letting out a grunt of pain, Sanemi rolled off and onto the grass next to you.

“You’re a fucking bitch you know that” he finally let fall from his mouth after a few minutes passed

“and you’re a narcissist who thinks he’s better than everybody, you never know when to shut the fuck up. I’m fucking better than you. Think cause you threw a tantrum and tossed me around I’d let you win fuck you”

Giving yourself a few more seconds for your vision to stabilize, you rocked your body back into a seated position and dropped your head into your hands on your lap. Seeing as Sanemi’s mouth had been quiet for more than a few minutes, and you had hit a solid blow to his head, you turned slightly to peek over your shoulder to ensure he wasn’t dead. Laying flat on his back with his left arm draped over his flushed face and one knee bent, you did a once-over scan of his person. Noting the new bruises forming across his abdomen, a smile forming as they served as friendly reminders that you had, in fact, inflicted damage on his body whether he acknowledged it or not. Continuing your assessment down to where his now dirty pants hung against his legs, falling in just the perfect way from the muscles in his legs. Apparently, ALL the muscles in his lower half, to be exact, since there was an extra one pressed firmly against the lower half of his stomach.

“You're fucking disgusting, Shinazugawa,” a smirk making its way on your face “fucking sick actually, was it getting punched in the balls or me talking about you like the worthless little man you are that got your dick hard” finally dragging his arm to the ground to drag his body all the way up your eyes were met with blown pupils and his signature feral smirk on his face. Dried blood on his head made its way into the snowy hair peaks. Surely you had a matching patch on yours. He looked like a wild animal, an attractive one, albeit

“I bet if I put my hand in those pants of yours, you’d be wet enough to keep me drunk for days. That smart ass mouth of yours is a cover; you want me to fuck you always have” by the time he finished his speech, he was in front of you, shoving your body back against the ground, slotting himself in between your legs and roughly rolling his lower half against yours as he leaned forward and bit the muscle between your neck and shoulder causing you to meet his hips in their rotation. “Lucky for you, I want you too” with that, his mouth met yours in a kiss just as rough as the both of you, hesitating just a second before meeting him back equally as desperate for his attention against your lips. Inevitability might be the word to use here; you two were bound to end up like this, but beating each other to bruises beforehand was on brand for your relationship.

Reaching his hand behind your head gripping the roots of your twisted up hair and pulling back so he could see your face. Purple darkened to its deepest shade stared back at you with no less fire than during training but something else was written within them now. something so intense that it sent heat through your body and had you unconsciously shifting back to escape it.

“scared” a tilt of his stupid mouth upwards

“Finally, realize your place with me,” he was goading you into a response, one he wasn’t going to get the luxury of experiencing right now. Without breaking contact with his eyes, your hands quickly pulled his pants to his knees before breaking his hold to drop to your knees and throat his entire length in one go. The satisfaction you received from watching his large frame cave in over you as his knees buckled from the rapid sensation of being shoved in your mouth gave. Making him hit the back of your throat once, twice, before pulling back off of him and running your tongue along the underside of his shaft and finally regaining the eye contact you two were making. The man was beautiful, flushed red face, eyes half hooded, muscles through his chest, and stomach flexing beneath your hand. The sights before you made you wonder why you’d never given in to your desires. Now, with him shoved into the depths of your throat, the only sounds coming from his mouth were grunts and poorly hidden moans. Pulling yourself away from him with an unconcealed smirk across your face, you couldn’t help the following words that slipped out

“you know.. you look so fucking good when the only noises you make are the ones I’m forcing from your mouth, sooo much better than that god awful voice of yours” not bothering to wait for a response you began inching back towards his waiting length, before you could connect however, two calloused hands grabbed your head and forced himsef all the way in your mouth and began roughly fucking your face the way he wanted to.

“And you look good with my dick shoved down your throat” a few more rough thrust to your mouth before he pulled himself out, tucking himself back into his pants and brought your body back up to its full height. Grabbing either side of your face and bringing you in for another meeting of your lips together. This one far softer than it should have been. Grabbing your hand and he began dragging you towards the doors to his home that you two had been training behind and into his room.

His estate wasn’t huge, considering it was just him living there, but there was more than enough space for both of you on his futon in the middle of the room. Dropping your hand, he finally turned to face you, looking very bit the predator that he was.

“I let you have your fun, strip and get on fours now”

Not willing to be so obedient to his request, you went to open your mouth in protest before five calloused fingers wrapped themselves around your throat forcing you to pay attention to him

“quickly and quietly, forgot about that part”

You were going to make another retort but thought better of it before moving to peel your bindings off and then quickly discard the standard corps pants you’d been wearing. Remembering your earlier words about not giving him the satisfaction of tapping out a dry laugh falling from your mouth at how you basically ended up doing it anyways. Moving to make your way towards the soft fabrics laid out across the floor, you began dropping to your knees, albeit not fast enough for Sanemi, as you felt the after-effects of the smack he landed on your bare ass before you could even register what happened. Falling unceremoniously against the bed, you propped yourself on your hands and turned to fix him with a nasty glare before the sight of his naked body flittered into view. Stiff, red, and standing at perfect attention between his hips was his waiting length. Though it had just been in your mouth not even 10 minutes ago, you still couldn’t help but marvel at how perfect it was. In the midst of your being lost in your thoughts, Sanemi had planted himself behind you and licked a fat strip through the center of your legs before sloppily sucking and licking his way through them. With a wet pop, he pulled himself away, just barely, before opening his mouth to mumble.

“Like I said, drunk. for. days” And then latched himself back on to you. The coil deep in your gut had already been forming before he pulled away, but his renewed vigor and intensity increased since his return pushed you over the edge, a sobbed moan launching itself out your lungs, breathe getting caught in your throat. The rest of your body shuddering behind it. Satisfied with your response, he pulled himself up on his knees to meet his pelvis against the roundness of your ass. Rubbing through the wetness, collecting it against his shaft before slowly beginning his slow entry inside you. Two moans, one breathy and broken and the other deep and uncontrolled, filtered through the air as the rhythm of colliding hips intertwined with them. It wasn’t long before he draped himself over your back, whispering little mumbles of nothing in your ear until you both peaked soon thereafter.

Rolling you both to the side before falling flat on the futon, still stuffed inside you. Fingers trailing the sides of your body before wrapping around your middle to pull you back flush against him.

“you’re not useless” gruff voice filling the air breaking the silence “nothing of mine is useless or weak” the implications behind his words not lost on you but instead of responding with words, you slowly rocked your hips against his, eyes finally wandering over your shoulder before smirking at him, your voice filling the air sounding far more hoarse than it had before

“You know… a little praise might’ve got you this treatment earlier Sanemi” followed by slow giggles as you felt him grow back to full mast within you. Chin placed on your shoulder beginning to meet you thrust for thrust he whispered

“let’s see where it gets me now then yeah…” leading into Your bodies introducing themselves to each other over and over throughout the night.

Bonus

You both kneeled heads bowed in respect to your master waiting for his next instructions. After being formally dismissed with your next mission assignment you two began to rise from your positions only to hear his soft voice

“My children a moment…” pausing your movements and looking towards the man whose amusement was now scarcely hidden behind his calm smile and unseeing eyes

“Yes, Oyakata-Sama”

“I sense you two have found a way to put your aggression towards each other to better usage, I hope it continues to fair well for you both”

Heat rising through your body, as you peaked to look at your partner. The physical representation of what you were feeling appear across his face and tips of his ears as you both quickly bowed your respects to master before making a quick exit from his grounds. His gentle laughter along side that of Amane-Samas could be heard in the background.

[jaws-and-canines]

"Do you think you conducted yourself in an appropriate manner?"

"No, sir, I do not."

"How fucking drunk were you?"

At the 7th annual Albion First conference, Haveter took to the stage drunk, in full dress uniform, and gave a speech generally regarded as one of his best, advocating for violence from European soldiers to be met with greater punishment.

However, not everyone was happy to hear of this, much less his commanding officer, General Alistair Davies. Following the speech, Haskell was detained by the Military Police, and Davies had him confined until he sobered up, to prevent him from disgracing himself further. Haskell was charged with Conduct Unbecoming for giving the speech without permission and whilst drunk and in uniform, which he conceded to and received minimal punishment.

Later, this Conduct Unbecoming charge would be used by the Court Martial as basis to discharge him when he faced a second count of the same for his conduct on the night of Jacob Kay’s murder.

Don't you see what they did to me? What they will do to you? What they will do to your wives? Your children? I can defend myself, I can stand up for myself. Imagine what they will do to the defenseless among us.

There is no honour amongst these people. And yet we allow them to take. I say no more. I say no more, enough- one son, one daughter coming home in a wooden box should have been enough and yet my colleagues in the Council here- they lack the spine to say no. They lack the spine to draw the line which the European filth are drenching with the blood of our children, our parents and our friends.

And yet we are told to hold back, we are told we must treat the war criminals with better regard than they treat us- so they can live out their natural lives on the taxpayer pound, in comfort better than the most vulnerable among us often do. Enough, I say, of this madness. Our people come first. You come first. And I will stand for that until I die- the prospect of a comfortable life behind bars does not deter these utter degenerates.

This is not enough.

I would beat their presidents to death on the steps of their capitol buildings with my own two hands if it meant no more death. I would cripple their men, sterilise their women, raise their children as our own- if it meant they would inflict no more death upon us. Like must pay like. But there is no use in expounding such things, however truthful, if I do nothing.

So today I will do something. The Council will not sit in session again until they table a motion to stop this madness. Because I say we put our people first, as we should. I say that simply calling these atrocities awful is not and has never been enough.

I say deeds, not words. I say- no more.

- CGen. Haskell Haveter, at the 7th annual Albion First conference

[reidhalstead]

Eyes roll into his skull, he's been called worse things than a nerd or a dork — but it doesn't sound like an insult when Anika says it. It doesn't bury beneath the skin and bother him like it has every ability to. She's capable of it, he knows that. When she balances a cup on the overflowing sinkside, like she's seeing how high she might build the leaning tower of Pisa, in the apartment. They exchange words they don't mean and it grinds on him, until Reid takes out the trash, because he needs the air.

Fuck it, he's a nerd. If that's how she perceives him, then he's grateful. There's every drunken right for her to say something cruel as often drunks do; dull the feelings and the considerations. It's what Reid's so afraid of, with every long sip of whiskey. That she might shatter this illusion with the sting of reminding him exactly what he is, laughing and smiling in the corridors like there's nothing wrong with this scene.

And when he's so close, the remnants of Anika's scent tickle his noise; it's funny because he's sure that's his aftershave. It's harder for him to forget that; all the borrowed parts of each other's lives. If Reid's on the honest train, in his mind, he doesn't care too much for the opinions of his neighbours either. But, he doesn't need a Molotov cocktail launched at his door. (That happened once to apt 24)

"Don't go banging on doors," Rational thinking says that it's not a good idea, as he follows behind her on the stairwell. He doesn't want to have to be fast, as she runs — staggering to the top of the stairs ahead of him. She's necking the bottle, the same way he had been. Burning. Burning. Because they both might combust if their fires aren't both drowned and fuelled simultaneously. Reid doesn't know what thing she's laughing at now, but he finds himself quietly chuckling to himself at the sound of it.

Their corridor is a mirror of the ground floor, the same shoddy carpets and similarly painted doors. They've done this walk countless times, coming home from work — to takeout in hand and taking the trash out. When the downstairs neighbour's kid gets lost again, Halstead's urging him back to the right apartment. The know the path like the back of their hands, as well as the ink that stains their skins. The corridor doesn't usually spin, though. He's not usually so allowing liquor to snatch all his inhibitions.

He's caught up to Anika, reaching for her arm before she does start knocking on random doors and they're in corridor altercations (again). He's about to answer her, thumb jerking in the other direction and tell her she's going the wrong way. But, she's parked herself on the floor, before Reid can even think to drag her in the right direction.

Sighing, it doesn't take much for him to concede. Slumping down next to her, thieving the bottle back from between her hands. His back rests against the wall and Reid peers up to the flickering corridor light above their heads, breathing another sigh of disbelief. "You picked the epilepsy light?" Of all the spots to collapse, of course, it would be right below the broken light. Reid's eyes squint in and out of focus for the evident adjustment. He jabs the bottle into her arm, playful as he points out, matter of fact: "I'm not carrying you in, by the way." She got this far, he believes she's capable of a little bit further. (But of course, he'd carry her inside, if he needed to) Reid has the habit of allowing himself to forget who they are — the both of them: "I've never heard you laugh so much." Cringily said off a liquor-slick tongue, so he adds: "Only when you're giving me shit for the ram," a beat, for his own unadulterated joke: "—which I know about, by the way." That she hates it "It's not like I live with a tattooist or anything, who could draw me some cool moth or whatever."

There was very little he could do, that could surprise her. Reid was like a book, one of those black and white soft ones, for newborns. No text — just pictures easy enough to register by a baby, or a very stupid child. So she averted her eyes, let them linger on anything sobering (not him) and took that as a match point. At least until he flew that tennis ball back, and it hit her right in between the eyes. Did he really fucking say that? Somehow having this come out of his mouth made her feel nauseaus, made her wrinckle her nose in slight disgust. Anika stared at him, like he'd said the dumbest thing he could think of. Like he'd grown a second head on his shoulders and it was saying the most ridiculous things. "Fuck, you're a nerd." she laughed, a little too loud, but he deserved all of it. Like she was going to get caught with any member of his family.

She moved fast, always a few steps ahead of him, unafraid of the obsticles laying around like lone scooters and bags of trash and someone's old sneekers. The scariest thing might have been that lingering touch of a hand on her back, like a safety net she could lean into, if needed. Not that she would, even if the ground split open before her and forced her feet back. But it felt as nice, as it was frightning.

And behind her, he was apologising and probably offering drunken half-smiles, she couldn't see but she assumed it was the type of smile that had him named the nicer one, of the two residing at apartment 02, by their upstairs neighbours. She remembered opening the door, after a series of persistant, very annoying knocks, and being met with a woman and a question: Where's the nice one?

She never cared for people. It was probably why people never cared for her either. Anika turned slightly to the side, and whispered. "Well, I don't care what some people do." as she was sure, he already knew, and didn't need anymore reminders. "I can go bang on the door of those assholes upsta— "

His arm snaked around her waist, and pulled her back before she could fall face flat into the stairs. Anika was suddenly too aware of the way his scent wafled up and cradled her face like hands. She blinked once, twice like she had gone mute. Oh God. She stumbled backwards so goddamn quick, it almost mimmicked the speed with which he caught her. "That was very, uh — fast." and then a quiet, barely audible "thanks" and a hand snatching up the bottle from him. She wished he'd let her crack her fucking head open. The image of that causin a series of laughs to spill past her lips, as she climbed the stairs to their apartment. The bottle was quickly open and already pouring into her mouth, like she was a parched man in the middle of the desert. "Eenie, meenie — " she began, fingers tracing over each of the doors.

"Hey — which one was ours?" a beat. "Actually, I don't care." then she sat down on the floor, with her back to the wall.

[yourheartonfire]

A continuation of this poor rebel x royal pair from here, though I do think this snippet stands on it's own. Thanks to @gingerly-writing for the original prompt!

After the stuff the enemy medics had forced down the protagonist's throat, there was no clear line between sleeping and waking. But eventually the ache in their muscles and bruises cut through the fog of the sleeping draught. The protagonist swam sluggishly to the awareness that they were slumped on the cold ground, feet bound together and hands tied tightly to the tent pole. No mystery whose tent it was.

"Back with us at last?" The antagonist's voice seemed to float in the heady, hazy atmosphere. "You were out a long time."

"'S'it smokey in here?" the protagonist groaned. "Or izzat the drugs and the, mm, concussion?"

There was a dry hmph. The protagonist's vision was clearing slowly, and they could just see a lean streak of black standing over them, dark against the gleaming reds and golds of the imperial tent. The antagonist. Their old childhood friend and their new crown prince - thanks to the protagonist's removal of the prior occupant from that position. And from the earth. 

The protagonist carefully rolled their neck, loosening the muscles and grounding themselves. The tent was not spinning. Their heart was not pounding. Their friend was not their friend. Not anymore. "Is the part where I'm oh-so-grateful you've placed me in your personal custody?" the protagonist drawled. "For my own protection, I'm sure - "

There was a flash of dark and the crack of a palm across the protagonist's face. Again. They swallowed and breathed through the new pain.

"You're getting good at that, your highness," they said, and spit out red flecked saliva on the carpet. "But may I suggest, for next time, a backhand? With a couple big rings, you can really do some damage-"

The antagonist made a strangled scream. "Stop telling me what to do!" they yelled. "Gods! I used to wonder what would make you shut up. Now I know: literally nothing short of death."

They flopped into a chair, and glared at the protagonist. The protagonist could see their face more or less clearly now, making the expression they always did when they wanted to look cold and foreboding and definitely not scared shitless. Despite the wardrobe, it was a shock how little the antagonist had changed when everything was so different. 

"What am I supposed to do with you, [protagonist]?" said the spare-turned-heir miserably.

The protagonist shrugged. Their throat burned with thirst, their shoulders screamed with ache. They pushed it away. Never show weakness. The antagonist had taught them that. "Take me to your father to stand trial for treason, revolt, etcetera. How is the old man these days?"

The antagonist propped their chin on their fist, twisted their mouth. "Not great," they drawled back with vicious understatement. "Better than my lady mother, though. She hasn't left her bed since you had my brother assassinated."

The protagonist flinched. It was a bad habit, a weakness. Of course the antagonist recognized it and twisted the knife. "She took you in," they said, sliding out of their chair to loom over the protagonist. "You were starving in the gutter and she took you into our household, gave you a royal education, treated you like her own child-"

"Her child? Your mother took me in to be your pet," the protagonist spat. "Your own personal peasant for you and your brother to practice ruling on. I guess she thought you were too big for a puppy."

"I- what?!" the antagonist sputtered. For a moment they were genuinely struck dumb. "No! You say what you want about the rest of us, but my mother-"

"She saw which way the wind was blowing with your brother," the protagonist said, rolling their shoulders and subtly testing their bonds. "Maybe she thought putting a face on the faceless masses could turn him around."

"Too bad she picked you then," the antagonist snapped.

The protagonist smiled sourly and the antagonist bit their lip and flushed, realizing they'd conceded the point.

"The irony hasn't escaped me," the protagonist said, hitching themselves up a little higher. "If all of this, all the blood and death as you put, if all I accomplished was removing your brother from the line of succession, I'll have done the empire and your family a greater service than your mother ever dreamed-"

"She thinks I put you up to it," the antagonist blurted out. The protagonist's mouth opened, and then shut again. The antagonist dropped down into their camp chair, somehow making despair look regal and elegant. "The rebellion, the overthrow of the Southern lords, the disruption of the sea trade, my..." They swallowed, reached for another bottle of wine on an overladen table. "The former crown prince's death. Then you just... walk straight into an ambush a day from my camp. She hasn't said, but her letters are... She thinks I..." They made a face, yanked the cork loose. "Father thinks the same, but he actually has more respect for me now," the antagonist added bitterly. "He wasn't so blind to my brother's faults as he pretended to be."

The protagonist let out a low whistle across their split lip. "Well. Now you definitely can't give me a merciful death."

The antagonist put the bottle of wine back down with a shaking hand. "Did you?" they whispered, so quiet the protagonist had to lean forward.

"Did I what?" they asked.

The antagonist started down at their hand pressed flat on the folding table. "Did you do this for me?" they said under their breath.

The protagonist rocked back, hard enough to thunk their head against the pole. They barely felt it, overwhelmed as the antagonist handed themselves over, heart and soul. "Oh, my," the protagonist breathed out. "Oh, your highness. Is that why I'm in your tent? You want me to pat you on the head before you hand me off to be tortured to death and tell you not to worry, that you're one of the good ones?"

"Stop it. Stop talking," the antagonist hissed, face going an angry, ugly red. "I should have known you weren't capable of any loyalty at all."

"Do you remember when your brother beat that housemaid to death?" the protagonist asked, settling themselves more comfortably. 

"That was an accident," the antagonist said automatically.

The protagonist shrugged. "Fine then. You remember when your brother accidentally hit a housemaid hard enough that she smashed her skull open on the nursery fireplace? For what, for being nice to us? For slipping us sweeties after he had me whipped again?"

"Stop it, I'm sorry I asked!" the antagonist yelled.

"And I sobbed and sobbed and you comforted me, you remember what you said?"

It was the antagonist's turn to flinch. "Damn you, I was a child. I didn't know better!"

But the protagonist wasn't going to stop. They couldn't now. "You held me in your arms and you said, 'Don't cry. She was only a housemaid. We have more.' Over and over. I still hear that in my sleep."

"So that's it?" The antagonist wrapped their arms around themselves, turned away. "I was a scared, fucked-up nine-year-old who said a bad thing so now none of the rest of it matters? I'm going to die with everyone else?"

"Die?" The protagonist cocked their head and sneered. Their heart was not pounding in their chest, the room was not spinning, their friend was not their friend. "I'm your prisoner. You're taking me to the capitol, to your father for trial."

"Bullshit." The antagonist turned pleading eyes down on the protagonist, bound and bloody. "What are you planning? Why do you want me to bring you to my father? What are you going to do to us?"

The protagonist breathed in and out, reached within themselves for the stone walls the antagonist had taught them to build, oh so many years ago. 

"I'm doing what I was taught," they said evenly. "By your mother, your brother, by your father, by you. To serve my empire, even unto death. Difference is, I draw a distinction between the empire and the fucked-up, inbred family that for some reason thinks they were sent by the gods to rule everyone else."

In the silence that followed, the protagonist could hear the distant shouts of the commanders, the jingle of horse bridles and the sounds of hammers and waxed linens flapping to the ground. They were breaking camp. Thirteen days to the capitol. 

"All right then," the antagonist said softly, face bloodless against the stark black of their jacket. They put down their untouched wine cup and turned away, never meeting the protagonist's eyes. "Let's play this out. Can't wait to see your endgame."

They walked out and the protagonist sagged limp against the tentpole. Thirteen days. They could stay alive that long. They just weren't sure they could stay unbreakable when they felt so very, very close to breaking.

[gaiuswrites]

King of Cups || Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Fool

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | six

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: It all spills over.

Word count: 8.8k~

Rating: Explicit

Warnings/tags: SMUT (WE MADE IT FOLKS), thigh riding, fingering/hand job, very brief breathplay/choking, cum eating¿? Angst/emo shit (I'm so sorry i have no self control)

Notes: HI FRIENDS, wow it's been a minute. Sorry for the massive delay. For anyone wishing to start KOC, now would be the perfectly spicy chapter to do so! This chapter was Herculean. idk why. Love you guys, enjoy! x (gif credit : @djarinsgf)

“Maker,” you bemoan, shielding your face from the heavy beat of the suns.

You’ve known warmth—you were raised in warmth. This is beyond it.

It’s not just warm, it’s sweltering. The heat is oppressive, congealing the air to mist; you can barely see through it what with the sweat running into your eyes. Tall, craggy dunes line the valley of desert, trapping the planet’s hot pulse within their walls. Your steps crunch along the dry, pebbled earth as you swat at the gnats buzzing in ribbons around your head.

A muffled gurgle sounds from behind you and you slow to a halt, boots gritting into the cracked top soil.

“You doing alright back there, Munch?” you ask, craning your head to the child nestled into the carrier fashioned onto your back. A green ear pokes free from the top, and you can see the jewel of his black eyes peering at you through the gauzy cloth you draped over it. He grunts, and you give a small shrug—shifting the pack by the straps, eliciting a giggle out of him. “We can always turn back, okay? I’m not going to be mad.” Another noise, a happy coo this time, and you shimmy your shoulders again, jostling the bag playfully.

“Well, you just let me know.”

Your conversations usually unfold this way. They leave much to be desired, but you’d like to think you understand one another—in fact, you probably understand the kid more than you understand his dad.

You’ve grown close with him, you’ll be the first to admit it. You’re attached to each other. The little one has been your constant companion for these months and in some ways, you suppose he takes care of you just the same as you take care of him. The chamber of space can be lonely; it’s cold and unkindly reflective, stranding you to the echoed chain of your thoughts—but when he tugs at your hair or slobbers spittle down the front of him or crawls up into your lap to nestle into your tunic, it feels like you belong there—there on the Crest, streaming through the galaxy.

And maybe, simply, it feels good to do right by a child—as if you could make up for it somehow, within yourself. To do better than you were given.

Squinting, you raise your wrist to check the coordinates on your comm and shade a hand over the screen, blocking the glare cast onto the display. “Almost there,” you mumble, resuming your stride as you begin the last leg of the trek to the settlement you and Mando discussed that morning.

“What?” he asked, planted some paces away from you.

You hummed a curious note, glancing to him.

“What is it?”

You were trying to be small all morning—shrunken and shy, avoiding the thought and avoiding him all together. You quieted yourself, as if to not take up space, but the attempt was fruitless; of course he picked up on it – you get good at reading people on the job, he’d said – and of course he called you out on your behavior. You took a big gulp of your caf, gaze flickering down—increasingly more and more invested in the scuffs marked into the table you sat at.

“Dala,” he said pointedly, arms folding over the breadth of his chest.

Shit. Who did you think you were fooling? Playing possum with a Mandalorian?

Worrying your lip, you stood. You couldn’t bear to look up at him, just looming there across the table from you, so you paced around the deck as you rambled. “Okay, so you know how I’m still connected to the RRM channels? Well, I’ve been checking the message boards and I—there’s a settlement here out in the Wastes. It’s small and new and they’re looking for volunteers and—”

You whistled in a breath. Fuck it.

“And I want to help.”

Like the toggle of a switch, you went from having a career—having a purpose—to having nothing. And all your gratitude for the transport he’s offering couldn’t fill that empty lull that’s settled inside you.

“Would you be comfortable with letting me take the kid? I know I’m probably asking a lot—and I will fully respect whatever you decide—but I can keep him by me the whole time, I swear, I just—” You shook your head, pinching your eyes shut before sighing, “I need to be doing something. Anything.”

There was a long pause. You scratched at the torn skin around your cuticle, nervously searching the pitch of his wordless visor. He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even twitch.

“That’s fine,” he finally remarked, graveled.

You blinked, taken aback at his agreement, and all at once your fidgeting ceased and a bright grin broke out over your features in its place.

It nearly brought him to his knees.

“Wait, seriously?” you asked, bouncing on the balls of your feet and he nodded, a subtle tilt to his helm. “Maker, thank you,” you exclaimed, and without thinking you flew towards him, flinging your arms around his neck and sealing yourself to his armored frame. His arms escaped out from his chest in surprise, suspended and stiff, before falling measuredly to his sides. You could’ve been imagining it, but you swore you heard the distinct grit of his teeth grinding together under his helmet.

“Really Mando,” you beamed, pulling back to lay your eyes on him, to let him see the earnest there: you have no idea how much this means to me. “Thank you.”

You gave his shoulders a squeeze, thumbs brushing along the scratchy fabric of his cape before tearing yourself away. Swiping up your mug of caf, you wound down the corridor - airy, buoyant - back to your makeshift quarters to prepare for your outing. It took him another minute just to get his damn feet to move from the spot on the durasteel you welded him to.

Din told you to be safe.

You smiled, and promised you would.

You left the Crest before him and it was strange, surreal. For the first time, you stood in each other’s shoes, leaving Din there on his own while you set off into the world. He watched you go—you and his boy—watched you walk away into some great unknown without him.

And he didn’t like it.

He soured, somewhere in the deep of him—within that pit he called a gut, he twisted sick.

Your feet hit the ramp, dull and tinny, and it sounded like goodbye—it sounded like you leaving. It’s what it will look like when time and fate touch, and inevitability catches up with him. It’s what it will look like when he takes you home. You’ll walk out of his life, down that same ramp, and your steps will echo those same beats. You won’t look back.

And Din, with all his strength, all his unshakeable resolve—Din will let you go.

///

The encampment is settled into the shadow of a cliffside, seeking respite there from the blazing suns, the taupe of the canvas shanties camouflaging into the arid landscape. Some crawl their gaze up as you enter the village, and you offer them smiles they do not return. Others do not acknowledge your presence at all— unstirred as your footsteps sound past, their heads bound heavy towards the earth. It’s not long before a decisive voice cuts through the hush that’s claimed the settlement.

“Are you with the RRM?”

You turn and are greeted by a woman ducking out of a tent—the grey of her woven tunic browned with sand, heat collecting in her black, coiled hair.

“Yes, I’m with the Movement.” It’s not a total lie. Sure, you’re on leave, but that doesn’t discount you completely. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

With a sharp exhale like a prayer of relief, she makes her way towards you. “Where’s the rest of your division?” Her eyes narrow discerningly, flitting behind you as if expecting to spot the rear of your party trickling in.

“It’s, uh—it’s just me,” you confess, pressing your lips together in a thin smile.

She rakes a hand over her hair, over her face. The skin around her knuckles is split, the beds of her nails chalked with days of unwashed grime. “Alright,” she concedes begrudgingly, without any better option presented. “And who is this?” She nods to the child, emerging from the pack and staring curiously at her.

“This is—” You take a moment to consider it—consider the secrecy around the child, the bounties, the life on the lam. Less is more, you decide. Again, it’s not a total lie. “I’m babysitting.”

The kid grunts an emphatic patu.

You both share a look—a quirk of her dark brow, an apologetic heft of your shoulder—and she sighs. “Well, I’ll take all the help I can get,” she quips dryly with a wave of her hand, leading you into the settlement.

///

She’s coarse, this woman—Arlaani, she told you—matronly and effective. She has a calculating gaze and powerful shoulders that she holds steady as she shows you through the camp. There are lines around her eyes, carved into the curves of her mouth. She knows what you know—what all women learn: sometimes you must be hard in order to keep others soft.

You walk shoulder to shoulder, matching her long strides with your own.

“The Black Sun has taken the southern hemisphere; their numbers have only grown since the Battle of Yavin. Pirates, mercenaries, spice runners—they’ve ransacked one half of the planet and have the officials of the other half in their pocket,” she scowls. “They have stolen our land, our homes—we’re moisture farmers, mechanics, mothers and fathers. We are simple people and we have been forgotten by our government—by those who vowed to represent us, protect us.” Arlaani draws in a long breath. “We’re on our own out here in the Wastes.”

You survey the area; the lifeless ocean of rock and sand, the few scattered trees that have died on their feet—roots withering bone dry in the suns. “Why settle here if it’s so uninhabitable?”

She huffs a humorless laugh. “Because, it’s uninhabitable,” Arlaani explains. “No one robs a beggar. There is nothing in the Wastes the Black Sun wants.”

There are no buildings, no structures; the whole area is undeveloped and raw. Tents are dotted sporadically in clusters, crates of supplies and water canteens stationed every other one. Children dawdle idly, tired and overheated, leaning against boxes and posts—their bellies distended and skin parched taut. Flies land on their shins, on their cheeks. They do not go to shoo them away.

“The Movement supplied those for us when we landed,” she comments, nodding to the crates. “That was two months ago.”

“No one has come back to check on you since?” you ask, brows notching together.

She shakes her head solemnly, jaw set rigid. “Our little ones go hungry, our elders are sick with red fever. We will run out of water before the week is through,” Arlaani says before she turns to you, holding your gaze—the seriousness evident in the stone of her eyes. “I thank the gods you are here.” She presses a palm to your shoulder. You feel the weight of it, the weight of her—of the lives she carries on her back.

“I thank the gods.”

///

You stop by each tent delivering what little food and medicine you brought with you from the Crest, and after each encounter—the people so grateful, so weary—your mind strays further and further to Mando.

Din, you scold yourself. Not Mando, Din. Din Djarin.

You still can’t bring yourself to say it.

He spent that whole fateful day nearly two weeks ago bristling at the very sight of you, going out of his way to limp to the other side of the ship just to ignore you better, only to do you in for one final head spin and give you his name.

Two weeks, and you still haven’t said it. There’s no other excuse: plainly - pitifully - you’re scared. You’re scared he regrets it.

Because how horrible of a truth would it be? To be offered something out of carelessness or guilt; to be the product of pity, or even worse, a mistake that cannot be unmade, cannot be rectified. He can’t take his name back, can’t unspeak it any more than you can unhear it, and this fear, picking at you like an old scab—it’s so painfully human, so terribly universal:

what if I’m not worth it?

And isn’t it easier to neglect the answer, then it is to ask the question.

So you’ve buried his name for both of your sakes, keeping it somewhere secret and private, there to garner dust in the quiet of your mind.

You’re brushing through the draped entrance of a tent when you spot him: a small boy hiding behind a supply crate, the top of his dusted head poking out over the ledge. You catch him peering at you, and he ducks down shyly. A honeyed grin blooms across your face.

“I think we’re being watched Munch,” you coo. The little ball of robes blinks up at you from your arms, earning his nickname tenfold as he crams his mouth with a flakey cracker. “You want to say hi?” He hums in response and you crouch, letting him wiggle free from you to toddle over to the other child. With small steps, he eventually makes it over to the other and immediately, without hesitation or provocation, extends one of his crackers to him.

Your heart swells until it bursts, proud and beautiful in your chest.

Munch leads him out from behind the box, the two boys shuffling slowly through the dirt back to you. He can’t quite meet your eyes—his gaze lands somewhere around your chin, your collarbone, and you fold forward, bent at the knees to meet his height.

“Do you have a name, sweetheart?” you ask kindly.

He nods, nibbling quietly on the cracker, and you breathe out a chuckle. “Not much of a talker, huh? I can respect that,” you say, eyes crinkling fondly with a smile. “Well if you want to tell me, you can—or not. That’s okay, too.”

He nods again, and you fish out more salty treats from the sleeve in your pack, gently handing them to the other—a gesture he nervously accepts, dirty fingers trembling as he plucks them from your open palm. This boy is precious—sweet faced and cherubic, he must not be a cycle over the age of seven.

And the realization comes so suddenly that it blindsides you—struck by it, there between your lungs: Din was his age when it happened—when life happened to him. When this could have happened to him.

You can’t help but think of it—think of him and everything he told you that night he came bleeding through the Razor Crest. You can’t stop imagining him; Din as a little boy tucked away, his people—his parents—decimated overhead. He is a Mandalorian by proxy. Displaced from his home, from his past, saved by a sect with an affinity for orphans—to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The irony of it all is not lost on you:

Din is a refugee too.

You see him in this boy, and in all the faces here—in every set of eyes, young and old alike. Each are individual - idiosyncratic - but they each wear the same qualifiers. The same exhaustion. They each fight the same tired battle, leaving them with identical sets of marks.

Does Din? If you were to see him, truly see him, would you find them there? You’ve seen the scars he’s earned from being a Mandalorian.

You wonder if he has any from simply being a man.

Pushing yourself to stand upright, you cradle Munch back into your chest, his teensy claws riddling your shirt, and offer the boy your hand—outstretched in front of you.

He’s cautious. Too cautious for a boy so young, for a child who should know nothing but abundant love and fearless imagination. He shouldn’t have had to learn this lesson: that some hands should not be taken, that some people should not be trusted. He studies you, hesitant but hopeful, and you smile softly—cycles of hard-won patience and empathy curving the corners of your lips.

He lays his small hand in your own. You walk on together.

///

The day blows by like hot desert wind, chafing at your skin. Minutes have ripened to hours—morning has crawled to midday.

The three of you finish your rounds— distributing rations throughout the camp, pitching tents, taking stock of the dwindling supplies for you to relay to the Movement once you return to the Crest and have access to your holopad.

It’s then that you notice Arlaani again. She’s speaking in hushed tones with another man, the both of them hunched over a large carton. You see the concern ticked clearly along the man’s jaw, the dread grooved into her brow, her crossed arms. With a frown, you plop the child down onto a nearby petrified log and the other boy joins, hopping up next to him, all too happy to get off his feet. You tell them not to wander off— a kiss to Munch’s forehead, a ruffle of the boy’s hair— before making your way to the couple.

“Hey,” you call, jogging over. “Is everything alright?”

Arlaani wheels around as you approach. It hasn’t been long since you’ve seen her, but somehow she looks older. Hollowed, drained— like there’s less and less in her. “It’s the water,” she grits out, “sand mites have gotten to the crates, to the canteens.” She tosses you one of the flasks. It’s littered with holes, porous and leaking— the remnants of water splashing out of the orifices bitten into the sides.

Arlaani dives through the crate, rifling through the supplies. She’s tense, upset, her voice is rife with it. “They’re all like this. Ruined, fucking—” She heaves out a hissed exhale and props herself up on the edge of the box, neck bowed between her shoulder blades. “This was the last of it, and now—now…”

The man tries his best - how do you comfort marble? - as he places an arm around her, his thumb drawing patterns there, reassuring and calm but she wants nothing of it; she gruffly shrugs it off as if stung, weaseling out of his hold. “I can’t— I need to think,” Arlaani bristles, as she paces away from the settlement, receding deeper into the Wastes.

“I’m sorry,” he stutters, “I have- I have to—” His eyes follow her shrinking form, worry apparent in the shape of them. It’s so obvious. He’s terrified of that woman—probably loves her, too.

“Go,” you say, and with a knowing expression, he turns and trots after her.

Heavy footed, heavy hearted, you trudge back to find the children exactly where you left them. Once there, you collapse to the hard ground, dust and dirt puffing up as you recline onto the log. Your palms run over the earth—scooping up sand and rock and letting it slip through the cracks of your fingers, gaze trained out onto the encampment—the people milling about, the miasma of helplessness stifling the air.

This isn’t enough. You’re not doing enough— these impermanent little nothings, your measly good deeds. It’s not going to matter. They’ll be bones by the time the next wave of volunteers rolls through. They’ll be grain.

You need to do something that lasts, that outlives you when you leave.

You glance over to the kid and his new friend, their little legs swinging off the edge of the trunk, heels thumping against the old wood. They look to you, two pairs of big eyes—crackers in their tiny fists.

“You boys ever dig a well?”

///|||///

The suns roast into his beskar, blistering him from the inside out.

The day has been long and it’s only half over. It took him longer than it should have to gather himself— his fob, his rifle, his fucking head—and depart the Crest. Longer than it should have to hunt the bounty here—some marauder scum who’s number is up and luck has run out. Longer than it should have to set up his sniper’s nest, sculpted into the mountainside.

Din is distracted, has been all day— has been since you left.

He can’t stop feeling you. Your warmth pushing against his chest, your arms looping around his neck, the heat of your palms searing through his flight suit. Din can smell you on him still— like citrus and moss, you cling to his cowl from where you buried your head.

It’s intolerable. It feels like an infection with how it’s been building, how this has spread— slowly but surely rearing to an unignorable head. Serpentine and insidious as it crept through him, this growing affliction— this morbid curiosity that spoiled like rotting stonefruit into infatuation— slipping along his bones and organs, blemishing Din in faint little licks— imperceptible to the naked eye but there all the same.

How did this happen? How did he become this?

You’ve been more relaxed now, bolder in some ways. Transparent. Sometimes, you’ll touch his arm as you walk by him or sweep your hair from your neck when you sit by his side in the cockpit, star shine on your jaw. You’re quick with a laugh, lips pulling back into a pretty grin. He’s even caught you staring at him, there out of the corner of his eye—from where he steals those same glances under the safety of his helm.

He spied you once, just a glimpse of your backside, padding quietly away from the shower with only your underwear on, drops of water tracking down your spine. It was brief, you were fast—you must have forgotten your shirt in your bunk—but he had to lock himself in his quarters and fuck his hand before he could even think about piloting the Crest into the stratosphere.

Din is a lot of things, but he isn’t daft. A part of him knows. A part of him is aware that you are two very human people with very human needs—and that you’ve been ignoring these primal aches with premeditated dereliction for months now.

And you can only dance around each other so long before one of you snaps.

And Maker, he’s so desperate to be rid of you—to get you out of his fucking system; to let him sleep without dreaming of you, to let him wake without plunging into his briefs and jerking himself off. You are everywhere. In his ship, in his galley, in his thoughts. He has no privacy, he has no sanctity— he has no idea how you have managed to worm yourself so deep into every living part of him. Others have tried and they have failed, and you— you did it in your sleep. From that very first fucking night, curled up in his chair, gore and ash stained tunic rising with your slumbered breathing. You snored.

You fucking snored.

And now you’re killing him— just as the suns above, you are blistering him from the inside out.

His level-headedness has all but evaporated. He’s peeved. Not only is Din distracted, but he's angry— has been since he plodded up this damn hill, waiting for his quarry to pass through the ravine between the valley of mountains—because instead of performing his job, he’s consumed with you. All of you.

He kneels, flattening himself against the rocky sand— your hands, so small and soft against him— and unclips the rifle from the strap on his back—how good you’d feel on his skin—he aligns his sights— the weight of your breasts in his palms—

His helmeted head clunks to the ground and he loses his aim, a frustrated growl emanating out from him. Focus, Mando. Fucking focus.

Din reorients his crosshair, training it on the gang of pirates in the gorge below. They lean haphazardly over their speeders, their cargo nets packed full with different wares and spices, jeering loudly and chugging from the jugs of spotchka they undoubtedly looted earlier that afternoon. He inspects the rabble, searching for his target and—those pretty lips that smile so easy for him, stretched around his length.

Fuck. He pinches his eyes shut.

You whispering husky into his ear as you ride him, you bent over the pilot’s chair begging for his cock, you sprawled out over the deck while he laps at your sweet cunt.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck— he can’t do this. He can’t fucking do this. You’re everywhere everywhere everywhere— you buffer his vision, his senses, his sight. He’s blinded with you. You’re blinding him.

With an infuriated heave he shoves himself off the ridge of the dune, bounty-less, and reverses his course back to the Crest—heart beating furious and bloody against his ribs.

///

The settlers surround the trench, peering down at you as you work. Hours ago, when you originally proposed this idea to Arlaani, they insisted on helping— to which of course, you insisted they didn’t. And so they watch— the refugees, Din’s foundling, the nameless boy— mangling their hands restlessly, animated with an inkling of that all too lethal substance long sought after by those of all species and creeds: hope.

You sink the shovel into the dry earth and your muscles burn with the effort—the skin on your palms stings from the rough grate of the wooden dowel and the yawn of your back strains as you pitch forward.

You’ve missed this.

You’ve been so distracted. You’ve grown comfortable in your routines, you’ve let yourself go listless—living in blissful ignorance—all because of a metal man in his metal ship with the most impossible and darling child you’ve ever known. All because your body reacts at the very sight of him, all because your belly flips when he speaks, that modulated purr rumbling loose from his beskar, all because, because—

You like him.

You wish you didn’t—you hardly know why you do—but you’ve soaked your fingers enough times in your rack to realize that this thing residing within you burns.

You can’t even see his face, and you don’t have to. His presence alone— that raw, vacuous energy that surges from him—it’s addicting. It's engulfing. It makes you whimper into the night, massaging your pearled clit as your other hand muffles your moans and you come over and over and over again, chasing after the fantasy you so dangerously harbor for this man. The man who’s piloting you back to Coruscant—the man who sleeps just down the hall.

But that isn’t real. That’s not real life— that’s not your life. This is real—the fuchsia of the setting suns blazing through the horizon, the sweat on your brow. You’ve missed this— Maker, you need this. Working with your hands, making an impact. You’re wanted here and kriff, does that not feel so unabashedly right. To be wanted. To be important.

Your back groans, the sinew woven over your spine aching in protest and you know, without a doubt, you’ll feel this for the next week. Half of you dreads it—being cooped up and sore, lactic acid compacting your joints— while the other excites at the prospect; the memory of a good deed lasting long after it’s finished. That reminder always there, always present: see, there’s still hope in the galaxy. We can still do good. There’s goodness where you look for it.

You fling dirt over your shoulder as you burrow lower and lower. With each shove, the soil changes hue, changes density—the striations darker, more definitive. It’s less dry now, thicker too—turning from sand to clay the deeper you dig. Again, you drive the spade into the sod with a taxed grunt, when you hear a distinct, wet squish.

You pause, stilling your shovel in the dirt. Everything - everyone - freezes.

Adrenaline thrums through you as you drop to your knees, using your hands to brush away loose silt piled atop the loamy floor, excavating what lies beneath.

Prayers and hollers erupt above you and you lurch your focus up to the sound, a feverish grin plastered to your face. The little boy jostles the child excitedly, and his green talons rumple the other’s tattered tunic. Your head falls back, cushioned by the dirt wall and you laugh - gargled, relieved - as water begins to seep through the tired ground.

Bubbling up, bubbling up—unearthing.

///

The promise of ridding yourself of your soiled clothes was the singular thought that fueled your trek back to the Crest. Every inch of you was filthy, caked in dried mud and gritty sand and you wanted nothing more than to strip from those dirty layers and melt into your bedroll. The kid, that lucky little bugger, had passed right out; sun drunk from his long day, he’d slept the entirety of the return trip—stirring only once when you placed him in the hover pram and sealed it shut.

Your bones are worn. Your tissue, your tendons— every little scrap that keeps you stitched together craves sleep. You reckon you should feel miserable, what with the tell-tale stiffness already burdening your spine and the fresh callus from the shovel’s handle reddening your palm.

But you’re not miserable, not even close. No, you’re happy—you’re glowing; fulfilled and serene, humming as you wash your pants in the basin, kneading at the sopping fabric. You wring out the article, shaking free the excess droplets before draping it on a metal rung overhead. You peel off your shirt and bra band next, leaving you only in your underwear as you plop them into the bowl and begin to scrub at the stains, concentrating on a particularly dirty patch at the sleeve.

The grating mechanics of the Crest’s great jaw unhinging sends your stomach bounding frantic to your lungs.

Kriff—shit shit shit, he’s back early.

Clutching onto your modesty, you cover your breasts and scramble to your quarters, quickly shimming a loose tunic over your head. Its hem barely covers the curve of your ass and you tug long at the cloth before peeking cautiously from the doorway and tiptoeing out of your room.

“Hey,” you warble, rounding a corner as solid feet pound up the ramp—you can feel their reverberations in the floor under your own. You pad into the galley, pulling at your shirt as you go, to tidy up the washing you left unattended. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you so—”

You falter.

He’s there at the mouth of the ship, the ramp drawing slowly up behind him and he’s fuming; you can practically see the steam lifting from his armor and his breathing is labored—chest rising, plummeting violently. You both stand immobilized on opposite sides of the hull—you, bare-legged and exposed and Din, all but anonymous under the steeled fury of his armor. Finally, the sound dampens, ship shuddering as she seals shut—sealing you in—and the leather of his fist creaks in the silence hanging dense like smoke around you.

“Mando...?”

He doesn’t grace you with a response. Instead he begins to stalk forward, stripping weapon after weapon from himself with every thundering step—rifle, blaster, vibroblade—he sloughs it all, metal clanging against metal as they clatter to the deck.

“Hey, what’s wrong-”

He’s not stopping. Fuck, he’s getting closer and closer and instinctually you back up—staggering until you’re pressed against the bulkhead—his broad frame crowding you until all you see is the silver polish of his beskar. You jolt when his hands fly up and slam into the wall behind you, framing either side of your head, fencing you between his forearms. Your lips part, wide-eyed and confused, and you gulp around the nervous lump threatening your voice.

“Do you have any idea,” he seethes, “what you do to me?”

“W-What-” Your stammering is cut short as he slots his thigh between your legs and you have to tilt your chin to meet his visor, a gasp finding itself on your tongue.

“Strutting around my ship, putting your hands on me, that kriffing smile…” Din ruts his knee into your heat, and you’re practically hoisted onto your toes. Your core pulses against the blunt pressure, blood racing to the throb at your center.

Maker, you could fucking faint.

“Do you know how long I’ve thought about this—about you?” His voice is tar black—smooth like obsidian—and you succumb to it. You can’t speak; any and all language evaporating from the forefront of your mind, because he’s everywhere. He’s inescapable and smothering and his scent floods over you, intoxicatingly wild—like iron and sand and something dangerous. Something heady, carnal.

“Is this what you want?” he hisses.

You’ve gone dumb. You’ve imagined this, you’ve dreamt of this, but now it’s actually happening—here, in the flesh, it’s finally happening and you’re trembling with the reality of it. All you can muster is a shaky nod, tongue darting out over your lip.

“Tell me,” he orders, scanning your face behind the guise of his helm. You feel his gaze rove over your eyes, your cheek—fanning across your lips.

Your breath hitches.

“Yes,” you whisper, “yes I want this.“

It’s all it takes.

Din is rougher than he means to be. He wears this as he wears his armor, plating the soft parts of himself he doesn’t want anyone touching. He doesn’t know anything else. He doesn’t know how to be anyone else but this.

He grabs a handful of your waist, rooting you still as he rolls his thigh against you. You inhale an airy noise, grappling onto his other arm stationed by your head and you bite your lip, sucking it into your mouth. Your cunt spasms for him as he presses up into your mound, fightless against the groan that seeps through you.

“You like that?” he pants. ”You like fucking my thigh?”

Din manhandles your hips, his hold on you vicious as he rocks you back and forth on his plated leg, your clit catching on the cold edge of his thigh guard with each motion. It sends hot sparks down your spine and you trap a moan behind your teeth, letting the sound rumble there before you swallow it. His hand weaves up from your waist, the drag of his glove setting fire to your skin as he passes over the swell of your clothed breast, and you arch into his palm as he swipes a thumb over a nipple. “You want more?”

He splays his large hand, groping at your plump flesh, and pinches your nipple hard until it pebbles through your shirt. With each sharp twist, his intention becomes clearer: it won’t be enough to skate by on moans alone.

“I asked you a question.”

Din slides his other hand to the small of your back, drawing you flush to his front, and you can feel him— the outline of his firm length twitching under his flight suit against your hip. He cranes over you, intimidating and menacing and achingly devious. The panel of his visor has never looked darker.

“Use your words, dala,” he husks.

You should be embarrassed by this—by your need made evident through the soaked lining of your underwear—but you aren’t. The heat that stipples your cheeks isn’t born from shame, it’s sprung from lust—pure and primal—and you can’t afford to give it any further consideration because all there is is this man wrenching sounds from you like an animal— and he’s scarcely even touched you yet.

“Your fingers,” you whimper, “I want your hands."

He learned this lesson within those first weeks—relearns it every fucking day. You could ask him for anything - everything - and he would oblige.

He can’t say no to you.

He shifts out from between you, hooking into the elastic of your panties and tears them down your thighs to rest just above your knees, the spread of your legs keeping them from dropping to your ankles.

Patiently - tortuously - he scrapes up your legs, leaving embers in his wake as he trails higher  higher  higher to where you need him most. You’re shivering—nerve endings fried and frayed—and every atom inside you hums with anticipation, with unbridled impulse.

The orange tips of his gloves dimple your inner thighs - squeezing, massaging - before he tilts his helmet, angling himself to see you better, and paws your swollen lips apart.

Your pussy is drooling for him.

He moans something indecipherable— a curse in Mando’a—at the sight of you glistening for him under the dimmed lights like this, and immediately you buck your pelvis to him, hungry for his touch—and the pathetic noises babbling out of you prove too much for him to bear.

“Fuck this,” he snarls, ripping a glove off and tossing it aside, “I need to feel you.”

Your eyes have dilated with want, blackened as you watch Din retrace his bare hand—that gorgeous thing you’ve never seen, only ever fantasized about—back to your heat and slowly - so fucking slowly - pass a finger through your slit.

You throw your head back, knocking against the durasteel. The mewl that escapes you is inhuman.

He’s so warm. His tan skin is molten—it’s like he brought the sun in with him, as if he’s burning that star straight into your sex. You’re slippery with arousal; you can feel how glossed you are, you don’t have to look. You can hear it—hear the obscene squelches he’s stroking from your seam.

“Maker, you’re - shit - you’re wet,” he groans loudly, reveling in the way you pitch your hips—seeking his warmth, his friction. He’s been toying with you, drawing patterns along your pussy and playing with your puffy folds, but he hasn’t even come close to your clit. You know it’s no accident. Din is methodical in all things, he doesn’t make mistakes. This is a decision—it’s intentional. You think, perhaps, he’s looking to break you—some sort of retribution for these months you’ve spent swimming in circles around each other—and you think, perhaps, you’d let him.

That you’d like it.

When Din grants you mercy, finally gliding his index along your neglected bundle of nerves, reflexively you fist into his cowl, knuckles going pale.

“Stars-” you exclaim—just like that.

He handles your body like he does one of his pistols - practiced, unparalleled - encircling your clit with precision, his finger on your trigger—blinding, perfect agony swiveled into your sweet cleft.

When he pushes himself inside you, all the oxygen gets punched out of your lungs.

“Fuck, and so tight,” Din growls, bending at the knuckle to curl over that spongy spot of your walls that makes you gape, makes your brain go slack. Your arms scamper around his pauldrons, nails scraping sharp over beskar. The heel of his hand presses into your clit and you grind against him, each roll of your hips pleading a filthy please please please as you chase after the orgasm he’s baiting you with.

He responds to that, bourboned praise dripping smug from his smirk. “Fuck, look at you, so desperate—gonna cum for me already?”

You don’t have the wherewithal to formulate a response. He’s fit another finger into you, fucking up into you hard—fucking you exactly how you need him to. It feels like you are about to shatter right there on your feet. It’s almost unbearable, this mounting tension that’s climbing within you. You’ve been so starved for this, so deprived of a kind touch and a good fuck, and within no time at all he’s coaxing you to the ledge of your release.

“Mando,” you sob, entwining your fingers into his cape, grinding grinding grinding into his palm when suddenly, without warning, his ministrations cease—that burning coil abating to a simmer. You let out a rasped pant, collapsing forward onto his shoulder— your climax ripped away from you at the last, pivotal second.

Your eyes are screwed shut, you don’t see the movement—you can only feel it once it’s already there: the bounty hunter’s glove grating over your neck. You sputter out a gasp as he forces your jaw up to align with the chill of his visor, trapped in the unrelenting strength of his grasp. Your eyes clamber around the chrome boxing you in, gulping back the fear coalescing in your mouth.

“You say my name,” he gravels. “You say my name when I’m inside you.”

Your cunt spasms around the fingers still seated within you—aching for movement, aching to cum—and your lower lip quivers as he leers. “I gave it to you—say it,” he commands.

For a fleeting moment, in the remaining rational corner of your brain, it occurs to you that you’re terrified—that there may be no going back once you speak it. There’s no unmaking this choice. Like a door—a door that swings both ways—once it is cracked ajar, it cannot be closed again. Because you know yourself, you loathe to admit it, but you know his name will crumble you; that you will bend—that you will want to give and give and give to him— and still, despite, you lay onto the handle and fling that door wide open.

“Din.”

“Fuck,” he seethes. His reaction is visceral—the whole of him stiffens, leathered pads of his fingertips searing into your throat. “Again.”

“Din,” you whine as he rocks his fingers into your walls.

He moans, wanton and guttural, at the way his name tumbles from you like velvet. “Good girl—fuck, that’s good.”

He vanishes from your neck, bringing his hand down to cup his cock bulging painfully against the fabric there and your gaze snaps to it, saliva pooling in the well of your mouth. You slither your hand down his breast plate, over the paneling of his flight suit, trailing south until it lands on the hide of his glove. You stop, waiting there - breathless - until he nods curtly.

His hand falls away. You mold your palm to his length.

“Din,” you give freely, high-pitched and girly, and his cock brays under your hand. Fuck, he’s big—you can feel his mass through his pants and your pussy flutters around his fingers moving deliciously lazy inside you. Your eyes latch onto his, the brown of them hidden somewhere under the helm, and you can feel his own bore into you, weighing leaden there—

before you both simultaneously rupture.

Din’s fingers slip out of you to fiddle with the hem of his pants, unbuttoning in a clumsy flourish until he springs free with a groan of relief.

Maker.

He’s fucking divine—long and veined, with a patch of dark curls padding around the base of him. Din weeps for you already, frustrated and pent up from the confines of his restraints, beads of arousal dappling his head. He hisses as you swipe a digit over his cock, smearing his precum down the silken slope of him. You’re transfixed—the both of you staring as you wrap your hand around his shaft and he shudders, keening in to your touch.

“Mm, fuck you’re soft- kriff-”

Din dwarfs you—you barely fit around his girth—and he can’t help but buck into your palm as you begin to move in tandem. Din flicks at your clit, mirroring your pace as you get each other off. It’s awkward and lewd and perfect—both of you, a tapestry of woven limbs and sweat and you pump him harder and harder, choking his cock with your fist. You fuck him raw, the dry drag of your satin hand ripping curses from his mouth.

“Fuck, dala,” he pants, “I-I’m not—” I’m not gonna last. His words are snuffed out as you circle your wrist and brush a thumb over his leaking tip, forcing him to shiver. He doesn’t have to finish his thought, you understand plenty well. You’re dancing along that same precipice, flirting with the fall.

“Stars, yes,” you plead. Fuck, you want him to cum— you need him to. You need to make him feel good, to let him know that you’re here - you’re right here - and that he means more to you than you care to admit; that you want him—have since you first laid eyes on him, since he rescued you, since he took you back to the Crest and gave you the last of his bacta to heal all your splintered bits. That he deserves this—with all that he’s done for you, all that he’s doing for you—

with all that he his.

“Din—please.” Fuck, you don’t even know what you’re asking for—more of him, all of him—and a groan tears through his modulator at the sound of you begging his name—like he’s wounded, like it pains him to hear you say it.

It’s a race now—the two of you hurdling headlong towards this terrible, messy collision. You’re both sloppy—wet sounds and slaps of skin—as you stumble closer to the brink of release. He’s been rendered incoherent, chiseled down to the basest of grunts and broken words you don’t recognize. His thumb finds a devastating pressure on your swollen nub and your legs begin to vibrate, nearly unable to stand on your own two feet with how fucking perfectly he’s working your pussy.

This thing inside you feels giant - monstrous - and that slow wave that’s been building and building and cresting is here, upon you. You’re trapped in the barrel of it, and it’s going to crash at any moment and sweep you out to sea. Drown you—happily, gladly. “I’m - oh fuck—"

“That’s it, good girl,” he praises, tightening his circles on your clit. “Cum for me, cum on my hand-”

A crack of lightening streaks up your middle, the whole of you shaking as your orgasm rushes through, a sputtering cry let loose into the ship. You feel yourself gush, dripping past his thickness stuffing you full, dripping down your inner thighs. Din pulls out from you and you whimper at the loss—his absence leaving you gaping, leaving you bereft. You’re siphoning down air, dizzy from your release, when he raises his hand, glistening with your fluids, and traces your bottom lip—asking for entrance.

Fuck.

You part for him, eager and pliant, and he snakes two fingers inside—tasting your own tang and the leather residue left there, stamped into the whirls of his fingerprints. Your tongue swirls around them, laving him clean, and you drag over the ridges of his shaft— still hard and throbbing and waiting in your grasp. He bobs his fingers in your mouth, matching you thrust for thrust, and you let out a depraved little moan, humming around him, and all Din can do is watch.

Watch as he disappears between your lips—his skin pulling and catching on your plush flesh— watch as you suck on them, watch as he practically fucks your throat. And Maker, you take him so fucking well, letting him do what he pleases with your all too supple body.

He can’t even begin to imagine what his cock would look like—what it would feel like nestled in the hot cavern of your mouth, hollowing your cheeks to suck him like hard candy. Din doesn’t let himself—can’t. If he did, fuck, that’d be it. He’d be done for. He knows he’d cum in a flash and he wants to make this last—to hold on to this - onto you - for as long as he can, allow himself this singular concession. The only time, he convinces himself, the last time.

He won’t think about you again.

He won’t think about you again.

He won’t think about you again.

You quicken your rhythm and Din bucks wildly into your palm, his seizing and twitching alerting you to how close he is. He slides from your mouth, a string of saliva trailing along after as he clasps onto the back of your neck.

“I’m gonna cum, I’m—” Din knots into your hair, gripping you rough, panting frantic. “Fuck. Fuck, dala— cyare-”

With a hoarse shout, he slams his gloved fist into the durasteel and spills over himself in hot, thick pumps, spurts shooting out to splatter on your tunic, on his flight suit, on your knuckles. You ease him through it, his cum glazing down his cock before you slow to a languid stroke, his seed sticky under your palm. You’re panting, the both of you, spent noises reverberating ugly and loud against the metal sidings.

Din sinks his helmet to your forehead while you catch your breath, his cold beskar kissing your flushed skin—the density of it comforting, grounding. Your eyes teeter shut and you let yourself lean into him, a dazed grin tugging at your wet lips. This is— nice; so much gentler than the pace he drove not minutes before. Head to head, his hand buried in your hair, your arm slung over his hulking shoulders; your fingers thread into the askew fabric behind his neck to discover a sliver of skin treasured away underneath. You trace there - lightly, whispered - earning a fizzle of static sent whirring through his vocoder.

“Fuck,” Din mumbles, before unweaving himself and separating from you. Your legs have gone useless and rubbery—you almost face plant forward without him there— and by the time you blink open, he’s already tucked himself into his pants and picked up his glove, slotting it over those skilled fingers that had just filled you to the brim. He turns back round to find you staring at him through the haze of your afterglow, eyes glassy and fucked out; your fluids dribbling down towards your underwear still bunched above your knees, hair tangled with sweat and saliva and cum—his and yours.

You look wrecked—disheveled. You’re so fucking pretty it makes Din want to scream.

He picks up a stray rag from a crate and offers it to you, before silently sliding your panties back up to your hips in one dexterous swipe. He lingers there but for a moment, savoring the touch of you—grazing a digit into the crease of your hip. You’re rendered mute— your brain can hardly string a sentence together— but finally you manage, your voice weak when you find it again.

“Thank you,” you croak, wiping away the traces of him off your knuckles, and you smile coquettish, delirious. “That was… that was, uhm—I really enjoyed that.”

A quiet beat slogs by.

And then, everything  shifts.

Din’s hand descends from your waist, holstering it to his side, and he moves away. He moves away from you.

You can feel it immediately—like a gust of chilled wind, the change in the air nips at you. Din’s armor is anything but warm—his presence, his aura, anything but inviting—but now, he seems farther from you than ever before, his visor tempered and steely.

You know him. You know this man. You’ve travelled with him, you’ve mended his ills, you’ve taken care of his son, you’ve spoken his name, you’ve laid prints on his skin and deeper still—

And here, before you, Din is white noise. Indiscernible. Unreadable.

Nervously, you twiddle with the frayed edge of the stained cloth, worrying your cheek. You swear, just for a second, that you see him inch towards you— you think you sense him, some part of him, breaching the chasm that’s formed between you. But it’s only a trick of the lowlight—a trick of your cruel heart, winged and errant beneath your ribs, misconstruing your thoughts to fancy.

Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t come to you like you want. He doesn’t touch you again, he doesn’t hold you like you need.

It feels like you’re withering—your legs too bare, your tunic too short, hair too mussed, eyes too bleary—everything feels wrong now, misplaced. “Din,” you start, you try—you try to keep attached to this tether, to this thin strand you’ve sewn between your bodies, but he shrinks back. He severs it. He is as you first met him. Rigid. Distant. A Mandalorian bounty hunter— the best in the parsec. He is as he was months ago, when you were strangers.

When you were nothing.

“I—” He silences himself, teeth clenching shut around the unspoken sentiment you so long to hear, and instead takes another step backwards. Farther away. Farther from you.

He stands straighter, impossibly taller, and you feel

small.

“Goodnight,” Din gives, his voice shrouded and cloaked by his modulator. He pivots on his heel, retreating into the depths of the Crest and leaves you there, the ghost of his hands on your neck, on your breasts, in your heat— still tingling from where they haunt you. Exhausted, you thud back into the bulkhead, unfocused and unseeing.

“Goodnight Din,” you murmur, but it falls upon deaf ears. He’s gone, and the empty hull swallows your words—burying them.

taggies:

@girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @pedros-mustache @miranhas-art @djarrex @bookloverfilmoholic @keeper0fthestars @misguidedandbeguiled @bookishofalder @helmet-comes-off @grumpymuffinmama @niiight-dreamerrrr @spideysimpossiblegirl @janebby @greatcircle79 @djarinsbeskar @sammysdaisy @whataperfectwasteoftime @mandobloggin @silver-streaked-wings

[ladyfogg]

Let Me Comfort You

Let Me Comfort You

Fic Summary: After leaving your first date to chase a lead, Colin loses the chance to question their informant. Frustrated and feeling useless, Colin returns to your place hoping for some comfort. And you’re more than happy to provide it. Love Exists Masterpost. The Evans Fics Masterpost.

Fic Rating: 18+

Pairing: Colin Zabel/Female Reader

Warnings: Language, Rough Sex, Oral (F receiving), Angst, Light Dom!Colin

Colin is in relatively good spirits when he gets to the meeting place. Your kisses are still on his mind and he hopes whatever work that needs to get done will happen quickly so he can get back to you.

As he pulls into a parking spot outside a local club, Mare climbs into the passenger seat.

“Hey,” she says. “Thanks for meeting me.” Her eyes take in his jacket and tie. “Did I interrupt something��again?”

“First date,” Colin admits.

Mare gives him a soft smile. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. She understands.”

Mare nods, turning her attention to the club. “Found out that one of our informants hasn’t been checking in. He’s said to frequent this club.”

“Let’s hope he still does.” Colin puts the car in park but doesn’t turn it off, letting the heat run. The temperature has dropped significantly and all he can think about is your warm bed and body waiting for him.

Time slowly ticks by and while numerous people come and go, Mare doesn’t react so Colin assumes the informant hasn’t been seen. By now he knows Mare well enough to try not to push conversation, so they sit in silence. To his surprise, his partner is the one to speak next.

“How did the date go?” Mare asks.

He’s surprised by her interest and excited to talk about you. “A little rocky in the beginning. We were both nervous. But, after that…” He smiles, remembering how stunning you looked sitting across from him in the restaurant. “Um, yeah, after that, things went well.”

“You gonna see her again?”

Hopefully right after this if it doesn’t go too late…

Colin nods. “Definitely.”

Mare nods along with him. He can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking and how she feels about him getting closer to you. It’s strange to think these things, to want some kind of validation from your boss. But Mare has the energy about her and Colin is a people pleaser.

“You two really like each other,” Mare notes.

He smiles, though her words do sting a little. “Should I be insulted that you sound surprised?”

Mare smirks as she shrugs. “You can if you want to be. I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. I’ve just never seen my girl take a liking to someone so fast.”

Colin feels his cheeks redden and he smiles. “That’s nice to hear.”

Mare looks him over, studying him like she does a piece of evidence or a suspect. “You two will be good together.”

Colin opens his mouth to thank her, but her expression hardens and she motions towards the club.

“That’s him!” she says, nodding towards the guy headed their way.

Colin barely has a chance to look at the informant before Mare is getting out of the car. The second the man sees her he turns around and books it.

“Shit!” Mare exclaims giving chase.

Colin swears and jumps out of the car himself. He takes off running after them, doing his best to catch up. The freezing night air steals his breath away but he pushes through it, weaving between cars. The informant does the same, trying to trip them up. Colin dodges around the cars on his left in an attempt to swing around and cut him off.

He’s gaining in the man but suddenly, the informant turns unexpectedly then barrels right into Colin, sending him flying back into a car. The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, his palm on fire from scraping against the asphalt in his attempt to catch himself.

“Zabel?!”

“I’m fine! Keep going!” He barely gets the words out after having the wind knocked out of him.

He hears Mare’s footsteps run past as he takes a moment to catch his breath. By the time he pushes himself to his feet, Mare is coming his way, looking annoyed.

“Lost him,” she sighs heavily.

Colin feels the bile rise in his throat and anger courses through his veins. “Fuck! I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Zabel.”

“But I had him!”

“Don’t beat yourself about it. If anything, I’m the one to blame. He ran when he recognized me.”

Her words don’t make Colin feel better. His already shaky confidence is shattered. Resting against the parked car, he yanks his tie off, using it to wrap his injured hand.

“You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Colin says, terser than he means to. “So, what should we do now?”

“I’ll call it in. Let them know that he was spotted. At least this means he’s in the area. If they don’t find him on the streets, they’ll get him at his place. Someone will pick him up.”

“Should we do a quick drive around?”

“Nah. It’s late. You should head home.”

Mare walks with him to his car. Colin’s knee is killing him and his pants are covered in mud. What had started as such a great evening went downhill fast.

“Go home and get some rest,” Mare says as he eases himself into his car. “I’ll let you know when he’s picked up.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Colin sits in his car for a moment, watching Mare get into her SUV. A small part of him wants to just go home and wallow in his self-pity. But a larger, more vocal side tells him to go to your place. Picking up his phone, he pauses for a second of contemplation before shooting you a quick text to see if you’re still awake.

Awake and waiting ;) comes your response only seconds later.

He’s twitchy and fidgety the entire drive, his throbbing hand just reminding him of his latest failure. It seems like every time he’s finally going to prove himself, he only manages to prove himself wrong.

When he pulls up to your apartment, he doesn’t hesitate getting out of the car. This time the cold barely registers.

You’ve left the door unlocked so he lets himself in, making sure to lock it behind him. The warmth of your place makes him feel a tiny bit better. He calls your name when you don’t come to greet him.

“In here, Detective Zabel.”

Colin’s heart nearly stops when he walks into your room to find you lounging on your bed in the sexiest panties and bra he’s ever seen. The only source of light is the dimmed lamp on your nightstand. It’s just enough to cast everything in a warm yellow glow.

The second you see his muddy pants and his tie wrapped around his hand, you sit up, face etched with concern.

“What happened?” you ask, getting off the bed.

Colin looks down at his hand. “Oh, you know, doing big shot detective work.”

“Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Here, sit down. I think I have a first aid kit stashed somewhere around here.”

You gently lead him to the bed, having him sit before you rummage around your room. Colin kicks out of his shoes as he carefully takes off his coat and suit jacket. His body is already sore and he knows tomorrow he’s going to be in a lot of pain.

When you come back to his side, you gently take his hand in yours. He watches you delicately unwind the tie before examining the scrape on his palm. It doesn’t look as bad as he thought it was. You grab a wipe from your kit and clean out his wound.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Colin debates not saying anything, but one look in your eyes makes him sigh. “I let an informant get away.”

“I’m sure you didn’t let them get away.”

“No, I guess not,” Colin concedes, seeing your point. “But I didn’t stop him or catch him like I was supposed to.”

You fall silent as you finish cleaning his palm and put a Band-Aid on it. “Well,” you say in a quiet tone. “You tried and that’s all that matters. You guys will get him next time.”

Colin stares at you, eyes raking down your body, just casually sitting there in the underwear you planned to seduce him with. It sparked the fire inside his already antsy body. He cups your cheek and pulls you into a kiss. It’s harsher, with more tongue and teeth than he usually uses yet feels appropriate considering the storm of emotions inside of him.

Your mouth falls open in surprise and he takes advantage, licking deep inside as he crushes you against his chest.

There’s so much he knows he can’t do. So much of his job that he knows he’s not qualified for. He’s reminded of it every fucking day.

But this. You. Making you feel good. He knows that he can do. It’s the first time in a long time that he’s felt truly sure of himself.

Your hands come up to his shoulders and you push him back to break the kiss. “Colin, baby…”

You’re, breathless and hearing his name in that tone only fuels his lust.

“Please,” he whispers against your lips as he draws you closer. “Please, I just need…” He can’t finish his thought.

You study him for a moment, before running your hand through his hair, peppering him with kisses. “What do you need, baby?” you ask. “How can I help?”

Dominance washes over him and he gets his voice back. “Lay down on the bed.”

As you do as he says, he stands up and strips. Despite the heat of your room, he still feels chilled to the bone. All he can think about is getting his hands on you and making you moan. Planning ahead, he drops his wallet on the nightstand so the condoms will be just within reach when he needs them.

Naked, Colin kneels on the bed, eyes raking up and down your frame as he leans over you. He swoops down for a kiss, losing himself in the taste of your lips while his hand cups your breast, giving it an appreciative squeeze.

You gasp and shudder. “Your hands are freezing!”

“Then let me warm them up.”

He tugs the flimsy material down so your breast is exposed, fondling it just as roughly as he had a moment before. The heat of your skin sears into his palm and you gasp again, writhing underneath him until the temperatures balance out.

Colin doesn’t stop kissing you, drunk on your lips just as he has been every single time they touch his. You bury one hand in his hair and the other falls to his hip, urging him on with a gentle squeeze. His thumb rubs circles around your nipple before he breaks your kiss so he can take the bud in his mouth.

You bow your back when he does, pressing your breasts into his face even more. Colin moans, lavishing your nipple with constant attention until he decides the other has been ignored for far too long.

Both your hands cradle his head now, keeping him pressed against your chest until he decides he needs to taste more. He needs your legs over his shoulders and your thighs clamped over his ears. He needs you moaning his name as he makes you come undone.

Your panties are yanked down without much preamble or ceremony. As nice as they are, they only serve as an obstacle between Colin and what he wants. He’s rough when he throws your legs over his shoulders before tugging you down the bed towards him. With a strangled moan, he buries himself between your thighs.

God, you’re already wet. He tastes your arousal with a thorough swipe of his tongue, relishing in the notion that he’s the one who made you like this. He’s the one who has you moaning and squirming underneath him. Emboldened by your reaction, Colin sucks on your clit, grunting as you squeeze his head with your thighs. He can sense you clenching at nothing, feel your hips attempt to jerk upward for more friction. But he pins them down, doesn’t do what you’re silently begging for.

Instead, he keeps doing what he’s doing, alternating between sucking and flicking with his tongue. He’s just as warm as you are now, beads of sweat trickling down his neck and making your legs slip on his shoulders. He only holds you tighter.

When he finally eases two fingers into you, he receives a harsh hair pull for his efforts. It makes him grin, his cock pressing eagerly against the bed. He’s not ready yet, doesn’t want to stop pleasuring you for even a moment because it’s the surest of himself he’s been in years.

This time when you come, he feels your body clench around his fingers. He lets your pelvis rocks against his face and he loses all train of thought other than the feeling of you coming all around him.

The second you relax, he sits up, gasping for air and taking in the gorgeous sight of you, bra tucked under your breasts and legs spread wide.

He reaches for a condom before you even have a chance to catch your breath. You see him roll it on and wiggle out of your bra, tossing it somewhere off to the side.

Colin grabs your legs, wrapping them around his waist before pushing into you with one smooth thrust.

You throw your head back with a gasp, “Colin!”

With his hands on either side of your hips, he fucks into you. His eyes never leave your face, taking in every expression. The way your eyebrows knit together when you shut your eyes or how your teeth dig into your bottom lip…it’s intoxicating.

Your hands cling onto his arms, tugging as though you’re trying to pull him closer. He doesn’t follow through, not yet. He wants to keep watching.

You open your bleary eyes and he loses himself in them.

How did he get so fucking lucky to have someone like you look at him this way? To see him for who he is? Even though you don’t know. You don’t know what he did. If you did, he doubts you’d look at him the way you are now.

He kisses you harshly, pressing his body against yours and, grinding himself into your heat.

It’s his turn to moan your name, his lips unable to leave yours for more than a second.

“You feel so good,” he moans. “I love the way you squeeze me. It’s like you’ll never let go.”

One of your hands buries into his hair while the other reaches blindly for his hand. When you find it, you twine your fingers with his and he presses your joined hands to the bed.

His mouth seeks your throat and moves down until he finds your breasts again. harsh kisses turn to him sucking on the flesh, desperate to leave his mark on you.

He comes not long after, throwing his head back with a guttural moan. You twitch and spasm underneath him, coming again but he’s too lost in his own pleasure to notice until he collapses on top of you and feels the aftershocks of your orgasm.

Colin can’t help but hold you close, even though your bodies are pressing so tight makes it hard to catch his breath.

You stroke his cheek, looking at him with concern. “Tonight really got to you, didn’t it?” you pant.

Colin nods, his forehead pressed to yours. “I’m sorry. So sorry for—”

“Don’t apologize.” You take his face between your hands and force him to look at you. “You have nothing to apologize for. That was actually really hot.”

Colin gives a breathless laugh before pulling you into another kiss. This time he’s gentler, carefully easing out of you so he can slide onto the bed. His movements allow you to finally take a deep breath and you slowly exhale. With shaking hands, Colin rids himself of the condom. He’s not one to be so rough and he’s worried he’s overstepped. But then you curl against his side, your arm thrown over his chest and your face buried in his neck.

“Hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere,” you say through a yawn.

Colin yawns himself, running a hand through his hair before tucking it behind his head. His other arm pulls you in close.

“Why? There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

He can feel your smile against his skin before you place a gentle peck on his throat. “Get some sleep, babe. We can talk more about it tomorrow if you want, okay?”

“I’d like that.”

You fall asleep almost instantly, but Colin stays awake, gently running his hand up and down your arm. Even after fantastic sex and being in your arms, he only feels marginally better. That little anxious voice in his head won’t quiet down and it takes a long time before he’s able to fall asleep.

---

Series Taglist: @lejardinfleur @spidergirlmcu @anonymushhy @samsassinparvismagna​ @kitwalker64​ @tatestripedsweater​ @xmaximoffic​ @marshmallow--3​ @stellarbound​ @kais-messiahbaby​ @margaretboothsear​ @slightlyvicked​ @nia-s-not-so-secret-diary​ @liandav​ @billyhxrgrove​ @TheOriginalDoll87 @tatesimper​ @sanni333​ @spider-starry​

[fruitcoops]

Hi, I love your blog so much! I recently got ankle lateral ligament reconstruction done, and as an athlete, it sucks so bad. I watched my basketball team play yesterday, and it felt really horrible to watch them lose by one point in overtime when I know I would have made a difference if I were on the court... I know you have lots of asks and prompts, but if you have the time and want to, could you possibly hurt me more than I’m already hurting with some angsty ankle injury stuff😩 like maybe Cap watching the Lions lose without him.

Thank you for all the awesome fics you write! Your blog is amazing!

Anon, this ask really struck a chord with me and I wanted to do it justice as best I could--going through a sports injury like that is the worst feeling in the world, and watching your teammates play without you just adds salt to the wound. Sending all the love and healing vibes your way, okay? Please keep me updated on how you're feeling if you feel comfortable <3

Combined with an ask for pre-Coops and Sirius' photo of Remus! SW credit goes to @lumosinlove

TW for canonical injury and mentioned scars (Remus)

Sirius felt a nudge at his arm and his irritation flared, but he did not take his eyes off the game. “Fucking hell,” he muttered as James missed yet another blatant pass. There’s three.

The next nudge was more insistent.

“What?” he snapped, sparing half a glance to his left and feeling his stomach swoop.

Remus raised his eyebrows and held the mouthguard out further. “Either put this in or unclench your jaw.”

You’re not my mother, Sirius almost snarked back, just to be even more of an asshole. He was cold from being at the rink without his gear, severely pissed off by the general bullshit happening on the ice, and the itch in the boot locked around his stupid fucked-up ankle was slowly driving him mad.

Remus offered the mouthguard again, and Sirius’ temper cooled by a few degrees at the soft encouragement on his face. Pretty, his brain supplied. He swallowed hard around his sudden dry mouth and shoved the plastic between his teeth, beating back the unruly emotions with a mental baseball bat. Nope. Not tonight. Focus on being angry.

Logan got distracted, and Finn paid the price as an enforcer slammed him against the boards; he bounced back immediately, but Sirius ground the mouthguard so hard it squeaked. “Tabarnak—”

“Come with me for a sec,” Remus said, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the angry shouts of Lions fans.

Sirius shook his head. What he wouldn’t give to be in the heart of the fight, letting off some of the steam that had been building with no outlet for weeks. “Game’s not over.”

Remus pressed his lips together, but said nothing; Sirius’ throat constricted as he looked at the scoreboard. There may have been three full minutes left on the clock, but the Lions had already lost—unless they pulled a miracle out of their asses, this game would be a stain on their record. Or if they just let me play.

Sirius sighed through his nose. The urge had been growing stronger the longer he stayed cooped up and restless, banging at the walls of his brain and bringing headache after headache.

“Cap.” The hand on the back of his bicep was surprisingly gentle and he closed his eyes as Remus gave him a light tug. “Come on. We can at least be productive instead of sitting here and stewing.”

He smells nice. How does he always smell so nice? Sirius stood and followed Remus down the tunnel, not even bothering to force smiles for the people pounding on the glass partitions. Don’t focus on the game.

Focus on his shoulders, something close to his heart suggested. You like his shoulders.

He scrunched his nose up at the thought—if he dwelled on the smooth, strong curve of Remus’ upper back for any longer, he would start remembering the one time he saw them bare, covered in sweat with scars that shone like moonlight and—

“Are you okay?” Remus asked, snapping him back to reality. Sirius jumped and concern flickered over the golden planes of his face. “You’re twitchy tonight.”

“Just…” He made a vague, aborted motion toward the ice before continuing toward the PT room, though he did not miss the worried look Remus shot him. Fantastic, now I look like a dick and an idiot.

“What’s going on, Sirius?” The door clicked closed behind them and Remus leaned against it with his arms crossed loosely as Sirius limped over to the table and sat down, pulling the mouthguard out. He stared at the floor and the hunk of plastic—don’t think about how nice his voice sounds around your name. Don’t.

He shook his head; through the door, the sounds of the game were faint. “They’re better than this.”

“Yep.”

“They’re all going to be angry tomorrow, which makes them sloppy.”

“Probably.”

“Coach will be upset.”

“No question.”

“It’s the Badgers.”

Remus made a face. “I know, right?”

“They’re a good team, but—” He tightened his jaw again and looked away.

“But we’re better,” Remus finished for him.

“Yeah.” Silence fell between them for a few moments, though it wasn’t uncomfortable. Being quiet around Remus was never uncomfortable, and Sirius was pathetically grateful for every scrap of it he could get. “I—the game would be different if I was out there.”

“Would it?”

“It would.” He had been going over every mistake for two and a half hours, placing himself in like a chess piece to stop the missed passes, fumbled pucks, and thoughtless plays. “They need me with them.”

The paper crinkled as Remus sat down next to him, and every one of Sirius’ senses went on high alert. “They need to you get better,” he said simply, those caramel-apple eyes making Sirius’ knees go weak. “Have you been doing your exercises?”

“Of course,” he scoffed.

“Good.” There was no defensiveness or indignation in Remus’ voice—guilt snapped, a firecracker behind his teeth.

“Sorry.”

Remus smiled wryly. “When you’re around injured hockey players all day long, you get used to a little bit of bitchiness.”

“I’m not bitchy!” Sirius spluttered. The poorly-concealed amusement on Remus’ face made mortification heat his cheeks. “I’m not!”

“Uh-huh.” The note of smug disbelief should not have been as attractive as it was. “Alright, lay down.”

Sirius swore he heard a few crackling noises as his brain short-circuited. “Quoi?”

“I’m not kneeling on freezing linoleum to check out your ankle, Cinderella,” Remus snorted. “Now get a wiggle on.”

“You have the strangest sayings,” he said as he laid back and stretched his leg out, bewildered and yet somehow relieved.

“And you—” Remus pulled the top buckle free. “—have no appreciation for the great American north.”

“I can take it off,” Sirius mumbled, feeling redness rise once again.

He cocked an eyebrow. “The boot? I might not be a muscle-bound athlete, but I’m pretty sure I can manage a couple strips of Velcro.”

“No, it’s—doesn’t touching people’s feet freak you out? Like, the sweat and everything?”

“If it did, I’d have to find another profession, because I’m damp all the time from you fuckers and you all seem to have a habit of breaking things below the knee. Bend.”

Sirius complied, drawing his knee toward his chest. His bare foot looked weird in the bright lights, pale and still swollen, but Remus was as golden as ever. You can watch from afar, he conceded when the cute little furrow appeared on Remus’ forehead while he felt around the bone. Just for a little while. “Your hands are warm,” he said before he could stop himself.

Remus glanced up, and his small smile caused a flood of butterflies in Sirius’ stomach. “Thanks. They’re usually pretty cold, so I’m glad I’m not accidentally giving you foot hypothermia.”

“Is that real?”

“No,” Remus laughed. Sirius wished he could keep that sound forever. “How’s that feel?”

“Uh, fine.” He blinked a couple times to come back to himself as Remus put light pressure on the sole of his foot. “Still fine.”

“You’re a lot more flexible than before. Things are healing well.”

A loud buzzer went off outside—Sirius closed his eyes as disappointment and frustration fired up once more. The crowd wasn’t cheering. The windows weren’t shaking. He didn’t even want to look at the TV to check the score. I should be out there, he thought for the umpteenth time. I’m letting them down.

“I’m sorry,” Remus said quietly as he worked through a few more exercises.

“Not your fault.”

“It’s not yours, either.”

Sirius wanted to believe him. “I’m the captain.”

“And you’re being responsible by doing this with me so you can heal faster.” People rushed past the door outside, but the PT room remained peaceful. Sirius stared at the plain ceiling and wished for a miracle. “They miss you.”

“Y’know, that’s not exactly making me feel better.”

“Sorry.” They lapsed back into silence. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Cool.”

Sirius chewed the inside of his lip for a solid two minutes, following Remus’ simple instructions without looking at him. He should have been out there with them, ankle be damned. It was basically healed anyway; they were just tying up loose ends, and maybe Remus needed to be a little less careful. “Is this really necessary?”

“I’m gonna give you five seconds to ask a different question.”

“I’m just saying, it feels fine and—”

“Time’s up.” Remus let go of his foot and Sirius only spared a moment to mourn the loss of his comforting touch before he caught the stormy, mulish stubbornness that took the place of Remus’ concentration. “Sit.”

“I am.”

He narrowed his eyes, and Sirius dragged himself upright with a huff. Arguing with Remus Lupin was about as useful as arguing with a brick wall, and that was coming from someone who won the ‘Most Stubborn’ superlative at their last end-of-year party. “First of all, ankles are annoying and the soft tissue will still be damaged even if the bone is healed. Second, it’s my job to fix you up so your boys stop whining to me about healing you faster. And third, I’m not giving up on you.”

Sirius paused for a long moment. “What?”

“I’m not giving up,” Remus repeated. His jaw set and he made direct eye contact. “I would love nothing more than to kick Snape in the kneecaps and let you go out there as soon as you can stand on your own, but that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to make sure you’re ready to kick ass and take names no matter what that little shit was trying to do. So don’t you dare sit there and try to chicken out at the finish line, because I know you want this even more than I do.”

In his chest, Sirius heart was hammering like he had just run five miles. I’m not giving up on you. Sirius had never wanted to kiss him more. “Thank you.”

Remus softened with a slow breath. “We’re in this together, Sirius. You and me.”

“I know.”

“Then let’s get to work. Next time you play the Badgers, make ‘em regret this game.”

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

Sirius walked back toward the locker room feeling rather nauseous. The whole team leaked their bad moods into the air—Arthur had barely looked at them before sending them home with a quiet “we’ll talk more tomorrow”, the equivalent of an arrow through Sirius’ heart. I need a pick-me-up, he thought as the rest of the guys trooped out in a melancholy raincloud. He fist-bumped each of them, per tradition, but their responses were weak at best.

Ice cream sounded good. Maybe a milkshake. Oh, who was he kidding, he needed a solid hug and something other than ice to look at. Not for the first time, he contemplated getting a dog, just so the house wouldn’t be empty and dark when he returned.

Laughter rang out ahead and Sirius inhaled sharply, letting the sound roll over him. “I’m not kidding!” Moody chuckled.

“Bullshit,” Remus countered, still snickering. “There is no way—”

“I’ve been around here longer than you’ve been alive, kid.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Remus groaned, though Sirius could hear the smile in his voice even from around the corner. “You only bring it up every goddamn day.”

“Brat.”

Sirius entered the room just in time to see Remus playfully knock the side of his foot against Moody’s; both were grinning. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, old man?”

Moody nodded to him. “Night, twelve.”

“A demain,” Sirius called, offering a slight smile as his eyes lingered on Remus. He was leaning back against the wall with stick tape in his hands—his hands, which never failed to make Sirius throw caution to the wind—and raised it in farewell. “See you, Loops. Thanks again.”

“No problem, Cap.”

He grabbed his duffel off the floor and slid his keys, wallet, and phone into his pockets as Moody and Remus resumed their conversation. He wondered how long they usually stuck around, and if they would oppose him staying—he wouldn’t interrupt, but being around people who weren’t going through the five stages of grief already felt nice.

An idea struck as Remus’ laugh raised goosebumps on his arms once again. With a careful glance over his shoulder, he slipped his phone out and snapped a picture before hurrying off toward his car. His breaths were shallow; that was such a creepy move, and surely one of them noticed—

No voices chased him. Nobody gave him strange looks. He waited until he was safely in the front seat of the car before unlocking his phone, and all the air in his lungs left in a rush.

The photo was perfect. It caught the lopsided tilt to Remus’ mouth, his slender-but-strong fingers, his long legs, the scrunch of his nose mid-laugh. Everything Sirius never let himself look at for long. He didn’t have much space left among the collection of paper memories on his dresser, but maybe if he put it in the back where nobody would see it unless they knew where to look…

He turned the car on. Later. He would print it out and deal with the taut rubber-band-ball of feelings later. Until then, he could settle for the imprint of Remus’ warmth taking away the pain in his ankle and the determination on his face as he promised to bring Sirius back from the personal hell he was living in. You and me, he had said, and Sirius wanted nothing more than to believe it.

[lewis-winters]

Hi but I actually really want your detailed character analysis for each guy in the Craver interrogation scene 👀

Oh anon, the monster you have unleashed.

Ok so like. This is only one of many of my (often contradicting, bc if I am anything I am a flip-flopping bitch #taurus-gemini cusp) readings of this scene. But it certainly is the most interesting:

Ok, so let's start with the three boys outside of the beating room. Namely, Floyd Talbert, Ron Speirs, and George Luz.

There is only one agitated fella in this frame, and it's not George Luz. George is very secure in himself here-- there's tension lining him and making him stiff and his attempts at humor fall flat, but the fact that he is making attempts at all is a sign that he knows who he is in this moment and he knows what he is being called to do. And that's to distract Tab.

Tab, on the other hand, is struggling with two sides of him. One is the vindictive side that wants to be in the room with the other guys. But that side is largely trumped by his very rational, very Company 1st Sergeant side. He isn't agitated because he wants to join in. He's agitated because he knows he should stop them, and he's right. He should. Though the beating is "justified", the Military Police will most likely not think so. He's 1st Sergeant, he's in charge of most, if not all of the men in there. If the MPs investigate this incident, he will have to be the one to answer for them. And also I just think he doesn't want to see anybody get into trouble. Except he can't go in there and stop them because they have a point, or at least, they think they do. Craver hurt one of their own, and now there is no reasoning with them. Look at who's inside: Bull and Martin and Malarkey. NCOs, just like Tab. None of them outrank him, but they are still leaders in their own right. And if Tab were to go in there and stop them, they'd chew him out for it.

Tab is waiting for someone like Ron to come in and stop it. Because Tab knows he himself can't.

Except. Except. Except.

Ron doesn't stop it. Ron, in fact, enables it.

And this is where we also see Tab start to lose respect for Speirs.

IRL, Winters said that Tab resigned as 1st Sergeant because he kept comparing Speirs' leadership to Winters' leadership, and though the show itself doesn't actually make that the official reason for Tab's resignation in the next scene ("I miss being back amongst the men"), there are traces of it in this scene.

When Ron enters the room, the first thing Tab asks him is "How's Grant? Is he dead?" Speirs bypasses that question entirely for the sake of joining in on the beating, gun drawn.

From Tab's point of view, that means Ron has every intention to kill Craver.

And, of course, if we apply what we know from what IRL Winters told us, that means Tab is also thinking, in that moment; "No, Dick would never do this. Dick would never let it get this far."

And you can actually see that moment of clarity + subsequent disappointment (as well as relief at finding out Grant will live and disbelief that this just fucking happened) on his face here:

Furthermore, this is also the moment Tab (and, by extension, every body else in the room) finds out that Grant is going to make it after Ron tells them.

So not only is Tab thinking; "Dick would never do this. Dick would never let it get this far," he is also thinking "Why the fuck didn't he tell us that in the first place?! If Dick had been handling the situation, we would have gotten the news immediately! He wouldn't have allowed something as risky as this happen!"

And he's right.

But in fairness to Ron, this is probably the first time any of Easy has seen him lose his cool.

Because Ron is actually losing his cool here. This is his "it's my dog!" moment. He let the anger get to him, and therefore he made a terrible miscalculation.

I've already talked about this in this Grant/Speirs ask, but let me reiterate it here:

We (and Easy Company) are very used to thinking that Ron acts without compassion, mercy, or remorse, therefore when we first view this scene, we think that what is out of character for him is not shooting the replacement. We (and Easy, but especially Tab) are wrong. That is probably the most in character thing about Ron in this scene. What is truly out of character for him here is him drawing out the gun with the intention of shooting this motherfucker in the face.

See, one of the reasons why we think he doesn’t act with compassion, mercy, or remorse is because in the first half of the series, we don’t see him outside of the glimpses Easy company gets or the stories they exchange. But after episode 7, he’s suddenly with us all the time, and we see that his advice to Blithe was more of a… miscommunication, in a way.

Act with no compassion, no mercy, and no remorse toward the people you want to protect your men from. But this is where this scene gets complicated. At first glance, we think "ah, yes, he's protecting his men from this replacement."

Except-- there is literally 1 replacement vs. at least 1 squad of men (roughly 9 to 11 men). Why the fuck does a squad of soldiers (veterans too!) need protection against 1 replacement who has not had the same training and combat experience as them? They don't need protection here, they can handle themselves.

Oh, and another thing that adds to this predicament: Ron knows that Chuck is going to live.

Out of everyone in that room, Ron is the only one who knows that Chuck is actually going to live. So his internal struggle isn’t so much “oh I should act with no compassion, mercy, or remorse– but easy company has ~changed~ me.” In my opinion, his internal struggle in this moment, the reason why his hand trembles as he's preparing to shoot Craver, is this: “If I shoot him, I'm not protecting my men. I'm taking revenge.”

Which isn’t in his moral code.

Ron acts with no compassion, no mercy, and no remorse, yes, but there’s a certain level-headedness to him that keeps him in line at all times: only against those he's protecting his men from. Sure, he’s prone to bouts of petty anger sometimes (see in the next scene: More and his photo album), but he never lets that get in the way of his judgement (see: More didn’t back down, but neither did he do so in a disrespectful way and Ron recognized that, therefore he conceded his own defeat and didn’t punish More). He does what is necessary in the moment and never takes it beyond that.

But Chuck’s shooting drives him to the point of wanting to take revenge. He enters that room, gun drawn, with all the intention of shooting this motherfucker in the face. He knows it's a bad move. But he does it anyway. And him entering the room with his gun drawn enables everybody else. We, as an audience, have to remember that what they are doing is illegal and is very, very punishable by military law. Also: beating someone up like this, no matter how fucking vile, isn't the right thing to do, either. But sure, the MPs might be gracious enough (or if a certain Nixon is generous enough to tip them to look the other way), to let them probably get away with it on account of saying that the replacement tried to fight them and they simply fought back (yes, that does sound like rhetoric used to excuse police brutality; isn't that what this is in a way?). But if Ron pulled the trigger? If Ron had actually killed him? That would have been fucking bad.

It's not a Captain's job to enable his soldiers to do something illegal that'll most likely get them court martialled and/or killed. It's a Captain's job to protect his men. From their opponents, as well as from themselves.

In this moment, Ron is not doing that.

I know we like to get all vindictive and be all like "yeah that's what he deserves, this is justice!" but this isn't justice. This is revenge. And, again, revenge is not part of Ron's moral code. If only because revenge, more often than not, gets people killed instead of keeping them protected. If he shoots Craver, that will not only implicate him. It will implicate everyone else in the room.

He realizes it here:

Ron only comes to his senses when he already has the gun trained on Craver's face. Portrayed beautifully by Settle, might I add.

... This is a reach on my part, but I think his next movement is very powerful-- idk if it was written into the script or if this is just something Settle decided to do, but after he wipes the blood off and he turns away, Ron then takes his hat off. Which to me invokes in me the image of a king taking off his crown, or an executioner taking off his hood. It's almost as if he's relinquishing his authority in this moment-- not over Easy (since he does give them an order literally seconds after he takes it off), but over the right to be judge, jury, and executioner.

He recognizes that he did a whoopsie.

You know who I think also recognizes it?

George fucking Luz.

Look at his face. Look at his fucking expression here:

This is the face of a man who knows the what ifs and the could haves. He's put two and two together and he's pissed.

That's why I think another layer of him staying outside isn't just to comfort Tab. It was self-preservation. He still had his wits around him at this time-- arguably he and Tab are the only ones thinking straight in this moment; it's no coincidence that it looks like he's looking at Tab here-- and a part of him believed that Ron would, too. Except, he didn't. That's why he's angry. Ron came up short.

Or idk, I could be projecting, I mean I would be pretty pissed off in his position. Pissed at Craver, but also pissed at Speirs-- if my Captain, my leader, the guy I trusted decided to do something reckless like that and put all the lives of my fellow soldiers on the line simply because he wanted revenge or simply because he wanted to scare people and therefore get a grip over the situation, I would be angry, too. Remember, Speirs has a layer of protection, somewhat. Probably wealthy family, some wealth squirreled away. Not to mention he's a commissioned officer less likely to be used as a scapegoat. These men, everyone in that room, are enlisted working class men. Most likely, they don't get the luxury of a scapegoat or a tip off or bail. Had Speirs gone through with it, they'd have a body on their hands. And if the family of this replacement pushed, the MPs will no doubt pick someone in this room and pin it on them. Or hell, they'll take everyone, punish all of them, and then execute several. They were just lucky this replacement didn't actually have anybody on his side.

This was dangerous. But Ron let it happen. He didn't protect them like he promised he would. And to some degree, George and Tab know that.

Although, I can argue, everybody in this room realizes that. Except, they realize it too late.

They realize it the second Ron pulls the gun.

I've said it before, in this ask right here, that Liebgott flinches in this scene. Which is funny, considering when Ron enters the room, he's the one who's most in Craver's face. Him and Babe. Which is understandable, considering the three of them were close, as can be gleaned from the Last Patrol. Of course Lieb and Babe would get dibs on Carver's face. Of course they're the ones who get to bloody them up good. Carver shot their best friend-- of course they're angry. Liebgott especially-- I feel like this is the episode where he lets all his anger out. For ep 1 - 9, he's fine. He's funny and jovial-- a little irritable, especially in the Last Patrol, but only at Web, really. And not even by that much. What he mostly is, is tired. And that's it.

But this is after Landsberg and after the mountain top, too. He's angry and he has no outlet. So of course he's the one getting the most hits on Craver. And when Speirs enters the picture, he's delighted in some way. But it doesn't last.

At first he's watching Speirs (as beautifully depicted in this gif set), he is the only one watching Speirs. Then, Craver is pistol whipped and held at gun point and what does Joe do?

He flinches. Babe also flinches. And then they, and the rest of the room, look away. They all look away. From Bull to Babe to Johnny to even Pat and Popeye. Frank physically steps back. Malarkey literally closes his eyes. The only one looking is More. It's almost like the weight of what they have done has finally sunk in for all of them.

But, it's not enough to spur them to stop Speirs. In fact, except for Malarkey, they turn back to look.

Because, like Speirs, the need for revenge is pulling them toward this need to see this replacement die. But unlike Speirs, they don't know if Chuck is alive or not.

And that's where it gets Yikes. And in a way, maybe Tab is right. If Dick had been in Ron's position, 1) this replacement would have been given to the MPs immediately, and; 2) Grant's safety and the news of Grant's safety would have been the top priority. And though that would have not quelled their anger, they would have at least been comforted by the knowledge that Grant was going to live.

Listen, Ron abides by the same code of honor Dick and all the other officers abide by, and he has held up that same code of honor many times. In different ways and through different methods, yes, but always with the same goal in mind: protect. Always protect.

But not here.

Ron did not give them the comfort of knowing Grant's status and he put them in a dangerous situation. He did not think of them first. No doubt spurred on by his own trauma and his own simmering anger and lack of a proper outlet, a proper enemy to take it out on, he was blinded by his rage and simply thought of himself and his revenge. Not his men.

Ron slipped up. They're just lucky he caught himself before it got any worse.

[seychellse]

Hey y'all! I'm trying to get a bit more familiar with writing smut so I'm trying out a few more suggestive pieces with some prompts! I'm starting with Nanami too bc gawd. I don't submit to ANY man but he would turn me into a 50s housewife I swear to god. Plz I wanna bear this man's children SO BAD

warnings: nsfw, overuse of the word 'dominance' and 'control', power struggle, shameless manhandling of male titties

pairing: Nanami x fem!reader, Gojo at first too but fuck that guy it ain't about him right now

wc: <1k

Prompt: Who's really on top?

Satoru Gojo may be the strongest sorcerer in the world, but he’s still just Satoru to you - goofy and annoying. You bet once you could easily beat the cockiness out of him if he ever turned off that damned Infinity, and knock him down a peg to force him into remembering his place below you; exactly where he belonged. It's pretty easy to get him to that point, actually; a bet won in your favour had him do exactly that, and you relished the opportunity to get one over him. Red-faced and sweaty, he gasped and whined underneath you, begging for release while you rode him to exhaustion and brought him to the edge of climax over and over again until he learned his place, begged you oh-so sweetly and conceded to you in a manner that was satisfactory before you let him cum all over himself in disgrace.

Nanami, on the other hand? He never needed raw power to be powerful or prove his authority, and you'd find that out the hard way. Trying the same song and dance on him hadn't worked out entirely in your favour, but you couldn't pretend you weren't enjoying yourself. In trying to assert your dominance over him, you found that even on the bottom, Kento would always be on top - and that was never going to change.

“Nanami…” You whine, one hand resting on the flat plane of his belly and the other stuck to your pebbled nipple.

“What is it? Use your words.”

You can barely remember to stay upright, let alone form a sentence that would make sense to your addled mind. Stuck between wanting to lay down and grind on him, and working through your pride to its inevitable end, you let your limbs decide for you and sag just a tiny amount, leaning back on your heels and spreading yourself open for his eyes to drink you in. All the while you flex around the solid length inside you, persistent even after two separate rounds, and try to return his aquiline stare. More than anything, you want to draw out some kind of emotion that would validate his deference to your domination.

But again and again, all you're met with is his solid demeanour. Nanami's expression underneath you changes only slightly, as if to mock your lofty desire to have him under your thumb, and your inability to materialise his submission despite every attempt you've made to ensure it.

Trying a different tactic, you bring your fingers up to his chest, circling the pink nipples with a feather-light touch and tapping the buds in interest. When that doesn't arouse any movement or noise from the impassive sorcerer, you risk your own position and bend towards him, aligning your own buds with his and sliding up against him to generate some friction on your sensitive spots. The action has you choking back your own groan, losing yourself in the feeling of his chest against yours as you rub him up and down with your own body and shamelessly build up the heat between the two of you.

In response, he just rolls his hips, eyebrows raised. Challenging you. He makes a pleased noise, but as soon as it leaves his throat it's swallowed up by your own throaty whines as the shift sets off his own movement, and accidentally-on-purpose causes his happy trail to grind delicately up and down your clit, already oversensitised from the first pop. The sensation forces your to screw your eyes shut and keen in longing, considering giving up the charade but your pride refuses to allow it. You press on despite the numbness, needing more than anything for Nanami to just drop the act, place his hands firmly on your tush and just have him squeeze, give back the control he already knows he has whenever the two of you engage in this dance. He's not so easily swayed, however; more than enjoying the show of you trying to remain in control and how easily you slip with only the most simple of touches. His hands remain firmly at his sides despite your insistence on bringing them to where you want them to be.

Clenching around him once more, both your hands stop their movement to fall to either side of him as you do your best to remain on top through your third orgasm of the night. You had asked for this, after all. All he was doing was obliging you, ever watchful from below as you tried and failed to assert your own dominance.

He smiles then; a sight rare enough to see from your stoic lover, and it sends an aftershock straight through you, travelling from the centre of your chest and settling in the place where the two of you are joined together. A long, lewd noise escapes your lips and you lean back, trying to catch your breath and move off him to stop the pulsating feeling making your mind incapable of functioning. He stops you full in your tracks, pulling you down to his side but keeping you connected at the hip. Bastard - he knows exactly what he's done to you and he revels in your dishevelled appearance on top of him, never truly in control despite your hubrid belief that you ever could be. Warmth blooms inside you as he makes himself comfortable beside you and he fixes you with an imposing stare, hazel eyes for once not veiled by his little goggles. The intensity of his eyes on you makes you simultaneously curl up on yourself and arch up into him, cowed but still needing his reassurance that you did well.

“Do you understand who’s in charge here, now?”

“Ye-yes.” You lower your gaze in submission, both embarrassed and horny in equal amounts.

“Good. Know your place, girl.”

[nugnthopkns]

Congrats on 500 followers!! If it’s still available, how about prompt 15 with elias pettersson? 😊

anything for you!! 🥰 tried something a little different with this — hope you enjoy!

i can look good in a certain light so don’t look too close at me tonight // my honest face by inhaler

Elias didn’t want to be there.

Packed nightclubs do nothing for him, but some of his teammates dragged him out under the guise of team bonding. He’d rather be at home reading the book his mom mailed him nearly a month ago.

Despite his lack of enthusiasm, Elias is paraded around the club with the rest of the guys. The franchise core of the Vancouver Canucks are a big deal, even in a place such as this one. It’s less university students and more young professionals, but Elias can’t help feeling out of place. He’s been neither of those things, and it becomes abundantly clear as the night goes on.

“Come on man,” Brock sighs, upset his friend isn’t enjoying himself like everyone else. “Lighten up.”

“Fuck off,” Elias snaps in response, still upset he’s even in the building. Brock backs off then, fading into the mass of dancing bodies and leaving the Swede to his own devices.

A beer is in his hand, his fifth of the night, when Elias sees her. She’s beautiful, all smiles and laughter as she dances with her friends. The way she sways to the beat draws him in, and Elias knows it’s rude to stare but he can’t help it. There’s just something about her. At some point they make eye contact, and when she winks Elias flushes a deep red before turning away. It’s embarrassing to be caught red handed so he slinks away from the edge of the dance floor and into an empty booth to nurse both his drink and pride.

She finds him later in the night, still sequestered away from the rest of the crowd. Brock and the others have given up on trying to get him to engage in the night and have let him sulk. The girl approaches Elias with an air of confidence that pulls him in further.

“Are you much of a dancer?”

The question hangs in the air for a second before Elias responds with a coy remark that surprises himself. “I can be if that’s what you want.”

She seems pleased with the answer, and offers her hand. Elias takes it gingerly, not wanting her to think he’s a creep, and follows behind until they’re planted squarely in the middle of the open area. Bodies crowd around them, but neither of them move until the song changes. With a bright smile she wraps her arms around Elias’s neck, and he follows her lead, resting his hands on her hips.

Elias is unfamiliar with that the DJ is playing, but she seems to know it, singing along and moving purposefully. He’s mesmerized by her — the way her body moves and how her mind seems to work. When he tries to speak she places a finger against his lips in protest.

“Talk later. Kiss me now,” she whispers in his ear, and Elias would be foolish not to oblige.

It’s messy, almost all teeth and tongue, but neither participant minds. The kids fits the atmosphere and Elias is breathless when she pulls away. They don’t kiss again, but he becomes bolder in his movements, letting a hand slip to the curvature of her ass. The song changes but they remain close to each other.

When it’s clear that her feet are beginning to hurt, Elias suggests finding a place to sit down. She shakes her head, saying it’s time she get going, and thanks him for the night.

Elias is a little hurt she doesn’t want to continue whatever it was they were engaged in, but concedes. “Can i at least get your name?” he asks, praying that by some miracle she’ll take pity and give it to him.

She shakes her head again, but pulls a tube of red lipstick out of the strap of her dress. Elias notices it’s the same shade that paints her lips. He cocks his head in confusion when she gestures for his arm, but does as instructed. The lipstick is uncapped and she goes to work, writing digits on Elias's forearm.

“You can get my name when you call."

He closes his eyes for a split second, not quite believing this is real. A beautiful girl has written her number on his arm in lipstick. It's something that happens in a movie. When Elias open his eyes she's gone, and he's left standing on the middle of the dance floor with a dopey smile on his face.

☼☼☼☼

celebrating 500 followers!

[boneswriteswords]

Just A Little Longer - Michelangelo

A/N: Here is my self indulgent Mikey goodtime lime. Let me live. (It isn’t a lime. Its a lemon. But lime rhymes with time.)

Unbeta’d because no one has the time for editing.

Also I have no idea if any of it makes sense so.....

~~~~~~

The bright neon LED lights of the alarm clock on your nightstand stood guard over you as you blinked awake. 2:04am. Awareness came slowly, your eyes dripping sleep even as the rest of you came online. You shifted, extending your body into a stretch, grinning when a muffled groan erupted from behind you.

A thick leg forced its way between yours. A heavy arm landed across your abdomen. A hard chest molded into your back.

Beyond your apartment walls, sounds of the city rage on. Waves of muted color trickle through the crack in your black-out curtains. Lines of yellow light bleed over the room. There are police sirens passing by as the house party three doors down blasts the newest Ariana Grande album. Someone honks their car horn in vicious repetition. If you strain, you can hear an muffled fighting and the shuffling of clothes as it turns physical.

All the noises harmonize and fade into nothing as you flip over, encouraging the limbs of your bed partner to stay entangled with yours. You’ve lived in the city long enough that the noises and the people and the lights don’t register much to you unless you focus on them. You know the sounds of danger from the sounds of the loud and that’s all you really need to know. Rainbow noise guided you, filtering through all the memories that you have access to you, and anything less has no space in your life.

Quiet nights are eerie after years of noise and you are more than happy having Mikey hold you in bed while the world keeps going around you.

REM does not return after closing your eyes again and you concede to being awake. It isn’t awful, not with the way Mikey clutches onto you as he shuffles - head nuzzling into whatever crevice he can reach. You can tell he is waking.

He can never remain asleep if he feels you are awake. He struggles to remain in a plan of existence where you aren’t. He fights himself awake and you never know if you need to be concerned or flattered by it.

You watch the lights as they bounce off objects in your room before looking back at him. Blurry lines. Soft shapes. Calming motions as they dance back and forth. They are beautiful but you’d much rather look at Mikey.

He has an arm curled loosely over your side while the other is resting under the pillow you both were using. You both liked long thick pillows that went from one side of the bed to the other. A small commonality made sweeter by your domesticity. His hand is curled limply and you remember that he had been stroking your head when you had fallen asleep earlier.

The muted light makes his green skin lighter. Shadows dip into the crevices of his skin and scars, revealing texture you usually only can feel. There is a darkness under his jaw and around his eyebrow ridge. You find yourself tracing the lines of shadow and light with your eyes, hurling the idea that anything could be more captivating out of the window. His breath is steady but his eyes are twitching behind his eyelids.

You see his eyes open. Three blinks and he is awake. You are jealous of how easy it is for him to go from one state of being to the next. He falls asleep quickly and he awakens even quicker. Deep blue eyes find yours and he smiles, moving his arm to drag you the tiniest bit closer. His lips twitch as he draws slow circles in the space between your shoulder blades.

There is an ache in your body, a reminder of the way he had rushed into your apartment as soon as the sun was down. The impact into the wall. Manic energy. Breathless laughter as pent-up passion bubbled over.

Your fingers trace down the side of his face, dipping down from the line of his throat to the pools of his collarbones below his plastron. He churrs the tiniest bit in response and it sounds a lot like the noise he makes when you tease the skin of his neck between your teeth.

You can’t leave marks on him. His skin just doesn’t color the ways a human’s might. Its thicker. Denser. Darker. Scalier. You can’t leave scratches either. It was a bit disappointing to find this out but knowing that he’d enjoy your marks if he was able to have them seizes you in ways you have never experienced. You imagine lining little rouge starbursts down his next and across the broadness of his shoulders and the way he would walk around with them proudly. Red lines connecting red flowers like vines.

His eyes scan over you. He is visual.

Its not always like this. You and him alone. Some nights its you and Mikey and the ghosts that follow you both. There are eyes in the shadows and they have many names and you never know who you are speaking to. They lurk while he cleans his weapons in the living room. They boldly take a seat next to you while you watch a movie tucked under his arm. Some nights, you pull up a seat at the table and serve them as Mikey makes a joke about something that happened during your day.

They exist and they try to make their home in your spaces and they take a toll on the nights when you are too weary to kick them out. A mix-match of traumas that spiral and float and smother and linger.

Mikey doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve. He rips open his chest and holds the organ up into the light directly. Makes you watch as it beats and pulses and moves his lifeblood through his body. There are no questions about what he does, how he feels. He is on display by choice, flitting about vulnerable as if there are no monsters in the world he lives in.

But there are days where he wraps himself up behind a glass wall to separate himself from the rest of the world. Deep-rooted hopelessness drains his light, his strength a house of cards edging towards collapse. His voice cracks and wavers. Its never his fault. No one asks for trauma. No one asks to be too late. No one asks for the life he’s lived.

Only recently has a door appeared in the glass. He always tells you where the key is so you can open it. You make sure to crack open the door and wait for him to invite you in further. If he does, you sit inside with him. If he doesn’t, you sit outside and wait for the wall to come down.

And then there are the days where you are translucent. You look down at your body and see through it, faintly incorporeal. A ghost. Light bleeds through you as you walk under the sun. Intangible and lost. You don’t feel real even as your ribs ache and the steady stream of your heartbeat remains. All that exists is quiet breathing.

All your worst nightmares are of you reaching out to hold Mikey’s hand but it goes through him. You can’t grip onto him and he walks away because he can’t see you.

Mikey tells you that he sees you. He grips your hand and squeezes and pulls you in close on the off chance that you feel like your floating away. He won’t let you but he doesn’t begrudge your fear. No one asks for the life you’ve lived.

Jeers erupt from outside but neither of you flinch. You just lean closer into each other. Mikey runs his hand up and down your spine, eyes wet, and you are astounded once more how stubbornly he loves you. How intensely he feels for you. How he believes so much that you both are it. The endgame.

You wish you could take the shadows that live behind his eyes and demand they leave. “You can’t have him,” you imagine you’d say, “He is mine. And I’m not scared of you. I love him too much.” If that meant pulling a seat up for them in the living room and offering them a whiskey laced with intention, you’d do it.

Mikey’s hand slips under your night shirt, his palm flat against the skin of your back and you melt against him. You have studied those hands and all the ways they make you feel things and you exhale harshly and slowly so as to not disturb the rays of muted light.

“You doing okay?” Mikey asks, voice dripping with drowsiness despite the awareness present in his baby blues. “Its late. Or early. Whatever. Was it a nightmare?”

“No baby,” you respond, pressing your mouth against his beak, “No nightmares tonight.”

“Good.”

You press another kiss to his beak before ducking down a little and pressing another one to the side of his mouth. The arm under the blanket shifts. His fingers stroke your head.

There is a lull.

“I love you.”

Its comes out unexpectedly but you aren’t ashamed of it. He already knows. That relationship milestone has long since passed. Even so, the words are splintered, cracked around the edges and easy to be drowned out by the sounds of screeching tires on the road and idiots on the street.

But the impact is till the same. The look he gives you is blue fire and he guides you closer for a kiss. It starts off light, gentle, a nudge against your mouth but his fingers cradled the back of your head as he deepens it. “Love you too. So much” is mumbled as he presses further into you.

Arousal simmers on the back-burner as an afterthought. You had fucked hard earlier - a frenzy, a reconnection after a week of only facetime calls and voice memos that left you worked up and over. You know you will fuck again when the sun is up because Mikey loves starting the days off right when you are both in the same place.

Right now is the time to relearn the shape of his mouth as he kisses you lazily. You pull back slowly. You stare at him and he stares at you, movements slow.  

A beat.

Two.

Three.

“You remember the talks we had?” you whisper before you could stop, brushing your nose over his, “when we had just met? The ones that lasted days at time?”

“Yeah,” he responds, his voice low, “That was a long time ago but I do. I don’t think I could ever forget.” There are flashes of light behind his eyes and you know he remembers each call. Each text thread that was either memes or philosophical questions that had you trying to unearth the truth of the universe. Each conversation that spanned days because real life creates lulls between responses.

“I fell in love with you there,” you whisper back, “Somewhere in those calls, I turned over to look into the phone and realized that you were mine and there would never be anyone else for me.”

“Yeah?” its a soft question that, from the look on his face, doesn’t require an answer, “You too?” You nod anyway. He deserves to see it.

He grins.

“I’m glad that we took our time,” you continue, wiggling as his hand scratches at your back the tiniest bit, “I like that we are friends. I like that I can say “Mikey is my best friend” when they ask me about my boyfriend. I’m glad that I got the chance to like you.”

“I like you too angel,” he whispers, his voice getting softer, warmth bleeding in the spaces between words. Heat singes around his eyes, “I like you so much.”

You hold him tighter, “no one knows my soul like you do.”

Mikey surges forward to kiss you again, his hand running down from your back to the side of your thigh. He rolls you both so he is half on top of you, maneuvering a thigh between your legs and pressing your chests touch as he slips his tongue between your waiting lips. You arms reach up to rest along the broadness of his shoulders, fingers dancing along the lip of his shell.

When he pulls back, his breathing is harsh, “you know mine angel.”

There is a sense of peace with knowing that all your exposed parts are being kept safe. The storms pass. Smoke is cleared. Petrichor sweetens the air. The dead are laid to rest so flowers can grow on their remains. The sun is bright.

Between you, pleasure kindles slowly. Hands roam and tug and cup. Kisses are scattered like constellations. There are murmurs of praise and whispers of awe. Time blurs as you sink down into it.

Mikey brushes his lips along the side of your face as he glances as the clock, the sun peeking its head above the skyline from the window, “Do you want me now?”

“Now.” You punctuate the word with a roll of your hips against his thigh. “I want to feel you.”

He sighs under his breath, hands shifting you until you are where he wants you. Your night clothes are removed and dropped by the side of your bed. His shorts follow, landing right on top of yours. He nestles firmly between your open thighs. “Okay angel. You can have me. You can have everything.”

The vulnerability in his voice shakes you. The slide of his cock into you has you gripping onto him. He draws it out, indulgent in the way you stutter and writhe against him. Its a seamless fit, despite his size. You are still prepped from earlier, wet and accommodating, and he drips like a faucet.

Mikey had never known sex could be like this. He always expected that sex would be purely physically, a thing that couples did to feel good and sate any hormonal urges. No one ever told him about how it feels when hands grip onto him, leaving trails of sparks and comets and tingles across his body that linger for days. No one ever told him that his lovers moans could vibrate along his vertebrate and resonate in the parts of his unknown. The void in his chest fills with liquid gold when he hears his named sobbed against his skin.

You hadn’t known either.

And even though you both do now, even though you crave each other more fiercely than you crave air, it always feels new when you collide. Every sensation has been redefined. Vulnerability has never felt so powerful.

You cry as you feel his cock pulse inside of you as he bottoms out and grinds forward. He grunts, his arms keeping your hips flush against his.

“How do you always feel so good?” Words emphasized with deep thrusts. Hard, slow, tapering into a grind before pulling back out. ”Always so good for me. Meant for me. Made for me to love. Made to take me.”

“Yes,” you hiss back, breath hot against his neck. Mikey adjusts, one of his hands remaining on your hip while the other slides to grip your arms behind your back. He presses you flush against his plastron, back arched off the bed and supported by the strength in his arms as he holds you. “Meant for you. And you found me.”

The casual, effortless show of strength spreads a warm haziness across your mind. You lean into it.

“Fuck - Mi...I-” There are tears in your eyes as you gasp and shudder as Mikey picks up the pace. Without warning, your mouth is covered by his and you can feel his smile against yours. A laugh bubbles up from somewhere and tapers off as the kiss turns hungry.

“Shh I have you,” he gasps between his own pleasured noises, “I have you. You are safe here. What do you need?” His hand strokes along your face as he rocks into you. His voice is breathless but full of intent. “Tell me what you want.”

“Everything,” you babble as he grind right up against your good spot, “I want everything with you.”

He groans, breathing deep as the colors blur into shapes. He tucks his arm back under you, grinding harder, your clit catching along the hardness of his plastron. Your legs tremble around his hips. Mikey kisses you again before he ducks down to your neck and shoulder, his mouth hungry and burning. Ravenous.

Something about romance ignites a wildfire inside of Mikey. You exploit it as often as you can and he lets you because you both know that nothing is said without intent, without meaning. Honesty burns under your skin and shines through your eyes every time you press words of love into his skin like galaxies in a telescope. He basks in the attention. He worships under it.

In return, Mikey spills filth into your ears. The kind that shouldn’t be as sexy as it is but god does he know what you need to hear.

(”You feel perfect, hot and tight.”/ “I’m yours.”/ “I can feel you. You are real.”/ “I know, angel, I know. You’ve been wanting me so much. You need me. I need you too.”/ “I’m going to show you I love you. You’ll never doubt it. You’ll never doubt that I love you.”/ “Angel I’m not scared of your ghosts. They are scared of me.”/)

Mikey’s voice is serrated in ways no one but you have heard. Raw and carnal and deeper than most would expect, flashing dark around the edges the more passionate he gets, the more he reaches down inside of you to pull out the parts of you only he sees. 

You fall apart from the inside and can do nothing as the bottom drops out. You aren’t scared, not with the way Mikey holds you and chases away anything that could ruin this. His “I loves yous” bleed into your skin and you take hold of his pain and strangle it. There is no room for the grief and emptiness as violent tremors rack your bodies and hands cradle exposed hearts. The lights flash and dance as the decrescendo halts everything around you.

Heavy breathing fill the room. Whispered praise is soft and there is shuffling. You wipe each other down as best you can with the wet wipes you keep by the bed before pulling each other closer. The morning light is higher, peeking between the blinds and under the edges of the curtains. 

Eventually you’ll get out of bed. Clean up properly. Make food and spend time together with your clothes on. Relax in the knowledge that the day is a good one with no dark figures hanging in the corners, waiting to come in. But, thats for later.

For now, you lay close, breathing each other in. Hands are still roaming. No one has faded and there is no cold glass protecting warm skin. Mikey murmurs something and you smile. Your smile meets his smile and laughter joins in, glimmering in the light. You peck at his mouth and his fingers dig into the skin of your flesh before he grabs the comforter and hides you both underneath it.

Everything can wait. Just for a little longer. 

~~~~~

[delimeful]

not always what they seem (2)

warnings: inappropriate jokes, remus being remus, mild panic attack, fear, miscommunication

long overdue commission for @legendsgates​! thank you for your patience and support 💚

Chapter 1

-

Janus watched the giant creatures around them devolve into more of that buzzing, clicking language as Remus waved his arm around enthusiastically in response to them.

“What are you-- Stop that,” the emo kid hissed, his whole body going tense, and Janus leaned back slightly just in time to avoid getting caught in the half-tackle that Remus was subjected to. “What if they just asked who wants to be first to be dissected, huh?”

“Oooh, kinky,” Remus cackled from where the kid had pinned his wrists to the floor. “Do you think they’ll probe me first?”

Janus rolled his eyes, and then stiffened as a shadow fell over them. “Kid—!”

He could see the moment the red alien’s hand made contact, the kid’s face immediately draining of all color as those strange talons wrapped around him and started to lift.

Almost instantly, Remus surged to his feet, grabbing the kid’s arm before he could be lifted out of range. The hold was so tight it almost looked painful, but the kid clung back desperately. He looked smaller than ever without the bulky hoodie around him, his frame barely concealed by a worn, slightly oversized band shirt.

Remus’s face twisted into a snarl. “Hey, hands to yourself, you shitty Mothra rip-off!”

Janus quickly rose to his feet as well, looking up past the kid’s terrified gaze to see the alien had paused, it’s strange antenna protrusions twitching. The facial features didn’t give him much to work with, so he attempted to see what the creature was seeing, contextless: the kid tackling Remus for big showy arm movements, Remus coming after him. Was it trying to seperate them like a pet owner with a pair of squabbling dogs?

He shifted forwards, setting a hand on Remus’ shoulder and expertly drawing all attention to himself. Remus glanced at him and then reluctantly cut off his litany of extremely descriptive curses, though his grip on the kid didn’t falter. Janus tilted his head back to carefully lock eyes with the alien.

“No. Stop,” he spoke with a stern emphasis. “Put him down.”

He reached up to grab the kid’s arm as well, tugging lightly, and then repeated himself slowly.

“Double D, buddy, I’d bet all three of my balls that they don’t understand English,” Remus said, “no matter how slow you say it.”

Janus didn’t break eye contact with the giant, moving to point at the kid and then the floor of their enclosure emphatically. “That doesn’t mean we can’t communicate with them.”

At the perfect moment to dramatically accentuate his point, the alien seemed to concede, lowering the kid down until his feet were touching the floor. The guy tore out of the oversized grip as soon as it loosened, nearly tumbling head over heels. Janus caught him by the arm, and Remus took the opportunity to jump forwards and click his teeth menacingly at the giant hand. The alien recoiled immediately, looking much like an elephant shying away from a mouse.

“I volunteer to get probed and this is how you fucks repay me? Just grabbing kids all willy-nilly? Have some respect!”

The kid muttered something, half-lost under his panicked breaths, and Remus turned to look at him. “What was that, short stack?”

“Virgil,” he repeated irritably. “It’s Virgil, not ‘kid’, definitely not ‘short stack’. I’m twenty years old, for fuck’s sake.”

Janus and Remus shared a glance over the newly-named Virgil’s head, and that was enough to set the man off into another fit of cackling laughter.

---

Roman watched, enthralled, as the little creature bedecked in green threw its head back and made a hair-raising clamor.

Intriguingly enough, the other two didn’t seem to react too strongly to such a loud outburst. The yellow one turned its face to the side as its tiny features pinched into an expression that Roman couldn’t quite decode, and the shaky purple one’s pale face seemed to shift color as it made an emphatic hand gesture of some sort. Patton would be taking plenty of notes later.

The motions, the expressions, they were all intentional and full of meaning, just like the pointing and sounds Yellow had made when Roman had tried to separate Purple from the group. He still didn’t quite grasp why the other specimens had responded so strongly; Purple had clearly been attacking, though thankfully no serious harm had occurred thanks to Roman swiftly jumping into action.

“This is incredible,” Logan murmured from beside him, and Roman couldn’t help but agree.

“There’s so much to analyze here,” he mumbled. “Any small animal would flee from a predator’s grasp, but they recognized that we’re sapient, and Yellow even approached instead to mediate!”

“Yellow?” Patton asked, a bit of teasing in his voice. “I thought your nicknames were always a bit wordier?”

“I can’t properly nickname someone unless I have their self-presentation and personality, Pat!” Roman defended. “It’s more of a… designation. After all, I can’t very well ask their names, can I?”

“I mean, we could certainly try!” Patton suggested with an optimistic lilt to his voice. “I’m not a linguist for nothing, y’know!”

“It might take some time to communicate intent, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Patton.” Logan’s ears flicked at the pleading look the Nihl sent him. “Still, I’ll admit there’s… no harm in a first attempt.”

Roman unsubtly chittered a laugh at his coworker’s expense, and Patton brightened immediately.

“Glad that you agree it’s… wordth a try!”

---

Janus was drawn away from the amusing argument going on between his fellow captives (the topic being how old one had to be to be an actual ‘for-realsies’ adult, federal law be damned) by two of the aliens simultaneously making odd, dragged out noises almost like stuttering groans.

“They sound like fucking zombies,” Virgil muttered from where he’d appeared at Janus’s shoulder. He’d snapped back to watching the three with blatant paranoia the moment they were loud enough to catch his notice.

The kid wasn’t subtle at all, but it wasn’t like he was wrong to be on guard. They were still abducted, regardless of how fantastical or impossible their captors seemed. Seeing how significant the size difference was, they’d have to work on escaping through… more cunning means.

Janus carefully held his position as the three giants crowded around the enclosure again, ignoring the way Virgil reached out to grip the back of his hoodie, either for comfort or in preparation to pull Janus from danger. This time, the three chattered amongst themselves for a long moment before going quiet and turning to the multiple-armed one.

Automatically, the humans mirrored the gesture, and the recipient of their attention met their gazes carefully one by one before placing a rigid, vertical hand under their chin and holding it there.

“Patton,” the alien said, slow and clear. It looked at them expectantly, and then repeated the phrase. “Patton.”

It was definitely some kind of word, that was clear enough. When not caught up in the rapid-fire chittering nature of the alien language, it was much easier to decipher.

“Patton?” Virgil muttered, and then squeaked when the alien stared at him with sudden intensity, hands flicking up and down erratically. Except for, Janus noted, the one still under its chin.

“Patton,” it said again, and then lowered the hand. Next to it, the insect-like one put a much bonier hand under its own angular chin.

“Roman,” it said, with a few subtle clicks that probably couldn’t be replicated by human mouths. Janus nodded, the pieces clicking into place. “Roman.”

Sure enough, next to make the hand gesture was the last alien, who introduced itself with a note of rippling bass overlapping with something like Logan. It was probably a bit mangled as he echoed it back, but different vocal chords made things difficult.

“You communing with them, Dee?” Remus asked from where he was crowding over his other shoulder. “That’s no sign language I’ve ever used. You speak alien and you’re not even going to share with the class?”

Janus elbowed him off, and then stepped forwards, and placed his own hand under his chin vertically, studying the ripple of reaction that got from the aliens.

“Dee,” he said, choosing to use his nickname as he had with the other humans.

The aliens immediately dissolved into excited chattering, which Janus patiently waited out. His fellow earthlings were similarly surprised.

“Wait, they’re doing introductions right now?” Virgil’s head whipped back and forth rapidly. Remus was gleefully attempting to mimic the weird, echoey quality of the voice of ‘Logan’ and getting concerningly close.

The one with all the arms-- Patton, it was Patton, he needed to remember if he wanted to make any progress at all here-- let out a string of syllables, slowed down but still nonsensical to them, and reached out.

Virgil jumped back and Remus started forwards, but Janus cut off all movement with a quickly snapped “Stop!”

Including the alien’s motion. He resisted the urge to smile at the success, instead looking up at Patton and tilting his head slightly. “What is it?”

Patton didn’t understand his words, but the questioning tone seemed to carry over, and after a beat, they moved their hand forward again just slightly before pausing, as though asking permission.

Janus weighed his options for a moment, before stepping forward. Virgil, who was still latched onto the back of him, came along with only a single sound of half-panicked protest. Patton correctly assumed that this was Janus giving his assent, and moved their hand closer, much slower this time.

With delicate, careful motions, they pushed Janus’s left hand out from under his chin, and then carefully curled a finger around his right arm, tugging that one up instead. Janus realized his mistake after a moment, and placed the right hand under his chin instead. Patton withdrew with a bright hum.

“What is happening,” Virgil hissed, and Janus glanced over his shoulder at him. The color had drained from his face, and his hand was white-knuckled where it was holding onto Janus’s borrowed outfit.

“I was mirroring their… introductory gesture, I suppose, and it seems that the meaning changes if I don’t use the correct hand. In this case, my right one,” he explained. “They’re going to want to know your name. Do you want me to assist?”    

Before he could answer, Remus was bouncing forwards, placing a hand under his own chin to gain the aliens’ attention.

“Call me I-Am-A-Buttface,” he half-shouted, grinning wildly.

---

“Did… did anyone else catch that one’s name?”

Roman watched as ‘D’ reached over and tugged the other tiny alien back by the collar roughly before they could speak again, astonished by how the other only let out what might be a cackle at the rough handling.

Not more astonished than he’d been by the alien catching on so quickly, though. Logan had been rendered completely speechless for a record amount of time, and Patton was still happily waving his hands back and forth at the success.

D visibly let out a long breath, and turned back to them, placing the correct hand under their chin this time. “D,” they repeated, and then switched things up.

They pulled the rambunctious one closer and placed their hand under that one’s chin, too. “Remus.”

“Are they-- introducing the other one as well?” Roman asked, and none of them could answer. ‘Remus’ didn’t seem to object, though they continued to speak in that rounded language. “That’s certainly a bit... unorthodox.”

D looked over at the only unnamed alien, the angry one that was standing at D’s shoulder, and after a moment, they jerked their head strangely. D seemed to understand, and held a hand palm-up in that one’s direction.

The unnamed alien put their hand in the proper introductory position, and had a few false starts before finally getting their name out. “Virgil.”

“Virgil,” Patton echoed excitedly. “That’s Virgil! Virgil, D, and Remus!”  

“Stars above,” Logan said faintly, “they really are just people but smaller.”

Roman couldn’t help but agree with the astounded sentiment. It hadn’t really sunk in before, but knowing the personal names of individual members of the unfamiliar species… “This could have been a disaster. Why were they labeled as primitive? Did the recorders even actually observe the planet they’re from? This seems a little hard to miss!”

“Easy, Roman,” Patton reached over to run a couple of gentle hands over his agitated wings. “You’re scaring the little guys.”

Sure enough, when he looked over, he could see all three of the tiny aliens were staring at him. He clicked an apology, and then echoed it in Common. “My apologies, small friends.”

“I agree with you, though… We can’t treat them as anything less, not like the tests would have us do. I’m not sure what our next step should be,” Patton admitted, and they turned as one to look at Logan. The Glanrim had a recognizably enthusiastic glint to his eyes.

“We’ll have to present our case to the Council. If we want them to believe us, we’ll need sufficient evidence that our specimens are sentient, sapient, and deserving of the standard rights,” he told them, tail swishing. “Our next step is to obtain that proof, through whatever means we can.”

Roman and Patton shared a glance before nodding in agreement. They turned towards the aliens with determination, and then stopped completely short.

“We’re… going to have to find some method of communicating our intentions,” Logan said, tapping his fingers on his shoulder in thought. “I believe the lack of such communication is what caused Virgil to behave so timidly in the first place.”

“Yeah, just reaching in and grabbing them probably isn’t a good idea,” Roman admitted. “What’s the plan, then?”

“Well, this can be a test in itself. Assuming that they can discuss amongst themselves what tests each of us did on the first run-through…”

---

Janus stared blankly at the three hands that had been set down along the floor of their enclosure, palms-up, each corresponding to one of the aliens. He turned to look at Virgil and Remus, just to ascertain that he was seeing the same thing they were.

Remus tilted his head to a painful-looking angle, and then nodded to himself. “It’s just like those choose-your-own-adventure books, except with huge aliens that we don’t know the intentions of! Fun!”  

“Oh, so they’re insane? They’re out of their skulls?” Virgil asked, his voice upping an octave in disbelief. “They really think we’re going to just literally put our lives in their hands, after they abducted and tormented us?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to have to do,” Janus muttered, and held his hands up when Virgil turned to him with a glare. “Just listen for a moment. What are they doing right now?”

“Trying to trick us,” Virgil shot back immediately.

“Getting handsy!” Remus offered.

Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “No and definitely no. They’re offering us a choice,” he clarified, “because we’ve done something to shift their opinions of us.”

“Some choice,” Virgil muttered. Janus pointed at him, making him jerk back slightly.

“Exactly. What do you think they’re going to do if we refuse to engage with them at all?”

“... Grab us anyways?”

Janus nodded, casting another look over at the waiting aliens. “If that happens, we’ve relinquished any and all control over the situation, no matter how small. Instead, we need to take advantage of this while we can. We’ll be putting our lives in their hands regardless, so it’s best to act strategically here.”

“Well, I know what I want.” Remus sidled a step away from them and towards the aliens. “Dibs on the hot one.”

“The what one?” Virgil gaped, and Remus ignored him in favor of getting a running start and then throwing himself directly onto Logan’s hand. Unsurprisingly, Logan seemed unsure how to react to a human sprawling over him like Rose from Titanic. Janus was too professional to slap a hand onto his forehead, but the urge was there. He grabbed Virgil’s shoulder when the kid started towards them.

“Forget it. He’s made his choice, and he doesn’t seem like the type to be swayed by common sense,” Janus said, rolling eyes and choosing very emphatically to not question his fellow human’s apparent qualifiers for someone being considered ‘hot’. “You need to make a decision of your own.”

Virgil shook him off, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “This is crazy. All of it. Forever. You know that, right?”

“I’m aware,” Janus replied, voice dry. Virgil shot him another look, and then seemed to actually consider the options, though grumpily. With his shoulders still up around his ears, he looked vaguely like a very angry turtle. Janus kept this observation to himself.

“Remus called the one with all the arms-- uh, Patton? He called them boring and said all they did was talk at him,” he finally offered, glancing over at the alien.

Janus nodded, keeping his own feelings on the matter off his face. “You want that one, then?”

“What?” Virgil looked at him, confused. “No, I mean you should go with them. You’ll probably have an easier time figuring out what they want from Patton.”

Janus paused, thrown off. “Hold on, that-- that leaves you with Roman. I… don’t think you’ll have the best time, considering.”

“And you will?” Virgil took Janus’s silence as the admittance it was, and nodded to himself. “I can do it. I’m tougher than you think. And anyways, if I let you go with him, he’d probably try to swipe my hoodie. Not happening.”

Janus huffed with exasperation, and Virgil gave him the closest expression he’d gotten to a smile yet before shoving his shoulder slightly and stomping up to Roman’s hand. The alien looked just as unhappy as Virgil about the decision.

---

“Well, that was an… interesting selection process,” Logan said, lifting up his hand slightly and finding that Remus seemed content to be toted around.

It was more than he could say about his own matchup. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” he grumbled as ‘Virgil’ continued to stand there, tiny arms bundled around themself, tiny eyes staring up at Roman aggressively.

The little creature didn’t seem intent on even touching Roman, let alone actually being picked up and taken anywhere. Roman looked over to where D was seating themself on the edge of Patton’s hand like a king upon their throne, and then back to Virgil, who didn’t move.

Maybe they expected Roman to do all the heavy lifting? He carefully lifted his hand, curling it around Virgil’s tiny frame, and received a vicious hiss for his efforts. He recoiled, antennae flattening. He hadn’t even known these creatures could hiss!

“You alright, kiddo?” Patton appeared next to him, one hand hovering as a safety net for D. Roman pasted on a smile immediately.

“Of course! Just working out methods of transport with… Virgil. They seem a bit less charismatic than D when it comes to conveying intent, unfortunately.” The tiny creature continued to stare at him, gaze only dipping away to meet D’s briefly.

Patton studied Virgil for a moment, gaze moving between their hunched form and Roman’s fidgeting hands. “They might be a little touch shy. The transport containers are still usable, if you need them!”

“Ah, that’s right! Patton, you’re a genius.” Roman exchanged good luck hums with the Nihl and waited until he departed to grab the transport container and present it to Virgil. “Is this what you want to use, you picky creature?”  

As though to spite him, Virgil’s skin shifted to a paler shade, and they went so far as to step back slightly. Roman allowed himself a few frustrated clickswears, and then stopped as he noticed the creature stumble slightly.

“Virgil…?” he attempted the alien’s name, but there was no response beyond their rapid air intake increasing. They didn’t look so good.

Feeling oddly off-balance, he quickly stowed the transport container away, and kept his hands out of sight to give the poor guy some more space. “Easy, easy. Please for the love of all that is good, don’t die of shock on me.”

Virgil didn’t seem to improve at first, but after a moment, they started muttering to themself, and slowly but surely, began to return to baseline. Roman felt as though years had been taken off his lifespan.

“Alright, if you feel so strongly about it, there’s no reason I can’t improvise and simply work from here,” he rambled, moving a seat and a tray of tools to the side of the wide-low enclosure. “Logan wasn’t kidding when he called you easily startled, was he?”

Virgil eyed the tray with wide eyes, and when Roman picked up the thermometer, they skittered back out of easy reach, arms lifted in what must have been a defensive gesture. Like a frightened Arkbit, but less fluffy, and Roman had to actually try to coax them over rather than just holding them still for the process.

“It’s just a thermometer! It won’t prick you or anything, on my honor,” Roman swore, and when that didn’t do the trick, he used the device on himself instead. “See, I just place it against my skin for a few moments, and… there! A perfectly healthy me!”

He extended the sensor end of the thermometer in Virgil’s direction, but didn’t advance. “C’mon, just give it a shot. We’re going to need your baseline in case you get sick, and it’ll make it easier to get the others’ temps if you can tell them I’m not going to electrocute them or anything.”

Virgil dithered for a long moment, but Roman’s patience was rewarded when the alien finally stalked closer and smacked his hand against the sensor like a challenge. Luckily, it was precise enough to work accurately even with such a small specimen, and soon enough Roman has a temperature.

“Huh… you’re warmer than me and Patton, that’s for sure,” Roman mumbled. “Logan probably already has all sorts of classification theories about you guys, but I think it’s at least safe to say you’re mammalian.”

Virgil tilted their head slightly at him, and Roman shook his head. “We’ll have more to talk about once we actually manage to make a breakthrough on language. For now,” he held up a small scale, normally used for weighing precise chemical measurements, “back to the boring stuff!”

The tiny alien made a strange drawn out noise, and placed their hands over their face, but they didn’t get all tense and breathy again, and that was progress in Roman’s book.

So long as they kept making progress, things would probably turn out okay.

[avengerscompound]

The Surrogate - Chapter 1

The Surrogate:  A Clintasha Fanfic

Masterlist

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Clint Barton x Natasha Romanoff x F!Reader

Word Count:  3305

Rating:  E

Warnings: Injuries, smut (M\F, oral sex, vaginal sex, public sex)

Synopsis:  A freak end of the world incident leads to meeting your two best friends, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff.  While your friendship with the two Avengers is anything but conventional, they are your all-time favorite people.  When you find out that Clint and Natasha want to start a family but have exhausted all their options, you realize your powerset might allow you to give them what they want.  Having your best friends’ baby might seem like a good idea on paper, but when you are as close as you, Clint, and Natasha are, will doing something so intimate mean feelings get a little mixed up?

A/N:  Just a reminder as this is a new series you must tell me (preferably by ask) that you want to be tagged or continue to be tagged.

Chapter 1

The sky was on fire.  Everything around you was chaos.  People running for their lives and parts of buildings crashing to the ground.  You were trying to not let the crowd drag you along with them because all you could think was there was nowhere you could go right now that would be safe and if you were going to die, you didn’t want it to be at the bottom of a pile of corpses.

You ducked down a side alley that stunk of trash but was blessedly empty of people.  As you took a moment to decide what you would do next, there was a cry from above you and a figure rocketed down from the side of the building, managed to grab hold of the fire escape just long enough to dislocate his shoulder and slow his fall, before landing on top of a dumpster with a loud crash and rolling onto the ground.  You rushed over to the figure that seemed to be trying to struggle to its feet.

“You probably shouldn’t move,” you said, crouching down and pushing him back a little.  It wasn’t until that moment that you realized this was an actual Avenger.  Not just any Avenger either, Hawkeye, one of the original ones.  You wondered what he was doing in your town and if there were any other Avengers here.  If there were, maybe you weren’t as doomed as you’d originally thought.

“Gotta,” Clint groaned trying to push you back off him.  “Need to get back.”

“You’re an archer and at the very least you’ve dislocated your arm,” you reasoned.

“Not dislocated,” Clint groaned, rolling onto his side.  “Broken.  And some ribs.  Might have bruised my spine.”

You helped him to sit up and furrowed your brow.  “I might be able to help you,” you said.  “A little anyway.  Help you get back.”

“What?  You a drug dealer?”  Clint asked, pulling his arm in against his side.

“No,” you said. “I’m enhanced.  I need you to kiss me.  And not like a peck.  With your injuries, it’s gonna need a full-on make-out session just to get you up.”

Clint’s face did not hide his emotions at all.  He furrowed his brow in confusion, then widened his eyes in surprise.  His lips pursed together as he considered if you were telling the truth and then a large smile broke out on it.  “If you wanted to make-out you just had to ask.”

You leaned in and licked your lips, wetting them well before bringing them to the archer’s.  The spark happened immediately as your powers engaged.  People often thought it was that spark that happens in stories where two people who are meant for each other finally kiss and fall in love.  The first time it happened you’d even fallen for that and you and the guy had ended up dating for a year too long before you realized that maybe there was no such thing as fate, and if there was it could go fuck itself because you weren’t spending another day with that jackass, destiny be damned.

Clint made a soft choked sound and his hand went to your hair drawing you in closer and deepening the kiss.  It was good really.  Even if he was caught up in the feel of your lips against his, and that spark that ran between you it would help with the process.  You teased your tongue into his mouth and he let out a moan as they started to actually do their job.

You were a healer.  Your powers worked perfectly in your own body.  You never got sick, if you cut yourself it would heal instantly.  One time you had been riding a bike and hit a rock.  It sent you sprawling and you heard a loud crack in your shoulder and a flare of white-hot pain.  People had come running to help but when you got back up, there had been absolutely nothing wrong.  Not even a scrape.

They didn’t work so perfectly on other people.  You’d figured out through some accidental trial and error that it worked through bodily fluid exchange.  Kissing could work on cuts and scrapes, but you’d normally need to donate blood to get to the level of healing Clint Barton currently needed, and that only worked if they were a compatible blood type.  There were other ways that worked better than kissing of course.  None you wanted to do right here in the street with a complete stranger even if you could talk him into it.

You swirled your tongue with his and licked over the corner of his mouth, dragging the kiss out as long as possible.  When you finally pulled back, his bruises were gone and most of his cuts.  The arm was definitely still broken but he seemed to be holding it a little better.

“Holy shit,” Clint said.  “I - uh -”

“You aren’t in love with me,” you assured him.  “Don’t worry.  Go save the world.”

He pulled himself to his feet and grabbed his bow from where it had fallen a few feet away.  “I wanna talk to you when all this is done.”

“If you save the world, I’ll meet you back here,” you agreed reluctantly.  You didn’t know if you'd just plunged yourself into deep water by outing your abilities to an actual Avenger or if he was stuck the ‘true love’s kiss’ groove and you were going to have to knock him out of it, but either way, you were dreading it, even if it did mean the world was safe.

You left the alley not long after Clint and ended up sheltering in a tunnel while you waited out the battle.  As the sounds of fighting and explosions died down and the sky began to return to its usual blue, you dared to set back out again.  Clean up crews and emergency services had arrived and it was a little difficult evading them, but you eventually made your way to the alley.

Clint was waiting for you alone.  It looked like he'd seen a medic.  His arm was now in a sling and he had stitches in his cheek.  “Was starting to think you weren't gonna show,” Clint said.

“They aren't letting people back into the hub of the damage,” you explained.  “Had to sneak past a bunch of barricades.”

“Well, aren't you resourceful?” Clint said playfully.  “You got anywhere we could talk?  Preferably where I could also get very, very drunk?”

“I doubt anything is gonna be open around here,” you said.  “Might have to go further out.”

Clint nodded and the two of you walked out looking for a bar together.  He was limping a little and you considered offering your services again, but the looming conversation held you back. You didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.

By the time you did find a bar that was open you had hyped up the conversation so much in your head, you were fairly sure he was going to either propose or send you to the raft for being unregistered and breaking the Sokovia Accords.

“Shots?”  Clint asked as you went into the busy bar.

“Yeah.  Definitely,” you agreed.  “And get food.  I’m starving.  I’ll find a table.”

It took a while to find anywhere to sit.  It was like half the city had decided to drink after the events of the day and this was the only bar open.  You ended up having to share a table with a group of women who seemed to already be halfway to fully drunk.

“So,” Clint said, placing a tray of shots on the table and sliding into the booth beside you.  “Enhanced, huh?”

 “Yeah,” you said and took your first shot.  He’d gotten Kaluah of all things, though you were grateful for the soft warmth of the coffee liqueur over a harsh burn of something like whiskey.

Clint chuckled and took his own shot. “Gonna make me beat it out of you, are you?”  He teased.  When you didn’t answer he shook his head and continued.  “How’d it happen?”

You shrugged.  “Don’t really know exactly,” you say. “I got sick as a kid, and they put me on this drug trial.  I got better and I don’t think I’ve been sick since, but it was such a long time between the trail ending and me noticing that I could actually heal myself that I can’t say for sure it was that or something else.”

You both took another shot and Clint scratched at his arm like it was annoying him. “So just healing?” He asked.

“That’s not enough?”  You shot back.

He laughed loudly, throwing his head back.  “No, that’s plenty.  More than I’ve got,” he conceded.  “You’re pretty defensive you know?”

You sighed and sunk back into the chair.  The alcohol was already making your head feel fuzzy and you were worried you were going to get into a fight with Hawkeye right in the middle of the bar.  “I can just see how this conversation goes.  You’re either gonna convince me to join the Avengers or you’re thinking about the kiss and that spark and you wanna ask me out.”

“That kiss was pretty great,” Clint teased.

“I know, it’s the powers,” you said.  “People think it’s some kind of soulmate thing.  I’ve had stalkers because of it.”

Clint waited as you took another shot.  One of the bar staff came over and put a plate of sliders and curly fries down and you both started to eat.  “God, I needed that,” Clint said with his mouth full.

“You did do a lot today,” you said.

“Yeah, I saved your ass and you won’t even date me,” he teased.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t date you,” you argued.  “I just don’t want an Avengers stalker.”

“Don’t worry,” he said.  “I mean, don’t get me wrong, if you wanted to kiss me again, I wouldn’t fight you off, but I get it.  It was something to do with the healing.”

“Yeah,” you said.  “Energy transference I think it is.”

There was another pause and you both took another shot.  You were drunk now, you knew it.  Normally you would be more careful about drinking this much with a strange man but there had been so much today, and he was an avenger.

“Why don’t you want to be an Avenger?” He asked.

You sighed.  “I’d be useless.  What am I gonna do, follow you all around and make-out every time someone gets a scratch?”

He laughed.  “That’s the only way it works?”

“It’s a bodily fluid exchange.  I could have spit in your mouth, but I thought that would be hard to talk you into,” you explained.

Clint laughed and held his side.  “You kidding? I normally have to pay people to do that.”

You completely lost it laughing.  “Oh my god!”

“Alright, alright, don’t make me laugh,” Clint said.  “My ribs are still busted.”

“Want me to help with that?” You offered.

He looked you up and down and chewed his bottom lip.  “Dunno.  Next time we make out, I want it to be because you want to make out with me.”

You giggled and heat rushed to your face.  It was not a reaction you were used to but then you weren’t used to good looking superheroes hitting on you either.

“So, if it’s bodily fluids, would blood work?” He asked.

“Blood works best,” you said.  “But I can’t keep myself bleeding long enough to do a bleed into their wound thing, and if it’s a blood transfusion, they still have to match my blood type.”

“Well that could still be useful,” he said.  “Maybe you are the same blood type as some of us?  You could come and see?”

You sighed and picked up the last shot on the tray.  Since you got your powers you had wanted to help, but they were so limited you hadn’t been able to find a way to do that and have it actually work.  You gave blood regularly and hoped that might have led to some of the miracle recoveries some people go through, but apart from that, there wasn’t much you could do.  At least agreeing to go with Clint to see if you might be able to help was something you could do.

“Fine,” you sighed.  “I’ll go with you, but I warn you, my powers are so limited.  I doubt it’ll come to anything.”

“Great,” Clint grinned and put his arm around your shoulders.  “Now, to trying to get you to want to kiss me for real.”

You laughed and drank the shot.  Clint went up and got more drinks.  This time just a pitcher of beer for the two of you to share.  Whether it was the alcohol, the stress, the thrill that he was an Avenger or maybe that he seemed to be a completely likable dumbass, you weren’t sure but it didn’t take long until you were locked together, kissing passionately and finding yourself getting more than a little bit turned on.

You were practically sitting on his lap as his hands slid up under your skirt.  The spark that ran from you to him, was like a hot current, pulling you to him.  He moaned into your lips, completely uncaring that there were people around you.  It was likely that part of that was due to the fact you’d been at it for so long his bones were knitting, but he was definitely as turned on as you were, you could feel his erection every time he pulled you closer to him.

You gripped his thigh and he broke the kiss and began sucking on the pulse point under your ear.  “I want to fuck you so fucking bad.”

“My place was in the fall zone,” you whined.

He gripped your thigh and pulled you so you were almost straddling him.  “Bathroom,” he growled against your ear.

You nodded and he pulled you to your feet.  The two of you stumbled to the bathrooms, making out against the wall as you waited for one to become free.  As soon as it did, Clint pushed you inside, locking the door behind you.  He was still sore you could tell, but even with the broken arm and ribs, he managed to lift you up onto the sink.  You spread your legs and he dragged your panties down.  You were already soaking for him, and he dropped to his knees and ran his tongue up your cunt.  The spark you felt as your powers engaged ran hard through your cunt, making you jerk your hips.  You braced your arm against the mirror and gripped the side of the sink as Clint held your legs apart and greedily sucking on your folds.  He moaned loudly and his tongue pushed inside of you like he was trying to drink you up from the source.  You rocked your hips against his face and he began to focus on your clit, sucking and biting at it.  He thrust two fingers inside you and fucked you hard with them.  With the current that was running through you, you were barely holding it together.  You panted, your head resting back on the grimy glass of the mirror above the sink.  Clint’s fingers moved inside you, dragging over your g-spot again and again.  You weren’t sure you were going to be able to hold yourself up and your legs kept wanting to snap night around his head.  He held them apart and kept going and with a loud cry, you came, gushing on his face.  He let out a moan to match your cry and lapped up what he could.  He stood and began to fish around in his pocket.

“Jesus, I think my ribs have healed.  Should have eaten you out in the field,” Clint teased.

“What kind of girl do you think I am?”  You laughed.

“Fucking filthy one,” he growled.

You grabbed him by the belt and began to unfasten his pants.  “Clint,” you said, still breathing heavily.  “I’m on birth control and I’m a healer.”

A slow smile played over his lips and he pulled his cock out.  “Well, then,” he said and thrust deep inside of you.

You both moaned, the spark returning again.  There was a banging on the door and you buried your face in his neck.  “Fuck,” you giggled.  “Gonna need to be quick.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Clint teased, playfully.  “I can do ‘quick’.”

You burst out laughing and let your head fall back, he held you close and started fucking you hard and deep.  He shoved you up against the wall with every thrust and you bit into his shoulder, moaning into his skin.  Your fingers dug into his back and you braced a foot on the wall.  Everything came together perfectly, the place, the person, your powers, how deep and hard he penetrated you, you lost yourself to it.  Your body spasmed and clenched and you came again, holding yourself as close to Clint as you could as it shuddered though you.  He thrust hard into you, holding you in place as he came.  “Fuck,” he groaned as his cock pulsed with it’s released.  “That was…”

“Mm-hmm…” you hummed and he slipped from within you.  “The healing thing always makes it more intense.”

“How come it’s done nothing for my ears?”  Clint asked as he tucked his cock back away.  “I mean, everything it’s been working on, but I still have my hearing aids on?”

You shook your head as you straightened yourself back up and pulled up your underwear.  “Don’t know.  The worse the injury or illness the more exchange has to happen.  I can’t do things like regrow body parts.  It does nothing for scar tissue.  And the older the injury the less likely it is to work at all.”

“Huh,” Clint said and there was another banging on the door.  “You ready?”

You nodded.  “Yeah, better let the people pee.”

The two of you walked back into the crowded bar.  “You coming home with me?”  Clint asked as he took out his phone and tapped around on it.

You shrugged.  “I guess.  I mean, I don’t even think they’ll let me near my place.”

“Cool,” Clint said casually.  “To the roof.”

You furrowed your brow and looked at him.  He just pointed the way so you followed after him.  As you reached the roof a large black military jet approached and then hovered above you both.  The back end of it opened up and it began to lower itself down, when it was within reach, Clint jumped up into the back and leaned over, holding his hand out to you and helping you scramble inside.

You followed him up to the cockpit as the back end closed again.  “Thanks for coming to get me, Nat,” Clint said, kissing the redhead at the cockpit on the cheek.

She scrunched up her nose and ruffled his hair.  “What was I supposed to do?  Leave you here?”

You watched them as you took your seat and buckled yourself in.  There was an easy affection between them and you realized, they were together.  Together-together.  You’d just helped Hawkeye cheat on Black Widow.

Bile started to bubble up from your stomach and you weren’t sure what to do.  You could keep it secret and let it eat at you forever, or you could tell her and she’d probably stab you.  It wouldn’t kill you, but being stabbed still hurt and you didn’t want it to happen.

Your conscience seemed to be in control though.  The words bubbled up and burst out of your mouth completely out of your control.  With a yelp and covering your mouth with your hands, you shouted; “Clint and I just had sex!”

// NEXT

[buckyskorpion]

11 hours - part three

Pairing: Biker!Bucky x Reader

Summary: bucky is the mystery you can’t wait to solve. if you can get out of his bed long enough, that is. a biker au.

Warnings: gang-typical violence, sex scenes, alcohol mentions, probably more to come so stay tuned

A/N: we got some spicy things happening this chapter folks!! a lot of natasha too and plot and a tiny bit of fluff at the end. i hope you enjoy!! let me know what you think. i wont be taking tags for this so please dont ask.

title taken from 11 hours by wet | playlist

part one | part two

Mrs Shoreditch had agreed to meet you at the cafe you’d been inhabiting daily as you kept watch on Steve’s shop, and you’re waiting for her now at your usual table with unusual trepidation. Your leg is bouncing under the table, you’re darting looks left and right down the street trying to catch sight of her. You have to finish this job - seeing Bucky last night confirmed that. Looking into his friends and his life feels wrong, and you want to end it as soon as possible. It’s none of your business unless Bucky wants it to be.

She’s late, one o’clock ticking by and then some, anxiety hiking with every passing minute. The file on her husband sits unremarkable on the table in front of you, and you drum your fingers against it unconsciously. The sooner this meeting is over the sooner you can move on with your day, maybe go see your dad, take on some normal clients who don’t have eery connections to your personal life and keep you up at night.

Someone approaches the table and you’re about to feel relieved, until you look up and instead of seeing Mrs Shoreditch apologising for her tardiness you find Natasha standing before you. She blocks out the sun, a ring of red wisps escaping her ponytail lit up like a halo behind her head but the calculating look in her eyes is nowhere near angelic. She looks nothing like the girl you met at the party - gone is the sundress, replaced by an outfit weirdly similar to yours. Leather jacket, skinny jeans, Docs and chipped black nail polish you catch as she wiggles her fingers at you in that same, condescending wave.

“Natasha?” You can’t believe she’s caught you, but you’re technically not doing anything wrong right now - you just feel like you are, with the way she’s looking at you like a ‘gotcha’ moment not gone your way.

Natasha nods, smirking, and says, “What a coincidence.”

“Yeah,” you breathe, but you know neither of you believe it. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting Steve,” she says. It takes everything in you not to glance over at the tattoo shop, giving yourself away. You bite the inside of your cheek and keep your eyes trained on hers, furrowing your brows in an approximation of confusion. She waits a beat, you don’t think you’ve convinced her, but then she says, ”He works over there.”

She jerks a thumb to the tattoo shop and you nod, following her finger with bone-deep relief. It doesn’t last long, tension eating it’s way back up your spine as she asks, “What about you? I haven’t seen you here before.”

Been here every day, lady, you think, but say with a tap to the folder on the table, “Work. Meeting a client.”

“Oh?” she asks, an eyebrow raised. She doesn’t question you further, but that in itself is suspicious. Everyone always presses for more with your vague answers - client? For what? Announcing you’re a private investigator kind of ruins your confidential reputation so you often have to work a lot harder than this to keep your work life private. Natasha doesn’t press it, though. Like she already knows. Dread curls low and heavy in your gut.

At that moment, Mrs Shoreditch finally shows up. She doesn’t seem harried, out of breath, or concerned she’s late in any way, shape, or form. She takes the seat opposite you, offering you a smile and placing her ridiculously expensive handbag on the table. With blonde hair tossed over one shoulder, to your absolute horror she looks up to Natasha and smiles at her, too. Recognition, as Natasha returns it.

“You should come over to the shop when you’re done,” Natasha says to you but it sounds more like a demand than a request, shattering the silence with a sledgehammer. You’d miscalculated, somewhere. Something isn’t right.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” you say, making eye contact with Mrs Shoreditch and hoping Natasha understands. You hardly think Mrs Shoreditch would want you going in there after you reveal that’s the place her husband has been shovelling her money into for months. Mrs Shoreditch avoids your gaze, however, picking at her perfect manicure. It clicks, then. You’re so fucking stupid.

“See you in a minute,” Natasha says, ignoring what you said entirely with a sparkle in her eyes that doesn’t bode well for you. She crosses the street, gone in a second, and you turn back to Mrs Shoreditch as a numbness creeps into your veins.

She’s a typical socialite, perfectly up-kept in every aspect and dressed to the nines even for a rubbish cafe in Red Hook. You didn’t think she was capable of hoodwinking you, and maybe that’s where you first went wrong. She finally meets your eyes, apologetic and almost tearful. She reaches a hand out, resting it on the file you’d prepared as if she realises last minute trying to touch you is a bad fucking idea.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, “I’ve been wasting your time-“

“Natasha hired you to hire me,” you say, cutting her off with the coldness in your voice. She nods mutely, retracting her hand back to her lap as if burned. “You already knew about Mike’s other bank account.”

“Yes,” she admits, rolling her lips together. At least she has the decency to look ashamed. “Ms Romanoff said she’d pay off an instalment of Mike’s debt if I hired you, and I- I didn’t ask questions. I’m so sorry, you seem lovely-“

You don’t wait to hear her finish, standing from the table and leaving your useless file behind without a second glance. You head across the street, for the first time approaching the front door of the tattoo parlour. Natasha knew you’d come here eventually, knew you’d see Steve and start putting dots together. She baited you here, but why? You were Bucky’s fuck buddy, nothing more. Why play this game at all?

You take a deep breath before shouldering the door open, entering the permanent twilight of the shop you’d come to know so well through the lens of your camera. It’s cool in here, the street noise dampened so all you can hear is pop-punk playing low through speakers and the buzz of the tattoo gun. Steve is at the back, bent over someone’s arm and doesn’t break concentration when the bell above the door rings, announcing your entrance. Natasha waits, however, hip propped up against the counter and smiling as she sees you stop at the door, not daring to enter further.

“What do you want?” you ask, calling out across the shop. It draws the attention of the two guys in leather, Steve’s regulars, sitting on the couch in the waiting area. They eye you suspiciously, as does the kid who mans the cash register you often see doing homework instead of his job. Natasha pushes off the counter, beckoning you to the back of the store where you know Steve’s office to be. You follow, heart in your mouth, aware you’re walking further into the trap you hadn’t even known had been set for you.

Natasha closes the door behind you and takes a seat at the desk, covered in stencil designs and files which she seems to entirely disregard as she crosses her feet on top of them, dirt smears be damned. You sit in the chair opposite, back ramrod straight with how uncomfortable you are, and wait for an answer.

“You’re smart,” she says, which is not what you were expecting. You blink, confused by the compliment, and Natasha smirks. “And a lot more observant than Bucky gives you credit for.”

“It’s my job,” you say, unsure of what to give away. Obviously she knows you’re a private investigator or you wouldn’t be in this mess, but she doesn’t know what you know. Not yet, anyway.

“I know,” she says, inclining her head, “I googled you.”

That makes you uncomfortable. Bucky doesn’t even know your last name, how does she? All that she would’ve found is your business website because you’re not stupid enough to put your life online, but still, the thought that she had been trying to look into you makes your blood run cold. You’re starting to really regret going to that party with Bucky - if Natasha’s weird behaviour then wasn’t a tip off, then your deep-dive into their secret lives has clearly shown you there’s a lot more to Bucky than he was ever intending of letting on. Natasha’s intervention in your job merely confirms what you’d already figured out.

“Why did you get Mrs Shoreditch to hire me?” you ask. Natasha regards you for a second, thinking, and it’s a look that reminds you eerily of Bucky.

“I wanted to see what you’d find,” she says. You feel your jaw clench, despite yourself - she’s being evasive even now, and it’s like she can read your frustration because she smiles then, says, “And I wanted to see if Bucky’s choice to trust you was a wise one.”

“He doesn’t trust me,” you say, defensive, too quick. She raises her eyebrows. Frustrated at this cryptic and frankly dramatic conversation, you ask, “Can you just tell me what you want? You’ve wasted weeks of my time and I think I deserve to know why.”

“As I said,” Natasha said slowly, clearly amused at the rise she’s managed to get out of you, “I want to see what you found.”

“Are you going to pay for it?” you snap. You don’t want to tell her - you don’t know why. Clearly, she already knows far more than you ever will, but this is the only thing you have over her and it feels like the most important thing in the world in this moment.  

Natasha rolls her eyes and says, “You’ll be well compensated, don’t worry.”

You have a small stare off with the red head before you huff, conceding. That was a fight you were destined to lose, anyway. You grab your laptop from your bag and send a quick email of everything you’d collected to Steve’s business email. His monitor pings with a notification and and you raise your eyebrows towards it, watching Natasha unfold her legs off the desk and lean forward to start reading. You don’t trust her with your laptop as far as you can throw it, so you make sure it’s shut down completely before placing it back in your bag.

Natasha reads for a long time, because you’d found a lot. Her eyes dart across the screen almost too-fast, the set of her mouth growing tenser and tenser as each silent minute passes. You feel a weird, sick sense of satisfaction at that - clearly, you’d surpassed her expectations.

You had been thorough. Pictures of Steve, the kid working the counter, the regulars who park their bikes at the back, the bikes themselves, the inside of the shop from your window vantage point, Sam at one point, Natasha at others, meetings they held and rough angles of deals gone on inside the shop. You couldn’t get a clear shot, but you saw them exchanging money with leather-clad strangers for something. The long hours after closing they spend at the tattoo shop doing everything but tattooing is all captured and saved on your computer. You’d written up a run-sheet of the shop’s routines as well, based on what you’d observed from your little cafe spot - Natasha spends longer looking at that then anything else, mouse hovering over the word you’d written at the bottom. Gang?

You’d researched them all, except for Bucky. He never appeared at the shop while you were watching it, and it gave you the perfect out to leave him alone in your investigation. Steve and Sam had wrap sheets longer than your arm, and Natasha notably had nothing online at all. None of them had social media, which is weird, and the only photo you could find dated back to a highschool cross country picture of Steve and Sam, first and second medals respectively. You refused to look for Bucky. It made you sick just thinking about what you’d find on him, so you decided you just didn’t want to know. Not like that, behind a computer screen in your apartment with a bottle of red-wine half gone beside you. Bucky doesn’t belong there.  

You could have kept digging, given more time. It had been eating at you, though, consuming the hours you were supposed to be sleeping and waking you up when you finally closed your eyes. It didn’t matter how much you found, ten more questions would arise from it, and you were becoming obsessed. So you decided to end it. Clearly, you’d come to that conclusion a bit too late.

“Bucky doesn’t know your last name,” Natasha says, suddenly, shocking you enough to flinch. She doesn’t look away from the screen, but goes on, “He doesn’t know you’re a PI, where you live, what you do in your spare time. He knows noting about you, but he doesn’t seem to care. I told him that was stupid.”

You swallow past the hard lump in your throat. You knew Natasha hadn’t exactly warmed to you at that party but you hadn’t expected this level of- what would you even call it? A threat? You feel threatened, a metaphorical knife to your throat as Natasha finally looks at you again, pinning you down with a cold green stare.

“He’s not in any of this,” she says, tapping a fingernail on the keyboard to emphasis your research. It’s not a question, but you know what she’s asking.

“I wasn’t hired to look into Bucky,” you say, refraining from adding because I have self control and I don’t need to invade his privacy to have sex with him. “Anything I need to know, I can get from him.”

Natasha is silent for a long time, staring at you, and you don’t dare look away. This, too, is a test. After god-knows how much time has passed, she stands and you do too, hurrying to grab your bag and meet her at the office door she holds open for you. Conversation over, you suppose - you’re starting to get used to Natasha’s cryptic ways even if they piss you off beyond belief.

“Delete everything you just sent me,” she says. You scoff, rolling your eyes at her, but she stares you down with the darkest, scariest look you’ve ever received from someone who’s a head shorter than you. You think about that word you’d written in your notes, gang, after one too many red wines and thinking back to the way Natasha looked at you when you described them all as a family. Maybe you shouldn’t argue with her, given everything you’d experienced today.

“I’d cover that window if I were you,” you say, instead of answering. A muscle ticks in her jaw but she says nothing else, so you take your leave. Steve waves awkwardly as you go but you ignore him, shouldering out of the shop and practically running down the street.

Energy burns in your muscles that you can’t seem to get rid of, even as you chose to walk all the way back to your apartment which takes over an hour. It’s anger, you realise, fisting your hair and pacing around your apartment like a crazy person. Uncontrollable rage at being played with, tested at every turn, and for what? You never asked to be a part of this game. You’d never done anything but exactly what Bucky asked and it still wasn’t enough.

Your phone begins to ring, Bucky’s name flashing across the screen, and with a scream of pure frustration you throw it full-force into the nearest wall. It makes a dent in the drywall, falls to the ground and the impact shatters the screen but that won’t stop it vibrating uselessly against the floorboards as Bucky rings and rings and rings.

You won’t pick up. This time, or ever again. And not just because you’ve now fucked your phone beyond repair, either. You never asked to play this game, so now you’ll take yourself out of it.

***

This is exactly why you keep yourself so guarded - cutting people out is easy when they have nothing to hold onto. You change your phone number when you go to get it fixed, and it’s like Bucky never even existed. He doesn’t know where you work, where you live, and you don’t go back to any of the bars you went to with him. It’s easier than breathing to remove him from your life.  

The same cannot be said about removing Bucky from you.

He’d crawled inside your ribcage and stayed there, burnt a cigarette hole in your heart to claim it as his and you hate that. You never allowed him to do that. So he might not be physically in your life anymore but he’s still there, a ghost of a hand on your throat and an ache that might mean you miss him.

His friends are crazy and he’s in a gang, you tell yourself daily, like it’ll help. Like you believe it even slightly. It’s better this way.

“You’re quiet, kroshka,” you dad says, handing you a cup of tea. You remove your thumb from your mouth where you’d been gnawing at a hangnail to take it, smiling up at him in thanks. He doesn’t go back to his armchair, though, rather kicking a cushion off the couch to sit beside you. You dip with his added weight, closer to him, and he allows you to rest your head on his shoulder while you both blow on your teas in unintentional tandem.

“Kroshka is tired,” you mumble. He clicks his tongue at you, which is fair. Shit excuse, anyway. You sit up, twisting to face him, and ask, “How do I know if I’m overreacting to something?”

“With you, overreacting is baseline,” your dad says, grinning as you slap him on the arm. He takes a sip of tea and says, “Tell me.”

“No,” you say, aware you’re being a brat, but what are you going to say? This woman tricked me and she’s smarter than me so I cut the guy I like out of my life because I can’t let anyone in or I feel like I’m going to die? Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

“Well,” he says, giving you an unimpressed look, “If you’re questioning whether you’re overreacting, I would say there might be some truth to the feeling. It’s not like you to be unsure, though. Are you sure everything’s ok?”

“Yes, papa,” you sigh, going back to leaning on his shoulder. He might have a point. “You’ve just raised an idiot.”

“I did no such thing,” he says, placing his tea on the side table to pull you into a hug. You feel small, like you’re a little girl again, and you close your eyes against your father’s chest. Maybe you can just stay here and forget about the mess you’ve made of your life. He rubs circles into your back and says, “You’ll figure it out.”

“Ya lyublyu tebya, luna,” you say softly. I love you, moon. You’ve been saying this since before you can remember, your dad whispering it into your hair when he tucked you in at night or you calling across the playground when he’d drop you off at school. In your secret language so no one else knows, a message just for him - from you to your entire world.

“Lyublyu tetbya bol’she, zvedzdy,” he responds, kissing your hair. Love you more, stars.

He sends you off with a bag of donut holes, an obvious reminder you’re both not actually Russian but New Yorker to the bone, and you eat two on the subway ride home while you think. Deleting Bucky from your life is instinct, protection - he’d gotten too close. But really, when you allow yourself to examine the tight knot of feelings sitting in the base of your throat, what’s making you run is guilt.

You crossed a line, investigating his friends. You pried into the life he very purposefully kept you away from and you’d changed your number not because you didn’t want Bucky contacting you anymore, but because he might decide not to and you couldn’t live with watching your phone for a notification that would never come. Natasha will have told him everything by now, probably even showed him, and he’ll never trust you now. You’d blown it. You could be angry at Natasha for baiting you into doing it, but she never would have felt the need to if you had just been honest.

You stuff another donut hole in your mouth to stop yourself from crying. It works only a little bit.

The apartment feels colder, lonelier than it ever has even though being alone was what you thought you wanted. It just allows you to think of Bucky some more, curled up on your couch with the bag of donut holes now empty on the coffee table, sniffling into the sleeve of your hoodie. His smell, the way he always runs hot, the callouses on his hands probably from working in his garage you’ll never get to see now. Stubble, short-shaven hair, tattoos all down his left arm you never gave proper attention to. You can’t remember them all. Just the star, red and big in the middle of his deltoid. You thought you had more time.

“Fuck it,” you say, fishing your phone out of your jeans pocket. Bucky might not have your number anymore but you have his. Maybe if you just called him and heard his voice for a second, just that rumbly ‘hello,’ it might scratch the itch driving you insane. Before you can dial though, you get a notification from your banking app - a deposit from a new contact.

Natasha Romanoff jumps out at you, stopping your heart in your chest. Does she have a sixth sense for any time you so much as think about Bucky? She’s transferred you an obscene amount of money, and it takes you far too long to realise she’s paying you for the Shoreditch case that turned out to be one giant trust test you spectacularly failed. The reason you’re being a pathetic mess alone in your apartment pining over a guy who, as Natasha said herself, doesn’t even know your last name. Get a grip, Jesus Christ.

You open up the notification just to check it’s real and she really did triple the quote you’d given Mrs Shoreditch. That’s when you read what she’s written as the name of the transaction - an address for somewhere in Queens. You should probably at least think about jumping up, grabbing your jacket and practically sprinting from your apartment to an address sent to you by someone you’re 99% sure is part of a biker gang, but you don’t. You have a pretty good idea of what that address means, and curiosity is your biggest vice. Natasha’s sending you a cryptic message and you might not quite understand what it means just yet, but you’re certainly not going to ignore it.

Half an hour later you’re standing across the street from White Wolf Mechanics, hiding in the gaps between street lights and watching Bucky fix up a motorbike. The three huge roller doors are all open, letting light spill out onto the street as well as the thump of a baseline from a song you recognise, because you showed him it. Natasha sits on the work bench cross legged, scrolling on her phone and occasionally handing Bucky tools as he asks for them. He stands, wipes his hands on his skintight black t-shirt and says something into the depth of the shop. Sam appears, grinning wide and tossing a greasy rag at Bucky’s head which he catches easily.

He seems well, and that makes you happy. It’s only been a couple of days since you last saw him but it might as well have been months from how much you’ve spiralled. He might not have even noticed you’d separated yourself from him, and that thought makes you sick. You should go. You need to go. But your feet carry you across the street, jogging into the shadows so they don’t see you. You’ll hear his voice and then you’ll go.

You linger by the farthest roller door from them, sticking outside the pool of light and half-hiding behind the wall of the shop. You can still see them, though, Bucky’s face now turned towards you as he learns over the bike. Brow furrowed in concentration, and you want to smooth out the dent between them with your thumb but that’s not for you anymore. It never was.

“Have you talked Sam about it?” Natasha asks Bucky. You watch him glare at the part he’s holding in his hands and his whole body stiffens. He keeps his back to Natasha so you can see the anger play across his face clear as day.

“What’s there to tell?” he snaps. “You’ve taken care of everything, fuck what I want, so what’s the point?”

“Cut it out, James,” Natasha snaps back, “You know I was protecting you.”

“When did I ask,” Bucky grits out through a clenched jaw, throwing the part to the ground so the clang of metal on stone echoes out onto the empty street, making you jump. He balls his fists up at his sides and says, “You were out of line.”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha says evenly. She unfolds herself from the table with an unfair amount of grace and steps behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Bucky sighs, shoulders curling in and tension leaking out of his body. You want to hug him, but you will yourself to stay where you are.

Eventually, Bucky shrugs off Natasha’s touch and says, like a moody teenager, “Whatever.” Natasha rolls her eyes, watching him go back to work on the bike with a bit too much aggression that is strictly necessary. She hands him the part he threw silently, and it takes him a beat to unclench his fists and take it. A peace offering, you suppose, in Natasha’s strange language. She doesn’t go back to the workbench, rather staying by Bucky’s side despite his annoyed grumble.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she says, “You proved me wrong, and I’m not too proud to realise that. I am sorry.”

Bucky looks up at her, as confused as you feel because where the fuck did that come from, and says, “Proved you- have you completely lost it?”

But Natasha isn’t look at him anymore. She’s looking at you.

Busted, you think, and you consider turning around and running before Bucky can see you. It’s a bit late for that, though, so you step into the light of the shop and halfheartedly return Natasha’s welcoming grin. It takes Bucky a second, snapping his fingers in front of Natasha’s face like he’s worried she’s actually gone in insane before he follows her eyeline and lands on you.

You’ve never seen Bucky shocked before, but he looks it now as for the second time the spare part he’s holding hits concrete with an ear-grating clang. You flinch at the sound despite yourself, and that seems to shock Bucky back into action. He whips around to glare at Natasha, pointing at you as he does.

“What did you do,” he demands. Maybe coming here really was a bad idea after all.

Natasha, ignoring Bucky completely, walks over to hold out her hand for you to shake. I’m lost, you think, as she says, “Let’s start again. I’m Natasha, James is the only family I have and I’m neurotically protective of him. He’s right to trust you, as much as it pains me to say I’m sorry for meddling in your relationship.”

You don’t take her hand. You’re not entirely sure you want to forgive her just yet, even if she did extend the olive branch to get you here. You fold your arms over your chest and say, “Next time, if you want to know something about me, just ask.”

She quirks an eyebrow at you, retracting her hand back to her side and you hate the way she always seems to be laughing at you. Natasha ducks her head, smirks, and disappears into some back office without another word. It’s just you and Bucky, the body of a bike between you as well as the weight of all the things you never said that’s all out in the open now. You’re looking at each other like you never have before, eyes open to the vast chasm of secrets you’ve both been keeping, and for the first time since you met Bucky you keep your distance.

“So,” he says, folding this arms over his giant chest. Not fair, you think, as his biceps flex against the tight sleeve of his t-shirt. Bucky averts his eyes to somewhere beyond your head and says, “You’re a private investigator.”

“You’re in a biker gang,” you reply, mimicking his folded-arms tight-lipped expression. He raises his eyebrows in a silent touché, and now that it’s out in the open you feel something inside you break off, slide down the tense hunch of your shoulders until you feel weightless. You should want to lock up tight, keep Bucky out because he’s gotten far too close already - you should use this blight as an escape. Somehow, though, having Bucky see you like no one else really has doesn’t feel as scary as you thought it would. Maybe because you have something of him, too, tucked against your head and healing that metaphorical cigarette burn. A secret for a secret. You can work with that.

“You changed your number,” Bucky says, and he’s walking over to you now. Guard dropped, hands by his sides, pinning you in place with his eyes on yours for the first time in what feels like centuries.

“I was scared,” you say, coming out more like a breath than a sentence, too transfixed with Bucky being so close to you when you never thought you’d get this again. He smells like car oil and sweat, but you’ll take any gross combination over nothing at all. He places his greasy hands either side of your neck, pulling you closer so practically standing between his legs.

“You know,” Bucky says, rubbing his thumb over the protrusion of your collarbone like he’s trying to turn your brain and legs into jelly, “Nat doesn’t have a high opinion of a lot of people. She means a lot to me.”

“She’s terrifying,” you say, and Bucky throws his head back in a laugh that has you grinning like an idiot. That sound settles warm in the pit of your stomach, spreading through all the dirty guilt and fear you’d been living in for the past few days. Biting your lip as you sober slightly, you say, “I’m sorry for prying, I should’ve just-“

“Don’t,” Bucky says, stern, shutting you up pretty effectively. “I’m sorry Nat is a nosy bitch-“

“Hey!” Natasha’s voice comes from the back office, startling you both into laughing even as Bucky turns to face the door with a murderous glare on his face.

“Don’t you have anything better to do!” Bucky yells, voice thundering through the echoey garage. He waits few beats for absolute silence, neither of you convinced Natasha had actually left, but it’s the best you’re going to get. He turns back to you, small smile on his face so at odds with how rough and messy he looks. Hulking muscle and scars and tattoos and you should be cautious, should be running, shouldn’t be letting him back you up until you hit the wall and he can pin you there with his hips pressed into yours.

But you’ve never been one to ignore something as intriguing and mysterious as Bucky Barnes, no matter how dangerous it might be. Bucky slides one hand up from your neck to splay across your jaw, fingers pressing almost too tight into the soft skin, and you should run from this, too. A reminder, a promise, a warning. You let him.

“Are we even?” Bucky asks, mumbled into the minuscule space between you. You can’t find your voice so you just nod, and Bucky cocks his head to the side as he asks, “You can still leave, y’know. I’ll understand.”

“No way,” you say with a vigorous shake of your head, probably too quickly if Bucky’s amused smirk is anything to go by. You shut him up real quick with a roll of your hips into his, watching with a sense of victory as his expression darkens and he tightens his grip on you. You say, eyebrows raised, “I’ve still got way too many questions.”

“Like what?” Bucky asks, but he’s not got his full attention on what you’re saying anymore, too busy using his grip on your jaw to tug your head to the side and kiss up your neck, warm and open-mouthed with just a bit of teeth.

You nod your head towards the bike he was fixing before, drawing his attention for a second as he flicks his eyes in its direction before resuming his trail of bruising kisses. A bit breathy maybe, you say, “Ever fucked someone on a motorbike before?”

“Absolutely not!” you hear a male voice practically scream, and soon enough Sam is practically running out of the back office with a smirking Natasha on his tail. “This is our place of work! It’s sacred!”

“Go home, Sam,” Bucky says into your skin, still loud enough for them to hear but he doesn’t get off you. You’re blushing, making eye contact with Bucky’s friends and wishing the ground will swallow you whole but Bucky just digs his teeth into the crook of your jaw and grins as he watches your eyes flutter shut. This mixture of embarrassment and unadulterated horniness is making your brain short-circuit.

“My eyes!” Sam cries as Natasha grabs him by the wrist and drags him from the garage. Not without a wink sent your way, and you’ll find time to be humiliated by that later. Right now, you’ve got Bucky’s mouth on yours to contend with and it’s going to take all of your attention.

Part 4

~~~

let me know what yall think of this part!! THANK YOU

[passable-talent]

part 4 for the dragon au? stakes are high and im scared but i need to know!

its been a while but here i am because i was suddenly fucking SMACKED with ideas (plural) so 

| part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | 

“I’ve tried to kill him before, (Y/N), don’t you remember? It didn’t end well.” Anakin was absolutely fuming- you were glad his anger was centered on you, and not Obi-Wan. 

“His guards turned you away,” you said, leaning against the chest he kept pushed up against the wall. Shmi had taken a seat at the table, and Obi-Wan was with Ahsoka on the couch. Anakin was the only one standing, pacing back and forth. “And they only got there because you hesitated. I won’t.” 

“It’s dangerous, (Y/N),” Obi-Wan reminded you, and you gave him a solemn nod, your left hand gripping your saber where it hung at your waist. “He’ll have any number of people come to his aid.”

“So we need to launch an attack,” you countered, “cover the entire town in battle so that I can do what I must.” 

“And endanger the citizens?” Shmi spoke up from her seat at the table, and you turned from her gaze, puzzling downward at the floor. 

“No,” you conceded, “the people have nothing to do with this.” 

“Then we must evacuate the city,” Obi-Wan said, with the confidence in his voice that you had always admired. Your gaze lowered slightly as you considered what you’d need to do to get Palpatine alone. You then looked to the dragon who the Coruscantians would recognize, and know to fear. 

“Anakin-” 

“I could create a problem outside of town,” he said, waving his hand slightly as though he was stopping you from finishing your question. “That’ll get them moving.” 

“If the problem is outside of town, they’ll only grow fearful and stay,” Obi-Wan said, and you tugged Anakin to your side the next time he passed, knowing that he’d calm down if he stood beside you instead of pacing. “We need to get them out of the city.” 

“The center of the city is already in ashes,” Shmi said, “it would be nearly harmless to put on a fire show there.” 

“Flush them out from the inside,” Ahsoka agreed, her dual sabers in her lap. You lifted your hips from the chest for an instant, feeling Anakin’s insistence that he wrap his cloak around you. 

“You’ll cause a panic,” Shmi warned. 

“Master,” you said, lifting your hand from your saber to slide it over where Anakin’s had come around your waist under his cloak, “you and Ahsoka can lead them out. They’ll trust two knights.” He gave you a brief nod. “Once the people are safe, Anakin can draw out the guards, and I’ll take care of Palpatine.” 

“It’s a good plan,” Obi-Wan said, a hint of trepidation in his voice, “but remember who you’re fighting. He’ll have tricks up his sleeve.” 

“He’s an old man,” you said, “when he stands alone, he’ll fall to me.” Obi-Wan shook his head, but you didn’t notice. 

~~~

You waited for three days, giving you and Anakin both time to heal for another battle. Shmi kept the Jedi fed, and you stood watch at the mouth of the cave, ensuring that no armies were marching upon you. 

On the fourth day, just before dawn, the plan was set in motion. You donned Shmi’s cloak, giving you protection. You watched, this time, as you wrapped it around yourself. Her scales were much browner than her son’s, complimenting your skin tone rather than standing against it. You didn’t mind the claws so much anymore- they’d be useful, if the scenario arose. 

Obi-Wan and Ahsoka set into the woods, Obi-Wan’s cloak kept safe with Shmi so that he would appear as human and knightly as his apprentice. When enough time had passed that they would be nearing the village, Anakin took his dragon form, and let you climb onto his neck.

It was certainly different. His scales were as familiar as his skin, and yet the hulking might you felt beneath you was foreign. You held onto a lower set of spikes on the back of his neck and hunkered down, expecting the flight to be very difficult, between the wind and the speed and the cold. 

As he left the cave and cleared the trees, it was quite difficult to hold on. You managed, but until the flight smoothed out, you’d have a hard time. 

But when it did- wow.

The sun was just above the horizon, long away across the sprawling forests and mountains, painting the whispy sluggish clouds with gold and pink. You’d never been so high in your life, not even the mountains you’d climbed while training with Obi-Wan could compare. You saw the world stretch out before you, curving off into the golden oblivion of another dawn. 

The wind was no longer harsh. It didn’t fight you, it flowed through you, pushing your hair back and raising Shmi’s cloak behind you. You felt almost as though you were levitating off of Anakin.

And Anakin- you held tight to him, but it was like you didn’t need to. His flight was smooth, gentle, he rose with the air instead of beating against it. The motion of his wings, up and down in long, controlled strokes, felt almost like breathing, like the breathing of a beast even greater than a dragon, the beast of flight, or even the wind itself. 

You’d been around dragons for weeks, now. You’d known them and grown to love them. You’d fought for them, been rescued by them, been mistaken for one yourself. But in all that time, you’d never truly understood what it was like to be a dragon- not a fire breathing beast, but the ruler of the sky in a way that was second only to the rising, gilded sun. 

You almost forgot what the day was meant to become, being the first of the morning to meet the sun as it peaked between the far-off mountain ranges. It wasn’t fear. You were facing no tyrant, you weren’t meddling in the politics of a king and his aspiring assassin. None of that was this day, not for the moment. This day was for the flight, for watching the forests and farms pass beneath you, for the clouds you could almost touch. Nothing had ever felt like this, and you doubted that anything ever would, again. 

But all dreams end. And the day was not for a flight, but for a war.

Coruscant reared beneath you, and you lowered your chest down to become more aerodynamic against Anakin’s neck. He turned into a tight spiral, descending toward the great scorch mark he’d left behind in his rescue of you, all that time ago. When he touched down, you slid from his neck, touching the ground again. It greeted you like a long-forgotten enemy. 

Almost immediately, you saw people begin to flee, to take what they had and rush to the streets and into the forests. You knew that somewhere, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan awaited them, to offer them guidance.

In the quickly-created chaos, you saw Palpatine. His red robes stood out to you, and you watched as he disappeared from the streets into a tall stone building. 

You pressed your hand to Anakin’s cheek. 

“Funnel them toward the Jedi,” you told him, his body so different but his heartbeat so familiar. “When you come back for the guards, I’ll know the people are safe.” He lept from the ground, and you pulled your hood over your horns, helping whoever needed it in the evacuation. They were moving quickly, and you disappeared into the crowds, knowing that Palpatine would stay behind and hide. He wouldn’t hide among the people.

When you neared the outskirts of the town, you turned back, facing down the crowd now rushing toward you. You froze in your tracks, like you had the day of your rescue, and you looked at Coruscant. 

Once again it blazed before you. Once again its people scurried, terrified, but this time, it had been your choice. Your words from that day echoed in your ears. 

“I curse this town.” 

A woman tripped on her dress in your path, and you dove down to catch her before she hit the mud. Her eyes met yours as you righted her, and you watched as fear and confusion crossed her gaze. She recognized you. 

“Go,” you told her gently, and she hurried past you without a word.

“I curse Coruscant and all who live within it." 

You’d been so hurt, that day. You’d been hurt by the people who didn’t stand for you, but you knew better, now. You knew that it was Palpatine who held not only this town, but nearly the entire kingdom in his grasp. You were here to free them all.

“I curse you to the fire and death I sought to protect you from!” 

Anakin swept past, raining fire down a few blocks over, but no buildings caught the blaze. He didn’t destroy the homes, he urged people out of them. 

“I curse you to be torn, limb from body and flesh from bone, I curse you to the same end of pain and suffering that I will be given!” 

A child stumbled from his mother’s grip and into the path of a frightened horse. With no hesitation, you scooped him up and turned, pulling him from harm’s way. His mother had nothing but relief in her eyes as she thanked you, whisking her son away.

“I curse the Force from this place, may its kindness never guide you again!”

You’d never hated the people. You’d never wanted this for them- you’d wanted to protect them from the scourge of a malevolent dragon. 

Well, Palpatine was no dragon. But he was malevolent all the same. 

When the streets were near empty, and the crowds were all behind you, you once again faced that grey stone building you’d seen him disappear into. You scanned it, and remembered what it had been- the barracks of the soldiers of the town. You’d been offered a bed there, when you first arrived. Why he would take refuge in it now, that didn’t matter, even as you looked up at the second floor window, and saw him staring back. 

You lit your saber and entered the building. 

The burning orange of your blade lit the room, the dawn sunlight not penetrating now-thick clouds of smoke. You made your way to the stairwell, hoping to corner him against the very window he’d revealed himself behind. 

“Good afternoon, Sidious,” he said as you entered the room. You raised your saber, narrowing your eyes. Whatever plan he had, you gave him no opportunity. 

“Your evil ends today,” you said, voice calm, strong. 

“I’m not the evil in the room,” he answered, fumbling a grip onto the sword on his hip. 

“I was a knight,” you growled, “and the town prospered without worry from the dragon. It was you who made them fear him. It was you who made them fear me.” Palpatine shuffled around the room, seemingly attempting to evade you. He only got closer to the stairs lead to the next floor up. 

“Vader would have destroyed this town and all of its people,” Palpatine said, clutching onto the handrail of the staircase. “Just as he is now!” You looked, briefly, over your shoulder and out of the window that was now beside you. From here, you could see fire raging through the town. 

“He meant Coruscant no harm until you threatened his home.” You stalked toward him, making him retreat up the stairs. 

“A dragon is a threat, no matter the harm they intend!” 

“You know nothing!” You snarled, one of your fangs catching against your lip. 

“I know that you mean to kill me!” he said, pulling forth his sword with the weakness of an old man. “To plunge Coruscant into chaos!”

“Coruscant is in chaos!” you shouted, waving an arm across the windows. From the third floor, you could see not only the flames, but the people. “Is this what you wanted? Was this in your plans? Provoking a dragon would end no other way!” 

“You didn’t need to do this!” Palpatine pleaded, “This isn’t my fault!” Snapping with anger, you struck your saber across a floorboard, slicing through it and sending the smell of smoke into the air. 

“I wanted to help Coruscant!” you shouted, “I wanted to protect its people! It was your ambition that has brought this down onto the people! Don’t you feel even the slightest regret for that? You tried to execute a Jedi Knight! You plan to kill the king!” 

As soon as you said it, you wished you hadn’t. 

“So I underestimated you,” he said, and suddenly there was no fear in his voice. Suddenly, his limbs didn’t shake, and he raised his sword with strength you didn’t know he had. “I didn’t think you’d figure it out.” With speed that surprised you, he launched toward you, striking his sword against your saber with such force that you crashed to your back, your saber digging into the wooden floor. More smoke filled the air, and little glowing embers began crawling across the floor. You pulled to your feet. 

Palpatine had disappeared up the stairs, to the fourth floor. You know he was baiting you into giving chase, but you couldn’t let him go. You charged after him, catching him before he could reach the next staircase. He was stronger than you’d realized, but still was no match for you- you began to overpower him quickly. Fear rose within him, you could sense it, and his tactics changed. Without warning, he shoved you against an armoire, and you went crashing through the doors. 

The back of your head cracked against something within the wooden wardrobe, and you fell forward, dizzy for the moment. Palpatine, though, wasn’t concerned with you, and instead pulled something from the armoire. Hoping for your vision to clear, you looked up at him, trying to focus on the black thing that swirled around him for a moment before laying over his shoulders. 

Wait-

You blinked, hard, as grey scales rose on his face and arms, as his fingernails lengthened into claws, as dark grey horns curled from his temples. 

“You’re a dragon?” You forced out, pushing yourself onto your hands and knees. Raising your head, he said only one sentence to you as he turned to the final staircase, leading to the roof of the barracks. 

“Haven’t you ever wondered who Vader’s father is?”

The world spun around you. Maybe it was the news, maybe the concussion. Now you understood why he’d baited you up the stairs- he could escape. He could escape, and with the form of a dragon he would incite a larger war, a war of chaos and mayhem and destruction. One that would have started right here, in Coruscant, and they would blame Anakin. It was all your fault- you thought you could outsmart him. You’d failed. 

So you pulled yourself to your feet. You rushed up the stairs, your vision fighting against the smoke and the flames, but focusing on the black dragon that Palpatine had become. 

You were too late- he took flight, clearing the rooftops to go incite the war that would make him king, as the last great politician who would save the kingdom. 

Your saber humming at your hip, you grit your teeth. You wouldn’t let him do it. You wouldn’t let his thirst for power take any more lives. 

You broke out into a run, one last effort of your prowess, gaining as much speed as you could before the edge of the roof, and then you jumped. 

This was nothing like the flight you’d had with Anakin. This was sickening, your saber held beneath your fists, your body without control. 

You focused any balance and agility you had as you closed the gap to the great dragon, and dug the full length of your blade, all three feet, into the thinner scales beneath the wings. 

As your momentum was parallel to the dragon, the blade was wrenched sideways as you fell, but then began to be pulled downward with your weight. Like a knife through butter, your weight pulled the saber further from the ribcage and closer to the stomach, until you opened the gash entirely. You took down the dragon- you heard him roaring in his pain. 

But when the saber left the dragon’s flesh, you fell. 

Your saber lost its grip, and the wrench stole it from your grip, as well. You had no control over your body, and fell toward the ground with your stomach toward the sky. You were disconnected from everything you’d ever had- your Jedi training, your home at the temple or the cavern, the people you loved. You wished, even though it had been impossible, that you were wearing Anakin’s cloak. At least, then, you would be wrapped in him as you plummeted downward. That would’ve been all the comfort you needed. 

You heard things crack, when you landed. You felt your head pound, wounds fresh and fresher willing you into unconsciousness. Your eyes still fighting against what they saw, you made out the shape of a human, falling from the sky above you. You saw a dark shadow pass through the smoke clouds, and a warm blanket of black overcame you. It dulled the pain, just for a moment, before your lost your grip. 

~~~

“You’re gonna be fine.”

Anakin’s voice was far away, like you were hearing him through water. You felt warm. For a moment, you thought that he had you in his arms, under the blankets of his bed. There was too much movement for that, but still- he held you, and you felt just as safe as you would’ve, in his cave. 

“Anakin, what’s happened?” 

Oh, Obi-Wan always worried too much about you. Doesn’t he know by now that you can take care of yourself?

“Whose cloak is that?”

Shmi had a truly lovely voice; she sounded like a mother should. You had never known your mother. 

“It’s got to be Palpatine’s. I found them covered in it, in the middle of a street.” 

Anakin’s voice, muddled as it was, soothed you. His voice sounded the way that an arm wrapped around your waist felt. He sounded the way a strong hug felt after a nightmare. 

“Palpatine’s? How is that possible?”

Ahsoka, on the other hand, sounded the way a jaunty slap on the back felt. 

“I don’t know.” 

Anakin sounded so troubled. You wanted to run your fingers through his hair, listen to the way his breathing would slow down. Maybe he’d want to talk over tea about whatever the issue was. 

“Are they alright?”

Shmi, so kind. So selfless. These were your loved ones, the only ones you had. Their voices washed over you with calm like no healing salve ever could. 

“I don’t know.” 

Anakin- he had been attacking Coruscant. He’d been protecting the people while engaging the soldiers. Is that why he sounded so worried? Had he gotten hurt?

“Their leg-”

“I know.” 

Anakin cut off Obi-Wan with urgency. Whose leg? Was everyone alright? Why couldn’t you move- why couldn’t you open your eyes?

“Are they going to be alright?”

Ahsoka sounded so fearful- you’d never heard her with so much fear in her voice. Something had to have gone horribly wrong, they needed help, didn’t they? They needed your help.

Your eyes didn’t focus, when you finally convinced yourself to open them. There was just grey sludge, and shapes all around. 

“(Y/N)?” Anakin’s hands came to your face, and despite knowing that some sort of danger faced them, you smiled. You couldn’t help but smile, when he held you, when he looked at you with sharp, beautiful blue eyes. 

“Hi,” you breathed out, making to wrap your fingers around his wrist. But a stabbing pain shocked your shoulder, and your arm stayed firmly in place. 

“It’s okay, don’t move,” Anakin said, pressing a kiss to your forehead. His lips were so soft. Still, you felt warm. You tried to find yourself, to place your location, but all you could see beyond him was grey fuzz.

“Where-”

“We’re home, you’re okay. We did it.” A warm hand covered the top of your head, and you moved just far enough to see Obi-Wan give you a smile. 

“I don’t know what you did,” Obi-Wan said, with that familiar touch of playful disapproval, “But you succeeded. Palpatine is dead.”

“The people?” You mumbled out, and Anakin squeezed your hand in his. 

“As far as we can tell, no one got hurt,” Ahsoka said, standing behind Anakin, her arms crossed, but a smile on her face. 

That was all you needed to hear. You laid your head back down, pulling Anakin’s hand onto your stomach. You didn’t want him going anywhere. 

Obi-Wan and Ahsoka discussed something with Shmi, something about returning to Coruscant to help the people. You couldn’t pay much mind to it, not with your attention and your senses so dulled. All you could manage to keep track of was Anakin, his thumb running over your knuckles. 

“I love you,” you said, unprompted. Your mind was fuzzy, your memory moreso, but you knew that he had been your last thought, as you fell. 

His smile grew, and he lifted your hand to his mouth so that he could kiss your fingers. Your eyes never left his, no matter how tired you were. 

“I love you,” he answered, resting his elbows onto the edge of whatever cushion you were laying on. 

You couldn’t focus, really, not on any thought you had. Your mind was beyond scrambled, and slightly throbbing. Was that blood running down the back of your neck, or were you imagining that?

No matter the muddled state of your mind, though, you couldn’t look away from him. His kind expression, a mixture of relief and love and happiness and bitter-sweetness. His soft skin, for your hands to hold, no one else’s. His broad shoulders with his cloak stretched over them, and you wanted nothing more than to wrap yourself in that cloak just then. And his eyes- those piercing, chilling blue eyes that had focused on you the first moment he met you and never looked away. He was staring, even now. 

A smile slid up your lips. 

“Be not afraid of being startled by my beauty,” you whispered, gently squeezing his hand in your fingers, “for I am enthralled by yours.”

-🦌 Roe

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