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[business4u]

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[pepsichrry]

Ride || Theodore F. Nott

Summary: An arranged marriage between two Pureblood families is almost common, but what happens when a sudden infatuation is brought into the mix.

Set after the Battle of Hogwarts!

Warnings: Sexual content, smut, Mentions of violence, angst, unhealthy relationship, Theo is obsessed with his wife

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Theo felt himself slipping away. Not quite how he did when he’d received the Dark Mark, and not quite how he did when he watched the life vanish from his mother’s eyes. This time, it felt different.

He watched you through foggy window panes in the dewy spring mornings and from across the dining table as you ate breakfast. He couldn’t stop watching you, and it drove him insane. His wife drove him insane. Of course he’d heard such sentences from his father’s colleagues and other men who complained, but those feelings were nothing alike Theo’s. Not like the pang in his heart when he watched you in the grassy fields of the estate or the fondness disguised by hard eyes as you exchanged pleasantries like strangers. After all, you really were strangers.

But Theo had come to know you like you didn’t even know yourself. To him, you were anything but a stranger.

He couldn’t even count the amount of times that he had dreamt of you sleeping beside him, feeling your warmth, imagining what it would be like to kiss you and please you like any husband would wish to, Merlin, like any man who lay eyes upon you would. If it weren’t for your complete lack of interest in him, he would have asked you to have your way with him already, but ever since the wedding, you hadn’t been interested in going near him at all. He couldn’t blame you, at first he had been opposed to marrying so young, claiming that his father was taking away his freedom, stripping him of his youth and leaving him to be stuck with a stranger in his house. But, oh, how wrong he was.

You were a delight, a pure and innocent light in the darkness of the family estate. You brought with you little possessions, maybe only a few dresses and boxes of trinkets, but you gave life to the creaking floorboards and dusty walls. In a matter of months, you’d planted flowers and fruit trees, stripped the dark rooms of misery and replaced it with sunlight and brighter decor. All of a sudden, the fires were lit and the house no longer sent a chill down your spine. That, at least, Theo could be grateful for.

Taking note of the subtle changes made, he always made sure to thank you with something or another, whether it be silky gowns, sparkling jewellery, shoes or perfume. But none of it seemed to impress you.

As time went on, Theo became aware of your distaste towards his expensive gifts and tried everything he could to satisfy you from an arms length, but it was difficult. When he’d been in school, a pretty bracelet would have been enough to get a girl to want him, but it seemed that there was nothing that he could give that made you want him. So he decided on giving you the only thing he could think that you’d want from him; space.

In leaving you alone, he began to observe you whenever he could, and in doing so, he started to understand that you didn’t desire dresses or sparkles to admire yourself in, though he did see you trying his previous gifts on in front of the mirror with a grin, and instead he realised that you enjoyed sitting in the library with a book or lounging in the garden eating fruits.

He admired you every day when you wore your lacy white dresses in the spring sunshine, hair falling over your sun-kissed shoulders. He admired you as you sipped at the fresh lemonade the house elves had prepared and watched as your soft lips enveloped the glass. He admired you as you lounged in the living room with bare feet on the oak floor. He even admired you in your bedroom from time to time as you slept, praying to Merlin that you wouldn’t wake up as he smoothed gentle fingers over your temple.

Sometimes, though, he wished that you would wake up, catch him in the act. He wondered what you’d say, how your face would contort into confusion or shock, he wondered if you’d let him stay. So, as time went on, he visited you every night whilst you slept, enjoying the close calls and nervousness that ran through him at the thought of you waking up. He took pleasure in the thumping of his heart and how you stirred in your sleep from time to time as the mattress dipped beside you. Every night, he wanted to kiss your plump lips as you slept, wondering if the action would wake you or if you’d be angry if he did. He knew it’d be wrong, but he couldn’t help how much he wanted to kiss your beautiful lips and freckled skin.

He imagined how it’d feel to run his lips and tongue over your body, lose himself in the supple curves of your hips and breasts or in the soft feeling of your hair. Sometimes he’d dream it too and wake up sticking to his sheets with a mixture of sweat and precum. It was a guilty pleasure to relieve himself thinking of you and everything he did to you in his imagination.

You were a sinful temptation wrapped in pure white bedsheets and gowns, tormenting him until he had to excuse himself from dinner with a swollen cock and a pink face.

His wife drove him insane. And she was oblivious.

One night, as Theo dodged the creaky floorboards outside of your bedroom, he heard it. The soft sigh falling from your lips, indicating that you weren’t asleep. The warm light emitting from the ajar door drew him in, enticing him into pushing gently against the barrier between him and you. And upon opening the door, he saw you.

You lay spread across the bed, hair framing your head like a shining halo in lamplight as your nightgown was pulled up to your stomach, held in place by one hand whilst the other reached between your open legs, though the sight was obscured by the flesh of your thigh as you lay parallel to the door.

Theo cursed mentally, wishing that you’d lay with your head on your pillow so that he could really see what your hand was toying with. He felt himself grow hot and shifted as his trousers tightened uncomfortably, alerting you of his presence when you heard the creak of a floorboard. Fuck. You looked at him with wide eyes, a deer caught in headlights as you ripped your small hand from between your thighs. Before you could even begin to stutter, Theo chocked out a bashful ‘Sorry’ before turning and slamming the door behind him.

In that moment, he wished that the ground would swallow him up. He had never been so shy around a girl, especially one that was lying, touching herself in his house, not that there had been any before. His head softly thumped against your door as he slumped back. But he didn’t have much time to feel sorry for himself as your door opened suddenly.

He spun to look at you. It had seemed that you’d smoothed down your wild hair before coming to find him as it hung over your shoulders like usual. Your eyes met his in the darkness of the hallway and he nearly collapsed. Between the blood from his head running to his groin and the look in your eyes, he thought that maybe he would collapse, but he cleared his throat and straightened up to his full height to look down at you with his usual stoic expression.

Your eyes trailed down his neck, to his chest and then, they looked straight down to the sizeable bulge in his slacks. He had worn neatly ironed trousers and a button down shirt to visit his father that day, and secretly wished that he had changed his clothes before coming to see you that night. It would have been more comfortable for his raging hard-on.

“Would you like to come in?”

Theo’s prayers must have been answered, because your soft voice lead him through your doorframe. He barely even registered what was going on until he was sat on your mattress like many nights before, but this time, you were awake, looking at him with lustrous eyes and flushed skin on your cheeks, neck and…

You leaned into him once he was settled on your bed and brushed your damp lips onto his own. His jaw hung open and his eyes were wide as they looked at you. This must have been a dream.

Surely he was awake judging by the feeling of your lips on his own and the hammering of his heart and the throbbing between his legs. You kissed him with fervour, running your hands over his shoulders tenderly and Theo sighed at the feeling of your touch, it was something he hadn’t felt before. You hadn’t even touched him during the wedding, not even for a dance, let alone at night. You had never consummated your marriage and he had never been so aware of the fact. He leant into your hands, chest rising and falling heavily as his head spun and his body overheated.

You hushed him quietly, running your hand through his brown curls and straddling his lap quickly, sighing as you felt the bulge in his lap against your bare core beneath your night dress. It had been drilled into your head that as a Pureblood woman, you must remain as pure as possible until you were inevitably married off, meaning you’d never been in any position similar to this. You didn’t even know what to do with the boy who began to run his rough hands over your back as he hungrily kissed you. But something about the situation made you giddy, here he was, you could finally have him all to yourself. The gorgeous, brown-haired beauty you’d snagged up.

You ground down into his lap on instinct, something sparking deep inside of you at the sound of his throat emitting a deep noise. Your mouth hung agape, breathing hot air onto the column of his neck once you’d tugged his hair back to reveal the expanse of his skin.

Theo felt like prey under your scorching touch. He wanted nothing more than to feel what you had been touching so dearly before he’d interrupted you. He wondered what it looked like, what it smelled like, what it tasted like. Merlin, how he wanted to taste it. To have what he’d imagined so vividly above him, restricted by nothing but a layer of clothing drove him to insanity. He couldn’t help but rut into you from where he sat below you.

He felt the pressure of your palm on his chest, encouraging him to lay his back against the silk sheets. Theo was down, obeying your every wish as you kissed fiercely, hands claiming every inch of his burning body, fiery like a sinner in church, your fingertips the devil, searing the flesh from his bones and torturing him in ways incapable of any human being responsible of.

His body throbbed, lungs heaving and struggling and his heart hammering against his ribcage. His legs and hands shook like they never had before and Theo did wonder why his body reacted the way it was.

Your lips let a soft sound pass through them again as his hips jolted, the bulge in his trousers pressed at the perfect angle, his cold belt buckle rubbing against your slick clit with a pleasurable shock. The boy was almost thrashing beneath you as he was oh, so eager to hear the noise again. His large hands encouraged you to press down against his need, spurring a deep sigh from him. You didn’t know why you hadn’t done this before.

“Is this what you imagine when you watch me?” You asked, and his body stilled minus the shivering of his hands and legs.

A frown dragged at his brow as you pulled your warm face away from his. “I-What?”

You grinned devilishly. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice how you sneak in here each night? Now answer me, is this what you imagine?”

The air was knocked out of him when your body ground down onto his again, forcing the answer out of him. He wheezed, “Yes!” His head falling back harshly onto the pillow as his eyes scrunched closed as if it hurt to watch you work atop of him. Your hand threaded through his curls, scraping gently at his scalp and tipping his head aside, revealing the moles scattered up his throat. You hungrily attack the expanse of his neck, leaving him purple and pink.

His body fell slack, allowing you to take him in any way that you pleased. With your mouth against his neck and your pussy against his groin, he felt himself grow closer and closer to succumbing to his own pleasure. The white hot light in his eyes grew closer and his mouth tasted the familiar sweetness of lust, all he needed was for you to keep going, then he was sure to release all tension. He needed it more than he’d needed anything before.

Theo tried to call out, but his breath was gone and his head span in circles, so all that could be said was nothing but the most pathetic noises he’d made. He whined as you scratched circles into his hair and bruised his neck with your sweet mouth. He pawed desperately at your body atop of him, searching for any way to force you harder onto his swollen length.

You felt his body shake and his chest rattle with unsure breaths, so hesitantly, you slowed your hips until you halted, appreciating the groan that slipped past Theo’s lips at the lack of friction.

Hushing him gently with a finger over his lips, you smiled sweetly at him. His eyes were bleary and almost unfocused as he looked up at you. A careful hand reach up to smooth over your face in attempts to bring you back down to his lips, but it was to no avail. He breathed out a tiny noise of complaint.

You brushed over his face gently. “I just need you to be quiet, Love, can you do that?”

It felt nearly as if he was in pain without the feeling of your hips rocking onto him, but he obeyed, nodding his head vigorously.

“Good.” You whispered, lifting yourself from him. Theo nearly complained until he realised where you were steadying yourself.

Your knees dug into the mattress on either side of his shoulders, wetness hovering over his shirt and he nearly thought he was about to pass out.

“Allow me?” You ask him. You knew the answer, but you waited quietly for his response.

“Fuck! Yes.” He twitched beneath your legs.

Slowly, almost teasingly, you found the end of your nightgown with your fingers. You toyed with the hem, brushing the soft lace against his clean-shaven chin as his jaw slackened. His mouth was open, heaving in breaths as his eyes watched intently as you lifted the gown up to your belly. Theo was downright salivating at the sight of your pretty little pussy right in front of him. He slid a hand from your backside, all the way up the front of your stomach, taking the nightgown from your hand and pulling it over your head. He hungrily stared over your body, drinking in your beautiful skin and rivets and dips.

His large hands dragged over your sides until they parted, one trailing down to your hip and the other to your full chest. His mouth was ready to feel you, to map out the entirety of your core, ready in his mind to remember when he sinfully touched himself.

Your hands reached to the headboard, pulling yourself up the the pillows, where his head lay, and you lowered yourself onto his eager mouth.

Instantly, his lips engulfed your clit, suckling at it as his hands held your hips firmly over him. As soon as he touched you, you couldn’t help but moan at the feeling. His tongue lapped at you with boiling hot accuracy and you fell victim to the wet sounds of your bodies connecting.

Your head lulled to the side, body weakened at the pleasure he was giving to you. His tongue ran in vigorous circles and you ground against his face in an attempt to make him lick harder.

Your forehead rested on the headboard, knuckles whitening as the sounds were becoming more and more obscene. Theo pressed you down harder onto him and between licking at your sensitive pussy, he sucked harsher and harsher. Your pearly juices were helping you slide over his mouth but he didn’t care that it was coating him more and more as he encouraged you to press onto him. The taste of you was sure to linger on his tongue, and he welcomed the thought eagerly.

His teeth grazed against your skin and you whined, reaching a hand down to his locks, hoping that just your hand would comfort him slightly despite the rough grinding of your pussy on his face. But by the desperate sounds he was making, he didn’t seem to mind at all.

The mixture of your juices and his saliva dripped down his neck and onto the pillow. His chest heaved up and down relentlessly as he awaited your climax. He wanted nothing more than to make you come.

He moaned into your pussy, the vibrations of his deep voice sending a shiver through you. Your entrance was beating and you could your thighs feeling light at his continuous movements. You were close.

Once you felt the familiar sensation run through you, your other hand came down to grip at his hair as you jerked over his jaw, thighs clenching around his head. Theo felt you squeeze his head, causing an odd lightheadedness to come over him, but not just in his head.

His legs went numb and his vision blurred as his cock leaked spurts of hot cum into his underwear. You still hadn’t stopped grinding on his face, feeling the last of your orgasm as he rode his out all the same. He shook gently, sucking harshly on your clit as you squealed at the sensitivity.

You soon came back down, legs shaking, still squeezing your husband’s head. You quickly realised how red his face was becoming and you were sure that you were killing him. Your legs quickly swung back over him and you sat beside him, viewing the result of your orgasm. His face was pink and his mouth hung open, taking in as much air as possible. His face was covered from his neck to his cheeks with slick and his eyes were closed shut. That was when you noticed the dark stain on his slacks.

You hoped to see him in your bed again.

pt.2

[starsofang]

Change of Heart

hitman!simon x f!reader / part 8

previous part

tw: alcohol use, angst, mentions of death

When life has completely and utterly failed you, you hire a hitman to take you out, too afraid to do it yourself. Instead of killing you like you had planned, he strikes up a deal with you, and you're too stubborn to bail out.

Waking up the next morning was the biggest slap in the face. It singed your skin with a burning sting, leaving you disoriented and lost. It was as if the brutal force of realization had hit you so hard, it knocked any form of thought right out of your mind except for pain. Irrepressible pain that caused you to feel numb.

Simon had left. All of your worried texts proved futile. What once showed as blue was now a sickening green that glared back at you. Your number was blocked, your messages unable to go through, and you were left an even shattered version than before. You were glass shards left to lay on the floor, you were a broken wind chime that could no longer provide a charming ambience.

You were broken and useless, tossed to the side like a damaged piece of scrap.

Simon had lived up to his name, and disappeared like a ghost. Drifting off into shadows of darkness, seeping into them and becoming one, never to be seen again.

You were hurt. Scratch that, that was a nice way of putting it – you were devastated. The walls you had so graciously taken down for him were now jagged pieces of debris with no mortar to glue them back together one by one. They were unrepairable, crumbling far too much to be saved.

Everything you ever learned about Simon felt like a lie, because that’s what he did – he lied. The glass was too foggy to tell the difference between what was a lie, and what wasn’t. If there were any parts of Simon that were truthful, you didn’t believe it. There was no grace of god to be there to lend a guiding hand to point you in the right direction. All you had was your gut, telling you deranged criticisms.

He lied to you, this was all a game, and you fell for it.

You should’ve known, really. A man like Simon was not one to love and be loved, not when he had an apparition named Ghost to steer him away from any attachment. After all, spirits could not grow devoted to a mere mortal woman who had nothing left to offer. You were stupid to think otherwise.

Graves was a bad enough person. He hurt you, tormented you, claimed you in order to assure your life was a living hell, with or without him. Now, the smallest part of you didn’t think he could be as cruel as Simon at this moment. It was a brainless thought, one you knew was far from true.

Simon never hurt you, nor did he treat you as bad as Graves.

But at least Graves didn’t have the gall to abandon you like an unwanted dog on the street.

Your mind was ping-ponging back and forth between truth and deception. You didn’t know what was real. It hazed over you, muting out every bit of you that was left inside and replacing it with nothing but cracked foundation.

Nothing was real. Nothing was worth it.

You didn’t leave the house for the entirety of the day, nor the next. You stayed in the confinement of your own home, feeling like a caged animal with no way out. You were slowly decaying away, losing the truest part of yourself, no longer able to see her in the reflection. She stared back at you with a ghostly image, whispering about how disappointed she was in you, how hateful she felt towards you.

She whispered about Simon, burdening you with reminders of what could’ve been if you were simply a little less broken. Bringing him up just to dig the knife in more, twisting it under your skin and basking in the bloodshed.

You were spiraling, just like you always did, because it was all you were good for. Simon was another excuse to crumble back into a deeply rooted self hatred. He was just a chess piece, a single card in a stack of dozens, while you picked it up and returned to your old game of reckless entertainment.

Day fourteen came before you know it. And you spent it completely by yourself, pondering why you ever made a deal with the devil in the first place.

It was easy to fall back into old habits when there was nothing there to offer recovery. Relapsing was what you did best, even when Simon was around, and you’d be damned if you didn’t do it again with him gone. It was a part of you, this endless cycle of self abuse, and it wasn’t going anywhere. It was simply on a temporary pause, now returning with more fiery persistence than before.

Alcohol was the only home you ever knew. It warmed you to the bone, engulfing you in a buzzing fervor. It welcomed you back with open arms, holding on to you with no intent of letting go. You were its lovely hostage, and you had grown Stockholm Syndrome.

Weeks passed by of tireless nights filled with the bitter taste that burned in your throat on repeat. Weeks were spent holed up in your apartment, nursing the only friend you had. This time around, you weren’t picky. You took whatever you could get, uncaring of the repercussions

And even in those weeks, Simon never left your mind. It was like a punishment for being good enough to fuck, but not good enough to stick around. It tortured your mind to the point of insanity.

The more alcohol you had, the more the memory of him became cloudy. It was exactly why you drowned yourself in it. You didn’t want to picture Simon’s face. Didn’t want to picture the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, or the way his smile was a bit crooked and off center. You didn’t want to picture him, and the future you grew too eager for, one that consisted of the two of you. Two puzzle pieces fitting together, only to be wretched apart and pressed down in separate corners.

You were completely losing yourself. All over a man who had broken you.

The cycle repeats. And repeats. You let it repeat, until hopefully one day, the alcohol would prove to be enough to give you the death you so greedily wanted.

It wasn’t until nearly four weeks in utter disarray that the cycle began to morph, railing off of the tracks that you worked so hard to have control over.

Deep into your daily routine of excessive drinking and wallowing in your own self-pity, the door knocked. You nearly missed it, brushing it off as your imagination. You didn’t have visitors, and the only one who cared to take that spot until leaving you was Simon.

Glancing around your apartment, you visibly winced at the disheveled sight of it. Bottles were thrown around carelessly, littering the kitchen counters and living room floor, where you were currently residing with a nameless show playing on the television. Hell had flown through your apartment, and it was your fault it had gotten this way again.

Old habits die hard. And you were always its unfortunate victim when those habits needed a host to leech on to once more.

Clambering up from where you sat on the floor, you somehow made your way to the door by the grace of god. It was late, and if you read right from the clock on the stove, it was past midnight. Anybody could be outside – a killer, an intruder, a thief. It was a mix between not caring about dying, and having enough logical sense to know nobody dangerous would knock first, that had you opening the door.

An unfamiliar man stood tall in the frame, bushy facial hair, sunken eyes that barely held a spark, almost as broad and stiff as Simon. But it wasn’t Simon, and this man was a mere stranger.

“Jesus,” the man muttered under his breath at the state of you. You frowned, feeling small and weak in comparison. After a moment, he cleared his throat, speaking again. “Need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

“I don’t even know who you are,” you muttered, narrowing your eyes.

“M’a friend of Simon’s,” he explained woefully. The sound of Simon’s name coming from somebody else’s lips and not yours had your heart clenching with a dull ache. It sent ice cold chills running through your veins. “The name’s John Price.”

You stared at him with a look of disdain. You never heard Simon mention him before. The more you thought about it, you never heard Simon mention anybody. He was an enigma that you fell into too easily without even knowing a lick of who he was outside of your temporary protector.

“If you’re looking for him, I don’t know where he is,” you replied dryly, gripping a hand on the door and beginning to close it. Before the hinge could click into place, John’s boot stopped it, wedging itself between the door and its frame. He gave you a tight smile, one that had you tensing.

“I know where he is, dove. I said that I need to talk to you.”

The two of you became trapped in a staredown, one that you were too exhausted to fight to be the champion of. Begrudgingly, you opened the door wide enough to allow him to slip in, shutting it behind him. You watched as he took in your apartment, surely judging the whirlwind of it. He wasn’t exactly the type to hide away his distaste, if his mockingly amused expression was any type of indication.

“What do you want?” you asked him, disregarding your own mess and instead focusing on him. He turned to look at you, flashing you another smile. It seemed trusting enough, kind even, but by this time, you knew better.

“Came to offer you a deal, of sorts,” he vocalized. “Might I sit?”

You glanced over at the living room, shame bubbling in you at the sight of the bottle you’d been indulging in before he came around. “Sure.”

You trailed behind him when he took his seat on the couch, letting out an exaggerated sigh, leaning back into it. His display of comfort made you feel uneasy. You made no effort to join him, opting to stand in the middle of the room.

“You were rather close with Simon, weren’t you?” he asked, causing you to scoff to yourself.

“Sure. What’s that got to do with anything?” you asked grimly.

Price hummed to himself, tapping his fingers against his knee. It caused a faint, muted sound of rough, calloused fingertips to chafe against the material of his pants. “Figured so. Allow me to ask you somethin’. You know of Simon’s occupation, right?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Silly me, that’s how you met, isn’t it?” He chuckled to himself. You weren’t sure what was so amusing. “Well, here’s the thing – his performance has been a bit… hindered as of late. I have a strong inkling that it’s because of you.”

The air in the room was tense, nearly suffocating you. Price had such a soft aura that was hiding menacing intentions. You could see through it.

“I need a favor from you, doll.”

“And that is?” you asked carefully.

He smiled at you, cocking his head. “I need you to reject him. Tell him you’re better off, that you don’t need him, whatever you can say to make him get his head back in the fuckin’ game. This job of ours isn’t a joke, you see. I can’t have him slackin’ off. That’s how he’ll end up caught and thrown in jail. Once it reaches that point, I can’t help him out of it. That’s why I need you to help me before that happens.”

Your eyes widened in bewilderment at the sheer nerve of Price. Asking you to tell Simon off, to lie and say you were happy without him? Fuck, the proof was in the pudding – you weren’t, and you could almost guarantee that Simon would know you were lying from one single word. Sure, you were mad at him – pissed – but you also wanted no part in this game Price was playing.

The more you sat on it, the more it became twisted. You were thrown in a tangled web of deception and betrayal, stuck to it like glue, fighting for your way out.

But how much of it was betrayal? How much of it was trickery?

Price’s words echoed in your mind on repeat. They formed together, creating a clear picture.

Price had been the one to have Simon toss you out. He was the reason for your harrowing spiral. He was why Simon had left you, treating you as if you didn’t exist. Just a pawn in his game, and you were too stupid to realize it all sooner.

“You did this?” you snapped. Price raised an eyebrow at you, but said nothing. “You… you’re the reason for all of this, and now you’re asking me for help to lie to him? Are you insane?”

His expression twitched into a flash of annoyance before returning back to a mask. Alarms rang in your head. “I’m doin’ this for Simon. You’re a little bird he fell into when he shouldn’t have, and now I’m tryin’ to fix it before it’s too late.”

“Bullshit. You’re doing this to save your own ass.”

“I’d highly advise watchin’ yourself, doll,” Price muttered in warning, eyes narrowed and expression darkened. “You don’t know anythin’ about what we do. Don’t know how dangerous it is for you to be involved with Simon, and for Simon to be involved with you. I’m savin’ Simon’s ass from fuckin’ up one too many times.”

The atmosphere was even thicker than before. It was hard to breathe. It made you queasy, as if poisoned with a heavy gas that may just kill you if you inhaled it for too long.

Price and you stared at one another, both stubborn and pulled taut. His anger simmered to a low boil once the two of you took that silence to gather your thoughts, but it didn’t entirely vanish. You could still see a flicker of a flame in his eyes.

He was dangerous. Not somebody you wanted to get tangled up in, but you had no choice. You were too deep into this webbed mess, and it was only a matter of time before it came to bite back at you.

“What’s wrong with him?” you finally asked, voice quiet and solemn. You crossed your arms over your chest, turning your gaze away from him so you didn’t have to see his display of weak sympathy and mock judgment.

“He fell in love with you, that’s what’s wrong,” Price bit back, sneering. “Now he’s weak. Can’t do his job correctly, got his head in the fuckin’ clouds, snaps at everybody who tries to talk to him. He’s riskin’ himself, riskin’ us, and I can’t afford losin’ a brother over some girl.”

Price’s words were bitter and cruel. It only irritated you, pricking at your skin until it drove you mad. All calmness that had festered in your brief silence washed away, replaced with the old flame of your anger.

“Losing him?” You laughed bitterly, throwing your head back in disbelief. “Sounds to me like it’s your fault and not mine. Have you ever thought that maybe you’re the reason he’s all fucked up?”

Price stood from where he sat on the couch. There were no longer kind features adorning his face. It was replaced with twisted anger, morphing into something unrecognizable. When he stepped closer to you until you were nearly nose to nose, it was like looking into the eyes of a feral wolf, ready to tear you apart at any given second.

“Wise words comin’ from an alcoholic,” he muttered lowly. It was a hard pill to swallow. “I was tryin’ to be nice, doll. I was givin’ you an option. A choice. You’re just as fucked up as Simon. The difference is that you’re goin’ down a path nobody can save you from. I can save Simon.”

The words slapped you harsh in the face. It was brutal and cruel, and he showed no remorse for the damage he was doing. This was a man who got what he wanted, hurting everybody in the process so long as he achieved it. His goal was to save Simon from his impending doom, and he was willing to take you down to make it happen.

“If you really cared about Simon, you would’ve never let him get to this state in the first place,” you retorted back just as cruelly. “It’s not my fault, and I’m not going to sit here and let you blame me for it. Take a look in the mirror and you’ll get your answer on why he’s being this way.”

Silence. Aching, deafening silence. It tinged the air with a sour smell. The two of you were making no moves of backing down, and it was simply a recipe for disaster.

You didn’t know why you were defending Simon. After what he did, he didn’t deserve your care. He didn’t deserve to have you bandage over his name from the countless wounds he’d inflicted on it by leaving you behind after taking all of you in this very apartment.

However, with a missing puzzle piece being added to the pile, that being Price, you couldn’t help but offer your support from afar. It was clear he had no hand in this game. He was a pawn, just as much as you.

“I’m not helping you toy with his feelings,” you whispered. This time, you sounded defeated rather than angry. Broken, sad, dejected. “He doesn’t deserve that.”

Price sucked in a sharp breath, stepping away but keeping his gaze pointed to you. He said nothing for the first few moments, eyes flickering over the worn out lines on your face. Empty eyes, ones that were surely full of life at some point in your life. Perhaps even lit up with Simon around.

He had taken that away from you, and it was only then he was realizing how cruel he was being. All of it, for the sake of protecting his own, of protecting Simon. He was so consumed by the thought of keeping Simon out of trouble, that he only sought to create more for you. A civilian, one who simply got wrapped up in the wrong crowd.

No outsider had ever cared for Simon like Price, Gaz, and Soap did. They were all each other had, bound together by an unfortunate calling. Nobody was allowed in, or out.

Then you came along, and Ghost had quickly become Simon again.

“You’re not goin’ to make this easy for me, are you?” Price sighed, shoulders deflating, releasing its built up tension.

“No. I’m not,” you agreed grimly.

“Stubborn one, you are,” he hummed, and dare you say it, he sounded amused. “Can see why Simon likes you.”

You glanced up at him, noting the faintest of smiles on his face. It was barely visible, a ghost on his lips, but even through your hazed exhaustion, you could see it.

“Tell you what,” he began, crossing his arms to match your stance. “I’ll talk to him. See what I can do. M’not promisin’ anythin’. This isn’t the type of life I want you wrapped up in, but I can see that you’re only goin’ to wallow here until you drop dead. I don’t want that blood on my hands.”

“What are you saying?” you asked suspiciously.

“I’m sayin’, that I’ll try to see if it could work. Again, m’not promisin’ you anythin’, doll. But if you’re the reason Simon can get his head out of his ass and stop doin’ sloppy work, then I’ll see what I can do.”

It was no guarantee, but Price was trying. One moment, he was begging you to hurt Simon to the point he’d never think of crawling back to you. Now, the story had changed, and he was making a peace offering.

You weren’t sure whether or not to trust him. You shouldn’t. It was a bad idea.

But the thought of seeing Simon again, to mend the broken bond you had formed, caused you to agree.

Simon was fucked. He’d drowned himself in a world of pure guilt ever since he’d blocked your number and called it quits. He was miserable, more than he’d ever been.

He didn’t feel guilt. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to feel anything at all. He was Ghost, after all, and ghosts didn’t feel. Yet with you, the narrative had switched. It was as if the gates of heaven had opened up, offering him a chance at redemption. He felt everything all at once – love, care, affection, longing, heartache.

Everything felt right with you. It was like he had finally found his home, only to have it torn away from the grasp of his hands. No matter how much he tried holding on to it, it proved a fruitless effort. It was gone before he even resided.

Simon’s mind became a jumbled mess. He returned to the empty shell he was before when nothing mattered and he only saw the world through a red-colored lens. It was straining, it was harsh. It hurt to wake up everyday and see a colorless world waiting for him.

His shattered, frail mind affected everything he’d ever known. Work became a chore. He was messy, careless, and the darkest part of him wished he would be caught so he could force himself into punishment for hurting an angel sent from above that was placed in his life to nurture him.

It was what he deserved. Simon was a man who fell in love, and Ghost was the devil that reminded him that he was undeserving. Unworthy.

You deserved better than him. You deserved the world, and Simon was the one who would take from it with greedy hands caked in the blood of God’s creations.

Everyday burned with an itch to see you, to send you a text. He missed you, but he hated himself more. It stopped him from reaching out, caused him to pull back on the reins and pace himself. Nothing could scratch the burning itch except for the brutal reminder that you deserved better.

The weeks were hell without you. He’d grown agitated at everything around him, going as far as to snap at Gaz and Johnny when they attempted to console him, to snap at Price out of unfiltered rage at what he made him do. He was too far gone, and the only foundation he had left was beginning to crumble, all because of him.

Damn Price for taking you away, and damn you for making him fall in love.

Simon didn’t know how much more he could take. It was eating away at him, like a parasite feeding off of its host, draining him of all soul. Even now, as he sat in his own apartment, hidden on his balcony and smoking all of his worries away with hopes of succumbing to the nasty tar that threatened to rise in his throat every time, he was decaying. Withering away, like a fragile flower.

The night was dark. The stars didn’t shine as brightly as they did on your balcony. The air didn’t feel as pure without you to share it with him. The smoke didn’t wisp up into silly, little shapes, and instead, tainted the air with polluted illness.

It was positively suffocating.

As Simon nursed the cigarette to the very end, stubbing it out with his boot and carelessly leaving it littered with the rest of them on his balcony, he heard the faint knock on his door. He silently prayed it was death, here to take him away and rid him of his pain for good.

It wasn’t death, but it was damn near close.

“Price,” he grumbled at the sight of the older man. It was too late for him to make an appearance, so he wasn’t sure why he did. Maybe Price had truly given up on him and was here to offer mercy.

Price didn’t care for greetings, stepping past Simon and into his apartment. Simon followed after him with his gaze, mentally preparing himself for another lecture. It was bound to happen at this point, seeing as Price was fed up.

Simon knew he was putting their lives on the line by being reckless. He just didn’t have it in him to care.

Closing the door behind him, Simon kept his distance, not uttering a word until Price spoke first. The man in question lingered around his apartment, seeming to stall with time, too choked up for words.

“You need somethin’, sir?” Simon finally asked. Price lifted his eyes to look at Simon. For a moment, they were unreadable. Masking away his thoughts, tucking them far in the back of his mind.

Price let out a deep exhale through his nostrils. He stood there in silence for what felt like eternity. Simon could see the gears shifting in his mind, working overtime.

“Go and get your bird back, Simon,” Price sighed, but to Simon, it sounded like church bells ringing on a Sunday morning, beckoning him home.

so many of y'all thought the last part was the end, but i'm not that cruel ;( i promise

[rosemarie333]

Astro Observations/Opinions (Tropical Edition Part Three 🌎)

Hello! Thank you for the support of my previous posts! I love all the comments and questions🫶🏾

These are based on my perspective of placements and signs, so take what resonates and leave what doesn’t🫶🏾 I’d love to hear y’all’s take as well!

Now let’s get started 😝

1. If you ever meet someone with nice and long healthy hair THEY prob have a great sun placement or have leo placements (could also have a good mars placement as well). gets compliments on their hair and it’s super big as well😋😩

2. Malefic or Harsh planets in the 3rd house (mars, saturn, chiron, lilith, and pluto) speak your truth because no matter what you can’t always please others and you shouldn’t hold your truth close to your heart because you deserve to share it to the world. Chappell Roan has both moon and pluto in the 3rd house and all homegirl said was “please stop harassing me and my family” and people were acting like she said something politically incorrect lol. Buttttt your words do have a lot of power😗

3. Sag mars are the type to push your buttons and then leave the scene when you explode LMAO idk but some sag placements be saying anything for a reaction at times like😀😀

4. Venus in the 12th 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 not seeing your beauty even tho y’all be the baddest in the room 🥺 12th house really makes the perception of themselves seem very foggy I’ve heard

5. Libra placements or venus dominance🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 having a fat ass, Cancer placements or moon dominance 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 being voluptuous like aphrodite, sag placements or jupiter dominance 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 having the thickest thighs ever lol watch out if you get kicked by a sag there the centaur for a reason (legs be strong asf LMAO) *having the planets in your first house too gives that vibe

6. Lilith in the 1st house, 10th house, and 11th house 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 getting talked about wherever you go and provoking people for NO reason

7. having 6th house placements 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 loving fitness (capricorn’s are that way as well)

8. fixed dominance 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 taking years to get over a situation (yes even aquarius placements), mutable dominance 🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 taking a day to get over a situation LMAO

9. neptune, pluto, venus or mercury in the 5th house people YALL ARE SO FUCKING creative, if y’all ain’t using your creativity and instead are replacing it with more logical ideas it can be draining because of how creativity is such a great outlet for yall. i recommend doing anything out of the box because when doing so it keeps the fire ignited in you guys🫶🏾 (12th house placements are creative asf too imo) even you guys with saturn or chiron, y’all don’t suck at being creative, you guys need to be around people and situations that invoke it out of you and learn how to get better using and being creative with time (per saturn)

10. Venus in pisces people, venus aspecting neptune, neptune in the 5th or 7th can really imagine the person they like to be someone there not. neptune can really fogg you guys perception of the person which allows so much resentment and anger later on because once the rose colored glasses is off y’all are like 😀 and it’s a completely diff person then who you thought they were. take your time, be patient but work on seeing people for who they are rather than what YOU want them to be (bc it hurts y’all in the long run and I DONT WANNA SEE MY PISCES HURT) and y’all intuition about y’all’s partners be ON POINT TOO if you listen to it🫶🏾

11. leo and scorpios are so much more similar than they think lol. they both esp when in the lower energy can operate off of ego and both can have a “me me me” type energy. scorpios really can hold onto resentment and past pain which then they can turn into fuck everyone else and then focus on THEY want which can hurt others in the process🥺, but leo’s do the same in a way that they are prideful and doesn’t want to admit that they aren’t the best at times. they both have a me vs the world attitude imo😭 but both in a chart? POWERFUL PERSON 😝

12. libra rising are all over the place at times and i wonder why (having every planet in their sisters sign house 😭😭😭 if there was a debilitated rising it would be in libra LMAO)

13. Saturn, Mars, Lilith, Pluto, or Chiron in the 11th🫱🏻‍🫲🏿 being constantly betrayed and bullied by friend groups and or being seen as an outcast for no reason 😭

14. Scorpio risings (pluto in the 1st or pluto aspecting your ascendant) please get a hold of your staring problem because i guarantee you one glance you give someone for longer than 5 seconds they feel y’all laser stare LMAO (no scorpio rising cant get away with their stare IMO)

15. Aquarius risings i’m so jealous YALL can look good in any fucking thing😩😩😩😩 like y’all can walk out with a trash bag dress and i’m not kidding everyone would be like 📸📸📸

Thank you for reading! 🫶🏾

[godihatethiswebsite]

Tethered Bonds

✽ Poly 141 x f!reader (Omegaverse AU)

A lucky stroke of fate led you right into the arms of your alpha soulmates. But is it everything you dreamed it would be or just the continuation of a nightmare?

Main Masterlist ✽ Ao3

✽ Part Five - On Trial

Apologies for the delay as there were a few speed bumps that my foggy brain just did not want to hump over. This chapter gave me some grief, but I'm still happy with how it turned out :)

Trigger Warnings: religious imagery, ptsd, angst, brief mentions of rape/incest/assault/drugging/coercion/miscarriage

Flat deadened eyes bore chasms through your own.

They peeled away the impregnable shroud of shame masking the abhorrent malefactions of those you’ve wronged.

In a split second of time, those eyes foisted judgment upon all your heinous sins with an executioner’s toll. Damning you to an endless oblivion amongst the cacophony of wailing souls eternally condemned to the River Styx.

Behold! The face of your adjudicator!

Blackened barbed wire constricts the fat of his gluttonous form. Exposed sickly ashen skin held together by threaded catgut, bursting at the seams with bone-white mold. Hellfire caged in little glass vials illuminates the agonized expression glued to a visage of perpetual torment, standing against a backdrop of towering decayed limbs, basking in the multitude of jewel toned offerings left by those who worship at the base of this miserable creature’s sacrificial altar.

…Of all the cheerful residents from the Hundred Acre Wood, who on god’s green earth decided that Eeyore of all things would be the poster boy for Christmas?

The melancholically predisposed cartoon character was a mess of tangled Christmas lights, having apparently failed in his endeavor to liven up the wilted excuse of a barren evergreen behind him and somehow succeeding in trapping his own pudgy form in the decorations instead – the ‘D’ in December knocked crooked in his fruitless struggles.

A paltry souvenir magnet from someplace sunny holds the calendar aloft, Winnie the Pooh designs posted on the side of your fridge with thick glossy sheets. A gift from your fathers; a new one included in their holiday care package every year. 

You’re sure the overstuffed box currently shoved beneath your kitchen table for lack of anywhere more reasonable to house it has its plastic-wrapped replacement buried amongst the other contents. Previous years involved such colorful settings as early 2000’s internet memes or a compilation of fun facts regarding the world’s different varieties of cheeses. Not for your own enjoyment, of course, but for the chagrined expression your family insisted on basking in come Christmas morn.

Not that you admitted to liking this past year's theme of childhood whimsey…

The curlicue numbers on the wintery grid mark the passage of time – crossed out with dry streaks of red ink. Christmas is naught but five days from now, the emphasized date stamped in the upper righthand corner with a glittery ribbon as if the holiday needed even more call for attention. It means almost nothing to you outside of a familial facetime over a microwaved breakfast of cheap eggo waffles. 

You’ll suffer congenially through the good natured poking and prodding. Chloe will send a text; Alex won’t. And the day will pass by in a whisper of silence – the magic of miracles stored back in their damp corporate box for cheapened rehashing the following year.

Holing away in the confines of your solitary habitat came with the added benefit of only exposing yourself to the overhyped celebration on a reasonable once-weekly basis, driving to and fro your therapist's office; painfully ignoring the garish spectacle of such yuletide enrichment as fuzzy wonky reindeer antlers wedged atop sticker splattered minivans, off-key fourth graders caterwauling carols in the backseat, tinsel and fiberglass grating on your teeth.

At least, your antisocialness normally would save you from such headaches. 

When the pharmacy didn’t bungle communications with your primary care physician and refill your prescription two weeks early. 

The voicemail left on your phone this morning was a little more than a minor annoyance. You’d only just finished chasing the taste of bile with citrusy mouthwash, leaning your leaded weight against the cold marble of the sink, stomach still spasming with painful braxton hicks-like contractions. Shaky hands splashed tepid water on your face, wicking away the evidence of exertion and clearing your chin of digested chicken noodle. 

You’d only half paid attention to the robotic voice droning over speakerphone, wiping off your face with a disgruntled glare at your reflection and muffling a groan into the pilled fabric of your hand towel at the automated message. This was not a day to be playing at adulthood. This was a day for warm chunky socks and Disney movie marathons. 

And now because some overworked new hire chugging Red Bulls probably keyed in the wrong refill date in an over-caffeinated zeal, you were once again paying for someone else's mistake. 

(A running theme for your life.)

You shook off the bitter thought with a weary sigh, hanging the damp towel from the plastic command hook on peeling wallpaper. The buzzing of the keypad rattled the counter as you’d cleared out your phone’s voicemail, scooping up the device and trudging back around the corner to begin what should’ve originally been an easy day. 

Now, a few hours of lounging had garnered you enough gumption to voyage out amongst proper society once more, rinsing your chubby dinosaur mug from earlier in the sink as your eyes flick up unwittingly to the calendar nearby. 

You know what you’re counting even as you abash yourself for it. 

The crumpled bag of mostly full coffee grounds has been sitting in your bin for the past two days, put there in an abstract protest to the blatant disregard of your feelings by a caustic alpha. The taste on your tongue has become as phantom as the scent that once clung to your coat rack, wafted away by a bottle of descenting spray the same way you wish to purge his lingering effervescence from where it's taken root in your spine.

The offending bag collects dust at the top of the pile, placed there in a huff at the start of every morning. When its existence mocks your suffering and the grief of a life you’ll never get to live is at the forefront of every painful heave into grimy porcelain, forced onto your knees like the flaccid servient creature that beast has morphed you into. 

Still, there’s no sign of refuse or food waste on the flimsy outside packaging. It never stays put long enough to accumulate filth or bury itself in neglected disuse. At the end of the night, when the wounds of before are wrapped in a somnolent layer of protective padding, it returns to its spot amongst the clutter of your countertop, a pitiful idol to the foolish part he’s allowed to fester against your better judgment.

God, you’ve tried so hard to ignore it – you really have. With what little there is to occupy your mind in this lackluster environment, the labor of staying detached is proving arduous. John’s memory agitating the stripped-bare axis of simple order your world rotates upon.

Distraction eludes you at every attempt to forget. The warmth of your nest is the comfort of his leather embrace, the Zofran on your tongue the calloused paw at your nape grounding you in tempered reality. Soft boar hair bristles are his fingers, the zest in your meal his vigor. His face is in the deep prussian sweater jailed to the back of your closet for the sole crime of coming too close to the cerulean shade that haunts your waking memory.

You thought you already knew what it meant to belong to another. To be branded with someone else’s signet like a bored kid in history class taking chunks out of his desk until it was too desecrated with graffiti to be regarded as anything other than his unofficial property. No one wanted to touch what the school bully had already sullied.

Until John.

It didn’t matter that the seat was already occupied. He just scratched out the nameplate with safety scissors and staked his claim with a wad of gum beneath the chair.

He was dark matter wedging its way to take up space between condensed molecules, bullying the other elements into submission until his chemical makeup twisted you to something there was no coming back from. Sweeping in with the strength of a category five and the persistence of the big bad wolf.

You despise John for the damage he’s incurred to your house made of straw – all of them really – but you detest yourself even more for the gnawing disappointment flooding your gut that he hasn’t shaken the foundations further.

The hiss of pain between your teeth as you adjust the abrasive scarf around your neck serves as a sobering reminder of the real cancer infecting your cells. Even if the claim was buried under layers, it didn’t mean your flesh didn’t still carry the scars from its etching. 

Slinging your purse over your shoulder, you take to the task of unlocking each of the bolts guarding you from the true terrors of an alpha’s altruistic attention. 

Please just let this be quick.

The sneer from the old crone in aisle two has you ducking the latter half of your face in the itchy fabric that hides the one thing you’re currently being judged for.

You don’t know her name, but you’ve seen her outside the steps of your apartment enough with her hellspawn of a pomeranian to know she lives in your building. The grey curls of her poodle cut perm do nothing to hide the splotches of alopecia that come with age. Tissue paper skin dappled with sun spots begs for the youth of collagen, gaunt around her cheekbones and only highlighting her witchy exterior, a moth eaten shawl hanging loosely over the quasimodo hump keeping her from standing at a height taller than that of a twelve year old child.

The grouchy bat is clever, though, you’ll give her that. There’s a discerning eye behind those tortoiseshell frames that speak of a bygone prime filled with intrigue and gossip that’s followed her well into her twilight years. 

She’s honed her intellect well.

And she knows.

Your skin crawls with maggots under her heated glare, boring subdermal tunnels that reach beyond the capabilities of a simple itch. The writhing anomalies only add to the growing discomfort of waiting in the pharmacy queue for far longer than need be. Ten minutes you’ve been behind the same middle aged man – too diffident to interrupt the conversation going on ahead of you – as what should’ve been a simple snatch and grab of his blood pressure medication turns into three decades of catching up with a bygone acquaintance from primary school.

“–when Janine drank some weird concoction back at Jimmy’s place. Fucking health nut has his own carbonator in his kitchen and she got the bright idea on six shots of cuervo to run a glass of milk through the damn thing. Ended up spewing all over Crystal’s pants.”

To their credit, the pharmacist had at least been working on filling prescriptions as he prattled on with the bald spot beta in front of you, bustling between stocked aisles of jarred substances and counting out little white tablets with every ping from the database. He just didn’t seem to care about the goings on inside the store. “Adam mentioned that when I ran into him at the football match last June. Isn’t that O’Hara’s omega? The one who used to save her gum in a giant ball after she was done chewing it?”

Eww. Seriously?

“Nah, that’s Abigail. Crystal was Billy and Carter’s girl.”

That seemed to catch the other alpha in his tracks, a quizzical brow replacing one of mild interest as he paused his fingers over the keyboard. “Was? What happened to her?”

“Fucking up and left them, that’s what. And right after they supported her through that unfortunate miscarriage too. Came home one day to an empty nest and a note on the table telling them she was done. Poor guys never even saw it coming.”

“Wow. Who would’ve thought she’d turn out to be one of them?”

“Yea,” the beta’s tone turned sour. “Unfaithful bitch.”

The Unfaithful. 

That’s what they call you now. 

Those who have forsaken their oaths and disgraced the name ‘omega’. The sanctity of packdom desecrated by egocentric bond breakers. Scheming harlots abandoning their worshipful protectors– denying them their designated rights and withholding the gift of eternal peace upon those alphas worthy enough to be chosen.

False omegas. Government apostates to how things are supposed to be run.

Doesn’t matter that those who claim to be victims before the courts are the same conniving bastards stripping us of our bodily autonomy. Nothing is impermissible. 

Rape. Incest. Assault. Drugging. Coercion. Words that carry weight become cotton candy deadlifts in the face of a mating bond. It has no undoing – no magic words or medical procedures. There is no running towards the arms of a better pack in hopes of a brighter future; no room for another in the tether of your soul. That anchor has taken root in the rock bed and cannot be claimed outside the mysticism of a scent match. 

Crueler parts of the world would hunt you down like the runaway slave they’re too cowardice to admit they perceive you as, a bounty placed upon your head and welts on your back for disobeying, brittle nails clawing at the dirt in a last attempt at freedom, dragged back to your master in an iron wrought collar displaying the shame of your sins. 

Suppose you should consider yourself lucky that here, amongst the dredges of refined society, your kind are merely shunned.

Bosom friends all turn their backs, work desks empty into a cardboard box under the guise of ‘performance issues’. The deli at the corner claims they’re closed, red blocky letters drawing blood by the gallons as the patrons inside regard you like you’re nothing more than a sopping wet stray begging for scraps in the rain.

There are no laws that protect from discrimination for people like you. The lease in your fathers’ names and the lie from their lips are the only things sheltering you from homelessness. Others are not so fortunate as to have the word of an alpha keeping them off the street. 

The forlorn promise of a better tomorrow is all that greets you now in the wake of devastation. There is no higher contract than the bite marks on your neck. 

The scathing look from the disgruntled woman would be warranted by those around you if they were privy to the same suspicions she carried. The signs were all there if they only knew where to look.

“Miss?”

You hardly notice when they end their interaction, the off-putting customer service smile from the alpha behind the counter making the pit of your stomach rumble with unease as you scurry to the front, quietly offering up your personal information as you place your ID on the counter.

If he only knew he had the power to blacklist you in his hands…

You fork over the cash in far shorter time than the previous customer did, spending less than two minutes to his twenty before you duck away from the substantial line that’s formed in the time since your subsequent arrival. 

It’s your luck the old hag is three guests behind you, averting your gaze to the task of stashing your meds to try and keep from further interaction. Too bad a half century’s worth of smoking comes out in the rasping slur she spits at you from underneath her breath.

“Fucking glitch.”

You’ve heard the words directed at you once before, only far more cutting and uttered from a far different mouth. That didn’t stop the insult from piercing through to bone, a deep ache in your ribs that slows your gait and gives you pause beside the basket drop-off. 

A quick glance around confirms a lack of disdain from your fellow shoppers. You’re surprisingly fortunate that her biting remark hadn’t been made any louder. You frequent this shop often enough to be recognizable to most of the staff – though not on any sort of conversational terms. Being blacklisted here wouldn’t just result in an inconvenient trek farther for medical service, but a mark that would deny usage no matter the location.

Every step out your front door is a chance for your past to catch up to you… in one form or another.

A shock of cold jolts you from your far-away stare, startling a yelp that draws brief attention as you jump back from the unwanted contact, hand retreating away at the abrupt offense. Cradling it to your chest, you’re met with cobalt eyes and sunshine hair, a bright eyed pupper beaming up at you from its spot perched at your feet.

“Sorry about him!” An apologetic voice squawks to the left of you, calling your attention to the hobbling beta woman at the other end of the leash. Her neon green marshmallow puffer greets you before her dark curls and round cheeks, a prosthetic hand keeping grip on her furry friend. “He’s a well behaved boy I promise! Ain’t gonna bite ya or anything.”

“Oh no, he’s fine!” The tremble in your words is more from social awkwardness than anything, having been caught off guard in a place far too crowded for your tastes, rolling your shoulders to halt the impulse to scratch. “Just wasn’t expecting a wet dog nose is all.”

The beta, on the other hand, has no problem running a knitted mitten over the back of her neck. “Yeaaaah, it’s not often he gets away from me like that. You see, he’s my service animal.” She calls attention to the black vest around his body, a litany of bright colored patches and big blocky words adorning the functioning harness that you hadn’t quite discerned upon first glance. “He uh… was just alerting to you.”

It takes you a moment to process the words, blinking down at the panting canine regarding you with eyes more keen than the pea-brained expression would suggest. 

Good to know even a dog can sense you’re nine different levels of fucked up.

“You can pet him if you want,” comes the gentle offer upon spying the embarrassment painting your features, taking her faithful companion’s inattention in stride. The quirk of her mouth gives you a green light even if her words already did. “Far be it for me to disagree with the boss here when he puts his mind to something.”

The words of declination rest limp on your tongue, a moment’s hesitation giving way beneath the understanding gaze of an impartial animal whose sole purpose is to provide the comfort of love. Crouching down to its level – uncaring of the salt trekked state of the tile – it's almost instinctual to wrap your arms around the retriever for an act that seems so much more dangerous coming from any other being. The muzzle that finds home in the junction of your shoulder roots you through the floor, going beyond solid concrete foundation and miles of serpentine pipeways, winding through terraceous cracks unyielding to the progress of man to find purchase in the damp soil unseen for thousands of years, unbowing to the anything but the turn of the earth.

Calm is not the word; the pounding pulse in your ears and the headrush of being out in public still ring through the chittering bustle of checkout lanes to keep you on your toes. Yet the ache in your soul feels less like a boulder and more like a handful of a pebbled shore.

Pulling away from the smell of damp fur, slobber greets your face in the form of affection, features pulling taut against the playful onslaught trying its best to intrude between the cracks of your mouth. 

“Easy does it, bud.” A soft yank on his harness serves as a gentle reminder, turning from loveable pup to esteemed gentleman panting in perfect submission. “No one wants to taste what you had for lunch earlier today.”

You flash her a grateful smile for the interference, fingers moving next to scritch around the bright red collar mostly hidden by dense hairs, a glinting dog bone with cursive scrawl clacking against the knuckles of your hand. “Rocky, huh?”

“Yea,” she chuckles. “Don’t judge, but he was actually my favorite power ranger as a kid.” Her mittened hand joins yours in the thick pelt of his neck, scratching at some secret spot that gets his tail thumping, the appendage a whirling propeller trying in vain to achieve liftoff. How long they must’ve been in each other’s company for such familiarity. “Figured since this little guy was gonna be my hero too, he deserved a name befitting the courage he inspires.”

Her sincerity sparks something in you as you reach back to your own childhood, the sizzling of pancakes on the griddle against a backdrop of Saturday morning shows. Your smile warms at the memory. “Hey, no judgment here. After all, mine was Tommy.”

The moment breaks with shattered glass somewhere off to the right, the both of you reacting with varying degrees of frazzled nerves. You don’t miss the way her hand strikes out with practiced swiftness towards her hip, something nonexistent bumped away from flexing fingers by a patience nudge. Wide eyes glance down at her stalwart companion, already staring back with all the surety of his namesake, pushing her palm further against the smoothness of his head, urging her to stay with him in the safety of the moment. You don’t know the ghosts that haunt her–doing your best to avert your gaze from the glimpse of carbon fiber–but you watch as they retreat with calming breaths back to the place where they were born.

She shoots you a look you know she rather wouldn’t, an unspoken apology wrapped in embarrassment as familiar to you as it is to her, understanding passing between mirrored irises. There’s a shuffling of feet as you both scurry on your respective ways, you towards the outside air while her path takes her further inward. A quick glance over your shoulder finds him pressed against her side, snout turned upwards with a lolling tongue and dopey smile, eyes on the caregiver staring back at him with fond devotion. To have something that loves you that much…

Your gaze softens along with your words. “Good boy, Rocky…”

Fire ants bite into your cheek as the sharp crack that accompanies them leaves an outline of lava, the slap mark on your face glowing red hot and searing with the weight behind their assault. It dulls as the molten rock cools, a beating heart on the surface kept in time with the now racing pulse in your neck. The shock of it is almost as painful as the protruding iron shelves getting knocked against your spine, blowback jostling the festive display contents some poor stocker worked so hard on as cardboard cubes of kleenex clatter like ornaments to the muck-stained floor.

The outcry from your lips is muffled in comparison to groaning metal shifting under your weight, hand instinctively flying up as a wall to protect from further onslaught. Heat blooms again even under your careful touch, hissing in a gasp as wide eyes filled with glistening saline catch up a moment before your nostrils take in a familiar decadence. 

Her omega scent of rich warm brownie, fresh out the oven – but swallowed from the edges by the beginnings of char. Too high a temp getting cooked for too long, potent in its fury as it cracks and concaves. A sickeningly sweet outer shell transmuting under pressure, turning perfect gooey fudge into bubbling tar.

The visage that greets you is tempered by dread; a mixture of refined beauty and smoldering hate.

White fluffy earmuffs contrast against long chocolate waves spilling like molasses over a matching pristine peacoat – as if not even fate itself dared to sully such purity. If the air of refinement somehow doesn’t outclass you than the designer handbag does. No pack could ask for a more exemplary omega.

You’ve seen those cheekbones on the cover of magazines, that glassy skin splashed clean in luxury skincare ads. Perfect porcelain as artistically rendered as fine chinaware. Every model you’ve ever envied taken shape as your worst nightmare. Dark bambi eyes red-ringed with acidic tears, button nose flaring with each heaving rise of her trembling shoulders. Full pouty lips quiver under the enormous weight of emotions that threaten to claw almond manicured nails through your skin like chainsaws.

There is anger, but there is also pain.

And you caused it.

You do not know which response consumes you more: panic, or shame. 

“You–” her voice breaks like her heart, delicate wind chimes in a spring downpour. “You s-stay away from them…” Her words come in a struggle, fighting for stability whilst she hangs onto her composure with a thread as thin as spider silk. “They’re not yours… so… so just– just leave us alone!”

Gone is the lighthearted vision spun in innocent etherealness from that day in the store. Sparkling doe eyes now filled with scorn don’t suit the unblemished being not a foot in front of you. There’s an ingrained sweetness in her now pitiful form that so easily calls to an alpha’s protectiveness, a creature that deserves to be cherished, adorned; royalty reincarnated to a modern day princess.

There are only traces of that now standing a few feet in front of the automatic sliding doors, a smashed box of tissues keeping the mechanism from closing and sending a chill over the entire conversation. 

You shrink in on yourself, lowering your gaze in a meek show of submission that speaks where your own voice fails. How could you continue to look her in the eye when you are the reason this woman is suffering? When you are the bad guy in every sense of the word?

Filth. Sullied. Poison. Suffocating her with your very presence as if your own tainted pheromones could overcast hers.

You expect more–deserve more–but she turns on her heels, the sensors allowing passage as she hurries back out the way you suspect she only just came.

You’re as stunned as the bystanders around you, blinking at her retreating form into the small parking lot beyond. You can’t help but watch as she races across the asphalt, thoughts of her own task left behind in a trail of her own tears. Badly muffled whispers start in earnest at the display. Chorused words of ‘wicked woman’ following you out onto the pavement. Tongues lashing into open wounds kept bleeding by your own shame. 

That pain is nothing in the wake of the familiar figure of a towering form.

He meets her halfway, hulking mass climbing out from the cab of a blackened range rover at the first sign of her obvious distress. From this far away you can only make out the sounds of heaving sobs, watch as dainty hands clutch the dark material of her protector, the furrow of his brow as he searches for answers to her suffering.

Whatever she responds, you find yourself once more snapped in place by the weight of his stare, looking no less worse for wear than the first time he did. 

Logic says the phantom tartness on your tongue is a hallucination ingrained from previous exposure, but the inner omega whining helplessly to be understood doesn’t comprehend the self inflicted wounds she scores with brittle claws at the first chance to taste. In many ways, designative instincts retain the innocence of youth: purely reactionary in their naive disregard. They’re doe-eyed five year olds holding up the mangled body of a broken baby bird and proclaiming ‘they can fix it’. To them, they don’t realize the damage that comes with wishing for a bite of lemon zest when they know that cupcake is theirs, deaf to the scolding of a parent who knows better. 

After all, what gives you the right to take what hasn’t been offered? For wishing for the comfort of an alpha’s scent that doesn’t belong to you? All it does is make you feel like the shameful thief the people in the shop think you are.

So you keep your distance from the alpha and his mate, once more stuck in a whirlwind of unintentional trouble. He’s too far away to make out the hues of his eyes, but his body language tells you exactly where he stands in all this. Fingers flexed in a possessive grip, the placement of his hand curled around her mid back, the subtle hunch he takes as he tucks her tearstained face beneath his covered chin.

A choice. 

Conceal. Protect. Intruder.

You once wondered at the outcome if you hadn’t run that night; if the call that beckoned you ‘wait’ had kept you rooted to the floor. How would this mammoth have reacted - the one who only watched in pure neutrality as your world crumbled apart? Would he have let his friend make the first move forward? Would there have been an altercation? Spoken words and awkward introductions such as with their Scottish brethren? Did they care about your cowardice? Did the alphas give you chase? Lose your scent in the produce aisle and catch their breaths in the crisp night air? 

At last you have your answer. 

The judgment he passes as he turns his back to you has far more gravitas than the mopey donkey on your fridge. The conjured images of morbidity that entertained you earlier this morning feels like a holiday in comparison to the way your arteries shrivel from necrosis; down another size and a half by Grinch standards.

(Would it ever grow again?)

Closing your eyes against the sight is all you can do to maintain your sanity.

“Lass!”

As if life hasn’t finished causing you torment enough, the rough brogue catching your ears has your eyes peeling back open, the depression gluttoning away at your insides taking note at the promise of further feast, cackling gleefully at the tousled mohawk rounding the the opposite side of the vehicle his companions are approaching. Concern sits heavy on his brow, footsteps sure of their path as the pair sidle up along the drivers side of their SUV, lemon shuffling his omega through the open door he holds and into the relative safety of the back seat. You expect John to join them – to fuss and coo over her the same way he did for you in the cafe. Your masochism soaks up the envy like a yorkshire pudding at Christmas dinner.

But he makes no move to join his mate, blazing a path that leads beyond.

It’s not her he’s calling out for. It’s you.

Something smothers in your chest at the meaty glove that yanks him backwards, the heft of his brawn outmatched by the iron grip stopping him from advancing any further, shoved back against the shiny black of the range rover. The suspension creaks from the sheer force of the impact, giving you a hint as to the momentum which was suddenly reversed and applied to the hull, vehicle tilting a few centimeters off its wheelbase before thudding back down to settle on its chassis.

Charged static fills the air as overwhelmingly as the growl ripped from their chest – from which alpha you aren’t sure. The palpable anger that must be flaring in their scent chokes those unfortunate few nearby into hurrying along, a group of teenagers giving wide berth as the old man a few cars over shoves something fragile into the boot with a telltale crunch, slamming the latch shut before climbing over his center console to the steering wheel from the opposite side. No one wants to get involved in pack business, much less find themselves collateral damage in a showdown between behemoths. 

Where lemon’s mouth is obscured, John’s isn’t, giving you unfiltered access to the snarl he spits up at the man a few inches taller than him. He makes his displeasure clear in a volume still too quiet for you to grasp, but his argument is apparent in the gesturing of his arms, the wildness matched by the heart he so clearly wears on his sleeve. His packmate stands in complete opposition to the outward show of aggression by the former, striking in his marble-like appearance, firm against the blunted chisel of whatever’s being discussed. The only sign that he’s participating comes in the form of the other’s interrupted pauses. 

Your thoughts turn to the omega inside overhearing all of this. The discontent she must feel down the bond from those she loves most has to be just as painful as the ability to hear the quarreling itself. What must she be going through–huddled alone in the shadows by herself–having to listen to what you assume is an argument over another woman… one that a mate is clearly defending?

What consumes her more? Is it rage? Betrayal? Anguish? Abandonment? Jealousy? Your heart goes out to her at this moment in a way you’re not sure her packmates are knowing or even empathetic to. 

You suddenly flinch as if being struck by the accusatory finger pointed in your direction by the up-until-now stoic alpha, nose to nose with a man he’s spent nights pressed even closer against. Whatever point he makes, there’s no rebuttal from the Scot this time – only a strained moment’s silence.

At last John shoves away the arm holding him, straightening his jacket with a look that says this isn’t over as his companion walks away to the driver’s side door. You don’t pay him further mind though as John huffs out his anger like a bull, raking a hand through his hair before meeting your gaze with far more softness. He sees it in your eyes the same way it reflects in his. Two pained apologies spoken without words.

Dark tint keeps you from seeing them as they enter the vehicle and drive off, peeling away with a nod to the discomfort inside but with enough self control to not endanger the ‘precious cargo’ in the back seat.

You knew the other day was too good to be true. It’s clear now the damage you’ve incurred in your foolish desire to forge a connection. The lies John told you to placate his unthinking selfishness. Why the radio silence has been deafening your apartment. 

Nothing is alright. Everything is broken. You’ve ruined god knows how many years of passion and devotion by the sole act of your own pathetic existence. 

You’ve robbed her of that–robbed them. Another reminder that they cannot give it to you. She has taken your place. They cannot claim another.

It’s your fault. Your fault.

Your fault your fault your fault your fault your fault… 

You can’t breathe.

Something’s crawling up your throat. You can’t– 

As customers pass the threshold of the automatic glass doors, no one pays any mind to the sounds of retching in the dumpster.

<< ✿ Previous ✿ <<

[starrywilliams]

END OF DESIRE

sub!abby x reader

summary: abby hates distractions when she’s reading, but this distraction is very welcome.

notes: short bc i don’t have the motivation to write anything long…!!! i used the iliad for this bc she has it and it physically hurts me to not write as lore accurate as i possibly can

warnings: not proof read !!!! cunnilingus, fingering, (both abby!receiving), yeah it’s just kinda filthy idk…

nsfw under the cut!

leant up against the headboard was a trembling girl, fingers tightening around the faded paperback with all her strength. “keep going abby.” you whispered, “if you stop, i stop, okay?” you reminded her of the agreement, nails pushing gently into the flesh of her thighs, a small whimper falling past her lips.

she took in a deep and shaky breath, pushing the glasses back up her nose. “helen has nothing but her b-“ she gasped softly as she felt your tongue drag over her clit, earning a harsh stare from below. “b-beauty. and the charm it casts on all men,” another whine escaped her throat as you left small, wet kisses around the edges of her pussy.

“without aphrodite she would be n-nothing.” she stumbled over her words, struggling to focus with your touch between her sensitive thighs. “you’re doing so well, don’t stop.” you smiled, the incoming cruelty begin to pervade your consonants. “and aphrodite plays the same role on olympus as on ear- fuck!”

she whimpered as your tongue pushed into her, hips bucking off the bed. you slapped her thigh, reminding her of what she was supposed to be doing. “shit, sorry,” she apologised breathlessly, restarting the sentence. “and aphrodite plays the same role on olympus as on earth.”

she swallowed harshly, fingers quickly swiping over her foggy glasses so she could keep reading. she sighed as she felt one of your fingers replace your tongue, pushing deep into her. she met your eyes, understanding that you weren’t gonna move until she continued.

“she gives hera, who wants to diverttt-“ the word faded into a whine as you curled your finger inside her, her head hitting the headboard with a light thud. “baby, you don’t want me to stop, do you?” your coquettish voice had her squeezing her eyes shut, head shaking. “n-no.” she sighed, looking back down to the blurry pages.

“divert zeus’s attention from the battle so poseidon,” abby whimpered breathily, your increasing pace making it impossible to concentrate. “ so poseidon can help the archaeans, the breast-“ a second finger sinking inside of her aching hole cutting off the word midway through. “keep going.” your stern voice left no other option for the desperate girl.

“-band, pierced and alluring, with every kind of enchantment woven through it.” abby breathed in heavily, legs trembling over your shoulders. your fingers kept up their unforgiving pace, stretching her out in the best way possible. with each thrust inside her, she could feel her high getting tugged closer and closer - whines slipping off her tongue endlessly. but she was supposed to be reading.

“fuck, w-why did you stop?” she said, voice hoarse and desperate. between your vexed eyes, glaring up at her, and the disbelief lining your slight grin, it didn’t take long for her to piece together your reasoning. “i’ll keep reading, just-just don’t stop, please?” she rambled, slightly high-pitched in her frantic desire, pulling the book back up before her face.

“there is the heat of love,” feeling kind, you’d started again, the sound of her struggling to get out her words coherently far better than anything else. “the pulsing rush of longing,” you could feel the need rushing all over your fingers, she was fucking soaking.

“the lover’s whisperrr-“ abby whined, feeling your lips attach to her aching clit, tongue swiping over the swollen bud. “irresistible.” she stuttered, all attention drawn to the stimulation that threatened to envelop her entire body soon. but she knew better now, she had to keep going.

“madness to make,” her thighs were shivering around your head, pussy pulsing around your fingers, while a spare hand laced itself into your hair - keeping you as close as she possibly could. “the sanest man go mad- fuckfuckfuck,”

her hips were grinding against your face, incomprehensible noises spilling out of her throat as you continued to fuck her. “go on baby, you can do it.” you mumbled against her clit, feeling her tighten around your fingers within seconds.

“ohmygodthankyouthankyou-“ her barely coherent words slipped aimlessly out of her mouth as she gushed all over your fingers. you kept going, replacing your fingers with your tongue, tasting her desperately. when you tried to return to her clit, you were hastily pulled away, the sensitive girl shaking her head as her thighs snapped back together.

“you wanna keep reading? i can always get the-“ you started, stopping at the notice of her eyes - renewed with a fresh desire. “oh, okay.” you laughed softly, realising it was your turn now.

[girlrotterr]

So glad you’re back, missed your amazing writing a lot!

Would it be possible to make something about maybe the reader getting bit and infected , but Ellie instead of killing them just kind of ..keeps them?

Like she refuses to lose anyone else , too many people she knew lost themselves to the infected and she just can’t shoot them, and despite their pleas for Ellie to just put them down, yknow before they’re fully infected, Ellie just can’t do it

It’s selfish and she knows that but she just can’t lose R . And maybe when R is like, fully infected, they’re way less aggressive with Ellie- like even with the fungus controlling their brain, those foggy eyes still recognize Ellie just a little bit, like they’re still there

Or maybe that’s what Ellie believes and she’s just majorly delusional! It’s not like she could get infected if we bit them anyway 😁

(P.S I’m glad you’re back but don’t feel any pressure to do anything you don’t want to! It’s always nice to keep balance and take breaks and all that. really love what you do!)

This literally made my day! tsym for this request, it was gut-wrenching to write...I definitely need to write more angst 😭

Fragments.

⋆ ★　it’s you 　·

The air in the room felt stifling, thick with tension and the lingering smell of antiseptic. You knelt beside Ellie, carefully cleaning the dirt and dried blood from her arm, your hands steady despite the unease crawling up your spine. Her skin was cold to the touch, and you could feel the thinness of her frame—she hadn’t been eating. Her face was hollow, eyes glassy as she stared blankly at the peeling wallpaper, as if the world beyond had ceased to matter.

"You need food," you said quietly, dabbing at the worst of her wounds. "If you don’t, you’ll collapse before you even make it out of this place."

Your voice barely stirred the silence. Ellie’s jaw tightened, but she gave no other sign that she heard you. You reached for the bandages to wrap the gash along her arm, but just as your fingers brushed the edge of her sleeve, she pulled back, standing abruptly. The bed creaked as she rose, putting space between you, her body tense like a spring ready to snap.

She moved to the window, staring out into the rain-soaked streets, her reflection barely visible in the glass. One hand rose to her forehead, pressing hard as if she could push away the weight bearing down on her. "I’m leaving tonight," she murmured, her voice flat but filled with quiet finality.

You rose slowly, watching her closely. "Ellie…" you began, but the words felt heavy, caught in your throat. "You can’t go alone. I’m coming with you."

The sound of your words seemed to break something loose in her, and she let out a dry, humorless laugh. It was bitter, the kind of laugh that had nothing to do with amusement. "No, you’re not," she said, turning halfway to glance at you. Her eyes flickered with something cold and distant. "This isn’t about you. You stay here. I don’t need you following me."

Her words cut through the air like a blade, sharp and unrelenting. You wanted to reach out, to close the gap, but her posture warned you to keep your distance. She ran a hand through her hair, the strands falling messily around her face, the exhaustion clear in the way her body sagged, but she kept standing. Kept moving. Kept fighting.

Finally, she turned fully, her eyes locking onto yours with a steely resolve. The warmth that had once been there—the fire, the connection—was gone. Replaced by something hollow, something hardened by too much loss. The person you were staring at was Ellie, but at the same time, it wasn’t her. Her expression was almost unreadable, the kind of cold determination that refused to be questioned.

"You don’t know what this is," she said, her voice low, barely above a whisper, but carrying the weight of everything unsaid. "You don’t want any part of it." Her gaze was icy, her eyes daring you to argue. Daring you to stop her.

And in that moment, you realized the Ellie standing before you was not the same girl who once trusted you with her secrets, her fears. She had become something else, someone chasing after something that only she could see.

The rain outside drummed softly against the cracked windowpane, its steady rhythm the only sound filling the suffocating quiet between you and Ellie. She had turned away from you again, facing the door now, hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets like they were holding her together. But you weren’t going to let her leave. Not like this.

"I am coming with you, Ellie," you said, your voice firmer this time. "You can’t do this alone."

She stiffened, her shoulders hunching slightly, like the weight of your words was too much to bear. For a moment, she didn’t move, didn’t say anything, the tension between you thickening with every passing second. The space between you felt like a chasm, widening with each breath.

"I told you to stay," she muttered through clenched teeth, her voice low but trembling at the edges. Her hands gripped the fabric of her jacket inside the pockets, knuckles white, though you couldn’t see it. "This isn’t your fight."

"You think I care about that?" you shot back, stepping closer, trying to catch her eye. "You think I’m going to stand by and let you run off into God knows what? You’ll get yourself killed out there."

She let out another bitter laugh, but this time it was shakier, less certain, like she was using it as a shield. "I’ll be fine," she said, though the words felt hollow, more for her benefit than yours. She shifted slightly, her back still to you, and you could see her hands twitch inside her pockets. Her whole body was rigid, but there was a tremor running through her, something she was desperately trying to hide.

You stepped forward, your voice softening but still determined. "No, you won’t. You haven’t slept, haven’t eaten. You’re barely holding on, Ellie." The words hung in the air between you, and you could feel the weight of them sinking in.

"Stop it," she snapped suddenly, her voice cracking at the edges as she turned halfway, but still not fully meeting your eyes. Her hands were shaking now, slight but noticeable, and she shoved them deeper into her pockets, as if that would make the tremors disappear. "You don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Then tell me," you pressed, not backing down. "Tell me why you won’t let me come with you. Why you keep pushing me away."

Her gaze darted to the floor, her lips pressed into a thin line. She was breathing faster now, the tremble in her voice more pronounced, and her whole frame seemed to sag under the weight of your words. But still, she didn’t look at you. She couldn’t.

"Because…" she started, her voice barely above a whisper, but then she swallowed hard, shaking her head, as if trying to force the words back down. She ran a hand through her hair again, her fingers trembling as they got caught in the messy strands, her breath shallow.

She took a step toward the door, her movements almost frantic, her back still turned. "You don’t get it," she muttered, her voice fragile. "If you come with me…"

Her voice broke completely, and she clenched her fists so hard inside her pockets that you could see her arms tense up. She couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t even face you, her entire body vibrating with barely contained emotion. You could feel the distance between you growing, and yet, you knew she was right there—right on the edge of something she didn’t want to admit.

"Ellie," you said gently, stepping closer until you were just behind her. "You don’t have to do this alone. You can’t keep shutting people out."

She took a deep breath, as if trying to steel herself, but it wasn’t working. The more she tried to keep her voice steady, the more it trembled, betraying her. "I have to," she whispered, her voice so small, so fragile that it barely sounded like her. "I can’t… I can’t lose anyone else."

The confession hung in the air like a fragile thread, one tug away from snapping, and your heart clenched. She still wouldn’t look at you, her eyes glued to the door, as if staring at it would keep her from unraveling. Her hands slipped from her pockets, fingers twitching at her sides now, shaking uncontrollably.

"Ellie…" you whispered, taking a step closer, but she flinched, turning away sharply, like she couldn’t bear your presence. Her breathing had quickened, shallow and uneven, and her eyes darted around the room as if searching for an escape. 

"I can’t… I can’t lose you too," she choked out finally, the words spilling out like they had been forced from somewhere deep inside her, where she had buried them. She bit her lip, hard, as if punishing herself for saying it out loud, as if the very act of speaking it made it real.

Her hands balled into fists again, trembling as she pressed them against her sides. She was shaking now, her entire body vibrating with the fear she couldn’t voice, the grief she refused to let surface. But it was there, seeping out through every crack, every tremor. And she couldn’t hide it anymore.

She wouldn’t look at you—couldn’t—but you could see the tears welling up in her eyes, and the way she blinked rapidly to hold them back. Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke again, raw and broken. "If you come with me… something will happen. I know it. I’ll lose you too." 

There it was. The truth she had been too terrified to say, the fear she had been carrying with her all this time. The fear that had kept her running, kept her distant, kept her cold. She wasn’t just afraid of losing more people—she was afraid of losing you.

You stood there, your heart aching for her, wanting to reach out and tell her it was okay—that you understood. But you knew that right now, she couldn’t handle that. Not when she was so close to breaking.

She turned away again, her shoulders hunched, her body trembling as she fought to keep herself together. "Please," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Just… stay. Don’t make me say goodbye to you too."

The silence that followed was suffocating, and you knew in that moment, she wasn’t just asking you to stay behind. She was asking you to save her from the heartbreak she feared was inevitable. To stop her from speaking her worst fears into existence. 

───────

The morning was overcast, the kind of gray that settled over everything, turning the world dull and lifeless. You and Ellie walked side by side through the empty town, your footsteps echoing faintly in the quiet streets. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the dampness still lingered in the air, making everything feel heavy and cold. Your breath came out in short, visible puffs, mingling with the mist that clung to the abandoned buildings around you.

Ellie was quiet, her gaze fixed ahead as she led the way, rifle slung over her shoulder. The tension from the night before still lingered between you, a quiet undercurrent that neither of you had fully addressed. But for now, there were more immediate concerns—supplies, food, anything that could keep you both going for another few days. The last town had been picked clean, and this one didn’t look much better.

You passed by boarded-up storefronts, windows cracked and shattered, their interiors dark and hollow. The signs above them had long faded, the paint chipped and peeling, a reminder of a life long abandoned. Ellie didn’t say a word, but her movements were sharp, purposeful, her eyes scanning every alley, every shadow. She was on edge, though she tried to hide it. 

As you walked, the distant sound of creaking metal caught your attention. A rusted-out sign swung lazily in the wind above an old convenience store. The windows were grimy, impossible to see through, but it didn’t look like it had been touched in a while. 

"Let’s check in there," you suggested, nodding toward the building. Ellie gave a curt nod in response, her lips pressed tightly together, and without a word, she moved toward the door, her boots scuffing against the wet pavement. She reached for the handle, testing it cautiously, and the door creaked open with a low groan, the hinges rusted from neglect.

Inside, the air was musty, thick with the scent of mold and decay. Shelves lined the walls, though most were bare, their contents either stolen or long expired. Sunlight barely filtered through the grime-covered windows, casting everything in a muted, grayish light. Ellie stepped in first, her hand already hovering near her pistol, her eyes sharp and scanning the dim interior. You followed close behind, your heartbeat quickening slightly in the eerie stillness of the place.

You moved toward the back of the store, eyes scanning the shelves for anything useful—canned food, medical supplies, anything that might help. Ellie moved along the opposite side, her footsteps deliberate, her focus entirely on the task at hand.

The quiet between you both was almost oppressive, but you could sense her tension with every move she made, like she was barely holding herself together. Her fingers twitched as they traced the edge of a dusty shelf, her breathing shallow but controlled. The rawness from last night was still fresh, unspoken, hanging heavy in the air, but neither of you knew how to address it.

Your gaze drifted toward her as she rifled through a half-empty bin, her face partially hidden under the hood of her jacket. There was something about the way she moved now—faster, more determined, as if keeping herself busy could drown out whatever thoughts were haunting her. But the slight tremor in her hands as she reached for a tin can gave her away.

"Ellie," you said softly, breaking the silence between you.

She froze for just a second, her shoulders tensing before she forced herself to keep moving, pretending she hadn’t heard you. "We need to focus," she muttered, her voice tight, strained.

"I am focusing," you replied, stepping closer. "But we’re not going to find much if you burn yourself out."

Her jaw clenched, and she finally looked at you, her green eyes flickering with something sharp—anger, maybe frustration, but beneath it, fear. She didn’t respond immediately, instead stuffing the can she’d found into her backpack with more force than necessary.

"We don’t have time to slow down," she said, her voice low, clipped. "Not now. We have to keep moving, keep finding what we can. It’s how we survive." 

Her words had a harsh edge, but you could see the exhaustion pulling at her features, the way her body sagged slightly as she spoke. She hadn’t fully recovered from everything—physically or mentally—but she was pushing herself harder than ever, trying to keep the walls up, to keep that distance between you.

You sighed, glancing around the room. "Look, I get it. I do. But if you don’t rest, if you don’t take a second to breathe… you’re not going to make it to the next town. Neither of us will."

Ellie shot you a look, a mix of frustration and something you couldn’t quite place, before shaking her head. She opened her mouth to respond, but just as she did, the soft sound of glass crunching underfoot echoed from the far side of the store. Both of you froze instantly, the air thickening as your heart rate spiked. 

Ellie’s hand was on her pistol in a flash, her body low and tense, her eyes darting toward the source of the sound. You reached for your own weapon, your grip tight, the adrenaline flooding your veins as you both moved silently toward the back corner of the store. There, behind a display shelf, something shifted—small, fast. A figure darted past the aisle in the dim light.

Ellie glanced at you, her eyes wide but focused, her hand steady on her pistol despite the fear lurking beneath the surface. The moment stretched on, filled with quiet breaths and pounding heartbeats as you both prepared for whatever came next. 

But this was no longer just about finding supplies. Now, survival had become the immediate goal.

The sound came before you saw them—a low, guttural growl echoing through the silence of the store, followed by the unmistakable shuffle of heavy footsteps. At first, it was just one. But then, more followed. A chorus of inhuman snarls and groans rising up from the aisles.

Ellie’s eyes darted toward the door as the noise grew louder, her posture stiffening with the realization. "Shit," she muttered under her breath, her grip tightening around the handle of her pistol. She didn’t need to say anything—you knew exactly what was coming.

Before you could react, a figure lurched into view, stumbling into the store from the far side, its limbs jerking with that unnatural, erratic movement you knew too well. The infected creature let out a high-pitched screech, its head snapping in your direction, milky eyes locked onto you. It wasn’t alone. Behind it, more shadows shifted, crowding the entrance as the herd began to pour in, a flood of bodies pushing against the broken doorframe.

"Go!" Ellie barked, her voice sharp and urgent. Without hesitation, she grabbed your arm and yanked you toward the back of the store, her eyes wide with fear but her movements quick, determined. The infected were swarming now, their snarls filling the air as they tore through the aisles, knocking over shelves and scattering debris in their path.

You ran, the sound of the horde behind you growing louder with every second, the ground trembling under their relentless charge. Ellie was in front, her boots pounding against the worn tile, her breathing fast but controlled as she weaved between shelves, looking for an exit. You could hear her muttering curses under her breath, her frustration bubbling just beneath the surface.

But then you heard it—the stumble, the faint hitch in her step. You glanced at Ellie, and immediately you saw the change. She was slowing down, her movements less fluid, more labored. Her breathing had turned ragged, and her face was pale, her brow glistening with sweat.

"Ellie!" you shouted, grabbing her arm as she stumbled again, barely keeping herself upright. Her legs were shaking now, her footsteps faltering as though her body was finally giving out.

"I’m fine," she snapped, pulling away from you, though the strain in her voice was impossible to miss. She tried to push forward, but her legs buckled again, this time more severely. Her frustration was palpable, a flare of anger that lit up her expression as she fought to keep moving.

Behind you, the infected were closing in, their growls growing louder, more aggressive. You could hear the scrape of their claws against the floor, the sickening sounds of their bodies slamming into shelves, knocking them aside in their frenzy to reach you.

Ellie tried to pick up the pace, but it was clear something was wrong. Her face twisted in pain and frustration as she pushed herself harder, but her body wasn’t cooperating. She was weakening—fast. Days without food, without proper rest, were finally catching up to her. And it showed.

"Damn it!" she hissed, her voice thick with anger—at herself, at the situation. Her fists clenched, her legs trembling with every step. She was trying, but her body was betraying her, and you could see the panic beginning to set in, masked beneath her frustration.

"Ellie, stop," you called out, your voice rising over the cacophony of snarls and shuffling feet behind you. "You’re going to get yourself killed if you don’t—"

"I’m fine!" she barked again, her voice strained as she forced herself forward. But it was clear she wasn’t. Her breath was coming in shallow gasps now, her legs nearly giving out beneath her as she stumbled again, catching herself on a shelf. She paused for a split second, clutching her side, her face contorted with frustration and pain.

You could see it in her—the fear, the anger. The way she was cursing herself for being weak, for slowing down. The look in her eyes was one of desperation, her teeth clenched as she fought to stay on her feet, her body visibly trembling from the effort.

But the infected were too close now. There wasn’t time.

"They’re almost on us!" you yelled, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her forward, practically dragging her as you both pushed toward the back of the store. You could hear the footsteps of the infected right behind you, their growls echoing in your ears, growing louder, more frantic.

Ellie’s legs were barely holding her up at this point, and she stumbled again, letting out a frustrated growl of her own. "I can’t…" she muttered, her voice cracking as she nearly collapsed, her knees buckling beneath her. "I can’t fucking—"

"Keep going!" you urged, your heart pounding as you tugged her forward, the infected right behind you. "You have to keep moving, Ellie!"

She gritted her teeth, her breath coming in harsh gasps. "I’m trying!" she snapped, but her voice broke, revealing the exhaustion and fear underneath. Her legs were giving up, her body shaking violently now with the effort to keep going. But there was no time to stop, no time to rest.

With a final, desperate push, you managed to drag her to the back of the store, where a door hung slightly ajar, leading into an alleyway. You kicked it open with your foot, the door slamming against the wall as you shoved Ellie through, both of you stumbling into the narrow passage outside.

The moment you were out, you slammed the door shut behind you, leaning heavily against it as you heard the infected slam into the other side, their snarls muffled but still terrifyingly close. Your chest heaved, your heart pounding in your ears, but you had made it. Barely.

Ellie collapsed against the brick wall of the alley, her legs finally giving out. She was breathing hard, her hands trembling as she gripped the wall for support, her eyes squeezed shut. Her frustration was palpable, mixed with the fear she refused to admit.

"I can’t…" she muttered, her voice weak, trembling. "I can’t… keep doing this."

You knelt beside her, your own breath ragged as you watched her struggle, her body shaking from the exhaustion, her face pale and drawn. She was angry—angry at herself for slowing down, for not being able to keep up. But beneath that anger, you saw the fear—the fear of losing, of failing, of being weak.

"It’s not your fault," you said quietly, your voice steady despite the chaos. "You’re exhausted. You need rest."

But Ellie just shook her head, her jaw clenched as she fought to catch her breath, her hands still trembling as she wiped sweat from her brow. "I can’t afford to be weak," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Not now. Not ever."

You stole a glance at her, noticing the way she picked at the dirt beneath her fingers, brow furrowed in concentration. She looked lost, wrestling with turmoil inside. The vulnerability in her posture struck you, and you reached out instinctively, your hand brushing against her cheek. The moment your skin made contact, her gaze snapped up to meet yours, a flicker of surprise dancing in her green eyes.

Your fingers grazed her face, gently caressing her skin, and for a fleeting moment, it felt like time stood still, the chaos outside fading into the background. But then her eyes fell to your hand, and your heart sank as you followed her gaze.

Your wrist was marked by a fresh bite, angry and raw, the skin around it bruised and mottled. You hadn’t even realized it—maybe it was the adrenaline that masked the pain. But now, as the truth washed over you, a cold dread seeped into your bones.

“No…” Ellie breathed, her voice breaking the stillness. Her eyes widened with panic, the color draining from her face as the realization hit her. The flicker of fear transformed into a tempest of emotions within her—anger, despair, disbelief.

In an instant, she was on her feet, her movements frantic as she began to throw things around the alley. Old crates, discarded bottles, and scraps of metal flew through the air, clattering against the brick walls. “No! No! No!” she shouted, her voice rising in a frantic pitch, echoing off the walls like a scream in the dark.

You remained seated, shock holding you in place as you watched her unravel. It was as if she was trying to physically push the reality away, to fight against the fate that loomed over you both. “This can’t be happening!” she yelled, her hands shaking violently as she grabbed a rusted pipe and hurled it against the wall, the sound of metal clanging against stone reverberating through the air.

“Ellie, stop!” you tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. The weight of your own fate held you down, anchoring you in place. You could only watch as she spiraled deeper into panic, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her eyes darting everywhere as if searching for an escape that didn’t exist.

“I can’t lose you! Not like this!” she cried, the desperation in her voice slicing through the air like a knife. She kicked over an old barrel, its contents spilling out onto the ground, littering the alley with debris. Each movement she made was frantic, unhinged, her anger directed at everything around her, but it was clear where the true target lay—at the helplessness of the situation, at you.

Her voice cracked with emotion as she faced you, rage and anguish contorting her features. “You can’t just—get bitten! You know what that means!” Her fists clenched tightly, her nails digging into her palms as if they could ground her in this moment of chaos. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears, mixing with the fire of her anger, creating a whirlwind of emotions that threatened to explode.

“Damn it!” she shouted, pacing the narrow confines of the alley, her energy raw and electric. “You were supposed to be careful! We were supposed to stick together! I can’t do this again!” With each word, she hurled another object, her fury radiating like heat waves. A glass bottle shattered against the wall, fragments scattering as they hit the ground like shards of her resolve.

You attempted to rise, to reach out to her, but the weight of your own fate held you down, anchoring you in place. The world outside the alley faded into insignificance as the reality of the bite settled in your mind, its implications crashing over you like a tidal wave. Ellie’s face crumpled, and you could see the moment the fight drained from her.

“I can’t do this again!” she shouted, her voice cracking, finally collapsing onto her knees in front of you. Tears shimmered in her eyes, glistening like tiny stars as they caught the dim light filtering through the alley. She was shaking now, her body trembling from the weight of the moment.

You reached out, brushing your fingers against her shoulder, but she flinched away from your touch, her eyes wide and wild, the anger and fear swirling in them. “You’re not… you can’t be bitten! Not again! Not after everything!” The words tumbled out of her, each one a plea, a denial of the truth that was crashing down around you.

“Ellie,” you finally managed to say, your voice low and strained, but she cut you off.

“No! Don’t say it!” She shot to her feet again, her fists clenched, the glass glinting dangerously in the dim light 

You wanted to reassure her, to tell her it would be okay, but the words caught in your throat, the reality weighing down your heart. You could feel the tears prickling at the corners of your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. 

“Ellie…” you managed to say, your voice strained and raw. “You have to put me down. Before it’s too late.” You could see the conflict in her eyes, the way she fought against the impending reality, her heart grappling with the instinct to protect and the stark truth of your situation.

 “You can’t let me turn,” you pleaded, your tone urgent as you reached out to touch her knee, seeking any connection that might ground her in this moment.

But she recoiled slightly, shaking her head vehemently. “I can’t. I won’t!” Her voice cracked with emotion, the glass shard trembling in her grasp as she wrestled with the weight of the decision before her. “You’re not going to die. Not like this! Not at my hands!”

“Ellie, please,” you urged, your own heart pounding in your chest as you saw the resolve in her face begin to crack. “You know it’s the only way. You have to be strong.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and when they opened again, the hurt etched into her features made your heart ache. “No! I can’t lose you! I can’t!” The glass fell from her fingers, clattering against the pavement, shattering the silence that enveloped you. Her shoulders trembled as her breath hitched, and you could see the tears beginning to spill over, tracing paths down her cheeks.

“It’s selfish, I know,” she said, her voice a choked whisper, filled with anguish. “But I just can’t… I can’t let you go. I can’t do it again.” Her body shook as she spoke, the weight of her grief pulling her under. The memory of everyone she had lost flooded back, and the fear of losing you felt like a tidal wave crashing against her, threatening to drown her in despair.

You watched her struggle, your heart aching for the pain she carried. “Ellie,” you said softly, trying to reach her through the turmoil. 

“No!” she cried, and it was a raw, primal sound, one that echoed with the deep, crushing fear that had taken root within her. She dropped her head into her hands, fingers tangled in her hair as if trying to pull herself together. “I won’t let you go,” she repeated, her voice muffled, but resolute.

“Ellie, listen to me,” you urged, desperation creeping into your voice. “I don’t want to become one of them. I can’t do that to you. You have to make the hard choice. You’re stronger than this.”

───────

Time slipped away in a haze of disorientation and muffled sounds. The world outside your awareness had transformed into a distant murmur, punctuated by the gnashing of teeth and the haunting cries of the infected. As the days passed, the infection took hold, an insidious creeping through your body, weaving its way into your mind, pulling you deeper into a fog that blurred the line between your old self and the new, grotesque reality. 

Yet, even as the fungus spread, there were fleeting moments of clarity—glimmers of recognition amid the haze. It was as if the remnants of your consciousness flickered like a dying light, occasionally illuminating the shadowy corners of your mind. And somehow, through it all, Ellie remained a constant presence, a beacon that anchored you to the fragments of your former self.

The small, makeshift shelter you shared was dim, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and the remnants of previous meals. Ellie moved around the space with a quiet intensity, her every action laced with a palpable mix of determination and despair. She had become the lifeline, foraging and hunting in the barren landscape outside, all while trying to preserve what remained of the person you used to be. 

Today, she returned with a small game—a rabbit, its body limp in her hands, the fur matted with dirt from the struggle. As she set to work preparing it, you watched from your corner of the room, your movements sluggish and uncoordinated, remnants of the old you trying to claw their way to the surface.

She moved with a practiced ease, though her eyes reflected the weight of her heart. The sun cast a soft light through the cracks in the shelter, illuminating her face, the tension in her jaw, and the shadows beneath her eyes. Ellie hummed a tune, a faint echo of the songs you used to sing together, but the melody was laced with sorrow. 

“Hey,” she murmured, her voice wavering as she chopped the rabbit into pieces. “Just hold on a bit longer, okay? I’ll make us something good.” 

You stared at her, trying to focus, your mind a swirling mess of thoughts and emotions. You wanted to respond, to assure her that you were still there, still part of this fragile moment. Your fingers twitched, and for a heartbeat, you felt a flicker of the warmth and love that had once defined your connection.

Ellie set the small pot over the meager flame and watched it carefully, as if the rhythm of the boiling water might soothe the chaos within her. “I wish you could help me with this,” she said softly, glancing over her shoulder at you, the ghost of a smile trying to break through the pain. “You always knew how to cook better than I did.”

You shifted your gaze toward her, the fog thickening around your thoughts, yet something within you stirred. You wanted to tell her that you remembered, that you could still see her, that you were still there. But the words lay heavy on your tongue, trapped in the murky depths of the infection’s grip.

As the scent of cooking meat filled the air, Ellie moved to the small stash of supplies, pulling out a bowl and some utensils. She served the food into two bowls, carefully portioning it out, her hands steady despite the tremor in her heart. The moment felt almost normal, a slice of life amid the horror that surrounded you. 

Yet, as she sat down across from you, her hands cradling the bowl, the weight of it all crashed down on her. She brought the food to her lips, but just as it reached her mouth, her resolve faltered. The sight of you—sitting there, half-formed and shifting between the shadows of your former self and the infected being you had become—made her heart ache. Tears streamed down her face, hot and relentless, splashing onto the bowl, mixing with the meal.

“I can’t do this,” she sobbed, dropping the bowl back into her lap. “I can’t eat. Not like this.” Her voice broke, cracking under the strain of the moment, each word laced with the weight of grief and hopelessness. 

Your foggy gaze remained fixed on her, struggling to understand the depth of her sorrow. Something in your chest tightened as you watched her, the recognition of her pain filtering through the haze. There was still a flicker of connection—some thread of recognition that made you feel like you were still there, still a part of her life. 

“I’m sorry…” she whispered, her voice shaking, trembling with the raw honesty of her emotions. “I thought we could be okay, that you could still… still come back to me.” Her tears fell freely, each drop a testament to the battle raging within her—love, loss, and the desperate longing for the past.

In that moment, something deep within you stirred, a yearning to reach out to her, to tell her that despite the infection, you could still feel her presence, still recognize her. You shifted slightly, the movement barely noticeable, but it was enough to capture her attention. 

“Ellie…” you rasped, the sound barely escaping your lips, but it felt like an eternity as you fought against the fog, wrestling with the remnants of your thoughts. It was a plea, a cry buried deep within, resonating with all the unspoken words that hung between you.

She looked up, her eyes wide, and for a moment, the world around you seemed to pause. “You’re still in there, aren’t you?” she breathed, her voice laced with disbelief and hope. “You can hear me?”

There was a flicker of clarity, a connection that pulsed between you—a heartbeat against the chaos that surrounded. You focused on her, trying to push through the fog, to let her know that you were still here, still fighting against the darkness that threatened to consume you both.

But even as the realization flickered within her, the truth hung heavily in the air—the infection was taking hold, and there was only so much time left. The thought sent her spiraling back into despair, the tears falling more freely as she gripped the bowl tightly, her knuckles whitening.

“I can’t lose you,” she whispered, her voice breaking once more, a raw wound laid bare for you to witness. “I just can’t.”

And in that moment, as the warmth of her tears pooled on your skin, you understood the weight of her love and the crushing reality of your situation. You were still there, a flicker in the darkness, but it wasn’t enough to shield her from the pain that lay ahead. The bond between you remained, even as the world began to fade, and all you could do was hold on to that sliver of connection, even as everything else slipped away.

[bellaxgiornata]

Falling For the Devil [Part ninety-five: "The Evening of Insecurity"]

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader Word Count: 9.2k

Summary: You attend a fancy gala as Matt's date.

Or

Old insecurities resurface, making you question your place at Matt's side.

[Series of one-shots about Reader meeting, falling for, and dating Matt Murdock.] [FFTD Series Masterlist]

Warnings: 18+ for this series; contains humor, fluff, romance, angst, smut, violence

a/n: The gala smut you've all been patiently waiting for (AKA there's semi-public sex in this installment)! Enjoy the return of Spicy Matty because this installment is slightly angsty but definitely filthy. Feedback is always appreciated!

Tag List: @ninacotte @stilldreaming666 @murdocksclient @madscamp02 @1988-fiend @linamarr @pinkratts @schneeflocky @acharliecoxedfan @yarrystyleeza @theetherealbloom @danzer8705 @lionalsowrites @harperdoodle @kmc1989 @lunaticgurly @mattmurdocks6thscaleapartment @pazii @kezibear @sleepysleepymom @eatingtheworldsoffanfiction @babygirlmurdock @theoraekenslover @wanda-maxamommy @justanerd1

Sitting in the back of the limo, your eyes were fixed on the skyline of the city flying by through the open sunroof. All the bright lights intermittently shining along the tall buildings stood out against the night sky–like false stars glittering amongst the city. As the excited chatter among your friends filled the air, you felt your nerves for the evening increase, gnawing at your stomach as you sat silently beside Matt. Occasionally your eyes would drop down to sneak glances at him in his tuxedo beside you as he focused on the conversation, a smile drawn wide on his handsome face as he listened to Foggy. His presence gave you a bit of comfort at least, though admittedly the sight of him dressed so well also caused a stir of anxious butterflies to flutter in your gut.

You’d gotten ready with Marci and Karen at Karen’s apartment for the evening, so you hadn’t actually seen Matt until he’d shown up with Foggy in the limo a little bit ago. Of course he’d looked just as breathtaking in a tuxedo as you remembered him looking during that charity benefit where you’d received an award last year. The dress shirt and suit coat he had on fit his broad, muscular torso just right, making you wish you’d been alone with him in the back of the limo on the ride to the gala. You were certain you’d have ruined your makeup and messed his hair and clothes if it had been just the pair of you alone, too. He looked more than good enough for you to want to throw decorum straight out of the sunroof if it wasn't for the fact that you both had an audience. You were longing to rip that bow tie off of him and tear open the buttons on his shirt. Your fingers practically itched in your lap to yank the zipper of his dress pants down, your body refraining from climbing on top of him and–

Matt’s hand tightened around yours in your lap, the gesture drawing you instantly from your thoughts. Gaze dropping down from the sunroof once more, you saw he’d focused his attention on you now. His dark glasses hid his eyes, but you could see the little coy smile now playing along his lips. He’d clearly picked up on what you’d been thinking about, the thought causing you to clear your throat as you ducked your head, grinning to yourself. Matt leaned over towards you in the seat, his mouth just beside your ear when he spoke.

“Trust me, I’m thinking about after the gala already, too,” he whispered.

At the sound of his deep voice in your ear, the nerves that had been in your stomach were abruptly replaced with a fire that quickly found its way through your veins, heating you from head to toe where you sat. Eyes still averted towards the deep red heels just visible beneath your floor length black dress, you couldn’t resist the words from spilling out of your lips next.

“Actually,” you whispered back, “I was thinking about what I wish we could’ve done beforehand. In the limo. If it had just been us.”

You caught the sharp intake of his breath beside your ear, your bottom lip slipping between your teeth as you fought back the smile growing further on your face. His hand gripped yours tighter as you felt the limo begin to slow to a stop.

“Oh, hey!” Foggy exclaimed from across the large limo seat. “Looks like we're finally here! Time to rub elbows with the filthy rich, drink all their booze, and eat all their little fancy finger foods!”

You were too focused on the presence of Matt beside you to excitedly stare out the window with your friends now that the limo was gradually pulling to a stop. Instead, you were very aware of the side of Matt's body currently pressed against the side of yours where you sat.

“Might want to control your thoughts tonight, sweetheart,” Matt murmured, his mouth still beside your ear. “I might not be able to hear them, but I can certainly guess at them.”

Raising your gaze from your shoes, you turned and focused on the cocky grin along his mouth. Taking a slow breath in, you fought to control the urge to force him to stay back in the limo with you, desperate to keep him all to yourself for the evening instead of actually attending the event. It was probably a good thing that you hadn't gotten ready together at the apartment because the pair of you might have never left, especially if your first week of living together was anything to go by. Matt dressed in a tuxedo was a turn on all on its own–a sight you were absolutely weak for.

“You're doing it again,” he cheekily pointed out. 

“I can't help it,” you whined softly, aware of your friends already beginning to exit the limo. “It's hard to not have thoughts when you're dressed like that.”

Forcing your eyes away from Matt, you began to scoot along the length of the seat, making your way towards the limo's exit with Matt following behind after you. Carefully you slid out of the vehicle, trying to make sure you remained covered as you stepped outside due to the high slit in the side of your dress. You sent the driver a smile and a polite ‘thank you’ as you took a couple of shaky steps past where he was holding the car door open.

Smoothing a hand down the silk of your dress, your other clutching your purse, you turned back around just in time to see Matt gracefully ease his way out of the back of the limo. You almost lost your footing as you saw him rising to his full height in his tuxedo, your heart skipping at the sight of him. His covered gaze quickly found you, probably having caught the stutter of the traitorous organ in your chest. The smile that formed along his mouth caused your heart to start up again, pounding rapidly and unevenly inside of you. 

The grin remained as he stepped over towards you, your breath coming in sharper as you tried to contain yourself. Matt held out an arm expectantly in your direction and you swallowed hard, reaching out and directing his large hand to your upper arm. His fingers curled firmly around your bare skin, the heat of them raising goosebumps despite the warmth of the night. 

Matt leaned in towards you, amusement in his voice as he whispered, “Breathe, sweetheart. I don't want you passing out on me.”

Heat was burning at your cheeks as a sudden timidity began to overtake you. That feeling like you didn't belong at this man's side–a feeling you hadn't really felt to this extent in quite some time–was suddenly washing over you. It didn't help that you were leading him up onto the sidewalk and over towards your friends where they were standing in front of the elegant ballroom the event was taking place at. Foggy looked handsome as well in his tuxedo as he stood beside both the stunning Marci and Karen, the pair looking like glamorous models in their dresses. 

As you led the both of you towards your friends, Matt silent at your side, your eyes were shifting around at all the well-dressed people making their way towards the entrance. Almost immediately your nerves hit you like a truck once more, your foot twisting in your heels as you took another step. Briefly you faltered, but Matt’s hand gripped your arm tight and quickly caught you, stopping you before you could fall. 

“Relax, everything is going to be alright,” Matt assured you, his mouth once more beside your ear as you both continued walking towards the ballroom entrance. “I've got you tonight Bambi. Just take a deep breath.”

“Right,” you murmured back, nodding your head quickly as nerves continued to fill your stomach. “Tonight will–will be fun.”

“I'll make sure you enjoy yourself here, sweetheart,” he promised. “Just relax and focus on me. That's all you need to do.”

You glanced at him beside you skeptically, your stomach anxiously flipping inside of you. “Okay, that normally calms me down, but tonight is a bit different. It’s not that you don't always look good, but tonight you look insanely good, Matt. Which almost makes me more nervous than relaxed.”

He chuckled lightly, focusing on you at his side as he walked. “And does it make you more or less nervous to know you're coming back home with me after all of this no matter what?” he asked.

“More nervous,” you immediately answered.

“Mmm,” he hummed back thoughtfully, his attention returning ahead of him. “Then maybe don't think about what I'm going to do to you when we get home tonight.”

You laughed weakly as the pair of you approached your friend group. Unfortunately what he'd said had only made you think about going home with this handsome man after the gala even more. And that was only increasing your anxiety for some reason. You definitely felt out of place at his side now that you'd left the safe confines of the limo, your eyes taking in the sight of all the stunning couples around you.

“Yeah, not helping,” you whispered. 

Matt laughed lightly at your side, his warm hand affectionately squeezing your bicep. You didn't know how you had thought you could handle attending this event as his date, but now that you were here, you certainly hoped you could survive it.

Focusing on your reflection in the bathroom mirror, you checked over your makeup and hair once more, making sure everything still looked as good as it had when you’d first left Karen’s apartment. Satisfied that nothing seemed too out of place, even with the occasional kisses Matt had snuck in so far this evening, your hands once more smoothed down the sides of your silk dress. 

You had to admit, the dress you’d chosen for tonight looked good on you. It hit in all the right places and the side slit that reached mid-way up your thigh was surprisingly flattering. You’d certainly never worn anything quite so beautiful before, only having splurged because Matt had practically urged you to buy something you really wanted to wear tonight.

But despite how beautiful the dress was and how good it made you feel to be in it, the nerves still fluttered frantically in your stomach as you stared back at your reflection. A frown pulled the corners of your mouth downwards, your eyes focused on the way they’d dropped. The slight confidence boost you’d felt tonight after getting ready with Karen and Marci had almost completely disappeared in the first hour of you being here with Matt. 

You’d followed him around, his arm looped through yours, politely greeting the people that approached him and smiling as they discussed varying topics. You’d joined the conversations whenever you’d had a chance, but nothing had fully shaken the insecurity that had only continued to grow inside of you every single time Matt introduced you as his girlfriend, because you could’ve sworn a few women had openly sneered at you. Others had given you a once over, their defined brows arching in something like distaste as they eyed you.

You knew Matt couldn’t exactly see what was going on, but you wondered if he’d somehow known something was happening. He’d often pull you further into his side throughout the evening and whisper comforting words before planting a lingering kiss to your temple. And while the gesture occasionally eased a flare up of your insecurity, that feeling always quickly returned whenever the pair of you passed some gorgeous, model-like woman in what was clearly a designer dress as she turned her nose up at you. Or as some other well-dressed man shot you a curious, almost offended glance. You’d soon found yourself wondering how your friends had been so excited about attending an event with all these stuck-up New York City elite–though it seemed like all of them were fairing vastly better this evening than you. And that only made you further feel like you didn’t belong here, walking the ballroom with Matt’s arm looped through yours as if you actually could be the one at his side.

As you were adjusting a loose strand of hair while looking at your reflection, a woman entered the bathroom and approached the opposite end of the counter, ignoring you entirely as she began fixing her makeup. Squaring your shoulders, you forced yourself out of your spiraling thoughts now that you were no longer alone. They weren't going to help anything tonight anyway. 

You reached a hand out, grabbing your clutch purse from off the counter before turning and heading towards the exit. Making your way down the short hallway outside of the bathrooms, you smiled politely whenever you passed someone as sweat began to dampen your palms. When you finally re-entered the extravagantly decorated ballroom a moment later, the sound of the live orchestra playing hit your ears just over the noise of multiple conversations. Feeling your nerves increase even further at the room full of people, you mentally reminded yourself that you only needed to survive for a few more hours here before you and Matt could go home.

Eyes scanning the room, it didn't take you long before you found Matt among the crowd of people. He was standing exactly where you’d left him a few minutes ago when you’d excused yourself to the restroom, but now you noticed he was talking to a different group of people than when you’d been at his side initially–three men and one of those gorgeous, model-like women who was standing a little too close to him. With a sigh, you plastered a bright smile onto your face once more and began making your way through the crowd and over towards the group, walking carefully so as not to trip in your heels. But your smile faltered the closer you neared the group when you began to pick up on the conversation.

“Oh, I apologize,” you overheard one of the men saying to Matt. “I truly thought she was your date tonight. You both just look so good standing together, I only assumed.”

You felt your feet come to an abrupt stop along the floor at the man’s words, your heart thudding so heavily in your chest that you could feel it. That was the last thing you wanted to hear tonight. More confirmation that you weren’t good enough to be at Matt’s side–that you didn’t belong there.

“Ahh, well, considering I’m blind, I can't exactly see why you'd say that,” Matt replied.

His tone had been charming and polite as usual when he'd responded, but you’d caught the edge to his words that the others clearly hadn't. Nevertheless, the entire group still laughed at his joke, but you winced as you stood there rooted to the spot feeling like your heart was gradually sinking to the floor.

“But I can assure you all, my lovely girlfriend is around here somewhere,” Matt added on. “And I’m sure she’ll be back very soon.”

Swallowing hard, you willed yourself to take another step over towards the group, attempting to push down the hurt the man’s comment had caused. You knew it was only a mistake, but that didn't stop it from unleashing even more insecure thoughts that were now running wild in your head, making you feel even worse than you had been a few minutes ago in the bathroom. Though it was taking everything in you to not have your fears feel validated by that small mistake.

You’d barely managed to take two steps closer before you noticed the woman beside Matt raise a hand and place it along his shoulder. The sight had your feet abruptly come to a stop once more. You noticed Matt had stiffened at her touch, but the sight of her so casually and intimately beginning to rub her hand along him immediately elicited a strong reaction from within you. Sick churned in your stomach, your heart nearly launching itself out of your mouth at the sight of this woman so brazenly touching him like that. As if she had every right to do so. The urge to vomit only increased when she leaned in towards him with a seductive smile spread across her damn red lips.

“If I was your lovely girlfriend,” she purred at him, “I’d know far better than to leave you alone in a room full of gorgeous women. Wouldn’t want one coming along and stealing you away from me, if I was her.”

Gritting your teeth, you felt tears burn at your eyes as the other men in the group burst into laughter at her comment. As if what she'd said was actually funny and the implication of her words wasn't vastly inappropriate. The woman just stood there smiling at Matt, her hand still rubbing his shoulder. You took in the frown along Matt’s lips for a second before your feet suddenly moved of their own accord, spinning you around and taking you directly away from the group. Too focused on fighting back tears in your eyes, your hands nearly crushing your clutch purse as you stalked off, you hadn't caught what Matt responded to the woman with. 

By the time you'd finally weaved your way around the mass of people and found yourself out of the ballroom and in an empty hallway, you'd completely lost your sense of direction. You had no idea where you'd wandered off to, your mind too busy cruelly playing back the mental image of that woman touching Matt the way she had. Saying the things she'd said. 

Right now you wanted to scream. To collapse onto the floor and cry, giving into your spiraling thoughts that came rushing back to you–all the ones trying to tell you that you’d never be good enough for Matt. That you didn't belong at his side at events like this. That you would never be the right woman for him.

Throwing a hand over your mouth, you attempted to muffle the choked sound of a sob that you were desperately fighting back. Because you knew that you couldn't cry here no matter how much you wanted to break down. You didn't want to ruin Matt's evening with your insecurities, the very same ones which you thought you'd put to rest already when it came to you being with him. Yet here you were, hiding in a hallway and trying not to cry because some woman was hitting on him in front of you again . Upset because some guy had mistaken her as his date just because of how she looked standing next to him.

Sniffling hard, you tried to force yourself to stop getting so worked up over all of this. This wasn’t the time or the place. Frantically you blinked back your tears, reminding yourself repeatedly that Matt had clearly not wanted that woman's advances and that he had openly acknowledged having a significant other. He hadn't done anything wrong. You honestly weren't even upset at him.

But still, that moment had wounded you quite deeply anyway. It made you once more feel like you weren't meant to be with him. 

Trying to focus on your breathing, you attempted to calm it down and even it out. You needed to relax so that you could find your way back to the ballroom and finish out the rest of the night. You’d worry about all of these spiraling feelings of inadequacy later. But as you were inhaling a slow and quivering breath in, you heard the door at the end of the hall open. Before you could even turn around to see who'd joined you, you heard Matt gently calling out your name. Eyes closing, you roughly blew out the breath you'd just taken. You hadn't wanted him to know how upset you'd been over something so ridiculous. Especially not with how far your relationship had come with him over the past few months. 

“Sweetheart, are you alright?” Matt asked.

With your back facing him, you quickly began wiping at your dampened cheeks, forcing the tears back. You knew it was pointless though because you knew with his senses he had already been aware of the fact that you’d been in here crying. Continuing to roughly wipe at your cheeks, you heard the sound of Matt’s footsteps approaching you from behind.

“Yeah, I'm–I'm fine, Matt,” you answered, trying to keep your voice even. 

“You're crying,” he pointed out. “You're not fine.”

Blinking hard a few more times, you tried to quickly regain control over yourself. But the moment you felt Matt's gentle hand on your shoulder, a soft sniffle snuck its way out of you. 

“I know you overheard what just happened,” he told you quietly. “I heard you walking over as it was happening. I know that’s what has you upset and I'm sorry, sweetheart.”

You shook your head before looking back over your shoulder at him. Matt was standing just behind you, his glasses no longer on his face and covering his eyes, probably having removed them and slipped them into his jacket pocket when he’d come to talk to you. There was a worried crease between his brows as his eyes continued to dart around your face, scanning you over. You could practically feel the way he was analyzing your body right now.

“You didn't do anything wrong, Matt,” you assured him. “You don't need to apologize. It's just–”

You broke off on a sigh, your eyes dropping down to your red heels peeking out from beneath your dress. Matt's hand on your shoulder began to gently spin you around to face him before his other hand landed on your opposite shoulder. Both of his hands gave you a firm, comforting squeeze as you continued to avoid his stare.

“It's just what, sweetheart?” he prompted.

You winced, shaking your head. “It's stupid. Really. I got upset and I was hoping to just come out here and calm down because I know how stupid it all is. We've been over this before–I thought I was past this already.”

“Hey,” Matt murmured, both of his thumbs beginning to rub soothing little circles over your bare shoulders, “whatever upset you isn't stupid. You can talk to me, you know that. I want you to talk to me. We do have that pinky promise, after all.”

Shoulders sagging in defeat, you knew he was right and had a point. You both had long since agreed to communicate with each other. This was precisely one of those times where you needed to.

Inhaling a deep breath, you slowly released it before your eyes traveled their way up Matt's handsome form in his tuxedo. When your eyes finally landed on his face, you couldn't help but relax at the way he was gazing down at you with so much love and concern reflected in his eyes. The sight only had you feeling further idiotic for having had such a strong reaction to that woman hitting on him.

“It’s really stupid but…I just feel like all night everyone has been staring at me like I don't belong here. Or rather, here with you, specifically,” you confessed awkwardly. “Mainly the women. They've just…openly made faces at me all night long and it's been weighing on me. And then to–to come back from the bathroom just to overhear all of that? For that woman to just touch you like that? Make the comment she did?”

You shook your head, that unpleasant squirming of your heart in your chest returning at the memory. Quickly you tried to blink back the tears, not wanting to cry anymore. Matt's expression only further softened as he listened to you. 

“To hear someone else openly acknowledge that another woman looked good next to you–something people here would probably never say about me–it…hurt,” you whispered. 

Matt was quick to wrap his arms around your shoulders, drawing you into the front of himself as he pulled you in for a hug. Your own arms timidly rose up, encircling his waist under his suit coat as you buried your face against his chest, careful not to smear any makeup onto his white shirt. The cologne he'd put on tonight filled your nose as you breathed in, somehow calming the uneven pattering of your aching heart. He smelled good, like something warm and woodsy. Safe and comfortable. The longer you breathed it in, the more it eased that ache in your chest just a little bit more.

“I wouldn't concern yourself with the opinion of anyone here,” he told you, his chin resting lightly against the top of your head. “Everyone here is so superficial and just putting on an act. And if you forgot already, they only invited us here last minute as a slight. Believe me, I've overheard some of the things being said about Nelson, Murdock, and Page when they think we can't hear. It's not you, sweetheart. I promise you that. And you know I love you,” he continued, the soft and even rhythm of his voice calming you more in his embrace. “Not a number far enough from one, right? I don't want anyone here but you and I never will.”

“I know,” you whispered back. “That’s why I feel stupid.”

“Don’t,” he replied. “You had a human reaction to the way you're being treated, sweetheart. That’s normal. It’s okay. I'm just sorry that's how you're being treated because you're here with me.”

One of Matt's hands unwrapped itself from around your shoulders, his fingertips beginning to glide their way down the back of your bare arm as his other continued to hold you to the front of himself. Your eyes closed under his touch, goosebumps rising along the skin his fingers had just brushed over. When his hand reached your wrist, you allowed him to gently unwrap it from around his waist.

“But you know,” he murmured, something about his change in tone catching your attention as his fingers interlocked with yours, “one of these days, there'll be a ring on this hand.”

Your eyes flew open, your entire body tensing against the front of him at what he'd just unexpectedly said. His fingers continued to affectionately toy with the fingers of your left hand as you stood there feeling like you suddenly couldn't breathe, your heart skipping a beat.

“And then I'll be introducing you to everyone as my fiancé at these galas,” he continued, a hint of a smile in his voice, “not my girlfriend.”

Your knees felt weak at his words, your right arm holding onto Matt even tighter, afraid you might actually lose your balance in your heels. It had been awhile since either of you had mentioned marriage, both of you having been so busy lately, but you knew it was something you both wanted. It’d been discussed. But for some reason standing there and hearing him so casually refer to you as being his future fiancé had you wondering if maybe you were closer to that future than you’d even realized. Was it possible he’d already bought a ring? You were too afraid to even hope for that, but the prospect of being engaged to him soon had your insecurities immediately draining straight out of you.

“And eventually,” Matt continued, his chin rising from off the top of your head, his lips lowering beside your ear, “I’ll be introducing you as my wife at these things. Then they’ll all have to call you Mrs. Murdock.”

Sucking in a sharp breath that got stuck in your throat, you found yourself suddenly lightheaded just at the thought of that. A jolt of excitement raced through you as Matt pressed a kiss to your cheek, and then his lips were curling into a smile along your skin. At a loss for words, you stood there with your mouth slightly parted in surprise as you tried to process the fact that he'd just said that.

“You like the sound of that, sweetheart?” he whispered.

“Yes,” you breathed out, not even pausing to think.

Because you did. You liked the sound of that a lot. The idea that Matt really wanted only you so much that he’d make a lifelong commitment to you. That he’d put a ring on your finger as a visible reminder to everyone else that you were his, and someday, you’d get to put one on his finger that showed the world he was yours . Forever.

You liked the thought of that far more than you realized, especially here in this moment and after what had just happened out in that ballroom.

“Mmm,” Matt hummed out, his hand which wasn't currently interlocked with yours sliding slowly down your back, “wasn’t quite expecting that reaction when I said that.”

“Wasn’t exactly expecting you to say that,” you whispered back.

His hand continued its slow descent down your spine, a shudder racing up the length of it under his palm. Eventually its trajectory changed, his hand coming to rest along your hip. Holding onto your waist in one hand, his other hand still entwined with yours, Matt began to carefully walk you backwards. As you moved, his nose nuzzled affectionately against your temple while your face remained buried against his chest. You felt your breath coming in sharper, the fingers of your right hand curling around his dress shirt beneath his suit coat as you tried to keep yourself from tripping over your own feet.

“I want to make you mine,” Matt told you, an edge of the possessive Devil in his words. “And I want you to know that you’re mine. To never question it.”

Your back had just barely bumped against the wall before Matt’s hand released yours and instead came to lightly encircle your jaw in his large palm. A soft gasp slipped out of your mouth as his hand gently pushed your head back against the wall, raising it up so that your mouth lined up with his. He leaned in and your eyes snapped shut just before his lips were on yours, somehow soft and full of heat simultaneously. 

You lost your footing at the intensity of the kiss, your left hand flying out to grasp onto Matt’s bicep over his suit coat just before his body pushed you further back against the wall, keeping you upright. His hand continued to hold your jaw firmly in place as he kissed you in a way that he had yet to this entire evening–a way that had your knees trembling. But just as you’d barely had a chance to match that intensity, he abruptly broke away from you, a fire burning in his hazel eyes as he focused his sightless gaze along your cheek. Your chest was heaving as you tried to catch your breath, your mind still reeling in the moment.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” he told you. “And I don’t care who tries to flirt with me. There might be a whole room of other women out there,” he continued, gesturing his head back down the hall in the direction from where he’d come, “but the only one I want is right here. And if you want, sweetheart,” he whispered huskily, his hand releasing your jaw and sliding down to lightly grip your neck, “I would be more than happy to show you how much I want you right now.”

Head still resting against the wall behind you, your eyes grew wide. Was he saying what you thought he was saying?

“I–I’m not sure I follow,” you whispered.

Matt's face hovered a few inches from yours, that unmistakable heat still burning in his eyes as he focused back on you, a small smile on his mouth. You were positive the tips of his fingers were feeling the thrumming of your heart with where they each rested along your neck.

“There’s a room to your right,” he said. “Yes?”

Slowly turning your head, you glanced over your shoulder. There was in fact a door there, one labeled ‘office.’ 

“I don’t hear any cameras inside of it, and I’m guessing it has a locking door,” Matt said. 

Your attention returned to him, your brows jumping up onto your forehead. “Are you suggesting we…?”

“Yes,” he replied, his smile growing into something mischievous on his face, a glint of something flickering in his eyes. “If you want to, of course.”

“But–but Matt,” you whispered in a rush, your cheeks heating as you glanced back to the door at the other end of the hall, “there’s literally hundreds of people back in the ballroom. And security roaming around. We are by no means alone here. We could get caught!”

He shrugged a shoulder, the movement drawing your eyes back to him. You could feel your heart beating faster in your chest at his suggestion, an unexpected excitement growing inside of you at the prospect of having him here at this gala without anyone knowing. The pair of you had never done anything like this before, the closest having been when he’d teased you back at Fogwell’s Gym last year. But you'd been alone at the gym that night–this was different. 

“I can assure you,” he began, “that no one has even been down this hallway except us all night. Trust me, I can tell. If we keep quiet, no one will ever know but us. So it’s up to you, sweetheart.” The corner of his lip curled into a devilish smirk, the sight causing your thighs to press together. “We can certainly head back to the ballroom instead. I would be content just having you at my side for the rest of the night. Or,” he continued, the corner of his lip curling even higher, “I could ease any of your lingering insecurities for the rest of the evening first. Prove that you and you alone are mine.” 

His hand released your neck as he pushed back off the wall, giving you space. Space you found yourself not remotely wanting.

“But the choice is yours,” he assured you. “Because you know I'd never want to make you uncomfortable.”

Mouth opening and closing for a moment, you felt at a loss for words as you tried to decide. There was a part of you that wanted to lead him back down the hallway and just finish out the night. It wasn't like the pair of you couldn't do all of this back at the apartment afterwards, and it would be more than mortifying if the pair of you got caught fucking in an office during this gala. But another part of you was curious. Curious to see what he meant about easing your insecurities–because you knew whatever happened he certainly would. And the thought of fucking him while everyone else was a few rooms over was tempting, especially considering the way both you and Matt had been treated so far this evening by the other guests. It'd be a little secret just between the both of you, and something about that had your blood beginning to rush to your cunt.

Ultimately the image of that woman who'd been running her hand along Matt’s shoulder flashed through your mind again, but this time something else raced through your entire body at the memory of it. Something almost possessive hit you hard. Something territorial. Without further contemplation, you knew exactly what you wanted right now. 

Hands flying out, they latched onto the lapels of Matt's tuxedo before roughly yanking him towards you, immediately crashing your mouth onto his. Matt's hand tightened along your hip almost bruisingly tight in response, something like a snarl vibrating in his throat and rolling into your own mouth. The sound of it had your fingers curling further around his suit coat, your feet beginning to clumsily guide the both of you over towards the office door. After a few steps, your hand released his coat, beginning to feel around the wall for the door handle. You were too caught up in kissing Matt to actually look for it, not wanting to end the moment, but he must've realized what you were doing because he broke away from you a moment later, loosing a breathy laugh as your hand continued to blindly search for the handle. 

“I take that as a yes on doing this,” Matt teased. He released his hold on your hip, grabbing you by the hand instead and shooting you a cheeky smile, one that had the corners of his eyes creasing. “Allow me,” he said.

He pulled you a few more steps down the hall towards the door, reaching a hand out and easily opening it. All the while he continued to smile back at you, his attention never leaving you. Somehow that only made you want him more–especially in that damn tuxedo.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, tugging you along after him. A giggle escaped you as you stumbled into the room behind him, your feet a little unsteady in your heels. You were still unable to believe that you were about to do what you were about to with him while so many people were nearby. But as usual, this was Matt you were with. The very same Matt who always made you feel safe and comfortable.

You had barely entered the room before Matt turned back towards you, quickly closing the door and flipping the lock on the handle. And then he was on you once more, pushing you back against the door without warning as he caged you in between his arms. His mouth was at your neck, trailing open-mouthed kisses along the length of it like you both hadn't just been briefly interrupted. Your head fell back against the door behind you with a soft thump , your eyelids fluttering in pleasure as your hands rose up, grabbing helplessly at his back.

“Only want you,” Matt murmured against your skin between kisses. “Only you.”

He continued trailing his sensual kisses along your throat, his hips pressing you firmly back into the door. Your breath was coming in sharp already, your mind almost entirely forgetting about the gala happening just a few rooms over because of his skilled mouth. When his lips finally landed over your pulse point, you felt his teeth gently bite down on the skin, taking you by surprise and eliciting a sharp hiss of pleasure from you. Your nails dug into his suit jacket, your teeth gritting together to keep from making too much noise. 

“ Matt ,” you breathed out.

“ Mine ,” he snarled in response along your neck.

The hand he had splayed wide along the door beside your head dropped down, landing on your thigh through the slit of your dress. He let out a pleased noise as he began to trail kisses past your collarbone, his face lowering to the cleavage the V-cut of your dress created. His hand began to massage the muscle of your thigh, gradually making its way further up your leg and towards your ass as his lips began to suck at a patch of skin along your breast. A dampness was steadily growing between your thighs, your eyes completely closing under his attention as one of your hands slid up and into his hair.

“Thought there was a slit in your dress,” he whispered, face still buried against your chest, the stubble on his chin tickling you with each word. “Was hoping to properly appreciate it tonight.”

You opened your mouth to respond but were cut short by his teeth placing soft nips along the swell of your left breast. His hot breath cascaded its way down the front of your dress as he did, the feel of it causing your brain to go blank. His large palm was kneading your ass in a way that had a soft moan tumbling out of your lips, one you were powerless to stop. Matt's mouth paused at the noise, hovering just above your chest as you felt his hand dragging its way back down to your thigh. 

“Careful, sweetheart,” he warned, his warm palm sliding to the inside of your thigh, fingertips brushing against your cunt just over your now damp panties. “Need to keep quiet if you don't want us to get caught.”

“That might prove–” 

You stopped short as Matt's fingers pushed your panties to the side. They soon began sliding back and forth through your damp folds, collecting the slick that had been steadily forming there for the past few minutes as your breath hitched. Hips squirming along the solid door behind you, a surge of pleasure raced through you when the pad of his finger began to delicately circle your clit. Eyes closed, you swore you saw white flash across your closed lids. He always knew exactly how to touch you.

“Difficult,” you finished lamely. 

“Mmm,” he hummed out thoughtfully.

The pad of his finger continued tracing circles over your clit, your cunt starting to desperately ache for his attention as he did. You could feel his erection growing against your leg through his dress pants with the way his hips were still pushing you back into the door. The feel of it almost had you accidentally loosing another moan.

“Or maybe you'd rather they all knew you were in here with me,” Matt continued, his tone suddenly dark and low–something reminiscent of the Devil. “Is that what you want? For all of them out there to know you're in here letting me touch you like this?”

A quiet curse slipped out of your mouth, your back arching against the door as his finger quickened its pace, pressing more firmly against you as he did. Admittedly you wished that woman out there knew exactly what he was doing to you right now after the way she'd been touching him. You wished she knew just how much he wanted your hands on him instead of hers.

“ Yes ,” you whispered, the word sneaking its way out of your lips. 

The truth of your admission surprised even you, your eyes flying open. Matt was hovering over your cleavage, his finger still drawing delicious patterns on your clit. But his face shifted ever so slightly upwards at your response, his focus turning up towards you. There was something almost dark matching the intensity in his eyes, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip as a growl rumbled in his chest. Your heart instantly accelerated at the look on his face.

“Certainly caught the truth in that,” he assured you, his finger never stopping its movements along you. “So you want me to give you a reason not to doubt that you're mine for the rest of the night? Is that what you want? To stuff you with my cock and fill you with my cum so you know who exactly you belong to?”

“Yes,” you answered.

Once again you’d found yourself stunned at your admission–and how quickly you’d answered. Even Matt seemed to be taken by surprise for a brief second, his head tilting a little to the side. But then ever so slowly his hand slipped out from under your dress, his smirk growing at the faint, pathetic groan you emitted at the loss of contact. 

He straightened up before you, both of his hands landing on the belt at his waist. Your eyes dropped down in the small distance between you, your heart hammering away in your chest as you watched his hands undo the buckle before sliding his zipper down. In a swift movement, he shoved his pants and boxers farther down his thick thighs before tugging his dress shirt out of the way, all the while your eyes were focused on the emergence of his erect cock springing forth. Practically salivating at the sight of it, especially considering the exhilarating situation you both were in, you whined impatiently against the door.

Matt’s eyes flew to your chin at the noise, a smile overtaking the smirk on his lips. In seconds he was pressing you back against the door behind you, one hand firmly grasping your thigh while his other roughly shoved the fabric of your dress out of the way so forcefully that you swore you heard a seam tear. But you didn’t care as he hoisted your leg up onto his hip, the head of his cock bumping against the slick of your core. Your hips eagerly twitched forwards at the contact, already desperate to feel him fill you.

Matt’s forehead lowered to rest against yours, the hand he didn’t have holding your leg in place along his hip beginning to drag his cock back and forth through your arousal. You bit the tip of your tongue more firmly with each teasing pass of him through your folds–partly in anticipation and partly to remind yourself to keep quiet. Even if you couldn’t hear the noise of the gala, there was a small part of you still aware of it continuing not that far away.

But when you felt him finally sink inside of you, you almost forgot your own name. The pair of you released a sigh at almost the exact same moment, as if you’d been waiting far too long for this connection between the pair of you tonight. Though truthfully with how long you’d had to endure chaste kisses, seeing him in that tuxedo while watching him display his intelligence in conversation all night, had felt like a new form of torture. And now having him finally burying himself inside of you felt like the sweet relief you’d been craving.

Matt rolled his hips forward into you, sliding the entirety of himself inside of you as your hands wound their way into his hair, keeping his forehead against yours. His lips brushed against yours so lightly that you almost didn't feel them just before his fingers dug into your thigh where the slit of your dress had slipped out of the way, gripping you tightly in place against him. His other hand landed with a sharp slam on the door near your head, holding himself upright.

“I’ll give you something to remind yourself that you’re mine for the rest of the evening,” his husky voice promised you. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart.”

Your whole body trembled at his words, feeling him drag his cock out from inside of you slowly at first before he sharply thrust himself back inside of you. Clenching your teeth together at the impact, your fingers curled tighter around the strands of his hair, not even worrying about how mussed it would look by the end of this. You had a feeling the both of you would look disheveled at this point no matter what, and a large part of you almost didn’t care anymore.

Gradually Matt began to pick up his pace as he began to fuck you, his hips eventually snapping forward into you so hard that your back and your ass pounded into the door behind you, the resounding bang accentuating each time he pumped into you, the noise louder than the obscene sound of skin on skin. You were struggling to keep your mouth shut, fighting to keep your pleasure quiet as Matt’s hips continued to viciously roll into you over and over again.

Eventually your lone heel on the floor began to slide ever so slightly back and forth along the tile with the intensity of each of his thrusts. One of your hands dropped down, grabbing onto his round and solid bare ass in an attempt to hold onto something. Beneath your palm, you could feel the large muscle repeatedly contracting in your hold with every pump of his cock burying itself inside of you. Eyes becoming half-lidded, your ragged breaths mingled with his sharp grunts in the minimal space that existed between your mouths. His forehead hadn’t left its place against yours, and every so often his mouth would occasionally graze your lips before he took the opportunity to seize your mouth in soft little kisses. The intimacy of the tender action was a perfect contrast to the way he was currently roughly fucking you into the door behind you.

“No one else–will ever have me–like you do,” Matt ground out between each sharp slam of his hips into yours. “You'll be–the only one–I call Mrs. Murdock.”

Your nails dug into the firm muscle of his ass at his words. You once more hadn't expected him to say that, but the pleasure of hearing it again shot straight through you so fast that you swore your whole body had ignited. With his cock filling you so wholly and those words echoing in your mind, you felt a moan building in the back of your throat. 

“Fuck, sweetheart,” he grunted. “The way your body reacts every time I say that–” 

Matt inhaled a hiss of air, his hips faltering in their rhythm as if he was already struggling not to cum just at your reaction. The fact that he was so turned on at the prospect of you being his wife alone had your eyes snapping shut completely, that moan that had been building in your throat making it halfway out of your mouth before Matt quickly quieted it with his own, swallowing the sound.

You could feel yourself growing closer to your release already, far more turned on by hearing him call you ‘Mrs. Murdock’ as he buried himself inside of you than you could ever imagine. With the way his body was shuddering against yours, you could tell it was having an unexplainable effect on him, too. One that was drawing him fast to his own climax.

“Say it again,” you whispered.

You heard Matt let out a low groan, his hips beginning to sloppily slam into your own as his blunt nails dug into the flesh of your thigh, clamping it tighter to his hip. Your release was building just at his reaction, making you understand just how he was feeling in that moment, too.

“Call me that again,” you breathed out.

His mouth found yours immediately, latching on as he kissed you fiercely but with so much tenderness. As if he was struggling with the intensity of his own feelings at your request. When he broke away from your mouth, he stayed so close that you could feel his lips brush yours as he whispered the name one more time.

Your eyes rolled back behind closed lids, your thighs shaking as another particularly rough thrust of Matt's hips pushed you back into the door. Your cunt tightened around him as he once more filled you, the delicious stretch of him inside you one you wanted to remember for the rest of the night. 

It was the pleasure-filled, deep moan that Matt so carelessly spilled into the room as he abruptly came inside of you that had you about to cum along with him. He continued to pump into you, the warmth of his release filling you as you neared your own climax. But the moment Matt whispered ‘I love you’ in a broken, breathy pant, you completely lost it. 

Gritting your teeth together, you fought back the moan growing deep in your chest as best as you could, though you couldn't completely quiet it as a wave of pleasure raced up the entirety of your body. Your thighs trembled at the intensity of it as Matt's cock gradually began to slow its pace, your own orgasm washing over you in a crashing, dizzying wave that took you by surprise.

Eventually when you'd finally fallen limp against the door behind you, exhausted and spent, his hips entirely stopped their movement. Inevitably Matt's forehead left yours, your eyes opening as he carefully removed himself from inside of you before shifting your panties back in place. The pair of you were both panting hard, attempting to catch your labored breaths. His face was flushed and covered in a sheen of sweat, a look of almost smug satisfaction on it.

Matt's hand gently lowered your leg from his hip, returning your foot to the floor as your hands both found their way to his hips, trying to keep your balance. Matt's own hands landed on your shoulders in return, helping to keep you upright as his gaze landed on your cheek.

“Certainly didn't expect tonight to go this way,” he mused. 

“You and me both,” you breathed out, still trying to catch your breath. “I've never exactly done that before.”

When Matt was sure you weren't about to lose your footing, he released his hold on you and took a step back. With an amused huff and a growing smirk, he began to pull his pants back up and to fix his disheveled state of undress.

“Pretty sure that wasn't the first time we've done that , sweetheart,” he teased. “We seem to do that often. And quite well.”

You rolled your eyes at him as you readjusted your dress, noticing he had just slightly torn the seam when he’d yanked it out of the way. Though you didn't think it was too noticeable to continue wearing tonight.

“You know what I mean, Matt,” you told him. 

“I know, I'm only teasing, love,” he assured you.

Your eyes spotted the small, decorative mirror hanging on the wall across the room, just past Matt as he continued adjusting his tuxedo. You bent down carefully, picking up your clutch purse that you'd dropped to the floor the moment Matt had pushed you back into the door, and then you made your way over to it.

“Convenient there's a mirror in here,” you said to Matt as you began inspecting your slightly smudged lipstick. “I can at least attempt to make myself presentable again before we go back out there.”

Using your fingers to wipe away the smeared lipstick as best you could, you heard Matt approaching you from behind. You saw him appear over your shoulder in the mirror a second later, taking in his out of place hair and slightly rumpled shirt. He wrapped his arms around your waist, drawing himself to the back of you as he leaned in towards your ear, your eyes catching sight of a devious smile on his mouth before he spoke.

“Now when we go back out there,” he murmured, his voice once more low and husky like the Devil’s, “I want you to remember this moment anytime anyone looks at you like you don't belong at my side. And if you catch yourself starting to believe them, I want you to do something for me, okay?”

“And what's that?” you asked him slowly.

Matt's nose brushed along the shell of your ear, your body straightening at the touch.

“I want you to focus on the feel of my cum dripping down your thighs,” he ordered you. 

Your hands stopped what they were doing trying to fix your makeup, hovering over your face as your breath caught in your throat. Eyes growing wide at Matt's reflection, you watched as he pulled away from your ear, turning and grinning at you through the mirror. 

“I know I'll certainly be paying attention to it for the rest of the night,” he said, grin growing wider.

[daechwitatamic]

Vice;Grip || chapter 1 || chs

(banner by @itaeewon)

Vice;Grip (masterpost) NSFW - minors DNI Genre: angst smut fluff, fuckbuddies!au Summary: Make it not hurt, you could have asked him. Or, at least, make it hurt in a way I choose.  A/N: infinite thank you's to @sailoryooons and @eoieopda for beta-ing!! //

Warnings: Frequent depictions of depression, depressive episodes, panic attacks, and substance abuse (alcohol, weed, and pills referenced). PLEASE know that these characters’ relationships with drugs and alcohol are not healthy and should not be emulated. If these topics are triggering to you, please consider sitting this one out. Section Specific Warnings: casual drinking, piv sex, , nip stim, reader on top, drunkenness to the point of blacking out, vomiting due to overdrinking (mentioned very briefly), dirty talk, implied drug use / vernon is high, heavy themes in regards to mental health - allusions to unspecified mental illnesses in the realm of depressive and anxiety disorders

wc: 5800

Playlist: you can call me in the middle of the night / you can leave before i wake up in the morning / and it could feel so wrong / but i'll still hold on

Now

You’ve been used to seeing his face only in puzzle pieces, triangular fragments of glass beside a fallen picture frame. Mostly in flashes of light that are gone too quickly to process the whole picture - as the car he drives passes under a streetlight, as the flashing lights from a dj booth sweep over you before moving on, as the moon crosses over the gap on your window’s blinds that your cat broke two years ago and you never replaced.

Despite this, you know everything about it: how he keeps it carefully flat, but when it breaks it’s always to jump to extremes. How he laughs so hard his features distort and shatter, how his eyebrows nearly meet when he’s breaking and pressing fingers to his eyes, how his eyes squeeze shut when he mouths your name against your neck and presses his fingertips tighter against your skin before letting go. You have it all memorized. You know it by heart, even in the dark. 

That was how you met - in the dark. You were dragged to a bar by your best friend Chan, determined to drink until you weren’t annoyed by the existence of everyone around you, until the music and lights seem to flow over and around you, like you’re experiencing them through a thick pane of glass. 

He’d been invited, too. He and Chan had friends in common. You’d noticed him early in the night, sometime before things got foggy. Of course you did - even in the dim lighting you could see how good-looking he was, all sharp points and edges. You made note of how he stayed quiet, a tiny smile on an otherwise unchanging face, but his eyes had darted around, following the conversation sharply. 

Sharp is your favorite word for him. It fits everything about him, top to toe, inside and out. 

Sharp, sharp, sharp. 

He looked how you feel inside, even now. 

You’d gone back to his place, that night. You still remember him leaning back against the wall of the bar, arms crossed against his chest, mostly in shadow until a pink light passed over you both before leaving you in shadow again. As your eyes adjusted again, pieced his face back together in the dark, one of those eyebrows had lifted in question. 

You were surprised at how clean his place was; he was surprised by how cluttered yours was, the next time you’d come together, maybe a week later. 

This was almost two years ago; you’d both gotten used to each other since then.

It wasn’t a surprise, each time, when he gasped and then whined when he came, when his grip tightened like he had to make sure you stay put until his heartbeat starts to slow again. Not a surprise when he’d pull his ripped jeans back on less than ten minutes later. Not a surprise when he’d reach out to wiggle your foot through the blankets to make sure you were awake to hear him mutter, “See you,” on his way out. Nothing surprising about how you’d go four days without talking and then send him a wyd?, nor about how he’d come to pick you up, his car idling outside your building within the half hour. 

You’d been doing things this way for ages. It was practically a routine. This was just what you two did, in the dark. 

You weren’t sure what he did during the day. You and him, you only existed when the sun went down. 

You didn’t know what he looked like in the golden hour, or at a restaurant table, or hurrying through a rainy afternoon. You didn’t mind; he belonged to you like this - only in the dark, only in pieces, only in too-quick flashes of light.

It was enough.

Or, you’d pretended it was, for as long as you could. 

1 yr 11 months ago

The first few times were simple. You both knew what you were there for. You’d text, he’d come get you. You’d watch his hand on the gear shift as he drove you back to his place. You’d undress each other across his living room, a breadcrumb trail to follow back out when it was over. He’d order you a ride when it was done, you’d get home and shower, sinking into your own bed just as the light started to shift outside, warning everyone that dawn was imminent once again.

Or, conversely, he’d text instead of you. Or he’d drive to your place and stay, pressing you against your entryway wall before even closing the door behind him, threatening all your neighbors with a show. He’d slip out, after, leaving the smell of his cologne on your skin, on your sheets, even - somehow - in your kitchen, where you’d gone for water while he got dressed. 

You both knew why you were there. You both knew what you needed out of it: just sex, just fun. You couldn’t even call it friends with benefits because you weren’t friends from dawn to dusk.

The just of it failed to last.

You know precisely the first time it was different, the first time you needed him. You needed the same things as always - his mouth hot on your skin, his hands alternating between sparks of pain and soothing caresses, the stretch of him emptying your mind and pushing every bad feeling out like there wasn’t room for them anymore. But for the first time, you didn’t want those things for enjoyment.

You wanted them as a salve.

Make it not hurt, you could have asked him. Or, at least, make it hurt in a way I choose. 

You did ask him, in your own way. With your tongue, with your hands, with your hips. You didn’t know if he could tell that something was different, that you were using him to hide, that your urgency was because you wanted to feel something else. As you moved together under the fairy lights above your bed, the motions were the same as always. 

It was after, that was different. Before he got dressed, he’d rolled to face you across the few inches of dark. His statue-like face wasn’t blank, now. Instead, his brows knit just slightly, his lips frowning on the hint of a pout.

“You okay?” he’d asked.

You’d looked back at him, goosebumps rising up and down your arms as your skin cooled. Should you lie? That was the best way to keep him at arm’s length, the best way to make sure this didn’t get too deep, the best way to ensure you didn’t scare him away.

But something made you tell the truth.

“A little better, now,” you admitted, quiet, your voice creeping through the dark like it was avoiding landmines as it tiptoed over your mattress. 

He’d nodded, slipping back into the silence he wore best. Then he’d stayed just a few minutes, breathing quietly beside you, before getting up and sliding back into the routine. A few extra minutes of not being alone, like he knew you needed it even if you couldn’t ask for it. 

In the silence he left behind, the truth had ballooned into the empty room: something had shifted. Now, on the nights when you hurt, when you weren’t sure you wanted to keep clawing your way through, you had another vice to pick from for distraction. More or less destructive than your other, older vices? You weren’t sure.

Almost two years later, you’re still not sure. 

1 yr 10 months ago

The levels of separation were just enough that you didn’t cross paths at a lot of social events. But it was always a little thrilling when the circles did converge, when he appeared at the edge of the group, when the game became act normal in front of everybody. 

You like games.

Vernon does, too.

The first time he showed up unexpectedly at the bar, your stomach swooped, and you hid a sneaky smile by tipping back your glass, draining the rest in one go and announcing that you needed a refill. 

A game, knowing he’d watch you walk away. A game, knowing he’d have to look away again quickly, before anyone caught on. A game, pretending when you return to the group that you don’t remember his name. A game, knowing that at the end of the night, he’d come home with you and make sure you didn’t remember anything but. 

You had too much to drink, too caught up in the fun, in the promise of later, in the thrill of feeling like you were harboring a secret like a precious plant, cupped in loose soil between your muddy fingers. 

The alcohol made you lose track of your friends, of the time, of directional stability. You stumbled to the hallway you thought held the bathroom, one sweaty palm slapped against the wall to help you get there. 

You’d only been sleeping with him for two months, but his hands on your waist were familiar. So was his mouth, near your ear, asking a familiar question - “You okay?”

“Should probably go home,” you muttered, still present enough to know you were a mess. That others could see your mess. 

“Can you get yourself out front?” he asked, and there was something gentle in it. It made your stomach turn; or maybe that was the vodka. It made you want to run, to put distance between you, to remind him that you weren’t his to take care of. It made you want to hiss and spit to remind him that you’re an outdoor cat.

“Why?” you asked, turning in place to face him, something hard riding up in your chest. 

He shrugged one shoulder, like it didn’t matter to him if you listened or not. “If you go out now, I’ll order a ride. Then I’ll head out in a few, when the car is here. It’ll look like you left already when I go.”

You narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re being awfully strategic.”

He lifted that eyebrow again. “You want Chan to know we’re fucking?”

The word sizzled through you like an electric shock. But you took a breath and considered the question. “No,” you answered, once you muddled through your soupy brain enough to find the word. “No, I don’t.”

“Okay,” he said, as if that settled that. “I’ll order the ride. Your place okay?”

“Mhm,” you said, distracted, suddenly aware of your lack of equilibrium, nausea making its presence known. You might not have told him goodbye before pushing your way back into the crowded dance floor, weaving around people and squeezing through impossibly tight spaces until you find Chan again.

“My uber’s out front,” you said in greeting. 

“What?” he cried, looking betrayed. “It’s not even one-thirty!”

“If I stay,” you told him seriously, “I will hurl. Talk tomorrow?”

He pouted a little but nodded, waving goodbye as you turned and struggled towards the front door. 

Stepping from the loud, crowded bar into the quiet street was almost dizzying in itself; you struggled to adjust as you took a few steps away from the door. The lit-up signs from the nearby businesses swam around the edge of your vision, and you swallowed down a fresh wave of nausea. 

It seemed like only seconds later, though it must have been at least five minutes, when the car pulled up and Vernon appeared from out of nowhere to usher you into the backseat. 

You don’t remember the ride home. You don’t remember Vernon supporting you by your elbows to keep you from toppling sideways (or backwards) down the stairs. You don’t remember dropping your keys so many times that he’d taken them from you, let you both into the apartment. You don’t remember him helping you remove your heels, or placing a glass of water by your bed. 

You do remember waking up somewhere in the bright hours of early morning, still in your tight dress, head pounding and stomach rolling. 

Your apartment was empty; you hadn’t expected him to stay, but you’d checked the couch anyway, just to be sure. You drank the whole glass of water, sat on the floor of the shower and let the hot water punish you for your bad decisions, and then crawled back to bed. You texted Vernon - the first time either of you had texted while the sun was up - and apologized, thanked him for getting you home. 

You expected an answer as reserved as he normally plays things. You were surprised when, instead, he sent you back, “i think i’d be good at rodeo”, followed quickly by, “rodeoing???”

Frowning, you sent back a line of question marks.

His answer made you laugh through a groan, pressing your face into your pillows in embarrassment - “corralling you was NOT easy… but i did it 🤠”.

Face flushed with embarrassment, you sent another apology. 

You sank into quiet after that, unsure if you’d messed things up, made it too real, became a thing of responsibility instead of a thing of attraction. But he’d texted you the next weekend, those three little letters sending relief through your system: wyd? 

“Not drinking,” you said, and he wasted no time in sending back, “want to not drink at mine?”

1 yr 9 months ago

come over?

you come here?? ill order ur ride

ok 👍

“You seem weird.”

Vernon kept his expression even, though hearing the words made him want to grimace at being called out so immediately. He’d been spiraling for at least an hour; had at one point gotten so worked up that he’d slammed his laptop on the desk, causing it to show a shuddering blue screen before restarting on him.

If it hadn’t stumbled back to life, he honestly thought he would cry over it.

He might anyway. Fucking shit.

“I’m a weird guy,” he deadpanned instead.

“Weirder than normal,” you volleyed. “Everything okay?”

Vernon sent a dark look over his shoulder, where the textbook he’d been burying himself in still sat open on the page he’d been on when your text had rolled through.

But you weren’t here to help him study. You weren’t here to listen to him complain that he’d failed his last test, that his scholarship rode on this next one. You weren’t here to help him make flashcards, or even to rub his shoulders while he hunched over the textbook.

You were here so he could forget, for just a little while, that he was stressed in the first place. You were here to help him feel something besides the knots in his stomach, so he could hear a voice echoing in his head that wasn’t his own calling him stupid, stupid, stupid. You were here to melt the edges of his anxiety, the way he could have with a shot or a pill, if he were in a different mood.

He replaced the textbook on the flat surface of his desk with your bare ass, leaning over you to brace an arm next to his sleeping laptop. He let your soft cries take up space in his mind, crowding out his internal admonitions, his mind’s noisy cycling through the list of things he should be doing instead. His stomach muscles clenched because your fingertips trailed over them, not because he was imagining having to tell his parents he’d lost his scholarship. He groaned, long and guttural, because you felt like heaven clenching around him, hot and silky and perfect, not because he’d read the same paragraph three times and retained none of it. His fingers found the back of your neck and gripped you hard, holding you in place as his hips snapped into yours, instead of gripping the pen that refused to write answers that made any sense.

It worked; it helped. It was the first time in days that Vernon felt okay. He wished he could last forever - just so that he didn’t have to go back to reality, to life outside of this.

“Car’s on its way,” he told you, after you were cleaned up and dressed again.

You looked up at him from where you were perched on his desk, the same spot where he’d been drilling you only ten minutes ago.

“Thanks,” you said, then looked down at the textbook in your hand. You’d picked it up absently, but now you turned it over, reading the cover.

“This looks hard,” you observed. “Is this why you’re all…” You trailed off and made a face to indicate that Vernon was the human equivalent of a keysmash. You even mimed the keysmashing, in the air in front of you, with both hands.

The smile he gave you was probably sheepish. “Yeah. Test tomorrow. Flunked the last one.”

And he wasn’t sure why he was telling you, but you nodded slowly, eyes still on the cover of the book.

“Sucks,” you said sympathetically, and that was that. You didn’t make it a thing. You gave him a quick smile as you closed his door, and then you were gone.

Vernon took a shower, dissociated in the warm water until it ran cold. Then he heated up some instant noodles, and set everything back up on his desk to try again.

Maybe he should make fucking flashcards.

He was still at it around two in the morning, literally holding his eyelids up to stay awake, when his phone rattled on his keyboard.

good luck tmrw. hwaiting.

1 yr 8 months ago

“Go talk to him!”

“Chan, from the bottom of my heart, fuck off.”

Your best friend pouted at you over the top of his beer. “You haven’t dated in forever.”

You hadn’t needed to. You didn’t want domesticity, nor partnership. And the parts that were left, Vernon had been handling just fine.

But Chan didn’t know that.

“I don’t want to,” you snapped. “I don’t want to talk to that guy, and I don’t want to date someone. I want to drink with my idiot friend Chan. Is that a problem?”

His pout deepened. “No,” he sulked. “But I’m worried about you, noona.”

“Well, don’t be,” you said, softening. “I’m fine. I’m just not after… all that.”

Still looking a little bit like a kicked dog, Chan glanced down at his beer and then back up at you, timid. “Have you been… working on anything lately?”

You wanted to crawl out of your skin. You wanted to evaporate, slip towards the ceiling in tiny droplets of not-matter, vanish as you got too close to the sun.

“Nope,” you said, forcing a breezy tone.

His eyes on you were too knowing. Your clothes all itched, suddenly. “Nothing, since -?”

“Chan,” you said, not even trying to hide the desperation on your face, in your voice, in the way your hands reach out for his. “Please, can we not do the intervention thing right now? I really, really cannot.”

He went quiet. “Fine,” he said finally, and the timid-younger-brother thing was gone, replaced with something almost angry. Frustrated, at least. “Fine. You need a refill?” He downed the last of his beer and reached for your glass.

“No,” you said, pulling it further from his reach. “I need shots. Let’s go.”

The burn in your throat helped you move on, move away from the uncomfortable moment. You relished the slight sting, closed your eyes as you felt the heat make its way to your stomach. Kept them closed, felt everything tight inside you loosen by degrees, until you could breathe again.

You danced, you drank more. You did tequila shots, licking salt off the back of some girl’s hand, both of you giggling even though you never saw her before in your life and probably wouldn’t again once the shots were done.

At some point, you stilled, realizing you hadn’t seen Chan in a while. You rested your elbows against the bar for balance and pulled out your phone.

where are you? you sent.

His answer confused you. told you goodbye almost two hours ago, you fucking mess.

Then, another, do I need to come back and get you?

Shame engulfed you. You were a mess, always a mess. A fuck-up, a drop-out, a waste of potential. The idea of him having to come take care of you, come back to get you and babysit you, made you want to crawl under the sticky floorboards.

no, you sent back. i’m leaving now.

But the shame hovered over your shoulder. Its breath coated your neck in humid huffs, its claws pressed into the flesh of your arms hard enough to leave little crescents, its tail curled around your leg to hold you in place.

You ordered another shot.

The room was dark, and smelled stale, like a window hadn’t been opened in months.

The room was not the bar.

Your body flooded with adrenaline so fast that you had to close your eyes and force an inhale.

You didn’t remember leaving the bar. You didn’t know where you were. You didn’t know how you got here.

The shame was back, tail heavy over your abdomen, but the spikes of fear were worse. You felt around the darkness until you could find your phone. You used its light to look around - you seemed to be alone on someone’s couch. Hand shaking, it took you three tries to open your maps app. You couldn’t get the screen to focus, couldn’t read to see what neighborhood you were in.

The screen swam before you and you clicked it off, closing your eyes and trying to breathe, trying not to cry.

Who could you call?

Not Chan, the shame whispered to you, lifting its head from slumber and opening its beady eyes, yellow across the dark room.

You didn’t have many other choices. You'd found that a symptom of isolation is that fewer people stick around, waiting for you to come out of it, to be normal again. You'd known this, logically, for years. You still couldn't help it when the urge to hunker down and speak to no one but Chan and your mom took over; you couldn't help when your stupid, broken brain told you that you were bothering everyone but to believe it. Don’t call Chan. You closed one eye and turned your screen on again, determined to make it make sense.

It was almost three in the morning.

You knew one person who might still be up.

Vernon’s hello sounded awake, and that’s what made you crack, tears starting to slide down your cheeks without permission.

“I don’t know where I am,” you admitted. The shame gave a hearty huff and lowered its head again. “I can’t - I can’t get a car because - I can’t see the - the buttons aren’t working -”

“Put me on speaker,” he said calmly, and you clung to his voice like the rung of a pool ladder. You didn’t need to climb up, you just needed to hold on.

“Okay,” you said, when you’d managed it.

“Go to your messages,” he said next, and walked you through each step until you’d managed to drop him your location.

“Thank you,” you’d said, tears dry. Everything dry. Even the shame seemed a bit opaque, the numbness strong enough to push away even this least desirable companion as it came creeping in. “Thank you, I’m sorry, I -”

“Stay on the phone with me,” he instructed.

“Vernon, no,” you protested. “You should go to sleep.”

“Wasn’t sleeping anyway,” he said flatly, and there was no room to argue.

You stayed on the line in silence as you hunted around for your shoes, or a coat. You found neither, though somehow your purse was still strapped to you. You did manage to find a front door. You exited the house, closing the door quietly behind you. You still didn’t know whose fucking house it was.

You threw up next to the mailbox. You collapsed into the grass, wet with morning dew under your back. You shivered, coatless and barefoot. Your phone was somewhere in the yard behind you, the call still connected.

Above you, the shame swam between the stars, twisting and undulating amongst the constellations until it made you so dizzy that you rolled over to throw up again.

When you saw headlights, you pushed yourself to sit, trying to breathe. The driver wouldn’t let you in the car if they thought you might be a puke risk. You looked around the ground near where you were sitting, trying to find your phone, realizing belatedly that you were still on the call with Vernon.

“Sorry,” you said, bringing it to your ear again. “I dropped my phone in the yard. The car's here.”

“I know,” he said simply, which didn't make sense, but you were too gone to figure it out.

“I'm gonna hang up now,” you said quietly. “Thank you for helping me.”

He made a noncommittal noise and you ended the call as the car coasted to a stop. You started to rise, to make your way unsteadily to the back door. Instead, the driver’s door opened.

“Vernon,” you complained, horrified that he'd come out at three in the morning to get you. He was supposed to be home, in bed, while a stranger drove you home - a stranger who you paid in money, owed no emotional labor for this effort. A stranger who could see you like this - a wreck, makeup smudged, confused, lost in multiple ways - and never see you again.

Vernon looked you over, then shook his head. He walked around his car and opened the passenger door, looking at you silently, waiting.

Finally, you stalked over.

“Why are you out here with no shoes on?” he asked, voice lower than normal.

“Lost them,” you muttered, dropping into the passenger seat. Your stomach swam again, but it seemed to be empty enough now that all you got was the suffering.

He drove you in silence for a little. Then, at a red light, looked over at you, that expression as blank as ever.

You were starting to learn his tells, though. His fingers tapped on the gear between you.

You’d made him anxious.

“What happened?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Blacked out,” you said, looking at your knees. “Didn’t mean to. I think some girls invited me along to their place? And then I must have passed out.” The tequila shot girl’s face swam in your mind - this seemed correct.

“Girls?”

You looked at him, surprised. Pieces clicked together.

“You think I called you to get me from a hook-up’s house?” you asked, defensive. “I’m a disaster, but I’m not a bitch.”

He cleared his throat. “I didn’t say that.”

You were both quiet a little longer.

“I’m not… I don’t…” You weren’t sure how to say it. “I know you didn’t ask me not to - and I’m not asking anything from you - but - I don’t…”

“Okay,” he said, stopping your ramble. You looked at him, relieved, so glad he understood. That you didn’t have to say it. “Cool.”

Cool.

If you could without throwing up again, you’d shake your head. He was just so… Vernon.

You were hungover for two days; you even called out of work for one of them. When the headache finally subsided, you told the cat you were never drinking again.

The cat jumped off the bed and trotted away; it might as well have called you a liar.

When the weekend rolled around, you didn’t text Vernon. The shame lay its heavy, clawed foot on top of your phone, leveled you with an even look that said don’t even think about it.

How could you face him again, anyway? Why would he want to see you, after he’d seen the truth so clearly - that you were messy, a mistake, more trouble than any situationship was worth?

Friday night came and went in silence. You were right - he wanted out. You didn’t blame him at all.

Then, Saturday night, a text came through.

you coherent? 😏

You laughed, rolled your eyes, sent back, unfortunately. can we change that?

want to try a different poison tonight?

is that supposed to be flirty?

if you need me to do the hard sell, my offer won’t end you up at a strangers house at 3am

that’s a solid argument

i’ll come get you. need some time?

yeah, gimme 30 min?

cool.

You snorted again. Cool. He was such a dork.

“Thanks for getting me,” you said, when you slid into his passenger seat.

“Can’t let you entertain yourself,” he said, ticking his head to the side like he’d learned his lesson. “You end up without shoes.”

The callback to last weekend made your face heat, and you expected him to lecture you - to tell you to be more careful, that you shouldn’t put yourself in situations like that, that your liver will quit someday.

He didn’t - didn’t bring up anything that happened until -

“Only need me, huh?” he asked, later, pressing so deep into you that you squirm away, delighted when he pulls you back roughly, puts you right back where you’d both rather you be. “No one else does it this good, right?”

“Shut up,” you huffed, half-laughing. “God.” Then he shifted his angle and you repeated yourself, a broken record, god god god, for a whole new reason.

1 yr 7 months ago

Everything was slow and heavy. Vernon’s eyelids lowered and then slid open again, slow… slow. Air army-crawled on elbows and knees into his lungs, slipped out too easily. His blood in his veins trudged; his heartbeat couldn’t whip it into going faster. The ceiling fan above him circled, chasing its tail in an endless loop.

come over.

It must have taken him two hours to type the text. Two hours for it to fly through space - is that how texts send? through space? - to your phone. Two hours for you to get there, to let yourself into his unlocked apartment.

“Took you forever,” he muttered, still watching the ceiling fan.

He was a little out of it, a little bit on another plane. Your hands were cool against his cheeks, thumbs cool as they traced his jawline. For a minute, they felt like the only thing tethering him to earth, keeping him in this room, in this apartment.

“You in there?” Your voice came from far away.

“Yeah.”

He opened his eyes again, and found you hovering above him, light streaming from behind you.

You didn’t mention his red eyes, didn’t tease him for the way his words came out one phoneme at a time. You just pulled your shirt over your head - he may have groaned when the fabric passed your tits, fuck you for showing up without a bra on - and then reached for his hem. Then you lay tight up against him, one hand absently stroking over his chest.

You let him make every first move, let him decide when he’s in his own body again. He kissed you slow, licked into your mouth like it was viscous, marveled in how your skin felt when his hands skated over your back.

It must have been two hours that he kissed you, only that, before finally tugging you to straddle him.

He’d been fucked up when he texted you, but he was feeling clearer now. Clear enough to peel your leggings over your ass, to lift his hips when you tugged on his sweatpants. Clear enough to let out a breath that shuddered embarrassingly when you positioned him at your entrance and sank to the hilt, stilling and tilting to look him in the eyes.

Sometimes Vernon thinks about Giles Corey. He shouldn’t even know about this random piece of American history; he definitely didn’t learn it in school. But sometimes Vernon would procrastinate real work by going to random Wiki articles, and sometimes what he read would stick. 

He remembered this one. During the early Salem witch trials, Giles Corey was tried as a witch, but not hung. Instead, he’d been pressed to death - the stones added one by one to the board over his chest. He was supposed to confess. 

He’d died that way, had been literally crushed to death, one stone at a time.

His last words had been more weight.

That’s how Vernon felt, most days. One stone at a time, pressing on his ribcage. It was never enough to crush him, just enough to make him feel like he couldn’t take a breath, enough to make him feel like his bones might crack and cave and it’s scary - but they never did. Or, they hadn’t yet.

Every day, Vernon woke up, spit at the feet of whatever church was awaiting his confession, and demanded, more weight.

But the stones had felt heavier, today. Some days were like that. Some days felt like hardly any at all. He tried to remember that - the lighter days would come.

He didn’t feel them at all, now. The only weight on his chest was your hands as you leaned your body forward for leverage, riding him at the pace he set with his hands on your hips, guiding you up and back - slow, slow.

“Fuck,” you groaned, eyes squeezing shut and then opening again, blinking quickly. “It’s too - god, I can feel everything - I don’t know if I can - it’s too -”

“I’ve got you, baby,” he murmured, reaching up to pull you closer, to bring you chest to chest.

“I need you to move,” you whimpered, burying your face in the crook of his neck. “Please, I need you to go faster.”

Vernon swore fiercely as his body obeyed without his permission, feet flattening against his mattress and arms crossing over your back to hold you in place against him. You both gasped, equally shocked at the sudden change.

“More,” you begged. “Please, Vernon.”

More weight, he thought, and then he wasn’t thinking anything because you were wailing, fingers twisting in the sheets next to his shoulders, pulsing around him in dizzying, soul-sucking waves.

Sometimes Vernon thinks being alone will be the stone that kills him.

He almost asked you to stay, after, just to keep it at bay. Almost.

He thought that you might be his new favorite vice.

1 yr, 6 months ago

wyd tonight?

uhhh awkward. i’m. on a date?

why awkward? you’re allowed.

thanks for the permission.

i’m generous, what can i say

dont worry though its nothing. we got set up. its… not going great lol

i understand. hes got tough competition.

Please. 🙄

have fun

im not going home with him. i promise.

prove it.

how?

come here after.

ykw?? i think i will. Next ->

my first svt fic ever!!! thank you so much for being here! i hope you continue to enjoy!

[bloodbruise]

Regulus black sopping wet pussy

listen. i think james could probably write soliloquies about being in between regulus' thighs. how it gets him drunk, the taste. the feeling of drooling into reg's cunt, spit mixing with slick and smearing on his cheeks, down his chin so, so sweet that he cant help but groan a guttural, "god, i love you," with his face buried there.

he loves it when his glasses get foggy with the effort—thats when he knows he's doing real well. when beads of sweat start to form on his brow from the heat of regulus' thighs. when droplets run down his neck from the exertion of fucking his fingers in and out, in rhythm with his tongue, throwing an arm across regulus' legs to open him up and stop him from squirming. when his breathing gets all labored, too focused on gulping regulus down to care about intaking air properly. mouth open, tongue laving ceaselessly at regulus' clit just to see how long he can keep him sobbing—thats when he knows its good.

and when regulus breaks another pair of his glasses from the force of his thighs squeezing around james' head, well, he's the furthest thing from annoyed. james wears it like a badge of honor actually, thinks he'd be happy to replace his glasses a million times over if only for one more moment between regulus' thighs.

[wmarximoff]

𝐤𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐭 | 𝐰. 𝐦𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐟𝐟

summary: to get what she wants Wanda will do anything - including hurting you.

warnings (18+): smut, strap-on sex (r receiving), non-con, a bit of dacryphilia, breeding kink, loss of virginity, forced pregnancy, toxic relationship, manipulation, heavy angst. MINORS DNI.

pairing: Wanda x fem!reader

word count: 3k

masterlist|

(please, don't flag the work)

༺ᱬ༻

At dawn, gray and foggy, the bitter winter temperature would arduously exceed the limitations of common sense degrees demarcated by popular thermometers.

The vehement peak of the serene dawn, as placid and peaceful as it ever was to be, had been swallowed up by a broad blanket of white, chaste snow; blizzard which had interspersed, crossing from north to south along the entire longitudinal extent of the ten thousand hectares located near the tiny town of Westview, New Jersey. You weren't born in there and, in fact, you barely knew that place at all.

The whiteness of sprays of snow in flakes of polished ice continued to crumble through the openings of the dense clouds, and a pale veil of frost took more and more possession of the tiles above the roofs and the tops of the enormities of the hills around the town, inferring a white and crystalline color.

You retained your own private assumptions about the phenomenon, however, and attributed it to increasingly distressing global warming (come on now Tony Stark, you could very well reverse global warming if you really wanted to!). But maybe you still held such a mundane concern at your core just to keep a sober dose of normality within you, and not give in to the long chants of long lonely days, as maddening as they could be.

The days that had passed gradually slipped one over the other, consubstantiating, consolidating into a single amalgam, and you no longer knew what to do to ward off the acute boredom that was consuming your nerves little by little like an autoimmune disease – there was no book to read or movie to watch that would wriggle your soul out of the lonely corners of a world you'd been segregated into, walls slowly closing in around you one by one. You were alone. Utterly alone.

Through the dim glass of the wide window of your solitary room, you gazed, with your gaze watered by the apathy that is intrinsically sprinkled in your irises and sluggish limbs and heavy in your joints like lead, the occluded sky of dawn – the few gloomy trees raised in the neighborhood surroundings like fortresses of dark, thick foliage, swaying on their own axes as the constant wind dictated outside their painted plaster walls.

With a sliver of fresh skin on your right temple pressed against the cloudy glass, so cold to the touch, your dead eyes followed the willow tree of snow outside as if it were natural, as if it was common to snow at that time of year and as if she wasn't using the situation to her whim, wherever she was at that moment, as much as she was everywhere at the same time.

Right, screw global warming. You were living like a little snowman cloistered inside your own particular snow globe – free from your point of view, but trapped inside the dome.

The truth was that Westview was a huge board full of pieces all situated in their proper squares, the vast majority composed of pawns as maneuverable and disposable as they could be, endlessly, always ready to be used and discarded and then replaced – and you were the queen of them, the most important piece to be cherished, but like everyone else, at your core, you would be just another component part of the grand scheme that Wanda Maximoff ruled with an iron fist. One wrong step and you were out, checkmate.

In a time that then sounded remote, an echo of a dream derived from a memory already forgotten, perhaps seven or eight months ago (you only calculated the passage of time by the gradual expansion of your belly, which then encompassed a larger roundness than a basketball), you were free. You were young and you were free and the world was a little less terrible than it could be.

But Wanda had kidnapped so much of you, in fact, disfigured you into a bizarre parody, a grim reflection of who you once were – but of your own free will you gladdened to the end in an elan worthy of praise, in the greatest pose of a soldier who is willing to kill and die for the glory of your people, despite the notion that you were fighting a vain, lost battle.

At the end of the day you were still her possession to be used and abused however Wanda saw fit. She saw everything, and everything she controlled.

You were nothing but a poor college student, still so full of spirit, and your captor was an esoteric entity versed in superhuman capabilities, the wielder of celestial powers who, according to herself, was also a multidimensional traveler – whatever meaning it held, or at least what she meant by such an eccentric statement as that.

All you knew was the things she could do and undo with a simple, banal hand movement, and how it affected you.

The fact was that you were alone, isolated, confined to an unknown town where escape was infeasible and outside contact was nothing short of scarce, subject to the pleasures, daydreams, paranoia and whims of a woman deeply troubled by her own inner demons, that you supposedly hated, but couldn't get away from even if you wanted to. Not when she was growing on you like a parasite, literally and figuratively speaking.

It was clear as the snow outside – conceiving Wanda's offspring in your womb (albeit at odds with your own individual desires at first, but attempts to shed such a burden proved, at first, flatly flawed and highly unnerving to Wanda's exhausted mind, who wasn't used to being a very reasonable person), whom she held so dear, there would be no way to nurture a flame of hatred for that woman that would not be extinguished quickly; no matter how little you knew about her for as long as your pregnancy lasted, Wanda's humanity, so disparate from the morbid cruelty at the bottom of those abyssal green irises, resided in the bosom of motherhood for which she cherished so much.

In the intimate caresses exchanged between her gentle blackened fingertips and your swollen belly, there was a kind of love so subtle and genuine that it almost erased from your memory the fact that you didn't want to be there in the first place. Her contact with that embryo was covered by a lapse of vulnerability, and that's why that witch once proved to have been as human as you were.

At a certain point, goodness was already given for those intentions, when there was not a shadow in her very existence. Deep down you just knew she was good. But it was no use if kindness was eclipsed by a haze of cruelty.

The faint gleam of her smile was enchanting, and the jadish irises were drowned in waves of tears that pooled behind long, thick dark lashes, right at the waterline of the one who so affectionately gazed at your belly by her rotten right fingers. At some point, you knew, you just knew that Wanda had given as much love to the world as she had to the unwanted child in your womb. You wondered what it was that had stolen Wanda's innocence so voraciously that, in the end, she ended up stealing yours too.

“Twins,” in one night she came, and Wanda had smiled at the utterance of her own words, never breaking her gaze from the skin stretched just below your navel, “My boys.”

Her touch felt cold, plastered like a corpse's hand. Everything about Wanda was somewhat cadaverous, reminiscent of the dead – although a veil of purity always overshadowed her dying features (for that witch was indeed beautiful), the dark, sharp circles under her eyes and the deep fleshed cheeks made her a spectral creature, unreal, with the waxy pale skin that so accentuated those emerald eyes that squandered a nuance of intense feeling.

You were never quite sure how to pinpoint what was going on inside her mind, although she always expressed that there was something there to look for.

“How,” you muttered with your eyes focused on anything but her, your shirt pulled up to expose your swollen stomach, not a smile found on your lips' commission to reflect that woman's.

The situation in which everything of the last few months had culminated in your stomach was in knots – the idea that it was done, and now you had nowhere to run from her.

“How can you be so sure, Wanda? Twin boys... that's a pretty... specific guess, I think. It could just be a boy, it could be a girl,” in the room lit by the orange flames of a fireplace that turned Wanda's hair as red as blood, you blinked, “It could be anything.”

“I just know,” lisped the woman who owned the long auburn locks that fell below her breasts, sketching a ghost of a vaguely nostalgic smile on her well-shaped lips, like someone wistfully remembering something that is gone and will never come back.

“I… just know it's them. My… our boys.”

There was a brief pause interspersed by the crackling fire in the dry wood, a breath held within bristling lungs.

“Thank you, Y/n.”

Your eyes finally turned to Wanda, who was crouched in front of you. She looked at you in gleaming green like she did the first time she made you bleed, when she emptied herself inside you, condemning you to that sick moment of intimacy with her.

“I know you don't understand this right now, not this version of you at least, but,” her jaw moved slightly, speaking at length in her speech, as if she were speaking like a child, seeking to express clarity. As if she had to plan her words carefully.

“I love you, детка . Everything I've done so far is because I love you, Y/n. You and our boys, our family. Everything I did was for you. I hope one day you can understand that and forgive me for what I did.”

Your eyes stung and sickly bile rose to the surface of your tongue at that controversial statement of hers. She knew it was wrong, she was fully aware of it. You could never imagine that whatever resulted from that one-sided relationship between the two of you could fall under the nominations commonly associated with the definition of “a family” .

You already had a family to call your own and belong to, a father and mother and siblings too, and from them you were usurped by her. That couldn't be a family, not that relationship structure, not you and her. Not when you weren't even twenty and barely even aware of what, say, Wanda's last name would be.

That night you cried yourself to sleep. And, like every night before that, Wanda listened until you fell into the softness of your own sleep clouded by layers of thick, salty tears.

But the warm, abstruse sweetness behind Wanda's hideous facade made her as seductive as the apple would have been to Eve, and the fragility that rarely saw the light of day made her seem so small compared to the times you feared for your life as she chained her hands behind your back and sternly brought her hips to meet yours over and over again.

You've also heard her cry before going to sleep. It just so happens that she was the one making you suffer, while you just had to put up with her external suffering.

Wanda was a complex puzzle to understand, so fluctuating, fascinating and unpleasant at the same time, like a new flavor to try, bad at first, but then becoming dangerously charming to the palate. And you didn't know whether you wanted to put those pieces together into one uniform image, or throw them in the trash and close the lid.

In fact, if traced back to the beginnings of your gloomy model of relationship (at least in the most primitive sense of the word, summarized only to the exchange of physical touches between two controversial animals, to, moreover, the imposition of physical contact from one part to the other), it was as if Wanda saw what she solemnly did to you as an artifice, a mechanism, a forced method to an end you never chose to have. It was as if she was just performing a necessary sacrifice that justified the means she chose to use.

She apologized again and again because that inside of you stung and hurt when she ripped something inside you, and she worked hard to make you like it too, even though you barely knew her at the time, and in fact just waking up from the stillness of your sleep to the uncomfortable feeling of a foreign body on top of you, with your legs spread wide and streams of fresh crimson blood dishonoring the sheets down your thighs, ripping you in half like no one before her had ever done.

“Shh, it's okay Y/n, it's okay. It's okay, you’re okay детка.”

She lisped that night with the palm of her right hand screwed to your lips, stuffing your protests behind your teeth (scorched-tipped fingers sweeping strands of your hair behind the shell of your ear, Wanda in a red tiara looking like would cry as much as you already did). The first time you saw her, that strange woman invading your room and also you, she seemed as uncomfortable with what she was doing as you felt with her tucked inside your innocence.

“I know it hurts, baby, I know, I…” Green eyes then pulled away from your face contorted in sharp pain, as if, for half a second, she couldn't even look at you in that state. As if, in your room, she would burst into tears with you.

“I'm very sorry. I'm really, really sorry детка , but I have to do this. It’ll pass, alright? Will pass. It’ll fit, we'll make it fit, okay? Just take a deep breath. This will be quick, I promise. I,” Wanda choked on her own words, “I'm so sorry, Y/n.”

And it went on for quite a few sluggish minutes – the headboard hitting the wall rhythmically, hard and slow behind your head, your white cotton underwear crumpled and discarded at the foot of your bed, your eyes focused on how much the sharp points of that scarlet tiara that seemed to protrude from the top of her skull resembled two demonic horns as they rose and fell in the dark of your room, above you.

When your conscience woke up, the very next morning and in a room you were not at all familiar with, the wet pain between your legs was the final sentence given that you were already her property. And you tried to run away, wander the streets of Westview, cry out for help from your new assigned neighbors, but they were smiling like machines, nothing was wrong. Nothing was ever wrong.

And the visits continued, scheduled for sunset; the fall of the veil of night was the apogee of your fate – in that house with dismal walls, dark shadows lightened by the tongues of fire that burned in the hearth, Wanda came in the form of that crimson specter to do what she had to do. And time had washed the regrets from her soul, when did the pleasures of the flesh begin to burn hotter on her skin.

“Dерьмо,” Wanda anathematized one night in a sigh under her breath, moaning in a thick accent in the roof of her mouth as she stood behind you, blackened fingers digging deep into the skin of your hips as hers pierced into yours.

“Dетка, you feel so good, s-so good, Y/n...” she gasped, your white-knuckled fingers screwed to the sheets moving beneath you both, “Fuck, I missed you so bad...”

“I-it hurts,” you squealed beneath her, your right cheek rubbing against your pillowcase, your teeth clenched, your jaw set, “W-Wanda, Wanda wait– go slow, you're– you're hurting me, Wanda, please slow down–”

“I'm going to come,” she suddenly announced, indifferent to your protests, “Fuck, I'm going to come inside you, Y/n.”

The cognition of such a sentence haunted the nerves of your spine. At that point, you already had basic knowledge accumulated about her – she was called Wanda Maximoff, she was from another universe and, as a factor of greater relevance to emphasize, she was capable of performing and handling magic, something that for you, until that moment at the time, was nothing more than a fictitious topic. And, if she was qualified to run an entire city on her own, she might well be able to turn something as frivolous as coming inside you with a fake phallus into a permanent action and one fraught with the most undesirable consequences.

“No-!” you immediately chafed then, trying to crawl your body away from hers on the bed sheets, “Wanda, don't– don't do that– Wanda–!”

But with a pull and a jerk she held you steady, your hips up, ribbons of scarlet energy restraining your wrists bound to the bed, just to the side of both your temples. And the notion that you couldn't even move caused warm tears to pool in the waterline of your eyes, clouding your view of the raised wall to the left of the double bed located in the heart of that partially lit room by the dull bulb of a bedside lamp.

“Hold still, детка, I-I'm almost,” she growled, her hips hammering against yours in essentially violent movements, “Almost there–!”

“No, pull out,” you whimpered, “Wanda, pull out, don't do that, don't do that, Wanda– Wanda, please–!”

“I need to do this Y/n, I fucking need to–!”

“Wanda, please–!”

She didn't pull out. She never pulled out – the point was not to pull out, it was that she emptied herself inside you, painted your insides with that magical secretion that only a few weeks later proved to be appropriate for the purpose Wanda had in mind. And she didn't touch you anymore, not that way, when her goal was achieved – with the plan completed, all she had to do was wait for your organism to do what it had to do. And so the months passed, snow fell on that simulated dome. Her visits weren't as frequent anymore.

“Why me?” you asked her once, as she stroked your belly through your thick crimson wool sweater.

Crouched down in front of the couch, Wanda raised her eyes to you like she always did when she was trying to communicate with the child she had shoved inside you.

“Because I love you,” was her answer, of course. A wave of ominous disgust twisted your insides at that oblivious response, as if Wanda were genuinely alienated from the reality of where she was your captor and aggressor.

“You barely know me, Wanda,” you spat, “And I barely know you. This isn't love, you're using me like a fucking incubator. You’re sick and you fucking know it.”

She lowered her head in front of your prickly speech, a lock of reddish hair piercing an emerald iris of hers, while Wanda's left fingers, dark as pitch, kept stroking your belly through a layer of clothing. She compressed her lips into a long line, and you held your breath. From your point of view, Wanda, stripped of that crimson armor she always wore and then tucked into casual clothes, sweatpants and a sweater as thick as your own, looked small and confused like a child, a little girl.

“You used to know me,” she muttered quietly, “Where I come from, you used to know me. We were married. We had our boys. You... for as long as it took in Westview after I had you back again, you were my world after I lost everything.”

You blinked once.

“Westview?”

She looked at you again.

“Yes, Y/n. Westview. They took you from me, more than once. But the second time they took our boys too. So I,” there was a pause in her speech, “I had to look for you in another reality. In a reality where nothing could ever get out of my control again.”

And for half a second you looked back at her.

“Wanda,” the palm of your right hand slowly snuggled against her left cheek, which approached your touch in an almost pathetic neediness, when was it that you looked into her eyes, “You’ll never have control over me, no matter how hard you try.”

She closed her eyes as a tear trickled down her cheek.

“I know.”

When the twins were born, you didn't want to hold them. And, begrudgingly, Wanda understood. She understood that she could never have you, not after what she had done to you, but to her consolation at least there were those boys left for her.

And she had been benevolent in letting you go, as if she had released a bird from its caged captivity, erasing from your memory any and all discernment of what your relationship had been like for ten months or so, abstracting from the confines of your mind the idea of how much she had harmed you by excluding herself from your memory. You went back to your old life, and she started a new one.

Time has come and gone. You had no sense of the past, and no one in your social circle even seemed to notice your absence for nearly a full year – it was like a dream, a memory, a lie. A kind of collective amnesia. You moved out of your parents' home after graduation and obtained a steady job in your field of work. And, after a while, you decided that it might be good to share your life with a second person – soon enough, a relationship blossomed between you and a dark-haired woman you met during a snowy winter day in a coffee shop.

Your girlfriend was a few years older than you and a single mom, but it turns out you got along great with her kids, and she was the best partner anyone could ask for. And when, on a warm summer day in the city park, Wanda offered you a strawberry ice cream cone right after presenting Billy and Tommy with their respective favorite flavors each, you genuinely smiled at her.

“Thanks, baby,” and then, you kissed her on the cheek. Billy asked Tommy to play tag, and the older twin accepted.

Wanda smiled at you. She smiled at you as if she didn't know how much she had already hurt you. “You’re welcome, детка.”

[https-murdock]

Matt once mentioned to foggy in the show he doesn’t like it when people treat him like he’s fragile and it made me think of Matt having a friend that lightly bullies him (replace his glass of water with orange juice after he puts the glass down so next time he picks it up and drinks it’s orange juice not water) (constantly tell him she gonna one day sneak into his house and take all his light bulbs and mirrors cause he “doesn’t need them anyway”) (move all his Funiture one inch to the left or right to throw him off) (and biggest one, if she jokingly says “ima fight you Matt Murdock istg” and he just goes “you would beat up a poor blind man?” Which she just takes off her glasses and goes “yeah I’ll fight a blind man look im blind too let’s go!!” And does that stupid fight pose.

i feel like he’d relish in a friendship like this so much, like not being babied and treated like everyone else finally.

this also strikes me as his humour, too - he’d find it funny that everyone else was so shocked by the way you talked or joked with him, but in reality he’s just glad you aren’t acting like he’ll break with such a light touch. it’s so important to him the way you are with him.

[mins-fins]

heart attack

&&. there's something hilarious about the beautiful doctor there to help with your terrible habits.

pairing: qian kun x gn!reader

genre: fluff

warnings: mentions of overworking, mentions of passing out & hospitalization

word count: 0.9k

notes: this….. THISSS💔💔💔 this drabble was very inspired by the thai movie heart attack (a movie that has no right being as cute as it is) kun fits the part so well because first.. doctor kun, and second.. kun is so amazing, i love kun, we all fucking love kun 😿 this is a early bday gift for user junjiie bc we all know he loves kun (happy early bday pookie ily) this is insanely self indulgent because i have slept less than three hours in these past five days and have been working myself to shit because.. med school!! yayyyyyyy!! im so excited!! (is not excited)

"so what's the matter with you?"

the usual roughness that would lace the voice of a medical professional is replaced by the softness you would feel of pillows, you glance up, meeting the eyes of the beautiful man before you. you stare, forgetting where you are for a moment, the exhaustion rendering you speechless.

but it's a whisper in your head that reminds you of where you are, and you flinch. "oh— i um.. there's these rashes appearing on my body".

"okay" he mutters, clicking his tongue and pen in unison. "and where exactly?"

"my arms, my neck.." he hums, pulling up your sleeve to check out what you told him. "also there are some on my fingers".

he bites into his inner cheek, much too close for the sake of your heart. he then glances up, examining your face through his glasses. "you haven't been getting any sleep" he snaps his fingers in your direction, letting go of you and turning back to his computer.

you respond with a dry chuckle, too tired to even try to add emotion. "and you know that how?"

"i can see it in your eyes, those dark circles aren't doing you justice" he sucks his teeth as he types out something. "what's your occupation?"

it isn't strange that he's curious, just answer the question.

you shake your head, mind all over the place. "i work in graphic design".

"ohhh" he doesn't exactly seem surprised. "freelance?"

you nod.

his eyebrows join together. "how does an editing job have you so tired?"

you let out a breath, too exhausted to allow a laugh. "it's a twenty four hour thing, if i'm awake at all times i function better".

"you're barely functioning now".

"well you're a doctor, you always tell people the obvious" you sigh, closing your eyes to try and recollect the many hours of sleep you lost. "i'm sure you aren't any better than me.."

"i'd be inclined to disagree".

you open one eye, staring at the pretty doctor who types away on his computer, catching you in his peripheral vision. (eyes you don't notice due to your lethargy making you less disposed to).

"when was the last time you slept?"

your throat goes dry, your senses reduced to the clear fatigue. you could simply lie, how would he even know? there's no way dr. qian is a psychic, that would be freaky, you're sure it would be nightmarish if that were the case.

there's an indecipherable glimmer in his eye, one that would scare you in regular circumstances where you were fully awake. it's as if he knows you're going to lie, your attempt at fib crawls down your throat before it can even escape your lips. "five days ago".

his reaction is serene, much too calm for your situation. "five days ago.. and how many hours did you sleep?"

your brain is foggy, you almost blurt the number 'six', but that's simply your default response when people ask. why would you ever lie to a doctor?..and the cute doctor especially?

you pause at the wave of your thoughts. what do you mean he's cute?

it's simply common sense, y/n. don't you like smart guys?

you would probably attribute it to your terrible sleep deprivation if it weren't true. you can't deny that the man before you is simply so attractive it should be illegal, he's absolutely gorgeous, how can a regular doctor be so beautiful? you might fall over, not from your lack of sleep, but from the eyes of the man who stares with such care.

"like.. three?"

your voice scratches as you recall the last time you 'slept', he hums, clicking his pen as he notes the information down. he turns in his rolling chair, scooting closer to you. "you mind if i see your hands?"

you can't even put up a fight, you're just about to give into your own exhaustion. you put your hands out for him, and dr. qian takes your hands in his own, examining the rashes which litter your fingers. he's close, so close, you can admire each of his facial features with amazing certainty. everything about him is beautiful, his cheeks, his eyes, the curves of his lips, it's all beautiful, it should be a crime for such a man to exist.

"that's an issue.. have you taken medication for sleep before?" you shake your head, and his fingers slip from yours.

"alright.. i'm going to put you on doxylamine" he mumbles, getting back to noting down your state. you begin scratching at the rashes on your fingers, and he snaps: "don't scratch it".

you move your hands apart rather quickly, his tone of voice intimidating you enough that you pause. he's much too convincing.

he points at you. "tonight, and this next month onward, you sleep before nine o'clock every single day".

you uncharacteristically snicker. "do you sleep before nine o'clock every single day?"

he raises an eyebrow, amused by the question. "i'm the doctor, i know best".

"of course".

"you'll end up dead if you keep going at this rate, take your medication, sleep before nine every day, then check back in with me next month".

"if i'm not available, can i reschedule?"

the question is simply meant to be comedic, you're just about to pass out, trying to sneak in a last minute joke before having to leave the office of the cute doctor. he leans his arm against the desk, smiling at you. "don't reschedule, i want to see you".

and you clearly weren't expecting those words, because your cheeks flare up.

see y/n? you do like smart guys.

[savannahsdeath]

call me silly but i cant stop thinking about hogwart au ellabs uhhh istg . i cant . also im pretty sure im the first one to make a hogwart au so please give ib if you want to make your own fic🤭 if im not the first one then sorry and please lmk who is !!

summary: you're roommates with your best friend and girlfriend, which don't seem to get along well.

﹒⪩⪨﹒

you and abby often wondered what's ellie doing in gryffindor, as the setting hat had doubts itself, wanting her to go to the slytherin for a split second.

"i mean, i'm happy she's with us." you quickly explained, realizing she might hear you through the bathroom door.

abby frowned, not looking away from her book. "oh, you are? and why, exactly?"

you laughed, leaning in to see what is she reading about, but she slammed the book shut with a loud bam! right in front your nose. "well, first of all, she's my girlfriend. self explanatory—"

"but... why?" she cut you off and sat up. "what do you see in her?" oh, you knew that one. it wasn't the first 'you deserve better' talk you had with abby. "wouldn't you rather to be with someone smarter, stronger and, i don't know, just... not a total loser?"

for a moment you sat there, so close to her your shoulders were touching, with your mouth parted and lips going dry. a moment passed as the door opened and ellie came out, sloppily wiping ruffling her wet hair with the towel. her gaze wandered between the two of you and she raised her eyebrow, but her obliviousness made her shrug the weird feeling off. "how much time do we have?" she asked, ignoring abby's presence, who just went back to reading her book.

"less than an hour." you annouced, getting up and taking the towel out of her hand, replacing it with a little bottle you picked up from your bedside shelf. "drink up."

"the fuck is that?" she twirled the unappetizing green liquid around the glass, noticing it's weirdly dense texture.

abby chuckled, winking at you as if to laugh at your low standards. "just listen to your girlfriend."

you smiled at the blonde girl before looking back at ellie. "it's going to rain, i don't want you getting sick."

"yeah, we don't want to hear you whining like a baby just because you catched a little cold." abby added, smirking as you gave her the stare. her comment passed by ellie's ears, not getting any reaction out of her.

she downed the potion in a few sips, wincing and letting you take the glass bottle out of her hands. she took a deep breath, trying to get rid of the taste. "i'd rather be sick." you giggled and rised on your tiptoes to reach her forehead, placing a loving kiss on it. she smiled for a second, before her face flashed with a grimace again. "wait— it's going to what?"

"it's going to rainnn" abby cooed, mercilessly but melodiously drawing out the vowels. you frowned, seeming to be the only one who doesn't see a reason to panic. yet, ellie was now pacing around the room, stopping to look outside the window. the clouds above the horizon were, in fact, dark blue, what predicted a downpour.

you came up to her, wrapping your hands around her tensed waist. "are you scared of some water?" you teasingly asked, nuzzling your head in the crook of her neck.

"that's not the point." she turned around, taking your hand and parting her lips. you just knew you'll probably spend the next minutes listening to the rules of quidditch, hopefully not enough to be late. "you see, when it rains, it's usually quite... foggy. pretty hard to see anything, yeah?"

"yeah, but..." you walked towards the bed, ellie following closely after. "slytherins won't see anything too, so it's fair, isn't it?"

she quickly shook her head and pursed her lips in a tight line, as if disappointed you don't get it. "someone gifted them special lenses. someone— i mean, anonymously, but everyone knows who it is. their captain's father." she stood in front of you as you sat down, fiercely gesticulating. "fucking bastards. they think money can solve everything... well, it kinda does but—"

"can you shut the f..." abby chimed in, deciding against cussing in the last moment. "...up. jesus, i'm just trying to study." she rolled her eyes as the attention was now on her.

"what are you even studying?" ellie walked closer to her, trying to see the book's cover through the blonde girl's pulled up knees, which she used to lean the volume on.

abby was quick to get defensive, closing the item as soon as she made sure the tab is on a right page. "none of your business."

"it doesn't look like one of our student's books at all..." ellie teased, tauntingly smiling as she got closer.

you sighed, taking a deep breath before speaking. "come on, els, we gotta go - get you ready and everything." you stood up and started rummaging through the drawers to think what should you take with you. ellie nodded and left your dorm, promising she'll wait for you before entering the quidditch's pitch.

"you really should go, it can be fun." you friendly nudged abby's shoulder, trying to keep your eyes away from the pages of her book, which seemed to attract your gaze and curiosity.

she looked up at you, visibly annoyed that she has to repeat it for the hundredth time. "that's not my thing."

that's not my thing.

yet, about fifteen minutes after the match started, you felt her warm presence next to you. she didn't say a word, probably too embarrased to admit she somehow got convinced to get her priorities wrong.

yet, you could hear her breath hitch when she saw your rivals score another point. no matter how hard the rain would hit her, soaking through her clothes, she'd calmly stand her ground and squint her eyes to see how bad the situation is.

yet, you eventually noticed she was holding her wand the whole time. and you noticed how her grip tightened as she mumbled a few words under her breath, inaudible because of the cheers. you couldn't believe it, but after a few minutes the clouds turned purely white and bright sun rays made people take off their coats. the same abby anderson, who always had to be the best student, not letting herself be distracted from studying just broke one of the school rules.

"you know you're going to have problems if anyone finds out?" you innocently looked up at her, gratefully smilling.

"then don't snitch on me." she shrugged, admiring the weather, which was her own creation.

yet, she made gryffindor win.

✧˖°

let me know if you want to see more!

[allbark-no-bite]

Guilty Conscience || Rafe Cameron x reader

summary: the guilty don’t sleep. nor do their girlfriends

warnings: mentions of death/murder

word count: 1.1k

author’s note: set in season 2. this one is one i posted on Wattpad a while back

It's late. Too late to still be awake but the muffled foot steps of Rafe's constant, on-edge pacing have managed to pry my eyes open to the darkness of his bedroom yet again. The soft tread of his bare feet makes a muffled sound against the expensive carpet, and pauses briefly every few seconds while he stands there, biting the edge of his finger nail with his other arm crossed over his chest, and then repeats the process.

He and Ward had returned mid afternoon from the Bahamas with a police escort, both looking worse for wear. I hadn't wanted him to go in the first place, but Rafe had reassured me he needed to do this for his dad, and that everything would be fine. They were supposed to get the gold and come home. Instead they came back empty handed and Rafe even more unnerved than before.

I close my eyes again, wondering how we could have possibly ended up in this situation. And whether there is a special place in hell reserved for the girlfriends of murders.

Rafe killed Sheriff Peterkins that day on the tarmac, no amount of denial is going to change that. No matter how hard I close my eyes, it isn't going to change the fact that I saw him raise the gun, his finger squeeze back on the trigger—

Thunder booms outside and my eyes fly back open. Earlier's ominous looking storm clouds that have been looming threateningly since this evening have finally come through on their promise of a summer shower. Not long after the weather sets in do I realize that Rafe's footsteps have been replaced by the patter of rain against the window pane.

The bed dips beneath me and the springs underneath groan in protest as he crawls back into bed. I shift positions as he wraps his arms around my waist from behind, his chin coming to settle between the crook of my neck. Rafe lets out a long, slow breath from his nose and it sounds like it carries the weight of a thousand worries.

I hug one of his plush pillows tighter to my chest. The one that isn't holding the pillow twists the golden signet ring on his finger.

I watch the rain drops as they slide down one by one and leave blurry streaks along the foggy glass window while listening to the rush of air against my ear as he breathes unevenly, never quite falling into the rhythmic pattern of sleep.

A while later, Rafe's head lifts from the safe crevice of my shoulder and his body partially pushes away from me. The comforter rummages as we both move again, and I roll over onto my other side to face him. The dark bedroom has turned his blue eyes a pale grey, but even so I can see the haunting ghosts of doubt and anxiety filling his gaze. There are shadows of half blue moons stamped under his eyes. Sleep has not been his friend.

"I—I need you to tell me that I'm a good person," Rafe whispers, finally breaking the silence. The mattress creaks underneath his weight as he uses his forearm to prop himself up, leaning partly over me. "It doesn't matter if you mean it or not, please— I just need to hear you say it," he says, sounding so broken and unsure of himself.

The request is almost enough to send the sinner inside of me to my knees. I've watched him struggle with his own mind for months now, fighting an internal battle that I know he can't win and I can't fight for him, no matter how badly I want to.

Ward's been in his head for so long now that most days I'm just picking up the shambles of the broken son he's neglected for years. Sarah was always his golden child, there's no denying that. I know it, Rafe knows it, Sarah knows it.

"You let everyone convince you that you're some kind of heartless murder and you're not," I whisper, gazing up at him.

This I believed. Sure, Rafe was a jerk, I'd known that when I met him, but he was a jerk who could press his lips to my neck, teeth grazing my skin and whisper that he loved me; even when he wasn't sure if he was capable of anything else.

My hand finds his cheek and brushes some of the blonde hair away from his eyes. There's a bruise there that I don't remember him having and a part of me wonders what really happened in the Bahamas.

A painful, miserable looking smile finds its way onto his face, and just once, he laughs into the darkness of his bedroom. "No. I'm just the regular kind of murder."

The soft, hopeful expression falters from my own face and I sigh, letting my forehead fall against his with my eyes closed.

It was hard, sometimes too hard, to admit that he wasn't wrong. Which of course always lead to a reinvestigation of my own conscience and why I was doing this. Why would I lie by omission, never think to say any different when Ward and Rafe gave their statements to the police, faking his innocence. My answer to this question, I find is always the same; because I loved him and I was afraid of what Ward would put him through if I left. He's told Rafe that he would never pick between his children, but I've seen him lie to Rafe enough times to know it was just something he said to cover his tracks.

Ward had done this to him, forced Rafe into lying and thinking that what he was doing was being loyal and helping his family, because he knew that all Rafe ever wanted was for his dad to look at him the same way he looked at Sarah. It was never about trying to protect himself or getting revenge. 

Rafe clings to me, falling into a more relaxed position as he settles himself on top of me. His body is warm and comfortingly heavy a top my chest. My finger tips gently scratch his scalp, something that's seemed to calm him in the past. After a while I wonder if he's fallen asleep, but then the soft tone of his voice speaks.

"When this is all over, I'm going to be better," he promises, speaking into the blue fabric of the borrowed cotton shirt that I'm wearing. His lips press to my collarbone in a subdued kiss and Rafe looks up at me. There's a firmness in his voice, like he's trying to be strong. "I'm gonna man up and get right."

Man up, I think. Yeah sure.

My palm cups his chin, my thumb caressing the bruise on his jaw. I don't say anything, just smile sadly at him and he returns the same type of half-hearted expression. My throat clenches. We both know that it's a weak promise.

"You're in too deep this time, you know that?" I'm fighting my own voice at this point. Incredibly, it doesn't break.

"I know, I know."

[crowandmousewritingco]

🇹​🇭​🇪​ 🇲​🇺​🇸​🇪​🇺​🇲​ 🇫​🇪​🇮​🇱​🇩​🇹​🇷​🇮​🇵​

Paring: Mr. Ben x trans!reader

Words: 1.8k

Rating: R to P

Author: Mod Crow

Author's Note: This was originally a Kinktober prompt, but I couldn't get it finish it in time. Soooo instead, I present to you what I'm going to try to post all of my unfinished Kinktober fics, and I'm going to call them the "Post Nut November" fics. I'm aware the gif isn't Mr. Ben (let's use our imaginations gurlies) but there aren't many good gifs of that man out there. Besides, we know Mr. Ben wears glasses thanks to one of the sexy fancams that one of those students made.

Summary: What was supposed to be a normal field trip with your daughter’s class turns out to be anything but that. You end up talking to your daughter’s teacher -Mr. Ben- while on the bus ride to the museum. Once at the museum Mr. Ben drags you off to an “Employees Only’ area, and one thing leads to another.

Warnings: Language, sexual content (obviously lol), you do have a daughter in this (Dahlia), pet names (sir and puppy) MDNI 18+

When you had agreed to help your daughter -Dahlia’s- ninth grade history class with their Smithsonian trips, you had been expecting the constant screaming of kids and constantly telling them to stay close and to not touch anything. You even came prepared with your little travel first-aid kit (you could never be too prepared when it comes to kids.) What you didn’t take into account was their teacher. You thought you knew what you were agreeing to, but as the bus made its way to D.C. the two of you had a chance to get to know each other. What you didn’t plan was the thing the two of you were currently doing.

Slapping one hand over your mouth, attempts to muffle the unholy hymns of pleasure that want to leave through your kiss plumped lips. Looking down to Mr. Ben -or Ben as he kept insisting you call him- your eyes instantly finding his, the welcoming warm chocolate eyes replaced with pupils blown wide with want and need. 

Gripping Ben’s hair tighter, you threw your head back as your hips took on a mind of their own. As you stood there, in some side hallway that extended past an ‘Employee Only’ sign, you could feel the coil in the pit of your stomach growing tighter and tighter. Your once rhythmic  grinding soon becomes feverish, the silence you had tried so hard to preserve now filled with the wet sounds of Ben’s handwork and the soft pants as you need the edge.

“F-Fuck…Ben. I-I’m gonna…ahhh…I’m gonna cum. Please don’t stop.” Your voice came out as a pleading whine, and that seemed to spur him on. Without warning you felt the knot in your stomach snap, your legs -or rather leg- held Ben closer to you, as you came, a silent scream had your face in this contorted look of pleasure and surprise. Your grinding slowed as your high raked through your body, till you were nothing more than a shaky mess.

Feeling Ben pull away, you gasp slightly, the cool air of the museum hitting your sensitive cock. Swallowing dryly, you watch as Ben gives your cock one final long slow lick, the action earning him a few breathless whimpers. Standing up right you study him, the way his messy hair laid on top of his head, the way his facial hair comes in patchy and is colored almost as if with salt and pepper, but one of the many things you liked about Ben was his aquiline nose, and the way it was constantly bumping your cock while he was paying attention to your entrance.

With your brain still foggy from the orgasm, you turn to face the wall, hands bracing yourself for what was about to happen. Looking over your shoulder, you put on your best puppy face, “Mr. Ben sir,” You bite your lip, pressing your ass to the noticeable tent in his khakis. This time you were the one rewarded with beautiful sounds. Though they weren’t whimpers. They were the next best thing, groans and growl like sounds. “I need help with something. Do you think you can help me?” As the question fell from your lips you slowly grinded against him. 

Feeling Ben grab your hips harshly caused a gasp to escape your lips, before pressing himself to you harder. Feeling him let go of you with one hand, you go to look to see what he has planned. The sound of a zipper giving it away. It didn’t take long before you felt the head of Ben’s cock rubbing your own before sliding his length to your needy hole.

“I think I can actually help you with that. The real question is,” Feeling his clothed chest press into your back, his hushed tone causing goosebumps to erupt over your skin, “Do you think you can stay quiet? I’d hate for us to get found.” Feeling heat spreads across your face and your brain begins to swim, all you can do is nod. 

“Tsk tsk tsk, you were using your words earlier. What happened to that pretty voice of yours now?” Trying to process the question just presented to you, you push yourself off the wall slightly. Looking over your shoulder, a quizzical look on your face, you saw Ben’s. A smirk, one that spelled trouble for you. Before you had a chance to ask him anything, you felt him bury himself in you in one fluid snap of the hips. The action causes your jaw to go lax as a silent scream is forced out of your body. 

As Ben continued to fuck you up against the wall, he was quick to wrap his warm lithe fingers around your neck. As a sound behinds to bubble from your chest, Ben squeezes just hard enough that it causes you to hiccup in the middle of your exhale. The smirk on Ben’s face growing more playfully, but you could still see his lust blown pupils. Loosening the squeeze just enough to feel the blood come flooding back to your brain, causing your brain to grow foggy and spacey. And unbeknownst to you, that feeling of your head floating and the rhythm and speed of Ben’s hips snapping into you, was enough to topple you over the edge. 

“Oh you look so pretty cumming on my cock like that.” You feel the hand around your neck slide up your face just enough for his fingers to set over your lips. Without even needing to be told, you opened your mouth. Feeling his fingers slip into your mouth, you couldn’t help but run your tongue over Ben’s fingers. “Fuck…I’m gonna cum. Where do you want me to cum puppy?” You could feel Ben losing his rhythm, but the speed never changed once.

“Mouth.” The word being distorted by his fingers. It was obvious that Ben liked your idea based on the way his cock twitched inside of you. Pulling out, you can’t help but let the soft whimper leave you, at the emptiness. Your sorrow was short lived because in what felt like a blink of an eye, you felt Ben turn you to face him and then gently persuade you to your knees with a gentle push.

On your knees you look up to Ben as he strokes himself. Opening your mouth, you allow your tongue to lull out of your mouth; the simple action causing Ben to groan. As you close your eyes you feel Ben grab a handful of your hair before guiding his cock into your mouth. Moaning at the taste of yourself on him you reached and gently cupped his balls, taking him further into your mouth. Bobbing your head you can feel Ben twitch against your tongue, the feeling spurring you to relax your throat and swallow around him. 

“F-Fuck, puppy I-I’m going to-” Ben’s words being cut off by a growl like groan vibrating his entire chest. You felt him grip a handful of your hair and hold you in place while he came -quite literally- down your throat. Squeezing your eyes shut, you focused on remaining relaxed so as to not start gagging around Ben. As Ben pulled out you couldn’t stop the one single gag that escaped. With his cock out of your mouth, you took sharp ragged breaths in. Tucking his cock back into his boxers, he makes quick work of fixing his pants. Squatting in front of you, Ben tucks a few strands of sweat slicked hair from your forehead. “You okay? I-I wasn’t too rough was I? I didn’t hurt you did I?” You could hear the worry lacing Ben’s words. Shaking your head, you reach up and plant a hand on his chest.

“You didn’t hurt me. I would have stopped if you did.” Your voice hoarse from its rough treatment. Your words helped soothe him only a bit. “I’ll be fine. Honest. All I need is some water and maybe a cough drop or two.” You nudged him playfully, earning a soft chuckle from the older man. 

“Okay, I’ll believe you.” Standing up, Ben offered you a hand and you happily took it. Standing up, you felt Ben pull you into his chest almost instantly. The feeling of the tug causing you to gasp softly. “We should do this again, though let me take you to dinner first.” His words finished with a soft chuckle. 

“Mr. Ben, are you asking one of your student’s parents on a date?” You playfully joke. You wiggle from his grasp so that you can redress your lower half.

“I most certainly am.” You can hear the playfully tone in his voice. “So what do you say? Is it a date?” Looking over at him, you can see a faint blush spread across his tanned face. Buttoning your pants, you reach up to his face. Holding his heated face in your hands, staring into his dark chocolate colored eyes through his black framed glasses, you smile softly.

“It’s a date.” Pulling his face to yours you press your lips to his gently. The kiss short lived at the sound of voices growing louder just before the door swung open. 

“What did Margaret need for Koch’s Deep Time exhib-” The woman's voice stopping as soon as she looked at the two of you. “Excuse me, what are you doing back here? This is a restricted area.” The taller of the two women reaching for the microphone clipped to her folded collar. 

“I told you that this wasn’t the way to the bathroom love.” Ben nudges you. For a moment you’re confused, but then it clicks.

“O-Oh! I told you I wasn’t any good at reading these maps babe.” You grab Ben’s hand and gently pull him along. You look at the two women. “Sorry about this, it was my mistake.” Walking past the two of them you push open the doors and step back into the loud main gallery of the museum. The voices substantially louder than they were only moments ago. 

Looking around, you search for your daughter and her class among the swarms of people. When your eyes landed on the assistant teacher and the class, you sighed softly. With Ben’s hand still in yours, you snake the two of you between bodies. Once closer to the group you gave his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go of his hand.

“Dad, where were you? And why is Mr. Ben's face all red? AND why is staring over here at us?” You look down at your daughter before looking over to Mr. Ben who, in fact, is staring at you.

“I ran off to the bathroom and bumped into your teacher while going in.” Hearing the museum’s tour guide speak up you nudge your daughter -Dahlia- as a way to say ‘pay attention’.  Your eyes slipping back to Ben, the words said earlier echoing in your head. “It’s a date”

credit: @inklore

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