#Gutter Glove

[ezgutter]

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[themsthenow]

🦾

[leibholz-moved]

may i have your attention please

he’’s holding an eel like a baby;;;

That would be all, thank you for your time

[heartkaji]

★ HEART-EATING SPIDER BOY !

(n) — kinich & the iconic upside down spider-man kiss.

the gloss on your lips tastes like miel de coco & hearts in a gutter.

you hope kinich will like it—you think he will. you think that he’ll like it so you sit cross legged on the floor of your bedroom with concealer on your nose & menthone on your tongue. your cheeks are swathed in cherry blush & your lips are bruised & aching. you hope to god that kinich will kiss it better.

kinich is late.

it’s fifteen minutes past midnight & the gloss on your lips is beginning to dry. this isn’t right—kinich is never late. you’ve stared out your bedroom window three more times than you’d like to admit. the ache in your chest is grueling.

your mascara is pouring.

down your cheeks, not out the bottle. you’re not crying but there’s blood in your throat so you’d like to think you will soon. your chest feels like cotton & your limbs feel like bone marrow & there’s a pounding in your ears and—

“y/n ?”

kinich comes like a thief in the night. he’s hung upside down outside your window while you sit pretty in a pool of powder & blood. your cheeks are red tinged & your eyes are burning—“y/n ? are you okay ? let me in.”

at least you think that’s what he’s saying. you can’t really tell through the double glazed glass. you make for the window sill with red bruised knees & legs that shake like jello.

you sniffle, he frowns.

his eyes are hazy & there are scratches on his nose. his lips swell like fresh peaches. you think there’s a twig or two in his hair but it’s hard to make sense of anything in the nighttime black. you want to kiss him silly.

“are you crying ?”

“no,” you lie.

kinich blinks, your lips falter. your mouth is smeared in a strange peach jam & he’d like to think the new hue is just for him. it’s hard to believe you’d do that for his sake though so he buries the thought in the grave of his chest.

“did you think i wasn’t coming ?”

you nod.

“is it because i was late ?”

another nod.

you bite your lip. kinich stretches a gloved hand to your cheeks & the fresh heat makes your skin crawl. you’re a good little thing so you won’t move an inch & you let him trace your face till she’s bruised & swollen.

“can i kiss you ?”

another nod. his lips, your mouth.

his touch is shy & it burns your skin a thousand shades of pink. he’s still upside down hanging by the tension of his hook but his inverted lips fit perfectly over yours. his mouth tastes like copper & sugared teeth & you can feel his tongue slip past your molars. the taste of your gloss seeps into his saliva & all of a sudden he tastes like crushed strawberries & fake honey. you hope his lips will trace yours forever.

he pulls away for a breath of air. your eyes are still wet & your chin is peach sheened & your lip is busted but god above you are so fucking beautiful.

“sorry,” he clears his throat while gloved fingers strum your lips, “for being late.”

a sigh leaves your lips & he kisses you again.

© ─ heartkaji ; do not steal, copy, edit, translate or reupload

idea from this post by @lotusnerd

[shotmrmiller]

need simon to be retired and living in the middle of nowhere with a car-fixing hobby, and you're pulling into his 'shop' because you were road-tripping across the country and now some funky noises are happening underneath the hood.

you tentatively walk towards the open garage, only to spot him under some run-down vehicle that has more rust than sun-faded paint, deflated tires, and a license plate that's also got rust gnawing at the edges, the numbers on it barely discernable.

you rap your knuckles gently on the weathered car, and the wheels of the creeper he's on squeak in protest under him as he rolls out to look at you, filthy gloves smearing the dust on his brow instead of wiping it away.

"err, hi. uh, i was pointed this way by some lovely folk that work in that diner down the way, and they said that you could take a look at my car."

he rises smoothly, even though his joints pop as he does, dark eyes squinting against the sun. he towers over you with broad shoulders and thick arms. a tough-as-teak country man.

you start when he speaks, deep voice echoing off of dusty walls. "they said tha', did they?" he lifts the hem of his grease-stained wife beater to wipe at the beads of sweat on his forehead, and your gaze involuntarily wanders to the thick trail of coarse, dark hair under his navel.

"what's wrong with it?"

if you knew that, you wouldn't be here, blatantly ogling him in some decrepit workshop located in a sleepy corner of the countryside. "i don't know. it's making some scary popping noises and figured that it needed to be looked at, asap."

your grimace is involuntary when he extends an oil-streaked gloved hand. you really hope he's not expecting you to-

"keys."

right. you wordlessly hand them over and walk a few steps behind him as he heads toward the front of your car. "did ya get it looked at before your trip?"

you want to snap at him, that obviously you did. you may not be some car wizard, however, you can do the bare minimum for it but he's your only hope for getting the hell out of here, so you press your tongue against the back of your teeth for a moment before answering.

"yes. i did prepare for it. got new tires, an oil change, and anything else it may have needed."

he hums at your answer, a low sound in the back of his throat, and curls his fingers under the hood and begins to feel for the release. your mind is in the gutter as your eyes linger on his sun-kissed skin, watching the tendons on his inked forearm ripple with each movement.

your mind is snapped back to reality when he mutters, "i hope ya don't think i'm doin' this for free."

"wouldn't dream of it. you don't seem the charitable type."

the latch yields under his fingertips, and the hood springs open. "i'd say i'm pretty charitable, considerin' i'm even helpin' ya with this."

your eyebrows furrow, corners of your lips pulling downward. "what, were you closed or something?"

he gives you a small smirk while his hand searches for the prop rod inside the engine bay. "do i look like a business, sweetheart?"

embarrassment burns your cheeks, and your mouth gapes unprettily as you turn around to truly take in the place. past the grease-smeared floors, there's rust blooming on the only workbench in the garage, a single red toolbox resting on the ground. there's a car jack tossed in a corner, a vibrant blue cooler by the door, and a few firearms on pegboard shelves. it looks like a simple garage. a personal one.

"oh my god," you stammer, "i'm so sorry, i just- the townsfolk, they led me to believe that you're a mechanic." how bloody mortifying.

he ducks his head under the hood, bending at the waist to lean over the engine, eyes swiftly scanning the machinery. "it's a hobby. i fix my own vehicles... and now yours, i reckon."

eventually, he turns the car on and listens to the engine roar to life before it begins to pop, standing over the open hood with thinned lips and furrowed brows.

he tells you that he can fix it, it'll just take a bit for the part to get here, obviously, so he recommends staying at a rented cabin in town for a few days— maybe even a week— and he'll give you a ride over.

he gets you there in no time, unsurprising because he drove the motorcycle far too fast— illegal, really. he helps you off the bike, your clammy hand in his much bigger, roughened one.

you rip off his helmet, pushing it into his barrel chest. "please never drive me around that fast again." he gives you a couple of pats to the shoulder, chuckling under his breath.

"unless you're plannin' on walkin' to get your car back, i can't promise tha'."

grrrreat.

(the issue was the serpentine belt, it was slightly frayed but the man kept you around for 2.5 weeks under the excuse of something taking too long, or the car being under worse condition. maybe he charges you a kidney for fixing it, and since you can't obviously pay that ridiculous amt of money, he tells you to go on a date with him. gross. or maybe he's a sane man and he just sends you on your way in 2 days time. idk. installs a gps in your car? keepin' tabs on ya cuz he plans on passing by wherever you live by complete coincidence.)

[1800titz]

ᴋɪɴᴋᴛᴏʙᴇʀ — ʟᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀ/ᴍᴀꜱᴋ ᴋɪɴᴋ

KISS ME | Stalker!Harry x Reader, purge au

You left him with a taste of you lingering between his teeth, after the first time. With his appetite, it’s only fair he comes back for seconds.

★18+

I don't know what possesses me to write a psycho sicko every time the pumpkins start rolling out onto the doorsteps (see Hitchhikerry) but there is simply something in the air, I fear. This is ᴋɪꜱꜱ ᴍᴇ for the KINKTOBER projects.

PLEASE read the warnings, and please put yourself and your comfort first and foremost. Consume only what you’re comfortable consuming. This one is not intended to be read as a love story, and has sensitive topics, dark themes, and *dubious consent.

If you enjoy this, consider checking out my patreon masterlist, constantly being updated, with loads of exclusive content. If you would like to see the other KINKTOBER projects and join the taglist for upcoming projects, do so here.

CONTENT/WARNINGS: dubcon. stalking. sexual assault. coping with sexual assault. under negotiated kink. unsafe sex (no use of condom, no negotiation prior). manipulation. mask kink. leather kink. daddy kink. breeding kink. p-in-v. oral (m to f). general manhandling.

WC: 12.3K

As always, Harry is just a faceclaim.

Spring is bleeding out onto the tarmac. 

Gold and liserian and bluebonnet. Midnight and cherry-red massacre, seeping into the gutter grate with the sky glowing like a peachring. 

Spring is bleeding out onto the tarmac. It’s unstilted, and smells like rust, and kerosene, and Summer feels a hundred miles away. A thousand, like sunrise on the twenty-second, milliseconds seeping like sand through a clogged hourglass. Like someone wedged their sticky fingers in through the top and stuck a piece of gum to the narrowed opening.

The miasma, even days later, when waste management hordes the lily-white cadavers into semi’s and street sweepers come out to pressure wash the asphalt, burns your nose like you’re huffing acid. 

And it feels like God cupping his hands around the continent and squeezing every ugly, brutish thing out. You wonder if the blood seeping between the asphalt slates sticks to the grooves of his palms. His fingerprints, casting massacre into the pitch sky, smudging asterisms together. You’re supposed to feel the holy spirit. 

(Feel it— don’t you feel it?) 

At the back of your tongue, in every empty room, like a nebulous haze of goodwill and unconditional love. When you were a kid, you wondered why feeling God didn’t make your skin itchy. It would, right? If the body of Christ stalled at your nape, looming over your shoulder. You were raised catholic, so it still lingers and sticks to the nook of your periphery like an oilslick, no matter how hard you knuckle at your eyes. 

You wonder if it’s that same holy spirit they’re tasting in the heme when they cough, supine on the sidewalk. If it’s God’s liquid love, righteous across every capillary, with the swing of a sword. A forefinger on a trigger. 

That’s what they say, anyways. Last Tuesday the blonde lady on Fox news said it was always God in our veins on the night of the holy purge— feel God (transubstantiation like a distant, muffled folklore ringing in your ears) cleanse your soul. Fox news always starts to lean on epistemic justification in Spring, and you wonder if people believe God is scrubbing them from the inside with a bathbrush. You wonder if they really even believe in God, anyways, when it’s all just a mangled apparatus for population control. 

(But God wants them to kill the poor people, right?)

Last spring, a man broke into your apartment. 

Charcoal bulk. Tapered obsidian. Wide shoulders, wide arms, wide, herculean thighs, in all black. Slate denim. Battered leather jacket. Those massive hands, coated in pure-nightfall leather. You remember them well, because you thought they resembled the thick, sheepskin gloves your grandfather would wear out in the snow—

Nothing besides black on him, besides the cruel arsenic white of a plastic doll mask stretched over his balaclava. Like those ugly, inexpressive porcelain things you’d find stacked up in antique stores. Your gaze lingered on the delirious scripture across the forehead. Kiss me.

He slunk in while you were in the bathroom. Cracked in your front door. You discovered a crater in the shape of his kneecap, days later, when you replaced the broken locks.

You found him on your couch like a stygian king, thighs split, like he belonged in your tiny living room in all his ominous, leathery heft, and for a second, you just stalled at the threshold with your heart at the base of your throat. Eyes wide. In stagnant impasse with this absurdly nonchalant intruder. Between a beleaguered rock and a hard place. He’d cocked his head at you. Dead silent, and your hindbrain prickled with parity of a slasher film clip— the kind you’d peep over your blanket, folded up to your nose with shaking hands, after bedtime. You weren’t allowed to watch the movie, at the time. But you always remembered that scene where the indifference rolled off the killer in lapping, tidal waves before he’d strike and carve a character open. 

Something scratched at your hindbrain. Some hysterical thread, clinging to the falsehood that this was a rancid illusion. A nightmare, limned in butter-yellow off the lamp on the side table. His dirty boots kicked up on your coffee table. Inkblots in the plastic cut-outs of the eye sockets, glimmering like hungry nightfall. Because it was the purge, sure, but it wasn’t you. 

Never you. It couldn’t happen to you.

Hindsight humbles the untouchable, crooked complex you wore on your shoulders. Your head, with your chin held high, behind the glowing string-lights tucked across your blinds and the bleeding street under your balcony.

(You remember you thought God prickled at your nape that night. May God be with you— that’s what they say.)

(God was cold, and it made your skin itch. Maybe he would have been warm, and kind, and you would’ve felt the goodwill and unconditional love if you didn’t ask so many stupid questions in kidhood during bible camp. If you didn’t bury your bible into the bottom of your nightstand when you realized they were justifying their gnarled agenda with the pages.)

You felt sick—

And he told you he didn’t have any interest in killing you. A purr, muffled by layers of stitched cotton and plastic. No interest in all that. Wouldn’t wanna hurt a pretty thing like you. 

Like a sarky paradox to all the formidable space he was taking up, in all his horrifying gear. 

Kiss me.

An irony to the ichor thumb-smudge across his forehead. An irony, you thought, to God with a bathbrush, and the date, and the time, and the uncomfortable, imperfect squeeze of you into the bracket of wrong-place-wrong-time. In your own apartment.

Aren’t you gonna thank me, he hummed, on his feet now, from across the room. Stalemate. Rotten stasis. Deadlock, at his discretion, with you, shaking like a leaf under the archway. 

For protecting you? That’s what he said. 

(If you weren’t frozen in place with the leftovers you had for dinner curdling in your belly— eye to eye with a facsimile of the reaper— you would have snorted. It was just so absurdly ironic that it nearly made your ribs ache.) 

He was so big, you thought, when his shoulders climbed and his chest swelled, under the animal skin. So rigid. You wondered if he was all bulk like that, under the layers, or if the loose coat, and the gloves, and the daunting mien of a predator just made him seem that much larger. You’re not a small thing, but he made you feel as much. Like a dolly. A maquette— a perfect marionette to toss around between his hands on the perfect night, the perfect date on the calendar. 

Lotta bad men around, tonight.

The floorboard creaked under his weight. One step forward. The carpet bristled under your heel. 

Aren’t you gonna thank me for protecting you? 

(Kiss me.)

You remember how you went along. Easy. Didn’t say no.

And you could chalk it up to survival— pure, self-preservational instinct— and the gunfire looming outside your window. No. You remember the swell of panic, the riptide of adrenaline tearing you into a deluge of auto-pilot. Something seeped into the hairline fracture across the line between saving yourself— and your dignity, your pride. 

(Something ugly, and wrong, and so out of place. So warm in a room so bone-chilling.)

You thought you were broken. The two choices, unequivocally, were always fight or flight. 

(So which synapse misfired, that night, that kicked your gears into neither?)

You remember ugly things from that night. It felt like your ribs were being pried open, and he was picking you apart, pinching some raw and deep to pluck it out between leather fingers, until you were squirming in a pool of your own spilled volition. Like milk knocked over on the counter. Left to rot. Curdle.  

Because it didn’t hurt. He didn’t hurt you. 

And maybe that was worse. Because you were supposed to kick, and fight, and scream, and you— 

Didn’t. 

And maybe at first, it was a form of endurance. Survival sense— shutdown, like a generator on its last limb, preserving its own continuance. Just go along, just survive, just—

It’s easier, you think, in retrospect, to justify that. 

What’s harder is that you remember you thought you were broken because part of you, eventually, didn’t want to kick, or fight, or scream. 

(Go for the eyes— that’s what they say— and where would you go, in those inky craters, under the shadows? Like polynyas brimful of tar. You’d drown.) 

You remember the way he called himself daddy— come sit on Daddy’s cock, tell Daddy how good he feels— and you remember the visceral burgeon of disgust swelling in your belly. 

The way it made you revolted, and shuddery, and white-hot. 

Wanting. Slick. 

Because he’s not your daddy. Wasn’t. Isn’t.

You knew it for what it was. A gross game. Meant to debase your conation. This scary man in his scary mask on this, scary night, in your home, here to take something for himself. A flinder of your rib— a cracked piece of bone, here to tuck it into the inside of his coat. To watch your face crease with the juxtaposing blend of repulsion and want, rolling down your spine like rainwater off a downspout, as your cunt fluttered. 

He fucked you stupid on his cock again, and again, and again, until the sun was scraping at the land with its hot fingers, and the corners of your room were white and blue. Took what he wanted, because he decided he could. 

And that’s the game. The brutal nature of humanity crumbling under the weight of anarchy, and unrestricted autonomy, even if only for a night. Bereft morals. Selfish whims.

(And you took it. Just took it. Didn’t put up a fight, not when terror started lagging behind pleasure.)

He ate your cunt, too, just the way you liked. For hours, with the plastic mask tucked up like the balaclava, to the tip of his nose. The hard edge, and the cotton, pressing into your mons when he rolled your clit with his tongue, pressed the flats of his white teeth against it. You remember that. 

His nice, clean white teeth, and his pink lips. 

He must’ve been a pretty man under all the unnerving guise.

By the time the siren screeched at seven, you were strewn on your sheets like puddy across the sidewalk. All worn, and tired, and malleable, which he seemed to like. Panting, sweaty, tacky. Covered in him. The sticky, pearlescent mimesis, like memorabilia. Your pink underwear dangling out of his pocket like a perverted token to pin up onto his wall like a poster, after. His hard, leather fingerprints, blooming across your soft love handles, where he held your bones in place (but you didn’t need him to— not when you were so willing to placate and assuage and give). The chiaroscuro made your ribs rattle when you breathed deep. 

You stared at the popcorn ceiling when his belt buckle clinked. Slotted himself back together, into unobtainable nightfall against the backdrop of daytime. 

There’s a lot of things that stuck with you from that night. He didn’t hurt you, and your skin stayed sealed, but according to everyone, a part of you maybe-died, or that’s how you should feel, anyway. So, you wondered if that gangrenous part of you was severed off, bleeding out onto the carpet. Between the floorboards, staining the ceiling of the apartment on the floor under yours. A nebula of rust red across plaster.

(You thought it was severed, because at first you didn’t feel it. Anything. Nothing. Numb. Pinpricks across your psyche like your hand when you slept on it the wrong way. Maybe he cut it loose when you weren’t looking— when your lashes fluttered, smogged in the haze of yellow string lights, when your cheek kissed the mattress, and sex.)

You remember a lot of things that make your chest feel tight, like cotton unspooling in the crevices of your lungs, and your head feel waterlogged, and your knees brittle. But you remember he told you, before he left, that he’ll see you next year. 

I’ll see you next year, sweetheart.

Like a portent. It should’ve been. In a way, it felt like a reassurance, and you hate that pulpy part of yourself. 

And what can you do? 

You’re a statistic. 

The label feels wrong. Permanent. Like a bumper sticker stamped onto your forehead with gorilla glue. You’re lucky, they tell you, after. What a close call, when you swallow preventive abortion pills and shiver at your own reflection passing in the mirror. You think, maybe, your guardian angel blinked, somnolence searing at the backs of its eyes. Because, maybe, angels sleep, too. You don’t know. They didn’t teach that in church. 

You go to therapy. The woman in the big, sable chair gives you this look. Crinkled countenance pinched in pity. How pitiful, you’re reminded, and how lucky you are to only be scratched by a freight train. You’re not smattered pulp on the railroad tracks, but in the cruel cosm, you feel like jam dripping down God’s hands. 

You ask her if it’s fucked up that it felt good. 

She tells you it’s not. 

But then, you ask if it’s fucked up that a crackled fragment of you, maybe-sort-of-in-a-way, wouldn’t mind if it happened again.  

That’s a different question. 

Because you’ve been mulling that thought over between your teeth, in the hollow gaps between mortified, pale-faced solaces, I’m sorry’s, I’m-sorry-that-happened-to-you’s. It’s been festering, and feels like a chunk of you rotting under the sun. But maybe, if someone tells you that it’s okay—

If you had to do it over— you put it that way, like emphasizing a crease in a sheet of paper, and she gives you another, long, reticent look this time, instead of a response. 

(Because, maybe, putting it that way makes the insatiable itch in your arteries more relatable. Easier to swallow. Easier to tolerate. Maybe you sound like less of a freak, with the tumult.) 

Guilt for feeling pleasure is, apparently, very common, as indicated by the PDF she emails you that night to look over. Rape Victims and the False Sense of Guilt. 

Rape. The word rape, across the screen, makes you flinch. It’s such a small word in the sea of the text, only four Lilliputian letters. Teeny-tiny. But it feels big. Like a big deal— rape, that’s a big word. It’s razor sharp when it echoes behind your skull. It’s ugly, and it ends on a blunt, hard sound. No elasticity. No give. This unyielding, little word that shatters around you in its hideous, mangled phonetics— is that what happened to you?

You’re lucky. What a close call. I’m sorry that happened to you.

Pleasure is a natural, physical reaction. A bodily reaction. That’s what it says.

You can cope with that. Comprehend that. The rest is— loaded. Like an assault rifle, in spring. You don’t know how to peel the pieces apart. You never learned how to take apart a gun.

You know what a bodily reaction is. 

But nothing explains the chimera you chase after— the fantasy, when you’re plugged around two of your own fingers, weeks, months later, chasing the phantom ache. 

Liking masks is okay, but liking masks is only okay if there’s something preliminary about them. Liking to feel small and scared is okay, but only if there’s a safety net, and safewords, and you trust the other person, and know them like the pores across the back of your hand. A stranger isn’t allowed to make you feel this way. 

But liking this— thinking about this, with your head fuzzy and your skin simmering— is wrong. Bad. 

It’s okay, but you need to heal. Something bad happened to you, and you need to sweep your pieces into the dustpan before you start to put them back together. That’s what you read between the lines. It feels accusatory.

(Only, you don’t think you could mold them into the same form, if you tried. Stick them back into their rifted crevasses, when they’re jagged and misshapen.)

The things you feel are, by all definitions— according to the internet, and everyone around you— wrong. Ugly. Sick. You shouldn’t feel anything but nausea scraping at the back of your throat, pooling briny under your tongue, when you think about that night. About him. That’s what you find in the vats of their eyes when you tell people what happened, the stricken shape of their faces. Like you’re broken. Because you are broken. 

Some part of you has a big indigo bruise stretched across it, smarting something awful. Some part of you is fractured ceramic. 

You’re a statistic. A number. A sliver on a bar graph. It feels like throwing yourself headfirst over a rock face. Into a yawning abyss. You splinter upon contact with the water, but it doesn’t ripple around you. Just lets your dissevered pieces wade and buoy.

You don’t go back to therapy after the third time, and you spend all summer burying your esoteric predilections at the back of the shelf. Let them gather dust, because they’re shattered anyways, and you don’t know how to make any sense of the smashed fragmentations. They’re so jagged, they’ll cut the soft skin on your palms up if you cup them too close.

You move when your lease ends in the summer. Not really by choice, but the decision has the weight of all those ruckled, condolatory looks. Those I’m-sorry-that-happened-to-you’s, like flour-sacks across your shoulders. Your apartment still reeks like him. It’s a phantom musk, whispering along your lungs. Cigarettes, and leather, and tangy sweat (it almost feels like it belongs— not unpleasant, like the brine across Poseidon’s abdomen). It’s uncomfortable. You long for it. You’re imagining it, you know that. 

Your new apartment is clean. It smells like bleach, and it has all different locks, and the promise spills in cobwebs behind your skull. You try not to get tangled in them.

And everything tells you it’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong— everything. A churning, gut feeling, when you sign the new lease, when you roll around your sheets in the middle of the night with your hand between your tacky thighs. 

You feel like you’re breaking an unspoken rule. You’re supposed to heal. This isn’t healing.

You consider booking that out-of-country trip in March. Week-long, just to stifle the premonition under the heel of your palm. The omen, that was still dripping heady, clotting the air alongside the stifling sound of the zipper closing its teeth together. Crinkling leather when he buckled his belt.

Your mom gives you a call. Tells you to come out to Maine for the weekend. You shrug the invitation off with your phone cradled between your cheek and your shoulder, and your laundry between your fingers. I’m fine, mom. I’m—

Fine. Cataclysmically. Okay. Bleeding out onto the tarmac with every step, like the incipient springtide. 

You cup a posy of daffodils between your hands with wistfulness speckling across your chest. 

You used to love spring. In kidhood, before the heavy, inordinate burden of purge-nights spanned across your shoulders, spring had the delicacy of a flower. The warmth of sunshine beading across your skin. The naivety of pastels. A callow touch of rose-tint.

You always knew living alone had its risks. In an apartment, no less, flimsy and unsheltered by security shutters and the bulwarks of a standalone. A danger, like a yellow warning sign. It’s the same precarious footing that warrants your mother’s calls back to your hometown every spring. 

(The same reason she called you last year. And you— stupid, stupid— didn’t go.)

You don’t know how to excuse yourself this year. Lack of self-preservation? Stupid, callow hope? You don’t know what you’re hoping for. 

(What you’re feeding.)

Maybe it’s the way you’ve been dusting the shattered shards on the shelf. 

Anybody else in your position would be halfway across the continent, and you’re shutting down your flower shop and turning in for the night. Pretending (that you’re pretending) you’re inviolable, like that headspace didn’t get crushed under his thumb last year. The clock ticks on the wall. 

The man who comes up to the register has a bouquet in his hand. A sprig of carmine carnations that crinkles when he lays it flat onto the countertop. He’s tall. Broad. Pretty— the first thing you think of, upon impression, mapping out the ridges of his face, the even slope of his nose, the burnt umber curl that spills over his forehead. Wordless. He stares at you. 

Just stares. Not quite boring into you, but lingering, inkpools fixed. Indescribably. Unremitting.

There’s a familiarity in his gaze. Something that weaves across you in unspooling, crepuscular cobwebs, something that prickles. And eye-contact feels like a stalemate. A competition; who will give first? Your mettle splinters in hairline fractures. 

“Is this,” your smile is flimsy. Brittle. Eyes dipping to the flowers he’s laid out. “…all for you today?” 

He smells expensive. Like amber musk, but something sticks to his scent like an afterthought. A note, in undertow. 

Smoke.

Like he washed his hands, brushed his teeth, but couldn’t kick the odor off his clothes, lingering in the stitches.  

Emotions dredge up from the pit of your psyche like his presence is the metal head of a shovel. Cold leather. A hot touch. Things you’ve left numb for too long, oozing, electric, alive. Your fingers flex on the stems, and the plastic clicks under your hand when you stare down at it. You can’t look. 

“Mm.”

You feel flayed. Raw. Like you’re going to come apart into tatters in the middle of the store. In front of a customer. You cast your gaze up. He isn’t looking at you anymore. Hands buried in his pockets, eyes listing across the melange of flower assortments you’ve got on display behind the counter. And you feel—

Embarrassed. Silly. Your cheeks heat, your heart thundering at your throat. It’s silly. 

“Oh,” you breathe as you roll the bouquet between your hands. Key in the numerical series to the system, “I like these. They’re very pretty. …Looks like today, it’s going to be… twenty-six.”

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Nothing at all, doesn’t make any motion towards procuring a payment method, and that nagging sense of worry spirals between your brows when you cast your inkpools up to find him staring again. Under your hands. There’s a judder to them. You watch his hand reach into the front-pocket of his jeans, and cull a cashfold. He licks his fingers before he separates the cash, and hands it to you. 

Your fingers brush. You swallow. 

You hand his change over with your fingers twitching. 

“Happy purge,” he tells you. Suddenly.

Your smile wobbles. Creases. Curls back up into a proxy of a cheery mien you have the resolve to upkeep. “Happy purge.”

His fingertips drum across the counter. “And may our souls be cleansed.”

It sounds droll. Wry. Like he’s making a mockery of every piece of propaganda the news channel paints across your screen, a week-long affair in snippets before commencement. You swallow. 

“Up for anything tonight?”

The question shouldn’t nick between your ribs. Scrape into the soft place— you’ll get loads of customers that ask. That participate, affluent folk. Young people, with grease smeared across their smiles when they tell you that they’re excited to exercise their God-given right. 

You shake your head. “No— no. I don’t… partake.”

The silence that congeals between you is suffocating. Heavy. You feel your poise withering. Shrinking back into you, under the weight of his gaze. It’s an eerie stagnancy, and you feel like you’re sinking to the depths. 

“You’re,” you tell him, trying to smile, but it doesn’t meet your eyes this time, “…all set.”

His eyes roam. Openly. Lash across you in bounds, slow, detail-oriented. It’s odd. Makes you feel strange. Finally, they fix on your face. No doubt, creased with discomfort. 

“Stay safe tonight,” he tells you, before he turns, bouquet in hand. 

“Right. You— stay safe,” you rock forward on your heels. The bell over the door jingles. 

You’re broken, but you’re not stupid. You twist the locks when you get home. Double-check every window. Turn off every light that you aren’t using. 

The announcement comes across the TV when you’re in the shower, and by the time you come out, the emergency broadcast has morphed off into a rerun of Friends. You don’t know what to do with yourself. Tuck your knees to your chest and stare at the clock? Roll into the fetal position and pray? 

May God be with you. 

The gunfire outside begins during the credits. You can’t stomach the harrowing scream that seeps across from the street below, so you plug your ears with your headphones, and you blast music until you feel like your ears are bleeding. Hole up in your bedroom.

You can’t discern the feeling that clots in your chest when you come out to your living room, eventually, to find him on your couch. In eerie stillness. Terror? Relief? 

He notices you. Swells when he breathes, all heft, just like you remember. The burgeon of fear that prickles at your nape, making your hair stand on end, you find, clots beside something you’re unable to dissect. For a long second, the both of you just breathe. Observe. 

He breaks the silence. 

“…Come tell Daddy hello.”

Daddy. Daddy— the titular moniker makes you bristle, startling you out of your stupor like whiplash. What are you doing? What are you doing?

You stall by the bathroom door. This game of cat and mouse is precarious. You’ll lose— that fact is brassbound. Undeniable. You don’t know what you were expecting. Why you stayed. You’ve got the short end of the stick, always. And still, you contemplate, lingering with your hand on the doorknob. The stagnancy in biding your time feels like staring at a snake coiling beside your feet. Waiting for it to lash forward. 

You take a slow step forward. Another. He doesn’t make any moves towards you, doesn’t give any indication that he’s keen to sit up. Content with the view of your dread snowballing. Mushrooming. Hands resting across his lap, his tree-trunk thighs split apart. 

Waiting. Watching. 

You don’t expect it when he sits up, grunting, to wrap his hand across your forearm. Lug you forward, into the alcove between his thighs. The brush of leather across your bare skin makes chills erupt across your skin. Manhandling you, like puddy between his hands. You’re supposed to fight, you’re supposed to kick, you’re supposed to—

Scream. You exhale when he twists you and forces you to sit on his knee. You’re stupid. What you’re chasing isn’t healthy.

You think he’s going to ask why you moved. Silly girl. Didn’t think I’d find you?

He doesn’t. 

“Been a good girl?” he drawls, instead, chest swelling in your periphery. It feels mocking, despite the casualness of his tone— unsanded around the edges. The irony of the position has your teeth set, like you’re a child on Santa’s lap, and not a grown woman on his. A petrifying— 

Half-stranger. Almost.

The revelation is uncanny to the way you’re searing under your skin. And there’s a thin line, you think, between coercion, and the way your heart batters a little faster, the way you clench your fingers together to avoid squeezing your thighs.

You don’t say anything. It’s rhetoric, because he isn't finished. He cups your knee under his palm, the dark leather, and says, “Kept your pussy to yourself, mm?”

Not your hands. Not your hands. 

Your pussy. 

The undiluted vulgarity trickles down your nape, makes you flinch, and you fist your hands a little harder, until the crescents dig into your palms. It’s still just as nonchalant, even-toned. But it’s crude, and it makes your face hot. 

Like he owns that. Like you belong to him, in some way.

(And maybe, in some way, some part of you does. That piece of your rib he still has tucked into his pocket from last spring.)

Your heart is in your throat. You turn your cheek. Away. Just enough, but the hand that was on your knee presses against the side of your face. Two fingers, gloved, that pry your attention back onto him. It’s almost effortless. Feels like he’s using hardly any strength at all, has your chin snapping back, and the weight of two fingers, against that groove under your cheekbone, has an ache radiating up into your temple. He’s feeling the ridges of your teeth through your soft flesh. Wrenching his fingertips into the hollow rift between the two rows, and your breath ebs your lungs in soft pants, free falling the gap between your lips. The slick, gummy inside of your cheek twinges under the pressure.

You stare back, and—

You don’t know what you find. What you’re looking for. There’s a hunger in the plastic cut outs, glimmering in the tenebrose, like a predator shimmering in the distance of the thicket. One that’s spent all winter hibernating.

He digs his fingers in a little harder. Makes your head tilt with an ease that makes your head spin. The sound that leaks out of you is embarrassing. So unlike you. So small, and vulnerable, and raw. 

It reminds you of feeling like you were being carved open, like you were having those pieces pulled out of you. Those fragments that you’ve buried deep behind your ribs, all yours. Delicate chattels between his fingers like a thread that he’ll tug to unspool you to the core.

His thumb grazes the corner of your mouth. Your lower lip. Rests there, all leather. It smells like charred tobacco. Tar. 

“Yes,” you breathe. Appease. The word comes out tangled with a frantic note, an exhale, and sounds garbled off your liquified, molasses-heavy tongue. 

Maintaining eye contact is difficult. Intense. Feels like wading a knee-deep morass with how treacly it makes your head feel, but it’s impossible to look away. With the angle he has your head, you feel snared into an unspoken standoff. Feels like you’re caught in a springe he’s laid out. You, with your rabbiting heart, and your ankle caught in a noose. And him—

Those deep-seated inkpools glimmer from the underbrush. 

“Is that right?”

It’s like a car crash, you think, stuck in limbo. A beatific maelstrom of metal scraping on metal. The beautiful, horrifying view, in the split-second of collision. Time in stasis. Slow motion.

You can’t look away.

He stops pressing to rap the pads against your cheekbone, instead, and the thump that echoes in your skull almost sounds hollow. Loud in your ears. The pang lingers in your jaw, like a dull ache, across your upper teeth, the inside of your cheek. 

There’s a split second there, where that bilious feeling slinks into your stomach and coils up, stretching between your lungs. That sick you find, buried under the galvanized cobwebs spooling your sense of self-preservation, like a haze of little, electric gossamers across your synapses. The incipience of a wave of nausea, softly lapping, at the thought that all of this, everything, is premeditated, and the gnarled root of it all sinks so much deeper than you’d ever expect. 

That he’ll know— knows— that you brought another man home last fall. 

It was stupid. A one off, scraped off a bar stool on a Saturday night after one too many whiskey sours, and the sex wasn’t even any good. You don’t remember it. 

But your head feels syrupy. You don’t know what’s worse: this burgeoning fear that you’ve disappointed him with— what? Free will? Autonomy? 

Or the slick ooze of the bone-juddering revelation that settles; he’s probably been watching you. Keeping tabs. 

(How else did he know where you moved? How to pin you under the pad of his thumb with such startling ease? You’re a thumbtack on a paper map, and a petrified part of you wonders if he’s got it— a chart of your whereabouts, your existence snared into a creased sheet— dangling next to the panties from last spring.)

If he knows about your liaison, he doesn’t indicate it. Opting to, instead, graze the shape of your lips with his thumb again, and push in to scrape the flats of your teeth with the leather. It’s gross. Feels strange— leather against the smooth inside of your lips, and when you breathe around it, you feel like you’re spinning out, headfirst, hurtling toward the ground. Something you don’t want to acknowledge rolls over, white-hot, in the pit of your tummy. 

“That’s good,” he settles on, and palms your breast so abruptly that it makes your lungs squeeze. Your throat clicks when you swallow. 

It feels so mechanical. Calculating. Collected. Nonchalantly purposeful— nothing gradual, no build up— like he’s here to reap and take, intent on what he’s looking for. But it’s all a startling, unnatural paradox, considering you were left so overly-satiated last spring, that you almost felt like a mindless shell of yourself. Entirely sapped. The enigma left your head clogged up and heavy for days. Weeks. Months. Your lashes flutter, dusting unfitting bliss across your cheeks like the speckling heat. Like pleasure is bulky, and rounded, and doesn’t fit into the jagged slot your anticipation has chiseled. 

He squeezes the doughy flesh in his hand, and scuffs your pebbling nipple with a side-swipe of his thumb. Then, the other. Long, thick fingers spanning, and coasting across your diaphragm, climbing your waist, the chiseled, swelling rungs of your ribcage, cupping under one of your tits again. He only stops at the soft sound that crawls out of your windpipe. Eyes flickering at the reedy, wanton whine that gushes through the seal of your teeth. The self-awareness makes you wither into yourself. Shrinking. Ecstasy feels like an agrestal parasite, mushrooming between your nerves. Budding in that slope under your navel.

(Wrong, wrong, wrong— a broken mechanism, misfiring. Grinding. Your eroded mettle squealing under the pressure.)

You can hear him breathing. He sounds like an animal. A panting beast. Feral. Untamed, wild, huffs stifled by ribbed cotton and matte plastic. He notches a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and pinches it. Tugs. A gust of your desperate breath escapes through that barren dearth between your teeth when he palms you by the front of your neck and pushes you against the back of the couch. 

It’s sloppy. Clumsy, an awkward angle from where you were on his lap— your limbs flail before you topple, and it requires more core strength on your part than you anticipate to sink back, but it isn’t violent. Aggressive. The coarse denim on his thigh abrades your naked skin when he twists to hover over you. Cushion denting under the weight of his knee. Your neck cranes back as he pins you to the back of the couch by the column of your throat. Head tipped back, nearly dangling over, neck straining. He looms over you.

Just—

Staring. Staring. You stare back and wonder if he feels your pulse hammering with the layer of the leather barricade between skin kissing skin. Like this, the mask is limned in shadows from the slant, and the crepuscular orifices under the plastic are even harder to make out. Harder to gauge. You want to gauge. You want to see—

You won’t have the upper hand. You know that, but prying for the threadbare margin of a hint, a motive, a reaction, feels like digging your fingers in for a last-ditch lifeline. 

His eyes are half-mast. Dark lashes spanned over the glint in pitch, mounted in white. You can’t see what he’s thinking. Can’t—

He reels forward, back hunched, leather jacket crinkling, and you feel the plastic mask tucked to your cheekbone. Your temple. Your hair. He reeks like santalum. Petrichor— the first rain spilling onto the pavement, scrubbing the bloodshed off into the grates— and the overwhelming scent of leather that clots in your nose. His mask scrapes your ear. He sniffs.

And you think, a little hysterically, that he’s smelling you. The recognition prickles in your skull, and climbs up your nape in a shiver. And it feels so— 

Animalistic. Primal. Indelicate. Like any sense of decorum flaking off and shedding like desquamate feathers, and it makes you feel so small. A frisson rides the ledges of your spine. Something shudders across his shoulders. Rattles them— you clock it in your periphery, stunned into subservience with your fingers twisting into the couch cushion. 

He sighs. Hums. Like he’s vibrating over you, buzzing, and the thought has that skein across your lungs tightening. The sound that seeps out of him is brassy. Low. Hungry. And the likeness that scrapes at your hindbrain, through the plume of reluctance and crushing desire, nearly makes you feel delirious— it almost sounds like a dog whining. Like he’s been holding himself back, and your scent is too much, chips an integral shard out of his flinty resolve. 

You don’t know why, but it makes you squirm. Makes your chest roll under him, hips shifting. Your eyes oscillate. Stutter from the ceiling fan to the corner of the room, because he’s smelling you and sounds like he’s falling apart. 

Your throat jumps under his hand. He drums his fingertip under your jaw, and it feels like the tick of a clock. He reels back. Slowly. Tipped over you, huffing with his head cocked. Almost panting. This harrowing monster, quivering in his skin, in all his heft, like he wants to eat you alive. Swallow you whole. His eyes slip. The feather-dust of his lashes kisses the pink-rimmed seam of his lower lashline, and he takes a deep breath, intumescent across the breadth of his shoulders. 

You swallow again, your throat still under his hand. The heel of his palm glued to your trachea. Your jaw arched back, under the press of his fingers. His eyes list. Stall across the apex of your denuded thighs, and the brief blip of pressure across your jaw, your throat, the fleeting restriction on your airway when he levels his weight and resituates, has your irises lolling and tainted gossamers stretching in sticky netting behind your skull. His freehand skates your abdomen. Prods your diaphragm, leather fingers grazing your belly button, the hem of your sleep shirt. Rucking it up. 

The boundary between arm-twisting and downright craving is negligible. It’s a foundation, under you— a poor excuse of a half-wall— crackled in fissures. When your hips hitch at the way he circles your navel, in a way, it feels like crumbled free will. Your own autonomy worn down and corroded by the chemistry spuming your veins (you tell yourself it’s artificial. A lethal injection of dopamine and melanocortin), because it feels like the hunger is pried out of you. Pulled out, tangled on his crooking fingertips. 

(And what do you have to say for yourself, when you need him like you need to eat.)

Your hips cant when he strokes his fingers over your waistband, across the sensitive, soft stretch of skin over your mons. You can still hear him breathing over the bloodrush, like spindrift, across the little, vibrating bones, deep in your ear. He sniffs, gaze pinned to the shape of your quivering thighs (juddering knees, swelling tummy)—

He knocks your legs apart with his thigh, until the plush of them spills around the shape of him. All broad, all muscle, all denim against your smooth skin, and he wrenches one of your thighs up with his fingers under your knee. Presses you back by the shin, with your sole planted on the couch cushion, and—

Like this, he has the perfect view. The perfect shape of your cunt, through your panties. They’re white this year. So unassuming, just a plain bikini-cut in ivory, but you wonder if he’s weighing the way they’ll look beside the other pair, like a sordid tchotchke. 

His eyes linger on it. You can’t see his inkpools, but they feel molten. Heady. Predatorial, and the shockwave riding the slanting arches of your ribcage makes it harder to take in a full breath. Lagoons spilling heat. They surge the soft shapes of your body like lavascapes, melting across your skin. 

You’re wet. You know that— feel the damp heat like you feel the want droning across your bones, lacing your muscles. And the sloppy, saturated shape of your dribbling pussy, behind the thin veil of a gusset, is no exception. You curl your toes. Dig them into the couch cushion. The carpet. Dangling onto the fragility of your self-possession (unraveling), and then he probes, with the tip of his index, right where your clit sits. A meager tap.

Your arousal is a tangible wad in your gut, and he plays with it between his fingers.

Desperation climbs to the base of your throat at an alarming rate. Echoes in your jugular as a thrum when his eyes sway between your face and the shape of your cunt. The shape of it under the entirety of his palm, swallowing you whole, between your legs, when he pastes his hand there. And he can’t feel the way it’s soaking, can’t feel how slick you are, but you wonder if the sheer heat leaches through the layers. 

If he can feel how hot and wanting you are, through the glove. 

He purrs like he can. Trails two fingers along the splitting fjord, your puffy lips. His thumb crooks into one end of your gusset just to let it snap back and watch the shiver roll up through your shoulders, huffing around a thick, rumbly noise that sounds amused. Drenched in humiliating mirth. A crater forms around his knee cap when he presses it onto the cushion. Between your split legs, thigh pressed flush to your cunt. Tight. 

“Gonna be a good girl,” he murmurs, face dangling over yours, and the words sound masticated. Starved. “—and let me eat that slutty cunt?”

There’s a fine line, you remind yourself, between being forced, and whatever the— you don’t want to admit it, won’t admit it, stuff it down— rapacious froth inside of you means.

He splits your lips with his fingers. Pries them apart like a butterfly to pin up and frame.  

Mental snapshots to encase on a shelf, mounted beside your underwear and a pushpin map with your face smattered in uneven, sawtooth cut-outs. All raw, and sloppy, and wet. Gushing down to the cleft of your ass— he can see everything, and his eyes rove like he’s mapping every bit of you to memory, your underwear balled and tucked into the pocket of his coat. Drinking in every delicate detail, your pebbled clit twitching under his thumb scuffing, and it’s so—

Humiliating. 

Embarrassing— shame clots in that interstice between your battering heart and your ribs, that soft spot it’s been dribbling into since he perched you on his lap like a little girl begging for a present. You screw your eyes, cup the heels of your palms over them. You can’t look— can’t—

He moans again. Gives you a heady hum, nearly as slick with want as you are between your thighs. Only, his is oil to your honey. Motor fluid to your syrup— a slippery smear of grease to sap. Rotten. Thick and coal-dark, like tar. Something gritty that catches like sand between his teeth when you try to close your knees. It’s a faulty maneuver, with your feet pried apart on his elbows, and you can only latch your knees, and—

It’s the wrong thing to do. 

A slipshod attempt to preserve your dignity, but what’s the use, when it’s porous enough for him to spew the virulent pollutant of longing for him? Noxious. Infectious. Enough to mill your pride from the inside into a powdered dust. Instead, he pries the folds of your cunt apart with one hand, on two fingers— an index and a thumb— and slaps the back of your thigh with the other. 

Your thighs quake. Plush flesh shaking upon impact, the searing heat wave that robs you of your ephemeral resistance— rolling the thought that this is gross, not what you want— and scorches it through to the core, until all that’s left for you to face is the overwhelming desire.

“Eyes on me,” he grunts. Dour. Unrelenting, until you peer through the spaces in your fingers like you’re watching a nightmare unfold, and let him wrest your knees back apart. “Yeah,” he tells you, hardly over the feather-light weight of a whisper, despite the way it feels like it’s crushing your skull from the inside when it swims your ears. “Just like that. On me, pretty girl.”

You can’t look away, so you chew on your fingers instead. Tuck them between your teeth, toes curling into the cushions. Your sleep shirt is in a discarded puddle of fabric on the floor, beside him. There’s something so uncomfortably potent in nakedness when he hasn’t even discarded his gloves. 

He won’t.

But an element of intrigue gets dredged up into the mist of your yearning when he sticks the pad of his thumb under the plastic chin of the mask to pry it to the bridge of his nose. Speckling the nebula, that clouds you, like stardust. Worse, yet, when he pries the balaclava to the same, angular slope, to show his bare chin, his full, pink mouth, his cupid’s bow. 

His nice, clean white teeth. 

His tongue, slinking out to smear across his lips. Like this, the cut outs aren’t over his eyes, and the pools of hunger are shrouded behind the plasticated layer. He feels with his fingers. Spreads your pussy apart, grazes his thumb pad across your throbbing clit, slick with your own sticky wetness, and you watch him purse his lips before a tacky, wet glob lands across your hood. Drool, dripping down, coagulating at your drenched hole. 

You shudder. Can’t look away— it’s—

Gross. It’s wet, and it’s rancid, and the feeling of it being smeared across your cunt, the feeling of a finger prodding at your rim, uselessly clenching at the air, makes your face crease. Brows pinching. 

(So why, then, do you feel so dizzy from the spiraling wave of your own lust fizzing across your veins?) 

You mewl. He tucks his fingers into his mouth. The same ones that have been smudging the amalgam of your slick and his own saliva, still tucked in that leather glove, and the sound he makes at the taste— pure hedonism, dripping around the plug of his own fingers— has your thighs hinging apart wider. Straining. 

It sounds so— shattered. So desperate. Frenzied. A sound like that, out of him, feels so unco that it nearly wrenches your head back. He groans around his fingers, sloppy, and grunts when he takes them out to feel for your hole, tease a breach with the middle digit, not quite bursting the threshold— 

And God, when he eats, it’s like he’s a man starved. Famished. All animal between your thighs, suckling on your clit, dragging his tongue across your hole, like it’s pure sustenance and he hasn’t eaten in weeks. Slurping around you, bullying your clit between his teeth like he wants to chew you up to spit you out. Rinse and repeat. 

He drags his tongue across you, so obscenely, seam to hood, like he wants you to see. Wants you to watch— wants you to know that you’ve got this horrifying brute on his knees between your legs, kissing on your cunt. Wants that ugly revelation to stick to the inside of your skull like knotgrass spilling across your bones— a twisted thought you’ll never be able to tame out of fruition. You let this happen; let him take. 

(And worse yet, you liked it.)

“Sloppy, little pussy,” he grunts, the words muzzled against your sopping cunt, spilling against his mouth, dripping. Sticking in strings to his lower lip, the corner of his mouth— and he crooks his finger. Notches it against your rim. 

It feels wrong. Strange. Leather against your cunt, instead of skin, when he prods and—

Pops the tip in. Stretches your gummy walls to the first, gloved knuckle. The soft, wet heat of you pulsing around him like a heartbeat is lost on the leather, the barrier between your skin, but he’ll make up for it. He’ll make up for it, he’ll—

“God,” you mewl when he crooks the finger and stuffs it to the hilt, stroking the wet squeeze of your walls enveloping it. 

The brutal ugliness in the concept of this man prying you open, stretching you taut when he wedges his ring finger in beside the first, with a glove on, douses you in shame. Has a white-hot heat spewing, geyser-like, at your underbelly. 

The sounds, though, the wet-squelch of those leather-coated fingers fucking into you, spilling slick and shoving it back in, makes your eyes screw. Has a heat nipping at the apples of your cheeks the way it nips at your cunt when he grinds harsh circles around your clit. It’s too much. Nearly too much when he nicks the razor-sharp mantel of your nerve-endings and hones there upon the horrid, wheezing sound you make, the way your leg flexes out beside his head in jarred reflex. Like he’s punishing it. You. For congealing up in his teeth like an insatiable sweet-tooth he’ll never scrape off his enamel. 

You cry out. Knock the heel of your palm into his forehead. Into the edge of that eerie mask, the kiss me, unsmudged, but he’s unperturbed. Unruffled. Unyielding, the same way the brutal crash of pleasure spooling tight behind your navel, your burning, flexed core. 

He catches your wrists in his hand. Like two limbs of a lamb, ensnared. The most perfect, decadent feast to carry out on a charcuterie board, and the sound he makes against your cunt nearly sounds inhuman. Like a rabid, territorial animal at its mealtime, mouthing off at a hand that tries to intrude. Encroach. Take. The vibrations make your head spin. Dizzy— you’re so dizzy, and you don’t recognize that you’ve been holding your breath until the shuddery cry that tears its way out of your mouth is silent. A hiss of a breath that melts into a long, wet gasp. 

He tucks your hands to your tummy, and takes. And takes, and takes. It belongs to him, right? The garbled slur that slips through the negligible gaps between your teeth sounds fucked stupid, and he hasn’t even split you apart on his cock. 

Your fingers twitch, pressed to your mons. Try to reach— to pry— hips canting back, forward, away, into. Against his slippery chin, and his tongue, and his unrelenting mouth. 

And oh, how you unravel, under his jaw, like you belong there. Under his hands, and the tip of his nose tucked to your mons, and the flats of his teeth, grazing—

He doubles down when he feels the pop— the release— your pretty, little cunt fluttering around his fingers, sucking them back in on every twist out, like a vice.

It starts on a long, wilting mewl. A desperate note that laces across your vocal cords and seeps out, not by your own volition, and ends on a gasp. The cord snaps. Too taut. Too much. The ripples of the aftershocks, lapping at your core, red-hot, sloppy, and spent, and overly sensitive, crescendo into a horrible ache when he suckles over your clit. Draws a searing stripe across your nerve endings with the tip, stifling groans into your puffy sex. 

You squeak. Tremble, toes tensing. Flexing. Hips arching back, trying to scoot away. Off. 

“I— came,” you bluster, but it sounds hoarse. Distant, in the thundering thrum of your vertiginous headrush. “I—“ you try again, hips canting, and he swipes out with his tongue, catches something raw and smarting on the fleshy edge. 

You jolt. Spine twisting, distorting pleas between your teeth you’re swishing them across your gums. You wriggle your foot, wheedling it under the space where his mouth is flush with your cunt. “I— please—“

He wrenches your foot back into place so aggressively that all you can do is make a pitiful, helpless squeak. Lashes fluttering, writhing, gnawing into your lower lip when he rolls his tongue across your pulsing clit. The sound that rumbles across your core rattles you down to the marrow. It feels like he wants to chew you to the bone. 

And when he pops off, finally— finally— panting like he’s had his fill, sucking at one of your lips until it’s tender and kiss-bruised— satiated this quenchless thirst that riles in the apertures of his skeleton, humming in his musculature— you breathe. Just breathe. Catch it— snag it. A soft repose in recompense for the throb in your guts, between your legs. Crystalline beads hover, sprouted from the corners of your eyes, streaking across your lash line. Your gaze is lachrymal. Pools of an unspooled bliss, mottled overwhelming, shimmery and red-rimmed. 

And the breath you’ve been catching—

Is forced out from between your lips when his hand lurches. Pins you, supine, to the couch, fingers spanning your nape. Heel of his palm at your jugular. The abruptness of the motion has your heart lurching to your throat. It nearly kisses the shape of his hand.

(But you suppose, if that cracked bit of your rib belongs to him, then maybe a sliver of your lung does, too.)

Somewhere between the dazed stupor of you, panting like you’ve run a marathon, and laying you out on the couch, he’s fixed the mask back on. The balaclava. And the crass, dirty thought that his chin is still slick under the cotton, making it sodden, and hot, and tacky to his skin, seeps across you and cakes like cement. 

He stares down at you through the cut-outs. Your heart is a hummingbird behind the rungs, trying to break free, and you feel it in your pulse, where his thumb strokes. You wonder if he can feel it. You’re still in that balmy, soggy headspace with your muscles pliable, your head heavy. A pastiche of heaven in a come-down, roping its way across your bones and smogging your hypervigilance. 

You’re less unnerved to be stared down at like that— like you’re a meal for him to chew apart between his teeth, like he’s contemplating every possible scenario and picking through to find the prettiest position to put you in, how to grind out the prettiest sounds— with your head feeling like it’s liquified.

Your lashes flutter. You trace the seams on the ceiling, where it’s been repaired for water damage. Maybe someone bled out on the floor above, you think. 

But the warmth of the evanescent fog doesn’t curb the note of nervousness that paints its way into your respiration— like bleeding watercolor— when you hear his hands on his belt buckle. See the way he hovers over you, so large, and indomitable, eyes potent and intoxicant. Hungry. 

(He’s sated his appetite enough to hold him over, bar him from tearing you apart, but he’s still hungry.)

“Think it’s about time you start to give back, sweetheart,” he tells you. Dripping ichor-thick with want. Like blood melded with syrup. 

Even with apprehension dancing across your mind, you want him to fuck you. You want him to stretch you fucking dumb around his cock, just the way you remember he did—

But his next words make that reluctance buzz a little louder in your hindbrain. Alarms. The blood-curdling croon of the siren.

“What do you think, mm?” he mulls aloud, tracing the pad of his finger across one of your pebbled nipples, then the smooth, unmarred skin of your tummy, pausing over your belly button. “Should Daddy make you a mommy this time? Make it stick?”

Your gasp sticks to your throat. Tangles between your tonsils. Your nostrils flare when you try to take a deep breath as indemnification, and you blink up at him, you find nothing but firm resolve in those voids. Abysmal, and unrelenting. 

“I— can’t… have a baby,” you croak, a touch incredulous, but you sound alien in your own ears. Like you’re drowning. 

He cocks his head, tipped down at you, with that ugly, ivory mask. “Sure you can. That’s what you’re built for, isn’t it?”

And the degradation, being stripped down to the metal cogs, the tender technicalities of your biology, makes your cheeks blister. It’s demeaning. You hate it. Hate him, you hate him— something molten rolls in your underbelly. 

(Something hot lingers between your thighs.)

You feel your legs dipping when under the weight of his crowding closer, between your split thighs. Bent at the knee, feet planted. The couch creaks. And when the coarse brush of denim kisses your naked skin, you feel the heat from it like a furnace. 

“No,” you tell him, eyes carved into narrowed slits, and the demand in your own voice makes your bones tremble when you hear. You suck in a breath. 

He blinks. Something flickers, congeals, in his eyes, almost like you’ve stunned him with your gall. Your unrestrained defiance. And there’s something uncomfortably stifling in his gaze, searing down at you, when he tips his head. Almost like he’s contemplating your response. Rolling it between his fingers. His thumb draws a feather-light line over your mons, across the stretch of skin where your womb is buried under the soft layers of muscle and fatty tissue. 

“How do you think,” he kisses his teeth behind the layers— a muffled sound, but one you pick up on with your heartbeat in your ears, “it works out if I take you now, and they find you later? Keep you all to myself. Cancels out, doesn’t it?”

The indirect threat, framed as a hypothetical happenstance, makes something curdle in your blood like sour milk. The bile rolls in the pit of your tummy, and you feel your throat squeeze. Your exhale is a weak hiss. A wheeze, because you feel like the breath has been knocked out of you, alongside the foolish temerity.

The finger that’d traced a line across morphs into a hand, and he presses the breadth of it to your underbelly. Big. All leather, broad, your belly button peeking from the wedge between his digits. 

He sighs, and takes the hand away. Works it back over his belt buckle, until the tails are free-standing, bifurcated, and his fingers work over his zipper. It’s a huff that swells his shoulders, and you’re reminded just how big he is, over you. How massive. How staunch to his ideas— you wouldn’t stand a chance. 

“But maybe,” his head bows to watch where he’s working, and his tone is thoughtful. Menacing. Saturated with condescension, the same way you’re drenched with the remnants of your gushing slick, between your thighs. He meets your eye. “They wouldn’t look at all. Awful lotta people go missin’ altogether, tonight.”

You blink. Squirm. Thoughts of you, swollen and pregnant with his baby— chain-linked to his wrist, to a dreary, foreign bedroom like a dog to a doghouse in a backyard— makes you vitriolic. Angry. 

Horrified. 

(So why, then, does it make your head fuzzy? Kindles crackle at your underbelly, where he pressed his enormous palm.)

“No— no. I’ll be. You can—“ you shake your head. Try again. Placate. This is a gun, broken china on a back shelf. You can’t dissect it for what it means. Your ribcage shakes. “You can do— anything. Please.”

You imagine he’s sneering at you from behind the mask. Under the balaclava, lips crooked, when he tucks a thumb into his waistband and frees his cock. One hand squeezing at the root, stroking up. The motion has a slimy glob of precum blurting from the tip. It’s thick in his fist. Heavy. Mushroomed ridges vivid pink, long, fat. A little lopsided, skewed slightly to the left in his hold, arching towards you. 

He didn’t make you suck it last time, but you wonder if he will, tonight. Gag the bold subversion out with the subtle flex of his hips, your insolence— you, stupid, little thing, telling him no— with his cockhead spewing against the gummy wall at the back of your throat. 

The view makes you dizzy. Like you’re staring up to the summit of a mountainside with him looming over you. The peak that crawls over you, so tall, and makes you feel so insignificant. 

Those liquid gemstones have shed across your temples, but you don’t recognize it until his thumb swipes at the corner of your eye. A pillow-soft caress. It’s almost tender. Almost. Deliriously, you watch him smudge the same thumb, brandished in your tear, along his cockhead. The wet thumbprint coagulates with the slick there, weeping from his slit. 

“‘Course I can,” he tells you. 

There’s no gentleness in the way he manhandles you, then. Wrangling you, by the scruff of your neck, into a hover across his lap. Positioning you how he sees fit, with him seated back on the couch, and you dangling over his cock, angled up in the seal of his palm. Your knees split across either side of his lap. 

“But mum and dad,” he grunts, and when his cockhead prods against your seam, you gasp, flinching up. “should stick together. Don’t you think?” 

He drags it forward, smudging it against your spent core, and it catches on your clit, the overstimulated nerve endings there, enough to make you shiver. It wracks up your spine. 

There’s nothing romantic about the way he holds you. He doesn’t cradle you close with this sense of softhearted adoration— despite your vulnerability— only pulling you close by the nape when his slick cockhead slaps your clit, your mons, with a wet smack. You gnaw into your lower lip, muscles clenching. Seeking. He smears the tip back to your pulsating rim. 

“What’s’a’matter?” he coos, probably at the rucks between your brows, creasing across your forehead. Your eyes flicker up. “You don’t wanna be my sweet, little wife?”

(You do, you do— you—)

“Oh—“ 

The press of his tip wrenching you open, taut around him, knocks your head back. Makes your shoulders rigid, spine arching over him, and his chuckle to the gasp that clots in your trachea is dark. Rich. It fizzles into a husking growl, though, when he presses down on the tops of your thighs and sinks you over him. Against him. Stretching the wet, sopping heat around him that throbs like a heartbeat with every tight breath you take, every inch lower. Your knuckles scrabble. Notch into his leather jacket, crinkling, burrowing, balling. 

“There you go,” he hisses. Groans. You’re not looking, but you know he is. Feel the molten pools of his gaze fixed where he’s feeding his cock, unwavering. He nearly sounds awed— splintering apart— when he tells you, “Such a pretty pussy. Look at this slutty, little cunt. Swallowing me right up.”

It’s raw. Bare— skin on skin— as close as you can get, and the pang that smarts at your rim permeates all the way up to your head, until that too, feels plugged. Foggy. 

It’s too much. Too—

He flexes his hips up sharply when you stall, just enough to wedge in to the hilt, and it wrests a high sound of surprise out of you. Nearly pained. Liked a kicked animal. It snags on something deep with the motion, something you haven’t been able to reach with your own measly fingers, and you mewl. 

He gruffs a slur behind the mask, tethers it with a groan, a breath that sounds caught in his mouth, but you can’t make out what it is. Not over the thrum in your ears. The assault on your senses, the unstilted stretch that feels like it’s prying you apart. Splitting you down the middle. Your thighs tremble. A sting. A dull throb that spills in your underbelly, lapping at your sex in sweltering, warm waves. Your clit twitches. 

There is something so cataclysmic in the way he hollows you out. Carves himself deep, scoring you in a way that’ll leave you begging for a piece of him, after, when you’re empty. A piece of his rib in return. It’s wrong— you shouldn’t want this man, crave him like you crave sanctum and stability. Your frenzied desperation, panting over him, seated to the throbbing root, feels chock-full of a festering longing you’ve been burrowing down since last spring. Spilling over. It sprouts— and spring, you think, bitterly, is all about revival. Rebirth. Flowering— the yearning you’ve been hiding behind your teeth germinates across your shuddering shoulders. 

He makes you ride him. Grunting, spitting how he wants you to bounce on his cock like the good girl you are. Soft, sloppy, half-hearted grinds you can manage over him, until he takes over, hitched on a huff that sounds nearly exasperated, and ruts up into you with the leverage of his feet on the carpet. 

He fucks you like he’s sedulous to make good on his words. Hard, fast, bludgeoning your rationale until it feels like you need the tang of cigarettes and santalum in every wheezing breath you take, writhing over the shape of him. His thumbs on your nipples. His fingers under the weight of your bouncing tits. 

Every pummel up into you feels like it kisses the seal of your womb. Feels like it’s battering a little closer to fruitions, to threats, and omens, and promises. 

And you like it. Love it. Can’t get away, can’t get enough, pawing at his chest, and then his collarbones, and then his chin, fingers knocking the border of the plastic mask. Kiss me— you think it’s cruel. So cruel, that you can’t kiss him. Can’t make out the shape of his bared teeth, the glint of them with his lips snarling. You want to lick across them. Bite. Taste blood for doing this to you. For making you feel this way. You want to tear him apart. Catch his tongue against your incisors. 

The thought is a distant chimera. A daydream you can’t chase, snared in a limbo— just take, take, take. But over the crests of your cheekbones, your dewy gaze watches him. Watches him, the way he’s watched you. Unrelenting. It’s hazy at the borders. Your sight flecked with wetness, shuddering, like a camera in hands that can’t stay still, but you’re unremitting. 

“Spit on me,” he growls. It’s an abrupt request— command, brimful of authority. Perverse. Then again, when you don’t oblige, it spills as a rasping grunt, “Spit on me.”

It wheedles into your threadbare sense of logic, registers. Your brows weave. Pinch, face creasing when he delivers a sharp plunge up, into you, tip to root. It’s gross. Disgusting. Lecherous. You think about your saliva blooming across his face, the way his heavy balls will throb. 

You want to spit on him. You want to bite him, claw at him, hit him— you pucker your lips. 

It lands as a tacky glob stretching across the bridge of the nose on the mask. Seeping into the inner-corner of the eye cut-out. Glistening, slick. The sight is revolting. Nasty. Your lips curl down, your brows crinkle—

He groans. It’s loud. Suffocated on desire, hunger, want, akin to the noise he made sniffing at your hair like a monstrous hound. A fucking creep. 

One of his hands leaves your chest, his thumb wriggles under the plastic white mask. It gets discarded, tossed off onto the couch. 

The view of him in, only in a balaclava, is new. 

No less unnerving, but it’s different, and it makes your inhale tangle in your throat. Something clicks in your lungs. You hover over him, with his neck craned up at you, and his eyes are green. Two pools of epidote, eroding under the swell of his pupils. Hornblende inkblots. A long, winding wild forest. You could get lost in it. 

(And pitifully, part of you already has. Melting apart like gum under the sun, between his stupid, thick fingers.)

“Fuck. Again. Give me another,” he tells you. It rumbles, but it sounds like a plea. You feel it vibrating in his chest, under your fingers, first, then watch the divot of the balaclava wavering into his mouth when he takes in a breath between his teeth. The way the cotton is stretched, tucked, across the bridge of his nose. 

You spit where he breathes. Where he’s huffing with every brutal thrust of his hips. It speckles the ribbed cotton with shimmer, then melts into the black where his lips lay. You can’t see how it saturates the mask, but you watch the way it affects him. Watch him unravel— the way he breathes through his nose, long, deep, lashes fluttering and dusting along his cheeks as his irises loll, and you’re faced with the view of their pure ivory frames. The pink rim across his lower lash line. 

He hammers into you, mercilessly, with his leather fingertips against your clit. It’s too much. Too harsh. Pleasure and pain coagulate into a lagoon that sloshes your head, pulses between your thighs, under his incessant fingers. 

And when he comes apart, under you, you nearly tip over the precipice at the experience alone. He makes a ragged sound, a groan, hips stuttering, and spurts ribbon after ribbon of his cum against the spongy walls flexing around him. Into you. Against the seal of your womb— oh, God— you burrow your hot face into his shoulder, hips canting, and bite at the leather. 

“Fuck,” he slurs. Heaves— and you feel him melting under you. Thawing. 

Your spine ripples. The molten heat of his cum, sticking to you, plugged up by his throbbing cock, makes you feel feverish. Aching. Charred all over, from the inside. You take a deep breathe and taste his musk at the back of your throat. Lingering along your tongue.

It’s almost comforting. But the reminder of who this man is, and what he does (has done to you, is doing), crawls along the serenity of your haze like a poisonous treacle. You muster the strength in your core to rock up onto your knees, make to clamber off. 

“Okay,” you breathe, “Okay—“

The thought of repose is a bittersweet mirage, though, sparkling in the distance, when he nudges his hips back up from beneath you. 

It knocks into something that makes your lungs seize. You feel his tacky spend coated across the undersides of your ass cheeks, spilling against the inside of your thighs. Pooling in the thicket of dark, wiry hair that nests around the root of his cock, dusting his balls. He grunts, and when he jostles you over his lap again, you have to catch your balance with your hands against his pecs. 

His eyes are shimmery when you blink up at them. Expressive enough for you to clock the derisive mirth that curdles, in shavings, along the chrysoberyl flecks in the tumultuous seas, when he hums. “You didn’t think I was done, did you?”   

He’s not done. Not for a good, long while. But you suppose, that a year of self-denial, precipitous self-restraint, is bound to spill over, eventually.

(It’s just too bad for you that you ended up in the path of the hurricane, front and center.)

He fucks you again over the arm of the couch, with your ribs smushed to the ledge and your knees on the cushion. Arms behind your back, head dangling, tits aching with the press of his weight, every drag against the fabric. Fingers in your mouth, straining the corners wide, riding the grooves of your clamped, slick teeth. Pawing at your ass, squeezing the flesh, prying your cheeks apart humiliatingly wide.

He makes you cum again. And again, until you’re sobbing. Legs hitched over his shoulders, chin twisted, gnawing into your own shoulder to stifle your mewls. 

“Tell me your name,” you slur under him. With his chin over tucked your shoulder, his hum ripples across your eardrum like a humid gust. Rolls between your shoulder blades. 

“Tell me your name,” you beg, again, mottled with frenzied desperation that climbs your throat. You know those eyes. You know that face— the one that lies underneath. The misty contours of it scratch across your skull in the smog of a memory. You know—

Your lower lip wobbles when he cups over your sternum, takes your breast in a doughy handful, squeezing around it, drowning you in every wet squelch, every slap of his hips against your ass. 

“Daddy.”

When you wake up, he’s not there. Ephemeral. The night nearly feels temporal, if not for the slick between your thighs, dewy at your cunt, where your seam is still aching. Crusting along the insides of your thighs. 

You feel like every bone is out of place. Like everything needs to crackle and slot back. Worn, tired, when you kick your feet over the edge of the mattress and stand. It pangs between your legs, first. And then across your chest. 

Your underwear is gone. You know you won’t find it. 

When you check the clock it’s midday. Late, too late to even be considered sleeping in. You’ve wasted the twenty-second off into somnolence. There’s still a haze across your head. This balmy, misty thing that keeps you sluggish. Tired. You’d chalk it up to oversleeping, but. 

It’s short-lived. Hollowed by the vacancy. Something stirs in the back of your head— you should probably send a life signal out to your family. Let them know you’re not splattered across the sidewalk, somewhere, or worse yet—

You think about his words. Keeping you all to himself. The thought makes your shoulders shudder. 

On the way to the bathroom, you find carmine carnations in your kitchen. Mounted in a vase that belongs to you, plucked out of the cabinet over your fridge. Beautiful, beautiful carnations.

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Blood Washes Out

Sylus x gn!Reader

Had this idea and had to spend like a week writing it

Warnings: hurt/comfort, blood, injury, murder, swearing, vomiting, panic, pet names, sharing clothes, cuddling, crying, guilt, broken bones, guns

Word Count: 2,801

Main Masterlist

Love and Deepspace Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form

The phone rings by your ear, waiting to be answered. The copper stench of blood latches itself to your senses. You can taste it on your tongue, against your teeth, at the back of your throat.

The call is picked up and a whimper of relief rips from your mouth against your will. “Sylus!”

“What’s wrong?” he demands. His voice is stern. You’re glad for its strength right now. “Are you alright?”

What a shit question for him to ask.

“I need you to pick me up.” You turn your head to the side to spit out the blood pooling in your mouth. You wish it would just fucking stop.

“Send me your location, but don’t hang up.”

You feel blood stick to your ear as you pull the phone away. The touch screen is covered in red fingerprints. You’re shocked it still reads your input as you go to your messages and send him your location. You feel a burn at the back of your throat as you put the phone back to your ear, disgust wrapping its hands around your esophagus and churning your stomach.

He says your name. It’s so rare to hear him say it nowadays. That’s how you know he’s really worried. “I’ll be there in five minutes. I’m sending Mephisto ahead of me. Stay on the phone.”

You nod even though he can’t see, squeezing your eyes shut and curling into yourself as you wait on the curbside. If there’s anybody else around, anybody else who witnessed what happened…

Panic floods your veins like ice.

What if someone did see what happened? Or- Or maybe someone who didn’t and just stumbles around the corner to find-

You clamp a hand over your mouth. Bloody fingers aggravate your nose. More blood pours over them, warm and wet, sliding over a layer that’s already congealed. The metallic twang stings your eyes.

You can’t tell whose blood is whose anymore.

“I’m coming, sweetie. Just a few more minutes.”

You gasp out, “I’m gonna be sick.”

You don’t get a chance to hear his response before you drop your phone to the sidewalk. Your body moves on its own in a mad dash to turn and hurl into the gutter. It burns. It burns so fucking bad. And the taste-

Your body convulses and shakes, acting against you until your stomach is empty and you’re coughing around dry heaves.

A motor pulls up nearby. Heavy boots scuff the pavement as they rush to you. A gloved hand pulls your hair back, collecting it at the base of your head. An arm wraps around your chest, keeping you upright. A caw sounds from above you.

“I’ve got you. Don’t fight it. I’ve got you.”

Sylus surveys the scene around you. A body lays several feet away on its back. A dark red trail worms its way through cracks in the sidewalk and follows the uneven ground to a drain intended for catching floodwater. A gun hangs limply in its hand. Yours is discarded nearby.

He ducks his head to look at your face. Your eyes are clamped shut, lips trembling as you try to catch your breath. Tears glide down the curve of your cheeks.

Your nose is broken. Blood oozes from it slowly, dripping into your mouth and down your chin. It mixes with your bile and saliva as you weakly spit it out. More blood covers your clothes and your hands. It’s hard to distinguish what’s all yours, or if your broken nose is your only injury.

He grabs a handkerchief from his pocket. It cost more than your apartment and he couldn’t give a damn as he uses it to gently wipe at your mouth. “Just breathe, sweetheart. Can you stand?”

You take in a deep, uneven breath, and nod. He lets go of your hair and grabs your phone, sliding it into his pocket without worrying about the blood. He tucks the handkerchief right next to it. His arms are strong and grounding as he helps you to your feet, putting himself between you and the body as he leads you to his bike. If he’d known what state you were in, he would’ve brought the car. As it was, he was more concerned with getting to you as fast as possible.

He doesn’t force you to put the helmet on this time. As much as he’d normally insist, he didn’t want to trap you in a helmet if you were still nauseous. He slips it over his own head as he gets on first and gives you his arm for support as you climb on behind him. Your arms wrap around him tightly, bloody fingers clinging to his shirt under his leather jacket. Your body rests heavily against his back.

“My gun…” you say quietly, halfheartedly, like your concern for it is only a distant afterthought.

Sylus squeezes your hands reassuringly. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll get it back for you later.”

You nod against him. The engine purrs beneath you as he turns his bike around and peels off back home.

-

The ride is a blur of passing lights and buildings, a collage of Linkon City and the N109 Zone meshing together until you relent to just keep your eyes shut. You don’t open them again until he slows to a stop in front of his mansion.

The twins are rushing out the door to greet you. “Boss! Woah, what happened to you?” Luke winces as he catches sight of you. Kieran smacks him upside the head and rushes to help you off the bike.

Sylus gets off after, pulling his helmet off and resting it on the seat. He pulls out the phone and handkerchief, and passes it over to Luke. “Get this cleaned up.”

“Sure thing, Boss!”

He takes you gently away from Kieran, wrapping an arm behind your knees and back and lifting you into his arms. “Follow Mephisto. Deal with it.”

Kieran nods. “On it, Boss.” Mephisto’s metal wings slice through the air as Sylus leads you past the twins and inside.

“‘M sorry,” you mumble. You turn your head from his shoulder, trying not to get blood on his shirt. Your hands sit limply in your lap.

“Don’t apologize, sweetie,” he assures. “Can you tell me what happened?”

The mansion is warm and familiar, dark and comforting in a way the night outside isn’t. He carries you all the way to his room and the ensuite bathroom where he sits you on the countertop. He removes his gloves, grabs a white washcloth, wets it under the faucet, and gently works on cleaning the blood from your face. The pristine white cloth stains pink, and eventually red.

You stare at his shirt. Despite it being black, you can see the remnants of blood you left on him.

“Eyes on me, sweetheart.” He holds your chin delicately in one hand, tilting your head up to look at him. “Talk to me.”

Fresh tears burn at your eyes. You want to forget tonight ever happened. Want to find someone with a time-traveling Evol just so you can go back and do everything different.

It’s a fruitless wish. Everything already happened. It was already burned into your mind. There would be no do-overs.

Your voice cracks as you speak. He frowns at the sorrowful sound. “I was going to the convenience store to get some snacks. I-I wanted some chocolate, and I didn’t have any, so… B-But I guess one of my neighbors followed me. A lot of them are Hunters, too. Said they heard me talking to you.”

“They recognized my name from the Association.” It wasn’t a question. You nod. He folds the cloth over and brushes away some splatter from your face, gently wiping away some stray tears in the process. “Did they threaten you?”

You don’t need to answer. He already knows. That gun in their hand wasn’t just for show.

“They…” You swallow uncomfortably. Your mouth feels tacky. “They said they were gonna turn me in, but wh-when they approached, I freaked out. I just started fighting back, I-I didn’t know what else to do. They punched me and I fell to the ground. Th-Their gun was aimed at me, I couldn’t think, a-and I…”

The weight of the weapon in your hands never felt heavier than in that moment. Tears fell freely now. Your lungs shudder, gasping for air you can’t seem to get enough of. Your face crumples into a horrible grimace as you sob. Sylus cradles the back of your head and pulls you into his chest. He drops the cloth in the sink to wrap his arm around you. You grab onto his shirt. The blood on your hands is dried and crackly, seeping deep into your pores and staining your flesh.

“I tried saving them,” you whimper. “I tried, but there was just so, so much blood, I- I couldn’t do anything.”

He hushes you softly. “You were threatened and you protected yourself.”

“What if the Association finds out? What’re they gonna do when they find out someone’s missing? Fuck, Sy, what- What’s gonna happen?”

“Nothing’s going to happen. They’ll put up missing posters around the block, wondering where they went off to. It’ll remain an unsolved mystery, a story to tell the grandkids.”

It’s not reassuring. He sighs.

“What do you want to happen, sweetheart? You tell your boss what happened: you don’t get tried for murder, but you have to come clean about sneaking into the N109 Zone and being besties with the big bad leader of Onychinus. Or you don’t say anything, and nothing happens.” He pulls away slightly to look down at your face. You stare at the glass door of the shower, eyes glazed over and distant. “Which option sounds better to you, hm?”

You wrack your brain for a third option. Something that doesn’t take away the job you love and permanently ruin your life, while giving the Hunter you killed some grace in death. But there is none. Not really.

So you sigh. Long and drawn out. Will this guilt ever get any easier to carry?

You pull away from Sylus and he lets you. You cringe at his shirt. “I got blood on you.”

He chuckles. “Blood washes out, kitten.”

“Not very easily.”

“No,” he agrees. “But I have my ways.”

This is no longer a simple conversation about laundry.

Sylus picks the cloth back up and wets it again. The excess water that isn’t squeezed out drips into your lap. He wipes the fresh blood coming from your nose. “We need to set this. Do you want something to bite down on?”

-

Your nose still stings as you stand under the shower spray. The heady scent of his shampoo saturates the air, swirling in tandem with the steam. There’s no more blood in your hair, on your ear from the phone, or on your face. And there isn’t any on your hands, either. But as you look down at them, water collecting in your palms and slipping between your fingers, you could feel the hot blood that had been there.

A knock on the door startles you from your revelry. It opens before you can say anything, and you can see the blurry silhouette of Sylus as he sets something on the counter.

“Here’s some fresh clothes. I’ll be out here when you’re done.” His face doesn’t ever glance at the shower door, even when you call out his name to stop him while he’s leaving. He just stands there, head ducked slightly and ear turned your way, listening.

“Thank you.”

He chuckles softly. “It’s just clothes, sweetheart.”

You sigh bitterly. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

The door closes with a faint click as he leaves.

You put some soap in your hands and scrub until the skin is raw. Until you can’t trick yourself into thinking there’s still blood on them. Until the water begins to run cold. Only then do you feel clean enough to turn off the water and step out of the shower.

The clothes are large, practically drowning you in excess fabric. The familiar athletic shorts only stay on because of the elastic waistband and a hidden drawstring that ties on the inside of the shorts. The sweater’s sleeves go past your hands. You can’t imagine wearing anything else right now.

Just as he promised, he’s sitting on his bed when you open the door. The deconstructed parts of your gun lay spread out on the blanket, neatly sorted out. He diligently cleans every piece, ensuring he gets every speck of blood while giving it basic maintenance.

“Sorry about the clothes, sweetie. I’ll have some tailored for you.”

You pad across the floor and carefully climb up onto the bed, doing your best not to disturb the array. He doesn’t stop you when you snuggle up to his side. Rather, he allows you to wrap your arms around his, adjusting how he works for your sake. You shake your head and rest it on his shoulder.

“This is fine,” you assure him. The silence goes on for a beat or two too long before you add, “I might just steal this sweater from you.”

He chuckles. “Go ahead, sweetie. I can get more.” He sets down a cleaned part and picks up another one he hasn’t tended to yet. “Tell me what materials you like and I’ll have a whole closet of them you can steal, if you’d like.”

You smile slightly. He only notices when he glances down at you. He sets the piece down and begins to quickly assemble it all back together. You inhibit his movements somewhat, so it takes a few seconds longer than he’s used to, but he doesn’t complain. Your gun looks brand new, just as pretty and perfect as it was when you first got it at the Academy.

He flips it to offer the handle to you, a silent question. It’s all too reminiscent of your first meeting with him. Even then, even after you’d pulled the trigger, frightened for your life, you’d tried to save him. If it hadn’t been for his Evol…

Well. Lightning never strikes the same place twice.

You hide your face in his shirt, the casual grey one he usually lounges around in. The clinking of the gun disappears with the sound of a drawer opening and closing. His hand brushes your hair.

“You should get some sleep, sweetie. It’s late for you.”

“I’m not tired.” Your body says otherwise. You’re practically melting into him, into the bed. If you stay there for just a few minutes longer, you’ll be fast asleep.

“Now why don’t I believe that,” he teases.

You sigh and force yourself off of him, beginning to slip off the bed. “Let’s watch something.”

He sighs, too, but at your unrelenting stubbornness. It’s almost reassuring. At least you weren’t in a heap under the blankets, sobbing. He follows you into the living room, to the couch directly across from a large TV. You grab a blanket and wrap it around yourself until you are securely cocooned and tucked against an armrest. He sits next to you, drawing you into his side. His Evol carries the remote to his hand.

You command him along through menus and catalogues until you reach one of your favorite comfort films. The lights automatically dim as it starts playing.

You’re not even three minutes into the movie before your eyes are drooping closed. He knew it would happen, knew the exhaustion would catch up with you eventually. Still, it was quite cute, watching you fight to keep your eyes open and your head off his chest. Slowly, slowly giving in. Resting your head on his chest. Listening to his unusual heartbeat. Losing the battle against consciousness.

Still, he lets it play through to the end. It’s not a bad movie, he decides. You enjoy it, so it must have some merit. And you can always tell a lot about someone based on their favorite things.

Careful not to wake you up, Sylus lifts you into his arms, cradling you close to his chest. He carries you back to bed, not bothering to unwrap you from your cocoon at all. Despite being wide awake, he lays down beside you, continuing to hold you close to him. If you have a nightmare, he wants to be there. If you wake up in a dazed panic, he wants to be there.

As accustomed as he’s become with taking lives, he’s unfamiliar with the crisis you’re facing and how to comfort someone through a crisis of any kind. He wants to help. As best as he can, he wants you to be okay. He needs you to be okay.

---

Tag List:

@the-golden-jhope @huen1ngk41 @armycaratlover @sylusfluffymeow

[yawnderu]

K-9 — Simon ''Ghost'' Riley x Reader | Chapter I

Sick as a dog, and just as vicious.

1 2 3 4 5

Simon Riley and his pathetic efforts to get close to the new medic will earn him a scar or two

or

Simon Riley is crushing on an uninterested, tired medic.

''I don't mean to be rude, but I'm getting tired of seeing you here.'' Your blunt words are met with a quiet chuckle, the masked man looking up at you with pure amusement in his eyes.

'' 'M trying not to get injured, bird.'' Oh, but he isn't. He's actively getting injured just so he can drop by and get your help. It's stupid, really, how his obsession with you began. He thinks about the first time he saw you, standing right next to Price, an unamused expression as he went on and on about his team, telling you stories of their missions and time together and despite how bored you looked, your attention was solely on him.

He took that chance to look at you, to truly admire you, noticing the way you pull up your glasses every few minutes even when they're not sliding down your nose, the way your eyes were focused only on Price, paying attention to no one but him, legs crossed while sitting next to Price, your face resting on your hand.

''Clearly not trying hard enough.'' He can't help the way his cock twitches at your bored tone, the small frown on your lips just making him think how pretty you'd look with his cum all over your face— he shakes his head softly, trying to get his mind out of the gutter, focusing on the fast and professional work you're doing on his injured arm, pulling the skin back together with a beautifully done stitchwork.

''It's hard being out there.'' He tries to make conversation and all you can do is hum in acknowledgement, gaze focused on the way the needle digs into his skin, coming out of the other side just to be pulled back together with the thin, transparent thread.

''Y'know Gaz was hanging from a chopper by a bloody rope?'' He knows you're close to Gaz, he has seen you talk to him often, and so he tries to desperately make conversation again.

''Scared the shit out o' the old man.'' His efforts work as a small snicker escapes your lips, stopping working on his stitches as you collected yourself. You look up at him with an amused glint in your eyes, nodding your head. God, he has never seen something quite as beautiful.

''Cap told me about it. Poor guy had his whole waist bruised.'' You let out another small laugh before turning your attention back to the deep cut in his arm.

''If I didn't know any better, I'd think you're getting injured on purpose.'' His heart almost stops as your cold eyes look back up at his, an eyebrow raised, yet there's a smirk tugging at the corners of your lips as you notice his lack of response.

'' 'M not.'' Is all he can say, the knowing look you give him enough to make his blood boil, traveling all the way down to his throbbing cock, thankful for the black hoodie sprawled across his lap to prevent the blood from leaking into his jeans. You ignore all the... beige flags, knowing he's not stupid enough to actually get injured on purpose. You finish stitching him up, throwing away the tools used and the bloodied gloves.

''Keep the wound dry for 24 hours, if any of the stitches come off or the wound opens, come to me.'' You softly pat his shoulders, a small yawn escaping your lips as you look up at the clock on the wall; 0200.

''Tired?'' He asks sarcastically, earning him a way-too-hard pat on the shoulder. Simon woke you up at 2 in the morning, claiming his wound couldn't wait. It wasn't even as bad as he made it seem, though you appreciate your work with the TF141 more than you let on, so you decided to help him. It isn't the first time he wakes you up at outrageous hours, claiming to need help for things ranging from a pathetic paper cut to a gunshot wound. This time, his arm was the only thing affected, a cut big enough to need stitches.

''Very. Now get out.'' Your hand sneaks into the back of his uniform, tugging softly and he gets the message, standing up and allowing you to guide him out of your office like he's a child. He doesn't care if it's you.

''Goodnight, Simon.'' You can barely keep your eyes open and he feels a slight sense of guilt at keeping you up, knowing you'll have to be awake again in less than 3 hours.

''Night, Doc.''

[NEXT]

[peppermintquartz]

Love isn't the big declarations or romantic gestures, Buck realizes one afternoon after they've spent the day puttering around Tommy's house getting some troublesome chores done.

Love is looking at the person who is doing something objectively unattractive and ridiculous and think, I adore this one.

Right now, he's observing Tommy with sweat-damp hair pulling off his rubber gloves, and then the big lug yawns, sticks a hand down his shorts and scratches his balls.

He can't believe he used to think Tommy was cool or smooth or suave. Tommy isn't cool. Tommy's the guy who fusses over his hair and points finger guns and squints at tiny print on ingredient lists and swears at umpires and referees when his teams are losing and scratches his balls after clearing the gutter while his boyfriend is watching him.

Unaware of Buck's scrutiny, Tommy stops scratching and yawns again. "Man. I could do with a shower."

"I love you," Buck says in reply.

Tommy turns and stares at him, mouth agape. His hair is sticking up at the back and the bits at the front are plastered to his forehead with perspiration. He looks like a Muppet.

Buck grins and stands from where he's been gardening, grimacing at the strain in his bad knee. "I love you."

The smile that blossoms on Tommy's face will remain one of the best things Buck has ever seen. The older man jogs over to Buck to cup his cheeks and kiss him. "I love you too."

Buck doesn't even complain about Tommy's hand that was just scratching his balls. It's not as if Buck hasn't done more with his hands and Tommy's nether regions. He kisses back. "Help me finish weeding and we'll shower together."

[divine-knight-hand]

The End of an Era

Regina George Masterlist || Full Masterlist || Read on AO3

Pairing: (Reneé Rapp's) Regina George x Female Reader

Summary: After the iconic Christmas dance fiasco, one of Regina's long-time admirers decides to make sure she's okay.

Content Warnings: Mentions of being a pervert, but fluffiness from there, brief mentions of weight change and dieting, a poetry reference, a bit of toxic behavior (and verbal degradation) but Regina is a queen and I'm wearing rose-colored glasses, nothing spicier than kissing, but their is some dubious consent (but the want is mutual!)

Notes: Christmas dance scene moment!!! I just recently saw the new Mean Girls and Regina George was all that was on my mind since. So, I quickly wrote this up. Enjoy!

Word Count: 1,624

Dividers by @anitalenia

I’m no better than a man… I thought as I ogled Regina while she danced onstage.

Most of the student body didn’t care for the plastics’ “Rockin’ Around the Pole” routine, but I made sure I had the best view of it every year. I already knew before this year’s performance that it would be a little different. I recognized the group’s newest member, Cady Heron, from homeroom. Regina quickly took an interest in her when she first transferred in, and she became the newest member of the plastics.

I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. What did it feel like to have Regina look at you in fascination? What did it feel like to be taken under her wing? How many times did Cady hang out with her? How many times did Cady go to Regina’s house?

The clapping of the girls’ leather boots made me jump, and my eyes zeroed back in on Regina. No, I didn’t actually care for the performance itself, but from freshman year, when I first saw Regina in the same tight-fitting crop top, short skirt, long gloves, and thigh-high boots, I was awe-struck. Since then, I’d taken to watching her from afar, which was easy to do, since she always made her presence known when she entered a room. With each passing day, I grew more and more enamored with her.

I found myself instinctively leaning in once the girls set up one of the grandest moves in their performance. Karen took to the bottom as Gretchen guided Regina into a handstand on her knees from behind. I willed my eyes down to Regina’s face once she made it into position.

Though I spent the performance letting my eyes travel along her body–looking at her thighs in the space between her skirt and boots, her exposed sliver of midriff under her crop top, and watching the way her beach blonde waves fell to frame her gorgeous breasts–I would not be perverted enough to hone in on her crotch as her skirt flipped. My mind might already be in the gutter, but I’d still have a little class.

I’d noticed that her clothes seemed to be fitting her a little tighter than normal this year. There were rumors floating around that Regina was gaining weight, but I also heard that she was on some health kick with special weight loss bars, so that couldn’t have been possible. It had to have just been in my head.

Or so I thought.

Suddenly, Karen’s legs began to shake, and as Regina lost her balance, Gretchen lost her grip, sending the three of them tumbling to the ground in front of a surprised Cady. The audience let out a unanimous gasp as Regina hit the floor face-first. Oh, shit!

It didn’t take long for all the cameras to start flashing, and the look on Regina’s face told me she knew that her life as the untouchable leader of the plastics was quickly coming to a close.

I figured that famous poet who said the world doesn’t end “with a bang but a whimper” clearly didn’t consider the fact that a teenage girl’s world could get explosive in an instant, without a single warning. I’m sure they’d change their mind once they met Regina George.

The curtains began to close, but not before I saw Regina take to her feet and speed backstage. I felt terrible for her. Was she one of the meanest people in the school? Yes. But, I was also in love with her- I mean- a firm believer that nobody deserved that level of humiliation. Not even mean girls. So, out of a sense of heartache and longing to comfort her, I did what any normal and not creepy person would do. I jumped out of my seat and went after her.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

I couldn’t actually follow Regina backstage, since I wasn’t in the talent show, so I ducked into the bathroom closest to the auditorium. As soon as I opened the door, I saw her, and my heart leapt into my throat.

She slammed her fists down on the sink in front of her, letting out an angry growl.

I gently closed the door behind me, not wanting to alert her yet, but my shoe audibly squeaked against the floor, and Regina’s head snapped in my direction.

I gasped once I saw her. It was an instant, and she quickly turned away, but after she made mascara tears a school-wide trend, it was hard not to notice when they were on her face.

“Get out.” She spat, still facing the other way.

“I- I wanted to see if you were okay.” I stammered.

“I didn’t say to start spewing mushy shit,” She insisted in that same cold tone. “I said to get the hell out.” When I didn’t immediately move, she roared. “NOW!”

I reeled backwards in surprise when she got loud, feeling an instant sense of guilt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep. I’ll go.” I turned to grab the door handle, but paused when I heard her sniffle again. “You know, I come to see your performance every year.”

“Yeah, everyone does, because I’m amazing.” I turned my head to see Regina impatiently drumming her fingers on the sink, gloves long abandoned. “What, did you think you were different?”

“No,” I admitted. “I know that nothing I do really sets me apart from anyone else in this hellhole.” She snorted at my remark, and I dared to slowly approach her. “So, yeah, I’m just like everyone else. I came to see your dance. I follow all the trends you set. I turn my head whenever you walk into a room. Hell, whenever you turn up, you’re all I can see.”

She snapped her head back to me, her face set in a stoic expression. “Are you mocking me right now?”

“No, no!” I stopped my advancements, waving my hands to emphasize. “I would never!” I moved my hands to my pockets, eyes drifting down to my shoes. “If anything, I was mocking myself. I’m just like any other nobody in North Shore. I honestly wouldn’t expect you to recognize me. Sorry for bothering you.” I bit my lip in shame, debating whether or not I should leave.

A beat of silence passed before I made up my mind to go, but before I had the chance, Regina spoke up. “You’re Y/N L/N.”

My jaw dropped.

“Ew.” Regina closed the gap between us, coaxing my mouth closed with a hand under my chin. “Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.” I muttered, heat creeping into my cheeks. She touched me! She actually touched me!

“I do know you.” Regina went on. “It’s a bit hard not to notice when someone’s practically stalking you.”

My cheeks burned with humiliation. “I… I…”

A faint smile stirred at her painted red lips. “Especially when they’re as cute as you are.”

What? “What?”

“Ugh, get your ears cleaned.” She rolled her eyes. “I said I think you’re cute. Do you honestly think I’d let you creep on me if you weren’t?”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Sorry about that…”

“Don’t be.” Regina moved my hand before wrapping her arms around my neck. “I liked your eyes on me.” She pressed her body against mine, and I hoped she couldn’t feel my heart fluttering. “Everyone watches me, of course, but you’re the only one I like watching me.”

“Regina…” I breathed.

“Oh. My. God.” Regina scoffed. “Stop being such a prude and wrap your arms around me. What are you, a nun?”

“S- sorry…” I muttered, moving my hands from their tense position at my sides to hold her. I felt electricity under my fingers once they made contact with the skin of her midriff.

“That’s… better.” Regina ran her tongue over her teeth, like a hungry shark eying its prey. “I don’t wanna kiss you without your hands on me.”

WHAT?! “Wha-” She cut me off by pulling me into the promised kiss.

She rolled her body against mine, and I sighed, my eyes fluttering shut as I let her tongue into my mouth. Her hands clawed against my back as she tried to pull me closer.

She pulled away, only to keep kissing my face. She kissed all over my cheeks before trailing her kisses along my neck to the collar of my shirt. I shivered as one of her hands pulled at my shirt, and I felt her lips against the sweet spot in my neck.

“Regina…” I breathlessly sighed. “I adore you…”

“I know~” I felt her mouth spread into a grin against my mouth.

Then, all too soon, she pulled away from me, fixing her hair as she looked me up and down.

“You came to ask me if I was okay, right?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Y- yeah,” I stuttered, still in shock from our kiss.

“Well, I’m better now~” She winked. “So, thanks for that.”

Before I could even formulate an idea on what I could possibly say next, she was out the bathroom door.

What just happened? I wondered just before my reflection caught my eye. I was covered in blotches of red lipstick. It was scattered on my cheeks, coloring my neck, and smudged across my lips.

I gingerly reached a hand up to admire myself. I was all marked up. I was Regina’s.

After tonight, we knew Regina might not have been queen of the plastics anymore, but I hoped that she left the room with the understanding that she would always be a queen to me. Her world didn’t end with a bang or a whimper. It ended with a kiss.

[yurinaa-world]

Hey, I just saw the recent angel reader work, can you do a demon one, but with Dr. Ratio, Sampo, Sunday and Gallagher... Thanks. Either platonic or romantic is fine

��𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓈: Dr. Ratio, Sampo, Sunday & Gallagher x Gender-neutral Reader

𝒮𝓎𝓃𝑜𝓅𝓈𝒾𝓈: with a reader that's a demon

𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈: fluff, spelling mistakes

𝒱𝑒𝓇𝒾𝓉𝒶𝓈 𝑅𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜

“Veritas enough with the math stuff and pay attention to me!”

Your arms wrap around Veritas' shoulders, chin his shoulder, trying your best to persuade him into listening to you and enough with working on these papers. Yet he just doesn’t answer you at all.

Ugh. Pressing your chest against his back, leaning in to have cheeks against others, and to top off with the annoyance, you begin to play with his soft, all for persuasion.

“Please Veritas. Mr. Veritas Ratio, I promise I won’t bother you after this.”

You give a little soft kiss on the cheek. “Enough with your childish behaviour. Since I’m feeling quite generous right now I’ll provide you with something if you let go of me this instant.

“Yes sir!” Moving back instantly just going over to sit right on top of the desk after moving his paper to the side. Your shoe rubbed his leg with a bright smile on your face.

“Give me something good!”

“I’ll give something even better.”

𝒮𝒶𝓂𝓅𝑜 𝒦𝑜𝓈𝓀𝒾

“What’s wrong, sampo? Cat caught your tongue?”

Arms wrapped around his neck while you straddled his lap. A bright smile plastered all over your face. His arms wrap around your waist with a lazy grin on his face.

“Sampo Koski doesn’t mind this arrangement in the slightest. Yet I was hoping for something more,”

“Like what?”

“Maybe, perhaps, a kiss?”

You just laugh at his little “deal” before leaning in to kiss his forehead and he immediately gets that smile where it isn’t what he truly wanted.

“Hmm? What will I get from you? Can’t give something for free,”

“Am I not your dearest lover? Even kisses have prices these days?”

He begins to put on that sad tone so you would feel bad and kiss him out of pity. Pressing your forehead against his. “Maybe..for you I could spare something. Since I’m not a nasty scammer like you.” You smile at me with loving eyes, your tail wrapping around his leg, gently rubbing and creasing it. 

Leaning in to give a feather-light kiss right on the side of lips—not satisfying in the slightest, just makes him want so much more. “Another?” 

“No sorry, you'll have to buy the full package first.

𝒮𝓊𝓃𝒹𝒶𝓎

It’s so difficult for you. Every time you try something with Sunday, you can’t help but be a little embarrassed and completely stop in your tracks.

 It feels like the simplest thing yet you can’t help that you’re doing something dirty, especially with Sunday making it worse by making you spell out what you want.

“What kinds of things do you think about?”

What does he take you as? Acting like your head is always in the gutter! Yet you won’t complain if that gets you affection from him.

To have me stare at you with his signature loving smile, gloved hands cupping your face, his forehead against yours, the feather of his wings gently touching your horns. 

“Anything related to you.” Looking lovingly at him, before he leaned, gently kissing your lip, making you grasp onto his collar—pulling him in deeper—making you breathless when he pulled away from you. 

“Sunday..”

“Shhh…let’s not end this so quickly.” He impatiently went back to your lips. Wanting way more than you could give him. And they say you’re the devilish one when they should be telling him that. 

𝒢𝒶𝓁𝓁𝒶𝑔𝒽𝑒𝓇

“Aren’t you drinking a bit too much?”

“Ha. Ha. I’m not drunk, I can hold my drink.” You laugh a little as you drink another shot. You can handle your drinks! You do feel a little red and dizzy but that’s just because it’s been a while.

Yet he knows you’re drunk. Sitting on the bar table like a carefree child. Gallagher is no idiot, he knows a drunk when he sees one.

“I’m so fine. Like so good. I mean I’ve never been better!” “Ah huh.” Your long tail was swinging around, wagging around before wrapping around his leg. Now he can’t move or else he might pull your tail while trying to get away.

You hiccup a little. “Gallagher, you wanna touch my horns? Hehe. I saw you staring at them before. Ya wanna?”

He isn’t the type to take advantage of you while you’re drunk but it’s not as if touching your horns would cause anything bad to happen. You did offer him the chance. Also, he might just be a little curious.

“Don’t blame me for you being stupid.” 

His white-gloved hand gently touched your horns, feeling the indents and the texture, but it was oddly cold. His touching just made you shut your mouth and tail wrap tighter.

When he pulled away from your horns you immediately missed his warm touch, causing you to take his hand and put it on your horns.

“Come on, don't stop now.”

if you liked this, consider tipping me on ko-fi! it'd mean a lot!

[ant1quarian]

what are the western bad sanses like with a crush?

Heheheheh.

Killer is probably trying to distance himself as much as possible. As soon as you're near him he is out immediately. He's terrified of catching feelings and so desperately doesn't want to have to go through that disappointment. But if you do manage to corner this Houdini somehow, he's going to be a nervous trainwreck. Laughing nervously, sweating, and a red blush forming on his face. If you manage to catch him and corner him, you better keep him or he's going to gap it out of town as quick as possible.

Dust is admittedly likely a lot more comfortable around you, actually. Nervous, sure, but he's beginning to be a whole lot more open to talking about himself with you- as well as getting close to slowly ridding himself of his scarf, poncho, and gloves (leaving his relaxed blouse, pants and shoes as well as his hat). He might start to hang around a lot more, as well as just... looking at you. Adverting his obvious eyelight whenever you two make eye-contact.

Horror is... adorably attached? Flustered, definitely, whenever you compliment him on anything he does for you- which leads us onto our next thing he does: things. For you. A lot of them. That guttering you've been meaning to get to for a while? He's got you. That dusting you haven't done for ages? He's got you. Too tired to cook yourself a meal? He's got you.

Nightmare ups the charm but also ups the distance. He'll come to you less and less, internally concerned with all of these emotions and kind of internally panicking because "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". Commitment issues? He has 'em. Not as bad as Killer does but uh... he's definitely struggling, pfft. Snatch him and haul him into your life- he'll go willingly enough.

Cross is like. A genuine schoolboy. Flustered and dying whenever you get close to him- stumbling over his words and getting you silly little gifts he thinks you'll like. Invite him over to hang out- he really, really wants to spend time with you.

Thank you for the ask! As always: Feel free to ask more whenever you want :]

[alpurrtwhizkersss]

Omg you're taking six of crows requests?!?

Can I get a Kaz x fem!reader where the two of them are a couple (or trying to be) like Kaz is less snappy towards her, they're working on his touch aversion and everything.

But then on a heist gone wrong reader is hurt/stabbed/shot and falls into the Harbour, and Kaz is terrified because of the water but he's more terrified of losing his girl and he realizes that none of the other crows will reach her in time so he dives into the water to save her and when he drags her back onto the dock they just hug each other and the reader is apologizing for ruining the heist, Kaz is just holding her tightly and telling her it's ok, she's safe and that's how the rest of the crows find them, curled up at the end of the dock. Maybe some soft kisses?

Kaz trying to deal with his trauma in ways like this makes me happy

His Star

Requested By:  anonymous!

Warnings: Drowning, reader gets stabbed in the arm, Kaz deals with some trauma flashbacks/anxiety, possibly OOC Kaz.

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Prompt: None

She/Her pronouns used to refer to reader.

Author’s Note:

hey!! sorry this one took so long, I haven't written for Kaz for a WHILE so I hope this meets your request!

Word Count: 1321

Kaz loved you.

Or, at least, you thought he did. He had never told you explicitly, but then, the ruthless young man had never told many people of his affections for them, choosing instead to close himself off to the world instead of facing his feelings.

Despite the mask he put over his emotions every day, you could still tell he loved you through the way he treated you, how he didn’t snap at you like he snapped at the other crows, and the way he looked at you.

Oh, how he looked at you.

Kaz Brekker looked at you as though he was a tired man, bound to the ground of the earth, weak and broken, and you were a star in the dark, endless sky waiting to lead him home, your brightness and your beauty incomparable to anything else.

There were many times Kaz had wanted to touch you, to reach his gloved hand out and graze it against your cheek, or to squeeze your thigh for comfort as you sat beside him, but he couldn’t. He feared that if he did, it would bring everything back. Bring Jordie’s death back. And the possibility was too painful to try.

You understood, of course, you would never push him to do anything he didn’t want to, so you left it alone. You never asked, you barely even thought, because even the idea of making Kaz uncomfortable or upset made guilt squeeze your heart sharply. You would listen if he brought up the idea, but you’d never do it yourself. You’d never put that burden on him over something he couldn’t control.

So you made do with what you had, you loved him in other ways, helping him with planning heists, gathering information to make his job easier, making sure he ate, checking up on him every so often (despite his protests), giving him small smiles across the Crow Club when you could see he was getting frustrated. Little things that made your presence known, but that didn’t intrude too much on his life, and you were happy that way.

“Y/N!” Jesper’s voice broke your thoughts as you slid down the rain-soaked tiles of the building you were scaling, landing gracefully on your feet as you shot along the gutter at the bottom and leaped onto the next one.

“What?” You yelled, hoping he would catch it over the raging wind, but all you heard in response was silence, and you realised you could no longer hear the cracking of his boots against the tile. 

Risking a look behind you, you caught your gaze on Jesper’s long figure clambering back up the roof, two others, Inej and Wylan, caught your eye as well, though, where Kaz was you had no idea, and you skidded to a halt, stopping for a moment as you watched the security of the bank you’d just attempted to rob begin gaining on you, their yells rising far above the torrential weather, you watched the other Crows running along the top of the roof, you only caught on to why they were doing this as you turned back, and felt a swift, violent pain crash through your upper arm, you let out an ear piercing scream as the shock and pain overwhelmed you, making your vision blur and your knees buckle underneath you. Almost as soon as you made a noise, you heard Jasper’s pistols shoot rounds into your attacker’s body, quickly able to take out some other guards from his high-up position, yet nobody came to save you as your body tumbled into the freezing harbour water that cascaded against the walls of the bank.

Kaz yelled your name as he watched you disappear off the side of the roof and into the waters below. He had already chosen to stay behind when he realised that you had not heard Jesper’s call to retreat upwards, and he thanked the Saints that he did when he began racing towards the edge of the roof, still screaming your name as he searched for your body in the blackness beneath him.

For the first time in a while, Kaz took a sharp, relieved inhale at the sight of your head poking above the water, and soon your arms came thrashing with it.

As you caught sight of Kaz, you began yelling, mostly unintelligible words, but he heard his name ring in his ears, and he swore he felt his heart tear itself out of his chest when he recognised the fear in your voice.

The fear in your voice that brought him back to that night. With Jordie. Jordie and the boat. And the eerie silence only broken every so often by the groans of the wood and the shifting of clothes against the bodies of the victims that the plague had so cruelly taken.

No. Kaz scolded himself. Stop. Stop, you have to help Y/N. She’ll die if you don’t help her.

He didn’t give himself time to think again before throwing himself into the freeze after you, and almost immediately he felt the same horrible effect that he felt that night with Jordie begin to take hold.

He pushed through it as he kept his mind on you. He couldn’t let you die.

If you died, he didn’t know what he would do with himself, he likes to tell himself that he could get through anything. That grief didn’t affect him anymore.

But with you? You were his star, and if you weren’t there anymore, his sky would go dark.

Kaz could hear your sobs echoing through the night air as he pulled himself through the current and closer to you. Almost as soon as he touched your skin with his gloved hands, he had to stop himself from letting the panic take over, soon becoming grounded once again by your whimpers and pleas for help.

“C-come here, Y/N.” He stammered out, the temperature of the water mixed with the adrenaline coursing through his veins making his speech slurred and awkward as he pulled you towards his chest.

You soon found yourself approaching the harbour, and Kaz made it his first priority to hoist your body up onto the wooden decking, quickly pulling himself up after.

As soon as you were safely out of the water, you backed yourself up against a wall, leaning to the side to cough up what you’d managed to inhale during your panic. Kaz soon made his way over to you, rubbing your back gently as you grasped the wall for support, before falling back against it, still shaking with the sobs that left your lips. You soon felt Kaz move his hand hesitantly to the back of your neck, before taking a deep breath and pulling you in closer to him, holding you tightly.

“I’m sorry…” You cried, taking the collar of his soaked jacket into your hands as he shushed you. “I’m so, so sorry, Kaz, I- I ruined everything. I’m so useless-” You buried your head in his jacket as he shook his head, staring down at you with as serious a stare as he could manage, despite his heart rate going at 30 miles per hour.

“No, no, Y/N, stop it. You didn’t ruin the heist. It was doomed from the start, it was a stupid idea anyway. All that matters is that you’re safe, do you understand me? You’re alright, and you’re with me, and nothing’s going to happen to you.” Kaz’s voice managed to soothe your racing heart and mind, and your gentle nods soothed his own as he dared to press a gentle kiss to your lips.

That was how the Crows found you both that night. Kaz wrapped protectively around you, every so often placing gentle kisses to your hair, and you, his star, encased safely in his arms, having never felt so much love from anybody in your life.

[kxttqi]

𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐥𝐲 .

m. fushiguro x gn!reader ✧  fluff ; christmas special !

この 物語 で ⇢ a late night christmas eve walk .

the first snow grazes the ground beneath your boots, a pale dusting of frost over black winter gravel that glows an iridescent sort of blue under the sharp light of the moon. the air feels like glass, biting in a way that scrapes your lungs raw with each breath. your scarf smells faintly of detergent and an edge of pine from the too-early wreath that'd been hung days ago in the middle of the jujutsu tech dorm doors. megumi walks a step behind you, gloved hands stuffed deep into his coat pockets, his head bowed slightly under a mop of inky hair. his breath fogs in the air, trailing behind him like a ghost.

it's quiet. not the "cozy by the fire" kind of quiet, but the kind that belongs to empty streets around midnight, broken only by the occasional wind or the far-off sound of an engine skipping through city blocks. the storefronts are dark and silent; there’s a nearly-forgotten wreath on one of the closed doors—dusty, handsomely aged, but still festive in its own way. the world feels small, closed in, like you’re walking inside someone else’s snow globe dream.

“i forgot how empty it gets this time of night,” you mutter to no one in particular, breaking the spell. somewhere nearby, a hollow clanging rolls out as someone tosses a bottle into a recycling bin. megumi doesn’t respond, but you don’t need him to. he always walks on your left side, almost reflexively, shielding you from traffic that was comprised of the stray car here and there.

you glance at him over your shoulder, and his face is pale under the pale winter light, his expression unreadable. he hasn’t said much, but you’re used to that. he’s not a quiet silence; he’s a steady one. it’s nice when everything else in life feels unbearably loud.

“i didn’t think you'd let me drag you out on christmas eve, ‘gumi," you venture after a beat, playful, though your breath comes out like puffs of dragon smoke. "i thought you were allergic to fun.”

megumi snorts, gaze not quite meeting yours as his eyes drift toward the frozen gutter to avoid whatever teasing look you're probably giving him. “fine,” he exhales, voice low. “next time, i’ll ditch you for yuji and nobara. they'd be thrilled to run through the snow while shouting about santa claus.”

you catch it—the tiniest curve of his lips as he looks away again, embarrassed. the thing about megumi is that his smiles never last long enough, whether they’re sad ones, teasing ones, or real ones. they’re like the breath curling out of your mouth: fleeting, easily lost to the air. but you’ve always liked them. you don’t need them to last forever so long as you get to witness them.

you fall back into quiet steps for a while. your hands are stuffed inside your coat pockets, one of them clinging to the crumpled paper bag you’d picked up earlier—a bakery run that had transformed into a “walk the cold away and stall going home” kind of errand. he hadn’t protested joining you, even though he knows you take the long way everywhere, like you’re afraid of endings.

“i don’t know if you’ll like this gift,” you say abruptly as something spills out of your mouth. there's nervousness there now, an uncharacteristic edginess as you stare straight ahead to avoid his reaction—because all at once, your bag feels stupid and your hands feel cold.

he doesn’t say anything right away. the snow crunches under his boots, a monotone rhythm punctuated only by the faint whistle of wind slipping through the telephone wires.

“you didn’t have to get me anything,” he finally replies.

"yeah, but i wanted to," you shoot back quickly. you’re frowning at the snowdrift on the edge of the alley now. “and i didn’t want to just… not. you didn’t expect me to, right?”

“no.” his voice is soft. it trips over your ears, low in the way that makes your face warm despite the cold. “but you didn’t need to.”

your eyes flit toward him, just for a fraction of a second. his breath fogs the glassy air again as he turns his gaze upward—a deflection, something habitual. a string of colorful lights, fat bulbs glowing proud red and green and gold, spans the street a block ahead. they aren't enough to drown out the silvery moonlight, though they're warm. he catches you looking, and the corner of his mouth turns up slightly, teasing.

 "what is it? a cursed object disguised as a scarf? should i be worried?"

“as if,” you huff, tossing the heavy weight of your bag so that it thunked gently against his arm for emphasis. “c'mon. we’re almost at the park. i’ll show you.”

the small green space, bordered with bare-limbed oaks and thin benches frozen with frost, is as empty as expected. you lead him to a sheltered corner, where a blue lamplight flickers half-heartedly through the shadow of an ancient metal playground. the swing set creaks loudly as the wind passes through. you’re not sure why you feel like you’re about to hand him something embarrassing—you figured you'd passed this stage with megumi a long time ago. he's known you too well and too long to be surprised by much.

you pull out the paper-wrapped box and hand it to him, eyes dancing between his hands and the old, frozen jungle gym behind him. “look, it’s—it’s not a big deal. but i thought, you know. even on christmas eve, you just… you don’t seem like the kind of person to do anything for yourself. so…”

“thanks,” he interrupts, quietly sincere. you blink, startled by the swiftness. he's already tearing open the paper by the time you step back, heart unexpectedly caught in your throat like static. he’s quick about it, meticulous but uninterested in making it some sort of “moment”—the way you figured he would be.

when the box is finally peeled back, the little black cat sitting inside causes something in his face to slacken, stop. it’s ceramic, glossy with paint, about the size of a flip phone, with sharp ears and a delicate gold ribbon tied around its collar. you figure it's cute without being over-the-top (or so you hope). the kind of thing that suits him. you knew if it took up too much space, his first instinct would’ve been to pretend he didn’t have room for it—so you’d gone with something small enough to sit on his windowsill beside the succulents he hadn’t quite managed to kill.

he looks at it for a long moment before meeting your gaze. a little frown tugs at his face. not an angry one, but the kind when somebody feels something they weren’t expecting to feel.

“you think i’m a cat person?” he murmurs, his voice the subtlest shade warmer, like this chewed-up christmas eve cold isn’t even touching him.

“you are,” you fire back instinctively, crossing your arms, though all at once the warmth in your chest makes it harder to look him in the face. you glance up at the night sky instead. the snow is starting to fall a little heavier now, gathering like thick down on the swings and benches. “i know you secretly feed the strays.”

he doesn’t respond, but in the low glow of the lamplight, his head tilts slightly to the side, and you catch that fleeting expression. his smile lingers this time—just long enough for you to hold onto it like some unspoken promise neither of you has the words for yet.

but then, after a pause: "merry christmas."

it’s as soft, understated, and beautiful as everything else about him— you don’t say anything, just bury yourself deeply into the heat clinging to his coat as the wind carries both your shortened shadows forward into the night.

© kxttqi — do not repost, copy, translate or steal my works without permission.

[soysaurus]

There's a trait that runs through every hero, regardless of if they've spent the last couple months in prison, rehab, or wrangling pyjamas onto a stubborn five-year-old: they're a workaholic.

Thank god Jason is not a hero. Roy, on the other hand, definitely is. He might be ‘inactive’ or ‘I’m just focusing on Lian right now, thanks’, but Jason has dropped by Roy's shitty apartment in Star often enough that he can confidently say Roy, no matter what, is a hero.

So he kicks him.

“Ow! What the fuck, Jaybird?” Roy glares as he brings his fingers to his lips, slurping up the bright orange liquid that’s currently coating half his sleeve.

More keeps dripping onto the floor in radioactive bursts, and the bowl is steaming. It has a chip in the side from when Jason was teaching Lian how to shoot, and Jason knows what the ceramic feels like when steam is escaping from every orifice. He had to use his Red Hood gloves to hold the damn thing last time. He had to do a lot of things, but Roy's fingers don't shake as he holds the bowl in one hand.

He kicks Jason lightly back. “You're a fucking asshole, Todd, ya know that?”

Jason's head is a slow buzz. It's a sound that he can feel spit behind his eyes, sing with sharp vowels and harsh chords. It's something that's attacking him from the inside-out, digging deep until he can feel the green of the pit flare in his throat.

“Fuck ‘ff,” he murmurs, turning his head to look anywhere but Roy. “Don't need your shit-ass soup. Don't need anythin’.”

He moves to stand, to sit, to do anything but be useless on the sofa.

Roy only needs one hand to hold Jason down, and Jason tells himself it's just this once. It's because Roy is a hero and Jason is anything but.

“Dude, you're, like, what? Two seconds from passing out my couch? Eat the damn soup.”

Jason doesn't look as the bowl is shoved in front of him. More sloshes over the sides, lapping at Roy's thumb. He needs to get his mind out of the gutter. He needs to remember why he came here in the first place.

Roy groans, deep and guttural with his head thrown back and all the muscles in his neck straining. Sometimes Jason wants to curl his fingers around the thick flesh, cord his soul into the pieces of Roy he can never get back, and take him. For real this time.

He looks at the damned fucking soup.

It's tomato or carrot, or maybe even something that has never been orange in the first place. Jason can feel the steam hitting his nose hairs but he can't smell anything. “Needs more seasoning,” he spits.

Roy sighs. The soup nips his fingers again as he plops down onto the sofa. Their thighs touch, brush, hold on tight enough to blur the lines.

“You're sick,” Roy says. He holds up a spoon. It's caked in red. “Here comes the aeroplane…”

Jason wants to punch him, and it's fine because even though Jason rescued Roy first, Jason was also the first who left. He was the first who walked away and didn't return. He was the first one who died, and then died again.

It's stupid. Roy likes to say he died too, but Jason doesn't like thinking about explosions. He can't think about anything right now anyway. His brain hurts. The words in his head buzz. A hot tip touches his lips but it's not the right kind.

“Open wide.” Roy's using his Dad voice, and it's horrifying. Jason can feel his heart in his lungs and sometimes he forgets Roy has green eyes too.

They're earthier. Grounded. They're nothing like the look Jason stares at Roy with when Lian's gone to bed and the bowl's still chipped and the dishes haven't been scrubbed but everyone is too tired to touch it.

Roy sighs. The spoon clatters into the bowl, and he sucks the soup from his thumb again. “Jay, you gotta work with me here. You're sick. Being a stubborn asshole isn't gonna change that. What're you even doing here, man? Thought you were tired.”

Jason has never said he's tired before. At least not to Roy. The voice in his head that glows green and grins acid is different. He thinks he loves the voice and also hates it. He doesn't know if it's himself or someone else.

“Shut up, Harper.” He sniffs without meaning to and promptly closes his mouth.

Roy's lips break into that sly grin that means he's going home with at least a couple numbers and a body or two hanging from his elbows. “Only if you eat the damn soup. Otherwise I'll keep going, baby. I can keep this up all night long.” He winks as if Jason doesn't know him. “You know I've got the stamina to prove it.”

Jason rolls his eyes. Kind of. It hurts and the world spins, and then Roy's whispering meaningless words into his ear. He thinks his eyes are open but then he blinks and sees the ceiling. He does a double take but his body doesn't move. The air swirls. Something pinches his hips, then his legs, and then Jason is in Roy's room and the sheets smell like his body wash.

There's another smell, something heady and unmistakably Roy. Jason's not in love because he's never been in love. He doesn't know what it looks like.

He smells soup.

A ceramic bowl clatters gently, and a duvet is tugged up to Jason's chin. The bed dips next to Jason's waist and Roy's hair is long. It isn't tied back, but it was before. With the lamp light, his eyelashes look brighter. Almost like they're glowing.

Jason's not in love because Roy could never love him. He's just not the type. He's someone who dedicates his life to one person and one person only, and Jason is nowhere near a hero.

The tip of the spoon touches his bottom lip. It's cooler.

“Open wide.”

Maybe it's because it's half-one in the morning or Jason's running a fever higher than he ever has before, or because he's only twenty-one and yet he has over half of Gotham's underground under his control. His chest clenches. Tim said Jason's going to end up with heart attacks if he keeps this going, and then Jason yelled about all the empty Red Bull cans littering Tim's floor.

Jason's only twenty-one but he's never been in love. He was, maybe, once when he was fifteen. But that was before the voice in his head was impossibly loud. He doesn't remember who it was, and they're probably gone.

He opens his mouth. Roy grins, sly and dirty. His Dad voice slips out: “Good boy.”

Jason's going to kill him. He doesn't remember why he came to Star City tonight. He doesn't remember a lot of things.

His chest tightens even more as he swallows, and maybe Tim is right. Maybe heart attacks are going to be what finally takes Jason out.

[yawnderu]

K-9 — Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader | Part II

Sick as a dog, and just as vicious.

1 2 3 4 5

Simon scores a date with his favorite medic

Or

Simon has to be under her watch after getting a knife to the gut.

"Oi, doc." Simon calls out and you sigh softly, gaze drifting from your patient report to him, his unmasked figure lays on the medical bed, gauze wrapped tightly over his abdomen, keeping his newest injury guarded from anything that could rub on or mess up the stitches.

"Why'd they call you K-9?" One of his thin, eyeblack stained eyebrows lifts as he looks at you, already feeling bored from having to stay still for so long, movement limited by the patched up stab wound on his stomach.

"Long story." You dismiss him, looking back down at the patient report you were writing for him. His medical file was interesting, indicating no pictures of him should ever be taken, as well as additional personal and professional information.

"You got surgery in 2020, what's that about?" You didn't notice any bigger scars whenever he was injured, having already seen his naked torso and part of his legs.

"Curious 'bout me, doc?" His tone is slightly teasing, the smug bastard thinking he's funny by asking that. A single eye roll is enough to get him to speak, a deep, gravelly chuckle escaping his lips before he answers.

"Took a nasty gunshot to the leg, was fadin' fast." He lays back down, gaze drifting towards the ceiling as he thinks about it. He was so close to death himself, only three years ago.

"Thought it'd be more interesting." Your bluntness never fails to make him double take. It's not passive aggressive or mean, just... way too honest. More than he's used to.

"I'll get a proper grand injury just for you, lass." You roll your eyes again, taking a sip from your coffee to hide the way the corners of your lips are tugging up. It's amusing, really, to find out how much Simon has changed throughout the years. Price told you he used to be much more quiet, though after 4 years of working with the task force, he was able to open up, getting more and more used to interacting with a team rather than being a lone wolf.

"That's not necessary, I can give it to you myself if you'd like." Your gloved hand presses on the scalpel on your white coat before going back to writing his medical report, tone laced with subtle humor.

"She can joke." He taunts, trying to sit up before a sharp hiss of pain escapes his lips. You frown, the report taking way too long to finish because you keep getting interrupted.

"Hold on." You walk up to him, hands holding onto his strong back before you try to help the behemoth of a man sit up. His calloused hands hold onto your forearms, a few low, deep groans escaping his lips at the strain his flexing muscles are causing to the fresh injury.

"Fuckin' hell." He mutters and you look up, eyes focusing on his pained expression for a second too long. Simon isn't ugly, really, but when his face is all scrunched up in pain, sweat gathering in the form of clear specks all over his eyeblack stained skin? He looks almost majestic. You get your head out of the gutter, placing some soft pillows behind his back to help keep him up without much strain.

"You should be healed up soon enough, got lucky the bastard didn't stab that deep." You shrug, looking back at the tiny coffee maker in your office before you look back up at him, his brown eyes already staring back at you, pupils blown, as usual.

"Want some coffee?" He shakes his head politely, eyes closing in pain as he tries to get into a more comfortable position.

"A cuppa would be nice." You flick his forehead softly, tired eyes drifting towards the clock on the wall. 0100, yet you simply nod and grab your phone from the desk.

"Try not to die while I'm gone." The door closes behind you before he can reply, brown eyes closing as he sighs when you're gone. He doesn't even know how it all started. Simon is a man of discipline, a soldier, a Ghost, yet the way his heart quickens and his cock hardens whenever he's with you is something he can't control, as if a parasite made home in his brain and is using his body as a vessel, ridding him completely of any self-control.

You come back 10 minutes later, a tray with a cup of hot tea and food placed on his lap, the almost comforting warmth quickly spreading through his legs and body.

"Thank you." He moves the spoon around the cup of Earl Grey, letting the sugar mix in for a hot minute before he takes a sip from it, nodding his head once in approval. He was starving, really, but he tried his best to eat slowly, ignoring his hungry stomach begging him to wolf it all down. His eyes drift back to the tray, attention caught by the singular orange left there.

His hands fumble for one of the knives in his clothes, finding all of the straps were removed by you and placed too far away for his injured body to reach. He looks back up at you, admiring you in silence and truly taking you in. The way you lift your glasses every once in a while even before they can slip down the bridge of your nose, the way your hand fiddles with the pen and your lips turn into a small pout whenever you're not sure how to describe something in the report, the way you look so angelic under the dim lights of the infirmary—

"What are you lookin' at?" You don't even bother looking back at him, feeling his stare on you for the past two minutes. He has such an intense gaze that makes you feel as if he can see through your soul, yet it never intimidated you.

"Nothin', bird, nothin'. Peeled you an orange."

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