#I guess I’ll bleach it and see how I feel | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

andypantsx3 · 11 months ago

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SOMETHING IN THE WATER | 6 | SHOUTO x READER

SUMMARY: As a future marine biologist, you’ve scored big on your final internship: a summer in the tropics, researching the waters off the coast of a lush, sunny island. But what you thought would be all beach days and piña coladas turns out to be the revelation of a lifetime when you haul in a handsome merprince, and discover not everything in these waters is quite as it seems. TAGS/WARNINGS: mermaid au, interspecies relationships, mating rituals/courting behavior, (sort of) case fic, aged up characters, eventual smut, fem pronouns/afab reader LENGTH: 3.7k of est. 27k, 6th of 8 chapters

Shouto was waiting on the shore when you returned, mismatched gaze pinned on you as you stepped out of the trees. He seemed to know from your expression that you’d found exactly what you’d been looking for.

“It is what you wanted, then,” he said.

You could feel a grimace overtake your features. “Not what I wanted, exactly, but it is what I expected to find.”

A clawed hand reached out to catch your ankle as you stepped out of the shade onto the hot sand. You could see the impression of Shouto’s tail in the sand where he’d dragged himself from the water, a thick line of disturbed beach. He peered up at you, thumb pressing into the hollow behind your ankle bone.

“They’re polluting this place and they’re trying to hide it,” you said, your mouth pulling into a thin line. “They’ve dammed off that lagoon for now but it’s not going to hold forever. And they’ve already killed off everything in it.”

Shouto’s claws rasped lightly over the skin of your ankle. “You are upset.”

You glanced down at him, finding his handsome face concerned. “I’m—angry, I guess, yeah. Especially now that I know you and your whole pod are here. It’s bad enough thinking of what this is going to do to all the local populations, but to think of you getting sick…”

Shouto’s long eyelashes fluttered as he took a slow breath. You carefully studied the sand next to him so you didn’t watch the way the muscles of his chest flexed and relaxed as he did so. “You want to protect me,” he concluded, something strange in his tone.

Your face flushed hot. “Well, yeah.”

Shouto’s expression went carefully blank, like he was trying not to look too pleased. Instead, he reached out a hand, taking yours, prying it open to reveal the sample kit containing a bleached chunk of coral you’d cut off the poisoned reef. “And you will keep the coral I gave you,” Shouto said.

You nodded, blinking in surprise. In your momentary funk you’d almost forgotten the underlying reason for your visit here—Shouto had given you something that would have taken him hours to get. Something he’d have had to pull himself through the forest on his arms alone for, something he too would have had to have waded into a poisoned reef for—and that had to mean something significant.

You doubted it was a token of friendship, as you’d first assumed. But then—what would be the cultural significance of the gift?

Shouto’s thumb petted over the hollow of your ankle bone again. “And you will wear them.”

You nodded absently, suppressing a shiver at the feeling of his touch.

“Yes, when I get back to my room I’ll scrounge up something to wear them on,” you promised.

Shouto’s expression shifted into something satisfied. “With dinner and a movie,” he said.

You stared at him. “You want—right now?”

“Right now,” he echoed, nodding seriously. His features rearranged themselves into a mask of determination.

You laughed at the expression, like a movie was some great hurdle to overcome, some life-or-death mission.

Well, you supposed a promise was a promise. And it was nearing dinner time.

Your mind instantly began to churn with plans. You’d have to dock the boat and beg off the meal with the science crew, figure out when and how to tell them about the poisoned lagoon, find a meal somewhere that Shouto could digest, meet him back at the beach, steal a wheelbarrow, and figure out how not to get caught.

“Alright, a deal’s a deal,” you decided.

An almost triumphant smile teased at the edge of Shouto’s mouth.

His hand left your ankle and he followed you back across the sand down to the water, slithering agiley like a handsome snake. He supervised you as you stuffed all your things back into your dry bag, then slipped into the water, keeping pace alongside you as you swam out to where you’d anchored the boat.

He pulled himself in after you, and boated most of the way back to the dock with you. He only slid back into the water when you shooed him off just out of sight of the port, promising to meet him back on the beach in front of the inn.

You docked the boat in town, then poked through a couple take-away food stalls for something that seemed like it wouldn’t mess with Shouto’s digestion. Stifling a wry grin, you settled on a sushi vendor, picking out a few basic rolls with local fish and a seaweed salad that you and Shouto could split.

You trekked back to the inn, stowing your food in your room, then poking your head into Yu’s room to let her know you’d finished up on the water, but weren’t feeling well and were going to sit out dinner.

Once you’d also verified Izuku was nowhere to be seen and that Inko was safely installed in the front office, you crept over to the maintenance shed. The door was unlatched—probably a product of living on such a small island with little crime—and you helped yourself to the wheelbarrow and an ancient tarp wedged underneath several old planters.

Shouto was waiting for you just off the beach, that head of red and white pair poking out of the water inquisitively as you approached. He eyed the wheelbarrow with suspicion, even as he hauled himself up on shore.

“What is that,” he asked, flatter than a question.

“Your chariot awaits, good sir,” you joked, gesturing at it.

A red eyebrow went up, Shouto’s mismatched gaze pinning on it with distrust. “I do not think I like chariots.”

You laughed. “It’s actually called a wheelbarrow—it’s used to haul heavy stuff. And you most definitely qualify as heavy stuff. I’m not strong enough to carry you all the way back to my room.”

Shouto’s eyes slid over the muscle of your arm assessingly. “Humans,” he murmured, almost to himself. “You cannot swim, fight, or lift things. It is a wonder you survive at all.”

You poked him with a sneakered toe. “Hey, I can too swim and lift things.”

Shouto’s pointed non-reply was answer enough and you huffed out a laugh.

“I will do it for you,” Shouto decided. “The swimming and fighting and lifting.”

For some reason this made you flush. “I—there will be no fighting on my watch.”

Shouto’s mouth quirked. In lieu of another answer he reached out an arm, gripping the side of the wheelbarrow. Your mouth went a little dry as you watched the muscles in his arm activate, and you just barely remembered to hold the wheelbarrow steady as he pulled himself in, biceps cording.

He was far too large for it, the bulk of his muscle and broad shoulders taking up nearly the entire thing, leaving his tail to drape out and drag along the sand. There was no way the tarp was going to cover enough of him.

“Okay, let’s wrap this around your tail, at least, in case anyone sees us,” you decided, spreading it out over his waist like a blanket. He looked a little goofy, and possibly a million percent more suspicious with the tarp dragging after him on the ground, but it was the best you were going to get, probably.

“So how long can you last out of salt water, do you know?” you asked, wheeling him around and heading up the beach. You figured it had to be a couple hours considering how long it must have taken him to reach the coral he’d given you, but you hated the thought of him getting uncomfortable.

“A long time. Close to a day I think,” he said.

“Wow, and you don’t dry out?” you asked.

He tipped his head back to look at you as you wheeled him, wet hair dripping into the wheelbarrow. “I do, but it takes some time.”

“And you’re not uncomfortable?” you grunted out the question, shoving him up the incline towards your room.

“Not for a long while,” he said.

Well that was good. You probably wouldn’t need to set him up in the tub then. It would be nice to eat your sushi somewhere other than the bathroom.

You were panting by the time you got Shouto up the hill, and it was an even larger production getting him through the door. It was only when you finally wheeled him inside, watching him peer around your room curiously, that you realized your seating options were limited. You were possessed of a single chair, currently occupied by your suitcase—and Shouto was far too large for it besides.

Something flipped in your stomach as your eyes were drawn towards your bed.

Like he could sense your sudden hesitance, Shouto turned to you, mismatched gaze pinning on you with a startling focus.

“You are nervous,” he observed.

You could feel your face heat. “Well I don’t exactly wheel mermen back to my room every day of the week.”

Shouto’s mouth pulled like he did not like the image of that. He grasped the sides of the wheelbarrow with clawed fingers, hefting himself out and slithering to your floor. You stared at the sight of him perched there on the rug, eyebrows lifting when he reached out a hand and drew your sitting chair towards him.

Instead of climbing in, however, he flipped open the top of your suitcase, peering in curiously.

You watched him flip a book over then ease it aside, rifling through your bag of clean socks and shorts. You sputtered when Shouto’s long fingers unearthed a bra, his head tilting.

“Nosy!” you squeaked, darting forward to throw your suitcase shut again. You didn’t know why you were so embarrassed, but you desperately hoped merpeople did not know the difference between swimwear and underthings.

Shouto’s frown was almost too cute to be borne. He looked up at you, his hand going to your ankle, as it always did.

“You do not have anything to bind the coral with,” he said, sounding a little pouty again.

Oh. So that’s what he’d been looking for.

You nudged his other hand aside, unzipping the pocket where you’d stored a few pieces of jewelry. You hadn’t brought many on the assumption that you’d mostly be working, but you’d brought enough to be useful. Shouto watched with some interest as you unclipped the chain of a necklace, sliding off the charm and storing it in your bag again.

His eyes followed you as you stepped away to your nightstand, where you’d stowed the coral he’d brought you. Immediately, you realized there was a problem.

“Uh, we might have to wait a couple more days until I can find a way to put a hole in these,” you said, gesturing with the pieces.

Shouto’s heavy tail made a scraping sound as he dragged himself across the carpet to you again. You plopped down on the edge of the bed so as not to tower over him, holding out the coral to him. Shouto angled his claws carefully away from your palm as he took a shard in his long fingers, the bleached white of it standing out starkly against the crimson of his coloring there.

Shouto’s handsome face stilled in careful concentration as he angled his pinky claw carefully, so that just the point of it pressed to a corner of the piece. You watched in fascination as he pressed down, and his claw bore right through—piercing it shockingly easily.

Your stomach flipped, and you recalled the first time you’d seen Shouto—how deadly those claws had seemed. Weeks into your friendship, you’d realized you’d been so focused on his most human of qualities—his beautiful face, inadvertently funny manner, his sweet thoughtfulness. But here was a reminder that he was also something far more than a man—possibly one of the most dangerous things in these waters.

Your heart beat a little faster as Shouto did the same to the next piece of coral, and you looped the necklace chain through them. There was a sort of dark, satisfied look in Shouto’s eye as you clasped it around your neck. A clawed finger gently touched your sternum, lifting the coral for Shouto’s inspection.

“Good,” he rumbled, looking pleased. His finger was warm against your skin, and you wondered if he could feel how quickly your heart was beating against it.

For some reason you felt your face warm. You stilled under Shouto’s touch until he let the coral drop back against your skin, seeming gratified.

Clearing your throat, you quickly rose from the bed, gesturing Shouto onto it.

“I’ll, um, grab our food,” you told him, hoping you sounded normal. “And get my laptop to pick out the movie. Just, uh, make yourself comfortable.”

You pointedly did not watch as Shouto levered himself up on the strength of those arms, instead unearthing the sushi from your room’s miniscule fridge, along with two bottles of water. You piled it all on your laptop like a tray, then turned back to Shouto.

He was far too large for your bed, laid out across it like a sunbathing model. His tail was far too long, draping off the end in a sweeping fan of scarlet and white. Your eyes traced the line of his tail back up the bed, up to where the scales freckled into the taught muscle of Shouto’s abdomen, fair skin all but glowing in the fading summer daylight, the shadows swirling and pooling in the divots of the muscle like water.

You flushed again at the sight of all of that laid out in your bed, waiting for you. You reminded yourself that he did not have the cultural context you did for sharing a bed, and that you were just splitting food. And he was another species, besides, no matter how human his upper half looked.

You very deliberately did not think about the fact that his sister had a human husband.

Shouto wriggled back against the headboard as you approached, and you clambered in next to him, careful not to brush his arm as you did. You set the sushi between you like a shield, then flipped open your laptop, wondering what kind of movie a merman might like.

“Um, got any requests?” you asked him.

Shouto’s mismatched eyes pinned on you. “I want to watch whatever you want to watch.”

Well that was no help. You wracked your brain for options, blinking when you remembered you’d told Shouto that he’d probably find human movies about merpeople funny. An idea formed.

Shouto watched with interest as your fingers clacked across the keys, alternately watching the movement of them and the windows that appeared across the screen. The island wi-fi was slow, and it took a few painful minutes, but eventually you ended up with a title screen queued up: The Little Mermaid.

You looked at Shouto for approval, only to find his eyes searching over the screen, as if for some clue of what was to come. Oh—that was right—he might have been able to speak to you, but chances were probably slim he could read any human languages.

“It’s an animated film about, uh, this mermaid who strikes a deal to be human and live on land,” you explained. “She, um, falls in love with a prince and they, uh, sort of fight to be together.”

Shouto’s mismatched eyes picked over you speculatively. “A human fights? I thought you were not capable.”

You rolled your eyes. “Well he mostly steers a boat around. But he does help try to defeat a sea witch.”

Shouto eyed you. “There is no such thing.”

A startled laugh burst out of you at the look of suspicion on his face. It was patently ridiculous that a merman was propped up in your bed telling you what was and wasn’t real.

“It’s fiction,” you told him. “People also think merpeople aren’t real, as you well know.”

Shouto looked doubtful, but you pressed play on your laptop anyway. You deposited his sushi in his lap, then hesitated over whether to hand him chopsticks too. As you watched him draw one long claw across the plastic cover, slicing it open instead of just uncapping it, you decided no. He most definitely would not be needing a pair of chopsticks.

Shouto seemed to like his plain rolls, all of the ingredients except the rice ocean-based. You watched his handsome nose flare suspiciously at your own rolls when you opened your container, shooting a look of obvious distaste at the spicy mayo drizzled over the top of one.

You had to hide another smile, strangely charmed by everything about him.

Shouto also was quickly absorbed by the movie, and did not notice when you plucked his empty container from his lap. He seemed to find it equal parts amusing and ridiculous. It was only when Ariel and Prince Eric almost kissed in the boat that you felt Shouto’s eyes on you. You stared resolutely ahead, pretending not to notice, your skin prickling.

He was distracted again by the rest of the film, even leaning forward with interest during the climax. But his eyes wandered your way again when Ariel and Eric finally kissed, and you looked up reflexively, face heating when his was closer than you had expected.

“Uhhh,” you said, stupidly. “Did you… like it?”

“Yes,” Shouto replied. Outside, the sun was sinking, and it cast Shouto’s face in an orange glow, the blue light of your laptop refracting strangely off his eyes.

Your breath quickened, for some unfathomable reason.

You jumped when warm fingers met the skin of your sternum again, and you heard the chips of coral click as they were lifted. Shouto’s eyes dipped to them, then back up to your face, dragging over it slowly.

“You said there were no other mating rituals, correct?” Shouto said.

You startled under his touch, brain functions freezing up at the mention of mating. What—mating rituals? And what did he mean other?

“Mating rituals?” you echoed, trying to keep your voice from coming out strangled.

Shouto nodded. “You said jewelry is often given. And dinner and a movie. But I believe you said there were no other common practices across cultures.”

You blinked, mind whirring with the implication that Shouto thought dinner and a movie was a mating ritual and yet had engaged in such a thing with you. And as for jewelry… you felt one of Shouto’s claws drag delicately over the skin just under your neck as he thumbed across the pieces of coral.

A sudden suspicion formed in your brain, illuminating your synapses like a light had just been snapped on. A million other things Shouto had said about fighting and hunting and protection suddenly felt like they made a terrible sort of sense to you. You stared back at Shouto, mouth dropping open.

No. There was no way.

“Shouto,” you said, your voice shooting embarrassingly high. It was ridiculous to even ask the question, and yet… “Are you—did you ask for dinner and a movie as a date?”

Shouto inclined his head. His hair had mostly dried, and it looked soft and silky in the orange light from the sun. You fought down the sudden urge to reach out and touch it.

“Dates are mating practices, are they not?” he murmured.

A hand pressed down next to your hip, titling you a little towards him with the dip of the mattress. Your heart beat fluttered, the skin at your hip prickling.

“But you—but there’s—but we didn’t—but you—” you fumbled, blinking flusteredly. The air in your room suddenly felt about a million degrees warmer, almost suffocatingly hot. Shouto tilted his head, then pressed the backs of his fingers to your cheek, as if testing your temperature.

“Are you well?” he asked.

Were you well. Were you well?

A literal fairytale creature, a prince of fairytale creatures, was sitting in your bed, having all but just admitted to engaging in mating rituals with you, and here he was asking if you were well!

You made a noise somewhere between the moo of a cow and a goose honk, and Shouto’s fingers shifted against your skin.

“How is it that you conclude the mating ritual?” he asked, watching you carefully. “If it is successful and my suit is accepted?”

His suit. His suit! Like he was courting you!

Dear god what had you been getting yourself into. And why did every single inch of your skin feel like it was on fire, especially when Shouto leaned closer?

“When they—in the movie when they pressed their mouths together,” you stammered. “You must know it from your sister having a human husband—it’s called kissing.”

Shouto’s fingers moved across your skin, until he was cupping your face in one large palm. Your breath froze entirely in your lungs. This close, his face was somehow even more perfect, and you were entirely robbed of higher brain function, gawking at him like he was an animal in a zoo.

Shouto was near enough that you could feel the exhalation of his next words on your mouth. “I would like do it, this kissing,” he said, tone slow and rolling. “That is if you accept me. If you acknowledge we are mates.”

You couldn’t really think past the feeling of his hand on your face, the way his claws rasped so sweetly over the skin behind your ear. He was so warm and so close and so stupidly, mind-numbingly handsome, and the low, gentle way he spoke to you sounded like the sea, a rumble of waves you wanted to sink beneath.

You opened your mouth to ask him to repeat the question, as your processing power was suddenly at zero percent.

But then Shouto shifted on the bed, the weight of his hand tipping you even further towards him. You felt yourself losing a little balance, falling, a hand pressing against his naked chest to catch yourself—

—And then Shouto’s mouth caught yours, and you forgot to feel anything else at all.

#todoroki x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #shouto x reader #shoto x reader #shoto x y/n #todoroki x you #todoroki x y/n #shouto todoroki x reader #shoto todoroki x reader #bnha x reader #andie's writing

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sluttyten · 7 months ago

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Little Shop of Wonders

Kinktober Day 8 | Kun Masterlist | Member Masterlist

tags: sex pollen, free use, consensual free use, fuck toy, shower sex, lots of cum, facefucking, masturbation, bukkake, cunnilingus, blowjobs, slight exhibitionism, subspace

length: 5971

The bell over the door jingled as you pushed it open, stepping foot inside the shop.

You’d never noticed this place before. An old shop with big glass window displays filled with plants and crystals, its heavy wooden door recessed from the street, an old brass lantern hung above the door offering only a small puddle of flickering light over the doormat.

“Welcome,” the doormat had scrawled across it, “to the Little Shop of Wonders.”

You weren’t sure what to expect, but it was a cool, damp October night, and the shop looked like a dry place to wait for your boyfriend.

Kun had an appreciation for magic. Usually, he favored card tricks, sleight of hand, but he’d shown you before that he was intrigued by more magical magic. He would like this place, too, so you texted him the address since he was already on the way to pick you up from work.

From deep in the recesses of the store, you hear a woman’s voice call out, “Welcome! Have a look around, and I’ll be there to help you shortly!”

The store is very old, if you had to guess. The floors are hardwood, bleached by ages of sunlight, dry and dusty with each step you take. The boards creak, and even when you pass over a thick rug, the floor groans beneath you, belching up dust. Dried flowers and herbs hang from the rafters. Strings of lights drape the edges of the room, occasionally cross-crossing the space in between. You spot more of those brass lanterns hanging at the ends of heavy wooden bookcases, the shelves of which are weighed down with heavy tomes and knick knacks that range from crystals and cute animal carvings to disturbingly realistic wooden figurines of people and a skull with a candle melted atop it.

This place gives you the creeps while simultaneously pulling you in deeper. It feels like magic. It tingles over your skin, smelling sweet.

You don’t know how long you’ve been walking around before you hear the door jingle in the distance.

You bump into a viney potted plant on the floor, and a cat bolts out of the shadows, streaking through a gap in the shelves. You follow the cat, discovering that it’s leading you back into the center of the store from where you’d drifted to the back edges. You can see the front door, the misty blue twilight sky outside the front windows.

Kun stands in the doorway, framed by that eerie light, though the light of the lantern glows on his face, radiant.

“There you are,” he says with a grin, stepping inside the store fully. “What kind of place have you found?”

“Welcome to the Little Shop of Wonders,” says the same woman’s voice as before, although now it sounds as though she’s floating above you.

You twist around, looking up at the ceiling, and you find her. She’s a wiry older woman, her curling gray hair tumbling around her shoulders, a long skirt and apron swishing around her legs as she very carefully balances and navigates her way across the beams.

When you look back at Kun, he’s watching her with a bemused expression, which shifts to that of one impressed when the woman leaps down from the beam and lands lightly on her feet.

She brushes her hands off on her apron, and looks at the pair of you with a wide, warm, inviting smile on her face.

“It’s so nice to meet you.” Her hands go to her hips, and she looks the pair of you over, her gaze studying the way you gravitate towards each other. “What can I help you with?”

“Oh.” You and Kun glance at each other, and then you say, “We’re just looking around.”

The woman nods her head. “Of course! If you look long enough, whatever you’re meant to have in here will jump out at you.”

You take Kun’s hand, and for a little while you browse the shelves, occasionally coming across a cat or the witchy woman herself, humming as she passes through different areas of the shop.

Finally, after you feel that you’ve spent nearly an hour together looking at the small oddities and interests in the store, you realize that it’s time you leave so you can get home. But Kun’s interested in the live plants the woman has sitting beside a window towards the back of the shop. He brushes his fingers along a blush pink leaf, lifts his fingers along the stem, and cups one of the curved bloodred petals.

“I’d be careful with that one, if I were you.” The woman appears suddenly at your elbow, nudging her way between you and Kun. She cups the plant’s pot in her hands, lifting it gently. “This one’s a powerful aphrodisiac. Quite a strong stimulant.”

Kun peeks at you over her head. You stifle a giggle against your hand.

“Doubt me if you like,” she warns, “But this plant’s pollen is known to cause intense arousal when ingested. Whether that means if the residue is on your skin, or if it’s contained within a bottle of honey.”

Suddenly she’s lifting a hand, a small vial of glinting golden honey sits in her palm.

“Are you saying that’s a bottle of sex honey?” You ask, trying to keep from laughing.

The woman’s mouth tightens. “Yes, dear. Essentially. A taste of this honey, and you and your boy would be bound to fall into bed together. THat’s why I have it labeled for sale over in the love and sex section of the shop. Now, if you ingest the pollen directly, say if he were to lick his fingers now after having touched the plant, the effects would be much stronger. Arousal lasting days, possibly.”

Again, Kun catches your eye over the woman’s head, and you watch your boyfriend daringly lift his hand to his lips, and he pops his index and middle finger both into his mouth.

“Oh, darling….” The witchy woman shakes her head while looking at Kun. She quickly sits the plant back down among the others, and she waves her hand towards the front door of the shop. “You should leave now. Good luck. And you, my dear,” she says with a look in your direction, “You may want to purchase a bottle of the honey, just so you can keep up with him.”

“I think we’ll be fine, but thank you.” You wrap your arm around Kun’s and walk towards the door with him, calling over your shoulder to her, “Maybe if this goes as well as you’re promising, we’ll be back for some of that sex honey.”

You swear that instead of swinging gently shut as it had when you opened it, the door slams behind you as you and Kun step out onto the sidewalk outside the Little Shop of Wonders.

“Come on.” Kun slides his hand down into yours, leading you away to where his car is parked. “Let’s get home.”

On the ride home, you both laugh about the woman’s warnings. It just sounds so silly, the things she was saying. Kun keeps sucking on his fingers, saying that he’s still waiting for it to kick in like she promised, that from the sound of it, he’ll need to fuck you as soon as you get home, but it must be slow acting. “I’m not even a little bit hard, yet. Maybe her plant isn’t working right. Not that I need the help, but she’s made it sound like one taste of the pollen and I’m going to be rock hard for days.”

You laugh, tipping your head against the seat to watch as Kun flicks his tongue between the V of his index and middle finger. “Kun, I promise, if you’re rock hard for days, if this pollen truly works as well as she’s said, you can fuck me however, wherever, as often as you want.”

“I have free use of you?” Kun’s teasing, looking over at you as he rolls the car to a stop at a light. “You’d be my little fuck toy?”

“Anything for you, Kun.” You’re playing, but some part of you is actually serious. You love Kun. Since you started dating him, you’ve wanted him a ridiculous amount. It’s only because you can’t constantly be on his dick that you haven’t let on to him how horny you frequently are. You’ve tried to tone it down, but honestly, giving him free use to fuck you however and wherever and whenever he likes is exactly what you’ve needed all this time.

If only the ridiculous notion of sex pollen was real and not just the imaginary creation of some batty woman in a mysterious shop.

When you get home, you hop in the shower while Kun starts to prepare dinner.

You’ve been in there for only about five minutes, when the door to the bathroom opens. You pull the shower curtain back a bit, peeking out into the steamy bathroom. Kun’s right there, already climbing into the shower, yanking the curtain back shut behind him as he backs you towards the wall.

“What’s this?” You giggle, reaching for his arm. “Did the pollen kick in or something?”

“Yeah,” Kun murmurs, and then his lips are on yours, his hands on your hips.

You can’t believe he’s really going along with this, playing into it just to have shower sex. You let him spin you around so your chest and cheek are against the wall. Kun pulls one of your arms behind your back, the other you lift above your head to brace yourself a bit.

“Any time, anywhere, that’s what you said right?” Kun confirms as he grinds forward against your ass.

“Mhmm,” you moan, rolling your hips back to meet his movements. “Yes, Kun.”

His mouth moves fiery hot over your bare shoulder, his skin hot against yours everywhere he touches. “Perfect.”

And then he’s thrusting forward, driving his cock between your legs, rutting forward again and again until his cock slides inside you.

With no prep, it burns a little, but you like it. You like when Kun gets a little rough from time to time. Like right now, when he just starts plunging into you with these big thrusts, clearly just chasing his own orgasm. His hand holds yours against your lower back.The shower spraying down on you both has your skin all slippery, your bound hands sliding with each of Kun’s powerful thrusts.

Your moans echo around the bathroom, and Kun’s breaths come hard and fast against your ear.

Kun presses up against your back, pinning you between him and the wall, his weight bearing down on you as he fucks into you. Each press of his cock inside you, each catch of his breath against your ear, the heat in your belly stirs a little more. But it doesn’t stir as quickly as Kun, he cums with his mouth against your throat, his body flush against yours.

One of his hands slides around down your belly, down between your legs, fingers against your clit as he thrusts several more times. Kun fucks his cum deeper inside you, gliding against your G spot while stimulating your clit, and you fall apart in his arms, feeling like you’re dissolving into sweet bliss as he keeps rocking his hips forward and tracing his fingers over your sensitive clit.

He keeps going until you’re whining, until he’s spilling inside you again.

Your legs shake as you actually put them into use again. Kun steps back, leaving you empty and on your own two feet. He rinses off quickly, running a hand down his body, over his cock. You twist around to watch him, biting your lip as you watch his hand run along his cock.

“Keep looking at me like that, babe, and I’m going to have to feed you something other than the dinner I started.” He leans in quickly, dropping a kiss to your lips, and then he steps out of the shower, calling back to you, “Shower quickly, dinner should be ready in a few minutes.”

You finish your shower, dry off, dress in a camisole and cotton shorts, then you head to the kitchen.

Kun’s standing at the counter, chopping a few toppings for the stew he’s made. You walk up behind him, wrap your arms around him and lay your head against his bare shoulder. He’s only wearing sweatpants that hang low on his hips. You run your hand over his bare belly, up his chest, and back down to the edge of his sweatpants.

Kun sits the knife aside.

You turn your head, brushing your lips over his warm skin. Kun lets out a shaky breath. You let your pinky finger tuck beneath the edge of his sweatpants.

“It smells good,” you tell him. “I’m ready to eat.”

Kun’s hand trembles as he picks up the knife again, and you rest your cheek against his shoulder, watching as he tries to chop up the last few ingredients. And then you notice.

He’s really so warm, his skin flaming hot beneath your cheek.

“Kun?” You take a step to the side, peering at his face, lifting a hand to his cheek. “Are you sick? You feel feverish.”

His eyes are dark when he looks at you. His pupils are blown wide, and he nearly moans at the cool press of your fingers against his warm cheek. “I’m not sick. I feel fine, except I don’t think that lady was lying about the pollen. I’m still so hard, babe, it hasn’t gone down at all.”

You look down to his sweatpants, at his cock that’s still ragingly hard, tenting the front of his pants.

Your mouth fills with saliva, and you lift your gaze back up to meet your boyfriend’s. You swallow to keep yourself from drooling when you say, “I meant what I said in the car, Kun. However, wherever, as often as you like. I can take it. Use me as your fucktoy.”

“Fuck.” Kun sits the knife aside again, and he reaches for you, twisting his fingers in your hair, and he forces you to your knees.

Your mouth drops open as Kun uses his free hand to push his sweatpants down. His hard, heavy cock springs free, already wet at the tip, leaking a crystalline thread of precum. You don’t need Kun’s hand in your hair to guide you; you dive forward, catching the falling bead on your tongue and following it up to the source, sucking Kun’s cockhead in.

That’s when he takes over, hand pressing against the back of your head, forcing you deeper on his cock. His hips jerk forward at the same time, triggering your gag reflex as he hits the back of your throat. Not that that stops him, if anything it encourages him to go harder, faster, and you take it all, hungry for his cock shoved down your throat even as your eyes begin to water, as your jaw and throat ache from the repeated pressure. You slurp around him as he starts to drag your mouth off of his cock. His fingers tight in your hair, Kun allows you a brief breath before he’s fucking back into your mouth.

You’re drooling all over his cock as Kun holds the back of your head, fucking his cock into the deep warmth of your throat. And when he cums, he just keeps going, filling your mouth and shooting down the back of your throat, it leaks from the corners of your lips, and you think you’re going crazy because you want more.

Kun drags you off his cock by your hair.

Spit and cum and tears streak your face, dripping from your chin as you look up at Kun.

He releases his hold on your hair to run his thumb under your bottom lip. “You’re so beautiful, babe. Get up, here you go.” Kun offers you his hand, and you slide your palm against his as he pulls you up to your feet. “Good girl, now sit down. It’s time for dinner.”

You obediently sit at the table, still a little fucked-dumb, still dripping his cum even when Kun serves you a bowl of the stew he made. It smells heavenly, rich with spices, and you dig in, the flavors of it only made better with the added flavor of Kun’s cum lingering on your tongue.

Kun pretty much inhales his helping of the stew, and he doesn’t even wait for you to finish eating before he’s walking over to you. You’re quite hungry, so you don’t want him to pull you away from the meal, even though you can see his cock still bulging his sweatpants, staining them with a spot of precum.

“Keep eating, babe,” Kun tells you, reaching out to stroke your hair. “You need to eat to keep up your strength. If what the lady said is true, I’m probably gonna be like this for a few days.”

You think back to him sucking the pollen residue off his fingers, licking his hands clean. Who knows how much he ingested?

You eat a spoonful of stew, eyeing his erection out of the corner of your eye. Is he just going to stand there and not take care of it? You look up at Kun, and it’s a horny little demon inside you that speaks with your voice, saying, “You don’t have to wait for me to finish eating, Kun. Until this wears off, I’m yours to do what you want with me.”

His cock twitches in his pants. Kun groans.

“Do you mean that, though? Really?”

You nod. “Anything you want. Within reason. No bringing anyone else into this–”

“I don’t want to share you!” Kun interjects.

You continue, “Nothing that we haven’t talked about before.”

Kun smirks at that. “Well, that pretty much leaves everything on the table, then doesn’t it?” He strokes your hair again. “All I want right now is to cover you in my cum, babe, head to toe. I want to fuck you in every room in this house, fuck you until we both pass out. I want to treat you like my doll.”

You turn back to your bowl of stew. You shrug, “Then do it, Kun.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him draw his cock out of his pants. You watch him start stroking his cock, but you focus on eating your stew, blowing on it to cool it off, taking your time to lick the spoon clean after each bite. You eat the stew like your pussy isn’t throbbing with arousal watching Kun jerk off inches away from your face.

He cums again when you’ve got your spoon halfway to your mouth. Kun’s cum streaks over your cheek, landing in your hair, across your lips, some of it hits your spoon and your hand. You eat that spoonful too, enjoying the extra salty addition of his cum to it. Kun keeps stroking his length, a few last spurts striping your cheek as you reach for the bowl. You lift it to your lips, quickly draining what little is left because as soon as it’s gone, as soon as you’ve sat the bowl down, Kun is pulling you to your feet.

When he moves you so your ass is on the edge of the table, you expect Kun to push your shorts to the side and slide his cock right inside you.

You don’t expect Kun to sink to his knees, for him to tear your shorts down around your ankles, and bury his face between your thighs. He spreads your legs with a hand on each thigh, massaging them as he licks at your pussy, as he fucks his tongue into you, as he sucks at your clit and licks up your wetness as you’re drenching his tongue, writhing against his face, needing more and more.

Kun moans loudly, eating you out in the most noisy manner he ever has.

You cum on his tongue, hands knotted in his hair as you ride it out, grinding against Kun’s face.

“If this is what we have in store,” you gasp as Kun licks a strip up your pussy one more time, “I think I could get used to this. You’ve never given better head, honestly. I need you to be this horny all the time if it means I get eaten out like that.”

Kun scatters kisses over your thighs. “We’re just getting started, babe.”

- - -

For the rest of the night, Kun has you sit on his lap, cockwarming him while you watch a movie together.

Kun’s hands are constantly moving – stroking along your thighs, dipping to touch your clit while forcing you to sit still on him; he pulls the neckline of your camisole down to expose your tits, and he teases your nipples until you’re whimpering and fighting the urge to fuck yourself on his cock. But as soon as you get desperate enough to beg for it, Kun stops.

He’ll have you sit up, kneeling above his lap with just the head of his cock still buried in your pussy as he jerks off, cumming inside you so he can watch it drip back out of your pussy. Instead of letting you cum, when you’re teetering on the edge, he’ll have you kneel on the floor, cockwarm him with your mouth instead so he can cum across your tongue and cheeks again, adding even more to the mess he’d made at dinner. He edges you again, and then he fucks your tits, cumming across them then taking his time afterwards to clean it up with his tongue, feeding it back to you and watching you swallow everything before he returns his tongue to your nipples, flicking his tongue over the hardened buds until you’re rocking your hips up off the sofa restlessly.

Kun cums more times than you can keep track of, and you take all of the cum he gives you, hungrily sucking his cock, feeling him fill your pussy, spreading his cum across your tits with your fingers, moaning as he shoots his load across your back while he’s got his fingers inside you.

Kun edges you through it all until finally your body can’t take anymore, and you cum around him while Kun’s got you riding him. He’s hugging you to his chest, his mouth locked with yours, and he is once again spilling into you when your orgasm finally explodes through you.

You don’t remember him carrying you to the bathroom, don’t remember Kun rinsing off with you in the shower, or when he carries you to bed. You remember only a brief glimpse of his cock finally going soft when he settles into bed beside you.

And you think that’s it.

The sex pollen ran its course.

You’re a little bit disappointed at that thought, truly. When you wake in the morning to pale sunlight, you check on your sleeping boyfriend, and Kun is all spread out beside you. He’s kicked away the sheets in his sleep, and although he still feels warm to the touch, his cock is soft against his thigh.

You know maybe you should feel like you had enough yesterday. The never-ending edging paired with the amount of fucking you and excessive cumming Kun had done should have satisfied you. But you were having fun. You liked Kun treating you like a cumdump.

Maybe you should go back to the Little Shop of Wonders, ask the witch for that vial of honey or maybe purchase the whole sex pollen plant.

You crawl quietly out of bed, pull on a shirt of Kun’s, and you tiptoe to the kitchen to deal with the mess from last night. Neither of you had bothered with the dishes from the stew, which are still spread out on the table. You get to work cleaning, tidying things and doing the dishes.

It’s probably for the best that Kun’s already gotten over the effects of the sex pollen, you think as you finish the dishes from last night and start making breakfast instead. Kun is supposed to work today. He’s got a deadline coming up, so he needs to get in the studio today, and he’d been complaining to you yesterday morning about a meeting he has this morning. He’s got things to do, people to see, he can’t call in sick today because he’s too busy dealing with a sex pollen crisis, though at least the people he’s working with and having meetings with are some of his closest friends; they just might understand the situation.

“Good morning,” Kun says suddenly behind you, startling you a bit, but before you can turn to him, his arms are around you, and his hard cock is against your ass. “I guess this isn’t over yet, babe.” He kisses your cheek. “I thought when I fell asleep that it must be. I’d gone soft, but I just woke up hard as I ever was yesterday.”

He thrusts against your ass.

“So I’m gonna fuck you, babe. But you keep doing what you’re doing, hm?” Kun pushes up the back of the shirt you’re wearing, revealing your ass to him. “God, you’re truly unbelievable, you know that? So fucking pretty, my babe.” And then he’s pressing in, cock pushing inside your pussy.

You brace your arms against the countertop, and you try to keep finishing the breakfast prep you’d been doing before Kun came in. The way that he’s fucking you makes that a little more difficult, but you try, and Kun seems to like that.

“Yes, babe, look at you. You’re taking it so well, letting me use you like this.” His cock twitches inside you.

It’s not easy, that’s for sure.

Your focus starts to slip when Kun pulls your hips back, angling you just right so each of his thrusts is nailing against your G spot. He’s moaning behind you, praising how sweet and tight and warm you feel around his cock. Your pussy just keeps growing wetter and wetter as he reaches up beneath your shirt to grope at your tits, as you try to keep on task even as Kun’s fucking you into delirium.

Kun cums, flooding your pussy, pressing in deep a few more times.

He steps back, and although you try to keep tight, to keep his cum in, you can feel some of it dripping out, sliding down your thigh, dropping to the floor.

Kun pats your ass, then pulls the shirt back down.

“Good girl.” He kisses your cheek again.

He sits down at the table, and a few moments later, the breakfast you were making is ready, so he pulls you into his lap to dine together.

“Kun,” you say after a while, “Don’t you have to go to the studio today? Don’t you have a meeting too?”

His erection is digging into your thigh, unable to be ignored.

“I do, and I was actually thinking about that.” He brushes his lips over your neck. “What if you come with me? This reaction isn’t going away, so I’m going to need to cum regardless of whether you’re there or not. So I could jerk off every five minutes, or you could come along and we’ll both get something out of it. What do you say?”

Twenty minutes later, you’re in the car with Kun. He’s flying down the streets.

Even though his eyes are focused on the road, his driving is worse than usual, though that almost certainly has to do with the fact that as soon as he’d pulled onto the road, he’d tangled his fingers in your hair and urged your mouth down into his lap.

You eagerly sucked at Kun’s cock, stroking him with both hands, leaving kisses along his length, drooling over the tip, choking yourself on him. Kun lays his hand on the back of your head, directing you when he really feels like he needs to. As you draw closer to the studio where Kun works as a producer, he starts taking over, pushing you down around his cock, his hips rising off the seat to drive himself deeper down your throat.

He cums right as he’s pulling into the parking garage of the studio. You clean him up as he navigates to a parking spot, and you wait patiently in the passenger seat as Kun gets out. He comes around to your side, opening the door and taking your hand like a gentleman, and he pulls you into a kiss as soon as you’re both standing outside the car.

He takes you into his studio, sitting you in his lap while he starts working, though that only works for so long. Soon he’s getting distracted by the pressing need he keeps grinding against your ass, so he has you slide to your knees beneath the mixing board. You pull up the sweater you wore, and Kun has you push your tits together around his cock, and he fucks between the softness of them, cumming across your tits and then immediately dragging your mouth around his cock.

You’re still kneeling there beneath the mixing board with your mouth full of his cock when his friend, who is also the artist he’s recording today, walks in. YangYang either doesn’t notice you down there or chooses not to say anything. You obediently keep your mouth around Kun, suckling and shifting on your knees.

YangYang chats with Kun for just a couple minutes, and then he heads into the recording booth.

Kun drags you off his cock, and you look up at him. “Babe, I really need to focus on this recording session, okay? So I’m gonna need you to take everything I give you, no whining or touching yourself, okay?”

You nod, sticking your tongue out, offering your mouth up to Kun again.

“Good girl.” Kun pushes you back down around his cock. You hear him press a button above your head, and then he says, “Alright, YangYang, go ahead.”

You bob your head on Kun’s cock, working your hardest to get him to cum for you, knowing that if he doesn’t cum, Kun’s going to be distracted. All you have to do is keep him satisfied, and then he’ll be focused.

He cums within minutes, but you keep going, and Kun tightens his fingers in your hair. You bring your hands up to his cock too, stroking him into your mouth, letting some of his cum and your spit slide down to lube the way. You’re making a mess of him; his cum leaking out of your mouth is pooling on the front of his pants, but you can’t help it. You’re swallowing around him, swallowing the first load of cum, but before long he’s cumming again, letting out a grunt as you choke around his cock.

“Dude, you good?” YangYang asks from inside the booth.

“Fine. Try that verse again.”

Kun’s hand weighs down against the back of your head, pushing you all the way down around his cock, and you close your eyes, letting him do it. You sink into some kind of state where you’re not asleep, but you’re not fully conscious either. All you know is the weight of Kun’s cock on your tongue, the taste of his cum, the smell of him as your nose is buried at the base of his cock. You can hear his voice, but he could be talking to you or a whole crowd of people, and you wouldn’t know the difference.

Eventually, Kun lets you up again, tugging lightly on your hair.

You gag as you’re pulled off of him, coughing and gasping for breath. Kun’s cum drips from your lips and chin.

“Are you okay?” Kun asks when he takes one look at the dazed expression on your face. “Babe, are you good to continue.”

You nod, feeling your lips form a loose smile.

Kun brings his hand up, wiping at your cheeks and chin and lips. His fingers are gentle beneath your chin as he brings you forward into a kiss. His lips leave yours, brushing over your forehead.

“We’re done with this for now.” He helps you the rest of the way to your feet. “You’re too far gone, you can’t even speak to me right now. If you could see the look on your face right now, my love, you would understand. Don’t pout.” You didn’t realize you were until Kun said that, and you try to tame your expression. He smiles, leading you over to the sofa along the back wall. “Take a nap. You’re amazing, and I love you, and once this all wears off, I owe you something huge.”

You hum, sinking down onto the sofa, laying your head down, and immediately you can feel a tired pull.

Kun strokes his hand over your head, kisses your forehead one more time, and you’re asleep before he walks away.

- - -

You sleep it off there on the sofa, waking hours later to go home with Kun.

He fucks you senseless a few more times that night at home, and when you wake the next morning you stay in bed with him, waiting for him to wake, waiting for him to need to fuck you again, to let you suck his cock again even though you’re pretty sure at this point, your throat is permanently molded to the shape of Kun’s cock.

But when he wakes, Kun just pulls you against his chest. His cock doesn’t grow hard. He just sighs and holds you close, and you’re actually perfectly content with that change of pace too.

But a few days later, as you’re heading home from work, you get the thought into your head to return to the Little Shop of Wonders, to see if that witchy woman will sell you a vial of that sex honey.

The pollen had been a lot. Your body is still aching days later, and Kun swears his balls are sore from how much he came in such a short span of time. But you’ve both agreed that maybe the honey would be nice to have – a less intense version of that that lasts only a few hours wouldn’t be bad to experience from time to time.

You walk down the side street you’d passed down just a few days ago, and you search the shopfronts for the window displays filled with crystals and viney plants, for the recessed doorway with the brass lantern and the ancient-looking wooden door.

But you pass up and down that street three times, checking each shop before you finally give up. It’s not here. It’s as if the Little Shop of Wonders was never here at all, but you know you couldn’t have imagined it.

Weeks pass, you forget about it, too swept up in the holiday season closing in around you. Christmas is just days away, winter staking her claim over the city with a snowstorm blowing in this afternoon, ruining your plans to go shopping for Kun a Christmas present and a birthday present, since that’s a week later.

You’re hurrying home from work, bundled up against the chill, thinking about what you can get Kun that he’ll truly appreciate.

And then, from the corner of your eye through the swirling snow, you see a gleam of bronze. You turn your head.

A brass lamp.

A wooden door.

Large plate glass windows frosted over, but not entirely concealing the displays of crystals and books and a wreath of candles and symbols.

A new wooden sign creaks above the door, blowing back and forth in the wind.

The Little Shop of Wonders sits waiting, promising the perfect present for Kun.

a/n: I could've gone on and on with this one honestly! I was going to write a few more scenes, but it's getting late and I really need to post this.

I hope you enjoyed! Reblogs are deserving of my eternal gratitude, likes are greatly appreciated, and your thoughts and comments are always welcome !

#nct smut #nct #wayv #wayv smut #kun #kun smut #qian kun #qian kun smut

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animeloverskylarmoon · 8 months ago

Text

Ulquiorra Cifer (Bleach) - Oneshot

“I’ll enjoy killing you reaper.”

The hand around your throat felt final. With your zanpakuto a good distance away, you really couldn’t see how this would end in your favor. In actuality, you should have known it was an ambush. Those two previous hollows had been taken down way too easily.

All it took was one viciously charged punch to your gut and you’d been knocked down. Now with its hand squeezing against your windpipe, you just prayed that it would be over quickly.

Your vision was becoming blurry, you could feel your consciousness slipping.

“Release her.”

There was a weight to those words, and your shaky gaze moved to the source of the order. All your mind seems to process are those emotionless green eyes. The hollow turned, still holding you off the ground. All you could offer was another grunt of pain.

“You would kill your own kind to protect a reaper.”

The hollow sounded almost disgusted.

“You are not my kind.”

Your savior lifted his hand, and the beam that shot out blasted the hollow’s head clean off. Your breath hitched, because the grip loosened almost immediately and your body was falling. You didn’t even have the strength to brace for the fall. You were caught, and your gaze shifted in his direction, trying to make sense of what little your brain could process before you finally gave in.

The next time your eyes opened, you were staring at a familiar ceiling. You blinked and when you turned your head, Unohana offered a smile.

“You’re awake.”

She looked altogether pleased that you were now conscious, and you had so many questions. Like how did you get there? What happened, who was the reaper that saved you?”

“It seems Ulquiorra-san made it just in time. I’m relieved that you’re alright.” Unohana wore a gentle look and you were happy, but the sentence seemed to play over in your head and that’s why you registered who had saved you.

“U-Ulquiorra-san?”

She nodded, turning her head as she gestured to someone. When she walked away, you weren’t expecting the former Espada to be your rescuer.

“You..saved me?”

“Yes.”

His tone was blank, his expression the very same.

While the alliance with them was solidified, it was still strange. Nel was easy to adjust to, after all she had been on your side from the beginning, but Grimmjow, even Harribel, it was weird. But obviously appreciated.

Now with all the wars done, they were as much a part of the Gotei 13 as any other reaper. So it shouldn’t be crazy that he would help. It was just the fact that you knew his personality. Before that moment, you wouldn’t have thought that he cared at all for you, much less your safety.

Suddenly you’re aware of how inadequate you are as a reaper.

“I guess it should be expected, I’m weak and useless.”

You laughed, but it was only to cover up your own inadequacies.

“You are weak.”

A bead of sweat ran down the side of your head at his very calm tone.

“Geez, he could have at least lied to me.”

It shouldn’t even be a surprise.

“But you are not useless.”

That made you turn. There was still a detachment to his gaze, but he was looking right at you.

“Everything in this world has a use, I have found mine. You will find yours.”

There was a sincerity in those words, even if he couldn’t display it on his face.

In that moment, you truly felt like you would indeed find your purpose.

Maybe that’s when your perspective on him started to change. After your recovery, you were back taking missions.

Your most recent one was with Shinji. While the assignment didn’t truly require a captain, you got the feeling that he just wanted to visit the Karakura. After all, he’d spent a few decades in the town. Now in casual clothing, the first place he stopped by was at Kisuke’s. Hiyori, Orihime, Ichigo and to your surprise Ulquiorra were all there sitting around the table. Ichigo was bantering with Hiyori, Orihime was just laughing happily at their antics and Ulquiorra stayed planted, almost blending into the background.

“Hey baldy you’re back.”

The nickname earned a yell.

“Stop calling me that you loudmouth shrimp!!”

She then persisted to grab him into a chokehold. At that point you realized how obvious it was that he missed his other home. A smile made its way on your face.

“(Y/N)-san, do you mind getting some more rice cakes? The store down the street sells the best ones. Kurosaki-kun ate all the rest.”

“I-I did not!”

His cheeks were burning and you were smiling.

“Hai, I’ll grab some more.”

“I will accompany you.”

Ulquiorra’s declaration earned looks from everyone in the room but Orihime. She was still wearing a bright smile.

“Really?”

Ichigo asked.

“Yes, she is weak. She needs someone to look after her.”

Shinji laughed and you puffed your cheeks that were now flushed.

“Y-You don’t have to keep saying it.” You grumble.

Ulquiorra was unfazed and you sighed.

“Let’s just go.”

In a matter of seconds you were out the door. You knew he wasn’t intentionally trying to be hurtful, he’s just very blunt.

“You have fully recovered.”

The statement drew your attention, and your cheeks heated when you realized he was looking at you. From the stare he must have been doing so the entire time you were walking.

“I-I’m okay.”

You stammered out.

“That’s good.”

That was all he said before he turned his gaze forward. In truth, you couldn’t read him. He gave so little away. You weren’t sure if he was being nice or simply making an inquiry just for some kind of confirmation. That’s why you felt you had to ask.

“Before..you said that you found a purpose, a use, what is it?”

His eyes were still directed ahead.

“To help other souls, the way that Orihime-san has helped me.”

For just a moment, you can hear just a spec of emotion and it’s possibly the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen, because a single act of kindness seems to have changed the views of someone who felt so far gone.

It was at that point that you realized that you truly did admire not just Orihime, but also Ulquiorra. Maybe that’s why you always felt so warm whenever he would even look in your direction.

Each encounter felt different, you grew closer.

“You’re weaker than all those fourth squad members.”

A few other reapers laughed at the statement and you gritted your teeth, clenching your fist.

Getting jumped by members in the eleventh squad was never ideal. They still thought they were the best of the best, and despite your clear irritation at the three men standing in front of you laughing, they were right.

You’re weak.

That’s why they always pushed you around. All you had done was drop off some papers when you caught them messing with a reaper from squad four. Of course you intervened, but now you’re backed into a wall and you’re certain you can’t take three of them, not all at once.

One of them cracked their knuckles and you flash stepped. You knew he assumed you were running away, that’s why when you reappeared, delivering a harsh kick to his face, his friends looked startled. He was down for the count in seconds, and you dropped low, taking another one down. His body hit the floor with a harsh thud, grunting at the pain.

For a while you were sure you had the upper hand. After all, one was unconscious and the other was at least rattled. The next attack you planned to deliver didn’t land. The last one moved quicker and you were grabbed by the back of your head as he slammed your face into the concrete. He grinned, adding pressure and you yelled out in pain.

“Serves you right.”

His hand moved to the back of your robes and he flung you. You expected to hit a wall, or at the very least the roof of a building, but someone caught you, slowing you down. Your feet skidded midair to a stop and when you looked over your shoulder, those green eyes seemed like recognition enough.

“Shit!! It’s Ulquiorra, I’m out of here!!”

The reaper who had been pummeling you dashed off and his conscious friend picked up the passed out one, running just as quickly. You huffed, face and ego bruised. They stepped on you like dirt, but one look at Ulquiorra had them booking it into next week. It was irritating, the reminder of your difference in power, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to be mad at him. This was the second time he’d come to your rescue.

“Your abilities would be better dispensed if you weren’t afraid to utilize your zanpakuto.”

Your brows knitted and this time you turned to him fully. It dawned on you that he must have seen a part of the fight to make such a comment.

“You saw?”

“Yes.”

Yet he hadn’t jumped right in. You weren’t sure why that made you feel a bit better. You know he thinks you're weak, but he didn’t immediately assume you wouldn’t be able to handle yourself. Despite your swollen cheek, you smiled.

“A-Arigatou!”

You couldn’t seem to wipe the happy expression off your face and he looked a bit confused.

“You are happy I let them attack you?”

“Hai!”

“Do you enjoy getting hurt?”

You just laughed, because it was funny how little he understood but still made an effort to try.

Time and time again he just seemed to be there.

His stare still the same, but his actions a reflection of someone who wanted to learn, to understand what it meant to protect, to care. After all he’d done, it felt right to treat him. That’s why you were now sitting in your quarters with a bowl of ramen placed in front of him.

“Eat up, there’s plenty!”

He just gave a nod, and you took a seat, chin in your palm as you watched him eat silently. You’ve realized for a while now that there was something underlyingly elegant about Ulquiorra. The way he spoke, carried himself, even ate. He just emits a certain type of energy.

You must have just been staring at him for a while, because he placed the chopsticks down and you blinked.

“I am done. It was delicious.”

You weren’t sure how such a monotone voice could sound so endearing.

“I’m glad you liked it.”

You took the empty bowl, heading over to your sink to clean the dish. Humming happily, you were barely paying mind to much but learning more about him. When the dish was cleaned, you placed it down, turning back to Ulquiorra who was not standing and just looking at you.

You blushed.

“I-Is something wrong?”

“No.”

You laughed a bit awkwardly, inching out of the kitchen.

“T-Then why are you staring at me?”

“Because you are beautiful.”

If you weren’t red before, you sure as hell were now. You looked away with a nervous smile.

“You really need to work on your skills Ulquiorra-san.”

He may have been oblivious about every single thing, but the one thing that’s guaranteed is that you always felt safe with him. That’s why those little meetings continued. After a mission or even a tough day, you would decompress by inviting him over and just offering a meal, or conversation.

Regardless of how battered you got or what you went through, you always felt a bit better when you saw him. Those green eyes that were still so void of emotion, they felt like everything you needed. What others were put off by drew you in. That’s why when the most recent rumor, well it felt somewhat crippling.

“Did you hear, Ulquiorra-san was injured in battle?”

For a second you staggered, and you rushed over to the group.

“Did you say he was hurt!!”

They looked a bit startled.

“Y-Yes, apparently there was an encounter with a powerful enemy in the world of the living. I heard he’s in squad four be-”

You didn’t wait for the rest, you were dashing off to squad four. Your feet were moving briskly, and the second you landed in the barracks, you were rushing through the halls, almost running into a few reapers.

“Ulquiorra!!”

Your yell echoed and you made another sharp turn. The moment you entered the room, you saw those green eyes. You didn’t even wait for him to say anything, you basically jumped into his arms. He took a step back, eyes widening slightly at the contact as you clutched unto him desperately.

“You’re okay…”

You were sobbing, and he looked down, still fairly confused.

“Why is she crying?”

He couldn’t understand.

You pulled back slowly, staring at him. For a second you were searching for injury. As you fully took in his state, you couldn’t truly see any bruises, or at the very least a wound.

“Y-You’re not hurt..?”

“No. Zaraki-san made an unsanctioned trip to the world of the living to chase after Kurosaki Ichigo. The Head Captain asked me to follow to ensure the damage was at a minimum. Unfortunately he got to Kurosaki before I arrived."

Ulquiorra stepped to the side and Ichigo’s twitching form was laying on the bed. You sweatdropped.

It just goes to show how unreliable gossip is.

You sighed, wiping your cheeks as you sniffled. You felt like a fool making a scene for nothing. Now thoroughly embarrassed, you just turned.

“W-Well I’m glad you’re okay!”

With that you were hightailing it in the opposite direction.

It was clear that just the thought of anything happening to him would be devastating to you. Before you knew it you’d become attached, that’s why with every little meeting at your barracks you felt a little more awkward. The moment you became aware of your feelings, you felt like he had too.

“(Y/N)-san.”

“Hai!!”

You jumped, and from his expression it’s clear he wanted to know why you were acting like a skittish cat. You swallowed, looking away, playing it off with a laugh. Suddenly being in your space with him alone felt like too much. It’s not like you could stop the visits altogether. Surely he would know something is up.

Also..you didn’t really want them to stop. The more you thought about it the more flustered you became.

“W-We should probably call it a night. L-Let me see you out.”

You jumped to your feet to do just that, but your legs chose that very moment to stop working. Your legs caught with each other and you tumble right into his chest with a grunt.

His hands came down to steady you, and when you looked up, you couldn’t move, almost stopped breathing. That emerald gaze was fixated on you and every fiber in your body just froze. You weren’t sure how to react, what to say. Your eyes shook and before you could stop yourself, you were pushing up on your toes as you pressed your lips to his. His eyes grew a fraction bigger, and yours stayed shut, terrified of rejection, or worse, disgust.

After a few moments, you pulled back with a shaky breath. Your lips quivered and your heart was beating aggressively against your rib cage. Ulquiorra still seemed to be collecting himself, and when he licked his lower lip and stared down at you, the next words were the last thing you were expecting.

“Be my wife.”

Your face flamed up.

“A-AFTER JUST ONE KISS!!”

“Yes.”

You felt like you were going to overheat. You meant to say something, reason with him, but this time his head lowered and he leaned in, pressing a kiss to your awaiting lips. Your brows knitted, and the gentle way his hands held your shoulders made you want to melt on the spot. With your eyes closed, you could hear your heart more clearly.

When he pulled you closer, you felt something thumping and it became apparent that the noise wasn’t your heart rate beating harshly, but it was his. You all but melted. He took one step, and you moaned the second you realized he’s used his flash step, pressing you to the door.

The sound echoed in the room, the noises of your desperate kisses felt near sinful. Your lips were meeting and joining with a sense of urgency. You had no idea Ulquiorra could kiss so well. You were barely keeping yourself upright.

Your fingers gripped tighter into his robes, and when he pulled back, you were fighting to regain your breath. When you looked at him, it was the first time you could see his emotions clearly. He was breathing pretty calmly for someone who had just stolen not just your oxygen, but also your heart.

“You taste sweet.”

That confession was almost too much. You wanted to say just that, but he kissed you again and you whimpered, now very aware that there was no escape.

He had too much power.

For once, you could admit that you were indeed weak.

#bleach #ulquiorra cifer #trust #orhime inoue #fluff #care #protective #ulquiorra x reader #gotei13 #humor #fights #ichigo kurosaki #rukia kuchiki #bleach anime #espada #cute #love

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2-dsimp · 5 months ago

Note

Yujin feels like someone who, when we date, I'll take him to my room and show him my weeb stuff, like my A2 size Ulquiorra poster (lol)

I'll be like: "this is my 2D/anime true love, my husbando, I'm saving to buy that *shows him a picture* $500 figurine, blablabla..."

Like I think yujin would be chilled, but the rest of the bois? Hmm

Icha I feel would be confused but try to understand (the gentleman appearance right?)

Miki, umm I won't take work husband home but he'll see my weeb items at work (keychains, stickers on my phone case, etc)

Soma, honestly I have no idea??

Pyrok is a plushie to begin with so this scenario wouldn't happen, but if he break my figurine I'll be very sad

Shimo gives normie vibe so I wouldn't even try, like I know canonically he kidnapped darling but say we're dating normally I'd probably go to conceal the fact that I'm a weeb

Cynix... I already know he'll get angry 😅 honestly great character but we're not compatible

Yujin would merely grin and talk about his favorite waifu’s. (His favorite is Yoruichi from bleach) out of the many waifu’s Danny spieled about to him in passing.

Icha isn’t all too versed in anime so you guessed correctly. He would sit down and listen while stealing a few of your forgettable trinkets.

Miki would be curious about the stickers and ask his coworkers about them. He’d find out through them all the lore and become highly intrigued.

Pre-zombie Soma would have played the game Bleach and teased you about how he beat your so called husbando.

Pyrok would just stare at you. (He’s a puppet by the way not a plushie XD)

Shimo isn’t quite a normie, he’s just a fan of few anime’s. He’s more of an old head retro type. But he does have his favorites especially those which involve showcasing his Oni kin.

Cynix would just give you an annoyed tch and a scrutinizing glare “Haa? What you know about such and such, slut?” Would often challenge you and if you prove yourself he’d gain a bit of respect. That is if you’ve got good taste to his standards

———-/——-

Also for further asks keep the requests limit to 1-3 characters! If it’s not a general question about their origins!

I’ll allow 4 if it’s about the spotlight bois but no other exceptions!

#Shimo the Woni #Soma the Zombie #Miki the Coworker #Yujin the Hacker #Cynix the Incel #Icha the Cultleader #Pyrok the KClown #yandere insert #yandere ocs #yandere male x reader #yandere confession #yandere imagines #yandere concept #yandere blurb

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ncity-agere · 2 months ago

Note

In my feels about Hoshi’s upcoming enlistment so maybe a drabble about how his little would handle it ?

You don’t want Caregiver!Hoshi to go! He’s your Tiger, why does he gotta leave?

Soonyoung is trying his best to calm you down while you’re on the floor having a meltdown, looking at your phone screen. “Sweetie? Cub? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

You turn to face him, tears running down your face and snot starting to flow from your nose. “Tiger… Tiger is enl… enlisb… en-” You tried to say.

“You saw?” Soonyoung asked, peering down at the article on your phone screen, no doubt reading the dreaded ‘Hello, this is PLEDIS ENTERTAINMENT’.

He cooed pitifully and knelt down next to you, holding his arms open. “Oh, Cub… Tiger’s gotta enlist, yeah.” He sounded a little sad, but not super bothered. Still, you curled up in his arms and sniffled as he wiped your nose with his sleeve. “It’s not my choice. I’d much rather be playing dress-up with you or making Mickey Mouse pancakes-”

You wrinkle your nose. “Burning Mickey Mouse pancakes.” You correct, even though your tears.

“Okay, burning pancakes -but I’ve gotta do it. It’s my duty, you know?”

You giggle a little at that. “Hehe… Tiger said ‘duty’.” You laugh, making Soonyoung crack a smile.

“Yeah. I guess I did, huh?” Soonyoung held you, pressing his lips together tightly. “It won’t be the worst thing in the world. I can still call you sometimes, I’ll visit during leave, and you’ll get to see Tiger without hair! Me! Bald! Can you believe that?” He asked incredulously, already having made peace with his soon-to-be lack of hair. Really, after a year and a half of merciless bleaching, it’s probably for the best now.

“No hair?” You ask, peering up at him curiously.

“No hair. It won’t be so bad since I’ll look so silly.” He assured you, kissing your hair. “I won’t be gone for so long. Before I go, you can take lots and lots of silly pictures of Tiger bald, okay?”

You sniffle and wipe your tears, nodding. “Okay Tiger. Promise?”

Soonyoung nuzzled his forehead with yours and nodded, shutting his eyes. “Tiger promises. My brave little cub will be just fine without me, okay? I’m so, so proud of you already.” He holds your hands and starts to get up from the floor with a soft groan. “Now come on, let’s get off the icky floor before one of us gets sick, huh?”

Well… the enlistment came eventually, weeks later. And both of you were in conflicted tears when it came time to shave his head and ship him off. You stood with the rest of Seventeen and a few of Soonyoung’s friends and family to see him go at the very last day. There were a few Carats nearby, but Pledis had agreed to make this a quiet event, as were Wonwoo and Jeonghan’s enlistments.

He waved to you all with a smile and entered the base, leaving you all to stand there sadly. His hyper energy was just… gone. And it left your heart sad and missing you tiger’s excitable energy already.

Sure, he was okay. He was only a few hundred feet away now, but it felt like a million, billion miles. You missed your Tiger.

But true to his promise, your camera roll was full of blurry, silly bald-photos of your caregiver. There were some where his eyes were wide in surprise and others where you were in frame making a funny face while Soonyoung was distracted. You smiled scrolling through them now, a pang of hurt and a pang of happiness hitting you at the same time.

Hoshi had only been gone a day by now, but you missed him. You wiped your tears, not wanting to cry but doing so anyways. Of course you would, you can’t control it. You miss him so, so much.

You had to remind yourself that he’d be back soon. He’s your Tiger and tigers don’t break promises. For now, you’d have to take care of yourself like a big kid.

And a brave little tiger cub like you is always up for a challenge.

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generation-of-vipers · 6 days ago

Text

sometimes intimacy is a field standing between you and the person you want most.

What the hell even is intimacy anymore? It feels like that word is everywhere. ‘The intimacy of this, the intimacy of that’. It’s a little funny, how I seem to complain of that wording in spite of the opener of this post. But truth be told— I’m not complaining. Not about the core value and notion of the sentiment. Sure, I think people could be more original with titles— but that’s just a nitpick. I’m glad people are realising there’s an intimacy in almost everything. An intimacy in life’s small pleasures, an intimacy in perhaps a breakup or a falling out. Intimacy is a word that triggers the human psyche— brings intrigue and sometimes, I think, for a lot of us— it can bring a sense of anxiety. And with that being said— if your idea and sense of intimacy is not much beyond something like physical relations, well— then maybe you won’t understand the nuance of what I and a lot of other people are saying and coming to realise. Intimacy, in my eyes, goes so much beyond the physical. To be intimate— to look into the eyes of someone, to laugh, to cry, to be perceived. It’s all sickly intimate. Oh, as I type this in my late afternoon, I’m coming to realise how much I am hating that word. Simply because it has bern dulled down to nothing. Nothing everything has to be euphemistic, my possibly close-minded reader. Not everything in life is chalked up to a human hunger, lust.

For me? There’s nothing more intimate than distance. Between me and this hypothetical person, stands a field. And what is in that field? Well, it’s whatever I want it to be. Maybe it’s empty and sun bleached, maybe it’s lovely and green with a small pond and that long grass that snakes seem to love to hide in. Maybe it’s full of flowers— yellow ones. Because I know that they’re her favourite colour. What stands between this person is something only myself and they know. It’s between us— between two souls whom shall not utter a single word to eachother, for one reason or another. However, actions always weighed more than words. A glance to me may feel more intimate than a kiss— a kiss can only portray one or two things. But a glance? A glance is a glance into the soul of the other person. A glance can mean a million things? Is it the look of love? Lust? (Seeing how my generation seems to care about not much else)— or maybe it’s one or anger? Unspoken words that stay unspoken like a sin? Maybe you’ll look at me and I’ll have to wonder why it is you looked at me that way. What it is about me that caused the twitch of your left eye. I doubt I’ll ever know. But it’s intimate. I’d be exploring and guessing the inner workings of a brain that is not mine— my calloused fingers (probably calloused from doing this a million times over, mind you) shall run their course along the curves and crevices of one’s brain, perhaps one’s soul, should I want to look that deep. Maybe I’ll run my index and middle fingers along the valve of your heart. My curiosities metaphysical body will touch your unknown soul— isn’t that intimacy? For those who chalk intimacy up to physicalities, think of it metaphorically. There is an intimacy in everything. So much so that the word holds so little weight. But because it’s so humane— so every-day— that’s why it’s so important. That’s why it’s important to appreciate it. Breathing air is normal, but losing oxygen will kill you. Appreciate things. Appreciate the intimacy of life.

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theunderneath · 1 year ago

Text

Read a few pages

Walking over to one of the tables in the room, your gaze wandered over all of the papers. You felt a little overwhelmed by all of the papers.

Jumping as a loud thud rang out into the mostly quiet cabin. You quickly turned around and sighed just seeing a book that fell off the table.

Walking over to the book, you picked up the thick novel. It didn’t seem to have any title.

Running your fingertips over the leather cover you wrapped your fingers around it and turned. You watched as the book open revealing what looked to be an index for this house.

(Some of the links for the bigger fandoms couldn't fit all here, so just click on the name and it'll take you to its own master list)

Anime

One Piece

Golden Kamuy

Hetalia / 2p Hetalia

Bleach

Yandere Aizen with a chubby Darling (Headcanon / EDITED)

Yandere Ryuken Ishida headcanon (EDITED)

Yandere Kisuke Urahara Kisses (Headcanon / NSFW-y / EDITED)

Yandere Ichigo cuddling with his Darling (Headcanon / EDITED)

Yandere Kisuke Urahara headcanons (NSFW-y / EDITED)

Demon slayer

One punch man

Most likely to least likely to give their S/O an aphrodisiac (headcanon / Sweet mask, Fubuki, Garou / NSFW / EDITED)

Garou, Fubuki, and Zombieman Darling want to play the Pocky game (Headcanon / EDITED)

Haikyuu

Nanbaka

Hunter x Hunter

My Hero Academia

FMA/Fullmetal Alchemist

A conversation about Greed being a yandere

Jujutsu Kaisen

Toji with a sassy plus-sized Darling (Headcannon / EDITED)

Poly Yandere Gojo and Geto with an S-grade sorcerer reader (Headcannon / EDITED)

Ouran highschool host club

Dress Up Darling

The Apothecary Diaries

The Ancient Magus' Bride

JJBA / Jojo's Bizzare Adventures

Darling Dearest Fashion Art

Darling Dearest Expressions Art

Black Butler

Bucchigiri?!

Marvel

X-men

Yandere Erik Lehnsherr with a reader that has the same power as him? (One shot / EDITED)

Slashers/Horror movies

Games

Danganronpa

Overwatch

Yandere Hanzo headcanons (EDITED)

Resident Evil

Twisted Wonderland

Genshin Impact

Other media

SCP Foundation

Creepypasta

Yandere Masky x touched starved fem reader (Headcannon / EDITED)

Yandere Masky headcanons (EDITED)

Yandere Hoodie and Eyeless Jack headcanons (EDITED)

Others

Meme about blog and post

Yandere meme (Guess I’ll die)

Do I do platonic yandere?

Fanart of other people's OC (ONE, TWO, THREE)

Old OC art

Old creepy art (ONE, TWO)

Meme about SCP and my blog

100 follower special

Fanart of the white dear

Self-made art of another artist's rendition of this blog username

An artist rendition of this blog username (reblog)

Me simping over another OC called Fox (art)

Shit post Hearts Day (art)

Yandere short story

Lookism

Viral hit

Manager Kim

The index you hold in your hand closes. Your eyes feel heavy from how much reading you just did. There is not much to do now.

You could rest, maybe eat some food in the kitchen, but you have a suspicion if you leave the house and return at a later date. There might be more wonderful stories for you to read.

However, the choice is yours. You could mark this cabin on your map to return to or close the door on this chapter to continue on your journey unburdened.

The choice is yours.

#yandere marvel #yandere hetalia #male yandere #yandere 2p hetalia #yandere jujutsu kaisen #yandere one piece #yandere x reader #yandere x you #Masterlist #Yandere one piece #yandere creepypast #Yandere scp #yandere bleach #yandere

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ink-flavored · 2 months ago

Text

#OCKiss2025 Day 6: Forbidden

Part of the @ockissweek event from Feb. 10-16th, featuring Pride & Justice <- Day 5 - Day 7 -> Tips are appreciated!

Pride hunched over his plate, frowning at what he’d thrown onto it. It was human food. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole “eating” thing, but Justice had asked him to help clear out the leftovers before they went bad. Not that Pride cared about that stuff. He didn’t care. But here he was, doing it anyway. Kind of.

He curled his tail around one of the chair legs for something to hold onto. A hazy gray mist swirled around his head, horns spewing a constant stream of nervous smoke. Pride plucked a chunk of sauce-covered meat—probably?—off the plate with his fingers and threw it into his mouth without thinking. It was squishy. Cold. The flavor was weird, sort of acidic. He licked his fingers.

Humans ate this food all the time, apparently. Pride couldn’t remember what it was called, but he did remember Justice being so proud of himself for making it for the first time. It looked so much better when he did it. Pride didn’t eat any of it.

He shoved the plate away, gut clenching his non-existent organs into knots. He didn’t know what being sick was like, but if he had to guess, that’s how he felt. Weak. Gross. Sick. He’d felt sick for weeks, and he didn’t know why.

The front door clicked open, and he jumped. When he saw Justice pass the threshold, halo shining like a beacon all the way across the expanse of the kitchen from the foyer, Pride should have relaxed. He should have been happy. But he felt sicker.

“I’m home!” Justice announced.

“You’re early,” Pride said. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” He hung his bag on the hook by the door and made his way over. “I just skipped post-mass brunch this time.”

“Why?”

Justice smiled, closing in on the table, but he suddenly stopped. His face scrunched up and he coughed harshly into his arm. “I—I came to see you,” he wheezed, “but I thought we agreed no smoking in the house?”

“I’m not?” Pride opened his hands to prove it, but Justice pointed at his head. His horns. “Oh, right, sorry.”

He smoothed his hands over his hair. His horns disappeared and his tail went with them, leaving only the scar that bleached his hairline as evidence. Justice inched his nose out of his arm and took a cautious sniff.

“Better,” he said, clearing his throat. “Thank you.”

Pride shrugged and slumped back down. “Yeah, sure.”

If Justice noticed his sobered mood, he didn’t comment, coming over and sliding an arm over the back of his chair. “What are you having? Leftover pasta?”

“Eh, I tried it.”

He nodded, smile faltering as he surveyed the meal. “It’s… supposed to be warm.”

“Oh.”

“And you eat it with a fork.”

Pride curled his lip, annoyed. “Why does human food have so many rules?”

“You don’t have to, but it would probably taste better. Unless you like it this way?”

“I don’t, really.”

Justice reached for the plate. “I can heat it up for you if—”

“It’s fine.” Pride brushed his hand away. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Alright.” He bent over and planted a soft kiss on his forehead. “Let me know if I can help.”

Pride stared at the table. “Sure.”

Justice eyed the kitchen cabinets. “I think I’ll have something too.”

He fluttered away, leaving Pride sitting alone. The lingering, warm stamp of his lips made him want to curl up in the dark forever.

Ever since Justice had confessed his love, and Pride nearly suffocated admitting his own feelings, everything felt wrong. Not just sinful, something he would normally take glee in, but impossibly wrong. It seemed like every step gave him vertigo. He couldn’t sit still, but he couldn’t do anything either. He wanted to chew through someone’s bones, then crawl into a hole and die. It didn’t make sense.

Pride should feel hedonistically happy every single day. He should be smug. He should be gloating. A demon and an angel getting along was one thing, but this? Pride had successfully tainted one of Heaven’s own angels, pulled him into the ultimate sin: literally sleeping with the devil. Justice gave him what was supposed to be preserved for humans and other angels, the chosen few who got to bask in God’s favor. Love. Kindness. Forgiveness. Pride snaked it all free of an angel’s heart, claimed them for himself, and he should be happy.

So why did he feel so fucking disgusting?

Pride opened his mouth, unsure what would come out of it. “Can I ask you something, J?”

Justice looked up from his preparation, shining like the sun. “Of course!”

“Does it hurt when you kiss me?”

His eagerness flickered with confusion. “What?”

“Like—you know, does it sting? My smoke hurts you and so does my ichor, so…”

“No, not at all.” His brows knitted into a thick line of concern. “Does it hurt you?”

“No.” It was the truth, but he felt uneasy.

“Okay, good.”

Justice watched him closely, as if he could sense what Pride wanted to say next. Maybe he could. Pride buried his fingers in his hair, digging under the ponytail on the crown of his head. He stared at the table, so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact.

“It doesn’t, but shouldn’t it?”

Silence.

He felt even worse for saying it out loud, for forcing Justice to think about it too, but he didn’t understand. Why didn’t it hurt? What was the catch? A demon and an angel couldn’t just be together—there had to be something going on. Something worse they hadn’t noticed, something beyond the whole “doomed, forbidden love” thing, something else Pride hadn’t thought of yet.

The chair next to him screeched along the floor. He glanced up, shameful, but Justice didn’t look upset. He put an empty hand out, a gentle invitation. Pride felt sicker.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, and he even smiled.

“I don’t know.” Pride cautiously lowered one hand and placed it on his palm. Justice curled his fingers around it. His voice shrank, small and unsure. ”It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because—fucking, I don’t know, it gave me a headache to be in the same room as you for a while. If anyone prays for me, I still get a migraine. I can’t walk past a church without my skin trying to melt off, and if that ever did happen, you can’t heal me without boiling me alive. So why is this okay?” He stared at their joined hands, connected in impossible neutrality. “We’re not supposed to want this, it shouldn’t feel good.”

“It almost sounds like you want it to be painful.”

Pride swallowed hard. Justice tilted his head down to try and meet his eye, full of care and concern and it made him want to bolt across the room.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe it would be better that way.”

“Really?” Justice asked. “I don’t think so.”

“I mean—not better, but it would make sense. If it hurt to touch you, then at least I’d know why. It’s because I’m a demon and you’re an angel and Big G decided that’s not allowed. I’d—I’d get to be mad about something.”

“’Get’ to be mad?”

He growled under his breath, frustrated. “I’d get to be fucking mad at someone, yeah. I could be pissed, and it would make sense, and I’d have a reason to be pissed all the time.” He sat back in his chair, slipping his hand from Justice’s grasp and using it to wave around the room. “It would be impossible to be together without hurting. I’d be pissed, you’d be pissed, and it would ruin everything, but at least shit would make sense. Everything would be back to normal.”

Now Justice looked a little upset. “Normal? Being angry and miserable all the time is what you want to feel like?”

“No, of course I fucking don’t.” Pride huffed and shoved himself out of his chair. “I don’t want to be like that, but that’s just the way things are. That’s how it is, all the time, forever.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way, Pride.”

“Yes, it does!” He paced a short line in front of the table. “Everyone—everything in my life that has ever done anything good for me has fucked me over at some point, and this should be the easy thing. This should be the thing that fucks me over from day one, so I can expect it, and get it over with, and—and just be fucked over already!” Pride stopped facing the wall and sighed. He dug his palms into his eyes. “But it hasn’t. And it’s fucking with me in a different way, I guess.”

Another spell of silence fell over them. He wondered if this would get him what he was “hoping” for. Maybe Justice would be mad that he wanted their relationship to be fucked up this much. In the end, everything would be exactly how it should be. All because Pride couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut. The sickness in the depths of his soul threatened to jump up his throat, but he swallowed it down.

“I know what you mean,” Justice said, solemn.

Pride whipped around, too shocked to form a coherent question. The look on his face must have asked for him, because Justice kept going.

“I was worried I’d hurt you by accident. I wasn’t sure what was okay and what wasn’t, why some things are allowed, and others aren’t.” He put his hands on his knees, palms to the sky. “It’s bad enough knowing I can’t help you if you get hurt. I’d feel horrible if kissing you was that painful for you—for both of us.”

Of course, Justice would feel bad. He wouldn’t try to find someone to blame. He’d take the burden on himself, while Pride looked for a reason to start a fight. He clenched his fists over and over, staring at the floor.

“I was really happy when it turned out everything was okay. I thought saliva would be close enough to ichor for it to do the same thing, so—”

“What?” Confusion snapped Pride out of his gloom. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

He wiggled his hand back and forth. “Well, they’re both bodily fluids, so I thought—”

“That’s so stupid.”

“My point is—”

“No, we are not just moving on from this.”

“Yes, we are! Moving on!”

Pride laughed, for the first time in what felt like years. Justice did too, a very familiar fond exasperation on his face. And for a split second, it felt right for them to be like this.

“What I’m saying is,” Justice continued, “is that maybe if God allowed us to touch each other, despite everything else, maybe we’re not doing anything wrong. Maybe this is ‘allowed’ after all.”

It was Pride’s turn to fall silent. If he was right, if God did carve out a loophole to keep all of this above board, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to think. Would that make things better or worse? Would it be one good thing in his fucked up life, or another reason to hate that the world tried to tear them apart? What would it mean if a demon and an angel weren’t forbidden, doomed lovers after all?

“Us being against the rules is kinda sexy though,” Pride noted, with a grin.

“Is that really what you’re taking from all this?”

“Obviously.”

Justice sighed. “At least it proves you’re feeling better.”

Pride almost jumped to make another smarmy comment, but realized it was true. The gross, sick feeling remained, but it was shoved to one side, making room for… something else. A pleasant calm. The way he should have felt when Justice came home.

And Justice gave him another do-over, leaving the table and coming to take his cheeks in both hands. “This one can be against the rules if you want,” he said, and bent low to kiss him.

It was warm and soft and painless. Pride stood on his toes to get closer, throwing his arms around Justice wherever they happened to fall. For something sinful, forbidden, and doomed, it tasted sweeter than any promised Heaven.

Events Taglist: @foxys-fantasy-tales @thelaughingstag @ceph-the-ghost-writer @auntdarth @damageinkorporated @srjacksin @wyked-ao3 @alesseia @monstrify

Pride & Justice Taglist: @elegant-paper-collection @auroblaze @zeenimf @vacantgodling @foxys-fantasy-tales @stesierra @monstrify @thelaughingstag @ceph-the-ghost-writer @damageinkorporated @wyked-ao3 @alesseia @firesidefantasy @aalinaaaaaa

Want to get on any of my tag lists? Check out my Google form!

#ockiss25 #ockiss2025 #oc kiss week #writeblr #writeblr community #tumblr writers #writers on tumblr #spilled ink #original prose #original fiction #original writing #original character #original characters #queer writers #trans writers #annika talks #P&J #Pride & Justice

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seeminglydark · 11 months ago

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1. would caro and john be into the tv show, the x-files? would they buy tapes of the episodes and talk about their own conspiracies and guess about the outcomes of the episodes.

2. also your comic has help peak my interest for the supernatural and conspiracy theories. what are some stories or theories that you’ve learned about that you have found the most interesting? and were you a believer before starting your comics or has your interest grown as you’ve continued with your comics.

3.lastly, i’m trying to buy more secondhand items and become the diy punk that i’ve aspired to be since high school (too afraid since i was a closeted trans man and living with an unaccepting family), any tips?

i, like john, try to stay away from modern tech as much as i can. i’m able to stay off my phone for the most part and rarely use my computer but i’ve been looking around and audiobooks on cassette are kinda expensive around me so i like to narrate book as i read them in paperback. i was wondering if canonically john uses resources such as the library and what his favorite books and movies are. i love horror and am just now getting into sci-fi and i love watching movies on my vcr + tv combo and i sometimes use a blu-ray player for more rare or expensive (at least in vhs format) movies.

sorry for the long winded paragraph, i’m unfortunately unable to escape my strict household (despite being an adult) until i find a job and am able to save every cent. i also tend to isolate myself so i have no friends to help me out. sorry to vent to you about this but i just wanted to end this by saying your comic and characters inspire me and give me hope that i’ll be okay once i’m free.

YES. John is obsessed with x-files. every once in a while you can see he has the iconic 'i want to believe' poster in his younger years on his walls. He still has it as an adult. both caro and john like watching those together, they also enjoy the twilight zone, charmed, Buffy (they they agree the corny movie from '92 is the best) and those old Bruce Campbell shows noones heard of, re: Brisco County Jr. I think as kids they theorize, and as adults they talk about everything everyone gets wrong, now that they know how these things really work. John can always guess WhoDunnit.

Ive always been interested in the idea of the supernatural. im a big skeptic though, ill be honest there, even though ive had many 'experiences' myself. i kinda like the idea of the unbelievable. definitely making the comics has peaked my interest in things i wasn't too keenly aware of before, like cryptids. im fascinated by the concept of Missing 411, and missing people who reappear somewhere else, but Liminal Spaces hold my heart specifically. ive always been keenly aware of the off feeling in those places before i even knew what that meant. i love scouring the internet for images of things like abandoned hotels that give me a weird kind of uneasy, most of the things people tag as Liminal aren't really that, so its a scavenger hunt to find something that fits my idea of it. coming up with the lore of my stories has been an adventure. my interest has definitely grown, more in places and phenomenon than in ghosts specifically.

there are so mnay things you can do to diy punk stuff, in my opinion thats the best and most rewarding way. it sounds to me that you need to start small and slow for your safety, so let me reassure you right here anon, that punk is a set of ideals, and not just fashion. youre still punk no matter what youre wearing. a jacket or vest is always a good place to start, you can literally buy ANYTHING at the thift store that strikes your fancy. this is a canvas you will be adding too for as long as its yours. once you have your canvas, its time to create, and there is literally no wrong way to do this. you can use paint markers, embroidery, bleach, ect. dont have money for spikes and studs? you can use soda can tabs and bend them, metal lighter caps, hell even staples and safety pins always look cool. you can make your own badges by bending metal soda or beer caps around a soda tab with a safety pin through it and then paint whatever you want on the cap. dental floss is what you usually see when punks have the white stitching on their pants and jackets, its durable and doesn't break, since crust and gutter punks need tough clothes that last. if you're worried about your family, i would personalize it first in small secret ways that are just for you, such as a message beneath your collar as seen here on my friends jacket. and here, and here! he hides patches on the inside as well! Im including a pic of john hiding a patch on caros varsity jacket as well. i will post my jackets one day, my camera is broken but i figured id share his since he hides things more than i do!

John absolutely uses the library, its a fantastic resource for SO many things, depending on where you're located. He would also probably use a digital reader later, because many of them you can get library cards on and borrow books that way. he is not a strong reader so he mostly reads books that may be under his age level, like goosebumps, but who cares, do what you enjoy. movie wise hes very obsessed with cosmic horror (hence the UFO tattoo) his favorites are Alien, The Thing, Killer Klowns from Outer Space and the Blob from the 80s. both he and Caro love the original Evil Dead franchise, horror comedy like American Werewolf in London, lost boys, etc.

Thank you, Anon, for the long winded paragraph. You asked some really fun questions for me to answer, i love nothing more than to talk about my characters, it was a really nice little break from editing a new podcast episode. I am so so sorry about your situation, and i am sending you all the best and all the love and strength that you can come out of this free and on the other side and live as yourself. If my comics and characters stories can provide a tiny bit of hope that its going to be ok, than ive succeeded at what i set out to do. wishing you all the best. and look into your library, they may have resources to help you with this as well.

#rj rambles #ask me things #punk stuff #diy #horror things #supernatural things #anon

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greenknightlao · 4 months ago

Text

Bleach 39

What happened in this episode the answer will be visible.

Interesting to see Ukitake still but I guess this is just signifying that Mimihagi truly is gone now… Whoa Soi Fon is still here is she actually going to do something against Gerard. As expected Renji is back which makes sense given he fought Gerard in the manga but this proves Uryu never truly intended to kill Renji just KO him but even better is the Visoreds heal Renji! This is literally the most significant thing they’ve done this arc and by “they” I of course mean just Hachi lol. I feel like Gerard being revealed as the soul king’s heart is a bit early here (wasn’t it soon after he used his Schrift in the manga) but either way we were teased about his heart being important during part 2 so it’s probably better this way. Oh is that Rangiku is she actually going to do something here I mean I always thought it was weird how she comes back with Hitsugaya only to not really do anything. Whoa are those new Shinji and Momo scenes nice although I guess that’s it for them… Soi Fon maybe you should just stop trying to use your Bankai it hasn’t really worked out for you recently… but hey I guess it’s still better than not doing anything since fighting BG9. New Isshin and Ryuken scene too announcing they’re gonna join the fight! I’ll save the episode 40 thoughts for later though…

#anime #anime and manga #bleach #bleach tybw #bleach thousand year blood war #manga #rangiku matsumoto #renji abarai #shinji hirako #momo hinamori #soi fon #gerard valkyrie #hachigen ushoda #ryuken ishida #isshin kurosaki #uryu ishida

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phyripowritesthings · 12 days ago

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at long last, it's part six of my ghost stories that are not quite ghost stories! in the last one, I wrote there'd be two more, but it turns out there's three! so two more after this one. the song this time is Lake of Silver Bells by Carbon Leaf, and I wish I could tell you what my fascination with lakes is but I have no idea! because it's the 1990s, please imagine the most nineties fashion you can for this one :)

The Silver Bells

characters/pairings: Canada (Matthew)/Netherlands (Maarten)

word count: 8035 summary: It was supposed to be a simple exploration, but what the journalist and the antiquarian find out on the lake, might be more than they ever anticipated.

also on AO3

It’s only when a voice startles Matthew that he realizes he’s gotten quite lost. He blinks down at the unfamiliar street while his dog tugs at his leash, then looks up at the man who addressed him.

“You alright?” he’s asking now, lowering the cigarette he’s holding.

“Yes! Sorry, I was… Thinking.” Matthew adjusts his backpack, and the tall stranger quirks his eyebrows minutely. When he takes a drag of his cigarette, his green eyes pierce through the smoke, and Matthew feels a bit self-conscious about having interrupted his break.

He looks up behind the man. “Oh! Is this your shop?”

They are, in fact, standing out front of a narrow antiques store, the sign over the window proclaiming ‘since 1888’. Matthew’s dog sniffs curiously around the doorway.

“It is, matter of fact. Been my family’s for over a century.” Now, the man stubs his cigarette out on an ashtray resting on the windowsill and straightens, which reveals that he’s even taller than Matthew had thought. “Can I help you with anything?”

“I… Hm, maybe.”

“That’s intriguing.” He nods, gaze sweeping over Matthew. Gestures. “Come in.”

“What about Kuma?” Matthew holds the leash of his dog up, and Kuma lifts his great white head towards the man, tongue out. “He’s pretty gentle, but…”

“That’s no problem,” the man assures him, and turns to go into the antiques store.

Inside, the radio is on softly, and though there are many curious items on display, the small store doesn’t feel cluttered. There is no one else in at the moment, and Matthew follows the owner to the old-fashioned register, where the man leans on the dark wood with both hands.

“Alright, how might I be able to help?” he asks. His accent is local, which is probably good.

“Well, I’m working on an article about this town,” Matthew starts, gesturing as if to encompass the whole place. “For a travel magazine, you see? Anyway, I was hoping to learn more about the history of the place, and also to go out onto the lakes, but it’s, well…”

“It’s autumn.” The shop owner nods. “This place turns into a ghost town as soon as the tourists leave. You’re too late.”

Matthew pulls a pained face. “That was kind of the point.”

“I see, I see. And I guess… No, he’ll have closed up shop by now…” As he trails off, the man twists the bleached tips of his hair further up, frowning thoughtfully.

“I think the lakes would be gorgeous now. I’d wanted to take photos,” Matthew adds, petting Kuma’s head absently. He isn’t sure what to make of the antiquarian.

“They are amazin’,” he replies, then seems to decide something and leans forward again. “If you’d like, I could take you out on the lakes sometime. Haven’t used my boat in ages.”

Matthew smiles, somewhat startled by the offer. “Really?”

“Why not?” The man shrugs, although he smiles back slightly. He must be a few years older than Matthew, and seems both completely out of place and exactly at home in the antiques store. “I’ll need to check on the boat first, though, so give me a day or so.”

“Of course, no problem! Thank you, sir.”

The man grimaces. “Please, call me Maarten.”

“Right. I’m Matthew.”

“Good, Matthew, where are you staying? I can let them know when it’s ready.”

So Matthew tells him the name of his bed & breakfast, and Maarten promises to call. With that, he finds himself, and Kuma, back outside the shop on the still-unfamiliar street. Great. Now to find the way back.

The bell of the antique shop chimes when the door opens, and Maarten comes out.

“I… Do have some town maps, if that’d be helpful,” he says. “New ones, even.”

“I swear I’m not usually this bad at directions,” Matthew tells him, gratefully accepting a tourist map from him.

“No, I suppose that’d be a bad trait for a travel journalist. Don’t worry about it, happens to a lot of people.” With a nod and a brief pat on Kuma’s head, he ducks back into his store, and Matthew unfolds the map.

The next afternoon, Matthew returns to his bed & breakfast to find the hostess waiting there to tell him he has a message.

“Maarten van Dijk wants you to know he is ready to go out to the lakes,” the woman recites from a slip of paper. “He’ll be at the docks tomorrow morning at nine, unless that doesn’t work for you.”

“That should be fine,” Matthew mutters. “Thank you.”

“Mr Williams, are you sure…” She pauses, then shakes her head. “No, never mind.”

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing. It’s beautiful out on the water. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.” She nods decisively and walks away, leaving Matthew frowning after her.

It must be some smalltown gossip he’s not to know about, he guesses. Shrugging, he goes to his room. He adds his notes from today to his work folder, checks that he has enough rolls of film for his camera, and sets out again. Apparently, there is a local museum.

It is a beautiful, clear autumn morning when Matthew makes his way to the town’s docks—well, dock. Only two boats are moored there at the moment, and he spots Maarten on the furthest one, smoking and looking at a map or a chart of some kind. At Matthew’s approach, he looks up. Matthew smiles.

“Good morning.”

“Mornin’. Come on board.” He jerks his chin and stands up to steady Matthew when he steps from the dock down into the boat.

It’s a small vessel—Matthew doesn’t know nearly enough about boats to know its actual name—painted a muted orange that fits right in with the autumn canopy. He sits on a bench so he doesn’t fall.

“Alright. Anywhere in particular— Hey, where’s your dog?” Maarten asks, pausing in untying the boat from the dock.

“Oh, the hostess of my B&B takes care of him if I can’t take him. I’m not sure if it’s safe for him, or if he could scare the wildlife.”

Maarten mumbles something as he sits at the back of the boat to start up the motor. After the initial roar of noise, it settles into a gentle hum as they start to drive away from town.

“He’d probably be fine, but you’d be the best judge of that,” Maarten says. “Anywhere in particular you want me to take you?”

“I don’t think so. You know the lakes, presumably.”

“Yeah. We’ll just do a loop around. Give a shout if you wanna stop somewhere for pictures or something.”

Lake is really a generous term for the waterways they start making their way through. While there are open areas every now and then, a lot of the place is marshy, leaving only relatively narrow swathes of deeper water for Maarten to drive his boat through.

“I used to go sailing a lot,” he tells Matthew. “But you can’t really do that around here.”

“No, I suppose not.” He has to duck out of the way of a tree branch full of golden leaves. “You used to live somewhere else?”

“Not that far away, by one of the larger lakes. Before I took over the shop from my mother.” He gestures ahead. “Left or right, Matthew?”

“Left.” Towards the sun.

“Exciting.” When Matthew turns to look at him, bemused, Maarten huffs a laugh but doesn’t say anything else.

By ten, they reach a solid patch of land that actually has a small, sandy beach, where Matthew asks to stop.

“Can I get off here?” he asks. “Just for a moment.”

“Sure.” Maarten looks over at the beach, and frowns. “God damn it. They’re havin’ parties again.”

Matthew watches him stalk over immediately after securing the boat to a tree and start to pick up trash from the sand, furiously putting it into a garbage bag he pulls from the pocket of his windbreaker. Somewhat charmed by this side of the curt antiquarian, Matthew takes a quick photo of him doing that, and makes a note of it in his flipover notepad, but then sets about doing a little circuit of the island they’re on.

The autumn colors are stunning in the sun; he really doesn’t understand why more people don’t come out to the Lake Valley after summer’s end. Although he’s read that many birds live in this area, he doesn’t find any at the moment—possibly, the noise of the engine scared them away. Or possibly Maarten’s grumbling as he comes up behind Matthew, garbage bag slung over his shoulder. It’s pretty filled.

“Stupid kids,” he says. “It’s one thing to party somewhere dangerous, but then to leave your trash everywhere too…”

“Dangerous?”

“Would you know the way to town from here?” Maarten asks, and Matthew shakes his head, understanding where he’s going with that. “No. Now imagine that, but in the dark, and you’re drunk and possibly high, and eighteen.”

“Did you ever get lost?”

Maarten raises his eyebrows, looking amused, and says, “No. I know the lakes. Not saying I didn’t do the other things, but not out here.”

“Well, that’s fair. I grew up in the mountains. You don’t do that out there, either.”

“I can imagine. Mountains terrify me.” He looks up suddenly, frowning. “Did you hear that?”

Matthew didn’t hear anything in particular, but he follows Maarten as he walks to the islet’s shoreline, on the opposite side of where the boat is, and watches him squint into the distance. There is another relatively open space here, although hemmed in on both sides by tall trees, bent over the dark water like a tunnel. The sun frames Maarten’s silhouette as he listens intently, head cocked.

“Some sort of bell,” he mutters.

“Like a church?” Maybe, one is tolling somewhere in a town. There doesn’t seem to be any wind, but Matthew knows that back home, sounds could echo off the mountains for ages, so who knows what this flat land could carry?

Maarten shakes his head. “Closer to a shop bell. Hm.” He spends a moment longer looking out over the water, then turns to Matthew abruptly. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your work, Matthew.”

“Oh no, it’s alright. Should we go find that bell?”

The antiquarian blinks slowly, lips parting as if he hadn’t considered it.

“Maybe we should.”

Although Matthew still can’t hear any bells, he’s content to sit in the front of the boat and look around while Maarten steers them towards the supposed sound. They pass underneath the arched trees and into an open area, filled with sunlight.

And there, on the shore of a larger island, hidden behind trees, Matthew sees a building. It looks fairly old, but in good condition, with walls of multicolored stones and a roof of red tiles. A large weeping willow dips its yellow leaves into the water next to the building, where there is a small wooden dock. Matthew turns to Maarten, notepad at the ready, to ask him what the building is, but the man looks baffled, green eyes wide and fixed on the little island.

“That’s where it’s comin’ from,” he mutters.

“The bell?”

Maarten startles, looking as though he forgot Matthew was there. He nods, though.

“You don’t hear it?”

“No.”

“Odd.” He frowns. “Do you mind if we go…”

Of course, Matthew doesn’t mind. If nothing else, a mysterious building that even a local doesn’t know about will make an interesting little detour in his article.

Maarten drives the boat to the dock and ties it to a post there. Before he disembarks, he pushes on the wood, but it seems sturdy, so he climbs off the boat and starts walking to the building. Matthew follows, camera at the ready.

The building has two floors, and the windows are small but quite clear—Maarten is peering through one, his sharp nose nearly against the glass.

Following a gravel path, Matthew walks around the building a bit. There are even flower boxes on some windows, all empty right now, and the place seems deserted. Around the corner from the boat, on the short side of the building, Matthew finds a door. A small bell hangs over it, gleaming in the sunlight as if newly polished, that would surely chime if the door opened, but the door is locked. A name has been painted on the wood in elegant, white cursive.

“Does this mean anything to you?” Matthew asks Maarten as he walks up. The man blinks at the name.

“Yes.” He frowns, bemused. “Van der Meer was my mother’s name.” He tries the door handle and runs his fingers over the silver lock. “I think I… I think I might have the key to this place. At the shop.”

He meets Matthew’s eyes, and both of them are equally intrigued.

Of course, Matthew absolutely has to come with Maarten when he goes to try out the key that he has at his antique shop, the next day. Having explored the museum, there isn’t a whole lot else left to do in town, anyway. He leaves Kuma with the B&B hostess again, having no idea what is inside the building.

The key is the same silver as the lock on the mysterious building’s door, but more than that, it’s shaped like a small bell.

“It’s always been there,” Maarten explains as he maneuvers his boat through the waterways. “In the register. Always thought it was for something that was sold ages ago. Kept it just in case.”

“Very curious,” Matthew says. He can’t wait to see if it works.

When they get to the door, Maarten reaches up and trails his long fingers over the name on it.

“Fifteen years,” he mumbles. He lifts the key to the lock. Hesitates. Matthew waits patiently; he might need a moment. But then, Maarten turns to him and holds the key out.

“What?”

“Go ahead, Matthew.” A hint of a smile flits across his face. “Isn’t that what journalism is all about?”

“Eh, not my kind.” Matthew takes the key from him and releases a long breath. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He pushes the key into the lock, sharing a look with Maarten when it fits, and then, Matthew slowly turns it. Without a hitch, without a creak of age, the door unlocks.

“Who’d have thought?” Matthew breathes. With a hand on the door handle, he looks at Maarten again.

“I wonder what this place is,” the antiquarian says. “I wonder if my mother knew.”

“Let’s find out.”

The door opens with, as expected, the gentle chime of the bell overhead, and they make their way inside. It’s warmer here, the sunlight lighting up the space in bright yellow beams, dust swirling. The interior of the building doesn’t match the outside; there is geometric wallpaper, shades of brown and green that remind Matthew of his childhood home, and a heavy wooden desk that incongruously has a Bakelite telephone sitting on it, along with a thin, leather-bound book.

Maarten lets out a long breath.

“Looks almost like a reception,” he says, walking slowly over to the desk. “I’ve got a phone just like this at the shop.”

“Phones are antiques already?” Matthew asks him while he is cautiously opening the little book. Maarten chuckles, not looking up.

“Curiosities. Look at this.”

It does seem to be a log, maybe a ledger, of some sort, Matthew sees. The first entries are in old-fashioned cursive he has a hard time reading, but Maarten points the words out with ease, along with a date: 1888. The same year his store was founded.

“So maybe… Your family came to the area then?” Matthew guesses. “One person opened a shop, another opened this…”

He gestures vaguely around. Maarten hums.

“Might be.” He carefully flips to the last page that has entries, the handwriting more modern, listing expenses in ballpoint pen. 1978. Fifteen years ago.

“What does this mean?�� Matthew wonders, as he pulls his notepad out to take some notes about the place he’s found himself at.

“I… Have no idea. Let’s look around.”

They stick together as they make their way to a door off the left side of the entrance, and find themselves in a well-appointed kitchen, again with green tiles just like there had been in Matthew’s parents’ house. It’s spacious, a large table taking up most room.

In the sunlight, the space looks inviting. Matthew can imagine the guests of this place having breakfast here. He’s stayed in a lot of inns and hotels and B&Bs over the years he’s been a travel journalist, and would be quite happy if they looked like this.

“Huh,” Maarten is saying, having pushed aside one of the striped curtains beneath the kitchen counter and taken out an ornate serving dish. “There’s one just like this at the shop. 1870s, very good condition.”

“Odd.”

“Not necessarily. They were pretty popular.”

They continue their exploration of the building by going out into a hallway behind the possible reception desk that spans the length of the ground floor. Matthew counts six doors in total, but when they try them one by one, they find them all locked.

“Alright, where would you keep the keys?” Maarten wonders.

“At the reception, surely.”

The keys are indeed in a drawer of the desk, all on one big ring; some have the same little bell-shaped handle. That reminds Matthew.

“Do you still hear those bells?” It’s how they got back here, after all.

Blinking, Maarten shakes his head. “It stopped when… I think when you opened the door.”

That makes Matthew shiver. He was willing to accept that Maarten just has better hearing, but that seems like too weird of a coincidence. He quickly jots it down in his notepad. Maarten looks closely at one of the bell-shaped keys, frowning.

“Still wanna try these?” he asks.

“Well, we’re here now, aren’t we?” Matthew shrugs. It’s just an old… Inn, or hotel. If it’s haunted, it wouldn’t be the first place he’s encountered, he thinks. Tourists love ghosts.

One of the bell keys fits a room labeled with the number one, and just as expected, it is a cozy little hotel room. Dust swirls in the sunlight here too, but there isn’t actually much at all on the nightstands or the little vanity, and it smells just fine—Matthew swears he detects the faintest hint of potpourri. The bed is even made with cheerful floral linens.

“This is nice,” Matthew says, but when he looks at Maarten, the man is frowning. “Maarten?”

“It’s getting really strange, now.” He walks over to a small wooden table that’s next to the sink in the corner of the room. “I’ve got one just like this.”

“At your shop?”

Maarten looks at him and nods, expression baffled.

“So there’s more than one.”

“That’s just it. There shouldn’t be.” He peers at the table closely, even kneeling to inspect the underside. “And it doesn’t look like a replica. If it is, it’s a damn good one.”

“So…” Matthew isn’t sure what to make of that, so he winds up his camera and snaps a photo instead. The click of the shutter makes Maarten look up at him. He’s right in a beam of sunlight, and his green eyes are bright. In his mint green windbreaker and sensible hiking shoes, he looks amusingly out of place.

“Well,” he says, standing, “let’s try those other doors.”

He hands the key ring to Matthew and gestures for him to go ahead.

The other five doors yield two more hotel rooms, a bathroom with a few shower and toilet cubicles, a laundry room, and, lastly, a set of stairs. The rooms also yield a plethora of random items Maarten recognizes as being at his shop, apparently never having sold—which he only now seems to realize is odd. A delicate glass lampshade here, a painting there; even a bulky transistor radio in the laundry room.

The two of them stand at the bottom of the stairs for a while. The steps are steep, wooden, and bathed in darkness; there’s another door at the top. Maarten takes a deep breath, shoulders heaving.

“I don’t know if I want to go up there,” he says. “Not… Yet.”

“Alright,” Matthew replies, even though he’s dying to learn what else this strange place holds. He is a journalist, after all. But something in Maarten’s deep voice makes him hold his tongue. The antiquarian clears his throat, turning to him.

“Maybe we can look around outside.”

Around the inn, there is an overgrown garden. Apart from the old weeping willow, there are pine trees and wild hedges surrounding barely-visible cobble paths that lead through what once must have been neat flowerbeds. They even find some benches, and a fountain, and a small, mostly-intact greenhouse. There are some markers still in the ground around, indicating which plants grew there.

“I bet this was lovely,” Matthew says, taking a picture of the moss-grown greenhouse. “They must have used their crops in the kitchen.”

“Yeah. That’s nice. You know, my mother was always…” Maarten sighs. “She was always gardening. I helped her often when I was little.”

“Do you think, now, that she was here?” Matthew asks, following him back towards the little dock, and Maarten looks up at the building, eyebrows drawing together.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe, she never left.”

They make it back to town, and Matthew is surprised to find that it is dusky. It was still sunny when they left the inn, but he supposes they lost track of time out on the water.

Standing on the dock, Maarten looks down at him, clasping the back of his neck.

“Thanks for coming,” he says. “I appreciate—hm. I’m sure you got a lot of, uh, writin’ to do. So I’ll—how long are you staying?”

Matthew only has his room for three more nights, but he says, “However long I need,” and Maarten lets out a long breath, nodding.

“I’ll walk you to the B&B,” he offers. “Or… You know, I think we stayed out longer than I thought. Are you hungry?”

“Pretty hungry.”

“Let me get you something to eat,” he says, a hesitant smile tugging at his full lips. Matthew bites his own lip and nods slowly. He still isn’t entirely sure what to make of the antiquarian, who’s friendly and open one moment and impossible to read the next, but dinner is always good.

Maarten takes him to get fried fish from a takeout place, and they eat it at the lakeside, while Matthew obligingly recounts some stories about places he’s visited for his job. When the food’s gone, they walk to the bed & breakfast, where Matthew turns to Maarten on the small step out front of the old building.

“Are you going back tomorrow?”

“I think so. Will you come?”

“As I said, however long it takes.”

“Hm, of course, journalism.” Maarten smiles slightly. “I think you could probably bring your dog, right?”

That would be nice, so Matthew tells him as much, and promises to meet him at the dock.

Kuma sits quietly enough in the boat, but he’s excited when they disembark at the inn’s dock, sniffing around the walls and jumping eagerly when Maarten opens the door. The antiquarian has brought a large backpack, which, he showed Matthew on the way, contains a serving dish identical to the one in the kitchen, as well as some smaller items he says are the same as one found at the inn.

Once in the kitchen, Kuma immediately lies down in a sunbeam, stretching happily, and Maarten puts his bag on the table to pull the dish out.

“What the hell?” he mutters.

Having retrieved the other dish from the cabinet, Matthew turns to see that the two now don’t match at all. In the boat, the serving dish had glinted in the autumn sun, but now, it’s dull and tarnished. Especially next to the nearly-pristine one from the kitchen. Both Matthew and Maarten stare at the two items, dumbstruck. Maarten’s other items have similarly been affected, become rusted or tarnished.

“That’s not normal,” Matthew eventually breathes. “I think this place is haunted or something.”

Maarten shakes his head. “There’s no such thing.” He meets Matthew’s eye, frowning. There is, Matthew notices, a thin scar on his forehead that disrupts his furrowed brow slightly.

“Then what’s happening?” Matthew asks. Maarten opens and closes his mouth. Breathes out slowly.

“But it feels…” He looks down at Kuma, who tilts his head quizzically, tongue lolling out of his mouth. “It feels nice.”

It does. Matthew sits on a kitchen chair in the sun, scritching Kuma behind the ears, and he can hear birds outside, the breeze rushing through the branches of the weeping willow.

“You really don’t know anything about the history of this place?” he asks. And then, the more obvious question occurs to him. “Wait, what happened in 1978?”

Maarten leans on the table. He wets his lips and flexes his long fingers against the light wood. Hesitantly, Matthew touches his forearm, and the antiquarian looks at him.

“My mother disappeared. October, 1978. That’s when I came back, took over the shop. I was barely twenty.”

“I’m sorry,” Matthew says softly. Kuma makes a small noise and rises up, padding over on the tiled floor to push his shaggy head against Maarten’s leg.

“She left this note for me. Said she’d gone out… To the lakes.” He shakes his head, smiling bitterly, although he reaches down to pet Kuma.

“And her name is here.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what to think, Matthew.”

“You don’t believe…” Matthew wants to say ‘ghosts’, but it seems a little insensitive now, so he trails off, gesturing around, at which Maarten smiles bemusedly.

“I think, if I were to get haunted, it’d have happened before now. You don’t wanna know how many people insist their antiques are full of spirits.”

Despite the strangeness of the whole thing, Matthew laughs, and Maarten smiles, looking down at the tarnished silver dish.

“I don’t know what this place is, but I know I want to keep looking,” he says. “Guess I should thank you for asking to get out here in the first place.”

“Happy to help.” Matthew realizes he is still touching Maarten’s arm across the table. He leaves his fingers there, and neither of them move.

The B&B hostess seems concerned when Matthew mentions going out to the lakes with Mr Van Dijk again.

Yesterday, they had done some more exploring of the garden and found a generator, which Maarten said he couldn’t make heads nor tails of, but Matthew was pretty sure was still in working order, given some fuel, and they’d both agreed that the greenhouse looked usable given some cleaning.

Kuma never seemed concerned, and that is honestly good enough for Matthew; his dog has great instincts about dangerous places. The hostess, though, as she’s serving his breakfast, frowns and shuffles her feet.

“Tomorrow is your last day here,” she cautions. “Surely, there are better… Ventures?”

“Don’t worry, I will write a great review of this place,” Matthew just says, which is, of course, not a reply to her question but does seem to placate her. And he has written a solid draft of his article already. It doesn’t mention the mysterious inn on the lake.

Before he goes to the dock, Matthew stops at the local post office to send his draft off, along with his photo negatives. What to do tomorrow, is another question.

For now, they make their way through a foggy morning to the inn—Maarten mentions that he’d wanted to let Matthew take a swing at driving the boat, but not with visibility so low. That would be nice, Matthew thinks. He’s only ever been in charge of rowboats, or the occasional canoe.

The generator does, in fact, work, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, so do the inn’s electric appliances and lights, even if they are all pretty old.

With the fog clearing, Matthew and Maarten go around opening windows and doors and taking stock of what exactly is in the kitchen and the bathroom. Then Matthew, much to his delight, gets to climb up on the roof to check the tiles and the chimney, and Maarten said he’d go see what he could do about the greenhouse, but instead he’s by the wooden ladder every time Matthew checks, keeping an eye on him.

And that is also nice, really. People don’t tend to notice him much. It is useful as a journalist, sometimes, getting to be an observer, but other times, it’s good to know someone’s watching. Especially if that someone is a handsome, mysterious antiquarian.

He smiles gratefully at Maarten when he gets back down, and the man ducks his head, clasping the back of his neck.

“All good up there,” Matthew adds. “It should be safe to use the stove.”

“I don’t actually know how,” Maarten says slowly.

“I do! My family has a cabin up in the mountains with a wood stove just like it.”

“Great.” Maarten smiles, a little melancholic, but doesn’t say anything else. Hesitatingly, Matthew reaches out to briefly clasp his upper arm, then turns to go inside.

Later, as they are cleaning up the greenhouse a bit, Matthew mentions that he only has one night left at the B&B, and that makes Maarten pause in his scrubbing one of the glass panes overhead. He’s straddling a stepladder, and peers down at Matthew with his hands resting on his strong thighs.

“Feel like I’ve kept you from your work,” he eventually says.

“I got plenty done,” Matthew assures him, pushing his glasses up. Outside, Kuma is happily playing around in the garden, probably getting his white fur unreasonably dirty. “Besides, I’ve kept you from yours as well, then.”

Maarten hums. Wipes his hands on his jeans.

“Where will you be going next, then?” he asks, quite softly.

“Nowhere fast. I mean, if you’re… Not getting sick of me. There’s a lot more here, I think.”

At that, Maarten just gazes down at him with those bright green eyes, as if he’s trying to suss him out. Matthew doesn’t think he’s a complicated person, but Maarten looks nearly bewildered.

“Surely, you got something to get back to.”

“Nothing that can’t wait a bit.” Everyone at home is pretty used to him being gone for considerable stretches of time.

Maarten nods slowly, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Of course,” he says. “Journalism.”

“Honestly? This is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Yeah,” Maarten agrees. And then, “Alright, which room do you want?”

“Which— Oh! I hadn’t…”

“It’s fine if you’d rather not. You know, haunted and all. But it is an inn.”

Actually, that sounds like a very good idea, so Matthew tells Maarten he isn’t picky about the room. Maybe, he’ll let Kuma pick one; he’s got good instincts, after all.

It is later than Matthew would have guessed when they return to town, but that’s alright. On the step out front of the B&B once more, Maarten asks him if he is sure he’d like to stay.

“People don’t tend to… Stick around town.” He laughs dryly. “Or around me.”

“Well, maybe they weren’t the right people,” Matthew replies, and shrugs helplessly when Maarten meets his eye, lips parted. The man doesn’t say anything, just nods, and touches Matthew’s arm, before he disappears into the night.

It’s easy, somehow, to lose track of time out on the lakes.

One day, Matthew is hauling his luggage into room 3, Kuma unhelpfully racing around his legs, and then another day, he’s taking Maarten into the woods to go mushroom foraging, and then he finally gets to drive the boat, after some instruction, back to town, where the B&B lady looks astonished to see him.

“More reporting to do,” he tells her, on his way to buy some rolls of film.

“More—?” She hurries after him. “Mr Williams, I have received some calls asking for you. Your employers, I think?”

“I’ll be back…” He wants to say ‘soon’, but feels strange putting an end date on his time at the inn. His time with Maarten. “But if my brother ever calls, please tell him I’ve found my thing. He’ll know. His name’s Alfred. Jones, not Williams.”

“Mr Williams…”

The town looks different, now. Less colorful, compared to the vibrant trees and cozy rooms at the inn. Even Maarten’s orange boat seems brighter once Matthew passes underneath the archway of trees. They’ve started losing their leaves, but still hide the inn from view well.

He finds Maarten in the garden plot, digging into the damp earth with floral gardening gloves and narrating, seemingly to Kuma, what crops he could plant where. The dog sits and listens obligingly. He likes Maarten.

Well, Matthew likes Maarten too. He seemed a little… Aloof, at first, but bit by bit, he keeps showing bits of wonder, and when his rare smiles reach his eyes, it feels like some sort of breakthrough.

Kuma notices Matthew first, bounding over to him for pets. Maarten looks up. Smiles. There is a smudge of dirt on his face.

“Town still standing?” he asks.

“Still there. Your store is alright.”

“Alright.” He hasn’t seemed too concerned about the antiques shop. Now, he gestures at the garden and starts his impassioned narration again.

Time keeps slipping by, it seems, in leaps and bounds, and Matthew can’t say how long it’s actually been but it’s started to snow, and the lake has started to freeze. They’ve made sure to get enough supplies, in case the waterways become impassable.

“Are you sure you want to stay?” Maarten asks, as he stands by a kitchen window, drying dishes and looking at the cloudy sky, while Matthew tends to the wood stove. His hair has grown, and the bleached ends have been cut off so it’s now all its natural dark blond, though still spiked up severely.

“I don’t see why not,” Matthew tells him, and he turns, holding the dishtowel with both hands.

“You’ve got a job. You have… Family.”

“It’s not been that long, Maarten. If you want me gone—”

“I don’t,” he says quickly. And, softer, barely audible over the wood crackling, “I promise you, I don’t, Matthew.”

“It just feels right,” Matthew says. He knows, when Maarten nods, that he gets it. Something about this place feels like exactly where they’re both supposed to be.

Still, as time slips by and they fall into a comfortable routine, neither of them goes up the stairs.

Matthew doesn’t have a reason not to, but Maarten is apprehensive, and he respects that. It does seem to be his building, after all, even if no official documents can be found in town, or indeed at Maarten’s store, about it even being built.

When Matthew comments on this, one day as they stand on the shore of the frozen lake, Maarten turns to him and looks down over the edge of his striped scarf for a long while, the tip of his nose red with cold.

“It’s yours too,” he eventually says, muffled through fabric. “For however long you want.”

He reaches for Matthew with his bare fingers. Hesitates. Matthew clasps his hand between both of his own and nods silently.

In different ways, he thinks they’ve both been lonely, and this strange place on the lake that seems so oddly suspended in time, so out of place yet completely at home, was exactly what they needed.

The strange place, or, perhaps, the company.

It doesn’t seem like a lot of time has passed, but Matthew finds himself learning Maarten’s little quirks; his tendency to sing odd little songs while he cleans, his elaborate bathtime routine, the very particular way he wants things arranged in the kitchen.

He’s a little surprised that Maarten, in return, knows exactly where he’s left his glasses every time he loses them, and how he takes his coffee, and when to pry him away from his latest project so he can eat.

The snow has gone in what feels like the blink of an eye, and Maarten’s crops are doing well, when Matthew finds the man at the foot of the stairs one day, key in hand.

He closes his eyes when Matthew touches his back, pressing his palm to his spine as he’s taken to doing. It seems every time that something slows when they touch. That it gets a little easier to breathe. Kuma curiously nudges Maarten’s leg, which makes the man smile.

He turns to Matthew. “I feel like…” He jerks his chin at the stairwell, trailing off.

“Kuma seems unconcerned,” Matthew says, his hand slipping to Maarten’s arm.

“Yeah. Matt…” He holds the key out to him without another word, and their fingers touch for much too long when Matthew takes it. He doesn’t ask if Maarten’s sure, because Matthew has learned by now that Maarten doesn’t do things he’s not sure about.

He quietly climbs the narrow staircase, the wood creaking under his weight. Kuma waits by Maarten’s side while Matthew fits the key into the lock, turns it, and opens the final door of the inn.

It’s… A room.

Just a room in the same style as the rest of the place, except this one feels lived in. There are books and photographs and paintings. A lounge chair by a modest fireplace, a record player, a large bed behind a beaded curtain underneath the slanted roof. There is even a small gas camping stove with a tea kettle on it. It’s nice.

Matthew pokes his head back through the doorway.

“Nothing unusual here,” he says, and Maarten’s shoulders sag. With a deep breath, the antiquarian starts to climb up too.

Kuma, with a delighted bark, races around the room before immediately lying down on the woven rug by the hearth. Maarten walks around the space, which spans the whole length of the building, fingertips dragging over furniture and windowsills.

“I don’t know what I thought,” he says softly.

Matthew has some ideas, mostly as they relate to his mother’s disappearance, but doesn’t voice them. Instead, he smiles when Maarten turns to him. The man inclines his head.

“Thank you, Matthew.”

“Of course!” He pushes his glasses up. “Journalism, remember?”

At that, Maarten smiles and shakes his head, coming closer. His fingertips now gently brush over Matthew’s wrist, his forearm, and he seems to be lost for words when Matthew meets his green eyes. His mouth opens and closes. Matthew swallows.

“Well, hey,” he says a little awkwardly, “you’ll have an actual living room, now.”

“Hm, we will.” Maarten seems to realize what he’s said, eyes widening. “Or, well—if you want that.”

“I… I do, Maarten.” Matthew touches his chest, running a hand up to his collar. He finds that his heartbeat thrums fast underneath the warm skin of his neck, just like Matthew’s own. “I’d love to.”

Maarten only nods, and when Matthew touches his jaw, he bends forward.

Time seems static for a moment, suspended as though in a sunbeam, and then Matthew reaches up and kisses him, finally and yet so soon. He swears he can hear a bell chime when their lips brush, but the sound is lost instantly when Maarten makes a wonderful, breathy noise and pulls him close, winding his arms around him as Matthew clings to his neck. Just like this place, it feels right, to stand there in the living room, exchanging slow kisses as if they’ve been doing it for years. Maybe they have been, or should have been. That’s what it feels like, in a sure way that makes Matthew shiver.

Slowly, Maarten pulls back to look at him, a flush on his cheeks that somehow smooths all his harsh angles. Matthew smiles, and he laughs softly, ducking his head.

“Glad you’re here,” he mumbles, pressing his lips to Matthew’s temple.

“Yeah. Me too.”

They have even more to explore now—each other, for one, but also the room. It becomes abundantly clear quickly that Maarten’s mother must have lived here for a while, possibly after she disappeared. There are photographs Maarten recognizes, of his parents and grandparents, even one of him as a grumpy toddler that makes Matthew laugh and tease him until Maarten kisses him silent. They listen to the records they find in a cupboard. Mostly things from the ‘60s and ‘70s. They open the windows while Maarten smokes in bed, and Kuma claims the lounge chair as his own.

Matthew thinks he means to go visit home, to pick up his things, to see his family and tell them about Maarten—they’ll be so happy for him—but every time, it seems, something comes up at the inn or in town, and he thinks it can’t have been that long anyway, and it doesn’t seem so important for a while. However long ‘a while’ really is.

Maarten starts working in the garden again. Matthew climbs up on the roof once more when a bird decides to nest in the chimney. This time, much to his delight, Maarten embraces him tightly as soon as he steps off the ladder, and just hums when Matthew assures him all is well. He is, it turns out, almost comically afraid of heights, barely able to listen to Matthew’s stories about his home in the mountains without shuddering.

“But I’ll come along if you want me,” he tells him anyway, and Matthew grins. There are so many things to show him.

Sometimes, when Matthew goes into town—Maarten hardly goes after a while—it will seem as though no time has passed at all since the previous trip, but other times, the seasons don’t even seem to line up, and it is disorienting.

But then, every time he gets back, it won’t seem so important.

And sometimes, out there on the lake, he hears those bells just like Maarten said back in the autumn.

He writes more notes, although he’s not sure what for, and takes pictures he doesn’t get developed. But that’s okay. It just doesn’t seem very important.

In the spring, they finally finish cleaning the greenhouse, and Maarten scolds Kuma for trying to eat some ducklings right before playing fetch with him on the lakeshore as Matthew watches from a kitchen window. He finds Maarten sketching sometimes, most often in ballpoint pen; he does pretty impressive depictions of the inn and the lake, of Kuma curled up in the sun.

In another time, Maarten says, he might have become a newspaper illustrator, and they might have worked together.

Matthew takes to hiking to look at birds, and fishing in the lake while Maarten putters in the garden. Kuma tends to scare the fish away, but occasionally, Matthew will catch something they can eat.

Then, it must be summer, although surely it cannot have been that long. The trees are densely, vibrantly green, and Matthew swims in the lake, splashing around with Kuma while Maarten reads one of his mother’s books on a garden bench. He makes them lunch with vegetables from the garden and tugs Matthew into the shower after Kuma shakes himself off and gets them both drenched.

They discuss many plans in the bed under the slanted beams of the roof, tangled together with the windows open and Kuma snoring in his chair. Plans to go to the mountains—even if Matthew will have to hold Maarten’s hand the whole time—to see Matthew’s family, to raise chickens or maybe another dog. To, one day, re-open the inn. Add ‘Williams’ to the door.

But those are all for later. Right now, Matthew is happy, and it never seems very important anyway.

On the day they realize it’s autumn, with the forest quite suddenly a picture-perfect riot of golds and reds, Kuma runs away.

He swims away, in fact, leaving both Matthew and Maarten to hurry after him in the boat. Matthew keeps trying to coax the dog back, to no avail. Kuma seems only to want to get away. He’s going quickly towards town.

Unexpectedly, the boat hits a tangle of driftwood and can’t continue, and Maarten hurriedly drives to shore so they can follow Kuma on foot, still calling out.

“He’s never done this before!” Matthew says, nearly in tears when they can’t seem to get through the underbrush.

“No, it’s—” Maarten jerks, looking up. “Did you hear that?”

“Kuma?”

“No, it’s… The bells.”

“The bells? Maarten, I don’t care about the bells!”

“I—of course.”

They continue to try and find the dog, to find their way off the lake, for what feels like hours. They have no luck. There is always something blocking the way. Brush, or water, or a hole, and Matthew can hear the bells as well, now. They’re chiming from the direction of the inn, and they’re louder than they ever have been.

“Why do you think he ran?” Maarten asks softly. Both of them are sitting despondently in the boat.

Matthew shakes his head, removing his glasses to rub his tired eyes. It’s getting dark. He tucks his knees between Maarten’s, and they sit quietly for a while, the bells chiming.

“I think his instincts told him something,” Matthew eventually says. “Something about this place changed.”

With a sigh, Maarten nods. They drive back to the inn.

It’s as lovely as ever, but seems too silent, now. Maarten traces his fingers over the name on the front door, and sighs again when Matthew embraces him from behind and leans his forehead against the man’s neck.

The bells still sound, now and again, close but not from the building itself.

“You know, I never knew my grandma,” Maarten says. “On my mother’s side, at least. 1948, I’ve been told she left. Grandpa supposedly died in ’63. There are pictures of them here.” He turns abruptly in Matthew’s arms. “I’m sorry, Matt.”

“No. Remember what I said? You’re the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I don’t think that’s what you said,” Maarten replies softly.

“I just didn’t realize it yet.”

He breathes out slowly, eyes closing. Matthew watches him, arms around his waist. Eventually, Maarten reaches up to card his long fingers through Matthew’s unruly curls—longer now, than they ever have been. It’s familiar, the way he brushes over his scalp, tucks his hair behind his ear.

“So, what now?” he asks. “If Kuma doesn’t come back…”

Honestly, Matthew hopes he doesn’t. He hopes Kuma makes it back to town and stays there, safe and sound. He says as much. Maarten nods sadly. Kisses him. They go inside.

They both know that it is their last night, although neither is sure exactly what that means. Matthew orders all his notes and rolls of film, and some of Maarten’s sketches. Maarten diligently updates the ledger and tidies the inn. Maybe, it’ll take fifteen years for these things to be found. Maybe, since Maarten has no more family, they will never be discovered at all.

“You have me,” Matthew tells him, pressing him into the mattress, because, after all, it is their last night. “No matter what, you have me, and it’s been amazing.”

“I love you,” he whispers, and for a brief moment, the bells seem to pause.

“I—I love you, too.” That, at least, is important. Has always been important.

The next day, they consider going out to look for Kuma again, just in case, but a heavy fog has descended on the lake and the bells are louder than ever.

Matthew stands next to Maarten at the end of the dock. Maarten reaches down and tangles their fingers together.

“Follow the bells?” he asks.

“Follow the bells.” Matthew tugs at his hand so that he leans over and kisses him. “Wherever they make take us this time.”

“Journalism, huh?”

“And what a story I have.” Matthew smiles wryly.

“Glad to have been part of it.” Maarten squares his shoulders. Squeezes Matthew’s fingers.

They step forward, off the dock and into the mist.

#Hetalia #nedcan #aph netherlands #aph canada #u: human #u: historical #fin #nqgs #I live right next to the sea you'd think I'd write about that more #but no. lakes.#these keep getting longer. people refuse to die #w: 10000 #that thing I wrote for that prompt was kinda close to being a ghost story. it's just a thing i like to write.

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