#I tried rendering the water. Never again

[bigdingus1234]

Bath Time

[lilacgaby]

prohero!bakugo but you, his wife, were kidnapped.

you sat in a dark room, the dripping of water the only sound you heard. your eyes were blindfolded, your hands restrained behind your back as you were bound to a pipe on the floor. the smell of blood filled your nostrils and you resisted the urge to gag.

"she's awake." a strange, gnarly voice you never heard before said, before ripping the blindfold of your eyes, a different man beside him shining a flashlight directly into your face.

you didn't wanna know what you saw in the corner of your eye, unmoving and surrounded by a puddle. but you were broken out of your thoughts by a voice:

"so, girlie, wanna tell us what your husbands weakness is? he put a bunch of our gang in prison some while ago, so we want him dead." a guy with a scar across his face questioned.

as you stayed silent, he pulled your hair, yanking your head forwards to look at him. "answer me, and we won't have to get ugly."

you glared at him, your eyebrows scrunching in annoyance, "no way, eat shit and die." at your words, the man slammed your head against the wall brutally, leaving a dent in the wall, and your head bloodied.

"looks like you'll be trouble huh? i'll ask you again, what's your husbands weakness?"

as you again refused to answer, the other man slapped you across the face. "maybe his next wife will learn to listen. but we'll keep you alive for a bit longer, maybe you'll have a change of heart."

they stood back, admiring their work on you. your nose was broken now, the smell of your own blood apparent to you now as it dripped over your face. your head was pounding as you struggled to stay awake.

"katsuki.." you muttered wearily under your breath, making the two men laugh at you. as you fought off tears off pain.. or was it embarrassment? you didn't know as the two feelings started to blur together.

you knew you just had to hold on. just for a second longer, he'd come for you. the tears dried up but her will didn't, even as the hours passed with no sign of katsuki.

"did your little husband forget you girl? guess you weren't as precious as we thought." the men laughed.

"y-you're wrong. he's coming, and you'll regret this." you mustered, making the men smirk. "oh yeah?"

"fuck yeah." a voice echoed through the compound, accompanied by the sound of a concentrated explosion blasting through the walls.

one of the men, shook up by his sudden appearance, and look of pure unadulterated anger, tried to run off. the other grabbed you, trying to use you as a shield for his next explosion, but katsuki just used it as an opening for a direct hit, sending him flying into the other man, rendering them both useless.

katsuki then ran over to you, untying you from your confines, and looked over you, gently grabbing your face in his hands. "shit, babe.. 'm sorry."

"you came.. i knew you would."

he took you into his arms, getting you back to safety. after this, he'd never want to let you out of his sights again, he just felt so worried, so anxious for what could happen.

but as you two held eachother, the thoughts and fears were all calmed by the feeling of your bodies in tandem.

[pellucid-constellations]

Hello, absolutely love your writing - Drabble

Something based on time traveler’s husband, but the reader is the time traveler and she can end up in bad places or beautiful places (you choose), Azriel all worried maybe, fluff and angst?

Sounds kinda long for a drabble, i don’t know haha 🤍

Pairing: Azriel x Reader

Word count: 1k

Warnings: Angst, references to trauma

a/n: Hi! :) I made this sooooo angsty lol oopsie

Masterlist♡

____________________________________________

Never in Azriel’s life did he think it would come to this. 

He held you against his chest as sobs wracked your body, your fingers gripping his leathers with so much force he was surprised the material didn’t rip.

It had been a long one this time. 

Three weeks ago, you were sitting with him on a bench by the Sidra, a small bag of feed in your lap as you spread it out for the animals along the water. He had looked away, only for a moment, but when he turned back the feed was emptying on the ground and your body was gone—lost to a time and place he would not know of until you returned. 

Only, you did not return as you usually did. 

Most of the time, you were gone for a few hours, days at most. Azriel would spend the entire unspecified allotment with a pit in his chest and an inability to swallow, too inundated by preemptive grief and fear that eating and drinking and breathing felt impossible. But slowly, after being mated for some years, the time became more expected, more manageable. You would return exhausted but safe, and Azriel would give you a day before expecting a story. 

But this time, this time, you appeared before him as you always did—your home base, you had called him—and you collapsed into a heap of tears and gasped sobs.

Azriel had tried to parse out what was wrong. He had started with words—simple, easy-to-understand questions, but when it became clear that you weren’t even aware that he was speaking, he moved to touch. He pressed his hands along your back and hair, trailed his lips across your cheeks and dried the dampness there with his fingers. He held you, gods did he hold you, because you were in front of him and alive and every day felt as if that truth would be ripped from him. 

But you still cried. 

You cried to the point that Azriel was sure your head ached. 

“What about Rhysand?” Azirel stressed, eventually resorting to anything else that could help you. “Cassian? Mor? Who would help, angel?” 

Your cries mellowed some, but they were still awful, painful hiccuping breaths that tore a hole in Azriel’s heart. He collected your face in his hands and held you there, a panic in his gaze as he stared at your swollen eyes—at the redness that he had missed when you first fell into his arms. It looked inflicted and unnatural on your face. 

“Are you hurt?” he asked. “Where did you go, my love? Tell me.” 

You turned in his grip, eyes brushing over his fingers as they rubbed soothing lines into your face, and then you cried harder. 

It was all Azriel could do to hold you against him. 

When another sound started to leave your lips, Azriel strained his ears to catch it. Over and over. A repetitive loop that he could not make sense of. He leaned you away from his chest and the words became clear.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Azriel. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” 

“My darling, what?” he begged, shaking his head along with his words. “My love, darling, please. What could you possibly be sorry for? Where did you go?”

You took in a harrowing, shaking breath. “It took me there. To that time.” 

It, you always called it, because you never got to choose what point in time you went to. Something else dragged you along at its whim, and that was why the act always filled Azriel with so much dread. He had feared this—whatever you had seen to render you so inconsolable. 

“To where?” he all but whispered, afraid that you would lose yourself again. 

“Your hands, Azriel. For weeks I watched—” Azriel stared back in horror as you clutched at the material of your shirt as if it burned. “I watched and I—I couldn’t do anything. You were so small and I screamed and fought but there was nothing I could do.” 

Something in Azriel fractured that he never thought would heal. 

Before him, his mate grieved a past he hoped would never fully be revealed. You lived through it and were made to watch, whatever power that sent you away cruel and vicious and unrighteous. A lick of anger flamed through him, but something stopped him from feeling it fully. 

“No,” you breathed out, staring down at your arms. “No, Azriel, I can’t go. I can’t—not right now.” 

Your fingers and hands and arms slowly morphed into a hazy glare, and Azriel stared down at them with as much desperation as you did. He reached for you, but his touch went through your limbs and he had to catch himself on the floor beside you. 

There was nothing he could do—absolutely nothing. He and Rhysand had enlisted the help of the Day Court not too long ago, and the entire curse-breaking legion hadn’t found a way to keep you from this fate. 

So, Azriel knew what came next.

He knew that this broken rendition of his mate was fading and he didn’t have the time to pick up the pieces. 

His breath came out in fast puffs as he gathered you into his arms and spoke low by your ear. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to be right here when you get back. I’ll wait right here and you’ll be back so soon, okay?” 

You nodded against his shoulder, but Azriel felt the tension in your body as you went to speak. “Okay, yes. You’ll be here.” 

“I’ll be right here, my love. I’m safe here. You’re safe and you’ll come home. I love you. So much. 

“I love you—” 

Azriel’s arms dropped.

You were gone.

[lalunanymph]

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇���𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 — sylus

୨୧ meeting him meant the end of your innocence and ignorance

✧.* warnings: suggestive, hunter/prey dynamic, sylus has issues™, mentions of death, mentions of blood, making out, finger sucking, just sylus being a tease

✧.* this my chemical romance edgelord looking ass evil man has got me by the cl!t </3 i cant stop the sylus brainrot help

The sole of your mud-splattered boot splashes into a puddle of filthy water, soaking the hem of your Hunters’ pants. 

Hot breaths spill from your parted lips, and you glance back, full of panic, trying and failing to catch the barest hint of a shadowy figure spilling closer towards you.

Nothing.

But, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet. 

Doubling your speed, you tighten your grip on your gun, feeling the hard handle slipping between your clammy hands. 

“Damn it,” cursing under your breath, you make a sharp turn, and find yourself face-to-face with a wall. Using your Resonance, you feel for the potential threat, breaths rising and falling sharply as your watch beeps your coordinates back to your anxious teammates.

The second your whereabouts were exposed, you feared what the repercussions would be for allowing yourself to be drawn into such a risky mission. 

Captain Jenna has already warned you not once but twice for going after Onychinus on your own. 

Defying her once again, you fear it would be the last time you would ever hear her sharp words or firm tone. 

A crunch of leaves overhead startles you, and you swivel with your gun raised, eyes darting everywhere in the vicinity. The smell of rubbish burns through your nose, and coupled with the sharp sting of your sweat, it nearly makes you sick with nausea. 

Panic infuses through you, rendering you mute and unable to move when you hear a slow, dark chuckle emanating from the shadows.

He appears, dressed in all black, strands of silvery hair falling right into his deep eyes; your worst nightmare coming to life. 

“There you are,” he seems to purr, deep baritone dragging through each syllable; hammering in how defenseless and trapped you were. “I never thought I’d ever see a day when a Hunter finally becomes the hunted.”

Sylus—head of Onychinus—approaches you with a slow smile spreading across his striking face. His tall stature and fitted clothes, in every shade of black you can imagine, is exacerbated by the crow perched right on his shoulder, its blood-red pupils widening at the scent of your fear. Despite the dangerous aura surrounding him, he could easily pass as a gentleman walking down the streets of Linkon City��eccentric and grinning. 

“You’ll never get away with this.” 

Your words, meant to be a threat, only serves to amuse him further. 

“Oh? Isn’t that what every good guy says?” Approaching you closer, he doesn’t pay any mind to the nozzle of your gun digging right into his chest. He knows you can’t shoot him; you still need your answers. “And then, inevitably, they all turn out to be wrong.”

A flash of red. Your arm seizes and goes limp, the gun in your hands tumbling to the ground; pained cries reverberating across the alleyway. The crow on his shoulder caws, flapping its wings in excitement. 

He grabs your face, digging his nails into the fat of your cheeks. “Pretty little hunter,” Sylus coos again, and this time, pushes you to your feet, controlling your movements with his Evol so you have no choice but to be the puppet at the end of his strings. 

Your legs spread without your consent, and your back meets the wall. 

Sylus watches, those sharp eyes ever mysterious and waiting. He doesn’t lunge or immediately savor your helplessness; letting you stew in your panic and loss of control. 

“Wh-wait,” you splutter. “Don’t do this—”

“Is this not what you were hungering for, my little hunter?” As he speaks, he advances towards you, every heavy footfall spiking fear in your chest. “You knew what you were getting yourself into when you tried to pursue me. So,” he stops in front of you, bending down close enough for his breath to touch your cheek. “Why the hesitation now?” 

“How do you know about my heart condition?” you demand, referring to the encrypted video he sent you a few days ago meant to lure you out into the open. “No one else knows that besides my grandmother.”

Sylus arches one dark brow, cocking his head to the side to truly study the mutiny on your face.

“And how are you so sure your grandmother was the only one with such classified information?” 

This asshole. He was never going to give you a straight answer. You had walked right into his trap.

Trying to move your limbs was futile. You were fully under his mercy. 

The stench of your entire situation grows harder to ignore. You replay every single moment which led you right in this situation. 

A shady video sent straight to your Hunter’s Watch. The dark background and the modulated voice whispering how you can get your answers if you meet him right at the docks at exactly one in the morning. Ignoring Xavier’s concern and Jenna’s suggestion for you to take a partner. Nero, who usually supported your crazy ideas, was for once hesitant when he inspected the video. They never expected you to take this on by yourself—for you to act this recklessly.

And tonight, you would die without any of them knowing the truth.

You want to shout, to tell the entire world that the leader of Onychinus is right in front of you. But, you cannot find  your voice. 

Sylus is close enough for the sharpness of his cologne to fill your nostrils. You can barely move your hand to press the alert button on your watch; your movements are restricted by this dangerous Evol you don’t think you’ve ever encountered.

��Tell me, why do you seek such answers when you do not know the magnitude of their implications?” 

His voice is saccharine sweet, condescending to a fault. 

Scoffing, you turn your face away, unable to look him in the eyes long enough.

“I guess… I want to know why my grandmother and Caleb had to die.”

The admission feels like a punch to your gut. To anyone else, your voice remains steady and firm. But, it took a special sort of psychopath to hear the tremble at the tailend of your sentence and yet, choose to laugh.

“Ah. Yes. I can answer that one for you—Onychinus did not cause the death of your grandmother and friend.” Nothing about tonight’s encounter could prepare you for what he has to say next. 

“You might want to look a little closer to home.”

Closer to… home? 

The confusion in your eyes is his aphrodisiac, and his nostrils flare; getting off on your distress.

“The Hunters,” he clarifies; tone like a teacher speaking down to a toddler. “Don’t you think it strange that they never investigated what happened to your family? Or, did a postmortem on your grandmother’s remains?” 

He’s speaking circles around you, intentionally messing with your mind. 

And yet, a seed of doubt begins to take root. You have to physically clench down on your fists to stop from lashing out at him; Jenna’s sympathetic expression, the doctors who told you that there was no feasible way they could glean what happened to your grandmother and Caleb without at least 85% of the body intact.

An accident. An anomaly. That was how they classified your family’s demise.

You weren’t even allowed to have a closed coffin funeral for them. 

His thumbs touch your cheek, swiping the tears away in a gesture far too intimate for a man who was meeting you for the first time tonight.

“Ever since I first saw you, you’ve done nothing but invade my thoughts.”

Your back melts off the wall and meets the ground, his entire weight pressed on top of you. He has you right under him with nowhere to go, and you can’t even call for help, those long, elegant fingers sliding right into your mouth, forcing you to suck on them.

“My pretty little stubborn Hunter,” he whispers. 

You know the look in his eye; the one men would get when they’re crossing the threshold of claiming the object they’ve been seeking for years. It’s the same look in Xavier’s eyes whenever you accidentally graze his thigh, or how Zayne’s expression visibly darkens when you call him ‘doctor’. It’s the same look Rafayel gives you when you say you want nothing more than to be by his side forever.

Desire.

And fear. 

Sylus swallows hard, and you’re surprised to find his touch faltering. Those magnetically dark eyes could engulf you whole, growing closer and closer until you’re forced to close your own eyes; his lips the first spark that sets your entire world ablaze.

Devouring you like you were oxygen in a deprived world, Sylus kisses are brutal and hard, nipping at your lips, forcing his tongue into your mouth so you have no choice but to choke on your own spit. A dark shadow flits overhead, its caws filling the night air with rampant euphoria. 

He is too forward… this is going much too fast…

“Do you not like it when intentions are made known to you?” He tugs at your bottom lip, smirking at your faltering expression when you realize you’ve spoken those words aloud.

You struggle against him, trying to turn your face away, but Sylus will not relent his grip on your cheeks. 

“Why?” you gasp. “Why are you treating me like this when we both are on different sides?” Struggling to push him away, you’re overtaken once again by his mouth moving down your jaw, caressing your pulse point and traversing down the column of your throat. Kisses which feel more like a possessive mark.  

“Who said we were any different?” He murmurs, and you have no choice but to voice out your disbelief.

“I’m a Hunter. You’re an illegal weapons seller. My job is to stop you—oh.” 

He kneads your hip roughly with one hand, expression open with want. You can’t formulate a single coherent thought, your vision purely dominated by the halo of his silver hair and those deep, impenetrable dark eyes. 

“No,” his deep voice intones, sending shivers up your spine. “You have no idea. We are more similar than you think.” 

Holding secrets you weren’t aware of, Sylus didn’t know where to start; how to make you believe him.

So, he settles for pinning you against the ground, your wrists held above your head and your body trapped under his bigger build.

“Heed my words, little Hunter,” he whispers, and there’s a look in his eye, an unfathomable emotion you wanted to unravel but it was gone the second you dared to look closer. “Do not trust what you think is the truth.”

Before your eyes, he dissipates to smoke, small flecks of blood landing on your cheeks and parted mouth. His raven caterwauls, inducing goosebumps across your entire body as it spirals into the night sky, disappearing from view.

You turn onto your hands and knees, spitting out the blood, wiping it off your cheeks with frantic swipes. 

Someone calls your name, and you don’t realize how badly you’re shivering until a warm embrace engulfs you.

“Oh, Y/N,” Xavier exhales, bringing you closer to the streetlamp light so he can scrutinize your face. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?” 

Thumbing the blood from your face, you nod, murmuring, “This isn’t mine.”

 Xavier opens his mouth, about to ask you what exactly happened when your Hunter Watch went off the grid when Jenna pushes through the alley, her gun at the ready, mouth set into a grim line.

“Y/N. You’re safe.” 

Accepting Xavier’s outstretched hand, you stood up with his help. Jenna shines a flashlight on your face, momentarily blinding you.

“Is that your blood?” she demands, sounding like she was a second away from giving you the lecture of a lifetime. 

You grimace, and Xavier tightens his grip around your waist.

“Captain, we should take her back for an inspection—”

“Agreed,” Jenna cuts him off, then narrows her eyes as she leans closer. “Is that… a mark on your neck? And your lips—they’re quite swollen.”

Slapping a hand to your mouth, you shake your head, hoping your wide, pleading eyes will get them to drop this. Next to you, Xavier stiffens, those blue eyes going glacial as he sweeps them all over your disheveled frame. It’s unavoidable that he comes to such assumptions based on your appearance. 

But, rather than lashing out in jealousy, he reels it in, choosing to steer you back towards safety.

“Whatever happened, you can tell us later. We need to get you checked up.”

His grip digs into your skin, and you don’t know what to say once the inevitable interrogation comes up.

How could you divulge all that Sylus had said without putting Xavier in a predicament between trusting you or being loyal to an organization he serves well? 

If what the Onychinus leader said was true, you couldn’t trust Captain Jenna either. 

And Tara…

Everything dear in your world begins to blur, infecting the foundations of your love for the people you trust; making them crack and crumble. 

Xavier, Jenna, Tara, Nero… did they all know what happened to your family but refused to tell you the truth? 

You had no idea how to react; you couldn’t wrap your head around such a betrayal if the truth were to come to light.

You think you could probably destroy the entire Organization with your bare hands if what Sylus said was true. 

Abovehead, somewhere in the trees, a raven caws—a harbinger of worse things to come.

a/n. save me emo edgelord crow boy save me .... reblogs and feedback are appreciated !!

©️ all works belong to lalunaymph. do not copy, repost, translate or share across any other platform

[luveline]

HI MLLLL! I absolutely loved your fainting fic with James! Can you write like a part a part 2 or like a follow up where reader starts realizing that James isn’t as bad as she thought and she falls for him as he takes care of her bc he’s really worried? I love them sm 🥹

James takes care of you when you faint

James is acting weirder than usual… sort of… nice? fem, 1.2k

The days after you faint are just as hot, but you come into work. You can’t afford to miss it, and it’s not as though you’ll make the same mistake twice. 

The memory of what happened is hazy at the start. James had just opened the window, the breeze that filtered in cooling your hot skin. You’d felt sick, you’d tried to stand, and your head had gone blank. 

You woke with your face in James’ hand. You can remember it if you think about it enough, his head tilted down toward you, the sunshine on his skin, his soft smile. He’d felt like a different person. 

You’d felt different. 

“Can you send me that information from the lab, please?” 

You glance away from your computer, eyes tired. “Sorry?” 

“For the, uh, Mr. Nguyen?” James asks. “You didn’t send them to me. I can’t do them if you don’t send them.” 

“Right.” You blink away the phantom of his hand on your cheek. “Okay.” 

“Are you feeling alright?” 

That’s all he asks. Every day since you passed out, at various times and in various ways. Are you okay? Are you alright? Is it too hot in here? Do you want to swap desks with me? That last one had been a little patronising. You’d told him to leave you alone. Your desk is right next to the radiator in winter, it’s prime real estate, and you’re not giving it up just because you got a bit hot. 

“I’m fine,” you murmur, turning back to your computer to open outlook. “Just thinking.” 

“About what?” 

“About you not talking to me.” 

“Funny.” 

You drag and drop the paperwork for the tests he’d wanted. It’s easy to render an invoice but you hate doing it because it involves a lot of talking back and forth with clients. James, on the other hand, loves to talk. 

“There, sent it,” you say.

“Thank you.” 

Awkward. You pretend to be busier than you are for a few minutes, stealing company time without remorse. James types up an email beside you, the click of his keys quick and loud in your ears. 

Remus pops a pen lid across the way, scribbling onto a post it note that he sticks on his monitor. You know what time it is from the sounds alone. A half a minute later, Sirius slinks up from the front of the office to wrap his arm around Remus’ shoulders, sing-songing, “You’re coming with me, handsome.” 

“Are you coming?” Remus asks James. 

There’s a lapse of quiet. You stare at your computer, aware of a silent conversation, but not privy to its content. “I think I’ll stay,” James says eventually. 

“Okie dokie. Y/N, do you want to come, lovely?” Remus asks. “It’s not too hot.” 

“I’m fine,” you say, “thanks. Thank you.” 

You don’t feel like yourself since you fainted. You’d hoped it would go away once you had a better night’s sleep, flooded your system with cold water and good food, but you can’t kick it. You have no energy, no want to do more than turn up for work and go home again, and you know what it is that’s making you feel this way, but you can’t admit it to yourself. It crops up in your mind unbidden and you push it back down. 

“Sirius never used to act like that.” 

“What?” 

“Sirius. He was never like that when we were growing up. Love makes him pathetic.” 

Love is a tender touch. Sirius had laid his arm over Remus’ shoulder without any hug or kiss, but it was as loving as either. To touch someone like they need a kind hand. 

Like James had held your face. His arm behind your back as he led you to the break room. 

“Do you wanna come with me?” James asks. 

You hold in a second confused, What? He’s standing now, you hadn’t noticed him moving, his water bottle in hand as he pushes his chair back under the desk. 

“Don’t wanna leave you here and have you smash your head in when there’s no one around. Imagine the clean up.” 

You get up on impulse. You grab your drink, and the back of your chair, and you stand there wondering if you’re about to be dizzy again. Your chest feels tight, but that weight of unconsciousness doesn’t come. 

“Hey,” James says. “Seriously, are you okay? You’re not like you today.” 

There’s a softness in his voice you can’t believe. “Can I eat lunch with you?” 

You wish that you said it to avoid the question. James wrinkles his nose, your heart drops into the pit of your stomach, but then he says, “I just invited you first.” 

“I… have to get my stuff from the fridge.”

“Me too.”

You walk slowly, worried it’s a joke, another stupid joke, but James comes up behind you and his hand graces your shoulder with the barest pressure. You can smell something sweet and warm on him, like jojoba oil. Maybe argan. “Sure you’re okay? You look peaky. Is it the heat?” he murmurs.

“It’s supposed to rain tonight.” 

“You can’t answer anything, can you?” James laughs with a vocal fry that goes straight to your chest. “I could ask you how many fingers you’d have and you’d tell me you have two hands.” 

James walks with you to the kitchen, where you gather your food and warm it in the microwave. He leads you to the break room, and makes sure to choose a table with enough space for you, even while people he’s friendly with beckon him forward. They look at you with unashamed curiosity, but James pretends not to notice so you do too. 

You’re expecting a joke. Aw, look, we’re finally on a date. Or Wow, you know how to use a spoon, I had no idea you were so dexterous. 

“Did you see they’re making a new movie about those aliens? The ones who can hear you everywhere you go?” 

You squeeze your spoon. “Uh, no, I didn’t see it.” 

“It looks awesome. I’ll show you the trailer on my computer after lunch, it looks just as good as the first two. That actress, the one with the really nice eyes is in it.” 

You have no idea who he means. James talks to you like a friend. He offers you some of his papris and he passes you a napkin from his pocket when you get food on your hands. James Potter might actually be a really nice guy. All it took was for you to garner his pity for him to show it. How pathetic you must seem to need it. 

“How do you feel now?” he asks as you clip the lid back onto your Tupperware. “You look better. Do you feel better?” 

“I’m fine, James.” 

“You frown so much I can’t tell.” He butts his knee against yours. “Alright, batten the hatches, I’m gonna carry you back to your desk.” 

“Why?” you ask in a rush. 

“Can’t fall if you don’t walk.” 

“James, don’t try it. I’m serious.” 

“You don’t sound serious. You sound like you want me to carry you.” 

“I’ll report you to Human Resources.” 

“For what? Being helpful?” 

“Harassment.” 

“Fine, but I’m not gonna catch you this time.” 

[flickering-chandelier]

Second Chance

Pairing: Cassian x Reader

Summary: Reader and Cassian have been friends for centuries, but nobody knows that she’s in love with him. Eventually she meets her mate in the market, but when he breaks her heart, Cassian is there to pick up the pieces, and offer her a second chance at love.

Based on this request! 🩷

Warnings: Swearing

Word Count: 4.5k

Cassian snickered as he landed on top of you, effectively pinning you beneath him. 

You grunted, “Okay, you win. Get off.”

He cocked his head, grinning. “I don’t know, this is pretty comfy.”

“You’ve proven your point,” you groaned, your head throbbing from hitting it on the ground of the training ring on top of the House. You tried to wiggle out from under him, but it was no use. He was massive, and your body was rendered utterly immobile. 

After another torturous moment, Cassian stood up, offering you his hand. He hoisted you up to your feet and you groaned again. 

“What were you saying about being able to beat me one-on-one?” he smirked. 

You just scowled at him and his smile spread further. He clapped you on the back. You winced at the impact. “Go get some water.”

Normally you would say something snarky about following orders, but your head was still spinning a bit, so you did as you were told without argument. 

You must have looked pretty awful because after a few minutes, Cassian knelt in front of where you sat on the bench, his eyes searching yours. “You okay?”

Nodding as you gulped down more water, you mumbled, “Mmhmm.”

His brow furrowed as he gently felt the back of your head, feeling the growing bump there. “Shit,” he said. “I didn't mean to pin you down that hard. Sorry.”

You shrugged, smiling faintly at your friend. “I knew I couldn’t beat you. It’s my own fault.”

He lightly brushed the hair that had come out of your braid off your face. You pushed down the swell in your chest, as you always did. “I think it’s time for the cool down,” he said, his eyes raking your sweaty, tired body. 

Your eyes widened. “You, the legendary commander of the Illyrian armies, are going to cut training short because you knocked me on my ass?” 

“Only for you,” he winked, offering you his hand again. “Don’t tell anyone.”

You took it, and followed Cassian as he guided you through the stretches. 

This had been your routine for a while. You had been in Rhysand’s inner circle for the last few centuries, and had found your home and family with them. Pretty quickly, you knew you wanted to be useful for more than just your mind, so you had asked Cassian to train you. You had started out at the Illyrian camps, but the way the males there treated you was…unsettling, to say the least. And it made Cassian angrier than you had ever seen him. So now you trained on the top of the House, sometimes accompanied by others, but often it was just the two of you. 

Training with him nearly every day for centuries had brought the two of you very close together. He was definitely the best friend you had ever had. He was your favorite person in the world. The two of you talked about everything.

Well, almost everything.

Even after all this time, butterflies fluttered in your stomach as you watched him, how his muscles stretched and bulged, his brow furrowed in concentration, his tanned skin gleaming with sweat in the morning sun. 

You had been in love with him for a very, very long time.

Frankly, it sucked being in love with your best friend. Your best friend, who flirted shamelessly with nearly everybody, who had a body even the gods were surely jealous of. Who was so kind and good and brave that nobody could ever compare. 

Especially not you.

That was the main problem, really. Why you had never said anything. You knew you could never deserve him, no matter how long you lived. He was legendary. Literally. He was strong, fearless, and so, so kind. And not to harp on this too much but, that body. Compared to him, you were entirely insignificant and you always would be.

So, you suffered in silence. Loved him from afar. And waited for the Mother or the Cauldron or whoever it was that was in charge of your fate and your mate to get their act together.

“What’s running through that pretty head of yours?” Cassian said, glancing over at you.

You reigned in your scowl. Centuries of friendship made it extremely easy for him to read you like a book. “I’m debating whether I hate you for pinning me to the ground like it was nothing, or if I love you for cutting training short,” you said, breathless as you continued to follow him through the stretches. 

He smirked. “Oh, please. You know you love me.”

Rolling your eyes goodnaturedly you grumbled, “Yeah, I know.”

If only he knew. 

---

Inner circle meetings these days were about twenty percent important business, and eighty percent goofing off. 

You loved it.

Seated between Azriel and Amren, with Cassian across from you, you grinned as the warrior picked a fight with Amren.

Azriel and you exchanged amused glances, both knowing that Cassian had never won against Amren, and he certainly wouldn’t start today. 

After they had been squabbling for quite some time about something that you honestly weren’t paying super close attention to, Amren turned to you, snarling, “Can you please tell him he’s a fool?”

Cassian sat back in his chair, clutching his chest, making a great show of being offended.

“Why me?” you asked. 

“He actually listens to you,” Amren said, pointedly raising an eyebrow.

You snorted. “He does not.”

Azriel cut in, smiling faintly. “He does. More than the rest of us, anyway.”

You glanced at Cassian, who just smirked back at you. “What can I say? She’s obviously the smartest one here.”

This, of course, started a whole new round of insults from Amren that left Cassian chuckling to himself, his eyes sparkling as he gazed at you through the entire barrage of Amren’s insults.

Later, you and Cassian were lounging in the sitting room at the House of Wind, after everyone else had wandered off home or gone to bed. 

You were laying down on the couch, reading a book. Cassian was sitting at the far end of said couch, your feet in his lap while he read up on war strategies. 

It was only a matter of time before the romance novel that you were reading got… steamy. 

Cassian immediately noticed the shift in your scent and threw his head back laughing. “Why do you read smut in front of people?”

You kicked his chest lightly, which only made him laugh more. “It’s not like I know when the smutty scenes are going to happen!”

“This one really got to you, huh?” he said, noticing the blush that had risen to your cheeks.

Before you could stop him, he lunged for you, grabbing your book and wrenching it from your hands.

“Noo!” you shrieked, and covered your face in embarrassment as he read aloud.

“His weight on top of me was nearly enough for me to come undone,” he said in a deep, sultry voice. “I couldn’t focus on anything but the power and command in his movements as he grasped both my wrists in one hand and pinned them to the bed above my head.”

You couldn’t stand it anymore. You grabbed for the book, but he was faster and caught you as you moved toward him. His arm wrapped around your waist and he spun you, pinning you to the couch, his weight holding you down for the second time that day.

But, this time was… different. Your bodies were completely flush together, every inch of you touching him. His hair tickled your neck as he looked down at you, your faces a fraction away from each other. 

The two of you just stared at each other for a moment, breathing hard. You could smell it on him too now, the lust. In this moment, he wanted you. You knew he did. Heat went through you in a wave.

And he knew it. 

“This is what you’re into, huh?” he said huskily.

You glared at him, but you knew the lust was still shining in your eyes. 

He smirked. “Is that why you baited me during training today? You wanted to feel me on top of you?”

Yes. “No!” You scowled, pushing his shoulders, but he didn’t move. “I baited you because I wanted to see how long I would last.”

Cassian’s smirk turned positively wolfish, his eyes gleaming in a way you’d never seen before.

You groaned, realizing what you just said. “Not like that.” You pushed against him again. “Get off of me, Cassian!”

He dipped his head lower, his lips just a breath away from yours. “Are you sure you want me to?” he said, his voice low, sultry. You could hardly breathe.

No, of course I don’t want you to. I want to stay here forever and ever.

“Yes,” you ground out. 

His lips darted to your lips for the briefest moment before he pushed off of you, sitting on his knees. After a moment, he handed the book to you. 

“I hate you,” you mumbled.

He smirked. “No, you don’t.”

You couldn’t stop your small smile. “No, I don’t.”

---

For days, you felt rattled by what happened that night. Cassian, of course, seemed relaxed as ever, but you felt yourself blush every time you were around him.

You were in the market, your thoughts lost in Cassian as usual, when someone across the street caught your eye.

He was beautiful. The very definition of tall, dark, and handsome. You felt drawn to him in a way you had never felt before, not even with Cassian.

You stopped in your tracks, unable to take your eyes off him.

After a few moments, he looked up and your eyes met.

And you felt it.

The mating bond that snapped into place. That tethered you permanently to this stranger.

And judging from the look in his eyes, he felt it too.

The stranger made his way over to you, his eyes not wavering from yours.

“Hi,” he said when he was in front of you, like he was in a daze.

“Hi,” you said. “You… felt that too, right?”

He nodded. “I never knew what they meant… what it was supposed to feel like…” he trailed off, just staring at you. “I'm Adonis.”

You introduced yourself and didn't know what to do next. For centuries, you had dreamed of the day that you'd meet your mate. But secretly, you had been waiting for the bond to snap into place with Cassian. You hadn't thought about what you would do if it turned out to be a random stranger.

“Do you… want to go for a walk?” Adonis said, clearly equally unsure of what one was supposed to do upon meeting their mate.

You agreed. And just like that, you were getting to know your mate.

---

You found Rhys, Feyre, and Cassian all in Rhysand's study at the river house. They looked at you questioningly as you walked in.

“Are you okay?” Cassian asked, his voice soft, the way it always was when he was worried about you. “You look… weird.”

“I met my mate today,” you said quietly.

Feyre and Rhysand looked ecstatic. Cassian, though, went perfectly still, his skin turning slightly pale.

“What happened? Who is he?” Feyre asked, her eyes wide in excitement.

You shrugged, briefly explaining how you and Adonis met.

“What's he like?” Rhys asked. “Do you like him?”

“I think so?” You said, noticing how Cassian was still as a statue. “I don't know, it's weird. I feel this tug towards him but I don't know anything about him! I mean, he seems… nice.”

Cassian finally unfroze, to look incredulously at you. “Nice?” He repeated. “That's it? Your mate is nice?”

“We went on a walk and yes, he seems nice,” you blanched, feeling like you should defend your mate but not sure how.

Your friends just stared at you, clearly underwhelmed by your declaration.

“What do I do now?” You asked nobody in particular.

“You keep getting to know him,” Rhys said, lovingly wrapping an arm around Feyre. 

You glanced at Cassian, who suddenly seemed very interested in the carpet.

“Okay,” you said. 

Really, what else could you do?

---

Your relationship with Cassian had felt off ever since you and Adonis had started to get to know each other better.

He still trained you every day, but where he used to be bantering and joking around with you, he was now all business, keeping his physical distance from you. 

It was confusing, having to grapple with your ancient feelings for him and these new blooming ones for your mate. 

After a few weeks of weirdness, you finally snapped. “Did I do something to upset you?” You asked as both of you stretched after a particularly grueling workout.

“No,” he grunted. “Why?”

“You've been acting weird for weeks.”

He glanced at you, his eyes guarded. “No, I haven't.”

“Yes you have, Cass. You've barely talked to me,” you tried to hide the pain in your voice. You didn't want him to know how deeply this ran.

Cassian sighed, pausing his stretching to face you, look you in the eye. “You’re right, I'm sorry. I just… I'm sad, I guess. I've been your number one for centuries and now…” he pushed his hair out of his face. “Things are different now.”

You took a step toward him, your heart cracking. “Is that what you think? Cassian, no matter who my mate is, you'll always be my best friend. And… I could really use my best friend right now.”

Guilt clouded his expression. “I'm sorry. I've been a shitty friend,” he said quietly, moving forward and wrapping you in a tight bear hug. “Are you okay?”

Sighing with relief, leaning into his touch, you said, “I don't know. I'm really excited, obviously, that I finally found him. And I do like him. But I'm also… scared.”

He pulled back to look you in the eye. “Scared? Why?”

“What if he doesn't like me?” You asked quietly. You hadn't been able to voice your fears to anybody else. 

Cassian’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would you even think that? Who wouldn't like you?”

I can think of at least one person, you thought, but shoved it down.

You shrugged, not sure what to say.

He murmured your name, moving to gently hold your face in his hands. “He'd be insane to not like you. I mean it.”

Warmth spread through you at his touch, the softness in his voice. “Thanks, Cassian,” you murmured.

Cassian kissed your forehead, then pulled you back into a crushing hug. “Anytime.”

---

Your gut was a bundle of nerves as you met with Adonis again. The two of you had been getting to know each other for the last few weeks, and while you didn't yet feel an electric shock, you were thrilled to have found your mate.

When Adonis showed up though, your nerves only got worse. The look on his face could only mean that he was about to deliver bad news.

The two of you made your way through awkward small talk until he braced his forearms on the table in front of him, and you knew he was about to get down to business.

“So, look. I know we're mates, and I do feel that bond between us, but I can't help but think that maybe the Cauldron was wrong,” he said casually, as if he were telling you it was going to rain later.

Your heart completely plummeted. You tried to maintain your breathing, keep your voice even. “Why do you think that?”

“The attraction’s just not there,” he said matter of factly.

Mind spinning, you repeated, “the… attraction?”

He nodded, like it was obvious.

“You're saying, you think the Cauldron was wrong… because you're not attracted to me.”

“Yes! I'm so glad you get it,” he smiled.

You just looked at him incredulously. “You're serious?”

“Yes?” He raised his eyebrow in question.

“So, you're… you're rejecting the bond?”

“I think that would be best. Don't you?”

You narrowed your eyes, trying to keep your rising fury locked down. “With the way you're acting right now? Actually, yes, I do think it would be best. You're a terrible person,” you stated, determined to keep your tears from falling until you could make it home.

His eyes narrowed, glaring at you.

And right then, you felt it. Despite your anger, it was still painful to have the bond rejected. It felt like you were being torn apart from the inside out, ripping your very being to shreds.

You gripped the table, centuries of training your body and your mind was the only thing that kept you from crying out as the bond broke.

Adonis felt it too, you knew, because he had gone pale as a ghost, his body trembling slightly. 

When the pain had subsided enough, you pushed away from the table, walking home without a backwards glance.

---

You were supposed to meet Cassian for dinner at the House, but you couldn't bear it. You went to your own apartment instead, laying in your bed in the fetal position for what was probably hours, tears streaming down your cheeks until your head was pounding and your eyes were burning.

It was awful, this feeling. How could he be your mate? How could someone like that be who the Mother wanted you with?

Would you never be good enough for anyone? 

And now your hopes of finding a mate were gone forever. Everyone knew that you only got one chance, one mate.

Why did yours have to be so awful?

A knock on your door roused you from your spiraling thoughts.

You just groaned, knowing that Cassian could hear it.

The door opened and you heard his heavy footsteps as he found you in your bed.

He grimaced as soon as he saw the state of you, his eyes flooding with concern. Instantly he was by your side, kneeling in front of you, holding your hand. “What is it?” He asked, his voice soft despite the tautness of his body.

Your voice came out as barely more than a croak. “He rejected the bond.”

Cassian's rage was palpable, filling the room. “What?”

Ashamed, you hid your face in your pillows. You couldn't tell him why. Didn't have the words in you, and you didn't want him to know how much it hurt.

He swore under his breath, then crawled into bed with you, gingerly wrapping his arms around you, holding you close. You buried your face in his chest, breathed in the scent of him. It almost broke your heart even more, knowing he would never feel for you what you felt for him.

His fingers drew small, soothing circles on your back for a long moment until he broke the silence again. “What happened?” He said quietly.

It was a long time before you could answer. But you knew that if you could tell anyone in the world, it would be him. “He's not attracted to me,” you whispered.

Cassian's entire body tensed, his grip on you tightening. “He said that?” He said with lethal calm.

“He did,” you croaked as another tear slid down your cheek.

“I'm going to slaughter him,” he growled, his body trembling as he sat up, taking you with him. “I'm going to rip his skin off his bones--”

He had moved you so you were straddling him, your hands on his shoulders. “No, you won't,” you said gently.

“Why shouldn't I?” He spat, his eyes dark, his hands gripping your waist so hard, it would surely leave a bruise.

“It wouldn't solve anything,” you said sadly. 

Cassian buried his hand in the hair at the back of your head, forcing you to hold his gaze. “You listen to me. He is wrong. He is awful. You are so beautiful. You are so strong and kind and incredible. Do not let him get to you, okay? This is his loss, not yours,” he said, his eyes locked on yours, alight with so much emotion, your eyes welled with tears again.

He pursed his lips, his eyes softening as he pulled you into him again. You cried into his chest. “Why would the Mother do this to me? Why would she choose him?”

“I don't know,” he said sadly, running his hands through your hair gently. “I don't know. Maybe she made a mistake.”

You sniffed. “I don’t know what to do.” 

He kissed your head softly. “You lean on the people who love you. And then you try to move on.”

You cried even harder, and he held you and held you until your sobs diminished and you drifted off to sleep.

---

Cassian barely left your side in the following weeks, his hands always on you, comforting you. Even when he had to go to the Illyrian mountains, he brought you with him. 

It always did something to you, seeing him in command of all those soldiers. His face stern, his body rigid, barking orders at everyone. Despite all the awful things that had happened recently, it still made your toes curl in your boots. 

But even you could only brave the cold for so long to watch Cassian be in command, so you eventually wandered into Rhysand’s mother’s house, a roaring fire already ablaze when you arrived. 

You sat in front of it, warming your hands, a blanket wrapped around your shoulders. 

Weeks after the disastrous meeting with your mate, you were finally starting to feel like yourself again, like other things in life mattered more than the jerk who hurt you.

It was mostly Cassian’s steady, comforting presence that had helped you return to yourself, his relentless insistence that you keep up with your training, that you don’t break your routine no matter how much your heart hurt. 

Cassian had been what was keeping you together for a long time, you realized. 

It was this thought that he interrupted, swinging the door open loudly, the snow billowing in behind him. After he had closed the door behind him, you heard his heavy footfalls stop dead in their tracks behind you.

You turned to look at him in confusion, and then you felt it. 

A bond snapped into place. 

A bond that somehow, after all this time, linked you to Cassian.

Your heart began pounding in your chest, your head spinning. “What--”

Before you could finish the thought, he was on top of you, pinning you to the ground, his lips on yours. You always forgot how quickly he could move, how he could be across the room in the blink of an eye with ease.

A moan sounded from you involuntarily as he cupped your cheek gently with his rough hand, his other on the floor next to your head, keeping some of his body weight off you so you wouldn’t be crushed. This seemed to spur him on even more, his tongue delving into your mouth immediately after you had opened your mouth to him. 

“I knew it,” he groaned, kissing your cheeks, your neck, “I knew it should’ve been me.” 

“Cassian,” you gasped, unable to process what was happening, what he just said--

He growled, kissing you again deeply, rocking his hips against yours.

You hated yourself for doing it, especially since you had been dreaming of this very moment for centuries, but you also needed a moment to think, to process. 

“Cassian, wait,” you said breathlessly, putting your hand on his chest. 

He halted immediately, pulling back to hover over you. “I’m sorry-”

“No, it’s okay,” you said, smiling to reassure him. He was breathing hard, his eyes locked on yours, trying to decipher if he had done something wrong, you knew. “I mean -- we should definitely continue that later, I just… I don’t understand.”

Cassian rose from on top of you, sitting up. You followed, sitting up to face him. “We’re mates,” he said with a soft smile, his eyes shining. “You and me,” he shook his head in disbelief. 

“I thought you could only have one mate? I thought that was it…” you trailed off, unable to form the words.

He shrugged, grinning. “I guess the Mother decided to give you another chance.”

All you could do was stare at him in disbelief. 

Cassian was actually your mate. Cassian.

His brow furrowed, his expression flooding with fear. “Are you upset?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. You gazed at him, at your beautiful, incredible mate. “Cassian, I’ve been in love with you for centuries. I’ve never been happier in my life.”

He made a choking sound. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

You bit your lip, pondering how much to tell him. He took your hand in his, scooching closer, hanging on your answer. Finally you leveled your gaze with his. “I don’t deserve you.”

His face contorted in anger then, a look that had never been directed at you before. “Why would you ever think that?”

Incredulously, you gestured to him. “Are you kidding? Look at you! You’re the commander of the Illyrian armies, they’ve literally written about your war tactics in the history books, you’re one of six people in centuries to actually reach Ramiel, you’re so kind and good and--”

Cassian’s lips were on yours before you could continue. “I love you,” he murmured against your lips. “I love you so much.” 

Your heart melted at his words and at his touch. After a few moments, he pulled back to look at you again. “Never say that you’re not good enough ever again. You’ve been in Rhysand's inner circle for centuries for a reason. How do you not see how incredible you are?” 

All you could get out was, “You love me?”

He laughed, the deep sound practically bouncing off the walls, before his expression softened, gazing at you lovingly. “Of course I love you. I was acting so weird after you met Adonis because I had never been so fucking jealous in my life,” he said quietly, gently tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’ve wished that you were mine for a long, long time.” 

You launched yourself at him and he was ready for you, wrapping his arms around you tightly as you kissed him. He laughed against your mouth, holding your body against his. 

Soon, you were completely tangled together, losing yourselves in each other.

Hours later, you were laying on the floor in front of the fire, your legs entwined together, your head on Cassian's chest, his arms around you. 

“After all this time,” you murmured, lost in the memories of all your lonely nights, now knowing that Cassian had felt the same way you did.

He kissed the top of your head. “I'm just glad the Mother finally helped us get together,” he chuckled.

“Me too,” you agreed. “We owe her a lot.”

“We owe her everything,” he said quietly, leaning in to kiss you again. 

You snuggled closer into him, relishing the thought that you would never again be alone.

@loving-and-dreaming @birdsflyhome @hanuh @sheblogs @iambored24601 @thalia-as-blog @evergreenlark @ecliphttlunar

[hatsukeii]

fragrance: lazy sunday morning, replica / college!kageyama tobio x reader

notes: lily of the valley (top), iris (heart), white musks (base)

description: fresh laundry pulled from the wash, lazing around in the embrace of linen sheets.

disclaimer(s): faint sillage, poor longevity

wc: 3224

warning(s): mentions of panic attacks, but other than that nothing!!! gn reader too!!!

The first Sunday morning you spend together is at 6am in a residential laundromat. The two of you have occupied the lonely space, watching clothes spin as soap bubbled and sloshed against fabric. You kneel in front of the opening of the washing machine, basket in hand as you lazily yank dripping clothes and soaking sheets out. Kageyama leans on the edge of another washing machine, hip pressed against the side of it with his phone in one hand and the other propping him upright as he waits for his own bedsheets to finish .

You go home with a basket of double sized bed sheets, ones that hang much too loose on your twin bed, despite your many attempts to tuck them beneath your mattress. Kageyama goes home with a basket of twin sized sheets, ones that stubbornly snap off the corners of his double bed as he desperately tries to pull them across.

————————————————————————

The second Sunday morning you spend together is at the same laundromat, at 6am again. A week of sleeping without bed sheets has rendered both of you impatient, itching to reunite with your own. Both of you assume that the other would be at the laundromat again the next week, and both of you are correct in thinking so. This time, you arrive with a duffel bag, alongside a basket of unwashed clothes, and Kageyama enters the laundromat with two baskets, one stuffed with bedsheets, the other with his own dirty laundry.

“Sorry, grabbed them by mistake last week, didn’t even fit on my bed properly.”

“All good, I also slept without bedsheets for the week.”

Bedsheets are exchanged, stuffed into baskets and bags, and the two of you continue your laundry in silence, shoving dirty clothes and towels into separate washing machines. You glance at Kageyama, a D1 volleyball jersey peeking from his basket.

“You the new first year on men’s D1 volleyball?”

He hums in confirmation, tugging the jersey from his laundry as he shoves it into the machine.

“I watched you guys play last Friday, it was good.”

“Thanks. I’m pretty sure you’re in my lecture hall tomorrow too.”

Your eyebrows rise, surprised. You swear you have never seen him in your lectures, only ever on the court. You aren’t even too sure of his name yet. Standing up, you slam the washing machine door shut, pressing lazily at the buttons until a droning beep sounds, and soapy water begins to trickle into your laundry.

“Really? Never seen you there before.”

“I sit behind you most the time. y/n, right?”

You scratch at your frizzy bed head, too dazed to register his question. You hear the beep of a second machine, and the sloshing of clothes and water.

“Yeah. Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Tobio. Kageyama Tobio.”

————————————————————————

The twelfth Sunday morning you spend together, unlike the first, or the second, or the third, or any previous ones so far, is on campus instead, at 8am. Somehow, the both of you have managed to do your laundry during the week, perhaps for the reason of making it to the college’s open day on time. You rub your arms against a school emblem hoodie, and a staff lanyard, whilst Kageyama is clad in full volleyball attire, kneepads and jersey proudly representing the school’s men’s volleyball team as the two of you make your way from the residential quarters to the main campus.

“Don’t you look extra cool today, Mr. D1 athlete?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, TA nerd.”

You grin, slinging an arm around Kageyama’s neck haphazardly and yanking him down. He yelps as his arm shoots up to your own, wrestling you off. Clicking your tongue, you kick the back of his knee and watch him catch himself halfway into his leg buckling beneath him, snickering vengefully. Ducking down swiftly and picking you up by the legs, he slings you onto his shoulder, arm wrapping around your waist as he continues walking. Kicking and flailing, your fists rain down on his rigid back, a vain attempt at forcing him to release you. His steps come to a stop, just to tighten his grip on your body.

“Let go of me! Or I’ll take your bedsheets again, asshole!”

“Yeah, if you can make it down, that is.”

Offended (not really), you stretch your arm as far as it can go, poking at his side. Kageyama squirms and writhes, the shit eating smirk once plastered on his face contorting into a pained laugh. His arm finally loosens around your waist, and you take the chance to wriggle out of his grip, landing on the ground in front of him.

“D1 athlete, but can’t keep someone half your height and weight on your shoulder, get good.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. He is good. Great, even. He does, however, wish he could have revelled in the feeling of his arm around your waist for just a little longer.

————————————————————————

The twenty-fifth Sunday morning spent together is, once again, as always, at the laundromat. However, with the months of friendship the two of you have accumulated, a new step to your laundry routine has been introduced. No more are the days of staring at bubbling clothes and spinning sheets through the veil of chatter and gossip amongst the two of you, instead replaced by morning coffees, walks, even the occasional jog. Today, the two of you have decided on a coffee walk, the steaming cups residing within your numbingly cold fingers, their heat emanating into frosty winter air.

You blow at the opening of the lid, wisps of steam puffing from the liquid as you take a sip of the latte (ordered with only half a shot and extra milk with sugar). Still too bitter, you wince, smacking your tongue to wash the caffeine down. Kageyama huffs out a chuckle, before gulping down his own (also ordered with only half a shot and extra milk with sugar), and grabbing yours from your hand, devouring it too. Then, he tilts his head, looking at your surprised expression with furrowed brows and nibbling his lip in confusion.

“You don’t actually like coffee, do you?”

“Well it’s the only thing they have at this cafe. Plus, you like this place, so I keep coming anyway.”

Kageyama stares, baffled. Him? Liking coffee? Where did you get that from?

“I thought you liked it, considering you started these coffee runs? I’m pretty indifferent to be honest.”

You let out a breathy laugh, pointing at him instead.

“I thought I could try to like it, but I only started because I thought you’d be into coffee? Isn’t that what brooding guys like you enjoy drinking on Sunday mornings, while their laundry is running?”

Kageyama hates coffee. He has to order it with a 1:7 ratio of espresso to milk. Yet the hums of satisfaction (or so he thought) that seem to escape your throat at every first sip of hot coffee on chilly Sunday mornings makes every disgustingly bitter swallow of caffeine just this much more enjoyable. You also hate coffee, albeit not needing as extreme of an espresso to milk ratio (1:6 to be exact), yet Kageyama’s fluttering grin makes it clear what you have to do- suck it up and swallow your scathing, sickeningly tart (half) espresso shot, so you can keep, whatever this is, going.

“Yes, brooding guys like black coffees in the morning. But no, I don’t like coffee at all. Wanna go somewhere else from now on, my treat?”

From that Sunday morning onwards, the two of you skip the usual coffee stop, and head around the block for a cafe that serves chocolate instead. Kageyama’s grin would stretch into a satiated smile from the corner of your eyes, and your small, fleeting hums would turn into droning ones of actual satisfaction, much to the delight of Kageyama’s ears.

He wants to keep this going, through winter, then spring, then summer, and autumn too. You want to take the longer walks to the new cafe with him, for hot chocolate, maybe even iced coffee one day, if either of you suddenly develops the palate for it.

“So, you stuck around the cafe only because you thought I liked it? That’s sweet, Mr. D1.”

“What, like you didn’t suggest it because you thought I liked it in the first place? How nice of you, TA.”

————————————————————————

The thirty-fourth Sunday morning spent together, the two of you are perched on the edge of Kageyama’s couch, eyes trained to his laptop as a grey circle spins, and spins, and spins. On the coffee table ahead sits two cups of hot chocolate, stale and lukewarm.

“What if I’m not in?”

“Don’t be an idiot, look at you. You’re so in.”

The circle goes on for an unsettling period of time, and you swear you can hear the veins popping in Kageyama’s head. They can’t possibly reject him, they won’t. And if they do, you’ll be there to make sure the decision is fixed hastily. You’ve seen him play countless games by now, taking sessions of TA work off for the sake of watching a ball hit the ground over, and over, and over. Even for someone who doesn’t know the slightest thing about playing volleyball, you could tell that he deserved this. He was perfect, through and through.

The circle disappears, and the webpage goes blank. Then, twelve portraits pop onto the screen. The two of you inch forward, noses almost touching the laptop as you scan for one particular name.

"No.9: Kageyama Tobio, position: setter”

You barely have time to register his name in the national team roster before strong arms engulf your entire body in a tight embrace. Kageyama’s weight knocks you into his couch, his head buried in the crook of your neck as he finally exhales from relief. He’s close, closer than he ever has been before, and you catch a hint of white lilies and cotton on his pulse. Smiling, a pang of pride surges through your head and heart, and you let your arms wrap around Kageyama, pulling him close. You feel a trail of water trickle down the side of your neck, followed by a flurry of badly hidden sniffles and sobs, and one of your hands moves to stroke the back of his head.

“I made it…I actually made it.”

“I knew you would, Tobio.”

————————————————————————

The forty-fifth Sunday you spend together doesn’t start as a Sunday at all. Instead, it starts as a gloomy, rainy Saturday night, red numbers glaring from Kageyama’s bedside clock while he holds himself close, quivering breaths wheezing from his chest. The bed is damp beneath his sweating figure, hair sticking to his face and neck in his unmoving, curled up position.

The door to his dorm unlocks with a click, and you tuck the spare key back beneath the pot of the houseplant outside, nudging it in until it disappears, before stepping inside. The room is pitch black, spare of the buzzing streetlights seeping through his blinds, dissipating in hospital white threads. Your heart drops at Kageyama’s erratic breathing, his body curled into a little ball and sinking into his linen bed sheets.

“Hey, you called?”

He doesn’t respond, so you shut the door behind you, and shuffle towards his bed. Your hand presses into the mattress, the fabric damp beneath your fingers, and you sit beside him, your thigh pushed up against his back. His back remains turned away from you, yet you can feel the tension loosen ever so slightly. Your thigh nudges into his spine, and your hand taps at him to get up. 

“Your bedsheets, they’re sweaty. Go take a rinse, I’ll change them for you, okay?”

Kageyama obeys, getting up for the first time in the past three hours and dragging himself into the bathroom. Pulling open every single drawer in his room, you search for his bedsheets, before finally finding the same set that you accidentally took home once. Water splashes and taps from the bathroom as you peel the old, sweaty sheets off the mattress, tucking in the new ones instead, and giving his blanket a fluff. His room is a mess, a volleyball sitting beneath his bed, scattered papers across his desk, knee pads slung carelessly over his chair. The national team jersey, however, hangs proudly at his door, as if to remind him who he is now. He is no longer just Kageyama Tobio, college student, health major, D1 college athlete. He is so much bigger than that now, reaching so high that his feet might just leave the ground forever. 

Yet pain fills your chest as you stare at his new jersey from his bed, the school’s D1 shirt now tucked away into some unceremonious drawer. Is this really worth it? Is this worth hours of panic attacks? Or mornings consumed by training entirely, leaving your Sunday habits behind? You can’t remember the last Sunday you saw him at the laundromat, or grabbed that hot chocolate together, each week a cycle of training, class, training, then sleep. Like the unending spinning of wet laundry in a washing machine.

The bathroom door creaks, and Kageyama finally steps out of the bathroom to see a fresh set of bedsheets on his mattress, cool and dry beneath his body as he crawls in. This time, he doesn’t turn his back to you. 

“Thank you, y/n. I’m sorry.”

“Just game nerves, I get it. I’m sorry I can’t be there tomorrow, Tobio.”

A knowing pout creeps onto his face, before it dissipates into a sad smile. He knows you’ve never missed a single one of his games, and that the only reason you won’t make it tomorrow is because of a TA promotion initiative. Of all games to miss though, why did it have to be his first nationals match? 

“It’s okay, you deserve that promotion. You have to get it.”

You reach over to grab his broad shoulders, shaking them a bit as you stare him down. 

“You are, quite literally, the best player I’ve seen in my life. You’re gonna be amazing tomorrow. Don’t worry.”

Getting up, you grab your phone from the floor, rolling over to leave the bed, when Kageyama’s arm shoots out to grab your wrist. If he can’t have you tomorrow, he’ll need to have you now.

“Can you stay the night?”

Your face flushes. Never have you ever been offered to stay the night before by a partner, let alone a friend. Yet he looks like a lost puppy, eyes searching desperately for some semblance of calm within the harrowing match that looms dreadfully in the near future. Somewhere in there, is a thick cup of hot chocolate, puffing steam from the opening of the lid on a frosty Sunday morning, a basket of clean bedsheets, freshly dried and warmed from the laundromat as the sun rises above the horizon, and the stupid TA lanyard that he searches amongst crowds and lecture halls for, day in and day out.

“Of course.”

The bedsheets shuffle as you crawl back in, making sure to inch away from Kageyama’s body just enough to give him space. You look at him, face pressed into his pillow and eyes threatening to snap shut at any moment, and smile gently. The mask of lilies diffuses into something even softer, like morning dew sitting on iris petals, and pollen wafting into spring air, so delicate that it threatens to drift away at each breath. His fingers shift around the bed to find your own, hooking his pinky with yours as he drifts off to sleep, finally, after two hours of sweating, and crying, and failing breathing exercises. 

Your phone buzzes, text messages from your professor popping up to cancel your meeting for sick leave.

The clock by his bed ticks into 00:00. Sunday morning has come.

————————————————————————

Kageyama wakes up before you do on the forty-fifth Sunday morning, national team jersey stretched across his body and a duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. He watches your nose twitch a little, adapting to the warm, now empty spot on his bed. He decides to watch you a little longer, so he can remember your finger wrapped around his beneath his blankets, and the stripe of light on your face as the morning sun shines through the blinds. He swears it will make him better, as long as he knows every detail of your knee touching his own under the covers, and can hear the small, hitched breaths you take in your sleep in his head, and he steps out the door.

You find yourself sprinting out of a taxi towards Kamei arena at 1pm, finally having read the messages from your professor. Wet hair from your morning shower leaves lines of water in the fabric of your sweater, barely having had the time to take it in the first place. The arena is expansive, every corner turned leading you to the wrong sports hall, until roaring cheers erupt from one of them, and you finally burst in through the right door. 

Kageyama stands at the serving line, bouncing the volleyball against the ground. If they take this set off this serve, they might just have a shot at qualifying. Warm fingers, hot chocolate, knees touching, fresh laundry, hitched breaths, lanyard. He has to remember it all. Feel it all. He scans the crowd, and a lone figure stands at the door. 

“You got this.” He can roughly make out from your lips, now realising that he doesn’t need to remember, or feel, or envision it at all. 

He takes aim, jumps, slams his hand into the ball with as much precision and power as his arms can conjure up. The serve hits right on the line, too close for anyone to think to save it, yet in bounds nevertheless.

The referee calls the match point, and the team hasn’t even had the chance to approach him in celebration, before Kageyama sprints off the court, and towards you. He runs into you, knocking you back a few steps as his entire body engulfs your own in an embrace. He doesn’t spare a second, before grabbing your face, and pulling it towards him, planting a firm kiss onto your lips. You hesitate, confused, before your arms find his neck, looping around to hold him as your eyes flutter shut, and you breathe in the notes of lilies, and musk, and irises, mixed with his sweat and adrenaline. The smell of Sunday mornings. The crowd screams. His teammates also scream. His hands pull your face away from his, so he can properly stare at you, irises darting between your eyes. Fuck a trophy, or a medal, or a national title. He would happily pretend to like coffee, just so you could take him to every single coffee shop in the world if you so desired. He would be satisfied with your knees touching beneath his blankets on lazy Sunday mornings, maybe his arms around your waist too, and your legs tangled up in each other, instead of just his finger wrapped around yours. He would willingly do laundry every single morning for the rest of his life, if it meant getting to pull bedsheets out of washing machines with you. 

“I thought you couldn’t make it?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Tobio.”

author's note:

this was ok! i wanted to experiment with vignettes but it's hard to find a balance... but! im 4/7 done with finals, and i finally have the weekend to rest, so i decided to get it over with and finish off this piece!! im so stupid i like accidentally posted it way too early while checking my blog at like 6am so i was very confused when this draft went missing ummmm

anyways! hope you enjoy!! don't let the word count get to you!! please!! i poured a lot of effort into this because 3k words is more than i have written in like weeks!!

tag time!!

@starlysama @chuuya-brainrot @bailey-reeds @fiannee @afyrian @iiwaijime

ok love u guys see u soon bye bye

[leandra-kinard]

Prompt:

A very sleepy Tommy is cuddled up to an overtired Buck,who's spouting a bunch of facts about one thing or another.

Tommy's trying to listen and reply, but he's a sleepy sleepy boy. Buck's tired as well, but he's buzzing and just too happy to go to sleep right now.

"Hey, did you know that flavors don't exist on their own?"

"Hm?" Tommy hums against Evan's collarbone. He's tired, exhausted even, a leaden weight rendering his whole body entirely motionless. He can only feel that somewhat dull tension in his muscles that is slowly lessening as he feels sleep approaching.

"Yeah. So, uh— You need saliva to dissolve the flavor molecules. Only then can you actually taste them because they otherwise wouldn't dock to your taste receptors."

"Mmh, 'ds fassinadn."

"Right? I never thought of that before, but it totally makes sense," Evan replies, his own voice a little lower and softer than usually, though not nearly as tired sounding as he should be after the shift he — they both have had.

There'd been another forest fire, an all hands on deck situation that had called several fire departments in the vicinity in. The 118 had joined the fray a little later than Tommy and his team.

"Kinda like the whole question of whether there's a sound if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it. Though — uh, maybe... I mean there's always someone. Animals, I mean."

"Mhm," Tommy hums again, bringing up his last energy reserves to sling his arm a little tighter around Evan's waist and push his shin between his boyfriend knees.

He can feel Evan's hand slide up higher on his upper arm, warm and heavy, only his fingertips slowly dancing over Tommy's skin. It sends the most pleasant little shivers up to his neck, making him hope to fall asleep with the feeling.

"Or... uh, the fact that water isn't really wet, just whatever touches it," Evan says.

Tommy's not sure that actually would make a lot of sense to him even if he wasn't half asleep yet.

"Ev," he tries, barely getting more than that one syllable out.

"Hm?"

"Sleep."

A soft chuckle hums through Evan's throat and vibrates against Tommy's temple.

"Sorry. I'm just... I— uh, I'm kinda buzzed after a shift like that."

"I know," Tommy tries to groan with affectionate exasperation. It merely comes out as a slurred mumble.

"I'm just glad nobody got hurt, and that there wasn't too much damage. Could've gone much worse."

"Bu' i' didn'"

"Which is why I'm so... uh, so excited I guess." Evan lets out another low chuckle, and Tommy, even though he still cannot bring up the energy to look, can imagine the smile on Evan's lips now — soft, a little pensive but nonetheless radiant. Beautiful.

"Tellm' mo' bou' inne mornin'," Tommy mumbles, feeling a little bit embarrassed about not even getting a fully intelligible sentence out. He softly clears his throat. "Mmh, I can't even take anything in. 'm half asleep."

"Okay," Evan replies gently, and a second later, Tommy feels a warm press of lips against his forehead. "You're really cute when you're sleepy, you know that?"

"Hmm."

There are more words, gently rolling off Evan's tongue, but Tommy can't make them out anymore. They slip away from him and his consciousness, as he — feeling warm, cozy, cared for and loved — finally drifts off to sleep.

[mediumgayitalian]

The satellite dish at Camp Half-Blood would be better suited as a cereal bowl.

It hardly works. It catches a grand total of nineteen channels, twelve of which are news stations, and the final seven almost never have anything playing that’s actually worth watching. But the DVD player only ever works every third month, and the strawberry plants have to be watered, so on rainy days, the sixteen of them cram into the rec room of the Big House, organised, fight-reduction seating for as long as Nyssa can tiredly maintain it, and squabble over the remote.

“It’s my turn! Give it to me!”

“Quit whining you little twerp —”

“Will! Make her give me the remote!”

“Snitch! Snitch! Sherman, beat him up —”

Nico narrowly dodges Kayla’s dirty sneaker, sniggering to himself as Will and Sherman share, for perhaps the first time in either of their lives, an identical sigh of endless suffering, each grabbing one sibling and yanking backwards. They’ve really dug their claws in, so it takes a couple tries.

“Kayla,” Will warns, both hands clamped around her ankles, “if you don’t let go in three damn seconds —”

“Ellis sucks at picking channels!”

“Everybody sucks at picking channels! We got maybe four to choose from!”

“Seven,” correct several people at once.

Will rolls his eyes. “Forgive me. I forgot about the three toddler channels the rest of y’all babies are so enthralled by.”

“As if you don’t watch Sesame Street with as much childlike glee as the rest of us, Solace.”

“Can it, Diaz. Kayla, remove your nails from his face!”

A hand tugs on his sleeve. Nico glances over to find Austin’s big, pleading eyes, and since he is a massively weak loser, apparently, he sighs, mouth twitching when Austin wiggles happily, and plunges his hand into the nearest shadow.

He digs around for a second, trying to orient himself, and smirks when he sees his hand reappear across the couch, right in between Kayla and Ellis’ heads. He waits, watching for a break. Austin watches carefully next to him, hands still around his other wrist, and when the timing is right — a twitch in Kayla’s knee indicating an oncoming kick that even Will won’t be able to stop — he squeezes. Nico darts between them, snatching the remote for himself. He passes it to Austin with a wink. Austin points it to the TV immediately, clicking it to what everyone has aptly named the ‘Grandma Channel’ — twenty-four-seven footage of gardening set to quit jazz.

Thirteen groans — one cheer by Miranda, their lone ally — sound at once.

“You’re weak as all hell, di Angelo,” Billie informs him, obviously a fake gardener. Shame.

He makes a face at her.

Despite their troubles, the peace of the Grandma Channel does not last. In what can only be a coordinated attack, Nico and Austin are lulled into a false sense of security, entranced by a particularly satisfying timelapse of a grape vine, and when their guards are down, they are ambushed. With a deafening war cry, Harley is flung bodily on top of the two of them, landing with two gleeful elbows to Nico’s shoulder and Austin’s ribs, rendering them breathless and perhaps even close to death.

“No maiming,” Austin protests, wheezing.

“I’m telling Chiron,” Nico agrees, similarly struggling to reinflate his lungs. He glances at his medic boyfriend, also known as Judas, who only shrugs, smirking. His thumb is notably smeared with grease, a consequence of touching Harley no matter how many times Nyssa forces him to shower. Traitor. “No maiming is, like, the only rule here.”

Harley climbs off of them, elbows once again violating the rule on the way off. Nico actually feels his spleen compress into the size of an atom.

“Tough!”

The little twerp hands his prize to his big sister, who points it at the screen gracefully, as if she did not just use said brother as a weapon against two innocent people. Constantly innovative, those Hephaestus children.

Nyssa, on account of having hands like steel wires and a right hook that could make Muhammad Ali fall crying to his knees, is left peacefully alone with the remote. Nico glares at her, as he often does, with equal amount of hatred and awe. His emotions are widely replicated across the overstuffed couches.

She clicks rapidly through the channels, as she always does, fast enough that the sound echoes like static along with the rain.

breaking — jump! — traffic — learn — George — crayon — soil — sale —

She hardly rests in a channel for more than a second, cutting in the middle of sentences and even words, images flashing rapidly across the screen, swirling colour and skipping melodies, steadied by the roll of thunder, the patter of raindrops, the roar of wind and away of bending trees.

kids! — buy — gun — bridge — add — spade — colour — nine — east —

Austin sighs from beside him, sinking into the couch. Nico breaks away from the hypnosis for a moment to glance at the rest of the room and finds everyone else similarly entranced; eyes half-lidded and unfocused against the still-swirling TV, heads tilted back, curled into each other, limbs slow, fingers tapping quietly.

run — neat — rose — pasta — schools — closure — Sola — bumper —

“Wait,” Will murmurs.

gym — roll — climb — bush — accident — bud —

The old couches creak as Will shifts, Kayla pushed gently to the side as he moves forward.

“Nyssa, wait. Go back.”

The rain seems to mute itself. Nico is aware, quite suddenly, of the stiff set to Will’s spine, the odd quality of his voice. Nyssa, too, must recognize it, because she glances over at him, then slowly back to the TV, pressing the channel button once and setting the remote carefully on the coffee table in front of her.

No one grabs it.

“— terrible tragedy,” says a news anchor. “Unbelievably, really, Barbara, and something so sudden —”

“No,” Will says.

“Yes, Dave, always something you read about in old newspapers but never remember happens in real life —”

“No. No.”

He reaches for the remote but misses the first time, patting blindly on the table, and the second time, too, eyes glued to the bright screen. His hand scrabbles, nails digging on the old wood, increasingly desperately, but his eyes won’t move, face won’t pivot. Nico swallows, pushing back the sting of bile crawling slowly up his throat, the dullness in his ear, muffled like his ear is turned to a soundproofed wall. The hands he tells to reach over and hand the remote to Will don’t work.

“— almost makes me think of James Dean. That’s Naomi Solace, for those just tuning in, currently in critical condition from a head-on collision with a semi in Savannah, Georgia —”

Nico’s ears white out completely.

Will’s knees hit the floor.

———

next

[hiimawarish]

like passing notes in secrecy

s. jing yuan being as clingy as mimi is with you. cw. female/afab reader. fluff. established relationship (you've been married for a long time). jing yuan is whipped. he's also a menace. tw. none? not proofread (as usual). wc. 0.8k a/n. what can i say more than the brain rot this man causes me is endless? credits. dividers by @/cafekitsune.

Jing Yuan ponders, for a few seconds, how he got himself into this situation.

As he watches the scene unfold in front of his eyes—the sight of you laughing loudly as Mimi followed your every command—, he wonders if he has ever experienced peace as overwhelming as this. Odd, isn’t it? That one can feel such peace that it’s unsettling. Yet, he does. The fact that he can spend his day off here, merely watching you play with Mimi is proof enough that he has more than he deserves. 

A smile curves into his lips at that thought. If you were to listen to his thoughts, you’d already be lecturing him on his self-deprecation—on how everything that has happened is not his fault. It has been a long road, he realizes, but it’s been worth it. Even if you had yelled at him the moment he brought Mimi home with that absurd story about being a grimalkin cub, even if you had seemed rendered speechless by a mixture of surprise and concern when he appeared home with a baby Yanqing in his arms… It had been a long and arduous journey, still you remained by his side. Most of the time he feels like he does not deserve such consideration, but through the centuries you’ve managed to change his mind.

You’re stuck with me for life, you’d say, sticking your tongue out at him in that cute and playful expression he loves so much. For life. For eternity. Those were big words, and yet you’ve meant each and every of them.

“Come on, Mimi, I’m tired already!” He can hear you complain. The amused smile on his lips widens at that—you always try to tire Mimi out, but it always backfires. Jing Yuan can see Yanqing standing outside with you, and by the expression on the boy’s face, he knows he thinks the same. The lion had grown unusually attached to you over the years, and instead of settling down with you, it seemed to fill with an infinite amount of energy. “Stop! Stop!”

The lion did, in fact, not stop.

It chased you around the backyard again, and Jing Yuan watched you laugh. Your hair free, just like you liked it, messy from the wind and your play. Your cheeks have turned pink by now, the strain of keeping up with Mimi clear in your face and your heavy breathing. Yet, you still play with it. You allow Mimi to chase you, to tackle you down, to nuzzle into your neck, and to finally rest its head on your shoulder.

“I’ll bring you water,” Yanqing sighs, shaking his head as he disappears into the main house.

Jing Yuan watches him leave with a hint of amusement in his golden eyes—the boy is definitely acting like a teenager now, he realizes. Bothered and moody, and yet he would never deny you or him help. He seems exasperated as he walks away, and if the General paid enough attention, he could have listened to Yanqing wondering how his mother had gone crazy from playing with the lion. Instead, Jing Yuan is focused on you; the way your fingers lazily play with Mimi’s mane, how the lion almost purrs.

“Aren’t you two cozy, hm?” He says, as he finally approaches you.

You open your eyes lazily, lips curving naturally into a grin that could melt even the everwinter from Jarilo-VI.

“We’re resting,” You say. The moment your hand stops playing with Mimi’s mane, the lion reacts—it nudges your face, a clear demand for you to continue. “Well, Mimi is resting, and apparently I’m giving pets.”

“So it is a bad time to ask for my cuddles, hm?”

You can feel the rumble of laughter from within his chest as he tries his best to lay down on your other side, and now you’re trapped. Trapped between a giant cat and your husband. His laughter is contagious, though, and soon you’re laughing, too. His hand snakes around your waist, pulling you into his chest lazily. 

Mimi whines.

You laugh, again.

“Who would have thought the cub would be so jealous?” Jing Yuan complains, playing dumb.

“Mimi is anything but a cub now,” You nudge him softly, giggling when Mimi follows you, placing its head on your chest again, its mane tickling your neck. “And, for your information, it takes after you. You’re just as demanding, if not more.”

More laughter. You can feel it on your back as he holds you, his hand on your waist soft and gentle, tracing lazy figures on the fabric of your dress. 

“But I’m a general, darling mine.” He presses a lazy kiss to your neck. “Demanding is part of my job, wouldn’t you say?”

You elbow him, and you don’t miss the vibration of his laughter against your back. Sometimes, you think, your husband is insufferable.

If only the people of the Luofu knew that, within the four walls of your home, the Dozing General is better known as the Doting General.

more works.

©2023 hiimawarish do not translate, repost, copy, modify

[ackermonie]

i think that as we grow up, there’s always this little child that still comes out to play once it feels safe enough to.

the more satoru makes you feel safe around him, the more this child comes out to play, and he cannot be happier. even though it could backfire on him in the sweetest, most frustrating ways possible.

it can either build up over the week or a single day of satoru not giving you the attention you’re used to from him. he’d notice you getting quieter, retreating from making the first moves. he’d say that it sometimes makes you feel insecure even, but he’s never done that on purpose.

if anything, him making it up to you afterward is usually rather enjoyable for him.

this time, he’s been busy for a few days, only able to throw in mid-day texts and good-night forehead kisses, so you begin to retreat back into your shell. you stop texting him back right away, no double texting when he gets too busy to reply, turning your head away when he tries to kiss you good night, until the weekend finally comes.

it was friday night. work in jujutsu high ends early and both you and the students get the luxury of a couple more hours of freedom, but gojo was nowhere to be found all morning.

your sour mood could be easily detected by the first-years, rendering them just a bit more careful with you for the day, which could be a reason why they were done with their training sessions a bit earlier than usual today.

back home, you convince yourself that you’re unbothered. you light up a few candles, slip in the bath, and pour your favorite shower gel all over, letting the warm water carry the tension off of your back for a bit.

"i don't care," you repeat like a mantra as you put on nice pjs. anything can be happening, right? you shouldn't be bothered this much when he doesn't prioritize you. you knew what you were signing up for when your heart started to beat a little differently around him.

he's gojo satoru, for heaven's sake. with a status and a name like his in such a world, you most definitely were never going to be a priority.

the sun sets and there is still no sign of satoru, so you grab yourself a snack to try to fill the emptiness he is leaving. it could be pms, or you’re just looking a bit too much into it, but your eyes start tearing up at some point. you throw yourself on the empty sofa with something playing on the tv to distract you, but that’s when you hear the click of the lock.

even though it’s still late, this is the earliest he’s been home all week.

"i'm hhooommmee," the sing-a-song tone rings in the house. despite the way your stomach crunches at the sound of his voice, a roll of your still-teary eyes is uncontrollable. you can hear him move in the house until he spots you, and his footsteps accelerate until he jumps over the back of the sofa to settle in his normal position by your side. an arm immediately pulls you to him. "there she is!!"

"mmm," your smile is tight-lipped and barely reaches your eyes. you keep your attention on the tv, suddenly seeming to be much more interesting than your boyfriend.

now, satoru knew this is happening, and the man never shows up to a fight unprepared.

“what are you watching?” the lights turn off without either of you moving a muscle, leaving the light from the tv as your only guide into the darkness. he takes off his glasses, focusing on the tv for a few seconds. “new girl? again? what are we? 20?”

“i don’t have anything else to offer, i’m afraid.”

his head dips to your neck. the tall man takes some rather big, dramatic whiffs as he squeezes you even closer, pulling yet another eye roll out of you.

however, those eye-rolls seem to always come as a package deal with something twisting girlishly in your stomach.

“you smell so nice, baby, what the hell.” you feel his nose press against your neck almost obnoxiously.

“mhmm,” you let out, trying to pull away just a bit until he straightens again, a bright smirk on his very, very kissable lips.

“you took a bath without me?”

“that’s what one does when they get back from work to find the house empty again, yes.”

“did you eat?”

you say nothing, but your grumpy gaze snaps to his, and you wish you can just slap that victorious smile off of his face. “no.”

“i figured,” his hands slip to your waist, and in one swift move, you are facing him on his lap, knees on each side of his hips. “so, an early day at work, no food, and no boyfriend? you must’ve had the worst day ever.”

you’re not aware of the way your lips pout grumpily. you just frown at him and cross your arms over your chest with a roll of your eyes. “it went fine.”

“did it, now?”

“yes. very.”

“what’s this pout for, then?”

you glare at him. intensely, ardently, you just stare daggers into his head, and the man has the audacity to giggle at your reaction. his hands slip to cup your cheeks before he squeezes them together, making your lips pucker grumpily, then he kisses the pout away in a very obnoxious, loud, messy manner.

“you missed me, didn’t you?” he rocks your face gently, using a baby voice that makes you slap his hands away immediately.

“no.”

"oh you so did. you so did." he only stops rocking your face when you slap his hand away, a gesture at which he giggles lovingly. "I missed you too." he wraps his arms around your waist, leaning his head back against the couch so he can look up at you. "very much so."

"ah yes, yes, of course," you cage his head to the couch, frowning down at him. "what else? you didn't mean to act like you forgot I existed all week?"

"oh, how could i?" he tilts his head to the side. the blissful look on his face as he looks up at you, soft ocean-colored eyes and all, is putting you in a very weak position in this argument. "I can deadass write a 100k word essay about every thought I've had about you this past week alone."

you try to get off his lap, but steel grips are on your waist, pulling you flush back to him. his hand slips under your shirt, the cold skin sending shivers down your back.

"come on, baby. you know i'm sorry." his tone turns a bit serious, and your grumpiness begins to subside. "with yuji and sukuna's fingers, I can barely have enough time to even piss." he reaches up and brushes a strand of your hair out of your face. "i'd rather drop dead than forget you existed."

"ugh," you roll your eyes, turning your head away only to have it adjusted back by a gentle hand to gaze down at him.

"i missed you so much, baby," he leans closer, eyes turning softer by the second as he brings you in by your cheek, one that's literally burning under his touch. after all those years of being together, gojo satoru is still very capable of turning you into putty in his hands.

"i think i missed you more," you mumble, eyes planted droopily on his lips in the dark room. newgirl is still playing in the background. your body relaxes into his, and arms wrap lovingly around his neck. "I was literally about to start crying right before you stepped through that door."

he kisses you briefly, but it's interrupted by a fit of endeared chuckles. "oh no, baby," he holds your face in his hands as he laughs, and you try to push at his chest to get away to no avail. "I'm so sorry," he continues on shamelessly, making you lean your forehead on his. "I promise I'm gonna try to do better."

"shut up," you hit his chest. "don't do that. work is still important. that was selfish of me."

"never more important than you are," he swipes your hair from your face again, pushing it behind your shoulder. "besides, I already did what I wanted to do with the fingers in my possession. so until further notice, I'm all yours."

you lean down, giving him a proper kiss this time, one in which you both sigh in relief. god, you missed the way he tastes.

"good. we have a lot of rotting in bed to catch up on."

==================================

more?

[alittlebitofloveliness]

Angsty Curtis Brothers fic

My mental health really isn't mental healthing today so I tried to channel that into this. Hope you enjoy :)

**************

“Good hustle, Curtis,” coach claps him on the back as he jogs off the field and he grins, pushing dark sweat soaked hair out of his eyes. 

They’re up by a touchdown and one field goal- that he’s responsible for- and with possession and just two minutes left in the fourth quarter they’re reasonably safe, though the game isn’t over until it’s over. 

His teammates pat him on the back and compliment his kick as he guzzles back water, and it’s not hollow per se, but even after two years it still feels skin deep. He’ll never be one of them, never be rich, never be quite good enough, popular enough, socy enough, no matter how good his kicks or how well he runs plays. They accept him, maybe some even like him, but they’ll never want him, not really. It doesn’t even sting anymore.

The people who do really care about him watch from the bleachers. Mom and dad are there, dad talking with his hands like usual and mom laughing at him like she always does, too in love to ever scold him for anything. They wave at him across the field when he catches their eye and it almost feels right. Almost. 

The gang is around too, though less obvious in their support of him. Two-bit and Dally are pelting a group of freshmen with popcorn, while Steve, Johnny, and Soda are all smoking near the gap in the fence. They’ll be gone as soon as the final whistle blows, and he really can’t blame him. The end of the match is always the hardest for him too. 

33..32…31…

The clock ticks down steadily, their team and the visiting school fighting back and forth without either team gaining any substantial yards and then the whistle blows and they’ve won.

Like every game they've ever won, the victory feels worse than losing. 

His teammates cheer and thump him on the back while the fans flood onto the field and the coach gives a short congratulatory speech before telling them he’ll see them at practice tomorrow.

Then it’s perfectly, blessedly over. Except it isn’t, is it? It never is, not really.

“You coming to the afterparty, man?” Jared Strong, one of the nicer guys on the team and also one of the biggest, asks, “Damien’s hosting and his parents are outta town.”

“Nah,” he shakes his head. Rarely does he go to parties with the team, even though he usually gets an invite. He has no love for pretending to be something he isn’t. Not anymore at least, “I got other plans. Thanks though.”

“Have fun,” Jared nods politely, his helmet dangling in one hand, pale hair stuck to his face, “I guess I’ll see you at practice tomorrow?”

“For sure. See you Jared.”

“Bye Pony.”

He watches as Jared rejoins the rest of the team, shining brighter than the rest of them even in his stained and sweaty jersey. Jordan’s captain of the team, nicer than the rest of them, obviously more skilled even though he never bragged about it. 

Jared reminds him of Darry, and it’s hard not to hate him for it. 

It’s been two years, but he can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever really recover from it, or if the hole Darry left in the world is going to be a permanent fixture rendering his life a theatre production he stars in as Ponyboy Curtis with the demands of Doing What Darry Couldn’t Finish.

He wishes he could be bitter about it, but it just feels like a weird sort of penance. Not that he was the one who killed Darry- no Paul Holden and his alcoholic buddies and their too fast cars had done that- but there’s an odd sort of peace tied in with the pain and the guilt of trying to make sure Darry’s legacy is never forgotten. He’ll never be football captain or boy of the year, but he can play the game Darry loved and go to college and get out of this town once and for all. Is it really his dream? He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care because it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Darry would know but he isn’t here, he will never be here again and it’s never going to be okay again because a piece of Ponyboy died the same night the police came to their door and told them about the accident and what use is there of living when he isn’t really alive?

Mom and Dad are both beaming when he makes his way over to them, and they’re both still living but they’re different now too, just like all of them are, and it shows in the way mom’s eyes are still bright but now they only ever shine with tears, and dad’s laugh is still loud but never so carefree as it used to be. 

“Great job Little Colt,” Dad ruffles his hair, and mom gives him a quick hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He allows it only because he knows Darry never used to. She needs the reminder sometimes, Pony thinks, that things are different, even though it’s something they all never forget.

He manages a faint grin but he’s tired of his performance, of pretending to be whole around the team, and he can see in their eyes they can see it. 

“Thanks. Let’s go home.”

Dad throws an arm around his shoulders but says nothing, something Pony is grateful for. He’s lucky to have parents who understand him so well, because most people don’t much like his silence even though sometimes talking is just so much work. 

The gang is waiting for them in the parking lot, clustered around dad’s truck and Steve’s car which are parked right next to each other. None of them are usually subdued- two years has given them all enough time to develop a new normal- but there’s a weight hanging over all of them that football games bring out. They’re all performers now, but all of them seem better at it then he is.

Well. All of them except Soda. 

Two-bit can joke again, better than he used to, and Dally is tougher and meaner than ever. Steve’s anger has been honed to a sharp edge, but he’s grown better about using it, his fights with the socs more frequent and violent, but his outbursts at the gang far fewer. Losing Darry had put things into perspective for all of them. Even Johnny was different, even though Pony suspects Johnny might have changed so he still fit with him rather than because of losing Darry. Not that Darry hadn’t loved Johnny and Johnny hadn’t loved him, but in the past two years Ponyboy has come to realize that Johnny spends a lot more energy taking care of him than his younger, more stupid self had ever been able to realize.

They all surround him when Dad drops the steadying arm around his shoulders to pull out his keys. Johnny hands him a cigarette without him having to ask, and he inhales half desperately, ignoring mom’s disapproving look and trying not to roll his eyes. He knows she’d hoped he’d wait until he was at least fifteen to start smoking, but If she can ignore Soda’s recent antics she can surely ignore his newly acquired habit.

Speaking of Soda, he’s currently reeling pickled and clearly far past the point of attempting to hide it. He’s paler these days than he used to be, and skinnier too, no matter how much mom is always hounding him to eat, and pony thinks maybe Soda’s the most ruined of all of them, or at least the only one of them that’ll never recover not really. Right now he’s living like he’s trying to follow Darry to his death, and the anger Pony feels has more to do with the sorrow that came with the fact that in losing his eldest brother he lost the human part of his other brother too.

Steve’s holding Soda upright, his arm under Soda’s shoulders while Soda slurs out a never evening stream of consciousness that none of them can understand, that stupid fucking flask he never goes anywhere without sticking out of his jacket pocket. Pony takes one look at dad’s tightly drawn face and locks eyes with Steve, both of them coming to a silent agreement, one he would’ve thought inconceivable before. Nowadays though, he and Steve Randle get along just fine.

He ducks under Soda’s other side, helping take the rest of his body weight, even though Soda’s got so slight as of late it’s hardly needed, and helps Steve guide him to sit in the back of the car. He’s so drunk he hardly seems to notice, still babbling incoherently.

“Thanks,” Steve huffs, and he looks tired, nearly as tired as Pony feels. He nods, and Steve nods back then goes to promise mom and dad that he’s sober enough to drive them all home. Mom and dad never believe any of them anymore, not without looking into their eyes and smelling their breath. Pony can't even blame them. They’d lost one son to a careless man’s drunk driving. Clearly, they couldn’t risk another.

Johnny climbs in next to him then, smiling softly, and Two crowds in after him. Dally takes the passenger side, and then Steve’s back, climbing into the driver’s seat.

Dally turns on the radio and rolls down the window while he lights up a cigarette, but even the rolling stones aren’t loud enough to drown out Soda’s talk, as much as Ponyboy wishes they could. 

It’s strange and wrong that they all fit in Steve’s car, a gang of six that’s meant to be seven, and also hardly a gang at all.

He rests his head on Johnny's shoulder next to him. 

Last week was the two year anniversary and everything has changed and nothing has changed, none of them are getting better, and Soda is still just getting worse.

Ponyboy sighs. They say three time’s the charm, right? Maybe three years will be enough. Enough that he will be able to look inward at the hole in his heart and it won’t look like a gaping wound. Maybe it will ache like a bruise instead of burning every hour like a knife wound. Maybe three years will be enough for him to be able to say Darry’s name without having to force it past clenched teeth. Maybe if he makes it to three years Soda will decide life is still worth living. Maybe he won’t.

Maybe three years will do what two years haven't. Maybe three years will be what it takes for them all to start to heal.

There’s nothing he can do but find out.

[netherfeildren]

The Cassandra Complex : Chapter XII : Venus

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Din Djarin x F!Reader)

A/N: I realized shortly after posting chapter 11 that I’d made a small mistake in the timeline I’m intending this to follow. I included a line from Din saying Paz had already tried to take the Darksaber from him and failed, but where we’re at now, chapter 5 of The Book of Boba Fett hasn’t happened just yet. So I’ve gone back and deleted that small detail from the previous chapter, and why am I even telling you this, idk, but if you guy could do me a solid and pretend to forget my fuck up, I’d love you forever for it. 

Writing Star Wars is hard

Also, the indomitable @dirtysouvenir has rendered the most gorgeous artwork imaginable of Din and Sithy, and I still can’t quite believe my eyes every time I look at it. Everyone please go show Jonis all the love and praise she deserves. 

Anyways… like always, forgive me for the wait. I love you all for being so patient with me. And shout out to chapter four of Someone’s Wife in the Boat of Someone’s Husband which served as inspiration for this. You will always be famous to me!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 8.1K

Read on AO3

Tip Jar

CHAPTER XII : VENUS

What are we doing here, and why are our hearts invisible?

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

“Just like that, yes. Good girl–keep doing what you’re doing.” His hand slides to circle your wrist, leather and the thick weave of your tunic, the slight shake of your nerves caught between. “Grip it firmly, but squeeze it gently. Yes– yes, good. You’re doing so well.”

You suck in a trembling breath, too hyper aware of the feel of his chest plate brushing against your back, the cap of his left knee gently bumping the back of your own, his arms wrapped in a loose and careful cage around your frame where he’s helping you direct the blaster at the target he’d set up several meters away for practicing. He’s got one of your wrists wrapped in the leather of his fist, the other cupping the underside of your elbow to keep your shaking arms steady. 

“I don’t know why I’ve never been very good at this,” you whisper over the sound of the burning desert winds lashing you in the brow. “It’s just never come very easy.”

“That’s alright. That’s why we’re practicing again.” The hand cupping your elbow moves slowly to your waist, all his handling of you these past few days has been so intentional, cautious and patient and aware of himself and you and your reactions. Your heart beats, thumps and thumps hard enough to make you a little dizzy, a little sick. “Keep your right arm firm, but fluid. Try not to lock your elbow, let the recoil move through you steadily.”

He’d covered your hair and face in soft white linen wraps to keep you from being scorched by the sun and sand, and his voice is so deep, head pitched low so that the modulator is vibrating right at the level of your ear, the sounds of him sluicing through the linen to curl around your ear. You shiver again, squeezing your fist too tight around the butt of the blaster. You’d asked him if he’d help you practice just before you’d made planet fall a few hours ago, and now here the two of you are. A few clicks outside of Mos Eisley, he’d found a cluster of sandstacks to land the Crest amidst for a couple hours of target practice—near an area he’d told you is called Beggar’s Canyon. 

You’re not sure if it’s just an excuse to have him touch you, but here you are now, in the circle of his arms, shivering with nerves and heat and want. The sun burns, but the places where he grips you burn worse, and your heart rings in your skull. 

“Focus your gaze between the eyeline, eventually, it’ll come naturally, your aim, but for now, use the field the blaster sets. Squeeze gentle–” He grips your now healed elbow firmly, anchoring your arm, the hand holding your wrist moves to your waist, securing you in his hold so that when you pull the trigger, the zing of the blaster bolt leaving its chamber moves through your limb, into your chest cavity, electrifying your heart, and his hold is steadying all the way through. He’s there to keep you up, keep you strong, and so it’s almost thoughtless when you do it, a gut instinct or some muscle inside your brain desperate to flex and stretch or come awake because faster than you can blink or think, you take hold of that bolt of plasma with your mind, freezing it midway between where the two of you stand and the target he’d set. 

You feel his hands flex around you, but he keeps still and silent, watching, waiting for what you’ll do next. And your heart beats faster and faster, the bright of the sun gleaming and nauseating, refracting off the sand, the plasma, your eyes. The bolt screeches and writhes and defies the laws of nature by your hand, and it does not feel good, but it does feel right. 

The first time you’ve really wielded the Force since the night you escaped. 

There’s something painful and uncomfortable and familiar about it coming back to you. Your breath goes fast within your chest, the taste of the desert on your tongue and the grit of sand sneaking beneath your clothes, sweaty line of anxiety down your spine, and his steady, calm breaths up against your back every other moment, this power inside of you that’s always been the cause of everything bad and only some things good. It vibrates in everything, moves through all living things, the Force, within you, within him. 

“Let it go, cyare. It’s okay if you miss.” You shut your eyes and let it fall away and now it’s not the Force or you or anything else, it’s only him keeping you up against the rest of everything. 

The two of you, like grief and the mountain. 

-

“How did you meet this woman again?” You ask for about the third time, seemingly unable to keep your mouth shut and your nerves to yourself. 

“She’s been keeping up maintenance on the Crest for a while now. And she helped out with the kid, watched him for me a couple times—I trust her.”

“Peli,” you repeat the name contemplatively, taking in the sight of him as he checks the pre-landing codes, flipping switches and punching toggles a little too roughly. He’s agitated, covered and swathed in it. You know he’s worried about you, the way you’ll feel being around someone else, scared you’re still feeling fragile or tired or weak. And you’re accepting it for now because you are. You are tired and you do feel fragile and you do need taking care of. If only for the time being, if only for a little bit longer. A sort of end feels very near, and you’re still working out what that such end is going to be. 

“Peli,” he sighs, hitting the last button and finally swiveling in his chair to face you, and you eye him suspiciously, you know that sigh and head tilt. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“Not tired?”

“No.”

“Your shoulder?”

Hurts. “Fine.”

“Cyar’ika.”

“Din.” Another sigh. Another shake of his head. You’re sure he’s rolling his eyes at you beneath that stupid lug of metal he wears on his fat head. But you hope that he’s smiling too, and you give him a soft, small one of your own, twisting your fingers together tightly in your lap. You want to reach out for him, to go to him and sit with him and kiss him again like the other day. But you don’t feel ready again. Again, fragile, tired, a weakness of heart within you that you can’t understand the source of, or you can, but you don’t want to accept it, you want to be able to move on, to get over it, to be like you once were. But that you also know he’ll let you feel for as long as you need to.

“I promise I feel okay, and that I’ll tell you if I don’t.” The target practice had left you tired and awake, and there is something moving inside of you—a recognition of sorts you can’t pinpoint exactly, but which you know is going to show or tell you something about yourself soon, the Force, the things you’d done or the things you’d do. And there’s patience too, a waiting, a readiness to receive whatever this would be without pressure or urgency. You feel entirely strung tight, a knot about to be set loose, entirely at ease, as well. Something strange about the anxiety you carry within yourself, like it doesn’t really matter much anymore and is only waiting for the right moment to be expelled. 

He gives a soft grunt and turns back to face the control panel. The rolling golden sands of Tatooine like an ocean before you, and then there in the distance, the littered smattering of sand blighted little buildings that make up the spaceport of Mos Eisley. He directs the Razor Crest towards Hangar three-five, the ship jostling with the lowering of the landing gear. 

“What if she doesn’t like me?” You ask nervously, following him down the ladder once he’s eased the ship into the landing bay, fretting over this ordeal of having to meet someone else from his life, a friend, which wasn’t even something you were aware he knew how to have. You hear the heavy thud of his boots against the durasteel, and then his hands are circling your waist and pulling you down the rest of the way, paying no mind to your indignant squawking. 

He’d been strange with his touch, as well. As if he couldn’t help himself some moments, overcome by habit and familiarity, and then afraid and cautious in others. And you can’t understand how you feel about this either. Grateful, a sort of soft that makes your eyes smart and your cheeks bleed with heat. He’s so aware of you, so aware of what you might want or need, but then overcome, as well, needing you, wanting you. And you feel so afraid you won’t be able to give him those things—the ones he wants or needs, that you won't be able to find your way back to the way things had been between the two of you before. 

“You’ll be fine,” he says, little compassion to be found for your fretting. You stick your tongue out at the back of his head, rolling your eyes and steeling yourself as he lowers the hatch, and a chirpy little voice calls, Mando!

The plank lowers, and lowers, and lowers, and finally, a mess of springy dark curls come into view. The small woman, Peli, claps her hands excitedly and spreads her arms in wide welcome of him, and something in your heart throbs. 

A friend, indeed. 

“Peli,” he greets her, heavy, swaying gate stomping down the gangplank, voice serious and not all matching her enthusiasm. You roll your eyes at him again as the reverberations of his steps tickle your feet through the soles of your boots. 

“Hey, look everyone! It’s Mando,” she says to the chittering droids whirring around her. You follow him slowly, slinking directly behind him so that the breadth of his shoulders conceals you for a second longer before, “And who do we have here? Another unlikely companion?” 

He pivots, letting you step into full view and brave shyness, a hand coming up to hover around your waist, urging you forward, but not actually touching you. The sound of your name rings in tune to the thump of your heart through the modulator. Careful, so careful, and it makes you hurt at your own self. Wanting to touch you one moment, unable to stop himself from ripping you into his arms; another, afraid, feeling like he can’t even put a gently motioning hand on your body, and how will you ever fix this? How are you going to ever be able to get the two of you back to where you were? 

You take a hurt little step away from him, swallowing the heat in your throat several times before you can force a smile onto your face. 

His body shifts and sways towards your retreating one. 

But the small woman steps towards you, pit droids spinning and skittering frantically around her, and she claps a work hewn hand on your shoulder. “Let Peli take a good look at you.” Her gaze is cheerful, full of a youthfulness that belies her age and an even more cheerful, gap toothed smile. “Pretty girlfriend, Mando.” She waggles her bushy brows up at him. “Brought me another set of bright eyes, didn’t’cha?”

“It’s nice to meet you, Peli.” Your throat feels humiliatingly tight when she takes your hand in her smaller one, giving it a swift shake, no gentleness about the way she handles you, and there’s something comforting about the forsaking of the kid gloves. Your fracture isn’t obvious for the whole world to see, there’s still normalcy to be found for you. 

She looks up at Din as you avoid his burning gaze, laughing scowl on her sunny face. “Who woulda thought you had it in, ya, huh?” She thumps a fist on his chest plate, shaking her head and moves to take a look at the Crest. “To what do we owe the pleasure? Chasing down some elusive bounty? Carbon scoring’s worse than last time.'' She chatters a million miles a minute, pulling out some sort of electric scanner, assessing the old gunship. 

“We had a long trip,” he sighs, hands fisted on his hips as he watches her impatiently, turning his gaze back to your face every few moments. You want to bare your teeth at him in a snarl and tell him to stop fucking worrying. You want him to take you into his arms or hold your hand. 

“Long trip, sure. That’s what he always says,” she tells you over her shoulder with a roll of her eyes. “Turns out it’s usually a gun fight or something just as idiotic.”

You snicker, enjoying the easy way she handles your Mandalorian’s surliness, grateful for the cheerful buffer she provides between your own internal angst and his overzealous worrying. “It was a long trip this time, I swear. We’re coming from the Core,” he grumbles, and the two of you follow her while she inspects the damage on the ship, and in a moment of bravery or desperation for normalcy or closeness or just him, you reach up to grip two of his thick fingers in your fist. His hand immediately adjusts and curves to wrap around yours, intertwining your fingers and taking you securely in his grip. You feel him turn to look down at you questioningly, but you refuse to look back. This is normal, this is how it should be, this is what feels right even if you need the barrier of his gloves to feel like you can breathe. 

“The Core! Long way’s.” Hmm, she muses as she goes. “Got a fuel leak.” Again. He huffs. “Taking a vacation now?” She turns back with another smarmy smirk. 

“Something like that.”

“Nice little honeymoon?” She teases. “I could use one of those myself.” She scans something else, and the pit droids chatter and chirp around her, almost full her height, she’s so small. 

“Peli–” he grumbles. Your grumpy, shy boy; you wonder if he ever blushes under that thing, squeezing his hand in yours as tight as you can. 

“Yeah, yeah. No droids, I know. When are you gonna get over that nonsense, huh Mando? It’s about time, you know!” She bends to inspect something closer near the landing gear, covered in carbon scoring here too, examines her scanner again, then clips it back to her utility belt. “Alright, here’s the deal–” But he cuts her off, pivoting while pulling his blaster in one fluid motion to shoot at a poor little droid that's gotten too close. “Hey! Hey! What’ve I said before? You damage one of my droids, you’ll pay for it!” She shouts. 

“Din–” you scold, gripping the thick of his arm to pull the weapon down. 

“What’ve I told you?” He barks. 

“No droids. No droids. Blah, blah. You have got to get over that! I’m tryn’a make a deal with you here, ya womp rat.”

He jerks aggressively towards another little droid that wanders too close, sending it skittering away in terror, and you pinch his arm beneath the thick duraweave, frowning up at him, be nice, when he looks down at you, giving him a jut of your eyebrow and thrusting your chin at Peli. He groans, cursing low and grumpy in Mando’a. “Fine. What’s the deal?”

“If you let them work on the Crest–” She jerks her chin at the little pit droids quivering behind the crates strewn about the hangar in abject terror of the mean Mandalorian. 

“No,” he cuts her off, stubbornness in every line of his frame. 

“Din!” You scold again, bumping your hip into his. 

“Come on, Mando! I’ll charge you half price–”

“Deal,” he cuts her off again immediately, the cheapskate. 

“Ha!” She hoots and claps loudly. “Droids! Get to work on this lovely man’s ship. Lemme see the cash.” She holds out a grubby palm, wiggling her fingers. “He’s pretty easy, you ever notice that?” She says to you conspiratorially. 

“Constantly,” you can’t help the laugh in your voice. Your first laugh in what seems like years. 

“Loose knickered is what they used to call it back in my day.” And you have to turn your face into his arm to muffle your cackling, listening to him start up another string of curses beneath the helmet.

“I’ve literally never heard anyone say that before, ever,” he mutters sullenly. 

“Well, you’re young.”

“Not that young,” you provide helpfully, big cheesy smile that feels slightly unnatural and rusted spreading across your face. 

“Whoopee, Mando! I like this one! You really do know how to pick ‘em.” She claps him roughly on the shoulder, her little paw slapping loudly against his pauldron. “Anyway, I’ve got somewhere to be for the next couple of days, you see. I’m dating that Jawa again—the one I’d told you about,” she announces, proud as anything, big smile across her leathery face.

“A Jawa?” You repeat, making sure you heard right. 

“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, bright eyes. They’re quite furry… very furry, but…” She clicks her teeth together, “You know…” Grins. 

You look up at Din, squeezing his arm in your grip. “Guess I gotta try it.” You’re pretty sure you hear him grumble something to the effect of over my dead body, before he’s agreeing to Peli’s deal with a clap and a shake, and the promise of two hundred and fifty Imperial credits and absolutely no harm done to her droids while she’s gone and they work on the Crest. 

“Treadwell, get in there!” She shouts, and the little pit droid chirps fretfully, trembling behind an R5 unit. “You can’t say no, you’re a droid. Oh, he’s not going to shoot you. Stop being a coward! What is this, a democracy all of a sudden?” Losing the fight, the droid wheels forward to get to work. “Yeah, thought so.” She turns back to you and Din. “You two can stay here, look after the shop while I’m gone? It’ll only be a few days.”

“We have some resupplying to do, but we’ll stay until you’re back,” he promises.

“And you’re not going to shoot my droids?”

“And I’m not going to shoot your droids,” he agrees, but later, you catch the too rough nudge he gives one of the little droids with his boot when he thinks no one’s watching. This man and his droid complex, you roll your eyes. 

“How’s the N-1 keeping up?” He asks as she’s packing up to go. 

“Just how you left her. That honey’s faster than a fathier. You should take her out while you’re here, give that baby a spin. Oh! And I added that turbonic venturi power assimilator I’d mentioned before. Remember? S’how I reconnected with my Jawa,” she nudges you with a wink. “You’re gonna be the fastest ship on the Outer Rim.” 

“You got a new ship?” You ask curiously.

“Just a side project we took up while I had some spare time.” But the way he says it is a little strange, making you pause to look up and try to read the blank face of his helmet. Ah, and he smooths that same hovering hand from before along the line of your spine, an attempt to soothe or quell your curiosity without actually giving you the gift of his touch.  

Peli leaves a few hours later, and she really does have a Jawa lover. The little critter comes to collect her right before the suns set, off to catch the sandcrawler before it journeys off into the desert, leaving you alone with only Din and the little pit droids for company. 

And suddenly, that shyness from earlier is back for some reason. The distraction of travel and the buzz of hyperspace lost to the calm silence of the quiet spaceport as the suns set over the horizon and night settles in, cool winds coming in on the sand gusts from deep in the desert. After hours of work, Din posing as the menacing overlord barking orders and complaints, intruding on their work when it isn’t up to his ridiculous standards, the droids finish up for the night, and Din engages the hangar security system, and then the ship’s, locking the two of you in safely for the night. 

“Dinner?” He asks as he moves slowly around the hull, pulling the cloak from his shoulders, a river of sand sluicing in a rain sheet onto the steel floor. The sound of it has a shiver moving through you as you lower yourself to the floor, crossing your legs beneath you at the edge of your makeshift bed. You desperately want to crawl between the covers without a shower and find the peace of evasion through sleep, secure in the knowledge that he won’t follow you into bed. He’d refused since you’d reunited, even though you’d invited him several times to share the much more comfortable pile of blankets than what you know his pilot’s chair or bunk provide. He’d not taken you up on the offer yet, and right now, fluttering heart and hot eyes and sweating nape, you’re glad for it. 

You don’t know what’s wrong with you—or you do. You’re overwhelmed with want and fear, of him, of his touch, of having lost what the two of you had before. And as you watch him start to pull his armor from his body, first one pauldron, then a vambrace, then a thigh guard, no sense of congruity to the pattern with which he divests himself of his Creed, it’s suddenly like he’s standing right in front of you, and yet you miss him anyway. Miss him in a way that makes you sick and devastated. 

You must make some sort of sound, a funny look on your face or a change in your breathing because he turns suddenly, a too worried, “What’s wrong?” on his tongue. 

“Nothing.” You look up at him from your spot on the ground, head falling back on your neck, and you can feel the wet of your eyes, trying to force yourself not to blink so that they won’t fall—the tears. “Nothing’s wrong.”

He comes to a slow crouch before you, long legs folding down, down. “What is it? Tell me.” Half missing his armor as he poses now, it’s like he’s half him, half yours, half only-man, half Mandalorian. A little bit like what you feel yourself; half, half, half. 

Pulling one glove from his hand, he lifts it, palm spread towards you, showing you his intention before he carefully cups the side of your face; thumb at your pulse, pointer and middle fingers giving your temple a soft pressure, pinky poised at the bridge of your nose. Your lashes brush against his index every time you blink, and his skin is smooth and rough at the same time, and warm—sun-hearted man. 

You press your face harder into his palm, letting him support the weight of your head, nuzzling against the rough of his calluses, blaster blister scratchy against your carotid, and heat pulses all through you from the crown of your head, sliding down the length of your, still yet, too long hair, the back of your neck, your chest, pooling to settle deep in the pit of your belly. 

And yet there’s something missing or different or off, like you feel empty but too full of trepidation to conjure up that old desire you’d always had, that need for him to fill, fill, fill you. Like the heat is there, but it’s remembered, not necessarily present. It all makes you want to cry and scream and go to sleep. 

The truth, and plainly: you’re terrified of anything that might hurt, can’t fathom the idea of it. 

Your heart beats in your throat, you taste it on your tongue, and it mixes with the sad when you say: “Do you remember when we were on Kashyyyk—when we sparred?”

“I remember,” he says, voice deep and low—through the modulator. You hate his helmet. You wish you could get beneath. You wish you were brave enough. The feeling of it coming on sudden and unexpected, thought, bitter and foul and not something you’d necessarily felt before, certainly not so viciously. It’s just that you hate that all this has happened—you want to feel the press of his lips at the crown of your head and the wash of his breath like heat moving through your hair—that you are not in the same place you once were, that you’re too afraid to move forward. 

“When we switched weapons—”

He hums: “Yes.”

“It was so green there.” You turn your face further into him so that you’re speaking into his palm now, words pooling there in the cup of it like a well of truths and fears. 

“It was.” The pointer and index stroke your temple, press once, twice, thrice—harder on the latter. It feels good, it feels real and reminding. He lets a heavy silence pass for a moment, he’s thinking of something, contemplating a push. “Do you remember—” He passes a swallow you can hear the thickness of, “Do you remember how I had you in the dirt—like a fucking animal? How you let me do whatever I wanted, however I wanted.” He gives the hardest press he’s given yet, at your temple, you think you feel the press against your brain, and you open your mouth to let the edge of your teeth dig hard into the meat of his palm. He growls a rough sound, a hungry sound, a sound like one he’d have made when he had you in the dirt like a fucking animal. 

You drag your teeth along the hill of his palm, closing your mouth at the end. You don’t give him the wet of your tongue, you don’t feel ready to taste his skin like that just yet—an assimilation of violence.

“Yes,” you finally say, realizing that he understands what you were thinking without having to say it, or knowing how to, that you’re full of memories of past desires and how badly you want them back and how out of reach that all feels, but also, that suddenly now, in a single blink, the heat in your belly isn’t remembered, but present, alive, awake. That you’re cunt clenches once, twice, thrice around nothing—harder, hungrier on the latter. That you’re wet for him. “I remember.”

“Good. I remember every single thing we’ve ever done.” You roll your face in his palm so that you can look up at him now, feeling something like brave. “Every word, every breath, I remember all of it. Alright?”

“Alright,” you say quietly. 

“And if you need me to help you remember too, then I will.”

“Alright.” And then: “What if I can’t, though?... What if we can’t ever have that again? What if I can’t remember? What if I can never give you that again?” A tear slides over the bridge of your nose, and now it’s not only truths and fears cupped in the palm of his hand but the saltwater of grief too.  

“Then we’ll find something new. A new way, a different way. We’ll do it however you want now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, cyar’ika.” It’s very much a promise, a new Creed being established here. 

“Okay.”

He nods, “Okay.”

-

The water is warm verging on hot verging on scalding. It feels incredible slithering over your tired and sore muscles, the ligatures in your arms still trembling from the blaster practice earlier today, from your overwhelm of emotions. 

You hate that you’re not good at it, that the only weapon that seems to become you is a lightsaber. 

The suds of his earthy smelling soap slide through your hair, slipping down your spine, over your ass and along your legs to pool around your feet and disappear down the drain. You shiver once, as though letting something fall away as you slide your hand down, over the swell of your belly, to cup the palmful of your cunt, wedging your hand between your thighs. You pet slowly at the wet curls there, realizing some of it is also the sticky slick of your desire. You were right, you’re wet for him and your clit pulses, slightly swollen and wanting. Your body is awake and hungry for him for the first time in what feels like eons. 

You explore slowly, your cunt slightly trembling at the feeling of being prodded and touched for the first time in you can’t remember how long. Moaning softly, you pull your fingers from between your legs, hands sliding up now to cup the weights of your breasts in each palm and squeeze tightly. Oh, you want him, you want him, you’re afraid. Your head falls back on a thump against the fresher wall, loud enough that you hear his lurking voice through the door, you okay in there? And instead of being annoyed at his overbearing caution, his hovering, you shiver again, something coming back to you now. 

Your desire. 

You shut the water off, grabbing one of the soft linens he’d slung over the warm pipe for you to wrap yourself in. He knocks a knuckle against the wobbly little door, “Cyar’ika?” 

Looking at yourself in front of the steamy mirror, too long, naiad hair, bright, strange eyes, you want him, you want him, you want to feel alive, awake, anything. You can’t deny your shortcomings, fears, whatever they might be called, but there is yet still a soft place inside of you that they’d not snuffed out, that wants Din still. 

You turn to slide the fresher door open just as he’s readying to knock again. 

He’d showered before you, after he’d fed you your soup and your disgusting fake bread he’d promised he’d find a real substitution for soon enough, and you’d needed a moment alone to sit in your grime and silence, digest your feelings. He’s clad now in one of his soft, dark undershirts, his flight pants and the helmet, opposite your towel and water dewed skin, steaming from the hot fresher. 

You watch a swallow pass through his throat, words caught, slow and heavy. He clears it once, twice, tilts his head down to take in the state of you, before he says, “You alright?”

You nod, wide eyed awake. He’s standing right in front of you and you miss him and you want to shock him wide eyed awake too. “The water was too hot. I got dizzy,” you lie, swaying towards him a little, letting your lashes flutter dramatically. 

Not all the way, but enough, just a little, as much as you can bear, that’s what you want from him right now. 

His hands come up to grip the sides of your arms immediately, his bare hands, soaking up the wet of your skin. He pulls you into himself, pressing you carefully against his chest, and you shiver and shake against him, teeth rattling with a sound entirely lacking temperance. Your blood feels like it’s boiling, there’s desire alive and writhing in your tummy, and you squeeze your thighs together tightly, shifting from one foot to another while you drip a puddle onto the cold floor. 

“Come here, sit down,” he murmurs, gently moving you to your bed, easing you down onto it slowly. “You need to take it easy,” he clucks over you, gripping your elbow to let you down carefully, keeping his hands on your bare skin until the last moment. “You’re pushing yourself too hard. You’re still tired, you’re still recovering. And you never listen. You have to listen to me when I’m trying to take care of you. You don’t eat enough, and I know your shoulder still hurts, little liar. Your elbow is barely better, and I saw you making strange faces when you were walking up the plank the other day. Your hip hurts doesn't it? Or your knee, something. No, don’t answer. I know you’ll just say no.” He talks and talks and talks, and you love him and you think that— 

There’s a name for this…

He’d told you he loved you and he’d not said it again, neither had you, it felt too huge a thing to talk about again just yet while there was still so much left to discuss and bridge, but what does it matter if your body sings or screams in pain when you have the love of this beskar titan? What could you care for all the rest of everything?

Yes, Din. Yes, Din. Whatever you say, Din, as he huffs and puffs and arranges you, brings another pillow and blanket from the bunk, his only one in there, not that he cares, lovely man. 

And it’s not only that you feel like you need to give him the things he wants or needs, because of course you do. You love him, you need to be able to give him things, everything, you want to be able to give him the whole galaxy. But it’s also that you want to. That to give him what he desires is to feed yourself, to live together, to be together, to give each other the things you need to stay alive. 

You let yourself fall back onto the soft blankets slowly, this nest where you’ve always felt so safe and so protected and so loved, even when neither of you knew it was love that was holding you here. And you watch him for a few anxious moments as he pulls the covers this way and that, tucking them here and there, trying to avoid looking at the bare expanse of your dew damp legs. But then, taking hold of his hand, you still his nervous movements, and he finally looks up at your face, letting go of his fretting, taking hold of the bravery in the palm of your hand. 

Shy—but brave. Brave—and wanting. 

“We’ll take care of each other, won’t we?” You want to tell him you love him again, but there’s something slightly terrifying, gloriously intimate and fragile about the words. 

“Always.”

“And we’ll keep each other alive?” Maker, I hope we keep each other alive. 

“Yes.”

You take hold of the edge of the linen covering you, revealing your naked body to him slowly, exposing your soft underbelly. You hear his breath hitch, exhale on a groan that sounds like dying. His grip on your hand goes tight to the point of bone crushing pain for one brief, brief moment before he remembers himself and gentles again. You shiver at the pain, belly swooping and quivering with fear and nausea and lust. 

You wish you could see his eyes, his face, his want. 

“You—” he stutters, swallows, “You don’t have to, my love.” My love. He doesn’t need to say it out loud again now with teeth and tongue, he says it in all the things he does. 

“You have to know that I want you so much. That I want you more than anything, Din.”

“I do know,” he says immediately. “I’ve never doubted that.” 

“I want to show you.”

“You don’t have to. I know—” His other hand comes up to grip yours with both of his, caging your limb within the strength of his fists—to keep himself from touching you anywhere else, you think. But you can feel the intensity of his gaze along your skin, over your bare breasts, quivering with your hitching breaths, water droplets translating the frantic beat of your heart in their trembling on the surface of your skin. The line of your belly, the slope downward to the soft place between your thighs. 

He’d seen the scarring on your hand, it was inevitable as much as you’d wished you could hide the deformity they’d left. As much as you wish you could’ve kept it from him, held an illusion for the rest of your lives together to spare him from the reminder of the things that’d been done, happened, chosen. But now… now he is to be subjected to the whole truth of it. Scars like cobwebs, strangely shimmering in silver lights beneath the surface of your skin—they’d been clever and ingenious in their torture—covering the whole circumference of your left hand up to your elbow. But also, from the lowest point of your last rib, over your right hip, traversing lower down the contours of your skin to wrap around the uppermost swell of your thigh. 

They’d left their mark like they’d intended, and it wasn't something you could ever hide from him, the reality of what’d been done, what you’d chosen. It was obvious in everything, etched into your skin, a chasm in the still present distance between the two of you. 

You feel like a bruise; tender, vulnerable, incongruously desperate to press on it harder and feel that dull throb, dark and ugly and on display. 

His hands go tight around yours again for a moment, before he’s snatching them back to grip his bent knee, white knuckled, silent anger on display when his eyes reach the scarring. 

“It’s okay,” you whisper, smoothing a hand over your hip down to your thigh to grip yourself there, digging your fingertips lightly into the plush softness. Your skin vibrates. “It doesn't hurt now.”

“What did they do?” His voice is like gravel, restrained fire-full fury. 

“They wanted to see what it’d take to leave a mark. They figured it out.” The helmet turns away sharply, a short, brutal curse spit from his mouth. The tongue of his mother, beautiful despite his violence. 

“It’s okay, Din.” You take hold of your thigh, pulling it up and apart, spreading yourself for him. Brave, wanting heart, be brave. He turns back immediately. “I want you to see how much I want you,” you whisper. “How much I still need you.” 

You let your fingertips flutter lightly over your swollen, needy sex, and you can hear the obscene, sucking sound of your wet lips spreading apart when you part your legs wide enough for your sex to bloom. Cunt hungry and weeping for him. 

Fuck, he spits, leaning closer, and his hand snaps forward to grip your ankle all the way around, pulling your foot up onto the uncompromising muscle of his thigh—your only point of contact. 

“Show me, cyar’ika. Show me how much that pretty cunt missed me,” he growls. 

You start slow, wide eyes fixed on the dark tee of his vizor, fingertips swirling around your clit slowly, it pulses and throbs and beats to the rhythm you can feel his own heart beating at within his own chest. But you pet it slowly, teasing both of you, and then feel lower down to the clenching mouth of your cunt—fuck, he spits again—slicking your fingers in your sticky wet. You start to rock your hips against the flat of your hand, the sound of your cunt, loud in the quiet hull, nothing to interrupt but the too desperate sound of your mutual panting. His fingers around your ankle are so tight they’ll leave a sore spot, and you can't think of the later hurt now, afraid it'll scare you out of this, all you can focus on is the beat of your cunt, the way it cries for him. 

You swirl your fingertips at your opening, again, again, “Put them inside. Let me see you fuck yourself.” And it’s a demand. 

You start with one, slow and tentative, a little, shocked gasp as you probe shallowly within the tight, little hole. Then further, wiggling inside until you’re impaling yourself with your own small finger, the first thing inside of you in so long, and suddenly, you wish it was him. Your eyes fill with tears at the thought, spilling over at the wish that he could’ve been the first thing inside of you after all this time, but the reality that you’re just not ready for it yet. The salted proof of your inevitable shortcomings slide back along your cheeks to drip into your ears. 

“Another,” he demands. “Oh, it sounds so pretty, little one. Give it another.” You pull your single finger out, sucking, wet-cunt sound that he groans in tune with, to press another one in, mewling at the pinch and stretch of it, the slick slide. Yes, just like that. You’re doing so well, he says, a mirror of his earlier words to you today during target practice. “Roll your hips, ride your hand.” You hitch another sob, “Don’t fucking cry,” he grits, pressing your heel hard into the meat of his thigh. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. You’re going to come for me, you’re going to let me see it.” He spreads his thighs wider in his kneeling crouch, pushing his hips forward into nothing, drawing your gaze to the heavy bulge behind the plaquette of his flight pants. He’s so hard. 

You crook your fingers inside yourself, hill of your palm against the swell of your engorged clit, fingertips against the spongey ridge at the front of your cunt, rolling your hips faster, chasing the orgasm you need to give him. Your foot feels numb in his grip, your cunt, on fire, so tight it hurts. Your belly hitches and heaves, open mouth gasping and you cry his name, moaning and writhing wantonly, your stomach slick and glistening again with sweat now instead of water. One of your palms reaches up to take hold of your breast, nipple caught between your fingers, squeezing tight, tight, tight. And suddenly he’s surging forward, letting go of your ankle to lean over you and rip his pants open, freeing his furious erection. The tip is red-purple and swollen fat, drooling a thick string of sloppy, white precum, and he wraps one massive fist around the angry thing. Din, Din, Din. He beats at his cock furiously, the sound of your name, the slick thwack, thwack, thwack of it sends you spilling into your orgasm, belly pulling tight, cunt twisting even tighter. 

“Fuck, fucking come—fucking come,” he snarls as he twists his fist cruelly around the head and the thick white viscosity of his semen starts to spill from the fat head, bubbling up and over his fist and between his fingers, splattering heavy and hot onto your spasming cunt, coating your fingers so that you’re pushing the thick of his come into yourself, slicking you further. “Yes, yes, yes, like that. Let me fucking see it…Look at what you do to me.” And there's so much furious want in his voice, and he’s so big, long and thick, and you know it’s going to hurt when he puts it inside of you for the first time again—you remember how it hurt before, how you loved it—and you’re afraid you’re not going to be able to handle any sort of pain ever again, not even the sort you’d been so hungry for before. 

But your womb pulls tight, pulses and throbs, and suddenly your two skinny fingers arent enough, you want the thick heft of his cock fucking hard and fast and deep inside of you, punching at the deepest spot within you.

His orgasm ends on a fierce groan, panting, thick chest heaving, his head hangs low between his shoulders. You pull your shaking fingers from your clenching hole, and he gives a few last lazy strokes, squeezing the last drops of come from the slick tip to splatter against your pussy. “I fucking missed this—your cunt covered in me.” His dripping cock bobs so close, and you have the sudden insane thought of him just shoving it in, holding you down prone and fucking all of his spend into your sloppy cunt, forcing you to take it and be his again. “I can’t wait to eat it. I can’t wait to fill it with my come again and eat it out of you.” There’s a part of you that might want it, that might wish for it. 

“Maker, Din…” you moan, rubbing the thick semen into your overstimulated clit, your mound, up the curve of your belly, slicking yourself in him.

 If you can’t have his touch, this is enough, and you bring your sticky, soaking fingers up to your mouth, sucking the come from them. He groans, not fair, sitting back on his knees, spent cock hanging obscenely from his open pants, wet and glistening. He reaches behind his head to tug his shirt up and off, leaving his sweaty chest bare and gleaming. Your eyes flutter shut, cupping your cunt in the palm of your hand, covering the slick curve of it, and you arch your back, spreading your thighs further, putting yourself on display for him. 

“Gorgeous, cyar’ika,” he says between pants. “So pretty, my love.” He reaches down to squeeze his half hard cock once more. “I can be patient for you, I promise. You’re so worth it.”

-

He lays beside you in the dark, stretched out long and entirely clothed, but here with you, forced and convinced to share your bed with a line of pillows as a protective moat between the two of you at his own insistence.

You’re on your side, hands folded beneath your smushed cheek, wide eyes searching fruitlessly for the shape of him in the pitch dark. You want to say something else. You want to tell him you love him again, to hear the words fall from your tongue. 

“What are you thinking?” He asks.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” You hum a barely breathed laugh. And then, “I know you’re scared or regretful or worried that we’ll not get back to where we were,” he reads you.

“Yes.”

There’s a name for this…

He sighs long, goes quiet for longer, and then finally: “What’s happened’s happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the galaxy.”

“Fate?” You muse, a little unbelieving.

Dark red—

“Call it what you want. We met, we separated…you were—gone. We waited. Now we’re here again. It’s meaningful, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You believe in this—fate?” I didn’t think I believed in anything anymore. But I believe in you.

“Call it what you want, but yes.”

—String. 

There’s something about this that you need to consider, chew on. The fact that you’d felt, all your life, cursed to know how a thing would happen, be, end, always. Something like fate, perhaps, the whisper of it making a home for itself within the shell of your ear, and now the truth that he too believes in this thing you’ve always lived with. Destiny, what have you—you believe in the same things, you believe in each other. 

“Will you hold my hand?”

He turns over, reaching to twine his fingers through yours; large, rough palm against small, soft palm. You want to tell him you love him again, you want to hear the words for him, but they feel trapped, tender, timid. 

You’d always thought your destiny fixed, poised, on the tip of your tongue. A thing was what it was birthed unto the galaxy in perpetuity, and no amount of desire could absolve you of its sunken teeth. But this—this desire is like the creation of myth, that dark red thread that goes by the name of fate being pulled taught, humming in accord with a frequency heard only by the two of you. 

Now: “Will you kiss me?” A beat of silence, his fingers around yours going tight, tight. 

“Come here,” his voice blends with the darkness, and tugging you into himself, protective border between your bodies and his hand around your jaw, he slips a kiss onto your tongue. His mouth holds the hot recollection of being alive; the drag of his teeth against your bottom lip, the taste, your fingers weaving through his hair, your names sounding together, a pair because they belong on the same breath. 

You pull back, and it’s only a small brevity, but it’s enough, and that confusion from earlier, that shiver of letting something go or taking it back into yourself, settles. 

You’re afraid or regretful or both, yes, sure. You also find yourself to be, suddenly, forgiving, full of empathy. You won’t be able to have him unless you take possession of yourself first, and on the tail end of a comet breaking across the sky: I love him, but I must also love myself. He deserves someone who loves themself, but more than that, I deserve it too. To be able to give him the things he wants and needs: I deserve to be in love with myself. 

You let the Tartarian memory become nothing.

 Love manifests itself primarily in forgiveness.

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[ivestas]

Could I request a könig x reader in which she’s one of the best soldiers/snipers in the world, covered in tattoos, smokes and is a ‘I joined the military out of spite and somehow all that anger turned me into this’, and könig is just smitten with her?

its time you learn to accept yourself

Summary: Through König, you learn love and self-acceptance. 

Tags: sniper!fem!reader x konig, strangers to friends to lovers, headcanon format, reader implied not to speak german, reader implied to be mentally ill, unedited

Word count: 1.7k

Note: im starting to really like this genre of ship-dynamic LMAO

When you joined KorTac, it was clear you didn’t give much of a shit about anyone there. 

You kept to yourself, spoke in monosyllables, and had much more interest in smoking the cigarettes you kept sneaking into the base than talking to any of them. 

He’d heard operators call you several things—none of them flattering to your image—however, one thing stood out clearly to him:

You were a good shot. They all agreed to that. To them, though your personality was shit, you had the eye of a hawk and the hands of a trained and experienced veteran who knew the sniper like the back of their hand. 

He couldn’t help but admire you, regardless of the fact you’ve never acknowledged his presence or even looked at him. 

He also couldn’t help but admire how calm you were, how you were just... yourself. Sleeves always rolled up with your tattoos in full display, a cigarette always nursed between your lips, the fact you never watered down your personality; he wanted that confidence—no, that sureness your character carried. 

König knew you liked to lurk near the shooting range—since you’d joined, he avoided disturbing you and had often gone to the other side of the range to practice his shots. 

However, in a fit of uncharacteristic confidence, he decided to approach you. 

He was prepared for your scathing words, or the silent look of disgust you often wore around the other men.

But, when he approached, you regarded him neutrally. 

“Hey, you’re...” 

“König.”

“Yeah, König, you’re König.” You echoed the accent of the word, looking proud. “I pronounced that well, right? König.” You repeated his name as though it were a flavorful candy.

He was rendered mute; German sounded so nice on your tongue. 

“König?” 

“A-ah, scheiße, I was lost in thought for a second,” he laughed awkwardly. “You said it well, yes.” 

“‘kay, good. Anyway, what’d you want?’

It was a blunt but reasonable question, but with your eyes trained on him, it was suddenly hard to speak or think. 

Bashfully, he spoke. “May I shoot with you?” 

“Uh, of course? This isn’t my shooting range, man. Have fun.” 

“No, with you.” 

“With me?” You echoed, dumbfounded. “How’d that work?” 

“We’ll make it a friendly competition—if you’d like, of course—whoever gets the most bulls-eyes wins.”

You smiled. It was brighter than the sun. “Sure! Sounds like fun—you go first, then.” 

König does. It was an easy shot, anyone could hit it, but he could feel your eyes watching him. 

Trying to steady his hands, he set his sniper on top of the heavy crates and tried to aim, trying to clear his mind.

It was difficult. Again, your eyes—he wondered if he was making any mistakes he didn’t even know of. He was sure he was doing everything right, but... was he? 

“Your hands are shaking, König. Try steadying them like this,” roughly, you took the hand that had been on the trigger and made the weight even. 

His cheeks erupted in warmth. Too close. 

He quickly takes a shot, and it was just about to hit the bullseye. 

“Time to show ya how the pros do it!” You sit right beside him, kneeling in front of the crates and setting your own sniper onto them. He noticed rough engravings on the snout of your gun, a rough shape of a butterfly and snake. 

Before he could ask about them, you shot. You had barely paused to even adjust. 

When he looked up, he couldn’t help the wave of admiration that hit him.

You hit the bullseye perfectly.

“Maybe one day you can be as good as me,” you teased, voice light. “But your ass needs practice. Can I help?” 

He couldn’t trust his voice so he merely nodded. Thank God he had a hood over his head because he was sure he resembled more tomato than a human. 

After that though, the two of you became closer—you saw each other more, interacted more, etc. 

You had taken a swift liking to him; he was eager to learn, polite, and soft-spoken, how could you not? 

König, though? He’s skipped the ‘friend’ part and went straight to crushing; honestly, he was flattered enough that you just acknowledged his presence, being one of the best snipers and all, but the fact you went out of your way to teach him—talk to him—it went all straight to the heart.

Even on missions, you’d talk to him. You’d often favor being quiet, whistling the odd tune or two before taking your shots, but now you’ve come to just take those small pauses to tease him incessantly. 

König was about to maul an enemy before a bullet shot through their head. 

His earphones sparked to life. 

“You should be more careful, I almost couldn’t save you there.” Your voice crackled through. 

He couldn’t help but huff, half amused, half worried. “Didn’t Aksel say for you to clear out the enemies on your end?” 

“Did already. They were like sitting ducks.”

You two are an actual powerhouse in missions; König with his physical prowess, easily overpowering anyone in his way, and you with your sniper, taking any enemies behind him down in an instant. 

You only grew closer to him and vice versa, and eventually, the daily conversations nearly became constant—attached to the hip, understanding each other to the extent that quick glances would equate to hundreds of lines of dialogue. 

It was during this that you realize you’ve grown... attached. 

It worries you—no, it scares you. 

You were, in your eyes, a poison that could do nothing but harm a soul like König’s; despite is outward brutality, you knew inside he was nothing but gentle—or maybe you were blind. Maybe you were in love and refused to see the dark that tainted his inner consciousness. 

Or, maybe, you liked that too about him. 

In any case, it was worrisome; it bit at your insides, at the quiet part of your mind, it lit everything to flame then ash. 

You weren’t the woman you were before the military; fuck, maybe that version of you never existed—you were always so fucked up, so full of incomprehensible anger that set every step you took on fire. 

That worry turned to anxiety, and it only increased when you realized that your stable, steady hands have become a shaking mess. 

It was during a pause between missions that you try to clear your head, to purge those feelings you thought and knew wouldn’t lead to any good. 

However König—oh, König—followed.

You told him not to, but he knew something was wrong, that you weren’t quite as steady as he’d known you to be; it was a weakness, a vulnerability that, right now, could harm you. 

Neither of you had the comfort of being weak, especially in a safe house that could be overridden with hostiles at any moment of the day. If he couldn’t help, he’d at least want to be able to protect you during this time.

So, he followed, through the murky corridors and under the cloak of night, finding you outside with a cigarette between your lips. 

You saw him and you were ready to snap at him, to drive him away, but he spoke so fucking softly. 

“Are you okay?”

You weren’t. He knew you weren’t, and you knew he knew that. 

So you sighed. Gestured for him to come, and he did, leaning against the concrete wall beside you. 

You were particularly loose-lipped, but at that moment, all inhibitions of restraint were gone. 

“It’s all a lie—when people join the military, it’s rarely for that strive of good.” You took a harsh suck of the cigarette. “You think any person with a good head on their shoulders and love for life would want to be in a fuckin’ military? Or a merc group? No amount of money makes this worth it, no... never.” 

König was silent. Listening. Thinking.

“More often than not, people just join to just—run. Die. Cut their losses and just engulf themselves in the worst of the worst because of their own flaws—hamartias. Know that word?”

König nodded.

You laughed airily. It was hardly a laugh, more like a throwaway noise. “I learnt it back in high school in English class—’fatal flaw of a hero’, or something. Flaws... good, bad, right, wrong, villainous, heroic, it’s a mouthful, isn’t it?”

König nodded again. 

“So many labels for those who, in hindsight, or just cogs to a greater machine. A twisted machination—isn’t that the true evil? The machinery?”

“You make it sound difficult,” König breathed. “When everything is so much simpler than that. Personal principles define those beliefs, right and wrong is as broad as it is small.” 

You hummed. “Never struck you for the philosophical type.”

“I’m not. Philosophy is redundant. The answer is always found within our hearts.” 

“Hmmm.” You took another puff of the cigarette. “The answer in my heart was anger. Always anger. Violence, insults, it always seemed most effective... I thought the military would set me straight, make me more controlled, but it did the opposite.” You stared at the ground, smoke spilling out your lips. “I’m worse now, a festering disease. I can feel myself burning out day by day, and, König? I want you to stay away from that—from me.” 

“I won’t.” 

“What?” 

“I refuse. I will stay by your side.” I can’t bear to leave you alone. 

“But... why?” Why, why, why? 

“Because you’re the most beautiful flame I’ve ever seen.” I love you. Accept that. “Don’t cut yourself short, liebe. You can always change and grow. Or remain stagnant. Either way, my eyes will always be on you.”

You, for the first time in your life, couldn’t trust your voice. 

But when you looked up at him, you hoped that the message was there. That he could see. 

And he did, and you couldn’t help the smile when you saw that the corners of his eyes crinkled. 

AO3

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[summercreolefanfictioner]

this is just an excerpt for a dabi-centric modern au fic I am doing in the future

the scent wafts in, her name making him beg on his knees prologue

pairing: dabi/todoroki touya x fem!reader/oc (MODERN AU)

summary: He mentions her name after 6 months in therapy, absentmindedly narrating vivid memories of her. She was the only good thing during his darkest times.

(In which Touya returns home after rebelling against his family for 7 years. And no, it wasn't about forgiveness. He wanted to fix himself because of a certain someone.)

themes: co-dependency, self-destructive behavior, toxic relationships, nsfw, family issues, violence

He touches her like she was water, like rain in the desert, like he was parched and she the only cure in his quenching thirst. He had always wanted to ruin her, sink her down in his level as all he knew was destroy himself further. Fuck his lungs. Fuck his liver. Fuck his life. He would die rebelling against the world, watching it burn in front of him as he drowns in pleasure of holding her in his arms.

Dabi—no; tonight, there would be no lies. Tonight, he finally allowed her a secret he kept to himself. She was sighing, a mere whisper in the dark because she had always been like that to him. She was his little secret, the good thing that made sense in his messy brain, that one thing that urged him to feel even if he was numb.

"Touya," he coaxed her, confusing her as he gingerly wiped the tears absentmindedly running from her cheeks. "Call me by my name. My name's Touya."

She immediately understood, sniffing through the tears as she nodded and tried her best. Touya," she called like she was testing the waters. It felt weird, but the name suited him; fitted him more than Dabi. "Touya," she tried again, and her voice was a lot gentler, like she was seeing the real him, the real boy beneath his ruined self.

"Touya…"

Love, he thought, wanting a taste of it, fucking hurts so bad.

"I'll kiss you," he said, not needing her answers anymore. Touya will take what he wanted when he wanted it. He wasn't being nice in the first place anyway.

They were naked in each other's arms, her finger on his lips as she let him savor her taste, memorizing it in his head as his touch ghosted behind her back to pull her close. He won't let go for tonight. She was his, and he was hers. He could never run away from this anymore.

Love was a taste of a shitty medicine; made him feel better yet rendered him bitter.

He couldn't outright tell her he would be leaving for a while, something about "fixing his shit because he didn't want to hurt any further." The old times when he would destroy things in fits of anger, lash out his frustrations at her even though it wasn't her fault, and nestling up to her because she was a fucking saint and she was always so understanding even though he didn't deserve it.

But Todoroki Touya was selfish. He wanted her, so bad. So bad he hated her, hated how she would just smile, hated how she would still insist on him staying even though his mere presence around her hurt.

"Don't forget me. Don't be someone else's," he begged in between kisses as he laid her down on their shared bed. He didn't have to do that, but he had to be sure. All his life, he was never chosen. He was tired of being second best. He was done seeking approval.

But he wanted her, so for her, he did.

She was so lost in hazy pleasure that all she could do was nod and let him do whatever he wanted.

Just be mine. Be mine only.

"Touya…"

Touya…

Didn't you know?

I have always been yours.

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[nart-is-a-monster]

GORGON VARIAN AU 🗣️🗣️🗣️

On this page my brain daydreamed that scene that never happened in the fic and also I fucked up that page with water oopsie 👇

Now this is about a fanfic that changed me and I will never ever ever be able to be the same again

I was planning a whole comic on my little sketchbook but then I wanted to put it on digital.... And I died bahdnsnfndmndnf I tried Lineart and I died sorry will happen again.

I exploded and fucking died (sowy Milo) ksjdjekg BUT I THINK I'll leave this be here

If someone or something or whatever gives me inhumane energy to complete all my wips then that day I'll post this as something so cool and rendered and ohhh wow omg colorrrrssss but no. I'm not completing this any time soon JDHSJFJSKGN I HAVE A JOB AGAIN AND IM IN PAIN AUGHHHH

The creator of the gorgon varian fic is the beloved Milo :3 aka @glitter-lisp

Also other stuff I did for the fic :3

This one of ulf, var and Hugo

And this one of a Hugo and varian

In case the links are upside down don't look at me