#I will reblog this six thousand times

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[elodieunderglass]

Hey bestie whats a narrow boat? I saw you tag that on something you reblogged and I'm pretty curious now!

- Terry Darlington, Narrow Dog to Carcassone

A narrowboat (all one word) is a craft restricted to the British Isles, which are connected all over by a nerve-map of human-made canals. To go up and down hills, the canals are spangled with locks (chambers in which boats can be raised or lowered by filling or emptying them with water.) As Terry says above, the width of the locks was somewhat randomly determined, and as a result, the British Isles have a narrow design of lock - and a narrowboat to fit through them. A classic design was seventy feet long and six feet wide. Starting in the 18th century, and competing directly with trains, canal “barges” were an active means of transport and shipping. They were initially pulled along the towpaths by horses, and you can still see some today!

Later, engines were developed.

Even after the trains won the arms race, it was a fairly viable freight service right up until WW2. It’s slow travel, but uses few resources and requires little human power, with a fairly small crew (of women, in WW2) being capable of shifting two fully laden boats without consuming much fossil fuel.

In those times the barges were designed with small, cramped cabins in which the boaters and their families could live.

During its heyday the narrowboat community developed a style of folk art called “roses and castles” with clear links to fairground art as well as Romani caravan decor. They are historically decorated with different kinds of brass ornaments, and inside the cabins could also be distinctively painted and decorated.

Today, many narrowboats are distinctively decorated and colorful - even if not directly traditional with “roses and castles” they’ll still be bright and offbeat. A quirky name is necessary. All narrowboats, being boats, are female.

After a postwar decline, interest in the waterways was sparked by a leisure movement and collapsing canals were repaired. Today, the towpaths are a convenient walking/biking trail for people, as they connect up a lot of the mainland of the UK, hitting towns and cities. Although the restored canals are concrete-bottomed, they’re attractive to wildlife. Narrowboats from the 1970s onward started being designed for pleasure and long-term living. People enjoy vacationing by hiring a boat and visiting towns for a cuter, comfier, slower version of a campervan life. And a liveaboard community sprang up - people who live full-time on boats. Up until the very restrictive and nasty laws recently passed in the UK to make it harder for travelling peoples (these were aimed nastily at vanlivers and the Romani, and successfully hit everyone) this was one of the few legal ways remaining to be a total nomad in the UK.

Liveaboards can moor up anywhere along the canal for 28 days, but have to keep moving every 28 days. (Although sorting out the toilet and loading up with fresh water means that a lot of people move more frequently than that.) you can also live full-time in a marina if they allow it, or purchase your own mooring. In London, where canal boats are one of the few remaining cheapish ways to live, boats with moorings fetch the same prices as houses. It can be very very hard for families to balance school, parking, work, and all the difficulties of living off-grid- but many make it work. It remains a diverse community and is even growing, due to housing pressures in the UK. Boats can be very comfortable, even when only six feet wide. When faced with spending thousands of pounds on rent OR mooring up on a nice canal, you can see why it seems a romantic proposition for young people, and UK television channels always have slice-of-life documentaries about young folks fixing up their very own quirky solar-powered narrowboat. I don’t hate; I did it myself.

If you’re lucky, you might even meet some of the cool folks who run businesses from their narrowboats: canal-side walkers enjoy bookshops, vegan bakeries, ice-cream boats, restaurants, artists and crafters. There are Floating Markets and narrowboat festivals. It’s generally recognised that boaters contribute quite a lot to the canal - yet there are many tensions between different kinds of boaters (liveaboards vs leisure boaters vs tourists) as well as tensions with local settled people, towpath users like cyclists, and fishermen. I could go on and on explaining this rich culture and dramas, but I won’t.

Phillip Pullman’s Gyptians are a commonly cited example of liveaboards - although they were based on the narrowboat liveaboards that Pullman knew in Oxford, their boats are actually Dutch barges. Dutch barges make good homes but are too wide to access most of the midlands and northern canals, and are usually restricted to the south of the UK. So they’re accurate for Bristol/London/Oxford, and barges are definitely comfier to film on. (Being six feet wide is definitely super awkward for a boat.) but in general Dutch barges are less common, more expensive and can’t navigate the whole system.

However, apart from them, there are few examples of narrowboat depictions that escaped containment. So it’s quite interesting that there is an entire indigenous special class of boat, distinctive and highly specialised and very cute, with an associated culture and heritage and folk art type, known to all and widely celebrated, and ABSOLUTELY UNKNOWN outside of the UK - a nation largely known around the world for inflicting its culture on others. They’re a strange, sweet little secret - and nobody who has ever loved one can resist pointing them out for the rest of their lives, or talking about them when asked to. Thank you for asking me to.

[miku-earth]

miku.earth update: September 15

Hi all! This is a lil progress update for those interested. In a rush? Here's the cliff notes!

The map site at miku.earth is back: sorry for the delay in fixing it! Check it out: it has six hundred Mikus!

Including the hyuge ol' queue, we've collected over 3,100 mikus!

Representation is important! I've been using some fancy stats to avoid bias. To that end, please help make sure we have a Miku in every African country!

oh hey! you clicked 'keep reading!' well hi! here is your Miku Direct. . The map site, miku.earth, is back!

I ran into a kinda complex issue and it was a whole Thing. I was working on the site the whole time though! Sorry for the delay, and I hope you enjoy now it's back up and running.

This site has six hundred Mikus on the map, and more are added each week. It was recently rebuilt from scratch (fun fact! I am not a web developer) so I hope it is far zippier and less glitchy as before. A mobile-friendly version is coming soon too!

Also: check out the new search feature! In addition to the title, artist name and region(s), it can also search for the categories indigenous and historic!

cw: this video involves moving around a 2D map with some speed. on the site itself site, this only happens when you hit the Enter key.

We've reached more than 3,100 mikus!

Even at its Miku-per-hour speed, the queue will continue until 2025 at least! This is with thanks to an incredible number of contributions, including donations of literal thousands of links.

Thank you so much to @awnowimsad, @worldmikuposter @the-hatsune-miku-trend, @communist-hatsunemiku, @council-of-beetroot, L-A and a whole host of DMers and emailers for helping get this far.

Oh and by the way: over two thirds of the collection are tumblr posts! Given that this was originally a twitter trend… if you know any Twitter users who are into this trend, please reach out. Some napkin math tells me there are at least 10,000 works of art total out there, which is, by the way, surreal. Let's make sure not a single one is lost.

If you're super curious, the collection is public! I have some tools to auto-annotate (I do not want RSI), but be aware the backlog isn't vetted.

Representation is important!

Fun as this trend is, this project was always intended as a serious study into how people represent their own culture through artwork. I'm no anthropologist, but I feel it is important to make sure this collection is respectful and bias-free. If we're to represent the world, we have to avoid underrepresentation!

To that end I've used some fancy statistics to calculate a "representation value" for each country. Here's a table if you're into the stats of it! This info is handy to help me with the queue – especially with tweets as they're a lil more effort than a carefully-tagged reblog. Of course, Indigenous, hyperspecific and low-note Mikus get priority.

And, well, of course you can see on the site there are purple regions for countries still missing a Miku. In particular, please help me make sure every country in Africa is represented.

Thank you for reading!

Phew! That was a lot. If you're still curious, please check the behind-the-scenes and source code. I work in the open! Even if my code is probably messy.

And if you're a programmer, issues and pull requests are welcome! This is actually a static site, so it's purdy easy to develop.

[msgexymunson]

Sammy's Mom

Description: Eddie Munson finds it difficult to get over his fantasies about you, his best friend's mom. He tries so hard to keep it in check. The only problem? Sammy's mom has got it going on.

A/N: kind of a little nod to the song "Stacey's Mom" (which is 20 years old now BTW, so if you remember it it's time to take aspirin for your back pain), I've written too much older Eddie in my time so trying to balance it out, as I've given him far too much rizz! And his friend is called Sammy as I've watched a lot of Supernatural recently. Please comment and reblog if you enjoy this my sweethearts.

Warnings: where do I start lmao, NSFW, Minors DNI or I'll slap you with a wet fish, age gap, Eddie's 21, reader is early 40s, MILF reader, reader referred to as 'Mrs F' a few times no first name given, perv Eddie, voyeurism, male masturbation, very slight foot fetish (nothing actually happens), oral both male and female receiving, p in v unprotected sex, slight anal play, cum eating.

10.5k words

Masterlist 

"UNCLE EDDIE!!" 

Johnny's little six year old voice rings out like a bell in the front yard. You look out the window and see him running as fast as his little legs could carry him towards a young man getting out of a beat up van. 

"Hey Squirt!" Crouching to his knees, he accepts your kids embrace, then stands with him, swinging him around in the air as Johnny shrieks uncontrollably, unbridled joy brimming from his chest. The next minute he's got Johnny on his shoulders, walking around the house to the back yard. 

You smile at their antics, warmed at the gesture. Eddie has always been good with your youngest son when he comes to visit Sammy, your oldest. It was nice, him having another man around to look up to, even if he really needs to remember to watch his language. 

Voices sound from the back yard; Eddie had found Sammy and as usual, they were loud and laughing. Not that you minded at all, any laughter those kids could get was music to your ears. 

You grab your sunglasses and perch them on top of your head, searching around for your gardening tools. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and you wanted to be near the kids at least. Grasping your pruners and gardening gloves in one hand and a cooler in the other, you make your way to the rear of the house. 

Pushing the back door open with a hip, you see Sammy is already in the pool. Johnny is still talking a mile a minute at Eddie, as he sits on the edge of a lawn chair. 

Well, he's certainly grown up. 

Eddie's shirtless, sitting there in his long black swimming trunks. There's a new tattoo on his ribs but you can't make it out from this distance. He's looking toned; his jaw is sharper, with shoulders broader than you remember. He's become a man. 

When the hell did that happen? 

Shaking your head out of your temporary revelry, you walk over to the pair of them. The snippets of conversation you overhear as you approach widen the smile on your face. 

"So, you think of any new monsters for me big guy?" 

Johnny beams at Eddie with pride. "Yeah! So right, it's like, a big bat thing right? With metal bits all over, and- and- then it's got these huuuuge teeth, and- and- when he opens its mouth the teeth fly out, right, and turn into bats!!" 

He starts excitedly flapping his arms around and screeching as Eddie laughs and ruffles his hair.

"Bats huh? That's sick. Pretty metal, squirt. Have to add that to the campaign." 

Johnny beams at the praise, staring down at his hand, trying to work out his fingers, then flashes the devil horn hand at him triumphantly. 

"Johnny honey, do you want to play in the pool? Give Uncle Eddie a chance to breathe?" 

"Yeah! Can I do cannonballs? Can I can I can I?" 

His enthusiasm always brings a smile to your face. "Sure thing honey, just don't go in the deep end, 'K?" 

"Kay!" He flashes a thousand watt smile at you and runs off, calling to his brother. 

Your gaze returns to Eddie, who you are sure was just checking you out. His eyes flick to yours almost guiltily. 

"Brought some beers out for you both. Here." Passing him the cooler, your hands brush briefly, the slight touch running a shiver down your spine despite the heat. 

"Thanks Mrs F." 

Eddie licks his lips and you trace the movement with your eyes.

"Mom! What are you wearing?" 

Sammy has exited the pool, dripping water everywhere. You look down at your outfit. You were wearing a two piece, slightly skimpier than your usual swimwear, and a pair of jean hotpants. 

"Sammy love, it's hot. I'm in my backyard. What am I supposed to do? Dress like a nun?" 

Eddie snorts a laugh next to you. 

"But you're all… exposed mom." 

"Sammy, shut up. Your mom can wear what she wants." 

"Yeah? You're only saying that because you-"

But you're destined to never hear the end of that sentence as Eddie pushes him into the pool. Water splashes everywhere, and Eddie laughs, throwing his head back. The gesture has you staring yet again, looking at the skin on his neck, the way his Adam's apple bobs. A mad idea enters your head; what if you just darted your tongue out and licked over it? Decorated that delicate skin with kisses? Nipped at the sides of his throat with your teeth?

Eddie makes eye contact with you then, and you quickly look away. He was sure you were eyeing him up, almost certain of it. Hell, he's been staring at you for years, mapping your curves with his eyes, knowing he'll never get a chance to feel them under his hands, but the look you just gave him made his stomach twist.

Before your thoughts can go any further you tear yourself away and over to the rose bushes. You deadhead the rose bush as if your life depends on it, furiously snipping and cutting, as if you're trying to trim back the impure thoughts you're having. 

After a while, the bushes are looking a lot neater. Stepping back, you remove your gardening gloves and swipe the sweat beads on your brow with the back of your hand. 

"Mrs F, you wanna beer?" 

You turn to see Eddie laying on a sun lounger, waving a cold one. As you walk towards him he stands up to hand it to you. 

"That a new tattoo Eddie?" You ask, pointing to his abdomen. He looks taken aback by your question but responds nonetheless. 

"Yeah, you like it?" 

Your hand drifts towards him almost instinctively, only realising when his muscles tense under your soft touch. It's a scorpion, surrounded in a wreath of flames. Tracing it with your fingers, you circle it slowly. Eddie can feel his heart pounding in his chest. A slow moan escapes Eddie's lips which pulls you out of wherever the hell you were heading. The heat must have gotten to your head. Pulling back your fingers, you respond.

"Yeah, I like it. Metal." 

Looking up around him through your lashes, your eyes meet his. He looks flushed, cheeks heating at your stare. 

"You OK Eddie?" 

"Y-yeah, fine. I'm gonna have a dip in the pool." 

He shuffles awkwardly off, nearly bent double. All his strange stance does is draw attention to the tent in his swimming trunks that has appeared. It's really rather large; to your amazement, you can't seem to take your eyes off it. Eddie dives into the pool, swimming over to your son. 

Did I just do that? 

You shake your head, banishing thoughts of Eddie's package, and head off to the kitchen to clean some dishes. 

As Eddie rushes into the pool, he's wishing the cool water would shrink the raging hard on he just got. 

Fuck, you look so good today. That skimpy bikini top barely covering the curves of your tits; them damn near spilling out of the top. Those tiny shorts, framing your hips and ass perfectly. Then you had to go and touch him. That had him nearly busting in his pants. He can't help but wonder if it was on purpose. A crazy thought he shouldn't be entertaining. 

He dips his head under the water trying to cool the blood that had rushed to his cheeks. 

You had to be at least 40. Sammy's Dad had been out of the picture for a while, he knew that much. He couldn't help but wonder if you were a little lonely; maybe that's why you had been flirting with him. Or it was entirely Eddie's imagination and he just needs to jerk off and get it out of his system. 

As he gets out of the water, shaking his hair like a dog, he thinks he sees you looking at him through the kitchen window, but he can't be sure. 

"Dude, why have you got a boner?" Sammy points at him from the water, forcing Eddie to cup his erection, trying to hide it from prying eyes. 

"I can't help it!" He whisper shouts, cheeks flushing anew, "your mom's hot!" 

"Eddie! Don't say that, that's gross!" Sammy slings back, pulling a disgusted face.

"Hey it's not, she's a total fox, what can I do, it's like, biological, she's a babe!" 

Little did he know you can hear every word, pressing your lips together firmly to suppress a laugh as you dry up a cup in the kitchen. 

"She's like, really old, and she's my mom for God's sake!" 

"Hey, rude, she's not that old. You think she's into younger guys?" You can hear the smile in his voice, he's clearly just trying to wind Sammy up now, but your thighs clench together at the thought. The cup in your hands is dry as a bone right now. 

"Eddie shut the f-" 

"What's a boner?" The little voice is clear and loud, cutting through the argument. 

A loud laugh shoots from your chest uncontrollably. You try to mask it with your hand but there's nothing you can do, it's out there now. 

Eddie's head whips around to face the house, flicking water droplets in its wake. 

"Oh shit." It's low, but loud enough to hear. 

Making your way back outside, you call out to Johnny to save either of them answering the awkward question.

"Come on kid, you want a snack?" 

"Yeah mommy! Shit!" Eddie's mouth drops open. 

"What did I say about copying Eddie" you ask sternly. 

He parrots back in a sing-song voice, "don't copy Eddie, Eddie is dirty." 

"That's right. Come on, inside." He runs past you in the way only a child can, feet flat on the floor slapping on the concrete.

Eddie steps a little closer to you.

"I'm so sorry Mrs F it won't-" 

"Hey, it's OK," you reply, stepping to meet him. You drop your voice lower, hand up as if you're telling a secret. On autopilot, Eddie leans towards you to hear your whisper, close enough to smell your shampoo. 

"Sometimes mommy's dirty too." 

Turning on your heel, you walk back into the house without a glance, leaving Eddie with his jaw on the floor.

Where the hell did that come from?

You try to steady your breathing as you go inside. That was reckless of you, he's half your age. You admonish yourself, telling your brain that you need to stop flirting with the poor boy. 

Eddie's frozen on the spot. It's clear you overheard their little conversation, and then you come out with something like that? It's definitely not his imagination at this point. For a crazy moment he thinks he might actually have a shot at you. 

Stop it. She's Sammy's mother for Christ's sake. Pull yourself together Munson. 

"Imma take a quick shower if that's alright and get, er, changed. You wanna work on the campaign some more?" Eddie says it over his shoulder to Sammy, not daring to turn. He's never been so hard in all his life. 

"Sure, just stay out of my mom's room." 

Eddie laughs nervously, "who do you think I am?" As he walks to the house. 

"Eddie fuckin' Munson." Sammy mutters under his breath. 

As he stumbles into the house with his bundle of clothes over his crotch, he catches another glimpse of you, on your hands and knees searching in a cupboard. 

"Honey, I don't think we've got any animal crackers left." You say over your shoulder to a pouting Johnny. 

You're barely contained in your jean hot pants, the denim tight against your perfect ass. 

"Fuckin' hell" Eddie mutters under his breath, tearing his eyes away to make his way upstairs. 

He practically runs up the stairs, tripping slightly on the last step. Flinging his body into the bathroom, he shuts and locks the door. 

Five seconds later he's in the shower with his hand wrapped around his slippery cock, tugging on it as if it were his last day on earth. 

Fuck, why does she have to be so fine? 

He's whimpering and stifling breathy moans as he cums hard in less than five minutes. Shame snags its sneaky claws into his heart then, as he hangs his head under the shower head. He needs to get it together before the thought of you ruins him completely. 

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

Knocking on your eldest son's door, he calls out for you to enter. Both him and Eddie are sitting on the bed, a pile of books and notes between them. You do your best to ignore the smoky weed smell as you address him.

"Sammy, I'm heading out, you still OK to take care of Johnny?" 

"Woah, Mrs F you look h-" Sammy elbows him in the ribs before he can finish the sentence, "-very nice." Eddie finishes lamely. 

A smile spreads over your face at his words. Your date tonight was nothing special, not really, but the need growing between your legs needed to be sorted out somehow. So, you'd dressed to impress; a red figure hugging dress, ending just at the knee, with matching slingbacks. Your hair was down, hanging past your shoulders in soft curls. 

"Mom, I'm going to Tiffany's, to stay over, remember?" Sammy responds, raising his eyebrows meaningfully at you.

"That was tonight?" Well, fuck. "Your grandma's coming to pick Johnny up at 9, can't you stay until then? 

"I can watch him." 

You both turn to look at Eddie. He looks just as surprised as you two at his words.

"I can watch him, no problem. I ain't got anywhere to be tonight."

Eddie doesn't know why he offered. Well, in part he did. He might get to see you again in that dress later. 

"Thanks Eddie, you're a lifesaver. I can pay-" 

"Oh no, don't worry about it." He flashes a grin which does something to your insides, melting them just a little.

"Thank you, I really appreciate it. Johnny's downstairs watching TV, he's had dinner, just need to wait for my mom to pick him up. You sure it's OK?" 

"Of course, it's no problem." 

"OK, well make yourself at home." You give him a winning smile of your own which makes his face flush red. 

"Oh, and Sammy?" 

"Yeah mom?" 

"Use protection." 

"Mom!" 

You laugh and shut the door, heading off to your date. 

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

The date was a total bust, not that you'd expected anything less. Greg from accounting was nice, sure; kind of handsome, in a middle aged balding kind of way. A reliable sort of guy. Then, when the dinner was over and he kissed you, you knew there was no way it was going to go any further. So, you'd refused his invitation to go to a bar, made your excuses and got a cab home. 

Standing outside your house, you look at the time. 9:30. Rock and roll. You huff into the humid night air at how old you must seem right now, and open your front door. 

"Eddie!" 

Sprawled on the sofa, manspreading, sits Eddie. A beer rests on the coffee table, and the TV is blaring out some horror film. 

He scrambles to his feet looking like he's about to be told off. 

"Mrs F, sorry, erm, your mom's not here yet, she called saying she was running late-" 

As if on cue, there's a knock at the door. You open it, and see your mom standing there, pushing past you in a cloud of perfume. 

"Hey love, so sorry I'm late!" She looks at you, then Eddie. "Is this your date?" 

Blushing a furious red, you shake your head. 

"Oh, no this is Sammy's friend, he was watching Johnny for a bit." 

"Oh, the young man I spoke to on the phone. Shame, he's very handsome." She winks at you. 

"Mom!" 

Eddie looks like he's about to die from blood loss; his face is so drained it's ghostly white. 

"I-I'll go get squirt," he stumbles out awkwardly. 

"Mom, please behave." You whisper when he's left the room.

"I'm behaving! I thought you were on a date, what happened?" 

"He wasn't my type." 

"Well, you should find someone who is. How long has it been?" 

You run your hand through your hair, feeling a little more confrontational than usual due to the alcohol in your veins. 

"Mom, just drop it. I'm fine!" 

"OK, OK! That babysitter is a fine looking young man-" 

"Mom!" 

"Mommy!" You turn just in time for Johnny to grab your legs in a hard hug, squishy cheek pushing against your thigh. 

"We went on an adventure! I'm a Knight, I saved the lady! There was gobbins and stuff!" His little eyes shine, staring at Eddie in pure adoration. 

"Really? Well done! Sounds amazing love. Go on, go with nanna. I love you." 

"OK! Love you mom! Bye Uncle Eddie!" He runs over to him and grabs his legs fiercely. Eddie ruffles his hair in response.

"Night squirt. Or should I say Sir Johnny the Just?" 

"Yeah! Imma hero!" He beams and runs off to grasp your mother's hand, regaling her of his adventures. 

"I'll see you later mom," you say, passing her Johnny's overnight bag by the door. 

As the door shuts, the only sounds are coming from the gristly movie on the TV until Eddie switches it off. Silence. 

"Mrs F, I only opened the beer after I put him to bed, I swear-" 

"Hey, it's fine, don't worry. Thanks for staying longer, I appreciate it." 

"Oh, it's fine. My trailers empty anyway, and you have cable." He smiles sheepishly at you. 

"I told you, make yourself at home. Finish your beer." 

Shoes are kicked off to join the jumble at the front door, and you rub some life back into your aching heels. Eddie's staring at your feet and he can't figure out why. He's never had a thing for feet, but yours? Yours he'd happily have running over his body, in his mouth, on his cock. He's almost ashamed at how just the slightest bit of your flesh on show has him practically drooling. 

You're oblivious to Eddie's perverse thoughts however. Tonight was not what you wanted, and it makes you huff aloud at the thought. 

"You alright Mrs F?" Eddie asks, concern in his voice as he sits back down on the couch, trying his hardest not to stare at your cleavage. 

"Yeah I'm-" why are you lying? "no, actually I'm not. Not the night I was expecting." When you flash a weak smile at Eddie, it's not returned. He looks worried almost. 

"Wanna talk about it?" 

It's sweet of him to ask, and you're about to brush it off but he just looks so invested in your welfare that it takes you aback briefly. 

"Sure. Hang on a minute." You pad barefoot to the kitchen and grab a beer, returning to the living room to sit on the couch beside him. 

Eddie is trying to tell himself he's just being nice. It's not just an excuse to stay. It's difficult to believe his own thoughts however when your dress is riding up your thigh like that.

The very air between you both seems thick and laced with unanswered questions, tension real and palpable. 

"So, Sir Johnny the Just?" You ask, to try and clear the closing space. 

"Yeah," Eddie grins, face lighting up at the mention of your boy, "I gave him the name. Made a little one shot for him, you know, fought some goblins, saved a damsel in distress. He's got a knack for D&D." 

Your eyes glisten at that.

"Thanks, he really looks up to you. It's nice, him having some guys around." 

"Can I ask, what happened to… Mr F?" He knows he's crossing a line here, but he's so curious, and Sammy never talks about it. 

"He left me. I was pregnant with Johnny, and he met some blonde twig, had an affair." 

"Oh, I'm so fuckin' sorry." 

You shrug. It's trauma, yes, but it's passed. A wound that has long since closed over the years, scarring but healing. You sip your beer and ask a line crossing question of your own.

"So, no girlfriend then? Since you're free on a Saturday night?" 

You're not sure where that came from, but it's been asked now. A bubble of nerves pops when you ask it, showering you in drops of second guesses. 

"N-no, well I mean, yeah I've had like, girlfriends in the past but no, I'm single. As a pringle." 

What was that about? Smooth Munson. 

You just laugh as he visibly cringes at his own words. 

"Pringles aren't single, they fit together. They come in a tube." You add, mock helpfully. 

You both chuckle then, diffusing some of the awkwardness between you. He knocks your knee with his. You reciprocate, and look up into those soulful puppy dog eyes of his. 

Eddie's arm lays on the back of the couch behind you, and he's painfully aware of that fact. He wants to drop it to your shoulder, to run circles on your exposed skin and give you that smile, the smile he's given to a dozen girls. But you aren't a girl. You're a woman. The thought is making him more nervous than a virgin on prom night. 

Coughing the thought away, he asks you about tonight. 

"So, what happened on your date? I thought you'd be out later." 

"So did I." You slug some more beer back to calm yourself, and continue, "he was a nice guy. Opened doors, paid for dinner. Then he kissed me." 

Eddie attempted to ignore the burning jealousy in his gut. 

"Oh yeah? Sounds awful.' 

Laughing, you reach and stroke his side for a minute. Your hand lingers, feeling down to his hip. Eddie's heart is pounding in his throat. To his amazement, you leave it there, absentmindedly running fingers over his t-shirt. 

'Yeah, torture," you quip, "it was the kiss." 

Suddenly, you're moving your hand, much to Eddie's dismay, and turning to face him on the couch. He does the same, noticing that his arm is now so close to your head he can feel a slight tickle from your hair. 

"Can I be honest with you?" 

"Sure," Eddie tries to say coolly, to act like his entire insides aren't on fire because of the eye contact you're giving him. 

"It's, er, been a while. A very long while." Your eyes dip down, unsure why the hell you're telling Eddie this, but something about him is making you want to be open when usually you're a closed book. 

Eddie swallows thickly. He knows exactly what you're getting at. On instinct his thumb is rubbing the back of your head, over the soft curls. You don't seem to mind, better yet, your shoulders drop some tension, letting go just a little. 

Still looking down, you say "I can usually tell what someone's going to be like, in bed, from a kiss. Never been wrong yet," you laugh a little, "and he felt, well, dull, and kinda selfish." 

Grabbing your beer for something to distract you from the ache in your core, you drink some more, nearly finishing it. 

As you place it back down on the coffee table, you glance at Eddie's lap. He's fumbling with his rings, spinning one with his thumb as he shifts in his seat. There's an unmissable bulge in the front of his jeans; they're so tight you can see the outline of it. Of him. 

Glancing up at his face when you feel brave enough, it's beetroot red, but his eyes look dark, hungry almost. 

"Well, th-that's a cool superpower to have," he laughs out nervously. 

"I suppose it is" You smile. 

Eddie's trying so hard to control himself. The devil on his shoulder is pulling at his hair and yelling in his ear to make a move. 

This isn't right though, it's Sammy's mom for fucks sake. 

That's when you put your hand on his knee, touching that bare patch of skin where his jeans are frayed. Your touch is delicate, almost hesitant, and it destroys any resolve Eddie had. His hand is shaking slightly as he puts his fingers over yours. 

The touch is warming and electric, fanning the flames of the blazing fire in your stomach. As your eyes meet, Eddie's confidence grows. He can see that you want this, but someone needs to make the first move, and he would kick himself if he missed out because he didn't have the balls to make it.

"You know sweetheart," he begins, as you take a sharp breath at the nickname, he's never called you anything other than Mrs F before that, "you can't just say you have a superpower like that and not show me." 

There's nerves in his voice, but also a cheeky smile playing on his lips. To his amazement you blush, mouth curving into a smile of your own. 

"Listen, Eddie, you're a very sweet boy-" 

"-man," He interjects, "I'm 21." 

Chuckling, you reply, "OK, a very sweet young man, but I don't think that's a good idea." 

It's true, you don't. It's a very bad idea, but it's one you can't get out of your head, your eyes drawn to the curve of his jaw, his stubble, those plush lips of his. Wetting your lips impulsively, you nibble at the bottom one which sends Eddie's head into a dizzying whirlwind. 

"I just wanna know if I'm good in the sack, think it's only fair if you can tell me, it's just a kiss." 

Luck being pushed as far as it can go and then a little further, he daringly places a hand on your cheek. 

He is right, it's only a kiss. 

You say it in your head as if you're trying to convince yourself of the lie. By the time you realise how weak of an argument it is, you're already leaning forward, eyes unmistakably drawn to his lips. 

Eddie leans in, breath fanning your face. 

"Don't you want to… satisfy your curiosity?" 

It's bold, he knows, but you're the one who leans in further.

Eddie doesn't think twice, not when your eyes are hooded like that and your lips are forming a sultry pout. He presses his lips to yours softly at first, feeling the plush of them melt against his, his hand winding into your hair. 

You don't stop him, or pull back. His lips on yours are disarming, taking away your bite. The kiss is gentle, and you dissolve into it, moving your lips against his with a passion you can't remember ever feeling. 

Eddie's trying really hard not to just stick his tongue down your throat and feel you up, but he needs to prove something. He might not ever get a chance ever again, so he takes it slow. Opening his mouth, his tongue swipes against your bottom lip, begging. Not only do you let him, you return his tongue with a lick of your own, running it over his lip in turn. Tongues stroke into each other's mouths sensually; you feel as if you have something to prove. Like he's the one who will be judging you and not the other way around.

He tastes intoxicating; you can't put your finger on why, it's beer, and cigarettes, and something else that's drawing you in. It's just pure Eddie. His smell too, leather, smoke and Old Spice;  it's filling you up from the inside out, making your head spin. 

Eddie's obsessed. Your touch, your scent, your taste. He could kiss you forever; he could kiss you until he dies, suffocated by your mouth, your passion. This feels like some sort of fever dream and he never wants to wake up.

Your fingers are touching cotton fabric before you even understand that you've got a fistful of his shirt, pulling him in further. He responds by dropping his hand to your neck, thumb rubbing intoxicating patterns on your pulse point. 

When you're feeling on the brink of being entirely consumed by his kiss, he's the one to pull away. It's a little sneaky, he knows that, but he wants the upper hand and thinks he won't get it ever again. Eddie can't believe his luck when he sees your eyes still closed, lips chasing his touch, with a ball of his shirt in your hands. 

As your eyes flutter open, you look up at him. A self satisfied smirk is smeared across his face and you can't help but think he's won this round of whatever the hell you're playing. Playing with fire it feels like. 

A moment too late and you remember your hand bunched into his clothes. You unhand him and slap his knee, fingers unwilling to pull away. 

"So, what's the verdict sweetheart?" Eddie asks. His fingers are still massaging at your neck, rubbing back and forth, sending tingles down your spine. 

"What?" You ask, mind well and truly blank. 

"Guessing that's good." He laughs, taking his hand away to take a sip of his beer. "Remember your superpower, Wonder Woman?" 

"Oh, yeah. It was… good." You shrug, picking up the last of your beer and downing it. 

"Good? Good?! Come on, you gotta give me more than that!" He huffs dramatically, slamming his beer bottle on the table. 

Laughing aloud, you turn and face him again. He really is beautiful. His hair framing his face, that triumphant smile on his lips, laughter lines creasing in his day old stubble. You can almost believe he's older than he is, but knowing what you know about his family, he's been through a lot. 

"OK, it was the best kiss I've had in a while. A very long time." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah." 

It's quiet for a moment; a loaded kind of quiet. It hangs heavily in the air like a thunderstorm. 

"Well, how about you?" You ask. 

"What do you mean?" 

"You know what I mean!" You laugh, nudging him with your foot.

"It was… good." He says, mimicking your words. Then he takes in your face, drinking in your beauty with his eyes, until he can't hold back anymore, "alright, it was mind blowing, you're really fuckin' hot." 

"Yeah, for my age" You scoff at his response, disbelieving him even after that kiss. You hear it alot, ever since you passed 35. 'You look good for your age', the backhanded compliment that feels like a knife in the chest. 

"That's bullshit!" Eddie responds loudly, shaking you out of your head and into the here and now, "you're fucking hot, period. Nothing to do with age sweetheart." 

If his words are lies, the bulge in his pants sure isn't. You feel drunk, and not from the alcohol. Eddie's kiss had you feeling reckless. Naughty. Young. 

"I overheard your little conversation earlier," you admit, scooching closer to him on the couch. Faces an inch apart, Eddie's torn between pouncing or running. So are you. 

"Yeah, you weren't supposed to hear that. Kinda glad you did." 

That makes you braver. All thought has gone, and the pounding need in between your legs has you losing all inhibitions as you lean towards his neck.

"Do you want me, Eddie?" You purr into his ear, nipping at the lobe with your teeth. 

"Uh, like, yeah. Yes, o-of course" He replies shakily, hand restless against your thigh. 

"You're trembling Eddie" it's your turn to smirk, lips dragging against his throat, "you've been with a woman before, right?" You know he has, but you can't help teasing him a little. 

Yes, a dozen, but none like you. 

"Y-yeah, I'm not a virgin, if th-that's what you're asking." 

Get it the fuck together Munson. 

"Then why are you nervous?" 

"Girls don't make me nervous. You make me nervous" He laughs, with absolute honesty in his words. 

With a flick of your eyes to his lips, you cradle his jaw. Eddie can't wait a second longer, he's about to burst. He takes a breath, grabs you by the hip, and presses a hard kiss to your mouth. 

The first one was a test, an examination. This one is pure desire, neediness etched into the marrow of his bones. Yet you're the one to deepen the kiss, mouth opening up to him, your tongue running over his with fervour. Lust is rolling off the pair of you, filling the room with its sultry fog.

Impatience gets the best of him, he needs you closer, so he yanks you into his lap, hands grabbing hard to your hips. Gasping into his mouth at the sudden dominance, you let him lead. His kiss is burning you, hot and heavy. Your hips start grinding into his lap of their own accord, each movement inching your dress higher and higher. 

Eddie rolls it up and over your ass so your red lace panties are on display, dress bunching at your waist. His hands are all over you, feeling at your thighs, your hips, your ass, kneading at the dough of your flesh desperately. 

Each grope, each bruising squeeze of his fingertips has you panting in his mouth, your hands winding into his loose locks, tugging. 

The kisses are becoming sloppier, allegedly immovable lipstick starting to smear on Eddie's face. You're biting at his bottom lip, grinding hard against his clothed dick; Eddie feels like he's died and gone to heaven. 

He tugs at your dress urgently, coaxing you to wriggle it up your frame and fling it away. 

The sight of you in your matching bra and panty set is enough to stop him in his tracks. It's gorgeous satin and lace, one of many you have. Even Eddie can see this is expensive. He runs his hands up and down your sides, drinking it in as if it were his last day on Earth. 

You allow him the few moments he takes to worship you with his eyes. If anything you're enjoying it as much as he is, his hungry stare fuelling your ego. 

"See something you like?" You tease, fingernails dragging across his neck. 

"Fuck yeah" comes his breathy response, pulling down a cup of your bra roughly, his mouth finding your nipple and sucking. 

Throwing your head back, you let out an unadulterated moan. You grab the hem of his shirt and tug it upwards. He gets the message, wrestling it off of his toned frame and throwing it away as if he's exasperated with clothes. Relishing in this new uncharted territory, your hands run all over his skin, tracing tattoos and freckles, fingernails leaving evidence of your desire. 

"Sorry, I just need to-" instead of telling you, he shows you, standing up with you grasped firmly at the hips. You think for a moment that he's going to take you upstairs, but he's pressing you down gently to the floor, lips and tongue tasting your neck, playfully licking over your collarbone. 

Eddie needs to know what your pussy tastes like; he's been dreaming of this for as long as he can remember. The thought of you unravelling because of him has him twitching in his pants. 

So, he makes his way down your torso, mapping your skin with his tongue. You're just so reactive; each time he laps and sucks at you a breathy gasp comes spilling from perfect painted lips.  

It's driving you crazy, his mouth is setting each patch of skin aflame, burning with passion. You're surprised by his movements as his mouth trails lower and lower. It looks like he's taking every enjoyment in tasting you, and the way he wiggles to get between your spread legs makes you realise he's going to go down on you. That is what's so surprising; you've never had a man who did that without some serious coaxing, let alone one who seemed to really want to. 

Now you're not self conscious by any means; you've grown to be very comfortable with your body, the feeling just comes with age. You can't help but be a little worried however, when Eddie reaches the stretch marks on your tummy. Little lightning strikes, lighter than the rest of your skin. You're not embarrassed, those little marks on your stomach and thighs are signs of your two beautiful boys. What's troubling you is the fact that Eddie can't have possibly seen any before, at least like this. What if they disgust him? 

It seems you needn't have worried. Eddie's in awe, running his fingers over the soft skin of the scars. He plants a kiss over the top and watches your muscles tense up. 

It's not that he likes them, or dislikes them for that matter; it's the fact that they are real. You're real, and in front of him in your underwear, and they ground him to the fact that this is actually happening. 

Reaching the hem of your panties he's torn between taking them off or not; you're just so damn pretty in them. He settles for running his tongue along the seam making you moan. You, Sammy's mom, moaning underneath him. He'd pinch himself if he didn't think it would spoil the mood. 

"You can take them off if you want baby." 

"Can I just, move them to the side? You're so fuckin' pretty like this." 

"Sure" you nod at him. He does so and nearly dies at the sight. Seems everything about you is thought of, down to your manicured nails, waxed legs, and bikini wax. The little patch of hair left is driving Eddie fucking crazy. 

He wastes no more time and runs his tongue through your folds, lapping at you like a man possessed. You taste exquisite, a flavour Eddie will remember for the rest of his life. It has him groaning into you, the vibration tingling over your clit making you writhe under him.

He's trying to map what you like, what makes you whimper, what makes you buck into his mouth. You can tell he's trying, really trying, but you know what you need. 

"Eddie, oh fuck, use, use the flat of your tongue," as he changes his tongue shape and rhythm, you wind your fingers into his hair and tug him right where you need him, "Oh God fuck, right there!" 

Yes fucking ma'am. 

Eddie's birthdays, Christmases, Easters, fuck it, all the holidays, have come at once. You are using him for your pleasure, riding his face. His dick is so swollen it's almost painful; he's rutting into the carpet like a teenager, the seam on his jeans not nearly providing enough friction.  

The pleasure is coursing through your veins, throbbing inside your stomach and thighs as you take what you need, fingers pulling hard at his hair. 

The moan that rips from your chest when Eddie pushes two fingers into your soaking wet cunt is pornographic, long and loud. He curls them upward, stroking incessantly at your g spot and spots appear in your vision. The last coherent thought you have is, fuck he really knows what he's doing. 

"Eddie!" 

You come with a strangled scream of his name, then it's all just white light and searing ecstasy as you ride out your orgasm. Your pulse and the feel of Eddie's hair taut in your fingers are the only things keeping you on planet Earth. 

Eddie just about holds it together, fingers working you through your release. You screamed his name. He almost came in his pants right then and there. The sound of you screaming his name is now a new core memory. He's sure he will replay it in his head many times with his fist on his cock.

Your back finally touching the carpet again, you tear Eddie's head away from your pussy and coax him none too gently upward. He hovers over your mouth, a little worried about kissing you when his face is covered with your release, but that worry turns into shock when you push his head forcefully towards yours and slip your tongue in his mouth. 

You can't help but moan at the taste of yourself in his mouth. The moan sounds low in your throat, buzzing into Eddie's mouth so low he feels it in his dick. Seems you weren't lying when you said mommy is dirty too. 

Suddenly Eddie's world turns sideways as you flip him onto his back, pushing his thighs apart with your knee. His scent, the feel of his skin, it's intoxicating. Before you realise what you're doing, you're sucking a love bite into the side of his neck, hard. 

Mine. 

Trailing lips and manicured nails down his torso, you pause at the fly of his jeans. You look up at him through your lashes. 

"This OK Eddie?" 

"Erm… oh God yes?" 

You giggle girlishly, flicking the button of his jeans undone and unzipping the fly gently. Relishing in the moment, you guide him to lift his hips and pull his jeans and boxers down slowly, unwrapping him like a gift.  

And what a fucking gift. 

As you pull his jeans and underwear down to his knees, his hardened cock springs out, coming to rest on his abdomen. It's big, the biggest you think you've seen in real life. Blushing a pretty pink at the tip, a pearl of pre cum sits on the slit at the top. 

Eddie takes your stillness as judgement, he can't help but fill in the silence. 

"Sorry, it's er, it's not like, impressive or anything- oh fuck" 

His apologies are interrupted when you take the tip in your mouth, sucking up the pre cum that glistens there. You roll the tip around your mouth, amazed at the fact he tastes so good. 

Breaking away with a pop, you reply, looking at him as you fist his length slowly with one hand. 

"Eddie, you're really, really big." 

"Really?" He doesn't look convinced, leaning up on his elbows to look at you. 

"Really. You're huge Eddie." 

"Yeah?" An edge of disbelief coats his voice, but he's smiling. 

"Biggest I've seen." 

Eddie's smile is damn near splitting his face in half. 

"So, could I get that in writing or- Jesus fuckin' Christ!" 

You take him in your mouth again, fitting as much as you can, fisting the rest in your hand. The groans and whimpers coming from Eddie's mouth are downright obscene. The wetter you get him, the louder he gets, so you dribble purposely all over your fist, letting it drip down to his balls. 

Eddie's eyes keep trying to roll back but he won't let them, he refuses. He needs to see this, to see you. The slick sounds your hand and mouth are creating are making him fizz from the inside out, each movement is making him want to blow his load in that perfect practised mouth. 

Sammy's mom is sucking my fucking dick dry. 

He's trying to get his head around this impossible situation but it's so outlandish he wants to laugh. Or cry. Or scream. He settles on moaning, hand resting on the back of your head, stroking encouraging circles. 

"Fuck, you're- you're too good at this, holy shit!" 

Relinquishing his length with a sodden wet noise, you fist his length, running your thumb over his tip and lapping at his balls. Taking one in your mouth and playfully sucking, he nearly busts right then and there. 

"OK sweetheart, I-I can't hold back if you, fuck, if you d-do that-" 

You finally unhand him with a cheeky smile and straddle him, your underwear the only barrier between your sex and his throbbing length. 

"You OK there champ?" You ask, a mischievous grin plastered all over your face as you drag your perfect nails down his chest. 

"Y-yeah, I'm fine, I-" Eddie grabs your hand, stopping you in your tracks, "Please give me a minute, please." 

Eddie's eyes are big, wide and wet. Almost like a lost puppy. You're torn between wanting to hold him close, look after him, and fucking him hard until he cries. 

Suddenly he looks concerned, eyes growing impossibly wider. 

"I don't have, a-a condom or anything-" 

You chuckle lowly, bringing his hand to your lips, kissing softly at his knuckles. 

"Eddie, baby, I had my tubes tied years ago. It's OK. If it's OK with you?" 

Holy shit. Sammy's mom wants to ride me raw. Jesus Christ. 

His head is spinning; he realises he's nodding so hard he may have whiplash. You smirk at his response, the rigorous nodding and wide eyed look is just doing something to your insides; twisting them up, making you hungry. 

Maybe that's why you do what you do. You wink at him, and swing your leg over, pushing your underwear to the side once again. Though this time, you're straddling him backwards, round ass on display as you tease the head of his cock with your soaking wet lips. 

As you sink down onto him, you hear the guttural moan that strikes out from his soul almost, travelling swiftly to your core. He's big, you weren't lying. You feel each vein, each ridge, as you seat yourself fully onto his cock. 

This boy has no idea what he's packing. 

Jesus Christ, the spots this impressive length can reach are unreal. You bounce on him slowly, revelling in the stretch. He's throbbing underneath you, inside you. The sensation makes you moan wantonly, feeling sexier than you've felt in years. 

Eddie's mesmerised by your ass, watching it bounce on his dick, drooling at the shake of it when it plunges back down. His eyes are drawn to your tight hole, half hidden by the pricey underwear that still adorns you. Just a tiny slip of lace hugged in your ass cheeks. 

He's already pushed his luck; he's well aware of that fact. The arousal pumping through him has him throwing caution to the wind however, so he sucks his thumb, getting it nice and wet, and pushes it against your asshole.

It surprises you, sure, but you're moaning louder at his bold move. 

Eddie's reeling, dizzy at your reaction. He was expecting at least for you to just slap his hand away, but if anything you speed up and make even more noise. Fuck, if you could get more perfect, you just did. He pushes his digit in, feeling you clench around it, riding him for all he's worth. 

"Oh fuck, Eddie!" 

It's too much for you to take, being filled in both holes, riding him hard and fast until your vision is blurring and spots are in your eyes. Your release startles you, a fuzzy feeling filling you up from the inside out and exploding from your cunt in a gush. 

Reality seeps in as you come down from your high; pain in your knees searing up your leg. 

"Sweetheart, I need to get on top, please." 

It's a relief you're not prepared to admit to as you climb off, legs twitching and knackered. 

Near collapsing on the floor, Eddie's on you, falling in his excitement. He's forgotten his jeans are still woven around his ankles. He kicks them off and slides between your spread legs. 

"Can I take your panties off now sweetheart?" 

What he's not saying, is he really doesn't want to miss what might be the only time he gets to see you naked. You oblige, lifting up your hips so he can wrestle the sodden garment off you. 

As if you can hear his prayers, you unhook your bra too, flinging it toward the couch. Eddie's nearly having a heart attack; it's hammering hard in his chest, the only thing stopping it from bursting out is his ribcage. The sight of you, nude, beneath him? It's unravelling him in a way he didn't know was possible. 

So he loses it for a moment, burying his head in the valley of your breasts, licking and sucking as if his life depended on it. Your nipples stand to attention at his ministrations, yet your core hums at the lack of attention. 

"Eddie, please, I need you inside me." 

Fuck this is unreal. She's so beautiful and she's begging for me. Feels like a dream. 

But it's not a dream. He's pressing his quivering length against you again and your pussy is swallowing him up as if it's hungry for him. 

You let him in, his hard member spearing you, humping into you hard and rough. You groan against him, fingernails finding leverage in his broad shoulders. 

His arms hook under your sweaty knees, pulling them hard against your torso, angling himself to fuck into you mercilessly. 

"Fuck, you feel- so fuckin' good" He stammers out, slamming his hips into you. 

You're beyond words, screaming his name like it's the only word you know. 

"You gonna come again? Please, fuck, please come, I need it, I need it baby please" His babbling words fire out at you, driving you ceaselessly to another orgasm. 

Fingers wind between your heaving forms, running urgent circles over your clit. They slip and slide against your sodden nub, desperately seeking to get you to that precipice. You moan, and moan, and finally clench and scream his name, voice hard, burning in your throat.

Eddie can't take it, not the way your cunt is grabbing onto him so tightly, constricting his dick as if it's afraid he'll leave. He stutters his hips and grunts his own release deep into you. 

For a minute he doesn't stop, He refuses to stop. He doesn't want it to be over. So, he fucks his cum into you until it's impossible to continue and finally comes up for air. 

You envelop his lips into a suffocating kiss, swollen lips and tongue and spit. Messy and passionate, he returns it, glad that you still want to kiss him at the end of all things. 

Though, you don't want it to be over. His touch, his feel, his taste, you could soak it up, roll around in it forever, wrap yourself in his arms and stay. A mad thought. A maddening thought. 

Eddie slips from inside you making you frown at the loss. His smile is soaked in mischief however, as he starts to kiss down your front again, burying his head in the deep valley of your breasts, tongue lathering over the supple flesh and moving downwards. 

He's never, ever, felt the need to taste himself on another. As a matter of fact, if you had told him yesterday he would feel the desperate urge to press his tongue into a pussy that is dripping with his own cum he would have laughed in your face. But, this is your pussy. Your tight wet cunt, and he needs to taste it. He needs it like he needs air to breathe. For a second he stares up at you with big soulful eyes. 

"I wanna taste what we made." 

His words are shooting into the pulse spilling from your core.

"Really?" Your words drip in perplexity, amazed that any man would want that, but the thought lingers, making you realise that you want that. 

No further time wasted, he dives into your dripping core, tongue dragging through your aching lips. For a moment it's too much, until it drops into pleasure; pleasure that you sink into, melting under his touch. 

Eddie laps furiously at your clit, both of your releases dripping from his chin. He sinks thick fingers inside, squelching into your soft heat. 

Wordlessly, he takes his fingers out and reaches them up to your face. His eyes are trained on you, flat of his tongue rubbing against your swollen nub. 

Hesitantly, you take in the sight of his sticky fingers, before you take them into your mouth, sucking and hollowing your cheeks. The taste is indescribable; it's salty, sweet, tangy, each separate flavour hitting your tongue differently, fuelling your desires.

You're making Eddie's dreams come true with that gesture. Your trust in him, your filthiness, the way your tongue works against his fingers, it's all shooting to his heart, and his cock. He's impossibly hard again, groaning into your cunt. 

Another release is speeding toward you. You can feel yourself hurtling towards it, free falling into ecstasy. You grip around his wrist, fingers digging bruises into the tendons as your orgasm rushes out of you in a string of curse words. 

He moves back up your body and you envelop his slicked lips in a firm kiss. To your surprise, you can feel his hard member digging into your thigh. It's been a long time since you've been with anyone who couldn't go more than one round before rolling over and falling asleep. The joys of youth. 

"You OK Eddie?" You ask between breath-taking kisses. 

"OK? I'm fucking amazing sweetheart. Feel like I just won the lottery or something" He huffs a laugh, nudging the tip of his nose with yours. 

"You, erm-" you begin, feeling almost embarrassed, "-you wanna go again?" 

"Oh hell yeah." 

His tip is already begging at your entrance but you place a firm hand to his chest, stilling his movements. 

"Eddie, upstairs? My back is killing me." You admit it, the hard floor giving you aches and pains. 

"Fuck, yeah, sorry. Come on" practically leaping up, he holds out his hand to you and you grasp it in yours. You giggle at his eagerness, the sight of him stark naked leaping up the stairs three at a time stoking your amusement. 

This might be inappropriate, it might be a bit wrong, but damn, this is fun. Having someone desire you so much, who wants to fuck you over and over? Morals can kick in tomorrow. Tonight, you have a gorgeous young man aching to give you more. 

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

"Hey, you still here?" 

You look up, distracted from your musings of last night. God, that boy had some stamina. 

"Huh?" 

"Wow, that date must have been good! You going to spill? Come on, tell me about it!" 

Blushing, you sip the glass of wine in front of you. Karen Wheeler had popped round unannounced with a bottle and you were sitting around your kitchen table whilst she grilled you about why you were smiling so much. She would lose her shit if she knew who you were smiling about. 

"I mean, I can't really talk about it." You mumble around your glass. 

"Oh God, why? Oh, he's married, I bet he's married! You naughty thing!" Her words are admonishing, but her cheeks are glowing. She's loving every minute of this. 

Why not? At least that would explain it away. 

"Yeah, he's married." 

"Oh my you're terrible!" She cackles, laughing. "How was he?" 

"I don't know what you're talking about Karen." 

"Oh, come on you're practically glowing! I know that look" She says, nodding sagely. 

"OK, look" You say, taking a gulp of wine for composure and a deep breath before it rushes out of your mouth in a torrid whisper. 

"It was fucking incredible, like toe curling incredible, you know? And he just kept going, I mean, honestly? The best I've ever had." 

Karen coughs and nods pointedly behind you. Glancing over your shoulder, you see him. 

Eddie. Fuck. 

He's standing there nonchalantly, leaning on the doorframe with a Cheshire cat grin. 

"Sorry for the interruption, just grabbing a couple beers." 

He bounces into the kitchen and fetches two beers from the fridge. 

"Me and Sammy are just working on the campaign. I'll er, leave you ladies to it." 

He practically skips out the room, leaving you red faced. 

"That Eddie?" You nod, face red as a beetroot. 

"He's grown up, hasn't he?" 

You steer away from this line of questioning, mortified that he heard what you said. 

"Only on the outside. You want a top up?" She agrees with a grin as you fill her glass up and she regales you with all the poolside gossip. When the bottle is done, she leaves with a wink, saying she'll keep your secret. If she only knew what that was. 

Eddie's on cloud nine right now, bouncing up the stairs three at a time. 

The best she's ever had. The best she's ever had. 

It's in his mind, playing in a loop. His mantra, a quote that will live deep in his chest from now until forever after. 

The best she's ever had. 

He flings the door open and flounces into Sammy's room, banging a beer down on the bedside table. 

"A beverage for you, good fellow!" 

"Aha! Fine work m'lord!" Sammy twists the cap off, tossing it in the bin. Eddie does the same, twisting to face the waste paper basket, and takes a long swig. 

"Eddie you dirty fuck." 

He freezes, ice pouring down his spine. Spinning on his heel, he turns to face Sammy.

"What are you on about?" He asks, a fake smile masking the fear that had bottomed out in his stomach. 

"I see the panties you've got in your back pocket, red ones. They're poking out! Dude, did you get lucky last night?" Sammy smirks, swigging his own beer.

He couldn't help himself. He swiped them when he was leaving. They were still wet, soaked with a mixture of his spit and your release. He'd sniffed them and got himself off twice this morning. 

Chill out. Sammy's grinning. He's got no clue who they belong to. 

Eddie relaxes and grins smugly back, laying on the floor, his back against the bed. 

"Oh, you have no idea." 

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

Humming to yourself, you sort through the dirty clothes in the laundry room, separating darks and lights. 

Your thoughts drift yet again to that messy haired rocker. His large hands, his tight torso, his dick. Fuck, his dick. 

Shaking your head, you do what you can to rid your brain of your salacious thoughts, loading the washer a little more forcefully than you necessarily needed to. 

You hear the unmistakable click of the door behind you. Not bothering to turn, you huff as you shut the washer lid with a bang. 

"I swear to God Sammy if you need a shirt for tonight I've already-" 

"Hey sweetheart." 

Flipping to face the door, there he is. Arms folded across his slender chest, smug smirk spread stickly across his features, he stares at you. 

"Eddie, you need to leave." 

Your tone is stern, but your bottom lip disappears into your mouth, being nibbled at by your teeth. 

"You sure? Thought you might wanna see me. You know, since I'm the best you ever had." 

"Eddie shut the fuck up!" You hiss between your teeth, eyes flashing to the door. 

"Sweetheart, Sammy's fallen asleep. He had a long night. You know what that's like." 

"Eddie, that was a one time thing. God, it's not like this can go anywhere, so why are you here?" 

Tapping your foot impatiently, he closes the gap between you, cornering you between the wall and the washing machine. 

You want to be angry; to push him away and leave, but the pounding of your pulse between your legs betrays you. 

As if he knows, he slots his leg between yours, denim clad thigh hovering near your throbbing heat, pushing your sundress up in the process. 

"I know. Fuck, I'm well aware. I just wanna- help you out. Like, an arrangement" He smiles, knuckles reaching up to stroke your cheek. 

"Eddie-" 

Before you manage to form words, he's on his knees in front of you, large palms running over your bare thighs. 

"Please." 

That's all he says, wet doe eyes wide, gleaming up at you as if you were some sort of goddess and he was kneeling at your altar. 

Eddie's begging to the old Gods and the new; fuck it, to anyone who might be listening. He wants you, with everything he has. Each fibre is burning for you. He thought it might go away after last night, but it was simply a taste. A drop of water doesn't quench an undying thirst. 

This little sundress is doing nothing to sate his hunger for you. The flimsy material clings in all the right places, forcing his eyes to trail over your curves like a man starved. 

Without a thought in your head, you wind your fingers into Eddie's hair, relishing the feel of his hot breath on your naked thighs. Guiding his head forward, you shudder as his lips trace across your flesh. 

Eddie lifts your dress up, reaching desperately to pull your panties off and away before you change your mind. Slick sticking to them, he pulls them down, watching as they gradually peel from your core. 

He sits on his heels, eyes flitting from your eyes to your cunt. 

"Sweetheart, please. I just wanna- I wanna help you with your needs. Fuck, with my needs." 

Nodding emphatically, you tug at his hair, drawing him in. 

Eddie counts his blessings and dives straight at your pussy, lapping between the folds just like you taught him. 

"Oh God" you moan aloud, then bite at your hand to stop your noises. Flicking one leg over his shoulder, you force his head as close as you can, nearly riding his face. 

If anything, Eddie is a quick learner, at least when it comes to you. 

His tongue is electric, hitting all of the right spots. He feels your cunt on his tongue, leaving hot and heavy licks. Running his hand up your thigh again, he presses his thumb against your clenching hole, wiggling into your slick drenched pussy. 

"Eddie, yes!" You whisper, fingers pulling at his curls incessantly. Eyes rolling back, you rut your hips into him, on the brink of falling apart.

White hot light sears your eyelids as you  come with a stifled cry, cunt undulating around his thick digit. 

"Fuckfuckfuck!" 

Yanking his head away from you by the roots of his hair, you cannot fail to hear the unmistakable moan that spills from his lips. 

Eddie's staring up at you dumbfounded, as if you created the universe just for him. 

Panting, you stare back down at him, his lips parted and shining with your orgasm. 

"Eddie, holy hell." 

He stands, wiping the slick from his face with the back of his hand, though it does nothing to remove the grin. 

Against every better judgement, you grab him by the shirt and pull him closer, lips nearly touching. 

"You- you can't tell anyone about this, OK? Not a soul, understood?" 

If it were possible, his grin grows even wider, palm resting at your waist. 

"I can be discreet." He whispers as he presses his lips to yours. Winding fingers into his hair, you deepen the kiss, tongue moving expertly between his parted lips to taste him, and you. 

Eddie pulls away reluctantly. 

"I better go." 

As he moves to the door, hand hovering over the handle, you call out to him. 

"Eddie, wait." 

Turning his head, he looks at you. 

"Sammy's seeing Tiff again tonight, and er, Johnny's still at his grandma's." 

"Good to know." He winks and leaves. What you don't know is that he does a mini victory dance once the door is shut, fists pumping in the air with sheer joy. 

He doesn't know how long this is going to last, but he'll take every single second he can get with you whilst you let him. 

Taglist (just some likely candidates ;) )

@cursedyuta @eddiesprincess86 @munson-blurbs @rip-quizilla @emsgoodthinkin @josephquinnsfreckles @zestychili @eddiemunsons-missingnipple @eiightysixbaby @lightvixxen @ali-r3n @usedtobecooler @roanniom

[tkwrites]

It Doesn't Matter Part I - Nico Hischier x ofc

Gif from offside-the-lines

Title: It Doesn’t Matter - Part I

Part I | Part II | Part III | Playlist

Author: Tory / @tkwrites 

Relationship: Beginning: Nico Hischier x Original female character 

Summary: Nico and Lena have been friends ever since he played in Halifax. When an opportunity of a lifetime brings Lena to New York, Nico offers up his apartment as her home base despite the fact that he’s been painfully, desperately in love with her for the last six years.

Warnings: Slow burn, mutual pining, friends to lovers, talks of masturbation, but nothing is described, Cliff hanger ending (I’m sorry, I had to!)

Word count: 7,300

Anonymous asked: I saw that you rebloged the Nico fic so I have to ask would you ever be open to write for him?, because the combination of your perfect writing and that sweet man, I would die for sure 😂

Comments: A thousand thanks to 🥭 Anon for requesting this fic! Nico has been such a fun, sweet character to write. I’m sorry for the cliffhanger ending, but I envisioned this fic in 3 parts, and this one had to end here. I hope you enjoy it! 

If you liked this, please let me know by commenting, reblogging, or sending in an ask. Your encouragement and comments truly inspire me to keep writing. 

It Doesn’t Matter - Part I

“You coming to the bar tonight?” Jesper asked. 

“I can’t, I’m helping Lena move in.” 

“Wait,” Jack said, barging his way into their conversation as per usual, “Lena, Lena? Like Lena from Halifax who you’ve been in love with since you were seventeen?” 

Nico felt a blush flood his cheeks as he nodded. 

“Moving in?”

“She’s coming to New York for an art program this year, so I told her she could stay with me.” 

Jack stared at him, one of his eyebrows cocked up. “You’re sure that’s a good idea?” 

Nico shook his head. 

“No it’s not a good idea, or no you’re not sure?” 

He shrugged. Hell if he knew. He was thrilled to have her close by but knew it would likely be torturous at the same time. 

“Who is Lena?”

“She’s this girl he met when he was playing for the Mooseheads,” Jack explained. “You haven’t heard about her? He never shuts up about her.” 

Blushing, Nico tossed an elbow pad in Jack’s direction. 

“Did you stay with her family or something?” 

“No,” Nico said. “She was friends with our goalie.”

“They’ve been besties ever since, and Nico still hasn’t grown the balls to ask her out.” 

Nico glared at him. 

“What?” Jack asked, shrugging. “You haven’t.”

“It’s complicated.”

“What’s so complicated about it? You like her. She’s single. You’re single. What’s the problem?” 

“I don’t…” he broke off. 

Keeping Lena as a friend was more important than the possibility of him spilling his feelings and risking losing her. Plus, he wasn’t totally sure she’d respond the way he wanted, and he was pretty certain he wouldn’t survive it if she turned him down. 

“So, in the meantime, you’re just breaking up with every girl you’ve dated and overlooking every other woman because they don’t measure up, but you won’t ask her out, so you’re just pining full time.” 

It was stunning, really, how he could talk so accurately about other peoples relationships without seeing the flaws in his own. Nico knew from experience not to bring Madeline up. In situations of talking about failure in relationships, Jack could dish all day long, but he could never quite take it if it was served back at him. 

“Betty at 2:00,” Jack murmured. Watching a petite woman with light hair enter the bar. She had a pretty, heart shaped face and big, expressive eyes.

She turned around, laughing at whoever was following her. Despite the fact that he couldn’t hear her, Jack knew her laugh was the kind that made other people want to laugh along.

Instead of the friend he expected, Nico stepped into the bar after her, looking a little punch drunk. 

Jack nearly choked on his beer.

Well, shit. 

If Lena was as funny and sweet as Nico made her out to be, Jack didn’t think he’d be able to move on from her either. 

She said something to Nico, and he tore his gaze from her to look around the bar. Their eyes met, and he raised a hand in greeting. Jack waved back. 

As they made their way closer, Jack realized her hair was actually light pink. And she had a nose ring: a delicate, jeweled thing hanging from her septum. Instead of calling up a resemblance to a hooked bull, like he usually thought those piercings looked, it made her face more lovely and interesting. The dainty diamond rested in the curve of her cupid's bow, emphasizing the shape of her top lip.

Lena felt herself smile upon walking up to the group of hockey players and their partners. She’d grown up with boys like this, and walking up to them was a bit like walking into her childhood. 

“It’s Jack, right?” Lena asked. She’d seen photos of him from Nico and recognized him right away, along with Jesper, who was sitting on his other side.

“In the flesh. You must be Lena,” Jack said, standing up. He shot her a flirtatious, charming smile.

She couldn’t quite hide her eye roll, “he’s just as cheesy as you said,” she whispered to Nico, who was still standing off to her left. 

Shoulders shaking with laughter, Nico pulled out a chair for her before settling into the one beside it.

God, even in this awful club lighting, she looked beautiful. The finer parts of her face were dulled in the dim, but everything he could see made him long for her. 

Maybe Jack was right. Maybe this was a terrible idea.   

“So, Lena,” Jesper said, leaning back in his chair, “what brings you to the city?” 

“I got accepted into an intensive year-long art program at the New York Institute of Art. I’ve been applying for years, and they finally accepted me.” 

“What kind of art do you do?” Dawson asked. 

He’d wandered to the table as soon as they sat down, and Nico was talking himself down from moving to sit between them. Dawson wouldn’t stop looking at Lena like she’d just fallen from the moon, and he wanted nothing more than to fall into her bed. 

“I paint, but I do a lot of charcoal drawings and pastels, too.” 

“Like the colors?” 

She was used to this question and laughed indulgently at the confused expression on his face. “No, pastels are just pigment with a binder. It’s kind of like paint, but they’re not liquid.” 

“She does amazing stuff,” Nico cut in, knowing she wouldn’t brag about her own work. He was happy to do it for her. “She did all the art in my apartment.” 

The first time Lena had visited him, she was aghast at how little was on his walls. It made his whole house look like a hospital - too sterile and characterless. No wonder he was depressed when he wasn’t playing. His home looked like a place made for leaving. 

So she’d painted for him. Ten canvases in total. Most were landscapes, but there was also a small abstract he always suspected was a kind of self portrait and a strange, dark, modern piece - swirls of color chasing each other across the canvas. When he asked about that one, she’d told him his games inspired it - blurs of black and red darting around the ice. 

She’d even done a large landscape of the view from his childhood window, based on a photo he’d sent her several summers before. Rows and rows of misty roofs tucked into the base of the Alps as the mountains loomed over the town. Somehow, she managed to capture the safe, cocooned feeling of home.

Every time he looked at the painting where it hung, taking up nearly the whole wall opposite his bed, it eased some of his homesickness during the long seasons in New Jersey.  

For months, a package he didn’t order would show up at his door, and he’d open it to reveal yet another piece of her to keep with him. 

When the Naters painting arrived, he’d called her practically in tears. She told him she knew he missed home and hoped it would bring a little bit of home to Jersey. 

He forced her to accept repayment for shipping such a large canvas and made her promise to let him pay if she was sending any more. Instead, she’d brought an additional four with her on her next visit.

Dawson looked even more enamored as he said, “that stuff is really good!” 

Nico couldn’t remember Dawson taking any particular interest in the art when he’d been at his house before. Jack had noticed it, which had spurred the conversation about Lena in the first place. 

She offered him a thankful smile that Nico was pleased to see, was void of any flirtation. 

They had a drink a piece before she began to yawn. Nico wasn’t surprised. She’d driven from Halifax to Maine the day before and then from Maine to New Jersey that morning. He’d helped her unload her things before she insisted they come to the kickoff party. 

“I’m really sorry,” she apologized, covering her mouth. 

“You’ve had a long day,” Dawson said, encouraging, “you should go get some sleep.” 

She smiled indulgently at him before standing from the table. She really was exhausted. Plus alcohol always made her sleepy. 

When they got home, Lena asked, “Do you mind if I let cookie out?” 

He shook his head, going to the kitchen to get some water. 

A few minutes later, her light orange tabby cat came skulking into the kitchen, eyeing everything suspiciously. When they made eye contact, Cookie narrowed his eyes as he stalked over. 

After sniffing his socks, he seemed to decide he was the same person he’d always been and rubbed his face on Nicos leg. 

Walking into the kitchen, Lena heard Nico murmuring in German. As always, it made her stomach twist a little. She’d known him for six years, and it wasn’t that she forgot he was from Switzerland so much as she forgot how sexy his voice sounded speaking the language he’d grown up with. Even with her limited understanding of German, she got the distinct impression he sounded more like himself than when he spoke English. 

Rounding the kitchen island, she expected to find him crouched down, talking to one of his siblings on the phone while digging something out of a low drawer. Instead, his phone was nowhere to be found, and he was speaking to Cookie, who had flopped onto his side, happy to be receiving pets. 

“Oh,” she said before she could stop herself. The sight of Nico loving on her cat made her heart thunk into her ribs.

This, right here, is why she originally told him she was staying in the city. 

He had insisted there was no reason she needed to spend the money when he was right across the river. When she’d hesitated, he played his ace, bribing her with Cookie. “You can bring him, and both of you can stay,” he’d said, “you wouldn’t have to leave him with your parents.” 

Even though she knew it would suck to be around him all the time, knowing he didn’t have any interest in her, she’d caved right away.

The problem with Nico was that he was just so damn sweet. He did everything from the bottom of his heart and was genuinely happy to help. As soon as she managed to convince herself she didn’t love him, he would go and do something like insist she stay with him not only for finances, but because she wouldn’t have to leave her cat behind, and feeling would swoop into her heart again.

This was her last undoing for the night. Not only had she watched him carry her things into his apartment, his hockey-hardened body taking the brunt of the weight with ease, she’d had to listen to him laugh and tease while he flashed his dimples at her all day. And now, he was sweet talking her cat in German.

God, how was she going to survive this? 

Nico’s eyes darted up at her noise. He hadn’t heard her come in.  She’d pulled her hair into a bun on the top of her head, but a few of the shorter pieces had escaped, falling around her face. 

Throughout the time he’d known her, her hair had been many different colors. When they met, it had been blonde, then ginger, then purple, then blue. She dyed it back to her natural ashy blonde for a while before going to this pastel pink she’d been maintaining for the last two years. When he asked her why she’d kept it for so long, she said, “I don’t know, it just looks like me.” 

He had to agree. It looked incredible on her, making her skin warm and her hazel eyes bright. 

Wanting yawned in his stomach, and he tore his eyes away before she could see the lovesick expression Jack teased was written all over his face whenever he looked at her. 

“I’m glad to see he’s making himself at home,” Lena said, laughing. 

“He’s sweet,” Nico said, standing. “I thought you’d be in bed.” 

“I wanted to say thanks again,” she said, stepping forward to hug him. 

As his arms wound around her waist, Nico allowed himself a moment of fantasy, imagining she wouldn’t be going to her own room when they turned in for the night. He couldn’t stop his mind from continuing down the fantastical road that living together might be the thing that finally got them from friends over the hill to lovers. 

“I’m happy to have you here,” he said when the fantasy had run its course, and he came back to reality. 

Cookie meowed as if upset at being left out. 

She broke away with a laugh and bent to gather him into her arms. 

“Thank you again,” she said, leaning in to brush a kiss over his cheek.

Nico felt himself go still as stone. He couldn’t remember if she’d ever done that before. 

“G’night.”

“Gute nacht,” he responded, barely holding himself back from waving as his mind was still caught on trying to process the fact that she’d actually kissed him. On the cheek, but still, her lips had been soft and warm, especially against the hard contrast of her nose ring.

He watched her disappear down the hall before he smacked a hand to his forehead. “Gute nacht,” he mocked himself. “You couldn’t think of anything better to say?” 

He was a fool for thinking this was going to work. 

The next thing he had never expected when he invited her to move in came the following morning. 

Lena hadn’t stayed with Nico in his new place before. She couldn’t have. He upgraded to renting the three bedroom apartment in their building when it was finally settled that she would be living with him. That way, he still had a spare room for when family or friends came in town.

The day previous, she’d picked the room closer to his. Had he known — had he thought about it, he would have suggested she take the other one. He could have made up some bullshit excuse about how he didn’t want his snoring to keep her up at night. 

Had he been thinking clearly, he would have noticed that her ensuite bathroom shared a wall with his bedroom. The very wall his headboard sat against. 

As it was now, Lena, always the early riser, was in the shower. Right on the other side of the wall. 

Waking up to the water drumming into the tile, it took him a moment to place the sound. Only when it shifted, quieting and changing rhythm did he realize what was happening - she’d stepped under the water. 

With a sudden jolt, Nico realized that his headboard, some paint, sheetrock, a jumble of studs, and a few dozen white subway tiles were the only things separating him from her naked form. 

The idea of it assaulted his senses until he was half hard and couldn’t think of anything else. 

Cursing, he pulled a pillow over his face and groaned loudly. He couldn’t ask her to move now. He would have to explain why, and he wouldn’t be caught dead telling her he needed her to move because he couldn’t get the image of her naked, water trailing off her hair, dripping onto her breasts and pooling around her feet, out of his mind. 

He groaned into his pillowcase again. 

This went on for a few more minutes before the water changed again, increasing in pressure and beating a staccato rhythm against the tile. A second later, he heard the water shift and change again as well as a gentle thud, as if she’d fallen against the wall. 

Knowing exactly what that meant, he vaulted out of bed, rushing to his own bathroom. He would not jack off to the sound of her in the shower. That was a step too far, but if he let his imagination run, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself.  He’d thought of her many, many times while getting himself off over the years, but doing it while she was in his house, very likely getting herself off, felt like a step too far. 

Cold water shocked him back into his senses, and he didn’t let himself think about it anymore. 

Lena stepped out of the shower, feeling much better. Not only did she feel more rested, she was finally able to release some of the sexual frustration that had settled on her like a heavy blanket since arriving. She would have done it the night before, but showering was always part of her morning routine, and in the rush of moving and getting to the bar to meet Nicos team mates, she hadn’t fully unpacked, and couldn’t find her vibrator. She’d tried with her fingers, but it just didn’t work the same way. When she finally fell asleep, she was still feeling frustrated and needy. 

After dressing and putting some dry shampoo in her hair, she walked into the kitchen only to find Nico scooping freshly ground coffee beans into the coffee maker, wearing nothing more than a towel. His hair was still wet, and she watched a rivulet of water wind its way down his back, all the way to the dimples at the base of his spine. Wanting sparked to life between her thighs again. So much for easing the sexual frustration. 

“Morning,” she made herself say, refusing to be the creepy one watching him shirtless, core throbbing at the thought of him. 

Nico jumped, and his hand snagged the towel around his waist before it fell. He thought he had more time. He wouldn’t have come out here in only a towel if he thought she would be out soon. He just wanted to have coffee made for her. 

“I thought you were still in the shower,” he said by way of explanation. 

“How did you know I was in the shower?” 

“It’s right on the other side of my bedroom wall,” he informed her, trying to keep the guilt out of his voice. 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckety fuck, fuck, fuck. 

“Oh,” she said, hoping beyond hope the sound of the water had drowned out the accidental, desperate way she’d moaned his name when her climax finally hit. 

She had to find her vibrator. Maybe she’d pick one up in the city, just in case. She couldn’t be getting herself off in the shower anymore. There was no way. Absolutely no way. Knowing he was on the other side of the wall would shrivel her sex drive like a dried out bean pod. There was no way she could get off to thinking about him, knowing he might be able to hear her, and then she would just be even more frustrated. It didn’t matter if she might find her vibrator unpacking later that day, she decided, she was getting one in the city. Better safe than sorry.

Pushing that idea away to think about later, she accepted the mug of coffee he held out to her. 

“Oat milk, right?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation away from her showers proximity to his bed. “I found this pistachio kind I thought you might like,” he said, rifling in the fridge with one hand, the other still clasping his towel. He needed to pull it tighter but couldn’t with her in the room. At least the cool air was calming his flushed cheeks.

And just like that, the sweetness that was Nico Hischier burrowed its way into her heart again, easing some of the lust back into love. It was incredible how being seen made her feel. Not only with eyes but with words and actions to follow them up. 

No wonder every man she’d dated in the last six years paled in comparison. Nico set an impossible standard for other men to meet. 

And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that he had the body of a god and the most empathetic, earnest brown eyes she’d ever seen. 

They never even stood a chance.

He found the creamer he’d picked up the last time he was at the grocery. Lena loved all things pistachio, and when he’d seen the non-dairy creamer, he’d automatically put it in his basket for her to try once she got here.

When he turned to her, he had to push away thoughts of kissing her that often came up when he saw her smile the way she was now.

Setting the creamer down, he mumbled, “I’ll be right back,” before practically running to his bedroom. He threw on some shorts and a T-shirt. Coming back in, he found her sitting at the table, looking at her phone as she lifted the coffee mug to her lips. 

“What are you up to today?” 

“I’m going into the city. Find the best subway route to the academy, find my classes, that kind of thing.” Her courses didn’t start for another few days, but Lena knew she would feel better having explored first. 

“If you can wait till I’m done with practice, I can come with you,” he offered. 

Even as he kept his expression neutral, she could hear the undertone of unease in his voice. 

“Nico, I’m going to be going out there by myself every day.”

“But you don’t have to do it alone the first time.”

It wasn’t like he knew the way any better. Lena knew for a fact that he didn’t take to wandering around the city for fun, and if he did, he drove in or took an Uber. Plus, she wouldn’t be able to get her vibrator if he came with her. She didn’t like thinking about the pity she’d find in his face at her inability to find a man to fulfill those needs for her.

“It’s not the first time. I’ve lived in the city before.” 

“For three months when you were twenty,” he reminded. 

“Exactly. It’s not my first rodeo.” 

He never understood that expression. He’d seen a rodeo, and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing someone could grasp after doing it once. It was just another American idiom that always went over his head.

“Nico, I’ll be fine,” she said when he didn’t respond. “I have you on speed dial if I get stuck somewhere, okay?” 

Biting his lip, he tamped down the overprotectiveness rearing up inside him. Lena was smart. She didn’t get herself into trouble. But she was also so pretty, and some men were dogs. 

The look on her face, defiant and determined told him exactly how this was going to end. 

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “But you’ll call me if you get lost?”

“Yes. I’ll call you if anything comes up.” 

Nico threw himself into practice. Hockey always managed to clear his mind when he was stressed. Even the sound of it - skates scraping the ice, pucks thwacking into sticks and the simpleness of communication - made everything else slip into focus. He didn’t have to worry about being an idiot or saying the wrong thing. He demanded the puck when he needed it and tried to get it into the net. 

Practice was a reprieve from the stress of life. Of all life, all the time. But especially then with Lena in his house. He could skate her out of his mind and focus on simpler things. 

Jonas came up to his stall as he was getting out of his gear. 

“Can I still come get my box?” 

It took a moment for Nico to remember. He’d had left his gaming console at his house a few days ago. “Yeah.” 

When they walked into the house, he found Cookie, right at home, stretched out over the back of the sofa in a sunbeam. 

“Since when do you have a cat? I didn’t think you liked cats.” Jonas asked. 

“He’s Lenas,” Nico corrected. Jonas raised an eyebrow, which Nico chose to ignore. “And I don’t dislike cats. Cookie is sweet.”

“Cookie?” he repeated. “She named her cat Cookie?” 

“Apparently she had a stuffed animal that looked like him named Cookie when she was little,” he explained with a shrug, trailing a hand over the cats silky fur. 

Cookie trilled at him and arched his back for more pets.

The door opened behind them, and Lena herself walked into the apartment, flushed from her walk from the station in the cool autumn air.

Nico tore his eyes away from her before Jonas could give him another raised eyebrow at the look he knew was all over his face.

“Hey, Lena,” Jonas greeted. 

“Hey Jonas,” she said with a big smile, giving him a hug. “It’s good to see you.” 

They’d met in Switzerland a few months before when Lena had come after a trip to Italy with some friends. Her friends had gone home, and she’d caught a train to Bern to spend a few days with him before she had to get back to Canada. It was then that he’d learned about her acceptance into the academy and suggested she should stay with him. 

After she went out and about with Nina, and he finished with training, they had all gone out for dinner and drinks at his favorite place, Tramdepot. Jonas’s girlfriend, Nola, was out of town, and had Nico not known she existed and that Jonas was head over heels for her, he would have been sorely tempted to end the night early so he and Lena would have to stop talking. 

“You can’t be jealous if you’re never going to ask her out,” Nina had admonished him on the way home.

Knowing Lena didn’t speak German allowed him to be open and honest with his sister, even as Lena walked in front of them. 

“She doesn’t date hockey players.” 

Nina gave him a wry look, “she told you that?” 

“No, she told her friend, Jessica. I overheard them.” 

“What exactly did she say?” Nina asked.

“She said, ‘I don’t date hockey players.’ And then Jessica asked, ‘what about Nico?’” 

“And she said?” Nina prompted.

“She said it doesn’t matter.” 

“I think you should still talk to her.” 

“She said it doesn’t matter, Nina,” he said, and there had been an embarrassing amount of whining pain in his voice. 

Nina bit her lip, glancing at Lena, who was walking next to Jonas, asking something about the architecture. 

“I can’t —” his voice had almost broken, “I can’t.” He couldn’t even get the words out. 

He was in love with Lena. He knew that. And it was wonderful and painful and awful all at the same time. But the thought of asking her and having her say no - the thought of asking her and it changing their friendship forever? That was worse than the bitter, lovely pain of being in unrequited love. The idea of losing her was worse than knowing he would never have her in that way. 

“Well, I should get going,” Jonas said, gesturing with the playstation and bringing Nico back to the present.

“I’m sure I’ll see you around,” Lena said, offering him another hug.

After Jonas left, Nico followed her to her room, leaning in the doorway. There were still boxes around, and he noticed a pile of clothes on the floor that she'd obviously pulled out of a box in search of her outfit for the day. He willed his eyes to skip over something lacy and green.

“How was it?” 

“Fine,” she said, setting her tote bag carefully on the bed, making sure it wouldn’t tip over. On top of the vibrator, she’d bought lingerie. Not that she had anyone to wear it for. But the pink set had been on display and matched her hair. She’d asked to try it on on a whim and found she couldn’t leave it behind. Even if it was just for herself, the lace and mesh balconette bra and matching panties made her feel pretty and sexy. So what if no one else ever saw them? She’d know they were there, and that was enough. 

All the same, she didn’t want Nico to see it. The thought of him knowing she’d bought lingerie when he knew she didn’t have anyone to show it off for made heat race to the surface of her skin.  

When it wouldn’t stay upright, she tipped the bag gently, resting it against her pillows so nothing would spill out. 

“Just fine?” he asked, worry edging into his tone. 

“It was good,” she said, turning around. “I found everything fine. I only went three stops in the wrong direction once. My advisor seems nice, and all my classes are right in the academy, so I won’t get lost.” Walking from the room, she changed the subject, “how was practice?” 

“Good,” he dragged a hand down his face, “I think we’re finally starting to gel as a team.” 

“That’s great, Nico.” 

“I hope it comes together before we head to Carolina.” 

“I’m sure it will. If you’re already seeing that now, it’ll only get better in a week, right?” 

He smiled, glad to have her sweet reassurance around. Though she never played hockey - “You would not want to see me on skates. I’m the most uncoordinated disaster of a baby gazelle you’ve ever seen.” - she’d grown up with siblings and friends who play and had a thorough understanding of the game and what it took to win. 

That first month living with her was an awkward dance. When his first road trip came around, it was a relief to get away. He could finally breathe easy, not worried about turning any corner to find her being unassumingly lovely in some new area of the apartment.

But by the second night away, he found himself missing her and missing their evening routine of sipping tea while watching TV. She never complained when he pulled up one of his brothers games or something else Swiss as long as the subtitles were on, and he’d gotten way too sucked in to the ridiculous reality TV show she loved about couples living in a villa together, searching for love. 

That second night, when missing her had settled into his chest in a way he hadn’t yet experienced, he almost turned it on for he and Jonas to watch before bed, just to get some comfort of home back. Instead, he’d tossed the remote to Jonas. Lena said she’d wait to watch it with him when he came back, and he didn’t want to let her down. Plus, he wasn’t totally sure he wanted Jonas knowing he enjoyed such trashy shit.

He missed the steadiness of her presence. He’d gotten so used to living alone, he’d forgotten how nice it was to have someone else in the house. She was always there if he needed a little comfort, offering a hug or a listening ear, or a back rub. 

After he got home, they fell into a comfortable routine, weaving in and out of each other's lives. They would have coffee at the start of each day before she left for classes, and he left for practice. 

In the afternoon, she worked on her art in the living room, and he liked to watch her paint or draw, silhouetted against the large window, if she was still there after he’d taken his nap. 

She cooked dinner most nights. She wasn’t a chef by any means, but she enjoyed cooking, and he was always appreciative, even when something was burned. Plus, she owed him. The money he saved her by not having to pay for housing for a year wasn’t insubstantial. Cooking was a small way she could pay him back on the few nights he was home each week. She’d even made his favorite meal the day after a hard loss. 

He gave her the cold he caught on their second trip. Something, he was sure, he got from Haula’s kids, and they were miserable together for a few days. He woke to her showering in the middle of the night more than once as she tried to clear her sinuses. 

When Halloween came around, he asked if she wanted to go to the team party with him. It was the first time since he’d come to New Jersey he didn’t have to come up with a costume by himself or do something with one of his teammates. He’d had girlfriends before, most of them from Switzerland, but no one who was able to make it to the party.

They spent one of his off weekends figuring out what to wear. Lena was worried about giving people the wrong idea and shot down most of the suggestions that came up on her web search as they were all suited for couples. 

Every time someone asked how long they had been dating, it was like being jabbed with a hot poker; pointing out everything she wanted but didn’t have. 

In the end, they decided to go as people who had been stranded in the desert. She panted their cheeks to look sunburned and put dyed baby powder in their hair and eyebrows to mimic sand. They wore ripped, tan clothing and carried empty canteens. 

When she’d come out of her room, he swore his heart nearly stopped upon seeing the open, artfully dirty button up shirt she wore tied over a tan colored bra. He’d seen her in a swimsuit before, so in theory, he’d seen this much of her skin, but this seemed more intimate than a bathing suit. 

It sparked a new wave of longing in him. 

More than once, Jack gave him an exasperated look when he caught Nico staring at her as she talked with the WAGs. He was obsessing over all the little details of her costume. The way one of her shredded khaki pant legs was higher than the other, showing the tattoo of a paintbrush crossed with a pencil on the inside of her right ankle, the stripe of her smooth low back visible between her shirt and pants, and of course, the flash of her cleavage anytime she turned toward him. 

“You’re gonna have to make it happen, man,” he said, passing by to get another drink. 

It took almost six weeks, but he got used to her fresh faced beauty being around all the time. It didn’t dull necessarily, but like living in a beautiful place, eventually, the beauty fades into the background until the lighting changes and everything is suddenly new and breathtaking again. While she was around all the time, it grew easier for him to push aside. 

On a Saturday in early November, he came home from practice to hear her humming somewhere in the apartment. She wasn’t in the living room - in fact, her drop cloth and easel hadn’t even been set up. 

Opening his mouth to call for her, his greeting died in his throat when he walked into the kitchen. She was in a tight, pink t-shirt, a matching pair of little boy short underwear and nothing else. His eyes were immediately drawn to the round swells of her ass peeking out from under the material. 

He couldn’t look away. Even knowing he should say something, so she didn’t think he was just creepily watching her didn’t help him. 

Forget looking like a creep. He was never forgetting this as long as he lived. 

Lena turned around and jumped. Nico was standing in the kitchen doorway, mouth slightly agape. He’d been quiet as a mouse, and the shock of his sudden appearance sent her sandwich diving off the plate. It opened on its descent and splatted onto the dark tile, meat and condiment side down - because, of course, it did. 

She swore, and it snapped Nico out of his reverie. He dropped to his knees to help clean it up.

As she knelt next to him with a wet rag to wipe the butter off the tile, her bare knee slid into his field of vision.

“I’m sorry I didn't say anything,” he said emphatically, feeling himself blush as he kept his eyes trained on the floor so they wouldn’t travel up the creamy expanse of her thigh.

Shaking her head, Lena stood, hoping he didn’t notice she’d practically turned the same shade as her shirt, “I’m sorry about this,” she said, gesturing to her legs. Of course he had to come home when she wasn’t wearing any pants. The shirt and panties had arrived that morning, and she had been trying them on when she decided to make a sandwich.

Nico looked up and felt his jaw go slack. Somehow, he managed to keep it from falling open. He could clearly see the slope of her breasts and a stripe of her stomach where the shirt didn't quite reach her underwear. He inexplicably wanted to bite the curve of her inner thigh.

He could only blink several times before he managed to look away. Made new in the harsh light of the kitchen, wanting her took over his thoughts, turning him into a bumbling idiot once again.

God, what wouldn’t he give to worship her any way she would let him?

“I didn’t think you were coming home until later. I would have put on pants.”

The fact that she apparently often didn’t wear pants when he wasn’t home burrowed into his brain to torture him later. 

He managed to make some kind of noncommittal noise and stood up. 

Lena scurried to her room, grateful that, at least, she had this new set on, and not a pair of ratty old undies.

She wished she could forget the shocked look on his face when he looked up at her from his knees. She’d envisioned him on his knees before her so many times, but none of those fantasies involved him staring open mouthed at her thighs. 

A week later, as they were watching Love Island, Lena asked a question she never thought she would have to.

“When’s your next night off at home?” 

Nico pulled up his calendar app, and flipped through the days, “Thursday.” 

“Oh.”

“What’s up?” he asked, setting his phone on the side table. 

“I…” Her cheeks flushed, and she bit her lip. 

“What?” he asked, feeling nervous. She was going to tell him she started dating someone, wasn’t she? That she’d met someone while he’d been out of town. The prospect of it roiled in his stomach.

“I thought I had more time,” she said. 

His fantasized dilemma fractured a little. “More time for what?” 

She took in a calming, deep breath, looking up at the ceiling so she didn’t have to look at his face when she said it. “I need to — I need to do a nude study for my figure class.” 

“So? You’ve done nude studies before,” he reminded, thinking about the sketches he’d seen in her portfolio. Part of this intensive training was figure drawing, which he knew she didn’t enjoy, but everything he’d seen looked near perfect to him. Smooth, curved lines, and strong, handsome faces. He didn’t understand what she was so worried about. 

 Professor Brown’s consistent feedback was that her drawings looked too one dimensional, that she wasn’t capturing the living essence of her subjects. She assured the class that, though it would be awkward, their art would be better when they could no longer pretend the person in front of them was a sculpture. The surefire way to do that? Take away the emotional distance between the artist and their model.

“Yeah, but those were with people I’d never met. My professor wants us to do a study with someone we know…preferably of the opposite gender. She said it would make the art more intimate.” Daring to meet his eyes, Lena felt a blush scorch her skin.

Understanding sparked in his face, and she watched his eyes widen. 

“You want me to be your nude model?” 

She licked her lips, “I thought about asking Jesper to do it, but that didn’t seem right.” 

“Why Jes?” he asked, barely keeping the flair of emotion out of his voice. That was the last thing he wanted to hear. Not only was his love for her unrequited, she would be more comfortable sketching one of his teammates. One of his engaged teammates.

“I don’t know. I feel like he wouldn’t be weird about it since the swedes are always so,” she gestured to her own body, “open. But it felt too… intimate when he has Nicole and we’re…us,” she finished lamely, finally daring to look into his face. 

His heart leapt into his throat. 

We’re us? What did that mean? What was us? They were friends? She wanted something more than friendship? Hope reignited in his chest for the millionth time.

He cleared his throat, hoping she couldn’t hear his heart hammering. “What would -” he had to pause to clear his throat again. “What would it involve?” 

“You’d just need to sit or stand for a few hours while I do some sketches.”

“Naked?” he asked, his voice squeaking over the word despite his attempts to stay cool, “or could I wear my boxers?” 

“I need to turn in six sketches, but at least half of them need to be nude, so you would only need to be naked for part of it.” 

He didn’t respond right away, trying to sort out and understand his own racing thoughts.

She nibbled at her lip, “I know it’s kind of a lot to ask.” 

There were so many reasons he wanted to say no, but despite all that, Nico still found himself nodding. He could never say no to her, even if it meant he had to pose naked for her to sketch. 

She felt her cheeks flush again. The thought of seeing him this way had nixed the idea of Jesper from her mind. She didn’t want to sketch his thighs, even if it would be less awkward than sketching Nico. She might never get the chance to see him naked in a romantic setting, so, selfishly, she was seizing the opportunity while she had it. 

“Has to be Thursday?” he asked. 

“Well, sometime in the next week,” she said. “If you’re not comfortable with it, I can ask Jesper.”

“It’s not that,” he said. Too quick, too desperate. If she asked Jesper, it would get around the locker room like wildfire that she’d asked him instead of Nico and on top of not wanting to let her down, he couldn’t take the chirping that would come from that. “It’s just fast.” 

“Do you have another day off?” 

He swiped through his calendar again and shook his head. “We leave for six days after the game on Friday.” 

Her lips pursed together. The flush that was glowing on her cheeks made him smile. At least she was just as nervous as he was. 

“Do you need me to do anything before? Shave or…anything?” he asked, gesturing to his chest.

She hadn't even thought about it. From what she remembered, Nico didn't have a huge amount of chest hair anyway.

She'd known going into this conversation that it would end with at least a fifty percent chance he’d say yes, but when he asked about shaving, it struck her suddenly and completely that she really was about to see him naked.

“Nothing you wouldn’t normally do,” she squeaked.

Nico felt himself smile. If she was going to be this flustered the whole time, maybe this wouldn’t be half bad. 

It Doesn't Matter:

Part I | Part II | Part III | Playlist

To read all my fics, check out my Fanfiction Masterlist

[bloatedandalone04]

Screaming Whispers

➪the one where anakin is a musician and you’re his muse.

Warnings: rockstar anakin, modern au, smut, fluff, swearing to the max, pda, unprotected sex, hair pulling, praise kink, small corruption kink, size sink, his bands name is 'screaming whispers' which translates to 'sw' for short...like sw for star wars??? and i didn’t even plan that, it just happened, jealousy (brief), possessive anakin, fingering, oral (f receiving), soft dom anakin, choking kink

Word Count: 6.3k

Do not repost this anywhere, reblogs are fine ♡

The lights were blinding and his ears were ringing, but Anakin wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. 

He couldn’t see much past the flashlights on the phones and the stage lights that flickered in time with the drums his bandmate, Vinny, was currently pounding on. Live shows were always so much better than being stuck in a recording studio all day, because at least out on stage Anakin could let out all his pent up frustration and no one would bat an eye.

Actually, the way he got so into his performance and really gave it his all had his fans absolutely losing their minds as they, too, fell under the control of the music and the lights and the lyrics. 

Anakin had only been in his band, Screaming Whispers, for just over a year now, but that was apparently enough time to get his and his friends’ names out there. One low budget album later and everyone knew about them, and really, Anakin had you to thank. 

You are his high school sweetheart, and have been his biggest supporter since the day he told you he wanted to do something with music and maybe try to make it his career. 

After writing countless drafts of songs that were all about you and his relationship with you, Anakin asked a couple of his friends who played instruments to rent out a recording studio to record one of the drafts he had actually finished. 

Anakin was the lead singer and guitarist, while his friend, Vinny, played the drums, and his other friend, Theo, played bass.  

It came out sounding decent and Anakin ended up editing it himself before uploading it to his burner account on Youtube, choosing some random photo he had taken of your hand holding his as the thumbnail. 

Within a few days, the video only had about thirty views, and he knew most of them were from you.

When he had first let you listen to the song with a nervous expression gracing his features, he was worried when you didn’t say anything during the whole two minutes and forty six seconds it played for. 

It ended and you turned to him, an unreadable look on your face before you were throwing yourself at him. He had never seen you so needy and desperate for him (unless he counted the very first time you and he slept together), and you spent the rest of the night loving on him because he had written you a song. 

Your boyfriend of over three years at that point had actually made a whole song about you. How could you not tear his clothes off right then and there?

A few more weeks had passed when Anakin randomly decided to see how the video was doing. He was bored and you were at class, and he had grown tired of walking around your shared apartment on campus by himself. 

When he clicked on the video, he was sure he had accidentally clicked the wrong one when he saw that it had gone from thirty views to ninety eight thousand views. It had over forty thousand likes and just under a thousand comments, all of which were praising him and the guys for how good the song is. 

You once again jumped his bones a few hours later when he showed you it, muttering something about how you knew people would like the song once it got more exposure. 

A month later, it had nearly a million views and Anakin was left to assume that the song had gone viral on a different platform that resulted in people searching the song up on Youtube. He didn’t go on TikTok or Instagram as he had no desire to, but was informed by Theo that the song actually did become super popular on TikTok and that was how so many people had found the video on his Youtube. 

Since it had gotten way more attention than he had ever expected it to, Anakin quickly changed the channel name from ‘Manakin 246’ to ‘Screaming Whispers’. It was the first thing he thought of and both Vinny and Theo agreed to call themselves that if they were to ever record another song together. 

Well, just a few days after that, the trio was contacted by a record label and a week later, they were signed onto Dynamic Studios as an official band. 

It all happened so fast. Anakin was encouraged to finish and edit his previous drafts, and that was how he found himself recording a whole album with most of the songs being about you. Vinny and Theo helped out a lot with the songs, but insisted Anakin be credited as the lead songwriter, since the whole thing was his idea. 

The album was called ‘Taking Back October’, and it had been streamed over three million times over various music sites. That, of course, resulted in a tour being booked, and that was where he is now. 

A full year after uploading that song and three months of being on tour, Anakin could safely say he was meant to do this. 

But the best part of it all? He had you watching him from your spot backstage, the biggest smile on your lips whenever he looked over at you from his place on the center of the stage. 

From where you stood, he looked to be having the time of his life. He looked so in his element, so confident and comfortable, and not to mention unbelievably attractive. 

You found yourself biting your lip as you hid away from the crowd. Part of you wondered how he did it, how he was so at home in front of thousands of strangers, but you supposed some people were just meant for the spotlight, and Anakin is definitely one of those people. 

You definitely were not, as just the mere thought of stepping out onto the stage would send you into a full blown panic attack. And Anakin knew that, so despite him wanting to show you off to the world and to his fans - he couldn’t believe he actually has fans - he knew better than to shove you into the limelight like that. 

For now, you were comfortable backstage, two lanyards around your neck that told everyone you were a guest on the tour, and that you were allowed backstage. 

As you watched your boyfriend play and sing his heart out to his song Homecoming Queen, one of the stage crew members came waltzing up to you, a kind yet flirtatious smile on his lips. “Hi,” he said over the loud live music. 

“Hi,” you called back, never taking your eyes off Anakin. 

The guy looked down at your tour and backstage passes, a smirk growing on his lips. “You a friend of the bands?”

That made you glance over at him, and you were immediately uncomfortable at the way he was looking at you. “Something like that,” you answer, and it was true - Vinny and Theo had also gone to high school with you, but they were closer to Anakin, obviously - but the crew member didn’t seem too convinced. “I’m dating the lead singer, this song is actually about me.” You try again and watch as his eyes grow wide before he’s looking on stage and at your boyfriend.

He meets Anakin’s blue orbs, and right away you could see a hint of possessiveness in them, similar to the look he’d give other guys when they looked at you for a little too long back in high school. 

The crew guy just backs away and leaves you alone, making you grin over at your boyfriend. Anakin just smirks before he is back to singing the chorus, all while never falling out of tune with the rest of the band. 

Even though you were buzzing with excitement for what’s in store for you once he’s off the stage and you’d have him all to yourself, you couldn’t deny how attractive he looks on stage. 

The show had been going on for just over an hour, and they would be wrapping up soon. Anakin’s skin was coated in a light layer of sweat, and the leather jacket he had been wearing when he had first walked out on stage had long since been discarded. His muscles flexed under the flashing lights as he effortlessly played his electric guitar and sang his heart out. 

You were sure his throat was raw, but he didn’t stop, and the fans were loving it. You also couldn’t take your eyes off the way the muscles in his neck strained as he reached the higher notes of the song, and you had to press your thighs together to feel some sort of relief for the pressure that had been steadily building up. 

After another ten minutes or so, the band wrapped up the performance and left the stage, leaving the fans still screaming in the stands. After Anakina picked up his jacket he tossed near the drum kit, he handed his guitar to the same stage crew member who had been talking to you, before he wrapped his free arm around your waist. 

Your hands were barely touching either side of his face before he was kissing you deeply, the hand that held his jacket moving to grip your waist. Anakin pulled you closer to him, his adrenaline making his body ache for yours in hopes to find some sort of relief for the energy that surged through him. 

“You were amazing out there,” you praised against his mouth, wanting nothing more than to poke your tongue out and run it up the side of his damp neck. “Like always.”

“Thank you, pretty girl,” he murmured, brushing his lips against yours before dipping his head down to kiss your neck. His hands bunched up the thin fabric of your loose sundress, the flowery print making his want for you skyrocket. “You look hot.”

You laugh, glancing down at the simple dress that seemed to turn him on as if it was the sexiest thing he’s ever seen. “You look hot,” you say back and brush his slightly wet hair away from his forehead. You had to crane your neck a bit to be able to gaze up into his blue eyes, due to the sheer size difference between the two of you. The physical evidence of just how different you two are, even down to your height, had you pressing your thighs together again. 

He wore dark clothes, most of which are adorned with chains, and his left arm was showing off a steadily growing sleeve of tattoos of random things - a lightsaber, a  couple quotes, more than a few vulgar images, and most importantly, an outline of a heart with the initial of your first name inside it on his bicep. His wardrobe consisted of jeans, muscle tees, leather and jean jackets, and vintage - though sometimes graphic - shirts. He wore black boots or converse to tie off every outfit, completed with a couple of wristbands, rings and his signature necklace chain with your initials on the small charm. 

You wore light colors, dresses and skirts that allowed you to show off the soft skin of your legs. Your body was bare of tattoos, with the exception of an ‘A’ on the side of your left wrist. Gold and silver jewelry were always on your wrist or around your neck, and you often wore flats or sneakers that went well with the rest of your look.

It was a big difference between the two of you, one that had been there since you were both seventeen, and it was what drew you into one another to begin with. 

He looked intimidating, scary, even, but you found out that he had the sweetest heart, and he had given it to you.

“I am hot,” he grinned down at you, and the double meaning had you shaking your head as he stepped away from you and placed his jacket over your shoulders. He looked you up and down, biting down harshly on his bottom lip as his hands found their home on your waist again. The black leather contrasted against your light dress in such a sinful way, Anakin almost let out a groan at the sight. “Fuck, I can’t wait to take you back to the hotel after this.”

The band was playing two shows in D.C., so their manager went out of her way to book them a hotel for the night. It saved them from sleeping on the tour bus, which was surprisingly difficult to do, and Anakin could usually fall asleep anywhere. 

He once fell asleep sitting down with his back pressed up against a washing machine in the laundry room at your apartment while he was waiting for the load to dry. He probably would’ve been sleeping for at least another half hour, had another resident not woken him up because he was sleeping against the only available washing machine. 

But, for some reason, Anakin found that sleeping on a tour bus was next to impossible, even though he was given the only double bed because he had you with him.

So, in an attempt to get himself tired, he would spend a good hour with you in bed once he and the band got back on the bus after a show. 

He could only imagine how happy Theo and Vinny are at the fact that they won’t have to listen to the two of you going at it for at least one of the two hundred and fifty nights they spent on tour. 

“Yeah? You excited to spend a night with me in an actual room instead of a bus?” You teased, wrapping your arms around his shoulders when his wrapped around your waist and pulled your body right up against his. 

“I’m so fucking excited,” he answered, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips as the stage crew walked around the two of you to begin packing up the equipment. He leaned down so his lips were brushing against your ear as he whispered, “We can be as loud as we want. I can’t wait to make you scream.”

You refrain from moaning in a public place, ignoring how dumb that sounded when you thought about how loud you got on a tour bus that had only a single, thin door that separated yours and Anakin’s room from the other guys. 

This man made you crazy in all the best possible ways. “Well,” you say back, tugging him impossibly closer by the hem of his white tee shirt. “What are you waiting for? An encore?”

Anakin groaned quietly, cursing under his breath when he felt your hand slide up the heated skin of his torso. “Fuck no,” he muttered, taking your hand in his and guiding you towards the exit door that would lead the two of you out to the parking lot. “I think if everyone in that audience could see just how good you look right now, they wouldn’t blame me for not going back out there and taking you to bed.”

You smirked a bit as he pulled you onto the bus with him and towards your room to indulge in a makeout session before he would give you the real thing once you got to the hotel. 

A short ten minute drive later, and Anakin was painfully aware of just how hard he’s gotten since your quick encounter backstage, followed by your intense making out that took place on the bus. 

Once his manager had given him the key to his room, Anakin pulled you along with him as he made his way to the elevator, pushing the button for the twelfth floor when he was in it. 

He leaned back against the wall as the numbers above the doors increased with every passing second. His lips were on yours in messy and noisy kisses, his hands sliding down to lift the bottom of your dress up as if you weren’t still in a public place, and were probably being recorded because every elevator seemed to have cameras nowadays. 

Once it stopped at the twelfth floor, Anakin easily picked you up and threw you over his shoulder, his hand placed firmly on your back to prevent your dress from slipping up and exposing you to anyone who might enter the hall while he carried you to the room.

He inserted the keycard for room 1209 with his free hand, before tossing it onto the table in the entryway. Anakin’s hands grip your waist after he sets you down and he turns your body away from him, his fingers sliding up your back and pushing your hair to the side. He unclasps the gold necklace he had bought you a few nights ago from a cute store you and he stumbled upon while you were out sightseeing. 

Anakin gently sets the chain down onto the table as well and places a few kisses to the back of your neck before he guides you forward and towards the king sized bed. “Look at that, baby,” he murmurs in your ear, wrapping his arms around you from behind. Since you had discarded his jacket back on the bus, his lips had free rein over the skin of your shoulders and neck as he sucked a few light marks onto it. “It’s bigger than our bed we have at home.”

Home. It seemed like so long ago, when in reality, Screaming Whispers had only been on tour for three months now. Anakin planned on using the money he would get from the tour and the shows to officially move in with you, in your own house, not a student apartment that was on the campus of his old college. 

You were still a student there, but had opted to get all your assignments done before the tour so you could save yourself from having to give up the school year. 

Humming, you lean back against his body. “We still need to get our bags from the bus,” 

Anakin sucked on the skin of your jaw as his hands pulled at the thin fabric of your dress. “I’ll get our stuff later,” he promised, sliding his hands up the front of your body, making chills take over you as he gripped your chest. “You look so fucking pretty, baby.” 

You hum again, closing your eyes when you feel one of his hands inch lower and lower until it disappears underneath your dress. “Just for you, Ani,” you whispered as he softly rubbed your clit through the thin lace of your panties. 

He kissed your shoulder in appreciation as his hand slipped past the lace, his ring-clad middle finger dipping into your heat. “Fuck, you’re so wet,” he nearly moaned, his free arm wrapping around your middle when he felt your body slump back against his. “So wet for me.”

“Ani,” you gasped quietly, moaning when he began to pump his finger in and out of you. The lace restricted him from going super hard, but he much rather preferred to work you up to that, anyway. “Fuck, it’s all for you. You looked so hot tonight.”

“You look hot, too, pretty girl,” he mumbled and removed his hand from your panties as he spun your body around so your chest was pressed to his. “I saw the way that crew guy was looking at you.”

You moaned quietly when his knee separated your legs, his thigh rubbing against your core through his jeans. “I said I was with you,” you weakly say, gripping his biceps tightly when his hands found your waist and began sliding your body up and down his thigh. “Said I’m yours.”

“You are mine,” he rasped, pressing a searing kiss to your lips before he gently shoved you away. The backs of your knees hit the end of the bed and you fall back onto it, your dress slipping up past your thighs and revealing the pastel pink lace that covered your core. “You’ve been mine since we were seventeen.”

You bite down harshly on your lip when he pulls the lace down your legs and drops it to the floor. “Oh, fuck,” you mumbled when he ran his tongue up your folds, eagerly collecting your wetness. 

Anakin glanced up at you, his eyes narrowing at the way you were refraining from being too loud. “No, Y/n,” he says sternly, bringing a hand up to slide his index and middle fingers into you. “We have this whole room to ourselves. I want you to be as loud as you can fucking get.”

Almost instantly a loud moan escapes you when he sucks on your clit, your back arching slightly when he began to fuck his fingers into you. Those skilled fingers, the same ones that had so effortlessly played the guitar in front of thousands of people just a half hour before. “Fuck, Ani. Fuck,” you whined.

Anakin smirked against you, curling his fingers once they are knuckle deep within you. The calloused tips brush against your walls and make you squeeze your eyes shut, finding it hard to believe that a year before all this, the skin of his fingers was smooth and gentle as he only played guitar in his free time before he made a career out of it.

Over a year of playing it non-stop had hardened his fingers and was a blessing in disguise, as they had never felt better when they were buried deep within you. 

“God, it feels so good,” you whimpered as he traced the letters of his name with his tongue onto your clit. “So fucking good, Ani.”

He hummed, sending vibrations up your core and making your mind go into a frenzy. “Louder, baby,” he softly demanded, moving back up your body and hovering over you while his hand picks up the pace a bit. “I want this whole floor to complain about us tomorrow.”

You were so turned on, you couldn’t even bring yourself to be embarrassed about the sounds your core was making as his fingers plunged into it repeatedly. Not that Anakin ever let you feel embarrassed about it, seeing as he prided himself on how wet he makes you every time he goes out on stage. 

“I know you want it, too,” he continues as he stared down at your fucked out expression. “Admit it.”

“I want it,” you managed to say as his thumb began rubbing circles on your clit in time with his fingers. The coolness from his ring contrasted against your searing heat, making the knot in your abdomen steadily form. 

Anakin smirked down at you, leaning in to run his tongue along the skin under your ear. “Want what?” 

“God,” you groaned as he pumped his fingers in and out of you at a brutal pace. “I want everyone on this floor to know who makes me feel so good, Anakin. I want them all to complain about how loud we are.”

Anakin was satisfied with your answer, “That’s my girl,” and he leaned down to begin sucking various marks onto the skin of your neck, the sounds you were emitting going straight to his dick that throbbed against his jeans. He didn’t think he could ever get tired of hearing all the sweet sounds you made just for him, and had been making for him since you were in high school. 

“Anakin,” you moaned, lifting your hips in time with the movement of his hand. “Please, please, don’t stop.” Your lips brushed against his as you begged him to keep fucking you with his skilled fingers. 

He hummed, kissing you deeply. “You gonna come for me?” He asked, already knowing the answer as he felt the way you clenched around his fingers every time your walls sucked him back in. 

“Yes,” you nearly whispered, a crease forming in your brow as the coil in your stomach was a mere few seconds away from snapping. “Please.”

“Come for me, pretty girl,” he requested, his voice deep and sultry next to your ear. “I want it all over my hand.”

You were unable to deny him his wish as you came hard, your thighs shaking slightly and your mouth opening to let out a long and loud moan. Your head dipped back into the middle of the bed, your fingers twisting tightly in the soft comforter as he slowed down the thrusts of his hand until you were whimpering quietly. 

“Just like that, baby,” he praised, kissing you once before removing his fingers from inside you. He brings his hand up to his mouth and sucks the digits clean as he moves back down your body. Anakin licked a single strip up your slick core before standing up, smirking at the way your whole body shook at the action. 

You weakly propped yourself up on your elbows, watching him pull his belt from his jean loops. He drops it to the floor, the sound of the buckle hitting the hardwood making your head swim with thoughts of what’s in store for you next.  

“Take that pretty dress off, baby,” he said under his breath, reaching behind him to pull off the white tee and leaving it to join the growing pile of clothes on the floor. You quickly lifted yourself up so you were kneeling on the bed, your hands fumbling to tug off your dress. Anakin gives you a soft smirk at how obedient you always are for him as you tossed the dress off the side of the bed, kicking his jeans down his legs and leaving him in his tight boxer briefs. 

You gave him a look that nearly had him falling to the floor as he moved forward and kneeled on the bed in front of you, making you crane your neck to be able to stare up at him. Your hands reach up and tug on the hair on the back of his neck, pulling his head down so his mouth could meet yours. 

Moaning quietly against his lips, you arch your back when you feel his hands slide up to unclasp your matching pink bra. He pulled it from your body, leaving you completely bare to his lust filled eyes. He let out a low growl as his hands slid back down to your hips. “Lay back, pretty girl,”

You oblige quickly, laying further up on the bed and resting against the soft pillows. “Please, Anakin,” you whined as he rubbed his still covered dick against your heat. “Fuck me.”

Anakin groaned as he shoved his boxers down, gripping your thighs and tugging them up until they were draped over his. “I’ll fuck you, baby,” he promised, running his tip over your wetness and coating himself in it. “I’ll fuck you so good, make sure everyone knows who made you come.”

“Fuck, yes,” you gasped just as he thrusted himself into you without warning, making you reach out to grip his forearms. Still on his knees, Anakin began fucking into you at a brutal pace, pouring all his leftover energy from the show into the way his hips hit yours. “God, yes.”

Anakin gripped your waist tightly, his eyes drifting from the way your breasts bounced with each thrust to your face as it twisted up in pleasure. “Say my name,” he demanded, burying himself to the brim and pausing there.

Your body tensed up, your stomach muscles flexing as he kept your hips pressed to his. “Anakin,”

“Louder,” he ordered, repeating the action. 

“Anakin!” You shouted, and it was followed by a string of moans as he resumed rocking his body against your own. “God, Anakin, you’re so deep. So deep in me.”

He grunted at your filthy words, the faint sound of the headboard hitting the wall making the whole scene look like it was straight out of a porno. “Fuck, you’re taking me so well,” he praised, reaching one hand up to pinch at your sensitive nipples. He felt you clench around him as he worked on hardening your peaks, his pace faltering just slightly at the tightness of your walls. “Always take me so well.”

“I love you, Anakin,” you whimpered, arching your back and pushing your chest up against his hand. 

He groaned at your sweet words, placing his hands flat against the comforter on either side of your head from where he knelt above you. “I love you so much,” he said back, speeding up his pace. “I’ve loved you for four years now, baby.”

“Nearly five,” you reminded him with a cry of pleasure. “We’ve been together for almost five years, Ani.”

“I know, princess,” he murmurs, leaning further down to press his lips to yours in a gentle kiss, a big contrast to the way his lower body was currently destroying yours. “How could I ever forget about the day you became mine?” 

“Best day of my life,” you mumbled when he leaned back again, digging his knees into the bed as he all but railed into you. “Fuck, you feel so good, Anakin.”

“You’re so tight,” he responded, making your stomach twist with a need to please him forever. You were vaguely aware of the loud smacking of the headboard now, and the way the picture that hung above the bed was tapping with each thrust of his hips. It only fueled your desire for him as your hands gripped the comforter once again. 

Your previous orgasm rendered you a bit more sensitive than normal, so you weren’t all that surprised to feel that knot begin to tighten once more. “Fuck, you’re going to make me come again,”

“Yeah? You’re going to come all over me again?” He mocked slightly, only making your head swim with dizziness at how dirty the whole event is. “I want it. Come all over me, pretty girl, nice and messy.”

Your eyes rolled back just a bit when he reached one hand up to press his fingers against the base of your neck. A strangled moan escaped you as you clenched helplessly around him.

You didn’t think you would ever get used to how he was in bed, versus how he  was out of it. He was sweet, kind and caring with you outside the bedroom, but inside it he was rough, loud and determined to get you off in any way he possibly could. The difference was almost too much to handle. 

A few more deep thrusts later and your core was flooding around him, noisily sucking him in deeper and alerting him of your second orgasm. “That’s it, baby,” he praised, watching as his dick became even more coated in your wetness. It spurred him to speed up the pace so he could reach his own release. “Good fucking girl.”

“Anakin,” you struggled to say as your body shook with overstimulation. “Ani, come, baby, please.”

It wasn’t the first time he had you begging him to come in you, but it still had his head going fuzzy for a second or two, as well as made him twitch inside you. “You want it?” He asked through a clenched jaw, his neck muscles straining as he tried to hold off for a little bit longer. 

“Yes,” you answered, powerless against his sharp thrusts as you took each one. “I want it so bad.”

“Fuck, princess,” he muttered, his pace slowing down as his own release flooded through him. With a couple slow thrusts into your greedy core, he fucked his seed deep within you. 

He falls onto the bed next to you a few seconds later, his chest heaving and a light layer of sweat adorning his skin, mirroring the way he looked on stage an hour or so prior to this. 

Anakin was a lot more drained now than he was before, and he knew that if he were to stay in bed for much longer he would probably pass out with you wrapped in his arms. 

He lifted himself up and pressed a soft kiss to your mouth, murmuring an “I’ll be right back,” against it before he dressed himself in his shirt and jeans, grabbing the keycard on his way out to retrieve both yours and his bags from the bus. 

-

The next day, after spending most of the morning wrapped up in the sheets together, you and Anakin finally decided to get up. 

Kind of.

He was currently propped against the headboard, eating a piece of toast with you on his lap. His acoustic guitar he brought with him was placed in your lap as you softly ran your fingers against the strings, leaning back against his bare chest. You were nowhere near as talented as he is with the instrument, and you knew it would sound awful if you were to try and play it without his guidance. 

“Mm,” he hummed when you plucked one of the strings at his request, tossing the crust of the toast onto the plate that was next to him on the bed. He would usually be more careful so there wouldn’t be any crumbs in the sheets, but he was checking out of the hotel before tonight’s show, so he decided to leave it to the cleaning staff as he knew they would be washing the sheets anyway. “That’s the B string, baby, not the D string.”

“And I’m supposed to know that…how?” You asked as he wrapped his arms around your middle. 

“Well, I’ve only been playing guitar for the entire length of our relationship,” he teased as he placed his right hand over yours. He guided your thumb to one of the middle strings and gently brushed it against it. Of course, it sounded a lot better because he was the one who controlled how much pressure and the pace of your thumb against the string. “That’s the D string.”

You refrained from rolling your eyes at the cockiness in his voice as you strummed along the string again, this time sounding a bit better than before. 

“There you go,” he praised, pressing a kiss to the side of your head as a reward. “That was good.”

You turn your head to give him a small glare. “You’ve never been a good liar,” you mutter. “Especially when it comes to lying to me, it’s why you could never get away with cheating.”

Anakin scoffed, “I would never,”

You shake your head with a dumb grin on your lips as he guides your fingers to strum the tune he had been going over in his head for the past few days. You let him take full control over the way he moved your fingers, noting the soft humming of an unfamiliar song leaving the back of his throat. “New song, Ani?” 

He shrugged from his spot behind you, leaning down to press a kiss to your bare shoulder, your tank top doing very little to cover your skin from him. “Maybe,” he answers as he begins to kiss up your neck, not even needing to look down at the strings to be able to play them perfectly. 

It made you a bit lightheaded, how hot and talented he truly is. “What’s it going to be about?” You ask, eyes glued to the way he effortlessly helped you play the guitar while also holding a conversation with you. His talent always surprised you, despite knowing early on how skilled he is with the instrument. 

“You, obviously,” he replied and you rolled your eyes. “What else would I write a song about?”

“You’re too much,” you say and he laughs quietly, agreeing with you as he goes back to mumbling potential lyrics in your ear. 

A few hours go by and it’s nearing the time for Anakin and the band to head onto stage. He smoothes out his graphic tee and smirks at the way you cowered behind the large speaker, eyeing him with your lip caught between your teeth. 

“God, Ani, you look good,”

“Me?” He asked and reached his hand out to you, pulling you into his arms once you took it. He played with the end of your pink and white skirt, eye fucking you a mere few minutes before he had to go perform in front of thousands of people. “I bet Vin and Theo are so jealous that it was me who got to take you to bed last night, in an actual room.”

You loosely wrap your arms around his shoulders, gazing up at him. “I bet all your fans are jealous that it’s going to be me who gets you all to herself after the show,”

Anakin hummed lowly, pressing a kiss to the skin under your ear. “I’d be jealous, too, if the hottest girl took me home,” he rasped. “Or in our case, took me back to that stupid bus.”

You laughed, leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek. Since you had applied a cute pink lip to go with your skirt, a stain was left on his skin when you pulled away. “Oh, sorry,” you say and lift your hand up, but pause when his fingers wrap around your wrist. 

“Don’t you dare try to wipe that off,” he ordered with a smirk. “I think it completes my look.”

And it really did. A black snapback was placed backwards on his head, a vintage shirt covered his chest and exposed his sleeve of tattoos, dark jeans with a few chains connected to the belt loops hugged his legs, and black boots gave him the daunting appearance of someone who was born to be on stage. 

The pink lipstick mark only added to the whole thing.

“Okay,” you swallow harshly, stepping away once Vinny handed him his guitar. “Have a good show.”

“I love you,” he called out as he placed the strap over his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.”

When he made his grand entrance, the crowd seemed even louder than normal, and you could only hope at least some of them were able to see your mark on his cheek as you hid behind the speaker and watched your boyfriend get lost in his element.

-

Series based off this fic

[yandere-wishes]

The Spider’s Web

Summary: You are a hero, you feel it within your bones. Calamity may strike and villains may rise. But you are still a hero, it's time to start acting like one. 

Continuations of Imposter Syndrome and Perfect Girl. But can be read as a stand-alone

 Warnings: Yandere themes,  violence, angst, just the worst Spanish you've ever heard.  SFW but Miles and the reader are 18+

Author's note: Last part of the Prowler Miles x Hero reader trilogy. Reblogs and comments are appreciated. 

There's a weight in your hand, familiar and awkward, worn yellow plastic stuck to rusted metal. You count the rotations it takes for one bolt to tighten, twist, twist, and repeat. You cradle the metallic gadget with such fragile care, lips tracing silent prayers across the cold alloy. This shall be your salvation once it's complete. Another key to unbinding these appalling shackles.

It's been months since the Prowler took you away. Locked you within his new hideout and threw away the key. He claims he loves you as he leaves sugar-tainted kisses upon your neck. Whispers that he's the only one who can keep you safe as he nibbles the shell of your ear. His claws have become a constant force upon your hips, his presence a burden, invariant and throttling. He's stripped you of your mantle as a hero, reduced you to a limbless, formless creature that merely exists within the dark of his room. Una muñeca, he calls you as he extinguishes the air from your lungs with a life-sucking kiss. 

But you're not a doll, nor a puppet, nor a toy. You're supposed to be a paladin, a saviour, the one who was going to alleviate this city of evil once and for all. But you're not a superhero, not now, not anymore. The thought is enough to make you sick. 

Your own reflection causes you the most pain. The glass paints a stranger with hollow eyes and a decaying soul. Defeated and broken. You've taken to smashing mirrors as a way to exercise your demons. Miles has stated his vexation over this and warned you not to invoke his anger again. It's hard to explain that his anger makes you feel human. The way his eyes narrow and his lips merge into displeasure is the only thing keeping you alive right now. You hate him, but he's practically forgotten that.

Your ears perk up as footsteps tread outside the room. You quickly rush to hide your new gauntlet under the bed, rolling to the deepest corners where the dust bunnies and boogeyman roam. You perch yourself on the bed, stretch to grab a framed family photo from one of the shelves, and focus your eyes. Keep busy, it's the best way to avert his suspicions. 

There's a light creek before Miles steps in. Footsteps heavy as if the ground's going to give way under him. He looks exhausted, practically dead. You wonder what he's been up to all day. You turn your head to face your nemesis, your jailer, your lover.

"Mi Vida" he mutters as he falls back on the bed, he turns wrapping his arms around your waist. "That slimy alien insisted I do some physical training today. It's exhausting. Says I need to be in shape for the big operation". You stiffen, ever since the sinister six had you out of their way, they'd been content with ruling the city with an iron fist. Nothing major, nothing extreme. But something is going down, something bad. Desperation throbs within your heart, you need to escape. 

Miles pulls you down until you're lying next to him. Gently prys the photo from your hands and looks it over. There's an endless moment that reverberates between you two. "I miss him sometimes'' he confesses, his eyes locked on his father's face. He looks like a child hopeless and lost. Desperate in all the ways you've never been. He pulls you closer and buries his head in the crock of your neck. It almost feels like love. If love was a thousand leeches that stick to every crevice of your body. Slowly infiltrating the heart. Slowly sucking away your life. 

Miles is a storm, a typhoon, a calamity. All hurling winds and bellowing thunder. A hurricane that shakes the world to its core. You've gotten so used to thinking of him as anything but human that you forgot he's just a boy. A boy with a heartbeat and a thousand painful memories all locked behind golden eyes. 

You remember when he used to tell you stories. Back when the safest place for a hero and a villain was the midnight sanctuary of a rooftop.

Stories of his childhood back when his father was still alive. Back when he was seven or maybe eight naive enough to believe his father's empty preaches about justice and righteousness. Mind too preoccupied with the new Rover red hot wheel his father had brought home after his shift. He'd been happy once, a long, long time ago.

Back then you used to think about him, in the spare moments between explosions and your blood pounding through your ears. You used to think about what kind of boy Miles would have been if his father had still been around. How sweet his smile could have been, how precious his soul would have been. Even after he kidnapped you and put you through horrors untold, you still think about the boy he could have been. Dare to imagine who he could have been. You wonder if his touch could have been endearing, could have made you feel safe. Half addicting and half comforting. It's laughable really, you never thought it possible to miss someone you've never met. Yet it unlocks a special kind of sadness within your heart. Maybe in some other lifetime, the two of you could have been real lovers. 

"We're planning to expand outside of New York, take over everything else," Miles says as his eyes grow heavier. He's tired, you think, that's good, that very very good. "There's no one left to get in our way." There's a dreadful banging in the back of your head. A screaming voice begging you to escape, to run away, to do SOMETHING, anything. There's a fatigue that has encompassed Miles, engulfed him whole. He's dead to the world in minutes. Whilst you are tortured by your consciousness. Your gadgets aren't ready. They're made from scrap bits you found around the hideout. Half assembled and never tested. Yet Miles is asleep, exhausted and unconscious. It's the perfect chance to run to return to your old life. 

Take a leap of faith, what's the worst that can happen...

You spare one last glance at Miles. Close your eyes and take in a shaky breath. A leap of faith you repeat within your head. You roll out of the bed and rummage under it to find your hidden gems. They're not perfect, not finished, but hopefully, they'll work. Your gauntlets are the most important part, they should theoretically be strong enough to break the seals on the window. From there you can use what little web filler alternative you were able to make to swing away from this dreadful place. Run and hide, New York is huge he shouldn't be able to find you. 

You rush for the window, pry the bolts loose, pull and pull until your muscles begin to collapse. The window creaks open and it sounds like freedom and hope all entwined with a fleece of dread. You step out onto the ledge. A hunting summer breeze ghosts across your face, as sirens scream in the background. A million lights bathe the city in a welcoming glow. You take a breath, turn around and fall. Diving into a concrete ocean, a place where you can finally feel alive. 

The rebirth of a hero has begun...

What is a hero in a land of villains? A shining star or a decaying light. To them, you are a monster, ripped from your mother's womb with a craving for blood and justice. To Miles, you used to be a beast, chained and tamed. He forgot that you were a numen. That you were something he had to fear. 

There's a divinity hidden inside each hero. Bones made of golden marrow that births sacred cells. A hero's blood is holy Ichor running through their veins. Ripping them apart from the inside and reassembling them as modern martyrs who shall die amongst the neon lights. 

How can you expect anything less from yourself? How can you be anything other than hallowed? You refuse to be anything other than sacred, trimmed in gold, and born of desert diamonds. 

Your eyes are focused on the last warehouse, Vulture, and Dr.Octopus are overviewing the newest cargo shipment. They're the last of the sinister six to die. The final lines to add to your tally. Then you can focus on the prowler.

After you escaped it took many days to find a safe place to hideout. You spend every second rummaging through the streets in search of new parts to use. You need a functional suit, one that could at the very least get you in and out of the Sinister Six's stock houses without detection. Then you could focus on stealing upgrades. You needed the strength, the extra power. There's a festering hunger pounding in your cranium. Desperate to get out. It screams the ballads of a vengeful melody. The need for retribution has become a cruel addiction, one that has driven you further than you ever dreamed possible. 

You stare out at the warehouse from your perch upon a skyscraper. 

 Count the seconds before the bomb detonates. On the count of three, a shiver goes up your spine. An acquainted terror, he's found, you feel his digital case price you from inside the shadows. Phantom pains resurface as old bruises begin to bloom. You earned your freedom to the symphony of breaking bones and tearing flesh. To the desperate tugs of your heartstrings as if it were a harp. There is no way you'll permit him to take it from you again. 

"Long time no see mami" His voice is gruff, hidden behind the layers of his mask. A small part of you used to miss this. Missed the Prowler you had fought almost daily. Missed the punching and kicking and the desperate need to kill or kiss one another. "Hello Miles" you spit his name like poison behind your teeth. Somewhere in the distance the bomb detonates, vermillion and smoke fill the air and you feel your heart skip in jovial delight. 

You twirl across the edge of the building, hands stuck out on either side. You look like a bird, like a ballerina. Like a friendly neighborhood Spidergirl. "What, you want us to beat each other up? For old time's sake."

Mile's mask slips away and he looks at you with eyes too dead for his young age. "You left me!" he screams, with a voice sheathed in pain, in anger, in broken dreams that had shattered far too quickly. 

You wonder if the mask has cut off the oxygen going into his brain. "Of course, I left you!" You scream, "You turned me into a metaphysical, gutless monster, you stripped me of every heroic deed I had embedded into your heart. You robbed me of my faith, my morals, my soul. Did you ever think I could love you after all that..." 

"You're talking crazy little bug, I was protecting you"

"From what! From the villains, I could have destroyed!"

There's rage leaking out of every aperture of his body. Anger within his lungs, pounding and prudent destructive at best. He rushes towards you, with every intent to kill to maim. He tackles you over the edge. You wonder if he has a death wish. You wonder if he's in love. 

You're falling into a sea of dying stars. Miles's arms wrap tightly against your waist. The ground seems infinitely far and yet ever so close. 

You wonder if Miles fears death or if he welcomes it. It wouldn't matter either way. For the first time in longer than you care to remember you feel so alive, dead tissue gives way to the howling wind in your ears. There's no end in sight. If you die, at least you'll die in each other's arms. Raindrops race past you splattering across the pavement, in a final moment of yearning, you sling your web against a low rise hoping it'll soften the fall. 

You wake up to the wet street. Miles's body sprawled out next to you. Inching closer you feel his pulse throb under your fingertips, a caged beast vying for its freedom. Desperate, desperate, desperate, exactly how he makes you feel. His eyes peel open, stardust and nectar falling from them. He's beautiful you think, he's deadly you recall. "and here I thought we had something special mami" he mumbles as his eyes begin to close. He'll live, you're sure of it. You just have to muster enough energy to drag him back to your lair. Tie him up for good measure, give him a taste of his own medicine. Maybe now with the Sinister Six gone and the city finally at peace. Maybe now with every bad influence scrubbed clean from his life. Miles can finally become a real boy. Maybe you two can finally become real lovers. 

There's a light that dances in front of your eyes. Rogue fire and magic all wrapped in one. A man steps out of it or maybe a seraphim. It's really hard to tell with the throbbing at the back of your head. He introduces himself. He looks just like you, spiders etched into his skin and pain pooling inside his eyes. You wonder if he's been through the same horrors as you.

But Miguel is older, a crooked thing. All fangs and blood and claws. You peel yourself from the ground and wobble over to him. Collapsing in his arms. Tears fall from your eyes matching the tears of the heavens.

"It's over little one, the pain is finally over" You know he's lying. Yet it soothes you. You know your new life as the protector of New York has just begun. 

You are Spidergirl now and your life has just turned into a Sisyphean labor

Sorry it's not as good as the other two, I was having a hard week lol

taglist: @nkmblackhyuuga @itsnotino @huicitawrites @bennybenten @scarleste @the-rouge-robin @murderofravens

[monstersandmaw]

Male dragon x male knight (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Fourth commission for you! [insert Fourth Wing joke here?]. This one is for @chroniclesinlacuna - so thank you!

(reposting because of some weird formatting shenanigans on the first attempt - sorry. Please reblog this instead of the other (deleted) one).

Content: (cis) male knight is sent to kill an injured dragon, and finds himself sequestered in the mountains with a beast of far greater intelligence and empathy than anyone had imagined. Non penetrative sex happens too, and bonding if you squint. Wordcount: 8938

“Boy, what’s going on?” Aneirin barked, grabbing for the arm of a page boy as he scuttled past in a slightly rumpled tabard.

He could have been a little gentler with the scrawny kid, but the corridors in the castle were roiling with a heady mix of unease and excitement, and that was rarely a good thing. Added to that, Aneirin had only just left Prince Ruairí in the hands of the next shift of Crownsguards, but if there was even the faintest whiff of trouble, he’d be back on duty in a heartbeat.

“Sir,” the boy chirped, bobbing a bow when he looked up and discovered that he’d been hooked like a minnow out of the flow of people by a knight of the realm.

Over six feet tall and still wearing his armour, though his helmet was tucked under one arm, Sir Aneirin Pendræd cut an imposing figure, and almost everyone in the castle recognised the Crown Prince’s personal guard and close friend, even if he did have a tendency to keep politely to himself for the most part.

“Well, lad?” he asked with just a hint of a growl in his usually soft baritone. “What’s got this place clucking like a hen coop?”

The kid grinned suddenly, all previous unease forgotten as his blue eyes began sparkling. “Dragon!” he beamed in breathless wonder. “There was a dragon sighted! Out by Icetide Pass! Lord Mortingale’s soldiers shot it down on their way through the mountain pass but they had to leave it there so they could take him to the Temple of Healing. His illness is bad, apparently. That’s why they risked coming across the mountains even though it’s going to snow soon. A dragon, my lord! A dragon!”

Aneirin chuckled when he learned that there hadn’t been an attempt on the life of one of his royal charges, and released the boy. “Go on,” he said, waving him away, and the page belted off in the direction of the kitchens.

With a sigh, the knight turned and headed back the way he had come and nodded politely at the guards flanking the entrance to the royal apartments.

The prince met him in the corridor with almost as much delight in his features as the page boy Aneirin had just released back into the wild. “Nye!” he chirped. “I was going to send for you. There’s been —”

“A dragon, I know,” he said, raising a dark eyebrow. “Is it true?”

“Sir Mathis heard it straight from Lord Mortingale’s lips himself,” Ruairí said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to get his friend to follow him.

Aneirin fell into step beside him, and bit back a yawn as he followed him through a concealed passage, out of the prince’s chambers and towards the adjacent apartment which belonged to his parents. In the darkness though, the prince paused and put his hands on Aneirin’s breastplate, tapping the cold metal a couple of times in his excitement. “A dragon, Nye!” he practically giggled. “Can you believe it? The magisters say they all migrated in to the frozen north a thousand years ago! What do you think drove this one south?”

“Maybe it’s fed up with all the snow,” Aneirin deadpanned, and the prince snorted a laugh and turned away, moving with easy familiarity down the dark corridor until he popped the latch on the door at the other end and they stepped out into the king’s empty study.

“Mother and father are in their sitting room,” Ruairí said, adding with a heavy grimace, “Magister Ferrar is in there too.” The much-hated former tutor of the crown prince was a truly odious man; pompously pious, deeply disdainful of those who wielded a sword instead of a stylus, and rake thin because he thought that consuming food with actual flavour was a grievous sin. Unfortunately, he was one of the most learned scholars in the country, so it was hardly a surprise that he had been summoned upon a credible report of a dragon reaching the king’s ears.

So it was that Aneirin found himself with the command of a small group of riders the next morning, heading north-east towards the belt of mountains that sheltered the kingdom’s fertile plains from the worst of the wild winters, and charged with finishing off the downed beast. A larger party would follow behind to collect the corpse for study and preservation, apparently, but his focus was killing it.  

Aneirin also had a grinning crown prince on his magnificent bay stallion at his side, despite his protests that a fire breathing lizard the size of an average cattle barn was probably quite dangerous, and putting the heir to the kingdom within a twenty mile radius of the thing was a colossally stupid thing to do, but the prince had insisted, and his parents had never been able to tell him ‘no’. To be fair, he was irritatingly charming.

“What do you think it will be like?” Ruairí asked as they trotted at the head of the column.

Nye looked around constantly, and even though the prince was dressed in sensible clothes for once, rather than showy silks designed to accentuate his fashionably fit figure and draw the eye of everyone in the room, he couldn’t help but feel the immense responsibility of guarding the crown prince out in the open like that. “Big, probably,” he mumbled. “And pissed off.”

The prince barked a laugh. “You’re funny, Nye. People think you’re grumpy, but you’re not. You’re just quiet.”

“You talk enough for the both of us,” he scowled, squinting at a shadow by the road a few hundred paces off. It was just an old tree stump, but he still glared at it like it was an assassin crouched in ambush all the same.

Somehow, the prince was still in a blindingly good mood as they walked their horses up the twisting, mountain road four days later, the breath of man and beast billowing in the air as they climbed higher. Everything was an adventure to Ruairí, and Nye couldn’t help but twitch a little smile as he watched the way the soldiers leaned closer to their prince in the firelight at camp, drawn like moths to his radiant joy instead of the flames of the campfire. Nye made one more round of the perimeter guards, greeting each by name and earning an earnest salute as he left them to their duties, and went to lie down on his own bedroll while the prince kept talking late into the night.

On the following morning, they reached the mouth of the canyon where the dragon was supposed to have gone down. According to Lord Mortingale’s soldiers, it had swooped overhead from a lower peak of the mountains, then swept down the narrow gorge like a hurricane, which spooked the horses to a white-eyed panic and caused the archers on the ground to nock arrows. When they’d loosed at it, it had wheeled away suddenly, and only to catch a wing on the bridge, colliding with it and disappearing into the depths of the gully. The soldiers had been forced to keep going, given the fragile health of their lord, and hadn’t been able to report accurately on the status of the dragon when they’d left the pass.

At the head of the canyon, a huge waterfall roared over the edge of a ‘v’ in the ridgeline of the mountains and plunged down out of sight into the bottom of the gorge. In the spring this road was only just passable because of the sheer volume of meltwater, but now at the tail end of autumn, the road was only misted by a constant spray. On either side of the gorge, the rocks rose into steep pinnacles, and in front of the waterfall, bathed in a sheeting mist, the stone bridge spanned the canyon and connected the road from one side to the other.

The walls that made up the protective sides of the sandstone bridge had been punched out in places by a the collision of something enormous, presumably the dragon as it fell, and all up the far side of the steep slope the trees and scrub had been singed to charcoal.

Aneirin held up a gauntleted hand and the riders halted. Taking a deep breath of damp, freezing air that burned his lungs, he listened. Behind the constant roar and rumble of the waterfall, a deeper sound filtered up through the scorched trees and scattered rocks. Low frequency, like two blocks of castle masonry grinding together, the rumble of a dragon reached his ears.

“Sir, that bridge looks like it’s about to go,” the captain of the unit muttered from Aneirin’s left and he nodded.

“We need to get a better look at what’s down there, but the scree slope on either side of the bridge is too dangerous to go near. I’ll dismount and go on foot.”

“Nye, you can’t go onto the bridge!” Ruairí exclaimed, wheeling his horse around to face his friend. “What if it gives out?”

“One man isn’t going to tip the balance,” he said. “But you stay here. You hear me? Stay…”

“I’m not a dog, Nye,” the prince pouted, but he did stay put.

Aneirin nodded, swung down from his horse and petted the placid gelding’s neck. The black horse twitched his head and stretched happily when the knight let go of the reins, but otherwise remained steady.

After only a couple of steps, he heard another rider dismounting from behind him, and turned to find one of the soldiers hurrying after him. “Captain said you shouldn’t go alone,” she said. “I volunteered.”

Aneirin shot the captain a level look, but didn't protest. He wasn’t sure what difference one extra person would make, but he wasn’t one for causing social friction when there were bigger problems to face; namely the dragon lurking in the steam at the bottom of the four hundred foot drop.

Stones and grit skittered away audibly under the arch of the bridge as the two of them stepped cautiously out onto it, avoiding the missing chunks and making their way to the middle where the wall was still intact and they could peer safely over the edge into the abyss. A flash of movement out of the corner of his right eye caught his attention, and Nye turned sharply to find the soldiers they’d left behind had dismounted and were loading bolts into crossbows. The grinding of the windlasses had dissolved into the noise of the waterfall and they were nearly all ready to loose.

Frustration flickered through him. If he shouted a warning from right above the dragon though, it could alert the beast to their presence, but if those fools shot down at it now, it could take out the entire bridge while they were still standing on it. Heck, if the dragon wanted to, it could probably start a landslide and suck the whole damned road into the gorge as well. Grinding his teeth, Nye waved and exhaled in relief when the captain responded in kind, and when Nye gave the signal to hold, the captain nodded and barked something to his soldiers that was lost to Nye behind the pounding waterfall.

Satisfied that they wouldn't endanger the crown prince or the volunteer soldier who’d come with him, Nye leaned over the edge and his breath caught. There at the bottom of the gorge was indeed the dragon.

A myriad of golden scales glittered in the water like a treasure hoard itself as the creature basked in the flow of water, seeming to enjoy the feel of it caressing the spiny ridges of its back. He frowned though when he realised it was slowly swinging its head back and forth through the water just downstream of the waterfall’s plunge-pool, jaws slightly open, and it appeared to be… catching fish? Somehow the image didn’t align at all with what he’d expected for a beast that big. Had it just been sitting in the river for a week catching salmon and trout like a fat lordling on a vacation from court life?

Before his bafflement could truly sink in, the sharp clunk of a crossbow loosing somewhere to his right jerked his attention away from the dragon, and before he could react, a thick, oak bolt sank deep into the creature’s shoulder just above its wing membrane and it gave a screeching roar loud enough to make Nye’s eardrums hurt and his mind go a little bit blank from the sheer, unfamiliar dread of it.

With a wild thrash, the dragon erupted out of the spray from the base of the waterfall and sent its tail and powerful hind quarters arcing around like a battering ram while remaining on the ground. The whole structure of the bridge swayed and shuddered as the beast collided with its footing piles, and both the knight and the soldier froze in place with their hands clutching the stone wall.

“Run!” Nye yelled at her, shoving her in the direction of her comrades gathered nervously on the road to their right. If he survived this, he was going to see to it personally that the one who’d loosed without a direct order was on latrine duty for at least six months.

The desperate beating of wings as the creature floundered and screamed again filled the air and the bridge gave way beneath them with a thunderous clamour.

Nye found himself sucked downwards amid a cloud of masonry and dust and the woman beside him screamed and floundered for the remaining edge of the bridge but it was too late.

Amid the clouds of choking dust, gold flashed and flickered, and something incalculably enormous barrelled out of the carnage at them with the force of an avalanche. Talons snatched for him and Nye found himself borne upwards while the scaly foot of a dragon closed around him. The brief thought that he would be punctured and crushed like an egg in his steel armour flitted across his mind as the dragon lurched upwards with a knight in one hand and, to Nye’s relief, a soldier in its other.

It struggled to escape the blocks of sandstone as they rained around them, but despite the bolt in its shoulder, it cleared the wreckage and swooped over the road, but as it banked, the soldier slipped from its grasp and plummeted away. Nye had the vague impression of her bouncing once and sitting upright while crossbow bolts buzzed through the air like summer flies until someone obviously yelled at the soldiers to stop in case they hit Nye.

The last thing he saw before they wheeled away into an open sky was Ruairí’s horrified expression peeking out from the visor of his golden helmet and the sword falling from limp, shocked fingers as his friend was snatched away by the dragon they had been sent to kill.

He wasn’t sure how long they flew northwards along the spine of the Icetide Mountains, but the dragon eventually began to tire, swaying and weaving, sometimes dropping a horrifying ten or twelve feet between wing beats, until a shivering Nye looked up and realised that a wide, snowy field was rapidly coming into focus through the oncoming snow that had started to fill the air perhaps an hour earlier. At the end of the long meadow covered in a perfect layer of deep snow, Nye could just about see a gaping hole in the cliff-face, and realised it must be a cave. Dimly, his mind supplied that this was probably the dragon’s home, and he was probably either about to be eaten or stored for later like a woodlouse in a spiderweb.

As the ground rushed up to meet them, he tried to thrash free of the enormous, curling talons, but he was held firm, and there was no freeing himself. When the dragon didn’t slow down nearly enough though, another thought crossed his mind. They were going to crash land, and he realised this might be it. Death by high-velocity impact with a mountainside wasn’t on the list of ways the Crownsguard knight had ever thought he would perish, but he didn’t have any more time to ponder it as the dragon twisted at the last minute and collided with the ground in a spray of snow, and Nye was tossed from its talons to land in a heap thirty feet from the point of impact.

He struck his head, helmet clanging once, and his consciousness winked out instantly.

Warmth was the next thing he felt, and he blinked his eyes open to find that he was lying on his back in the snow, and above him, a dragon was squinting against the onslaught of a full storm, its ochre eyes fixed on him as it tilted its head this way and that to get a better look at him, and it exhaled again. Its warm breath washed over him and he realised his clothes were soaking wet where the heat of its breath had melted the snow.

Aneirin’s first thought was that he was about to be eaten, but instead of floundering away or reaching for a weapon, he just froze.

“You’re awake,” came a rich, rumbling voice and he blinked. Nothing in the tales he’d ever heard had suggested that dragons were capable of human speech. They were wild, savage beasts that burned the land below them in great swathes and snatched people into the air like owls hunting vermin in a cornfield. “Thank goodness,” the dragon went on, and then sat back on its haunches like a dog to regard him at a bit of a distance. A huge, golden dog, partly covered in snow and bleeding from a barb in its shoulder, but still, the resemblance to a dog was remarkable.

“How… How long was I out?” Aneirin rasped, sitting up. When he didn’t feel sick and his vision didn’t warp, he felt a degree of relief. The concussion he’d suffered wouldn’t be bad.

“Only a minute or so,” the dragon said, lowering its muzzle a little and puffing out again. “But you should get inside before you freeze. The temperature out here is too low for human survival.”

“How would you know that?” he groused as he struggled to stand and then gave a yelp as his ankle gave way beneath him in a hot flash of pain. In all the shock of coming round and finding a dragon in his face, he’d not noticed the pain in his leg.

The dragon caught him in its claws and tightened its hold just enough to hold him steady and he clutched at the tiny, snake skin scales that covered its hand more out of reflex than anything else.

“Come on,” the dragon muttered, and he could hear the bellows of its breathing clearly this close up. The sheer presence of the creature was astonishing, overwhelming, and he swallowed, trying to process everything that had happened that day.

Using three out of its four legs, the dragon ploughed through the deep snow, keeping him aloft with its right front foot, and then it ducked its head and slipped into the cave like a snake disappearing into its den.

Aneirin blinked slowly, looking around. It wasn’t a cold, empty cave littered with carcasses and bones, but instead the walls were smooth, ashlar masonry, and adorned with tapestries. In the far corner was what appeared to be a great nest on a stone platform made of silks and furs.

“This… This isn’t what I’d expected,” he whispered, wondering if he was hallucinating all this.

The dragon chuckled, low and warm and oddly friendly before he sat the knight down on the bed of fabric and stepped back. “I’ll find you something to wrap your ankle. I don’t think it’s broken, but it might like some support…”

“How would you even know that?” he asked again, ignoring the pain and staring up at the creature.

Its sunset orange eyes seemed to laugh and the pupils dilated just a little as the dragon stared at him. Then it cocked its head a little to one side and laughed quietly again. “I have an interest in human scholarship, though I admit, my sources may be a little out of date now…”

“You… what?”

If dragons could look embarrassed, this one managed it, so much so that Nye felt a prickle of shame creep in behind the slightly hysterical exhaustion that was making his body heavy, his mind a bit slow, and his dark eyes incredibly gritty.

Clearly seeing as much, the dragon sighed, a sound like wind moving through woodland, and then said, “Why don’t you rest and we’ll talk more tomorrow?”

“I thought perhaps… uh…” Nye faltered, the shame intensifying.

“That I was going to eat you?” the dragon said, one brow-ridge rising with disconcerting familiarity into a dryly sarcastic expression. “Please, all that pretty, etched steel of yours would give me terrible indigestion.”

“Says the dragon that was gorging on fish in the river like a grizzly bear.”

“Well we don’t exactly have an overabundance of trout up here on the mountaintop,” the dragon retorted, puffing smoke out of its nostrils. “Excuse me for wanting to broaden my diet and make the most of an unfortunate situation. Until you lot came back and shot at me, I was actually enjoying myself. They weren’t the mountain goats I’d been looking for, but the fish were fun to catch and tasty to eat.”

At his words, Nye’s brown eyes slid to the bolt that was sticking out of the dragon’s shoulder still, like a bee’s sting, and his gut twisted. “You want me to take that out for you?” he asked, jutting his chin upwards to indicate the bolt.

“If you would be so kind,” the dragon admitted. “Though I’m surprised you’re offering, since you seem to have been sent to finish me off. It does hurt rather…”

“Here,” he said, and gestured for the dragon to lower its body down, which it did with surprising grace given the close confines and evident discomfort. “My name’s Aneirin,” he added.

“The one with the gold on his helm shouted something different at you as we flew off,” the dragon said as it got settled on the stone floor in front of its nest. “He seemed particularly distressed.”

“‘Nye’, probably,” he said as he reached for the oak bolt and braced his other hand on the scales of the dragon’s shoulder. The body beneath him was solid and warm, and the scales had the most beautiful iridescence to them over the gold lustre beneath. “The prince is the only one who calls me that, except my sister. What should I call you, by the way?”

“My name is —” the dragon began, but grunted and bared its teeth when Nye drew the bolt out. A little blood trickled down, but it wasn’t much, and Nye pressed a wad of clean linen from the pile beneath him to the wound, and the dragon went on. “My name is Vulfuri’ik.”

Nye scowled. “Vul… fury… ick?” he repeated, butchering the syllables and the glottal stop even while they were still fresh in his ears. “Never been much good with languages,” he added with a wry look at the dragon, who was regarding him sidelong with a flat, unimpressed sort of look at his poor efforts. “How about I call you ‘Fury’ instead?”

Indignant, the dragon’s head lurched up and the movement pulled the makeshift dressing away from the clotting wound as it fixed the knight with a scowl of outrage. “Fury? Fury?!” it repeated. “My name means ‘peaceful wanderer’, you know? It’s a name that’s been carried by many of the noblest males of my line!”

“I’d been wondering if you were male or female,” Nye mumbled. “Well, I can certainly try to pronounce your name — what was it again?”

“Vulfuri’ik,” he said with exaggerated pronunciation, huge teeth clicking when he snapped his jaws shut at the end of the word and glared down at the knight.

“Vool… fur…eek…”

“Oh for the love of the sky, no. No. Just stick with Fury. That’s fine. You’ll only be here for one night anyway. Once you’ve healed up and I’ve convinced you to tell your kind to stop shooting your nasty little bolts at me if I ever need to venture down into the valley, I’ll take you back to the road and I’ll never have to hear you spoil my sacred name with that tiny little tongue of yours.”

“My tongue’s had quite a few compliments, you know?” Nye shot, not entirely sure where the bout of playful innuendo had come from. Perhaps it was exhaustion and the fact that he was trading gentle insults back and forth with a creature that was only supposed to exist in legends now anyway.

“I’m sure,” Fury said dryly. “But until you decide that I can test that claim for myself, why don’t you take your little metal shell off and I’ll find you a goat or something you can eat, and then you can rest.”

Nye had to smile. The creature was supposed to be intimidating, and in a way he supposed he was, but the sense of humour was not something he’d been expecting. As he stripped off the various pieces of his plate armour, he felt the dragon’s curious eyes on him and turned to meet his gaze. In the stillness that swung between them, Nye sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, gaze snagging on the scab that had formed over the hole where the crossbow quarrel had sunk into his shoulder. “When we’d heard that a monster from the mists of time had crashed down on the border of our kingdom, we only thought to protect ourselves from you. Clearly, you were just… raiding our larder…”

The dragon laughed, deep and rumbling like a rock slide, and something shot through Nye that he wasn’t expecting to feel. He didn’t often seek out the company and touch of others, despite his momentary brag earlier. It just wasn’t something he felt the need for, but in that moment, the way the dragon’s voice rippled through him and his supple lips pulled back to reveal a maw full of sharp, white teeth, and his talons flexed on the stonework floor and his wings drew a little closer to his muscular, lithe body… Nye felt his cock twitch and decided he might actually have a concussion after all.

The dragon left not long after that, and returned with a neatly butchered and roasted goat, which surprised the knight, who had been poking around the large, chilly cave and hopping awkwardly to avoid putting weight on his sprained ankle.

“You shouldn’t be up,” the dragon purred as he landed and held out the goat on one talon. “Here.”

“You want me to eat out of your hand? Bold. We’ve only just met.”

The dragon’s laugh sounded again, only longer and louder this time, and he looked at the steel hanging on Nye’s hip. “I thought you could use that. It’s not the most elegant of solutions, but I don’t exactly have a full dinner service here. I don’t collect crockery like an old lady.”

It was Nye’s turn to bark a laugh at that, and he shook his head. “Alright, I’ll use my castle-forged steel sword as a carving knife, but just this once.”

“I hope it’s clean,” the dragon grimaced.

“I take good care of my weapon,” he said, and then hoped the dragon wouldn’t notice the flush in his face at the horrible and actually unintended innuendo. Definitely a concussion. He was never this bold or unguarded with people ordinarily.

“Glad to hear it,” Fury muttered dryly.

Fury let Nye sleep on the pile of fabric that night while he curled up on the floor like an overgrown, gold-adorned house-cat, and Nye found that he had no trouble drifting off whatsoever, and woke to find the snowstorm raging outside the cave entrance when he woke the following morning.

Over the next three days, while his ankle healed and the snow piled up, he and Fury talked. The cave he was living in was the remnants of a human outpost from the time when dragons and humans had apparently once lived in peace. “This cavern was actually where the dragon would have lived, while their rider would stay in a small room below — through that tunnel,” Fury said, astonishing Nye with the information.

“Their… ‘rider’?”

“Mmm,” the dragon rumbled, puffing a small flame over his tongue to ignite a torch on the wall beside an opening large enough for a human to walk down. “Every room in this little termite mound of an outpost is accessible to my kind as well, though I have to go outside and back in again. Something to do with the structure of the rock not being sound enough to tunnel down from here. There are other rooms below.”

“Yes, sure, but… rider?”

“Oh. Has your kind forgotten that?”

“Forgotten what? All we know about dragons is that you’re deadly, fire breathing lizards who —”

“Reptiles, yes,” he growled. “But not lizards. Lizards do not spit volatile compounds which ignite when combined.”

“That’s how your fire is made?”

“Yes, it’s a simple bio-chemical reaction. Don’t they teach you anything these days?”

“I… You know what, no. Dragon biology wasn’t covered in my training to become a knight.”

“No, but they do cover how hard you need to hit a fellow man and where to cut him open to make him die… Very refined.”

“You’re one sarcastic lizard, you know that?”

Instead of taking offence, the dragon grinned at him. “Gosh, it’s wonderful to have company,” he sighed. “I know I shouldn’t enjoy it too much, since you’re only still here because you’re hurting and there’s a snowstorm and all, but I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve actually… you know… exchanged words with someone. I talk to myself all the time, but it’s not the same.”

“When was the last time? Are you the only dragon in these parts?”

“I’m the only dragon for at least five hundred miles,” he sighed. “And she’s a big, grumpy elder dragon who thinks I’m still a hatchling for goodness sake! A hatchling! I’m very much an adult, and I’m sorry my gizzard isn’t saggy enough for her tastes, but there you have it.”

Nye laughed and then rolled his ankle around experimentally. “I think it’s basically healed,” he said. “But it’s been an unexpectedly nice change from castle duties. Keeping the prince from falling down a staircase because he’s too busy flirting with some lording’s son has it’s own challenges, sure, but this is a nice change of pace.”

“You and the prince are… close?” Fury asked carefully. “But you are not… mated?”

“Mated? Gods no. They wouldn’t let him ‘mate’ his Crownsguard. He’s expected to continue the line, and I know you know enough about human biology to know that wouldn’t happen with the two of us, even if we wanted it.”

“Oh. Yes,” he said. “Is it… acceptable for two of your kind to mate though?”

“Yeah, when the future of a kingdom doesn’t hang in the balance,” he shrugged. “You?”

He nodded. “Dragons do not dictate with whom another may mate, though I admit, I’ve only ever met one of my kind. There are so few of us left in these parts after all.”

That rather dampened the mood, and they spent the rest of the evening discussing lighter topics. Nye told him about his twin sister and the work she did in the Temple of Healing, and how he had always felt like she was the smart one out of the two of them. He told Fury of her passion for healing and helping, and how he felt that his role as a knight in the castle, training younger soldiers and protecting the crown prince, was barely halfway as useful as Seren’s work, and was surprised when Fury reassured him that helping to ensure the longevity of a ruler he valued was just as important.

“I realise I don’t know you all that well,” Fury said, “But I don’t think you would stand behind a ruler who did not care for their people.”

Nye looked down at his rough, scar-flecked hands where he had cradled them idly in his lap. “Ruairí is a good man,” he said with quiet certainty, thinking of that fire-lit camp and their warm smiles and boyish laughter. “The soldiers love him, and the people adore him too. You should see the way they cheer for him at the tourneys…”

“Tell me about them?” Fury asked, his eyes lighting up at the idea of more knowledge.

“The tourneys or the people?”

“All of it…”

So he did.

While the snowstorm continued to whisk the world into a white haze outside, Nye told the dragon everything he wanted to know about how humans in his kingdom lived these days, and in turn, Fury curled around him to keep him warm with the heat of his enormous, golden body.

Nye talked late into the night, and he only realised that the dragon had fallen asleep when he noted the regular rhythm of his breathing had slowed even more than usual. Turning, he stared at the dragon and marvelled at what he was seeing. The light of the nearby fire in a niche in the wall caught the iridescence of his golden scales, each one unique and perfect, and Nye reached out and ran his fingertips over the dragon’s brow-ridge and around the base of the horn that curved elegantly backwards over his head. The dragon let out a long, low, sleepy rumble of pleasure and Nye gave a sigh.

Conflicted about his feelings for a creature that was about as far from a human as it was possible to get, he curled up against the dragon’s side that night, and woke in the morning with the dragon’s arm snugging him close to his warm body.

Sliding free, Nye stretched and walked easily across the cave floor towards the entrance; his ankle was healed and he would have to return home soon, lest he be pronounced dead and the modest estate he owned outside the city be turned over to someone else. His sister must be beside herself with grief and worry too, if the prince had done what Nye was sure he would, and informed her personally of what had happened to her twin brother.

The wind had lost its vigour and now the little flakes drifted gently down like the pattern on a lace curtain.

A warm breeze wafted over his neck and he turned to find that Fury had come to stand behind him. He’d been so lost in his thoughts that he’d not heard the enormous, golden dragon moving behind him, and he exhaled too. Fury nuzzled him gently and crooned softly. “You are thoughtful,” he said. “Even… sad?”

“Just thinking about what my sister must be going through right now, thinking I’m dead.”

“I will fly you back today,” the dragon replied immediately. “The weather is not ideal for you, but I have a human friend who keeps horses on the plains below these mountains. You can borrow a mount from her and ride to the capital. If I try to approach, they’ll shoot me down on sight without realising what a precious cargo I would be carrying,” he added, and huffed a breath out that made Nye shiver again. “You’re cold standing here on the threshold, come,” Fury added, scowling.

“Not cold,” Nye said, his voice cracking just a little. “It’s nice.”

“Oh. You had but to ask,” he smiled, and sighed out another deliciously hot breath in the cold air.

Nye brought his hand to the delicate skin between the flared nostrils and Fury jolted and then relaxed in almost the same heartbeat. “You like that?”

“Mm, very much,” he rumbled, eyes rolling slightly as he closed them. “Your touch is… wonderful.”

Nye moved his hands along the dragon’s head, taking his time to feel the contours beneath his hands, and Fury gasped and lay down on his belly, allowing Nye to touch him wherever he pleased. “You’re so beautiful,” Nye murmured. “Your scales are like coins… You’re like a treasure yourself…”

“Oh,” the dragon sighed, shuddering bodily.

“What?”

“That’s… That’s quite the compliment among our kind… calling someone — ah — a treasure…”

“You are,” he said, leaning closer and kissing him just in front of his closed eye. “You’re rarer than gold, too.”

“Charmer,” the dragon rumbled, but he sounded pleased. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“You… You want… more?”

Fury opened his eyes and regarded Nye. “I don’t want to hurt you…”

“You’re careful,” Nye said. “And clever. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

Fury let out a long, low-frequency growl that Nye felt in every fibre of his body, and then licked his lips. “I want to use my tongue on you,” the dragon rasped. “I want to taste you. I want… I want you, human. Like I’ve never wanted anything before.”

“So long as you’re careful, you can have me,” Nye said, stepping back and undressing slowly.

The dragon watched, as though Nye were a priceless statue that was being unveiled just for his pleasure. He rocked his hips from time to time against the floor, and Nye realised with a jolt of satisfaction that the dragon was as aroused by the situation as he was. “Fuck, you like this, don’t you?”

“I like you, human,” he said with a bit of a snarl to his tone. And when Nye’s dark, linen trousers and underwear hit the cave floor beside his shirt, the dragon raised his head and exhaled to drive away the goosebumps that had prickled over Nye’s skin. “Let me pick you up?” he breathed.

Nye inclined his head, and the dragon’s claws closed around his naked body. He’d never felt so vulnerable and cherished and so turned on in all his life. He went limp in the dragon’s grasp even as the sharp teeth and lashing tongue descended, seemingly to devour him. Somehow, he trusted that this was not the way he would die.

Fury parted his jaws and let his searing hot tongue lave over Nye’s entire torso and down to his groin where his cock was straining and leaking already, and when the heat of Fury’s mouth washed over him, his mind went blank with pleasure. “Gods, that’s good,” he gasped, bucking weakly in Fury’s careful hold.

“Now who’s a treasure, look at you,” the dragon purred, his deep voice skittering through Nye’s body and setting every nerve ablaze.

His tongue pressed against his cock, the friction perfect, and Nye tumbled towards his release with a shout, arching and writhing helplessly in his hold as the dragon worshipped him. When he came against his tongue, Fury gave a great groan of pleasure and Nye’s hearing warped for a moment.

When he came back to himself, Nye found Fury’s tongue gently cleaning him, and he glanced dazedly down the dragon’s belly to where he found his hard cock dripping freely onto the floor. “You can… Use… me to make you come, if… if you like…” he said vaguely.

Fury laid him down the bed and lined his hard cock up with the knight’s thighs. He was far too big to enter him, but the feel of Nye’s legs around his hard, slick cock was enough to send a rumble of ecstasy through Fury and he gasped, tilting his head up to the ceiling and rutting against him. His hips moved desperately and a constant, low-frequency growling rippled out of him.

“You’re going to make me come,” Fury groaned. “Oh I’m going to come, I’m coming… I’m…”

He lifted Nye up in his talons while his back legs pistoned helplessly, and he spilled over the silk sheet beneath him and halfway up Nye’s legs and torso. His hot come covered Nye’s skin despite the dragon’s best efforts to raise him out of it, and the feel of it around his cock and over his abs nearly made him come again right on the heels of his first orgasm.

When the dragon finally stopped, he lowered Nye to the cleaner part of the bed and let out a long, rumbling purr. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nye chuckled. “Fuck, that was hot.”

Fury gently cleaned him and he dressed in one of the finer silk shirts from the dragon’s collection.

“Is this what you hoard then?” Nye asked, plucking at the sleeve of the garment.

“Mmm? Oh, no,” came Fury’s sleepy reply from where he’d curled up on his nest after discarding the fabric that had been ruined by his release. “I just collected it for my own comfort over the years. Come here.”

Nye lay down with him and let the dragon’s warmth seep into him while the world passed them by for another day. They made love again later, and Fury took his time to take Nye apart a second, third, and even a fourth time before the sun set on their secret lair.

The following morning though, Fury woke to find Nye dressed in his armour and ready to leave. “Wait,” the beautiful, gentle, golden dragon said. “Before you go, I want you to see something. Go down that staircase, and I will meet you at the other end.”

Nye nodded and headed off in the direction the dragon had pointed, turning down a switchback staircase cut into the rock. He came out in a pitch dark room with no idea how large the echoing space was until a warm light trickled around the edge in a creeping tide. He looked and found, astonished, that a channel of oil had been ignited, and the light was racing around the perimeter of a massive chamber, at the centre of which were rows and rows of… books.

Kept at a safe distance from the fire, the books were stored on stone shelves, and he stepped out to find ancient tomes, perfectly preserved by the stable atmosphere and humidity of the chamber. From behind him, he heard the steady footsteps of the dragon, and turned to find him rounding the corner, scales shimmering in the low light.

“This is your hoard?” he asked.

“Mm,” the dragon nodded. “Silly really, but your kind are fascinating to me. The way you chronicle everything… Look there,” he added and pointed to a nearby shelf. The two approached it together and the dragon raised a talon to a particular tome.

Nye drew it off the shelf and realised it was a tome dedicated to healing.

“That might help the lord you told me about. The one who was travelling to the capital for relief from his illness,” Fury said. “When you described his symptoms to me, I thought of that book. Take it with you today, and it might save him if your sister can prepare the necessary tinctures for him.”

The knight looked up at the dragon and his eyes brimmed with quiet tears. “You’re not at all what I thought you’d be,” he croaked.

Fury lowered his head and exhaled just to make Nye shiver. “Nor are you, human.”

With a heavy heart, Nye let Fury pick him up, and they began their journey southwards in silence. The wind roared in his ears and he curled up in the protective embrace of the dragon’s claws, enjoying the ride but wishing he had warmer clothes.

Eventually they dipped low over the landscape and Fury touched down in a snow-dusted pasture while a few horses scattered and whinnied indignantly at their arrival.

From the small farmhouse nearby, a middle aged woman emerged and put her hands on her hips when she saw the dragon.

“Your friend?” Nye asked as he was set gently down in the snow and Fury stepped back.

Eliara was wary of a stranger at first, though not of the huge, golden dragon it seemed, but when Fury vouched for him, she lent Aneirin a horse on the condition that he would bring the mare back to her in the same condition when he was able. He swore an oath to do so, and she seemed satisfied.

“Will I ever see you again?” Nye asked Fury while they stood on the snowy road outside the barn where some of the less hardy horses were kept.

Fury bit his lower lip and then said, “If you wish it, I can give you a gift that will allow you to see me again.”

“I do,” he said. “I… I want to tell Ruairí that you’re not an enemy to the kingdom but an ally. I want him to meet you. I want… I want you to be welcome in our lands. Providing you don’t eat our sheep…”

He rumbled a low laugh and dipped his head to nuzzle Nye’s side. The horse seemed completely unbothered by his presence. “No, precious one. I will not eat your people’s sheep. There are plenty of wild ones to sustain me.” He drew in a deep breath and held it before rising up to reveal his chest and exhaling gently. Taking his talons like two pincers, he plucked free a single, golden scale from right over his heart and held it out to Nye.

The knight took it like it was a sacred relic and held it in the palm of his hand. Its warmth was surprising, and he closed his fingers around it before looking up for an explanation.

“My magic will allow me to feel what you feel when you hold it against your skin, Nye,” he said. “If you wish to see me, I will know it, and I will come.”

Nye squeezed it tight and tried to ignore the ache in his chest. “I wish you could come with me now,” he said, “But you’re right. They would attack you this time.”

“Perhaps in the future,” Fury smiled. “Don’t be sad… It… I do not like to feel you sad…”

Nye kissed the smooth scales between the dragon’s nostrils and tucked the gifted scale safely into the pouch on his belt. “I’ll have it made into a pendant that I can wear around my neck, always.”

Fury swallowed thickly and looked away, but he was obviously deeply moved by the promise.

Eliara’s palomino mare might have been alright with the dragon’s presence, but she was not at all happy at the prospect of a ride in the snow. She did allow Nye to mount, though only after making her sentiments known with a hefty nip on his arm. With an oath to return the mare and a promise to the dragon to summon him when he was first able to, Nye set off for the capital.

Eliara’s stud was only a day’s ride from the city walls, and when Nye trotted in near sunset, the first place he went was the Temple of Healing. Seren screeched when she saw her brother and flew at him, looping her arms around his neck and sobbing. “I thought you were dead,” she cried. “The prince said…”

“Hush,” he smiled, holding her too. “It’s quite the tale, but first, this is for you. It is for Lord Mortingale.”

Thanks to the lost knowledge in the book, the lord was healed within in a month, and Nye returned to his life in the castle. Ruairí begged him to tell every detail of his time with the dragon, and while Nye was a loyal servant to the crown, he felt justified in not telling his prince quite everything… Magister Ferrar seemed to suspect a deeper bond existed between the two of them than simple friendship, but if he did, he kept that to himself.

When spring melted the snow and the crocuses pushed their bold, purple spearheads through the frosty ground to liven up the pastures, Nye took the mare and his own black gelding which Ruairí had led back to the castle when he’d been snatched away by Fury, and he returned the mare to Eliara.

Then, in the privacy of the deserted, wildflower meadow, he took the silver pendant that he had had crafted for him and cradled it in his hand, closing his eyes and trying to beg the dragon silently to come to him.

He waited in the pasture for an hour before he heard the beating of wings and when he looked up into the clear, spring sky, he saw a flash of gold and his heart leapt. The dragon banked, showing his gleaming wings, and a huge gout of flame burst from his maw across the sky like a pennant before he turned, tucked his wings, and made a peregrine dive towards the meadow.

He barely stopped in time to avoid crushing Nye beneath him, and when he nuzzled him like a cat over and over, rumbling and purring and crooning, Nye laughed and kissed him. “I missed you too, Fury,” he said.

“You have no idea,” the dragon replied. “Gods, you have no idea. Are you well?”

“Can’t you tell?” he asked, only then releasing the large pendant to dangle back against his chest.

“Yes,” Fury laughed. “Yes, I can. My most precious treasure, you are happy and I love it. I missed you. Will you fly with me?”

Nye turned and looked back to find Eliara standing at a polite distance. The horsewoman nodded once and called, “I’ll keep your gelding for you til you return.”

“Thank you,” he said.

And with that, the dragon picked him up and thrashed his wings hard, taking off and soaring up into the clear sky.

Nye spent a week at Fury’s home, and after that, he returned to the capital with Fury this time.

Ruairí was the first to greet the dragon, and he swore that Fury could come and go from their city in peace, so long as he respected the same bargain. Fury solemnly gave his oath in return. The second human to greet Fury was Seren, and the two spent a solid three hours talking about healing treatises until Nye and the prince interrupted politely with an offer of refreshments. Fury had no time for Magister Ferrar, apparently.

Thus, the ancient alliance between dragon and human was reforged by a knight and his golden dragon, and Nye spent the days when he wasn’t at his prince’s side in the loving arms of his dragon.

__

I really hope you enjoyed this. If you did, and you made it all the way to the end, please consider showing your support by reblogging. It really is the best (and totally free!) way to help the artists and writers whose work you enjoy.

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[mirisss]

Enhypen reaction to their gf's solo debut

The New Kard part 2, part 1 can be found ~ here ~

Pairing: Enhypen OT7 x idol! (Y/n)

Wordcount ≈ 1.1k

Warnings: People sending some hate to (Y/n), a tiny bit of angst but mostly fluff

Summary: In a world where the Kard we know today doesn’t exist, a new Kard is created. “The new Kard” = (Y/n) - 02 liner dating Enhypen, Keeho (P1harmony), Ricky (ZB1), & Yunjin (Lesserafim). After The New Kard made their debut with Cake, the promotions for the song were over. However, (Y/n) still had much to do as she prepared for her solo debut. 

Authors note: Thank you for the request! I hope you enjoy it even if I couldn’t fulfill everything in your request. 

Request by 🍮 - anon

Please reblog! 

Third Person POV

The New Kard’s debut was quite a success. Everyone was talking about it. The MV received a lot of views and the rookie group even got a win on one of the music shows. Thousands of videos went viral of moments where the group hung out, performed, or joked around on variety shows. (Y/n) became particularly popular, netizens loving her stage presence and personality. Her group and her boyfriends were all so happy about their successful debut. 

Once promotions were over for Cake, the company booked a meeting with (Y/n), telling her that she would be making her solo debut after they saw how popular she was. (Y/n) was incredibly happy, she decided that it should come as a surprise for everyone, they wouldn’t find out until the info was posted. (Y/n)’s groupmates Keeho, Yunjin, and Ricky were all busy working as MCs or acting in a drama. Enhypen was busy preparing and then promoting their newest album, Dark Blood with the title track Bite Me. 

(Y/n) was working hard and tried her best to hide the fact that she was preparing for her solo debut. Her title track was just her style, she loved it. The styling was top-tier, the MV shooting had been a lot of fun, and she truly hoped the song would be a hit. Her friends and boyfriends were so busy with their own work that they missed the post announcing that (Y/n) would be debuting as a soloist in 3 weeks. Her debut album became one of the most-bought debut albums of all time. The fans seemed super excited for (Y/n). 

The day of her debut was finally here, (Y/n)’s MV was just posted, and thousands of views rolled in within seconds. It wasn’t until that day when the MV was released, that Enhypen found out that their girlfriend was debuting as a soloist, or well she now was a soloist as well. They watched the MV, mesmerized by her dance moves and her beautiful voice. The second it was over they called (Y/n), who answered, expecting them to have found out by now. “(Y/n)! You’re a soloist now!?! Why didn’t you tell us?” Jake along with Sunoo exclaimed loudly. “Surprise!” (Y/n) chuckled, nervous to hear their opinions. “Can you come over or should we come to you?” Heesung asked, wanting to congratulate her in person and not just over the phone. “Uh, hold on,” They heard a low mumble in the background, probably (Y/n) asking her manager when she could meet with her boyfriends. “I can head over to your place in 2 hours,” “See you then, miss you, love you” Sunghoon began saying goodbye, and as he came to the last part all the boys joined in. 

2 hours later, (Y/n) was knocking on Enhypen’s door. Jungwon opened the door, a silly smile on his face as he basically threw himself on the girl, hugging her tightly. “(Y/n)!” Jay shouted happily from the living room. Jungwon released her from his hug after a minute, allowing her to step inside and close the door, they walked over to the living room. The other six boys stood there, with a cake and a banner that read “Congratulations honey,” Which they all also said once (Y/n) had noticed the banner behind them. “Thank you,” Everyone was smiling as love-sick teenagers as they sat down together, eating some of the cake and talking about everything. The boys told (Y/n) about everything they loved about the song, the MV, and the dance. 

A little later, (Y/n) opened up her Instagram, checking some of the comments people were posting under her latest post, the one with the announcement of the MV’s release. Many comments complimented her and congratulated her for her fast solo debut. However, her happy feelings and smile soon disappeared as she found hundreds of people writing their dismay and dislike of the song and the choreography, saying that (Y/n) should have done better. Her heart fell as she found people writing that they regretted buying her album. Niki noticed the way (Y/n)’s smile disappeared, he scooted closer to her, throwing an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. He glanced down at her phone, finding her reading comments. “Hey, what’s wrong?” The others noticed the scene once they heard the maknae’s voice. 

“People are disappointed, I should have done better,” “Oh darling, no, you were amazing, they’re just being haters for the hell of it,” Jay said, also coming over to comfort (Y/n). “They hate the song and/or the choreo, saying it’s not my style and it was just a waste of money for the company,” “Do you like the song?” Jungwon asked, “Of course, I love it,” “Do you like the choreo?” He then asked, “Yes, it’s something I’ve dreamt of doing,” “That’s all that matters then. It wasn’t a waste of money or a disappointment if you love it, then it was a success,” “Wonnie,” “Hey, look, we’re so proud of you, your members are so proud too! And real fans will love it too!” Sunoo said, giving (Y/n) a bright smile, his eyes crinkling up along with it, something (Y/n) loved about Sunoo, his true smile was cute and sweet. 

“Please teach me the dance? I want to be prepared for the dance challenges for tiktok,” Niki said, Sunghoon and Jake immediately stood up to learn the dance too. No matter what happens, as long as (Y/n) has Enhypen, she will continue to smile and be strong. Within seconds of standing up and trying to teach the boys her choreo, she was smiling and laughing. Completely forgetting about the hate she had received. 

[banjjakz]

serial bereavement ; yuuta x gn/f!reader

Every first Thursday for the past six months, without fail, a single plot of ashes has been unlawfully exhumed from the cemetery behind Joenji Temple.

Or: As a rookie hire, you are partnered with Investigations Section 1 Officer Okkotsu Yuuta to investigate a law-defying, bone-chilling, uniquely disturbing case of obsessive love that threatens to shut down the entirety of Shinjuku.

part i. word count: 5.2k

warnings: rating & warnings WILL change; part i of iii; reader is referred to with she/her pronouns & has a vagina & breasts, but is never addressed with gendered titles [e.g.: "ms.," "lady," etc.]; eventual smut that is dubcon at best; horror-romance, in that order; themes of psychosexual horror; side satosugu [non-essential to plot]; i cannot overstate how abnormal this one is, even for me

the content of this fictional work is inspired by the video game "collar x malice" which belongs to the original rightful owners. i do not own or claim to own the rights to the collar x malice franchise. this written work does not represent the intentions, actions, or thoughts of any of the creators/owners of the "collar x malice" franchise.

‪♡‬ read on ao3 ‪♡‬

likes♡ / reblogs ↻ appreciated!

Every first Thursday for the past six months, without fail, a single plot of ashes has been unlawfully exhumed from the cemetery behind Joenji Temple.

The first incident was thought to be a freak accident, one of those strange, wild card crimes that confound local police and commandeer national attention. Pictures of the desecrated grave ravaged internet forums for weeks thereafter, sending chills down the backs of even the most stoutly atheist Japanese youth. An already horrific occurrence worsened all the more with the repeated presence of a seemingly random signature: there, at the bottom of the grave, in the very deepest point of the aged, black soil, laid a folded handwritten note. Upon unfurling the crisp creases, the Shinjuku Police Force Special Crimes Unit discovered that these were actually letters.

Love letters, to be exact.

Presumably penned by the perp, the characters were neat and clean – almost feminine in nature. So strong was the desire imbued into these letters that it seemed as though each individual brush stroke contained one thousand sonnets of unceasing, burning ardor. Clearly, the perpetrator yearned for the attention of their beloved.

That they would go to great lengths – immoral lengths, even – for just a three-minute story on the evening news, all so that their beloved might idly overhear the report as they prepare their dinner, idly chopping radishes to the soundtrack of a violent confession woefully fallen upon their deaf ears…

Well. It makes you squirm. You suppose that’s the point.

As a fresh-faced rookie of the Special Regions Crime Prevention Office, this is your first time on the job in the midst of such a sensational case. At first, your department was unsure how to label these crimes: neither killings nor injuries were incurred, and yet, the spiritual damage effected by the robbing of a Buddhist shrine’s graveyard was somehow worse than any brutal homicide. Eventually, the commissioner labeled these incidents as “Serial Bereavements” out of respect to the families whose deceased loved ones had been wrongfully removed from their final resting place.

After the first offense, local news stations reported the anomalous crime with a sick sort of fascination. Lovesickness was no foreigner in Japan, and although many screwed their faces up at the morbid displays of affection, so too did just as many turn up the volume on their televisions and lean just a few centimeters closer, eyes glazed with blue light, horror, mortification, and arousal.

After the second and third offenses, it was obvious that a pattern was beginning to emerge. Both incidents occurred on the first Thursday of the month, and both incidents were signed with the same achingly forlorn pages of desperation. In fear of exacerbating the perpetrator, or inspiring copycats, news stations and publications were not permitted to release the contents of the letters.

After the fourth offense, protests began to congregate outside of the Shinjuku Police Station, demanding an immediate and swift correction of the police’s incompetency in addressing the issue. When the first set of ashes had been disturbed, cherry blossoms still clung to the trees. By this time it was July, and the harsh glare of the summer sun beat unrelentingly upon the earth, as though reprimanding its inhabitants.

After the fifth offense, a special curfew was instated for all residents of the Shinjuku ward. No persons for any reason were to be out past eleven o’clock at night. This was punishable by immediate apprehension for questioning. The law was martial, but the law was necessary. Or so the commissioner claimed.

After the sixth offense, the police began looking inwardly, suspecting members of its own ranks. There was no possible way that a civilian could have been able to penetrate the immense security measures installed to secure the Joenji cemetery. Ropes and ropes of caution tape, nearly 24/7 surveillance, and daily K-9 rounds were still not enough to halt the perpetrator in their tracks. This could only mean one thing:

An inside job.

“Scary,” shivers Ieiri, mockingly, lips curled in a sardonic smirk around the length of her unlit cigarette. “You hear they think it’s one of us?”

You regularly have lunch with Ieiri Shoko, director of the Forensics department. She is as caustic as she is jaded, having served in an underrecognized role for far too long, wasting her prolific talents in an obscure government position with little excitement – save for, of course, highly-charged periods of reoccurring atrocities, such as the current case of the Serial Bereavements.

“Don’t even joke. We should be taking this seriously…”

The cooling September breeze has you huddling into your knees a little further. Enjoying lunch on the rooftop was a treat while it was still summer. But now, September has just torn a new page in your calendar and has brought with it an uncharacteristically crisp cold snap. It is Tuesday, the second.

“I’m sooooo serious,” Ieiri says after taking a rather dramatically prolonged drag from the now-lit cig. “Couldn’t be any more serious. Brr.”

Usually, Ieiri’s dry humor is an effective, if transient, salve to your ever-festering anxiety. But today is an exception.

“Please, just think about it for a second... To think that any one of the people we work with every day could be committing such heinous crimes…and for a romantic obsession, no less…it doesn’t frighten you?”

Ieiri exhales smoke, puffing lazily like a sated dragon draped over its hoard. “Nah. I seriously doubt anyone in our ward has the balls.”

Her vulgarity makes you blush. You’ve always been easy to fluster. “Ieiri-san!”

“How many times have I told you to just call me by my first name… jeez.” She ruffles your hair without even an ounce of care for how it makes you groan in consternation. “Too polite for your own good. Someone is going to take advantage of that, one day. And then where will you be? Calling for Ieiri-san to come save you?”

Somewhere, she’s strayed from the path of lighthearted teasing. You still under the weight of her calloused palm, peering curiously up at her through your lashes. “Um…well…”

And as soon as her touch had manifested upon you, just as quickly is it yanked away. “Anyways, call me whatever you like. Not like it matters, anyway.”

“I guess not…”

The rest of your lunch is finished in an unstable silence. Her final, rhetorical question rolls around in your mind, impressing itself upon your malleable brain tissue: Calling for Ieiri-san to save you?

But when would you need saving?

You’re a police officer, after all. You can take care of yourself.

If you couldn’t, why would you serve as an officer in the first place?

;

On the following Monday – the third of September – the director of the Investigations Unit summons you to the fifth floor.

After a polite (terrified) bow, you enter Investigations HQ. “Hello.” Please do not fire me. Please do not transfer me. Please do not publicly reprimand me. Please do not—

“Ah, thank you for coming. Wow, what a deep bow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a perfectly geometrical ninety degrees.”

Face burning, you avert your gaze to the marble floor. “Ummm…”

You’ve heard that the chief of Investigations, Gojo Satoru was an eccentric fellow, passing in and out as he pleased through the station, hanging off of the director like a second skin. It should come as no surprise that he is here to greet you, today. And yet, still does your thin skin prickle with humiliation, with shame.

Geto Suguru, director of Investigations, cuts in before his partner can continue. “Leave her alone, Satoru. She’s shaking. Are you doing alright today, officer?”

Embarrassed, you nod. Great. It hasn’t even been a full sixty seconds and you’re already embarrassing yourself in front of your superiors.

“Alright, alright. I’ll lay off. Only ‘cuz you asked, though! Hehe.”

“I’ve summoned you today to invite you to join a special taskforce,” Geto continues, unperturbed by Gojo’s wily eyebrow wiggles. “This taskforce will use unique means to investigate the Joenji Serial Bereavements.”

Your blood is paralyzed in your veins, cowed by the enormity of this proposal. “Sir…?”

“In the short amount of time since you’ve joined the Shinjuku Police Department, your conduct has been nothing but outstanding. You’re capable and damn impressive. And frankly speaking, officer, we need a fresh set of eyes on this case.”

There’s nothing else you could possibly say other than: “I would be humbled to join. Thank you.”

“Great, knew we could count on you. We’re keeping the taskforce small for confidentiality’s sake. You’ll be working with one other partner: Officer Okkotsu Yuuta from Investigations Section 1.”

That name… why do you know that name?

Then it hits you: Okkotsu Yuuta is the name whispered through the halls of the police department with awe, envy, admiration, and – occasionally – fear. He is a legendary detective with prowess in both tactical as well as strategical measures. His presence is felt rather than seen, as he is scarcely spotted within the physical walls of the department. However, what does not tangibly appear is nonetheless ever-present in whispered rumors and glamorized notoriety.

“O-Okkotsu-san…” you stammer, taken aback. “But…I’m sorry, sir. I don’t mean to question your judgement, but why have I been chosen to pair with Okkotsu-san?”

“Oh! He specifically requested—”

Gojo’s cheerful sentence is curtailed by a swift elbow to the ribs. While he recovers, Geto finishes the thought, “Okkotsu has requested to be paired with a rookie for this assignment to personally train them. Something about ‘personally ensuring the longevity of the Shinjuku police force,’ or the like. What a do-gooder, am I right?”

“Okay,” you respond, uncertain.

“Your first matter of business will be a visitation to the Joenji graveyard to look for any new leads. You leave in one hour. Okkotsu will meet you downstairs, in front of the building. Good luck!”

In a daze, you bow deeply once more. “Thank you. I will be sure to work hard.”

;

Unsure of what to expect, you linger in front of the armed entrance to the building, trying your best not to shift your weight from foot to foot in an obviously apparent display of anxiety.

It’s not that you’re the type to be starstruck! You are a sensible, no-nonsense, down-to-earth person. Celebrities have never appealed to you much, and idol culture continues to confound you.

In light of this, it’s quite difficult to explain the visceral, full-body reaction you have when you meet Officer Okkotsu Yuuta for the first time.

He is not superbly handsome. Good-looking enough to get street-casted? Sure. With some minor work, he might even be the jewel visual for an up-and-coming boy group. Young and fit, he is the picture of an officer steadily approaching the peak of their hotshot years. Plain, dark hair falls on either side of his forehead in a lopsided part, and his uniform is buttoned and put together, if only a little wrinkled. All in all, he is an average, considerably attractive young man in the Shinjuku police force.

And yet.

Eyes like pools of obsidian tether you to the spot like a spell has been cast upon your bones. Enchanted, your lips part, but no sounds slips through. The intrusive, overstimulating soundtrack of Shinjuku rush hour traffic fades to little more than background noise as your senses are held hostage by the void of quiet, negative space in the shape of a young man that stands in front of you.

His bow is deep and overly formal. He’s technically your superior… and definitely a senior-ranking officer. “A pleasure to meet you,” he announces to the concrete ground “I’m Okkotsu Yuuta, Investigations Section 1.”

“N-nice to meet you, Okkotsu-senpai. My name is—”

The cringe marring his otherwise untroubled face stops your words before his interjection is even voiced. “Ah, um. Just ‘Okkotsu’ is fine. We look to be around the same age, too, so I don’t mind. May I address you casually as well?”

Face burning, brain scrambled, you somehow remember how to speak. You give him an affirmative before pausing, perplexed. How did he know your name already?

Okkotsu specifically requested to be paired with a rookie…

Geto’s words float to the forefront of your mind, soothing your hummingbird heart. Surely, the director and chief of Investigations must have briefed Okkotsu on your file before you were cleared to accompany him on this special taskforce.

Normally, you are woefully naïve, a bumbling but well-intentioned junior officer. The unsettling nature of the Serial Bereavements have pushed you towards an edge you didn’t even know you could reach.

The thought of the assignment weighs down your fresh-faced bashfulness. Suddenly, the afternoon sun is less bright, the heat on your face concentrating into the precursor to a migraine just behind your eyes.

Okkotsu blinks once, twice. “Thank you for working with me on this case. Would you believe me if I told you that I’m a bit of a scaredy cat?”

Your eyes bug out of your head in disbelief. “Um? But you…” His reputation specifically includes the highest number of skillful takedowns, arrest totals, and successful confessions across the entire prefecture. A scaredy cat?

“I know how it looks. It would be quite embarrassing if anyone else knew… but I’m a pretty anxious person.”

With a refocused perspective, your gaze hones in on the smattering of purple bruises underneath his tired eyes which birth a cool webbing of veins sprawling down and out across his pale, gaunt face. You realize that his uniform isn’t actually wrinkled – it just hangs off of his thin frame, tucked intentionally to give off the illusion of a much bigger silhouette.

In him, you see a reflection all too similar: young, ragged, hungry, scared.

It’s not enough to set you completely at ease, but your lungs relax their hold on your bated breath, letting it go as slowly and reluctantly as a child forced to part with their favorite plush toy. “Me too,” you hum. “Um, nonetheless, I will definitely try my best to be helpful. I hope I will not slow you down Okkotsu-se—er, Okkotsu.”

“It’s not about fast or slow.” The service car pulls up and loiters at the curb where the two of you are still lingering. He opens the back door for you. This is the first time a polite young man your age has done that. You try your best to remember that you are literally at work, on the clock, about to investigate an especially morbid case.

Once ensuring you’re comfortably inside, he shuts the door and rounds the rear of the vehicle to slide into the leather seat next to you.

“What matters is that we can rely on each other. Fast or slow, we’re partners now… as long as we finish together, it doesn’t matter the pace.”

He rattles off the address to the department driver after dropping what is possibly the most insightful reassurance you have ever received in your life.

Okay. You can kind of understand why the entire department is obsessed with him.

“R-right. Thank you.”

The rest of the ride is spent in a silence two shades off from comfortable. Nothing is wrong, per se – but the both of your negative energies linger and interact with each other like animals of the same species encountering for the first time.

How odd, you think, to find someone like you, and who is unashamed – eager, even – to admit it. To embrace it.

;

The cemetery is small and would otherwise go unnoticed if not for the dramatic influx in attention following the past few months. Plain and unadorned, neatly kept, with no ostentatious monuments or memorials, as is befitting for the burial grounds behind a Buddhist temple. All in all, the scenery would be somewhat peaceful if not for the six disturbed plots of land where remains were once laid to rest.

This is your first time at the scene of the crime. Your rank is too low to justify visiting this high-profile area without clearance from a supervisor. Now that you’ve been assigned to a taskforce specifically investigating this case, it was necessary that Yuuta took you to observe the scene yourself.

Although there is a total lack of gore or rot, still does the sight of six empty graves provoke within you an acute revulsion. Perhaps it is the absence of any overt suffering, and the oppressing knowledge of the extended waves of unearthed grief spanning across multiple kin networks who must now lose their loved one a second time – this is what inspires the damp, fragile sheen pooling at your waterline.

“Hey,” calls a soft, gentle voice. Yuuta’s timid wave brings you back from your wallowing. “Before we left, I grabbed the letters from forensics. Thought it might be helpful to have while we re-assess the scene.”

Something he’d done entirely for your benefit. Conscious of your lack of experience with the case, you incline your head, grateful. It’s almost as though your gratitude makes him uncomfortable. He averts his gaze and hands over a collection of six plastic-encased papers. Despite their origins within deep, aged earth, each one is pristine.

Steeling yourself, you read February’s letter, the origin of chaos:

My Dearly Beloved,

Did you know that not even the moon and all her stars, nor the sun and all his days, burn as brightly as my heart does for you? There is a certain privilege that I have been blessed with in this lifetime: the privilege to admire you from afar while passing through your stratosphere when it is convenient.

But, unlike you, I am a flawed and impure creature. I am greedy. Each morning, I wake up with a hunger to do more than watch. I want to draw you near to my side. I want to feel your flesh. I want to know what your innards taste like. I want to bathe in your desire. I want to carve myself into your being, forever and ever and ever, so that in the next life, you will be born missing me.

Please look at me. I love you so terribly it defies the laws of life and death. You’ve awoken something within me. I hope you’ll take responsibility.

Nauseous, you shift the letter to the bottom of the pile, hands shaking, head spinning.

“How disturbing…” you can’t stop the words from leaving you, unbidden. “How can someone desire another person in such a way that it permits violence?”

Okkotsu studies you closely. “Do you really feel that way?”

Alarm coils like a snake cornered in the pit of your gut. Sharply, you snap your gaze to his still, calm face. As pallid and pockmarked with depression as the moon herself. “Excuse me?”

“Are you truly disgusted by this kind of love?”

Fighting to ignore your fight-or-flight response, you answer: “I don’t consider this to be love.”

Peculiarly, his face breaks out into a smile, clearing away the lingering cloudy expression. “And that’s why I’m glad we’re partners. I knew you’d have the right idea about this.”

“Most people condemn this crime…”

“But too many sympathize with a false motive,” he volleys back, dark eyes glinting with a strange intensity. “This isn’t a crime of ‘love.’ The perp doesn’t act out of affection. They want to own, subdue, and take what is not theirs. How is that love?”

“Exactly,” you affirm. “To be honest, those connections have always kind of unsettled me…even in shows, or books, or games, I could never look at the obsessive type.”

“Scary, aren’t they?”

This isn’t just a work case for him, you belatedly realize. His tense posture, his imploring eyes, his specification of partner – this is personal. Something about these occurrences strikes a chord deep inside of him, resonating so profoundly that it would not be enough to watch another resolve these crimes; no, Okkotsu is compelled to eradicate the danger completely, uprooting it from the source, destroying the danger with his bare hands, watching it dissipate with his own eyes.

“Mm. I’m glad we’re working on this case together, Okkotsu.”

He offers a small, benign quirk of the lips. “Me too.”

Your partnership progresses steadily from this first encounter.

Most of your daily duties are now fulfilled off-site, accompanying Okkotsu to various locations of interest, following potential leads, and occasionally conducting interviews. It’s been merely two days since the taskforce has been formed, and yet, you’ve been so preoccupied with your new assignment that it completely slips your mind to alert Shoko as to why you’ve been absent from your regular rooftop lunch dates.

You are mortified to open an aggrieved SMS from her on Wednesday morning:

Ieiri-san 08:15Oi. Are you dead

Me 08:16 Ahhhh!! I’m so sorry!!!! A new assignment is taking up a lot of my time. I apologize for not communicating. And for missing lunch. We can eat together today? I can bring you something? Whatever you like! I can make it!

Ieiri-san 08:20 Nah, none of that You’re probably overworking yourself already. No need for extra labor Just meet me on rooftop @ usual time

Me 08:21 Absolutely!!

It is surprisingly difficult to tear yourself from Yuuta’s side, as the two of you have been practically glued together from sunrise to sundown ever since embarking on the special assignment. He is reluctant to let you slip away for lunch, and as a result, you linger past a reasonable time to reassure him that you will be back on time.

When you are finally able to break away from Investigations HQ, you check the time on your phone only to realize that noon has rounded the corner with unanticipated haste. Hurriedly, you make your way to the seventh level of the police station building, embarrassingly conscious of your damp forehead and rapid breath.

“Sorry I’m late!!” Bursting through the metal door, you explode onto the rooftop, cloth-wrapped bento in one hand, and your furiously beating heart in the other.

It’s almost comical, how serene Ieiri looks, unbothered as ever as she leans against the railing with her trademark cigarette weaving in between her restless fingers. “Took you long enough. Been waiting for two days, now.”

“Ahhhh…”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You look like you’re about to piss your pants. C’mere.”

Face in flames, you stride over to pop a squat next to her. “I really do apologize, Ieiri-san. These last couple of days have been really hectic…”

“How so? You mentioned a new assignment. When did that happen?”

“Hmm, I’m not sure if I can talk about it…Investigations personally assigned me…um, not to be impolite or brag or anything! Just, I think it’s a little sensitive in nature, so—”

“Investigations?” She cuts you off, her dull timbre unusually sharp. “You mean those two idiots asked you to handle a highly classified criminal case? During your first quarter? By yourself?”

“Ah!! Geto-senpai and Gojo-senpai are quite eccentric, but they are very nice--!”

“No, they are not—”

“—and I’m not by myself! I’m partnered with Okkotsu Yuuta!”

If you weren’t such an anxious person who is well-practiced in the art of overanalyzing the countenance of others, you would surely have missed the way Ieiri’s eyes widen imperceptibly, the way her breath stutters on the next exhalation. She does not look at you for a beat. Two beats. She stares straight ahead at the exterior of the building when asks,

“You’re investigating the Serial Bereavement cases.”

“Ieiri-san…” you whine, head in your hands. “I’m, like, ninety percent sure no one else is supposed to know…”

“What, don’t trust me? Not like I have any friends around here to tell.”

“That’s, well. That’s not the point. Okkotsu mentioned that this was a sensitive matter, so…”

“Just ‘Okkotsu,’ huh?” She peers sideways at you. “No ‘senpai’? Wow, you two sure got comfortable fast.”

“No, please don’t misunderstand! Because honorifics make him uncomfortable, he asked that we speak casually!”

“I asked you the same.”

Her blunt response stuns you silent. It takes you several seconds to produce a response. “Well, yes. But that’s different…Ieiri-san is older…”

“Not by much.” Finally, she lights the cig in her hand. “Hey, let me ask you something.”

“Okay, please go ahead.”

“It was Investigations who put you on the case? Nobody else was involved?”

Hesitation halts your tongue. Mentally, you are transported back to that fateful day, just a little less than forty-eight hours ago, when your new assignment had been unloaded upon you.

“…I’m sorry, sir. I don’t mean to question your judgement, but why have I been chosen to pair with Okkotsu-san?”

“Oh! He specifically requested—”

Gojo was never able to finish his sentence, cut off by Geto’s strategically timed blow. Almost as though the chief was about to reveal something better left unsaid.

You may be a rookie, but you aren’t stupid. There’s a reason why you got this job, after all.

And if you can deduce this much, surely the next conclusion you land on isn’t so far-fetched:

Okkotsu must have personally requested you as a partner.

But the question is…why? You hadn’t been personally acquainted before you’d met outside of the station before heading to your first investigation together. He’s been nothing but kind and respectful – if a little unsettlingly intense, at times, but you think that’s just kind of how he is.

There must be an element that you’re missing from the equation, a piece of the puzzle of which you are not yet aware. It is for this uncertainty that you choose to disclose the truth to Ieiri.

“Okkotsu requested me as his partner.”

Obviously, she asked you for this information because something was dependent upon how you answered. Studying Ieiri’s reaction might be the first step towards unraveling this strange situation.

And react, indeed she does; again, it is quite muted, eroded by years of police work and other unspoken traumas you’re sure lie dormant inside of her mysterious, impenetrable depths. But perhaps it is because of your friendship that Ieiri’s micro-expressions appear to you more as the dramatic admission of feeling that they truly are.

A twitch of the brow, a purse of the lips. Her next exhalation of smoke comes fast and hard, expelled from her mouth in one decisive whoosh of toxic air. Usually, she pays special attention to the wind pattern so that she does not blow smoke in your face. It seems she’s thoroughly perturbed today; the fumes whip you across the cheek and you hack violently in surprise.

Your adverse response snaps her out of the momentary brooding. “Shit, sorry,” she mumbles, quickly removing the cig from her lips and smothering it on the ground. “You alright?”

“J-just fine,” you murmur after one final bout of ear-splitting dry heaves. “Can I ask you a question, now?”

“Shoot.”

“Is it a bad thing that Okkotsu and I are partners?”

Visibly, Ieiri must chew and swallow her initial retort. This is quite unprecedented behavior from the woman with little to no filter on any given occasion. “How are you finding it so far?”

“Well…he’s really considerate. And accommodating. Um, he even revisited the crime scene with me since I’d never been, and he let me read all the letters, too.”

“That’s funny,” says Ieiri, stone-faced. “How did he show you the letters?”

“He said he picked them up from the station before we left. I was quite surprised that he went through all the trouble of doing that, since those kinds of sensitive evidence usually aren’t allowed to leave Forensics…”

“You’re absolutely right. They aren’t.”

“Ah…Okkotsu must have special clearance…?”

“He doesn’t,” Ieiri deadpans.

“…I see…”

Her hands twitch at her sides like she’s itching for another smoke, even though the carcass of her most recent stick still smolders underneath the dagger of her high heel. “Well. You can do whatever you want with Okkotsu. Sounds like you’re in capable, dedicated hands.”

“Huh? Ieiri-san, wh—wait, where are you going--?!”

But before you can finish your panicked inquiry, Ieiri has already blown through the metal door, stomping her way back downstairs to the sixth floor where the Forensics Department awaits her gloomy presence. It’s unlike her to storm off mid-conversation. You’ve never seen her emotions rise above slight annoyance – and that level of frustration is reserved exclusively for the Investigations chief and director. What had you done to provoke even worse of an ire?

Riddled with guilt and anxiety, you wade through the rest of the workday in a foggy, unfocused haze. Okkotsu gives up trying to ask you what is wrong after his third attempt. When you eventually, mercifully fall into bed that night, unshed tears overflow past your clenched, trembling lashes, staining your pillow with sorrows you cannot speak aloud.

Upon waking up, you are granted no reprieve. It is Thursday, the sixth of September. The first Thursday of the month.

You don’t bother with something as trivial as breakfast this morning – not when the thought of what awaits you in the day ahead fills you to the brim with unbearable dread.

Arriving at the police station and getting briefed on the day’s events only confirms your worst fears: there has been another Bereavement at the Joenji graveyard.

This month’s occurrence is twistedly unique.

Accompanying the usual handwritten letter is a fresh, human heart, so red and wet, glistening with fresh gore, that it almost appears to be beating through the still stock photos taken by Field Operations upon first discovery.

Due to your increased status, you are granted clearance to read this month’s note before any other department can get to it. Ieiri is absent from the Forensics office when you rush off the elevator to the sixth floor. One of the interns retrieves the file for you, and you are equal parts eager and terrified to scan its plastic-encased contents.

My Dearly Beloved,

Aimless admiration has thus far sated my yearning soul. Seeing you eat well every day fills my spirit with a sense of completion. I am at ease to watch over you and ensure your wellbeing. But there has been a disturbance. I can feel your increased awareness, like a child opening its eyes to the world for the first time. Coupled with this awareness is a newfound distance between us. Things were going so well. Why now? Why pull away? This can’t be because of me. It must be someone else.

I think I know who.

What must I do to regain your undivided attention? How can I reclaim your primary affections? To experience even an inch of separation, a millimeter of remove, is for my body to undergo countless agonizing deaths.

Will you pay attention to me?

Will you notice me?

Will you choose me?

Look at me.

Look at me.

Look at me.

I serve my beating heart up on a platter just so that your gaze might befall it for the barest of breaths.

Recent events have shown me that I cannot stand idly by any longer while others sneakily and deliberately encroach on our relationship. I’m getting restless. I’ve been waiting quite patiently. Are you as antsy as I am? Soon, you’ll know me as all that I am.

I miss you. I see you every day and I miss you. Come back to me.

Before it’s too late.

[feyreswaterybowels]

⟡ Princess of Dreams ⟡

# 2 Lucien x Rhys!Sister

⟡ Part 1 ⟡ Part 2 ⟡ Part 3 ⟡

Word Count: 3k

Summary: Following the events of the Solstice ceremony.

Warnings/Tags: smut. implied past sexual assault. fluffy romance. feyre and Rhys’ sister being besties and wanting to destroy tamlin. possible grammatical errors.

Authors Note: All likes comments and reblogs are appreciated, welcome and encouraged! Let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list for part 3! Bold italics are mental communication, regular italics are inner thoughts. (Mood Board)

⋆ ݁⟡ ݁☾ ݁⟡ ݁⋆ ݁⟡ ݁☾ ݁⟡ ݁⋆ ݁⟡ ݁☾ ݁⟡ ݁⋆ ݁⟡ ݁✩ ݁⟡ ݁⋆ ݁⟡ ݁☽ ݁⟡ ݁⋆ ݁⟡ ݁☽ ݁⟡ ݁⋆ ݁⟡ ݁☽ ݁⟡ ݁⋆

It’s hours later when the intensely bright sun had finally sunk back below the western horizon, giving me back my beautiful night sky.

There had been more countless hours of…well of not much really but it was still exhausting to be standing around all day surrounded by thousands of flowers and brightly colored streamers, watching Feyre and Tamlin greet and speak to everyone while Ianthe followed around trying to explain what happened.

The cauldron had blessed her chosen friend, she told anyone who would listen—how the sun had altered its very path to show how glad it was for her return. I would silently mock her every time she repeated those words.

There hadn’t been many interested in her tale, and the ones that were showed mild interest at best.

Feyre had stuck close to us for a majority of the time. I didn’t mind. I felt extremely protective over her. Not only as my High Lady but as my friend. I may not have access to my physical powers but I could still enter a mind in half a second and destroy someone if they dared harm her.

I’d enjoyed watching this new Feyre. How confident and sure she’d become. When the adoring fae wished to touch her hand, weep a bit over her, thank her for all she’d done she would have cringed away before. Now she openly accepted their thanks and gratitude. Thanking them and smiling as any High Lord would. Mostly genuine. Though for some, like courtiers and sentries, she put on a better show.

After six hours many retreat to freshen up.

“Tell my brother I love him.” I tell Feyre when she hugs me as she leaves. She promises to tell him for me.

Lucien and I stay, watching as lunch is cleared away and the band sets up. I would give anything to be spending this day with my family, but I was always grateful to have my mate at my side.

So when the band finally started playing and the fae around us took to the dance floor I dragged Lucien up. He hadn’t put up much of a fight—we loved dancing.

And dance we did for hours. I had even stolen Feyre away from Tamlin a few times much to his annoyance and my satisfaction.

We laughed together, spinning around the dance floor. It reminded me of myself and Mor—how we would get drunk on wine at Rita’s and dance the night away. I couldn’t wait to have nights like that with Feyre, too.

I spun her back into Tamlins arms as Lucien stole me away this time, practically begging me to come with him to eat and I realized why when I noticed Ianthe prowling around the tables.

Even she couldn’t put a damper on my mood right now. We fixed our plates and seated ourselves. More wine in our glasses as we sat tucked off away from the largest parts of the crowd—talking in hushed voices and feeding one another as if we hadn’t been mated for nearly two decades now.

Eventually I had shifted from my seat to stand behind Lucien, playing with his hair while we watched those on the dance floor become increasingly more drunk. I started braiding his hair, a taunt braid along either side of his head, curling behind his pointed ears.

“Your hair is getting so long,” I tell him, those auburn locks well past his shoulders now.

“I know,” He says, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking of cutting it—”

I gasp, drawing his attention up to me. “You better not!”

The laugh that leaves his mouth goes straight to my core. He reaches up and pulls me to bend over him so he can kiss me.

“Is that an order, Princess?” He asks against my lips and I grin.

“More like I’ll kick your ass if you do it,” I tease, kissing him again.

As I’m pulling away to go back to braiding his hair I feel eyes on us. Violet meeting teal and I bare my teeth in a wicked smile. I slide my fingers through his hair, gently pulling to tilt his head back, keeping eye contact with her as I lean down to kiss him again… stroking my tongue over his. He gasps in my mouth, reaching up to caress my head with a strong hand.

Anger lights in those eyes across the way and I grin as Lucien’s lips move to my throat, my free hand sliding around and down his chest—slipping under his shirt to feel heated skin.

I moan as he sucks on my skin, digging my nails into his chest and tightening my hand in his hair.

“Fuck,” Lucien growls, standing quickly from the chair, towering over me. “Come here.”

Then I’m being dragged away. I look over my shoulder smirking at Ianthe who is red in the face looking like she’s about to have a tantrum. She takes a step forward as if about to follow Lucien and I only to be stopped by Feyre, though I couldn’t hear what was being said before we disappeared into the thick woods.

“You’re nothing but trouble,” Lucien taunts, pushing me against a tree and attacking my mouth.

“You love it,” I gasp against his lips, reaching between us to work his pants open, ignoring the way the tree bark digs into my wings.

“Turn around,” he orders, but before I can move he’s got me spun around and pressed against the tree. “Hands.” Is his next order.

I present my wrists to him behind my back and his large hand wraps around them, pinning them to my lower back.

“I’m gonna fuck you right here, Princess,” Lucien says, the sound of his buckle coming undone making me shiver. “I want you to be loud enough that she hears you.”

I moan at that. Knowing exactly who he’s talking about without saying her name. Though it’s unlikely she’ll actually hear me from this distance over the music but the thought that she might? And probably had many times is something I love. She wants him so bad—not that I blame her. But to remind her he was mine over and over, that she would never get to have him made me feral.

I’m pulled from those thoughts when the skirt of my dress is being lifted, that hand of fire trailing between my thighs, rubbing at my wetness before ripping the stocking and panties I wore beneath.

“Tell me, sweet girl, are you turned on because of me? Or because you know she knows exactly what we’re doing out here?” Lucien asks, fingers sliding through my wetness, rubbing in that perfect spot until I was weak in the knees. Only held up by his weight pushing me against the tree.

“I asked a question,” He grunts, pulling that heat away from my center.

“Both,” I gasp out in a moan, needing his hand back. “Fuck, both.”

“That’s a good girl,” He praises, hand sliding back between my thighs, rubbing at me, two fingers sliding inside.

“Oh, fuck, Lu,” I moaned. His fingers weren’t as thick or long as his cock but they felt so good filling me up, curling perfectly to find that spot that had me seeing stars.

“I’m gonna make you cum on my fingers first,” He leaned over me to breathe in my ear, careful of my wings, fingers pumping faster, “then on my cock. Then I’m gonna take you back to that party filled up. We’re going to tell everyone goodbye then I’m gonna take you home, tie you to the bed and have my godsdamn way with you.”

“Yes, please!” I cry out, clenching around his fingers, cumming entirely too easy just from the way he rubs that spot inside of me, just from the way his voice rasped against my ear.

His fingers slide from me but before I can protest I feel him press against me, pushing in, in, in until he’s fully sheathed inside of me. He pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, the back of my shoulders between my wings. I wished he had ripped the damn dress from my body so I could feel his lips against my skin.

“That could be arranged,” He purrs, reaching around to grasp my breast, not realizing I had sent that through the bond.

“Lu, please,” I begged, pushing back against him. He hisses in pleasure, nipping at my neck before straightening his spine, still holding my wrist as he pulls his hips back, thrusting all the way back in. “Yesss.”

Then he fucks me. Hard and rough.

Bent over against a tree in the middle of the forest. I let every sound imaginable fall from my lips exactly the way he ordered me to. Between the events of the day, the flirting, the unwanted looks from another and the wine I was falling over the edge easily for the second time.

He slows his thrusts, giving me only a moment to catch my breath before he’s pulling out and spinning me back around. My knees buckle and I fall to the ground directly in front of him.

“Look at my pretty girl, so fucked out she can’t even stand,” Lucien coos, grasping my chin gently to tilt my head up, sliding his thumb into my mouth. I suck on the digit, batting my eyelashes at him, watching that fire burn in his eyes.

He reaches down, grabbing me around the waist and hauls me up, lifting me easily into his arms, my dress bunching between us. My arms and legs wrap around him and I kiss him. I can’t help it.

It only takes some slight maneuvering before he’s back inside of me, my calves over his forearms as he’s thrust into me. It was always such a turn on the way he could hold me like this, so easily, as he took me.

The bond suddenly lights up with warmth and my mind goes blank as I come again.

“Fill me up. Please, cum in me, I want it.”

I can feel how close he is without him saying anything. The sounds he’s making, the feelings through the bond. I know exactly when he’s about to cum and I moan as he fills me up

“So good, that was so good, Luc.”

He moans, eyes meeting mine and I smile at him. Pushing a few strands of hair from his sweaty forehead.

He takes a few gasping breaths, holding me in his arms still, basking in the high of his orgasm. I wrap my wings around us as we stand there, providing us with some form of privacy should anyone stumble upon us.

“We should get back,” I tell him, kissing the tip of his pointed ear. Wanting nothing more than to just skip out on the goodbyes and just go back to the house.

“Just another minute,” he said breathy, one of his hands reaching to grasp my ass cheek. “Just wanna be inside of you.”

“Mm. We could just go say our goodbyes like this,” I offer, playing with the braid I put in his hair earlier. “Unfortunately that means quite a few males would see me with your cock—”

Lucien growls at that and I giggle when his eyes meet mine. “I would kill someone.”

I hum in response, kissing him.

“The thought of you killing someone simply for seeing my body shouldn’t be so sexy.”

His hearty laugh vibrates through my body—my favorite sound.

“Come on, Princess. Let’s get this over with so I can get you in my bed,” He says, slipping from my body and setting me getting on my feet, making sure I was steady before tucking himself away.

We take a few moments to collect ourselves, kissing softly between straightening the other clothes and fixing disheveled hair. Of course no one was stupid. They would scent the smell of sex on us but that didn’t mean we had to make it any more obvious.

By the time we got back the sun had been long gone from the sky, dozens of blazing fires lit the area now. I didn’t spot Ianthe anywhere but Feyre finds us within moments of us taking up a spot by the fire.

We had meant to say our goodbyes but Feyre offered me a glass of wine. Which led to another. And another. We danced with one another around the fire—Lucien taking turns spinning us around. I had no idea where Tamlin was and I honestly didn’t care.

It was when Feyre asked Lucien and I to escort her back to the manor. Being ever the gentleman he agreed. I was much more drunk than Feyre but Lucien offered an elbow to each of us, letting us hang on him as he led us back to the house.

We left Feyre at her bedroom, I giggled out a goodnight, grabbing her face and kissing her cheek. As we were turning away I tripped over my foot and giggled again.

“Luc, I’m drunk,” I said, as he grabbed my arm, wrapping it around his neck.

“Yeah, Princess, I know,” Lucien chuckled, leading me to our bedroom.

I felt so light and blissful, letting him undress me and clean me up. He pulled the pins from my hair and cleaned the makeup from my face sliding a nightgown onto my naked body.

He laid me back, pulling his comforter over my body, tucking me in tightly. “Get some sleep, sweet girl,” He smiles down at me, kissing my forehead.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

I woke up hours later to Lucien tossing and turning. Ever since the Mountain his sleep was more restless than not, dragging up traumas old and new.

My head pounded from all the wine I’d drunk but I watched his face, still peaceful despite the unease of his sleep. It was when a horrified grimace crossed his face that I took over. When I felt the bond run ice cold with fear, when I got a glimpse of that nightmare—one he’s had before, where it starts with Jesminda’s torture and right as she’s about to be executed she changes into me as Beron and Lucien’s brother’s force him to watch me be murdered.

I slip into his mind, caressing it gently, ending the dream easily before it gets to that horrid part. I crawl next to him, laying his head in my lap and carding my fingers through his hair, braiding and unbraiding pieces, scratching at his scalp gently.

Instead I show him Velaris, the life I want us to have there together, the life we always talked about.

Living in our home right on the river. Late night stroll under an endless diamond sky. A long and happy life with beautiful red headed, winged babies. All the adventures we could go on together when no longer stuck in the boundaries of the Spring Court. Having the bond declared in a ceremony, a proper wedding, going swimming in the Sidra, taking him to see Ramiel—there was so much I wanted to do with him.

We’ve had a good life together here in Spring. He had done everything to make it better for me once he realized who I was, that I was stuck here. Picnic dates by the pond, visits to farmers markets, naps under beautiful trees, drinking wine, horseback rides, festivals and gardening.

But we could have a better life. An amazing one instead of a good one and I wanted to spend it with him.

He shifts, arms wrapping around my legs, nuzzling against my thigh, pressing his lips to my tanned skin but he doesn’t wake. I lull him into a deeper sleep, thumbing away the crease between his eyebrows.

My head whips up at a sound across the hall, Feyres room. I listen carefully, hear her door open. Then there’s a gentle knock on our door. She must have had a nightmare too…maybe I should start checking in on her at night.

I gently untangle myself from Lucien’s embrace, pulling the bed sheet over his body before sliding from the bed. There’s a second knock just before I reach the door. I scanned her head to toe quick—sweaty and disheveled but not physically harmed.

“I heard you, are you okay?” I asked, stepping to the side to let her into the room, scanning the hall for any sign of trouble. There seemed to be nothing.

The room was lit mainly by the moon light and I watched her look around the room. The night gown she wore was above mid thigh but she turned around to look at me before I could question her motive.

“I had a dream about it,” she rasped thickly, “Under the Mountain. I couldn’t remember where I was.”

I nod my head in understanding. Lucien had similar dreams. I wanted to kill Amarantha all over again for what she had done. To Feyre. To Lucien. To my brother. To thousands and thousands of fae.

“What did you dream of tonight?” I asked, stepping closer to her.

“She had me spiked to the wall like Clare Beddor. And the Attor was—” She shuddered, running her hands over her face.

I walked closer to her, a frown on my face, wanting to provide her with some kind of comfort. There’s something in the house, a vibration, I feel it but before I can question it she’s thrown her arms around me. I don’t object as she buries her face against my neck, warm tears falling on my bare skin. I let out a small sigh, sliding an arm around her waist, the other caressing her head, stroking over her dark golden hair.

“I’m sorry, Feyre,” I breathed, kissing the crown of her head. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

Her cries and tears eventually subside but I continued to hold her. Allowing her to take the comfort she needed from me. I pulled back slightly, caressed her face gently, wiping away the remaining tears. I looked at her, I knew she could see the concern in my eyes, but there was something else in hers, something not completely of the fear and sadness she was presenting.

“Why are you—”

“What’s going on?” Tamlin’s deep voice rumbles through the room. I turned my head slightly to look at him, he stood there face a mask of cold calm, the beginnings of claws glinting at his knuckles—looking as if he’d caught us in the middle of something naughty.

“I had a nightmare,” she explained, pulling, straightening her nightgown. I fought the urge to smile. “I-I didn’t want to wake the house.”

Tamlin knew I didn’t sleep in here most nights. Lucien either slept in my room or we slept separately, so in his eyes Feyre had to have been seeking out the comfort of Lucien after her nightmare.

He just stood there staring at us. Eyes glancing at Lucien before looking at me with narrowed eyes, a glare that I returned. His mouth tightened into a thin line and I nearly snarled at him—those claws still half drawn.

“I had a nightmare,” Feyre repeated sharply, walking forward to grip Tamlin’s arm, turning him but he looked back at me. I crossed my arms over my chest and smirked at him as she led him from the room closing the door.

“You little shit, your lucky Lucien wasn’t awake, Tamlin would’ve killed him,” I told her crawling back in bed with my mate.

“I wouldn’t let that happen. I needed to plant some kind of doubt in his mind. You seemed to do the trick though,” Feyre’s answer came five minutes later, laughter in her voice.

“You should have told me I would have kissed you right in front of him,” I teased back, sliding under the sheet, cuddling up to that warm body.

“Next time,” Is her response, a mental image of her winking and blowing me a kiss followed.

I laughed out loud.

“What’s going on?” Lucien asks, a slight frown on his face at being woken suddenly.

I grinned, kissing his chest.

“Nothing, my love. Go back to sleep,” I whispered, easily slipping into his mind to lull him back to sleep.

I grinned to myself.

“Burn it down, Feyre” I told her. “Burn it all down.”

Fuck Tamlin. And fuck the Spring Court.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

tag list: @sleepylunarwolf @stained-glass-eyes0708 @saltedcoffeescotch @cherry-cin @xmalfoyweasleyx @jesskidding3 @minaethrym @scorpioriesling @inloveallthetime @paleidiot

[mhahaikyuus]

mafia geto pt 2

continuation of: part 1

tags:; established relationship, mafia geto, fluff, smut, mentions of gun, violence, domestic relationship

words: 1.6K

MINORS DNI

a/n: likes and reblogs appreciated

Your first date was six months ago

You were still a student but Geto had a personal driver to drive to and from campus/work. You basically lived at his house at his request, “I can take care of you, please just let me.” 

As much as you adored him you had to set boundaries with Suguru. Telling him you were still going to keep your job, go to school, and keep your apartment. He agreed reluctantly but respected your wishes.

Geto lived in a mansion and when you first came to his home you thought it was one of those historical houses that you could tour in. Geto gave you a key with a kiss on the lips telling you, “Choose a wing it’s yours.” 

Your eyes almost bulged out of your head at his words, “Suguru...what are you talking about a wing is mine?” 

“I want you to have whatever you want and too feel comfortable. I live alone and I want to spend time with you here. So pick a wing and I can have someone pick up whatever you want.” He said guiding you further into the house. Your feet seemed to be planted before his hands held your shoulders walking down the huge hallway.

“Baby I feel like I’m taking advantage." You admitted looking at the rug beneath your feet that had to cost more than your yearly salary. 

“You’re not. But if you are taking advantage I’m glad it’s me.” He smiled his head leaning down to your own height. His pretty violet eyes studying your nervous ones. 

“You’re not funny.” You whined. 

The 6′3 man picked you up bridal style making you shriek in laughter as he walked into one of the wings giving you a tour against your will. 

Geto adjusted you to his side and opened the door walking in, “What do you think? If it’s not your style we can call designers and make it whatever you want. You sighed leaning into his neck at the beautiful bedroom you both stood in Your face tucked into his neck as your other hand rested on the other side of his face. “I have an apartment ya know. You don’t need to do any of this. I can come over here normally.” The bedroom was bigger than your apartment. Geto dropped you on the bed and climbed beside you pulling your waist to make you straddle him. 

“Stay with me, please.” He whined a voice only you had the chance to hear and it was enough to make you melt. 

“Okay baby.” You agreed before leaning down to kiss him. Making out with his soft lips and his hands running over your body. 

You never outright asked him where he got his money but after a couple months together you connected the dots. 

It was a 75 percent chance whenever you went to touch his waist a gun would be either tucked in his waistband or in his pocket, causing you to momentarily pause and pull it out and drop it on a nearby surface. 

He had a jaw dropping number in his bank account with nothing to spend it on, well until you. Thats how he was able to continuously buy items from your job and brush it off like it was buying a candy bar at a gas station not a thirty thousand dollar watch. 

When you were sleeping, after trying to wait for him to come home, Geto walked into your shared bathroom coming home late from work. The light was enough for you to squint your eye open and in your blurry vision you saw your boyfriend covered in blood before shutting the door. His usual crisp white button down, face, and hands stained with copious amounts of blood. He took a shower cleaning him of his sins before climbing into bed with you. 

It confirmed your suscipions when you woke up after a long night with Geto. You were In the kitchen eating a snack leg swinging on the bar stool, when an emergency meeting took place. About 50 guys all armed with guns and suits with scowling faces all flooded into Geto’s office. You didn’t want or need to know what happened but gun shots were sounded off and yelling heard across the mansion. You shut the door to your room and turned on the tv with a snack ignoring whatever was happening in your house. 

Geto came in about 10 minutes later with a scowl dropping his watch on his nightstand and picked you up like you were nothing using you to release his anger, pressing and choking you into the mattress then afterwards gently loving you like you were fragile. He pounded you into the mattress until you were a drooling mess trying to run from his rough thrusts but he would wrap a hand around your throat and put his leg up onto the bed to really make you cum until the sheets were soaked through.

Whispering the filthiest shit in your ear, "Don't run angel. You're taking it so good, are you going to let me slut you out? Give me what I want?"

He asked into your ear as you whined into the pillow as his rough thrusts made your eyes roll back as his large thumbs pressed into your lower back making you arch under the huge man. Suguru would kiss up your body muttering small “Thank you, thank you, thank you. you’re so beautiful. like an angel.” as he rolled off of you and you were trying to regain your senses as he cleaned you up. 

You still had your apartment but Geto had cut a deal with you landlord and bought your entire building. Rent paid for as long as you stayed and he didn’t even tell you until you called your landlord confused about your bank account that month, seeing your payment had been refunded. 

Walking into this office you opened the door no knock or warning, only a privilege you had, to talk to him “Suguru?” “Yes love.” He said not even looking up from whatever contract he was reviewing at his desk. His thick hair almost a curtain over his tired eyes. Sleeves rolled up and the first two buttons open. “Why was I told that my rent is paid…indefinitely.” You said with a tone to your voice that Suguru didn’t like.

His pen stopped moving at your question,“Because I bought your building darling.” 

“Suguru! We talked about this. You can’t keep spending all your money on me.” You said exasperated. You told him this multiple times but he never listened. A relationship where the man paid for dates and a gift for special occasion was normal to you but he took this to a different level with spending money.

Suguru was at your beck and call and did whatever you said. He would never want to jeopardize your relationship with him not listening or communicating properly with you. However, you paying for anything with your own money was not going to happen, ever. Suguru hated arguing with you. Every time you had the discussion he would agree with a small smile and do it anyway. That was never going to change

He turned his chair and gestured for you to sit in his lap. You reluctantly came around his desk and sat with moody eyes and Geto laughed, “Stop pouting because I take care of you.” “You’re not taking care of me, you’re using too much money on me and you need to stop.” 

“No. I love spending money on you. You spending all my money makes me hard.” He said shifting his hips so you could feel him.

You rolled your eyes and lightly smacked his chest, “I’m serious.” 

“Me too. Darling you have to stop feeling bad. If there was a problem I wouldn’t spend the money.” He shrugged. 

“You’re so annoying.” You groaned, “You're going to get mad one of these days and break up with me and then send me an itemized receipt making me bankrupt.”

He narrowed his violet eyes at your words squeezing your hip. “What? Now you’re preparing to leave me angel?” 

You laughed giving him a deep kiss, “Of course not.” 

“Good because I can’t sleep without you. Now that I know all it takes is you, you’re not going anywhere.” He said his thumb stroking your face lovingly.  

You looked down from his eyes to his neck. His dress shirt, 2 buttons open and a loose tie hanging in a knot at mid chest. Your boyfriend looked sexy especially when he said all the right things. 

Grabbing the tie you tugged him into you. Your nails digging into his nape making both of you groan into each other’s mouths. You loved running your hands through his silky black long hair.

Pulling away from you he dug into his back pocket and pulled out something for you. 

“This is bad timing but I got you something.” He said with a small smile with purple eyes shining with happiness. His own lips shining with your saliva.

He handed you a card. “I got you a black card, unlimited spending.” 

You gently rested your head on his chest not saying a word. He already knew what you were going to say. Geto tucked the card in your back pocket before smacking your ass making you laugh. “You’re impossible baby.”

Every night you dressed in one of his shirts and he clung onto you. His arm wrapped around your waist and his weight crushing you. 

When the sun would peak through the curtains he wakes you up with morning sex until your legs felt like jelly. Geto would carry you to breakfast in his shirt with a spread already on the table. 

Your legs laying over his under the table as you two ate. His other hand gently rubbing your leg. He needed to be touching you when you were in his presence. 

Geto was not sure of a lot but he knew that once he experienced your love there was no turning back.

[alcestas-sloboda]

The last time I was genuinely happy was in the summer of 2021.

My grandad called me and told me to come outside so he could buy me some ice cream. We stood there discussing what I was planning to do in Odesa, and he joked about our grandmother being a hard woman to live with, but we loved her nonetheless. Five days later, I would lose him. Six months later, the full-scale invasion would start. Nothing would ever be the same again.

That could've been you in Bucha, you know that? they didn’t choose who to kill, they killed everyone on their path? Your luck, then, that you were born in the western part of the country. The only thing you lost are your childhood memories of Crimea, Melitopol, and Zatoka, not your home. But the war continues: your flat could still become the final destination of a hypersonic missile. Don't forget it. Hopefully, you won't hear the siren that night and will die in your sleep. Hopefully, they will find the remains. Hopefully, it will be the entire family, so you won't suffer without each other. Because at the end of the day, your death would mean nothing but pain for your loved ones. The world will keep on spinning; missile parts will be sent to Russia. People will still pity the Russians, but they won't pity you or your family.

Suddenly, you realize that you no longer believe in what you believed before. Do you believe in something good? Well, your small, naive inner child is still alive then. Barely. What? You thought those institutions were meant to maintain peace? That's funny. Probably, that peace is more needed in expensive restaurants hundreds of kilometers away from the frontline.

I genuinely don't know why I'm writing this post again. Is it to be seen by the same 10 people? I know they feel the same. We just sit here together, slowly going mad, hoping someone will finally react. Maybe someone who reblogs your fandom post will find some sympathy. But sympathy is not what I need; I want to be heard.

Fuck you watched "Don't Look Up" with an ironic smile on your lips. And now, you are the main character.

All of you here preach about giving voice to the oppressed, but are you really doing it? The moment you become uncomfortable, it suddenly becomes not your business - "keep ___ out of politics." God, I would've loved that. I would've loved to not know anything. Not to know the names of military equipment. Not to understand that your life can literally depend on the presidential election in a completely different country.

I'm so tired of fighting for my right to be heard. I'm so tired of having to prove my right to live, to speak my own language. "Your country doesn't exist," "Your language is artificial; speak human (Russian)." Don't be too emotional. Don't hate Russians. Don't wish them anything bad. Don't open your mouth. Don't call out organizations. Just shut the fuck up or die.

No one will care if the biggest country in Europe disappears. No one will care if millions die. If your culture will finally be dealt with, if Russia will finally succeed in doing so. A thousand years of history can burn down in just one night. No one will bat an eye.

The world will keep on spinning.

[triviallytrue]

Were there Russian Chaos Agents on tumblr in 2016?

First things first:

Things I got wrong in earlier posts on this:

@ms-disinformation didn't identify these accounts ahead of time, this blog started posting in 2019 and is focused on accounts that are likely to be bot-run

Relatedly, the accounts accused of being Russian state actors were accused of being trolls, not bots - they were almost undoubtedly human-run

Tumblr didn't announce the mass ban of these accounts until several months after they did it - they banned the accounts in fall of 2017 and announced them in March 2018.

What actually happened?

The Internet Research Agency is a Russian company accused of creating fake social media accounts to attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. On March 23, 2018, tumblr posted a list of accounts they claimed were linked to the IRA that they had terminated the previous fall. On November 16, 2018, they posted a second list of accounts given to them by law enforcement of other IRA-related accounts (unrelated to any election interference) that were also terminated.

How did tumblr identify these accounts?

tumblr has been extremely vague about the methodology used to find these accounts, but we do have another source: the Buzzfeed News journalist who wrote about the termination of these accounts back on February 6, 2018 (over a month before tumblr's post) identified them by cross-referencing tumblr accounts with twitter's list of IRA-affiliated accounts, finding similar or identical usernames and profile pictures.

Unfortunately, this only kicks the can further down the road - how did twitter identify these accounts? These sites don't want to reveal their methods, but this study offers some insights into the behavior of these accounts and possible tools used to identify them.

Why should we believe tumblr's narrative?

There are a lot of reasons I'm convinced that tumblr is being honest with us about this, the simplest of which is that they don't have a good reason to lie about this. tumblr nukes accounts all the time without disclosing its reasons - if they wanted to get rid of an arbitrary list of accounts they dislike, they could do that and none of us would know. They deleted these accounts months before posting any explanation at all, and the only backlash they received was in articles like the Buzzfeed News article above slamming them for not talking about the Russian troll problem, instead of accusing them of terminating activists.

It's also not like this is some tactic that tumblr has employed frequently - the list of IRA-affiliated accounts has been untouched since 2018. This was a once-off, not part of any organized strategy to suppress certain types of posters.

Moreover, tumblr users with similar post content were left untouched, including many that reblogged heavily from the IRA accounts - the Buzzfeed News article identifies one such blog (alwaysbewoke) who posted more or less the same type of antiracist, pro-Sanders activism (albeit without the eventual support for Trump) who wasn't deactivated.

It's also worth noting that the IRA is a real company and not a US boogeyman (even if some subsection of liberals use the phrase "Russian bot" as such) - recently, the leader of the Wagner group came forward and confirmed that he founded it and still finances and runs it, and he's relatively direct about the fact that it was used to interfere in US elections:

“Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere,” Prigozhin said in November, one day before the US midterm elections.

Finally, and most convincingly in my opinion, no one behind any of the over a hundred accounts on the tumblr IRA list or the thousands on the twitter one have come forward in the past six years to claim that they were wrongfully associated with the IRA and banned as a result.

Isn't that fascinating? Can you imagine what a story it would be, if social media sites were not only terminating activists but lying about why they were doing it? Do you think that not a single one of these hundreds of alleged activists thought of calling a sympathetic journalist, showing them their US driver's license, and asking them to a run a story? What about messaging their old mutuals, or making a new account, or finding a federated platform that won't delete them on sight? I can't find a shred of evidence that any of this ever happened, and that's pretty telling.

The funny part is, there's no real evidence that these accounts ever achieved anything, and indeed, reasons to doubt that they did. They operated in preexisting echo chambers and circulated mostly true stories with a specific slant to them, with the occasional dash of outright lies. Certainly, it's hard to argue that they were less reliable or more biased than your average Fox News article. But arguing that they weren't Russian propaganda seems pretty difficult.

[sarahowritesostucky]

Bucky's Hands 🫠 And Angry GIF Racists

Originally I saved these GIFs off of Google and posted them with a similar caption as they have below. Nothin' special. Just meant to be a cute drool-over-Bucky post. It got a few thousand likes, which was neat.

A couple of months and a few hundred reblogs later, the girl who apparently made the GIFS messaged me--very pissily, informing me that since she made them I had no right to post them and how dare I!

I told her I don't see any issue with saving a GIF off of Google to use in a post or embed in a fic, etc. They are simply clips from movies, after all.

She furiously told me to remove my post.

TBH, I was about to ask if she'd be cool with a link to her account for credit (even tho the GIF already had her watermark on it). And if she'dve said no, then I was prepared to delete the post just to shut her up. I figured she was 14 or something. Angry on the internet, what are ya gonna do, right?

But I decided not to say that or do that, when within an hour of her messaging me, about six of her mutuals started messaging me nastily. And then one or more of them began anon-bombing me with hate. At least one of them included racial slurs, ethnic slurs, and wished for/encouragements for me to go self-delete.

Since she or one or more of her friends are such ugly, racist people, I chose to say "bye bye, I will continue unapologetically saving and using GIFs from Google."

Then, to illustrate the point of how stupid she was being, I went and took about 90 seconds - 2 minutes of my time and made. the same. exact. GIFs. Boy was that "unique artwork" hard to make 🙄.

So in case somebody doesn't know my stance on this: I will always credit and never repost other people's paintings, drawings, digitals, sculptures, poems, fanfics, fanvideos, edits, manips, belly button lint weaving pieces, blurbs, and poetry ... but I'm not going to refrain from using a widely-available GIF if the maker of said GIF isn't readily knowable. If they are, great, I'll give credit. If not, oh well.

And if floridamatista (I think that was the name?) or any of your sweet, racist friends ever come across this post, I encourage you to reevaluate your value system in life, that you felt it appropriate to throw out the n word, death threats, and antisemitic slurs over. a fucking. GIF.

The hands, the veins, those thick wrists 🤤 Lord, I did not need a new kink today, but alas I have found one anyway.

(Go ahead and use without credit, y'all. Since they're, ya know, clips from movies)

[walks-the-ages]

Posted January 2024: "I'm not a zionist! How dare this person put me on a zionist blocklist without any proof!!!!! They're just being antisemitic!!!!!"

Me, June 2024: searches their blog for 'Israel' or 'Palestine'.

Me: finds tons of heinous, racist, genocidal propaganda on their blog claiming that Palestinians raise their children to die for the cause, they use the tag "free Palestine from Hamas" all the time, they're reblogging from known Zionists like Prismatic-Bell and others, they're claiming that Palestinians regularly enslave Israelis to do housework (???), that "hundreds if not thousands of Jewish women were raped on October 7th" and "Land Back means Jewish people need to be able to reclaim ~Israel~!" Etc.

Anyways, Valcaira for your free zionist blocklist.

"Doesn't identify as a zionist" and thinks that makes a difference when their entire blog is filled with zionist propaganda and debunked talking points. And this is a full 5 months after crying about being blocked as a zionist -- search their blog further back than *three days ago as of this post* and I'm sure you'll see even more horrifying crap.

If it walks like a duck and qwuaks like a duck, it's a duck.

If someone reblogs zionist propoganda and uses zionist dogwhistles and talking points, they're a zionist. Even if they ' don't identify as one'.

Hmm, do you think zionists are going to try to co-opt trans and genderqueer language next (" I don't identify as a zionist, therefore I am not a zionist") on their ever-lasting , failing quest to make genocidal acceptable to the masses?

Screenshots below. Note the time stamps of "three days ago" reblogging a post that was only made "six days ago".

Aka, just this WEEK they're reblogging zionist crap, while complaining five MONTHS ago about how zionist is a dirty word to silence jews 🤦

After blocking this zionist and making sure you check peoples blogs from now on for the dogwhistle of "zionist is a word used to demonize jews The Left™ don't like" ,

please check out Kareem's GoFundMe, he was one of the victims of Gaia Thomas 's scam* , and he has not reached his goal yet from months ago because of the original fundraiser being closed by Gaia Thomas!

His goal is €40,000 and so far is at €18,246 !

*Gaia Thomas arranged multiple gofundmes to evacuate Palestinians, then tried to steal the $50,000+ for herself, before public backlash and potential legal ramifications made her return the funds and close the fundraisers-- which in turn, meant that the original Palestinians did not receive a single cent of the original donations, and had to find someone else to create a new fundraiser with.