#I’ve been trying to be patient with myself the last few days

[adonis-koo]

Time heals everything so just let it do it’s work. If u can’t stomach the thought of love, then don’t force it. It will come when it’s ready.

Ik it’s sucks to think that maybe he wasn’t as into you as he said, but at least you were honest and loved them to the fullest extent which is really admirable.

And plz give him a side glare upon my behalf whenever u see him at work

my intention has been settled the entire day as ‘it’s okay to grieve what wasn’t meant for me’

i ended up talking to him outside at work yesterday and we talked about how we both felt, how it went down, it was…a very bittersweet feeling, but I understood where he was coming from and why he made his decision, I gave him my few thoughts in relation and spared him all the feelings I’m reconciling now.

we left things on good terms, because even if it wasn’t love, we still cared for one another deeply, and that still meant something.

does it still hurt? it does, but will I be okay eventually? I will, I do firmly believe it. another mantra I’ve been repeating is ‘I will never miss out on what is meant for me’

also I unfortunately don’t have the heart to sideglare him and it’s also no longer possible because yesterday was my last day 🎉 I’m off to get another job working with kids and I’ll be getting my licensing for it.

I’m very excited because this something I’ve been wanting to do for a long while and just didn’t realize there was a niche to get in to start. will it work out? hell if I know, I thought this would work out and it turned into a total dumpster fire 💀

but regardless I’m embracing the journey for what it is. anyways I’m gonna stop using this blog as my journal now, because I’ve accidentally projected on here for two months straight and if you scroll far enough you can watch this train wreck go down in 4K and I’d that isn’t embarrassing then idk what is💀

[floral-hex]

I just get so tired of waking up every day and having to claw my way up to some emotional baseline

[peachesofteal]

Simple Math / Part Fifteen

Simple Math masterlist

Ghost/Soap/female reader AO3 - 4.7k words Tags: 18+ mdni, nurse!reader, hospital setting, domesticity, feelings of anxiety, self doubt, anxiety about sex. PTSD. Tiny bit of a panic attack. Tiny smidge of Simon's past if you know where to look. Comfort. Cockwarming. Barebacking, anal fingering, masturbation, praise kink, daddy kink. Basically the guys fuck while Bunny watches.

You’ve been having dreams about the hospital.

It’s always the same one.

You’re running a code with an intern and a fleet of baby nurses. No one is moving as fast as you are, no one is following direction. You’re on fast forward, they’re on rewind.

Every time, the dream starts and ends the same way. For some reason, you can’t see the patient’s face. You work on them for what feels like hours, and then only once it’s been called does the mental block disappear, you look down-

To see yourself.

Intubated. Bruised and broken.

Dead.

“Bunny.”

“Hmm?” You glance up across the counter, feeling the focus of Simon’s eyes before you see them.

“Everything alright?” Pen babbles ‘moremoremoremore’ while making the sign at the same time.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He mimics Penny’s sign, and then gives her a yes, spooning more yogurt into her mouth.

“You’ve been standing in the same spot for the last ten minutes, staring into your coffee.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry… I’m just a little… scatterbrained this morning.”

“Still having that dream?” It’s been a week and a half since it started, and a few days since you finally confided in Simon and Johnny it was bothering you. “Do you think it might be related to going back to work this week?” You shrug.

“Maybe? I don’t know… I’ve never dreamed of working on… myself.” His jaw flexes, and then he sighs.

“I’ve been thinking…” Penny squawks, demanding the attention of the room, and you pull some blueberries from the counter and put them on her plate. “My therapist is taking new patients. I don’t want to push you before you’re ready, but I’d like you to consider it.” The grimace slides onto your face without preamble. Sure, you’ve considered therapy in the past, but it’s a risk. Mandated reporting, paper trails, everything you don’t need.

“I don’t need therapy right now.”

“You have PTSD.” He says point blank, and you blink. Your mind fractures, little pieces twisting and turning, trying to knit together a larger picture.

“No- I- I’m not… it’s…” You’re a medical professional, don’t you know what PTSD looks like?

“It’s hard to see, in yourself.” Simon senses the confusion and tries to soothe it away, cool balm on a burn.

You suppose he’s not wrong. It’s not unrealistic, you having PTSD, but you’ve never been confronted with it. Never been forced to face the truth.

No one’s ever known you well enough, to see.

It stings. It stings for some reason, and you don’t know why.

“I’m sorry.” He stands, moving around the counter to stand in front of you. “I want to help you, bun, but I should have approached that differently.” You shake your head, relenting into the steady hand at your back, and tip your face into his chest. The confrontation of the truth aches, but there’s comfort in Simon’s touch, understanding, and you relent to it, drifting away inside his tender hold.

“What’s goin’ on?” Johnny’s close, appearing in the kitchen after sleeping in. He was deep in his own dreams when you woke up, sweet like angel in the clouds, buried in the pillows, and you couldn’t stand to wake him.

Simon rumbles something over your head. You can’t make it out, ear covered by his bicep, and you turn your head to peek, reaching for Johnny.

“Hey, pretty girl.”

“Hi.”

“Why don’t ye come lay down wit’ me on the couch?” He coos, stroking a hand over your hair. “’m not quite awake yet.” Simon gives you a squeeze, and you nod.

“Yeah, okay.”

Johnny holds you close. His nose in your neck, fingertips carefully tracing over your skin, heat at your back, he calms you, comforts you, lulls your stiff muscles languid. He’s so good at it, pulling and kneading until you settle, and it dawns on you he’s had practice.

“Would you tell me about you and Simon?”

“What do ye want to know?”

“What was it like… in the beginning. When you got together.” He kneads your hip, thoughtful for a quiet moment, and then takes a deep breath.

“He was difficult. Didnae wan’ to let me in, no matter how hard I tried. Had to corner him in his room on base just to get him to kiss me.” Johnny chuckles low, rubbing your shoulder. “Took him forever, to break down, let me see him, really see him, for the first time. I had glimpses, here and there. Moments in the field, on base, at the bar with the team when we’d decompress but… it took a lot of work. He tried to push me off, hide away.”

“Why?

“It’s his story to tell ye, bunny. An’ he will, in time.” He sighs. “He’s always been like this, strong, steadfast, more serious than me, but he buried a lot of things, deep. Always was very aware of it, jus’ not willing to show it to anyone else. Wanted to be a ghost.”

“But… he’s okay."

“He’s okay. Has some moments where he gets lost, still, but works through ‘em, wit’ me or on his own.” He kisses your neck, soft enough to tickle, and you shiver. “He’s really good at this, bein’ a da, takin’ care of a family. Treats us all like his little unit. I miss him too much when ‘m away. Pen too.”

“I’m sure.” His lips graze your shoulder, humming.

“An’ ye. When I go back, I’ll be thinkin’ of ye all the time.” When he goes back. The idea is chilling, a douse of cold water. It’s felt so far away, the idea of Johnny returning to his job, the thing that brought you to him in the first place.

“But that won’t be for a while, right? I mean, you’re still healing.”

“It won’t be for a while.” He assures, though there’s something in his voice, pinched and pained. You don’t ask, don’t push, choosing to close your eyes instead, nestled in his arms, safe.

“This is the worst.” You’re whining. You know you’re whining, know you sound like a child, but it spills out of you without stopping.

“I know sweetheart.” Simon screws the cap onto a travel mug, giving you a sympathetic smile. They’re both up with you, before the sun, listening to you moan.

You shouldn’t be going to work at this hour. You should be awake, puttering around, working your rhythm back to normal, getting oriented to working at night.

You’ve never hated your manager more. She insisted she was sorry, that she had no choice but to fill the overnight shift. She assumed, she said, the new nurse would want to go to days when you got back, but she’s taken a liking to it.

She’s taken your shift.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad? An’ ye’ll see me tomorrow when I come in for therapy.” That is an upside at least, knowing you’ll be able to see him, see them both, at work.

But the rest of it, simply put, sucks.

“We should probably get going.” Simon kisses Johnny goodbye, and you’re drawn to them, sidling up in their orbit. Johnny wraps an arm around you, mouth to your temple.

“Have a good first day back, bunny. I’ll be thinking of ye.” You turn, grazing your lips on his, and he seals the kiss, drenching it in care, sweetness.

“Bye.”

Simon walks you all the way to the door.

Your resistance at the initial idea slowly fades as the sun peeks over the city. It’s different with Simon at your side, the paranoia and rampant fear infecting the atmosphere wherever you go is farther away.

You trust him. You’re starting to believe they may be able to keep you safe.

He holds your hand for most of the trip.

It’s… nice. Once you make it to the door, he turns and tucks his fingers under your chin, holding your gaze like a magnet. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.” He presses his lips to your forehead, and you lean into it, eyes closed.

“Have a good day, bunny.”

Work is absolute hell.

Dayshift is so different from nights, and you have trouble adjusting. The turnover rate at the hospital is fairly high, so when you badge in and get started, you hardly recognize anyone.

Except, Marshall.

He’s standing outside the pit when you round the corner, devilish grin aimed at one of the nurses you don’t recognize. New probably. Sheep in a lion’s den.

You clear your throat. His head snaps up.

“Well, well, well… looks who back from vacation.”

“Marshall.” You greet, barely looking at him, tapping through your tablet. “I wasn’t on vacation. I was out on medical leave. Big difference.”

“Right.” He takes you in from head to toe. “Rotator cuff, huh?”

“Mhmm.”

“Surgical?”

“No.” The other nurse watches you with interest, before scurrying away when a bell chimes. “Still having inappropriate relationships all over the hospital, I see.” He raises an eyebrow.

“You’re one to talk.” Ice cracks across your forced smile. He smirks. “Heard you’ve got yourself two boyfriends.” You suck your teeth. Nia.

“Considering he’s no longer my patient, it’s hardly inappropriate.” With the best timing, his phone rings, pulling his focus, and you slip away.

Fucking asshole.

Simon opens the front door for you and is careful not slam it closed.

“Penny asleep?”

“Johnny’s trying now. We’ll see if he has any luck. She’s been fightin’ it.” The kitchen smells like garlicky lemon, and you peek over his shoulder to see a large saucepan filled with linguini, capers, and shrimp. Your mouth waters.

“That smells amazing.” He takes your bag from you and hangs in on a hook from the hall tree.

“Scampi. We remembered you said it was one of your favorites, and we thought we’d spoil you a little bit. Celebrate your first day back.” Your cheeks burn hot, and to your horror, tears build up through your nose to your eyes. His brows crinkle together. “Hey, what is it?”

“That’s just… it’s really nice. You don’t have to.” Someone celebrating something with you, for you, is alien. The memories of the beginning of your relationship with Phillip are long gone, twisted and gnarled into black rot. It’s how he charmed you, wooed you, brought you closer and closer until they all but faded and you were left with only the darkness. The vice grip of his hands. His satisfied, sickening smile every time you closed your eyes.

“It’s not a ‘have to’ thing, sweetheart. We want to.” He skates his fingers over yours, pulling them to his mouth. “I know it’s hard to get used to.” You’re a little bewildered by it, the care, the consideration, even the memory of something you mentioned off hand.

“I… thank you.” He kisses your temple.

“Go shower. You smell like a hospital.”

“This was so good. Thank you again.” Your hands are woven together under your chin, rich wine sauce still present on the back of your tongue.

“Aye, thank ye.” Johnny winks at Simon, who rolls his eyes.

“Here, let me-“

“I got it.”

“No, you cooked.” You protest with a pout as they both rise.

“Johnny, sit.”

“Can wash dishes, ye know. I’m not helpless.” A sliver of twilight passes over Simon’s expression, not quite darkness but still full of a looming shadow until he sighs, relenting.

“Alright.” Your lips purse.

“What about me?”

“Ye jus’ sit on the couch and look pretty, bun. Willnae take us more than a few minutes.”

‘Just sitting on the couch’ lasts for all of five minutes before you’re antsy, rolling to your feet and padding into the kitchen.

You stop dead at the corner of the counter.

They’re making out. More than making out, Simon is swallowing Johnny’s whines with big breaths, his hand down the front of his pants. You buzz, thighs pressing together without permission, spine tingling heat awakening in your blood with zeal.

“Ah, shite-“

“Shhh. Be good.” Simon admonishes, but smiles into the kiss, wrist working a rhythm in Johnny’s sweatpants. He pulls away, chin tilted, looking down his nose with an eyebrow raised, almost condescendingly, but still grinning. “Feel good? Just need some relief?” Johnny’s moan is strangled in his throat, and you’re about to turn the corner in the shame, mortified you’re essentially spying on them, when Simon looks at you like he knows you’ve been there the whole time. “Like what you see, sweetheart?” You whimper. It slips out, unbidden, and Johnny turns, forehead pressed to Simon’s cheek. His hips are trying to jerk into the grip that has slowed, and he groans.

“Si.”

“Relax.” Simon stills him, pulling his hand free. “Maybe bunny wants to play too.” You give them a nervous smile, butterflies building in your stomach. You’re scared, there’s no other emotion to describe it. There’s fear, bad memories, anxiety building in the back of your throat, but at the same time, desire pushes you forward. You trust them, and it’s reached a critical point. You want to try.

“I… maybe if we s-started slow… I’m not sure…”

“That’s okay.” Simon coaxes, wrapping an arm around Johnny’s waist, hand splayed possessively on his stomach. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Their bed is an enchanted place.

There’s love in it, beguiling affection that transfers to you, dots down your throat to your chest, your clavicle, ass pressed into the hardened swell of Johnny’s cock.

It’s enough to strike down your fear, pry you open, lecherous want infiltrating your mind, your soul.

Their dynamic is crystal clear. Simon is natural in his mastery of both Johnny and you, the leader, the maestro. His forbearance at slowly peeling you free, layer by layer, puts you at ease, calms you enough you let him take your pants off, leaving you in only your underwear and the t shirt you put on before dinner. He folds you up against Johnny, careful to mind his sore spots, the pieces still healing, lips finding the plush fold at your ribcage.

“Sweet little bunny.” He glides careful fingertips over your panties. “Can I touch you here?” You draw a deep breath.

“Yeah.” Johnny’s lips graze your neck, and he sweep up over your belly towards your nipples, under your shirt.

“An’ can I touch ye here?”

“Mm- mhmm.” You buck into them, sensation building between your legs, lust cascading to where Simon’s fingers slip into your underwear and down the seam of your pussy.

“You’re wet, sweetheart. Is this for us?” You nod, Johnny tickling circles across your breasts, playing back and forth, pinching and stroking gently.

They’re both taking it slow, cautious, and there’s one half of you wanting to rip into them, and vice versa, while the other half is terrified. So far, the reckless abandon side is winning, but when Simon grazes over your clit, the crest of your fear bottoms out in the pit of your stomach. Johnny flexes his hips, the weight of his cock between the curve of your ass, and the combination of it, the touch now overwhelming, stream of thoughts turning panicked and unstoppable like a bolder rolling down hill, steals your breath.

In the wrong way.

“S-stop.” You freeze, immobilized, muscles turned from molten lava to stone, eyes wide, lungs rasping. Simon immediately creates distance, while Johnny jerks backward, palm steady on your shoulder, but separated otherwise.

“Ye’re alright, bunny.”

“Take a breath.” Simon coaches, maintaining eye contact, and you nod shakily, anchoring yourself to Johnny’s tender hold. You manage a breath, not so far gone you’re spiraling, and it’s deep, without a hitch or a studder. “That’s great. You’ve got it.”

“I’m sorry.” You whisper, disappointed. You’ve let yourself down, let them down-

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” He murmurs, understanding and slow. “We’re done. There’s no rush.”

“No!” You blurt. He raises an eyebrow. “Sorry, I just… I don’t want it to end I’m just not sure I can… do it.” His head tilts, surprise contained with a slow smile, and Johnny hums.

“Do ye wantae watch, pretty girl?” You nod shyly.

“Is that… is that okay?”

“It’s more than okay.” Simon rasps, stroking your cheek. “Sit up against the headboard.”

The two of them move into position seamlessly, sweat and breath thick in the air, a wet fog blanketed around you. A bottle of lube discarded on the mattress, a pillow under Johnny’s hip to cushion him. He’s settled on his side, arranged carefully to avoid pressure on his injuries, and they both face you.

Simon kisses his neck, sucking urgent marks into his skin before he palms Johnny's ass, hard and then slips between his cheeks. You’re unable to see his hand, but when Johnny’s eyes go wide and he groans hoarsely, your clit throbs.

“There you go.”

“Simon.” He whines, high pitched and needy.

“Bloody tight, Johnny. Been so long since I’ve taken care of you, huh?”

“A- fuck, aye.” He presses backwards into Simon, and pants. The scene makes you drool, the eagerness on Johnny’s face, the slow movements of Simon at his back, his lips against Johnny’s cheek, neck, murmuring gently. You’re nearly shivering, ache screaming between your legs, and instinct takes over as your slip your hand inside your underwear. You’re slick, so wet it dampens your curls, and your fingertips slide over your clit, zaps of electricity echoing through your nerve endings.

Simon looks up at you through heavy lids, mouth obscured by Johnny’s shoulder. “Are you touching yourself sweetheart?” You nod, not trusting yourself to speak, afraid it will come out a garbled mess. “You want to come when I fill our boy up?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Keep going.’ He orders, and then shifts, pressing his cock to Johnny’s entrance. Johnny moans, and your own hips jerk.

Simon pushes slowly, focused on Johnny’s face, cataloging every expression. “Y’alright?” Johnny nods, lip tucked into his teeth. “Christ. You’re strangling me.” He thrusts sharply, sealing his hips to the soft curves in front of him, and Johnny cries out in a high-pitched wail, eyes slamming shut. He fumbles with his cock, squeezing at the root, but Simon pulls him away. “Not yet, sweet boy. Need you to last for us.” You’re trapped in a shockwave that hasn’t quite reached shore yet, tension building with each swipe over your sensitive bud.

“Bunny…” Johnny rasps, and your apprehensions wane.

“Does it feel good?” you whine, and he nods, groaning. Simon builds his thrusts into an unrelenting pace and cups Johnny’s belly, stroking down, pushing against the strain of muscle there, Johnny’s eyes rolling into the back of head. You wonder if Simon can feel it, the pressure, the bulge of his hard cock, shoving deeper and deeper.

“Daddy-“ Johnny shrieks, and Simon’s mouth curls into a satisfied smirk.

“That’s right, good boy. Fuck… perfect little hole f’me. All mine.” He practically growls it, and you writhe, flicking down your pussy and back up, breathing hitching in a frantic pace. Johnny’s delirious, hands scrambling across the sheets, half reaching for you, half reaching for nothing. “Isn’t he perfect, bunny?”

“Ah- yeah.” Your tongue is numb, body burning. Sweat slicks down the middle of your back, and you ride your hand violently.

“Please.” He’s begging, frenzied, fingers twisting, and Simon reaches for his cock, wrapping his fist around his length. It doesn’t take long until Johnny’s back bows, and your toes curl. You hiss. They move together wildly now, a push pull in a frenetic dance, and your eyes slip closed, sinking into the slick sounds of Simon fucking Johnny open, Johnny moaning, whispers passed back and forth. Simon cups his jaw, tilting his face towards you, and they both watch, drifting from your eyes down to where you’re trying to make yourself come, clit swollen and throbbing.

“She’s such a good girl, isn’t she? Touchin’ herself, watching you take my cock.”

“Pretty girl.” Johnny slurs through his gasps, body shaking with the power of Simon’s thrusts. He’s close, judging by the fevered look on his face, little gasps and whines tumbling from his mouth. Simon squeezes him, thick thumb rubbing over his slit.

“Come, bunny. Be good for daddy.” Simon coaches, and you tighten, cosmic explosion streaking behind your closed lids, the same time Simon grits out something under his breath, jaw tight, tugging relentlessly on Johnny’s cock until he’s crying out too, cum splattering up his belly and chest, Simon milking every last drop from his cock as he lazily strokes inside him.

Immediately, you gasp. Shocked at yourself, but not scared. Not nervous just… emboldened.

They both read it on you, and Johnny’s head lolls with a satisfied, lazy smile. Simon pulls free, rubbing Johnny’s hip sweetly, ducking into the bathroom to get a towel. He cleans him up carefully, gently, and Johnny’ reaches for your hand. You don’t turn away.

And when Simon urges you to tuck in between them for sleep, you do. More than willingly.

“He looks good.” Hot tea wafts from the cup in front of your nose. You’re on break, somewhat, watching Johnny work through his last few minutes of physical therapy, his face broken out in satisfied smile. His biceps flex. “Really good.”

“He’s been workin’ out at home, a bit. In the garage.”

“He shouldn’t be pushing it.”

“I know.” Simon squeezes your good shoulder. “He’s okay, bun. He’s strong. A bit too stubborn for his own good sometimes, but strong.”

“Dada.” Penny smacks an open palm against Simon’s chest, and he covers it with his own, bouncing her slightly.

“Look, Pen. Is that your Da in there? Is that him?” The therapist smiles at Johnny and pats him on the back, rubs his shoulder down to his elbow with wandering fingers. She’s pretty, and fit, tight ass, tiny hips. A sliver of self-doubt, self-consciousness pokes at you, and then jealousy nearly turns you green. Simon cocks his head with a laugh. “Easy, bun. She’s just doing her job, you know.”

“What? I know that. I’m fine.” You immediately blurt, and it does nothing for your cause.

“It’s cute. That you’re jealous.”

“I’m not,” you roll your eyes, “whatever.” He chuckles, and then starts to pass Penny to you.

“Can you hold her while I help him get his stuff together?”

“Sure, c’mere girlfriend.” You tuck her up into your chest, playing with her hair as she curls into you. “Sleepy huh? It’s past your nap time. I bet Dada keeps you up for an early bedtime tonight.” She coos. Her fingers tighten in the collar of your shirt.

And then a freight train rams itself in the deepest parts of your heart.

You lean against the wall to keep your balance.

This is not your baby, but she feels like yours. Her weight is familiar now. Her routines. Her signs and sounds.

It’s easy to close your eyes and imagine she’s yours.

It’s been days since you touched yourself in bed as Johnny and Simon had sex, and the scene, the desire, is burrowing itself in your brain.

You want more.

You want more so badly you wind up touching yourself in the shower, fingers stroking your clit until you're muffling a moan in your elbow when you come.

It doesn’t soothe the ache. You’re not sure what will.

So, when you’re done, and find them relaxing in bed, Johnny in boxers, an idea abruptly runs through your head.

Could you?

Your fingers twiddle with the hem of your shirt.

“Hi.”

“Hi?” Simon raises an eyebrow. Johnny stops his sketching to smile.

“I um. I wanted to… see… or ask for something.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing, I just… I was wondering if I could… sit on you.”

“Sit on us?” Simon’s brow furrows, but Johnny’s face lights up.

“Like, ye wannae sit on one of us?” He emphasizes the word sit, and Simon murmurs.

“Ah.”

“I just… I really want to… I want to move on.” The words take you by surprise. “I want to feel like a human again, like how I used to feel. Before I was like this. I think…”

“Taking back control of your body will bring you closer to healing.” Johnny looks at Simon, and there’s desperate sadness in their eyes. Their hands intertwine, gripping onto each other so hard it looks like it hurts.

The moment passes, gone like it was never there in the first place. Johnny turns back to you.

“Ye’ll have to sit on me, pretty girl.”

“But... your hip.”

“I can take it.” You nod. Not that you prefer one to the other, but you’re curious.

“Is there a reason why…”

“I’m too big, bunny. Especially if it’s been a while for you. We’ll need to ease you into it.” Johnny smirks, and you hide an excited shiver.

“Okay.”

You stretch yourself out with your own fingers at first, the process made easier by your orgasm in the shower, all the while both Simon and Johnny encourage you, coo at you, praise you.

You stay present. Focused.

“Take it slow,” Simon coaches when you straddle Johnny’s hips, “don’t rush it. Just take your time.” Hands on his shoulders, Simon reaches for his cock, sliding it through your lips, brushing your clit before angling it at your entrance. You take a deep breath.

“Okay.”

The first inch makes you whine. Johnny’s fingertips draw circles up and down your spine, his lips in your ear. “Good job, pretty girl. Just like that. Nice and easy.” Your eyes slip closed, and you take more, sliding down his cock, the burn of the stretch smarting tears in your eyes. Simon wipes them away.

“Our brave girl. You’re doing so well. Feel okay so far?”  

“Y-yeah.”

“Ye alright? Does it hurt?”

“A little.” You wince, taking another inch, glancing down. Your equilibrium pitches.

“Look at me.” Johnny redirects, head tilted back on a pile of pillows. “Jus’ look at me, bunny. You’re safe. I’ve got ye.” His hands guide your hips, keeping your pace even and slow, careful. Even when the anxiety invades your control, he steadies you. “It’s us, just us. We’re here, bunny. You’re okay.” The ache, the open sore spot spilling sticky, blackened tar, seals up. It's zippered shut, away from you, packed tight for another day. Another moment. The only thing you need to focus on is here, and now. With them. Johnny's jaw clenches. “Christ Si. She’s really tight.”

“I know.” He pushes some of Johnny’s hair from his forehead. “You’re both being so good. I’m proud of you.” The praise, the warmth from the both of him, glows in your heart. You’ve never felt so safe, so cherished, in your life. Again and again, they surprise you, teaching you how things you used to dread or shy away from can be enjoyed, valued.

This is how it should be. Love without fear. Intimacy without fear.

You’re fully split open on Johnny, stuffed full. It’s tender, calm in the low light of the bedroom, almost cozy. His thighs blaze under your ass, and the heat creeps like lava to your fingers and toes, turning you boneless, languid in his arms. Simon leans in to kiss your temple.

“How do you feel?”

“R-really full.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No just… stretched, I think?” You wiggle a little bit, and Johnny finally breaks eye contact, looking up at the ceiling with a groan.

“Try to be still bunny. We just want to get you used to the feeling. This isn’t about sex.” Simon's last comment earns Johnny a warning glance, and he nods, straightening.

“Right. Even though your perfect little pussy is drivin’ me mad-“

“Johnny.” Simon chides. “Bunny, can you lean forward for me?” His hand presses to the middle of the back, guiding you to rest your cheek on Johnny’s shoulder. “Good girl.”

The room lapses into silence that lasts, rhythm of your chest rising and falling syncing with Johnny’s, Simon humming, working a hand up and down your spine.

Up and down. Up and down.

You think you could do it now. Roll your hips and rise on your knees, sink back down to feel the pressure, the bludgeoning tip of Johnny’s long cock nestled at your cervix. You’re not sure, not confident, but somewhere in your dreams, you picture yourself milking him dry, riding his cock until you’re shattering.

“Si.” Johnny’s voice pitches to something you’ve never heard, low and heavily accented. “Will ye read?” Pages of a book flutter. You hadn’t realized your eyes had closed, but as Simon’s voice picks up a page with no pretense, you don’t fight it, allowing yourself to drift between them, cradled on Johnny’s body with a piece of him pulsing inside you.

It’s bliss. It’s love. You’re…. happy.

[daydreaming-nerd]

You Want a Baby? (Bat Boys x Female! Reader)

Based off of multiple resquests... and by all means request more of this shit. My Ruhn asks have been kind dry. Would hate for the frat pack to run a train on the reader...

AN: You guys I spent so much time on this I hope it lives up to expectation because this is my kind of thing.

Summary: It's the perfect storm, you're ovulating, all your mates happen to be home and they all want to see you pregnant with their child.

Warnings: Double penetration, breeding kink, size kink, possessive mates, Over stim, literally so many things I'm probably forgetting

Word count: 3738

It was that time of the month, well not THAT time. 

Fae periods were a bitch, that much was true. But fae ovulating? It was a whole different thing. The need to be touched, to be filled, was excruciating. Ever since I had found my mates, three of them to be exact, it was like all those sensations had been heightened. Every time I ovulated, all three of my mates couldn't be present. 

The first time Rhysand was meeting with Tarquin leaving only Cassian and Azriel to fuck me senseless. The next time around it was just Azriel to keep me sated. One of the most memorable times was last year when it was just Rhys and Cassian to help. However, I patiently waited for a day when all three mates would be here to take care of me, a day I secretly hoped would be today. 

I woke up this morning to an empty bed and a note that said they had all gone to Windhaven to check on the Illyrian camps. I didn’t mind their absence too much until later that afternoon when I felt my body start to sweat with need. I went to the bathroom to strip off my clothes, leaving me only in the black lingerie that Azriel had bought me for solstice last year. I couldn’t help but admire myself, running my hands down my body. It wasn’t until then that I realized what was going on, I was ovulating. 

The boys were in Windhaven which meant there was a possibility that they could all be here by tonight. But with the tensions in the Illyrian camps high, I knew it was most likely a long shot. So I spent the day dancing around the townhouse in nothing but my lingerie, loving the feeling of the fresh air on my skin. As the sky got darker I realized my mates weren’t likely to come home. 

I made my way upstairs to our oversized bed and tossed myself on top of the covers. I tried to sleep and push all thoughts of Rhysand’s hands, Azriel’s tongue and, Cassian’s cock from my mind. I was unsuccessful, and ended up finding myself writing all over our shared bed, begging for any kind of friction the sheets offer me. That’s how the boys found me, squirming around our bed in nothing but my lingerie. 

“Well, what do we have here?” Cassian drawled, leaning against the doorway.

I sat up straight, trying to act like I wasn’t about to reach a hand down my panties just seconds ago. 

“I told you both,” Azriel said smugly, walking into the room with Rhysand in tow. 

“Told them what?” I ask bringing my knees to my chest in a lame attempt to cover myself.

“I told them that you were ovulating today,” Azriel smirked. “I’ve been tracking your cycle since I got left out last time,” he looked to Cass and Rhys with a death glare. 

“We got back from Windhaven a few hours and decided to get a drink at Rita’s,” Rhysand explained, stalling towards where I sat on the bed. “We were talking about you.”

“You were?” I ask, sensing the seriousness in Rhysand’s voice. 

“Oh yes we were little one,” Cassian laughs. 

“We were talking about how amazing you would look pregnant,” Rhysand explained, his voice like liquid sex. 

“R-Really?” I say, not trusting my own voice. 

“Yeah,” Cassain answered, taking a step toward me.  “We think we're ready for a baby.” 

“Only if you’re ready though,” Rhys assured me. 

My heart skipped at their words. The idea of carrying any one of their children excited me. I couldn’t lie, I had been thinking about it since my last cycle. 

“What do you think, little one? Gonna let us put a baby in you tonight?” Azriel drawled, leaving a kiss on the shell of my ear. 

I couldn’t even speak, all the intelligent words leaving my brain. All I could think about was how feral the fae were when trying to conceive. My legs would’ve fallen apart if it wasn’t for my arms holding them together. I nodded my head, still unable to think. 

A collective growl filled the room as Azriel grabbed my arms and stood me up in the center of the room, leaving me on display for each of my mates. They closed in on me instantly and I had to crane my neck up to meet each of their gazes. Cassian’s hand slid under the strap of my bra inspecting me thoroughly. 

“Which one of you bought her this little set?” Cassian said, slipping the strap of my bra off my shoulder while Rhysand worked on the opposite strap. 

“I did,” Azriel said, rubbing circles into my hips as he left open mouth kisses on my shoulders. 

“Well thank you Az,” Rhys smirked, unclasping my bra. 

My body felt like it was on fire from three sets of hands roaming up and down it. Even if I closed my eyes I could easily tell who touched me where. The sensation of it all had me tossing my head back on Azriel’s chest, trusting him to support my body. He grasped my hips tightly to keep my knees from buckling as Cassian and Rhys stared at my breasts now free of the tight black lingerie.

“Look at those perfect tits Az,” Rhysand drawled. 

I felt Azriel’s large hand drift up my torso and to my neck pulling me against his body even more so I could feel his hard cock pressed up against my back. His hand on my throat gently pushed my head to look at him as he said back to Rhysand

“They are perfect,” he smirked, craning his neck down to capture my lips in his. 

“And soon they’ll be full of milk,” Cassian pointed out with a smirk, swiping a calloused thumb over my nipple.

Rhysand bends his head down to take one of my aching nipples into his mouth sucking it taut. The gesture catches Cassian’s attention and he leans down to give the same treatment to the other side. The sensation has me arching my back aching to be closer to them. I feel Azriel’s hands grip my hips and yank me against his body again. His hand comes to grip my throat once more as he sticks his tongue down my throat earning a moan from me. I feel Cassian’s lips pull off my tit with a pop as he watches me and Azriel. 

“Gods sometimes I forget how tiny she is,” Cassian drawls running his hands up and down my sides. “Look at her with Az she’s like half his size.” 

Rhys stops his menstrations on my other breast to see what Cassian is talking about, “She’s practically half all our sizes Cass,” Rhys chuckles. 

“Gods I just wanna toss her around like a little doll,” Cassian curses. 

“Do it,” Azriel smirks, pulling his lips from mine. “You know how much she loves it.” 

Cassian says nothing before picking me up by my hips effortlessly and tossing me onto the bed earning an excited squeal from me. 

“Told you,” Azriel beamed with male pride. 

Cassian stalked towards me with Rhys and Azriel hot on his heels and I started moving up the oversized bed towards the headboard. 

“Oh no you don’t,” he smirks, grabbing my ankles and yanking me down the bed. I wait patiently watching Cassian untie the leathers of his pants, my mouth nearly falling open as his large cock springs out. “Come here baby,” he smiles and I eagerly sit up and lick the tip of his cock. 

I looked up at him through my lashes donning my most innocent expression as I took as much of him as I could in my mouth. The rest I pumped with my hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Azriel and Rhys fisting their cocks at the sight of me sucking Cassian off. 

“Good fucking girl y/n,” Cassain moaned tossing his head back in ecstasy. 

I reveled in the salty taste of him, the feeling of every single vein in his cock massaging my tongue. I would never get tired of this, of pleasing my mates.  Cassian pulled me off him and pushed my upper half down on the mattress. My panties are ripped off and discarded somewhere in the room. There goes that set. 

“Stop Cass, make sure she’s ready, I don’t want to tear her,” Rhysand tells Cassian, the voice of a High Lord making its appearance. 

Cassian bends down to inspect my pussy, running a finger through my folds to find me absolutely drenched. “Oh she’s ready alright,” he smiles. “God baby your pussy is so fucking tiny. It’s a miracle you can take us so well.” 

“Cass please,” I whine, nearly coming undone at his words.

Cassian starts pushing his cock in me and the stretch has me backing away from him subconsciously. He grabs my hips and pulls me back towards him, pinning me to the mattress. I had been their mate for a while now but every time they entered me I still felt the stretch. Cassian was right, I was half their size, was a miracle I could take them. 

Cassian started trusting in me at a fast pace and the sound of our skin slapping filled the room. To my right and left Azriel and Rhys continued to stroke their cocks and as much as I longed to put them both in my mouth, Cassian had me in such a state of pleasure I couldn’t focus on anything else. 

“Fuck Cass look at her belly,” Azriel practically moaned. Cassian’s eyes snapped to my stomach where he could see the bulge from his cock thrusting into me. I moaned at the sight. 

“Yeah, you like that baby?” He smirks, leaning over to capture my lips in his. His pace speeds up and within seconds he’s cumming inside of me. 

Cassian pushes his cock in me a couple of times, his attempt at burying his seed deep inside me. He pulls out soon after and I whine at the sudden emptiness. 

“That’s the one that’s gonna get her pregnant,” Cassian beams with male pride, his cock already hardening. 

“Pfft, you wish General.” Azriel scoffs positioning himself between my legs. 

He pushes in slowly and I cry out at the stretch once more. Each glorious inch of him brings immense pain and pleasure. 

“Shhh be a good girl and take it all,” Azriel coos until his hips are flush with mine. “That’s a girl.” he moans as he begins fucking me hard. 

My mind goes to mush almost instantly and the moans coming out of my mouth are damn near feral. The need to be fucked and filled by each of my mates runs so deep in my veins. My hands claw and scrape and find Azriel’s forearms as he slams his hips into me, seeking out his own pleasure. 

“Az please let me cum, I-I’m so c-close,” I mewl, each word hard to get out. 

“Not yet baby, you don’t get to cum until we all have a load in that little pussy,” Rhysand drawls, pumping his cock. “Speaking of, step aside Az I’m not gonna last much longer.” 

“No, I’m not done with her yet,” Azriel growls, his possessive side coming out. 

“You think I can fit in there with you then?” Rhysand asks. 

“Now this I gotta see,” Cassian jests. 

The thought of two cocks fucking my pussy at once has my eyes glazing over and my mouth falling open like I’m in some sort of subspace. 

“I can take it,” I choke out between Azriel’s thrusts. 

“Pick her up Az,” Rhys says, his voice practically dripping with lust. 

Azriel doesn’t stop his minstations as he wraps one of his arms around me, lifting me off the bed. My arms wrap around his neck as my forehead bumps his and he stares me down as he fucks me mid-air.  

“Good girl,” he rasps, proud of how well I’m taking him.

The next thing I know he’s lying me down again, Rhysand’s warm chest replacing the mattress. His hands wander up and down my sides trying to soothe my nerves as Azriel stops moving. 

“Alright little one take a deep breath for me,” Rhys instructs and I can feel him lining his cock up at my entrance. 

I do as I’m told, taking the deepest gulp of air possible, excited for what comes next. The second I let my breath go I feel Rhys pushing his cock into me aside Azriel’s. The stretch is more than any I’ve ever felt before but the sounds escaping Rhys and Azriel’s mouths make it so worth it. Once Rhys is brushing my cervix along with Azriel tears prick my eyes and Cassian is kneeling before me in an instant. 

“Shhh breathe baby,” Cassian coos, glancing down to where both his brothers' cocks are seated inside my pussy. “Fuck, you’re being such a good girl. Just gotta take two more loads and then we’ll let you cum alright?” 

All I  can muster is a shallow nod as Rhys and Azriel begin thrusting in tandem. The constant feeling of fullness has me feeling numb while feeling everything all at once. I arch my back further and Rhys runs a hand down my hip to hold me in place so that he doesn’t slip out. My eyes glance to Azriel who has his eyes fixated on the bulge in my stomach being made by both his and his High Lord’s cock. All the while, Cassian brushes the sweat and hair away from my brow whispering praises to me. 

“Fuck I’m gonna cum,” Rhys groans, the vibrations of his chest skittering down my back. 

“Me too,” Azriel moans and within seconds I feel his sperm coating my walls just like Cassian’s. 

Azriel cumming triggers Rhys to cum as well and even though I can still feel Azriel, the load my High Lord put in me is equally as distinct. 

“Holy fuck,” Azriel groans pulling out of me inspecting his work. My breaths are so ragged and my vision so blurred that I can barely make out Rhysand’s voice. 

“Take her Cass,” he mutters, or so I think. My assumptions are proven right when I feel Cassian’s arms snake around me, pulling me off of Rhys’ cock.

 I whimper at the loss of the fullness as Cassian lays me on top of his chest stroking my hair and kissing my brow. My body vibrates and my heart pounds with the need to cum. 

“Poor baby, you wanna cum don’t you?” Cassian coos tilting my chin up to meet his gaze. My eyes are glassed over and my face looks fucked out but I’m still able to nod. 

“Make her cum Cass, I want us each to get one more load in her before we’re done,” Rhysand says, already fisting his cock. 

“Rhys I’m not sure, look at her. I don’t think she can take much more.” Cassian warns, placing me against the pillows and moving down my body. 

“Do you want her pregnant or not?” Rhys snaps.

“Of course I do,” Cassian says. “Can you take three more loads baby?” he asks me. 

“Of course she can,” Azriel says, his cock already at attention from seeing his fucked out mate. 

“I-okay,” I sputter, still vibrating at the need to be touched. At this point, I was practically bucking my hips into Cassian’s face. 

“You want me to lick your pretty clit?” Cassian smirks using one arm to pin my hips to the mattress and the other to spread my folds. 

“Y-yes,” I beg. 

Cassian chuckles, his eyes fixed on my cunt, “Looks like we made quite the mess of her little cunt,” he muses and both Rhysand and Azirel peer down to investigate. 

“Shit Cass it’s spilling out,” Azriel curses. 

“Don’t worry brother,” Cassian assures him, as he presses two fingers inside me, pushing the cum deep inside me. “She won’t waste it. Will you baby?” He smiles at me. 

“No, I w-won’t,” I say, meaning every word my body still shaking. 

“Cass lick her little clit or I will, the poor thing is shaking,” Rhys orders Cassian. 

Cassian doesn’t waste a moment before lowering his mouth to my pussy  and attacking my clit. It only took five kitten licks for me to orgasm harder than ever before. My back arches off the bed and the tension from my body pushes more of my mate’s cum out of my aching hole. 

“Ah ah ah,” Cassian says, pushing two fingers into me again. “What did we say about wasting?” 

“Cass it’s your turn,” Azriel bites close to spilling his load. 

“Spread em’ baby,” Cassian smirks, spreading my legs for me anyway before burying himself inside of me. 

“Oh gods Cass!” I cry out as he starts fucking me relentlessly chasing his own release.

“Fuck I love seeing that little bulge,” Cassian grins, placing a hand over where his cock hit my belly.

 Seconds later he’s spilling his load into me, a sound coming from his mouth that I’ve never heard before.  My vision nearly goes black, the only thing keeping me grounded is Cassian gripping my throat and pulling me up to kiss me as his second orgasm coats my walls. 

“Who’s next?” Cassian asks, pulling out of me. 

“Me,” Both Rhysand and Azriel say at the same time. 

“Back off Az, you got to have her first last time,” Rhys growls. 

Whenever I told people I had three mates they would usually joke about how territorial they would get over me. The irony was that my mates almost  never had a problem sharing me, but tonight? Well, tonight was just one of those nights. When mates were trying to conceive they were practically feral, I was honestly surprised things had gone so smoothly till now. 

“Yeah, and I literally had to share her pussy with you!” Azriel roars. 

Cassain drags me up to lay my upper half on his chest so he can run a hand through my hair and whisper praises to me.

“I’m pulling rank, as your High Lord I’m going first,” Rhysand orders, nudging my entrance. 

“Fuck off Rhys,” Azriel says continuing to fist his cock. 

Rhys pushes his cock inside me with a groan as he bottoms out. My body shudders and on instinct, I move away from him but he grips my hips and brings me down his cock again fucking into me hard. 

In my haze my head falls to the side, my cheek grazing Cassian’s abs, the very ones he let me rut on to get off a few weeks ago, and I meet Azriel. He looks glorious, pumping his cock while watching Rhysand fuck my hole. On instinct, I reach my tongue out and lap at the head of his cock catching his immediate attention. 

“You wanna suck it baby?” He muses brushing his cock against my lips. I open my mouth wide, sticking my tongue out in response.

 I know I’m so fucked out I can barely wrap my lips around him but Rhys pulling rank seemed like a dick move and I wanted to remedy it in any way I could. Azriel pushes his cock into my mouth letting out a guttural moan in the process. 

“Good fucking girl,” Azriel moans and it spurs me on to suck him even harder as he fucks my mouth. 

“Oh fuck,” Rhys roars cumming into me for the second time tonight. He knows better than to stay seated in me longer than necessary and pulls out as soon as possible. Azriel’s cock follows, his cock leaving my mouth with a bead of saliva dripping from it.  

“Are you fucked out my love?” Azriel croons, grabbing my jaw to face him. It’s evident from my hazy eyes that I am.

“One more load sweetheart,” Rhys whispers, pressing a kiss to my brow. “You want a baby in your belly don’t you?” 

“Uh huh,” I rasp still unable to form actual words. 

“Open,” Azriel orders his grip on my jaw tightening.  

Of all my mates Azriel was always the most dominant. I loved to test Rhys and Cassian, but when it came to Az? I knew it was in my best interest to be a good girl. 

So just like I had a million times before I opened my mouth nice and wide for him. His hand gripped my jaw, keeping it open before he spit in my mouth. 

“Now swallow,” he growled and I followed his orders once again. I opened my mouth to show him I had been a good girl and he rewarded me by pushing his cock inside me. 

“What was that about Az?” Cassian laughed stroking my hair. 

“Grounding her, if I’m gonna pump a load in her I want her to feel it,” Azriel groans. “We’ve done it before, haven't we baby?” he asks me and I nod enthusiastically. 

Rhys wipes the sweat from my brow as Cassian presses a hand down where Azriel’s cock makes a bulge in my belly. 

“She’s gonna cum Az,” Cassian informs his brother. 

“Fuck I can feel it. Her tiny cunt is squeezing me so tight I can barely fuck her.” Azriel groans. “Ready baby?” Azriel asks me and I nod once more. “1…2…3…Fuckkk,” Azriel moans, spilling his seed into me.

Despite the haze that fills my head I can’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment knowing I did it.  I gave each of my mates two orgasms the evidence dripping from my sore cunt, wait fuck. 

“Waste!” is the only word I can get out as I feel all six loads of cum spilling out of me. 

“Shh, it’s okay mate,” Azriel coos, pressing a kiss to my brow laying down on the side that wasn’t occupied by Rhys. “Cass plug her up,” Azriel continues. 

 Without warning, two of Cassian’s fingers slide into my pussy keeping their combined cum from leaking out. 

“Get comfortable mate,” Cassian chuckles. “We’re gonna have to sleep like this.” 

And sleep I do. With Cassian behind me, my head on Rhys’ chest, and Azriel using my stomach as a pillow I’m out within minutes. I don’t know what the future holds as far as children go, but I’d say this was a good first attempt at conceiving.

pregnant! Reader x bat boys Drabble

Masterlist

[andhumanslovedstories]

I’ve been struggling lately with the feeling that my job is pointless. Intellectually I know it is not—nursing is one of those professions where you get to be real smug about knowing the value of your work. But it’s still felt very pointless. Like I’ll start a shift thinking, “what am I even doing here,” and end it thinking, “what have I actually even done.” It’s been a ROUGH couple months.

But I had a really good shift last time I worked, which was good for the soul and also a very useful data point. I got to do pain management advocacy and symptom management, met a bunch of cool patients, did education for new nurses, and had several long heart to hearts, which the kind of midnight heart to hearts that I think are the most important part of night shift, all of that while being well staffed with very pleasant and appreciative patients and coworkers, and I was still like. Pretty depressed. I had a sense of satisfaction and moments of joy and meaning, but it turns out that one good shift did not cure the depression that has been latched on to me for the last few months like some kind of fucked up mental health leech. As I realized I was still depressed and that it was still interfering with my life even when everything was going well, the sense of peace washed over me was the best I’d felt in a while. Because I was like, okay! None of my usual stuff as worked! I have no excuse not to try something new to get my brain out of the shit ditch it’s slipped into.

So I’m applying for short-term disability. I’m worried I won’t get it, and I’m not sure what the next step is if I get rejected, but I feel so much better having decided to pursue it. It’s so much fuckin paperwork for sure, to a degree that’s overwhelming except that that the form could be a checkbox that says, “you want money?” and I’d be like “THIS IS TOO MUCH.” I’m totally not writing this post instead of finishing an email to my manager. I’m definitely not writing this post to avoid dealing with coordinating all my various care providers. I’m certainly not at every moment worried that I’m secretly faking all this so I can get three to nine weeks of a cool summer vacation.

I was thinking about how I almost flunked nursing school in my final semester because I turned in assignments late for a class with a “no late homework” policy. The professor said that this was reflective of real life, where if you miss deadlines you’re just fucked. I ended up appealing my grade and passing, because frankly it was a weak reason for making me repeat a final semester when there was no issues with my actual work or knowledge. During my appeal, I was like “I also think this policy is ableist. Harsh penalties for late work hurt students with health problems, especially chronic health problems when you aren’t asking for one week off due to the flu but instead for a general and never ending flexibility. I’m not trying to make an excuse but explain why this policy is a bad one. Disabled healthcare workers are an asset to healthcare.” I’m trying to remember my own argument as I pursue help. My depression and ADHD and eating disorder do help me be a better nurse, not because like depression gives you superpowers, but because I manage my chronic illnesses every day, in ways that range from hardly noticeable to life or death. Being kind to patients means being kind to myself, and vice versa.

I’m rambling. I really do not want to do this paperwork or send these emails. And I’m not sure if I deserve the leave I’m trying to take. But I miss being love with my job. I miss enjoying it. I wouldn’t judge someone else for going on medical leave, and my job doesn’t want me to burn out or quit. It almost feels like I have to be skeptical of applying for leave because no one else is. Everyone I’ve spoken to has been very supportive, including my manager. And considering how many unpaid days off I’ve had to take lately, disability leave would be an improvement over some of my recent paychecks. All in all, short-term disability makes sense and seems like a reasonable response to circumstances. But FUCK. I wish it required like 90 percent less documentation.

[heavenlyvision]

˚₊‧⁺⋆༄ dearest pt.II first part ˗ˏˋ here ˎˊ˗ pairing: Vamp!Tomas x reader wc: 7k warnings: 18+ only, smut, mentions of injuries, blood drinking, cunnilingus, fingering, multiple orgasms, p in v sex, minor cumplay, -- like tiniest amount, afab!reader, no pronouns or y/n used, pet names used; dear/dearest a/n; i hope you enjoy it !!! i know this took a while for me to finish and i'm thankful to you all for being so patient !!! <333 MDNI | SMUT UNDER CUT

Most of your day is spent being anxious about Tomas’ promise to return tonight, you don’t know what he’s expecting, or if he’s expecting anything at all. Last night… sleeping with him was stupid, he’s not even really Tomas, you mean… he is… but he’s not. What even is his end game here, was it to sleep with you? Does he plan on killing you? And what is your end game? Surely you can’t leave him like this… you don’t want to leave him like this, you miss your Tomas.

The way you’re feeling is getting hazy and the lines are blurring, you’ve grown too attached to someone who isn’t even their original self. How would Tomas feel when he comes back, only to see you left him like that for so long, would he still look at you the way he used to? With kindness and adoration, or would he condemn you and tell you that you’ve broken his trust. These thoughts that plague you are debilitating, whatever you decide to do, you need to do it soon. Maybe you’ll be able to talk to him tonight… or maybe that’s not a great idea.

A knock on your door startles you out of your thoughts, looking to the clock you can see it’s about the time Kuai Liang visits everyday but when you open it, the only person in front of you is Harumi.

“Hi! It’s just me today, Kuai is a little bit busy but I’d like to chat, we’ve not spoken in a while,” she smiles at you, it’s kind but also mildly strained.

You eye her for a few moments, feeling uneasy by her lack of explanation and Kuai’s lack of presence, “…Yeah, uhh… come on in,” you say, stepping off to the side to let her into your home.

She brushes past you and moves to the small dining table, sitting as she asks, “How have you been?”

Lingering awkwardly, you answer, “I have been… fine I guess,” you pass her on the way into the kitchen, “Tea?”

“Yes, thank you,” she fiddles with her fingers against the table and quietly waits for you to return with tea, not speaking again until you’re done in the kitchen and sitting across from her, “I just wanted to come by and check on you, make sure you’re… well,” she blows on her drink, watching you carefully.

“I’ve been fine, not great but nothing has changed since yesterday,” you’re lying through your teeth, you just hope she doesn’t notice.

She has come here for a reason today and you aren’t quite sure what it is but she knows something, you can only hope she doesn’t know about Tomas visiting you nightly. The reactions you’d get from her, from everyone, well, to be quite honest are frightening to think about. You’ve waited so long now and there isn’t any real or good reason as to why – besides the fact that you enjoy Tomas and all of his attention, foolishly, you like him.

This visit is incredibly uncomfortable, you know why you’re uncomfortable but you can’t figure out why she’s uncomfortable. It’s been a good few moments now, of her trying to think of something to say and failing.

Your patience is growing thin and as you sigh, you decide to be blunt, “Has something happened, Harumi? You seem to be worrying about something.”

Her eyes grow wide for a second before she collects herself, “No, nothing has happened… I guess I’m just worried over Tomas, I’m not supposed to tell you… but he’s been moving closer to the village, I’m just a little concerned for you.”

If you hadn’t known her for so long, you’d believe her but she’s still withholding something from you. It is an incredibly good cover though, “I am not worried, I can take care of myself,” you offer in an attempt to ease her nerves, she’s lying but she’s still genuinely concerned for you, you believe that much.

She smiles appreciatively at you but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, “Thank you,” she murmurs, taking a sip of her drink.

The visit isn’t long, she doesn’t linger like Kuai Liang does, she came to check on you, have a small chat and then she’s out the door. It’s something you value about her, not really being one to linger yourself. It’s not often she drops by on her own though, her solo visit has raised alarm bells in your mind.

You’re on edge for the rest of the day, leg bouncing anytime you try to sit still, too much anxious energy pent up inside you. You can’t focus enough to do anything though, nothing holding your attention long enough to forget about your situation. The day can’t go by slow enough, you want it to hurry up so you can see Tomas and talk to him, maybe he has answers, or will be able to offer you some comfort… wait, since when did you start seeking him for comfort?

˚₊‧⁺⋆༄

Frustratedly, Tomas did not come by last night like he had promised, you waited, even stayed up significantly longer than you usually do, only for him to neglect to visit. It’s not characteristic of him, not when he’s made it an active habit to see you every night for the past few months. For him to suddenly stop out of nowhere, it hurts if you’re honest. It hurts because it feels like he’s gotten what he wanted from you, like he’s lost interest suddenly after fucking you.

Though, it’s suspicious too, especially since Kuai Liang also neglected to come by, sending Harumi in his steed. The lack of communication here is annoying and there isn’t a damn thing you can do to fix it, having to just deal with it whether you want to or not. It’s not like you can ask anyone if they’ve seen Tomas and you certainly can’t ask Kuai, not when he doesn’t even visit.

You’re feeling a little aimless and still on edge, it feels like every muscle in your body is wound tight and like you’re ready to fight back against anything that could give you a mild fright. You can’t sit in your house all day again, you’re going to go stir crazy, you might start bouncing off the walls. Instead of rotting away in your house, you wander around the village, even visiting people you’ve not spoken to in months, not since Tomas’ original disappearance.

It's nice but by the time you’re done, there is a significant amount of day left and you’re still high strung. This is frustrating you to no end, so you choose to go for a walk, not particularly enjoying the thought of it, only hoping it will expend enough energy and that you’ll be too tired to continue to be anxious.

Walking is honestly, annoying, it feels pointless, you know it isn’t and that there are benefits, you just personally feel no benefits from it. You don’t experience the mental clarity; you experience mental irritability. Almost as soon as you start, you want to stop but you’re determined to waste your time, maybe if this irritates you enough, you’ll be too focused on being annoyed to remember everything else.

You can’t be sure how much time passes, but you sure are irritated, instead of forgetting things though, it’s just piling all together. Frustration reaching a new point, you want to scream and kick your legs and have a full-blown tantrum but you just keep going, keep moving forward. You… aren’t used to feeling this uncertain for this long, normally you know what the right thing to do is and maybe if you were being honest with yourself, you’d realise you already know what the right thing to do is but just because it’s the right thing… doesn’t mean it’s easy.  

When you finally turn around and head back home, you’re sufficiently tired by the time you walk through the front door. The first thing you do is head for the shower, washing the day away before collapsing onto the couch, it doesn’t take long for sleep to find you. It isn’t intentional but you also don’t really mind, happy that you’re finally exhausted enough to sleep at all.

˚₊‧⁺⋆༄

It’s been a couple more days now and you still haven’t heard from Tomas, at first it mostly hurt and was vaguely concerning, now it’s starting to just feel concerning. You’ve seen Kuai Liang once, he visited yesterday quickly, to check in on you but he seemed… similar to how Harumi was acting, like he knows something that he’s keeping from you. No one is saying anything to you, so you’re taking things into your own hands. Maybe visiting people again and talking to them will result in some kind of gossip, someone has to have seen something helpful.

Being nosey proves to be fruitful, people tell you little tidbits and what you’ve gathered is – Kuai Liang has seemed on edge the past few days, he has recently asked people if they’ve seen anything unusual, and has been searching the nearby land a lot more frequently. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out he’s had some kind of run in with Tomas, whether he actually made contact or only saw him, you have no way of knowing but you know he’s clearly had some kind of confirmation of his proximity to the village and he must have witnessed his presence himself for it to have affected him this much.

Knowing Kuai has seen Tomas is worrisome, you don’t think Kuai will hurt his brother, he believes he can be helped. It’s Tomas who might react more…violently, he’s not adverse to injuring people, he’s grievously hurt some people just to make a point. To completely dismiss the idea of him harming Kuai Liang would be foolish, though it seems Tomas is avoiding him at the moment so you can be thankful for that much, he’s not actively aiming to attack him. Small miracles or whatever, you just hope Tomas comes by soon… you’re worried about him, the hurt you felt has passed, especially since it seems like he’s been avoiding getting too close because of Kuai Liang, at least… that’s what you’re telling yourself, until proven wrong.

The sun has gone down by the time you get home, though it’s not quite late, you just spent a lot of the daylight in the village, you think you’re finding joy in talking with people again. That or you’ve been feeling lonely since you’ve been getting less visitors lately. Brushing off the thought, you commence your nightly routine of showering and cooking dinner for yourself.

It’s not until after dinner that you’re graced by Tomas’ presence, you’re washing up in the kitchen when you hear thumping as he stumbles into your house. It makes you jump, all the noise he makes as he clumsily enters your home.

“Tomas! What the hell? Where have you–” moving closer, you take in the state of him, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all good,” he smiles at you, “How have you been?”

He looks really tired, “I’ve been…” you frown deeply as you remember how you’ve been, “I’ve been worried! What happened to you for the past few days?”

He looks guilty, well… as guilty as he can manage, “A lot happened, I–”

“–You slept with me and then disappeared for three whole days,” you cross your arms, still eyeing him carefully, concerned.

“Yes, I see how it may look like that,” he scratches the back of his neck.

Your eyes scrutinise him, “It doesn’t just look like that, that is objectively what happened.”

“From your perspective yes, but a lot… a lot happened, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging… I just couldn’t get close enough to see you again,” he sighs, dejectedly.

You cross your arms, sizing him up, “Well, now that you’re here, can you explain what has happened?”

“I can, I just need to sit down or something,” he rubs at his eyes.

There is something definitely wrong with him, he looks exhausted, you don’t think he could look any worse, “…Yeah, just… lay down on the couch, I’ll get some extra blankets.”

“I won’t need them,” he reminds.

You pause, “Maybe not for warmth but the comfort would be nice… right?”

He smiles at you softly, so slight that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t watch him so closely, “Sure.” You know he’s lying for your sake, but you’ll get him the blankets anyways.

When you come back into the living room, Tomas has made himself comfortable on your couch, you go to give him the blankets and his hand brushes yours as he takes them. You aren’t sure if he’s going to use them or not, but he unfolds one and stretches it out over himself, he’s quite large under the small throw blanket, not that he seems to mind. He uses the other to prop his head up on the arm of the couch, he looks a little ridiculous actually, his feet don’t fit under the throw and his head does not look comfortable like that.

You frown at him but there’s an amused smile ghosting your lips, Tomas looks at you, “What?”

“You look ridiculous… you don’t have to use the blankets if you’re uncomfortable,” you move to sit in the armchair facing him.

He frowns, his tone defensive, “No, I will be using them.”

Lightly huffing an amused breath, you say, “Alright! I’m not stopping you…” You let him settle in some more before asking again, in a polite way, “…What happened, Tomas?”

His eyes flick to yours quickly before looking straight ahead, “I ran into Kuai Liang…after I left yours.

You stay silent, mostly because you’re thinking too many things to be able to pick which question you should ask first and you’re hoping he’ll offer that information on his own. But the silence persists, he just lays there, his eyes closing as he sinks further into your couch.

He must feel your increasingly aggravated staring though because he sighs, “We fought.”

The annoyance you’re feeling towards him increases tenfold, “Why are you withholding? Just tell me everything that happened–”

“–Why?” He glances over to you, smirk plastered on his face, “You worried about me? You care about me, about my safety?”

The urge to roll your eyes is strong but you worry that if you give into that urge now, they’ll permanently be placed at the back of your head by the time this conversation is finished, “More worried about what you may have done.”

He huffs at you, amused by your inability to admit you care for him, “Kuai Liang is fine, I had a feeling if anything happened to him you would get upset so I played defence, I didn’t even hurt him… that bad… I think.”

Your tone is flat, “Are you kidding?”

He blinks at you, “I don’t think so.”

When you saw Kuai he seemed fine, so you’re going to assume if he was hurt, it really wasn’t that bad but that doesn’t mean you’re elated by all of this. In fact, you’d say you’re pretty well on your way to being pissed off right about now, you can feel your eyebrow beginning to twitch.

“Okay, listen… before you get upset, just know I really did try my best to avoid a fight,” he moves to try and sit up but winces as he does, only making it about halfway up.

Frowning, you move over to him, kneeling on the floor, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry about it,” his hand holds over his stomach as he continues to sit up, his legs still laying across the length of the couch.

You’re beginning to get exasperated, “Okay… so, am I not worrying about it or are you fine?”

He pinches his brows, “Both.”

He’s frustrating you and he knows it, you tug at his clothes to try and see what may have happened, “Stop being annoying and–”

“–You know…if you wanted me to undress for you, all you had to do was ask,” he throws that smug smile your way and you feel like you might start vibrating with your irritation.

Tugging your hands back, you slump to the floor beside him, “Tomas please– just let me look at you…”

“Listen.” He waits for you to look him in the eyes again before continuing, “When I ran into Kuai we fought and I was focused on not hurting him… he nicked me is all, it really isn’t bad.”

You’re confused, “That was days ago… why aren’t you healed yet?”

He looks away from you, “It’s not important.”

Thinking on it, you realise it’s pretty clear why he’s not healing, “Tomas…”

“I’m fine,” he asserts.

You place your hand on his, “You could be finer though… I can help.”

His voice is firm, “No.”

He’s back to annoying you, “Why not?” You whinge slightly, hand tugging away in your irritation.

He sighs heavily, “You don’t know what you’re offering.”

You don’t appreciate his tone, “I’m fairly certain I do.”

He repeats his previous sentiments with a simple, “You don’t.”

You spell it out for him, to show him you do understand, “I’m offering to help you heal faster by letting you drink my blood, there isn’t much to not get–”

He’s growing frustrated with you now, “–You aren’t understanding the gravity of letting me do that.”

You understand his trepidations, but you want to help, “…Tomas–”

“–What if I can’t control myself? You are literally the last person I’d ever want to hurt…” He’s frowning to himself, agonising over the thought.

Reaching out, you go to touch him on his arm again, attempting to offer comfort but it only makes him tense in response, “I want to help and… I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t.” He looks you straight in your eyes, his brow set, tone serious, “You’re not understanding just how good you smell to me,” you have a feeling, that if he could manage it, he’d walk away from you.

His words effect you in a way they probably shouldn’t, at least not in this moment anyways, you push away the feelings swirling in your stomach and refocus, “Let me at least see how bad you’re hurt then.”

The hardness in his eyes softens and he nods, a good choice because you were not about to let this go. He moves to sit on the couch properly, no longer laying across it and you stand to help him undress his upper half. You try to be careful, but he still winces at some movements made, his discomfort more apparent now that he’s not trying to hide it from you. Once you’ve managed to get his layers off, you shuffle to sit beside him and look him over, he lets you get your eyeful.

It's honestly not as bad as you were picturing, still not great, if he were human you’d be running to get your first aid kit, but you know of a quicker and hassle-free way to have this fixed fairly soon.

He must feel how hard you’re thinking because he says, “I’m good, it’s fine.”

“Doesn’t look fine,” you quirk a single brow at him.

He keeps a straight face, “Well…” He looks down at his wound and then back at you, “It is.”

“I don’t want to keep going round like this, you’re being unnecessarily stubborn, let me help or I’ll…” You pause to think of a good threat.

He just smiles smugly at you, waiting for your threat patiently, nodding his head in encouragement.

“I’ll…” You look at him sternly, “I’ll never let you touch me again.”

“Well, that seems like an overreaction,” his expression is still overwhelmingly amused, not taking you seriously at all.

You huff out a sigh and slump slightly, “I just want to help.”

“I know you do,” his hand reaches out to cradle the side of your face, “But it’s not necessary.”

Leaning into his touch, you offer a different perspective, “If the roles were reversed and I was the one who was hurt, would you be so quick to give up your argument and not help?”

“I don’t think that’s the same,” he defends himself, badly.

You go to argue with him, but he predicts that move and instead kisses you, he’s gentle about it, kissing you sweetly for only a moment before pulling back. Frowning, you try to remember what you were going to say, “Tomas… seriously, just bite me.”

He hums at you, “No,” he murmurs, moving in to kiss you again.

You stop him, holding a finger to his lips, “I want you to bite me.”

“You into that sort of thing?” He speaks against your finger.

Choosing to fuck with him, you reply, “Yes.”

He groans at you, “You make everything difficult.”

You drop your finger, “Me!?” You’re shocked by his audacity to accuse you of being difficult when this conversation could’ve ended ages ago.

“Yes, you,” he grumbles out mildly annoyed, before pressing his lips onto yours again, this time less gentle about it all.

His kiss is deep and unapologetic, his tongue licks into your mouth, you moan at his forcefulness. The hand on your face tilts your head so he can have more access to you, his other hand gropes at the fat of your hip, wanting to tug you closer, he wants you in his lap.

Parting from him, you voice concern, “Tomas, I don’t think I should sit on you, right now.”

“I disagree, in fact I think you should always sit on me,” he tries to pull you onto him more.

You place your hands on his shoulders, “No, Tomas, seriously, I’m worried about hurting you–”

“–It’d be worth it,” he smiles but you frown at him, and he drops his smile, instead offering, “It’s fine, you’re not going to hurt me.”

You insist, “I don’t want to risk–”

He gets sick of this back and forth and cuts you off by moving you into his lap with ease, apparently his initial attempts were just for show. “I’m not made of glass,” he leans in close, his lips brushing your cheek, “I could still fuck you stupid.”

Deciding to spin this in your favour, you say, “If you want to do anything more than just kiss me, you’ll have to bite me.”

“I really don’t want to hurt you, dear,” his thumb brushes high on your cheekbone.

“This is my first, final, and only offer, if you want to… go any further tonight, you’ll have to drink from me,” you shrug, playing at indifference despite knowing he’s done an exceptional job at making you wet without trying very hard.

Dropping his hands to your thighs, he shuts his eyes and sighs, his head leaning onto the back of the couch.

Cruelly, you grind your cunt down into his pelvis, hoping to incite some kind of reaction, this is quickly changing from wanting to help heal him, to wanting him to bite you while plowing into you. His response is a deep groan and his fingers gripping your thighs harshly, his dick jerking underneath you.

He opens his eyes to look at you, “You’re not playing fairly.”

Quirking a brow at him, you ask, “Would you?”

“Of course not,” he smiles, leaning up again, “But you know… you’re giving away your intentions.”

You feign ignorance, “I’ve not a clue as to what you’re referring.”

“Keep going, keep rubbing your pretty, little cunt down into me and we’ll see who ends up more affected,” he hums, “But remember… I can smell you,” he moves his lips to the side of your ear, “And dear, you smell divine.”

You don’t move, mostly out of spite, he’s overly confident and there’s good reason for it but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss you off, just a little bit, “I’m not doing a single thing.”

His forehead drops to your shoulder and his hands rub up and down your thighs, a faint humming leaving him in thought. Turning his head to the side, he licks along the expanse of your neck, when he reaches your jaw, he presses a small kiss to it. Trailing his lips back to yours but you turn your head just before he can kiss your lips and he huffs a sigh in response.

“I can’t even kiss you now?” He questions.

You pout, looking away from him, “No.”

Sighing, he asks, “You want me to bite you this bad?”

Turning back to face him, you add, “Please?”

“Fuuck–” his brows pull together in thought for a moment, “Fine.” You go to celebrate your win, but he cuts you off, “But you need to tell me if it hurts, or if you’re dizzy or if you just don’t want me touching you anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” you smile at him.

He looks worried, like he’s still not sure if this is a good idea, “Alright, just… relax for me.”

“I am relaxed,” you reach out with both your hands and cradle his face, “You need to relax,” leaning in, you press a chaste kiss to his lips before pulling back and waiting for him to bite you.

He takes a breath, “Kiss me again?”

Moving your hands to his shoulders, you lean in again to kiss him, you mean for it to be quick, but he lightly grabs the side of your neck and pulls you closer, kissing you deeper. His lips are insistent and his free hand gropes at you. His sudden parting from you has a whimper leaving your lips but he’s already trailing his kisses from the corner of your mouth down your cheek, past your jaw, to your neck.

He doesn’t bite you, not straight away, he sucks and licks at your neck first, leaving gentle kisses in between. He nips lightly at your skin, and you stifle a moan at it, not wanting him to know just how aroused you’re getting from the thought of him biting you. The way his mouth quirks against you has you doubting that you’re hiding anything from him though. Thankfully, he doesn’t comment on it and instead presses a single peck to your neck.

Pulling back, he looks you in the eyes one last time, wanting to check that you’re absolutely okay with this. When he’s satisfied, he nuzzles into your neck, you move your head to the side, offering him more room. His teeth lightly graze your skin before slowly sinking into your skin, the pain shocks you but dulls as he lathes over the spot with his tongue, licking at your blood.

It’s a new feeling, the ache of his teeth in your skin, it’s making you hazy. Tomas moans into your skin both from the taste and because you’ve begun absentmindedly grinding down into his lap, seeking friction. When he pulls back, he moves to see your reaction, to make sure you’re still okay.

In all honesty, it doesn’t feel like he drank that much from you, “I thought you would take… more.”

“Mmm, I want to bite you elsewhere,” he moves in and continues to lick at the blood left behind.

Seemingly keeping true to his word, he shuffles to move you. He’s careful as he does, laying you down against the couch gently. Getting himself comfortable, he leans over you, a smile prominent on his lips. Your clothes are his next focus, his hands pulling at you. You want to help him but as you rise he places a hand on your chest and lightly pushes you back down.

Arching your back, you make it easier for him to take off your shirt, “Don’t overdo it.”

“Mhm,” he mumbles in mindless agreement, though he’s not really listening now, too busy looking at your tits.

“Tomas.”

His eyes flick to yours, “Sorry dear, what did you say?”

Squinting at him, you repeat, “I said, don’t overdo it.”

“I am fine,” he leans back to show you wear he had been injured, “Look, already healing better.”

It is, it’s still there and looks irritated but the minimal amount of blood he took from you seems to have helped a great deal. It’s less open and for that you’re thankful but it still has to be tender, “Just be careful.”

“Someone might mistake that for you caring about me,” he has a giddy look in his eyes.

Smiling at him, you say, sheepishly, “Well, I might not go that far.”

He hums at you with a slight smile on his face, not believing you. His hands move to your lower half, pulling off your bottoms, your underwear are tugged off along with them. He’s not wasting any time tonight, eager to have you naked underneath him.

Maybe if he were to give you a little time to think, you’d feel more embarrassed about how he’s stripped you bare and pulled your legs apart all within the span of a minute but he’s not giving you that time, he’s already shuffling himself in between your legs. Your legs which have been haphazardly thrown over his shoulders, you could’ve sworn you just told him to be careful.

He trails his lips along your inner thigh, his touch so gentle it makes a shiver run down your spine, “Can I still bite you?”

You feel fuzzy, his words not completely registering when his breath is tickling your inner thigh, “You can do whatever you like.”

A big grin breaks out across his face, you can feel it, you don’t get a chance to correct your statement or make a snarky remark though, he’s already sinking his teeth into the soft expanse of your thigh. You jump slightly but he holds you steady, growls leave him, clearly enjoying this immensely.

When he parts, he licks and sucks at your thigh, not letting your blood go to waste, “Still with me?”

You feel a little hazy still, but you don’t know if that’s from him biting you or the position he’s put you in, he’s so close to your pussy and you want so badly for him to just put his mouth on you–

“­–Hey,” his voice cuts off your thoughts and you look down to him, “Are you okay?”

“Mhm, yeah, I’m all good,” your head flops back onto the couch once you’ve answered him.

He sighs, “Mmm, is that so?” His thumbs move to your cunt and spread your lips apart so he can hungrily gaze at you on complete display, “You okay with me leaving you like this?...” His thumb runs through your slick heat, “…Or do you want me to do something to help?”

He places his thumb over your clit, not moving, just keeping steady pressure and it’s driving you insane. You want more, you need him to do more, he’s being purposefully cruel now, he wants it just as bad as you do. He also likes to hear how much you want him though and he’s not going to give you any sort of relief before you do.

On another day, maybe you hold out longer, tease him back, but today you’re all too happy to bend to his will, “Tomas…” His eyes shoot to yours, “I missed you.”

The look in his eyes lower and a huffed breath leaves him, “You play dirty.”

“I wasn’t trying to– ah,” you get cut off by his tongue licking at you, up the length of your cunt.

Genuinely, you were trying to give into him, but you seem to have said something that carried more weight than you expected it too. His tongue drags heavy on your pussy, flicking at your clit just to watch your thighs shake and body twitch. Unconsciously, your thighs go to close around his head, he moves he hands to keep them apart. He doesn’t stop there though, he pulls them open and up, almost folding you half.

His mouth doesn’t leave you, in fact, his tongue enters you, his nose presses into your clit, he’s trying to taste as much of you as he can. The wet slurping sounds he’s making are obscene, the room filled with how he laps at your cunt. He’s getting you close to finishing embarrassingly quickly but just when you think you could cum like this, he pulls his mouth back and bites into your other thigh.

Two of his fingers slip into your cunt just as his teeth puncture your skin, the simultaneous feelings are like a gut punch, you twitch and go to cover your mouth as his thumb reaches your clit and circles it harshly. A loud moan slips from you and is caught by your hands, the resulting sound a muffled cry. You cum around his fingers, your thighs shaking with it, Tomas moans into your skin, feeling your cunt pulse around his fingers and your blood coating his tongue, it has his control slipping.

Retracting his teeth and fingers from you at the same time, he slips the two fingers that were in you into your mouth. You take them, glassy eyes looking at him, your blood stains his mouth now, he was messier about his last bite. Slipping your tongue between his two fingers makes him shiver, the look in his eyes is dumb and sated.

When he pulls his fingers from you, he watches intently as they leave your mouth, he trails them, wet and slick down your chin, neck, sternum, all the way back down to your cunt. You gasp against the sensitive feeling, he pushes them inside you, crooking them up, his thumb already back on your clit.

“I really do love watching you cum,” he mumbles mindlessly. Going to say his name results in a pathetically moaned sound leaving you, it makes him smile deviously, “Trying to say something, dearest?”

You shake your head no at him, huffing out small sounds as his fingers pick up speed, his eyes never leave yours, intent on watching you the whole time, wanting to see every expression you make.

He leans down, free hand holding himself up, “Tell me again.” Your thoughts are garbled, and your eyes get lazy, unfocused, “Stay with me, I want to hear it again – how you missed me.”

You focus back on him, words slurring slightly, “Missed you so much, Tomas– hah.”

His fingers speed up again, his thumb harsh on your clit, you spasm around his fingers, your stomach pulling tight.

“I missed you too,” he smiles at you, his fangs showing through it.

Your back arches against the couch, “I– I was –mmphf– I was worried about you~”

Tomas curses at your confession, his head swimming with affection for you, he pulls his fingers from you suddenly and you whimper at the loss, “No– no, don’t be sad, I just can’t fucking wait any longer.”

The overwhelming need for you has overpowered him, he’s shucking his pants down his thighs carelessly. Pulling his cock out and immediately guiding it to your cunt, he slips the head of it through your folds a few times before slowly entering you. He’s trying to take his time and be gentle, he really is but he’s so suddenly desperate to be balls deep he can’t seem to find the patience to open you up for him more.

He makes it easier for you though, his thumb rubbing circles over your clit. It’s completely unexpected when you cum on the first few inches of his cock like this, a bitten back moan leaving you as shudders run through you. He had gotten you so close before retracting his fingers, the fullness now and way he was playing with you had your forgotten orgasm being not so forgotten.

“Tomas– it’s –ah–” You can’t even get out what you want to say, though you’re not entirely sure what you wanted to say. Cumming on his dick makes you go cross eyed, your hips moving to grind up into him, wanting so badly to be stuffed full as you orgasm.

He grunts out, “Fuck–” before taking advantage of your gushing pussy and slips balls deep, a loud and deep moan leaving him, “So incredibly slick, my dear,” he grinds down into you, his pelvis digging into your clit, he’s trying to give you a moment to breathe but he desires friction. “You never cease to amaze me, so incredibly perfect… responsive.”

Ironically, your cunt twitches at his words and a devilish smirk makes an appearance on his face, as if to gloat about his previously accurate statement, “I don’t know… if I can handle another,” your eyes are wet and unthinking when you look up at him.

“You can handle another,” he groans, dragging his cock out at the same time as he speaks, “Been so good to me tonight, I’m just returning the favour.”

He slams back into you, a high-pitched whine leaving you, matched against his low one, “I jus wanted to help –mmph–”

“And help you did, so incredibly helpful,” his words are coming quickly as he starts thrusting into you more consistently, “Taste absolutely divine, dear. Few moments there –ngh– I was scared of hurting you, you’re such an overwhelming presence in all facets of my life.”

Lewd and wet slapping sounds follow each of his thrusts, his hips fucking into you at a speed that makes your head spin. You’re not really capable of responding to him anymore, you’re as good as gone. His cock hits so deep inside you, he tickles your cervix, a thrilling kind of pain following each of his deep thrusts.

“You wanna know something?” He leans in, getting impossibly closer, deeper.

He’s waiting for your response, “Yeah– hah– mmph~”

He engulfs your mouth in a deep kiss, his tongue in your mouth before you can really register that he’s kissed you. He’s heated and rushed; kissing you in such a needy way that you can’t even keep up with him. When he pulls back a string of saliva connects the both of your mouths, he licks his lower lip, disconnecting it.

“I could smell how fucking wet you were getting each time I bit you,” he huffs breathlessly into your ear, “Fresh arousal drenching your cunt every time my teeth sunk into you, do you know how hard it is to focus on not taking much blood from you when you’re getting horny from it?”

“S–sorry,” you apologise but your pussy clenches down on him, his words working you up.

“No, don’t apologise, dear. You did nothing wrong, nothing.” He traces wet and sloppy kisses down the side of your face and neck, “I just meant to say, I think you would cum awful hard if I were to bite you at the same time, don’t you?”

Before you can comprehend the conclusion he’s given you, his hips switch from slamming into you, to grinding when he re-enters, the added stimulation makes you stupid, slurred words of praise and his name leaving you. Just as you’re about to climax, he bites into your neck, he doesn’t drink from you this time, he just sinks his teeth into your flesh. The pain rockets through you and you finish all over his cock, fresh, creamy, cum leaving you and leaking down his dick, a white ring left at the base of it.

The sound he makes is feral and not human, deep animalistic groans leaving him at the way you squeeze his dick so tight. He forces his way through all the sensations he’s feeling, fucking into your tight, spasming cunt, the slick of you making it easier. You’re so fucked open on him that he’s getting dizzy thinking about it, about how well you take his fat cock.

Raising his upper half, he looks down to where he’s fucking you, at the mess you’ve made, at the bite marks on your thighs, it’s all driving him wild. There’s very clear evidence of him being here and it’s sending pleasure down his spine to his core.

His dick jerks and twitches and as he looks at your face, at the gooey look in your eyes, at the unshed tears sitting in your waterline, he cums. It forces its way through him, the sensation almost making him spiral, he’s already cumming when he remembers what he wanted to do.

Pulling out, he aims the rest of his cum at your cunt and thighs, wanting to leave evidence of him all over you. He almost whimpers at the sight of your pussy leaking and being coated in him. Absently, he takes his hand and places it in his spend, smearing it up your stomach and grabbing your tit, leaving evidence of it there too.

You gasp at how he grabs at your breast, his slick forefinger and thumb tweaking your nipple, “Tomas–” You moan out to him.

His eyes shoot to yours and he looks sheepish, “Sorry…I got carried away.”

Mumbling lazily, you ask, “Are you okay?”

He bites a laugh at your question, “Are you kidding? I feel fantastic.” He moves in and presses a soft kiss to your cheek, “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay…tired,” you wrap your arms around him, pulling him down into you for a hug.

He breathes in the scent of you, committing it to memory, “You should sleep, I’ll carry you to bed–”

You object, cutting him off, “–No… you’ll be gone when I wake up, I really did miss you…”

He can’t hide the way your words make him glow with joy, “How about, we shower and see how you feel?”

“Mmmkay, you’re gonna need to do all the work though…” He’s already picking you up off the couch halfway through your sentence, “…Don’t think I can walk.”

“Wasn’t expecting you to,” he chuckles, carrying you off down the hallway.

˚₊‧⁺⋆༄

IT IS DONE !!!!!! MWUAHAHA!!! i hope you enjoyed it :3

[annwrites]

— jacaerys velaryon quotes ⊹⊱♛⊰⊹ | read

❝You there—girl—do you know how incredibly rude it is for you not to stand and curtsy when in the presence of royalty?❞

❝You are to look at me while we're speaking. Do you understand?❞

❝From now on, you will wear more suitable clothing when outside your private chambers—which means conservative in nature; not whatever men found desirable upon the Street of Silk. You are a representative of our house now. A dragonrider. A soldier to our cause. You will look the part.❞

❝You will watch your tongue, you insolent little wench.❞

❝You are being too gentle with her—too patient—she requires a firmer hand, elsewise she will never properly learn.❞

❝Just as soon as you can give such commands in High Valyrian, I shall consider. Now, do as you are told.❞

❝Is this what it's going to take, then?❞ (...) ❝Me manipulating you like a ventriloquist does its doll to get you to do what I need you to?❞

❝Rȳbās,❞ he then says with a smug look. ❝It means obey.❞

❝You've silver hair, purple eyes, pale skin. Men would pay handsomely to pretend at having a Targaryen princess or lady for an hour or two, would they not?❞

❝Everything to do with you concerns me!❞

❝I do not answer to you, but you will to me: your superior. Now.❞

❝You will address me properly, and you will hold your tongue. You speak only when spoken to, is that understood?❞

❝If you ever raise a hand to me again,❞ (...) ❝I will take it. What you just did is treason.❞

❝Go on, then. Try me. See how far I let you get after such a stunt. You think me weak? Easy to strong-arm?❞

❝I doubt it. You've no idea who you're testing. I am your future king,❞ he spits. ❝And you will obey me, you little bitch.❞

❝You think your comely looks make you special? Think they're all you need, so as to easily fool and take advantage of men? To get your way?❞

❝There is a screen, and I hardly intend to look. Now, do as your prince commands.❞

❝I won't allow any harm to befall you, you have my word, Y/N! As long as you are with me, you are safe!❞

❝Do you think she enjoys being trapped in here all hours of the day? Do you know how long it's been since someone has ridden her? Let her show you the skies. Allow her that privilege.❞

❝I want us to experience this together.❞

❝It is possible,❞ (...) ❝To change your mind about that which you think you want. If you only consider other options.❞

❝Gods, you're fucking impossible, aren't you?❞

❝Teach me how to please you. Allow me to show you how truly sorry I am in this...other way.❞

❝I have taught you much these last few days. It is time, mayhaps, you return the favor.❞

❝Allow me to please you.❞

❝You have me on my knees. Begging you to allow me to pleasure you. You need more reassurance that you have me at your mercy now?❞

❝I would use my mouth, Y/N, if it please you.❞

❝I know what I want. And I know that it is you. Here. Now. Will you not allow me this most singular indulgence?❞

❝May I untie my breeches, My Lady?❞

❝Gods,❞ he mutters against your mound. ❝You're so beautiful. Mm, and delicious.❞

❝I did not need even touch myself to finish at your hand.❞

❝In truth, I would very much like…❞ (...) ❝For us to begin sharing all our meals together. To walk together, when you choose to on the beach. To ride together.❞

❝But I do not burn for her. Not as I do you. You fill my every waking fucking thought now. All I wish is to be near to you. To touch you. To hear your voice.❞

❝Was it fair to her when I had my face shoved between your thighs as you finished upon my tongue?❞

❝I don’t want to lose you,❞ he whispers. ❝When I’ve only just found you. When I am with you, I don’t feel so afraid anymore. Please…please don’t take yourself from me. Please.❞

❝We’ve fondness, but a fire does not rage within me when I’m near her as it does for you. A fire I am desperate to keep fanning the flames of. Because if it were to burn out—now—I know not what I would do.❞

❝When I am with you, I feel fearless. Not a coddled princeling. Not some royal betrothed where everything must be prim and proper. I feel… I feel alive. I have the attentions of a woman grown, and I would be remiss to shirk them out of the sake of propriety.❞

❝It is why I ask you—if you can find it within yourself to consent—to let me have you, at least in private. Let us live while there is still time for it.❞

❝I mean for us to share more than just meals and walks together, you know?❞ (...) ❝Such as my bed, and yours. Perhaps baths. The rug before my hearth. The dining table chairs. The windowsill. My settee…❞

❝Only for you, my little dragonseed,❞ he replies, kissing you tenderly. ❝You see: I can be quite generous.❞

❝I deign we shall need moontea in large supply.❞

❝If you wish to quiet my tongue, you will need to find other uses for it, then, my sweet.❞

❝I want you…to be the first.❞

❝I want for you to… Tell me what to do. Use me for your pleasure. Please.❞

❝Command me.❞

❝Gods, I want to touch you.❞

❝Yes, mistress.❞

❝Let me instead. Please, I beg of you. Let me tend to your needs.❞

❝Do I have your permission?❞

❝Thank you, Y/N. For making my first…❞ He trails off for a moment. ❝For being my first, and for making it perfect.❞

[novashelby]

The Storm That Heals Us~ Tommy Shelby x Cancer patient!Reader: Angst

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Reader

Warning: Triggering topic such as cancer

Word Count: 1,223

Summary: Tommy's wife is diagnosed with cancer and tries to hide it from him because they have a rocky marriage

This was requested by anon a while back. I hope it is okay. I don't do well with the topic of cancer

We’ve only been married a year. They say three is a lucky number. I was supposed to be the lucky number. But truth be told, nothing about our marriage had been lucky. In the midst of all his darkness, I was convinced he married me for emotional convenience. But when Tommy Shelby found out I wasn’t going to be walked on or over, we started fighting more. A hot head and one who hates to be wrong. It’s a bit tricky to figure out which one of us is which. Perhaps we are the same person and that is why we suck together. 

But that is not why it’s unlucky number three. Just last month I was bathing, feeling the warm soapy water encasing my body. When I dragged the sponge over my right breast, something seemed off. Something seemed tender and bruised. Quickly, I threw the sponge in water and felt around with my hand. There was a small lump, but nonetheless a lump. If I was anyone else, I would have assumed a pimple or swollen hair follicle, but I’m not anyone else. It’s the family curse. My great grandmother, my grandmother, my two aunts, and my mother have all found the lump. Thankfully for my mother, she was able to get it treated. But I am doomed for bad luck. That’s what Tommy tells me everytime something happens. “You have that fookin’ luck…that bad luck.” 

As soon I found that fucking lump, I went to the doctor only to get confirmation of what I already knew. I hate to say that the first thing that left my mouth was, “how long?” But the doctor sighed. They always sigh. 

He told me, “Well, it’s small. We’ll remove it and do some radiation treatment-”

“And lose my hair?” I also hate to say that was the second question, but Tommy loves my hair. Sometimes I think what he loves about me is thinning with each day.  

I never told Tommy about the procedure, and one night, when he went to run his hand over my body, I stopped him. It was as if I was repulsed by him. Just as I knew, Tommy didn’t take very kindly to my refusal. He sat up, looking at me before saying, “is this how our marriage is going to be now?” We sat side by side, under the covers on the bed. He replaced my breast in lieu of a cigarette.

“I don’t feel well,” I said, and his response made my blood boil. 

“You never feel well anymore,” he said. “I’m starting to think it’s me. Perhaps we should discuss something that will make you feel better.” There was always a tone of threat. He dealt with his lovers as he did his business partners. 

That was it for that night. 

Which brings me to now. The bathroom floor feels cold against my clammy body. I puked up my dinner which was nothing, but a few biscuits and a glass of milk. Milk is a no-no for my new stomach, I’ve learned. But as I’m on this bathroom floor, I realize. I realize that Tommy will know. He will figure it out. My body will thin out, I’ll be bruised, and my cheeks will sink in. Nevermind my hair that is already falling out in clumps. As I hear his footsteps approach, I try to gather myself to save face, but moving just makes it worse. My body feels like it’s on a merry go round, and I cling to the toilet once more. At this point, as I feel the burning acid climb up my insides, I don’t know what I am throwing up. It is a clear bile. 

As I am hunched over, Tommy walks in and asks, “are you pregnant?” Oh, how easy that would have been. 

I turn to him, face pale. I could see myself in the mirror. My eyes look sunken with heavy bags. “No.”

He sighs. “Have you seen a doctor?” he asks like I am dumb.

I’m blunt. “Yes.”

“Well?” he presses, coming inward, leaning on the bathroom vanity, puffing on his smoke. Always a smoke. Before I can answer him, I beg him to put it out.

“The smell, Tommy-”

“How far along are you?” he asks, disregarding the fact I told him I’m not pregnant. “Funny enough, love, we haven’t fucked in two months. Every night I wait for your comfort. Perhaps you’re going elsewhere for it-”

“I’m not pregnant, Tommy.” My head is boiling at this point and I feel my temper on the verge. I sit up, resting against the toilet, trying to catch my breath. He’s not convinced, I can see it in his face. How he’s half ignoring me. 

“You know,” he starts, pointing a finger my way. “I do fuckin’ love you. You married me, thought you understood the way I am-”

“Tommy,” I plead, closing my eyes. “Please.” But he goes on and on about how I betrayed his trust, but he still loves me and wants to work through whatever it is. 

“But that fuckin’ baby is going-”

“I’m not fuckin’ pregnant!” I yell at him in a tone I never dared to before. It was enough for him to get a bit startled. He is about to say something else when I say, “I found a lump on my right breast.” Tommy pauses mid-smoke, and looks over at me, eyes knitted. “A few weeks ago, maybe a month ago now…I don’t know. They ran a test-”

“You never told me,” he says in this low, depressing whisper that makes me feel like every problem in the world is my fault. Tommy finds his way to the bath basin and sits on the edges. He throws his lit smoke in the sink and runs his fingers through his hair. “And you never thought to tell me?”

“I didn’t want it to be another burden-”

“What?” He turns to me, face like a ghost. He slides to the marble flooring next to me. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I feel him tenderly grab me by the face, placing me in his lap. His chin rests on my head. “Fuckin’ ‘ell, love, I’m…love, you should have told me?” This was the Tommy I met and agreed to marry. The one who is tender and loving, smooth talking and sweet. I twist in his lap and his hand rests on my cheek. “I’m scared to ask-”

“It’s early enough,” I say, nodding, swallowing the lump down. “But it doesn’t feel any better-”

“No, no it doesn’t,” he agrees, leaning down to place a kiss on my forehead. “God, love, I love you so much. And I just…I've been so selfish. From now, you and I are going to go through this together-”

“Tommy, Tommy, please,” I whisper. “Just lets not act all weepy-”

“I’m not,” he protests, gripping my chin. “I’m taking care of you because if you have forgotten, I am your husband.” Yes, I have forgotten, but at this moment, I forgive it and soak up his affection. I need every inch of tenderness I can get my hands on. And so, I move on and relax into his words. “I love you.”

“Thank you, Tommy,” I say before quickly adding, “I love you, too.” 

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for starting shit with a 15 year old??

Alrighty here’s our cast:

I’m OP, I’m 19 years old, I’m FtM trans but not out nor have I started transitioning medically. I’ve graduated but live at home while I attend college

I have a little sister named “Janet”, she’s 16 and a sophomore. She’s popular, friendly, and had a big friend group

Janet has a friend named “Amy” who’s 15. Amy is the kid I think I started beef with

Okay for the story;

Janet is the leader of her group. She’s got the strongest personality and is the most sociable. Almost all the kids in her group are comfortably upper class while Janet and I are sitting very middle class. It’s always very jarring when I drop Janet off at a friend’s house and it’s a literal mansion.

Amy is who introduced Janet to this group, but it became quickly very clear that Amy has never been told “no” in her life. She’s controlling, spoiled, and jealous. Now, I’ve hung out with Amy before (Janet was there too, we were at a get together and Amy tagged along with us) and she’s a sweet girl, but definitely a product of her environment.

Now, over the last few weeks, things have spiraled out of control for that group. Amy got a boyfriend and has been repeatedly picked to spend time with him and made her friends (Janet’s group) feel like shit about it. Her boyfriend was always invited to group things, but Amy refused to let him join. She cited the other girls (who are all either lesbians or dating other boys) as trying to “steal her man”. She’s very insecure about herself and I genuinely feel bad for her

Recently, she’s been left out of group activities because she chose not to attend, but then later would send the group hateful messages on social media or would vague post about them being pieces of shit because they didn’t insist that she attend. Janet’s been under fire the most along with another girl named “Christina”. Amy even went as far as to out Christina as bisexual on Snapchat because Christina pointed out that Amy could have attended their Halloween party at any time as it lasted for seven hours

So Amy’s a mess.

Now, recently (again), Janet started talking to a boy we’ll call “Jeremy”. Jeremy’s a sweet guy, he’s in band, he’s still a dork because he’s a high school sophomore, but he’s still a cool kid. One day, Jeremy sends a bunch of screenshots to Janet from Amy. Amy, who has a boyfriend as mentioned above. Amy was not only flirting with Jeremy, but also talking shit about me and my family. She called my mom fat, said my dad was lying about having cancer (he’s a terminal colon cancer patient), called my twin sister an ugly control freak, and me a “gay whore who acts like a man” (LMAOOOO).

Here’s where I may be the asshole. I got Amy’s number from Janet’s phone and sent her what’s basically an essay calling her out for these insults and also threatening to screw her parents. I told her to never contact Janet again and that I hope she got over her insecurities. I know her insults weren’t directed towards me nor was I supposed to see them, but I can’t stand people talking about my family. I know I shouldn’t have contacted her, especially behind Janet’s back, but I wanted to defend myself and my family

Anyways, if I’m voted the asshole for sticking my nose in high schoolers’ business, I’d completely understand

🧐

^^^ so I can find this again 😭

What are these acronyms?

[rampantram]

I've been saving this but I can't take it anymore... your art is super cool!! I love the drawing style you have, especially the lines and expressions. Also the dynamic poses and interactions between characters, everything looks so cute but at the same time exciting to keep watching!! I would read a whole manga with your art in it :3

Curious question: what size are your drawings normally? I see that you draw in pencil and many times there is more than one drawing on a single canvas/sheet so I am curious to know approximately the size of your drawings

I hope you don’t mind me using your ask to say this, but…you guys have no idea how much your kindness and positivity has affected me since I started posting my CotL stuff.

I’ve had anxiety since I was a kid, and depression for almost a decade now, and most recently been diagnosed with ADHD and OCD. I’ve had the most lows in my life over the past few years, and my consistency and drive to draw has suffered for it; at most, I’ve posted every other week, but mostly once every couple of months, and even longer than that until now. Being on medication has affected my motivation to draw, and I’ve been on short-term disability for over a month now, trying out new medications and feeling mostly miserable from the side effects.

Despite all that, I’ve wanted truly to finally be consistent with art, interact with people, try new things, and it’s helped so much to have so many people loving the things I’ve come up with. I haven’t been as consistent this last week, and spotty some weeks before that, but you’ve all been so patient despite that, which is part of the reason I want to give you some transparency and vulnerability on my part.

So I apologize if things continue to be a little less than organized or consistent, but I’m going to keep trying my best everyday, because I want to keep bringing you things you enjoy and want to interact with, so…thank you. 🥹

But getting to your question before I really start to tear up…this 9x12 sketchbook by Strathmore (specifically the recycled paper) is what I’ve been using for my sketches for a long while:

And it typically depends on how big or small I think each of the drawings should be, but I do try to keep them on one page if I can just for organizations’s sake.

Also if I know I need to post it from my phone, I try to make things easier for myself by putting things within proximity of each other with my phone’s camera in mind (not the whole page because it’ll be blurry, up and down since that’s easier for me to take a shot with, and so on).

If I’m gonna scan it, that makes things a bit easier, but I do try to condense them enough so I can try and avoid doing two scans of the same page and having to stitch them together (this one below just ended up taking the whole page, and since most scanners - my roommate’s included - usually only scan Letter or A4 size areas, those I end up having to scan on multiple parts and edit them together in Clip Studio Paint).

But of course, it all comes down to what feels right or works with your own method the best (as long as you achieve the outcome you wanted, the tools and method to get there don’t necessarily have to be the “best” or “right” way to do it).

I hope this helps, though, and that you have a brilliant day~✨

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime roundup, Pt. 1: Ongoing/returning shows and the trash heap

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it!

I wasn't expecting to watch nearly this much anime in just the past three months, but life completely failed at getting in the way. So here's everything I either watched or tried​ to watch for the Winter 2024 season, and a short review for each.

I'm not going to bother with trying to rank them, so instead they're sorted by category, as follows:

Continuing series from Fall 2023

Returning series

What I dropped

Mixed reactions

On hold

New series that are actually good

With this first entry, I'll be covering the first three, with the back half arriving in another couple of days. As with the 2023 rankings, the OP for each show is linked in the corresponding title.

Here we go.

Ongoing shows:

The Apothecary Diaries

Looking back at my 2023 rankings, I think my placement of The Apothecary Diaries’ first cour at #11 may have belied how much I love this show and believe it to truly be one of last year’s greats. If anything, it was hampered by its status as an ongoing show making it incomplete by nature, and I worried myself over the possibility of recency bias taking over my top ten (Frieren is in the same boat, so its top overall ranking should really highlight how damn good it is). Make no mistake, though: The Apothecary Diaries fucking rocks, and it continues to fucking rock. 

It’s largely more of the same, and that’s what you would want from another cour of this show. At the same time, though, more and more is uncovered about Maomao’s background and Jinshi’s status as the proverbial camera continues to pull back and the mysteries adorning the edges of the frame become clearer. I got a sense at the end of the Fall 2023 cour that the show was moving on from its episodic nature into something more serial and plot-driven, and I was mostly right: While several episodes of the Winter cour still revolve around various mysteries of the week, they all start to converge before you even realize it. It’s the same flywheel-effect approach to plot development that Kaguya-sama did so well: While so many of the events seem like one-off curiosities in the moment, these almost-imperceptible movements eventually barrel forward into an unexpected but perfectly logical momentum. The show teases out several plot threads that may not seem relevant at first, and it trusts you to be patient enough to see them play out.

I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that, along with the next entry on this list, The Apothecary Diaries is one of the best anime of the past five years. I had a feeling that this could end up being the case as 2023 came to a close, but I’m sure of it now. Watch this show.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Last year’s best anime continues apace into 2024 as we get an honest-to-goodness story arc: Frieren, who has been around too long to bother taking any magical governing bodies seriously, needs a certified mage in her party order to continue on the journey north. She decides to take the necessary exam to be certified as a First-Class Mage, a rarefied status in this world, and has Fern tag along to do the same in order to double their chances. 

And it’s still incredible! Great action, brilliant animation, wonderful character moments, and a beautiful score. It is still the top-rated anime ever on MyAnimeList, and by a significant margin. I’m not sure I agree, necessarily, but I can say with all sincerity that this has been a perfect season of television and my Fridays now feel empty without it. 

That’s all I’ve got on this one. What else do you want from me? I’ve already written nearly 2000 words about this show alone since it premiered. You’re asking me for more? I’ll kill you.

Shangri-La Frontier

If the low placement on my 2023 list was any indication, I was pretty fed up with Shangri-La Frontier by the end of its first cour, and the first couple episodes of 2024 being little more than plot set-up had me teetering on the edge of dropping it entirely. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t reel me back in once shit actually started happening and the plot really began to move forward.

Well, for a bit, at least. The height of the series so far has been the Wethermon arc, in which Sunraku teams up with his fellow shit-gamers, Pencilgon and Katzo, as they vie to be the first to take down a notoriously difficult unique boss. As the fight plays out, we get to see the feeling-out process of a tough action-RPG boss, rife with attack pattern memorization, skill timing, and buff stacking as the margin for error grows ever thinner. As always, the animation is on point, the soundtrack rules, and the action sequences are exhilarating.

But my major gripe with the series remains: There’s hardly any actual story here, even after 25 episodes. There are broad gestures towards a larger plot (“the truth of this world,” as the NPCs call it), but they are too vague to even resemble anything enticing. Everything in between the major fights is just set dressing, and there’s a lot of in between. There’s decent stuff in there, to be fair; the adorable rabbit NPCs are always a delight, and I love the commitment to depicting our top-level gamers as smug, preening shitheels. These are long walks for short drinks of water, though, and much of the main cast isn’t likable enough to make the downtime tolerable, to the point where watching the many set-up episodes feels like more of a grind than the actual grinding in the show. Even in the best fight sequences I still had moments where I found myself yelling “STOP TALKING ALREADY” at the screen. Internal monologues are a constant in battle shonen, I know, but if there’s any demographic whose internal monologues I want to hear the least, it’s gamers.

I kept watching this show despite myself, and six months later I’m still not sure how much I actually enjoy it. I haven’t seen any of the lousy VRMMO anime that people favorably compare it to, so at least it isn’t Sword Art Online. Yay, I guess? Yet here I am, still plugging away at a show I can’t strongly recommend to a lot of people. Shangri-La Frontier has turned me into a Steam reviewer.

Undead Unluck

The stakes continue to rise exponentially in one of last year’s more underrated shonen hits (or it would’ve been a hit if Disney gave a fuck about marketing the anime on its own platforms). The Union neutralizes a threat, gains a new Roundtable member, and then shit hits the fan.

The scope of this series goes into absolutely buckwild directions, and all I will say is that “Kimi no Todoke predicting the future” was not a piece of worldbuilding I would have ever expected. But at the same time, it never loses focus on the human element, which only gets more poignant as it goes on. There’s a really beautiful message in the last arc about how people can live on through the memories of others, well past their bodies dying, which hits nice and hard considering this season aired at the same time as Frieren.

This is a show that I tended to watch sporadically (because I just plain forget to open Hulu just to watch one show every week), and I would say that it was the ideal way to watch it, except the pacing issues from the first cour only got worse during a monumentally consequential sequence in the middle of the second. There was an episode that had, I shit you not, 90 seconds of new content in the first seven minutes of runtime, and at the exact point in the series where you’re salivating for something, anything new. In a season where so much goes on in just 24 episodes, I’m baffled that they felt the need to pad the runtime so much.

That’s the worst of it, though, and the momentum fortunately builds up from there and barrels downhill until the end. The story becomes incredibly meta, which was a very ballsy move for a Shonen Jump series that was still relatively early into its run. The gamble pays off, though, and the debut season ends on several incredibly strong episodes, and now I want more. I’ll be hopping on the manga soon.

It also struck me towards the end of the season just how goddamn cute everyone looks. For all of the spraying blood and grim marching towards Armageddon, it says a lot that I still wanna pinch everyone’s fat little cheeks.

Returning shows:

The Dangers in My Heart, season 2

The first season was absent in my 2023 rankings but I decided to pick it up while the second was still airing, and I’m so glad I did: The Dangers in My Heart is an almost-too-precious middle school romance that is endlessly endearing and bluntly honest (if a little exploitative) about what middle schoolers are actually like, warts and all. Insecurities are amplified, they struggle to figure out their identities, and mental and physical development run on different schedules from one kid to the next. And amidst all this raging hormonal nonsense, we have ourselves a lovely little romance story.

Kyotaro has (mostly) kicked his chuuni tendencies and realized that he’s madly in love with the beautiful, cheery Anna. He’s as aware as anyone of what a mismatched couple they’d be, though, and continues to self-sabotage any progress in the name of maintaining her good social standing. To pile onto his loner’s perspective of middle school politics, Kyotaro also gets a front-row seat to Anna’s part-time work as a model-slash-actress and he wonders if an underdeveloped shrimp like him should be seen anywhere near someone so obviously more mature. At the same time, though, he’s a growing boy, and we see lovely moments of progress as Kyotaro takes initiative both for her sake and to achieve what he wants. To both ameliorate and complicate these situations, Anna reciprocates his feelings towards her, and we creep ever closer towards what we want to see, in increasingly awkward and precious fashion.

So much of this anime is just gorgeous. Even setting aside the visuals and music (which are on point at all times), there are really lovely themes in here about insecurity, teenage perceptions of maturity, and self acceptance. On top of all of that, though, this is just a delightful slice-of-life romance story. You can probably guess where we’ve ended up by the end of the second season, but it’s the getting there that makes it all worth it. The manga is still running (and I plan to pick it up), so there’s clearly plenty more of the story to tell, but if this is where the anime ends, it ended perfectly.

Holy shit, though, did the first season really air at the same time as Skip and Loafer and Insomniacs After School? Dentists must have made a mint that season because every single one of these shows is so unrelentingly sweet that my teeth start to itch. Not that I’m complaining.

Mashle: Magic and Muscles, season 2

I honestly think I might’ve been too hard on Mashle in my 2023 rankings. I gave up on it a few episodes in when it’d initially aired, but I eventually came back to finish out the season and ended up having a pretty good time. I’ll cop to having forgotten that latter part when I mapped out those rankings, but that enjoyment quickly came back to me when I picked up season 2... even if the season begins with a ton of table setting.

Plenty of battle shonen take time to find their voice, both in manga and anime, and Mashle really seemed to hit its stride fairly quickly into the second season. Mash Burnedead’s lack of magical quality is no longer a secret, and now magical society has to find a way to deal with it, so the series’ initial stakes are raised and Mash HAS to become a top-level sorcerer lest he lose his life. Also, the bad guys are back. Unfortunately, just as I started to genuinely appreciate the ensemble cast, most of Mash’s friends took a backseat to the larger plot (Lemon is nowhere to be seen almost all season) as the villains raise the stakes with increasingly JoJo-esque magic abilities. There’s still plenty to like, though, and some of the new characters help. Props for having an openly nonbinary character play a major role.

The music is a real highlight here; a surprising amount of hip-hop paints the backdrops during dialogue, and any show with an OP by Creepy Nuts will immediately grab my attention. "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born" actually turned into a bona fide hit single, much like Oshi no Ko's "Idol" and Jujutsu Kaisen's "SPECIALZ," and I'd say it's well earned (seriously, it fucks, please click the link above). The animation has also started to really pick up where it felt like it kept falling short in the first season as well, and I found myself looking forward to action sequences more as the season went on.

And hey, it might’ve taken 21 episodes to get there, but I finally laughed at a cream puff gag!

Urusei Yatsura (2022), season 2

I really don’t have much to say other than it’s more Urusei Yatsura, and that’s just swell. We continue the modern adaptation of the classic gag manga as the OG anime babe and her piece-of-shit “darling” get caught up in yet more bizarre hijinks. Despite the 48-episode run being touted as an “Urusei Yatsura all-stars” cherry-pick from Rumiko Takahashi’s 34-volume opus, not all of the segments hit on the same level, but the stories that last entire or even multiple episodes have been killer. Lum and Ataru, despite their myriad flaws, genuinely do care for one another, and this series is at its best when those feelings get to shine through. Takahashi remains a legend for her expert balancing of comedy and heart, and while this particular adaptation doesn’t have the built-in benefit of 300+ chapters of familiarity, those moments still feel earned.

It’s Urusei Yatsura. It’s a classic for a reason. Watch it.

Dropped:

Gushing Over Magical Girls (dropped after one episode)

For the TL;DR version, consult the image above.

All I’d heard about this show going in was that the manga it’s based on was good and that there would be boobs. I wish I’d known more than that before watching, though, because if I’d known that said boobs would belong to middle schoolers, I wouldn’t have bothered with even the one episode I did end up watching.

I was drawn in by the initial premise, too: The protagonist, the conspicuously-named Utena (who looks enough like Bernadetta from Fire Emblem that I was immediately endeared to her), is an enormous fan of the magical girls who keep her city safe, so when an adorable maho shoujo mascot approaches her with an offer, she immediately takes him up on it. As her sinister-looking (and unnecessarily revealing) costume suggests, though, Utena doesn’t get to live out her magical girl dreams; she actually got roped into—and blackmailed into keeping—a role as a villainess. The magical girl team she idolizes quickly finds her, and to stave off their assault, Utena is forced to summon a monster to bind them. As they continue to struggle and squeal, Utena goes further with it by ripping their clothes and spanking their bare bottoms red, because it turns out that she’s actually into this stuff, sexually. The title, it turns out, is a double entendre.

Credit where it’s due for a clever concept: On paper, this is really goddamn funny! My issue is with the execution: I don’t really care to see someone’s sexual awakening if it involves repeated violations of consent, and much less so if I have to see nudity of ostensible middle schoolers (Japanese middle schools are the equivalent of seventh through ninth grade, meaning these girls are 15 at most). After 100 Girlfriends, I thought I could handle whatever trashy bullshit any anime could throw my way, but the longer I chewed on Gushing’s premiere, the worse it sat with me. I have no intentions of playing morality police here, but I can’t bring myself to watch any more of this than I already have. 

Early teenage sexuality is a very difficult subject matter to handle delicately, especially in a comedy milieu, and I can levy plenty of criticisms on that matter towards series I otherwise enjoyed, like Call of the Night and the aforementioned Dangers in My Heart. And although there appear to be some coming-of-age elements here, Gushing doesn’t seem interested in handling it without being exploitative. Maybe it gets better, but I don’t plan to find out for myself. 

I just feel like it’s a shame that in a season with some actual halfway decent LGBT representation, the breakout yuri hit is about middle schoolers performing dubiously-consensual BDSM on each other. And maybe that speaks to something for some sapphic viewers, and I have no intention of speaking over them, but I do know that this isn’t for me. I would’ve gone fucking feral over this show when I was like 13, but I haven’t been a 13-year-old boy for a long, long time. 

I may not have a leg to stand on here as someone who watches Mushoku Tensei (and frankly, that one’s on strike two with me), but I have to put my foot down somewhere. For me, that “somewhere” is borderline pornography involving 13-15 year olds. I try to meet media where it is, even the squicky stuff, but I cannot put myself at the level Gushing Over Magical Girls sets for itself. 

Sasaki and Peeps (dropped after eight episodes)

This show is frustrating to even process postmortem. After a mildly intriguing hour-long premiere that introduced a whole lot of concurrent concepts, Sasaki and Peeps somehow managed to not only continue heaping new ideas onto the pile, but also fumble every single one of them in a way that wasn’t even entertaining to watch.

Sasaki, a lonely 40-something salaryman of modest means, decides that instead of living vicariously through adorable animal photos on social media, he should pull the trigger and get a pet of his own. He settles on a reasonably-priced and suitably adorable fat little Java sparrow, who as it turns out speaks human language and is actually named Piercarlo the Starsage (Sasaki settles on calling him Pii-chan, or Peeps in English). The bird was reincarnated from another world, where he is able to take Sasaki at will, and the man realizes he can use the other world’s relative dearth of technology to his advantage and sets up an interdimensional trade full time so he can make coin on his own watch and help Peeps try the delicious beef he heard is the best food in Sasaki’s world. To the latter end, he also invests in a restaurant. Peeps also helps teach him magic, which Sasaki is forced to use in a pinch in the real world. He is quickly found out and gets roped into a secret government bureau of psychics, because the agent who caught him using ice magic decides he’d be a perfect complement to her water powers (think Kanne and Lawine from Frieren, but stupider). Sasaki now has to balance these multiple lives, which hardly ever interact with one another, as the stakes rise in Peeps’ world in the form of palace intrigue and in Sasaki’s world in the form of a growing threat of evil psychics or something. Also, there’s magical girls, because why the fuck not at this point.

If you actually managed to process all that and went “wow, that’s a lot, I wonder how they can tie all that together,” it brings me no pleasure to report that Sasaki and Peeps completely fails at that task. This is a work of fiction with entirely too many ideas, to the point where it feels like it has no ideas. There’s a saying in football that a team with two quarterbacks is a team with no quarterback, and Sasaki and Peeps has, like, six on its depth chart. You ever hear a band that managed to cram multiple genres in the same song and you get whiplash every time it switches up? Those are bands with a lot of influences, but no identity or vision to call their own, and that is Sasaki and Peeps to me: It is the Twenty One Pilots of anime. A lot of shit got thrown at the wall, and none of it stuck: This show, conceptually, is shit-stained drywall with a pile of turds adorning the moulding. 

For a show about a 40-year-old man, it gave me serious pause that there was not a single named adult woman in any of the episodes I watched, and I grew even more frustrated waiting for one to show up. Sasaki’s partner, Hoshizaki, seems to be a driven, professional young woman, but it turns out she’s a 16 year old high school student, for some reason. The daughter of the viscount doing business with Sasaki is a young girl who likes to tag along with him, and Sasaki’s neighbor is a latchkey high school girl who may or may not have a yandere-ish fixation on him. The magical girl we meet is also definitely a kid. The female psychics they face off against don’t appear to be older than teenagers, though the one who appears to grow fond of him turns out to be several hundred years old, which especially gave me pause because we all know that unfortunate trope and the type of person who hides behind it. Before progressing any further, I found out that the light novel series upon which this show is based was written by someone with the pen name “Buncololi,” which told me the rest of what I needed to know.

That part made me increasingly uncomfortable, and I became less and less convinced that this show was capable of sticking the landing as it continued to pile on new, contrived ideas. This was a waste of an excellent voice cast, but more than that, a waste of time.

Tales of Wedding Rings (dropped after nine episodes)

I can’t believe how much goddamn isekai I ended up watching this season. That Tales of Wedding Rings wasn’t the worst one (see above) was a minor miracle, because boy howdy was this one a dud.

Satou is just a normal high school boy, blah blah blah, his childhood friend he’s in love with is actually a princess from another world and she has to go back to fulfill a political marriage, he follows her into the portal to pull a Benjamin Braddock. But then, gasp, the palace is under attack, so the princess (her native name is Krystal, but growing up in Japan she was known as Hime, which means… princess) instead decides to marry Satou, bestowing upon him her kingdom’s ring, which gives him powers that he uses to fight back the demons. It turns out that her ring enables him to use one elemental affinity out of five, so of course now Satou has to collect the rings held by the other four kingdoms in order to become the Ring King and save the world, and to do so he has to also marry each corresponding princess.

This is basically Tolkien’s Rings of Power but as a harem isekai with bonus nudity. What I saw of the season was basically a MacGuffin hunt that had waifus of various fantasy races attached. Fine character designs for each, to be fair, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested.  It’s funny on paper that (to paraphrase Geoff Thew) our protagonist’s power level scales with the size of his harem, but Tales didn’t do enough to make me actually care what was happening. And I wanted to! There were elf titties and I didn’t care. That’s criminal.

What makes Tales especially difficult to watch is that this show is fuck ugly. The color palette is muddy and unappealing, everyone looks uncannily shiny, and there’s a smudgy Vaseline filter over everything. The action sequences are uninspiring, the animation is lousy, and every character looks terribly off-model unless they’re naked. Watch the OP I linked if you don't believe me; that's the best of it. The aural element isn’t much better; ecchi scenes are punctuated by a Cinemax-caliber smooth jazz score that I pray was chosen ironically, and most of the show’s humor consists of “an old guy is screeching.” And if you’re wasting Shigeru Chiba’s talents on that one lousy joke, you’ve fucked up catastrophically.

What completely pushed me out of wanting to see any more of this show, though, was how hard it doubled down on the worst elements of harem anime by having Protag-kun be a wishy-washy little ninny even though he’s openly declared his love for and is literally married to Hime/Krystal. And I wanted to care about her; the narrative made me want to care about her, and her jealousy of the other princesses is warranted, but alas, the harem demands bodies. To his credit, Satou recognizes her mixed emotions and makes extra time for her to make it clear that she’s forever number one in his heart, but every single time their shared romance and emotions actually push them towards consummating their (all caps for emphasis) MARRIAGE, the show goes Rent-a-Girlfriend on us and finds a cheap excuse to ruin the moment. No thanks, I’m out. Nothing else about this show is good enough to make me wade through that shit.

Honestly, the only thing that had me coming back after my Persona 3-induced hiatus was that I wanted to see the dragon girl, and that alone was almost worth it, but there really isn’t much of a draw otherwise. There were better isekai, better romances, better fantasy settings, and even better uncensored harem shenanigans this season. I might pick this back up as the second season approaches, but I’m not in any hurry.

[scrubbinn]

Mimic HRT: 16 months “Body dysmorphia”

“The mimic octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus, the thing that has, in some way, become a part of me. At least it’s the thing mixed into my slime medication. It’s been about a week since I turned into a cocoon. Which, even the doc still doesn’t know why exactly that part happened. And while I'm glad it's over, I’m worried there's something else in this treatment that no one knows about. Last time I checked, cocoons have nothing to do with slimes or octopi… octopus? Oh this is going to bug me all day.”

“It's funny I don't consider that cocoon to be the strangest part. It’s that I’m oddly calm about the whole thing. It’s not like the calm before I started taking normal hormone replacements, that was like a film over me that left me unable to express emotions. Now, I just feel calm. Complete. Myself. I suppose I can no longer consider myself a slime, though I am still similar. I've been told that thanks to me, Mimic HRT is now being perfected and stocked for others as a type of shapeshifter medication. I really didn't expect to become a patient zero for something like this. I can’t complain too much, this body really is everything I could have wanted. I should probably explain. It’d be a good idea to go over all the new parts of me.”

“Alright, from the top… actually I don’t know if that works, I’m not exactly humanoid, not always at least. Oh, I guess we can start with that actually. Shapeshifting has become nearly second nature. The brain isn’t human anymore, so it’s not really that surprising that it’s become so easy to take different shapes. Everytime I enter a new room, the first thing I think to do is copy the appearance of the wall or some furniture, it’s just this predator ambusher mentality that feels so correct to morph into something else. Mimicking people or objects in motion is incredibly tiring, but inanimate objects are so much easier. It’s probably because Mimics don’t spend much time moving so it exerts way more energy. Like, you know how most video games you see mimics as treasure chests right? Well I’m sure there’s an answer about game design, but no, seriously, it’s because you get to just be a simple square shaped object without worrying about how many fingers or teeth you’re supposed to have or worry about how to move convincingly. I already know I’m convincing, I am a box! Look, sometimes you just gotta turn into a ball and do nothing for half the day and it just feels nice. It’s those times where I’m too exhausted to do anything so I spend the entire time pretending to be a couch. There are also times where I can’t help but move. When I know I’m safe in my bed, for example, I let all my extra limbs move on their own to find crevices between the mattress and pillows, it’s like I’m trying to find a hole to slide into for safety. Sometimes I also shift color and texture on my own without realizing, which has led to some awkward moments where I’ve jumpscared Abi about… pretty much every time she picks me up for a date."

“I did say mimicking living things was difficult but that doesn’t mean I'm constantly just a pile of goo and eyes on the floor. I have a humanoid form that I can enter with ease. It's a bit more cloudy than the normal sky blue of my previous form though. My hair has changed a lot too. It's still the same material and texture, but it's become flattened to something more ribbon-like. It's much longer too, reaching out to my back. I can move it now though. I can stretch them, widen, flatten, turn them into tubes, they can curl and soap up, and with just a little water, I basically look like I did before, just, with a bunch more, teeth and eyes.… Ok so yes, I might be missing a face where the typical one is and I just shift colors and textures to pretend I still have one. And maybe a few of these limbs are just weirdly shaped mouths, with teeth that snap at anything that gets too close. And perhaps I have dozens of eyeballs all over my body- Ok, ok, this is a lot actually, let’s go over this one at a time. Teeth first I guess. I've been finding them in various shapes and lengths all across the body, and they move around too, I think in total I've found seven. There might be an eighth, it's hard to really count, especially when they move and bite automatically. At least they know well enough not to try and eat anyone I like. Hear that Dr. Erian? Better be careful! Ha! Anyway, eyes have been easier to deal with. There's dozens that swim around my hair and body, they usually stay closed until a vibration hits one and then they all suddenly open up. 360 degree vision isn't something that's easy to describe. It feels… spherical? That's the best explanation I have. At least they blend in with the body so I don't have to worry about people constantly being terrified of me. As long as I can hide the teeth under clothing, and keep most of my eyes closed, I look like a normal slime. Hm, normal. Kinda lost normal from my vocabulary somewhere along the way. Normal doesn’t involve a month long metamorphosis”

“About the cocoon… I… no, we don't need to talk about it. We can talk about something else…”

“Oh! The brain, it's… unique, it's doing fine though. No more headaches for the most part. Abigail and I have been studying this thing a lot. It's kinda hard to call it a brain. It siphons out nutrients melted down in the goo and sends it throughout this body with what I call its root system. They're kinda like nerves, but I'm naming them roots, because it just sounds better and also cause it looks like there’s a giant potato growing in my head. Besides, I don’t think they help move the body like nerves, the roots pull and push through the body, rearranging themselves to where I need some nutrition or where there’s an injury. I know other slimes have a core that they can move around and even remove for a bit. Never heard of one moving on its own, and I'm pretty sure if this was removed, I'd die on the spot. It's so weird to think this thing is a brain and a stomach. It's definitely a brain. If the core is hanging out near my leg, that's where I feel the headaches. Oh right, it moves more than just the roots around. I don't think I can control it? Control it… ha, yeah like a human can control their own brain, why should I be so different…”

“Uh… so, the thing is… I uh, I have something to say, about… how I don't have anything to say right now. But I will later, when it's important! Because it isn't important right now. Let's talk about something actually important, like, like… Actually yeah. I do need to talk about something. Because I don’t know how to bring it up to Abi, or you Erian when we last met.”

“I'm, not acting right. I mean, I am acting right, for a mimic. But I don't know, I thought I'd be acting like a cute slime that was curious and ditzy and cute and someone who… people still liked. Abi hasn't said it, but I know she doesn't like the new me. It's understandable, I'm a lot less cute and a lot more, eldritch. That’s not fair to her, we still love each other, it’s just this change is, a bit much. I already mentioned hiding with camouflage and biting things automatically. But there's the fact I'm still missing my memories, and I think at this point it's clear I'm never getting them back. Not to mention making human memories isn't possible anymore. Everytime I think back on things. I don't look at memories like how I used to. I used to look back on them with emotions and feelings. But now, I can only view memories as things that tell me if something is dangerous or food. When it's neither, when it's family or friends, I feel nothing. My brain is animalistic, it's a solitary predator for a social life. Is it even possible for me to adapt to that? Maybe… maybe I should stop taking the medication. Stop here when I still can. Is that wrong of me? Am I less of an otherkin for wanting to cling to the remainder of this humanity? I don't know. I don’t know anything!”

“…I do know something. I know how I cocooned myself- Shit! I didn't mean- it’s ok, I'll just start a new record- I… no I need to talk about what happened at some point. It’s hard but I need to get it out of my head somehow. I just need some time before I can talk about it.”

“I need to talk about something happy. It's probably not coming across well but I am happy. I am truly, genuinely happy. Being a mimic hasn't stopped my soapy journey. I'm still a soap slime at heart and my slipperiness has only gotten more hilariously troublesome. Now that every part of this body is made of materials crafted to slip around, it's been fun to learn new ways to not bang my head on every wall. I'm actually being serious, it's kind of fun to slide everywhere, I feel like a kid again. Not to mention that sometimes Abi will just stick random aromatics in my hair and the whole room starts to smell like orange peel and pine. I know slimes are a more fantastical species but sometimes I do wonder how a soap slime would evolve in the wild. What would I do? Is the scent thing to lure in prey? To socialize with others of their kind? Maybe if I did fully become a slime, I'd get a nature documentary made about me. Being a slime is cool but mimics aren't bad either, there are some upsides to it. With all this control of my body, I finally feel like myself, when I need a different body type for my human form I don't need to think about it, it just happens, if I feel like being purple that day it just happens, different hair, different voice, different anything. I finally don't have to be forced into one thing. It feels like… it just feels, I feel everything better, from how sweet Abi's voice is, to the wind blowing through Hyper city, to the vibrations of the soft sounds of the night life. I am happy. I am really truly honestly happy.”

“ok, I'm ready to talk about it. About the cocoon. I can do this. I. Can. Do. This. It was just a day before it happened, that's when the pain started. I don't mean the pain of my brain being rewritten, or the pain of my skin dissolving. Those were bad, but what I experienced. It was indescribable. This started in the middle of the night. I couldn't sleep for the past two days from an aching body except for the brief moments of unconsciousness. Then all of a sudden, I felt a searing pain in my chest. I was delirious from exhaustion and the sudden jolt of fear wasn’t helping. I somehow got the idea that something foreign was growing inside my slime body, like a mold, and just like a mold, it spread. I could feel the misery move throughout my body into my limbs and neck. I think what I was feeling was the exposed nerves of my new teeth forming surrounded by solidified lye, but no, what I felt had no explanation. Nothing could ever fully rationalize what I felt that night. The torrent of agony eventually crawled into my head, I thought it was a nightmare. I did, things, in my panic, that I don't want to remember for this recording, and I don’t want anyone to learn about. Turns out mimics can get scars, that’s all I’m going to say. It felt like I was about to recede into nothingness, or disintegrate completely, either one would have been preferred over what actually happened. It just continued. It felt like different layers of pain where eventually I'd start to dissociate only for some new sudden jolt of pain to bring me back. Like every single one of my cells was popping one after the other. I couldn't even scream, I forgot I had no lungs and didn't remember how slimes even talked, I just laid there, unable to move, hoping somehow a doctor or witch would arrive to stop the pain. Eventually thinking became too hard. Every single micrometer of my insides and outsides were screaming, and I couldn't pass out. You could simply say it hurt and call it a day, and you would be wrong. Getting a scrap when you fall on the sidewalk hurts. This was hell. That's when it happened. I still don’t understand it. I mean it was probably the pain and exhaustion causing hallucinations and… I heard a voice. In my head I mean. It was so clear despite everything and I was struggling so hard to listen, but the voice was gentle. It taught me what to do to ease the pain. I followed its words. The next thing I remember was waking up next to Abi and my mother rushing in with a doctor. I think you were informed about the rest. Looking forward to the call I get from you about this one. End recording.”

* * *

“Good morning Ms.Mulberry, pleasant to see you in higher spirits than our last meeting.”

“Hello Theo. Let's make this meeting quick, Abi and I are going out in half an hour.”

“Blunt as ever. Fine then, I wish we could have had this talk sooner, but I believe we need to discuss the crossroads you've entered. I'm sure you've already heard about it and if you wish to skip right over I understa-”

“Tell me. Please.”

“Beg pardon? Well… ahem. There's a point in every transition that we refer to as a crossroads. What can best be described as a choice, we can put you on a much lighter dosage of your medication until your body is producing the correct chemicals to remain stable on its own. This would be the end of your transition. On the other hand, with your written consent, we would continue with your treatment's normal dosage until you fully become a mimic. This would most likely entail complete identity loss, and losing any part of you that could be called human. Depending on your sentience and level of aggression, you would be given over to the proper authorities to make sure the rest of your life is handled properly as per the agreement on the paperwork you signed.”

“...I.”

“You’ll have to make this choice soon, from your latest recording you may have already gone past your crossroad, but you still can turn back from here. I promise. If you wish, there are other things we can discuss. You mentioned a voice that appeared inside your head. Have you heard it since?”

“No, I haven’t. Sorry I’m not feeling great, could I go soon?”

“You’ve undergone a great deal of stress Ms.Mulberry. You look like you’ve barely slept in days, despite your claims to the contrary, you don’t appear to be very happy. You should probably seek a listening ear. I can get you in contact with a therapist who specializes in therian traumas.”

“Dr. Erian?”

“Yes Ms.Mulberry?”

“Am I a coward for wanting to turn back? Am I not actually otherkin? Am I just a leech for people who need this treatment more than me? I should want to continue right? Why do I suddenly care about the little of me that’s human? I don’t even remember when I was human! Why should I care? Why do I care? What am I?”

“You're brave Mayday. You're very brave.”

“I’d like to move to a lighter dosage.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mention list: @a-shramp, @calliecwrites, @be702, @respectfulevil, @hyacinthdoll1315

Start - Prev - Next

@aster-is-confused, @bloodandbrandywyne, @glitchgloop

[blossomverse]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚El Chico del Apartamento 512˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

pairing: neighbor!miguel o'hara x fem!reader

word count: 4.9k

summary: you've had a crush on miguel for the longest time. he happens to be your very kind, extremely attractive, next-door neighbor. what happens when you end up bonding over smoothies and a broken elevator?

cw & tw: mostly fluff, mildly suggestive dream, catcalling (by strangers), random man grabs reader's wrist without permission, stuck inside an elevator trope, some cursing, minors dni

a/n: i'm currently undergoing a miguel brainrot, that's how i found myself writing this in the middle of the night. the sentences on bold and italic are supposed to be reader’s inner thoughts. the story is heavily inspired by the song "el chico del apartamento 512" by selena. i srsly recommend listening to it as you read

Every day, coming home from work, same routine. Life in Nueva York was like this. The unwanted stares and comments from strange men were a frequent thing you’ve had to deal with. Your response would always be to ignore, continue walking as fast as you possibly could, and show that you were not afraid, nor bothered.

Today was no different, unfortunately. After a stressful shift at work, you had arrived inside your apartment complex and clicked on the elevator’s summoning button. That old thing would always take forever to arrive when called. As you waited patiently, one of the neighbors that always had some unwelcome attention to give, began approaching to make conversation.

Please, not today. I’m tired of rejecting this dude.

“Oh, how lucky I am! I’ve been waiting to see you again, Y/n.” He stood next to you.

“Mhm, I bet.” You answered, uninterested in whatever he had to say.

“So, I’ve been meaning to ask–“

“No offense, but you should really go shower…” You blurted the words out, cutting him off before he could ask anything.

The man stood speechless for a hot second, unsure on what to say next. You simply stared blankly at the wall, not even sparing him one pitiful glance. He was about to speak again, when a familiar ding was heard. Finally, that prehistoric device had reached the first floor and opened its doors.

A few people made their way out and as you looked up to see the last one leaving, your heartbeat completely accelerated at the sight. There was he: the image of your dreams, the one your heart belonged to. The guy from apartment 512.

“M- Miguel, hi!” You said, a little bit too loud and enthusiastically for your own good.

You’d bask on the embarrassment later when you had reached the comfort of your home. For now, all you cared about was him.

“Y/n, it’s nice to see you.” He walked fast and made his way to open his mailbox.

“It is– it is always nice to see you, too.” You heard your words become nothing but stammers. Something that happened regularly when you would speak to him.

“Home from work already?” He asked while taking out his correspondence and shuffling through it.

“Oh, yeah… finished early. I’m guessing you’ll probably head to work now, I see you’re umm– you’re wearing your gym clothes.” You subtly admired his muscles, which looked enhanced by his tight fitted shirt.

“I’ll stop to get a smoothie from across the street first. They’re really nice and nutritious, you know. Maybe you’d like to check them out sometime.”

With you?

Your heart ran a mile, just thinking about that possibility. But no, his voice was too nonchalant to be asking you out. He was simply recommending the place. Nothing more, right?

“Sure, I’ll go when I have the time.”

There was an awkward silence growing as you looked down at your feet. You didn’t want to make this situation uncomfortable or to keep bothering him. Everyone that was waiting for the elevator along with you had already disappeared, including the annoying neighbor. You had completely disassociated with the fact that you were evidently trying to go home, ignoring everything just to give him your attention.

Would that make me look like a fool in front of him?

“Well, I– I should probably leave now. Guess we’ll talk another time.”

“Have a nice evening, Y/n.” He stuffed everything he had picked up at the mailbox into his duffle bag.

“Yeah, good luck at work.” You offered a tiny smile and pressed the button again, summoning the elevator.

“Thanks.” He chuckled and simply left.

In a few minutes you were stepping inside your apartment. Which just happened to be right next to his. That’s how you had met when you had just moved in. Both of you quickly became acquainted with each other over the months, although it’d be too extreme to call yourselves friends. You were just… neighbors on friendly terms.

“Ugh, I totally made myself look ridiculous again, didn’t I?” You spoke aloud to yourself as you took off your shoes.

This crush was something you had been harboring for quite a few months. At first, you just noticed he was an attractive man. No one could deny that. But as you continued getting to know little bits and pieces of him, and noticed how respectful and kind he was to you, compared to others, your heart couldn’t help but fall for him.

You went inside your room and opened the window. Looking down at the streets, you noticed how he was walking away from the kiosk with his smoothie in hand and couldn’t help but continue admiring him from afar. He took a small sip from it and continued his steps. Your eyes never left him, convinced that he would not notice you staring his way.

Miguel looked up and glanced at the building where you both lived. His eyes immediately noticed the opened window on the 5th floor, with a certain person leaning her elbows on it. He smiled at you and waved. Your cheeks and ears immediately heated up. He had noticed you.

You waved back reluctantly, then slowly stepped away from the window, closing it a few seconds later. As you sat down on your bed, you fanned your face and ears. Things just couldn’t get more humiliating than this.

You decided to take a cold shower, hoping it would relax your mood. Once the cool water hit your skin, you were able to take a deep breath and release all the tension. At some point you’d need to confess your feelings, right? The worst thing that could happen would be getting rejected. Or maybe he’d be nice enough to accept going on a date, just to try things out, and then end up confessing you’re not exactly compatible.

I could just keep this to myself forever, though.

The evening went on as it usually would. Dinner was made while playing that romantic playlist you had created when thinking of him. Then you watched some tv, not paying too much attention to it, as you wrote the —probably— thousandth love letter you had made for him. That was the only way you knew how to pour out your feedings. At least without stuttering like a fool. But you could never give these to him.

Acting like a schoolgirl in love was definitely not the best way to go about this, you knew it. And yet, you couldn’t stop yourself from wasting the ink of your pen on a piece of paper that’d remain stored away, along with others like it. A red sharpie adorned the corners of the letter with pretty hearts. Each one was a symbol of your infatuation.

The sky was dark outside, letting you know it was probably time to go to bed. After all, tomorrow you had to wake up early, just to repeat the same, boring routine. You went to the kitchen to grab some water, like you usually would before sleeping. The faint sound of a blender could be heard through the wall. He was already home.

You smiled, knowing that only a wall separated both of you. A wall that felt infinite. With a final sigh, you heard the blender stop, and made your way to your room. The satin bedsheets welcomed you, bringing comfort after a long day of work. The thought of your earlier interactions with him clouded your mind as you waited for sleep to take over.

The next morning, as you were making your way out of your apartment complex, some random old man you had never seen before began trying to talk to you. There weren’t a lot of people around, unlike most mornings. For a moment, you considered going back inside, but you simply couldn’t afford being late for work. The old man spoke in Spanish so you could just act like you didn’t understand that he was talking to you.

“Chica, ven a verme.” [Girl, come to see me.]

You walked away without breaking pace. The old man kept calling behind you, his voice getting closer, until suddenly, his hand was clutching your wrist to turn you around. Your gasp was audible. No one had gone as far as grabbing you without permission before.

You were ready to defend yourself and slap the man away, when you felt the presence of another person, yanking the stranger away from you. When you turned your head around, you saw Miguel. His tall figure was blocking you from the old man’s view.

“No le caen los viejos rabos verdes.” [She doesn’t like dirty old men.]

“Perdón, no sabía que tenía novio.” [Sorry, didn’t know she had a boyfriend.]

You were breathing heavily, trying to process everything that had just happened. The old man walked away. Miguel didn’t move for a few minutes, staring at him menacingly. Once your knight in shining armor had made sure the coast was clear, he turned to you with a soft expression on his face.

“Are you alright? That fucker didn’t hurt you, did he?” He was concerned and his arms wanted to hug you, but he didn’t want to step outside the line, like that other man had done.

“N-no, no, I’m okay… I think.” Your body was shivering just a bit, partially because of the chilly morning air.

“I’m glad to hear that. If anyone ever bothers you again, tell me.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Thank you, for helping me… but, how come you’re outside this early?” You were confused. He had told you about how he only worked from afternoon until nighttime at a gym, and barely ever woke up early.

“I was on my way to the airport.”

“Oh– you’re going to travel… well, I wouldn’t want you to lose your flight because of me. Anyways, I have to get to work–“ You began walking away.

“Wait wait, I’ll go with you. And I’m not traveling.” His words made you slow down your steps.

“I don’t want to be a burden…” You said, reluctantly.

“You’re not, I promise. But it’s completely fine if you don’t want me to accompany you, so don’t feel like you have to agree.” He assured you with a warm smile.

“No, I would really like that– I mean… sure, you can.”

He gave you one of the chuckles you loved so much and you resumed your walk to work. He followed after you silently. It was quiet as you both made your way through the streets, save for the sound of some cars and the other people that walked by. It was a comforting silence. It made you feel safe.

Once you had reached your destination, you turned around to thank him again. You both said your goodbyes as you watched him leave. There was barely any time to process anything. Much less as you both walked together. He always made you so nervous.

Work was slow and tiring. Your mind drifted to the thought of Miguel, as it often did. But today, he seemed to be persistent on staying running through your head for longer. It definitely made you get distracted way too many times during working hours.

Finally, after each agonizing second, it was time to clock out for the day. Once you were a block away from home, you remembered to buy groceries. By the time you had finished, the night had covered the sky with its starry mantle.

As you neared the building of your apartment complex, your eyes drifted to the kiosk across the street. There they found Miguel, and a smile crept up on your face. He was speaking with the other customers, a lively conversation likely taking place by the looks of it. His gym clothes were on, meaning he was back from work.

You considered going there with the pretext of trying the smoothies he had recommended, but desisted upon the idea for the moment. First, you needed to get rid of the grocery bags. Perhaps, by the time you had left them at home, he’d still be there chatting and you’d have time to come down and casually join the fun.

If only the elevator was faster, of course. It seemed to move even slower when you needed it to do its job the most. Miguel and the smoothies would have to happen another time. Or not… for you felt a familiar presence entering the building and joining the long wait for the elevator.

“Hey again.” Miguel’s voice rang across the hall.

“Oh– hi, Miguel.” You totally pretended you hadn’t recognized him by the smell of the Axe body spray he’d use after gym.

“Need help with that?” He pointed at the bags.

“It’s no big deal, honestly. But thanks, you’re always a gentleman.” Soon enough, you realized you’d given him a compliment and cringed internally for some reason.

“Heh, glad to know that.” His voice all smug.

The elevator arrived and you both made your way inside. It creaked loudly as it made its way up to the 5th floor. Miguel shook his head and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Remind me to tell the landlord to get this old thing fixed.”

“It’s no use, anyways. You know he’ll just ignore the request.” You sighed and leaned your back against the elevator wall.

“I should still try, at least before it brea–“ The lightbulbs blinked and the elevator stopped.

The two of you stood in silence for a few seconds, realizing what was happening. You were now stuck inside an elevator, and with the man of your dreams no less. But even the fact of being here with him didn’t stop you from slowly panicking.

“Shit… Miguel, what are we going to do?” You asked, exasperatedly.

“Press the button for emergencies, it should alert the nearest fire department. Just don’t panic.”

“How can I not panic? We could run out of air and die here…” You pressed the emergency button repeatedly and checked your phone to find signal, but to no avail.

“Don’t do that, the button could break. And we’re not gonna run out of air. This has air currents here, I think.” He spoke while typing on his phone.

“You seem oddly relaxed…”

“I’m also worried, but I’m trying to text the group chat of the people I train. One of the dudes is an engineer and there’s also a doctor, so they’ll probably know what to do.”

“Shouldn’t you call 911 or something, instead? I have absolutely no signal–“

“Hold on, I’m getting some answers… Miles said ‘don’t run out of air’…” He squinted his eyes as he began reading the replies.

“Ha, I told you we could run out of air!” You began panicking more now, thinking his doctor friend had answered.

“Hobie said ‘lay flat on the floor if it starts falling’…” Miguel continued reading the texts out loud in a confused tone.

“WHAT? Don’t tell me your engineer friend said that.” You were now seated down on the floor.

“No, he’s a musician. Only the younger people are answering right now, but these sound ridiculous.” He almost laughed as he kept reading. Leave it to the teens to joke about a situation like this one.

You leaned your head back in frustration. Miguel ended up sitting down as well and carried on typing. He looked awfully chill in this situation. Your only hope now was that the fire department had been notified through the emergency button. As time passed, you convinced yourself that if you were going to die, at least it’d be with the man you liked.

“Well… thankfully we’ve got some food and water, in case we have to spend the night here.” You pointed to the grocery bags, which were now also laying on the floor as well.

“And good company.” He smiled without looking up from his phone.

You felt your face heat up again, and your heart jumped up and down. His words always managed to fluster you in the worst moments. Now that you were stuck together for so long, it was becoming harder to hide your crush. You thought that this was probably a signal the universe was sending you, to convince you to finally confess before you died and it was too late.

“Umm, Miguel…”

“Yeah?” He looked up, glancing at you now.

“So there’s this thing I’ve been meaning to say– or ask, I guess.” You breathed in before continuing.

“I hear you.”

It was now or never.

“Okay, so–“

The elevator shook slightly and began moving up again. The lights flickered repeatedly, then the doors opened after it had reached your floor. You were not dying there together, after all.

“Oh, I guess grandpa decided to take a nap in the middle of his shift.” Miguel joked as he stood up.

He reached out his hand and helped you stand up. He then took some of the bags and carried them for you until you’d reached your door.

“I’m so glad it started working again.” You commented as you fumbled with the keys.

“Yeah, but anyways, what was it that you wanted to ask me? You never got to finish your sentence.”

You stood there frozen for a second, trying to come up with something to say. Your life was no longer at risk, so you didn’t feel the need of confessing before death any longer.

“Oh, it was nothing important.” You stalled, still thinking about what to say.

“Are you sure? You can tell me anything.”

“I just– I wanted to know if I could start training at the gym you go to.” You said as you opened the door of your apparent.

“That’s it?” He sounded like he didn’t really believe that’s what you meant to say.

“Yep. I’ve just never been to a place like that in my life so I gotta ask the expert, of course.” You smiled innocently, as if to convince not only him, but yourself, that what you had said was the truth.

“Sure, you’re welcome to do so. It’s not exactly a secret society, so you could have joined any gym without asking me.” He spoke sarcastically but your mind focused too much on the last portion of his sentence.

He probably doesn’t want me to join the same gym as him.

“Right… well, it was a long day and you must be tired. See you around, Miguel.”

You took your bags inside and closed the door quickly, leaving him slightly dumbfounded. Leaning against it after locking, you took a deep breath. Your mind felt like a jigsaw puzzle, and overthinking wasn’t helping at all. A shower was all you needed to get rid of all the stress caused by today’s incidents.

Once you had finished freshening up, you grabbed a quick snack before heading to bed. Rest was due. You didn’t feel like thinking about him and confusing your head even more. Now in the comfort of your bed, you allowed sleep to take over.

Thankfully, there was no need to worry about waking up early the next day. The sweet weekend had arrived, meaning you could rest and stay inside all day. The perfect way to avoid Miguel.

However, your dreams had different plans. As if to spite you, your subconscious mind displayed images of how it would be like if you and Miguel were a couple. The dream began by showing how you knocked on his door and confessed to him, he looked happy as he confessed his feelings as well. Then everything shifted, you were both having dinner at a nearby restaurant and he leaned over to kiss you. One last shift of images happened before you woke up. This time, the images presented you both kissing inside the elevator, slowly taking each other’s clothes off. His mouth had moved to your neck, leaving marks as he made his way down your body. It all felt soft and intense… and so real.

The loud honk of a car resonated through the walls, making your eyes open. The memories of your dream flashing rapidly inside your head, making you cover up your face in shame. But you wouldn’t deny how much you were enjoying it, so you screamed into your pillow in frustration.

“Fucking car had to wake me up exactly when it was getting good!” You whined and threw the pillow.

What if this was another sign?

Sitting up on the bed, you reached out for your phone and called your best friend. Sometimes when a girl doesn’t know what to do, she needs professional assistance from someone who knows her better than she knows herself.

“Oh em gee, look who’s calling!” You heard your friend on the other side of the call.

“Hey, bestie… so, I really need help with something– more like, someone.” You admitted nervously.

“And here I thought you wanted to, you know, say hi to me and know how I’m doing, maybe ask me out for brunch but nooo… I’m kidding, of course. How may I be of service?” She joked, making you laugh.

“Well, it’s about my neighbor.” You whispered the word ‘neighbor’, as if it was possible for Miguel to hear you talk about him through the wall.

“Wait, is this the neighbor you spoke to me about like two months ago?”

“Yeah, it’s about him. I’m in dire need of some advice.” You hated how she knew you so well.

“Girl, seriously… I thought by now you had already fucked him.” Her words made you gasp and burst out laughing.

“You did not just say that.” You continued giggling, unable to control yourself.

“Well, did you do it? Or did he break your heart and you need your best friend to cheer you up?” Maybe she didn’t know you that well.

“No, I just have this huge crush on him–“ You began explaining.

“Still?” Your friend cut you off with her comment.

“Yes, still. And I don’t know, but lately a lot of strange things have been occurring. I keep thinking they’re signs saying that I should tell him how I feel, but he keeps giving me mixed signals sometimes. I never know what’s going on inside his head.”

You continued rambling about everything that had happened in the past two days. Your friend listened carefully, her own mind trying to come up with the best answer to your problem. Surely, you couldn’t continue living life like this. Once you had finished the rant, she stayed silent for a few more seconds before finally speaking.

“In my opinion, you should knock on his damn door and confess. What’s he going to do? Bite you? You’d probably like it, anyways.” At least she spoke the truth.

“You make it sound so easy.” You shook your head and sighed.

“Because it is. You knock on his door, confess, I’m sure he likes you so he’ll say yes, then he’ll invite you in and you can fuck. Simple.” She sounded proud of her answer.

“It’s not certain that he likes me, maybe he’s just really nice.” You protested, still denying that possibility.

“Gosh, just get it over with! If he rejects you, just come over to my house for the weekend and I’ll help you deal with the pain. But now I need you to get your ass up and stop being a coward. Or else, I’ll show myself up when you least expect it to tell him everything.”

“You wouldn’t do that…”

“Try me.” You heard her chuckle.

“Ugh, fine! Fine, I’ll do it myself.” You sighed in defeat.

“Today.” She almost threatened.

“Mhm, today, whatever.” You spoke through gritted teeth.

“I’ll be expecting an update of how it went. But if by midnight I don’t receive anything, I’ll know for sure it wasn’t a rejection. Good luck, love ya!” She blew a kiss through the phone and hung up.

This girl…

You armed yourself with the courage your best friend had provided you with. She was right, you needed to get this over with. The next two hours you spent getting ready, making sure you looked and smelled nice. Even going as far as shaving, because you never know.

Once you thought you’d done enough, you checked yourself in the mirror one last time and inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly. As you made your way out, your heart was racing like never before. With wobbly legs and fiddled thumbs, you found yourself at his door. Another breath was taken before finally knocking on it.

Each second felt endless, even the door seemed to be opening in slow motion. Goosebumps suddenly appeared on your skin as you timidly looked up. But right there, standing in front of you, wasn’t the guy from apartment 512. Instead, a beautiful blonde woman had answered.

You felt your heart chatter. A million things going through your head as you stared at this woman you had never seen before. She looked a bit confused, waiting for you to speak first. At the moment, you simply couldn’t find any words.

Of course, he has a girlfriend. How could I be so stupid?

You were about to turn around and walk away while apologizing for the interruption. She obviously didn’t recognize you, so you’d just pretend you didn’t live next door and act like you were looking for someone else’s apartment. Then you’d pick up the pieces of your heart and spend the weekend with your best friend. As you took your first step back, the blonde spoke up.

“Were you looking for my brother?”

You froze and blinked twice. The breath you didn’t realize you were holding was released. Now you felt even more confused than her.

“Your brother? Miguel never mentioned he had a sister.” You scratched the back of your head.

“Are you the neighbor he was stuck with inside the elevator last night?” Miguel’s sister chuckled.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“My brother went to the kiosk to get us breakfast, even though we should already be having lunch. You can come in and wait for him if you’d like.” She opened the door wider to invite you in.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come by another time.”

“Alright, then I’ll let him know you were looking for him when he comes back.” She gave you a warm smile as she began closing the door.

“Sure, no problem.” You smiled back.

Once the door was finally shut, you remained standing in the hallway. There were now two options: either run back inside the house like a coward, or meet him at the kiosk. You chose the latter.

The elevator was as sluggish as ever, yet this time you didn’t care. You made your way out of the building, feeling like you were in a movie scene as the air hit your face while you walked to the kiosk. You noticed him immediately, leaning against the counter as he waited to receive his order. And in this moment, this was all that mattered. Him, only him.

The guy from apartment 512.

He looked up and your eyes met. There was no turning back now as you approached. He smiled brightly and you returned the smile with a hint of shyness.

“So, you came to try the smoothies I told you about.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Actually, I came to talk to you about something– and I promise it’s not about the gym.” You heard him chuckle.

“Okay, how about we enjoy some smoothies first and then we talk?” You were about to agree to his suggestions and then you remembered…

“But what about your sister?”

“Oh, don’t worry– wait, how do you know about my sister?” He was confused.

“Umm, I knocked at your door earlier.” You nervously admitted.

“Hmm, I see. As I was saying, don’t worry. She won’t die without her overly complicated, banana, pineapple, kiwi, and almond milk smoothie. Or her empanadas, which I seriously recommend, too.” Miguel rolled his eyes playfully as he listed out all the ingredients from his sister’s smoothie.

“If you say so… then I’ll have an uncomplicated guava smoothie with empanadas.” You spoke cheerfully.

“Good choice.” He stepped slightly closer.

“I think today I’m finally making the correct choices, for once.”

Life in Nueva York was like this, same people, same routine. Skyscrapers reaching for the sky, a bustling city scene. Yellow taxis honking loud, streets alive with motion. From dawn till dusk, a vibrant place, a perpetual emotion.

And now you had someone to share it all with. The smoothies from the kiosk across the street. The ancient elevator that would sometimes fall asleep. The unwanted stares and comments. This life and its precious moments.

❀if you made it this far, thank you for reading~ it's been ages since i wrote anything, so i hope i'm not too rusty. let me know if you'd like a part 2❀

[galaxywarp]

(please like if you read. and it would mean a lot to me if you read.)

————————

My body and my mind have been sick lately

So my sleep schedule has been fucked.

3am is a normal time to wake.

And just before the sun rises,

I find a couple of dollars

And I put some gas in my tank and I buy a cheap iced coffee,

And I drive and I watch the sun come up

While I listen to music that makes my friends sad.

And as I’m standing at the pump and overdrawing my bank account to put a few dollars of gas in my car,

And my speakers are playing a song about wanting to kill my father with a baseball bat,

I see a man around my age walking towards the gas station,

From out of the shadows of the distant sidewalk

Into the harsh light.

And he’s wearing an oversized sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants and he’s walking alone through the dark to a gas station at 5 in the morning to buy a lighter

And some part of me registers that this is a man who others may feel nervous about him approaching them through the darkness.

But in him I see myself.

And I miss being a meth addict.

And I miss his world. And I miss dragging myself, dirty and beaten, to the nearest gas station at 5 in the morning with loose change in my pocket to buy myself a lighter so that I can smoke my meth pipe.

And I get back in my car that’s still playing a song about wanting to kill my father with a baseball bat.

And I try to think about what it is I’m missing.

And I think of rooms of faces,

Painful, terrible, beautiful faces,

Where every person there understands exactly what it’s like to be at a gas station at 5 in the morning listening to a song about wanting to kill your father with a baseball bat.

And you don’t have to think about it.

You don’t have to talk about it.

They just hand you a pipe

And a lighter

And the pain goes away.

And I drive to pick up my iced coffee

And I don’t feel as bad about the iced coffee as I thought I would.

It’s only two dollars, after all.

And it’s easy to find two dollars, even when you have nothing else.

You can find two dollars in a lot of places.

In your couch.

In old jacket pockets.

In the kindness of a stranger.

And I’ve been hoarding loose change for years.

I keep it in my grandpa’s old ammunition box from the war.

The box where I keep one of the shells from the guns they fired at his and grandma’s funeral.

The box where I keep a dirty rusty nail that someone gave me in rehab.

Someone who didn’t make it, but I did.

The box where I keep the smooth pretty blue stone that the other patients passed around on my last day, that they held close to their hearts as they wished me strength on my journey. As they told me that I was strong and that I was going to make it.

And it’s the box where I keep my loose change

For iced coffee

And meth lighters.

It’s easy to find two dollars.

Your mom will give you two dollars

If you tell her it’s for iced coffee

And not meth lighters.

Your mom will give you two dollars

If you promise it’s not to kill yourself.

And in the drive thru the girl asks me to please wait a moment, she has to refill the coffee.

And I tell her it’s okay, really, no rush.

And she thanks me

And tells me she appreciates me.

And I think about all the jobs I’ve had

Where I had to ask a customer to please wait a moment

So I could do something important

Like refill the coffee

Or use heroin in the bathroom.

And when she hands me my iced coffee I say thank you

And I tell her “I appreciate you too”.

And I see her face fall, briefly,

As she is stunned by my words

Taken aback by this brief, fleeting moment of genuine kindness and connection.

And just as quickly she smiles at me

Truly smiles

And says thank you.

And I hurry and drive away, so she can deal with the rest of the cars in line

Many of which are running late for work

And who will blame her for it.

And I take my drive.

And I watch the sun rise.

And I listen to music that makes my friends sad.

And when I come home

I wash down my antidepressants with what’s left of my iced coffee

And I think about how I don’t miss being a meth addict.

I am a meth addict

Without his pipe.

[ken-dom]

The Stars Look Very Different Today

∘₊✧ Ryland Grace solo fic

2.5k words

∘₊✧ Summary: The computer has a new command for Ryland — one he’s extremely relieved to carry out.

∘₊✧ Author’s notes: I’m barely half way through the book and I’m so in love with Ryland already. My god. Anyway this obviously got me into researching some of the hornier aspects of space travel, potentially unlocked a new kink along the way, and this is where I ended up. If you’re as curious as I am about the topic of this fic, you might enjoy this Vice article and also this Mauden article!

Title from Space Oddity by David Bowie, suggested by the wonderful @heresthestorymorningglory who encouraged me endlessly with this fic, as always!

∘₊✧ Warnings/content: NSFW, Project Hail Mary spoilers!, masturbation, if you squint it’s kinda Ryland x Computer — and it’s kinda forced masturbation but he definitely wants to do it so take it as you wish, premature ejaculation, written from Ryland’s POV in keeping with the novel, horny Ryland, mentions of porn, low key science kink, and my favourite tag ever: cumming in space! 🪐🛸💦

∘₊✧─────────────────────✧₊∘

‘Ejaculate.’

The voice has become familiar to me over the last few days. Almost comforting at times, if not a little on the unsettling side. But hey, unsettling isn’t the worst thing a person can be, right? Or a computer, if we’re being technical. Which I suppose we should be.

I blink my eyes open, groggy from what I’m guessing was a relatively short period of sleep before I check the analogue clock on the wall to confirm it. I don’t think on it for too long, however, because my attention is pulled to the heat I can feel pooling in my gut, and the throbbing sensation in my… between my legs. It’s untimely, but expected.

I’ve found myself with this little problem upon waking up for the third time in a row, now. The previous times, I’ve ignored it, willed it away while trying to keep my mind on everything else I’m still adjusting to rather than wasting my time… enjoying myself a little too much. 

This time, though, it seems the ship knows and wants me to do something about it.

I obviously haven’t heard correctly. My inconveniently timed arousal must be playing on my mind. It has been a while since I… no, that’s irrelevant right now, I’m giving in but I need to focus.

Why would the computer instruct me to-

‘Ejaculate.’

There it is again, plain as day this time. Yup. The computer wants me to… ejaculate.

Despite being completely alone, lightyears away from another living human, I feel incredibly exposed all of a sudden.

I gradually sit up and look around the room, rubbing at my tired eyes, careful not to cause any friction that might exacerbate matters. One of the robot arms is waiting patiently at the other side of the small room, holding out a little plastic cup, which I presume I am supposed to deposit my offering into. And then, what? Give it back to put into safe storage? Or eject it out into space where it’ll crystallise and float forever as evidence of my deed, only for some alien to discover and analyse a hundred years from now and take back to his home planet with breaking news. ‘Sex seed found among the stars, Earth astronaut got too excited about space travel.’

Sex seed? Jeepers.

Maybe, more likely, they’ll keep it to repopulate in the event of this whole thing not working out, or-

Ok. Let me think this through a little more scientifically.

Why would I need to ejaculate right now? What’s different about this time to the previous times I’ve woken up with a raging erection straining against my uniform?

‘Ejaculate.’

‘Just give me a moment, please?’ I reply, irritable, and the computer does not answer. The robot arm remains, though, and I know I will be given no choice in this.

Is that ethical? 

Whatever. I don’t think I need to get caught up in the semantics of whether one can consent to a spacecraft computer asking for one’s semen, robot arms or not. And after all, in the words of the wise Beyoncé, I woke up like this.

So, back to the question. If it’s not for repopulation purposes, perhaps… ah! Of course! It’s for my own good! The computer is trying to make sure I stay healthy.

Masturbation has been proven to lower anxiety levels and stress. This is a high-pressure sort of situation after all. Maybe it thinks I need a little relaxation to be able to focus properly, or to keep my blood pressure levels well maintained?

That’s the stuff. I’m really getting the ball rolling now.

I remember a study I read, and realise that actually, the fact that it’s been a while is actually important here, too, and not just a distraction my body insists on.

Infrequent ejaculation can result in prostatitis, and the way to avoid the secretions and subsequent bacteria growth that cause the condition, is to ejaculate. Frequently.

The computer has either noticed my recent arousal levels; the higher heart rate, the dilated pupils, the change in blood flow to cause certain… swellings, and let’s face it, the scent of desperation I must be giving off after this long without an orgasm, and thinks I’m overdue an ejaculation or two… or, it’s programmed to encourage masturbation at set intervals with frequent ejaculation in mind as a necessary tool to health.

In honesty, I started to lose my erection when the first of all these thoughts occurred to me – nothing like a computer and a robot arm teaming up to persuade you to rub one out for them to kill the mood – but… mmh…

Listen, I know I can get a little… carried away with science, but I really am alone out here and I don’t think the computer is at all concerned with what gets me going. It just wants me to cum in a cup. I can do that. I think.

I retrieve the cup from the robot arm, which folds away, patiently waiting for me to return with the goods, no doubt.

‘Don’t look, okay?’ I say a little weakly, feeling my cheeks heat up. I know it’s a computer, but it knows things. Too much, almost, and I feel watched. I’ve never been into that, being watched. Nothing against it, but I much prefer to do this with my curtains closed and my doors locked, preferably in a darkened room, or the shower. Since I can’t be afforded these luxuries aboard the Hail Mary, the least I can ask for is the computer not to look.

It doesn’t answer me, of course. I didn’t really expect it to, but at least with whatever else it gathers about me, it’ll know I’m not enjoying it’s presence while I knock one out for it.

Who knows, maybe over time, we’ll get to know one another and the computer’s presence will be the only way I can jerk off. Maybe it’ll start talking me though it… would dirty talk be programmed incase of difficulty… getting into it?

I chuckle softly, knowing that liking the computer is a real possibility. Doll syndrome, it’s called. I’d start preferring the computer to a real living, breathing human. Or maybe there’s another syndrome specifically for the preference of a computer…

But I’m letting myself get distracted again.

Back to the matter at hand. Ha!

I sit back down on my bed, my erection pressed painfully against my uniform trousers now, as I consider the little plastic cup. By the look of it, it holds about 100mls. The average ejaculate is around 1.25-5mls, and from experience I tend to fall somewhere in the middle of that range, so it’s extremely unlikely I’ll fill it, but it really has been so long, the fleeting thought passes through my mind that it won’t be big enough.

Then my thoughts switch to how this is all so clinical and not at all sexy. I guess that’s another kink I might be missing out on, but before I can get carried away again, the robot arm drops something else down for me.

Oh. It’s a dirty magazine. The sort they keep on the top shelf, hidden behind more family friendly editions like House and Home or Celebrity Chat or whatever people read these days.

A pair of breasts almost knock me clean out as the magazine drops into view before me. The robot arm flicks through the thin, glossy pages and holds it open at a page of a woman with her legs spread, glistening folds displayed beautifully as if just for me.

But she’s not real. Looking at the image only reminds me that I’m alone, and whilst her aroused state and thoughts of how she might pleasure herself does make my cock twitch, my heart sinks a little that I’ll never feel another wet pussy.

‘No thank you,’ I choke out, slightly reluctant, and the robot arm switches to a magazine it was apparently holding behind the one with the pretty vagina photograph.

This one displays an image of a thick, handsome penis, uncut and leaking at the tip, fingers ghosting over the happy trail above…

‘No, that’s not the issue,’ I say, a little high pitched, because my cock is leaking now too, and I know I’m not going to make it to the cup if they keep showing me images like this.. ‘I just… I can manage on my own, thank you.’

Still, I feel a little disappointed when the robot arm takes that enticing cock away, too, and I’m left truly alone once again.

I let out a long breath, as even as I can muster. I need to get out of my head.

I close my eyes, breathing deeply. I focus on the ache between my legs. I think about taking my time, really enjoying the sensation of touching myself in space – and the thought that I’m actually in space, does it for me again. With an involuntary pulse of my cock, I feel a thick drop of pre-ejaculate form at the tip.

Take my time? Who am I kidding.

Clasping the cup securely in one hand, I slip the other over the crotch of my trousers and the strangled noise that escapes me would’ve been enough to wake the whole neighbourhood had I been back home on Earth.

I feel a rush of shame flood my senses, but then I remind myself that I can be as loud as I want here. In space, no one can hear you moan. I laugh again, feeling giddy. This is kind of exciting, actually. The thought that I’m alone is finally working for me, and without overthinking it any further, I tear open the fastening on my trousers and let my cock spring free.

I’m so hard it’s painful, visibly throbbing, angry red tip shining with pre-cum. Begging to be touched.

I realise as I stare down at my neglected equipment that words like cum and cock aren’t usually so easily thrown around in my vocabulary, and that I must be unusually horny – another word I tend to shy away from until the moment calls for it – to be thinking like this.

I bite my lips together, anticipating how it might feel.

I’ve never done this in space before. It must be ok to do it, otherwise the computer wouldn’t expect me to just get on with it, ‘reading’ material included, but what if it feels different? What if it hurts?

I tentatively raise a trembling hand and carefully drag a featherlight fingertip up the underside, base to tip, tracing a thick vein and collecting some pre-cum on the way.

I squirm, moaning loudly. I wonder if the computer has really shut its ears off, or if it’s simply programmed to know the difference between horny, desperate groaning and other types of sounds, like real pain or distress.

Whatever, I need more. Fuck.

I suck my finger clean and do it again. A gentle fingertip ghosting up the hot flesh and my body jolts upright.

I’m not gonna last more than a few seconds, and I know it.

It turns out that for whatever reason, touching yourself in space feels fucking incredible.

I lose track of most of my thoughts after that, feeling like I’ve transformed into some sort of rabid animal.

I slump backwards, spreading my legs, and my hand wraps around my shaft, immediately pumping furiously as a broken string of growls and roars rip from my throat.

I barely have time to remember the cup, but somewhere in the haze of unbridled bliss, my lizard brain must have kicked in at just the right moment because only instinct could have given me the sense to raise my other hand and position the cup to catch the insane amount of ejaculate I release as I writhe on the sheets.

Some of it dribbles down over my fingers, but it doesn’t matter, as long as I deposit some in the provided receptacle, I suppose, the computer will be satisfied.

It seems to drag on for a while, this release. Not that I’m complaining; it feels so good I wouldn’t be able to comprehend words enough to form an actual complaint at this moment, even if I wanted to. But as climaxes go, this one, long and intense and oh, so delicious, is up there with the best.

I shakily place the cup (around 7-10mls not including what I didn’t catch – that has to be some sort of record for me) onto the floor and roll over, curling into a ball, my softening cock twitching through aftershocks of pleasure as every muscle in my body relaxes me into another round of sleep.

I wake up five hours later, sprawled on my back with my cock out, still soft for now, and my hand sticky. It must have worked. I must have needed it.

Slowly, I sit up again, tucking my co- my penis back in. Making myself presentable. I am in uniform, after all. I reach up to smooth my hair down. It’s a mess, and there are loose strands stuck to my forehead. I’ll deal with that later.

I notice the cup of ejaculate has gone, collected by my trusty pal, the porno robot arm, and a little sink has been revealed from behind its wall panel.

The computer isn’t going to instruct me to clean myself up – it’s giving me that dignity at least, but it’s pointing me in the right direction. And it’s correct.

I stand on shaky legs to head over there, feeling a slight headrush.

Hopefully, the computer will never speak of it again-

‘Thirty-seven seconds.’

‘Until what?’ I ask, too relaxed to care very much, as I soap up my semen-coated palm.

‘Thirty-seven seconds to produce 7.8mls of semen.’

My cheeks burn. It timed me? And I couldn’t even last out a whole minute?

Did computers care about premature ejaculation as much as humans seem to? Is it even premature when you’re only trying to pleasure yourself?

‘Yeah, well, it’s been a while,’ I retort, sheepish but clearly irked. ‘A long while.’

No further comment from the computer. Great.

I know it’s time for me to get on with the thousand other things occupying my time on this ship, so I do. But the nagging thought I couldn’t shake as I observed the beetles told me that I had to prove the computer wrong about my stamina.

I can last.

And apparently, the thought of proving the computer wrong about my own masturbation habits was doing it for me and-

‘Mmhhnnn-’

That delicious friction against my sensitive cock in these pants was tormenting me. And I thought cock not penis so I must be horny again. Does space travel typically cause high levels of arousal?

Fuck it. It doesn’t matter.

‘Computer, you got another cup? You can watch this time. I’m gonna put on a real show for you.’

[oohnotvery]

Hand To Your Heart (Chapter 5)

Tw/cw: pregnancy content in author’s note

Holy freaking shit, I have never experienced nausea like this in all my life. I don’t remember being sick at all with my daughter, but this time, the nausea has been debilitating. I can barely get out of bed, can’t stomach anything except Jolly Ranchers, and I’ve had to resort to playing Doctor-Patient with my toddler so I can just lie on the floor while she covers me with blankets for “playtime.” Lolololol.

I want to finish this story so badly, for myself and for all of you. I hope and pray that my condition improves as the weeks go by. In the meantime, thank you for your patience these days :)

As she stares down at the set of unearthed coffins poking out from the mud of an ancient graveyard, Scully isn’t quite sure why Mulder insisted she come here today. Before he left her apartment last night, he gave her the address of an old church and told her to meet him in the back by the graves. He’d mentioned a body he wanted her to look at, but all she sees right now are a few decaying tombstones.

And to her irritation, there’s no sign of Mulder . . . or Diana.

With a frustrated huff, she glances once more around the empty churchyard before advancing towards the cover of a shady oak tree. When she left her apartment this morning, the day was sunny, if not a little overcast. Once she crossed the border into Maryland, however, tall pillars of dark clouds began to pile up on the horizon, and before she even reached the church, rain started pelting her car. After frantically searching her backseat and trunk for an umbrella that didn’t exist, she threw on a spare trench coat, but it did little to protect her hair, and within minutes of entering the graveyard, she was completely drenched.  

She’s about to duck under one of the tree’s largest branches when she hears a shout.

“Scully!”

She whips around, stringy wet hair slapping her cheeks, and sees Mulder and Diana striding towards her purposefully, two matching black umbrellas raised high. Scully fights the urge to fix her dripping locks as she takes in Diana’s perfectly styled curls, which seem to be completely resistant to the weather.

Mulder gestures for her to meet them in the spot where she was standing earlier, and grumbling to herself, she starts marching back out into the rain. Mud squelches under her boots and chilly water trickles past her jacket collar and down her spine, sending goosebumps up her arms. She’s about ten feet from the suspicious set of coffins when her foot catches on a partially-exposed tree root. With a yelp, she flings out her arms, trying to catch her balance, but her other foot slips on the wet surface and she goes down, landing with a splat in a thick, oozy puddle of mud.

Before she can even assess the damage, she hears a bright peal of feminine laughter ring out over the rain. Heat flames across her cheeks and she digs her fists into the slick mud to push herself to her knees. She glances down and curses when she sees that her entire outfit, from jacket to undershirt to trousers, are brown and slick with filth. Tugging her hands out of the sludge, she tries to rake some of the thicker, goopier chunks off her shirt, but it’s a futile endeavor. Her clothes are almost certainly ruined.  

The rain pelting her face suddenly lessens and she glances up, seeing Mulder standing over her, his umbrella shielding her from the storm. Their eyes meet and she can tell in the mischievous glint of his gaze that he’s holding back a laugh.  

“Hey, Scully, you’ve uh, you’ve got something . . . right . . . there,” he says with an impish grin, swiping his finger across her cheek, gathering mud as he does. Mortified, she dabs at her face with the back of her hand, realizing in horror that it’s not just her clothes—her entire face is coated in mud.

Humiliated, she dips her head as angry tears well in her eyes. Even when Mulder hoists her to her feet and gives her grimy arm a tentative squeeze, she can’t bear to look at him. In her peripheral, she watches him furiously shake mud off his hand like some sort of wet dog, grimacing when he can’t seem to get it all off.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, all joking gone from his voice.

“Fine,” she says past a thick swallow. She squints towards the coffins, ignoring Diana, whose face is practically gleaming with delight, and clears her throat. “Is there somewhere in the church where I can get cleaned up?”

Mulder dips his clean hand into his pants pocket and pulls out a set of keys. He slips them into her jacket pocket, being careful to avoid the mud coating her clothing. She looks up at him in question.

“Why don’t you head to the motel and take a shower?” he suggests instead, guiding her away from the graveyard. “I’m in Room 4. Take a shower, clean up, and we can try again later today.”

Forehead crinkling, she shakes her head. What motel? “No, Mulder, I’m here now. Let’s just get this over with—”

“I can’t take you seriously with mud all over your face—”

“I didn’t ask your opinion,” she snaps irritably. “I just need ten minutes to get cleaned up, and then we can get back to work.”

“Scully,” he sighs, taking a step closer, but not close enough to risk coming into contact with her ruined clothes. “I’ve known you for five years and I’ve never seen you this filthy.” He briefly seems to reconsider this. “Okay, maybe, maybe the time we got covered in shit when I was hunting cockroaches. But this is a new level of mess, Scully. You’re not going to be able to work in these conditions. I’m not going to be able to work in these conditions.” He reaches out as if to touch her hand and then pulls away, thinking better of it. “Go take a real shower.”

It’s illogical to argue with him and she knows it. She herself is disgusted by the way her clothes are sticking to her skin, humiliated by the brown wash of dirt all over her nice blouse and trousers.

A few moments pass in silence, the only sound the pitter patter of rain on his umbrella. After a minute, her eyes climb to meet his. “Why did you book a motel room?” she asks suspiciously. “We’re only forty-five minutes from your apartment.”  

He shrugs casually, his eyes flickering towards Diana. “We plan to be at this case a while. Figured it was easier than driving back home every night.”

At his words, a light bulb seems to illuminate in her mind, and something akin to horror begins to creep into her chest. She parts her lips, wondering how to ask. Wondering whether she should ask.

She clears her throat. “So did you stay here . . . last night?” Did you drive to D.C. last night to fuck me, and then turn around and drive back to the motel to be with Diana? The thought is so chilling, she shudders.

Mulder swallows, a frown creasing between his brows. “It’s easier than fighting traffic every morning,” he shrugs.

A non-answer. She purses her lips tightly. “I see.”

He shakes his head. “You see what, exactly?”

But she won’t dignify him with a response. Turning her shoulder, she gestures defeatedly towards her car. “You’re right, Mulder. I’m too filthy to work this case right now. I’m just going to go home.”

“Scully,” he growls, irritation flickering across his face, “no. I asked you here for a reason. I know you have a change of clothes in your car. You always carry at least three different outfits, I’ve seen them myself. Go take a shower, chill out a little, then come back here. I need you.”

Her spine stiffens. I need you.

She inhales sharply, wondering when this particular catchphrase became so painfully loaded. “Which motel?” she asks after a moment, not meeting his gaze.

He replies with the name of a place that sounds as if cockroaches are its primary inhabitants. With a cursory nod, she turns on her heel and starts walking to her car. Mulder jogs to catch up with her, pointlessly holding the umbrella over her head as if she weren’t already soaked to the bone and caked with mud.

He opens her driver’s side door, gesturing for her to take a seat. Grimacing, she peels off her dirty coat and tosses it into the passenger floorboard before lowering herself into her always-impeccable car. Mulder rests one hand on the roof, ducking his head to meet her eyes. She glares at him from underneath her brows.

“I never thought I’d say this, Scully, but I think I have a thing for women covered in mud.” He gives her a cheeky wink and she whips her eyes towards the dashboard so that he can’t see the outrage building in her gaze.

He probably thinks he’s being cute, she realizes with a clenched stomach.

He taps the hood of the car before shutting the door, and she makes sure to peal out as fast as possible so that her tires sling some mud onto his expensive trousers. It’s petty, sure, but when she catches his outraged look in the rearview mirror, she almost smiles.

Almost.

**

The motel is only a few miles down the road and Scully finds Room 4 easily enough. She lugs her go-bag into Mulder’s room and dumps it on the unmade bed, then retreats into the bathroom, where she cringes when she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

It’s worse than she imagined. Dark clumps of mud hang from the wet strands of her hair, and thick brown streaks cover her chin and cheeks. Underneath the grime, her face flames red with mortification. She thinks about all the dozens of humiliations she’s faced in the past two days and curses: Mulder showing up to bed her out of some warped sense of obligation; discovering that he’s very likely fucking Diana, a woman who blatantly disdains her; and getting a graveyard’s worth of mud shoved up her throat in front of that woman . . . .

She strips down, peeling off layers that will undoubtedly need to be thrown away. Her coat and shoes she’ll try to salvage, but she shoves her pants and shirt into the plastic bag of the bathroom trash can and ties off the bag before starting up the shower.

She steps into a blast of shockingly cold water, yelping as goosebumps ripple up her spine. Furiously, she turns the knob until the water starts to grow gradually less frigid, but it remains cool throughout her shower. Gritting her teeth, she decides she’s just going to have to get this over with fast. It takes four passes with the soap bar to get the initial mud off her arms, face, and neck. The bar grows stubby and useless by round five, and she growls in irritation when she discovers remnants of mud lingering behind her ears. Finding none of Mulder’s own products in the shower, she lathers up her hair with motel shampoo, rinsing and repeating three times for good measure before finishing with some motel conditioner. Only when the water finally starts to run clear at her feet does she decide she’s clean enough.

By the time she’s stepping out of the shower and into a fresh towel, she feels slightly buoyed. She slips into new underwear and a fresh pair of pants and a work blouse before running out to her car to clean the crusted mud off the driver’s seat. Once she’s finished cleaning, she retreats into the bathroom to run a blow dryer through her hair, frowning at the way her hair poofs up when not tended with her own products. She makes a mental note to stock her go-bag with better toiletries.

She’s finger combing her hair into place when she notices something that slipped her attention earlier: there’s a connecting door in Mulder’s room. And it’s open, just a crack. A sickening knot of dread forms in her stomach, but it’s not enough to dampen her curiosity. She takes a few steps towards the door, then waits quietly for a few beats to ensure the room’s occupant is not in. When she’s sure the room is empty, she pulls the door the rest of the way open.

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, Diana’s room. The bed is crisply made and two pairs of sky-high heels stand primly in front of a set of dresser drawers. An odious perfume lingers in the air, one with which Scully is vaguely familiar, one she’s sensed in the basement office and in the Hoover Building hallways . . . and maybe even in Mulder’s apartment.

So . . . Mulder is sharing a connecting room with Diana. Scully thinks back to her conversation with him from a few days prior, how he told her Diana has been consulting with him for the past few weeks. How many times have the two of them spent the night away from home? And how many times have they booked adjoining rooms?

Swallowing thickly past a wave of confusing emotions, Scully starts to back out of the room when something catches her eye. There, on the bed.

How did she miss it on her first pass through the room?

Sitting right on top of the duvet, almost like a pair of prizes, lay Diana’s bra and underwear. They’re in full view, which Scully assumes is purposeful—just in case Mulder steps inside for a chat. Despite her better judgment, she takes a step closer. The bra is a sexy, lacy thing, black with red ribbons interwoven through the fabric. The underwear is even more scandalous, just a scrap of fabric that can’t possibly cover anything Diana’s hiding underneath her clothing. In a fit of maniacal self-sabotage, Scully wonders whether she should inspect the underwear for traces of Mulder’s semen.

Her cheeks blaze at the thought, but it sets off a new train of suspicions. Mulder’s products were missing from his shower. What if . . . oh, God.

With ringing ears, Scully slips into Diana’s bathroom and shoves back the shower curtain. Her eyes furiously scan the bottles lining the shelf and her heart stutters to a complete stop when her gaze lands on a familiar bottle.

That’s Mulder’s shampoo. And that’s Mulder’s soap. In Diana’s shower.

If she wasn’t sure about the state of affairs before, she is now. She’s a sucker for hard evidence, and this is pretty damn close to confirmation.

She bolts out of the bathroom before she can find any more incriminating evidence that will inevitably break her heart. It makes sense, she realizes as she grabs her go-bag with shaking hands, intent on abandoning the case and heading straight home. She’s not a believer, not like Diana is. She’s not sexy, not like Diana is. She doesn’t own lingerie, not like Diana does.

Oh, shit, she winces as she replays memories from Mulder’s late-night visit. What kind of underwear was she wearing when he went down on her? It definitely wasn’t a sexy lacy scrap of fabric. She doesn’t even own anything like that. More like something white and cotton and comfortable and . . . oh, God, could she be less appealing?

She’s so caught up in her thoughts that she almost doesn’t see the person stepping up onto the sidewalk right in front of her. With a yelp, Scully swerves out of the way, tripping over herself as she manages not to knock down the other person.

A cool laugh floats through the air as Scully rights herself.

“Be careful, Agent Scully,” comes Diana’s voice. “I would hate to see you fall twice in one day.”