#I'M FINALLY DONE WITH THIS FIC

[penumbra-mayhem]

An Accidental Bridge

Sam/Darlin' fluff | 1759 words

(I hc Darlin' with a stutter; read here for more.)

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

Sam’s mind was gently pulled into consciousness as a great horned owl called from outside his bedroom. He glimpsed at the clock on the wall. Nine o'clock. Still late evening, not yet time to be up. Enticed by the owl's promise of a set sun, though, Sam slipped off his blankets.

Bare feet met hardwood as he left the bed, eyes still closed in an attempt to at least stay half-asleep. He shuffled over to his window and pulled back the black-out curtains before feeling around for the latch. His fingers found it just as a sliver of a voice snuck through the silence:

“SSSam?”

He gave a groggy response as he opened the window, “Jus’ gettin’ someair…”

Darlin’ gave a low hum of approval and rolled over to face him. Sam made his way back over and climbed into their bed with all the grace of a drunk bat, eliciting a sleep-laden giggle from his mate.

“Oh, hush,” he grumbled, his smile unwittingly trickling into his voice, “I’m barely awake.” He drew Darlin’ to his chest.

They both drifted in and out of sleep, lulled by the owl’s repeated call. The cool air of early night seeped into their room; the two snuggled further under the covers in response.

"I can feel your magic,” Sam mumbled. It was an uncommon sensation; usually, Darlin' only let their magic extend beyond themself when they felt safe. And they rarely felt safe.

“Yours t-t-too...”

“Feel good?”

Sam felt them nod. He gave them a small kiss before asking, “What’s it feel like?”

Darlin’ drew sleepy circles on his chest as they tuned into his magic. After a few moments of silence, they spoke—slowly, like they were savoring a flavor in their mouth:

“It’s l-l-like….sinking into a wwwarm b-b-bath..it’s like a…b-b-bass…low and in-in the b-back…thrumming…ocean wwwaves under a full mmmoon…immmmense…soothing…l-like aloe v-vera on skin after a-a sunny day…”

Joy swelled in Sam's chest and he tightened his arms around them. “I love the way you put that, darlin’,” he murmured.

Darlin’ smiled softly, sleep tugging at them. “How's mmmine?”

“Yours? Mmm…” Sam allowed Darlin’s magic to seep into him. “Your magic…is like fireworks. Those kinds that you light and then toss into the street to see them spin real quick and change colors…you’re the buzz after a concert...the windswept euphoria when you get off a roller coaster…you’re stargazin' durin' a meteor shower…your magic feels like…like…”

Home.

Darlin’ jumped.

They pushed themself up a bit and stared at Sam with wide eyes.

“What? What is it?” he asked, staring back in concern.

They shook their head. “Fuck, I-I-I heard y-you in-in mmmmy head.”

Sam mouthed a small ‘oh’. Seeing that Darlin’ was more startled than scared, he relaxed slightly. “You think we might of bridged?”

Darlin’ gave a small nod. “I-I didn’t mmmmean t-t-to.”

“Me neither,” Sam assured them, “Guess we were just…in tune with each other.”

They dropped their gaze. "I...I-I haven't d-d-d-done that in-in...in a l-l-l-long t-t-time."

"Me neither," Sam replied. He studied them a moment before asking, "Are you okay?"

They nodded again. "Are-are y-you?"

Sam couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just worried about you."

Darlin' lowered their head back onto his chest. “I-I’m fine. J-just…surprised mmme,” they muttered, trying to slow Sam's heartrate with their words.

Sam ran one hand up and down their back, with the other in their hair. When he felt like they had both reached a state of calm again, he asked, “Is that somethin' you’d be interested in doin' with me?"

After no response, he added, "S'alright if the answer’s no.”

"You don't wwwant that. N-not wwwwith mmme."

Shut down. It was the kind of response he often got from them. It was the kind of response he couldn't stand. He knew it was a form of protection, and they had been getting better about it. But still, every so often, Darlin' would deny him or themself something in the belief that they were broken or unworthy or dangerous. Every time, it simultaneously burned Sam's heart and broke it.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, trying to keep his tone gentle.

Darlin' bit the inside of their cheek. When he was met with no response again, Sam kissed the top of their head and entreated, "Please, Darlin'. You don't have to speak quick. You don't even have to give an explanation. But please don't ignore me entirely."

Fuck. How could words spoken soft as candlelight twist guilt into their gut like a knife? Darlin' buried their face into Sam's chest, breathing in his scent. It steadied them.

Finally, they responded, their voice muffled by Sam's sleepshirt, "It...fucking s-sucks…in-in mmmy head."

There it was.

Sam sighed, "That may be true, for you. But that doesn't mean I don't want to bridge with you. I'm not scared of your thoughts, darlin'."

"B-but you should b-be.”

"But I'm not," Sam pushed back, just a little. Silence fell between them, and he let it. Darlin' had answered his question. There was no point in trying to convince them how he felt. He kissed their head once again in silent reassurance that he was not mad and closed his eyes, hoping to get a bit more sleep.

Darlin' bit harder at the inside of their cheek, their mind buzzing with frustration. The owl outside made itself known again; Darlin' laid in indecision as they listened to it call over and over. They could feel Sam's magic—not reaching out but still present. His magic was safe. He was safe. He was strong. Stronger than they were. Braver. Calmer. Steadier.

When Darlin' finally spoke, their voice was small and soft and scared:

"I-I wwwwant t-to try...if-if you also wwwant t-to."

Sam felt his heart skip. He craned his neck to the side to make eye contact with Darlin' as he asked, "You sure? I don't want you doin' this if you're not really wantin’ it."

"You-you give mmme all of you. I-I wwant to do the same. E-Even if it scares mme," they whispered, "I-I wwwant t-to b-be b-brave for you."

"You don't have to."

"B-but I wwant t-to."

Sam studied their face for a moment before kissing their forehead and whispering, "Alright. Thank you, darlin'. But if we start and you don’t like it, you tell me and we’ll stop, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good…is there a certain way you want to lay or sit?"

"N-n-no. You?"

"Nah, this is perfect."

Sam closed his eyes and leaned his head back against his pillow, running his hand through Darlin's hair. Darlin' closed their eyes as well, listening to Sam's heart.

It was quick. Almost as quick as the first time. When the bridge reformed, Sam could feel Darlin's body tense against his. Through the bridge, he felt the tension in his own muscles. He kissed the top of their head.

It's okay. You're safe.

“Fuck.” Fuck, woah, that's fucking weird.

I'm going to fuck this up.

I shouldn't have done this.

I'm just going to hurt you—

—hey, hey, it's ok.

Fuck, sorry, I'll try to quiet down...

...Do you think anyone's ever tried bridging with more than one person at one time?

If you can do that, could you make a true hive mind?

Bee people. Bee shifters? Are there any insect shifters—

—fuck! Sorry!

"SSSorry..." Darlin' muttered. Sam giggled and stroked Darlin's head. The sensation soothed them both.

You're alright, darlin'.

I don’t mind your thoughts.

But you should—

—shut up, Tank—

—fuck, I wish I would just shut up!

Sorry…

...Your head is so quiet.

Shit, I don't mean quiet like empty I just—

—god I am such an ass!

You're not an ass, darlin'.

Damn, I love you.

I love you.

"I love you, darlin'."

Darlin’s body went lax at the assurance. Their mind stilled for just a moment. Tap tap tap. Darlin’ tapped Sam’s chest three times—a gesture he’d come to learn meant ‘I love you’. The feeling of their own fingers echoed against Darlin’s chest.

I love you, too.

So much.

Fuck what time is it?

Shit, we’ve got to get up soon.

Do we?

It’s…Saturday? Yeah, Saturday.

Fuck yeah, we can stay in bed.

We could make breakfast.

More like you could make breakfast, I’m shit at cooking.

I’m shit at most things.

I don’t even think I’m doing this right—

—you’re doin’ just fine, pup.

Sam’s heart skipped as he realized what he’d just thought. Or maybe it was Darlin’s heart skipping, he couldn’t quite tell. His eyes shot open, and he looked down at Darlin’, whose face was already turning red. Sam’s own face began to burn too.

“Fuck, Darlin’, I’m so sorry.” I’m sorry.

I didn’t mean to think that.

That wasn’t appropriate.

I should have asked before—

—fuck…

For once, Darlin’s head was quiet. Like static. Sam’s stomach fluttered. Or maybe it was Darlin’s. The bridge was somehow deepening, and Sam struggled to differentiate where the feelings were originating.

I know wolves can be particular with those kinds of names.

Especially when their mates aren’t wolves.

I should have asked.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…

Sam’s thoughts slowed as Darlin’ pressed a soft kiss to his lips. They buried their face into his neck.

“Darlin’?”

I liked that.

You…what? "What?"

Darlin’ groaned quietly, “I-I liked it.”

Call me it again—

—wait, I mean, uh, um…

A grin stretched across Sam’s face. “Oh yeah?” he cooed, stroking the nape of Darlin’s neck.

You like bein’ called pup?

Sam giggled as his stomach fluttered at the word; this time he could tell that feeling definitely came from Darlin’.

You just a little puppy?

My puppy?

“SSSSSaaaammm…” Darlin’ whined.

Sam pulled his body back a bit. Darlin’ turned their head to look up at him. The blush on their cheeks made Sam swoon, but he still had to be sure:

“I can stop, darlin’,” Sam said, his voice soft but serious.

Darlin’ shook their head. “N-no.” It’s just, nobody’s ever called me that…

Sam couldn’t stop grinning. Their blush. The way they ducked their head and avoided his eyes. The weakness in their voice. He rarely saw Darlin’ so bashful.

Well it’s about time…

My sweet puppy…

C’mere… "C'mere."

Darlin’ hummed as they curled themself around Sam once more, tangling their limbs with his. Sam ran his hands through their hair as they traced their fingers over his chest. The two sank into repose as their sensations and thoughts melded and lost origin.

Sam breathed deep and murmured, “Such a good pup.”

Your pup.

[hajihiko]

Nice night 🌘

[ckret2]

Bill hates it when people mention Euclydia. Everyone thinks it's because he doesn't want to hear his home's real name; it's actually the opposite.

Here, have some fic. The naming of Euclydia (among other things), the birth of the Nightmare Realm, and the Axolotl planting the seeds of a trillion-year-long plan to keep Bill from the death penalty.

This is the 🎉FINAL PART🎉 of a 9-part plot about the Axolotl in the aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. If you wanna read the others (or look at the art), here's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

####

With the immediate crisis averted and the triangle, for the moment, not attempting to invade and/or demolish the multiverse, most of the god militia pulled back. A group remained stationed near the unstable border between dimensions to watch the triangle; but the less powerful gods could trickle back in to get back to their own work, first and foremost the construction workers doing emergency repairs to reformat and stabilize the neighboring dimensions.

The Axolotl—who, he suspected, would have been arrested himself for interfering if they weren't still focused on the triangle—wove through the crowd until he found the Time Giant; and then swam angrily up to her and demanded, "You used me as a distraction?"

She turned a stone-hard look on him. "That was the agreement."

"No! The agreement was that I'd try to talk him down! We'd only resort to distracting him if I couldn't get through to him!"

"Ya didn't get through to him." The Time Giant nodded at the Axolotl's burned side. "Look at you. Your leg's off."

He looked down at his missing foreleg. He'd been so distracted by the near end of the multiverse, he'd barely noticed the pain. "It's just a flesh wound," he insisted. "I'm an axolotl, it'll grow back!"

She shook her head.

"I would have gotten through to him! You saw me talk him down after an entire army threatened him!" the Axolotl said. "What if I had succeeded, and when we left my tank he found out you already wrote him off?! You never gave me a chance—"

"We did give you a chance," she said testily, "and I saw that you weren't gonna succeed." She hooked a thumb over her belt and tapped a finger on her time tape; the stylized symbol of the Time Giants glowed on the side, an unsubtle reminder that she knew what was coming far better than he did. "So I did my damn job."

So she'd sent him in already knowing that he would fail. The Axolotl was speechless for a second. "But—you couldn't know—I got so close, if I'd had just one more try to talk to him..."

"If I'd let you, I'm sure you woulda kept trying until the end of time," she said. "You seem like a good guy, Ax—but you can't save everyone." She pushed past him to get to work. "There's first aid near where Dimension 2 Gamma was. Get those burns looked at."

"They're fine."

She was wrong. He could save everyone. Because he wouldn't stop until he did.

####

"You're replacing it?" the triangle asked petulantly.

"I'm not talking to you," VENDOR said, turned away from the triangle. "You had your chance at diplomacy and you blew it." The crablike cop was holding up a clipboard with some paperwork for VENDOR to review, and didn't look pleased to have been temporarily reduced to a secretary.

"I'm just asking a question!"

"We're not speaking."

At the top of his lungs—which was, it turned out, very loud and very shrill—the triangle said in the direction of the reporters, "Oh wow, that's a crazy thing to say about Lady Morgenstern! And talk about obscene! She'd be furious if she could hear that—!"

"Shhhhh!" VENDOR rounded angrily on the triangle. "You don't even know who she is!"

"I know her name and I'm not afraid to use it," the triangle said. "You're really replacing my dimension?"

"If I can be left alone long enough to finish signing the authorization paperwork," VENDOR muttered. "The construction crew's already out here and waiting, so if you don't mind..."

"It just seems pretty tacky, replacing a universe just like that." The triangle spoke like dimension he was talking about was just a pawn to be used in a trivial argument about etiquette, rather than everyone and everything he'd ever known. "No memorial or anything? Yeesh."

"So hold a memorial for it," VENDOR said. "We don't have any choice, we have to repair all the fallen walls to keep reality stable. If you'd let us into your hovel to sweep up what's left of your old dimension, it could have at least been incorporated into the new one."

The triangle half reached for his hat, stopped himself, and curled his hand into a fist and thrust it down at his side. "Over my dead body," he said. "Which I'm pretty sure got incinerated! So that means never!"

"You're pretty sure?" VENDOR asked archly.

"It... I had more important stuff to take care of, okay? I'm a busy guy!"

"I'm sure," VENDOR said. "Well, it's too late for any cleanup operations anyway. Enjoy rotting away in your landfill."

"Wow, that's how you talk to a refugee from the biggest disaster ever?" The triangle laughed. "Hey, bet the muckrakers over there would love to hear how sympathetic you are to the—what'd you say I am—the 'last surviving soul from my dimension'—?"

"Let's find somewhere quieter to work," VENDOR said to the cop.

He looked relieved "You got it."

As VENDOR and THEIR impromptu secretary moved away from Dimension Zero, the triangle shouted after THEM, "Hey! How do I vote for Municipalitron!"

Volcanoes on several of VENDOR's planets erupted. THEY whipped around to face the triangle. "You don't! You aren't in my district!"

"Well, whose district am I in? This Morgenstern creep you keep bringing up?" the triangle asked. "How's voting work, do you toss a ballot across the border and I toss it back—?"

"You're not in anyone's district! If you were, you'd have been arrested already!"

The triangle stared in dumb shock. "Wait, so I don't get to vote for which of you idiots I have to deal with?" He hollered at VENDOR's retreating back, "That's fascism!"

Fuming, VENDOR passed the Axolotl muttering under THEIR breath about showing the triangle fascism; then stopped, abruptly turned to face him, and snapped, "You."

"You," the Axolotl agreed.

"You're an optimistic fool."

Yes, well, he knew that already. He'd been voted Most Adorably Idealistic in his law school yearbook for a reason. "I don't think I like you, either."

"No one does." THEIR camera whirred irritably as they looked the Axolotl up and down. "What are you doing here, anyway? I assumed you'd been sent to figure out who's liable for this whole mess—but no, you only handle afterlife cases, don't you? Who sent you?"

The Axolotl was silent.

Furiously, VENDOR said, "Are you serious?! We could have avoided half this mess if it weren't for you!"

"If it weren't for me, he'd have knocked down the multiverse before anyone realized he's setting the fires," the Axolotl snapped. "And if you had figured that much out, you'd have gotten your cops killed before anyone realized he's a god."

"The professionals here to handle the situation could have figured it out faster if you weren't derailing their investigations," VENDOR snarled. "And arguing about jurisdiction! We could have arrested that that little troublemaker the moment we figured out just what he's done—"

"Right after you arrested that kid with the spray can who didn't have anything to do with this?"

THEY growled in frustration. "Forget it! I hope you're happy with your genocidal pal over there—you seem about as concerned with public safety as he is." THEY stormed off, the cop with THEIR paperwork chasing after THEM.

The Axolotl watched VENDOR go; then turned to look ruefully toward Dimension Zero.

When the triangle caught his gaze, he formed a heart with his fingers over his top point and called out, gleefully singsong, "Genocide paaals!"

It wasn't exactly the reaction he'd hoped for.

####

The Axolotl was attempting to distract himself from scratching his itchy leg while it regrew by eavesdropping on the triangle. It seemed like the triangle was entertaining himself by darting around the border of Dimension Zero to start arguments with anybody he happened to recognize (except the Axolotl, whom he seemed to be trying to ignore outside of throwing a few odd quips at him.) At the moment, the triangle and the Time Giant were hollering at each other about her decision to reinforce the second dimensions by making them splinter into multiple timelines.

"So you're really willing to sacrifice zillions of lives by letting me incinerate all their parallel timelines?" The triangle laughed in disbelief. "And everyone here thinks I'm the killer! That's not a good look for you, buddy!"

She glanced up from a table full of paperwork to give him a totally neutral look. "You're the one who's willing to incinerate them. You could not do that."

"When I do it, it's justified."

The Axolotl was distracted from the argument as the storm cloud with the apoc agents gloomily blew past him. It was talking into a walkie-talkie as it went: "Yeah, I know he's a nut. But he's a nut that can't throw fireballs outside the border of his dimension, and I've got to finish this report before we can get outta here." He sighed at whatever the walkie-talkie said in response, and said, "Yeah. We'll rendezvous after I have his testimony." It let its tornado suck the walkie-talkie back in and drifted to the Time Giant. "Mind if I steal your conversation partner for a minute? ATTF business."

She grabbed a binder to try to shield her papers from the worst of the storm's rain. "Please. Take him."

"Thanks." It floated closer to Dimension Zero and raised its voice to bark, "Hey! Magister Mentium!"

The triangle looked over mistrustfully. "What?" As he'd talked to the Time Giant, he'd been playing with the fabric of reality, creating a circle out of raw... stuff. The Axolotl couldn't tell what the stuff was, but it looked like it was some sort of animal tissue, except far too uncannily homogeneous to be natural, disturbing in its uniformity. Like a slice of baloney. When he saw who'd called out to him, he rolled his eye and turned his attention to extruding the circle into a baloney cylinder. "Heeey, Officer Fun Police! Here to rain on my parade again?"

"Rain jokes aren't as funny as you think they are," it said. "No, this is Apocalyptic Threat Task Force business."

The triangle's eye narrowed. "What business? Are you gonna complain about my renovations again?"

"No. If you're not about to knock reality down, I don't care what you do anymore," the cloud said. "It's not my business to punish anybody for previous apocalypses, I just want to prevent future ones. Answer a few questions for our incident report and I'll be out of your life." There was an implicit and you'll be out of mine in its tone.

"All right," the triangle said dubiously. "Fffine. Then we're on the same side. I'm not fond of apocalypses either."

It paused like it wanted to argue with that claim, but said, "Good enough for me." It pulled out the soggy notepad it had been using all day, flipped through it, couldn't find a free page, and with a sigh pulled out a tape recorder instead. "You're from Dimension 2 Delta, right?"

"If you say so," the triangle said, lifting his hands in a shrug. "You guys are the ones who named my dimension."

"Uh-huh." Under its breath, the cloud muttered, "Not exactly a name, but... If you're from 2Δ, that makes you the only direct witness to how your universe was destroyed."

The triangle paused. "Mm."

"Can you explain what happened, exactly?" When the triangle didn't respond, the cloud added, "I'm not gonna arrest you for it. If we want to have a chance of stopping something like this from happening in the future, we need to know what happened here."

"Uhhh, yyyeah. Suuure," the triangle said.  It wasn't clear exactly how Dimension Zero rearranged, but the view of the eternal dance party simply vanished. There was no sign of the millions of shapes. The music had fallen near silent, just a constant distant low thumping noise, like your heartbeat in your ears; quiet enough that it couldn't drown out the whispery hiss leaking out of Dimension Zero. "It's not like I have anything to hide." Whatever he was about to say, it seemed like he wanted to hide it from his party prisoners, at least.

A bolt of lightning shot through the storm's recorder, turning it on. "You said you were an active participant in the end of the world, right?"

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" He eyed the recorder suspiciously. "What is this, some trick to try to get a confession out of me?"

"Again, I'm not a cop. And you already confessed in front of a thousand reporters," the storm said. "If you were involved, you've got a different perspective than some guy ten superclusters away who only witnessed it, that's the only reason it matters."

"Oh," the triangle said. "Then—yeah, I was there for the whole thing. Start to finish."

"Great," the storm said gruffly. "Then could you explain in your own words what happened when the universe ended and, to the best of your knowledge, what caused it."

"Oh. Yeah. Right. The cause," the triangle said. "It... it was a—monster."

"I thought you said you—"

"It was a monster," the triangle said, more confidently now.

The cloud hesitated. "All right," it said. "Tell me what happened."

The triangle took a deep breath. "Okay. So. It uh—started with the third dimension."

"The monster came from the third dimension?"

"No, we were going to the third dimension. But we needed—"

The hissing background static exploded into a roar.

The void filled with the staticky screams of countless dead voices, pleading for mercy, pleading for it to stop. Death rattles, howls of agony, wails of terror. Most of the crowd of gods outside Dimension Zero fell silent, turning to stare at the disembodied hysterical shrieks.

One voice, strained with pain, rose above the cacophony, crackling, "Emergency services! We need medical assistance! Ambulances, or—please—I don't know what happened—it's like everyone's internal organs spontaneously ruptured, there's—there's hundreds of people here! Some of them are missing parts of their body, they just—disappeared! I'm hurt too, I don't know what it is—I can feel it inside me—"

A second voice replied, "We can't send assistance. Everyone's bleeding, the whole city's dying! We can't help you!"

Whatever the triangle said was lost beneath the roar. He didn't even seem to notice it. His eye was filled with static. The word "blood" was just barely audible. The word "mandibles."

Another voice, trying to sound professional, trying to sound authoritative, but trembling with fear, "This is an emergency announcement! This announcement will not repeat! The fire can transmit over radio waves and sound waves! Turn off all radios and TVs! Turn off all radios and TVs and destroy any wireless phones and pagers! Do NOT listen to the screams! Again, the fire is transmitting over radio waves, this message will not repeat, destroy your radio and warn your neighbors!"

The Axolotl saw images flash in the triangle's eye, too fast for him to mentally process one before another ten had gone by: a plane like infinitely thin glass with tiny delicate shapes painted on its surface shattering in a rolling wave; a bleeding body reduced to shards and then the shards reduced to chips and then chips reduced to dust; fire spitting and crackling into every crack split in existence; a light shaped like a triangle. (Was that the light that had blinded the Oracle's seer?)

Another voice gasping, "It's doing something to the gravity, I-I don't understand—we don't even have the equipment to read... it's like gravity's turned in a direction that doesn't exist! Does anyone know how to stop it?! Our universe is tearing ap—" and the words were cut off with a scream; and the scream was cut off with a sudden silence that was swallowed whole by the other voices.

The triangle had peeled open, shining golden panels stretching out like petals, his mandibles unhinged and curling around his eye in a ring of teeth, like a blooming carnivorous flower, sun-soaked and mesmerizing. God, he was so bright. He shot light in every direction like an explosion that never ended. Like a star trapped in the moment of supernova.

Another voice, shaking with rage, "Did you hear that, you monster?! I told you we weren't ready yet! Why didn't you listen?! I can see the destruction from here—the sky's on fire, everything is burning. How could this happen?! YOU killed them all—" and the rage cracked, revealing the fear and grief just barely hidden underneath, "Remember us. If you're the only one left, you have to remember us. Please—"

The static snapped off; the triangle's body snapped back into place; his eye snapped back into focus; "—and then they appointed me their god," he said cheerfully, "and here we are!"

And with only a couple more dying cries of pain and pleas for help, the voices fell back to their constant background whisper.

The storm cloud had started sleeting.

The Axolotl had stopped breathing. Just the sound of the carnage was enough to make him sick.

But the triangle sounded perfectly at ease—more than he had before he'd answered the cloud's question. "So is that all you needed?" He'd resumed playing with the cylinder of meat he'd been constructing—extruding it further, and then, dissatisfied with the results, collapsing it back into a circle.

His hands were trembling as he messed with the cylinder. There was a tightness around his eye.

"What..." The storm cloud let out a low rumble of thunder, ahem, "what... did you say about blood? I didn't catch it."

The triangle blinked blankly at the storm. "I didn't say anything about blood."

It paused.  "All right, then—what about the other voices? Who were they?"

"What voices?"

The storm stared at the triangle, baffled sunbeam fixed on him; then swung the sunbeam over to the Axolotl. "You heard—?"

So his eavesdropping had been noticed. He nodded. Oh, he heard, all right.

The triangle glanced between them. "I think you guys are hearing voices," he said. "The only one talking here is me."

He said it like he meant it. The Axolotl was sure he did. Had he not heard the voices?

"Never mind, forget it," the cloud said uneasily. "You said someone... Who appointed you their god?"

"Uhhh..." the triangle tilted to the side as he tried to think. "Pretty much all my people? Yeah. It was everyone!"

"Your people? From your universe?"

"Yup!"

"They didn't appoint you their god," the cloud said. "They're all dead."

The triangle scoffed. "I don't know what you're talking about. They're all in here with me!"

"You mean the mortals from the other universes?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the triangle repeated, a little slower, warningly. "They're all from my universe."

For a moment, the cloud just stared at him, at a loss. It glanced again toward the Axolotl. The Axolotl had nothing to offer it.

"Is that everything?" The triangle tried to keep his voice peppy, but there was an edge of exhaustion that hadn't been there earlier. (Yeah, him and everyone else here.)

"I guess that wraps up that part of the questionnaire," the cloud muttered uneasily, trying to recover its professional tone. "Just a couple more questions. I need your name. For the report."

Dimension Zero's hissing background static rose again: "The murderer... The name of the murderer... is—"

"NOBODY ASKED YOU!" The triangle turned and chucked the cylinder he'd been working on into the Dream Realm. He grumbled under his breath, created another circle, and started stretching it out again.

The triangle could hear the voices. Then why hadn't he been able to hear them earlier? Unless he had been able to hear them—and he just... couldn't remember that he'd heard them?

Even if the Axolotl hadn't known about the incomparable trauma the triangle had survived/caused, it would be pretty obvious by now that something was going terribly wrong inside his head. Contradictory stories about his own reality, memories he refused to remember, facts he simply set aside as not relevant. Was he refusing to face them, or was he unable?

From their conversation in the Axolotl's tank, he thought the triangle understood more than he was willing to admit. But the Axolotl might be the only one who knew that.

And that was beginning to give the Axolotl an idea.

"Just—put me down as the Magister Mentium, okay?" the triangle told the cloud. "Everyone'll know who you're talking about."

"If you say so," said the cloud. "What was your universe's name?"

"Its name?" The triangle glanced up from his new cylinder and gave the cloud a perplexed look. "You asked already. You said it's Dimension 2 Delta."

"That's its serial number. Every dimension's assigned one at its Big Bang. But it's standard to let a dimension's own residents choose its name. It makes it more personal." The cloud sounded as though it had memorized this explanation. The Axolotl wondered how many times it had had to take statements from a destroyed dimension's grieving survivors. He hoped it usually got to give this spiel to witnesses of a narrowly averted apocalypse. "Typically the first explorers to leave their dimension get to name it; but the only person ever known to leave 2Δ is... you."

"Oh," he said. "Right."

"So, what did your people name your universe?"

He stared at the storm like it was stupid. "We called it... the universe?"

"Everyone calls their universe The Universe," the cloud said. "Followed by The World, The Dimension, Reality, and Home. They're all taken, come up with something else."

"Seriously? You're making me name my whole universe and now you're telling me how to name it?"

"They're not my rules," the cloud said. "If you don't have a native name, we usually name a dimension after the first known explorer to leave it. Was that you?"

The triangle was quiet for an uncomfortably long moment. His gaze twitched away; and for a moment the Axolotl thought he saw another image flash in his eye: a triangle floating in space, eerily serene, dead. His voice was small when he said, "No."

Surprised lightning quietly flashed in the storm's cloud. "Oh. Do you know the name of the first?"

"Of course I do. He's my..." He stopped himself. He said, too evenly, "His name is Euclid."

Obviously, the triangle wasn't speaking a language that can be spoken with human mouths or written with human symbols. "Euclid" is a stand-in word for an unpronounceable name; trying to say the name without the right anatomy—without even the right laws of physics and sound waves—would only mangle it.

But the rest of the multiverse didn't have the right physics or anatomy either. "Euclid," the cloud repeated, mangling it. The triangle winced. "Fine. How's Euclydia sound?"

"It sounds stupid," the triangle said.

"Well, it's your dimension. Do you have a better suggestion?"

"I..." The triangle floundered helplessly. "That... Okay hold on, I've had a very long..." He floundered again as he tried to figure exactly what kind of time span he'd been having a long one of.

"If you want me to come back later..." said the cloud, who very obviously did not want to have to come back later.

"I don't knowww, gimme a second," the triangle whined. "I've never thought about a universe having a name! It's—it's fine. Euclydia's fine."

"If you're sure—?"

"Of course I'm sure," the triangle snapped. "Euclydia. Yeah. Great. Fine."

"All right." The cloud zapped its tape recorder, turning it off. "Thanks for your time."

As it started to hover off, the triangle said, "Hold on! I answered your questions, you owe me some."

The eye of the storm reluctantly swung back toward the triangle. "What?"

He held up the shape he'd been extruding. "What do you call this... 3D circle thing?"

The sunbeam swept over it. "A cylinder?"

The triangle pointed toward VENDOR, who was out at the edge of the crowd answering the questions of some reporters who'd caught THEM attempting to slink away from the scene. "And what are the 3D circle things Coin Slot over there is hauling around?"

It glanced at VENDOR's stock of planets. "Spheres."

The triangle shook his cylinder. "Well, what am I doing wrong, then!"

"I don't know, math's not my thing," the cloud said. "Try rotating it."

The triangle waited until the cloud had moved on; then created another circle, extruded it again, but curled the extrusion around into a circle. He ended up with a shape like a donut. He said, quietly, "Oo-oo-ooh." He sounded impressed.

The Axolotl swam up alongside the storm cloud as it left. "So. Find out what you wanted to know?"

The cloud laughed ruefully.

That was what he thought. "Are the interviews you've been taking classified?"

"No, our reports are open to the public. Anyone can request copies. The database is a nightmare to navigate, though."

"Let me know who to contact for the records on this incident. Especially the witness testimonies."

"I take it you're also planning to go through that noise we just heard with a fine-tooth comb?"

"That's hardly the start of it."

If the Axolotl had been convinced of anything during all his conversations with the triangle today, it was that the triangle could barely begin to grasp just what it was he'd done to his dimension and all the dimensions around it—and he did a very poor job of communicating what he did grasp.

And if the Axolotl could prove that—if he could build a convincing argument that the triangle hadn't understood what he'd done, psychologically couldn't understand, that even now he only had the fuzziest comprehension of what he was involved in...

Someday, that triangle's sins would catch up to him. Someday, he would be in the hands of the gods of death and justice, and they would have to decide what fate his actions had earned. And when that day came, it would be the Axolotl's job to ensure that the triangle didn't end up damned or erased from existence.

As it was now, that triangle didn't stand a chance in the multiverse of being found innocent. But there was more than one way to avoid a "guilty" verdict.

By the time the triangle stood before a judge, the Axolotl would make sure that the right laws were in place for him to do what he wanted to do.

####

Where there had been swarms of firefighters earlier, now the scene swarmed with construction workers, working on the emergency genesis of over half a dozen replacement universes—carefully, so that the big bangs didn't do any further damage to an already unstable situation; but quickly. Already every destroyed one-dimensional universe had been replaced. Several half-burned dimensions had been supplanted with oddly-shaped undersized universes that met at the older universes' burned edges; jagged 1D dimensions sealed the gaps between these dimensions like a line of solder between two panes of stained glass.

By now, the flat planes and edges surrounded the zeroth dimension like the sleek shifting surfaces of an infinity-sided die; all except for one last missing wall in the middle of the damage.

Dimension 2 Delta. "Euclydia."

The construction workers were already setting up the scaffolding and equipment to set off another big bang.

As the Axolotl looked at the copious warning signs around the construction site—"DANGER! COSMIC EXPLOSIVES" "GENESIS IN PROGRESS"—the specialized equipment, the veritable army of workers, the mountain of papers the Time Giant had been reviewing earlier to ensure that everything was up to code and nothing would go wrong... he couldn't help but think of the triangle holding the seed of a big bang in his bare glowing hand, threatening to set it off right there. The Axolotl had known it was foolish, but seeing all the workers' preparations put just how reckless it was into perspective. Like a toddler holding a stick of TNT over a campfire.

He spotted the Time Giant among the workers, flickering back and forth across the scene as she tried to literally be multiple places at the same time. When she settled down for a moment over a worktable to double check a pile of blueprints and forms and calculations and even more paperwork, she caught sight of the Axolotl passing by, and tipped her chin up at him in greeting.

He paused, then nodded back to her. No hard feelings. He was just following his principles; and she was just doing her job. They'd each found their own way to help hold up the multiverse.

"Hey," she called out, and gestured for him to come over. As he did, she said, "Your leg's healing nicely."

He glanced down at it. His new toes were stubby, but at least they were back. "I don't like being uneven." He'd take a few more days on his tail. "I'll probably pay for it tomorrow, though." When he finally got home, he'd have to see if he could cancel his morning appointments.

"Reckon we'll all be feeling this tomorrow." She tilted her head toward Dimension Zero. "I've got a message for the god of DIY over there. I think you're the only one he likes—you mind carrying it over?"

####

It wasn't hard to find the triangle; he was leaning against the membrane around the zeroth dimension, moodily staring out at the third. He seemed to be gazing past all the gods, unfazed by their hubbub. The Axolotl tried to see what he was looking at, and didn't spot anything of note. As far as he could tell, the triangle might as well just be stargazing.

Along with the police tape and the ATTF barrier and the long-forgotten cordons to hold off the reporters, there was now an additional grid of orange cones set up blocking anyone from getting too close to the destroyed wall and the construction site. The Axolotl glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention before he slipped past the cones and swam up to the triangle.

When he approached, the triangle was muttering under his breath: "Stupid, now it sounds like an STD. I should've named it something cooler. Like... Triangletopia. Or the Party Plane. Or Margaritaville—I bet no one's ever used that one before..."

"Magister," the Axolotl said.

The triangle's eye snapped to him. "Hey, look at that! The pompous psycho is back! If you're even thinking about sticking me back in your 'office'—"

The Axolotl held up his forelegs appeasingly. "I'm not." He wasn't even crossing the threshold into the triangle's turf. "This is the last time I'll speak to you today."

"Finally, some good news," the triangle grumbled. "What do you w—ha! Ah-haha! I caught myself, that one didn't count."

The Axolotl decided not to count it. "The Time Giant wanted you to know they're about to set off the big bang where Dimension 2 Delta used to be. You probably don't want to be too close to the wall when it goes up."

The triangle's expression darkened; but he just said, "All right. Fine. Have fun. Not my problem! Just keep the construction noises down."

That was all he'd been sent to tell the triangle; but he added, "If you ever want to leave your dream realm, this is your last chance."

The triangle groaned. "This again? Listen, frills, I already told you I'm not interested! And you don't have the right to drag me out, this is my sovereign god territory—"

"I'm not threatening to," the Axolotl said gently. "I just—wanted to make sure you know. If you change your mind later, you physically won't be able to leave."

That gave the triangle pause. "I... don't see why not."

"For something to pass from one dimension to another, it needs a large enough hole to pass through," the Axolotl said. "For a person carrying the mass and energy of an entire universe to cross from one dimension to another... they need a hole the size of a universe. The missing wall where 2Δ was is the size your universe used to be. And now... it's the only exit big enough for you to pass through. Do you understand?"

The triangle stared at him silently. There was that hard, heavy look in his eye. It was awful to see. He did understand.

"If you don't come now..."

"We came up with a way to fit my entire universe into this one," the triangle said. "If I ever want to leave, we'll invent a way to get it back out."

"Your universe didn't fit in without incinerating it."

The triangle tapped the side of his hat with a finger; somewhere inside it was the speck that used to be his universe—the seed of a big bang. "It's travel-sized now. The next time will be easier."

For the first time since seeing the awful ruin of Dimension 2 Delta, the Axolotl forced himself to turn his fearful gaze chronologically forward. He squinted toward the hazy, far-flung future; and then he gave the triangle, in the present, a sorrowful look. "No, it won't," he said. "But I'll do what I can for you."

The triangle stared sullenly at him, unmoved by the offer. "I don't see what you're getting out of helping me. Everyone else is dying to send me to ghost jail or however things work around here."

"Isn't it enough to help you just because you exist and that makes you worth it?"

"If you ever, ever say something like that again, I'll kill you. I will find a way."

He wasn't particularly surprised. But that was truly what the Axolotl believed—and believed strongly enough to guide everything else he did. 

The things this triangle had done were too ghastly for even an ancient, experienced god to fully wrap his head around. Without exaggeration, he might have done the worst thing anyone anywhere in the multiverse had ever done.

But.

But if the Axolotl could prove that he, the worst person ever, was worth giving a second chance—that he could change, that he could show remorse for what he'd done, that he could be a force for good in the multiverse... then he would have proven that everyone, no matter what, was worth it.

The Axolotl had been voted Most Adorably Idealistic, but he'd never been called soft. His ideals were harder than diamond and sharper than obsidian. He hadn't decided to protect the triangle in spite of the impact that might have on the multiverse; he was protecting him because of the impact it could have. 

The Axolotl was a god of justice, of monsters, of second chances, and through his actions he could shape what justice meant throughout the multiverse as if he were sculpting clay; and he thought a small, sharp little equilateral triangle would make a perfect sculpting tool.

"In truth, I just don't believe in punishment. Not even for you." The Axolotl lay a forefoot on Dimension Zero's bubble. "But I don't see why you trust me." Because it was clear the triangle did. He'd trusted the Axolotl to judge the character of the other gods. He'd kept looking toward him like he was trying to gauge his own situation based on the Axolotl's reaction to it. He'd admitted the truth about the remains of his universe and his plans for it. It seemed like the Axolotl was the only one the triangle trusted in all this mess.

The triangle thought that over; then said, "You seem like a grade-A sucker."

He laughed. "I'll try to live up to your opinion of me." He had a guess what kind of people this triangle thought were suckers. The charitable; the caring. The people who didn't think that seeing the worth in everyone was a kind of illness.

"You should know, I intend to legally register my tank as a purgatory. I'll probably submit my application before the end of the week. If you claim it as your afterlife, you'll be transferred to my tank for holding while awaiting trial to decide your final afterlife."

"Ugh, now it all makes sense: you're starting a cult! I don't wanna join your cult, frills—I've got my own."

"But you do want to go straight to your lawyer's office if you're about to go on trial for your sins," the Axolotl said pointedly. "I don't intend to house anyone in my tank permanently. It will just be a transfer place for clients preparing for trial or figuring out where they want to go next—another afterlife, reincarnation... You're already technically dead; you can request at any time to come to my tank, and you'll be there."

"Sounds great for your other clients! But I'm not planning to go on trial and I don't want to be in an afterlife," the triangle said testily. "I'm pretty sure we've been over this!"

"I know you don't. I wish you didn't have to face it. But when you have no choice," the Axolotl said. "When you need it. When your time comes to burn like your people—" (the triangle flinched) "—call me. I'll offer you a second chance at any time."

"Low blow," the triangle muttered. "Don't put yourself out on my account. I'll be fine by myself."

"I'm sure." The Axolotl suspected he'd be putting himself out on the triangle's account for a long time. "What's your name? Your real name."

The background hiss of cosmic noise roared louder. The echoes of billions of erased ghosts said, "THE NAME OF THE MURDERER IS—"

With a flinch, the triangle cranked the distant dance music louder so it spilled cacophonously out of Dimension Zero again. It was too late, though. The Axolotl had heard the triangle's real name.

He pretended he hadn't. He waited.

The triangle didn't answer for a long moment. "You probably wouldn't be able to pronounce it."

"Maybe not." He'd seen how the triangle had winced hearing the cloud try to pronounce the name of some other shape. "I still want to know who you are."

He wrestled with his words; then finally gave up and asked his question. "What... is this place? We're not in the third dimension. When I—freed my dimension, I expected to go up; but we went... down. I didn't know there was a down." He confessed his ignorance in a near whisper, almost drowned out by his own music.

"You're in Dimension Zero." But that wasn't right. Dimension Zero was—should be—a point, and it's impossible to be "in" a point. A point simply is. "You are Dimension Zero."

The triangle said, "Then call me King Zero."

The Axolotl considered that. "Yes," he said. "I think that is your name."

Someone shouted, "Clear the way!" One worker at the construction site was looking directly at the Axolotl. "That means you! Unless you wanna be boiled frog legs!"

"I'm not a frog," the Axolotl muttered; but, he turned one last time to newly-crowned King Zero, said, "Call me," then hastily swam to the safe side of the orange cone barricade.

"Five, four, three..."

The Axolotl watched the triangle—and the triangle watched him—until the detonation. The big bang went off in a flash of light bright enough it would have incinerated anyone in the vicinity had it not been contained to a flat plane.

When the Axolotl looked away from the light, the afterimage of a triangle was burned into the center of his vision.

Dimension Zero was sealed off from the rest of reality—locking its king in for the next trillion years.

####

When the triangle said his name was "King Zero," of course, he wasn't speaking English. English wouldn't exist for a long time. The name King Zero is simply a convenient translation.

The English word "zero" comes from the French zéro. Zéro comes from Italian zefiro. Zefiro comes from Medieval Latin zephirum. And zephirum comes from the Arabic صِفْر—ṣifr.

####

Centuries ago, in the dream of a naive, trusting human, the human asked in Arabic, "What should I call you?" And King Zero responded, "Call me Ṣifr."

And years later, a dreaming human asked in Medieval Latin, "What should I call you, o muse of mathematics?" And of the two Latin words descended from his current Arabic nickname, Ṣifr responded with the one he thought was closer: "Call me Cifra."

A dreaming human asked in Old French, "What's your name?" And he replied, "My name's Cyffre."

Speaking Middle English, he told a dreaming human, "My name's Siphre."

And in Modern English, he told Edward Bishop Bishop, "The name's Cipher. But you can call me Bill."

In a year's time, and two years before his death from sleep deprivation, Edward would write Flatworld, a book about a 2D shape and his Muse journeying up to the highest dimensions; and also all the way down, below the spaces and planes and lines, to the self-absorbed King Zero, buried in the point-sized zeroth dimension, who thought a whole universe was contained inside him.

####

(It's FINISHED. 🎉🎉🎉

Hi y'all, if you just joined us for this Axolotl plot arc, usually this is a post-canon human Bill fic. I took a break from the main plot for one week to post a one-chapter flashback and then it was nine chapters. This bitch is 50k words. It's a novel unto itself.

Anyway if you only showed up for this story about the Ax, it only exists in service of a much longer story; so if you enjoyed this check out the rest of the fic. This is technically chapter 69 (lol). (If human Bill isn't usually your thing, I've been told that this is The Human Bill Fic For People Who Don't Like Human Bills because Bill is clearly very much a triangle unhappily trapped in a human body, rather than just chill with being human—so you might wanna give it a shot.)

And for the regulars who are already reading the whole fic: OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY FINISHED, WE'RE FREE, WE CAN RETURN TO THE PRESENT. Listen I love the Ax and his bizarre but unbending morality, but guys. Guys. I miss Mabel so much.

Pre-warning that I may end up needing to skip a chapter or two before the end of the year, because work's piling a LOTTA extra work on me this month and I might just flat out not have time to edit & do art. I'm up at 3 a.m. editing & queueing this post and I was up til 3 a.m. another night doing the art because I HAVE NOT HAD TIME this week to do it any earlier. I did this because I love y'all.

No that's a lie, I did this because I want to FINISH this DANG ARC. That's my birthday gift to me.

Anyway lemme know what y'all think!! 💕)

[steveseddie]

gold was the color of the leaves

steddie | rating: t | wc: 1,6k | cw: none | tags: steve pov, silly teenage boys, first kiss, fluff

for @steddie-spooktober day twenty two prompt “leaves”

read here on ao3

Steve wakes up when a leaf tickles his nose– or rather, when someone tickles his nose with a leaf. He scrunches it up, swatting the leaf away with his hand. 

He easily recognizes the snigger that follows so he’s not surprised to open his eyes and find Eddie leaning over him, one elbow propped up on the grass and a devilish grin stretching over his lips.  

Steve lifts his sunglasses to scowl at him. “Are you like, allergic to people relaxing?” He asks in a bitchy tone that only makes Eddie grin wider. 

“Deadly so, Stevie,” he says, long dark eyelashes fluttering as the hand that’s still holding the leaf rests against his forehead like he’s going to faint. “It was either annoying you or dying, and you don’t want me to die, do you?”

“I guess not,” Steve says with a long-suffering sigh, but either the fondness in his voice or the way his lips tick up prove that he doesn’t mean it because Eddie’s grin turns blinding, his dimples popping. Steve is glad he’s already lying down or his knees might’ve buckled at the sight and sent him rolling down the small hill they’re laying on.

“Besides,” Eddie says, tickling Steve’s cheek with the leaf, “you’re missing out on all the fun.”

“Napping is fun,” Steve points out, swatting Eddie’s hand away again. 

“Yeah, if you’re eighty!” Eddie snorts. “Are you an old man, Stevie?”

“Eddie, I’m younger than you,” Steve deadpans. 

“Maybe, but I have a young soul, Harrington–”

Steve smirks. “If by young you mean immature–”

Hand to his heart, Eddie gasps indignantly. “Hey!”

“Dude, you and the kids spent the last hour gathering leaves in piles and jumping on them,” Steve says amusedly. He spent the better part of that hour watching them tackle each other between shrieks of laughter, thankful for his sunglasses and how they let him stare at Eddie as much as he wanted without getting caught.

Eddie shrugs. “Hm, you may have a point.”

When he moves, something in Eddie’s hair catches Steve’s eye. A leaf– proof that he’d spent an hour being tackled and rolling on the floor before he decided to annoy him.

Steve’s fingers itch to reach out and pluck that leaf from Eddie’s hair, smooth the curls down, grab a hold of them and drag Eddie down–

Steve shakes those thoughts out of his head, balling his hands into fists to keep them from reaching out. In the silence that follows, Steve becomes aware of the sudden lack of yells and laughter around them. “Where are the little shitheads?”

“Wheeler sent them to wash their hands so they can have a snack,” Eddie says, pointing at the water fountain where the boys are cleaning up and at Max and El, walking arm in arm towards Nancy and Robin at the picnic table. 

“Not you?” Steve asks, head falling back against the blanket he’s using to lay on the grass. 

Eddie shakes his head. “Nope, I told her she’s not the boss of me,” he pauses, “then ran away before she could hit me with her book.” 

Steve snorts out a chuckle.

“Besides, I don’t want a snack. I got one right here,” Eddie says with a playful wink that turns Steve’s cheeks bright red. 

He ignores the heat creeping on his face. “I swear, Munson, if you try to bite me again–” he says, thinking about last week when Eddie said he was hungry and promptly sunk his teeth on Steve’s arm.

It didn’t hurt that bad– he was wearing a thick sweater after all. What did hurt was biting his tongue as hard as he could to keep a moan from slipping past his lips from Eddie biting him.

Eddie sniggers. “I won’t bite you, I promise,” he says innocently before he leers at Steve, his face hovering merely inches from Steve’s face. “Only if you ask.”

Steve grits his teeth together. “Shut up,” he quips, shoving Eddie off of him until they’re both lying on their backs, their sides pressed together. 

They fall into comfortable silence which Steve breaks with a loud yawn. 

Eddie’s head lolls to the side, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “Tired, sweetheart?”

Steve’s stomach flips at the petname. He shrugs as casually as he can. “A little, I- uh, I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Nightmares?” Steve nods. Eddie grimaces apologetically, tugging some hair across his face. “Shit, I should’ve let you keep napping.”

Without giving it much thought, Steve curls his pinkie around Eddie’s. “No, it’s fine,” he says, waiting for Eddie to meet his gaze. When he does, his eyes are a little wide. Wistfully Steve wishes it’s because of their interlocked pinkies. “I don’t wanna miss out on all the fun just because I’m tired.”

Eddie's eyes sparkle and he props himself up on his elbow again, grinning at Steve. “Does that mean I can tackle you into a pile of leaves?”

“You forget I was a jock,” Steve says smugly. “I’d like to see you try.”

Eddie laughs, something between a snort and a giggle. He drops his head in Steve’s chest, making Steve’s heart stutter. 

From this angle, Steve spots another leaf trapped in the curls in the back of Eddie’s head, and this time he doesn’t stop himself from reaching for it. 

The moment Eddie feels Steve’s fingers in his hair, his head snaps up and Steve’s hand ends up cupping the back of Eddie’s neck. 

Their faces are close– so close that Steve can hear the way Eddie’s breath catches when he realizes the same thing.

“Eddie–” Steve starts, not sure if he’s going to apologize for touching his hair without permission or for the way his eyes keep darting down to Eddie’s lips in a way that he knows is fucking obvious. 

But before he can decide what to say, he hears Eddie make an impatient, needy noise in the back of his throat before he surges forward and presses his lips against Steve’s. 

He lets out a surprised yelp, thinking– holy shit, Eddie is kissing me!

The thought bounces against Steve’s skull like a ping-pong ball as he tries to get his brain working again. But before he can do that long enough to kiss Eddie back, he’s pulling away and out of Steve’s reach. Steve’s hand falls back to his side, empty except for the leaf that he plucked out of Eddie’s hair. 

“You uh– you had this in your hair,” Steve says dumbly, holding up the leaf. 

Eddie’s eyes dart to the leaf and his expression falls as he realizes that is why Steve’s hand ended up in his hair, not because Steve was making some kind of move.

“Shit,” he mutters, his doe-like gaze darting from the leaf to Steve’s mouth. That he just kissed. “Shit, fuck– I– shit.”

He scrambles to his feet, and in his haste, ends up stumbling and falling back on his ass– only to roll down the small hill. 

“Eddie!” 

Steve jumps to his feet and runs after him, careful not to trip and follow Eddie down the hill the same way.

He makes it to the bottom right after Eddie and his eyes dart over his starfished body, checking for injuries. 

“Christ, dude. Are you okay?”

Eddie groans, covering his face with his hands. “Did the fall kill me? Please say yes.”

Steve suppresses a snort. “I mean. It’s barely even a hill, so I don’t think that’s possible. You might end up with a bruise or two though.”

“Oh, you mean apart from the bruise to my ego?” 

“What?”

“You know,” Eddie gestures between himself and Steve with one hand, “because I kissed you and you didn’t want me to.” 

Steve puts his hands on his hips. “Who says I didn’t want you to?”

Eddie’s hands fall from his face, revealing his wide eyes and slack jaw. “You did?” He asks, voice going high-pitched.

“Yeah,” Steve says, a lopsided grin stretching over his lips. He knocks his Nike against Eddie’s leg. “I did, you just took me by surprise, s’all.”

Eddie lets out a tiny, startled, “Oh.”

Steve smirks. “Yeah so how about you get up so I can check you don’t have any cuts or bruises before I kiss you. Properly this time.”

Eddie squeaks and scrambles to his feet with as much grace as when he tumbled down the hill. Steve finds his eagerness fucking endearing. 

There are even more leaves trapped in Eddie’s curls now, and with an amused shake of his head, Steve plucks them out of his hair before checking for any bruises. 

Then, as promised, he leans in and kisses Eddie. The second kiss is also short and chaste and over too soon, but it’s good and Steve has to remind himself they’re in public in order to gather enough willpower to pull back. 

When he does, his brain is a little hazy and he completely misses the way Eddie’s expression shifts from dopey to mischievous so it catches him by surprise when Eddie tackles him into a pile of leaves, laughing maniacally. 

“Ha! Got ya!” Eddie whoops, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, hovering over Steve who wants nothing more than to kiss the stupid smug smile off his face. 

But he can hear the kids laughing at him and cheering for Eddie in the distance and there’s no way he can get away with kissing him even if Eddie’s hair falls like a curtain around them, offering a little cover.

So he grabs a handful of leaves and shoves them into Eddie’s grinning mouth instead.

He’ll save the kiss for later.

[starlight-eclipsed]

A place to rest.

[le-chevalier-au-lion]

255, 0, 0: rosquez [e], part 1

It’s a joke, Valentino will say if anybody asks.

And see? Marc laughs, open-mouthed and clumsy, a little uncertain, his cheeks red—red like the silk crunched in his hands.

“Valentino?” He does ask.

The smirk is mostly reflex, a trained instinct. So is the way he tips his head to the side, challenging. Marc’s eyes flicker from his mouth to the clothes he’s holding and to the pale strips of Valentino’s fingers.

“Well? Aren’t you going to put it on?”

Marc’s breath hitches. “Uh—”

Valentino crowds into him, walks straight into the suckerpunch cloud of sweat and some girlish, cloying perfume. “It’s a very nice gift, no?”

For a sick, suspended moment, he thinks he’s taken it too far, read things wrong. But Marc nods, a sharp, jerky move, and wets his gloss-stained mouth. The ugly rattle-drum inside his chest eases off, softens into lazy contentment. Valentino feels the knife he’s pressed against Marc’s back—even though he doesn’t realize, or worse, doesn’t care—and relaxes.

Marc nods again, dazed, and takes a step back. Times goes slack. He’s probably going to go to the bathroom change, and—

Alright, Valentino thinks hysterically, sweat beading on his throat, alright, then.

By the time he crashes back into his own body, Marc has already toed off his sneakers and his socks, is pulling off his ratty gray hoodie. There’s nothing under it. Valentino stares—at his chest, at the soft swell of his pecs, at his small brown nipples. There’s a hickey bitten low on his collarbones. Purple, fresh.

Three beers and half a bottle of prosecco go sour in his stomach. Valentino tugs him in by the front of his jeans, right where he’s fumbling with the zipper, one hand shaking, the other squeezed tight around the bunched silk.

He presses down lightly against the bruise, just the edge of his nails. Marc jolts into him, wide-eyed.

“I won,” comes the babbling—ringed with a laugh, his wobbly smile turned shameless. “And you told me to have fun when I win—in Assen, remember?”

No, he doesn’t. Had been a little too busy screaming himself raw in Assen, delirious, this golden, giddy relief gnawing at his ribcage. Still got it. Busier in a club in Amsterdam with Uccio and the rest of his friends, so drunk and high that the whole night goes by him in jerky flashes of molten colors.

Valentino makes a show of it, though. “Hmm, I know.” Marc’s chest is wax-smooth under his fingers, and he trembles like a live wire once he touches him. That unkind knot in his mouth lingers, feels like it’s going to fill him with blood. “But it wasn’t what you wanted.”

“Valentino,” Marc says slowly, “are you going to kiss me tonight or do I need to go out again?”

It’s like being forced to the side by his Honda, or watching him slip by, taking that one piece of legacy for himself too. Valentino makes himself click his tongue reproachfully, raise his eyebrows. “That’s not very polite.”

Marc’s lashes flutter low, coy. “Can you kiss me? Please?”

He’s being mocked.

He knows he’s being mocked. It doesn’t mean it’s any less effective, mostly because Marc is staring up at him, flushed, shivering, half-dressed, emotions pouring out of him despite the porcelain front of his flirting. This whole weekend is already a joke anyway, and Valentino is the butt of it—of fucking course Casey’s retirement gift would be a bigger headache.

Might as well lean into it.

His killer eyes have turned liquid and beseeching. Valentino hooks two fingers on the soft underside of his jaw, splays his hand low on the small of his back.

“How beautiful,” he mutters.

Che bella. Marc gets that look again, clumsy, shocked, hungry—like he’s been slapped on the face and discovered that he enjoyed it. “Valentino,” he mutters, all letters of his name clumped together in his rural bumfuck Catalan accent.

That tastes better than please. Valentino is feeling generous now. Fizzling like a champagne high. It’s a chaste kiss, close-mouthed, brief. Marc tries to go for more, messily, his tongue insistent on the seam of his lips, but Valentino only needs to make a soft, chiding noise and tap against his jaw for him to relax.

“You should go get ready, now.” He points to the bathroom with his head. “Give me a proper show, hm?”

Marc walks on unsteady legs. Valentino watches, catches a couple of raised, pink lines on the back of his neck, five perfect marks. The generosity turns nasty and thick, churning—I’ve got you. He doesn’t think that Marc will give much attention to girls anymore.

On his own, Valentino gets rid of his shoes, his shirt, his jeans, his underwear, and sits on the bed. He doesn’t have an explanation for this— any of this—which means he should start working on one.

It’d have made perfect sense in Assen, is the thing, Marc one step below him on the podium, as sweet as he gets after a race he didn’t win, I’m so happy for you bubbling in his mouth.

Sachsenring, too—or the club after it, in that tense-but-pretending-it-isn’t mix of Honda and Yamaha personnel. Marc fucking loves Germany or something like that, had laughed that ugly, honking laugh of his the whole night. But he’d been tucked under Santi’s arm every time Valentino so much as looked at him, and Santi—well, a crew chief has to know you.

There’d been that look, steady, faintly disapproving. He hasn’t been on a Honda for something like a decade, and yet.

The door opens. Valentino still doesn’t have an explanation.

“You got it too small.”

And he’s fidgeting too, but isn’t tugging the hem down, so Valentino gets the front row seat to his thighs, hairless like a girl’s, corded with muscle.

To his everything else, once he drags his eyes up—his chest straining against the red fabric when he breathes, one of the straps falling low on his shoulder, the budge tenting up the skirt.

“Did I?” Valentino grins through the sizzling heat needling under his skin.

Marc glares at him—tries to, that is. He can’t quite make it stick through the shuddery awe in his eyes when he catches Valentino sitting languid and lazy like a cat on the bed, his legs spread, or the way he fidgets, standing awkward in the middle of the room. This is probably the mindfuck of his life. Valentino can’t help but let his grin twist in his lips, a little too mean.

If Valentino even thinks about it, Marc would crumble to his knees, pray the Padre Nostro drooling around his cock.

He swallows through the dryness pooling on his tongue, then again through the sharpness of the memory of the Corkscrew dust. “C’mere, baby,” he says crookedly, in obnoxious English, “or are you too shy for it?”

The challenge works. Marc’s face hardens into a suit of armor, and he stalks towards him, settles on his lap so fast that Valentino can’t brace for it and stop his own punched out breath. Because of course Marc sits straight on top of his dick, naked under the little dress.

His hands are clammy, though, when he reaches for Valentino’s collar. Shaking. “I really can’t bel—,” he starts, with this guts-on-the-floor kind of earnestness.

Valentino shushes him, runs just the tips of his fingers over his back. From his scratched nape to his Venus dimples, his nose stuck at the hinge of Marc’s carved jaw. There’s no illusion, this close. The second-hand perfume, the smear of gloss from some random woman’s mouth, the cheap polyester-making-as-silk, nothing works.

 He was wrong at that club. Marc is pretty, but he doesn’t really pass as a girl.

“Look at you, princess,” he croons anyway, sleazy, annoying.

Marc jerks against him, grinds his heavy cock against his thigh, mouth slack. He’s shivering, and grinding, and shivering some more. Valentino barely hears whatever string of bullshit he’s spewing—bella, amorina, principessa, everything sticky sweet—through the pound of blood in his ears.

Crashing feels easier than this, Marc a line of sweltering heat on his lap. Valentino hasn’t done anything with a guy since 2000-and-whatever, very early, when Uccio pulled him to the side. You’re getting too famous for that, and Valentino had agreed, hadn’t said it was just some handjobs or whatever. Which means he really needs an excuse, now.

But there’s only Marc, pretty and masculine and pretty all over again. His balls feel heavy pressed against his leg, and the head of his cock keeps bumping his stomach through the silk when he grinds hungry and shameless.

It’s something like morbid curiosity that gets Valentino to lift the dress up—call it an unwilling familiarity with dicks after years of jerking off to porn magazines in groups, someone stuck on lookout duty, or getting sucked off in Ibiza by fucking Sete or Uccio or God, who cares, he was so high all the time there.

Marc is heavy on his hand, and tan there too. Thick. There’s a pearly drop of pre-come on his tip—a little more when he runs his thumb over it.

Big.

Really fucking big.

Valentino’s smirk feels like a rusty razor between his lips. Cruel, dull, a little clumsy in what it’s supposed to be doing. “Pity you won’t use it, I bet those girls you go out with are all starstruck. Ah, Marc, you’re so big, will it fit?”

Marc bucks into his grip, but his mouth is wobbling, and his eyes are huge, liquid—insistent on his face. “Do you like it?”

He doesn’t have to. It’s not like he’s going to get fucked by it or anything.

“It’s very cute.”

Valentino wonders, maybe, if that will piss him off. Doesn’t want to bother with it—nuzzles at the crook of Marc’s jaw and makes his fist nice and tight. He mouths at the flesh of his throat until Marc goes slack against him, spilling those soft, wretched little noises, the fake silk sliding smoothly against his skin.

He doesn’t think he ever liked a rookie that much—especially one that’s so dangerous. Dangerous like Casey, like Jorge.

But then, they wouldn’t have been quite so sweet, so eager, groaning a bitten off Valentino against the shell of his ear.

Valentino nuzzles against his cheek, smooth and hairless. The second-hand gloss smears on his own face, gross and tacky. “You should get on the bed. Make it  really pretty, and I might even fuck you again.”

Marc laughs, wild with it, his mouth bent in a smug grin. Starstruck rookies aren’t usually this insolent to him. “I think you’re going to want to, anyway.”

He can’t quite flip them like this, with his full weight on his legs, so Valentino does the second best thing and lands a slap against Marc’s ass. It’s more noise than bite, but he still goes boneless against him, wide-eyed, beseeching.

Valentino’s cock is nestled under him, on the sweaty crease of skin between his dick and his hole. It’s—fucking sweltering, and Marc doesn’t stop moving right on top of him. He can’t quite think like this either, a noise ripping its way out of his throat. At that, Marc nods, mostly to himself, something too calculating and attentive and sharp about his face.

Watching him. Taking notes.

Which—no.

Valentino shoves at his shoulder. Marc finally, finally moves off him and gets on the bed properly. He doesn’t need to chide him, or make him move—Marc goes all on fours, back arched. The hem of his little dress doesn’t cover anything.

In this disjointed tug of heat, Valentino sort of regrets not getting it in blue or yellow. He’d seen red and clocked it as Marc’s color, but now—

Marc looks at him over his shoulder, his smile broad and sharp no matter that he’s fidgeting a bit, shifting his weight on his knees. “You can do it,” he jokes, very generously, “you promised me it was going to be crazy.”

“I don’t think I have to do much with you,” he shrugs, casually cruel.

Marc laughs, blushes. He’s worn his admiration on his sleeve the whole time, it figures it wouldn’t bother him much. It’s fine. Valentino can take things from there—he’s fucked plenty of women like this before.

The crack of the lube bottle sounds ominous, though.

Marc is tight around his fingers—Valentino works in one a little too fast, and he hisses, something pained to it, tense around the edges. Two only go in with what feels like half a bottle of lube, the wet of it dripping over his smooth, shaved balls and Valentino’s wrist, going tacky on the bedsheets.

He mewls and babbles, a flurry of words in a Catalan so thick that Valentino has decided to ignore him. But Christ—he’s loud, shameless. Keens when he tries to scissor his fingers, even though he can barely move. Moans when he fucks them in, his thumb rubbing idle circles on the stretch of thin skin behind his balls.

The next ten minutes are probably going to be incredibly embarrassing for one of them.

Still—

His voice has gone up a pitch. The person in the other room bangs against the wall hard.

Valentino presses his face against the mattress, mean, an arm braced on Marc’s shoulder blades, right where his sweat is turning the silk dark.

“It’s probably going to be in the newspapers tomorrow,” Valentino manages to speak. The words come out slowly, one by one, pried from his dry throat. “Rossi with a whore in Laguna Seca. Keep it down, eh?”

Marc doesn’t. Makes this wretched noise instead, but at least he’s biting the pillow, so it isn’t as bad as it could be. Not so loud. Valentino decides that he really doesn’t care, because Marc twitches, tightens up on his fingers, his cock leaking and heavy between his thighs. He will have someone in his team pay off whoever is in there.

Can’t have Rossi screws a guy being the headline, really.

That sudden meanness fizzles out before it can grow thorns. Marc twists and fidgets to look at him over his shoulder, eyes gone glassy, all pupils. Valentino wishes that he’d got him in some make-up too, so it’d smear, but then he’s talking—

“I thought about it.” The words pour from his mouth in a rush, Ithoughtaboutit. Valentino is this close to purring about fucking me? Yeah, I noticed when he blurts out the rest, “at the club in Austin, when you—when you called me a whore. Can you—”

He says it like Valentino would, puttana, and grinds back against him. There’s static in his ears, and his entire body lurches forward like his guts are being tugged with hooks to bite at Marc’s shoulder, the imprints of his teeth red and sore. Valentino gets his fingers out, replaces them with the head of his cock bumping against Marc’s hole before he starts whining.

“Should’ve known you’d want me to call you a slut.”

He wishes that it’d sound like a show, silver-bright, cruel in the same measure that it is slick. It doesn’t. There’s only Valentino, panting like a dog.

And Marc whimpering, rushing to nod. He sees things happen in jerks, like a kaleidoscope, his hand on the back of Marc’s head, keeping him down, making him arch up, the tip of his dick catching on his hole and then slipping inside it.

Valentino needs to move his hips in those tiny rolls, barely anything. Marc is an inferno around him, tight and tense like he’s pressing his nails over his nerve endings, his shoulders hitching with every breath.

It takes ages until his hips are pressed against the swell of his ass, fake silk brushing against the hair on his crotch, and Valentino can feel each agonizing millisecond of friction, has to start counting backwards, think about the circuit and how punishing and miserable it is, anything, hot like fever.

He can’t tell which one of them this humiliates more. Can’t tell if Marc’s still being loud, either, through the staticky hiss in his ears.

His mouth damns him like it tends to do—nonsense pours out of him like a punch, whore and my groupie and choking for dick, aren’t you and princess and pretty. All of it against the crook of Marc’s neck, where he still smells like some girl, so he won’t look at his cock splitting him open, or at the dress draped over his ass.

It’s a mess from there, Valentino rutting against him like he’s twenty too, zero finesse to it, just the wet, loud slide and this thorny coil in his throat that’s been there since COTA, unswallowed, driving him insane when he caught the tail end of Marc slipping out of a party and the click of heels behind him.

“I’m really lucky,” he pants through grit teeth, digging his fingers into his ass, his thighs, his hips—hopes all of those touches will bruise. “Got the prettiest girl at that party all for me.”

Marc shudders, this tiny ah catching in his throat. “For you,” he says, urgently.

Reaches out behind him for his hand, to wrap it around his cock, the wet, obscene weight of it. Valentino runs a finger over the weeping slit.

“Want me to play with your clit, baby?”

Valentino makes it obnoxious, plans to laugh, but Marc makes a noise between a giggle and a whine, a bit like he’s dying, and goes tight around him. It’s like he’s slipping a knife inside him, prying tendon from flesh from bone. Valentino grunts, then lets out something reedier once he feels the wet heat of Marc’s come on his fingers, how his body trembles.

Christ—alright. His own body seizes, skin a couple sizes too small.

He presses his forehead against Marc’s muscled back, the silk, relief unspooling his limbs. It’s barely three more thrusts until he’s coming too, buried all the way in, his heart drumming somewhere high, his hands numb and shuddering, vision whited out.

Next time, he thinks, head fuzzy, Valentino is getting something small and lacy to replace Marc’s race day red underwear.

[gauloiseblue]

And at every table / I'll save you a seat

(Gaz × Reader)

[+18 | Adult Content MDNI]

Tags: fluff, smut, family issue, friends to lovers, slow burn, [A bit of warning] tradition view on virginity and marriage, piv sex

Words: 9.8k

It all started with a little request

"Will you take my virginity?"

He's taken aback by the ask, but he quickly regains his composure.

"No." He replied.

You look at him for a while, before you mutter out, "I understand."

"Wait," He grabs your hand before you could turn around, "Let's talk about it."

He observes the hesitation rising from your face when you look away, "I don't think you'd understand."

"You haven't tried yet." He smiles gently, "Try me, (Name)."

"... It's a long story."

"I got time for it." He told you, "Tea?"

With that, he invites you into his place.

You're silent when he offers you a seat, and he lets you sit with your thoughts as he works on the drink. It's not your first visit to his apartment, since you've been here quite often. But you never came with a somber mood, and he didn't know what to say to cheer you up.

He hands you the cup, before he pours the tea from the pot. He hears you murmur something, and though he doesn't quite catch it, he can roughly guess it.

"So," He began as he sat down across the table, "Would you mind telling me why you suddenly wanna lose it?"

You had blown the steam away from the cup, before you took a sip. He watches you take your time with the drink, until you're ready to talk.

"I know that I said I'm keeping myself until marriage, but I don’t think it's possible now." You bit your lip, as you fidgeted with the handle of your cup, "Because I'm going to be wed to someone I didn't know."

He raises his brows at your statement, "That practice still exists today?"

"Yes, it still does." You begin to explain the outline of the story. "My family came from a community that still holds an orthodox belief. My parents aren't conservative, but they can't escape the tradition either. When they told me about the engagement, I begged them to call it off, yet they asked me to go with it. But I don't want that. I don't want to be trapped in a loveless marriage." Your eyes shift as you hold back tears, "I know that they love me, if they don't, I won't be here. Away from home."

You quickly wipe your cheek before you continue, "The man who'll be my husband is highly respected in the community, but he's at the same age as my mother. I don't know why he asked for my hand, we barely talked. But for the last few months, he began to send me gifts. It's customary for a suitor to give the girl presents as a way of courting. Anyway, I won't bore you with the details."

He waits for you to gather your thoughts, before you start again.

"To be a bride, it's common for a girl to go through a ceremony, to see if the girl is suitable for marriage. I have to fulfill all of certain criteria to be recognized as a proper fiancée." You snort when you mention it, "Ky, you're a smart person, you must've known what that means."

He crosses his arms when you subtly ask him to make the conclusion. "If you fail the virginity test, then you're ineligible to be a bride."

"There are other factors that can annul the engagement, but yes, purity is the most important aspect for the bride to have." You stated, "If I fail that test, then I can be free from the custom."

"Won't you be shamed for… not being pure?" He carefully asked.

"Yes, but It's better than the other option."

You went quiet after the confession, as if you've retreated back to your shell.

He gazes at you long and closely, while a sense of familiarity comes to rest on him. The way you carry yourself reminds him of the old you—who couldn't look him in the eyes when you both were strangers.

"Say," He begins, as he rubs his face, "If I were to help you, what then?"

"Nothing, we can pretend it never happened."

"You know it's not possible, right?" He frowned, "We can't go back like we used to, at least I can't see it that way."

"I know, but I don’t have a lot of choices." You replied with a sigh, "I can never sleep with a stranger, and I can't do it myself either." You told him, "I have to lose it somehow, but I don’t know how. And the reason I asked you this because you seem to have a lot of experience, so—"

You stop when he presses his hand against his lips. While it's impossible to tell if he blushes or not, you swear you see a red tint on his cheeks.

"You're not…?"

He scratches his neck, as he coyly replies, "My ma raised me well, (Name). Of course I'd save myself before marriage."

"Oh—" You cover your mouth in shock, "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have asked you—"

"It's alright." He smiles, "How much time you have left until the ceremony?"

"About a month." You answered.

"I'll help you then." He said with such ease, that it made you stare at him wide-eyed, "But let me take you to a date first."

"What," You gulped, "What do you—Why? I thought… you said no…?"

"I hate seeing you like this, and I don't want you to resort to one night stand." He told you, "Besides, you didn't force me into this."

"But I did make you sympathize with me." You shook your head, "That's why you changed your mind."

"I said no because I knew you're saving yourself for marriage."

"But you said that you did too."

"That makes us even then." He tilts his head, "I'll take yours, and you'll take mine."

You open your mouth to speak, but nothing comes out of it. Not because you're at loss for words, rather, you have too many questions in your head.

"You can decide how many dates we'll go before you decide if you want to do it." He reaches out to squeeze your hand, "How's that sound?"

Although you're still unsure at that time, you can't help but nod at the offer.

The first time he takes you on a date, it's on Sunday, 07:20 PM, at an independent cinema. He phoned you earlier, telling you that they're going to play an old romantic film.

"I thought you like mystery?"

"Yeah, but you wouldn't pick that on the first date." He grins, "Besides, the movie has Binoche in it."

By the time you arrive at the cinema, you spot him talking to another man by the ticket booth. He turns his head when he hears your call, before the other man leans to the side to see you.

"You're early." You told him.

"I could say the same to you." He said with a smile, "The movie's starting in 10, c'mere."

He extends his hand towards you, and you take it with a little bit of apprehension.

The man whistles when he drapes his arm around your shoulders, "I see ya bringing a date tonight."

"Yeah," He turned to you, "Ain't she pretty?"

His friend chuckles when your face turns red, "Can't argue with that."

"Well, we'll talk later. I'm gonna show her around for a bit." He gives the man a pat on his arm, "You still have that shrine of yours?"

"'Course!" He warmly retorted, "Wouldn't close it for ya."

He mutters something back to him, and the man gives him a thumb up. When the two of you part with him, you ask him about the shrine.

"It's just a room full of merchs." He explains, "He's a movie fanatic, so when he liked a film, he'd find any of the collectibles."

"Like graphic t-shirts?"

"More than that." He grins, "You'll see."

At the end of the hall, there's a door smaller than the theater one. He opens it for you, and guides you inside.

The room is roughly the size of a humble apartment, but it's filled with many posters and other things you have to see up close to know what they are. Your eyes scan the movie posters that are mounted on the wall, before you turn to a doll. It's a porcelain doll, adorned with old-fashioned clothes. You lift the little paper beneath it and begin to read.

"It's from 'Interview With The Vampire'." You hear him say, "It's one of the collections that he's proud of."

"I've seen that movie years ago." You murmured, while tracing the edge of the paper with your finger, "I didn't understand what the story was about, until I read the book."

"You read the novel?"

You nod, "I still read it from time to time. Oh, would you look at that." He turns his gaze towards the spot you point at, "Didn't we watch that movie together?"

"Mulholland Drive?" He rubs his chin, "Didn't you say you hate it?"

"Well, I did. But it's been stuck in my head since then." You turn on your heel and skim through the titles of the posters, "I see a lot of foreign movies but not french." You commented, "Isn't he a movie fanatic?"

"He is. Just not a hypocritical one." He replied, "He told me that many of the French directors are lecherous, and they like to put their fantasies into their movies. Guess what caused them to earn a good rating?"

"I don't know, affinity bias?"

"Precisely." He grins, "He likes a few French films though, like Plein Soleil, Amélie, Playtime,"

"Léon?" You smirk.

"He'd berate you if you ever mentioned that name in front of him."

You laugh at his playful warning, "I think I like him."

"Too bad, he already has a wife." He circles his arm around you, "Why don't I introduce you to someone else?"

You roll your eyes at him, as you're so used to hearing those words.

"Yeah, his name is Kyle Garrick, and he's currently single."

"Come on, you loved it the first time you heard it."

"Well, I did laugh at it, but it's getting old." You jest as you poke in his ribs, "Try something else, and maybe I'll fall for it."

And he gives you a response that gets you burst into a laughing fit. You shove him away as you retort back, ignoring the quiet tension that begins to hang in the air.

When the two of you enter the theater, he places his hand on your back as he guides you to your seat. Though it's just a small gesture, it sends a warm feeling to your stomach.

He settles down beside you, and his arm brushes against yours. The seats are quite broad compared to the commercial cinema, but still, there's not much space left between you and him. You try not to think about it too much, as you rest your hand on the same armrest as his.

The opening of the film with the scenery of a small town, before it shows the greetings between churchgoers and the neatly dressed gentleman. It then cuts to a standing crowd, who begins their worship with singing. You frown when you listen to the narrator, as she portrays the minds of the villagers as singular. As the hymn comes to an end, the parishioners bend down to sit on the pews, before the pastor climbs up to give a sermon. The colors of the scene contrasts with the next bit, as it cuts to two figures in the middle of the snow. The figures are covered with red hoods that they hold tightly as they walk against the wind.

The movie soon changes right after the wind blows the church door open. It focuses on the two figures earlier—a mother, and a daughter, as they begin to settle down at their new house.

Scene after scene, the narratives begin to blur into one, and you let yourself be immersed into the flow of the film. Instinctively, your body leans forward as you watch the chocolate and the store begin to take form. Yet in doing so, you missed the look your friend gave.

When the first conflict happens, you can't help but show your dislike towards the man—the well-dressed man from the beginning. But it soon dissipates when the woman invites her guest inside.

They talk for a little while, and the way she—her guest behaves, the clumsiness that she shows—that makes her look like a cornered cat, it almost looks surreal, as if you're watching yourself from the future scope. You press your hand against your lips, as the crease between your eyes deepens.

Perhaps it's just the right moment, or perhaps your thoughts spill over into his, that he decides to push your head gently onto his shoulder.

You were taken aback by the gesture, but you welcomed it. You murmur something to him, as you wrap your hand around his arm.

"What?" He asked in a low tone.

"Nothing." You told him while hiding your smile.

Kyle Garrick. You wonder if kind has always been his middle name. If it's not kind, then it must be thoughtful. It must be nice, to receive such affection from a man like him. In the midst of thoughts cartage, you begin to ponder, if it's alright for you to keep them from someone who's more deserving.

At the end of the movie, you slip your hand from his arm, as you stand up from your seat. You still remember the way he understands, and doesn't push further. He keeps the rest of the night in a lighthearted mood, though his hand lingers on you a little longer, and his gaze doesn't stray further from you, even just a little bit.

That night, you lay down on your bed with your thoughts as your lullaby. It doesn't help you sleep, but it does keep you company for the night.

The next day, you ask him if he's free on Friday.

It's curious how fast he responded back, considering that he still got jobs to do, particularly reports. When you read the message, you bite your lips as you type a new one.

'Wanna have dinner together?'

A new chat pops up in a second.

'Sure'

And another one after.

'When?'

'Today' You reply, 'Takeouts?'

'Let me cook for ya'

And it's settled.

When you show up on his doorstep, he opens it up the first time you ring the bell.

"Hey," He greets you with a grin, and you notice a red stain on his shirt, "Come in."

"Smells good." You commented as you stepped in, "What are you cooking?"

"Bolognese." He replied, "I haven't decided on the pasta yet. What do you want? Pappardelle or spaghetti?"

"Fusilli?" You said, before a smile betrays your lie, "Anything's fine, really."

"Pick a color then. Yellow or blue?"

"Yellow."

"Pappardelle then."

You thought it's just a random decider, until you saw the color of the packaging.

"Guess you're used to people who say it's up to you." You remarked while you climbed on the bar stool.

"You can say that." He chuckles as he drops the pasta into the pot.

"Were they your dates?"

"Pshh, no. Just my little brothers and sister. You know the story."

"I know." You trailed off and looked away, "But you must've had those moments in your dates."

"Like what you did earlier?" He smirks and you groan at him.

"Come on, you know I'd never complain about your choice."

"I know, that's why I like you."

"You always say that."

The conversation ends with a quiet chuckle, as he goes back to watch over the boiling water. You sense a reply from him that should be laid bare, but he left it at surmise.

"Dinner's ready." He announced, as he lifted up the plates from the counter. You follow him to the dining table, and you pull a seat while he places the dishes on the table.

As the two of you dig in, you quietly bite on the broad pasta. You might not be aware of it, but you always chew on your food longer when you're preoccupied with your mind.

You hear his voice as you snap out of your thoughts, but not clear enough for you to grasp.

"What?"

"It's alright if you wanna back down." He repeated, as he swirled the pasta with his fork, "I agreed to help you because you asked me to, but I know it might make things awkward between us, so."

"Oh, that's not—it's not about that, it's just," You chewed on your lip, "It's just that, when I think about you, I can't help but think that… I'll end up stealing something from you." You shook your head, "You could wait for the right person, you're not obligated to help me—"

"Well, I want to."

"I know, that's why I feel bad because I knew you wouldn't hesitate to help." You frown, "You're too kind for me, Ky. Sometimes I'm scared that I might get the wrong idea."

You almost jump when he holds your hand, and witness the fortitude that reflects in his eyes. "Go ahead then, go on and get the wrong idea. Because it might be true after all."

The way he said it—with a clear, unmistakable voice, drags you into silence. You can't find the words to say, nor the right response for his statement. While you're not entirely sure about the truth, you can see the trace of it on his face.

Your throat begins to tighten, and you try to swallow down whatever's in the way.

You know that he's hopeful that you'd give him some kind of clarity, but you don't. You couldn't.

After the dinner, you don’t extend your visit as you excuse yourself from staying.

"Let me take you home."

You shake your head, "I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

You shoot him a smile, "Yes, don't worry about me."

He seems hesitant for a moment, but it disappears the moment you pull him into a hug.

"I'll call you when I'm home."

He picks up the phone at the second ringtone, and asks you if you're home. You give an affirmative answer, before the line turns silent.

The words that had wrapped around your throat came back to the surface. They beg to be let out of your tongue, but you bite them down. Not now. Not yet.

The call ends not long after, as you both say goodnight. As you sit down on the vanity stool, you look at the reflection of you in the mirror. It's the shape that you've known so well, and yet, you don't recognize it at the same time. Has your face already been like this? Is this what he always sees whenever you're around?

Absent-mindedly, you reach up to touch your lips. What would you taste like, if he ever kissed you?

Unfortunately, you can only imagine for now.

Four days would pass, and you soon find yourself waiting for the bell. He had messaged you earlier, telling you that he'll pick you up at your place.

The destination of your date is still unknown, since you only asked him to take you to somewhere quiet. Somewhere you can talk without the presence of curious ears. Of course, the first thought that came to your mind is the privacy of your home, but he got another idea, and kept it as a surprise.

"Bring a jacket with you." He told you on the phone, "You might need it."

But you don't know how cold it'll be, so you stick with a cardigan.

When he gets to your place, he doesn't ring the bell. Instead, you hear your phone rings, before a honk of a car announces his arrival. You walk out of your place and lock the door behind.

"Where are we going?" Is the question you asked him after you got into his car.

"You'll find out." He replied with a grin.

He doesn't give you any clue, other than the paper bag on the back seat. He also told you that it's a one-hour drive, so it's alright if you want to rest your eyes.

"I'm fine." You said, as you turned on the radio.

The ride is predominantly filled with songs, and the occasional chat between you and him.

On the other day, you either wouldn't stop talking, or you'd sit in comfortable silence. But that morning, both options seem unreachable.

"I'm sorry." You uttered quietly.

"What?"

"Sorry that I dragged you into this." You muse, "And I'm sorry that I made such a big deal out of it. I made things worse, didn't I?"

"Why'd you say that?"

"Because things have already changed between us, even when we haven't done anything."

"You think so?"

"Yes," You divulged, "When you said those things, I couldn't help but think that maybe you really meant it. But then again, you never told me anything before. Anything that could… indicate something."

"Are you sure?" You frown at his reply, "Think again, (Name)."

"What—?"

The car comes to a halt, and you snap your head towards the window. The usual view of the city has been replaced with trees. You stare at the board near the entrance, and you notice the words 'National Park' on it.

"We're here." He stated while unbuckling the seat belt.

You soon follow him as you push the door open. The cold air rushes inside, and makes you shiver.

He offers you his hand when you step out of the car. "Let's take a walk."

The trail that he chooses isn't as rough as you thought, and you can easily keep up with his speed. Though you knew that he slowed it down for you.

As you walk by his side, you feel a tug on your hand. It was his hand, and he wrapped it around yours. He smiles when you turn to him, and mutters out the same line he used whenever you're out with him.

"Wouldn't want to lose you here."

And it just clicked. Every piece of the puzzle just falls into the right place, and you begin to see the whole picture. He never changed at all, it was you who's changing.

"You like me."

You feel his hold tightens, before he loosens it up a second after.

"Like is an understatement."

"I'm afraid to use the stronger word."

"I know." He spoke softly, "That's why I never said it."

At the end of the path, a quiet lake waits for the two of you, providing a place for a silent conversation. The water is calm, but the breeze is colder than before. You hug yourself, trying to savor the little warmth that your cardigan provides. It doesn't take seconds before you hear a rustle, and feel yourself wrapped in a parka.

"Told you to bring a jacket." He murmured, as he held the garment for you.

His coat is warm, as if it has absorbed the heat of his skin. Your hands slip into the sleeves, before you roll up the cuffs. You watch his face as he zips up the parka, before he returns your gaze.

Perhaps it's him who leans closer, or it's you who wraps your hands around him first, but in the end, your lips meet with his. The kiss you both share is soft, and filled with longing. It's impossible to tell who's feeling it belongs to, but it envelopes around you like a mist.

When the two of you part, you smile as you murmur against his lips.

"I like you."

He softly chuckles as he cups your face, "I'm glad."

You both recognize the nuance of it, but no one speaks of it louder than a heartbeat.

I like you. What an understatement.

—

"Why do you like me?"

He lifts his head from the magazine when he hears your question.

"I could tell you all of the reasons, but at the end of the day, I simply like you."

"Really?" You roll your eyes, "Is that your way of saying you don't know?"

He lets out a small laugh, while he closes the mag. "Fine, I'll tell you." He begins, "I can't remember when it was, but we're pretty close at that time. We were just talking that night, and you asked me if I chose to be the giver because I felt uncomfortable receiving. I never thought about it, but it made sense. When I said yes, you told me, if I don't learn to receive, then I'd end up hurting other people. Because I denied their affection."

You lift your brows at the recount, "Did I really say that?"

"Yes, but it's not your words that got me the most. It's the way you broke my logic, and helped me see things from a new perspective." He stated, "It felt… nice, to be understood by you." He rubs the nape of his neck, "Well, what about you? Why do you like me?"

"I'm not sure." You pucker your lips, "I think I've always liked you. Because you're thoughtful, and it's something that's easier to say than done."

"Just that?"

"What? You want more?"

"Yeah," He smirked, "Go on."

You look at him long and hard, before you decide, "No."

"Why?"

"I'd say something embarrassing."

"Like what?"

"... I'm not telling."

He jumps on the sofa as he seizes your body. You squeal when he digs his fingers on your waists, and you shout, "Cut it out!"

He chuckles when you try to slap his hand away and fail, "C'mon, tell me." He grins, while his hands don't stop tickling you.

"Stop—I'm not telling—!"

When he had you pinned down, you kicked around to get him off you. Which, unfortunately, ends up knocking the empty glass on the table. You both watch in horror as the glass falls off the surface, and into the floor.

But it doesn't shatter. Instead, it bounces twice, before it rolls in a half circle. When it stops moving, it takes about five seconds before the two of you burst into laughter.

"That's the second time you almost broke it."

"Sorry." You muttered through your giggle, "But whose fault was it?"

"Me." He grinned, before slowly bent down to kiss you.

Just like the other kisses you've shared, it goes on for more than a minute. He gently guides you as he cups your cheeks. Your arms find their way around his neck, and keep him close to you.

He leans his forehead against yours, as he catches his breath. You observed the way his chest rises and falls while you follow the same rhythm. Maybe you soften at the sight of him, or maybe a kiss'd really loosen up someone's tongue, that's why the words fall out of your mouth so easily.

"I like your kisses."

He raises his head as he turns his gaze on you. "Was that the thing you're embarrassed to admit?"

You give his shoulder a punch.

"Hey." He retorted with a chuckle, "'M just kidding."

He presses his lips on your cheek, before he lays down on your side. You shift your body to give him space, and settle your head on his arm, while the other one is wrapped around you.

"Comfy?"

You nod, "You're warm."

"Glad to be your heater."

You bury your face into his chest as you giggle.

"I just wish you're portable," You jest, "So I could use you whenever I'm cold."

"Who says I'm not portable?"

"Well, you can't be with me 24/7."

"Careful what you wish for." He smirked.

You raise your brow at him, "Is that a warning?"

"Maybe."

"Mmm," You rested your finger on your chin, "Didn't sound like one."

"Really?" He teases, "Then you won't mind if I keep you here for the night."

"I'm busy tomorrow, so no." You hold your chuckle when you see him pout, "But I'm free next weekend, you can keep me until Monday if you want."

A glint of mischief crosses his eyes, as he pulls you into a kiss.

"I can't wait."

But waiting doesn't feel longer than you expect, since you meet him for dinner almost everyday. If one of you couldn't make it, you both would be on the call that night.

Talking has been a part of your relationship, even when the two of you still carried the friends title. You could talk with him for hours, and bring up every topic into it. Doesn't matter how random or strange. But there was a line that you both couldn't cross, something that kept the two of you in circles. And you thought it'd stay that way, until you stepped into the other side.

It's a wonder how a familial issue could push your relationship to this point, since you wouldn't think twice about him for the sake of friendship. Now that you've crossed the line, you have nothing to hide from him.

While it might be a good thing, it also leads you to unknown territories. When you're with him, you can no longer ignore the tension that fills the room. Any time that he kissed you, or held you tight in his arms, you couldn't help but think if this would be it. This would be the right time for it. But you couldn't bring yourself to ask.

Maybe that's the reason why—after the 2:01:31 mark on the call, you bring up the obvious question to light.

"Y'know Ky," You start, "I don't have much experience with sex, and neither do you. So how exactly are we gonna do it?"

The line goes silent for a moment, before you hear him draw a breath in. "Are you afraid it'll hurt?"

"No—I mean, yes. But that's not my point." You sigh, "I just—I don't know, I feel like I need to learn about it before getting to the act."

There's a subtle hint of a rustle that you could only guess coming from the papers, "It'll definitely help if we do some research beforehand."

"But where do we start?" You asked, "Porn?"

"I wouldn't recommend that. It's… unrealistic."

"What then? 'A guide to sex' book? 'Sex for dummies'?"

You catch the sound of his chuckle from the speaker. "Only grandmas would read that."

"I would read that if it helps me prepare."

He hums, and your ear picks up the sound of clink, like a metal is placed against a wood. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"How far have you gone with your partner in the past?"

You hum as you think back, "I think I stopped at heavy petting. I was in high school back then and I was curious. But it hurted, and I was bleeding after the session." You snort when you recall the moment, "Of course I freaked out, but when I secretly tested myself out, I found that I'm still a virgin. I could only guess that he tore something with his nail. That's why I bled."

"I see."

"What about you?" You asked, "How far have you gotten with it?"

"Same as you." He responded, "Fingering, oral, hand job, all the foreplay stuff."

You bite your lip as you hear his tone becomes heavier with each word, something that you notice whenever you dive into a risky topic.

"Should we give it a try?"

There's a pause from the other side of the call, before you receive a reply. "You sure you want it?"

"Yes." You breathe out, "We gotta start somewhere."

Your fingers toy with the hem of your shirt, as you wait for him to answer.

"Alright." He mused, and you felt the warmth creeping up from your lower belly. "Is the plan still on?"

"What plan?"

"You staying over for the weekend?"

You smile against the phone as you reply, "Of course."

"I'll be waiting then."

Friday evening, you arrive at his door with a bag of clothes and other necessities. When the bell rings, it takes about three seconds before the door swings open.

He greets you in the usual manner, except this time he speaks in a softer tone.

"Hey." He smiles upon seeing you, "Come in."

He steps aside when you walk in, before he takes the bag from your hand. You mutter a small 'thank you', and wait for him in the living room while he puts your things aside.

"You want something to drink?" He offered, but you shook your head.

"I'm fine."

You watch him come near you, before he bends down to his knees. You raise your brows when he tugs your hand towards him, and presses a kiss onto your palm.

"Can we talk?"

"About what?" You asked.

"Your boundaries." He squeezed your hand gently, "What's your preferences, what you're not comfortable with,"

"Oh." You look down to your lap to hide your blush, "I don't have any preference yet, I think." You shrug, "I have to experience it to know what I like or dislike, but I think I'm fine with everything you do. Just… don't treat me rough, because I don't think I can handle it."

"Wouldn't dream of hurting you." He pecks on your cheek. "Come,"

You stand from your seat as he pulls you up, and your body follows him naturally as he drags you with him. As he closes the bedroom door behind, your heart leaps when he lifts you up with his arms to kiss you. Your legs wrap around his waist, while you keep your hands on his chest.

When he lays you down on the bed, you push his body away for a little as you mumble, "My, aren't you eager."

He observes your face before he chuckles, "You don't know how long I've waited for this."

You moan when he presses his kiss on your neck, and you feel his hand slip under your garment. Soon, the elastic band of your underwear is dragged down on your skin, and you instinctively close your thighs together.

"Let me taste you, (Name)."

He tugs your pants down until they reach your ankles, he takes his time to unhook them from your feet, before pushing your legs apart. You call his name as a protest, but any attempt to cover yourself from him is useless.

"Ky—" You stare at him wide-eyed as he lowers his head to your core, to the point that you can feel his breath against your labia. Your body tenses up when he gets the first taste of you, before he buries his tongue into your core.

"Tell me if I hurt you." He told you, and waited until you nodded to continue.

You gasp when he presses his tongue against your clit—not out of pleasure, but foreign feeling as the rough texture of his tongue latches on your nub. Your hand shoots up to grab his hair, while your legs clamp on his head. He grunts when you squirm away, and links his arms around your thighs to keep you still.

At first, you only feel a strange sensation every time his tongue swipes against your bundle of nerves, but soon it builds up into a familiar surge. Warmth begins to spread from your lower region, and you muffle a moan when he flicks his tongue on your sensitive clit.

"Ky—!" You hissed when it hit the right spot, "Keep going—"

Your hips bucks involuntarily as he sucks on the swelling bud, it sends an electricity through your body, before his lips detach from you. You whine at the loss of contact, but it doesn't take a second before his elastic muscle returns to its previous place.

The grip on his hair tightens as he picks up the pace, and soon the pleasure starts to coil inside your stomach. Your brows are knitted as you focus on his tongue, chasing after the high that's been hanging in front of you. It's not until you tilt your hips, that you finally reach it.

You cry out as your back arches, your eyes snap open as the wave of pleasure hits you. It was different, more satisfying than what you did on lonely nights. As you slowly come down, your body relaxes under his touch.

When he reaches up to kiss you, you chuckle as you taste yourself from his lips. "And you told me you're a virgin." You mused.

"I don't need to lose it to be good at oral."

You roll your eyes and hold him off by his chest, "Yeah right."

He seems taken aback when you push him to the side, before straddling him between your legs. Your hands work on his pants, as you loosen up the drawstring. "What are you doing?" He muttered out.

"Returning the favor." You replied with a smirk, while you tugged down his pants.

You've seen the outline of his member when he's still dressed, but now that you strip him off, you finally get the full view of it.

You sense his gaze on you as you stare at his cock. Your hand reaches out to touch the tip, and it twitches under your fingertips.

"Are you just gonna stare?"

"Patience." You shot him a teasing look, "I was just admiring."

He props himself up to watch you bend down, taking his length into your mouth. You look at him through your lashes, as you slowly drag your tongue along the shaft. Your fingers wrap around his base, and begin to give it a pump.

His breath becomes shallower with each stroke of your hand, while you wrap your lips around his cock. The tip feels hot on your tongue, as if it's filled with impatience. He groans as you sink your mouth deeper, "Keep going, baby."

You perk up at the nickname he used, but it needs to wait before you can bring it up to him, since your mouth is occupied at the moment.

He places a hand on your head, and runs his fingers through your hair before they settle on your crown. You grunt when he begins to rock his hips gently, while his hand gives you no room to pull back. He's careful enough not to push too deep, but he still overwhelms you.

"That's it—" He panted, brows knitted together as he focused on you. "Fuck—"

His heavy breath, his gentle grip on your hair send warmth through your body. It's not the first time you've done this, but it's the only time you felt desired. He's eager, but he's careful at the same time. He doesn't rush things, he fixates on the moment instead. When you place your hand on his thigh, he slows down as he loosens up his grip on you.

"You alright?"

You nod before you pull away from him.

"I want to ride you."

His brows are raised as you climb on top of him, slowly lowering yourself onto his lap. He takes a sharp breath when your core touches the base of his member, leaving a wet trail as you grind on him. You hear a quiet groan from his sighs, and it becomes heavier each time you pick up the pace.

You bite your lip as you feel your core throb at the sight beneath you. The way his head digs into the pillow, half-lidded eyes and panting, and the way his muscles tense as he chases after pleasure. His hands settle on your waists, keeping you from moving too far from the right spot. Your breath comes out as a huff when the friction starts to get to you. It almost feels real, as if he's really inside you.

"I'm close." He chokes out a moan, and you feel his fingers dig into your skin. "(Name)—"

Your lips curl into a grin when you hear the urgency in his voice. You lean down to kiss him, and he eagerly returns the favor. You grunt against his mouth, as you struggle to move with his arms wrapped tightly around you. But he doesn't seem to mind the erratic pace, since his hips move on its own.

His body shudders and he throws his head back as he groans, loud enough that you can feel his chest rumble through your palms. His member twitches against your core, spilling the white release onto both of your and his clothes. It takes a moment for him before he registers your lips on his neck, which he tilts his head and leans his cheek against yours.

"That was…"

"Good?" You grinned as you gave him a kiss.

"Great. Amazing. Ten out of ten." He chuckles, "Are you sure you're a virgin?"

You playfully pinch his cheek while you laugh, "Shut up."

He shoots you a coy smile, before he gently rolls you down with him on the bed.

"We should take a bath."

"Later." He muttered, wrapping one arm around you.

"Come on." You protested while tugging his hand off you, "We can cuddle after that."

"Fine," He lets you go, "Let's take a shower."

And he said it in a not-so-innocent voice.

The two of you end up prolonging the bath time, as he's taking you for a second round. If he's eager the first time, the second time must be worse. Since he's got the taste of it. You knew that he's exceptional, that he's a quick-learner, but you didn't expect it'd apply to sex as well.

The thing is, you never came with fingers alone. But when he cornered you in the shower, knuckles-deep in your core, he had you screaming as the sweet shock from the orgasm went through your body. He doesn't give you much of a break, as he bends you down until your ass touches his hip. You gasp in horror when you feel the tip of his dick against your drenched hole, he teasingly rubs himself on your labia, before it slips down to your clit.

He had your thighs pressed together, which made the friction even stiffer. You groan as he begins to thrust, hitting your throbbing bud everytime without mercy. He pins both of your wrists against the wall with one hand, while he keeps your body still with the other. It's almost unfair how strong he is to hold you down like this, and how cruel he is to tease you as he whispers dirty words into your ear. By the time you come, you have no energy left, even for standing.

He catches you right before your legs give up, holding you up while he sneaks a hand under the back of your thighs. You yelp when he props you up in his arms, carrying you out of the bathroom.

You land on the bed with a bounce, and receive no privilege to get up as he holds your legs together, before placing them against his shoulder. The color in your face is drained the moment his length rests on your thigh, fervent and heavy.

"I hope you're not tired yet," He grins, and you swear you see horns growing from his head the moment he says it, "Because I'm nowhere done with you."

—

Kyle Fucking Garrick.

You take back what you said about his middle name. It's not kind or thoughtful, it's fucking Prick.

It should've been obvious to you, after all the gossip you heard from your friends about him. Something that you thought as a baseless fact, a Lavater-physiognomy type of bullshit, but somehow they got it right. He's not as innocent as you defended him to be. He is freaky, and he's good at keeping it a secret.

After he exhausted you the night before, he decided that the best way to wake you up was with his mouth. Your clit was already swollen from yesterday's activity, and he abused it again in the morning. You stirred in your sleep, before your eyes snapped open at the sharp tug on your sensitive bud.

"G'mornin'." He greeted you the moment you woke up, still disoriented. "How's your sleep?"

You narrowed your eyes, as you tried to turn your vision focused. "Wha—" You slurred.

"Shh." He pushed you down to the bed, while his hand worked its way to your fold. "Let me take care of you, baby."

And thus you started your day with an orgasm.

Of course it's only the beginning, since it's him that you're talking about. He could make you faint in the bathroom if you didn't lock the door behind, and he could certainly numb your mind with his fingers if you didn't cut two apples for breakfast. But once you ran out of excuses, you're pretty much doomed.

While you knew he'd stop right away if you told him so, you couldn't bring yourself to say it. Because once he puts his hand on you, you just melt. The irritation that you carry in mind dissolves the moment he wraps you in his arms, and every curse you hold on your tongue comes out as a whimper, as his mouth latches onto your nape.

It's a game of self-will, and he plays it underhandedly. You both know what you want, but no one speaks of it, no one takes the initiative. You grit your teeth as frustration begins to take over you. It's pretty clear he wants you to say it, with the excuse that it's yours to decide. But he lures you with sweet words, and waves your much-needed release in front of you. Close enough for you to see, but far away from your reach.

And finally, after three neglected orgasms, you swallow your ego and beg. "Please Ky—" You cried out, "Please, just fuck me—"

His hand ceases to move, as he pulls it out of your sopping core. You whine at the loss of contact, before he muffles it with his kiss.

The trip to his bedroom is quite messy, with a lot of thrown clothes and sloppy kisses. When you find yourself on his bed again, you crawl up to give him some space. He follows after you, and presses his lips against yours with impatience. Faintly, you hear the sound of a wrapper being ripped, before he pulls away to roll down the rubber on his length.

He comes back to your side, locking his lips with yours again, while he slots his hips between your legs. Your hands find the purchase on his back as you cling to him, digging your fingers into his skin the moment you feel his tip against your hole.

A gasp escapes your lips when he pushes himself in, stretching your pussy open with his dick.

"Shit, you're too tight." He hissed, as your walls tightened around his glans.

Your face contorts in pain, as he tries to squeeze himself deeper.

"No good." He mused, pulling himself out of you. You whimper as your hole clenches around nothing. "On your side, baby."

He gently rolls you to the side, sliding his arm below your head as he lays behind you. He places a hand under your cheek, and guides your lips back to his. You wince when you feel the nudge against your core, before it slowly sinks deeper into you.

It doesn't hurt much, compared to what you endured earlier. But it still stings, and you smack your palm against his hip when he begins to thrust. "Ky—" You moaned against his lips, gripping onto his skin as you felt yourself stuffed to the brim.

"Just a little more, baby." He places a kiss on your shoulder, while his hands find their way to wrap around your body. "Just a little more."

No words could form in your tongue, as your mouth snaps open at the steady thrust of his cock. It was slow, torturous, and left you wondering if you've underestimated his size.

But it soon comes to a stop, as his lower stomach touches the curve of your bottom. Your heart is beating against your chest, and you try to catch your breath while he showers you with kisses. The push of his hips comes to a halt, and you take it as a chance to rest. You lean your head back to his shoulder, giving him access to your neck, which he soon decorates with love marks.

"You alright?" He murmured, tenderly stroked your arm.

You hum as an answer. "You can move now."

"You sure?"

"Yes." You breathe out, "Please."

You sense a hesitation in his touch, before he presses a kiss on your temple.

"Tell me if it hurts."

You nod, giving his forearm a squeeze as a reassurance.

He shifts your body closer to him, readjusting the position to make it more comfortable. You raise your head a bit while he moves, before he guides you back to his arm. A grunt escapes your lips the moment he drags his member out, before he thrusts it back in. Your core flutters around him, as the numbness slowly fades into pleasure.

Perhaps your body is still sensitive from all the teasing he did, but you can't deny that he's good. Every stroke of his cock just hits right, as it grazes you in the place where his fingers couldn't reach. You grip his arm when you feel his pace quickens, filling the room with the wet slaps of the skins. And when his tip nudges the tender part of you, your body reacts in a way you don't expect.

He seems to notice it, as he lifts his head up to see your face. "Does that feel good?" He whispered in your ear, and you yelped when he snapped his hips against yours.

"Oh God—" You scrabble at his body, trying to find something to grab on. "Do that again."

"Gladly."

A warning comes up to your throat, before it dies down as soon as he moves. You squirm against his strong grip, digging your nails into his thigh like a claw machine. When his cock grazes the right spot within you, you cry out a strangled moan. And the second time he does it, the suspicions you had in mind are all erased. He's no longer teasing you, because now he really intends to make you scream.

When he rolls on top of you, you feel your legs being spread apart with his knees. Stretching your pussy open for him to go deeper. With him on top of you, and your stomach flat on the bed, you have no room to crawl away.

His hand snakes around your shoulder, propping you up into a half-arched position. A whimper comes out of your mouth the moment he slams himself into you, while his lips are busy with your neck. Niping and sucking on your reddening skin. Your hand reaches up to the back of his head, gripping the curls of his hair as you moan.

"I'm close." You hissed, "Kyle—"

"I know, baby." He presses a kiss on your nape, "I know."

He raises your hips slightly, before slipping his hand between your thighs. Your body jerks when he touches your clit, rubbing it in a circle motion. The fact that it's already swollen doesn't help you either.

"Ky!" You claw his hand in panic, "I can't—I can't—"

"You can." He grunted against your ear, "Let it go, baby."

Your grip on his wrist tightens, as every muscle in your body tenses up. You could barely hold it when he fucked you slow, and now with his finger on your clit, you just break.

A loud cry fills the room as you come. Hard. Your eyes roll up, hands gripping tightly on the sheet until your fists turn pale. And for a moment, you forgot how to breathe, until you gasped for air. Which comes in the form of short and trembling puffs. The moment of bliss and numbness only descends for short seconds, before you realize he's still inside you.

The burning sensation in your core comes back to you, although weaker than before. You whimper against the sheet, as he prolongs the high you just reached. His fingers no longer slotted between your folds, as they move to grip your waist. In daze, you begin to wonder when it'll end. Until you feel a shudder from the body on top of you, and a strangled moan falls from his mouth.

He rests his head on you, catching a breath, before he slowly rolls down to the side. You watch him as he wearily pulls off the condom, and throws it aside.

The two of you lay down still, mustering the energy that's left after the laborious session. Although you doubt if it's the same case for him, since he has no trouble getting up to fetch the tissue box.

As he wipes himself off, you mutter out with a low voice, "You've ruined me for other men."

He turns his head to you, before a grin spreads on his face. "Already thought about leaving?"

You know from his tone that he's not serious, but neither of you can carry the usual banter. At least not now.

"You know what I mean." You mused.

His face softens, as he bends down to kiss you. "I know."

You smile against his lips, and carefully shift your body until you lay on your back. He climbs on top of you, planting each arm on your side as he latches his lips on yours. You reach up to cup his face, pulling him closer as you part your lips, giving his tongue the access to dive into your mouth deeper. The two of you relish in each other's taste, before you feel something on your thigh.

"You're hard." You let slip what you saw, and he flushed.

"Sorry." He rubbed his neck, "You just… turn me on."

You observe his face for a moment, noting how he avoids your eyes whenever he's shy. His expression, and his candid confession set something in you, as you feel the warmth in your lower belly.

"I think we can go one more time."

"Aren't you tired?"

"A little." You replied, "But it's nothing I can't handle."

His eyes search into yours for a second, before he gives in.

"Alright." He uttered, "Let me grab the condom."

—

Now that you've gotten the taste of it, you can understand why sex is often called forbidden apple. Because once you put your teeth to it, you can't go back to what you're used to. No more friendly cuddles, and no more innocent kisses that won't lead to something.

While it's easy to get swept up in the new pastime, you can't help but worry. As a lot of 'what if's fill your thoughts. You never doubt him, no. But you'll never know what the future's like. For you and him.

One day, when the two of you lounge on the couch—with your head on his chest, as it rises and falls in a slowing rhythm, you divulge a question that's been eating you up.

"What if it doesn't work?" You brood, "What if he still wants to marry me despite of everything?"

You watch the subtle change in his face as he meets your gaze. "Do you want me to come along?"

"No," You muse, "It'll make things worse."

He hums, "Have you talked to your parents?"

"... No." You looked away, as you chewed on your lip. "No, I haven't."

"I think you should." He gives your arm a squeeze, "Talk to them, maybe they'll help you."

"They didn't help me at all." You said bitterly.

"You wouldn't know that, (Name)." He let out a quiet sigh, "Parents don't usually tell what they've done for their children. And that could be the case with yours."

"They didn't stop the engagement."

"Maybe they couldn't." He replied, "Hey, look at me." He gently pulls you to face him, "I know it's hard for you, and I can't imagine how you feel about it. But your parents love you, you said it yourself." He reassured you, "Maybe they didn't stop it because they're powerless, but they knew that you'd find a way out. After all, they're the one who told you about the ceremony, right?"

While you're still frowning at him, you begin to soften up in his hold. "... Yeah, they did." You muttered.

"They knew that you're against it and you'd deliberately failed one of the tests, so they just told you what to do and what you shouldn't. It's their way to tell you which one to break, and which one you should keep in mind." He sighs, "And I hate to say it, but I'd do the same if it's the only choice I have."

Though his words have put you at ease, you can't help but sense a new doubt entering your mind. "Will they… will they be okay if I fail the test? Won't it give them a bad name?"

"I think it's the risk they're willing to take." He smiled softly, "Talk to them, (Name). You need it."

You follow his advice two days later.

You've been mulling over the talk for days, going through all of the possibilities over and over again in your mind. You've prepared for a whole speech, but it all disappears once you hear their voices. Just like that, all of your thought falls from your mouth, as they flow out like a stream.

There's a lot of talking, a lot of 'sorry's, and maybe a few of tears. But in the end, you feel better.

As the conversation slips into a mundane, but comfortable chat, you slip his name between your life update. Though you have your doubts about it, it's worth telling in spite of all.

"You should introduce him to us." Your mother chirped, "Bring him with you the next holiday, I want to meet the lucky fellow."

You chuckle as you tell her alright, but no promise.

Four days later, on the evening at the airport, you reach up to kiss him before you say the words. You almost laugh at how easy it was, to say such words with such ease. And he'd laugh with you, if he wasn't struck by it.

"I thought you're afraid to use that word."

"Not anymore." You said with a smile, "Not with you."

He seems confounded for a moment, before he shakes his head, grinning from ear to ear.

"I hope you won't regret it, because I'll say that to you everyday from now on."

"Well, why don't you start now?"

You both chuckle, before he wraps his hands around you and pulls you into another kiss.

"I love you, (Name).

"Come home to me soon."

[kayatoastkkat]

hey I'm back at the fanfic fanart again

I am still in deep denial that How to be a Proper Gentleman ended :( This is my coping mechanism now. This is also your reminder to read @quilna's fics and that you will not regret it. (Though I do recommend having some tissues, a mop and a bucket at standby. There is sure to be an ocean of tears.)

anyways are you on team Hyde's shitty drawing or team Lanyon's shitty drawing let me know in the notes lmao I wanna see

[meownotgood]

[nimudae]

"They kiss under the snow while the sun rises and Law thinks that this is without any doubt the best first kiss of his entire life"

From chapter 1 of martilla's fic "Fireflies" 💙

[Ko-fi]

[tending-the-hearth]

just a friendly reminder that i will never get over the tragedy that is the domino squad

[hanjoj]

Would you have him as a PT? 👀

[istharoth]

In love with a 2-D Character?! Obscuary Edition!

Blurb: In which you are a character in a popular game the Tokyo debunker boys are coincidentally in love with.

Edward Hart

Granted his favourite character was not part of the selection when the game was first released, he chose Romeo's favourite character.

Why? Because he's seen one (1) fanart of you and Romeo's favourite character looked similar to you.

ABSOLUTELY LOVES YOU, you're so. You're hilarious, he absolutely gets everything you do.

Fandom-wise, he's pretty lax about everything, even in-game farming.

He cannot access the next chapter? Oh well, YouTube it is.

But he's a whale. Uses the Obscuary bar profits to pull on your banner

Gets you maxed out!!

He's the biggest fan of everything fandom. Fanfiction, videos, art, edits. Everything.

He even enjoys watching character discourse because it's amusing.

Isn't addicted to the game, just addicted to hearing your voice.

Has Rui and Lyca go to comic-cons to buy merch of you. Probably has used super-chats on your va if they stream.

He just wants to show his support

(Too much support that the va has made a specific message for him in your voice.)

Probably the biggest supporter of rps too, he enjoys all the headcanons

Rui Mizuki

Sweet sweet Rui, he doesn't usually play otome games. (he's going into this thinking it's an otome game.)

Is kinda disappointed he can't vr it out

Does not choose you as his first choice, chose the first character on screen because he accidentally pressed them

laments it after meeting you in Chapter 1! Your banners take way too long and he has horrendous luck

Your SR won't come home, it's one thing but why won't your R card come home either!? (This is me ranting. Rui come home :<)

Is the victim of many lost 50/50 + banner ending when he needed one more 10 pull for a guaranteed character.

Drinks made after you are an absolute must.

Is the kind of person who is very active in a fandom then just disappears for a while and becomes very active again.

YEAH during that activity, he's leaving kudos/comments on every fanfiction. Maybe he's even writing a few, but won't post them. They're for his own eyes + i feel he's very cautious about showing his art.

Because art essentially is a part of you, and even the drinks he creates are all carefully catered to someone's tastes. Similar to his writing and art, he's just not very keen on showing it.

Re-reads his own work though, just to giggle about it.

Lyca Colt

Omg, wait, he's a bit confused about the entire game, the rhythm game especially but he gets the hang of it.

Gets pouty when he can't do a mission, and that stops him from continuing to read the story.

But! Anyways, onto you.

Likes your design + thinks you're kinda cool.

(IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DEVASTATED WITH WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU IN THE STORY.)

Trad fanartist Lyca? Trad fanartist Lyca.

in cons, he's seeing them in the artist lane, he's getting sales made for your future banners. (Obscuary funds are an afterthought)

Also one of the "Pulls for everyone, doesn't really care who he gets but has a few characters he will avoid pulling.)

He's the type to get jealous when someone else likes you.

You know the "Please respect mine and Gojo's space, we're married and I don't like you shipping yourself with him," (Paraphrased) YEAH, that but not exactly like that. He's just keeping the jealously inside.

Probably really chill about the game. Doesn't really read fanfiction.

He just sees Rui or Ed read some, reads one passage, likes it and draws it out.

Prev [Hotarubi] Next [Mortkranken]

[pininiu]

"WITH THE EYEBALLS!?"

"Yes, Jude. Baxter with the eyeballs"

Ever just imagine that Jude looks at Baxter like this sometimes ever since he realized?

[airu27-rkgk]

Flash Paper Feathers

Art by @airu27-rkgk | Fic by @shadowfaerieammy

Read it on AO3~

After months of working on this, it's finally done! Our @kaishinbigbang piece! Enjoy the story and the art 💜💙

Summary: Shinichi has always known himself to be odd. The question has lived in the back of his mind for as long as he can remember, a constant nagging sense that he doesn't belong. With no idea where to start with questioning it, he's never delved into it much. When an odd figure starts showing up, nearly a mirror image of himself, Shinichi is forced to quite literally look his otherness in the face.

Special thanks to mac @katsukifatale for organising the event ✨

[effen-draws]

A small painting for the last chapter of my now finished swap fic!! It's... a big chapter in case you couldn't tell. Nearly 25k words in total.