#It for sure has been A Day. But felt I should mark the passing of one of the most recognisable

[crushribbons]

𝖇𝖎𝖗𝖉𝖎𝖊

summary: Sebastian Sallow should have been a Ravenclaw. (series masterlist)

cw: 4.6k words, pining, fluff, very light angst, smut (18+ ONLY), male masturbation *cough*saltburn*cough*, sexual imagery, Sebastian in a towel 😵‍💫

a/n: this if my first HL fic :) feedback welcome and requests are open! req rules here. enjoy xx laney

“Mr. Sallow! Would you care to join the rest of the class in absorbing the information I am teaching? I suspect the grounds will still look just as they do now after the period has ended.” 

The wave of suppressed, tittering laughter fluttered around the room and died quickly as Professor Weasley turned back to the parrot on her desk. Sebastian yanked his head off his upturned palm and away from the window he’d been staring out of. Rain was pouring down in resolute sheets and turning the lush Hogwarts grounds to murky mud. Absolutely no good for a flying match against Imelda, because the witch was so talented at flying in any condition, it almost guaranteed that the outcome of their “friendly” wager would be ten less galleons in his already light pockets. 

He turned his attention, or at least tried to, back to the parrot. Weasley had been droning on for so long that he could no longer remember whether it had started as a parrot or if it had been a picnic basket first. He doubted that in his day-to-day life he would find much use for turning either into either.

“Dreamy dreamer,” murmured a voice to his left, and he swiveled his head still further to catch the eye of the witch sitting next to him. She was balancing her head on her fist and smirking to herself.

Dreamy, he was. The Transfiguration classroom was as cold as the grounds were sure to be, but when he remembered that his favorite classmate was seated mere inches from him, he suddenly found his cheeks to be unbearably hot. 

She had plummeted into his life, in the wake of a dragon attack, nearly three years ago now, and Sebastian had never been so instantly intrigued with anyone before. He was intrigued particularly because she refused to tell so little about her past, her travels, herself, that he couldn’t help but be drawn toward this talented little mystery that demanded solving. 

“So,” he had said, on only her second morning at the castle, sidling up to her as soon as he found her not flanked by Professor Fig whispering in harsh, muted tones. “Entrance, pursued by a dragon, is it?” She had whipped around to face him. Her smile was enough to make his knees crumple and he felt a little taken aback. No one had mentioned that the dragon tamer was ludicrously beautiful.

“I fared slightly better than poor old Antigonus, though, don’t you think?” His breath had stuttered in his chest for a moment. Oh, he liked her already. She introduced herself and asked for his name. 

“I’m Sebastian Sallow, but how’d you get here, after the dragon? And where from? And why do all the professors seem so concern–”

“Sebastian Sallow, I think the Sorting Hat may have missed the mark with you. Only a Ravenclaw could be so curious,” she’d deadpanned with a glint in her eyes that told him she was thoroughly enjoying the obscurity surrounding her arrival at Hogwarts. She gave his Slytherin tie a gentle brush with her forefinger and then she was gone. As she’d clipped away towards the Great Hall for breakfast, robes swishing behind her and the imprint of her finger swiping across his chest still present, his jaw had hung slack. He later inwardly punished himself for calling hoarsely after her,

“N-no, I’m a Slytherin!” Very witty, Sallow.

They became friends quickly after that. When he sat down in the first Transfiguration class of fifth year and found himself elbow to elbow with her, he prayed to every deity he could remember that he could manage not to fuck up talking to her this time. And he didn’t; their chats and whispered estimations as to how long it would take Ominis to fall asleep after lecture started and notes passed to one another were the highlight of his week–no, his year. Before his sixth and seventh years, a well-placed and distracting bottle of port had been enough for him to slip into Professor Black’s office long enough to fix the Transfiguration schedule and ensure those highlights would last.

When she’d first asked him to show her how to get in the Restricted Section of the library, however, he’d realized that this witch was not just adventurous outside of school. It had taken all his nerve and self-control not to stare at her bum as they snuck through the library doors and past Scribner’s watchful, hawkish gaze. Reaching the section unscathed and unnoticed was old hat for Sebastian at that point, but it gave his companion such a thrill that she threw her arms around his neck and squealed in delight. Sebastian remained stiff as a board while congratulating her, so as not to reveal that he was, in fact, stiff as a board.

Now, in the never-ending void that was Professor Weasley’s lectures, Sebastian tore a corner off the ancient copy of Transfiguring the Tedious in front of him and scrawled on the paper with his quill. He slid it along the table to her hand and bumped it against her pinky. The pinky surreptitiously rose to slide the scrap under her palm, her eyes never leaving the demonstration at the front of the class. It was so subtle that he would have hardly believed she’d received his note if they hadn’t practiced this fine art of espionage about ten times already that period.

She opened the note under their desk and read what he’d written. Please, if you’ve any humanity, you’ll kill me and save me from this torture. Her lips immediately pressed together hard to contain a snort. She moved the paper back to the top of the desk and jotted down a response. When the paper landed in Sebastian’s lap, he glanced down.

And leave me here to endure it all alone? I think not, birdie.

Birdie. Birdie, as in, should have been a Ravenclaw; birdie, as in, his favorite thing in the world to be called. Whenever his peppering questions regarding her whereabouts during the day or what she did over the summer break (out in the Highlands exploring and assisting and digging and Merlin knows what else!) caused her to throw down a book with a huff or break into a sweet, clear laugh, she would cry, “Enough, birdie! I swear I’ll get that dodgy old hat to put you where you belong!”

Sebastian couldn’t recall when she’d gone from being an interesting new classmate with a secret she kept under her cloak to the reason he was excited to wake up in the morning. At some point, while they grew closer and he had shared his anxieties and fears for Anne, he had realized that he did not want her to bump elbows and waggle eyebrows at that Weasley kid when she passed him in the hall. He had realized around the same time that he did not want Poppy Sweeting to be the one who took her to Hogsmeade every weekend to giggle over butterbeers. 

The pieces of this puzzle slowly continued to arrange themselves over the years, such as that time in Crossed Wands when she had knelt before his crouched body to make sure the gash on his eyebrow wasn’t too deep. She gripped his forearm to steady them both and hissed when she saw the damage to his freckled forehead. “Come here,” she had murmured, and Sebastian was sure that the stone floors were going to open up and swallow him whole as she lightly traced her wand over the cut and it healed into a dark line. “I think it suits you.” 

“I was looking a bit too soft anyway, don’t you think?” He chuckled, touching the healed scar. 

“If it still hurts tomorrow, I’ll kiss it for you.”

As he rose back to his feet, his brain wanted him to shout “Can I have that in writing?!” but instead he opted for the much more suave option: “I can kiss it myself just fine.” 

He ought to have sealed his own mouth permanently with the binding curse. 

The point was, he finally drew the conclusion that he was madly in love with this woman, for she really had blossomed from a somewhat timid new fifth-year student into a self-assured and confident (not to mention talented and brilliant) young woman. It made Sebastian’s heart glad to watch this transformation over the years. The only thing that could make his heart gladder, he was sure, would be her hand in his. 

In an act of blissful mercy, Professor Weasley ended her lesson at the appointed time she always did. “And remember!” She called shrilly over the din of twenty 18-year-olds rushing to shove books into bags and be done with thinking for the day, “Bird transfiguration will figure heavily into the N.E.W.T.s, so practice as much as you can! I have picnic baskets available for those who wish to borrow them.”

“Are you gonna take one?” Sebastian asked the witch to his left, who was sweeping her parchment and quills haphazardly into her leather satchel.

“No, I don’t think I need to practice much. I’ve already got my own little birdie.” Then she actually pinched his cheek in her fingers. Sebastian’s skin turned bright red at the contact, and his insides took flight in an awkward but not uncomfortable way at her words: My own little…

Was she trying to kill him? This had to be the flirting that Ominis insisted was always occurring between the two of them. Usually, Sebastian had no problem at all recognizing and reciprocating attention from the opposite sex, but something about this particular witch made his head go mushy as the mud they avoided as they walked across the courtyard, robes pulled up over their head to avoid the downpour as they dashed towards the Great Hall.

Her affectionate nickname did sometimes feel like a deflection on her part, an attempt to infantilize him into a permanent position of friendship. He couldn’t bring himself to care though, quite frankly. He adored hearing it so much, although only from her lips. As they splashed through the courtyard, he recalled the time Imelda, hoping to goad him during Quidditch practice, had shouted “Come ON, birdie, and FLY, dammit!” He’d sent a bludger straight at his team’s captain, causing her to careen off course with a fresh string of obscenities. 

And down, deep down, buried in the depths of the shameful part of Sebastian that held all guilt and impurities, he wanted nothing more than to hear that nickname leave her mouth in a gasp as their bodies pressed together in his empty dormitory. His shame at this well-visited fantasy was not eclipsed by his desire for her, however, and he far too frequently found himself rushing back to his bed after their shared classes and repeating her sweet words to himself as he tugged his pants down and slid the curtains of his four-poster shut. He hoped today’s rain might cleanse him of his sins just a bit, because that old routine was currently all he had planned for the evening.

Once they found shelter inside, robes still dripping and hair plastered to their forehead, his friend turned to him. “I’m drenched,” she said cheerfully. Even though it was true, she still looked a vision, her bright eyes shining in the low light and smile always in place. “I’m going to go change before dinner…say, are you still flying Imelda?” She glanced back outside at the deluge. “For your sake, I hope not.”

Sebastian put his hand to his heart, feigning offense. “Are you insinuating that I couldn’t beat the most Quidditch-obsessed witch in the school just because of a little rain?” She pursed her lips, and he could tell she was about to fire back with a witty reply; he felt his head swim a little, as it always did when they bantered back and forth, possibly resulting in a playful shove or tweaked nose that he would think about for hours later. 

Suddenly, the Quidditch-obsessed witch in question came barreling around the corner, eyes fiery, and yelled, “Sallow! Outside, now!” Sebastian groaned, partly because he most certainly did not want to race Imelda right now, and partly because the girl he’d much rather be spending time with gave him a wink and departed to her dormitory with a muttered “Good luck, birdie.”

When he trudged into the Great Hall an hour later, sopping from head to toe and more mud than man at this point, he caught her eye at the dinner table and dropped his broom unceremoniously on the ground. She got up to fuss over him as he plopped down beside her and began eating everything in sight. 

“Did you–?”

“Does it look like I did?” he grumbled around a mouthful of chicken.

“It looks like you challenged the ground to a race and lost, my dear.” 

He may as well have. The second Samantha had blown the whistle to start the race, Imelda had taken off like a perfect missile of pure speed, whipping through the hoops at the other end of the field before Sebastian could even kick off. From there, well…he decided it might save him a small bit of face if he told her he only fell off his broom once.

“Poor thing, poor thing!” She tutted, brushing the grimy locks of hair from his forehead. The food Sebastian was swallowing got caught in his throat at the contact and he choked. Ominis got up from his position on the other side of this accidental seductress and whacked Sebastian hard on the back without looking up from the copy of the Daily Prophet he was running his wand over. Once the food made its way safely to his stomach, Sebastian cleared his throat. 

“I’m a mess, I ought to go clean up,” he said. Truthfully, he knew he needed a wash to clean his body, but his trousers were also becoming tighter and tighter the longer he spent with her. He needed some time in a hot bath with nothing but his thoughts.

She smiled and swiped a line of dirt from his cheek. There was no other explanation–she was trying to kill him. His pulse hammered every time they touched, and especially hard when–

“Dirty birdie,” she giggled, and it was too much for him. Sebastian shoved back the bench he was sitting on and clambered haphazardly to his feet. 

“I’m going to go, er, to, uh, the–see you later!” 

He all but ran from the Great Hall, barely pausing to snatch his broom from where he’d left it. Merlin’s beard, this was getting out of hand. He wanted to spend time with her, but at the rate things were going, all his thoughts would be consumed with the idea of getting her naked and he doubted he’d make for a very good friend then. Adventurous and devil-may-care as she was, she was still a lady, after all. His uncle hadn’t taught him much, but he’d taught him how to respect a woman, and no part of that instruction had included zoning out mid-conversation with that woman and wondering if she cried when she came. Or if he could make her.

“Pull yourself together, pull yourself together,” he grunted as he made his way to the dungeons and told the ornate silver snake at the entrance to the Slytherin dormitory the password it required. Imelda was standing in the common room, engaged in telling the story of Sebastian’s spectacular fall(s), but he didn’t even stop to acknowledge when she called, “And there’s the man himself, the Miraculous Mud-Eater!” He blew past her and the gaggle of Slytherins gathered around the fire, all chuckling at his appearance. Their words fell on deaf ears. The only words ringing around Sebastian’s increasingly empty head were, “My own little birdie…my own little dirty…”

He closed his eyes and swayed on the stairs, gripping the bannister for support. The erection that had been encroaching since Transfiguration was close to blinding him with desire by now. Banging open the door to the seventh-year dormitory, he ignored whomever said, “Alright, Seb?” and snatched up the bath towel flung over his trunk. Then, he was out of the common room as quickly as he’d entered it. 

The nearest bathroom was only a hallway away from the Slytherin dorm, but no one ever used it. Ice cold was the only water temperature available for a bath, and the stone floors were somehow permanently covered in a layer of frost, due to the position of the dungeons underneath the Black Lake. Sebastian sprinted past the door, then skidded to a halt. Perhaps freezing and dingy was alright if it meant quiet and empty, too.

Leaning back against the cold granite of the bathtub, Sebastian finally let out a long sigh. The water had practically given him frostbite when it first came out of the faucet, but after far too long a while, it had warmed to a humane temperature, and he used his wand to heat it until it actually felt good to strip and slide into it. His muddy clothes lay in a heap next to the tub, long forgotten. All that mattered to Sebastian now was the feeling of his hand wrapping around his aching cock and the thought of her voice, sweet and clear and sinful as hell.

It always started the same way. On his first stroke, he conjured the image of her healing his cut in Crossed Wands, only in this version, he actually acted on his instincts and pulled her in by her neck for a searing kiss. Naturally, in this perfect little fantasy, she melted into him with a moan every time, and suddenly, the dueling stage was gone, and the two of them were crashing into an empty classroom and making out furiously. Sebastian pictured the feeling of her, desperate and needy for him, hopping up onto a desk so she could wrap her legs around his waist and grind against him. 

A whimpered and whiny “Fuck, fuck, fuck” left his lips as he tipped his head back against the cold floor. The hand that he wasn’t using steadied him against the bathtub stairs, foamy soap drifting around him and cleaning the dirt from his body. He wondered absently, fucking his hips into his hand, what she looked like when she took a bath. Her clothes falling away, the sight of her ass as she slowly descended into the tub, and the soapy water running down her tits. 

Sebastian was a tit man, through and through, and this latest imagined pornography had him tipping dangerously close to the edge. As he stroked himself harder and faster, water pulsating gently around him, he pictured her swimming over to him and wrapping her arms around his neck (the scent of her hair from when she’d done the same in the library filled his brain). “Little birdie,” she was whispering, and Sebastian swore he could almost taste and feel her. “Aren’t you curious about what it feels like to fuck me?”

Merlin’s fucking sake, of course he was! Back in reality, he swore and groaned as he neared his precipice. A full day of aching for this woman should have had him on the edge of coming almost instantly, but he slowed his hand just for a moment, wanting to savor the idea of her. Her, who he was most definitely sickly in love with, even though she’d had two other relationships since her time here and never expressed interest in him in any other way than friendly ribbing. 

“Oh, baby, Go-oood,” he whined under his breath, because now, in the bathtub of his dream, she was straddling his cock and sinking onto it, her heat wrapped around him like the most perfect silk glove. Then she was moving, bouncing up and down with her arms still clutching his neck and whimpering his name over and over. 

“Seb, Seb, it feels so-s-soo–fuck!” she cried, and Sebastian wished more than anything that his hands were digging into her hips instead of his own as he bit back a groan and panted. Her tits, heaving in front of his face, looked so marvelous that he couldn’t stop his imaginary self from leaning forward and catching a nipple between his teeth. The scream that tore from her lips at the sensation was enough to make him come, and the realization that she’d probably be clamped down on his cock like a vice actually did. 

He let out a hoarse cry, his vision leaving him for a moment, and then his sticky load was being spurted into the water. The relief felt almost better than the orgasm itself, tense as he had been all day. 

He really needed to pull himself together in regards to this witch. 

After he’d regained the ability to think, speak, and move, Sebastian finished his bath as if nothing at all had happened. He quickly vanished his cum from the water so that he could dip below the surface to wash his hair. As he scrubbed his skin with a sponge from the massive carved wooden cabinet that held the bath supplies, the guilt started seeping back in. She was his friend, and that was all, and that was clearly all she wanted. In the wake of finally coming, the words “little birdie” seemed more condescending than sweet. There was no romance behind them; she clearly saw him the same way she saw that first-year Hufflepuff who’d given her a single flower with shaking hands and nearly vomited while asking her to go to the Yule Ball with him. She’d given a very polite, “How sweet you are!” then explained with mock regret that she would be away for the holidays, and would not be able to attend with him.

That was Sebastian: a hapless little boy in love with a girl who was too kind to say anything about it. He mentally added three more layers of clothes to her as he thought of her, out of respect.

When he rose out of the water and looked to where he’d placed his clean pajamas, he saw with a lurch that he hadn’t put his clean pajamas anywhere. A moan of horror escaped him when he pictured them where they actually were: at the bottom of his trunk. In his haste to get in here and rub one out to the thought of his friend, he’d forgotten to grab them.

The only fabric available to him were the muddied and disgusting robes he’d raced in, or the towel currently wrapped around his waist. Sebastian glanced out the bathroom window. The moon over the Black Lake was high in the sky, and his shoulders drooped a little in relief at the thought that most everyone ought to be in bed right now, and he wouldn’t have to walk half-naked through a packed common room. 

Dirty robes safely in the laundry hamper, Sebastian secured the towel around his waist as best he could before poking his head down the hall. It was deserted, the only audible sound the soft whoooosh of the draining bathtub behind him. He exhaled, stepped into the hall, and began half-walking, half-running towards the Slytherin dormitories, leaving wet footprints in his wake.

He had almost made it to safety when the last, the absolute last voice he wanted to hear on the planet, yelped, “Oops!” from behind him. Whirling on the spot, mere feet away from the dormitory door, he locked eyes with his girl.

“What on earth are you doing down here?!” He scream-whispered in indignation, clutching the towel tightly around his waist Her eyes were the size of dinner plates, taking in his tousled wet hair, bare torso that was not at the physical peak he wished it was, and the thin grey towel that was threatening to slide further south at any minute. “It’s the middle of the damn night!” 

“I-I’m…” This was his worst nightmare. Getting caught quite literally with his pants down and the girl of his dreams was stifling laughter at the sight. He turned away from her, determined to lock himself inside the dormitory and never come out. Maybe if he took a draught of living death he could sleep for the rest of the term.

“Seb, hang on!” she laughed, darting towards him as he told the snake his password and lifted a leg to try and clamber inside. He paused and looked back at her, if only because he wasn’t really sure how he was going to gracefully lift himself with only a towel around his waist. “I sent you an owl but never heard back!” she said. “There’s leftover cherry tart in the kitchens from dinner, and I snuck you some.” She held out the tart and his heart twisted into a knot. His favorite. The fantasies he’d made up about her mere minutes ago now seemed doubly inappropriate as he saw the real thing, clad in an innocent nightgown and thick wooly robe. 

“Oh. Thanks.” He took the dessert. They both stood motionless for a second. She was tactfully looking everywhere except at his body. Sebastian prayed for death. “Well, I’m naked, so–”

“Right! I’m sorry! You just darted out of dinner so fast…” She trailed off. Sebastian grunted noncommittally and readjusted his grip on the towel. His head was starting to sweat from embarrassment. “Well, good night, anyway,” she said, trying to muster an awkward smile.

“Good night,” He responded through gritted teeth. “Thanks again for this, it looks great.” With that, he turned around and clambered very clumsily, but fully covered, through the dormitory door. 

As he lay in bed that night, Sebastian replayed the whole fiasco in his head a hundred times. He wondered what she thought of what she saw, or if she would discuss it with anyone. It wasn’t exactly how he’d envisioned her seeing him nude for the first time. She certainly didn’t seem impressed. And he’d been so rude to her, when all she’d done was bring him a treat.

He covered his face with his hands and groaned loudly. “Shut up,” huffed Ominis from the bed next to him. He was a light sleeper and the slightest sound could stir him.

“Give me one of your sleeping potions.”

“Fine, if it’ll knock you out so I don’t have to.”

Sebastian got out of bed and quietly opened the trunk at the foot of Ominis’ bed, feeling around for the small cylindrical bottles the Gaunt boy always kept on-hand for sleepless nights. He found one, uncorked it, and drained the contents.

He had just stumbled back into bed, the effects of the potion working through his blood immediately and making his eyes heavy as boulders, when he noticed a small piece of paper on the windowsill by his bed. Undoubtedly, this was from the owl she had sent him. He managed to throw one leaden arm up to snatch it and bring it an inch away from his eyes so he could make out the delicate writing in the near-darkness of the bedroom

A little birdie told me he liked cherry tart, so I saved him some. I’ll bring it to you in a bit. 

Sleep overtook him.

Back in her own bedroom, the letter writer lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling. She hadn’t been able to form a coherent thought all night. Poppy had asked her what was wrong, why she was being so quiet. She had shrugged and gone off to bed, but the lingering ache persisted between her legs.

Had Sebastian Sallow always been that fucking gorgeous?

pt. 2

masterlist

[multifandomsimagine]

Imagine Addison noticing Mark's feelings for you

It's the look on Mark's face that causes Addison to slow her walk as she's walking on the bridge. He's resting his arms against the railing, looking down at something on the first floor. He has an unconscious smile growing, tender and soft eyes gazing below to the first floor of the hospital as whatever he's watching has him practically radiating joy.

Addison might have first gotten to know Mark because he was Derek's best friend but she had gotten to know him and become close to him, close enough to call him a friend. There had been a rough patch because of what happened in New York but that didn't erase their history together. And it's because of that history that she knows that the look on his face means something.

She walked over to the side of the bridge, making sure that she was far away from Mark to not startle him out of his trance, before looking over the edge. Addison doesn't notice anything unusual at first as the hospital lobby looks like it does any other day. In the seating area were families fidgeting in their seats, picking at the armrests as they waited, desperate for any news on their loved ones. The nurses stations were buzzing with activity, some typing on the computer, some jotted down notes as they updated charts, and others were walking to different patients as they talked to doctors to update them on the patient's latest status. Doctors passed through, jogging to make their way to their operations or to patients who needed their attention.

With nothing catching her eyes, Addison looks to Mark again and carefully follows his eyesight to the last group in the lobby: the interns. The interns had split into smaller groups - Izzie and George were whispering to each other while you, Christina, and Alex were talking - as you all waited for Meredith. But it's not the whole group that Mark is staring at. No, the soft look in his eyes is directed at you.

Addison watches as his eyes follow your every move, as you gesture to the duo as you tell them about the surgery you assisted in - if she's interpreting your gestures correctly. She raises an eyebrow when she notices Mark's grip on the railing tightens slightly when Alex leans closer to your ear and whispers something to you. Neither one of them can hear what is being said but they can hear your reaction as you push Alex away while you throw your head back in a loud laugh.

Having seen enough to make her own deduction, Addison makes her way to Mark. He doesn't notice her presence as he continues to stare down at you.

"You've also changed."

Mark is startled out of gazing and turns his head to look at her. At his questioning look, she nudges her head toward you and his eyes dart over to you before meeting her gaze once more.

"You sleep with many people and flirt with even more, making it clear that there are no strings attached but," she gestures to you, "I can see the string here."

Mark gets off of the railing and shakes his head. "It's not like that. We're just—"

Addison gives him a look and Mark pauses, letting out a sigh. "I don't know what this is. It's different from what I've felt before but I don't know." He shakes his head. Even though he tries to stop himself, his eyes search for you once more and he watches you and the rest of the interns, now that Meredith has finally joined you all, make your way to the exit. He can't help the smile that shows when he sees you smiling as well.

A faint smile grows on Addison's face at the tender look on Mark's face appears once more. This is a different side to Mark, one that she never knew existed but is happy to see. "Change isn't a bad thing. You should embrace this feeling. It looks good on you."

[ellecdc]

I come with wolfstar comfort thoughts <3

When you're sick remus is wonderful, he hates seeing you ill so he does everything he can to help: makes you tea, maybe some soup, gets you some meds and puts you on the sofa with a blanket and a pillow (sirius's chest)

Sirius on the other hand is less sure of what to do but he still wants to help so he let's remus tell him what to do, he's in charge of physical stuff like carrying you to the sofa (even if you're perfectly capable of walking) and being your human pillow while remus is busy in the kitchen, he's also tasked with moral support which mainly consists of stupid jokes and funny stories (he has many of james being a total drama queen when he got ill in the dorms)

I hope you feel better soon <3

-💫anon

poor Siri - I had a vision for this and now that it's written, I'm not sure I quite hit the mark, but let me know what you think! and thanks for your request <3

poly!wolfstar x sick!reader who they plan to nurse back to health

CW: fem!reader, cold/flu symptoms, brief passing mention of Sirius' childhood (no details), fluff

Sirius closed the door behind him and tossed his keys haphazardly into the dish that Remus insisted they go in, causing a loud clanging which echoed through the hallway. 

He realised only then how quiet the flat was in comparison which was rather unusual for this time of day as you and Remus always managed to beat Sirius home. 

Sirius felt some tension ease from his face (and body and soul) when he saw a familiar head of tawny curls over the back of the couch. 

His plans for a surprise upside-down Spiderman style kiss - to what he had assumed was a sleeping Moony having fallen asleep reading a book - was foiled when Sirius came around the top of the couch to see you - looking particularly pathetic - curled up and resting your head in Remus’ lap fast asleep. 

“Wha-?” Sirius asked dumbly, looking between Remus’ sad smile and your sleeping form - you seemed flushed and were breathing with your mouth open, likely because you couldn’t breathe from your nose.

“Hey Pads.” Remus offered quietly.

“What happened?”

Remus grimaced as he looked down at you and brushed some of your hair away from your face; you didn’t even stir. “I don’t think she ever made it to work today; I got home and found her on the couch.”

And Sirius could see that this was likely true, based on the vast amount of evidence that you’d been living on the sofa. 

You’d tried to contain your used tissues to a paper bag but there were a few stragglers from where you no doubt lacked the strength to put much effort into aiming anymore. A half empty waterbottle and a bowl of soup with a layer of film on the top sat dejectedly on the coffee table along with a packet of Benilyn with a few missing tablets.

“Poor babydoll.” Sirius cooed as he rubbed Remus’ shoulder. 

Remus turned to press a kiss to Sirius’ hand before gently lifting your head in order to stand.

“We’ll nurse her back to health in no time.”

Sirius felt his eyebrows furrowed as he watched Remus gently lower your head onto a throw pillow; still never managing to rouse you from your sleep. 

“How do we do that?” Sirius asked.

Remus hummed as he made for the kitchen and Sirius followed him much like a lost puppy. “Well she needs lots of rest, and we should try to get her to eat before we give her anything to bring down her fever; she hardly ate any of the soup she made earlier. Maybe some Chamomile too. But I want to start by bringing her fever down.” He said with finality as he started puttering in the kitchen. 

“What should I do?” Sirius asked like a child helping their parents in the kitchen; he felt worse than useless, he felt like he was in the way.

This is what happens when you don’t have a loving family; you don’t always know how to love - the verb to love, the action of loving someone. 

Sirius feels love, he knows that much. He just doesn’t always know what to do with all of that love.

Luckily for him, he had two of the loveliest partners in the world to help him on that end. 

Remus turned to smile softly at Sirius before leaning down to peck a kiss to his head. “Go change into some comfies and I’ll put you to work.”

And well, Sirius didn’t need to be told twice. 

Officially donned in his favourite pair of sweats and a long sleeve band tee, Sirius returned to find Remus knelt in front of you on the couch as he whispered. 

“I know, Dovey.” Sirius could hear Remus coo quietly as he approached. “Think you can try for me, though?”

You made a sound halfway between a groan and a sob as you pulled yourself into a seated position and accepted a cup of tea from Remus. 

“Too much honey.” You protested meekly without even taking a sip; Sirius was sure he could smell the honey from where he was standing.

“It’ll help your throat, love.” 

You groaned again but took a dutiful sip which earned you a beaming smile from Remus. 

“I feel horrid.” You croaked, and Remus - god love him - managed to not grimace at the sound; Sirius was thankful he was stationed behind the sofa where you couldn’t see him, because he was not as gracious as your other boyfriend. 

“I bet. When did you last take these?” Remus asked as he motioned towards the medication.

“It was early, I think around eleven.” 

Remus hummed in acknowledgement as he stood from his crouched position. “You should be okay to have more once you’ve got something in your stomach, then. I’ll make soup, okay? Here Pads.” He pointed towards Remus’ now vacated spot on the couch. 

Sirius offered you a sad smile as you turned to look at him. “When did you get home?” You queried.

Remus scoffed in response. “I’m surprised he didn’t wake you, sweet girl, the way he comes in and throws his shit everywhere.”

Sirius scoffed in faux offence. “I am very graceful, thank you very much.”

Whoever said laughter was the best medicine was a sodding liar, because though Sirius got what he had sort of wanted (which was to see you smile), your chuckle quickly turned into a coughing fit. 

“Alright, that’s it.” Remus chided jokingly. “Sirius, lay here please.”

Sirius dutifully followed Remus’ direction and laid back on the sofa with his head resting on the arm and his legs spread, welcoming you into his arms as Remus encouraged you to lay back down with your head resting on Sirius’ stomach. 

“Neither of you are to move until Y/N is better.” Remus ordered with severity no one truly believed. 

“I hope she never gets better then.” Sirius harrumphed as he burrowed further into the sofa beneath him and rubbed loving strokes up and down your back as you wormed your hands around Sirius’ middle. 

“That’s mean.” You pouted.

“I was just saying that to our tyrant, dolly; you get better but pretend you’re not so we can trick him into letting us stay like this forever, deal?” 

“Deal.” You agreed with a sniffling sigh, causing Sirius to tsk in sympathy. 

“My poor sweet girl, so poorly. S’breaking my heart.”

Sirius could feel the heat radiating from your forehead as you hid your face in his stomach.

“I feel a bit better now.” You barely got out without coughing. 

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you, babygirl.” Sirius said with a sad chuckle. 

“It’s true.” You insisted sleepily, turning your head again so that your cheek was pressed against Sirius as you looked up somewhat dopily at him. “It’s always better when you guys are here.” 

And you were likely a little loopy from your fever, feeling more than vulnerable in your current state, and sufficiently doted upon by both Remus and Sirius; but Sirius couldn’t help but admit you were certainly onto something.

Sirius always felt better when the two of you were around too.

[pursuitseternal]

“Knowledge is a dangerous weapon:” Bookworm!Tav, Vampiric Spawn Powers, and Breeding—“Bites” Update 📚

Astarion x F!Reader | E | 4.6K of banter and breeding

Based on an anonymous prompt

(HBD @lipstickghoulie )

Summary: You have always loved your books and a challenge, when your Vampire Rogue learns his starvation has kept him from his full powers, you take him up on his challenge to teach him the skills that are his due. As you draw closer together, he finds that one bit of information you have failed to teach him… how to make a dhampire

CW: light mocking of Astarion’s ditziness, Spawn Spidercrawl, catching powers and feelings, flirty touching, creepy silent vampire moves, Breeding talk, no babies just breeding, Mating Press™️

Ao3 link | Series link | Masterlist

📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚

You always knew he was… dumb. Thick headed. Unobservant.

Okay, at times the comments from his thick, rosy lips were just plain stupid. “That lever… must do something…” That was a wonderful moment, one that earned him your eyes rolling so far back in your skull they hurt. “We have some words and some… circles…. Wonder what they do….” Another example of his unparalleled intelligence.

Not to mention the countless times he failed to remember any of the major gods and their shrines as you passed through crypts and defiled chapels.

For as handsome as he was, for as sultry and seductive as you found him, he was… smoothed-brained. But as your journey forced you closer together, you couldn’t help but think some of it may be merely pretense, he was a magistrate after all. He was abused and tortured for centuries, surely that does things to one’s mind. And he was always reading. Every day, every night at camp, his beautiful aquiline nose stuck in a book, crimson eyes devouring the words at a breakneck speed.

One to even rival your own thirst for knowledge.

Maybe it was that you allowed the poor Spawn a chance to drink living, thinking blood for once. Your own. Maybe that was what began to take his little, stupid moments and turn them into something endearing.

Not that he was gracious when you corrected his ignorance. Every time, he gave that adorable, grumpy harumph and then defended his comments, or… since he started feeding from you, he’d just look at your neck still freshly marked and lick his lips. That really shut you up. Set you on fire.

But it wasn’t until you needed him to reach that last little chest up on the crumbling ledge inside some dank cavern that you realized his ignorance wasn’t wholly pretend.

Astarion, vampire spawn, didn’t know just what he should be capable of. He looked positively befuddled when you told him to just climb the brick wall. His sass had been sharp, “I’m not some spider, darling.”

“But you can spider climb, you dolt,” you had laughed imitating his tone, trying to call his bluff on skills he should have, at least according to what you had read in your book. A Spawn should scale such a wall with immense ease.

He just narrowed his crimson eyes at you, a snarl on his lips as he shook his head. “I have never performed such an act, darling, nor have any of my brothers and sisters, those of us Cazador kept for his bidding. Better check your precious facts in your precious tomes before you throw your assumptions on my prowess… dear.”

You still shiver at that night. Back at camp. When you ignored the way he bristled as you approached him in front of his tent. He had sneered at you, readying his next acerbic quip for you… Until you sat so close beside him, settling the heavy book in his lap. Leaning in, you point to the page. Traits and Strengths of the Vampiric Spawn.

You felt him cease breathing, his left hand clutching at the edge of the book growing even whiter. “Astarion,” you breathed. Leaning in more, you looked into his eyes, his gaze scanning the words so quickly on the aged vellum. And then he shoved you by your cheek out of his sightline. He needed to finish this.

“Why, I should be positively remarkable, assuming your book is correct,” he sighed, as if he saw a vision, a dream fulfilled. One where he was powerful.

You nodded as his crimson eyes flashed at you, wide with wonder. “You mentioned Cazador never let you feed enough, and not from thinking creatures.” He nodded, skeptical even as his eyes fixated on your lips. “Well, what you did not know was that denying you a sufficient diet meant also restricting you from your full powers, even as a Spawn, Astarion. You should be able to climb up walls and ceilings, move swifter, lift boulders too much for even Karlach to manage. You should be able to heal almost instantaneously, without potion or feeding.”

“And now?” he replied, that little tremor of hope in his voice unmistakable as his hand traced over the page of your book.

“Well, it’s a difficult deduction, since you have our unwelcome illithid parasite. But now that you are feeding regularly, even from thinking creatures, you should find the effects more than just making you feel… happy,” you rambled on. Even as you kept talking, his eyes glued their gaze to your neck, your lips. If you weren’t mistaken, they even dipped down the v-shaped cut of your tunic.

“So… the more I drink from thinking creatures, the stronger and more powerful I will be?” he murmured, a slight grit in his throat as his eyes definitely darted down your bosom now.

“Y-yes,” you rejoined, sliding back just a touch.

And he slid that touch closer, and then some.

“You’ll help me, won’t you, darling? You’ll help me learn these skills? Give me all I require to access my full potential….” His eyes looked wet, the ruby irises glowing in the flickering firelight. “Please?” he adds with that smirk and that single arching brow of his made you stomach flutter and heart thump so hard in your chest.

“I…” you started, but he only seemed to lean ever closer.

“You know, when I was a Magistrate, back in the City, I would have craved someone with intelligence like yours. We would have been rivals, colleagues…” his eyes dip once more shamelessly up and down your seated body. “Perhaps lovers even,” he breathed. “I always surrounded myself with those of highest intellect, darling. Intelligence is so… undervalued by many, and knowledge is a dangerous weapon, but I see you, my darling. Won’t you please come to my aid now?”

“We… we can try,” you had whispered, barely able to the let the words from your lips with how you seemed to seize under the intensity of his stare.

“Wonderful,” he purred, catching your cheek, your chin in his cool palm. “I just hope we don’t have to wait too long…”

You squirmed as his thumb began to brush beneath your lip.

“…to put my new strengths to the test I mean, of course.” He smirked that little bit more twistedly. More seductively. And you knew he heard your heart beating in your artery, your blood rushing under his touch in your veins to pool lower. It was his nature, and you knew more of it than he did.

“Of course…” you breathed. “I’d be happy to help.”

“Then it’s settled,” his voice was thick in his throat, you relished the way his other arm stole around you, clutching at you back to bring you all the closer under his heady spell of charm and seduction. “All that’s left is to seal our new arrangement somehow…”

He pushed that heavy book off his lap, sliding to bring you into completely flushed against him. You’re sure your pulse was raging so loudly, it’s deafened his pointed and twitching ears. That chilled, corpse-cold touch under your chin tilts you up just… so…

You melted, closing that distance between your lips. Every logical thought dispersed in the wind of your desire, that panting breath that passed from your lungs into his.

That’s how this all began, and where it had brought you to this moment, where he clings to the ceiling of a massive cavern filled with both the stink of Gnolls and the vile creatures themselves. Dagger gripped in between his glinting fangs. He readies himself with a look of pure and dark excitement. He loves this. He misses this when it’s just you all back in the quiet of camp, where he tests his ever growing strength and climbing abilities, where he drinks from you every night before he hunts in the dark.

Where he slowly makes you more and more aware of your awakening body the more he touches you and caresses and kisses you. Always every night. Always between your increasingly intellectual discussions about vampiric powers and the moment he sinks his fangs into your skin to feed. He always leaves you after dark, his own belly sated, while you… you grow all the hungrier. Needier. You want more debate, more analysis, more of his body covering yours as he drinks you down.

But not anything more. Not yet. Even as you knew he was edging closer to asking you for sex. Even if he didn’t know all the… implications. After all, knowledge was a dangerous weapon.

You shake your head to free yourself from the longing thoughts of past nights and burning expectations of the night to come. You give him the signal, watching him release with flawless precision, dagger in hand now, as he falls from his spider-perch.

The Gnolls never see you coming, not before your endearingly ferocious Vampire Spawn lands with preternatural grace on their heads and vivisects them before you even reach their location.

He pants as you get at least one good shot from your bow, right for the last twitching body on the ground.

It’s not until you smile, satisfied, you notice that Astarion’s pale skin is riddled with scratches and tears from the beasts’ claws. He holds out his arms, rolling up his sleeves and smiling. Enjoying the sight of his vampiric body healing before his eyes. That crimson gaze practically glows as he looks at you over the carnage. “See something you like, my sweet?” he purrs, arching that brow, just for you, as if the others in your party aren’t even there.

“Ahem,” you clear your throat, turning to find the coveted chest of supplies, that Zhentarim sigil on it is no deterrent to you. Not when your Vampire Spawn can charm anyone to do anything now. “We better head back to camp,” you kneel before the strong chest, trying your hand to pick the iron lock.

“Tch,” his voice brushes your ear, physically tickling the small stray hairs that make you gasp. “You know I’m far more skilled with my fingers, especially when it comes to slipping inside…” You shudder to feel him crouching right behind you, his thighs pressed against your ass, his waist brushing your lower back. “…Slipping inside chests, locks, that sort of thing,” he adds louder, just to appease your unease. That dexterous touch has only grown all the smoother and stronger and sneakier now that he has fed well for a while.

He is so sneaky in fact, only one of his hands actually works the lock pick for a moment, the other quickly skates up your leg, tracing the inner seam of your buckskin breeches almost to the peak of your thigh. He laughs in your ear as you muffle a noise under your own palm.

“Soldiers, you really need four hands to pick one lock? Haven't you gotten better, Fangs, now that our fearless leader has let you suck on her and tutor you in being a Spawn?” Karlach chortles, her feet swaying side to side in that perpetual motion dance she seems to do.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Astarion throws the barb over his shoulder, letting you bury your face to hide the tweaks of ecstasy at the corners of your eyes as his fingers keep moving higher… higher. “Some silent performance only you get to savor, it seems?”

“If I didn't know better…” Gale’s pedantic voice draws closer.

“There now,” Astarion crows like the proudest rooster of them all, his hand quickly leaving the edge of your mound to twist that pick and pop the lock just as Gale peers from behind. “Look at all this loot,” he groans and stands, satisfied as he folds his arms over his chest. “Good thing you have a strong, well-fed Vampire to bring it back with us. Wouldn’t you agree, darling?”

He smirks down at you, hand extended to help you to your feet. Back to the rest, he flashes you that fang-toothed smirk that he knows sets your pulse galloping out of control. Pulling you up, he has to steady you in your legs, near boneless as they are with just that tease of pleasure. “Calm yourself darling, you're making my undead heart hurt sympathetically from all that… excitement,” he rasps right into your ear once you’re on your feet before him, releasing you in favor of bags of treasure and potions and loot to stuff in his pack.

Your mind is racing as your trod back towards your little camp well off the Risen Road for good measure. Thoughts scramble, worries peak their heads up, and you can’t stop thinking about the rest of what you have learned reading about vampires. Necessary research for you, particularly since Astarion has seemingly added flirtation and seduction into your witty repartee this last tenday. So far, you’ve managed to keep his wandering eyes from those pages when he glances through your tomes. He seems to prefer every little dip of your skin where he can see it at any rate. So far, you’ve managed to keep his hands in places on your body that are not too dangerous, yours on his as well.

But something inside you knows that tide is shifting. He wants to offer you more in exchange for more… and… well, if it doesn’t just make your body thrum with life in ways no books had and no previous interests had either.

He has beaten you back to camp, haphazardly tossed the loot for the rest of you to sort out in the center of camp. You know he’s waiting in his tent, now that the sun has begun to trek lower and lower. It’s time for your research, for your indulgence of his strength, and… whatever else might happen.

His tent is dimly lit as you enter, a mess of blankets and pillows, some fine and some in tatters. Stacks of books in the corners have replaced the blood bank bottles you first found here to clutter his space.

But no Astarion.

You tilt your head confused, settling down on one pillow, more or less intact, reaching for an apple he keeps in his stash of food just for you. Just to replenish you between his own feedings. As you bite into the hard skin, as the juice fills your mouth, you reach for a book, some ancient law book he found in the ruins of that village. Must make him think of his old life.

The pages are old and soft in your fingers, your eyes absentmindedly skimming the long words and complex sentences as you chew.

Peaceful. Until you realize it’s far too quiet.

You feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle, that feeling of being watched creeping up your spine. Turning, mid bite, you peer into the shadowed corner of his tent behind you.

Two glowing red eyes stare at you from the dark, just a hint of glinting teeth as he smiles and drinks in your fear and surprise. He laughs to hear you hiss as you jump in your seat. “There you are,” he croons from his darkened corner. “I’ve been waiting.”

“F-f-for what?” you force a smile and force your breath to steady all at once. He slides closer, settling down right beside you, and you notice your worn book in his hand, the smile on his face is sultry.

And predatory.

And for a moment, you regret teaching him as much as you have about his untapped powers.

“When were you going to tell me about your little bit of… research… on the side?” his voice is chilling, his brow arching as he flips the book open right to the back.

Right where you had been trying so hard to prevent his eyes from skimming, his ambitious brain from devouring the knowledge.

Your body is hot and rigid, and you know from the way his pointy ears twitch, he hears your pulse. You know from the way that his nostrils flare that he smells your arousal, the slick that dampens your underthings just to be this close to him again after his little stunt today.

“If my observations are correct… and they usually are…” he purrs, even though the stack of evidence to the contrary is vast. But you bite your tongue as he continues, your heart leaping at the topic he is about to breach. “You sound and smell eager to discuss this topic if dhampires, my darling.”

You swallow, watching so heated and frozen as he slides so gracefully to place the weight of that tome in your own lap, his fingers removing the half-eaten apple from your fingers to toss to the side. Then he brings their sticky, juicy tips to his mouth to suck them clean.

You moan, unbidden, at the wet and vigor with which his tongue cleans every crevice of those digits.

“Now, I’d hate to be left wondering just why my intelligent, little darling would withhold such a vital… potent… part of my unrevealed powers as a vampire?” he sets your hand back on your thigh, a little extra brush of his fingers, returning to trace that seam inside your breaches as he had before. “Is she… curious? Afraid? Is this why she has been just so hesitant during our…” he grips your chin, turning your head with commanding force until there is nowhere else to look but his deep crimson eyes, “…late night trysts?”

“It’s not something one just… brings up, Astarion,” you try to flatten your tone, even as that one hand still traces up and around your thigh. “It’s just not… done…”

Something about his eyes softens, “It would be important to discuss, you know, for there is more that I would like to share with you than just witty banter and blood…” his tone dips low into a rumble. “It’s not something I would have known, not a concern I would have shared until I knew of it…”

“There’s more to it than you might know,” you squeak as his fingers press into that slot between your legs. “Now that you’re well-fed, you’ll feel actual….”

You swallow the word. His touch presses hard enough into your folds through your breaches to make them soaked. And you, wanton you, you give a breath and a buck of your hips to keep his fingers there.

“Pleasure,” he smirks, eyes scanning your face as your force your eyes back open, halfway at least. “Yes, I gathered as much. The more I feed, the more I come alive… alive enough to perhaps even bestow a new life…” he squints a grin at you, your mouth slack as he draws that touch just as hard again, “…perhaps one day.”

You arch your body, trying to slip closer. Your secret is out, your anxious thoughts over clandestine information dispersed in the air. And so, the next words from your mouth just build on all that you had been swallowing down.

“Yes, perhaps one day…” you sigh, leaning back on your hands to try to give him full access to your cunt. “Perhaps one day, we could test out those powers together.” Your voice shakes with excitement, it’s pressed with the sincerity you feel for him.

“Oh, my love,” he smirks and reaches both arms around your waist. That newfound strength pulls you flush into his lap, until your molten, silk-soaked center presses against where he’s hardening. “You always know what to say… Seems like quite the power that will take much preparation and proper timing…” He brings your fingers back to his lips as he kisses them softly. “I’d have to feed on more than just a bear and more than just sips from my little treat, sweet as you are…”

You nod, once or twice, before losing yourself in the bliss of his tongue on the tingling inner skin of your wrist. Barely more than a lap before his fangs pierce your skin and suck you down. Your very essence, your living blood pools in his belly, you feel it coursing in his veins. It fills him and hardens him beneath your hips in an instant.

“Well, practice makes perfect you know,” he croons, bloodied lips barely hovering off your own. “I can tell from your scent you are not… in season…. And I have only had the single little taste.”

You pant, writhing at the scratch of your clothing, you long to rip it off and toss it where your book has long since been abandoned. “Sounds right to me,” you hiss, arms tucking around his neck to lower those arrogant stupidly handsome lips to your mouth.

Astarion’s throat rumbles with a growl, the taste of your blood fresh in his mouth as he rolls you on your back. Primal. Feral. He’s your powerful vampire, blood in his body, lust in his brain. And you want to put it all to the test—your own little experiment to match his enthusiastic desire for you. His touch is lightening fast and strong, pulling off your clothing, swift and sure and careful until every inch of your bodies are bare.

Strength hums in his muscles, even as his hands gently caress your cheek, your neck still sore from all his feeding. His body presses you into the pile of blankets that cover his plank of a bed. His hips grind your belly, your thighs are pulled almost against your chest until you’re spread wide open for him. But for every jolt of his cock as it prods above you and drips his early cum on to your belly, his kisses on your lips are sweet, gentle. A silent movement of gratitude for all your willing aid. Those fingers drag their slightly warmed touch around your breast, kneading it tenderly. With every arch of your back, you can almost catch the base of his cock inside your folds.

And you shake. You quiver. You’d had a few lovers, mostly boring and few and far between. But never has your body burned for anyone like it does for him.

As if his vampire touch is calling your blood to pool beneath it. Not one traditional strength, but with Astarion, you aren’t totally sure he doesn’t have some unnatural ability to command your body. To make your blood pound and sing just for him.

“What a good girl,” he rasps, a grind of his hips to send that cock near your navel, over your skin. “I can feel your heat for me from here. Just waiting to be fucked full.” His mouth descends quickly but carefully, only taking a single nipple in his lips. Sucking hard, he pops off with a loud wet noise.

Almost as loud as your moan.

“So ready, aren’t you?” His question weighs you down, your eyes half shut to savor the way he drags back with that length, sliding it in just an inch or so into your aching sex. “I’m waiting…” he growls, and you sob as he pulls even that little bit of his tip back out.

“Yes, hells below, yes,” you pant, hands flying to claw into his ass. Pulling him towards your throbbing core.

That blunted tip prods just barely inside you again. “You want me to fill you?” he rasps.

You nod, your teeth biting your lip hard enough to bleed.

“You want me to fill your belly like you let me fill mine with your sweet blood?” he grips his arms around your shoulders, pressing harder into, cock sliding in another little bit. “Fuck you so many times, my cum will drip from you for days?”

“Yes, Astarion…” you breathe, his mouth devouring your words, ready to swallow your cry as he does, finally, fill you.

You feel the gravity of his body crushing you, his legs braced with every tendon taught as he snaps his hips into. It’s so deep, so driving the way he fucks. And every thrust slaps your flesh and smacks his balls against your ass, but you love it. His breath dampens your collarbone, arms wrapped so tightly around you, you can do nothing but hold on for dear life. Your thighs burn from how they’re bent into your stomach almost, your folds leaking with arousal, and the drag of his cock touches every part of your walls and slams against your channel’s end.

He licks your shoulder, wet tongue lapping up to the artery in your neck. Where it pulses and dances in time with his beat inside you. Flushed and boiling, speared on his length, you pant, suffocated deliciously until you burst. Your visions swimming and muscles contorting in his press, you scream for him. You can hear your arousal, your slick, coating his thighs as his thrusts only increase with speed.

Lifting his head, he sweeps a hand down your sweat-drenched belly, palm bracing just below your navel. His push is relentless, hard and gradual enough you feel it behind your belly, how he gives you resistance from outside against that constant ramming of his cock at your deepest point. It’s enough to throw you into another coil of bliss instantly. “Good girl, so wet and dirty and waiting to be filled…'' he finally speaks through his panting. And he pushes on your belly once more, grunting with each fuck as he comes undone.

As he thrusts and spills his seed, prodding the full length of him to the deepest point yet. You can feel it almost sticking through your skin as he pulses. As he spills, burst after burst, he still rams that end of your cunt.

Beads of sweat drip from his forehead as he looks down your body, and how your skin is wet and flushed and marked from where he gripped you so fiercely.

He smiles and licks his lips. You try to clamber out, but his hand only comes to rest on your shoulder. “Ah ah,” he tutts his tongue at you, slipping out, only to take two of his fingers to play in your mix of cum, slipping it back inside you over and over again. “You’ll need to practice too, and you’ll need to rest to keep all of me inside of you.”

You shudder, a smile wide on your mouth, aroused and embraced, half hidden behind the back of your hand as you cover your face.

“Tch,” he chides you, pulling that hand from your face, “none of that, my darling. I’ll watch every bit of your blush darken your cheek until you’re ready to go again.”

“Again?” you choke. Your hips already feeling stretched and sore, you lay them flat and try to ease the aches.

“Oh yes,” he purrs, “you’ll have to build your strength the old fashioned way, my treat. Now,” he gives your ass a little smack on the side as he lifts it, “on your knees, darling…”

You finally take a breath, freed from his wiry, heavy frame. One cool hand settles between your shoulder blades to have you rest your head on his bedding. But that other hand pulls your hips up, slipping through your juices and teasing your clit until you buck back against his belly. You breathe contentedly, savoring the way his fingers caress you, worship you.

You close your eyes, wriggle your hips, already craving that stretching fullness inside you. A future with him at your side during the day as your strong, well fed vampire… and on your back and knees and belly and any way he would want you during the long nights with your virile lover.

[grapejuicenharry]

Angel (part 4)

Y/N fails her exam and has a slight miscommunication with Harry, but he takes care of her. (4k words)

warnings: angst, smut, 18+, squirting (sorry i got carried away), fingering.

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆ . ✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶. ⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶ ⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Y/N woke up with a sour feeling in her stomach. She'd been on edge since the weekend, dreading today because her psychology exam results were coming out, and she knew she hadn't done well.

She remembered how exam week had lined up with her period, the dull ache in her head making it nearly impossible to focus or prepare like she wanted.

Harry had been there atterward, pulling her close, covering her in kisses, and telling her how proud he was and how she'd done her best. In those moments, she'd felt a bit lighter, as if the weight had lifted. But now, as she thought about the results again, that same heavy pit began to settle in her stomach.

Y/N's day was off to a terrible start.

Nothing had gone right since morning.

She'd nearly slipped in the bathroom while brushing her teeth, burned her breakfast because she was so lost in anxious thoughts, and then, on the way to university, a creepy guy wouldn't stop staring at her. All she wanted was to hide away in Harry's room, wrapped up in his arms, safe on the couch.

She wished she could call Harry and ask him to be with her, but she knew he was busy preparing for his own exams. He had a calculus test in a few days and was buried in studying. She was thankful she hadn't chosen calculus this semester—she'd probably flunk it for sure. But Harry was such a nerd, so smart and hardworking, she knew he'd get through it easily. The image of Harry buried in his book, glasses perched on his nose, brought a smile to her face. He was just too cute. 

Y/N sits in the library, her laptop open in front of her. She nervously chews her nails, contemplating her recent life decisions. Closing her eyes, she whispers, “It’s okay,” and clicks to view her grade, silently praying for a passing mark.

She failed.

A big, fat D stares back at her from the screen. Her eyes go glossy as she struggles to hold back the tears that threaten to spill over. Embarrassed, she glances around, hoping no one saw her screen. The thought of telling Harry makes her stomach twist—Harry, who always believed in her, his favorite girl. Part of her wants to call him, to feel his comforting embrace, to hear him tell her it will be okay. But another part worries that he might be disappointed, maybe even embarrassed. Harry always calls her smart and brilliant, but how would he react to this? Would he laugh? Would he be ashamed?

No, she tells herself, he would never do that. He loves her; he always takes care of her. Her grade wouldn’t matter to him—she can always retake the test, after all. Taking a deep breath, she decides. She should definitely call Harry.

Harry doesn’t pick up. Y/N tries calling him three times, but each call goes unanswered. She texts him, but the messages remain unseen. Frustration and exhaustion settle in, and she decides she can’t stay at the university any longer. Packing her laptop, pouch, and books into her bag, her stomach growls, reminding her that she skipped breakfast after burning it earlier. She decides to stop by the campus café on her way home.

But as she approaches the café, she sees him—Harry. Her Harry, leaning against the wall, deep in conversation with Emma. The same Emma who never missed an opportunity to get close to him. And worst of all, they’re laughing together. Harry says something that makes Emma throw her head back in laughter, standing far too close to him. Y/N stares from a distance, her eyes stinging with unshed tears and a headache starting to build.

Harry and Y/N have been dating for a while now—ten months, and she trusts him completely. She knows how much he loves her and that he’d never cheat. But her chest aches at the thought that he might’ve ignored her calls just because he was busy with Emma. Y/N feels so alone, so vulnerable with everything that’s gone wrong today. 

When Emma places a hand on Harry’s shoulder, Y/N feels a spark of anger she rarely experiences. She’s not usually the jealous type, but today has been a disaster, and her emotions are all over the place. All she wanted was to be with her boyfriend, for him to comfort her, but he's... occupied. 

Of course Harry would enjoy Emma's company, she thinks bitterly. Emma, who's so good in all her classes, probably never fails at anything. She's beautiful, with her blonde hair, perfect white teeth, and tall, slender frame that seems to match Harry's so well. Unlike YN, who feels foolish, even small, in comparison. She's never felt this insecure, this low, and right now, she just feels... dumb.

Blinking away her tears as discreetly as possible, Y/N turns and walks back to her apartment, her appetite gone. 

༘˚⋆𐙚｡⋆𖦹.✧˚

Harry was confused. He was finally done with his studies for the day and wrapped up to go home. He was so excited because he can finally spend the night with Y/N, whom he hadn't seen for two days. He had been so busy with his exams that they did not get time to meet each other. He missed her terribly, and now he just wanted to go to her apartment, cuddle with her, and just be in each other’s presence. She’d been the first thing on his mind all day—the person he’d wanted to see as soon as he got a break from studying. 

He fumbled with his keys as he opened the apartment door, unlocking his phone to make a call, but his eyes widened when he saw that Y/N had called him three times in the afternoon. “Shit,” he whispered, mentally cursing himself for silencing his phone. He dialed her number back, but the calls went unanswered. He tried texting her, but there was no reply. 

Sighing, he slouched on the couch. His muscles were sore and achy because of sitting in front of his laptop all day. That made him think of Y/N’s touch—the way her hands would move over his shoulders, soothing every ache, her voice soft and calming. The thought only made him miss her more. His hair was all messed up and tousled, eyes red and sunken behind his glasses, and a face with exhaustion written all over. 

He hadn’t even gotten the chance to have a proper meal all day. He was so buried in his books that he forgot to eat. But that did not matter. Now he just wanted to be with her, to talk with her, to breather her, and to share a meal with her. 

༘˚⋆𐙚｡⋆𖦹.✧˚

Y/N was a mess. She had been crying for the past two hours and couldn't understand why her tears wouldn't stop. Her face was all blotchy and red. Her eyes swollen with tears, and she declined Harry’s call yet again. He’d been calling nonstop and even texted, asking if he could come over. But she didn’t want him to see her like this—all blotchy with snot covering her face. Y/N knew she was being immature, but her feelings were hurt, and she just wanted to let out everything that had been bottled up since the morning. 

Cuddled on her couch with a blanket wrapped around her as she stares at his contact yet again. She couldn’t help it. Finally, she texted him not to come over, saying she was busy. Harry would just assume she is busy with her assignments. She tried to come up with some other excuse, but she knows if she had told him that she was not well, he would rush over to see her. 

God, Y/N couldn’t help but feel pathetic.

She knew she should just call him and, for the truth, talk to him and clear the air, but right now she just wanted to be alone... with no one around but her broken heart. 

────୨ৎ──── ────୨ৎ────

Harry visits Y/N the next morning, His night went by tossing and turning, unable to get a wink of sleep, so upset after her text message. There was a sour feeling in his chest, one where he couldn't quite put a finger on. He knew Y/N well, and she never acted like this. Even when she was in an unpleasent mood, she never refused to hang out. This was the first time she had ever done something like this, and he couldn’t help but worry. Weird thoughts started creeping up his mind. But he pushed them aside and made his way over to Y/N’s apartment. He wanted to know what’s wrong and if she is okay. 

Harry rang the bell twice, but there was no response. Concern tugged at him, so he tried opening the door, and thankfully it was unlocked. Slipping inside, he made his way through the quiet apartment towards her bedroom. When he reached her room, he paused in the doorway, his gaze softening as he took in the sight of her sleeping peacefully. A frown took over his face when he looked closely at her puffy eyes and red cheeks. Wondering if Y/N had been crying. He couldn’t help but advance his steps towards her bed and carefully sat beside her. His fingers traced her features: the stray strand of hair, the fallen strand of her delicate nose, and her pouty lips. She looked like an angel, his beautiful angel. 

Y/N stirred in her sleep, opening her eyes, which was somewhat an effort because of how late she had been to bed after exhausting herself. Blinking up in surprise, she sees Harry,

Harry, who was sitting beside her and his fingers playing with a strand of her hair. 

“Harry… What are you doing here?” Her voice barely above a whisper. Y/N sits up, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles, pulling her blanket closer around her. Seeing his face clearly after two whole days, worry written all over. 

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you." He said softly, “You wouldn’t answer my calls last night. And I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” He murmurs, but his face fell when she looked away quickly, avoiding his eyes.

“I am fine,” she mutters sharply, looking down at her lap. Harry frowns at her response. 

“You don’t look fine, love. What’s going on? Did I do something?” 

She takes a shaky breath, trying to hold back tears that are threatening to pour any second. She hated herself for not being able to control her emotions during such times. She looks down at her lap, trying her hardest to avoid his gaze.

“You didn’t answer my calls either, Harry. I needed you. Yesterday was... hard for me. And you..” She pauses, taking a breath. “You were with Emma.” 

Harry’s brows knitted in confusion. Then realization dawned on him. His expression softened, and he reached out, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Y/N, no. My phone was on silent because I was studying, and I didn’t see your calls until later. I’m sorry. I never meant for you to feel that way. And Emma..” Harry shakes his head and takes a deep breath before saying, “Baby, she is dating Alex. She just wanted to know, ask me a few things to plan his birthday party, since I’m his close friend.” 

"Oh,” whispers Y/N, more to herself as realization dawned upon her. Her fingers nervously pick at her cuticles. She’d been so stupid, so dumb, to jump to conclusions. 

“You’re not stupid.” Harry says softly, as if he can read her thoughts. He knows her tendency to blame herself for even the smallest things. 

“I just.. I failed my psychology exam, Harry.” She admits, her voice breaking as she sniffles. “I felt like everything was falling apart, and you weren’t there. I didn’t know what to think.” Her cheeks were red with tears.

Without hesitation, Harry pulls her into his arms, his hand rubbing gentle circles on her back. She buries her face in his neck. His clean, masculine scent gives her comfort as she clings to him and straddles his lap. Her arms wrapped around his neck tightly.

“I am sorry, Y/N." He murmurs, “I should’ve been there for you, but failing that exam doesn’t change anything about how smart you are. You’re going to get through this. And I’m going to help you however I can. I’m here, okay? You don’t have to go through this alone.” 

Hearing him say these words instantly brings relief to her, her mind instantly relaxing, easing some tension from her body. The weight of failure soon dissipates. She clings to him tightly. How could she ever think Harry would be ashamed or embarrassed of her? 

He is right—she will get through this; failing an exam doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. It was just a stupid test. 

After a while, she pulls back, feeling much better. “I just felt so alone. I didn’t mean to doubt you.” 

Harry gently lifts her chin and presses a soft kiss on her forehead. “And I'm sorry for making you feel like you couldn't reach me. I love you, Y/N. The last thing I want is for you to go through something like that by yourself.” 

Her lips curl into a smile. Her heart is still racing at the sound of his ‘I love you’, even though he says it to her so often. “I'm sorry too... for jumping to conclusions.” She whispers back. 

Harry smiles, his thumb brushing away a tear. “C’mon, no more tears, okay? Let’s get cleaned up, and we’ll have breakfast together.” He suddenly stands up, with Y/N in his arms, making their way to the washroom. Y/N laughs at his antics. 

He sets her down on the counter, handing her toothbrush with toothpaste already on it. She takes it and starts brushing her teeth, keeping him caged between her legs. 

༘˚⋆𐙚｡⋆𖦹.✧˚

After she was done brushing her teeth, they peeled off each other’s clothes while stumbling into the shower eager. The hot water cascaded over them. Harry applied shampoo to Y/N’s hair, his fingers massaging her scalp gently. She tipped her head back in relaxation, letting her eyes flutter shut, enjoying the sensation. His touch felt like heaven. He felt like home; it all felt so natural. She loved these domestic moments—showering together, cooking for each other, sleeping in each other’s arms—like they were meant to be. 

As Harry rinsed the shampoo from her hair, his hand drifted to her shoulders, rubbing soothing patterns into her tight muscles. He was tracing every curve of her neck. Y/N shivered under his touch. Harry hated seeing his baby stressed, exhausted, and drained. He wished he could take all her worries away. 

His hand then moved to her front, cupping her breast in his soapy palm, squeezing and pinching her nipples. Y/N let out a soft gasp, resting her head on his shoulder now, her eyes fluttering shut. How had a sweet, comforting moment turned into something heated? but she didn’t mind. Not when it had been so long since they’d touched each other like this. They hadn’t had the chance to initiate anything with each other in a while because of their busy schedules. So naturally, Y/N was very aroused by his simple touch. 

Harry began planting slow, deliberate kisses along her bare, wet shoulder while his fingers continued to caress her breasts. He could feel the tension in her body and how she was clinging to him like he was her lifeline. “Feels good, yeah?” he murmured huskily, his voice thick with desire. She nodded feverishly, unable to form any words. 

As Harry stood behind her, she could feel him, his hard length pressed against the curve of her ass. The feeling sent a thrill through her. Unable to resist, she pushed back, grinding against him slowly, teasingly. Harry’s breath hitched. She felt a sharp inhale against her ear.

A smirk tugged at her lips; she knew what she was doing. But she did not expect a sharp sting of his palm on her ass. The slap was lightly, sending a jolt of pleasure straight to her core. She gasped at the contact. 

"Behave,” he murmured in her ear, his voice low with arousal, nipping at her ear lightly. Her pussyclenching around nothing, she could barely hold back any longer. She was so wet, drenched with desire, her wetness coating her thighs. She wanted him to touch her pussy, make her cum—

In the next moment, Harry turned her around and pressed her against the wall. She gasped at the cool contact with the tiles. He captured her mouth with a heated kiss, sucking her bottom lip. His lips moving hungrily against hers. Her mind was spinning. It took her a few moments to process. Her body arching as she let out a soft, needy moan.

Harry groaned in response. The kiss was messy and passionate, as if they were trying to make up for the lost time. Harry began trailing kisses down her throat and sucking a sensitive spot below her ear. He needed her to know this—how much he’d miss her. He dipped his head and took a nipple in his mouth. Y/N gasped as the heat of his mouth came into contact with her cold nipple; he started sucking gently while his other hand played with her other breast. 

“Harry, it feels so good,” Y/N whispered, her voice barely above a breath. Her eyes closed, her hand tugging at Harry’s hair. 

Harry looked up at her, his gaze dark with desire and lust. Seeing her so needy, so desperate for him, he loved her like this. He wanted to take care of her with pleasure and satisfy her needs. Without any worry, Harry dropped down to his knees. He hooked one of her legs onto his shoulder, his fingers slipping between her legs and playing with her wet slit. He looked up, meeting her eyes as he brushed his thumb on her clit. 

“Fuck, you’re dripping, baby,” he muttered, his voice hoarse with need. 

Y/N’s breath hitched, fingers tightening in his hair, as in the next moment he dipped his head and licked a long path from her opening to her clit. “A-aah, yes,” Y/N breathed out. Her moans became more loud as he began sucking her clit, his tongue swirling around the sensitive bud. His both hands gripping her waist tightly, He smirked at her response. Y/N tightened her grip on his hair and began grinding against his face. Harry groaned in response, the vibrations making her legs shake. 

He pulled back just enough to catch his breath, his lips glistening and his eyes dark with lust as he muttered, “I need to have this sweet pussy for breakfast every day." With a smirk, he dove back in, devouring her like she was his last meal. 

The filthy, dirty words made her feel gooey inside, a warmth spreading from her chest to her core. She’d never understand where Harry got his filthy mouth from, but it always stirred something deep within her, making her brain all mushy and puddled, like she could barely think straight. It made her want to do everything that he said, every sinful thing he whispers in her ear, with that husky and deep voice of his. 

Finally, the deep bubble of pleasure in her belly burst. Her vision hazy, her head tipped back as the loud moan escaped her lips. Just at the right moment, Harry thrust two fingers inside, curling them up. It sent her over the edge. Her back arched as she moaned breathlessly. Harry groaned into her as he felt her walls clenched around his fingers. Y/N squirted, her pussy fluttering, as she tried catching her breath. Harry, whose face was now wet with her release, was lapping up every drop of her arousal like a starved man.

Y/N never thought she could squirt; never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined Harry making her squirt, but it felt so euphoric. She was so sensitive, shivering at every flick of his tongue. When she managed to look down, her breath hitched. Harry was still on his knees, his face wet, eyes closed, lost in devouring her. But what caught her eye was the way his own cum dripped down his abs—the evidence of his own release. He had cum without even being touched, just by eating her out. The sight made her clench around nothing.

Harry looked up at her, following her gaze. It took a second to realize what she was staring at. He glanced down at his abs; his face flushed an even deeper shade of red in embarrassment. 

Y/N quickly pulled Harry on his feet, his cheeks red, lips glistening with her arousal, and eyes dark and hypnotizing. Y/N leaned forward and captured his mouth with hers. Pouring every emotion she couldn’t quite put into the words. She could taste herself on his lips. They both pulled away, resting their foreheads together, trying to catch their breath. 

Harry laughed breathlessly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Guess, I got a bit carried away, huh?”

Y/N’s gaze softened as a smile curled on her lips. “Seems like you had a good time down there.” She teased, her fingers tracing circles on his abs. 

Harry chuckles as he pecks her nose. “You have no idea.” He admits. 

༘˚⋆𐙚｡⋆𖦹.✧˚

After they both actually showered and cleaned each other up, tired and exhausted. The hot water relaxing them, Y/N leaned on her toes and began applying shampoo to his head. She loved that he smelled like berries now. Harry wrapped her in a towel and then dressed her in his shirt—the one he’d wore that morning. It reached her thighs, and it smelled like him. It felt like home. 

While he himself walked around shirtless, just in his gray trousers that slung low around his hips. Not that Y/N minded; she loved the view. 

Harry made his way to the kitchen, quickly preparing a breakfast for her. He scrambled some eggs and poured a fresh glass of orange juice. They both had their meal while being in each other’s arms, tugging at the corner of the couch. His arms wrapped around her tightly. 

This morning felt like heaven. Y/N decided she wanted every morning to start like this, filled with sweet words, kisses, and gentle touches, without the crying part, of course. 

She felt Harry behind her, bringing her back to reality. “I’m going to tutor you for your psychology rest, baby. We’ll go over everything, and you’re going to do great; I just know it,”

He murmurs, reassuring while pressing a chaste kiss on her cheeks as she felt all the worry leaving her body. His confidence in her made all the worry drain from her body. She knew she would pass the next exam, with him being on her side. 

[hxney-lemcn]

Not so Long Distance — Idia Shroud x gn! reader

summery: with the seconds ticking down, everyone has a certain amount of time before they meet their soulmate, you just hope yours is your online crush.

tw: awkward encounters, reader isn't Yuu.

a/n: I'm in my Idia phase, help. Also, my first soulmate fic I'm proud of.

wc: 2.6k

Master List

The countdown on your wrist that had once been a beacon of hope and excitement slowly turned into one of doom. The idea of meeting your soulmate was terrifying yet exciting. Meeting someone that you fit perfectly with was mystifying, and the underlying fear of rejection scared you, but overall you would accept your soulmates wishes. But now? Something you never even thought of happened. 

You’re falling for someone you met online, but your timer is still ticking. 

With the internet still being new, and research into how it could affect the soulmate mark is still going on, you’re not sure if you should lose hope yet. For all you knew, the mark didn’t register when two people meet from separate distances…but you felt like you were coping with that explanation. You had met him online months ago, and every bad joke or insult towards a shitty player made you laugh, everytime he laughed at your bad jokes your stomach fluttered. It was embarrassing in a sense, you were falling for someone you hadn’t even seen yet. What if he was tricking you and he was some old man? But you doubted it, he sounded young and the way he talked was even outdoing modern slang. In fact, you even brought up this train of thought one day while you were on a call playing separate games. 

“Y’know, for all I know you’re some fifty year old guy,” You said in a joking tone, farming your crops in game.

“Hah?” Gloomuri, or Gloom as you’ve dubbed him, let out a noise of confusion. “Are you really that dumb?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean!” You huffed, accidentally hitting a plant that still needed to grow mature causing you a slight profit loss on your farm. “I just mean that I’ve never seen your face. Even though I know you, if I saw you on the street I’d never realize.”

The call fell silent for a few seconds, but to you it felt like minutes. You were propositioning something that felt like crossing a small boundary that was set. A video call. Something you were nervous about as well since that meant showing your own face. But IGloom had snuck his way into becoming one of your top, if not closest friend over the past few months. He’d drone on about some game drama you had almost no idea about, while he’d listen to your ‘normie’ drama (as he dubbed it) about school or friends. Although you’d say the best moments were when you’d both geek out over games or anime together, fighting on who the best character is and what your favorite part was. 

“Y-you wanna do a…video call?” Gloom hesitantly asked, you could hear the nerves in his tone which caused you to backtrack.

“We don’t have to if you don’t wanna, I’m not trying to pressure you,” You assured. “I’m just a bit curious. 

A few more seconds passed before he spoke up, voice even shakier than before, “Y-you’d show your f-face too…right?”

You fidgeted with your computer mouse, his nerves starting to get to you, “It’s only fair I suppose…” When you clicked on the call, unsure where this was going, you were surprised to see his camera on, but covered. “Wait, you mean right now?” You asked. 

“D-did you not mean right now?” He replied back, his voice an octave higher. 

“I-I just don’t…I’m not the most presentable,” You muttered back, looking at your reflection in the black of your phone screen. You pushed some of your hair back into place, fixing the collar of your sweater. Oh gosh, you were going to finally see what your crush looks like! 

“I don’t either,” Gloom mumbled, continuing to mumble something under his breath that you couldn’t make out. “N-never mind, never doing this-”

“W-wait!” You called out, turning your camera on as soon as you were out of sight. “I’ll do it, just don’t judge me too hard, okay?” Another few seconds before he meekly replied a small ‘ok’. “On the count of three. One…two…three.” 

Just like that, your breath got taken away. On the other side of the camera was a pale guy with blue flaming hair and…wait a minute…didn’t someone exactly like him go to your campus? You blinked at him with wide eyes, snapping out of your daze when he shied away from your gaze.

“Do I know you?” You asked dumbly, snapping Gloom out of his own daze. It was his turn to blink at you before he tilted his head. 

If he moved his hand away from the bottom of his face you’d notice a sharp smirk overtake his handsome features, “I’d hope so, we’ve been talking for how long?”

“That’s not what I meant,” You huffed once more that night. “You look like a guy that goes to my campus.”

“Really?” Gloom asked, unbelievably skeptical. “‘Cus not many people have blue flaming hair.”

You rolled your eyes, glad that convo was back to your playful banter, “I’ve never actually seen him. Only heard about him once from my irl friends. And yes, he was described as having fiery hair.”

“...Where do you go to school?” He asked, suddenly serious.

You gave him a skeptical look, “And why should I give you my current location? So you can stalk me?”

“I could find out in one click if I wanted,” He shrugged, amber eyes showing he was completely serious. 

“Thanks for not doxxing me I guess…” You grumbled, a bit put off. “I go to Night Raven College.” The silence was loud after that revolution before he broke it.

“I guess you do know me irl.”

That call had changed something in your friendship. The space between y’all had seemed to get smaller as you both grew more comfortable with one another, nearly having calls everyday. Now that you knew what eachother looked like, you’d have some video calls sprinkled in, and your raging crush seemed to only grow stronger. Now you had a pretty face to put to his lovely deep voice, and you wanted to strangle him for how attractive he was.

You now found yourself counting down the days till school started, and as you looked down at that damned timer on your wrist you found yourself hopeful again. You had fifteen days till school, and your soulmate timer was down to twenty days. You had been barely getting any sleep due to that, hoping that once you met Gloomuri, who you’ve come to know as Idia, the timer would hit zero. You both just clicked so well in a way you’ve never felt before, you just hoped he had the same numbers lining his own wrist. 

…

With how excited you were with meeting Idia, you found yourself getting quickly overwhelmed with school work. The professors didn’t hold back when it came to work, and contact between you and Idia had devolved from video calls into texts. It wasn’t until you woke up the first Saturday of the school year, looked down at your wrist and noticing the time had changed from days to hours. You nearly had a heart attack seeing it, all your anxiety mashing together at one moment. What if you just stayed in your dorm all day? But then that would mean your soulmate was someone in your dorm. But if you went out there was a high chance it wasn’t Idia. 

Before the dilemma could get to your head too much, your roommate asked if you wanted to tag along with them to Sam’s shop. Wanting to clear your mind a bit, you agreed, hoping to just ignore your problem instead of overthinking. You both ended up talking about classes, what you predicted you’d struggle in and do okay, who was in your classes and such. 

You had to hold yourself back from buying something, though you do have to give Sam props for having almost everything you could think of. All was good once more…until someone with a head of fiery blue hair walked in. It wasn’t Idia though, no, but someone who looked eerily similar if not quite a bit younger. Your friend noticed your attention left them, falling onto the young technomatic humanoid and decided to speak up.

“Hey Ortho,” They greeted him with a smile. “How’s it going?”

“Hello!” He replied back quickly, “My morning is going well. How about you?”

“It’s been good,” They smiled. “This is my friend.” They introduced you, saying your name. To your surprise Ortho lit up, seemingly recognizing your name. 

“Really?” He asked. You hummed while nodding in agreement, heart skipping a beat. Peaking at your wrist you noticed the time was cut down to minutes. Was this it? Was Idia actually your soulmate? Your hope was reignited tenfold.

“My brother talks about you all the time!” Ortho exclaimed excitedly.

“Wait, you know Idia?” Your friend asks, astonished. “The shut-in who uses a tablet to attend class?”

“M-maybe,” You murmured bashfully, crossing your arms as a nervous habit.

“Are you free after this?” Ortho asked, nearly jumping up and down.

“Yeah,” Your friend spoke up before you could. “We just finished actually.”

“That’s great!” Ortho exclaimed, his eyes shining. You were sure if he didn’t have the bottom half of his face covered he’d be smiling widely. “You should come over to Ignihyde, I’m sure Idia would love it if you came to visit.”

“Okay.” 

It was out before you knew it, and like a whirlwind, you were suddenly swept to the front door of Idia’s dorm room, his little brother by your side. Before you could lift your hand up to knock, the door automatically slid open after Ortho’s face was scanned. You knew Ignihyde was known for its technical prowess…but this seemed like overkill. You stood outside awkwardly, unsure if you were allowed to step in yet, but you weren’t left to flounder for long as Ortho pulled you in by your hand. You glanced once more at your wrist and you nearly burst into tears. Only a few seconds left. A few seconds left until Idia was your confirmed soulmate and you suddenly didn’t feel as excited. Fear grasped your heart, unsure if he would be willing to be tied to you for the rest of your lives. You didn’t have much time to think of every terrible scenario as you faced the guy you had been fawning over. 

As Idia turned to greet Ortho (and grab some snacks), he found himself having a heart attack when he saw your face. He knew you both went to the same school, but he wasn’t prepared to see you face to face…not irl at least. He barely comprehended Ortho’s rambling, too busy trying to hide his visage from your sight. He wasn’t prepared for someone to visit, not to mention you. Everywhere he looked he saw a different mess that would surely disappoint you, dirty clothes that scattered the floor, empty ramen cups that lined his desk, and empty cans of energy drinks that filled his trash can…yeah not the best first impression. 

You, on the other hand, anxiously straighten your shirt while trying to not seem like you cared about your appearance too much. You were the first one to speak up after Ortho took his leave (seemingly ignorant of the tense atmosphere). 

“Hey,” You greeted, an awkward smile on your lips. Instead of replying, Idia merely gave a weak whimper as he pulled his hood as far as it would go over his head. “I-I’m sorry, Ortho invited me, and I have been wanting to meet you in person, I hope I’m not overstepping too much…” Then, he let out a sudden shriek, causing you to nearly fall over from how loud it was.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, scared he might’ve hurt himself somehow. 

“Th-the…y-your…I’m in a dream, this has to be. There’s no way this is real,” He muttered, holding his face in some sort of desperation. 

“Not a bad dream I hope…” You chuckled awkwardly, not sure what was going on. Not the cute meeting with your soulmate like you wished, you just hoped this wasn’t him violently rejecting you. Instead of replying, he let out another whimper, and you felt like you’re intruding in something you shouldn’t be. Your awkwardness meter being at its max, you decided you should take your exit and hope he calms down soon so you both can talk the situation out. 

“I’ll just…it was nice seeing you,” You stumbled over your words a bit. “I’ll let you uh…I’ll leave you to it…”

“W-wait!” Idia jolts up, eyes erratic. “You…w-we’re…” “Soulmates?” You supplemented. 

“Y-yeah…how are you so calm about it?”

“Would…would it be weird if I said I was hoping for you to be my soulmate?” You asked in a whisper, eyes darting around his room instead of meeting his own. Not like he’d be able to make eye contact with you either. 

Idia let out a squeak at your reply, his heart beating erratically. He found you too good to be true. You both liked similar games and anime, and when you didn’t play the same game you’d both play your own game while being on call. He found himself looking forward to your calls, something he would have never thought possible (he avoids calls like the plague). He found himself looking forward to something for once, finding solace in something that wasn’t fictional for once, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It was scary, but manageable when you were just pixels like everything else he loved (Ortho wasn’t technically pixels, but he wasn’t human (anymore) either). But now you were face to face in person, and you were so much more attractive when he could see you fully, and gosh he’s not sure how much more he could handle this. Especially not with such bold remarks like that. 

Idia never really cared about soulmates. If anything, he loathed the ink that marked his skin. Wished for the digits to just go away. His entire life was a curse, so cursed that he was forced to drag someone down with him. He didn’t deserve it, and no one else deserved his fate. And now, seeing you, a person outside of his family that he managed to grow close to…he felt conflicted. He too was happy you were his soulmate. You were so sweet, but not overly so. Not afraid to snap back at him with your quick wit. His heart would skip a beat when he heard the smile in your voice, or when you’d laugh at his lame joke. He would dream of a future with you when he closed his eyes, allowing him to envision a life with you and Ortho, living happily somewhere like normal people would. He was also guilty, you didn’t deserve a secluded life away from others.

“Yes,” He ended up answering. “That’s like…super weird.”

“Oh,” You felt disheartened. This was totally a rejection. 

“You shouldn’t like me,” Idia continued. “Someone like me doesn’t get that ending…”

“Hmm,” You hummed, an idea forming in your mind. Perhaps you just needed to speak his language. “I guess you got the secret good ending then.”

“B-but-”

“No buts,” You tutted. “Now, last time we talked you mentioned that game, why don’t we play it?”

It’ll take a lot of time for Idia to fully warm up to the idea of having a soulmate, truly. Not just some numbers, but an actual person who smiled at him so warmly, like he was worth something. It’ll take even more time for him to warm up to you, your love, your affection…but he found something small burning within him. Like a small spark being lit deep in his heart…hope. Hope for the future, something he’s never felt before.

[supernova-stardust]

No One Has To Know What We Do

jegulus | 18+ | 5,602 words | kinktober submission

@jeguluskinktoberr day 26 - mirror sex

Regulus has worked his entire life to earn a spot at Juilliard in their ballet program, but one day he's late to class and is forced to teach the Columbia football team their monthly ballet lesson. Enter James Potter: handsome, cocky, and annoying. Obviously, Regulus hates him immediately and can't resist his charm.

OR

Regulus and James hook up in the ballet studio after class and make a mess of the mirror (and each other).

This fic was written specifically for Jegulus Kinktober 2024 and contains the following prompts:

cunnilingus/deep throating, marking, impact play, semi-public sex, punishments, praise kink, mirror sex, breathplay

entire fic after the break or read on ao3, minors: dni

Regulus had never been late to class in his entire life. In fact, he typically showed up at least a half hour early to warm up, stretch, and make sure that he always got his favorite spot at the barre. Ballet was a wonderful discipline and he prided himself on being the most disciplined. He was never, ever late. That’s part of what had earned him his spot here in the first place. Very few people made it to the college level for ballet, let alone men. Nevermind Juilliard. He had goals, namely to be a part of the NYC Ballet Company and perform until he physically couldn’t anymore.

And so, the fact that he was running late today felt so unreal, it was like an out-of-body experience. Of course every single thing that could have gone wrong did go wrong and as he entered the room huffing out of breath with everyone staring at him, he knew that he was in for the worst class of his life.

“Lovely of you to join us, Regulus. I was just telling everyone who arrived on time that the studio will be closed to private practices this evening to allow the Columbia football team to have their monthly lesson,” his instructor explained as he set his belongings down on the floor in the corner and made his way to the barre. Thankfully, his spot was empty. Dancers were creatures of habit after all. “I was going to ask for a volunteer to stay tonight and teach their lesson, but since you’re late, I believe you should have the energy to stay late today.”

Fuck. Of course the only time he was late he would get saddled with teaching the football jocks. It was well known that none of them took their lessons seriously.

“Of course, I’d be happy to stay,” he said instead of voicing his honest thoughts. He’d rather drown himself than stay late for people who didn’t even respect the work they did, but saying no wasn’t exactly an option if he wanted to maintain his instructor's respect.

***

As the football team filed into the studio, Regulus felt more nervous and exposed than he expected. Growing up, he always knew he was a man. He started testosterone the moment he turned eighteen, despite his parents disowning him for it and in his everyday life he never thought about ‘passing’ anymore. He rarely, if ever, experienced dysphoria anymore. No one he knew before transitioning went to university with him and really the only person who knew and he saw regularly was his older brother, Sirius. Despite all of that, being surrounded by muscular and extremely masculine men had him questioning his ability to 'pass' for the first time in a long time. Every guy who walked in made him feel more and more self conscious. His body was toned and muscular, he couldn’t dance for hours on end if he wasn’t fit, but where he was all lithe limbs and grace, these men were bulky muscles, sharp jawlines, and reminded him of the picture-perfect portrayal of masculinity. 

“Please spread yourselves out on the barre along the wall and stretch while we wait for everyone to arrive,” Regulus announced. He heard murmurings of jokes and complaints but didn't deign them important enough to respond. He scrolled through the music app on his phone, searching for his preferred playlist that he listened to for warmups when he was alone. He hoped that it worked well enough for the class today, but figured that the jocks in the room wouldn’t notice if it didn’t anyway. As he connected his phone to the bluetooth speaker in the studio, a man with dark, messy hair and richly tanned skin ambled into the studio. The man’s warm brown eyes crinkled behind golden framed glasses as he laughed loudly at something one of his teammates said as they came into the studio together, not caring about the etiquette of staying quiet in the studio to avoid disruptions.

Regulus hated him immediately.

The two men shoved at each other a bit before Regulus cleared his throat. The two of them froze and looked at him, the one wearing glasses raking his eyes up and down Regulus’ body. “There’s a time and place for… whatever it is you’re doing,” Regulus snapped at them. “This is neither. Please, take a spot at the barre so we can get class started. Might I remind you that this is a requirement for your training and your coach relies on my feedback to know whether or not you're participating properly.”

They went completely stone-faced and found their ways to the barre at Regulus' scolding, clearly wanting to make sure that they didn't need to repeat this lesson in order to continue to be a part of the team. Regulus went through the motions of showing the team a very basic combination to start and pressed play on the music. “Five, six, seven, eight,” he counted out and led the class into their warmup. Once he was sure that they had the basic combination down, he began making his rounds down the barre, offering subtle corrections and moving their bodies as needed. When Regulus made his way to the man with the golden skin and messy hair, he placed his hands on his hips and adjusted him properly.

“At least ask my name first, love,” the man joked, his eyes crinkling in that annoyingly cute way as he smiled wide. 

“Does it matter? Neither of us wants to be here,” Regulus retorted.

“Aw, c’mon. You don’t know that.” He tilted his hips again and Regulus swore it was intentional. “My name’s James, by the way.”

“James, you know what I want you to do?” Regulus asked as he corrected his hips again.

“What’s that, love?”

“Shut up and hold your hips properly.”

James hummed and looked as though he’s deep in thought for a moment before he replied. “I’d prefer if you held them, I think.” 

His teammate behind him at the barre stifled a laugh and looked away quickly when Regulus glared at him. Regulus groaned in annoyance and walked away, figuring that ignoring him was the better option for class to be able to continue with as few disruptions as possible.

After what Regulus swore was the longest hour of his life, he dismissed the class and informed them that he would be emailing their coach to confirm that they all completed the class and to schedule their time for the following month. The men all nodded and said their thanks as they grabbed their belongings and shuffled out the door. All except for one. When only Regulus and James remained in the studio, Regulus walked over to his bag on the floor and pulled on his oversized sweater and baggy sweatpants. He sat on the floor and peeled his black ballet shoes off his feet while watching James standing in the middle of the studio. His entire life he’d been under a microscope, having his body analyzed and critiqued for every slight imperfection, but he’d never felt more heavily scrutinized than while James was staring at him alone in this space. 

“You can leave now,” Regulus snapped. After ten hours in the studio, he was ready to leave and he didn’t want to entertain this immature man any longer than he had to.

“I just— You never told me your name.”

“That was intentional.”

James stepped closer to him and while normally being alone with a man like this might make him uncomfortable, Regulus couldn’t help but feel drawn to everything about him, his casual confidence pulling him in. If they were in different circumstances and had met in a more controlled setting where Regulus could make sure that he was cool with the fact that he was trans before any flirting happened, Regulus might have even wanted to date this annoying man. Or at least fuck him. He hated James for it.

“Are you really gonna make me beg? I’m not above getting on my knees, you know.”

Fucking hell, this guy.

“Regulus.”

The corner of James’ mouth quirked up in a smirk and he took another step closer. “Regulus,” he said in a way that made his name sound like sin. “I’ve never met anyone named Regulus before. A unique name for a unique beauty.”

Regulus scoffed as he stood, grabbing his bag and slipping on his slides as he tried to step around James. “Thanks. Picked it out myself. Are you done? I’d like to go home now.”

“Picked it out— oh, that’s cool.” James stepped into his path and walked backwards as Regulus continued walking towards the door as if James wasn't even there. When they reached the door, James pressed his back to it and smiled down at him. “Look, I’m gonna be really honest with you, I think you’re hot.”

Regulus glared at him in response, crossing his arms and pushing his weight into one hip. He said nothing while James seemed to squirm under his cold eyes before continuing on.

“I, uh, I don’t date,” James explained. “Too busy between football, school, friends, and work. Feels rude to demand someone’s attention when I can’t give them mine.”

“I have a hard time believing you care about being rude.”

“Says the meanest guy I’ve ever met, I mean, fuck. You didn’t even give me a chance to— anyway, you’re hot. For some reason, I think I’m into the whole mean thing. We’re here all alone and I’m sure you’re the one with the keys to lock up.”

“Are you trying to hook up with me?” Regulus raised an eyebrow in question.

“Are you flattered?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on,” James whined as he banged his head on the door behind him. “Have you ever had a hot quarterback want to fuck you in the dance studio? You can’t honestly tell me you didn’t think about it at all during that class. You had us all bent over, for fuck’s sake.”

“This is a learning environment,” Regulus replied. “I’m a professional, you know.” He refused to admit that he absolutely was staring at James’ ass every time he passed by, but now he wondered if the man had seen him in the mirrors lining the walls.

“Please, you’re not as subtle as you think.”

Regulus’ cheeks turned pink at that and he felt the blush all the way to his ears.

“I’ll move so we can both go home if you can honestly tell me that you don’t want to hook up. But I have a feeling that you want this as badly as I do.”

The silence that stretched between them was charged with desire. As much as he hated the guy, Regulus wanted James so badly it hurt. But he was also terrified of, well, everything. Being a gay trans man came with a lot of disclaimers beforehand, in his experience. He tried to hint at the fact that he was trans earlier and James said he was cool, but did he really know what he was getting himself into by continuing to hit on Regulus? If he told James outright, would he be safe here alone with him? 

Regulus let out a shaky breath before he spoke again. “I— I don’t usually hook up like this.”

“It’s fine, it can stay between us.”

Oh, why did that hurt? Why didn’t he want to be kept as a dirty little secret? What was it about James that made him… want? He’d never wanted anyone like this before. 

“It’s not that, It’s— I’m trans.”

“Okay?” James’ eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Don't take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure why that matters?”

Regulus gaped at him, unsure how to even respond to the confusing man before him.

“I think you’re hot,” James continued, saving Regulus from having to formulate a response. “I’m pretty sure you think I’m hot, though you haven’t admitted it. If I was a more self conscious man, I might feel a bit inadequate if I’m honest. We’re young and we have this place to ourselves for the night. I’m clean too, if you were wondering.”

“I’m clean,” Regulus responded without processing the rest of what James just said. 

James smiled at that. “So?”

“So?”

“You want to go home or can I kiss you already?”

Regulus dropped his bag on the floor next to him with a loud thud and crashed his lips onto James’, crowding his body against the door. Their first kiss was a cruel thing, the building energy between them finally boiling over into something physical. James’ arms wrapped around Regulus, one snaking down to his lower back and the other gripping the nape of his neck. When Regulus brushed his tongue along the seam of James’ lips, he opened for him and Regulus allowed himself to indulge in exploring James’ mouth.

Regulus reached a hand down towards the knob of the studio door near James’ hip and clicked the lock in place while they continued kissing. He felt James smirk against his mouth and pulled back, glaring at the taller man he had pinned against the wall with his body.

“What?” Regulus snapped. He would never admit it outloud, but really wasn’t sure why this man’s cocky attitude was so attractive. That smirk on his face made him melt and Regulus knew that he was in for a world of hurt after this was all over and James wanted nothing to do with him again.

“Planning on more than a kiss?”

“You were the one who—”

“I know, shh, I’m just teasing.” James placed a quick peck on Regulus’ lips. “I feel like I’m pushing my luck here by asking, but do you have a condom?”

Regulus felt his face heat. He normally wasn’t embarrassed by sex, honestly. There was just something about this Adonis of a man trapped against the door in front of him asking him for a condom that felt like an out-of-body experience. “Uh, I think so, let me check.” He dropped down to his knees and rifled through his bag, trying to ignore the heavy weight of James’ gaze on him. When he found the condom, he grabbed it and looked up, holding the condom up like a prize. James’ eyes were heavy with desire and when Regulus went to stand up, James buried a hand into his hair to hold him in place. 

“You look so pretty on your knees, Regulus.”

“I’d look prettier with your cock in my mouth.”

“Oh,” James tightened his grip in his hair and Regulus let out a wanton moan at the feeling. “You are a good boy, aren’t you?”

Regulus hummed in response and reached for the waistband of James’ shorts, tugging them and his boxers down just low enough to free his hard cock. Regulus leaned forward against the resistance of the hand buried in his hair and lapped at the precum beading at the tip. James groaned at the feeling and pumped himself a couple of times in front of Regulus’ face. Regulus raised himself up higher on his knees and dragged his hands up under James’ shirt, feeling the hard muscles of his abdomen and back before he licked at a vein along the underside of his cock and then sucked him into the back of his throat, taking as much of him in his mouth as possible. 

He bobbed his head a few times, relishing at the feeling of James’ hand threaded in his dark curls guiding his movements, then pulled back and ran his tongue up his entire length. He swirled his tongue around the tip once, twice, then pushed his tongue at the slit, moaning at the unique salty taste that was James. When he looked up under hooded eyes, they locked eyes and James gave him a pleased smile.

“Fuck,” James breathed. “You’re so good for me, you do look so pretty just like this, I knew you would. Can you be such a good boy and let me fuck your throat, hm?”

Regulus squirmed as he opened his mouth with his tongue flat, feeling hot wetness pooling between his legs. When he felt James slide his cock back into his mouth, he relaxed his throat and surrendered completely to the pace that James set. He felt James shift so he had one hand on both sides of his head and Regulus adjusted so that both of his hands gripped James' hips. He was slow at first, unsure of how Regulus would handle his size, but grew more confident when Regulus moaned around his cock. Soon, the pace was unrelenting and Regulus felt his eyes watering, tears streaming down his face. Spit ran down his chin and he found that he didn't care at all. He dug his fingers into James' hips, hoping to leave bruises. Evidence that he had James, if only for a little while. He barely had any room to breathe between the strokes as James continued to thrust into him, focused entirely on his own pleasure.

Before he knew it, James pulled himself out of Regulus’ mouth. He bent down to wipe the spit off of Regulus' chin with his thumb then languidly sucked at it before pressing the pad of his thumb against Regulus' bottom lip. Regulus swiped his tongue out and caught James' thumb in his mouth, sucking and swirling his tongue around the digit. James smirked, pulling his thumb away and wiped at the tracks of tears on Regulus' face with his thumbs. Regulus whined a needy sound at feeling so empty, rubbing his thighs together in hopes that any form of friction would bring him relief. James leaned in to kiss him before pulling Regulus to his feet as he tucked his erection back into his shorts.

“Shh,” James soothed, pushing his hair away from his face and placing soft kisses on his cheeks. “Let me return the favor, c’mon.”

James grabbed his hand and dragged a boneless Regulus to the center of the room. When he got there, he held up one finger, signaling for Regulus to wait a moment. Regulus wanted to pout, but watched as James went to the corner of the room where a stack of folding chairs leaned against the wall. He grabbed one and carried it back to where Regulus stood, opened it up, then pushed Regulus into the seat facing the mirror covered wall. 

Regulus reached his hands out towards James’ hips and tugged him closer, hoping to return to having that beautiful cock in his mouth before James clicked his tongue softly. “I said I was going to return the favor, baby.” James knelt down and looped his fingers under the waistband of Regulus’ sweatpants. “Can I?”

“In front of the mirror?”

“Why not?” James shrugged. “It’s hot. Plus it’s not like there’s anywhere in this room without a mirror. Might as well make good use of it.” James playfully tugged at Regulus' waistband with one hand again as he removed his glasses with the other and set them to the side on the floor. “Are you gonna make me beg or can we continue?”

Regulus nodded as he shifted his hips so James could pull at his baggy sweatpants, then he heard James laugh as he pulled at the baggy shorts underneath his sweatpants revealing yet another pair of shorts, these ones much tighter and shorter. “So many layers,” James huffed. “Why do you need so many layers?” He pulled down the shorts and finally got to Regulus’ underwear. Pulling those down, he unbunched all of the layers of pants from around his ankles and threw them to the side. The cold metal of the folding chair bit into Regulus’ skin as he sat there in just his baggy sweater feeling extremely exposed.

“Keeps the muscles warm in between—” All thoughts of the logistics in layering clothing during ballet were lost as he felt James spreading his legs apart. James bit down on the soft skin of his innermost thigh as he slid his hands up to Regulus’ hips. He allowed James to pull him towards the edge of the seat, tilting his hips up to give James better access. 

Regulus writhed at the first feeling of James’ tongue on him and he let out a shameless moan that echoed around the room. He tilted his head back and allowed his legs to fall open in pure pleasure. James grabbed under his thighs to hike his legs up over his shoulders, giving himself more access as he continued devouring Regulus, licking and sucking at him. When Regulus glanced up, he looked at the two of them in the mirror. Watching James on his knees worshiping his body, he understood immediately why James said it would be hot. He had never seen a sight quite so erotic and between the feeling of James sucking on his most sensitive nerves and the reflection before him, he climaxed hard and fast. His orgasm rippled through him and James reacted by moaning as he pushed his tongue inside him, lapping at his release. 

As he came down from the orgasm, James slowed down and started kissing down his thighs, sucking small bruises along the way. Normally, Regulus would ask his lovers to avoid leaving marks like that, especially since they were so visible in classes, but something about James made him want to be claimed. He wanted people to know they were together, and for a time, be able to say that he belonged to James.

Just when he felt like he was coming back into his body, James pushed two fingers inside him and curled them up at the perfect angle, hitting the sensitive walls inside his body. Regulus felt his entire body jolt with pleasure as James’ tongue returned to between his thighs, circling the sensitive nerves and flicking in time with his fingers. 

“Fuck,” Regulus whined, feeling his body climbing rapidly towards another orgasm.

James pulled back to gaze up at him, his fingers continuing at a punishing pace. “I know you can cum for me again, baby. Show me what a pretty boy you are while you cum on my fingers.” He bit into his leg just above his knee and sucked a bruise, watching his fingers pumping in and out of Regulus’ body. His orgasm crashed through his body again and James moaned at the sight, dipping his head between his legs again and giving him one languid lick before pulling back and smiling up at Regulus. He sucked on his fingers and made a show of licking off every drop, giving Regulus a visual reminder of how skilled he was with that tongue.

“Think you can go again?” James asked from between his legs. Regulus had no doubt in his mind that if he said yes, the man would sit between his thighs all night long, and maybe if they hooked up again he’d get the opportunity to experience it, but for now he really wanted to know what he felt like buried deep inside him.

Regulus shook his head and pulled off his oversized sweater, then the white tee underneath until he was sitting in the middle of the room, fully exposed. “Your turn, you have a criminal amount of clothing on your body.”

James barked a laugh and practically ripped off his clothes as he stood. He grabbed Regulus’ hand and hoisted him to his feet, pulling him in close to his naked body. The feeling of their bare skin brushing against each other was enough to set Regulus’ overstimulated nerves alight. He moaned as he leaned in for a kiss, tasting a heady combination of the two of them on James’ lips.

“I’m going to grab the condom,” James said against Regulus’ lips, his breath hot. He kissed down Regulus’ jaw and neck before he continued. “Go stand facing the mirror for me.”

“I—”

“If you don’t want me to take control, tell me now sweetheart.” James said softly. He placed a quick peck against his lips. “Otherwise, I’m going to get a little bossy from here on out.”

Regulus nodded, then moved to stand facing the mirror while James dug through their discarded clothes for the condom Regulus had found earlier. When he returned, James stood behind him and gently grasped at his jaw, ensuring they made eye contact through the mirror.

“Familiar with the traffic light color system?”

Regulus nodded again and James clicked his tongue. “I’m going to need verbal confirmation here, baby.”

“Yes.” 

“Good, so if you want me to stop immediately you say?”

“Red,” Regulus answered without hesitation.

“And if I check in and you’re enjoying yourself?”

“Green.”

“Good boy. Last one, then we can continue. If you need to pause or something doesn’t feel right?”

“Yellow.”

James kissed his neck from where he stood behind him and smiled. “Very good. Now, hands against the glass for me. And they’re not allowed to move at all. Your pretty little ass will get a beating if they do. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes… Sir?”

James clicked his tongue and Regulus could tell that he was disappointed. "Come now, you can do better than that."

Regulus wracked his brain searching for whatever it was that James was asking. Finally, it came to him after he reflected on all the times James had called him 'baby' and a 'good boy.'

"Yes, Daddy."

James let out a groan at that, moving his hand down from Regulus’ jaw to his throat and squeezing slightly. Regulus keened and pushed his hips back towards James, searching for friction. 

“Fuck, you’re gonna be the death of me,” James said as he pulled back and ripped at the condom wrapper. Regulus whined at the loss of the hand around his throat and turned around. He draped his arms around James' shoulders and sought out his lips for a kiss.

With the condom not fully unwrapped, James froze and gripped Regulus’ throat, stopping him from the kiss he was seeking. “What did I say, baby?”

“Oh, please.” Regulus scoffed when James loosened his grip just enough to allow him to reply. “We hadn’t even started yet.”

James’ eyes darkened at that. “Did I or did I not tell you that if you moved your hands from the mirror, you’d be punished?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Do you want to push me to find out how serious I am?” At the silence hanging between them, James smirked. “Now, turn around. Hands on the mirror. I’m going to spank you five times and you’re going to count out each one, thanking me for every one. If you stop counting or lose your manners, you’ll earn five more. Understand?”

“Yes.” Regulus followed his instructions, placing his hands on the cold mirror and breathing as evenly as he could.

“Yes what?” James kneaded his ass, making him even more sensitive to the touch.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Good boy. Color?”

“Green.”

James hummed in acknowledgement before his hand slapped Regulus’ ass. Regulus let out a surprised yelp. 

“Count, baby. I won’t remind you again.”

“One,” Regulus cried out. “Thank you, Daddy.”

James’ hand smacked down again, the sound echoing in the room, and Regulus gasped at the shock of pain that rippled through his body. “Two. Thank you, Daddy.” Regulus looked up into the mirror, taking in James’ hungry face. 

“Maybe you can be trained, baby. Three more. You’re doing so good.”

With each slap to his ass, Regulus became more sensitive and felt himself slipping into a hazy headspace where everything felt like pure pleasure shooting to every nerve in his body. When he finally reached number five, James dropped to his knees behind him and rubbed at his cheeks before pulling them apart and licking all the way from his sensitive nerves to his ass. He circled the ring of muscle with his tongue and pushed in slightly.

“Fuck,” James breathed hot against him. “You did so good, baby. You’re fucking dripping for me. Have you learned your lesson? Will you be a good boy and let me fuck you now?”

Regulus nodded, a whine escaping his throat that he would normally feel embarrassed about.

“Words, baby.”

“Yeah— Yes, please. Please fuck me, Daddy. I need your cock inside me.”

James bit into one cheek of his ass before he stood up, grabbing the condom and rolling it on. “Anything for you,” James murmured as he lined himself up with Regulus’ entrance. They made eye contact in the mirror as James pushed in slowly, using both hands to grip onto Regulus’ hips and position him perfectly. “Color?”

“Green. Fuck, so fucking green.”

Finally, James moved his hips. Regulus had never been a religious man, but he swore that he found a new religion at the feeling of James inside him. James moved his hips in purposeful, deep thrusts, making Regulus see stars with each shift inside him. Regulus’ eyes closed and his head tilted back as he relished in the sensation until he felt a strong hand on his jaw. The grip was unyielding and Regulus knew that he’d do whatever the man this hand belonged to said.

“Eyes on me, baby,” James purred. “I want you to watch me ruin you for anyone else.”

Regulus cried out a moan and opened his eyes, taking in their bodies in the mirror. His hot breath fogged the mirror in front of him as James pounded into him from behind, both of them glistening with sweat. James’ face was smug as he continued to hold onto Regulus’ jaw, not offering him any way of avoiding watching their bodies. 

James’ pace started to slow, but he somehow managed to make it feel like he was impossibly deeper inside Regulus’ body. He snaked a hand down towards the bundle of nerves between Regulus’ legs and rubbed in confident circles, pushing Regulus closer and closer to the edge. Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly experience more pleasure than he was already tasting, James’ hand slid down from his jaw to his throat and squeezed. The restriction of blood flow to his brain made Regulus feel fuzzy as he dissolved into pure pleasure. His knees buckled and he arched his back, pushing his ass into James’ hips as his orgasm washed over him. A moment later, James let out a moan and Regulus felt him pulsing inside of him as he followed him over the edge.

James ghosted his fingers along the side of Regulus’ neck as they rode out the last of their orgasms and he kissed his shoulder. When he pulled out, he took off the condom and tied it off, then walked over to toss it in the trash can next to the door. Regulus turned to lean against the mirror, watching James stride back towards him. Regulus gave him a weak, hazy smile.

“You okay?” James asked. He placed a quick peck on Regulus’ lips and rubbed soothing circles on his shoulder.

“Yeah, I—” James interrupted him by kissing him again. “I thought you said this was a one-time thing?” Regulus questioned.

“That doesn’t mean you deserve to be treated like shit, Regulus.”

Regulus gave him a flat look before he pushed off the mirror and walked to where his clothes were piled on the ground. He started pulling on his many layers and by the time he was fully dressed again, he glanced over to see James standing watching him, still completely nude. Regulus bent over to grab his glasses on the floor and handed them to him. “What?” Regulus asked.

James pushed his glasses on his face and for the first time, Regulus witnessed a flustered James. “Look, I know what I said, but can I have your number anyway?”

“I won’t be your late night, drunk booty call, James.”

“I just…this was a lot of fun. It’d be nice to do it again sometime, that’s all.”

“So, a sober booty call?”

“No, I—”

“Listen, how about you give me your number? If I’m ever feeling like having you boss me around again, I’ll give you a call. How’s that?” Regulus raised an eyebrow as he pulled his cell out of his sweatpants pocket and held it out to James in offering.

James hesitated to take the phone from his hand, clearly playing a game of mental chess on how to obtain Regulus’ number, but Regulus refused to be a pawn in his games. “This is my only offer, it expires once your pants are on. Take it or leave it.”

Sighing, James grabbed his phone and created a new contact with his phone number, then handed it back to Regulus.

“‘Daddy,’ really? You seriously put your name as ‘Daddy’ in my phone?”

James smirked, then began dressing himself. “I figured you’d remember me that way.”

Regulus rolled his eyes, but internally he might as well have been giggling and kicking his feet. He stepped forward and placed a chaste kiss on James’ cheek. “I’ll consider calling you, Daddy,” he said and then he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Clean the mirror and take that trash bag out with you, yeah? I can’t have my teacher finding out about this.”

“You got it, baby.”

As Regulus walked out of the studio, he thought to himself that he should absolutely not call James again. He made a bargain with himself anyway that if he was still thinking about him in a few months, he’d gladly fall back into that man’s arms again.

[theminecraftbee]

"Do you think Daedalus felt joy every time the Minotaur devoured someone? Or did he feel only sorrow?"

Cub glances over at Joe. Joe has been, as is typical, digging. He needs to mine even more stone; his base is not yet big enough for everyone! He's recently passed the one million stone mark and he simply must mine even more. If he'd had a story to tell about himself, well, it most likely wouldn't be Daedalus. A crueler storyteller would go with someone like Sisyphus, but Joe feels his task will be done one day.

He rather fancies himself John Henry, personally. Then again, John Henry dies at the end of the blues song. Maybe that is, itself, a sign that Joe should slow down. If he does that, though, he will never be done before he has to leave for the season ending!

Huh, there's a metaphor or poem in that somewhere, he's sure.

Anyway, none of that is relevant, because he's looking at the creator of the labyrinth at the moment. Cub's clearly thinking about it. God bless that man, he can follow Joe's metaphors as well as just about anyone ever could.

"Well, I don't know. Personally, I think he'd be more glad for every day the Minotaur couldn't find his way out," Cub says. "That was more the goal of the thing, right?"

"Well, I suppose that is true," Joe says. "Minos imprisoned him though so he couldn't tell anyone the answer."

Cub shrugs. "Sounds like a skill issue to me."

Joe has no response to that, so he turns to go back to digging. Inside the maze, the frustrated screaming of one GoodTimesWithScar can be heard.

"You know, does this mean you think of the hermits as man-eating bull monsters? On account of you trapping them in your maze and all," Joe asks.

"Oh yeah. Hundred percent. You don't?" Cub says.

Joe tilts his head. "You've got a point. They've got the bloodlust for it."

Cub nods. "Really, I'm doing everyone on this server a community service," he says, and he goes back to taunting the poor soul trapped in the unending maze of pain and torment that he has created.

Joe watches Cub leave and mumbles to himself: "Technically, I don't know it's a labyrinth. Labyrinths only have one entrance and exit. That doesn't matter, dear viewers, because I have a mining machine to beat in a race! What's that? What mining machine? Doc's world eater was last season? Oh, don't worry about it, although I think maybe it's time to play a song--"

[godnectar]

Hey absolutely a huge fan of your work. If you can and want to, could you please do one of a yandere writing nsfw stories of himself and his darling hoping to recreate it one day with his darling?

・��� ｡ﾟYAN! NSFW WRITER ;

cw: obsessive & possessive behaviour, kinda suggestive (ofc sylas 🙄), gn! reader (non-specified genitalia), etc.

yandere writer! who, since you two became a couple, has become more and more excited when he had to write his little erotic scenes in any of his books. he would spend long, extensive hours giving specified details of the 'event' when you are not with him–

yandere writer! who swears he has never felt this aroused as his trembling fingers type on his computer. what would you think of him, mmmh? what would you do if you ever discover the way his lovely cock reddens, probably also leaks, at the mere thought of recreating those writings with you, his precious muse?

yandere writer! who, when he thinks he's done for good, lets out a shaky breath, doing his best not to succumb and scroll up to reread something that could be considered as the dirtiest, most obscene scenario he's ever made.

yandere writer! who spends the rest of the midnight questioning himself about his lil' moments of sinfulness; would you approve of it? would you hate him for doing all of this while thinking about you, especially without you knowing? ...or would you consider helping him and fulfill his fantasies?

yandere writer! who truly wants to feel shy, even ashamed, but he just isn't able to. deep inside, he's aware of how much he wants you under him, listening attentively and trying out everything he dreams about. why should he suppress his desires when he's slightly sure he could eventually convince you of making them possible?

yandere writer! who, after some good minutes spent overthinking, ends up sobbing outraged tears, not just because of the overstimulation of his hand sliding up and down on his dick, but because he cannot muster up the courage to share his perversions with his darling. how long will he resist until he goes madder than he already is?

yandere writer! who, as he believes every writer does, has a million erotic drafts about him and his lover he hopes you will never know about. he cannot afford having his babe feeling weirded out; what if you decide to leave him? he doesn't want to actually lock you in the house, you know :(

yandere writer! who felt his soul leave his body the moment he entered the office a random day and saw you looking at his computer screen; his heart started beating wildly when he catched a glimpse of a smug smile spreading on your lips. what he didn't expect was to find himself some hours after breathing hard, his body glistening in sweat and skin marked up with your love <3

yandere writer! who, once he was able to experience how amazing you were while carrying out his fantasies, now he can't get enough of his babe and constantly wants to repeat ♡ his little obsession for u growing as the days pass.

"my muse, i hope you are aware i can't let you go after making me this happy; my masterpieces have been made because of you, it would be a shame to stop, don't u think?"

© godnectar 2023. please do not modify, translate, or repost my works on any platform without my permission.

[baelarys]

Thérèse pt2

Aemond targaryen X Reader velaryon

Word count: 1644

Warning : anguts,Mention of suicide.

Author's note: I would appreciate it if you read this with the song la nave del olvido by José José

Thérèse pt1

The young lady entered the princess's room, the light curtains blocking the morning sun as she set down the new tray of food and removed the old one.

The room was quiet, although that was nothing unusual; hers lady must have been asleep, or perhaps she was already awake and her deep cloak of sadness had not allowed her to get out of bed.

With quiet, sure steps, he adjusted the curtains to allow a little more light to come in, hoping that the soft glow could offer some comfort to the princess. Then he approached the bed with a bow, watching to see if his mistress showed any signs of being awake.

"Good morning, my lady," she murmured respectfully. "I brought your breakfast. Is there anything else I can do for you this morning?"

SHe didn't hear any response, so she decided to move the curtains that provided more privacy to the bed. What she saw left her cold: The princess, whom she had known since she was a child, was lying in her bed without any sign of life. Her delicate face, as pale as snow, contrasted painfully with the plump cheeks that had always been a beautiful red.

The lady felt a lump in her throat as she tried to process what she saw. She approached slowly, desperately hoping to find some sign of breathing, some hint of life. But there was nothing. The princess, in her deep sadness, had finally succumbed.

With silent tears beginning to stream down her face, the young lady leaned down and took her mistress's hand, finding it cold to the touch. The dried blood soaked into the white sheets was silent testimony to the desperation and suffering the princess had endured.

Gathering what little courage she had left, the lady stood up and headed for the door. She knew that he should notify the others, but at that moment, her heart was overwhelmed with pain. With one last glance at the princess, the young lady left the room, ready to bring the sad news to those who needed to know.

"What?" said Queen Alicent, unable to believe what had happened.

"She... she is dead," the young lady repeated with a trembling voice, her gaze fixed on the stone floor.

"how? Gods, this can't be!" The queen's voice cracked as she sank into her chair, unable to process the magnitude of the tragedy.

The room fell silent, broken only by the echo of the young lady's shaky breathing and the queen's suppressed sob. Alicent, slightly recovering from the initial shock, struggled to her feet, her face reflecting a mixture of disbelief and pain.

"We must inform the king," She said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "And organize the preparations. Let the Masters examine the body and let the Septon pray for her soul."

The young lady nodded, wiping the tears from her face. The heavy responsibility of the news she carried did not allow him to falter. With firm steps, he headed towards the king's chamber, knowing that that day would mark a deep wound in the heart of the kingdom.

Alicent, still in shock, wiped away the few tears that escaped from her eyes. A grim thought crossed his mind: how would he tell Aemond? He was already dealing with the loss of his daughter, and now he would also have to deal with the death of his young wife.

With a deep sigh, she headed towards his son's chamber. The corridor seemed endless, each step carrying the weight of the news she had to share. Upon arriving, she found Aemond sitting in an armchair, absorbed in his thoughts.

“Aemond,” she said softly, his voice shaking, “I need to talk to you.”

He looked up, immediately noticing the gravity on his mother's countenance. Alicent knelt next to him, holding his hand tightly.

"It's... it's your wife. She... has passed away. I'm so sorry, my son."

Aemond froze, his face showing a mix of disbelief and pain before reality hit him. A heartbreaking sob escaped her lips as she leaned forward, holding her mother's hand tightly.

––––––––––

Queen Rhaenyra entered the council chamber, her commanding presence silencing any murmurs. With one graceful movement, he sat down in his chair.

“We can begin,” she said firmly, her eyes sweeping over each of the councilors present.

The room remained silent. The members of her council exchanged uneasy glances, none willing to be the first to break the tragic news. Rhaenyra watched them expectantly, sensing the tension in the air.

Finally, the Grand Master cleared his throat and stepped forward, bowing his head slightly in respect.

“My queen, I bring news from King's Landing,” he began, his voice trembling slightly. “This morning, the young princess was found... lifeless.”

A whisper of dismay ran through the room. Rhaenyra remained silent for a moment, taking in the information. His expression was a mask of control, although shock was evident in his eyes.

“Y/N...?” she asked weakly “How…? She is dead? No, it can not be. My daughter had no enemies; The people loved her.”

Rhaenyra gave a nervous laugh, hoping that her child's death was a mistake, but she received no answer. The room remained in a tense silence.

“How?” she finally asked, tears held back in her eyes.

"From what it seems, the princess herself ended her life, or someone else did," the maester reported. "There are rumors that you yourself gave the order to end her."

Rhaenyra looked at everyone, bewildered.

"I!? Order the death of my own daughter?!” she shouted, “I'm dealing with the loss of a child and now the loss of my baby and my granddaughter.”

The room remained silent, all eyes avoiding her. Rhaenyra turned to Daemon, seeking some support, but his face seemed unchanged, almost indifferent to the tragedy.

Rhaenyra took a deep breath, trying to regain control.

"You ordered that?!" Rhaenyra asked angrily once the council had left.

Daemon was sitting, looking at his hands.

"It was an accident," he said, trying to defend himself.

"An accident? How could that be an accident?" Rhaenyra approached her husband, anger and desperation in her eyes. "It is a disgusting and horrible act committed in my name, Daemon."

"You said you wanted Aemond." His voice did not show any regret.

"I said I wanted Aemond," Rhaenyra claimed, "I didn't say I wanted you to kill innocent children and women."

"It was an accident," Daemon repeated, this time with annoyance.

"It does not matter!" The queen cried, her voice cracking with anguish. "Your recklessness has cost me a daughter and a granddaughter."

The room fell silent. Rhaenyra fell into one of the armchairs as tears ran down her face.

"My sweet girl... she is dead now," she lamented, sobbing hard.

The silence that followed was heavy, filled with the sadness and despair of a mother who had lost her daughter. Rhaenyra, lost in her grief, barely noticed when Daemon stood up and approached her. He looked at her, his own eyes shining with a mixture of remorse and suppressed fury.

"Rhaenyra, I'm sorry..." he began, but his voice broke. The words that followed seemed empty given the magnitude of the tragedy.

"No," she answered, her voice barely above a whisper. "You can't understand what you've done. You have destroyed everything I loved. My daughter, my granddaughter…” she sobbed, her body shaking with the intensity of her pain. "I will never forgive you, Daemon. Never."

Daemon helplessly watched her fall apart. He knew there was nothing he could say or do to repair the damage done. The queen, broken inside, hugged herself, her sobs echoing in the empty room, a sad melody that marked the end of a hope and the beginning of a mourning that would never end.

The air in the room became thick, as if the castle itself was mourning the loss of its princess. The night, dark and silent, loomed over them, wrapping them in a blanket of infinite sadness. Rhaenyra, lost in her grief, curled up on the couch, her tears falling steadily as the reality of her loss settled deep in her heart.

Daemon, unable to bear the sight of his broken wife, slowly withdrew, leaving Rhaenyra in her pain, knowing that nothing could redeem him in her eyes. The queen, now alone, mourned the loss of her daughter, two innocent souls torn from her life by an act of incomprehensible brutality.

The echo of her sobs filled the room, echoing in every corner, a sad symphony of love and loss that would remain on the castle walls forever.

“Princess Y/N Velaryon was born in the year 113 A.C., the second daughter of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and her husband, Ser Laenor Velaryon, whose paternity was questioned by the court.

From her childhood and throughout her youth, she was a happy and beautiful girl, loved by the entire kingdom, who nicknamed her "The Jewel of the Kingdom." At the age of 16, the princess married her uncle, Prince Aemond Targaryen.

From this union a daughter was born, Alysa, who unfortunately died while she was still a baby. Princess Y/N Velaryon was a rider of the dragon Dawnlight, a majestic silver dragon.

To this day, it has not been clarified whether the princess's tragic end was caused by her stepfather or if it was the loss of her daughter that led to her own death. Her memory, however, remains alive in the heart of the kingdom, which still remembers her with affection and reverence.”

—True account of Archmaester Gyldayn of the Citadel of Antigua

[mountswhore]

Hey if it's okay then I want to request a pregnancy fic where y/n has been having a hard time dealing with the changes during pregnancy and Mason is helping her out in every way he can. Thank you x

my beautiful girl — mason mount

summary: you were four months along, finally starting to show and yet you were still struggling with the changes you were going through. mason decides to help in any way he can.

After the hell that was the first trimester, you thought you were in the clear. With morning sickness subsiding, you realised it was just making way for more pesky symptoms.

You were four months along now, Mason still elated his beloved child was on the way. As were you, but Mason doesn't need to carry the child for nine months, nor does he need to experience anything you were currently experiencing.

It was still hell on Earth.

Mason's arm slid around your stomach, finally resting below the forming bump. You could practically hear his smile as he pulled you into him, his warm breath coating the revealed skin on your shoulder. Today was the day you were finding out the sex of your baby, and you couldn't wait.

"How did you sleep?" Mason asked quietly, the question was a frequent one, considering you couldn't sleep much over the past three months of pregnancy.

You hummed in response. "It was okay."

Mason was downstairs making you a peppermint tea and himself some breakfast, whilst you took to showering. The hot water felt good, too good, so the shower wasn't long. Unfortunately, Mason's massive bathroom mirror was a curse to you. Even whilst steamed up, you could see yourself and your body.

You tried to be grateful, to be so glad you were able to carry this child, as a lot of women struggle to do so and would kill to be in your position. But your body was changing, and you had terrible self esteem since gaining the stretch marks. You felt so unlike yourself, the feeling mostly being down to how different life had been since becoming pregnant.

The baby wasn't planned, is any child planned? You'd spoken about children in the past with Mason, and you'd both agreed you felt ready for whenever it was going to happen. And a year or so later, here you were.

"Hey." Mason appeared in the bathroom, mug in hand and a concerned look on his face. "What're you thinking about?"

You grabbed the mug and passed him to put it onto your dresser. "Nothing."

Mason knew that was a lie. Instead of saying anything, he sat you down on the bed and crouched between your legs. Still adorned in only a towel, you pulled it over as much skin as you could. Mason knew exactly what this was about, as you'd discussed it at the start of the first trimester. You were crying, you didn't know whether it was good or bad, so Mason calmed you down with making a list. Eventually, you had decided the baby was a good thing, the only cons being about how you'd look and how your body would react to carrying and birthing a child, which you seemed hesitant over.

"You," he spoke, kissing your lips firmly with his hands either side of your head, "are beautiful. I know what's going on in your brain, and I'm telling you it's okay to feel that way. Everyone struggles with their body, but you need to remember you're doing something amazing. You're carrying our child, you're making sure she grows like she should and you're looking after her until she's ready for us."

"She?" You giggled, tears sliding down your face.

"I'm hoping for a girl," he responded, "but anyway, you look amazing. You're doing amazing. I know I'd struggle doing what you're doing, but I'm so thankful every day I wake up and see that bump. It will all be worth it when the baby is born."

He was right, you knew he was. All you needed was that reassurance that you haven't lost your life to pregnancy. You're still the same person before, but you're growing a baby, too.

"You will always be my beautiful girl, nothing and nobody will ever compare to you." Mason spoke, his voice quiet as he held your gaze. You smiled, grateful for the kind words he'd said.

"Let's find out what we're having then," you breathed out, standing from your position on the bed and strolling towards your closet. "I hope it's a girl, too." You admitted, peering from around the door at Mason.

His cheeks turned pink, reaching out to stroke your arm before he left you to dress.

You were sat in the waiting room, surrounded by mothers to be. All at different stages in their pregnancy. You were grateful to have Mason come with you today, his arm wrapped firmly around your shoulders. He was scrolling on his phone, and you occasionally looked down to see what he was laughing at, but for the most pat you were looking around and hoping the doctor would call your name.

Finally, you thought, as you'd heard your name and stood up with Mason's support.

The appointment was a blur, it was mainly just telling the doctor how you were coming along and you were in your head for most of it, Mason taking control of the social side of today.

You were abruptly pulled from your thoughts once the cold gel had hit your stomach, a sharp gasp falling from your lips. Mason chuckled and squeezed your hand, and you couldn't help but return the smile. He was so excited, he'd been looking forward to this for so long.

"Did you want to find out the sex today? Or were you wanting it to be sent to a member of family?" The doctor questioned, and you looked at Mason. Neither of you wanted a gender reveal, it wasn't appealing to you at all. You just wanted to know, so you could tell family the good news.

"We just want to find out today, if that's okay." You answered.

The doctor rotated the screen so both you and Mason could see. It was just a blur to the both of you, you had no clue what you were looking at.

"So," the doctor pointed at certain parts of the screen, "it's a very healthy baby girl."

Mason cheered, kissing your cheek and thanking the doctor for the confirmation. You were both ecstatic to be having the baby girl you'd hoped for. You were mainly glad for the healthy part, you weren't as biased as Mason was. You felt like you were doing something right, your body was handling it well, and in the end it felt worth it. It wasn't long until you'd be holding that healthy baby girl in your arms, and even if it was long, painful hours or labour, it would all be worth it.

[lightofthemoonglow]

kinktober day 25

Human Furniture | Pregnancy | Edgeplay

Thomas Hewitt

a follow up to this story

The wedding night had gone off without a hitch. They had stayed in Thomas’ bedroom all night, unable to stop once they had started. Charlie had walked in during a round, saying he had to make sure they were doing it right or even at all. He had gotten an eyeful of Thomas taking his new wife from behind, though thankfully neither of them noticed. In the morning, she had been covered in bruises, scratches and even a bite mark on her shoulder.

It had scared Thomas to see the results of his work, how he had wrecked his new bride because he had been enjoying himself. Hurting others felt differently, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Seeing her limp out of his room, their room, had made him feel sick. So he hasn’t touched her since then, too afraid of doing worse to the only person he had ever touched in that way. Thomas had avoided the bedroom as much as possible over the last seven or so months, he’s slept in the barn, in the fields, in the basement, anywhere but his bed as much as possible.

Though their countless rounds had resulted in something at least. The bump is getting harder and harder to ignore and Thomas wonders if his mama would be happy with just one.

The new Mrs. Hewitt has had to make do with dresses meant for someone bigger, things they had picked up from the church. There’s no driving to the big city for special dresses, though Luda Mae has hinted they might do so with the next one. Though only the new couple know that the chances of that seem lower and lower every passing day. It’s hard to resist her, with her breasts nearly spilling out of her dresses, that swell of her belly, the knowledge that he had done this…

So one afternoon, when Thomas thinks he’s alone, he goes up to their room and takes himself in hand. Muttering under his breath, eyes closed, he thinks about it. About his wife spread out under him, clearly bred but still needing more. Begging for it, needy and moaning as he gets on top of her, careful as he should have been that one night-

“Tommy?”

She’s standing in front of him now, a hand on her bump as she gazes down at him. She’s only in her underwear and then her bra is gone, showing him what he had tried not to see for months. “You could have just come to me. Why won’t you…why haven’t we?” It’s not about the sex, she would be fine without it. But they had held each other that night, she had fallen asleep in his arms and he had kissed her on the lips right before that, lifting the mask for a moment. They had bonded that night and now it seemed like it had never happened.

Thomas reaches out and touches the bump, looking up at her. They can communicate without him needing to speak. He can, if he really tries, but it’s easier to use the hand signals and head movements that he had developed over the years. He doesn’t want to hurt her again, not when there’s a baby in her that they both want.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she whispers, reaching down to brush his jaw with her fingers. “And I want it again. Let me show you how much….” She manages to get on her knees, quite the feat at this point. Moving between his legs, she takes him in hand, stroking him back to full hardness before she wraps her mouth around the tip.

Her mouth is wet, hot, everything that he had been trying to replicate with is hands. The lack of experience she has doesn’t matter as she takes more and more of him into her mouth. It’s as big as the rest of him, so she can’t take it all. Thomas groans helplessly as she strokes what she can’t fit, his breath coming out in short gasps as he bucks his hips forward.

But before he can finish, she stops and tugs down his pants the rest of the way. “Let me…” she whispers, looking up at him with pleading eyes that he can’t say no to. Nodding, he lays back when she asks him to and watches with wonder as she climbs on top of him. Slowly, she takes him inside of her, both of them nearly squealing with pleasure as they finally have this again after so long.

“Want to do this all the time,” she whispers as she slowly rides him. “I have waited for you every night…my hand right here…” She touches herself between her legs, moaning loudly. “So I’ll be ready for you.” She’s moving faster, he’s trying to keep up and they finish almost at the same time.

[cuubism]

Made in an Instant (5/5)

Dream's eldritch pregnancy, conclusion

Hob has never been so angry in his eternal fucking life. He’s going to find whoever decided to kidnap his pregnant husband and brutally murder them. Back in his day, people lost hands for stealing. Maybe he’ll bring back drawing-and-quartering. Now that was a good punishment.

With Matthew and Lucienne’s help from the Dreaming, he’s managed to track the kidnappers down to an abandoned prison just outside London. It’s really too on the nose. Dream will be peeved about the lack of creativity. Hob gets teary at the thought. Fuck he’s worried about him.

He doesn’t encounter anyone as he breaks into the place, which is worrisome. Shouldn’t there be someone? Guards? Kidnappers? He’s got his ancient broadsword strapped to his back—it felt more poetic than a gun—and he’s itching to just swing it through someone. Getting hacked in half will teach them to mess with Dream.

He passes dozens of empty, decrepit cells, walking faster as he still doesn’t find anyone— then stops. Turns to the cell at his right. That’s Dream’s magic. He feels it. And as he steps closer, he finds runes traced along the floor, along the walls and bars, a cage of magical lettering.

The only problem: the cell door is already open. And Dream is nowhere to be seen.

Shit. Is Hob too late? Did they take Dream somewhere else? Did they hurt him again? He spins in place, already starting to panic, he’s going to have to—

“Hob.”

Hob whirls around. Dream is standing at the other end of the hall. His coat is rumpled, but he looks generally unharmed. Most importantly, he’s not in a prison cell.

Hob rushes over to him, embraces him. Dream hums with pleasure at the touch. “Thank God. Oh, love, thank goodness you’re okay.” He holds Dream at arm’s length, looking him over. “Are you okay? What happened? Did they let you go?”

“I freed myself,” says Dream. He holds out his wrists, which have what look like burn marks on them from some sort of manacles. “I am. Mostly. Unharmed.”

Hob takes his hands, looks over his wrists carefully. “If they bound your powers like that, then how did you get out?”

“My powers were bound.” Dream smiles craftily. “But hers were not. I wished for us to get out. And she unlocked the cell.” He really seems quite proud of it. “We worked together.” Then he grimaces, pressing a hand to his lower belly. “Unfortunately, she has now taken this wish on as her own, and, I believe, decided she wants to get out. Now.”

“Now?” Hob flits around him, trying not to panic. Again. “Isn’t it too soon?”

“Wishes are often made in an instant,” says Dream.

Hob takes him by the arm and starts bundling him towards the exit. “Alright, let’s go home, then. Christ. Did you kill the kidnappers?”

“I do not kill humans,” says Dream.

“Did you eternally punish the kidnappers?”

“Yes.” He seems frighteningly unperturbed considering he’s just been kidnapped and is now apparently going into magical labor. Maybe he’s just compartmentalizing. Dealing with it all by not thinking about it. Hob will just have to do all the freaking out for the both of them.

He gets Dream into the car. Buckles him in. Starts driving at a speed that would definitely get him a ticket if he wasn’t married to someone who could just make police officers become suddenly and mysteriously distracted.

“How are you feeling?” he asks as he drives.

Dream considers. “Hmm. Restless. I’m curious what will happen.”

“You don’t know what will happen!?”

“This is untrodden ground, Hob,” says Dream. He does not sound as concerned about it as Hob thinks he should be. But then, the pregnancy itself has never seemed to concern him as much as it has Hob. It’s the grander scale of the thing that weighs on Dream’s mind. “No Endless has carried a child before.”

That’s just absolutely fantastic.

“We will find out,” says Dream, settling deeper into his seat.

Yeah, we sure fucking will, Hob thinks.

Matthew catches up with them partway through the drive home. Dream must have sent him a message in whatever dream-way he has, though Hob doubts he intended for Matthew to actually come find them. Hob feels briefly bad about not trying to contact Matthew himself, to let him know Dream was okay, but he was a bit distracted by the whole magical labor situation.

“Who the fuck kidnaps a pregnant lady?” Matthew exclaims as he soars in through the open car window, landing awkwardly on the dashboard. Dream slants a look at him, and Matthew amends, “Uh, I mean, a pregnant dude.”

Hob’s pretty sure that wasn’t the part of the statement Dream objected to and that calling Ye Olde Lord of Dreams dude might actually be worse.

“Does that make it worse or better?” Matthew wonders.

“Their fates were sealed the moment they threatened my child,” Dream intones, ominous as a storm front. “Now their minds belong to the Dreaming, where they will be fed upon by nightmares bearing the faces of their most deeply held fears. For eternity.”

“Definitely don’t kidnap pregnant ladies,” Matthew mutters. He ruffles his feathers in a shiver. “You good now, boss?”

Dream just inclines his head.

“You good, Hobster?”

“Well, my husband is going into some kind of unprecedented magical labor,” Hob says, voice tight. “And I didn’t even get to chop anyone’s head off, so I’m a bit worked up.”

Matthew squawks in alarm. “Labor?!”

“Do not be dramatic,” says Dream.

“Sure, sure,” says Hob. “It’s a regular Tuesday.”

“I am fine,” Dream says, more firmly—this time to Matthew. “Please inform Lucienne all is well. I will send for you at a later time.”

“You freaking sure?”

This time Dream gives him a stern look, and Matthew ducks his head. “Right, right. Well, see you later, then, I guess? Um. Good luck?”

He cringes to himself, but then wheels away out the window again. Dream rubs his forehead tiredly. 

“Don’t want the whole peanut gallery in the delivery room?” Hob asks, and Dream cracks a small smile.

“Would you truly have killed them?”

“I was kind of looking forward to it actually. Bit peeved you dealt with them first.”

Dream chuckles, tension easing. Hob’s still going way above the speed limit, and should really keep his attention on the road, but still he holds out his hand on the center console. And Dream takes it.

--

At home, Dream continues to be restless. Hob bandages his wrists, not that he thinks it will really do much. Dream changes into some of Hob’s comfortable loungewear. And then just starts pacing. Walking restless circles between the kitchen and living room, back and forth, back and forth. Hob’s never seen him like this. Normally Dream is very still, in control. He doesn’t fidget.

“Shouldn’t you lie down or something?” Hob asks. The way Dream is treating this is really not helping him fret any less.

Dream keeps pacing around the kitchen. “Hmm. No. I am going for a walk,” he says, and heads for the front hall.

“A walk?” Hob follows him at a rush, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Dream—”

Dream is already putting on his shoes. “Wear a coat at least,” Hob says, draping one of his own over Dream’s shoulders.

Dream gives him an arch look. “Are you not coming along?”

“Of course I’m coming!” With a frustrated sigh, Hob puts his own shoes on too.

He follows Dream out to the street, empty at this hour of the night, and across to the park, where Dream trudges off into one of the woodland trails like he’s on a mission. Hob follows, scrambling to catch up.

The forest path is absolutely dark at this hour, lit only by scant patches of moonlight. But Dream has always seemed comfortable in the nighttime, so he doesn’t seem perturbed. Meanwhile, the empty surroundings are not settling Hob’s anxiety.

“Dream, are you sure we should be wandering about in the park?” he asks.

Dream raises an eyebrow at him. “It is not as though we will need to go to a hospital.”

“It’s just— it’s the middle of the night.” And you were just kidnapped, he thinks but doesn’t add. Hob doesn’t know what delivering an Endless baby is supposed to be like, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to do it in the fucking woods. “We can go to the Dreaming if you like?”

Dream shakes his head. “She wishes to be born in the Waking. I believe so she can properly meet you.”

“…Oh.” Hob’s heart squeezes. And he resigns himself to doing whatever Wish wants, even if it means delivering in Richmond Park. She’s going to be a spoiled terror, he already knows it. Much like Dream, if he’s being honest.

“Fine,” he says, and takes Dream’s arm. Pulls him close. “Why are we in the park, then?”

“Wish is restless,” Dream says. “And. I am restless. I can feel all her budding dreams, her feelings, they are wrapped up in me far more tightly than any other dreamer’s and the process of disentangling them is agitating us both. And out here it is…” He looks up at the empty sky. “Quiet.”

Again, Hob is painfully reminded that Dream verbalizes so little of what he actually feels. And he’s reminded, too, just how strange, how beyond comprehension, this pregnancy really is. Human pregnancies are already strange and miraculous, but this is… soul-bending. He can’t imagine how it must feel, for Dream to be so close to their daughter for so long and then have to figure out how to let her go.

“Okay,” he says, wrapping an arm around Dream’s waist and letting him lean on him. “Take your time, then. Both of you.”

“I was not ready,” Dream admits, “for this to happen now. I thought there would be more time.”

“I know, darling. Me too.” Hob kisses Dream’s temple, rests their heads together as they walk. “You’ll still have her though, yeah? Even after she’s born. She’s not going anywhere. It will just be a change.”

Hopefully Dream will stick to his agreement to take some maternity leave after the birth. He is really going to need it.

“And you will get to meet her,” Dream says. “I look forward to that.”

Hob does, too. God. So soon.

For a while they are quiet, just listening to the low breeze, the night birds, and the waving branches, taking in the moonlight and the isolating darkness of the park at night. It’s peaceful. A bit eerie, too. But this atmosphere is Dream’s element. He is a creature stepped right out of it. And it seems to calm him.

Finally, Hob asks, “Does it hurt?” Surely if it did he wouldn’t be strolling around out here, but then, Dream is very catlike in that he does not like to let on when he is hurting. Hob knows it well.

“No, except in the way exhaustion might be said to ‘hurt,’” Dream says. “But it’s no matter. You needn’t worry about me.”

“Dream,” Hob says quietly, “I thought we’d gotten past the point where you realize that I’m always going to worry about you.”

Dream stops walking, pulling Hob to a stop beside him. He turns to Hob, brow furrowed, and Hob takes him by the arms. “You deserve someone to worry about you,” he says. “Someone to care whether you’re feeling well. I want to do that. I want to fuss over you.”

Dream keeps staring at him, expression pinched, but then softens and says, lowly, “I like when you do.”

He’s said so before, but it can be hard, sometimes, to get things internalized with Dream. To get him to feel he can have it. Count on it.

“It’s settled, then,” Hob says, and Dream huffs. “I’ll take care of you.”

“As you wish,” says Dream, but leans in close to Hob as they start to walk along again.

Hob wonders what it all feels like. He had never watched Eleanor go into labor, it wasn’t really the done thing at the time, but he grasps the idea of what it’s meant to look like. But Dream doesn’t show much on the outside, other than his evident restlessness. Everything about his pregnancy, if something so nontraditional can be called that, is so cerebral, it leaves Hob apprehensive for how the ‘birth’ is meant to go.

It’s all a lot. It’s a lot.

“Hey,” Hob says abruptly. “I’m proud of you.”

“For… being… pregnant?”

“Yeah, for being pregnant— but more for trying again. I— even so many years later, I think about Robyn, and the things I didn’t do or should have done, and it’s daunting to put myself in that position again. Even if I want it. So, I’m glad that you’re willing to try again, because I know it’s the same for you—maybe even more so.”

“We promised to make it good,” Dream says quietly. Something Hob said to him once, when Dream had first dramatically announced that he was inexplicably expecting a child.

“And we will,” Hob promises. The more he thinks about it the more freaked out he gets, honestly, but he’s going to be self-assured for Dream. At least externally. “We will, darling.”

“You never had other children,” Dream says, more confirmation of a fact than a question.

Hob grimaces. “Couldn’t bear to. I think, if I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t want to now, either. I can’t have another family pass me by while I go on. Hurts too much.” He owes Death free drinks at the Inn till the end of the world, this time around.

“Yes,” Dream agrees, solemnly. “Better, this time. I hope.”

It will be. Hob’s determined.

He kisses Dream’s cheek, keeps him close in the circle of his arms. And they walk on into the night.

--

It’s some time later when Dream stops, seemingly at random, and says, “Okay. We can go home now.”

Hob says, incredulously, “Dream, we’re on the complete other side of the park.”

“Easily remedied,” says Dream, pulling out his sand. Before Hob can say, wait maybe you shouldn’t do that right now, the world is spinning violently around them, and their bedroom rushes up to meet them.

Dream lands primly on the bed. Hob hits the floor, only just managing to get a hand up in time to not break his nose. He rolls over onto his back, looking up at Dream. “Not to be like that, but I think pregnancy is making you crazy.”

“I have been balancing her powers with mine for months now, splitting my focus to prevent it from creating chaos in the Dreaming.” Now he sounds truly weary. “As she has grown it has become more challenging and occupied more of my attention. Her power is impulsive. Whimsical. It is like trying to contain sparks.” He smiles tiredly. “I suppose it has made me scattered, yes.”

Hob finally pushes himself up from the floor, goes to perch beside Dream. He kisses Dream’s temple. “I like your crazy.” He lays his hand on Dream’s stomach. “And hers. Even if it means I have to buy extra fire extinguishers for the sparks.”

Dream smiles, tilting his head against Hob’s.

“Now you just stay there,” Hob tells him, helping Dream get out of his coat, pulling his shoes off, and nudging until he gets settled in the center of the bed, “and let me get you whatever you need.”

“Only you,” says Dream.

Hob fetches him some water anyway.

When he gets back, he slides into bed beside Dream. “It is not long now,” Dream tells him, solemnly.

Heart lurching, Hob braces a hand on Dream’s shoulder, and… waits.

He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

“What are we waiting for, exactly?”

“Patience,” says Dream.

Does he have to be like that?

Well, at least he’s not writhing in pain. Hob will take the confusion of… whatever this is… over having to watch him in pain.

Dream holds out his hand. Hob takes it, twining their fingers, heart pounding with anxiety. He recognizes the moment when Dream lets most of his focus slip into the Dreaming, into himself, that endless ocean of him. His eyes fall shut, his rigid spine relaxes ever so slightly, his jaw loses its tension, and he becomes distant. Hob keeps squeezing his hand, grounding him.

Dream lets out a huge breath, squeezing tight on Hob’s hand, and reality sort of… slips.

It breaks down the middle and skids sideways, and for a moment everything is all mashed together, like a door that’s never meant to be unlocked is being jammed open so something can get through, and Hob can’t tell where his hand ends and Dream’s begins, if he’s still awake or what year it is or if they’ve been flung into the Dreaming sea, there’s a deafening whine in his ears rising in pitch, his skin prickles all over with static. And then Dream reaches into himself, into the everything-that-is-him, and where his hands go his form goes sort of inside out like he’s actually reaching out of himself instead of in. It’s incredibly nauseating to watch but Hob can’t look away, never mind that he’s not sure which direction is even up anymore.

When Dream withdraws his hands, he’s holding a baby.

For a long moment, Hob can only stare at the two of them, speechless, his tiny daughter and his insane husband who’s pulled an infant out of fucking— out of where? Hob still hasn’t gotten an answer on whether he has a uterus!

The lack of physical progression is breaking Hob’s brain, it feels like Dream’s pulled Wish right out of the fucking ether, and Hob really might pass out but he can’t pass out because Dream’s the one who’s manifested-or-whatever a whole baby so if anyone gets to pass out it’s him.

“Dream…” he whispers, incredulous.

Dream smiles tiredly. He looks absolutely exhausted now, like it’s all crashed down on him all at once. He looks down at the baby, meeting her eyes as something passes between them, then leans down to kiss her forehead. Then he shows her to Hob, holding her carefully. “Your daughter, Hob Gadling.”

Wish looks up at him with wide eyes. She isn’t crying, which normally would alarm him, but nothing about this is normal, and she didn’t come out of a womb—apparently—so she isn’t covered in blood or amniotic fluid or anything, she’s just there. She actually exists. It wasn’t all some insane fever dream.

And she looks so much like Dream, with her tuft of fluffy black baby hair and bright blue eyes. Hob touches her cheek lightly in wonder, and gets a little static shock for his trouble. When he yanks his hand back, Dream chuckles, and Hob swears Wish is laughing at him, too. He just knows it. Co-conspirators, they are. “Sparks, you said.”

“Yes. One of her many abilities.” He gestures for Hob to take the baby. “She will not shock you again.”

“Eh, I’ve dealt with worse than a little electrocution.” Hob carefully takes Wish and cradles her in his arms. “Alright, Sparkle, let’s not burn down the flat just yet, yeah?”

He barely gets the sentence out before Dream bursts into tears.

Hob only manages not to jump in shock through years of ancient holding-babies instincts. As it is, panic spikes, because Dream doesn’t cry. Not really. He often looks like he’s going to cry, but rarely lets the tears fall.

Now he’s sobbing. Hysterically sobbing, chest shaking, clutching at Hob’s shirt. Hob would be worried about his ability to breathe if Dream actually needed to breathe in the first place.

“Okay, alright, sweetheart, it’s alright.” Hob maneuvers Wish into one arm so he can cradle Dream with the other. Dream presses his face into Hob’s shoulder and wails. “Shhh, honey, oh, love, it’s okay.”

Endorphins crash? Hob thinks desperately, because he’s never seen Dream sob like that. Or at all. But he imagines it must be jarring to gradually grow a whole being inside you and then be abruptly thrown off the cliff of separation.

“Here, love. Breathe. Come on, now.” He takes Dream’s hand and guides him over so that Wish can grasp onto his finger with her little baby hand. “Do you want her back?”

Dream shakes his head, but stops hyperventilating, pushing himself further into Hob’s side. “No. You should hold her. It is just that. I cannot feel her as I once did.” He takes a shuddering breath, but steels himself. Hob wishes he wouldn’t. If there’s any time Dream shouldn’t have to shore up his emotions, it’s now. “I knew this would happen. But I have grown selfishly accustomed to her presence close to mine.”

“It’s not selfish,” Hob tells him, heart breaking. “It’s not. It’s okay. You love her. And she needed you. She still does.”

Dream lets out the heaviest of breaths, and slumps against him, utterly spent. He slips one bandaged arm behind Hob’s back, the other still stretched towards their daughter. God. Their daughter. Who Dream pulled out of what feels like thin air. It only gets stranger and more amazing the longer he thinks about it.

He looks down at her, cradled so tiny in the crook of his arm. Was Robyn that small? He can’t fully remember. But Robyn screamed and cried so much his presence filled up the room either way. Wish is quiet, just looking up at him with her wrinkly newborn face. She’s like a wisp of thought, a silent scattering of light, like Dream on some days when he fades into the shadows, just a bit. Dream had described her internal world as whimsical and vibrant and so this transition into waking must be quite overwhelming indeed. Just like it so often is for Dream.

“She’s beautiful, Dream,” he says quietly, getting choked up. Dream hums in agreement. “She’s perfect. The both of you are.” He kisses the top of Dream’s head. “I’m proud of you.”

Dream grumbles, but Hob knows how he needs to hear that sometimes.

“You should rest,” Hob continues. “You’ve been through a lot.” More than a lot. Hob still hasn’t fully gotten the panic of Dream’s disappearance out of his system. And he would not be surprised if it was affecting Dream more than he let on, too.

“I do not…” Dream starts, but trails off.

“You’ve kept an eye on her for months, darling. I’ve got her now.” He bids Dream to lay his head down on his chest, pets his hair, and Dream makes a low, pleased groan. “We’ll be okay, love. Promise.” And maybe by the time Dream wakes up again Hob will have been able to wrap his head around the existence of Wish. Probably not, but he can hope.

Dream sighs again, tiredly, but subsides, and soon enough seems to slip into proper sleep, Wish’s tiny hand still latched on to one finger.

Dream wrapped under one arm, Wish cradled in the other, Hob lets out a long breath and privately takes a moment to be relieved that everything went okay. No matter how many times Dream had tried to assure him, he had never been fully able to shake the fear that lingered from Eleanor’s death. But thankfully, weirdness of it all aside, everything seems to have worked out.

Hob looks down at Wish, who’s still just gazing up at him peacefully. Pretty soon he’s going to have to get up to get her sorted with diapers and a swaddle and whatever else a sort-of-human baby needs. She’ll need to eat as well, and he’s not sure how Dream wants to handle that. But he doesn’t want to disturb Dream’s peace so for now he just stays, holding her against his chest.

“Think it’s just us for a while, love,” he tells her. “It’s alright. It’s all been a lot for you, I bet. But you saved your da, d’you know that?” It’s pretty remarkable, when he thinks about it, that her powers had manifested enough that Dream was able to use them to escape. “You’re going to be a right terror, I can just tell already. Wishing all sorts of mischievous things. Going to have to get some proper child locks or you’ll wish yourself right out onto the street, won’t you?”

She makes a soft cry, and Hob knows it’s normal for her to cry, good even, but still it hurts his heart. Fuck, he really is going to have to move either her or Dream in order to arrange some milk. But if he takes Wish with him to the kitchen to prepare some formula, Dream will be distressed if he wakes alone. If he leaves her in a bassinet, he’s going to be stressed to leave her unattended. Maybe he’s not as prepared for this as he thought. Maybe there is no true being prepared. Especially when it had all been so different, the last time he’d had a child.

“Yo!”

Hob almost jumps again as Matthew appears and flutters down to land on the foot of the bed. If he’s not careful he’s going to have a heart attack. “Jesus Christ. Some warning?”

Matthew cringes. “Sorry. I just came to make sure he’s okay. The Dreaming went sort of inside out and it freaked everybody out.”

Hob strokes a hand through Dream’s hair. He doesn’t stir. “I think he’ll be out for a while. Did the Dreaming sort itself out?”

“Yeah, it settled down.” Matthew hops closer, peering down at Dream and Wish, tilting his head. “Damn. He really did it. I mean, I knew a few people who had babies, when I was alive— but jeez, I’m not really sure I believed it.”

“Tell me about it.” Matthew keeps peering at Wish, so Hob adds, “You can say hi to her. I promise she’s real.”

“‘Real’ doesn’t really mean much when it comes to dreams, dude,” Matthew says. But he leans down by Wish. She studies him, eyes wide and blue. “Holy shit she looks just like him.”

“I know, right?” Hob’s not sure if it’ll stick. It’s easy to say the baby looks like Dream now based on her blue eyes and tuft of black hair, but babies’ features can change a lot as they grow.

“Wow. This is… a lot.” 

“How do you think I feel?”

“I can’t imagine,” says Matthew. “I’m glad everything worked out, though.” He hops down to the bed and plucks at Dream’s hair affectionately with his beak. Dream still doesn’t stir.

“He’ll probably come to check in on the Dreaming in short order, knowing him,” Hob says. He’s not exactly happy at the thought of it. They might have been able to avoid Dream getting pulled temporarily back into work if he hadn’t gotten kidnapped by a group of incompetent occultists, but Hob knows he’s going to want to at least set foot in the palace briefly after all that. “Do me a favor and kick him out as fast as you can?”

“Kick him out. Yeah, that’ll end well for me,” Matthew says, then shrugs in a flutter of wings. “I’ll do my best. And I should probably go let Luce know everything went fine. Is, uh, there anything I can do to help before I go?”

Hob’s about to say no, then reconsiders. “D’you think you can make baby formula without hands?”

--

While Matthew is in the kitchen attempting to do that according to Hob’s instructions, Wish finally decides that she’s proper hungry, actually, and lets out a loud shriek that nearly pierces Hob’s eardrums.

Dream sits bolt upright like he’s been struck by lightning and spins towards him.

“You’re alright, love,” Hob says, even as Wish shrieks again and he grimaces at the volume. God, she’s like a fire alarm. Add soundproofing to the list of modifications Hob’s going to have to make to their flat. He hands Wish back to Dream as Dream reaches for her. “She’s just hungry. I deputized Matthew to make some formula.”

“There is no need,” Dream says, and holds the baby close.

“Matthew, nix the formula!” Hob calls out to the kitchen. “Dream’s going to handle it.”

Matthew calls back, “I don’t want to think that about my boss!”

“You’re the one who’s sexualizing a perfectly natural process!”

Matthew squawks in outrage, and Hob laughs as he hears the fluttering of wings that heralds him fleeing back to the Dreaming.

“I think you delight in tormenting him,” Dream says.

“He started it.”

Dream doesn’t berate him for it. He only smiles down at their daughter, running a light fingertip through her fluffy hair. And Hob remembers a conversation they’d once had, about what it would be like when Wish was born.

“Were you excited to be born, Hob?” Dream had asked.

“How the fuck should I know?” Hob had said. “I was three seconds old.”

“Hm,” Dream had mused. “I was never truly ‘born’ in this sense, but I believe if I were I would have been very displeased about it.”

It had made Hob laugh in the moment, and then made him feel sad when he thought on it later.

It was said that raising a child let you relive your own childhood. Hob had found it to be true with Robyn, despite how Robyn had grown up in an era so different from his own, so much more comfortable, never going hungry, or wanting for the things that Hob had wanted for as a boy. When he’d seen Robyn play, seen him learn, he’d remembered things he’d forgotten, moments of life lost to time. Wish’s childhood will be different in ways he can’t even imagine. Supernatural baby, supernatural parent, modern world of modern dangers and wonders. But still so much of it comes back to the simple things, growing and learning and playing.

He doesn’t think Dream really had a childhood. Never had the chance to grow and learn and play. He doesn’t know all the detail of how it was with Orpheus, but he knows Dream looks back on that time primarily with guilt. And it can’t have been easy to try to raise a child when you were never one yourself.

Hob had promised Dream that he would make it better this time. That he would make it good. He wants to show Dream what childhood can be like. What a happy family can be like. Had Dream and Calliope had that, if only for a time? He hopes so. He really hopes so.

Either way, Hob is determined to show him. And when he looks at Dream smiling down at their daughter… he thinks he might even succeed.

[crying-fantasies]

Insecticons

Masterlist

Featuring G1! Shrapnel, Bombshell and Kickback, smut/fluff/humor, CW: stretch marks fetish too(?), insect courting (goes with the mech I guess?), oral (receiving), the Insecticons do it like insects and you rock their world moving, Bombshell is into gore (caution).

Most wildlife on Earth are optic catching, sometimes colorful or dull, they have come to realize it is sometimes due to the species and the regulations of their environment or to attract a mate.

They've been on Earth for so long, they've seen it all and eaten it all, stripes and dots, wings and long legs, Kickback can't stop to compare those with the ones of his alt-mode, but also notices the lack of other patterns, he likes the stripes, for example, the way they look pretty and he has seen insects with them, shiny colors as they follow a possible mate around, flying and showing themselves to prove worthy of continuing their primitive organic coding.

He felt jealous, he won't lie about it, looking at the two things canoodling, immersed in their world, interfacing could be good, but Shrapnel is mean, he likes to zap him, and Bombshell would pluck out his wings in his version of foreplay.

So when he finds you he can hardly stop his antenna and wings from picking up at the sight of you. Suddenly understanding the reason cicadas sing at dusk, and male mantis let their female eat their head, his alt-mode may be a grass jumper, but his song makes your hands hold your little audials in distress, he promises to practice more when Shrapnel tells him to shut up. He should tell them, they are his partners, but he is also sure Shrapnel will try to steal you away, Bombshell, Primus no, he could cut you open to see how you worked from the inside.

Too much risk, it was better to see you on the outskirts of their hideout, where they wouldn't see you, and to get you away from any other Decepticon, oh, but if Autobots dared to see you he was promising to snap their helms from their frames, such is the insecticon’s way.

Not much progress was made, and Kickback understood, that maybe you only mate in certain seasons or had to eat something nourishing, it was fine, he was good with holding your tiny hands, letting you sleep above his chassis, and even changing colors slightly, one day, after your session of sunbathing, he noticed.

Could have been the warm season, could have been the necessity to show off, but his optics centered over your exposed skin so much that his visor was glowing, how could you blame him? He just saw something he never expected to see in you.

Something that he never knew would make his spark bloom with excess energy.

“Kicky, dim off the lights I can't see”

You had stripes, pretty ones at that, of a slightly different color than the rest of your skin, his spark started to cycle along his biolights, and you smiled while asking a happy “What?” when his servos and digits started to roam over the different textures on your stripes, “stop it” There was no ounce of malice as you pushed him away by his helm, his sharp denta gripped at your wrist in a playful nip.

Maybe you were entering your mating season, or not, as you just continued to sunbathe above him, not minding where his servos roamed over more exposed skin as days passed by and the heat started to rise, more stripes started to appear, Kickback counted them as a way to pass the time, solar panels doing their work as you indulged in a collection of sheets done with plants, it was another day basking in your presence.

Until he felt the change of static in the area, a single designation popping on his processor as he tried to rush you out of their territory.

Shrapnel found out about you, most likely with Bombshell tailing behind him.

It was no surprise when his fits of protection did nothing more than give him a beating as you tried to get away as soon as possible, his leader reminding him of the no humans rule, to think with his tank was one thing that Shrapnel understood, but to think to mingle with a human was another different, still, that didn't stop Kickback to try and explain his case with the obvious interest from Bombshell.

Things were laid out clearly and strictly, no biting, no killing, no dismembering, “I’m serious, Bomb”, and if you said no, Kickback was sure to protect you even if he was the youngest, assuring you to come back, his partners wouldn't do you any harm, what's more, they would like you and you, them, little by little.

But Shrapnel wanted to try, showing off his alt-mode just as Bombshell did the same, “Are not all organics attracted to these displays?”, turns out, you don't, and it was agonizing, “How can you look at my frame and feel nothing but lustful desire?”

Unsaid rejection became common, but also did the scratches, and the collective sunbathing, sooner than later Shrapnel wasn't so opposed to the idea of you near and even eating with them, fruits were reserved for your consumption once you showed up, Bombshell stopped looking at you strangely and in change started to be attracted to your stripes in the same way Kickback did, just that his servo stopped from being pulled way sooner than later.

When or how you finally caught your place in their hierarchy was a mystery, as one day you came back as always, the sun was bright and the wetness promised rusty plating and achy joints, Bombshell was in his usual sunbathing spot when you plopped next to him and kissed a side of his helm.

Kickback was thrilled to finally see an accepting gesture on your part, Shrapnel was mad for not being the first.

But you let him be first, expecting on the ground over towels and blankets you didn't want to ask their origin, his servos roamed over your body, and a bolt of electricity was evident before his digit pressed over your ribs, Bombshell hissed in warning, earning a growl from Shrapnel, attempting to calm himself, but he couldn't while watching your face so close when he rolled you over your first thought was that he liked this position.

Nothing could have prepared you when he penetrated, pumping greedily as his arms hugged you to him, pressing you a little to the front, ass up, chattering as he always does, “so nice and full, such great Earthling, earthling”, Shrapnel mouthed over your neck once he finally slammed home.

He didn't move for a while, and it made Kickback retain a whimper, imagining for himself how nice it would be to lay his transfluid inside your body, did you have a forge? If you did and it was active, then all their problems about being outnumbered would be gone.

But humans work differently from insects, “huh, who could've thought”, Shrapnel said after he growled over your squirming body, trying to keep you close and immovable as he mounted you from behind, finally letting go of the stiffness as you, the innovative, delightful creature that you are, started rocking your hips against him, earning a different kind of growl, words chocked on his glossa as he began to move too, “Wait, Earthling, wait, wait” feeling all the crevices inside, your innermost flesh pushing and turning over his nodes just right as he was a mess, sprawled over your rear, holding to you, dripping noises could be heard, Bombshell only watched, calculative as always, apparently impressed by the way Shrapnel seemed so lost in you, eagerly waiting for his turn, Kickback wasn't so lucky, last in the hierarchy meant last to be served, he was soon to reach a newfound limit while watching you pursuit release, moving and working hard for it, ready to overload as your face showed nothing but pleasure once Shrapnel started to move too.

His painful and hot array was noticed by Bombshell, but he only watched for a second before returning his optics to his leader and you, whimpering almost in silence as your face contorted in full bliss as Shrapnel dumped loads inside you.

It was messy, the way Shrapnel’s spike was drenched by transfluid and whatever your body secreted was nauseating but also made them go and clean both with purring content, Kickback was soon to start cleaning his leader but Bombshell stopped him, servo over his midsection and throwing him next to your trembling body, “go first” is all he said while tending to his leader, who almost overloads again, Kickback didn't have to be told twice before holding your hips with his servos, massaging over the stripes on your rear and the beginning of your leg struts, purring so hard at the surprised sound you made once the clarity came back to your foggy mind, just to find him grinning like a maniac between your legs, showing off sharp fangs, dermas soon touching over your array panel, or lack thereof, glossa soon following, cleaning transfluid that has already dripped away and pushed what he can save inside once again, content at the sound you make as he frags you with his glossa and the way your hips can hardly move, held back by his servos as he has dropped to the floor, kneeling to let you have some leverage, your hands come to his helm, trying to rut against his faceplate, his chuckle makes you moan by how it vibrates to your tender flesh, “told you they would like you”.

.

The G1 Insecticons always was a soft spot for me, I like their madness and whole destructive factor, but there is little of them in the series or the fandom, praying this little work gets people more worked up on them because damn, they're so fine.

@tf-kinktober2024

[dronebiscuitbat]

Oil is Thicker Then Blood (Part 69)

It seemed like the moment Tera got her fangs she became obsessed with using them.

It had been multiple weeks of wrangling her to let things go, to not utterly destroy every blanket, pillow, toy, or random chunks of metal she found. She was like a puppy, using her fangs as an extra hand to feel out the world with her mouth.

Both Uzi's and N's hands were covered in tiny bite marks, Tera would never truly try to bite either of them, but that didn't mean she didn't nibble and knaw at their hands whenever she got the chance, like love bites, only slightly more painful.

It didn't help that Uzi's mood was already on an extremely short emotional fuse. She was constantly tired, her back ached and she was utterly sick of getting sick. More was coming out of her then she was putting in, and yet she was still gaining weight.

Month two of her pregnancy was looking to be a worse rehash of month one, where she was decidedly less worried and emotionally vulnerable and much more pissed beyond measure.

V was also sticking around more.

It was weird.

They lived side by side, so they'd always seen quite a bit of her, even if it was only passing conversation as they went to and from wherever they were going. But now V was inviting herself over. Offering to help with Tera, or asking if she needed oil, or something to eat, or just… being considerate.

Uzi wasn't sure what exactly was going on with her. But V also refused to take no for an answer. So… she was just hanging around, mostly dozing off on the couch or lazily playing with Tera, who's favorite game was now ‘tug of war’.

“Are you gonna tell me why you suddenly want to be here? Or are you just going to keep me guessing?” Uzi finally asked after the third day that week V had miraculously gotten into the apartment without her knowledge.

“Nope.” V hummed back, the ‘p’ popping as she went back to playing with the newly energized solver kit, tugging on a rope toy made for dogs.

Despite V's normal antagonistic behavior, her presence was actually incredibly… welcome.

Taking care of Tera, doing the household chores. And trying to decipher what the hell was up with Doll, before had been no problem. Was starting to get a little difficult, in part because of Tera's new penchant for destruction, but her core felt heavy and sluggish, stuttering as it used quite a bit of power to combine her and N's code together. Her core was even lighter now, becoming a light shade of lavender instead of a deep violet.

And having someone around to help, even if Uzi couldn't decipher the reason why, was not something she was going to complain about.

At this very moment though, she was washing bottles in preparation to refill them, while also replacing the rubber caps, as now they were full of bite marks and rips.

“Sooo where do you get the oil?” V asked, for the first time genuine curiosity in her voice. And Uzi didn't even turn around to answer as she scrubbed the inside of another bottle.

“Uh… the nursery?”

“No. Not the oil you drink, the oil she drinks. N was saying something about her oil needing to be filtered or, whatever.”

“Me?”

“… Do you like… prick yourself?”

“What? No. I have a side pannel that opens… did you not know?” Now Uzi turned to look at her, finding her holding Tera up in the air with one hand, away from the rope toy.

“No. Why should I know? I didn't pay too much attention to who I was killing.” V always had the tone like she didn't care or wasn't interested, but it really wasn't fooling Uzi anymore, if V truly wasn't interested, she wouldn't have asked.

“Yup. Every worker drone has a side panel, has a oil port, a charge port, everything we need to take care of kids. N doesn't have one, we checked. So you probably don't either.” She explained, thankful that it's the last time she'd have to explain this.

“Huh.”

Then there was silence again, Uzi trying to get a particularly stubborn stain off a bottle and going to town at it, growling slightly as if that would help scare it away.

When her head suddenly felt like lead.

She leaned over the sink as the feeling of extreme dizziness washed over her, her core skipping beats as her vison went blurry and her hearing faded into muffled sounds.

She dropped the bottle and it clattered against the floor, bouncing away on the tile. And gripped the side of the sink, feeling herself becoming unsteady as her legs wobbled and her stomach turned exactly once.

Then she began to fall to the side, unable to keep her balance, vison blinking out, bracing to hit the hard floor with what little withering control she had over her body.

Only she never did, something had caught her halfway down, cradling her gently and purring softly, she almost thought it was N, with how gentle they were, but he wouldn't be home for a couple more hours.

When her head stopped spinning and her core went back to its normal tempo, the first thing she felt was the plush texture of the couch, not the cold tile of the floor. And the feeling of a warm hand on her forehead.

And when her eyelights opened, she realized it was V. Holding her head to check her temperature.

What. The Fuck.

“V?”

“Oh good, you're fine.” She immediately removed her hand, but still hovering over her as V looked down at her, looking as blasé as ever.

“Why are you being so nice?”

“Why are you complaining?” V quipped back, putting a hand in her hip as Uzi sat up, and shook the lead from her head.

Uzi sighed, grumbling as she truly, honestly, did not have the energy to argue with V over her weirdness, but she guessed she shouldn't complain, as he had just been saved from hitting the floor.

“Oh whatever, thanks for catching me… I guess.” Uzi went to get back up, but V pushed her back into the couch with a decent amount of force, dropping Tera into Uzi's lap before walking over to the sink herself.

“Mmmhm.” Was all V said, before beginning to finish cleaning out the bottles herself.

With another long-suffering, confused sigh, Uzi took V's previous position of playing tug of war with Tera, letting V do whatever the hell she wanted.

Next->

[drgnflyteabox]

postcards from the coast [2]

previous || part two -> linens || part three -> tbd

series masterlist

pairing: kyle 'gaz' garrick / single mom!reader summary: kyle looks for you, then finds you tags/warnings: grief, less angst but still there, depression, non-creepy stalking, judgmental people, anxiety, previous injuries, insomnia, don't accept rides from strange men ladies and theydies, unless it's gaz then feel free<3 w.c: 1.2k

"Can I get a red-eye?"

Sleep has been difficult lately. Evasive. He sometimes goes through insomniac phases, where no amount of jogging or calisthenics practice or mental exercise helps. It's pure, restless energy.

Before, he might've taken himself to a bar, found a pretty girl to fuck and ease the buzzing under his skin. Now it's too painful - too much of a reminder of post-mission decompressing with the team. Sat in a circle booth, slapping each other on the back as they left, the smell of cigar-smoke and perfume.

Not that he'd be able to here, anyway. The town is too small, too isolated. There's hardly a main street, just a strip with bare necessities vaguely at the center of rolling hill country pock-marked with bleached white cottages and surrounded by cold ocean on all sides.

Peaceful, sometimes. Unbearable, mostly.

"Sure, any milk or sugar?"

"No, that's alright, thank you." He's been here every day, mixing a caffeine fix with his ongoing search for you. Curiosity and boredom, he tells himself. The product of so many sudden life changes - the end of their last mission, Johnny's passing. He just needs something else to focus on, something soft and wide-eyed.

At least the coffee is good.

The next time he sees you, it's in passing. Driving out of town to the post office to pick up a gift from his sister.

You're holding a toddler by both arms, their feet on yours, walking them up the steps toward the local library. Another long skirt, wimpling softly in the breeze. There's a smile on your face as you watch the child walk with you.

It almost feels like a missed opportunity - like he should turn back. But the post office closes in a couple hours and it takes nearly that long to get there, so Kyle elects to be patient.

You're there every evening. From five o'clock until closing at eight, you sit at the same window and alternate reading a massive tome and babbling back at your baby, who's sitting on a wooden high-chair.

The librarian makes rounds just to say hello to the two of you, pinching cheeks and ooing and aweing.

"And how old is she again?" She whispers mindfully. Her nametag says Nettie and she's a kindly-looking old woman, bent a little from years of work but sturdy as a mast in a storm.

"Turning two soon," you whisper back. Neither of you have any idea he's there yet, browsing the books as a cover to peek through the shelf at you. "She's a taurus."

"Just about to hit the terrible twos!" Nettie laughs.

"Yep," you laugh with her, but there's something there. A sheepishness. Embarrassment? Your expression is almost a grimace, from what he doesn't know. He wants to, though. Looks through the peephole and lets his chest fill with something other than grief for just a moment.

"And the father? Not a fan of reading?" She probably means well, but your face goes from vaguely uncomfortable to something like a deer in the headlights.

"Oh, um," you're floundering, but Nettie is too busy stroking a wrinkled hand over your girls head. "He's not in the picture."

Not in the picture? If Kyle had felt any kind of guilt for eavesdropping, it's overshadowed by that information. Best stake-out of his career to-date.

You shrink a little when Nettie yanks her hand back, frowning. He can tell judgement and prejudice when he sees it - experience and a keen eye. Must be hard being a single mom.

Resigned - that's the look. Pained and embarrassed and resigned.

"Right. Well," Nettie's sensible leather shoes clack against the floor. You don't watch her go, your hand is reaching into your bag for a tiny knit hat.

Fuck, you're leaving.

As you gather your things - book, coat, bags, baby - he tucks himself into the shelf, positioned still as a sniper, to-

"Ouch!" Your voice cuts through the quiet of the library. Kyle flounders, caught off guard for once. He'd only gently bumped into you to make it look like an accident, like something out of a rom-com. Girls liked that, usually.

But instead of looking up at him with surprise, you close your eyes and shy away from him, shoulders coming up defensively - you can't reach your arm, not with a baby on your hip, but it's obvious you're in pain.

"Are you okay?" You look to him, wincing still. You're asking him if he's okay? Heat creeps into his cheeks, warming him with regret.

"I'm good, I'm good," he says quickly. "Sorry about that, love, didn't see you there."

"That's okay," you readjust, arm limp at your side. Your heavy bags hang off of it, but there's nothing you can do with the baby on your hip.

"Let me get those," there's no time for you to reject his offer; he's too quick. The bags are heavy - no doubt there are more books and a baby go-bag. This close, you smell powdery soft like linen sheets and laundry dried outside.

"It's the least I can do," he's trying to be casual about it, lest he scare you off. Holds the door open, notices while you step out that your daughter looks just like you.

"Thank you, you didn't have to," you look down. How'd you hurt your arm? He knows he didn't hurt you - not like that, at least. Not enough to warrant such a reaction.

"Of course I did, didn't mean to get'cha so hard," his head swivels. There are only two cars in the parking lot. "Can I get these in your car?"

"Oh, I walked, that's okay," you reach to take the bags back, but he pulls away.

"I can't let you walk home, please- let me be a gentleman and give you a ride," he knows it's a long shot. Neither of you have exchanged names, neither of you are locals. He's tried to make himself look as approachable as possible; head tilted down, brown eyes imploring, palms out even with your bags in one hand, but it's a gamble.

There's natural suspicion and hesitation, your eyes looking side-to-side, but you nod with a hesitant smile after a moment. It's hard to keep the grin down, but he manages it up until you're tucked in his passenger seat and he's putting your bags in the back of his car.

"My name is Kyle, by the way," he puts his keys in the ignition, turns them. Pretends not to notice how you sink into the seat, eyes drooping, holding your daughter on your lap. It's not safe, but it's a country road and he promised to drive slow on the way.

You tell him your name. It's pretty, fitting. He wonders again about you - who left you like this? Alone, hurt, tired, trusting a stranger to drive you home. If he were your man, he'd never let you be put in a position like that.

The cottage you're renting is tiny, a glorified shack, rented as a cottage for tourists.

"There you are," he murmurs, trying not to startle you. "Need help getting in?"

"Hm?" You've been staring out the window. "Sorry! No, I'm alright, thank you again for the ride. Josie and I appreciate it."

Josie. It fits her, fits you. His eyes crinkle at the corners.

There's not a chance he lets you get the bags out yourself, and once you're appropriately sent off to your door, he sits and waits for a moment. Makes sure you get inside. Feels something loosen in his chest.